book giveaway!

Since it was first published in 1981, Getting to Yes has been translated into 18 languages and has sold over a million copies. The book offers up a simple set of guidelines for negotiating disputes. Its guidelines can be applied to almost any type of dispute – professional, personal, geopolitical. I found that it was an interesting read, and a few of its key points seem very useful in rethinking how to approach conflict. The writers are from the Harvard Negotiation Project. The focus of the book is on changing the approach to disputes from “zero-sum” to “win-win”. What this means in non-lingo-speak is that most people view a negotiation or a dispute as a battle where someone will win and someone will lose. If we argue over who gets the last apple, someone must get the apple and someone must get nothing. The authors argue that finding a way to satisfy everyone in a negotiation is always possible, even if one side doesn’t believe it is possible. If we argue over who gets the last apple, we need to understand why. Do we both want to eat apples? Are there no oranges available? Maybe one of us wants the skin of the apple for cooking and doesn’t care about the fruit.

This is similar to an example in the book. I’m not sure there is anything in this book that leads to an epiphany (“NOW I can settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!”) but the book does have a number of very helpful suggestions on how to approach negotiation in terms of thought processes. I thought the concept of BATNA (“Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement”) was helpful, which is to know when ending negotiations may be a better alternative than continuing them. I though the discussions relating to understanding the other side’s positions before launching into opinions was helpful, as well. Too often negotiations are statements of position (“I will give you $10 for that lamp and no more”) rather than discussions based on achieving the desired result (“let’s consider how much that lamp would cost new, then consider how much it has depreciated through use in arriving at a reasonable range of prices”). It applies well to marriage disputes, as well.

I am going to give this old but gently used book away. In order to be entered in the giveaway, you can either leave a comment to any previous post on bripblap or link back to bripblap from your blog. If you leave a comment, it must be at least 50 words long and relevant to the post. If you create a link to bripblap, just send an email to me at bripblap[at]gmail.com with the URL of the page where your link is located.

I’ll choose a winner from the entries using a random number generator. The contest will close at 10:00 PM EDT on Thursday, July 12^th. I will announce the winner on Friday and send the book out by media mail early next week (I can only ship to US locations, so please, no foreign entries).

Good luck!

 

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