The Art of Negotiation

Moving decisively beyond the two prevailing approaches to negotiation, the win-win approach of Getting to Yes and the hard-ball "just say no" approach of You Can Negotiate Anything, Wheeler introduces the powerful new "dynamic learning" approach, which has been developed by him and his colleagues at the Harvard Program on Negotiation.

Wheeler's method emphasizes adaptation and improvisation. Wheeler shows-based on extensive research into actual negotiations by masters of business, the military, law, and sports-that successful negotiations are limited by fixed expectations. The significantly more successful approach is a mixture of both intense preparation and superior adaptability. Superior negotiators engage in a dynamic learning process, are open-minded about their own best interests and the interests of others, and improvise their way through unexpected situations to beneficial outcomes.

Based on Wheeler's ground-breaking research, the book provides practical tools he and his colleages at the Harvard Negotiation Program have developed for each phase of the three-step learn, adapt, influence process.  Along the way, he tells the success stories of master negotiators such as diplomat George Mitchell, movie and music producer Jerry Weintraub, UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and investment banker Bruce Wasserstein, and he offers powerful graphics and lists to use in preparing for the negotiation process, as well as exercises for building up ones limber-mindedness for optimal improvisation.

Award-winning Harvard Business School Professor Michael Wheeler has taught negotiation to thousands of MBA students, executives, managers, and public officials from companies and organizations around the world. Wheeler is editor of the Negotiation Journal, published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and co-chairs the board of the non-profit Consensus Building Institute. He lives in historic Gloucester, Massachusetts, his hometown.