Challenge Accepted: How to Keep the Hostages Alive (& Your Business)

person through these I will start with the assertive's voice those of you that have read the book know that we believe there are three types bite flight make friends from the caveman days so I'm going to start with the assertive voice it will cause them to be combative then I'm going to switch to the infamous late night FM DJ it will slow their brain down it's an involuntary response then I'm going to switch to the accommodators voice a happy smiling voice that brain will kick up instantly now what you're going to begin to learn about the Neuroscience rules is the Neuroscience rules are always rules it always has this effect on everybody regardless of gender or ethnicity understanding something is also understanding what's not being said what I didn't promise you is the degree of impact it will have and with all the skills that we teach you it will always have a certain effect the degree of impact will vary you will see this effect on each one of these people they will all react to different degrees some of them will be extremely pronounced some will be almost not discernible the takeaway there for the lesson for you when you implement skills if you don't see it have the impact that you've seen it have on others you say oh it failed it didn't work no it didn't fail you need more of it so the difference between type of impact and degree of impact and we'll be talking a lot about a lot of those things so I will use all three voices with all three people please look for the differences in how their brain works you know that'll be indicated by the non-verbals their voice will change their body language will change body language postures that they adopt will affect how their brain thinks if you pay attention to just that you'll get enough takeaways they'll all do a lot of good things did I leave anything out uh no the only other thing that I wanted to add when he's in the assertive voice there will be pressure there will be stress that is induced on the participant going back to what I said earlier about the discomfort that negotiations causes you watch how it manifests itself in each of the three individuals especially when he's in the assertive voice they're going to be taught or told explicitly what they cannot negotiate with him about and watch how quickly at least one will violate the rule and immediately jump into problem solving for an item that's prohibited that's what we do when we are under stress and pressure some people are willing to violate policy rules and laws just to get out from under that discomfort so pay particular attention to that when they're when he's in the assertive voice all right this is the scenario I'm a bad guy bank robber trapped in a bank you're the law enforcement hostage negotiator that's going to talk me you don't know how many bank robbers there are you don't know how many hostages we have all you know is you and your colleagues have the banks around it your job to talk me out you have four restrictions there are four things you cannot do please feel free to take notes should you choose to do so the four things you cannot do you cannot give me weapons you can't give me Transportation you cannot give me drugs or alcohol and there's no exchange of hostages you know like an exchange of hostages you can't offer to come in if I let people out no one comes in people only come out when we start we will simulate being over the phone you'll say ring ring I'll answer and we'll begin when you're ready say ring ring ring ring I need to call in 60 seconds or she dies how do you expect me to do that you put a car right out front you put it directly in front of the bank I come out I leave that's how you do it who am I speaking with I have no intention of telling you that you've got 55 seconds how do we negotiate if I'm not aware of the safety of the hostages you will find out the safety of the hostages as soon as I leave the bank where where's your leverage if you take out my house my Leverage is I'm going to start killing people right away if you can put that car out front so you've got 50 seconds what are you looking for are you not listening to me I think that we need to get on it you hear me tell you I wanted a car now you have 45 seconds I heard you all right so you know I need a car yes or no I understand that you need a vehicle five yes or no 43 seconds how do you expect me to get a vehicle that quickly for you so you can get me a vehicle if you have enough time perfect you've just agreed to give me a vehicle no we can figure out a way to do that if you give me some proof of life I have no intention I'm gonna give you proof of death in 35 seconds if you don't put a car out front thank you I'm just not sure that we can do it that quickly so you can do it I think that if we get going made it sound like the only problem is time I think that's the only problem with a lot of things so you can give me a call I think there's a potential to provide you I have 30 seconds to provide the car how about you give me something and then we can work it out I know I'm giving you 30 seconds I just don't see how we're going to get anywhere with this kind of adversarial relationship then I'll start throwing bodies out the front door I'm just start killing away every every minute if you want you get 30 seconds how do I know that you're not going to kill if I get you the vehicle because I'll be gone I just don't think we're negotiating here you want me to kill her right now I'll kill her right now but it doesn't matter to me I got other people is that your goal and have to send in Bloodshed if necessary it's your call can you at least tell me your name no it seems like this is the only resolution is us coming in all right we're gonna stop there nice job nice job now let's get started let me start out by reminding you one of the Black Swan groups great rules the secret to gaining the upper hand in any negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control if somebody gives you a take it or leave it offer in negotiations it's kind of only three possibilities number one they're either highly insecure number two they're under a lot of pressure number three they're testing you I recently spoke to Mark Cuban about this I did an interview with him on Fireside new social media app and I noticed before he likes to do the take it or leave it offers a lot on Shark Tank so I told him you know I think you're testing people to see how they handle the pressure to see how they can represent you because one time on Shark Tank he said look you got to take this offer from me you can't talk to anybody else take her to leave it right now before you speak to anybody else any entrepreneur looked back at him and said if I was representing you you wouldn't want me to get pushed around like that would you subtle side hit that's a no oriented question and he stopped and he relaxed for a second and he said no you go ahead and talk to them he likes to test people he likes to see how they bear up under pressure so let's go back to how we started they're highly insecure well they're under a lot of pressure or even they're testing you I've got four approaches for you for dealing with this number one the no oriented question which was pretty much the one that I just gave you a few moments ago you wouldn't want me to get pushed around if I was representing you would you it's an obvious no here's another one that can help with the other two types is it disrespectful if I ask to clarify a few points if they're insecure or they're under a lot of pressure of course getting somebody to say no makes them feel safe and secure and they're happy to proceed and what you want someone who's either insecure or under a lot of pressure to feel is safe and secure so this is a great way for our first response the next response use a mirror repeat the last three words of what they just said to take it or leave it offer your mayor would be take it or leave it with that upward inflection boy that upward inflection is great for making sure something lands gently even something you're afraid may sound harsh so again I'll do it for you take it or leave it that's gentle and it's inquiring mirrors are great for keeping people talking number three at gentle label here's a good label to use it sounds like there's no movement on any of these points no it's a downward deflection or you could hit him with the upward inflection it sounds like there's no movement on any of these points either way a gentle label gets people talking if there's no movement they're going to tell you that most likely they'll soften someplace read what they say read the look in the moment gather data with your eyes if you're on the phone listen to how long the silence is before they answer and what their tone of voice is when they do answer number four use generosity to your advantage in your label say you've been very generous it sounds like there's nothing more you can do now you want to get generosity out of people even when they seeming stingy and pushy and especially when they're seeming stingy and pushy while you feel they're being stingy and pushy they probably feel they're being generous I know it sounds ridiculous but that's what empathy is all about so if you need more generosity from the other side label it to see if you can nurture it and get some more that's a great thing about saying you've been very generous with someone who doesn't seem particularly generous to you but understand it's not about you chances are if they're being backed into a corner or they feel insecure they actually feel they're being generous so you want more of it label it and then the last part it sounds like there's nothing more you can do well it's very difficult to say yes ever even to a label so even if they do say yes they're going to want to say more they're going to want to keep talking be prepared to mirror and label what they say in response to this label or any of the things that you say and read their tone of voice and look on their face remember one of the Cardinal rules of negotiation in the Black Swan group and a Black Swan method is never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing the flip side of it is if they feel like it they could probably do a lot so this is the way to get them to do as much as they can do and to make them feel good about the process remember it's all about getting your repetitions in so practice with a friend family member or co-worker before your next high stakes negotiation to be fully prepared remember you don't get in life what's fair you get what you negotiate if you want to become a better negotiator click the link in the description below so if I'm uh if