When you’ve made some statement to a negotiating counterpart about their feelings or motivations, there are two magic words that you want to hear them say: “That’s right.”
When someone says “that’s right,” it means that they’ve come to embrace what you’ve said. They’re crediting you with seeing things their way. This transforms the negotiating environment. They now feel that they are dealing with someone who understands and respects their point of view.
The person saying doesn’t feel “that’s right” is a concession, either. In fact, it’s empowering to be able to say “That’s right.” Your counterpart will feel that their opinion, their way of seeing things, has truly sunk in with you. They may even feel that they’ve convinced you.
For your counterpart, this is the best of both worlds: they get to agree with you (and forge a bond) without feeling like they’ve caved (maintaining autonomy). This satisfies their basic emotional needs for safety and autonomy.
They’ve also given you a valuable window into their true motivations and desires. You now have your counterpart’s self-confirmed view of the situation. They’ve stated their position unequivocally, which you can now use to commit them to your preferred course of action. You have the roadmap you can use to get them to bring their self-professed beliefs into alignment with the actions you want them to take. This gives you a powerful advantage.
So how do you get your counterpart to say “That’s right?” Follow these steps below.
Shortform Example: Paraphrasing
To show how this works in a real-world scenario, we’ve created a brief sample dialogue between a car dealer and a potential customer. Pay close attention to how the car dealer rephrases the customer’s concerns in her own words.
Customer: “I don’t like the options in this car.”
Dealer: “OK.” (Intermittent interjection)
Customer: The tech is outdated, there’s no extended warranty coverage for the tires.”
Dealer: “I see.” (Intermittent interjection).
Customer: And the dealership isn’t offering anything like a free oil change or inspection.”
(Silence)
Dealer: “I hear your concerns. It sounds like you don’t like the stereo and Bluetooth setup, you’re concerned that you’ll have to eat the whole cost if you get a flat tire, and that we’re not taking care of you with free services.” (Paraphrasing)
Customer: “That’s right.”
What else can we do to set up this epiphany for your counterpart? Summarize what they’ve said. Note that this is different from labeling or paraphrasing.
Think of summarizing as paraphrasing + labeling. You’re rearticulating what they’ve said while acknowledging the underlying emotions that drove them to say it. You’re covering both the Presenting Dynamic and the Underlying Dynamic.
You need to understand your counterpart’s complete worldview. If you’re dealing with Bob, you need to be fluent in “The world according to Bob.” Summarizing is how you get there. This is not about you agreeing with or sympathizing with that worldview. It’s about empathizing with it and understanding it.
As an example, the author discusses his negotiations with Abu Sabaya, a violent kidnapper in the Philippines. When Sabaya kidnapped an American, he claimed he was doing so in exchange for “war damages.” In other words, he believed that he was engaged in a noble struggle for the rights of the oppressed Muslim minority in the Philippines.
Obviously, the American hostage negotiators thought Sabaya’s self-image and professed cause was utterly divorced from reality. But that was irrelevant: the negotiators still needed to show empathy for Sabaya’s beliefs to be able to work with him and bring the hostage standoff to a peaceful resolution. Over the course of months, they were able to identify and summarize Sabaya’s worldview and build the rapport they needed.
(Shortform note: Voss doesn’t actually provide the extended dialogue for how he and his team reached this breakthrough in the book, but we’ve created one here to demonstrate how summarizing would work in practice.
Sabaya: “We’ve been talking for months, and I don’t think you Americans are even trying to understand why I’m doing this.”
FBI: “It sounds like you think we don’t care about your motivations or ideology.” (Label)
Sabaya: “You don’t, and you’ll only have yourselves to blame when I execute this hostage for all the world to see!”
FBI: “You’re fighting for your people. You believe that Filipino Muslims have been oppressed for centuries by Catholics, even down to the present day with fishing rights. You’re resorting to violence because you feel that all the other options haven’t worked. It all seems so tragically unfair and it makes sense why you’re so angry.” (Summary)
Sabaya: “That’s right!”)
When they were rewarded with a “that’s right” after accurately summarizing his claims of oppression, they knew they had made the crucial breakthrough.
As crucial as “That’s right” is, you need to watch out for the fool’s gold of “You’re right.” They sound nearly identical, but they mean vastly different things.
For your counterpart, “You’re right” is an admission of defeat, a capitulation. They don’t get the feeling of autonomy that they get from thinking that they’ve brought you around to their way of seeing things. Instead, they feel like they’re meekly submitting to your authority.
This is not where you want them to be. You want your counterpart to think that they’ve arrived at your preferred conclusion themselves. “You’re right” does the opposite: it forces them to see things your way. As a result, they’re going to be much less committed to the conclusion that they’ve reached. This will cause implementation problems: they’ll try to wriggle out of their commitment, because they don’t own it.