Negotiation Mastery Negotiation Lessons on Persuasion From Former FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss

imagine you're going on an African safari with your family you fly into Rwanda you land safely you head to the radisson Park Hotel in a taxi suddenly the taxi drives into a warehouse where you're surrounded by armed terrorists and you realize you've been kidnapped what would you do they hand you a cell phone and tell you to make one call who would you call well an interesting challenge right now you should be asking yourself what does this have to do with my life and getting the most out of my time a genius Network what if kidnappers really were only businessmen what would happen if the keys to negotiating a kidnapping where you feel like you don't have a lot of leverage and you don't want to make the other side mad weren't terribly different from a normal world business negotiation Chris Voss is the author of this amazing book which is called never split the difference negotiating is if your life depended on it it's a Wall Street Journal best-selling business negotiation book it's been listed on ich komm as one of the southern best negotiation books ever written Chris the 24 years works with the FBI and retired as their lead international kidnapping negotiators after leaving the FBI Chris used his unique negotiating skills set forth to form his own company which is called the Black Swan route his company teaches business owners like us his negotiation methodologies which focuses on discovery and the black swans small pieces of information that have a huge effect on an outcome Chris and his team have felt companies secure and closed better deals save money and solve internal communication problems I'm gonna be sitting down an interview and Chris and I'm going to ask him a number of questions that I know and believe you would ask if you were sitting here then based on the time we'll possibly do some questions and just remember there's no such thing as a stupid question there's only stupid people that ask questions right so first off bring him up Chris boss thank you so much so great to have you here I mean I've been really looking forward to this not only for the group but just for myself because your book is amazing and I'm sitting on a whole slew of questions here I won't have time to ask you all these but whatever pops out so what the heck does negotiating with terrorists have to do with people run into business yeah well our negotiations are calmer yeah now interestingly I you know she's seen on the Netflix show mind hunters right FBI psychological profilers they started that whole thing by just saying all right friendly behavior is just human behavior just happens to be more intense but it's governed by the same set of rules and some of they started solving all these crimes hostage negotiation is just negotiation human beings involves same set of rules we would've thought that hostage negotiations are occasionally more intense and but in reality you guys have more stories of people yelling at you in storming out of rooms than we ever had as it because our guys are more reasonable not because of our approach so the dynamics are all the same as long as you're dealing with human banks yeah so for people that really have no context of what a company that helps people with negotiation doesn't mean what do you what do you guys really do for people what we kind of got a soup the nuts operation now we I originally envisioned envision us just mainly being a training company and we wanted to train companies and we were doing a lot more or training individuals now besides companies but we're also coaching in a lot of deals we're doing a lot of coaching people come to us with a problem something they've been struggling with for a while and on average I would say people come to us with a negotiation they've been dealing with if they come to us I've been dealing with from any problem six months to a year and a half typically we'll have it solved in about a week and you know one of the biggest things I think we help people do is will will cut your negotiation time down now to about 25 percent of what the amount of time you actually spend on it that's awesome well what I'm hoping is after our conversation here that everyone here is more capable has a better context of this is really able to hear things see things that they've never thought of before because Chris is incredibly you know what's great about is you didn't just write an amazing book on it you've actually lived this you've done this and I mean this is now this training is a byproduct of how many years did you spend with the FBI 24:24 yeah and we're doing it now too I mean I got I got a team I mean you guys know you need a good team I got a good team around me and and and my guys are continuing to push forward new ideas like my son is my in my business you imagine what it was like growing up son of a hostage negotiator he started getting himself out of trouble in high school before I even know what he was doing he's got some stories that I'm when I hear a my like you know I didn't know that happened that's a why I'm bringing it up now but we're still making it better all the time now to I think that's why well don't was it create the the phrase from this morning don't compete create we're still creating it so I think that's cool well you know entrepreneurs is Dan Sullivan says you know you wake up every day and you make it make it up and make it real and in the process there's a lot of negotiation along the way and you negotiate with yourselves let me know everything we're doing is a sales job you're either attracting people or repelling people so working for the FBI what's the most interesting or surprising thing that you learned or took away from there why if he took the edit it was the ultimate entrepreneurs job at the time but that's that's if you took that attitude and I had a friend of mine who was a hostage negotiator one day said that to me when we were in New York we had a bald owner we had an absolute ball I worked with guys that were fun to work with and we had fun like working incredibly odd but what else there's it was a Jersey girl that I work with and ladies forgive me I use the term girl because it's less syllables and I like wards that have less syllables but a Jersey girl I worked with in New York top top chick top New Jersey chick name her name was Louise and she went by Lew and Louisa saying the FBI there's a seat for every ass so it was it was a great job whatever you were into her you could do it and have a great time doing it mm-hmm you know since and you write about this a lot in the book not just things that were successful but when people died and during your time there how do you you know part of it is learning techniques but another is how do you have to be psychologically and mentally to negotiate under extreme pressure