Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In [Paperback]

Roger Fisher (Author), William L. Ury (Author), Bruce Patton (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 3, 2011

Since its original publication nearly thirty years ago, Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution.

Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. Thoroughly updated and revised, it offers readers a straight-forward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry-or getting taken.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roger Fisher is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law Emeritus and director emeritus of the Harvard Negotiation Project.

William Ury cofounded the Harvard Negotiation Project and is the award-winning author of several books on negotiation.

Bruce Patton is cofounder and Distinguished Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project and the author of Difficult Conversations, a New York Times bestseller.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Revised edition (May 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143118757
• ISBN-13: 978-0143118756
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Negotiating
  • #6 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills
  • #10 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Motivational

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Information, Could Use Better Layout July 2, 2012

By Lisa Shea HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The title of Fisher and Ury's book is Getting to Yes - Negotiating Agreement without Giving In. It's a case where the title clearly lays out what the book is about. In Getting to Yes the authors present, step by step, how to find your way to a win-win solution that helps meet your goals while at the same time preserving the relationship so that future negotiations also go smoothly.

This book was the assigned textbook for a college course I took on negotiation, but it's one of those fairly rare cases where the material that's useful for a college course is also immensely useful for off-the-street people in a variety of situations. This book avoids complicated jargon and long, droning background chapters. Instead, it plunges into helpful information to assist people in negotiating for a new car, negotiating issues with their landlords, and all the many ways we all negotiate for our position throughout life.

Negotiation isn't just for union leaders trying to avert a strike. All of us negotiate each day as we try to juggle our many roles. We negotiate with our co-workers over assignments. We negotiate with our family members over chores. In an ideal world all of those discussions would go quickly, smoothly, and with as little strife as possible.

Getting to Yes provided numerous helpful examples which made their points more easy to understand. It is so true that people tend to remember stories where they might not remember dry text. When I think about this book I do remember several of the stories clearly, and those help to represent the points the authors were making. The stories help remind me to focus on the issues when negotiating and to look for objective standards to work with.

The information presented is wonderful, and immediately useful in life....

On the down side, this is a new version of older material. The authors chose to keep the initial book in its original form and then add on additional information at the end. I appreciate for historical reasons why they wanted to do that. However, from a fresh reader point of view, I feel they should present an integrated whole which most clearly presents the full information. The way the book is laid out currently, you have to go back and forth to find all information on a given topic.

Also, the format is not laid out for easy reference. If they went more for a "dummies" style with an easy to scan layout, graphs and charts to quickly find and scan, and quick end-summaries, that would make this more useful as a reference book to keep on a shelf. Right now if I had an issue to handle it would be less than quick to grab the book and find the answer. I would have to wade through the book to figure out where to get the support I needed.

Still, I do recommend that everyone read this book at least once, to build their skills in negotiation. It's something we all have to do! Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for those involved in community issues June 28, 2012

By Joshua P. OConner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The premise of Getting to Yes is relatively simple; in essence the traditional view of negotiation (as a game of "give and take" between parties) is largely unproductive and can shatter working relationships between parties. Under this traditional view, parties are forced to choose between hardline negotiations (where you attempt to force your desired outcome) and softline negotiation (where you make extreme concessions in order to preserve the relationship). The authors offer a new outlook (referred to as "principled negotiation") where all parties work to make objective and rational statements about their desired outcomes (including providing empirical reasoning for their desired outcome). This new approach (summarized in the Appendix) removes the oppositional/adversarial outlook of negotiation and works to find creative solutions which satisfy the needs of all parties involved.

The model proposed is easy to use. The first step involves detaching personal politics from negotiation. Through making the negotiation about the issue at hand, the authors claim that relationships are more likely to be preserved regardless of the outcome of the negotiation. A major element of removing personal politics from the negotiation is to focus on personal interest rather than a hard position. Expressing personal interest in more lucid terms rather than abbreviated and absolute terms (e.g. "I would like to be able to sell the house and have a capital gain that would allow me to put 20% on house X" rather than "I would like to get $160,000 for the house") allows both parties to understand the interest at play and to work to explore mutually beneficial outcomes. In addition to expressing personal interests, the authors also insist that the terms of the negotiation be expressed in objective terms (i.e.... when negotiating the house price an offer would be based off of the same quantitative/qualitative comparisons used in an appraisal). Instead of throwing out arbitrary figures in order to whittle a party up or down, each party must justify their request with some particular objective fact.

As the authors conclude the book, they provide a set of "Frequently Asked Questions" that they've received since publishing the first edition of the text. Each of the questions delve into more specific detail regarding how to employ the techniques in situations where power imbalances may be at place or one party simply refuses to negotiate.

Overall, the authors use the bulk of the text to compare and contrast traditional negotiation styles with their proposed "principled" negotiation technique. Read more ›

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read Book September 23, 2012

By Allan M. Lees

Format:Paperback

There are a few books that have such relevance to so many aspects of daily life that they should be on everyone's "must read" list, and this is one of them. Although at first it might seem that this is merely one more addition to the seemingly endless pile of platitudinous self-help books that crowd the bookshelves and deliver little or no real worth, in fact this book is a highly pragmatic text on the process of negotiation. The authors don't pretend that negotiating will get you everything you want - in fact they are very clear on the limitations of negotiation and how to think of negotiation as a process that has strict boundaries. What the book does is make explicit the nature of negotiation, the types of tactics people commonly use, and the most competent method for pursuing negotiations so as to maximize the possibility of achieving a negotiated outcome both parties can live with. The text is clear, the examples simple to grasp, and the conceptual framework adequately developed. Nowadays we might add some learning that evolutionary psychology has provided, but aside from that this is a superb book that can enable enhanced outcomes in most realms of life, from family conflicts through business negotiations to community issues. The entire book can be read and absorbed in less than two hours, but the lessons can be applied over a lifetime.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Systemic Analysis of What Every Good Negotiator Already Knows January 6, 2012

By Jiang Xueqin

Format:Paperback

There are no secrets to negotiating, but it is an art form. You need to exercise total self-control, suppress your ego, and focus on the task at hand. You need to empathize with the side you're negotiating with, and figure out how to best arrive at a mutually satisfactory agreement. You need to hold firm, while at the same time understanding that reaching an agreement is what's important, and that ultimately everything can and need be sacrificed in order to reach an agreement, because the consequences of not reaching an agreement are unbearable -- and that takes a firm hold of reality.

None of this is particularly surprising to anyone with any negotiating experience (which is to say anyone with any experience), but what this book does is offer a systematic overview of good negotiating technique. Where this book lacks is good story-telling and examples -- as readers we need lots and lots of examples in order to make the lessons here concrete and memorable.