Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate

Written by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro

Narrated by Daniel Shapiro

In Getting to Yes, renowned educator and negotiator Roger Fisher presented a universally applicable method for effectively negotiating personal and professional disputes. Building on his work as director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, Fisher now teams with Harvard psychologist Daniel Shapiro, an expert on the emotional dimension of negotiation. In Beyond Reason, they show readers how to use emotions to turn a disagreement-big or small, professional or personal-into an opportunity for mutual gain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Oct 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9780786555499

Roger Fisher

Roger Fisher helped create the Harvard Law School Center on Negotiations. He is the author of the business bestseller Getting to Yes. Fisher died in 2012.

Reviews for Beyond Reason

[simchaboston · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Clearly written and engaging, with advice that's useful for daily relationships as well as international diplomacy or labor-management negotiations. Experts might find it too simplistic, but being a non-expert I appreciate the easy-to-understand explanations.

[gshuk_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent analysis of the role emotion plays during the negotiation process. The book flows well covering 5 core concerns that affect emotion(Appreciation, Affiliation, Autonomy, Status, Role) He uses impressive real world examples that make sense. Loved the example where a man in a bar was looking for a fight with him. He changed the person’s mood from anger to pride and reduced tension by asking the person for their expert opinion on how to handle a situation like this.

[chellinsky · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting, but lacking book. The two authors give common sense advice on how to handle negotiations and the emotions that result from negotiations. At face value, this seems useful and any new insight into this realm should be helpful. However, while they are able to describe what emotions arise and how they hurt negotiations, I found their recommendations limited to either traditional responses (e.g. take a break to cool off) or nothing that a little common sense could derive (e.g. put yourself in their shoes to see what emotions you could invoke in them). A good topic to discuss, but I was looking for something deeper than was presented. I'm not sure who would even find this discussion useful--unless s/he never participated in a negotiation before.