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

jerk with “How?” How am I supposed to . . . ? How do we
know . . . ? How can we . . . ? There is great power in
treating jerks with deference. It gives you the ability to be
extremely assertive—to say “No”—in a hidden fashion.
“How do we know if we pay you that you won’t hurt
Alastair?” Aaron asked.
In the Chinese martial art of tai chi, the goal is to use
your opponent’s aggressiveness against him—to turn his
offense into your way to defeat him. That’s the approach we
took with Alastair’s kidnapper: we wanted to absorb his
threats and wear him down. We made sure that even
scheduling a call with us was complex. We delayed making
email responses.
Through all these tactics, we gained the upper hand
while giving the kidnapper the illusion of control. He
thought he was solving Aaron’s problems while we were
just reading him and wasting his time. You see, it’s best not
to go chin to chin with aggressiveness like that of Alastair’s
kidnapper; rather, default to using “what” and “how”
questions to avoid making bids or adjusting your own
negotiating position. Dodge and weave.
Finally, following days of back-and-forth bargaining on
the daily rate, Aaron got the kidnapper down to a token
amount and agreed to deposit a portion of the funds in his
bank account. After that partial payment was made, Aaron
came up with the perfect way to nonconfrontationally
confront the cabbie with a calibrated “When/What”
question.