In 1981, a book was published, which, in my view, represents a major event in human history.

Its title is Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury of Harvard University.

Since the dawn of ages, we have been taught how to compete, to fight each other, how to coerce others, etc.

This is, to my knowledge, the first book which teaches us how to agree.

There already were books on negotiation. But most of these books were only trying to give tricks to induce the other party to do what we wanted. As far as these methods were efficient, they led to agreements which implied the frustration of one of the parties and which thus contained the germ of future conflicts. On the contrary, this book invites us to look for agreements, which would be profitable to all parties and therefore sustainable.

Previous publications were based on the idea that negotiation was aimed at winning and thus having the other party lose. This book shows that “winning” has two meanings: “making the other lose” (particularly in sports) and “making a profit”. If you try to make a profit, rather than defeat the other party, there is no inconvenience to the other party making a profit as well, and particularly, if this brings him to accept that you make one. Fisher and Ury invite us to look for mutually beneficial solutions. A consequence of this idea is that you do not have to give in to reach an agreement. You have to give the other parties satisfactions, which will induce them to give you the satisfactions you need. And the full title of the book is Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

Millions of copies of this book were sold all over the world. The method it created, called Principled Negotiation, has hence become the basis of any serious thought concerning the search for amicable solutions and conflict resolution.

It is based on an idea as simple and obvious as the egg of Christopher Columbus, but which will have required tens of thousands of years to be discovered: beyond the positions that the parties in a negotiation take, there are interests which the positions try to satisfy. But negotiation on positions has little chance to reach the satisfaction of interests. We should then negotiate on interests. This idea will be developed in this book.

Though Getting To Yes is a beacon, which helps avoid most obstacles to successful negotiation, it remains insufficient.

One of its weaknesses is due to a lack of attention given to emotions. Each of the authors of this book tried to remedy this insufficiency. William Ury wrote a book to give us methods to overcome the negative emotions of the

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other party. Roger Fisher, in collaboration with Daniel Shapiro, focuses on the ways to make the other party feel positive emotions.

On the other hand, some practitioners argued that negotiation on interest faces limits, as one can often see situations where parties act against their own interests. Think of these heirs who fight in court for years while the value of the assets disappears. They prefer to lose rather than letting the other(s) receive anything. Principled negotiation cannot handle these situations. Therefore, a large number of practitioners, and mainly those dealing with interpersonal relationships tend to ignore this theory.

In general, it has been argued that principled negotiation assumes that parties are reasonable and that it is unable to deal with cases where they are less reasonable. It recommends behaving reasonably but does not explain what to do when our emotions or our beliefs bring us to behave otherwise, or when the other party is unreasonable.

As a consequence, principled negotiation is more popular in business circles as relationships supposedly are less emotional and behaviours would be more rational.

Thirty-five years have elapsed since the first edition of Getting to Yes. During this period many evolutions occurred.

As already mentioned, the authors of this book of reference realized what was missing and each of them wrote about emotions. Their teachings in this respect are remarkable by their intelligence and efficiency. They nevertheless remain insufficient as they keep considering emotions as a troublesome phenomenon in the rational process that a negotiation should be. Practice shows that many agreements are made on this basis, which are in no way rational and which are, on the contrary, totally emotional. We shall discover many examples of such agreements.

During the same period, various scientific research results were published, which provide us with other negotiation tools. This is particularly the case of the research in psychology conducted at the University of California Palo Alto. This research, originally intended for therapeutic treatments, lead to the discovery of psychological mechanisms, which we unconsciously use in our daily life and which can become tools when we become conscious of them and use them in negotiation. Some of these works were published before Getting to Yes but at the time they remained within a circle of specialists and later became known by the public at large.

Research in neurosciences (sciences of the brain) allows us to understand the role of emotions in our behaviour in general and namely in negotiation.

Finally, mediation, which appeared in the United States in the 1970s, developed all around the world since the ’80s. The concept of mediation is to ask a third party to help the parties to overcome their disagreement. In most cases, the purpose will be to resolve a conflict but it can as well be to negotiate a contract or a treaty. As a matter of principle, the mediator should help the parties find their own solution. It is not his mission to find and even less to coerce the parties to adopt a solution (in opposition to the mission of the judge or the arbitrator).

Mediators then had to develop techniques, which allow the overcoming of difficulties met by the parties. Most of them found their inspiration in

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principled negotiation. Particularly in considering mediation as assisted negotiation, they wished to use negotiation techniques and namely principled negotiation.

Mediators’ thinking ended up creating a method by stages, which starts with discovering the dispute until an agreement has been found. We shall see in this book that the same process can also be used in negotiation.

Two tendencies appeared among mediators. One tends to avoid emotions or their expression as much as possible. It is mainly used by Anglo-Saxon mediators in commercial mediation. Another one tends to consider that, for the parties, emotions may be as important as interests, sometimes more, and to then give emotions a crucial role in the process. This view is better received by those who specialize in interpersonal conflicts, and in countries where the culture values emotions (namely Mediterranean and Latin countries).

