The Jordan Harbinger Show - 165: Chris Voss | Negotiate as If Your Life Depended on It

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

Chris Voss (@vossnegotiation) retired as the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI, is CEO of the Black Swan Group, and is the author of the national bestseller Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It. What We Discuss with Chris Voss: How you can be a more effective negotiator for anything by using the FBI's own field-proven hostage negotiation techniques. How to determine which of the three archetypes of negotiator you're dealing with: The Analyst, The Assertive, or The Accommodator. Who has the real leverage in a kidnapping or hostage scenario -- and how this applies to your own lower-stakes negotiations. What it takes to subtly convince someone to have it your way. The Black Swan Rule: Treating others not the way you want to be treated, but the way they want to be treated. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. Several years ago, I met an FBI hostage negotiator who had revolutionized the way the FBI deals with terrorists, bank robbers, and other hostage takers who would gladly hold a gun to your head to get what they wanted. Now, Chris Voss is one of the leading experts on negotiation anywhere. Today, we'll learn the subtle art of letting someone else have our way, using psychological leverage, archetypes of different negotiators, and personalities, as well as something called the Black Swan Rule, treating others not the way we want to be treated, but the way they want to be treated. There's a reason Chris has changed the way we negotiate with both terrorists and teenagers, at home or the home office, and if you liked our previous three-part series on negotiation with Alex Coots, then you'll really love what Chris and I have for you on this episode of

the show. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great guests and manage my relationships for years, well, it's all about systems. It's about tiny habits and consistency. I'm teaching you all that in the Level One course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. All right. Here's Chris Voss.

I read the whole book, of course, again, which is great because you still learn, there's so much in the book. It reads like a more interesting instruction manual or textbook with actual stories, which most textbooks don't have because there's never any practical application to things you read in a lot of textbooks.

books. But I noticed that even after how long you've been doing the FBI thing, how long were you doing that? 20 years. 24 years. You said you still feel fear during the negotiations. What do you mean by that? Why are you still feeling fear after? Well, you know, I mean, fear is an element that nobody ever gets away from it. You're wired into it. It really just matters what you're scared of. It's not that you're not scared. It's what you're scared of. You know, I'm scared of not doing a good job. I'm scared I miss something. It took me a long time to realize I'm actually scared of being a Great. Scared of being scared? Yeah, you know, like if fighting words for me are coward.

Because the last thing I want to be is a coward. Conversely, you know, one of the worst names I can ever call him, but it's a coward. Like, if I say you're a coward, I probably despise you. Okay. Where are you from? Would you're up? Iowa. Iowa?

Okay. Is that a thing? It's like a Texas thing. It sounds cowboysish. Like, oh, he called me yellow. I'll show him. Yeah. Marty McFly, nobody calls me, yellow.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. If somebody called me a coward, I'm like, I don't know, how personally would I take that? Yeah, right? Different, we resonate with different words. I don't think it's an Iowa thing. I think people are guilty of that everywhere. Sure. You know, it's a little bit, you know, what are you born?

I mean, we believe, you know, my company, that you're born one of three types, fight, flight, or make friends. It's a descendant from the caveman days. And people who put it in other ways, you know, caveman saw something, you know, do I eat it? is it eat me? Can I mate with it? It's pretty much the same thing. Yeah. I happen to be from the fight tribe, so. Okay. But the world splits pretty evenly into thirds. I mean, you get into a real problem, the problem of projection bias. I am normal, if you will. There's something that you're normal. So thinking that other people think like us. Yeah. So if we're fight, we think everybody's fight. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you think everybody's like that. I can remember, first time I got

introduced to the concept, I was when I first went up to Harvard Law School's negotiation course in their executive class, and they gave us this TKI, Thomas Kilman, Conflict Mode instrument. It breaks you into five types, knock two out, your left for one of the three. And I remember sitting there thinking, like, every one of my hostages negotiators damn well better being assertive because we get people's lives on the line. Projection, you know, that's how I am. That's what it takes to do the job. As it turns out, each type has stuff they bring to the table that are necessary. No one type has the market cornered.

And as I looked over my hostage negotiators, I had those that were primary analysts and I had those that were primarily relationship oriented people. And I was primarily assertion. And what you really need is all three. So that just happens to be the tribe I started out in and you got to learn the rest. So we have personality archetypes that affect our negotiation. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. And you measure that from a test or you just kind of say this person is this one, this person is that one based on their? You can get a pretty good feel early on when you have miscommunications and mismatches and communications are barriers. You know, impasse is almost always a type problem, a tight mismatch problem, misunderstanding of a conversation, classic example, the combinator of relationship-oriented type. The worst thing they can do to you is stop working on a relationship because that's the thing they value most.

If we're talking, it's awesome. If I shut up, it means I hate you, or I'm furious. The meanest thing a relationship-oriented person can do is give you the silent tree. Oh, interesting. You know, and that's how they signal fury. Now, the analytical type, on the other hand, love silence because they love to think. So you get an analyst and an accommodator talking to each other. The analyst goes silent because they're grateful for the opportunity to think.

The accommodator relationship-oriented type is like, oh, my God, they're upset. I better talk. Oh, right. So then the analyst can't think because the accommodator keeps talking. Right. The analyst is just like, I wish you'd shut up. And the commenter's going, I got to talk. And if the other person is assertive or relationship oriented, I should say, and then the analyst is thinking the relationship oriented person's going, uh-oh, they're mad at me, they're angry. Right. So we have the, it's kind of like the, what's in that book, The Five Love Languages or something like that? You ever heard of this? I've heard of it. Yeah,

it's for relationships, of course, but it sounds like these personality archetypes exist. in negotiation as well. Yeah, absolutely. And so do you, in the beginning of any negotiation, do you try to ascertain which type of communication style the other party has? Is that important? Well, you want to pull, you know, pull the information as you go. In reality, you should be working and having a great relationship all the time.

So, you know, we like to start with the nine negotiation skills. There's two that everybody likes. And so you start out with that until you know the other type, which is basically, you you know, really listening, really dialing in, because everybody wants to be listened to. And then if you run into problems, your first question is I'm probably misinterpreting what they say. You know, problems on my end. It's sort of like the real problem with cross-cultural negotiations. Everybody wants to learn cross-cultural negotiations.

Because I still want to be me, but I want to know the tiny little things I got to do to make you happy so I can still be me. Like an American, all right, so don't show the bottom of my feet to somebody from the Middle East. don't shake with my left hand. And then I could do everything else wrong. Sure. Yeah. You know, we're looking for shortcuts as opposed to really adapt into the other side. Right.

