Jocko Podcast 354: Everything in Life Is A Negotiation. With Chris Voss.

this is Jocko podcast number 354 with Echo Charles and me Jocko willink good evening Echo good evening in August of 2000 the militant Islamic group Abu sayef in the in the southern Philippines broadcast that had captured a CIA agent the truth was not as newsworthy or as valuable to the rebels Abu sayyaf had kidnapped Jeffrey Schilling a 24 year old American who had traveled near their base in Hollow Island a California Native Shilling became a hostage with a 10 million dollar price tag on his head at the time I was a supervisory special agent attached to the FBI's Elite crisis negotiation unit the CNU the CNU is the equivalent of the special forces of negotiations it's attached to the FBI's hostage Rescue Team HRT both are National counter-terrorist Response assets they are the best of the best I was a natural for the Shilling case I had spent some time in the Philippines and had an extensive background in terrorism from my New York City days assigned to the Joint terrorism task force jttf [Music] a few days after Schilling became a hostage my partner Chuck rajini and I flew to Manila to run the negotiations along with Jim Nixon the FBI's highest official in Manila we conferred with the top Philippine military brass they agreed to let us guide the negotiations then we got down to business one of us would take charge of the negotiation strategy for the FBI and consequently for the U.S government that became my role with the support of my colleagues my job was to come up with a strategy get it approved and implement it our principal adversary was Abu sabaya the rebel leader who personally negotiated for Schilling's Ransom sabaya was a veteran of the Rebel movement with a violent past he was straight out of the movies a terrorist sociopath killer he had a history of rape murder and beheadings he liked to record his bloody Deeds on video and then send them to the Philippine media sabaya always wore sunglasses a bandana a black T-shirt and camo pants he thought it made him a more dashing figure if you look for any photos of Abu sayyaf terrorists from this period you will always see one in sunglasses that's sabaya sabaya loved loved loved the media he had the Philippine reporters on speed dial they'd call him and ask him questions in Tagalog his native tongue he would answer in English because he wanted the world to hear his voice on CNN they should make a movie about me he would tell reporters in my eyes sabaya was a cold-blooded businessman with an ego as big as Texas a real shark sabaya knew he was in the Commodities game in Jeffrey Schilling he had an item of value how much could he get for it he would find out and I intended it to be a surprise he wouldn't like as an FBI agent I wanted to free the hostage and bring the criminal to Justice as a result of the Shilling case I would become the FBI's lead International kidnapping negotiator and that right there is a book as an excerpt from a book the book is called Never split the difference which is written by a man named Chris Voss Chris Voss spent 24 years with the FBI where he spent time as the lead crisis negotiator for the New York City division of the FBI was also the lead International kidnapping negotiator he was trained as a negotiator not only by the FBI but also by Harvard Law School and Scotland Yard which is London's Metropolitan Police he worked the 1993 World Trade Center bombing the TWA Flight 800 explosion the cat the kidnapping of Jill Carroll in Iraq in 2006 as well as countless other Dynamic situations around the world an incredible experiences and it's a privilege tonight to have Chris Voss with us here to discuss what he's been through and what he's learned Chris thanks for joining us thanks man happy to be here yeah it's uh by the way if I ever have anybody else read my my book I'll have you do the reading let me know let me know I'm here to I'm here to help out uh yeah fantastic book yeah if people if you don't have this yet you it's never split the difference the subtitle is negotiating as if your life depended on it so fantastic book and we actually tried to do this before covert or maybe right before covid oh yeah but it didn't work out and so glad you could finally get out here and definitely looking forward to this conversation uh let's before we jump into the book and all your lessons let's let's get a little bit of background on you and how you ended up here today so where'd you grow up where'd you come from small town in Iowa uh son of a of Richard Joyce Voss my dad was a blue collar entrepreneur owned his own business my mom was initially a stay-at-home mom that's what they were back in those days and then ultimately you know as their kids grew up got involved in my father's aspects of my father's business what was the dad's business uh oil jobber originally a middleman between uh show oil and the end user which would usually be um large Farms small companies and then really the business when he bought it was home heating oil and I can remember my father going out in the middle of the night in the middle of winter because somebody's Furniture shut down he had to fix it and they're going to freeze and then uh after he got into the business according to him um not not independently verified but it certainly was a case gas company came in and gave everybody that had fuel oil furnaces free natural gas service furnaces took away all his customers by the time that I graduated high school we were one of the only houses that I knew that was still burning fuel oil for for heat but he adapted you know you got to adapt he expanded his business bottom gas stations built some convenience stores saw himself as much in the energy business as a fuel oil business and just adapted and so what were you doing growing up were you playing sports in school do you like school what was the deal there yeah well I played football and basketball and and if I wanted to run track I was allowed there were certain things I wasn't allowed to do like like one year one year I want to play golf you know every every High School's got a golf team and the old man just wasn't having he wasn't seeing that as as legitimate um sporting activity that could divert me away from working for him so you know I had to my father believed he put a roof over your head he fed you he clothed you you oh you're gonna go to work you got paid but yeah you're going so what were you working at the gas stations and whatnot mostly um the only time I ever worked at a gas station it was for one that he didn't own and it was a business associate wanted to hire me on but most of the time it was um whatever needed to be done maintenance driving trucks driving tractors cutting grass painting like I I did it painted a lot of stuff in the summertime I to this day I hate to pray you know he needed he needed a house painted he had kids here here's here's a bucket of paint here's a brush here's a scaffold well my favorite one was he um wanted a new garage want to build you know the house we bought had a single car garage you barely fit that one in he wants a new garage I'm I'm probably about 11 or 12 at the time my older sister's 13 or 14. he hands his crowbars into go out in the backyard tear down the garage [Laughter] and then and then so we're pretty much tear the whole thing down and we got the foundation left and you you got to knock the foundation out and uh the old man thinks all right well I'll go run a jackhammer I'll put my kid my 12 year old on a jackhammer on the foundation and I I don't know I'm like all right Dad you know and the foundation was so big I couldn't break it up with a jackhammer so you have financed a higher contractor this guy comes in with a backhoe and I'm thinking an adult man needs a backhoe to take this out and I'm out here with a hammer and nails and a jackhammer and I'm 12. yeah so uh just you you're doing good in school Fair um I was capable of better grades than I felt like getting um uh mostly a b student did you have interest in going to college what was your what was your future looking like when you were like 16 years old College college was always part of the game plan like my for whatever reason it was just always accepted that all this uh older sister and two younger accepted we were going to go to college your man was going to spring for four years of tuition if you graduated or not that was on you finite amount of money you know got got certain amount of money put in my checking account start of every session if I spent it or not it was up to me um and I just you know it was just and then whatever happened after that was pretty much up to us and so where'd you end up going to College Iowa State University my older sister went there one reason to go um you know I really idolized her growing up and she was there sort of plowing the ground it was far enough away from home that I wouldn't have to work in evenings or be expected to work on the weekends you know because if we get out of that work radius three and a half hour drive on a whim he can't call me back at four because he needs something down to five but it was also close enough to get back on a weekend if I needed to for whatever reason and no wrestling for you growing up in Iowa ah good observation nah I wasn't I wasn't into wrestling A Home of a lot of great wrestling yeah it gave a bunch a bunch of folks Iowa State Cyclones were running Championship after championship in those days um the the 190 pound wrestler Frank Santana I remember him but no I was a basketball player I wasn't a Grappler those Seasons Clash now at what point did you start looking at law enforcement actually when I was 16 a buddy of mine and I went and saw of a uh based on a true story true life movie The Super cops two cops in New York somebody recently actually found me a DVD of it sent it to me um these guys worked in Bed Stuy back when bed style was a really bad area white dudes very black Area Community loved them loved them these guys locked up bad people and the good people in the community appreciated the heck out of it and these guys were extremely creative I didn't realize that at the time the other thing that really attracted me to a complete Mavericks like didn't pay attention to what the bosses told them and put a lot of bad people in jail were very very creative about it and uh the uh the community actually nicknamed them bad rap Batman and Robin that's that's awesome except for the dude that got stuck being Robin yeah who wants to be Robin right but then then uh me and my buddy saw this when I remember we were 16 and we both got struck at that moment in time we want to be in law enforcement and I stayed in in law enforcement is occasionally a harsh reality and my buddy went to Phoenix got on the police department there and the harshness of it he just wasn't built for it and he didn't last this was the guy that saw the movie with you yeah did you what'd you study in college um ultimately was a business degree uh they didn't call it that back then they would call it industrial Administration but it was a business degree and uh I started out originally you know I I got in the engineering school I switched out as soon as I was there switched to Sociology but then I realized that a lot of sociologists out of work what if I changed my mind about being a cop so I decided to go to business just to have the flexibility of going whatever Direction I wanted to go so do you graduate in four years four you got out of four years and then was it straight to the police academy somewhere yeah I went well and initially I wanted to go to Kansas City Missouri I uh I'd never been there but everybody in that part of the world the three cities for choices were principally Kansas City St Louis and Chicago originally I had my heart set on San Francisco and because we had visited there my family went there when I was about 18. I thought this is a cool town it's really interesting place and then a thing called proposition came through in Calif Proposition 13 came through in California where they cut back on all the property taxes I figured they were going to impact the municipal budgets negatively probably a guy from out of state is going to have trouble getting hired so then I just decided stay local and everybody that I knew that have been to Kansas City said this is a great town and so I just went and applied completely out of the blue they were they told me they were not hiring when I graduated I remember when I graduated I was really depressed because I didn't know where I was going to go didn't want to go back home and work for my father but I had nowhere else to go and Kansas City although they knew internally that June 1 it was going to be a new fiscal year and a new world they're telling me at the time now we got no idea when we're gonna hire just no idea this is May so they had to have known they were going to iron you and a new fiscal year came in they started a new class I was in a class how'd they notify you ah interesting I may have gotten a letter I don't I don't even actually remember so you didn't think you had a job then all of a sudden you got a job suddenly I had a job and then in the meantime like I'm I'm back working from my dad driving a truck your dad's like got your life plotted out for you you're fine you're a kid you know and and also like just to get into law enforcement I remember I applied for Sheriff's Department got turned down and then I had done an internship with the Iowa Department of Public Safety and I can't remember exactly why I don't think I wanted to be in Iowa I didn't want to be an Iowa highway patrol if I was going to be uniform I want to be in a city and I remember being told from the police people in the Department of Public Safety like you could walk right into the highway patrol because I'd had an internship with him the year before so they knew me they knew I was an honest guy and that however Innovative I was I also really wasn't a rule breaker you know I was going to follow the rules um but I I didn't want to I didn't want to be a highway patrolman so I held up for Kansas City want to be in a city and got in there so you so you end up in Kansas City how's that like uh going to the police academy how is that a boot camp scenario is it a gentleman's course is it you go home in the afternoon are you staying in Barracks how does that all work yeah they had just moved the police academy into a local community college I think for budgetary reasons they had their own Academy in its own Standalone campus where they controlled all aspects of it and for whatever reason which I'm sure is budgetary they abandoned that so we're in a community college um combination of classroom not quite boot camp plus you're going home to your own apartment every night they uh six months uh PT every day and something that I think law enforcement has really lost sight of like the neck restraint the Carotid restraint we worked on that every single day for six months like nobody that I ever worked with ever heard anybody by misapplication of the neck restraint and they knew they they knew that it was potentially lethal and if there was one thing they were going to do we're going to be in condition relatively speaking not seal condition but in condition but we weren't going to hurt anybody even putting a neck restraint on them we worked on that every day for six months yeah it's a just a horrible thing to see happening right now with law enforcement I mean I talked to a lot of police officers around the country and in most places right now you cannot use a neck restraint it's considered lethal force and you you you cannot use it right um and as anybody that knows anything it is absolutely the best way to get someone under control that's out of control without hurting them and if somebody had to restrain my wife or my daughter I would beg that they please use a neck restraint because they'll be fine uh so it's it's great to hear that at some point in time you were training that way and you did it every day so you learn how effective it is you also learn what to be careful of right so yeah that that makes sense like one one cop and I um we had to Corral this gorilla uh and just you know Caucasian just for the record but this monstrous dude at the mental hospital which means like normally somebody's is nuts and big as that once you Corral them you take them to the mental hospital so when a mental hospital calls you to get somebody out of there you know you got a problem if we would have been able to choke that guy out with the proper carotid restraint I don't know how we'd have got him out of there without shooting him like and we got him out out of there completely unarmed yeah yeah that's a that's a horrible escalation to go from oh this guy's a problem and now I have to shoot him because I don't know what else to do or I'm not allowed to do anything else that escalation from this guy's going to be perfect literally perfectly fine to now he's dead because I didn't have I wasn't authorized to use the tools that I should be authorized to use and should be trained properly uh that's awful so it's a six-month School six month Academy in a community college um trying to maintain quasi military discipline which emotional enforcement kind of quasi and it was it was yeah it was a good classroom working out occasionally a couple times a week going to the range and like when you're when you're saying classrooms is like four or five hours of Class A Day you learn about the laws you learn about what you can and cannot do yeah that kind of stuff combination constitutional law some understanding probable cause uh administrative rules and regulations that we're going to have to know just to get by on the street you know I can remember the first time a standard Report Form was a form 189. and so they they say we're going to learn how to fill out a form 189. I remember thinking like I got to remember 189 forms I was relieved that I didn't have to memorize 189 forms so did you feel pretty good do you feel pretty prepared when you ended up you know you get your badge you go to the street how did you feel like you're pretty prepared for it well I felt like I was I certainly did uh there were a couple things uh that took getting used to like initially I was so nervous my breaking officer was scared to let me drive and then uh you know the complexity of being on patrol listening to the radio and actually being on patrol most initially you can't do both so if you're really paying attention to your environment if you're looking around if you're listening you're not going to hear the radio yeah and finally somebody's going to come by and say we've been calling you for 20 minutes but then and then you just keep keep doing it every day every day every day and then suddenly something clicks and you're pulling in all the information and you're dialing so you have a break-in officer is that the term you used yeah yeah for two months um they you know they want to see whether or not they're going to Turn You Loose Kansas City at the time ran one-man car Patrols so when you got cut loose off break-in you were riding around by yourself which is for a variety of reasons actually I'm here now really a good Patrol strategy why is that what I just heard recently uh unsourced that a male police officer is less likely to overreact to a challenge if he's by himself and if there's two males there two male police officers at the initial challenge you're a little more likely to overreact because there's another male there that you're afraid of losing face in front of I don't know how true that is it makes sense to me for a variety of reasons there's some more complexity to it you know I held off before talking to you about the different people you've had on um huberman um yeah and I saw yeah you had him in I think he's brilliant he's brilliant dude I happened I I had the Good Fortune to have lunch with him one day and um so I'm very much into the Neuroscience aspects these days and on one of his podcasts he was talking about again separating out the problems with law enforcement and it happened to be a podcast on love and relationships I think and as I recall he's talking about uh the basic for neurochemical hormones that drive us and as I recall is primarily testosterone serotonin oxytocin serotonin and he said if you're essentially a testosterone type you're more likely to see things as a challenge so let's get out of race and get into type you got a testosterone driven cop stopping a testosterone-driven male and they're both going to see almost everything that happens as a challenge you can expect that to turn into a downward spiral absent better training it's got nothing to do with race the dynamic that I thought you were going to say is if I'm pulling you over and I'm by myself well I'm by myself so I better de-escalate right I better be thinking another Point yeah whereas if I'm with Echo and he's my partner and you start getting mouthy old you know we're gonna kick your ass I feel more confident more just like in a bar right the guy that's in the bar that's by himself oh he's not causing any problems it's the guy that's with three of his friends and all of a sudden he's getting mouthy right no that's yeah exactly right and and most police departments are running um two-man patrols two-person patrols yeah it's weird for me because in my background in the SEAL Teams you if any possible way you have a buddy with you as a matter of fact if you don't have a buddy with you you're kind of getting in trouble so you're always because you know you can't watch your back you know you you just can't right so you always have someone with you so I've always thought to myself man if I was a police officer I'd really like to have a partner um well you're trained too I mean you're trained to not let your your negative emotions gonna get out of control yeah uh I would definitely you know any the same thing in the SEAL Teams I mean you got to learn to de-escalate things and and just being in a leadership position you got to learn to de-escalate things because someone's comes in and they're mad about something and if you're in a leadership position and all you do is go back at them you see see they you know Boston's plan sucks and you think oh you're challenging me instead of saying oh well what sucks about the plan do you want to make some adjustments to it like that's what you do that's how you de-escalate it you don't say well you don't understand the whole problem I dare you so right yeah uh yeah that takes some training so that takes some uh some mental gymnastics to get to a point where you can do that um so now you're out there in Kansas City a couple months was there any moment where you felt like like oh I messed up or or did you ever feel like okay now I'm a cop you know what I'm saying no I loved it my first year there I loved it I absolutely loved it I was in a commercial area you know it's a fair amount of street life um a little more fast-paced and that suited me I'm not a real meticulous super organized super patient by nature and nurture I'm not sure which but neither one so my first year I had I had a ball I mean I had a ball I mean I was putting bad guys in jail you know I really loved it I can remember um my parents came to visit me one time and we we met at the uh they came by the precinct towards the end of my shift and I was told they were there so we drove up and my mom said when she saw me get out of the car she said the way you moved when you got out of the car I saw a cop get out of that car so then after I was there for a year they switched me to a residential area which is a different kind of work you know you're not you're not making locking up multiple guys in a night um you're looking for residential burglars it's much more painstaking meticulous patient work and so I went from an area that I just loved to an area that I just wasn't I wasn't built for and I and I started getting bored while I was there is that when you started looking for something else to do well you know I don't know that I looked so much for something else to do um I was gonna I was planning on I wanted to become a member of the SWAT team and it took three years to get on the SWAT team so I'm I'm there you know two-ish years and the guys I knew most of the guys that were on a SWAT team and they said well you know put in for the selection process you know just go through it if you put in then the Commander's cams and sergeants are going to get to know that you're interested they're going to keep an eye on you then next time around you got a better shot so all right cool so I I put in for the selection process ended up number one on the list number one no shocked everybody so the the captains went to the lieutenant colonel and said let's wave the three-year rule on number one guy here isn't going to have three years for 10 more months and Lieutenant Colonel said I don't care [Music] rules are rules we're not we're not waving them so I'm going to precinct on board by they're they're taking everybody on the list under me one at a time and there was even the discussion of the possibility that if they took everybody they still wouldn't take me they'd be a whole new selection process so I'm a little annoyed by this and that my father says um what you think about Federal oh my God I'm happy in Kansas City so he introduces me this guy with the Secret Service and I talked to this guy and uh he says you know I've traveled all over the world with the Secret Service and I remember thinking somebody paid you and paid for your flights and paid for your hotel to go all over the world like I'm from Iowa like I you know I'd seen Canada from a distance that was the extent of my international travel so I'm like that sounds cool and so I didn't know one Federal agency from another no idea Secret Service I will go down there we're not hiring not hiring so I see an article in a newspaper uh FBI's first billion dollar budget I knew enough about budgets that I thought it's got to be salaries they're