Leadership Book Club: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

Mike and Kristen break down Chris Voss's game-changing book on negotiation, Never Split the Difference. As a former FBI hostage negotiator, Voss brings street-smart tactics that work in real-world situations, not just theory. The couple explores how these techniques—from using the late-night FM DJ voice to mastering the power of "no"—can transform both business and personal interactions. Mike shares his experience applying these methods in restaurant management, while Kristen connects the dots between negotiation tactics and improv techniques. They unpack why getting to "yes" isn't always the goal and how understanding your negotiating style (are you an Accommodator, Analyst, or Assertive?) can make or break your success.

Highlights:

• The psychology behind the "late-night FM DJ voice" and why tone matters more than you think
• Why "no" is more powerful than "yes" and how to use it to your advantage
• The three negotiating styles: Accommodator, Analyst, and Assertive - and how to work with each
• Why asking "How am I supposed to do that?" can be your secret weapon
• The power of tactical empathy and why labeling emotions works
• Getting to "that's right" instead of "you're right" - and why the difference matters
• Using the Ackerman model for pricing negotiations (start at 65% and work up strategically)
• How to prepare a negotiation one-sheet that sets you up for success

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss 
• Getting to Yes by Roger Fish and William Ury
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
• Jefferson Fisher on Instagram for negotiation tips
• Previous Episode: The Coaching Habit

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Transcript

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

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Kristen: Hello, and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen,

Mike: I'm Mike

Kristen: And today we are doing an LBC Leadership Book Club episode, and we are doing Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss.

Mike: Well, welcome back. I know we took last week off. Kristen is very chagrined to discuss that at all.

We had some family stuff and thank you for bearing with us. If you even noticed that we were off last

Kristen: We won't do that often.

Mike: Time has a different, flow nowadays, I think, with the constant flood of information. It's, we took off one Jeremy Bearimy, and any fan of The Good Place will know how long that was.

Basically one dot of the eye off. So thank you. Welcome back. This week Never split the Difference negotiating As If Your life Depended on it. This is a really great book. I've read it before a few years ago. I don't know that I've applied a lot of the negotiatingparts of it, I'm, I'm starting to add those in to my repertoire, but there's a lot of good like psychology in here about,evaluating the people that you're dealing with, working with and understanding who they are, their patterns and things like that, and how best to talk to them.

So even if you're not a negotiator by trade. And he talks about like negotiation is life. So he has a lot of fun examples of how he gets a better deal on a car or like when he's checking into a hotel. So lots of good stuff. Let's dive right in. Chris Voss is an American businessman, author and academic.

Mr. Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator, the CEO of the Black Swan Group Limited and co author of the book. Never Split the Difference. He is an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School, Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and lecturer at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

I'm

Kristen: My alma mater.

Mike: dun, dun.

Kristen: Don't think that's the appropriate

Mike: Well, you know, you, so Kristen actually likes football and it's, it's,

Kristen: I mean, we don't need to talk about USC this

Well, let's see. I don't even know. Do they have a football team? Okay. And she like watches the games and stuff. And it's so likeI don't want to say out of character, but it's pretty cute. Anyway.Well anyway, I did graduate from the, my undergrad was through the Marshall School of Business at USC. So of course, I have to say

Mike: USC, so of course I have to say,

Kristen: No.

Mike: Over his FBI career, he was invited more and more to like these schools that do negotiations classes and things like that. And generally, at least to his telling, he ran circles around people. And I think the overarching,the theme of this book is going to be, street knowledge is far more effective than academic knowledge when it comes to dealing with people.

I personally, having worked in restaurants for almost 20 years, can tell you no one knows psychology better than a long tenured waiter. We can read you pretty quickly, and, so.Okay. Originally a Kansas City beat cop, Mr. Voss eventually joined the NYPD and became a member of the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force from 1986 2000.

He spent 24 years working in the FBI crisis negotiation unit and was the FBI's chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator from 2003 to 2007. After working on more than 150 international hostage crises,

He retired from the FBI in 2007 and founded the Black Swan Group. The Black Swan Group serves as a consultancy firm and trainer for both businesses and individuals on negotiation skills.

Co writer is Tahl Raz, a journalist and author. I looked him up. He seems mostly to co write books. I don't think he's a,he's a supporting author. So that makes sense. Interestingly enough, if collaborator, if you don't know this, the NYPD is quite a bit larger than the FBI.

Kristen: FBI.

Mike: The NYPD is one of, if you compared to many standing armies is quite large.

Which kind of makes sense. So.

Overview, Never Split the Difference is a book on business negotiation, but really it's about the psychology of human interaction and how to maximize your results in dealing with, other people. Chris had a very unique experience of being part of the growing understanding of negotiations under extremely high stakes situations.

When he started in the 1970s, the whole like hostage negotiator thing that we're all so familiar with nowadays didn't exist and the FBI and the police for their whole their negotiation tactic was let's stall until we can affect a you know a military resolution to this problem. It wasn't really trying to you know do business with these people and negotiate.

So anyway Chapter One The New Rules And Mr. Voss, he recounts an experience, during a hostage role play scenario at Harvard. He goes into quickly, we see the difference between academic theory and an experienced negotiator who is relying on their understanding of human psychology. We are introduced to the concept of open ended questions, which he refers to as calibrated questions.

In this book, you're going to see, three or four basic techniques that you can use pretty much in every scenario. And calibrated questions are one of the foundations of negotiation and really discussion with people.So he, he has a fun, scenario where he negotiates, circles around some of the Harvard students by just asking him the same question over and over,and he basically, they're trying to get money out of him in a business negotiation and he just keeps saying, I don't know how I can do that. And they wind up negotiating with themselves. And, this is one of his foundational techniques was he just asked people, I'm not sure how I can do that.

And when you say that to someone who's like asking you for money they start to negotiate with themselves. They start to try and solve your problem, and that's interesting. So he goes through another class, he was part of at Harvard, where he is the only outsider even though he's negotiating with highly educated students with modern business learnings, he puts them through their paces.

And the real, as I said, the overarching theme of this book is that real world experience and a fairly basic understanding of human psychology are useful more useful than most academic classes and theories. And I don't think Mr. Voss could necessarily be my therapist, but he knows how people work.

Kristen: Yeah, I thought it was interesting, like he spent some time in this section talking about the book that I think it was considered the foundation of or like the book on negotiation which is called Getting to Yes. And he kind of juxtaposes it to the stuff he's going to cover in this book, which are much more like practical tactics, versus Getting to Yes is pretty theory based.

I, this was my first time reading this book, but I've read Getting To Yes actually as part of a class on negotiation for my Master's program. So it's interesting to see his take on it. I think

Mike: Yeah, I know we get into this later, but he actually talks about, you shouldn't be trying to get to yes. You should be trying to get to no and because people will give you a lot of yeses that aren't a real yes, and he later on, I think I go into it, he gives the example of a telemarketer who calls you at home when you're at dinner and the first question they ask is, Is this a good time?

Or do you have, time to talk? And, or, and what they should really be asking Is this a bad time? 

So he had a good example of, like a political research call and, usually they're trying to elicit a yes. Like, do you think, candidate A is the best choice for, the election?

Of course you say yes, but what they should be asking you is do you really think that if nothing changes, that the country is headed for its best days yet. And if if what they're really trying to do is get you to give money to oppose, the answer you will say is, no, I don't think that.

And all of a sudden you're not agreeing, you're just not agreeing to agree, you're agreeing, In, in, in actuality. So we'll delve into that more.But the basis of Chris's teachings and his techniques are that human beings are often illogical and they're driven by many different factors, including emotional reasonings, personal perceptions, hidden desires, outside pressures, et cetera.

No one is a truly rational actor and academic approaches that presuppose this are doomed to fail.The turning point in negotiation theory was in 1971 during an airline hijacking that was handled very badly. Soon after this, the NYPD undertook the creation of a special division for negotiations. They got smacked down by a judge who very clearly, elucidated their techniques should have relied far more on discussing things with the hostage taker who was talking to them and instead they tried to press a military solution and they ended up getting people killed unnecessarily.

