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I think this book was 2/5 stars for me max. Way overhyped and indeed, only mostly applicable to some FBI hostage situation negotiators. Even a rather toxic book I'd say, but some small things here or there are admittedly quite useful.

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Indeed. A lot of advice is only good when you don't need to maintain a relationship. I had a manager who kept saying variants of "How can I do that?" Within a year multiple people left the team. It works the first few times, but you get sick of that quickly enough.

My prior comments on the book:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29940964

If you follow his more recent material you get to the core - tactical empathy. While I don’t buy into all the Voss stuff, there is a Zen like quality to the discipline of truly operating the conversation from the POV of the other player while not losing your own grounding on what you want. It’s definitely made a positive impact in my own outcomes & dramatically lowered my rate of failure.

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