where someone is life is on the line in literally you're the guy who is going to be interacting with someone that could that could and will kill somebody in themselves and I mean how did you how did you get yourself in the mindset to even do that I mean did it first come to techniques or did it first come like let me I mean how did this training happen how does one prepare themselves I guess yeah I actually I think I got kind of lucky because um I I got I got I learned the process really well before I actually became a hostage negotiator so I I had a really good process and I was and I stated in my training level was pretty high so I was ready for the first real deal negotiation I've ever got involved in with which was a bank robbery with hostages so I relied on the process I was really solid and it worked out and bank robbery with hostages well they happen in movies all the time they happen in the entire country about once every 20 years they're really rare events yeah so I got really lucky and and and then I did it right and it turned out the other thing was I worked for a guy that taught me stuff before I knew that I'd learned that and he used to always tell us we had the best chance of success but we never guaranteed success and and I learned that sort of as a mantra before I realize that meant that if you did it long enough it was something's gonna go bad and when it did then it was hard but then you again you revert to your training you revert to your process and realize you know this chance of success means every now and then something's gonna go bad yeah so when something did go bad how did you internalize it I was hard you know it took me a while I mean how I internalized it was I doubled down I just decided and I actually then would look for negotiators that have been in scenarios where people getting killed because if you if most hostage negotiations go well so if you don't do very many you're like I'm awesome and people get really overconfident somewhere north of five and short of 15 something's gonna go bad and then I would look at those because I said all right I'm never gonna let this happen again what do I have to do to get better oh that's when that's when I said to my that's when I that's actually how I ended up at Harvard learning negotiation because I was like right I did everything we know how to do it was inadequate we got to get better and so I Harvard was happy to collaborate with us but everybody I would go out recruit guys specifically because they were in a case where somebody got killed and I saw they didn't quit and I knew you either go like I'm gonna get better or I'm gonna go do something else and everybody they said I'm gonna get better those are the guys I wanted so I've got some interesting questions here one is you say that Oprah Winfrey is the greatest negotiator of all time why do you say that and what skills are needed to be a great negotiator yeah it's Oprah Winfrey got Lance Armstrong on camera and got him to admit to everything and no question was a surprise he agreed in advance to be asked every one of those questions think about that negotiation in advance and you know you could pick out time after time after time where she and her people did something spectacular which required communication she's had no shortage of blowouts with celebrities how many men do you know about that's a mark of a great negotiator not not who they crushed but what they achieved what they accomplished it who's still doing business with her after those blowouts and then also look at where she started yeah poor black female from Chicago right trauma yeah it isn't like she was she if she didn't have her dad give her a million dollars start out with right so when you start looking at the length of the things that she did and then I've gotten to know her vice-president for for booking and talent relations for the last 19 years recently in in LA and I've gotten to know some of the stuff they did and I was like wow yeah a lot a lot of the exact same stuff that we did yeah only only in a different way which was a relief to me to hear that what's the same ideas but I well Oprah's in Chi I'm not friends with her I've met her twice once in 1999 I think it was in a spa down in air in Tucson and she is just hardcore I mean she you know you can just tell she has a force field I mean she is a force of nature and she's very strong and very powerful but she also knows how to be pleasant in it and she's a she's a very interesting personality and she she was so tired when I spent about 10 minutes talking with her about equine like therapy with horses and stuff and I'd so badly wanted to ask her do an interview but she just looks so exhausted at the time that I just had to keep it at a personal level but you know and she was very pleasant but very protected until she could see that you know there's some way cuz all day long she's just getting hit up people want a piece of her and you have to do that but yeah I mean you're absolutely right she has not developed a reputation of being a jerk I mean yeah anytime there's the whiff of controversy it goes away she's a fan of fiims yeah I I had somebody tell me a very specific conversation she had with an extremely high-profile celebrity that wanted to put conditions on the interview and in sum and substance Oprah called her on the phone and the message was it's my way or the highway and the the celebrity completely agreed now she didn't say it like that but that was the essence of the messaging so if you can say so one who's used to getting their way and this person has pretty much gotten away through the entire world do you say it's my way the highway to them then you're good at negotiation yeah so what are the biggest mistakes that would start with that that we make with negotiating because we're all doing it I mean how would you even define negotiate [Music] communicating to accomplish results and in real broad times and from information gathering is part of it herb Cohen wrote a book a long time ago called you can negotiate anything and he defined negotiation is a use of power and information in a web of tension now what of attention would be emotions and the only tweak I think that we made on our tea and our definition is we don't just use information we gathered and use it because if you're saying the use of information you're assuming you're coming to the table and you know you you should have gathered all the information before you come to the table the table is the best place to gather information and a lot of people will hold themselves back from going to the table because you want to be prepared you don't want to be caught off guard about a third of you in a room or horrified at getting caught off guard at the table and that's holding you back so yes so in terms of the mistakes do people like what are some common ones that are easy to fix like you have a whole