EntreLeadership - #369: The Best Way to Negotiate Fear with Chris Voss

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

After 24 years in the FBI negotiating life-and-death situations like international kidnappings and hostage crises, Chris Voss has stared fear in the face too many times to count. Now, as the CEO and founder of the Black Swan Group, Chris is teaching the business world how to do it too. Although the stakes are much different, the emotions are the same—and fear, in particular, can be downright paralyzing. Tune in as Chris explains why fear is so dangerous and shares the fastest, most effective way to lead your team through it.   entreleadership.com/podcast Chris Voss' website The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler TED Talk The happy secret to better work by Shawn Achor Chris Voss' MasterClass on Negotiation Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss Black Swan Newsletter Critical Thinking Cheatsheet Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   As an Amazon Associate EntreLeadership earns from qualifying purchases.   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know that when it comes to high-stakes situations, conversations, and decisions, we need to be wise, logical, and rational. But so often, as leaders in these moments when we most need to be rational, we find ourselves acting emotional. Fear, anger, anxiety, worry, and passion, get in the way of common sense. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host Alex Judd, and today we get to learn from Chris Voss.

This is a guy that knows a thing or two about high-stakes situations. Before becoming a best-selling author, he spent his career as an FBI hostage negotiator. And he says that negotiation is communication to influence outcomes, and this is a tactic necessary for every business owner, because every business owner faces the same set of challenges. everybody's got this the basically the same challenges how do I not waste my time how do I get to what best paying customers or clients how do I get my best match on the other side as quick as possible actually the the real problem here especially in small businesses and especially during these times that we're in right now is you know a lot of opportunities are fake opportunities you know

in every negotiation there's a favorite in a fool. If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's probably you. So there are a lot of people, especially in tough times, that are trying to get our product or services for free. And there are also, there are fewer people,

but just based on the numbers, 300 million people in the United States. Let's say that 10% of those people are actually my customers. That's 30 million people. people, how do I not waste time spinning my wheels with the 80 to 90% that are going to waste my time? Because the 10%, which is still a massive number, they want to pay me. You know, they'll pay for value.

They want exactly what I have and what I have will save their business. So how do I separate the wheat from the chaff and go to the people that will pay me and pay me well for what I'm worth. That's the real challenge, particularly in tough economic times. One of the things, as I've read your writing and studied your interviews and the things that you've talked about that I've realized is that in order to be effective at this, it seems like there needs to be a certain level of internal composure that an individual has whenever they sit down at the negotiating table. So can you speak to what? what that is and how do we cultivate that?

Yeah, that's a critical issue. And what composure do you need? You need the composure where you're smartest. So this is going to sound stupid. It's completely counterintuitive. But you're smartest when you're genuinely curious. It's impossible to be angry and be curious at the same time. You know, our biggest issue is not to keep ourselves out of emotions,

but to keep herself out of negative emotions. And negative emotions make us dumber. Like anger, there's an old saying, if you get mad, you know, if you give a speech when you're mad, it'll be the greatest speech you ever regret. That's right. Anger makes us dumb. It actually limits our ability to taking information

while simultaneously convincing us that we're right. And which means you get a double whammy of dumb. That's right. double whammy of dumb. That's right. So how do you guard against that, though? Because I think it's so easy. Maybe anger is where people go or fear, one of the two. And it seems like either is negative. Yeah. Well, anger is a result of fear, actually. I learned that a long time ago when I first started all this on a suicide hotline. You know, volunteering on a crisis hotline or a suicide hotline is like a masterclass in emotional intelligence. Like you find out what makes people tick.

And we didn't know at the time, it's a masterclass in navigating and deactivating negative emotions. Now, we're wired to be basically negative. 75% of our wiring in our brain is for survival, which is mean be fearful, be cautious, be pessimistic. You know, the optimistic caveman died. eaten by the saber-tooth tiger you know the pessimistic caveman said you know what i ain't going in there i'm not going in that cave i just got a bad feeling and yeah and he lived and the optimistic caveman said

you know i i'm optimistic i think this is a good place to live i'm just going to go charging in there and he got eaten by the saber-tooth tiger right so you know there's a difference we're wired to survive we're not wired to succeed per se to succeed is an optimistic outlet it's a basically a positive frame of mind. So that's not the way we're naturally wired. So we've got to deactivate that in ourselves. I mean, that's why it's becoming cliche to have a good morning ritual.

