#27 Chris Voss: The Art of Letting Other People Have Your Way
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Welcome to the Farnham Street Podcast called The Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish, the curator behind the Farnham Street blog, which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you like this show, you'll love the website and our weekly newsletter.

The Knowledge Project allows me to talk with interesting people to uncover the frameworks you can use to learn more in less time, make better decisions, and live a happier, more meaningful life. On this episode, I have Chris Voss, the former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator. This dude has literally been face-to-face with a range of bad people. Chris wrote Never Split the Difference, which is how I first came across his work and was introduced to him.

This interview will take you inside the world of high stakes negotiations, showing you the skills that helped Chris become so successful when everything was on the line. These are the tools and tactics you can use to be more persuasive in your personal and professional lives. Enjoy the conversation.

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I have to ask, how did you end up becoming a hostage negotiator? Like, was this something that you dreamed of as a kid? Not at all. Not even remotely. Becoming an FBI agent to start with was a bit of an accident. I wanted to be in law enforcement. I never thought about the FBI. And...

My father encouraged me to think about federal law enforcement because he had paid for a college degree and I went out and got a job that only required a high school education. There's nothing wrong with that. I became a police officer, but finding out about federal law enforcement, Secret Service specifically, Secret Service guy said, I traveled all over the world. I thought, hmm, I've barely been out of Iowa. That sounds like not a pretty good idea.

Ended up with the FBI as a result. And then I was I had a recurring knee injury. I'd done some martial arts in college and to try to make myself more physically capable.

and had hurt my knee in college and was on a SWAT team with the FBI and re-injured my knee again. And then instead of completely blowing it out, I still wanted to be in crisis response. I knew we had hostage negotiators. I didn't know what they did. I figured, you know, how hard could it be? I talked to people. I could talk to terrorists. How hard could that be? I mean, I literally thought that, you know? Yeah.

Uh, so, you know, my, my son, my son likes to joke. It's a boss fan. One of the unofficial boss family models is how hard can it be, which is the, you know, almost, but not quite the redneck equivalent of, Hey, watch this. So, uh, but I got into hostage negotiation and it was, uh,

By accident, it was what I was built for. And I loved it. And negotiation in general, I love, you know, real good negotiation is real good emotional intelligence. And I like taking a deep dive into people and connecting with them. Were you ever scared? No. Well, you know, we hostage negotiators don't get shot over the phone. No, but I mean, the consequences of success or failure in negotiation can be huge. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I think that lucky, the thing, I started out training on a suicide hotline. And I went to the hotline initially because I was told that I had to do it to become a negotiator. So I went there for mercenary reasons. I went to learn. And, of course, your success rate in anything is higher as soon as you sort of forget about failing and focus on learning. And so since I was there to learn, I got a tremendous confidence and a process to

I didn't realize it, but I was learning a concept that my former boss, Gary Nessner, used to always tell us. There's no guarantee of success, but what we guarantee is the best chance of success.

which carries an implied possibility that there might be some stuff here that's out of our control. And so with those elements and a great reliance on a process, no, I was never scared of having things go wrong. Now, that doesn't mean that I wasn't involved in situations where we could see it was going to go wrong. And I worked a few cases like that, kidnappings, where all the earmarks were there for

It going bad because we were that was part of our training to be to be able to recognize the profile of those, you know, the profile of circumstances and facts and then to do what you could to try to head it off. But you got to know a train's coming at you to get out of the way of that train. And there were a few things that went bad. There's nothing you could do about that.

I want to go back to that hotline that you worked on. There's an interesting story in your book about your first performance review. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, that was great. I mean, that was because negotiation skills are perishable and you don't know. They erode invisibly. You get done with your training and if you go through good training, you're sharp. I mean, you're on it. You know you're on it. You know you're very sharp.

And you don't know that it's perishable. So I finished my training. I remember I was sharp because I was a bunch of people that were all sharp and the training was good. And a year later, I had no idea how many bad habits I picked up. And I get the annual review where a supervisor listens in, Jim, who was this really great guy, upbeat guy. And I had the person on the line actually say,

My habits were so bad that the person congratulated me for doing a great job, which of course I didn't realize that was a bad sign. And I remember walking back to the room to interact with Jim and

And he was like, hey, man, that was horrible. I remember thinking like, are you kidding me? Did you did? And I said, did you just hear that guy? He I was I was so good. He congratulated me for being good. And Jim said, yeah, well, let's start there. And what's wrong with that and how far off base you are if they say that?

And I was like, wow. And he was right every step of the way. And it was at that point that I kind of took, you know, I rededicated, took a deeper dive. I wanted to get better. I didn't, I don't want to get worse. I wanted to get better. As a practitioner of this for so many years, what would surprise people the most or perhaps, I mean, what surprised you the most about how real life negotiation works versus the way that we think it works or the way you thought it worked before you got into this line of work?

Well, if you let the other side go first, it'll take less time. You know, we used to I had a judge in a federal trial that had a great saying. He says, we're going to delay things in order to save time. And we think in the most direct route, you know, let me just tell you what I want so you can give it to me like that's the most direct route.

And it's a mess. I mean, that going in direct is a really bad idea. It just creates so much. It creates chaos. You know, Covey's we think that Stephen Covey seek first to understand, then be understood the seven habits of highly effective people.

I mean, I always just, maybe my perspective's wrong. I always thought of Covey as this warm and fuzzy nice guy. You know, seek first to understand then be understood as a mercenary's tool. I mean, if you want to get to your outcome faster, let the other side go first. It'll take a lot less time. You don't waste time spinning your wheels or you don't waste time arguing or you don't waste time at point counterpoint. And I think most people don't realize that. They don't understand the tremendous amount of power

of letting the other side go first, not the least of which is it takes less time overall. Are there downsides to letting the other side go first? You know, only if you take yourself hostage.

What does that mean?

And you know it, well, then letting the other side go first because of your ego issues is your ego weak. If your ego is weak, don't let the other side go first. But if there's any strength whatsoever in your position, your ego, your ability to learn, your ability to get a better deal, you got to let the other side go first. It's information. You're operating in the dark otherwise.

How do you step outside of your ego? Like, did you have techniques in the FBI where you were able to do this easily? Or is this something learned over time? You know, as soon as you learn that it's the best way to go. I mean, and then, you know, there's a couple of techniques. You know, one technique is you're really focused on using your radar or your sonar or whatever metaphor, your gut instinct, your intuition, right?

If I'm really focused on what emotions are driving you, there's an instant compartmentalization that takes place where my negativity is no longer going to get in my way. I mean, just in genuine curiosity is a hack for emotional control. If I'm genuinely like I'm genuinely curious as to why you're crazy. You know, that's that's that's one instant hack. There's a variety of instant hacks.

I will use my tone of voice intentionally because I can I can also hear my tone like on a suicide hotline I learned really early on the soothing calming tone Calm the other side down, but you know there's there's a reason why if you talk to yourself sometimes you're actually smarter if you talk out loud in a soothing calming voice and

That voice comes out of your mouth. It goes through the air, comes back into your ear. It hits your mirror neurons. It calms you down. So if you say to yourself out loud, not internally, but if you say to yourself out loud, you know, you got this. You got this. I got this. I can do this. You can actually calm yourself down. That's another hack. I came to rely on a process and knew how good the process was early on. So I just thought, look, let me let me lay my process on you. I'm going to get my way.

