Positions, Interests and Needs
Roger Fisher & William Ury
Best known for their bestseller, ‘Getting to Yes’ published in 1981 which provided an everyday guide to successful dispute resolution, Roger Fisher and William Ury have been at the forefront of developing effective and accessible methods for mediation and conflict resolution at the personal, local, national and international levels.
Getting to Yes
The cornerstone of Fisher and Ury’s work, is to help people consider strategies which help disputants in a conflict ensure a win-win solution. Their theory is placed in the context that most disputants in conflict attempt to resolve the issue by negotiating around positions rather than their underlying and potentially mutual interests and needs.
The methodology behind their approach of helping people to become more effective mediators is broken down into several stages:
Don’t bargain over positions
The ‘Getting to Yes’ approach begins with this proposition, that resolving differences on the basis of positions (whether this is bargaining over a new salary or resolving an international boundary dispute) is essentially an inefficient method that can put the relationship at risk.
‘As more attention is paid to positions, less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns of the parties. Agreement becomes less likely. Any agreement reached may reflect a mechanical splitting of difference between final decisions rather than a solution carefully crafted to meet the legitimate interest of the parties. The result is frequently less satisfactory than it could have been.”[1]
Separate people from the problem
In all disputes, at all levels of the society, there is an increasing tendency for people to become part of the problem. In the classical positional bargaining approach it is tempting to equate both the substance of the issue with the actors involved.
‘Positional bargaining puts relationship and substance in conflict. Framing a negotiation as a contest of will over positions aggravates the entangling process. I see your position as a statement of how you would like the negotiation to end; from my point of view it demonstrates how little you care about our relationship. If I take a firm position that you consider unreasonable, you assume that I also think of it as an extreme position; it is easy to conclude that you do not value our relationship - or you - very highly.’ [2]
Focus on interests, not positions
Fisher & Ury state that people’s positions are the result of their broader interests, i.e. their underlying fears, needs and desires. Therefore, the role of a mediator is to consider whether it is possible to identify mutual interests that can provide a creative palate to design new mutually compatible positions:
‘Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting ones. We tend to assume that because the other side’s positions are opposed to ours, their interests must also be opposed. If we have an interest in defending ourselves, then they must want to attack us. If we have an interest in minimising the rent, then there interest must be to maximise it. In many negotiations, however, a close examination of the underlying interests will reveal the existence of many more interest that are shared or compatible than ones that are opposed.’[3]
Invent options for Mutual gain
In conflict, the difficulty for mediators is to try enabling participants to consider a range of options that might draw them closer to a win-win solution. By identifying mutual interests and needs it may be possible to help broaden the number of proposals that will be satisfactory to both parties.
‘Consider once again the two children quarrelling over an orange. Each child wanted the orange, so they split it, failing to realise that one wanted only the fruit to eat and the other only for the peel for baking. In this case, and inmany others, a satisfactory agreement is made possible because each side wants different things. This is genuinely startling if you think about it. People generally assume that differences between two parties create the problem. Yet differences can also lead to the solution.’[4]
[1] Fisher, R., & Ury., W, ‘Getting to Yes – Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In’, Penguin Books, New York, 1981, p 5.
[2] Ibid, p 20-21.
[3]Ibid, p 42.
[4]Ibid, p 73.