Tips on How To Use Tactical Empathy | Chris Voss

all right we are here welcome to the black swan group's fireside on tips to how to achieve tactical empathy i am chris voss ceo and founder of the black swan group prior to 2008 i was the lead hostage negotiator with lead international kidnapping negotiator for the fbi and i handled you know kidnappings globally around the world domestically internationally domestic sieges international kidnappings i have with the help of my son brandon voss we took the hostage negotiation tools transferred our skills into the business section sector i started teaching at georgetown university harvard university and usc university of southern california for you southeasterners i think that's a university of south carolina and then we published in 2016 never split the difference negotiating as if you'd like depended on it wall street journal bestseller selling globally today we teach individuals and companies how to negotiate with emotional intelligence tactical empathy from everything in their lives from getting a cup of coffee at starbucks to getting a hotel suite upgrade free upgrade on a hotel suite so with that i have one of my my co-hosts my my co-pilots shay shay i think you got a couple things you want to add at this point yes as everybody fills in welcome to um today's fireside chat um i am your moderator along with kayla of the black swan group and just as chris said today's topic is on tips on how to achieve tactical empathy so if any time during our conversation you would like to ask chris a question um feel free to send a message via the chat and we'll invite you to come up on the stage um and for the folks who are tuning in uh worldwide via desktop be sure to request access to the fireside app through the page that you're currently on so you can join us and interact in future conversations and also this is very important be sure to follow chris and all of our black swan group instructors so you receive exclusive alerts for future fireside chats that you can rsvp to be a part of and share this stuff out while it's going on if uh if we're saying stuff that you like uh we'd love it if you if you shared it across your platforms let the world know for example i see that troy jackson is in the house and he was with us yesterday when uh we had sandy's session going and he threw some brilliant stuff out that i really enjoyed and i tweeted out some of his uh some of his comments so that's the cool thing about the people that get involved with us and and learn tactical empathy and that we coach and we train um some smart folks out there and get a kick out of talking to you and hearing your thoughts too and your questions do we want to dive right in uh shea you want me to tee off on on our first sort of prep question or do we have in somebody clamoring for our attention right off the bat let me see nobody as of yet so guys definitely put questions into the chat for chris um but we can start with our first question chris can you explain what tactical empathy is and why it's crucial to not only use in negotiations but everyday conversations to uncover black swans yeah you know and and and i want to dive in a little bit on both of these words uh because some of the stuff that i've put out on uh instagram recently um you know people react to both tactical and empathy in different ways they react to tactical some people react as if it's a negative thing and some people react to empathy as if it's you know positive thing in terms of sympathy compassion agreement and both are really actually neutral words uh like a knife is a neutral tool in one person's hand it's an instrument of death in a surgeon's hand it's an instrument of life it's a tool any given tool uh is not in and of itself either good or bad uh it can lead to very good things or even occasionally bad things now empathy is a crazy word my understanding in the etymology those of you that are wardsmiths i always get confused between etymology and entomology i think etymology is origin and entomology is the study of insects easy to get those two confused but the origin of empathy is that it was originally an interpretation from a german word about feeling art and it's really about trying to get and understand just develop an understanding of the feelings that are being projected by the other side the feelings and perspective so really a neutral thing like you might react to a work of art and it might touch you but you're trying to figure out what feelings are coming off of it and then as we move forward through time you know empathy gets uh you know uh uh interpreted in different ways along the way but what i learned mostly from was a guy named carl rogers american psychologist that really again used empathy just to hear people out find out where they're coming from and rogers used the phrase if you could summarize their thoughts and feelings completely not your thoughts and feelings but their thoughts and feelings completely and not whether or not you agree or whether or not you disagree but just what's coming off of them their attitude and that was kind of what i learned about empathy from suicide hotline days back in the 19th brother ever before the internet even before cell phones and then i ran across bob manukin's book uh you know in the early part of this century beyond winning and bob newkin is a chair uh was the chair of on negotiation in charge of the program on negotiation at harvard and his book beyond winning i highly recommend chapter two in that book beth best chapter on empathy i've ever read and we tell everybody that's a black swan read and absorb and into your dna this chapter because manukin said empathy is not agreement it's not even necessarily liking the other side you draw this fine line with empathy then it becomes a completely limitless skill unlimited skill it requires no common ground it requires no agreement you know empathy is about the transmission of information stephen kotler would say that kotler is the author of a number of books on flow interesting cat one of the more interesting