way of start with about no as an example I love the right that you you know most people want to get it yes maybe we can talk about how yes could possibly not be the first thing you want to hear out of someone's mouth because everyone here is like you know wanting to sell stuff and got a lot of the world's greatest marketers and they're you know and I've always I've had the conversation - Dan Dan Sullivan that you know knows are great yes sirs are great maybes or what kill you you know if someone says no you at least know where they stand and you can either you know it's done or you can now know anyway you know that's actually a starting point but maybes where someone's like oh I'll call you back or whatever and so I'd love to have you talk about just the languaging and what to pursue and how to actually start the whole process of getting to you know something favorable and the result that you want yeah sure all right so yes is a useless word there is no more useless work and the majority of probably yes addicts and and recognizing that is one thing getting out of it is is even harder because you're hardwired if you're hardwired to hear yes breaking out of that dynamic is really really hard but it could be one of the one of the biggest issues and if you're hardwired free s course you're horrified at now but in any any any important negotiation I don't bother with yes at all we and give you an example we ran a training in New York a few months back and I had recently run across Robert Herjavec wonderful guy I mean generous on the strength of just an introduction I'm from one person I'm sitting down with this guy and for lunch for 90 minutes he's talking to me for 90 minutes and he's paying me what else do you want right so through the course of conversation anytime we got this training going on and I offer him you know give me a free ticket and he says how many can i buy like wow even better would an even more gracious guy he loved so much we're talking about he's willing to pay too so we're going back and forth on on the tickets how many he's gonna buy and the windows closing it it's gonna slam shut and he's not gonna get in and my people are bugging me they're mad at me because I'm giving away tickets for free that we'd be selling otherwise so I'm in a doghouse already anyway so it's I'm in Los Angeles my team is in New York East Coast he's we three our handicap in LA and they're screaming at me and he hasn't pulled a trigger on the tickets so I sent him an email are you against committing for three tickets now are you against paying for those tickets before the start of business tomorrow because we're gonna be three hours behind the clock if he if they wait till tomorrow morning they're gonna be gone and then I'm gonna be embarrassed I get in I get an email back in in less than 30 minutes we'll commit to three now we'll pay for them and they pay for them within the hour after five o'clock in Los Angeles so every every time it's really I mean we don't bother with yes you can flip any kind of question you kind of commitment question from yes to no and you be shocked at what people will say no - I mean friggin shocked shocked and yes is yes his commitment yes his hesitation yes is concerned that's why people are really good at the false yes yeah we'll talk about the false E&C you know with you know verses that's right versus you're right yeah yeah this is a really good distinction in the real you know some I never never knew or realized until September talking to me about that one time when we met the exact yeah yeah yeah oh by the way I should say that too when I first met Chris it was a couple years ago and Tim Larkin who many of you know he's been a genius and work for you know known Tim for 20 years and he Tim actually is he's been on the cover of black belt magazine he's trained you know lots of you know Navy SEALs MMA fighters everyday people men and women and he you know his book this science of violence is that there's a title his book and he has this great violence is the answer yet and I've interviewed him on it you think I would know this stuff and when you know Tim is he's a badass and he's a great guy and he he said that you know violence is never an option unless it's the only option you know what are you doing a situation where someone is going to hurt or kill you and when Brian Kurtz actually organized to dinner and invited Chris to it and Tim I sat next to Chris and Tim was there and it was a small group there's maybe like on a 10 of us or something and Tim said you know he's like he's like I don't mean to be total fanboy but I love your book and he you know Tim said this is the best book on negotiation he's ever read and so right from the get-go is like wow this is an important guy and so yes there's lots of little things that most people would have no idea about but you know you identify those and you teach people how to actually use them so let's talk about the false yeses and what you really want to accomplish to know that you are successfully I guess negotiating right right alright so and the thing that Tim talked about to me about that one time to somebody tells you you're right what are they telling you now they're telling you to shut up and go away I want to maintain a relationship with you I still like you either because I want to or I have to but I'm really this is it's designed to preserve the relationship but please please stop talking and please go away and we might like you're right more than we like yes because we think we have to make a case you think you got to make a case you think to negotiate you got to make an argument you got to make a compelling case you got to give you value proposition to the other person and you think you scored when they look at you and go you're right and what happens is you get real happy and you shut up and you probably walk out or the office you probably walk away or you know you you think you made the point with your significant other or whoever maybe and Tim said soundex amigos like you know you save me so much money cuz I was he was on a rant with a senior team and he'd read the book and he's trying to get everybody on the same sheet of music this is direction were gone and he says one of the executives said Tim you're right and he and he said holy cow if I'm so far off track with my guys that they're trying to politely get me to shut up I need to stop the meeting right now I need to back up I need to find out where I'm off track and then I need to go to everybody and get myself corrected which it kind of blew me away that he was that enlightened about it and it's what he did he stopped the meeting he went back he talked to everybody found out where he was wrong because if people are telling you look shut up you're probably off track a two-millimeter difference is use it Tony Robbins phrase right another two millimeter difference you want to get people