Never split the Difference

Brooklyn, New York, 1993. A bank robbery went wrong and two jets with long guns were left inside with hostages. They call FBI negotiators. An agent arrives who had just joined the team, a big guy from Iowa, thick voice, infinite patience, named Chris Voss. Their job was simple in theory and almost impossible in practice: convince those two armed guys, locked up with people they didn't want to let go, to come out with their hands up and surrender, without anyone dying.

Voss had not studied negotiation at an elite university. He didn't have an MBA. He was a policeman. But he had a different intuition than everyone else. That night in Brooklyn he used almost no techniques from the official FBI manual. He didn't threaten, he didn't rush. He spoke slowly, with that voice like that of a nighttime radio announcer, and basically repeated the last words that the jets said, over and over again, like an echo. After hours and hours, the two criminals came out and surrendered. And Voss realized, as they were handcuffed, that he had done something different, something that didn't have a name yet, something that was going to change the way the FBI negotiated with kidnappers in the rest of the world.

Twenty years later, that same Chris Voss, now retired, wrote a book called "Never Split the Difference", which in Spanish was translated as "Break the barrier of no." And it very quickly became one of the best-selling trading books in the world. It is read by people who are going to buy a used car, it is read by the executive who has to close a million-dollar contract, it is read by parents who want their three-year-old son to stop screaming in the supermarket. And everyone gets something out of it. That's the strange and beautiful thing about the book.

In this article we are going to see what it is about. Who was Chris Voss and why his story matters. What are the central techniques that the book proposes. Why is it called that, "never split the difference." And how, according to Voss, almost everything we were taught about negotiating in the last fifty years is wrong.

Let's start with the author. Chris Voss joined the FBI in the 1980s. He went through the anti-terrorist unit in New York. Then he joined the crisis negotiation team. And he ended up being the main international negotiator in kidnapping cases, for more than twenty years. In other words: when an American was kidnapped in the Philippines, in Haiti, in Colombia, in Iraq, the guy who picked up the phone or who traveled to the place was him. He spoke with guerrillas, with gangs, with drug traffickers, with Somali pirates. His job was literally to keep unstable, armed, desperate people from pulling the trigger.

In the mid-nineties, Voss enrolled in a negotiation course at Harvard, the famous business school. He was the only FBI agent in a room full of Wall Street lawyers, Fortune 500 executives, businessmen. Paid, expensive course, taught by disciples of the authors of the book "Yes... okay!", the academic bible of modern negotiation. That Bible said, among other things, that good negotiators are those who separate the person from the problem, those who appeal to reason, those who seek mutual gains, those who reach a "yes" agreement. Voss listened to the classes, did the exercises, and at the end asked to speak with the teacher. He told him, more or less: Professor, all this is very nice, but it doesn't help me. I don't negotiate with rational people sitting at a table. I negotiate with a drugged guy who has a knife to a kid's throat. Here you are teaching me chess, and I play chess underwater while someone sets me on fire.

That difference is the heart of the book

That difference is the heart of the book. Voss says that most negotiation theories start from a false assumption: that people make rational decisions. Research by Nobel laureates like Daniel Kahneman, who has an entire book dedicated to this, showed that it is not. That we are emotional animals, first, and rational animals later. That our decisions are cooked in the old part of the brain, the one that felt fear in the African savannah before knowing how to write. And only later does reason come to justify what we already decided by instinct.

If that's true, Voss says, then all the classic negotiation is pointing in the wrong place. It is not enough to have good arguments, with data, with numbers. You have to talk to the emotional brain. You have to understand what the other person feels, put it into words before he does it, and calmly defuse it. He calls this "tactical empathy."

In the mid-nineties, Voss enrolled in a negotiation course at Harvard, the famous business school.

He was the only FBI agent in a room full of Wall Street lawyers, Fortune 500 executives, businessmen.

Tactical empathy. The adjective is important. It is not soft empathy, that of "I understand you, brother, how difficult it must be." It's something more strategic. It is identifying the emotions of the other, labeling them, returning them with precise words, and using that return so that the other feels heard and lets their guard down. You don't agree with him. Don't give up. You show him that you saw what he is feeling. And that, almost magically, takes the air out of the conflict.

The first specific technique that the book teaches is the mirror. When someone is talking to you, especially if they are angry or nervous, you repeat their last two or three words, in a questioning tone. Nothing else. That's all. The person, who was expecting you to interrupt him with an argument, becomes disconcerted, and, almost without realizing it, continues talking. And as she continues talking, she gives you more information, she calms down, she feels heard. Voss tells how in Brooklyn, that night in '93, the only thing he did for hours was that: repeat. If the jet said "we want the helicopter to go," Voss responded "the helicopter." And the other followed. And in the end it came out.

