Women in STEM Bookclub: Never Split the Difference

This book club is for women in STEM to explore workplace related themes that are centered on women, STEM issues and leadership. Through these book explorations, we share experiences, exchange new ideas, and empower each other through friendly conversation and community.

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Title - Never Split the difference: negotiating as if your life depended on it
By: Chris Voss

Everything we’ve previously been taught about negotiation is wrong: you are not rational; there is no such thing as "fair"; compromise is the worst thing you can do; the real art of negotiation lies in mastering the intricacies of No, not Yes. These surprising tactics—which radically diverge from conventional negotiating strategy—weren’t cooked up in a classroom, but are the field-tested tools FBI agents used to talk criminals and hostage-takers around the world into (or out of) just about any scenario you can imagine. In NEVER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss and co-author Tahl Raz break down these strategies so that anyone can use them in the workplace, in business, or at home.

Throughout the book, Voss draws on his experiences in truly life-or-death situations to illustrate these techniques and offers scores of examples of how they translate into our working lives. We spend most of our days at work negotiating for something. Knowing the most successful, crisis-tested approaches to the process will ensure the conversation more frequently goes your way. What sets these strategies apart from other negotiation paradigms—i.e., the standard thinking in negotiations is to approach them as logical and sequential problems to be solved—is the injection of emotional intelligence and empathy into the negotiation process. This was the game-changer for the FBI, Voss writes, and these are the unique skills emphasized in Never Split the Difference.

Voss explains how simple these tools can be, such as your tone of voice, the types of questions you ask the other party, or even how you enter the conversation in the first place. Successfully asking for a raise, a new position, a client concession, or a change to the terms of a contract can all be influenced by the techniques outlined in the book. Voss was part of the generation that revolutionized and refined the FBI’s approach to the process of negotiation. And now he can help readers do the same in their own lives.

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Whether you love or hate the book, read one chapter, or happened across this description and found yourself interested, come join us for coffee and conversation!
Feel free to reach out for any questions or book suggestions as well.

Sincerely,
Jenny & Daniela