Episode 17: Never Split the Difference
Hello and welcome to Episode 17 of Metamorphosis, featuring the book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz.
Chris Voss is the former lead international kidnapping negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CEO of the Black Swan Group Ltd. He cut his negotiation teeth by volunteering at a Suicide Hotline, and later got trained by the FBI, Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. With around 24 years at the Bureau, he adopted and engineered a system that worked when it came to successfully resolve kidnappings.
Soon he realised that with an arsenal of negotiation techniques deployed from high-stakes field practices and a deep understanding of human psychology, one would hold the keys to unlocking profitable human interactions in every domain, interaction and relationship in life.
Coupled with the launch of the field of behavioural economics, by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, showing that man is a very irrational beast. The skills and techniques in the book are laser-focused on the animal, irrational and inchoate emotional beliefs of our counterparts.
In other words, the centrepiece of this book is in the guise of Tactical Empathy.
Inevitably, the book does a deep dive into all the nuances, but at the core, it shows how negotiation is at the heart of collaboration. Starting with refined techniques, specific tools, turn of the phrase and the build-up to the final act.
My first takeaway is that Empathy is a powerful mood enhancer.
By employing active listening, mirroring (isopraxism) one can establish a rapport that leads to trust. It signals to another’s unconscious, “You and I are alike.” By repeating back what people say, you trigger the mirroring instinct, and your counterpart will elaborate on what was just said in the process of connecting.
Using Tactical Empathy to identify and influence emotions rather than deny or ignore them helps focus on validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it.
Asking calibrated questions buys you time and gives your counterpart the illusion of control. “How am I supposed to do that?” (queries that the other side can respond to but that have no fixed answers.)
Spotting your counterpart’s feelings, turning them into words and then very calmly and respectfully repeating their emotions back to them. That’s called Labeling, the phenomenon of applying rational words to a fear- disrupting its raw intensity.
Begins with roughly the same words: It sounds like…. It looks like….The amygdala, a part in the middle of the brain that is involved with processing emotions associated with fear, begins to soften once the negative reactions are brought into the open by labels.
My second takeaway is that “No” is not a failure. Used strategically it’s an answer that opens the path forward. A Yes and maybe are often worthless. But No always alters the conversation.
As Mark Cuban says, Every No gets us closer to a Yes. Don’t mistake and conflate the positive value of Yes in general with the value of the final Yes in a negotiation.
Mislabeling emotions or desires, allows us to force them to listen and makes them comfortable by correcting you.
The way to extract information is by getting the other party to disagree, draw their own boundaries and define the desires as a function of what they don’t want.
Get people to say no early. What about this doesn’t work for you or What would you need to make it work?
My final takeaway is from the use of the F-bomb.
We are often limited by the ‘I am normal’ paradox. That is, our hypothesis that the world should look to others as it looks to us. But while this is innocent, it is one of the most damaging assumptions.
Approaching a negotiation with the misconception of similar worldviews leads to projecting your style on the other side. There’s a 66% chance that your counterpart has a different worldview.
The use of the F-word Fair is a surrogate for exploiting the other side on the defensive and gain concessions. By tactical usage of the word, you can bend someone’s reality and anchor their starting point.
“We just want what’s fair.” Use it when you are accused of being dense, “We’ve given you a fair offer.
“I want you to feel like you 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.
As we come to the end of this episode, like always, leaving you with some words to live by:
“To disagree without being disagreeable is the most guarded secret of negotiation.”
