Section 1 – Voss's History and Discovering An Effective Negotiation

In “Never Split The Difference”, Chris Voss outlines what he discovered about effective negotiations over his 24 years as an FBI hostage negotiator.

Each chapter attacks 1 main principle. It then breaks the main principle down into smaller sub-principles. In the official book, each chapter starts with a story of a hostage negotiation that Chris experienced. He then dissects what worked in the negotiation, and what didn't.

The book starts with introducing Chris's experience and history.  Here are some facts:

• he started as a Kansas city cop (for 2 years)
• he joined the F.B.I as an agent (for 24 years)
• he first joined the F.B.I as a swat agent, then he was moved to the joint terrorism task force, and became an international kidnapping/hostage negotiator
• he spent 10 year teaching and consulting at business schools
• he currently has a company called “the black swan group” that teaches negotiation

I often consider why an author decided to write their book. Here is what I was able to identify from the first chapter:

Chris found the techniques he learned as an F.B.I. agent to work not only in hostage negotiations, but in customer service and parenting. Noticing that negotiation didn't seem to be an exact a science, but more of an iterate process, he sought to understand the science of negotiation taught at some of the most popular universities. He took a class at Harvard to better understand why his techniques worked, only to find out that the theory taught in class was ineffective, and focused heavily on humans as primarily rational beings compared to the reality that we are emotional beings.

We have an exciting ride ahead of us. Let us begin...