Negotiation Power: Negotiation Skills Without Concessions, and the Professionalism We Must Not Overlook

Negotiation Power: Negotiation Skills Without Concessions, and the Professionalism We Must Not Overlook

The two sides in a negotiation are like two people in a romantic relationship. In love, there are no true winners or losers; only when the two ultimately come together can there be a real win-win outcome.

I came across Getting to Yes while attending a training course on negotiation without concessions, where reading the book was part of the program. The book itself is compact and concise. If one only reads the text, the gains may feel somewhat limited; but when it is paired with real cases, explanations of the theory, and hands-on practice, the value naturally becomes much greater. For someone who has never received formal negotiation training, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the change in understanding before and after reading it as “subversive.” It gives people a completely new perspective on negotiation—something that happens every day—and makes the seemingly fanciful idea of “negotiating without concessions” feel both understandable and persuasive. Most importantly, it makes one more aware of the power of professionalism. Once an activity has developed into a specialized discipline, studied repeatedly by countless people, then relying only on vague personal impressions and intuition is no different from trying to pit one’s own limited judgment against the accumulated wisdom of humanity. The outcome is easy to imagine.

The fundamental premise of Getting to Yes is the idea of “win-win,” an important concept that still has not received the attention it deserves. In this respect, it is not very different from other books on conflict management, such as The Third Alternative. But as the saying goes, the great way is simple, yet easy to know and hard to practice. Even if we accept the basic ideal of win-win, without systematic training it is still difficult to apply in real situations. Getting to Yes builds on this foundation and provides a relatively complete theoretical framework and practical guidance specifically for negotiation. It allows readers to observe and approach negotiation from a more professional perspective, to understand its essence more deeply in theory, and to respond more effectively to different situations in practice.

In the book, the win-win goal is translated into a specific principle for negotiation: focus on interests, not positions. This is presented as the central argument in Part One (Chapter 1). The authors point out that the main problem in negotiation—whether in formal settings or in the many informal activities of daily life that are, in essence, also negotiations—is that we tend to emphasize and solidify positions rather than interests. Positions create separation, and that separation prevents most negotiations from achieving a true win-win result. Only by paying closer attention to the essence of negotiation—the real interests of both parties, rather than their fixed positions—can we genuinely achieve mutual benefit.

In Part Two (Chapters 2–5), the book develops this foundation into four major principles: separate the people from the problem, focus on interests rather than positions, develop the best alternatives for satisfying interests, and insist on using objective criteria. The authors offer many valuable examples. One of the most memorable is the story of the orange: two children are given one orange and, through negotiation, split it equally in half. One child eats the fruit and throws away the peel, while the other uses the peel to make something and throws away the fruit. This is exactly the dilemma in most position-based negotiations. On the surface, the agreement may look “fair,” but because it fails to fully consider the parties’ real interests, value is left on the table after the negotiation, and a true maximization of mutual benefit is never achieved. The book is full of thought-provoking examples like this, while the training course added even richer cases grounded in local realities and business negotiation practice. It emphasized the importance of interest-based negotiation, as well as the importance of insisting on objective standards so that negotiation is based on principles rather than positions.

Part Three (Chapters 6–8), along with the ten questions that follow, turns to specific situations in negotiation practice and explains how to apply professional negotiation theory in concrete scenarios. These include negotiations in which the other side is much stronger and we are at a disadvantage, negotiations in which the other side refuses to cooperate, and negotiations in which the other side uses dirty tricks. In such difficult environments, how should we respond and handle the situation? The book includes both theoretical analysis and concrete, actionable steps. In the training course, these points were explained even more clearly and in greater detail. It supplemented the book with common negotiation traps, such as false information and the salami tactic, and also walked through the practical process of every stage of a negotiation, from planning to closing. It provided a wealth of operational tools—enough to arm a negotiation team to the teeth. At the end of the course, we also carried out a negotiation simulation based on business practice. As the saying goes, what we gain on paper always feels shallow; to truly understand something, we must practice it ourselves. This kind of exercise is indispensable for mastering and flexibly applying what one has learned, and I benefited from it enormously.

In the concluding section of Getting to Yes, the authors arrive at much the same conclusion: theory is knowledge distilled from practice, and understanding theory helps us remain clear-headed about the kinds of situations that arise in everyday negotiation. But knowing theory does not produce immediate results. Negotiation is a highly practical discipline, and only through conscious application in real life can one continue to improve. Using principled negotiation—fully considering interests rather than positions—is the best way to achieve negotiation goals.

More than a decade ago, TVB produced a television drama called Take My Word for It (literally, Negotiation Expert). I have to admit that the main reason it caught my attention at the time was that its four leads—Bobby Au-yeung, Julian Cheung, Kenix Kwok, and Annie Man—were all actors I liked very much. Even then, I was deeply impressed by the professionalism of the negotiators in the drama, the teamwork they displayed, and the precision of their thinking.

After finishing Getting to Yes, that drama came back to mind after many years. This time, when I could look back on it with a more professional lens, I found myself thinking that perhaps the essence of Negotiation Expert lay in the opening line repeated in each negotiation: a sincere line that seeks to adjust both sides’ positions and fully take the other party’s interests into account—“Hello, we are negotiation experts. We are here to help you.”