Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, by Chris Voss (with co-writing assistance from Tahl Raz) aims to provide a comprehensive guide to negotiation theory and strategy, giving you the tools you need to negotiate successfully.
Voss’s thesis is that good negotiation happens on the emotional level of the brain, not the rational level. Your job as a negotiator, Voss argues, is to practice and display empathy toward your counterpart by understanding their emotions, learning to see the situation from their point of view—and, ultimately, getting them to feel comfortable enough with you to let their emotional guard down.
Voss argues that most people have two basic emotional needs—to feel secure and to feel in control. Successful negotiators are those who can navigate these emotional truths and use them to tap into their counterpart’s real desires and fears.
The Rider and the Elephant: A Metaphor for Reason and Emotion?
Other writers have emphasized just how much emotion—not reason—drives our behavior. In The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006), author Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a human rider sitting atop an elephant to illustrate how the human mind works. The rider, representing reason, can do her best to attempt to direct the elephant. But the elephant, representing emotion, is far more powerful and has its own will; it will only comply with the rider’s commands if those commands are not in conflict with its desires. This metaphor closely tracks Voss’s view of human nature, as he argues that emotion is the primary influence over our behavior. Your negotiating success hinges on understanding the power of emotion to overwhelm reason—and harnessing that power to get what you want from your counterpart, just as a rider harnesses an elephant.
Voss advocates using calculated empathy—understanding someone else’s feelings to get what you want from them. Calculated empathy gives you crucial insight into why someone is behaving the way they are. Ultimately, according to Voss, you need your counterpart to feel emotionally safe with you—you want them to see you more as a partner than an adversary.
Voss outlines five calculated empathy techniques:
1. Active listening: Talk slowly and calmly to show that you’re concerned about how the other person feels. (Shortform note: Even small active listening gestures—like nodding your head, smiling, looking in your prospect’s eyes, and occasionally adding in short phrases like, “Got it” or “I see”—will make your counterpart feel as if you are listening to them.)
2. Using the right tone: Use a light and encouraging voice as your default tone to put your counterpart at ease. (Shortform note: Research supports the argument that tone can be crucial to achieving your goals, even in non-negotiation situations—and that using the wrong tone can lead to unfortunate consequences—for example, the highly gendered description of Hillary Clinton’s voice as “shrill” may have played a role in the failure of her presidential candidacy in 2016.)
3. Reflecting back: Repeat the last three words that the person has said in your next sentence. By imitating their speech patterns, you’re signaling to the other person not only that you’re hearing them, but also that you’re similar to them. (Shortform note: Reflecting back is closely related to the concept of familiarity. Someone who feels this sense of rapport or familiarity with you is far more likely to comply with your requests, because the social costs of saying “no” to a friend or even an acquaintance are much higher than they are for a stranger.)
4. Labeling: Identify and vocalize someone else’s emotions through phrases like, “It seems like you’re disappointed by what’s being offered.” (Shortform note: In Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, author Marshall Rosenberg identifies emotional labeling as an essential component of expressive nonviolent communication—a way of interacting with ourselves and others rooted in compassion and the conscious effort to avoid causing emotional harm.)
5. Accusation audits: List every bad thing your counterpart could say about you at the beginning of the negotiation, through phrases like, “You probably think I’m lowballing you on this offer, that I’m trying to cheat you, and that I don’t have any respect for your intelligence.” This triggers your counterpart’s innate empathy and makes them want to reassure you that you’re not as bad as you’ve portrayed yourself. (Shortform note: Although not specifically addressed by Voss, anticipating accusations could potentially be misused if you were to deliberately mislabel someone else’s perceptions of yourself, thereby tricking them into expressing empathy for you under false pretenses.)
In addition to making your counterpart feel secure and listened to through calculated empathy, Voss writes that you also need to make them feel like they have autonomy and control over the situation. You need to put them in the driver’s seat.
Voss says you can give your counterpart this feeling of autonomy by asking open-ended “how” or “what” questions.
For example, if you’re confronted with a price that’s too high or an offer that’s unreasonably low, you would respond with a simple, “How am I supposed to do that?” According to Voss, the key strategic benefit of open-ended questions is that they put your counterpart to work helping you. When you ask an open-ended “how” or “what” question, you’re putting the other person in a position where they’re providing solutions to your problems.
(Shortform note: In Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing author Douglas Van Praet writes that an effective tactic used by marketers is to give customers an active role in how they experience and consume a product. They will be more inclined to consume and purchase it, thinking that this is an intrinsic choice they’re making—but in fact, the positive associations were guided by external marketers.)
After you’ve displayed calculated empathy and put your counterpart in a relaxed emotional frame of mind, Voss writes that it’s important to elicit the proper responses from them. There are certain responses you do and don’t want to hear from your counterpart—even seemingly simple and routine responses like “Yes,” “No,” and “That’s right” each have very different emotional weight and mean very different things.
Voss writes that “Yes” is often the fool’s gold of negotiation. People often say “yes” just to get someone else off their back. A false “yes” does not signal any true agreement or commitment—it’s just a way to end a conversation with someone who’s being too aggressive and domineering.
(Shortform note: Why do we say “yes” when we really want to say “no?” Some psychologists think it has to do with our innate human instinct for reciprocity. We comply with others’ requests because we would want them to reciprocate and comply with our requests if the shoe was on the other foot. Simply put, we have an instinct to follow the Golden Rule and treat others as we would want to be treated. In Influence, Robert Cialdini calls this the Reciprocity Principle and argues that it was the glue that enabled social cohesion in early human communities. If another individual brought you some firewood, for example, bringing them some of your own firewood would help the two of you survive and make the overall clan or tribe stronger. This created networks of obligation among early humans that made it easier for the group as a whole to multiply and survive.)
To avoid the false “yes” and get a real, firm commitment from your counterpart, Voss argues that you need to do something that may seem counterintuitive—you need to get them to say “No.” Why? Because saying “no” makes your counterpart feel in control. When we say “no” to something, it is a way of setting boundaries and demonstrating our independence.
To get to “no,” Voss writes that you need to ask your counterpart questions that are designed to prompt negative answers. You can do this by 1) deliberately mislabeling their emotions or desires, forcing them to correct you, or 2) asking what they don’t want, giving them a free hand to draw their boundaries and establish their comfort zone.
Say “No” Without Damaging Your Relationship
In The Power of a Positive No, William Ury writes about the “positive no”—a way of saying “no” to people that doesn’t damage your relationship with them or hurt their feelings. Rather, the positive no is a self-empowerment tactic, a way of asserting your autonomy and confidently but respectfully refusing to comply with requests that you don’t want to. Rather than giving in by saying “yes” when you don’t want to, rudely and brisky saying “no,” or avoiding confrontation altogether, Ury recommends the positive no as a way to ground your refusal in mutual respect.
For example, if a colleague asks you to stay late at work to finish a project, a positive no would be, “I’m sorry, I can’t work late tonight. I recognize that the project is important and I’m fully committed to helping you. But I want to be home to read to my daughter at night, and I won’t be able to do that if I’m here at the office. Instead, why don’t I move some of my meetings around tomorrow and clear time during the workday so that you and I can finish this project?”
After you’ve set your counterpart at ease by giving them the freedom and autonomy to say “No,” you want to begin the process of bringing them around to your way of seeing things. Voss writes that two words from your counterpart can be a great signal that you’ve achieved this—“That’s right.”
When someone says “that’s right,” it means that they’ve come to embrace what you’ve said. They’re crediting you with seeing things their way and now feel that they’re dealing with someone who understands and respects their point of view. By saying “That’s right,” they’ve stated their position unequivocally—which you can now use to commit them to your preferred course of action. To get your counterpart to say “That’s right,” Voss recommends summarizing—putting their story into your own words to demonstrate that you really get it.
(Shortform note: Voss writes that “That’s right” gives you a window into someone else’s mind by providing you their self-confirmed view of the situation under discussion—which you can then use to commit them to your preferred course of action. This idea of using someone’s else’s stated commitments to steer them toward desired thought and behavior is closely related to what Robert Cialdini calls the Consistency Principle in his seminal 1984 book Influence. Cialdini argues that humans have an obsession with sticking to their guns—and that consistency is closely related to commitment. Once we’ve committed to a course of action or to a belief, we pressure ourselves to conform to that commitment, going through great mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that our current behavior and beliefs align with our past behavior and beliefs—even when they clearly don’t. This creates a valuable opening for you in a negotiation. If you can get your counterpart to make even a small commitment, you can potentially get them to make larger and larger ones.)
Voss writes that people’s behavior and thoughts in negotiations are primarily driven by their emotional needs for security and autonomy. As a negotiator, you need to know how to properly tap into those emotional needs and turn them to your advantage. You do this by switching up their perspective—showing them that by helping you achieve your desired solution, they will satisfy their own hidden wants.
Voss warns that your counterpart will often try to exploit your anxiety by using deadlines to trick you into suspending your rational judgement and pressuring you to make a deal. But Voss argues that deadlines are almost always arbitrary and flexible, and they rarely trigger the dreaded consequences people fear they will. As long as you’re committed to not negotiating against yourself to meet the deadline, this can work to your advantage—you can flip the table and force your counterpart to accommodate your deadline.
(Shortform note: Deadlines are important to negotiations in professional sports. In Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2004), author Michael Lewis describes how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane skillfully exploited Major League Baseball’s trade deadline in 2002 to acquire top players from other teams, while giving up little in return. Every year, the trade deadline created a time crunch in which losing teams with star players would be desperate to trade off their stars in the hopes of recouping at least something of value. This lowered the asking price for stars and gave Beane the opportunity to acquire players that he could never afford at the beginning of the season.)
Voss writes that you also need to take advantage of the powerful cognitive biases that shape how we receive information and determine our best interests. The main cognitive biases Voss addresses are:
(Shortform note: A variant on the framing effect is what’s known as the valence-framing effect. Research has shown that people hold their negative opinions—i.e. what they’re against— much more strongly and confidently than their positive opinions—what they’re in favor of. In other words, we seem to dislike what we dislike more than we like what we like. In one social psychology experiment, participants who expressed a preference for fictional political candidate A over candidate B showed a notable division in how they responded to information that their preferred candidate had engaged in corruption. Those who supported candidate A because they were pro-candidate A were more willing to abandon their support in light of this information; those who favored A because they were anti-candidate B were far more likely to dismiss the corruption allegations and even double down on their support for A.)
(Shortform note: In Influence, Robert Cialdini argues that loss aversion is closely tied to an idea called the Scarcity Principle. The Scarcity Principle makes things with limited availability more appealing to us. Thus, rare goods are expensive and abundant items are cheap. We’re more compelled to buy these goods because we instinctively fear that we’ll lose our opportunity if we don’t act immediately. You can use this principle to your advantage when negotiating by making your counterpart feel your offer has an element of scarcity.)
Even after you’ve gotten your counterpart to agree to your terms, there’s still one problem—how can you trust them to follow through? Beyond agreement, you need to lock in commitment and implementation.
Voss writes that asking open-ended questions keeps your counterpart engaged, but off-balance. They also force your counterpart to consider your position. This is crucial when ensuring implementation. By asking questions like “How can I do that?” or “How can we ensure that we follow through on what we’ve agreed to today?” you transform your counterpart into a partner helping you solve a shared problem.
(Shortform note: In Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury take a more rationalistic, less emotion-based approach to implementation. They argue in favor of negotiating agreements with the success measured against objective standards and performance indicators. When you use objective standards, such as market value or average salaries, you’re basing the agreement on principle instead of succumbing to pressure tactics or threats.)
Voss writes that you can observe your counterpart’s language cues and speech patterns to see whether or not this person is truly integral to the decision-making process. Specifically, Voss warns, be on the lookout for their use of pronouns. The person really in charge seldom says “I” or “me.” Instead, they deflect to third-party pronouns, saying things like, “We’ll have to see if that’s a realistic path forward for us” or “We’ll have to review internally before we can commit to anything.”
(Shortform note: A recent study out of the University of San Diego surveying over 90,000 conference calls found that CEOs who used first-person singular pronouns received a better response from investors, who found that the use of these pronouns demonstrated honesty, responsibility, and empathy. Conversely, those CEOS who leaned heavily on pronouns like “us” or “we” were more likely to be found by investors as craven, weak, and trying to evade accountability. This points to a possible difference between how leaders speak and how people interpret them, and may indicate a limitation of Voss’s theory, since leaders who are aware of people’s preference for “I” pronouns may use them for that reason, nullifying Voss’s technique.)
Sometimes, you’re going to come up against a dishonest or unscrupulous counterpart. Voss writes that liars tend to be more verbose and use more complicated, rambling sentences—hoping to draw your attention away from the web of dishonesty they’re weaving around you. He says they also use more distant, third-person pronouns like “they,” “them,” and “we.” They tend to avoid saying “I” or “me.” Psychologically, this helps the liar distance herself from the lie.
(Shortform note: Voss writes that liars rely heavily on third-person pronouns, but we’ve also seen that people in positions of power do the same thing to avoid being pinned down to a definite position. Both are examples of deflection, but they are not the same thing. If you’re talking to a CEO, for example, and you notice that she’s using a lot of third-person pronouns, you shouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that she’s lying or trying to mislead you. Instead, she may be trying to deflect in order to avoid being too tied down to any particular course of action—that’s her being strategic, not dishonest. In order to distinguish between the two scenarios, keep asking open-ended questions, watching for tonal and nonverbal cues, and listening for key bits of information that your counterpart might reveal.)
Voss writes that, beneath the offers and counteroffers that are part of any negotiation, there is a swirl of deep psychological currents that drives our hidden wants, fears, and desires—and those of our counterpart. Your job as a good negotiator is to construct an accurate psychological profile of your counterpart so that you can be better attuned to what they’re really looking for.
Voss identifies three main types of negotiator:
(Shortform note: Other analysts of negotiation have identified different negotiation styles. At Harvard’s Program on Negotiation blog, they list four main styles—Individualists, Cooperators, Competitives, and Altruists. Individualists are purely transactional, focused on their own return on the deal, and show little interest in helping their counterparts achieve their goals. Cooperators are those who strive to help all parties to a negotiation accomplish their objectives. Competitives are primarily concerned with relative outcomes, wanting above all to do better than their counterparts—whom they often see as competitors and even enemies. Altruists are a rare breed who are most concerned with ensuring that their counterpart gets what they want, even if doing so comes at their own expense.)
Voss cautions that you need to be prepared before you head into a negotiation—regardless of which type of negotiator you’re dealing with. That means you need to think about your open-ended questions, how you’re going to reflect back, and your labels before you go in. You may not need a script—but you do need a plan.
There are some specific dodge-and-counterpunch moves you can use when you’re facing down a seasoned negotiator.
(Shortform note: Some negotiation analysts have written that switching the conversation to non-monetary considerations can be an effective technique for negotiators dealing with a larger and more powerful counterpart. They suggest that you can restore some balance to the negotiating environment by appealing to principles like your counterpart’s sense of fairness and reputation or by emphasizing the unique non-monetary advantages you can offer—like agility, knowledge, or personalized service.)
(Shortform note: Many psychologists argue that anger itself is not a “positive” or “negative” emotion. When used appropriately, anger can power professional success and fuel personal creativity. Instead, the key is to harness that anger to serve useful purposes in situations where it can actually make a difference. This is another way to think of strategic umbrage—angry but in control.)
Finally, Voss stresses the primacy of having information. Indeed, he says that at their most fundamental level, all negotiations are exercises in information-gathering. But some pieces of information are easier to obtain than others. Voss writes that in every negotiation, there is some hidden piece of information that, if it were known, would completely transform the dynamic of the negotiation and the final outcome. He labels these Black Swans.
The most important pieces of information, according to Voss, are the unknown unknowns. These are the bits of information that we lack—and, crucially, don’t know that we lack. These are the Black Swans.
