Never Split The Difference (Chris Voss) - Summary

CHAPTER 1 | THE NEW RULES 
How to Become the Smartest Person . . . in Any Room  

I was intimidated.
I’d spent more than two decades in the FBI, including fifteen years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East, and I was on top of my game. At any given time, there are ten thousand FBI agents in the Bureau, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. That was me.
But I’d never experienced a hostage situation so tense, so personal.
“We’ve got your son, Voss. Give us one million dollars or he dies.”
Pause. Blink. Mindfully urge the heart rate back to normal.
Sure, I’d been in these types of situations before. Tons of them. Money for lives. But not like this.
Not with my son on the line. Not $1 million. And not against people with fancy degrees and a lifetime of negotiating expertise.
You see, the people across the table—my negotiating counterparts—were Harvard Law School negotiating professors.

I’d come up to Harvard to take a short executive negotiating course, to see if I could learn something from the business world’s approach. It was supposed to be quiet and calm, a little professional development for an FBI guy trying to widen his horizons.
But when Robert Mnookin, the director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project, learned I was on campus, he invited me to his office for a coffee. Just to chat, he said. 
I was honored. And scared. Mnookin is an impressive guy whom I’d followed for years: not only is he a Harvard law professor, he’s also one of the big shots of the conflict resolution field and the author of Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight.

To be honest, it felt unfair that Mnookin wanted me, a former Kansas City beat cop, to debate negotiation with him. But then it got worse. Just after Mnookin and I sat down, the door opened and another Harvard professor walked in. It was Gabriella Blum, a specialist in international negotiations, armed conflict, and counterterrorism, who’d spent eight years as a negotiator for the Israeli National Security Council and the Israel Defense Forces. The tough-as-nails IDF.

On cue, Mnookin’s secretary arrived and put a tape recorder on the table. Mnookin and Blum smiled at me.
I’d been tricked.
“We’ve got your son, Voss. Give us one million dollars or he dies,” Mnookin said, smiling. “I’m the kidnapper. What are you going to do?”
I experienced a flash of panic, but that was to be expected. It never changes: even after two decades negotiating for human lives you still feel fear. Even in a role-playing situation.I calmed myself down. Sure, I was a street cop turned FBI agent playing against real heavyweights. And I wasn’t a genius. But I was in this room for a reason. Over the years I had picked up skills, tactics, and a whole approach to human interaction that had not just helped me save lives but, as I recognize now looking back, had also begun to transform my own life. My years of negotiating had infused everything from how I dealt with customer service reps to my parenting style. “C’mon. Get me the money or I cut your son’s throat right now,” Mnookin said. Testy.
I gave him a long, slow stare. Then I smiled.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Mnookin paused. His expression had a touch of amused pity in it, like a dog when the cat it’s been chasing turns around and tries to chase it back. It was as if we were playing different games, with different rules.
Mnookin regained his composure and eyed me with arched brows as if to remind me that we were still playing.
“So you’re okay with me killing your son, Mr. Voss?”
“I’m sorry, Robert, how do I know he’s even alive?” I said, using an apology and his first name, seeding more warmth into the interaction in order to complicate his gambit to bulldoze me. “I really am sorry, but how can I get you any money right now, much less one million dollars, if I don’t even know he’s alive?”
It was quite a sight to see such a brilliant man flustered by what must have seemed unsophisticated foolishness. On the contrary, though, my move was anything but foolish. I was employing what had become one of the FBI’s most potent negotiating tools: the open-ended question.
Today, after some years evolving these tactics for the private sector in my consultancy, The Black Swan Group, we call this tactic calibrated questions: queries that the other side can respond to but that have no fixed answers. It buys you time. It gives your counterpart the illusion of control—they are the one with the answers and power after all—and it does all that without giving them any idea of how constrained they are by it.
Mnookin, predictably, started fumbling because the frame of the conversation had shifted from how I’d respond to the threat of my son’s murder to how the professor would deal with the logistical issues involved in getting the money. How he would solve my problems. To every threat and demand he made, I continued to ask how I was supposed to pay him and how was I supposed to know that my son was alive.
After we’d been doing that for three minutes, Gabriella Blum interjected.
“Don’t let him do that to you,” she said to Mnookin.
“Well, you try,” he said, throwing up his hands.
Blum dove in. She was tougher from her years in the Middle East. But she was still doing the bulldozer angle, and all she got were my same questions.
Mnookin rejoined the session, but he got nowhere either. His face started to get red with
frustration. I could tell the irritation was making it hard to think.
“Okay, okay, Bob. That’s all,” I said, putting him out of his misery.
He nodded. My son would live to see another day.
“Fine,” he said. “I suppose the FBI might have something to teach us.”
I had done more than just hold my own against two of Harvard’s distinguished leaders. I had taken on the best of the best and come out on top.

HEART VS. MIND 
Through decades of research with Tversky, Kahneman proved that humans all suffer from Cognitive Bias, that is, unconscious—and irrational—brain processes that literally distort the way we see the world. Kahneman and Tversky discovered more than 150 of them.

There’s the Framing Effect, which demonstrates that people respond differently to the same choice depending on how it is framed (people place greater value on moving from 90 percent to 100 percent—high probability to certainty—than from 45 percent to 55 percent, even though they’re both ten percentage points). Prospect Theory explains why we take unwarranted risks in the face of uncertain losses. And the most famous is Loss Aversion, which shows how people are statistically more likely to act to avert a loss than to achieve an equal gain.

Kahneman later codified his research in the 2011 bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow. Man, he wrote, has two systems of thought: System 1, our animal mind, is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is slow, deliberative, and logical. And System 1 is far more influential. In fact, it guides and steers our rational thoughts.

System 1’s inchoate beliefs, feelings, and impressions are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. They’re the spring that feeds the river. We react emotionally (System 1) to a suggestion or question. Then that System 1 reaction informs and in effect creates the System 2 answer.

Now think about that: under this model, if you know how to affect your counterpart’s System 1 thinking, his inarticulate feelings, by how you frame and deliver your questions and statements, then you can guide his System 2 rationality and therefore modify his responses. That’s what happened to Andy at Harvard: by asking, “How am I supposed to do that?” I influenced his System 1 emotional mind into accepting that his offer wasn’t good enough; his System 2 then rationalized the situation so that it made sense to give me a better offer.

If you believed Kahneman, conducting negotiations based on System 2 concepts without the tools to read, understand, and manipulate the System 1 emotional underpinning was like trying to make an omelet without first knowing how to crack an egg. 

THE FBI GETS EMOTIONAL 

As the new hostage negotiating team at the FBI grew and gained more experience in problem-solving skills during the 1980s and ’90s, it became clear that our system was lacking a crucial ingredient. At the time, we were deep into Getting to Yes. And as a negotiator, consultant, and teacher with decades of experience, I still agree with many of the powerful bargaining strategies in the book. When it was published, it provided groundbreaking ideas on cooperative problem solving and originated absolutely necessary concepts like entering negotiations with a BATNA: the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

It was genius.

But after the fatally disastrous sieges of Randy Weaver’s Ruby Ridge farm in Idaho in 1992 and David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, there was no denying that most hostage negotiations were anything but rational problem-solving situations.

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.

...

Psychotherapy research shows that when individuals feel listened to, they tend to listen to themselves more carefully and to openly evaluate and clarify their own thoughts and feelings. In addition, they tend to become less defensive and oppositional and more willing to listen to other points of view, which gets them to the calm and logical place where they can be good Getting to Yes problem solvers.

The whole concept, which you’ll learn as the centerpiece of this book, is called Tactical Empathy. This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.

CHAPTER 2 | BE A MIRROR 
How to Quickly Establish Rapport

ASSUMPTIONS BLIND, HYPOTHESES GUIDE 

Good negotiators, going in, know they have to be ready for possible surprises; great negotiators aim to use their skills to reveal the surprises they are certain exist.

Experience will have taught them that they are best served by holding multiple hypotheses—about the situation, about the counterpart’s wants, about a whole array of variables—in their mind at the same time. Present and alert in the moment, they use all the new information that comes their way to test and winnow true hypotheses from false ones.

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. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that really smart people often have trouble being negotiators—they’re so smart they think they don’t have anything to discover. 

Too often people find it easier just to stick with what they believe. Using what they’ve heard or their own biases, they often make assumptions about others even before meeting them. They even ignore their own perceptions to make them conform to foregone conclusions. These assumptions muck up our perceptual windows onto the world, showing us an unchanging—often flawed—version of the situation.

Great negotiators are able to question the assumptions that the rest of the involved players accept on faith or in arrogance, and thus remain more emotionally open to all possibilities, and more intellectually agile to a fluid situation.

CALM THE SCHIZOPHRENIC 

For those people who view negotiation as a battle of arguments, it’s the voices in their own head that are overwhelming them. When they’re not talking, they’re thinking about their arguments, and when they are talking, they’re making their arguments. Often those on both sides of the table are doing the same thing, so you have what I call a state of schizophrenia: everyone just listening to the voice in their head (and not well, because they’re doing seven or eight other things at the same time). It may look like there are only two people in a conversation, but really it’s more like four people all talking at once.

There’s one powerful way to quiet the voice in your head and the voice in their head at the same time: treat two schizophrenics with just one pill. Instead of prioritizing your argument—in fact, instead of doing any thinking at all in the early goings about what you’re going to say—make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. In that mode of true active listening—aided by the tactics you’ll learn in the following chapters—you’ll disarm your counterpart. You’ll make them feel safe. The voice in their head will begin to quiet down.

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. The latter will help you discover the former. Wants are easy to talk about, representing the aspiration of getting our way, and sustaining any illusion of control we have as we begin to negotiate; needs imply survival, the very minimum required to make us act, and so make us vulnerable. 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.

THE VOICE 
- Late-Night, FM DJ Voice: deep, soft, slow, and reassuring.

This soothing voice is the key to easing the confrontation.

