Getting to yes - Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Bruce Patton, William Ury

Penguin

2011

200 páginas

6h 40m

ISBN-10: 0140157352

Resenhas (5)

4 (Muito bom)

Minhas Notas

Negotiation is a basic means of getting what you want from others. It is back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.

More and more occasions require negotiation; conflict is a growth industry. Everyone wants to participate in decisions that affect them; fewer and fewer people will accept decisions dictated by someone else. People differ, and they use negotiation to handle their differences. Whether in business, government, or the family, people reach most decisions through negotiation. Even when they go to court, they almost always negotiate a settlement before trial.

There is a third way to negotiate, a way neither hard nor soft, but rather both hard and soft. The method of principled negotiation developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project is to decide issues on their merits rather than through a haggling process focused on what each side says it will and won’t do. It suggests that you look for mutual gains whenever possible, and that where your interests conflict, you should insist that the result be based on some fair standards independent of the will of either side. The method of principled negotiation is hard on the merits, soft on the people.

Unlike almost all other strategies, if the other side learns this one, it does not become more difficult to use; it becomes easier. If they read this book, all the better.

The more you try to convince the other side of the impossibility of changing your opening position, the more difficult it becomes to do so. Your ego becomes identified with your position. You now have a new interest in “saving face”—in reconciling future action with past positions—making it less and less likely that any agreement will wisely reconcile the parties’ original interests.

Bargaining over positions creates incentives that stall settlement. In positional bargaining you try to improve the chance that any settlement reached is favorable to you by starting with an extreme position, by stubbornly holding to it, by deceiving the other party as to your true views, and by making small concessions only as necessary to keep the negotiation going. The same is true for the other side.

Positional bargaining becomes a contest of will. Each negotiator asserts what he will and won’t do. The task of jointly devising an acceptable solution tends to become a battle. Each side tries through sheer will power to force the other to change its position.

Positional bargaining thus strains and sometimes shatters the relationship between the parties.

In a soft negotiating game the standard moves are to make offers and concessions, to trust the other side, to be friendly, and to yield as necessary to avoid confrontation.

To deal with psychological problems, use psychological techniques. Where perceptions are inaccurate, you can look for ways to educate. If emotions run high, you can find ways for each person involved to let off steam. Where misunderstanding exists, you can work to improve communication. To find your way through the jungle of people problems, it is useful to think in terms of three basic categories: perception, emotion, and communication. The various people problems all fall into one of these three baskets.

If you want the other side to accept a disagreeable conclusion, it is crucial that you involve them in the process of reaching that conclusion.

Face-saving reflects a person’s need to reconcile the stand he takes in a negotiation or an agreement with his principles and with his past words and deeds.

First recognize and understand emotions, theirs and yours. Look at yourself during the negotiation. Are you feeling nervous? Is your stomach upset? Are you angry at the other side? Listen to them and get a sense of what their emotions are. You may find it useful to write down what you feel—perhaps fearful, worried, angry—and then how you might like to feel—confident, relaxed. Do the same for them.

Don’t react to emotional outbursts.

Speak to be understood. Talk to the other side. It is easy to forget sometimes that a negotiation is not a debate. Nor is it a trial. You are not trying to persuade some third party. The person you are trying to persuade is seated at the table with you. If a negotiation is to be compared with a legal proceeding, the situation resembles that of two judges trying to reach agreement on how to decide a case. Try putting yourself in that role, treating your opposite number as a fellow judge with whom are you attempting to work out a joint opinion.

Instead she looked to their underlying interests of fresh air and no draft. This difference between positions and interests is crucial. Interests define the problem. The basic problem in a negotiation lies not in conflicting positions, but in the conflict between each side’s needs, desires, concerns, and fears.

Such desires and concerns are interests. Interests motivate people; they are the silent movers behind the hubbub of positions.

Your position is something you have decided upon. Your interests are what caused you to so decide.

Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting ones. We tend to assume that because the other side’s positions are opposed to ours, their interests must also be opposed. If we have an interest in defending ourselves, then they must want to attack us. If we have an interest in minimizing the rent, then their interest must be to maximize it.

Agreement is often made possible precisely because interests differ.

position is likely to be concrete and explicit; the interests underlying it may well be unexpressed, intangible, and perhaps inconsistent.

A position is likely to be concrete and explicit; the interests underlying it may well be unexpressed, intangible, and perhaps inconsistent.

