Positional bargaining wastes effort and damages relationships

Fisher and Ury describe the common default of negotiation — each side stakes out a position, defends it, and concedes grudgingly — as inefficient by design. Because each concession is framed as a loss of face, negotiators dig in longer than the substance warrants, and agreements that do emerge often reflect stubbornness rather than merit.

Worse, this style treats the other party as an adversary to be worn down, which is fine for one-off transactions but corrosive for relationships that continue afterward — a spouse, a colleague, a long-term supplier. Winning a positional fight today often means paying for it in resentment or reduced cooperation tomorrow.

The authors' broader claim is that positional bargaining optimizes for the wrong variable: it rewards persistence and threat-tolerance instead of the actual quality of the outcome for both sides. Takeaway: a negotiation strategy that wins the argument but poisons the relationship is usually a bad trade.