The Anatomy of PEACE. RESOLVING THE HEART OF CONFLICT. The Arbinger Institute

hey blow themselves up in order to maim and murder innocent civilians," Lou blurted.
Unhappy with the interruption, Elizabeth's mouth stretched disapprovingly into a line.
"I agree with Elizabeth that there are sordid details on all sides of this history," Yusuf said. "What I would like to introduce you to, however, is one not-so-sordid figure.
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"After taking Jerusalem in 1099," he continued, "the Cru�saders took control of most of the coastal areas of the Middle East. They continued to hold these regions for about eighty years. They succeeded largely because of infighting between rival Muslim military and political leaders. This began to change, however, with the rise to power of the Turkish sultan Nflr al-Din, who unified the various peoples of Syria. The tide turned entirely in favor of the Muslim resistance under his suc�cessor, Yflsuf Salah al-Din, or simply 'Saladin,' as he is known in the West. Saladin united all the Muslim peoples from Syria to Egypt and mobilized their collective resistance. His armies recaptured Jerusalem in 1187.
"Militarily, politically, and in every other way, Saladin was the most successful leader of the period. His successes were so surprising and total that historians sometimes invoke luck and good fortune to explain them. However, as I have studied Saladin, I am convinced he succeeded in war for a much deeper reason; a reason that won't seem at first to be related to war at all."
"What?" Pettis asked. "What reason?"
"To understand it," Yusuf answered, "we need to get a bet�ter feel for the man. Let me tell you a story. On one occasion, an army scout came to Saladin with a sobbing woman from the enemy camp. She had requested, hysterically, that the scout take her to Saladin. She threw herself before Saladin, and said, 'Yesterday some Muslim thieves entered my tent and stole my little girl. I cried all through the night, believing I would never see her again. But our commanders told me that you, the king of the Muslims, are merciful.' She begged for his help.
"Saladin was moved to tears. He immediately sent one of his men to the slave market to look for the girl. They located her within the hour and returned her to her mother, whom they then escorted back to the enemy camp."
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Yusuf paused for a moment. "If you were to research Sala- din, you would discover that this story is characteristic. He was renowned for his kindness toward allies and enemies alike."
"I'm not sure those who died at the end of his army's swords thought him kind," Elizabeth interjected. "But I agree that in comparison to others of the period, he did shine a little brighter."
Lou was unimpressed. His mind drifted back to Vietnam and to all the dead young men his regiment had to carry out of the jungles. When he had returned from Vietnam, Lou made a personal point of visiting the mother of each soldier who had lost his life under his command. Over a period of two years, he visited fifty-three towns, from Seattle and San Diego in the West to Portland, Maine, in the East and Savannah, Georgia, in the South. He sat in the living rooms of the homes these men never returned to and held their grieving mothers in his arms as he told them of the heroic deeds of their sons. He loved his men. To this day, he still dreamed of ways he could have saved more of them. Being kind and merciful is well and good, he thought, but they are traits that are poorly rewarded in wartime.
"With that bit of background," Yusuf continued, "let me contrast Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem with the Crusaders' initial invasion. In the spring of 1187, after the Crusaders had broken a truce, Saladin called upon the forces of Islam to gather in Damascus. He planned to march against the occupiers in a unified effort and drive them from their lands."
"If I might," Elizabeth stepped in once more, "who was oc�cupying whom was not entirely clear. As I mentioned before, each side viewed the other as an occupying force."
"Right," Yusuf said. "Sorry for the imprecision." Resuming, he said, "Saladin sprung a trap on the occupying�err, rather, Western�forces near the Sea of Galilee. A few escaped, includ�ing a leader named Balian of Ibelin. Balian escaped to Tyre,
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� THE HEART OF PEACE
where via messenger he made a surprising request of Saladin: he asked whether he could go to Jerusalem and fetch his wife and bring her back to safety in Tyre. He promised he would not take up arms in defense of Jerusalem. Saladin agreed.
"However, upon arriving in Jerusalem and finding there was no one to lead its defense, Balian begged Saladin to let him out of his commitment. He wanted to stay and lead the resis�tance against Saladin's army. Saladin not only allowed it, he sent an escort to lead Balian's wife from Jerusalem to the safety of Tyre!"
Lou let out an audible harrumph.
"Yes, Lou, kind of hard to imagine, isn't it?"
"She must have been a looker, that's all I can say," Lou said, looking around for a laugh. Miguel obliged him, his eyes danc�ing with mirth as his broad shoulders rolled with laughter, but for the rest the joke fell flat. Carol shook her head ever so slightly and fought to remember that Lou was better on the in�side than his outward bravado sometimes suggested. She knew that his behavior was being exacerbated by the stress he was feel�ing from having to be away from work when so much was going wrong there.
"The siege of Jerusalem began on the twentieth of Septem�ber," Yusuf continued. "Nine days later, Saladin's men breached the wall close to the place where the Crusaders had flowed through almost ninety years earlier. Saladin put his men under strict order not to harm a single Christian person or plunder any of their possessions. He reinforced the guards at Christian places of worship and announced that the defeated peoples would be welcome to come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage when�ever they liked.
"As a way to restock the treasury, Saladin worked out a ran�som structure with Balian for each of the city's inhabitants. His
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men protested that the amounts were absurdly low. But Saladin was concerned for the poor among them. So much so, in fact, that he let many leave without any ransom whatsoever. He sent widows and children away with gifts. His leaders objected, say-ing that if they were going to let so many leave without any com�pensation, they should at least increase the ransom for the wealthy. But Saladin refused. Balian himself was allowed to leave with a rich sum. Saladin even sent an escort to protect him on his journey to Tyre."
Yusuf looked around at the group.