What are you trying to do? You're trying to deactivate the negative, put yourself in a positive frame of mind. If you just have a good morning ritual, then your brain will be rewired to succeed for the day. You'll take in more information. You'll recognize patterns sooner. These are what make us better business, men and women.

We take in more information. We recognize the guy who's trying to play us for the fool, and we politely disengage, or we recognize a great customer, and then we knock ourselves out to over-deliver because we know we're going to get paid. This seems so relevant to where we're at right now, and I love that analogy you used to the caveman, because it seems like almost overnight, everyone was out of the cave and almost everyone in business has ran back to their cave and has committed that they're never going to leave their cave ever again,

it seems like, because of fear and the unknown. So how does the business owner effectively lead and operate when their customers are operating from that frame of mind, but also their team is starting to take on that exact same frame of mind, Chris? Yeah, well, it's scary. And so the elephant in the room is fear here. So the first way to get rid of the elephant in the room is to simply recognize it. You know, if we got an elephant in the room, we can't say, you know, there's no elephant in the room. Don't worry about the elephant in the room. It's not there.

It's not going to bother us. And everybody goes, are you out of your mind? You're crazy. You know, people react to the denial. Two-millimeter shift is a denial to simply calling it out. So we learned that saying it's not there doesn't help. it makes people mad, it makes it more fearful. So our default is to just pretend it's not there and hope it'll go away.

Now, that's not terribly effective, but at least they didn't make things worse. And what we learned as hostage negotiators is to call it out and say, you know what, there is an elephant in the room. It's right there. And when you look at it head on, people are much more likely of your three choices. They're much more likely to say, yeah, you know what? But we can tackle that elephant. And then people start thinking when they go, yeah, it's right there.

Okay, so how do we tackle it? The simple recognition of a problem in so many different cultures, in so many different applications, the truth shows up over and over again. What's the first step to solving a problem is recognizing it? Like the every 12-step method says start out by recognizing a problem. not denying it, not ignoring it, recognize it. The truth shows up in the universe in our world in patterns. And when it starts showing up in the same places as an antidote for different types of problems,

and you know it's the truth, you know, I know I'm rambling, but Elon Musk used to always read two books simultaneously. His brother said he was always reading multiple books at the same time. And they asked Elon evidently about it. And he said, yeah, I'm looking for the truth. And I know that if it shows up in multiple different books, it's a universal truth. And then I could use it for whatever I need to tackle. So the recognition of a problem has shown up in our lives in multiple ways,

whether or not you're dealing with 12-step problems or relationship problems or business problems or wartime problems. And some people are saying this is a wartime economy. The first step is always to recognize the problem. And again, everything you're talking about, it seems like the business owner or the leaders in this situation are going to be the people who are detached enough emotionally to be able to have that perspective. What are some specific actions that leaders can take to kind of gain that detachment to be able to look at this situation and not be emotionally involved in it, Chris? Well, let's draw a fine line here between negative. emotions and positive emotions. Okay.

Because you're not going to get out of any problem unless you're optimistic that you can do it. And it's a positive emotion. The real recognition of this distinction, the importance of it, I'm a huge fan of Stephen Kotler, and he's become a friend. And I did a video the other day and half the books on my bookshelf for Stephen Kotler books. And he sent me an email and they go, like, yeah, you know, you got SK books all over the place. Well, yeah. And the first one is that really put him on a map is called The Rise of Superman.

And it's about the mindset of flow, which is about top performance. Whether you're an X-Games athlete or whether you're a businessman or woman. What does it take to perform at your highest level? The mindset of flow. Your pattern recognition is at its highest level. Your ability to absorb information is at its highest level. Your brain is functioning at its highest level, and it's actually highly positive. It borderlines on euphoria.

