Books like The Art of Negotiation

Bill Ury was one of the authors of the most important book in the negotiation field – Getting to Yes written more than 30 years ago. It challenged the win-lose model of negotiation that prevailed at the time. Bill and his partners Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton made it clear that we not only need to get agreement, when one is possible given the underlying interests of the parties, we also need to know how to defend our own interests in the face of inside and outside pressure. 

One of the reviewers of The Power of a Positive No said that the book “has the power to transform our lives by enabling us to say Yes to what counts – our own needs and values.” I’ve watched him in action; Bill’s three-step method works. First, you say what you really need. Then, you say no to proposals that don’t meet… show more.

Susan has helped a lot of people come together to work out their differences and achieve a common goal, even in the face of deeply-held conflicting values. She calls the kinds of processes she helps to design: civic fusion. Because she is a skilled mediator who has worked in all kinds of situations in many places, she is able to explain and illustrate how adding a “neutral” facilitator can overcome fundamental obstacles to agreement. The cases that she talks about, like a city that has gone bankrupt, thrown out its elected leaders and had to write a new charter to redefine the kind of democracy it wanted to be, actually pulled that off. 

She played a role in bringing together pro-life and pro-choice leaders for a private dialogue in which they were able to find common ground. Passion, power and conflict generate energy; Susan describes ways of channeling that energy… show more.

I used to think that being good with feedback meant being great at giving it. This book showed me that I was missing a big part of the equation: receiving feedback.

It taught me that one of the most powerful and important ways to build psychological safety and trust on a team is not only to ask for the team’s feedback, but to receive it in a way that builds trust. The simple act of saying “thanks for the feedback” creates a foundation upon which strong teams can be built.

Bill Isaacs offers a pioneering approach to communicating in business and in life. His book starts with the assumption that people don’t know how to talk in a way that will make it easier for them to work together with others to solve shared problems. His company, DIAlogos, has organized dialogues in a wide variety of public and private settings. In the book, his discussion of “the architecture of the invisible” makes clear why better communication begins with listening, respect, suspending our own opinions, and finding our voice. I’m particularly taken with his discussion of how we can “cultivate organizational and system dialogue.” He also has some important ideas about how we can return to civility in our public discourse in the current time when “Red” and “Blue” have forgotten how to communicate at all. 

This book provides good crisp and short distillations of what the field of negotiation theory and practice offers for practical advice in legal negotiation settings. It covers deception and candor, information sharing issues, cultural and communication issues in negotiation, dealing with clients and others, the new media of online and email negotiations, and particular issues relating to different kinds of negotiating relationships and contexts. Lots of useful advice for the practical negotiator, as well as for high-level diplomatic and even hostage negotiations. Very useful for its specificity on a range of issues. Useful even for non-lawyers!

This is the book that brought game theory to life. Eschewing dry mathematical theorems, and conducting rigorous logical analysis through rich examples of strategic use of threats, promises, and brinkmanship in real life, Schelling opened up a whole world of practical applications of the theory. My own thinking and writing about game theory owes a huge debt to Schelling. You should also read his “Arms and Influence,” “Micromotives and Macrobehavior,” and “Choice and Consequence.”

When I read this book for the first time, my reaction was “wow.”

Professor Rousseau helped me to appreciate that everything (really, everything!) related to work was malleable and negotiable. We can all be more proactive in co-designing our own work arrangements, so that we can be happier people and deliver better value to our families, employers, and communities.

I say “negotiable” but the book is not motivated by self-interest. The book focuses on idiosyncratic deals that help employees to leverage their unique strengths, so that everyone (including managers and coworkers) benefit from employee i-deals.

Professor Rousseau’s recommendations are firmly anchored in empirical evidence, so her advice to employees is spot-on.  

3-D Negotiation lives up to its title – by showing that negotiations require a multi-dimensional (3D) perspective. My favorite part of this book is the emphasis that deals are unlikely to last when negotiations ignore the “spirit of the deal.” As Lax and Sebenius put it, "while parties can agree to the same terms on paper, they may actually have very different expectations of how those terms will be met. And because they fail to achieve a true meeting of the minds, the deal they've signed may well fall apart." Their solution? Negotiators need to look beyond the tactics (the first dimension) and make sure they consider the deal design (the second dimension) and the setup (third dimension). The authors provide a compelling argument about why negotiators fall short when they don’t consider all three dimensions. 

While this book is written for lawyers, it is a must-read for anyone who is a professional negotiator. I love how this book stresses that traditional hard-bargaining negotiation tactics can lead to run. The book artfully makes the case that a lawyer should serve the client's interests rather than merely papering the deal or making sure the contract will win in court. I especially like the emphasis on the need to shift from conflict to collaboration and how Mnookin and his co-authors focus on not just negotiating the deal – but how to make a deal sustainable so it avoids a Pyrrhic victory. I was also glad to see the chapter on professional ethics – something many negotiators often overlook in their quest to get the best deal. 

I got this book when I was in law school and found it to be filled with insights that I never expected nor got anywhere else. It must be good because it’s on its 8th edition now! However, I should warn you that it’s dense (over 600 pages) and designed for students. But for the reader who wants to become a serious professional negotiator, this is the book I keep referring back to. This is for the person who wants a really deep dive into the subject of negotiations. It covers every aspect from psychology to economics to closing the deal.