Never Split the Difference

You fall to your highest level of preparation

Negotiation is an everyday part of finding value in one’s professional and personal life. Never Split the Difference makes the case for a strategic, information-based and empathetic approach to negotiation. As a measure of its importance in preparing graduate students for the business world, I actually took two “immersion” courses in negotiation during my MBA studies. From a practical standpoint, they were some of the most beneficial courses I’ve ever taken. They were also quite challenging. As reinforced by Chris Voss, effective negotiation means dealing with negativity by observing and consciously labeling it without judgement. I’ve learned that you can be direct and to the point without being confrontational as “conflict is often the path to great deals.” The trick is keeping your cool…which is a skill I am always seeking to get practice with. Other somewhat pointers that I learned in my coursework and are reinforced in this book are:

• You don’t get what you don’t ask for
• Silence is powerful/utilize effective pauses
• “No” is not a failure. Rather, used strategically it’s an answer that opens the path forward
• No deal is better than a bad deal
• Deadlines are almost never set in stone
• Potential loss is loom larger in the human mind then do similar gains (Loss Aversion ala Kahneman)
• Don’t use round numbers — use weirdly specific numbers.