Summary

Negotiation is not a battle; its a process of discovery. The goal in a negotiation is to uncover as much information as possible. This can be done through mirroring and labelling (read notes for more about this technique). One of my favorite techniques is asking the ‘how am I supposed to do that?’. Just three ideas alone is worth in gold.

Favorite Quotes and Chapter Notes

I went through my notes and captured key quotes from all chapters below.

P.S. – Highly recommend Readwise if you want to get the most out of your reading.

Highlights and Notes

How to Become the Smartest Person . . . in Any Room

• Kahneman later codified his research in the 2011 bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow.3 Man, he wrote, has two systems of thought: System 1, our animal mind, is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is slow, deliberative, and logical. And System 1 is far more influential. In fact, it guides and steers our rational thoughts. System 1’s inchoate beliefs, feelings, and impressions are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. They’re the spring that feeds the river. We react emotionally(System 1) to a suggestion or question. Then that System 1 reaction informs and in effect creates the System 2 answer. Now think about that: under this model, if you know how to affect your counterpart’s System 1 thinking, his inarticulate feelings, by how you frame and deliver your questions and statements, then you can guide his System 2 rationality and therefore modify his responses. That’s

• What were needed were simple psychological tactics and strategies that worked in the field to calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust, elicit the verbalization of needs, and persuade the other guy of our empathy. We needed something easy to teach, easy to learn, and easy to execute.

• It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there. By listening intensely, a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other side is experiencing. 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. In addition, they tend to become less defensive and oppositional and more willing to listen to other points of view, which gets them to the calm and logical place where they can be good Getting to Yes problem solvers.

• Effective negotiation is applied people smarts, a psychological edge in every domain of life: how to size someone up, how to influence their sizing up of you, and how to use that knowledge to get what you want.

• In every negotiation there are between three and five pieces of information that, were they to be uncovered, would change everything. The concept is an absolute game-changer; so much so, I’ve named my company The Black Swan Group. In

• Negotiation is the heart of collaboration. It is what makes conflict potentially meaningful and productive for all parties. It can change your life, as it has changed mine.

How to Quickly Establish Rapport

• Good negotiators, going in, know they have to be ready for possible surprises; great negotiators aim to use their skills to reveal the surprises they are certain exist. Experience will have taught them that they are best served by holding multiple hypotheses—about the situation, about the counterpart’s wants, about a whole array of variables—in their mind at the same time. Present and alert in the moment, they use all the new information that comes their way to test and winnow true hypotheses from false ones. In negotiation, each new psychological insight or additional piece of information revealed heralds a step forward and allows one to discard one hypothesis in favor of another. You should engage the process with a mindset of discovery. Your goal at the outset is to extract and observe as much information as possible. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that really smart people often have trouble being negotiators—they’re so smart they think they don’t have anything to discover.

• Great negotiators are able to question the assumptions that the rest of the involved players accept on faith or in arrogance, and thus remain more emotionally open to all possibilities, and more intellectually agile to a fluid situation.

• Students of mine balk at this notion, asking,“Seriously, do you really need a whole team to… hear someone out?” The fact that the FBI has come to that conclusion, I tell them, should be a wake-up call. It’s really not that easy to listen well. We are easily distracted. We engage in selective listening, hearing only what we want to hear, our minds acting on a cognitive bias for consistency rather than truth. And that’s just the start. Most people approach a negotiation so preoccupied by the arguments that support their position that they are unable to listen attentively. In

• For those people who view negotiation as a battle of arguments, it’s the voices in their own head that are overwhelming them. When they’re not talking, they’re thinking about their arguments, and when they are talking, they’re making their arguments. Often those on both sides of the table are doing the same thing, so you have what I call a state of schizophrenia: everyone just listening to the voice in their head(and not well, because they’re doing seven or eight other things at the same time). It

• There’s one powerful way to quiet the voice in your head and the voice in their head at the same time: treat two schizophrenics with just one pill. Instead of prioritizing your argument—in fact, instead of doing any thinking at all in the early goings about what you’re going to say—make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. In that mode of true active listening—aided by the tactics you’ll learn in the following chapters—you’ll disarm your counterpart. You’ll make them feel safe. The voice in their head will begin to quiet down. The goal is to identify what your counterparts actually need(monetarily, emotionally, or otherwise) and get them feeling safe enough to talk and talk and talk some more about what they want. The latter will help you discover the former. Wants are easy to talk about, representing the aspiration of getting our way, and sustaining any illusion of control we have as we begin to negotiate; needs imply survival, the very minimum required to make us act, and so make us vulnerable. But neither wants nor needs are where we start; it begins with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for a real conversation to begin.

• Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard and we risk undermining the rapport and trust we’ve built. There’s plenty of research that now validates the passage of time as one of the most important tools for a negotiator. When you slow the process down, you also calm it down. After all, if someone is talking, they’re not shooting.

• When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. Smile at someone on the street, and as a reflex they’ll smile back. Understanding that reflex and putting it into practice is critical to the success of just about every negotiating skill there is to learn. That’s why your most powerful tool in any verbal communication is your voice. You can use your voice to intentionally reach into someone’s brain and flip an emotional switch. Distrusting to trusting. Nervous to calm. In an instant, the switch will flip just like that with the right delivery.

• Most of the time, you should be using the positive/playful voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing, good-natured person. Your attitude is light and encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile while you’re talking. A smile, even while talking on the phone, has an impact tonally that the other person will pick up on.

• When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve(instead of fight and resist). It applies to the smile-er as much as to the smile-ee: a smile on your face, and in your voice, will increase your own mental agility.

• Playful wasn’t the move with Chris Watts. The way the late-night FM DJ voice works is that, when you inflect your voice in a downward way, you put it out there that you’ve got it covered. Talking slowly and clearly you convey one idea: I’m in control. When you inflect in an upward way, you invite a response. Why? Because you’ve brought in a measure of uncertainty. You’ve made a statement sound like a question. You’ve left the door open for the other guy to take the lead, so I was careful here to be quiet, self-assured. It’s the same voice I might use in a contract negotiation, when an item isn’t up for discussion. If I see a work-for-hire clause, for example, I might say,“We don’t do work-for-hire.” Just like that, plain, simple, and friendly. I don’t offer up an alternative, because it would beg further discussion, so I just make a straightforward declaration. That’s how I played it here. I said,“Joe’s gone. You’re talking to me now.” Done deal. You can be very direct and to the point as long as you create safety by a tone of voice that says I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s figure things out.

• Mirroring, also called isopraxism, is essentially imitation. It’s another neurobehavior humans(and other animals) display in which we copy each other to comfort each other. It can be done with speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo, and tone of voice. It’s generally an unconscious behavior—we are rarely aware of it when it’s happening—but it’s a sign that people are bonding, in sync, and establishing the kind of rapport that leads to trust. It’s a phenomenon(and now technique) that follows a very basic but profound biological principle: We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. Mirroring, then, when practiced consciously, is the art of insinuating similarity.“Trust me,” a mirror signals to another’s unconscious,“You and I—we’re alike.”

• It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a“mirror” is when you repeat the last three words(or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective. By repeating back what people say, you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting. Psychologist

• The intention behind most mirrors should be“Please, help me understand.” Every time you mirror someone, they will reword what they’ve said. They will never say it exactly the same way they said it the first time. Ask someone,“What do you mean by that?” and you’re likely to incite irritation or defensiveness. A mirror, however, will get you the clarity you want while signaling respect and concern for what the other person is saying.

