to tell me a year earlier that Martin Burnham had been
killed. My stomach tied into a knot when I heard his voice.
“We just got a call from José,” Kevin said. “He’s still in
guerrilla territory but he escaped and he’s on a bus and he’s
making his way out.”
It took me half a minute to respond, and when I did all I
could say was “Holy shit! That’s fantastic news!”
What had happened, we learned later, was that with all
the delays and questions, some of the guerrillas peeled off
and didn’t return. Pretty soon there was only one teenager
guarding José at night. He saw an opening late one evening
when it began to chuck down rain. Pounding on the metal
roof, the rain drowned out all other sound as the lone guard
slept. Knowing the wet leaves outside would absorb the
sound of his footsteps, José climbed through the window,
ran down jungle paths to a dirt road, and worked his way to
a small town.
Two days later he was back with Julie and their baby,
just a few days before his daughter’s first birthday.
Julie was right: with enough time he had found a way
home.
Calibrated “How” questions are a surefire way to keep
negotiations going. They put the pressure on your
counterpart to come up with answers, and to contemplate
your problems when making their demands.
With enough of the right “How” questions you can read
and shape the negotiating environment in such a way that
you’ll eventually get to the answer you want to hear. You