48 pages • 1 hour read
Getting to Yes
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Themes
The Importance of Disengaging From Strong Emotions
Disputes often lead to resentment, rancor, hurt pride, and anger. These inspire conflict rather than resolution. The first negotiating principle of Getting to YES is to disentangle strong feelings from the issues to be decided and replace them with a willingness to work together with the other side to solve mutual problems. This approach leads to much better agreements.
Negotiations sometimes begin with each side angrily staring the other down. This inspires tit-for-tat threats and counterthreats until each party believes the other side is the problem. Proposals promptly get criticized, negotiators feel personally rejected or that their honor is besmirched, and participants cease to listen to the other side.
To break this vicious cycle, the book advises that negotiators follow a simple rule: “Do not push back” (110). Instead, they should ask their counterparts to describe their thoughts and feelings, and listen to the replies without interrupting or critiquing them. This helps to clear the air: “Freed from the burden of unexpressed emotions, people will become more likely to work on the problem” (33). Listening carefully and calmly provides a negotiator with important information that can be used later to craft a better agreement.
A team can then respond with their own concerns—not in an angry or accusatory way but from a personal perspective. They can express how “we” feel instead of declaring how “you” caused trouble. This takes pressure off the other side; now less defensive, they’re more able to hear the problems their counterparts face.
It’s helpful to ask the other team for ideas on how to resolve issues. This moves parties toward working together and away from trying to dominate or defeat each other. A wise negotiator also makes a point of thanking and appreciating those across the table for their civility and good ideas. In these ways, the other side soon realizes that the purpose of talks isn’t to defeat one another but to work together. A positive cycle of mutual consideration opens up.
As the book states: “The basic approach is to deal with the people as human beings and with the problem on its merits” (41). This leads to talks that reduce lingering resentments, find solutions through cooperative efforts, and increase compliance. The results are wise, efficient, and friendly. Such pacts open the doors to further productive cooperation in the future. Thus, potential enemies become allies.
Inquiring Into the Other Side’s Needs
A position is the stance a side takes during a negotiation. The other side quickly assumes an opposing position. Most negotiations thereafter become arguments about which position should dominate. A much better way to settle disputes focuses, not on stiffly defended stances, but on the wide range of interests that each side has in the issue and how to fulfill these wants and needs.
It’s easy to begin talks—say, over the price of a house for sale—between the two parties making an offer and counteroffer. This has the advantage of being quick, but it devolves into a verbal wrestling match and ignores other ways to resolve differences. It becomes a contest of wills, and the settlement, if any, has more to do with the relative strengths of the bargainers than the merits of each side’s position: “Positional bargaining frequently results in odd, arbitrary results that are difficult to explain to constituents and of little value as precedents in future negotiations. It also tends to bruise relationships” (186).
A wise negotiator instead asks about the interests that underlie the other side’s stance. Interests include the costs involved in an agreement, the concerns of the negotiator’s constituents back home, the need to prove themselves, unusual situations in their lives that impinge on a settlement, and so forth. Any or all of these concerns can be factored into an agreement to make it better.
An example is the businessman who wanted to buy a radio station but couldn’t get a minority owner to drop her extremely high asking price. The businessman inquired further and learned that she wanted to continue managing the station and retain some ownership in it. Once he looked beyond her position, he saw her needs and realized they were easy to fulfill. They crafted an agreement that retained her as manager and sold off only the portion of her share that the businessman needed for tax purposes. The sale went through. Unless these types of interests are carefully investigated, many options get overlooked; an agreement will likely be less valuable to both sides or will fail altogether.
Positional bargaining, then, leads to overly simplistic, combative negotiations and overlooks opportunities that can improve prospects for a successful pact. Inquiring into each side’s interests, on the other hand, opens doors to a much wider variety of ways to reach an agreement. Such compacts are more likely to be accepted and to receive good compliance after signing. Thus, it is important to look past the position to the issues it represents. Solving the issue makes the position obsolete.
The Significance of Tools for Reaching an Agreement
The chances of reaching an agreement greatly increase if there are many possible solutions rather than a single one. Solutions must fulfill the needs of both sides; this requires a great deal of creative thinking and careful reasoning. Several techniques help produce good ideas. These include brainstorming, circle charts, different perspectives, third parties, accepted standards, and BATNAs.
A brainstorming session can generate raw ideas for later refining. The process involves a small group that thinks freely on a question, their ideas noted without criticism until the group has a long list of possible solutions. This list can then be winnowed down to a smaller set of strong proposals. The most offbeat concepts may ultimately get rejected, but thinking about them often leads to other ideas that are innovative yet practical.
A circle chart both filters ideas and generates new ones. The chart contains a circle divided into four sections dedicated to detailing a problem, analyzing its causes, theorizing methods for solving it, and setting down the specific steps needed to implement the solution. A circle chart tends to generate even more ideas—which can, in turn, be analyzed using the chart.
A wide collection of perspectives may speed the development of good solutions. People from professions other than those at the negotiating table can make observations or raise issues overlooked by negotiators. Their input can greatly improve the quality of potential solutions.
Third parties—arbitrators, mediators, or neutral observers—often will more fairly judge an issue than the negotiators themselves. Their input is likely to be more neutral and dispassionate than the observations of either side in the dispute. They thus act as an outside referee.
Another way to bring in a third party is to introduce a set of commonly accepted criteria as aids to dispute resolution; these may include industry guidelines, legal precedents, and community standards. The great variety of such sources adds to the number of possible solutions to a disagreement.
A best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA, serves as a fallback position. By itself, a BATNA adds to a side’s arsenal of solutions. Both teams should find ways to improve their BATNAs, which reduces the pressure to capitulate. It also might inspire a mutual search for even more ideas for a strong agreement.
Each dispute benefits from several ideas for solutions. BATNAs, brainstorming, circle charts, and the other techniques are a set of problem-solving tools. The more options, the stronger the resulting pact. Sometimes several ideas can be stitched together to form an elegantly innovative agreement; in any event, having many choices greatly increases the chance of achieving an agreement that works for both sides.
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