Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In

by Roger Fisher

the more attention that is paid to positions, the less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns of the parties.

in contrast to positional bargaining, the principled negotiation method of focusing on basic interests, mutually satisfying options, and fair standards typically results in a wise agreement.

To find your way through the jungle of people problems, it is useful to think in terms of three basic categories: perception, emotion, and communication.

Ultimately, however, conflict lies not in objective reality, but in people’s heads.

As useful as looking for objective reality can be, it is ultimately the reality as each side sees it that constitutes the problem in a negotiation and opens the way to a solution.

People tend to assume that whatever they fear, the other side intends to do.

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If you want the other side to accept a disagreeable conclusion, it is crucial that you involve them in the process of reaching that conclusion.

Even if the terms of an agreement seem favorable, the other side may reject them simply out of a suspicion born of their exclusion from the drafting process.

To give the other side a feeling of participation, get them involved early. Ask their advice. Giving credit generously for ideas wherever possible will give them a personal stake in defending those ideas to others. It may be hard to resist the temptation to take credit for yourself, but forbearance pays off handsomely. Apart from the substantive merits, the feeling of participation in the process is perhaps the single most important factor in determining whether a negotiator accepts a proposal. In a sense, the process is the product.

Perhaps the best strategy to adopt while the other side lets off steam is to listen quietly without responding to their attacks, and occasionally to ask the speaker to continue until he has spoken his last word. In this way, you offer little support to the inflammatory substance, give the speaker every encouragement to speak himself out, and leave little or no residue to fester.

Whatever you say, you should expect that the other side will almost always hear something different.

It has been said that the cheapest concession you can make to the other side is to let them know they have been heard.

Make it your task while listening not to phrase a response, but to understand them as they see themselves. Take in their perceptions, their needs, and their constraints.

Once you have made their case for them, then come back with the problems you find in their proposal. If you can put their case better than they can, and then refute it, you maximize the chance of initiating a constructive dialogue

Before making a significant statement, know what you want to communicate or find out, and know what purpose this information will serve.

However difficult personal relations may be between us, you and I become better able to reach an amicable reconciliation of our various interests when we accept that task as a shared problem and face it jointly.

try to structure the negotiation as a side-by-side activity in which the two of you—with your different interests and perceptions, and your emotional involvement—jointly face a common task.

The basic approach is to deal with the people as human beings and with the problem on its merits.

A position is likely to be concrete and explicit; the interests underlying it may well be unexpressed, intangible, and perhaps inconsistent.

The most powerful interests are basic human needs. In searching for the basic interests behind a declared position, look particularly for those bedrock concerns that motivate all people. If you can take care of such basic needs, you increase the chance both of reaching agreement and, if an agreement is reached, of the other side’s keeping to it. Basic human needs include: security economic well-being a sense of belonging recognition control over one’s life

The purpose of negotiating is to serve your interests. The chance of that happening increases when you communicate them. The other side may not know what your interests are, and you may not know theirs. One or both of you may be focusing on past grievances instead of on future concerns. Or you may not even be listening to each other. How do you discuss interests constructively without getting locked into rigid positions? If you want the other side to take your interests into account, explain to them what those interests are.

Make your interests come alive. If you go with a raging ulcer to see a doctor, you should not hope for much relief if you describe it as a mild stomachache. It is your job to have the other side understand exactly how important and legitimate your interests are. One guideline is be specific. Concrete details not only make your description credible, they add impact.

Part of the task of impressing the other side with your interests lies in establishing the legitimacy of those interests. You want them to feel not that you are attacking them personally, but rather that the problem you face legitimately demands attention. You need to convince them that they might well feel the same way if they were in your shoes.

People listen better if they feel that you have understood them. They tend to think that those who understand them are intelligent and sympathetic people whose own opinions may be worth listening to. So if you want the other side to appreciate your interests, begin by demonstrating that you appreciate theirs.

If you want someone to listen and understand your reasoning, give your interests and reasoning first and your conclusions or proposals later.

You will satisfy your interests better if you talk about where you would like to go rather than about where you have come from.

It may not be wise to commit yourself to your position, but it is wise to commit yourself to your interests.

Show them that you are attacking the problem, not them.

Successful negotiation requires being both firm and open.

He expands the pie before dividing it. Skill at inventing options is one of the most useful assets a negotiator can have.

In most negotiations there are four major obstacles that inhibit the inventing of an abundance of options: (1) premature judgment; (2) searching for the single answer; (3) the assumption of a fixed pie; and (4) thinking that “solving their problem is their problem.”

These obstacles are applicable to any problem solving situation, not just negotiation.

Nothing is so harmful to inventing as a critical sense waiting to pounce on the drawbacks of any new idea. Judgment hinders imagination.

If the first impediment to creative thinking is premature criticism, the second is premature closure. By looking from the outset for the single best answer, you are likely to short-circuit a wiser decision-making process in which you select from a large number of possible answers.

brainstorming session is designed to produce as many ideas as possible to solve the problem at hand. The key ground rule is to postpone all criticism and evaluation of ideas. The group simply invents ideas without pausing to consider whether they are good or bad, realistic or unrealistic. With those inhibitions removed, one idea should stimulate another, like firecrackers setting off one another.

The more different a brainstorming session seems from a normal meeting, the easier it is for participants to suspend judgment.

If the participants do not all know each other, the meeting begins with introductions all around, followed by clarification of the ground rules. Outlaw negative criticism of any kind.

Joint inventing produces new ideas because each of us invents only within the limits set by our working assumptions. If ideas are shot down unless they appeal to all participants, the implicit goal becomes to advance an idea that no one will shoot down. If, on the other hand, wild ideas are encouraged, even those that in fact lie well outside the realm of the possible, the group may generate from these ideas other options that are possible and that no one would previously have considered.