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Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
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“The trick to “How” questions is that, correctly used, they are gentle and graceful ways to say “No” and guide your counterpart to develop a better solution—your solution. A gentle How/No invites collaboration and leaves your counterpart with a feeling of having been treated with respect.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“And it means lowering the hostage mentality in your counterpart by asking a question or even offering an apology. (“You’re right. That was a bit harsh.”) If you were able to take an armed kidnapper who’d been surrounded by police and hook him up to a cardiac monitor, you’d find that every calibrated question and apology would lower his heart rate just a little bit.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Another simple rule is, when you are verbally assaulted, do not counterattack. Instead, disarm your counterpart by asking a calibrated question. The next time a waiter or salesclerk tries to engage you in a verbal skirmish, try this out. I promise you it will change the entire tenor of the conversation. The basic issue here is that when people feel that they are not in control, they adopt what psychologists call a hostage mentality. That is, in moments of conflict they react to their lack of power by either becoming extremely defensive or lashing out. Neurologically, in situations like this the fight-or-flight mechanism in the reptilian brain or the emotions in the limbic system overwhelm the rational part of our mind, the neocortex, leading us to overreact in an impulsive, instinctive way. In a negotiation, like in the one between my client and the CEO, this always produces a negative outcome. So we have to train our neocortex to override the emotions from the other two brains.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“The script we came up with hit all the best practices of negotiation we’ve talked about so far. Here it is by steps: A “No”-oriented email question to reinitiate contact: “Have you given up on settling this amicably?” A statement that leaves only the answer of “That’s right” to form a dynamic of agreement: “It seems that you feel my bill is not justified.” Calibrated questions about the problem to get him to reveal his thinking: “How does this bill violate our agreement?” More “No”-oriented questions to remove unspoken barriers: “Are you saying I misled you?” “Are you saying I didn’t do as you asked?” “Are you saying I reneged on our agreement?” or “Are you saying I failed you?” Labeling and mirroring the essence of his answers if they are not acceptable so he has to consider them again: “It seems like you feel my work was subpar.” Or “… my work was subpar?” A calibrated question in reply to any offer other than full payment, in order to get him to offer a solution: “How am I supposed to accept that?” If none of this gets an offer of full payment, a label that flatters his sense of control and power: “It seems like you are the type of person who prides himself on the way he does business—rightfully so—and has a knack for not only expanding the pie but making the ship run more efficiently.” A long pause and then one more “No”-oriented question: “Do you want to be known as someone who doesn’t fulfill agreements?”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“knew him well enough to know that he was trying to show me that he was in charge. So after we talked for a while, I looked at him and asked, “When you originally approved this trip, what did you have in mind?” He visibly relaxed as he sat back in his chair and brought the top of his fingers and thumbs together in the shape of a steeple. Generally this is a body language that means the person feels superior and in charge.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Think back to how the doctor used calibrated questions to get his patient to stay. As his story showed, the key to getting people to see things your way is not to confront them on their ideas (“You can’t leave”) but to acknowledge their ideas openly (“I understand why you’re pissed off”) and then guide them toward solving the problem (“What do you hope to accomplish by leaving?”).”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“This really appeals to very aggressive or egotistical counterparts.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“The implication of any well-designed calibrated question is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his intelligence to overcome the problem”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“What about this is important to you? How can I help to make this better for us? How would you like me to proceed? What is it that brought us into this situation? How can we solve this problem? What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here? How am I supposed to do that?”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“The only time you can use “why” successfully is when the defensiveness that is created supports the change you are trying to get them to see. “Why would you ever change from the way you’ve always done things and try my approach?” is an example. “Why would your company ever change from your long-standing vendor and choose our company?” is another.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“what,” “how,” and sometimes “why.” Nothing else.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“My advice for her was simple: I told her to engage them in a conversation where she summarized the situation and then asked, “How am I supposed to do that?”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“What makes them work is that they are subject to interpretation by your counterpart instead of being rigidly defined. They allow you to introduce ideas and requests without sounding overbearing or pushy.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“explained to her that this implication, though real, was in her mind. Her client would hear the words and not the implication as long as she kept calm and avoided making it sound by her delivery like an accusation or threat. As long as she stayed cool, they would hear it as a problem to be solved.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“When you go into a store, instead of telling the salesclerk what you “need,” you can describe what you’re looking for and ask for suggestions. Then, once you’ve picked out what you want, instead of hitting them with a hard offer, you can just say the price is a bit more than you budgeted and ask for help with one of the greatest-of-all-time calibrated questions: “How am I supposed to do that?”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“thinks he’s in control. And the secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control. The genius of this technique is really well explained by something that the psychologist Kevin Dutton says in his book Split-Second Persuasion.1 He talks about what he calls “unbelief,” which is active resistance to what the other side is saying, complete rejection. That’s where the two parties in a negotiation usually start.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“thinks he’s in control. And the secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Whether we like to recognize it or not, a universal rule of human nature, across all cultures, is that when somebody gives you something, they expect something in return. And they won’t give anything else until you pay them back.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“That fear was a major flaw in our negotiating mindset. There is some information that you can only get through direct, extended interactions with your counterpart. We also needed new ways to get things without asking for them. We needed to finesse making an “ask” with something more sophisticated than closed-ended questions with their yes-no dynamic. That’s when I realized that what we had been doing wasn’t communication; it was verbal flexing. We wanted them to see things our way and they wanted us to see it their way. If you let this dynamic loose in the real world, negotiation breaks down and tensions flare. That whole ethos permeated everything the FBI was doing. Everything was a showdown. And it didn’t work.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“if you can get at what people are really buying—then you can sell them a vision of their problem that leaves your proposal as the perfect solution.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Cuando la gente tiene un estado de ánimo positivo piensa con más rapidez, y es más probable que se avenga a colaborar en la resolución de un problema (en vez de luchar y resistirse).”
Chris Voss, Rompe la barrera del no: Negocia como si te fuera la vida en ello
“That’s why, instead of denying or ignoring emotions, good negotiators identify and influence them. They are able to precisely label emotions, those of others and especially their own. And once they label the emotions they talk about them without getting wound up. For them, emotion is a tool.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Don't look to verify what you expect. If you do, that's what you'll find. Instead, you must open yourself to the factual reality that is in front of you.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
“they will never add up unless we break free of our expectations. Every case is new. We must let what we know—our known knowns—guide us but not blind us to what we do not know; we must remain flexible and adaptable to any situation; we must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the informational and emotional realities served up moment by moment in whatever situation we face.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“We could have avoided all that had we asked a few calibrated questions, like: How does this affect everybody else? How on board is the rest of your team? How do we make sure that we deliver the right material to the right people? How do we ensure the managers of those we’re training are fully on board?”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“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.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Yes” is nothing without “How.” While an agreement is nice, a contract is better, and a signed check is best. You don’t get your profits with the agreement. They come upon implementation. Success isn’t the hostage-taker saying, “Yes, we have a deal”; success comes afterward, when the freed hostage says to your face, “Thank you.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“From the ashes of Dos Palmas, then, we learned a lesson that would forever change how the FBI negotiated kidnappings. We learned that negotiation was coaxing, not overcoming; co-opting, not defeating. Most important, we learned that successful negotiation involved getting your counterpart to do the work for you and suggest your solution himself. It involved giving him the illusion of control while you, in fact, were the one defining the conversation.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
“Paraphrase: Benjie should repeat what Sabaya is saying back to him in Benjie’s own words. This, we told him, would powerfully show him you really do understand and aren’t merely parroting his concerns.”
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It