I mean, that's highly positive. So Kotler and others, and he's the most recognized, have pointed out to us that will be smarter in a positive frame of mind. Another data point on this. Harvard psychologist, his name will come to me in a minute. great TED talk on the happiness advantage. Is that Sean Acre? Sean Acre. Says you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind.

31% that's not 2%. That's a huge leap. You can beat your competition with that much of a leap. You'll thrive with that much of a leap. So positive frame of mind is extremely important in performance. negative frame of mind makes you dumber. And that's the important thing. The leader has to not be, don't be giddy.

I mean, don't be goofy. But you have to be highly positive. A quiet, calm, optimistic confidence people want to get behind. We will get through this. I know you're scared. The phrase that I just used that leaders should say to people, I know you're scared. It's not, we're all scared.

It's I know you're scared. That's the best way to deactivate your fears in the other side. I heard a great story, actually probably several years ago, but same circumstances. Companies headed down a path, all their employees think they're going in the wrong direction. It's a statewide state of California, so the statewide corporation, boss calls everybody, together mandatory meeting because all the employees think that the upper management is high and they're going to lose money and on top of that they say the expense of bringing us all together is a waste of money boss stands up in front of everybody and says i know you think we're nuts i know you think we're

headed down the wrong path i know you think management is out of its mind and person who was the meeting because we were telling him this was a specific strategy. He said, it was remarkable. How much better we felt. We all sat there thinking like, wow, the boss understands how we feel. He gets it. He didn't stand up there and said, we're all scared. He said, I know you're scared. and those two, the first one is the default mode that most people go to and it's ineffective. And the second one, I know you're scared, is radically different and phenomenally effective. It's interesting because I feel like the minute you turn on the TV right now, it's really easy to go into a negative frame of mind really, really fast. You love that, doesn't it?

That's right. It makes for good television. And at the same time, I think everyone probably resonates with what you're saying about guarding a positive frame of mind. But because of the culture we live in today that is so fear-based, you run the risk of appearing delusional just because you're acting positive. How should leaders respond to that? You know, it's interesting. A fair amount of personal responsibility. Very interesting to the way President Trump is navigating his way through this now, because fan or foe,

You know, his foes hate it when he does something that resonates with the people. And I saw him on TV last night, and they're talking about mailing out checks. And to everybody, you know, he's well aware that the cure for this coronavirus might cause more harm than the disease. You know, more people, we throw millions of people out of work, how are they going to feed their families? You know, people are going to die as a result of locking down the economy. It's just a crazy balance. But anyway, they talked about last night mailing out the checks, and somebody says, what about the oversight?

Who's going to oversee that the checks are sent out properly? And he goes, you know what? I'll handle the oversight. He's just going to take care of it, huh? Yeah, now, first of all, practically, that ain't never going to happen. Yeah, that's right. There's no way. You know, he's going to look at every check that goes out.

That ain't happening. Now, I got to tell you something, though. People love a leader taking responsibility. I'll handle it. Now, that's also highly positive. You know, I'll handle it. It is not fearful and it's not emotionally detached. That's a great example of someone who's highly positive in the moment that he's going to take care of something.

He didn't say, we're all scared. You know, he's got a great instinct for dropping something like that in at the right moment. And people go, are like, all right, I can get behind that. We'll get behind that. And it's crazy how reassuring that could be in the moment. And I would say, you know, I consider myself a political. So not, I'm an independent.

Every president that I've ever seen And a lot of my stuff When I was with the FBI Was directly reported to the president of the United States Every one of them Has done stuff that I thought was really stupid And every one of them has done stuff That I thought was really smart

This guy's no exception There's things that he's done That I thought were really dumb And there's stuff that he's done That I thought was really smart So I'm not taking an issue on either side of the eye When he said that on TV last night I was like, that was a brilliant remark, and that's highly positive.

So what can the business owner or the business leader that has people looking to them right now as a centering source of stability or like just saying, I want some confidence from someone, so I'm going to look at you. What should the business owner be focused on right now? Well, actually, more structured communication with the team focused on next steps, focused on highly positive, focused on teamwork. You want to go fast, go alone, you want to go far go as a team. This is a great time to double down with effective communication with your team.

