13 minutes
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
Here are my notes of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury
1 Don’t Bargain Over Positions
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Arguing over positions is inefficient
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Bargaining over positions creates incentives that stall settlement. In positional bargaining you try to improve the chance that any settlement reached is favorable to you by starting with an extreme position, by stubbornly holding to it, by deceiving the other party as to your true views, and by making small concessions only as necessary to keep the negotiation going.
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When there are many parties, positional bargaining is even worse
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Once they have painfully developed and agreed upon a position, it becomes much harder to change it. Altering a position proves equally difficult when additional participants are higher authorities who, while absent from the table, must nevertheless give their approval.
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Pursuing a soft and friendly form of positional bargaining makes you vulnerable to someone who plays a hard game of positional bargaining.
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Each move you make within a negotiation is not only a move that deals with rent, salary, or other substantive questions; it also helps structure the rules of the game you are playing.
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These four points define a straightforward method of negotiation that can be used under almost any circumstance.
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People: Separate the people from the problem.
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Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
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Options: Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains before deciding what to do.
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Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.
- Trying to decide in the presence of an adversary narrows your vision. Having a lot at stake inhibits creativity.
2 Separate the People from the Problem
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Every negotiator has two kinds of interests: in the substance and in the relationship
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Disentangle the relationship from the substance; deal directly with the people problem
Perception
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Put yourself in their shoes.
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Don’t blame them for your problem.
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But even if blaming is justified, it is usually counterproductive.
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Discuss each other’s perceptions.
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Look for opportunities to act inconsistently with their perceptions.
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Give them a stake in the outcome by making sure they participate in the process.
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Pay attention to “core concerns.”
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Many emotions in negotiation are driven by a core set of five interests: autonomy, the desire to make your own choices and control your own fate; appreciation, the desire to be recognized and valued; affiliation, the desire to belong as an accepted member of some peer group; role, the desire to have a meaningful purpose; and status, the desire to feel fairly seen and acknowledged.
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Consider the role of identity.
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As human beings, we apply our general tendency toward either-or thinking to our self-perception: “I am a kind person.” “I’m a good manager.”
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If you find a counterpart’s behavior oddly out of character or feel as if you have unexpectedly stepped on a land mine in your conversation, think about whether they might be experiencing a threat to their identity from something you have said or might say.
Make emotions explicit and acknowledge them as legitimate.
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Allow the other side to let off steam.
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People obtain psychological release through the simple process of recounting their grievances to an attentive audience.
Use symbolic gestures.
- On many occasions an apology can defuse emotions effectively, even when you do not acknowledge personal responsibility for the action or admit an intention to harm. An apology may be one of the least costly and most rewarding investments you can make.
Communication
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Negotiation is a process of communicating back and forth for the purpose of reaching a joint decision. Communication is never an easy thing, even between people who have an enormous background of shared values and experience.
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Frequently each side has given up on the other and is no longer attempting any serious communication with it. Instead they talk merely to impress third parties or their own constituency.
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Effective communication between the parties is all but impossible if each plays to the gallery.
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To reduce the dominating and distracting effect that the press, home audiences, and third parties may have, it is useful to establish private and confidential means of communicating with the other side.
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Important decisions are typically made when no more than two people are in the room.
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Speak about yourself, not about them.
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“I feel let down” instead of “You broke your word.”
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Speak for a purpose.
Prevention works best
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The techniques just described for dealing with problems of perception, emotion, and communication usually work well. However, the best time for handling people problems is before they become people problems.
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Face the problem, not the people.
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Separating the people from the problem is not something you can do once and forget about; you have to keep working at it. The basic approach is to deal with the people as human beings and with the problem on its merits.
3 Focus on Interests, Not Positions
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Reconciling interests rather than positions works for two reasons. First, for every interest there usually exist several possible positions that could satisfy it.
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Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting ones. We tend to assume that because the other side’s positions are opposed to ours, their interests must also be opposed.
4 Invent Options for Mutual Gain
- Thinking that “solving their problem is their problem”
PRESCRIPTION
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Separate inventing from deciding
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Before brainstorming:
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Define your purpose.
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Choose a few participants.
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Change the environment.
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Design an informal atmosphere.
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Choose a facilitator.
- During brainstorming:
- Seat the participants
- Clarify the ground rules, including the no-criticism rule.