I said, “Joe’s gone. This is Chris. You’re talking to me now.” I didn’t put it like a question. I made a downward-inflecting statement, in a downward-inflecting tone of voice. The best way to describe the late-night FM DJ’s voice is as the voice of calm and reason.

When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. Smile at someone on the street, and as a reflex they’ll smile back. Understanding that reflex and putting it into practice is critical to the success of just about every negotiating skill there is to learn.

When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. Smile at someone on the street, and as a reflex they’ll smile back. Understanding that reflex and putting it into practice is critical to the success of just about every negotiating skill there is to learn.

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. Forget the assertive voice for now; except in very rare circumstances, using it is like slapping yourself in the face while you’re trying to make progress. You’re signaling dominance onto your counterpart, who will either aggressively, or passive-aggressively, push back against attempts to be controlled.

Most of the time, you should be using the positive/playful voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you’re talking. A smile, even while talking on the phone, has an impact tonally that the other person will pick up on.

The effect these voices have are cross-cultural and never lost in translation.

When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). It applies to the smile-er as much as to the smile-ee: a smile on your face, and in your voice, will increase your own mental agility.

The way the late-night FM DJ voice works is that, when you inflect your voice in a downward way, you put it out there that you’ve got it covered. Talking slowly and clearly you convey one idea: I’m in control. When you inflect in an upward way, you invite a response. Why? Because you’ve brought in a measure of uncertainty. You’ve made a statement sound like a question. You’ve left the door open for the other guy to take the lead, so I was careful here to be quiet, self-assured.

MIRRORING 

Mirroring, also called isopraxism, is essentially imitation. It’s another neurobehavior humans (and other animals) display in which we copy each other to comfort each other. It can be done with speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo, and tone of voice. It’s generally an unconscious behavior — we are rarely aware of it when it’s happening — but it’s a sign that people are bonding, in sync, and establishing the kind of rapport that leads to trust.

It’s a phenomenon (and now technique) that follows a very basic but profound biologicalprinciple: We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. Mirroring, then, when practiced consciously, is the art of insinuating similarity. “Trust me,” a mirror signals to another’s unconscious, “You and I—we’re alike.”

Once you’re attuned to the dynamic, you’ll see it everywhere: couples walking on the street with their steps in perfect synchrony; friends in conversation at a park, both nodding their heads and crossing the legs at about the same time. These people are, in a word, connected.

While mirroring is most often associated with forms of nonverbal communication, especially body language, as negotiators a “mirror” focuses on the words and nothing else. Not the body language. Not the accent. Not the tone or delivery. Just the words.

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.

By repeating back what people say, you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting. Psychologist Richard Wiseman created a study using waiters to identify what was the more effective method of creating a connection with strangers: mirroring or positive reinforcement.

One group of waiters, using positive reinforcement, lavished praise and encouragement on patrons using words such as “great,” “no problem,” and “sure” in response to each order. The other group of waiters mirrored their customers simply by repeating their orders back to them. The results were stunning: the average tip of the waiters who mirrored was 70 percent more than of those who used positive reinforcement.

HOW TO CONFRONT—AND GET YOUR WAY—WITHOUT CONFRONTATION 

I only half-jokingly refer to mirroring as magic or a Jedi mind trick because it gives you the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

To consider just how useful that can be, think of the average workplace: invariably there is still someone in a position of authority who arrived at that position through aggressive assertiveness, sometimes outright intimidation, with “old school” top-down, command-and-control assumptions that the boss is always right. And let’s not delude ourselves: whatever the enlightened rules of the “new school,” in every environment (work or otherwise) you will always have to deal with forceful type A people who prefer consent to collaboration.

If you take a pit bull approach with another pit bull, you generally end up with a messy scene and lots of bruised feelings and resentment. Luckily, there’s another way without all the mess.

It’s just four simple steps:
1. Use the late-night FM DJ voice.
2. Start with “I’m sorry . . .”
3. Mirror.
4. Silence. At least four seconds, to let the mirror work its magic on your counterpart.
5. Repeat.

KEY LESSONS 

The language of negotiation is primarily a language of conversation and rapport: a way of quickly establishing relationships and getting people to talk and think together. Which is why when you think of the greatest negotiators of all time, I’ve got a surprise for you—think Oprah Winfrey.

Her daily television show was a case study of a master practitioner at work: on a stage face-toface with someone she has never met, in front of a crowded studio of hundreds, with millions more watching from home, and a task to persuade that person in front of her, sometimes against his or her own best interests, to talk and talk and keep talking, ultimately sharing with the world deep, dark secrets that they had held hostage in their own minds for a lifetime.

Look closely at such an interaction after reading this chapter and suddenly you’ll see a refined set of powerful skills: a conscious smile to ease the tension, use of subtle verbal and nonverbal language to signal empathy (and thus security), a certain downward inflection in the voice, embrace of specific kinds of questions and avoidance of others—a whole array of previously hidden skills that will proveinvaluable to you, once you’ve learned to use them.

Here are some of the key lessons from this chapter to remember:
■ A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find.

■ Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously.

■ People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.

■ To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say.

■ Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built.

■ Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart.

There are three voice tones available to negotiators:

1. The late-night FM DJ voice: Use selectively to make a point. Inflect your voice downward, keeping it calm and slow. When done properly, you create an aura of authority and trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness.

2. The positive/playful voice: Should be your default voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you’re talking.

3. The direct or assertive voice: Used rarely. Will cause problems and create pushback.

■ Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side to empathize and bond with you, keep people talking, buy your side time to regroup, and encourage your counterparts to reveal their strategy.

CHAPTER 3 | DON’T FEEL THEIR PAIN, LABEL IT 
How to Create Trust with Tactical Empathy

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.

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.

In an fMRI brain-scan experiment,1 researchers at Princeton University found that neural resonance disappears when people communicate poorly. The researchers could predict how well people were communicating by observing how much their brains were aligned. And they discovered that people who paid the most attention—good listeners—could actually anticipate what the speaker was about to say before he said it.

If you want to increase your neural resonance skills, take a moment right now and practice. Turn your attention to someone who’s talking near you, or watch a person being interviewed on TV. As they talk, imagine that you are that person. Visualize yourself in the position they describe and put in as much detail as you can, as if you were actually there.

Empathy is not about being nice or agreeing with the other side. It’s about understanding them. Empathy helps us learn the position the enemy is in, why their actions make sense (to them), and what might move them.

As negotiators we use empathy because it works. Empathy is why the three fugitives came out after six hours of my late-night DJ voice. It’s what helped me succeed at what Sun Tzu called “the supreme art of war”: to subdue the enemy without fighting.

LABELING 

We employ our tactical empathy by recognizing and then verbalizing the predictable emotions of the situation. We don’t just put ourselves in the fugitives’ shoes. We spotted their feelings, turned them into words, and then very calmly and respectfully repeated their emotions back to them. In a negotiation, that’s called 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.

Labeling has a special advantage when your counterpart is tense. Exposing negative thoughts to daylight—“It looks like you don’t want to go back to jail”—makes them seem less frightening.

In one brain imaging study,2 psychology professor Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that when people are shown photos of faces expressing strong emotion, the brain shows greater activity in the amygdala, the part that generates fear. But when they are asked to label the emotion, the activity moves to the areas that govern rational thinking. In other words, labeling an emotion—applying rational words to a fear—disrupts its raw intensity.

Labeling is a simple, versatile skill that lets you reinforce a good aspect of the negotiation, or diffuse a negative one. But it has very specific rules about form and delivery. That makes it less like chatting than like a formal art such as Chinese calligraphy.

Let me let you in on a secret: people never even notice.
The first step to labeling is detecting the other person’s emotional state. Most of the time you’ll have a wealth of information from the other person’s words, tone, and body language. We call that trinity “words, music, and dance.”

The trick to spotting feelings is to pay close attention to changes people undergo when they respond to external events. Most often, those events are your words.

If you say, “How is the family?” and the corners of the other party’s mouth turn down even when they say it’s great, you might detect that all is not well; if their voice goes flat when a colleague is mentioned, there could be a problem between the two; and if your landlord unconsciously fidgets his feet when you mention the neighbors, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t think much of them (we’ll dig deeper into how to spot and use these cues in Chapter 9).

Once you’ve spotted an emotion you want to highlight, the next step is to label it aloud. Labels canbe phrased as statements or questions. The only difference is whether you end the sentence with a downward or upward inflection. But no matter how they end, labels almost always begin with roughly the same words:
It seems like . . .
It sounds like . . .
It looks like . . .

Notice we said “It sounds like . . .” and not “I’m hearing that . . .” That’s because the word “I” gets people’s guard up. When you say “I,” it says you’re more interested in yourself than the other person, and it makes you take personal responsibility for the words that follow—and the offense they might cause.

But when you phrase a label as a neutral statement of understanding, it encourages your counterpart to be responsive. They’ll usually give a longer answer than just “yes” or “no.” And if they disagree with the label, that’s okay. You can always step back and say, “I didn’t say that was what it was. I just said it seems like that.”

The last rule of labeling is silence. Once you’ve thrown out a label, be quiet and listen. We all have a tendency to expand on what we’ve said, to finish, “It seems like you like the way that shirt looks,” with a specific question like “Where did you get it?” But a label’s power is that it invites the other person to reveal himself.

If you’ll trust me for a second, take a break now and try it out: Strike up a conversation and put a label on one of the other person’s emotions—it doesn’t matter if you’re talking to the mailman or your ten-year-old daughter—and then go silent. Let the label do its work.

NEUTRALIZE THE NEGATIVE, REINFORCE THE POSITIVE 

Labeling is a tactic, not a strategy, in the same way a spoon is a great tool for stirring soup but it’s not a recipe. How you use labeling will go a long way in determining your success. Deployed well, it’s how we as negotiators identify and then slowly alter the inner voices of our counterpart’s consciousness to something more collaborative and trusting.

