The Negotiating MASTERCLASS | Chris Voss and Shane Parrish

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Let the other side go first; it’s faster.

  Voss’s biggest surprise about real negotiation is that leading with what you want creates chaos and wastes time arguing point and counterpoint. Letting the other side talk first gets you information you’d otherwise be guessing at. He reads Stephen Covey’s ‘seek first to understand’ less as warm advice than as a ‘mercenary’s tool’ for reaching your outcome faster. The only reason not to go first is a fragile ego. If there’s any strength in your position, ‘you’ve got to let the other side go first.’

• 02

  Control your emotions with curiosity, a deliberate tone, and trust in a process.

  Genuine curiosity about why someone is acting ‘crazy’ instantly stops your own negativity from taking over. Saying ‘you’ve got this’ out loud in a calm voice can actually calm you down. Voss describes three natural styles, matching fight, flight and make friends. Assertive, ‘direct and honest’ types like him come across so bluntly that a colleague said dealing with him was ‘like getting hit in the face with a brick.’ Analysts use the calm late-night-DJ voice. Accommodators smile as they talk; negotiator Charlie Beaudoin wrote ‘smile — they can feel it in your voice’ on the team board.

• 03

  A yes means little without a plan for how to carry it out.

  Fake yeses are easy to give. Voss learned that a telecom company he pitched found 50% of the deals it signed never got carried out. So aim for the other side to propose the solution. Push back on bad terms with ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ and close with ‘That was brilliant, let’s do that.’ People follow through on their own ideas with fewer reminders. Treat time as the resource at stake in every negotiation, including ones with colleagues.

• 04

  Your fallback plan becomes your ceiling, and opening high backfires.

  Harvard’s BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is sound in theory. But people stop pushing once they beat it and leave money on the table, and those who think they have no fallback freeze up before they start. Hostage negotiators never had one. Instead, set a lofty goal and challenge yourself to beat it. Anchoring high starts with a lie: one of his Georgetown students demanded a big jump from $85K to $110K, got it, then learned a peer hired at the same time earned $125K. A founder Voss coached opened with ‘I’ve got a lousy proposition for you’ and won a third of the business for her husband.

• 05

  Clear away deal-breakers first by naming the accusations against you.

  Voss says fear blocks deals three to nine times more than benefits make them, and cites a figure that 70% of buying decisions are about avoiding loss. His preparation sheet starts with a no-spin summary of the facts that the other side would agree with. Then list their unspoken fears and say them aloud: ‘I’m sure we seem like bullies.’ Real estate agents insist ‘nobody’s ever accused us,’ but buyers routinely warn each other that agents only want the commission. Make a list of what you’d like to deny, and name each item instead. Denial makes it worse; naming it clears their heads.

• 06

  Labels open people up more than questions do.

  A question makes people stop, think and phrase a careful answer; analysts may reply ‘let me get back to you in a week.’ A label like ‘It seems like you have some next steps in mind’ seems to bypass that, and one student called it ‘unlocking the floodgates of truth-telling.’ In his Georgetown MBA classes, labels proved the most widely useful tool, raising effectiveness 30–33% by Voss’s estimate. ‘Sounds like there’s more here than meets the eye’ draws out problems that ‘What’s the problem?’ doesn’t. Use empathy not because you’re soft but because it ‘saves time.’

• 07

  Look for the loss, and ask questions people can answer with no.

  Hostage negotiators were trained to ‘look for the loss’ before Kahneman and Tversky showed that losses weigh about twice as much as gains. People aren’t afraid to fail; they’re afraid to fail in a new way, which is why nobody got fired for hiring IBM. Saying no makes people feel safe. Rephrase ‘Would you like to try this?’ as ‘Are you against this?’; Voss says one client reported a 100% success rate. His son learned that saying no relaxed his father: Voss would refuse before the sentence was finished, then ask him to explain again.

• 08

  Mirrors and calibrated questions make people think, and that includes your kids.

  Repeating someone’s last one to three words makes them restate what they meant, often hearing for themselves how unreasonable it sounded. When a teenager asks for the car on Friday, Voss suggests a label and a question: ‘It seems like you think you don’t have to earn that privilege… How can I give you the car on the weekend if you’re not responsible during the week?’ His son went straight to the vice-principal whenever he broke the uniform rules and listed his own faults; he was waved back to class with a free pass. Voss’s view is that these are human-to-human skills, not parenting tricks, and they work for good relationships when used to understand rather than manipulate.