The key ideas

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

Chris Voss, Tahl Raz, 2016

In a Harvard negotiation exercise, a “kidnapper” demands money or he will kill the hostage. The FBI negotiator answers with one question, leaving the kidnapper to find the solution. Chris Voss brings crisis-negotiation techniques into ordinary life: how to listen, name feelings, and refuse in a way that keeps the conversation going.

Who it is for

For anyone asking for a raise, bargaining, arguing with loved ones, or having difficult conversations at work.

Negotiation is a process of discovery rather than a battle. The goal is to learn as much as possible.

One question for a kidnapper

Harvard, a negotiation seminar. Professor Robert Mnookin plays a kidnapper and sets a condition: money now, or he kills the other person’s son. Across from him sits FBI negotiator Chris Voss. Voss stays silent, looks at him for a long time, and asks one short question. After it, the “kidnapper” has to find a solution for him. What the question was will become clear near the book’s end.

Voss spent more than twenty years in the FBI and many years negotiating hostage situations and kidnappings. In this book, written with journalist Tahl Raz, he takes crisis-negotiation techniques into offices, shops, and families.

He calls his approach tactical empathy: understand the other person’s feelings and draw on that understanding in conversation. An important qualification: this is a practitioner’s experience and stories rather than rigorous research. The stories are vivid illustrations rather than proof a technique will work in any conversation.

“Scared off your driver?”

Brooklyn, 1993. Robbers hold hostages in a Chase Manhattan branch. On the phone, the ringleader mentions in passing that police scared off their driver. The negotiator does not ask a new question. He simply repeats, “Scared off your driver?” As the robber explains, he reveals details about an accomplice.

Voss calls this mirroring. Repeat the other person’s last one to three key words with a questioning tone, then stay silent. In Voss’s experience, the person hears their own words and elaborates.

Voss recommends a calm, low voice, which he calls the “late-night DJ voice.”

Imagine a colleague saying, “This project will sink us.” You can argue. Or repeat, “Sink us?” and stay silent. A minute later, it emerges that deadlines were changed and nobody remembered to tell them.

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About the author

Chris Voss is a former FBI agent who spent more than twenty years in the Bureau and many years negotiating kidnappings, including overseas. After leaving, he founded the consulting company The Black Swan Group. Tahl Raz is an American journalist and coauthor of business books.

All books by this author: Chris Voss, Tahl Raz

Terms from the book

  • mirroring
  • Labels: Voss’s name for phrases naming the other person’s feeling: “It seems…” or “It looks like…”. The author’s technique from practice.
  • Accusation audit: Voss’s term: prepare a list of criticisms the other person may have and calmly voice them first.
  • Calibrated questions: Voss’s term for open questions beginning with how or what that invite the other person to seek a solution together.
  • Ackerman model: The book’s bargaining framework: offers at 65, 85, 95, and 100% of the target, an uneven final number, and a nonmonetary addition. The author’s framework rather than a universal formula.
  • Black swans: Voss’s image for unknown facts that can transform a negotiation.

All terms

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