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

CHAPTER 8
GUARANTEE EXECUTION
D
uring a dangerous and chaotic prison siege in St. Martin
Parish, Louisiana, a few years ago, a group of inmates
armed with makeshift knives took the warden and some of
his staff hostage. The situation was especially nervy because
the prisoners were both tense and disorganized, a worrisome
mix that meant anything could happen.
The negotiators sensed that, beneath the bluster, the
prisoners didn’t really want to hurt the staff. They knew that
they felt backed into a corner and, more than anything, they
wanted the situation to end.
But there was a stumbling block: the inmates were afraid
that the prisoners who gave up after taking correctional
officers hostage, not to mention the warden, would end up
beaten, and badly.
So the negotiators delivered a pair of walkie-talkies to
the inmates and designed this elaborate surrender ritual to
get the hostage-takers to end the siege. The idea was
elegantly simple:
The inmates would send out one of their guys with a
walkie-talkie, and he’d walk past the three perimeters of
combined multiagency law enforcement that were stationed

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outside the prison. Once he’d walked past the final
perimeter, he’d get into the paddy wagon and be transferred
to jail. There, he’d use the walkie-talkie to call the guys
back in the prison and say, essentially, “They didn’t kick
my ass.” And they’d know it was okay to come out just like
he did, one at a time.
After some haggling, the inmates agreed with the plan
and the first inmate comes out. It starts off great. He walks
past the federal zone, then the SWAT zone, and then he
makes it to the outer perimeter. But just as he’s about to
climb into the paddy wagon, some guy sees the walkie-
talkie and says, “What the hell are you doing with that?”
and confiscates it before sending the guy off to the jail.
The inmates back in the prison start to freak out because
their buddy hasn’t called. The one with the other walkie-
talkie calls the negotiators and starts yelling, “Why didn’t he
call? They’re kicking his ass. We told you!” He starts
talking about cutting off a hostage’s finger, just to make
sure the negotiators know the inmates are for real.
Now it’s the negotiators who are freaking out. They
sprint to the perimeter and start screaming at everyone. It’s
life and death at stake. Or at least an amputated finger.
Finally, fifteen nail-biting minutes later, this SWAT guy
comes striding up, all proud of himself. “Some idiot gave
this dude a radio,” he says, and sort of smiles as he hands
the negotiators the walkie-talkie. The negotiators barely stop
themselves from slugging the guy before they tear off to the
jail to have the first inmate call in.

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Crisis averted, but barely.
The point here is that your job as a negotiator isn’t just to
get to an agreement. It’s getting to one that can be
implemented and making sure that happens. Negotiators
have to be decision architects: they have to dynamically and
adaptively design the verbal and nonverbal elements of the
negotiation to gain both consent and execution.
“Yes” is nothing without “How.” While an agreement is
nice, a contract is better, and a signed check is best. You
don’t get your profits with the agreement. They come upon
implementation. Success isn’t the hostage-taker saying,
“Yes, we have a deal”; success comes afterward, when the
freed hostage says to your face, “Thank you.”
In this chapter, I’ll show how to drive toward and
achieve consent, both with those at the negotiating table and
with the invisible forces “underneath” it; distinguish true
buy-in from fake acquiescence; and guarantee execution
using the Rule of Three.