Notebook for Never Split the Difference Voss, Chris Citation (APA): Voss, C. (2016). Never Split the Difference [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com CHAPTER 1 | THE NEW RULES Highlight (yellow) - Page 8 I realized that without a deep understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is little help in the fraught, shifting interplay of two people negotiating. Highlight (yellow) - Page 12 “[ I] t is self- evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish, and that their tastes are anything but stable.” Note - Page 12 Kahneman Highlight (yellow) - Page 15 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 16 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 16 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 16 Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. Highlight (yellow) - Page 17 Life is negotiation. Highlight (yellow) - Page 18 In this world, you get what you ask for; you just have to ask correctly. Highlight (yellow) - Page 18 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. CHAPTER 2 | BE A MIRROR Highlight (yellow) - Page 25 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. Note - Page 25 Intellectual humility is important Highlight (yellow) - Page 25 Too often people find it easier just to stick with what they believe. Using what they’ve heard or their own biases, they often make assumptions about others even before meeting them. They even ignore their own perceptions to make them conform to foregone conclusions. These assumptions muck up our perceptual windows onto the world, showing us an unchanging—often flawed—version of the situation. Note - Page 25 Inconsistency avoidance tendency Highlight (yellow) - Page 25 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 25 throughout the day, he constantly referred to the influence the other four bank robbers exerted on him. I hadn’t yet learned to be aware of a counterpart’s overuse of personal pronouns—we/they or me/I. The less important he makes himself, the more important he probably is (and vice versa). Note - Page 26 Secret life of pronouns Highlight (yellow) - Page 27 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 28 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 28 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 28 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 30 Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. Highlight (yellow) - Page 30 There’s plenty of research that now validates the passage of time as one of the most important tools for a negotiator. Highlight (yellow) - Page 32 When deliberating on a negotiating strategy or approach, people tend to focus all their energies on what to say or do, but it’s how we are (our general demeanor and delivery) that is both the easiest thing to enact and the most immediately effective mode of influence. Our brains don’t just process and understand the actions and words of others but their feelings and intentions too, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions. On a mostly unconscious level, we can understand the minds of others not through any kind of thinking but through quite literally grasping what the other is feeling. Highlight (yellow) - Page 32 Think of it as a kind of involuntary neurological telepathy—each of us in every given moment signaling to the world around us whether we are ready to play or fight, laugh or cry. Highlight (yellow) - Page 32 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 33 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 33 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 35 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.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 36 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 36 the average tip of the waiters who mirrored was 70 percent more than of those who used positive reinforcement. Highlight (yellow) - Page 43 As I’ve worked with executives and students to develop these skills, I always try to reinforce the message that being right isn’t the key to a successful negotiation—having the right mindset is. Highlight (yellow) - Page 47 Negotiation is not an act of battle; it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible. Highlight (yellow) - Page 47 To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. Highlight (yellow) - Page 47 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 47 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 48 Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. CHAPTER 3 | DON’T FEEL THEIR PAIN, LABEL IT Highlight (yellow) - Page 51 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 an academic way of saying that empathy is paying attention to another human being, asking what they are feeling, and making a commitment to understanding their world. Highlight (yellow) - Page 52 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 53 When we closely observe a person’s face, gestures, and tone of voice, our brain begins to align with theirs in a process called neural resonance, and that lets us know more fully what they think and feel. Highlight (yellow) - Page 54 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 55 most of the time you’ll have a wealth of information from the other person’s words, tone, and body language. We call that trinity “words, music, and dance.