Never Split The Difference By Chris Voss: 3 Takeaways
“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.”
—Chris Voss
Chris Voss began his career as a police officer and then worked up the ranks to become the lead international kidnapping negotiator. Through his writing, you can tell that he’s the never-satisfied type of person who wants to learn the experiences of his work to improve upon them for the next time. He's been in the field to experience many paradigm shifts of hostage negotiations, many of which he helped transform.
His book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, blends creative and interesting tactics and strategies with stories ranging from international hostage negotiations to conversations his students have had with their bosses. But the benefits of learning these techniques aren't just to get that raise or that lowered car price. He writes that at the heart of it, "Negotiation is nothing more than communication with results."
Never Split the Difference provides practical and simple tools to use in everyday situations. While the examples are geared toward circumstances where you want to negotiate something specific, the points can be extrapolated to general conversations, discussions with your partner, and even strategies for parenting. The book is deep with information, so much so that the three takeaways below are from the first few chapters alone. He also discusses strategies for spotting a liar, the rule of threes, how to use calibrated questions, and much more.
"What this book is really about is getting you to accept negotiation and, in doing so, learn how to get what you want in a psychologically aware. You'll learn to use your emotion, instincts, and insights in any encounter to connect better with others, influence them, and achieve more."
1. Use Mirroring
Have you ever noticed two people in a conversation with very idiosyncratic patterns? They nod in the same way, they replicate each other’s speech cadence, and when two people are walking next to one another they even match walking patterns stride for stride. This is called mirroring, or isopraxism. This typically unconscious neural behavior is a way of connecting to the other person and establishing rapport or, as Voss states, "copying each other to comfort each other."
When it comes to negotiations, the FBI uses mirroring strategically. "Of the entirety of the FBI's hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick," Voss says. "Simple, and yet uncannily effective."
The technique is easy: When you’re in a conversation, repeat back the final 3 (or most important 1-3) words that the person just said and then wait 4 seconds to let it set in. The other person will then elaborate on what they just said but in a different way than was initially said which forces them to reflect on it. It disarms them a bit so that they reflect more calmly than may have initially said.
On the contrary, if you ask someone "What do you mean by that?" you're likely to incite anger, irritation, or defensiveness in their response.
Voss states, "Mirroring will make you feel awkward as heck you first try it. That's the only hard part about it."
I've game-tested this in a few arenas (parenting, marriage, with patients) and it is a bit awkward but it’s definitely effective. I've been using its close cousin, "tell me more about that" for years now which seems to have a similar effect.
2. Labeling
The old school theory was that in a negotiation it was best to separate the person from the emotion. This never made sense because the person acts based on their emotions. The optimal strategy is to understand the emotions of the person you're dealing with and make them feel appreciated and understood. Great negotiators use labeling as an effective way to do this.
Labeling is verbally putting a name to an emotion as a way to acknowledge and validate.
How to do it:
Get a good understanding of the emotional state of the counterpart. Use any tiny piece of information such as a fidget when you ask a question about the neighbors to your landlord or a flat response from a friend when you mentioned their significant other. This is the technique psychics use. "They size up their client’s body language and ask them a few innocent questions. When they "tell his future" a few minutes later, they're really just saying what he wants to hear based on small details they've spotted. Most psychics would make great negotiators for that reason."
Once you've identified the counterpart's emotional state, it's time to label it aloud. Never do this by saying "I'm hearing that...." because making it personal puts defenses up. Instead, make it neutral by saying, "it seems like...," "it looks like....," or "it sounds like...." This subconsciously forces the other person to elaborate on their thinking that goes beyond a "yes" or "no." This also enables an escape plan if they disagree with you. "I didn't say that was it, I just said it seems like...."
The final rule of labeling is silence. We tend to talk too much and overcomplicate language so this final step might be tough. Provide the label then step back. This silence "allows the other person to reveal themselves."
"It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors that you know nothing about, how's your family? Labeling is a shortcut to intimacy. A time-saving, emotional hack. It also makes the emotions their feeling seem less frightening."
3. Get A "That's Right."
Get your negotiating counterpart to say, "That's right." Voss calls this the "that's right" principle. When the person you are negotiating with says "That's right," it means that they are embracing what you said and acknowledging a form of agreement.
"The 'that's right' breakthrough usually doesn't come at the beginning of a negotiation. It's invisible to the counterpart when it occurs, and they embrace what you've said. To them, it's a subtle epiphany."
One of the best ways to do this is to provide a summary of their side of the situation which will prompt "That's right." Voss points out that a proper summary isn't simply paraphrasing what was said. "A good summary is the combination of rearticulating the meaning of what is said plus the acknowledgment of the emotions underlying that meaning (paraphrasing + labeling = summary)."
In his book, Voss tells the story of a negotiation he had with a terrorist who was holding an American captive, Jeffrey, for 10 million dollars. After weeks of negotiation, there was no breakthrough in the case. So Voss went back to the drawing board and wrote a two-page document that revamped the tactics which included getting a "that's right" using the summary strategy. His colleague did this and the terrorist didn’t speak for a full minute, then finally said, "That's right" and hung up. From that point forward the terrorist dropped all of the demands he was making and totally changed course. Ultimately the captive escaped and there was no physical harm done.
Two weeks later the terrorist called the negotiator and said, "I was going to hurt Jeffrey. I don't know what you did to keep me from doing that but whatever it was, it worked."
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