So there's a variety, you know, depending upon which one of those you stumble over early on, then yeah, you can teach yourself to keep your emotions under control. In the book you mentioned, there was three, I think, three different types of voices. The one you just gave us was the FM DJ kind of voice. Yeah.

The late night FM DJ. Can you give us an example of the other two and how the tone and pitch is different? Well, you know, the assertive voice is a direct and honest guy. You know, just here's what I want. Give it to me. If you think of and the world breaks up pretty much evenly into thirds. It's from our caveman days. It's fight, flight, make friends, response to threat. We either fight it, we run from it, or we make friends with it.

And the world really does pretty evenly split up into thirds. And so about a third of the planet's a direct and honest. That's my natural type. You know, I'll say, look, I could be mean to you because I'm a jerk or I could be mean to you because I just don't know any better. Or I could be mean to you because I hate everybody or I could be mean to you because I hate you specifically.

If I explain it to you like that then then your reaction is like well you sound like a jerk And I don't care why you don't like me. Yeah, you know the direct and honest voice. I once had a An FBI hostage negotiator when I was just talking to him in my natural normal tone of voice He said dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick That's what their direct and honest voice does if you think of yourself as a direct and honest person you

And you're just trying to get your point across. You're so blunt that it obscures your message. Right. So that's the direct. And then the fight, flight, make friends. The flight guy is a late night FM DJ voice. He's the guy that thinks that like, you know, it's stupid to fight. Let me let me get let me get far enough away where I could be safe. And then I'll then I'll rethink this.

And then there's make friends. And that's a person who naturally smiles when they speak to you. And I just like talking to you. And when I speak to you, I mean, I just enjoy it. I'm really happy to speak to you. I'm happy to be in your podcast. And if I smile, you can hear it in my voice. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, even every now and then I had one of the hostage negotiators on the team in New York, a guy named Charlie Baldwin. And Charlie was a natural accommodator. You know, we'd walk into a bar and

that we'd never been in before. Maybe we're someplace, you know, working a case. We'd never been there before. Walk into the bar, Charlie would walk around and literally introduce himself to everybody in the bar one at a time. And he'd just walk up and say, hi, I'm Charlie. And he'd smile at people. And when we were in hostage negotiations, Charlie would write a note on the board that said, smile. They can feel it in your voice. And it was very powerful. And Charlie broke down more barriers just by smiling at people.

How should we prepare to go into a negotiation? Well, it's impossible to know everything going in to start with. And it's a lot faster to hear it from the other side. So prepare to be genuinely curious, you know, like and tell yourself, you know, that's a pretty cool stuff here. If I can if I can just find out what it is.

So, and that's part of letting the other side go first. Some people say negotiation is the art of letting the other side have your way. You get the other side talking and you're very collaborative. You find a way to gently say no to the bad stuff. Like, how am I supposed to do that? It's a great way to say no to something bad. How am I supposed to do that? And the other side feels very collaborative. They feel a lot of collaboration there.

They feel very powerful and they're more likely to throw out some more options and then when they throw out an option that suits you you know the best phrase is

To close a deal is for you to say, that was brilliant. Let's do that. Right. So you just get them talking until they throw something out that works well for both of you. And the real issue with any deal is implementation. It's not agreement. Yes is nothing without how. I can give you fake yeses all day long and you're never going to get what you wanted.

That's why you want it to be the other side's idea because they'll implement more effectively and with fewer reminders and fewer follow-up if the implementation was their idea. That's where the real time saver is or where the profit killer is in bad implementation or even a deal that never gets implemented. We were in competition for a negotiation contract with one of the major telecommunications companies

And through the process of that, found out that fully 50% of the deals they sign never get implemented. Half of their signatures. Talk about they're killing themselves on implementation. I mean, they are destroying their profit over bad implementation or even not even implementing at all. So yes is nothing without how. And it's one of the great things.

toxic waste dumps of profit eating microbes out there. Wasn't getting to yes based on that whole principle? You know, it is. And, you know, one of the biggest differences between getting to yes and my book, Never Split the Difference, is getting to yes is intellectually sound. There's nothing intellectually to be challenged on getting to yes.

And unfortunately, that does you no good as soon as you involve human beings because none of us are intellectually sound. You know, we're all driven by emotion and passion and emotional intelligence. If we'd have known as much about specifically articulating emotional intelligence like we do now as we did when Getting to Yes was written, I think that would have been a different book.

And I met Roger Fisher back in 2004 when I went through – when I first started collaborating with Harvard Law School. And Roger Fisher was both brilliant intellectually and actually emotionally intelligent, incredibly emotionally intelligent. But they wrote an intellectual book, and that's where it falls down.

One of the key ideas out of there was BATNA, the best alternative to negotiated agreement. The idea that you consider the worst case opportunity in any negotiation. Is this an idea you found useful or do you agree or disagree with that in practice? You know, again, intellectually brilliant idea in practice, a horrible idea.

And it came – it was much easier for me to come to accept that because as a hostage negotiator, what's my BATNA? Are we walking away? Do I say to the bank robber, well, I'm not giving you a plane, so we're leaving. There ain't no BATNA in hostage negotiation. So as soon as I got – I was never handicapped by BATNA. It's a great handicap. Here's the problem with BATNA.

That becomes your goal. And so therefore, if you say to yourself, and the vast majority of people who calculate their BATNA, you know, as long as I do better than my worst alternative, as soon as I get past that, I'm good and I can quit. Right. Which leaves massive amounts of money on the table. Problem one. Problem two. What happens if you don't have a BATNA? If you believe you have to have a BATNA to negotiate, then you've immediately taken yourself hostage and you're done. Yes.

You say, oh, my God, the other side has all the leverage and the power. I've got no legitimate BATNA. We're hostages here. You take yourself hostage. If you could just let BATNA go entirely, then it doesn't matter. And that puts you in a much better mindset and mind frame in so many different ways. So BATNA, which is this intellectually sound idea, I know what they were trying to do.

They were trying to help people calm down in negotiations by being able to say to themselves, well, if it doesn't work out, I've got a reasonable alternative. Right. The practical implication of that, and even one of my colleagues who's really a business negotiator with hostage negotiation background said,

He made all the Harvard people really angry because he used to call it not BATNA but WATNA, the worst alternative to negotiating an agreement. And he said, you know, let's start – because he hated it like I did. And they got so mad at him. They said, there is no WATNA. It's only BATNA. But he was trying to point out what a bad idea emotionally that was and how many problems that it created as a result. Wow.

What are the other bad recommendations you hear in your profession that are practiced even by practitioners? Well, you know, there's a couple subtle ones. And, you know, one of the first one is this, you know, you got to go first. You got to anchor high. And, you know, in practice, that interferes with collaboration if you anchor high. It's basically it's starting out by not telling a truth.

It's defining it as a win-lose scenario. And it's also taken a risk of leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table. One of my favorite stories was because we never taught high anchoring. But one of my students in Georgetown, he decides he's going to go for a job interview. He's going to high anchor. He's making about 85K at the time. And he wants a nice big jump. And he wants to anchor at 110. That's what he's after.

And on the way to the interview, his father's telling him, he's like, "You know, that's a huge jump. You're talking about, think of the percentage jump. That's $25,000 in terms of percentage. You're going for too much." And he's like, "I'm determined. I'm going to go after it. I'm going to throw out the number 110." So they go into the interview and they say, "You know, what are your salary expectations?" And he puffs himself up and proudly says, "110, 110." And he negotiates the deal and they go, they give in. They give him the 110.