So,he references Daniel Kahneman's work in behavioral economics where Mr. Kahneman found similar problems with academic economic theories in that they discount the fact that humans are not really rational beings, and he's the founder of behavioral economics. Mr. Voss states that negotiation is largely working with or exploiting your counterpart's System 1 thinking as described in, Daniel's Thinking Fast and Slow,

So,you're kind of hacking into the reactions that you're going to get by doing certain things with System 1.And the best skill you can develop as a negotiator is,is listening. Everyone wants to be understood and people can tell when you're really listening to them, even in high stakes, high pressure, high stress scenarios.

So his core technique with this is tactical empathy. That is you have to deal with System One emotional and cognitive biases before you can engage someone's System Two rational thinking and actually solve problems Mr. Ross sees these skills as not just as a negotiation, but as life skills, saying in this world you get what you ask for you just have to ask correctly

Kristen: I do love that he brings in Thinking Fast and Slow

Mike: Yeah

Kristen: System two, thinking we've talked about it a lot on this podcast, but

Mike: Yeah, I don't know. it's a pretty fabulous book, and a lot of

Kristen: It'll be an LBC eventually. I'm sure.

Mike: Oh, 

I thought we did the,

Kristen: We haven't done Thinking Fast and Slow

Mike: We haven't? No.

Kristen: We talked about it a lot, the concepts a lot.

Mike: We didn't actually do it. Okay.

Kristen: It's on the

Mike: It's on the list. Okay. Chapter Two, Be a Mirror. So he goes through a bank robbery he negotiated for in Brooklyn, where they take hostages and they didn't really have a great plan. when the police go in, they don't actually know that they don't know who they're dealing with.

They don't know how many people are, the hostage takers. They're not, they're operating from a place of scarcity, The beginning of Chris honing these techniques is this. he starts by, and the book is them learning how to do this, him learning how to do this.

And,we all see in movies nowadays, it's very like organized, hostage negotiator kung fu, if you will, but they don't have that back in the day. They're making this up and they make a lot of mistakes.He starts, just asking a lot of calibrated questions to the main kidnapper to find out what's really going on.

How did they get to this point? He introduces the concept of the Late Night FM DJ Radio Voice, which I may or may not have.And it's designed to calm a situation or counterpart down. And, technically we're biologically wired to respond to a deep male voice. Yeah. Especially a reassuring one.

Kristen: I do wonder about the research, how that holds for like women's voices.

Mike: 'Cause I do, that is like a very stereotypically male voice. There might be something to lower tones of voices in general. But that was the only thing I thought of that. I'm like, that's I know that's a little stereotypical. I know there's, we can look that up. I know there's research into frequency and how it responds, and like an infant's, crying is very high pitched and you are designed, I know this for a fact, biologically designed not to be able to ignore that.

So there's, it, this is maybe an oversimplification, but. I don't know. You fall asleep with me listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. And that gentleman has a very soothing, not super low, but low ish. He speaks slowly, his enunciation is very clear. He's calm when he's talking.

There's something to that. We can look into it more.

Kristen: at it more. Yeah. But he does, he talks about there being three voices that you use during a negotiation process and one of them is like the firm commanding voice and he's like, you use this very rarely, which I think is counter to what a lot of people would assume and the one you're using most of the time is actually like a positive, playful tone of voice and then you switch into the DJ voice.

As needed to help calm the situation. But I felt like one of the interesting things he talked about with voices is when you're using like the positive playful voice, his advice is to smile while you're talking.

Mike: I found again, things in here. This is one of the books I read very early on in my leadership journey along with It's Your Ship. And I find there are some things in here that I've incorporated that are automatic at this point. And these voices, especially the, light, playful voice.

I'm not super playful at work exactly, but I try and speak like he says, with a smile in my voice. And I find that, it, it smooths the wheels of, everybody likes somebody who's happy. Everybody likes a boss who isn't too stern, and everybody likes somebody they can get along

Kristen: with. Yeah. I think it's a good way to trick yourself into taking on that tone of voice, especially in situations where you might be nervous or like a phone interview event. So I just thought that was a good piece of advice.

Mike: Yeah.He continues assumptions blind, hypotheses, guide, a good negotiator will hold multiple hypotheses at once at the main goal at the beginning of an interaction is just discovery. So this stuff is super useful for salespeople. And I think he has some,they do consulting for a lot of sales companies or department, that kind of thing. So in the beginning, just finding out as much information as possible.

And you know, I find this out for myself. Sometimes this is antithetical to very intelligent people who often feel like they can see the whole picture. We're not always super curious about other people. We're, aloof, arrogant, whatever you want to saybut.especially in the beginning you just want to ask lots of calibrated questions and find out as much information as you can.

Kristen: In the beginning of a negotiation, it's not about what you say. You want to make the other person and what they have to say the entirety of your focus. The more someone feels heard, and the more they feel their needs are being addressed, the more their emotional state will calm down, and you can actually then get to, like, system 2 rational thinking.

Mike: Mirroring is repeating the last one to three words that your counterpart says. When you do this, people feel you are listening to them, and they will keep talking. So it says, after you mirror someone, practice silence at least four seconds, my wife added there. I'm not good at that.

Kristen: Which feels, by the way, when you're just training this and learning how to add silence into conversations. This is also used in coaching training a lot because part of that is getting used to silence and silence actually viewing silence as a gift.

Four seconds will feel like a million years when you're first getting into this and learning to just let silence happen.

Mike: So long,

Kristen: Yeah, but it's really good.

Mike: And I do want to say I am by no means a master or even an intermediate at negotiation or anything like that, but these techniques and principles are very useful just in daily life. The whole practice silence thing I adopted in interviews, I will let people just speak.

And I will let, the questions that I ask sometimes just sit there and they'll have to think, and I will resist the urge to fill the side of the uncomfortable silence. And later he'll break down. There's three overarching personality types and each one reacts to silence very differently.

So,and mirroring works especially well with the kind of authoritative driver type. They love that you're listening to what they're saying. And those, I am not, I'm an analyst. My wife's an analyst also. But if you find somebody who's like a driver personality and you just keep repeating the last like three words in a questioning tone of voice they will go for hours. and they won't even notice that you're doing it to them. They love 

Kristen: it. Yeah. yeah. People love hearing themselves talk and love hearing their own words repeated back to them. So yeah.

Mike: Yeah,

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: Kristen noticed when I doing it to her cause she's an analyst and like, why are you doing that? But, a more like, type, I don't want to say type a, I don't know if that's, but like a driver, archetypical businessman, boss kind of guy. They love to hear their words repeated back to them.

Anyway, so we'll move on.Chapter Three, Don't Feel Their Pain. Label it. So this chapter is all about labeling. Instead of pretending emotions don't exist Or following a lot of prevailing academic literature, of trying to separate problems from people. Good negotiators identify in emotions and label them openly.

Labeling is verbalizing someone's emotions. Even if you are not correct, they will correct you and give you more perspective on them. He discusses that you don't need to agree with someone's emotions or position. just identify them. I can tell you that works in dating also. There was a time in New York when I was studying how to talk to girls because I was so bad at it.

And New York girls are especially intimidating. They're used to being found attractive all day long. You walk out on the street and there's men asking you out telling you're pretty all day long. And you have to really, figure out how to break through that and get some attention from them.

And one of the things is you just make assumptions and say stuff like, Oh,it seems like you're angry or you seems like you guys are sisters, or it seems like. you and your friends are having a good time and it doesn't matter. Even if you're wrong, they will correct you and keep the conversation going.

Kristen: Interesting

Mike: It really works. Just make some assumptions and put it out there. People, as long as you're not too like audacious, you can be a little audacious, actually, as long as you're not disrespectful and you're having a, and you're playful about it, they will continue the conversation with you. 

Labeling and emotion reduces its impact and is a shortcut to trust and intimacy.

A label can sound like something. It seems like paying your bill on time is important to you. If you're talking to someone, you're trying to get them to pay a bill. It sounds like it seems like.It feels like, but not, what I'm hearing is, because the I makes it about you.

Kristen: Small difference, but big and I've had bosses that are, that have said that what I'm hearing is it's actually intimidating because now instead of them identifying with you, they're dragging you into their like expectations or a tacit accusation that you're not living up to something.

Mike: What I'm hearing is you think that's okay. I really had a boss that said that to me once. What I'm hearing is you think that's acceptable. Yeah. Just so you know, that's when I started looking for a new for a new job.

Yeah. No, it's interesting. This is a, this is definitely a technique that we train in improv specifically, because it really helps drive a scene when you label the emotions your scene partner is having.

