Never Split The Difference
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Our approach to negotiation holds the keys to unlock profitable human interactions in every domain, every interaction and every relationship in our life.
No matter how much you dress negotiation up as mathematics and logic, we are fundamentally animals reacting to our most deeply held invisible fears, needs, perceptions and desires.
Life is negotiation. The majority of our interactions are negotiations that boil down to the simple, animalistic expression: I want.
🎨 Impressions
A very well-written book, with great stories from Voss’s time in the FBI. This book will teach you to reclaim control of the conversations that inform your life and career.
How I Discovered It
This was recommended as one of Ali’s top books in 2021. I had seen it advertised in best-seller lists but never wanted to read it until his recommendation. I thought it would be generic and explain one point over and over. But it was actually the opposite. The book developed it’s ideas throughout and was very actionable and specific.
Who Should Read It?
If you want to have more interesting conversations. If you run your own business and are involved in pivotal decisions.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Negotiation is nothing more than communication with results.
📒 Summary + Notes
Negotiation serves 2 vital life functions: 1. Information Gathering 2. Behaviour Influencing
It’s communication with results.
Be A Mirror:
Have a mindset of discovery. Your goal at the outset is to extract and observe as much information as possible.
The goal is to identify what your counterparts actually need (monetarily, emotionally or otherwise) and get them feeling safe enough to talk (especially about what they want.) Wants are easy to talk about as they represent the aspiration of getting out way and sustaining any illusion of control. Needs imply survival, the very minimum required to make us act and so make us vulnerable.
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.
People focus on what to say or do, but it’s how we are (our general demeanour and delivery) that is the easiest to enact and influence.
Most of the time you should use the positive/playful voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Light and encouraging. Relax and smile.
Another voice, is where you inflect your voice downwards. Talking slowly and clearly you convey one idea: you are in control.
Mirror their speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo, tone of voice. it’s a sign of bonding, establishing a rapport that builds trust.
Repeat the last 3 words (or critical words) of what someone has just said. By repeating you trigger this mirroring instinct and the counterpart will elaborate and connect.
Label Their Pain
Instead of denying or ignoring emotions, identify and influence them. Label emotions of others and their own. Once they are labelled they can talk about them without being wound up.
The more you know about someone, the more power you have.
Labelling is a way of validating someones emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels.
Always being with: It seems like, It sounds like, It looks like. Don’t lead with the word ‘I’ and it makes it sound like you’re more interested in yourself. Neutral statements encourage your counterpart to be responsive.
Acknowledge the negative and diffuse it. Say you know they are ‘scared’ and admit your mistakes.
Do an accusation audit - listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you.
Master No
Get your counterpart to say no - it helps them relax and more easily consider the possibilities. They will become more open to hearing what they have to say. It gives them the feeling of safety, security and control.
Ask: “What about this doesn’t work for you”
Persuade from their perspective, not ours. Start with their most basic wants.
We are all driven by the need to feel safe, secure, in control. Satisfy those drives.
Trigger The 2 Words:
The most important words in negotiation are actually ‘That’s right’
How to Trigger it:
Effective pauses - silence is powerful
Minimal encouragers - use simple phrases ‘Yes’ ‘Ok’ ‘uh-huh’ ‘I see’
Mirroring - listen and repeat back to them
Labelling
Paraphrase - say things back in their own words, shows them you understand
Summarise
Telling someone ‘you’re right’ and they get a happy smile on their face but leave them alone for 24 hours and they will change their mind as they haven’t agreed to what you said.
Bend Their Reality
If you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, unmet objectives - you can see what they are really buying - then you can sell them a vision of their problem that leaves your proposal as the perfect solution. A good babysitter sells not child care, but a relaxed evening. A locksmith - a feeling of security. A furniture salesman - cosy rooms for family time.
Know the emotional drivers and you can frame the benefits of any deal in language that will resonate.
Start with an accusation audit acknowledging all their fears. Anchor their emotions in preparation for a loss, as a result they’ll jump at a chance to avoid the loss (due to loss aversion)
Use specific numbers - numbers that end in 0 sound like guess-estimates not a thoughtful calculation
Offer something unimportant to you, but is to them.
Unexpected gifts introduce a dynamic of reciprocity - the need to answer your generosity in kind
Create The Illusion of Control
Get the counterpart to do the work for you and suggest your solution himself. Give them the illusion of control.
Ask an open-ended but calibrated question that forces the other guy to pause and actually think about how to solve the problem. Ask a “how” question.
What is important to you?
How can I help 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?
Guarantee Execution
Guide your counterpart to develop a better solution - your solution. By making your counterpart articulate implementation in their own words, you will convince them that the final solution is their idea. People always make more effort to implement their solution.
The 7-38-55 Rule: Body language is most important. Pay close attention to make sure their body language matches up with their words. Use labels to discover the source of incongruence. eg can you identify hesitation in their voice.
Rule of 3: Get the counterpart to agree to the same thing three times.
The Pinocchio Effect: Liars use more words than truth tellers. They use pronouns like ‘him, she, it’ instead of I to distance themselves. Liars speak in more complex sentences. They work harder at being believable.
Pronouns: The more they use ‘I, me my’ the less important they actually are.
Humanise yourself. Use your name to introduce yourself. Say it in a fun, friendly way. Let them enjoy the interaction.
The Black Swan
To uncover unknowns, unknowns, we must interrogate our world, must put out a call, and intensely listen to the response. Ask lots of questions. Read non-verbal clues and voice your observations.
To get leverage you have to persuade your counterpart that they have something real to lose if the deal falls through.
Show them their inconsistencies between their beliefs and actions, no one likes to look like a hypocrite.
Discover what they do not know and supply that information.
You always get the best stuff at the beginning and end of the interview.
