Chris Voss: How to Succeed at Hard Conversations
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I endure huberman, and i'm a professor of neurobiology and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine. My guest today is Chris voss. Chris voss spent more than two decades as an agent with the FBI or federal view of investigation, where he was a little crisis negotiator in a member of the joint terrorist task force. Chris also the author of a phenomenal beling book entitled never split the difference.

In addition, he has taught courses in negotiation at harvard, at Georgetown and at the university of southern california as a world expert in all forms of negotiation today, Chris teaches us about how to hold hard conversations where we are seeking particular outcomes, or perhaps where we don't know what the optimal outcome could be. He talks about this in the context of business, in the context of relationships, including romantic relationships, but familiar and work relationships as well. And he talks about how we should think about ourselves in the context of negotiations, so that we can all arrive at the best possible outcomes.

Indeed, during today's episode, you will learn to pay attention to emotions, not just other people's emotions, but your own emotions, in order to determine whether not you are processing the information you are hearing accurately, and equally important, whether or not you are being heard accurately when you are in a discussion of any kind, but especially heeded discussions. In addition, we discuss the role of both physical and mental stamina a in the context of difficult conversations, negotiations and decision making, because in the real world context, often times those can take place not just within a single conversation, but over the course of several days or even several weeks, months or years. Chris also teaches us about deception, that is, how to determine if somebody is lying by asking particular types of probe questions.

Thanks to Chris, both bread and depth of expertise in the negotiation process, he Green, during his more than two decades service in the FBI, as well as his generosity and sharing that information, by the end of today's episode, you will have an excEllent understanding of what the negotiation process is really all about and how to Better Carry out those negotiations so that they can best serve you and others. Before we begin, I like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost of consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electrode drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium and patache. This so called electronic and no sugar, salt, magnesium and potash are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electro lights need to be present in the proper ratio.

And we now know that even slight reductions, intellectual al light concentrations or dehydration of the body lead to deficits and cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back electorate ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of paci um and sixty milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrates my body and make sure I have enough electrical lites. And while I do any kind of physical training, and after physical training as well, especially if i've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element that's element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase.

Again, that drink element element dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja sessions and n sdr non sleep depressed protocols. I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much.

So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up up has lots of different type of yoga ea sessions, those you don't know yogananda a is a process of language still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations.

And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yoga ea and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even which is a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my conversation with Chris boss. Chris boss, welcome Andrew .

pleasure.

And I ve been one to talk to you on a record for a while. You are quite the what we call on science to end of one. When somebody is a true sample size of one, I realized that, yes, you are, because you have this incredible skills set from your time in the FBI.

But you also have an incredible understanding and knowledge. I've had to communicate about that skill set so that people can clean useful information from IT. You are also the guy that I text or call everyone's in a while, and i've run myself into a jammer or when I think I might be in a jamb and I won't reveal details, but you tell me whether or not things are OK. And unfortunately, the last couple times I reached out, you said, you're good.

So thank you. Always help you to help me.

Thank you. Well, have a lot of questions today, but what i'd like to start off talking about is negotiations take many forms, but if we could break those down into their broad categories, that will be useful. But before we do that, I want to know about the mindset that you have when you go into a negotiation, and whether not there any practices.

I realized been in this profession a long time. And so IT perhaps became reflective to you at some point. But all of us at some point are going going to negotiations, business negotiations, relationship negotiations. That said, a is there a process of getting one's mind and body right for a negotiation? You are shifting from more listening and less talking. Um what are there any tools that you use on the regular that could be a useful for us to keep in mind as we extend into the different categories and negotiations in ways to approach the negotiations .

and they there can be a couple of different um first will just trying to figure out what was really going on is the really issue and then how can I get an approach where most likely to get the best possible outcome. Um so there's always more than meets to die and there's a certain there's a certain few cliches, but the real issue is there's always a Better deal or um there's no deal at all. So first will try.

My first thing is I want to find out with that, there's a deal at all or what that is a bad deal. And then i'm going to walk away really fast because those are going to be a complete place of time. Um it's not a thing to not get the deal.

This is going to take a long time to not get the deal. What's this thing to take a long time to get a bad deal? So you know, I want to know, I want to try to figure out real quick with that is a cut rod on the other side of the tables.

As somebody I can trust, i'm getting i'm leaning a little more inclined to dealing with the difficulties now as long as I don't give in, so I get I want to die. No, early on what the possibilities are now if i'm curious if i'm actually interested. Now another aspect of the mindset is, like find in a great mood, like if i'm just gonna playful.

A couple of really huge personal negotiation wins recently was when I was just trying to be playful. I mean, I was just I was in a great mood, and i'm joke around and great negotiation is not exciting. It's astonishing um a one conversations right now with a possible longridge ted TV show.

And so I was telling the producers and is going to be real housewives for to make the show properly, then i'm going to be any screaming, is that going to be bar rescue or yell at people when I going to be health kitchen were yelling at people, it's never going to be exciting, but IT is going to be astonied shing. You get outcomes were suddenly you find yourself in a place like what in the world? How do that just happen? And so I I lose a suitcase in an airport here the day and i'm walking into lost luggage place. And i'm in a great mood because i'm home and i'm happy to be home and i'm going to get a good night nights sleep and even late that they am just happy. And are you ready to walk into as the lost luggage store where these people are Better children like they expect you um they know that you expect them to wave a magic want and proof your luggage is gonna there so for whatever reason, that's when I say when I walk into doors, Young laces, how can I help you well, first of all, how you can help me is obvious because I am in a lost luggage.

There's only one reason and that's kind of a silly question and I go I need you to wave a magic and and SHE just laughs and SHE looks at main SHE ends up walking me out to the Carole climb ing up on the carousel and SHE walks down a ramp ed, the luggage comes out of and I guarantee you they're not supposed to do that and SHE sticks her head and SHE looks around SHE comes back out and i've never seen in these people leave the office little and walk back to the Carole and he says weight here and SHE he disappears into the bowls at the airport, which like looks like a superhighway down there, right? Like god knows what IT looks like on the east airport. And pretty soon the carrol starts up again.

And my bag and another bag pops up this other poor smoking their weight. And i'm like, I have never seen anybody do this ever like Normally they say, here's the number, will call in twenty four hours you might drop in your house. And I and I look around at the, there's another Young lady, then I say, you know, please tell us.

Thank you for me. I gotta go because SHE SHE doesn't come back effort, like almost ten minutes. And on my way out, SHE SHE comes out the door and SHE high fired me.

He says, how is that for a way, that a magic ground? And that was the magic phrase, and I never would have set IT to if I wasn't playful in a moment. And i've got a couple of others, like when I was just playful, and i'm joking with people almost at my expense, is shocking, astonishing. Well, you can get people to do you if you had in the right way. So interesting.

I wonder what IT tapped into, but IT sounds like IT might have tapped into her sense that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand kind of ability but finally, somebody just said IT directly and that would be kind of fun to to actually play that role because Normally they are restricted to their keyboard on their phone yeah you know I love that on the opposite side of that spectrum.

If ever you're feeling tense, stress, jet lag, angry, I can think about negotiations where like people are trying to keep their egos in check, that they want to be right um you know that break up negotiations, this nonuser ily romantic break ups that could include that but also professional break ups, the dissolution of of a contractor, something like that. Do you ever have to check yourself? Like, okay, I need, I need to.

I mean, I imagine being calm as Better than not being calm for most, most, all things. Do you have a process of doing that? You think like a press steady? I have never seen you.

Overall, i'm pretty steady. Well, the late night FM DJ voice that i'm not sure that I called the phrase, but kind of famous for to calm you down also comes me down. So if I get back out of shape, um I will in uh conversation is heated our switch into that voice with the intention of of coming you down because you know that's the hustle to go serious voice but it'll calm me down to like intentionally going to that voice camps down the negative emotions which are convinced make me dumb r in the moment interview with my capacity process information no reasons for that lamond s reasons. No scientific academic studies that any journals well.

after you're done, i'm going to tell you something that perhaps to be astonishing to you as to why there is real neuroscience behind that late night FM DJ voice having an impact on other people's great.

but not yeah and i'll do that because IT comes me down. Now, if I can, if I can make the shift, the hard part is to shift into a positive mindset. If I can make that shift, but I can only make IT from a calm voice I also think it's the emotions that kind of a rock, paper, scissors sequence.

I don't think you can go from sadness to relation directly uh sad um depressed down. I think there's something to um getting angry to pull you out of sadness. And I think if you're angry, you've got ta go to calm next.

And so but if I can get out of anger and go to calm, then I can say something to myself like the reality is this is a luxury problem or I was in a negotiation with a kind of part that I knew was deceiving, lying to me. And I remember saying to myself, you know, i'm lucky to be in a negotiation. I mean, they wouldn't be trying to hostile me if we won't really good.

If we didn't have a product that was phenomenal, I wouldn't be targeted at all. So i'm actually lucky to be in this conversation so I can make that next shift emotionally than i'm good. The hard part is making no chess.

I'm going to to share with you what I learned recently about sound and emotion. I'm researching an episode on music in the brain, fascinating topic, leaving out there's a lot known and the auditory system has this property where, of course, the neurons and nerve cells that responded different frequencies of sound, low, low frequency, no deeper tones and high frequency square, that sort of thing. Okay, that's pretty straight forward.

Just like we have neurons that responded different, different colors or different now angles of lighting in the room. But what I learned, and I confirmed with a good friend of my, who is the auditory neuroscientist and and neurosurgeons named eddy chunk, he was a guessed on this podcast previously, is that low frequency sounds of the sort that your voice is, that late night F, M, D, J. Voice are responded to in the brain by neurons.

No surprise there. But the frequency that those neurons fire is also low frequency. In other words, when you speak in your low voice, right, the other person's brain, here's that, and starts firing in a low frequency tone.

In other words, IT in trains to your voice, not just the timing, but it's actually like you're essentially playing an emotional piano down in the low key of their right of their mind. Now, when you go up to the high frequencies, the neurons cannot follow the high frequency. So there's something special about low frequency sound that actually changes the emotional tone of the people that hear that low frequency sound.

This is wild, right? I know. I mean, of course the content of the words matters too, but anyway, there's there's real newer science to support the voice that you are in doubt with and that you that you employed for your work.

Well then and then also the point and two is it's the other size is not making a choice. It's an involuntary reaction.

That's right. This is not something one can override except by preps plugin their ears, right, right? If they are hearing that, their mind is getting shifted toward a state of low frequency isolation, which is one of more calm.

And so yeah so .

that's a real thing and and we're you to have A A high squeaky chip monkey boys. You might not have been the negotiator you at all though, who knows? Maybe another tactic there. I mean, I think back to the, I guess IT was during one of the gulf war campaigns. Whether they weren't they trying to squeeze out saddam and some of his people by playing like melly vanilla at high volume for hours and hours, is that tactic actually used?

That was pana ma, when they were trying to get nora only a.

only a few countries I was tell me before.

and the White, fascinating, useless information around harison stuff like that, I tried that at at pana ma and and for whatever the military guys they were playing music at and sounds. And then also among the many stupid things that the F B I did a wake o and late at night they tried that in a way go compound to and I was just there was one of the things that the host negotiations were adamantly against, adamantly against. But they got overruled.

Um bianco command are among the many stupid things that would do not wake up. There was also done. Not wake was stupid. Its kind of productive harses goers are always against that.

So for those who you don't remember, wao wao s branch divide .

ans a David kraft, yeah, there was a netflix series that was out but recently that's fair um um about the how I went down yes.

sad ending. He eventually set the building of blaze.

killed himself in everybody else, a children parent, including some children. And there are some F, P, agents that is still not got on with that .

luck to talk about some different types of negotiations. Often times, I think because you're a former FBI negotiator at a terrorist task force this kind of thing, we tend to focus on the negative negotiations right, get the hostages away. We'll talk about that stuff, break ups, business deals that have gone wrong, um people lying, cheating.

What about negotiations that are been eleven? Let's say that two people want to um come to A A true win win around, you know what they each need to be their best interest in. What's a friendship? Two friends taking a trip together, vacation, who's going to pay for a White? Who's going to pay up front? People going to pay each other back? Or romantic relationship? Two people are considering you fusing finances to some extent, or moving in the heather.

What sorts of questions should people be asking themselves prior to those negotiations? In particular? Is IT very important that people know exactly what they want going into a negotiation? Or I can recall many times when i've gone into life circumstances knowing I wanted a certain set of feelings or outcomes, but not being extremely specific about I want this salary I want to live in, know in a west facing house on this particular location, an exploration um can potentials, um I think can also take the form of negotiation.

So how do how .

people think about approaching benevolent negotiations like where we're not talking about something tragic happening? If IT doesn't go through, IT might hurt IT might be a little bit high friction but talk about how to get to a win win yeah well.

a couple of interesting things are, first, all you know the phrase win, win um because win, win is this great collaboration. I mean, in point of fact, that should be win, win, which might only be emotional win, win. Now the physiology win, win.

I know that if someone opens the negotiation with me and I say right up the bat, look, I want to do win windy with you. That correlates extremely highly with someone is trying to pick my pocket. So if you use that phrase in the first five minutes, I didn't know where you comes from, me trying to get me to draw my god as you when I lose.

So when IT came up on an instagram post that put up recently, which is essentially watch, watch out for the person says, when, when. Now I didn't say when wind is bad, I said, watch after the person that says, IT. Also, you've got to be cautious if, if you like some of the win win mindset and people set themselves up to just get slaughtered, but the person is expressing a desire for win, win and look in to pick our pocket.

Like if I feel when win in my heart, you go, let's do when deal, find a watch, i'm like, OK, what do you want? And then I found myself given away the stores. So there's a lot behind the win win physiology that you have to have, uh, complete understanding of.

