"Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must be readers.” Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States.
Truman’s quote echoes through the years from leaders in all walks of life. To continue to grow and improve, we must read. And effective leaders have a growth mindset – always modeling and demonstrating that they are learners and trying to get better each day.
Going forward, this Resources column will sometimes feature book summaries
from Harvard University’s acclaimed Program on Negotiation (PON, sometimes referred to as the Harvard Negotiation Project). The books are written by Harvard professors who are acknowledged world-wide as experts on the art and science of negotiation.
Although the books cover many types of negotiation, I will most often write from a labor-management, collective bargaining perspective that our readers can relate to as they face the challenges of getting to a CBA together.
Next month, we will examine some critical insights from the foundational book in the Harvard PON series – Getting To Yes, by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton (original publication, 1981, 3rd Edition, 2011).
Introduction to Getting to Yes…
More than 30 years ago, Getting to Yes was one of the first books to suggest that we could eliminate the adversarial “win-lose” aspect of negotiations, replacing it instead with a “mutual gains,” “win-win” mentality where negotiators “separate the people from the problem.” The authors call this “principled negotiation.” It is often characterized as “interest-based” negotiation.
Negotiators must deal with both the emotional aspects of problem-solving as well as the substantive issues involved. Principled negotiation encourages us to be “soft on the people” while remaining “hard on the problem.”
Getting To Yes provides the following framework for “interest-based” bargaining,
or as the authors call it, “principled negotiation:”
1) Separate the people from the problem, recognizing that we must avoid negative, disrespectful behaviors toward each other; while still working hard together on our problems.
2) Focus on interests, not positions or proposals that get us locked in to a zero-sum, win-lose battle. Our interests drive us toward outcomes in a collective bargaining session. For example, the company has an interest in managing rising costs, and the union has an interest in providing economic security to its members.
3) Generate options that might meet our interests, using non-judgmental brainstorming exercises. Options are just possibilities and not firm proposals, and therefore not as likely to generate negative emotion and resistance.
4) Invent options for mutual gain as you work together, side-by-side, discussing options and using ideas to generate more ideas; and
5) Insist that results be based on objective standards. For example, a third-party wage study might be agreed upon in advance as a benchmark for wage options. Both sides can tell their constituents that the result was fair and not a product of the power or will of one side over the other.
We will dive into these five steps of principled negotiation together from time to time in the coming months for in-depth insights that will help us all become better at the crucial skill of negotiation.
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