And all along the lines of what great negotiation is, first of all, fear is the problem. And the best way, the best way, not the guaranteed way, just the best way, to get rid of fear is to call it out. You know what, there's an elephant in the room. We're scared for our survival. I did a video specifically to this because we coached a client just two weeks ago. A client calls me up and says we got a massive public event that we had to cancel. We're going virtual.

We got a million dollars in sponsorship money. All our sponsors are freaking out. And the boss says to me, this is a show, what we're dealing with. And I said, you know what? Say that exactly. say that exactly to your employees that are going to help you dig your way out. And then when you call the sponsors on the phone, first words out of your mouth have got to be this is a show.

And then we went down the line on outlining all the fears. You're scared that this is going to destroy your company. You're scared that you're not going to be able to feed your family. You're scared that you're not going to be able to pay your mortgage as a result of this. you feel the world caving in on you. And they went back and they started every negotiation with every sponsor. They actually had adapted in the moment to create a better value proposition, but you cannot get somebody to listen to the positive until you've deactivated the negative.

They went back and renegotiate with all their sponsors, completely different event than what the sponsors bought into. Not one dime of sponsorship money was pulled out. Didn't lose a dime. and they had a million and a half dollars at stake. What do you attribute that to? Deactivating the fears first. And great teamwork on their part.

They pulled their team together. In the moment, you know, they put together a war room. They said, okay, what can we do that's a different value proposition but is worth as much or more? They redesigned the event. They pulled their team together. They did the research. They did the work. They redesigned the event.

They actually came up with a better value proposition. And they wanted to say, hey, we got a better idea. Well, they did, but you got to deactivate the fear before somebody listened to the better idea. Because your thinking is clouded with fear until you deactivate it. And the only way to deactivate it, that most effective way, is to call it out. You keep using the word deactivate. Is that actually what happens neurologically? or what is going on inside our brains and inside our physiology whenever you label something like that?

Yeah, so they did. This neuroscience experiment has been duplicated a number of times. So they put people in fMRIs so they can wash the electrical activity in their brain. Now, we know where the negative part of the brain is. It's in a little thing called the amygdala. It's about an almond-sized organ in the center of your head. and it's the command post for your emotions and your thoughts. Every thought you have either starts there goes through there.

Now they map that out, and when you're in a negative frame of mind, 75% of that organ is dedicated to negative activity. So if you get angry and I got you in an fMRI, I'll watch that exact real estate in your brain light right up. So they put them in the fMRIs. They show them a picture that caused them to think something negative. And it didn't matter what the negativity was. was the picture would make him feel lonely, sad, afraid, concerned.

And they watched that part of the amygdala light up. And then they just simply said to the person, what are you feeling? Which effectively is had them self-labeled. And whenever the person said, I'm angry or I'm scared or I'm sad, whenever they self-labeled, they actually, the electrical activity deactivated. it started to shut down. It started to go away. Not some of the time, every single time.

Now, it wouldn't, the label might not always fully deactivate it, but it at least started to turn it down. So the degree of impact of the labeling varies, but the type of impact never changes. And so that's what we're designing. We're calling it out. And just in case, call it out a couple of extra times, in case that your label didn't work the first time.

And here's the thing that scares, you know, the bejes out of everybody. They're afraid of planting labels or planting negatives. Like if, what if I go too far and I drop seeds of negativity? So this is like, I'm not panicked right now, but because you just called me panicked, I'm now panicking a little bit. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly right. And that's hard to get over.

It was like when we were hostage negotiators, almost every hostage siege has a potential of suicide, everyone. And if we sensed it, we was taught to call it out. And initially everybody said, well, I can't say that. What if I ask them if they're suicidal, I mean, and they said, call it out bluntly, are you going to kill yourself? Are you going to commit suicide? And we were always afraid that the person in the house would go like, well, I wasn't, but now that you mention it, that's not a bad idea. Yeah.

I mean, it takes a lot of boldness to say that or to ask that. Scared the hell out of us. Scared the hell out of us. And it never happened. Like in 50 billion times, nobody ever said, well, now that you mention it, sounds like a good idea. What happens every time if they weren't suicidal, the guy on the other side would go like, no. No. And that's what happens on any negative.