In point of fact, both sides should feel good about the outcome. And isn't that the definition of win, win kind? That is how they feel about IT more than really what they got. So in a benevent lent negotiation among friends, where we've gonna go to eat, uh, where we're going on vacation, what rule we gna take, people really just want to be heard out more than anything else which Operates. Seems to be to understand how it's going to make any difference, makes all the difference in the world, and how what's the best way for somebody to feel heard out.

Well, i'm going to start out by telling you, describing to you, not telling you, but describing to you what my best guess is on your perspective, because IT really calibrate me actually finding out what your position is. And the only way I can find out where your position actually is, i'm i'm to increase you telling me if I start taking a guesses at first because you're immediately right away, you immediately gone to tell me either write or wrong, you're going to correct me. Correction is is a satisfying thing to do and you're gona be much more candid with me if you corrected me then if i'm asking you so and you feel good about correct at me.

So it's going there's all these great emotional lubricants to me getting to cracked me so i'm going to stand up by saying like his is what I think you think in is I think your approaching ist is what I think you want out of this, out of this, not what you should be, but what you probably are based on your perspective. And that's going accelerate the conversation exponentially, like it's ridiculous how much faster things are gonna go and then IT becomes both and information gathering in a report building process simultaneously instead separately, which is what makes this approach faster, even though that seems more indirect. So if we're getting ready to say you do not going to take a car trip to the same Frances go from here, and I would say I so my guesses is you want to take the most direct room because you hate waste in time and you probably to say to mean, no, no, no, no, I want to go up the pacific most highway because this beautiful stretch uh country, like I realized it's going to be.

With the time if we go the pacific coast because we got to jump off at at some point, but I really want to see the scenery you would have. I've taken a guess of what you want and you're going to come back to quit and correct me and then maybe i'm thinking time on the trip, but I forgotten how beautiful IT is to roll up the coast and so when you throw that out, i'll be like, oh yeah, that is a beautiful ride and we might not get another shot. Who knows what's going to happen. So yeah I know now now that we're having a conversation, i'd rather run up the pacific coast highway before we before we go inland and make the trip and and that's how we get to um we collaborate for A A Better outcome may be a Better idea is on what I had mine in the first place.

I love that because what you just described as hypothesis testing, yes, is that the way scientists are training, many people don't know this, but they teach us and science not to ask questions, but to start with a question like how does how does the brain develop for something and then you say a hypothesis and you test hypotheses and you figure out the right wrong and that takes you through a set of decision trees and you eventually get at what you hope is some core truth um and and hopefully others arrive there as well and you get a consensus.

So I love the idea of hypothesis testing. In fact, when you said take the most direct route from where we are now in Angeles to cisco, um I like to take one or one, not the five. The five is faster.

So I mean, think, but I like one of one first, while there a couple really great talk and hamburger spots along the way that I used to have my bodog, also you get to see the coast and IT makes those extra two hours completely worth IT. And so you're exactly right in that working through the decision tree doesn't necessarily mean presuming that the hypothesis is right. IT sounds like you be equally okay with the high post is being wrong because really what you're trying to do is just to learn and in learning set up this collaboration.

I loved a couple things. First of all, when you talk about hypothesis, when my son brain was involved in the company, is on is out on his own now, but he is always say, hypothesis, test your hypothesis. You always use that term and even now, like we were talking about IT and you to say, you know some hot dog and hamburger places a bit like a cow, I didn't even know that. Yeah, I know I yeah, I want to check those places out so that's how you discover new stuff in a conversation.

Love IT. So and also, i've been sure people are noting to not say the words win, win when approaching any kind of negotiation. What what do you think this is about those little catch phrases that that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness? Because you could imagine that some you, I come to you and say, you know, hey, Chris, like, let's let's do some collaborative thing for social media, for podcast. And this can be a win win for both of us. Now, I noted to never say that with you, but you could imagine that somebody really means that yeah but for you, that sounds like IT, it's a flag that they're trying to pull one over.

It's a IT correlates really strongly with the people that are definitely trying to cut your throat. And i've i've had to admit that to me can do amazing i'll be um i've experienced IT. I give somebody throws the wind wind out early to me i'll say, right I think I know where this is gone but let me explore IT and I said, yeah you know this great opportunity for you that's another talk and we're going to put in a room with all these billion's and it's gonna all this opportunity for you if you just come in and speak and you know we don't have a budget.

I've got that one before. The famous, the famous, the world world, just work out in your favorite because because it's going to work out in my favorite. right?

Exactly right.

I've been i've been on the receiving of those offers many and time fascinating. Conversely, what sort of openers um do you think established the best report and the never in discovery of a topic?

Well, when i'm seen correlates very strongly with people I want to do business with if if they figured out something that they know is valuable for me. And I ve just done IT and you've just offered IT like right off the bat, no strings attached. They found a way to drop something on me that's valuable.

They didn't approach me with their hand out. They approached me with some sort of generosity, like a front of my joe polish anis official genius network, joe. But he says that gives to the giver.

I jowled that a bunch of favorite for me before I ever joined. And he was trying to help me out and get my books sold. And he asked me to come in and speak. And he, he done. He emphasize my book on his podcast and different conversations.

And I know I finally paid the fear join because he had done so much for me like there's not much joke asked me for right now because he's done so much for me that he gets a blanket pretty much just right away. What do you? What what do you want? What do you need? Because he's just generous and the generative approach univerSally, i'm seen a lot of really successful people that lead by generosity. And so if if you start out that, you know if if you give me a five star of you, the book on amazon, no strings attached or anything like that, goes a long, long way to somebody who wants to establish a long term relationship collaboration.

When I first opened my laboratory in two thousand and eleven, I had a technician at the time who had been a technician for a lot of years. And there's this culture and science of people borrowing things from laboratories and not giving them back or breaking them.

This could be little things like, you know small instrumentally a forceps um but you know as a student or post that these are the things that you cove IT like a really nice para forceps is like a great thing know you drop on once there are they're not good anymore, by the way. It's like they're yet to treat them with respect, surgical tools that to be treated with respect. These are very fine instruments and people used to combine our lab all the time and borough stuff for us.

And he'd always landed out like, what are you doing? But anytime I went to go borrow something, he'd say, do not borrow anything from anybody else, because then we're going to owe them. Right now, everybody owes everything.

And I was like, you run in up our budget, giving away these instance. They come back with the four steps, don, something he said, just trust me, this is the way to do IT. And I don't recall ever could, and cook cashing in on any of that.

But he was exactly right when I eventually decide to move institutions. We've given away so much, and we'd asked for so very little, maybe nothing that know when you leave a place, typically there can be a little bad blood. And all we got was sorry to see you go, kind of has IT been me.

I would have been in a kind of exchange of, oh, we asked for things. We give things. You know, it's time. Neighbourhood group in neighboring d where you d borough egg milk from the neighbor.

Remember those days? I don't know people do that any longer, but I think IT falls well into what you're describing that when you just do things for people um out of goodness, then you know sure you sort of have a history where you could return to that they owe you. But there's also just something good about just doing things out of goodness and also not asking for so much um in expecting people to provide that.

So I love that and I actually I love providing good reviews for things I like on the phone. When the airline that we don't do the same more we book our own flights. But any time I get help on the phone and you know if it's really great help, i'll say, how can I help and they say, would mean a lot if you would send an email to this to my business.

Just saying I I did a great job or something and I actually really enjoying doing that. So um I love the points you're making because they're very actionable. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens.

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And they'll give you a year supply of vitamin d 3k two again that's that let the Greens dotcoms slash huberman to get the five free travel packs in the year supply of vitamin three k two shifting slightly into the more um let's call them high friction negotiations are the types negotiations where there is the potential for a truly bad outcome， right? I know you have been assess before, but some of our listeners are going to be learning about you for the first time due recall of the many negotiations that you did well in the FBI. Anyone particularly negotiation that felt like if this doesn't work out, this is really catastrophic? And would you be went to share that with us?

well. I learned you know they try to teach us early on on that not everything's going to work out. And the second negotiation I had the Philippines the first one a Young man of just shelling was great by terrace group ebs and um in a walk and away because we we stole the bag as long enough that we just know sometimes if you can slow you down, you wait for something good, fall out of sky and IT will and that not happening in that case in a bad guy in a Colin the negotiated that I coached on the phone after was over to basically tell them that they still had a good relationship. IT was not. Why does the big I called the negotiation is responsible for moons and everything and say, you know, you did a good job, which is exactly what happened so we roll into a case um and I hadn't had anything go bad at that point of time.

A Better case of burns barrow case a by different faction of the terrace group thirteen months later ends up in um two three remaining hostages shot, killed by friendly fire um on along the way um hostages had been executed american had been executed early on and IT was IT was a train rack and lots of people get killed all on the way and just really ridiculous bad things happening and that that was bad all the way through um so we learned you know learn a life from IT went back and checked everything we did and we didn't do anything wrong that we felt, based on our strategy didn't didn't miss anything in that was why ended up going collaborating with the guys at harvard because my reaction was if this if we did everything we know how to do that wasn't enough. That means if we're not smart enough, we got to get Better. And so that case taught me a lot about the dynamics that really happened on the other side and the difference between, you know, the and other people are really on your side.

The use government was not highly collaborative. The filliped government was not highly collaborative that everybody wanted to get their pound of flash out of the other, out of the other side. I mean, just everything bad that you could imagine early on when gas bergh h was murdered by the abc, f IT was a national holiday in the Philippines, and the bad guys had a history of killing people on national holidays.

And we were front of Philippines, and we had no idea that that day was an national ality. And we showed up at, uh, Philippines national police headquarters of manila. And I was closed.

Now we got around. I got on going hostage case with bear guys threatened to kill hostages, and we showed the gates. And the gates are close and well, like what has going on here.

And was the national holiday nobody is working today. And my first of all, nobody told us that. Secondly, I don't think the bad guys really care.

That is a national holiday. And nobody y's working. Our negotiated is nowhere to be found. We got a guy there that the previous negotiators we work with, Philippine national police, was not that happy that they didn't have him under complete control. So they give us a guy that will not tell us anything and tell actors told them. So he had conversations with the bad guys, and we're actually here about the second hand he didn't show that day.

And then and of course, that day the bag is an answers going to kill a, kill a hostage and give IT is a gift to country, the Philippines, because this holiday, and they go all, by the way, they are like doing this on holidays. And so any and garden of gina's head cut off with, because of all the waring factions on our side of the table, not tell me each other what else going on. So I had assumed at that point a time that people tell us the stuff we need to know.

We didn't need ask. And after that I got, like, looked doing nothing here that I don't need to know. I know if fatality coming up and you sum, I know you, you got to tell us.

So really learned a lot about collaboration on our side of the table and also the lack of collaboration on the other side of the table. Just because warm us doesn't mean they get their act together. And in the bad guys didn't have their act together.

And ultimately, the hostages, one of the reasons some didn't come out because internally they they had double cross each other. So learn a lot about what really fundamental human nature dynamics are in teams. And your team has not got to act together, and the other team does not either.

So what can you do is a communicator to make up for that? Really learned a lot about that in that case, had cases subsequent to that involved in how tito, when our kaya was killing people on a regular basis. But we saw those common, and we did everything we could do to keep the train from smash and into us.

You see a train coming down the tracks. You know, it's coming down the tracks, and you do the best you can to derail. And sometimes you can't.

I've heard IT said that when people take somebody captive, that they either want their money, their body or their life, or some combination of those.

Yes, it's probably one of those. And very true.

And as the negotiator trying to rescue the hostage is IT important to identify early on which of those three or which all of those three thereafter, like how serious they are, are they willing to actually kill the hostage? Are they, you know, will they go for any amount of money above x number of dollars? And right I mean because the person is on the other side is gambling, right? The gambling they're freedom. They're gambling there um reputation with whoever their reputation matters to um is IT important to get into the mindset of the person you're negotiating with quickly um using the hypothesis generating method. And if so, could you give an example of how that played out in your previous work?

Yeah the the indicator is really there. I mean, once you sort of lose your illusions about how you think how you think things should play out, the dependence of behavior are generally pretty quick and clear. And just because you don't like the patterns, like without kato, we recognize the patterns and known what they are, doesn't mean you can change what they are.

And ali, in two thousand, and forrest timeframe was very clear about killing people on deadline, and we had to recognize that. So there becomes a pattern of behavior, and it's usually specificity in what they say. And this is this is all this is all human nature.

Like if if if you're in a business negotiation and they say, you know, we're going to do something horrible here, we're going to walk out that's fairly nonspecific. And if they say, look, if we don't get this by this specific deadline and we don't get these specific c things met by this specific c time, that's pretty specific that it's specificity. You look forward, I learned to look forward in kidnapping negotiations were working a case in in Philippines and a bad guy say, you know, if we don't get a ransom for the sun, seventeen year old boy at the time is kidnapped.

Ed, you know, you tell his family he's gonna SE an egg and as a uf ism for losing a child. And early on, when that threat came to on our side of the table, but is like, oh my god, they're to kill him and all this is really bad. We got to make sure the family can pay the ransom.

I'm like, didn't say when I was gonna en, didn't say how was gonna happen, didn't say who is going to do IT you know the basic specification, who what went and wear like they left themselves and out here are very clear out and we never said we were going to do. We never said when I was gonna en, we never said, watch child, you know what they're just trying to scare is from out something that I said. We got plenty of time to play with this.

We we got to pushed this always through the process into the end. Now later on, in that case, when the family tried to deliver ransom and IT was screwed up by god knows who, the bag guys came up back on the phone and they said, if we don't get paid tomorrow, your son dies. And I said, right now, that specific, and these guys sound like they mean IT.

And so we're gna have to make sure this thing goes down tomorrow, or that the into this kid. And at that point in time, we allowed the family, we were a position to allow or disallow. We were in opposition to offer thoughts. And our thoughts were, they mean IT now, and you need to do something now, or likely something bad, it's gona happen.

