Nolan Martin :
Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us on the NEGOTIATEx podcast. We are continuing our conversation with Mickey Bergman, CEO of Global Reach. If you haven’t already checked out part A of the show, be sure to do that first. Let’s jump into the conversation with Mickey.
Aram Donigian :
Amazing. So much in there in terms of framing, the work you did in studying this leader, just really powerful. And then the connection that Gov made, if we could, can we shift to, you termed a loss earlier and then we know that you have those. How about, when you think about a discouraging negotiation where you thought you had something coming together until it suddenly fell apart and then what did you do about that?
Mickey Intense Journey Through Diplomatic Negotiations & Personal Challenges [00:36]
Mickey Bergman :
Yeah. Okay. Unfortunately, even with the success stories, remember the average time to get somebody home and this, it varies a lot, but the average is about two and a half years.These are two and a half years in which you fail every single day until one day you succeed. And there are parts of it in which, like there are weeks in which nothing happens.
And then there are hours in which, decades happen as they like to say in the Middle East in this. I think one of the most radical rollercoaster rides that I’ve had was around Otto Warmbier and two specific roller coasters that I can, parts of these rollercoaster rides that I can mention here. The first one was actually when I was in Pyongyang and that was about September 2016.
He was there already at that point for about eight months being held. Something like that, I think. It was just before the elections in the US that were happening in November. And the fact that the North Koreans, for them, we figured out it took us a long time. We figured out we went, my official reason for going was to negotiate the return and recovery of remains of the US servicemen from the Korean War, because there’s about more than 5,000 still there.
And that’s the topic that the North Koreans want to engage in. And then on the side, we knew we’re going to talk about, although, because they know who we are and we know where to come, but they insisted that the governor can’t go, and that was because every time the governor travels, goes to Beijing. It’s a big story. They didn’t want the publicity around. It’s me. Nobody cares.
So I can go quietly. And it was my first time actually leading a mission. And I give credit to the governor to letting me do that because that’s a, both on the ego and then the control. But I went, I was able to in the first few days there, I felt really good about the connections that I’ve made with the staff level. It’s a larger story again, very much similar to what I just told you about Myanmar, how you engage with your minder to figure out how, even though you’re on opposite sides of the negotiations, how you actually become joint in your mission to succeed in this. And we had all the different pieces for it in place.
And I walked into the meeting eventually with the Vice Minister, believing that I have a deal there. And it’s not that they said no, because they’re very rarely say no, but it was clearly not a yes. And I left that meeting and it was all happening relatively quickly. And I left that meeting and the minder, his name was Kim.
We made a bond between us. He was not allowed in the meeting, of course, because he’s a lower level, but he’s the one that wrote the memo. That’s why we collaborated on that and were hopeful and he got all the signals that it would go well. He saw my face when we walked out and I don’t have a poker face, it’s one of my traits.
And he saw it, it’s like and he looked at me, it’s he went like this, no? And I said, no. And we went into the car and then he told me, he said, Mickey, there is a saying in my country. It says it takes a hundred hacks to take down a tree. And I looked at him and all I could utter back was, I really hope I don’t need to come back 99 more times in order to get Otto.
But that was one, the first kind of roll call because I had a moment when I thought it was happening. The second one was actually when Otto returned, because even though we were very involved in all the negotiations and the back and forth, this was one of the cases in which it was a state department official that did the last part of it. And so we knew it was coming, but we didn’t know exactly the details and I was driving, it was 5 AM was dropping my wife and my daughter at the airport that we’re heading up upstate New York and my phone rings and I can see friend and Cindy, Otto’s parents. And I was like, Oh, here it comes.
This is the call I was waiting for. And I answer and it’s give me the good news. And they’re on the other side. And they tell me, hey. He just crossed the airspace, he’s coming home and I was just in one of the biggest highs that I had in my life because for the last 18 months, all I did, I was obsessed with this work over Otto. I’ve never met auto before, but I had dreams about bringing back at nightmares about other eventualities. And I was so excited. And then I heard Fred’s voice, but there’s a problem. I was like, what is that? It’s we don’t know the details of it, but he’s apparently in a coma and everything just crushed.
And, we have our cognitive biases. I have an optimism kind. I was trying to explain to myself in my head, oh, maybe it’s a purposefully induced coma just for the travel, to blur him up and stuff. It will be okay. And I flew to Cincinnati and I was there when he arrived and I saw him at the hospital. I just had an existential crisis of what it is that I’m actually doing because here I was completely failed the family.
And I remember with Cindy, all I could, I just kept crying and all I could say is I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And Cindy, his mother, gave me a hug, in his room next to his bed. And she said, because of you and the work you’ve done, I was able to hug my son while his body was still warm. And I, yeah, it’s, you go again, wins losses, but that was devastating.
NM :
I’m sorry to hear that. What a tough experience, especially as your first time. Where your boss gives you the reins to go out there. Yeah. I know that was difficult, but continue having the impact.
MB :
Yeah and as you see yeah, there’s no, but to this, it was a huge loss. And following that tragedy, we were able to retrieve a lot of remains. Now it’s not a trade. It’s not something that, oh yeah, no, but. We did this, it’s just the complexity of this, because of this, I, we had to come to grips, me and my counterparts in North Korea of how we deal with our relationship with what just happened and be honest about it and yet maintain it. And there’s a lot of stuff about this. Also, I write about it in the book, but yeah, it’s devastating.
NM :
You mentioned this interesting dynamic between the mother. I’m sure that dealing with families is definitely difficult. When you’re dealing with these hostages or captured individuals, how did your negotiation skills help in communicating, even encouraging families going through the unimaginable?
Exploring The Depth Of Negotiations In Hostage Crises [06:26]
MB :
Yeah, I actually don’t separate between negotiations with captors, our own government, and not even with families. So because it’s not, I define negotiations a little bit different than the traditional way. And maybe I should have started with it. The common way of looking at negotiations is that, kind of a transaction, a give and take, a zero sum way, maybe not a zero sum but the transactional part of it.
And I like to look at negotiations as our ability to influence somebody else’s behavior and decision making. And when you look at it that way, yes, there’s a lot of transactions in it and deals and exchanges, but it’s a little bit more than that or a lot more than that for me. And so I look at these relationships with the families as one of those ongoing relationships.
When you’re a family and something like that happens to you, very rarely does the family know anything about the country their loved ones is being taken. It’s their thing, it’s their life, they’re doing stuff, but overnight they’re thrown into a huge, international geopolitical crisis with so many players. So much misinformation and disinformation thrown at them. So many people coming to them and telling them what they absolutely must do or must not do. And most people with the best intentions, but very few of them have ever worked it. And then you have the government. And when you have all of that, you have to trust the government, your government.
Over time, you start understanding the complexities in government and the individuals in governments, different offices, and their interests and how they’re looking at it. And I am extremely aware that’s what the families are going through. And so the last thing that we want to do is to add to that complexity and to that, the tormenting part of it.
Because think about it, every single day, these families are asked to make decisions, multiple decisions. Each of these decisions can be the decision that might bring their loved ones home or might cost them a week, a month, a year, or their lives. And it’s an impossible burden. That’s why we actually never reach out to families proactively.
They come to us, even if it takes time, that’s fine. We don’t, we’re not chasing them that way. There are others that might, and then I promise them when I talk to them, that since I don’t have a security clearance, which is I’ll share with them what we know, I’ll be honest, good or bad. Again, my lack of poker face, I lean into this and I know that my authenticity is what helps me in these relationships.
And so they know that good or bad the news we will share. I will share. It’s very common in our world. And I understand why when you don’t have good news or when you have bad news, you just stop communicating because it’s really uncomfortable to provide bad news or even no news, that’s not the best in this kind of thing.
You need to communicate, you need to be honest about it. And they’ll appreciate that. And also knowing that once we take over a case, it doesn’t mean, I don’t come with an arrogance of saying, I know what to do here. At the end of the day, the decision is going to be their quarterbacking it. I’m an advisor. I’m able to tell them what it is that we think, how we think we can do this.
But I still need them to say yes or no to it. And when they come up with ideas or their other tracks, there are other people do that to assess whether we tell them, look, we don’t think that will help, but it won’t hurt. So go ahead and try it because they need to do something or whether we say, actually, this will damage what it is that we’re doing.
