Almost forty years ago, Roger Fisher and William Ury’s seminal textbook ‘Getting to Yes’ (1981) outlined a four-point approach to ‘negotiating an agreement without giving in’.

One of these invites us to ‘Invent options for mutual gain’. Rather than it descending into a choice between your way or my way, they advocate taking time to identify or generate a variety of possibilities that might address each person’s needs (not positions!).

This idea of putting out a number of options on the table and spending time thinking these through gets us past the narrow, win/lose thinking that conflict conversations can bring up.

Our natural tendency is to want to get straight to the point and hopefully get them to accept our