PodCrash with Matt Ebert
PodCrash with Matt Ebert
FBI Negotiator: Why Getting a "No" Is Better Than Getting a "Yes" with Chris Voss
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I'm Matt Ever. I turned one collision repair shop into a multi-billion dollar business called Crash Champions. Now I'm sitting down with people who have also built great things so you can build something of your own.
SPEAKER_00Alright, so all of us face negotiations in business every day, right? You're fighting for what you want, I'm fighting for what I want. Um I stay at home with my six and nine year old. At home as well. Very few of us have done it with high stakes. I'm talking hostage negotiations, kidnapping, and some of the worst situations that you could ever think of. So today's guest is Chris Voss. He is a former FBI hostage negotiator and the author of Never Split the Difference, one of the most popular books in business out there right now. His whole thing is showing people that the skills he picked up negotiating with kidnappers and terrorists actually transfer over to business. So it's pretty deep. Got it. And then 25 years in business, right, at Crash Champions, when you think about your negotiation skills, how how would you say they've uh they've grown over time or what have you gotten really good at that you weren't good at when you first built the company?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I I I'm definitely better. Um I don't know if I can define why or what or in particular, but um you definitely get better negotiating over time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not sure if it's uh if it's rhetoric, but uh I apply a lot of what you said, uh I think when we first sat down, it's like find out what people want and just give it to them, right? So I think I try to approach every conversation like that, trying to find out exactly what that other person wants at the end of the table and then maneuvering my way through that conversation to ensure I guess we both get what we want at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, getting to a win-win um is usually where you do the best.
SPEAKER_00You know, Chris says the person who's most comfortable with silence usually wins the negotiation.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So, Matt, I think everybody working today needs a raise. All right, well, I guess that answers that. Well, I'm looking forward to this one and uh maybe even applying some of this stuff at home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this'll be a good one. I'm excited for it. Okay, everyone, this is Podcrash. I had the chance to reading your book a few years ago and found your background um super interesting. Spending years as an FBI hostage negotiator, first thing that came to my mind is is that something you practice a lot and get really good at? Because it it wouldn't seem to me that people are getting kidnapped every day, or am I completely wrong?
SPEAKER_02Well, it depends upon what end of it you got. Um when I stood, I took over our international kidnap response program, and actually around the world, uh there's anywhere from one to four Americans being held every day. Because it's a big world and there are a lot of Americans. So every day. When I'm doing that, every day, yeah.
SPEAKER_01There was something going every day. Oh wow. That's way more often than I would have guessed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, you know, you got guys like me do a good job. Uh there's a phrase uh in the news, if it bleeds, it leads, and we're not letting people get killed.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's that's great. So how did you get trained on that? Or was it something you were naturally good at? How did you get how did you get good at that?
SPEAKER_02Well, I got yeah, I got trained, and first of all, I believe that nobody's naturally good. Everybody has talent, abilities that that can be nurtured. We all kind of start the same place. So uh I happen to develop an interest in it. I think I'm coachable. If if anybody has an advantage, it's whether or not they're coachable, and I'm very coachable.
SPEAKER_01So did you have like a mentor when you first started? Did they part your partner you up and then you you learn from them then?
SPEAKER_02Well, my my learning journey really began uh for hostage negotiation, negotiation in general, when I volunteered on a suicide hotline. Okay that's uh that's kind of applied emotional intelligence under very quick circumstances. And that's really where it began. And then I had mentors, I you know, Gary Nessner, my former boss of the Crisis Negotiation Unit, he was a mentor. You know, I like to learn from people who know what they're doing. Uh so there were a bunch of them. And then I practiced at it. If you're gonna, if you're gonna get good at anything, um, negotiation, emotional intelligence is perishable or it's it's unlimited. Uh it's like uh it's like a skill, it's like a sport almost. And if you if you work at it, you get good at it. And if if you don't continue to practice, then your skills diminish.
SPEAKER_01You know, I feel like I work on the emotional intelligence all the time. My wife would say I'm still terrible at it, but I feel like I've gotten better.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, they see every day. It's kind of tough. There's no escaping the significant other.
SPEAKER_01One of the things that I kind of remember from reading is uh it's more about the emotion than anything sometimes, right? When it comes to negotiations or conversations. It seemed to me like I remember you really believe like the emotion mattered even more than the logic or facts or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, the facts are what you assemble after you've made up your mind. I mean, the the hard thing for a people to wrap their mind around is decision making requires emotional evaluation, if you will. You decide based on what you care about, which then makes decision making an emotional process. Now you can follow directions without emotions. You know, you know, do this, do A, B, C, D, uh, arrange things in alphabetical order. That doesn't require emotion. But arrange things in the best order, you know, you've got to evaluate uh how you feel about what makes something the best. So the first hurdle to be overcome in negotiations really is to realize that every decision is driven by emotion. My son Brandon used to say that uh negotiation is a series of emotional moments. Yeah. And then and then from there, when you recognize the brain is wired to be negative. Survival wiring is ballpark. You wake up in the morning with survival mindset, it's 75% negative. Okay. Um, because the negative caveman survived. You know, the pessimist lived, the optimist got eaten by the bear. He said, I'll go pet that thing, it'll be fine. And he got eaten.
SPEAKER_01So it's the natural survival job of the brain that makes us think that the negative more often.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. Yeah. And then and then, like when you start to wrap your mind around that, you get a tremendous edge. Like people made the primary decision-making factor is avoid loss avoidance. Okay. Not the only, just the primary. And negative reaction to outcomes. So you if you now you can navigate it, ignore it, or deny it. If you deny it, it makes it work, it makes it worse. If you ignore it, it slowly festers.
SPEAKER_01If you navigate it, then you get big advantages. Before I jump into some of the those things, I I kind of wanted to get maybe a hostage story or something from you. What was the biggest win you had, or or the, you know, what what gave you the biggest challenge over the years?
SPEAKER_02Well, the the real gateway event for me, uh, more than anything else, was when I was still, I was assigned to New York. I was a member of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, and I was also, I ran the negotiation team for the New York office of the FBI. Okay. And there was a bank robbery with hostages. Now, the movies make it seem like that happens every day, but where the hot where there's a negotiation where the police show up and surround and trap the bad guys inside, and there's actual hostage negotiation, that won't happen one time this year in all of the United States. And it occurred in Brooklyn, it was going down, and and it hadn't happened in New York City for 20 years. So that's how it really is a rare event. It really is. Unlike the bad guys. Uh well international kidnapping versus domestic, those are two different things, also. Yeah. But uh, yeah, the bad guys know the cops are coming. They know there's somebody gonna trigger the bank alarm. They know, you know, they got, yeah, I don't know, 90 seconds, two minutes. You see all the time, they try to time it out how long the cops are gonna show up before they get there. So, you know, they're gonna be gone. Banks get robbed all the time. They just get out of there before cops show up because they know they're on their way.
SPEAKER_01So, in a hostage situation, something went wrong, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's yeah, the timing was wrong. They planned it out wrong. Yeah, exactly right. Uh, things things didn't go as planned.
SPEAKER_01So their emotions are probably pretty high.
SPEAKER_02Well, typically, and that was the crazy thing about this case at the Chase Bank was, you know, we for the reasons that you just gave, you know, you got to make uh an educated guess in advance what you're faced with. Uh they didn't plan on getting caught inside, so they're probably upset. Well, we get we get to the Chase Bank, and uh the the organizer, the primary guy, although he didn't get plan on getting caught off guard uh inside, he was an extraordinarily manipulative dude. So he actually he he only got rattled once. I rattled him. But he kind of didn't really get rattled the whole time because he was so manipulative, he was so used to manipulating everybody around him, and he felt he was smarter than everybody. Okay, you know, he figured he was gonna uh manipulate his way out.
SPEAKER_01So how did you how did you rattle him?
SPEAKER_02Well, um he started out, he came up with a fake surrender plan that was an escape plan. Okay, and he he planted that in our heads, and we didn't realize where it came from. Any piece of information you have in a negotiation, just because it came from a reliable source doesn't mean it's reliable information. So we show up at the bank and we're told that there are seven bad guys on the inside from a bunch of different countries, and that they actually want to surrender. Now, as crazy as that sounds, this is back in the dark ages before cell phones, this is 1993. There'd been a hijacking in New York City just a few months earlier where the hijacker who hijacked a plane in uh Lufthansa flight in Germany surrendered and said he was going to surrender as soon as the plane touched down. He, you know, uh stupid criminal trick. He wanted a ride to the U.S. Okay. He, the hijacker, his life was lousy enough where he was, you know, that three hots and a cot in a jail cell was better than where he lived. So he didn't have the money to uh pay for his own airline ticket. So he hijacks a plane. Wow. So earlier this year, and and while this Lufthansa is coming across the US, we're being told from the cockpit, like, hey, this dude's gonna surrender as soon as he shows as soon as it touches down, which is exactly what he did. So we got some precedent in New York City for uh uh surrender right away. What had happened was the the the manipulative dude inside had called the precinct and said, give him this information and said, We want to surrender, we want to drive to the precinct and give up. Which is a way to go mobile. You know, it's a it's a uh uh reverse of a Trojan horse, if you will. They want they wanna they want to get a vehicle to drive to the the precinct, lo and behold, he's planning on turning it into a car chase, not a surrender. So we're we show up to Chase Bank, and I still have a picture of what we call situation board where I wrote down this information. And you you come at the bank, you organize the information, you put it in these big pieces of uh, you know, presentation charts, you put them on a wall so people see what the information is. Now I'd gotten it from a reliable source, a police officer, police detective at the precinct, and we never asked where the precinct got the information. And it was the big guys. Okay. So this this is this dude's way of keeping us off guard, keeping a threat level low at all times. So he he does several things, he he refuses to give his first name because when you give your name to someone voluntarily, you've allowed them to connect with you. And he's keeping his head, he's not allowing us to connect. And then he actually, one of the first things he says to the first hostage negotiator, NYPD detective named Joe, who's an extraordinarily talented guy, Joe Perano, he says to Joe, like, look, I'm the calmest one here. Like, and we do not expect the dude to be that calm. So he continues to manipulate us. He's doing a lot of things to keep us off guard about five hours in. After Joe's done a great job stabilizing the scenario, uh the PD commander, Hugh McGallan, another brilliant hostage negotiator that I learned a lot from, says, All right, we're gonna switch up. And I've been coaching, I was in a coach's seat, you know, the co-pilot's seat up to that point in time. And uh Hugh says, Joe, you're coming off the phone and Chris, you're up. And Chris says is what I want you to do. Um, even though this guy had never given us his name, he uh we'd identified him by voice. We'd found his car, we went to his house, we brought a neighbor, a neighbor heard him on a speaker and said, Yeah, that's who that is.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so you did know you that was that's true. You found out who he was and he didn't know he knew yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he didn't he didn't he didn't know we knew. So um and um the other thing he he kept doing to us also, which was the mark of a great CEO negotiator who's at the table. A great CEO in business will come to the table and you think you have the decision maker in front of you. And the CEO will say, like, look, I gotta be careful, my board's gonna fire me. If I do the if I make a bad deal here, my board's gonna fire me. So I don't I actually don't have any authority to make a deal. You can give me a proposal, but I gotta take it to my board. It's called blaming the people that are not in the room. Uh-huh. So this guy, having told, uh, tried to make us believe that there's seven guys in there, he he keeps saying to Joe on the phone, like, these guys I'm with are more dangerous than I am. I'm scared of them. If I do the wrong thing, they're gonna kill me. Same thing as the CEO, blaming the board, blaming somebody who's not on the phone. Interesting. So Hugh says, Hugh says, uh, you're gonna do two things. He keeps, with no warning, ending the phone calls. He said, No matter what happens, you have to end the call. Every time he tries to end the call, he says, Well, these guys are coming, I'm gonna put you on any of this nonsense. He says, You just keep them on a phone for a few more seconds. Because the real control and the real direction in every conversation is how a conversation ends. Everybody globally is all excited about the first impression or the opening. The first impression is the second most important impression. It's important, it's the second most important. What's the point? So the most important is the uh the first is last, the last impression. The last impression is the lasting impression. The last impression sets up the next conversation. Okay. Almost everybody gets that wrong. Everybody gets that wrong. You know, uh, you have a contentious negotiation and or contentious email. You start out by saying, hey, you know, we love you, we want to do business, we want to work this out. And then the last line on the conversation is, I would remind you, if we can't work this out, we have legal recourse. And that's a horrible last impression. Yeah, you just threaten them. You threatened them. No matter what you said, nice up front, you just wiped it all away. Uh interesting. And I first learned that from Hume McGowan. He says, we're gonna control the end. If we get, if we control the end, if we end it and we end it calmly, we're gonna slowly get back in a driver's seat. So you just gotta gently make sure you end every conversation. And then we had also, we'd identify this guy, and you says, the two other things uh that you gave me that were really important. He said, uh we're not gonna do a traditional handoff. A traditional negotiator handoff is normally Joe says, Hey, Chris been sitting here the whole time. And he's heard everything, and the first thing Chris is gonna do when he comes on the phone is he's gonna summarize the whole situation so you don't feel like you got to start from scratch. And then I would come on the phone and say, All right, you know, we've been here, this has happened, and lay everything up, and the bad guy's gonna say, Okay, at least I'm not starting with somebody who's clueless. Yeah. That's traditional. Hugh says, Don't do that. Says you're just gonna come on a phone with no explanation, you're not gonna make any threats, you're just gonna be the guy he's talking to now. Period. You're not gonna inflame it. But we're just making a switch. And then he says, the last thing I want you to do is first chance you get, I want you to confront him with his name. So I get on the phone suddenly, and uh this guy's last name is Watts. Watts is, you know, where's Joe? And I just said, Joe's gone. You know, you're talking to me now. And I didn't say it like Tony Soprano, you're talking to me now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I I had to I had to say it, you know, just calmly. You know, you know, you're talking to me. And so we we engage, and um the reason we'd found out who he was was since he thought he was gonna get in and get out cleanly, he'd actually driven his own van to the bank. And I said, Look, we you know, we got we got a van out here. We found the owners of every van and identified him except this one van. And this is what's called he's he's he's a little off guard because I s we switched nicely, but with no explanation. And now I'm just laying some facts out to him, and now he's uh now he's rattled. So actually, the first the first thing he does um is he starts stumbling over his words, he says, Well, you know, we got more than one van. Then he says, we only have one van, and I and I'm mirroring him like because he's catching me completely off guard. The mere the mere negotiation skill is a great skill when you're caught off guard. You just repeat what the other guy said because you don't understand, and you gotta say something. So I mirrored him a couple times, and he starts, this control freak guy starts spitting out information that he didn't mean to give us, mostly that there was a getaway driver that that had that had gotten away. And so, and his voices come up, and he's this is how you get a control freak person to start spilling information with a with a calm voice, and they're just repeating back what they just said. It's a great way to punch through somebody's lies because they'll they'll fall all over themselves if you just if somebody says it'll happen tomorrow, and you know they're lying, and you go, it'll happen tomorrow, and then they'll start to blabber, they'll talk too much and say things they don't mean to say, which is exactly what this guy did. The other crazy thing he did, which was, I gotta admit, it was very impressive, since we switched with no notice, and up to that point in time we hadn't heard a word. There are two female hostages inside and a bank guard, unarmed bank guard. Suddenly this woman comes on the phone with no warning. And so he mirrored you too. He mirrored you too, Chris. It sounds like he did, he did. You know, he's he's getting even though he was rattled, he still had some chest moves left in him. And it was a great way to remind us that he had live hostages without actually threatening them. Okay. Because if he raises this dude's smart enough, if he raises a threat level high enough, then either the sniper's gonna take him out or the swatters are coming through a door or window or a wall, but they're coming if the threat level is high enough. So he's got to remind us he's got hostages without actually threatening them. So, you know, the woman, the woman just says, I'm okay, and I go, Who, you know, tell me your name, who is this? And she's bam, she's off, she's gone. And he comes back on the phone like nothing happened. And so I'm like, who was that? What's going on? And he tries to get back to give us a ban and we'll surrender. And I'm not buying into it. So abruptly, and I still don't know why, to this day, the other bank robber comes on the phone. There aren't seven of them inside there, too. And the other guy comes on the phone and he is rattled. He's the guy that you expect to be upset. Okay. And about 90 minutes later, I've got him surrendering to me out in front of the bank.
