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A review by apike
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Tahl Raz, Chris Voss
4.0
This book is a great foil for "Getting to Yes". While Getting to Yes presents a good review of a common-sense approach to rational negotiating, Never Split the Difference digs into the emotions, the empathy, and the tricks that you (and your counterpart) can use to better understand what somebody wants and needs.
As you may expect given the title, it verges at times into an overly-confrontational semi-deceptive approach, suited to the hostage negotiating environment that the author cut his teeth on. At one point it lauds a negotiator for explicitly lying, which IMO is straight-up a bad way to build a working relationship.
That said, it has a wealth of useful tips for steering conversations, not just towards a deal that will be tolerable for both parties, but an agreement that is great on paper and as actually implemented. It's chock full of example questions worth asking – tools to build your empathy with the person you're negotiating with – which are easy to pick and choose from as needed.
While the tactics deserve to be taken with a grain of salt, they were useful for this polite Canadian who is often tempted to quickly find an acceptable deal, when I would be better off investing more time in building empathy and getting somewhere great.
As you may expect given the title, it verges at times into an overly-confrontational semi-deceptive approach, suited to the hostage negotiating environment that the author cut his teeth on. At one point it lauds a negotiator for explicitly lying, which IMO is straight-up a bad way to build a working relationship.
That said, it has a wealth of useful tips for steering conversations, not just towards a deal that will be tolerable for both parties, but an agreement that is great on paper and as actually implemented. It's chock full of example questions worth asking – tools to build your empathy with the person you're negotiating with – which are easy to pick and choose from as needed.
While the tactics deserve to be taken with a grain of salt, they were useful for this polite Canadian who is often tempted to quickly find an acceptable deal, when I would be better off investing more time in building empathy and getting somewhere great.