I'm uh if I've got hostages and I call you and I say listen I want a car I think I saw this one on your YouTube channel I want a car in 60 seconds outside right um would you what's the first thing you say to me you want to try yeah let's do it all right so I'm the you're the bad guy I'm the bad guy okay yeah Chris I'm gonna blow this woman's head off if you don't give me a car in the next 60 Seconds how am I supposed to do that not my problem you got 55 seconds all right so if I wanted to do it it's just is madness out here it's chaos I mean this is Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus is organized compared to the nonsense that's going on out there so even if I wanted to do it I can't do it in that time frame I'm sure you're the FBI you're the police you can make anything happen 50 seconds sounds to me like you're not going to give me a chance I'm giving you a chance right now 50 seconds Chris there's plenty of cars out there go get one of the cars and pull it up outside or I'm gonna blow her head off sounds like you have a reason to live I do have a reason to live that's none of your business no I'm I'm not trying to find out why I mean my first number one thing is to make sure that you live so get me a car and I will drive off honestly you've got 45 seconds I don't want to talk anymore if you're not going to give me a chance how am I supposed to do it I'm giving you a chance 45 seconds that's plenty of a chance like to me even find get all the commanders together and get them to think about this which they're probably not going to do anyway I will go and talk to them but how am I supposed to find them all talk to them get them to think about it in 45 seconds okay how long do you need all right now first of all I want you to understand I don't think they're gonna do it well then I'm gonna blow my head off that would be your choice see now so the other thing too is hostage negotiators are successful 93 of the time which is one of the things that I learned in the business which means seven percent of time they just ain't coming out now I we have to do everything we could possibly do in the meantime but our number one goal is not putting any additional people at risk like I get this question all the time like if you think it's going to save a hostage why don't you just give them a car and save those hostages well I can't put additional people at risk and by the way while we were doing that hmm I don't know anybody put a clock on us but we went more in 45 seconds it's true and what were you thinking when as we were going through it um there was all the questions were provoking me into all the questions you asked me felt like they were dragging me away from my objective in a quite a tactical way so I was thinking oh it's not this is annoying he's making me talk and I don't want to talk that's kind of what I was thinking and then yeah I mean the questions you asked were making me Ponder and they were making me abandon my focus which was to just get this car and kill this woman right see which was I wasn't asking you that stuff to get you to answer what I was really doing was do exactly what you talked about get you to ponder get you to think you know what Kahneman would has talked about in his book Thinking Fast and Slow pondering he would call slow thinking in-depth thinking where you really think about stuff and then you really make the decision and you really make up your mind instead of me trying to hustle yeah like I could hustle you into something really quick but it wouldn't be your decision and the whole point of getting somebody to ponder something is so that when they do come to a decision they own it when you said the thing about even if I wanted to do that like I couldn't do that in 45 seconds or whatever that I liked that sentence because it obviously there was a degree of empathy there so even if I wanted to it wasn't you know [ __ ] on My Parade it wasn't attacking me too much and you made me Ponder the reality of the fact that it's not even possible my demand is not even possible even if you you know were on my side so that was a very good question to to make me Ponder myself to realize that what I'm asking for is not going to happen she knows there's another reason why I said it like that too um because you know a lot of people if you ask for something in a business deal that they're not going to give you they give you the classic American lie I'll try um you know and and maybe it's not an American Life maybe it's a lie in the English language like me you know in any kind of deal somebody looks at you and says I'll try [Music] you don't get a good feeling no and you get all try enough times you know right away it ain't never happening yeah yeah so I didn't do all try you know I basically said I don't think it's gonna happen but I'll check because I'm trying to shift us out of an adversarial into a collaborative conversation and so then what I'm basically saying is like I don't want to mislead you I don't think this is going to happen I will be your advocate how important is that collaboration no relationship survives long term without collaboration just just ain't gonna happen so you're giving me the impression that you're actually on my side to some degree and that we're collaborating to find an outcome together an important fact she's a crazy thing is hostage negotiators have repeat customers if I get you out alive the chances of um you straightening out your life are not great and the chances of you ending up in another hostage you're high if you don't get killed otherwise and you got to have a memory of the last hostage negotiator trying to work with you versus a guy hustle Jen lied to you guy or gal so if you always look at all interactions as if you're going to have to pay for everything you said eventually which means if you lie you're going to pay for it if you did every thing you could to be collaborative then your counterpart's going to remember that in the future like well I didn't go my way but at least you got in line of me it's a comma you know it's common a thousand percent is karma I'm a big believer in karma very much I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and um right now I'm just going to be completely honest with you I'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months I go to the gym about 80 percent of the time so I track it with 10 of my friends in a WhatsApp group in this tracker online that we all use together we call it Fitness blockchain and I'm currently at 81 um so 81 of the days I've done a workout in the last 150 days right so I'm going to the gym about six times a week that's been a little bit impacted by The Diary of a SEO live tour but I'm trying to stick to it and so one of the things I'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all I eat is I'm having the fuel protein shake thank you heal for making a product that I actually like The Salted Caramel is my favorite I've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one how important is it generally in negotiations to listen because a lot of people you know kind of think they can overpower someone with right just talking at them right yeah and and what they're what they're called is um they can't hold a job yeah you know you you and there are a lot of people that are very visible that are doing that and in the moment they might look very good but what ends up happening is they're frequently initially extremely successful and then their success rates drop off a cliff and then they don't hold the job because they were awesome in their first quarter and had a continuing steady decline in their productivity until it went to zero and they they can't be tolerated anymore but everybody sees really loud guy or gal getting deals or and and they're the ones that make the most noise about it so your original question is how as important is listening there is no negotiation methodology that doesn't list listening is an advanced skill no matter what school of thought somebody's in in negotiation they all list listening is advanced far more difficult than simply keeping quiet it's critical and you will actually end up increasing the velocity of your deal Cycles by listening which a lot of people think it's really counterintuitive but you know I did I did an interview with Mark Cuban six or seven months ago and I talked about listening and he's like yeah you know if I take the time to to really hear somebody out in our first deal and pay attention to what's important with them then every deal after that will come to me faster having done it right up front and it'll increase the velocity of my ability to make deals with them because they'll trust me they'll know that I hear them out they know that I'm looking out for them and consequently you know it doesn't take me a long time to establish trust when we come back we come to the table we get right down to it and it really increases the velocity of my ability to make deals and a lot of people can't see that because I got to hear mine I gotta you know blah blah blah I got to find out what their point of view is it seems highly efficient but what it is is incredibly efficient long term hmm and then as it relates to speaking when you're talking when you were talking to me then in our little dummy negotiation um I noticed the tone of voice you took was very very calm you list in the book three different voices available to negotiators right give me a flavor of those three voices that are available to negotiators well there's there's three natural types um and humans five fly to make friends and these are the arcade man ancestors that lived either fought the Sabretooth tiger ran from the saber-toothed tiger or feet out a way to make friends with it and the indecisive caveman got eaten by the saber-toothed tiger doesn't have any descendants and we've got substantive reason to believe that that exists globally regardless of gender ethnicity um religion the three types the globe split pretty evenly into thirds got a lot of data on it backs it up our brothers and sisters at Harvard pretty much agree based on their experience Warden has pulled a lot of the same data comes very very close to the same and each type has a voice you know and the voice of the assertive Natural Born assertive which I'm actually a natural born is heard of is more than Donald Trump style negotiator you're attacking blunt Direct you know uh of Ivanka Trump once described her her dad Donald and said you know he's not blunt he's just Direct well he's just an example but you know what I think is direct you feel like you got hit in the face with a brick which is always counterproductive long term always always always long-term counterproductive