forced the other guy to pause and actually think about how
to solve the problem. I thought to myself, This is perfect!
It’s a natural and normal question, not a request for a fact.
It’s a “how” question, and “how” engages because “how”
asks for help.
Best of all, he doesn’t owe the kidnapper a damn thing.
The guy volunteers to put the girlfriend on the phone: he
thinks it’s his idea. The guy who just offered to put the
girlfriend on the line thinks he’s in control. And the secret to
gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other
side the illusion of control.
The genius of this technique is really well explained by
something that the psychologist Kevin Dutton says in his
book Split-Second Persuasion.^1 He talks about what he
calls “unbelief,” which is active resistance to what the other
side is saying, complete rejection. That’s where the two
parties in a negotiation usually start.
If you don’t ever get off that dynamic, you end up
having showdowns, as each side tries to impose its point of
view. You get two hard skulls banging against each other,
like in Dos Palmas. But if you can get the other side to drop
their unbelief, you can slowly work them to your point of
view on the back of their energy, just like the drug dealer’s
question got the kidnapper to volunteer to do what the drug
dealer wanted. You don’t directly persuade them to see your
ideas. Instead, you ride them to your ideas. As the saying
goes, the best way to ride a horse is in the direction in which
it is going.