So you need to decide between one or the other approach. And we always say look, if you choose another path with somebody else. That’s fine. We don’t get insulted. We understand what you’re going through and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of that, but these families, even though funny enough, the prisoners, I very rarely meet them.
When they come home, I often, lately, I meet them more than in the past cause I don’t have any role in their lives afterwards, but they also don’t know what, who we are and what we’ve done. The families are becoming part of my family and those relationships continue.
AD :
Your work is clearly personal. I can only imagine the emotional toll that this sort of work and those roller coaster takes you on sometimes. How do you take care of yourself, Mickey, and ensure that you’re able to recharge and remain emotionally, mentally healthy after having been neck deep in some really awful situations?
Managing Stress & Maintaining Self-Awareness Through Long-Distance Running [10:39]
MB :
It’s a good question. There’s a saying that you see people running and you say, Oh, why are people running?
They’re running because they’re running away from something. I run long distances. I do marathons and my daughter and I love to do the Disney marathon weekend, which we’re heading over there in January, all these are, I do something called the dopey challenge over there, which is a, you run the 5k, the 10k.
The half marathon and the marathon in four days, the whole weekend.
AD :
That is dopey!
That’s exactly. It’s dopey. The medal is dopey with spinning eyes because he’s that crazy. So I find running to be the place where my mind quiets down, better processing, I just feel. Better about everything when I do that, but it’s important part of emotional intelligence, the first plane of emotional intelligence, self awareness.
And that is such an important thing. You have to recognize and take time to evaluate where you’re at because it does happen and it’s not that rare that you get into a burnout. And if you’re not, acknowledging that for yourself, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to be emotionally hijacked, which is when you’re reacting based on your emotions rather than your best interest over time.
When you are emotionally burned and you recognize that in that burn zone, you have to figure out how to find your little mental breaks. It is so important. By the way, the best way to do it is not to internalize it. It’s actually to articulate that. to somebody else. Because once you articulate it, it’s like an addiction.
Once you admit that you have a problem, now you’re starting to deal with it. Now, being in a burnout zone is temporary, but if you don’t treat it, you’re going to be burnt out and you’re done. Making sure that you recognize once you enter the zone to take care of yourself, even if it means hey, I need two days, no meetings because every single meeting, especially with families is, you’re an empath, you take on the pain.
That’s my personal motivator in this. So you have to know how to take that break. And last I have to say, I have my daughter is now 11, my daughter and my wife. They’re a great grounding force for me. It’s not a, Oh, you’re so great. No, they bring me down. They’ll remind me how not so great I am. That humbles and it’s really actually good.
You mentioned empathy as an important skill. What do you look for in terms of qualities when you’re bringing on a new negotiator onto your team? And what does the onboarding or training look like for these new members?
NM :
You mentioned empathy as an important skill. What do you look for in terms of qualities when you’re bringing on a new negotiator onto your team? And what does the onboarding or training look like for these new members?
The Role Of Emotional Intelligence In Strategic Team Building & International Negotiations [13:04]
MB :
I’ll just say, we don’t have a big team. We had a small team at the Richardson center before the governor died. We were basically two people, the governor and myself and one and a couple of advisors. or consultants that we took. One is a former ambassador, Cameron Newman. One is Steve Ross was specifically working on Myanmar and Bangladesh for us.
With Global Reach, we actually have more resources because we have a chairman is backing us up financially in a better way that we had in Richardson. And so I have a team and those teams are not, it’s not assistants. These are executives. These are C level and people. So we have a former head of the FBI hostage recovery fusion cell.
After his retirement, we brought him back from retirement to this. We have another who used to be NSC and corporate intelligence who comes in on the strategy. So we don’t have a large team, but. We recruited a few months ago, about six months ago, we recruited one last piece of our team, an individual named Stacia, and I can tell you at first, she’s fantastic.
So it’s one of the first times that I’ve met somebody who can do what I do better than me, even though, she’s five years behind me on this, but it’s great. It’s fantastic to see that. The most important thing for me is emotional intelligence is to be able to see it. And you can figure out emotional intelligence very quickly, if somebody has it. Emotional Intelligence, yes, some people are born with it. Some people are not born with it, but it’s certainly a learned skill. You can improve on it. If you spend time, if you’re a dedicated, so I’m like my internal, I’m an Israeli-born male. Emotional intelligence is not exactly our brand.
