＜Getting More＞ by Stuart Diamond is a work of illuminating people’s inside through which we become aware of how to become a successful negotiator. According to the book, our life is full of negotiation, and we build our own strategies to get more from round tables, say, workplace, market, and home. To be a better negotiator dealing with ‘life’, Stuart willingly shows his approach by corroborating his idea with hundreds of database based on real life examples.

I got assigned six different team-project activities in the second-half of this year. Starting the first team project, which doesn’t seem to be laborious at the moment, first, I and my teammates divided each responsibility and set to work immediately. Before long, I came to aware that the role division was palpably unfair. Unwittingly, I was taking on more than half of the work by myself, so I couldn’t help but asking them to share my burden a bit. Then, the result, I hadn’t expected, was brought about; the lost credibility towards me. They judged me that I was dumping to others because I am incompetent or lazy. How absurd the going is! I failed at the negotiation to the ground. Had I read ＜Getting more＞ I would have behaved different way. I would have examined the amount of work to do thoroughly and set the standards of role division with more careful attention, had I read a line “standards are the law of an organization.” My tone would have sounded more sincere in persuading them to distribute the burden, had I perceived the other party first and thought in their world. As I notified them unilaterally that I need to reduce my burden, I lost the credibility, so that the result was devastating otherwise they feel sympathetic and try to solve the matter together.

 What Stuart tells us is every bit of our lives is made up of negotiation. He ultimately says understanding trust dynamic is the basis to achieve successful negotiation. He defines trust as “a feeling of security that the other person will protect you.” When we negotiate without trust, we should spend as much energy on getting commitments that we are sure really commit them as in setting our goals. This very basic and wise principle is not a grandiose negotiating technique but greatly unobserved one. Without building a trust relationship, we’ll never get our goals at the end, as in my case.

In part 1, Stuart generally explains important elements of negotiation, and in part 2, he gives various kinds of examples in each different negotiating table. How he elaborates the importance of getting trust from others is admirable. The most remarkable idea was to use ‘standards’ and reframe them, if necessary. Standards, set officially by other parties, are one of the most powerful negotiating tools according to his suggestion. Furthermore, ‘framing’ is important in making use of standards. Framing refers to the way we use standards, as we elicit specific phrases from the standards by framing. It has the same power as 30 seconds broadcasting ads capture the public’s hearts. All of the idea is corroborated by numerous searches and real life examples, so that I feel like I have already experienced all negotiating tables and am fully ready to step into it with a whole different perspective compared to the past. This book will not guarantee each time success of your negotiation for sure. Instead, this book will let you to “get more” on the table for sure.