Getting to Yes - Takeaways on Negotiations

Getting to Yes

Principled negotiation is an all‐purpose strategy.

Any method of negotiation should produce a wise agreement if possible, should improve or not damage the relationship, and should be efficient. It should meet the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolve conflicting interests fairly, be durable, and take community interests into account.

Don’t bargain over positions

As more attention is paid to positions, less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns of the parties. The participants must work side by side, attacking the problem.

The Four Steps of Principled Negotiation


1.  People: Separate the people from the problem

• To deal with psychological problems, use psychological methods. When perceptions are inaccurate, look for ways to educate. If emotions run high, find ways to allow people to let off steam. Where misunderstanding exists, work to improve communication.
• The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess. If you want to influence them, you need to understand empathetically the power of their point of view and to feel the emotional force with which they believe in it.
• Don’t deduce their intentions from your fears.
• Don’t treat as unimportant those concerns of the other side perceived as not standing in the way of an agreement. Communicating things you are willing to say that they would like to hear can be one of the best investments a negotiator can make.
• Give them a stake in the outcome by making sure they are involved in and participate in the process. Get them involved early and give them credit for their ideas which will give them a personal stake in defending those ideas to others.
• Make your proposals consistent with their values so they can save‐face. A person needs to reconcile the stand they take in a negotiation or an agreement with their principles and with past words and deeds.
• Make emotions explicit and acknowledge them as legitimate. Listen without responding to attacks until they have spoken their last word. Don’t react to emotional outbursts.
• Use symbolic gestures to produce constructive emotional impact on the other side. This includes eating together, shaking hands, an apology, etc.
• To improve communication, be an active good listener. Show that you understand what they are saving.

2.  Interests: Focus on interests, not positions

• Reconcile interests, not positions. Look to what the underlying interests are. Examine their position to determine why they hold it. Realize that each side has multiple positions. Each person on the other side might have a different interest.
• For every interest, there are usually several possible positions that could satisfy it.
• Analyze the decision you are asking them to make and evaluate the choices and the consequences for them associated with each.
• In searching for basic interests behind a declared position, look particularly for those concerns which motivate all people: security, economic well‐being, sense of belonging, recognition, control
• Communicate your interests to the other side so they can understand how important and legitimate they are. Be specific with concrete details. Show that you have understood their interests “correct me if I’m wrong”.
• Go into a meeting with one or more specific options that would meet your interests but also with an open mind.

3.  Options: Invent options for mutual gain

• 4 major obstacles to identifying multiple options:
• Premature judgment – inventing options does not come naturally – brainstorm without judgment (p. 61 guidelines for brainstorming)
• Searching for a single answer – broaden the options available
• Assumption of a fixed pie – it’s not a “fixed‐sum” game
• Solving their problem is their problem mentality – have to develop a solution that will meet interests of both side
• Look for items of low cost to you and high benefit to them, and vice versa.
• The kind of differences that best lend themselves to dove‐tailing are differences in interests, in beliefs, in the value placed on time, in forecasts, and in aversion to risk.
• Ask for their preferences. You want to know what is preferable, not necessarily what is acceptable. You can take the preferred option and work with it some more and present two or three variants, asking again which they prefer.
• Make their decision easy. Choose one person from the other side and see how the problem looks from their point of view.
• Start drafting an agreement early. Prepare multiple versions starting with the simplest possible. What are some terms that the other side could sign, terms attractive to them as well as you? Can we reduce the number of people whose approval would be required? Can we formulate an agreement that will be easy for them to implement?
• Draft a “yesable proposition”.
• Invent options first and decide later. Brainstorm options (circle chart as guide)

4.  Criteria: Insist on using objective criteria

• Develop alternative standards in advance and think through their application to your case. Also consider procedural solutions.
• Objective criteria need to be independent of each side’s will and should be legitimate and practical.
• Don’t yield to pressure (bribe, threats, manipulations, or refusal to budge).
• Work to shift positional bargaining to a search for objective criteria, from what the other side is willing to do to the question of how the matter ought to be decided. It doesn’t always end an argument or yield a favorable result, but it is a strategy you can vigorously pursue without the high costs of positional bargaining.

Develop your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)

In response to power, 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.

• Formulate a trip wire. A trip wire is a far from perfect agreement that is better than your BATNA. It provides some margin in reserves so that if you get to the trip wire in your negotiations, you will know to take an alternative action and you will still have room to move.
• The better your BATNA, the greater your power. Vigorous exploration of what you will do if you do not reach an agreement can greatly strengthen your hand.
• To develop your BATNA: 1) invent a list of action you might conceivably take if no agreement is reached; 2) improve some of the more promising ideas and convert them into practical alternatives; 3) select, tentatively, the alternative that seems the best.
• Consider the other side’s BATNA.
• Work hard to improve your BATNA. It will help you determine is minimally acceptable and will probably raise that minimum. Developing your BATNA is perhaps the most effective course of action you can take in dealing with a seemingly more powerful negotiator.

Negotiation Jujitsu – if the other side won’t play (and the last resort is to bring in a third party)

1. Don’t attack their position, look behind it. Try to identify the interests it represents and the principles it reflects. Think about ways to improve those options.
2. Don’t defend your ideas; invite criticism and advice. Instead of asking them to accept your idea, ask what is wrong with it. Ask what they would do in your position.
3. Ask questions and pause. Statements can generate resistance. Questions allow the other side to get their point across.
4. Silence is one of your best weapons. Use it. People tend to feel uncomfortable with silence, particularly if they have doubts about the merits of something they have said. Silence often creates the impression of a stalemate which the other side will feel impelled to break by answering your question or coming up with a new suggestion. When you ask a question, don’t take them off the hook by moving on with another question or comment of your own. Some of the most effective negotiating you will ever do is when you are not talking.
5. Use the one‐text procedure. Prepare a draft and ask for criticism. Redraft and go again.
6. Continue to bring things back to objective facts and principles. Establish a dialogue based on reason.
7. Give praise and support in order to separate the people from the problem.

Tricky Tactics

1. Deliberate deception
• Unless you have good reason to trust someone, don’t.
• Don’t let someone treat your doubts as a personal attack.
2. Psychological warfare – recognize the tactic and talk about it to diffuse it
• Stressful situations
• Personal attacks
• Good guy/bad guy
• Threats
3. Positional pressure tactics – refusing to negotiate, extreme demands, delays, etc.