So he's on a job after a couple of months and he's talking to a colleague hired at the same time, same basic pay grade. And he says to the guy, he says, you know, what do you think are – his colleague says to him, what do you think are of our compensation? He says, well, look, I got news for you. I negotiated my own deal.

And this guy says, you're getting paid more than 125? You know, you can imagine a guy's heart stopping. And I'll give you another example. One founder of a business here in Los Angeles negotiated with another founder. I'm coaching. She wants to pull 10% of her business. She wants the other side to give an additional 10% to give to her husband because her husband's really helping out. So if you wanted 10%, you were going to high anchor.

You know, what are you high anchor with? Twenty five, maybe being willing to settle at 10. She doesn't high anchor. She comes in with an emotional intelligence approach that she learned from me, which is she starts a conversation by saying, I've got a lousy proposition for you, which is enormously disarming. I mean, and you and you say that and you shut up.

And she ended up with a third of the business for her husband. In the back of the book, you go through a negotiation. I think you call it a negotiation one sheet. Can you walk us through that? Yeah. You know, first of all, you know, take a take a completely truthful version of what are the facts and circumstances that brought us here to get today? You know, don't put any spin on it from your side. You know, a summary, summary of the facts, just the facts, man.

And not because, say, something like, well, we're the smartest people that ever lived. And if they had any sense, they should be doing business with us. That's not a summary of the facts. You know, and really drive for a summary that the other side would agree is true. Again, the no spend zone is real hard. But try not to do it without any spend. And so then start to look from emotionally intelligent. What are the crazy, wacko, bizarro things?

schizophrenic reasons, fears that the other side might have in the back of their mind about us. And a lot of this is really counterintuitive, but if you're a bigger company than they are, then a fear that they might have in the back of their mind is that you're going to bully them or that they see you as bullies. So take the circumstances and if you were a neutral third party, what are the fears the other side might have? And lay out what those fears are because fear gets in the way of deals and

anyway from three to nine times more than benefits make deals. You know, there's an interesting stat out there that says 70% of the buy decisions are made more to avoid loss than to accomplish gain. So think of the reasons why they wouldn't do business with you first. And that's real hard because we're so used to selling ourselves and our value proposition.

that nobody ever spends any time thinking about why they wouldn't do business with us. That's going to be the deal breakers. That's where they're going to be. And you've got to eliminate deal breakers before you can make deals. You cannot leave landmine deal breakers out there. And I think most people are taught over and over and over in business, what's our value proposition?

which is very one-sided point of view of things and takes into account in no way, shape, or form what the deal breakers are. And that's why with that telecommunications company I was telling you about, 50% of their deals never get implemented because they're not paying any attention to deal breakers, and that's how costly that is. Imagine having a signed deal that you think was going to go and have half the time have that thing turn into a train wreck. How much money does that cost you? You don't even have to make any better deals.

You just have to not have 50% of them go in the tank. And they're going into the tank over deal breakers. Now, if you have an effective summary of the facts that the other side would agree to,

If you thought about their paranoid reasons for not doing business with you, which is where the deal breakers are, now you're ready to talk. Is that when you do the acquisition audit or the labels? Accusations audit. Yeah, exactly right. Now you're ready to lead into what are their potential accusations against us. Okay.

And the depth of how deep you go into that. I mean, that's how we start out with. And we're also going to think about the reasons why they would make the deal with us. And it's a sequencing issue. You've got to get rid of the negative before you can go to the positive. Sometimes the negative, getting rid of it will be so powerful that you don't even have to pitch the positive because the other side is going to go ahead and pitch it for you.

So what are the accusations they might make? And if you're a bigger company than they are, you might want to say, like, I'm sure we seem like bullies. You take the negatives and you articulate them in a very specific structure that we call labels. We're just calling it out. You know, you're calling out the elephant in the room.

I'm sure we seem like bullies. I'm sure it looks like one cooperative. I'm sure we seem like we're not paying attention to what you're really after. You know, whatever. It looks like we're trying to push you around. If there's if there's reason to think that there's plenty of baggage there.

For example, if you're in real estate, you don't have to be a genius to know that every buyer and seller of a house, they all say to each other, look, your real estate agent is not on your side. Real estate agents are only there to get a fast buck. You know, I do a fair amount of coaching in the real estate industry these days. And I'll say, what are the accusations the other side might potentially make against you? And they say, well, nothing. They've never met us. Right.

And I'll say, look, hold on. You don't know that buyers are saying to each other, no real estate agent is on your side, that real estate agents are only in it for the commission. You don't know that. And I say, yeah, well, we know that, but that's not true of us. I said, okay, all right, let's go back. Just everybody else. Yeah. We're not talking about what's true of you. You know there's baggage in your industry. And

And so you don't have to be Albert Einstein of emotional intelligence to know that that baggage is there. A friend of mine bought a house here recently in L.A. I asked him about his agent. He said, look, I know they're not on my side. I know no matter how much they try to befriend us, they're only they're trying to push this into a deal so that they can collect the commission as quickly as they possibly can. He says, I know that.

All right, so this is a recognition of the circumstances. Now, there are plenty of agents that that is not true of them at all. Right. But just because it's not true of you doesn't mean that it's not in your potential clients in the back of their mind before they get started. And that's how you begin to clear this up. Because if it's lurking in the back of their mind, it's a distraction. So let's go back again and let's take it to circumstances that if you weren't involved

You know, what's the reputation in the industry? What's the reputation of the people in your position? Let's address that up front and you get dialed in much faster with people. It's kind of hard for people to do because they know the stuff is out there. Another thing I tell people to do a lot of times, what would you like to deny before you get started? Every real estate agent is going to say, well, I'd like to say, look, you know, we're not one of those fast talking salesmen. We're not one of those

agents who are just looking for a quick commission. All right. So make a list of the stuff you want to deny. And instead of denying it, because denying things makes it worse. Right. Just pull it out, you know, and say, look, you know, I know that my my industry has a reputation for being fast talking salesman. I'm sure it seems like every real estate agent you ever come across is just trying to get a quick hit with minimal amount of effort and then move on.

And then what happens when you say it to a prospective client or whatever industry you're in, the stuff you want to deny, you say, sure, it seems like. Then they go like, no, no, no, no, no. But in reality, what you just did was you just cleared it out of their head. And now their head's clear and now they can listen to you. I like that a lot. So after that, you move to calibrated questions? Yeah. You're going to move into a calibrated question or –

When we teach people how to take calibrated questions, because questions might, you need information, but they might not be the best way to get information. Like you might say to a person, how would you like to proceed?

What would you think are the next steps? Now, they may have something in mind already, and you might actually get a better answer by instead of saying like, well, what do you think the next steps are? You might want to say, it seems like you might have some next steps in mind. And, you know, we had one person refer to that technique. They were so stunned by the effectiveness of gathering information with that label. It seems like you have some ideas in mind. It seems like you have some next steps you've been thinking about.

They actually refer to that as unlocking the floodgates of truth telling. What does that mean? I haven't seen the neuroscience that backs it up yet. We just know that in practice all the time. If I ask you a question, it has a tendency to get you to stop and think and contemplate and formulate an answer.

