Lex Fridman Podcast - #364 – Chris Voss: FBI Hostage Negotiator

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage and crisis negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get free trial - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: Chris's Instagram: https://instagram.com/thefbinegotiator Chris's Twitter: https://twitter.com/fbinegotiator Chris's Website: https://blackswanltd.com Chris's Masterclass: https://masterclass.com/classes/chris-voss-teaches-the-art-of-negotiation Never Split the Difference (book): https://amzn.to/3J5scNC PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:31) - Negotiation (12:21) - Reason vs Emotion (27:17) - How to listen (36:06) - Negotiation with terrorists (38:14) - Brittney Griner (39:53) - Putin and Zelenskyy (47:13) - Donald Trump (54:23) - When to walk away (58:37) - Israel and Palestine (1:06:16) - Al-Qaeda (1:11:46) - Three voices of negotiation (1:20:11) - Strategic umbrage (1:23:18) - Mirroring (1:26:29) - Labeling (1:33:55) - Exhaustion (1:36:09) - The word "fair" (1:39:06) - Closing the deal (1:41:03) - Manipulation and lying (1:42:58) - Conversation vs Negotiation (1:54:17) - The 7-38-55 Rule (1:58:16) - Chatbots (2:07:39) - War (2:09:10) - Advice for young people

The following is a conversation with Chris Voss, former FBI hostage and crisis negotiator, and author of Never Split the Difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it. And now a quick two second mention of the sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Shopify for e-commerce, indeed for hiring great teams, and in set tracker for biological data. She's wise to my friends.

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you can hear it from my nose at the moment is that I started getting allergies as nature wakes up from its winter slumber. And I think it's already a year ago, maybe a little bit over than that. I got a test for different things I'm allergic to. And they put different things on your skin. It's like this grid, and you get to see what are the things that you're allergic to based on

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data. So the core to the algae thing is data, the core to everything inside tracker does is data. I'm really excited about personalized data driven advice for how to make your life better. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insidetracker.com slash Lex. This is Alex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Chris Voss. What is it like negotiating for a hostage with a kidnapper? What is the toughest part of that process?

The toughest part is if it looks bad from the beginning and you're getting engaged in a process anyway. What are the factors that make it bad? That makes you nervous that if you're at a observer situation where there's general negotiation or it's a hostage negotiation, what makes you think that this is going to be difficult? If they want to make it look like they're negotiating but they're not. I can, in 2004, time frame, Al Qaeda and Iraq was executing people on camera for the publicity.

And they wanted to make it look like they were negotiating. So they'd come on and they'd say, if you don't get all the women out of, uh, Iraqi women out of the jails in Iraq in 72 hours, we're going to kill a hostage. That was one of the demands and one of the cases in that time frame., first of all, even if we'd have been willing to use government, the coalition would have been willing to do that. It wouldn't have been able to happen 72 hours. So, is it an impossible ask from the beginning? And so then that looks really bad. Like they're trying to make it, they're trying to make it look like they're talking reasonably, but they're not.

So your hostages and bad shape there. If they've made a demand that you just, even if you wanted to do, you couldn't do. So then what makes that very difficult is, and kidnappings especially, you're working with family members, you're coaching people. Bad guys are in touch with family members, or if they're not directly in touch with family members, the other thing that I'll kind of was doing at that time was they didn't give us a way to talk to them. They make they're making statements in the media but then not leaving their phone number, if you will. Yeah. So that's one more thing. They're intentionally blocking you. They're asking

you to do something you can't do, they I'm giving you a way to talk to them. So you gotta get with the family and discuss with the family how you're gonna approach things. Now the family definitely wants to know is this gonna help. So a bunch of cases like that in that time frame. And you gotta be honest with them. It's a long shot. Our chances here are slim and none. And when it's slim and none, it'll take slim, but it's still very, very slim. And there were a number of people that were killed in that time frame before the tide finally got turned. And it was, it was hard dealing with families at the time. Can you negotiate in public versus like a direct channel in private? Oh, yeah. Bad guys pick the media. They're making statements in the media. So that, and that's a big clue. Their channel of choice tells you an awful lot.

And if they're choosing the media, then that means there's people who are trying to appeal to. That means in their view, there's such a thing as good media. So if there's good media, there's bad media. How do you make it bad? And we made a bad form. It just, unfortunately, it had to go through a number of iterations where they got the message in quite. In that negotiation, do you think about the value of human life?

Is there a dollar figure? Is there, how do you, a numerate, not a numerate, quantify the value of human life? Yeah, that's, it's like beauty. It's any other beholder. So that was the first lesson on any hostage negotiation. Really any negotiation. Like it isn't matter what it is to you, matters what it is to the other side. One of the things, especially in your conversation, I listened to with that Andrew. By the way, you guys, I know the thing I really liked about that conversation. First of all, I think the world to him.

Andrew human. Yeah, Andrew human. And you released it on my birthday. I appreciate that. There's a nice birthday present for me. I tried the time for it perfectly, just for you. Yeah, nice job. Thank you.

But empathy is in the eye to beholder. In every negotiation, whether it's over car, house, collaboration, your company with the bad guys. How does the other side see it? Now, the nice thing about kidnapping for ransom, if there's an actual ransom demand, an actual demand, is it's a mercenaries business. They're gonna take what they could get,

and they tend to be really good at figuring out how much money somebody has. So, and again, I'll keep drawing business analogies. You're looking for a job with an employer. There's a market price of the job, and then there's what the employer can pay you. Now, maybe the market price of the job markets 150 grand. Employer can pay you 120.

But it's a great job. You know, we were talking about Elon a minute ago. Like, I'd worked a minimum wage to follow him around. You know, that would be worth it. What are the value other than the dollars? And how hard is it to get the dollars and how quickly can you get to them. Those are the things that the bad guys are good in kidnapping are good at figuring out. So the value of human life to them is going to be what can they get.

A crazy thing in the kidnap business. We used to get asked by FBI leadership. When is this going to be over? Any answer would be when the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they can. Now dissecting that statement, you're talking about when they feel like they got everything they can. So the key to kidnapping negotiations are the feelings at a bad guys. We're talking about feelings kid never's feelings Which drives everything doesn't matter what human endeavor it is So it's not reason it's emotion There's no such thing as reason

I should say for a little bit of context. I just talked yesterday with a guy named Sam Harris. I don't know if he knows Sam, but Sam, and because I was preparing for a conversation with you, I talked to him about empathy versus reason. And he lands heavily on reason. Empathy is somewhere between useless and erroneous and leads you astray and is not effective. The reason is the only way forward. Well, let's draw some final lines there. The two final lines I would draw is, first, what is your definition of empathy? And secondly, how do people actually make up their minds?

And I'm, and I'm gonna flip it. I'm gonna go with how people make up their minds. You make up your mind based on what you care about. Period. That makes reason, emotion based. What do you care about? You start with what you care about. You see some guys swimming out in off the coast of the ocean,

and you see a shark coming up behind him. Who you cheering for? If it's a dolphin or out there, you're cheering for the shark. Might actually feel bad for the shark, because it's gonna taste bad. Who do you care about? You mean the human will taste bad?

Yeah, he eats a dolphin. You know, I think they're gonna leave a bad taste in your mouth even if you're a shark. So you make it up your mind on every circumstances based on what you care about. So then what does that do to reason? Your reason is based on what you care about from the beginning. Now then empathy, if you define it as sympathy, which it was never meant to be sympathy. Ever. You know, I'm, etymology, I think it's the word.

I keep getting etymology and entomology mixed up. Etymology being, right, the, you know, where words came from, the origin, entomology being bugs. Got it. Right. So I like etymology, where did something come from? Also like entomology. Anyway, etymology, where did something come from? Also like entomology. Anyway, etymology.

So my understanding from my research, the original definition of empathy was an interpretation of a German word where people were trying to figure out what the artist was trying to convey. It was about assessing art. And so it was always about understanding where somebody was coming from, but not sharing necessarily That same thing. So then when I was with the Ipianne, I first started collaborating with Harvard Bob Mnookin wrote a book Beyond winning second chapters attention between empathy and assertiveness Still the best chapter on empathy I've ever read anywhere.

And Bob writes in his book, Bob was the head of the program on negotiation. He's also agreed to be interviewed for a documentary about me and my company that hasn't been released yet, but it should be released sometime this year. What's the name of the documentary? Tactical empathy. Good name.

So Bob's definition of empathy is said not agreeing or even liking the other side. Don't even gotta like them. Don't gotta agree with them. Just straight understanding where they're coming from and articulating it, which requires no agreement whatsoever.

That becomes a very powerful tool, like ridiculously powerful. And if it, if sympathy or compassion or agreement are not included, you can be empathic with anybody. I was thinking about this when I was getting ready to sit down and talk to you because you use the word empathy a lot. Um, potent. I can be a empathic with Putin. Easy. It's easy. I don't agree with where he's coming from.

I don't agree with his methodology. Early on the Ukraine Russian War, I saw an article that was very dismissive of Russia that said, Russia's basically Europe's gas station. And I thought, all right, so if you're in charge and the way you feed your people is via an industry that the entire world is trying to quit. The whole world is trying to get out of fossil fuels. If that's how you feed your people, if you don't come up with an answer to that, the people that you've taken a responsibility for are going to die alone in the

cold and the dark. They're going to freeze and they're going to die. All right, so that doesn't mean that I grew with where he's coming from or any of his means. But where is how does this guy see things? It is the story of the word. You're never gonna get through to somebody like that in a conversation unless you can demonstrate to them you understand where they're coming from, whether or not you agree.

Early 90s, last century, I'm a last century guy, I'm an old dude. Refer to myself as a last century guy. Also a deeply flawed human. Yeah, so terrorist case New York City civilian court terrorism does not have to be tried in military tribunals. It's a very bad idea. It was always bad the FBI was always against it

I'm getting ready. We have Muslims testifying an open court against the legitimate Muslim cleric. The guy that was on trial had the credentials as a legitimate Muslim cleric. The people that were testifying against him didn't think he should be advocating murder of innocent people. We'd sit down with him, Arab Muslims, Egyptians, mostly.

And I would say to them, you believe that there's been a succession of American governments for the last 200 years that are anti-Islamic, and they'd shake their head and go, yeah. And that'd be the start of the conversation. That's empathy. You believe this to be the case. I never said I agreed. I never said I disagreed. But I showed them that I wasn't afraid of their beliefs. I was so unafraid of them that I was willing to just state them

and not disagree or contradict. Cause I would say that and then I'd shut up and let them react. And I never had to say, he's why you're wrong. I never gave my point of view. Every single one of them had testified that sympathy, not agreeing where the other side is coming from. I'm not sure how Sam would define it,

but common vernacular is it's sympathy and it's compassion. And that's when it becomes useless. And there's a gray area, maybe you can comment on it, is sometimes a drop of compassion helps make that empathy more effective in the conversation. So you're just saying you believe X doesn't quite form a strong of a bond with the other person. You're imagining it doesn't. You're maybe right. Yes, I'm imagining it doesn't. form a strong of a bond with the other person. You're imagining it doesn't. You may be right. Yes.

