When most people think of negotiations, they imagine big, high-stakes moments: haggling over the price of a house, negotiating a starting salary, or hammering out the terms of a business deal. But conversation is also something we do every day. It’s figuring out who is doing what work with your spouse, convincing a coworker to help with a project, or even deciding where to go for dinner with friends. The better you understand negotiation – which is really about influencing other people’s decisions – the better you will be able to deal with conflicts and opportunities, both big and small.

My guest has spent decades studying the art and science of maintaining that effect. John Richardson teaches negotiation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is co-author of never settle. On the TODAY show, John shares what he learned from conversation veterans like co-author Roger Fisher reach yesand FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss. He highlights the skills of master negotiators, including how to build reciprocity, uncover what people really want, and how to stop your emotions from clouding your judgment. We also get into the part of the conversation that makes people most uncomfortable: the back-and-forth over hard data like price and salary and how to handle those conversations with more confidence and better results.