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.
POSITIONS
Party A
Party B
INTERESTS
(Negotiable to some degree)
NEEDS
(Unlikely to be negotiable)
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
Fisher, R., & Ury., W, ‘Getting to Yes – Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In’, Penguin Books, New York,
1981, p 5.
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 in many 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
2
Ibid, p 20-21.
Ibid, p 42.
4 Ibid, p 73.
3