I'm imagining it doesn't. I'm imagining you need to show that you're on the same side, that you're, but you need to signal a little bit about your actual beliefs, at least in that moment, even if those that signaling is, is, um, not as deep as it sounds, but at first, you know, basically patting the person on the back and saying, we're on the same side, brother. You know, that's what most people, when they're really learning the concept, that's the basic human reaction. And in application, especially in highly adversarial situations.

Like, I need a regular guy, Muslim, but how's that guy gonna say, buy it if I like, you know what I'm doing on your side? I've been there, I feel you. No, no, no, no, no. People get conned by that so much. Like if we're on opposite sides of the table and I try to act like I'm not on the opposite side

of the table, that makes me disingenuous. So I would rather be honest, my, you know, my currencies integrity. And at some point of time, if you go like, you know where I'm coming from, my answer's gonna be like, look, I can agree on maybe where we're going. But if we're talking about, you know, am I on your side now?

As a human being, I wanna see you survive and thrive, not in my expense. I think the world is full of opportunity, optimistic, and I get more than enough reason for saying that. I think the world is full of opportunity. Optimistic. I get more than enough reason for saying that. Is there enough for here for both of us? So I got no problem with you getting yours. You know, just don't take it out of my hide.

And I'm going to be honest about it. About both of those things. I'm not interested in you taking it out of my hide. I think this is plenty here for both of us. Now, I don't need to be on your side. It's in a human sense, but do I have to side with you over the war? No, or the how would distributing the stock

or how much you get paid or how much you make off this car? I think people, my experience as a layman is that empathy is not got it down side. That you don't need me to act like I'm on your side for us to make a great deal. Great deal. Well, we'll talk about two things. A great deal and a great conversation. Right. There are, there are often going to be the same thing but at times they're going to be different. That's a you mentioned Vladimir Putin. There is some zoom level at which you do want to say we're on the same side. You said the

human level. It's possible to say kind of zoom out and say that we're all in this together. Not we Slavic people, we Europeans, we, but we human beings. What a same planet. Same planet. Right. Several years ago, and his name has evidently been mud now, but he was very nice to me. Lawyer Henton named Tom Gerardi, and no shortage of bad reporting on him now. I have absolutely no idea if any of it's true. I do know that in my interaction with him, he was always a gentleman to me and was very generous. When he'd get into conversations with people, he'd always say like, you know, let's look at 10 years from now, where we could both be in a phenomenal place together.

Now let's work our way back from there. And that's a good line. Yeah, and then, you know, I saw him do it in simulations. He, I was teaching a USC, we were at a function together and a gentleman at the time told me that he was an he was really influential. So I walked up to the guy cold and I said, Hey, you know, I'm gonna come on and talk to my class at USC. He didn't know me. Other than the fact that we had mutual acquaintance and he graciously consented to come in. And he said, What do you want me to talk about? And I said, Look, dude, dude, just from your success here, it doesn't matter what you talk about. You know, either I agree or I'm going to disagree or I'm going to learn from it.

My students are going to learn from it. So students want to roleplay with them. They dispute and let's do a negotiation every single time. You'd go to pick a point in the future where we're both happy 10 years, 20 years from now. And let's work our way back. Now hostage negotiator. Same thing. I call into a bank. Bad guy picks up on the phone. And I'm going to say, I want you to live. You know, I want to see

you survive this. You know, whatever else goes with that, let's pick a point in the future that we're both good with. And then we work our way back. And people make also, we were talking before about emotion or what you care about, people make their decisions based on a vision of the future. Like without question, yeah. There's, I think there's a Hindu temple in the United States being a, has been or being assembled the same way that the Hindu temples were in India a thousand years ago. By hand, volunteers, by hand. These people are knocking themselves out for a place in paradise, a vision of the future. What you will go through

today, if the future portends what you want, you'll go through incredible things today. So it's a vision of the future. So you have to try to paint a vision of the future that the, uh, the person you're negotiating with will like just tough to do. Let's find out what their vision of the future is. And then remove yourself as a threat. Sure. You know, if we can collaborate together

At all if you think that I could do anything at all. I help you to that point and you know integrity is my currency I'm not gonna lie to you. It which gets back before that I lied to you about whether or not I'm on your side You know right now and then at the moment run opposite sides defense That's not gonna stop us from being together in the future. Inside you're going to say, well, you didn't lie to me about today. Maybe you won't lie to me about tomorrow. So going back to world leaders, for example, whether it's a Volodymyr Zelensky or Vladimir Putin, you don't think it closes off their mind to show that you have a different opinion.

Depend upon when you showed it. Is that, are you arguing from the beginning, or are you displaying understanding from the beginning? I don't think it stops you from being adversarial. That was the thing about Manukhin's chapter in his book, the tension between empathy and assertiveness. I remember reading that name of the chapter thinking like,

in my business there is no tension. And then I got into it and I read, I thought, this is red herring. He's drawing people in because his entire chapter is that empathy puts you in a position to assert. And there is no tension. It's a sequencing issue. And that's why again, I think it was written for Lord. Yeah. Sequencing issue. The timing is everything.

So you emphasize the importance of in terms of sequencing and priority of listening of truly listening to the other person. I'm sorry, what did you say? That was a bad joke. I think that. Your timing is just perfect. How do you listen? How do you truly listen to another human being? How do you notice them? How do you really hear them? I always hated the term active listening. If anything, it's proactive. And as soon as you start to try to anticipate where somebody's going, you're dialed in more. Because along the way, either you're congratulating yourself for being right, or when suddenly they say something that surprises you, you really notice it. Like test not what I expected.

You're dialed in, you're listening. So it's proactive. And then one of the reasons, you know, we name the book Tactical Empathy. Name the book, never split the difference, but we're talking about tactical empathy. Calibrated emotional intelligence. What's calibrated by? But we're talking about tactical empathy. Calibrated emotional intelligence. What's calibrated by? First it was experience as hostage negotiators, and we've come to find out that our experience

as hostage negotiators is backed up by neuroscience. Another reason why I listen to Andrew Heuberman's podcast all the time, heavy, heavy, heavy on the neuroscience. And so then emotional intelligence calibrated by what we know about neuroscience. What do we know about neuroscience? I don't talk about it from a layman's perspective and even say we's an arrogant thing, you know, human beings. I didn't do the research. I'm scooping up as much of it as I can as a layman. The brain's largely negative. I think there's ample evidence. People would argue with you as to what the wiring is and what does what and

the limbic system and all of that but the brain is basically 75% negative. It was an element. I make that contention. Number one, number two, the best way to deactivate negativity is an elamment. I make that contention number one number two. The best way to deactivate negativity is by calling it out. And I could say look I don't I don't want you to be offended by what I'm getting ready to say. That's a denial. Your guard is up. You're getting ready to get mad. If I say what I'm getting ready to say is probably gonna offend you. Now you relax a little bit and you go, all right, what is it? And then I say it, whatever it is,

and you're gonna be like, oh, that wasn't that bad. Because we knew from hostage negotiation by calling out the negativity deactivated and then number of neuroscience experiments have been done right and left by calling out negativity deactivating the negativity. So calling out a head of time.

So like acknowledging that this is, this is going ahead of time that this is going to hurt. The experiments that I've seen have been when the negativity was inflicted and then having a person that was being inflicted upon simply identify it. Just identify. Yeah, what are you feeling? I'm angry and the anger goes away. It's tough because I've had a few, and again we're dancing between things, but I've had a few conversations where anger arose in the guests I spoke with. Yeah. And I'm not sure identifying it. That's like leaning into it and going into the depths.

Because that's going to the depths of some emotional psychological thing they're going through. And I'm not sure I want to explore that iceberg with a little ship we got. It's a you have to decide do you want to avoid it? I do want to lean into it. It's a tough choice. See, I'll fit in the room. It is an outfit in the room. It is an outfit. Especially when I think that's the big difference between conversations and negotiations.

big difference between conversations and negotiations. Negotiation ultimately is looking for closure and resolution. I think general conversations like this is more exploring. There's not necessarily a goal. If I had to put a goal for this conversation, there's no real goal. It's curious to explain ideas. So that will give you freedom to not call out the elephant for time. You could be like, all right, let's go to the next room, get a snack and come back to the elephant. Right.

All right. So I make a tiny adjustment on the negotiation definition, sure, because you said, I think seeking closure, you used to work and closure was one of them. The goal is maybe another. What, yeah, what is, what is negotiation? Well, I would say seeking collaboration. And because closure kind of puts a little bit of a finality to it and a real problem, and any negotiations always implementation. So why we say yes is, I say, yes is nothing without how.

And yes, and it's very best, it's only temporary aspirations, aspirational, it's usually counterfeit. So if you're looking for, that's a good line. Yes is usually counterfeit, it's aspirational, without the how. Yes, it's just a good line.

Yeah. And we're a good line. Yeah. And we're working on it. I was practicing in front of the mirror 14. You're pretty good. You got a bright future. You should write a book or something. Yeah. Your book is excellent, by the way.

Thanks. Appreciate that. What am I doing here anyway? This and earth and you with you. I don't know Well collaborating Why me though? Why why why do you why do you want to talk to me? I've heard you speaking a few places. I was like this This is a fascinating human um, I think on clubhouse and different places and I'll listen to some YouTube stuff and this is Just you've meet people that are interesting that that's that's what I love doing with this podcast is just

Exploring the mind of an interesting person You notice people sometimes you sometimes there's like a homeless person outside of 711. I noticed who are you? Yeah Sometimes there's like a homeless person outside of 7-11, I notice who are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. It doesn't like, I don't look at the resumes and the credentials and stuff like that. It's just being able to notice a person. Is I've been leafing through the different choices of the podcast? The young lady that only fans and the sex workers, that's a fascinating human being.

Like, I want to know what makes that person tech? At thousand percent. The fascinating thing about her is her worldview is almost entirely different than mine. And that's always interesting to talk to a person who just is happy, flourishing, but sees the world and set of values she has is completely different.

And there's also also not argumentative is accepting of other world views. It's beautiful to explore that. Yeah, no kidding, I would agree. And then yeah, thought provoking, because I consider myself, the word I was looking for before is abundant. I think it's an abundant world.

So I'm pretty optimistic. I consider myself, I don't know, happy exactly describes it, but yeah, you know, I'm, so then if I'm happy optimistic, abundant, I got a worldview and then you run into somebody that has a vastly different worldview and they're happy and they think it's abundant too. And you're like, what is going on in your head or mine or what am I missing? Yeah, so that's fascinating. And the pie grows, which is useful for kind of negotiation when you paint a picture of a future,

if you're optimistic about that future, there's a kind of feeling like we're both gonna win here. Exactly. And that's easy. We live in a world where both people can win. Yeah, and in point of fact, that's the case, although a lot of people want us to think otherwise, mostly because of the negativity that I was talking about before so the brain is generally cynical. Yeah, my description of it is

The pessimistic caveman survived and we're descendants of the pessimists. Yeah, optimistic gag. I got eaten by a save-it-through tiger Yeah, but on the flip side the optimists seem to be the ones that actually build stuff these days. There's the switch. Like, so at what point in time do we catch on? Because the difference between survival and success mindset, the success mindset is highly optimistic. So where do we switch or how do we stay switched from survival to success? That's the challenge. Yeah, somewhere we stopped being eaten by saber-to-tigers and started building bridges and buildings and computers and companies.

