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

anymore and drove to Washington to make his point. He
wanted attention, and knowing what he wanted gave us
positive leverage.
Watson also told us he was a veteran, and veterans had
rules. This is the kind of music you want to hear, as it
provides normative leverage. He told us that he would be
willing to surrender, but not right away. As a military police
officer in the 82nd Airborne in the 1970s, he’d learned that
if he was trapped behind enemy lines, he could withdraw
with honor if reinforcements didn’t arrive within three days.
But not before.
Now, we had articulated rules we could hold him to, and
the admission that he could withdraw also implied that,
despite his bluster about dying, he wanted to live. One of
the first things you try to decide in a hostage negotiation is
whether your counterpart’s vision of the future involves
them living. And Watson had answered yes.
We used this information—a piece of negative leverage,
as we could take away something he wanted: life—and
started working it alongside the positive leverage of his
desire to be heard. We emphasized to Watson that he had
already made national news and if he wanted his message to
survive he was going to have to live.
Watson was smart enough to understand that there was a
real chance he wouldn’t make it out alive, but he still had
his rules of military honor. His own desires and fears helped
generate some positive and negative leverage, but they were
secondary to the norms by which he lived his life.