Christopher Voss Quotes

You can never in negotiations be totally predictable. The minute you’re predictable, they’re going to figure out how to take advantage.

If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that's the only way you can quiet the voice in the other guy's mind. But most people don't do that.

The first principle of contract negotiations is don't remind them of what you did in the past - tell them what you're going to do in the future.

Soft words and hard arguments.

You cannot just dictate at negotiations. You must also listen.

Success of negotiations cannot be guaranteed. If there is no attempt, then failure is guaranteed.

Know what you want to achieve prior to starting to negotiate. It's the golden rule but the one most people fail to heed. Without a plan, you allow the opposing party to define your goals instead of the other way around.

In most negotiations, you can't attribute success or failure in negotiations to one side.

I got really good at negotiating from a place of weakness.

Emotions aren't the obstacles to a successful negotiation; they are the means.

My goal is to be the tough negotiator but... not to air differences through press releases.

Conflict is good in a negotiation process... it's the clash of two ideas, which then, all being well, produces a third idea.

Solutions must be based on compromises.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.

My job is to come up with something that you like and you agree with that you would play wholeheartedly. If we disagree, I may not be doing my job correctly.

The only way to conduct an effective collaboration is to debate the things upon which you disagree. If one doesn't manage to bring the other around to his point of view, then whichever collaborator feels the most passionate about the thing being debated ought to get his way.

What is negotiation but the accumulation of small lies leading to advantage?

I'm a participant in the doctrine of constructive ambiguity.

You have to listen to adversaries and keep looking for that point beyond which it's against their interests to keep on disagreeing or fighting.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

You can't go to a negotiating table pointing a gun, but you've got to keep it over your shoulder.

Genuine dialogue, not rhetorical bomb-throwing, leads to progress.

Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage.