What do your regrets reveal about what you value, and how can they make you a better negotiator?

Bestselling author Daniel H. Pink (The Power of Regret, Drive, A Whole New Mind) joins Stan Christensen to talk about regret, persuasion, motivation, and building a career as AI takes over entry-level work. Drawing on regrets collected from more than 26,000 people in 134 countries, Pink explains why we regret the chances we didn't take far more than the ones we did, why moral regrets cut deepest, and why "awkward" is almost never a good reason not to reach out.

Stan and Dan also cover:

- How to change someone's mind in a divided country, and the "looping" technique for understanding people you disagree with

- Why taste, composition, and wisdom become more valuable as AI improves

- Career advice for 21-year-olds, and why "follow your passion" falls short

- What really motivates people, and why fairness matters in pay and negotiation

- How Dan reads, when to quit a book, and the fiction and nonfiction that changed his mind

Timestamps

(0:00) Introducing Daniel Pink

(1:35) What our regrets reveal about what we value

(3:01) The girl on the school bus

(6:20) How regret makes you a better negotiator

(7:26) A silver dollar and a handwritten letter

(10:45) Regrets of action vs. inaction

(13:07) Connection regrets: "If only I'd reached out"

(17:05) Understanding each other in a divided country

(19:25) Looping for understanding

(22:31) Negotiating your career in the age of AI

(24:56) Taste, composition, and wisdom

(31:56) Why "follow your passion" is bad advice

(37:00) What really works for productivity

(40:50) Why empathy isn't weakness in negotiation

(45:20) What actually motivates people

(47:41) Negotiating job offers and fair pay

(51:43) How Daniel Pink reads

(55:13) Daniel Pink's book picks

(57:54) Who persuaded Daniel Pink

Links

Daniel H. Pink: https://www.danpink.com

The Power of Regret: https://www.danpink.com/books/the-power-of-regret/

The World Regret Survey: https://worldregretsurvey.com/

The Puzzle of Motivation (TED): https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation

Books discussed: A Whole New Mind and Drive (Daniel H. Pink), High Conflict (Amanda Ripley), Deep Work (Cal Newport), Getting Things Done (David Allen), Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury), Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke), James (Percival Everett), Animal Farm (George Orwell), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead), Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (Ben Fountain), The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt), The Stoic Challenge (William B. Irvine), Influence (Robert Cialdini), The Art of Gathering (Priya Parker).

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AllThingsNegotiation

Host Stan Christensen has spent his career as a professional negotiator and teaches negotiation at Stanford. On All Things Negotiation, he talks with leaders, diplomats, and thinkers about how persuasion and influence work in the real world.

How do you persuade a president, negotiate with Russia, and build a coalition when change seems impossible?

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and USAID Administrator Samantha Power joins Stan Christensen for a candid conversation about diplomacy, negotiation, and leading through crisis. Power, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Problem from Hell and The Education of an Idealist, shares how she talked her way into covering the war in Bosnia, what she learned negotiating the removal of Syria's chemical weapons, and why Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin was the best negotiator she ever faced.

They also discuss how to raise human rights issues without sounding moralistic, what really worked in persuading President Obama, the Ebola response, the dismantling of USAID and its human cost, and the lessons from her Harvard course on making change when change is hard, including why every coalition needs both "Baptists and bootleggers."

0:00 Samantha Power and The Education of an Idealist

0:30 The audiobook and a letter to her son

2:15 How a failed negotiation made her a war correspondent

4:05 Writing her own press badge

4:45 Why you have to get close to the issue

6:50 Negotiation lessons: leave it all on the field

9:30 Leading USAID

11:15 How USAID was dismantled

15:10 Why Congress didn't push back

24:20 How to persuade President Obama

27:40 Raising human rights in policy debates

33:25 Syria, chemical weapons, and the red line

41:30 Negotiating with Russia's Vitaly Churkin

45:35 Lessons from the Ebola response

51:15 Teaching social change at Harvard

52:25 Shrink the change

53:30 Find your Baptists and bootleggers

SAMANTHA POWER

Harvard Kennedy School faculty page

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/samantha-power

BOOKS BY SAMANTHA POWER

The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-education-of-an-idealist-samantha-power

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2003 Pulitzer Prize)

https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Hell-America-Age-Genocide/dp/0465061516

Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/300934/chasing-the-flame-by-samantha-power/

HER HARVARD COURSE WITH CASS SUNSTEIN

Making Change When Change Is Hard: The Law, Politics, and Policy of Social Change

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/courses/making-change-when-change-hard-law-politics-and-policy-social-change

BOOKS DISCUSSED

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/77696/switch-by-chip-heath-and-dan-heath/

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Team-of-Rivals/Doris-Kearns-Goodwin/9780743270755

LISTEN TO ALL THINGS NEGOTIATION

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-negotiation/id1769229339

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AllThingsNegotiation

Host Stan Christensen has spent his career as a professional negotiator and teaches negotiation at Stanford. On All Things Negotiation, he talks with leaders, diplomats, and thinkers about how persuasion and influence work in the real world.

#SamanthaPower #Negotiation #Diplomacy #USAID #AllThingsNegotiation

David Brooks, bestselling author of How to Know a Person, explores how to bridge America's political and cultural divide, and why listening, empathy, judgment, and understanding people we disagree with may matter more than persuasion.

Brooks, host of the new podcast The Permanent Questions and author of The Second Mountain, argues that many of the institutions shaping young people have become better at preparing them for careers than preparing them for life.

We explore what universities should be teaching that they often are not: judgment, empathy, moral reasoning, curiosity, listening, and the ability to understand people whose beliefs differ from our own. David explains why intelligence and good judgment are not the same thing, why asking better questions can transform our relationships, and why understanding another person should come before trying to persuade them.

The conversation ranges from America's political and cultural divisions to AI and education, meaning and faith, marriage and parenting, loneliness and friendship, and what David learned about suffering and character.

At the heart of the conversation is an idea from How to Know a Person: in an increasingly divided culture, learning how to truly see and understand another human being may be one of the most important things we can learn to do.

This is ultimately a hopeful conversation about becoming better listeners, better thinkers, better parents and partners, and better at living with people who see the world differently.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

David Brooks

How to Know a Personhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/652822/how-to-know-a-person-by-david-brooks/

The Second Mountainhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/3375/david-brooks/

DAVID BROOKS'S NEW PODCAST

The Permanent Questions with David Brookshttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-permanent-questions-with-david-brooks/id6803240325

BOOKS DISCUSSED AND RECOMMENDED

The Sense of Reality by Isaiah Berlinhttps://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Sense+of+Reality+Isaiah+Berlin

Community by Peter Blockhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/815995/community-third-edition-by-peter-block/

The Meaning of Marriage by Timothy Keller and Kathy Kellerhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309809/the-meaning-of-marriage-by-timothy-keller-with-kathy-keller/

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Franklhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/206272/mans-search-for-meaning-by-viktor-e-frankl/

Morality by Jonathan Sackshttps://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jonathan-sacks/morality/9781541675322/

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandelhttps://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770028/thetyrannyofmerit/

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegnerhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/172500/crossing-to-safety-by-wallace-stegner/

Juvenescence by Robert Pogue Harrisonhttps://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/J/bo18596462.html