• The language of negotiation is primarily a language of conversation and rapport: a way of quickly establishing relationships and getting people to talk and think together. Which is why when you think of the greatest negotiators of all time, I’ve got a surprise for you—think Oprah Winfrey. Her daily television show was a case study of a master practitioner at work: on a stage face-to-face with someone she has never met, in front of a crowded studio of hundreds, with millions more watching from home, and a task to persuade that person in front of her, sometimes against his or her own best interests, to talk and talk and keep talking, ultimately sharing with the world deep, dark secrets that they had held hostage in their own minds for a lifetime.

• ■   A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find.

• ■   Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to test them rigorously.

• ■   People who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible.

• ■   To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say.

• ■   Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built.

• ■   Put a smile on your face. When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve(instead of fight and resist). Positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart.

• ■   Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words(or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side to empathize and bond with you, keep people talking, buy your side time to regroup, and encourage your counterparts to reveal their strategy.

How to Create Trust with Tactical Empathy

• That’s why, instead of denying or ignoring emotions, good negotiators identify and influence them. They are able to precisely label emotions, those of others and especially their own. And once they label the emotions they talk about them without getting wound up. For them, emotion is a tool. Emotions aren’t the obstacles, they are the means. The relationship between an emotionally intelligent negotiator and their counterpart is essentially therapeutic. It duplicates that of a psychotherapist with a patient. The psychotherapist pokes and prods to understand his patient’s problems, and then turns the responses back onto the patient to get him to go deeper and change his behavior. That’s exactly what good negotiators do. Getting to this level of emotional intelligence demands opening up your senses, talking less, and listening more. You can learn almost everything you need—and a lot more than other people would like you to know—simply by watching and listening, keeping your eyes peeled and your ears open, and your mouth shut.

• Playing dumb is a valid negotiating technique, and“I don’t understand” is a legitimate response. But ignoring the other party’s position only builds up frustration and makes them less likely to do what you want. The opposite of that is tactical empathy. In my negotiating course, I tell my students that empathy is“the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart, and the vocalization of that recognition.” That’s

• Notice I didn’t say anything about agreeing with the other person’s values and beliefs or giving out hugs. That’s sympathy. What I’m talking about is trying to understand a situation from another person’s perspective. One step beyond that is tactical empathy. Tactical empathy is understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow. It’s bringing our attention to both the emotional obstacles and the potential pathways to getting an agreement done. It’s emotional intelligence on steroids.

• Politics aside, empathy is not about being nice or agreeing with the other side. It’s about understanding them. Empathy helps us learn the position the enemy is in, why their actions make sense(to them), and what might move them.

• We employed our tactical empathy by recognizing and then verbalizing the predictable emotions of the situation. We didn’t just put ourselves in the fugitives’ shoes. We spotted their feelings, turned them into words, and then very calmly and respectfully repeated their emotions back to them. In a negotiation, that’s called labeling. Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels. It gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about(“How’s your family?”). Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack. Labeling has a special advantage when your counterpart is tense. Exposing negative thoughts to daylight—“It looks like you don’t want to go back to jail”—makes them seem less frightening.

• Labeling is a simple, versatile skill that lets you reinforce a good aspect of the negotiation, or diffuse a negative one. But it has very specific rules about form and delivery. That makes it less like chatting than like a formal art such as Chinese calligraphy.

• Once you’ve spotted an emotion you want to highlight, the next step is to label it aloud. Labels can be phrased as statements or questions. The only difference is whether you end the sentence with a downward or upward inflection. But no matter how they end, labels almost always begin with roughly the same words: It seems like… It sounds like… It looks like… Notice we said“It sounds like…” and not“I’m hearing that…” That’s because the word“I” gets people’s guard up. When you say“I,” it says you’re more interested in yourself than the other person, and it makes you take personal responsibility for the words that follow—and the offense they might cause.

• The last rule of labeling is silence. Once you’ve thrown out a label, be quiet and listen. We all have a tendency to expand on what we’ve said, to finish,“It

• In basic terms, people’s emotions have two levels: the“presenting” behavior is the part above the surface you can see and hear; beneath, the“underlying” feeling is what motivates the behavior. Imagine a grandfather who’s grumbly at a family holiday dinner: the presenting behavior is that he’s cranky, but the underlying emotion is a sad sense of loneliness from his family never seeing him. What good negotiators do when labeling is address those underlying emotions. Labeling negatives diffuses them(or defuses them, in extreme cases); labeling positives reinforces them.

• Try this the next time you have to apologize for a bone-headed mistake. Go right at it. The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it. Whenever I was dealing with the family of a hostage, I started out by saying I knew they were scared. And when I make a mistake—something that happens a lot—I always acknowledge the other person’s anger. I’ve found the phrase“Look, I’m an asshole” to be an amazingly effective way to make problems go away. That approach has never failed me.

• “We don’t see each other all that often,” you could say.“It seems like you feel like we don’t pay any attention to you and you only see us once a year, so why should you make time for us?” Notice how that acknowledges the situation and labels his sadness? Here you can pause briefly, letting him recognize and appreciate your attempts to understand what he’s feeling, and then turn the situation around by offering a positive solution.

• We do that by labeling the fears. These labels are so powerful because they bathe the fears in sunlight, bleaching them of their power and showing our counterpart that we understand. Think back to that Harlem landing: I didn’t say,“It seems like you want us to let you go.” We could all agree on that. But that wouldn’t have diffused the real fear in the apartment, or shown that I empathized with the grim complexity of their situation. That’s why I went right at the amygdala and said,“It seems like you don’t want to go back to jail.” Once they’ve been labeled and brought into the open, the negative reactions in your counterpart’s amygdala will begin to soften. I promise it will shock you how suddenly his language turns from worry to optimism. Empathy is a powerful mood enhancer.

• So I don’t ask. Instead, I say,“In case you’re worried about volunteering to role-play with me in front of the class, I want to tell you in advance… it’s going to be horrible.” After the laughter dies down, I then say,“And those of you who do volunteer will probably get more out of this than anyone else.” I always end up with more volunteers than I need. Now, look at what I did: I prefaced the conversation by labeling my audience’s fears; how much worse can something be than“horrible”? I defuse them and wait, letting it sink in and thereby making the unreasonable seem less forbidding. All of us have intuitively done something close to this thousands of times. You’ll start a criticism of a friend by saying,“I don’t want this to sound harsh…” hoping that whatever comes next will be softened. Or you’ll say,“I don’t want to seem like an asshole…” hoping your counterpart will tell you a few sentences later that you’re not that bad. The small but critical mistake this commits is denying the negative. That actually gives it credence. In court, defense lawyers do this properly by mentioning everything their client is accused of, and all the weaknesses of their case, in the opening statement. They

• The first step of doing so is listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you, in what I call an accusation audit.

• To start, watch how Ryan turns that heated exchange to his advantage. Following on the heels of an argument is a great position for a negotiator, because your counterpart is desperate for an empathetic connection. Smile, and you’re already an improvement.“Hi, Wendy, I’m Ryan. It seems like they were pretty upset.” This labels the negative and establishes a rapport based on empathy. This in turn encourages Wendy to elaborate on her situation, words Ryan then mirrors to invite her to go further.“Yeah. They missed their connection. We’ve had a fair amount of delays because of the weather.”“The weather?” After Wendy explains how the delays in the Northeast had rippled through the system, Ryan again labels the negative and then mirrors her answer to encourage her to delve further.“It seems like it’s been a hectic day.”“There’ve been a lot of ‘irate consumers,’ you know? I mean, I get it, even though I don’t like to be yelled at. A lot of people are trying to get to Austin for the big game.”“The big game?”“UT is playing Ole Miss football and every flight into Austin has been booked solid.”“Booked solid?” Now let’s pause. Up to this point, Ryan has been using labels and mirrors to build a relationship with Wendy. To her it must seem like idle chatter, though, because he hasn’t asked for anything. Unlike the angry couple, Ryan is acknowledging her situation. His words ping-pong between“What’s that?” and“I hear you,” both of which invite her to elaborate. Now that the empathy has been built, she lets slip a piece of information he can use.“Yeah, all through the weekend. Though who knows how many people will make the flights. The weather’s probably going to reroute a lot of people through a lot of different places.” Here’s where Ryan finally swoops in with an ask. But notice how he acts: not assertive or coldly logical, but with empathy and labeling that acknowledges her situation and tacitly puts them in the same boat.“Well, it seems like you’ve been handling the rough day pretty well,” he says.“I was also affected by the weather delays and missed my connecting flight. It seems like this flight is likely booked solid, but with what you said, maybe someone affected by the weather might miss this connection. Is there any possibility a seat will be open?” Listen to that riff: Label, tactical empathy, label. And only then a request. At this

• ■   The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open.