going to be hiring I went down I put in it was the first of a three-year hiring push and uh and I got in and just like that so how long is it between when you get accepted and when you're going to the FBI Academy yeah well October 31st I'd had three years on the police department and I would have gone to the SWAT team the bureau hired me on October 15th and I remember you know I'm a dumb 20 something year old I put in for the bureau and I remember literally telling people you know whoever whoever offers me a position first SWAT team comes I'm going with a SWAT team the bureau comes I'm going with the bureau and then they kept uh the police department had had a the chief at the time hated the FBI with a passion hated the FBI so they had a rule that if you left the police department the only job you couldn't come back from was it you became an FBI agent a Hugo took a job as a dog catcher they'd take it back you go take a job you know think of something a hairdresser you know I don't know what but the only job and in my exit interview they they literally told me they said you understand you can never come back if you joined a bureau like well it's not my intention to come back but so consequently they had to I had to keep my application a secret until it was in a final stages they couldn't go interview any of my commanders until just they were sure that they were going to hire me at the last minute and you know that led I was still a mouthy 20 something so that led to a couple of problems as I was leaving the police department what's the beef where's the beef did this guy have a specific beef with the FBI was it like a case where the feds came in like straight out of a movie he had [Music] um jurisdiction right scene talking on the street with ladies of the evening and that uh a couple of Bureau guys spotted him on the street with these ladies of the evening on the way to a meeting and it made it back to the city council because the agents were wondering whether or not they could trust the guy and they said you know I don't work with this guy and then he went on to like the FBI this is how bad it got under this guy I don't know if you're familiar with the FBI National Academy yeah but if you get if you get sent to the National Academy Bureau pays all your expenses space pays for your flights like doesn't cost an agency a dime to send somebody to the National Academy and it's a stepping stone in a lot of police departments to be becoming chief for the next promotion it's a big deal yeah and I spoke at the last FBI National Academy meeting yeah it was awesome so I get there in the FBI Academy you know uh October 15th and they start talking about how they pay all expenses for cops and I'm thinking nobody from Kansas City has come here in 10 years it it can't be that it's free like now it's free that's that's how much this guy hated the FBI well so you get picked up for the FBI uh you show up to the academy how's the academy yeah it was good um you know running shooting mostly academic the um uh the physical aspects of it were not super challenging you could if uh it would help you at the time you could be in no condition at all and they'd whip you into shape they ended up having um problems with that later on and so now you can't get in unless you're in at least a minimal physical condition but you you could come in and be fat completely out of shape if you put in the effort you'd meet the minimums and they weren't huge like FBI agents are not wrestling people to the ground on a regular basis so they want you to be physically capable but you know it was more rigorous than a police department because you you might get into a wrestling match with somebody every day and the bureau's uh tactics is to outman outgun the bad guys so that physical confrontations are unnecessary so they want you to be able to handle yourself but it's not that big of a deal they really want you they want you to do the classroom work they want you to be able to shoot well my shooting improved significantly from when I was there and it was it was it was good solid 16 weeks it was transformative how are you looking at because you're a you're a cop coming off the Mean Streets and how are you looking at the college kids is there is there like uh fun with that with that interaction yeah it was I was a lot more um harsh so to speak more aggressive more blunt than the vast majority of them were um I I was and they come from all walks of life and they're going to turn them into agents but I was you know I was I was a street cop what percentage of people are previous cops rolling in there pretty small pretty small they're at the time they hired in five categories I was cops are in the modified category which is all others like you're not a lawyer you're not an accountant you're not a scientist you're not a female you're not a minority uh you're not any others you're not a language you know you don't you're not already fluent so everybody else goes into a large categories modified and you know it's a more competitive theoretically it's just more more people there um and I was modified so not that many cops was there any uh did you have any challenges when you were there is anything hard for you no I don't think so no nothing nothing there then I mean I could I was already in decent condition took care of myself pretty well I could study when I felt like it and I already knew how to shoot do people get kicked out of the academy like what percentage of people make it through I mean they got a good screening progress program so I'm sure it's not that many no yeah there's well it's even it's even better now um uh and no not that many did not not that many did like if if you got if you got caught lying about anything you should you should be shutting the door um any any cheating should be shown the door if you that was they had a problem with physical conditioning because they tried they wouldn't Force official physical conditioning rules in the academy but then not once you join we're actually in a field office as an agent and somebody brought up well if if legally your full FBI agents from the moment you walk in the door you shouldn't get fired and from the academy on something you won't get fired from if you're in a field office and you should be you shouldn't be fat and out of shape in a field office they just weren't firing people for them so they then they then they just raise the physical minimums to get in the door are you when you're there so is is everyone getting trained just to be an agent yeah and is there do you go to Specialty training after that so if I'm an accountant and they think I'm gonna be looking at tax fraud do I go there I become an agent and then I go to an advanced school to be uh you know a tax fraud guy pretty much exactly yeah the theory then and I think it still holds pretty true now like being an FBI agent first specialize I have towards we got to make sure that you understand how to how to be a generalist before you you know you follow your bliss for like lack of a better term like somebody's breaking a law on every cool thing you could think of like if you were into collecting postage stamps somebody's engaged in an active criminal Enterprise making money from accountable I get a matter so the cool thing about the FBI is that ultimately if you take your time you can have the best time investigating crimes around stuff you're really interested in but uh if I speak Spanish or I speak Russian are they going to throw me into an assignment where this is my main gig as soon as I get done Spanish guys for a while everybody had that if you got hired in the Spanish program everybody was going to have to do a stint in Puerto Rico those were the only ones at the time Puerto Rico's bureau's got his hands full in Puerto Rico Puerto Rico is doesn't know if wants to be state or a commonwealth you know infrastructure problems uh on us on the one hand still uh you know back in my time in a bureau still a couple of active groups that engaging in violence for Independence um so this just this crazy combination of very difficult things to working in Puerto Rico so if you're a Spanish speaker you're going to do time in Puerto Rico that was the only language so as a normal agent would for you for instance do you get any any say in where you're going and what you're getting assigned to no they're just going to give you what they're going to get not then but then the bureaus uh policy which made was made complete sense like starting your life over as an FBI agent it's a big jump and the easiest way effectively is to go into witness security program complete new identity no ties to your old identity at all because it's the easiest way to become an FBI agent like nobody nobody you're not around people with the high school with you're not around your neighbors you're not not even around family oh so you're saying not literally like it's witness protection but they take you and they're not going to send you back to where you're from right they're going to send you to some other city so you don't have to run into the people you used to know you're going to be right it's a new life that was back then now the problem with that it was very expensive to I'm I'm in Kansas City they send me to Pittsburgh for two years they get me ready to go into one of major offices is this what they actually did with you yeah so this is your first assignment is Pittsburgh two years in Pittsburgh do you get some kind of a special assignment like you're gonna be working gang you're gonna be working drug you're gonna be or are you just working um you most offices start you out working working applicants because you got to get used to Landing credentials on somebody in a low stress environment so if you're doing a background investigation you're walking into a bank because somebody used to work in a bank wants to become an agent or something else where the background's required geez that's not the rush you were looking for was it it's a little slow to start I would but you know the first couple times you know these crazy things where you hold your your creds up in front of somebody yeah you're used to that and but or if you're going into a bank to lock somebody up that's a whole different so they they warm you up in applicants and then depend upon where you are where you're gonna get assigned to I initially get to sign to foreign counterintelligence FCI working spies which is not for me again that's slow meticulous work and so I within the rules now I'm scheming on how to get out of there uh you you get there you get assigned this foreign counterintelligence you already know this is really not your gig well so what's your scam what do you run how do you try and maneuver well as it turns out the guys ahead of the office his kid is getting ready to go to college in Iowa State so I'm not that far from out of Iowa State I'm like look you know I'll connect you with some friends you know what we'll help make sure your Landing is is a soft landing and you know I helped look out for his kid building some relationships relationship building and so then he initially I want to go to The Drug Squad drug and organized crime the different choices they get a bank robbery Squad great Squad I got no shot at the bank for every Squad drug and organized crime or white collar so let me do the drugs in organized crime this guy I'm told he's going to send me a drug and organized crime and then when the transfer comes through I'm on surveillance which ended up being a great thing it was better than FCI uh but then you you know that's that assignment played into where I ended up in New York and surveillance is you could experiment with stuff and um and all the field of visions surveillance is a light undercover that you got you got a name different last name you got the ID you got credit cards any event that you gotta somebody you're following whether it's a drug dealer or a spy gets on a plane you got to go with them you got to be able to pay for it you know you you got to be able to go so I get a chance to do some undercover work there also because then they're they're borrowing the guys in their surveillance teams you've already got an undercover backstop you go out and buy do drug buys and that's when I found out to being undercover is the lie for a living and it didn't fit me didn't suit me some some people it's fine it works for you but lying for a living didn't work for me and undercover sounds sexy everybody wants to do undercover I mean that sounds sexy I want to get out they want to buy drugs you know I want to go in and organize cry I want to do all this stuff and until you try it something that sounds sexy you don't really know if it's for you so I got a chance to try it a couple of a few times in in Pittsburgh and I just realized it just wasn't for me I had uh two friends one of them went to the FBI the other was trying to go from the SEAL Teams to the FBI the other one was going to another agency inside the government and they both went to the screening and the guy that was going to the FBI comes back he's got took the freaking lie detector test that thing was crazy you know as soon as they out they said uh pick a number between one and five and tell us you know don't tell us the number when we ask you if it's a number and he goes okay and so he's you know thinking of three and they go is it one and he goes no and the the thing's all flat he goes is it two and he goes no as soon as he says that he goes if the thing starts going wild is it three he said it's off he goes they knew exactly because I told him that and and he was one of those guys like he just wasn't comfortable lying and it just it just called him out now my other friend who went to another agency he comes back from his interview he goes yeah I took that lie detector test and I go how was that he goes I flatlined it and the the he said he just yeah just that thing couldn't he also did I just I just blew through it and here's the thing I actually don't know if he's like because he lied a lot this guy you know he was one of those guys that told like small small lies all the time you know he's talking to a girl he's telling a little crazy story he's talking to some other dude he's telling us something even when he's talking to you you know you know those kind of friends that you have where they you know they're kind of lying about stuff like you know and you're good with it it's just White Lies but it's all the time he was one of those guys and so I kind of believed him when he told me he flatlined the thing he probably yeah but he may have been even lying about that I'm not sure uh but that idea you know for me I'm like you like I don't want to be I don't like to have like I don't like to have to cover like lie about stuff and make stuff up and it just doesn't sit well with me I wouldn't be a good undercover guy uh so how long did you have to do that for I was I worked surveillance for about a year and a half a year now a lot of times you're just straight up sitting in like the plumbing van on the corner with a camera taking pictures that's what you're doing yeah or even if even if you're in a Chase vehicle where you're following them like they're they're moving for of an eight ten hour shift they're moving for an hour max so you're sitting around no matter what so this is still not what you came in to do no you know I wasn't it wasn't you know I'm and I'm I'm buying my time in Pittsburgh at the time because I knew that you know I'm gonna be out of there soon what is it a two-year assignments that you guys get roughly at the time it was roughly two years for the movie onto one of the top offices they called it the top 12 the time but everybody was going to New York at the time um every FBI agent everyone in the country got paid the same amount of money if you were if you're an agent in Kansas City if you're an agent my hometown Mount Pleasant Iowa you get paid the exact same amount of money somebody in New York got paid so consequently there were people in New York were quitting right and left they were having trouble Staffing the office and they said look you're going to New York I mean the orders aren't here yet but nine out of 10 of you coming out of this class you guys are all going to end up in New York so you're going don't be shocked when your orders for New York come through so I'm in Pittsburgh I'm waiting for the orders to New York to come through and so what year is this that you finally get orders to New York 1985. 1985. the day my son Brandon was born was the exact same day I got my orders to New York were printed you roll up to New York and what what do you get assigned when you get up there I catch a break um since I got surveillance time and since I've been a cop The Joint terrorist task force the surveillance team dedicated to them uh needed needed bodies and I because of my surveillance time I got put right on so that was that was a huge break for a whole bunch of reasons um it was I saved a lot of money didn't have to pay for suits and dry cleaning that's uh you know the cost of living is now increased so my living standard is taking a step back and then the second thing was at the time the surveillance teams were the only guys that took cars home surveillance and SWAT took cars home and so this takes care of all my commuting expenses which is another significant chunk of cash so and then I'm with New York City cops as partners a joint terrorist task force surveillance team but the coolest thing of it was we were the only surveillance team in New York that actually got out on the street with people went into the subway you had to be prepared to end up anywhere in New York City at one o'clock in the morning toughest neighborhood by yourself no comms with anybody like totally on your own and you develop you know it's a New York very dangerous time 19 mid to late 80s very dangerous yeah so if you're if you're into this job like this is great this is Disney World every day like how do you end up in the South Bronx and the bad guys leave you alone I remember the first time I'm going through bedside about one o'clock in the morning and we you know we could use pay phones you know you had special number you could use a pay phone that cost you I called some friends of mine in Iowa to say guess where I am at right now I am in Bed Stuy in a drug neighborhood hanging out now you're you said you were the counter-terrorist team is that right yeah well joint terrorist task force task force yeah you know I think I I know there's some terms of art for anti-terrorist versus counter-terrorists I think we're counter terrorists and so who are you tracking how are you ending up in you know some drug infested part of the city who you tracking it was it was a very cool transition time the terrorist task force started out mostly all domestic terrorism and had every ethnic group had a terrorist group Puerto Ricans had the fla and the marchitaros Jewish jdl bombers um black panthers had turned into the Black Liberation Army and the most dangerous one of all the May 19th communist organization which was mostly white female lesbians and they were the smartest the most organized the most effective of all the groups like they we had more respect for their organization and and the way they and at one point in time domestically all the groups got together because it's like a professional association where you have confidence they know they hang out together they know each other and they did a couple joint operations and on May 19th were so disappointed in the organization of the other groups and they finally said you guys go on your own so the first first generation of terrorist task force put them all in jail I mean knocked them out they they you know they want Awards right and left books were written about all the cases they made so I get there and I join that just as that's going away and simultaneously just as the Islamic radicals are starting to come to town like I get there just a couple of years before the first World Trade Center bombing and and we're seeing a shift but the bizarre part of it was no one believed this no one believed no one no one no one FBI headquarters New York City Police Department they were actually in the process of disbanding the terrorist task force when the first world Trader Center bombing occurred in 93 some of my supervisors uh a a deputy chief famously said to one of my supervisors you're telling me about pink elephants walking down Broadway because they felt there was no terrorism in the United States because none of the incidents were were occurring on American soil and we had all been reassigned to gang crimes gang crimes was was a really big thing at the time and they took us they disbanded the terrorist task force and who reassigned us all the gangs so you're there they disband this terrorist task force after they kind of broke a bunch of these domestic terrorist groups of they say ah there's no more threat were you guys already saying hey no there's an Islamic extremist threat or were you not quite there yet we weren't we weren't quite there yet we since something was going on and so we took all our terrorist cases and made them gang cases because they qualified as gang cases okay so you guys are now part of this gang task force we're working gang crimes you know the the different groups whether whether wherever they had originated from at the different time at the time there were a couple of uh bank robbery Crews that were they realized if we call where we hang out a mosque then we just pulled another layer of the First Amendment over us and it's that much harder to get to get at us so they said you know the criminals and they're and every religion has legitimate um practitioners so it's not the legitimate practitioner's fault that the criminals change the name of the building and hang out in to a mosque and that that's what a bunch of them did and we went from literally the First World Trade Center bombing a couple of guys that were investigating some bank robberies we're trying to get a wire in a building that the bank robbers said was a mosque and the prosecutors wouldn't touch it they're like we are not we don't care what you find we are not putting a wire in a church and then the Trade Center happened and I turned right back around and with all the probable cause we'd previously established we got the wires that we needed right after the first Trade Center bombing what was your well so were you in that gang task force doing surveillance when the first uh World Trade Center attack happened I had been I had shifted from surveillance to what we call going inside being part of the investigative Squad so I was no longer doing like cover and I had been doing um investigations uh overtly for probably about two years when the First Trade Center bombing happened how how uh how surprised were we on that first World Trade Center bombing like no yeah completely um there were some cases that we had had working we just we didn't imagine we we didn't have our arms around the guys that did the bombing we actually had we were looking real hard at a particular group that engaged in a test blast of the Trade Center explosive they were tricked into the test blast they didn't even know what was going on the opsec of the guys that hit the First Trade Center was really really good and uh Ramsey Youssef Master minor First Trade Center bombing who is in fact College Sheikh mohammed's nephew 911 Mastermind his nephew Ramsey Youssef did the first he came to town he brought the plants with him he found a bunch of disorganized guys you know nobody nobody really appreciated what he was how organized he was he pulled the whole thing together and left New York shortly before the bomb went off and we got lucky on that bombing I mean the amount of damage yeah I could have done ridiculous ridiculously lucky and their intention was first time was to take the tower down yeah they placed a bomb in a position to try to drop one Tower into the next and when Ramsay came back when we brought him back collectively I'm told that they flew by the Trade Center and he told the guys that I'm playing next time we're taking it down okay how did this impact your job so once this happens is it like full Focus now you realize you gotta you gotta pay the the FBI needs to pay attention to the Islamic extremists yeah we well we got we got on them in a hurry um we we've been working different aspects of the group for about five years and everything they did there was tremendous restrictions on terrorist investigations because they saw it as a political investigation so the oversight like we had to re-justify the cases every six months and if you had if they hadn't committed a crime or we hadn't turned up a crime in that six-month time frame the investigation just got shut down you couldn't pursue it so but consequently we had little bits and pieces all along that when they hit the Trade Center we could go back to the previous cases well here's a piece here here's a piece here here's a piece here and we now now saw how the group had uh coalesced in in the United States by not breaking a law in their own way for example one guy um one of the Ring leaders got stopped at a car pulled over in a car stopped trunk load of weapons one of the one of the passengers in a car had a federal firearms license it had dealer tags on a car wasn't to write the reason it got stopped was because the tags didn't match the car they had legitimate reason for having a dealer tags do you have a license plate you put on any car you want driving around you're golden so legitimate car stopped within the laws of the United States no reason to take anybody to jail when we start backtracking we see same guys in a car with a bunch of weapons on the way to a firing range so we when when we could bring all the pieces together it all came together pretty fast at what point did you get interested or start to get involved in negotiation yeah I had uh I had I would say it would be fair to say utterly no interest and be in a hostage negotiator