First, let’s talk a little human psychology. In basic terms, people’s emotions have two levels: the “presenting” behavior is the part above the surface you can see and hear; beneath, the “underlying” feeling is what motivates the behavior.

Imagine a grandfather who’s grumbly at a family holiday dinner: the presenting behavior is that he’s cranky, but the underlying emotion is a sad sense of loneliness from his family never seeing him.

What good negotiators do when labeling is address those underlying emotions. Labeling negatives diffuses them (or defuses them, in extreme cases); labeling positives reinforces them.

We’ll come back to the cranky grandfather in a moment. First, though, I want to talk a little bit about anger.

As an emotion, anger is rarely productive—in you or the person you’re negotiating with. It releases stress hormones and neurochemicals that disrupt your ability to properly evaluate and respond to situations. And it blinds you to the fact that you’re angry in the first place, which gives you a false sense of confidence.

That’s not to say that negative feelings should be ignored. That can be just as damaging. Instead, they should be teased out. Labeling is a helpful tactic in de-escalating angry confrontations, because itmakes the person acknowledge their feelings rather than continuing to act out.

CLEAR THE ROAD BEFORE ADVERTISING THE DESTINATION 

Remember the amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear in reaction to threats? Well, the faster we can interrupt the amygdala’s reaction to real or imaginary threats, the faster we can clear the road of obstacles, and the quicker we can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust.

We do that by labeling the fears. These labels are so powerful because they bathe the fears in sunlight, bleaching them of their power and showing our counterpart that we understand.

...

...The obstacle here wasn’t finding the right match for the woman. It wasn’t that she was this highly finicky, hard-to-please donor. The real obstacle was that this woman needed to feel that she was understood, that the person handling her money knew why she was in that office and understood thememories that were driving her actions. 

That’s why labels are so powerful and so potentially transformative to the state of any conversation. By digging beneath what seems like a mountain of quibbles, details, and logistics, labels help to uncover and identify the primary emotion driving almost all of your counterpart’s behavior, the emotion that, once acknowledged, seems to miraculously solve everything else.

DO AN ACCUSATION AUDIT 

...In court, defense lawyers do this properly by mentioning everything their client is accused of, and all the weaknesses of their case, in the opening statement. They call this technique “taking the sting out.” 

What I want to do here is turn this into a process that, applied systematically, you can use to disarm your counterpart while negotiating everything from your son’s bedtime to large business contracts.

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

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. 

...That explains why, after Anna labeled Angela’s fears, Angela’s first instinct was to add nuance and detail to those fears. And that detail gave Anna the power to accomplish what she wanted from the negotiation. 

KEY LESSONS
As you try to insert the tools of tactical empathy into your daily life, I encourage you to think of them as extensions of natural human interactions and not artificial conversational tics.

In any interaction, it pleases us to feel that the other side is listening and acknowledging our situation. Whether you are negotiating a business deal or simply chatting to the person at the supermarket butcher counter, creating an empathetic relationship and encouraging your counterpart to expand on their situation is the basis of healthy human interaction.

These tools, then, are nothing less than emotional best practices that help you cure the pervasive ineptitude that marks our most critical conversations in life. They will help you connect and create more meaningful and warm relationships. That they might help you extract what you want is a bonus; human connection is the first goal.

With that in mind, I encourage you to take the risk of sprinkling these in every conversation you have. I promise you that they will feel awkward and artificial at first, but keep at it. Learning to walk felt awfully strange, too.

As you internalize these techniques, turning the artifice of tactical empathy into a habit and then into an integral part of your personality, keep in mind these lessons from the chapter you’ve just read:

■ Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use.

■ The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open.

■ Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence.

■ Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust.

■ List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.

■ Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

CHAPTER 4 | BEWARE “YES”—MASTER “NO” 
How to Generate Momentum and Make It Safe to Reveal the Real Stakes 

“NO” STARTS THE NEGOTIATION 

“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.

Jim Camp, in his excellent book, Start with NO,1 counsels the reader to give their adversary (his word for counterpart) permission to say “No” from the outset of a negotiation. He calls it “the right to veto.” He observes that people will fight to the death to preserve their right to say “No,” so give them that right and the negotiating environment becomes more constructive and collaborative almost immediately.

When I read Camp’s book, I realized this was something we’d known as hostage negotiators for years. We’d learned that the quickest way to get a hostage-taker out was to take the time to talk them out, as opposed to “demanding” their surrender. Demanding their surrender, “telling” them to come out, always ended up creating a much longer standoff and occasionally, actually contributed to death.

It comes down to the deep and universal human need for autonomy. People need to feel in control. When you preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say “No” to your ideas, the emotions calm, the effectiveness of the decisions go up, and the other party can really look at your proposal. They’re allowed to hold it in their hands, to turn it around. And it gives you time to elaborate or pivot in order to convince your counterpart that the change you’re proposing is more advantageous than the status quo.

Great negotiators seek “No” because they know that’s often when the real negotiation begins. Politely saying “No” to your opponent (we’ll go into this in more depth in Chapter 9), calmly hearing “No,” and just letting the other side know that they are welcome to say “No” has a positive impact on any negotiation. In fact, your invitation for the other side to say “No” has an amazing power to bring down barriers and allow for beneficial communication.

This means you have to train yourself to hear “No” as something other than rejection, and respond accordingly. When someone tells you “No,” you need to rethink the word in one of its alternative— and much more real—meanings:

■ I am not yet ready to agree;
■ You are making me feel uncomfortable;
■ I do not understand;
■ I don’t think I can afford it;
■ I want something else;
■ I need more information; or
■ I want to talk it over with someone else.

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.”
People have a need to say, “No.” So don’t just hope to hear it at some point; get them to say it early.

PERSUADE IN THEIR WORLD 

In every negotiation, in every agreement, the result comes from someone else’s decision. And sadly, if we believe that we can control or manage others’ decisions with compromise and logic, we’re leaving millions on the table. But while we can’t control others’ decisions, we can influence them by inhabiting their world and seeing and hearing exactly what they want.

Though the intensity may differ from person to person, you can be sure that everyone you meet isdriven 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.

As we saw with my chat with Daryl, you’re not going to logically convince them that they’re safe, secure, or in control. Primal needs are urgent and illogical, so arguing them into a corner is just going to push your counterpart to flee with a counterfeit “Yes.”

And being “nice” in the form of feigned sympathy is often equally as unsuccessful. We live in an age that celebrates niceness under various names. We are exhorted to be nice and to respect people’s feelings at all times and in every situation.

But nice alone in the context of negotiation can backfire. Nice, employed as a ruse, is disingenuous and manipulative. Who hasn’t received the short end of the stick in dealings with a “nice” salesman who took you for a ride? If you rush in with plastic niceness, your bland smile is going to dredge up all that baggage.

Instead of getting inside with logic or feigned smiles, then, we get there by asking for “No.” It’s the word that gives the speaker feelings of safety and control. “No” starts conversations and creates safe havens to get to the final “Yes” of commitment. An early “Yes” is often just a cheap, counterfeit dodge.

“NO” IS PROTECTION 

As you can see, “No” has a lot of skills.
■ “No” allows the real issues to be brought forth;
■ “No” protects people from making—and lets them correct—ineffective decisions;
■ “No” slows things down so that people can freely embrace their decisions and the agreements they enter into;
■ “No” helps people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable, and in control of their decisions;
■ “No” moves everyone’s efforts forward.

There is a big difference between making your counterpart feel that they can say “No” and actually getting them to say it. Sometimes, if you’re talking to somebody who is just not listening, the only way you can crack their cranium is to antagonize them into “No.”

One great way to do this is to mislabel one of the other party’s emotions or desires. You say something that you know is totally wrong, like “So it seems that you really are eager to leave yourjob” when they clearly want to stay. That forces them to listen and makes them comfortable correcting you by saying, “No, that’s not it. This is it.”

Another way to force “No” in a negotiation is to ask the other party what they don’t want. “Let’s talk about what you would say ‘No’ to,” you’d say. And people are comfortable saying “No” here because it feels like self-protection. And once you’ve gotten them to say “No,” people are much more open to moving forward toward new options and ideas.

“No”—or the lack thereof—also serves as a warning, the canary in the coal mine. If despite all your efforts, the other party won’t say “No,” you’re dealing with people who are indecisive or confused or who have a hidden agenda. In cases like that you have to end the negotiation and walk away.

Think of it like this: No “No” means no go.

KEY LESSONS 
Using this chapter’s tools in daily life is difficult for many people because they go directly against one of society’s biggest social dictums. That is, “Be nice.”

We’ve instrumentalized niceness as a way of greasing the social wheels, yet it’s often a ruse.We’re polite and we don’t disagree to get through daily existence with the least degree of friction. But by turning niceness into a lubricant, we’ve leeched it of meaning. A smile and a nod might signify “Get me out of here!” as much as it means “Nice to meet you.”

That’s death for a good negotiator, who gains their power by understanding their counterpart’s situation and extracting information about their counterpart’s desires and needs. Extracting that information means getting the other party to feel safe and in control. And while it may sound contradictory, the way to get there is by getting the other party to disagree, to draw their own boundaries, to define their desires as a function of what they do not want.

As you try to put the chapter’s methods to use, I encourage you to think of them as the anti–“niceness ruse.” Not in the sense that they are unkind, but in the sense that they are authentic.

Triggering “No” peels away the plastic falsehood of “Yes” and gets you to what’s really at stake.

Along the way, keep in mind these powerful lessons:

■ Break the habit of attempting to get people to say “yes.” Being pushed for “yes” makes people defensive. Our love of hearing “yes” makes us blind to the defensiveness we ourselves feel when someone is pushing us to say it.

■ “No” is not a failure. We have learned that “No” is the anti-“Yes” and therefore a word to be avoided at all costs. But it really often just means “Wait” or “I’m not comfortable with that.” Learn how to hear it calmly. It is not the end of the negotiation, but the beginning.

