Black Swan — “Never Split the Difference” Chapter 10 Summary
You never know what you don’t know until you know it.
Find the Black Swan(s)
Things that happen and were seen as impossible until then — that is a black swan.
The origin is literal by the way. Until the 17th century only white swans had even been sighted so the term “black swan” became synonym with impossible things. Lo and behold, the Dutch Explorer Willem de Vlamingh found a black swan in Australia on 1697.
Back to negotiation, then black swans represent events or pieces of information outside our regular expectations that can’t be predicted. They are unknown unknowns.
For example, your sales negotiation is going great, but you don’t know your counterpart is about to leave their company. Your sale will fall through. It will shatter your worldview of the negotiation once you find out because it flips everything upside down.
But it doesn’t need to be a super secretive piece of information. It can be something obvious and/or simple that both you and your counterpart have missed, or something vital to you but completely missed by your counterpart. Strictly speaking, it’s something that shifts the interpretation of the negotiation up until that point.
Uncovering Unknown Unknowns
Every negotiation is new. What you already know from experience can guide you, but you can’t follow it blindly to the point you miss new information that completely changes the negotiation.
We must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the informational and emotional realities served up moment by moment in whatever situation we face.
Chris goes so far as to brace himself to have at least three Black Swans to uncover in a negotiation, that is, at least three pieces of information that flip the negotiation on its head once known.
But of course they are hard to find, they are black swans after all. You need to change your mindset to be more intuitive and nuanced in how you listen. After all, no one asked for a smartphone specifically before it was invented. It was up to product designers to come up with a phone that had not yet been seen in the wild and put it out for the world to see.
It’s the person who can best unearth, adapt to, and exploit the unknown that will come out on top. The one who can ask the right questions, not those that confirm known information or reduce uncertainty.
To wrap up this section with a more concrete note, remember all the tactics taught previously in the book. Ask lots of questions, read nonverbal cues, use labels, all those tactics that can make your counterpart talk more and increase the chances of learning that one golden piece of information.
The Three Types of Leverage
Leverage. That is the biggest advantage you get from uncovering a Black Swan. They give you the upper hand.
Wait, but what does leverage actually mean? Put simply, it’s the ability to inflict loss and withhold gain. Find where you counterpart is afraid to lose and where they are looking to win.
However, leverage changes based on time, necessity, competition, and so on. If you need to sell your house now you have less leverage than when you don’t have a deadline. If multiple people are bidding on the house, you have leverage to net a better price.
At its core, you get three types of leverage: positive, negative, and normative.
Positive Leverage
Positive leverage is when you have the ability to give or withhold your counterpart of something they want.
If someone tells you they want to buy your car — you immediately have positive leverage. You may or may not sell it, and use their want to get a better price than you would get otherwise. Now that leverage is on your side you can use all the other tactics to get an excellent result.
Negative Leverage
Negative leverage is when you have the ability to hurt someone. Not physically, mind you. This is more about threats than the hurt itself. “If you don’t pay your bill then I will …”.
This gets people attention because of loss aversion. It’s not that they won’t buy your car, rather they will lose something they already have — loss aversion.
Just a word of caution, much like aggression, threats can simply turn the negotiation south. Even if it doesn’t immediately cause problems, it will likely thicken the air for the rest of the exchange. Instead allude to that negative leverage. For example, “It seems like you strongly value the fact that you’ve always paid on time”, alludes to reputation damage.
Normative Leverage
Normative leverage is when you use your counterpart’s norms / guidelines / rules / moral framework to bring them around.
If you can show inconsistencies between what they say and what they do then you have normative leverage. No one likes to look like an hypocrite.
To discover a Black Swan that gives you normative leverage you can ask what your counterpart believes in. Listen to the answer and speak it back to them.
The Similarity Principle
Research as confirmed that we trust people more when we view them as similar or at least familiar. Belonging is a primal instinct. If you can trigger the “we see the world the same way” moment then your influence increases.
That’s why depending on the person sitting across you might benefit from building greater rapport with them. The more similar you come across, the higher the chances of getting where you want.