And now that they are this serious, because you always gotto worry about what we to refer to as a double dip, do they take the money and then, and they come back and say, now that was a downpayment, that wasn't the rent them, that was just a downpayment, you're got to make sure you don't get double debt if you let the family pay. And you got to give me your honest opinion as to work out, they going to let the hostage go if you pay now. And our our thoughts were, you pay to moise sound coming up and he did.

The double dip is a scary thing to hear about. At a much lower level, meaning more minor level, people sometimes get shaken down online. You know that their password will get taken. There are people everywhere who go for the click on this link, you know you you get a text message, know we've identified that your account has been changed, verified. You click on the link takes you some place where you put in your log in in password and boom, it's gone and then they try to sell IT back you typically through cypher to currency because it's not tractable.

By the way, those those negotiations can be a lot of fun.

if a lot. Well, i'm hoping that our discussion about this now is going to save some people the trouble of having their their account act. I known people who have their account act, and these are some smart people.

But what's interesting is that i've also observed those situations where somebody gets to the point where they say, you know, i'm just going to give them what they want. And I I remember in this one particular instance saying, no, no, no, do not give them the money because then they're going to say they want more. There's there's no guarantee that they're gona give you back what you want.

And why would they right? If you think about IT, why would they the money funds in and like they just can live IT and go to the next thing. So how do you um gain confidence that you are likely to be double debt or not?

Um well, first of all, I got to find out if you know if there a position to share out the threat or a any sort of different position bean like have a Better time to proof life and there are a lot of people that to try to scare me, but they don't really have the ability to scare me. So you get to find out, do some confirmation. Do they do they have access to account? Do they do they have your data? They have your money.

Do they have IT in a and they just try to make you believe that they have that position of influence on you. Um there a lot of a lot of big guys out there that are just roll in a dry styling for dollars, if you will, and if they don't scam you when they have no leverage, genia theyll find somebody else that i'll give them. So there's a bit of you know authenticity or or are they in a position to do IT? And the same rule applies in indian negotiation.

Um the other side is gonna you in when they feel like theyve got everything they can kidnappers I be as by ambassage as by an FBI commander. When is gonna over when the bad guys feel like they've got everything they could, not when they did, but when I felt like they did. So our jobs is just make him feel IT sooner. So you know how how hard do you make IT innocently? On the other side, if everybody wants to feel like they did to, they got a good days, pay for a good day's work.

So if you let them feel like them in charge, and you make a work by asking the innocent how in what questions, which are very hard and fatigue to answer, then you're gone to get to the point where you're going to get a salad outcome, where you don't get double debt and you're going to be happy that it's over because I felt like they got anything could could be your data, could be your bank account um could be anything. The other side is gonna satisfied with the outcome when they feel like they worked for IT and in a business negotiation and you'll sell on your car and some you put a Price tag on your car and the guy walks up. To instance, i'll give you full out right now.

Would you reaction? I should ask for more. Maybe I won't sell my car. You know, every human interaction in the sight wants to feel like that they earned what they got. And so the idea of empathy and houses negotiations is really just to make him feel that sooner we're going to .

come back to empathy because it's such a big important topic. But i've heard said before that if somebody you don't know, but maybe you also somebody you know, places a real sense of urgency on you need the money now or I need to do something right away or else um not a threat of physical violence, but that any request for expanding something is a red flag yeah that is likely to be a scm.

You know very seldom do you need to click on the link within twenty four hours, right? I mean, how could that possibly be right that but we but that's one way in which people are exploited. You that some request comes in by phone or by you know email or text or maybe even person. Somebody says you need to do this right now or or something that is going to capture people sense of urgency, get them to make a mistake and there they're left reeling because that request for something right now or else, I think, hits a fundamental nerve in us. You know.

they want to help to be a rescue.

right? So is that a good rule of thun for people to keep in mind? Do not.

I think that's a great rule of them. I mean, I friend of mine, somebody got all of his phone number not that long ago, and I I was getting tax from his number. So I like, look, and I got some moral problems. Look, and I need some money from you.

Now was a friend, a friend's number? And remember when I first saw IT, actually, when I first saw that, I was really busy, and I felt bad that I think back home that day, and then I didn't hear from him again. And so I thought, well, whatever was, you worked that out.

So a couple weeks later, I get the text again. You got a real prime. I got to get back to me right now.

So i'm I said, if it's really my buddy, I am gonna him right now I got to make sure it's really my buddy and I said, hey, man, you know, you didn't raise this at all last time I saw in vagus because i'd seen him in vegas recently and he's like, know I was busy, can bring him up and something like us. So there's no direct confirmation of denial. We had breakfast together bagoas.

So then I shoot back and I like, and man, I gotto tell something that was such a crazy night, and I still owe you money from them. So, you know, that night when we were gone and I still owe you money, i'm happy to help. Now, IT wasn't a crazy united.

IT was breakfast, and I did know money and his next response was like, yeah, don't worry about IT. You know, you can make that up to me with this from my guys. cool.

So now I start making stuff up. And I said, you know, and when we were those strippers and a dog and a clown and the pony, i'll never get over that. So other guys, what are you talking about? And I said, by the way.

And then I started thinking some stuff about his wife and his mother and a guy that insult and call me names and stop text to me. And then I, then I send all those text messages to the real guy, including, you know, what i'd said about his mother. And he checked to me back.

He's got a great sense of humanity. By the way, my mom does think you're attractive. H, man, I, but I I started at all by just checking the source. If I was my friend, I would help them immediately and I need to through something. Adam, that's onna confirm that it's him and then i'm nerem m but i'm not also gonna have put A A little bit of a cover there that that if he doesn't catch, I know it's, I know it's a kind and then i'm gonna fun with that incredible knowledge that.

you know, people will hear this and they might think, oh, you know, that's never onna happen to me but like I said, unknown family members and friends who they make the mistake, they take debate of clicking on the link and then now they're getting the shake down.

Actually a good friend of mine said that her parents called at some point parents probably in their late seventies now um someone had called their house and told them that their child, this woman had been um kidnapped and that they need to send money right and that if they call the police they killer or harm her in some someone so they started sending money and they were afraid to contact her and you can see like what a bind a loving parent would be in, right? They obviously don't want to get this child of there is hurt and they obviously are willing to do whatever IT takes in order to get them back. Turns out a total scm right because eventually there was communication that may realize that their daughter perfectly okay and never even interacted with kidnappers. Ers, those kinds of scams happen pretty often.

I have a friend also.

Yeah, so the sense of urgency, what should have been the first flag?

That's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. And IT, look, even if you've got your loved one, the secondary issue is, if you do what they want, are they going to let them go? Which is actually a legitimate question, like if they really are bad guys. One of the things we learned in houses negotiation that apply a business negotiation, there are legendre a questions that is, O K ask you not being disrespectful, you're not pushing back those. There are fair.

You use the f bomb fairly general questions that you can ask under any circumstances, which is basically, you know, if I comply, is this going to work out the way that you're articulate in IT? Anything that adds communication into IT, which gives you more information to find out what the ultimate outcome looks like even in kidnappings? How do you know that? How do you know that if you pay, they going to let them go? That's a legitimate tion.

There are example somewhere in between, you know getting your instrument account hacked, your bank account hacked and you got forbid your child kidnapped, for instance. Um there's a whole practice within the legal profession of pRobing to see whether or not somebody who's going to give up money to avoid a lawsuit, for instance.

right? This is actually a lawyer friend of man recently describe their job very well, he said in his word's first person. He said, I scare people for money. The Operative word being scare people.

It's and it's been an .

us is being very honestly scarer people for money, very good at IT and and he understands how other people scare people for money and he works both sides and you know plenty to for defense type situations. But IT made me realized that you know a lot of the legal profession is not okay. The lawsuit slid across the table. It's the okay. Here's what the lawsuit would look like. Here are all the statutes that potentially were violated and then there's a probe of like what somebody's finances are and know how much they're willing to pay and do they have liability insurance to the even really policy, all the sorts of things that are that are really it's not necessarily an illegal shake down, but it's you know a pRobing as to whether or not you know there's it's worth the effort .

diagnosing the oil tablet to pay you.

right? And so that happens really often. I can give a specific example where somebody had a incident at a dog park where their dog allegedly ran into, somebody may be charged at somebody in a dog part, people standing around and the person moved and apparently injured their knee but rather than sue the owner of the dog, what they typically do is deliver some set of documents that say, you know, I was a injured your dog was responsible for this um and if you don't settle up for x number of dollars, you're going to be sued for usually an exorbitant count above and then there's this question that the the lawyers have to figure out like is IT puffy they saying i'm going to see you for four million dollars as very basis for that in good lawyers will say that's popfly y they're trying to scare you with a big number.

But a lot of people see that number ago. Oh, my goodness, you, what do they want? You know, like, I don't even know if they were injured. If they were, that's terrible. I D want that taking care of. If my dog is responsible, I D want that taking care of what what do they need in order to make this go away, right? And that happens millions of times a day throughout the country.

And a good portion of those probably happened here in california because there's that's kind the way the legal system is arranged, right? So this is not somebody um you know I could be somebody manipulates law, could also be somebody who's being entirely honest about their experience of being injured by somebody else's dog. So under those conditions, I mean that sounds like the same set of rules apply.

You want to know how serious they are. Do they have a case, so to speak, that the work of the lawyers, but in assessing how serious somebody is, he said, it's fair. He called to the effort.

I like that. I'll never forget that. I just ask a fair question like like how much money do you think you deserve? Or um is that would that be a good example of a very direct question or or IT um how likely are you to walk away if we don't give you the money like you know there? I mean, I could imagine there's all sorts of reasons why people would be dishonest about about .

to answering those questions well and how much money do you think you could deserve? You deserve is is a really good question, not necessarily what the answers, but how they answer IT you you're going to get how quickly they fire back and well or not, they stop and think about IT how and what questions. Typically are best to judge the other size reaction, and the answer is secondary because a hour what question causes what we would refer to is, uh, deep thinking, slow thinking, dan, behaviour, economics thinking, fast and slow. Slow thinking is in debt thinking.

You ask a how or what question makes the other side think first and just a reaction to how they think about IT and do they actually do they actually think about IT? Or do they fire right back at you that gives you a clear picture of who you're dealing with, where the outcome is gona go? How much money do you think that you deserve the unit of ten million dollars? I thought this is, I got to shake down another song, the side.

Or they say, I if they stop and think about IT and they give you a thought for answer, that's a completely different person on the other side. You asking a question to get a to diagnose how they respond first, the answer is second. And sometimes I if it's a cut road on the other side, i'm going to start power panel with how and what questions just a warm out that's passive aggression.

If I if I get a cut rote aggress around the other side, i'm going to drop into passive aggressive behavior to slam down and warm up. Um one of my hostage negotiation heroes, a gum john y. Pico, was john, a medical peacock, jane, like jane rockets, tania janny, jantie tico, got all the western hostages out of the route in the eighties, rote.

A book called man without a gun, a negotiated in person, face to face, with the only guy that ever did that got everybody up in his book, he wrote, one of the great secrets to negotiation is learning how to resource the other side. And when you've got a really dangerous abbassi on the outside of the table, you don't go, knows the nose, you don't argue, you not combat. If you wear out exhausted and if you get somebody really combat of or cut road on the other side, start papara on with how and what questions. Because even think about the answered tires of, and it's pass of aggressive and it's deferential and IT really works.

So if the person on the opposite side of a high friction negotiation is aggressive, the goal is to slow things down, fatigue them yeah, and get them to just either relent or to reveal something that's that's a looper yeah right?

yeah. If if I have to make the deal, then i'm gonna warm out. I'm interested in drilling .

a little bit further into this process of wearing them down in the past, of aggressive way, of reducing the aggressive stance. And I want to highlight for people that what we're talking about here is, you know, manipulation to extract something or actually talking about the reverse. We're talking about a bad actor who's aggressive and trying to define that bad actor.

What does that process of a wearing them down look like or sound like? Could you give us a couple of examples of but say, i'm the bad actor. We play this game.

I won't be very good at this and I am saying, look, I want example dollars by this date or you're not going to get what you want. They're gonna die or disappear. Is that simple and a stonewall kind of approach? What is the approach that you take to wear that person down?

Well, what are they're gonna have questions that are mostly how and what and they're to be legitimate questions, which is how do I know you're gone to follow through? What does that look like? Like if I do what you want, how do I know you're gona follow through?

So get them to talk about the alternative, okay. So if you were to if you deliver by that date, i'm going to pass them to you without fail like they're just getting kind of brief answers where the person is just again, this kind of like rigid stone wall approach.

Yeah well and so there's a phrases that we use all the time, vision draft decision. So if if you're really gone to comply, if I if I give in and when I say how do I know you know you onna, follow through. I'm not talking about the thread.

I'm not trying to give you to clarify the threat. I'm trying to get you to clarify what implementation much like. So I need to know i'm based on your reaction to that. If you plan following through, if I comply, you will already have that in your head or be open to IT vision drive decision. You've thought through an advance.

What does letting the hostages go look like if you if you have no intention of ever really released in a hostage, if I follow through, then you not going to be able to answer the question or and you're party going to throw back on me really quickly. And so then now I know like, right? So you got no plans on compliant.

If I give in, you not GTA comply. So I but you still want the money, then i'm going to ask, well, am I supposed to pay you if you don't have any plans for compliance and if you're willing to entertain a conversation about what compliance looks like? I was a kidnapping that the my unit worked just before I was in IT in venezuela.

They weren't entirely sure that the big is got the fark, I think had the hostage. They did an exchange point till let the hostage go. There was some distance from where they had a very good idea that he was being held.

So he figured that I going to drag the hostage all the way. This river crossing, if the aca and go SHE is too much effort. And then was one a few times. So there was going to be assignment, theoretically, assemble ten is exchange, but they going to have send the money across the river before the hostage was let go. So if we agree to this art and not gonna drag this this guy all the way to this river crossing, they don't plan and let them go.