inhibits your ability to make deals people get tired of getting hit in the face with a brick so it wears them out then there's the very analytical type um which was you know that soothing calming voice that I was using triggers a neurochemical response and you it actually calms you down neurochemically it's a involuntary automatic response now you can fight it you can fight your way back out of it but you can't stop me from getting the calming neurochemicals started in your head and you know with if if you're careful not to seem either cold or condescending that tone of voice is what the great TV interviewers use the great news anchors because there's a lot of there's confidence and calm simultaneously and people really like it and then there's you know there's a smiling voice a friendly voice and somebody Just Smiles when they speak that triggers a different neurochemical reaction the people that you automatically like right away as soon as soon as you lay eyes on them as soon as they start speaking you know and there's an advantage to that so I was using in an emotional situation and if you're in an emotional negotiation you know you want to go with the the soothing voice and smile sprinkle that in and now you kind of you get the combination of both of them and it's it's collaboration you're going to want to collaborate with me if I use that voice I guess it's an attempt and as you say to like pacify pacify them the other thing that I in chapter three of your book you talk about is by the way you got a pretty good voice you got you gotta you got you you're basically downward inflecting your voice portrays first of all it's very genuine but it portrays a guy who's actually really thinking about what he says and he actually listens oh that's where he can compliment thank you you're still gonna die [Laughter] this video is about labels the ultimate negotiation tools sometimes we think of it as the ultimate MacGyver tool what makes it a MacGyver tool well a MacGyver tool is really simple and Incredibly effective ridiculously effective to do your labels right you got to keep them simple stick to the format it seems like it sounds like it looks like you've seen you sound you look we have great negotiator that loves to say it feels like stick to that simple format we're intentionally leaving the word I out I is a thought interrupter a pattern interrupter when you use the word I it draws attention to yourself it interrupts the other side's thinking and you're using labels to gather information we know from negotiation they add this to gather information the crazy thing is asking questions is not always the best way to gather information labels work well more of the time than asking questions do labels trigger stream of Consciousness reactions you might say to somebody what are you thinking about this you might label them instead and say seems like you've given this a lot of thought or it seems like you're thinking about something here or it seems like you saw some things you like either one of those is going to trigger a much more unvarnished flow of thoughts from the other side one of the people who's really learned this stuff and is doing a great job of applying this in a real estate area calls it unlocking the floodgates of Truth talk happens to be a woman that's applying this and seeing the insights and not the least bit surprising because women have a tendency to pick this stuff up faster than men do that doesn't mean men can't be great at it also just said for whatever reason women seem to get a head start on understanding this and applying it really quickly this is emotional intelligence based negotiation one of the crazy things about this is that when Brandon and I brought these hostage negotiation techniques out of Hostage negotiation into the business world we didn't think labels were that big of a deal I can tell you now that we both use them so much that we can work our way entirely through a negotiation only using labels when you get good at them you respect their Simplicity and you apply them you can use them all over the place one of the main things that makes labels incredibly versatile is the fact that all three types like them a lot we've done a lot of polling we've got a lot of reason to believe that the world pretty much breaks up into three types asserters analysts and accommodators across the board regardless of gender or ethnicity probably pulled at least 2 000 people in this regard got a fair amount of data and in polling all these people and in different classes we've talked we frequently run exercises where we ask them of the nine negotiation skills which skills would you most prefer your counterpart use with you in order to make a great deal with you all three types pick labels as number one on number two so while you're still trying to get a feel for the other side and draw a beat on what type they are labels will always be your highest percentage shot at the very beginning when you're proceeding and then if you find out that they resonate really well with labels you just simply stick to them it's your safest bet and the way you go from being barely good enough to get by to being a superstar is just by increasing your odds a little bit at a time labels increase your odds get good at them practice them simply practice every day get your reps in and they will serve you well how much practice should you get in an hour a day make an hour label hour label at noon label over lunch label from seven to eight every day whatever time it is get your practicing make a cheat sheet of labels keep it by your phone your cheat sheets are especially include labels of negative Dynamics fill in a blank it seems like you hate X it seems like you dislike X it seems like X is a problem for you have those fill in a blank labels by your phone have them ready they will serve you well I just wanted to share a little quick a quick little sort of win that I had last week I was talking to a client who was requesting a discount from us they already have a discount from us but they wanted a further discount because of covered pandemic stuff so I'd had the first conversation where I'd where where the CEO of this organization had basically pretty I don't think it was subtext I think you pretty much openly said if you don't give me another discount I'll take my business elsewhere so we had a second meeting where my CEO came along I summarized the situation um let him talk for a while and then I sort of said it seems like if we if we're not in a position to give you an additional discount that's a deal breaker for you and he said oh whoa hang on I mean you're the one escalating this I didn't escalate that that's um that's you that's saying that that's not what I'm saying um and so then the conversation went on but I just wanted to highlight this little bit because after the call my CEO sort of turned and said to me I think oh I think he was right when he said that you escalated that and then I just sort of I stood my ground and explained to my CEO that um hey it was it was the subtext that I had been reading and B by saying that at a time in the conversation which we did end up agreeing was was appropriate it was just it felt a bit risky to him I think to my to my CEO yeah we we extracted from this other person that he wasn't like he wasn't ready to walk away like he had been sort of threatening me on previous calls so that sort of that's been like a real confidence booster for me because he was also a very uh very assertive unpleasant gentleman so I just wanted to share that but that's right is the difference now the question becomes does it work on social pass so as a kidnapping negotiator I'm working kidnappings all over the world Americans doing stupid things and this is an American it did something stupid in the Philippines and this is a sociopath that's got them and this is a negotiator that I'm coaching and we go round and round for months and finally and make no mistake this guy in a bandana is a murder and rape and killing sociopathic murder and machine does empathy work on social paths this guy's a sociopath this is a poster child for sociopaths we're several months into this and we're going to lay a heavy duty dose of empathy on this guy which is say everything they're thinking saying and expressed from their point of view until they say that's right 10 million Ransom demand for the American on the table but 10 million dollars for war damages for 500 years of Oppression from the Spanish to the Japanese to the Americans now immediately all of you are tuning out because you're saying to yourself I've never been in an argument where the person on the other side was bringing up stuff from the past it didn't matter anymore that doesn't happen 500 years of Oppression after about four months of back and forth I put my guy on the phone get a that's right out of him lay it all out you're not asking for ransom for the American you're asking for war damages for economic harm the south of Philippines for 500 years of Oppression from the Spanish to the Japanese the Americans the Injustice of it all you're not Filipinos anyway you're separate moral independent Homeland it's being oppressed by a current regime in the middle it's held up by the latest Colonial Invaders who are The Americans lay it on thick and my guy talked to the terrorist and laid it on thick and it was a moment of silence and the terror said that's right and The Ransom demand went away we went from 10 million dollars to zero in that moment it went away the sociopath let it all go the case took a couple twists and turns about four months later on Monday Thursday Thursday before Easter the night Jesus prayed in Gethsemane the American walked away walked away he's walking down a dirt road local farmer sees him says You must be the American who's been kidnapped he says I am the alert the Philippine military the military comes down picks him up flies into Manila they hold a big press conference the military says in a daring rescue operation we have rescued the American they gave him a ride you got him out of the country I'm back in Manila about three weeks later I connect back up with my guy he says you're not going to believe who called me I don't know who called you the terrorists sociopath the killer the killing machine called him and said have you been promoted yet I don't know what it was he said to me on the phone they're really good they should promote you hangs up the phone what's he saying in that moment and think the context in this negotiation the sociopath got nothing and he called his counterpart to say I felt respected by you I'd talk to you again we're okay which is the way that everybody you interact with should feel when they get