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

CLEAR THE ROAD BEFORE ADVERTISING THE

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DESTINATION
Remember the amygdala, the part of the brain that generates
fear in reaction to threats? Well, the faster we can interrupt
the amygdala’s reaction to real or imaginary threats, the
faster we can clear the road of obstacles, and the quicker we
can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust.
We do that by labeling the fears. These labels are so
powerful because they bathe the fears in sunlight, bleaching
them of their power and showing our counterpart that we
understand.
Think back to that Harlem landing: I didn’t say, “It
seems like you want us to let you go.” We could all agree
on that. But that wouldn’t have diffused the real fear in the
apartment, or shown that I empathized with the grim
complexity of their situation. That’s why I went right at the
amygdala and said, “It seems like you don’t want to go back
to jail.”
Once they’ve been labeled and brought into the open,
the negative reactions in your counterpart’s amygdala will
begin to soften. I promise it will shock you how suddenly
his language turns from worry to optimism. Empathy is a
powerful mood enhancer.
The road is not always cleared so easily, so don’t be
demoralized if this process seems to go slowly. The Harlem
high-rise negotiation took six hours. Many of us wear fears
upon fears, like layers against the cold, so getting to safety
takes time.
That was the experience of another one of my students, a

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fund-raiser for the Girl Scouts, who backed into naming her
counterpart’s fears almost accidentally.
We’re not talking about someone who sold Girl Scout
cookies: my student was an experienced fund-raiser who
regularly got donors to pony up $1,000 to $25,000 a check.
Over the years, she’d developed a very successful system to
get her “clients,” usually wealthy women, to open their
checkbook.
She’d invite a potential donor to her office, serve a few
Girl Scouts cookies, walk her through an album of
heartwarming snapshots and handwritten letters from
projects that matched the woman’s profile, and then collect
a check when the donor’s eyes lit up. It was almost easy.
One day, though, she met the immovable donor. Once
the woman sat down in her office, my student began to
throw out the projects her research had said would fit. But
the woman shook her head at one project after another.
My student found herself growing perplexed at the
difficult donor who had no interest in donating. But she held
her emotion in check and reached back to a lesson from my
recent class on labeling. “I’m sensing some hesitation with
these projects,” she said in what she hoped was a level
voice.
As if she’d been uncorked, the woman exclaimed: “I
want my gift to directly support programming for Girl
Scouts and not anything else.”
This helped focus the conversation, but as my student
put forth project after project that seemed to fulfill the

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donor’s criteria, all she got was still rejection.
Sensing the potential donor’s growing frustration, and
wanting to end on a positive note so that they might be able
to meet again, my student used another label. “It seems that
you are really passionate about this gift and want to find the
right project reflecting the opportunities and life-changing
experiences the Girl Scouts gave you.”
And with that, this “difficult” woman signed a check
without even picking a specific project. “You understand
me,” she said as she got up to leave. “I trust you’ll find the
right project.”
Fear of her money being misappropriated was the
presenting dynamic that the first label uncovered. But the
second label uncovered the underlying dynamic—her very
presence in the office was driven by very specific memories
of being a little Girl Scout and how it changed her life.
The obstacle here wasn’t finding the right match for the
woman. It wasn’t that she was this highly finicky, hard-to-
please donor. The real obstacle was that this woman needed
to feel that she was understood, that the person handling her
money knew why she was in that office and understood the
memories that were driving her actions.
That’s why labels are so powerful and so potentially
transformative to the state of any conversation. By digging
beneath what seems like a mountain of quibbles, details, and
logistics, labels help to uncover and identify the primary
emotion driving almost all of your counterpart’s behavior,
the
emotion
that,
once
acknowledged,
seems
to

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miraculously solve everything else.