BOOK DESCRIPTION
Distinguished diplomat Ambassador Wendy Sherman brings readers inside the negotiating room to show how to put diplomatic values like courage, power, and persistence to work in their own lives.
Few people have sat across from the Iranians and the North Koreans at the negotiating table. Wendy Sherman has done both. During her time as the lead US negotiator of the historic Iran nuclear deal and throughout her distinguished career, Wendy Sherman has amassed tremendous expertise in the most pressing foreign policy issues of our time. Throughout her life-from growing up in civil-rights-era Baltimore, to stints as a social worker, campaign manager, and business owner, to advising multiple presidents-she has relied on values that have shaped her approach to work and leadership: authenticity, effective use of power and persistence, acceptance of change, and commitment to the team.
Not for the Faint of Heart takes readers inside the world of international diplomacy and into the mind of one of our most effective negotiators-often the only woman in the room. She shows why good work in her field is so hard to do, and how we can learn to apply core skills of diplomacy to the challenges in our own lives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
is a professor of the practice of public leadership and director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, she is a senior fellow at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Ambassador Sherman is senior counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and former U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs.
She serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group and the Atlantic Council, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group. Ambassador Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that reached agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran for which, among other diplomatic accomplishments, she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama. Prior to her service at the Department of State, she was vice chair and founding partner of the Albright Stonebridge Group, counselor of the Department of State under Secretary Madeleine Albright and special advisor to president Clinton and policy coordinator on North Korea, and assistant secretary for legislative affairs under Secretary Warren Christopher.
Ambassador Sherman, with a Masters in Social Work, began her career as director of child Welfare for the State of Maryland. Later, she managed Senator Barbara Mikulski’s successful campaign for the U.S. Senate, served as director of EMILY’s List and ran Campaign ’88 at the Democratic National Committee for the Dukakis presidential campaign. She served on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, was chair of the Board of Directors of Oxfam America and served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board and Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism. Ambassador Sherman is the author of Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence published by PublicAffairs, September 2018.
[Alessandra Seiter] In March 2013, the United States began a series of secret talks with Iran. The opening of these secret talks led to the first high-level contact between US and Iranian leaders in over 30 years and laid the groundwork for the reinstatement of the P5+1 negotiation team. Composed of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, the P5+1 embarked on a 20-month series of negotiations with Iran between November 2013 and April 2015. What the seven countries agreed on was a landmark deal. Iran agreed to severely curtail its nuclear program and subject its facilities to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency in exchange for relief from nuclear-related sanctions previously imposed by the US, the European Union, and the UN Security Council.
Though President Donald Trump announced the US's withdrawal from the deal in May 2018 and its fate remains in the balance, the joint comprehensive plan of action, otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, remains an impressive showing of diplomatic negotiations between historically hostile countries. At the head of the US negotiation team was Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who has taken on another leading role as the director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
On this episode of Behind The Book, we'll talk about Professor Sherman's new book, "Not for the Faint of Heart: "Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence". It offers a fascinating insider's perspective on creating meaningful change, balancing conflicting interests, and how women can make the most of their hard-won seat at the table. Ambassadors Sherman's story as a change maker starts in her home state of Maryland, where she watched her parents take significant risks to fight for racial justice in their community.
So you actually start the book by talking about your own childhood and that really struck me, the role that your father, in particular, played in Civil Rights.
[Wendy Sherman] When I was a teenager, my father went to a Rosh Hashanah service where the rabbi, who was part of a group of clergymen who were trying to end discrimination and degradation of African-Americans in Baltimore, had just been arrested a few days earlier for trying to integrate an amusement park. My father was very moved by that, my mother as well. And my father went to see the rabbi and said, "What can I do?" My father was in residential real estate, he sold houses. And the rabbi said, "Well, you're more powerful than any rabbi "or priest or minister."
[Alessandra Seiter] The rabbi advised her father to sell houses to anyone, regardless of race, religion, or any other criteria. He took the rabbi's advice and within six months had lost 60% of his real estate listings.
[Wendy Sherman] Within a few years, his business was closed, even though he'd added other services to the business, but not for one moment did my parents regret what they did.
[Alessandra Seiter] This balancing act between sacrifice and progress would later inform many aspects of Ambassador Sherman's career, including at the negotiating table with Iran. It helped her and her negotiating team stay focused on their main objective.
[Wendy Sherman] One has to define, before you go in to a negotiation, what will be success? And in the case of the Iran nuclear negotiation, President Obama said, "You have to make sure "that Iran can't obtain a nuclear weapon. "And to do that, you have to close down all the pathways "to fissile material that's necessary for a bomb." So that was the measure of success.
[Alessandra Seiter] An integral part of achieving this success was Ambassador Sherman's ability to foster deeply human connections with those across the table from her. Her Iranian counterparts were all men and coming from a conservative Islamic culture would not permit themselves to shake her hand. She related this experience to having grown up in an Orthodox Jewish community, where similar customs prevail.
[Wendy Sherman] I took an occasion on the margins of one of our negotiating rounds to say, "You know, this is not new to me, "I grew up in a Jewish community. "And among Orthodox Jewish men, "they don't shake my hands either." Even though we came from very different places, and we'd continue to come from very different places and fight vigorously for our country's national interests, in that moment we could see each other. I think in most situations in life, when we have interpersonal relations, it's good to find some common ground because we're all different. We all come from different backgrounds and from different places. And finding common ground doesn't mean you're gonna solve the problem that's in front of you. The Iranians didn't trust me, I didn't trust them, I still don't, they still don't. But we needed to understand that we were human beings and that we each did have places that were the same.
[Alessandra Seiter] Ambassador Sherman develo