Charles Leikauf recommends Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference for finance professionals. The book argues against settling for middle-ground deals. Voss teaches a tactic: refuse proposals by asking "How do you expect me to do that?" instead of saying no, which lets you push back while keeping the relationship intact.
One of my favorite books for finance professionals is called Never Split the Difference. It's by this guy who used to be an FBI hostage negotiator, and he talks about how to negotiate your way. Now, it's called Never Split the Difference because a lot of times when you're negotiating, people will be like, oh, well, just split it in half. He was a hostage negotiator, and like, you can't like cut the hostage in half, right? Like nobody's happy then. You can't do that, right? Same thing like the story from the Bible where the king was like, oh, the 2 women are saying it's my baby. No, it's my baby. Well, you can't cut the baby in half. Nobody's going to like that, right? So the idea is negotiating to win, to get what you want, not Not negotiating for let's meet in the middle. If you're giving unreasonable demands from a counterparty, do you really want to meet in the middle between terrible and kind of bad? No, it's not a win for you at all. So, the idea here behind that book is one of my main key takeaways is you can tell someone no multiple times without saying the word no. Good example. You know, how do you expect me to be able to do that? That's saying no without saying no. And so, you can extend things through there. He also uses emotional intelligence at a very high level from tonality to to labeling, highly recommend Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.