■ “Yes” is the final goal of a negotiation, but don’t aim for it at the start. Asking someone for “Yes” too quickly in a conversation—“Do you like to drink water, Mr. Smith?”—gets his guard up and paints you as an untrustworthy salesman.

■ Saying “No” makes the speaker feel safe, secure, and in control, so trigger it. By saying what they don’t want, your counterpart defines their space and gains the confidence and comfort to listen to you. That’s why “Is now a bad time to talk?” is always better than “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

■ Sometimes the only way to get your counterpart to listen and engage with you is by forcing them into a “No.” That means intentionally mislabeling one of their emotions or desires or asking a ridiculous question—like, “It seems like you want this project to fail”—that can only be answered negatively.

■ Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.

■ If a potential business partner is ignoring you, contact them with a clear and concise “No”-oriented question that suggests that you are ready to walk away. “Have you given up on this project?” works wonders.

CHAPTER 5 | TRIGGER THE TWO WORDS THAT IMMEDIATELY TRANSFORM ANY NEGOTIATION 
How to Gain the Permission to Persuade 

TRIGGER A “THAT’S RIGHT!” WITH A SUMMARY 

I wrote a two-page document that instructed Benjie to change course. We were going to use nearly every tactic in the active listening arsenal:

1. Effective Pauses: Silence is powerful. We told Benjie to use it for emphasis, to encourage Sabaya to keep talking until eventually, like clearing out a swamp, the emotions were drained from the dialogue.

2. Minimal Encouragers: Besides silence, we instructed using simple phrases, such as “Yes,” “OK,” “Uh-huh,” or “I see,” to effectively convey that Benjie was now paying fullattention to Sabaya and all he had to say.

3. Mirroring: Rather than argue with Sabaya and try to separate Schilling from the “war damages,” Benjie would listen and repeat back what Sabaya said.

4. Labeling: Benjie should give Sabaya’s feelings a name and identify with how he felt. “It all seems so tragically unfair, I can now see why you sound so angry.”

5. 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.

6. Summarize: 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). We told Benjie he needed to listen and repeat the “world according to Abu Sabaya.” He needed to fully and completely summarize all the nonsense that Sabaya had come up with about war damages and fishing rights and five hundred years of oppression. And once he did that fully and completely, the only possible response for Sabaya, and anyone faced with a good summary, would be “that’s right.”

KEY LESSONS 
“Sleeping in the same bed and dreaming different dreams” is an old Chinese expression that describes the intimacy of partnership (whether in marriage or in business) without the communication necessary to sustain it.

Such is the recipe for bad marriages and bad negotiations.

With each party having its own set of objectives, its own goals and motivations, the truth is that the conversational niceties—the socially lubricating “yeses” and “you’re rights” that get thrown out fast and furious early in any interaction—are not in any way a substitute for real understandingbetween you and your partner.

The power of getting to that understanding, and not to some simple “yes,” is revelatory in the art of negotiation. The moment you’ve convinced someone that you truly understand her dreams and feelings (the whole world that she inhabits), mental and behavioral change becomes possible, and the foundation for a breakthrough has been laid.

Use these lessons to lay that foundation:

■ Creating unconditional positive regard opens the door to changing thoughts and behaviors. Humans have an innate urge toward socially constructive behavior. The more a person feels understood, and positively affirmed in that understanding, the more likely that urge for constructive behavior will take hold.

■ “That’s right” is better than “yes.” Strive for it. Reaching “that’s right” in a negotiation creates breakthroughs.

■ Use a summary to trigger a “that’s right.” The building blocks of a good summary are a label combined with paraphrasing. Identify, rearticulate, and emotionally affirm "the world according to . . ."

CHAPTER 6 | BEND THEIR REALITY 
How to Shape What Is Fair 

DON’T COMPROMISE 

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. Most people in a negotiation are driven by fear or by the desire to avoid pain. Too few are driven by their actual goals.

So don’t settle and—here’s a simple rule—never split the difference. Creative solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict. Accommodation and compromise produce none of that. You’ve got to embrace the hard stuff. That’s where the great deals are. And that’s what great negotiators do.

DEADLINES: MAKE TIME YOUR ALLY 

Moore discovered that when negotiators tell their counterparts about their deadline, they get better deals. It’s true. First, by revealing your cutoff you reduce the risk of impasse. And second, when an opponent knows your deadline, he’ll get to the real deal- and concession-making more quickly.

I’ve got one final point to make before we move on: Deadlines are almost never ironclad. What’s more important is engaging in the process and having a feel for how long that will take. You may see that you have more to accomplish than time will actually allow before the clock runs out.

NO SUCH THING AS FAIR 

In the third week of my negotiations class, we play my favorite type of game, that is, the kind that shows my students how much they don’t understand themselves (I know—I’m cruel).

It’s called the Ultimatum Game, and it goes like this: After the students split into pairs of a “proposer” and an “accepter,” I give each proposer $10. The proposer then has to offer the accepter a round number of dollars. If the accepter agrees he or she receives what’s been offered and the proposer gets the rest. If the accepter refuses the offer, though, they both get nothing and the $10 goes back to me.

Whether they “win” and keep the money or “lose” and have to give it back is irrelevant (except to my wallet). What’s important is the offer they make. The truly shocking thing is that, almost without exception, whatever selection anyone makes, they find themselves in a minority. No matter whether they chose $6/$4, $5/$5, $7/$3, $8/$2, etc., they look around and are inevitably surprised to find no split was chosen far more than any other. In something as simple as merely splitting $10 of “found” money, there is no consensus of what constitutes a “fair” or “rational” split.

After we run this little experiment, I stand up in front of the class and make a point they don’t like to hear: the reasoning each and every student used was 100 percent irrational and emotional.

THE F-WORD: WHY IT’S SO POWERFUL, WHEN TO USE IT, AND HOW 

Once you understand what a messy, emotional, and destructive dynamic “fairness” can be, you can see why “Fair” is a tremendously powerful word that you need to use with care.

In fact, of the three ways that people drop this F-bomb, only one is positive.

The most common use is a judo-like defensive move that destabilizes the other side. This manipulation usually takes the form of something like, “We just want what’s fair.”

Think back to the last time someone made this implicit accusation of unfairness to you, and I bet you’ll have to admit that it immediately triggered feelings of defensiveness and discomfort. These feelings are often subconscious and often lead to an irrational concession.

A friend of mine was selling her Boston home in a bust market a few years back. The offer she got was much lower than she wanted—it meant a big loss for her—and out of frustration she dropped this F-bomb on the prospective buyer.

“We just want what’s fair,” she said.

Emotionally rattled by the implicit accusation, the guy raised his offer immediately.

If you’re on the business end of this accusation, you need to realize that the other side might not be
trying to pick your pocket; like my friend, they might just be overwhelmed by circumstance. The best
response either way is to take a deep breath and restrain your desire to concede. Then say, “Okay, I
apologize. Let’s stop everything and go back to where I started treating you unfairly and we’ll fix it.”

The second use of the F-bomb is more nefarious. In this one, your counterpart will basically accuse you of being dense or dishonest by saying, “We’ve given you a fair offer.” It’s a terrible little jab meant to distract your attention and manipulate you into giving in.

Whenever someone tries this on me, I think back to the last NFL lockout.

Negotiations were getting down to the wire and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) said that before they agreed to a final deal they wanted the owners to open their books. The owners’ answer?

“We’ve given the players a fair offer.”

Notice the horrible genius of this: instead of opening their books or declining to do so, the owners shifted the focus to the NFLPA’s supposed lack of understanding of fairness.

If you find yourself in this situation, the best reaction is to simply mirror the “F” that has just been lobbed at you. “Fair?” you’d respond, pausing to let the word’s power do to them as it was intended to do to you. Follow that with a label: “It seems like you’re ready to provide the evidence that supports that,” which alludes to opening their books or otherwise handing over information that will either contradict their claim to fairness or give you more data to work with than you had previously.

Right away, you declaw the attack.

The last use of the F-word is my favorite because it’s positive and constructive. It sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation.
Here’s how I use it: Early on in a negotiation, I say, “I want you to feel like you are being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if you feel I’m being unfair, and we’ll address it.” It’s simple and clear and sets me up as an honest dealer. With that statement, I let people know it is okay to use that word with me if they use it honestly. 

As a negotiator, you should strive for a reputation of being fair. Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success.

BEND THEIR REALITY 

By far the best theory for describing the principles of our irrational decisions is something called Prospect Theory. Created in 1979 by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, prospect theory describes how people choose between options that involve risk, like in a negotiation.The theory argues that people are drawn to sure things over probabilities, even when the probability is a better choice. That’s called the Certainty Effect. And people will take greater risks to avoid losses than to achieve gains. That’s called Loss Aversion.

That’s why people who statistically have no need for insurance buy it. Or consider this: a person who’s told he has a 95 percent chance of receiving $10,000 or a 100 percent chance of getting $9,499 will usually avoid risk and take the 100 percent certain safe choice, while the same person who’s told he has a 95 percent chance of losing $10,000 or a 100 percent chance of losing $9,499 will make the opposite choice, risking the bigger 95 percent option to avoid the loss. The chance for loss incites more risk than the possibility of an equal gain.

1. ANCHOR THEIR EMOTIONS 

To bend your counterpart’s reality, you have to start with the basics of empathy. So start out with an accusation audit acknowledging all of their fears. By anchoring their emotions in preparation for a loss, you inflame the other side’s loss aversion so that they’ll jump at the chance to avoid it.

2. LET THE OTHER GUY GO FIRST . . . MOST OF THE TIME. 

The tendency to be anchored by extreme numbers is a psychological quirk known as the “anchor and adjustment” effect. Researchers have discovered that we tend to make adjustments from our first reference points. For example, most people glimpsing 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 estimate that it yields a higher result than the same string in reverse order. That’s because we focus on the first numbers and extrapolate.

