Negotiation

Difficult people in negotiation come in many forms: those who are deliberately hostile and aggressive, those who are unreasonable and refuse to engage with logic or reality, those who negotiate in bad faith with hidden agendas, those who are emotionally volatile and unpredictable, and those who simply lack the skills or self-awareness to negotiate productively. […]

The 7/38/55 rule, derived from research by psychologist Albert Mehrabian in the 1960s, suggests that when communicating feelings and attitudes, only seven percent of meaning comes from the words themselves, thirty-eight percent comes from tone of voice, and fifty-five percent comes from body language and facial expressions. While this specific breakdown has been oversimplified and […]

Black Swans in negotiation are pieces of information that, once discovered, completely change the entire dynamic and outcome of the negotiation. Chris Voss borrowed the term from Nassim Taleb’s work on unpredictable high-impact events to describe unknown unknowns in negotiation: things you do not know that you do not know, but which, when revealed, transform […]

The calibrated question is a negotiation technique where you ask questions designed to make the other party think through your problem and propose solutions that serve your interests. Rather than making statements, demands, or proposals that trigger defensiveness and resistance, you frame your position as a question that invites the other party to solve the […]

BATNA, the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement, is the most important concept in negotiation theory and the most practical tool for improving your negotiating outcomes. Developed by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their landmark book “Getting to Yes,” BATNA represents what you will do if the current negotiation fails to produce an acceptable […]

The accusation audit is a preemptive negotiation technique where you systematically identify and voice every negative thought, fear, or accusation the other party might have about you, your position, or your proposal before they articulate it themselves. This counterintuitive strategy works because it disarms defensive reactions by removing the psychological ammunition people would otherwise use […]

Anchoring is the cognitive bias where the first number mentioned in a negotiation disproportionately influences all subsequent judgments about value, price, or terms. When someone throws out an initial figure, that number becomes the reference point around which the entire negotiation orbits, regardless of whether it has any rational basis. This is not because people […]

Tactical empathy is the practice of understanding another person’s perspective and emotions without endorsing their position or agreeing with their conclusions. This distinction is what makes the technique tactical rather than merely empathetic. Most people confuse empathy with agreement, believing that understanding how someone feels means you must concede to what they want. This confusion […]

Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, built his career on two techniques most people dismiss as trivial: mirroring and labeling. In high-stakes situations where lives hung in the balance, these simple verbal tactics created the psychological safety that allowed kidnappers, terrorists, and criminals to lower their defenses and negotiate. The techniques worked because they exploit […]

Most people think negotiation is about getting to yes. The entire conventional framework of negotiation training, from Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes to the standard MBA curriculum, is built on the assumption that the goal of negotiation is agreement, and that skilled negotiators are people who can find creative ways to align interests and […]