Never Split the Difference

Key Concepts

Negotiation is about listening and being in tune with the other person

“It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there. By listening intensely, a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other side is experiencing.” (p. 16)

“In negotiation, each new psychological insight or additional piece of information revealed heralds a step forward and allows one to discard one hypothesis in favor of another. You should engage the process with a mindset of discovery. Your goal at the outset is to extract and observe as much information as possible.” (p. 25)

“Most people approach a negotiation so preoccupied by the arguments that support their position that they are unable to listen attentively.” (p. 27)

“The goal is to identify what your counterparts actually need (monetarily, emotionally, or otherwise) and get them feeling safe enough to talk and talk and talk some more about what they want.” (p. 28)

“But neither wants nor needs are where we start; it begins with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for a real conversation to begin.” (p. 28)

Don’t be afraid of “No;” seek it

“‘No’ is the start of the negotiation, not the end of it. We’ve been conditioned to fear the word ‘No.’ But it is a statement of perception far more often than of fact. It seldom means, ‘I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice.’ Instead, ‘No’ is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo. Change is scary, and ‘No’ provides a little protection from that scariness.” (p. 78)

“Then, after pausing, ask solution-based questions or simply label their effect: ‘What about this doesn’t work for you?’ ‘What would you need to make it work?’ ‘It seems like there’s something here that bothers you.’” (p. 79)

“There are actually three kinds of ‘Yes’: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment.” (p. 80)

“A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge. A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action. And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract.” (p. 80)

“Though the intensity may differ from person to person, you can be sure that everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control. If you satisfy those drives, you’re in the door.” (p. 84)

“That’s right”

“As you’ll soon learn, the sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually ‘That’s right.’” (p. 98)

“When your adversaries say, ‘That’s right,’ they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it.” (p. 105)

“Driving toward ‘that’s right’ is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing ‘you’re right’ is a disaster.” (p. 105)

“It works every time. Tell people ‘you’re right’ and they get a happy smile on their face and leave you alone for at least twenty-four hours. But you haven’t agreed to their position. You have used ‘you’re right’ to get them to quit bothering you.” (p. 106)

“‘Yes’ is nothing without ‘How’”

“By making your counterparts articulate implementation in their own words, your carefully calibrated “How” questions will convince them that the final solution is their idea. And that’s crucial. People always make more effort to implement a solution when they think it’s theirs. That is simply human nature. That’s why negotiation is often called ‘the art of letting someone else have your way.’” (p. 169)

“There are two key questions you can ask to push your counterparts to think they are defining success their way: ‘How will we know we’re on track?’ and ‘How will we address things if we find we’re off track?’ When they answer, you summarize their answers until you get a ‘That’s right.’ Then you’ll know they’ve bought in.” (p. 169)

“Influencing those behind the table”

“Yes, few hostage-takers—and few business deal makers—fly solo. But for the most part, there are almost always other players, people who can act as deal makers or deal killers. If you truly want to get to ‘Yes’ and get your deal implemented, you have to discover how to affect these individuals.” (p. 170)

“That can be easy as asking a few calibrated questions, like ‘How does this affect the rest of your team?’ or ‘How on board are the people not on this call?’ or simply ‘What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area?’” (p. 171)

Negotiation types

“Over the last few years, in an effort primarily led by my son Brandon, we’ve consolidated and simplified all that research, cross-referencing it with our experiences in the field and the case studies of our business school students, and found that people fall into three broad categories. Some people are Accommodators; others—like me—are basically Assertive; and the rest are data-loving Analysts.” (p. 192)

“The greatest obstacle to accurately identifying someone else’s style is what I call the ‘I am normal’ paradox. That is, our hypothesis that the world should look to others as it looks to us.” (p. 197)

“The Black Swan rule is don’t treat others the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they need to be treated.” (p. 198)

“Know their religion”

“Access to this hidden space very often comes through understanding the other side’s worldview, their reason for being, their religion. Indeed, digging into your counterpart’s ‘religion’ (sometimes involving God but not always) inherently implies moving beyond the negotiating table and into the life, emotional and otherwise, of your counterpart.” (p. 225)

“Using your counterpart’s religion is extremely effective in large part because it has authority over them. The other guy’s ‘religion’ is what the market, the experts, God, or society—whatever matters to him—has determined to be fair and just. And people defer to that authority. (p. 228)

It’s a mistake to assume your counterpart is crazy; it’s likely something else

MISTAKE #1: THEY ARE ILL-INFORMED

“Often the other side is acting on bad information, and when people have bad information they make bad choices.” (p. 233)

“Your job when faced with someone like this in a negotiation is to discover what they do not know and supply that information.” (p. 234)

MISTAKE #2: THEY ARE CONSTRAINED

“In any negotiation where your counterpart is acting wobbly, there exists a distinct possibility that they have things they can’t do but aren’t eager to reveal.” (p. 234)

MISTAKE #3: THEY HAVE OTHER INTERESTS

 Techniques

THE VOICE

“When deliberating on a negotiating strategy or approach, people tend to focus all their energies on what to say or do, but it’s how we are (our general demeanor and delivery) that is both the easiest thing to enact and the most immediately effective mode of influence.” (p. 32)