The second technique is the label. Label emotions. Saying things like "it sounds like you're frustrated," "it sounds like you don't trust us," "it sounds like you're tired of this." The important thing is the verbs: it seems, it sounds, it gives the impression. Never "I understand you" or "I know how you feel." Those trigger rejection, because they sound like you are assuming that you know the other person. When you label, on the other hand, you are offering a hypothesis, and the other confirms, corrects or qualifies it. And by doing that, it lowers the emotional intensity. Named emotions lose strength.

Voss also has a reverse technique, which he calls an "accusation audit." If you go into a negotiation and you know that the other person has a lot of objections, you say all the bad things that the other person might think about you first, out loud, before him. You go into the meeting and start by saying, "Look, I know you're going to think this is expensive, we're late, we had a problem with your order last year, maybe we're not the best fit for this." The other one, who had those phrases ready to throw in your face, runs out of bullets. And, furthermore, he begins to defend you. He tells you things like "no, it wasn't like that either." That's the magic.

Next comes one of the most counterintuitive ideas in the book. Voss says the nicest word in a negotiation is not "yes." It's "no." When someone tells you "no", they feel safe, they feel like they own the conversation, and from then on they are willing to listen to you. The "yes", on the other hand, is often false, given out of commitment, social pressure, the desire to finish the talk. People say "yes" to get off the hook, not to commit. For this reason, says Voss, you have to design questions that lead the other to say "no" at key moments. Instead of asking, "Are you ready to move forward?", ask, "Would it be crazy for you to move forward now?" or "is this a bad time to talk?" The other answers "no", and by saying "no" he is actually telling you "yes, we can move forward" or "yes, it's a good time." And he feels empowered. And that, paradoxically, suits you.

Another key tool: calibrated questions

Another key tool: calibrated questions. Those are open-ended, purposeful questions that begin with "how" or "what." "How am I supposed to do that?" It is one of Voss' favorites. If the other person is asking you for something impossible, instead of saying "no, I can't," you return the ball: "how do you want me to do that?" The other, now, has to think about your problem. You have to think how to solve it. And many times he only realizes that what he asked for was not reasonable, and he lowers the demand, without anyone telling him no directly. Voss used that phrase to free a hostage in the Philippines, because when the kidnappers asked him for a million-dollar figure that the FBI was not going to pay, he responded: "how am I supposed to get them that?" And the kidnappers began to explain, almost justify, their situation. They lowered the order. They went down three times. In the end they charged a tenth and released the person.

There is another very important distinction in the book. Voss separates the "yes" from the "you're right." "Yes" is a soft word. "You're right" is the magic word, the word to aim for. When the other person tells you "you're right", really, not as a way to cut off the conversation but as a real recognition, something happened there. The other internalized your vision. You summarized so well what he thought, what he felt, what he needed, that he finally felt understood and told you. From that point on, the negotiation changes. That phrase is the indicator that the other has passed on your side. And it is achieved, precisely, by listening, labeling, mirroring and summarizing.

Voss also talks a lot about voice. Three tones. The direct assertive tone, which is almost never used because it generates a reaction. The positive and playful tone, which works for most situations, sounds cordial and opens doors. And the famous tone of the night announcer, that deep, slow, calm tone, like an early morning radio program. That tone is used when things are hot, when the other is upset. The voice lowers the temperature. Voss insists that most people underestimate the physical effect that the speed and tone with which you speak has on others. It is not an accessory. It's half the message.

We come to the title of the book. "Never split the difference." Never split the difference. What does it mean? It means that the most typical shortcut in any negotiation, "let's meet in the middle", is usually a bad idea. Voss tells the example of a husband and wife arguing over what color shoes to wear to a meeting: he says black, she says brown. If they split the difference, what do they do? A black shoe and a brown shoe? It's ridiculous. And yet in serious negotiations, people with money, with responsibilities, split the difference all the time, losing in that match in half what they really wanted. Voss says no deal is preferable to a bad deal. That the truly good negotiator prefers to leave empty-handed rather than accept something that will hurt later. And almost always, if you don't agree to split the difference, what appears is a creative solution that no one had thought of at the beginning.

There is a chapter devoted to an almost surgical technique for negotiating price, which Voss calls the Ackerman model, after a CIA agent who perfected it. It works like this. Before you start, you calculate the maximum price you are willing to pay, or the minimum you will accept if you sell. You put a ceiling and a floor on that number. Your first offer is sixty-five percent of that goal. Yes, sixty-five, a figure that seems exaggeratedly low. Then you go up to eighty-five. Then to ninety-five. And you close at one hundred, but using a strange, non-round number, something like ninety-seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-three pesos, because figures that seem precisely calculated transmit, paradoxically, more solidity than round ones. And between offers and offers, before going up, you use all the previous tools: tactical empathy, tags, calibrated questions. The idea is that the other person feels that every concession you make costs them. That's the key part. If your offer goes up easily, the other suspects that you have more to give. If it goes up with effort, with pain, with doubts, the other begins to feel that they are close to your limit and stops pushing.

