Turn your adversaries into allies

- This is an audio course. No need to watch. Just listen. Welcome to the latest edition to LinkedIn Learning podcasts. We've curated some of the best business podcasts and made them even easier to listen to. Each episode is split into sections. Use the links in the contents area to skip to whichever section you like. We're always looking for new ways to help you learn, and we'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks for listening. - I want to hear about your book "Turn Enemies into Allies" and your martial arts work. So could you sort of just tell us the whole story here? What's the big idea that you're presenting? - The big idea is that I have a model that I use when I go into organizations and help people resolve conflict. The model is based on Aikido and some of its techniques and principles like blending and redirecting of energy, for example. - So tell us then when it comes to Aikido, or first could you share what that is for those who are not familiar? And then what are its parallels to this process? - Right. So that's where this idea for me, anyway, came from. Aikido is a martial art first and foremost. And it was developed in the 20th century, so it's a pretty recent evolution of the martial arts. And it was developed by a man named Morihei Ueshiba, a Japanese man who's now dead but only died in 1969. His idea was that you could subtly transform other martial arts through Aikido into a martial art that didn't harm people. So the goal is to render the attack harmless without harming the attacker. And you do this by first getting out of the way of the attack and moving in to join with its energy and then redirect it. So let's say somebody coming at me with a punch. Instead of blocking and punching back, I get out of the way really fast. I join the energy by, let's say, grabbing onto the arm that's punching me. And then I redirect it into a pin or a fall. So I'm not trying to harm the opponent. I'm just trying to control and de-escalate the conflict. So with that comes a metaphor. And in fact, Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, had a philosophy that went along with the development of the art. And he said that this is about turning our adversaries into allies. This is about not protecting ourselves from the enemy outside of ourselves, but from the enemy within, that if we could vanquish the source of the conflict within ourselves, then we would have no difficulty with those outside ourselves. So we call it blending and redirecting. And we think about the attack as a gift of energy that I can use to redirect and keep the opponents safe while also keeping myself safe on the mat. Off the mat, we're practicing Aikido any time we listen with an intention to learn with curiosity. So that's the same thing as blending and redirecting. The major point here is that you can do what I'm doing if you're a manager, a leader of an organization, with some key skills that I describe in the book and some attitudes that I describe in the book, like non-judgment, like curiosity, like appreciating where people are coming from; the ability to listen; the ability to reframe the conflict as a gift of energy that people might be able to use to actually build their relationship and become leaders themselves; and apply the skills not only at work, but in life too. The big idea is you can do this. And you can do it fairly easily, actually, if you get over the idea that conflict is negative, that it's a bad thing, and adopt the attitude and begin to practice it, that conflict can be a gift if we decide that it is, to get to know each other better and to learn how to solve a problem rather than needing to create a contest over it.