3. ESTABLISH A RANGE 

In a recent study, Columbia Business School psychologists found that job applicants who named a range received significantly higher overall salaries than those who offered a number, especially if their range was a “bolstering range,” in which the low number in the range was what they actually wanted.

Understand, if you offer a range (and it’s a good idea to do so) expect them to come in at the low end.

4. PIVOT TO NONMONETARY TERMS 

Stimulate your counterpart’s brainstorming to see what valuable nonmonetary gems they might have that are cheap to them but valuable to you.

5. WHEN YOU DO TALK NUMBERS, USE ODD ONES 

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.

6. SURPRISE WITH A GIFT 

HOW TO NEGOTIATE A BETTER SALARY

1. BE PLEASANTLY PERSISTENT ON NONSALARY TERMS

2. SALARY TERMS WITHOUT SUCCESS TERMS IS RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Once you’ve negotiated a salary, make sure to define success for your position—as well as metrics for your next raise. That’s meaningful for you and free for your boss, much like giving me a magazine cover story was for the bar association. It gets you a planned raise and, by defining your success in relation to your boss’s supervision, it leads into the next step . . .

3. SPARK THEIR INTEREST IN YOUR SUCCESS AND GAIN AN UNOFFICIAL MENTOR

KEY LESSONS 
Compared to the tools discussed in previous chapters, the techniques here seem concrete and easy to use. But many people shy away from them because they seem manipulative. Something that bends your counterpart’s reality must be cheating, right?

In response, let me just say that these tools are used by all the best negotiators because they simply recognize the human psyche as it is. We are emotional, irrational beasts who are emotional and irrational in predictable, pattern-filled ways. Using that knowledge is only, well, rational.

As you work these tools into your daily life, remember the following powerful lessons:

■ All negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the surface. Once you know that the Haitian kidnappers just want party money, you will be miles better prepared.

■ Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe, so don’t compromise. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides.

■ Approaching deadlines entice people to rush the negotiating process and do impulsive things that are against their best interests.

■ The F-word—“Fair”—is an emotional term people usually exploit to put the other side on the defensive and gain concessions. When your counterpart drops the F-bomb, don’t get suckered into a concession. Instead, ask them to explain how you’re mistreating them.

■ You can bend your counterpart’s reality by anchoring his starting point. Before you make an offer, emotionally anchor them by saying how bad it will be. When you get to numbers, set an extreme anchor to make your “real” offer seem reasonable, or use a range to seem less aggressive. The real value of anything depends on what vantage point you’re looking at it from.

■ People will take more risks to avoid a loss than to realize a gain. Make sure your counterpart sees that there is something to lose by inaction.

CHAPTER 7 | CREATE THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
How to Calibrate Questions to Transform Conflict into Collaboration

THERE IS ALWAYS A TEAM ON THE OTHER SIDE 

SUSPEND UNBELIEF 
The genius of this technique is really well explained by something that the psychologist Kevin Dutton says in his book Split-Second Persuasion. 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.

If you don’t ever get off that dynamic, you end up having showdowns, as each side tries to impose its point of view. You get two hard skulls banging against each other, like in Dos Palmas. But if you can get the other side to drop their unbelief, you can slowly work them to your point of view on the back of their energy, just like the drug dealer’s question got the kidnapper to volunteer to do what the drug dealer wanted. You don’t directly persuade them to see your ideas. Instead, you ride them to your ideas. As the saying goes, the best way to ride a horse is in the direction in which it is going.

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.” Those words inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively.

But let me cut the list even further: it’s best to start with “what,” “how,” and sometimes “why.” Nothing else. “Who,” “when,” and “where” will often just get your counterpart to share a fact without thinking. And “why” can backfire. Regardless of what language the word “why” is translated into, it’s accusatory. There are very rare moments when this is to your advantage.

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. As always, tone of voice, respectful and deferential, is critical.

Otherwise, treat “why” like a burner on a hot stove—don’t touch it.

Having just two words to start with might not seem like a lot of ammunition, but trust me, you can use “what” and “how” to calibrate nearly any question. “Does this look like something you would like?” can become “How does this look to you?” or “What about this works for you?” You can even ask, “What about this doesn’t work for you?” and you’ll probably trigger quite a bit of useful information from your counterpart.

Even something as harsh as “Why did you do it?” can be calibrated to “What caused you to do it?” which takes away the emotion and makes the question less accusatory.

You should use calibrated questions early and often, and there are a few that you will find that you will use in the beginning of nearly every negotiation. “What is the biggest challenge you face?” is one of those questions. It just gets the other side to teach you something about themselves, which is critical to any negotiation because all negotiation is an information-gathering process.

Here are some other great standbys that I use in almost every negotiation, depending on the situation:

■ 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?

HOW NOT TO GET PAID

Let’s pause for a minute here, because there’s one vitally important thing you have to remember when you enter a negotiation armed with your list of calibrated questions. That is, all of this is great, but there’s a rub: without self-control and emotional regulation, it doesn’t work.

The very first thing I talk about when I’m training new negotiators is the critical importance of self-control. If you can’t control your own emotions, how can you expect to influence the emotions of another party?

To show you what I mean, let me tell you a story.

Not long ago, a freelance marketing strategist came to me with a problem. One of her clients had hired a new CEO, a penny pincher whose strategy was to cut costs by offshoring everything he could.

He was also a male chauvinist who didn’t like the assertive style in which the strategist, a woman, conducted herself.

Immediately my client and the CEO started to go at each other on conference calls in that passive-aggressive way that is ever present in corporate America. After a few weeks of this, my client decided she’d had enough and invoiced the CEO for the last bit of work she’d done (about $7,000) and politely said that the arrangement wasn’t working out. The CEO answered by saying the bill was too high, that he’d pay half of it and that they would talk about the rest.

After that, he stopped answering her calls.

The underlying dynamic was that this guy didn’t like being questioned by anyone, especially a woman. So she and I developed a strategy that showed him she understood where she went wrong and acknowledged his power, while at the same time directing his energy toward solving her problem.

The script we came up with hit all the best practices of negotiation we’ve talked about so far.

Here it is by steps:
1. A “No”-oriented email question to reinitiate contact: “Have you given up on settling this amicably?”

2. 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.”

3. Calibrated questions about the problem to get him to reveal his thinking: “How does this bill violate our agreement?”

4. 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?”

5. 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?”

6. 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?”

7. If none of this gets an offer of full payment, a label that flatters his sense of control andpower: “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.”

8. A long pause and then one more “No”-oriented question: “Do you want to be known as someone who doesn’t fulfill agreements?”

From my long experience in negotiation, scripts like this have a 90 percent success rate. That is, if the negotiator stays calm and rational. And that’s a big if.

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. That means biting your tongue and learning how to mindfully change your state to something more positive. 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.”)

KEY LESSONS 
Who has control in a conversation, the guy listening or the guy talking?
The listener, of course.
That’s because the talker is revealing information while the listener, if he’s trained well, is directing the conversation toward his own goals. He’s harnessing the talker’s energy for his own ends.

When you try to work the skills from this chapter into your daily life, remember that these are listener’s tools. They are not about strong-arming your opponent into submission. Rather, they’re about using the counterpart’s power to get to your objective. They’re listener’s judo.

As you put listener’s judo into practice, remember the following powerful lessons:

■ Don’t try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Aggressive confrontation is the enemy of constructive negotiation.

■ Avoid questions that can be answered with “Yes” or tiny pieces of information. These require little thought and inspire the human need for reciprocity; you will be expected to give something back.

■ Ask calibrated questions that start with the words “How” or “What.” By implicitly asking the other party for help, these questions will give your counterpart an illusion of control and will inspire them to speak at length, revealing important information.

■ Don’t ask questions that start with “Why” unless you want your counterpart to defend a goal that serves you. “Why” is always an accusation, in any language.

■ Calibrate your questions to point your counterpart toward solving your problem. This will encourage them to expend their energy on devising a solution.

■ Bite your tongue. When you’re attacked in a negotiation, pause and avoid angry emotional reactions. Instead, ask your counterpart a calibrated question.

■ There is always a team on the other side. If you are not influencing those behind the table, you are vulnerable.

CHAPTER 8 | GUARANTEE EXECUTION 
How to Spot the Liars and Ensure Follow-Through from Everyone Else

“YES” IS NOTHING WITHOUT “HOW” 

Calibrated “How” questions are a surefire way to keep negotiations going. They put the pressure on your counterpart to come up with answers, and to contemplate your problems when making their demands.

With enough of the right “How” questions you can read and shape the negotiating environment in such a way that you’ll eventually get to the answer you want to hear. You just have to have an idea of where you want the conversation to go when you’re devising your questions.

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.

Besides saying “No,” the other key benefit of asking “How?” is, quite literally, that it forces your counterpart to consider and explain how a deal will be implemented. A deal is nothing without good implementation. Poor implementation is the cancer that eats your profits.

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 issimply human nature. That’s why negotiation is often called “the art of letting someone else have your way.”

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.

On the flip side, be wary of two telling signs that your counterpart doesn’t believe the idea is theirs. As I’ve noted, when they say, “You’re right,” it’s often a good indicator they are not vested in what is being discussed. And when you push for implementation and they say, “I’ll try,” you should get a sinking feeling in your stomach. Because this really means, “I plan to fail.”

When you hear either of these, dive back in with calibrated “How” questions until they define the terms of successful implementation in their own voice. Follow up by summarizing what they have said to get a “That’s right.”

Let the other side feel victory. Let them think it was their idea. Subsume your ego. Remember:
“Yes” is nothing without “How.” So keep asking “How?” And succeed.

SPOTTING LIARS, DEALING WITH JERKS, AND CHARMING EVERYONE ELSE 

As a negotiator, you’re going to run into guys who lie to your face and try to scare you into agreement.Aggressive jerks and serial fabricators come with the territory, and dealing with them is something you have to do.

