While I usually take this opportunity to discuss mediation cases, I wanted to broaden the topic today to discuss a helpful resource to hone your negotiation skills. After all, mediation is merely assisted or facilitated negotiation. The mediation resource is a book by Chris Voss titled, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.[i]
Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator who uses the skills and techniques developed in that death-defying world in more every day negotiating situations. His approach to negotiations includes some of the same attributes and tools that I have seen used successfully in numerous mediations – all of which stem from the idea of collaboration rather than battle.
Who would have ever thought any form of collaboration would be advantageous in a hostage situation? The reality is that there is a certain level of cooperation required to successfully negotiate the resolution of a hostage situation because most hostage-takers don’t plan to take hostages. Rather, they arise out of failed bank robberies. They didn’t plan to take hostages so they have no real plan for how to resolve the hostage situation. They always want two things – money and safe passage to escape. Those are two things they are never going to get. So, one who has figured out how to work with hostage takers to resolve those crises is certainly well equipped to help us figure out how to resolve a mediation matter and be a mediation resource.
In the book, Voss discusses how to:
Establish Rapport
Create Trust with Tactical Empathy
Gain the Permission to Persuade
Shape What Is Fair
Calibrate Questions
Transform Conflict into Collaboration
Spot Liars
Create Breakthroughs by Revealing the Unknown Unknowns
His insights into effectively using active listening are particularly helpful. From building empathy to creating a collaborative environment, to finding potential solutions that neither side had contemplated to listening to what the other side is and is not saying are all critically important to a successful resolution, whether its hostages or a claim.
Chris Voss is a teacher, trainer, author, and coach. You can learn more about him and his company, The Black Swan Group, at www.blackswanltd.com.
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