SPEAKER_01After about six hours total, seven hours total.
SPEAKER_02Six total. You know, it took a few hours to stabilize things for us to know when the threat level is low, when things are just dead, when you're just stuck, you can take a risk. You don't want to take it clumsily, you know, uh, and you realize that this is the time we're going to risk a switch, and but we're going to do it gently. We're going to do it nicely. We're not going to be threatening in how we do it. And that that's how we end up getting everybody out.
SPEAKER_01Appreciate that. So, you know, it's been um a lot of years now, I think, right? You when did you retire? 2010 range? Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, I got out. I got out. It's 2007. Okay. So since then, you've been you took some of those skills you learned and you've been helping people like me who read your book, and basically pure communication skills uh come into play from what from what you learned and got really good at. It is that is that correct? Is that how I would sum it up?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, human human connection. I mean, I I I taught at Georgetown after after the Bureau, taught at Georgetown, Harvard, USC. You know, to prove this stuff worked, you know, taught it in MBA programs where students had to take it out and use it in their lives. And then after we, you know, we proved it worked, we and we started to refine it for uh non-hostage, technically non-hostage, so many ways people are taking hostage every day. And the book came out, the book's been number one in the business negotiation category. We're coming up on 10 straight years of being number one.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations, that's amazing. Yeah, it's been a good ride. Well, it also means it's good and that it's helpful. It works. It's good, it works. Yeah. If you were to say, like, you got like number one easiest thing to learn, what do you think that would be?
SPEAKER_02Well, the simplest is not necessarily the easiest.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Uh the let's go simplest first step.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just just finding a way to re- summarize back to somebody what their perspective is first. Now that's super hard because we want to have our say. Okay. And the business schools train people backwards. There's a movie long time ago, Rodney Dangerfield, back to school, about an old guy that goes back to school. So I did Rodney Dangerfield, the famous comedian from last century. You know, I don't get no respect for those of you who don't know who the heck is. Caddyshack. Very funny guy. Yeah. Yeah, Caddyshack. So I went back to school after I got out of the bureau, and I uh I caught on with a special program, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. And there was a lot of cross-pollination, if you will, between the business school and the school of government. Okay. Because they're trying to they're trying to make the business school students more socially responsible, conscious of what they're doing to the world, hence the public school of government and the public school of government is trying to teach the government types to be more business oriented. And so, and the cross-pollination, heavy emphasis on your elevator pitch. If you caught a CEO in an elevator and you got 30 seconds, what do you say? Yep. Well, that tells you how much we all burn to have our say. So, since you're burning to have your say, the other guy is too, let him go first. Summarize, paraphrase, show them that you comprehend what they just said. That breaks down barriers like a magic wand. And it's completely counter to what they're teaching in the business schools, because the business school says, you know, what's your value proposition, what your elevator pitch. Everybody works so hard on their value proposition. You know, they put in the LinkedIn profile, we help people do this. We solve this problem. People are dying to have their say. So recognize that and let the other guy have their say first, and they will bond with you. And you're going to get closer to a deal automatically. Saves a massive amount of time.
SPEAKER_01It's simple, but it's hard. Because you gave them that chance to express themselves and showed you cared.
SPEAKER_02Both things uh are critical. And the second part is as critical as anything else.
SPEAKER_01It shows you care. So you you talk about uh silence and letting things sit. Is it for that reason that people are dying to give what's on their mind that the silence is so tough to do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it's so tough to do, and then um there are basically three negotiated types assertive, analyst, accommodator, fight, flight, make friends, inherited from the caveman days. Okay. Now, two uh and every everybody's naturally starts out as one of those types. And that doesn't mean that you don't remain that, that you remain that type or that you're locked into it, that you can't learn. But you do have a default type. So which can you say them again for me, Chris? Assertive, analyst accommodator, which reflects fight, flight, make friends. Okay. Now the assertive is uh Donald Trump is an assertive. You know, he he wants to be respected. Okay. He wants to be heard, wants to have his say. Jeff Bezos is an assertive. What are you, Chris? The flight guy. I'm an assertive. You're an actual born assertive. All right. I'm guilty as charged.
SPEAKER_01Very good. And then the other the analyst.
SPEAKER_02Analyst is the flight type, analyst um uh uh Elon Musk. Now, Elon Musk is heavy analytical. Now, it's not that he's afraid of a fight, but it's his last move. Okay. He doesn't he he's not looking to fight first. It's an it's an option. And the analyst sees fighting as extremely inefficient and ineffective, tremendous waste of resources. Now, prepared to fight if you back them into a corner. But would prefer not to because there are more productive ways of doing things. That's the analyst, and that's why the basic flight, you know, because the assertive wants to fight right away.
SPEAKER_01I think I might be that one. I have to ask others around me, but I think I might be the analyst type. Fight if I have to, but but would rather uh rather talk about it first, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, let's find let's find a better answer. Yep. Now the make friends type is the accommodator. Um, they want to be friends with everybody. Uh very hope-focused. You know, the I and it's my view that the accommodator, uh, the make friends type is a reason for the phrase hope is not a strategy. Because they're they're so hope-focused that you know, uh my friend Joe Polish refers to it as hopium. You just think that's the only thing that's going to get you through. Interesting. So those those are those are the those are the three basic types. And it comes up most at impasse. Like if we have an impasse, and you initially asked me about silence. So an accommodator, the make friends type, when they're furious with you, they go silent. Okay. That's the way they signal fury. That makes sense. Now the I the the analyst, um uh Elon Musk. Elon Musk gets asked a question on Lex Friedman's podcast and goes silent. Dead silent, I think is either 22 or 42 seconds.
SPEAKER_01That would seem like forever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because some people's six seconds seems like forever. Now, Musk isn't silent because he's furious, he's silent because he's thinking.
SPEAKER_01I do that, and then I have to tell people I'm thinking. I feel I feel my own uh discomfort with the silence, and so I'll tell people I'm thinking. Like I'll actually say that sometimes. I don't know if that's a good thing to do or not. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're gonna freak out when you go silent. Yep. And you need them to let you think. And that's like type mismatch. Imagine silence in a negotiation. The accommodators there person is thinking, oh my God, Elon's furious. Elon is thinking, I wish you'd shut up so I could think.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Is it two that are never gonna get along? Is there do two conflict more than another, or that doesn't really matter? It's just understanding the type of person that you're that you're talking to that's most helpful.
SPEAKER_02I don't understand uh the type mismatch. Like you get you get two uh accommodators, two hope-oriented people, two make friends types. They never get anything done. Like uh if they make a deal, yeah. If they make a deal, there are no details. They're like, ah, you know, it'll be fine. Well, it's not fine, it's gonna be a train wreck. The analyst sees the assertive coming the same way animals in the jungle hear an elephant coming through the jungle. Okay. So the analyst, in many cases, won't even come to the table with the assertive. The assertive was I I we never you never even came to the table. How did I offend you? And the analyst says, I heard you coming from a mile away. I wasn't planning on getting hit.
SPEAKER_01That's great. So they, you know, and if they do talk to each other, they find each other exhausting. Another thing that you talk about is um no being kind of a good thing to get to, which um everybody probably finds that um not the natural thing that they would think because everybody's trying to get to yes, right? But you you actually helped me with with the word no. Um maybe you could talk about that that for a minute. Why is no, in your opinion, a great thing to get?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I and I'm glad to hear that you found it useful. So to back up just one step, uh, the underlying principle of empathy, tactical empathy, is how is it to the other side? We could both be in the exact same moment, and it's a vastly different experience. So, which side of yes are you on? We all love to hear it, nobody likes to say it. Because we've been trapped by yes. You know, the yes momentum is also uh each yes confirmation yes is a microagreement or a tie-down. Nobody likes to be tied down. That interface is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01So you completely disagree with the whole business, get a bunch of small yeses, and then you get the big yes.
SPEAKER_02Well, um and the refined disagreement is you can make deals doing that, just not as many as you should.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And many people learn this yes momentum when they're making no deals, and suddenly they start making deals. And they went from being an F student to a C student. Now they don't know they're only a C student.
SPEAKER_01Feels way better than an F.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's better than an F. If you're an F student in college, you get kicked out of college. If you're a C student, you get a degree. That's how much difference it makes. And you never felt what it was like to go from a C to an A. Got it. As soon as you understand the difficulty of saying yes versus hearing it. Now, we hate to hear no, but we love to say it. Because you feel safe when you say no. You feel defeated. If you don't know any better, you feel defeated when you hear it. But when you say it, you feel safe and protected. And that makes you more willing to listen.
SPEAKER_01So sitting in it putting yourself in the other person's seat, them saying no to you, now they've got that kind of uh survival thing covered. Now they can maybe relax.
SPEAKER_02Right, relax and have a deeper conversation. And the stupid thing is it's a Pavlovian response. It's just the act of saying no. You know, the the Russian psychology experiment ring a bell when you feed the dog, and the dog realizes every time he hears a bell, food's coming, so they automatically salivate. So ring the bell without feeding them, the dog still salivates. It's an automatic response. So there's an automatic response to saying no. You don't even think about what you're saying no to. You just feel good when you say it. Okay. And so you, you know, you can change, change the question from do you agree to do you disagree? Do you like this to do you hate this? And people feel better when they say no. And and without thinking about, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're going down the same path, we're just using a different word. Nobody takes those steps. They just know they feel good when they say no. So harness it. It's that simple.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned um empathy. Um how would you define empathy? Tactical empathy is the expression I think I've heard heard you use. What what is that? What do you what is empathy in in the context?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm glad you asked that because that that's another thing. It's not sympathy, it's not compassion. Okay. Empathy is articulating what you believe the other side is expressing to you. It's demonstrating, verbally demonstrating comprehension. We used to say it's demonstrating understanding. People get so worried that the word understanding is agreement. They're not synonyms. Look them up in a dictionary. They are not synonyms. And saying I understand doesn't demonstrate what it is exactly I have understood or comprehended. Okay. To make the other person feel understood, which then triggers neurochemicals, which bond them to you. You can't say I understand where you're coming from. I was there once, I felt the same way. No, no, no, no, that doesn't get it. If you can tell that they think you're a jerk, then empathy would be to say, you feel I'm a jerk. Now that's really specifically chosen words. You feel X. You feel I'm a jerk. You feel I'm greedy, you feel I'm grabbing with both hands. I never said I agree. I just said you feel. Now people people tend to be horrified at saying that. But that's really what it boils down to.
