The tenth and last chapter of Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss is called “Find the Black Swan.” This chapter is about finding black swans, which is the most important part of Never Split the Difference and the name of Chris Voss’s personal company.
In a negotiation, there are three different types of information. Known knowns are things you know as a negotiator. Unknown knowns are things that you don’t know but know to be possible (such as the possibility of negotiating with a new person since the last person became sick). The last information is unknown unknowns. This is information you don’t know and cannot predict, since it cannot be based on past experience. These are what Chris calls black swans.
The term black swan comes from a time in history when everyone thought there were only white swans, until an explorer went to Australia and saw a black swan. Before then, it was unthinkable to believe that any other kind of swan existed. Black swans are important to find in a negotiation because they are leverage multipliers. What’s leverage you ask? Great question, Chris Voss says there are three types. Positive leverage is when you withhold something the other party wants to have, Negative leverage is the ability of a negotiator to make the other party suffer through threats, and normative leverage is based on the norms and standards of the other party.
In order to find black swans, Chris says you need to know the other party’s religion. This means to know their worldview, because only once you know someone’s worldview will you really see things from their point of view. Once you know their worldview, you will often find that they will trust you. This is because of the similarity principle, where people tend to like and trust people they find similar or familiar.
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