Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In - Book Report/Review Example

Book Report: getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in The book by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton titled Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in. the book is edited by Bruce Patton and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1991. It is a non fiction book that made appearance in the Business Week for several years it is about negotiation techniques and making of decisions that are wise and logical. This will ensure that business decision result in profitability. The purpose for the book is to educate the business leaders to develop well organized decisions and also help in the conflict resolution in the areas that require a higher degree of negotiation. The book targets the procurement and business people who engage in negotiations in the daily. It can be used in all other fields that require negotiations. This book has been a success as witnessed by its listing as a best seller. The book proposes a method of principled negotiation based on four propositions. The four propositions include; separate the people from the problem, focus on interests not positions, invent options for mutual gain, and insist on using objective criteria. Fisher and Ury believe that for any successful negotiation must start by separating the people and issues. People tend to involve themselves with issues and relate with their positions. Furthermore, separation of issues from people ensures that the relationships are not affected by the negotiations undertaken. The separation of issues from individuals leads to the objective analysis of issues. Emotion is another aspect of people’s problem. In scenarios where either anger or fear is involved the negotiation process is adversely affected because under the fear or anger, people react because they feel their interests are being threatened. To protect their interests, they tend to be aggressive. In some circumstances such, fear results in misconception of the ideas of the negotiating parties. Therefore for any negotiations to take place the parties must control their emotions. The second aspect is perception. Perceptions of the negotiation parties contribute in success or failure of the negotiation process. The authors indicate that negative perception leads to increased difficulty in the reaching of agreement. Just as perception affect the performance of the students in the subjects they undertake it affect all the other choices that are made by humans in their daily life. Thirdly, communication affects the people. Many times during negotiations parties tend to be busy strategizing on their response to the offer presented by the other part as a result this leads to misunderstanding of ideas presented by the party. In order to solve this problem, the authors suggest active listening leading to proper understanding of ideas passed across. Speaker should be given time to speak and elaborate on what ideas he or she wants to pass across without interruptions. The listeners should summarize the speaker’s main points and ask for clarification on issues that are not clearly understood by the listener. This will ensure that communication breakdown is limited thus facilitating the process. The best method that can facilitate faster agreement is to ensure that the people’s problems are prevented during the process. A good relationship between the parties increases success in negotiation and reduces the risk of interference of the process by people’s problem. The authors’ second proposition is focus on interests. This deals with the setting of interests of the negotiations and looking at these interests to see if they are met in the negotiation process. The authors state “your position is something you have decided upon on. Your interests are what caused you to so decide.”[p.42]. the use of position in the determination of a problem creates a situation of a dispute which is depicted by lose- win or lose- lose scenarios. If the problem is defined as underlying interest, it is possible to come up with a win -win situation that leads to satisfaction to both parties resulting in development of positive relationship between the parties. These interests once identified must be discussed by the parties resulting in the consideration of the parties’ interest during the negotiation process. The resultant effect of the sharing of the underlying interest is, discussions will focus on the interests that are given and solutions provided will be focused. Any negotiating party should have a defined focus but remain open to different position and proposals. Generation of options is important in the steps of problem solving as such Fisher and Ury identify four obstacles to generating options and four techniques of overcoming these obstacle. These obstacles include premature decision between the parties without looking at other present alternatives. The other obstacle is narrowing of options to find an answer. Thirdly parties may define their problem in win-lose terms. Finally, one party may decide that the solution depends entirely on the other party. To overcome these obstacles, the authors encourage the use of objective criteria in cases that have opposing interests. The use of objective criteria includes the following steps. The parties must agree on which criteria fits their situation. The selected criteria must be practical and legitimate meeting professional or legal standards. Objectivity can be tested by checking for suitability of the standards agreed by the two parties. There are three points to consider when using objective criteria. First, each issue must be viewed as shared in the objective criteria. Any suggestion put across must be backed with a reason thus facilitating the negotiation process at the same time. Open mind approach could be used in the use of objective criteria. This will lead to reaching of understanding in situations that may be tasking and create room for alternatives provided by the parties. Finally being reasonable will help in the understanding of the ideas of the other party even if the idea does not represent the interest of the party. Additionally, Fisher and Ury elaborate on situations that may affect the negotiation process. One case is when dealing with a powerful party. They suggest ways of protecting the weaker party. To protect themselves from a poor agreement parties develop a “bottom line” which represents the worst acceptable outcome of the negotiation process. As such negotiations that fall below the bottom line will be rejected. Fisher and Ury argue that using of the bottom line approach is not practicable because the figures used in the setting of “bottom line” are arrived in advance of the actual negotiations. These figures may be unrealistic resulting in the reduction of option generation. They suggest that weaker party should concentrate on best alternative to a negotiated agreement as such the party should only accept solutions that improve their situation. The power of negotiation is derived from the ability to walk out of the negotiation. The other situation that may arise is when the use of principled negotiation is not accepted by one of the parties. This may be as a result of rigidness with the hope of maximizing gains. The party may resort to personal attacks, and refuse to use the principle approach. This problem may be very serious in some cases even requiring introduction of a third party that will assemble the list of the interests of all the parties and draw a proposal which will be given to the parties for comments. This is repeated until no further improvements can be made on the proposal and the solution can be to accept the proposal or abandon the negotiations. Parties may resort to suing dirty tricks in an attempt to affect the negotiations to favor their interests. These are unethical and unpleasant tricks that include leaks to the media to create a good guy-bad guy scenario. The ricks include engaging in deliberate deception about facts, authority, and intentions. The solution to such problems is verification of facts and claims presented by the other party. The other trick used is psychological warfare. Consequently, threats are used to create a psychological pressure. The negotiator should ignore these pressures and deal with the issues of interest in a principled approach. Finally, some parties resort to use of positional pressure tactics so as to make the negotiations one sided. The demands may be increased. These tricks must be pointed out clearly and negotiation be based on the merits of the proposals. Fisher and Ury have develop a book that has a cross cutting theme that is applicable to almost all the fields in problem solving and therefore it is important to get a copy of the book so as to perfect the art of negotiations. With the relevant examples offered in the book it is possible for any reader to understand the concepts presented by the authors thus, increasing the need for readers to obtain the information that they want to receive from the book. The structure and arrangement of the book makes it easy to read and understand. Ideas are arranged in a chronological way with several accompanying examples and with in text citation of referenced books making it a very useful book for research and education. In conclusion the book presents opportunity of any reader to become an efficient negotiator with the ability to resolve conflicts. Works Cited Fisher, Roger, William Ury and Bruce Patton. Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1991. Print. Read More