And if it's a long way to dragon and they get their money, do they want to dragon back? Like even if their ambuLance, once they get there, if they're gone through all the effort to get to the meeting location and the usage is there, we'd not just increase the chance significantly. They're going to go in and comply because it's pain in the to take him back.

This is our human nature stuff, human nature investment. How do you get them to engage and actions and behaviors and the verbal commitments? That actually means something to them.

When I was working kidnappings, the very last thing we always have the family get the bad guys that say last, not first, but last was we'd actually get a verbal promise to let them go again at the end, because we have been talking to a long enough at this point time. We ve got a pretty good idea what they sound like when they're lying, and what they sound like when they tell them the truth. If somebody tells the truth, they pretty much extend to tell the truth the same way every time.

If they tell the truth, he talked to somebody long. And if you've got to a line on, do they ever tell the truth? And if they do, what does that sound like? People lie twenty ways.

They tell the truth one way. So we've been coaching and negotiations with the kidnap is long enough that know what they sound like when they tell the truth. So when when they ask at the very in, if we if we paid, you promise to let them go, it's not that the answer, but how they answer IT. And that that will be the last thing to sugar the deal. You know, how do you continually stack the ads in your favorite for implementation?

Do you have a bodily like a synthetic sensor for lying? The reason I ask is, years ago, I had the experience of knowing somebody, and they turned out to be a generally good person. But I sense ed early on that something was like off.

I couldn't relax around them. I just couldn't relax around them. And and I could not tell you why.

But I was as if my, I couldn't even identify the neuron atomy of IT. You know, I say he was the vague st nervous something, but I teach her anatomy. I can't point to one pathway in the body.

There was something about my automatic response that would just start crying cking up when I was around them, like, something is off, something is off something. And and I did you not five years later. Five years later, I discovered a series of lies that all ratted together, that were actually pretty meaningless in the total context of things.

But I remember thinking at that moment, all my goods, like my, my system, new like new. And you know for all my knowledge of neuroscience, I I can't tell you to the stay like what IT was in in the in my biology, but I had something to do with my bodily response. IT wasn't just a thought like that doesn't quite add up or I feel like i'm getting the run around.

This is IT was a physical sensation. Are you familiar with that experience? Yeah, well.

it's a little bit of what you guys and your colleagues are still discovered in the science behind the gut and what we are actually teaching. You know, my company now we teaching people learn the difference between your gut and your amiga for lack of a Better time. You're fear centers and know which one is which.

And listen to your gut you've got is ridiculously accurate. Now where where does that information come from? When your podcast recently, I was listening to talking about all the factory cute right to smells. I can never thought of that, of course.

You know yeah um was a term for the the the molecules you put off the kick that like, of course and that's why some of the great investigators I knew would say, I can smell that. I can smell IT. So what all this feeding you're got and what what are the senses that the science hasn't yet discovered?

You know, you can you can make me believe, I will never believe that the life force stops at the services of our skin, that there's energy and we can pick up on the energy. I mean, our god is being fed by all these different inputs that were aware of, or that we have yet to be made aware of. The tone, voice doesn't match their their words.

The the head top. You've got a supercomputer in your brain. Your god is incredible if you could listen to IT instead of your fear centers. And as soon as you started listening to your god, you can explain IT at the time.

But you got, you ve got a bad feeling, and you've got and later on then you saw IT all at all, came together where your brain was picking up these cues. Your brain was probably, when you're in their presence, there has got to be in order. Somebody gives off when when they intentionally deceiving, you know, you didn't know that that and I was a smell and maybe you couldn't have consciously smell that you still picking IT up so long answer to.

I'm a very big believer in the gut. I think there's science that we know and yet to discover that tells us that the god is just ridiculously accurate. If we listen to IT instead of our fear centers.

I completely agree that there are energetic exchanges that neurotic science can't have to explain the field of neusatz, that is, is starting to explore some of these things. There's basically three apex journals, the most competitive journalists to publishing science, nature and cell. And I only mention that because there was a series of articles written in science magazine about magneto reception in humans.

You know, the idea that humans can detect magnetic fields sounds like quirky, right? Turtles can detect magnetic fields. They migrate by them, actually, long distances.

But the idea is, is that humans can do that. And yet there are some well controlled studies where people have to guess about the orientation of a magnetic field. And they do IT Better than chance. Not everyone can do IT, but some can do IT Better than chance in a way that cannot be predicted by anything else except some inherent form of magnetic reception in their nervous system. So there are capabilities of the nervous system that are starting to be revealed, which we don't have a lot of evidence, but there's enough evidence to suggest that these things are really happening.

The other example, what you might find interesting is a little bit more, little less esoteric, but there is a beautiful paper polished in one of the cell press journals a couple of years ago, showing that when people listen to the same story, the distance between their heart beats tends to be very similar. Now doesn't mean that their exact heart rates are similar, but if you look at the distance between their heartbeats, they all in train to the same rythm, the same song, and get this, they're in completely separate rooms. The experts are being done on completely separate days.

And yet, if I were to line up just, you know, the distance between the heart beats for you, they would line up like a set of columns. And for dozens of individuals listening to the same story. So you know clearly, there's a passage of energy from things we hear and things we see that goes into our nervous system at a level that's below our conscious detection.

Here's the last thing i'll say about this. We have a series on mental health coming out, not mental illness, but mental health. But I think to be among the very fine psychiatrists in the world.

A doctor, paul ty, and he said, you know, we all think that the forebrain is the supercomputer, right? He said, no, the subconscious is the super. Yeah, that's where the real knowledge processing is happening. That's the iceberg below the surface where all the real lifting is taken place and that people who learn to tap into the subconscious can learn to use that information in very meaningful ways. And I think that's describing .

he's been on with you before.

right? He has to talk about trauma in particular, and he was on less freedom podcast. Well, the series that we're doing with him is not about trauma pursue.

It's really about the subconscious in the self. I think you'll find this series really interesting. IT and IT has a number of very practical questions that one can ask themselves about.

They're so conscious and kind of work the process of psychic. We're excited to release that series. But because I don't know if anything like IT that's been put out there into the public, but.

But I was so pleasantly surprised to hear him say, you know, we all here that the four brain is the supercomputer. It's what drove our evolution is like, no, no, no, no, it's it's the unconscious. That's where our real wisdom resides. And the forebrain is just the implementation device. So if you know how we convince .

ourselves that they were ensure dry, yeah, I mean.

I can think of a time that my god told me a and IT turned out to B, B. More often than not, though, i've suppressed my response that I overwrite IT thinking. I think I made the mistake that you guys train your negotiators to avoid, which is, I thought, well, this is making me anxious, and the anxiety must be like me, like this must be my fault.

I'm not able to calm myself in the situation, not sleeping well. I said a and um and therefore like this must must represent some deficiency on my part and then and lord knows, as your shirt point out, I am a very flawed person. I have many flawed, I always say have three thousand that piece and at least as many flaws to match those pet peas and one to one at least relationship. But the point being that I I think our bodies really do know.

They know yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would agree.

So when you're doing negotiations and you're hearing someone's voice on the phone, they're a lot of cues. When they're face to face their additional accused, there's their face. And then of course, if negotiations are being done by text over a computer or phone, it's a very diminished environment for information.

So maybe we could talk about each of those because we live in those landscapes. If we're face to face and we're negotiating um you're listening, of course, to what I want, what i'm insisting on. You're working that process from your your side. What are you paying attention to visually .

it's more um are things in aligned. There's lamon s data. The words, the way that said and look on people's face and how are they wade and how they play out is a racing out there. Very and scientific, thirty, fifty five, seven percent words, thirty percent delivery, fifty five percent body language. People won't argue Better all the time, but not that accurate as a rural of film, we threw that out there.

But I tell people the most important issue is do they line up? So i'm not going to look for like when you raise your eyebrow or when you look up unto the left, i'm really just gonna to get a gut feeling whether I think these things are lining up, whether they're in alignment, whether they are at a line. And then i'm going to be real careful about what meaning I assigned to that.

You know, a effective cues, changes in your tone of voice, changes in your movement. And that's one of the reasons why we don't teach reading people's body language, because it's completely contentious to you in the moment. So I, if I convince myself that, you know, raised the eyebrow, means this.

Is that a context? I was an negotiation once what threw out a figure out to somebody, and I some kind look after, decide and look back and accepted my offer. And I made the mistake of not saying to them.

The proper thing for me to say at the time we've been seems like something just cross your mind, cause you only completely true observation. If they look to the site and look back, something cross your mind. Now I read IT at the moment of saying that they had more money.

And I found out after the fact that was wrong, they were stretched to the limit. The look of didn't mean that they were holding stuff. They were holding step back. But I read IT wrong, and I didn't bother to check on the effective cue that I saw.

So one of my babbling about what i'm babbling about is, if we are in a negotiation, and what I am listening to your tone, voice, or watching your body language or your words, if I see you shift at all, I should pay attention that there was a shift in your affect behavior. But I need to find out what was behind IT, as opposed to make an assumption as to what I meant. So i'm gonna watch.

I'm going to get my gut feeling and i'm going to say, sounds like there's some heat or IT looks like something just cross your mind or even if I can attribute to specific effective move, I might say IT feels like there's something in the way. Let me listening to my get all throughout an observation on whatever any of those might be just to go back over the ground a little and double check because they don't think about negotiating and person is you're going to give me more information physically that I can actually process. And if you say something that stop provoking, i'll stop and think about IT.

And when i'm stop and and thinking about what you just said, i'm missing all your choice. So all the skills are we teach the labels, the mirrors, the opening of questions, which seem like we're going back and plan on the ground. Again, we are because I didn't picked up all the information the first time, there's just more than than I can get.

And so I need to go back over a couple of times with you just so I get IT right, without making you feel interrogated, you actually feel hard and you actually get to go back over again. So IT becomes what seems to be an inefficient process, but it's actually me just double check in my information. So if we're face to face, i'm gonna when I ask you to repeat, but i'm not going to say would you please repeat that? I'm going to get you to repeat without asking you to repay.

Is the same true in online or text communications?

The same thing is true. The problem with online in texas, people try to bundle everything in the one communication. Best analogy I can think of is, if you playing chess by text, would you put seven moves in your, in your text? No, you'd only put one move in.

So only try to get one point across and attacks don't explain on through whole bunch of stuff and texture emails. They're almost always too long and it's going to come off as cold. So do what you can to soften soften IT um is a documented film has been done on my company called tack the empathy neglect.

Uh one twenty two twenty three ams the film make a DNA DNA films that was finished last year. Not out yet for vary reasons. We put IT out so that we screen the thing in vag as late last year.

I see that I love IT. I'm not a good judge of a film about me. I am going to love IT matter what about me? But I tell that that night on, man, I love IT, this is great.

Two days later, I find out I realize this a huge problem. I've already told him it's okay. So I gotta, I ve got, i'm going to text him and I want to call him.

And we got to fix IT. Now to sunday text message, I sent him a two line text is now bad time to talk. I get something you don't want to hear two lines.

Now what were my other options? I could call them they can. I get a great relationship? I call him. If he's in a position to pick up the phone, doesn't matter what he's doing, he's going to answer the phone. He was in the middle of zoom call.

If I had call he to picked up during the zoo m call in both conversations would have been bad. He immediately fires back to me. And in middle of zoom call, or calling in a half an hour, he already knows you going to like what he's going to hear.

I'm preparing for bad news. Didn't on a phone like, look, I know what I said. We had a problem.

We had to get there on camera. Dark is guy in my, in my team. And I am shocked that I haven't made in part of a documentary.

This is going to be incomplete without we got to get on on film. We show this. Anybody else? We get a film, make a part of IT immediately.

Problem solving money. He goes, okay. I to get a cruel direct or get direct to a crew, I need know when we can do that.

I need to. We, we got another showing in the films scheduled in L A. Less than a month away.

So I got to get there on camera, and we ve got to get IT. It's gonna three weeks of editing. So to get access to dance camera, he goes, done.

Or there is counter, he says, done. It's done. We go through this whole conversation in less than ten minutes.

Now think of the Normal negotiation. A, nick, how are you? What's going on today? Are you in a good mood? Hey, hey, hey.

How the kids doing all the time wasting conversation? But I set him up with that Normal. He would also, he he could have legitimate said, are you at your mind? We've been working on this for years. You didn't bring this up in a year. Not only that, you already told me two days ago at the showing in in vegas that you love IT and now, uh, you you're in a half into this project, you're bringing up all these new problems that would have been the Normal negotiation. But since since we had a highly club of relationship, I two line text was done in ten minutes.

Now since the next, a very generous guy, when he gets done, and he says, by the way, you understand, how much is gonna me this three weeks editing? This is three hours of shooting and three weeks of editing, I go, yeah, he goes, but i'm happy to do IT calling back the next day. It's got a favorite asking me you got doesn't matter what IT is because we've gone through what would have been a very complicated negotiation that started on text, and I sent him a two line text honour sunday, and we get to solve that fast.

So if I understand correctly, by setting the context in a very direct and sucked way, right, he goes into IT in a problem solving mode with you, whether if you do the the tour of all the things that are going well in life, and yeah the sort of the will keep this pg, you know the the the mud sandwich approach, you know you know they teach you that you when you get a lab, you know most scientists have no skill running a business, right? You get a aborted or or you've as experiments and then suddenly you're in charge of people managing ing budgets and all this stuff.

I mean, mean, most scientists, ninety nine percent of scientists, are completely unqualified to do the job they do at the level running a laboratory. When they start to learn IT on the job, eventually you end up having to let somebody go. And and so the difficult thing they teach you in these online training things is you tell somebody something nice, then you give them the bad news and then you tell something them something nice on exit, right? That's kind of what sort of speaks sandwich, right? Alright, this is not that what your talking about is saying, hey, this is the problem.

You're not going to like the problem or there is a problem. You're not going to like IT so that they show up with the context of solving a problem as supposed to, giving them the tour of all the things are going well and then that the problem is really in contrast to that. And then it's like, uh, you so what I love about what you're describing is it's it's direct, it's honest. You're not doing the the tour of the garden before you take them down to the um to the subject tank.