That’s something that I had to learn. I had a great teacher. It’s two teachers. One is a governor Richardson who never intentionally taught me that, but he just did it and I saw it and my second one is my wife who I’ve learned emotional intelligence, the definitions and all of that. I just took it from our personal life into the professional.
It is something that is so important in negotiations to me, the four planes of it, the ability to, of self awareness, which you can see in a second in the person. And if you have that self awareness, the second plane is self management. So knowing where you are coming from, where you’re at, and then be able to manage it in a conversation and discussion, new situations, including crisis situations, the third plane is being able to recognize the emotional state of the other person, of your counterpart.
And then, of course, the fourth plane of this is based on that acknowledgement of your counterpart. Can you manage that relationship according to the needs that you have? And that is by far the most important skill that I look for.
AD :
Well, critical enough. You teach an entire course on emotional intelligence at Georgetown. Is that right?
MB :
Yes, I have. To tell you, look, the program master of science in foreign service. It’s the program that I graduated from, it’s the best two years I’ve ever done for myself professionally. Fantastic cohort. And it’s one of the top ranked schools in this. And I felt over the years that graduates of that program, of any other of the leading programs, whether it’s Johns Hopkins SAIS or Columbia or Harvard or anywhere else, it doesn’t really matter.
From that perspective, we graduate fantastic graduates, who can analyze national interests, who can create policy recommendations and have great presentations and articulations of them in memos or in PowerPoints, but national interests are just a part of the game and what we are not training is in this human interaction, the emotional intelligence, the empathy, the sympathy, all of that kind of part. We’re not training in that.
And if you look at the world affairs and some of the biggest crisis and avoidance of crisis in our history, it boils down to personalities. And characters and ability of people to communicate with each other. And if we’re just training people and coming into a meeting with talking points, 15 points, this is the national interest, our allies, as well as our adversaries look at this so as long as it’s aligned on paper, we’re good. But if it’s not, we’re screwed. People need to know who you are. People need to know who your family is. People need to know that bonds. That personal bond that is created allows you flexibility when the facts and the actions on the ground are clashing. And so that’s why I spent time and I’m glad that the School of Foreign Service allows me to do that.
Even though I’ve been taking a break because of my book, but I look forward to come getting back into it to do this class. And it’s a seminar, it’s, it’s a semester long, but it’s a typically 16 students tops. And we do tons of simulations. We do some things that are, can be frowned upon and anybody looking from the outside, you actually need to be able to hear from people that you’re not supposed to listen to. And you need to train how to listen to that without that triggering you emotionally, but just staying calm with it and figure out what’s your best interest.
AD :
Yeah, Nolan, I would so agree with how critical emotional intelligence is and actually connecting with individual versus talking past them. I’m really curious, Mickey, as you reflect on just an incredible career and a lot of years yet ahead of you doing really difficult work, what are some of the hardest and most humbling lessons you’ve had learned over the years.
Navigating Influence & Building Personal Relationships In Diplomacy [18:17]
MB :
I think I was able to learn one of the hardest ones for me was early on. And that’s actually before I did all of this, when I was working at the Clinton global initiative, which was my first work out of the university. When I left the Clinton global initiative is when I learned that lesson while you working for the former president and my job was to call in CEOs and heads of foundations and say, hey, President Clinton wants to have you in this meeting, but it’s not about the only participating. We need you to make a commitment and people will just thought, oh, we’ll do this. We’ll do that. Good things. You start feeling like you’re really good at this, that people are responding to you.
And when you leave, you find out that people were that responsive to you not because you’re good at this. But because of the association of who you’re calling on behalf. It wasn’t Mickey. Oh, Mickey! Yeah, for you, I will do a hundred million dollars. No, I was a vehicle. And so learning that and remember, that scarred me.
And I remember that. And look, a year and a half ago, I had to face it myself. And this time I came to it with eyes wide open. When the governor originally passed away. September of a year and a half ago, almost, I knew, very well that so many of the contacts that I have are likely because of my association to him. And that’s why I spent so much time in developing and deepening my personal relationships with those people and I knew that’s going to be a time of testing whether I succeeded in that or not and when he passed away we were two weeks away from traveling to Caracas, Venezuela.
