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

military officer. They talked in Tagalog. We reviewed
transcripts translated to English and used them to advise
Benjie. I rotated in and out of Manila and oversaw the talks
and strategy. I instructed Benjie to ask what Schilling had to
do with five hundred years of bad blood between Muslims
and Filipinos. He told Sabaya that $10 million was not
possible.
No matter what approach we took to “reason” with
Sabaya over why Schilling had nothing to do with the “war
damages,” it fell on deaf ears.
Our first “that’s right” breakthrough actually came when
I was negotiating with Benjie. He was a true Filipino patriot
and hero. He was the leader of the Philippine National
Police’s Special Action Force and had been in his share of
firefights. On many occasions, Benjie and his men had been
sent on rescue missions to save hostages, and they had a
sterling record. His men were feared, for good reason. They
rarely took handcuffs.
Benjie wanted to take a hard line with Sabaya and speak
to him in direct, no-nonsense terms. We wanted to engage
Sabaya in dialogue to discover what made the adversary
tick. We actually wanted to establish rapport with an
adversary. To Benjie that was distasteful.
Benjie told us he needed a break. We had been working
him nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for
several weeks. He wanted to spend some time with his
family in the mountains north of Manila. We agreed, but
only on the condition that we could accompany him and