For example, let’s say you were looking to buy a house from someone. If, in the course of your negotiation with the seller, you discovered that they were facing some sort of external financial pressures (from a lawsuit or a job loss), you would have great leverage over them. This information would tell you that your counterpart was a highly motivated seller who would likely accept a heavily discounted offer from you. This is a Black Swan—something you didn’t know before, didn’t know that you didn’t know, and that completely reshapes the negotiating dynamic.
Voss highlights some important tactics for finding your counterpart’s Black Swan:
(Shortform note: Although Voss couldn’t have anticipated this when he published his book in 2016, the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for businesspeople to conduct in-person meetings and negotiations, with such gatherings largely moving to virtual platforms like Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Working with other people without the benefit of face-to-face interaction created a number of pitfalls, including inability to see the totality of a person’s body language (since they usually just appear as “talking heads’); difficulty of making direct eye contact, which inhibits trust-building; and a heightened awareness of racial, ethnic, age, and gender differences between ourselves and our counterparts, since videoconferencing enables us to simultaneously see ourselves and the other person—something that doesn’t happen with in-person interactions and that may subconsciously force us to lean back on stereotypes.
(Shortform note: The Similarity Principle can also be used for nefarious purposes, unfortunately. Con artists often practice a form of deception known as affinity fraud, in which they target and exploit members of their own age, racial, religious, or other identity group. Their exploitation is effective because their victims see the con artist as being someone like them, which causes them to feel a level of trust and let their guard down in a way they might not with someone they perceive to be an “outsider.”)
Voss writes that Black Swans also give us key insight into how our counterpart sees the world. Once you know this, you’ve cracked the code—you can speak to them fluently in a language they understand. This helps you avoid the mistake of thinking your counterpart is “crazy” just because you don’t understand their behavior.
(Shortform note: Voss’s argument that irrational or inexplicable behavior by a party in a negotiation is often the result of their poor information speaks to a concept known as information asymmetry. In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner write that information asymmetry occurs when information is unequally distributed between parties. This has major implications in a negotiation, in which experts will rely on knowing more than the other party to extract value from them.)
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, by Chris Voss (with co-writing assistance from Tahl Raz) aims to provide a comprehensive guide to negotiating theory and strategy, giving you the tools you need to negotiate successfully—whether you’re trying to get a raise at your job, buy a car at the right price, re-sign your lease at a reasonable rent, or any of the other everyday situations where we have to use negotiation to get what we want from somebody else.
Voss’s thesis is that good negotiation happens on the emotional level of the brain, not the rational level. He argues that human beings are inherently irrational and impulsive, willing to make decisions with incomplete information and disregard for their own basic material interests—if the decision satisfies a deeper emotional need. Your job as a negotiator, Voss argues, is to practice and display empathy toward your counterpart by understanding her emotions, learning to see the situation from her point of view—and, ultimately, getting her to feel comfortable enough with you to let her emotional guard down.
Understanding the emotional core of negotiation is the key to getting what you want from your counterpart, according to Voss. By tapping into your counterpart’s emotions—what they most desire to gain, what they most fear losing—you can get the decisive upper hand in any negotiation.
Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator, CEO and founder of The Black Swan Group (a firm that specializes in negotiation training), and adjunct professor at the University of Southern California and Georgetown University. During more than two decades with the FBI, Voss was the lead negotiator on several high-profile kidnapping and terrorism cases, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 TWA Flight 800 explosion, and the 2006 Jill Carroll kidnapping case in Iraq. He has appeared on television to discuss his experiences and theory of negotiation, including on CNN Newsroom, Fox and Friends, and The War Room With Michael Shure.
Tahl Raz is a business journalist who has worked as a collaborator for several leading non-fiction books on business, negotiation, networking, and management. Raz is an expert in editorial and digital content strategy who offers freelance consulting services for enterprises looking for engaging and action-oriented content. Besides Never Split the Difference, his other collaborations include:
Chris Voss at The Black Swan Group
Social Links:
Learn More:
Negotiation services at the Black Swan Group
“Talks at Google” with Chris Voss, May 23, 2016
TEDx University of Nevada talk with Chris Voss, March 18, 2019
MasterClass Live with Chris Voss, April 1, 2020
Never Split the Difference was published in 2016 by HarperCollins. The book was a commercial success and was a certified Wall Street Journal bestseller. Since publication, Voss has become a widely regarded expert in negotiation in popular media, and has made multiple appearances on podcasts, television shows, and filmed lectures.
While Never Split the Difference is not the only book to deal with negotiation tactics and strategy, it is notable for its primary author’s biography—a former top FBI hostage negotiator who teaches his readers to apply the skills he learned in that high-risk job to the world of everyday negotiation—as well as his fundamental theory of negotiation.
Voss’s book was seen as a direct challenge to Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (1981) by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, which had long been considered the go-to text for negotiation. That book’s philosophy is based on the premise that human beings can use the rational and logical parts of their brains to overcome raw emotion to assess risks, weigh tradeoffs and formulate deals that mutually benefit all parties. Voss’s text, on the other hand, argued instead that human beings are fundamentally emotional and irrational beings and that the secret to successful negotiation is mastering and manipulating your counterpart’s emotional impulses.
Besides Never Split the Difference, other significant negotiating texts include:
Never Split the Difference was seen as an important contribution to the literature of negotiation theory and strategy.
Readers appreciated that the book focused on practical examples, without devoting too much time to academic theories or complex analysis of human psychology beyond the simple observation that emotional intelligence—not mathematical problem-solving skills—is the cornerstone of successful negotiation. Publisher’s Weekly also praised the book for its user-friendly style and colorful anecdotes from Voss’s storied career as a hostage negotiator, which helped illuminate the book’s core ideas.
According to some Amazon reviews, however, other readers found the book repetitive and overly long. They argued that it was too heavy on anecdotes and storytelling and too light on negotiation ideas and principles. Some reviewers also found Voss’s rejection of long-held negotiating principles (like the titular splitting the difference, looking for win-win solutions, or “getting to yes”) was too dismissive and ignored real-world negotiating scenarios where these alternative approaches could yield superior results to his methods.
Voss begins by discussing the emotional component of negotiation and making the argument that tapping into your counterpart’s emotional drives and impulses is the key to getting what you want from them. He then highlights a range of tactics like listening actively, reflecting back, labeling, and calculated empathy that you can use to put your counterpart at ease and get them to let their emotional guard down. Voss argues that these tactics will put your counterpart in a position where they’re more willing to divulge crucial information that will give you the upper hand in the negotiation. He also analyzes the flaws of commonly accepted negotiating principles like “win-win deals” or “getting to yes,” before presenting some step-by-step scenarios for you to model your negotiation techniques from.
Throughout, Voss uses stories from his unique background as an FBI hostage negotiator and university professor to highlight the book’s main ideas and principles. He also uses hypothetical examples to give the reader a blueprint for how to apply his negotiation tactics in everyday situations.
In this guide, we’ve reorganized the chapters to improve general flow and readability. Specifically, we’ve merged the first three chapters of Voss’s book into one chapter since they all deal with the general topics of emotions, cognitive biases, and how to turn them to your advantage in a negotiation. We’ve also moved a section on cognitive biases that originally appeared in Chapter 1 of Voss’s book to Chapter 7. He addresses cognitive biases in both chapters, which is somewhat redundant and disrupts the logical flow of ideas. Thus, we’ve made the choice to consolidate this discussion in that later chapter. Finally, we’ve moved Chapter 7 to follow Chapters 1-3 because its discussion of safety and autonomy logically follows those chapters’ analysis of how negotiation is primarily emotion-based.
We’ve also supplemented Voss’s ideas with findings from outside research, incorporated the negotiation strategies of writers whose ideas differ from his, and added unique examples to clarify his points.
Voss argues that negotiation triggers fear and anxiety in many people. We worry about getting outmaneuvered by the other side, about not having enough information to make informed decisions, and about deadlines that pressure us into making bad deals. We also think that negotiation is something reserved for high-powered businesspeople and lawyers—not ordinary people like us.
But according to Voss, this is false. Negotiating is something we do every day. In fact, negotiation is taking place whenever you want something from someone else. It can be the major scenarios (buying a car, renting an apartment) but it can also be typical, daily stuff like getting your partner to take out the garbage.
In these chapters, Voss breaks down the mystique around negotiating by highlighting:
Voss’s core thesis of negotiation is that we as human beings are all inherently irrational and impulsive—willing to make decisions with incomplete information and disregard for our own basic material interests if the decision satisfies a deeper emotional need. He argues that most people have two basic emotional needs:
Successful negotiations, then, must navigate these basic emotional truths. As Voss discovered in the course of his career as a hostage negotiator, getting what you want from someone else—which, after all, is the standard for success in any negotiation—is more about heart than mind: You need to ask yourself emotion-questions to try and get a mental blueprint for how your counterpart thinks:
The Rider and the Elephant: A Metaphor for Reason and Emotion
Other writers have emphasized just how much emotion—not reason—drives our behavior. In The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006), author Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a human rider sitting atop an elephant to illustrate how the human mind works. The rider, representing reason, can do her best to attempt to direct the elephant. But the elephant, representing emotion, is far more powerful and has its own will; it will only comply with the rider’s commands if those commands are not in conflict with its desires. Thus, the rational part of ourselves can advise and guide our emotional core—but in a pure contest of wills, emotion will nearly always defeat reason.
This metaphor closely tracks Voss’s view of human nature, as he argues that emotion is the primary influence over our behavior. As Voss goes on to argue, your negotiating success hinges on understanding the power of emotion to overwhelm reason—and harnessing that power to get what you want from your counterpart, just as a rider harnesses an elephant.
This emotion-based theory of negotiation promoted by Voss stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by other writers in the field. What Voss describes as “old-school,” classic negotiation theory is premised on the idea that human beings are inherently rational. They are able to calculate what their optimal outcome is, with each step in the negotiation designed to bring them closer to that outcome. This school of thought imagines humans to be like computers, evaluating comparative advantages and disadvantages and making decisions based solely on those calculations.
Voss cites Roger Fisher and William Ury’s Getting to Yes as a classic of the genre. He says that Fisher and Ury’s theory holds that in negotiations, two parties engage in a mutual act of problem-solving, each of them trying to get to a “win-win” settlement that pleases both parties.
Win-win is based on compromise. It stipulates that negotiating counterparts should just look for common ground and seek terms that they can both live with. Voss writes that we’re taught from an early age to resolve disputes this way—compromising, meeting in the middle, and splitting the difference. For example, if someone is trying to sell you something for $2 and you only want to spend $1, you split the difference and pay $1.50 for the item.
On some level, Voss concedes, this feels fair and reasonable. Plus, it’s much easier to do this than really put in the effort to build a deep connection with the other person. However, Voss counters, real negotiations are seldom this cut-and-dry. For starters, some negotiations really are win-lose, zero-sum scenarios where an equitable and mutually beneficial solution is impossible—a win for the other person can only mean a loss for you. In an election between two candidates, for example, only one person can win—a vote for one means one fewer possible vote for the other. There’s no room for compromise, because it’s winner-take-all.
Besides, Voss writes, in real-world negotiations people are so overcome by emotion and impulse that they struggle to even identify what constitutes a “win” for them, let alone work with someone else to achieve one.
Instead of rational interest, argues Voss, you must learn to tap into your counterpart’s hidden reservoir of emotions, desires, and anxieties that truly drive their surface-level behavior.
Fisher and Ury on Emotion
Although Voss frames Fisher and Ury’s approach in Getting to Yes as overly rational and clinical, those authors do acknowledge the role that emotion plays in influencing our desires and perceptions.
Fisher and Ury argue that successful negotiators don’t ignore emotion—rather, they defuse emotions that hinder discussion. They encourage you to talk openly with your counterpart about your emotions and theirs. Critically, they urge that you acknowledge the other person’s emotions as legitimate and allow them to vent, but that you not react to an emotional outburst—instead, you should just sit and listen. With emotions thus acknowledged, say Fisher and Ury, negotiations can be less reactive and more proactive and people can more easily focus on the substantive issues at hand.
This empathy-first approach shares some similarities with Voss’s theory of negotiation. Ury and Fisher do not discount the importance of emotion, as Voss sometimes alleges they do. Indeed, they write that emotion must be acknowledged openly. They do, however, argue that emotions must be overcome so that both parties can move to a more substantive and rational negotiation.
Instead of “old-school” methods, Voss champions calculated empathy—understanding someone else’s feelings for the purpose of getting what you want from them.
Calculated empathy gives you insight into why someone is behaving the way they are. Once you have this understanding, it’s easier for you to display empathy to the other person. And once you reveal yourself to be an open-minded person who is willing to listen and who understands their perspective, your counterpart will begin to loosen up and feel more comfortable with you. According to Voss, they will come to feel emotionally safe with you—seeing you more as a partner than an adversary. This will make them far more willing to grant you access to their innermost thought processes and hidden desires—where the most valuable information lies.
And this is critical, because as Voss argues, your secret weapon in any negotiation is the quality of information you have. In fact, all negotiations are exercises in information-gathering. If the person on the other side of the table is driven by their emotional need for security and autonomy, your job is to figure out how you can take advantage of those needs to get them to reveal information that will give you the upper hand.
Empathy Leads to Emotional Intelligence
Other writers have explored the crucial role of empathy in human interaction. In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that empathy is one of the five core components of emotional intelligence, which he says may be more important to a person’s ultimate success in life than their intelligence quotient or IQ.
According to Goleman, empathy is the fundamental skill that allows us to interpret what others want or need. Empathy changes the way we look at the world: When other people are in pain, you work to understand their pain and help them through it. You also work to not cause people pain. Goleman argues that this is the essential root of all human morality—in other words, empathy makes you a better person.
Goleman writes that you can develop greater empathy by taking into account other people’s perspective and backgrounds and considering how that might influence their thoughts and behaviors.
Voss outlines five main tactics you can use to achieve calculated empathy:
According to Voss, active listening is a set of tools that skilled negotiators use to disarm their counterparts. It means making it clear to the other person that you’re truly hearing and understanding them.
Too often, we are only passively listening. We might be literally hearing the sounds of the other person’s words, but we’re not properly engaged with their thinking and their concerns. That means we’re missing important information and squandering an opportunity to show our counterpart that we care about what they have to say.
According to Voss, you can project active listening by talking slowly and calmly to show that you’re concerned about how they feel. In contrast, Voss urges the reader to think about how it feels when someone (like a salesperson or a politician in a televised debate) bombards you with lots of information all at once. You feel overwhelmed, not in control, and like they’re trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Voss describes this sensation as feeling like the other person cares more about what they’re saying than about listening to your concerns.
(Shortform note: Although Voss invokes a salesperson to demonstrate the failure to listen actively, sales experts increasingly encourage active listening. In Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling author Jordan Belfort argues that, in order to boost your sales output, it’s critical to practice active listening with prospects. Belfort writes that even small active listening gestures—like nodding your head, smiling, looking in your prospect’s eyes, and occasionally adding in short phrases like, “Got it” or “I see”—will make your prospect feel as if you are listening to them, and also help you from spacing out and reverting back to passive listening.)
Voss also argues that tone is crucial to calculated empathy. He writes that using different tones of voice can be like flipping an emotional switch that gets people cooperative and relaxed. According to Voss, there are three main negotiating voices to use:
Gender and Tone
The evidence seems to bear out Voss’s argument that tone can be crucial to achieving your goals, even in non-negotiation situations—and that using the wrong tone can lead to unfortunate consequences.
In a 2018 New York Times article, Jessica Bennett pointed out that words like “shrill” are used twice as often in media to refer to women than men—and that this highly gendered vocal criticism may have played a role in the ultimate failure of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016.
And in a 2018 BBC article, David Robson writes that women today speak at a measurably lower pitch than they did in the 1940s and 1950s. Comparative research that studied audio recordings of female voices from Australia in 1945 with female voices from the 1990s found that there was a drop of 23 Hz over five decades, from an average of 229 Hz to 206 Hz—which, he argues, is an audible difference in tone and pitch.
