CHAPTER 01: The New Rules

Summary

• The narrator is a former FBI agent who is now the lead international kidnapping negotiator
• He is taken aback by a tense hostage situation where the kidnappers are Harvard Law School negotiating professors
• They trick him into a role-playing scenario where they pretend to kidnap his son and demand $1 million for his release
• The narrator is initially scared, but uses his years of negotiation experience to diffuse the situation
• He uses techniques such as asking for proof of life and using the kidnapper's first name to humanize the interaction
• The kidnappers are surprised by his approach and the narrator realizes his negotiation experience has transformed his everyday interactions.
• The narrator is a participant in a mock negotiation at Harvard Law School
• He is paired with a redhead named Andy who uses inescapable logic traps to make offers
• The narrator responds with variations of "How am I supposed to do that?"
• The group agrees on a final figure that the narrator is happy with
• When the results are shared, it is revealed that the narrator had "destroyed" Andy's budget and gotten "literally every dime he had"
• The same thing happens with the narrator's next partner, leading to him being known for his "special style"
• His approach is revealed to be passive-aggressive, asking the same three or four open-ended questions over and over until the other party gives in
• Andy is shocked to realize this is what happened during the negotiation
• By the end of the course, the narrator has a reputation for his unique approach to negotiation.
• In 1972, a hijacking incident in New Mexico known as the Downs hijacking led to a court ruling that "a reasonable attempt at negotiations must be made prior to a tactical intervention"
• The incident served as an example of what not to do in a crisis situation and led to the development of modern theories, training and techniques for hostage negotiations
• The New York City Police Department was the first to create a dedicated team of specialists to handle crisis negotiations, followed by the FBI and other agencies
• In 1979, the Harvard Negotiation Project was founded to improve the theory, teaching and practice of negotiation
• In 1981, Roger Fisher and William Ury, co-founders of the project, wrote "Getting to Yes", a groundbreaking treatise on negotiation that changed the way practitioners thought about the field
• Their approach focuses on problem-solving, separating the person from the problem and working cooperatively to generate win-win options
• At the same time, University of Chicago professors Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman were launching the field of behavioral economics, showing that humans are not fully rational and selfish, and that their taste are not stable.
• Through their research, they found that people suffer from Cognitive Bias, unconscious and irrational brain processes that distort the way we see the world.
• The FBI's Crisis Incident Response Group (CIRG) combined the Crises Negotiation, Crises Management, Behavioral Sciences, and Hostage Rescue teams to reinvent crisis negotiation.
• The FBI realized that problem-solving techniques were not effective in emotionally driven incidents and focused on developing psychological skills and tactics.
• The FBI experimented with therapeutic techniques to develop positive relationships with people and demonstrate empathy.
• The FBI's new technique was called Tactical Empathy, which is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence.
• The FBI's approach to negotiation was different from that of other negotiating institutions and focused on psychology, counseling, and crisis intervention.
• The author presents a new approach to negotiation, called "Tactical Empathy," that focuses on the emotional intelligence and psychological skills needed in crisis intervention situations.
• The book is structured as a step-by-step guide, with each chapter building on the previous one.
• Chapter 2 covers Active Listening techniques such as Mirroring, Silences, and the Late-Night FM DJ Voice, and teaches how to slow things down, discern between wants and needs, and focus on what the other party has to say.
• Chapter 3 delves into Tactical Empathy, teaching how to recognize the other party's perspective, gain trust and understanding through Labeling, defuse negative dynamics, and disarm complaints.
• Chapter 4 covers ways to make the other party feel understood and positively affirmed, and teaches the importance of "That's right" instead of "Yes" and how to emotionally affirm the other party's worldview.
• Chapter 5 teaches the flip side of Getting to Yes, the importance of getting to "No," how to negotiate in the other party's world, and an email technique to ensure you won't be ignored.
• Chapter 6 covers the art of bending reality, including tools for framing a negotiation, navigating deadlines, fairness, and anchoring emotions.
• Chapter 7 teaches Calibrated Questions, which are queries that begin with "How?" or "What?" and eliminate "Yes" and "No" answers, forcing the other party to apply their mental energy to solving your problems.
• Chapter 8 teaches how to use Calibrated Questions to guard against failures in the implementation phase, nonverbal communication, and how to influence deal killers.
• Chapter 9 covers the step-by-step process for effective haggling, including the Ackerman system, how to prepare, how to dodge an aggressive counterpart and how to go on the offensive.
• Chapter 10 covers the Black Swan, the rarity that can help you achieve true negotiating greatness.