So we look for these kind of sound bites. Yeah. Like, oh, don't cross your foot and point it at the Saudi Prince because that'll make them mad. And then meanwhile, you just ignore all of the other more nuanced things. The things that would actually require work to learn and practice. Right. Yeah. Better to just open up a fortune cookie and learn something really quick about negotiation.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And I know that you use this in parenting, which makes sense you got to negotiate with kids, but what about people day to day? I mean, are you looking at personality archetypes and communication or negotiation styles with everybody that you meet kind of automatically? You know, there's a difference between, you know, are you looking for it, or you're focusing on it, or are you just trying to remain aware of it?

Right, right. And it's a little bit more just remaining aware of it. And make some predictions about how people are going to react to different sorts of gestures, you know, an assertive type. I'm a natural born a certain. You know, we're not good at reciprocity because we think we're so logical that if you gave us something, it was only logical that you should have given it to me. Therefore, I don't know you anything. Right, so it's a little sense of entitlement maybe. Yeah, you could call it like that. If I got it, I should have got it. The relationship-oriented person, we want to trade stuff back and forth all the time. So if I give you

something, I'm really happy. I'm like a puppy dog with a ball. You know, throw the ball again, let's do it again. And we get really flummished when the assertive just seems to be completely oblivious that you got to throw the ball back. And the assertive is thinking like, what's your problem? You know, I don't know what's the matter with you. So tiny little things like that, again, it's when there's an impasse. Somebody, communication is broken down. It's probably going to be a tight mismatch. I wonder if it's been a little annoying since you've written the book dealing with family and friends where they look at every action that you have that you do. And they're like, oh, I'm not doing that. You're doing this thing. You're doing the reciprocity thing. I'm not playing

that game. The hardest part is with my girlfriend. Just because she's heard me give a thousand interviews talking about this stuff. So she's heard me talk about it. Her guard gets up a little bit. And I'm like, you know, I can, what is that, what is that line from the movie The Negotiator with Kevin Spacey, the character he's playing? I can listen to you and actively listen at the same time. Yeah. It gets in a way. People do get a little defensive.

The closer they are to you, the more defensive they might get. Oh, man. How do you shut that down? Because I would imagine there's people, especially if you're dealing with somebody who's also really aware of negotiation skills or say you're not dealing, say you're dealing with a terrorist in the Philippines, which you talk about in the book, are they, if they're reading into your actions, that could kind of blow up in your face. because even if you're not trying to do some sort of trick to them, they might perceive it that way.

And you have to manage that. Yeah, well, all right. So first of all, it kind of starts with where's the other side coming from? Like if my son and I use negotiation techniques all the time, he's my chief operating officer, he's a chief negotiator for a company. But we want to collaborate. So, of course, we should be able to use negotiation techniques with each other. We'll both come from a great place. Or potential clients.

You know, if a client wants to cheat us, they're not come from a good place. We're probably not going to make a deal with them. We're not trying to cheat our clients. You know, so they don't need to have their guard up around us. We're going to over-deliver. So it's really on where you're coming from. Now, then, if you're talking about a terrorist, most of them that negotiate, are the classic assertive negotiator, and I got one or two moves, period.

They're used to intimidating people, and that's it. They're demanding, name-calling, assertive. The craziest thing is that I didn't realize when a book was written, but we realized since we come out, the procurement negotiator in business is almost the exact same type as the kidnapping negotiator internationally. Wait, so somebody in Abu Sayyaf is the same as the procurement guy? One just has a fancier rifle and maybe a hostage.

Right. And the other one is a terrorist. Procurement people in business, boy, they intimidate. They call names. They do everything they can't to pound a heck out of the other side. Huh. I am imagining we're going to get some emails from procurement people that are like, it's not true.

I'm not like that. He's just dealt with bad ones. No, no. Here's a funny thing. Every, we do a lot of open enrollment training, 50 people in a room. There's always one or two procurement people there. And, you know, I'll say, anybody here from procurement? And I'll raise their hands.

Get out. Well, I'll let them stay, but I'll say, tell me I'm wrong about you guys. Tell me I'm wrong. Really? And I'd be like, no, you're not. I mean, I was at a lot of procurement people in supply chain. I was at a supply chain conference one time. One of the guys was talking me off to the side.

And he said, you know, when you're procurement, you've got to be really careful that you're not a supplier's either biggest customer or only customer because you'll end up putting them out of business. Right. And I remember thinking to myself, if you're doing it right. Did you hear what you just said? They know they're so tough. It's not win-win at all at that point. The big advantage is, too, and salespeople are horrified of procurement. I mean, they find out procurements on the other side and they just start to have nervous breakdowns.

the only time procurement's going to be involved is when they really want you. Can you explain what procurement is so in case people don't know? Procurement are the buyers. The contracts negotiators, Raytheon calls them contracts negotiators. Some companies call them they're either in contracting or they're in procurement. Those will be their titles. But their job is to buy on behalf of the organization. Okay.

Now, what happens is the organization will identify a supplier they want, and then procurement becomes involved. Procurement does not waste their time on suppliers they have no interest in, ever. So if procurement gets in a game with you, buckle up, let them call your names. Don't get upset. Calm down. They're only talking to you because they really want you. And if we realize that up front, then you wouldn't be chasing. them down the, don't get scared. You know, I had a director of sales call me says, I want you to

teach my people how to not cut the price when someone from procurement calls us with 48 hours left in a quarter. And I remember thinking to myself, if you even have to ask me that question, your structural problems are far out of my ability to change. But the reality is, all they do is say no. Because a procurement guy who calls with 48 hours left in a quarter feels that's the only time the entire quarter he had leverage. Forty-eight hours, his leverage is gone. Right. So wait 48 hours. He's got no leverage. Yeah. Well, you know, wait 72 hours. You got them. Interesting. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't know that they have any leverage. That's also in Never Split the difference is that you always have leverage. And I thought, well, wait a minute. What about in a kidnap situation?

they got your aunt. You don't have any leverage, but even then you have leverage. And it's a classic example that we love to ask people. The person with all the leverage, you know, I got your aunt, you got, you're the ones got the leverage. Cash is king, right? Who's got the cash? Yeah. You do. They don't, you probably don't actually want my family member screaming and whining in your basement. I'm going to give them back. Yeah, you want to get rid of that person and trade them for a briefcase full of money at that point. At some point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, buyer's market. Kidnapping in reality is a buyer's market, but that gets back to leverage as

any eye of the beholder. That's true. I suppose because unless you're talking about you're an American and you're being held by a group overseas, your aunt is only really valuable to you. They can't turn around and go, oh, well, we got a better offer for your aunt from this other person. Dude down the street, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like you're the only buyer for that particular product. Exactly. You might really want that product. You might really want your aunt back, but nobody else can outbid you. Exactly. Yeah, that's interesting.

I hadn't really thought about that. I thought for sure the exception to you always have leverage was when you were talking about a kidnapping. But actually, even there. Yeah, you got a lot of leverage. It's sort of amazing. Huh. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Chris Voss.

We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And if you like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. And now back to our show with Chris Voss. Well, and your stuff has to work, because if your negotiation techniques don't work in the FBI for hostage situations, someone dies theoretically. Yeah, and let me draw a fine line, because I had to learn that early on too.

And I learned it from my old boss Gary Nessner. But he always told us, and it took me a while to figure out what it meant, we got the best chance. of success. We never guaranteed anybody's success. We just guaranteed them the best chances. So by death, you know, you said it's always got to work. Best chance of success, if it works 99 times out 100, you're in 100 kidnappers. You're going to lose one person. Oh, man. So you always have to be kind of ready for that emotionally? You should be. I don't know that you're ever actually ready until it happens. And, but then depending upon how have you prepared yourself except and told yourself at least intellectually, that it was a possibility, then you get through it.

And what I ended up doing was I actually pointedly recruited the veteran kidnapping negotiators with the people that have been in situations that somebody got killed, who were the best. Because the other thing at that point in time, too, is one of two things happen if you're kidnapping negotiators, somebody gets killed. You say, you know what, I could do something else. Like a different job. Yeah.

Let me go do something else with any other. FBI, I don't got an appetite for this. You know, I want to, whatever it is. You know, maybe I want to do witness support. I don't know what, but they're going to decide, eh, this ain't that much fun. Or they're going to say, I'm never going to let this happen again. I'm going to double down.

I'm going to get smarter. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to go back. I'm going to think about every single thing I did. And if there's one, even the tiniest thing I would change or get better at, I'm going to go back and get better at it. And those people would become the best negotiators. because we're always going to propose solutions to scare people.

What do you mean by that? I might say, stop talking to the bad guys now. Yeah, that would freak me out. I'd be like, I want to keep talking with them because I feel like as long as I keep talking with them, my wife's going to be okay. Exactly. Sure.

But we may know from the profile of the situation that at this point in time, if we stop talking, the other side's going to get worried and in order to regain control, instead of doing something negative, they're going to do something positive because then they can regain control in a completely different mindset.

So let's trick them into doing something positive because they're going to try to regain control. And they'll be real specific instances where that'll be crystal clear that that's what they're going to do. Oh, man, to be sitting next to, you must have a lot of people standing next to you, especially during these kidnap situations

where they're like, you better be damn sure about this. Because you're sitting there like, all right, well, what we're going to do is we're going to leave them alone for 24 to 48 hours and then they're probably going to put your mom on the phone. And then that person's like, what are you talking about? You better be right about this. How do you gain that person's trust? Or do they just have to trust? You got to know that moment's coming. Okay.

If you know it's coming, you prepare in advance. So you tell them in advance, hey, look, we might have to ghost them for a couple days, just be ready for that? Well, I'm going to say, you know, there's a really good chance we're going to do something here. scare the hell out of you. You know, I don't know exactly how all this is going. You know, I got a team with me. This is not just me saying this. I got a team. I am a representative of our entire body of institutional knowledge. This is not my decision. Everything I do, I bounce off a lot of people, but I'm going to tell you in advance, we're going to ask you to do stuff that scares a heck out of you. And actually, and I'm going to, I'll say to them, I'm going to tell you in advance,

I want you to be scared. It's going to help us in the negotiation. How's that? Well, what actually happens when you do that, first of all, the bad guys, if they satisfied you're scared, they think they got the upper hand and they relax. You know, fear is their control mechanism. So their overriding desire is for you to be scared. Yeah, mission accomplished if you've got some kidnapped relative. Right. Now they think they're going to get what they want.

And they relax. They're less worried about deadlines. They don't make so many threats. They chill out. But the other really crazy thing about the way the brain works is if you have a negative of emotion in you, say fear. And instead of me trying to say eliminate fear, I say I like it, it'll make it go away. Right. It dissipates, takes the edge off probably. Takes the edge off tremendously because you'll be like, what? You want me to be scared? Because I'm not trying to

suppress it at that point. As soon as you stop trying to suppress it, it's one of the keys to make it to go away. Ah, okay. So this ties in a little bit with what you wrote about with cognitive, I think, with cognitive bias and having to, knowing that we all suffer from this cognitive bias. We can't just have these robotic negotiations. And part of that is there's an emotional component to negotiation. A lot of people think, oh, if I do this, they're going to do this. If they do this, then we're going to do that. And that's sort of like a rational computer program negotiation.

Right. And that doesn't work because we have to take into consideration this emotional component of negotiation. How do you prepare for that? Are you looking at kind of a roadmap in your head of, all right, the logical response would be this, but I think that we've got this emotional component where they're freaking out because the military is looking for them in the jungle. So there's a little bit of fear, or there's a little bit of urgency that they're feeling that wouldn't dictate this type of response.

Are you able to predict what the other side is going to do most of the time, or are you looking at maybe two outcomes, the logical outcome and the emotional outcome, and it's going to be one or the other? Well, there's no such thing as logic, first of all. At all. At all, period. Okay. It's like beauty.

It's in the eye of the beholder. You know, what's logical to you and what's logical to me, we're going to make up based on what we care about, which then sort of takes the definition of logic out if it's based on what you care about. So we start that there's emotional tension. We'll try to think about two to three moves ahead no more than that, and we'll think on a couple, two or three different sets of outcomes. Now, we're never going to hit one exactly, but actually if we think on both extremes and we're prepared for extremes, it's going to land someplace in the middle and we're going to be prepared for no matter what. The reason why you don't think more than three moves ahead is, and it's kind of hard to envision this,

but everybody wants to think in terms of chess, you know, negotiation's chess. Right. Well, just connect all the pieces with springs under tension. Because when you make a move in chess, all the other pieces stay in exactly the same place. But if they were all connected by springs, every time you, moved one, they'd all move a little bit. And by the time you'd made two or three moves, almost all the chest pieces would have reset, which meant all of your analysis is now gone, because the entire board got reset. And that's what happens with emotions. So you think,

I know roughly where I want to end up. There's about five different ways to get there. Let's see which one we go off on first. So you're not looking at like, okay, we do this, and then that's probably going to happen. Then we're going to do that and then that's probably going to happen. Do you have to take each move individually based on where you are right in that moment? Because if the chest pieces are all moving every time you do something, then you're dealing with a whole new scenario after each move. Does that make sense? Pretty much. About after each third move, like, you got a pretty good idea what the next move is going to be. But you go very much farther than that. And I'll give you an example. Chase Manhattan Bank, we talk about it in the book. Yeah, the bank robbery.

Bank robbery. I'm a second negotiated on a phone. Huma Gown is a commander of the NYPD team. He puts me on a phone. He takes this guy off. He says, you're up. You're next. This is what I want you to do. Bad guy had been hiding his name from us the whole time. We're pretty sure we knew who he was by the time I'm getting ready to get on a phone. We'd also been talking to him about letting hostages go. Is this Chris Watts? A guy named Chris Watts. Yeah. Great first name, right? Depends on your emotional perspective. Yeah, but, all right, so we're asking about hostages. We got no reason to believe he'd hurt the hostages, which was bad analysis.

He'd beaten all of them at that point. And we didn't know that. That's a bad sign, I would assume. Generally, it's a bad sign. So, Hugh says, we're going to switch up negotiators. We're not ordinary handoff, handoff with Jordan and be like, Chris is going to come on the phone. Chris has been listening a whole time. Let me introduce Chris.

And you have been listening the whole time. I have. Okay. That's the normal handoff. And I would say, hi, I'm Chris. You know, I've been sitting here with Jordan the whole time. And as a matter of fact, I've been listening to everything. Here's everything I heard.

Why would you switch negotiators? Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm curious. Why go, hey, Jordan was negotiating with you before. He's gone now. Now it's me. What's the point of that? It could be you're doing a bad job. Yeah, that's probably why.

It also could be you and the hostage taker have got such a great relationship going. that the minute he comes out, the relationship's over, and that's why he won't come out. Oh, interesting. So he wants to keep that going for some reason, some psychological attachment to the negotiator? Yeah, I was on another barricade, and I'm listening, and hostage, the guy who's barricaded and a negotiator having such a great conversation, I turned the commander, and I said, he ain't coming out as long as he gets to talk to Jordan. We're going to be here for Christmas.

Yeah. He's having a great time. George's his only friend, yeah. George is the only friend. Oh, man. So it could be a variety of reasons. You know, you've got to call it in a moment. But anyway, Hugh puts me on a phone and he says,

we're not going to do the ordinary handoff. You're just going to take over the phone and say, you're talking to me now. And we're going to do it really abruptly. All right. And then when you get a chance, you're going to do a couple of other things. So we do a complete abrupt shift. And our bad guy is kind of like, oh,

you're going to play games with me, huh? Now, of course, this is not what he says, but he talks to me for a few moments, puts me on hold. He goes and gets a hostage with no warning, and all of a sudden I hear a woman's voice on the other end of the phone say, I'm okay. I'm sorry, who is this? Who is this? She says, I am okay. And then the phone goes dead, she goes away. Now, not in a million years we have predicted that going forward.

But he's like, you want to play games? I'll play games too. He goes and gets a hostage. He puts her on the phone. Doesn't say anything threatening. He never gets on the phone and says, now I want to remind you, I got hostages. It's all implied.

Because he also knows the bank is surrounded with the seventh largest standing army in the world, NYPD, seventh largest standing army in the world. They got 50 caliber of machine guns. They got SWAT guys. They got bombs. He doesn't want to get killed.

He's smart enough. to imply a threat without stating a threat because he knows if he says, you got an hour if you want to keep the hostage alive. Swat's going to go in and somebody's going to put a little red dot on his forehead and he's going to be gone. But we never could have predicted that move. And if we'd have had a whole game plan mapped out that we were sure was going to work, that would have all been wasted time as soon as he put the hostage on the phone because it blew the plan up to that point.

Reset the chess board. What was the point of the abrupt shift in negotiation, and negotiators without doing a handoff? Why do that? We were trying to show him in a maybe not entirely subtle way that we were in charge. And you can do that. You can do in any negotiation.

You could risk something the other side might not like if you've been stalemated for a really long time. And we'd been stalemated for five hours. And a stalemate by definition is a low threat level. So it's, you know, risking a U-turn, and what happens after your U-turn, it becomes an S-curve, and you come around someplace else, and you're in a better place. So we were risking a setback because we'd been stuck for so long. You mentioned that when people feel listened to, they listen to themselves more,

and they clarify their demands and their desires. So how would that look in practice? Is that, because when I'm imagining this, I'm imagining somebody just kind of being fake-nice to the hostage taker on the phone so that they feel heard or something. I guess I'm trying to imagine what this would look like in practice. Well, in a bank or in a business negotiation. Well, I guess the exciting version is the bank robbery, but the practical situation is the business negotiation. Yeah, well, you know, I could say, look, you, you know, you say you're not going to hurt a hostage, but you're not going to let anybody go. I mean, how do those things add up? If I need you to hear what you're saying,

I need to pick out a couple things that you say that don't add up. And then I say, how do those add up? So you're forcing me as a hostage take it to reconcile what I've said and maybe think about what I'm doing? That is exactly the point. And that it works in hostage negotiation or works in business negotiation. And it's actually probably more important in business negotiations because most business people will stay stuck in a rut with a strategy that's taken them nowhere. and they'll say they have big goals. And so I can say to head of sales,

you want your salespeople to be more productive, but you're not going to give them any more training. How do those things add up? It reminds me of the how am I supposed to do that technique. It's a version of that. Is it? Okay. Yeah, exactly right.

You know, how is a great deferential word. You know, one definition of confrontation is a focus comparison. So I take your actions and I take your words, and I use the word how to compare them. It's just a focus comparison. So that in practice would be somebody asks you for something like, give me a million dollars or I'm going to shoot your aunt, say, well, how am I supposed to do that?

How am I supposed to get you the money? Yeah, that's just a straight how. It's a deferential, but it shifts the entire problem back onto them, which at least wears them out. How much of negotiation, especially in a hostage situation, or actually business and that for hostage, for that matter, is wearing the other party down to the point where they just want to, if it's a hostage situation, go home,

take whatever the hell they can get and leave, or in business, they just want to go to the bathroom or get lunch and just not be in that damn conference room anymore. Well, it's wearing the other side down if the other side is an aggressive throat-cutting negotiator. Or if they're from procurement. Sure. From procurement, yeah.

You know, it depends upon who's on the other side. or if your emotions are out of control, you know, your emotions are going to get tamped down as you get exhausted. If your emotions are out of control in a negative way. It's important to draw a fine line. It's not emotions that are bad. It's negative emotions that are bad. Positive emotions actually help us perform better.

How do you harness that in practice? I would imagine it's got to be pretty tough knowing there's a bank full of people and you've got to harness positive emotion. I mean, what are you doing to get yourself in a positive? state. Oh, well, I mean, defensive one on a bank, I mean, I'm going to remain optimistic over the outcome.