We started to experience, we got enough data back to collaborate and we stopped listening to our mcdill and we started listening to our gutcdill and we start to listen to our gut. Let me just return briefly to terrorists. What do you think about the policy of not negotiating with terrorists? Well, that's not the policy, first of all. Now everybody thinks that's the policy. Yeah. It hasn't been the policy since 2002, when Bush 43 signed a National Security Presidential Directive, NSPD, the time it was NSPD 12, which basically said, we won't make concessions. That doesn't mean we won't talk. So I'm in Columbia at the same time, and I have been intimately involved with the signing, him signing that document.

I knew exactly what it said. And he didn't inherit it from somebody else. He signed it. And I'm in Columbia and the number two in the embassies is last night on TV, the president of the United States said, we don't negotiate with terrorists. Are you calling a president of the United States a liar?

And I remember thinking like, all right, so. He probably said that. And that's not on the document that he signed. So I said, look, I'm familiar with what he's signed and that's not what it says. Well, you know, and so the argument But that's always been the sound bite that everybody likes. We don't negotiate with terrorists Depends upon your definition of negotiation if it's just communication. We negotiate with them all the time number one and number two

Like every president has made some bone-headed deal with the bad guys like Obama released five high-level Taliban leaders from Guantanamo in exchange for an AWOL soldier that we immediately threw in jail. And I thought that was a horrible deal. And that's putting terrorists back on the battlefield. And then Trump turned around and topped it

by putting 5,000 terrorists back on a battlefield. And then Trump turned around and topped it by putting 5,000 terrorists back on a battlefield. So we haven't had a president that has stuck to that on either side of the aisle since people started throwing that out as a sound bite. What do you think of that negotiation? Forget terrorists, but the global negotiation, like with Vladimir Putin, the recent negotiation over prisoners, the exchange, the braiding guy, is there a way to do that negotiation successfully? First of all, I agree with the idea that she was wrongfully detained and that she didn't deserve to be jailed and that there should be no second-class citizens ever.

And whether you're a WNBA player or you just some bonehead that walked into the wrong situation, you government she's not abandoned you ever, ever. Now what they do in the meantime, there should have been a negotiation. They were desperate to make a deal at a bad time. They'd been offered far better deals than prisoner swabs earlier and turned them down. And then he gets turned up. And thank God for Brittany Griner that the public got enough attention. They kept pressure on the administration. They made a deal. Now governments want to make those kind of deals. That's fine. As long as it because that was basically a political negotiation. You're putting 5,000 Taliban back on a battlefield that ain't negotiating with another government you put in five of them back on a battlefield that

ain't negotiating with another government that's directly contradicting this thing that you claimed and those were all bad deals now that was a Brittany Griner thing a bad deal I think it was great for her if I was in the middle of it would have been have been better. And she still would have come home. Yeah, there's some technical aspects of that negotiation. What do you think is the value of just the link on it of meeting in person for the negotiation? That's a great idea. Can I just follow that tangent along? There's a warning you create now. It's been going on over a year.

It's for me personally giving my life stories is a deeply personal one, and I'm returning back to that area of the world I was there. Volodymyr Zelensky said he doesn't want to talk to to Vladimir Putin. Do you think they could get in a room together? And say you were there in a room with Putin and Zelensky and Biden is sitting in the bag drinking a cocktail or maybe he is at the table participating. How is it possible through negotiation, through the art of conversation, to find peace in this very tense geopolitical conflict.

I think it's eminently possible. I think getting people together in person has always been a good idea. Now, who's getting them together under what circumstances and how many times you get them together? The documentary, the human factor about the Mide's peace negotiations, mostly through the 90s, mostly into the Clinton administration, got kicked off under Bush 41, and then the documentary continues through Trump, but just touching basically on it. But they're getting air fat and the different

Israeli prime ministers together in person. And these guys did not want to talk to each other and dependent upon the prime minister, the mere thought of being on the same planet with air fat was offensive. And they started getting these guys together in parts and regularly and they started seeing each other's human beings. And they started realizing that there was enough room on a planet for them and that

people dying was stupid and they were and they would slowly work things out by getting these guys together in person. So how long does it take? Who's hosting it? But it's a good idea. But the skill of achieving that thing that you talk about a lot, which is empathy, and I would say in that case, not just empathy, but empathy plus a bit, you might disagree with this, but a drop of compassion in there. I think compassion is helpful, but it's not essential. Like if you just know where I'm coming from, like the feeling of being understood,

part and understood, that's powerful. Is, yeah, and again, I know I picked the vast majority of this up on Andrews podcast, but I picked it up in other places because early on, when we were putting a book together, Tall-Ros, the writer, my son, uncredited co-author, so the book's really a collaboration between me, my son, Brandon, and Tall-Ros.

And we're driving for that's rights. When somebody feels like what you've said is completely their position, they say that's right. You know, when somebody feels like what you've said is completely their position, they say that's right. Not you're right, but that's right. So, Tal says, you know, I think what's happening here is you're triggering a subtly piphany in somebody. So I'm like, all right, I'll buy that. So I start looking up the neuroscience of the feeling of epiphany, getting ahead of oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin is a bonding drug. You bond to me.

I don't bond to you. When you feel completely understood by me, you bond to me. Then in one of the relationship podcasts that I'm listening to on Andrew, it says oxytocin inclines people to tell the truth. You're more honest. All right, so you feel deeply understood by me,

you bond to me and you start getting more honest with me. Serotonin, the neurochemical satisfaction epiphany, you feel oxytocin and serotonin, being understood. Alright, I got you bonding to me. I got you being more honest with me, and I got you feeling more satisfied so you want less. What more do you want out of a negotiation? Of course, there's already with leaders and great negotiators, there's walls built up. Defense mechanisms against that. Right? You're resisting.

You're resisting this basic chemistry, but yes, you should have that. You should work towards that kind of empathy. And I personally believe that I don't actually understand why. But I've observed it time and time again, but getting in a room together and really talking, whether privately or publicly, but really talking. And like this, so I'll comment on this. So right now, this is being recorded and a few folks will hear this, but when you really

do a good job with this kind of conversation, you forget there's cameras. And that's much better than there being even a third person in the room, but often when world leaders meet, there's like press or there's others in the room. Like as, you know, man to man or man to woman, you have to like meet like in a saloon, just the two of you and talk. There's some intimacy and power to that, to achieve that. If you're also willing to couple that with empathy, to really hear the other person, I don't know what that is. That's like a deep, deep intimacy that happens.

And I think there's actually, because we get to ask this in a black swan group all of time, like, how do you know, zoom, that's bad, you know, because you don't have the same visual feedback on zoom. And that's not true. Like you and I, I see you from the waist up right now. If we go on zoom, I'd be looking at you from the waist up. I'm not wearing pants, yeah, but the internet. I apologize for that. Sorry, yeah, but the internet. I apologize for that.

Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. You only see a small portion. Usually, that's usually where I go. But anyway, I'm glad we're both ever jikulous. I appreciate it. But what makes this different in person? I actually think, I think there's energy that we're on a, we don't have the instrumentation to define yet. And I think that there's a feel. I think there's an actual energetic feel that changes. And just because we don't, again, just because we can't measure it,

doesn't mean it's not there. Yeah, I would love to figure out what that is. Folks that are working on virtual reality are trying to figure out that what that is during the pandemic. Everybody was on zoom. Zoom and Microsoft. Everybody is trying to figure out how do we replicate that? I'm trying to understand how to replicate that because it shares not fun to travel across the world just to talk to Snowden or Putin or Zelensky. I'd love to do it over Zoom. It's not the same. It's not the same. I go in a room with Putin.

You would go in a room with him? I would, yeah, 1000%. I'd get a that's right out of him. That's right. Well, first you would give him a that's right probably. Ah, getting a given. See that and his issue, the troops are buddy up in negotiation, the difference between hearing and speaking, the same words are vastly different. And what I'm looking for is what I'm the responses I'm getting out of you.

Because if you can't first, that's right, especially like if you can't appreciate what that really means Here and it is unsatisfying So those two words are really important you talk about that in your book. What is wise that's it? What does that's right mean? Why is it important? Well, it means that what you just heard you think is unequivocably the truth Like it's dead on it hit the target the target, it's a bullseye. And there's been a topic in discussion, especially between my son and I a lot, like what happens? Disoxytocin bonding moment.

And his contention has always been like, Donald Trump is the poster child of what it means. Because Donald Trump's an addressing an audience, you know, he's he's in a debate with Hillary or he's given a speech someplace and when the people that are devoted to him, when they believe that what he's just said is completely right. It's insightful. They look at him or they look at the TV and they go, that's right. And it's what people say when they're bought into what they just heard. Now, if you're not convinced of the way the Donald Trump's followers are bonded to him,

and he also, just like this, in my view, destroys the idea of common ground. Because when he first started to run for president, the pundits, all said, eyes in New Yorker. Nobody in the Republican party is going to like him. It's Middle America, you know, it's blue collar, you know, it's regular common folks, factory workers. Then I got to like Trump because he's from New York and he went to Wharton. He's an Ivy Leaker and he's a son of a wealthy real estate mogul and he had a

million dollars handed to him when he got out of college. He, you know, he's born with a silver spoof spoon in his mouth. The rank and fire Republicans had never gone accept this guy. Based on common ground. Look how smart that was. Do you think he's a good negotiator? Do you think Donald Trump is a good negotiator? No, I think he's a great marketer. If you look at his negotiation track record, all right, so I started following Donald Trump in the 80s when I was in New York. I'm a last century guy. He's a last century guy. We got mutual acquaintances. The minister that married him to Mahler Maples was a friend of mine, a close friend of mine. And in 1998, I threw a fundraiser in his apartment at Trump Tower that he attended.

So no shoulders of mutual friends. We went to the same church. Still have mutual acquaintances friends. I don't know. And I've watched his track record, Negotiation History, which is exactly his track record with North Korea. Where are we with North Korea? What was the deal that he made with North Korea? See your your answer is the same as everybody else's Well, I remember it started out with a lot of fanfare. Yeah, but I don't know what happened Because nothing ever happens as more public fanfare so marketing minded Starts out with a bang if he doesn't cut the deal in a short period a really short period of time he moves on And everybody wonders what had happened because it was so much fanfare at the beginning now

At the beginning him even open in that dialogue with North Korea was masterful Like I was I was such a fan when you got a president in the United States That is willing to sit down and talk with a leader of another nation, whenever you're other president, all our advisors are saying, the leader of North Korea is beneath you, you cannot dignify him by responding to him directly and consequently, the Trump administration, inherits a can of worms that has been simmering for 30 years. He didn't get us into that. And he opened up a dialogue with nobody else

who's capable of opening a dialogue. And they just went away. Nobody knows what happened. And there was no deal made. Now great negotiators make deals. What do you think about these accusations that he's a narcissist? If you're a narcissist, does that help you or hurt you?

