two of the three remaining hostages were

killed and they were shot by friendly

fire that was the first time that i'd

worked anything where people had gotten

killed

former fbi kidnapping negotiator

best-selling co-author of the founder

and principal of the black swan group

i'm chris voss how important is it

generally in negotiations to

listen whether it's business or law

enforcement if i take the time to to

really hear somebody out in our first

deal then every deal after that will

come to me faster

it's critical i'm so compelled to ask

you like what is the cost that we don't

get to see of your job you know you get

you get really wrapped up in your work

and i think you tend to become

distant

in your personal life the closer you are

to someone

sometimes

you just it's really harder for you to

see things from their perspective the

truth sometimes is a knife to the heart

right

like you go through a traumatic event

are you traumatized by it then never

recover or is there post-traumatic

stress growth where you took that and

decided to be better than you ever were

before because you never

want to let that happen again

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

direva ceo usa edition i hope nobody's

listening but if you are

then please keep this yourself

[Music]

chris

you've lived a

extraordinary life for many many reasons

which i'm sure we're going to go into

but um

i guess my first question is

what do i need to know about your

upbringing your early years if i am to

understand the man you are today

i think really that my father just

required that that we work hard and then

we figure stuff out like my father was

an entrepreneur

and then no matter how old you are even

i started working for him probably when

i was about 11 but the downside of

working for a guy that would never ask

you to do anything he wouldn't do

himself

if there is anything that he wouldn't do

himself just because it needed to be

done

then like you get asked to figure out

some crazy stuff

like you know a middle-class

entrepreneur you know

blue collar you know guy and i remember

i think it was about 11.

he decided he wanted a new garage in the

backyard and we had to get rid of the

old garage and

you know he handed me and my 13 year old

sister crowbars and said go out and tear

down the old garage

he just kind of

you know he's got to figure stuff out

and so i really grew up in an

environment of working really hard

it he never preached this ethics but we

were you know very ethical you know

honest hard working

and figure stuff out which is

if that's your attitude

there isn't that much you can't do

and that was kind of drilled into me at

an early age figured out work hard be

honest

so if i hit fast forward on your on your

life from that point and i go into your

days and the the swat team for the fbi

right

how long were you working in the swat

team with the fbi

uh i was i was technically a member of

the swat team for about a year and then

you know i was in on a pittsburgh fbi it

was on that swat team

and then i got transferred to new york

and i decided to try out for

the fbi's equivalent of the navy seals

the fbi's hostage rescue team

and so i tried out for that team and i

re-injured my knee

so i wasn't i never technically made

that team nor when i was in new york was

i on the new york swat team but i had

been on the swat team in

pittsburgh for about a year

you ended uni during training

yeah you know it was originally

uh toured up originally in college and

my view is you know the worst things

that have happened to me i've always led

the better stuff i would never become a

hostage negotiator if i hadn't torn on

my knee

and so you know then when i was trying

out for the hostage rescue team then i

re-injured it

and uh

i went went to a doctor to have it

rebuilt for a second time

[Music]

