Negotiation Genius
Deepak Malhotra & Max Bazerman · 2007
Negotiation Genius (2007) is a book by Deepak Malhotra & Max Bazerman on Communication & influence. Two leading business-school professors turn negotiation into a learnable discipline. They show how to claim and create value, investigate the other side's real interests, and out-think bias, deception, and hardball tactics.
The book that replaces born-with-it charisma with a repeatable system, BATNA, value creation, and investigative questioning, so ordinary people can consistently negotiate like the naturals.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of Negotiation Genius pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Your real power comes from your **BATNA**, your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. It sets your **reservation value** (the walk-away point), so the way to negotiate from strength is to improve your own BATNA and accurately assess theirs, never accepting a deal worse than walking away.
- Every deal lives inside a **ZOPA**, the Zone of Possible Agreement between the two sides' reservation values. If it's positive, a deal exists somewhere in that range; your task is to discover it, expand it, and claim as much of the surplus as possible.
The other 5 — and the full 12-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 12 minutes, read or listened to.
- Genius Is a Method, Not a Gift
- Claiming Value: The Power of the First Move
- Creating Value: Expanding the Pie
- Investigative Negotiation: Negotiate Like a Detective
- When Rationality Fails: Biases of the Mind
- When Rationality Fails: Biases of the Heart
- Confronting Lies and Deception
- Negotiating from a Position of Weakness
- When Negotiations Get Ugly, and When Not to Negotiate
Finish Negotiation Genius tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 12 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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