The key ideas

Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People

William Ury, 1991

A senator visits a Soviet minister, hears a firm “no”, and instead of arguing, asks him for advice. Some time later the minister agrees. William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes, explains what to do when the other side does not want to negotiate: five steps that go around resistance instead of breaking it.

Who it is for

For anyone who keeps running into someone else's “no” (at home, at work, with neighbours and clients) and wants to settle conflicts without going to war and without giving in.

Only they can break through their own resistance. Your job is to help them.

What the book is about

In the morning your spouse answers your suggestion: “That's ridiculous, we can't afford it.” At midday your boss cuts you off mid-sentence: “We've already tried that.” In the evening your teenager shouts from the hallway that all her friends have their own phone line and she doesn't. William Ury opens the book with a day like this. Why do we hear “no” so often, even when we want to settle things on good terms?

Ury is one of the founders of the Harvard Negotiation Project and co-author of Getting to Yes. The question readers of that book asked most often was simple: what if the other side won't cooperate? This book is his answer, a five-step “breakthrough strategy”.

At its heart is a paradox. In Ury's view, the task is not to make the other person say “yes”. The task is to create conditions in which they can change their position without feeling they have lost. You don't break their resistance. You help them get through it themselves. Each step that follows removes one of the reasons why backing down right now feels like defeat.

An interesting detail: in the revised edition the author himself noted that the book is less about difficult people than about difficult situations. In a tense argument, each side may see the other as the difficult one. So from here on, we talk about difficult situations, not “bad” people.

This is a negotiator's practical guide, built on his own experience and examples, not a scientific study.

Idea 1. Go to the balcony

For Ury, the first obstacle to agreement is inside us. When someone pushes, it is natural to strike back, to give in, or to slam the door. Striking back starts a cycle of action and reaction in which both sides can lose. Giving in or walking out can leave you without the very thing you came for.

The author calls the answer “go to the balcony”: imagine you are watching the argument from above, like a spectator. From up there it is easier to notice the other side's tactic and which of your own buttons they are pressing. And it is easier to remember what you really want.

One piece of Ury's advice: don't make important decisions on the spot. Take a pause, even a short one, and come back to the question with a cool head.

Why does the paradox start with you? As long as you are at war, you cannot build the other person a way to retreat.

In a meeting, in front of everyone, a colleague calls your report half-baked. Instead of a sharp comeback, you can say: “Let me write down your comments and get back to them after lunch.”

A good answer in an argument can start with a pause. While your reaction is in charge of you, the conversation may be running by someone else's rules.

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About the author

William Ury is an American negotiation expert and one of the founders of the Harvard Negotiation Project. With Roger Fisher he wrote Getting to Yes.

All books by this author: William Ury

Terms from the book

  • Breakthrough strategy: Ury's name for his own five-step method for negotiations where the other side will not cooperate. A negotiator's practical framework, not a scientific model.
  • Go to the balcony: An image from the book: step back from the argument in your mind, so you do not act on emotion and you keep your goal in sight.
  • Reframe: A step in Ury's strategy: treat the other side's position as an attempt to solve a problem, and use questions to turn the talk toward the shared problem.
  • Golden bridge: An image Ury borrows from Sun Tzu: a path the other side can take to agreement without losing face.
  • Power paradox: The author's point: the harder you push, the harder it is for the other person to agree, because agreeing can look like defeat.

All terms

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