done with the interaction regardless of how the outcome goes they should feel so respected and so heard that they can get nothing and say to you we're okay I deal with you again so Chris you know one of one of the hostage negotiations that you're best known for you right about in the book is the DC sniper case I don't know if people remember back in Washington several years ago you were very involved in that as the FBI's lead hostage negotiator can you tell us a little about what was going on in that case and what your role was well we um for those of you we thought it was one sniper back in Washington DC it's been over 10 years now and it ended up being two of them that were going around shooting people randomly communication could be actions negotiation can be actually it's a negotiation not just words well one one thing we always phrase I like is the most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know your rent that cuts either four there's no neutral ground on that it either Cuts in your direction or you'll be in a negotiation before you know it so we looked at what the snipers were doing as a communication that they wanted something they were communicating with their actions they were communicating through violence and we started and actually we found out we were right um because they got frustrated because it actually been calling law enforcement for a while they started leaving messages at the scenes of the shootings they're trying to communicate they ultimately they they wanted 10 million dollars so we looked at that as communication and then when we finally discovered it it was absurd as it sounds I was running the negotiation team the morning they called in to speak to us we found out that they'd actually been calling law enforcement for about 10 days you know it was classic ridiculous comedy they called one tip line for the sniper and the operator didn't know who she was talking to and she actually said no you've got the wrong number you got to call somebody else imagine that you know the serial killers call in now let me put you on hold while I transfer you they also they got um one of the executive assistants to one of the chiefs of police in the DC Metro Area they got him on the phone and spoke to him he thought it was a joke and didn't take a message didn't follow up you know yay and hung up on them and I think the guy ended up losing his uh losing his position after it came out that he'd actually spoken to him on the phone so it was a series of communication and so then the most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know you're in all right so if they're communicating via actions what does this mean what's the commodity that they're after how do they want to engage and we engage with them on the phone and it contributed to how they were caught and even more importantly it contributed to them when they tried to put forward an insanity defense later on in court it showed that they were conscious of what they were doing and what they were after so it's you know very much like what you said reading the other side you know you listen so you can read the other side figure out what they're thinking what they're doing so maybe not a life or death situation like you're normally working in but Constance was very involved in Michael Strahan leaving live with Cal getting him that job in the first place on Live with Kelly and then going to GMA and I don't know if you've seen last week's People magazine cover story so what can you tell us about those negotiations because I think for those of us that were just reading about it you know we were probably getting one perspective and it seemed like people were taking sides but what was it really like behind the scenes I think a big part of of what we learned was that description I'm so sorry everybody sorry negotiation with this it's a good startling technique and a negotiation right sit still okay so um it was intense um I don't know if any of you saw or heard about when Conan and Jay Leno and they turned it into a documentary and and I as a fan you know was watching and like how could something like this happen like these are smart people like these are top level Executives at the networks and I understand now so what I've learned about that is when you're dealing with big corporations people might be sitting this close to one another and they don't communicate so for us the key was over communication um which might not have appeared like there was over communication but behind the scenes there's a lot of communication over communication and we had to stop really just following what the media was saying because half of it is not true half of it is just the salacious gossip magazines which I hope everybody you know don't read and buy and what we definitely just stay true is to ourselves and just remembered that it was the same boss you know of both television shows and Port of ABC asking for this to happen so I think the key for us was you know you get the people that you trust in the room together you have the same message points and and we really just hunkered down and just wrote it out and so you know there wasn't a lot of press from Michael talking about this afterwards and then this article came out all these months later so I'm curious how you sort of negotiate the collateral damage or the the negative publicity and then come out with a with a cover story like this months later so people had offered a cover at the same time you know right after Kelly had her cover and we just said you know what this isn't you know we're done you know we did what he was told to do by the executives who made the move and let's just get through this and let's enjoy the summer and go spend time with your family and then when it's time to come back for not just his you know the new beginnings the GMA full-time but also back to football for him he still does NFL on Fox every Sunday he does have four children he was able to spend some time off that he hadn't had I think since I don't think ever um you know I played 15 years and then right went right into a sitcom and and then you know the Live with Kelly and Michael jobs so that's why we waited um and it wasn't about addressing it it was you know this is behind the scenes with me and my family decide that you know you don't get to see so that was it so I'm gonna tell you about a kidnapping took place in Haiti 12 year old boy gets grabbed it's over your boys and Americans says he's a dual National is the only American in the family that gets crap a couple interesting things about this interesting to me anyway you might not find them interesting what difference does it make that is a dual Lash well here's another thing about the kidnapping business they really don't like grabbing Americans no doesn't every kidnapping industry anywhere in the world whether it be Haiti whether it be Iraq you know whether it be Philippines they want to grab locals they don't want to grab Outsiders particularly Americans but wait a minute aren't Americans supposed to have a great big giant price tag on them on their head since you want to kidnap Americans well if you're in business what's one of the last things you want to have happen what do you hate in business what you hate is more government regulation you grab an American pretty soon Uncle Sam the US government shows up in your country with politicians with military people with law enforcement people with lawyers and they start interfering in the local operation that's more government regulation you don't grab American citizens because you don't need the American government showing up and telling everybody how to do things so the vast majority of the kidnappings I worked internationally when an American was taken the bad guys didn't even know they had an American which is a case when they grab this 12 year old boy now they've grabbed this 12 year old boy in a carjacking which is an interesting business model you know carjacking car with more than one person and let one of those people go they notify the family right away there's all sorts of advantages to this this car this model of kidnapping not the least of which is what happens if you grab the one person in that family that nobody likes you got a car you're still gonna get paid this is you got an asset you're gonna you're gonna liquidate the asset this is a business transaction where you got uh you get you guaranteed they at least get something out of it that's one great thing about the business model in Haiti at the time so 12 year old boys have been grabbed he's the only American citizen in his family his father's not an American citizen but he goes to the US government says my son's an American citizen you gotta help us and they tell him the FBI is going to be there to help you now I don't know what would go through your mind if you were told that the FBI was going to be there to help you probably maybe about 15 minutes later you might hear a knock at the front door and these guys would be there Maybe they'd even have on FBI hats to prove that they were fbias instead about 15 minutes after this father has told the FBI is going to be that help him he gets a call from some guy named Chris voice who says he's in Washington D.C and he literally says to me on the phone you're in Washington D.C How You Gonna help me now put yourself in my place what would you say put yourself in my place how long before this father hangs up the phone now put yourself in your place isn't this exactly what everybody that you deal with on behalf of Jones saying to themselves about you how you gonna help me do you have any idea what my challenges are How You Gonna help me how long do you have before one of your customers one of your clients hangs up the phone if not literally figured how long did I have with this father how long do you have on a daily basis if you check the data how long do you have to make a first impression which by the way I will tell you is the second most important impression I'm going to spend some time on First Impressions over the coming moments and it's the second most important impression what's the most important impression the last impression the last impression is the last impression let's go back to the first impression in that seven to ten second window that you have what do you have to establish seven to ten seconds do you know Trust trust and competence not confidence competence seven to ten seconds and the difference between competence and confidence because there's a lot of coaching to be confident a lot of people get a think they get a long way with confidence would you rather have a confident plumber or a competent plumber trust and confidence all right cool you say to yourself right