• ■   Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence.

• ■   Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust.

• ■   List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.

• ■   Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

How to Generate Momentum and Make It Safe to Reveal the Real Stakes

• “No” is the start of the negotiation, not the end of it. We’ve been conditioned to fear the word“No.” But it is a statement of perception far more often than of fact. It seldom means,“I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice.” Instead,“No” is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo. Change is scary, and“No” provides a little protection from that scariness.

• It comes down to the deep and universal human need for autonomy. People need to feel in control. When you preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say“No” to your ideas, the emotions calm, the effectiveness of the decisions go up, and the other party can really look at your proposal. They’re

• Great negotiators seek“No” because they know that’s often when the real negotiation begins.

• In fact, your invitation for the other side to say“No” has an amazing power to bring down barriers and allow for beneficial communication.

• Whether you call it“buy-in” or“engagement” or something else, good negotiators know that their job isn’t to put on a great performance but to gently guide their counterpart to discover their goal as his own.

• Though the intensity may differ from person to person, you can be sure that everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control. If you satisfy those drives, you’re in the door.

• And being“nice” in the form of feigned sympathy is often equally as unsuccessful. We live in an age that celebrates niceness under various names. We are exhorted to be nice and to respect people’s feelings at all times and in every situation. But nice alone in the context of negotiation can backfire. Nice, employed as a ruse, is disingenuous and manipulative. Who hasn’t received the short end of the stick in dealings with a“nice” salesman who took you for a ride? If you rush in with plastic niceness, your bland smile is going to dredge up all that baggage. Instead of getting inside with logic or feigned smiles, then, we get there by asking for“No.” It’s the word that gives the speaker feelings of safety and control.“No” starts conversations and creates safe havens to get to the final“Yes” of commitment. An early“Yes” is often just a cheap, counterfeit dodge.

• Saying“No” gives the speaker the feeling of safety, security, and control. You use a question that prompts a“No” answer, and your counterpart feels that by turning you down he has proved that he’s in the driver’s seat. Good negotiators welcome—even invite—a solid“No” to start, as a sign that the other party is engaged and thinking. Gun for a“Yes” straight off the bat, though, and your counterpart gets defensive, wary, and skittish. That’s why I tell my students that, if you’re trying to sell something, don’t start with“Do you have a few minutes to talk?” Instead ask,“Is now a bad time to talk?” Either you get“Yes, it is a bad time” followed by a good time or a request to go away, or you get“No, it’s not” and total focus.

• There is a big difference between making your counterpart feel that they can say“No” and actually getting them to say it. Sometimes, if you’re talking to somebody who is just not listening, the only way you can crack their cranium is to antagonize them into“No.” One great way to do this is to mislabel one of the other party’s emotions or desires. You say something that you know is totally wrong, like“So it seems that you really are eager to leave your job” when they clearly want to stay. That forces them to listen and makes them comfortable correcting you by saying,“No, that’s not it. This is it.” Another way to force“No” in a negotiation is to ask the other party what they don’t want.“Let’s talk about what you would say ‘No’ to,” you’d say. And people are comfortable saying“No” here because it feels like self-protection. And once you’ve gotten them to say“No,” people are much more open to moving forward toward new options and ideas.

• despite all your efforts, the other party won’t say“No,” you’re dealing with people who are indecisive or confused or who have a hidden agenda. In cases like that you have to end the negotiation and walk away.

• You provoke a“No” with this one-sentence email. Have you given up on this project? The point is that this one-sentence email encapsulates the best of“No”-oriented questions and plays on your counterpart’s natural human aversion to loss. The“No” answer the email demands offers the other party the feeling of safety and the illusion of control while encouraging them to define their position and explain it to you.

• That’s death for a good negotiator, who gains their power by understanding their counterpart’s situation and extracting information about their counterpart’s desires and needs. Extracting that information means getting the other party to feel safe and in control. And while it may sound contradictory, the way to get there is by getting the other party to disagree, to draw their own boundaries, to define their desires as a function of what they do not want.

• ■   Saying“No” makes the speaker feel safe, secure, and in control, so trigger it. By saying what they don’t want, your counterpart defines their space and gains the confidence and comfort to listen to you. That’s why“Is now a bad time to talk?” is always better than“Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

• ■   Sometimes the only way to get your counterpart to listen and engage with you is by forcing them into a“No.” That means intentionally mislabeling one of their emotions or desires or asking a ridiculous question—like,“It seems like you want this project to fail”—that can only be answered negatively.

• ■   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 a potential business partner is ignoring you, contact them with a clear and concise“No”-oriented question that suggests that you are ready to walk away.“Have you given up on this project?” works wonders.

How to Gain the Permission to Persuade

• CNU developed what is a powerful staple in the high-stakes world of crisis negotiation, the Behavioral Change Stairway Model(BCSM). The model proposes five stages—active listening, empathy, rapport, influence, and behavioral change—that take any negotiator from listening to influencing behavior. The origins of the model can be traced back to the great American psychologist Carl Rogers, who proposed that real change can only come when a therapist accepts the client as he or she is—an approach known as unconditional positive regard. The vast majority of us, however, as Rogers explained, come to expect that love, praise, and approval are dependent on saying and doing the things people(initially, our parents) consider correct. That is, because for most of us the positive regard we experience is conditional, we develop a habit of hiding who we really are and what we really think, instead calibrating our words to gain approval but disclosing little.

• If you successfully take someone up the Behavioral Change Stairway, each stage attempting to engender more trust and more connection, there will be a breakthrough moment when unconditional positive regard is established and you can begin exerting influence.

• We were going to use nearly every tactic in the active listening arsenal: 1.  Effective Pauses: Silence is powerful. We told Benjie to use it for emphasis, to encourage Sabaya to keep talking until eventually, like clearing out a swamp, the emotions were drained from the dialogue. 2.  Minimal Encouragers: Besides silence, we instructed using simple phrases, such as“Yes,”“OK,”“Uh-huh,” or“I see,” to effectively convey that Benjie was now paying full attention to Sabaya and all he had to say. 3.  Mirroring: Rather than argue with Sabaya and try to separate Schilling from the“war damages,” Benjie would listen and repeat back what Sabaya said. 4.  Labeling: Benjie should give Sabaya’s feelings a name and identify with how he felt.“It all seems so tragically unfair, I can now see why you sound so angry.” 5.  Paraphrase: Benjie should repeat what Sabaya is saying back to him in Benjie’s own words. This, we told him, would powerfully show him you really do understand and aren’t merely parroting his concerns. 6.  Summarize: A good summary is the combination of rearticulating the meaning of what is said plus the acknowledgment of the emotions underlying that meaning(paraphrasing + labeling = summary). We told Benjie he needed to listen and repeat the“world according to Abu Sabaya.” He needed to fully and completely summarize all the nonsense that Sabaya had come up with about war damages and fishing rights and five hundred years of oppression. And once he did that fully and completely, the only possible response for Sabaya, and anyone faced with a good summary, would be“that’s right.”