and at that point in time i thought well

i don't know how many times they could

put humpty dumpty back together

so i love crisis response because you

got to make a decision i've been very

much a decision-oriented guy you know

president kennedy talks about the

dangers of comfortable inaction i've

always hated that

so you know i wanted to stay involved in

crisis response we had hostage

negotiators

my son and i like to joke that one of

the voss family models is how hard can

it be

and i remember thinking how could it be

you know they talk

talk to terrorists i talk every day i

can talk to a terrorist

when you um when you injured your knee

and you you're thinking about what to do

with your life i i read that you

had a chat with a lady um about options

and she basically rejected you and said

yeah said go away

who is she

uh

she was the head of the hostage

negotiation team for fbi new york

she was on uh one of the terrorism

squads close to mine

and i knew she was in charge of the

program

and

you know i thought

you know the willingness to learn was

adequate

and so you know i sought her out to

express my interest and kind of

presented myself like ta-da here i am

i'm wonderful look at me

i'm willing to learn

and she was just like go away everybody

wants to do this it sounds cool

everybody wants a t-shirt

she asked me about you know any previous

experience or credentials i had i didn't

have any

one after another i was like nope nope

no education no background no experience

no no that's none of this none of this

and finally she just said like no you

can't do it

stop bothering me

it was like

got to be something i could do you know

i've always kind of been proactive

i didn't know i was there's a theory

that i uh principal that we operate on

now which is

never ask advice from somebody wouldn't

trade places with

or never take direction from somebody

who hasn't been where you're going

i just thought it made sense to go to

the right person and ask

which is kind of how i got in the fb in

the first place

and i said there's got to be something i

could do what is it she said you know

what there is go volunteer on a suicide

hotline

but until you've done that

don't bother me

and it just seemed really obvious to me

okay you know this is somebody who knows

i'll do it and that's how i got in the

fbi really

and so i went and did it and i went back

to and i said you know

i i've been volunteering a suicide

hotline for the last five months and

she's like

what she was shocked

she said i tell everybody to to do that

nobody ever does it

when i went back to her said i'm

including the story in the book

she said you know i told over a thousand

people over the course of my career

to volunteer on a hotline and only two

people did it and you were one of them

and i thought that's just

that's so obvious

what was that like that suicide hotline

you five months you did that i actually

volunteered there for a total of three

years

and then i got involved in the board and

the funding and the operation and i

taught there too

because i was so into it it was so

valuable um i went there to learn a

skill

and i ended up learning a skill and

serving the community which then was

very no better

secondary bonus

than to do something that benefits you

and have it benefit everybody else too

difficult man uh well if you take the

training you're willing to learn the

training was phenomenal

and i went there to learn so i soaked it

up like a sponge emotionally difficult

uh

it can be depend upon how vulnerable you

make yourself

now since

and what i used to tell the volunteers

there because uh crisis hotline suicide

hotline

the biggest problem is volunteer burnout

it is difficult emotionally if you go

there to help

and you want so much to help

and there's a lot of people that make it

extremely difficult to help them and

that can be emotionally draining

now i went there to learn versus help

and the help was a secondary benefit

so the really difficult types we used to

call them frequent callers

they didn't suck the life out of me they

fascinated me

like this is crazy i gotta learn how to

communicate with these people these are

no different than the people that are

very difficult

in business negotiation because how you

do something is how you do everything

way back when i learned this thing

called the drama triangle

which was kind of three arc archetypes

of difficult people

and we're seeing that show up exactly in

business negotiations

so human behavior is human behavior

period what is that triad well um the

way i learned it way back then was you

know there's there's um uh the victim

uh the protector

and the persecutor

and

someone who comes on a hotline

really portraying themselves as a

victim they're trying to draw you into

being the protector or to give advice

you know i'm i'm i i need your advice

might be what they would literally say

and then if you're dumb enough to give

advice

then they switch from being the victim

to the persecutor and they attack you

for your advice

and then as soon as you back off

then they go back to being a victim

again to try to lure you into giving

them advice so that they can attack your

advice

and so what they told us you know the

earmarks

of watch out for somebody trying to lure

you into giving advice

versus being a great sounding board

helping them

discover

the answer on their own

and then in 2002 much later i run across

jim camp's book start with no

and he talked about effectiveness in

business negotiation

helping your counterpart discover the

best answer because if they discover

something mutually beneficial versus if

you offer it

if they discover it it's their idea and

they're going to do it

if you offer it

you're giving them advice

and they got no emotional ownership and

they're less likely to do it so he

called it helping them discover the best

deal

and back in the on the hotline days it

was just guided discovery helping them

discover the best outcome

from those three years volunteering at

the suicide prevention line was there

anything else that you really learned

about the nature of human beings um that

has stayed with you still to this day in

business and and your days as an fbi

negotiator yeah well you know still

still

still actually going back and and

pulling the lessons out of it um

and it's

you know people are uh

their thoughts are most dominated by

loss

um what are they worried about losing

what's their vision of loss over the

future

daniel kahneman won the nobel prize in

2002

behavioral um

uh

prospect theory uh economic nobel prize

on human behavior which is

lost looms larger than gain

some people are putting it at a two to

one ratio

nobody ever puts it less than two to one

lost things twice as much as a as an

equivalent game i've heard people talk

about be as much as nine to one

which is why researchers are having

trouble putting an exact number on it so

sometimes somewhere between two and nine

times loss

your vision of the loss is going to

determine your behavior

and that was really and we taught on a

hotline and taught in

uh hostage negotiation look for the loss

somebody's taken hostages

they've suffered a personal identity

identity law somewhere along the line

and there's probably a triggering event

in the last 24 to 48 hours but look for

the loss

and then kahneman comes across in 2002

danny kahneman and amos taversky

taversky had died by the time they

awarded the nobel

uh prize which is why he didn't get it

along with kahneman because they're not

giving it after somebody's died

saying that no this is just human

behavior period

period not just hostages not just people

in crisis

but it's the single dominating influence

of all human decision making not the

only

influence

just the biggest

and so learning how to cope with that on

the hotline is exactly what we're doing

these days in all our interactions is

there a way to like leverage that to

your favor when you're negotiating with

someone you can you have to be really

careful with it

which is really

the whole reason

to being use empathy as an approach

because if you don't use empathy

um

then you're the hostage taker

are you trying to use leverage against

them i mean it's it's such a blunt force

trauma concept

that if if you don't do it gently

uh with empathy versus sympathy

you know empathy is is not the same as

sympathy

but you're going to seem like a hostage

taker yourself

if you start out by saying like look man

i know you got a lot to lose if you

don't make this deal

well that's trying to trigger

loss but you yeah i seem like a hostage

taker myself if i do that

so i gotta work my way into a position

where

i gotta get you to

realize

that that's the case

quick one we bring in eight people a

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when you became a hostage negotiator

