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Listen deeply enough to be changed
Hal Saunders was a senior diplomat who helped write the Camp David Accords, and later the mentor of Priya Parker, who wrote The Art of Fighting. After he retired, he spent 20 years teaching dialogue skills to young people.
His line to them was always the same: listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear. At his funeral, each guest was handed a stone with the first half of the line on one side. Turning it over revealed the second half, followed by his name and his birth years.
The Art of Fighting is dedicated to him.
How did the Camp David Accords come together?
US President Jimmy Carter hosted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat in Maryland for thirteen days in September 1978. The two leaders disliked meeting face to face, so Carter's team often shuttled drafts between their cabins. The talks produced two frameworks, one on Egypt and Israel and one on the wider region. They led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, signed in March 1979.
How did diplomacy lead to a dialogue method?
After his career in government, Hal Saunders developed a process called sustained dialogue, in which small groups from opposing sides meet repeatedly over time. He drew on his experience with the Dartmouth Conference, a series of unofficial US-Soviet meetings that began in 1960. The method moves from airing relationships to exploring their dynamics and then to planning action together. It has since been used on university campuses and in community disputes.
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