Even with you. Like, you're a bank robber, and I'm talking to you on a phone. Ideally, you've made an escape demand? Ideally. Why is that ideal? That shows that you want to live. Oh, right. Right. If I make no escape demand, you're wondering if I'm just going to...

If you haven't made an escape demand, there's a really good chance that you're playing on dying today. Suicide by cotton. So absence of an escape demand is a really bad, bad, bad, bad, bad sign in a barricade bank robbery. If you got a guy barricade in his house, he ain't got to make an escape demand because that's where he lives. But if it's a bank or something like that and there's no escape demand, you've got a real problem. Do you try to lead them to an escape demand or are you actually seeing if they'll do it because you want to get a read on their situation? No, you got to read them.

Yeah. You know, you really can't lead people because something in what they're saying is, going to give you the out. So I just got to listen for it. Okay. Right. Because if you just say, how do you plan on getting out of there? They're just going to make something up, but it doesn't... They're going to be like, I'm going to start throwing bodies out until you let me go. Oh, man. So I don't want to go there. Yeah, you don't want to accelerate that timeline by any stretch. Yikes. Yeah. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Chris Boss. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers really is what

keeps us on the air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And if you're listening to the show on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode. It really helps us out. Now for the conclusion of our show with Chris Voss. One thing that's fascinating to me is that smart people often don't make good negotiators. That was actually really disappointing for me because I thought, I'm going to be naturally good at this. I'm a well-studied guy.

I went to law school. I'm going to be great at negotiation. And then I read the rationale for why, and I thought, crap, that is me. I would totally fall into these traps. Can you outline what some of that is? Because I think a lot of people think they're really good at negotiating because they're intelligent and they can solve a lot of problems. Yeah.

You want to show how smart you are. And the problem with that is you might not intend it that way, but it makes me feel stupid. As a hostage taker or as an right or as in business. I mean the more the more you show you're smarter than me the less I want to be around you because I like being around you and that's not good news for a long-term relationship. So you know that's a real problem. The other problem is there's an efficiency

problem that was completely opposite what we would think. If you want somebody, if I want to tell you the answer me telling you it's very passive on your side. it's what we refer to as a didactic exchange. You're just sitting there listening passively. And there's some pretty solid data out there that if I want to get a point across you in a didactic exchange where you're just listening,

you're just passive, you're not engaged. I've got to tell you 19 times. That's a lot. It's a lot. It's the least efficient way to get a point across is to tell somebody because you've got to tell them 19 times. Now, if I slow down, if I, use questions to affect your thinking.

If I shape your thinking so that you discover it. Right, then it's my idea. Two things. Okay. You discover it faster and it's your idea. So I've got two things going for me now. It took less time overall and you embrace it much more because you feel like you thought of it. This seems like a parenting.

This would come in handy of parenting, right? Well, maybe, you know, how much a parenting is just human being to human being? Yeah, I think all of it. Yeah. It's just that one human being might be a little bit more emotional or irrational. Are kids more irrational than adults? I don't even know. Well, again, definition of rationality.

You can count on kids to be more optimistic and adults to be more pessimistic. So who's better off? Probably the kid. In a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, there's, and that'll give us off onto almost a whole different journey on cognitive learning. But kids are more present in the moment. That's why they learn faster than adults do.

Adults are always worried about outcomes. They're always considering what happened in a past. They're always worried about where it's going. Those two things, by definition, takes you out of the moment, which means you're not learning as much. You're not figuring out the moment as fast as you could be. Kids learn languages faster than adults do. Do they have this magical power?

No, they're not distracted by the past or the future the way adults are, and they just are more focused in the moment. And probably less worried about looking stupid as well. Well, that's part of the worry. The worry of the future. How am I going to look if it doesn't work out? Interesting book out there called The Culture Code, Daniel Court. Oh, sure, yeah.

Very first part of it, right? Four groups. Kindergarteners, business school students, CEOs, and I think lawyers. Interesting set of samples. Four teams, marshmallow challenge. You get macaron, dry macaroni string and a marshmallow. As a team construct the highest tower. What team wins?

The kindergarten. Really? Huh. Second place are the CEOs. Third place are the lawyers. Last place are the business school students. That's funny. No surprise, the lawyers coming in.

They're coming in hot, right? Yeah. But the kindergart is because they don't care about looking stupid in front of each other. So they don't care about making mistakes. So they try 400 different ways and they finally find when they're lost? And they have a ball. and they interact and they support each other, and nobody gets bent out of shape,

or nobody gets concerned or embarrassed, and they win every time. And the business school students are still making spreadsheets until the clock almost runs out, and then they finally throw something together and it falls over. Yeah.

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, and I actually took a harder look at that, too, because I don't think it's business school students per se, I think it's the age range. Oh. Typical age range, you're talking about mid-20s to early 30s. And sort of my view, my experience, that's when people are at some of their most individually competitive times.

Do you find that negotiating with people, hostage takers, for example, do you see differences in the age group? Like, hey, if someone's 19 and they take hostages, is it a different negotiation than if someone's 60 and they take hostages? Or is that kind of... No, I would be completely different. Really? Yeah, because, you know, their views of the past and the future are going to be completely different, which is going to affect your threat level. How can you tell, aside from the age, what do you live?

looking for for their assessment of the past and the future? They're going to start giving it to you right away. It's remarkably, that stuff in any circumstance is remarkably easy to hear if you're actually listening. What are you listening for? First you look for pronouns, then you'll look for levels of emotion. Then, you know, there's going to be implications, indicators of the future and nearly everything that they say.

They're optimistic. For the young person or the older? Either person. Okay. Either they're optimism or pessimism about, you know, where things are going or, you know, what's in the moment, or you also look for specific types of losses. Personal or professional losses are the biggest ones. You know, big personal losses, big professional losses.

And so you're looking at people's calculation over losses, and then how does that affect their vision of the future? Okay. So when you see that somebody is maybe younger or optimistic about the future, does that bode better for the negotiation itself, or is it just a different set of tactics? Yeah, well, if they're optimistic about the future, then you've got somebody you can work with them. You know, they're in a midst of a coping situation, sometimes it's gone sideways for the moment. There's a pretty good chance to just trying to sort of get their feedback under them emotionally,

and especially if they're optimistic about the future, then they feel they're resilient over whatever comes out of short term. They'll get over it. So you're pulling all these different levers depending on what people are giving you. Are you mostly reacting to the hostage taker? are you following through on a specific set of plans, more or less, that just takes different detours based on what they're doing you? You're trying to figure out how you can get out in front of them. What does that mean?