when was your first real job

yeah it was a chase manhattan bank

robbery bank robbery yeah with hostages

which

although it happens all you know in the

movies all the time you know bruce

willis

samuel jackson

kevin spacey

eddie murphy they're negotiating the

hostages out of banks and every movie

about it

in real life it's a really rare event

like it was a bank robbery with hostages

in new york city and there hadn't been a

bank robbery with hostages

in new york city for over 20 years

now

people get taken hostage in bank

robberies

but generally the bad guys are gone

before the police show up

because they know if the police get to

play surrounded

their chances of getting away are lou

so they're gonna be gone

but to trap bank robbers in a bank with

hostages really really rare

and that happened about a year and a

half after i got out of the negotiation

training

and i was still volunteering on suicide

hotline so my skills you know you fall

to your highest level of preparation

i was ready i was ready to go when they

put me on the phone because i'd been

negotiations of perishable skill and i'd

been working at it my skill level was

really high at the time are you nervous

when you get that phone call about that

bank robbery

i know i was ready to go i mean

i was doing it because i wanted to

i would want to get involved i wasn't

doing it to get the t-shirt

you know i was doing it because i wanted

to get involved and as a matter of fact

like

i was never asked to go a friend of mine

had taught me

and having made a mistake previously i

had learned the lesson of just show up

if something's going down

show up um

i heard this advice from a government

official not that long ago and he said

run to trouble

always run to trouble

there's a whole bunch of reasons for

that

whether it's business

or law enforcement

one of the nice things about run into

trouble running into you know

figuratively theoretically

running into the burning house

you don't get criticized as much

you know you run the trouble if you're

running into

a static situation or something a bunch

of people have been dealing with for a

while and it's just been sitting there

in deadlock

and whatever you do

people are going to criticize you you

know because they failed and you're

doing something different then they

don't want to see you succeed

but if if you're running that you run

into chaos you run into trouble

you know the criticism is much lower

you know but he's dealing with it

somebody's got to do something decisions

have to be made

it's a great strategy run the trouble

and and i had and i'd come to uh to like

that a lot so

i'm sitting at my desk in new york

my buddy charlie walks up and says

there's a bank robbery with hostages in

brooklyn let's go

i looked at a police detective colleague

because i had an interview scheduled

that morning i said can you cover the

interview

he says yeah i got it and we go

head to the bank and we show up

and a team forms fbi and nypd both show

up because it's a bank

we know the pd negotiators really well

our commander hugh mcgowan super sharp

guy knew what he was doing

he integrated the team first negotiator

on the phone was a pd detective

he points to me says you're the coach

we stood up the rest of the team around

joe the original negotiator

joe talks the situation

into stalemate which is not a bad thing

because the threat level's not coming up

and uh

lieutenant mcgowan looks at me and he

says okay you're up

and they handed me the phone

and what was your job at that point what

was the the the bank robber asking for

and what was your job at your objective

well we didn't know it at the time like

the bank robbery was actually the

classic great ceo negotiator

like the great ceo negotiator is going

to act helpless at the table

because he doesn't want you to force him

into a commitment

you know i found this out some years

later when i was learning negotiation at

harvard

you know they called a business strategy

blame somebody who ain't in the room

so great ceo negotiator is going to be

like look man i got a board of directors

like i got to be careful what i commit

to here because this board of directors

i i you know i do the wrong thing these

guys got to fire me you know they're

going to throw me right out of this

company

and and if the guy does that he's got

all the power in the world he don't care

about his board of directors he just

doesn't want to get backed into a corner

so the bank robbery we get on the phone

with this guy the the the guy who

orchestrated the whole thing

and he's like man i'm scared of these

guys in here these other these other

guys that i'm with man they are

dangerous

like i'm scared of them they might hurt

me

so i gotta be careful what i say to you

oh here they come now

and i gotta hang up the phone and he was

he was making it all up you know

initially

our initial assessment is this guy's an

inadequate personality he's scared to

make a decision

complete smoke screen on his part so

we're you know we're when we're in the

in the negotiation for several hours and

we got the banks surrounded and then the

investigators on the outside

and this is a

residential commercial area of brooklyn

so there are cars everywhere

and they identify the owner of every

vehicle on the outside

and talk to them except there's one van

out there and it belongs to this guy

and as it turns out this guy is running

a cash courier business that services

this bank

and they can't find this guy he is

nowhere to be found

so they go to his address and they say

hey do you know

this guy

and will you come to the scene of the

bank and listen to the voice because

we're running the negotiations on

speaker

outside

to the commanders

and the witness comes in and says yeah

that's that's this guy's name happened

to be chris also

so they voice id this guy and he has

never given us his name this is another

great technique if we meet

and i don't give you my name

[Music]