But learning how to handle aggression and identify falsehood is just part of a larger issue: that is, learning how to spot and interpret the subtleties of communication—both verbal and nonverbal—that reveal the mental states of your counterparts.

Truly effective negotiators are conscious of the verbal, paraverbal (how it’s said), and nonverbal communications that pervade negotiations and group dynamics. And they know how to employ those subtleties to their benefit. Even changing a single word when you present options—like using “not lose” instead of “keep”—can unconsciously influence the conscious choices your counterpart makes.

THE 7-38-55 PERCENT RULE 

In two famous studies on what makes us like or dislike somebody, UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian created the 7-38-55 rule. That is, only 7 percent of a message is based on the words while 38 percent comes from the tone of voice and 55 percent from the speaker’s body language and face.

While these figures mainly relate to situations where we are forming an attitude about somebody, the rule nonetheless offers a useful ratio for negotiators. You see, body language and tone of voice— not words—are our most powerful assessment tools. That’s why I’ll often fly great distances to meet someone face-to-face, even when I can say much of what needs to be said over the phone.

So how do you use this rule? First, pay very close attention to tone and body language to make sure they match up with the literal meaning of the words. If they don’t align, it’s quite possible that thespeaker is lying or at least unconvinced.

When someone’s tone of voice or body language does not align with the meaning of the words they say, use labels to discover the source of the incongruence.

Here’s an example:
You: “So we’re agreed?”
Them: “Yes . . .”
You: “I heard you say, ‘Yes,’ but it seemed like there was hesitation in your voice.”
Them: “Oh, it’s nothing really.”
You: “No, this is important, let’s make sure we get this right.”
Them: “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

This is the way to make sure your agreement gets implemented with no surprises. And your counterpart will be grateful. Your act of recognizing the incongruence and gently dealing with it through a label will make them feel respected. Consequently, your relationship of trust will be improved.

THE RULE OF THREE 

I’m positive that sometime in your life you’ve been involved in a negotiation where you got a “Yes” that later turned out to be a “No.” Maybe the other party was lying to you, or maybe they were just engaged in wishful thinking. Either way, this is not an uncommon experience. This happens because there are actually three kinds of “Yes”: Commitment, Confirmation, and Counterfeit.

The Rule of Three is simply getting the other guy to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation. It’s tripling the strength of whatever dynamic you’re trying to drill into at the moment. In doing so, it uncovers problems before they happen. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.

When I first learned this skill, my biggest fear was how to avoid sounding like a broken record or coming off as really pushy.

The answer, I learned, is to vary your tactics.

The first time they agree to something or give you a commitment, that’s No. 1. For No. 2 you might label or summarize what they said so they answer, “That’s right.” And No. 3 could be a calibrated “How” or “What” question about implementation that asks them to explain what will constitute success, something like “What do we do if we get off track?”

Or the three times might just be the same calibrated question phrased three different ways, like “What’s the biggest challenge you faced? What are we up against here? What do you see as being the most difficult thing to get around?”

Either way, going at the same issue three times uncovers falsehoods as well as the incongruences between words and body language we mentioned in the last section. So next time you’re not sure your counterpart is truthful and committed, try it.

THE PINOCCHIO EFFECT 

With Carlo Collodi’s famous character Pinocchio, it was easy to tell when he was lying: you just had to watch the nose. It turns out that Collodi wasn’t far off reality. Most people offer obvious telltale signs when they’re lying. Not a growing nose, but close enough. In a study of the components of lying, Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra and his coauthors found that, on average, liars use more words than truth tellers and use far more third person pronouns. They start talking about him, her, it, one, they, and their rather than I, in order to put some distance between themselves and the lie.

And they discovered that liars tend to speak in more complex sentences in an attempt to win over their suspicious counterparts. It’s what W. C. Fields meant when he talked about baffling someone with bullshit. The researchers dubbed this the Pinocchio Effect because, just like Pinocchio’s nose, the number of words grew along with the lie. People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder—too hard, as it were—at being believable.

PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR USAGE OF PRONOUNS 

The use of pronouns by a counterpart can also help give you a feel for their actual importance in the decision and implementation chains on the other side of the table. The more in love they are with “I,” “me,” and “my” the less important they are.

Conversely, the harder it is to get a first person pronoun out of a negotiator’s mouth, the more important they are. Just like in the Malhotra study where the liar is distancing himself from the lie, in a negotiation, smart decision makers don’t want to be cornered at the table into making a decision. They will defer to the people away from the table to keep from getting pinned down.

Our cabdriver kidnapper in the Philippines of Alastair Onglingswan used “we,” “they,” and “them” so rigorously early on in the kidnapping I was convinced we were engaged with their leader. I just never knew how literally true it was until the rescue. In the Chase Manhattan Bank robbery from Chapter 2, the bank robber Chris Watts consistently talked out how dangerous the “others” were and how little influence he had on them, all a lie.

THE CHRIS DISCOUNT 

People always talk about remembering and using (but not overusing) your counterpart’s name in a negotiation. And that’s important. The reality though is people are often tired of being hammered with their own name. The slick salesman trying to drive them to “Yes” will hit them with it over and over. 

Instead, take a different tack and use your own name. That’s how I get the Chris discount.

Just as using Alastair’s name with the kidnapper and getting him to use it back humanized the hostage and made it less likely he would be harmed, using your own name creates the dynamic of “forced empathy.” It makes the other side see you as a person.

Humanize yourself. Use your name to introduce yourself. Say it in a fun, friendly way. Let them enjoy the interaction, too. And get your own special price.

HOW TO GET YOUR COUNTERPARTS TO BID AGAINST THEMSELVES 

...Look at this closely: see how the mixture of mirroring and open-ended questions dragged out the information about Bruno’s financial problems, and then the “No” method exploited his desperation? It might not have been a great idea to use this method if there’d been another buyer, but with no one else it was a brilliant way to get Bruno to bid against himself.

KEY LESSONS 
Superstar negotiators—real rainmakers—know that a negotiation is a playing field beneath the words, where really getting to a good deal involves detecting and manipulating subtle, nonobvious signals beneath the surface. It is only by visualizing and modifying these subsurface issues that you can craft a great deal and make sure that it is implemented.

As you put the following tools to use, remember this chapter’s most important concept. That is, “Yes” is nothing without “How.” Asking “How,” knowing “How,” and defining “How” are all part of the effective negotiator’s arsenal. He would be unarmed without them.

■ Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands.

■ Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves.

■ Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are.

■ Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal.

■ Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.

■ A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open.

■ Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.

CHAPTER 9 | BARGAIN HARD 
How to Get Your Price 

WHAT TYPE ARE YOU? 

Your personal negotiation style—and that of your counterpart—is formed through childhood, schooling, family, culture, and a million other factors; by recognizing it you can identify your negotiating strengths and weaknesses (and those of your counterpart) and adjust your mindset and strategies accordingly.

Negotiation style is a crucial variable in bargaining. If you don’t know what instinct will tell you or the other side to do in various circumstances, you’ll have massive trouble gaming out effective strategies and tactics. You and your counterpart have habits of mind and behavior, and once you identify them you can leverage them in a strategic manner.

There’s an entire library unto itself of research into the archetypes and behavioral profiles of all the possible people you’re bound to meet at the negotiating table. It’s flat-out overwhelming, so much so that it loses its utility. 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.

Hollywood negotiation scenes suggest that an Assertive style is required for effective bargaining, but each of the styles can be effective. And to truly be effective you need elements from all three.

A study of American lawyer-negotiators1 found that 65 percent of attorneys from two major U.S. cities used a cooperative style while only 24 percent were truly assertive. And when these lawyers were graded for effectiveness, more than 75 percent of the effective group came from the cooperative type; only 12 percent were Assertive. So if you’re not Assertive, don’t despair. Blunt assertion is actually counterproductive most of the time.

And remember, your personal negotiating style is not a straitjacket. No one is exclusively one style. Most of us have the capacity to throttle up our nondominant styles should the situation call for it.But there is one basic truth about a successful bargaining style: To be good, you have to learn to beyourself at the bargaining table. To be great you have to add to your strengths, not replace them.

Here’s a quick guide to classifying the type of negotiator you’re facing and the tactics that will be most fitting for you.

1. ANALYST 

Analysts are methodical and diligent. They are not in a big rush. Instead, they believe that as long as they are working toward the best result in a thorough and systematic way, time is of little consequence. Their self-image is linked to minimizing mistakes. Their motto: As much time as it takes to get it right.

Classic analysts prefer to work on their own and rarely deviate from their goals. They rarely show emotion, and they often use what is very close to the FM DJ Voice I talked about in Chapter 3, slow and measured with a downward inflection. However, Analysts often speak in a way that is distant and cold instead of soothing. This puts people off without them knowing it and actually limits them from putting their counterpart at ease and opening them up.

Analysts pride themselves on not missing any details in their extensive preparation. They will research for two weeks to get data they might have gotten in fifteen minutes at the negotiating table, just to keep from being surprised. Analysts hate surprises.

They are reserved problem solvers, and information aggregators, and are hypersensitive to reciprocity. They will give you a piece, but if they don’t get a piece in return within a certain period of time, they lose trust and will disengage. This can often seem to come out of nowhere, but remember, since they like working on things alone the fact that they are talking to you at all is, from their perspective, a concession. They will often view concessions by their counterpart as a new piece of information to be taken back and evaluated. Don’t expect immediate counterproposals from them. People like this are skeptical by nature. So asking too many questions to start is a bad idea, because they’re not going to want to answer until they understand all the implications. With them, it’s vital to be prepared. Use clear data to drive your reason; don’t ad-lib; use data comparisons to disagree and focus on the facts; warn them of issues early; and avoid surprises. Silence to them is an opportunity to think. They’re not mad at you and they’re not trying to give you a chance to talk more. If you feel they don’t see things the way you do, give them a chance to think first.

