Getting to Yes

Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

negotiation
communication
business
personal development
Achieve win-win outcomes in any negotiation. This Learnerd summary of “Getting to Yes” breaks down the proven method of Principled Negotiation from Harvard. Learn to separate people from problems, focus on underlying interests, create options for mutual gain, and use objective criteria to negotiate effectively without giving in.

1 Listen

2 Executive Summary Cheatsheet

The core method of Getting to Yes is Principled Negotiation, designed to produce wise agreements efficiently and amicably. It is based on four fundamental principles.

2.1 The Problem: Don’t Bargain Over Positions

Most people negotiate from positions (e.g., “I want $50,000 for this car”). This leads to a battle of wills, damages relationships, and is inefficient. Arguing over positions produces unwise outcomes.

2.2 The Method: The Four Principles of Principled Negotiation

2.2.1 Separate the People from the Problem

Negotiators are people first. Deal with “people problems” directly; don’t try to solve them with substantive concessions.

  1. Perception: Put yourself in their shoes. Don’t deduce their intentions from your fears. Discuss each other’s perceptions openly.
  2. Emotion: First, recognise and understand emotions — theirs and yours. Make emotions explicit and acknowledge them as legitimate. Allow the other side to let off steam. Don’t react to emotional outbursts.
  3. Communication: Listen actively and acknowledge what is being said. Speak to be understood. Speak about yourself, not about them (use “I feel…” statements).

When emotions run high, use symbolic gestures like an apology or an expression of sympathy. Acknowledging the other party’s feelings isn’t the same as agreeing with their position. You can say, “I understand that you feel you’ve been treated unfairly, and that makes you very angry.” This de-escalates the situation without conceding a point.

2.2.2 Focus on Interests, Not Positions

Your position is what you have decided upon. Your interests are the needs, desires, concerns, and fears that motivate your position. Reconciling interests works better than compromising on positions.

  1. Ask “Why?”: To identify their interests, ask why they hold their position. Put yourself in their shoes and ask why they don’t hold your position.
  2. Realise each side has multiple interests: The most powerful interests are basic human needs: security, economic well-being, a sense of belonging, recognition, and control over one’s life.
  3. Talk about interests: Make your interests come alive. Be specific. Acknowledge their interests as part of the problem.

Imagine a dispute over an orange. Two people are arguing over who gets it (their positions). If you ask why they want it, you might discover one wants the peel for a cake and the other wants the juice to drink. Their underlying interests are not in conflict. By identifying interests, you can peel the orange, give one person the peel, and the other the fruit to squeeze.

2.2.3 Invent Options for Mutual Gain

Don’t assume there is a fixed pie. Before trying to reach an agreement, invent a wide range of options that advance shared interests and creatively reconcile differing interests.

  1. Separate inventing from deciding: Brainstorm first, judge later. Sit side-by-side to attack the problem, not each other.
  2. Broaden your options: Don’t search for a single answer. Look for mutual gain by identifying shared interests.
  3. Dovetail differing interests: Differences in interests can be leveraged for a better solution (like the orange example). One person may care more about the present, the other about the future.
  4. Make their decision easy: Think about what outcome would be easiest for them to agree to.
  1. Premature judgment: Don’t shut down ideas before they are fully explored.
  2. Searching for the single answer: This narrows your vision and prevents you from finding the best solution.
  3. The assumption of a fixed pie: Believing that what’s good for you must be bad for them.
  4. Thinking that “solving their problem is their problem”: Your goal is to find a solution that also works for them.

2.2.4 Insist on Using Objective Criteria

Base the agreement on some objective standard independent of the will of either side. This makes the negotiation a joint search for a fair standard.

  1. Fair Standards: Look for criteria like market value, expert opinion, precedent, or law.
  2. Fair Procedures: Use procedures like “one cuts, the other chooses” to divide assets fairly.
  3. Frame each issue as a joint search for objective criteria: Ask, “What’s your theory? How did you arrive at that figure?”
  4. Reason and be open to reason: Never yield to pressure, only to principle.

2.3 Other key ideas

The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating.

BATNA: Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

Your BATNA is your source of power. It’s the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured. Before a negotiation, you should know exactly what you will do if you fail to reach an agreement.

  1. Invent a list of actions 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 one alternative that seems best.

The better your BATNA, the greater your power. If your BATNA is strong, you can negotiate with confidence. If it’s weak, you must either find ways to improve it or lower your expectations for the negotiation.

If the other side pushes hard with positional bargaining, don’t push back. Use Negotiation Jujitsu.

  1. Don’t attack their position, look behind it: Treat their position as one possible option and look for the interests behind it.
  2. Don’t defend your ideas, invite criticism and advice: Ask them what’s wrong with your proposal. “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
  3. Recast an attack on you as an attack on the problem: “When you say X, are you suggesting that my analysis of the problem is incorrect?”
  4. Ask questions and pause: Use questions to expose problems. Silence is a powerful tool; people tend to fill it, often revealing valuable information.

2.4 Key Phrases to use

  • “Help me understand why you feel that way.”
  • “What are the interests or needs behind that position?”
  • “What would be a fair standard for us to use here?”
  • “Could we explore some other options together before we decide?”
  • “What would you do if you were in my position?”
  • “Let me see if I understand what you’re saying…”
  • “Let’s look at the problem from a different angle.”
  • “If we can’t agree, what is our best alternative?”

3 Video

4 Practise

Role-playing is the best way to practise principled negotiation. Find a partner and try to negotiate a common scenario, focusing on the four principles.

Let’s try one example: Buying a used car. One person is the seller, who wants the highest possible price because they need money for a down payment on a new car. The other is the buyer, who wants a reliable car for the lowest possible price.

Instead of haggling over price (positions), try to:

  1. Separate the people/problem: Maintain a respectful tone.
  2. Focus on interests: Seller’s interest is money for a new car; buyer’s is a reliable vehicle within budget.
  3. Invent options: Could the payment be made in instalments? Could the seller include winter tyres? Could a trusted mechanic inspect the car (objective criteria)?
  4. Use objective criteria: What is the official book value for this model? What have similar cars sold for in the area recently?

5 Learn More

Back to top