It's what I would call the difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter. A straight shooter tells you the truth. They just tell IT in a way that land softly.

Let's talk about break ups, business breakups, romantic break ups, right?

You break them up with me?

No, no. But thanks for the hypothesis is test? no. In fact, in fact, i'm enjoying this conversation so much as I always do.

I'm learning a tone for you that, if anything, i'd like to expand and deep in our relationship. The gala knowledge jetty plutonic and professional but expensive. What is the process of ending a relationship? And again, this could be romantic relationship, could be business relationship, could be employer employee.

could be individuals.

could be a telling a whole group, or an entire group telling an individual, you know, the reason I raise this as a particular example is that i'm assuming that both sides don't want the same thing. One side wants to continue, the other side wants to end. right? I'll avoid the use the word win, win or the words win, win.

Excuse me. And just ask, is there a way to have that conversation in any of the context I just mentioned in, as you so beautiful ly described, a straight shooter manner where it's direct, it's honest, but IT lands soft because what we're talking about here is feelings of rejection. And nobody likes feeling rejected, right?

I don't know anybody who likes being fired even from jobs. They don't like people's egos, software, right? So is there .

what maybe .

a more specific way of asking the question is, is there away to encourage the person getting the bad news to get their ego out of the way and see that if both parties don't want IT, it's best for .

everybody involved? I almost want to say no. But first, what are the Carry? It's most of the time when people are struggling with this.

They are trying to save the other other side. They trying to save themselves. So who you really trying to save by postponing is soft.

You know, try to act like a it's it's something that is not there. I don't know that anybody has ever been fired. They didn't have a sense that IT was coming.

The person that was getting ready to firm opens up by saying, how are you. They know how the other person is and and a person get really good fire has got some good and things going wrong. Like you said, you got to very powerful so you to lower the boom as quickly as you can, but also as gentle as you can.

I was involved in a non profit and number years ago, filleted with church, and which struggling, whether not to let the executive drug or go, I go to the minister, the church. Norman Vincent peels protege, A Y, A guide named artha kal Andrew, one of the best human beings i've ever met my life, phone amo guy, and i'm struggling with. I thought viren let this woman go was gonna bad.

And I thought author was going to count from me way out and and he looked to me, he said, you know, there's there's no gentle way to get somebody y's had off and I said, yeah, the humane thing here is happy to bring IT to conclusion as quickly as possible because there's no humane way to cut somebody y's set off. There's no humane way to terminate the relationship. Now what are the caveat? Maybe there are first caaba, if you going to find somebody, never fight somebody on a friday, friday, month, on monday, five.

On a monday, they got a work week to work their way out of IT. You find on a friday, they get a weekend to be miserable and to feel horrible, and they can do anything about IT called off guard or not. On a monday, they can pick themselves up.

They can start looking for a new job no matter who you are. Fire on a friday. They can start looking for a new job on a saturday is two days of misery.

So yeah, you're going to fire somebody. Fire on a monday, not on a friday. We have bad news to give somebody Warners common.

The um people are ridiculously resume to pain, if warned. And then that you're lower the boom. You're not going like what I have to say.

It's going to be heart breaking. You gone to hate me. Has IT no one three seconds? They get the guard up. Let them have the bad noise. That's the humane way to cut somebody to settle off.

Don't make, don't linger, don't make him think that how the kids, how are you? I care about you, your great human being, not the stuff. At the begin warning, bad news is common and heard with the bad news.

Rip the band date off. The pain is not if you try to rip the band date off slowly, that's exclusion, and you try to save yourself. So if you got to terminate a relationship regards.

So what IT is, the quicker you do IT, the less painless IT is. The sooner people can move on. Stop trying to save yourself, realize how human beings handle pain. If anything, human beings are incredibly resilient if given the opportunity to brace ourselves. First.

I agree. Thank you for that. There's a concept that a lot of people haven't heard of, and i'm confident in saying that because I hadn't heard of him until recently despite spending a lot of time in the literary around doping and motivation.

And it's a term from psychology that is being used a little bit more now and it's ego depletion. Yeah, it's an interesting concept. And I been going to run this by you for a while, but I saved IT for a discussion today.

IT turns out ego depletion is a lot like decision fatigue. Um you know we have all heard the Steve jobs saying, you know he wore black turtle that every day because you know he didn't have have to make that decisions. So we had more energy to make other decisions.

I've been accused of doing the same because of my black long, long shirts. But there's a whole other reason for that. Some people might know but anyway it's not important in the moment.

Um but ego depletion is a little bit different than decision fatigue or decision budget. The idea with ego depletion is prety simple. It's that the molecule dope, I mean, does many things in the brain.

But one of the things that IT absolutely does is that holds us to goal directed behavior that associated with that a sense of self, like, I want to accomplish this, I want to get to that. And the whole notion of ego depletion volts, the, the idea. And this has been a data, substantive observation. When people have to fight to be right, or to defend their position for a period of time, eventually that depletes and IT seems to be, at least in part, document mediated because defending one's position takes work, right? You earlier you talk about running somebody down, you know, wearing them out.

And I wondered, as I just throw this concept out to cold here, um whether or not that calls to mind any um examples from your work where you felt like, okay, like this person could really hold but if I just kept pressing, eventually they tilt right you know and it's different than the kind of fatigue that comes from a conversation that starts at three in the afternoon and end at two thirty in the morning. We've all been there. I've been in those conversations.

Usually they're not very pleasant. And three and the more peelin apart, you just i've learned over the years, you know like you clip IT at nine thirty and you try and shift right one of the worst pieces of vice i've ever heard um is you'd never go to sleep banging. It's like no actually um actually get sleep, wake up and then revisit the problem if the situation allows that's my my trying to step all night, trying to work something out is just counter biology.

So ego depletion, I have a feeling a lot of what you did in your profession was running down there doping to the point where then they're Operating from a different place where they're not defending the ego. They're actually thinking more practically about the whole situation. They have any kind .

of texture of meaning to yes no agree, draw the distinction uh first of all and hostage negotiation is is too kind of hostage takings um if there's a demand um and it's gonna contained and uncontained which is just literal definition contained as big guys in a bank like at the chase bank in brooklin way back win you got have surrounded, they can cut away and uncontained as a kidnapping you don't know where they are uncontained unknown al location we're going to try to get our way in a contain situation, probably by ego depletion.

Where about going to the point where they're just going to give them because they're tired, because they going to come out, we're going to put handcuffed him um which means that if the eagle gets recharged, they're going to go back and to think they're going to think back over the deal. So when somebody on a business negotiation, it's basically uncontained because even if you come to agreement that there's a whole implementation phase, they're going to did you did you get to agree me because you warm up because they get tired, because they just gave in at some point of time, they are going to get recharged and they are going to get recharged where you're an implementation. So they either going to not to follow the terms of the deal or the slight opportunity, they are gonna deviate. And so yeah, I think equal depletion is is a real thing and it's a bad way to get a business deal. It's gonna stick because they rest and .

then they come back. Yeah, a different person. Yeah.

they're to be recharged. Ele is going to be recharged. And if you get if you get the agreement based on a depletion of the ego, that battery is gonna charge back up again.

Well, it's a business deal with. It's personal negotiation. You know you have a disagreement. We do are significant and follow that bad advice. Don't go to bad, angry.

And so you stay up to three in the morning and you think you come to a resolution. And but he gets a good nights sleep next day. They feel completely differently about what they said the night before.

I metaphor of that happening .

once or twice saw on a movie.

right? Yes, in a movie, a friend explained that situation to me earlier. You mention approaching a conversation in a playful way, right? All right.

You know, this might be life for death, but let's play this like a game because you can see more opportunities. Now we know that when where we are relaxed, we see the big picture. When we're tense, everything, na, vision tunnel, vision tunnel, thinking tunnel, everything, we lose access to the full tool kit.

So you always, always to take really good care yourself. Your fit, you're in shape, you in calm. I'm true you have your moments like anybody else. But um what are some .

of the things .

that good negotiators do all the time so that when the bell goes off and they have to respond, they are ready? And the reasonable access is because we've been talking about negotiations in kind of a vacuum. I happening and then how is want to handle IT? But like any athlete, like any teacher, like any parent, like any kid, everybody has to be ready for real life circumstances.

And we know one always get the warning. We don't get the memo that is happening in two weeks. And sometimes the conversations around courtroom drama or the big day, you know, IT implies that we get the warning. But more often than it's a phone color, a text that comes in in IT just hits us. And suddenly we are in negotiations and we didn't get time to prepare, right. So maybe could talk about reading ess and then we can talk about again, like maybe this is sound trivial to, but for me, I be very curous to know whether not you have any practices of stealing yourself, what those look like, what you've seen other people used to, to be able to get themselves into the moment of of being .

able to shop their best self. yes. Well, small stakes practice for high stakes results. I guy will occasions find myself in the middle of negotiation that I didn't expect I could have been thrown out stuff on a regular basis on my way during the day.

Verbal observations, what we referred to as labels, because the label seems like something just cross your mind, is a label in a midnight and negotiation when I see you hesitate or or looked to the site, how are are you ready for that? Now, on my way over, heard of this interview, i'm both talking to my left driver, the whole wage in him, to talk, also being careful about not tap in the gas tank out completely. So the fatigue when I get here, I talk, I talk about the lift driver on a regular basis.

I interactions tsa guys in the airport all through a label on seems like a tough day. Tough day seems like you have a good mood and whether right or wrong, i'm i'm getting in. I'm trying to stay loose.

I'm trying to keep the mental muscles limbo and IT just becomes a bit of a habit on a regular basis occasionally. All for a something. Now i'm talking about lift drivers.

I am in a bad mood. I get into a lift couple of weeks on my way home. Lift driver is not helpful.

I mean, i'm coming at the airport. I'm struggling. My bags not lifting a finger, doesn't open up the rear.

I got open up the rear, the vehicle myself. I got ta load the bags, everything I get in. He's just saving unhappiness.

Now I know that if I say, what do you love about what you do for living? I immediately trigger what tony Robins would call a state change. And i'm annoyed this guy and our fair mones are combat tive.

But i'm thinking, like, I I just don't need this. And so I go, what do you love about driving for left, this guy proceeds to unload on me. And always personal struggles that I feel like a complete jerk for being angry item and everything that he's going through.

And i'm just trying to get myself out out of a bad mood and to keep from sending him a really negative vive the whole way so that he doesn't drive forty five miles an hour in a sixty five miles an hour lane and make IT, you know, inflict me with a longer and more expensive ride because i'm so annoying as a customer. But i've got a habit of small stakes practice for high stakes results. And who do I get a practice on the lift drivers on a regular basis? The guy behind the canner at the hotel of the tsa guy, i'm going through tsa, the grocery store clerk, the starbucks person.

The only way I am at my best in my negotiations, this is trying to keep my negotiation muscles limber by interacting with people. H throughout the course of my day, and then, you know, leave even Better than I found them. You trying leave negative common in my wake, trying to leave as much positive common in wait as possible.

I love that and i'm very familiar with the feeling of needing to conserve my voice for podcasting, your energy for things and I mean somebody who's think genuinely curious about what people's experiences are. So I like the question um you know how's your day going? It's pretty open ended. It's suppose if somebody was really upset that would be perhaps the worst question I could possibly ask um from what you just described. But when I put .

put a fine point on IT too because like I manipulate him with what do you love about because there's you watch them change in the moment to immediately to shift unto this concept of love, which is more than like, would you like about driving for left? What do you love about driving for left? I can trigger a state change in you instantaneously, no matter what kind of moderate, because this guy was in a very bad mood.

Plus additionally, the download from that typically is so quick i'm going to get a real clear picture on who you are really, really fast. I'm talking to a CEO of a company couple of months ago there, you know for lack of a Better term, that delivering clean water to the world. And I like, that's a cool mission.

Like I dig this because an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur, want to make a da universe. I dig that trying to make a difference in the world. So I said to him, what do you love about what you do for living? Immediately fires back to me.

I love leading teams. I lovely and teams, and I love giving shareholders a great return on our investment is really important for me to give shareholders is a great return. And then, yeah, you know, we deliver water.

And then he said a fourth thing, and I thought this guy could be doing toilet paper. He doesn't care about the mission of the company at all. He's a great C E.

O. Probably because you want to see o to the teams. You want a CEO deliver a corporate CEO to deliver a return investment for shareholders.

But that's why he's a great corporate CEO and not a great entrepreneur CEO. So by him giving me me the download real quick, that was blatantly honest. I do.

I think this is a great guy. yes. Do our core values lineup.

My mission is more important to me than his mission ism or his mission is making money. Now I like making money, but it's not number one. It's a strong number two. But that questions that of how are you today to what do you love about you, immediately put him in Better place. Plus you get some ridiculously candid answers that tells you who they are real fast.

What is the best way to approach our response to somebody who is asking to be heard? Perhaps theyve got complaints, maybe about us, maybe about somebody else. People are venting, right? People seem to vary on the propensity to vent spectrum.

Some people were just, they vent all the time. This happened, that happened, you know. And they want to complain the the way it's sometimes describes as they love to take other people's invent tories.

They love to take inventories of everybody else's mistakes that you know it's it's a lot easier so often than taking our own inventories of what we could be focused on and do Better. That's that's a universal truth in my mind. But you know, people approach other people that they trust and they want event, presumably to get over whatever IT is that is bothering them.

But all too often, IT seems to just amplify the feelings of frustration. What are you doing somebody care about that cares about your constitute event? Is IT just yet let them you let them vent? Or do you do you try and let them negotiate with themselves little bit in a way that could help them more than if you were to just let them vent?

I'm really clear of letting people went because a lot of times, and they never IT seems to be a spiral that just spiral, zac control. So how do why somebody even that they don't feel hurt, they feel ignored if you like to be waste in a time talk and they're frustrated.

