Never Split The Difference (book)

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: Communication (MOC)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. Anchoring - set up the expectations in advance or be aware of the other's anchoring methods.
2. Labeling - talk about the other's fear from their point of view, show them you understand their viewpoint
3. Mirroring - use their words to describe the situation
4. Seek their help - let them be in charge of finding a solution, by saying "how can I do that"
5. Give them sense of control - seek out the "no"
6. Negotiation is connection - Negotiation is not solved by rational division of resources in a compromise, but rather a result of the interlocking / merging of world-views through an authentic, emotional, connection.

🗒️Relate

⛓ by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book? You will find better solutions for disagreements instead of frustrating compromises, you will be able to make them help you instead of fight you.

🔍Critique

✅ relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style...

Although the book might sometimes be too cynical or hypocrite, in the end the main message lingers with me. The best way to negotiate is through human connection, mutual understanding, emotional intelligence and cooperation. Even if it takes a little bit of "faking it", in the end its still more honest than to treat negotiations as a zero-sum game of rationality.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Intro

Emotions are not a problem to be solved, it is the solution. Negotiation is an act of connection. Negotiation is never only a rational solution, but rather its affected by desires, preferences, and viewpoints.

Note the tone you are using, your body language, try to be more calm, relax, like a late-at-night radio host. Smile. non verbal communication

THE NEW RULES

• no matter how we dress up our negotiations in mathematical theories, we are always an animal, always acting and reacting first and foremost from our deeply held but mostly invisible and inchoate fears, needs, perceptions, and desires.
• 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.
• Emotions and emotional intelligence would have to be central to effective negotiation, not things to be overcome.
• 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.
• 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,
• listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. Once

Mirroring

To break the ice, repeat the words the other side is using, this will have to create a sense of empathy, of understanding his emotions. After mirroring, give him a moment of quiet, to let him open up and act. Mirroring

BE A MIRROR

• 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.
• 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.
• Most people approach a negotiation so preoccupied by the arguments that support their position that they are unable to listen attentively.
• make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• You can use your voice to intentionally reach into someone’s brain and flip an emotional switch.
• 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.
• we copy each other to comfort each other.
• it’s a sign that people are bonding, in sync, and establishing the kind of rapport that leads to trust.
• as negotiators a “mirror” focuses on the words and nothing else.
• Use the late-night FM DJ voice.         2.      Start with “I’m sorry . . .”         3.      Mirror.         4.      Silence. At least four seconds, to let the mirror work its magic on your counterpart.         5.      Repeat.

Labeling

Talk about the other's fears will help clear the tension and solve them. Say things like:

1. It looks like you feel that...
2. It seems that you believe that...
3. It looks like you don't want that... don't say "I think that"... the discussion is not about you. Say as if you're looking at how this situation is perceived "from the outside", from a non-partial viewer. Labeling

DON’T FEEL THEIR PAIN, LABEL IT

• instead of denying or ignoring emotions, good negotiators identify and influence them.
• Emotions aren’t the obstacles, they are the means.
• empathy is “the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart, and the vocalization of that recognition.”
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• when you phrase a label as a neutral statement of understanding, it encourages your counterpart to be responsive.
• Labeling negatives diffuses them
• labeling positives reinforces them.
• The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it.
• 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.
• 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.
• human connection is the first goal.

Accusation Audit

Similar to labeling, its useful to prepare your partner in advance for the worst possible outcome Accusation audit, even if it means to exaggerate a little, because then everything that happens will be better than what he expected, and his reactions will be toned down accordingly. It removes any alternative narratives (any other negative arguments, meaning you control the Narratives) and gives a voice to his and your fears about what's going to happen. Vulnerability.

so say things like:

1. I know that you heard about me x, y, z
2. Unfortunately this will probably result in 1, 2, 3

Seek No

You should be afraid of the word "no", when your partner says no it gives us a lot of information on what he does want or feel. It gives him a sense of security and control in the conversation, otherwise if they can't say no, they will either lie, leave or feel coerced.

BEWARE “YES”—MASTER “NO”

• For good negotiators, “No” is pure gold. That negative provides a great opportunity for you and the other party to clarify what you really want by eliminating what you don’t want.
• 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.
• 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.
• There are actually three kinds of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment.
• 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.
• 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.

Get to "that's right"

The way to make your partner open up to you is to show him that you understand his worldview. Active Listening. The way to do that is to echo his beliefs, like labeling. We present how to world looks like from his point of view:

1. it seems that you care about...
2. It seems that you think that...

its important to distinguish between "that's right" and "you're right", we're not trying to convince the partner with our beliefs, but rather to make him see that we understand his. Validation.

"that's right" is a sign of progress, "you're right" is a signal that the conversation is useless.

TRIGGER THE TWO WORDS THAT IMMEDIATELY TRANSFORM ANY NEGOTIATION

• Before you convince them to see what you’re trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, “That’s right.” The “that’s right” breakthrough usually doesn’t come at the beginning of a negotiation.
• When your adversaries say, “That’s right,” they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it.
• “that’s right” is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing “you’re right” is a disaster.
• 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.

