Beyond Reason Using Emotions as You Negotiate

Whether you are negotiating a business contract or curfew with your teenager, emotions can get you in trouble. They also can help you get what you want. This book shows you how.Telling a negotiator Don’t get emotional” is nonsense. We all have emotions of some kind—all the time—and these emotions deeply inform both what we want and how we go about getting it. In Getting to Yes, master negotiator Roger Fisher helped readers understand the mechanics of everyday agreements and how to reach them while preserving respect and self-worth. Now, in Beyond Reason, he and psychologist Daniel Shapiro share their expertise in understanding how emotions affect negotiations and, more importantly, how they can be used as a tool.Beyond Reasonsheds light on five core emotional concerns we all feel during any interaction, whether between business partners or spouses. Do you feel unappreciated? Alone? Put down? Trivialized? Your autonomy impinged? Awareness of these core concerns” gives you power. Fisher and Shapiro show you how to use them to generate positive emotions in others and in yourself, allowing you to set the emotional tone and to get what you each want more easily. You will even know what matters most to people before meeting them. Fresh, insightful, and engaging, Beyond Reasonis sure to be viewed as Fisher’s most important work since Getting to Yes.

Roger Fisher is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law Emeritus, Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the founder of two consulting organizations devoted to strategic advice and negotiation training.

Daniel Shapiro, Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, teaches negotiation at Harvard Law School and in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital.