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

TRIGGER A “THAT’S RIGHT!” WITH A SUMMARY
After four months of negotiations, Sabaya still refused to
budge. I decided it was time to hit the reset switch.
Benjie had gotten so good at extending the
conversations that you could tell that there were times that
Sabaya must have paced back and forth for an hour before
calling Benjie, trying to figure out how to get what he
wanted. He would call in and say, “Tell me yes or no! Just
yes or no!”
We had to get Sabaya off this war damages nonsense.
No matter what type of questioning, logic, or reasoning we
tried with him, he wouldn’t release it. Threats against
Schilling came and went. We talked him down each time.
I decided that in order to break through this phase we
needed to reposition Sabaya with his own words in a way
that would dissolve barriers. We needed to get him to say,
“That’s right.” At the time, I didn’t know for sure what kind
of breakthrough it was going to give us. I just knew we
needed to trust the process.
I wrote a two-page document that instructed Benjie to
change course. We were going to use nearly every tactic in
the active listening arsenal:
1. Effective Pauses: Silence is powerful. We told
Benjie to use it for emphasis, to encourage

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Sabaya to keep talking until eventually, like
clearing out a swamp, the emotions were drained
from the dialogue.
2. Minimal Encouragers: Besides silence, we
instructed using simple phrases, such as “Yes,”
“OK,” “Uh-huh,” or “I see,” to effectively
convey that Benjie was now paying full attention
to Sabaya and all he had to say.
3. Mirroring: Rather than argue with Sabaya and try
to separate Schilling from the “war damages,”
Benjie would listen and repeat back what Sabaya
said.
4. Labeling: Benjie should give Sabaya’s feelings a
name and identify with how he felt. “It all seems
so tragically unfair, I can now see why you
sound so angry.”
5. Paraphrase: Benjie should repeat what Sabaya is
saying back to him in Benjie’s own words. This,
we told him, would powerfully show him you
really do understand and aren’t merely parroting
his concerns.
6. Summarize: A good summary is the combination
of rearticulating the meaning of what is said plus
the acknowledgment of the emotions underlying

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that meaning (paraphrasing + labeling =
summary). We told Benjie he needed to listen
and repeat the “world according to Abu Sabaya.”
He needed to fully and completely summarize all
the nonsense that Sabaya had come up with
about war damages and fishing rights and five
hundred years of oppression. And once he did
that fully and completely, the only possible
response for Sabaya, and anyone faced with a
good summary, would be “that’s right.”
Two days later Sabaya phoned Benjie. Sabaya spoke.
Benjie listened. When he spoke, he followed my script: he
commiserated with the rebel group’s predicament.
Mirroring, encouraging, labeling, each tactic worked
seamlessly and cumulatively to soften Sabaya up and begin
shifting his perspective. Finally, Benjie repeated in his own
words Sabaya’s version of history and the emotions that
came with that version.
Sabaya was silent for nearly a minute. Finally he spoke.
“That’s right,” he said.
We ended the call.
The “war damages” demand just disappeared.
From that point forward Sabaya never mentioned money
again. He never asked for another dime for the release of
Jeffrey Schilling. He ultimately became so weary of this
case and holding the young Californian that he let down his
guard. Schilling escaped from their camp, and Philippine
commandoes swooped in and rescued him. He returned

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safely to his family in California.
Two weeks after Jeff Schilling escaped, Sabaya called
Benjie:
“Have you been promoted yet?” he asked. “If not, you
should have been.”
“Why?” Benjie asked.
“I was going to hurt Jeffrey,” Sabaya said. “I don’t know
what you did to keep me from doing that, but whatever it
was, it worked.”
In June 2002 Sabaya was killed in a shoot-out with
Philippine military units.
In the heat of negotiations for a man’s life, I didn’t
appreciate the value of those two words: “That’s right.” But
when I studied the transcripts and reconstructed the
trajectory of the negotiations, I realized that Sabaya had
changed course when he uttered those words. Benjie had
used some fundamental techniques that we had developed
over many years. He had reflected Sabaya’s vision. He had
stepped back from confrontation. He had allowed Sabaya to
speak freely and exhaust his version of events.
“That’s right” signaled that negotiations could proceed
from deadlock. It broke down a barrier that was impeding
progress. It created a realization point with our adversary
where he actually agreed on a point without the feeling of
having given in.
It was a stealth victory.
When your adversaries say, “That’s right,” they feel they

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have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as
correct of their own free will. They embrace it.
“That’s right” allowed us to draw out the talks and divert
Sabaya from hurting Schilling. And it gave Philippine
commandos time to mount their rescue operation.
In hostage negotiations, we never tried to get to “yes” as
an endpoint. We knew that “yes” is nothing without “how.”
And when we applied hostage negotiating tactics to
business, we saw how “that’s right” often leads to the best
outcomes.