How to get to yes: The books you need to read to get the deal done

Learning the tricks of negotiation is no longer confined to business schools. Today we’re all expected to know how to seal the deal.

We need to represent our own interests in today’s market economy.

When Donald Trump produced his book The Art of the Deal in 1987, making deals was something that entrepreneurs, property developers and chief executives did. Mostly they did it their own way, and like Trump, they credited good outcomes to their own cleverness.

Since the 1980s, the need to negotiate has entered most parts of life. It’s taught to parents and to children; it’s part of training for essential services; it’s swotted before people get a job, buy a home, pitch for a raise; it’s part of marriage counselling and the armed services, and it helps when you go to buy a new washing machine.

As the market economy makes us agents of our destiny, we are required to represent our own interests throughout our dealings in life, and most people have learnt that it’s not enough to rely on good will, a nice smile or the list price. So, we’re borrowing from the corporate playbook.

Corporate bookshelves are now bursting with books on getting the best deal and a few of those books have been around since the early 1980s. But along the way their focus has changed to reflect shifting cultures. Today, the hardball tactics of The Art of the Deal look primitive compared with the science behind modern tomes.

One of the most resilient and popular of the deal books is Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in, by Roger Fisher, William Ury and (in later editions) Bruce Patton.

First published in 1981, it was updated this year because it’s the go-to book for beginners and the refresh book for experienced negotiators. John Kenneth Galbraith said of it: “This is by far the best thing I’ve ever read about negotiation. It is equally relevant for the individual who would like to keep his friends, property and income and the statesman who would like to keep the peace.”

Spinning off the success of that book was Getting Past No, first published in 1991 and updated in 2007. In this book, Ury explores the emotional barriers to negotiating effectively and the tools you can use to manage emotions. Similarly, his book Getting to Yes with Yourself: How to get what you truly want, published in 2015, delves into the psychology, not just in the relationship between parties, but within the negotiator’s own mind. For instance, Ury says you have to convince yourself of a position before you try to convince others and recognise your own prejudices before you enter talks. That is, fix yourself first.

The evolution of those books indicates how the nature of deal-making has changed over the past few decades. Much of the language around negotiation in the 1980s focused on tough tactics, presumptions of rationality, win/lose outcomes and the strong-arming of weaker opponents. It was a Wall Street environment and most of the players were men.

Since then, the entry of women into positions of power, the rise of culturally different economies, and in particular the growing appreciation of the role of psychology in relationships has recalibrated the discourse.

Difficult Conversations (1999) emphasised bargaining as more of a conversation than a confrontation.

Take for instance one of the biggest sellers of recent years, Getting More by Stuart Diamond, published in 2011. Its TED-talking author has been described as the world’s best negotiator, but his strengths are in developing empathy, managing emotions and handling unpredictability. A similar outlook was reflected in Beyond Reason: Using emotions as you negotiate, by Daniel Shapiro and Roger Fisher, published in 2006.

One of the giants of deal literature is Deepak Malhotra, who has written several books, including Negotiation Genius: How to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results at the bargaining table and beyond, first published in 2007 and updated in 2014. He summed up his approach in the book as “not about buying, selling, crafting deals, reaching agreements or overcoming bias, but about engaging with people who are usually well-intentioned human beings who have different interests and perspectives”.

Malhotra raised the bar in 2016 with Negotiating the Impossible: How to break deadlocks and resolve ugly conflicts (without money or muscle). He is also the master of long titles.

It’s worth noting how many of the most popular books of the past few decades come out of Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation. This centre for academics and practitioners was set up in 1983, and some of its alumni include Malhotra, Jeswald Salacuse, Lawrence Susskind, Robert Mnookin, Bruce Patton, Daniel Shapiro, Deborah Kolb, Joshua Weiss, Ury and Roger Fisher.

Shifting the focus from jawboning to conversations were two books published around the turn of the century. Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, first came out in 1999 and emphasised bargaining as more of a conversation than a confrontation. Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high was edited by Kerry Patterson and first arrived in 2002. Some of the take-outs from that book include: the fuzzier the expectations the more likely is disappointment; speaking in absolute terms doesn’t increase your influence; and the more you care about something the less likely it is you’ll behave well.

More recently, the arrival of behavioural economics has informed the strategies of wheeling and dealing. The notion that people aren’t rational, that they have predictable biases, fears and prejudices, has opened new avenues for advice.

Margaret Neale’s Getting (More of) What you Want: How the secrets of economics and psychology can help you negotiate anything, in business and life was published in 2015. Pitched at a general readership, it explores when to talk and when to walk away, why keeping a poker face isn’t helpful, when to make an offer and when to wait.

More business people are going straight to the behavioural economists for tips, if only because their counterparts have probably read the classics of the deal genre. Richard Thaler of Nudge fame (Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness, was published in 2008) has a newish book called Misbehaving: The making of behavioural economics (2015) that explores the way people’s irrationality can be exploited by government, business and people themselves.

Many authors worked for the FBI, and their books appeal because they combine business tips with the thrill of the spy genre.

The Undoing Project: A friendship that changed our minds, Michael Lewis’s book on the founders of behavioural economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, appeared in 2016 and is rich in lessons on choice theory, decision-making and the power of story in convincing people. As Tversky said of their approach, “we study natural stupidity, not artificial intelligence”.

A surprise in this genre is the presence of so many authors who worked for the FBI, and indeed the appeal of these books owes something to the fact that they combine business tips with the thrill of the spy genre. As Chris Voss said of his book Never Split the Difference, if his tools of persuasion didn’t work, “somebody died”. Voss explores how to deploy tactical empathy, how to ask the right questions to get the answers you want, and what sort of tones of voice to use in different scenarios. He is the psychologist at the end of a gun.