it unsettles you

you don't feel you've connected with me

and this guy would not give us his name

so you know we're we got a voice id on

him when a lieutenant says you're up

next he says i want you to confront this

guy

about his name as quick as you can

and we're not going to do a normal

smooth hand-off you're just going to

start talking normally the protocol is

if you hand off from one negotiator to

another the second guy comes on he says

look i've been here the whole time

and i've heard of everything that's

going on and here's everything that i've

heard because you don't need the other

guy on the other side saying like

where do i start with this guy you know

have you been here listening do you have

any idea what's going on

it's a smooth transition but a

lieutenant his gut instinct is like yeah

we're not gonna do this this guy's a

manipulative guy

and in a really subtle way

we're going to start taking back control

and we're going to start by not doing a

smooth transition so i get on the phone

i'm talking to this guy now this is a kg

dude

we

shift with no intro

so what does he do

in order to remind us that he's got

hostages but also not raise the threat

level because he's got to genuinely be

concerned that the snipers are going to

put a red dot on his forehead and the

next thing is going to happen is he's

going to be at the pearly gates

explaining his actions over the last 24

hours

he goes and gets a hostage and puts her

on the phone

we haven't we've been there five hours

we had no

confirmation of the condition of the

hostages other than him saying i'm

taking care of the girls everything's

fine as a matter of fact i gotta hang up

the phone cause they're hungry and they

want to get something deep all kinds of

smoke screens

so i'm on a phone and i hear this female

voice come on go like i'm okay i'm okay

and i'm like

uh who's this what's your name i'm okay

and then that's the last i heard of her

he comes back on the phone pretends like

this didn't even happen

i'm like all right this is a cagey dude

we're gonna go forward

i'm gonna find a way to hit him with his

name but do it gently

so i start talking about his van outside

which he knows is out there he just

doesn't know that we've identified it

and i said you know we got a van out

here

and we found

the owners of every van

and spoken to him

except one

and he goes

we have more than one van

now

i got no idea what this guy is talking

about

so i did what we refer to as a mirror i

just repeat the words because my brain

is like what is this guy talking about i

go you have more than one van he goes no

we only have one van i go you you you

only have one van

and he goes

yeah yeah and and you chase my driver

away i go would chase your drive away

he says yeah when he saw the police he

cut and run

now this super control freak guy

is now blurting stuff out

as a result of my mirror my technique

that he did not mean to say

this ends up convicting his getaway

driver who had gotten away and we didn't

even know there was a third guy

how did that case end

everybody came out

why why did the bank robber concede in

the end did he get anything he wanted

well the uh not and you know

and

you know how do you negotiate when

you're not going to give them anything

you know you help them see a different

vision of the future is what it really

boils down to

and what you really want them to see is

a vision of future where they live

and then you're hoping the survival

instinct kicks in

and when the second guy got on the phone

with me

his principal concern was getting killed

right

and his secondary concern

was

uh being handled roughly

when he came out

of course he knew that they had beaten

the women on the inside

and that may contribute to his

being handled roughly when he came out

but he number one didn't want to get

killed and number two

my opening line was look when you when

you come out you'll be treated with

dignity and respect

and i said that to him enough times that

he decided it was going to be true and

uh he asked to meet me face to face out

in front of the bank

was he treated with dignity and respect

a thousand

you got to keep you got to keep your

promises because

and you know this was this was one of

the things when i was teaching

negotiation at harvard

you know my academic brothers

and sisters up there were like were like

would you lie

to get the guy out

and my answer was no and they'd say like

yeah but let's say let's pretend let's

imagine

that a terrorist has got a nuclear bomb

in boston

and you know that if you lie to him

he won't set the bomb off

so how do you answer that one

and my answer is well number one

the guy's probably testing me to see if

i'll lie

so i gotta watch out that it's not a

trap

number two

if he's not testing me he's gonna be a

better liar than i am

and he's gonna sniff it out you can't

lie to a liar you just can't they're too

good at it

and then number three

even if i lied to him and get them out

somebody's gonna find out that i lied

and i will always have the reputation of

being a liar

and i can't risk my

reputation so if i'm uh if i'm a if i've

got hostages and i call you and i say

listen i want a car i think i saw this

one on your youtube channel i want a car

in 60 seconds outside right

um would you what's the first thing you

say to me you want to try

yeah let's do it all right so i'm the

you're the beggar i'm the bad guy okay

chris

i'm gonna blow this woman's head off if

you don't give me a car in the next 60

seconds

how am i supposed to do that

not my problem you got 55 seconds

all right so if i wanted to do it

it's just it's madness out here it's

chaos i mean this is

ringling brothers barnum bailey circus

is organized compared to the nonsense

that's going on out there so even if i

wanted to do it

i can't do it in that time frame

i'm sure you're the fbi you're the

police you can make anything happen

50 seconds

sounds me like you're not gonna give me

a chance

i'm giving you a chance right now 50

seconds chris there's plenty of cars up

there go get one of the cars and pull it

up outside or i'm going to blow her head

off

sounds like you have a reason to live

i do have a reason to live that's none

of your business

i'm i'm i'm not trying to find out why i

mean

my first number one thing is to make

sure that you live

so get me a car and i will drive off

honestly you've got 45 seconds i don't

want to talk anymore

if you're not gonna give me a chance how

am i supposed to do it i'm giving you a

chance 45 seconds that's plenty of a

chance

like to me even find

get all the commanders together

and get them to think about this

which they're probably not going to do

anyway

i will go and talk to them

about how am i supposed to find them all

talk to them get them to think about it

in 45 seconds okay how long do you need

i know first of all i want you to

understand

i don't think they're gonna do it

well then i'm gonna blow my head off

that would be your choice

see now so the other thing too is

hostage negotiators are successful 93 of

the time

which is one of the things that i

learned in the business which means

seven percent of time they just ain't

coming up

now i we have to do everything we could

possibly do in the meantime

but our number one goal is not putting

any additional people at risk

like i get this question all the time

like if you think it's gonna save a

hostage why don't you just give him a

car

and save those hostages

well i can't put additional people at

risk

and by the way while we were doing that

i don't know anybody put a clock on us

but we went more than 45 seconds it's

true

and what were you thinking when as we

were going through it

um there was

all the questions were

provoking me into all the questions you

asked me

felt like they were dragging me away

from my

objective

in a quite a tactical way so i was

thinking oh he's not this is annoying

he's making me talk and i don't want to

talk

that's kind of what i was thinking and

then

yeah i mean the questions you asked were

making me ponder and they were making me

abandon

my focus which was to just get this car

and kill this woman

right see which was

i wasn't asking you that stuff to get

you to answer what i was really doing

was doing exactly what you talked about

get you to ponder get you to think

you know what kahneman would has talked

about in his book thinking fast and slow

pondering

he would call slow thinking in-depth

thinking where you really think about

stuff

and then you really make the decision

and you really make up your mind instead

of me trying to hustle you

like i could hustle you into something

really quick but it wouldn't be your

decision

and the whole point of getting somebody

to ponder something

is so that when they do come to a

decision they own it

when you said the thing about even if i

wanted to do that

like i couldn't do that in 45 seconds or

whatever

i liked that sentence because it

obviously there was a degree of empathy

there so even if i wanted to it wasn't

you know on my parade it wasn't

attacking me too much

and you made me ponder the reality of

the fact that it's not even possible

my demand is not even possible even if

you

you know were on my side so that was a

very good question to

to make me ponder myself to realize that

what i'm asking for is not going to

happen seeing there's another reason why

i said it like that too um because

you know a lot of people if you ask for

something in a business deal that

they're not going to give you

they give you a classic american lie

i'll try

you know and and

maybe it's not an american line maybe

it's a lie in english language

like but you know in any kind of deal

somebody looks at you and says i'll try

[Music]

