How to Disagree Better with Julia Minson

**Julia Minson** (0:00)
Yeah, body language lies all the time. Most people are actually really, really bad at reading body language. And it's sort of not surprising, like recipients are bad at reading body language, right? Observers, but also the person trying to express themselves through body language is usually really bad. One of my favorite examples is people always talk about having a closed posture versus an open posture. And if you look around any room of people when you're speaking, half of them have their arms crossed. And it's not that they have a closed posture and they don't want to hear you. It's like half of them are cold, right? If it's a woman with crossed arms, it's probably that she is cold in an overly air conditioned office room.

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:45)
Good morning, everybody. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. And for the uptenth time, I'm telling you that we scour the earth for remarkable people, so they can inform and inspire you. And of course, we found another remarkable person. Her name is Julia Minson, and she's a behavioral scientist. She just wrote a new book. It is called How to Disagree Better. I got to tell you, I love titles that begin with how, all because there's no question about what it's about, right? And these like esoteric titles, and now we know. Well, guess what the book is about? Oh, it's How to Disagree. Oh, yeah, doesn't take a rocket scientist. So more on her introduction. She's on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School, and she's a professor of public policy.
Basically, she's just an expert on disagreements and negotiations and stuff. And oh, my God, we could kind of use that these days.
Welcome to the show, Julia.

**Julia Minson** (1:51)
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:53)
So, Julia, can we start with a very interesting question? Because you being an expert in negotiation, this might be a very weird question. But as I sit here and I think about it, what is the point of war? Whoever benefits from a war? I don't understand. Why do people go to war?

**Julia Minson** (2:10)
Oh, that's a great question. I think I would be a lot better off if I had the answer. I think like any kind of conflict, people desire what other people have. And they say, well, if I can't take it through persuasion, if I can't take it through negotiation, then I'm going to take it by force. And we see that certainly, like you say, in armed conflict, we also see that in other aspects of life.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:37)
Yeah. I don't want to point out the obvious, but it seems to me that men believe this more than women, right? Am I missing something?

**Julia Minson** (2:45)
I am not an evolutionary biologist. That's not my field. But in almost every, not in every species, there's plenty of species where females are more aggressive than males. But the species that are the closest related to humans, all the great ape species, males tend to be more aggressive than females. Or at least that's what I remember from college level evolutionary biology.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:06)
I want to introduce a piece of very irrelevant trivia here. But I read your book and your family, I think I got this right, comes from Ekterinaburg, is that right?

**Julia Minson** (3:16)
I was born in Ekaterinburg, yes.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:19)
So I want to tell you that I'm probably the only podcaster who's going to interview you, who has been there. I have been to that city. I went for a big tech conference and all I can remember is that there was this troupe of little old women dressed in Russian whatever, I don't know, Ekaterinburg attire, and these little old ladies, I loved them. I had so much fun with them. So I just thought I'd mention that so I can build up my credibility and see if we can agree on even more. Can I just ask you a few more difficult questions and I promise you we'll get to the book.

**Julia Minson** (3:56)
All right.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:57)
So now.

**Julia Minson** (3:57)
Let's go for it. Love difficult questions.

**Guy Kawasaki** (4:00)
Let's hypothetically say that Donald Trump called you up and said, Julia, could you just coach Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff a little bit? Can you give them a little help about how we can get some agreement in Iran and work this out? First of all, would you take the job? And then what would you tell them?

**Julia Minson** (4:18)
I would take the job because I think that diplomacy is incredibly important and I have great faith in the power of better conversations to lead to better results. And actually, I wouldn't tell them things. I would start by asking them things and that is trying to get a genuine understanding of what people's goals are.