From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I've always felt negotiation is pretty-easy. You have to look at any situation from the perspective of all sides, and find a zone of fairness in between.
Any time you get angry, frustrated or disappointed, it's worth remembering that those emotions are just a first draft. You would never publish a draft version of your blog, right? The same is true of emotion- a lot of people just go ahead and 'publish' – internalising how they feel – without stopping for a second and thinking that maybe they ought to do a revision.
Fear is healthy, fear is natural, and if anyone's ever told you they've been to combat and were never afraid… they're either lying or a sociopath. Fear is a very good reaction; it makes you think more clearly. The fine line is panic. Panic is contagious- if one person panics, everyone panics. Fear is healthy, but panic is contagious. As a leader, you also realise that calm is contagious.
We have this macho-willpower-crap, as if somehow willpower is the answer to everything in life and if someone needs help, it means they don't have the willpower. It's a nonsense.
If you don't have some failures continually, it is a signal that you have retreated into the conservative past. Most people still interpret failure as an unfortunate thing to get to success, but this isn't actually what it means.
For me it is important that the kids see me for who I am – a good person who works hard but has fun.
Most people think of optimism as a celebration, but for us optimism is a courageous choice to remain grittily determined to find solutions in a timely and collaborative way. We have no choice but to address climate change, and thus we have no choice but to remain stubbornly optimistic.
Resilience is the responsibility and opportunity of the community.
A resilient position means that you are not always on the brink of war. The cost of war is so great that being on the brink is a deeply uncomfortable place to be. We have to make leaders and societies pay more attention to the costs of conflict.
The smallest male can be dominant based on his social skills. Think about it; nobody walks into a big store in London and assumes the biggest person is the boss! It might be the old man; it might be the young woman!
I personally want to throw up every time I hear some completely senseless and baseless statement like 'we need more of Europe, not less'. It means nothing, and those slogans simply drive people crazy – It goes to show the intellectual vacuousness of the people who say them.
We had intended to build a media network but what we were really building was a people network. The same idea of reaching out, opening up and asking for help has been invaluable to me since- especially in the world of diplomacy.