Is there a more popular term these days in narcissists? Everybody's a narcissist. Everybody you don't like is a narcissist. The homeless guy down on the corner. He's a narcissist. That's why he's there. Yeah, it's lost meaning for you a little bit. Yeah, and first of all, most psychological terms is a hostage negotiator and really we were never in the psychology and we stared away from it because psychology is at best is soft science. If it's not informed these days, if it's not informed by real studies or neuroscience,

the guys that I'm impressed with these days, psychologist neuroscientists, now I'm interested in that guy or girl. But then psychology convention, do you get them all together and they all agree? No. But also the interesting thing about psychology is each individual person is way more complicated

than the category psychology tries to create. And there's something about the human brain. The moment you classify somebody as an narcissist or depressed or bipolar or insane in any kind of way, for some reason you don't use, you give yourself a convenient excuse not to see them as a complicated human being. So I'm put ties with them. I had that when I was talking to, I did an interview with Kanye West, and then there's a lot of popular opinions about him being mentally unwell and so on. And I felt that that kind of way of thinking is a very convenient way of thinking to ignore the fact that he's a human being, that again wants to be understood and heard. And that's the only way you can have that conversation.

Yeah, agree completely. That's right. I'll say something stupid soon. Don't worry about it. But he said not we were talking about terrorists and not negotiating with terrorists. Is there something? No, it's job going all the way back to where that rabbit hole started. There's where rabbit were else in Wonderland right now. The the is there there something about walking away of not negotiating?

Is there power in that? All right, so it depends upon whether or not you're doing it with integrity or attack to start with. And then also, hostage negotiators are successful 93% of the time, kind of across the board. Which means that the 7% of the time is going to go bad. And that was my old boss Gary Nessner. I learned so much from Gary. But one of the phrase that he used over and over and over again until I finally worked

the case and went bad was this is going to be the best chance of success best chance of success and then something went bad And I remember thinking like well best chance of success is no guarantee of success So your question is other negotiations used to walk away from if you got no shot at success then don't negotiate And there you have to accept the fact that some deals you're never going to make. We teach my company, it's not a sin to not get the deal, it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. And Gary, in his infinite wisdom, they realized that there was something called suicide by Cobb, and that it might have... Gary was very much into clusters of behavior.

He kept us away from psychological terms, and there would be clusters of behavior that would be high risk indicators. And he wrote a block of instruction called high risk indicators, which meant if you start seeing this stuff show up, this thing's probably going bad. And you're gonna need to recognize that from the very beginning and adjust accordingly.

And it's the same way in business and personal life. I'm talking to a head of a marketing company. I have tremendous respect for. I admire that with this guy and his company does start it from scratch. He borrowed space in a back of a drug store to start his company. And now it's usually successful. And he's laying out to me that he finally had to confront a potential client and walk away from him. And he said, how do you think I handle this? My answer was 1000% correct. And as a matter of fact, the behavior that he indicated,

he's a type, and you should have walked away sooner than you did, because this guy was playing at the old time, Al Qaeda 2004, they're playing us. They're not negotiating. We call them out on it. We don't think you're negotiating. You wouldn're not negotiating. We need, we called them out on it. We don't think you're negotiating. You wouldn't say it exactly like that, but that was absolutely the approach.

Confront people on their behavior in a respectful way and signal that you're willing to walk away. And mean it, a thousand percent and mean it. Isn't that terrifying? I mean, it's scary because you don't want to really walk away. Or do you have to really want to walk away? Well, this gets core values, your view of reality. If it's an abundant world, it's not scary to walk away.

If it's a finite world with limited opportunities, then it's horrifying. But you have to use that worldview to be willing to actually walk away. Yeah. It could be walking away from a lot of money. It could be walking away from something that's going to hurt people because if you lose a hostage.

Yeah, well, but if they're not going to the hostage out yeah suicide by cop they let them go The 7% how do most negotiations fail? The bad guys were never there to make a deal in a first place if it was suicide by cop if they were there If they're on a killing journey They were there, if they're on a killing journey, Senator's really phrase, if they're on a killing journey, and the actions that they're currently engaged in are part of that killing journey. Killing journey.

Is there advice you can give about, you mentioned Israel, Palestine, the Middle East, taking on a few conversations on that topic, is there hope for that part of the world? And from that hope, is there some advice you could lend? Yeah, I think there's hope. Then I get friends on both sides. And also, after I left the FBI, most people listened to this.

Probably not going to remember who Rodney Dangerfield was. Oh, come on. But he's still doesn't get any respect. Yeah. Yeah. New Yorker. Is he a New Yorker? I think he was a New York guy.

I like Jersey or something. Yeah. Yeah. And he did a movie a long time ago called Back to School. He went back to school. Is that all guy back to school? So I went back to school after I left the FBI. I did get a master's at Harvard Kennedy.

And that's where I'm running across people on both sides of that. And when they could talk, they said, let's start from the premise that we both sides want a better life for our kids, which is this version that I was telling you earlier from Tom's reality. Let's pick a point in the future that we will happy with. And he found the thing to talk. You know, we, all right, so it

might not be better for us. How do we make it better for our kids? And that's where the hope derives from because I think both sides ultimately want it to be better for their kids, which is why they still engage in interactions and which is why I think the leadership, regardless of how compromised they might be only the side. They're few straight players in a game, in the Middle East, or anywhere for that matter.

But they want a better future for their kids. You get people to agree that you want a better future for your kids now, you can start talking about, well, how do we work our way back from that? And then, all right, so we got a mutual point in the future. The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are also, for me, interesting, because you mentioned clubhouse about almost two years ago now,

when Israel was selling Gaza. They hit the UPI office. You know, they were hitting, they got fed up with the rocket attacks from Hamas, and of course Hamas is putting rockets in the UPI office to the AP office, whichever press office it was there. Has that office gonna be there otherwise a Mass is running a show

You know you're gonna run that office unless they let you unless you let them store weapons there. That's just part of the game and and where are they gonna are they gonna storm and specially designated ammunition dumps? No, they're gonna put them in schools. They're gonna put them in hospitals. They're gonna put them in all places That it when Israel hits them, they're gonna look really bad. So after a while, Israel gets fed up and they start shilling Gaza and they're hitting these places. Friend of mine, Nicole met him, is hosting rooms on clubhouse,

and she says, you gotta come on, the vitriol is killing me. These are all turning to screaming matches. Nobody's talking to anybody. I Say all right cool. We'll go on. We'll do it and watch. We won't have a single argument We'll invite people on from both sides The only there was one rule Before you started to

Describe what you thought of the other side You had to say before I disagree with you. Here's what I think your position is and you got to continue to state the other side, you had to say before I disagree with you, here's what I think your position is. And you got to continue to stay the other side's position until they agree that you've gotten. Now, what happened? No agreement and no arguments. That was what we were really going for. We wanted to show that people on both sides and one of their emotional timeframes, if your only requirement was you had to state the other side's position first, nobody got out of control. Did it work?

That's exactly what happened. Not one, we wanted to show people that you can have conversations that do not devolve into screaming matches with vitriol talking about how you're dedicated to the destruction of the other side. Just first, see if you can outline where they're coming from. That's really impressive because I've just having seen on clubhouse people, which part of the reason I liked clubhouse, you get to hear voices from all sides, they were emotionally intense.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I mean, I'm sweating just in the buildup of your story here, I thought it's gonna go to hell, but you're saying it kind of worked to make it. No, one person lost control. Now, of the two sides, the people that were speaking on behalf of the Israelis were a little

better at articulating supportive positions for the Palestinians. Most of the people who want to speak up on behalf of the Palestinians, they just, they'd want to start in like, you're doing this. And I'd say, no, no, no, no, you can go there. Just not yet. Mm-hmm. Before you go, that you can say that all you want. Before you go there, you've got to try to articulate to them where they're coming from.

They got to tell you you got it right. And what would consistently happen is there's a leveling out of a person to try to see the other side's perspective and articulate it. It's enormously beneficial to the person who's trying to do it, which was really the point that we were trying to make. It's a really interesting exercise. By way of advice, so if it works at clubhouse, for people who don't know, that's a voice app where you can be anonymous. It's really regular people, but regular people who can also be anonymous. It can be chaos.

If it works there, that's really interesting. When you sit down for a conversation across the table from somebody, don't have them even steal man the other side have them just state the other side just just You're explaining you're understanding it. Yeah, that's it and every now and then I would jump in Like you know and is somebody supporting Israel, you know whoever the heck they were and They they'd take a couple things you know, whoever the heck they were. And they'd say a couple things. And the Palestinian guy would be like, ah, or gal, or supportive of them would say,

you know, you miss some stuff. And I'd say, let me jump in. First of all, I know what the Nakhbias, the Nakhbias catastrophe. That's the day Israel was born. You, you know, for the rest of the world's birth of Israel for you to the Nakhbah, I said, you've got members of your family that is still walking around carrying keys to the front door of the house, they abandoned it. And it'd be like,

yeah. And I'd say you feel bad that in point of fact, then World War II, the world stood back and watched while the Nazis threw the Jews off a building. The only problem was they landed on you. And they'd be like, yeah, that's where they're coming from. So articulating deeply what the other side feels is transformative for both people involved in a process. What's the toughest negotiation you've ever been a part of or maybe observed or heard of? What's the difficult case you just stands out to you or maybe you just want one of many?

Well the stuff we went through without kind of in and around Rack in Saudi, first one was in Saudi in 2004 timeframe. The hardest part about that was working with family members and not deceiving them about the possibility of outcome. Yeah, how do you talk to family members? Is that part of the negotiation? Yeah, empathy, learning empathy the hard way and then being able to take it up to higher levels

because at its base level, a guy that we're working with now that's coaching us in the US and is a business partner, his name is Jonathan Smith, he pointed out to us that there's kind of, there's a shoe-haarie concept. Are you familiar with shoe-haarie? It's martial arts concept. And she was, do it exactly as the master is telling you to do it. Wax on, wax off, credit kid stuff. Uh, huh is when you've done the reputation, repetitions enough times, you're getting a feel for it.

And you begin to see the same lessons coming from other masters. You're seeing the same thing show up in other places. And at the re-level, you're still in the discipline, but you're making up your own rules. It's almost a flow state. And you don't realize that you're making up your own rules. And if somebody asks you where you learn that, you probably say, I, you know, my sensei taught it to me, my master taught it to me. This will come back around the Neo-Shame with families pretty quick. We did this once because there's a bunch of people that we coach, business people that are scared of the amount of money that they're losing if we're not coaching

them regularly. One of these guys, Michael, we're interviewing him for a social media posting about two years ago. And Michael says, yeah, you know, you got to gather data with your eyes. And I remember thinking, and I went, woo, I like that. I said, where did you hear that before? And he goes, you know, I don't know. I heard it from you, I think. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't remember to say that. Yeah. For at that first time, I've heard that he's in re. So what's this got to do with families? Empathy at his base level and the shoe level, I learned it on the suicide hotline is saying like, you sound angry.