There were quite a few Americans being held there, and we had an idea. We had a thing that we worked with before and a solution to this. And we were going in mid September to do this. And then the governor passed away, surprisingly. And the first thing that I felt was a personal loss. It was 4 A.M. when I got the phone call from his wife, Barbara.
The second thing I thought was. Oh, shit. Our mission to Venezuela because he was the access. He had the relationship with Maduro, and I had to put that to the test. It took me about 24-48 hours. I was talking to a bunch of colleagues on this, and then I realized that, hey, Governor Richardson would have loved for me to cynically use his death in order to have one more rescue at the very least.
And so I reached out to the Venezuelans and I said, as you’ve seen, our friend passed away, unfortunately this weekend, but the idea that he was bringing to you on this is still solid. It’s valid. Would you consider in honor of him to receive us at the date? And it took Maduro about five minutes to get back. It will be our honor to have you and pay tribute to the men of peace. Governor Richardson. They wanted to get that deal, and I knew I had one shot with them in his name. And I had to make it count in order for have a continuous relationship for me with them.
And we did, and it worked. And on December 1st, two and a half months later, 13 Americans came back from Venezuela and our relationship continued. But that was one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned early on. And then I tried to implement and from this.
NM :
Reframe it and definitely think about the scenario and what you had to overcome and just how to get started about it.
AD :
What a powerful, just honor to the Gov’s legacy too, just powerful.
MB :
We call it Gov’s last mission. That was five days after his funeral. That’s when we were in Caracas.
NM :
Wow! As we prepare to wrap up, what final challenge would you leave with listeners, specifically on your message that diplomacy isn’t just for government officials.
The Importance Of Participation In Global & Domestic Affairs [21:50]
MB :
I’m going to say, hopefully it’s not too inappropriate here, in our youth, hopefully after 18, you should play strip poker. And when you play street poker, nobody is allowed to be in the room and observe you either active participant or you’re out of the room. I think that when we look at history and the world around us, our own country, our own society, international relations, we have to be active participants. We’re not witnesses. We’re not observers. We’re not traveling to a country to observe. We’re active participants. Every single conversation, every single meeting we have is a building block, and we have to know it and to appreciate that’s what it is. Again, internationally and domestically.
When you meet with somebody who believes differently, we have to realize that is what it is. And my challenge, and that’s what I said, this is not government’s business. Governments do what governments do, people, and you never know how important that is to people, especially, at moments of crisis being able to go and visit just when somebody’s down again, I can two quick examples I know we’re short on time.
Cuba, given the example of Cuba Whether you believe that we need to have a regime change or whether we should let just let them be It doesn’t matter on that on the people’s level, Cuba has gone through one of the deepest crises. It’s still ongoing. Since the special period with the fall of the Soviet Union. As neighbors to Cuba, this is the time to go and visit. This is the time to go and talk. This is the time go and engage again, not talking about regime change, not justifying, not legitimizing, but just be a good neighbor to the people who are hurting right now.
It will pay dividends if we do that. It’s also the right thing to do. Same goes domestic. That’s the second example. A day after the elections here, again, no matter where you stand on the political map, when one side lost the other side won, it is the good, the best time for the people who won to go to the people, their neighbor that they know is on the losing side of it, not to gloat, but actually to talk at, hey, we’re here. We’re going to make it work.
At the moment of crisis, the moment of vulnerability, that engagement, that active engagement participation is absolutely needed. And we just need to stop being observers.
I love it on both fronts, both the international and the domestic front, to be active participants. And I like how you’re defining that, which is not jumping into solving the problem, but listening, engaging, building the relationships like you were talking about that Governor Richardson did so well that you have done as well.
Yeah, that’s just, I find that very powerful, Mickey. So thanks for that final kind of challenge, but, and also just thanks for all the examples, stories, skills that you’ve shared over the last hour. Appreciate your time today.
MB :
I appreciate it. I enjoyed it. Thank you!
NM :
That is it for us on today’s podcast. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the NEGOTIATEx podcast if you haven’t already, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
