1: The Washington (then) Redskins CFO was worried. And cranky. It was two weeks before the season opener.
“He walked by TJ’s desk and slammed down a folder full of paper,” writes FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
TJ was the assistant controller. He was also taking Chris’s negotiation class at Georgetown University.
“Inside was a list … 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: “It was 1998 and I was standing in a narrow hallway outside an apartment on the twenty-seventh floor of a high-rise in Harlem,” Chris Voss writes in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
Chris was the head of the New York City FBI Crisis Negotiation Team. At least three heavily armed fugitives were inside. Earlier in the week, the fugitives had fired … continue reading
1: The impulsive boss was known for his “drive-bys.”
Another “urgent, poorly thought out assignment that created a lot of unnecessary work,” former FBI negotiator Chris Voss writes in Never Split the Difference. “Past attempts at any kind of debate created immediate pushback.”
“I think I have a better way” was always interpreted by the boss as “the lazy way.”
It was the end of a long consulting engagement. Thousands of … continue reading
1: Chris Voss and the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit were stuck.
They were five hours into a negotiation with bank robbers who had taken three hostages at a Chase Bank in Brooklyn.
The year was 1993. The problem? They were limited by the negotiating approach that hostage negotiators were using at the time, Chris writes in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.
“We … continue reading
1: The call came in at 8:30 a.m. A robbery at a Chase Bank in Brooklyn had gone south. Three bank employees were being held as hostages.
Chris Voss and the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit had been called to the location. The Negotiation Operation Center (NOC) had been set up in a building across a narrow street from the Chase branch.
“The word when we came on the scene was … 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