when I first joined a bureau I was on a SWAT team in Pittsburgh I got to New York I tried out for HRT that I was ridiculously underprepared when I tried our prayer chart they I was just like sad but um knew that I could do it if I worked at it you know you can't train a couple weekends you gotta you gotta train your your tail off for a year it's got to become a lifestyle yeah I don't have to tell you that I mean that's what it is it's a lifestyle so I tried out for HRT and um failed miserably and then started working out again and read you my knee had my knee put back together for the second time and then I thought all right so and as probably as you well know there's a shelf life that's special operation Special Forces then you were expired you're going to expire at some point in time you know something's going to break too many times and you're not going to be able to do it anymore uh so then I thought all right so we got negotiators I've seen these guys out there they're there all the time crisis response uh be a negotiator because crisis requires a decision somebody's got to decide what to do and decide now and I wanted to stay in that game and do it so I thought I'd I thought I would angle myself towards a negotiation team and had to jump through some hoops but eventually made it so this is what year is this that you that you make it to negotiation team I get trained in 90 two 92. you've seen last century 1992 before cell phones and and so this is inside the FBI there's a Detachment of negotiators is that the way it's set up you can do it as an additional duty like when you're a street agent there's something in you there's four basic additional assignments something in you is going to resonate with one of those four you can be an undercover you could be a negotiator you could be in Swat you could be in a bomb Tech each one of those a little bit different breed of cat and something in you is really going to line up with one of those things and so if that was out for you yeah swats out because the knee and I was interested in negotiation and what you do if you if if they take you on the team then they send you to Quantico for two weeks to get that training there's three schools in the world that every hostage negotiator wants to go to you want to go to the bureau school you want to go to London Matt Scotland Yard and then you're either going to want to go down to Australia you're going to want to go to Canada because both of those run great Great Courses so the bureau the bureau's course as opposed to the Scotland yards course the bureau's course will turn you into the best hostage negotiator you could be Scotland Yard turn you into a great team player which I had no idea was there was a difference then but there's a huge difference so I went to the bureau school and learned how to negotiate so you're this is when you're still part of the gang task force right you get this collateral Duty right as a negotiator so if something was to pop up where a negotiator was needed they'd call you you'd get brought in right whereas some other guy that became a bomb Tech all of a sudden there's a bomb they find a pipe bomb somewhere they needed someone to go work on that they call one of the bomb Tech guys that's been to that school exactly and so forth okay so you've been trained now once you've been trained in that did you start to realize this is kind of something that you're good at did you realize it was something you were more interested in you thought you would be well I had volunteered on a suicide hotline before I went to the negotiations rating wait you volunteered on a what Suicide Hotline okay got it that was a hoop I had to jump through because I went to the head of the negotiation team in New York I said I want to be a hostage negotiator and oh this is in the book the woman that you that said turn me down yeah and so I volunteered on Highline so then when I get to the bureau's negotiation School and they're playing tapes I say to myself I've been doing this for a year and a half I just didn't have a SWAT team outside so I've already felt that it was something that I was going to be good at and enjoyed while I was there how was that learning curve at the suicide hotline yeah it's really counter-intuitive um I had like it's in it's an invisible skill it's ridiculously effective and it's completely invisible and you go to training for that did they train you to be yeah not only they train you but at the at the beginning of the the training they give you a piece of paper with 10 10 possible statements to somebody in a hotline might make so write down what you think a good response is they're going to give you back this piece of paper at the end of the training they gave me back the piece of paper at the end of the training now I I write like it looks like I write with my feet my handwriting is very this thing like there's no way you can fake my handwriting so they hand me this piece of paper and I know that's my handwriting and I remember thinking like what [ __ ] wrote those responses that was that was how far they take you in two months and you don't you don't even know what's an example of what you what into you what you instinctively might think you should say to what you actually should say um so and one call that I did get this guy calls in and says look look I you know I just I'm just you know I'm trying to put a lid on this night I'm trying to put a lid on this night now before training I might have said have you tried watching some TV uh have you tried working out like when I'm really stressed I know if I go get a good workout it clears my head or have you tried meditation like jumping right in to problem solving that is the wrong way to do it that is that will prolong the situation like the speed accelerator which is neuroscience based I didn't know at the time is to deactivate the negatives by calling them out so I just say to this guy because I've been taught to just like call out what you're in so I go he sounded frantic so I said Son for epic and immediately his voice started coming down several notches instantaneously and that that time like people listen to that conversation would be like what he the guy what he just said seems unhelpful however if I'm watching the person that he said it to instantaneously came down and since you don't see examples of that in real life or on the movies or TV on the movies of TV the guys say look if you tried working out and and then in the movies of TV they'll depict it as the guy as the other person saying like wow that's a great idea I'll do that so what's psychologically going through my head when I tell you I want to put a cap on this night I got to put a cap on this night and you say you say back to me you sound like you're frantic what's going through my head that's making me de-escalate right so um it's probably a neurochemical reaction there's a there's and from listening to huberman and others I'm fascinated by what finding the science behind it it's been duplicated in a number of experiments that if I put you in an fmri where I can watch the electricity moving around in your brain and I show you a picture that induces some sort of negative thought and what the picture is it doesn't matter the experiment's been done a number of times they might have shown them puppies in the rain a starving child in Africa anything that induce a negative thought and so seeing the picture they watch areas in your brain light up that either for you or predicted in advance where the negativity in your brain is housed that bounces around a little bit based on person but it's essentially about three quarters of the amygdala and a couple of other things that are involved so they watch it light up when you see the picture now they just say to you what are you feeling just asking you to label it Call it out Simply call it out and every time they ask a person to Simply identify the negative emotion that they're feeling the electrical activity in the areas that had lit up start to diminish every time not sometimes not 75 percent of that time every time now the amount they diminish changes which is why I happen to hit the nail on the head with this guy on a hotline he starts coming down significantly sometimes you can call out somebody's negative emotion and there won't be any perceivable response it doesn't mean it didn't work it means you just need to do it some more but it happens every time now what triggers it is is it a neurochemical response is it a conscious response is probably some sort of neurochemical response but what we learned in hostage negotiation and in On The Hotline actually we we do this extremely aggressively now in all our business negotiations like you know I get some contentions to talk about I'm going to call you on a call you on the phone send you a text sending an email saying like okay you're not gonna like what I have to say is you know it's going to be harsh this is going to be insulting and so I I started in a funny kind of way I started applying this when I'm running our International kidnap response I go to an embassy there's kidnapping the Philippines I think you read about earlier I am unwelcome because somebody from Washington DC shows up the locals in the embassy the message they get is they're screwing up you either screwing up or you're in it inadequate somebody from DC is not welcome and I'm walking into a hostile environment every time and because they were new to it they didn't know exactly the response they'd usually be doing something wrong and I'd walk in I started pointing out what they were doing wrong and my partner Chuck Ragini who you uh you who's in the story whenever we walk into a room he would start to Flinch because he knew that I was getting ready to lay into these guys and somewhere along the line I learned to say before I started criticizing him I'd say this is gonna sound harsh and then I criticize him and they'd be okay they'd go from being mad to you know it preempted the negativity by letting them know what was coming and I've seen it seen it work on a regular basis something about it makes it worse the you could say you could probably get away with seeing saying this uh in the Navy and the teams you could say you know Captain this is gonna I don't want you to think I'm being disrespectful and you're probably not going to get to say the sentence second sentence second sentence or he's going to have shut you off but if instead you said Captain I know this is going to sound disrespectful he'd sit there and listen to you he'd appreciate being warned and there's something about that reaction that tiny little shift that I learned way back on online so you worked this suicide hotline for a year I was I was actively on the line for probably a little over two years two and a half years I stayed very involved when um when a First Trade Center kicked off then R's follow-on case which was a larger larger broader conspiracy on a couple of different groups that were all linked together um through the course of that following year I just didn't have time to volunteer on a hotline anymore so this is how this is kind of how you get started in this negotiation learning this skill um and I I kind of told you this before we started recording we're going to see all kinds of overlap between what I talk about from a leadership perspective you know there's a lot of skills that are transformed it's like if you're good at baseball there's a lot of things that are going to transfer over to softball if you're good at wrestling there's a lot of things they're going to transfer over to uh you know Jiu Jitsu so there's a lot of stuff that's really really similar and there's some some differences as well but this skill of negotiation as I read through the book it's evolved a lot in the last 40 50 years right um and it you know some of the stuff that you talk about in the book you know hostage negotiation used to mean you know stall them until we get a chance to assault like that that was what it was there was a mindset change that you outlined in the book uh that occurred around 1971 October 1971 a guy named George Giff am I saying that right he's a he's a guy that took a took took a plane took a plane took hostages on the plane the plane lands to refuel the hostages had actually negotiated their own release but the FBI got frustrated and shoots the engine of the plane the guy loses his mind kills the hostages the FBI gets sued and actually loses the lawsuit so so all of a sudden they realized they needed to make some adjustments to their the way they're negotiating right uh another thing that you kind of detail in the book is 1979 Harvard starts this negotiation project and they're starting to look at negotiation theory and practice they're trying to improve it uh a book ends up coming out of that the book is called getting to yes that was written by Roger Fisher and William Yuri who were also the co-founders of that project and and the theory that they had was that look the you know people are emotional and they're animalistic and they're unreliable and they're irrational and you just need to overcome that right with you know rational logical you know problem solving mindset which is which is actually an idea that doesn't turn out to work so well because it's a lot harder to overcome that irrational emotional animalistic human so those are some of the uh those are some of the evolutions that start to take place when in the book that you that you run through um and in fact going to the book here you say you say this about their system was easy to follow and seductive with four basic tenants one separate the person the emotion from the problem two don't get wrapped up in the other side's position what they're asking for but instead focus on their interests why they're asking for it so you can find what they really want three work cooperatively to generate win-win options and four I'm putting a little tone on those aren't I sorry uh and for establish mutually agreed upon standards for evaluating those possible solutions so this is like one of those just detached academic things it was a brilliant rational and profound synthesis of the most advanced Game Theory and legal thinking of the day for years after that book came out everybody including the FBI and the NYPD focused on problem-solving approach to bargaining interactions it just seems so modern modern and smart right so that was what was kind of happening then you go on to say halfway across the United States a pair of professors at the University of Chicago was looking at everything from economics to negotiation from a far different angle they were economists Amos taversky am I saying that right taversky and psychologist Daniel Kahneman kaneman Connor McConnell Kahneman yeah and he wrote uh Thinking Fast and Slow together the two launched the field of behavioral behavioral economics economy won a Nobel Prize by showing that man is a very irrational Beast feeling they discovered is a form of thinking as you've seen when Business Schools like Harvard's began teaching negotiation in the 1980s the process was presented as a straightforward economic analysis there's a period when the world's top academic economists declared that we were all rational actors that means on both sides that means considering that both people on both sides are rational and so it went in negotiation classes assuming the other side was acting rationally and selfishly trying to maximize their position the goal is to figure out how to respond in various scenarios to maximize one's own value this mentality baffled Kahneman who for Year from years in Psychology knew that in his words quote it is self-evident that people are neither fully rational nor completely selfish and that their tastes are anything but stable end quote so there were these two schools going on with negotiation and one of them took this kind of logical approach and the other one realized that you had to deal with these emotional the emotions was a way of thinking you're gonna have something you're gonna have to deal with and you must have realized that on the suicide hotlines as well yeah you know and I didn't really understand why all I knew is that taking that approach accelerated things just complete acceleration and situations that I thought would have taken hours and so I just saw and again Kahneman and doesn't when the Nobel Prize have like 2002-ish so just saw that it worked didn't understand why I didn't really care oh my first issue has always been what works now I understand a mechanism is important sometimes to ex people need to understand a mechanism some people need to understand a mechanism I care about number one what works number two secondarily is isn't moral you know I missionaries and Mercenaries and mercenaries if it works missionaries if it follows your basic moral code if it qualifies on both of those then I'm good got it uh now you go into the book a little bit about how the FBI sort of started to adopt this you know the FBI that they were deep into that book at one point getting to yes that was what they were using a lot of guys were using that but then you know you get Ruby Ridge up in Idaho you get the the Waco Texas right these things are kind of does that these things are they're very disastrous um and you throw this in the book I'm gonna go to the book here I mean have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he's the Messiah he was becoming alarmingly obvious that getting to yes didn't work with kidnappers no matter how many agents read the book with highlighters and hands it failed to improve how we as hostage negotiators approach deal making there was clearly a breakdown between the book's brilliant Theory and everyday law enforcement experience why was it that everyone had read this best-selling Business book and endorsed it as one of the greatest negotiation texts ever written and yet so few could follow it successfully were we morons uh in 1994 let me fast forward a little bit from the book and again I'm reading excerpts for the book the book is awesome I mean we're hitting some wavetops so just order the book right now so you can get all these details in 1994 FBI director Lewis free I know it's free Louis free announced the form the the formation of the critical incident Response Group a blended division that would combine crisis negotiation crisis management Behavioral Sciences and hostage rescue teams and reinvent crisis negotiation the only issue was what techniques were we going to use and you go on to say what were needed were simply were simple psychological tactics and strategies that worked in the field to calm people down establish Rapport gain trust illicit verbalization of needs and persuade the other guy of our of our empathy we needed something that was easy to teach easy to learn and easy to execute in the early years the FBI experimented with both new and old therapeutic techniques developed by the counseling profession these counseling skills were aimed at developing positive relationships with people by demonstrating an understanding of what they're going through and how they feel about it it all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted and by the way again I talked about like leadership this is exactly what I talk about from a leadership perspective I mean if you don't know me at all I'm absolutely trying to get you to trust me how do I get you to trust me I put some trust in you I listen to what you have to say you're going to listen to me same exact thing here back to the book listening is the cheapest yet most most effective concession we can make to get there by listening intensely a negotiator demonstrates empathy and shows a sincere desire to better understand what the other side is experiencing exactly why you listen to your subordinates exactly why you listen to your peers exactly why you listen to your boss what are you trying to tell me boss let me listen um you know whenever I get asked the question you know my my team's not listening to me what should I do yell louder it's like no you want your team to listen to you listen to them be quiet listen to them hear what they have to say uh you go on to say psychotherapy research shows that when individuals feel listened to they tend to listen to themselves more carefully and openly evaluate and clarify their own thoughts and feelings in addition they tend to become less defensive and oppositional and more willing to listen to other points of view which gets them to calm to the calm and logical place where they can be good getting to yes problem solvers so again this is one of the things that I am talking about all the time with people I always say you know if I'm if I want you to see something if I want to if I know the truth about something if I've got some great plan and I want you on board with my plan the best thing I can do is not tell you what the plan is is let you come up with a plan let you let the truth be revealed to you by you not not by me right that's my goal and and you go on to say this whole concept which you'll learn as the centerpiece of this book is called tactical empathy this is listening as a martial art balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and assertive skills of influence to gain access to the mind of the other person contrary to popular opinion listening is not a passive activity it is the most active thing you can do once we started developing our new techniques the negotiating World split into two concurrents two currents negotiation as learned at the country's top school continued down the established Road of rational problem solving while ironically we meet heads at the FBI began to train our agents in an unproven system based on psychology counseling and Crisis Intervention while the ivy league taught math and economics we became experts in empathy and our way worked so that's how the that's how the shift the shift took place that's good stuff in that book well yeah who the hell wrote that yeah no it's great and uh telling you I mean I just I was really uh really stoked to read it and and got so much out of it just seeing you know that whole section right there I mean this is what I I'm talking to people all the time about from a leadership perspective you know the the big difference the big difference between when I talk about leadership and if you and I are negotiating the big difference is as a leader I don't really care at the end of the day what plan we use I just want the best plan so I I you know if we're gonna attack a Target at the end of the day I don't care if we attack it from the North or from the south I just want which one is best so I don't really have I'm not trying to make you think something I actually just want to find the best solution now there's a chance that my solution is the best there's a chance that your solution is the best if I go and try and RAM my solution down your throat what are you going to do you're going to get defensive we might not get to the best solution right if I hang on to my idea too tightly we're not going to get the best solution so the main thing that I can do to help us get to the best solution not to my solution not to your solution but just to the best solution right the best thing for me to do is listen what you have to say because I can't make you listen to me I can't but I can listen to you that's going to open up your mind it's going to move us in the right direction so that's that's probably the the big difference between the two is that when you're negotiating you have a goal that you're trying to get to well here's what I'd add to that because that description is really the way we negotiate is we're just looking for the best deal like you said you're looking for the best plan yeah like the the real hard part in negotiating is your goal you need to see it merely as a suggestion if you get too goal oriented you get tunnel vision and you miss better answers never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better yep and by definition you're never going to know the best possible outcome it's not possible because the other side's holding stuff back you're holding stuff back getting people to accept that intellectually is often really difficult with really experienced business people and I'll say when are you not holding something back uh budgetary problems pressures to make the deal pressured and not make the deal internal politics personal pressures is there over time you're not holding something back and no one ever said I negotiate and I and I I'm completely honest all the time nobody ever says that every people are always holding stuff back so if you are they are too and you're both holding back information that would change the course of the deal if revealed that's why you're holding it back now so now what happens if you exponentialize this so to speak there's an overlap of the unknowns so it's impossible to know the best deal going in it's not possible but very few business people will accept that it is what it is I know what it is I'm experienced I know what the outcome is going to be I know what they're being driven by like you you know you you are uh stroking your own ego when you say stuff like that yeah well that that means this stuff is even more in line with what I talk about I think it's completely online the other thing that's interesting is uh you know when you I forget if we'll cover this today but I talk to business people and and occasionally and it's usually it's very rare that you know you and I are working at a company and and we can't come to a conclusion we can't come to an agreement you want to do it this way I want to do it that way and when that happens and the reason it happens so rarely in business because if you and I work for the same company well we both want to make money we both want to take care of our client we both want to take care of the team right like we're ultimately aligned and so we we're trying to do something that's going to make us money and take care of the client and take care of our team we're going to figure out a solution