A review by cocoonofbooks
Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations by William Ury

3.0

A quick read with practical, memorable tips on negotiation. Where I found it a little disappointing is that he opens the book by talking about how we are constantly negotiating -- with our spouse, with our coworkers, with our kids. But almost all of the strategies and examples seem based around formal negotiations -- salary negotiations, union negotiations, negotiations with hostage-takers. The tips seem very helpful for situations in which both sides are aware of the fact that they are negotiating and where they both have at least some motivation to reach an agreement. I've only had one opportunity to try to put the tips to use, when bringing a grievance to HR, but the person I was talking to came out swinging, interrupted and argued with everything I said (whereas all the people in Ury's examples have paragraphs in which to express their viewpoints), and made it clear that they didn't really care whether I worked there or not. So while I think Ury's tips could be useful in a lot of situations and in certain careers where negotiations happen often, I haven't found a lot of immediate applications for me.