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We most of the time struggle during a negotiation, not really knowing the best way to handle the challenge.

Frustration is the main outcome when this happens

Here below is a nine minutes summary of some negotiation ultra actionable practices.

Chris Voss, the author, developed the methodologies and tools as part of his job as an FBI negotiator in charge of freeing hostages in the four corners of the world.

In the book, he shares some real stories about the challenges he and his teams faced in some crisis situations and transposes what he learned to our daily lives situations. Because life is negotiation.

Before starting with the tools, a few words about the mindset.

You should engage the process with a mindset of discovery. 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.

Be a mirror

When a request or a proposition seems unreasonable, try not to oppose it head-on. Be a mirror instead. It’s just four simple steps.

Use the late-night FM DJ voice.

Start with “I’m sorry…”

Mirror (repeat the unreasonable request)

Silence. At least four seconds, to let the mirror work its magic on your counterpart.

Repeat.

When using this simple framework, the person you are disagreeing with will by herself come to a more reasonable request or proposal.

Don’t feel their pain, label it

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.

Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Spotting their feelings, turning them into words, and then very calmly and respectfully repeating their emotions back to them.

The reason 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.

We all want to reinforce the positive, anyway it’s very important to first neutralize the negative. We have to start by clearing the road and build a safe place for negotiation. Labeling is the way to do it and it can be declined in several versions.

You can simply label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power (eg. “It seems you don’t want to take the risk of…”).

You can also start with an accusation audit and label all the terrible things your counterpart could say about you (eg. “It sounds like you think we are the bad guys rejecting all modifications in the contract”).

The main benefit of such an accusation audit is that you get rid of the negative dynamics very early in the negotiation process and, because the accusations often sound exaggerated when said alound, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true (or, at least, make some neutral and depassionate space for the negotiation).

Beware “Yes” — Master “No”

“No” is the start of the negotiation, not the end of it.

“No” means “I am not yet ready to agree”, “You are making me feel uncomfortable”, “I do not understand”, “I dont’ think I can afford it”, “I want something else”, “I need more information” or “I want to talk it over with someone else”.

On top of that, there are three kinds of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation and Commitment.

A counterfeit “yes” is one your counterpart is using when she would like to say “no” but wants to take the escape route.

A confirmation “yes” is just a simple affirmation in response to a black-or-white question with no promise of action.

A commitment “yes” is the real deal. it’s a true ageement that leads to action.

“Yes” is the final goal of a negotiation, but don’t aim for it at the start. Saying “No” makes the speaker more secure, slows things down and protect people from making ineffective decisions.

So, next time, Start with NO in order to Get to YES.

Trigger the two words…

“That’s right”.

Combining listening, labeling, paraphrasing and summarizing what your counterpart says (and doesnt’say) is the right way to obtain a “That’s right!” from her.

“That’s right” is even stronger than “Yes” and can really close the deal.

Bend their reality

We don’t compromise because it’s right. We compromise because it’s easy and because it saves face. Most people in a negotiation are driven by fear or by the desire to avoid pain.

The rule here is: never split the difference.

Creative solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict. Accomodation 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.

That said, the lever to operate here is the concept of loss aversion.

People wil take more risk to avoid a loss than to realize a gain. Make sure your counterpart sees there is something to lose by inaction.

The key method to bend your counterpart’s reality is anchoring.

You can anchor their emotions (prepare them for a loss) and anchor their starting point (set an extreme value).

By anchoring first, you will bend their reality toward yours.

Create the illusion of control

The idea here is to push your counterpart to suspend his unbelief.

Unbelief is the natural state and mindset of all parties when starting a negotiation. It’s the active resistance to what the other is saying, complete rejection.

The key here is to ask for help with calibrated questions. A calibrated can start with “how” and “what”, as these two words are the ones that more widely open the question. “Why” is also a possibility but can most of the time sound very accusative.”Who”, “where” and “when” usually provide short answers and do not start an open the discussion.

The power of calibrated questions is that they offer no target for attack like statements do.

Asking calibrated questions is asking for help. It will give your counterpart an illusion of control and will inspire them to speak at length, revealing important information.

Guarantee Execution

Once reaching an agreement, we have to be sure it will happen. Said differently, you have to avoid the counterfeit “yes”.

There are multiple ways of doing this through combination of the following methods, tools and tricks.

Use calibrated questions that start with “how”. “How” is about the execution of the deal.

Pay attention to the motivations of ALL people involved in the result of a negotiation, not only the ones who sit around the table. What are the interests of those who are “behind the table” ?

Follow the 7–38–55 rule. Only 7% of the message is based on words. The other 38% are based on the tone of voice and 55% on the body language.

Get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement three times and avoid the counterfeit “yes”.