The researchers cited by Robson suggest that the deepening of female voices over the 20th century (and likely into the 21st century) may be a result of the influx of women into traditionally male-dominated social and economic roles over that time. This may have led them over time to adopt a deeper tone in an effort to put themselves on equal footing with their male colleagues—suggesting that, as Voss argues, adapting your tone can be an effective strategy for getting what you want.
Voss cites reflecting back as one of the most effective psychological tactics you can use. Essentially, it is imitation and repetition. You repeat the last three words that the person has said in your next sentence. It may sound simple, but there’s profound psychological meaning behind it.
Human beings are drawn to what’s similar and are distrustful of that which seems alien or different. By imitating their speech patterns, you’re signaling to the other person not only that you’re hearing them, but also that you’re like them.
Reflecting Back Makes People Feel Familiarity
Reflecting back is closely related to the concept of familiarity. We are more likely to be kindly disposed toward people who we believe to be similar to ourselves—and one way to display that familiarity is through imitation and repetition.
According to Robert Cialdini in Influence, this building of familiarity and rapport is closely connected to what he terms the Liking Principle—which stipulates that we’re more likely to comply with requests from people that we know and like, especially familiar figures like neighbors, friends, and family. Voss’s strategy of imitation makes sense when looked at from this perspective, because imitation is an easy way to establish rapport with another person—you’re literally copying what they're saying. According to Cialdini, someone who feels this sense of rapport or kinship is far more likely to comply with your requests, because the social costs of saying “no” to a friend or even an acquaintance are much higher than they are for a stranger.
And it makes sense, from an evolutionary and group cohesion perspective, why we would be more willing to comply with the wishes of people we know. Early human communities were extended kinship groups, where the survival of the individual was closely tied to the larger familial group. In this world of localized, tight-knit communities, helping people in your in-group was a valuable survival trait: you relied on them to help with the necessities of life, like food-gathering and child-rearing. The members of your kin group would also have probably been the only people you actually encountered. Thus, there evolved a strong propensity to assist individuals who were personally known to us.
Voss identifies labeling as another important calculated empathy technique. It’s identifying and vocalizing someone else’s emotion. This is a valuable shortcut to building intimacy, because it demonstrates insight and empathy on your part, builds essential rapport, and doesn’t require you to give up anything.
In order to label, you first need to identify the other person’s emotions. This requires being perceptive and on the lookout for physical and verbal cues. Things like nervous hand gestures or sweating, for example, are telltale signs of anxiety.
Once you’ve figured out what they’re feeling, vocalize what they’re feeling back to them. Voss advises negotiators to always phrase labels to begin with neutral, qualified, third-person statements like, “It seems like,” “It looks like,” or “It sounds like.”
Starting with third-party labels also gives you some plausible deniability. If the other person says that your emotional labelling of their anger, for example, is incorrect, you can always respond with something like, “I didn’t say you were angry. I said it seemed like you were angry.”
Labeling Empowers Us to Own Our Emotions
Labeling others’ feelings can be useful in a negotiation, as Voss writes. But there might be good reasons for you to take it one step further. In Nonviolent Communication, author Marshall Rosenberg writes that it’s also crucial to label your own feelings as part of expressive nonviolent communication—a way of interacting with ourselves and others rooted in compassion and the conscious effort to avoid causing emotional harm.
Taking it a step further, Rosenberg argues that it’s important not only to identify what you’re feeling, but why you’re feeling it as well. It’s important to acknowledge that your feelings stem from your own needs and expectations—not necessarily the actions of others. Marshall identifies three ways we deny responsibility for our emotions:
Using “it” and “that” to describe your reaction (like “That makes me nervous” or “It annoys me when you do that”), implying that something external is causing your feelings
Using a pronoun other than “I” after the phrase “I feel this emotion because....” This looks like “I feel sad because he didn’t show up” or “I feel annoyed because she isn’t here yet.”
Correctly labeling a feeling, but attributing it to someone or something else, like “When you forgot my birthday, I felt lonely.”
Note that we can also apply Rosenberg’s insights to Voss’s practice of labeling. If you see that your counterpart is evading responsibility for their emotions by saying things like, “That makes me uncomfortable,” you can use labeling to force them to own their feelings and face them down by responding, “It sounds like you’re uncomfortable.”
Voss writes that anticipating accusations is a twist on labelling, in which you label your counterpart’s negative emotions—but about you specifically. When anticipating accusations, list every bad thing your counterpart could say about you at the beginning of the negotiation. This defuses the situation immediately and puts it all right out there in the open.
This might sound like, “I know I didn’t hand in that sales report on time. You probably think I’m lazy, uncommitted, inattentive to detail, and that I don’t care about wasting your time or everybody else’s.”
According to Voss, you should then ask for input based on that list. This is where the tactic really works its magic. You’ll actually trigger their innate human empathy by making them reassure you that you’re not as bad as you’ve portrayed yourself. Your counterpart might respond to the above accusation audit by saying, “OK look, I don’t think you’re lazy or that you don’t care. This was definitely a mistake but let’s try and fix it.” Right away, you’ve reset the negotiating dynamic.
We all have an inherent need to forge some kind of connection to the person across the table. By anticipating their accusations, you’ve forced them to make the next move in building that empathy.
(Shortform note: Although not specifically addressed by Voss, anticipating accusations could potentially be misused if you were to deliberately mislabel someone else’s perceptions of yourself, thereby tricking them into expressing empathy for you under false pretenses. If you were to do this, some might find it to be dishonest and emotionally manipulative. By distorting their reality this way (for example, by painting a picture of yourself as being worse than you actually are), some might consider accusation audits to be gaslighting—a form of psychological manipulation in which you maneuver someone into questioning their perceptions of reality.)
To illustrate how these tactics might all play out together in a real-world scenario, we’ve created a brief dialogue between two coworkers (Paul and Jenna). Paul missed a very important meeting that Jenna had organized where they were meeting with a major prospective client for their company. Although the meeting went well without Paul, his absence meant that Jenna had to do the entire presentation by herself, which caused her a lot of stress and anxiety. In the dialogue below, we’ve explicitly labeled where each tactic is being used.
Paul (speaking in a light, empathetic tone): Hi Jenna. I heard you crushed it at the meeting with the Orient Point people yesterday. Great job taking them through the deck and answering all their questions. (Tactic #2: Use the Right Tone)
Jenna: Thanks for that Paul. It means a lot to me to hear that from you.
Paul: And look, I want to address me not being there. I had a childcare emergency—my daughter’s nanny had to leave early on short notice and my wife wasn’t able to come home to relieve her, so I had to leave work early. But I feel absolutely awful about leaving you in the lurch like that. After putting you in that position, I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you thought I was a completely uncaring, out-to-lunch, selfish colleague who has no respect for all the incredible work you do for the team. (Tactic #5: Anticipating Accusations).
Jenna. Look, we all have personal stuff that comes up and that can’t be helped. And for the record, no, I don’t think you’re a selfish or uncaring colleague. I just would’ve appreciated some kind of heads up before I went into that meeting having to carry it all on my shoulders.
Paul: I get that. (Tactic #1: Listen Actively). It sounds like you’re disappointed with what happened, and that’s totally ok and completely reasonable. (Tactic #4: Label). And you’re right, you shouldn’t ever have to carry it all on your shoulders. (Tactic #3: Reflect Back).
Jenna: I appreciate you saying that Paul, I really do. I’m glad it went well, and I’m excited to continue our partnership together.
Paul: Great, so am I!
Answer these questions to learn more about how other people think and feel.
Have someone else’s actions ever seemed perplexing to you because you didn’t know or understand what they really wanted? Describe the situation. In the future, how could you apply some of the tactics you’ve learned to uncover people’s real wants and needs?
Practice reflecting back. Write down what someone who was upset with you recently said to you. Now write a response, using the last 3 words in your reply. What do you say?
Practice an accusation audit. Remember a time when someone was unhappy with you. Now do an accusation audit: “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m…”
Voss’s fundamental theory of negotiation is that people are driven primarily by their emotional needs for safety and autonomy. They want to feel that they’re in good hands with you, and they want to feel like they’re not being manipulated or coerced into something they don’t want to do. Thus, your job in any successful negotiation first and foremost is to get your counterpart to a place where they feel secure and in control.
Up to now, we’ve seen how Voss addresses the “safety and security” part of emotional negotiation through calculated empathy tactics like active listening, tone, reflecting back, labeling, and accusation audits. In this chapter, Voss focuses on autonomy and making your counterpart feel like they’re in the driver’s seat. He explores:
(Shortform note: We’ve moved Chapter 7 to follow Chapters 1-3 because its discussion of safety and autonomy more naturally follows the analysis of how negotiation is primarily emotion-based and therefore sets up a more logical flow of ideas for the reader.)
Voss notes that autonomy is one of the most basic human emotional needs. As a good negotiator, your goal is to give your counterpart the illusion of control and lead them to your preferred outcome (while letting them think it’s their idea).
But how do you make them think they’re in the driver’s seat? Voss says you do this by asking open-ended “how” or “what” questions. These kinds of questions ask the other person for help in coming up with solutions, which gets them to start seeing the situation from your point of view. It's the first step in dissolving the confrontational, win-lose dynamic that too many negotiations naturally fall into.
For example, if you’re confronted with a price that’s too high or an offer that’s unreasonably low, respond with a simple, “How can I do that?” These straightforward, yet seemingly innocuous questions can be the golden key in a negotiation.
Voss recommends other good open-ended questions like, “How do you expect me to be able to follow through on that?” or “What are you hoping to accomplish?”
Voss notes that these “how” or “what” questions are different from more accusatory questions that begin with more loaded words like “why.” “Why” can be a very problematic word in negotiations, warns Voss. “Why” puts the onus on your counterpart, shines a light on them, and makes them feel like they’re in the hot seat—which takes them out of their comfort zone and into a place where they’re no longer in control. This is exactly where Voss says you don’t want them to be.
For example, think of the enormously different emotional weight between a non-open-ended “why” question like “Why would you say that?” and an open-ended “what” question like “What makes you say that?” The former is accusatory and borderline hostile; the latter is empathetic, welcoming of insight, and devoid of any emotional sting.
Asking the Right Negotiation Questions
Other negotiation experts back up Voss’s insights about asking open-ended questions, arguing that such questions are essential in order to glean valuable information from your counterpart. They warn that your counterpart will be reluctant to divulge information if they think you’re trying to exploit or take advantage of them, but asking the right kind of questions can prevent this.
Experts recommend asking questions that enable you to present yourself as someone trying to gather information for a mutually beneficial solution, rather than someone trying to outwit them in a zero-sum competition. They advise asking open-ended questions to elicit more comprehensive responses; interjecting with probing responses like “I see” or “Tell me more”; and asking neutral, non-leading questions (like “Can you tell me about your semiconductor sourcing?”), while combining them with explanations like, “We’ve found that some clients prefer having a standing meeting every month, whereas others prefer to schedule them on an as-needed basis. Could you give me some insight on which meeting structure works best for you and why?” The goal is to put your counterpart at ease so that they see you as a helper, not an adversary.
According to Voss, the key strategic benefit of open-ended questions is that they put your counterpart to work helping you. When you ask an open-ended “how” or “what” question, you’re putting the other person in a position where they’re providing solutions to your problems. In doing so, you’re leading them along to the conclusion that you want them to reach—all the while convincing them that your desired solution is their idea.
This also helps with the implementation of the decision. Your counterpart will buy into it and commit to it because they’ll think they came up with it. In this scenario, they’re the teacher and you’re the student. This gives them a powerful feeling of being in charge. But you’re really in control as the listener, because they’re giving you information you need.
Voss writes that open-ended questions also prompt longer answers from your counterpart—which, in turn, reveal key information. Your counterpart might reveal what they really desire out of a negotiation or what a potential dealbreaker might be. They might also reveal the challenges they face in actually delivering on the terms you’re negotiating (like, for example, a salesperson whose boss won’t allow them to sell you an item for under a certain amount).
(Shortform note: Other writers have backed up Voss’s ideas about inverting someone else’s mental process, planting an idea in their head, and making them think it was their own original idea. In Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing, author Douglas Van Praet writes that when marketers give customers an active role in how they experience and consume a product, it’s more effective than conventional marketing or advertising because it allows customers to form their own unique associations with the product. They’ll be more inclined to consume and purchase it, thinking that this is an intrinsic choice they’re making—but in fact, the positive associations were guided by external marketers. For example, Red Bull built relationships with college students by offering them cases of the energy drink and letting them organize events where they could consume it.)
Crucially, as Voss argues, open-ended questions allow you to get information without then being obligated to reveal information. Straight requests for information can lead to an unproductive tit-for-tat dynamic, where the other side expects some sort of reciprocity (e.g., “I gave you something, now you give me something.”
A straight request for information is something that can either be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” or just a literal, minimal response. Questions like, “Does this apartment have a washer-dryer?” or “When were the windows in this apartment last cleaned?” yield nothing beyond the literal information requested (information that you can often obtain on your own without asking). Instead of putting your counterpart to work for you, writes Voss, you’re setting up the expectation that you’ll pay them back with information of your own. And if your counterpart is really a savvy negotiator, they’ll ask for information that’s highly valuable to you.
Voss argues that open-ended questions free you from this dynamic because they come across as natural, normal, conversational questions instead of requests for information. “How can we get this to work?” doesn’t have the tit-for-tat feel. You’re asking without directly asking.
When Tit-for-Tat Works
Other theorists of negotiation take the opposite assessment of Voss when it comes to “tit-for-tat” or mutual retaliation strategies. In The Evolution of Cooperation, author Robert Axelrod demonstrated that a tit-for-tat strategy was actually the most optimal in negotiating the classic “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game theory problem, with major ramifications for real-world negotiation strategy.
In the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” two criminal accomplices are being interrogated by the authorities. The optimal outcome for the pair is if neither one of them informs on the other. However, if one prisoner decides to give evidence against his accomplice (while the accomplice, meanwhile, says nothing), the turncoat does the best of all—receiving a light sentence, while his tight-lipped accomplice takes the full rap. However, if they both finger each other for the crime, each of them receive a worse outcome than they would have if they’d both stayed silent. The dilemma shows a scenario in which two parties acting purely in their self-interest do not produce the optimal outcome.
After conducting a Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament with hundreds of contestants, Axelrod concluded that mutual cooperation at the outset followed by a tit-for-tat strategy produced the best outcome. The most successful contestants began with a mutual, cooperative strategy, but then made sure to properly match what their counterpart did at every turn (i.e., tit-for-tat). Thus, if one partner defected from the agreed-upon strategy by giving evidence to the police in Round One, the other’s best move was to respond with a defection of their own in Round Two.
Axelrod argued that this provided a model for how counterparts should behave in real-world negotiations—start off cooperating; be clear about your actions; “defect” (appropriately and proportionately) from the cooperative strategy when your counterpart does so; back off of your defection if and when your counterpart adjusts their behavior; and accept that there does not have to be a clear winner or loser in the negotiation (you “win” even if only some of your needs are met and you’re better off than you were before, regardless of whether or not your counterpart got more).
With all of this focus on taking advantage of your counterpart’s emotions, Voss cautions that you also must remember to regulate your own emotions. Don’t get angry. Open-ended questions, reflecting back, labeling, anticipating accusations, and everything else will fail if you’re overly emotional. You’ll only heighten the emotional stakes of the negotiation and encourage your counterpart to respond in kind.
Voss advises hitting the pause button if you feel yourself getting too emotional. Let the passion dissipate. Don’t respond to your counterpart’s provocations with outbursts of your own. He warns that this may be part of a deliberate strategy on their part—trying to rattle you to force you into counterproductive moves. Don’t make the mistake of playing into their hands.
