If you're in deep trouble, the person you want on your side isn't some real-life Jack Bauer; it's Chris Voss. He's been trained in negotiation by Scotland Yard, Harvard University and the FBI, where he was a negotiator from 1992 until 2007, when he retired from his position as the bureau's lead international kidnapping negotiator. He had a key role in creating and teaching the FBI's national negotiation course and was responsible for recruiting, training and leading its 90-person corps of emergency negotiators.
Voss has taught business negotiation at Harvard and is currently doing the same at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He is head of the Black Swan Group, a firm that specializes in business and security negotiations.
Voss and other negotiation experts say many of the same principles apply when you're negotiating a contract or business agreement of any sort, whether you're dealing with customers or co-workers. Here he shares the secrets of effective negotiation.
CSO: What is the key thing to know before starting a negotiation?
Chris Voss: You want to use it to gather information. You need to find out everything you possibly can through the negotiation process. You've got to take all of your assumptions and test them. That's why I don't even call the assumptions "assumptions" any more. I call them a hypothesis, because that requires you to test it.
Also see the companion article "Seven essential business negotiation skills"
Now, there's nothing wrong with making assumptions. The problem with assumptions is people never test them. For instance, they just assume the other person has the same beliefs they do. If you start from there, then there's always going to be things you believe to be true about the other person which are slightly off. If that accumulates on you, then it'll be like building a foundation that's out of line—you know eventually everything's going to fall. So your first rule is find out what their assumptions are.
The way to do that is be credible, treat the other side with respect and be patient. If you do those things, then that enables you to build a relationship. It lets the other side feel comfortable because you're credible, you're trustworthy, you're respectful. You will help them discover what the problems really are and what the answers really are.
A negotiation is really a discovery process for both sides. That's one of the reasons that really smart people have trouble being negotiators—they're so smart they think they don't have anything to discover.