Alan Watts used to say that his definition of the human ego was “defense of a position.” That is exactly what the workplace ego is: defending your isolated position in the organization. But when you fight for a position instead of embracing the entire system, you contract your being into something small and weak.
The bigger part of you is the part of you that is unconditional, accepting, and without judgment. Many just don’t grasp that that’s the really powerful part of you.
The power aspect of neutrality is that it allows you to be an observer who is open to all possibilities. When you meet with team members from another department you can hear their side of the story and see whole-system solutions. You are not overly defensive of your position in the universe.
In negotiations, neutrality is a mutually inclusive concept that most businesses now acknowledge is the only real way to do business if you want longevity and a lasting network of relationships with the people with whom you negotiate. The old macho idea of besting your “opponent” in a negotiation gives people a short-term thrill and a long-term headache. Professional athletes whose agents best the team to get multimillion-dollar contracts often earn the scorn of fans when they have a bad year and leave the sport in shame and disgrace.
Neutrality brings you to honest solutions, and, most of all, it lets you allow—not force—the results to move toward a fruitful outcome.
Author and social scientist David Hawkins talks about surrender being the most powerful path to enlightenment. And in today’s world of the macho, Rambo-like computer-game character, people almost cannot conceive of such a thing being the path to power.
But ironically it is what martial-arts hero Bruce Lee taught. At only 135 pounds, Bruce Lee was, pound for pound, the strongest fighter on the planet. No one could defeat him—not even the biggest American boxers, with whom he did exhibitions. He once said, “To be a great martial artist, you become water. Water is totally accepting of whatever gets thrown into it.” And the big American boxers would lose because they would punch outward and try to defeat who was in front of them. Bruce Lee said, “I’m like water and you are jumping into my ocean when you fight me. And to be like water is the most powerful way you can be, both as a martial artist and as a human being.”
Water is soft and accepting, yet it has the power to level a city.
Bruce Lee said the only American boxer who came close to that principle was Mohammed Ali, because Mohammed Ali would dance and “float like a butterfly.” And with his amazingly flexible body, he would invite his opponents’ punches throughout the fight in such a way that they would punch themselves out, being drawn like moths into the neutral fire Ali was embodying. And by the time an opponent was so weary he couldn’t hold his arms up anymore, Mohammed Ali would jump in and finish his fight. He would “sting like a bee.” But he never actively resisted his opponent early in a fight. Nonresistance was his neutral, successful position.
Former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger was one of the greatest negotiators of all time because no one could come up with a position that would offend him. No one could upset him. No one could put him on the defensive. He was always willing to understand the other side’s position, so they could almost always find a whole-system solution that would in some way work for both of them.
Duane Black has been a master negotiator for land acquisitions for many years. He says, “When you’re negotiating with someone and you find things that they have to have, that they just can’t live without, you can get so much in return on your side of the equation by giving them those things, it’s amazing. And that happens a lot. Sometimes people will have a particular hot button, and if they can get that, they’ll give you everything else.”
A skilled hands-off negotiator never has to make a deal happen. He never gets so attached to a particular outcome that he can’t move to the idea of higher opportunity. He can always push back from the table and say, “Gee, I would have loved for this to work but I can see it’s probably not going to work in a way that will serve both of us, so I’m happy to just take a step back.”
Back to neutral, the position with all power. Back to where it doesn’t matter if it “works out.”
“And it will amaze you how people will respond to that power,” says Duane. “How people are drawn to the fact that you might want them but you don’t need them.”