Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen work for the Harvard Negotiation Project.
Valuable analysis of just about any verbal interaction which goes beyond 'pass the butter, please'. Everybody has 'discussions' like the examples given here: where neither side says what's really on their mind, nobody is truly satisfied with the outcome and both parties come away with bad feelings, facing future awkwardness, resentment or worse. The authors hail from the Harvard Negotiation Project, part of Harvard Law School, and provide an intriguing breakdown of conversations into different formats, suggest some surprising new ways of looking at what's going on, learnign from the situation and adopting different strategies to resolve problems. (Kirkus UK)