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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Use tactical empathy, which means naming and acknowledging the other side's thoughts and feelings without agreeing with them, to build understanding and move negotiations forward. Chris Voss explains that the reasons a counterpart won't agree are often more powerful than the reasons they will, so clear those barriers first by letting them voice them openly (this point comes from the book/notes he's discussing in the interview).
Key Points
- Tactical empathy is distinct from sympathy or agreement: the goal is to demonstrate understanding, not to take a side.
- Labeling is the core technique: name the emotion or view you hear (e.g., "It seems like you're angry about how...") to validate it and get close to someone quickly.
- Genuine intent matters; people detect insincere attempts to flatter or act curious, so the approach must be earnest.
- Politicians like Mario Cuomo used the same method by articulating his audience's feelings without endorsing their views, and won them over quickly.
- Clearing barriers first works better than pushing for agreement, as illustrated by the Iger-Jobs example, because once negatives are aired, people more readily move to the positives.
- Shared understanding matters more than shared identity; common ground is only needed so the other person feels understood.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Label the other person's view with a neutral statement such as "You think..." or "It seems like you're angry about..." and then stop; do not agree or disagree.
- Let the counterpart respond fully, then listen for information you can use.
- Name the barriers to agreement first, asking the other person to lay out the reasons they won't deal, rather than trying to overcome them with arguments.
- Allow objections to be stated completely, without denying or explaining them away, so they lose their force.
- Make sure the approach is sincere; do not try to imitate empathy you don't feel.
- Voss's example from his terrorism-trial work: he told Muslim witnesses, "You think for the last 200 years there's been a succession of American governments that have all been anti-Islamic," and they responded with openness.
- Bob Iger's Pixar/Disney negotiation with Steve Jobs: Jobs wrote out reasons not to do the deal on a whiteboard, Iger stayed mostly silent without offering any explanation or pushback, and once the negatives were out, Jobs himself said the positives could outweigh them.
- Voss notes that geography can create stronger common ground than ethnicity, though he treats shared understanding as the real goal, not shared identity.
Bottom Line
Understanding the other side's perspective, expressed with genuine curiosity and without agreement, often unlocks a deal more reliably than arguing for your own position.