Voss also talks a lot about something he learned from behavioral psychology, particularly Kahneman's work: the seventy-thirty rule, or whatever you prefer to call it. The idea is simple. The losses outweigh the gains. Most people, offered a wonderful opportunity to win, stay put. But if you tell him he's going to lose something if he doesn't act, he jumps. That's called loss aversion. And good negotiators use it all the time. Instead of selling the other person the list of benefits of your proposal, you paint them what they are going to lose if they don't move. Not in a threatening way, but almost in passing. "I just wanted to let you know before this option is no longer available." The other, who minutes before could calmly close the conversation, is now worried. He is manipulative, yes, to a certain extent. But that's how the human brain works. Voss says that ignoring this is going into the negotiation with one eye closed.

There is another important distinction that the book raises, and that is between the three types of negotiators. Voss calls them the analyst, the pleaser and the assertive one. The analyst is methodical, quiet, prepares everything, asks for time, does not show emotions. The pleaser is relational, wants to be liked, seeks quick agreements, gives in a lot in order not to break the atmosphere. The assertive person is direct, strong, he cares more about closing than bonding, he usually speaks loudly. The giant mistake of most is assuming that the other negotiates like one. And not. If you are assertive and the person on the other side is an analyst, you will read their silence as weakness when in reality it is just processing. If you are complacent and the other is assertive, you are going to feel crushed by something that the other does without any intention of crushing you. Quickly recognizing what type you have in front of you is half the job.

In the last chapters of the book, Voss talks about something he calls the…

In the final chapters of the book, Voss talks about something he calls "black swans." The concept is borrowed from Nassim Taleb, who we talked about in another episode. Here he applies them to negotiation. Black swans are hidden pieces of information that the other person has and that you don't, and that if you discover them, they change everything. Negotiation is not a closed game of offers and counteroffers. It's an investigation. Your mission is to find out what the other person really needs, what they fear, what pressure they have outside the table, what would unblock them. And that can only be discovered by patiently listening and asking questions. Most people prepare the negotiation by thinking about what they are going to say. Voss suggests preparing it by thinking about what he is going to ask.

There is a story that the book tells that stuck with many people. It is the story of an FBI client who was kidnapped in Haiti. The kidnappers asked for 150 thousand dollars. The family had much less. Voss coached them over the phone. It made them ask, over and over again, "how do you want us to get that figure?", "what would happen if we told you we didn't have that money?", "how are you going to manage the risk if this gets complicated?" The kidnappers began to let up without anyone making a direct counteroffer. They dropped to 50 thousand. Then to 25 thousand. The family ended up paying $4,750. Four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. A ridiculous number. The kidnapped person came out alive.

The book is full of stories like that. The funny thing is that Voss always comes back to the practical hook. Each chapter ends with a series of applicable lessons, and the message is: these techniques that I used to get people out of Haiti alive are useful for talking to your boss, for selling a car, for arguing with your partner about where to go on vacation. The mental structure behind a hostage negotiation is the same as any tense conversation. The risks change, not the mechanics.

What impact did the book have? It came out in 2016 and since then it has sold millions of copies in dozens of languages. Voss set up a training company, The Black Swan Group, that trains executives from large companies in these techniques. He made online courses that have hundreds of thousands of students. And, above all, it changed the way many ordinary people began to think about negotiation. Before, negotiating was for lawyers, managers, professional buyers. Today there are parents, teachers, real estate agents, doctors, people who apply the mirror and etiquette in their daily lives. The idea that negotiating is basically learning to listen better caught on.

There are criticisms too, of course. Some say the book simplifies, that applying hostage techniques to an office meeting is overkill, that tactical empathy can feel, if noticed, like manipulation. Voss answers that the techniques work precisely because they are not manipulation: they require that you, seriously, be interested in the other's situation. If you do it just as a trick, it shows and it breaks. The difference between a good negotiation and manipulation, he says, is if after going you are left with the feeling that you won against someone, or that you understood someone.

The great contribution of the book, in the end, is not a recipe. It's a paradigm shift. What Voss proposes is to turn down the volume, ask more questions, stop fighting over arguments, stop asking for a quick "yes," and accept that most of the important things in life are neither won nor lost at the table. They win in how you listen before speaking.

And it is up to the reader to try. Voss insists on that a lot at the end. These things are not learned from reading. They are learned by practicing. The next tense conversation you have, in any area, you can use as a laboratory. Try saying, "This seems to frustrate you." Try repeating the last two words. Try asking "how do you want me to do that?" And pay attention, not to yourself, but to the other person's face, to the tone they use, to what they say next. There, says Chris Voss, you will find the best negotiation school that exists. The one that is not taught at Harvard. The one that is learned, as he learned, by talking to scared people in the most complicated moment of their life.