that's 99 of the time one percent of the time you or don't wanna you either you either don't want to help the client you there's someone on the team you don't want to take care of there's some something going on where we're truly not aligned maybe you want to break off and start your own company so you want us to fail and if it comes to a point where I'm saying Chris hold on a second this is going to make us money it's going to take care of our team it's going to take care of the client and and we can't come to an agreement that means we're not aligned and you know you talk about that there are some deals where you know you want to sell the car and I want to buy the car but we just can't there's no there's no possible way that we're going to do it because you want you know thirty thousand dollars for the car and I literally can only pay twenty thousand dollars it's not gonna happen right we're not aligned so that does occasionally happen um but yeah it's it's it's very interesting that the Meat Heads at the FBI were the ones that started trying to listen and empathize and see the other people's perspective right right let's get let's get into the book uh and I'll tell you what when I was reading the book one thing that was a little bit tricky for me is as I was reading the book I'm like I want to read about you got you it's kind of written you know I've written a couple books too and in my books I tell a story the combat Story the business historian and give the principal and that's what your book is too there's a lot of that hey here's a a combat story an FBI story or a business story and here's the the negotiating principle that comes out of it and I kind of was going back and forth you know do I read a bunch of the stories because the stories are great but I figured since you're here it'd be great you know I'm sure you'll tell some of those stories but just to get into uh the techniques the techniques the negotiation techniques that you outlined in the book and that's kind of what I decided to do may or may not have been the right decision we're not sure yet maybe you'll have to come back just for pure uh story time but I wanted to get into the tactics that you talk about because again I think they're so prevalent and at you know in in your intro to the book you talk about negotiating being negotiation is life you're negotiating all the time right so these are things that you that everybody can use all the time and and the other thing is kind of like leadership people think leadership you either have it or you don't but really leadership is a bunch of skills that you can learn right and negotiation you know how often you hear oh that guy's a great negotiator you hear that a lot or that guy is not a good negotiator negotiator but you what you don't realize is negotiation just like basketball or just like playing guitar there's a bunch of skills that you can learn there's a bunch of moves that you can make and once you know those skills once you know those moves you can utilize them and so this book awesome book for pointing out some of these uh tactics techniques and procedures so let's get into a little bit the first technique that you talk about or the first one that I'm going to highlight is called mirroring yeah and you say mirroring also called isopraxism is that right it's a lot of syllables luckily you've only got in here once I don't have to say it again is essentially imitation it's another neural behavior that humans and other animals display in which we copy each other to comfort each other it can be done with speech patterns body language vocabulary Tempo tone of voice it generally it's generally an unconscious Behavior we're rarely aware of when it's happening but it's a sign that people are bonding in sync and establishing the kind of Rapport that leads to trust it's a phenomenon and now a technique that follows a very basic but profound biological principle We Fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar as the saying goes birds of a feather flock together mirroring then when practiced consciously is the art of insinuating similarity trust me a mirror signals to another unconscious you and I we're alike once you're attuned to the dynamic you'll see it everywhere couples walking on the street with their steps in perfect synchronicity friends in conversation at a park both nodding their head and Crossing legs at about the same time these people in a word are connected while mirroring is most often associated with forms of nonverbal communication especially body language as negotiators a mirror focuses on the words and nothing else not the body language not the accent not the tone or delivery just the words it's almost laughably simple for the FBI a mirror is when you repeat the last three words or the critical one to three words of what someone just said of the entirety of the FBI's hostage negotiation skill set mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick simple yet uncannily effective by repeating back what people say you trigger this mirroring Instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting psychologist Richard Wiseman created a study using waiters to identify what was more effective what the more effective method of creating a connection with strangers mirroring or positive reinforcement one group of waiters using positive reinforcement lavish praise and encouragement on patreon is using the words such as great no problem and sure in response to each order the other group of waiters mirrored their customers simply by repeating their orders back to them the results were stunning the average tip of the waiters who mirrored was 70 percent more than those who use positive reinforcement so that's pretty amazing it's nuts isn't it yeah you point out later in the book that it can feel weird to mirror when you first start doing it yeah it feels weird to everybody pretty much yeah it feels weird to everybody you know I don't know why that is maybe because it seems so obvious to the user I mean it's obvious yeah you know I feel like saying some more based on you know what it is yeah it's just uh and that's one of the ones again I was talking about huberman before like if I could get him to do a ton of experiments I try this try this try this I gotta find out this and that that'd be one of them as to what makes a mirror work so effectively with so many people and and it does and then who's attracted to it I find interesting who's attracted to it and I also find it's different circuits in the brain like the majority of the people on my team we get really good at labeling and I find uh as a performance skill than in myself and others we not might not mirror enough and then those that are really attracted to mirroring and will use it almost exclusively okay what isn't that makes you tick that makes you like that mirroring so much and I think it's they're attracted to the Simplicity of it and then they're not offended by simple Concepts which actually in many cases takes a more sophisticated approach to really like simple stuff and I'm seeing regularly people that really mirroring is a sophisticated skill and if somebody rejects it off off the off the top of their head I think you're worried about appearing stupid and if you're so confident in your intelligence that you got no problem looking stupid then you're happy to mirror got it uh one piece of advice that I give to people is when Chris rolls into my office and you're pissed about something I gotta talk to you right now one thing I tell people is like cool I get out my notebook get out my pen yeah and like what's going on Chris talk to me and to me that's showing you that I'm listening to what you have to say and I'm taking it seriously and it seems like mirroring is a is another way of doing it right if you're repeating what I'm saying then I'm like oh he's paying attention to me he's listening to me you're proving that you're listening to the person which also is a really positive thing never mind the whole psychological connection that we're making just the fact that when I'm repeating what you're saying back to you it shows you I'm listening to what you're saying right I often when I talk about listening and how important it is people don't realize how important it is and I think one of the ways that I use to explain how important it is I use the opposite which is if you're talking and I cut you off everyone knows that's disrespectful everybody knows it it's like a sign of disrespect if someone's talking not jump in there and cut them off oh you're not listening me that's being disrespectful the opposite of that is when I actually listen to what you have to say and now we've got a little technique to prove to you that I'm listening to what you say I'm going to mirror those last couple words back to you so there's no doubt that you got the words if you repeat them back nice little technique uh moving on a little bit um again we're hitting the highlights of this book you got you got to get the book the book is definitely going to is definitely going to leave a mark on your brain so get the book in a good way yes in a good way yeah not psychological damage but in a positive way uh I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here the language of negotiation is primarily a language of conversation and Rapport a way of quickly establishing relationships and getting people to talk and think together here are some key lessons from this chapter remember a good negotiation negotiator prepares going in to be ready for possible surprises a great negotiator aims to use her skills to reveal the surprises she is certain to find my note next to that was role play how often are we role-playing if we're negotiating what do you mean so let's say from a leadership perspective you know it's you and me we're peers and I go hey Chris I gotta I gotta go meet with Echo you know how he's all mad about you know us cutting his hours I'm gonna go talk to him right now I know he's pissed can we run through this a couple times so I'm just gonna role play so that way I think about what could Echo possibly say you know he might he might get mad about this he might talk about his family he might talk about how long he's been here and I want to kind of have some contingency plans here right to do what you said prepare be ready for possible surprises and actually be ready to take those surprises and when he says you know what about my family and I said well the important thing is Echo I know we got to give you some last hours right now but the main thing I want to do is keep you here the only way you can do that is if we cut back your hours a little bit it's hopefully going to be temporary it should be when the market picks back up are we in an actual negotiation see where I'm going here echo's not in his head he's kind of on board let's take care of the family what he's thinking I get more free time so there you go you know there's another Point hey now's a little time to make all those baseball games you got to make so that's a point that you made role play something that we did we do with our clients all the time right um if you're with a good role player right great tool right like if you get somebody who has who's dialed in enough emotionally enough emotional intelligence to make some good predictions for you it's probably not bad even if they're not good at it you just got to make sure that that's not exactly the way you expect it to go down yep yep all right so this is a possibility not this is how it's going to happen definitely uh you say don't commit to assumptions instead view them as a hypothesis and use the negotiation to test them regularly rigorously to me my note I wrote down on this one was the most important characteristic for a leader to me is to be humble and if you're not humble you know I go and think and I'm right you're wrong or I'm just right it doesn't even matter what you are because I know I'm right right this this word of or the way you put it viewing your ideas as a hypothesis my plan is it's beautiful asthma and everyone that a thousand percent of the tribute to my son Brandon because he we'd be talking about this developing it after I left the FBI and kick any ideas around and he'd have an Insider he'd say something and I know that use the word hypothesis in our vernacular came from him and it's a good word when you're going into a discussion with somebody don't say this is my idea say this is a just a hypothesis it's the one I came up with could be right could be wrong let's see where it's at uh you say people who view negotiation as a battle of arguments become overwhelmed by the voices in their head negotiation is not an act of battle it's a process of discovery the goal is to uncover as much information as possible and it goes back to what we already talked about I'm looking for the best way of doing it you're looking for a deal that works best deal best plan what's the difference right to quiet the voices in your head make your soul and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say which means we're listening the most underrated tool of leadership yeah is listening uh slow it down going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making if we're in too much of a hurry people can feel as if they're not being heard you risk undermining the Rapport and Trust you've built gotta get used to that silence yeah and you talk about it in here many many people are uncomfortable with silence yeah for a variety of reasons it's just happened in the last 72 hours last few days um what I love about what I do for a living now is I get an interesting conversations with people with Fascinating People that I just like aspire to be in the same room with so Ari Emmanuel you know the the art that Ari from Hollywood the guy that you know uh the character on um entourage is based around right so he gives me a call he wants to talk about something and he says you know speakers Bureau Don Walker runs it we'll get on the phone with him cool so I get on the phone with with Don and Ari at the same time and Don has done his homework but he's one of those guys that's not comfortable with silence so fortunately he's so smart about what he's doing and he's done it for so long that everything that's coming out of his mouth is exactly what I'm thinking however I've I've done a a talk a couple of times that you get seven to ten seconds to get somebody's attention or you lose it and so he starts out by saying I know I get seven to ten seconds to get your attention and he must have talked for about three minutes and finally Ari goes that's the longest seven seconds I've heard in my life because Don just couldn't stop talking um next one put a smile on your face when people are in a positive frame of mind they think more quickly and are more likely to collaborate and problem solve instead of fight and resist positivity creates mental agility in both you and your counterpart all good stuff now you got you go into this section here and you talk about it in the book already you tell and again I'm I'm skipping the stories that you wrap around these where people can get the examples of what you did and where you use these so get the book so you can get some of those examples um three voice tones available to negotiators number one the late night FM DJ voice you selectively to make a point inflect your voice downward keeping it calm and slow when done properly you create an aura of authority and trustworthiness without triggering defensiveness number two the positive playful voice this should be your default voice it's a voice of an easy going good-natured person your attitude is light and encouraging the key here is to relax and smile while you're talking number three the direct or assertive voice use rarely will cause problems and create pushback uh we did a podcast a while ago on something called Psychological reactants and what this is is the Instinct that everyone has that when I tell you to do something you don't want to do it right it's just a natural reaction that everybody has and it causes that's what allows reverse psychology to work because when I say oh Chris you can't do this you go yes I can right when I say you couldn't paint that fence all by yourself you go yes I couldn't you go do it um so that direct voice is something to watch out for foreign moving on to this next section and you already mentioned this the the idea of labeling uh you say don't don't feel their pain label it emotions are one of the main things that derail communication once people get upset at one another rational thinking goes out the window that's why instead of denying or ignoring emotions good negotiators identify and influence them they are able to precisely label emotions those of others and especially their own and once they label the emotions they talk about them without getting wound up for them emotion is a tool emotions aren't obstacles they are a means the relationship between an emotionally intelligent negotiator and their counterpart is essentially therapeutic it duplicates that of a psychotherapist with a patient the psychotherapist pokes and prods to understand his patients problems and then turns the responses back onto the patient to get him to go deeper and change his behavior that's exactly what good negotiators do getting to this level of emotional intelligence demands opening up your senses talking less and listening more can learn almost everything you need and a lot more than other people would like you to know simply by watching and listening keeping your eyes peeled your ears open and your mouth shut to me about labeling a little bit how we using it what does it look like um simple again it seems like it sounds like it looks like seems like something's bothering you seems like you don't know when you're going to need me seems like you've given this a lot of thought just hanging a label on something it hits the brain in a different way than anything else does and even questions like me and another guy Steve show were doing a lot of stuff with real estate agents these days got a book coming out four residential real estate agents in about two months what's the name of the book so everyone can pre-order it the full fee agent okay and the Agents we've coached for example you go through an open house you walk around you look around and the agent says you're on the way out the door what'd you see that you liked basically pretty good question as questions go starts with the word what not a great way a good word to start questioning with calibrated question if you will and people stop and think and they're like ah well you know we're kind of like the kitchen to give you a thoughtful answer same scenario somebody walking out the door the agent says seems like you saw some stuff you liked oh yeah look I got to tell you something we were looking at the bedroom and we could see our daughter in there and you know the backyard is perfect for the way our kids and like a complete download of what's going through somebody's brain like just straight like from Layman's perspective bypassing the prefrontal cortex entirely shoving up uh uh listening device in the side of your head and hearing what's going on in your head another example in the labels when you're exhausted when you're tired it's hard to give a good answer so I'm on my way back from a trip to the UAE a couple of months ago and I'm in Seattle waiting to get on a plane and I'm exhausted shoot a text to a buddy to take care of this now he could have come back at me with a good question what makes you ask to make sure that we're aligned but instead he texts me back seems like you have a reason for asking now I was so tired at that point in time that I saw the difference seems like you have a reason for asking I must have thrown back at him at 10 line text bang bang bang bang bang bang and then afterwards I thought if he just said what makes you ask I was tired enough that I thought you know just I'd have texted him back just do it stop bothering me there's something about the way the label hits the brain that there's a complete mental change in through response and the amount of information you get out of somebody seems like we're danger close on this one to the borderline catastrophic mistake that we can make which is you come into my office you're all mad and I look at you and say calm down you're mad so the difference here is it seems like you're really mad about this yeah well it seems like seems like this is important because the great skill works with your boss also he's one of the students in my class at Georgetown boss comes by come on we got to go right now we got we got something we got to take care of right now he called it the boss drive-by now we is you we got something we got to do right now that means I got something for you to do right now and he's in a really he's loud about it you know so this guy gets drug into his boss's office and immediately says sounds like this is important well the boss is coming at you like that because it is important which is the first thing he wants or she wants you to understand so if you demonstrate sounds like this is important right away boss immediately comes down three notches starts thinking things through somebody's angry you know sounds like this has made you angry sounds like this is important sounds like this is upsetting you want to you want him to come down several notches see the lizard brain is out of the driver's seat and the human brain is back in right I got a this book here leadership strategy and tactics I talk about one of the tactics I talk about I call it reflect and diminish which means when Chris comes into my office and he goes I can't believe the supply Department didn't get this stuff here on time what I do is reflect some of that anger but I diminish it so I say are you serious it didn't show up yet what how much gear is it that you're missing so immediately I show you that I'm on your side I show you that I'm also mad about it but we start moving towards the solution as opposed to like well you need to calm down before you come in here or hey you need to take ownership of this like cool we can get there but a little this is like a very similar idea to reflect and diminish yeah well and I love that question how much gear is mission missing because like on our list of calibrated questions we hold people almost exclusively to what and how and so how feels good to the other side and through touch on what Kahneman would talk about it triggers in-depth thinking so the how question to immediately even think about the answer let alone answer it you put them in a completely different frame of mind which takes all you know all the steam out takes all the gas out of the tank takes all the wind out of the sails whatever you want of their Reptilian Brain and you you now got them in a deep thinking mode how's a great question how is a great question talk me through uh the next section here tactical empathy what's uh how do you how do you how do you use that what does it mean um first of all it was we put the word tactical in front of it to destigmatize the word because in common usage the word is thought of as sympathy or compassion and it's not in in usage it's been convoluted and distorted I can empathize you know I've been there I feel that way I agree that was that was not the original origin of the word or how it was meant to be applied that was why I started collaborating with Harvard in the first place because Bob manuken wrote in his book empathy's not even liking the other side it's not agreement it's not liking it's demonstrating that you'll understand now and people equate to understanding to agreement in my terrorism days in New York we're trying to get Muslims to testify against other Muslims in open court and they were shocked by that by a whole bunch of reasons one of you know if you want to be proud to be an American you know have have a uh an Arab Muslim who's uh in this country just trying to work really hard they said to us after the trial you know when you told us ahead of time this was about the truth we thought you were kidding and having gone through the process we realized that your system is about the truth and so how do we get how do we get those Muslims to come in and testify honestly I would sit down with them and I'd say right off the bat you think for the last 200 years there's been a succession of American governments that have all been anti-islamic and they would go yeah now that's empathy I never said it was true I didn't say I agreed I didn't say I disagree I took no position whatsoever on that statement I say you think this and I'd nail it on the head and none of it is that hard when you really really you know where the other sides come from you're just scared to say it like I'd say to these guys and you just watched then be shocked and then dial in with me having said what was in the back of their mind that's all it is and that's and that is a a similar thing to labeling uh you say here labeling is a way of validating someone's emotion by acknowledging it give someone's emotion a name and you show that you identify with how that person feels it gets you close to someone without asking about external factors you know nothing about think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy a time-saving emotional hack so this is similar to oh this is what you think about a certain subject which now I'm reading back to you hey you think that the past 200 years has been anti-islamic governments this would be it seems like you're angry about the way the Islamic world's been treated hey that'd be that'd be a great start a good start like some of this stuff is ridiculous doing especially talking about politicians like I'm surprised more politicians don't don't get this Mario Cuomo Andrew Cuomo's father Chris Cuomo's father governor of New York I saw him addressed a hostile crowd of African Americans that were waiting for Winnie Mandela this is just before Nelson Mandela gets out Winnie Mandel is doing a world tour they're keeping the pressure