Bargaining Under Fire: Strategies To Improve Our Negotiation Skills

Published in

The Startup

6 min readApr 2, 2018

Negotiation is omnipresent. It is tempting to avoid, but is critical to getting what we want. It can be uncomfortable. It can even lead to confrontation and hurt feelings on both sides. But while some of us may feel like we aren’t the best negotiators, there are tangible steps we can take to improve our negotiation skills.

On the latest episode of The Power Of Bold, I spoke with Chris Voss, the former lead international kidnapping negotiator at the FBI. Chris has negotiated some of the highest-stake hostage situations in locales like New York City, the Philippines, and in the Middle East. He is also the author of the bestselling book Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.

You can listen to the episode on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.

The podcast episode touched on everything from Chris’s career in the FBI to why Oprah Winfrey is one of the world’s best negotiators. That said, I’ve collected my top five insights from the interview on how we can improve our negotiation skills.

1. When Negotiating, Don’t Overlook Emotion

Chris is the master of emotions. While much of the classical negotiating literature—most prominently Getting To Yes—assumes that bargaining partners think and act rationally to maximize their own interests, Voss’s own experiences show that emotions are vastly underrated.

So essentially, by ignoring emotions, you’re negotiating with one hand tied behind your back.

To avoid this self-inflicted wound, Voss recommends something he calls tactical empathy.

Tactical empathy is emotional intelligence on steroids. It requires that we ask our counterpart questions to understand their perspective—even if that perspective is skewed or inaccurate. It’s being able to think from our counterpart’s point of view to quickly assess what is driving them. Once you do this, you tactfully bring your counterpart’s fears into the open, which allows you diffuse their power and generate feelings of safety and trust.

Throughout the podcast interview, Chris provides tips and tricks on how we can leverage emotions in our own negotiations. From gently labeling your counterpart’s emotions to admitting your own flaws in an “accusation audit,” we can increase the odds of getting what we want by showing our counterpart that we are listening and that we understand where they are coming from.

2. Capitalize on “the Loss”

Every human has psychological biases, from confirmation bias to recency bias. But there’s one particular psychological bias that can pay off in spades in every negotiation.

It is loss aversion.

Discovered by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, loss aversion is the idea that humans weigh losses more than gains. And while it’s reported that we weigh losses twice as much as gains, the number could be even greater.

Hostage negotiators are trained to look for the loss in their counterpart and persuade them that they have something tangible to lose if they don’t agree to the deal on the table. Lucky for us, we can also capitalize on loss aversion in our negotiations, whether we’re seeking a salary increase or the renewal of a terminating contract.

Sounds easy, right?

The caveat, though, is that you can’t start the negotiation by emphasizing the loss. You have to precede the fear of the loss by real, substantive empathy, mostly by admitting your own flaws.

Without preceding the fear with empathy, you seem like a hostage-taker yourself. It’s a one-two punch: empathy then assertion.

3. Understand That “Yes” Is Overrated

Many negotiators focus on stringing together a series of “Yeses” from their counterpart in the theory that the counterpart will be more likely “Yes” in response to the “Big Ask.” Chris says that this is the wrong approach.

He says that “Yes” is one of the most useless words on the planet.

“Yes” is useless without “How.” In addition, many people simply say “Yes” to avoid conflict or to escape a conversation.

I’m willing to bet that you have done that at least once.

Instead, we should be searching for “Nos.” By saying “No,” people feel comfortable. They feel safe. They feel protected.

By hearing what Chris calls a Calibrated No, we are able to gather critical intelligence that would be found in four or five “Yeses.” By hearing, “No, I don’t agree because of X, Y, and Z,” we are able to determine the real drivers behind our counterpart’s position and, accordingly, adjust our strategy throughout the discussion.

So don’t be troubled if you hear “No” in your negotiation. You’re just one step closer to your objective.

4. Trigger Reverse Empathy

It’s safe to say that we are all looking out for ourselves. We are the most important person in our story. So assuming this, how do we get people to care about our needs and what we want to accomplish?

The answer is reverse empathy.

In his book, Chris has several tactics to make it more likely that your counterpart will understand and accommodate your position. But the one I view as most powerful is encompassed in one simple question:

“How am I supposed to do that?”

When faced with an unattractive offer, you can ask “How am I supposed to do that” to force your counterpart to look at your position, whether they want to or not. You trigger slow, “System 2” thinking that requires your counterpart to stop and take a hard look at you and your situation. It’s a deferential question and it gives you time to think.

Using this question often results in concessions to your position (about 85 to 95 percent of the time). The worst result is that your counterpart says “Because if you want the deal, you’ll do it.” Even in that case, you’ve gained valuable intelligence and can continue to negotiate with the other side.

So what’s the bottom line? “How am I supposed to do that?” can be a great way to trigger reverse empathy.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

Never Split The Difference is chock-full of actionable insights that can help us improve our negotiation skills. It’s such a useful book that it’s worth a second or third read to soak up all of the tactics and strategies.

That said, reading is one thing. Execution is another.

You simply can’t read about negotiation to improve your negotiation skills. You need to go out into the real world and practice.

While the plethora of tactics and strategies can be overwhelming, Chris recommends that you start by focusing on just one skill. It could be strategically mirroring some of your conversation partners or internally labeling your counterpart’s emotions. You can even practice smiling on the phone. The choice is up to you.

While the learning curve may initially be steep, your progress will eventually compound. The only way to get there, however, is through practice, even if you’re an introvert or if you don’t inherently like negotiating. Don’t forget this.

Get Started

Chris says that hostage negotiation is just a more intense version of negotiation in our day-to-day life. The similarities are many. So ultimately, by studying the insights that he has gathered in the field, we increase the odds of getting what we want.

Learn some of the tactics, internalize them, and then go put your negotiation skills to work. By doing all of this, may be pleasantly surprised during your next negotiation.

What do you have to lose?

Thanks for reading! Once again, you can access Chris’s interview on The Power Of Bold by visiting our page on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. If you’d like to read a transcript of the episode, please visit The Power Of Bold’s website.