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

MIRRORING
Chris Watts came back on the phone trying to act like
nothing had happened. He was a little rattled, that’s for sure,
but now he was talking.
“We’ve identified every car on the street and talked to all
the owners except one,” I said to Watts. “We’ve got a van
out here, a blue and gray van. We’ve been able to get a
handle on the owners of all of the vehicles except this one in
particular. Do you know anything about it?”
“The other vehicle’s not out there because you guys
chased my driver away . . .” he blurted.
“We chased your driver away?” I mirrored.

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“Well, when he seen the police he cut.”
“We don’t know anything about this guy; is he the one
who was driving the van?” I asked.
The mirroring continued between me and Watts, and he
made a series of damaging admissions. He started vomiting
information, as we now refer to it in my consulting business.
He talked about an accomplice we had no knowledge of at
the time. That exchange helped us nail the driver of the
getaway car.
Mirroring, also called isopraxism, is essentially imitation.
It’s another neurobehavior humans (and other animals)
display in which we copy each other to comfort each other.
It can be done with speech patterns, body language,
vocabulary, tempo, and tone of voice. It’s generally an
unconscious behavior—we are rarely aware of it when it’s
happening—but it’s a sign that people are bonding, in sync,
and establishing the kind of rapport that leads to trust.
It’s a phenomenon (and now technique) that follows a
very basic but profound biological principle: We fear what’s
different and are drawn to what’s similar. As the saying
goes, birds of a feather flock together. Mirroring, then, when
practiced consciously, is the art of insinuating similarity.
“Trust me,” a mirror signals to another’s unconscious, “You
and I—we’re alike.”
Once you’re attuned to the dynamic, you’ll see it
everywhere: couples walking on the street with their steps in
perfect synchrony; friends in conversation at a park, both
nodding their heads and crossing the legs at about the same

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time. These people are, in a word, connected.
While mirroring is most often associated with forms of
nonverbal communication, especially body language, as
negotiators a “mirror” focuses on the words and nothing
else. Not the body language. Not the accent. Not the tone or
delivery. Just the words.
It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is
when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to
three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety
of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the
closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet
uncannily effective.
By repeating back what people say, you trigger this
mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably
elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of
connecting. Psychologist Richard Wiseman created a study
using waiters to identify what was the more effective
method of creating a connection with strangers: mirroring or
positive reinforcement.
One group of waiters, using positive reinforcement,
lavished praise and encouragement on patrons using words
such as “great,” “no problem,” and “sure” in response to
each order. The other group of waiters mirrored their
customers simply by repeating their orders back to them.
The results were stunning: the average tip of the waiters who
mirrored was 70 percent more than of those who used
positive reinforcement.
I decided it was time to hit him with his name—to let him

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know we were on to him. I said, “There’s a vehicle out here,
and it’s registered to a Chris Watts.”
He said, “Okay.” Not letting anything on.
I said, “Is he there? Is this you? Are you Chris Watts?”
It was a stupid question, on my part. A mistake. For a
mirror to be effective, you’ve got to let it sit there and do its
work. It needs a bit of silence. I stepped all over my mirror.
As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back.
“Are you Chris Watts?”
What the hell could this guy say to that? Of course, he
replied, “No.”
I’d made a bone-headed move and given Chris Watts a
way to dodge this confrontation, but he was nevertheless
rattled. Up until this moment, he’d thought he was
anonymous. Whatever fantasy he had running through his
head, there was a way out for him, a do-over button. Now
he knew different. I composed myself, slowed it down a
little, and this time shut my mouth after the mirror—I said,
“No? You said ‘okay.’”
Now I had him, I thought. His voice went way up. He
ended up blurting a few things out, vomiting more
information, and became so flustered he stopped talking to
me. Suddenly his accomplice, who we later learned was
Bobby Goodwin, came onto the phone.
We hadn’t heard from this second hostage-taker, until
now. We’d known all along that Chris Watts wasn’t acting
alone, but we hadn’t gotten a good read on how many
people he had working with him on this, and now here was

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his unwitting accomplice, thinking our original police
department negotiator was still handling our end. We knew
this because he kept calling me “Joe,” which told us he’d
been in the loop early on, and somewhat less involved as
the stalemate dragged on.
At the very least, the disconnect told me these guys
weren’t exactly on the same page—but I didn’t jump to
correct him.
Another thing: it sounded like this second guy was
speaking through a towel, or a sweatshirt—like he was
biting on some kind of fabric, even. Going to all these
lengths to mask his voice, which meant he was clearly
scared. He was nervous, jumpy as hell, anxious over how
this standoff was going down.
I tried to set him at ease—still with the downward-
inflecting DJ voice. I said, “Nobody’s going anywhere.” I
said, “Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”
After about a minute and a half, the jumpiness seemed to
disappear. The muffled voice, too. His voice came through
much more clearly as he said, “I trust you, Joe.”
The more I kept this second guy on the phone, the more
it became clear he was someplace he did not want to be.
Bobby wanted out—and, of course, he wanted out without
getting hurt. He was already in deep, but he didn’t want it to
get any deeper. He didn’t start out that day planning to rob a
bank, but it took hearing my calm voice on the other end of
the phone for him to start to see a way out. The seventh-
largest standing army in the world was at the ready outside

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the bank doors—that’s the size and scope of the NYPD, in
full force, and their guns were fixed on him and his partner.
Obviously, Bobby was desperate to step out those doors
unharmed.
I didn’t know where Bobby was, inside the bank. To this
day, I don’t know if he managed to step away from his