Name: Getting past no
ISBN: 9780553371314

Getting past no

We all want to get to yes, but what happens when the other person keeps saying no? How can you negotiate successfully with a stubborn boss, an irate customer, or a deceitful coworker?In Getting Past No, William Ury of Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation offers a proven breakthrough strategy for turning adversaries into negotiating partners. You'll learn how to:- Stay in control under pressure- Defuse anger and hostility- Find out what the other side really wants- Counter dirty tricks- Use power to bring the other side back to the table- Reach agreements that satisfies both sides' needsGetting Past No is the state-of-the-art book on negotiation for the twenty-first century. It will help you deal with tough times, tough people, and tough negotiations. You don't have to get mad or get even. Instead, you can get what you want!From the Trade Paperback edition.

What Hacker News says

JAlexoidJan 2023

> force you to articulate your position well

That's the problem with how we see a debate. It's just about that. There's no need to present your position in a compelling way or find common grounds with whoever you're debating.

If you read any books by professional negotiators - you'll notice that they conduct themselves very differently than you would in a debate.

Getting to Yes and Getting Past No have been eye opening to me. I no longer feel like I even need to "win an argument".

> the public can gain a lot because a debate forces you to be very on point

I recall reading some articles stating, that debates fail to convince anyone of anything. Public debates only encourage tribalism, IMO. If you watch a presidential debate - no amount of "winning" changed people's opinions.

I can even argue, that just hearing "X won the debate" will cause more impact; compared to listening to them.

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brigandishSep 2022

You're going to have to speak to them, and it's going to be a difficult conversation for both of you. I therefore would suggest reading a book called Difficult Conversations[1], I can't recommend it enough. It's part of a series based off of research conducted at Harvard, of which Getting to Yes, and Getting Past No are two of the others, also highly recommended.

[1] ISBN 9780143118442

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5F7bGnd6fWJ66xNDec 2021

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, 2021 edition

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, 2nd edition 2014

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury, 2011 edition

Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations by William Ury

Bargaining for Advantage by Richard Shell, 2nd edition 2006

Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff

Nonviolent Communication: A language of life by Marshall Rosenberg, 2015 edition

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

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BeetleBDec 2020

Books I liked:

- Bargaining For Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/Bargaining-Advantage-Negotiation-Stra...)

- Negotiation Genius (https://www.amazon.com/Negotiation-Genius-Obstacles-Brillian...)

- Getting To Yes (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...)

- The Coursera course from the University of Michigan (and not the Yale one).

- Getting Past No (https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...)

- Difficult Conversations/Crucial Conversations/Nonviolent Communications

The last bullet (arguably the last two bullets) are about conversation skills, but that is an essential part of negotiations.

I won't claim to be good at this stuff. It takes a lot of effort and practice to change habits you've formed your whole life. But still, I've improved somewhat. What I do think I've become much better at is identifying why someone's efforts succeeded (or in this case, failed).

I would also recommend Influence by Cialdini. It is not a negotiation book at all, but will make much of the material in those books more meaningful if you've read this book.

Books/courses I discourage:

- Never Split The Difference

- The Lynda course (there may be more than one now, but the one I took years ago was bad).

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BeetleBJun 2020

Crucial Conversations: This book does a great job describing the landscape and problems in communications. Don't focus too much on the solutions (and all the weird acronyms they have). Even the authors at the end say that if you understand the big picture (people feeling unsafe to speak openly to you, etc), and take actions to mitigate that (it need not be identical to what they recommend), you're most of the way there.

Difficult Conversations: Also a great book on describing the landscape. It has good strategies, but the book is written in a way to be hard to follow in a real conversation. Consider it more of an educational/reference book as opposed to a guide.

Nonviolent Communications (NVC): The best I've read in terms of giving concrete advice. Poor on describing why the strategies work. Had I read this without reading the other two I likely would have dismissed it. The book's advice will seem very wishy-washy, but upon reviewing my notes of the other two books, I realized the advice is pretty much the same in all of them - merely presented differently. Warning: There is a bit of NVC cult out there (similar to TDD, Agile, etc) - ignore the cult/hype and just focus on the stuff in the book.

NVC is very polarizing on HN. However, most of the criticisms I see here about it are clearly from people who've never read the book. And some people are triggered by the use of the word "violent". Hard to help people who judge books by their title.

Getting Past No is also a pretty good book.

BTW, I do not want to come across as an effective communicator. I'm still far from it. However, I think reading all these books and occasionally reviewing my notes has made it much easier for me to identify the communications problems that I witness (mostly at work). I've been in teams with communications problems, and I often fantasize about synthesizing all the stuff in the books into a series of blog posts, using solely examples from work. When I first started reading the books, I kept saying to myself "Ah, this part of the book describes me!" and then "Ah, that annoying guy at work - he's in this book!" and before long all the annoying folks at work were to be found somewhere in there :-)

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wintermutestwinApr 2020

Great post. Your reading list is excellent and I'd add Getting to Yes. I think there are some key elements you left out: (1) the concept of emotional safety and the value of brainstorming (Crucial Conversations), (2) seeing the problem as separate from the people (Getting Past No / Getting to Yes), (3) Negotiating interests, not positions (Getting to Yes).

Here are the links to the reading list (and I added Getting to Yes):

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...

https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...

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