SPEAKER_01So you're acknowledging how they how the person that you're communicating with feels. And that pretty much. And that that is disarming to them, that makes them feel heard. Exactly. I'm gonna have to try that. I think that's where I go wrong with my wife all the time. Like, because she must feel that I don't understand or don't hear her, because she'll repeat it many times, and then I get frustrated that she's repeating it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, and okay, so um, and and it's it's great exercise because it's so much more demanding with people that spend time around you more. Hence the spouse is often the toughest one. Okay. But if she's got to repeat to you over and over again, what you really have to say is, I probably look stupid right now. Interesting. Because if she had to repeat it more than once in her eyes, you do look stupid. And and that's that's the hard part about empathy. Now, I probably look stupid doesn't mean that you admitted you were stupid. But that's how you look in a moment. If somebody's got to repeat something to you more than once, inside they're saying to themselves, how stupid are you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I feel like in my defense, it's not that she thinks I'm stupid, it she thinks I'm probably discounting or ignoring her. That's what I would bet.
SPEAKER_02Now you're honing in on it, and that's what you gotta say. All right. And as as we iterate this, then you just demonstrated that automatic gut instinct response for empathy that you have. And that's what, and then then you just say it out loud. It, you know what, based on my actions, it looks like I'm ignoring you.
SPEAKER_01Should have had this conversation with you a few years ago. I might have saved myself some some grief. You know, the learning journey, man. It's everybody goes through it. Um, do you ever try some of these uh and they don't work?
SPEAKER_02It's not that it didn't work, it's that you'll get feedback that's different than what you expected. Okay. And then you you've got to be prepared for a different response because it's it's all feedback. And then you're not evaluating it, it's just more information. Like, you know, what one of our most powerful phrases in a contentious negotiation where someone's being very demanding is to say, How am I supposed to do that? And you say it exactly like that, and you use those exact words. Okay. Now, eight out of ten times when you're dealing with a demanding negotiator, immediately the negotiation is transformed substantially. And that's a really high win rate, about eight out of ten times. Now, two out of ten, the other side's gonna slam it right back at you.
SPEAKER_01But an 80% chance of it being super helpful.
SPEAKER_02Uh 80% chance. And and so most people's experiences, every time I used how am I supposed to do that, it was phenomenal. Yeah. And then, you know, I got uh I I am I'm listening, I'm coaching. We've coached some executives at SpaceX and Starlink at different times. Um very flattered to find out a bunch of the top people have taken my master class and read the book. We get a we get a tour of SpaceX a number of years ago. We're sitting down with these guys and talking candidly. And you can imagine Elon's got these guys in huge negotiations. Okay. And so one guy's using how am I supposed to do that? Because they got a demanding client on the on the other side, with literally, you know, billion-dollar deals are nothing to these guys. Hundreds of millions of dollars on a daily basis. And he uses how am I supposed to do that? And it's worked every time up to then. The guy screams back at him, I don't care what happens to you, I don't care if you get fired, I don't care what happens to you. You get fired for all I care, you're gonna do it. Interesting. And he's so caught off guard. And he's he's saying, like, it didn't work. I said, No, it worked, you got different feedback. That guy just told you who he was, and whether, and and so, and who he is is one of two things. That sort of intensely angry response is it leaves you with two characters on the other side. They're using anger as manipulation, or they're under so much pressure they're almost losing their mind. Now that you have more information about the person on the other side, you got to find out whether or not that anger is a manipulation tool, which is a false emotion, or they are under massive pressure.
SPEAKER_01So could you just ask them then, are you about to tell me what to do next? Or could you just ask them, are you angry?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, very close. Um, the perfect response is it sounds like you're under a lot of pressure.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you're not maybe less accusatory?
SPEAKER_02Far less accusatory, just observing. It it it completely avoids the accusation entirely. Now, if they're under a lot of pressure, that's gonna take most, if not all, of the anger and the steam out of the attack. If it's a manipulation, they're gonna shrug it off. They're gonna pretend like you didn't say it. Um, and they're gonna immediately shift and try and they'll put it back on you. But if it's true anger, then you're you're gonna feel them come down and you're gonna start to break the barriers down.
SPEAKER_01Do you think there's a lot of manipulators out there? Is that something that you face often or so there's not a lot.
SPEAKER_02Uh there are certain manipulation habits that have come to be acceptable. But there's there's enough. Uh the the statistic that the incidents of sociopaths, sociopaths and psychopaths, they're about 2% of the society. Uh and what's the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? Sociopath is far more spontaneous, a psychopath does far more planning.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Both crazy that's not. Thought about it or acted on it. Or acted without thinking, huh? All right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Anyway, um, what does that boil down to? About one in every 36 people. Yes. Okay. So if you're in business, you're dealing with a lot more than 36 people. So you probably got a sociopath or a psychopath in there, huh? Yeah, they're there. They're just there. That's just it's, you know, the grass is green, the sky's blue, uh, the days are shorter in the wintertime and longer in the summertime, unless you're on the equator. They're just there. That's so that becomes a component, and your skills are going to be a diagnostic of what you got on the other side.
SPEAKER_01What if you're being like a term that I never ever heard as a, I don't think as a younger person, but maybe have heard a lot in say the last several years. If if somebody's gaslighting you, like what's a tech like what's a technique you can use? And first of all, how do you recognize it and what's the technique to deal with it?
SPEAKER_02All right, so gaslighting is the destabilization technique of the assertive. Destabilization of the assertive, okay. They're trying to knock you off balance, knock you off your feet. And it's principally the assertive who happens to be the manipulator. Now not every assertive is a manipulator. Most assertives, 35 out of 36 really actually care about you deep down inside. It doesn't that it doesn't seem like it on the outside because of their approach. Okay. But let's go back to our one in 36 is a problem. 35 out of 36 are genuine human beings. But the one in 36 who wants to manipulate you, go on offense in the moment, that's the tactic of uh the assertive manipulator. They're trying to knock you, make you dot yourself by attacking you, flooding you with accusations of your wrongdoing. And so uh again, if it's a technique, you know, you could say something to the effect of, you know, seems like you think I'm a total idiot. Seems like you think I'm not listening to you. If that has any impact on them, on stabilizing them and minimizing the attack, then they're they're backed into a corner under pressure. If it doesn't work, if they if they put it right back on you, if they continue to attack and gaslight, now now you've got the sociopathic assertive who's trying to who's trying to exploit you, pick your pocket, cut your throat. Got it.