dudes i've ever met but it's about the transmission of information compassion is a reaction to that information sympathy is the reaction to that information empathy is a compassionate thing to do but it's not necessarily compassion so it's just about getting where the other side is coming from so fully and so completely that they say that's right that's what we talk about the black swan method is about triggering that's right moments from the other side now what good does that do you this is getting a good five-star that's right out of somebody is equivalent of sprinkling fairy dust on them and changing their mind because a good solid that's right triggers oxytocin oxytocin is the bonding drug oxytocin is what's behind all these mystical experiences in the past such as the stockholm syndrome if you ever heard of the stockholm syndrome came from a a siege in a bank in stockholm sweden like in the 1970s and the hostages that came out all refused to testify against their captors and they were the world was shocked that the hostages had so bonded to their captors and in fact one of the reasons why it's called the stockholm syndrome instead of brooklyn syndrome brooklyn as in the movie dog day afternoon was during the captivity during the seeds there were indicators that some of the female hostages actually had sex with their captors and the world was going like what in the world is going on but the oxytocin is the bonding drug oxytocin is what mothers feel when their children are born and they are bonded to the child oxytocin is this crazy one-way drug because when a newborn baby is born you know over the year it attaches to the mother or the parent by being held by being nurtured but the mother the instant and the father because i bonded to my son the moment he was born you know we lay eyes on our children and we're done i can remember when i laid eyes on my son brandon vos unofficial co-author have never split the difference like i was done the moment i saw him it was oxytocin now on his end you know a little kid fresh in the world blinking looking at me and he's like you know that guy looks kind of interesting he's got kind of a dopey look on his face he looks like he might be nice but the point is oxytocin is just one way bonding what do you do when you get a thatch right out of somebody in a negotiation they bond with you they bond with you in a very big way and this oxytocin bond is massive and that's what empathy is about triggering an oxytocin bond from the other side to you now we threw the word tactical in again as a neutral term why did we throw that in to make empathy much more of a neutral word a neutral tool that anybody can use i had to use it as a hostage negotiator you guys had me out there negotiating against al qaeda do you want me to be sympathy with al-qaeda in order to save your life no you want me to get the dude from al qaeda to bond with me so i can get him to do what i want and it's a mercenaries tool and tactical is when we begin to discover neuroscience and we found out about things like oxytocin we find out about things about dopamine chemical reactions it's a hard science neuroscience is a hard science psychology is a soft science you know and as a hostage negotiator or even a business negotiator he found limited use for psychology but neuroscience is really hard stuff for example the neuroscience experiment has been done over and over and over again triggering them on a negative emotion in somebody's brain neuroscience has mapped out what we call the limbic system in your brain and most people have heard of something called the amygdala everybody you know people have heard the amygdala hijack well the amygdala is this almond sized organ in the center of your brain that you're emotional it's like the command post if you will for your emotions as they run through your brain now neuroscientists have mapped the amygdala and know that 75 of the real estate in the amygdala is dedicated to negative thoughts 75 to negative thoughts half one entire half and then 25 percent of the other half 75 percent of the real estate so they put people in fmri's functional magnetic resonance imaging device so they can watch the electricity go through a person's brain and then they showed them a picture and a picture was designed to induce negative thoughts and that might be a puppy in the rain you know who knows a baby seal on a beach a little old lady that was homeless but whatever it was pictures that would induce negative thoughts they show them the picture and they watch the 75 percent of the amygdala that's negative light up see the electrical activity go through it and then they simply say what are you feeling labeling the black swan methods tool of labeling and they have the person self-label which is a side note this means you can negotiate with yourself with this method and each time the person labeled the negative emotion each time not half the time every time the electrical activity and the negative part of the amygdala diminished every single time labeling works every single time now the critical aspect of this tactical application of this neuroscience knowledge to empathy is the degree of impact wasn't always the same maybe it diminished it a little bit maybe it diminished it a lot and so when we're teaching you the black swan method and we have you employ something called the accusations audit which is a series of calling out the negatives in advance the tactical application of emotional intelligence if the amygdala is 75 negative you need to lead by deactivating the negatives every time well when don't you deactivate the negatives it works only with human beings who are alive lead by deactivating the negatives we tell people to do a negative assessment the accusations audit call them out in advance and we say to them all right so you did your negative labels the series of labels and they stared at you what does that mean and most people say like ah didn't work i'm on the wrong track now if you get no reaction from the other side to the labeling of a negative that means it worked you