If I just use a label, it seems like you've got something on your mind. There's something about that that instead of you formulating an answer, it tends to just remove a barrier and I tap directly into your thought processes and your thought processes come streaming out of your mouth. So it's almost like you eliminate the system two thinking and just get the raw system one. Exactly.

Yeah. And you're clearly a fan of Daniel Kahneman and his description of how the brain works, right? Prospect theory, Nobel Prize winning psychologist. Is that how you think about that? Or do you have different terms in mind that... You know, our terms are a little more layman's terms because, and this goes right to why hostage negotiation has direct application to business. Because when I learned hostage negotiation back in the

In the early 90s, they used to tell us, all right, look, some guy, some poor guy's got himself in a jam. He's barricaded someplace. He's taken hostages. Look for the loss. You know, there's going to be a loss. All our techniques are designed to get the guy talking, find out what his loss is and address that. So look for the loss. Something would have happened. And we just figured that it was only the loss was a driver of bad behavior, bad criminal behavior.

And then Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky come along and unfortunately, you know, when the Nobel Prize is handed out, Amos Tversky has already died of cancer. Otherwise, he would have got it also. Kahneman and Tversky come up with prospect theory and win the Nobel Prize for it after hostage negotiation has been invented, which is the fear of loss is the single biggest driver of human behavior.

Prospect theory says, you know, loss stinks twice as much as an equivalent gain. Not that it's the only driver, but it's the biggest driver.

And when I found that out, I said, you know, we've been operating like that for years, looking for the lost. We just figured it was hostage takers. We didn't know it was everybody. And that it was hardwired into us. Yeah, exactly. And if it's hardwired into everybody, then this set of emotional intelligence tools designed to uncover it as quickly as possible, diffuse the negativity around it, get somebody talking in a more balanced state of mind,

And then you can move to people to solve the problems much more quickly. You know, so that's the hack. The hack is the shortcut is look for the loss and factor it into your thinking, which again is why 70% of buy decisions are made based on avoiding a loss as opposed to accomplishing a gain. Do you think that relates to the old saying, like you never get fired for hiring IBM? Yeah. You know, because, well, then the other, the other crazy thing is

navigating people's fears, people aren't afraid to fail. They're afraid to fail in a new way.

So you never get fired for hiring IBM is like if we hire IBM and we fail, it's already been demonstrated to be a socially acceptable outcome. But let's say let's if we go out, you know, when when was when was Apple started? When did they first make the first Mac? If we go out and hire these guys, you know, named Jobs and Wozniak, they built some stupid computer in their garage. You know, that could go bad. Whoever heard of those guys?

So let's hire IBM first because that's the safe failure. And so the safety in your failure is – and a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around this, but it's not that we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to fail in a new way, in a different way from everybody else because that's humiliating. It's embarrassing. Yeah.

And then that loss is – the bigger loss is a loss of self-esteem, which is an even bigger hit for us. So if you're a new company and you have no real established track record, is there a way to use that to your advantage or shape the perceptions of somebody taking a risk on you? Yeah, because again, then you call it out. You know, the elephant in the room, so to speak.

you can call it out. And it's not that it's guaranteed that you're going to make the deal if you call it out. It just increases your batting average. It increases your win percentage. There's no...

There's no guarantee of success. There's just a guarantee of the best chance of success. So any negative that's there, ignoring it is leaving a landmine, but calling it out gives you your best chance at eliminating it as an issue, whether you're an unknown startup or whether or not you've got a strong competitor.

I used to, before the book came out, and been very happy with the success of the book. It's been called one of the seven best negotiation books ever written. It leads its category. The Audible version of the book has been leading the business category on Amazon basically since the book came out. Oh, it's a phenomenal book, yeah.

And but before all, you know, before we've had this kind of success with the book, if I stood up in front of a group, I would say to them, why in God's name would you ever listen to a hostage negotiator? Because that's what's going on in their head. Right. They're asking themselves that question. So I'll just go ahead. I'll call it out from the very beginning. Boy, it seems like listening to a hostage negotiator is a really dumb idea. And people go like, no, it's not. Maybe you might you might not. You might know something we don't know.

And I'm like, okay, good. I got you to say it. That's the way I don't have to. Yeah. And then it sits in a lot more than if you say it yourself. Exactly. Yeah. And I think the final section to the negotiation one sheet you had in the book, if I'm remembering correctly, had to do with money. Like is money always the primary motive or how important is money in a negotiation? Well, let's talk about money in the sections in a book too. We're also looking for black swans.

Like if we want you to write down the things you learned in that negotiation, you didn't know going in. And if you can't write those things down, you didn't do a good job because there's stuff to be discovered. And it's usually then on money or whatever your objective is.

You know, we do want you to pick out a good goal to begin with because human beings are goal oriented. But we don't want your goal to be your best alternative or your worst alternative. You know, come up with a lofty goal and then think of how you're going to beat it. So human beings need to do, in fact, need to be goal oriented in order to perform, which is the whole BATNA problem because a BATNA, your goal then is very low. Pick a high goal and then challenge yourself to beat it by discovering new information.

So your high goal may shouldn't actually be money because you got to hit a range in money. Let's say you beat somebody on the money issue really badly where your implementation is going to be horrible or you're going to put them out of business. So you need to come up with a dollar figure the other side is comfortable for. An analogy to that would be a friend of mine was running a magazine when he ran Washingtonian Magazine in Washington, D.C.,

And we talked about salary negotiations. And he said, you know, I tend to pay slightly on the higher end of people's expectations because if I pay them lower than they hope for, they tend to be really anxious throughout the term of their employment. And they're not going to do a good job. If I pay them more than they expected, they actually they're going to think they were worth that all along. And they're not going to be that appreciative. They're going to take it for granted.

But if I can pay them at the higher end of their expectation, they're going to feel really good about the salary. They'll be very comfortable. And that's when they're going to be at their best. And then they're going to do a great job for me. So overpaying people is as much a problem as underpaying people. Which one do you think is more prevalent? Wow. I think, well, people, I think they're probably underpaid more.

But then you can actually fix that, too, depending upon how you take care of them as an employee. Like if you can underpay somebody and if you're really focused on their growth and development as people and professionals, they'll be really happy in the job and they'll do great because, you know, the old phrase money is not a motivator. What is a motivator?

the meaningful work within that profession, to be involved in stuff that's going to matter to everybody else. You know, being involved in critical strategic projects or I had an executive from the General Services Administration who got ahead really fast. He once said, run to trouble. Like if you like working on the company's biggest problems,

There's a couple of good things about that. I mean, if the company's really having some serious problems in a certain area, number one, you're not going to make it any worse. You're not going to be the guy that screwed that up because it's already screwed up. So it's like a fail safe area to be in. And then if you succeed, you become known as a troubleshooter. You worked on stuff that helped the entire company. Your job satisfaction is through the roof.

Which puts you in which actually then puts you in a position to get paid a lot more on down the line because you're so valuable. And if they don't pay you more, then it gives you an incredible resume because then you go to another company and say, look, I saw I'm a I'm a I'm a problem solver. I'm a fixer. And somebody else is going to pay you a lot more. That's pretty counterintuitive. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And and that's how people get ahead.

Are there cases where negotiation is not really a negotiation? Like, how do you recognize that's the situation you're in and what are the alternatives? Well, yeah. I mean, we like to believe the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in. So, first of all, anytime the word yes is in the air, somebody's trying to get a yes out of somebody or something, you're in a negotiation.

