Watson coughed.
“I’ll come out,” he said.
And he did, ending a forty-eight-hour standoff, saving
himself from harm, and allowing the nation’s capital to
resume its normal life.
No explosives were found.
While the importance of “knowing their religion” should be
clear from Watson’s story, here are two tips for reading
religion correctly:
■ Review everything you hear. You will not hear
everything the first time, so double-check.
Compare notes with your team members. You
will often discover new information that will help
you advance the negotiation.■ Use backup listeners whose only job is to listen
between the lines. They will hear things you
miss.In other words: listen, listen again, and listen some more.
We’ve seen how a holistic understanding of your
counterpart’s “religion”—a huge Black Swan—can provide
normative leverage that leads to negotiating results. But
there are other ways in which learning your counterpart’s
“religion” enables you to achieve better outcomes.