Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

The method of principled negotiation developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project is to decide issues on their merits rather than through a haggling process focused on what each side says it will and won’t do. It suggests that you look for mutual gains whenever possible, and that where your interests conflict, you should insist that the result be b

A vintner making a fine wine chooses his grapes from a number of varieties. A sports team looking for star players will send talent scouts to scour the local leagues and college teams all over the nation. The same principle applies to negotiation. The key to wise decision-making, whether in wine-making, sports, or negotiation, lies in selecting fro

Give them a stake in the outcome by making sure they participate in the process.

proposition: Separate the people from the problem.

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. Again, you can change the game simply by starting to play the new one. Even if the other side is not willing to talk to you directly (or vice versa), a third party can take a draft around.

you are negotiating with them even if you are not talking with them. The question is whether to do so at a distance by actions and words (such as “We will never negotiate with terrorists!”) or whether to do so more directly. In general, the better the communication, the better your chance to exert influence.

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.

There are three big problems in communication. First, negotiators may not be talking to each other, or at least not in such a way as to be understood. 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. Rather than

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.