Kristen: It's also a coaching technique too. So yeah, there's, it has a lot of uses. It's a good thing to just start,just start trying out. A lot of

Mike: Yeah, a lot of these techniques, just try them out a little bit. There's really four, there's calibrated questions, there's labeling, we'll get to the rest, but you can try them out just in conversation with your friends.

Like it sounds like you're upset right now or it sounds like you're really happy. Either one, they're going to talk to you about it. Yeah.

Kristen: Cause people will correct you. As long as you leave space for

Mike: you got to leave space. But 

it's going to smooth, it's going to grease the wheels of human interaction. Okay.Go right at negative emotions and situations. He takes a trip to Canada and fails to ask permission of the lead FBI agent in the country for country clearance.

And this person could actually bounce him right back out the door, even though he was sent on a FBI mission. Instead of tiptoeing around the issue, he calls the guy and says right out, that he messed up. Actually, he says, forgive me, father, for I have sinned. And I was like, what are you talking about?

And he keeps doing it. And he's I'm sorry, I forgot to. And the guy's like, nah, that's fine. And stamps his passport or whatever the equivalent is. So owning up to that stuff I've found very useful to bosses. Like I'll say I'm sorry, I have not dug into this. I know I should have, I've been busy.

I'm going to make it a priority. They accept that, you know,One of the things he teaches is the accusation audit of verbalizing and honestly addressing any negativity, whether real or perceived allows us to get to a place of empathy. So you could say to someone. You probably think I'm being unreasonable right now.

Nine out of ten times they're going to take your side and be like, no, you're not unreasonable. You're just asking for what you need and the, Yeah. Yeah,

Kristen: Yeah, and he uses this as this is an exercise to go through and have prepared going into negotiation is what are all thethe negative things that the person could potentially believe about you and just putting them all out in the open and then seeing what they respond to, which is very interesting.

Yeah, a lot of times they'll diffuse it, Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: You can say things like you probably think I'm being unfair. You must think I don't really want to deal this deal to go through that kind of stuff. It super works.

And interestingly, in one study, Matthew Lieberman at the University of California runs brain imaging of people who are shown photos of others experiencing strong emotion. While looking at these photos, the subject's amygdala, meaning the people that were looking at the photos, their brain registers fear. 

And shows a lot of brain activity when the subject is henceforth asked to label those emotions, like this person looks scared or this person looks angry. The activity in their brain switches to the area that controls rational thought and the fear diminishes. So I think the uncertainty of it all is more scary than the actual scary stuff.

Kristen: Yeah. I want. I want to look up some of these studies, but I think that's awesome, Yeah, no,

Mike: Neuroscience, man. Cool.

Chapter Four, Beware yes. Master No. So here he discusses the very famous book, getting to yes, instead of getting to yes, you're actually trying to get to now find the barriers, the objections, the hidden agendas, the,the unnoticed stakeholders. That's very important. Like who's really involved in this negotiations and always just the one person that set the table with you.

Find all the barriers to why this person would not want to make a deal with you. And by bringing those barriers out into the open, you're actually able to get a real yes. Not a placating yes.

Kristen: So example he gives of a salesman that uses a script to get successive yeses out of you. But you don't actually say yes because you want to.

Mike: So he talks about a salesman selling, I don't know, water purifiers or something, and the call goes do you like, do you enjoy drinking water? Yeah, of course. I have to answer yes. Do you like your water to be clean? Yes, of course.

And, but by the second one, you know where this is going. You're like, this guy is trying to sell me a water purification thing.

So instead of starting the sales call, he says, with is this a good time to talk, you should say Is this a bad time to talk? If you start this way, you take pressure off of people to give you a fake yes. They will either say, No, this is actually a, er, no, this is a bad time to talk. And they'll usually tell you a good time to talk.

Or they will say, yeah, it's fine.And I used the example of my wife trying to get me to go to a birthday party. And we had a very busy week and I have a, I have an introvert meter that, you know, when my social battery fills up for a week, that's it. Anything else puts me into a distressful state. And if she had started to said something like, feel free to say no.

She would have made me feel comfortable to say no, and I probably would have just said yes. As it turned out, I said, no, absolutely not!

And the minute I said that, my brain actually started to run scenarios of what it would be like to go to the party and try and figure out a way that I could go because I love her and I want to support her. So the minute I felt safe to, to, maintain my autonomy and independence, I was more apt to meet her in the middle.

And he talks about that. If you let people feel safe to say no, they actually feel safe to ponder the situation and consider how they could make it work. Chris's negotiating career actually starts with a no. He goes to the officer in the NYPD in charge of the special task force and asks her to join. She flat out says no. She asks for his qualifications, degrees in psychology,experience background. He has none. And instead of trying to like fudge it or talk himself up, he says, I have no experience. I have none of those things, but doesn't back down from his request. So she looks at him. She admires his persistence.

She tells him there is one thing you can do. Go volunteer at a suicide hotline thinking he won't do it because no one, she always, this is her out, okay. That she's probably used a dozen times and she tells him later, no one's ever done it, but he does it. And so he goes to volunteer at a suicide hotline where he learns a ton about, human psychology and how to talk to people.

Kristen: He talks about we are indoctrinated with the need to be nice to people. People know this is disingenuous. I think other cultures are less, dramatic about this than America. But America, Canada, oh my god, Canada, Well, and even in the US it's very regional.

Mike: Yeah, it's pretty regional, right?

Kristen: Yeah, definitely, or there's definitely regional patterns. But, yeah, no, I thought this chapter was interesting because he talks about we have this reaction to the word no, but it has a lot of meanings. So it could mean I'm not ready to agree yet.

I need more information. I need to talk it over with somebody else or you're just making me feel uncomfortable. So,assessing like, what is this actually mean and asking questions like what about this doesn't work for you or what would you need to make it work. And he says reasons to look at no as a positive and as a step forward is, some of the purposes that provides are: Allowing real issues to be brought forth, protecting people from making ineffective decisions, so slowing things down so people can freely embrace their decisions and the agreements they enter into, helping people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable, and in control of their decisions, and moving everyone's efforts forward.

I talk a lot about yes in my work, and in yes and, being the cornerstone of improv, but I think it's an interesting argument for, some places, no is actually a good thing,

I think yes and, you're being collaborative in your approach to problem solving,It's like different uses, different use cases, different places.

Yeah. Well, this is you asking questions. The other, the yes and is more like about you going along with something somebody else is already saying.

Yeah. And that's more for like creativity, brainstorming like idea, like generative thinking versus more

Mike: Yeah, the generative thinking I think is the thing.

Okay.Chapter five. Trigger the Two Words that Immediately Transform Any Negotiation. Yeah. And I'm going to work on this because I'm not doing this well, using a summary to let the other side feel heard is incredibly powerful. Paraphrasing plus a label equals summary. And what you're trying to get to, what you're trying to get out of them is that's right.

And when they say that,You've. Hit negotiation or just interaction gold because you've connected with them and connected with the way they're feeling or what they're thinking. And when you get, that's right,that is someone that knows that you hear them.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. They feel understood. And I also thought it was interesting just like where he says, you want to say, it seems like you are feeling this way as opposed to, I'm hearing that you're feeling this way.

In this case, you want to not hear the you within it. So again, you don't want it to center on you. So if they're saying you're right. That's not a good thing, because a lot of times people are just saying that to get you to stop bothering them so you'll go away. But it's the, that's right, is the language you're looking

Mike: Yeah, the you're right is fine. You're right. Leave me alone.

Kristen: Yeah,

Mike: You're right. That's fine. You're right. Yeah.

Kristen: So it's interesting, and he, he talks about several tactics. A lot of these are, used in other places in the book, but things that you can use to get to that's right. So effective pausing, which is like using silence, using like minimal encouragers, he calls them, to convey that they have your full attention.

So that's things like, Yes. Okay. Uh huh. I see.

Mike: When that goes back to Coaching Habit like what's on your mind and what else? Yeah. And what else?

Kristen: relate.

Mike: Yeah. And what else?

Kristen: Mirroring, labeling your feelings, which we've talked about both of, paraphrasing, which is useful in many contexts, but, this really is about active listening, right? So repeating what they say, not just in their words, which is you're doing a lot of that's like coming down to mirroring, but also paraphrasing, so repeating what they're saying in your own words, because that really shows that you understand what they're saying. You're not just like parroting what they're saying. And it looks like you want to say something,

Mike: No, I'm just looking at you cause you're beautiful.