Stalling for Time: My life as an FBI hostage negotiator, by Gary Noesner, also reads like a thriller but brings home the messages of listening carefully, controlling one’s emotions and discovering what the other side really wants.

What Every Body is Saying, by Joe Navarro, is born of a spook’s life. He describes how to read bodies for your own advantage, how to read emotions in bodies (pursed lips betray doubt, hands behind the head signal confidence and uncomfortable body movements usually indicate lying). He can sum up the mood of a room before the door closes.

As the need for negotiations slipped into other parts of life, authors began tackling ways of arguing your case at work, especially for women (see below); in relationships and when raising children. One of the gurus of how to talk to others in your family is linguist Deborah Tannen, whose books include That’s Not What I Meant (conversation style in relationships), You Just Don’t Understand (talk between men and women), You’re Wearing That? (mothers to daughters) and Talking 9 to 5 (how men and women talk at work).

Negotiating with kids has attracted its own genre and much of the advice comes straight from the handbooks of international negotiators, business strategists and scientists. Examples include How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and How to Negotiate with Kids … Even When You Think You Shouldn’t, by Scott Brown.

Brown, a father of four, comes from Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation and adapted tools for business talks to the home scene. Among his take-outs are how to decide what style of negotiation is needed, how to work on solutions together, and how to focus on the problem not the child.

Finally, someone decided to turn the tables on parents and publish a negotiation book for children. Trouble at the Watering Hole: The adventures of Emo and Chickie, by Joshua Weiss, presents a fable of animals stuck at a watering hole to explore constructive problem solving, using individual skills for a group effort and how to defuse conflict.

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Many of the books written by and for women concern career negotiations.

When women ask

Women’s voices in the literature of deal-making are much like women’s voices at work – not heard enough. But when they get the floor they make an impact.

Until a decade or so ago there were few women authors writing on negotiation, but a wave of books began appearing when people started worrying about the lack of women in top positions, the wage gap between the genders and unchanging cultures in the workforce.

Negotiating at Work: Turn small wins into big gains, by Deborah Kolb and Jessica Porter, (2015) outlines how small changes in workforces can pave the way for changes in the status quo. While offering practical advice to women at work, the authors point out that every time a woman gets a break it alters the pathways for those coming behind.

Another Kolb book is The Shadow Negotiation: How women can master the hidden agendas that determine bargaining success, co-authored with Judith Williams and published in 2000. It explores the meta landscape of negotiations, and how unspoken attitudes, assumptions and conflicting agendas drive plays.

The Mediator’s Handbook, by Jennifer Beer, was first published in 1982 but was expanded with Caroline Packard in 2012. It’s aimed at general readers and highlights more nuanced methods of coming to agreement. Takeouts include: mediators guide, they don’t decide; impartial attentiveness is crucial; and conversations should be structured for specific purposes.

Many of the books written by and for women concern career negotiations. In 2003, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever launched a call to arms with Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the gender divide. It was prompted when Babcock’s dean at Carnegie Mellon University explained that the lack of women graduates teaching their own courses was because “more men ask. The women just don’t ask”. After the success of that book, they wrote Ask For It: Women can use the power of negotiation to get what they really want (2008).

One of the biggest sellers, partly due to the prominence of the authors, was The Confidence Code: The science and art of self-assurance – what women should know, by journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. They took on imposter syndrome, the peril of thinking small and the power of failing fast, and gave women the tools to “lean in”.

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Advice Central: Best books for deal-making

Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in.

Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton, Random House, 2018

Getting to Yes with Yourself: How to get what you truly want. William Ury, HarperOne, 2016

Beyond Reason: Using emotions as you negotiate

Daniel Shapiro and Roger Fisher, Penguin Books, 2006

Negotiation Genius: How to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results at the bargaining table and beyond

Deepak Malhotra, Bantam, 2008

Negotiating the Impossible: How to break deadlocks and resolve ugly conflicts (without money or muscle)

Deepak Malhotra, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2016

Difficult Conversations

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Penguin Books, 2000

Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high

Edited Kerry Patterson, McGraw-Hill, 2011

Getting (More of) What You Want: How the secrets of economics and psychology can help you negotiate anything, in business and life

Margaret Neale, Basic Books, 2015

Misbehaving: The making of behavioural economics

Richard Thaler, WW Norton & Company, 2015

The Undoing Project: A friendship that changed our minds

Michael Lewis, WW Norton & company, 2016

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it

Chris Voss, HarperBusiness, 2016

Stalling for Time: My life as an FBI hostage negotiator

Gary Noesner, Random House Group, 2010

Every Body is Saying: An ex-FBI agent’s guide to speed-reading people

Joe Navarro, William Morrow, 2008

That’s Not What I meant! How conversation style makes or breaks relationships

Deborah Tannen, William Morrow, 1986

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and men in conversation

Deborah Tannen, William Morrow, 2007

Talking 9 to 5: Women and men at work

Deborah Tannen, William Morrow, reprint 2011

Negotiating at Work: Turn small wins into big gains

Deborah Kolb and Jessica Porter, Jossey Bass, 2015

The Shadow Negotiation: How women can master the hidden agendas that determine bargaining success

Deborah Kolb, Simon & Schuster, 2000

The Mediator’s Handbook

Jennifer Beer and Caroline Packard, New Society Publishers, 2012