Ask “Why?”

The most powerful interests are basic human needs.
In searching for the basic interests behind a declared position, look particularly for those bedrock concerns which motivate all people.

Basic human needs include: • security • economic well-being • a sense of belonging • recognition • control over one’s life

Make a list. To sort out the various interests of each side, it helps to write them down as they occur to you. This will not only help you remember them; it will also enable you to improve the quality of your assessment as you learn new information and to place interests in their estimated order of importance.

Make your interests come alive.

If you want someone to listen and understand your reasoning, give your interests and reasoning first and your conclusions or proposals later.

Look forward, not back. It is surprising how often we simply react to what someone else has said or done.

If you ask two people why they are arguing, the answer will typically identify a cause, not a purpose.

Caught up in a quarrel, whether between husband and wife, between company and union, or between two businesses, people are more likely to respond to what the other side has said or done than to act in pursuit of their own long-term interests.

Two negotiators, each pushing hard for their interests, will often stimulate each other’s creativity in thinking up mutually advantageous solutions.

Attack the problem without blaming the people.

Invent Options for Mutual Gain

Often you are negotiating along a single dimension, such as the amount of territory, the price of a car, the length of a lease on an apartment, or the size of a commission on a sale. At

Invent Options for Mutual Gain

He expands the pie before dividing it. Skill at inventing options is one of the most useful assets a negotiator can have.

In most negotiations there are four major obstacles that inhibit the inventing of an abundance of options: (1) premature judgment; (2) searching for the single answer; (3) the assumption of a fixed pie; and (4) thinking that “solving their problem is their problem.” In order to overcome these constraints, you need to understand them.

and the whole peel for the other. Why?

Since the end product of negotiation is a single decision, they fear that free-floating discussion will only delay and confuse the process.

Separate inventing from deciding Since judgment hinders imagination, separate the creative act from the critical one;

If you cannot agree on substance, perhaps you can agree on procedure. If a shoe factory cannot agree with a wholesaler on who should pay for a shipment of damaged shoes, perhaps they can agree to submit the issue to an arbitrator. Similarly, where a permanent agreement is not possible, perhaps a provisional agreement is. At the very least, if you and the other side cannot reach first-order agreement, you can usually reach second-order agreement—that is, agree on where you disagree, so that you both know the issues in dispute, which are not always obvious.

The relationship between the sides, often taken for granted and overlooked, frequently outweighs in importance the outcome of any particular issue.

Three points about shared interests are worth remembering. First, shared interests lie latent in every negotiation.

Second, shared interests are opportunities, not godsends. To be of use, you need to make something out of them. It helps to make a shared interest explicit and to formulate it as a shared goal.

Third, stressing your shared interests can make the negotiation smoother and more amicable.

Agreement is often based on disagreement. It is as absurd to think, for example, that you should always begin by reaching agreement on the facts as it is for a buyer of stock to try to convince the seller that the stock is likely to go up. If they did agree that the stock would go up, the seller would probably not sell. What makes a deal likely is that the buyer believes the price will go up and the seller believes it will go down. The difference in belief provides the basis for a deal.

Few things facilitate a decision as much as precedent. Search for it.

What can you invent that might be attractive to them but low in cost to yourself?

Typically, negotiators try to resolve such conflicts by positional bargaining—in other words, by talking about what they are willing and unwilling to accept.

The outcome results from the interaction of two human wills—almost as if the negotiators were living on a desert island, with no history, no customs, and no moral standards.

To produce an outcome independent of will, you can use either fair standards for the substantive question or fair procedures for resolving the conflicting interests. Consider, for example, the age-old way to divide a piece of cake between two children: one cuts and the other chooses.

As you consider procedural solutions, look at other basic means of settling differences: taking turns, drawing lots, letting someone else decide, and so on.

Pressure can take many forms: a bribe, a threat, a manipulative appeal to trust, or a simple refusal to budge. In all these cases, the principled response is the same: invite them to state their reasoning, suggest objective criteria you think apply, and refuse to budge except on this basis.

No method can guarantee success if all the leverage lies on the other side. No book on gardening can teach you to grow lilies in a desert or cactus in a swamp.

In any negotiation there exist realities that are hard to change. In response to power, the most any method of negotiation can do is to meet two objectives : first, to protect you against making an agreement you should reject and second, to help you make the most of the assets you do have so that any agreement you reach will satisfy your interests as well as possible.