• Driving toward“that’s right” is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing“you’re right” is a disaster.

• Why is“you’re right” the worst answer? Consider this: Whenever someone is bothering you, and they just won’t let up, and they won’t listen to anything you have to say, what do you tell them to get them to shut up and go away?“You’re right.” It works every time. Tell people“you’re right” and they get a happy smile on their face and leave you alone for at least twenty-four hours. But you haven’t agreed to their position. You have used“you’re right” to get them to quit bothering you.

• The power of getting to that understanding, and not to some simple“yes,” is revelatory in the art of negotiation. The moment you’ve convinced someone that you truly understand her dreams and feelings(the whole world that she inhabits), mental and behavioral change becomes possible, and the foundation for a breakthrough has been laid. Use these lessons to lay that foundation:

• ■   Creating unconditional positive regard opens the door to changing thoughts and behaviors. Humans have an innate urge toward socially constructive behavior. The more a person feels understood, and positively affirmed in that understanding, the more likely that urge for constructive behavior will take hold.

• ■   “That’s right” is better than“yes.” Strive for it. Reaching“that’s right” in a negotiation creates breakthroughs.

• ■   Use a summary to trigger a“that’s right.” The building blocks of a good summary are a label combined with paraphrasing. Identify, rearticulate, and emotionally affirm“the world according to…”

How to Shape What Is Fair

• In fact, Don A. Moore, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, says that hiding a deadline actually puts the negotiator in the worst possible position. In his research, he’s found that hiding your deadlines dramatically increases the risk of an impasse. That’s because having a deadline pushes you to speed up your concessions, but the other side, thinking that it has time, will just hold out for more.

• Moore discovered that when negotiators tell their counterparts about their deadline, they get better deals. It’s true. First, by revealing your cutoff you reduce the risk of impasse. And second, when an opponent knows your deadline, he’ll get to the real deal- and concession-making more quickly. I’ve got one final point to make before we move on: Deadlines are almost never ironclad. What’s more important is engaging in the process and having a feel for how long that will take. You may see that you have more to accomplish than time will actually allow before the clock runs out.

• Remember Robin Williams’s great work as the voice of the genie in Disney’s Aladdin? Because he wanted to leave something wonderful behind for his kids, he said, he did the voice for a cut-rate fee of $75,000, far below his usual $8 million payday. But then something happened: the movie became a huge hit, raking in $504 million. And Williams went ballistic. Now look at this with the Ultimatum Game in mind. Williams wasn’t angry because of the money; it was the perceived unfairness that pissed him off. He didn’t complain about his contract until Aladdin became a blockbuster, and then he and his agent went loud and long about how they got ripped off. Lucky for Williams, Disney wanted to keep its star happy. After initially pointing out the obvious—that he’d happily signed the deal—Disney made the dramatic gesture of sending the star a Picasso painting worth a reported $1 million.

• In fact, of the three ways that people drop this F-bomb, only one is positive. The most common use is a judo-like defensive move that destabilizes the other side. This manipulation usually takes the form of something like,“We just want what’s fair.”

• If you’re on the business end of this accusation, you need to realize that the other side might not be trying to pick your pocket; like my friend, they might just be overwhelmed by circumstance. The best response either way is to take a deep breath and restrain your desire to concede. Then say,“Okay, I apologize. Let’s stop everything and go back to where I started treating you unfairly and we’ll fix it.”

• The second use of the F-bomb is more nefarious. In this one, your counterpart will basically accuse you of being dense or dishonest by saying,“We’ve given you a fair offer.” It’s

• “We’ve given the players a fair offer.” Notice the horrible genius of this: instead of opening their books or declining to do so, the owners shifted the focus to the NFLPA’s supposed lack of understanding of fairness. If you find yourself in this situation, the best reaction is to simply mirror the“F” that has just been lobbed at you.“Fair?” you’d respond, pausing to let the word’s power do to them as it was intended to do to you. Follow that with a label:“It seems like you’re ready to provide the evidence that supports that,” which alludes to opening their books or otherwise handing over information that will either contradict their claim to fairness or give you more data to work with than you had previously. Right

• The last use of the F-word is my favorite because it’s positive and constructive. It sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation. Here’s how I use it: Early on in a negotiation, I say,“I want you to feel like you are being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if you feel I’m being unfair, and we’ll address it.”

• If you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, and unmet objectives—if you can get at what people are really buying—then you can sell them a vision of their problem that leaves your proposal as the perfect solution. Look at this from the most basic level. What does a good babysitter sell, really? It’s not child care exactly, but a relaxed evening. A furnace salesperson? Cozy rooms for family time. A locksmith? A feeling of security. Know the emotional drivers and you can frame the benefits of any deal in language that will resonate.

• In a tough negotiation, it’s not enough to show the other party that you can deliver the thing they want. To get real leverage, you have to persuade them that they have something concrete to lose if the deal falls through.

• 1. ANCHOR THEIR EMOTIONS

• To bend your counterpart’s reality, you have to start with the basics of empathy. So start out with an accusation audit acknowledging all of their fears. By anchoring their emotions in preparation for a loss, you inflame the other side’s loss aversion so that they’ll jump at the chance to avoid it.

• “I got a lousy proposition for you,” I said, and paused until each asked me to go on.“By the time we get off the phone, you’re going to think I’m a lousy businessman. You’re going to think I can’t budget or plan. You’re going to think Chris Voss is a big talker. His first big project ever out of the FBI, he screws it up completely. He doesn’t know how to run an operation. And he might even have lied to me.” And then, once I’d anchored their emotions in a minefield of low expectations, I played on their loss aversion.“Still, I wanted to bring this opportunity to you before I took it to someone else,” I said. Suddenly, their call wasn’t about being cut from $2,000 to $500 but how not to lose $500 to some other guy.

• 1. LET THE OTHER GUY GO FIRST… MOST OF THE TIME.

• The tendency to be anchored by extreme numbers is a psychological quirk known as the“anchor and adjustment” effect. Researchers have discovered that we tend to make adjustments from our first reference points. For example, most people glimpsing 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 estimate that it yields a higher result than the same string in reverse order. That’s because we focus on the first numbers and extrapolate. That’s not to say,“Never open.” Rules like that are easy to remember, but, like most simplistic approaches, they are not always good advice. If you’re dealing with a rookie counterpart, you might be tempted to be the shark and throw out an extreme anchor. Or if you really know the market and you’re dealing with an equally informed pro, you might offer a number just to make the negotiation go faster. Here’s my personal advice on whether or not you want to be the shark that eats a rookie counterpart. Just remember, your reputation precedes you. I’ve run into CEOs whose reputation was to always badly beat their counterpart and pretty soon no one would deal with them.

• 1. ESTABLISH A RANGE

• Instead of saying,“I’m worth $110,000,” Jerry might have said,“At top places like X Corp., people in this job get between $130,000 and $170,000.” That gets your point across without moving the other party into a defensive position. And it gets him thinking at higher levels. Research shows that people who hear extreme anchors unconsciously adjust their expectations in the direction of the opening number. Many even go directly to their price limit. If Jerry had given this range, the firm probably would have offered $130,000 because it looked so cheap next to $170,000. In a recent study,4 Columbia Business School psychologists found that job applicants who named a range received significantly higher overall salaries than those who offered a number, especially if their range was a“bolstering range,” in which the low number in the range was what they actually wanted. Understand, if you offer a range(and it’s a good idea to do so) expect them to come in at the low end.

