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Getting to Yes: Principled Negotiation

The Harvard method — negotiate on interests, not positions, and know your BATNA

What is principled negotiation in Getting to Yes?

Principled negotiation is the method Fisher & Ury lay out in Getting to Yes (Harvard Negotiation Project): negotiate on the merits instead of haggling over positions — separate people from the problem, focus on underlying interests, invent options for mutual gain, and judge outcomes by objective criteria — with your BATNA as the source of real leverage. It’s an influential framework grounded in decision theory and negotiation experience rather than a lab-tested protocol. The four principles are meant to be read as one move, not a menu: you separate the people from the problem so that disagreement stops being read as hostility, which is what makes it safe to disclose interests; disclosed interests are what make it possible to invent options beyond the one number on the table; and objective criteria are what let both sides accept an option without either having to concede to the other person. BATNA — your best alternative to a negotiated agreement — sits underneath all four, because knowing what happens if you walk is what lets you hold the method under pressure instead of reverting to haggling.

Positional bargaining — staking a number and grinding toward the middle — wastes effort, strains relationships, and often leaves value on the table. Fisher and Ury’s alternative is to negotiate on the merits: get behind stated positions to the interests driving them, expand the options, and anchor agreement to standards both sides accept. The common misreading is that principled negotiation means being accommodating. It does not — Fisher and Ury are explicit that soft bargaining, where you concede to preserve the relationship, fails for the same structural reason hard bargaining does: both treat the relationship and the substance as a single dial. The method separates them so you can be genuinely warm toward the person and genuinely unyielding on the merits at the same time. Below are the core practices, each with the reasoning that makes it work.

Practices

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Research

Frequently asked questions

What is principled negotiation in Getting to Yes?

Principled negotiation is the method Fisher & Ury lay out in Getting to Yes (Harvard Negotiation Project): negotiate on the merits instead of haggling over positions — separate people from the problem, focus on underlying interests, invent options for mutual gain, and judge outcomes by objective criteria — with your BATNA as the source of real leverage. It’s an influential framework grounded in decision theory and negotiation experience rather than a lab-tested protocol. The four principles are meant to be read as one move, not a menu: you separate the people from the problem so that disagreement stops being read as hostility, which is what makes it safe to disclose interests; disclosed interests are what make it possible to invent options beyond the one number on the table; and objective criteria are what let both sides accept an option without either having to concede to the other person. BATNA — your best alternative to a negotiated agreement — sits underneath all four, because knowing what happens if you walk is what lets you hold the method under pressure instead of reverting to haggling.

How do you focus on interests, not positions?

A position is one solution a person has fixed on; the interest is the underlying need it was meant to satisfy. Positions clash because they’re single points, but interests are multiple and often compatible — so working at the interest level reveals overlaps that positional bargaining hides. Most interests can be met in more than one way.

How do you separate the people from the problem?

Negotiations entangle the substance with the relationship, so a disagreement on the merits gets felt as a personal attack and triggers defensiveness. Deliberately separating the two lets you press hard on the issue while protecting the relationship that makes agreement possible — emotions and perceptions handled as their own track.

How do you invent options for mutual gain?

Treating negotiation as a fixed single decision triggers premature judgment and a win-lose frame. Separating inventing from deciding — generating many options first — lets you find trades that exploit differences in priorities, so each side gives on what it values less to gain what it values more.

How do you insist on objective criteria?

When agreement rests on whose will is stronger, both sides dig in and the relationship pays. Grounding terms in a fair external standard converts a contest of stubbornness into a joint search for the right answer, and gives both parties a face-saving reason to move.

How do you know your BATNA?

Power in a negotiation comes from your alternative, not your demands: the better your BATNA, the less you need this deal, so the calmer and firmer you can be. Knowing it sets a rational walk-away point and stops you from accepting a deal worse than no deal.

What is Negotiation jujitsu?

Counterattacking entrenches both sides. Instead of meeting force with force, you sidestep: treat their position as one possible option, invite their reasoning, and recast attacks on you as attacks on the shared problem. The energy they bring gets redirected into examining interests and standards rather than escalating.