just need more you're on track you've just got more to go through so shay you asked me what is tactical empathy it's us taking empathy as a demonstration of understanding and adding in what we know to be true from neuroscience to accelerate the process so you get your deals faster how much faster do you get your deals the black swan group was in an important conversation two weeks ago we used tactical empathy we scheduled the call for 60 minutes we were done in 17. we were prepared for it to take 60 minutes to get to where we wanted to go and we got there in 17 minutes that's how it accelerates things that's how you put time back in your life that's how you give yourself more time to enjoy life that much more and in this negotiation when we were done everybody was in a good mood and that's what you want to strive for that is exactly correct just being able to sparks what was it the what was the kim brain chemical that you said oxytocin oxytocin oxytocin not to be confused with oxycontin i'm not dealing oxycontin here i'm a i'm an oxytocin dealer just being able to establish a trust-based influence off of tactical empathy and as you said you completed the deal or completed the conversation within you know several minutes 17 minutes it's just that's amazing so we have a question from jigar jigar would you unmute yourself hi there uh um thank you for uh having me up and uh giving me the opportunity to ask the the amazing legendary ravas a question um chris i've been following you for quite some time now and i've watched the master class at the book and of course every youtube rabbit hole i can find you in uh so my question is you know one of the things i i wonder is that you know you are so generous with your information your your knowledge and do you ever wonder what happens when you know more people know about your method and you know a black swan meets a black swan and how do they negotiate how do they how do you negotiate with a black swan like you know what do you what do you do when you're in a negotiation with with your son um or someone who knows all your tools um and then the second part uh is uh how do you see the method evolving uh as more people come to uh know of it yeah you know i love both those questions that's really cool and it's almost it's almost a joke like right like you know three black swans walk into a bar and who pays um yeah we negotiate with each other all the time i mean one of the first things we do especially when we bring somebody new into the uh to the organization um because we make sure that they're using the skills with each other we got to get them out of the bad habits like the first bad habit is asking questions where somebody's trying to get a yes for an answer i mean that's horrible i mean that's just bad bad communication so we got to get people out of the yes habit but you know tactical empathy is about genuinely understanding the other side uh it's not bad depending upon what you're using a force and we believe in collaboration of black swan groups so we negotiate with each other all the time like brandon call me on the phone and if he's got something that's developed a hot button and you know he needs to take he needs to take corrective action with me soon because for whatever reason i'm running down the wrong track he says he calls me on phone and says you're not gonna like this and you know that's a miniature accusations order before we get started you know this is going to make you angry you're going to find this highly insulting you know he'll throw those one of those at me and i'll appreciate it because i know the effect it has on me you know i'll imagine something really bad and then whatever he talks about is going to be relief and we can navigate it really quickly so we use these we use this stuff with each other all the time so the issue really isn't if somebody's black swan trained is what are they trying to do with it and the more in the black swan method you are then the faster you are recognizing the motivation of the other side and a lot of you are also asked this place into the other question you're asking me is how is this evolving it's evolved massively since we first started it and one of them is a recognition of the person on the other side because just because you can make the deal doesn't mean you want to and we're spending a lot of time on a concept that we refer to as proof of life is there a deal there at all is it deal with you and even if the deal is there with you do you want to deal with them we borrowed a phrase from a guy good friend runs an organization called genius network his name is joe polish what do we borrow from joe polish he talks about customers counterparts people that are both that are half or elf what's half hard annoying lame and frustrating and the l in half could actually be lucrative joe says somebody could be hard annoying lucrative and frustrated and you don't want to deal with those people what's an elf joe says alph is easy lucrative and fun so some of what we're evolving to is identifying halves up front because money from them is blood money it sucks the life out of you it makes you unhappy and we even in the people that call our business development team working very seriously on what our half profiles look like and davey johnson run runs biz dev she uses tactical empathy and when somebody calls in that's a half client even if they're offering us a lot of money i encourage her to not make that deal because they're going to be painful every step of the way and we're just not interested in them because the half people are not repeat customers and the elf people are and we use tactical empathy to get a feel really quickly whether or not they're half or elf because everybody that's half keeps us from the elves everybody that's hard annoying and lame and frustrating is going to be a one-shot interaction it's going to be difficult and painful and they're not going to repeat and the elves are going to be repeat customers possibly lifelong customers long-term prosperous relationships they don't mind paying because