• 1. PIVOT TO NONMONETARY TERMS
• 1. WHEN YOU DO TALK NUMBERS, USE ODD ONES

• Every number has a psychological significance that goes beyond its value. And I’m not just talking about how you love 17 because you think it’s lucky. What I mean is that, in terms of negotiation, some numbers appear more immovable than others. The biggest thing to remember is that numbers that end in 0 inevitably feel like temporary placeholders, guesstimates that you can easily be negotiated off of. But anything you throw out that sounds less rounded—say, $37,263—feels like a figure that you came to as a result of thoughtful calculation. Such numbers feel serious and permanent to your counterpart, so use them to fortify your offers.

• 1. SURPRISE WITH A GIFT

• HOW TO NEGOTIATE A BETTER SALARY

• I break down the process into three parts that blend this chapter’s dynamics in a way that not only brings you better money, but convinces your boss to fight to get it for you.

• BE PLEASANTLY PERSISTENT ON NONSALARY TERMS

• Pleasant persistence is a kind of emotional anchoring that creates empathy with the boss and builds the right psychological environment for constructive discussion. And the more you talk about nonsalary terms, the more likely you are to hear the full range of their options. If they can’t meet your nonsalary requests, they may even counter with more money, like

• SALARY TERMS WITHOUT SUCCESS TERMS IS RUSSIAN ROULETTE

• Once you’ve negotiated a salary, make sure to define success for your position—as well as metrics for your next raise. That’s meaningful for you and free for your boss, much like giving me a magazine cover story was for the bar association. It

• SPARK THEIR INTEREST IN YOUR SUCCESS AND GAIN AN UNOFFICIAL MENTOR

• Remember the idea of figuring what the other side is really buying? Well, when you are selling yourself to a manager, sell yourself as more than a body for a job; sell yourself, and your success, as a way they can validate their own intelligence and broadcast it to the rest of the company. Make

• Once you’ve bent their reality to include you as their ambassador, they’ll have a stake in your success. Ask:“What does it take to be successful here?” Please notice that this question is similar to questions that are suggested by many MBA career counseling centers, yet not exactly the same. And it’s the exact wording of this question that’s critical.

• The interviewer then gave a great and detailed answer. The key issue here is if someone gives you guidance, they will watch to see if you follow their advice. They will have a personal stake in seeing you succeed. You’ve just recruited your first unofficial mentor.

• In that one little move, Angel weaved together a bunch of the lessons from this chapter. The odd numbers gave them the weight of thoughtful calculation. The numbers were high too, which exploited his boss’s natural tendency to go directly to his price limit when faced by an extreme anchor. And they were a range, which made Angel seem less aggressive and the lower end more reasonable in comparison.

• ■   All negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the surface. Once

• ■   Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe, so don’t compromise. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides.

• ■   Approaching deadlines entice people to rush the negotiating process and do impulsive things that are against their best interests.

• ■   The F-word—“Fair”—is an emotional term people usually exploit to put the other side on the defensive and gain concessions. When your counterpart drops the F-bomb, don’t get suckered into a concession. Instead, ask them to explain how you’re mistreating them.

• ■   You can bend your counterpart’s reality by anchoring his starting point. Before you make an offer, emotionally anchor them by saying how bad it will be. When you get to numbers, set an extreme anchor to make your“real” offer seem reasonable, or use a range to seem less aggressive. The real value of anything depends on what vantage point you’re looking at it from.

• ■   People will take more risks to avoid a loss than to realize a gain. Make sure your counterpart sees that there is something to lose by inaction.

How to Calibrate Questions to Transform Conflict into Collaboration

• We learned that negotiation was coaxing, not overcoming; co-opting, not defeating. Most important, we learned that successful negotiation involved getting your counterpart to do the work for you and suggest your solution himself. It involved giving him the illusion of control while you, in fact, were the one defining the conversation. The tool we developed is something I call the calibrated, or open-ended, question. What it does is remove aggression from conversations by acknowledging the other side openly, without resistance. In doing so, it lets you introduce ideas and requests without sounding pushy. It allows you to nudge.

• Then, once you’ve picked out what you want, instead of hitting them with a hard offer, you can just say the price is a bit more than you budgeted and ask for help with one of the greatest-of-all-time calibrated questions:“How am I supposed to do that?” The critical part of this approach is that you really are asking for help and your delivery must convey that. With this negotiating scheme, instead of bullying the clerk, you’re asking for their advice and giving them the illusion of control.

• Calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart on what the problem is rather than causing conflict by telling them what the problem is.

• But calibrated questions are not just random requests for comment. They have a direction: once you figure out where you want a conversation to go, you have to design the questions that will ease the conversation in that direction while letting the other guy think it’s his choice to take you there.

• First off, calibrated questions avoid verbs or words like“can,”“is,”“are,”“do,” or“does.” These are closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple“yes” or a“no.” Instead, they start with a list of words people know as reporter’s questions:“who,”“what,”“when,”“where,”“why,” and“how.” Those words inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively. But let me cut the list even further: it’s best to start with“what,”“how,” and sometimes“why.” Nothing

• You should use calibrated questions early and often, and there are a few that you will find that you will use in the beginning of nearly every negotiation.“What is the biggest challenge you face?” is one of those questions. It just gets the other side to teach you something about themselves, which is critical to any negotiation because all negotiation is an information-gathering process.

• Here are some other great standbys that I use in almost every negotiation, depending on the situation: ■   What about this is important to you? ■   How can I help to make this better for us? ■   How would you like me to proceed? ■   What is it that brought us into this situation? ■   How can we solve this problem? ■   What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here? ■   How am I supposed to do that?

• This really appeals to very aggressive or egotistical counterparts. You’ve not only implicitly asked for help—triggering goodwill and less defensiveness—but you’ve engineered a situation in which your formerly recalcitrant counterpart is now using his mental and emotional resources to overcome your challenges. It is the first step in your counterpart internalizing your way—and the obstacles in it—as his own. And that guides the other party toward designing a solution. Your solution.

• Think back to how the doctor used calibrated questions to get his patient to stay. As his story showed, the key to getting people to see things your way is not to confront them on their ideas(“You can’t leave”) but to acknowledge their ideas openly(“I understand why you’re pissed off”) and then guide them toward solving the problem(“What do you hope to accomplish by leaving?”). Like I said before, the secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control. That’s why calibrated questions are ingenious: Calibrated questions make your counterpart feel like they’re in charge, but it’s really you who are framing the conversation. Your counterpart will have no idea how constrained they are by your questions.

• Once I was negotiating with one of my FBI bosses about attending a Harvard executive program. He had already approved the expenditure for the travel, but on the day before I was supposed to leave he called me into his office and began to question the validity of the trip. I knew him well enough to know that he was trying to show me that he was in charge. So after we talked for a while, I looked at him and asked,“When you originally approved this trip, what did you have in mind?” He visibly relaxed as he sat back in his chair and brought the top of his fingers and thumbs together in the shape of a steeple. Generally this is a body language that means the person feels superior and in charge.“Listen,” he said,“just make sure you brief everyone when you get back.” That question, calibrated to acknowledge his power and nudge him toward explaining himself, gave him the illusion of control.

• The very first thing I talk about when I’m training new negotiators is the critical importance of self-control. If you can’t control your own emotions, how can you expect to influence the emotions of another party?

