I'm going to tell you a story about a failed negotiation（谈判）. Actually, several failed negotiations. A professor named Steve Lubet visited the ancient Jordanian city of Petra. In order to get there, you have to travel more than a mile through a narrow gorge（咽喉） carved（雕刻） into the side of steep（陡峭的） mountains. When Steve visited, you could purchase（买） a round-trip horseback（马背） ride trip through the gorge（咽喉） for a fixed price at the entrance, or alternatively（二选一地）, you could walk through the gorge（咽喉） into Petra, and then when you were finished, you could either walk back out or you could negotiate（谈判） with individual horse guides for a one-way return trip. Steve knew that the most usual price paid for that one-way trip out was for Jordanian dinars, or a little more than half of the price of the round-trip ticket that you could purchase at the entrance.

  But he assumed（假定） that if he waited until the end of the day, when the city was closing down, there weren't as many people around, he could find a guide without a customer who would be willing（愿意的） to give him that one-way trip for three dinars, or maybe even less. And he negotiated with a number of different guides, but he had no takers, and he never reached a negotiated agreement. Now, as a professor who writes and teaches about negotiation, people often ask me for advice on how to drive a harder bargain（交易）. How do I get that horse guide to give me the one-way trip for three dinars, or two, or maybe even one? Now, in much this way, most negotiators focus the lion's share of their attention on what they want out of the negotiation, what's in it for them, what do they need, what do they want. But my research and my life experience has taught me that the very best negotiators adopt（采用） almost the opposite approach（靠近）.

  You see, when we negotiate, we seek（寻找） the assistance（帮助） of another person in helping us to achieve one of our important goals. In the complex modern world we live in, we almost always need the assistance of other people, so negotiation becomes a daily necessity（需要）. And the best way to convince another person to help us achieve our goals is to focus our attention on helping that other person achieve some of their goals. The key ingredient to making（使） this happen is empathy（ 同感）. Really putting yourselves in the shoes of the other person, really forcing yourself to see the world from their perspective（透视画法）. Now, this is true whether you're negotiating with a horse guide in Petra, or whether you're negotiating a much more common kind of part of our daily lives, such as where you're going to go for dinner on Saturday night with your spouse（配偶）.

  Empathetic negotiators, regardless（不顾一切地） of the context, are always asking themselves questions like, "What does that horse guide really want out of this negotiation?" Or, "What type of activity would really make my spouse happy on a Saturday night out?" The paradox（似非而是的论点） of negotiation（谈判） is that getting the best result for yourself requires focusing like a laser（激光） on the needs of the other person. Great negotiators practice what I call radical（基本的） empathy（ 同感）. First, they frame their proposals（提议） in a way that emphasizes（强调） how an agreement would serve the other party's needs rather than their own. Second, they're always looking for and finding ways to give the other party additional（附加的） benefits that are valuable to the other party and have only a modest（谦虚的） cost to them to provide. And third, they always make proposals that consider the psychological（心理的） and emotional（感情的） needs that we all have to feel like we're being respected and treated fairly. In the year 2000, the rock star Bono from the band U2 was leading an effort to convince Western governments to forgive（原谅） a large amount of sovereign（至高无上的） debt（债） owed to them by some of the poorest nations in Africa.