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Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It Paperback
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Product details
- ASIN : B07VDCS13R
- Language : English
- Paperback : 116 pages
- Item Weight : 9.1 ounces
- Best Sellers Rank: #42,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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About the authors
Tahl Raz is a storyteller of big ideas in business, technology and the social sciences that are transforming the way we work and live. An award-winning journalist and best-selling author, he has edited and published in everything from Inc. Magazine and GQ to Harvard Business Review and the Jerusalem Post. Management guru Tom Peters called his first co-authored book, “Never Eat Alone,” one of “the most extraordinary and valuable business books” of recent history. The book is still in hardcover over a decade later and is now used as a textbook in MBA programs around the world. He has held roles as a Chief Content Officer, CEO of an online education company called MyGreenLight, and founder and editor-in-chief of Jewcy Media. He lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and a very fat Pug named Bibi.
A 24 year veteran of the FBI, Chris Voss is one of the preeminent practitioners and professors of negotiating skills in the world. He is the founder and principal of The Black Swan Group, a consulting firm that provides training and advises Fortune 500 companies through complex negotiations. Voss has taught for many business schools, including the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Harvard University, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, among others.
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Prior to 2008, Chris Voss was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI. According to The Black Swan Group, through his 28 year with the Bureau, he was trained in negotiation by the FBI, Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. Chris has taught business negotiation in the MBA program in several of the world’s best universities and business programs. Voss continues to host seminars and attend guest lectures and is rumored to be working on additional books.
“Never Split the Difference”, a euphemism for “never compromise” because compromise on the street often leads to the loss of lives, Was published in May of 2016 and is an extremely powerful book that tells the stories of negotiation when you really can’t afford to lose, like in a situation where you are negotiating for the lives of others. Each chapter includes engaging theories on communication and actionable recommendations on how to improve your communication skills, while telling intriguing stories of the life of an FBI agent. These stories include bank robberies, terrorists and a bunch of different “bad guys”. This book will not only help your business deals, but your personal relationships as well. Voss gives us more than just the advice on what to do, he shows us why they work as well.
This book is a fun read full of useful information. The new concepts in every chapter had me highlighting the techniques and lessons that I truly wanted to remember. The most important to me, being that you should never be so eager to solve a conflict that’s result is inconvenient for you. Accepting bad deals is almost always a mistake. Compromise isn’t always the answer, while pushing for a hard “yes” doesn’t get you any closer to a victory, it only angers the other party. And finally, “Driving towards “that's right” is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing “you're right” is a disaster.” (p. 105)
Overall this is a wonderful book that teaches the reader that negotiation, at its core, is nothing more than conversations with reactions and results. Getting what you need from others will help set up the rest of your life. Chriss Voss will teach you how to take authority and show dominance in the conversations that will make or break your career. Because of the strong lessons in this book, I believe it would be a great book for most young people to read. Whether they are beginning their college career or creating their own blue-collar business, “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss is a great resource for people looking to better their life without looking for a designated “self-help” book. Remember: “... without self-control and emotional regulation…” (p 156) these strategies will not work.
Thoroughly enjoyed the FBI application as well as the behavioral psychology focus which provides interesting and thought provoking insights into the practical application of the authors methods.
Whether you are renegotiating your rent or buying a new car, these tools and techniques can provide you the upper hand.
What stood out to me the most was how the book breaks down negotiation tactics into digestible, actionable insights. The author has a knack for blending real-world examples with theoretical knowledge, making the art of negotiation not only approachable but also immensely intriguing. Each chapter felt like a new adventure, unraveling the intricacies of human psychology and strategic communication in ways I had never considered.
That said, who better to guide you in the best techniques for negotiation than someone who was involved in genuinely high-stakes negotiating – world-class ex-FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss. Having seen too many B-Grade movies, your perception of dealing with hostage-takers, as was mine, may be assembling an armour-clad SWAT team, getting a clear head shot at the hostage taker, and rescuing the terrified victims.
After seeing too many incidents end in disaster for the victims, the FBI turned to using very sophisticated negotiation techniques. Most business negotiators are raised on the “Getting to Yes” approach of Fisher and Ury. One of their keys to negotiating is the assumption that the other side is going to “act rationally and selfishly in trying to maximize their position.” Your task is to get as much as you can. The only people who come close to doing this are those negotiating with other people’s money and who will make an outsized commission irrespective of the outcome.