Kristen: Oh, well, that's

Mike: cute.

Kristen: I'll leave that in.

Mike: in. Leave that in.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: I'm just, I'm, Kristen's beauty is not just her physical beauty. I fell in, you know, apparently I'm anwhat is it?Sapiosexual. And the more I found out how smart she was, the more interested in her I became. So it's a combination of a lot of things, but, and listening to you talk, definitely like it's like, Oh, you're so smart.

You're smart. Like, so anyway, sorry,

Kristen: Well, that's cute.

Mike: Let's try some labeling. It seems like you're very touched by that appreciation

Kristen: Yeah, well it,

Mike: She twirls her hair and blushes and laughs. If I, if we were at a bar, I'd probably could get her number at this point.

Kristen: I guess marry somebody who can can make you blush after you're already married.

I don't know. Anyway, and the, so the last one is summarizing. So this is actually a combination of both re articulating the meaning of what is said as well as acknowledging the emotions underlying that meaning.

So that's like the next level is you're both re articulating what they're saying and what that actually means and like what they're feeling about it.

So those are all effective ways to get somebody to say that's right or equivalent.

Mike: Chapter Six. Bend Their Reality. We compromise on a lot of deals and in, we compromise in life because it's easy and safe. And most of us have gone into even just the normal negotiation that normal workers are, is the salary negotiation of the way.

And we just, we don't have much guts in that regard. We'll take the first offer. It's very hard to go through the negotiation and be uncomfortable, so we're conditioned to be nice to people. We're conditioned not to upset people. And consequently, we don't always ask for what we actually want.

And

Kristen: The passage of time. And its sharper cousin, the deadline, is one of the most effective techniques in negotiation. He has a kidnapping example in Haiti where there's a lot of kidnappings in Haiti while this is going on. Everybody's getting kidnapped and they're asking for outrageous sums, millions of dollars.

Mike: But the more he digs into it with like calibrated questions, he uses the passage of time to make people uncomfortable. They find that so many of the kidnappings are happening on Thursday and Friday and what the kidnappers really want is party money. As soon as he finds this out, he's like, okay, now I know how much money we actually need to get this person back.

We don't need a million dollars. We need seven grand because for seven grand, they can have a rip roaring time over the weekend. And 

Kristen: I don't know.

Mike: it's crazy. but they were able to figure that out. I mean, who would have thought People that have damage in the part of the brain that handles emotions often cannot even make small decisions.

Kristen: Yeah. I thought that was interesting.

Mike: They can't even decide, what do they want for dinner. They can still reason very effectively, but they have real trouble making decisions. It's so fascinating, like the way the brain's developed over millennia and the things that stop us from like being effective in life or understanding ourselves or our own emotions.

And a lot of it is just like these parts of the brain not being super integrated yet. So we have some more evolution to go, I guess. Okay.

Yep. One of the most powerful words in negotiations, both positive and negative, is the word fair.

Kristen: Yeah, which is interesting. And he says, he'll even bring it in early in a negotiation, he'll bring in the word, like, I want you to feel like you're being treated fairly at all times.

Mike: Yeah, he says that, and he says, along with that, if at any time you don't feel like we're behaving fairly, please stop and we'll address it. And I think that's a genius way to, go into a discussion or

Kristen: For sure.

People, again, you're making people feel safe. They can object if they want to. Like, hey, this isn't, I actually don't feel this is fair. Let's talk. State as much as possible.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: So back to understanding prospect theory from Daniel Kahneman, who describes how people choose between prospects that involve risk. And of course, we've talked about this a little bit, but it is far more involved than we can address here or that I actually understand.

Of course, we know loss aversion is more powerful than seeking gain. And it's not enough to demonstrate that you can give the other person what they want. They actually have to believe that they have something concrete to lose by not dealing with you.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. Fascinating.

Kristen: Yeah, definitely a very strong cognitive bias. Yeah. And he has like a lot of tactics for, so like understanding like prospect theory in general, like things that you can do to help use that to your advantage. So part of it is anchoring their emotions. yeah. Starting out with the accusation audit that he talks about.

So you're basically acknowledging all their fearswhich you can then use to like frame things as loss aversion, right? Once you've acknowledged their fears.

When it comes to monetary negotiations, letting the other side start. So they're anchoring the conversation.

Mike: Or if, when, if you do name things first, always using a range instead of a single number.

You told me that when I was interviewing for jobs, you say, when they ask you for salary, you can say, well, I'm currently interviewing for jobs between, X and plus X plus, you know, 35 K or something.

And then they, they're going to come in not at the top, but they're also probably not going to come in at the bottom. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. It's great advice. I heard many years ago,

Mike: That I've used that and they have come in, my negotiations have come in much closer to where I actually wanted them to

Kristen: Yeah. It's a very effective way

Mike: Super effective, You set your value without being too dramatic about it or being like, this is the number I need. Oh, this is the range that I'm current. And it's honest too. Like I'm not actually interviewing for jobs that pay X minus 50

Kristen: And it feels more cooperative, too. Yeah, you're not like, I need this. You're like, here's the range we're working with. And then that also leads into non monetary terms, too. So pivoting to non monetary terms. Bolstering the offer with things, of things other than monetary terms aspects. So especially things that are not important to you, but are potentially important to the other person. So it's good to

Mike: Or even not to let them know you've reached

Kristen: Yeah. Or at the end. Yeah.

Mike: You're like, I'll throw in a pony. And then they're like, he's got no more money. He's offering the pony. Okay. That's the best offer.

Kristen: He talks about that at some point. I forget

Mike: it's pretty late in the,

Kristen: it's this is a way to end show. This

Mike: is the way to, yeah,

Kristen: Throw in something else.

Mike: The kitchen sink. Okay, fine. That's the top offer I'm getting for this.

Kristen: And then he says, when, and I know you don't necessarily

Mike: Well, I, I've changed my mind a little bit since we put the notes together. Okay. I think it's, there's a lot of different angles from this. He's definitely not wrong.

Kristen: Yeah. I don't think he, I, from being a marketing major in college and stuff, like studying this stuff, I actually agree with this.. But he, what he says is when you do talk numbers, Use odd ones.

Round numbers tend to feel like a placeholder. I mean, you see this in pricing everywhere, right? Like it's used in a lot of places. But yeah, when something is too round of a number, it doesn't feel as real to people. And whereas like non rounded numbers, and especially in the context of negotiation, feel like the result of a thoughtful calculation.

Mike: 423, 459, or 423. 59, people think, well, he must have done some

Kristen: Wow, you must be like doing some work to get to that number. Yeah, just say, there's a lot of these psychological tricks that are used in marketing and once you know about them, you see them everywhere, but. And then the last one he talks about is, you can also take the tactic of starting with like an extremely low anchor that they then reject.

And then you can surprise them with something that's unrelated. yeah. That's like a bonus. So that like triggers the reciprocity response. This is, he talks about reciprocity in a couple of places, but this also is covered in one of my favorite books on the psychology of how to influence people, which is Influence by Robert Cialdini, which I've mentioned beforebut reciprocity is a big one.

Mike: Yeah, and I think different of the three archetypes respond to reciprocity differently. I can't remember exactly where they are, but I know as an analyst personality, if I give you something of this value, I kinda expect it that will be calculated in there somehow. Where I think the driver personality, if they give you something, they expect something back.

Maybe they're not as calculating in the value, the numerical value, but they expect like loyalty or something like that, you know.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: So he uses the example of, again, as Kristen said, using extreme anchoring and an accusation audit. He had to hire some contractors who, for, I don't know, a government job, who they normally get 2K a day, but he only had a budget of 500 a day.

And instead of calling and saying apologetically, hey, the best I can do is 500. He starts with an accusation audit of himself. And he says, at the end of this call, you're going to think I'm terrible at my job. I'm a terrible businessman. And maybe even he's lying to me. You've already earned some trust by putting that at the fore.

Kristen: And there, and especially if they know you a little bit, they're like, no, I don't think that about you. You're a great guy. And they're more open to hearing what he has to say. And in the end, they all take the gig. Well, and the other thing that he said that triggered that was Yeah, loss aversion. He's I wanted to bring you this opportunity before I took it to somebody else. So then because people were like, oh, like this is about losing it to your competitors.

