Summary: “Like it or not, you are a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life.” Getting to Yes, page xvii We negotiate every day of our life. We negotiate on everything; where to go on vacation, the sale price of a house, even a raise from the boss. Or rather, we should be negotiating. For most people though, the idea of conflict is so disagreeable, that they give in to pressure and walk away from the discussion feeling cheated and unsatisfied. Enter Roger Fisher and William Ury, collaborators on the Harvard Negotiation Project, in which they developed their method of ‘principled negotiation’. Principled Negotiation is the process of finding acceptable compromise through determining which issues are 'fixed' and which are 'flexible'. The negotiation principles shared in this book are useful for everything from negotiating the price of a car to determining an agreement on limiting nuclear arms development. Which makes it pretty versatile and useful stuff. Golden Egg Separate the People from the Problem “A basic fact about negotiation, easy to forget in corporate and international business transactions, is that you are dealing not with abstract representatives of the ‘other side,’ but with human beings”. Getting to Yes, page 18-19 Negotiations always have two components. First, you have the substance of the negotiation- in essence, what you’re trying to resolve. As importantly, negotiations also address the long term relationship of the person with whom you are negotiating. As a real world example, a salesperson wants not only to make the sale but to keep the customer for a long period of time. The reality is that, in most cases, it’s more important to maintain the long term relationship than to "win" the negotiation. The ‘people’ and the ‘problem’ often become entangled to the point where we are treating them as one. Take, for example, when one spouse says to the other “The kitchen is a mess”. While the well intentioned spouse was merely trying to identify a problem, their comment may come across a personal attack, leaving the other party feeling angry. In our two GEMs below, we identify two valuable techniques to use in negotiation. GEM # 1 Deal directly with the people problem. “To find your way through the jungle of people problems, it is useful to think in terms of three basic categories: perception, emotion, and communication.” Getting to Yes, page 22 Let's take a look at the three elements, and how we can best harness them. Perception How often have you been in a negotiation with someone, thinking they are out of their mind because of their opinion or beliefs? One of the hardest things to understand is where someone is coming from. Yet the most important thing to do is to put yourself in their shoes. A husband may see a refreshing half full glass of water on the kitchen table, while his wife sees a dirty, half full glass of water about to leave a water ring on the wooden table. Understanding where a person is coming from is NOT the same as agreeing with their position, but it does help when negotiating as you can customize a solution that fits both parties. Since it’s important to understand where they are coming from, both parties points of view should be discussed. Through this discussion, both parties will feel as if they are contributing to the resolution of the conflict. Any final agreement will be more likely to be seen as "win" by both sides if both parties have input into the solution. Any solution created solely by one party has a much lower likelihood of being accepted by the other side. Next time you find yourself in a negotiation, ask yourself, "have I included the other party in creating this solution?" Emotion My dad used to tell to me about the importance of not falling prey to your emotions. When emotions become involved in any negotiation there is the chance of one or both parties becoming irrational. Of course,