(Shortform note: Staying calm may have the added benefit of rattling your counterpart and increasing your power. In The 48 Laws of Power (2000), author Robert Greene argues that everyone seeks power on some level and that if you’re not a power player, you’re simply a pawn in someone else’s game. He writes that since you can’t opt out of the competition for power, you’re better off becoming a master player by learning the rules and strategies practiced since ancient times. One of his laws is to rattle your opponents by always staying calm and objective. When you get angry, writes Greene, you’ve surrendered control. But if you can make your enemies angry, you gain the advantage.)
After you’ve displayed calculated empathy and put your counterpart in a relaxed emotional frame of mind, Voss writes that it’s important to elicit the proper responses from them. In the following chapters, Voss describes which responses you do and don’t want to hear from your counterpart—and the emotional impulses behind even seemingly simple and routine responses like “Yes,” “No,” and “That’s right.”
Voss explores:
As Voss writes, much of old-school negotiating strategy is premised on the idea of “getting to yes”—with the titular 1981 book Getting to Yes being the touchstone text of the genre.
He says it’s easy to understand why this makes intuitive sense. Your counterpart saying “Yes” to something you’ve proposed in your negotiation would seem to mean that you’ve reached some sort of agreement or that they’ve acceded to your conditions.
But, Voss cautions, “Yes” is often the fool’s gold of negotiation because people often say “yes” just to get someone else off their back. This false yes does not signal any true agreement or commitment—it’s just a way to end a conversation with someone who’s being too aggressive and domineering.
Another false “yes” that Voss cautions you not to take seriously is the “yes” response that follows leading questions. People use this false “yes” when pushy salespeople ask them a series of leading questions whose obvious answer is “yes,” in the hopes that they’ll trap the person into eventually saying “yes” to whatever they’re selling. But, even after repeatedly answering “yes” to a salesperson’s leading questions, most people won’t want to say “yes” to the overall negotiation. Instead, they’ll feel pressured and manipulated, and thus more likely to ultimately say no.
(Shortform note: Voss writes that people often give vaguely affirmative responses even when they really want to say “No.” This may be related to a personality trait called agreeableness. People who rank high on the agreeability scale have a strong desire to get along with others, and often have an extreme fear of being disliked. This often leads such people to say what they think others want to hear and results in them making commitments that they don’t actually intend to follow through with. This fear of disappointing others ultimately leads to damaged personal and professional relationships.)
A False Yes Dialogue
Here’s how such an exchange might go on the phone.
You: Hello?
Salesperson: Hi, I’m with RestaurantCoupons.com and I’m calling you with a special offer.
You: Ok.
Salesperson: Do you like eating delicious food at high-quality restaurants?
You: Yeah, sure. (Leading Questions “Yes”)
Salesperson: And do you enjoy saving money?
You: I guess I do, sure.
Salesperson: Well then you’ll love our offer. We’ll send you a coupon giving you 20% off the next time you dine at one of our participating restaurants. Wouldn’t it be great to treat the family to a great meal for a fraction of the price?
You: I guess.
Salesperson: Great! So can I put you down for the first free coupon, on us? After that, I’ll send you some more information on the membership program, where for the low, low price of $125 per month, you’ll get more discounts to an even wider selection of restaurants.
You: Well, ok, I guess… (“Get Off My Back” Yes)
To avoid these false yeses and get a real, firm commitment from your counterpart, Voss argues that you need to do something that may seem counterintuitive—you need to get them to say “No.”
In Voss’s analysis, “No” signals the beginning of a successful negotiation, not the end of one. Saying it makes your counterpart feel in control. According to Voss, this speaks to a basic psychological need for autonomy. When we say “no” to something, it is a powerful assertion of control. We are setting boundaries and demonstrating our independence in the most fundamental way. We are saying, “I am in control, and I will not let external forces dictate what I do.”
As Voss argues, once the other person feels more secure having said “no,” the real negotiation can begin.
The “No” Phase and Children
Voss writes that our negotiating counterparts often feel the need to say “no” in order to assert their autonomy. But it’s not just adult negotiators who have a need to draw boundaries this way—young toddlers also assert their boundaries using “no.”
Many parents know that young children around two or three years old usually become highly disagreeable and refuse even the most simple requests or directives from their parents by shouting “No!” (even with things they’ve previously agreed to with little trouble).
Despite the stress it causes parents, the “no” phase is actually an important part of early childhood development. This is the age at which children are experiencing the most rapid brain development that they’ll ever experience in their lives, with over 4,000 new neural connections being formed every minute.
This neurological growth is actually what drives the much-lamented toddler stubbornness. This is the age at which children are developing for the first time a sense of autonomy and self-awareness. They have a developmental need to draw lines in the sand and form their own opinions—and this newfound independence often comes in the form of “no.” Childhood development experts argue, however, that the “no” phase is crucial to their growth as they become well-adjusted children and, ultimately, functional adults.
So, how do you get to “no”?
According to Voss, you need to ask your counterpart open-ended questions that are designed to prompt negative answers. Answering these questions gives them a sense of autonomy and control. You can do this by:
Say “No” Without Damaging Your Relationship
In The Power of a Positive No, William Ury writes about the “positive no”—a way of saying “no” to people that doesn’t damage your relationship with them or hurt their feelings. Rather, the positive no is a self-empowerment tactic, a way of asserting your autonomy and confidently but respectfully refusing to comply with requests that you don’t want to. Rather than giving in by saying “yes” when you don’t want to, rudely and brisky saying “no,” or avoiding confrontation altogether, Ury recommends the positive no as a way to ground your refusal in mutual respect.
For example, if a colleague asks you to stay late at work to finish a project, a positive no would be, “I’m sorry, I can’t work late tonight. I recognize that the project is important and I’m fully committed to helping you. But I want to be home to read to my daughter at night, and I won’t be able to do that if I’m here at the office. Instead, why don’t I move some of my meetings around tomorrow and clear time during the workday so that you and I can finish this project?”
Once you’ve given someone the freedom and autonomy to say “no,” how do you take the next step and transform that into a successful negotiation? Voss recommends asking solution-based questions or labeling the effect of the “no.”
Solution-based questions can be fairly simple and straightforward, like “What about this doesn’t work for you?” or “What would you need to make this work?”
Labeling the effect of the “no” can be something like, “Based on how you’re responding to me, it seems like we might not have enough common ground to reach an agreement.”
(Shortform note: Although Voss doesn’t explicitly make the connection, it seems that these tactics of solution-based questions and labeling are designed to put your counterpart in a solution-oriented frame of mind. Your counterpart will be forced to give thoughtful, considerate answers and work through her path to getting to “yes.” Similarly, labeling the effect of the “no” by implying that you think they’re not interested in working with you can trigger the opposite response from your counterpart. Since it’s unlikely that your counterpart is really uninterested in coming to an agreement with you—otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting down to negotiate with you in the first place—such labels can have the effect of making her reaffirm her commitment to the negotiation and refocus her mind on finding common ground and building consensus.)
Shortform Example: How To Get to “No”
To demonstrate how labeling would work in a scenario like this, take a look at the brief dialogue below. Notice how Person 2 vocalizes the effect of Person 1’s “no.”
Person 1: “No, I don’t like those terms.”
Person 2: “It seems like there’s some real resistance on your part to what we’re discussing.” (Label)
Person 1: “Well, I’m definitely not comfortable with where we stand.”
Person 2: “I hear what you’re saying. And it sounds like there’s a disconnect and that you think I’m trying to pull one over on you.” (Label)
Person 1: “No, I don’t think you’re doing that, I just want to get to a place where I’m feeling comfortable about going forward with this deal.”
After you’ve set your counterpart at ease by giving them the freedom and autonomy to say “No,” you want to bring them around to your way of seeing things. To do so, make some statement about their feelings or motivations designed to receive a positive affirmation from them through what Voss describes as two of the best words you can hope to hear in any negotiation—“That’s right.”
Although it’s a simple phrase that can be easily missed, Voss writes that there is great power in those two words. According to him, when someone says “that’s right,” it means that they’ve come to embrace what you’ve said. They’re crediting you with seeing things their way and now feel that they are dealing with someone who understands and respects their point of view.
For your counterpart, this is the best of both worlds. They get to agree with you (and thereby forge a bond) without feeling like they’ve caved. This satisfies their basic emotional needs for both safety and autonomy.
Beyond just putting them in a more positive emotional frame of mind, “That’s right” also gives you an important strategic advantage. You now have your counterpart’s self-confirmed view of the situation. This gives you a valuable window into their true motivations and desires. By saying “That’s right,” they’ve stated their position unequivocally—which you can now use to commit them to your preferred course of action.
Commitment and the Consistency Principle
Voss writes that “That’s right” gives you a window into someone else’s mind by providing you their self-confirmed view of the situation under discussion—which you can then use to commit them to your preferred course of action. This idea of using someone’s else’s stated commitments to steer them toward desired thought and behavior is closely related to what Robert Cialdini calls the Consistency Principle in Influence. Cialdini argues that humans have an obsession with sticking to their guns—and that consistency is closely related to commitment.
Once we’ve committed to a course of action or to a belief, we pressure ourselves to conform to that commitment, going through great mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that our current behavior and beliefs align with our past behavior and beliefs—even when they clearly don’t.
The Consistency Principle creates a valuable opening for you in a negotiation. If you can get your counterpart to make even a small commitment, you can potentially get them to make larger and larger ones.
So how do you get your counterpart to say “That’s right?” Voss recommends taking the following steps.
AMPP: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime
In Crucial Conversations, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler argue that paraphrasing is a crucial tool to get others to participate in a dialogue—especially when they are reluctant to do so.
They cite paraphrasing as one of the four key listening tools of their AMPP (Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime) strategy. By asking even simple questions like, “What do you mean?” you are building a bridge that will help you understand the other person’s views. When you mirror their responses, you’re showing yourself to be a familiar, understanding dialogue partner—especially when your tone and nonverbal language matches the words coming out of your mouth. Paraphrasing makes them feel even more safe, because it demonstrates that you’re open minded, closely listening, and empathetic, since you were able to articulate their feelings in your own words. Lastly, the authors encourage you to prime the other person’s responses by verbally guessing what their emotional state might be and encouraging them to respond.
Priming closely tracks Voss’s technique of open-ended questions, as it is designed to elicit thoughtful and solution-oriented responses.
Example: Affirm Their View by Paraphrasing
To show how this works in a real-world scenario, we’ve created a brief sample dialogue between a car dealer and a potential customer. Pay close attention to how the car dealer rephrases the customer’s concerns in her own words.
Customer: “I don’t like the options in this car.”
Dealer: “OK.” (Active listening/intermittent interjection)
Customer: The tech is outdated, there’s no extended warranty coverage for the tires.”
Dealer: “I see.” (Active listening/intermittent interjection).
Customer: And the dealership isn’t offering anything like a free oil change or inspection.”
(Silence)
Dealer: “I hear your concerns. It sounds like you don’t like the stereo and Bluetooth setup, you’re concerned that you’ll have to eat the whole cost if you get a flat tire, and that we’re not taking care of you with free services.” (Paraphrasing)
Customer: “That’s right.”
According to Voss, another way to help your counterpart see you as a partner who recognizes and understands their view of things is summarizing. Note that this is different from labeling or paraphrasing.
Voss says you should think of summarizing as paraphrasing + labeling. You’re rearticulating what they’ve said while acknowledging the underlying emotions that drove them to say it.
(Shortform note: The benefits of summarizing in communication go far beyond influencing how your counterpart sees you. In 12 Rules for Life, author Jordan Peterson identifies summarizing as the most effective listening technique. Peterson argues that it forces you as the summarizer to take the time to genuinely understand what is being said, rather than skirting over it on the surface; gives the person a chance to correct what you said, or emphasize something you didn’t; and helps you extract the true moral of the story.)
As an example, Voss discusses his negotiations with Abu Sabaya, a violent kidnapper in the Philippines. When Sabaya kidnapped an American (a young man from California), he claimed he was doing so in exchange for “war damages.” In other words, he believed that he was engaged in a noble struggle for the rights of the oppressed Muslim minority in the Philippines.
Obviously, Voss and his team of American hostage negotiators thought Sabaya’s self-image and professed cause was utterly divorced from reality. But that was irrelevant. The negotiators still needed to show empathy for Sabaya’s beliefs in order to be able to work with him and bring the hostage standoff to a peaceful resolution. Over the course of months, they were able to identify and summarize Sabaya’s worldview and build the rapport they needed.
Labeling and Summarizing to Build Rapport
Voss doesn’t provide the extended dialogue for how he and his team reached this breakthrough in the book. We’ve created one here to better demonstrate how summarizing would work in practice.
Sabaya: “We’ve been talking for months, and I don’t think you Americans are even trying to understand why I’m doing this.”
FBI: “It sounds like you think we don’t care about your motivations or ideology.” (Label)
Sabaya: “You don’t, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame when I execute this hostage for all the world to see!”
FBI: “You’re fighting for your people. You believe that Filipino Muslims have been oppressed for centuries by Catholics, even down to the present day. You’re resorting to violence because you feel that all the other options haven’t worked. It makes sense why you’re so angry.” (Summary)
Sabaya: “That’s right!”
Voss writes that when they were rewarded with a “that’s right” after accurately summarizing his claims of oppression, they knew they had made the crucial breakthrough. Sabaya ended up not harming the hostage (despite his clear stated intentions of doing so), who ultimately was safely returned to his family in the United States.
(Shortform note: This section originally appears in Chapter 8 of Voss’s book. We’ve moved it up as it directly pertains to the discussion of key phrases like “Yes,” “No,” and “That’s Right.”)
Ultimately what you want in any negotiation is to get to the Genuine “Yes.” This is a “yes” that signals both agreement and commitment. They’re accepting your terms and they’re pledging to fulfill them.
Voss outlines a process to see if the “yes” your counterpart is giving you is genuine. Here’s how he explains it.
Six Steps to Get to Yes
In Getting to Yes, Ury and Fisher take a somewhat different approach to “yes” than Voss. They recommend:
Focusing on understanding your counterpart’s view of the situation rather than emotionally reacting to their words or behavior (either with aggression on your part or ill-considered concessions).
Breaking impasses by centering the discussion around broader convictions and interests rather than specific positions. For example, if you’re buying a car, avoiding rigid positions like, “I won’t pay more than $15,000” and instead focusing on the real reasons that buying the car is valuable to you (safety, convenience).
Regulating emotions by establishing clear emotional boundaries. For example, at the outset of a negotiation, the parties can mutually agree to pause the discussion if any of them feels themselves getting too heated or even designating set times for when certain emotions can be expressed.
Conveying an appreciation and understanding of your counterpart’s perspective and making sure to vocalize that understanding (this actually does dovetail nicely with Voss’s emphasis on empathy).
Framing things in a positive way, even if there is disagreement. For example, if you feel that someone you’re negotiating with is being obstinate or unreasonable, you can say, “We’ve worked together successfully many times in the past. In this negotiation, however, I don’t feel you and I are enjoying our usual easy rapport. Is there something happening that’s presenting a roadblock for us here?”
Avoiding an escalating cycle of tit-for-tat. Sometimes in negotiations, there’s a temptation to match the intensity or posture of your counterpart. If they reject your offer, you reject their counteroffer. If they refuse to budge on one item, you stand pat on something of your own. To break this self-defeating cycle, Fisher and Ury argue that you should simply refuse to react to these kinds of provocation. Instead of letting your counterpart dictate your actions, be flexible, don’t get sucked in by your emotions, and explore opportunities for mutual collaboration and consensus-building.
Here’s how a customer might secure a Genuine Yes from a car dealer:
Customer: “So, do we have a deal?”