I'm just calling out the elephant in the room. I'm just calling out the elephant in the room. Your emotions, what's driving you, I'm throwing a label on your affect, and I'm saying you sound or it sounds like you are, because that's the basic, cry-to-kid wax-on wax-off approach. Now, there are a lot of hostage negotiators that will tell you, empathy doesn't work at home, not true.

They've never gotten out of shoe. Now, there are a lot of hostage negotiators that will tell you empathy doesn't work at home, not true. They've never gotten out of shoe. You get ready to talk to your significant other. And you want to go someplace that you know is going to make her angry. You want to go do something. Now, that's real negotiation right there. You could say to her, you sound angry, in which case she's going to blow up because her reaction is you made me angry, Bozo.

How do you act like you're an innocent third party or that you were independent of how I feel bad? And you learn a little bit more and you say the high level is this this is probably gonna make you angry. And then what I did with families, I knew how they felt before I walked in the door. I knew that they were scared to death. You find out that your, your, your husband, your father, your brother has been grabbed by Al-Qaeda, who are in the business of chopping people's heads off. You're going to be horrified. I can't walk into them and go like, you sound angry. Of course I'm angry. You idiot. But known what they are, I used to walk into family's

houses. And I'd say, I know you're angry. Now what do now what are the circumstances dictate that they should also feel? They're going to feel abandoned by their government. They're going to feel totally alone. They're going to be scared and they're going to be angry because they feel the government abandoned them. Now there in point of fact, is this an accurate statement that their loved one voluntarily went into a war zone and voluntarily went someplace their government told them not to go, or the facts that the government abandoned them, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, the government wanted, tried to get them to not go and they went anyway. But that doesn't change how they

felt in a moment. And I'd walk into a house and I go, I know you're angry. I know you feel abandoned alone. And I know you're horrified. And I know you feel the United States government is abandoned you. And they would look at me and go like, yeah. What do we do now? Now we're ready to rock.

What do we do now now ready to rock? Is there a with al-Qaeda or in general is there a language barrier to it could be just barriers of different Communication styles. I mean you got like a New Yorker way about That might make somebody from like I Don't know Laguna gunna bech I'm comfortable. Do you feel that language barrier and communication is that language and communication style and itself creating a barrier? You get a barrier when you think that your way is the way. Sure, that's the biggest barrier.

Yeah. And that happens all the time. When people talk about what about cross-cultural negotiations, you know, what happened? Do I got to shake hands with? Sure. So that I can get my way. Well, if you strip it all down, we're all basically the same blank slate when we were born. We got to everybody's got a limbic system, everybody's limbic system works pretty much the same way. People are driven by the same sorts of decisions. How does this affect my future? One of my risk of losing, how does this affect my identity? You know, kind of kidnapper, you're a New York City businessman, you're a tobacco farmer in the South. All making those same decisions based on the same things. So, as soon as I start to navigate that, and I tailor my approach, which is what empathy is,

to what you think, how you see things. So, I can be the biggest goofball ever from, if you're living in a south, yeah, maybe I'm a New Yorker, or I'm somebody from LA or somebody from Chicago. But my geography is foreign to you, but as soon as I start dialing in on how you see things, suddenly you're listening. What about the three voices you talk about, the different voices you can use in that communication right the

Serter's voice direct an honest I'm a natural born assertive Natural born I thought we're all blank slate. Yeah, well, that's a stop catching me on what I said How dare you throw you accuse me of what I've said to a quote Bono I stand accused of what I've said the things I've said That's a good line He's got a few good lines. Yeah. So assertive voice. You're born that way. Which one? What are the other ones? Analyst. You're an analyst. And I could tell you're assertive.

Yeah. What's the analyst voice? Well, an analyst is close to the smarter. Just to go more thoughtful. No, it's a matter of fact. Look, you ever do a decision tree? Yeah, see, you like it too, don't you? So, decision trees, you know, they're a computer scientist. So, I like mathematical

Systematic ways of seeing the world It's the analyst You think Donald Trump would ever say that Unlikely Is he more the assertive kind of he's a natural born assertive yeah, yeah I are all New Yorkers like this. Is this somewhat something in the water? No, that's a crazy thing. I mean, there's an affect that a city can have.

Yeah. And, you know, New York's Northeast, not just New York, but the Northeast is a little more the affect of the area, of the culture of the area. The individual's still boiled down into the three types, cross-ab of the area, the individual's individual still boiled down into the three types, cross-abort. What's the third one? A commonator smiling optimistic hopeful. I'm a hundred a thousand percent convinced that the phrase hope is not a strategy

is designed at people's frustration over a third of the population being a commonators that are hope-driven. I hope this works out. In their very relationship, on the surface, their very relationship oriented, they tend to appear to be very positive than they are, but it's really built around hope. And the idea is you can adopt these three voices. You can, yeah, You can learn them. They're all learnable.

The analysts are often mistaken for a commonators because as you said before, you know, analysts are more introspective, more analytical. They're looking at the systems that work. And if they like to learn, they notice that a commonator is make more deals than they make. They also notice that there's a higher failure rate of the deals. But since they notice stuff and they think about it, they catch on faster than assertives do that the pleasant nature of an nature of an a commonator contributes strongly to making deals. Like my daughter-in-law is an analyst. You know, another descriptor we have in an analyst are

assassins. You know, an analyst will snipe you from a thousand yards out in the middle of the night, and you never know what hitch it, and they're really happy with that. But how has assertiveness, the assertive voice served you in negotiation? Poorly. The assertive voice is almost always counterproductive. It feels like getting hit in the face with a brick. And that's almost always counterproductive. So for me to be more effective, especially in an negotiation,

I'll need to slow down and smile. You know, I heard that Teddy Roosevelt was a good negotiator and then he was extremely stubborn. And perhaps the right term for that will be assertive, but he picked his battles. Is there some value to holding strong to principle? So I don't even know if that's probably the opposite of empathy. Are there times when you can just stick the extremely stubborn to your principles to a negotiation? We do it all the time. We're just nice about it.

Okay, it helps to be nice. You're saying? Well, yes, because I need you to hear me. And the assertive tone of voice, so when we do our training, typically we do an exercise called 60 seconds or so you guys. And I play the bad guy bank robber and I ask you to be the hostage negotiator.

And your job is to give you the four cons, real world constraints. And then you got to try and negotiate me out of the bank. Now we're doing this. Now the first voice that I always use in that exercise is the service voice, which is the commanding voice. It's the voice that all police officers have taught to use in the street. Issued loud and clear commands.

You know, to me, I don't feel like I'm attacking you. I just feel like I'm being direct and honest and clear. You and the other hand feel attacked. Now, we're doing a sex exercise in Austin a couple of years ago. The first participant has an Apple watch on. He tells us afterwards that sitting still, not even answering when he first gets hit in the face with the assertive voice, his heart rate jumped to 170, which is a typical fight or flight reaction. I come at you like I'm fighting you. Your your fight flight mechanism is all kicking the gear which clouds your thinking. You're

automatically dumber in the moment. So if I want to make a great long term deal with you, highly profitable, I'm agnostic to you being profitable. You'd be profitable. Well, that's fine. I'm here to make money for me. Me making you dumber will always hurt me. Me making you feel attacked will always hurt me. So there's never a value in being and you making me afraid. There's never a long-term value in it. That's some, it's another thing that tall, Ross, when we write a book, brace me on.

Because he said, there's scientific data out there that's called strategic umbrage. Well, there's data. Well, whether or not it's scientific, I would call that into question. But he said, there's studies out there that show that strategic umberage works. And another thing that I also enjoy, you probably get tired of me saying wonderful things about Andrew. He talked, there's never, there's never enough wonderful things to say about the great Andrew Hewerman, the host of the Hewerman lab podcast, everybody should subscribe to.

You should talk to Andrew. You're a funnier than he is though. I'll give you that. He's funny accidentally. He makes me laugh all the time. Not when he's trying to be funny. He's a really, he's one of the people in this world that's truly legit. He's a really strong scientist and a really strong communicator and a good human being. And those together

don't come often. And that's nice to see. Yeah. Yeah. He's a treasure, national treasure. Anyway, you were saying, well, he sort of taught me how to think about that and studies and science and And also from different books that he's turned me on to is really helped me think about this stuff. So the studies about strategic umberage Were done the ones that I've seen that show it's effective There were simulated negotiations with college students. Now here's the problem with that negotiations with college students. Now, he's a problem with that. A simulated negotiation with a college student. College students are going to sit down as part of their assignment. They're going to sit down one time. They're going to sit down for 45 minutes.

And they're going to think that if they didn't come to a deal at all, that they failed. And there's no ongoing implementation. There's just the deal and then it walk away of a pretend situation. So they got no actual real skin in the game. There's no deal on earth. Do you sit down and come to agreement 45 minutes and never see each other again because there's the implementation of the deal. Even if it's only payment. So the data is flawed based on the way it was collected. It's a highly flawed study. And all data is flawed, as you know, as a scientist. You just got to be aware what the flaws are and decide whether or not that destroys the study.

Or what do you think? Take a look at the data. There's no such thing as perfect data. Look at the data, see what you think of it. The data that says that strategic umbrage works is based on flawed circumstances. Can you explain strategic umbrage? Get mad scaring the other side into a deal. Getting mad at using anger strategically to bully the other side into an agreement. That's nice to hear in some sense.

It's nice to hear that empathy is the right way in almost all situations. It's nice. Best chance to success. I thought it works every time, just it works more than anything else does. What is the technique of mirroring? There's a lot of cool stuff in your book.

There's just kind of jump around. What's mirroring? Mirroring is like, it's one of the most fun skills because it's the simplest to execute. You just repeat one to three-ish words or what somebody said. Usually the last one to three words. What I found about it is the people that really like mirroring, love it because it's so simple and so effortless and invisible. They typically, for lack of a better term, tend to be both high IQ and high EQ.

Like I'm not a high IQ guy. I'm average dude. I like to think that I can learn in EQ, emotional intelligence is skill you can build and I'm always working on building it. But a lot of really regular average people would be like, mirroring that stupid, I'm not doing that. And I don't know why they don't like it.

But when I find somebody that loves to mirror, I'll always ask them, you know, how'd you, I'm just going, I IQ. And typically their IQ is pretty high. Now, I don't know why that combination attracts people to marrying, because there's nine skills, eight from hostage negotiation and we, and the ninth really was tone of voice,

and we just define that as a skill. And each one is different and focuses on different components of the conversation. And a lot of people don't like the mirror they found it so awkward like I don't particularly I'm not particularly strong in mirroring I got to do it intentionally I'm good at labeling. But does it also work? Oh yeah. Yeah it feels maybe awkward but there's it's true There's got to be ways to signal that you're truly listening

That's important. I think you do body language. You can yeah, there's a lot of ways to signal that but mirroring is probably just this trivial little hack It kind of is You know, there's a situation I had a conversation with Stephen Codkin. He's this historian and He would say My name a lot throughout the conversation. He would be like we have to understand Lex Is that and for some reason that was making me feel really good. I was like he cares about me And I wonder if that key if everyone has that key that, that could be name, just using people's name, could be powerful.