They're like, sure, I'll take that right.

Mike: I'm sure this man is very successful in negotiations. I wouldn't want to have him on the other side of any table I'm sitting at.

Yeaheven though we are deeply emotional and irrational beings, there are biologic patterns to our behaviors and he has ways to exploit them, in general, no deal is better than a bad deal, right? And that's something that is I think just not wired into us, we're somehow wired to come to consensus and be agreeable.

And I think you reach a certain level when you can walk away from something that isn't right for you. Probably in relationships too, right? Lots of people are in relationships that they just de facto fell into or kept going. Kristen's told me many times, like at some point it's easier just to get married than it is to break up.

So, um, and he, he goes, and this is the crux of his book, never split the difference. So he gives an example of, he gets up and he wants to wear black shoes, but his wife's you should wear brown shoes. And instead he compromises and he has one black and one brown show. So who won in that scenario?

Not either one of them, you know.

Okay, chapter seven, create the illusion of control. Asking for help works, and this is back to his first question. How am I supposed to do that? He uses this question as his main weapon, like a boxer's jab, and it's, he fights behind it. I don't know how I can do that. How am I supposed to do that?

I don't know. I don't know how I'll make that happen. And

Kristen: It's good. It's so

Mike: the boxer's jab. You know, the jab is the, I'm not a boxer central punch, and you can build a whole game around the jab. It creates distance between you and your opponent. You can actually hit someone quite effectively and it sets up all your other shots.

And no matter what happens, they have to deal with your jab. So while they're dealing with that, they're leaving their, the stomach open or the abdomen open or the side open or something where you have another, if you want to see that watch Nate Diaz fight, Okay. So use open ended questions.

Who, what, when, why, and how, what and how are best, why can some sound like an accusatory, question and can often backfire. Kristen says, this is coaching.

Kristen: Yeah. If you listen to our episode on The Coaching Habit, this will sound familiar. It's like stick with questions. Let's start with what and how.

Mike: Yeah.

Yeah. How am I supposed to do that? What do you need to make this work?

Kristen: Mm hmm.

Mike: Instead of does this look like something you would like, which is a yes or no question, ask, how does this look to you? So it's open ended. I'm trying to wrap my head around this too.What is a calibrated question? What is an open ended question?

But it's really questions that don't have a definitive or a yes or no answer. Yes or no is binary, non binary. Alright, so you're. You're inviting narrative from the person. What about this works for you? What about this doesn't, what would you like to do? And they'll tell you. What is the biggest challenge you face?

That's a coaching question right there. What about this is important to you? How can I make this better for us? How would you like to proceed? What about this works for you? Doesn't work for you? How can we solve this problem? What are we trying to accomplish here? Yes to all this

Kristen: Open ended questions are so useful because they will teach you something about your negotiating counterpart.

Mike: All negotiation is information gathering. It is like martial arts,it doesn't matter if it's boxing or jujitsu, often the beginning first round of the match is you figuring out what your opponent will do in certain scenarios, watching for patterns of their footwork, of their handwork, and the more information you gather in the beginning, you're going to form a game plan that's going to go through their game plan.

You can calibrate questions to give people the illusion of control. It works very well with people who are arrogant or egotistical. yeah.

Kristen: I mean, this is kind of like if you're, you're on a bad date and you're just trying to get through it to the point where you can leave. Yeah. Asking questions about themselves is a really great way to do it.

Many applications, right?

Mike: And then all of a sudden you peel off to the bathroom and don't come back.

Kristen: I never did that for the record. Bye. Yeah, no, at least I'm polite, tell people I'm leaving.

Mike: I thought you said you didn't date anyone before me.

Kristen: Oh,

Mike: Yes, you told me that. Okay.

Kristen: I'm pretty sure there's evidence to the contrary on our, on this very podcast, but you know,

Mike: I don't remember that.

Kristen: Uh huh. But yeah, the other thing he talks about with this maintaining the illusion of control that's absolutely critical is your own emotional regulation. So the two tips he gives for that are to take a pause and give yourself time to collect your thoughts before responding.

Mike: And,

Kristen: If you are, like, verbally assaulted, a good response is a calibrated question or open ended question, which is really smart.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Chapter Eight, Guarantee Execution. So again, I'm not that experienced with doing deals in business. Not really, I hire vendors, things like that. I hire people, but I don't negotiate deals that involve some sort of future execution. Like we, we do a deal and all of a sudden there's an office building going up or something like that.

That's, it's a more, so he says, yes is nothing without how a deal is no good without execution. So I think a lot of deals get done and then nothing happens for them to follow through because again, people can give you like a tacit yes. So he has a prison riot and they work to negotiate with the hostage takers and they agree to come out, but they in,a successive series of surrenders and part of the deal is the first people to surrender and who are going to be relocated will be given a radio in which they can radio back to the other hostage takers and let them know that they're okay and that they didn't get brutalized or beat up by the cops and they neglect to go figure out the operational aspect of this. And those first surrendees do not receive a radio. And in fact, the people who take their surrender are like, what do you mean give them a radio. That's insane. And so they have to go back to the drawing board and fix all this. But so the deal is no good without the how.

Agreement and agreement is nice. A signed contract even better, but it's not done until you have the check in your hand. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: And I love this phrase. Negotiation is the art of letting someone else get your way.

Kristen: So they think it's their idea.

Mike: Yep. That's real winning.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: And the art of war, it's like win from a thousand miles away. Yeah. Do you want to win or do you want to be the one seen to be winning? The people who really know how to win aren't after the image or the glory. They just want what they want. You know. Two questions you can ask at the beginning to let the other person feel in control and get them to own the execution are how will we define success?

How will we get back on track if we get off track? Such powerful

Kristen: Yeah, those are great

Mike: So good

Kristen: There's so much packed into this chapter

Mike: There's so much in

Kristen: tactics.

Mike: so. Much tactics. and. They're the tactics of letting other people win also, I find Western negotiations, is very black and white.

It's I win, you lose. And, I think real winning is maybe I win, you win. Maybe I win a little more or I get the part of winning that I really want, but I don't need to also crush you to feel like I've won. And if you see anyone like that in the modern political landscape, that's up to you, whether that's your style,but I think there's enough winning out there for everybody.

Kristen: So let them feel like they're winning and in charge.It's important to discover players not at the table. you can do this by asking questions like, how does this affect the rest of your team? What do the rest of your team see as the biggest challenges here? And in sales, they'll actually teach to teach you to, when we were in hotel sales, they're like, who, who else is involved in making this decision?

What is your team's criteria? Because it's a lot of times there's power players that are not seen.The deal killers can be more powerful than the deal makers.he uses the 7-38-55 rule and those are very odd numbers too, so I'm assuming it comes from a study,

Mike: Assuming it does, but 38 is off the wall.

Kristen: Okay. So 7 percent of information comes from the words being said. 38 comes from tone of voice. FM late night radio DJ voice, which also he doesn't say male. I'm sure No, he doesn't.

Mike: Female radio DJs Overnight DJs who have a nice calming voice And then 55 percent comes from body language and interestingly enough when we started this podcast.

We had to re situate ourselves around the table because the microphones And there, what is the diffuser sound diffuser? What is this called?

Kristen: It's a pop filter

Mike: Filter that's in front of us was covering our mouths and I couldn't get enough information about what Kristen was saying. And I I was like, is she mad at me?

Is she in a rush? Is she had enough of me

Kristen: I was not mad at him,

But yeah,

Mike: I couldn't see like the lower part of her face. And that was actually a problem during the pandemic with masks. I hear you talking, I see your eyes, but I'm missing half of the body language information that I need. We should do a episode on body language. It's not always as definitive as people like, oh, if you look up to the left, you're being deceptive. It's not like that. It's more, much more complicated than that. But your limbic brain is garnering subconscious information from that. And we had to relocate our

Kristen: Yeah. Adjust how we've seated ourselves at the table. Yeah.

Mike: 55 percent comes from body language. Look for incongruities between someone's words and their body language. That's a good one. If you find disparities, you can use calibrated questions and labeling. And I think this is so powerful and kind of beautiful, that most people will be too afraid to say something like this.

But say, Okay. I heard you say yes, but I'm sensing hesitation. Or I heard you agree, but it seems like you might have other thoughts. Oh, that's a

Kristen: Yeah. A lot of that's just trusting your intuition about reading people

Mike: wrong! Because we know, right?

