Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton
Contents
In Conclusion
Overview
The authors close by affirming that principled negotiation organizes common sense into a usable framework, but true skill comes only through practice. Using a Frisbee anecdote, they argue that “winning” means choosing a better process, not beating the other side. Principled negotiation delivers solid outcomes while preserving relationships.
Summary
The chapter asserts that most of the book’s ideas reflect common sense many readers already possess. The contribution is organizing that intuition into a coherent framework for thinking and acting during negotiations, making effective behavior more conscious and repeatable.
The authors emphasize that understanding concepts is not the same as skill. As with physical training or sports, only deliberate practice—observing oneself, trying techniques, and learning from outcomes—builds negotiation capability.
They illustrate “winning” through a Hyde Park Frisbee anecdote: asking who is winning in many negotiations is like asking who is winning a marriage—the wrong question. The real win is agreeing on the game itself: adopting a process that addresses shared and differing interests constructively.
The authors conclude that principled negotiation reliably yields outcomes as good as or better than other strategies, while being more efficient and less damaging to relationships. Though changing habits and separating emotions from merits is hard, negotiators should aim first to win a better way to negotiate—achieving both substantive fairness and decency.
Who Appears
- Reader/NegotiatorEncouraged to practice principled negotiation and redefine winning as adopting a better process.
- American fatherPlays Frisbee in Hyde Park, prompting the anecdote about the wrong question of who’s winning.
- Twelve-year-old sonPlays Frisbee with his father, part of the illustration about redefining winning.
- Homburg-clad BritisherAsks, “Who’s winning?” highlighting the misconception about competition in negotiation.