Well, I need to start to assess, you know, what's driving you now? What loss is there? What negative emotion is there? The hostage negotiation skills are just emotional intelligence tools. I can start to hear what negative emotions are driving you, and I know how to turn them down. I will listen for what those positives might be, and I know how to turn those up. And as soon as I start getting a read out of where you are sort of on, you know, there's a buffet of choices that I then have.

And so now I can get proactive and start to get out in front of something. If you just need to feel back in control, you're barricaded, your man, or your wife, instead of saying, do you want to get out of this alive, do you want to see your kids again, do you want to live, those are all yes when you're into questions? If you're really mad at your wife, I might say, do you want your wife to win? And so that's no. Right. I know from my experience that when you say no, you feel in control.

That's why people say no. Yeah. So you might want to give them a no so that they regain control or feel like that. It's five times as good as yes would ever be. So no's even better than yes. At least five times better. Really? Across the board in all circumstances, all circumstances.

So you're trying to get them to say no? Or get to a no, I should say. Well, business deal. I lay a proposal out in front of you. Instead I, instead of saying, would this work for you? I'll say, is it ridiculous to think this might work for you? Yeah. Of course, I would say no, unless it's actually ridiculous somewhere else.

Well, if there are problems with it, when you say no, you say, no, it's not ridiculous, but here are the problems. If I say, would this work for you? You can't say yes, but here are the problems. It's really hard to do that. So you're scared to say yes because you think you've just agreed to the deal. Right. So that's when you're going to go, maybe. And then you got nothing.

You got nothing. You're scared to answer at all. But since when you've already said no to something, whatever you say after that, you don't feel there's obligations that go along with it. I said, no, it doesn't work. hear the problems. I never said I'd agree if I lay the problems out. If I lay the problems out and you fix them, I will agree. But since I never felt like I said that, in point of fact, if I fix all those problems, I now have a tailor-made solution to you that you felt in control.

Right. So the no is almost like a highlighter. It's like you're seeing the invisible ink at that point. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Because you can, I'm telling you exactly what's wrong at that point. And then you can go, all right, circle, mentally circling these three things. Right. Change those. And then we, in the same. theory we have a deal. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of just having you shoot something down or lose control by saying, yes,

what you're not going to do, especially if the stakes are really high. Right, right, right. Got it. We got a lot of people that are focused on that. They lay a proposition out to somebody and they say, you know, what's wrong with this? You know, what are the obstacles here? There's got to be obstacles. You know, help us identify them.

So this is cooperative almost no matter what, because you're doing a deal, whether the person's kidnapped a family member or they're robbing a bank or you're sitting across from them sharing a pot of tea at a business negotiation that's friendly or you're parenting your kid. So these are all cooperative regardless of whether or not it's all a business deal seemingly. Yeah. I would imagine that cognitive bias comes into play, especially when emotions are really high. And you talk about this a little bit in the book. Is that why you have people, all right, let me back this up. You see these things in movies, right, where there's a hostage negotiation and there's like

the police captain's on the phone and the commissioners on the phone and the mayor's on the phone and the hostages negotiators on the phone and then some psychologist is on the phone. And there's 15 other people listening on headphones. One, is that accurate? Two, what is the point of that? Are you trying to, is it sort of getting everybody's opinion? I mean, what's the point of all this? All those people are on the phone with a bad guy?

Yeah, I feel like I see that a lot. You're only going to want to have one person on the phone. You're not going to want to swap out a lot of people. Oh, I just mean listening to the call. Oh, well, listening to the call. If people know how to listen as a team. What does that mean? Everybody's, everybody got specific assignments, stuff you're listening for.

Like, your only job may be to keep track of how long the conversation lasted. Why is that? Why is that important? Because the longer the conversation, it's an indicator we're making progress. Because it's sort of a trust barometer or? Yeah, I think that's a fair, that's a fair assessment. but there's and then so then I might have somebody else you're only listening for the negative things that they say that sound negative or be construed as negative you're only listening for the

positive things they say I mean when somebody starts talking between the words that they say and even more importantly the words they don't say or their tone of voice there's more information there than one person can keep up on roughly we can we can listen at a rate of about 400 words a minute, we speak at a rate of 140 to 160 words a minute. That's why we think we can listen to more than one conversation, just a words. But there's five times as much information in the tone of voice than there are in the words. So 140 times five is now you're already shot the bandwidth of one person to listen. I see. So you've got people listening for vocal tonality, like you said, the positives and negatives. And that has to be a specific person. Because I'm sitting here while you're

telling me that, I'm like, I could do that all myself. But that's exactly what people who get people killed in hostage situations think, right? Yeah. Yeah. So don't hire me for that. You know, give me seven people. If you give me seven people to listen to everything, we'll all pick a different part, we'll all have very specific assignments, and we will come up with an encyclopedia of information, ideas, and clues in a 10-minute conversation. So these seven people are these all, these people are all on your team when you're negotiating, doing the hostage negotiation thing. And then the call ends and then what everybody goes and sits down and says,

all right, what did you hear? What did you? I mean, how do you construct this in the moment? Because I would imagine you can't say, all right, everybody file a report about this.

This has to happen pretty quick. I would imagine these hostage negotiations, time is always of the essence. So you get these seven people that you pick for your team. And are they all hostage negotiators? Are they all trained? They've all got to be trained. And do they always do the same thing?

Like, is there always a guy? Am I always the voice tone guy? Am I always the positive guy? No, it kind of depends. You know, everybody's got, everybody's capable of pretty much doing any job. Our best negotiator will not be on the phone. Our best negotiator will be running the team. And then, because of that, like almost any one of the team members can be on the phone

because whoever's on the phone's got the support of seven people. And we could almost take our least trained negotiator and put them on a phone. So that's in a way that's almost like the least technically skilled part of it? Probably. If you're coachable, as long as you're coachable, you're taking input from people on notes. And plus while you're talking, I mean, you're looking around and maybe somebody's written something on a board and they point to that. And then you say that.

Like in Chase Manette Bank robbery, again, in the book. You know, I'm on the phone. I'm talking to the guy. I'm talking to the guy. I'm working on them. Really, my point is to get a hostage out, which is what the hostage negotiator is supposed to do. And somebody hands me a note and says, ask him if you want to come out. That was somebody that was listening.