you don't get a good feeling no and you

get all trying enough times you know

right away it ain't never happening yeah

yeah so i didn't do i'll try

you know i basically said i don't think

it's gonna happen

but i'll check

because i'm trying to shift

us out of an adversarial into a

collaborative conversation

and so then

what i'm basically saying is like

i don't want to mislead you i don't

think this can happen i will be your

advocate

how important is that collaboration

no relationship survives long term

without collaboration just just ain't

gonna happen

so you're giving me the impression that

you're actually on my side to some

degree and that we're collaborating to

find an outcome together

yeah and point of fact

see the crazy thing is hostage

negotiators have repeat customers

if i get you out alive

the chances of

you straightening out your life

are not great

and the chances of you ending up in

another hostage siege are high

if you don't get killed otherwise

and you got to have a memory of the last

hostage negotiator trying to work with

you

versus the guy hustle jen lied to you

guy or gal

so

if you always look at all interactions

as if you're gonna have to pay for

everything you said eventually

which means if you lie you're gonna pay

for it if you did every thing you could

to be collaborative then your

counterparts going to remember that in

the future like well i didn't go my way

but at least you got in line to me it's

like comma isn't it it's karma a

thousand percent is karma i'm a big

believer in karma very much

i had a few words to say about one of my

sponsors on this podcast as the seasons

have begun to change so has my diet and

um

right now i'm just going to be

completely honest with you i'm starting

to think a lot about

slimming down a little bit because over

the last couple of probably the last

four or five months my diet has been

pretty bad um and it started to show a

little bit really over the last two

months i go to the gym about 80 of the

time so i track it with 10 of my friends

in a whatsapp group and this tracker

online that we all use together we call

it fitness blockchain and i'm currently

at 81 percent

um so 81 of the days i've done a workout

in the last 150 days right so i'm going

to the gym about six times a week that's

been a little bit impacted by the

derivatio live tour but i'm trying to

stick to it

and so one of the things i'm doing now

to reduce my calorie intake and trying

to get back to being nutritionally

complete and all i eat is i'm having the

hule protein shake thank you for making

a product that i actually like the

salted caramel is my favorite i've got

the banana one here which is the one my

girlfriend likes but for me salted

caramel is

the one

how important is it generally in

negotiations

to listen because a lot of people

you know kind of think they can

overpower someone with right just

talking at them right

yeah and and what they're what they're

called is

um

they can't hold a job yeah yeah

you know you you and there are a lot of

people that are very visible that are

doing that

and in the moment they might look very

good but what ends up happening is

they're frequently initially extremely

successful

and then their success rates drop off a

cliff

and then they don't hold the job because

they were awesome in their first quarter

and it had a continuing steady decline

in their productivity until it went to

zero

and they they can't be tolerated anymore

but everybody sees a really loud guy or

gal

getting deals

or and and they're the ones that make

the most noise about it so your original

question is how as important as

listening

there is

no negotiation methodology that doesn't

list

listening as an advanced skill

no matter what school of thought

somebody's in in

negotiation they all

list listening as advanced

far more difficult

than simply keeping quiet

it's critical

and you will actually end up

increasing the velocity of your deal

cycles by listening

which a lot of people think it's really

counter-intuitive

but you know i did i did an interview

with mark cuban

six or seven months ago and i talked

about listening and he's like yeah you

know if i take the time to to really

hear somebody out in our first deal

and pay attention to what's important

with them

then every deal after that will come to

me faster having done it right up front

and it'll increase the velocity of my

ability to make deals with them because

they'll trust me they'll know that i

hear them out they know that i'm looking

out for them

and consequently

you know

it doesn't take me a long time to

establish trust when we come back we

come to the table we get right down to

it and it really increases the velocity

of my ability to make deals

and a lot of people can't see that

because i got to hear them out i gotta

you know blah blah blah i gotta find out

what their point of view is it seems

highly efficient but what it is is

incredibly efficient long term

and then as it relates to speaking

when you're talking when you were

talking to me then in our little dummy

negotiation

um i noticed the tone of voice you took

was very

very calm

you list in the book three different