they they're willing to pay for what they get they don't chisel you on the price they want you to deliver a great product and we do and so that's one of the ways that we're constantly evolving and to tie both of those things together we love people that negotiate with us using our methods and we welcome it because we know they're going to be more effective and they're also more likely to be in the long term so they could be great long-term customers clients and friends wow fantastic thank you so much it's uh so great talking to you um that uh is really helpful and i look forward to see what you guys come out with in the future and and i'm gonna remain a huge fan thank you thanks man thanks for thanks for being with us on our journey thanks jigar tim street you're up next what's your question for chris hey chris thanks for coming to fireside we're really excited to have you here um yeah it's cool happy to be here great uh curious if you um have been trained in managing and controlling your reaction to your own emotions because i imagine when you're talking to people your experience emotions yourself you know like you might be an argument with a significant other and something you say you wish you didn't say right can you talk about that that training what you went through or or if you didn't what you've learned along the way yes you know great question man great question that's an ongoing challenge and you know i'll throw a little i'll throw a little commercial out if i can uh because i'd be remiss if i didn't let you know what the black swan uh team was doing you know we we've got a course called caviar which is all about mindset and the scene caviar stands for curiosity now this is an ongoing battle for everybody and i'll refer back to the amygdala the mysterious amygdala because the amygdala again like it's 75 negative so as a human being when i wake up in the morning and i'm functioning normally my amygdala is in survival mode which is 75 negative you know you're not i'm not negative because i grew up uh you know with demanding parents or you know because um because dad was mean to me or you know because of my diet i'm negative because i'm human that's how humans are wired the negative humans our ancestors were descended from people that survived by being basically negative survival mode is to be pessimistic that's why the amygdala is 75 negative the optimistic caveman didn't survive the optimistic caveman walked by the cave and said you know last time we came by here tim went in and he never came out and there was a lot of screaming and growling inside and he never came out but i'm optimistic i think i can go in there and survive and that guy doesn't have any ancestors or any descendants so we wake up in a negative frame of mind survival thinking is not success thinking success thinking requires hygiene that daily practice and i struggle with this myself you know i i got a daily practice of writing down stuff that i'm very grateful for first thing in the in the morning you know that's that's like oral hygiene do i gotta do i gotta do a morning gratitude exercise because i did it yesterday well do i got to brush my teeth this morning because i brushed them yesterday yes i do so part of my discovery and i'm not sure if i was really trained this way externally but i know in the black swan team we all work on this we've all got our our tools now the c in caviar is curiosity and the crazy thing about curiosity is like it is a mechanism to override negativity automatically if you're genuinely curious you can't be angry curiosity is a positive frame of mind so for me personally i go back and forth to try to keep my mindset positive between curiosity and gratitude those are the ones that i try to the mechanism i use to override the negativity several years ago i'm mentally prepping for negotiation with a then business partner that uh we knew we didn't trust uh uh in that um in our interactions we knew that they you know they this person wasn't completely honest with us and you know it was now somebody that i would refer to as half and we did we did business uh with this counterpart because the short-term benefit was moving the company forward but i knew that there was going to be a shelf life to it and since they they weren't honest um and prepping for it i'm in a negative frame of mind because i hate being lied to you know one of my currencies is my honesty and my integrity i you know i believe in it i got an ex-girlfriend a long time ago that once said to me you know you'd rather have your arm ripped off than tell a lie and i remember thinking you said that like it was a bad thing like it was an insult so i don't like people that don't that aren't honest with me and i was in a negative frame of mind and then i said to myself you know the reason we're in this negotiation and because this person just will not let go of making the deal is because we're successful and i'm actually lucky to be in this conversation at all i'm lucky to be having this conversation i'm lucky to be successful and with that bit of gratitude it instantly changed my attitude and i came up with the labels that i needed for the negotiation so tim i've been giving you a real rambling answer is that um it's a struggle for everybody because we're human and the mechanisms that i use to overcome my automatic negativity are gratitude and survival and i and i got to repeat them on a regular basis and i'm far from being perfect and keeping myself out of a negative frame of mind what about the the opposite what about euphoria what if you're in a state of euphoria where you could also make a mistake by not controlling that reaction to that yeah it's an interesting question you know and i'm not sure you know you euphoria would be a highly positive um you know euphoria might just be potentially you know i probably made a good decision but i'm not looking sufficiently at all the details i mean that's that's another thing why you know the the default operating mode of the black swan group is uh you want to go fast go alone you want to go fargo as