Salesperson: “Yep, we sure do! Congratulations!” (Yes #1)
Customer: “Great. So just to confirm, I’m getting this vehicle at $20,000, with financing coming in at 4.5%, with the extra leg room and free oil changes and inspections every six months?” (Summarize)
Salesperson: “That’s right, that’s what we agreed to.” (“That’s right” and Yes #2)
Customer: “Fantastic, I’m glad we’re on the same page. And what on your end would stand in the way of us being able to close on these terms?” (open-ended question)
Salesperson: “I don’t see anything standing in the way on my end here. I’ve already confirmed this with my boss and with our financing people. I can’t foresee anything that would derail this. But even if we were to hit some sort of hurdle, I’ll personally make sure that we secure this vehicle for you on these terms.” (Yes #3).
Customer: “Great. Can’t wait to sign those papers!”
Thus far, Voss has explained how people’s behavior and thoughts in negotiations are primarily driven by their emotional needs for security and autonomy. If you can help them meet those emotional needs using techniques like calculated empathy, summarizing, and open-ended questions, you are in a prime position to get them to divulge their hidden wants and desires—crucial information that will give you the upper hand in a negotiation.
In this chapter, Voss explores the tactics that enable you to properly identify, articulate, and use those hidden desires and irrational blind spots to your advantage. You do this by switching up their perspective—showing them that by helping you achieve your desired solution, they will satisfy their own hidden wants.Specifically, he looks at:
Voss observes that deadlines are one of the most common sources of anxiety in negotiations. We feel that we will lose out on an opportunity if we don’t make a deal right away, or that these terms will never be available again (this feeling of anxiety is related to a cognitive bias known as loss aversion, which Voss explores a bit later in the chapter).
Voss warns that your counterpart will often try to exploit your anxiety by using deadlines to put pressure on you to make a deal. This is one of the cornerstones of high-pressure sales tactics, in which a salesperson tells you that a deal is for “the holiday season only” or that a product is “only available on a first-come, first-serve basis.” These deadlines compel you to suspend your rational judgement, ignore the pros and cons, brush aside questions of whether or not you even need the item in question, and, ultimately, rush headlong into a bad decision.
(Shortform note: In High Performance Habits, Brendon Burchard argues top performers hold themselves to hard deadlines because it creates a sense of urgency that helps them prioritize. They don’t get distracted by soft deadlines (i.e., deadlines that don’t have serious ramifications if they’re not met) and instead focus their energy on completing highly consequential, time-sensitive tasks. Also, because these deadlines are usually set by other people (like bosses or clients), high performers recognize that their timeliness affects other people’s ability to do their jobs. Burchard writes that this further encourages urgency and service. This is one way you can make deadlines work for you on a personal level, helping you to essentially negotiate with yourself on progress toward a goal.)
Voss argues that deadlines are almost always arbitrary and flexible, and rarely trigger the dreaded consequences people fear they will. Instead, their real purpose is to force people to compromise with themselves in order to meet them, because people tend to feel pressured to take any deal now rather than holding out for a better deal if they fear they might lose the deal entirely.
According to Voss, a lot of old-school negotiation theories advise that you don’t reveal the deadline that you’re working under, arguing that if you do, the other side will assume you’re under a time crunch and will try to pressure you into making a deal on their terms. These theories say your counterpart will attempt to run out the clock and delay discussion of the issues until the very end. For example, if you only have until Friday to make a deal and you let the other side know this, they’ll wait until Thursday to start negotiating in earnest thinking that you’ll then cave to their demands.
But Voss argues that you should reveal your deadline to your counterpart. Doing so puts time pressure on them as well as you, as they lose out from a missed deal just as much as you. This forces the other side to get down to negotiating immediately and reduces the risk of a no-deal impasse.
(Shortform note: Voss is not the only prominent figure who takes a critical view of the idea of deadlines. Anthony Casalena, founder and CEO of Squarespace, has said that he likewise finds deadlines to be arbitrary and meaningless. Casalena finds that rushing to meet deadlines tends to compromise the quality of work and burn people out unnecessarily. His philosophy is simply to change a deadline if he feels that his team won’t be able to put out the best possible product by that date.)
As a good negotiator, Voss writes that you also need to use their deadline to your advantage. He cites the example of car dealers making generous offers when their reviews are up at the end of the month. Because they have to meet sales quotas as part of those performance reviews, they have a powerful incentive to close the deal on your terms.
Trade Deadlines in Sports
As Voss notes, a skilled negotiator will look for ways to use deadlines to their advantage. One area in the real world where we can sometimes see truly exceptional use of deadlines is in professional sports. In Moneyball, author Michael Lewis describes how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane skillfully exploited Major League Baseball’s trade deadline in 2002 to acquire excellent players from other teams while giving up little in return.
The annual trade deadline is the point in the season after which players cannot be traded. What this means is that weak teams that are no longer in playoff contention are looking to offload their stars. This is especially true if those players are set to become free agents in the offseason—after which they can sign with any other team they wish, leaving their original team with nothing to compensate for the loss. Thus, the trade deadline creates a time crunch in which losing teams with star players are desperate to “sell” their stars in the hopes of recouping at least something of value.
As Beane wisely recognized, the deadline served to create a glut in the market for star players, which lowered their price and gave him the opportunity to acquire players that he could never afford at the beginning of the season.
Voss further argues that most people are powerfully guided by their notions of what is and isn’t fair—they are drawn to what they consider to be fair, equitable, and reasonable and repelled by what they consider to be unfair or unreasonable. He writes that you can take advantage of this fact and change someone’s perspective by demonstrating that you care about treating them well. This triggers their natural empathy and forces them to see you as an honest broker in the negotiation. This is especially true since people’s quest for fairness and their desire to reject unfairness can lead them to irrational choices, according to Voss. Knowing this can be a powerful advantage for you in negotiating.
Of course, to truly put this into action, Voss says you need to have a good definition of “fairness.” He identifies three uses of the term—two of them being underhanded tricks and one that sets the stage for open negotiation.
Fairness and Cultural Variation
Voss writes that you never want to put your counterpart in a position where she feels she’s being treated unfairly. But depending on what culture she’s from, you might also want to make sure she doesn’t feel that you or others are being treated unfairly either.
Beyond Voss’s three definitions of the word “fair,” some researchers have found that attitudes about fairness or equity differ significantly across cultures. For example, one study demonstrated that children’s sense of injustice when they receive more than others varies significantly between children from different countries.
Researchers brought together over 800 children from the U.S., Canada, India, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, and Uganda. The study tested the children’s ideas of fairness by measuring how pairs of children reacted to different distributions of candy between the two participants. One child would pull a lever to dispense the candy. In half the experiments, the candy was split 50/50. But the other half of the time, the candy was distributed unevenly between the child pulling the lever (the “lever puller”) and their partner. The lever puller had the option of either accepting or rejecting the allocation of candy—with the latter choice meaning that neither child would receive anything.
While nearly all lever-pullers across all countries of origin rejected candy splits in which they were shortchanged (disadvantageous inequality), only lever pullers from the U.S., Canada, and Ugandan children proved willing to reject distributions in which their counterpart received less (advantageous inequality).
Voss writes that you need to figure out what your counterpart’s true, underlying need is and then frame your position such that it satisfies that need. To do so, you can take advantage of their cognitive biases: mental errors in routine information processing that impact how we react to situations and form judgments. And, in fact, powerful cognitive biases shape how we receive information and determine our best interests.
Voss notes that advertisers understand this principle well. The products and services we purchase are usually presented to us as satisfying some deeper, more intrinsic need. When someone purchases a home-security system, they’re not really purchasing the sensor, door chimes, cameras, or home-automation technology. Instead, what they’re really buying is the peace of mind that comes with believing that their home and family are safe. That’s why advertisements for these products emphasize the emotional benefits of being able to enjoy normal life without having to think about your family being harmed or your possessions being stolen.
Similarly, Voss notes that makers of luxury products like sports cars and jewelry don’t emphasize the technical features of the vehicle or the gemological specifics of the diamond ring they’re trying to sell. Instead, they highlight the exclusivity and rarity of these goods. They do this because they know that their customers are largely driven by the need to assert their status through owning and displaying these products, which satisfies a deeper need to feel superior to others.
(Shortform note: Economists call status symbol goods like jewelry, fine champagnes, or designer jewelry Veblen goods—named for the economist Thorstein Veblen, who famously explored the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption among economic elites in 1899’s The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen goods differ from ordinary goods in that demand for them tends to increase as their price increases. As they become more expensive, fewer people can afford to buy them, which makes them rare. For people who wish to own such rare items to highlight their elite status, this rarity and exclusivity is precisely what makes them valuable.)
The same principle applies to your negotiating position, argues Voss. How you frame your position or offer matters just as much—if not more than—the actual substance of the position itself. And as a skilled negotiator, you can take advantage of universal human cognitive biases to frame your position in a way that makes it optimally attractive to your counterpart.
The first cognitive bias Voss points to is what’s known as the framing effect. People respond differently to identical choices based solely on how they’re presented. For example, the framing effect would make health-conscious consumers more likely to purchase milk when it’s marketed as being “99% fat-free” versus “1% fat”, believing that the first option is less fatty (even though, of course, there’s no difference between either product other than how the label positions them).
(Shortform note: A variant on the framing effect is what’s known as the valence-framing effect. Research has shown that people hold their negative opinions—in other words, what they’re against—much more strongly and confidently than their positive opinions—what they’re in favor of. In other words, we seem to dislike what we dislike more than we like what we like. In one social psychology experiment, participants who expressed a preference for fictional political candidate A over candidate B showed a notable division in how they responded to information that their preferred candidate had engaged in corruption. Those who supported candidate A because they were pro-candidate A were more willing to abandon their support in light of this information; those who favored A because they were anti-candidate B were far more likely to dismiss the corruption allegations and even double down on their support for A.)
Closely related to the framing effect is the principle of loss aversion. Loss aversion makes people fear an equal loss more than they value an equal gain. Voss observes that salespeople are skillful manipulators of the loss aversion principle. When they say things like, “I just wanted to give you the opportunity to take advantage of this offer before it goes away, ” they’re creating a (usually false) feeling of urgency that triggers your sense of loss aversion. When something is framed this way, you’re no longer thinking of gaining something—you’re thinking about losing out on a potential deal.
Knowing this, you can put yourself in a strong negotiating position by framing your preferred solution as one that prevents your counterpart from incurring a loss.
For example, if you’re making an offer on a house that needs some work, you might say something like, “The house is great but it definitely needs significant contracting work. There’s foundational damage, and the gas line for the grill is too close to the house to pass inspection. I’m willing to pay cash now and absorb those costs so you don’t have to shell out that money. Plus, I’m willing to waive inspection. But if we take too long and end up having to go through inspection, I might have to start looking for other deals.”
Loss Aversion and the “Scarcity Principle”
In Influence, author Robert Cialdini argues that loss aversion is closely tied to an idea called the Scarcity Principle. The Scarcity Principle makes things with limited availability more appealing to us. Thus, rare goods are expensive and abundant items are cheap (like how gold is more valuable than iron). We’re more compelled to buy these goods because we instinctively fear that we’ll lose our opportunity if we don’t act immediately.
Cialdini notes that sales professionals are skilled in using this principle to their advantage. It’s why we see so many “limited-time only” or “first-come, first-serve” sales pitches: The goal is to drive you the buyer into a loss-aversion frenzy that forces you to suspend your better judgement and rush headlong into an ill-considered decision. Knowing this, you can use the principle to your advantage by making your counterpart feel your offer has an element of scarcity built in.
With this new knowledge of cognitive biases, Voss presents specific negotiating tactics to make your counterpart think about your position in the way you want them to.
Anchor their emotions by anticipating their accusations so that you acknowledge all of their fears. By preparing them for a loss, you’ll trigger their loss aversion and make them work hard just to avoid it. This also helps frame your offer as being better than worse alternatives. Even something as seemingly innocuous as prefacing a criticism with “You might hate me for saying this, but…” can achieve this. You’re priming them for an unpleasant experience. And in order to avoid that experience, they’ll start convincing themselves that what you’re telling them isn’t actually that bad—in other words, they’re already doing the mental work to avoid a “loss.”
Let your counterpart make the first move. Remember, you don’t know enough about what you’re buying or selling to make an informed offer right away, so use their offer as a starting point. But also be aware that your counterpart might try to use this to their advantage by throwing out an extreme first offer to use framing effects against you. For example, a car dealer might ask a ludicrous price for a non-luxury vehicle, like $80,000. When you balk at this and they bring it down to a still-quite-high $50,000, the latter figure feels more reasonable by comparison, tricking you into thinking it’s a good deal.
If you’re negotiating something with a monetary value, establish a range. Base it on historical examples or what the figures in comparable deals look like. Voss also advises you to properly anchor your range (where one of the “extreme” ends of the range is actually the number you want). For example, if you’re looking to buy a new home, you could say to the seller, “Houses in this market with this many bedrooms and bathrooms typically go for between $150,000 and $180,000,” when $180,000 is really the realistic figure you’d like to pay. By framing it this way, you’re making it seem to the seller like they’re extracting maximum value from you when you’re actually just paying the price you wanted.
Be open to, and consider offering, non-monetary terms like recognition and perks. These are often small add-ins that cost nothing but can make all the difference to you or your counterpart. For example, universities are often able to secure larger philanthropic gifts from alumni donors by offering to put the donor’s name on a building or classroom on campus. This costs the university next to nothing in the way of money (they have to put some signage on the building or classroom anyway), but the non-monetary prestige of these naming opportunities often makes a huge difference to the benefactor.
Use strange numbers. Voss writes that unusual numbers sound like a product of precise calculation, even if they’re completely arbitrary. Your counterpart is far more likely to take a number like $41,972.37 seriously than $40,000 (which sounds like a placeholder or just a negotiating platform).
Surprise your counterpart with a gift. Voss says this can even be a simple conciliatory gesture that costs you little, like an offer to pick up lunch or coffee. This engenders goodwill and triggers their natural emotional need for empathy and reciprocity. People feel the need to repay kindness with kindness.
Frame for Success in Negotiation
Harvard’s Program on Negotiation offers more techniques to frame your offer to be maximally appealing (these tactics complement Voss’s):
While you want to offer a range and throw in non-monetary items and gifts, don’t overwhelm them with too many options. Sometimes people can become so bewildered and dismayed by an abundance of choices that making no decision feels like the better option.
Make three offers simultaneously with different parameters, such as $50,000 for a standard package, $60,000 for a standard package on an accelerated timeline, or $75,000 for a premium package. This lets you and your counterpart figure out what’s most important to both of you and gives a choice, similar to Voss’s suggestion of establishing a range of values. When you signal a range of what you’re willing to pay, it can open a conversation about what makes you pay the low end of the range vs. the high end.
Present an expensive option that’s meant to be rejected, but that makes your standard option look cheap. In the example above, the $75,000 package might not be something people choose often, but it makes the $50,000 package look cheap in comparison and thus makes them feel they’re getting a bargain.
Think about how you can bring people around to see things your way.
Has someone ever placed deadline pressure on you, which then caused you to make a bad decision? Describe what happened. How could you resist this in the future?
Think of an upcoming negotiation of some kind you need to do. How could you make use of loss aversion to make the other person worried about losing what you have to offer?
So far, Voss has demonstrated how calculated empathy, reflecting back, labeling, anticipating their accusations, and asking open-ended questions can get your counterpart to feel secure and in control, thereby making them more likely to reveal their true wants and needs—giving you the power to bring them around to your wants and needs by harnessing their cognitive biases against them.
But even after you’ve gotten your counterpart to agree to your terms, there’s still one problem—how can you trust them to follow through? Voss notes that even if you get a “yes,” if there’s no way for your counterpart to actually follow through, this is useless—because “yes” is nothing without “how.”
In this chapter, Voss explores how to move beyond mere agreement and toward implementation. Specifically, he looks at:
In this section, we’re going to revisit Voss’s idea of open-ended questions and explore it from a new angle.