voices available

to negotiators right give me a flavor of

those three voices that are available to

negotiators

well there's there's

there's three natural types

um

in humans five fly to make friends and

these are the uh our caveman ancestors

that lived

either fought the saber-tooth tiger

ran from the saber-tooth tiger

or

figured out a way

to

make friends with it

and the indecisive caveman got eaten by

the saber-tooth tiger doesn't have any

descendants

and

we've got substantive reason to believe

that that exists globally regardless of

gender ethnicity

um religion

the three types the globe splitting

pretty evenly into thirds got a lot of

data on it backs it up

our brothers and sisters at harvard

pretty much agree based on their

experience warden has pulled a lot of

the same data comes very very close to

the same

and each type has a voice

you know and the voice of the assertive

natural born assertive which i'm

actually a natural-born assertive

is more the donald trump style

negotiator you know attacking

blunt

direct

you know uh

ivanka trump once described her her dad

donald and said you know he's not blunt

he's just direct

well

he's just an example but you know what i

think is direct you feel like you got

hit in the face with a brick

which is always counterproductive long

term always always always long-term

counterproductive inhibits your ability

to make deals people get tired of

getting hit in the face with a brick

so it wears them out

then there's the very analytical type um

which was you know that soothing calming

voice that i was using

triggers a neurochemical response in you

it actually calms you down

neurochemically it's a involuntary

automatic response now you can fight it

you can fight your way back out of it

but you can't stop me from getting the

calming neurochemicals started in your

head

and you know what if if you're careful

not to seem either cold or condescending

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that tone of voice is what the great tv

interviewers use the great

news anchors because there's a lot of

there's confidence

and calm simultaneously and people

really like it

and then there's you know there's a

smiling voice a friendly voice and

somebody just smiles when they speak

that triggers a different neurochemical

reaction

the people that you automatically like

right away as soon as soon as you lay

eyes on them as soon as they start

speaking

you know there's an advantage to that

so i was using you know in an emotional

situation and if you're in an emotional

negotiation

you know you want to go with the the

soothing

voice and smile

sprinkle that in

and now you kind of you get the

combination of both of them and it's

it's

collaboration you're going to want to

collaborate with me

if i use that voice

i guess it's an attempt and as you say

to like pacify

pacify them the other thing that i in

chapter three of your book you talk

about is

by the way you got a pretty good voice

you got you got a you got you you're

basically downward inflecting

your voice

portrays

first of all it's very genuine

but it portrays a guy who's actually

really thinking about what he says and

he actually listens oh that's very kind

compliment thank you

but she's still gonna die

in chapter three you talk about um

labeling their pain i found that a

really interesting concept right don't

feel their pain label it i think that's

probably a mistake i've been making i

actually was thinking about that in the

context of like my romantic

relationships right when my girlfriend

is talking at me as a way to kind of

create that bridge

how do i

create that bridge by acknowledging or

labeling her pain can you explain to me

what you mean by labeling their pain

you know um think of what whatever the

negative emotion that they're feeling is

the elephant in the room so if i'm if

i'm

you know i'm holding someone hostage and

i'm crying

yeah

yeah i'm gonna say

it sounds like you feel like you're out

of control

it sounds like you

you feel that

you're gonna have to do something you

really don't want to do

and what does that do to me when you

when you do that

all right so and this is one of the few

and the black swan method that's also

backed up by neuroscience like we know

anecdotally that this stuff works

because we're proving it over and over

again we're walking the talk

we make our own deals

very effectively

and the people that we coach make their

deals and accelerate their deals very

effectively so you know so we got no

shortage of our own anecdotal

information we don't really don't need

the neuroscience

but there's been several neuroscience

experiments

they put people in fmri's functional

magnetic resonance imaging devices where

they can watch the brain light up

and they induce

negative feelings in people and they

watch

the brain light up

typically by showing them some sort of

photograph

that causes them to feel a negative

emotion whether it's sadness anger

whatever it is

and then they simply ask the people to

identify

or label

what they're feeling as a result of the

what they saw

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and each and every time the person

