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Getting Back to the Table
Book

Getting Back to the Table

5 Steps to Reviving Stalled Negotiations

Joshua Weiss
Berrett-Koehler, 2025
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In the face of defeat, resilient negotiators pick themselves up, dust themselves off, learn from their missteps, and return to the negotiation table in a stronger position than before. In this practical guidebook, Harvard negotiation expert Joshua N. Weiss explains the most common reasons negotiations go awry and offers a tested, five-step approach to bouncing back from setbacks. Learn how to turn stalled or failed negotiations into successes and techniques for adopting the mindset of an effective negotiator.

Summary

To fail forward as a negotiator, embrace a growth mindset and commit to self-reflection.

Building resilience as a negotiator requires developing a healthy relationship with failure. Start by embracing a growth mindset: Instead of viewing your capabilities as fixed, remind yourself that you can learn and improve through mistakes, gaining new strengths and skills with practice. Growth happens when you step outside your comfort zone. The most effective negotiators aren’t afraid to acknowledge their limitations or admit their mistakes. They turn setbacks into learning opportunities and use those lessons to achieve better outcomes.

A number of mental blocks can prevent people from learning from their mistakes, the most common of which is blaming others. Instead of taking ownership and reflecting when something goes wrong, people refuse to take accountability, often due to fear of reputational damage. Biases can also prevent you from correctly processing failure. For example, psychology researchers Elizabeth Krusemark, W. Keith Campbell, and Brett Clementz explain that people with a “self-serving bias” have a heightened impulse to preserve and boost their self-esteem, which...

About the Author

Joshua N. Weiss is a co-founder of Harvard University’s Global Negotiation Initiative, a senior fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the director and creator of Bay Path University’s Master of Science in Leadership and Negotiation degree program.

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