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 56 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 seems like you like the way that shirt looks,” with a specific question like “Where did you get it?” But a label’s power is that it invites the other person to reveal himself. Highlight (yellow) - Page 57 Labeling negatives diffuses them (or defuses them, in extreme cases); labeling positives reinforces them. Highlight (yellow) - Page 57 As an emotion, anger is rarely productive—in you or the person you’re negotiating with. It releases stress hormones and neurochemicals that disrupt your ability to properly evaluate and respond to situations. And it blinds you to the fact that you’re angry in the first place, which gives you a false sense of confidence. Highlight (yellow) - Page 58 Labeling is a helpful tactic in de-escalating angry confrontations, because it makes the person acknowledge their feelings rather than continuing to act out. Highlight (yellow) - Page 58 Early on in my hostage negotiation career, I learned how important it was to go directly at negative dynamics in a fearless but deferential manner. Highlight (yellow) - Page 59 The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it. Highlight (yellow) - Page 59 Research shows that the best way to deal with negativity is to observe it, without reaction and without judgment. Then consciously label each negative feeling and replace it with positive, compassionate, and solution-based thoughts. Highlight (yellow) - Page 63 By digging beneath what seems like a mountain of quibbles, details, and logistics, labels help to uncover and identify the primary emotion driving almost all of your counterpart’s behavior, the emotion that, once acknowledged, seems to miraculously solve everything else. Highlight (yellow) - Page 64 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 call this technique “taking the sting out.” Note - Page 65 Carnegie figured this all out before but this is a great technical perspective Highlight (yellow) - Page 66 no communication is always a bad sign. Highlight (yellow) - Page 71 As you try to insert the tools of tactical empathy into your daily life, I encourage you to think of them as extensions of natural human interactions and not artificial conversational tics. In any interaction, it pleases us to feel that the other side is listening and acknowledging our situation. Whether you are negotiating a business deal or simply chatting to the person at the supermarket butcher counter, creating an empathetic relationship and encouraging your counterpart to expand on their situation is the basis of healthy human interaction. These tools, then, are nothing less than emotional best practices that help you cure the pervasive ineptitude that marks our most critical conversations in life. They will help you connect and create more meaningful and warm relationships. That they might help you extract what you want is a bonus; human connection is the first goal. Highlight (yellow) - Page 72 Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. Highlight (yellow) - Page 72 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. Note - Page 72 Removing via negativa Highlight (yellow) - Page 72 Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. Highlight (yellow) - Page 73 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. CHAPTER 4 | BEWARE “YES”—MASTER “NO” Highlight (yellow) - Page 77 A trap into which many fall is to take what other people say literally. I started to see that while people played the game of conversation, it was in the game beneath the game, where few played, that all the leverage lived. Highlight (yellow) - Page 78 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 84 Using all your skills to create rapport, agreement, and connection with a counterpart is useful, but ultimately that connection is useless unless the other person feels that they are equally as responsible, if not solely responsible, for creating the connection and the new ideas they have. Highlight (yellow) - Page 84 if we believe that we can control or manage others’ decisions with compromise and logic, we’re leaving millions on the table. Highlight (yellow) - Page 85 An early “Yes” is often just a cheap, counterfeit dodge. Highlight (yellow) - Page 91 “No”—or the lack thereof—also serves as a warning, the canary in the coal mine. If 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. Think of it like this: No “No” means no go. CHAPTER 5 | TRIGGER THE TWO WORDS THAT IMMEDIATELY TRANSFORM ANY NEGOTIATION Highlight (yellow) - Page 97 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 105 “THAT’S RIGHT” IS GREAT, BUT IF “YOU’RE RIGHT,” NOTHING CHANGES Highlight (yellow) - Page 106 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 111 “Sleeping in the same bed and dreaming different dreams” is an old Chinese expression that describes the intimacy of partnership (whether in marriage or in business) without the communication necessary to sustain it. Such is the recipe for bad marriages and bad negotiations. Highlight (yellow) - Page 112 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 112 “That’s right” is better than “yes.” Strive for it. Reaching “that’s right” in a negotiation creates breakthroughs. Highlight (yellow) - Page 112 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 . . .” CHAPTER 6 | BEND THEIR REALITY Highlight (yellow) - Page 116 I’m here to call bullshit on compromise right now. We don’t compromise because it’s right; we compromise because it is easy and because it saves face. We compromise in order to say that