“There are essentially three voice tones available to negotiators: the late-night FM DJ voice, the positive/playful voice, and the direct or assertive voice.” (p. 32)

“Most of the time, you should be using the positive/playful voice.” (p. 33)

MIRRORING

“It’s a phenomenon (and now technique) that follows a very basic but profound biological principle: We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar.” (p. 36)

“It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective.” (p. 36)

TACTICAL EMPATHY

“Tactical empathy is understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow. It’s bringing our attention to both the emotional obstacles and the potential pathways to getting an agreement done.” (p. 52)

“Empathy is a classic “soft” communication skill, but it has a physical basis. When we closely observe a person’s face, gestures, and tone of voice, our brain begins to align with theirs in a process called neural resonance, and that lets us know more fully what they think and feel.” (p. 53)

LABELING

“Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels. It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about (“How’s your family?”). Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack.” (p. 54)

DO AN ACCUSATION AUDIT

“The first step of doing so is listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you, in what I call an accusation audit.” (p. 65)

“As you just saw, the beauty of going right after negativity is that it brings us to a safe zone of empathy. Every one of us has an inherent, human need to be understood, to connect with the person across the table.” (p. 68)

EMAIL MAGIC: HOW NEVER TO BE IGNORED AGAIN

“We’ve all been through it: You send an email to someone you’re trying to do business with and they ignore you. Then you send a polite follow-up and they stonewall you again. So what do you do? You provoke a “No” with this one-sentence email. Have you given up on this project?” (p. 92)

CALIBRATE YOUR QUESTIONS

“First off, calibrated questions avoid verbs or words like “can,” “is,” “are,” “do,” or “does.” These are closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or a “no.” Instead, they start with a list of words people know as reporter’s questions: “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how.”” (p. 153)

“But let me cut the list even further: it’s best to start with “what,” “how,” and sometimes “why.”” (p. 153)

“Here are some other great standbys that I use in almost every negotiation, depending on the situation: (p. 154)

• What about this is important to you? (p. 154)

• How can I help to make this better for us? (p. 154)

• How would you like me to proceed? (p. 154)

• What is it that brought us into this situation? (p. 154)

• How can we solve this problem? (p. 154)

• What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here? (p. 154)

• How am I supposed to do that?” (p. 154)

ACKERMAN BARGAINING

1. “Set your target price (your goal).

2. “Set your first offer at 65 percent of your target price.

3. “Calculate three raises of decreasing increments (to 85, 95, and 100 percent).

4. “Use lots of empathy and different ways of saying “No” to get the other side to counter before you increase your offer. (p. 206)

5. “When calculating the final amount, use precise, nonround numbers like, say, $37,893 rather than $38,000. It gives the number credibility and weight.

6. “On your final number, throw in a nonmonetary item (that they probably don’t want) to show you’re at your limit.” (p. 206)

Quotables

“It was becoming glaringly obvious that Getting to Yes didn’t work with kidnappers. No matter how many agents read the book with highlighters in hand, it failed to improve how we as hostage negotiators approached deal making. There was clearly a breakdown between the book’s brilliant theory and everyday law enforcement experience. Why was it that everyone had read this bestselling business book and endorsed it as one of the greatest negotiation texts ever written, and yet so few could actually follow it successfully?” (p. 14)

“The first step to achieving a mastery of daily negotiation is to get over your aversion to negotiating. You don’t need to like it; you just need to understand that’s how the world works. Negotiating does not mean browbeating or grinding someone down. It simply means playing the emotional game that human society is set up for.” (p. 18)

“Effective negotiation is applied people smarts, a psychological edge in every domain of life: how to size someone up, how to influence their sizing up of you, and how to use that knowledge to get what you want.” (p. 18)

“Students of mine balk at this notion, asking, “Seriously, do you really need a whole team to . . . hear someone out?” The fact that the FBI has come to that conclusion, I tell them, should be a wake-up call.” (p. 27)

“I’m here to call bullshit on compromise right now. We don’t compromise because it’s right; we compromise because it is easy and because it saves face. We compromise in order to say that at least we got half the pie. Distilled to its essence, we compromise to be safe.” (p. 116)

“In other words, while we may use logic to reason ourselves toward a decision, the actual decision making is governed by emotion.” (p. 122)

“The biggest thing to remember is that numbers that end in 0 inevitably feel like temporary placeholders, guesstimates that you can easily be negotiated off of. But anything you throw out that sounds less rounded—say, $37,263—feels like a figure that you came to as a result of thoughtful calculation. Such numbers feel serious and permanent to your counterpart, so use them to fortify your offers.” (p. 133)

“If this book accomplishes only one thing, I hope it gets you over that fear of conflict and encourages you to navigate it with empathy. If you’re going to be great at anything—a great negotiator, a great manager, a great husband, a great wife—you’re going to have to do that. You’re going to have to ignore that little genie who’s telling you to give up, to just get along—as well as that other genie who’s telling you to lash out and yell.” (p. 242)