Negotiating Skills - Labeling

Key points from Chapter 3: Don't Feel Their Pain, Label It from Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it by Chris Voss. 

As you try to insert the tools of tactical empathy into your daily life, think of them as extensions of natural human interactions and not artificial conversational tics. In any interaction, it pleases us to feel that the other side is listening and acknowledging our situation. Whether you are negotiating a business deal or simply chatting to the person at the supermarket butcher counter, creating an empathetic relationship and encouraging your counterpart to expand on their situation is the basis of healthy human interaction. They will help you connect and create more meaningful and warm relationships. That they might help you extract what you want is a bonus; human connection is the first goal. 

• Imagine yourself in your counterpart's situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn't demand that you agree with the other person's ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person's situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use.
• The reasons why a counterpart will NOT make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they WILL make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open.
• Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don't worry, the other party will fill the silence.
• Label your counterpart's fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, bur remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart's amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust.
• List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.
• Remember you're dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.