We’ve seen how Voss writes that asking open-ended questions keeps your counterpart engaged, but off-balance. It also forces them to consider your position. This is crucial when ensuring implementation. By asking questions like “How can I do that?” or “How can we ensure that we follow through on what we’ve agreed to today?” you transform your counterpart into a partner helping you solve a shared problem. It’s much harder for them to wriggle out of a commitment if you can get them to see your negotiation as a puzzle they’re helping you solve—especially if you successfully make them think that they’re the one coming up with the solutions. Asking these open-ended questions and making them work through the answers gives them a much greater stake and investment in the ultimate solution.
Objective Standards and Implementation
In Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury take a more rationalistic, less emotion-based approach to implementation. They write that what they call “positional negotiations” are really just a battle of wills, in which both parties stick rigidly to their positions until one side is forced to back down. This tends to make the agreement inefficient, uncivil, and difficult to implement, because one side is being dragged to the solution unwillingly and resentfully.
A better alternative, they argue, is to negotiate an agreement measured against objective standards, independent of the will of either side. When you use objective standards, such as market value or average salaries, you’re basing the agreement on principle instead of succumbing to pressure tactics or threats. For example, in a salary negotiation, if an employer is dealing with an employee who’s upset that she isn’t being offered as large a raise as she’d like, the manager can appeal to an objective standard by saying, “I have these figures here showing average salaries for your position in our market for companies of our size. As you can see, what we’re offering is well in line with those numbers, and in fact, above average. We value you as an employee and want you to feel valued, but we think what we’ve offered here is fair.”
According to Fisher and Ury, objective standards relying on precedent, scientific merit, and community practices strengthen the agreement — making it less vulnerable to attack and more fully committing both parties to its smooth implementation.
We can see this with a hypothetical case study.
Imagine Karen is a fundraiser for a major American university. Let’s further imagine that one of her donors signed a multi-year pledge in which they agreed to give $250,000 to the university for five consecutive years. As part of the gift agreement, the university agreed to name one of the new residence halls after the donor. After following through on the gift pledge for the first two years, the donor has reneged in the third year and is now six months behind the giving schedule.
Despite the non-payment, the donor’s name was already added to the residence hall (which represents an opportunity cost for the university because that prominent display could be given to another donor who would pay on time). Moreover, the donor is still expecting to receive other perks and benefits of being a major benefactor (like free tickets to events on campus and invitations to select lunches with the university president and faculty). Naturally, Karen would be frustrated. She needs to resolve this issue, while still maintaining a good relationship with the donor.
How might she begin to fix the situation and get the donor to comply with the agreement? She might manage it by using a mix of summaries and open-ended questions to steer the donor toward her preferred solution (resuming his gift payments) and show him that the only way he could get what he wanted (special treatment by the university and his name continuing to be displayed on the residence hall) would be by satisfying her needs first.
The donor’s response might reasonably be exactly what Karen wants to hear: “We know the university can’t continue to do all the great things it’s doing and continue to treat me so well without me following through on my gift commitment. I’ve been having some cash-flow problems on my end, but it’s unacceptable for you to not have been paid. I will send you a check for my $250,000 gift installment by the end of the week.”
While this is a hypothetical example, it realistically replicates many of the situations that Voss relates, and it demonstrates how he coached clients to respond to difficult issues.
Of course, Voss warns that many negotiations involve more parties than just the people at the table. Getting buy-in from your direct counterpart isn’t worth much if the people outside the room can block your counterpart from following through. For example, a car dealer may agree to your terms for purchasing a car. But if she doesn’t really have the authority to make that deal and her boss can just nix it when she takes it back behind closed doors, you haven’t really won anything by just winning the dealer over.
That’s why Voss stresses the importance of figuring out the motivations of the people behind your direct counterpart. Ask how this will affect them. There are always dealmakers and deal-killers. And when you suspect that decisions are really being made by committee, you need to know what that committee really wants. After all, it could take only one member of the committee to kill your deal.
Open-ended “how” questions once again show their usefulness by helping you identify where these sorts of implementation problems may occur. Asking questions like “How does your boss feel about this deal?” or “How do you think the rest of your team will react?” will make your counterpart think through how to ensure implementation on their side.
Fear of Conflict and Failure to Commit
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni labels failure to commit to a decision as one of the main dysfunctions that undermines team effectiveness. Lencioni argues that teams need to be committed and on the same page in order to succeed. There can be no ambiguity around what goals the organization is trying to achieve, and all team members must fully buy into the plan.
Dysfunctional teams, however, fail to achieve commitment, and instead they lumber from one non-decision to the next. If you were negotiating with a representative from a dysfunctional team, you would see this immediately—the person you were dealing with would have no ability to actually commit to what you agreed because she would be undermined by her team.
Lencioni writes that the problem stems from a fear of conflict. When teammates haven’t had the opportunity to hash out disagreements through productive, ideological debate, they feel that their ideas haven’t been properly considered. It’s also harder to make any decision when alternative points of view have not been considered, because it feels there might be better options that lay undiscovered. The result is a lack of commitment—ambiguity about goals, confusion regarding individual responsibilities, and indecision.
Voss advises that another way you can evaluate whether or not your counterpart is reliable is by examining their language cues. He highlights several verbal and nonverbal cues that can help you determine whether you're dealing with an honest broker who will work with you to implement your agreement—or a liar who’ll try to wriggle out of their commitment.
Voss writes that you can observe your counterpart’s speech patterns to see whether or not this person is truly integral to the decision-making process. Specifically, Voss warns, be on the lookout for their use of pronouns.
The person really in charge seldom says “I” or “me.” Instead, they deflect to third-party pronouns, saying things like, “We’ll have to see if that’s a realistic path forward for us” or “We’ll have to review internally before we can commit to anything.” This is because they wisely don’t want to be tied down to a decision and are skillfully creating the illusion that they can’t agree to your terms because there’s a nebulous “other” entity whose buy-in they must first secure.
Conversely, you’re likely dealing with a low-level player if you hear them dropping a lot of first-person pronouns like “I” or “me.”
Leadership and First-Person Pronouns
Some studies contradict Voss’s assertion that the use of first-person pronouns is a sign of low status.
Researchers looked at how high-level corporate officers like CEOs and CFOs used pronouns on earnings conference calls (which have become increasingly high-profile interactions that attract a great deal of media attention). The purpose of the study was to see how investors reacted to the use of singular pronouns (like “I” and “me”) versus plural pronouns (like “we,” “us,” and “they”).
Studying over 90,000 such conference calls that took place over a span of 20 years, the researchers found that CEOs using first-person singular pronouns received a better response from investors, who felt that the use of these pronouns demonstrated honesty, responsibility, and empathy. Conversely, those CEOS who leaned heavily on pronouns like “us” or “we” were more likely to be seen by investors as craven, weak, and trying to evade accountability.
This points to a possible difference between how leaders speak and how people interpret them, and may indicate a limitation of Voss’s theory. Leaders who are aware of people’s preference for ‘I’ pronouns may use them for that reason, nullifying Voss’s technique. However, Voss is relating the patterns of behavior he has witnessed in his years of experience, so he might argue that a negotiator is more likely to interact with leaders who use third-person pronouns. Thus, while accounting for possible exceptions, negotiators looking for verbal cues can probably rely on his approach.
Voss also warns negotiators to be on the lookout for non-verbal language cues. He points to findings from UCLA that give a percentage breakdown for how people communicate:
Words alone tell you just a sliver of what your counterpart is really saying. Voss urges you to watch for inconsistencies between words, tone, and body language.
Think of someone who’s saying pleasant things like “Good morning” or “How are you?” but with a blank expression or in a tone devoid of any warmth. This is why telemarketers are told to smile, even when they’re speaking to people on the phone—the customer can “hear” the friendly expression on the telemarketer’s face.
Voss writes that you can use labels to further shed light on the incongruence between someone’s words and nonverbal body language. If they’re saying all the right things but you doubt their commitment, you can say, “I’m glad you say you agree, but it seems like there was some hesitation there. It’s important that we get this right and that you feel comfortable.” This will make them feel respected, and will make you a trustworthy partner in their eyes.
Other authors have noted the importance of nonverbal communication but have observed that men and women have different levels of aptitude in understanding and interpreting it. In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman writes that women are better at picking up verbal and nonverbal cues, and at expressing and articulating their feelings. Men, meanwhile, are adept at masking “weak” emotions such as hurt, fear, guilt, or vulnerability.
If we pick up on Voss’s ideas about the importance of non-verbal communication, Goleman’s work would appear to suggest that women would be more effective negotiators in face-to-face situations, since they are more attuned to body language, facial expressions, and other below-the-radar signals that might indicate their counterpart’s true emotional state. It could also be taken to suggest that you need to be more aware of your non-verbal communication if you’re negotiating with a female counterpart. With respect to men, Goleman’s findings also suggest that looking for signs of weakness, shame, or fear in a male negotiating counterpart would be an ineffective strategy, since they are so adept at masking these emotions.)
Sometimes, Voss warns, you’re going to come up against a dishonest or unscrupulous counterpart. He advises you to cut off negotiations when you see that this is the case—there’s no deal to be had if the other person’s word is useless. But what are the signs of a liar?
Voss writes that liars tend to be more verbose and use more complicated, rambling sentences—hoping to draw your attention away from the web of dishonesty they’re weaving around you. He says they also use more distant, third-person pronouns like “they,” “them,” and “we.” They tend to avoid saying “I” or “me.” Psychologically, this helps the liar distance herself from the lie.
Voss writes that liars rely heavily on third-person pronouns, but we’ve also seen that people in positions of power do the same thing to avoid being pinned down to a definite position. While these two assertions aren’t completely mutually exclusive—it’s of course possible for a person in a position of power to also be dishonest—it’s important to not conflate the two. Both are examples of deflection, but they are not the same thing.
If you’re talking to a CEO, for example, and you notice that she’s using a lot of third-person pronouns, you shouldn’t immediately conclude that she’s lying or trying to mislead you. Instead, she may be trying to deflect in order to avoid being too tied down to any particular course of action—that’s her being strategic, not dishonest. In order to distinguish between the two scenarios, keep asking open-ended questions, watching for tonal and nonverbal cues, and listening for key bits of information that your counterpart might reveal.
To effectively employ Voss’s techniques, you need to accurately size up your counterpart so that you can anticipate how they’ll approach you and how you can best respond.
In this chapter, Voss tells you how to take a comprehensive assessment of the person across the table from you by:
Voss identifies three main types of negotiator:
Voss does not say that any one type is better or more effective than any other. They all can work in different situations. But he does say that whatever you are, you shouldn’t project your style of negotiation onto your counterpart—for example, if you’re an Aggressive, you have to adjust your behavior when you’re dealing with a Giver. Voss sees this as another extension of the empathy that’s at the heart of his approach to negotiation—treat others as they wish to be treated.
Don’t Be a Pushover
Some other writers on negotiation do caution that it’s possible to go too far in being accommodating to someone else by meeting their style.
In Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (2014), Adam Grant writes that the biggest risk of being a giver is giving too much of yourself, at your own expense—letting others seize opportunities that should be yours.
When negotiating, givers often feel empathy for the counterparty, which makes them afraid of being too off-putting—and as a result, they dial down their self-interest. However, Grant does concur with Voss in that the best negotiating strategy is to understand the other person’s objective perspective and interests. By getting a handle on what they really want, Grant argues you can work with your counterpart to find mutually beneficial solutions.
The first type of negotiators identified by Voss are Givers. These are people-pleasers. Voss writes that they value the time spent building a relationship with their counterpart. Givers tend to be highly sociable and agreeable—but also poor time managers.
When dealing with a Giver, Voss advises you to focus your open-ended questions on implementation. This is because they’ll often agree to things that they can’t actually follow through on, since they’re so eager to make you happy.
Conversely if you’re a Giver, Voss advises 1) don’t sacrifice your reasonable objections because you’re afraid of conflict. Remember, most good decisions are borne of conflict and discomfort. Lean into it and avoid negotiating with yourself. Also, 2) avoid excess chitchat, especially if you’re face-to-face with someone who’s not a Giver. As you’ll see below, Calculators will want to get straight down to the facts, while Aggressives want to be the ones doing all the talking instead of listening to you.
Fear of Conflict
Voss’s belief that most good decisions are the product of some level of conflict and discomfort has been backed up by other writers. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni writes that fear of conflict is a major reason why working teams fail to implement decisions.
Lencioni writes that functional teams engage in what he calls “ideological conflict”—passionate disagreements about issues and ideas that do not devolve into personal rivalries and discord. Because they trust each other, members of functional teams feel comfortable expressing their true opinions and publicly disagreeing over important issues. With trust, they know that feedback isn’t meant to damage a person, but rather to improve their performance.
When there is a fear of conflict, however, these productive disagreements never happen—and as a result, the team is unable to resolve critical issues. Teams that fear conflict don’t tap into the full expertise and experience of their members. When this happens, they’re in danger of making mediocre decisions because they haven’t accounted for all possible angles and viewpoints. Even worse, a team that doesn’t openly discuss disagreements may end up channeling their unspoken conflicts into personal attacks—so that a team of Givers might, by trying too hard to accommodate each other, ironically end up at odds with each other.
Voss describes Calculators as methodological and diligent people. They want to assess all the facts before committing to a decision. As a result, they’re fairly unconcerned with time and less likely to be pressured by deadlines.
He warns that Calculators can be uncomfortably distant and cold, because they’re focused more on the results of a negotiation than on forging a human connection with their counterpart. They see you and the negotiation with you as completely separate entities.
When dealing with a Calculator, Voss recommends using clear, unambiguous data to back up your assertions. Don’t ad-lib, and avoid giving them any surprises. Also, don’t ask too many questions—even open-ended questions. Calculators will tend to not answer them until they have all the information they feel they need to respond. Instead, they’ll just treat your questions as just more data to analyze, which will take up a lot of your time.
On the other hand, if you’re a Calculator, be sure not to cut off your most valuable source of info—your counterpart. You’ll learn more from creating some empathy and connection with them than you can from all of your external research and number-crunching. Be sure to smile when you speak to put your counterpart at ease and get them to be more forthcoming.
How Analysis Paralysis Might SInk Negotiations
In The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin writes that people with highly analytical minds—those committed to logic, information, and efficiency, and intolerant of arbitrary, inefficient, or illogical expectations—often find themselves needing more and more information to answer basic questions, even when they recognize that such excessive information gathering is counterproductive.
Rubin terms this type of dysfunction “analysis paralysis,” in which someone becomes incapable of making a decision because they keep researching or the research doesn’t clearly point in one direction. Rubin warns that this can have detrimental consequences for someone’s career. If a Calculator easily falls into analysis-paralysis, they won’t be able to make the big decisions necessary to do their job. They’ll also be more likely to do poorly in work environments where people view their excessive probing as challenges to authority or insubordination.
Voss characterizes Aggressives as being highly achievement-oriented. They want to get things done. They hate wasted time and care a lot about meeting—and beating—deadlines. They also tend to have a forceful personal style, are more comfortable making threats and issuing demands, and can’t listen to you until they feel they’ve been heard. In short, they’re the classic hard-bargainer, the sharks, the type of adversary that many rookie negotiators fear going up against.
But, according to Voss, you can also use their domineering personalities and need for tangible accomplishments against them. Aggressives can be especially vulnerable to time pressures, since the biggest defeat to them is making no deal at all. If you can back them into a corner where they’re facing a deadline, you’ll be in a great position to dictate the terms.
Fundamentally, writes Voss, you need to put an Aggressive at ease and get them feeling in control. He recommends using a mix of labels, reflecting back, and open-ended questions to prompt a “That’s right” from them. This shows them that you see and understand their worldview and gives you credibility in their eyes (without them feeling like they’ve conceded something to you, which can be an unbearable blow to the ego of an Aggressive).
Reflecting back is also particularly effective with Aggressives, writes Voss. They love hearing themselves talk, so hearing you echo what they’re saying will boost their ego and convince them that you’re listening.