Kristen: right? Because we're picking up on things, but

Mike: Even if you're wrong, just stopping the flow saying something you're going to get more information out of people. Yeah.

Kristen: And it could be something completely different going on with their body language that has nothing to do with the deal you're talking about. So yeah, if you get it out there, you're more likely to move forward.

Mike: As I correct the spelling of counterfeit.

Okay.

Kristen: Oh my goodness.

Mike: We may come back to these notes some days and I'll tell you what, I use these in business a little bit when I'm going into a one on one or a conversation. Sometimes like I, I have some one on ones to do this week and I'm going to actually go back through here and pull some of these questions out because I'm working with a new team now and I'm still getting to know them.

So my old team a little bit, and I miss you guys if you're listening, miss you guys a lot. I think about you all the time. But for them I could just do Coaching Habit stuff. I already knew them. We already built trust, but now it's like back to the square one building trust, getting in there, finding the, the roadblocks, the obstacles, the success.

So I think some of these questions are great. Okay. Okay. Look for incongruities. Calibrate questions. Rule of three. And for those of you who are cool, you will know that this is not the Sith rule of two.

Kristen: It's also not the improv rule of three.

Mike: Is there an improv rule of three? What's that?

Kristen: that? Well, it's likebasically, like, if you're listing things, there needs to be three things, and if you go more than three, then you need to go to five, and if you do more than five, you're just doing it the rest of the scene, usually.

But yeah, things come in

Mike: freeze. The rest of the scene?

Kristen: Yeah,so say you're, so if you do something twice in improv, you're, that gets a good reaction. You want to do it a third time. If you're listing things, you want to say three things or five things. It's just like, yeah, it's an improv rule,

Mike: Improv rule? Yeah.

Kristen: Which can be broken, like all rules, right? But they're foundational. He's smiling at me again. It's cute.

Mike: Aww. Foundational?

Kristen: Oh God, stop mirroring me.

Mike: She, she took a minute to figure it out, but she's an analyst. She's not a driver. But I did it at least twice to her without her noticing,

Kristen: Well, he was doing it with like, just like a goofy smile on his face

Mike: I wanted to know more. I didn't know about this, but you'll see if you rewind, I used a couple mirrors.

Probably not great. I'm again an analyst,and goofy. But she gave, I mirrored the last two or three words that she said, and I found out more. And now I know more about the rule of three. I didn't know what that was at all. Sith rule of two is there's only two Sith because it's, I don't know, read the legend of Darth Bane.

It's a pretty good book. Now I know the rule of three. And so that's how you use mirrors. I won't say that's a great execution of it, but she, I got at least two out of her before she noticed

Kristen: I

Mike: was, yeah. Before I was like, what's going on? I really thought the second one you were going to notice, but you did not.

You just were kind of

Well you 

Kristen: were asking me questions about something I like talking about, so, there you go.

the 

Mike: Boom, boom, boom. Okay. There are three type, back to the rule of three, there are three types of yes, the commitment yes, the confirmation yes, and the counterfeit yes. People are very good at the counterfeit yes.

Which

Kristen: is just I just want to end this conversation or,

Mike: Yeah, I'm just agreeing with you because I know I can slide you back out the door. yeah. it's almost like a Wing Chun stripping of your hand on my Yeah, you can, okay. Yeah. Rule of three

Kristen: Whereas like the confirmation yes is I agree, but I'm not actually committing to any action versus the commitment yes is the actual like, okay, let's take, let's do this.

Mike: Yep. Rule of three is getting the other party to agree to the same thing three times in the same conversation. I think this goes it goes back to like that's right when you get that's right. That's like the confirmation yes, or commitment Yes, I don't know.

It's the affirmative. Yes that they're actually saying yes Yeah, and this is a good, I think, just when you're talking, thinking about like selling in general, like getting somebody to commit three times and maybe the first time it's closer to a counterfeit yes. But by the end it's a commitment yes. that's why you get to know first. If you get to know, five times and then they say yes, they really mean it. Yeah, because you've already made them safe to feel no. Okay, watch for telltale signs of lying. This can include using overly complex sentences and unnecessary words. Body language that does not match up with the tone of voice or words, or the words being said.

People who are important in the situation will often not use personal pro pronouns like I and my, they will refer to we and us and I don't know. I see the,

the CEO going, we want, 

Kristen: Right. Our expectations are. Well, he means him, but he's elevated enough in his Kung Fu to not refer to himself like that.

Mike: And I don't think it's just like the royal we, he knows he has the power. He's not trying to make himself feel more important. He's just trying to get something done. Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah, the other thing he talks about in this chapter that I like is about saying no. So we talked more about like getting the other person to say no, but like for you saying no in a conversation, he's like,you can express, say no four times usually before actually just saying no. So like the first is like, how am I supposed to do that? The second is your offer is very generous. I'm sorry, that just doesn't work for me or something like that. And then number three, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I just can't do that.

Mike: do that. Yeah. You know, those three, like if you say that they're going to try and they're going to negotiate with themselves and whoa, can we do this then?

What about if I did that? Cause they won't and you're going to expose them as wanting to make a deal and you're going to find their boundaries.

Kristen: And if somebody is still really persistent, then it's like, I'm sorry. No. And then finally just no. But I thought this is also useful for not just negotiating, but like anybody who has people pleasing tendencies and needs help with saying no. I think these are some really good ways to say it.

Mike: So I want to give a quick plug. Jefferson Fisher, he's a lawyer on Instagram. And I think he has a podcast now in Houston.

And he gives people, coaching or advice on how to negotiate or how to be assertive. And one of the things he talks about is the downward inflection. he's like, when you,if you're talking to your boss, like, Hey, when you get a minute, can we talk about my bonus? Sounds very different than, Hey, when you get a minute, can we talk about my bonus?

And it has a different, like it hits different in the brain. So he's actually got a lot of cool, very quick, like 30 second videos on a lot of this stuff that I find super useful.Check him out. Maybe we can link him in the comments. He's got a lot of stuff like how to just deal with negativity, how to deal with narcissists, how to deal with people insulting you, how to people,

It's super interesting stuff.

Kristen: Nice. Yeah.

Mike: So we should, we should link him because he's, his stuff is really on point and really is about being self confident and regulated and not, not following other people's BS.

And I like it. 

Kristen: Chapter Nine. Bargain Hard. Chris Voss will negotiate. He says, I will negotiate past where most people will split the difference.And he elucidates his strategy of the bargaining phase. He talks about knowing what archetype you are. There's three broad, he said he found 19, with him and his son. And they whittled that down to three broad categories.

Mike: The accommodator, the analyst and the assertive. I say the accommodator is like the talker. You could also say like a diplomat. They generally believe that as long as people are talking, they're making progress.the analysts, like my wife and myself, we're the thinkers, the planners, we want numbers, we consider carefully lots of op I think you get the idea.

And with each of these, we have strengths and, weaknesses that, the analysts, obviously, we get too bogged down in numbers sometimes, we get, information paralysis, right? The accommodators aren't actually, they're talking, but they're not actually accommodating anything. And then the last is the assertives.

Those are the drivers, they're the, I think more of the stereotypical leader.

Kristen: Time is money. Time is

Time is money. Let's go. I'm in charge. Yep.

Mike: The analysts were methodical and diligent and not in a big rush. Our self image is often linked to minimizing mistakes that tracks classic analysts prefer to work on their own.

Also tracks can speak in a way that is distant and cold and sometimes arrogant and may put their counterpart at ill ease can confirm. Uh, we are generally reserved problem solvers, information aggregators, and we are hypersensitive to reciprocity. If we give you a thousand dollar value, we expect that back.

Not out of a sense of loyalty, but just out of math. Don't expect immediate counter proposals with these people. It is vital to be prepared. Use data to drive your argument. Avoid surprises, please avoid surprises. We don't like that. Silence displayed for us is an opportunity to think, not talk. If you're talking at every, in every pause in the conversation, we will be annoyed with you.

We are trying to work things out. Please shut the f up and let us, let us think. Apologies have little value to us. So true. Just the facts, ma'am. We respond very well to labels, because we are often misunderstood, and we often misunderstand ourselves, and we're not always super emotionally in tune.