• The script we came up with hit all the best practices of negotiation we’ve talked about so far. Here it is by steps: 1.  A“No”-oriented email question to reinitiate contact:“Have you given up on settling this amicably?” 2.  A statement that leaves only the answer of“That’s right” to form a dynamic of agreement:“It seems that you feel my bill is not justified.” 3.  Calibrated questions about the problem to get him to reveal his thinking:“How does this bill violate our agreement?” 4.  More“No”-oriented questions to remove unspoken barriers:“Are you saying I misled you?”“Are you saying I didn’t do as you asked?”“Are you saying I reneged on our agreement?” or“Are you saying I failed you?” 5.  Labeling and mirroring the essence of his answers if they are not acceptable so he has to consider them again:“It seems like you feel my work was subpar.” Or“… my work was subpar?” 6.  A calibrated question in reply to any offer other than full payment, in order to get him to offer a solution:“How am I supposed to accept that?” 7.  If none of this gets an offer of full payment, a label that flatters his sense of control and power:“It seems like you are the type of person who prides himself on the way he does business—rightfully so—and has a knack for not only expanding the pie but making the ship run more efficiently.” 8.  A long pause and then one more“No”-oriented question:“Do you want to be known as someone who doesn’t fulfill agreements?”

• The first and most basic rule of keeping your emotional cool is to bite your tongue. Not literally, of course. But you have to keep away from knee-jerk, passionate reactions. Pause. Think. Let the passion dissipate. That allows you to collect your thoughts and be more circumspect in what you say. It also lowers your chance of saying more than you want to. The Japanese have this figured out. When negotiating with a foreigner, it’s common practice for a Japanese businessman to use a translator even when he understands perfectly what the other side is saying. That’s because speaking through a translator forces him to step back. It gives him time to frame his response.

• KEY LESSONS

• Who has control in a conversation, the guy listening or the guy talking? The listener, of course. That’s because the talker is revealing information while the listener, if he’s trained well, is directing the conversation toward his own goals. He’s harnessing the talker’s energy for his own ends.

• ■   Don’t try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Aggressive confrontation is the enemy of constructive negotiation.

• ■   Avoid questions that can be answered with“Yes” or tiny pieces of information. These require little thought and inspire the human need for reciprocity; you will be expected to give something back.

• ■   Ask calibrated questions that start with the words“How” or“What.” By implicitly asking the other party for help, these questions will give your counterpart an illusion of control and will inspire them to speak at length, revealing important information.

• ■   Don’t ask questions that start with“Why” unless you want your counterpart to defend a goal that serves you.“Why” is always an accusation, in any language.

• ■   Calibrate your questions to point your counterpart toward solving your problem. This will encourage them to expend their energy on devising a solution.

• ■   Bite your tongue. When you’re attacked in a negotiation, pause and avoid angry emotional reactions. Instead, ask your counterpart a calibrated question.

• ■   There is always a team on the other side. If you are not influencing those behind the table, you are vulnerable.

How to Spot the Liars and Ensure Follow-Through from Everyone Else

• By making your counterparts articulate implementation in their own words, your carefully calibrated“How” questions will convince them that the final solution is their idea. And that’s crucial. People always make more effort to implement a solution when they think it’s theirs. That is simply human nature. That’s why negotiation is often called“the art of letting someone else have your way.”

• On the flip side, be wary of two telling signs that your counterpart doesn’t believe the idea is theirs. As I’ve noted, when they say,“You’re right,” it’s often a good indicator they are not vested in what is being discussed. And when you push for implementation and they say,“I’ll try,” you should get a sinking feeling in your stomach. Because this really means,“I plan to fail.” When you hear either of these, dive back in with calibrated“How” questions until they define the terms of successful implementation in their own voice. Follow up by summarizing what they have said to get a“That’s right.”

• When implementation happens by committee, the support of that committee is key. You always have to identify and unearth their motivations, even if you haven’t yet identified each individual on that committee. That can be easy as asking a few calibrated questions, like“How does this affect the rest of your team?” or“How on board are the people not on this call?” or simply“What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area?”

• In two famous studies on what makes us like or dislike somebody,1 UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian created the 7-38-55 rule. That is, only 7 percent of a message is based on the words while 38 percent comes from the tone of voice and 55 percent from the speaker’s body language and face.

• When someone’s tone of voice or body language does not align with the meaning of the words they say, use labels to discover the source of the incongruence.

• 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. When I first learned this skill, my biggest fear was how to avoid sounding like a broken record or coming off as really pushy. The answer, I learned, is to vary your tactics. The first time they agree to something or give you a commitment, that’s No. 1. For No. 2 you might label or summarize what they said so they answer,“That’s right.” And No. 3 could be a calibrated“How” or“What” question about implementation that asks them to explain what will constitute success, something like“What do we do if we get off track?” Or the three times might just be the same calibrated question phrased three different ways, like“What’s the biggest challenge you faced? What are we up against here? What do you see as being the most difficult thing to get around?” Either way, going at the same issue three times uncovers falsehoods as well as the incongruences between words and body language we mentioned in the last section. So next time you’re not sure your counterpart is truthful and committed, try it.

• In a study of the components of lying,2 Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra and his coauthors found that, on average, liars use more words than truth tellers and use far more third-person pronouns. They start talking about him, her, it, one, they, and their rather than I, in order to put some distance between themselves and the lie. And they discovered that liars tend to speak in more complex sentences in an attempt to win over their suspicious counterparts. It’s

• We’ve found that you can usually express“No” four times before actually saying the word. The first step in the“No” series is the old standby:“How am I supposed to do that?” You have to deliver it in a deferential way, so it becomes a request for help. Properly delivered, it invites the other side to participate in your dilemma and solve it with a better offer. After that, some version of“Your offer is very generous, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me” is an elegant second way to say“No.” This well-tested response avoids making a counteroffer, and the use of“generous” nurtures your counterpart to live up to the word. The“I’m sorry” also softens the“No” and builds empathy.(You can ignore the so-called negotiating experts who say apologies are always signs of weakness.) Then you can use something like“I’m sorry but I’m afraid I just can’t do that.” It’s a little more direct, and the“can’t do that” does great double duty. By expressing an inability to perform, it can trigger the other side’s empathy toward you.“I’m sorry, no” is a slightly more succinct version for the fourth“No.” If delivered gently, it barely sounds negative at all. If you have to go further, of course,“No” is the last and most direct way. Verbally, it should be delivered with a downward inflection and a tone of regard; it’s not meant to be“NO!”

• KEY LESSONS

• ■   Ask calibrated“How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking“How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands.

• ■   Use“How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using“How can I do that?” as a gentle version of“No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves.

• ■   Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players“behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are.

• ■   Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal.

• ■   Is the“Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction.

• ■   A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of“I,”“me,” and“my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of“we,”“they,” and“them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open.

• ■   Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks.

How to Get Your Price

• Any response that’s not an outright rejection of your offer means you have the edge.

• You know the moment: you’ve mirrored and labeled your way to a degree of rapport; an accusation audit has cleared any lingering mental or emotional obstacles, and you’ve identified and summarized the interests and positions at stake, eliciting a“That’s right,” and… Now it’s time to bargain.

• Skilled bargainers see more than just opening offers, counteroffers, and closing moves. They see the psychological currents that run below the surface.

• found that people fall into three broad categories. Some people are Accommodators; others—like me—are basically Assertive; and the rest are data-loving Analysts.

• Analysts are methodical and diligent. They are not in a big rush. Instead, they believe that as long as they are working toward the best result in a thorough and systematic way, time is of little consequence. Their self-image is linked to minimizing mistakes. Their motto: As much time as it takes to get it right.

• Analysts often speak in a way that is distant and cold instead of soothing. This puts people off without them knowing it and actually limits them from putting their counterpart at ease and opening them up. Analysts pride themselves on not missing any details in their extensive preparation. They will research for two weeks to get data they might have gotten in fifteen minutes at the negotiating table, just to keep from being surprised. Analysts hate surprises.

