How does "Separate the people from the problem" work?

Negotiations entangle the substance with the relationship, so a disagreement on the merits gets felt as a personal attack and triggers defensiveness. Deliberately separating the two lets you press hard on the issue while protecting the relationship that makes agreement possible — emotions and perceptions handled as their own track.

How does "Invent options for mutual gain" work?

Treating negotiation as a fixed single decision triggers premature judgment and a win-lose frame. Separating inventing from deciding — generating many options first — lets you find trades that exploit differences in priorities, so each side gives on what it values less to gain what it values more.

How does "Insist on objective criteria" work?

When agreement rests on whose will is stronger, both sides dig in and the relationship pays. Grounding terms in a fair external standard converts a contest of stubbornness into a joint search for the right answer, and gives both parties a face-saving reason to move.

How does "Know your BATNA" work?

Power in a negotiation comes from your alternative, not your demands: the better your BATNA, the less you need this deal, so the calmer and firmer you can be. Knowing it sets a rational walk-away point and stops you from accepting a deal worse than no deal.

How does "Negotiation jujitsu" work?

Counterattacking entrenches both sides. Instead of meeting force with force, you sidestep: treat their position as one possible option, invite their reasoning, and recast attacks on you as attacks on the shared problem. The energy they bring gets redirected into examining interests and standards rather than escalating.

Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher & William Ury)

What is principled negotiation from Getting to Yes, and how do you use it?

The Harvard method — negotiate on interests, not positions, and know your BATNA

Short answer

Getting to Yes (Fisher & Ury, of the Harvard Negotiation Project) argues for negotiating on the merits instead of haggling over positions: separate people from the problem, focus on underlying interests, invent options for mutual gain, and judge outcomes by objective criteria — with your BATNA as the source of real leverage. It’s an influential framework grounded in decision theory and negotiation experience rather than a lab-tested protocol.

Positional bargaining — staking a number and grinding toward the middle — wastes effort, strains relationships, and often leaves value on the table. Fisher and Ury’s alternative is to negotiate on the merits: get behind stated positions to the interests driving them, expand the options, and anchor agreement to standards both sides accept. Below are the core practices, each with the reasoning that makes it work.

The practices (6)

Why it works

A position is one solution a person has fixed on; the interest is the underlying need it was meant to satisfy. Positions clash because they’re single points, but interests are multiple and often compatible — so working at the interest level reveals overlaps that positional bargaining hides. Most interests can be met in more than one way.

How to do it

1For each demand, ask "why?" and "why not?" until you reach the underlying need.
2List your own interests and your best guess at theirs before you talk numbers.
3Acknowledge their interests as part of the problem, then look for solutions serving both.

Evidence

Mechanistic

A foundational tenet of the Harvard Negotiation Project. The interests-vs-positions distinction is widely taught and consistent with research on integrative bargaining, though the book itself is a framework, not an experiment.

Honest caveat: Mechanistically sound and widely adopted; treat it as a well-reasoned framework rather than a single quantified study.

Common mistake: Negotiating the two stated positions as if they’re the only options, so the talk becomes a tug-of-war with no room to create value.

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