Apologies have little value to them since they see the negotiation and their relationship with you as a person largely as separate things. They respond fairly well in the moment to labels. They are not quick to answer calibrated questions, or closed-ended questions when the answer is “Yes.” They may need a few days to respond.

If you’re an analyst you should be worried about cutting yourself off from an essential source of data, your counterpart. The single biggest thing you can do is to smile when you speak. People will be more forthcoming with information to you as a result. Smiling can also become a habit that makes it easy for you to mask any moments you’ve been caught off guard.

2. ACCOMMODATOR 

The most important thing to this type of negotiator is the time spent building the relationship. Accommodators think as long as there is a free-flowing continuous exchange of information time is being well spent. As long as they’re communicating, they’re happy. Their goal is to be on great termswith their counterpart. They love the win-win.

Of the three types, they are most likely to build great rapport without actually accomplishing anything.

Accommodators want to remain friends with their counterpart even if they can’t reach an agreement. They are very easy to talk to, extremely friendly, and have pleasant voices. They will yield a concession to appease or acquiesce and hope the other side reciprocates.

If your counterparts are sociable, peace-seeking, optimistic, distractible, and poor time managers, they’re probably Accommodators.

If they’re your counterpart, be sociable and friendly. Listen to them talk about their ideas and use calibrated questions focused specifically on implementation to nudge them along and find ways to translate their talk into action. Due to their tendency to be the first to activate the reciprocity cycle, they may have agreed to give you something they can’t actually deliver.

Their approach to preparation can be lacking as they are much more focused on the person behind the table. They want to get to know you. They have a tremendous passion for the spirit of negotiation and what it takes not only to manage emotions but also to satisfy them.

While it is very easy to disagree with an Accommodator, because they want nothing more that to hear what you have to say, uncovering their objections can be difficult. They will have identified potential problem areas beforehand and will leave those areas unaddressed out of fear of the conflict they may cause.

If you have identified yourself as an Accommodator, stick to your ability to be very likable, but do not sacrifice your objections. Not only do the other two types need to hear your point of view; if you are dealing with another Accommodator they will welcome it. Also be conscious of excess chitchat: the other two types have no use for it, and if you’re sitting across the table from someone like yourself you will be prone to interactions where nothing gets done.

3. ASSERTIVE 

The Assertive type believes time is money; every wasted minute is a wasted dollar. Their self-image is linked to how many things they can get accomplished in a period of time. For them, getting the solution perfect isn’t as important as getting it done.

Assertives are fiery people who love winning above all else, often at the expense of others. Their colleagues and counterparts never question where they stand because they are always direct and candid. They have an aggressive communication style and they don’t worry about future interactions. Their view of business relationships is based on respect, nothing more and nothing less.

Most of all, the Assertive wants to be heard. And not only do they want to be heard, but they don’t actually have the ability to listen to you until they know that you’ve heard them. They focus on their own goals rather than people. And they tell rather than ask. When you’re dealing with Assertive types, it’s best to focus on what they have to say, because once they are convinced you understand them, then and only then will they listen for your point of view.

To an Assertive, every silence is an opportunity to speak more. Mirrors are a wonderful tool with this type. So are calibrated questions, labels, and summaries. The most important thing to get from an Assertive will be a “that’s right” that may come in the form of a “that’s it exactly” or “you hit it on the head.”When it comes to reciprocity, this type is of the “give an inch/take a mile” mentality. They will have figured they deserve whatever you have given them so they will be oblivious to expectations of owing something in return. They will actually simply be looking for the opportunity to receive more. If they have given some kind of concession, they are surely counting the seconds until they get something in return.

If you are an Assertive, be particularly conscious of your tone. You will not intend to be overly harsh but you will often come off that way. Intentionally soften your tone and work to make it more pleasant. Use calibrated questions and labels with your counterpart since that will also make you more approachable and increase the chances for collaboration.

We’ve seen how each of these groups views the importance of time differently (time = preparation; time = relationship; time = money). They also have completely different interpretations of silence. I’m definitely an Assertive, and at a conference this Accommodator type told me that he blew up a deal. I thought, What did you do, scream at the other guy and leave? Because that’s me blowing up a deal.

But it turned out that he went silent; for an Accommodator type, silence is anger. For Analysts, though, silence means they want to think. And Assertive types interpret your silence as either you don’t have anything to say or you want them to talk. I’m one, so I know: the only time I’m silent is when I’ve run out of things to say.

The funny thing is when these cross over. When an Analyst pauses to think, their Accommodator counterpart gets nervous and an Assertive one starts talking, thereby annoying the Analyst, who thinks to herself, Every time I try to think you take that as an opportunity to talk some more. Won’t you ever shut up?

Before we move on I want to talk about why people often fail to identify their counterpart’s style. 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. After all, who wouldn’t make that assumption?

But while innocent and understandable, thinking you’re normal is one of the most damaging assumptions in negotiations. With it, we unconsciously project our own style on the other side. But with three types of negotiators in the world, there’s a 66 percent chance your counterpart has a different style than yours. A different “normal.”

TAKING A PUNCH 

PUNCHING BACK: USING ASSERTION WITHOUT GETTING USED BY IT 
When a negotiation is far from resolution and going nowhere fast, you need to shake things up and get your counterpart out of their rigid mindset. In times like this, strong moves can be enormously effective tools. Sometimes a situation simply calls for you to be the aggressor and punch the other side in the face.

That said, if you are basically a nice person, it will be a real stretch to hit the other guy like Mike Tyson. You can’t be what you’re not. As the Danish folk saying goes, “You bake with the flour you have.” But anyone can learn a few tools.
Here are effective ways to assert smartly:

1. REAL ANGER, THREATS WITHOUT ANGER, AND STRATEGIC UMBRAGE 

Marwan Sinaceur of INSEAD and Stanford University’s Larissa Tiedens found that expressions of anger increase a negotiator’s advantage and final take. Anger shows passion and conviction that can help sway the other side to accept less. However, by heightening your counterpart’s sensitivity to danger and fear, your anger reduces the resources they have for other cognitive activity, setting them up to make bad concessions that will likely lead to implementation problems, thus reducing your gains.

Also beware: researchers have also found that disingenuous expressions of unfelt anger—you know, faking it—backfire, leading to intractable demands and destroying trust. For anger to be effective, it has to be real, the key for it is to be under control because anger also reduces our cognitive ability.

And so when someone puts out a ridiculous offer, one that really pisses you off, take a deep breath, allow little anger, and channel it—at the proposal, not the person—and say, “I don’t see how that would ever work.”

Such well-timed offense-taking—known as “strategic umbrage”—can wake your counterpart to the problem. In studies by Columbia University academics Daniel Ames and Abbie Wazlawek, people on the receiving end of strategic umbrage were more likely to rate themselves as overassertive, even when the counterpart didn’t think so. The real lesson here is being aware of how this might be used on you. Please don’t allow yourself to fall victim to “strategic umbrage.”

Threats delivered without anger but with “poise”—that is, confidence and self-control—are great tools. Saying, “I’m sorry that just doesn’t work for me,” with poise, works.

2. “WHY” QUESTIONS 
Back in Chapter 7, I talked about the problems with “Why?” Across our planet and around the universe, “Why?” makes people defensive.

As an experiment, the next time your boss wants something done ask him or her “Why?” and watch what happens. Then try it with a peer, a subordinate, and a friend. Observe their reactions and tell me if you don’t find some level of defensiveness across the spectrum. Don’t do this too much, though, or you’ll lose your job and all your friends.

The only time I say, “Why did you do that?” in a negotiation is when I want to knock someone back. It’s an iffy technique, though, and I wouldn’t advocate it.
There is, however, another way to use “Why?” effectively. The idea is to employ the defensiveness the question triggers to get your counterpart to defend your position. I know it sounds weird, but it works. The basic format goes like this: When you want to flip a dubious counterpart to your side, ask them, “Why would you do that?” but in a way that the “that” favors you. Let me explain. If you are working to lure a client away from a competitor, you might say, “Why would you ever do business with me? Why would you ever change from your existing supplier? They’re great!”
In these questions, the “Why?” coaxes your counterpart into working for you.

3. “I” MESSAGES 
Using the first-person singular pronoun is another great way to set a boundary without escalating into confrontation.

When you say, “I’m sorry, that doesn’t work for me,” the word “I” strategically focuses your counterpart’s attention onto you long enough for you to make a point.

The traditional “I” message is to use “I” to hit the pause button and step out of a bad dynamic.When you want to counteract unproductive statements from your counterpart, you can say, “I feel ___ when you ___ because ___,” and that demands a time-out from the other person.
But be careful with the big “I”: You have to be mindful not to use a tone that is aggressive or creates an argument. It’s got to be cool and level.

NO NEEDINESS: HAVING THE READY-TO-WALK MINDSET 
We’ve said previously that no deal is better than a bad deal. If you feel you can’t say “No” then you’ve taken yourself hostage.
Once you’re clear on what your bottom line is, you have to be willing to walk away. Never be needy for a deal.

ACKERMAN BARGAINING 

The Ackerman model is an offer-counteroffer method, at least on the surface. But it is a very effective system for beating the usual lackluster bargaining dynamic, which has the predictable result of meeting in the middle.
The systematized and easy-to-remember process has only four steps:
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.
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.

KEY LESSONS 
When push comes to shove—and it will—you’re going to find yourself sitting across the table from a bare-knuckle negotiator. After you’ve finished all the psychologically nuanced stuff—the labeling and mirroring and calibrating—you are going to have to hash out the “brass tacks.” For most of us, that ain’t fun.

Top negotiators know, however, that conflict is often the path to great deals. And the best find ways to actually have fun engaging in it. Conflict brings out truth, creativity, and resolution. So the next time you find yourself face-to-face with a bare-knuckle bargainer, remember the lessons in this chapter.

■ Identify your counterpart’s negotiating style. Once you know whether they are Accommodator, Assertive, or Analyst, you’ll know the correct way to approach them.