If I say to you, look, you're probably going to think I'm smoking dope here. You're going to, and your thought will be like, hmm, I wasn't. And now that you mention it, that sounds stupid. So I'm not naturally just going to start thinking that because you planted that idea. Right. Now, the bad analogy that we've been taught is, and this is how people get so. confused, the difference between the denial and an observation. You know everybody said like, okay, if I say to you, don't think of a pink elephant, you think

pink elephants. Well, what did I do? I said, don't think about it. And it makes no sense to us rationally that the two millimeter shift from a denial to an observation takes you from implanting to deactivating. and that's why the people that my company, the Black Swan Group coaches, are killing it. That's why one of the people we coached

a million and a half dollars on the line and didn't lose a dime because they understood the difference from a denial to an observation. A million and a half dollars didn't lose one dime. as you talk about this labeling the negative emotion and kind of deactivating all of the tension by doing that i couldn't help but think i wasn't thinking about this before we got on this call but our CEO whenever all of this started to go down he brought everyone into a room and the way

he started the conversation was uh i mean we are people of faith so he started by praying and then after we prayed, he said, I know that some of you are really panicked right now. And I know that some of you are really scared. And I know that some of you are really anxious. But I want to let you know, you are okay, we are okay. And it sounds like whether he knew what he was doing or not from a psychological and neurological perspective, it sounds like that's labeling. Is that right? Yeah, that's brilliant stuff. You know, I'm not shocked as your CEO because that was a, That was emotional intelligence. That was EQ.

And that is showing up more and more and more these days in the leaders that are leading people through tough times. And thriving regardless of the circumstances. Emotional intelligence, man. That was great. That's brilliant stuff. I was on a call with a business owner the other day that the state they were in, I think they were in Washington, shut business down for two weeks. a while back and they said we're not open right now because we're a non-essential business and they said I'm gonna have to start laying people off and I don't

know if we're gonna make it through this is what they were saying and they said the only way we would get through this they recognized exactly what we were talking about the only way we're going to get through this is if we have some creative idea that allows us to solve this problem in a brand new way but I tell you what, I'm losing a little bit of hope right now that that's going to be possible in the next two weeks. If that person was talking to Chris Voss, what would Chris Voss tell them? I'd go back with, look, you're scared. I know you're scared. And I know it looks bad right now. And I know it looks like we're not going to get through the next two weeks. Let's pull together as a team

and brainstorm the solution because if we give ourselves a chance there's always a solution we just have to see what the blessing in disguise is here what can we build that will survive this and end up being a supplement

when we get to the other side of this and if they say oh I don't know Chris like I'm pretty beat down right now I don't know that I have the energy to do that myself, but much less lead other people in that. Sometimes when you go into deactivate the negatives, you haven't gone far enough.

And so that's why when you take your first round, you got to shut up and wait for your feedback. And, you know, I would say, it sounds like you feel hopeless. Sounds like you're scared. Sounds like you feel alone. Sounds like you just don't know when this is going to be over. One of the definitions, I'm going to take a step back here and talk strategy.

One of the definitions of traumatic stress is it's unrelenting and it's overwhelming, which means you don't, unrelenting means you don't know when it's going to be over. So how do you chunk it out a little bit? You chunk it out since you don't know what's going to end, you start saying, all right, so we're going to schedule strategy meetings. We're going to get together every day at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. or every day at 10 o'clock or we're going to convene brainstorming sessions every day at 10 and 2. When people are scared, they say, okay, look, we're getting together to work on solutions tomorrow at 10 a.m.

Cool. All I got to do is hold on until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. And then we're going to get together as a team and we're going to talk about how we're going to work our way through this. Things will have changed by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. We will have gathered data by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. we will have researched options by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. I don't know that we're going to have the right options by 10 a.m., but we're going to have more options than we have right now. And people can cope with bad times when they chunk it into schedules as to when are we going to take next steps.

By 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, we're going to have an option that we're going to put on the table and we're taking that step no matter what, because the worst thing is inact. Now we take a step in between 10 and 2 tomorrow. We're going to look at the results. And by 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, we're going to be smarter because we're going to have new data and we're going to have new information. However you want to chunk it out.

