Instaread Summaries - Summary of Never Split the Difference: by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz Includes Analysis

Summary of

Never Split the Difference

Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

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This is a summary with analysis.

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Table of Contents

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz is a guide to using hostage negotiation techniques in business and personal negotiations.

Modern negotiation strategies taught in business school usually center on classic texts that describe negotiation without factoring in emotions or irrational behavior. In reality, all negotiations involve emotional factors and illogical reactions. And in hostage scenarios, splitting the difference by accepting the release of half the hostages in exchange of partial fulfillment of demands is never a desired outcome.

Hostage takers who feel heard are more likely to trust negotiators to be honest about what they want. Active listening involves mirroring the other person's speech, speaking in a way that sounds assertive but calming, and not saying anything at all for several seconds between utterances. This slows the conversation down and conveys the impression that the negotiator wishes to understand.

Negotiators can also use tactical empathy to increase the other partys trust, which involves naming and validating the other partys emotions through labeling, that is, by stating what the negotiator perceives their emotions to be. Negotiators can lay out their assumptions about the other partys accusations against the negotiator to defuse negativity preemptively.

Good negotiators understand that not every yes means agreement, and no can often be the starting point that leads to real progress in the negotiation. It can be useful to encourage the other party to respond to questions that they would naturally answer with no in order to grant baseline permission to disagree. Negotiators should ask a lot of how and what questions, which can reveal the other partys actual motivations or force them to solve the negotiators problems, and allow the other party to feel ownership of the solution and to refuse offers with subtlety. Negotiators should also strive for the other party to respond to statements with Thats right to form the foundation for cooperation. Once negotiators can get the other party to respond with Thats right, they know that they are seeing eye-to-eye on the situation and can start to work toward a solution.

A negotiator can make offers that include odd, specific numbers; carefully revealed deadlines, and extreme initial anchor offers that are far above or below the goal, all of which influence the other party unconsciously to cooperate. Haggling is inevitable in some negotiations, and who wins the bargaining depends on the bargaining styles of the participants. Negotiators often use the Ackerman model for each step of a haggle, which makes the other party think the final offer is the most they can get.

The biggest breakthroughs occur when negotiators discover Black Swans, factors that are not clear at the start of the negotiation but which turn out to completely change the outcome. These can be religious beliefs, loss of power, or previously unknown monetary considerations.

The best preparation for a negotiation is a one sheet that summarizes the situation and the best and worst case scenarios, lists questions to ask using the words how or what, identifies the accusations the other party might level, anticipates deal-killing factors, and suggests items other than cash that can be leveraged in the negotiation.

Chris Voss is a professor of negotiation at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. He is the founder of negotiation consultancy Black Swan Ltd.

Tahl Raz has co-authored books on leadership and business achievement with Keith Ferrazzi and Gary Burnison. He writes for a variety of publications including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), a book about behavioral economics.

William Griffin was a hostage taker at a bank in Rochester, New York, in 1981. He was shot by a police sniper during the altercation.

Abu Sabaya was a leader of Abu Sayyaf terrorists who took hostages and ransomed them in the Philippines.

Jeffrey Schilling is an American who was taken hostage by Abu Sabaya in 2000.

Chris Watts was the first hostage taker with whom Voss negotiated. He held bank employees hostage in Brooklyn in 1993.

1. Negotiators can gain an advantage by learning to manage emotions.
2. Negotiators must practice active listening techniques to make the other party feel a sense of trust.
3. To gain trust and uncover hidden obstacles, good negotiators can learn to practice empathy for the people with whom they negotiate.
4. The best way to get the other party in a negotiation to be willing to agree to a solution is to summarize and repeat their concerns in a way that will make them say, Thats right.
5. The word no can be a powerful tool in a negotiation when it reveals previously unknown points of contention.
6. Certain seemingly arbitrary factors will influence parties to a negotiation to be more likely to accept an offer or make a compromise, such as using offers with very specific, odd numbers, or starting with an extremely low or high first offer.
7. If negotiators ask questions that begin with the words how or what, they can convince the other party to solve shared problems. How questions can also ensure that an agreement is authentic.
8. A majority of communication is nonverbal, so negotiators must be able to interpret tone of voice and body language to ensure accuracy.
9. Bargaining and haggling depends on the negotiators styles, which can be assertive, analytical, or accommodating. Each style can be more successful when a negotiator uses progressive offers that make the other party think they are getting as much as possible.
10. Black Swans are hidden factors that can completely change the negotiation if discovered and leveraged.
11. A successful negotiation requires thorough and specific preparation for how to proceed with the other party based on all available prior knowledge.

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