Best Negotiation Books: 26 Picks Recommended by CEOs

Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project replace haggling over positions with principled negotiation: focus on interests, separate the people from the problem, invent options for mutual gain and judge outcomes by objective criteria. They also cover stronger opponents and dirty tricks.

Chris Voss, the FBI’s former lead international kidnapping negotiator, turns cases from a Brooklyn bank robbery to gang violence in Haiti into nine principles that put emotional intelligence at the center of bargaining. Adam Grant praised its advice as useful for everyday conflicts as well as high-stakes deals.

Thomas C. Schelling applies game theory to threats, deterrence and bargaining between states. Steven Pinker, who named it among his most important books, said it explains why it can pay to act like an irrational hothead.

Brian Gunia argues that money makes people think narrowly at the bargaining table, and he borrows the more strategic habits of old barter economies, where goods were swapped directly, to improve modern negotiations over money. Adam Grant called his bargaining insights both novel and useful.

Roger Dawson rejects naive win-win thinking for Power Negotiating, which secures the deal a negotiator wants yet lets the other party believe it came out ahead, covering opening and final moves, pressure points and unethical tactics. Javed Khatri credits it with helping him close many deals.

Jim Camp treats win-win bargaining as a trap that pushes negotiators into early compromise and offers a decision-based system instead: prefer no to yes, never rush to close or appear needy, set an agenda for each contact and deal only with real decision makers.

Dale Carnegie’s rules, drawn from his New York courses on human relations, show how to win others over to a point of view and correct people without stirring resentment. Sanja Zepan used its advice on negotiating and defusing conflict to turn angry users into supporters.

Robert B. Cialdini went undercover among car dealers and other compliance professionals to explain how reciprocation, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity get people to say yes, and how to resist those tactics. Charlie Munger said no other scientist shaped his thinking on the subject more.

Adam Grant sorts people into givers, takers and matchers and uses his research to show how each style fares in negotiation, influence and networking, including why some givers get exploited while others reach exceptional results.

Olivia Fox Cabane argues that charisma is learned rather than inborn, splitting it into presence, power and warmth, each with practices meant to make people more persuasive and influential with others. Dr. Monali Y. Desai rereads it yearly for its small lessons on communication.

Robert B. Cialdini and his co-authors Noah J. Goldstein and Steve J. Martin turn persuasion research into fifty short puzzles, such as a park sign about vandalism that increased wood theft and jam sales that jumped when shoppers saw fewer flavors. Alex Hormozi calls it underrated.

Marshall B. Rosenberg’s method replaces judging and blaming with stating feelings and needs and listening with empathy, as a way to resolve disputes in families, workplaces and politics. Satya Nadella has recommended it, and Fast Company reported that he urged his new direct reports at Microsoft to read it.

Robert B. Cialdini argues that persuasion depends on the moment before a request, when redirecting attention can make an audience receptive without changing its beliefs, with examples from advertising imagery to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letters. Alex Hormozi has it on his list of books.

Harvard Negotiation Project authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen map the structure of hard talks with a client, spouse or weak employee, showing how to begin without provoking defensiveness and stay steady under attack. Bogdan Lucaciu says it moved him from arguing who is right to learning.

Oren Klaff, whose method raised more than $400 million over 13 years, uses neuroeconomics to explain how a pitch lands and builds deals around his STRONG sequence of framing, story, intrigue, prize, hookpoint and decision. Jeff Gibbard credits its frame control lessons for gains in sales and team management.

Harvey Mackay’s handbook on selling, managing, motivating and outnegotiating rivals includes lessons on when to smile and say no, alongside the Mackay 66 system for gathering intelligence on prospects, customers and competitors. Thom Singer says it taught him to build relationships and sell.

Bill Eddy, who works as a lawyer, therapist and mediator, applies conflict management grounded in empathy to five high-conflict personality types, showing how to recognize each one and handle or safely end those relationships at work and at home. Andrew Huberman recommends it to everyone.

Oren Klaff draws on high-stakes deals, including winning over a skeptical Swiss banker, to show how to lead a buyer step by step to a conclusion they reach alone and therefore trust. Jonah Berger praised the methods as intuitive and actionable at work and at home.

Priya Parker, a conflict facilitator and author of The Art of Gathering, argues that strong groups thrive because their members disagree, and shows how to spot a dispute, work through it and cope when it stays unresolved. Adam Grant calls it a warm guide to arguing better.

Psychiatrist Mark Goulston holds that persuasion starts with getting the other person to listen at all, and gives techniques for making someone feel understood and for talking an angry or aggressive counterpart down from a reflex reaction toward calmer reasoning.

Jay Heinrichs teaches classical rhetoric for everyday disputes, from Cicero’s three-step method for moving listeners to act and Lincoln’s habit of lowering expectations to modern dodges such as the Yoda Technique and the coded language politicians aim at specific groups.

Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff present game theory as the discipline of anticipating a rival’s next move while the rival does the same, drawing on sports, politics, poker and reality television to show its role in business and personal dealings.

G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, advisers to executives and to the FBI’s hostage rescue training program, teach a four-step, relationship-based process for selling ideas to doubtful bosses and colleagues, with self-assessments that reveal each reader’s natural persuasion role.

Mark H. McCormack, who built International Management Group from a handshake agreement with Arnold Palmer, covers the practical people sense business school leaves out, with chapters on negotiation, reading others and the hidden life of a deal.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, reads the 2016 election as a contest won by persuasion, arguing that people decide on emotion and supply reasons afterward, and catalogs tactics such as directionally accurate exaggeration and linguistic kill shots.

Shelle Rose Charvet offers 14 patterns of language resting on the idea that each person has unconscious habits for getting motivated and making decisions, so words that fit those habits persuade without manipulation, with clients and bosses as well as at home.