to say that's right because that's right what you say when you hear the complete and total truth you agree a thousand percent no matter which side of political a year on the last presidential election the last presidential debate whichever candidate that you loved when they said something that you loved you don't look at the TV and go you're right you looked at the TV and you said that's right and that's right with people when they say when they're all in and they come what they had just heard is a complete truth now the invisible fairy does magic to that is they feel incredibly bonded to you in that moment they don't know that that's the other thing that's really powerful about it somebody wants to tell me that's somebody saying to you that they feel empathy from you and that's so powerful for example the greatest practitioners of this in the world are actually sociopaths they're also vulnerable to it interestingly enough the idea that social past can't either can't feel her to use empathy they do feel it and they do use it but if you were willing to accept this premise you know this outlandish idea that sociopaths are good at empathy you should ask yourself why why is because it's quick and it's sustainable and they're lazy and it's a way that they maintain really solid relationships with very little maintenance from them so empathy saves time but you put less money less time into relationships to keep them strong once you've established empathy bridge and you've established it when somebody looks at you and says that's right what I really was was an international negotiation coach I coached negotiations in every culture on a planet and they didn't they weren't asking for ransom for the America and they were asking for war damages for 500 years of oppression the Spanish the Japanese - the Americans violations under blackjack Pershing all the sort of nonsense that's another story that you should be tuning out right now because you were never in an argument with someone where they were bringing up stuff from the past that didn't matter anymore where are you so we you know we tried all sorts of logic all sorts of in and out you know try to be clever I thought I knew terrorism I thought I knew Islam and thought I knew all this stuff and finally one day we just said we're gonna eat oh that's right out of the guy on the other side the sociopath and make no mistake a rape and serial killer chopped lots of heads off personally was proud of it and no shortage of rapes to his credit and I coached my guy to get on the phone and you just keep make their case it's the Stephen Covey advice instead of seek first to understand then be understood demonstrate understanding you got to make their case not your case but you just just recognize it don't agree with it just but lay it out the way they see it lay out everything that this sociopathic Terrace has been laying out of all the nonsense of why 10 million dollars is a bargain-basement price for 500 years of war damages and he laid it out and he laid it out and he laid it out and laid it out I said and if you're not laying it on thick you're not laying it on thick enough and he's my guy finished it and it was a short silence on the other end of the line and the terrorists said that's right and we said okay let's talk again in a couple of days and the ten million dollar ransom demand went away they never brought it up again ever it went away it was gone it was completely gone a couple months later the American walks away we had done a number of things we'd gotten em disorganized we completely disorganized them they didn't know we did it to him through our communication techniques American walks away a couple of months later military picks him up flies him out we take him back to the US I'm back in the Philippines about three weeks after this on another case and the guy that I coach says you're not gonna believe who called me on the phone not like I know who called you on the phone the terrorist guy's name was survivor sivaiah still knew his undercover name still had his undercover phone number was smart enough to know that he had to either be with the police or the military but didn't know and didn't care called him on a phone and said have you been promoted yet I have no idea what you said to me on the phone you're really good at it they should promote you and also think about what he's saying because would he deal with him again was he really saying when he made that call I respect you I'd deal with you again so it's exactly who would imagine that you can get to somebody like that yep so you you talk about three voice tones negotiators can use what are they in on a related topic what is an example of mirroring and how is that important all right the three voices are the three default types you know in our way of thinking everybody in an entire planet regardless of gender regardless abandoned ethnicity either falls into fight/flight make friends some people would call that fight/flight mate but it's the cavemen that survived from the caveman days we saw a threat on a jungle path we ran from it we fought it we made friends with it and my Harvard brothers and sisters subscribe to the same philosophy we tested somewhere north of 2000 people in all countries and we believe that to be true so the three voices are what your natural voices are and and I'm not going to make any political statements any way shape or form but the assertive the fight type direct and honest that's my natural born type Donald Trump and if I were to talk to you we do an exercise called sixty Seconds so she dies and I do all three voices and the exercise and a view of volunteering I look at you and I started with the assertive voice and I just go I need a car in 60 seconds so she dies if you think of yourself as direct and honest you're an assertive you got a tone of voice that's combative it causes problems there's no way around it it's not a good voice my natural born type I once had a hostage negotiator said to me dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick and I didn't take that as a compliment but that's my natural voice that's voice one voice two is the accommodators voice about a third of us are just relationship oriented we naturally smile we're naturally very happy it's actually ridiculously strategically smart you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind if you're smiling you're hardwiring your mood you're making yourself smarter everybody has something called Marriner on so I smile at you your marathons trigger even if you fire it you started a smile back it's an involuntary response they're chemical changes in your brain you're smarter too it's a smart move one of the reasons why naturally gregarious people make lots of deals because people and and they're not always a best deal but they're probably pretty good but you okay so you just said you're 31% smarter when you're