About this item
You've read the classic on win-win negotiating, Getting to Yes ... but so have they, the folks you are now negotiating with. How can you get a leg up ... and win?"Win-win" negotiation is an appealing idea on an intellectual level: Find the best way to convince the other side to accept a mutually beneficial outcome, and then everyone gets their fair share. The reality, though, is that people want more than their fair share; they want to win. Tell your boss that you've concocted a deal that gets your company a piece of the pie, and the reaction is likely to be: "Maybe we need to find someone harder-nosed than you who knows how to win. We want the whole pie, not just a slice." However, to return to an earlier era before "win-win" negotiation was in fashion and seek simply to dominate or bully opponents into submission would be a step in the wrong direction - and a public relations disaster.
About the Author
Larry Susskind (born in New York City in 1947) has been a member of the MIT faculty for more than four decades. He is currently director of the MIT Science Impact Collaborative (scienceimpact.mit.edu) in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His work as an environmental planner focuses on the mediation of environmental disputes and strategies for involving large numbers of groups with very different ideas and interests in managing natural resources together. His books entitled Water Diplomacy, Negotiating Environmental Agreements, Environmental Diplomacy, Better Environmental Policy Studies, and Transboundary Environmental Agreements explain how this is possible. Through his writing and practice as a mediator with the Cambridge-based not-for-profit Consensus Building Institute (www.cbuilding.org), he has helped to establish the field of public dispute resolution. Breaking Robert's Rules, Breaking the Impasse, Dealing with An Angry Public, Negotiating on Behalf of Others, Built to Win and the Consensus Building Handbook offer insights into the techniques and strategies that have made Professor Susskind a much sought-after trainer and teacher. He has supervised more than 60 doctoral students at MIT and Harvard, many of whom now teach in universities around the world. In 1983, with Roger Fisher, Howard Raiffa and Frank Sander, he founded the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School (www.pon.harvard.edu) which continues to play an important part in shaping negotiation and dispute resolution theory. At PON he is co-director of the Negotiation Pedagogy Initiative.
