In my journey to learn about mediation, I thought Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes was gospel—until I happened to read Chris Voss’ Never Split the Difference, Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
Voss was a top-level hostage negotiator who dealt with every manner of bad guy. In his cases, there were no win-win situations and he couldn’t exactly agree to split the difference and let the terrorist kill two of four hostages. He boasts of humiliating the Harvard-based Fisher and Ury guys. The book’s a great read with lots of practical ideas.
He doesn’t pull any punches:
“I’m here to call bull---- on compromise right now. We don’t compromise because it’s right; we compromise because it’s 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”.
A few other take-away points:
1.Forget trying to get people to say yes. Start by getting them to say no. “Yes” is often said just to make someone go away. “No” often just means, I’m not comfortable with it. . .yet. “No” should be the beginning of the negotiation because it makes the speaker feel safe and in control.
Voss writes, “The sooner you say no, the sooner you’re willing to see options and opportunities that you were blind to previously.”
Voss calls it a “liberating moment that every negotiator needs to reach.”
2. Diverging from Fisher and Ury, Voss emphasizes emotions over logic. He cites the research and his years of super-high-stakes negotiation to conclude that all of us are irrational and that emotion is not only desirable for decision making, but essential:
“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.”
3. From his early work on a suicide hotline, Voss learned that the negotiator who sees himself as the conquering hero, “as Russell Crowe in Gladiator,” is the worst because his style is “all me, me, ego, ego, ego.” A good negotiator gets the other party to feel safe and in control by understanding their needs and desires. But the guy listening is the guy actually in control of a conversation. The skilled listener directs the conversation toward their own goals.
4. Use big open questions like, “What about this is important to you?” and “How can we solve this problem?” Voss calls them calibrated questions, that make the other party feel in control even while you remain in charge by framing the conversation.
5. “Review everything you hear from your counterpart,” Voss writes. You may not fully understand everything the first time you hear it. Use back-up listeners to help you hear between the lines.
6. Mirroring is “a Jedi mind trick” to show respect and still disagree. By repeating the last few words someone else said we show understanding and empathy. Coupled with a question, it helps the speaker refocus. Labelling is summarizing a speaker’s position from their viewpoint, saying, “It seems like. . .” If the speaker says, “That’s right,” you’ve made genuine progress.
7. Appropriate use of tone, pauses and silence can have huge impact. Voss talks about when and how to use “The Late-Night FM DJ Voice.”
8. “Slow. It. Down.” Voss says when negotiators hurry, people end up feeling they’ve not been heard. They don’t feel they have the safety and the control they need to make a real deal. Give yourself plenty of time when you have a tough case. “Deadlines are the bogeymen of negotiation, almost exclusively self-inflicted figments of our imagination, unnecessarily unsettling us for no good reason,” Voss writes.
9. “Taking the sting out” is Voss’ term for how trial lawyers front their tough issues. The same technique works in negotiation by taking the other’s sides worst accusations out of their mouths when you say them first.
10. The word “fair” can be messy, emotional and destructive. It has to be used with extreme care. He describes how it is often used manipulatively and how to preempt the problem by telling the other side to stop him right away if they ever feel he is not being fair.
11. Go in with a very carefully prepared negotiation plan. Plan your moves to reach “an ambitious but legitimate goal.” Plan your tactics.
12. In tough negotiations, there are plenty of tough offers. Be ready to take a punch in the mouth. Be ready to turn it around.
13. “Humanize yourself,” Voss writes. “Use your name to introduce yourself. Say it in a fun, friendly way. . .humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.” Once, trying to get on a sold-out flight, he charmingly asked for “The Chris Discount.”
Voss has plenty of hair-raising stories. He doesn’t really reject basic Fisher and Ury principles but he emphasizes understanding and respecting your opponent no matter how ill-informed or even crazy they seem.
These closing words from the book should be our daily mantra:
“You’re going to have to embrace regular, thoughtful conflict as the basis of effective negotiation—and of life. . .[T]he adversary is the situation and. . .the person that you appear to be in conflict with is actually your partner.”
He doesn’t pull any punches:
“I’m here to call bull---- on compromise right now. We don’t compromise because it’s right; we compromise because it’s 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”.
A few other take-away points:
1.Forget trying to get people to say yes. Start by getting them to say no. “Yes” is often said just to make someone go away. “No” often just means, I’m not comfortable with it. . .yet. “No” should be the beginning of the negotiation because it makes the speaker feel safe and in control.
Voss writes, “The sooner you say no, the sooner you’re willing to see options and opportunities that you were blind to previously.”
Voss calls it a “liberating moment that every negotiator needs to reach.”
2. Diverging from Fisher and Ury, Voss emphasizes emotions over logic. He cites the research and his years of super-high-stakes negotiation to conclude that all of us are irrational and that emotion is not only desirable for decision making, but essential:
“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.”
3. From his early work on a suicide hotline, Voss learned that the negotiator who sees himself as the conquering hero, “as Russell Crowe in Gladiator,” is the worst because his style is “all me, me, ego, ego, ego.” A good negotiator gets the other party to feel safe and in control by understanding their needs and desires. But the guy listening is the guy actually in control of a conversation. The skilled listener directs the conversation toward their own goals.
4. Use big open questions like, “What about this is important to you?” and “How can we solve this problem?” Voss calls them calibrated questions, that make the other party feel in control even while you remain in charge by framing the conversation.
5. “Review everything you hear from your counterpart,” Voss writes. You may not fully understand everything the first time you hear it. Use back-up listeners to help you hear between the lines.
6. Mirroring is “a Jedi mind trick” to show respect and still disagree. By repeating the last few words someone else said we show understanding and empathy. Coupled with a question, it helps the speaker refocus. Labelling is summarizing a speaker’s position from their viewpoint, saying, “It seems like. . .” If the speaker says, “That’s right,” you’ve made genuine progress.
7. Appropriate use of tone, pauses and silence can have huge impact. Voss talks about when and how to use “The Late-Night FM DJ Voice.”
8. “Slow. It. Down.” Voss says when negotiators hurry, people end up feeling they’ve not been heard. They don’t feel they have the safety and the control they need to make a real deal. Give yourself plenty of time when you have a tough case. “Deadlines are the bogeymen of negotiation, almost exclusively self-inflicted figments of our imagination, unnecessarily unsettling us for no good reason,” Voss writes.
9. “Taking the sting out” is Voss’ term for how trial lawyers front their tough issues. The same technique works in negotiation by taking the other’s sides worst accusations out of their mouths when you say them first.
10. The word “fair” can be messy, emotional and destructive. It has to be used with extreme care. He describes how it is often used manipulatively and how to preempt the problem by telling the other side to stop him right away if they ever feel he is not being fair.
11. Go in with a very carefully prepared negotiation plan. Plan your moves to reach “an ambitious but legitimate goal.” Plan your tactics.
12. In tough negotiations, there are plenty of tough offers. Be ready to take a punch in the mouth. Be ready to turn it around.
13. “Humanize yourself,” Voss writes. “Use your name to introduce yourself. Say it in a fun, friendly way. . .humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.” Once, trying to get on a sold-out flight, he charmingly asked for “The Chris Discount.”
Voss has plenty of hair-raising stories. He doesn’t really reject basic Fisher and Ury principles but he emphasizes understanding and respecting your opponent no matter how ill-informed or even crazy they seem.
These closing words from the book should be our daily mantra:
“You’re going to have to embrace regular, thoughtful conflict as the basis of effective negotiation—and of life. . .[T]he adversary is the situation and. . .the person that you appear to be in conflict with is actually your partner.”