That's the feedback i'm going to give you feedback on what i'm guessing is causing your event in just an observation that sounds like this is this is drive you crazy because nobody listens to you. Sounds like you've been struggling with this for a long time. Sounds like this is very frustrated for you.

Um what's the emotion? The particularly negative emotion, frustration is about somebody being denied a goal in the future angers about somebody who's upset about something happened in the past. The type of negative emotion begins to focus you in on where they is IT forward thinking or is a backward thinking.

And frustration and anger can be two very different versions of the same negative emotion, but they are focused on different points in time. So i'm gonna to intuitively, if I don't know um from what you've told me, i'm going to start taking educated guesses on making an observation on what IT is a striving. If you need event, you've been talking and people been ignore ing you or you've been taking actions and people have been ignoring you if you need event because you communication, your actions have been ignored.

There are some clues here in, the sooner that I get at the heart of what's bother you, the sooner you're gonna be to let you off. So i'm going to encourage letting the steam off without trying to correct you, without giving you advice um without frustrated you, by not listening to you, by trying to recognize verbally with some of the motivators are which will deactivate anger much more quickly lads, the whole basis for crisis hotline to begin with people eventing. And so how do you most effectively event somebody so that instead of going a rent from hour and the rain, introduced taxes into the system or the poison themselves? I think negative emotions put toxins in our system.

You know how to deactivate that is quickly so that you're not hurting yourself as much and and you you feel hurt, you feel relieved. You feel listen to so and if that involves me, if it's a close friend who's venting to you, you're involved in a situation to some degree, and I might even say what feels like you're prety frustrated because I am and listen to up to now. And i'm going to start taking some emotionally educated guesses on what I think is driving you. And i'm going to put in the form of a label, which is just an observation, seems like, sounds like, looks like then if I get IT wrong and you go less than IT at all, I can say, well, that's just what IT seems IT just seems that way you put you in a position to just like somebody know, you see, I mean, you doing your best understand i'm i'm not a fan of venting. I if if I go on a rent, personally, I always feel worse, so I want to deactivate that negativity, so I get my feed back under me emotionally.

Very useful knowledge you just share with us. You metate.

A tiny little bit I mean and trying to make my day more effective. I have a gratitude exercise that um I do almost every morning um all the ways to make myself effective. Actually i'm looking at the non sleep deep breast practice over the because you know I like to make you for my time so and and I am spiritual so um i'm talking to the ali I on a regular basis you pray I do yeah the morning .

and night when you need .

to both yeah I mean I think you know within that you believe in one god or the universe or whatever IT is. I think spirits rituals, an important component of health. Whatever your spiritual ality is, you should recognize that. And you should you'll be Better off if you engage in some sort of a spiritual practice doesn't have to be any other three major religions, but spiritual ality is component of who we are. So yeah, I practice on regular.

So sense of higher power to Better to find higher power IT could be, as you said, with a line with conventional religion, or just a line with the idea that there are things outside of us that are important to pay attention to, that we can all do Better by being in recognition of our service to or or both something like .

pretty much like and and and leaving IT is is open and is as possible because I think there's a spiritual nature to us. Perry, I agree.

What about your .

physical .

training? I must say, you know, you're you're an excEllent shape. Imagine that we are on with the FBI thing. I mean, I saw silence of the lambs at the beginning. She's running around with other quite agency shooting targets and running and left in into and their setups and there know that was was a one thousand nine eighty film, so is a little bit dated now brought out there they're doing other stuff as well. Um but you know nothing nothing works like the basics. So um was the FBI the first time you ve got serious about fitness or were prior to that we're you an athlete and into fitness? And what are you doing now is to maintain your Frankly .

impressive shape um but thank you for the compliment I would sports, athletics, fitness was always a part of my life. I was into sports, but not particularly good at him a football, basketball um you know i'm a last century guy. So what long before the condition is involved is involved as IT is now with interval training and interested of stuff, which is you weight lifting was introduced in my high school, my senior year.

Know I lift to wait some, continued to college a little bit of time in a martial large. Rip my new apart in college in the martial large. But yeah, fitness has always been a part of my life as much for liking to be in condition.

And you know, the spiritual regeneration of a well, I knew what I was or not these days. You i'm looking for hacked. There is I know you don't like the term hacked. no. Well, mechanism changes.

Yeah hax sort of implies that we're using one thing to account something different. I like mechanisms, but the end of the day, if people want to call something a hack because IT gets them the result they won or that they are, it's more appealing to to apply the tool. That's what matters to me. You know, tools sitting in a box don't .

do anything there. So what these days called plasma, principally, i'm struggling with issues with a couple of joints that I know science will eventually help me regenerates. On the meantime, good diet. You know the basic college diet, uh not a uh not a perfect diet, but by and large overall my diet is pretty good um and then you know the uh the little little things spiritual keeps me in shape physically uh in a cold plunge is chAllenging psychologically and physically and the shifter there.

that's for sure. You don't need science to know that three seconds or a minute and that cold water is going to a change your chemistry for a long while afterwards and for the Better I believe. Yeah, once you get out, people forget this.

They like, I hate the called the the point is not how you feel like you're in IT. You can feel proud of how you navigate portion. Point is how you feel afterwards.

I feel old saying, why do you see yourself in in the hand with the handwork? Because I feel so good .

when you stop like that, like that. Spoken like somebody worked in new york city for a long time out here. We would always say something rydal ops alive.

Nia, that's not true anymore. I think it's been overrun by by other and a different ethos in any event. Thanks for sharing that because I think that we can separate the physical from the psychological right. I mean, we've been talking about the mental and fatigue status of the people who are negotiating with often times during this conversation. But then, of course, there's how you show up to the job. I mean, if you run down three days and you've been in a fight with your spouse and that's still in the back your mind and you're um and you're hungry, tired, sick, what you know um not connected to your firepower, all those things that there's no way you can be as effective at any job. So it's great to hear and not surprising to hear that you have bedrock practices that you you implement.

especially at interesting point. Almost everybody I knew that I was really good at anything they did for a living. They probably took pretty good care themselves.

Yeah, I agree. There's this. The language around self care get, I think it's really distorted. I'm an editorialized for a second here, I think IT. But i'm going to editorialize in line with what you just said.

You know, I think self care sounds like native gazing, where people think that it's all about self, but it's actually taking care of oneself so that we can show up Better for everybody else, more energy, more capacity, more staying power, to have those hard conversations with the people we care about and that move our life forward. So it's really refilling the the fuel tech in my mind as opposed to um the kind of egocentric ncc stic you know stance that a lot of people take towards that. And and I understand what they do.

You know people score through instagram a and they see people, you know self thing every every muscle and like in all this stuff in this. And i'm not disparage ging what people want to do, but at the end of the day, self care is about being more ready to do Better for the world. If you if your mission .

orient are completely.

do you think there's been a change in the FBI over the last three, forty years around that? I have this image of my mind of agents like sitting in cars for twenty hours, eating hog sandwiches, you know, and looking through monoculture and running themselves into the ground with you, like this kind of bulldog like persistence to get to solve the puzzle.

I mean, put differently, I imagine there were some negotiations that were very long and fatigue. So um did you recall one of the longer negotiations that you had? And how do you sleep at night midway through a hostage crisis?

Um so the largest one that I was I was directly involved in on almost stated day and our hour went about three each days. Washington, D. C. Two thousand and three started the second iraq war, guiding di watts, and rolled the track onto the mild c, claim the at four bombs. And he left four bombs scattered around the city.

Had he actually done matter, he was just called.

He was bluff. He was bluff. And he, he, and either, and start on the same. Patrick day can't interesting a cup.

You the thing in you said IT was in of the Philippines like national holiday.

Yeah how I right interesting for whole bunch of reasons. Now I I had to go home and go to sleep one night. And when we were in the middle that and then I wish es, I don't remember having trouble going to sleep because I felt like I did a good job um and we handed I handed the shift off to the other houses, negotiated the bureau's effectively a team leader of vince ff on so adventure bringing and negotiator so and the team that he was with know everybody was in good hands.

This manufact then almost kick me at the scene because I don't want to go and he just kept hand, go home gets and sleep, go home gets and lep. And finally five times that, I went home, so I felt like I was leave in things in really good hands. And when working kidnapping, we expect them to go for a long minutes of time.

Just kind of a if you have faith in the process and you feel like that you're doing the best that can be done, then I think you could sleep at night. Um I just to answer that question, you you have to be careful whether you're work in A A A case seed or anything in in the bureau. You don't run yourself into the ground.

And there was some cases are worth than the nineties where I mean, like weed knocked ourselves out like we would. We worked hearing, but we also saw but we occasionally we took time off to, you know, I work with guys and realized that sometimes you get to go out and have a beer kick back and blauw sustain. So I think everybody that I ever worked with, we're occasionally cautious enough to recharge the batteries.

And then in depend upon the nature of the chAllenge in front of you. I was a siege. E and saint Martin parish went six days. I don't think those guys got a lot of sleep, but the nature of those sieges, that particle type posy junin last five or six days anyway, you just got to gut IT out.

whether you ever instances where you just trying to keep the person on the lies so they can just read, you know.

I I never had to do that personally. You had to be prepared to do that from the very beginning of any siege that you might have to get some, you might have to orchestrate assault of some sort. I was fortunate enough early on of my training there's kind of a famous siege in, if you know, hostage negotiation history in london call the princess gate siege where um um a legende british houses negotiated.

David Venus had a bad guys on a phone while the sas was hidden, hidden a building. And remember that we were shown, like, look, there may become a time when you have to keep somebody on a phone when swat comes in, that goes with the territory. So expect that a possibility from the very beginning.

And IT was a great siege. The bad guy salem, the photos of him after he was shot, the phone is within his reach. David kept them on the phone.

I've heard the tapes. The breaching explosions were going on and slim says, I got to go, I got to go. There's suspicious noises and they've vent us in his classic british accent said, selling, there are no suspicious noises.

Now let's get back to talking about how many people are going on the bus to the airport then and and I went in and I caught up with David. A number years later, I had A F. I.

I had a presidential intern from the White house intern with me in the we're drinking in a bar with David Venus I got a lot of stories where I am drinking in a bar with somebody and in turn walk around everybody and tap David on the shoulder and he says, crisis, you kept the terrorist on a phone after the moment that the S A. S. Came in the door and David says, yeah, I had kept them on the phone even longer if the S A.

S. Had hadn't coming so soon. So why am I tell him that story? If you're gna get into that line of business, you're got to accept all the things to go with IT and realize that it's not you to made the decision somebody else did. You can implement the strategy.

Do you remember a case in screen tal where I think IT was a youth gang took over like an electronic store?

I remember .

I was a ID. The two things that rent that stand out of my mind from when I was a kid, one was the good guys with name .

of the electronic story.

right? Good guys was electronic store. And bad guys, so speak.

One in there of them hostage. And I must have been a kid. This must have been like A A or something like that. I remember that .

kids about the so as in seventy .

five so um and as I recall, they ended up opening fire on a bunch of hostages who were laying down on the ground. Is that right?

They they, they knew that they were getting ready to execute the hostages because they put bags over their heads, and that whenever the bad guys do anything to dehumanize a hostage, IT sees you to shoot somebody with a bag over their head. Then IT is not because you can see the face. And so the bad guys had begun that process, and they knew they needed to assault.

God forbid anyone should ever be taken hostage. I realize circumstances differ, but you just mention putting bags over their heads.

There's this notion of cheaper that you know people will describe post talk after something about how, you know, somebody walks into a building, tells people that, you know, put zip tize on their own ankles or are going to a back room that nobody resists and that in retrospect, CT had somebody caused a commotion, they might have caused enough of a commotion to either run out or be let go. And yet, of course, there's a very logical part of everybody's brain. I would hope that things, listen.

This person is an aggressor. There's a gun in my face. Don't be an eye t right? Because we also have heard of the case in new york city that read about this in the newspaper.

So presumedly it's true um where someone was held up a gun point in one of the women in the group that was held up. So what do you can do? Shoot us and the person shot them. So that happens to so you know I don't know there's a fair and safe answer to give people on this, but if you're told to do something by somebody and it's all happening in real time, I mean, you have to ask they want my money, my body, my life for some combination of the three in real time while under personally significant arrest but for hostages like if they if they disobey, cause a commotion, is that extending their life or is IT shortening their life? I guess it's very context dependent, right?

Um the only thing that I could, without knowing the context, anything you can do to humanize yourself and comply what the bag guys want increases your chance of survival. So let's say you got to order to to go to back room.

You could look at the hostage take and say, i'll do whatever you say, i'm Chris, you know, drop your name on them in a way so that you go from being a faceless person to somebody with the name that increases the chances to you survival, humanizing, whatever you can do to comply. Simultaneous ly become more of a human being because it's the upside of what I was talking about before. If you're easier to kill, if you've been dehumanized, you're harder to kill.

If you've been humanized, you're harder to harm like maybe they're not going to kill you. They just they are going to hurt you. They're less likely to harm you if they know your first name.

How do you as a host negotiate or if they if they talk about a hostage, how so you you know you mean, you mean shiller demand rax. I'll find a way to drop the person's name into the conversation so soon. If if you can human, I just buy bringing them to know your name increases the chances of survivability, crease the chances of being treated Better and comply. I'll, well, i'll do with every same. Chris is is going to start to move the ads in your favorite R.

You know that what you described extends to uh science. Um know i've talked before about my stance on animal research and um why I choose to no longer do IT. I do think that has its place in making important discoveries that cannot be made on humans, but that eventually extend to you don't want to do IT, I don't want to do a person.

I don't want to do IT, and I don't want to private worker, large kind of our workers kind of work work. But the point I was going to make is that when you do primate work, they strongly discourage, near forbidden from giving them names, right? They give .

numbers IT all .

falls in line with what you were talking about. Because the moment something has a name, IT moves from being a research animal to A A pet of sorts. And that makes IT a relationship, right? So interesting how a name turned something from a IT elevate something to a relationship.