a team um you know we're a team operation and i've come to really understand what it means to be a team player because i always thought yeah i'm the team leader i'm a team player the team needs to get behind me so if i get euphoric about something i know if it's going to work to be effective i got to run it back through my team euphoria is only a danger if i'm a diva and i'm thinking this through as we talk if i'm truly a team player and that means i'm serving the team as much or more as the team is serving me and me being who i am i have to focus on serving the team versus me the team serving me then euphoria is not a problem at all because i got a strong team game yeah man good question really thoughtful question appreciate it absolutely um we have krish up on stage krish if you would unmute yourself uh hi chris uh thanks for the opportunity uh my question so i actually asked two questions i want to know which one that i've been put um you can ask i like your second question if you can ask that one okay uh okay yeah sure so my second question is how do i deal with a party that wants a bribe for a deal to go through sure yeah uh that's a i love that question so my personal um uh opinion is people that are demanding bribes are sick of people who are completely transactional and just using them and there's so many counterparts that do not give a darn about them don't give a crap about them personally they're like all right you're going to treat me like a commodity it's pay to play you got to pay extra if you want to treat me you want to treat me like a prostitute then you're going to pay you know bribes are for people that are lazy so if if i were in a position where somebody was demanding a bribe then i'm i'm looking at someone that's never been connected with on a personal level so i'm actually interested in that challenge if it's somebody i gotta deal with you know can i connect with them can i can i trigger an oxytocin moment can i give this guy a solid hit of oxytocin which is gonna say like all right so for everybody else i charge x but for you you get a family and friends rate you might even give it for free i mean i would look at that person as um a a good challenge and if somebody's demanding a bribe for me they're telling me that we haven't connected we really haven't connected they may be charming you know are they sociopath are they so should pass react to oxytocin too that's a crazy thing what a lot of people don't understand about empathy is sociopaths lack guilt or feeling bad over their actions or maybe they don't care about you but they still have neural chemicals they can still get a dose of oxytocin they still react to dopamine so as as i'm going through this if somebody's demanding a bribe for me what they're telling me for sure is they're not connected to me now will connecting giving them a solid hit oxytocin is this going to turn the situation around i don't know but i do know that if i don't bother to find out my chance of conversion is zero right okay uh i think that makes some sense i mean it's like it's it's one way to go about looking at dealing with these kind of people because yeah they definitely would have emotions there and that could be something yeah they they you know the person on the other side of the table they still got emotions now i'm not saying that get getting uh you know a series of really deep five-star that's rights out of them is gonna get you out of bribe territory but i know you're not gonna get out of there without it sad enough so i mean this is something it's a tough situation but this is that tactical empathy and getting that mix at least some kind of that's right is making some progress with those people exactly maybe you get a discount on the bribe i don't know right whatever all right thanks so much and i appreciate you doing all this and i love your book and the master class and everything thanks thanks man i appreciate it thanks chris um troy if you could um was this a famous dude i was quoting from yesterday i love this guy well thank you thank you so much chris sorry about the background noise i'll finish up the walk but um i hope you guys can hear me clearly i really apologize i just really wanted to be here i got a lot of knowledge a lot of good um emotion out of what i heard you're saying the same things going on right now today but chris i want to throw this at you really quick when you think of like tactical empathy and negotiations right you think of game theory as far as winners and losers infinite game plan versus finite game plan right what's the best strategy i'm thinking like you know i want this to continue i don't want to just be a winner or a loser i don't want winners or losers sometimes that may happen especially like you mentioned the person is being i guess you would say um not truthful honest with what they're doing as far as their business or social interactions so i'm wondering what's your approach on that do i want to keep playing with all these different people or do sometimes i just want to let it go and just when would i win and take my toys and go home yeah you know uh i i i hate the term win-win but you know if you're in if you're in win lose first of all you know that's a finite game and the whole game theory conversation is another interesting conversation because everybody that studied negotiation at one point in time wanted to study game theory in the academics at harvard at mit if they put in their course description that they're teaching game theory like everybody wants i want to know how to win that game and i have never ever seen any game theory that actually makes people better negotiators the only game theory game we ever played you know we use the ultimatum game because the human nature reaction to the ultimatum game violates what game theories game theorists globally say you should do and we use the ultimatum game just to prove the game theory doesn't work long long-term long-term success so and we've gotten really the way our thinking has evolved since the book has come out and and it has i mean it's