no positive state of mind right you can flip yourself into that and become 31% more effective and smarter that seems to be a pretty good advantage huge yeah so and there's actually a hardwired connection if you force a smile on your face when you feel lousy the chemical change is still take place and you can overwrite it and then the third type is what we call the late-night FM DJ that's the hostage negotiators natural tone of voice I mean we we learn that we drill it over and over and over and over again because it hit them it hits the mirror neurons it triggers a chemical change and it slows the other side's brain down now we'll use that about ten percent of the time if we have a term in a contract that's completely unacceptable that term would often be work for hire I will not sign a contract that has a work-for-hire clause well I would but it has to be four five billion dollars not kidding around because work-for-hire takes our intellectual property I just don't say take it away we all sit down at the table and I'll look you in the eye and I'll say we don't do work for hire late-night FM DJ voice you will feel that that's an immovable term what I say what you hear if I say that's an immovable term you're gonna get mad and want to fight me on it I don't need that so I will just take the term and I will lay it out like that your brain will slow down it'll stop when you recover you'll come up with the answer for me I also won't say I need you to take that clause out I need you to volunteer that idea that's great so I heard you say before that when someone says let's make a win-win situation they're usually going to try to that's an indicator that they're gonna probably you either try to take advantage or whatever and and I found it very interesting because I have used that term I have you know I'm willing to be scenes that I'm delusional here I have said it in ways where I really do look out for other I want to be a win-win situation not use it as terminology to hide dishonesty or hide attempting to be and I know the whole thing of like a lot of people that brag about how their integrity is now great they are and how they want you to win a lot of times are the most full of I also know that some people that are the most smooth-talking or sometimes you know wolves in sheep's clothing sort of thing and when I heard that though it really struck me is like going huh so you know what do you do when you're really genuinely wanting to create a value for value deal you're not trying to overly negotiate if that's the right way to call it you're not trying to scam somebody but you're giving too much of it away or you're letting people steamroll over you I guess what are some without making this a confusing question what are some indicators that should be red flags or warning signs that if someone says this be careful and what's the caveat to that how could I better you know describe things because I do want things to be a win-win situation for someone I mean like everyone here you know they invest a lot of money to be in this group I want them to get a hell of a lot out of it I genuinely care about my clients right you know and at the same time I have some people that will try to take advantage of me and they ask for too much or they're just very demanding and so like what are words to that are indicators and so I'm asking you two things you know what are like warning signs that when you hear them you know antennas go up this is you know something to know on the other side how do you protect yourself from you know getting getting taken advantage of right right alright so context let's so context honest and contextual intelligence is a Porsche a part of emotional intelligence that's really what we're talking about here we're talking about military-grade emotional intelligence weapons great empathy how do you like that huh that's actually good all right so context you should have a win-win mindset if you're in a win-lose mindset that's actually stupid because if the other side loses why are they ever gonna want to make a deal with you again that's that's kind of dumb but a lot of people don't realize that in business negotiation most people business stories like I had them over a barrel and they knew I beat him and every time I hear somebody talk like that I just shake my head I think like you know you were losing so many deals no absolutely there's people that are in the transaction business versus the relationship business right right so now more context on win-win if somebody articulates it right up front that's the tell they're trying to cut your throat now we talked about this a little bit also and you know Joe doesn't show up and go like hey happy to see you let's do a win-win deal yeah you know you start talking about it further down into the conversation or you feel it or you try to live it that's completely different than what we've seen over and over and over again nearly every single person that right off the bat we've been in a negotiation with them and if they articulated let's do a win-win deal in the first three minutes I know they want to get our stuff for nothing and and now and now I'm already headed for the door so you know what are the tells actually there's two tells you you got to watch out for people that are trying to cut your throat what's worse is the people that are trying to pump you for information and never do the deal with you at all one of the things that is not in the book which is actually probably going to be the much more the focus of the book that we're talking about now we call proof-of-life of the deal and if salespeople have a saying it's not wrong to not get the agreement it's wrong to take a long time to not get the agreement that's what's killing you that's what kills more people in more business and we shift what we refer to as proof of life like right up front and and then we walk away which is it's also you know it's been expressed a couple times here play the long game play the long game that's when you start being willing to walk away from stuff or I was also play the percentages game I get if or-or-or half you know I'm in a conversation with a potentially extremely lucrative client two days ago I get coached because I was on a phone by myself and normally we like to negotiate in teams but I got off the phone and I called one of our coaches I said this is my read they failed the proof of life's that test they did some other stuff I think I need to email this guy back and tell him we're not interested he's waving at he's waving a billion company it's gonna grow to a billion dollars and want to change their culture they got all these problems he outlined all these problems I know we have answers I know they could benefit from us but I strongly feel like they want us to create a program for us and then they're either gonna implement it without us or they're gonna go to who they want