on the South African government make sure they let them go she's in New York heavy duty African-American crowd almost all African-American Mario Cuomo isn't just not African-American he's Italian which in New York is a much different dynamic at the time a couple of black guys had been chased out of an Italian neighborhood into traffic and it got killed by getting hit by cars tensions with the Italians are very high Cuomo steps up into a crowd that is just short of throwing rocks at him before he said a word he starts out and he starts going you see a world that doesn't take your skin color into account you see a world that doesn't give you a chance because of where you came from and how they perceive you and he just started laying out thing after thing after thing after thing that they were in fact feeling and thinking not agreeing with any of it I I guarantee you before he stepped out on the stage he probably said to one of his aides said Watch Me Turn This Crowd around they start cheering him inside of about five minutes before he's finished with them they loved him like they were so in favor because he dialed into them and what they were thinking and feeling and he wasn't afraid to say it and to this day I'm shocked that more politicians don't do that because it's not agreement he takes no position on it whatsoever this is what you see yeah yeah it lets that person understand that you understand at a minimum this is what we're looking for um uh you say here as you try and insert tools of tactical empathy into your daily life I encourage you to think of them as extensions of natural human interactions as not and not artificial conversational ticks in any interaction it pleases us to feel that the other side is listening and acknowledging our situation whether you are negotiating a business deal or simply chatting to a person at the supermarket butcher counter creating empathetic relationship and encouraging your counterpart to expand on their situation is the basis of healthy interaction now this is something I say to people a lot I say Hey listen you can't pretend to do this stuff you're not Robert De Niro and you're not Meryl Streep so don't pretend to be curious about them don't pretend just really feel that way yeah you need to say hey I really want to learn what you know I really want to understand what you're thinking here because if you're trying to act you're gonna fail most people are going to fail when they're trying to act right and I always say intent has a smell so if you come in there and you're just trying to butter me up with some little conversation I'm gonna smell it most people are gonna smell that I know when I the reason I know that is because when I was a young seal I was the youngest and most Junior guy in my first two seal platoons so when you know the boss would come in we all we you know whatever [ __ ] he was throwing we'd see right through it like okay I see what's really going on here intense gonna have a smell so it should be Earnest all this stuff should be earnest uh you go on to say some key points here imagine yourself in your counterpart situation the beauty of empathy is that it doesn't demand that you agree with the other person's ideas you may well find them crazy but by acknowledging the other person's situations you immediately convey that you're listening and once they know you are listening they may tell you something you can use so boom the reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal so Focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence get them into the open what do you mean by that which part uh you and I are talking and what barriers are you looking at what barriers sometimes you're saying barriers the reason I'm not going to agree to a deal isn't because I can't find common ground it's just that there's these barriers that I have that are that are worse right right right so first of all uh kind of three different things there and I'm gonna I'm gonna try to drive the state through the heart of common ground to start with and this is my theory on Common Ground first of all the strongest common ground is usually ethnicity or geography and geography is more powerful than ethnicity like if you and I grew up in the same neighborhood um and I don't know what all the combination of ethnic ethnic groups you are because like if you were in New York you'd be one of five and I wouldn't know which one it is he's talking to Echo Charles right now by the way yeah so um but if we grew up in the same neighborhood like you and I resonate yeah now if you and I had the exact same ethnicity and you grew up in New York City and I grew up in Mississippi where you're like I don't know what this dude is talking about there's going to be some resonance but geography is stronger now then Common Ground also why do I want to have common ground with you so you understand me so we say we share core values you understand where I'm coming from if so if I just demonstrate that I understand I'm not going to be one I don't got to be from your neighborhood you because what common ground is does this guy or gal understand me so that just show somebody you understand and Common Ground is unnecessary not a barriers um example one of my favorites uh Bob iger's book the right of a lifetime he sit down to negotiate what ends up being the sale of Pixar to Disney at the time jobs hates Disney Seas with hatred for Disney and when I went to school everybody writes up that purchases you know it was obvious it was a great move it was great for both companies not how this thing goes down Hager gets to put in charge of Disney he reaches out to jobs because he he knows there's been bad blood I just been the number two guy at Disney for nine years reaches out to jobs and on some congratulatory thing and jobs immediately shoots back at him how long were you Michael's number two because he he's blaming Michael Eisner how long were you the number two guy well this was always going down not willing to accept any compliment so Iger says let's talk about this job says come on down yeah you want to talk to me come into my backyard go to the Apple campus I think you're ready to set up uh jobs wants to work off a whiteboard pros and cons offers the pen to Iger says you go first now Iger knows how much bad blood there is here he is not anxious to say a word and this is in his book so he says not Steve go ahead Steve gets up jobs starts writing all the reasons why not to do it all the barriers he effectively does this approach on himself and writes some nasty stuff about Disney like just short of out in our profanity insulting your culture sucks you guys suck everything about you is horrible your children you know I mean he everything he's laying all this stuff out there and he and he kind of gets done and he looks to uh hand a pen back to Iger who's who's not just crestfallen because he just think feels like he's gotten the stuffing kicked out of him and he says well I guess there are a lot of negatives there and jobs look back at him and says you know sometimes the positive outweigh the negative because he deactivated all the barriers they got all the barriers out they got him out into the open air they cleared their head by first discussing and just calling him out like Bob Iger does not offer a bit of explanation for any of this no I can never says but that wasn't true or but oh yeah no nothing he doesn't say a word he just lets all the negatives get out there and when he when he lets jobs run the full course of the reasons for not doing it then jobs is left with the positives which is in fact the way humans make decisions you will reconcile in your head how do you live with the negatives deal with them deactivate them before you decide to do something if you can reconcile all those negatives as soon as you do your brain then goes to the positive and then the positive picks up this tremendous amount of velocity having been Unshackled from the negatives that's that's it we do it all the time we do it constantly I've had this thought a couple times already during this discussion it's and it just hit me again the idea of talking about the negatives you know right now in the veteran Community there's a huge you know issue with uh PTSD and Veteran suicide and I I've talked about this before when I've lost my friends in combat every time I've been a guy that was like okay you're given the eulogy you're giving a memorial speech so I had to go and sit down in the in the pain and sorrow and write down what I'm going to say to a crowd of people you know in a day or two days and what you end up doing is you end up thinking through and putting on paper like you know this terrible situation um and then you know coming out of the military when I got out of the military I was talking to people telling the Leadership Lessons that I've learned but in telling the Leadership Lessons that I've learned you're also talking through some of the really bad things that happened so as I hear you say that look you got to get those negatives out there I tell veterans that a lot you know get it helps when you talk through these things you know they say that about World War II versus Vietnam World War II you got done with World War II what did you do you got on a ship with a bunch of other guys that just were in combat and you sailed back to America for six weeks and you sat below decks and told stories to each other about the friends that you lost and all the stuff that you've been through well in Vietnam what did you do you got done with your tour you got on a plane for 15 hours and then you got dropped off in Main Street America you didn't get to process it you didn't get to talk about any of this stuff there yeah and then you got yelled at so yeah this idea of getting the negatives out there even though it's uncomfortable and it is uncomfortable it sucks no one wants to do it but if you do it you start to deal with them you start to contend with it and I can tell you right now the more you do it the more you process it the better you're gonna feel right so it's not even just a negotiation thing this is like a life thing yeah um another note you make pause after you label a barrier or a mirror or mirror a statement let it sink in don't worry the other party will fill the silence getting used to that silence thing label your counterparts fears to defuse the power we all want to talk about happy stuff but remember the faster you interrupt action in your counterparts amygdala the part of the brain that generates fear the faster you can generate feelings of safety well-being and Trust same idea right yeah if we talk about that thing that is pissing you off or that thing that's scaring you the minute you let out of that cage it like loses some of its power right you know when we work with explosive we do something called tamping the explosives which means you compress that you hold that thing in and it's going to cause more damage so when you cover up an explosive it creates a bigger explosion that's why you see like a kid puts a firecracker in a microwave oven and it causes them because the microwave oven is shut and there's massive over pressure and it blows the door you know 150 yards because you compressed it well it's the same thing with this fear that you're talking about you let that thing out let it breathe it's going to take the sting off of it uh that's why you know you just talked about this with Steve Job list the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can this is the counter-intuitive counterintuitive what's counterintuitive about this is I think to myself you know if I actually tell Chris that it seems like I'm ripping him off what if he doesn't think that he probably won't know and why should I admit to it it's like he knows he knows he's thinking that you're thinking if I'm thinking that hey this price is probably high he's definitely thinking the price is high uh remember you're dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood so use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perception Dynamics there you go I mean this is just some awesome techniques here uh the opening to chapter four here is kind of a surprise beware of yes and master no right at some point their development all negotiators have to come to grips with no when you come to realize the real psychological Dynamic behind it you'll love the word it's not just that you lose your fear of it but that you can come to learn what it does for you and how you can build deals out of it yes and maybe are often worthless but no always Alters the conversation talk us through that yeah um I think I first came across this idea Jim Camp wrote a book in 2002 called start with now and I remember seeing that on a bookshelf like doing a double take on like start with no I thought we were supposed to get the yes yes it was a magic word and he had discovered inadvertently that if you just tell the people it was okay to say no that they were more likely to agree just he's right up front he called the right to veto and he'd say you know I just want you to know if before we get into this you can say no at any time you say no to me anytime and that and I'll go away and he made more deals so accidentally one of my hostage negotiators in uh Pittsburgh tells me she says that you know because I'm making everybody read this book did I do this now she was going to be removed removed from the negotiation team in Pittsburgh because her boss was jealous of how much the police department loved her so she finds out she's going to get removed which is going to hurt the offices relationship with the police department but this guy doesn't care because he's jealous she sits down with him and she says do you want the FBI to be embarrassed now I remember when she first told me that I remember thinking through at the moment like I would never have had the guts to say like that sounds so manipulative I imagine this guy just bursting into flames on the spot guy relaxes he leans back in his chair you know he Steeples with his hands like that's what people do when they feel really good about themselves laughs and uh he goes no she says what do you want me to do and he says well you know stop letting this stuff interfere with your investigations now go back to work so he calls her in to fire her from the team she walks out no problem so I'm like there's something here and then I start thinking about other conversations I've had uh Lieutenant on the police department that I thought gotten this guy's way a lot because he was uh over manage them I remember him saying to me once you know a Lieutenant's job is to say no but I thought no it's not uh Elite you know Lieutenant is the leader Leader's jobs to encourage people not to say no so why is he saying this it makes it feel good to say no it makes him feel safe it makes him feel protected and we start experimenting with instead of letting people say no what happens if you actually get them to say no like how does that change feelings the way they react and it makes such a massive difference like instantaneous like if it's important I don't say do you disagree I say do you disagree I don't say is this a good idea is this a ridiculous idea I don't say you know what I'm never going for yes I'm always going for no and you know if I can because I know I'm all over the place here I'm on a plane from uh JFK to LA where it's a red eye and uh a black businessman sitting next to me he's kind of loud uh he's got a he's got a big colorful sweater on but I just you know not not crazy out there but I just think you know interesting interesting cat clearly a businessman he's got people on his team because people that are sitting you know back in economy or walking by and you know hey boss hey doing and finally but I hear him on a phone and he's just try and force people to say yes and finally I can't take it anymore in between calls and I tap on the show and I said look get them to say no change your questions you drive me crazy I can't take it anymore I can I'm hearing you shove this down people's throats switch from yes to no and I go instead and again instead of degree do you disagree instead of would you do this are you against doing this and I gave him a quick rundown of how to make the switch and he's a smart dude picks it right up really fast she gets back on the phone and I also say you know the reason you should listen to me is because I wrote this book never split the difference so just do it smart dude learnable coachable does it instantaneously looks back at me says thanks he says let me introduce myself my name is Trevor you may know me by my stage name Busta Rhymes [Laughter] wow okay you know your hair's a little shorter right now I didn't recognize you right off the bat but uh I do recognize that name uh you go on to say no has a lot of skills no allows real issues to be brought forth no protects people from making and lets them correct ineffective decisions no slows things down so people can freely Embrace their decisions and their agreements they enter into no helps people feel safe secure emotionally comfortable and in control of all their decisions no moves everyone everyone's efforts forward and there's a there's a a a thing that you point out here which is important because you say using this chapter's tools and daily life is difficult for many people because they go directly against one of society's biggest social dictums that is be nice right especially because in the book you're like hey smile be pleasant and and you know getting people to say no is one of those things you say we've instrumentalized niceness in a way as a way of greasing the social Wheels yet it's often a ruse we're polite and we don't disagree to get through daily existence with the least degree of friction but by turning niceness into a lubricant we've leached it of meaning a smile and a nod might signify get me out of here as much as it means nice to meet you that's death for a good negotiator who gains their power by understanding their counterpart situation and extracting information about their counterparts desires and needs extracting that information means getting the other party to feel safe and in control then while it may sound contradictory the way to get there is by letting the other party by getting the other party to disagree to draw their own boundaries to Define their desires as a function of what they do not want in other words getting them to say no yeah it's nuts it just it's of the of the you know the different skills are counter-intuitive to the to their own degree like the extremely strong degree that getting somebody to say yes makes them uncomfortable concern worried about what kind of traps they're walking into was a hook what have I forgotten complete different 180 degree tone on getting him to say no like that the Comfort level from saying no and then the ability to think things through immediately like if I were to say do you disagree do you disagree you go no I don't disagree but here are the following problems and you'd lay them right out one two three four five right off the top of your head have no problem if I'd have said do you agree and you don't want to say yes I agree but here are the following problems you won't do it the second way because you would have felt that the mere utterance of the word yes hooked you and so then anything that you lay out after that feels like you're digging yourself in deeper but having said no you don't feel hooked so now you're going to lay out the next four or five things that you might need because you don't feel like you're digging yourself in deeper and the next four or five things after the yes or no are what's critical it's never never right there it's never at the point of decision it's really here are the problems or here's what you got to accomplish and you got to get past that and you get past it freely when people say no because they feel safe and protected they feel no sense of obligation they don't feel like they're digging themselves in with each thing they say after that I got the that emotion from that you got an example in the book real common example the two the two examples you is now a bad is now a bad time to talk right versus do you have a few minutes to talk right like when someone calls you up on the phone and says hey do you have a few minutes to talk right now I I want to say no but I also kind of feel like when I say yes like what do we get but when someone says hey is it a bad time to talk right now I'm like no it's not a bad time I'm like okay with it it's just one of those things uh the other thing that you got in here that really aligns a lot with with what I talk about a lot is um negotiate in their world persuasion is not about how bright or smooth you or forceful you are it's about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea so don't beat them with logic or Brute Force ask them questions that open past your goals it's not about you I I say all the time I've written in these books make it their idea right how can I make this their idea and the other thing I say a lot is the truth doesn't matter if I punch you in the face with it right I mean if I punch you in the face of the truth you're not going to be open to it you're going to be pissed and you're going to find a way to defend yourself and you're probably going to stab me in the neck with uh your facts from your perspective so uh with a dull spoon right stab you in the neck with a double spoon yeah uh now we get into this section here trigger the two or the chapter five trigger the two words that immediately transform any negotiation you say the crisis negotiation unit the FBI crisis negotiation negotiation unit developed what is a powerful Staple in the high-stakes world of Crisis negotiation the behavioral change stairway model bcsm behavioral change stairway model the model proposes five stages active listening empathy Rapport influence and behavioral change that take any negotiator from listening to influencing Behavior the origins of this model can be traced back to the Great American psychologist Carl Rogers who proposed that real change can only come when a therapist accepts that the client as he or she is an approach known as unconditional positive regard the vast majority of us however as Rogers explained come to expect that love praise and approval are dependent on saying and doing things people consider correct that is because for most of us positive regard for the positive regard we we experience as conditional we develop a habit of hiding who we really are and what we really think instead calibrating our words to gain approval but disclosing little so they come up with this thing active listening that's the first step empathy all right I kind of see where you're coming from Rapport now we're starting to understand each other influence you're starting to listen to what I have to say and then behavioral change you're actually going to do something different based on the influence here uh if you successfully take someone up the behavioral change stairway each stage attempting to engender more trust and more connection there will be a breakthrough moment when unconditional positive regard is established and you can begin exerting influence after years of refining the staircase and its tactics I can teach anyone how to get to that moment but as Legions of b-school grads weaned on the most famous negotiating book in the world getting Diaz have ultimately discovered you more than likely think more than likely haven't gotten there yet if what you're hearing is the word yes you'll soon learn the sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually that's right that's what you're looking for you're looking for the other person the person that you're negotiating with to say that's right the that's right breakthrough usually doesn't come at the beginning of a negotiation it's invisible to the counterpart when it occurs and they Embrace what you've said to them it's a subtle epiphany so talk to us about that's right well that's what people say when they're completely all in on what was just said like and if you look for it you see it everywhere and and one of the great examples that I like to use is the people that are devoted to Donald Trump and my son pointed this out I mean if that isn't the proof of the that's right moment somewhere in a speech or in the presidential debate when he articulated something when you bought in completely you looked at the screen and you pointed at it and you said that's right and it's not just Trump it's any charismatic leader anywhere when the charismatic leader is articulated something that you believe is totally true and it totally gets you nobody ever says you're right they always say that's right and there's that statement is when when you were totally bought in on what was just said and as as and our co-author tall was one that pulled out uh the description of it being a subtle epiphany tall contributed brilliantly to the book I mean he brought a lot to the table besides just being a writer and so then um as I was getting more into Neuroscience I look up Neuroscience the Neuroscience of epiphany what neurochemicals do you get hit with you get hit with serotonin and oxytocin and oxytocin is the bonding drug so they hence people bonded to Donald Trump or any other leader you're you're bonded to Obama you're bonded to whoever has uttered the things that you believe to be completely true there's this it's a one-way Bond and there's a feeling of a bond and then again back to huberman's podcast you know for me just being bonded is enough on another one of his podcasts he points out oxytocin inclines people to tell the truth so now not only are you bonded to me you're more likely to tell me the truth and then he points out on yet another podcast serotonin the feeling of satisfaction which means you're not as demanding so if I can get a that's right out of you you're going to bond to me you're going to tell me the truth and you're going to make fewer demands what else do I want yeah the the example and again