Or if if I want is in your brain, you're in a negotiation and there's there's no two ways about the most dangerous negotiations. One, you don't know you're in that either place for you or against you. And of course, in the most common commodity, the commodity that's in each and every negotiation is time.

Not price, not money. Dollars are not always involved, but time always is. Right. So as soon as you begin, collaboration is time. Internal collaboration among colleagues, trying to implement a project, trying to get somebody just to support you in what your proposal is. Those are all negotiations. And recognizing those early on or, you know, the other thing is, you know, out here in Los Angeles, I was talking to a

a woman whose job was securing the rights to music for songs, the rights to music for movies. And she says, you know, this isn't a negotiation. You know, we call Sony on the phone. We tell them we want the rights to this song. The person on the other end of the phone has no latitude whatsoever. He just tells us what he or she just tells us what the price is. She says, that's not a negotiation. I get news for you. That is a negotiation. And here's why.

Never be mean to somebody who could hurt you by doing nothing. So the reality is that's probably true of everybody you interact with because you're interacting with them because you want them to do something. What's the negotiation on this thing over the music? All right. So depending on if she takes the other person for granted, that person writes down her information and her order. Does he put it on the top of his pile or does he put it on the bottom of the pile? Because he didn't like being treated like an order taker.

If she approached him in an emotionally intelligent way, maybe not only does he not put it on the top of the pile, maybe by hand he walks it down the hall to the next person in the chain. Because if time is money...

And time is always an asset in a negotiation, even when somebody's taking an order. There's no shortage of people who would take an order that didn't like how they were spoken to, to take the person's request and either put it at the bottom of the pile or maybe it goes in file 13, maybe it goes in a trash can and it's forgotten. So the implementation terms are always there. And if everybody could hurt you if you're mean to them, then by the same token with the right emotional intelligence approach, they could help you if they feel like it.

And I like to get every edge I can. So I want people to feel like helping me or even offering to help me in ways I didn't even know they could do. And that's where we gain our edges across the board with everybody in my company and also with the people that we coach because the

The better your relationship is, the more the other side is going to want to help you out if they have an option to. And people have tons of options that most of us don't even know about. And I think one of the keys you mentioned in the book to figuring that out is active listening. I imagine, I mean, that was a huge part of your job and is one of the keys to empathy and understanding.

how can I learn to be a better listener? Yeah. And it's, you know what? And then it's even beyond active. It's proactive listening because, all right, so what am I proactively going after? I know that the negatives are a bigger deal. I'm proactively listening for where the negatives are. I'm proactively listening for their fear of loss. Having heard it, now I have a very specific toolkit designed to deal with that exactly.

And the practice of hostage negotiators since 1972, when it was invented, pretty much, have taught us exactly what works and what's the fastest way into somebody's emotional system so they can hit the triggers and move on. And with those tools, and I get this done much more quickly. One of my students did an actual study on it. Her conclusion was empathy saves time.

Don't use empathy because you're a missionary, because you're a soft touch. Use empathy because you want to get stuff done faster and you've got other stuff to do to get after. How does it help you save time? Well, we're not spinning our wheels as quickly. You know, if I'm rooting out the problems earlier, I'm figuring out what you can throw on the table that you'll only throw on the table if you feel like it, if you feel connected to me.

Or when you're trying to telegraph, there's a problem in your tone of voice. If you ask me if something is possible and I say, okay, or if you ask me if it's possible and I go, okay. With empathy, I know the difference between those two things. I got a set of tools proactively where I go right after the second one and I'll say, you know, it sounds like there's more here than meets the eye as opposed to what's the problem? Hmm.

You know, I heard something in your tone of voice. What's the problem? Or sounds like there's something here I'm just not getting. And the second one is going to trigger a floodgate of information, which you would like to tell me as long as you don't feel you're going to be attacked as soon as you tell me.

Right. And that's how I'm going to save time. What do you do? I mean, it sounds like empathy works really well in particular situations. Are there situations where it doesn't work well? Like what if your opponent, I don't even want to use the word opponent, but the person you're negotiating with maybe doesn't have as many emotions or is way on the rational end of the spectrum? Yeah, well, you know, again, it only works where people are involved. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But even somebody who doesn't have a full range of emotions still got it. And I don't care what the range is. I just need to use my proactive skills, you know, my tactical empathy skills to figure out where your drivers are. Everybody's driven by loss. You know, our sociopaths, which there's no shortage of them functioning in the business world. They're self-interested. They have desires. They're driven by loss aversion. There's no getting around that.

Unless you're catatonic, there's going to be emotions that are driving you. Just not the full spectrum that everybody has. I don't care what the spectrum is. I'm going to use the tools to get in there to figure out which ones are driving you and simply adapt to them. You've said something previously along the lines of there can be great power in deference. Can you explain what you meant by that? What are some examples of when deference is the best strategy? Yeah, the power of deference is insane.

And not to get political because we don't want to talk political, but I wish I would remember the guy's name. There's an article I think I read it online on MSN recently. One of the guys who has the most influence whatsoever over Donald Trump is a billionaire from New York who is more successful. He's older.

He's got more money than Donald Trump. And the guy's not involved in politics whatsoever. But he uses deference on Donald Trump because it gets Donald Trump to listen. Now, he doesn't use deference because he has to. He doesn't need a job. He doesn't need any deals with Donald Trump. He doesn't need Donald Trump for anything, for whatever reason they have a relationship. He's older than Donald, so he doesn't need to be deferential to him because he's younger. He's got more money than Donald Trump, so he doesn't need to be deferential to him because he needs the money.

He's more established socially in New York than Donald Trump. There's nothing he needs from Donald Trump. If you were to do just a plain assessment, and I hesitate to use the word superior because it's very judgmental, but his life is on a higher functioning level across the board, other than the fact that he's not as well known as Donald Trump. But this guy doesn't care to be well known. And he calls Trump on a regular basis president, and he's deferential to him.

Because people loves when somebody doesn't have to be deferential but is hmm and so deference is this great tool for 360 degrees of influence if someone is proceeds themselves to be superior to you and your differential to them They love it because they think that they they they're entitled to it So it makes them very happy if you're on a peer level with them and you're deaf you treat them with deference and

They love it because you didn't have to. And they felt tremendous respect and appreciation for it. If you're subordinate to them in any way and you're deferential to how they feel, they love it even more and they're wonderfully appreciative of it because you didn't have to do it. And they see you as being a very generous, gracious and nurturing person.

So deference kind of works on everybody where – and as a mercenary, I like the skills that work on everybody. I do not want the negotiation approach that I use to be restricted because I have to have common ground with you or because I have to have power over you.

Those are all restrictions. If I don't have common ground, where am I? I'm not willing to be handicapped by that. If I don't have leverage on you, where am I? I'm not willing to be handicapped by that. I want an approach where I'm not handicapped by what other people perceive to be strengths. What are the other skills that work over everybody? You know, the phrase, the technique that I use different times that we refer to as labels. You know, it seems like you've got something in mind here.

That's actually a very specifically worded hostage negotiation skill adapted for business use. What we found on our three types, the fight, flight, and make friends,

The the flight, the analytical type guy is very leery of questions. And if I ask you a question, even if it's a really good open ended question or really good calibrated question, like what do you think the next steps are? Our analytical flight oriented guy, which is basically not fight every battle, but fight only if I have to and they need to. And it's smart.

