Transcriber: Emma G Reviewer: Mile Živković
Martin Luther King once said
that "Man must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge,
retaliation, and aggression.
The foundation of such method is love."
I want to share with you today how true that statement is.
I've seen it and lived that.
I firmly believe that conflict doesn't have to be destructive,
and competition doesn't have to be about winning.
I came from the world of business,
and I am also an Israeli,
so I have a first hand experience
that conflicts and competition are the ingredients
to create enemies and wars.
As most of you probably know, during last summer,
the conflict in my country escalated and led to war.
The fact that I've lived and experienced
conflicts and crises in the most extreme way
made me realize that there has to be another way.
After all, managing competitions and conflicts
is all about people and the dynamic between them.
I want to talk to you about conflicts and competition,
not the kind that wars are made from, but the kind that start revolutions.
I have found that, when competition is managed correctly, it can create
amazing ideas, personal growth, and momentum in our lives and businesses.
Competitions force us to think creatively, to gain an edge,
but left alone to magnify and get out of control,
competition leads to conflict.
And we can avoid that if we learn to manage competition
and use it to find a solution instead of creating a divide.
In fact, I believe that competition can bring us closer together,
create unexpected friendship, and lead to great opportunities.
Both competitions and conflicts can lead to positive and negative circumstances,
the difference comes from how we manage them.
I was so fascinated by this idea
I started researching about competitions and conflict in different areas,
and in my research I came up with three main keys.
These keys may not be the final solution,
but these are the very first steps
for understanding, solving, and managing competitions and conflicts
in our business environments and in our lives.
The first key is something I like to call 'Use flight mode.'
Have you ever been in on an airplane
and felt like the world is getting smaller while you are still the same size?
From up in the sky, we get to see things from a different perspective.
Everything seems less dramatic while we get to see the whole picture.
Flight mode helped me to remove myself out of a situation,
make big problems look small while I get to see the big picture.
I believe that perspective is the very first key
for understanding and solving conflicts.
If we'll manage to remove ourselves enough from the situation,
physically, emotionally, or otherwise,
we will manage to see that there is a much bigger story unfolding.
As an example, I was very inspired when I watched
the recent Hollywood film about Steve Jobs.
While he was recruiting a new team for the Macintosh project,
Steve Jobs shared his vision with his team saying:
"We cannot look at competition and say we are going to do it better,
we have to look at the competition and say we are going to do it differently."
He changed the focus and the perspective of his team,
and he changed each and every one of us.
Through our ability to look at things differently,
to look at things from a different perspective,
we can achieve much bigger and different results.
The second key is what I like to call 'Be a gentleman.'
The most fascinating thing I discovered in my research
was that managing competitions and conflict
is all about us as people.
It's a simple enough idea, but also a complicated one.
I see a gentleman as someone who will listen,
will be kind, won't criticize others unfairly,
and will share his opinion politely.
It is all about listening and understanding the other side,
a treasured ability that true gentlemen and ladies have.
When I integrated the 'flight mode'
with the ability to see things from a different perspective,
together with 'be a gentleman'
with the ability to listen and understand the other side,
I was amazed to realize that in a conflict, both sides are right;
each one from his own perspective, but they are both right.
And that was startling to me because I love classic American movies
where there is always the good guy and the bad guy,
the right side of the story and the wrong side of the story,
and I was amazed to realize that, in reality,
there is no right or wrong side,
both sides are right,
and the difference is to create an understanding between both sides.
I have learned the hard way that in most aspects in business,
there is no one school solution
and the closest thing to universal is that.
I have learned to set aside everything I know,
everything that is familiar to me,
and just focus on the person that is sitting in front of me.
Listen to what he wants, he needs and follow only that.
We may never agree, but we have to work on creating an understanding,
and work on building a trusting bond
in order to[find] special solutions for both of us.
Years back, I worked for a company
that had a past conflict with a different company.
When I approached that company trying to gain them as a customer,
I've been told by one of the executives there
that they were not going to have any business with us.
Now, as a stubborn Israeli, I obviously didn't give up,
and every time I was visiting that area, I used to meet with that executive.
And in those meetings,
I used to share my idea, my understanding, my point of view
on his products, his market, his competitors.
With time, not officially, I became one of his trusted advisers,
I became one of the persons that he chose to consult with
anytime he needed to make an important decision in his company.
That executive kept his promise,
he didn't buy from me.
I invested two years in that relationship,
I spent my time, effort,
researched studies on his market, his products.
I obviously didn't follow any business school method
or listen to any of my colleagues saying that I was just wasting my time.
And they were all right
up until, one day, just like that,
when that executive showed up to one of our meetings
with a huge contract for me to sign on.
Needles to say, it was one of my biggest closings so far.
That executive chose to work with me
because I managed to present a different point of view to him.
I was being a gentleman.
I managed to disagree with everything I know,
everything that was familiar to me,
I just focused on what he wanted, he needed, and I followed only that.
With that executive there is another key that worked: perseverance.
Perseverance is key for life.
The third key in my system is to 'Never give up.'
Some of you might be thinking:
"Does 'never give up' really help us solve conflict and competition in our lives?
And I say yes.
We cannot give up on the basic principles that guide us.
To do so would be to abandon our beliefs and dreams.
With that executive I never gave up.
I put in a lot of effort and time and I never gave up,
because I believed I could build a trusting relationship with this guy.
Can you imagine what would have happened
if you let gone on the things you believed in?
I have learned that in life I can fail.
We can fail, but we cannot give up on the things we believe in.
In my research, I found
that competitions and conflicts offer us many gifts and opportunities.
They allow us to look at others and the world differently,
and they push the human race forward.
Let's now look at ourselves:
what can we learn from competition as it relates to our own journey?
Whether you see yourself as a competitor or not,
chances are you have a story to tell about the time
when competition helped you to achieve something you never felt was possible.
You may also remember a time
when competition led to a conflict in your life;
perhaps that memory has left you with a negative association.
In my own experience, competition helped me
to be more confident,
to understand my strengths and weaknesses,
to move up in my career,
to manage my ego and be a much better loser.
When I got my first sales position, I was terrified.
I have no experience, no knowledge,
and I needed to manage the competition in two aspects:
inside the company with my sales colleagues,
and outside the company with other companies I competed with.
In order to overcome this,
I needed to put my ego aside and follow some sales leaders.
When I observed the technique of these leaders,
I realized that old school techniques are not working anymore.
And that was before I put these three keys on paper
and really talked about them,
but even then, what really helped me to overcome this
was that I managed to see the big picture
and understood the companies and the products that I was going after.
I managed to approach my customers right,
to not preach them but listen instead,
and I never gave up.
Although It was truly terrible at the beginning,
I never gave up because I believed I can.
Competition forces us to analyze
what we are good at, and what we need to work on.
It helps us to develop an understanding of ourselves
which helps us grow and become more confident
in our ability to succeed in this world.
Conflicts can help us get into transformative changes
in our business environments and in our lives.
And these changes are the key to succeed
and the key to communicate with each other.
I believe that that approach will lead us to a better future.
If we will learn to utilize these three keys,
that approach will lead us to a future
which Dr. King would be proud of.
Thank you.
(Applause)