Using the name is really context driven. It can be extremely powerful with someone who's genuine and it comes all across in their demeanor. And it's used in a way that you can tell this meant to encourage you as opposed to explore you. Sure. And the people that are really into exploiting will also use it.

Do the same thing. So you have to be, you have to avoid using the things that people that are exploitors, manipulators use, because it might signal to others that this person is trying to trick me. It'll be very conscious of it. Yeah. What's labeling the you mentioned, the thing you like? Well, you know, I said earlier,

that old progression from you sound angry, to this is probably gonna make you angry, to I know you're angry. Labeling is hanging a label on an emotion or an affect and then just calling it up. Is that almost always good? Could it be a source of frustration when a person is being angry

and you kind of put a label on it, call out the elephant? Is it possible that that will lead to escalation of that feeling versus resolution? Well, what would make it bad? Like, if I'm pointing out like that blatantly obvious, like if I say, look, I need you to get up and go down to the bank and make the deposit. Let's say I'm talking to my somebody who works in my company. I need you to get on the phone with this person and make the deposit. Let's say I'm talking to somebody works in my company.

I need you to get on the phone with this person and make the appointment. And they go, sounds like you want me to talk to this person. Yes. That would be annoying. If it's just so absurdly obvious, that there's no insight in your label at all. And as soon as you're demonstrating an awareness or a subtlety or an insight, either to you or to them, now we're making progress.

So the only time a label could ever potentially be kind of productive, it's like if you weren't actually listening, and the label is, indicates that you're not listening. You know, I'm teaching in USC, and I'm teaching labels, and you know, one of the kids in a class, he just wants to take the skills and make his deals, and just hustle them, and he's just looking for a hustle. So he writes up a paper about, you know, he goes,

there's some malls, I think by Palm Springs, there's some place, some out of malls, a lot of people go to buy suits. So he goes in there and he immediately starts the bargaining that my book teaches with no empathy. And he's like, throws a price to the guy, and a guy's like, no. And he throws another price to the guy, and guys like, no.

And then he says to the guy behind the counter, sounds like we can make a deal. Like, no, it doesn't. I just shut down everything you just said. If anything, it sounds like we're never gonna make a deal. Yeah. But he tried to use this label for manipulation. Now, the guy didn't get mad on the other side, but it's like, clearly, his dude is not listening to me. And at the core of everything,

you have a bunch of like, you know, almost like hacks, like techniques you can use, but at the core of it is empathy. At the core is empathy. That's the main thing. You can be able to just sit there and listen. And perceive. Yeah, look for insights. You know what? I like silence. Or like you're both sitting there chilling with a drink looking up at the stars.

There's a moment the silence makes you kind of zoom out and realize you're in this together. As opposed to playing a game, or some kind of like chess game of negotiation, you're in it together. I don't know. There's some intimacy to the silence. And like, if I, I'll ask a question and just let the other person sit there in silence before they answer, or vice versa, they ask me a question, I sit there in silence before the answer or device a verse that asked me a question I sit there in silence that's a

big physical big intimate thing. Yes, and the other two types until they've experienced that are afraid of it. And what I'm actually going to do is for one of the reason I'm really I'm really comfortable with silence. I think because I've experienced it's effectiveness and also my son Brandon, like he's a king of dynamic silence. Like he coaches people, he says,

go silent, count thousands to yourself. Don't stop till you run out of numbers. That's a good line. He's also good, full of good lines. He is, that is and so There's so much to it But the other two types are natural wiring against it white and tell you've experienced it and you know You got instant instant intuitions giving you data once you've experienced it

Yeah, but your megal is kicking into gear again. Sorry. I realized it's more complicated than that Until you've experienced it. So, a commonator's hope-based. How do they signal fury? The silent treatment. So, when you go silent, they're scared to death, you're furious. Because that's how they indicate it.

The assertive Thanks the use the analyst went silent because you want them to talk some more When a point of fact You're there You're thinking or and I love your description the feeling of intimacy and silence and Experiencing the moment because I'm actually going to factor that into trying to get the commoners love shared intimacy. They love would love to experience a moment.

And I can see that being very compelling, then be willing to cross that chasm and experience silence and see how see how worse form. Yes, no, lacking, which is why sentiment. Because you start thinking what voice the other person thinking, we're actually going to do this. We're going to sit here for 10 seconds and come. I mean, there's tricks to it, I guess, like Brandon says,

to just calm it out and realize through data that there's intimacy to it. I had a friend of mine, he lost his voice, singing, so he his voice, singing. So he couldn't, the doctor says he can't talk for a week, just to heal the voice, the vocal cords. But he hung out with other people, with friends, and didn't talk to them.

He just hung out. And he said it was really intimate. They both didn't talk to each other. They just sat there and enjoyed time together. I don't know. It's a wake up class. I think to try it maybe with people in your life, just hang out and don't say anything. Like as an experiment, don't say anything the entire day, but hang, spend time there. Yeah, definitely. It's interesting. I haven't tried it myself It seems It's kind of like a silent retreat, but more Actifest part of like regular everyday life

Anyway The is there other other interesting techniques we can talk about here. So for example creating the illusion of control Yeah, it's principally you you know, by asking what and how questions? Because people love to tell others what to do or how to do it. It does a lot. That was that was really the way when the book was first written that we really thought about one how questions is given the other side, the illusion of control. that we really thought about one how questions is given the other side the illusion of control. And there's a lot more to it than that that we've discovered I mean it triggers deep thinking it wears people down.

Deep thinking is could be exhausting and you want to what's the what's the role of exhaustion and negotiation is that ultimately what I'm careful with that. Some people exhaust intentionally. One of my negotiation heroes, a guy now who's unfortunately suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's, John Domenico Pico is the unhossaged negotiators that got all the western hostages out of Beirut in the 80s. And he wrote a book called Man Without a Gun. And I'm acquainted with Johnny at this point in time. I don't think he has any memory of who I am at all. But he writes in his book, one of the great secrets of negotiation is exhausting the other side. Plotical negotiations that could be Johnny was deferential. It was in the 80s leading

up to about 1986-ish. Every negotiation involved in warring parties in the Middle East that you can imagine. He was in Cyprus. He was in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, the Iranian government had tremendous trust in him as a westerner, a representative of the UN. Got all the westerners out of Beirut and he was just ridiculously patient and which I'd found exhaust would often find exhausting. So exhaustion is a can't be a component of finding resolution and negotiation. If it's if it tamps down the negative emotions, often exhaustion will tamp down negative emotions. And if it puts you if it getting the real trick is really getting negative emotions out of out of the way because you dumber in a negative frame of mind.

So the goal is always positive motion as you talk about. That's what you're always chasing together. I think so. Yeah. And that's what that's right. It's about. Yes. Like whatever you're triggering, whatever the chemistry you're triggering in your brain,

like yeah, yeah, we're doing good here. I think so. Yeah, long term for long term success. Absolutely. How is the word fair used in a poem? Yes, the F-bomb, as you call it. How is it used in abused and negotiation? It's usually used, most frequently used as a weapon.

It's abused as a point of manipulation. It's what people say when they feel backed into a corner and they can't come up with any legitimate reason as to why they're being backed into a corner. Like nobody uses the word F, the F bomb, nobody uses the word fair when they've got criteria to back them up. So consequently, when somebody starts dropping it, you've got

to realize the other side's got no legitimate outside criteria. They're feeling very vulnerable. They can't explain it, but they feel defensive. And it's saying, hey, look, I've just, I've given you a fair offer is a way for me to knock you off your game, if you're not aware of it. So a lot of cutthroat negotiations, negotiators are gonna use it on you to knock you off your game. The NFL strike probably now, it's been a good 10 years ago. And maybe even longer than that.

One of this sticking points was, the owners were not opening their books to the players. Players want to see the numbers. And in order to not open their books, they just sent a rep to the press conference saying, we've given them players a fair offer. Well, if it was fair, you'd open your books. Yeah. If you gave them a fair offer and it was justified by what was in your books, you'd open them to prove your point. So what ends up happening though, that, well, the owners gave the players a fair offer, starts to get picked up in the media. And then it starts getting repeated.

And now, now, that different people on a player's side who are going like, maybe they have given us a fair offer, caused people to be insecure about their own position. It's an enormously powerful word that can be used and abused. And it almost always comes up in every negotiation. It's shocking the number of times it comes up and with people who don't really understand how or why it's coming up So usually it's a signal of Of a not a good place in the negotiation without question. I'm completely convinced that if the person is using the word as a means of getting what they want then

Either accidentally on purpose either in their, or they know they got a bad position, or their gut is afraid that they are. Do I use the word? What I'll say is I want you to feel like I've treated you fairly. And if any given point in time, you think I'm not treating you fairly, I want you to stop me. And we're going to address it. Big ridiculous question, but how do you close the deal? How do you take the negotiation

to its end? Is it implementation ultimately? You got to pivot to agree upon implementation, to really move out on the negotiation. And I might say, how do you want to proceed? And if you don't know, I might say no more into question, is it a ridiculous idea if I share with you some ideas about a proceed? And then you agree on the actual steps and that's the implementation, it's not just the philosophical agreement, it's the implementation. It's not just the philosophical agreement. It's actual steps. The big problem in all negotiations is a lack of discussion of next steps It's deep. Who is the best negotiator you've ever met? Yeah, actually probably my son Brandon. Yeah, yeah, he's ridiculously talented. I mean, he's ridiculously talented and Yeah, he's ridiculously talented. I mean, he's ridiculously talented. And yeah, he's, you know, and what was it that calls book the culture, the talent code says that, you know, people just

noticed and started getting good at it. It's no such thing as a child prodigy. He's just got interested when they were kid. I mean, Brandon started learning how to negotiate when it's two years old. And he's been in it and immersed in it, you know, since he can make complete senses, even before he can make complete senses. He's ridiculously talented. What's his future? What's he want to do? He's gone, he has been involved.

He's, he run and built my company. And now he's going to be in affiliated affiliated licensee run his own operation. He's pretty he's pretty much gonna end up doing very much It's gonna open his entrepreneurial opportunities to do what every once and not have his dad say no And do a better job than his dad more slightly. Yeah, okay Do you see some of the techniques that you talk about as manipulative? Manipulation is whether or not I'm trying to exploit you or hurt you.

Am I trying to manipulate a bank robber and to let me save his life? Yeah. So manipulation is like, what am I trying to do to you? Yeah. So you don't see the negative connotation. If you're trying to bring a better future, it's not manipulation.

Stop it. If I'm trying to bring a better future if I'm being genuine and honest, like I compliment you. Yeah. If my compliment is genuine, that's not manipulation. But if I think you're going to have a pair of shoes that are the dumbest looking things I've ever seen.

