What expert negotiator Mickey Bergman learned from a failed meeting with a Nobel Peace Prize winner

Professional negotiator Mickey Bergman made a name for himself working alongside the late American politician and diplomat Bill Richardson for nearly two decades to secure the release of political prisoners and hostages around the world.?

In 2018, two Reuters reporters, one of whom was a good friend of Bergman’s, were arrested in Myanmar for reporting on the military massacre of the Rohingya minority. When Myanmar’s then-leader Aung San Suu Kyi invited Richardson to join an international commission, they saw an opportunity to try to get them released.?

Bergman said he was “kind of awestruck” by Suu Kyi, who was internationally renowned at the time for her peace advocacy and standing up to an oppressive military regime. But, when Richardson brought the issue of the jailed journalists up at an official meeting with her, pointing out that she too had been a political prisoner at one point, Bergman recalled, “She referred to the journalists as traitors. And at that point I felt like the glass shattered. The image of Aung San Suu Kyi that I had in my mind, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize and all these accolades internationally, who always does the right thing and fights for minorities, just shattered in front of me. I couldn't believe the words that I was hearing her say. And in a moment I realized that the whole strategy that I built was going to absolutely fail. It's going to cause my friend to stay in jail because of a bias that I had that I just didn't see.”

Three and a half years later, Bergman was back in Myanmar with Richardson, this time negotiating the release of an American journalist with the leader of the military junta that had taken over the country. Determined not to repeat the mistake he had made in 2018, he took time to study Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. “I found out that unlike what you would expect from a military leader, he was soft-spoken,” Bergman said. So, he designed an approach that was “very attuned to his personality, very soft, very personal, to establish an emotional contact” between him and Richardson, in a private, one-on-one meeting. The strategy ultimately proved successful.?

Bergman’s takeaway: “Nothing would've changed if I had not learned my lesson and looked past somebody's title and into their personality…These titles are great in giving us a good concept of who the person might be, but they also hide blind spots for us.”

The lesson is useful to anyone, beyond professional negotiators. As Bergman says, “You need to figure out, take your time, learn who the person is, their characters, their personalities, their life story, and you might find much more depth into your ability to connect and therefore do something positive with that individual.”

Read more about Bergman’s life and work in his new book, In the Shadows: True Stories of High Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad.

Have you ever misjudged someone because of their titles or accolades? Tell us about it in the comments. Subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation live on LinkedIn.

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