Customer Reviews

Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People

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My profile: 42 yo, sales engineer.

I find this audiobook a constant refernce in my travel pack. As a sales engineer on the road I keep resorting to the techniques of this book to find the break-through awakening in the negotiation process.

This approach is not ivory-towered inspirired, its based on very concrete situations and it calls for leaderhip qualities that are assumed by default since you are your own worst enemy.

I find this audiobook more complete than getting to yes and a complement to it. negotiation is not a subject just to be left to one tool or aproach, I encourage anyone inetrested in the theme to spice-it-up with other tip observing book such as Herb Cohen's.

Be prepared to study and use a powerful technique.

Shorter than i thought it would be but has great information. to get the most you need to also read getting to yes first.

William Ury wrote here an excellent sequel on the bestseller "Getting to Yes" and expands hereby the negotiation tools set to be more equipped towards dealing with the difficult person in a negotiaton (or situation).

The book follows 5 steps. It covers basic communication styles to diffuse the situation and elements to boost your BATNA (your best alternative) overall. The content list of his book gives already some ideas of this approach. The book covers these 5 steps in a schematic way, by being brief and very much to the point. Compact written and easy to assimilate.

William Ury does also give the course "Dealing with Difficult People and Difficult Situations" at the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. This course follows also these 5 steps as illustrated here in this book. He is certainly a highly experienced and empathic speaker. He is a great person to come across and therefore I am not surprised he wrote a excellent book like this.

I certainly highly recommend his book, his negotiation course, as well as William Ury as public speaker/trainer.


Content:
Overview: Negotiating with difficult people

Step 1: Go to the balcony (Don't react)
- Keep your eyes on the prize
o Identify your interests
o Identify your BATNA
o Decide if your should negotiate
o Stay focused on your goal
- Name the game
- Buy time to think
o Pause and say nothing
o Rewind the tape
o Take a time-out
o Don't make important decisions on the spot

Step 2: Step to their side (Disarm them)
- Listen actively
o Give your opponent a hearing
o Paraphrase and ask for corrections
- Acknowledge the point & the person
o Acknowledge your opponent's feelings
o Offer an apology
- Agree wherever you can
o Agree without conceding
o Accumulate Yeses
o Tune in to your opponent's wavelength
- Acknowledge the person
o Acknowledge his authority and competence
- Express your views without provoking
o Don't say BUT, say YES...AND
o Make I statements, not you-statements
o Step up for yourself
o Acknowledge your differences with optimism

Step 3: Don't reject....reframe (Change the game)
Step 4: Build them a golden bridge (Make it easy to say YES)
Step 5: Educate, don't escalate (Make it easy to say NO)
Conclusion: Turning adversaries into partners
Analytical table of contents

If the information taught on this audio-book is what they are teaching at the Harvard Law School program on negotiation, save your money on both! I have studied negotiating for nearly 20 year's now and this audio-book is a worthless piece of garbage! If you really want to learn negotiating skills (w/ or w/o dealing with difficult people), try any Roger Dawson audio program. Then again, try anything but this audio program.

Now I must find a way to negotiate my money back!

I enjoyed the audio edition of this book while driving to my work. My english comprehension is not very good, but the clarity of the pronunciation and the great content of the book made me happy during several Madrid's traffic jams