Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference: Empathy as Two Facets

Chris Voss spent years as the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator, and Never Split the Difference boils the method down to one idea: you win by understanding the other side, not by out-arguing them. He is precise about what he means by empathy. On the Crisp podcast he corrects the usual reading: "Empathy was never meant that way. It was meant as understanding." Empathy here is a tool, not a soft skill. In the Big Five, using it well takes two facets pulling at once.

Tactical empathy is Sympathy plus Assertiveness

The empathy half is Sympathy (A6), the facet for reading and tuning into what another person feels. Voss's labeling and mirroring are A6 turned into technique: name the other side's fear out loud and it loses some of its grip. But A6 on its own makes a pushover. The second facet is Assertiveness (E3), the drive to keep going after your number. Voss frames the whole thing as teamwork rather than combat: "This style of negotiation, this emotional intelligence-based approach, is the ultimate collaboration." The trick is holding high A6 and high E3 in the same conversation, understanding the other person completely without conceding a thing you came for.

The research backs the split in a way that flatters Voss. When Galinsky and colleagues tested it, negotiators who did the cognitive work of figuring out what the other side wanted and why claimed more value; those who slid into pure emotional empathy did not always do better, and sometimes did worse, because feeling the other person's feelings can nudge you into giving ground. That is the gap between A6 as information and A6 as a leak. Voss's tactical empathy is the first kind: you use the understanding, you do not let it soften your ask.

This is what separates the book from the darker school of influence, where the move is to deceive or dominate. Voss is not doing that; his leverage comes from making the other side feel genuinely understood, which is hard to fake and hard to resist. If your A6 runs high and your E3 runs low, the book is a manual for keeping your warmth (E1) while finally asking for what you want. If it is the other way round, it is a lesson in why listening closes more than pushing.

Read the book: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss.

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