SPEAKER_01Our advice is to walk away. That's the one or two percent of people you just don't want to deal with, huh?
SPEAKER_02You know, it's it's not a sin to not get the deal. It's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. This person's gonna soak up a lot of your time. It's just not profitable. There's one in 36. There are 35 out of 36 that are out there looking to do business with you. Pass the one by.
SPEAKER_01Way easier, way easier pass than that one. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Yeah. You're big on what you call calibrated questions. There, which I think uh I remember being like those are questions that are maybe like what and how, right, rather than a why. Yep. Um, yep. What makes those the better questions?
SPEAKER_02Well, we we also refer to those as thought-shaping questions. I'm gonna ask you a what or how question, not to get an answer, but to trigger a thought process in your head. Okay. That's gonna trigger deep thinking. So, how am I supposed to do that? How is primarily designed to create implementation? And so the question, how am I supposed to do that, is to put the thought in your head that implementation on this path is gonna be very difficult. Okay. Or you can lay some implementation that I can't actually do out in front of me. So, how is designed to shape thoughts, mostly not exclusively, but mostly around implementation. Now, what as a compliment, what is principally designed to uncover problems? Like the classic Mr. CEO, what keeps you up at night? Okay, trying to uncover problems. What's the biggest challenge you face? Jim Camp in 2002 wrote a negotiation book called Start with No, that was his favorite question. What's the biggest challenge you face? That's designed to uncover problems. And a way to get you to think about them. Now, the thing about thought-shaping questions is they can be exhausting to answer. So you could ask somebody a great thought shaping, what's the biggest challenge you face at 10 o'clock in the morning, get a great answer because they got a lot of gas in a mental gas tank. You catch them at a four o'clock meeting, you know, you're pitching a CEO. What's the biggest challenge you face at four in the afternoon? Guy's exhausted. He's gonna say, you know what, just give me your answers because I ain't got time for that kind of thinking right now. You're wearing me out. So you got to understand what time of day and and how they can handle the question at the time.
SPEAKER_01You know, there's a phrase that um it's not what you say, but how you say it sometimes. And I think you've even mentioned uh tone of voice as being important. Um late night DJ voice, for example. Um, what why is that so good?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. The tone sets the tone, as uh as my head coach Derek Gaunt would say, running my coaching team. I can start to change the velocity of your thoughts with the tone of my voice as soon as I start to downward inflect. Cause your your your emotions to dampen, to calm down, you're thinking to slow down. If I can downward reflect and smile, that impacts your brain in another way. And so if I could put the two of those together, I can say almost anything with the right tone of voice. Interesting. It's a it's it's a it's a skill of mastery to understand how your tone is going to impact the other side and what a huge advantage it is.
SPEAKER_01And usually downward inflection is a is the is a great direction.
SPEAKER_02One of the crazy things, hostage negotiations with terrorists, killers, criminals, psychopaths are always calmer than the typical business negotiation. Okay. And the stakes are so much higher. And lines are on a line, but the hostage negotiator starts out with the late night FM DJ voice, and business people start, you know, yeah, you're you're an idiot tone of voice right off the bat.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna I'm gonna try I'm gonna remember that. It's it's interesting because uh I'm sure all of us have like triggers and and some some I have I'm aware of, and some I I might not be aware of, but it's when you start to feel that way thinking through your response and using techniques like that that probably then can because you know when your emotions on the rise, that's not gonna be good for you either. Amen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Huh. And you make you make a very good point. You could you can use this stuff to interact with yourself. Like there's no shortage of ways to change the chatter in your brain so that it works for you instead of against you.
SPEAKER_01And these skills are are one of the ways. Did you always know that you were gonna use the the things that you learn and these skills, teach them to others? Or how'd you what led you to writing the book? What led you to your your your company now is called Black Swan, right? Um you got the skill set, why not just retire? Oh man, life is too interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is uh I I first suspected it before I became a hostage negotiator. To become a negotiator, I had to volunteer on a crisis hotline. Okay. And I remember thinking at the time, like, does this stuff just work for people in crisis? Or can I try this every day? And I started experimenting with it. And that's when I knew it was just the application of emotional intelligence accelerates the creation of relationships and deactivates people's anger faster than you could imagine. And, you know, I always wanted to teach it and train it. It took a while, you know, I had to finish my journey with the Bureau and a bunch of other things. But as soon as I caught on on the suicide hotline, I was like, this stuff, maybe it's just a human condition. Does it have to be people in crisis? And the answer is no, it's just a human condition. And ultimately, you know, I got a collection of former local police hostage negotiators, the guys that gals that do it all the time. And every single coach on my team who's got law enforcement experience was local, not federal. Okay. And I got a we found a couple of guys with extraordinary talent that weren't cops before. And we we were lucky enough, we got three. We got uh Nick, who was on my sales team. Nick's an enormously talented guy, and we recruited him into sales as a youngster, and now he's a coach on our co one of our coaches. We've got George, who was a procurement negotiator for JetBlue. And we he used our stuff to make a massive amount of money for JetBlue, and when he uh when he retired, he joined us up. And then we got Joanne, who's actually Chinese female, using the black swan method in China on Chinese businessmen. Oh wow. She didn't mean to speak, she uses it in China, and the craziest thing is like her English is broken, and so with broken English, Chinese female dealing with Arab males in the Middle East in English with broken English, she's still working magic. That's how universal the skills are.