I'm willing to accept that seven to ten seconds seems like a narrow window how do I establish that your resume correlates loosely with whether or not you know what you're doing you know this now your company's capabilities listed out in a value proposition correlate loose with whether or not someone can trust you to solve their problems if it correlated strongly you guys wouldn't even need to talk to clients you just slide your resume across the table email them your resume email them realistic capabilities and they look at your resume and go like oh this person knows what they're talking about wow these capabilities look good deal where could we sign no it doesn't happen fact that comes into play seven to ten seconds so how did I establish that with this father instead of trotting out my resume because I'd done it wrong before he used what I said to his father right Haitian kidnappers and not killing kidnap victims these days I realize that's really stupid because they kill each other at the drop of a hat but for whatever reason they're not killing kidnap victims now today Thursday and Haitian kidnappers love the party on Saturday night if you say the things that I want you to say when I want you to say we will have you sent out late Friday early Saturday morning he said to me tell me what you want me to do and we had to send out Saturday morning secret to getting in the upper hand of negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control if you're controlled oriented negotiator I got you you're simple you're really simple you're override of objective is to feel in control so if I make you feel in control I gotcha so and also the key to power negotiations is deference you cannot be deferential and project power and I got to tell you if you if if I sniffed at your control oriented powering on a guy and I'm a cutthroat you will have bled to death before you knew what happened and the Cutthroats love smelling that they love it because you if if and and it is a type I mean it's it's one that I've been typically been guilty of myself you know asserters want to be in control I want to project power I want to I want to you want and if he projects power how does he feel awesome and when you feel awesome as you guard up or down and so all you got to do to get your way with him is the feeling the emotional moment if you want to exploit him and take advantage of them just make them feel powerful State Department State when I'm when I'm overseas on behalf of the FBI State Department is in charge overseas the FBI is in charge of Investigations and negotiation strategy the FBI is not good at not being in charge and we're always in charge domestically and my first time in an embassy in the other country I'd be like all right look I'm in charge of negotiations this is how we're going to do this and state department will be you're not charging nothing we're in charge but I'm in charge of negotiation but we're in charge and it'll be a battle and I tell them what to do and they wouldn't do it so then I'd walk in I'd say you're in charge now do this and they go okay it's silly but somebody's determined to be powerful and be in charge let make him feel powerful and in charge create that emotional moment you have your way with them did you ever wonder what are the emotional intelligence secrets that FBI hostage negotiators use to get their way and whether or not they would do you any good in your business or personal negotiations after all if there's a bank robbery with hostages which I've negotiated and there's four hostages does the hostage negotiator says well I'll tell you what why don't we meet in the middle and we'll call it a day [Laughter] you really can't compromise when you're a hostage negotiator and that's that's the way that I learn negotiation so I'll I'll take you through a little bit of how I got to learn it and how I began to apply it in my business and professional life and it really started on a night in late winter in New York City well after dark I left the the FBI office 26 Federal Plaza and fought my way through traffic to get to a suicide hotline I was volunteering on the suicide hotline because I've been told that that was the best way to become a hostage negotiator the best experience and as a side note I will tell you it's the best way to learn how to really listen to people on an emotional intelligence perspective so I got to the hotline that night and I picked up the phone and I answered the phone and my uh hotline voice hello this is helpline which was the came to be known as the late night FM DJ voice which now I refer to as the late night FBI DJ voice but the voice on the other end of the phone just blurted out he's I I need your help I need your help I got to put a lid on this day I got to bring a lid to this day and I listened to him and I sense that he was frantic so that's exactly what I said I said you sound frantic and immediately I could I could feel a change in his tone of voice and his voice came down I felt strength come into his voice and he started to talk to me and he began to tell me uh his issue was that he was battling the disease of paranoia and he was going to go on a car trip the next day with his family and in he knew that on that car trip because of his paranoia he would get completely wound up and and overcome with the paranoia so since it was going to happen the next day that night he was overcome with paranoia thinking about the paranoia for the next day and it completely wrapped himself up and needed to put a lid on the day so as we begin to talk uh he began to tell me also about how much his family was helping him and I used something that I'd someone else had once said to me and I remember how strong it was because I was explaining to a colleague of mine how involved my family was and how supportive they were and at that time my colleague said to me it sounds like your family's really close and when he said that to me I remember how good it felt and how it just drew together everything that I was feeling and how I felt myself strengthened when he said that so I said to this the same thing to this man on the phone I said it sounds like your family's really close and he says yeah we are and so then he began and he continued to talk and he talked and he began to tell me all the things that he was doing never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing and it probably includes just about everybody so be nice to everybody today see how far that'll get you have an awesome day [Music] the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in I met the guy who started the website post Secrets it was about sending in your secrets anonymously he got a message including a brand new Starbucks coffee cup which proved that the guy worked at Starbucks and the node said I give decaf to people who are mean to me the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in for those of you that think you might be developing a tolerance for caffeine well be nice to people today be likable is six times more likely to make a deal with somebody you like be likable it increases your deal making ability plus when you're likable you're in a better frame of mind you're more positive you're 31 smarter so be likable you increase your deal making ability you make yourself smarter and you have a better day [Music] the last impression is the Lasting Impression what's more important than the first impression the last impression you can get away with the mediocre first impression you can't get away with the mediocre last impression make a positive impression at the end say something that's true Express positive regard Express positive hope for a great outcome whatever it has to be the last impression is the Lasting Impression exceeds the next conversations and it's what leaves the Lasting Impression make it a good one [Music] thank you foreign I think I'm a terrible negotiator so let's start with that we will definitely today cover some of the principles of that but what I really want to talk about is in the book when you're talking about some of the scenarios that you were in where people it's a life and death situation right and you're the line of defense how do you deal with that emotionally like that's my job feels high stress but that's no one's life is on the line how do you deal with that yeah it was a couple things I mean first of all you just don't know any better maybe when you first started but not long term uh you know training in the FBI they started out really good um I mean they hit you you know with the Tyson uh line everybody is playing until they get punched like the second day of the negotiation training the FBI they hit you square between the eyes of something really hard like a real story or yeah yeah you know they spent they spend the first day laying out a philosophy which if you understand the nuances of the words I still completely agree with hostages never been killed on Deadline in the United States ever and so like you get kind of comfortable and you got a sense that negotiation is pretty successful overall I mean in reality it's about a 93 success rate whoa and then and then the very next day they present a scenario where it looks like a hostage got murdered right on Deadline right in front of everybody and you just like I mean you were hit in the head can I use the words you use in the book because this was when I realized I don't want your job or the one that you had back then you said she was shot twice in the back with a shotgun right almost cut her in half as she flew through the glass window yeah and I thought God damn like I I don't know I'd find a way but Chris I don't know how I'd come back from that like that would that would damage me in ways that I can't imagine well that that ends up kind of getting into a secondary characteristic because then when I was running a program I went out of my way to look for negotiators that have been involved in The Siege where somebody getting killed and they bounced back you know typically with a success rate that that's that high if anytime you're under less than double digits of a job sieges whatever you want to call them probably Everything You Touch Is going to turn out good and you're going to get a little overconfident you know once you start climbing past double digits I mean odds are starting to run against you and what happens with pretty much every time is The Negotiator will be like you know I didn't get into this to watch people die I'm going to find another thing to do or they're going to say I'm never gonna let this happen again and those people will double down and they'll be more courageous and speaking truth to command whether it be an ambassador an Onsen commander and basically