- Brainstorm.
- Record the ideas in full view.
- After brainstorming:
- Star the most promising ideas.
- Invent improvements for promising ideas.
- Set up a time to evaluate ideas and decide.
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Consider brainstorming with the other side.
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Make their decision easy
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Since success for you in a negotiation depends upon the other side’s making a decision you want, you should do what you can to make that decision an easy one. Rather than make things difficult for the other side, you want to confront them with a choice that is as painless as possible. Impressed with the merits of their own case, people usually pay too little attention to ways of advancing their case by taking care of interests on the other side.
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Making threats is not enough. In addition to the content of the decision you would like them to make, you will want to consider from their point of view the consequences of following that decision. If you were they, what results would you most fear? What would you hope for?
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We often try to influence others by threats and warnings of what will happen if they do not decide as we would like. Offers are usually more effective.
6 What If They Are More Powerful?
- The most any method of negotiation can do is to meet two objectives: first, to protect you against making an agreement you should reject and second, to help you make the most of the assets you do have so that any agreement you reach will satisfy your interests as well as possible.
Protecting yourself
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Negotiators commonly try to protect themselves against such an outcome by establishing in advance the worst acceptable outcome—their “bottom line.”
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But the protection afforded by adopting a bottom line involves high costs. It limits your ability to benefit from what you learn during negotiation.
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A bottom line also inhibits imagination. It reduces the incentive to invent a tailor-made solution that would reconcile differing interests in a way more advantageous for both you and them.
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The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating. What are those results? What is that alternative? What is your BATNA—your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement?
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The insecurity of an unknown BATNA. If you have not thought carefully about what you will do if you fail to reach an agreement, you are negotiating with your eyes closed.
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In most circumstances, however, the greater danger is that you are too committed to reaching agreement. Not having developed any alternative to a negotiated solution, you are unduly pessimistic about what would happen if negotiations broke off.
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Formulate a trip wire.
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To give you early warning that the content of a possible agreement is beginning to run the risk of being too unattractive, it is useful to identify one far from perfect agreement that is better than your BATNA.
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The better your BATNA, the greater your power.
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What is true for negotiations between individuals is equally true for negotiations between organizations. The relative negotiating power of a large industry and a small town trying to raise taxes on a factory is determined not by the relative size of their respective budgets, or their political clout, but by each side’s best alternative.
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Generating possible BATNAs requires three distinct operations:
- inventing a list of actions you might conceivably take if no agreement is reached;
- improving some of the more promising ideas and converting them into practical alternatives; and
- selecting, tentatively, the one alternative that seems best.
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The desirability of disclosing your BATNA to the other side depends upon your assessment of the other side’s thinking.
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If your best alternative to a negotiated agreement is worse for you than they think, disclosing it will weaken rather than strengthen your hand.
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Consider the other side’s BATNA. You should also think about the alternatives to a negotiated agreement available to the other side.
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If they appear to overestimate their BATNA, you will want to help them think through whether their expectations are realistic.
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If both sides have attractive BATNAs, the best outcome of the negotiation—for both parties—may well be not to reach agreement.
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The stronger they appear in terms of physical or economic power, the more you benefit by negotiating on the merits.
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The more easily and happily you can walk away from a negotiation, the greater your capacity to affect its outcome.
7 What If They Won’t Play?
Negotiation jujitsu
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If the other side announces a firm position, you may be tempted to criticize and reject it.
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If you do, you will end up playing the positional bargaining game.
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Rejecting their position only locks them in. Defending your proposal only locks you in.
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How can you prevent the cycle of action and reaction? Do not push back.
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When they assert their positions, do not reject them. When they attack your ideas, don’t defend them. When they attack you, don’t counterattack.
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Don’t attack their position, look behind it.
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Don’t defend your ideas, invite criticism and advice.
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Recast an attack on you as an attack on the problem.
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Ask questions and pause.
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The first is to use questions instead of statements. Statements generate resistance, whereas questions generate answers. Questions allow the other side to get their points across and let you understand them.
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Silence is one of your best weapons. Use it. If they have made an unreasonable proposal or an attack you regard as unjustified, the best thing to do may be to sit there and not say a word.
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If you have asked an honest question to which they have provided an insufficient answer, just wait.