"He sounds disturbingly weak to me," Lou said.
"Yes," Yusuf said, "so weak that he was the most successful military leader of his era and remains revered to this day."
"He's still weak," Lou insisted. "And soft."
"Why do you say that, Lou?" Elizabeth interjected.
"Well," Lou began, "you heard what Yusuf said. He let all those people take advantage of him."
"You mean because he spared their lives?"
"And let them make off with the treasury."
"But they weren't in it for the treasury," she answered. "They were trying to establish a lasting victory."
"Then why not get rid of their enemies?" Lou objected. "Let them walk away and you just allow them to fight another day. Trust me, I fought in Vietnam. We would have been mas�sacred there if that's what we had done."
Pettis spoke up. "We were massacred in Vietnam, Lou."
Lou's back went rigid. With eyes smoldering, he turned hard on Pettis. "Listen Pettis, why don't you stick to what you know, hmm? You have no idea what Vietnam was about�or about the heroism our men showed there."
"Air force," Pettis responded. "555th Tactical Fighter Squadron. Two tours." He looked calmly at Lou. "You?"
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� THE HEART OF PEACE
Lou was taken aback and muttered incomprehensibly un�der his breath before hurriedly saying, "Four years in 'Nam. Second Battalion, Ninth Marines�'Hell in a Helmet' as we called ourselves. Sorry," he added, nodding to Pettis.
Pettis nodded back. "No apology necessary."
"Two veterans in the group," Yusuf smiled enthusiastically. "Splendid!
"Lou," he continued, "you mentioned that Saladin sounds weak or soft."
Lou nodded, almost meekly this time.
"Do you suppose, however, that the defenders of the cities he captured one by one thought him weak? That rival Muslim leaders he subdued thought him weak? That those who had been defeated by no one else thought him weak?"
Lou hesitated momentarily. "No," he said in a more sub�dued tone. "I suppose not."
"No, they surely wouldn't have. And the reason why is sim�ple: he wasn't weak. He was, in fact, remarkably and unfailingly strong. But he was something more than�or perhaps more accurately, deeper than �strong. And this extra something is what set him apart from all the others of his era who, although strong, were unsuccessful."
Yusuf paused.
"What was it?" Pettis asked. "This something extra, this something deeper."
"The most important factor in helping things go right."
"Which is?" Pettis followed up.
"The secret of Saladin's success in war," Yusuf answered, "was that his heart was at peace."
This was too much for Lou. "'Heart at peace' you say, Yusuf?" he asked with an edge to his voice. "That's your secret� that Saladin's heart was at peace?"
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"Yes."
"You've got to be kidding," he said, looking first at Pettis and then at the others, with mocking eyes that culled for allies. He thought he found what he was looking for in Pettis, who seemed lost in thought, his brow deeply furrowed.
Lou then glanced at Elizabeth but couldn't read her coun�tenance. He dug in once more, keeping her in his sight as he spoke. "So the secret to war is to have a heart at peace?" he asked mockingly, turning back to Yusuf.
"Yes, Lou," Yusuf answered unflinchingly. "And not just in war. It is the secret to success in business and family life as well. The state of your heart toward your children�whether at peace or at war�is by far the most important factor in this interven�tion we are now undertaking. It is also what will most determine your ability to successfully maneuver your company through the challenges created by your recent defections."
This comment knocked Lou completely off his stride. He was not accustomed to people standing up to his sarcasm, and Yusuf's even bolder development of his thesis and his pointed comment about Lou's corporate troubles caught Lou off guard.
He looked sideways at Carol, whom he surmised to have been the source of the inside information. She stared stiffly ahead, not acknowledging his gaze.
4 � Beneath Behavior
Just then, one of the young employees of the company walked in the room and whispered something to Yusuf. Excus�ing himself, Yusuf quickly followed the worker out of the room.
After he left, Pettis said to Avi, "I'm not sure what Yusuf meant by a heart being at peace. I'd like to hear more about that."
"Sure," Avi said. "To begin with, let's compare Saladin's re�capture of Jerusalem to the earlier capture by the Crusaders." He looked at Pettis. "Do you notice any differences in the two victories?"
"Certainly," Pettis responded. "The Crusaders acted like barbarians."
"And Saladin?"
"He was almost humane. For someone who was attacking, anyway," he added.
"Say more about what you mean by humane," Avi invited.
Pettis paused to gather his thoughts. "What I mean," he fi�nally said, "is that Saladin seems to have had regard for the peo�ple he was defeating. Whereas the crusading forces seem�well, they seem to have been barbaric, as I said before. They just mas�sacred all those people as though they didn't matter at all."
"Exactly," Avi agreed. "To the initial crusading forces, the people didn't matter to them. That is, the Crusaders didn't really regard them as people so much as objects or chattel to be driven or exterminated at their will and pleasure.
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"Saladin, on the other hand," Avi continued, "saw and hon�ored the humanity of those he conquered. He may have wished they had never come to the borders of his lands, but he recog�nized these were people he was doing battle with, and that he therefore had to see, treat, and honor them as such."
"So what does that have to do with us?" Lou asked. "You're talking about a nine-hundred-year-old story, and a story about war at that. What does it have to do with our kids?" Thinking of what Yusuf had said about his company, he added, "And our employees?"
Avi looked squarely at Lou. "In every moment, we are choosing to be either like Saladin or like the crusading invaders. In the way we regard our children, our spouses, neighbors, col�leagues, and strangers, we choose to see others either as people like ourselves or as objects. They either count like we do or they don't. In the former case, since we regard them as we regard ourselves, we say our hearts are at peace toward them. In the lat�ter case, since we systematically view them as inferior, we say our hearts are at war."
"You seem to