This was a particularly personal conversation for MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas.
Before launching MeidasTouch, Meiselas practiced as a litigator. One of his mentors during that career was Tony Piazza, a pioneering mediator whom Meiselas credits with teaching him foundational lessons about negotiation, listening and conflict resolution.
Piazza began mediating in 1980 and helped shape the modern practice of mediation in civil litigation. Over more than four decades, he has mediated thousands of disputes, including massive fights between corporations, billion-dollar cases and complex international litigation.
Meiselas brought his former mentor on for a different kind of conversation: What can the lessons Piazza learned resolving seemingly impossible disputes teach us about diplomacy at a moment when negotiations around the world are breaking down?
Piazza started with a fundamental requirement.
Unless both sides are actually committed to reaching a resolution and have the authority to honor an agreement, he said, “you’re just witnessing crude political theater.”
But when parties genuinely want a deal, Piazza says one of the greatest obstacles is surprisingly simple: reactivity.
Piazza described a recent dispute between two multinational companies that had been fighting for years and remained more than $3 billion apart. After flying to Hong Kong to mediate the case, Piazza helped the parties reach an agreement in a single day.
The key, he explained, was changing the nature of the conversation. Instead of allowing the parties to continue trading attacks, demands and counter-demands, the mediation created an environment where each side could more objectively evaluate its risks and options.
That lesson has particular resonance as wars escalate and diplomatic agreements repeatedly collapse.
Piazza ultimately offered a broader principle that extends beyond courtrooms and negotiating tables: people with profoundly different experiences and beliefs still have to find ways to remain in dialogue.
“What I try to do in my work and what I’m very slowly learning to try to do in my life,” Piazza said, “is to just accept that there are going to be ever so many opportunities for conflict,” and approach those conflicts through a more productive, less reactive dialogue.
Watch Ben Meiselas’ full conversation with his longtime mentor Tony Piazza above as they explore what decades of resolving some of the world’s most difficult legal disputes can teach us about negotiation, diplomacy and finding a path out of seemingly intractable conflicts.
Ben also discusses the art of negotiation in the new book from MeidasTouch, WTF America. Preorder it today!
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