SPEAKER_01That's great. What is a black swan method? Is it a quick answer or is it something that takes a long time to learn?
SPEAKER_02You can have game-changing skills immediately. Okay. Uh switching, changing, learning your tone of voice, switching from yes to no. It'll change your negotiations today. Today. Now we got a bunch more skills, and it's it's similar to a language, it's similar to a martial art. A lot of people have compared it to uh Tai Chi. It becomes a fun language to speak across the board. And if you decide you want to speak the language, like you got less friction in your life right away. You you have more in your life. And and you continually find places to use it, whether it's with a significant other or uh the TSA guy who's giving you a hard time because you, you know, you forgot to drink the water out of the water bottle. You know, it's all over the place. It's a person at the grocery store. One member of my staff had to negotiate an emergency passport in New York City for my girlfriend Wendy about two years ago. Okay. And she needed same-day service to get to Switzerland in Manhattan. And the woman's initial response was the soonest, and this was going to be Monday, and the woman said, I get you into Connecticut on Thursday. The trip was going to be over. She either flew, she either flew on Monday or she didn't go. Right. And so my assistant literally says to the woman, because she could hear her voice, like, don't you don't you know how busy we are? You think you're something special? That's coming across in her voice and her attitude. And so my assistant says to her, Boy, it sounds like you guys are really getting killed over there. Nice. And seven minutes later, the woman said, Look, have her come in at 7:30 in the morning. I'm gonna put her in, ahead of everybody else. There won't be a long, that will be when the line is short. She's got to be here at 7:30 in the morning, Monday. She didn't have to go to KNAFTI. Awesome. But it was recognizing what was going on with the other person. So this is everywhere. This is all around us.
SPEAKER_01I feel like you should have a big waiting list, Chris, for your help because communication, it may I see every day like humans in general, we're just horrible communicators. It seems, at least I see in my life in business every day. Like we're not that good usually.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's emotional triggers, and as soon as you know, to derail us, and as soon as you start seeing them, you start letting us stop letting those triggers happen, happen. I will tell you, there's a number of things we have coming up that uh directly to uh what you're talking about. The first thing is we've created the Black Swan Community, okay? Which you can come to our website, blackswanltd.com, and you can join the community right now. You do not have to wait for any of our scheduled training. Come in and join the community, start interacting with other people that are there helping each other get better. Michael Perriente is a defense attorney in Las Vegas who's become extremely successful using his stuff. He's in there practicing twice a week. Really? And he if he if he can't find other attorneys to practice with, he'll practice with anybody because the skills are perishable. If Michael loses a client, you know, maybe he lost a $50,000 retainer. He lost a $100,000 retainer. It's worth it for him. He doesn't want to, he doesn't want to perish a bit. So you can go and join the community and get help now. Now then we've got a professional deal maker day coming up here in Las Vegas. I live in Vegas, um, May 15th. Okay. You you can sign up for that. Now, if you join a community now, you can get ready for that deal maker day. The deal maker day is expensive. You know, our in-person training. I'm bringing my A team to bear. We're giving you all our focus. Uh and and it is not cheap. So join the community first. Start getting yourself up to speed. Enjoy the communication. The secondary benefit is the money you're going to make. The primary benefit is life is more colorful when you start doing this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I imagine it's a you probably, in a way, it's almost conversations and stuff can almost be a game sometimes, probably, huh?
SPEAKER_02Well, it's a game where we're on the same side.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not where you win, I lose, but where just the art of it, I guess, is what I'm referring to. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Very, very, very definitely. It's it's enjoyable, it's fun.
SPEAKER_01I think social media and and stuff and and young people, it I think it's gonna get even the need for communication skills is gonna get even more and even worse, I think, with kind of where I see current trends for sure.
SPEAKER_02I agree with you completely. And what I love about that is then that gives you the competitive advantage if you learn this.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Chris, this has been awesome. Thanks for sharing a story or two and uh some skills or two. Um, and I know there's so much more wish this could go on for a long time, but we're all about championing people here. So before I let you go, I would ask you the question if if you had the opportunity or given the opportunity, who's one person in your life you would champion right now and why? Wow.
SPEAKER_02Well, I am I am I am championing him, and it's Troy Smith, who's one of my coaches. But Troy also has a side program called Walk a Mile in My Shoes. Troy's retired police officer from San Antonio, Texas. And the Walk a Mile in My Shoes organization gets cops and gangbangers together. Oh, wow. And they go bowling. Really? And or they play basketball together. And Troy is about breaking down the barriers, and these two sides start seeing each other as human beings, and they're not enemies anymore. And the kids, the youngsters that he's developing and growing out of really tough circumstances, based on walk a mile in my shoes, is an amazing thing that I'm just inspired by and delighted to help uh support.
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, what a great idea. That is awesome. All right. Besides the Black Swan website, are you on social media or anything, Chris? Any anybody follow you anywhere else? Or is that the best way to do that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm I'm the FBI negotiator on Instagram.
SPEAKER_01Awesome.
SPEAKER_02And that's where where most of my postings go.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for spending the time this afternoon. Really, really appreciate it. It was great. Yeah, it was a pleasure, man. Thank you, man. Thanks for having me on. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want more podcast in your life, which of course you do, make sure to like, follow, and subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Catch you next time.