Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Along the way, keep in mind these powerful lessons: ■Break the habit of attempting to get people to say “yes.” Being pushed for “yes” makes people defensive. Our love of hearing “yes” makes us blind to the defensiveness we ourselves feel when someone is pushing us to say it. ■“No” is not a failure. We have learned that “No” is the anti-“Yes” and th

Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously.

KEY LESSONS When push comes to shove—and it will—you’re going to find yourself sitting across the table from a bare-knuckle negotiator. After you’ve finished all the psychologically nuanced stuff—the labeling and mirroring and calibrating—you are going to have to hash out the “brass tacks.” For most of us, that ain’t fun. Top negotiators know, howe