Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

by Chris Voss

teams and reinvent crisis negotiation. The only issue was, what techniques were we going to use? Around this time, two of the most decorated negotiators in FBI history, my colleague Fred Lanceley and my former boss Gary Noesner, were leading a hostage negotiation class in Oakland, California, when they asked their group of thirty-five experienced law enforcement officers a simple question: How many had dealt with a classic bargaining situation where problem solving was the best technique? Not one hand went up. Then they asked the complementary question: How many students had negotiated an incident in a dynamic, intense, uncertain environment where the hostage-taker was in emotional crisis and had no clear demands? Every hand went up. It was clear: if emotionally driven incidents, not rational bargaining interactions, constituted the bulk of what most police negotiators had to deal with, then our negotiating skills had to laser-focus on the animal, emotional, and irrational. From that moment onward, our emphasis would have to be not on training in quid pro quo bargaining and problem solving, but on education in the psychological skills needed in crisis intervention situations. Emotions and emotional intelligence would have to be central to effective negotiation, not things to be overcome. What were needed were simple psychological tactics and strategies that worked in the field to calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust, elicit the verbalization of needs, and persua...