labeled it

the the uh

electrical activity in that part of the

brain diminished every time

not deny

but just called it out you know you

don't deny the elephants in a room you

say there's an elephant a room and that

makes people feel

heard or seen or felt all of the all of

the above right so you know whatever the

emotional reaction to that is people

feel seen

heard felt understood

and it's probably a combination of you

know the emotional reaction and the

neuroscience reaction is it diminishes

the negative emotions

every time now the degree the degree

that it diminishes the emotions changes

like i you know we call that a label and

i may label the negative that that i

hear

and it might have a minimal impact a

tiny little impact or might have a huge

impact

but the impact is the type of impact is

the same every single time the degree of

impact changes but the nature of the

impact

is always to diminish the negative

emotion

one of the things that i read as well

that you're looking for in these

negotiations is for

them to conf give you a confirmation

like if they say that's right yeah so

you're you're trying to get me to not

blow this lady's head off and if you can

get me to say

that's right

what is that a signal of that's right is

what people say when they feel

understood you pull that's right out of

somebody

you're on your way in

in the direction of a great resolution

no matter what the negotiation landlord

tenant

employee employer

you know business deal

pulling that's rights

sends you in a great direction so you've

labeled something that i'm feeling you

said stephen it feels like you're about

to do something you don't want to do and

then i go that's right right now so

so tall

rise great researcher besides great

author

he speculates he says you know i think

somebody says that's right when they

even experienced an epiphany to some

degree

that's what you say when you when you

what you think you've heard is

completely true you're not agreeing with

a person

you're observing that what they said was

true

and when he said epiphany i'm like ah

this is interesting let me look up the

neuroscience of epiphanies

and among the neural chemicals that you

get ahead of

in an epiphany is oxytocin

which is the bonding drug so you get a

hit of oxytocin based on what i've said

and you have an involuntarily

feeling of bonding towards me

and then

you know the neuroscientists that i

think the world of andrew huberman

i heard him talking about on oxytocin

and he says that oxytocin tends to make

people tell the truth

so if you say that's right

you're going to feel bonded to me and

you're going to be more likely to tell

me the truth

that ain't a bad position for me to be

in in a negotiation

negotiations are you know

all over our lives so i mean

yeah when i was everywhere everywhere

right it's everything it's teams it's

business it's podcasting it's my

girlfriend whatever when i was reading

through the the principles in your book

never split the difference

um

so much of it i could relate to you from

the context of like romantic

relationships with my partner yep you

must find yourself in your own romantic

relationships deploying some of these

skills

and which ones of them

which one in terms of whether it's just

you know acknowledging them making them

feel heard what are the key skills that

translate really effectively to romantic

relationships

well they all do

because every human being wants to be

understood

and in a romantic relationship

they want to know that you understand

you know and in many cases

like any relationship

they just need need that in and of

itself now the additional demands of

romantic relationship is

they're gonna want you to understand and

adjust

which in point of fact

what other relationship

do they not want that from you as well

not only show me you understand

but

then walk the talk

it's um

the closer you are to someone

sometimes

you just it's really harder for you to

see things from their perspective

like you think you didn't do anything

wrong and you know and

typically male female but not confined

to this

you thought you were fine when in fact

what they perceived was that you were

clumsy and

insensitive are you good at negotiating

in

a romantic relationship because i can

i'll ask her when

well the problem with dating a really

smart girl is

she starts out negotiating you pretty

quickly

but the really that you know the real

issue is

what's your intent behind it

like if you're hearing your romantic

partner out just to get him to shut up

like the second or third time you pulled

that on them they have figured it out

and you're disingenuous

but if you're hearing somebody out

because you want things to be better

you really want

the relationship to be long-term and you

want it to continue to get better

then they're happy to

let you hear them out or to be

let you make them feel heard

because you're going to make the

adjustments and your behavior to take

that into account and you're going to

show that you care enough about how they

feel

not just what happened but how they feel

about what happened which is a recipe

for a great relationship romantic or not

but as as should be

it's even a higher standard for a

romantic relationship because how can

you be

involved long-term if you don't care how

the other person feels

in your negotiation negotiating days was

there an instance where

it really didn't go the way you wanted

it to go yeah and with 93 success rate

means seven percent of time is going bad

and that's just that's just the nature

of the game is there one that stands out

for you as being well every one of them

does

but

then then the issue is do you learn

like uh naseem nicholas taleb would call

it post-traumatic stress

growth like you go through a traumatic

event

um are you traumatized by it which and

then damaged and never recover

post-traumatic stress

uh injury harm disorder

or is there post-traumatic stress growth

where you took that and decided to be

better than you ever were before because

you never

want to let that happen again

when i said when i say this what is the

incident that comes to mind well the

first one uh that people died in

was the second case that i worked in the

philippines the burnham's a barrel case

and

early on before we could even get our

arms around

like a situation that was

moving really fast and the philippine

military was engaged and chasing the bad

guys

and a chase had been on for weeks

um guaranteero was murdered uh by by the

abu sayyaf

about 21 days into that case they had

already killed a number of filipinos

prior to that

and as they moved across the landscape

and the oceanscape and island island

south of philippines

they would they would kill hostages and

pick up new hostages because there were

people in their way all the time

so that was an ugly case from the

beginning to the end

in the end of it

uh

the two of the three remaining hostages

were killed in a botched rescue attempt

and they were shot by friendly fire

philippine scout rangers

inadvertently stumbled over the abu

sayyaf encampment

didn't realize it was one that had

hostages and it just opened fire

they recognized it as a terrorist

encampment

formed a skirmish line on the trees on

the uphill side and just started pouring

um rifle fire down into the camp

uh and so that was

that was the first time that i'd worked

anything where people had gotten killed

does that stay with you yeah it does it

does and and i felt sorry for myself for

a long time and it's not like i'm um i'm

happy about it but

for i'll never remember the moment that

i got the call 5 30 in the morning i was

in washington dc

where i lived

and a voice on the other end of the

phone said i've got bad news martin is

dead

and it was just a few hours after martin

burnham

had been killed and deborah yap the

