LIFE IS NEGOTIATION
While you might be curious how FBI negotiators get some
of the world’s toughest bad guys to give up their hostages,
you could be excused for wondering what hostage
negotiation has to do with your life. Happily, very few
people are ever forced to deal with Islamist terrorists who’ve
kidnapped their loved ones.
But allow me to let you in on a secret: Life is
negotiation.
The majority of the interactions we have at work and at
home are negotiations that boil down to the expression of a
simple, animalistic urge: I want.
“I want you to free the hostages,” is a very relevant one
to this book, of course.
But so is:
“I want you to accept that $1 million contract.”
“I want to pay $20,000 for that car.”
“I want you to give me a 10 percent raise.”
and
“I want you to go to sleep at 9 p.m.”
Negotiation serves two distinct, vital life functions—
information gathering and behavior influencing—and
includes almost any interaction where each party wants
something from the other side. Your career, your finances,
your reputation, your love life, even the fate of your kids—
at some point all of these hinge on your ability to negotiate.
Negotiation as you’ll learn it here is nothing more than
communication with results. Getting what you want out of