Calling them evil, we miss their story Guest: Bob Bordone

Welcome to another program of We Can Find a Way, a podcast about conflict and its resolution. My name is Elveris, and I'm one of the first mediators of Turkey, certified in London back in 2005. I have taught it for a long time at Istanbul Bilgi University, where I worked for 16 years, and I started a pilot community mediation project with a municipality in Istanbul. I mediated court appointed cases, but now I'm based mostly in London. In this podcast, I strive to cover conflict and its resolution through alternative means in all areas of life.

In this episode of We Can Find a Way, my guest is negotiator Bob Bordone, whose YouTube channel I follow fondly, and I share an interest in civic life as well as clinical teaching background, although my legal clinic never dealt with mediation or negotiations. Thanks to a former student of Bob who suggested that he starts a YouTube channel, we can all learn now how he applies negotiation theory to films, events in Oscar ceremonies, and many policy and political settings. This is of utmost importance in today's polarized world, where democracy is under serious threat. That's why I wanted to talk to Bob today.

Bob Bordone is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He worked as Harvard Law School faculty for 20 years and is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, author, coach, and teacher on negotiation, mediation, consensus building, dialogue, and facilitation. So let me now turn to our interview with Bob of 31st May 2000.

Thanks for agreeing to talk to me today in We Can Find a way.

-A great pleasure to be here, and thanks for inviting me.

So, Bob, please tell us what kind of projects you worked on as a clinical professor of negotiation and mediation program at Harvard.

- So, I spent 21 years teaching at Harvard Law School. In 2006, actually founded Harvard Law School's Negotiation and Mediation Clinic. And really, the kind of work we did at the clinic focused broadly on conflict assessment work and dispute systems design work. We've worked with a wide range of clients, so I can give you a few examples. Obviously, some things are more confidential than others. One example that is not super confidential because it's actually written about extensively in the book I co-authored on conflict management systems is the work we did with the National Institutes of Health, which really was looking at what are the ways in which employees at NIH, that's what kinds of conflicts do they find themselves in? What processes are available for their resolution? Are people actually using those processes? Are they resolving conflicts in different ways? And really, how can we improve the system at NIH? So that's kind of one category.

Sometimes we would actually work on a actual mediation of some sort. For example, some students work over an extended period of time with a multi generational family that had hundreds of acres of land. Really they hadn't dealt with it for many years and got to the point where there were a lot of unpaid taxes and if they didn't work out how they wanted to use this property or did they want to sell it, essentially it was going to get possessed by the state. This is a really complicated mediation, bringing people in from six different states over an extended weekend with a lot of planning. So that's another just complicated context in which we worked. At times we work in a corporate environment, or maybe with a law firm looking at, for example, how do conflicts come up with respect to people of color within an organization? And were they experiencing differences or disputes differently, and were the processes in place actually helpful to them? The work was really rich. It was very varied. And the systems design approach, which is something that I feel really strongly about…

Online dispute system design or in general?

-In general for organizations, four schools, four universities. We actually did some projects that were online. But the textbook that I co-wrote with three other colleagues is really on designing processes and systems for managing disputes on line, in person, across time and space. First textbook in the United States that really provided a kind of systematic way to design and evaluate these kinds of dispute management systems.

And how did these so varied cases get referred to you?

-You know, in the beginning it was just being really scrappy, calling people up that we knew, really trying to make a sell. Over time, I think our clinics started to get a reputation. We had these really hardworking and smart students who were doing this work for free. Now, the disadvantage that we brought is that all of our work had to fall within the contours of a twelve week semester. But I think over time by the dint of somewhat being scrappy, calling people up and then by word of mouth. Right. So we did a program for NIH. It went well. And then the next thing we have the center for Disease Control reaching out to us.

Uh, but this was before the pandemic, I guess. Right? Yeah. It's kind of interesting that health issues have started to get treated like that.

-I've done a lot of work in the health care sector. I think that's partially by dint of living in Boston, at least in the United States, probably number one for healthcare in the country. But if not number one, a close number two, maybe with New York. And these are really large research hospitals. They're complicated. I mean, even before the pandemic, thousands of people ego, competition, funding, insurance issues, promotion and retention. Most healthcare professionals are tops in their field, but don't have really received any training or background in handling conflict or differences. And then there are suddenly thrust in managerial positions. I mean, it's been a great, rich area of work for me.

Can you please tell, how did you switch or decided to focus from a business oriented negotiation mediation model to issues involving public policy and in general, politics or community issues in negotiations? What prompted you to do that?