Meanwhile, if you’re an Aggressive, watch your tone and use open-ended questions to make yourself more approachable. Remember, browbeating your counterpart into concessions can backfire: they might give you a false “Yes” just because they’re intimidated by your forward style and want you to get off their back. As Voss has demonstrated, these kinds of false agreements aren’t worth much, because your counterpart has no intention or desire to actually implement the terms.
Use Threats Strategically
Voss writes that Aggressives are more prone to using hardball tactics, including threats. Harvard’s Program on Negotiation blog suggests that, while threats can sometimes be counterproductive and only serve to alienate your counterpart, they can also be an effective negotiation tactic if you deploy them strategically.
In order to determine whether your threat is just empty bluster or something that can actually advance your goals in the negotiation, they recommend taking the following factors into account:
Your emotional state: If you’re issuing threats out of sheer anger or frustration, it’s unlikely to help you make headway in the negotiation. When you’re angry or flustered, your ability to assess information and calculate costs and benefits is highly compromised. You don’t have to be a robot, but don’t let your emotions run the show.
The potential for tit-for-tat: Is your threat going to result in a counter-threat by your counterpart, leading to a damaging cycle of mutual escalation? If so, you might want to think twice before issuing it.
How you frame your threat: If you present your threat as a purely retaliatory, punitive measure, it’s unlikely to be useful. Strategic threats are about advancing your interests, not simply punishing your counterpart or preventing her from fulfilling her interests. Be sure to frame your threat to make it clear that they will get what they want if you get what you want. For example, if you’re making a threat to walk away from a deal, you can say something like, “If we reach an impasse and I’m left with no choice but to terminate this negotiation, we both lose out on a potentially lucrative deal for both of us. Let’s turn this around and focus on making sure we both get what we want.”
Voss cautions that you need to be prepared before you head into a negotiation—regardless of which type of negotiator you’re dealing with. That means you need to think about your open-ended questions, how you’re going to reflect back, and your labels before you go in. You may not need a script—but you do need a plan.
But Voss warns that it’s not enough to just have your own moves thought out in advance. Like a general, you also need to be quick on your feet, anticipate your counterpart’s moves, and formulate in-the-moment tactics for fighting back and countering. At the same time, you have to avoid being too hemmed in and tunnel-visioned by your own plan. If the negotiation is unfolding in a way that your plan didn’t precisely account for, you need to have the mental agility to adapt it on the fly with the changing circumstances.
Below, Voss highlights some specific dodge-and-counterpunch tactics you can use when you’re facing down a tough negotiator.
Plot Your Negotiation Roadmap
Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation blog recommends running through a pre-negotiation checklist before you sit down at the table. While Voss’s preparation guidance tends to focus on scripting specific tactical moves, Harvard’s checklist focuses on more overarching, strategic concerns, including:
Knowing clearly what you want to achieve from the negotiation—both long-term and short-term goals.
Understanding your greatest strengths and weaknesses.
Understanding what your counterpart wants and how you can give it to them (which is why they’re negotiating with you in the first place).
Mapping out your priorities: Some of your goals may be secondary or tangential to your main objective. It’s important to know what your highest priorities are, because that will help you figure out what you might be willing to sacrifice and what you absolutely must have.
Assessing your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated settlement: In other words, what does a no-deal situation look like to you? Is that something you can live with, or must you strike a deal at all costs?
Dodging tactics (where you’re skillfully deflecting the “punches” of your counterpart) can be best explained with an example. Let’s say you’re looking to sell your house and you think you can get around $250,000 for it. If a prospective buyer comes along and throws you an obvious lowball offer of $175,000, how do you respond?
Open-ended questions are a great way to say “no” without actually using the word. In this context, you would say, “The listed price is $250,000. I’m willing to negotiate, but you’re offering less than I paid for it; I’d be losing money. How can you expect me to do that?”
If the first offer is monetary, as in this case, Voss recommends pivoting to non-monetary terms. Ask questions like, “Let’s put price aside for now. What else can you offer for this house that would make this a good deal for me?”
(Shortform note: There are always parts of a negotiation that fall outside of direct price haggling that can be used as a sweetener. For example, in Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, David Mason Greene writes that offering to pay cash for a house (instead of getting a mortgage loan from a bank) is often enough of a benefit to the seller that they’ll be willing to accept a lower price. When you make a cash offer, it’s much easier and quicker to close the deal than it is when you have to secure financing from a bank or other financial institution (that will inevitably insist on appraisals, inspections, and other time-consuming loan contingencies). If a homeowner is in a rush to sell their house (perhaps because they lost their job or need to move because they got a new job somewhere else in the country), this time-saving can be incredibly valuable and worth the lower price you’re offering. In this way, you can “dodge” some of the seller’s possible objections.)
Voss argues that you also need to be prepared to hit back—without getting angry. Remember, even if you’re able to browbeat your counterpart into making big concessions, these will likely end up being hollow victories for you. Like a confession under pain of torture, a concession being under emotional distress is likely to be false and of little strategic value.
Instead, Voss urges the use of a technique psychologists call strategic umbrage. This means being genuinely angry (not faking it), but in control of your emotions. The key to strategic umbrage is getting angry at the offer being made—not the person making it. If you get an unworkable or frankly insulting offer, you can respond by saying “I see. I’m afraid there are no circumstances that would make what you just proposed work for me” in a displeased—but measured—tone is a good way to leverage a little bit of anger to your advantage.
“I” and “me” statements are also effective, according to Voss, because they put the other side’s focus on you as a person, which triggers their empathy. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” is a great way to hit the pause button on a bad dynamic.
The Right Way to Get Mad
Many psychologists argue that anger itself is not a “positive” or “negative” emotion. When used appropriately, anger can power professional success and fuel personal creativity. Indeed, one study out of the University of Michigan shows that people who suppress their anger have worse health outcomes than those who are able to find healthy outlets to express it. Suppressors had higher instances of bronchitis, heart attacks, and tended to die younger.
The key is not to suppress or get rid of all anger. Instead, we should strive to harness that anger to serve useful purposes. Much of this comes down to applying your anger to situations where it can actually make a difference.
If, for example, you’re stuck in traffic, that’s a situation that’s completely beyond your control. Anger is useless in this scenario because it won’t do anything to change the outcome, so in this case, you should work through your anger and dissipate it. But let’s say a coworker took credit for your idea at work and got a commendation from the boss that you feel you really deserved instead. In this situation, some level of anger is rational, and it might actually result in a correction of the situation. Like Voss, psychologists advocating for some expression of anger recommend using a measured, calm tone to express your displeasure, while taking care not to degrade the other person. This would allow you to harness strategic umbrage by being angry but still in control.
Lastly, you need to be willing to walk. Voss writes that “no deal” is better than a bad deal. If you suspect that your counterpart is lying, he says you should terminate the discussion right away. There’s no point in negotiating if you can’t get accurate information from your counterpart or if they’re acting in bad faith.
Even if they’re not lying per se, Voss advises you should walk if your counterpart has no ability to follow through on the deal (despite what might be their best intentions). This comes back to implementation: if your counterpart can’t actually pull the trigger because outside forces won’t allow them to act, you have nothing to gain by speaking with them.
However, you should always maintain collaboration with your counterpart: you might need to work with them on some future deal. Avoid emotional escalation if you need to shut down the negotiation and never look at your counterpart as an enemy.
(Shortform note: In Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury argue that the decision to walk away from a negotiation is more about the power imbalance between two parties than it is the unreliability of one of them. While wealth and connections enhance negotiating power, the power of each side also depends on negotiating skill and the strength of their alternative. If one party has a stronger alternative— for instance, the ability to get a better price elsewhere—they have the ability to walk away from an agreement, which gives them leverage. The stronger your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement), the greater your power. Other power enhancers include a good working relationship, listening skills, and ability to identify the other side’s interests and create mutually satisfying options.)
Voss recommends what he calls the Ackerman Model as a good alternative to traditional, old-school negotiating. Created by ex-CIA operative Mike Ackerman (who later founded a company advising law enforcement on kidnapping situations), this model improves on the traditional offer-counter system because it doesn’t end with you “meeting in the middle.”
(Shortform note: The book presents this in the context of bargaining for a lower price when you’re the buyer. If you’re bargaining for a higher price, as the seller, then invert the process.)
The Ackerman Model follows these six steps:
This should be ambitious, but reasonable. You don’t want to negotiate with yourself and set your target price too high (if you’re the buyer), but you also don’t want to set it so low that your counterpart would never agree to it. Doing some research beforehand will help you set your goal.
(Shortform note: Rather than setting a precise target price as Voss does, some negotiation experts recommend setting a target price range. This makes you appear more flexible, reasonable, and open to counteroffers, but also helps establish an ambitious opening bid on your terms. If a house is listed in your market for $250,000 you might want to offer a price range from $220,000 to $240,000—less than the seller is asking, but possibly within the zone of acceptability.)
Thus, if you’re aiming to pay $100,000, your opening bid should be $65,000. This is a starting bid designed to catch your counterpart off guard. Voss writes that an extreme starting bid like this can also trigger your own sense of loss aversion in a constructive way. By starting with a low offer, you’ll start thinking of anything higher than that as a “loss,” which you’ll work hard to avoid. In reality of course, you’re still well below your target price at this point, so even if you move off your opening bid it’s still a “win” for you. In addition, says Voss, your bid can force your counterpart to reveal their own price limit. If they balk and say something like, “I couldn’t possibly sell for anything less than $75,000,” that means you’ve just forced them to reveal their price floor.
(Shortform note: The Ackerman Model that Voss presents says to simply offer 65% of your asking price if you’re the buyer. The Harvard negotiation blog has a bit more nuanced approach to making first offers. They write that, when making your first offer, you need to find your reservation point, the point at which the proposed deal on the table holds equal value to the next best alternative—which might be simply walking away. You also need to figure out what this point is for your counterpart as well. Knowing these limits for yourself and your counterpart will help you identify what negotiation experts call the zone of possible agreement—the spectrum of mutually acceptable options for your negotiation.)
When they throw you an unacceptable counteroffer, use an open-ended question like “We’ve talked over my fixed costs already. Given that, how can I pay the price you’re asking for this?” Get them to think about how they can solve your problems.
(Shortform note: Much of Voss’s advice with regard to the Ackerman model seems to focus on you making the first offer and driving the subsequent counteroffers in order to put yourself in the driver’s seat and force your counterpart to negotiate against themselves and generally play the game on your terms. Some observers see things a bit differently, however. Other negotiators argue that making the first offer is a classic example of negotiating against yourself. While it’s true that Voss says you need to do your research first, making an opening bid without knowing what the offer person really wants often amounts to you voluntarily taking money out of your own pocket. If someone is selling something and you don’t know their asking price, any offer you make could be tantamount to shortchanging yourself before you even start bargaining—like offering $20 for something that the seller would have happily accepted $5 for.)
When planning your counteroffers, use three increases—but each time, you reduce the size of the increase. For example, Voss recommends countering at first with a number that’s 85% of your target price (a 20 percentage-point jump). Then, you increase it to 95% of your target price (only a 10 percentage-point jump this time). If they’re still not accepting this, then finally you meet them at your full target price (which by this point is a modest 5 percentage-point jump). All of this activates your counterpart’s inclination toward reciprocity. They’ll be inclined to match your raises with concessions of their own.
There’s also great power in the decreasing increments of your offer increases. They fool your counterpart into thinking that they’re squeezing you for every last penny. This makes them feel like they’re in control and that they’re earning hard-won concessions from you. Of course, you know that you’re still well below your target price.
(Shortform note: At the Harvard negotiation blog, they write that offering a rationale for your counteroffers can be an effective tactic. They identify two kinds of rationales—constraint and disparagement. Constraint rationales usually center around why you can’t afford what your counterpart is offering: “That’s completely outside of my budget.” Disparagement rationales question the legitimacy or fairness of the counterpart’s offer. If you were buying a car, you might say, “This is a used car with 100,000 miles on it and is no longer serviced by the manufacturer. I’m really surprised you’re asking this much for it.” Research from Columbia University showed that negotiation counterparts were more receptive to constraint rationales and tended to work harder to find common ground with people who used them.)
This gives it added weight and credibility, as Voss mentioned during the analysis of framing effects. Something like $99,321.94 sounds like a much firmer, more non-negotiable number than $100,000. This will signal to your counterpart that this number is the product of a great deal of calculation and analysis on your part and that, therefore, it can’t be negotiated.
(Shortform note: A paper from Harvard Business School analyzed the effects of round-number offers vs. more “precise” offers in the world of mergers and acquisitions. They found that offers made at round levels—i.e., $5-per-share—tended to perform worse than offers rounded to the half dollar or quarter—i.e., $4.75- or $4.50-per-share. Specifically, they found that bidders who made round-dollar offers 1) tended to end up paying a higher purchase price, 2) were less likely to complete a deal, and 3) realized lower returns even when they did complete a deal.
Include a non-monetary item along with your final offer to signal that you’re truly at your limit. By pivoting to something other than money, you’re sending a message to your counterpart that the monetary portion of the negotiation is over and done with and you’re ready to move on to other items.
(Shortform note: Other negotiation writers suggest that you can also experiment with non-monetary items as part of the normal offer-and-counteroffer cycle before you make your final offer. Doing this gives you valuable room to maneuver and can help you hone in on what your counterpart really values. If you’re negotiating a renewal on your apartment lease with your landlord, for example, you can make multiple offers to her that vary with regard to the monthly rent and the term of the lease. Seeing how she reacts will tell you a lot about whether she values a) getting the maximum amount of money each month or b) securing reliable tenants.)
(Shortform note: Counterterrorism Strategies for Corporations: The Ackerman Principles offers a more in-depth exploration of Mike Ackerman’s theory of negotiation and how to apply them in the world of international business. Drawing on his decades of CIA experience, Ackerman’s book specifically looks at how CEOs, CFOs, and other officers of global corporations can minimize the threat to their employees from terrorism and organized crime, exploring tactics to prevent and effectively respond to kidnapping, extortion, and hostage-taking.)
In this example, we will use a parent (Dana) trying to negotiate a lower annual tuition for her daughter’s private high school with the school’s headmaster.
We’ve seen Voss stress the primacy of having information. Indeed, he says that at their most fundamental level, all negotiations are exercises in information-gathering.
But some pieces of information are easier to obtain than others. Voss writes that in every negotiation, there is some hidden piece of information that, if it were known, would completely transform the dynamic of the negotiation and the final outcome. He labels these Black Swans—and says that finding them is the last piece of the puzzle to succeed in your negotiation.
In this chapter, Voss explores:
Voss writes that there are three types of information.
First, there are known knowns. These are the things we know for sure. In a negotiation, the known knowns are things like your counterpart’s name, their offer, and the knowledge gained from your experience in past negotiations. Voss warns that, while it’s good to come into a negotiation with this kind of knowledge, it can also distort your reality and make you miss new information. The things you know as certainties can blind you to receiving new information, make you tunnel-visioned, and wrongly convince you that this is the only kind of information.
Next, Voss describes known unknowns. This is information that we know exists but that we don’t possess ourselves. In a negotiation, a known unknown might be our counterpart’s price ceiling (i.e., the highest amount they’re willing to pay) or her dealbreaker condition. We know she has these; we just don’t know what they are.
What Not To Reveal in a Negotiation
Voss focuses on navigating the information about your counterpart that you either know or don’t know. But, as other negotiation experts write, it’s also important to make sure that some of your information remains unknown to your counterpart. Over at the Harvard negotiation blog, they argue that there are costs and benefits to every piece of information that you reveal to your counterpart. According to Harvard, there are four categories of information that you should always try to keep secret in a negotiation:
Things that are delicate or sensitive, like proprietary information or trade secrets.
Information that you’re not authorized to share. For example, your boss may instruct you that some news about your company (perhaps a planned move to another city or a major personnel announcement) is not public information and is not to be shared.
Things that can weaken your bargaining position. For example, if you’re selling your house because you need to relocate to another city for work, you might want to think twice before revealing that to a buyer. She might conclude that you’re desperate to sell and could use that as leverage to lowball you.
