Something to readCompensation
Never Split the Difference
A former FBI hostage negotiator's book on negotiating as if your life depended on it
Why it’s worth your time
An ask at work, for a raise, a deadline or a bigger role, tends to go better when the other person feels understood before they feel pushed. Chris Voss built his approach as an FBI hostage negotiator, and with Tahl Raz he argues that people decide on feeling first and find reasons afterwards. It's a practical book, so read it with your own manager in mind.
How to use tactical empathy in a raise conversation
The book · About 5 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
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- Start with the idea of tactical empathy.
Read for that idea first, then for the tactics built around it.
- Open your next ask with their side.
Before your next ask, write one sentence that states how the other person sees the situation, as fairly as you can. Say it first, check you've got it right, then make your ask.
Good moments for this: before a raise conversationbefore you answer an offerwhen a no stalls a project
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
A kidnapping is a one-off; at work you'll be in the same one-to-one next week. The listening tends to travel well, while moves that put pressure on someone can cost more than they win.
What might make this harder
Ask what it would take: what would my work need to look like for this to be a yes, and when could we revisit it? Write down what you hear.
Questions people ask
What is Never Split the Difference about?
Negotiation, taught by a former FBI hostage negotiator who argues that people respond to emotion before logic.
What is tactical empathy?
The book's term for stating the other person's perspective clearly. His company's page says it builds trust faster than any argument.
Is Never Split the Difference good for salary negotiation?
It can help, especially its emphasis on listening and on getting comfortable with no. It's written for business and everyday life rather than pay talks in particular.
What it says, and how it holds up
Much of working life is negotiation that never happens across a table: a deadline, a bigger role, a raise. Chris Voss came to the subject from the other extreme. After police work in Kansas City he spent 24 years at the FBI, ending as its lead international hostage negotiator, then left in 2007 to teach negotiation and now heads the Black Swan Group, a negotiation consultancy. The book, written with Tahl Raz and published in 2016, carries what he learned from kidnapping cases into business and everyday life.
His company's page for the book says a no can create safety and open the door to agreement, and suggests asking How am I supposed to do that? as a way to push back without a fight. For a raise or an offer, the simplest piece may be the most useful: say their side before you argue yours.
Publishers Weekly reviewed it. His company's page sells it in absolutes: fair doesn't exist, and compromise costs more than it saves. It's worth taking the listening whole and the absolutes with some salt. If what you're missing is a sense of what the job pays elsewhere, that's research rather than technique: look up comparable pay first, then bring the listening into the room.
Other perspectives
Different takes on the same question. You don't have to pick a side.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.