Anchoring

in continuation of previous notes, people tend to stick to the first value that they hear. It's also connected to deadlines that determine our behavior. For example, accusation audit anchors the perception of our partner about the worst possible outcome, or if we are the first to mention a number, this will anchor the partner on the possible value of that item. This can help us to bring the partner's worldview closer to ours. Similarly we have to be carful not to fall for the partner's anchoring. Anchoring

BEND THEIR REALITY

• “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
• 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.
• Deadlines regularly make people say and do impulsive things that are against their best interests,
• Deadlines are often arbitrary, almost always flexible, and hardly ever trigger the consequences we think—or are told—they will.
• 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.
• while we may use logic to reason ourselves toward a decision, the actual decision making is governed by emotion.
• To get real leverage, you have to persuade them that they have something concrete to lose if the deal falls through.
• 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.
• if you offer a range (and it’s a good idea to do so) expect them to come in at the low end.
• 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,
• “What does it take to be successful here?”
• 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.

Create the Illusion of Control

Instead of seeing the negotiation as a power struggle where each side tries to bend and break the other side, treat it as if you are asking for their help Inverse. Let them have a sense of control, these will ease them and use their own sense of grandeur to your benefit. They will do what's in their power to help you, if you ask the right questions.

The calibrated questions, like how, what, or why (they have to be open ended), will help the other side understand your problem through experience, rather than you just telling them, which will cause resistance.

CREATE THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

• 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 secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control.
• You don’t directly persuade them to see your ideas. Instead, you ride them to your ideas.
• Asking for help in this manner, after you’ve already been engaged in a dialogue, is an incredibly powerful negotiating technique for transforming encounters from confrontational showdowns into joint problem-solving
• 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.
• it’s best to start with “what,” “how,”
• 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.
• 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.

How to Talk about Wages

For example, when negotiating wages, instead of giving a single value, give a range. Because it will make the comparison easier, and will automatically anchor him to the lower value. You can also talk about benefits that are cheaper to the employer but expensive for you as wage alternative.

BARGAIN HARD

• Negotiation style is a crucial variable in bargaining. If you don’t know what instinct will tell you or the other side to do in various circumstances, you’ll have massive trouble gaming out effective strategies and tactics.
• people fall into three broad categories. Some people are Accommodators; others—like me—are basically Assertive; and the rest are data-loving Analysts.
• 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.
• 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.
• don’t treat others the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they need to be treated.
• 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.
• Anger shows passion and conviction that can help sway the other side to accept less. However, by heightening your counterpart’s sensitivity to danger and fear, your anger reduces the resources they have for other cognitive activity, setting them up to make bad concessions that will likely lead to implementation problems, thus reducing your gains.
• The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is.
• Taking a positive, constructive approach to conflict involves understanding that the bond is fundamental to any resolution. Never create an enemy.
• 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.
• When the pressure is on, you don’t rise to the occasion; you fall to your highest level of preparation.

Let Them Help You

Instead of confronting your partner, you should ask him open ended questions. preferably those which start with "how" or "what", to make him act and use his intelligence to solve your problems. For example, if your partner puts you in a tough spot/dilemma, ask him "and how exactly I'm supposed to do that", and let him find a solution. Its even better for egoistic partners who like to feel in control or to demonstrate their intelligence. Open ended questions

GUARANTEE EXECUTION

• Negotiators have to be decision architects: they have to dynamically and adaptively design the verbal and nonverbal elements of the negotiation to gain both consent and execution.
• The trick to “How” questions is that, correctly used, they are gentle and graceful ways to say “No” and guide your counterpart to develop a better solution—your solution. A gentle How/No invites collaboration and leaves your counterpart with a feeling of having been treated with respect.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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
• just like Pinocchio’s nose, the number of words grew along with the lie. People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder—too hard, as it were—at being believable.
• The more in love they are with “I,” “me,” and “my” the less important they are.
• using your own name creates the dynamic of “forced empathy.” It makes the other side see you as a person.
• Humanize yourself. Use your name to introduce yourself. Say it in a fun, friendly way. Let them enjoy the interaction, too.

Find the Black Swan

We have to maintain a Beginner's Mind and avoid over confidence. We have to remember that we can't read minds Theory of Mind, so we have to constantly be attentive to our partner and pay attention to the details, the words used, and the non verbal communication in order to not be surprised. Forget the end goal, if you focus just on that you will fail. Trust the Process. Communicate Trust and care for the other side's goals.

FIND THE BLACK SWAN

• We must let what we know—our known knowns—guide us but not blind us to what we do not know; we must remain flexible and adaptable to any situation; we must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the informational and emotional realities served up moment by moment in whatever situation we face.
• negotiation is more like walking on a tightrope than competing against an opponent. Focusing so much on the end objective will only distract you from the next step, and that can cause you to fall off the rope.
• By positioning your demands within the worldview your counterpart uses to make decisions, you show them respect and that gets you attention and results.
• when you ascertain your counterpart’s unattained goals, invoke your own power and follow-ability by expressing passion for their goals—and for their ability to achieve them.
• people operating with incomplete information appear crazy to those who have different information.