And I go, wow, those are great shoes. Not an espionage manipulation. So there's guys I call Warren Buffett who are big on integrity and honesty. What's the role of lying in effective? Lying is just a bad idea. For variety reasons. First of all, there's really a chance you have to say it's a better lie than you you are they're going to spot it right off the bat. Yeah. Secondly, they could be luring you into a trap to see if you will lie.

Thirdly, the chances are they're going to find out that you lied to them. Eventually, it's really high. And then the penalties and the taxes are going to be way higher than what you had in a first place. So long term, you want to have a reputation of somebody with integrity and the more you lie, the harder it is to maintain that reputation. Yeah, exactly. And what's going to get out? Yeah. So what's the, we can just return to that question. What's the difference between a good conversation and a good negotiation? Can we, because I think just reading your work, listening to you, there's a sense I have that the thing we're doing now and just conversation on podcasts and so on is different than

negotiation. It feels like the purpose is different. And yet having some of the same awareness of the value of empathy is extremely important. But it feels like the goals are different. Or no. Really close, fine line. I mean, I, you know, I ruled in here, not I have any expectations, not looking for anything other than having an interesting conversation. And to hear what was behind the questions that you were asking me and what interest you. And then also, you description of silence and a power of silence. Something I'm going to take away is a learning point and help learn to teach others. But I ain't come in here.

I suppose the negotiation is when we're both aware of a problem we're trying to solve. Right, there's no problem in the room. Right. Just to solve, except maybe like the human condition and... Insect, you know, wisdom. Insect, learning.

How do you train to become better in negotiating In business and in life. Yeah, just small stakes practice for high stakes results I mean decide what what kind of negotiating resonates with you. I mean what that means small stakes practice for high stakes or small So small little small stakes practice for high stakes or small stakes. So small little incremental, like picking up girls at a bar, what are we talking about? Well, that can't be. For some people, that's high stakes practice.

Well, labeling mirrors. What are the basic tools of great negotiation? Labeling mirror and paraphrasing summarizing. So you start labeling a mirror and people that you just have regular interactions with just to gain a feel for whether or not you can read somebody's affect or how accurate you read is to get better at it. the lift driver or the grocery store clerk or a person behind the airline counter at the airport. So putting a label on their affect or throwing something at them that because negotiations of parable's perishable skill, emotional intelligence is perishable. So seeing if you can indicate that you understand their label. One of my favorite labels to throw out on somebody

which, you know, maybe re-level, I might look at somebody who looks distressed and I'll go tough day. So several years ago, I'm at the counter at LAX. Well, I'm waiting to line to get to the counter. And a lady behind the counter is clearly making a point to not meet my eyes so that I don't approach. And she looks and so like you know when you're next in line and they're making sure that you don't meet eyes. And I'm thinking to myself, all right, so they're having a bad day. So I walk up and as soon as I approach the kind of I go tough day and she kind of Snaps around It's goes no, no, no, how can I help you? And goes out of her way to help me

Now I'm practicing but I also know it made her feel better. I relieved some of the stress So now I'm going through TSA. I want to look for people having a tough day It's a good place to find a good place to find and practice And I'm rolling through the line and I realize I haven't tossed a label out on any one of these guys. And there's this guy watching the bags come out of the X-ray machine. And he's just kind of got an in different look on his face. And I go, tough day. And he kind of goes, I can see from his body language like, no. And I go just another day, huh? And he goes, yeah, just another day.

You know, he felt seen, but I missed and I'm practicing. And I'm trying to stay sharp. So these are the few words, which just a few words you're trying to like quickly localize the effect and I live on it. Very, very, very analytically said. Thank you. Not letting it go. I love it. It does the same apply to just conversation in general.

It's just how to get better conversation. I think a lot of people struggle, they have insecurities, they have anxiety about conversation. I, as funny as this to say, I have a lot of anxiety about conversation. Is that, it basically do the same kind of practice practice some of the techniques in yeah genuinely just trying to make sure you heard somebody up. Yeah What's the best conversation you've ever been in except this one of course? What what I mean not the best conversation, but what stands out to you as

What what I mean not with the best conversation, but what stands out to you as Conversation that changed you as a person maybe Well, there's probably been a lot of them along the way. I mean, but one that When the that I remember on a regular basis there's actually this too, but when I was in a bureau I'm a Quantico I'm their friend and services another guy from New York buddy my name Lionel and We're both trying to decide whether or not we want to be try to get into profiling or negotiation Because they're both about human dynamics and both of us really like human dynamics And we're sitting around talking about it and we're talking about several things and he labels me and I know he didn't know what he was doing I think I think he was just he had picked it up. And I'd been talking about my family quite a few things.

And he said to me, and I never said this directly that we were close. But he said to me, it sounded like your family was really close. And I can remember in the moment, like this feeling, just like I felt great in the moment. I mean, what he said just drew together everything that I'd been saying and nailed the essence of it. And I have a very clear recollection

of how good that felt in the moment. So a couple of years later, I'm on a suicide hotline. Now I got this line back in my head, you know, line, technique, reaction, read, whatever you want to call it. Guy calls in on a hotline and I could tell the dude is rattled by his tone of voice. I mean, just just amped up. And he goes, you know, I'm just trying to put a little on the day. I need, I need to help put a little on the day. I got to, I got to put a little on the day.

And I go, you, you sound anxious. And he goes, he goes, yeah. And he came down a little bit and it was a guy that was, was telling me about, he was battling the disease, the paranoia. And he's gonna go on a car trip with his family the next day. And he knew that on the car trip, he was gonna, you know, twist himself in the knots. And so the night before he's twisting himself in the knots.

And he's laying out everything that he's done to try to beat paranoia and how much his family's helping him. And he's going on the car trip with the family because they're going to take him to see a doctor. And so I hit him with the same thing that my buddy Lionel said, it sounds like your family's close. And he goes, I had him with the same thing that my buddy Lionel said, it sounds like your family's close. It goes, yeah, we are close. And you love a lot a little bit more. And then he started ticking off all the things that he was

doing to try to be paranoid. And he sounded determined. And so I said, you sound determined. And he goes, yeah, I am determined. I don't be fond of them all. Thanks. And that was all I said. So those two conversations, which are overlapping conversations, those two things really stick out of my mind. Do those things like through all the different negotiations and conversations you've had, do you do they kind of echo throughout, like you basically, because when you empathize with other human beings, you start to realize we're all the same.

And so you can start to pick little phrases here and there that you've heard from others, little experiences, they were all about, like we all want to be close to other human beings, we all want love. I think we're all deeply lonely inside, looking for connection. We're just, if we're worried for honest about it. And so all humans have that same, all the same different components of, or it makes them tick. So you kind of see yourself basically just saying the same things to connect with another human being.

Yeah, there aren't that many different things that we're looking for understanding on or connection on or satisfaction of. They just aren't that many different things that we're looking for understanding on or connection on or Satisfaction up. They just aren't that many of them regardless. And so yeah, you're looking for to manifest itself in some form and other and you're willing to take a guess on whether or not that's what you see in her here. What advice would you give to me to be better at these conversations? To me and to other people that do kind of interviews and podcasts and so on. Wow.

I really care about empathy as well. Is there kind of, as a lifelong journey in this process? Yeah, well, I think I would advise you to take that approach, which is your approach that you're taking. You care about it, you're very curious about it. You see it as a lifelong journey, you're fascinated by it. You enjoy learning about it. And you definitely do see it as a lifelong journey.

It's supposed to, this is what I can, if I can acquire this, then I can manipulate people. No, I mean, I fall in love with people I talk to. There's a kind of deep connection and linkers with you, especially when I'm preparing the more material there's in a person, the more you get to fall in love with them ahead of time, they think you get to really understand, not understand, but what I mean by fall in love is appreciate, huh? Appreciate, but also become deeply curious. That's what I mean by fall in love.

Like, you appreciate the things you know, but you start to see like Allison Wonderland, you start to see that there's all this cool stuff you can learn if you keep interacting with them. And then when you show up and you actually meet, you realize, it's like more and more and more and more. It's like in physics, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. And it's like, it's really exciting. And then it could also be heartbreaking

because you have to say goodbye. Goodbye, I hate goodbyes. I hate goodbyes. It seems terrible, right? Yeah. It reminds me that I'm gonna die one day. Like things end, good things end it sucks, but then it makes the the moment more delicious You know that you do get this band together. Yeah

Okay I just want to completely forgot I want to ask you about this the 738 55% rule It's really interesting. Is there an all truth to it? That 7% of a message is conveyed from the words used 38% from the tone of voice and 55% from body language. Is there really truth to that?

All right, so Albert Moravian, I think is the name of the UCLA professor that originally proposed a 738-55 ratio and discussed it in terms of that it wasn't the message, but how much he called it liking. Like, the meaning is coming across, but you're liking of the message. And so, it's been extrapolated heavily by people like me to this meaning of the meaning in 738.55 from liking to the meaning. When I've seen regularly is people that communicate verbally, if they're speakers, Tony Robbinsbins 730-55 guy he throws a ratio out there Go that's it exactly that's exactly how the message comes across this is how we got to balance it

This is how we get to do it those that communicate principally in writing The meaning of the words are much more important to them. So they're deeply uncomfortable with seven being the words because the content, the words, the meaning of the words, when you're writing, it's so important that you hate to poop it that way. So I, first of all, 1,000% believe it's an accurate ratio, but the real critical issue is not what the ratio of those three things are, it's what's the message when they're out of line?

Like what's the message when the tone of voice is out of line with the words? Like it don't matter what your ratio is, you got a problem if their tone does not match their words. That's hard to really put a measure on exactly, even in writing, there's a tone. I mean, it's not just, even in writing, it's not just the words. There's the words,

but there's like a style underneath the whole thing. And there's something like body language, the presentation of the whole thing. I mean, yeah, I'm a big fan of constraint mediums of communication, which writing is or voice like clubhouse. There's a personality to human being when you just hear their voice. It's not just, you could say it's the tone of voice, but there's like, you can like, what is it?

The imagination fills in the rest. Like what I'm listening to somebody, I'm like, I'm imagining some amorphous being, doing things. When they get like, I'm imagining some amorphous being, right? Doing things. When they get angry, I'm imagining anger. I don't know what exactly I'm visualizing. Well, and so you may think of a funny story because we were talking about your buddy Elon before. And I told you about that I'd interacted

with some of the senior executives. So I know that they love working with him. And I think it's an interesting guy and they realize that he can be funny and he jokes around. So that they tell me, during this conference call, just words, and a guy on the other end of the line says something, you know, that wasn't, was wrong but wasn't bad.

Yeah. And so they said, they're on a phone and Elon goes, you're fired. And then everybody in the room with them can see that he's joking. Yeah. But the person on the other side can't, and they all go to work, wait, wait, wait, wait, they can't see you're looking on your face right now. You got to stop, you got to stop.

