The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
Interpretation
Gaining an advantage in negotiation involves allowing the opponent to feel in control while guiding the conversation.
In this quote, Christopher Voss emphasizes the importance of allowing the other party in a negotiation to feel empowered, which can lead to more productive discussions. By asking open-ended questions, you shift the cognitive burden onto them, allowing for a more favorable position for yourself without overt confrontation or pressure.
In practice
Using this quote in a business meeting to illustrate effective negotiation techniques.
When you expect to get into a negotiation, you expect to be faced by a guy that's going to attack you, a guy or gal that's going to attack or that they're going to try to get the best of you. Two-thirds of us, that makes us very defensive.
Price doesn't make deals, and salary doesn't control your career.
There are three kinds of yeses. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. People are most used to giving the counterfeit yes because they've been trapped by the confirmation yes so many times. So the way you master no is understanding what really happens when somebody says 'no.' When yes is commitment, no is protection.
The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'
Very few negotiations are begun and concluded in the same sitting. It's really rare. In fact, If you sit down and actually complete your negotiation in one sitting, you left stuff on the table.
The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in.
The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don't have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven't had that fear.
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
When you are speaking to your team after a game, never talk about the kid who was the star of the game. Talk about what your other players did to help the team win. Be sure to spread the wealth... Then have individual meetings with one to three players to praise and reinforce. Make sure you touch them.
The responsibility of leadership is not to come up with all the ideas but to create an environment in which great ideas can thrive.
What can I do to create a healthy work environment? Because we have all been groomed to the normalization of violence and the normalization of abuse. And we refuse to live in that society.
A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.
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