ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

February 24, 2005

"I care, but not that much."

- Herb Cohen - Author, Speaker, Consultant

"The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld."

- Dorothy Thompson (1894 - 1961)

Herb Cohen

Cohen has been a practicing negotiator for over 40 years. His clients have included business and government. As an adviser to Presidents Carter and Reagan, he was involved in the Iranian Hostage Crisis and credited with helping to shape the government's response to the skyjacking of TWA Flight 847 and the seizure of the Archillo Lauro.

The point of his quote is that an emotional distance from the outcome is critical to success in creating an agreement.

Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson was born July 9, 1893, in Lancaster, New York.  Her mother died in 1901 and he father sent her to live with relatives in 1908 because she fought frequently with her stepmother.

She graduated from Syracuse University in 1914 and worked for the women's suffrage movement until 1917.  She began her journalism career in New York in that year and moved to Europe in 1920. By 1925, she headed the Berlin bureau of the New York Post and the Public Ledger. In 1928, she married Nobel Prize- winning novelist Sinclair Lewis (her second of three marriages).

She was expelled from Germany in 1934 by Hitler for her critical reporting of the Nazis. She returned to America and two years later she began writing a thrice-weekly newspaper column, “On the Record,” for the New York Herald Tribune. With its syndication in over 150 newspapers and her work as a lecturer and NBC radio commentator, she developed such a large following that Time magazine called her the second most popular woman in America, after Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Her marriage to Sinclair Lewis ended in 1942, and her column ended in 1958. Her final book, The Courage to be Happy was published in 1957. She died in Portugal in 1961. 

Her emotional style and passionate involvement contributed to her success and her difficulties.

What is the role emotions should play in business? Herb Cohen makes a great case for staying emotionally distant even when dealing with terrorists. He is focused on the result. Dorothy Thompson felt emotions were critical to creating the desired result and she fought some very important battles with strong emotional involvement. So should we approach business like a game of poker even when it impacts the lives of people we care about or is there a way to have emotional integrity and still be successful? I don't have an answer: Maybe because I'm extremely over sensitive and  learned to hide my emotions to survive school. Communication was not an innate personal strength of mine, and I consciously had to learn how to emotionally distance myself from issues. I did discover that I could be successful in getting what I wanted by being more thoughtful of how I played my cards. Yet it is those occasions where I become emotionally connected and stop listening and become demanding, angry, and fearful that I know I have a profound belief in what I am fighting for even while I see the damage I am creating in attempting to achieve a positive result. 

I call this the Impact Zone (In surfing, this is where the wave hits with all its force): Not much good happens if you're in the impact zone except maybe learning to stay away from it. It's also the impact zone that spawns life and creates necessary change. If I appear confused on the issue, I assure you I am. So I end with this quote.  

"Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow." - Dorothy Thompson

Wishing you tomorrow.

Sincerely,