However, in significant IT, it's up a notch, an entire empathy circuitry, which is perhaps the property segway. To talk about empathy. This is a topic that you spend long time. Again, you you mention tactical empathy documentation. By the way, when is that going to be out or do we have some sense .

my guesses we'll finish jump, throw all the hoops and probably have out at the beginning next year or um i'm currently working with one mos endear on a couple of different projects. They've been enormous ly supportive and we've asked for their guidance on how how to have the best time to get the documentation out and very happy with people are dealing with their and actually stroke of universe was looking out for me, funny size circumstances and just really enjoy with the people that are working with there. So probably first part of next year.

fantastic. What's your take on empathy? I think of empathy in the pop cultural sense of, you know, somebody's feeling pain and we feel their pain, but of course, employ extends wave beyond that. Yeah.

yeah, yeah. And that was roman lana.

Yeah, my college stanford. Yeah, I was.

I was really fascinated by the conversation you head with him on that recently. And so and he said, a lot of people use empathy, a lot of different ways sort of for their own meetings. So um my take on empathy taxi empathy also to keep your names out because people give me thoughts and I want to sort some that I am very close to Stephen cotler perspective on IT and Stephen to say empathy is about the transmission of information. Compassion is the reaction to the transmission.

I like that. And by the way, i'm a fan of Stevens work. I think I think he's quite a stood and a boy. Is he a hard work and he writes like a beast and is up at like four in the morning because like fifty az or something his way in the dogs yeah no you fit more to was in room and others gotchee Steven .

but yeah so um and and that was when I was with the F P. I was started collaborate and with harvard because the harvard definition um was empathy was not liking near the site IT was just demonstrating and understanding their perspective.

Baba u can spoke beyond winnings chapter the attention between empathy and a certain Venus he says the empathy is not agreeing disaggregation or even liking the other side, which sort of falls into what Stephen talked about is about the transmission of information. Now, empathy is very compassionate thing to do, but IT doesn't necessarily quite too compassion itself. If I, if I, if I let you know, if I make you feel hard by me saying to you what you're perspective on something is you're going to feel careful.

You're gone to feel understood. It's going to land with you really well. I don't necessarily have to feel compassion for you. I know it's a precursor to compassion. So I would separate IT from sympathy clearly, and I would even sympathy separate IT from compassion, although I know it's a very compassionate thing to do.

It's about tactical empathy is about me actively demonstrating verbally to you that I understand where you're coming from tactic from the experience and hoses negotiators backed by neal science, is that people largely react negatively. So the smarter move for me, instead of trying to reinforce a positive, is the first, deactivate the negative by simply calling IT out, calling the elephant room out. Don't deny the elephant.

Don't ignore the element. Call the elephant a rumour, say probably going to sound like i'm greedy. If I expect that you're going to think i'm overreaching, i'm not going to say I want you to think i'm greedy and I say it's probably going to same greedy.

So simply well educated, emotional intelligence influence, gun instinct influence on what the other side is, thinking and feeling. If I can define IT in that way, then IT becomes an unlimited skill. If IT requires me for to have compassion for you when I don't, then that limits my ability to use empathy.

And i'm not interested in having that ability to be limited. I wanted to be an unlimited skill. So if you just if you define its strict in terms of transmission of information, then it's not sympathy, compassion or liking or Green. IT has a very powerful effect. IT at least feels like compassion to the other side.

IT reacts with the emotional circuit uti the neurochemicals that everybody has to some degree, if they live, even if they're on this, the spectrum, they have some of that going on inside and of what i've read on, even even a mental illness. Uh, in my last century training I saw people who were paranoid. Giza hanc is effectively be more of a wiring problem and a chemical problem for for a layman's description and a lot of whatever reread said empathy.

You've been affected with pain or schizophrenic people, regardless of how to array the circuit tree in their head is it's uh IT helps them on some level to feel understood. So empathy is just about many somebody feel feel understood. Example, when I am more in terrorism, we had a lot of arab muslims testify an open civil court against A A legitimate and mum cleric who is also a criminal, also committed crimes.

And I would sit down with him, and I said one off the bed, because I know where they coming from. You believe that there has been a succession of american governments for the last two hundred years that have been antis, laming and IT looked at me and I go like, yeah, I never said I IT was true. I never said I reed and never said I disagreed by me, simply articulating what their perspective on the interaction was.

They were so started by IT. IT was empathy, and and we were so good at that empathy frequently. And in that time frame they would say, are you, are you muslim? And I say, no respect a religion, you know, if you need to know, you know, i'm a Christian, but I respect your religion and I I got no problems saying to you where you're coming from.

That's empathy from my definition. And then IT becomes an unlimited its girl. I don't have to feel IT.

I don't have to necessarily want to do anything about IT. You know, golden says as cognitive empathy, me just recognizing what your emotions are coming from. There's emotional empathy, me feeling your emotions and there's impair ic concern.

You want to do something about your distress. My version of tactic, empathy, probably bring those into play in sequence on a continuum of sorts, but none of them are precursors. IT is me showing to you that understand where you coming from? And IT has a phenomenally favorable impact on the interaction.

Tell me about mirrors as a tool.

Yeah, mirrors is one of the simplest, easiest and most effective of the skill that takes the least amount of brain power. It's just repeating one to three est words of what somebody y's just said can be one. You should never usually be more than five hostage negotiations learned that by repeating the last one to three words, as somebody yy just said, IT doesn't have to be the last one to three words.

And the mirror is not the body language mirror not mimicking anybody physically and it's not mimic their tony voice or their effect or anything bottom, it's just repeating one to three ish words. We found that accesses for whatever part of brain you uh that you going to energize to do IT. It's it's a different part of the brain than labelling.

People are usually good, really good at labelling, like a label almost run on my team label. S A lot sounds like this is bother you. Sounds like seems like you just not really sure where this is gone.

And the mirror, I got a consciously make IT a point to mirror and what's the mirror used for its in place of what did you mean by that? Or would you please go on or I don't understand, could you repeat that again so i'll listen for stuff that either I don't understand or I need you to talk more about? And instead of saying, could you say more about that, i'll just mirror the words.

Now, for whatever reason, IT connects the thoughts in your head, the message, the way that land is. I heard what you said, the words. I got the words because I just repeated them and I still don't understand.

So I need a more in depth explanation without using the same words that you used because if you say, um I think express EXO press ism is useless and I might say, what do you mean by that and you go, I saw practical m is useless SHE repeat the same words only latter you figure that saying a latter will make a penetrate micra ini um that has a work I need you to read, to explain, to go into more debt, to expand using different words. And for whatever reason, we found his houses negotiators that I find a business that if I mirror you, you'll expand and you'll connect. So it's I used IT in that context.

I might use IT to get you to hear yourself out loud. Like before you just said, doesn't make sense. I'll repeated backward for word, one to three words in all important flex. I'll say that that doesn't make sense. You use my tone, make a land with my tone, so you can hear yourself out loud.

Somebody else just pointed out to media the day that if you're talking to somebody and they're in mid thought and they kind of their voice trails off because they sort of lost the train of thought. If you mire them there, that helps them get their train to fight back and expand. So it's it's a ridiculously effective communication tool to get people to expand and feel heard.

Its simplicity put some people off. There are some people that say, yes, I sounds student. I don't see what good that will do.

I always notice if somebodies really wants to know about marrying. My description is, are both high I Q and high EQ. And why does that work? A hi I Q guys.

Gonna want to know something. It's really simple. IT doesn't take any effort to do, and that's what a mirror does. It's really, really effective. It's almost no effort on your part at all.

Interesting that I must say that neuroscience has a an unfortunate earth of knowledge out how brains interact. This is starting to change. But most of what we know about how brains work is from putting people into functional magnetic president imaging machines, so called them, and I exposing them to movies or games that they have to play at saturday, and then looking at brain state activation.

There are a few laboratory starting to look at how people interact in real time with both people in separate MRI machines that hopefully will be able apart some of this. And i'm certain that somebody hearing this will use this knowledge to go to the experiment, if not, run up the flag for some highly qualified people at stanford who who could do this, because be fun to see what's happening. But I have the sense that what's happening is that there is a real merge of cognition when one hears their own words, right spoken back to them that um you know you get now get two brains processing the same information and that has of lead new places.

So um I don't have any insight as to what exactly is happening, but um certainly that something is happening there, right evidence by the real world results that you're getting really tell us that um would be interesting to to see and learn a bit of what's happening. If there's a fusion, for instance, of a coctivor of emotional centers for activation of run. If there's something about hearing our own voice, there's very different than hearing other people's voices.

Most people cringe when they hear their own voice on recording, right? Most, not all, some people are in love with their own voice. We know these people, but we know that our auditory system cancels out the hearing of our own voice.

Did you know that as we're talking now, our auditory system is suppressing our own voice. We don't really hear ourselves speak the same way that when you speak, I here you speak yeah so it's an active na chemical inhibition of the response. And it's amazing too because as we grow up, our voice changes, purity and so forth.

And the other ways to that, the vocal course chAllenging thickness, is that. And our voice changes, but we always know self from other in terms of voice. And we cancel out our actual auditory perception .

of our own and .

breathing and heart beat. We shut down our response to self actively within the .

break as fascinating.

So maybe hearing back some of what we just said allows us to actually hear what we just said.

yeah, was true. And that's why people, sometimes all somebody needs a sounding board so they can, somebody else can hear, hear, they can hear themselves out and get a repeat back down, and then they go like way of them. I just say that yeah, interesting.

interesting, useful indeed. Proactive listening tell us about proactive listening. We're all told that we need to be Better listeners you know the we two years in one mouth as if that's going to remind us most people of two years in one mouth.

But I get the point they were saying, hey, there's value in listening and more often than not, we default to broadcast but no reception or mostly broadcast, let's reception, right? Hence the the call for natural breathing is useful in a lot of circumstances because IT keeps us IT keeps our mind. What is proactive listening? How do we do IT? What's a good for? I will be trying .

to get people out of the notion of active listening just because active listening has been so overused that people have lost track of IT and at most of us taught poorly and its interactive verse proactive.

And so we'd learned as hostess negotiators first, while just a label, the presenting emotion, and we just assume that and the presenting emotion was always anger of some form anger, ub said, a uncertain real instances the guy was under control, but they were almost always negative emotion. So we just assume that IT was a defined to what was uh confined to what was driving hosea checkers with negativity. Now, if I may cause I feel like and passed to talking about newer science to you.

your knowledge of neuroscience is, is, is spot on. Voss, I always say numerous times you ve asked me about things in the sciences. You've never been off the mark here. You clearly done your homework.

We are trying to learn about IT. But um layman's terminology, the survival brain is largely negative. Ball park, I would say seven, five percent negative.

Your reactions are gonna negative. So number one, I believe that's principally backed up by the experiments of neurosciences FM rice of use eluded to. And so then a hostage negotiation, we were taught to basically label representing emotion. And then i've seen experimental and reporting of experiments. I think the first time I read about IT was in a book called the output d spiralled.

And that book is a good ten years old, I think, which means, you know, the neurosciences evolving, but primarily the experiment there I remember reading about and read about in other places that if people were undergoing A A negative emotion in my uh lamon's parrys of the experiment that they shown a picture that induce the negative emotion in their head. And then he asked people to simply call out what the emotion was and when they self labelled, then the emotion diminished. Now the degree of diminishment varies, but the percent is the time that IT diminishes by simply by calling IT out is just darner all the time.

So for largely seventy five percent negative and we can deactivate the negativity by calling IT out. Well, let's be proactive. If you're human being and were engaged in a negotiation, there's going to be a certain very predictable negativity that's going to be there. And I should be practicin calling, IT out, anticipating the negativity gonna be there based on the circumstances is highly predictable. And you got instinct before you referred to.

When you want to say, look, I don't want you think of being greedy, you gets telling you it's highly predictable, you're going to come off as greedy so let me be practicing say it's probably onna seem like i'm being greedy and that's the dying over to what is eminently predictable in the interaction and just being proactive to deactivate the negative emotions that either are taking place or what our experiences found that I have not seen any science that is yet. That is at the opportunity. The back is up and initiates.

I can create a barrier if I call out a negative that's not there. IT doesn't plant IT. IT actually inoculate you from IT if and i've done this in practice, i've was given a lecture a couple years ago.

Anybody ask a question? I try to find the value in the question, no matter how bad the question is. This poor guy asked me a question that I just cannot find a single component in this question that demonstrate he was listening or paying attention.

There was nothing about IT that I can congratulate him on. And so I said, this kind of sound harsh because I know the answer i'm getting ready to give them is going to make IT sound like to the group that I think he's stupid. I just I can think of a way to respond to this without saying effectively like what do you think in about that? Got nothing the world talking about.

So I go, this is going to sound ask, and I answer the question and this kind of goes, okay. And I start answered somebody else question and he goes, that was in harsh. Now, if I hadn't said this is gonna sound harsh and answer the question, I guarantee you my answer would have embarrassed him.

An embarrassment is one of the worst negative emotions you can inflict on anybody, and he would hate me to this day for embarrassing him. So I got a moment coming at me that is predictably negative, and I can let that, I can let that train run me down, or I can call out out in advance and get a reaction where the guys is. I wasn't a band. And that would be more proactive about the emotions is about I love IT.

And i'm recalling an instance to in graduate score, my graduate advisor, who sadly has passed away but was a phenomenal scientist, I mean, just pure, insist on game the answers could emotionally detach from the answers. She's just was was a ninja.

She's to come into the laboratory when we're working on a paper and shit, sit down and sh'd say, you're onna hate me for what i'm about to ask you to do and I think, oh no, I can have to redo all the analysis or I want like some thing and then you say you gotta change that like fought and figure too, my god, like what you mean, how to age you but was release. But I wanted nothing more than to make her happy with my work, because I respect the standard that SHE held so so greatly. You could have asked me to, you stand on my head and do the experiments fifty times.