As it turned out, I didn't even know at the time who was from. I found out about, I think I found out like three years later. It was my friend, Jamie, Jamie Sedano. Jamie's sitting there and something in Jamie's instincts is telling him that this guy wants to come out. more than anything else. He just hears it. His radar is picking it up. Our subconscious, where our radar is, is literally 20 million times faster than our conscious. And Jamie's subconscious, his instinct, has picked it up. And he writes, ask him if he wants to come out. And I see a note pop in in front of my face. I don't know where it came from. It doesn't matter. So I go, do you want to come

out? And there's a long silence on the other end of the line. And the guy says, I know how I do. that, which is a great big giant, yes. Yeah. A great big giant, please figure out how to get me out of it. Yeah, I want to come out, but I don't want to get shot. I don't want to get shot. I don't want to get beat up. And as it turned out what he was really worried about, he was worried about his buddy shooting him when he went out of the door.

Oh, his co-conspirators? His co-conspirators? He was shooting at his back or whatever? Yeah. Wow. Or as soon as he got out the door, he thought the NYPD were he was going to catch a beating. And he's like, I don't know how I'd do it. That's what we found out later on.

That was what all that meant. So we continue to talk. We continue to talk. And when he says, I don't know how I do that. Like everybody goes like, holy cow, okay, get him out of there. Focus on getting him out. I'm talking, I'm talking. I'm talking.

Again, probably about, I don't know, maybe half an hour later. Another note comes in my hand. I don't know where it's from. As it turns out, it's from Jamie again. And the note says, tell him you meet him outside. And I say to him, how about this? how about if I meet you out front of the bank? And he goes, yeah, I'm ready to end this shit.

So did you walk up to the bank door? Not quite. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I don't go strolling up like I'm a customer. Yeah. Because normally, first of all, FBI doesn't do, as a general rule, we don't do face-to-face. Really? Yeah, so we're scrambling.

We decide I got to go out. I don't have a bulletproof vest. I don't have a ballistic helmet. You know, they're grabbing a vest from this guy in a guy. of grabbing a helmet from this guy, and I'm trying to put this stuff on. And I'm scrambling to get outside. And the plan, once I get outside, is I'm going to stand behind one of the SWAT trucks, it's got a PA on it, and I'm going to talk to him from the PA.

I'm not going to walk up. How was that better than the phone? Yeah, who cares, right? I guess, yeah. It felt better. You know, and we don't know what he's thinking. So it was, it was funny. Ha-ha, ha, hostage story, funny, ha, ha.

The people inside are like, this story is not funny. But I get out there, I get on the PA, I start talking to him. At this point, I still don't know this guy's name. Crazily enough, that's the way it evolved. So I said, hi, it's Chris, I'm out here. So SWAT, standard operating procedure is to barricade the exit from the outside. So bad guy suddenly doesn't run away. So SWAT has barricaded the bank from the outside, which everyone has forgotten.

So I'm trying to talk this guy out to the door. We don't know how many bad guys are inside. We don't know how they're going to react. We don't know they're going to start shooting. We don't know what the hell's going to happen. He comes to the door and can't get out. Oh, God. That was he rattles the door.

He was like, ah. He's nervous, right? I mean, no crap. I'm trapped in here now. Yeah, and on the outset, we're going, nah, what do we do? We forgot to unlock the door. And with no plan of how to unlock the door. So SWAT commander, SWAT guys, you know, those guys don't get rattled.

You know, quickly, they scramble a couple guys. ballistic shield. These two guys get behind a ballistic shield. You know, they go up really, really, really slow. Again, we don't know how many bad guys are inside. And we don't know what that's going to happen. You know, are they going to see them? Is somebody going to jump them? Who knows? They just get up there real slow. They get the key. They unlock the door. Real slow they back away. And Bobby comes out. I'm trying to put myself in his shoes. I don't know if I'd want to leave. You'd have to, I would have to trust you so much to be like, yeah, I'm going to stroll out of here. Of course you trust me.

Of course. Don't you trust me now? Come on out. Yeah, sure. Come on out. I guess also I have no choice. I'm stuck in a bank with a bunch of other criminals that I'm thinking might shoot me too. Well, you know, decision, some people, you know, you make the decision. I mean, what holds you back from your decision or your fears?

The biggest fear that was holding him back was that he was going to get a serious, seriously beaten when he came out, which did not happen. and the fear that drove him out was he had come to the realization that every additional minute he stayed inside. Since he planned on coming out, every additional minute he stayed inside was going to cost him jail time. So the clock is ticking. Did you tell that? You told him that was going to happen? Don't need him to think that. Realize that he's come to that conclusion on his own.

There's also, since you don't know for sure what's going to happen to the hostages, that's not resolved yet. he needs to get out of there before this goes bad on the inside. So all sorts of losses are driving them to go out the door. I don't want to be here when this goes bad. I want to minimize my jail exposure. You know, the status quo, when the status quo costs you, that's when you leave the status quo, whether you're in a bank, whether you're in a business deal.

That's most people don't make deals because they're comfortable with the status quo, Even if they shouldn't. It's a boiling frog analogy. You know, you can turn the heat up on a frog and it'll stay. They'll get comfortable when they should leave. You have to be aware that the status quo is worse than the possibilities, and that's when people make decisions to change the status quo. Do you highlight that for him?

Like, hey, you know, the longer this lasts, the worse it's going to be, that seems like something I would hear in a movie with him. You highlight it, but not like that. Right. That seems you don't want him to panic, right? Right, right. Or you don't want to sound like you're threatening. Yeah, that, sure, that makes sense.

So you go back, you're going to ask you how a question. I might say something like, look, man, and how can I go to the judge on your behalf if you don't come out? That's saying the same thing. But it's using how question again is really deferential. And so you confront people with how questions because it leaves them the option of the decision. And they don't feel backed into a corner. Is this how you mentioned before slow things down? Is that what this is as well?

slowing things down by asking questions. And we're slowing things down because we want them to feel that sense of control and not like this is moving so fast that they don't have control. That's the first and biggest reason. The other thing, too, is, you know, Danny Connman wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. Slow thinking is in-depth thinking. You're using how or what question to trigger in-depth thinking, which also is exhausting. So if it's my intention to gain the upper hand by exhausting you, that's what I'm going to do.

So you're creating more cognitive load for me to come up with the reasons. Yeah, you used to go to law school or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cognitive load, right? Well, I read Daniel Kahneman's book, right? Yeah, thinking fast and slow. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. So I'm really making my brain do work.

