The best negotiators didn’t battle over who should get the biggest slice of pie. Rather, they focused on making the pie itself larger, finding win-win solutions where everyone walked away happier than before. The concept that both sides could “win” in a negotiation, Fisher and his colleagues wrote, might seem impossible, but “it is increasingly recognized that there are cooperative ways of negotiating our differences and that even if a ‘win-win’ solution cannot be found, a wise agreement can still often be reached that is better for both sides.”