the details on the book are are outstanding but the example that you give goes back to the thing that I opened up with you had sabaya this Mastermind terrorist and you were in negotiations with them and you're actually working through a translator and the translator was a hard ass you know pretty much let's we need to go at him type of attitude and you kind of convinced him over time to take a less a more indirect approach and and eventually the The Negotiator kind of read back hey look you've been oppressed for this long the Spanish came here they converted your people against their will and you've been suffering underneath this government and sabaya says that's right and that's what changes it that's what changes his attitude yeah yeah and if I can couple of tangents because yeah you know we that was also when I was working with mcraven okay not Admiral but Captain McCray and he was he was phenomenal and he he shared he created the hostage working group in the National Security Council his leadership you know what a great guy to work with I can remember in particular when we're working that case and wanted to follow it on like there was some stuff that the US government was very nervous about and you needed a guy um who stood up properly for everybody and for the right thing if you will and I can remember being at one meeting in particular uh uh Captain mccraven mcraven I don't mean to be disrespectful I'm sure it sounds disrespectful just call him a craven but uh mcraven stands up and he says you know what I'm not going to stop talking about this until somebody tells me to sit down and shut up and they're gonna have to tell me twice and I remember thinking that's the guy I want talking to the White House that's the guy that I want to talk in the Department of State and we're in the midst of that Shilling case and the last thing that we need when we're in a forward operating base is any sort of um insecurity indecision from Washington DC and when you're out there on the front lines having a guy like Captain Bill mcraven Admiral bill mcraven holding things together back in Washington DC it's just a ridiculously reassuring feeling to have he was a great guy no doubt about it that's that's awesome uh there's a big difference and you pointed out in the book there's a huge difference and you mentioned it but I just want to cover it again just to make sure people catch this there's a huge difference between that's right and you're right because you're right anyway here's a good way to here's a good way to translate this you know you're talking to your wife and you know you say something she goes oh you're right that is not what we're looking for that means she wants you to shut up and she's going to carry on and you haven't come to any kind of conclusion uh so there's a big difference getting someone to say you're right in fact there's a lot of times where that's in an increase in hostilities that just means they're looking for another way to attack you yeah and they haven't quite got it yet but they're they're waiting they're laying in weight and it's if they've given you your right um you got problems foreign be careful with that one look for that's right uh next section bend their realities and and you get into this here don't compromise which is a interesting thing we're going to talk through the win-win mindset pushed by so many negotiation experts is usually ineffective and often disastrous at best it satisfies neither side and if you employ it with the counterpart who has a win-lose approach you're setting yourself up to be swindled of course as we've noted previously you need to keep a Cooperative Rapport building apathetic approach the kind that creates a dynamic in which deals can be made but you have to get rid of that naivete because compromise splitting the difference can lead to terrible outcomes compromise is often a bad deal and a key theme will hit in this chapter is no deal is better than a bad deal even in kidnapping yes a bad deal in kidnapping is where someone pays and no one comes out to make my point on compromise let me paint an example a woman wants her husband to wear black shoes with a suit but her husband doesn't want to know he prefers brown shoes so what do they do they compromise they split the difference they meet halfways halfway and you guessed it he wears one black shoe and one brown shoe is this the best outcome in fact No in fact it's the worst possible outcome either of the two outcomes black or brown would have been better I'm here to call [ __ ] on compromise right now we don't compromise because it's right we compromise because it's easy and because it saves face we compromise in order to say that at least we got half the pie still to his Essence we compromise to be safe most people in negotiation are driven by fear or by the desire to avoid pain too for you are driven by their actual goals so don't settle here's a simple rule never split the difference Creative Solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk annoyance confusion and conflict accommodation and compromise produced none of that you've got to embrace the hard stuff that's where the great deals are and that's what negotiators do amen [Laughter] it's quiet say Amen what point did you realize that was the title of the book tall came up with that um the original title was killer deals we started working with tall Brandon and I my son Brandon um uncredited co-author of the book and Tulsa's right so we're gonna we'll start with killer deals and at some point in time the the proper title of the book will occur to me and I'll tell you what it is now you're free to disagree but I can tell you when I get deeply into this enough it I'll give you the title and probably about halfway through the whole writing process was when he said titles never split the difference it says it's the essence of what you guys are talking about it if you completely understand it and understand why he says that's what the title is and we're like you got it that's right [Music] yeah he came he told came up with it probably about halfway through the writing process now how does that we're going to get into I think I'm gonna cover it but the uh the Ackerman approach right now in the Ackerman approach you're shooting for a specific number right and you know you're kind of compromising to get to that number nope why if you shoot for a specific number why is that okay as long as you get your number but that that's my number uh meaning you wanna you wanna sell me this car for ten thousand dollars I only want to give you seven thousand dollars my first offer is a lowball offer right and then I come up well my first offer 65 of what I want to pay then I go 85 95 then 100 of what I want to pay right so I guess we didn't we didn't split the difference no it's not and there's also a very specific um uh sort of rationale behindi offers each offer has to be effectively half as much as the previous increase right you gotta you gotta always have diminishing increases the other side is going to feel like they're beating you into a position they're going to be very gratifying for them uh deadlines you talk about here time is one of the most critical crucial variables in any negotiation the simple passing of time and it's sharper cause causing the deadline or the screw that pressures every deal to conclusion whether your deadline is real and absolute or merely a line in the sand it can trick you into believing that doing a deal now is more important than getting a good deal deadlines regularly make people say and do impulsive things that are against their best interests because we all have a natural tendency to rush as a deadline approaches yeah not only Rush is the deadline approaches but not rush at all until it's looming no like and people lose track of that it's the process and at deadlines are really just designed to kick the process into gear but human beings being what they are if you give somebody a deadline of Friday don't expect to get into any kind of conversation before Thursday yeah I've done a lot of deals like on the way to the airport we're on our way out and that's when the discussion actually starts right not optimal right uh skipping ahead a little bit in the book The F Word why it's so powerful when to use it and how the most powerful word in negotiations is fair right as human beings we're mightily swayed by how much we feel we have been respected people comply with agreements if they feel they've been treated fairly and lash out if they don't once you understand what a messy emotional and destructive Dynamic fairness can be you can see why fair is a tremendously powerful word and you need to use it with care in in fact of the three ways that people drop the F-bomb only one is positive the most common is a judo-like defensive move that destabilizes the other side this manipulation usually takes the form something like we just want what's fair think back to the last time someone made this implicit accusation of unfairness to you and I bet you have to admit that it immediately triggered feelings of defensiveness and discomfort these feelings are often subconscious and lead to irrational concession the second use of the F-bomb is more nefarious in this one your counterpart will basically accuse you of being dense or dishonest by saying we've given you a fair offer the terrible little jab meant to distract your attention away from a distract your attention manipulating to giving in if you find yourself in this situation the best reaction is to Simply mirror the F that has just been loved that you fare you'd respond pausing to let the words power do to them what it was intended to do to you following that with a label it seems like you're ready to provide evidence that supports that which alludes to the opening of their books or otherwise handing over information that will either contradict their claim to fairness or give you more data to work with than you had previously right away you declaw the attack the last use of the f word is my favorite because it's positive and constructive it sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation here's how I use it early on in the negotiation I say I want you to feel like you're being treated fairly at all times so please stop me at any time if I'm being unfair and we'll address it simple and clear and sets me up as an honest dealer with that statement I let people know it's okay to use the word with me if they use it honestly as a negotiator you should strive for reputation of being fair you represent your reputation precedes you let it precede you in a way that paves success I when I read all that I was like oh we all it seems like human beings have this sort of natural we're just raised that fairness is a big thing for us and you know what I what I sometimes when I think of when I can't quite make a connection I think of the opposite and what that triggers in people so what's like the Epic insult that guy's a cheater right that guy's a cheater oh yeah you won but he cheated you know you hate that guy you don't want to be that guy when someone says you cheated you get all defensive so it's the same thing here or this this F-bomb when it gets dropped on you and someone goes hey we just want what's fair we need I'm not being fair and it can trigger you to making a deal you shouldn't have made a lot and the amount of time like there it's rare that in a a negotiation that has any sort of contentiousness to it at all the word will always come up I mean it's a great manipulative device and people often say it added defensiveness but for the same for the same ends you know get the aside to change your mind providing no evidence whatsoever as to why they should that's not fair yeah exactly yeah yeah that's uh you see it and usually it's it's when the table hasn't gotten turned on somebody in an unexpected way that's when they'll drop the word what does that look like um a person I know who's an eminently Fair person was in a real estate negotiation right after the housing market where they were at drops substantially and they got the buyer to increase the offer above Market by simply saying we just want what's fair now the person that used this phrase had gotten the tables turned on them by a drop in a market so it wasn't even the buyer's fault but I didn't do anything buyers following the market so this person out of simple defensiveness having had the tables turned on them they felt that it was an unfair series of circumstances now is is that the buyer's fault buyers are spying in a real estate market that is dictated by the Dynamics of the market and that was the first time it really jumped out at me and then I started looking for it across the board because a person who told the story got the buyer to raise the price and I remember thinking like that wait wait as an innocent bystander here that you know that's not fair there's no fairness there and I thought if a good person can do this and change completely change the Dynamics in a relationship in the negotiation how often does it come up and then you start looking for it and you see it over and it is so effective that the the manipulators have seen the good people use it and change the Dynamics that they've gotten really good at using it to cover up manipulative Behavior watch out for that one got a section in here bend their reality you start going to some of the methodologies of that anchor their emotions to bend your counterparts reality you have to start with the basics of empathy so start out with an accusation with an accusation audit acknowledging all of their fears by anchoring their emotions in preparation for a loss you inflame the other side's loss aversion so that they'll jump at the chance to avoid it you talk about loss aversion people are people don't want to lose right and and this uh accusation audit is sort of what Steve Jobs put up on the board when he did it himself right right um Eiger could have done it if he if he had stepped up to the thing and said well you're probably going to say this and this and this but he got Steve Jobs do which is even better uh but you anchor those emotions the other thing you say is uh let the other guy go first most of the time I suggest you let the other side anchor monetary negotiations the real issues that neither side has a perfect information going on the table this means if you don't know enough to open up with confidence so this is what we hear all the time in negotiations you know you don't say the number first how much do you want how much will you give me for the car well what do you think it's worth like we do this around and around right yeah uh what are the disadvantages advantages of opening or giving the number well very much as a general rule I'm I'm going to want the other side to show the number first because it's information it's gonna it's gonna tell me it's going to tell me data it's going to tell me mindset where you're coming from it's going to tell me a lot none of which am I getting if I go first so as a general rule we don't go first again a general rule it's at some point in time to keep from going round and around around I'm going to throw a number out now I'm going to characterize it before I throw it out and if it I'm going to say this is a lot when when we quote prices for our coaching first of all our coaching is more expensive if you can find negotiation coaching anywhere which is very hard to find we're going to charge you more than anybody else this so I'm gonna I'm gonna say that I'm gonna charge you more than anybody else does somebody somebody wants to bring me in for a talk I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna be so expensive and we're going to quote you a heart-stopping price and then you get that causes you to reflect on your value it causes you uh to run the numbers one or two things you're gonna you're gonna ask me what the number is and you're either going to say hey well he said it was expensive or you're going to say wow it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be and then we don't bargain so if I Gotta Throw a number I I like to refer to as I never throw the number out naked if I and if otherwise I want to know where you're coming from I also want to give you a price that you want because price is a term and I need to hit the sweet spot on your price if I go too high you're not going to over deliver you're going to feel like you undervalued yourself and you're going to do the same amount of work if I pay you too much I found that out the hard way if I go too low you're going to do a lousy job so what I need what I really want besides just throwing a number first I want to know what number do you think a good number is that you're going to work really hard for and feel like you earned your money and not change that you just undervalued yourself in the past and now now all of a sudden I'm worth this much more money which means you're not going to put in extra effort you're also talking here about if people are are stuck on the money you can start talking about other things right the non-monetary terms right so like if you're negotiating for a job you start talking about things that don't have anything to do with money right and that can be a good way to start to move the conversation forward the uh this is just interesting psychology the biggest thing to remember and when you start when you when you do get to numbers you say the biggest thing to remember is that numbers that end in zero inevitably feel like temporary placeholders guesstimates that you can easily be negotiated off of but anything you throw out that sounds less rounded say 37 263 dollars feels like a figure that you came to as a result of thoughtful calculation such numbers feel serious and permanent to your counterpart so use them to fortify your offers yeah it's nuts right I mean it's just that's Voodoo yeah it is so true and it's just complete voodoo Ah that's and and yet go look at the prices in a store right we see examples of it everywhere they're all 9.95 or whatever and there's a psychological thing to be you know ten dollars seems like a ton of money 9.95 I can afford all day right right right yeah well the original magic one that I love like iTunes 99 Cents for a song back when Napster and you could get all your music for free like jobs and apple like let's put a number on this that seems so small and it's not it's not a round number and suddenly people were paying for music again 99 cents still 99 Cents for a song isn't it some songs yeah I guess it's all like streaming and all this stuff now you don't really buy well actually I don't I buy like the whole thing whatever that is 129 sometimes so they jacked the prices some some yes some key points all negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs don't let yourself be fooled by the surface once you know that the Haitian kidnappers want to party want party money you'll be better you'll be miles better prepared and there's a whole section in here about that about these Haitian kidnappers you did you worked all kinds like dozens of cases of these Haitian kidnappers one of the things you've identified as they would like kidnap early in the week they wanted that money by Friday so they could go out and party and so how much do they need to have a great party that weekend that's sort of the number that you would end up looking for I mean it's awesome uh splitting the differences wearing one black and one brown shoe don't compromise meeting halfway often leads to bad deals for both sides approaching deadlines entice people to rush the negotiating process do impulsive things that are against their best interests we talked about the f word you can bend your counterparts Reality by anchoring his starting point before you make an offer emotionally anchor them by saying how bad it will be when you get to numbers set an extreme anchor to make your real offer seem reasonable or use a range to seem less aggressive the real value of anything depends on what Vantage Point you're looking at it from and last people 10 people take more risks to avoid a loss than realize again make sure your counterpart sees that there's something to lose by inaction that's why the that's why the website says today only yeah you'll miss out uh you got a section in here that's about fast forward a little bit calibrated Quest calibrate your questions and we we kind of discussed this earlier if we were recording or not but I talked about asking Earnest questions as a leader you're asking Earnest questions and you've got this a little bit similar approach but uh different verbage here calibrated questions are not just random requests for comment they have a direction once you figure out where you want a conversation to go you have to design the question that will ease the conversation in that direction while letting the other guy think think it's his choice to take you there that's why I refer to these questions as calibrated questions you have to calibrate them carefully just like you would calibrate a gun site or a measuring scale to Target a specific problem the good news is that there are rules for that first off calibrated questions avoid verbs like can is are do or does these are closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no instead they start with a list of words people know as reporters questions who what when where why and how those words Inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively but let me cut that list even further it's best to start with what how and sometimes why nothing else who when and where will often just get your counterpart to share a fact without thinking and why can backfire regardless of what the language what language the word why is translated into it's accusatory there are very rare moments when this is to your advantage the only time you can use y successfully is when defending when defensiveness that is created supports the change you are trying to get them to see why would you ever change from the way you've always done things to try my Approach as an example so I found this very useful because you know I I often talk about something uh from a military perspective called the indirect approach which means I don't want to attack you head on I want to you know I want to attack you from a flank where you're not defensive and this applies to everything it applies to leadership it applies of approaching people applies to you know if you've got an ego which everyone does and I attack your plan that means I'm attacking your ego you're gonna get defensive so you know oftentimes it's in order to get around your ego I'm going to ask you Earnest questions about the situation but the key thing that you've got here is I don't say well why do you think this is a good plan because that's an accusatory question right instead I'm a better question would be hey can you help me understand the outcome that you're looking for with this plan and all of a sudden we've got we've taken away any possibility that you can see that I'm accusing or attacking your plan which thereby is attacking your ego uh how did you come across this calibrated questions idea um Camp spoke 2002 he called them interrogatives the reporters questions in the FBI we called them just open-ended you know the list what who won't win where how and why and I noticed that he leaned heavily on one in particular which was the biggest challenge you face now I didn't realize it at the time um first of all it's a white question what's deferential people like to be asked what to do secondly now we now know the Black Swan method what is principally designed to uncover problems what's the biggest challenge you face what gets in the way I'm coaching some dentists recently people are balking at how much their dental work is going to cost the question is what happens if you do nothing you know to what questions deferential and so then be begin to to look harder at the questions I thought that was the only lab overlap between business and hostage negotiation at the time then then the Burnham case in the Philippines um it goes bad train wreck all the way around and somebody got Proof of Life on our hostages in the midst of that case and I'm just remember it blew my mind because a hostage was overheard on a phone and I'd never gotten a hostage on the phone so between how does somebody get a hostage on a phone and who the heck is getting Proof of Life on our hostages like there was more than one buyer like I didn't know what to do with this so the case case is an ongoing 13-month long train wreck a lot of people died including two out of two out of three of the total Americans that were taken listen to a drug dealer kidnapping in Pittsburgh a few months afterwards drug dealer on drug dealer one drug dealer's got the other drug dealer's girlfriend hostage who do you go when somebody important to you has been kidnapped even if you're a drug dealer you go to the FBI so our hostage negotiators are riding around listening to the drug dealer talk to the other drug dealer and just on his own he goes hey dog how do I know she's okay and the change in the tone of voice the kidnapper drug dealer went from thinking he was in charge to being having lost all control of negotiation and not knowing it at the time it was just a high question so then we changed all of our negotiation kidnapping strategy to how and what questions just hammering them with how and what questions because you want to you want to test some test it out to kidnapping and finally I'm coaching another kidnapping in the Philippines coaching a brother his brother's been grabbed by a serial killer lone kidnapper only time in my entire experience with one kidnapper they're always operating gangs and the guy was a we found out after a fact because we we caught him he was a multiple kidnappings and it killed at least well didn't have the evidence that he killed a hostage in another case just that Ransom was paid and the hostage never appeared so there's only one conclusion we're coaching coaching a brother again a good guy who would