But as soon as you start chunking out the time and you lay out a process, people want to know that there's a process in place that at worst will be smarter and at best will be smarter and will be in a better position. Allow yourself the opportunity to be smarter tomorrow than you were today and then you will work your way out of any problem. And in doing that, you kind of lead people to understand that the win is not a clean, clear-cut solution. the win is just having one option tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. If I was in that position as the business owner,

I'd feel that that is a lot more achievable than us having to solve this entire mess by tomorrow at 10 a.m. We don't have to solve at all. We just need one option by tomorrow morning. Yeah, it's a great point. And kind of the old cliche, how do you eat in an elephant? One bite at a time.

So we're going to take one bite out of this by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. and as soon as we do, we're going to get smarter. What are some other tactics or actions that leaders can take if their people are on the proverbial ledge right now, and their people really can't focus on productivity and work, even though it's hyper-necessary right now because they're so mentally and emotionally just drained by everything that's going on? Your description is perfect. Again, this gets us back to deactivation of the fears. And that's a great description because you say, look, you guys feel like you're on a ledge right now.

You feel exhausted. You feel that this has drained the life out of you. You don't know where this is going to go. What you just described was a great emotional intelligence response. What's our gut instinct telling us that people are feeling? The best chance of success, which is not a guarantee of success. My old boss, Gary Nestner, crisis, negation. negotiation into the FBI.

You know, I heard him say this a thousand times before I finally realized how true it was and we've carried a forward into our company. There's no guarantee here. And if you start telling people there's a guarantee, they're going to say, you know what, you're delusional? There aren't any guarantees. It's crazy. But if you say, here's what we're going to do, we're going to take the steps that give

us the best chance of success. The absolute most we can hope for, the most realistic optimism is let's go on a strategy that gives us the best chance of success. and give ourselves the opportunity to be smarter at every step of the way. And then people go like, all right, that's realistic. I can get behind that because there are no guarantees in life. There never were. And if you try to tell somebody you've got a guaranteed 1,000% chance of success,

that's a fool's errand because very soon something's going to go wrong and then you're going to lose your credibility. Well, you told us this was guaranteed it would work. Now, where's your credibility? How do I follow you now? But if you say this is the best chance of success, there are no guarantees. All we can ask for from the universe is the best chance of success. And fortune favors the bold.

It always has in good times and bad. The saying isn't fortune favors the inactive or fortune favors the timid or fortune favors the indecision. Fortune favors the bold. you take steps you figure out the best chance of success you allow yourself to be smarter today than you were yesterday and you will thrive in ways that your competitors will not man as you're describing that i have this image in my head i watched your master class in preparation for this and that was wonderfully done it's uh it's outstanding that entire program is outstanding but your lesson specifically was so good and they showed that footage of, I believe it was the case. I think it was in New York City and it was a Chase Bank

that was being robbed, if I remember correctly. And they showed this footage and there's SWAT everywhere. People are freaking out. They've got the street blocked off and people were taken hostage inside the bank. And I just, I got this image picturing myself, you're getting this call. And I mean, the situation seems probably anytime you get a phone call, the situation has become as bleak as it could possibly get. And you're stepping into that. And it's like we're going from, I mean, just an absolutely horrible situation. And my objective is to get everyone out of here safe and secure and to get these guys,

these bad guys behind bars. And I think there's some parallels to that situation to the business owner that's having to walk into the office right now on Monday morning saying like, this thing is a mess. What am I supposed to do? It looks like this mound of work. that seems unachievable. So when you would walk into a situation like that one at Chase Bank, what were the things you were doing to put yourself in the right headspace?

And I guess walk us through the parallels there, Chris. I had to process. I mean, if you got a process you can rely on, and the process was call out the emotions. Just call them out. Your emotions? No, no, no. Well, if I need to deactivate me, you know,

and I do this with myself on a regular basis. Like if something's got me, concern, stress, you know, concern is our disguise word for fear. If you feel concerned, you're scared. And any time or apprehension, you know, it's a disguised version of fear. And I'll go like, I'm scared. I'm scared. I just call it straight out and, you know, I don't know how many times I got to say it. It could be two times.

