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

particularly useful.
In this case, it caused her boss to take a nice, long pause
—something he did not often do. My student sat silent. “As
a matter of fact, you can put them in my office,” he said,
with more composure than he’d had the whole conversation.
“I’ll get the new assistant to print it for me after the project is
done. For now, just create two digital backups.”
A day later her boss emailed and wrote simply, “The two
digital backups will be fine.”
Not long after, I received an ecstatic email from this
student: “I was shocked! I love mirrors! A week of work
avoided!”

---

Mirroring will make you feel awkward as heck when
you first try it. That’s the only hard part about it; the
technique takes a little practice. Once you get the hang of it,
though, it’ll become a conversational Swiss Army knife
valuable in just about every professional and social setting.
KEY LESSONS
The language of negotiation is primarily a language of
conversation and rapport: a way of quickly establishing
relationships and getting people to talk and think together.
Which is why when you think of the greatest negotiators of
all time, I’ve got a surprise for you—think Oprah Winfrey.
Her daily television show was a case study of a master
practitioner at work: on a stage face-to-face with someone
she has never met, in front of a crowded studio of hundreds,
with millions more watching from home, and a task to
persuade that person in front of her, sometimes against his
or her own best interests, to talk and talk and keep talking,
ultimately sharing with the world deep, dark secrets that
they had held hostage in their own minds for a lifetime.
Look closely at such an interaction after reading this
chapter and suddenly you’ll see a refined set of powerful
skills: a conscious smile to ease the tension, use of subtle
verbal and nonverbal language to signal empathy (and thus
security), a certain downward inflection in the voice,
embrace of specific kinds of questions and avoidance of
others—a whole array of previously hidden skills that will
prove invaluable to you, once you’ve learned to use them.

---

Here are some of the key lessons from this chapter to
remember:
■
A good negotiator prepares, going in, to be
ready for possible surprises; a great negotiator
aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is
certain to find.
■
Don’t commit to assumptions; instead, view
them as hypotheses and use the negotiation to
test them rigorously.
■
People who view negotiation as a battle of
arguments become overwhelmed by the voices
in their head. Negotiation is not an act of battle;
it’s a process of discovery. The goal is to
uncover as much information as possible.
■
To quiet the voices in your head, make your sole
and all-encompassing focus the other person and
what they have to say.
■
Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the
mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If
we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if
they’re not being heard. You risk undermining
the rapport and trust you’ve built.
■
Put a smile on your face. When people are in a

---

positive frame of mind, they think more quickly,
and are more likely to collaborate and problem-
solve (instead of fight and resist). Positivity
creates mental agility in both you and your
counterpart.
There are three voice tones available to negotiators:
1. The late-night FM DJ voice: Use selectively to
make a point. Inflect your voice downward,
keeping it calm and slow. When done properly,
you
create
an
aura
of
authority
and
trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness.
2. The positive/playful voice: Should be your
default voice. It’s the voice of an easygoing,
good-natured person. Your attitude is light and
encouraging. The key here is to relax and smile
while you’re talking.
3. The direct or assertive voice: Used rarely. Will
cause problems and create pushback.
■
Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words
(or the critical one to three words) of what
someone has just said. We fear what’s different
and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the
art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates
bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side

---

to empathize and bond with you, keep people
talking, buy your side time to regroup, and
encourage your counterparts to reveal their
strategy.

---