to go with in the first place and they're gonna tell them to do our stuff and I know there's a lot of people out there that are telling their favorite vendors to do what we do it's been it's been directly reported back to me so we get out of those really early on you know who are gonna be the time wasters long way around no on you know what you get taken advantage of occasionally and look at how well you do yeah yeah oh absolutely I mean they'd be willing to be taken advantage of occasionally yeah that's one thing that I you know I say to people all the time you know like well you know I tried to help someone answ like it's par for the course I mean what I try to do is align myself with people that are aligned with me and when I start seeing disalignment even though I extend myself even though I try and they just keep at it they keep complaining and that sort of stuff it's like after a point just like what it's not a line I mean you just see the world different than I do and so but yeah it's really good to have indicators early upfront and be able to you know bail on it because there's always signs you know yeah it says if you would here what are you looking for if you're able to sniff it out and smoke it out early enough in advance yeah now dealing with people that want to kill somebody when they you you said it interesting like you talked about it in the book and I've watched interviews with you and I've seen you speak I mean you have a great talking at Google and where a lot of people I mean even Gary help it would say that you know the problem with dealing with the terrorists is they've got nothing to lose but your from your sampling they always have something and so you can is there anyone that you simply cannot negotiate with you know I would say or a situation if they're communicating with you we used to always say you always have leverage if you're talking to me I got leverage at all so we'd have a problem with people that wouldn't talk to us at all or we're gonna we're gonna sniff out early on what they're trying to orchestrate and we we would and we look for indicators we just call them high risk indicators like if they're if they're where this is going if they're setting us up and then you just have to recognize that you're being set up but if you're talking to me then I have leverage and even if you're trying to set us up if I can figure that out before we get to where you're going I'll try to change the destination and some of them might be by refusing to talk or it might be by calling you out and we did this we did this publicly we started Isis executions from 2012 timeframe when jim foley steven sotloff some of the others were murdered that was Al Qaeda 3.0 it's al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 they did the same thing Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was an al Qaeda lieutenant in Iraq in 2004 it's our Cowie I think was a guy's name in Iraq they started the same thing and when we sniffed out that they were orchestrating murders we basically went public with it and we changed the narrative from they were terrorists to they were criminals because a criminal will travel the world to go be a terrorist and that's how they were recruiting but a criminal won't travel the world there will be a criminal I can be criminal here what do I need to go to Iraq for so we changed the narrative and what ended up happening in 2004 when we change the narrative we went from chopping people's heads off in a spring time to Anna falls our Jiri the al Qaeda at number two actually put out an edict to stop killing people on camera because it was bad for business well so I guess you can shift a extraordinarily violent people if just by changing their bending their reality you talk about bringing reality so let's how does one what are some I guess tools that people can use to bend someone's reality all right so all the vast majority of decisions that we make is based on how we're calculating loss Danny Kahneman won the Nobel Prize behavioral economics prospect theory it's over and over again they said lost things twice as much as an equivalent game so if you accept that that your view of and your view of the realism of the situation by twice I saw an interview that Danny Kahneman gave that said actually that's not true it's not twice as much it's more like five to seven times as much my partner Amos and I lowered the number to two because we wanted fewer arguments from our colleagues so if I know that your view of loss will distort your perception of reality by five times then all I need to do is figure out what loss you have going on in your head and change it for example I could say do this and you'll experience a 20% increase in profitability or I can say don't change a thing and you're gonna lose 20% year-over-year each and every day you don't change and the second one is gonna eat at you and you're not going to be able to get it out of your head and it you know what keeps you up at night mr. CEO it's some sort of a loss 70 percent of my decisions are made to avoid losses which means you shouldn't pitch value you should start out by finding out what they see their law says which this whole I did this communication approach I need to get you talking because I need to know what you think the loss is and how you see it and then then I need to use the same set of tools to get you to see it differently on a process that therapist would call guided discovery but I'm looking for very specific things and that's why we read only in the book we refer to it as tactical empathy we know somebody's asked me earlier about neuroscience we know so much more about the way the brain actually works because of neuroscience these days we know so much more about empathy that is we're looking for very specific things that if I start talking to you what I want to know first is what you're worried about losing what's a Black Swan your company is a Black Swan group you uh you know black swans are you write about it in the book it's Black Swan is the unexpected tiny little thing that's going to change everything that that's sort of a theoretical idea now the real-world ideas there's a black swan and every one of your deals how many negotiations have you approached were you not hiding cards we're not holding information you're not holding something back you don't want the other side to know pretty much everyone right so number one you're not holding back unless you think it's important so it matters so if you put it out on the table it probably changed the negotiation you just don't feel safe doing it if it's true for you it's true for the other side now the hard thing to see is where is the overlap on those cards that nobody's showing neither one of you have any idea what's in there so you got to get to a point where you have a reputation for not hurting people so that then they will might show their cards also