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

were all called in and we too squabbled among ourselves.
Then the kidnappers raped and killed several hostages, 9/11
happened, and the Abu Sayyaf was linked to Al Qaeda.
By the time the crisis concluded in an orgy of gunshots
in June 2002, Dos Palmas had officially become the biggest
failure in my professional life. To call it a train wreck would
be generous, if you know what I mean.
But failures plant the seeds of future success, and our
failure in the Philippines was no exception.
If the Dos Palmas calamity showed me anything, it was
that we all were still suffering under the notion that
negotiation was a wrestling match where the point is to
exhaust your opponent into submission, hope for the best,
and never back down.
As my disappointment with Dos Palmas forced me to
reckon with our failed techniques, I took a deep look into
the newest negotiating theories—some great and some
completely harebrained—and I had a chance encounter with
a case in Pittsburgh that completely changed how I looked
at the interpersonal dynamics of negotiation conversations.
From the ashes of Dos Palmas, then, we learned a lesson
that would forever change how the FBI negotiated
kidnappings. We learned that negotiation was coaxing, not
overcoming; co-opting, not defeating. Most important, we
learned that successful negotiation involved getting your
counterpart to do the work for you and suggest your
solution himself. It involved giving him the illusion of
control while you, in fact, were the one defining the