■ Prepare, prepare, prepare. When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall to your highest level of preparation. So design an ambitious but legitimate goal and then game out the labels, calibrated questions, and responses you’ll use to get there. That way, once you’re at the bargaining table, you won’t have to wing it.

■ Get ready to take a punch. Kick-ass negotiators usually lead with an extreme anchor to knock you off your game. If you’re not ready, you’ll flee to your maximum without a fight. So prepare your dodging tactics to avoid getting sucked into the compromise trap.

■ Set boundaries, and learn to take a punch or punch back, without anger. The guy across the table is not the problem; the situation is.

■ Prepare an Ackerman plan. Before you head into the weeds of bargaining, you’ll need a plan of extreme anchor, calibrated questions, and well-defined offers. Remember: 65, 85, 95, 100 percent. Decreasing raises and ending on nonround numbers will get your counterpart to believe that he’s squeezing you for all you’re worth when you’re really getting to the number you want.

CHAPTER 10 | FIND THE BLACK SWAN 
How to Create Breakthroughs by Revealing the Unknown Unknowns 

Black Swan theory tells us that things happen that were previously thought to be impossible—or never thought of at all. This is not the same as saying that sometimes things happen against one-in-amillion odds, but rather that things never imagined do come to pass.

Black Swans are events or pieces of knowledge that sit outside our regular expectations and therefore cannot be predicted.

This is a crucial concept in negotiation. In every negotiating session, there are different kinds of information. There are those things we know, like our counterpart’s name and their offer and our experiences from other negotiations. Those are known knowns. There are those things we are certain that exist but we don’t know, like the possibility that the other side might get sick and leave us with another counterpart. Those are known unknowns and they are like poker wild cards; you know they’re out there but you don’t know who has them. But most important are those things we don’t know that we don’t know, pieces of information we’ve never imagined but that would be game changing if uncovered. Maybe our counterpart wants the deal to fail because he’s leaving for a competitor. These unknown unknowns are Black Swans.

UNCOVERING UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS 

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.

But those were not the only important lessons of that tragic event. If an overreliance on known knowns can shackle a negotiator to assumptions that prevent him from seeing and hearing all that a situation presents, then perhaps an enhanced receptivity to the unknown unknowns can free that same negotiator to see and hear the things that can produce dramatic breakthroughs.

Finding Blacks Swans is no easy task, of course. We are all to some degree blind. We do not know what is around the corner until we turn it. By definition we do not know what we don’t know.

That’s why I say that finding and understanding Black Swans requires a change of mindset. You have to open up your established pathways and embrace more intuitive and nuanced ways of listening.

This is vital to people of all walks of life, from negotiators to inventors and marketers. What you don’t know can kill you, or your deal. But to find it out is incredibly difficult. The most basic challenge is that people don’t know the questions to ask the customer, the user . . . the counterpart. Unless correctly interrogated, most people aren’t able to articulate the information you want. The world didn’t tell Steve Jobs that it wanted an iPad: he uncovered our need, that Black Swan, without us knowing the information was there.

The problem is that conventional questioning and research techniques are designed to confirm known knowns and reduce uncertainty. They don’t dig into the unknown.

THE THREE TYPES OF LEVERAGE 
At a taxonomic level, there are three kinds: Positive, Negative, and Normative.

POSITIVE LEVERAGE 

Positive leverage is quite simply your ability as a negotiator to provide—or withhold—things that your counterpart wants. Whenever the other side says, “I want . . .” as in, “I want to buy your car,” you have positive leverage.
When they say that, you have power: you can make their desire come true; you can withhold it and thereby inflict pain; or you can use their desire to get a better deal with another party.

NEGATIVE LEVERAGE 

Negative leverage is what most civilians picture when they hear the word “leverage.” It’s a negotiator’s ability to make his counterpart suffer. And it is based on threats: you have negative leverage if you can tell your counterpart, “If you don’t fulfill your commitment/pay your bill/etc., I will destroy your reputation.”

This sort of leverage gets people’s attention because of a concept we’ve discussed: loss aversion. As effective negotiators have long known and psychologists have repeatedly proved, potential losses loom larger in the human mind than do similar gains. Getting a good deal may push us toward making a risky bet, but saving our reputation from destruction is a much stronger motivation.

So what kind of Black Swans do you look to be aware of as negative leverage? Effective negotiators look for pieces of information, often obliquely revealed, that show what is important to their counterpart: Who is their audience? What signifies status and reputation to them? What most worries them? To find this information, one method is to go outside the negotiating table and speak to a third party that knows your counterpart. The most effective method is to gather it from interactions with your counterpart.

NORMATIVE LEVERAGE 

Every person has a set of rules and a moral framework.

Normative leverage is using the other party’s norms and standards to advance your position. If you can show inconsistencies between their beliefs and their actions, you have normative leverage. No one likes to look like a hypocrite.

For example, if your counterpart lets slip that they generally pay a certain multiple of cash flow when they buy a company, you can frame your desired price in a way that reflects that valuation.

Discovering the Black Swans that give you normative valuation can be as easy as asking what your counterpart believes and listening openly. You want to see what language they speak, and speak it back to them.

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.

Once you’ve understood your counterpart’s worldview, you can build influence.

While the importance of “knowing their religion” should be clear from Watson’s story, here are two tips for reading religion correctly:

■ Review everything you hear. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with your team members. You will often discover new information that will help you advance the negotiation.

■ Use backup listeners whose only job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss.

In other words: listen, listen again, and listen some more.

We’ve seen how a holistic understanding of your counterpart’s “religion” — a huge Black Swan — can provide normative leverage that leads to negotiating results. But there are other ways in which learning your counterpart’s “religion” enables you to achieve better outcomes.

RELIGION AS A REASON 

Research studies have shown that people respond favorably to requests made in a reasonable tone of voice and followed with a “because” reason.

In a famous study from the late 1970s, Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer and her colleagues approached people waiting for copy machines and asked if they could cut the line. Sometimes they gave a reason; sometimes they didn’t. What she found was crazy: without her giving a reason, 60 percent let her through, but when she did give one, more than 90 percent did. And it didn’t matter if the reason made sense. (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I cut in line because I have to make copies?” worked great.) People just responded positively to the framework.

While idiotic reasons worked with something simple like photocopying, on more complicated issues you can increase your effectiveness by offering reasons that reference your counterpart’s religion. Had that Christian CEO offered me a lowball offer when he agreed to hire my firm, I might have answered, “I’d love to but I too have a duty to be a responsible steward of my resources.”

IT’S NOT CRAZY, IT’S A CLUE 
In their great book Negotiation Genius, Harvard Business School professors Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman provide a look at the common reasons negotiators mistakenly call their counterparts crazy. I’d like to talk through them here.

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. There’s a great computer industry term for this: GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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. Such constraints can make the sanest counterpart seem irrational. The other side might not be able to do something because of legal advice, or because of promises already made, or even to avoid setting a precedent. Or they may just not have the power to close the deal.

MISTAKE #3: THEY HAVE OTHER INTERESTS

Think back to William Griffin, the first man ever to kill a hostage on deadline. What the FBI and police negotiators on the scene simply did not know was that his main interest was not negotiating a deal to release the hostages for money. He wanted to be killed by a cop. Had they been able to dig up that hidden interest, they might have been able to avoid some of that day’s tragedy.
The presence of hidden interests isn’t as rare as you might think. Your counterpart will often reject offers for reasons that have nothing to do with their merits.

GET FACE TIME 

Black Swans are incredibly hard to uncover if you’re not literally at the table.

OBSERVE UNGUARDED MOMENTS 
While you have to get face time, formal business meetings, structured encounters, and planned negotiating sessions are often the least revealing kinds of face time because these are the moments when people are at their most guarded.

Hunting for Black Swans is also effective during unguarded moments at the fringes, whether at meals like my client had with his Coca-Cola contact, or the brief moments of relaxation before or after formal interactions.

During a typical business meeting, the first few minutes, before you actually get down to business, and the last few moments, as everyone is leaving, often tell you more about the other side than anything in between. That’s why reporters have a credo to never turn off their recorders: you always get the best stuff at the beginning and the end of an interview.

Also pay close attention to your counterpart during interruptions, odd exchanges, or anything that interrupts the flow. When someone breaks ranks, people’s façades crack just a little. Simply noticing whose cracks and how others respond verbally and nonverbally can reveal a gold mine.

KEY LESSONS 
What we don’t know can kill us or our deals. But uncovering it can totally change the course of a negotiation and bring us unexpected success.
Finding the Black Swans—those powerful unknown unknowns—is intrinsically difficult, however, for the simple reason that we don’t know the questions to ask. Because we don’t know what the treasure is, we don’t know where to dig.
Here are some of the best techniques for flushing out the Black Swans—and exploiting them.
Remember, your counterpart might not even know how important the information is, or even that they shouldn’t reveal it. So keep pushing, probing, and gathering information.

■ Let what you know—your known knowns—guide you but not blind you. Every case is new, so remain flexible and adaptable. Remember the Griffin bank crisis: no hostagetaker had killed a hostage on deadline, until he did.

■ Black Swans are leverage multipliers. Remember the three types of leverage: positive (the ability to give someone what they want); negative (the ability to hurt someone); and normative (using your counterpart’s norms to bring them around).

■ Work to understand the other side’s “religion.” Digging into worldviews inherently implies moving beyond the negotiating table and into the life, emotional and otherwise, of your counterpart. That’s where Black Swans live.

■ Review everything you hear from your counterpart. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with team members. Use backup listeners whose job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss.

■ Exploit the similarity principle. People are more apt to concede to someone they share a cultural similarity with, so dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground.

■ When someone seems irrational or crazy, they most likely aren’t. Faced with this situation, search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad information.

■ Get face time with your counterpart. Ten minutes of face time often reveals more than days of research. Pay special attention to your counterpart’s verbal and nonverbal communication at unguarded moments—at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line.