Information that is uncertain or subject to change.
But the most important pieces of information, according to Voss, are the unknown unknowns. These are the bits of information that we lack—and, crucially, don’t know that we lack. These are the Black Swans.
Your task in a negotiation is to uncover your Black Swans (the pieces of information about your counterpart that will give you unparalleled insight into her mental processes, desires, and hidden anxieties) by asking the right questions. In a negotiation, those who can best identify and exploit the unknown unknowns are those who come out on top.
For example, let’s say you were looking to buy a house from someone. If, in the course of your negotiation with the seller, you discovered that they were facing some sort of external financial pressures (from a lawsuit or a job loss), you would have great leverage over them. This information would tell you that your counterpart was a highly motivated seller who would likely accept a heavily discounted offer from you. This is a Black Swan—something you didn’t know before, didn’t know that you didn’t know, and that completely reshapes the negotiating dynamic.
(Shortform note: Although he doesn’t mention its use in this context, Voss probably recognized the term “unknown unknowns” when it entered the popular lexicon—albeit somewhat infamously—in 2002 when then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said it during a media availability in which he was questioned by reporters about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. The supposed existence of such weapons stockpiles was the cornerstone of the George W. Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq, which they ultimately did in spring 2003. Rumsfeld used the term to argue that even if there was no evidence of WMDs, the existence of “unknown unknowns” meant that the administration could never be fully certain they weren’t there. Critics of the Bush administration accused Rumsfeld of using the notion of unknown unknowns to justify his decision to invade Iraq when he couldn't offer known knowns to do so.)
Voss highlights some important tactics for finding your counterpart’s Black Swan:
Voss argues that too much is lost with impersonal media like email. These indirect modes of communication don’t allow you to hear your counterpart’s tone of voice, and you won’t see the unplanned, non-verbal signals that they might be sending you. Voss also advises you to remember that spoken words only represent 7% of human communication. Likewise, email gives your counterpart too much time to rehearse their responses and stall for time. You’ll miss those little, unguarded, spontaneous moments that can be such rich sources of information.
(Shortform note: Although Voss could not have anticipated this when he published his book in 2016, the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for businesspeople to conduct in-person meetings and negotiations, with such gatherings largely moving to virtual platforms like Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Working with other people without the benefit of face-to-face interaction created a number of pitfalls, including inability to see the totality of a person’s body language (since they usually just appear as “talking heads’); difficulty of making direct eye contact, which inhibits trust-building; and a heightened awareness of racial, ethnic, age, and gender differences between ourselves and our counterparts, since videoconferencing enables us to simultaneously see ourselves and the other person—something that doesn’t happen with in-person interactions and that may subconsciously force us to lean back on stereotypes.)
Voss writes that decades of social science research shows that we are more likely to trust people whom we see as similar to ourselves. Voss advises you to look for what you have in common with your counterpart. Build a rapport with them and create a conversational—even confidential—atmosphere. By doing this, you take your counterpart out of their “negotiation” mindset. In doing so, they’ll start to reveal key bits of valuable information that they otherwise wouldn’t because they believe they have a bond with you.
(Shortform note: This technique can also be used for nefarious purposes, unfortunately. Con artists often practice a form of deception known as affinity fraud, in which they target and exploit members of their own age, racial, religious, or other identity group. Their exploitation is effective because their victims see the con artist as being someone like them, which causes them to feel a level of trust and let their guard down in a way they might not with someone they perceive to be an “outsider.” Perhaps the most notorious—and most successful—affinity fraudster was Bernard Madoff, who targeted affluent and well-connected Jewish individuals and organizations (Madoff himself was Jewish and active in these circles), and stole an estimated $17.5 billion from his victims.)
Ultimately, says Voss, uncovering a Black Swan gives you leverage—the power to inflict loss or withhold gain. And as we’ve learned, calculating losses and gains is difficult for people to actually do. There are three types of leverage: positive leverage, negative leverage, and normative leverage.
Positive leverage is the power to give someone something they want. According to Voss, the best way to exercise positive leverage is to give your counterpart what they want by making them give you something that you want. This is the classic mutually beneficial or “win-win” negotiating scenario. If you can figure out that your counterpart’s Black Swan is something they desire, you can use positive leverage to help them achieve it if they help you achieve your aims.
We see this in routine interpersonal transactions all the time, but the concept even applies to high-level trade and economic agreements between nations. For example, the United States might allow China to export its goods to the American market (something Chinese manufacturers want very much), but only on the condition that China lower its own trade barriers, eliminate export subsidies, and crack down on intellectual property theft (things that are greatly desired by the American business community).
Positive Leverage and the Capitalist System
In its most idealized form, the entire system of capitalism and free enterprise is a giant web of trillions of positive-leverage transactions in which both parties benefit and end up with greater utility than they did before.
In Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell argues that in a free-market system, millions of individual consumers and producers exchange resources (money, goods, and services) with each other, each working to better their own individual circumstances. In doing so, each party betters themselves and also betters their counterpart at the same time—so that, for example, when someone buys a car, both the purchaser and the car manufacturer improve their lives. Additionally, everyone who was involved in the production and sale of that car, from factory workers to truckers to dealership owners, benefits by leveraging their time, effort, and skills for a paycheck, with which they can then leverage other purchases. The system is built on the concept of fair trades—positive leverages.
Negative leverage, says Voss, is the power to inflict harm or take away something that someone else values. It’s inherently based on threats and triggering your counterpart’s sense of loss aversion.
In order to harness the power of negative leverage, you need to figure out what would constitute a “loss” for your counterpart. Voss reminds us that these losses are not always monetary or tangible. It can be a loss of status, prestige, ego, or reputation.
He recommends using subtle labeling to allude to their fear of loss. For example, if you sense that your counterpart greatly values their reputation as an honest dealer, you would label their behavior by saying, “It doesn’t seem like you care about being seen as straightforward.”
Honor, Reputation, and Cultural Barriers to Negotiation
The non-monetary or intangible assets alluded to by Voss that some negotiators fear losing carry different weight across different cultures. Research shows that international or cross-cultural negotiations are powerfully shaped by individuals’ different cultural norms and values about what’s right or wrong, important or unimportant, and public or private.
Anthropologists divide the world’s cultures into three broad types—dignity, face, and honor cultures. People from dignity cultures (like the U.S. and Western Europe) tend to be highly individualistic, valuing independence and individual initiative. Because they come from countries with strong traditions of rule of law and sanctity of contract, their approach to negotiation tends to feature high levels of trust and focus on finding mutually beneficial solutions.
People from face cultures (primarily East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea) value social harmony, tend to elevate the good of the group over that of the individual, and show strong deference toward elders and authority figures. Because of their need to save face and preserve harmony, their approach to negotiation tends to focus on indirect questioning and collective decision-making, with direct confrontation or threats a rarity.
Lastly, people from honor cultures (like Latin America) tend to be highly protective of their perceived in-group (like family) and react aggressively to perceived slights to status. Because of these cultural traits, they tend to be less willing to trust their negotiating counterparts, for fear of being betrayed or double-crossed by them.
Lastly, Voss describes normative leverage as when you use someone’s own norms and standards against them. You do this by pointing out the gap between their behavior and their professed principles. Something like, “You say that you value transparency and openness, but it seems like you’re being evasive and indirect with your answers to my questions,” can be a powerful indictment that forces your counterpart to rethink their behavior. No one likes to feel like a hypocrite.
(Shortform note: While it may be strategically beneficial in a negotiation to play upon your counterpart’s anxiety about being a hypocrite, other writers have noted that hypocrisy is a fairly universal human trait. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt writes that, while we may enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of others and relish the feeling of moral superiority that it gives us, we are all hypocrites to some degree or another, excoriating others for behavior that we ourselves engage in. Haidt argues that we are able to do this without suffering cognitive dissonance because we as humans excel at inventing rationales for why whatever we’re doing at the moment is virtuous—or at the very least, justifiable. Therefore, when using normative leverage against your counterpart to point out hypocrisy, watch out for the possibility that they might do the same to you and thereby activate your own anxiety about being a hypocrite.)
Voss writes that Black Swans also give us key insights into how our counterpart sees the world. Once you know this, you’ve cracked the code—you can speak to them fluently in a language they understand.
When you find their Black Swan, you access their hidden area, their deeper desires. This enables you to predict what they’ll do next. Knowing their Black Swans can also prevent you from thinking your counterpart is “crazy” just because you don’t understand their behavior. If someone is behaving in a way that seems irrational or counterintuitive, remember—there’s likely some piece of information that you don’t know (and don’t know that you don’t know) that creates its own internal logic and rationale for them. In other words, because they have a different set of knowledge and beliefs than you, their view of the situation—and thus, the actions that stem from that view—probably make perfect sense to them. As Voss has emphasized, it comes down to empathy—standing in someone else’s shoes and trying to see the world the way they see it.
For example, the 9/11 hijackers undeniably committed a heinous crime that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. And it certainly seems to most observers that hijacking a plane and crashing it into a populated building (resulting in the deaths of everyone on the plane, including themselves, as well as many people in the buildings and on the ground) is an act of extreme irrationality. But accounts of the planning and execution of the attacks highlighted that the young men who carried them out were motivated by a mix of genuine ideological and religious convictions and believed that they were acting on behalf of oppressed Muslims around the world. In their worldview, any action would be defensible in order to combat the evil forces of Western (and specifically American) religious oppression they believed themselves to be combating.
Voss writes that what looks like crazy behavior by your counterpart may really be rational, because:
Information Asymmetry Skews Negotiations
Voss’s argument that irrational or inexplicable behavior by a party in a negotiation is often the result of them having poor information is a concept known as information asymmetry. In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner write that information asymmetry occurs when information is unequally distributed between parties. Not only does this sometimes cause one party to think the other is acting irrationally, but it also gives an enormous advantage to the party that has the greater amount of information. This has major implications in a negotiation, in which experts will take advantage of knowing more than the other party to extract value from them.
Levitt and Dubner cite the example of a real estate agent, whom you might think is acting with your best interests at heart. But she’s actually using her vastly superior knowledge of the real estate market to get the best deal for herself. With her information advantage, she can convince you that a lowball offer on your house is actually a good one and encourage you to quickly sell your house below-market—so she can quickly pocket her commission and move on to her next client.
In your negotiations, be mindful of any situation in which you as a layperson find yourself at an information disadvantage relative to an expert. And, if you can’t figure out why your counterpart is acting a certain way (for example, you can’t figure out why your realtor is advising that you settle for the first bid you get), instead of assuming they’re acting irrationally, look for a possible information asymmetry that might be affecting your negotiations.
Voss expands upon his analysis of Black Swans by exploring two different real-life hostage scenarios (a subject in which he is well-versed given his background as a top FBI hostage negotiator) in which law enforcement officials respectively failed and then succeeded in understanding a hostage-taker's true motivations.
While obviously far more dramatic and high-stakes than any negotiating scenario a reader is likely to find herself in, these extreme examples serve to highlight the importance of uncovering hidden information and understanding a counterpart’s true motivations. These are principles that apply to any negotiation.
In 1981, William Griffin walked into a bank and proceeded to take nine employees hostage. Based on prior experience with hostage scenarios, police expected Griffin to ultimately surrender peacefully. This was their known known—or so they thought. However, Griffin shocked police when he executed one of his hostages in plain sight, before being killed himself by police sniper fire.
In this case, the authorities made the tragic mistake of not understanding Griffin’s real motivations. Griffin didn’t want money or recognition. Instead, his real motivation was to die—and he knew that executing a hostage would provoke the police into shooting him in a “suicide-by-cop” scenario. The tragic killing of the hostage happened because the authorities failed to recognize Griffin’s true wants, needs, and incentives. This was a classic Black Swan—something that the authorities didn’t know, didn’t even consider, and would have completely changed their response had they known it.
As Voss writes, the police on the Griffin case relied too heavily on their existing beliefs about what a hostage-taker would want to achieve from their crime and were unable or unwilling to entertain any information that might have challenged this belief. This is an example of what psychologists call the confirmation bias—in which people seek out information that confirms what they already believe and ignore anything that challenges those beliefs.
The police in this case had an outdated idea of what a hostage situation was and were only willing to approach it from within that framework. But there are ways to overcome the confirmation bias. In his book The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb recommends a technique called “negative empiricism,” in which you seek out information that disproves your original belief. Had the police in the 1981 Griffin case done this, they may have been more open to the possibility of an unpredictable and unprecedented scenario (in other words, a Black Swan) that would have entirely transformed how they approached the hostage standoff.
The story of Dwight Watson presents the opposite case. This was an instance where an FBI hostage negotiation team (led by Chris Voss) successfully identified a Black Swan and used it to de-escalate what could have been a dangerous situation.
In March 2003, Dwight Watson drove a tractor full of what he claimed to be explosives to Washington, D.C. and threatened to detonate his device. In their discussions with Watson, however, the FBI learned that he was a devout Christian. This Black Swan gave the authorities valuable insight into Watson’s state of mind, his motivations, and how to craft appeals to his religious ideals that would let him surrender without losing face.
This worked because the authorities put in the hard work to gain a holistic understanding of Watson’s view of the world. It may have made little sense to the individuals on the FBI team, but it certainly made sense to Watson. This breakthrough came because the team was willing to listen.
Counterpoint: Compassion Is Better Than Empathy
Voss writes that, in the Watson case, FBI negotiators used empathy in order to understand Watson’s view of the world (in his case, that of a devout Christian) and to make specific appeals to him that spoke to his religious convictions. However, not all commentators agree with Voss’s view that empathy is the key to negotiations—or to human relations in general.
In Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Harvard psychologist Paul Bloom draws a crucial distinction between empathy and compassion. Empathy, he argues, is the internalization of the emotions of others—feeling angry when they feel angry, sad when they feel sad, and so on. According to Bloom, empathy (however well intentioned) is counterproductive because taking on the emotions of others will inevitably become exhausting and unpleasant—and ultimately make you want to withdraw from efforts to help others.
Bloom also argues that the concept of empathy suffers from another fatal design flaw, namely that we are more naturally inclined to extend toward others who look and think like us. Further, because it involves putting yourself in someone else’s proverbial shoes, empathy is impossible to scale—even if you can feel empathy for your neighbor or for people in your community, according to Bloom, is it really possible for you to cast that emotional onto the nearly eight billion people on the planet? For these reasons, argues Bloom, empathy is an inadequate tool for overcoming global systemic racial, gender, linguistic, and other barriers.
Compassion, says Bloom, is different. With compassion, rather than simply reflecting back the emotions of others, we assign value and meaning to the emotions of others—and, crucially, to the people expressing them. Compassion does not trigger the same feeling of emotional fatigue as empathy. Instead, a compassionate person will be inspired and motivated to help.
When viewed in this light, it could be argued that what the FBI negotiators really exhibited in the Watson case was not empathy, but rather, compassion. They did not merely ape or mimic Watson’s emotional state. Instead, they used their understanding of his worldview and emotional frame of mind to make appeals based on the innate value of human life—both Watson’s own and the people he was threatening to kill.
Get what you want from your negotiations.
Have you ever wanted to get information from someone, but didn’t know how to ask without seeming too forward? What happened? What open-ended questions could you have asked to get this information in a subtle way?
Has someone ever committed to do something for you, only for them to not follow through? Describe how that felt. What can you do in future situations to ensure that other people live up to their commitments?
What negotiating style best describes you? Explain your answer and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your style.
Have you ever completely changed your thinking about a project or a negotiation because new information came to light that you hadn’t considered? Detail what happened. To avoid being surprised next time, what techniques would you use to find these “black swans” or hidden pieces of information?
Think about the main takeaways from Never Split the Difference.
Which tactic from this summary will be the most helpful for you in future negotiations? Explain your answer.
Explain why empathy is so important to successful negotiations.
How did reading this summary change what you thought about how to negotiate?