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

Voss describes another negotiation, this one with a set of armed fugitives hiding in a flat on a high rise in New York City. Lacking other communication, Voss and two other negotiators take turns addressing the fugitives through the door. Speaking with a calm voice, he vocalizes the fugitives’ concerns, including their fear of arrest and going to jail. After six hours without any response, the fugitives emerge and are handcuffed, explaining that the negotiators calmed them down.

From this experience, Voss highlights his strategy of “tactical empathy,” which involves empathizing with a counterpart’s point of view and then vocalizing the counterpart’s feelings. Labeling a counterpart’s feelings out loud and without judgment validates them and provides a “shortcut to intimacy” (55). Voss cites a study that suggests labeling emotions lessens their impact. He acknowledges the risk of mislabeling others’ emotions but suggests that, in most negotiations, there are plenty of clues to predict what your counterpart is feeling, including body language, tone, and word choice. After identifying an emotion, Voss suggests identifying it without using the pronoun “I”; instead, start with a neutral phrase, such as “it seems like” (56).