It could be 50 times. By the time I've said it enough, I've actually, I've read, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, change the electrical patterns in my brain. And every single time when I said when I'm no longer scared, my instant reaction is, I'm fine. The only thing I'm really scared of is being scared. I mean, that, you know, that's, so that's, as soon as I start calling myself out as scared when I'm not,

my instant reaction is like, shut up, let's go. And that's the way the dynamic works. So you can self-label or you can label with people, You know, calling out the negative emotions as hostage negotiators, we weren't smart enough to make the distinction. We just said call out the emotions. We called it emotion labeling. And in point of fact, the emotions that were always present were negative emotions. And we just thought it was hostage cases.

We didn't know that human beings are 75% negative by neuroscience. We got the neuroscience, which is only discovered in the last five or so years. and neuroscience back this up. It's not psychology. It's neuroscience. It's hard scientific data. And so that's the way we wired. And we were taught way back then, call out the emotions.

They happen to be negatives. And we were taught how to navigate negative emotions in the fastest, most effective way possible. And then just before we got into that, you started talking about bold action. if someone has a disposition towards hesitating, how do you coach them towards taking action because we know that's what's necessary in this situation? People who tend to be more hesitant tend by and large it's mostly highly analytical people and highly analytical people value data. And so you start changing the conversation for different words for the same thing.

And you say, let's gather some data here. You know, data improves design. Let's take a cautious step, but we can't get more data without taking us step. And then every time we get data, we get smarter. Data improves design. And we're not trying to eat the elephant in one fell swoop. We're going to take a bite out of this elephant, and we're going to digest it, and then we're going to pay attention to what we've learned in a moment.

And the instant we take a step and have data, we will be instantly smarter. So the next instant, our next step will be that much smarter. So you know that you're wired to want data and you know that the way to get more data is to just take the next step. And it's almost like testing or experimenting and the whole time you're just observing and getting information. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is. We have to have a hypothesis and we've got to test our hypothesis. And the minute we test it, we're smarter, which then means we're even more likely to solve the problem

because every step we take, we get smarter with every step. Are there any common themes that you're already seeing leaders do in this season that you think are unhealthy for them? Well, wow. Yeah. Allowing fear to paralyze you. You know, that's leader after leader in wartime situation after wartime situation. I think it was Roosevelt that said in the country's worst moments with combination of depression, the war. You know, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Paralysis of fear will stop you from gathering information. will keep you from making smart moves. And again, it's another version of a negative emotion, which when you get caught in it, the double whammy is you think you're doing the right thing. You're more convinced you're right when you're afraid or you're angry and your decision is in action and you're even more convinced it's right.

I mean, the double whammy on negative emotions is just really debilitating. So how do you get yourself out of it? just be, all right, so this is crazy. What's really going on here? If you can get yourself in a mindset to go, this is fascinating. What's really going on here?

You're now back into the curious state of mind, which you're smarter. You begin to recognize patterns. You see the way out when you're genuinely curious. Something you just said made me think of kind of the idea of defining the win and walking in with a specific objective. And it's obviously clear, at least I assume it's clear, that when you would walk into situations like the one at Chase Bank, you had a very clear objective, I would assume, that everyone gets out alive and those bad guys go to jail. It seems like a lot of

times right now people are almost negotiating with themselves and they're giving themselves possible alternatives. Like, okay, our primary goal is that we want the business to survive and we don't want to have to lay people off. But then they're going through these lists of alternatives of what is maybe even more likely than that defined objective. So I guess just for people's internal sanity and health, how should they weigh those competing objectives? And what is the responsible way to handle those competing objectives and lead effectively through those? The responsible way is you have to be committed to taking a step after you've done your analysis. My company, there's seven of us.

We've always operated virtually, so we didn't have to go back and restructure how we communicated to start with. So we had a bit of an edge. But even more than that, we don't hold a meeting without next steps. We don't have meetings to talk about stuff, to analyze. And we have very strict time frames, and we have very structured conversations. and we always come out of everything with the next step. I don't talk to anybody without having a next step afterwards. And I get up in any problem that I think about,

I go, what is the next step? And we put deadlines on ourselves, and we go like, what's the next step? And if we don't know what to do, I mean, everybody has an idea in their head. We got a proposal with multiple people in real estate out there right now. And who want to work with us? And we don't know how they're going to work with us, but they want to work with us.