at least we got half the pie. Distilled to its essence, we compromise to be safe. Most people in a negotiation are driven by fear or by the desire to avoid pain. Too few are driven by their actual goals. Highlight (yellow) - Page 116 So don’t settle and—here’s a simple rule—never split the difference. Creative solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict. Accommodation and compromise produce none of that. You’ve got to embrace the hard stuff. That’s where the great deals are. And that’s what great negotiators do. Highlight (yellow) - Page 117 What is it about a deadline that causes pressure and anxiety? The answer is consequences; the perception of the loss we’ll incur in the future—“The deal is off!” our mind screams at us in some imaginary future scenario—should no resolution be achieved by a certain point in time. When you allow the variable of time to trigger such thinking, you have taken yourself hostage, creating an environment of reactive behaviors and poor choices, where your counterpart can now kick back and let an imaginary deadline, and your reaction to it, do all the work for him. Highlight (yellow) - Page 117 The mantra we coach our clients on is, “No deal is better than a bad deal.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 118 Increasing specificity on threats in any type of negotiations indicates getting closer to real consequences at a real specified time. To gauge the level of a particular threat, we’d pay attention to how many of the four questions—What? Who? When? And how?—were addressed. Highlight (yellow) - Page 118 It’s not just with hostage negotiations that deadlines can play into your hands. Car dealers are prone to give you the best price near the end of the month, when their transactions are assessed. And corporate salespeople work on a quarterly basis and are most vulnerable as the quarter comes to a close. Highlight (yellow) - Page 119 When he arrived, his counterparts asked him how long he was staying, and Cohen said a week. For the next seven days, his hosts proceeded to entertain him with parties, tours, and outings—everything but negotiation. In fact, Cohen’s counterparts didn’t start serious talks until he was about to leave, and the two sides hammered out the deal’s final details in the car to the airport. Note - Page 119 They exploited the reciprocation tendency. Remember "no deal is better than a bad deal" Highlight (yellow) - Page 120 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 120 Moore discovered that when negotiators tell their counterparts about their deadline, they get better deals. Highlight (yellow) - Page 121 In something as simple as merely splitting $10 of “found” money, there is no consensus of what constitutes a “fair” or “rational” split. Highlight (yellow) - Page 121 “If you approach a negotiation thinking that the other guy thinks like you, you’re wrong,” I say. “That’s not empathy; that’s projection.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 121 Why, I ask, did none of the proposers offer $1, which is the best rational offer for them and logically unrejectable for the accepter? And if they did and they got rejected—which happens—why did the accepter turn them down? “Anyone who made any offer other than $1 made an emotional choice” I say. “And for you accepters who turned down $1, since when is getting $0 better than getting $1? Did the rules of finance suddenly change?” Highlight (yellow) - Page 122 Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain,2 neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explained a groundbreaking discovery he made. Studying people who had damage in the part of the brain where emotions are generated, he found that they all had something peculiar in common: They couldn’t make decisions. They could describe what they should do in logical terms, but they found it impossible to make even the simplest choice. Highlight (yellow) - Page 122 The most powerful word in negotiations is “Fair.” As human beings, we’re mightily swayed by how much we feel we have been respected. People comply with agreements if they feel they’ve been treated fairly and lash out if they don’t. Note - Page 122 Charlie's Kantian-Fairness tendency Highlight (yellow) - Page 122 Most people make an irrational choice to let the dollar slip through their fingers rather than to accept a derisory offer, because the negative emotional value of unfairness outweighs the positive rational value of the money. Highlight (yellow) - Page 125 “Okay, I apologize. Let’s stop everything and go back to where I started treating you unfairly and we’ll fix it.” Note - Page 125 How to respond to "that's not fair" Highlight (yellow) - Page 125 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.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 125 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,” Highlight (yellow) - Page 125 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.” Note - Page 125 Best Highlight (yellow) - Page 126 As a negotiator, you should strive for a reputation of being fair. Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success. Highlight (yellow) - Page 126 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 126 Know the emotional drivers and you can frame the benefits of any deal in language that will resonate. Highlight (yellow) - Page 127 while our decisions may be largely irrational, that doesn’t mean there aren’t consistent patterns, principles, and rules behind how we act. And once you know those mental patterns, you start to see ways to influence them. Highlight (yellow) - Page 128 To get real leverage, you have to persuade them that they have something concrete to lose if the deal falls through. Highlight (yellow) - Page 131 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 131 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 132 I want to stimulate my counterpart’s brainstorming to see what valuable nonmonetary gems they might have that are cheap to them but valuable to me. Highlight (yellow) - Page 136 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. Students from my MBA courses who have asked this question in job interviews have actually had interviewers lean forward and say, “No one ever asked us that before.” 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. CHAPTER 7 | CREATE THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL Highlight (yellow) - Page 148 Whether we like to recognize it or not, a universal rule of human nature, across all cultures, is that when somebody gives you something, they expect something in return. And they won’t give anything else until you pay them back. Highlight (yellow) - Page 149 It’s a “how” question, and “how” engages because “how” asks for help. Best of all, he doesn’t owe the kidnapper a damn thing. The guy volunteers to put the girlfriend on the phone: he thinks it’s his idea. The guy who just offered to put the girlfriend on the line thinks he’s in control. And the secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control. Highlight (yellow) - Page 149 psychologist Kevin Dutton says in his book Split-Second Persuasion.1 He talks about what he calls “unbelief,” which is active resistance to what the other side is saying, complete rejection. That’s where the two parties in a negotiation usually start. If you don’t ever get off that dynamic, you end up having showdowns, as each side tries to impose its point of view. You get two hard skulls banging against each other, like in Dos Palmas. But if you can get the other side to drop their unbelief, you can slowly work them to your point of view on the back of their energy, just like the drug dealer’s question got the kidnapper to volunteer to do what the drug dealer wanted. Highlight (yellow) - Page 150 You don’t directly persuade them to see your ideas. Instead, you ride them to your ideas. As the saying goes, the best way to ride a horse is in the direction in which it is going. Highlight (yellow) - Page 150 an old Washington Post editor named Robert Estabrook once said, “He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 151 When you go into a store, instead of telling the salesclerk what you “need,” you can describe what you’re looking for and ask for suggestions. 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 152 Her client would hear the words and not the implication as long as she kept calm and avoided making it sound by her delivery like an accusation or threat. As long as she stayed cool, they would hear it as a problem to be solved. Highlight (yellow) - Page 152 the calibrated open-ended question takes the aggression out of a confrontational statement or close-ended request that might otherwise anger your counterpart. What makes them work is that they are subject to interpretation by your counterpart instead of being rigidly defined. They allow you to introduce ideas and requests without sounding overbearing or pushy. Highlight (yellow) - Page 153 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 153 let me cut the list even further: it’s best to start with “what,”“how,” and sometimes “why.” Nothing else. “Who,”“when,” and “where” will often just get your counterpart to share a fact without thinking. And “why” can backfire. Regardless of what language the word “why” is translated into, it’s accusatory. There are very rare moments when this is to your advantage. The only time you can use “why” successfully is when the defensiveness that is created supports the change you are trying to get them to see. “Why would you ever change from the way you’ve always done things and try my approach?” is an example. “Why would your company ever change from your long-standing vendor and choose our company?” is another. As always, tone of voice, respectful and deferential, is critical. Otherwise, treat “why” like a burner on a hot stove—don’t touch it. Highlight (yellow) - Page 154 Even something as harsh as “Why did you do it?” can be calibrated to “What caused you to do it?” which takes away the emotion and makes the question less accusatory. Highlight (yellow) - Page 154 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 154 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? Highlight (yellow) - Page 155 The implication of any well-designed calibrated question is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his intelligence to overcome the problem. This really appeals to very aggressive or egotistical counterparts. Highlight (yellow) - Page 156 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? Highlight (yellow) - Page 158 Even with all the best techniques and strategy, you need to regulate your emotions if you want to have any hope of coming out on top. Highlight (yellow) - Page 158 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 159 Another simple rule is, when you are verbally assaulted, do not counterattack. Instead, disarm your counterpart by asking a calibrated question. Highlight (yellow) - Page 160 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 160 When you try to work the skills from this chapter into your daily life, remember that these are listener’s tools. Highlight (yellow) - Page 160 They’re listener’s judo. CHAPTER 8 | GUARANTEE EXECUTION Highlight (yellow) - Page 163 “Yes” is nothing without “How.” While an agreement is nice, a contract is better, and a signed check is best. Highlight (yellow) - Page 169 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.