Because the guy on the other side is dying right now. He doesn't realize you're joking. So there was, you know, there were the words and the tone of voice, but it lacked the visual to go with it. Never less was probably funny. I'm sure it was very funny at the time. Maybe not to him. Just as an interesting to ask, I don't know if you're following along the developments of large language models, there's been something called Chad GBT, there's just more, more and more sophisticated and effective and impressive chatbots essentially that can, they can talk. And they are becoming more and more human-like.

Right. Do you think it's possible in the future that AI will be able to be better in negotiators than humans. Do you think about that kind of stuff? Well, so definition of better or versus less flawed. Like the chatbots have been out there for a long time and probably about five years ago now, a company approached us because they were doing a negotiation chatbot.

And they said two things. First of all, I said, you know, why are you talking to us? It's a well-informed effect. We already spoke to the people that are teaching quote the Harvard methodology. And, you know, the rational approach to negotiation just doesn't work.

Rational approaches does not work. The rational approach just does not work. Our chatbots are not getting anywhere. But we're shown in around about 80% of the interactions, a higher success outcome with these chatbots. They showed me what they were doing, and it was still a lot deeply flawed, emotional intelligence-wise, but the reason why that they

were having higher success rates is the chatbots were never in a bad mood. And you could reach out for a chatbock in the middle of the night. So if you were talking to somebody that was never upset and was always available, then you're going to have an higher success rate. Negotiations go bad when people are in a negative frame of mind. So the natural ability of a chatbot to be positive is just going to give you a higher success rate. Yeah, and then I'm going to get mad and argue with you. You say, you say to a chatbot, you know, your price is too high. Chatbot is designed to come back with a smiley face. Yeah, you say to a person, your price is too high.

They go, how dare you? I'm trying to make a living. You know, they're gonna go off the deepest. Unfortunately, I think the way Chadbots are going now, they will come back negative because they're becoming more human, more and more human-like. That's the whole point.

To be able to pass the toying test, you have to be negative. You have to be an asshole. You have to be negative, you have to be an asshole, you have to have boundaries, you have to be insecure, you have to have some uncertainty. Well, as them doing being, having boundaries and being negative, like I can, like you, you throw a proposal to me.

But, you know, before I say no, I'm gonna say, look, I'm sorry, that just doesn't work for me. I'm going to set up a real clear boundary without being negative. Sure. So, a lot of people really struggle with setting boundaries without being negative, without name calling, without indignation, without getting upset. But see, there's a, when you are, when you show that you're not getting upset, I'm not just seeing that. I'm seeing a flawed human that has underneath at a temper,

underneath the ability to get upset, but chooses not to get upset. And the chatbot has to demonstrate that. So it's not just going to be cold and be this kind of corporate blank empty sort of vapid creature that just says, oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that. No, it's basically Thank you for saying that. No, it's basically, uh, you have to, the chatbot has to be able to be mean and choose not to be interesting. I don't know. Maybe not. I'd be, I'd be willing to, to see that play out and see, see how it plays out. But I guess what I'm saying is to be a good negotiator, you have to be, have the capacity to be a bad person. And choose not to.

Really? I think so. See, I think you just gotta have the capacity to set a boundary and stick to it. Interesting. Because I think it's hard for me to trust a person who's not aware of their own demons. Because if you say you don't have any demons, if you don't have any flaws,

I can't trust you. Yeah, well, it's first of all to lie, right? Somebody's lucky. Right. It's back to long. Yes. So you have to have a self-awareness about that. But you'll be able to control it and demonstrate the able to control it. I mean, this is humans, I just think humans intelligent, effective humans are able to do this well, and chat bots are not yet. And they're moving that direction. So it makes me think about what is actually required for effective negotiation. That's what AI systems do is they make you ask yourself, what is it that makes humans special? Any discipline? What is it that makes human special? Any discipline? What is it that makes human special chess and go games, which I asked

systems are able to beat humans out now? What is it that makes them effective at negotiation? What is it make them effective at? Something that's extremely difficult, which is navigating physical spaces. So doing things that we take for granted, like making yourself a cup of coffee is exceptionally difficult problem. Robots.

Because of all the complexities involved in navigating physical reality, we have so much common sense reasoning built in, just about how gravity works, reasoning built in just about how gravity works about how objects move the what kind of objects there are in the world. It's a it's really difficult to describe because it all seems so damn trivial, but it's not trivial. Right. Because a lot of that we just learn as babies. We keep running into things and we learn about that. So AI systems help us understand what is it that makes humans release? What is the wisdom we have in our heads? And negotiation to me is super interesting because negotiation is not, it's about business, it's about geopolitics, it's about running government. It's basically negotiating how do we have the different policies, different bills and programs

and so on. How do we allocate money? How do we reallocate resources, all that kind of stuff. That seems like AI in the future could be better at that. But maybe not. Maybe you have to be a messy, weird, insecure, uncertain human and debate each other and yell at each other on Twitter. Maybe you have to have the red and the blue teams that yell at each other in the process of figuring out what is true. Maybe our

systems will not be able to do that. I figured out the full mess of human civilization. Yeah, interesting. Well, I mean, the two thoughts that I had along the way was, I mean, anytime you're talking about systems or scaling, you know, you're talking, my belief is chatbot systems, things that don't require decision making, just following instructions. At least 80% of what's going on.

Now, the remaining percentage, whatever it is, does it require the human interaction and what's required? Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not like, I am not pro conflict and I also know that there's a case to be made in the creative world that some of the best thinking came out of conflict. Reading interviews of Bono, you too. Their admiration for some of the Beatles' best music came when they were fighting with each other. And the song one, Octoom, which is I believe from the album, Octoom Baby, those guys were fighting. I mean, they were on a verge of breaking up. And their appreciation, the conflict could create something beautiful. And then when

I was in the crisis negotiation unit, you know, my last seven years in the FBI, it was a guy that, um, they Vince, brain dude, brain, brain brain negotiator and he and I used to argue all the time And then when we had a change in the guy who was in charge The guy who was in charge took me off to the side. He's like, you know, I can't take you and Vince fighting all the time And I said well, I got news for you. I think we come up with much better stuff as a result of our battles. And he said, you know, Vince said the same thing to me. And I'm like, so if we'd have a problem fighting, why do you have a problem?

But, you know, there is something there that sometimes the most difficult insights, you rack your brains as to why someone is so dug in on something that so you think is so wrong. Yeah, maybe there's something to it. I think there's something to it. There's something about conflict, even drama that might be a feature, not a bug of our society. I interesting. Do you think there will always be war in the world? Yeah.

So there will always be a need for negotiators. And negotiating? Well, as it turns out. Why do you think there will always be war? What's your intuition about human nature there? Yeah, just because we're basically 75% negative. And then, for lack of a better term, I call it two lines of coat. Like, somewhere when you, everybody when we were little, somebody planted in two

lines into our head, we don't know when it got in there. But somebody said something to us, it's stuck. And there are a lot of people that had some really negative garbage dumped in their brain when they were little and Just based on the numbers What kind of opportunity they were given afterwards? Did they ever have an epiphany moment when a genuine who believed they can get get themselves out of it? Like what is it? Want to joke the spends this book is breaking the habit of being yourself?

Yeah. You know, like, how do you get at that two lines of code that that either mean or well intentioned, but stupidly speaking, adults said to you at the wrong moment and planted in your brain? Like, how the chances of everybody on Earth getting out of it, getting that out, even a majority of people on earth getting that out of their heads is really small. What advice would you give to a young person today about how to have a career they could be proud of or a life? Maybe somebody in high school, college trying to figure out their way in this world? It's probably a take on a cliche of do what you love, but if you figure out your ideals and pursue your ideals, and stick to them when it costs you. Like a guy admire very much Michael Mogill runs this operation crisp video at Atlanta.

And one of his talks, he would say core values are what you stick to that cost you money. It's not a value that really matters to you unless it's cost in you. And stick to your values. cost in you and stick to your values. Now when I was in the FBI, I worked really hard at, you know, the number one core mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the American people. So I could pursue that value at all times, which I did, or I could follow the rules. Or I could follow the rules. You don't have time to do both. What did you know you found what you love? What did you find love with whatever this process is that isn't negotiating? I think it was in a conversation on the suicide

hotline that I was telling you about earlier with the guy who was paranoid. When I thought I can have that significant of an impact on another human being in this short of a period of time, that's really cool. How hard is it to talk somebody off the ledge? So this question, that's a big question. Why the hell live it all? How do you have that kind of deeply philosophical, deeply psychological, and also practical conversation of somebody and convince them that they should stick around? Well, it's more clear and clear in the clutter in their head. And

let them make up their own mind. That, that was what volunteering on suicide island was really about. Just let me help, let me, let me see how quickly I can clear out the clutter in your head. If you're willing to have it cleared out, like I did, did you call here because you're actually looking for out? Or did you call here to fulfill some other agenda So are you know, are you are you willing to have are you willing to clear the clutter in your head? Not everybody is so once you clear the clutter as it is At least somewhat hopeful chance that you'll you'll continue for another day.

Yeah. And, like, if you step back, like very few people that commit suicide physically are up against it that hard. Like most of them, by and large, are pretty intact physically human beings. They're struggling with emotional stuff. But then it's an emotional issue. It's not a physical issue. So if you would be a complete mercenary, like, I got him a very big fan of guiding Mark Pollock, a born, great athlete, lost his eyesight and then became

paralyzed. born great athlete lost his eyesight and then became paralyzed. Like he's an emotional leader. He's about helping people thrive and live great lives. Like Marks was born. He was a spectacular athlete. And first you lost his sight in one eye, then he lost his sight in the other other eye and then he fell out of window in a tragic experience like if there was ever a dude they was saying like live in sucks You know, and if there's any doubt in my mind something worse happens to me every few years But marks about being alive and inspiring other people

So the hard part with navigate with somebody who's toss tossing it in because there's a chemical imbalance or it's the way they're interpreting the world. There's clutter in their head. Can you help clear that clutter in their head and help them by themselves inspire them to reinterpret that world. Yeah. As one worth living in. Yeah. What do you think is the meaning of life? What's lost? Why live? What's the good reason?

Well, I have, I have very strong religious beliefs. Spiritual. You know, I don't, a thousand percent, if you were to try to confine me in a box, I'd be a Christian. I have tremendous respect for the Jewish. I don't think any religions got it nailed exactly. I'm, again, you know, I keep mentioning them. I'm kind of a bono Christian. I think bono is lazy like what? And I'm gonna boat you, but my belief in Jesus is what I've got after Christianity leaves a room. You know, the dogma, man's application of spiritual beliefs. So that being said, I truly believe that my life

was a gift and there's a purpose here. And for my creator decided that I woke up in the morning because he still had some cool, interesting things for me to do. And you have gratitude for having the opportunity to live that day. Yeah. Well, you do one heck of a good job at living those days. I really appreciate your work. I appreciate the person you are. Thank you for

Just everything you've done today for just being empathic. Honestly, you're a great listener at your great Conversationalist is just an honor to meet you and to talk to you. This was really awesome Chris. My pleasure Thanks for listening to this conversation with Chris Voss the support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description And now let me leave you some words from John F Kennedy with Chris Voss to support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you some words from John F. Kennedy. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Thank you.