Now, I know if somebody wants to work with me, you've got something in your head. You may not realize it, but you actually have a vision. And so I said, all right, so lay out the next steps as you see him. In a perfect world, what would this look like to you? And one of the people we're talking to said, sounds like you guys don't have a vision for how we're going to proceed. And I said, no, I don't. but I trust you and I know that if you want to work with me,

you've got something in your head already that if you could wave a magic wand, what is it? So lay it out in an email. There's a really good chance that I'm going to like most or not all of it. There's something in your head that I'm going to like. I guarantee it.

Lay it out for me and that's the next step. You lay this out. Why am I telling this long story was even if I don't have a next step, I said, you give me one. And then either I'm going to agree or I'm going to disagree, but your thought is at least going to get me thinking. But we're always going to have next steps.

You can't have meetings without next steps, and you can't have meetings with no time limit. We put strict time limits on our meetings, which then puts us under the gun a little bit. You know, we're talking for 90 minutes, no longer, and we've got a long agenda. and every little chunk of the agenda has a time frame on it. And it's always next steps.

And if you're going to put a damper on somebody's idea that's cool, you better have a better idea. Don't walk into this room without ideas for next steps. And we're going to take them and then we're going to be smarter and we're going to support each other. Before my final question, number one, I would say that everyone should read your book, never split the difference. what I told my friend after I came in contact with your work, I said, man, it's kind of like how to win friends and influence people if Dale Carnegie was in the FBI is how I feel about your book. So, man, it's so, so practical, so tactical, such just insanely actionable advice on every page. So I would say everyone should read that. How else can they stay in touch with everything that you and your team at Black Swan are doing, Chris?

Yeah, we put out a weekly newsletter comes out on Tuesday mornings. It's concise and actionable. It's also the gateway to everything that we do. The newsletter is the gateway to our website, every training offering we have. We put a lot of free content out there and take advantage of the free stuff. We'll also put the link to that in the show notes. Well, I'll tell you what, we appreciate your time today. Before we go, I'd like to know what is your final word of encouragement.

if you're sitting down for a cup of coffee with these business owners, and Chris Voss has one final thing to say before he sends them off back into the real world to go deal with the crazy times that are going on right now. What's the final thing you would say, Chris? Yeah, there's something small here. There's something new here that if you pull your team together and take a few steps to find it, is going to change everything for you. Something is buried within this that's going to be.

going to be an outcome that you'll use on the other side of this catastrophe. It's going to end up making your business stronger and you're going to come out the other end stronger. Discover it now and a year from now you're going to be giddy over the outcome. There you go. Very good. Well, thanks so much for your time. We really appreciate you, Chris. Thank you very much. We are so grateful to Chris and his team for the time that they invested to make that conversation happen and to make it so relevant to what the business owner is walking through right now. So if you want to follow anything that Chris and his team at Black Swan are doing, we put the link to their website in the show notes of this episode. And also, I absolutely recommend that you get and read

never split the difference. That book is so tactical. It's so actionable and it's so applicable to all of the things that so many of you are walking through right now. Hey, I also want to let you know about a resource that our team created that pairs perfectly with this episode of the podcast. It's called the Critical Thinking Cheat Sheet, and it helps you make sure you as a leader are applying common sense and wisdom and rationality to all of the variables surrounding the decisions that you're having to make in this season. So if you want to get this free resource, text the word critical to 33444-4. Again, that's the word critical to 33-44-4-4 or just click the link that's in the show notes.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again. soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network

like the Ken Coleman Show. Are you doing what you were born to do? I'm Ken Coleman, host of the Ken Coleman Show, where I give you practical advice to help you discover your purpose and then map out a plan to get you there from accounting to advertising, from plumbing to production. You were created to fill a unique role and the world needs what you have to offer. Join me on the Ken Coleman Show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you.