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

SUSPEND UNBELIEF
While I was racking my brains over how this sleazy
politician managed to get Martin Burnham on the phone
while we never could, FBI Pittsburgh had a kidnapping
case.

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My partner Chuck brought me the tapes from the case
because he thought it was funny. You see, one Pittsburgh
drug dealer had kidnapped the girlfriend of another
Pittsburgh drug dealer, and for whatever reason the victim
drug dealer came to the FBI for help. Coming to the FBI
seemed kind of contrary to his best interests, being a drug
dealer and all, but he did it because no matter who you are,
when you need help you go to the FBI. Right?
On the tapes, our hostage negotiators are riding around
with this drug dealer while he’s negotiating with the other
drug dealer. Normally we would have had the guy ask a
bulletproof proof-of-life question, like, “What was the name
of the girlfriend’s teddy bear when she was little?” But in
this situation, this drug dealer hadn’t yet been coached on
asking a “correct” question. So in the middle of the
conversation with the kidnapper, he just blurts, “Hey, dog,
how do I know she’s all right?”
And the funniest thing happened. The kidnapper actually
went silent for ten seconds. He was completely taken aback.
Then he said, in a much less confrontational tone of voice,
“Well, I’ll put her on the phone.” I was floored because this
unsophisticated drug dealer just pulled off a phenomenal
victory in the negotiation. To get the kidnapper to volunteer
to put the victim on the phone is massively huge.
That’s when I had my “Holy shit!” moment and realized
that this is the technique I’d been waiting for. Instead of
asking some closed-ended question with a single correct
answer, he’d asked an open-ended, yet calibrated one that

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forced the other guy to pause and actually think about how
to solve the problem. I thought to myself, This is perfect!
It’s a natural and normal question, not a request for a fact.
It’s a “how” question, and “how” engages because “how”
asks for help.
Best of all, he doesn’t owe the kidnapper a damn thing.
The guy volunteers to put the girlfriend on the phone: he
thinks it’s his idea. The guy who just offered to put the
girlfriend on the line thinks he’s in control. And the secret to
gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other
side the illusion of control.
The genius of this technique is really well explained by
something that the psychologist Kevin Dutton says in his
b o o k Split-Second Persuasion.1 He talks about what he
calls “unbelief,” which is active resistance to what the other
side is saying, complete rejection. That’s where the two