Book Review: Never Split the Difference | 075

Assalamualaikum - hi friends! For this episode, I reviewed one of my favourite books: “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it.” Authored by Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator for over 20 years, Chris shares some practical, tried-and-tested negotiation tactics, bringing forth many interesting real-life applications throughout his hostage negotiation experience and how we can apply those techniques in everyday scenarios. I gotta admit… Before I read this book, I had zero interest in the subject of “negotiation” - to me. I have always perceived negotiation as something sleazy and manipulative or being forcing people. Besides, I always thought: why bother? I barely ever have to use it in my day-to-day responsibilities in my job, anyway. This book totally changed my mind. Turns out, what I thought was “negotiation”: that was actually terrible negotiation! As Chris Voss highlights, effective negotiation is about emotional intelligence, active listening, empathy, perspective-shifting, and even being cheerful (who would have thought?). Mind you, we’re talking about a guy who used to deal with terrorists, here! Not only did the book convince me to appreciate negotiation, it also completely expanded the ideas about what negotiation is about, with how practical and effective the techniques are in every day application: not only in the many facets and dimensions at the workplace, as an engineer, manager, subordinate, and presenter, but also in surprising other applications in my personal life, such as effective parenting, day to day conversations, and yes - even da'wah! Above all, this book did to me what I thought was impossible: to actually ENJOY negotiation. And to appreciate it as one of the most important life skills you can learn. I mean, one of the techniques of the book - Mirroring - was so effective, that the author said that people think it’s some kind of Jedi Mind trick. Dude. A book that teaches you to be a Jedi. Need I say more? Join us for our review of “Never Split the Difference”, and strap yourselves in for a paradigm shift of one of the most surprisingly important and effective life skills we can possess! -Faisal