Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

My guys told Julie to answer every one of the kidnappers’ demands with a question. My strategy ...

to tell me a year earlier that Martin Burnham had been killed. My stomach tied into a knot ...

just have to have an idea of where you want the conversation to go when you’re devising you ...

demanding a ransom. And we never had it backfire. Once I was working with an accounting consultant na ...

By making your counterparts articulate implementation in their own words, your carefully calibrated “Ho ...

INFLUENCING THOSE BEHIND THE TABLE A few weeks after José got back to the United States, I dro ...

the opposite of the Burnham case, where our negotiator cut the deal with one of the guys and then the rest ...

to consider only the interests of those at the negotiation table. You have to beware of “behind the ...

slighted, or otherwise somehow personally injured by the notion that he and his people “needed” any tra ...

to spot and interpret the subtleties of communication—both verbal and nonverbal—that reveal the mental states of y ...

his organs in Saudi Arabia.” Within twenty-four hours, I’d been charged with heading the negotiation from Quantic ...

jerk with “How?” How am I supposed to . . . ? How do we know . . . ? How can we . ...

“When we run out of money, what will happen?” Aaron asked. The kidnapper paused. “It will be all right,” he ...

THE 7-38-55 PERCENT RULE In two famous studies on what makes us like or dislike somebody,^1 UCLA ps ...

Them: “Oh, it’s nothing really.” You: “No, this is important, let’s make sure we get this right.” Th ...

repeatedly lie or fake conviction. When I first learned this skill, my biggest fear was how to avoid sou ...

It turns out that Collodi wasn’t far off reality. Most people offer obvious telltale signs wh ...

out of a negotiator’s mouth, the more important they are. Just like in the Malhotra study where ...

side see you as a person. A few years ago I was in a bar in Kansas with a bunch of fellow FBI negotiato ...

She looked from the register, met my eyes, and gave a little laugh. “I’ll have to ask my manager, Ka ...