Kola is trying to buy a used laptop from a seller at a market in Ikeja. The seller says: forty-five thousand. Kola says: no, twenty thousand. The seller shakes his head. Kola raises to twenty-five. They go back and forth, both frustrated, both suspicious, and eventually settle somewhere in the middle without either feeling good about it. This is positional bargaining. And according to Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project, it is the standard way most people negotiate — and it is badly flawed. In positional bargaining, each side takes a position, argues for it, and makes concessions to reach a compromise. It is what happens when you haggle over a price, argue over who does the dishes, or fight over the terms of a school group project. The authors identify three serious problems with this approach. First, it produces unwise outcomes. When negotiators argue over positions, they become psychologically committed to those positions. Your ego gets attached to what you said first. Backing down feels like losing, so you defend your position long past the point where the evidence supports it. The negotiation becomes about face, not facts. Second, it is inefficient. Positional bargaining creates every incentive to stall. You open with an extreme position, give away as little as possible, and drag things out. The more extreme the starting point, the longer it takes to move. Meanwhile, the real interests of both sides go unexplored. Third, it damages relationships. When negotiation becomes a contest of wills, resentment builds. One person ends up feeling they surrendered. The other may feel guilty. A friendship strained by a negotiation is a real cost — sometimes more important than whatever was being negotiated over. The authors also observe that soft positional bargaining is not the answer. You can try being generous and giving in readily, but then a hard bargainer will exploit you — and you end up with an agreement that leaves you feeling used. There is a third way. They call it principled negotiation. It is neither soft nor hard. It is hard on the problem and soft on the people. It decides issues on their merits rather than through a battle of wills. It looks for mutual gains rather than victories. The method has four principles, each of which this book explores.