When you are trying to catch an airplane your goal may seem tremendously important; looking back on it, you see you could have caught the next plane. Negotiation will often present you with a similar situation. You will worry, for instance, about failing to reach agreement on an important business deal in which you have invested a great deal of yourself. Under these conditions, a major danger is that you will be too accommodating to the views of the other side—too quick to go along. The siren song of “Let’s all agree and put an end to this” becomes persuasive. You may end up with a deal you should have rejected.

In short, while adopting a bottom line may protect you from accepting a very bad agreement, it may keep you both from inventing and from agreeing to a solution it would be wise to accept. An arbitrarily selected figure is no measure of what you should accept.

The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating. What are those results? What is that alternative? What is your BATNA—your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement? That is the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured.

If you have not thought carefully about what you will do if you fail to reach an agreement, you are negotiating with your eyes closed.

People think of negotiating power as

The better your BATNA, the greater your power. People think of negotiating power as being determined by resources like wealth, political connections, physical strength, friends, and military might. In fact, the relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching agreement.

Consider the other side’s BATNA. You should also think about the alternatives to a negotiated agreement available to the other side. They may be unduly optimistic about what they can do if no agreement is reached.

If they appear to overestimate their BATNA, you will want to lower their expectations.

“What would happen to Golda Meir if tomorrow morning she appeared on Israeli radio and television and said, ‘On behalf of the people of Israel I hereby promise to withdraw from every inch of territory occupied in ’67:

Don’t defend your ideas, invite criticism and advice. A lot of time in negotiation is spent criticizing. Rather than resisting the other side’s criticism, invite it. Instead of asking them to accept or reject an idea, ask them what’s wrong with it. “What concerns of yours would this salary proposal fail to take into account?” Examine their negative judgments to find out their underlying interests and to improve your ideas from their point of view.

When the other side attacks you personally—as frequently happens—resist the temptation to defend yourself or to attack them. Instead, sit back and allow them to let off steam. Listen to them, show you understand what they are saying, and when they have finished, recast their attack on you as an attack on the problem. “When you say that a strike shows we don’t care about the children, I hear your concern about the children’s education.

People tend to feel uncomfortable with silence, particularly if they have doubts about the merits of something they have said.

Perhaps the most famous use of the one-text procedure was by the United States at Camp David in September 1978 when mediating between Egypt and Israel. The United States listened to both sides, prepared a draft to which no one was committed, asked for criticism, and improved the draft again and again until the mediators felt they could improve it no further.

change the game by starting to play a new one.

There are three steps in negotiating the rules of the negotiating game where the other side seems to be using a tricky tactic: recognize the tactic, raise the issue explicitly, and question the tactic’s legitimacy and desirability—negotiate over

There are three steps in negotiating the rules of the negotiating game where the other side seems to be using a tricky tactic: recognize the tactic, raise the issue explicitly, and question the tactic’s legitimacy and desirability—negotiate over it.

Rather than saying, “You deliberately put me here facing the sun,” attack the problem: “I am finding the sun in my eyes quite distracting. Unless we can solve the problem, I may have to leave early to get some rest. Shall we revise the schedule?” It will be easier to reform the negotiating process than to reform those with whom you are dealing. Don’t be diverted from the negotiation by the urge to teach them a lesson.

Tricky tactics can be divided into three categories: deliberate deception, psychological warfare, and positional pressure tactics. You should be prepared to deal with all three.

Before starting on any give-and-take, find out about the authority on the other side. It is perfectly legitimate to inquire, “Just how much authority do you have in this particular negotiation?”

If they do announce unexpectedly that they are treating what you thought was an agreement as a basis for further negotiation, insist on reciprocity. “All right. We will treat it as a joint draft to which neither side is committed. You check with your boss and I’ll sleep on it and see if I come up with any changes I want to suggest tomorrow.” Or you might say, “If your boss approves this draft tomorrow, I’ll stick by it. Otherwise each of us should feel free to propose changes.”

Good faith negotiation does not require total disclosure. Perhaps the best answer to questions such as “What is the most you would pay if you had to?” would be along the following lines: “Let’s not put ourselves under such a strong temptation to mislead. If you think no agreement is possible, and that we may be wasting our time, perhaps we could disclose our thinking to some trustworthy third party, who can then tell us whether there is a zone of potential agreement.” In this way it is possible to behave with full candor about information that is not being disclosed.

Psychological warfare These tactics are designed to make you feel uncomfortable, so that you will have a subconscious desire to end the negotiation as soon as possible.

They can comment on your clothes or your appearance. “Looks like you were up all night. Things not going well at the office?” They can attack your status by making you wait for them or by interrupting the negotiations to deal with other people. They can imply that you are ignorant. They can refuse to listen to you and make you repeat yourself. They can deliberately refuse to make eye contact with you.

In each case recognizing the tactic will help nullify its effect; bringing it up explicitly will probably prevent a recurrence.

Threats are one of the most abused tactics in negotiation. A threat seems easy to make—much easier than an offer. All it takes is a few words, and if it works, you never have to carry it out. But threats can lead to counterthreats in an escalating spiral that can unhinge a negotiation and even destroy a relationship.

Threats are pressure. Pressure often accomplishes just the opposite of what it is intended to do; it builds up pressure the other way.

The question changes from “Should we make this decision?” to “Shall we cave in to outside pressure?”

You can also resist lock-ins on principle: “Fine, Bob, I understand you made that statement, publicly. But my practice is never to yield to pressure, only to reason. Now let’s talk about the merits of the problem.” Whatever you do, avoid making the commitment a central question. Deemphasize it so that the other side can more gracefully back down.

It is often hard to decide what it means to negotiate in “good faith.” People draw the line in different places. It may help to ask yourself such questions as: Is this an approach I would use in dealing with a good friend or a member of my family? If a full account of what I said and did appeared in the newspapers, would I be embarrassed?

It may be useful at the beginning of the negotiation to say, “Look, I know this may be unusual, but I want to know the rules of the game we’re going to play. Are we both trying to reach a wise agreement as quickly and with as little effort as possible? Or are we going to play ‘hard bargaining’ where the more stubborn fellow wins?”

There is probably nothing in this book which you did not already know at some level of your experience. What we have tried to do is to organize common sense and common experience in a way that provides a usable framework for thinking and acting. The more consistent these ideas are with your knowledge and intuition the better. In teaching this method to skilled lawyers and businesspeople with years of experience, we have been told, “Now I know what I have been doing, and why it sometimes works” and “I knew what you were saying was right because I knew it already.”

In most instances to ask a negotiator, “Who’s winning?” is as inappropriate as to ask who’s winning a marriage. If you ask that question about your marriage, you have already lost the more important negotiation—the one about what kind of game to play, about the way you deal with each other and your shared and differing interests.

This book is about how to “win” that important game—how to achieve a better process for dealing with your differences. To be better, the process must, of course, produce good substantive results;

From time to time you may want to remind yourself that the first thing you are trying to win is a better way to negotiate—a way that avoids your having to choose between the satisfactions of getting what you deserve and of being decent. You can have both.

Our behavior should be designed to model and encourage the behavior we would prefer and to avoid any reward for the behavior we dislike, both without compromising our substantive interests.

First, recognize that, while people often do not negotiate rationally, it is worth trying to yourself. In a mental hospital, we do not want psychotic doctors. Likewise, in coping with the irrationality of other negotiators, you would like to be as purposive as possible.

yours—you are negotiating with them even if you are not talking with them. The question is whether to do so at a distance by actions and words (such as “We will never negotiate with terrorists!”) or whether to do so more directly. In general, the better the communication, the better your chance to exert influence.

A key point, worth repeating, is that negotiating does not require compromising your principles. More often success is achieved by finding a solution that is arguably consistent with each side’s principles.

Don’t assume that you have a BATNA better than negotiating, or that you don’t. Think it through. Then decide whether negotiating makes sense.

Before a doctor can answer such questions as what pill to take and what food to avoid, he or she will want to learn about the patient’s symptoms and diagnose possible causes. Only then can the doctor develop a general strategy for better health. The same is true for specialists in negotiation. We have no all-purpose patent medicines. Good tactical advice requires knowledge of specific circumstances.

Strategy depends on preparation. There are two generalizations about strategy worth passing along. First, in almost all cases, strategy is a function of preparation. If you are well prepared, a strategy will suggest itself. If you are well versed in the standards relevant to your negotiation, it will be obvious which ones to discuss and which ones the other side might raise. If you have thoroughly considered your interests, it will be clear which ones to mention early on and which ones to bring up later or not at all. And if you have formulated your BATNA in advance, you’ll know when it’s time to walk.