I would probably would have done IT. I thought they would make the project Better. And as a consequence, he would been pleased, because SHE was the standard for me, and in many way still is. But I wonder if you read your book because she's to present this request with, like you're gonna hate me and then he asked me for on me and all I hate you like that's nothing but now I wonder if if I would have been taken back if he had just said, um you know um hey, by the way, figure to needs redoing I might have been kind of brissel by that so may be you read your book case these are great tools, mirrors and proactive listening. And thank you for sharing this course.

Did you ever employ the family members of kidnappers, friends of kidnappers as a means to um tap into a different aspect of their psyche? Because I think that we are all as human beings, very context driven. So I can imagine that the person who kidnap somebody or whose trying to steal somebody's resources is in a particular group of a person. And and I I do think there are people in the world who are just evil. But I also know, because i've read about IT and I trust the sources, that there are people who have done horn as things who love their dog and genuinely love their dog and won't harm and animal but i'm not trying to give these people a pass but I could imagine that um those other facts to somebody represent really good entry points for allowing them to see the kind of inconsequent in their behavior or is that the case that when these are high stress situations that you just have to basically you you have to attack the, you know, disarm the aggressor and you're just focusing on the person as the bad actor, not considering the other context of their lives.

right? So they draw distinction between hastain takers and IT contain situation and um kidnappers uncontained unknown location. So you're probably asking about somebody to contain situation. A bad guys in a bank do I Watson in in a tractor in washington, D C.

So very kind of intrusively if they going to contain situation, there's a saying out there says the system that you're employee is protecting designed to give you the outcome that you have. So bad guy White watton is on his tracor and dc, the family's part of the system that put him there. The bullet, harsh reality of that is now at that siege that went all long enough, and IT was so high profiles some of his family members showed up.

Now we can, we could and and did try to use them. I can. I'm working from one place to another from the negotiation Operation, uh, cell component on the way to command post houses. Negotiate me a couple of people with them, Watson's family, and they see i'm in a hurry and then i'm not interested to being stopped and they have got to say to me something to stop me, get my attention and I go to look, our brother's just hurt in his heart. He's just hurting, you know, things i've gone bad for our whole family and he just heard in his heart, don't kill him over that.

And I looked at the negotiate and I said, get that on tape and we'll play that for him because if we can get that on ted exactly the way they said at vattel land, but if we put him on a phone with them, they are going to try to reason with them and they are going to say stuff to him. They didn't help, which they don't very well intention, but it's gona be kind of intuitive and it's probably going to make a worse. So you have to understand family can be extremely important if you get him to say exactly the right thing.

And it's probably going to need to be highly orchestrated because you know how it's going to land. And unfortunately, think if you get to in a direct conversation, it'll probably renewed old wound. Our family members have heard each other in ways that they have no idea even happened. And so the other, you know, family member, my son, that is, day remembers when I told him sana clause wasn't real and I had know that I have no memory position, family of each .

other over the years.

that they have no idea which comes up in his live conversations. And you don't know what what wounds, you don't even know what wounds are there that you cost. And so in in a contained situation, a family member can be extremely helpful. But IT has to be it's it's a surgical shot that you have to be really, really, really careful with. Otherwise you can go the other way because wounds that people don't .

even know there is a psychologically a stute way of viewing IT because i'm a big fan of the family systems model of psychology. And you can't look at any human being psychology, positive meaning, adaptive formal adapter psychology, and not look at the family system which that evolved, which is not today, that some privately healthy families occasion don't have issues with a child having mental illness and and I think that happens, but i'm told that ninety nine point nine percent of the time you can identify a family system organization or a lining age of genetic tire, ta that that makes things start to make sense when somebody's really struggling, right? And as you point IT out, sadly, often time is said, dead involves pains of past.

Oh, what things are sharing that? Because I think that in my mind, the movie version of IT is they bring the mother and and it's like, Billy don't do IT no. And then then, as you said, might like that might be the time when Billy is really gonna let his mother know, you know, child is sucked for ability, right? And that's how what you want. And guinness, what a complex jab.

What are complex, high stakes, high consequence job? What did you do to unload some of the heaviness? And i'm not just starting about getting good night sleep or having A A beer with your co workers after although those things you important roles for people I realized, you know do you think we can dump the heart stuff in our head, in our hearts in a way that you know allows us to be functional because you know, people in your line of work, and I think just anyone in the world you live long and if you're you're gone to experience .

loss yeah you're going to get kicked .

in in the gut yeah and you're going to see people what you care about get kicked in the gut that there is so much beauty to life as well but but that's the reality. So did you do you have tools, processes that you used to can dump the baggage that you can lean in your relationships, in your relationship to yourself with with restored sense of optimism?

Um yeah I think mostly mostly people that i've always worked around a wave been very reinforcing of one another comedic motioning friendship wise, you being able to laugh with each other, taking IT easy on each other, people you know laughter um and genuine understanding without you know somebody trying to tell that you did wrong.

I've been lucky enough to define myself in those groups most of the time or we we just evolved that just a way that we were we were attracted to one another um emotionally, psychologically because of that. That's probably IT mostly. I mean, i've tried to person of these emotions out recently, like i'm not particularly proud of anything i've ever had done, but I always felt like he was a privilege, like you must be a proud of accomplishments.

I don't know that it's pride, but there's there's other satisfaction that I get out of IT. And so thinking about what drives me also now, you know, that are running the company and and I get people also entrepreneurs that are trying to do the best for their employees. You know, what do we encourage in one another so that whatever we're doing, people feel good about IT. And I tried to take a lot of that from what I learned is an fb agent and a host negotiated and the people that I was around and you know we did joke with each other lot and we did um play tricks on each other, you know, good, good nature, humor. Avoid the people that are running you down but be able to take some good nature ribbing every now then and and I think humors is a one way another combined with hard work and appreciation for what you're doing um has probably been most of the mental health along away the casion a buran love IT we did a whole .

episode on alcohol and so people we're going to hear me say love IT and think away here i'm supporting out listen the data say as long as you're not alcoholic, as long as you are of age, probably ly two drink so a week as or less is safe. Make make good high quality drinks if you're going to have them, consume them in the right context or don't consume.

But but that's why I said love IT I support your your love of burbo i'm not burbling drink IT but tell me a little bit more about what you're up to lately. You eluted to IT a moment ago that you're running teams. That are doing a lot.

So you're you're in charge a lot of people now helping people, help people, providing lot of service in the world through a lot of different channels. First of all, I want to say that your book never split the difference. One of my favorite ite books, thank you.

I don't say that likely I don't endorse books very often, but the books I do endorse, I love, love, love. I also have to say that is a top between your book never split the difference and the body keeps the score for the award for best titles of any book. Those just like amazing titles, amazing.

amazing titles code came up with the title was that .

in the body keeps keeps the score just like because there's so much contained in in the title and then the book exceeds the expectations. So really amazing. But people should listen to IT read IT if they haven't already.

You're doing a lot more right now than then just writing, although I want to hear about your other book projects as well. But before you list off the number of things you're doing, tell me first about fireside because this sounds like a really interesting um endeavor that Frank lavin heard of before. Um what's fireside brain?

New social media platform um it's essentially in an interactive podcast. It's a subscription service. Found a by felon pattern and mark cuban family I ve been friends for a number years. He was google's Youngest employee. She's an entrepreneur dynamics smart, hard charge in person. And it's sort of grew out of what's inadequate in some of the social media apps that are out there um trying to combine the best ideas of a few different things and found suggested to me and I thought i'll jump in because she's a visionary. And what is turned out to be is is effectively weakly interactive group coaching.

And do you get the APP off your iphone or your android, whatever platform your phone is on and then you log in? We do an hour once a week and it's you're getting group coaching and then you can ask questions and it's got a video component to IT. So if you want to ask a question, we're going to bring you up on, quote, stage and I get to see you and talk directly to you, and you got to see me and talk directly to me, or I interviewed my cube in a couple of weeks, go, and people got to come on and ask more questions or ask me questions.

And what IT is turned out to be as is one of sort of uh the the the next level of how to get Better in negotiations. After you ve read the book and probably taken the master class, you know, where do you go next? One of the people that came on the podcast here the day the the fireside episode, they said, well, I do not have enough money yet to go to your in person training events because those are expensive and this is i'm gonna get Better in the in the meantime and and worked my way in that direction.

And so the monthly coaching, if you were to sign up for group coaching from us on a regular basis, on a monthly basis, IT would probably easily cost you for what we're providing twenty five, thirty thousand hours a month. And this is a thousand a year. So at scale, it's an opportunity. Interact directly with me and the members on my team once a week in a group coaching and and it's just kind of fun. We're going na kick out of IT and people that really, really care about interacting well with people.

Guy comes on the first episode I did, and he said, besides the fact that you help me make a lot more money, you help me save my marriage and he just needed know how to talk more genuinely and honestly with his wife in a way that matter felt heard, and he didn't really have a good way to do that beforehand. And I was just like. That's a lot.

I I don't know how to respond to that and then just be grateful that people can say up like that to us. So the fireside thing is kind of cool. We're still experimenting with IT. It's an interactive podcast group coaching. It's fun.

great. I mean, I would say you change in lives there. I mean the saving marriages and know is no small deal. And I think that the ability to communicate um directly with people also imagine gives them the opportunity to implement that, the tools that you're providing in real time, one thing to hear about something and try IT, but then you can get feed back in real time. Are you on these these fireside chats directly or members of your team?

I do. We do one every week and I want some month. And the other thing too, like I can explain something one way and if for whatever reason, IT doesn't land in your context, you can't quite get IT. So that's what we found about the interactive nature of that.

Somebody comes on and ask a question in their context and then i'll answer IT go like, oh OK are that helped? So you you get to hear people like you who are struggling with the the way you are. But I haven't put IT in your context yet. And that's the other thing that's great about A Q N A live q and a.

We had a guest on here who told me that there are amazing data supporting the fact that people follow the medical and health advice of doctors that they can relate to far more than they follow the medical and health advice of physicians that they feel aren't like them um and often times this can include the physician or health care provider being someone that they would aspire to be like.

But often times it's just some common report like they both like baseball or they would like to cook or a garden and that sets a bridge where then the patient is willing to do all these things that ordinary they would be resistant to, right? And and there are really good data to support this. And I that really stuck with me, says that it's it's not just about the information or the the delivery route of the information that the context and the reports even along something is like a you eo, but not a major, major sports fan of most things but you know like got your bills fan or something like me too. Like that can be the difference between somebody doing all the things to lower their Brown pressure the day and changing their diet of all those things versus is not making the changes.

All report is a magic, yet kind of a magic component that changes every well.

fireside tells like a great opportunity for people to not just ask questions, but to build report with you and members of your teams. So i'm going to check IT out, lord and I, I need help improve my communications and certain domains of life. Leave me.

I get the memo. fact. What other writing projects are .

you involved in? If any? We've been toying with this uh, companion uh, Operations manual for tactical empathy, which getting IT right is important.

So it's sort of a campaigning book and never split the difference. It's probably at least a year and a half out from being done. So in the meantime, we just do we do a lot of online training.

You know, we we got a newsletter we put out weekly for people to get our latest cutting edge application thoughts as much as possible. We have put an information out that we charged for a lot, and we put out a lot of free stuff. You i'm run out ideas on instagram, but we're constantly trying to put information out there so that so that people can collaborate Better.

So specific, we just finish a book for residential real estate agents. A friend of mine, Steve, show. We put that out last november.

That's sort of nishi, but it's mostly the black sone method for real state agents because every conversation they're in is that difficult emotional conversation. Sell of the houses, one of the most stressful moments of anybody's life, sell on our buying. So we just put that out in the meantime, you know where spread as as much as possible.

We certainly point out the various places people can find you and in the different venues for for learning more. I wanted to say that numerous times without today's conversation, you throughout the words sounds like as an opener. And I have to say, I have this kind of crazy idea in the back of my mind. And I believe that simple, fiel tested tools are immensely powerful, not just for resolving negotiations, but really for changing the way that people interact with each other and themselves.

And if I have one wish, uh, for the world, uh, on the basis of our conversation, how amazing would I be if kids learned early on to talk to one another from that sounds like perspective, because I think that would naturally leave orient them to our listening, right, or at least offering a hypothesis of what they heard and how poorly they might be listening, and then getting a defensive stance response that informs them about the accuracy, or lack of accuracy, and on and on. I feel like that that sounds like question, sounds like you feel blank or sounds like you believe like just seems to me like that like one of the one of the most potent tools in the universe. And I sure wish that all adults would implement IT, but that kids would learn about IT too.

Yeah, yeah, that's that's a great thought. You know, how how do we teach him at a Young rage that that listening is actually an effective thing to do, actually way to think things through also? So I yeah agree. I mean, we magic want right .

exactly. Well, Chris, I want to thank you so much for your time today. I you've joined us on this tour of so many different facets of your work prior and present and you you let us get a glimpse into the the portal of your future work too, which i'm usually awaiting. I also just wanted thank you for everything that you do. You always struck me as such a giver of knowledge and um you know you you can't put a value on that. You're constantly putting knowledge into the world on instagram, your book um fireside and courses and on and on clean from your experience in very, very intense circumstances but really with an eye toward people getting the most out of that for their their daily lives, which hopefully don't involve hostage and negotiations unless there are hostage to negotiator. So I just want to say um thank you ever so much for what you do and for being such a phenomenal communicator and also thank you for doing into that late night fd j voice.

Know I I wanted to be a here sitting with you being interviewed on your podcast. I first discovered you. Thank you. So where years ago, it's probably to be here really, really. And I love what you're done in getting actionable, usable tools into the world so people can navigate more effectively.

Thank you. Right back at you.

Come back again. alright. thanks.

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Chris voss. I hope you found IT to be as interesting and as actionable as I did to find links to Chris s. Website and to his excEllent book and never split the difference as well as to as social media handles. Please see the links in the showing te captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please describe to our youtube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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