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

And you know what? The answer she got was “You’re
right, you can’t and I apologize.” Her client explained that
they were going through some internal problems, but she
was given a new accounting contact and told she’d be paid
within forty-eight hours. And she was.
Now, think about how my client’s question worked:
without accusing them of anything, it pushed the big
company to understand her problem and offer the solution
she wanted. That in a nutshell is the whole point of open-
ended questions that are calibrated for a specific effect.
Like the softening words and phrases “perhaps,”
“maybe,” “I think,” and “it seems,” the calibrated open-
ended question takes the aggression out of a confrontational
statement or close-ended request that might otherwise anger
your counterpart. What makes them work is that they are
subject to interpretation by your counterpart instead of being
rigidly defined. They allow you to introduce ideas and
requests without sounding overbearing or pushy.
And that’s the difference between “You’re screwing me
out of money, and it has to stop” and “How am I supposed
to do that?”
The real beauty of calibrated questions is the fact that
they offer no target for attack like statements do. Calibrated
questions have the power to educate your counterpart on
what the problem is rather than causing conflict by telling
them what the problem is.
But calibrated questions are not just random requests for
comment. They have a direction: once you figure out where