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Subtitled: Never Split the Difference
Twenty years ago, I read several books about negotiation. And I have read a few since then. Bizarrely, _The Mommy Trap_ was one of the better ones. _Getting to Yes_ was largely useless. But I don’t know that I could have articulated clearly _why_ some of the books I read were useless and some were really interesting and sometimes helpful. I have also read — or at least tried hard to read — a bunch of game theoretic books about fair division. I recently listened to Planet Money’s _Fair Division_ podcast.
All this stuff is basically crap. All I really got out of everything I read could be reduced to a few basic principles, most of which I knew in some form — and so do you — long before I read my first book about negotiation.
(1) Know what you want. When you get it, stop, implement the details of closing, and be nice on the way out the door (no gloating, leave a basis for returning to negotiate something in the future / renegotiate this deal if something turns out to be other than expected). If you get what you want quickly, do not worry about how much you “left on the table”. They can have it. They gave you what you wanted. But, you know, maybe do more research going into the negotiation so you have a really good sense of the possible.
(2) Listen, pay attention to discrepancies, nail down details, clarify, and if in doubt, slow down. If you stop trusting the person, walk away.
(3) Have an alternative to making a deal / making a deal with this person. Make it something you _really_ like, and make it detailed, and pretty easy to implement. This will make the above principles much easier to actually follow through on.
Voss is aggressive. He wants to get everything he can get, so he doesn’t follow my rule number 1. But he _does_ actually take really seriously being respectful and leaving a basis for returning to (re) negotiate. He takes negotiations into areas where I do everything I can to avoid negotiating — he focuses on the importance of trusting oneself and one’s team, rather than the trustworthiness of the other person. He takes implementation details super seriously. He is a huge believer in slowing things down, and his detailed explanation of the _how_ of listening is among the best I have ever read, in a context of negotiation, therapy or anywhere else. It is _remarkable_.
But the real worth of this book is in the fact that Voss simultaneously takes research seriously AND he is a big believer in collecting information face to face and making use of it. Most advice givers in this and other contexts focus on one or the other. He is complete.
The stories he tells are engaging and he has both good self-insight and a great sense of humor. He is consistently compassionate, and often creative. I think this is a book that will reward reading more than once, but if you don’t read it completely or more than once, I’d highly recommend focusing on the section on listening and basic mirroring. He has an amazingly concise description of a minimalist approach to mirroring that is actually sort of shocking, and some of the stories he tells about using that technique are Jedi Mind Trick fabulous.
ETA: I read this on the recommendation of my former martial arts instructor. I liked it well enough to buy a gift copy for my Priestess. She liked it well enough to post a comment on FB thanking the person who recommended it to me. Good times!
Twenty years ago, I read several books about negotiation. And I have read a few since then. Bizarrely, _The Mommy Trap_ was one of the better ones. _Getting to Yes_ was largely useless. But I don’t know that I could have articulated clearly _why_ some of the books I read were useless and some were really interesting and sometimes helpful. I have also read — or at least tried hard to read — a bunch of game theoretic books about fair division. I recently listened to Planet Money’s _Fair Division_ podcast.
All this stuff is basically crap. All I really got out of everything I read could be reduced to a few basic principles, most of which I knew in some form — and so do you — long before I read my first book about negotiation.
(1) Know what you want. When you get it, stop, implement the details of closing, and be nice on the way out the door (no gloating, leave a basis for returning to negotiate something in the future / renegotiate this deal if something turns out to be other than expected). If you get what you want quickly, do not worry about how much you “left on the table”. They can have it. They gave you what you wanted. But, you know, maybe do more research going into the negotiation so you have a really good sense of the possible.
(2) Listen, pay attention to discrepancies, nail down details, clarify, and if in doubt, slow down. If you stop trusting the person, walk away.
(3) Have an alternative to making a deal / making a deal with this person. Make it something you _really_ like, and make it detailed, and pretty easy to implement. This will make the above principles much easier to actually follow through on.
Voss is aggressive. He wants to get everything he can get, so he doesn’t follow my rule number 1. But he _does_ actually take really seriously being respectful and leaving a basis for returning to (re) negotiate. He takes negotiations into areas where I do everything I can to avoid negotiating — he focuses on the importance of trusting oneself and one’s team, rather than the trustworthiness of the other person. He takes implementation details super seriously. He is a huge believer in slowing things down, and his detailed explanation of the _how_ of listening is among the best I have ever read, in a context of negotiation, therapy or anywhere else. It is _remarkable_.
But the real worth of this book is in the fact that Voss simultaneously takes research seriously AND he is a big believer in collecting information face to face and making use of it. Most advice givers in this and other contexts focus on one or the other. He is complete.
The stories he tells are engaging and he has both good self-insight and a great sense of humor. He is consistently compassionate, and often creative. I think this is a book that will reward reading more than once, but if you don’t read it completely or more than once, I’d highly recommend focusing on the section on listening and basic mirroring. He has an amazingly concise description of a minimalist approach to mirroring that is actually sort of shocking, and some of the stories he tells about using that technique are Jedi Mind Trick fabulous.
ETA: I read this on the recommendation of my former martial arts instructor. I liked it well enough to buy a gift copy for my Priestess. She liked it well enough to post a comment on FB thanking the person who recommended it to me. Good times!