filipino hostage been killed martin's

wife gracia

was wounded and lived

and i i'll never forget that was the

worst

that to that point and since

was the worst

professional moment personal moment of

my professional career and i used to say

is the worst moment of my personal

career until i was hearing another

hostage negotiator talking about a siege

he was in

when

an infant had

had died had been killed

and i remember sitting there watching

him talk about it and he's still very

definitely

dealing with the scars and the wounds

from having been the negotiator on scene

and i remember him saying like you know

i don't know why i keep telling you know

giving these presentations maybe i just

want people to know something

bad that happened to me on a winter's

day

and i was sitting there thinking

bad for you

that wasn't your blood it wasn't your

child

and i thought you know

we're taking on too much

because it wasn't a member of our family

it wasn't my brother

wasn't my significant other it wasn't my

son i got killed

and that's when i tried to that's when i

realized i had to put that stuff in

perspective it wasn't doing anybody any

good

for me feeling sorry for myself

i couldn't and and

what we the changes we made as a result

of the pronunciation saved lives

you know that was that was our mandate

all right so martin burnham is dead

what do we do with that

do we quit or do we get better

if we get better

somebody else is going to live and a

whole bunch of people ended up living

based on

strategy adjustments we made as a result

of that case it seems like a big

a very significant sort of burden to

carry right it goes back to what i said

at the start you know it takes a certain

type of person to want to be

want to play with those stakes yeah

somebody who's naive

yeah you just don't know any better

makes us difficult sometimes just

thinking about you know the traumatic

things we go through it makes us much

difficult especially in forming

relationships

i was i struggled with that a lot

struggled in

having a girlfriend probably because my

home life was so traumatic that i would

always run from commitment but when

you've lived in such and you hear the

same with like soldiers and stuff you

know and you've lived through such sort

of traumatic events

and high stakes

coming home to

hey babe you're right can be

difficult right yeah yeah it can be it

can be it can be difficult you can you

can have difficulty unwinding

the other person depending on how you

process information

like the other person might genuinely

doing their best to be there with you to

get you to talk about it

and

you know if you if if that isn't the

best way that you process it

and yeah one of the very difficult

things about me is

i don't process stuff by talking about

it i'll talk about it afterwards

you know but i i kind of need i need to

unplug you know i'll need a good night's

sleep

you know i'll need i'll need to let it

run through the data banks and kind of

bake on its own i'm probably pretty good

the next day which is interesting

because in your work you have no time

for that

yeah well you know and maybe that's why

i need it more at home because in the

work i mean we're gonna

you know we're going on it right now

we're dealing with it right now

mirroring something you talk about as

well in the book which i find really

interesting because again something with

my girlfriend i started to explore which

was

you know when she says something to me

or when she does something i to make her

again feel hurt i guess i just kind of

repeat it back to her right also trying

to is it also a body language thing or

is it just

how does mirroring mirroring work well

the hostage negotiators mirror the black

swans mirror you know the way that we

teach in business now just all verbal

okay you know if if you start lining up

physically

uh which is what the body language

mirroring thing is

like if you if you if that happens

naturally then so be it

enough people try to do it as a

manipulative tool

that we're really leery of

even coaching people on that at all like

if we're talking and suddenly we both

find us and i'm actually listening and

you're listening we both find ourselves

leaning the same direction that's cool

because we're dialed in

but the body language thing is is a tool

of manipulation so many times of people

that are just trying to exploit you

that aspect of it we stay away from now

the hostage negotiated mayor the black

swan mirror

repeating just the last one or three

words of what somebody said or then

taken surgically

picking a gist one or three words here

and there it's ridiculously effective

ridiculously effective yeah

you did very nice

just and and the thing that i find

fascinating about it too is

like if we find somebody that's really

into mirroring

they'll typically be somebody who's iq

and eq both are real high

and there are a lot of people whose iq

is real high

you know their book smarts are good but

the people smarts aren't good

and they tend to love mirroring because

it's

the least amount of effort with the

maximum amount of response

and they want to

guide and negotiation

in a very gentle but purposeful way

while the and the other side doesn't

feel guided they feel like they're

expanding

and it's been real consistent when you

think about your your next phase and

your next your projects that you're

working on now and what you're trying to

do you've got your the blacks one group

right i saw that online um the objective

of that is to to coach people into

negotiation skills and stuff like that

yeah worldwide globally

yeah and what does that look like is it

a course that people can buy is it a

webinar what is it yeah it's all of it

the website is blackswanltd.com

i mean if you just start now we got free

stuff

like how do you start to get better now

if you're further on down the line

we coach people through

all kinds of deals

on a regular basis and it's a really big

part of what the company does we coach a

lot of people

through negotiations

and you've got your book as well which

we've talked about a bit which is never

split the difference which has sold more

than two million copies worldwide which

is just staggering

crazy crazy numbers we have a closing

tradition on this podcast where the

previous guest leaves a question for the

next guest oh and i get to

i only get to see when i open the book

okay oh good handwriting so this is

useful

okay

is there someone

in your life

that really needs your help

but you are still unsure

on how to help them

uh there's uh there's someone in in my

immediate family

that um

i can uh i continue to

buy the wrong gifts for

and uh

i've got actually a conversation

scheduled

for me to at least say all right i

realize i'm getting it wrong

help me get it right

i think we can all relate to that in

some respects well i can anyway

thank you chris thank you for your time

thank you for writing such a great book

on a topic that is relevant to more than

just fbi negotiations as you know it's

relevant to my relationship with my

partner to my business to everything in

between it's really relevant to all the

interactions i have with all humans and

that's clearly a testament to why it's

sold more than it's almost 2.5 million

copies or something crazy like that

i know that i know the stats around

books i know that more

i think my publisher told me that

most books don't sell a thousand copies

so like 90 plus percent of books don't

sell a thousand copies just so to sell

2.5 million copies worldwide is

staggering but it speaks to your

experience and and the way you

articulated it in the book it's been an

honor to speak to you thanks for your

wisdom

and um i'm going to keep brushing up my

negotiation skills pleasure's been mine

thanks for having me on thanks chris

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