saying like now we can't do it like this I don't care what you're involved in an operation where somebody got killed yeah so how did you how did you did you need to put yourself back together or do you not react like that let's start with that question um I've been uh repeating one phrase in my head for a long time leading up to that that I didn't really realize what it meant my old boss Gary nessner used to always teach us best chance of success what we're doing is the best chance of success and so then when the Burnham cerbero case in the Philippines a lot of people got killed and finally the quick breakdown what happened um uh Gracia and Martin Burnham and another American citizen named Guillermo sombero got scooped up in a dive Resort in the Philippines and a region of the Philippines every thought was completely safe now the bad guys the abusaf were looking for westerners they've been a Siege earlier in the same year in another part of the Philippines where they looking for Americans and westerners they got nothing but Western Europeans any ultimately that case was a train wreck which I was not involved in because there were no Americans there and the bad guys ended up scoring about 20 million dollars as a result oh which made a rival gang jealous of the score so they go out and they do an even more daring raid they cross like 400 miles of open ocean on these lousy little boats scooped everybody up in a dive Resort and ended up getting three Americans and a bunch of Filipinos um sabero ends up getting murdered by the the terrorists about uh three-ish weeks in 21-ish days how how does The Siege go on for that long oh this late thing lasted 13 months so yeah that was just that was just the beginning that wasn't even the opening act so did they kill them to make a point to just prove like we're serious well you know they were Western American arrogance if you will when sabriel finally got killed or got killed early on you know there had been Filipinos the bad guys were killing the Filipinos regularly like it was no big deal and I can remember at that point in time when we try to stir up a little outrage over it I thought you know we have sat here and not really said much at all well these Filipinos are getting beheaded now all of a sudden we want everybody to be bent out of shape and I remember thinking like if I if I was a host country my reaction would be like oh now it's important to you so um but that the group that was doing it at the time I mean there were they did all the bad things that that terrorist murders do I mean all of them how do you so one was that the first time that you were on a call where somebody got killed as a first kidnapping that I was directly involved in where somebody or people were getting killed yes all right so when the first body shows up what how are you the one talking to them now we coached okay uh one of the reasons why you know what I'm doing now is applicable uh the the Black Swan method is based on hostage negotiation which is universal human nature everybody's human so I could show up in any country I mean literally any country any culture Philippines Nigeria Cape Town Baghdad all I need to do is find somebody that's coachable and that person probably knows the market if you will and I understand the human wiring so we put together their their knowledge of the market in very general terms and my knowledge of how to get people to engage and then we can negotiate anywhere when the first body comes out what happens to you it's the first time that this is gonna awry we're in the seven percent now yeah that don't go well it for me when I think about the way that that would like impact my mind and force me to like regroup did it knock you off or are you just laser focused well you got to keep wrong because the case was still ongoing and so no time for emotions right now is that what you're telling yourself uh yeah kind of probably you know we just I mean you got no choice case is still going on you gotta you got a team you want to go fast go alone you want to go far go as a team you can always run screaming from the building but really and this this is where life gets interesting for me is that by Nature I would say I'm a run screaming from the building person but I had to flip it all because I don't respect that and right in discovering that you don't respect your initial impulse becomes a fascinating Journey if you're willing to walk it so I'm always curious if if other people are having to do what I have to do to keep myself centered in there or if it's just like nah it didn't occur to me to run screaming from the building well when you're when you're in the midst of you know when you're in the battle I mean you can't you can't you can't bail I mean people are looking at you to lead there are other people's lives that are still on so that's your idea you wouldn't allow yourself to do that probably yeah okay now let's we're back in the Philippines the first body just gets dropped off you obviously decide that you're going to get stronger you don't want it to happen again how do you like are you just really good at re-centering yourself emotionally or have you are is it a meditative practice like when the body hits I I know what that would be like for me that Rush of Blood to my head where my ears almost feel like they're closing in you can hear your heartbeat beating in your ears um how did you did that happen and you had to calm yourself down or does that just not happen and you're just so laser focused well it was principally because we were still in the midst of The Siege there was still two still two Americans whose lives were at stake and up to that point in time the intergovern the intergovernmental organization was probably at its worst like we had previously gotten through a case and everybody had gotten away with kind of half cooperating and the bodies hadn't been the case we just finished uh just a couple of months earlier like nobody got killed and it's a little bit like like success you went you know a football analogy again it's tough for a football team to repeat after they won the Super Bowl because people a little more focused on their own success versus Team success once they reach the Pinnacle so the cooperation in the early part of the second case was horrible I mean horrible because they'd gotten away with it previously and there was no body count but now there was there was people were dying so we really had to we got arms more around the case we pushed a little harder on cooperation people got a little more serious about not cooperating which in the long run 12 months later was when the final round uh two out of three remaining Americans got killed in a botched rescue attempt and the the case had gotten really ugly again at that point now that one hit Me Harder than the first one because in the first one nobody had been cooperating with us so I felt less responsible for the outcome because government of the Philippines was playing games with us you know they they they felt out of control in the last case so they gave us a guy who was supposed to handle the negotiations that was just completely going missing in action on a regular basis when he was supposed to be with us I mean he went and they pulled him right after the first series of deaths they were like all right this ain't working out so good so I felt you know we still had the case going and I hadn't got my arms wrapped around it that well now 12 months later I'd had my arms wrapped around it and then when Martin Burnham when the ward came in then he got killed that that hit me that was that was a real I'll never forget that moment I was I was at home in the U.S when I when I got the call that he'd been killed back for me at the time was difficult uh worst moment of my professional career one of my worst personal moments until I'm listening to a case a couple years later listening to a negotiator talk about how hard it was on him when a baby got killed in Siege oh God and I remember thinking at the time and it was a guy had a tremendous amount of respect for I thought hard on you that wasn't your relative and then when I thought about that I thought and how am I you know feeling sorry for myself over Martin Burnham's death because he wasn't my father he wasn't you know my spouse he was my brother you know I I got no right feeling bad about this or at least to the extent that his family members though so that you know that was a bit of you know the overall Journey that putting things in perspective like you asked to be in the middle of this stuff it's a volunteer job you're gonna feel sorry for yourself when you volunteered that's probably out of perspective why did you volunteer you know I I found myself I was in crisis response I was a member of the FBI SWAT team and I had re-injured my knee and I wanted to stay in crisis response I liked crisis response people got to make up their mind you know you can't go well let's sleep on this you know let's give this 24 hours to think about it you know you can't do that you get you know you got to make a decision and I've always been in favor of decision making so I've been a SWAT guy and we had hostage negotiators and it was a little bit like what we were talking about earlier you know some stuff is a lot harder than it looks from the outside oh yeah and I literally remember thinking to myself I talk to people every day I could talk to terrorists how hard could it be you know my son and I joked the divorce family motto is how hard could it be which is a little bit like you know it's a little bit like the redneck's famous last words hey watch this yeah hold my beer on my beer so uh but then I got into it and I've been volunteering when I finally got trained I got volunteered on a suicide hotline and then when I'm in it I'm like I'm around these extraordinary people that are doing phenomenal things with words I mean with words not actual actions just words making a huge difference and being in the middle of these sieges and making a difference simply by what they said and I thought nah you know I could get into this this this this could be good it was and so how does that Journey begin of learning what to say like what are they what are the sort of magic words like take us back to the Philippines the bodies start coming out how do you talk somebody down like that like it it just seems like all hope is lost once they kill the first person there's no backing out Yeah man they still get more people that are at stake and so you you can't not communicate and you know it's kind of like any other negotiation where the other side is doing stuff that is just not in their interest but they're absolutely convinced that they're right I mean