-Truth of the matter is, since I'm not a trust fund baby, I still do a lot of work in the commercial space. It's also true that throughout my whole life, I've had a long standing interest in politics and civic life. And in fact, I think a lot of what drew me originally to the field negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution was around those issues and the sense that we could get better outcomes if we could have better conversations, if we listened to each other more, if we were able to just for a moment, hold back from the notion that we were right and they were wrong. And so, after 21 years of full time teaching and writing and my work at Harvard Law School, I thought this was an opportunity to really turn and focus more on my work around the kind of civic and political space also in the US context.

I just think the level of polarization here has become so toxic and is the biggest threat to our democracy in the United States. In my last year teaching at Harvard Law School, I taught a class called Political Dialogue in Polarizing Times. And even in the context of that class, at times I felt that students were hesitant to talk about political differences openly. And yet I think that's so incredibly important, because if we're going to be able to solve some of the toughest problems facing us, we have to learn how to talk to each other. The notion that simply we will vanquish the other side when the other side is like 35% to 40% of the population doesn't really make sense to me. I know from the work that we both do that people in their own story think of themselves as good people pursuing the right thing. And so if we think of the other person as evil or bad, it means we've somehow missed their story that there is a place for kind of empathy and perspective taking that we haven't done adequately. So all of those things, I think the urgency of the moment, the sense that this is always an interest of mine, the sense that I could, perhaps find a way to do both. In other words, find a way to support myself, definitely keep clients, but also spend a non trivial amount of my time on issues of political concern and polarization was my hope. And so far, that has been really working out. And I guess it does work, both in the business and commercial sector, but also around with civic organizations and schools, but in churches, but also with politics. I've done work both within the United States Congress and within the executive branch. So that's been a real blessing for me.

What is your take on the general acceptance of that kind of approach among your colleagues?

-Among my colleagues who do conflict management and negotiation mediation work, I think there's a pretty high acceptance for this work. I do think in the US context, there are at least some in the dispute resolution space who are kind of losing hope about the possibility of engagement with the other as working. I see them becoming more advocacy oriented and less facilitative in creating space for conversation. But I still think that for a lot of people who do our work, that there's a real openness. I think in our society, though, there is less and less of a space, unfortunately, for conversation and dialogue. I think that can be seen by people on the left as an accommodation of ideas or thoughts that are illegitimate, indefensible, racist. I think on the right, they see dialogue as not really dialogue, but just a secret attempt to persuade me that I've been a Neanderthal and need to change. And that's part of the problem, right? We have to kind of create genuine spaces that feel like all of us can have some voice, listen and be heard. And that just takes a lot more work. It's a lot more challenging than 140 character tweets.

Can you tell us now why you started your YouTube channel? It's a lot of work. I see it's, like, every week. There's an engagement, preparation, et cetera. Please tell me more.

-Yeah, that's a great question. No, I would love to say I have some incredibly noble, original, animating reasons for starting the YouTube channel, that would be untrue. Actually, a former student of mine who just about a year ago reached out to me, and he and I just spoke about what was going on in our country. Towards the end of our conversation, he said to me, did you ever think about doing a YouTube channel? To which I said “definitely not”. I have no interest in this. So he runs a company that produces these channels, and over the period of time, he persuaded me that this would be a worthwhile endeavor, and mostly for the idea that in his mind, and this is very flattering for me, very kind of him to say, but he felt that I had a lot of content to offer the world, and that while paying a workshop is awesome and great, there's only so many people who could take a workshop. And so he said, “try this out and do it for, like a year to 18 months”. And he said, “I think over time, you'll gain a lot of subscribers that you could really make a difference”. He was like, maybe it will drive business to you. And I would not say that was the main reason for doing it, but it's certainly not a bad thing. But you'll also kind of hopefully cultivate the kind of a community of interest around this work. So we're about halfway through that kind of 18 month period. It is a lot of work, as you say, but I've had a lot of fun with it. It's also been really a great gift to see people like you reach out to me either about a particular video or a series of the videos, or sometimes ask a question. And so I hope the channel builds. I think there is valuable content there. I'm not sure I'm the most exciting person to listen to, but keep my fingers crossed it will make a difference and touch a lot of people.

When I watched Top Gun Two, two nights ago, I thought oh, this is a subject for Bob.

- I got to see that. I got to see the movie.

Because the thing is, now that we know we can take a wide perspective, to all the events around us, from the Oscars to Russia-Ukraine, conflict, we don't really have to pressure ourselves like, oh my God, what am I going to do this week? All the last programs actually show that you just have to look around and you can spot there is a subject that you can cover.