And we do, Don't respond well to calibrated questions. This all tracks, okay. Section two, the accommodator, we call him the diplomat. The most important thing for them is the time spent building relationships. So I think you can see that is a very positive thing, right? And an analyst might miss that part.

We miss the importance of the human relationship connection. we're I don't want to say robotic, but we'll you know, we're more facts based, for accommodator. As long as there is a free exchange of information and conversation, they feel like they are making progress. They love the win, as long as they are communicating, they're happy.

Oh my God.Goal is to be on great terms, of the three types, the most likely to build rapport without accomplishing anything.

Kristen: if you have like two accommodators together.

Mike: Tracking, right? They're just like, Hey, you're the best. No, you're the best. And then we forget to do the deal guys. Like we need, okay.They're easy to talk to and friendly, will yield a concession to appease or acquiesce if their counterpart is sociable and friendly. Ask them calibrated questions about implementation.

Like, how are you going to carry this out?and I will say I remember now having read this book. I started to work on the other two, archetypes on myself. I'm like, I need to work to build relationships more and I need to learn to drive better. And at some point we'll do The First 90 Days. Which has,

Kristen: I think that's our next book,

Mike: it? So it has five different types of scenarios that you can go into as a leader. There's the turnaround, there's the startup, there's sustaining success, there's accelerating growth, and I don't remember the fifth one, but each one has a different character that is best for it and the turnaround most effective personality type for that is the driver. You need somebody, it's a chaotic mess. You need somebody that goes in there and says, don't worry, I'm in charge. Do this, do this, do this, do this. And they do that for six months and they turn the place around. And that wasn't my

Kristen: natural makeup. And after COVID I had to, when I went to the hotel in San Francisco, it was a real turnaround situation.

Mike: And instead of like my normal, like spreadsheet, long term analytical thinking. I just needed to drive things to survive the day. So these are all things that you need in your personality makeup to be successful in different scenarios. 

Kristen: Uh, back to the accommodator.

Uncovering their objections can be difficult as they may leave issues unaddressed out of fear of the conflict that may arise. My wife doesn't have this problem. Be conscious of excessive chit chat where nothing gets done. And the assertive personality. Time is money. Every wasted minute is a wasted dollar.

Getting the solution perfect is far less important than getting it done. They love, I think everyone is envisioning this person, they they love winning and they will do so at the expense of others at times. They are direct and candid and have an aggressive communication style. Business relationships are based on respect above all.

They want to be heard. And this is why mirrors work well with them and can't hear your point of view until they have expressed there as it's fascinating. They tell rather than ask when you are dealing with assertive types, it is best to focus on what they have to say. Once they are convinced you understand them, then, and only then, will they listen to your point of view.

To them, silence is an opportunity to speak more. Mirroring is excellent to use with them. They love it. They respond to calibrated questions and labels. Not great at reciprocity, interestingly enough. If you are an assertive, focus on moderating your tone, you're probably scaring people.

Each of these types view time, preparation, relationships, and money differently. They also have very different views and practices of silence. Can confirm.

Yep.

Mike: Identifying your counterpart's type. 

So we often project our own style on the other side. And this is the golden rule fallacy. We assume that others want to be treated as the way we want to be treated. And that's not true. They're, they may be very different than you. You can't assume that every, and I was doing this for a while. I assumed everybody had like kind of Gen X desires.

and hopes in their life. And I was getting all these like new millennials and Gen Z and they have a very different, different viewpoint. And they started everybody's, really different. So don't assume that because you understand your own style, that the person you're talking to shares that they may be vastly different than you.

Don't treat. Treat other people as you want to be treated, treat them as they need to be treated. The psychological judo of negotiations can include the use of tactical anger. As long as it's genuine and channeled well. Yeah,

Kristen: Yeah, I also like that he has some ways in here to show assertion if you're a, you know, nice, maybe people pleasing, conflict avoidant person.

So one of them is to use why questions. This is one of the exceptions for focusing on what and how questions, but, a question like why did you do that can really knock the other person back and make them think about. What they're saying.

Mike: This is the stuff Jefferson Fisher is really good at sharing. Nice. This kind of Judo like negotiation. Nice.

Kristen: This is the

And then using I statements to set a boundary, so like, I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me is a way to do that.And then basically being ready to walk away and like, doing whatever it takes to make yourself be okay with walking away, which

Mike: is hard.

That, that's a dating thing too. 

Very powerful stuff.Then he goes into some actual, techniques to bring into your negotiation. He uses the Ackerman model, set your target price, set your first offer at 65 percent of your target price. And then calculate three raises of decreasing, intensity, 85%, 95%, and then 100%.

Your fourth offer should be your last one. Use empathy and lots of different ways of saying no to get the other side to increase their offer. Often they will negotiate with themselves. It's so true.I don't know that from making people do that. I know that from doing it on my own. Yeah. Oh, I could do it for less.

Okay. When calculating the final amount, use precise, not precise. Non round numbers. $423,000 sounds better than 420 or 430 for some reason.For a final offer, throw in a non-monetary item. Something, sometimes something they don't even want. Here's your pony. Okay, they're done negotiating they offer the pony.

This gives them the idea that you've reached your absolute limit. 65 percent of your target price is an extreme anchor that will often drive your counterpart very quickly to their price limit. It can induce shock and a fight or flight reaction. So he's using these tactical, you know, uh, tactical, not the reverse of empathy, to get them to potentially rush into action.

The raises are dropped in sparingly, adding calibrated questions.These offers often work on reciprocity. The diminishing increases also give your counterpart the idea that they are reaching or getting you to your actual limit. I think that's smart, right? You go from 65 to 85. Okay. So if I plan to pay you a hundred thousand dollars for this boat and I start at 65 K or like, wow, that's almost 50 percent of what I think it's worth.

And they might meet you at 75 K or something like that. And then when you go to 85, you're like, all right, and that sounds good.

Kristen: and then,

Mike: 95 is a far lower increase and they start to see the reduction in your increases and psychologically they're like,we're almost where he's going to get.

And that's it. So anyone who's bid on an item on eBay or sold something on eBay is probably familiar with that process. Research indicates people who get concessions feel better about the bargaining process than someone who gets a single fair offer. Even when they pay more.

Kristen: which

Mike: is nuts. Humans are illogical beings.

Psychology.And chapter 10. Find the black swan.

Kristen: The final

Mike: chapter. The final

Kristen: Which by the way, I have to hand it to Chris Vos. I feel like in most of the books we read, the last two chapters are like, Nope, the fluffiest, he has a meat meaty stuff in these last two chapters.

So no,

Mike: He's not an academic and I mean he is right, but he's not an academic learner.

He was a Kansas City beat cop, like this man is from the, you know,

Kristen: I don't know. I got a lot out of this book and he's a little bit more out there in the zeitgeist lately. I've seen him on a lot of podcasts lately, including Jocko's Of course. Um. But a lot like, and he I don't know, so I should find out more about him.

Mike: Anyway, Chapter 10, Find the Black Swan. the black swan was something for a long time that was thought impossible because in England there was no such thing as anything other than a white swan. So people who said something about a black swan, it was,a slang or idiom for something that doesn't exist or can't be possible.

And it wasn't until someone around 1700, I don't know, Captain Cook who knows, journeyed to Western Australia that someone actually saw a black swan.In general, both sides of a negotiation will have between one and three black swans. This is information that were it to be discovered by the other parties, it would change everything.

And sometimes these black swans, are unknown to you as well. And that's why

Kristen: Like your own

Mike: Own black swan are unknown to you. And that's why if somebody can dig through your stuff well enough, they'll elicit from you.

Kristen: That's right.

You're right.

Mike: And that's a black swan. And you're like, that is what I'm after. And, you know,Feeling for the truth behind the camouflage. Intuition plays a huge part in negotiations.

Why are they communicating what they are communicating right now? While these black swans, seem like they should be some giant revelation, often they are seemingly innocuous and both parties may be oblivious to. he goes on to describe leverage as a judicial. I love this concept. A leverage is the fluid that splashes between two parties back and forth.

It's the ability to inflict loss and withhold gain. Those are leverage. There are three types. There's positive leverage. Your ability as a negotiator to either provide or withhold things that your counterpart wants. 

Negative leverage, which is what most people think of as leverage, your ability to make your counterpart suffer. Potential losses will loom larger in the mind than commensurate games.