these guys want to get paid and negotiation is not what it is to you it's what it is to the other side you get all bent out of shape that it's a horrific horrible thing that was something I heard you say I think in in an interview yeah so there is no such thing as logical there's only what matters to you yeah I was like oh my God that is so true you literally just cut through decades worth of Economics textbooks that try to make people seem rational with that one said that that the second I heard you say I was like oh my God that is absolutely true there is no such thing as logical there's only what matters to you yeah okay so is that like when you come into a situation like that are you just asking yourself what matters to this person yeah is that is that the most funniest question what matters then what matters and and then ultimately people make up their mind principally on what they perceive the loss to be um and that's that's human nature doesn't matter the scenario when you say the loss the loss that led them to do this or what losing in that scenario would look like gotta look at both lost a drum to the table in the first place to take the action and then what loss are they avoiding by the action and you want to get in their head and find out what it is and since what loss are they avoiding is all perception you know vision of the future then depending upon how you got in their head if you're in there by invitation which is the whole point of empathy or the Tactical application of empathy to get in By Invitation since you're in there by the invitation then the idea is to get them to look at another loss so if it's a kidnapping it's a question that is is seems as um merciless as how are you going to get paid if you kill people how are we gonna how are we gonna collaborate you know how much are you losing by getting rid of hostages when you could have gotten paid for them because somebody's going to scare up the money for the hostage right somebody's going to a hostage negotiator's real job internationally is to make sure that if somebody scares up that money that there's enough of a trail left that you can hunt them down afterwards it's exactly why you give a bank teller bait money you don't want the bank teller to get shot over money now you also don't want the bank robber to leave the bank with the entire contents of the Vault you give them enough money he said I Bank tell it doesn't get shot the bad guy leaves and you chase him down afterwards that's the way to save lives and put the bad guys out of business if you want to get them focused back on the money again and then if they kill more hostages it's their loss and that's when they start to think like all right well maybe we made our point you know let them let them let them feel that way who cares how they feel as long as you get what you want and that's the idea to try to re-engineer the outcome that's really interesting okay so let's talk about what makes somebody a good negotiator what does the smarter look like so if all of this is about two lines of code like so much of your book revolves around once you understand how people are wired once you understand what their religion is once you understand their two lines of code we become controllable isn't the right word but we become movable influenceable if that's a word so how do we begin to suss that out so when you're sitting across the table and I like I know that a lot of this deploys against business negotiations but I want to keep it when lives are on the line so ultra high stakes literal life and death what are you asking what are you looking for how much of like the fact that you guys have these teams and everybody's broken up okay you're looking for positive statements you're looking for negative walk us through that what what's the setup and then how are we going to tease out this information well yeah the setup is yeah you know we're gonna pull together a team because there's so much in what's said and the way it's said even more in the way it said if there's just there's more information coming off a person if even if you can't see them there's more information that you can keep up with if you're not trying to respond and then you know you formulate a statement in your mind and the amount of time that you're formulating a statement you're not listening so there's just more data there than one person can handle so we built a team concept and we had different people listen for different things and the more we thought about it like how long did the conversation go how much profanity which is you know emotional adjectives how many emotional adjectives were in there negative emotional adjectives as there's few as the conversations get longer and there's fewer negative emotional adjectives you're making progress it's never straight line so it's going to go and come so you know what's our pulse what's our frequency and then would people really start listening for the nuances and you you get five people together I mean if you want to listen for everything you probably need at least five people keeping track of everything and at then then the patterns start to emerge really fast or like in a in a tractor man Siege in DC and tractor man yeah Dwight Watson drove a tractor to the middle of Washington DC in 2003 just before the beginning of the first Iraq War and his family had been crushed by the tobacco industry settlement they were no longer able to farm and sell enough tobacco you know I don't know but this the tobacco industry settlement ended up crushing his family business he tried to protest in DC a couple times got legal permits to protest nobody cared you know save the tobacco farmer that ain't exactly a hashtag that's real popular yeah and it's not their fault that that's how they grew up making a living which was completely legal acceptable and nothing wrong and in the world suddenly decides it's a bad thing so we protest a couple years in a row nobody cares so he rolls back into DC now with his tractor and his and his trailer and his his uh 4x4 and claims he's got bombs which gets everybody's attention as a way of doing it yeah yeah you'll get somebody's attention to work in a case Park police negotiators were backing them up we're coaching them we're doing all the analysis for him you know we're the team that we put up around him because we work a good team and we get to the point where he's found a face-saving way to surrender you know he said I was in the 82nd Airborne the 82nd Airborne parachutes Behind Enemy Lines and you're there for 72 hours with no backup you can withdraw so basically he's agreed to come out after 72 hours now the problem is he's a volatile dude and since we don't know for sure whether or not he's got explosives in a fit of rage if he goes the wrong direction the sniper's got a green light on and we're thinking like all right we got to keep this guy from getting himself killed because when you're in a rage you're going to do something stupid and there's a very specific protocol where we suspect the explosives might be and if he makes a move for the explosives we cannot wait and find out if they're there and so we're thinking like we gotta get this guy out of here in less than 72 hours because that's just too much for for stable Behavior we cannot expect them to stay cool for 72 hours so there's a disagreement within in the negotiation cell as to when he said he's going to come out and I look at the negotiators and I go when's do I coming out and I go like he's coming out the mall and I said ah I don't think he is I think we're still 36 hours away you know we're not we're not eight hours away well we'll call him and ask him and I'm like hold on hold on hold it before we call him in the event he's not coming out tomorrow morning what are we going to say to get him to change his mind and we've heard all this military stuff all this hyper masculine stuff and buried in the military jargon and the hyper masculine stuff they're hints of his religion which is Christianity just hints of it just hints and Winnie Miller uh female negotiator on my team sit in the back of the room and what do we say what do we say what do we say and when he goes tell him tomorrow's a dawn of the third day because you know the Christian religion Jesus crucified on Friday he gets up on Sunday that's 48 Hours That Ain't three days that's not 72. it's one day to Saturday it's two days to Sunday so we're thinking about this we're like yeah okay the owner of the third day so we call him back on the phone they go Dwight when are you coming out you're coming out tomorrow right he goes no I'm not coming out tomorrow and then a negotiator brilliantly because delivery is as important as Awards she brilliantly says the white tomorrow's the dawn of the third day as his long silence on the other end of the line because I'll come out tomorrow as she saved his life because I promise you the 24 more hours he'd have cracked and he'd have made some move where the sniper would have taken him out and we did not want that to happen by this point in time we're talking to this and it's this poor schmuck has just been crushed he's tried to get the world's attention we don't think he's got bombs but we don't know he doesn't have bombs and we can't take that chance we got to get him out of there before he gets himself killed and so that was kind of you know here's a guy doing something that looked really bad but there were still possibly to your point what's inside somebody you know what are those kernels those groins that are still in there that maybe we can uncover them maybe we can reach any reach and and we got him out he came out that nobody nobody got hurt okay so that was a case of literally knowing their religion and also there's something in there about knowing that he needs to save face and the military thing about 72 hours and having an honorable exit and all of that right look Chris you said at the beginning the devil is in the detail and I really want people listening to this podcast to get detail from us about how they from the minute they turn off this podcast and go and buy your book never split the difference how from that moment they can be better at negotiators what is the best way to do that should we role play do you want to explain to us the skills that are involved in negotiating how do you normally work this kind of thing but let the other side go first and that's really hard to do because everybody wants to have their say one of the things about negotiation is negotiations The Art of Letting the other side have your way how do you do that you gotta let them talk so um let's say you have a promotional event of mine you want to do a promotional event with me you got you've