The book’s title, ‘Never Split the Difference’, highlights the deficiencies in this approach. What is splitting the difference in a hostage negotiation? I’ll give you $5m instead of your asking price of $10m and you kill only 8 hostages and free 12?
“Negotiation, as you’ll learn it here, is nothing more than communication with results,” Voss explains. The economist Amos Tversky and the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, the founders of the field of behavioural economics, won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that man is in fact, (and even in business,) a very irrational beast.
The beauty of the method Voss teaches is how easy it is to grasp the basics, even if it may take years to perfect these techniques. The method Voss describes was developed because it is easy to teach, easy to learn, and easy to execute. It was designed for police officers who weren’t interested in becoming academics or therapists. They simply needed a highly effective way of changing the behaviour of the hostage-taker, and to shift the emotional environment of the crisis just enough so that they can secure the safety of everyone involved.
If indeed you don’t get what you deserve, only what you ask for, you have to ask correctly. So, claim your prerogative to ask for what you think is right.
The centrepiece of this book, is ‘Tactical Empathy’ and it works. This doesn’t involve agreeing with the other person’s values and beliefs or giving out hugs, that’s sympathy.
Tactical Empathy is contingent on active listening – listening hard and doing so in a relationship-affirming way. Active Listening involves techniques such as Labelling, Mirroring, Accusation Audit, silences and more. I will address only a few.
Labelling is repeating your counterpart’s perspective back to them. You will be able to disarm your counterpart’s complaints by repeating them aloud. Labels almost always begin with the same words: It seems like … It looks like… It sounds like … and not “I’m hearing that …” The word “I” gets people’s guard up.
There is enough research that indicates that the best way to address negativity is to observe it, without reaction and without judgment. Then label the negative feeling and replace it with positive, compassionate, and solution-based thoughts. “You seem disappointed that the price you were expecting to achieve is being rejected…” Then listen encouragingly so a solution can be found.
There are three voices that are useful in a negotiation, one Voss calls the “late-night, FM DJ voice”: it is non-threating, soft, and calming. Talk that starts with “I’m sorry …” and a soft smile, makes people more open to creative solutions because their brains are not freezing in fear or anger.
“Mirroring” is feeding back to your counterpart what they have just said. Not the body language. Not the accent. Not the tone or delivery. Just the words. Sometimes repeating only the last three words or the critical one to three words of what someone has just said, will produce the desired effect. Your counterpart will inevitably elaborate, and even reveal more information that will further fuel the negotiation. Mirrors work magic.
By affirming what you are hearing, you are showing you understand (not support or concur with) your counterpart’s worldview.
“It seems like you want us to let you go.” Or “It seems like you don’t want to go ahead with the sale under these conditions.” When they can say to you “That’s right…” you have connected in a meaningful way that will allow for the exploration of other options. If they had said, “You’re right…” more often than not, they are fobbing you off.
“I always try to reinforce the message that being right isn’t the key to a successful negotiation—having the right mindset is,” Voss explains. Negotiation is not a battle between opposing forces.
By doing an accusation audit in advance, you can often surface what is their concern upfront and eliminate it. When teaching negotiation, Voss invites students to roleplay. Knowing what is going to bother them, he introduces the process with: “In case you’re worried about volunteering to roleplay with me in front of the class, I want to tell you in advance … it’s going to be horrible… (But) those of you who do volunteer will probably get more out of this than anyone else.” The response is always positive.
By listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you, you can address it, with playful seriousness, and elicit the useful ‘That’s right…’ reponse.
“In the decades since my initiation into the world of high-stakes negotiations, I’ve been struck again and again by how valuable these seemingly simple approaches can be. The ability to get inside the head—and eventually under the skin—of your counterpart depends on these techniques and a willingness to change your approach, based on new evidence, along the way.”
This is a remarkably engaging book, that reads like a novel, complete with reports of Voss’s gripping experiences chosen to highlight what he teaches. This is a must read for anyone whose work involves negotiation. For those who are not so engaged, read it anyway even if your most serious negotiation is your noisy neighbour or getting a seat on a “fully booked” flight.
Readability Light --+-- Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High +---- Low
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently released Executive Update.
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Il libro (lingua inglese) è facile da leggere e comprensibile. L’autore introduce ogni argomento con degli episodi tratti dalla sua carriera personale di negoziatore per l’FBI.
Ogni capitolo contiene tecniche concrete su come affrontare la negoziazione.
Piacevole alla lettura e rapido nell’esecuzione di ogni capitolo.
Da rileggere.