Commensurate gains, negative leverage and threats often backfire. You can use negative leverage without actually using threats. It seems like you don't care about the position you are leaving me in is a good label.

Kristen: Yeah. He warns against using threats in general. You can say something like that. Despite being

Mike: Despite being a driver and knowing that he's the assertive personality type, he has used techniques to, ameliorate the severity of the way he talks to people.

He does have a funny example of his, I think one of his sons just kept mirroring him for 45 minutes and the other one was just cracking up laughing and he was like, what? And he's like, you don't even realize that he's been doing this to you for an hour

Kristen: like That's amazing

Mike: Because he loved, they love talking about themselves, as do I, but I'll notice if you do that to me after about six minutes.



Mike: And the normative leverage which is using the other parties norms standards morals, etc to advance your position And he has an awesome description of this in this chapter. He says know their religion and it doesn't necessarily mean religion. It means their perspective on life, their morals the

Kristen: Worldview.

Mike: Their worldview and position your demands within their worldview and you show them respect and you're far more likely to trigger a sense of shared belonging in someone and you're more likely to reach a consensus.

So super smart. 

Kristen: Yeah, and then the last section in here, this is actually in the appendix, but very worth noting is he takes you through the process of creating a one sheet to prepare for a negotiation. So that consists of identifying your goal, a summary of known facts, these are the things that will hopefully elicit a that's right from the other side, three to five labels like potential labels.

An accusation audit, so like thinking through what are the things they could think about you up front. Three to five calibrated questions that you can potentially use. So what are we trying to accomplish? How does that affect things? What's the biggest challenge you face? Et cetera. Questions specifically to ferret out if there's any behind the table deal killers. Deal killing issues. So questions to help understand if there's other things related that could be influencing it. So things like self esteem, public perception, autonomy, perceived power dynamics, et cetera.

Mike: Those are really powerful ones that,people gloss over, but they're, these dynamics can play a, public perceptionand power dynamics, like unspoken power dynamics can play a huge role in someone's willingness to do a deal or something with you.

Like maybe you even just in the business where you take a job that you don't really love for less money than you want because it makes you feel a certain way about having that title. All right. And knowing that can give you that, that leverage.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then the last thing, and this is coming up with some non-cash offers. So if this is a monetary negotiation, you would prep the things for the Ackerman model. So like figure out your 65%, 85%, et cetera, but also identifying potential non cash offers that you can throw in.

So I love this as a way to prepare for negotiation. I'm definitely going

Mike: my, I want my pony, I want my pony.

Kristen: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that brings us to summary.

Mike: Okay.summation. They're not crazy. And I love this. People may be operating for motivations that are beyond your understanding, but you should try to find out what those are rather than just thinking the other side is crazy.

And there was a part in How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I think is one of the most brilliant leadership books ever written. where he talks about like Abraham Lincoln telling his wife not to call the Southerners evil or crazy because Lincoln says, don't say that about them because they're exactly what we would be if we were raised in those situations.

So even though he drastically disagrees with their perspective, he's able to see how they got to it and not demonize them and not, And that I think is the pathway to world peace. And harmony, you might not understand people, but most people are not evil. They're just operating from a set of needs, or, the unspoken motivations or pressures or desires that, that, that are hard for them to express and are hard for you to see.

So people are not crazy. Find out what their point of view is and why, and you'll,you'll be farther along for it.Overcoming fear and learning to get what you want out of life.People generally fear conflict, even healthy conflict. And I don't know if conflict is the right word. Maybe it's like healthy disagreement.

No, conflict

Kristen: Conflict is, I think part of the problem is conflict is not inherently negative,

Mike: Well, the word feels negative

Kristen: but it has a lot of negative connotations.

Yeah, but

Mike: Yeah, it's a cognitive bias. Okay, people in close relationships often fail to make their needs and desires known. Yeah. I think we know all about that.

When you are new to negotiations, you will experience a lot of fight and flight response. And that's true. And I've coached a lot of my team in their future. I'm like, okay, when you go into negotiations, you're going to need to talk about salary. Let me tell you a little about how I've become more comfortable doing that and you're going to prepare them.

You're going to feel uncomfortable. You're going to, you're going to want to scream out a number. You're going to want to run away. You're going to want to take the first number that they say, but this is what you can actually command in the market. So knowing that will help you, you,and don't avoid honest, clear conflict.

So that's it. Never Split the Difference. Chris Voss. Great book. Should read it.Kristen, what didn't resonate?

Kristen: So I think one thing that rubbed me the wrong way is he's pretty dismissive of Getting to Yes, the book and like academic theory of negotiations in general.

And it goes in with a, like, this is the, why my approach is the best approach. I don't think that should be thrown out. I actually think there's a lot of value in that book. And I think the best negotiators are actually going to pull tactics and techniques from both of these books. But I think these are really the, the two foremost books on negotiation.

And I think there's a lot of value in both of them.

Mike: Nice. So, you know, that kind of goes into what didn't resonate for me. Chris comes off as just a little bit smug and

Kristen: Yeah,

Mike: smug, you

Kristen: These feed into each other.

Mike: A little bit, but to be honest, I think some of it was the person they chose to do the narration. I wish

Kristen: Oh, he didn't do it

Mike: No, I wish they had to let him do it.

He's an excellent speaker.

Kristen: Huh. Surprising.

Mike: he's, he does a lot of public speaking. I don't know why they didn't let him do it. Yeah, And I do say that maybe he has a right to be a little smug, he's negotiated with bank robbers and lots and lots of terrorists..And I will say in the interviews I've seen him in on Jocko, just his stuff, he doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel super smug. So I can't judge the man, but, and the other things I don't a hundred percent agree with the non round number thing.

And maybe it's cause of my analytic personality. I know there's a psychology to it, but I also feel like everybody knows it at this point a little bit. I could be

Kristen: Yeah. I, we'll move on, but we talked about that already.

Mike: Kristen, what was your most life changing take away?

Kristen: I think there was a, there's so many good tactics in here. I found it really interesting actually that a lot of the foundations in it are things that are taught in improv and or coaching.

So things like mirroring, labeling emotions, asking open ended questions. So it was really interesting to see other potential applications for them. And there's just so many techniques in this book. I think it's very practical. There's a lot of stuff that I want to play with. I really like the one sheet model that he gives, Ackerman model, etc.

So I think there's a lot to take away and put into practice.

Mike: That's awesome.

Kristen: What about you?

Mike: For me, the three archetypes are fascinating. I do think it's difficult, and I don't buy into the Myers Briggs.

I, Any study of people is going to yield you a certain amount of information. Generally, trying to classify people I don't 100 percent agree with, except this part's true.

Kristen: That's something I have strong opinions on that we can talk about at a later date. Sure. , um,

Mike: You know, my finding is these three archetypes are fairly accurate and I make assumptions about people in the way that he said, not assumptions, but hypotheses about people.

When I first meet them and try and fit, the first thing I try and do is figure out which of these three types they fit into. And then I can start to like tailor my game to like, how do I talk to them so that they can hear me? Yeah. And It's just, and it also helped me figure out my own type, and use a, an adapted style as, as necessary as talked about.

So I wholeheartedly think this part is genius and, yeah, a lot of great stuff in here. Highly recommended book. Sorry we missed a week. We're very chastised and chagrined about,

Kristen: We put out 25 consistent episodes, so

Mike: God. We're on twenty six.

We're a half year. We're doing all right. So, thank you for joining us in 2025. This is our first,episode in 2025.

Kristen: Well, LBC in 2025, we had an

Mike: one This is the first one we've recorded in 2025.

Kristen: We've actually recorded

Mike: So I'm not working on the calendar of release because she does that work. I'm working. Okay. Thank you everyone. Thanks for joining us. 

Kristen: Thank you guys for listening as always. And yeah, we're formulating our schedule for the first half of the year. The First 90 Days is going to be our next book, I believe. But, beyond that, if you have any strong recommendations or feelings like we should do this book first, please reach out to us.

Mike: Yeah, put it in the put it in the chat or the comments or I don't know. How do

Kristen: Via our website

Mike: Via our website do we have a Facebook page?

Kristen: No, we have an Instagram 

I don't feel like now is the time to add Facebook.

Mike: I mean, sure,

Anyway,

Kristen: So we will end there. Thank you guys for listening and we'll see you next time.

The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

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