During my carrier, I have been a lawyer, which means that I was a negotiator assisting my clients, I then was a lawyer and a mediator and after leaving the Bar, a mediator and a trainer in negotiation and mediation techniques.

I faced all the questions pertaining to the difficulties of finding amicable solutions and to the methods to be used to reach them, every day for several decades, in a very practical way.

All along my career and still today, I realized that I was not the only one in this case but that there was no global thinking on the matter. Many authors of articles and books had introduced one or the other finding (in psychology for instance) in their practice. They had developed a theory based on this finding and would not move from there.

I was recently shocked when speaking with one of the most respected authors in the mediation field. As I was asking him a question about the resemblance between his teaching and that of another great name, I discovered that he did not know the work of his colleague. As I expressed my surprise, he explained that he had elaborated a theory 25 years ago, that his training was selling well and that he then did not feel the need to bother taking new ideas into account.

One can find various training programmes on the market, and especially for mediation, which are based on one (and only one) basic idea. Each of them is generally good but it is a pity, in my view, not to enrich them with other ideas, which may become an important value allowing us to improve our practice.

Negotiation and mediation are probably among the most difficult activities one can practice. They become dangerous when they are not properly exercised. As a result we ought to use all the tools available to us to reach the best possible solutions.

I realized when we added all these inventions together, we obtained more than the sum of the components. These ideas do not stand next to each other; they organized themselves to create a dynamic whole, creating a new vision of relationships between individuals and organizations. They invite us to adopt new behaviours allowing us to prevent and resolve disputes as well as to build amazing contracts and alliances.

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On the other hand, it appeared to me that these methods were easily adaptable to different cultures. This means they allow a dialogue between different social groups and nationalities.

This book is intended to share with all professionals of negotiation and mediation (lawyers, corporate counsels, business managers, unions and association representatives, project managers, mediators etc.) what I learned in theory and practice as well as the ideas that I developed by myself.

I am starting from the initial idea that negotiation and mediation are one (and only one) thing: a process to build amicable agreements. The difference pertains to the presence or absence of a third party to ensure the smooth unfolding of the process. The process is the same but the parties either conduct it by themselves in negotiation or with the help of a neutral in mediation.

Moreover, negotiation and mediation are not separate from the rest of life. We negotiate at any moment of our life with our spouse, our children, our colleagues, our managers, our employees and possibly our clients and suppliers. We “mediate” when we try to put an end to a dispute between our children. A good manager spends a lot of time in the position of a mediator, not only to resolve disputes, but to help his teams collaborate using the best of their intelligence and the energy of every member and of the team as a whole.

Hence the research work on negotiation and mediation consist in a more global reflection on interactions between human beings. The goal is not to find “tricks” to coerce the other party to do what we want but to learn how to behave with our environment in order to live in the best possible harmony at home and at work, which may, from time to time, imply that we hold formal negotiations or mediations.

The unavoidable consequence of the vision is obviously that what we will discover allows a brand new reflection on management and politics but such is not the purpose of this book.

I suggest that we limit ourselves to those activities, which are explicitly oriented toward making of agreements and that we use the concept of negotiation/mediation to designate these methods as a whole. I will use the word negotiation to speak about this specific method, separately from mediation and vice versa.

But the many concepts to be presented and their systemic interactions made it difficult to reach my goal.

I could have presented the findings of the various authors who inspired me and include the ideas that I developed by myself somewhere. This would have turned to a series of ideas but would have been of little practical interest.

I could have followed a chronological plan of the various steps of negotiation/mediation (hereafter negotiation/mediation) and described them one after the other. This idea would have faced two obstacles. On the one hand, some initial steps are justified by the preparation of what must happen then. I could not explain the beginning without having described the further steps. On the other hand, most elements of the method derive from fundamental knowledge, particularly in psychology, which could hardly

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be introduced as the description would have gone, without losing the reader in the back and forth movements between theory and practice.

I then decided to go by logical rather than chronological steps.

We will start by asking ourselves why we need to learn how to negotiate. “As we do it all the time, we must know how to do it and we don’t need to learn,” say most of us. It is interesting to observe that in large law firms, partners rarely attend negotiation-training sessions. They send their young associates, though only partners negotiate for their clients. The same happens for the top management of companies.

We will then discover that we spontaneously do everything wrong (particularly in dispute resolution) and that we need to be reprogrammed to become efficient negotiators/mediators.

We shall then explore the notions of conflict and dispute and see how they find their solutions.

We will reflect on what is at stake in negotiation/mediation, in terms of interests as well as emotions and power.

We shall see how we can negotiate and mediate beyond differences in personalities, cultures and nationalities.

In order to acquire the ability to negotiate/mediate in such a global way, one should know some communication methods. One must also be aware of the main obstacles to negotiation/mediation and learn how to overcome them.

When all this will have been covered, we shall have to discover how to deal with the different types of problems that we may encounter.

Having learned how to master these techniques, we will be able to discover the negotiation/mediation process, step by step.