kind of cool it's one of the fun things about continuing to take our courses or learning from each other you know i got a i got a core team the black swan team me and derek and brandon are the principal people that are coming up with our ideas and our intellectual property if you ask a question derek brandon and i will each give a different answer and all of us will be right because we think in very complementary fashions and then like yesterday it's the first time i got to hear sandy talk in a while and i was literally taking notes sandy is coming along she's she's bringing some great stuff to the table and monday was troy like troy is one of the most naturals at this that we have ever run across so you know what am i babbling about we're out of the game theory win lose dynamic and we're into the positive some game world and what that means and concepts such such as elf and half you know we figure that 80 percent of the planet is not for us it's just a mismatch it's a mismatching core values we're very much into the core values and living our core values as a team now and defining those and if your core values are different than mine there's no bad on you you know i could be a half for you if you're half for me i'm probably half for you and we shouldn't be doing business together because we should be both be going to elves and while the elfs are a minority of the total population wherever you are there are more else out there than you can than you could possibly serve like i know in the united states at least there are 3 million else and we do not have three million subscribers to the newsletter so there are people out there that we're not getting to because we're letting the half slow us down and your original question is is it a win-lose world is it a game theory world or is it a larger positive sum game world and how do you kick yourself into that positive larger world and some of it is walking away from people you shouldn't be doing business with because they are keeping you from the people that you should have in your life whether you're doing business with them or whether they're in your personal relationships and this is a really hard one to wrap your mind around that you they're better off if you walk away from them probably about five years ago a friend of mine in los angeles michael levine a pr guy came and spoke at the class i was teaching at usc and i said michael you know you're a superstar and pr in la in the entertainment industry you represented bill clinton i mean you represented some some big big people what could you tell my students and one of the first things out of michael's mouth was fire your flaky friends and i remember my reaction to that is that's harsh i mean you know throw people overboard kick them off to the side walk away from them they're your friends but if they're haves if they're if if you know take the word flaky out and just say you know we don't match up our core values don't match and i'm holding you back as much as you're holding me back then moving on gets you out of the win-lose dynamic and into the positive some game and your life is better now i love your question because you're asking about game theory and you're asking about winning and losing which means you're studying this but also from the conversation we had yesterday you i know you have a high level of emotional intelligence and you're about getting better and having a better life and these are just some some seeds some thoughts i'm sharing with you for you to add into your thinking because if you're about getting better and having a better life then you got good core values and that rambling dissertation that was all over the map i hope is of some use to you in how you move forward oh no chris i'm really like kind of blown away for a lot of different reasons and one of those is like you know you know like you guys you're very smiling about a lot about me and i really really appreciate the encouragement and um you know this is just amazing stuff because it's very natural it's very humanistic it makes sense to me and i love the language and using hey values and just like look why am i putting myself in spaces where i don't belong and just removing myself without causing harm at that point in time so i really appreciate this i'm so interested and thank you for letting me ask the question am i yeah thanks for being with us today man thank you thanks troy um up next we have christian christian could you unmute your mic yeah it's my pleasure to be here chris i love the master class and big fan thanks for your time uh the question is yeah my pleasure the question is interesting so i've worked with a lot of people in very rural communities and i've worked with a lot of really really bright people and their major problem is they don't spend a lot of time around other folks they don't feel like they connect so while they want to be empathetic and they want to be able to interact with people they simply don't have a great understanding or many commonalities so how do you bridge that gap yeah with a great question man um and first of all commonalities are not required for empathy i mean tactical empathy is the the next level up it's a quantum leap forward up from common ground because when you're commonalities when you're looking for commonalities what you're really hoping for is that someone understands you based on their background it's a it's a it's an inefficient hypothesis but let's say if i'm from iowa and you're from iowa um i'm hoping you understand where i'm coming from because i'm hoping you grew up in a blue collar environment and in a pitch in with a pitching attitude and get things done and figured out yourself i'm hoping you understand that that's what we're hoping from from common ground so but that's you know that's that's a that's a low percentage proposition there's a percentage there though right so maybe it's a 25 accuracy it it beats a zero percent accuracy so what are the chances if you and i share a common background that you understand where i'm coming from well there is a percentage there