since there's stuff that's gonna matter to you that they have no way of knowing it matters you got to get them talking which is why picking out lies is not enough because you only lie about stuff that you know is important and half of the black swans you don't know are important so you're never gonna give a physical tell you know do I look down when I'm hiding do I look to the side when I'm high I don't know what's important I'm not gonna give you a physical tell that's why I also got to get people talking about the whole environment sort of an unguarded stream and a blurt something out quick example a an organization is trying to get me to come and speak for free which I'm not doing alright so how what kind of constituency do you have how many people 300 will regional Association we don't have money for trainers we could buy books really okay they can videotape it really I need need videotape but then the killer was I said what kind of publication if you got well we don't have one that there's a national publication really what's the national publication god get you interview me we place it in the national publication they got to put stuff in their publication they got twenty thousand people are immediately accessible to get them to put it on the I'll come talk to you for free national is like a course we got to put something in the art in a magazine anyway this is way we support a regional association to get a speaker that would come in and charge them a bunch of money and he'll come in and do it for free yeah we'll do that if we hadn't had that extended conversation about what you have access they they didn't know I want to be in somebody's magazine but it's the access to the people so we just had to keep talking because they were sitting on assets that they had no idea would matter to me until we started talking about we're taught that we got we have II ask questions to do what gather information you need to find out information two-thirds of the time questions are not the best way to get information if I say to you what's on your mind that's a good opening a question we would call that a calibrated question all your questions should start with either water how if you ask calibrated questions they're very deferential there's great power and deference when I'm deferential to you you're more likely to be honest with me because you feel large and in charge it's a whole bunch of emotional intelligence reasons why that works but you're still gonna give me a fairly guarded answer we're just taught and so you'll answer but it'll be guarded before we're talking instead of saying what's on your mind I say sounds like you've given us a lot of thought it sounds like there's something on your mind that's just a verbal observation we call it a label it's gonna bypass your prefrontal cortex it's immediately gonna re-energize what you were thinking about which brought us to the table and you're much more likely to give me a solid download of what's going on in your head it'll come out much more unguarded so instead of saying to a CEO at some I would never say what's keeping you up at night mr. CEO because that's just so tired not that it's a bad question CEOs are sick and not being listened to when they give the answer but I might say seems like there's something you guys are really struggling with you probably you're much more likely to come out with it so we're gonna we're going to design in advance two or three things that then end up being pretty much really Universal and they're gonna work on almost all scenarios my favorite one my son somebody calls him on the phone business-related they say how you do today and you know what he said its back sounds like it's something on your mind and he gets an almost immediate download of information that's great you know how do you spot a liar and what should you look for one of the things we talked about as a Pinocchio effect which means the more words they use the more they're trying to convince you a liar knows they're lying so they're gonna talk at length and they're gonna read your body language you're gonna try really hard to convince you one of the real problems with if I'm telling you the truth and you don't realize I'm telling you the truth I'm gonna talk to you like you're an idiot and you're gonna be offended and consequently call me a liar so a strong indicator of truthfulness is more concise people get and the more angry they get at you it correlates more strongly with them telling the truth if I tell you something you don't buy it I go like well you're an idiot I don't even have time for you I'm probably telling the truth because I haven't taken the time to convince you so additional words convincing words correlate really strongly with with people lying Bob manukan wrote a book called beyond winning the first chapter is called the tension between empathy and assertiveness Bob mannequins ahead of the program on negotiation or Harvard I tell a story about him at the beginning of the book bring a guy though and I'm reading this chapter and the title the tension between empathy and assertiveness I realize the title is a red herring because then he makes the case that they're necessary combination that there is no temple but that empathy is required for assertiveness so we I want you to be emotionally intelligent ly assertive for them to make a great deal with you they're going to know what you need you have to assert your own interests never stop asserting your own interests just don't be a jerk when you do it right you know let take responsibility for how lance let it land in an emotionally intelligent way so they can hear it so that they hear what you want them to hear if assertion without empathy what they hear is that you're a jerk and you're trying to take them hostage and you're trying to push them around you're trying to make them lose okay and those are gonna that that's just that's just a tweak still be assertive but be it in a way that that actually builds a relationship because they appreciate the fact that you were straight shooter but he loves straight shooters right who doesn't like a straight shooter and tell us the truth and an emotionally intelligent way and that's that's the whole design of it here's one trap I see a lot of entrepreneurs get into including myself is if you become very effective at selling people or you become very effective at persuading and there's always ways to be far better I mean certainly you a lot of times can sell yourself into deals you shouldn't even be in you know I mean you descend up getting clients you shouldn't have yeah you're always in that you know and I know a lot of especially marketers that there they go into these pitch modes because they've studied so much damn and I appear so much persuasion they they can't frickin help themselves and so everything becomes a negotiation and trying to squeeze and so part of it is like