• People like this are skeptical by nature. So asking too many questions to start is a bad idea, because they’re not going to want to answer until they understand all the implications. With them, it’s vital to be prepared. Use clear data to drive your reason; don’t ad-lib; use data comparisons to disagree and focus on the facts; warn them of issues early; and avoid surprises. Silence to them is an opportunity to think. They’re not mad at you and they’re not trying to give you a chance to talk more. If

• ACCOMMODATOR

• The most important thing to this type of negotiator is the time spent building the relationship. Accommodators think as long as there is a free-flowing continuous exchange of information time is being well spent. As long as they’re communicating, they’re happy. Their goal is to be on great terms with their counterpart. They love the win-win. Of the three types, they are most likely to build great rapport without actually accomplishing anything. Accommodators want to remain friends with their counterpart even if they can’t reach an agreement. They are very easy to talk to, extremely friendly, and have pleasant voices. They will yield a concession to appease or acquiesce and hope the other side reciprocates. If your counterparts are sociable, peace-seeking, optimistic, distractible, and poor time managers, they’re probably Accommodators.

• ASSERTIVE

• The Assertive type believes time is money; every wasted minute is a wasted dollar. Their self-image is linked to how many things they can get accomplished in a period of time. For them, getting the solution perfect isn’t as important as getting it done. Assertives are fiery people who love winning above all else, often at the expense of others. Their colleagues and counterparts never question where they stand because they are always direct and candid. They

• Most of all, the Assertive wants to be heard. And not only do they want to be heard, but they don’t actually have the ability to listen to you until they know that you’ve heard them. They focus on their own goals rather than people. And they tell rather than ask.

• When you’re dealing with Assertive types, it’s best to focus on what they have to say, because once they are convinced you understand them, then and only then will they listen for your point of view.

• To an Assertive, every silence is an opportunity to speak more. Mirrors are a wonderful tool with this type. So are calibrated questions, labels, and summaries. The most important thing to get from an Assertive will be a“that’s right” that may come in the form of a“that’s it exactly” or“you hit it on the head.”

• If you are an Assertive, be particularly conscious of your tone. You will not intend to be overly harsh but you will often come off that way. Intentionally soften your tone and work to make it more pleasant. Use calibrated questions and labels with your counterpart since that will also make you more approachable and increase the chances for collaboration.

• We’ve seen how each of these groups views the importance of time differently(time = preparation; time = relationship; time = money). They

• for an Accommodator type, silence is anger. For Analysts, though, silence means they want to think. And Assertive types interpret your silence as either you don’t have anything to say or you want them to talk. I’m

• When an Analyst pauses to think, their Accommodator counterpart gets nervous and an Assertive one starts talking, thereby annoying the Analyst, who thinks to herself, Every time I try to think you take that as an opportunity to talk some more. Won’t you ever shut up?

• The greatest obstacle to accurately identifying someone else’s style is what I call the“I am normal” paradox. That is, our hypothesis that the world should look to others as it looks to us. After all, who wouldn’t make that assumption? But while innocent and understandable, thinking you’re normal is one of the most damaging assumptions in negotiations. With it, we unconsciously project our own style on the other side. But with three types of negotiators in the world, there’s a 66 percent chance your counterpart has a different style than yours. A different“normal.”

• The Black Swan rule is don’t treat others the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they need to be treated.

• As a well-prepared negotiator who seeks information and gathers it relentlessly, you’re actually going to want the other guy to name a price first, because you want to see his hand. You’re going to welcome the extreme anchor. But extreme anchoring is powerful and you’re human: your emotions may well up. If they do there are ways to weather the storm without bidding against yourself or responding with anger. Once

• First, deflect the punch in a way that opens up your counterpart. Successful negotiators often say“No” in one of the many ways we’ve talked about(“How am I supposed to accept that?”) or deflect the anchor with questions like“What are we trying to accomplish here?” Responses like these are great ways to refocus your counterpart when you feel you’re being pulled into the compromise trap.

• You can also respond to a punch-in-the-face anchor by simply pivoting to terms. What I mean by this is that when you feel you’re being dragged into a haggle you can detour the conversation to the nonmonetary issues that make any final price work. You can do this directly by saying, in an encouraging tone of voice,“Let’s put price off to the side for a moment and talk about what would make this a good deal.” Or you could go at it more obliquely by asking,“What else would you be able to offer to make that a good price for me?”

• And if the other side pushes you to go first, wriggle from his grip. Instead of naming a price, allude to an incredibly high number that someone else might charge. Once when a hospital chain wanted me to name a price first, I said,“Well, if you go to Harvard Business School, they’re going to charge you $2,500 a day per student.”

• No matter what happens, the point here is to sponge up information from your counterpart. Letting your counterpart anchor first will give you a tremendous feel for him. All you need to learn is how to take the first punch.

• Marwan Sinaceur of INSEAD and Stanford University’s Larissa Tiedens found that expressions of anger increase a negotiator’s advantage and final take.2 Anger shows passion and conviction that can help sway the other side to accept less. However,

• Also beware: researchers have also found that disingenuous expressions of unfelt anger—you know, faking it—backfire, leading to intractable demands and destroying trust. For anger to be effective, it has to be real, the key for it is to be under control because anger also reduces our cognitive ability. And so when someone puts out a ridiculous offer, one that really pisses you off, take a deep breath, allow little anger, and channel it—at the proposal, not the person—and say,“I don’t see how that would ever work.” Such well-timed offense-taking—known as“strategic umbrage”—can wake your counterpart to the problem. In studies by Columbia University academics Daniel Ames and Abbie Wazlawek, people on the receiving end of strategic umbrage were more likely to rate themselves as overassertive, even when the counterpart didn’t think so.3 The real lesson here is being aware of how this might be used on you. Please don’t allow yourself to fall victim to“strategic umbrage.” Threats delivered without anger but with“poise”—that is, confidence and self-control—are great tools. Saying,“I’m sorry that just doesn’t work for me,” with poise, works.

• We’ve said previously that no deal is better than a bad deal. If you feel you can’t say“No” then you’ve taken yourself hostage. Once you’re clear on what your bottom line is, you have to be willing to walk away. Never be needy for a deal.

• 1.  Set your target price(your goal). 2.  Set your first offer at 65 percent of your target price. 3.  Calculate three raises of decreasing increments(to 85, 95, and 100 percent). 4.  Use lots of empathy and different ways of saying“No” to get the other side to counter before you increase your offer. 5.  When calculating the final amount, use precise, nonround numbers like, say, $37,893 rather than $38,000. It gives the number credibility and weight. 6.  On your final number, throw in a nonmonetary item(that they probably don’t want) to show you’re at your limit.

• The genius of this system is that it incorporates the psychological tactics we’ve discussed—reciprocity, extreme anchors, loss aversion, and so on—without you needing to think about them.

• “Even though your building is better in terms of location and services, how am I supposed to pay $200 extra?”

• “I fully understand, you do have a better location and amenities. But I’m sorry, I just can’t,” he said.“Would $1,730 a month for a year lease sound fair to you?”

• Instead of getting pulled into a haggle, Mishary smartly pivoted to calibrated questions.“Okay, so please help me understand: how do you price lease renewals?”

• The agent didn’t say anything shocking—merely that they used factors like area prices and supply-and-demand—but that gave Mishary the opening to argue that his leaving would open the landlord to the risk of having an unrented apartment and the cost of repainting. One month unrented would be a $2,000 loss, he said.

• Then he made another offer. Now, you’re probably shaking your head that he’s making two offers without receiving one in return. And you’re right; normally that’s verboten. But you have to be able to improvise. If you feel in control of a negotiation, you can do two or three moves at a time. Don’t let the rules ruin the flow.“Let me try and move along with you: how about $1,790 for 12 months?”

