IF YOU HAVE NEVER faced a difficult deadlock or ugly conflict in your life, consider yourself to be among the lucky few. But if you are like most people, you have encountered negotiations that seemed impossible, and you have struggled with some tough questions: How can you defuse a situation in which no one seems willing to back down? Is it possible to negotiate effectively when you have no money or power? If your attempts at negotiating in good faith are failing, what can you do? How might you deal with people who are acting aggressively or unethically, or who are simply unwilling to negotiate? How can you resolve protracted or escalating conflicts?
Over the years I have worked with tens of thousands of business owners, executives, and managers. I have consulted on hundreds of high-stakes negotiations, deadlocked deals, diplomatic stalemates, and protracted conflicts. And I have advised countless people who were dealing with challenging situations or difficult people in their work or daily lives. One question that people in all of these environments ask is how they can learn to negotiate more effectively when things seem hopeless. And while many books carry nuggets of insight on the topic, I have struggled to come up with an answer when asked to recommend a book that deals with especially challenging situations. I have not found a way to share my conviction that even the most difficult of negotiation problems have potential solutions.
That is why I wrote this book. It is an acknowledgment of the fact that while those of us who study negotiation have written a lot that is extremely useful, we may have ignored some of the most persistent and important questions. This book provides answers to those questions.
The lessons in this book are brought to life through stories of people who managed to negotiate the seemingly impossible without having had the money or muscle to solve the problem. Each chapter tells a different story—from history, business, diplomacy, sports, or popular culture—and each story yields a series of insights and principles. Whenever possible, I give additional examples of how these insights can be applied in other domains, whether you are negotiating with an employer or a spouse, a strategic partner or a child, a potential customer or a terrorist group. I have no doubt that you—the reader—will find additional, more personally relevant, applications.
I hope that the lessons in this book will help you resolve conflict, overcome deadlock, and achieve better outcomes in all of your negotiations—from the simple to the complex, and from the mundane to the seemingly impossible.