Never Split The Difference

FBI hostage negotiating techniques are about hacking the logical mind!

without a deep understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is a little help in the fraught, shifting interplay of two people negotiating.

No matter how we dress up our negotiations in mathematical theories, we are always an animal, always acting and reacting first and foremost from our deeply held but mostly invisible fears, needs, perceptions, and desires.

This book is about hacking the logical/conscious part of the human mind by manipulating the unconscious part and translating these hacks to time tested negotiating techniques like Mirroring, Labeling, Calibrated (open-ended) Questions, No-Oriented Questions, Paraphrasing, Loss Aversion, Normative Leverage, and many more… which are used by FBI hostage negotiating teams when people’s lives are at stake.

It mentions some of the behavioral psychology studies and experiments and the role of emotion on human cognition and decision making

It is filled with kidnapping and business stories and how these techniques saved human lives and also lead to great deals.

This is a general read for anyone who seeks to improve his persuasion, negotiation, or communication skills whether in a business context or day-to-day life.

I learned many techniques that I can use to communicate better and influence more when interacting with other people.