• “Sir, I understand your concerns, and what you said makes sense,” he said.“Your number, though, is very low. However, give me time to think this out and we can meet at another time. How does that sound?” Remember, any response that is not an outright rejection means you have the edge.

• “That is generous of you, but how am I supposed to accept it when I can move a few blocks away and stay for $1,800? A hundred and fifty dollars a month means a lot to me. You know I am a student. I don’t know, it seems like you would rather run the risk of keeping the place unrented.”

• Mishary then prepared to give the last of his Ackerman offers. He went silent for a while and then asked the agent for a pen and paper. Then he started doing fake calculations to seem like he was really pushing himself. Finally, he looked up at the agent and said,“I did some numbers, and the maximum I can afford is $1,829.” The agent bobbed his head from side to side, as if getting his mind around the offer. At last, he spoke.“Wow. $1,829,” he said.“You seem very precise. You must be an accountant. [Mishary was not.] Listen, I value you wanting to renew with us and for that I think we can make this work for a twelve-month lease.” Ka-ching! Notice this brilliant combination of decreasing Ackerman offers, nonround numbers, deep research, smart labeling, and saying no without saying“No”? That’s what gets you a rent discount when a landlord wanted to raise his monthly take.

• ■   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.

How to Create Breakthroughs by Revealing the Unknown Unknowns

• As Taleb uses the term, the Black Swan symbolizes the uselessness of predictions based on previous experience. Black Swans are events or pieces of knowledge that sit outside our regular expectations and therefore cannot be predicted.

• If an overreliance on known knowns can shackle a negotiator to assumptions that prevent him from seeing and hearing all that a situation presents, then perhaps an enhanced receptivity to the unknown unknowns can free that same negotiator to see and hear the things that can produce dramatic breakthroughs.

• began to hypothesize that in every negotiation each side is in possession of at least three Black Swans, three pieces of information that, were they to be discovered by the other side, would change everything. My experience since has proven this to be true.

• This is nothing beyond what you’ve been learning up to now. It is merely more intense and intuitive. You have to feel for the truth behind the camouflage; you have to note the small pauses that suggest discomfort and lies. Don’t look to verify what you expect. If you do, that’s what you’ll find. Instead, you must open yourself up to the factual reality that is in front of you.

• Who has leverage in a kidnapping? The kidnapper or the victim’s family? Most people think the kidnapper has all the leverage. Sure, the kidnapper has something you love, but you have something they lust for. Which is more powerful? Moreover, how many buyers do the kidnappers have for the commodity they are trying to sell? What business is successful if there’s only one buyer?

• I should note that leverage isn’t the same thing as power. Donald Trump has tons of power, but if he’s stranded in a desert and the owner of the only store for miles has the water he wants, the vendor has the leverage.

• One way to understand leverage is as a fluid that sloshes between the parties. As a negotiator you should always be aware of which side, at any given moment, feels they have the most to lose if negotiations collapse. The party who feels they have more to lose and are the most afraid of that loss has less leverage, and vice versa. To get leverage, you have to persuade your counterpart that they have something real to lose if the deal falls through.

• Positive leverage is quite simply your ability as a negotiator to provide—or withhold—things that your counterpart wants. Whenever the other side says,“I want…” as in,“I want to buy your car,” you have positive leverage.

• So what kind of Black Swans do you look to be aware of as negative leverage? Effective negotiators look for pieces of information, often obliquely revealed, that show what is important to their counterpart: Who is their audience? What signifies status and reputation to them? What most worries them? To find this information, one method is to go outside the negotiating table and speak to a third party that knows your counterpart. The most effective method is to gather it from interactions with your counterpart.

• Normative leverage is using the other party’s norms and standards to advance your position. If you can show inconsistencies between their beliefs and their actions, you have normative leverage. No one likes to look like a hypocrite. For example, if your counterpart lets slip that they generally pay a certain multiple of cash flow when they buy a company, you can frame your desired price in a way that reflects that valuation.

• In any negotiation, but especially in a tense one like this, it’s not how well you speak but how well you listen that determines your success. Understanding the“other” is a precondition to be able to speak persuasively and develop options that resonate for them. There is the visible negotiation and then all the things that are hidden under the surface(the secret negotiation space wherein the Black Swans dwell). Access to this hidden space very often comes through understanding the other side’s worldview, their reason for being, their religion. Indeed,

• While the importance of“knowing their religion” should be clear from Watson’s story, here are two tips for reading religion correctly: ■   Review everything you hear. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with your team members. You will often discover new information that will help you advance the negotiation. ■   Use backup listeners whose only job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss.

• Research by social scientists has confirmed something effective negotiators have known for ages: namely, we trust people more when we view them as being similar or familiar.

• Research studies have shown that people respond favorably to requests made in a reasonable tone of voice and followed with a“because” reason.

• But the moment when we’re most ready to throw our hands up and declare“They’re crazy!” is often the best moment for discovering Black Swans that transform a negotiation. It is when we hear or see something that doesn’t make sense—something“crazy”—that a crucial fork in the road is presented: push forward, even more forcefully, into that which we initially can’t process; or take the other path, the one to guaranteed failure, in which we tell ourselves that negotiating was useless anyway.

• Whatever the specifics of the situation, these people are not acting irrationally. They are simply complying with needs and desires that you don’t yet understand, what the world looks like to them based on their own set of rules. Your job is to bring these Black Swans to light.

• Here are a few ways to unearth these powerful Black Swans:

• GET FACE TIME

• Black Swans are incredibly hard to uncover if you’re not literally at the table. No matter how much research you do, there’s just some information that you are not going to find out unless you sit face-to-face.

• But it’s very difficult to find Black Swans with email for the simple reason that, even if you knock your counterpart off their moorings with great labels and calibrated questions, email gives them too much time to think and re-center themselves to avoid revealing too much. In addition, email doesn’t allow for tone-of-voice effects, and it doesn’t let you read the nonverbal parts of your counterpart’s response(remember 7-38-55).

• OBSERVE UNGUARDED MOMENTS

• During a typical business meeting, the first few minutes, before you actually get down to business, and the last few moments, as everyone is leaving, often tell you more about the other side than anything in between. That’s

• Also pay close attention to your counterpart during interruptions, odd exchanges, or anything that interrupts the flow. When someone breaks ranks, people’s façades crack just a little. Simply noticing whose cracks and how others respond verbally and nonverbally can reveal a gold mine.

• WHEN IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, THERE’S CENTS TO BE MADE

• More than a little research has shown that genuine, honest conflict between people over their goals actually helps energize the problem-solving process in a collaborative way. Skilled negotiators have a talent for using conflict to keep the negotiation going without stumbling into a personal battle.

• One can only be an exceptional negotiator, and a great person, by both listening and speaking clearly and empathetically; by treating counterparts—and oneself—with dignity and respect; and most of all by being honest about what one wants and what one can—and cannot—do. Every negotiation, every conversation, every moment of life, is a series of small conflicts that, managed well, can rise to creative beauty. Embrace them.

• ■   Black Swans are leverage multipliers. Remember the three types of leverage: positive(the ability to give someone what they want); negative(the ability to hurt someone); and normative(using your counterpart’s norms to bring them around).

• ■   Work to understand the other side’s“religion.” Digging into worldviews inherently implies moving beyond the negotiating table and into the life, emotional and otherwise, of your counterpart. That’s where Black Swans live.

• ■   Exploit the similarity principle. People are more apt to concede to someone they share a cultural similarity with, so dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground.

• ■   When someone seems irrational or crazy, they most likely aren’t. Faced with this situation, search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad information.

• ■   Get face time with your counterpart. Ten minutes of face time often reveals more than days of research. Pay special attention to your counterpart’s verbal and nonverbal communication at unguarded moments—at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line.