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Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss w/ Tahl Raz

The New Rules - How to Become the Smartest Person... in Any Room

  • Framing effect: people place greater value on going from 90% to 100% than 45% to 55%.
  • Prospect Theory: a theory behind why we take unwarranted risks in the face of uncertain losses. The most famous being Loss Aversion, which shows people are more likely to act to avert a loss than to achieve an equal gain.
  • The psychological tactics required were to calm people down, establish rapport, gain trust, elicit the verbalization of needs and persuade the other guy of our empathy.
  • Listening is the cheapest and most effective concession to get to earning trust. It is not a passive activity, but in fact the most active thing you can do.

Be a Mirror - How to Quickly Establish Rapport

  • Good negotiators know there will be surprises; great negotiotars aim to use their skills to reveal these surprises.
  • Under you know what you are dealing with, you do not know what you are dealing with.
  • George A. Miller put forth that we can only process about seven pieces of information at a time. We are easily overwhelmed.
  • "A state of schizophrenia": the voice inside of one's head that you listen to can impede conversation. When two are in conversation, really there could be four.
  • The goal is to identif what your counterparts need and get them feeling safe enough to talk and talk and talk more about what they want.
  • Talk slowly and convey one idea: I am in control.
  • Mirroring, also called isopraxism, is essentially imitation.
  • Don't commit to assumptions. View them as hypotheses and use negotiation to test them rigorously.

Three tones available to negotiators

  1. Late night FM voice
  2. The positive/playful voice
  3. The direct or assertive voice

Don't Feel Their Pain, Label It - How to Create Trust with Tactical Empathy

  • "Seperate people from the problem." Don't get emotional.
  • "The supreme art of war": to subdue an enemy without fighting (Sun Tzu).
  • The best way to deal with negativity is the observe it, without reaction and without judgement. Then consciously label each negative feeling and replace it with positive, compassionate and solution-based thoughts.

Beware Yes, Master No - How to Generate Momentum and Make It Safe to Reveal the Real Stakes

  • Compromise and conession, even to the truth, feels like defeat.
  • "Yes" is a meaningless answer that hides deeper objections ("maybe" is even worse).
  • Teach yourself to respond to "no" as something other than rejection, and respond accordingly.
  • Use the power of a "no" answer to provoke a response.
  • By turning niceness into a lubricant, we've leeched it of meaning.

Bend Their Reality

Create the Illusion of Control

Guarantee Execution

Bargain Hard

Find the Black Swan