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Silence often creates the impression of a stalemate
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Don’t take them off the hook by going right on with another question or some comment of your own.
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Note that in most situations you do not have to get anyone’s consent to start using the one-text procedure. Simply prepare a draft and ask for criticism.
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“Please correct me if I’m wrong”
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“We appreciate what you’ve done for us”
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“Our concern is fairness”
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“We would like to settle this on the basis of independent standards, not of who can do what to whom”
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“Trust is a separate Issue”
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“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying”
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In principled negotiation you present your reasons first before offering a proposal. If principles come afterward, they appear not as the objective criteria that any proposal should satisfy but as mere justifications for an arbitrary position.
8 What If They Use Dirty Tricks?
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Common response is to respond in kind. If they start outrageously high, you start outrageously low. If they are deceptive, so are you. If they make threats, you make counter-threats.
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Effective counter to a one-sided substantive proposal is to examine the legitimacy of the principle that the proposal reflects. Tricky bargaining tactics are in effect one-sided proposals about negotiating procedure, about the negotiating game that the parties are going to play. To counter them, you will want to engage in principled negotiation about the negotiating process.
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Discussing the tactic not only makes it less effective, it also may cause the other side to worry about alienating you completely.
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The most important purpose of bringing the tactic up explicitly, however, is to give you an opportunity to negotiate about the rules of the game.
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Separate the people from the problem.
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Focus on interests, not positions.
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Invent options for mutual gain.
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Insist on using objective criteria.
Some common tricks
- Ambiguous authority.
After they have pressed you as hard as they can and you have worked out what you believe to be a firm agreement, they announce that they must take it to someone else for approval. This technique is designed to give them a “second bite at the apple.”
Make concessions, only you will make concessions. Do not assume that the other side has full authority just because they are there negotiating with you.
Before starting on any give-and-take, find out about the authority on the other side.
Insist on reciprocity. “All right. We will treat it as a joint draft to which neither side is committed.
“If your boss approves this draft tomorrow, I’ll stick by it. Otherwise each of us should feel free to propose changes.”
“nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,”
so that any effort to reopen one issue automatically reopens all issues.
- Dubious intentions.
Where the issue is one of possible misrepresentation of their intention to comply with the agreement, it is often possible to build compliance features into the agreement itself.
Less than full disclosure is not the same as deception.
Good faith negotiation does not require total disclosure.
- Psychological warfare
Stressful situations.
Contrary to the accepted wisdom, it is sometimes advantageous to accept an offer to meet on the other side’s turf. It may put them at ease, making them more open to your suggestions.
Be aware that the setting might have been deliberately designed to make you want to conclude negotiations promptly and, if necessary, to yield points to do so. If you find the physical surroundings prejudicial, do not hesitate to say so.
Personal attacks.
The good-guy/bad-guy routine.
Threats. Threats are one of the most abused tactics in negotiation.
You can also warn the other side about your likely actions in the event of no agreement, so long as you can show how those actions are intended to safeguard your interests, not to coerce or punish the other side.
- Positional pressure tactics
Refusal to negotiate.
First, recognize the tactic as a possible negotiating ploy: an attempt to use their entry into negotiation as a bargaining chip to obtain some concession on substance.
Second, talk about their refusal to negotiate. Communicate either directly or through third parties.
Extreme demands.
Bringing the tactic to their attention works well here. Ask for principled justification of their position until it looks ridiculous even to them.
Escalating demands.
A negotiator may raise one of his demands for every concession he makes on another.
Psychological effect of making you want to agree quickly before he raises any more of his demands.
But lock-in tactics are gambles. You may call the other side’s bluff and force them to make a concession, which they will then have to explain to their constituency.
Like threats, lock-in tactics depend on communication.
A calculated delay.
Postpone coming to a decision until a time they think favorable.
“Take it or leave it.”
As an alternative to explicitly recognizing the “Take it or leave it” tactic and negotiating about it, consider ignoring it at first. Keep talking as if you didn’t hear it, or change the subject, perhaps by introducing other solutions.
In Conclusion
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If your BATNA is fine and negotiation looks unpromising, there is no reason to invest much time in negotiation.
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Don’t assume that you have a BATNA better than negotiating or that you don’t. Think it through. Then decide whether negotiating makes sense.