Great books & ideas · Roger Fisher & William Ury · 1981
Getting to Yes — the key ideas
Free — no account needed to read
Principled negotiation: separate the people from the problem and focus on interests.
The key ideas
Separate the people from the problem
Be soft on the person and firm on the issue. Attacking someone makes them defend themselves instead of solving the problem.
Interests, not positions
A position is what someone says they want; an interest is why. Two opposed positions often hide interests that can both be met.
Know your best alternative
Knowing what you will do if there is no agreement keeps you from accepting a bad deal or rejecting a good one.
The criticism
- It works best between parties of roughly equal power acting in good faith; it has less to say when one side is far stronger.
- Some critics find “objective criteria” harder to agree on in practice than the book suggests.
A real-world example
- The situation
- Two friends want to share a car but both need it on Saturdays.
- The idea applied
- They discover one needs it for a morning class and the other for evening shifts. The “conflict” was two positions; the interests fit together.
Practise it
Think of a disagreement and write the other person’s position — then guess three interests that might sit underneath it.
Described in our own words with the source named — not a summary of the full book and not a substitute for reading it.
Lessons that use these ideas
- Interests, not positions — What people ask for is rarely all of what they need — look for outcomes useful to both. (7 min · Practising)
- Preparing to negotiate — Know your alternatives, their likely interests, and the questions you will ask. (7 min · Practising)