Detect if the person speaking has the power to decide. If she uses a lot of “I”, “me” and “my”, there is a chance she doesn’t. If she uses “we”, “they” and “them”, there is a high chance you are dealing with the decision maker.

Bargain Hard

No part of a negotiation induces more anxiety and unfocused agression than bargaining. Skilled bargainers see more than just opening offers, counteroffers, and closing moves. They see the psychological currents that run below the surface.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Yourself, and the negotiators you are facing have a specific style. And depending on the style, some specific tactics will better fit.

The Analyst is hyper sensitive to reciprocity and skeptical by nature. Silence is an opportunity to think for him. The risk, for him, is to cut himself from an essential source of data, his counterpart. Asking too many questions too early to him is not recommended as he will not answer them before gathering the data and understand all implications.

The Accommodator spends time building the relationship. He wants to remain “friend” with his counterpart. He is very easy to disagree with but it’s much harder to uncover his objections. He will have identified potential problems and will leave them unadressed by fear of conflict.

The Assertive believes time is money. He loves winning, even at the expense of others. He has an agressive communication style. Most of all, he wants to be heard and he has very few ability to listen. He tells rather than asks. Only when he is convinced you understand his point of view, he will be able to listen at yours. For him, silence is an opportunity to speak. With him, the most effective tools are mirror, labels, calibrated questions and summaries until you hear a “That’s right”.

Human beings tend to think themselves as being “normal”, and that the world will look the same to others than it looks to them. There is a high probabilty they are wrong. Considering other worldviews is a first step toward success in the negotiation.

Once you know who seats at the table, be prepared.

Know your target, or your target range, and prepare an Ackermann plan. It works as follow.

Set you first offer at 65% of the target and calculate three raises of decreasing increments (85%, 95% and 100%). Use different ways of saying “No” (eg. through “how” and “what” calibrated questions) and nonround numbers, like 3467, for your final offer to give credibility to the number. Plus add a nonmonetary item at the very end to show you are at your limit.

Be prepared to take a punch (receiving an initial offer that would anchor you very far from your target) and avoid the compromise trap by punching back (by showing real anger, using “why” questions or “I” messages to communicate your feelings).

Anyway, punching back is the last resort and de-escalating is the priority when you think you are the hostage of the situation. Asking for a break is definitely possible and even recommended.

Never forget that the person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue.

Find the Black Swan

Negotiation breakthroughs are created by those who can identify and utilize Black Swans.

The concept of Black Swan has been popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a famous risk analyst and author.

Basically, a black swan is an unknown unknown . Something that never happened ,that we do not expect, and that we even think is not possible according to our experience and knowledge.

As an example, the tsunami in Fukushima in 2011 is a black swan.

The black swan theory asserts that the past is of no use when predicting the future. There are events or pieces of knowledge that sit outside our regular expectations and therefore cannot be predicted.

This is a crucial concept in negotiation. We usually deal with known knowns and known unknowns. And now we have to add the unknown unknowns, the Black Swans.

In a negotiation, black swans are powerful leverages. They can either be positive leverages, negative leverages or normative leverages.

To cut a long story short, a black swan is a piece of information about your counterpart or the situation that will help you bend the negotiation toward your best interests.

To uncover unknown unknowns, the key is to collect as many data as possible about your counterpart through hearing, listening and observing. On top of that, if what your learn doesn’t fit any of the known models you have, or if the counterpart seems to be irational or act in a crazy way, avoid forcing it into an existing model because there is a high chance your would do a mistake doing so.

On the opposite, try to understand his worldview and the reason why he is behaving this way. The key answer lies there, sometimes well hidden.

There are many rational explanations. Your counterpart can either be ill-informed, constrained or have other interests. Discovering this cause is the path to success.

Negotation or manipulation ?

This is a question I asked myself when reading the book and writing this summary.

Should I promote tactics that could, for some of them, be related to manipulation ?

I think the answer lies in the cause you are fighting for.

Both Robin Hood and Prince John are stealing, but their causes are opposite. Does one cause justify stealing and the other not ?

Einstein developed the theory of relativity but did not invent the nuclear bomb. Is the discovery the problem, or the usage we make out of it ?

Chris Voss provides some efficient tools. These are enablers.

You are the one who decide why and how you use them. The change you want to make happen is yours.

And it’s definitely better if you play the infinite game and your cause is a just one.

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss was originally published in It's Your Turn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jean-Marie Buchilly via It's Your Turn - Medium #itsyourturn #altMBA #SethGodin #quotes #inspiration #stories #change #transformation #writers #writing #self #shipping #personaldevelopment #growth #education #marketing #entrepreneurship #leadership #personaldev #wellness #medium #blogging #quoteoftheday #inspirationoftheday

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