No. Just, simply, no. Let me paint you an example: A woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with his suit. But her husband doesn’t want to; he prefers brown shoes. So what do they do? They compromise, they meet halfway. And, you guessed it, he wears one black and one brown shoe. Is this the best outcome? No! In fact, that’s the worst possible outcome. –Never split the difference, p.115 Continue reading Don’t compromise
When your adversary say “That’s right,” they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it. Why is “You’re right” a disaster? Consider this: Whenever someone is bothering you, and they just won’t let up, and they won’t listen to anything you have to say, what do you tell them to get them to shut up and go away? “You’re right”. It works every time. Tell people “you’re right” and they get a happy smile on their face and leave you alone for at least twenty-four hours. But you … Continue reading Get your counterpart to say “That’s right” ✅ But make sure it’s not “You’re right” ❌
Send this one-sentence email. “Have you given up on this project?” The point is that this one-sentence email encapsulates the best of “No”-oriented questions and plays on your counterpart’s natural human aversion to loss. It offers the other party the feeling of safety and the illusion of control while encouraging them to define their position and explain it to you. Just as important, it makes the implicit threat that you will walk away on your own terms. –Never split the difference, p.92 Continue reading Someone ignores your emails?
To get to them, a great way is to mislabel one of the other party’s emotions or desires. You say something that you know is totally wrong, like “So it seems that you really are eager to leave your job” when they clearly want to stay. That forces them to listen and makes them comfortable correcting you by saying, “No, that’s not it. This is it.” –Never split the difference, p.91 Continue reading If you’re talking to someone who is just not listening.
But while we can’t control others’ decisions, we can influence them by inhabiting their world and seeing and hearing exactly what they want. –Never split the difference, p.84 Continue reading If we believe that we can control or manage others’ decisions with compromise and logic, we’re leaving millions on the table.
I am not yet ready to agree; You are making me feel uncomfortable; I do not understand; I don’t think I can afford it; I want something else; I need more information; or I want to talk it over with someone else. Then, after pausing, ask solution-based questions or simply label their effect: “What about this doesn’t work for you?” “What would you need to make it work?” “It seems like there’s something here that bothers you.” –Never split the difference, p.79 Continue reading When someone tells you “No”, you need to rethink the word in one of its alternative – and much more real – meanings:
The emotions calm, the effectiveness of the decisions go up, and the other party can really look at your proposal. –Never split the difference, p.78 Continue reading Preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say “No” to your ideas.
It rarely means “I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice”. Change is scary, and “No” provides a little protection from that scariness. –Never split the difference, p.78 Continue reading “No” is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo…
I started to see that while people played the game of conversation, it was in the game beneath the game, where few played, that all the leverage lived. –Never split the difference, p.77 Continue reading A trap into which many fall is to take what other people say literally
We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. –Never split the difference, p.73 Continue reading Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power.
Roadmap to Billions 