But keep two things in mind for this similarity principle, or any Black Swan discovery really:
- Review everything you heard — you will not capture all information at first listen and if possible even review notes with team members
- Use backup listeners so your only focus turns to listen between the lines — then the backup can listen for the rest
The Power of Hopes and Dreams
Something else to come out the rapport-building and the Black Swan discovery is hopes and/or dreams of your counterpart.
Everyone of us has their set of hopes and dreams they imagine but don’t even know if we can reach them. When someone displays a passion for those hopes and dreams and shows us a way to get there, we immediately start to follow along.
That’s another tool for your negotiation arsenal. If you can uncover the other side’s hopes and dreams, you can then come up with a plan to help them get there.
Because
Yet another tactic to win people over: a because reason. Research studies have shown that people respond favorably to requests made in a reasonable tone of voice followed with a because reason.
It’s not Crazy, it’s a Clue
Human nature does not like the unknown. It scares us. That’s why in the face of the unknown we can ignore it, run away, or label it in a way that we can dismiss it.
However, during negotiation the unknown is something we can embrace. It can be a telltale sign of a Black Swan. Pursue it and you might just find it. Back away and gain nothing for certain.
Mistake #1: They are Ill-Informed
There’s this great term in computer science: garbage in, garbage out (GIGO). It also applies in negotiation. Maybe the reason for the other person to seem crazy to you is back they lack information themselves. Maybe what they know is wrong and they work under faulty assumptions.
These situations require that you uncover what is that piece of information they don’t know and supply it.
Mistake #2: They are Constrained
If the other person is acting wobbly, chances are there’s something they can’t do and are not willing to reveal. It’s a constraint on their part.
Again they might seem irrational. But reality is that they were legally advised to not do what you need, because of promises already made, or even to avoid setting a precedent. You just don’t know it.
Mistake #3: They Have Other Interests
Third mistake you can make based of the other person seeming crazy: they have hidden interests you don’t know of. It’s not that they lack information or they have unknown constraints — it’s that moving forward is not aligned with their hidden interests. Your job is to find that Black Swan.
Get Face Time
Another simple tactic — get face time with your negotiation counterpart. Email, voice call, or even a video call won’t have the same effect as if you are physically sitting across from the other person.
It will create a different chemistry, and it will let you properly assess nonverbal cues during the conversation.
Observer Unguarded Moments
When you get that precious face time, pay close attention to the moments leading to the start and to the end of the meeting / encounter / negotiation session when people are leaving.
Thing is, people will have their guard up in the meeting. People are mentally prepared for the meeting to be the brass tacks of that encounter. But, people will be more relaxed in the moments leading up to the start and when leaving. These two moments can be revealing.
Speaking of revealing moments, also pay attention to nonverbal cues, like facial expressions, during interruptions, odd exchanges, or anything that breaks the flow of the engagement. These can be really golden moments to uncover underlying dynamics or emotions.
Overcome Fear and Learn to Get What You Want in Life
People generally fear conflict and as such avoid useful arguments out of fear that the tone will escalate and run out of control. This leads to accumulation of resentment, bitterness, and can destroy relationships even.
That is the whole point of Chris writing this book for us readers. He wants to fight those physiological fears that make us avoid the useful arguments. He wants to teach us how to overcome and fight for what we want in life.
In other words, we have to embrace regular, thoughtful conflict as the basis of effective negotiation. It’s never about fighting the person sitting across from us. It’s about a collaborative approach to problem-solving.
Fighting for what you believe is not selfish, nor is it bullying, nor is it just helping you. If you are an honest, decent person looking for a reasonable outcome, you can ignore your negative thoughts that say you are only working to push your selfish agenda.
Calibrated questions definitely lead your counterpart towards your goals. But not in a manipulative way. You are getting them to examine and articulate what they want, and why and how they can achieve it. The calibrated questions ask for their creativity to produce a collaborative solution.
Chris wraps the book with a request: be an exceptional negotiator and a great person by both listening and speaking clearly, always with empathy. Treat your counterparts — and yourself — with dignity and respect. And please be honest about what you want, what you can do, and what you can’t do.
Every negotiation, every conversation, every moment of life, is a series of small conflicts that, managed well, can rise to creative beauty. Embrace them.
