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

developed the reputation as one of the centers, if not the
center of knowledge, for law enforcement. When a
negotiation is going badly and the negotiators involved are
directed to call and find out what “Quantico” has to say, the
CNU is who they call.
CNU developed what is a powerful staple in the high-
stakes world of crisis negotiation, the Behavioral Change
Stairway Model (BCSM). The model proposes five stages—
active listening, empathy, rapport, influence, and behavioral
change—that take any negotiator from listening to
influencing behavior.
The origins of the model can be traced back to the great
American psychologist Carl Rogers, who proposed that real
change can only come when a therapist accepts the client as
he or she is—an approach known as unconditional positive
regard. The vast majority of us, however, as Rogers
explained, come to expect that love, praise, and approval
are dependent on saying and doing the things people
(initially, our parents) consider correct. That is, because for
most of us the positive regard we experience is conditional,
we develop a habit of hiding who we really are and what we
really think, instead calibrating our words to gain approval
but disclosing little.
Which is why so few social interactions lead to actual
behavior change. Consider the typical patient with severe
coronary heart disease recovering from open-heart surgery.
The doctor tells the patient: “This surgery isn’t a cure. The
only way to truly prolong your life is to make the following