Before reading Never Split the Difference, I had little understanding of negotiation. Chris Voss used to run hostage negotiations for the FBI. This skill has endless applications, from setting salary to getting your kids to bed. The book covers many strategies and tactics that you can put to good use today.
Key Takeaways
Memorable Quotes
Rating: 9/10
Another great general purpose book. You can use it to make any conflict easier and to sway things in your desired direction. If you're in business or you're a parent, you'll find immediate uses for some of the tactics in this book. Also worth investigating: Thinking Fast and Slow, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Influence. This one will be worth reviewing more than once.
Key Takeaways
- Effective negotiation is an exercise in empathy and understanding others.
- Learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
- Use "It sounds like..." to ensure you understand your counterpart.
- Listen for the "that's right..." moment.
- You must prepare for every negotiation.
Memorable Quotes
- He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.
- Conflict brings out truth, creativity, and resolution.
- Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.
- If you approach a negotiation thinking the other guy thinks like you, you are wrong. That's not empathy, that's a projection.
- The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas.
- Psychotherapy research shows that when individuals feel listened to, they tend to listen to themselves more carefully and to openly evaluate and clarify their own thoughts and feelings.
- The Rule of Three is simply getting the other guy to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation. It’s tripling the strength of whatever dynamic you’re trying to drill into at the moment. In doing so, it uncovers problems before they happen. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.
- Identify your counterpart’s negotiating style. Once you know whether they are Accommodator, Assertive, or Analyst, you’ll know the correct way to approach them.
- Prepare, prepare, prepare. When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall to your highest level of preparation. So design an ambitious but legitimate goal and then game out the labels, calibrated questions, and responses you’ll use to get there. That way, once you’re at the bargaining table, you won’t have to wing it.
- Get ready to take a punch. Kick-ass negotiators usually lead with an extreme anchor to knock you off your game. If you’re not ready, you’ll flee to your maximum without a fight. So prepare your dodging tactics to avoid getting sucked into the compromise trap.
- Set boundaries, and learn to take a punch or punch back, without anger. The guy across the table is not the problem; the situation is.
- Prepare an Ackerman plan. Before you head into the weeds of bargaining, you’ll need a plan of extreme anchor, calibrated questions, and well-defined offers. Remember: 65, 85, 95, 100 percent. Decreasing raises and ending on nonround numbers will get your counterpart to believe that he’s squeezing you for all you’re worth when you’re really getting to the number you want.
- Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.
- The last rule of labeling is silence. Once you’ve thrown out a label, be quiet and listen.
- The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it.
Rating: 9/10
Another great general purpose book. You can use it to make any conflict easier and to sway things in your desired direction. If you're in business or you're a parent, you'll find immediate uses for some of the tactics in this book. Also worth investigating: Thinking Fast and Slow, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Influence. This one will be worth reviewing more than once.