Decision-Making Quote by Brian Koslow

Koslow’s advice reads like a calm corrective to one of negotiation’s most common failures: mistaking friction for disrespect. The line “it would be wise” signals a pragmatic, almost managerial tone, as if spoken from someone who’s watched deals implode for reasons that had nothing to do with price, terms, or strategy and everything to do with ego. The intent is less about emotional suppression than emotional triage: keep your identity from becoming the battlefield.

The subtext is that negotiations are intimacy-adjacent. They trigger status anxiety, fairness instincts, and old scripts about being heard. “Don’t take anything personally” isn’t a plea for stoicism; it’s a power move. If you refuse to interpret sharp language as a character judgment, you deny the other side one of the easiest forms of leverage: provocation. You also avoid the trap of “winning” an argument and losing the outcome.

The second sentence gives away the real point: objectivity is not a moral virtue here, it’s a tool for spotting openings. “Leave personalities out of it” implies a shift from person-to-person combat to problem-solving. Once you stop litigating tone, you can see the structure underneath: incentives, constraints, face-saving options, the hidden “why” behind a hard no. It’s a reminder that most impasses are not personal standoffs but misaligned needs wearing the costume of attitude.