But the analyst is going to want to think about that answer for an extended period of time because they want to think through all the implications of the answer before they come up with it. So if I say, what are the next steps to an analyst? Now it's going to say, you know, let me get back to you in a week. But if I say, for whatever reason, seems like you got some next steps in mind, the analyst is very likely to blurt them right out.

So this label skill, which interestingly enough, when I first left hostage negotiation, I didn't think it was that applicable. But through our constant practice in the laboratory, which was the MBA program that I taught in at Georgetown University, the part time program, which mean everybody had a job during the day. So I said, take these skills back to your day job and try them.

We found out the labels were the most universally applicable skill of all the tools. And what was the success rate on them as reported by? Well, the success rate, it went from, it increases everybody's batting average, but one of the best things it did was then it created some responses and people that were going completely silent otherwise.

where the batting average was zero. So the labels across the board probably raises everybody's effectiveness no less than 32%, 33%.

So whatever your effective rate is, if you're not using labels, it's going to drop that in on top of that. The other thing while we're talking, which has the most universal success rate, and somebody on the phone was telling me today that the success rate was 100%.

is intentionally getting people to say no. That rewarding all your yes-oriented questions into no-oriented questions. Instead of, would you like to do this? Say, are you against this? That's an insane success rate. And people have literally gone out and gotten on the phone as soon as we taught them how to do what we refer to as a no-oriented question and simply said,

Instead of would you like to try this option, said are you against this option? And a person gives them a no. And instead of rejecting the deal, it makes a deal. I mean, that one's really insane. That's crazy. And all three types like that. You have kids. I mean, how do you negotiate with them? Do you use labeling and getting them to know? Like walk me through what you do at home. Yeah, you know, labels and mirrors, open-ended questions, calibrated questions, those are all real good.

depend upon the age of the child. You know, you want your kids to think. And a good label is designed to encourage the counterpart's thinking. You want your kids to think, you want your counterparts to think. And your child says, you know, Dad, can I have a car late this weekend? Or Friday night, can I have a car Friday night? And your answer could be like, it seems like you think you don't have to earn that privilege. You know, draw them in, get them engaged.

How can I give you the car on the weekend if you're not responsible during the week? You know, draw them into the thought pattern. Increase their thinking. That's a great thing to do with kids. Are there any other things you do with your kids that parents who are listening to this podcast can take away and implement differently? Another one that a lot of parents have a lot of success with is also the mirror system.

which is just repeating the last one to three words of what someone has just said. I mean, and, you know, sometimes your kids say stuff to you where you want to say to yourself, did you actually hear what you just said? Am I the only one that heard how crazy that was? Right. But the mirror actually gets them to rearticulate it again with slightly different words. And, you know, a lot of it is not a parent-child problem. A lot of it is a human being to human being problem.

We just happen to mistake it because it happens to be adults and children involved in the interaction. It's a little bit like the analysis of saying playing basketball makes you tall. You know, you're seeing it set as facts and you're misinterpreting the facts. And so some of this is just human being to human being. They just happen to be the human beings that we're engaged with a lot at this point in time.

So we do want the counterpart to think, and you do want your kids to think, and you do want them to hear out loud and be a good sounding board sometimes to make them reword what they just said because it increases their thinking. Have your kids ever out-negotiated you? Oh, well... Just through sheer persistence? See, that brings up another one. We think kids are persistent. We say teenagers...

are really tough on their parents because they don't take no for an answer. Again, it's a human being to human being thing. Teenagers have learned that once a parent says no, they're probably actually more persuadable because the act of saying no makes people feel safe. Like when my son was 17 and he said, dad, can I? And I'd say no before he finished his sentence. Yep.

But then I would also, having said no, having felt like I protected myself, I would almost always find myself saying, all right, now talk me through this again. Let me hear this. Because I've already said no, so I can't be hurt. Uh,

And now I can hear them out. And again, this is, you know, basketball playing doesn't make you tall. It's not kids learning not to take no for an answer. It's a set of human beings who happen to be young learning how eminently open-minded a counterpart can be once they've said no. Do you ever actively coach your kids on how to negotiate better? Like not necessarily negotiating with you, but in...

seeking what they are getting, what they want to achieve. See, here's the bad thing about growing up the son of an FBI hostage negotiator, which is what happened to my son, my son.

I found out when he was in his 20s how much trouble he got himself out of when he was in his teens using Haas's negotiation skills. That's awesome. He was around it all the time. He learned early on about going after problems and diffusing problems. He played football, junior high, high school, college. This isn't in the book.

He'd go to school and I had him in a Catholic school where they had a uniform. And every now and then, because he was a kid, you know, he'd go to school and there'd be something wrong with the uniform. And a student would say, hey, you know, you screwed this up today. You're not wearing this properly. Watch out for the vice principal. Most kids are going to spend the entire rest of the day running from the vice principal because they don't want to get in trouble.

As soon as he realized he'd made a mistake, the very next place he would go would be the vice principal's office. He'd knock on the door and he'd go straight in. And he was telling me one time he walked in and he's telling the vice principal, you know, he's a disrespectful student. You know, he doesn't have any respect.

He's not paying attention to the rules. He's empty-headed. And the vice principal stopped and said, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. He said, who sent you? And he said, nobody. As soon as I realized I was wrong, I came in. And the vice principal scribbled him a note that gave him a free pass for the rest of the day and said, get out of here. Now get back to class. Stop bothering me. That's awesome. And he knew that was a way to avoid detention. And those are only the stories you know about. Yeah.

Exactly. What about relationships? I mean, should you change how you negotiate or engage with your partner? I mean, you had some interesting advice on compromise in the book. Does that apply to relationships? Yeah. Well, it applies based on where you're coming from. You know, there's – Adam Grant wrote a great article called The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence. Like, you know, we joke around, use your powers for good and not evil.

But emotional intelligence is a really powerful thing. It's potentially ridiculously manipulated. Use it in your relationships if you're trying to make things better. Like, are you trying to get the other side to just lay off of you so you can go back to what you're doing? Or are you trying to actually understand more so you can have a better relationship? These skills are absolutely required if you want to understand your counterpart more and have a better relationship. So much so that the Silicon Valley professor

female executive one day is talking to her fiance and she says, why do I like talking to you? All of a sudden, last couple of days, our conversation has been great. What's going on? And he said, well, I'm taking this training and they're making me use it with you. And she found out the book was never split the difference. And she went out and she bought 10 copies and gave them to all of her girlfriends, husbands, and boyfriends. Yeah.

Because, you know, seek first to understand and be understood. It's great for relationships. It's also there's, you know, you can use it for manipulation as well. But if you want a better relationship, absolutely use this stuff for it. Walk me through the compromise thing in the book about why we should never compromise. Compromise is I got this killer gray suit.

And I got a pair of black shoes that I love and I got a pair of brown shoes that I love. I think I should wear the black shoes. You think the brown shoes are going to look great. Let's compromise. I'll wear one black and one brown.

I mean, compromise in theory, supposedly you're open to the other side's position. Theoretically, that's a great idea. In practicality, its implementation is absolutely one black shoe, one brown shoe. Heard a story recently of a horrible compromise. Two companies are merging.

