Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Featured in the Fall 2024 Special Edition Newsletter

Getting to Yes, a key text on negotiation, was inspired by a question: “What is the best way for people to deal with their differences?” (Fisher & Ury, 2011, p. xxi). One of the ways is to shift from positions to interests, which is a framework for finding mutual agreement that can be used in workplaces.

This book starts off by illustrating how negotiation is present in our everyday lives – in deciding with your spouse what to have for dinner, in bargaining the terms of a contract, or in determining how tasks on a project are allocated among team members. Negotiation, in other words, is the back-and-forth communication that ends in an agreement. The challenge arises when people give in too much or, conversely, hold too strongly onto their points. People may discover they have given in too much when they realize they are dissatisfied with the outcome. On the other hand, if people hold on too strongly, they can exhaust themselves while alienating the other people involved. Tipping too far to one side or the other of the spectrum has downsides, and Getting to Yes introduces a third approach to reaching agreement, one that moves past bargaining over positions and digs deeper to find the interests undergirding those positions. This book covers:

• What is meant by positions vs. interests and how this framework can be beneficial
• How to use this framework to generate options, as well as what criteria to use for evaluating those options
• What the alternatives are for resolving conflict when the positions vs. interests model is not effective

Getting to Yes empowers readers with a new way to think about reaching agreements with other people in the face of significant differences. The tools highlighted in the book are a key part of building your competence to effectively manage conflict in the workplace and learning environments.