learn pick up fast how and what questions how and what questions how and what questions and at one point in time the kidnapper wants a daily per diem to keep the hostage alive which we we gotta fight over that because it's a way to test Financial Resources not to keep the hostage alive that's the family's resources so on his own the brother says when we run out of money paying the daily amount what's gonna happen and there's a silence and this serial killer on the other end of the phone says it'll be all right my negotiators in country call me there we think we got a positive breakthrough today but we're not sure what it is and they told me that I said this guy just promised never to kill hostage like I had no idea that it was a lone guy I thought we were just talking to the boss didn't know he was a killer it was another case where he chopped the victim's ear off sent the ear and video of him chopping here off to the victim's company they got paid I knew about that I've been told for a variety of reasons I'd heard about that I didn't know it was this guy take him completely out of his game with a version of what question saw another one took another guy completely out of his game with a version of the how question in a Dynamic where you'd have said we had no leverage if you thought in terms of Leverage but you got influence how do you get influence through deference and that's when we really began to dial in collectively principally my son Brandon and I another guy Derek gone very involved in the development of our thinking and we really narrowed it down to how and what is a way to really get the upper hand in a negotiation um fast forward a little bit here you got a couple things that are awesome points don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right aggressive confrontation is the enemy of constructive negotiation I always say when you're dealing with someone give them an out you know you just give them an out you can say ah you know it seems like this is the best way to do it but I know you you're smart on this stuff too does it make sense and they go yeah you know go ahead and do it that way you know they you give them an opportunity that they don't have to say I was I'm wrong you're right go do it your way no never do that and the other one again this isn't just for negotiation this is for Life bite your tongue when you're attacked in a negotiation pause and avoid angry emotional reactions instead ask your counterpart a calibrated question just such a such a solid move that will keep you out of trouble you want to say something back you know I I actually go I tell people you know someone starts attacking you or someone someone starts getting aggressive with you you know take a step back kind of Nod your head show them that you're listening don't say anything back to him instead ask him a question you way to go forward uh the 7 38 55 rule and two famous studies on what makes us like or dislike somebody UCLA psychology Professor Albert mayhabrian right totally murdered that one you're not Persian I'm not you know how to say that if you're a Persian sorry there Albert we'll call him Albert Dr Albert uh created the 738-55 rule that is only seven percent of a message is based on the words while 38 comes from the tone of the voice and 55 from the speaker's body language and face while these figures mainly relate to situations where we are forming an attitude about someone the rule nonetheless offers a useful ratio for negotiators you see body language and tone of voice not words are our most powerful assessment tools uh important to remember that important to pay attention a lot of us a lot a lot of people their your face gives away so much and it doesn't even matter what you're saying the look that you have on your face is just just giving away the way you feel and it doesn't even matter what your words are did you feel like you had to learn to uh you know control your facial expressions I got my my business partner and my friend Leif Babin you know he when he when we first started working together when he was pissed you knew it and so did everybody else it was like his face would turn red you could see how mad he was and you know over time you know as you know he started to realize that that didn't help him started to learn how to not do that is that something that you see people have to recognize and then get get themselves trained up on yeah depending upon the person there's underlying currents um so it could be for different reasons the short answer is yes and the the longer answer is how do you align your thinking in the moment a little bit of what you mentioned earlier like if you're really interested in what the other person is saying and then you worry about evaluating after the fact you don't have to worry about the look on your face as a matter of fact if you're really interested the more interested you look the more they're going to talk so if you can separate the two things out from evaluating judging what somebody said to just being making sure you fully understand then facial expressions are not a problem now the people that have a problem with them and you know it's you you're your guys faces turn red making all that's a characteristic principally of the assertive negotiator who can't wait to disagree and is holding it in the highly analytical type you know the people that seem completely emotionally detached when they think you're not looking they reveal everything and and like their facial expressions their their body language I mean they almost sometimes they look like they're twitching and so if if you know who who's highly analytical if you're faced with a team of people do not talk to the analytical guy or gal keep an eye on them you got to kind of watch them out of the corner you're right because they're going to be rolling their eyes and they're going to be sneaking peeks at people at moments I mean like they are they're the most honest most unguarded body language you ever saw in your life if they don't think they're being stared at yeah uh let me ask you this so I've been talking about leadership you're talking about you write about negotiation how much interaction because there's also a ton of similarities with uh interrogators how much interaction did you have with interrogators I mean I obviously worked with a ton of interrogators in a bunch of different organizations how much how much work did you do with interrogators a fair amount and there there's probably about three schools of thought out there um the the Great well the bad ones are just Brute Force you know I'm gonna I'm gonna make you uncomfortable physically or emotionally and I'm gonna try to force something out of you and that's that's just that just doesn't work it's kind of it's counterproductive if you if you only care about what works then you won't be harsh because it doesn't work now the other two that are left there's one thing called the listing information which uh they're a fair amount of interrogators out there that like it and they they want to get you into a very short-term mindset get you to say things that you know to be against your interests the problem is if you're getting somebody into a short-term mindset they're going to come a point in time when they regret saying it to you and you're going to lose their cooperation everything's going to fall apart so it has a shelf life now the Rapport based people those are the magic magicians that make cases nobody else can make or make deals no one else could make and the other side still wants to talk to him like when I left surveillance in New York and went inside to investigate what we were talking earlier became an inside you know uh open investigator I was surrounded by guys that had gotten cooperation from Witnesses voluntarily that people would just say like I got no idea how that guy got that cooperation One agent in particular his name was Larry whack and even even on the task force people admired how he got people to cooperate because he was he was he developed Rapport poor relationships with people even if he had a hammer the Rapport on the relationship you know the belief that we will always have be able to talk to one another as opposed to me tricking you into a short-term mindset which at some point in time you're going to feel betrayed like the rapport-based approach to deal making interrogation wins every time the same thing with leadership we might as well throw leadership in there as well you know the time I say well you know if you don't do this I'm gonna fire you or whatever it'll work for that task but eventually you're looking for another job uh so yeah those those similarities building relationships across the board so you just mentioned the analyst that's one type of person and you've got a whole section in here about not only you what kind of negotiator are you because you got to know yourself but then also how are you going to interact with these people you got the analysts that you talked about which is methodical diligent they're not in a big rutch you talked about them uh tell me about the accommodator just the so being an assertive the accommodators this weird animal they knew the analysts nor the asserters can really figure out but the accommodators really is a very hope-based person and very focused on that the moment is Pleasant and then if if the moment is pleasant and we hope hard enough then everything will be fine now when we wrote when we wrote the book we said the accommodator was focused principally on the relationship having a positive relationship and that's pretty close to True like they want the relationship to be positive but you know we worked with people that would see a train coming at us uh rhetorically uh Federal figuratively not literally there's a problem coming at us this person was on a team and we had a training and all the books that were supposed to be that were gone this guy knew about it for days at the last minute tells us none of the manuals were here because he'd been and we're like you know this is the train is getting ready to hit us we've been here for three days you haven't said a word for three days that's not relationship focused because I'm standing on a railroad track and you see a train coming my way and you're not warning me so you know this relationship is coming to a close and then we realized in hindsight and we see it constantly they're hoping something good happens at the last minute everybody's saved my colleague Derek would say you know an accommodator will walk you into a Minefield knowing it's a Minefield hoping you don't step on a mine and so the accommodators I think are the source of why in a business world people often say hope is not a strategy because the accommodator will go with hope alone and it'll work out hope alone is probably good somewhere between 20 and 45 percent of the time maybe that maybe that's being generous maybe 20 of the time and they're going to remember the 20 percent and ignore the 80 when the world turned into a disaster so the accommodators are really are very positive people they're very upbeat and they're very hope focused which is in and of itself it's not a strategy it's it's a necessary element you got to be hopeful it's going to work out it's what it is is inadequate now simultaneously people love dealing with somebody like that so we'll see on a regular basis the accommodators will make more deals overall than anybody else will but that'd be mostly really sloppy deals that are nowhere near as profitable for either side as they should have been because they simply hoped that things would fall into place and then the last one which I think you just self-identified as sorry assertive so what's the deal with the assertive negotiator just honest I'm just being honest with you you know I'm I'm saving you a lot of trouble because I want you to be honest with me so I'm gonna be honest with you that was stupid that's a dumb idea that's never gonna work you didn't think this thing you know the the assertives anybody that describes themselves as simply open and honest and it's always a punch in the face it's always just that approach like you the other side's got to know where you're coming from you do have to be honest but it's how you deliver it and the assertives are the typically the worst at making you I had I had my partner once tell me dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick and I remember thinking like how could that be I'm the nicest guy I know yeah no that's like what I thought what I talked about earlier like me punching you in the face with the truth is not a good way to get you listen exactly Echo always brings up the example of the person that says you know I'm just a direct person but I gotta tell you you were totally screwed up and again there's not a lot of people like oh thank you for being that direct person and telling me how jacked up I am usually oh look do you occasionally get someone that loves to get coached and love to get told what they yeah you get some people a lot of times it just defends them so that is so so when you take these three different personality types negotiator types are we looking to blend yes that's what the goal is each type has something really critical they bring to the table the the sort of I mean you got to tell the other side where you come from otherwise you're making them guess and you don't make good deals based on guesswork the analysts you got to think things through you've got to come up with it run some numbers you don't have to run them all run any run some any accommodator like so many people look at the accommodators and say that person's making tons of deals what are they doing it's in their demeanor it's in their approach um the just FYI for people that are about to order this book you also kind of give how do you deal with the accommodator how do you deal with these sort of songs you give both sides of the spectrum uh I'll fast forward a little bit we mentioned this briefly this this Ackerman bargain bargaining and this is the I call the system the acronym Ackerman model because it came from this guy named Mike Ackerman an ex-cia guy who founded a kidnap for ransom consulting company based out of Miami on many kidnappings we'd constantly be paired with Ackerman guys never Mike himself who helped design this haggle and you lay out this haggle it's a systemized and easy remember process that has only four steps well you go to six steps here um number one set your Target price which is your goal then you set your first offer at 65 of your Target price then you calculate three raises of decreasing increments 85 95 and 100 percent use lots of empathy and different ways of saying no to get the other side to counter before you increase your offer when calculating the final final amount use precise non-round numbers like 37 893 rather than thirty eight thousand it gives the number credibility and weight on your final number throw a non-monetary item that you probably don't want to show you're at your limit so this is a pretty cool little system yeah is that is that something you could advise someone to use when they're going to shop for a new car or a used car yeah yeah it's not a bad model it it's if you if you're gonna bargain it's the most effective bargaining model out there nothing beats it uh getting into the slot it might be the last chapter find the Black Swan and we haven't mentioned this yet but you've got the Black Swan group this is your consulting firm and quick description of the Black Swan Black Swan Theory tells us that things happen that were previously thought to be impossible or never thought of at all this is not the same as saying that sometimes things happen against a one in a million odds but rather that things never imagined do come to pass the idea of the back Black Swan was popularized by Nasim taleb and his best-selling books Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan but the term goes back much further until the 17th century people could only imagine white swans because all swans ever seen had possessed white feathers in the 17th century London it was common to refer to impossible things as black swans but when the but then the Dutch explorer William Devlin sorry people of Holland uh went to Western Australia in 1697 and saw a Black Swan suddenly the unthinkable and unthought was real this is a crucial concept of negotiation in every negotiation session there are different kinds of information there are those things we know like our counterparts name and their offer and our experiences from other negotiations those are known knowns there are those things we are certain that exist but we don't know like possibility that the other side might get sick and leave us without another counterpart those are known unknowns and they are like poker wild cards you know they're out there but you don't know who has them but most important are those things we don't know that we don't know piece of information we've never imagined that would be game changing if uncovered maybe our counterpart wants the deal to fail because he's leaving for a competitor these unknown unknowns are black swans so this is obviously something highly important to you since you named your company the Black Swan how did you stumble upon this idea well they had their first um talib's book in 2007 a Black Swan got me thinking about it I like his stuff I mean he's he's highly in-depth thinker um he's got a he's got a writing tone that is not for everybody but really in depth and and so I saw that I I the idea and like the impact of the Highland probable well that's what we did all the time in negotiation It's a combination of two things we're going to change ourselves in subtle little ways that the other side is never going to see and we're going to gain the upper hand we're going to steer it we're going to steer the negotiation and to the best possible outcome now that that doesn't mean that everything's going to a positive outcome but you've got to recognize what the best possible outcome is so there's a great metaphor for making tiny little subtle changes in your negotiation approach the other side is never going to see where you're going to make all the difference it's completely invisible and then while you're in the middle of it there's always stuff great stuff will fall out of the sky if you let it the other side's going to say something that works for you they're going to talk to you they're going to be softer in a position than you realize there's going to be pressures on them that you don't understand something is always always there and in many cases the other side doesn't imagine it and to draw a real fine point on this that a lot of people Miss it's a reason why reading body language to detect deception is almost a waste of time because for you to deceive me you've got to know it's important to have a tell you have to be consciously covering it up but a significant amount of that time you don't even know it's important so if I'm just looking for towels and not getting you talking the stuff that you didn't know was important is never going to come out so so what if so what if you're lying number one that doesn't tell me what the truth is and if we're only focused on what you're hiding rambling conversation what might that look like a woman who's getting um funding for a film she's doing in Los Angeles a couple years ago she's trying to get 300 000 out of investor very focused on this film being shot in LA very focused on this amount of money very focused on what they're trying the point they're trying to make in a film but she's mirroring and labeling and out of the blue it comes out that the financier owns a castle in France which would be a great setting for the next film something she never would have brought up the financier they're talking about a film being shot in La martial arts this and that all these other little things you know female martial artists beating up bad guys like how is she going to say oh by the way you don't have I'm working on another film we want to it's a medieval film you don't happen to have a castle in France do you like that is never going to come up ever but she's talking and she's labeling and marrying and the next thing you know this this thing comes out that the other person has no idea makes any difference changes the structuring of the whole deal now instead of talking about one film they're talking about multiple films completely changes the complexion of the the finances that are needed on the first if she can go back out she's already got partial packaging on a second film like it changes everything and there's no way that she would have known to ask it and the person on the other side was well instead of 300 Grand what about my castle because that's not going to do any good for a film in L.A just little things like that well one thing that emphasized the importance of listening is you know at one point you're talking about a case you've got a guy that's you know uh drives to drives to Washington DC in a tractor he's going to blow himself up he's going to blow up uh some of the points yeah and you know he's saying he's going to blow himself up um but when you actually have you're having conversations with him and you've got multiple people listening right because listening is so important that if you look if you can get more more than one person you get two or three or four people listening to the conversation and they're gonna pick things up that someone else might miss and studying the transcript so you had someone on the team that realized number one he was a veteran how can we utilize that and then someone realized he was like of I don't want to say fundamentalist Christian but a very strong Christian and you had a certain religious thing going on so are you able to utilize these things that people caught just through listening and it changed the Dynamics of the whole of the whole negotiation right right kept him from getting killed got him out of day early and so that was you know short in a timeline okay because he was he was really at the end of his rope and each hour went by he had less sleep which increases the likelihood that he's going to do something stupid we're still not 100 sure that there are bombs there and so if he'd made a particular move uh towards where the possibility he had he had his Jeep and a flatbed they said we don't know their own explosives in a Jeep and a flatbed if he goes there we got to take him out and we're talking to him and this comes up and he's agreed to come out 72 hours we want to cut try to cut 24 off of it and when one of the female negotiators Winnie Miller says you know tell him tomorrow's the donor the third day which is 48 hours and I'll come out it's what he says and he had talked so much about the military and his 82nd Airborne experience somebody else listening heard the underlying strong Christian beliefs in that his religion if you will everybody's got a religion everybody everybody has got a religion just depend upon what it is and how broadly you define it uh just gonna hit some of these last section of the book I'll cover um but I just want to hit some of these highlights here let what you know your no knowns guide you but not blind you every case is new so remain flexible and adaptable black swans are leverage multipliers remember the three types of Leverage and you go over these in the book positive which is the ability to give someone what they want negative the ability to hurt someone and normative using your counterparts Norms to bring them around again there's more detail on the book inside the book work to understand the other side's religion which you just mentioned everybody's got a religion digging into World Views inherently implies moving beyond negotiation table and into life emotional and otherwise of your counterpart that's where black black swans live review everything you hear from your counterpart you will not hear everything the first time so double check compare notes with team members use backup listeners exploit the similarity principle people are more apt to concede to someone when they share a culture someone they share a cultural similarity with so dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground when someone seems irrational or crazy they most likely aren't faced with a situation search for constraints hidden desires and bad information and last get FaceTime with your counterpart 10 minutes of Face Time often reveals more than days of research pay special attention to your counterparts verbal and non-verbal communication at unguarded moments at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line so really uh really just awesome points that apply to me they apply to business they apply to interacting with any human obviously they apply to negotiations but um there you go I mean we hit the the wave tops of some of the last I mean probably read less than five percent of this book uh so many good stories and again I I felt I feel kind of bad that I skipped a lot of the a lot of the stories themselves uh but get the book and and that way you can hear some of the examples behind this so what so what so what are you up to right now what do we got we got the Black Swan group right yeah we're coaching and training negotiations of all the companies out there you can get training from very few and we'll coach you which sort of shocks me like how do you how do you how do you not believe in your stuff enough where you you'll coach I mean literally the real definition of a coach is somebody you go into the game but the coach is right there prepping you you come out of the game you could talk like how do you teach this stuff and not be willing to coach it and so we we coach across the board it's a much bigger aspect of the business than I ever thought it would be we gotta just finish the documentary film called tactical empathy um looking premiered in Beverly Hills about 10 days ago taking our time on a distribution deal we'll see what happens with that outlining a lot of stuff that we're talking about