And it's a progressive new company in the industry, and it's an old line historical, you know, a very dignified company. And they come together, and through the process, they find out there's this phenomenal building worth $800 million for sale, and they get a chance to get it for $200 million. And they want to build a new learning center, and it's big enough for this state-of-the-art learning center and their corporate headquarters.

The CEO from the prestigious, high reputation, long term reputation firm says we can't do that because we'll look like it'll violate what we stand for. It'll look like we're spending far too much money on our headquarters. We'll look self-indulgent if we buy that building.

And the guy from the new, the newer cutting edge company was like, we got, we, how can we, how can we pass this up? It's got a state of the art facility. We can put our education and we can save. It's a $600 million value savings. We can move our people in. They're going to feel phenomenal being in this new, new facility.

And so what'd they do? They compromised. They bought the building for the new learning center. They kept their old headquarters for the images. In fact, they're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars because of the compromise. And a bunch of the executives who never agreed with the compromise in the first place are going to leave the firm. So they're losing a tremendous amount of leadership over compromise. And that's what happens with compromise.

You put half measures in and it destroys everybody's idea instead of finding out what's the best course of action. I like that a lot. What fields of knowledge outside of negotiation itself and I guess your own experience have you found most valuable in kind of adding to your repertoire of tools and finding new insights? Some of the stuff that I'm finding really interesting now has to do around the mental state of flow.

Because historically, we're supposed to be dispassionate in negotiations. You know, you drive to be dispassionate, a drive to get into a neutral frame of mind. Well, flow is where your pattern recognition and your decision making is at its peak. Your mental endurance increases and your overall performance is much better.

Like X Games athletes are doing things that the world thought was previously physically impossible. Are they physically, can an X Game athlete, is their vertical jump five feet instead of two feet? No. But their performance and what they're doing is the equivalent of taking a vertical jump and doubling it or tripling it. But they're physically the same specimen.

The state of flow, which borders on is a highly positive frame of mind bordering on it's fun. They're having fun, bordering on euphoria. Their pattern recognition and their decision making is near perfect in that state of mind. That's what we need in business. We need more mental endurance. We need better pattern recognition. We need fearless decision making.

to as soon as fear drops away we can think better it's a positive frame of mind so the whole psychology of flow in terms of people's performance in business is stuff that i'm finding fascinating

And it happens to also, it's emotional intelligence rolled into flow. So that also plays a role in the decisions we're making and what negotiation tools we want to use. When you lose your flow temporarily, like when you were on the job, what did you do? I mean, it happens to all of us. We get distracted, something comes up, there's more information coming at us than we can handle. How did you get back into that? Yeah, well, the old remedy was just rest.

You know, an exhausted hostage negotiator at the end of the day, I just I just got to take him off the phone and let him get a good night's sleep. But, you know, the new remedy, what are the hacks? How can we get this guy recharged? I mean, it's one of the it's one of the reasons why I think people are meditating a lot more now.

You know, 10 minutes of good meditation might give you enough of a brain reset that you're back in the game 10 minutes later. I mean, that's a hack into flow. What can I do to change my mental state of mind that will give me a quick recharge? I mean, it's kind of what Tony Robbins is doing in his seminars. Tony Robbins, before the neuroscience was there, he figured out the physical hacks into flow. That's why he sleeps four hours a night.

you know that's why he can stand up and do a 14-hour seminar essentially with no breaks i mean if you if you go to his one of his seminar robin's is on a stage for anywhere from you you you got to be prepared to sit there for anywhere from 12 to 14 hours on top of that robbins is going to make you do a number of things physically to put you in flow while how how can you dial in to a tony robbins seminar for 14 straight hours only leaving your chair for bathroom breaks

Sitting in a stadium, an indoor basketball arena on a concrete floor in a tiny little wooden chair, squeezed into a bunch of other people and not get tired. Robbins is putting you in flow. How do you pay attention that whole time? That is direct application to the business world to your day-to-day performance. So there's a number of things that you can do. 10 minutes of meditation.

Stand up and move around. You know, he has people. He has people do what we used to call primal scream therapy. I mean, just kind of let loose for a couple of seconds. There's an there's an instant reset, an instant body reset.

There's a whole bunch of things you could do through the course of a day that can give you a quick smile and laugh. You get an instant chemical change when you laugh. Don't laugh because you're in a good mood. Force a laugh and you'll actually feel better chemically. You'll trigger a chemical change. It's a lot of different things that you can do. 20 years ago, if a hostage negotiator was running out of gas, I would never have thought to take him off the line and tell him a couple of jokes.

Now, maybe I would. Yeah. When you're in your negotiations with somebody, how do you separate out somebody on the other end of the phone or the negotiation like you, um,

versus somebody who's read a book, like the people who know what they're talking about from the people who pretend they know what they're talking about? You know, one of the biggest things is where's the other side coming from? Because I get people that will try my techniques on me because they're trying to communicate with me better, and I'm good with that. Or I get somebody who's trying some of this stuff on me because they're just trying to prove that they're smarter than me and they're still going to exploit me and take advantage of me.

You know, you can sniff that out pretty fast. So a lot of it really has to do with, you know, not as the other person trying to collaborate with me, but really are they trying to hurt me?

And I'm good. I'm absolutely good with somebody negotiating with me as long as they're trying to make a better deal. Right. Not if they're actively seeking to hurt you. Yeah. And even then, at that point in time, I just want to know for sure because I might not back out of that deal that, you know, I might not like them. And we have some people we're doing business with that I really don't like.

But it benefits my company a lot. And so I'm not kidding myself about who I'm dealing with. There's nothing wrong with having a tiger by the tail as long as you know you got a tiger by the tail. Does that cause you a lot of stress? If I let it cause me stress. I realize now that every now and then the people that we're doing business with that are trying to exploit us,

That isn't, as they say, a first world problem or a success problem. I'm only dealing with these because the book is so good and because we make a difference in people's lives. Make no mistake, we make a difference in people's lives. You go on Amazon and look at the reviews and it's person after person after person where we made a difference in their lives. We made their lives better. Men and women.

Facebook posting the other day, a woman gave her daughter my book and she went out and negotiated a 30% salary increase for herself. Nice. Yeah. It's a really good positive impact. Yeah. And so you get trolls because you're successful. You get attacked

Only by being successful and when I remind myself of that that I can deal with it. What is which gears a little bit talk about some personal questions? Just outside of negotiation per se but stuff that I found interesting or that came up while I was reading your book that I was curious about The first one I want to ask you is like after a long career in law enforcement negotiation How do you personally determine if you can trust someone has your experience made you more trustworthy of other people or less?

All right. So we've got we've all got the intuition to pick this up. And as soon as you start focusing on implementation and seeing what people do in front of you, then, you know, trust is a funny word. Take the word trust out and put in predictable. What am I going to predict these people are going to do? Yeah. If you can substitute the word predict for trust or predictable for trust, then put you in a much more rational frame of mind and you and you can see things easier and then you can make better decisions.

And the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. So if I'm dealing with a company that has horrible follow up, I should expect them to continue to have horrible follow up. I can't trust them to suddenly be smart or I'm out here in Los Angeles now. A number of different conversations going on about TV shows.

And these guys cheat each other or set each other up to be cheated on a regular basis. So I can't expect them to be any different. Dealing with me just because I'm a hostage negotiator, they're still going to try to set me up and take the intellectual property and cut me out. No.