you know I have about six hours of interviews with Arianna Huffington when I was helping her launch your book thrive a few years ago and my favorite line out of the whole thing that she said was you know the best way to complete a project is to drop it and you know and there are some things in life you just need to Unseld them you need to negotiate yourself out of the deal right because you so like you're really damn good and just say no and you know doing it in ways that are very effective so advice that you would give for just knowing what to not get yourself involved in well all right so the question started out with cutting ties with somebody yeah dishonest negative or lazy people and getting them out of your life and because I think all of those are negotiations also you know especially if they're relatives that's a tough gig you know all right so the hard part about empathy is what empathy is their perspective we're happy to have empathy with people we agree with but that that anybody could do that so you're gonna cut ties with somebody doesn't want you to cut ties with them what's their perspective going to be on you anticipate it and then inoculate it go farther past it because you can't plant negatives with observations you only plant negatives with denials so if I was going to cut my relationship with you my normal good instinct to try to make it land softer was you're like look I don't want you to think I'm a jerk but we're not going to work together anymore so that was wrong because I denied the negative now my smart move is to say look I'm gonna look like a jerk I don't deal with you anymore it's that simple you know articulate the negative just as an observation and I might even know you know I'm in we do this all the time you know I look I'm gonna seem unappreciative jerk that doesn't realize your value doesn't appreciate the amount of time that you put into this and I'm gonna look stupid and lazy I don't want to deal with you anymore what do you got left to throw back at me you got nothing and you're gonna think wow he was really honest your reaction to that I mean and that that's that's the really hard part about this but this is one thing and we talk about in the book a little bit we refer to this as the accusations audit since we've been in a coaching I mean that's how we're that's how we're cutting negotiations from 18 months to week by by just we aggressively over defuse negatives I mean extremely aggressive in it and it's making a huge difference so that negotiation is to negotiate to agree to part ways well how are they gonna react let me preempt it yeah great great what should I have asked you that I did not Wow [Music] I'll go back to something you did ask me like how do people get better right away let the other side go first you know let the other side talk don't be in a rush to make your case there's a really good chance you let the other side go first there's gonna be something in that mess that you love and then you go brilliant and I think it was there I did and it'll work let what a lot of things that seem really inefficient in the process are the reasons why we're cutting our negotiation time way way way way down the emotional intelligent approach is really indirect and it seems meandering and it seems like it's all over the place but the reality is it saves massive amounts of time in your book you actually have a great term about practice where you talk about what is it's towards the end it says effectiveness rise to the level of your preparedness what yeah you don't fall you know you don't rise to the occasion you fall to your highest level of preparation yeah you don't rise say that again you don't rise to the occasion you fall to your highest level of preparation yeah so part of bringing Chris here was to have you all here this now it's your job to go and absorb it and learn how do people get your book any training from you what do you recommend for people here to go deeper with what you've talked about and become amazing at negotiating all right when I need copies of the book I buy it on Amazon myself I get a cheaper from Amazon then I get it from our publisher so books an easy read we all could also get it on audio - oh yeah true we've also got a negotiation newsletter comes out once a week it's good price it's free yeah well one of my federal government employees used to like to say if it's free I'll take three but it's a short sweet article each week comes out on Tuesday morning plus we get training announcement the newsletter will take you right to the website it's a gateway to everything that we do we've got stuff that we put out there for free and stuff that we charge a lot of money for but there's stuff that we have for free and you might as well let the newsletter take you in and and do the free stuff you can subscribe via text text FBI empathy all one word don't put a state your autocorrect put a space between FBI empathy sent it to the number two to eight to eight and it's 20 to 828 FBI empathy all one word you get a text box back it'll sign you up and when we're doing training whatever it's it's gonna be there it's it's the best gateway to our stuff okay FBI empathy all one word two two eight two eight two two eight two eight and Gina will also send that out to everyone but probably write that down or do it now the book is called never split the difference what does that mean you know pretty pretty literal you know the the interesting thing about it is the other side might be right like I can give you example after example after example worth splitting the difference or compromises a dumbest idee on the planet I mean it is just stupid but to really embrace it the other side might be right and if your ego gets in a way it's going to stop you from hearing what they have to say and taking it spending the difference half what you want half of what I want you think I should wear brown shoes I think I should wear black shoes I wear one black one brown I mean it's just an I give you so many examples of time after time splitting the difference of compromising just worked out bad and that's why somebody asked me earlier said well all negotiations everybody's suppose it's a good deal for everybody's mad I'm sorry that's dumb and then that's a net split in a difference so have you found this useful awesome thank you [Applause] you

Channel: Joe Polish

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Keywords: 25k group, business, coaching (industry), entrepreneur, genius network, genius network annual event, genius network events, genius network mastermind, joe polish, joe polish genius network, marketing, piranha marketing, success, chris voss negotiation, chris voss tactical empathy, chris voss never split the difference, chris voss fbi, how to negotiate, tactical empathy

Id: zel8OyzE5LQ

Length: 59min 35sec (3575 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019