is it full length documentary 54 minutes 54 minute documentary got a book uh for real estate agents the full fee agent coming out um Steve Shull the guy that did the book with me interesting cat I know Steve for well over a year before I find out he played in the NFL like most NFL guys you know the first five minutes not only that Steve was a Super Bowl Captain dang he didn't just play in the NFL he didn't just play on a team that went to the Super Bowl he was a captain of the team like I think I finally found that out after I knew him like four years like he just he doesn't lead with that stuff but understands the value of coaching because he played for Don Shula he played for some real coaches so he shares a coaching philosophy that you know the stuff that we coach you on if you do what we ask you to do it's going to work so the full free agent's coming out in about two months and then uh my son Brandon and I and another colleague are working on a follow-up that never split the difference should be on about a year nice uh yeah the coaching piece I always tell people with uh with leadership it's not an inoculation you don't just get like a shot and now you're good now you get it you don't go to the gym one time and now you're in shape you don't pick up a Guitar get taught and now you know how to play it it's the same thing when they go you're not going to say oh I read the book and now I'm good to go no you actually need to train it you need to get coached on it that's why that's why you got to do that follow-up so that's awesome we do the same thing at our company I mean most of the companies that we work with we do long-term engagements with them uh Black Swan ltd.com that's where that's where people if they want coaching if they want to get uh deeper on this stuff you're also on social media you got on Facebook and Instagram you're at Black Swan LTD you're on Twitter at Black Swan grp you personally aren't on Instagram big social media guy over here oh yeah at the FBI negotiator so did I get all those things right is there anything else we need to know about yeah I know those those are good on the website blackswonltd.com we got a lot of free stuff there's to get your skill level up like wherever you are we can meet you where you are the another thing we put out that that is free but that's not what makes it valuable we gotta we got a Weekly Newsletter concise actionable not 10 articles where you're trying to decide what to do next like one article roughly 700 words complete actionable concise stuff the newsletter's free you sign up for it on the website you get it emailed to you on Tuesday Mornings wherever you in the world you are take the free stuff you can get a long way with the book and free stuff alone yeah and everybody that's listening just beat the king of negotiation because you're getting the stuff for free so just get in there and get it take it from them otherwise you don't win right you want to get one up on the FBI negotiator you got to go hey yeah I got this from the I got this from the master of negotiation I got it for free that's how good you are so get in there and sign up for that uh that scene that's that gets us up to present day yeah pretty much um the master classes out there you know you and I were talking earlier about the master class is good it's also it's insane how cheap that is as far as costs like the master class might be the best deal on Earth and my negotiation course and a whole bunch of other cool stuffs on there iger's got a course and sorkin's got a course like if whatever you want to learn you're going to find it on Master Class so you're on there as well awesome all right well now you know what time it is Echo Charles yes do you have any questions yes oh here we go well I took the Master Class by the way very helpful very good that's a very well done one um what's your thoughts on like good the whole good cop bad cop uh interrogation anything that's a manipulation or where you're not being genuine and honest and if you're a good cop bad cop you're probably one of you is play acting yeah yeah and it's as a long-term strategy like you might get short-term what you need but you're always going to find always going to find that you need long-term cooperation and to engage in something that's guaranteed to cause it to go bad it's not just from from a mercenary standpoint you don't do stuff you know it's gonna hurt you in the long run so back to the accommodator so if I'm running late not that I ever run late but hypothetically if I'm running late and then Jocko texts me how long is it going to be till you get here and I know probably it's going to be like 20 minutes probably but I say in my head if there's no traffic light stopping me if traffic is good I could probably be there in six so I tell them about five minutes because I want to avoid giving him the bad news up front you see I'm saying and then I'm hopeful that I make it in the five is that me being the accommodator yeah I think so and I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes people make on a regular basis constantly like and and the fix is the opposite like if you if you know you're 20 minutes away tell them 25. yeah here's my thinking if I would ever that ever were ever to happen I'm thinking I give them the good news so he's not that mad at me it's insane so if I give him the worst possible news for that 10 minutes or whatever he's gonna be mad see I'm saying then he's already mad when I walk in there but if the small chance arises that I get there in the five minutes boom easy money yeah that's how it plays out in your head and that that is so common like and my girlfriend is an accommodator a wonderful human being brilliant entrepreneur like so many things about her that are just brilliant she's and she's also she's gorgeous I'm talking to her on the phone the other day she's saying you know she's nice enough she's in the middle of Zoom calls she takes a call anyway she says hey says I'm in the middle of a business call I'll call you back in 15 minutes I go okay and then that night I called her I said that was the longest 15 minutes I've ever heard yeah like I didn't I I knew when somebody gives me a vague amount of time and it's not just her anybody I go on about my day because you're trying to be nice you know you're trying really hard to keep the other person from being in a bad place you and Time After Time After Time After Time the lights are not all in line and the data that you get overwhelmingly says that's going to go bad and they're almost everybody still does it that was one of my favorite stories from mcraven's Book C stories and you might have been one of those guys out there they're running some up in the Caribbean and a helicopters are late picking them up and they are not uh outfitted for the water temperature water's warm but it still ain't 98.6 and the Choppers one of the Choppers going to show and that Choppers uh 15 minutes and they were there for three hours they would you know and that's that's that's not a military op that's human beings trying to be nice to other human beings and I you know it just doesn't work out so the flip side is overestimate the time you tell them 25 minutes you're here in 20. he's delighted with you he thinks you're great delighted might be a strong but I'll tell you you know someone else the airlines do this yeah oh yeah like there's the last time no but the opposite now they caught on because their biggest criticism was whether or not their planes are late so it doesn't matter what airline it is I fly all the time plane lands and they go like well our Gate's not open yet so we got to wait another 20 minutes before we get at the gate in the first couple times that happened I remember and I said out loud in the airport was it a surprise that we showed up like this plane is really big I know they picked it up on radar they saw us coming from a long way away how is the gate still occupied we're not here as a surprise the airline knew all along when they were going to get there but to fool you they told you they were going to be there at three o'clock you made your plans around three o'clock they land at 2 30 which is a half an hour early you think the airline's great you're mad at the airport nobody ever blames it the airline knew all along when they were really gonna get it so when you show up early when you overestimate at the time the people you're doing business with love you they think you're fantastic you put time back in their day yeah this thing goes deep man yeah well plus just like uh building a relationship with people the more you tell them things that's really going to happen you know the the higher the trust level goes yeah as opposed to telling someone you're gonna be there in six minutes and you show up in 16 minutes what about uh if someone has food in their teeth and you don't want to tell them a combinator right yeah that's gonna go bad you gotta know right just gotta tell them right it helps them out big picture but you don't want to deliver that bad news is kind of the deal what's the plight right of the accommodator just hopeful like Fallout and no one has to say if you're over there trying to figure out if you're an accommodator or not I'm gonna go ahead and say let's I'll solve that riddle for you right now you're in a god of it accommodator for sure hey we're all doing the best we can right on right on anything else Echo Charles that is it is honor I've I've followed you I actually I got that book right when it came out so thank you that's completely appreciate it what year did the book come out 2016. they haven't been out for a while awesome uh Chris any thought any closing thoughts from you no I've been I've enjoyed the conversation um delighted at how thoroughly you understand how this applies the leadership and everything else I mean you're seeing a parallels right away you know I've listened to your other podcasts we talk about like you know I left High School Not educated dude but you're a learner which is really cool which is really cool well thank you appreciate it and uh thanks for coming on thanks for coming down here and thanks for sharing your experiences and and all these Lessons Learned with everybody I mean it's just awesome that people can pick up this book and learn what you've learned over the Decades of work you put into this and of course more important uh thanks for your service thanks for your service and in law enforcement in the FBI Thanks For Fighting terrorists and kidnappers and and drug dealers and criminals to keep us safe here on the home front um and the same to you brother yeah it was an honor to be able to serve yeah amen exactly it was a privilege all right thank you and with that Chris Voss has left the building Echo Charles yes sir excited about that one huh yes you like that one I liked it though a lot to learn yeah what was your uh big takeaway besides the fact that you're an accommodator I know I felt it right when he was explaining it I was like bro that's well he also said they make the most deals well there you go right establishing Rapport all that oh and I ain't look am I am am I an accommodator I don't know but if I'm not I know I have accommodator traits from time to time we know that you're not analytic okay I already know that you're not assertive there's only three options yeah okay well no no no we go for a blend right yeah you blend blend but your high percentage accommodator maybe all right we'll go with that from now on I'm gonna keep an eye on it because I I like to know what I don't know so he seems saying so it did shed some like that's a good idea on that thing um but the interesting takeaway geography is more influential than ethnicity in building and it makes sense because in Hawaii everybody's mixed and you know there's all different kind of community but if you're from and I'm from Waimanalo yeah we're good we can be in Dubai me new brothers 100 so boom um so that made a lot of sense to me and what did what did shed some light on is some of your tactics as well oh in a good ways band so um okay one time you called me out for clicking the pen all right I edit it out so it's not on any episode but it's one and the way you said it was is that clicking going to show up on the recording do you think you said you think like me it was like my idea kind of a thing you know like I have to figure out for myself if it's gonna as opposed to hey that clicking is annoying and it's gonna ruin the take or whatever you know I was like oh I see because it was effective and if you look back on the video I think I uh published that outtake somewhere okay um if you look on the video I responded like totally like it worked that little tactic no the uh it really was cool to read the book and to identify all these things that their psychological their psychological traits or psychological characteristics or psychological Maneuvers yeah so they work again they work with human beings so it doesn't matter your leadership your interrogation your your negotiation they're all they're all going to have some similar similar approaches yeah and they are and so yeah it was really cool really cool to read about really cool to to go through and then be able to sit here with Chris and talk through it uh and you know it's awesome he and again I kind of did go through I talked about it on the podcast but like the book has a bunch of cool stories in it right and is there a temptation just to jump into like negotiation hostage negotiation all that stuff but I I felt like I really kind of wanted to dive into the tactics the principles themselves so maybe I was a little bit selfish on that one but yeah you know what I realized uh about you or somebody told you this before where your your interest is like it's like a 80 20 where you like how things work for sure but only like 20 80 is you're interested in okay so what do we do about it so like and I think I'm kind of the if I'm like really trying to be introspective I'm kind of the opposite so I'm like a 2080 kind of a scenario so anytime I start going deep on how things work I see your eyes kind of glaze over and then you snapped in you'd be like okay this is well this is what you do this is what you do it's like you uh you interrupt it with the next step kind of a thing so it so I can see why you'd be really into the the stories but yeah I think the tactics are are the ones that a lot of the time anyway if you listen to them it's like okay now I can use them in my particular life I think they're both together or the most effective for sure yeah the other thing that I I thought about look I don't care how long a podcast is gonna be I don't care for 12 hours but I also you know you have to think all right if we start getting into all these cool stories he's gotten here they all have their own branches and you know sub stories and details that's gonna be you know we get to a point where diminishing returns right we just have a 19-hour podcast in which point just get on Just just go and read the book yourself or go get the audiobook and go with it that way so that's kind of the kind of how I went with it but uh just just awesome to have them on here and and learn from you know the subtitle the book is negotiating as if your life depends on it depended on it right so he has countless times negotiated stuff that it where someone's life or lives were on the line literally doesn't get more you know I I used to say about extreme ownership combat is like life but Amplified and intensified yeah well if you can negotiate for someone's life you can negotiate for the car that you want the used car that you want to pay you know 2 700 bucks for instead of the 4 200 bucks that they're offering it yep so all right there you go uh thanks for joining us everybody if you wanna if you like this podcast if you want to support it and you want to actually support yourself cognitively you want to be cognitively ready for those moments that's why I'm three deep right now with Jocko fuel I think with discipline goes now normally you'd be thinking oh you drank three energy drinks today yeah you've had a bad day you have trouble you have to mark this down as a negative on your overall health we're actually not doing that at all not even doing that at all because I had one what times it's four o'clock right now I had the first one at like 10 30. prior to a Echelon front Academy call then I had another one as we kind of started this thing and then I had another one as we kind of got halfway through this thing so what does that mean I've had does that mean I've had a bunch of sugar doesn't mean I've had 82 grams no I've had zero sugar that's a monk fruit which is a beautiful thing I've had have I had what would that be three times have I had 600 milligrams of caffeine no I haven't even had 300 milligrams caffeine so if you want to be good too but you want that energy yeah go to jockofuel.com get yourself some Mulk which is dessert get yourself some go you can also go to Wawa we got the ready to drink protein available available in Wawa you can you Jocko fuel.com you can check it um we're getting there but the ready to drink stuff is kind of a game changer yeah it's good I told you about the chocolate milk versus milk right yes sir with my daughter yeah who is not gonna pull any punches yeah she she looked Pete we know we sat down a table at camp and Pete was all like bro it's better than chocolate milk and she looked at him like he was just a liar you know what I mean I almost had to like get her to settle down you know like you can't look at a you know a grown man like he's a liar but she kind of looked at him like yeah right well the good thing is Pete was like oh let's go yeah let's go get him out so he got out the straight regular like chocolate milk yeah and Mork side by side taste this well blind taste test she she was like dang that's the that's the true that's probably the truest and most awesome test that's ever been performed for taste in the world dip in the world probably right so there you go get yourself some mulch get yourself some ready to drink milk vitamin shops got this stuff as well go in there thing is hey gotta remember about Wawa somebody somebody hit me up on social media they cleared the shelves in Wawa thank you because look it's a war out there have I explained the war to you a little bit yeah it's a war the big companies don't like the little companies yeah the big companies have overwhelming Firepower and the term in in the form of cash money that they can throw to try and Crush the the up and comers they don't want that competition they want to smash they want to smash Jocko fuel they want to smash discipline go yeah so what they do is they make Maneuvers they throw money at at stores and the stores like to offer something else but they got to be able to got to make sense so when you go and you clear the shelves at Wawa thank you when you go any of these any of these stores when you go in there and get after it it shows them that there's demand signal to retail and they want to keep us as opposed to when somebody throws a bunch of money at them say we want you to we want you to get rid of those guys yeah think about that that's called a monopoly yeah right yeah it's a monopoly those are Monopoly moves and so we appreciate it when you help us fight the man right the corporate entity that's not a person there's no person those other companies not people you know they're not people they're just big corporate entities there's big giant corporate entities yeah no people there no humans yes we're human we're here we're getting after it so anyways appreciate it jockoffuel.com go get some of that originusa.com get yourself some American made everything hunt gear we're getting it out certain pieces are out the pants are out the some of the shirts are out just get on there and order it if if it's not available right now we're making it and if you want to get it you got to order it now I'm sorry but you got to order it now and then we'll get it to you as soon as it's ready as soon as it's been made here in America by American hands jeans boots so that's what we're doing originusa.com get yourself some of that support America and support yourself it's true also chocolate store chocolate store called Jaco store this one equals Freedom Shirts new one is out it's been out it's a good one Whatever standard issue one standard issue multiple forms multiple forms uh get one look is Christmas near it's Christmas near technically maybe maybe not but bro they already have Christmas stuff available where was it my wife came home and said they like she went to Target or Walmart or something and they were like she's like Christmas gear is up you know available so is it near this is something to think about we'll say that so yes we've got some good stuff on there some kid stuff on there Warrior kids stuff on there as well so we kind of got everything something for everybody if you want to check out let's face it the warrior kids need that Christmas hitter it yeah that'll be a good clothing gift I've got some accessories we've got some good stuff on there also we got the shirt Locker the Halloween one is with Halloween no another good gift idea by the way got some gift cards too on there the gift that keeps on giving that keeps 100 every month get somebody the shirt Locker and then they get a new t-shirt every month you know that has layers in it layers could be one layer could be seven layers you get seven layers do we charge by the layer no no the layers are just part of the pack included you're right but yes cool designs people like really like the designs this is what I'm finding out and thank you thanks thanks for everyone for the feedback so yeah really good SRI Locker man stuff women's stuff hoodies hats all that cool stuff.com stuff across the board subscribe to the podcast you know that drunderground.com we've been recording those yeah putting word out answering your questions uh if you go to Jocko underground.com look people are getting censored right now people are getting banned whatever we're not gonna that's not gonna happen to us at least on the platform that we could happen on this platform whatever form you're listening to they could ban us yeah if that happens we'll be on Jocko underground.com it costs eight dollars and eighteen cents a month if you can't afford it no big deal we still we're still here to support look we know hard times right now right if you can't afford it email assistance Jocko underground.com if you can't afford it cool support the cause capital t h e the capital c a u s e the cause freedom psychological warfare we got flipsidecanvas.com books obviously never split the difference by Chris Voss check that book out and then all the books I've written good get that book only cry for the living by Holly McKay uh just a great book we put it out on Jocko publishing check that one out and then all the books I've written you know what they are so go get them get the warrior kid books let's face it that book would have helped you set out so much if you had it when you were a kid it would help me and if you know kids any kids get them that book once again Christmas cool get it make it happen uh Echelon front you heard me talking a lot about leadership today well we solve problems through leadership at Echelon front go to echelonfront.com and also up and coming we've got an uh a little something that we call the Roll Call which roll call is an event and we've got one October 17th in St Louis Missouri how to just check this because they told me they still got some seats our stuff sells out quick so roll call is for police law enforcement First Responders military October 17th St Louis Missouri if you can if you're in that category go and check that out it's going to be it's it's our leadership principles kind of geared toward that group of people also we have online training said this today you're not going to get good at leadership with one book or with one rehearsal or one practice no you need to get in there go to extreme ownership.com learn about life Square your life away extreme ownership.com and if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families check out Mark Lee's mom mama Lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to America's Mighty Warriors dot org also check out Micah Fink he's got his program taking you up and taking vets up in the wilderness so they can find themselves again and rebuild Heroes and horses.org if you want to follow Chris Voss and the blocks Black Swan group it's it's black swanltd.com Facebook and Instagram is Black Swan LTD Twitter at Black Swan group and Chris is on Instagram he's at the FBI negotiator and of course we are also on social media and whatnot Twitter Graham Facebook Echoes at Echo Charles I'm at Jocko willink of course watch out because that algorithm's sitting there waiting to grab you by the throat and drag you into Oblivion don't let it uh thanks once again to Chris Voss for joining us for teaching us about negotiation and thanks to Chris for his service in the police department and the FBI thanks to all the FBI agents that are out there right now doing their best to keep us safe and the same goes to the rest of our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol Secret Service all First Responders thanks for everything that you all do to keep us safe and of course thanks to our military men and women who are on the front lines around the world right now we live in Freedom because of the sacrifices you make thank you for your service and everyone else out there life is a negotiation and people are not rational they are filled with emotions and biases and judgments and that includes you so pay attention and listen more than you talk not just in negotiation but in leadership and life and until next time this is zeko and Jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 696,402

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint

Id: bnleaSnBd8I

Length: 234min 48sec (14088 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2022