and i personally have found that the common ground that's the strongest revolves around your geographic upbringing or your ethnicity like if if you're from a small town in iowa and i'm from a small town in iowa we got a similar geographic uh experience up to this point in time you know if if you're irish german and i'm irish german we get if i'm aware of it and if i'm from from the midwest i'm probably not aware of my ethnic experience because that's the way midwesterners are they're kind of colorblind you know there's a pretty good chance uh that uh you might understand what it's like to be completely colorblind because you were irish german from the midwest and ethnicity was never discussed in your home so you're actually completely blind to it but then empathy doesn't require common ground it just requires me dialing in to you and taking some educated guesses and being willing to be wrong and being educated now you're talking about people in rural areas and they're attributing their lack of experience to being good at empathy to a lack of practice and there is that but their other hidden problem really is their age what am i talking about from up to about age 23 24 25 despite in addition to the fact that her brain is still developing but everything is awkward like and so we're not thrown by feeling awkward but from about your mid-20s on you start to hit a rhythm and you start to figure think that you know things and you're feeling less and less awkward and then from about the mid-20s on instead of awkwardness going with the territory of being alive feeling awkward throws you off and makes you feel like you're doing something wrong and it becomes the biggest barrier to learning so the people that you're talking about that are in more isolated areas they're attributing their feeling of awkwardness to the lack of interaction but the biggest difference is their age and we find consistently the feeling of awkwardness is the biggest barrier to learning because adults don't like to feel awkward and simultaneously it's also a solid indicator of accelerated learning daniel coyle in his book the talent code talks about awkwardness being an accelerator for learning andrew hubermann neuroscientist out of stanford talks about awkwardness being an indicator of changes in neuroplasticity which increase your learning and so the people that you're talking to to try to get them good at empathy encourage them to feel awkward and tell them that when they are trying it and they do feel awkward they're actually learning much faster and it's a great sign and if they're willing to be awkward it don't matter if they live on the top of a mountain they're going to learn faster than the guy or gal who's in the middle of a city and they got people around them all the time but they're running from the feeling of awkwardness as opposed to embracing it really well said so for those folks that are interested they do feel awkward they're looking for practice but they can't find it you recommend they watch a tv and try to empathize with a character or something as simple as that you know it's not bad empathizing with a character and you know there's i think there's some data out there that actually reading helps develop your empathy so reading great works of fiction where the characters are really well developed now tv is not bad the real problem with tv is the dialogue in response to empathy is always horrible like you see something on tv you see an actor portraying someone who's troubled or unhappy and they do a great job of portraying what someone feels like in that situation and then the dialogue that they write in response to that is always horrible it's someone talking them into a position explaining to them like i feel the same way you feel and i hate that when they put that in a tv show because in real life if i say i'm in the same boat as you i feel the same way as you do in real life you go f off and on tv when somebody says i feel the same way the person being spoken to says oh thank god and i'll give you a great example i'm flying american airlines a couple weeks ago i don't know what happened but they cancelled like 25 of their flights across the country i think they had a pilot problem they kept real quiet pilots didn't show up for work and they're cancelling flights all over the place now i'm supposed to be flying from dc to vegas and i'm standing in lax looking for a hotel room i'm in la i don't even plan on being in la i got to find a hotel room i want american to pay for it because they stranded me in a city i wasn't even supposed to be in at all and i'm in a line of people in the same boat and there's a guy up at the front of the line and he is teeing off on this poor girl behind the counter and so i'm like let me let me try this same boat common ground stuff because he's picking on this girl so i don't use an ounce of empathy with the i with this guy i say to him hey man we're all in the same boat here i'm stranded too it's not her fault common ground right just like on tv i know this is not empathy i'm going for common ground we're in the same boat experiencing the same trauma simultaneously this guy literally turns around and says to me mind your own f in business that's how good common ground is and that's what a difference tactical empathy is so if that would have been an episode on tv he'd turn around and thank me for intervening that's the difference great explanation thank you thanks christian victoria you're up next hello thank you again for having me up and thank you for hosting these wonderful conversations i chris i met you yesterday and i just wanted to first say thank you was interesting after i spoke with you just the feeling that you give in your voice like your mentoring the person that you're speaking with is was just really moving and that really sat with me after we spoke together um oh thank you mike my question is is something that you just said a little while ago the issues with people who are in the half category and people who are in the l and just thinking about you have worked with and