Not leave me in a role. I get bent out of shape over that or I can just expect it to happen and keep my guard up. Right. And not not kid myself. Or, you know, another analogy I like. I think everybody knows the story of the scorpion, a frog trying scorpion, try to get across a river and he jumps on a frog's back. And the frog says, you know, if you sting me, then we'll both drown. We'll both die.

Scorpion says, why would I ever do that? They get halfway across the river. The scorpion stings them, and the frog says, why'd you do that? Scorpion said, I'm a scorpion. It's in my nature. Yeah. So the frog's mistake was not in helping the scorpion. The frog, you know, put the scorpion on a twig and tore him across so that he can't stab you. Right. If he's going to stab me, that doesn't mean I can't collaborate. It just means that I'd be stupid if I don't think I'm going to get stabbed.

So, how do I now arrange this so I don't leave myself in a position to be stabbed? What kind of thoughts would you share with your younger self? Let's say you're 20 years old and just beginning your career. All right. So, that has to do with my type. So, I'm a natural born assertive, which means I'm a little hard on people. I'm a little blunt. Dealing with me can be like getting hit in the face with a brick.

So I would tell me just be a little nicer. Don't compromise who you are. Don't take any different positions. You know, I've been I've always been highly guided by what I believe to be right and wrong set of rules. You know, do the right thing is a phrase that matters to me. So, you know, I'll I'll punch you in the face by trying to get you to do the right thing and thinking that my motivations are good enough to cover up my delivery.

So I'd tell my younger self, just be nicer. Don't change any of your positions.

Don't go in any other directions. Just be nicer about it. You get a lot farther. But by nicer, do you mean that the bluntness was unkind? Or do you mean in your approach to saying the same sort of thing? Mainly how I said things. Right. Okay. You know, and I don't know if it's a fair analogy or not. And again, not to wade into anything politically, you know, but I'd ask you, what are the biggest differences between

in the overall goals and objectives of Ronald Reagan versus Donald Trump. You know, Ronald Reagan fired more people when he fired the air traffic controllers, I think, than Donald Trump has his entire career. Ronald Reagan is seen as a nice guy, but very aggressive, very pro-American, very anti-Russia, pro-business, you know, fired the air traffic controllers. I mean, that was an aggressive guy.

But he was he was he used to always say, I'm a nice guy. He smiled at people. So but he didn't change any of his positions. So that's for me that, you know, that's for me. Can you tell me about a time that you failed and what you did to recover and learn from that? Yeah. You know, I mean, there's all kinds of failures. You know, one we talk about in the book, hostages die. We didn't expect them to die.

And at that time, I mean, I've always I was a big proponent of a strong team game. So I was really satisfied that that I'd included my team. We'd done everything we knew how to do and what we knew how to do wasn't enough. So to me, I used it. I used it to get better. So, you know, I did everything we knew how to do. It wasn't good enough at that point in time.

You know, we had another much lower profile kidnapping where I thought it was going to go bad and the people that were working the kidnapping didn't want to listen to me. Now, I'm not sure that I could have changed the outcome, but I'm like, all right, so those guys are more experienced. And, you know, I didn't push it as hard as I could have. Right. And it ended up going bad. I mean, I chose not to wade into that one. And I don't think there's any way that we could have made a difference whatsoever on that one because –

the person that had been kidnapped was, unbeknownst to law enforcement at the time, was doing a lot of criminal activity that he was hiding, which is the principal reason he died. But there have been plenty of times when I made mistakes and I was wrong. On that call on the suicide hotline at the end of the call at the end of the year, I had a lot of bad habits. I didn't know about my bad habits at the time. I think the biggest difference is

I think I'm very open to learning. I'm a little bit like, all right, so if I'm not doing it right, tell me how to do it right and I'll do it right. I just want to know the best way to do it. What do you think the difference is between the people who are open to learning and not open to learning? I think there's an embarrassment factor. I think people are really embarrassed at being wrong.

I, you know, that's kind of the only way I can can couch it, because I know that I'm I know that I'm very open to learning. And I know that there are a bunch of people out there that are not. And I am kind of mystified by by myself. And so when I'm trying, I got a few of those in our classes, you know, for a company brings all their salespeople in.

There's going to be some people in there that are, before the year is out, are going to get fired by that company because they didn't make their numbers and they're not open to learning. Turnover sales is very high. And one of the reasons why the boss has got that person in our training is because he's trying to save that. He or she is trying to save that person. And that person will be incredibly blocked. I mean, new ideas is such a threat to their self-concept.

They're horrified that maybe they were doing it wrong and trying to crack that code because if I can't get that guy or that gal to open their eyes, we can't save them. They're going to get fired. What do you think prevents people from that though? Like the notion of being wrong, like what's going on inside that person? Because I'm sure they also at some level feel if they don't see it tangibly that, you

Something has to change and yet they're still unwilling to see reality. I'm satisfied from Danny Kahneman that there's a fear of loss in there someplace. Their perception of themselves and there's some...

There's something inside them that just scares the heck out of them. You know, I was one of the things that I was talking to my girlfriend recently. I was saying like, you know, I think everybody's got two lines of code somewhere deep down inside. Somebody said something to everybody when we were little kids.

There was like our two line of mad, two lines of magic code in there and figuring out what that code is. Those two lines is what really drives the direction that people go. And some, you know, some, it has to do with self esteem. It has to do with, you know, I met a guy one time who was, was, he was a surprise to his family. You know, they thought they were done having kids and

10 years after they were done having kids, another one is on its way. And he used to love to tell this guy he was an accident. And his two lines of code, that almost made him feel like he was unwanted. So what did somebody say to somebody in those two lines of code? And how do we get in there and help unravel it or maybe change a couple words in there so that instead of defeating themselves...

They're taking better care of themselves. I had another colleague that I worked with that used to always say, my grandmother always said, self-praise is no praise. Well, I'm thinking like, so, you know, you can never praise yourself. You can never say this to yourself internally. You know, I did a good job here. So, yeah, I don't know what it is sometimes. But anybody we can reach and figure out what it is, we try to because we want people to have more satisfying experiences.

And enjoyable lives. So, Chris, I want to end on a high note. What's the smallest habit you have that makes the biggest difference? You know, I think just taking a moment to let the other side articulate what's really burning on their mind. The other person is going to be highly appreciative of that. And you're going to save a lot of time.

Again, it's a great mercenary and missionary skill. It saves you a lot of time. It has better relationships. People are going to like dealing with you even more if they get a chance to have their say. And if they feel really listened to, the amount of time it takes to have their say is

tends to be really short because people find being listened to being very satisfying. I like that a lot. Thank you, Chris. Where can people find out more? All right. So the best way to connect is to subscribe to our complimentary newsletter. The edge comes out once a week and it is the gateway to everything we do. It's got a short article about a couple of tips on how to get better at negotiation. It's a, it's a light read. It's a light, quick read. It's a great way to start your day.

Plus, it's the gateway to everything we do. The website is BlackSwanLTD.com. But the best way to subscribe is to text the word FBI Empathy and make it all one word.

It's not case sensitive. Don't let your spell check put a space in between FBI empathy, but FBI empathy, all one word to the number 22828. And the number is 22828. And you'll get a text response that'll sign you up for the newsletter, tell you about the training. It's free, which is a good price. And it's a way that my company can help you get better. That's excellent. Thank you so much, Chris. I really enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, my pleasure. I did too. Thank you for having me on.

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