Summary of Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss & Tahl Raz: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It

Note to listeners: This is an unofficial summary of Chris Voss and Tahl Raz’s Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It designed to enrich your listening experience.

Excellent negotiation skills can make the difference between life and death – a promotion at a job or the possibility of being retrenched or passed over, a sound or mediocre pay hike, and so on. In Never Split the Difference, author Chris Voss (with Tahl Raz) tells us about his journey. This is from being a key negotiator with the FBI and dealing with many situations involving hostage-takers and kidnappings to his current life as the head of the Black Swan Group, teaching negotiation skills to many clients.

Never Split the Difference takes us inside the world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the skills that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered most. He shares the nine active principles – counterintuitive tactics we can use to become more persuasive in our professional and personal lives. Life is a series of negotiations we should be prepared for. This book takes emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level and gives the listeners a competitive edge in any discussion.

Chris Voss is one of the preeminent practitioners and professors of negotiating skills in the world. He is the founder and principal of the Black Swan Group, a consulting firm that provides training and advises Fortune 500 companies through complex negotiations. Voss has taught for many business schools, including the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Harvard University, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, among others.

Please note that this summary is not the original book and is meant to be listened to as a supplement to the original.