dealt with some of the most difficult half people in the world i'm thinking of you know part of my question yesterday was dealing with the political divide in this country and i'm wondering if you're for example you're in you're in a uh in a family or in a your neighbor is a half but you want to find some way where you have to work together for something that is going to benefit the entire building let's say or the entire community is there any given your experience is it at all possible to how do would you try and find a way to have to have to move you know they're not going to be enough but you can't have them totally a half what would you do what do you do in those situations that's a great question um and so it's all right so what's your best chance of success and you know i used to use that phrase all the time best chance of success i learned it i learned it from you know my boss uh one of my main mentors gary nesner he ran ran a crisis negotiation unit when i first got there and gary used to always talk about best chance of success and i repeated it over and over and over again and then finally we had a kidnapping go bad and people get killed and i was at the helm and i said to myself all right so i guess best chance of success by definition means you're not always going to be successful so the first thing you got to relieve yourself of is the needing to be always be successful you know in baseball to bat a thousand or percentage-wise to win 100 of the time that is not possible now what's my best chance of success hostage negotiators got a 93 success rate 93 percent success rate i don't know of any other profession with that high of a percentage success rate i don't know any sales people wolf of wall street has booked the way of the wolf he talked about having a 3 success rate hostage negotiators tactical empathy 93 success rate which by definition means seven percent of those people you are never going to get to an agreement with no matter how much time you put in so tactical empathy is still the answer whether they're a neighbor whether they're on the condo board whether they're a friend family member expect it to take longer let it sink in what we prescribe and a lot of people when you've got opposing arguments going on a great way to interact with someone that you disagree with is to say before i disagree with you here's what i think your position is you've done two things you haven't lured them into thinking in any way shape or form that you don't have a counter point of view before i disagree so they know that you're not in agreement here's what i think your position is they're gonna listen you're going to get that sentence out and then they're going to listen intently for where you're coming from and that's going to start the transformation process now is is that process going to be sufficient even if it's 93 successful which is a really high rate seven percent of the time it's not going to work but it's your best chance of success tactical empathy is always your best chance of success do and let it do not look for the instantaneous transformation that you will get in in less adversarial conversations one of our long time students customers and i talk about this in the um in my ted talk he's in an argument with his sister family member family gathering his younger sister is a primary caregiver for their ailing father and the pressure on her is enormous she's had too much to drink and she starts in on him and he said he'd seen this happen before and he realized it was just his turn and all he wanted to do was make her feel heard and not disagree with anything make her feel hurt he said it went on for an hour before she finally ran out of gas and then she just stopped she just ran out of gas did not have did not get it that's right out of her did not feel the oxytocin moment at all just was relieved that she was no longer beating on it the next day she sends him an email that said yesterday i attacked you and you showed me nothing but love thank you for being my big brother give them give it a chance to sink in give it a chance to work as much as it possibly can and realize that you've done the best that you can and it won't always work every time but without trying it it won't work at all that's the best i can give you didn't hear all the moments when like oh my god wow that is just truly beautiful truly beautiful and and and you could just i could just feel how that can because when you focus on really caring for somebody that is the most beautiful thing you could do thank you i i really appreciate this thank you so much you're welcome thanks for being here today shea you're gonna wrap us up yeah unfortunately time flies um but i want to thank everyone for all of their questions and for tuning in um be sure to subscribe to the black swan group on youtube where we post new videos every week and follow us on all of our social platforms which you can find all in my fireside bio tomorrow we will be hosting another topic and that will be the black swan leadership framework with coaching instructor derrick gaunt at 12pm eastern time and during that session we'll go over helpful tips to take your leadership skills to the next level and pretty much lead like a hostage negotiator in the business world so if you're interested please plan to join us tomorrow and also on friday for our last fireside conversation of the week but thank you all for joining and continue to practice your negotiation skills

Channel: NegotiationMastery

Views: 41,870

Keywords: tactical empathy, negotiation strategies, chris voss, business negotiations, best negotiation practices, black swan group, never split the difference, emotional intelligence, effective negotiation skills, best negotiation training, components of emotional intelligence, effective communication techniques, tactical empathy questions, tactical empathy examples, tactical empathy in business, negotiation strategies and techniques, negotiation strategies in conflict resolution

Id: vRERVNNbB4Q

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 16 2021