Don’t negotiate, just listen: the most effective lesson in negotiation
In the book by Chris Voss, a former FBI negotiator, negotiation is not a game of quick-witted manoeuvres but a practice of patience and listening
I keep myself regularly up to date with non-fiction on the topics I know best and deal with most in my work with companies. Or at least I try to, given the eternal, unbridgeable gap between the number of publications and the time required for in-depth study. Alongside this professional pleasure – or duty – there is often a guilty pleasure, which is very easy to indulge in, particularly in the field of negotiation and sales: sifting through and choosing from the most bombastic and spectacular titles. I’ve thus picked up Chris Voss’s book (co-authored with Tahl Raz), which in the original already bore the grandiose title *Never Compromise: Negotiate as if Your Life Depended on It*, published in Italia with an even more blunt title: *Wanting Too Much and Getting It*.
Raz is a journalist and consultant, but the content comes from Voss, the FBI’s former chief negotiator. For this reason, the book is captivating and a page-turner, particularly for readers who grew up on American crime novels. The book alternates between brief theoretical sections and lengthy accounts of real-life operations: international abductions, kidnappings and crises handled by the FBI. This engaging and down-to-earth structure can, however, lead to a misunderstanding: the techniques may seem far removed from the day-to-day reality of professional negotiations or, conversely, appear too ‘miraculous’ to be applied straight away to secure a pay rise from your boss, buy a house at the price you want, or persuade your wife and children – as the inside cover already promises.
In reality, the heart of the book is far less theatrical than it seems. Voss describes objectively spectacular scenarios and contexts, but he does not present the model of the brilliant negotiator who turns a situation around with the right remark. On the contrary, one of the ideas that recurs most frequently in the text is almost the opposite: those who feel the need to appear brilliant stop listening. And those who stop listening miss out on information.
It is here, in my view, that the most relevant insights are to be found. Although peppered with ‘techniques’ – mirroring, labelling, framing, carefully crafted questions – the crux of the argument lies in the fact that these are not meant to steer the other person, but to create the conditions for them to continue speaking. The aim is not to impress the other person, but to understand how they are forming their decision. And not to let oneself be distracted by one’s own thoughts, ‘so preoccupied with the arguments supporting one’s own position that one is unable to listen attentively’. And then the aim is to slow down – a concept often repeated, especially in the first part of the text: s-lo-w-d-o-w-n. Slow down. Everything. Completely. “Rushing is one of the most common mistakes made by all negotiators. When you rush, the other party feels they are not being listened to”. If for no other reason than this, not to mention that by slowing down and listening, you can gather more information before acting.
Another point, which runs counter to widely held beliefs in sales contexts – ideas that may have been interesting at first but which, over time and through over-use, have become ineffective clichés – the importance that Voss attaches to ‘no’ as opposed to the supposed effectiveness of the ‘chain of yeses’ still practised in certain fast-paced, transactional sales models: ‘Nos are feared like death and carry with them a host of negative connotations’. But if ‘securing a forced “yes” does not bring the negotiator any closer to victory, and merely provokes the customer’s anger’, and ‘no’s’ can bring relief, why have we sanctified the former and demonised the latter? The seemingly provocative tactic that ‘No is the start of the negotiation’ is, in fact, consistent with the approach whereby ‘no’ is valuable because it slows down the conversation, clarifies boundaries and reduces the other party’s anxiety. It allows us to stop feigning agreement and start having a real conversation.
