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

It was tempting to just wait until the third day, but I
doubted we’d get that far. With each passing hour the
atmosphere was growing tenser. The capital was under siege
and we had reason to believe he might have explosives. If
he made one wrong move, one spastic freak-out, the snipers
would kill him. He’d already had several angry outbursts, so
every hour that passed endangered him. He could still get
himself killed.
But we couldn’t hit on that at all; we couldn’t threaten to
kill him and expect that to work. The reason for that is
something called the “paradox of power”—namely, the
harder we push the more likely we are to be met with
resistance. That’s why you have to use negative leverage
sparingly.
Still, time was short and we had to speed things up.
But how?
What happened next was one of those glorious examples
of how deeply listening to understand your counterpart’s
worldview can reveal a Black Swan that transforms a
negotiation dynamic. Watson didn’t directly tell us what we
needed to know, but by close attention we uncovered a
subtle truth that informed everything he said.
About thirty-six hours in, Winnie Miller, an FBI agent on
our team who’d been listening intently to subtle references
Watson had been making, turned to me.
“He’s a devout Christian,” she told me. “Tell him
tomorrow is the Dawn of the Third Day. That’s the day
Christians believe Jesus Christ left his tomb and ascended to