Second, a clever strategy cannot make up for lack of preparation.

Think about closure from the beginning.

Before you even begin to negotiate, it makes sense to envison what a successful agreement might look like. This will help you figure out what issues will need to be dealt with in the negotiation and what it might take to resolve them.

Imagine what it might be like to implement an agreement. What issues would need to be resolved? Then work backwards.

Working on a draft helps to keep discussions focused, tends to surface important issues that might otherwise be overlooked, and gives a sense of progress. Drafting as you go also provides a record of discussions, reducing the chance of later misunderstanding.

Move toward commitment gradually. As the negotiation proceeds and you discuss options and standards for each issue, you should be seeking a consensus proposal that reflects all the points made and meets each side’s interests on that issue as well as possible. If you are as yet unable to reach consensus on a single option, try at least to narrow the range of options under consideration and then go on to another issue. Perhaps a better option or a trade-off possibility will occur later. (“All right. So perhaps something like $28,000 or $30,000 might make sense on salary. What about starting date?”)

Tentative commitments are fine and should not be changed without reason. But make clear that you are not firmly committing yourself to anything until you see the final package. At the top of a framework agreement, for example, you might write: “Tentative Draft—No Commitments.”

Instead, offer options and ask for criticism. (“What would you think of an agreement along the lines of this draft? I am not sure I could sell it to my people, but it might be in the ballpark. Could something like this work for you? If not, what would be wrong with it?”)

Be persistent in pursuing your interests but not rigid in pursuing any particular solution.
One way to be firm without being positional is to separate your interests from ways to meet them.

When a proposal is challenged, don’t defend the proposal; rather explain again your underlying interests.
Ask if the other side can think of a better way to meet those interests, as well as their own.

Where disagreements persist, seek second-order agreement—agreement on where you disagree. Make sure that each side’s interests and reasoning are clear.

Make an offer. At some point clarifying interests, inventing options, and analyzing standards produce diminishing returns. Once an issue or group of issues is well explored, you should be prepared to make an offer.

Be generous at the end. When you sense you are finally close to an agreement, consider giving the other side something you know to be of value to them and still consistent with the basic logic of your proposal.

(Assuming the role of the other side and listening from the receiving end to your own arguments is a powerful technique for testing your case.)

Sometimes people seem to prefer feeling powerless and believing that there is nothing they can do to affect a situation. That belief helps them avoid feeling responsible or guilty about inaction. It also avoids the costs of trying to change the situation—making an effort and risking failure, which might cause the person embarrassment. But while this feeling is understandable, it does not affect the reality of what the person might accomplish by effective negotiation. It is a self-defeating and self-fulfilling attitude.

Studies of negotiation consistently show a strong correlation between aspiration and result. Within reason, it pays to think positively.

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

It is comparatively easy to listen when the other side is saying something that you agree with. It is harder to listen to things with which you disagree, but that is the very time it is most effective.

Just as, by finding relevant precedent and principles a lawyer enhances his or her ability to persuade a judge, so a negotiator can enhance his or her negotiation power by finding precedents, principles, and other external criteria of fairness and by thinking of ways to present them forcefully and tellingly:

enhance your negotiating power in three ways: You can commit to what you will do, for example, by making a firm offer. You can, with care, make a negative commitment as to what you will not do. And you can clarify precisely what commitments you would like the other side to make.

But you gain by simplifying the other side’s choice

By making an offer you give up your chance to haggle for better terms. But you gain by simplifying the other side’s choice and making it easier for them to commit. To reach agreement, all they have to say is “yes.”

The more concrete the offer, the more persuasive. Thus a written offer may be more credible than an oral one.

(A real-estate agent we know likes to have a client make an offer by stacking bundles of hundred-dollar bills on the table.)

You may also want to make your offer a “fading opportunity” by indicating when and how it will expire.

You will also be more effective as a negotiator if you believe in what you are saying and doing. Whatever use you are able to make of the ideas in this book, don’t wear them as though you were wearing someone else’s clothes. Cut and fit what we say until you find an approach that both makes sense and is comfortable for you. This may require experimentation and a period of adjustment that is not so comfortable, but in the end, you are likely to maximize your negotiation power if you believe what you say and say what you believe.