If you’re looking to hone your negotiation skills, whether in business life or family life, you may want to considering starting with these three new books, recommended by the New York Times.
- The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes, by William L. Ury. “Mr. Ury believes that people often end up unhappy with the outcome of a negotiation because they do not recognize what is truly important to them in the first place.”
- Fearless Negotiating by Michael C. Donaldson. “This thin, breezy book has a Negotiating 101 feel to it. For example, Mr. Donaldson goes out of his way to define basic business terms like profit and markup… But he is good at explaining how to go about each step in his process.”
- The Peebles Principles: Tales and Tactics from an Entrepreneur’s Life of Winning Deals, Succeeding in Business, and Creating a Fortune from Scratch, by R. Donahue Peebles. “You want to control at least one key component of any deal. You want to make it painful for the other side to have to go ahead without you.”
I’ve added these books at the new Amazon.com Wish List for Consumerism Commentary, and I’ll likely buy them for myself as reading time permits. Negotiation is one area I’m hoping to improve rather than continue to sell myself short in situations in which I feel I don’t have the upper hand.
Updated December 7, 2011 and originally published April 8, 2007. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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