1: When we reflect on our lives, what are our proudest accomplishments? Steven Kotler asks in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.
“Now think about how hard we worked to accomplish them. Sure, everybody gets lucky a few times. There’s always a handful of occasions when you get exactly what you want without having to work very hard to achieve it,” he observes.
“But are those the memories that … continue reading
1: Define problem Analyze problem Recommend solution.
This sequence is the “normal” or “rational” way of communicating, Stephen Denning writes The Secret Language of Leadership. “It’s an appeal to reason—a model that has been the hallowed Western intellectual tradition ever since the ancient Greeks. . . And it works well enough when your aim is merely to pass on information to people who want to hear it.”
But what if … continue reading
1: “It was just the worst meeting you ever went to,” Craig Dunn recalls in Stephen Denning‘s book The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative.
“We had insults thrown at us. There was a lot of anger and disappointment. People had lost faith in the firm,” he remembers. “And they had good reasons for feeling the way they did. We all had to face the … continue reading
1: Thomas Jefferson’s heart was set on politics.
The problem? He was “born quiet, contemplative, and reserved—purportedly with a speech impediment,” writes Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. “Compared to the great orators of his time—Patrick Henry, John Wesley, Edmund Burke—he was a terrible public speaker.”
Thomas had two options: he could fight this reality. Or, he could accept … continue reading
1: Imagine it’s Thanksgiving. Sitting in the living room is a grandfather who’s grumbling.
“He is cranky but the underlying emotion is a sad sense of loneliness from his family never seeing him,” Chris Voss writes in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
He’s grumpy because he feels like he never sees the family. And he feels lonely. So he’s expressing his feelings … continue reading
1: It’s hot. A sweltering hot summer’s day.
Three fugitives are trapped in an apartment on the twenty-seventh floor of an apartment building in Harlem. Chris Voss, the head of the New York City FBI Crisis Negotiation Team, stands in the hallway on the other side of the door.
Yesterday, we looked at the importance of understanding the other person’s emotions in any negotiation.
And while the fugitives were … continue reading
1: The date was April 1, 1993. Lou Gerstner had just been named CEO of IBM. For decades, IBM had been one of the world’s most admired corporations.
Now, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Lou had started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s largest and most respected consultancies. Soon after taking his new role, he asked his friends at … continue reading
1: New York City. September 30, 1993. It was a brisk autumn morning. The time was 8:30 AM.
“Two masked bank robbers trigger an alarm as they storm into the Chase Manhattan Bank at Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street in Brooklyn,” Chris Voss writes in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
Three bank employees are inside: two female tellers and a male security guard. “The robbers crack … continue reading
That is an understandable question, writes FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
The answer? Everything.
Because “life is negotiation,” he writes. “The majority of the interactions we have at work and at home are negotiations that boil down to the expression of a simple, animalistic urge: I want.
“I want to free the hostages,” may be relevant only … continue reading
1: The FBI had been put on notice. The U.S. deputy attorney general wanted answers on why the FBI’s hostage negotiation techniques were not working.
“After the fatally disastrous sieges of Randy Weaver’s Ruby Ridge farm in Idaho in 1992 and David Koresh‘s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993,” writes Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, it … continue reading