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 169 “Yes” is nothing without “How.” So keep asking “How?” And succeed. Highlight (yellow) - Page 171 in any negotiation you have to analyze the entire negotiation space. When other people will be affected by what is negotiated and can assert their rights or power later on, it’s just stupid to consider only the interests of those at the negotiation table. You have to beware of “behind the table” or “Level II” players—that is, parties that are not directly involved but who can help implement agreements they like and block ones they don’t. You can’t disregard them even when you’re talking to a CEO. There could always be someone whispering into his ear. Highlight (yellow) - Page 172 (A surprisingly high percentage of negotiations hinge on something outside dollars and cents, often having more to do with self-esteem, status, and other nonfinancial needs.) Highlight (yellow) - Page 172 How does this affect everybody else? How on board is the rest of your team? Highlight (yellow) - Page 173 Truly effective negotiators are conscious of the verbal, paraverbal (how it’s said), and nonverbal communications that pervade negotiations and group dynamics. Highlight (yellow) - Page 177 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 177 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?” Highlight (yellow) - Page 179 The use of pronouns by a counterpart can also help give you a feel for their actual importance in the decision and implementation chains on the other side of the table. The more in love they are with “I,”“me,” and “my” the less important they are. Conversely, the harder it is to get a first person pronoun out of a negotiator’s mouth, the more important they are. Highlight (yellow) - Page 179 Just like in the Malhotra study where the liar is distancing himself from the lie, in a negotiation, smart decision makers don’t want to be cornered at the table into making a decision. They will defer to the people away from the table to keep from getting pinned down. Highlight (yellow) - Page 185 The art of closing a deal is staying focused to the very end. There are crucial points at the finale when you must draw on your mental discipline. Don’t think about what time the last flight leaves, or what it would be like to get home early and play golf. Highlight (yellow) - Page 186 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. CHAPTER 9 | BARGAIN HARD Highlight (yellow) - Page 193 there is one basic truth about a successful bargaining style: To be good, you have to learn to be yourself at the bargaining table. To be great you have to add to your strengths, not replace them. Highlight (yellow) - Page 193 Their self-image is linked to minimizing mistakes. Their motto: As much time as it takes to get it right. Note - Page 193 Analyst Highlight (yellow) - Page 193 hypersensitive to reciprocity. They will give you a piece, but if they don’t get a piece in return within a certain period of time, they lose trust and will disengage. Highlight (yellow) - Page 194 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. Note - Page 194 Dealing with analysts. Highlight (yellow) - Page 194 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 you feel they don’t see things the way you do, give them a chance to think first. Highlight (yellow) - Page 194 The single biggest thing you can do is to smile when you speak. People will be more forthcoming with information to you as a result. Smiling can also become a habit that makes it easy for you to mask any moments you’ve been caught off guard. Note - Page 194 As an analyst Highlight (yellow) - Page 195 Of the three types, they are most likely to build great rapport without actually accomplishing anything. Note - Page 195 Accomodator Highlight (yellow) - Page 195 Due to their tendency to be the first to activate the reciprocity cycle, they may have agreed to give you something they can’t actually deliver. Highlight (yellow) - Page 195 uncovering their objections can be difficult. They will have identified potential problem areas beforehand and will leave those areas unaddressed out of fear of the conflict they may cause. Highlight (yellow) - Page 195 If you have identified yourself as an Accommodator, stick to your ability to be very likable, but do not sacrifice your objections. Not only do the other two types need to hear your point of view; if you are dealing with another Accommodator they will welcome it. Highlight (yellow) - Page 195 Also be conscious of excess chitchat: the other two types have no use for it, and if you’re sitting across the table from someone like yourself you will be prone to interactions where nothing gets done. Highlight (yellow) - Page 196 Their view of business relationships is based on respect, nothing more and nothing less. Note - Page 196 Assertive Highlight (yellow) - Page 196 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 196 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 