# Never Split the Difference **Chris Voss and Tahl Raz** | [[Action]]  --- > "Negotiation as you'll learn it here is nothing more than communication with results." Most people think negotiation is about logic—marshalling arguments, presenting evidence, meeting in the middle. Voss spent decades as an FBI hostage negotiator learning the opposite. Negotiation is a process of discovery, not a battle of arguments. The goal isn't to overpower your counterpart with logic. It's to understand them so completely that they convince themselves your solution is their own idea. > "Who has control in a conversation, the guy listening or the guy talking? The listener, of course." The listener directs the conversation toward their own goals whilst the talker reveals information. This inverts everything we assume about power dynamics. The FBI uses teams of five people on a single hostage call—not because talking is hard, but because listening well is extraordinarily difficult. We engage in selective listening, hearing only what we want to hear, our minds acting on cognitive bias for consistency rather than truth. Everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control. Satisfy those drives and you're in the door. The entire Voss toolkit—mirroring, labeling, calibrated questions—serves this purpose. You're not manipulating people. You're making them feel heard, which creates the safety for genuine negotiation to begin. --- ## Core Ideas ### [[Tactical Empathy]] Empathy is not about being nice or agreeing with the other side. It's about understanding them—learning their position, why their actions make sense to them, and what might move them. Tactical empathy takes this further: you deploy understanding strategically to influence behaviour. The reasons why a counterpart will *not* make an agreement are often more powerful than why they will. Focus first on clearing barriers. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. List the worst things the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. This disarms the accusation before it gains power. ### [[Mirroring]] 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. It's almost laughably simple, yet uncannily effective—the closest thing to a Jedi mind trick in the negotiator's toolkit. Mirroring signals similarity. "Trust me," it says to the unconscious, "you and I—we're alike." The technique has four steps: use the late-night FM DJ voice, start with "I'm sorry...", mirror, then silence for at least four seconds. Let the mirror work its magic. ### [[Labeling]] Labeling is a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional hack. 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. Labels almost always begin with the same words: "It seems like..." / "It sounds like..." / "It looks like..." The crucial discipline is what comes after: 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 fill the void. Resist. The other party will fill the silence with information. ### [[Calibrated Questions]] Calibrated questions give your counterpart the illusion of control whilst you gather information and guide them toward your goals. They avoid closed-ended verbs—"can," "is," "are," "do," "does"—which invite simple yes/no answers. Instead, start with "what" and "how." Sometimes "why," but carefully—regardless of language, "why" sounds accusatory. The most powerful calibrated question: **"How am I supposed to do that?"** Delivered deferentially, it becomes a request for help. It invites the other side to participate in your dilemma and solve it with a better offer. You're saying "No" in a hidden fashion whilst treating them with deference. Other essentials: "What about this is important to you?" / "How can I help to make this better for us?" / "What's the objective?" / "How will we know we're on track?" ### [[The Three Types of Yes]] There are three kinds of "Yes": Counterfeit (they're saying it to get rid of you), Confirmation (a reflexive response with no commitment), and Commitment (the only one that matters). Most negotiators chase "Yes" without distinguishing which kind they're getting. "That's right" is better than any "Yes." It signals that your counterpart feels genuinely understood. To trigger it, use a summary—a label combined with paraphrasing. Identify, rearticulate, and emotionally affirm "the world according to them." Contrast this with "You're right"—what people say to get you to shut up and go away. It sounds like agreement but contains no buy-in whatsoever. ### [[Strategic No]] We've been conditioned to fear "No," but it's a statement of perception far more often than fact. It seldom means "I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice." More often it's a temporary decision to maintain the status quo. Change is scary, and "No" provides protection from that scariness. Good negotiators welcome—even invite—a solid "No" to start. It means the other party is engaged and thinking. 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 you get "No, it's not" and total focus. You can express "No" four times before actually saying the word: (1) "How am I supposed to do that?" (2) "Your offer is very generous, I'm sorry, that just doesn't work for me." (3) "I'm sorry but I'm afraid I just can't do that." (4) "I'm sorry, no." --- ## Key Insights **Wants are easy to talk about; needs make us vulnerable.** Wants represent the aspiration of getting our way, sustaining the illusion of control. Needs imply survival—the minimum required to make us act. Neither is where you start. It begins with listening, validating emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for real conversation. **Deadlines are often arbitrary, almost always flexible, and hardly ever trigger the consequences we think.** They regularly make people say and do impulsive things against their best interests. Counterintuitively, revealing your deadline often gets you a better deal—it reduces the risk of impasse and accelerates real concession-making. **Loss aversion is your strongest lever.** In a tough negotiation, it's not enough to show you can deliver what they want. To get real leverage, you have to persuade them that they have something concrete to lose if the deal falls through. People will take more risks to avoid a loss than to realise a gain. **Never split the difference.** Splitting the difference is wearing one black and one brown shoe. Meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides. Creative solutions are almost always preceded by risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict. Accommodation and compromise produce none of that. Embrace the hard stuff—that's where the great deals are. **The Black Swan rule: don't treat others the way you want to be treated; treat them the way they need to be treated.** There are three negotiator types—Analysts (data-loving), Accommodators (relationship-focused), and Assertives (time-focused). The "I am normal" paradox—assuming others see the world as you do—is one of the most damaging assumptions in negotiation. With three types, there's a 66% chance your counterpart has a different style than yours. **Normative leverage exploits inconsistency.** If you can show gaps between their stated beliefs and their actions, you have normative leverage. No one likes to look like a hypocrite. A subtle version: label the positive norm—"It seems like you strongly value the fact that you've always paid on time"—making it costly to violate. **The less important someone makes themselves in their language, the more important they probably are.** Watch for overuse of personal pronouns. Those in love with "I," "me," and "my" are often less important than those who deflect to "we" and "they." --- ## Connects To - [[Alchemy]] - Negotiation is psycho-logical, not logical; Voss and Sutherland agree that human behaviour defies rational models - [[The Brain Audit]] - Both focus on removing barriers before making arguments; clear the road before advertising the destination - [[Supercommunicators]] - Deep listening as the foundation of influence; connection precedes persuasion - [[Playing to Win]] - Strategy as integrated choices; Voss's toolkit is about shaping which choices your counterpart sees - [[Skin in the Game]] - Loss aversion and asymmetry; people protect against downside more than they pursue upside --- ## Final Thought Negotiation is not an act of battle; it's a process of discovery. The goal is to uncover as much information as possible whilst making your counterpart feel safe and in control. That's the paradox at the heart of Voss's approach—you gain power by giving it away. Asking "How am I supposed to do that?" puts them in the driver's seat whilst you steer from the passenger seat. The techniques are simple enough: mirror the last few words, label their emotions, ask calibrated questions, pursue "That's right" instead of "Yes." But the discipline required is immense. You have to resist the urge to argue, to prove you're right, to fill silence. The listener controls the conversation—but only if they can actually listen. Hope is not a strategy. Preparation is. Good negotiators know they have to be ready for surprises; great negotiators aim to reveal the surprises they are certain exist. They hold multiple hypotheses in mind simultaneously and update relentlessly as new information arrives. That's the mindset: not winning arguments, but discovering truth and shaping perception.