-I mean, negotiations are all around us, conferences are all around us. Plenty of opportunities to comment and learn. And I try to make this channel really relevant by focusing on current events. I mean, I try to do some combination of theory and advice and background, but then some combination of current events and then some fun, right. By reacting to, let's say, the TV show succession or the TV show Heart Stopper, I try to make it relevant in those ways as well.

My last question is what are your ideas or your initiatives about using negotiation, mediation and most contentious political issues, such as the abortion, gun control, even the 6th January hearings right now?

-Yeah, thanks for that question, Idil. To be honest, I think negotiation is really the only way that we will be able to resolve any of the most contentious issues in our society. And in fact, one of the, I think, really troubling things we see in this moment on both sides of the political aisle, at least in the United States, although I think in other places as well, is both sides thinking that somehow they will be able to force their way onto the other side, that they will be able to vanquish or defeat those who have opposing views. That strikes me as very dangerous and also really unrealistic because most of the contentious issues of the day, whether it's abortion in the United States, whether it's the January 6 Commission, whether it's guns, there are substantial sets of people on the other side who have different and opposing views. By the way, I wouldn't recommend this anyway, where we can say, well, it's a small minority, let's just vanquish them. I wouldn't recommend that, anyway is the best way forward, but that's not the reality here. So I think the question in my mind bring people together to actually listen with some degree of curiosity to each other, to be able to explain their perspective in a way that increases the likelihood that the other can actually hear it. I think that in the process of doing that, what we would find is there are substantial differences, but there are some shared in common ground. Even if there isn't shared common ground that we can really act on, at the very least, we have a more nuanced, more human empathetic story of the other. Even having that enables us then to work on a whole bunch of other issues where maybe we do have shared common value. But I think the way it's been set up right now is we can't even have a conversation about the issues because the issue feels so tightly tied to my identity. And when I feel identity threat, then I have to defend the entire thing.

How is that going to work? Not to feel a threat to your identity? If it's like, your core identity, how can you pretend like they're not attacking your identity?

-I mean, I think part of this, right, is helping people understand that their sense of who they are, their community, they're from, their culture, is something that doesn't have to be connected to kind of an all out defense of every, single ancillary issue that might be associated with that identity. And I think that's also where leadership comes in, because really good leaders are able to kind of inspire and motivate and find the best aspects of who we are and draw that out. And not very good leaders demagogue leaders, narcissist leaders, autocrats use identity and fear, so they tap into identity threat and loss aversion, which is easy to tap into, because those are psychological biases that all of us have. I don't think the task is an easy one. I think it's a really complicated one that involves certainly not just teaching people negotiation skills, which is kind of what you and I are interested in. Negotiation mediation skills. I mean, that's a piece of it. I think another piece of it is maybe related to negotiation. But really thinking about our negotiations within, how do we build kind of healthy and nuanced self concepts, which is a negotiation of sorts, which is an internal one, I think. Then there's the role of leadership. There's the role of civic institutions, there's the role of teaching history. Well, and of course, saying all this can make you just put your head down and say, oh, well, we're doomed.

The institutions are being undermined. History is like bias. Oh my God, where do we start?

-Where do we start? Right? Let me just get my bunker and my cans of corn and hunker down for the end times somehow or another. For me, this taps into I have this interest in politics, I have this interest in civic life. I also think some of this is motivated by a point of faith for me, in terms of just like, being a helpful people. And hope is really different from optimism. And hope is more essential than optimism, right? Because it's what kind of motivates us to get up in the morning and do things.

Thank you very much. Is there anything else you would like to add?

-No. Something that is super honored to be a part of this to be on your podcast. I'm so grateful that you asked me and I hope people will take a look at my YouTube channel as well and maybe they'll find some videos, uh, there that could be useful or helpful or less entertaining.

Yes, they will. Thank you very much.

-Yeah, thank you.

My guest was Bob Bordone. We discussed how his interest and engagement in civic life, combined with the political decay we're facing in this country and beyond led him to found his YouTube channel and share his know how. While initially his location in Boston helped him to work in the health industry and other public institutions to resolve their conflicts, he emphasized that today the only way for contentious issues in society in the US and beyond was to be resolved through negotiation. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please follow like or share it Shortly I will upload a picture of Bob in the Instagram account of We can find a way, I will also share some excerpts from the episode in stories. Lastly, I would like to close by thanking musician Imre Hadi and artist Zeren Goktan who allowed me to use their music and a picture in the podcast. Thank you and see you in the next program.