196 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.” Highlight (yellow) - Page 196 When it comes to reciprocity, this type is of the “give an inch/take a mile” mentality. They will have figured they deserve whatever you have given them so they will be oblivious to expectations of owing something in return. They will actually simply be looking for the opportunity to receive more. If they have given some kind of concession, they are surely counting the seconds until they get something in return. Highlight (yellow) - Page 197 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 197 We’ve seen how each of these groups views the importance of time differently (time = preparation; time = relationship; time = money). Highlight (yellow) - Page 197 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 197 The funny thing is when these cross over. 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? Highlight (yellow) - Page 197 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 198 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 205 ACKERMAN BARGAINING Highlight (yellow) - Page 206 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 207 Researchers have found that people getting concessions often feel better about the bargaining process than those who are given a single firm, “fair” offer. In fact, they feel better even when they end up paying more—or receiving less—than they otherwise might. Highlight (yellow) - Page 211 Notice this brilliant combination of decreasing Ackerman offers, nonround numbers, deep research, smart labeling, and saying no without saying “No”? Highlight (yellow) - Page 211 Prepare, prepare, prepare. When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall to your highest level of preparation. Highlight (yellow) - Page 212 learn to take a punch or punch back, without anger. The guy across the table is not the problem; the situation is. CHAPTER 10 | FIND THE BLACK SWAN Highlight (yellow) - Page 219 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 222 experienced negotiators delay making offers—they don’t want to give up leverage. Highlight (yellow) - Page 223 I do not believe in making direct threats and am extremely careful with even subtle ones. Threats can be like nuclear bombs. There will be a toxic residue that will be difficult to clean up. Highlight (yellow) - Page 223 A more subtle technique is to label your negative leverage and thereby make it clear without attacking. Sentences like “It seems like you strongly value the fact that you’ve always paid on time” or “It seems like you don’t care what position you are leaving me in” can really open up the negotiation process. Highlight (yellow) - Page 224 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 224 Discovering the Black Swans that give you normative valuation can be as easy as asking what your counterpart believes and listening openly. You want to see what language they speak, and speak it back to them. Highlight (yellow) - Page 225 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 227 “paradox of power”—namely, the harder we push the more likely we are to be met with resistance. That’s why you have to use negative leverage sparingly. Highlight (yellow) - Page 228 The other guy’s “religion” is what the market, the experts, God, or society—whatever matters to him—has determined to be fair and just. And people defer to that authority. Highlight (yellow) - Page 228 Review everything you hear. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with your team members. Highlight (yellow) - Page 228 Use backup listeners whose only job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss. Highlight (yellow) - Page 228 listen, listen again, and listen some more. Highlight (yellow) - Page 229 When our counterpart displays attitudes, beliefs, ideas—even modes of dress—that are similar to our own, we tend to like and trust them more. Similarities as shallow as club memberships or college alumni status increase rapport. Highlight (yellow) - Page 232 It’s not human nature to embrace the unknown. Note - Page 232 But embracing it leads to more optimal results. Highlight (yellow) - Page 232 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. Highlight (yellow) - Page 236 when you recognize that your counterpart is not irrational, but simply ill-informed, constrained, or obeying interests that you do not yet know, your field of movement greatly expands. And that allows you to negotiate much more effectively. Highlight (yellow) - Page 243 the style of negotiation taught in the book—an information-obsessed, empathic search for the best possible deal—you are trying to uncover value, period. Not to strong-arm or to humiliate. Appendix: Prepare a Negotiation One Sheet Highlight (yellow) - Page 253 Remember, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. Once you’ve got flexibility in the forefront of your mind you come into a negotiation with a winning mindset. Note - Page 253 Applies strongly to life also. It's filled with unknown unknowns! Highlight (yellow) - Page 256 being relentlessly curious about what is really motivating the other side. Highlight (yellow) - Page 256 Internal negotiating influence often sits with the people who are most comfortable with things as they are. Change may make them look as if they haven’t been doing their job. Your dilemma in such a negotiation is how to make them look good in the face of that change. Note - Page 256 This!!!!