got a whole game plan laid out and um your typical negotiator you're worried about your budget you're worried about the details you want to be in control um how would you start that how would you normally start that if you want to contact me about it make the deal I would call you and I'd say hey Chris uh my name is Jake I'm based in the UK I hear you've got a new book out never spit the difference I I run a events agency in the UK and I would love the opportunity to share your story with people um across the pond how do you fancy that sounds like you get something specific in mind yeah yeah I absolutely do yeah I want to do a book tour around the UK um and I reckon we can sell out theaters um and I've got some great contacts in the TV industry so I reckon I can get you on to um BBC breakfast and Good Morning Britain they're the two big early morning programs over here um what do you think all right so I'm going to stop right there and talk about what just happened yeah before you contacted me whether you actually wrote it down or you're aware of it you have an entire Vision in your head Vision drives decision now there are a lot of times in negotiations where people are actually just contacting someone to get a competing bid or they're looking to do due diligence like let's say you want to do this whole book tour thing but you want to do it with an equivalent author there's somebody else with a business book out there and you're dry running with me to see what I might be looking for which means the vision in your head does not include me so my first saying sounds like you've got something in mind it doesn't I didn't say what do you have in mind because there's a any question puts people on guard to some degree now what do you have in mind is a good what we would refer to as a calibrated question a lot of other people would call either an open-ended question or a reporter's question who what when where why and how reporters interrogative I asked that question if I want you to stop and think it triggers what Danny Kahneman would refer to as in-depth slow thinking if in that moment I want you to stop and think and take a step back I'll ask you what question If instead I want to trigger a straight stream of consciousness seems like sounds like he had something in mind hits your brain in a completely different way and it's much more likely to open up a direct Downstream unvarnished stream of consciousness of your thoughts now there's no guarantee of success of any approach I just want to use the stuff that's most likely to get the thinking out of you without exhausting you I want you to give me a downstream that you're comfortable with which simultaneously makes it me feel to you like I'm easy to work with yeah yeah well you were kind of praising me when you said to me seems like you've got something like I almost felt I had to tell you something because I almost felt like you you were already impressed do you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah there's all this additional emotional intelligence relationship building benefits that kind of come with this approach entirely so can I flip it slightly because I'm an intrigued by this approach I want to go back to the angle Jake was talking about but in relation to your days as a FBI negotiator what would you do if somebody refused to play ball with you so if somebody just refused to engage well you know that's part of the assessment of the process now we probably start what we consider to be one-way dialogue because you refusing to answer back doesn't mean you're not listening so if you're refusing to answer me back what does that mean what that means is you're scared your guard is up you don't know if you could trust me the future looks extremely uncertain to you you're Frozen so that informs me is to now I'm going to start taking educated guesses you know each one of these things sounds like is a label looks like feels like those are those are educated guesses you know we have a scientific term for them we call them swags that's a scientific wild ass guess I'm gonna take a scientific wild ass guess on what you're feeling some negotiating we got a 27th floor of a high-rise and a in Harlem in New York in uh in the 90s we have brought the circus to town we got the SWAT team we got on 27 floors in this high-rise I mean the circus has come to town we've made so much noise getting up there we figure there's no way that these guys are not long gone because we brought the circus we got elephants we got trapeze artists I mean we make that much noise bringing an entire SWAT team and everybody to bear on this apartment so I think we're talking to an empty apartment I get two baby negotiators with me they're still in training I'm like cool this is right of passage everybody talks to an empty apartment at some point in time in point of fact that fugitives are inside and they're heavily armed and so I just say look I want you to know that I know you're scared and I know you're worried about coming out and I know you're worried about getting hurt when you're coming out here's what it's going to look like when you come out so that you don't get hurt because I said Vision drives decision right I got to start putting a vision in their head of them coming out safely so we're we're talking to this empty apartment I'm thoroughly convinced it's empty for six hours six hours of this over and over and over and six hours in a sniper on an adjacent building says I just saw a curtain move inside and we all go like holy cow they really are in there and so then I go look you know we just saw the curtains move on the inside one of you just looked out the window I've been telling you for six hours we're not going away and that you're going to come out safe and about five minutes later without saying a word the door opens and a pair of hands comes out exactly as I've described I said you have to come out with your hands first so that we can see that they're empty so we don't hurt you and you've got to move really slow because we've got to keep you safe we brought all three out all three of them out one at a time exactly like that they never said a word when when we got outside the first one to come out was a female and I went to talk to her I'm like I've been talking for six hours why don't you say something and she says well we were hoping you would go away and I said well if you were hoping we were going we would go away why'd you come out she said well you said you'd never go away so we finally believed and decided to come out a lot unbelievable when you were doing these negotiations how were you actually able to ultimately keep your mental sanity because that's huge yeah yeah yeah um well I mean when I first got into it I was volunteering on a suicide hotline and uh there was a lot of oversight when you started out a lot of really good training and had a fair amount of oversight you know you take once were you still in training you start you take a call and then you go and you talk about the call and if you had and you get coaching um you know when you're in the car you're on your own but afterwards immediate feedback from who was listening to the call give you some coaching and that got me started and but then I failed to appreciate my first year on the hotline how perishable the skills were and what you're talking about how do you practice how you stay Sharp after I'd been on a hotline for a year we come up for an I come up for an annual review and I take this call and I think I did a great job I mean I was so good that the person to call congratulated me on how good I was and I remember getting ready to go in the room to listen to the supervisor who was reviewing and I was kind of like I'm looking forward to this and it's really sweetheart of a guy named Jim he's like man that was horrible I go did you actually this is a call I took [Laughter] you did a guy congratulate me how good I was he goes yeah let's start that that's the first problem if they tell you that you did a good job then they're helpless without you which means you didn't make him feel empowered in any way you didn't make him feel like he found the answer himself as soon as you get off the phone these dudes lost again that's the first thing you did wrong and so I was like I had no idea how much my skills had eroded so we advocated in the FBI teaching it as one method to stay sharp I think probably the best best method would be to review your recordings the actual execution with colleagues and then to be able to go over it with them that I don't think there could be a better way it's better than role-playing it's better than teaching we didn't have that capacity so we put a heavy emphasis on teaching because you don't want to be embarrassed and teach it wrong so you take a deep dive and we we role played a lot role playing's limitation with emotional intelligence scenarios is you got to have a role player that's going to respond correctly and most of the time they won't so if your role player isn't any good Dennis you got to teach it and we taught constantly and then we would my first year in a full-time hostage negotiator there was a massive amount of um money for field exercises so I got a chance we traveled all over the U.S putting negotiation teams into really complicated field exercises so I got a lot of practice coaching teams also and then trying to bring out the best of people but you know rehearsal some sort of small Stakes rehearsals where people didn't actually get hurt right and and you mentioned being embarrassed you have to let down your ego right yeah because I've done this before I don't really take too many sales because myself these days but I will go back into the archives and have my team listen to me on some sales calls and it's just it really is humiliating but I get them to rip me apart because they learn and as you said there you then began coaching other people and you learn a lot from teaching even if you're not the best expert right because you identify things that are at the top of your mind that maybe for other people they've sunk down to the back of their mind right

Channel: NegotiationMastery

Views: 48,103

Keywords: Black swan, Emotional intelligence, Sales, Sales techniques, Negotiation skills, Active listening, black swan group, business negotiation tactics, conflict management in the workplace, effective communication techniques, emotional intelligence tips, getting to yes, how to negotiate, negotiation strategies, negotiation strategies and tactics, never split the difference, tactical empathy, salesforce crm, hubspot crm, Chris Voss, hostage negotiator

Id: yCIZ9NrXzqs

Length: 99min 36sec (5976 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2022