Right. So that I'm eventually like just beat up tired. Yeah, you're tired, you're worn out, and you won't. it. You know, ownership, ownership is the issue. Huh. Yeah, this is, this is really interesting, because it seems like it's a really slow game of, you're grinding these guys down a little bit, but you can't make it seem like you're doing. You can't beat them up. You have to let them just drain their energy reserves on their own. Yeah, and principally, again, it's draining negative energy. Because you don't make good decisions in an angry state of mind. There's an old

saying, you give a speech when you're angry, it's the best speech you'll ever regret. Yeah, I've heard that, I think, probably from you. But are there tricks then for getting into a positive emotional states when the states are high? I mean, you said optimism, but do you want them in a positive emotional state as well? Sequencing in context, as a general rule in a crisis hostage situation, you don't want them, you know, you don't want them euphoric. You just don't want them negative. Business, the more positive frame of mind we're both in, the better. deal we're going to make. And the more likely we are to want to do another deal. And that's

probably the only flip-side difference between business negotiation and hostage negotiation. Hostage negotiators, at least 90% of the time I'm using a soothing, calming voice, late-night-night FM DJ. The FM DJ's voice? To calm you down, slow you down. And maybe 10%, five-percent, I might have an upbeat voice selectively. flip those for business. 90% of the time, I need to be upbeat. 10% of the time, I may need to say something like, we can't do that instead of no.

So 10%, you know, for me to lay something out that I need you to think about it in a serious way, which should be a minority of the time, a small minority, I'll use, that's when I flip the voices. That makes sense. So you're switching between this logical brain where they have to calculate something in crunch numbers or do something in their head, and keeping their emotions engaged enough where they're happy to be there with you

and they feel like it's a cooperative engagement. Yeah, and you're actually, you have more mental ability in a positive frame of mind. I mean, the mindset of flow, which is where optimum human performance is, is highly positive. Okay. So what about when somebody asks you for something impossible, right? This is one of the top takeaways from Never Split the Difference, the How Am I Supposed to Do That type situation? But what happens when somebody asks you for something impossible? Business, we can come up with an example easily. But I'm thinking in hostage situations, you hear this ridiculous stuff in

movies all the time where they're like, yeah, we need a helicopter and a private jet and, you know, you need to drive the van around the, like, you know you're not going to help these guys get into a helicopter landing on the roof of Chase Manhattan Banks. Not going to happen. But you can't say you're delusional, man. There's no chance of that. happening. You have to do something when faced with an unreasonable request. How do you handle that? How am I supposed to do that? And then... I mean, that's the opening move. What did they just say, land the helicopter on the roof of the damn building? And I'm saying, but if I do that, how don't you can let the hostages go? Okay, so it's always make them think, make them think, make them think.

Right, right. Huh? Yeah, and it's kind of crazy how it works. I finally got it flipped on me once. I'm in a, we're doing a simulated terrorist prison takeover. We're doing some training, interestingly enough, where we were in Jamaica. And I'm playing a bad guy, and I'm the most experienced negotiator there. I had a great time. Plus, I figure, you know, I'm better than any of the, my opinion, I'm better than any of the negotiators on the other side. Okay. And I'm saying, you know, you got to, I'm holding these people, you got to let my colleagues out of jail.

And the negotiator on the other side says, how do you want us to let him go? And then up until that moment, the thought of my head that I hadn't thought it all the way through. Because it wouldn't be enough just to let them out of jail. Sure. Let them run around Kingsdown? Yeah. Well, they'd go a half mile and they'd wait for them and they'd pick them up again. It's not just how do I get them out of jail.

How do I make sure they get away? I hadn't thought it all the way through. And it never even occurred to me until they asked me that question in a simulation. And I remember saying to myself, I didn't think this all the way through. So even you who kind of maybe developed a lot of this tactic, it works. Yeah, a good question makes you slow thinking, Danny Kahneman thinking, in-depth thinking. You become aware that you haven't thought it all the way through. You immediately see it falling apart.

two steps further than you've thought, and that completely stops you in your tracks, completely, which is the point of the question. Stop the other side in their tracks. So you pause, I know the formula of this is like pause, apologize, mirror slash apply as a question. So can you break down that formula a little bit? The pause is clear. And then you literally say, sorry, Jordan, but how am I supposed to do that? Is that kind of how this is applied? Yeah, yeah. And it's that simple. As stupid as it sounds, absolutely. So your girlfriend and kid must use this on you all the time.

You know, it's a great way of letting somebody know also. It's another way of saying, you just ask the impossible to me. You know, it forces a good, how am I supposed to do that question, forces the person being asked to take a hard look at exactly what they're asking the other person to do. Now, they might not change their mind. That's not the point. The point is to get him to stop and think. Okay, because I'm thinking people right now are going, wait a minute, they're just going to tell me exactly how they expect me to do that. But that's okay. Well, two things. First of all, everybody imagines that. Yeah, that's how it simulates in my head. That's how everybody simulates in your head.

Now, slightly out of nine out of ten times, it doesn't work out that way. And so we get a lot of people, wow, well, at one time it doesn't. realize there that your success percentages, you'd be happy with those percentages if you went to Vegas. You had a gambling system. All you're going to do is it works more than 51% of the time or more, and pretty soon they're renaming the casino after you. Right, sure, yeah. So again. Or you're banned from the casino, which is more likely.

But every now and then, somebody on the other side says, because you have to if you want the deal. That's actually a great answer. because everybody's job as a negotiators find out how far we can push the other side without driving away from the table. Right. And when somebody says, if you want the deal, you'll do it. You now know that's as far as we go. What happens when people get angry? This is probably happening far less in business situations, but I would imagine hostage takers, they get pissed off.

They're like, look, man, I'm the one with the gun. I'm the one with the civilians. Stop jerking me around. I'm tired of answering your stupid questions. I'm hungry. I'm tired. it's hot in here. Quit asking me stupid stuff.

And here's what should completely bake your brain. Hostage negotiations are calmer than business negotiations. Okay. How is that even possible? I haven't run into a single business negotiator. It doesn't have at least five stories of somebody on the other side screaming at them, slamming the door, calling them names, refusing to call them names on a phone.

Constantly. Everybody's got those stories. hostage negotiators have one and two. Okay. Why is that the case? Well, again, because as soon as the other side feels listened to, why get mad? And a hostage negotiator starts listening right away. Business negotiation, we sit down, I go like, I ain't interested in what you had to say. You're going to listen to me.

Right. I hold all the cards. I got to win. My boss needs to see me as the smart guy in the room. Yeah. Yeah. We don't do that as hostage. We calm people down real fast.

How do you do that? First is voice. FMDJ voice. FMDJ voice actually, what does that really mean? Before I finish the sentence, if you can see me or if you could hear me, and if we're on a phone you could hear me, my tone of voice has gone in and hit something in your brain called mirror neurons. Those mirror neurons have triggered an actual chemical reaction in your brain.

Chemicals are being dumped into your brain and into your system that slow you down. before I've even finished a sentence. That's how that happens. And that works even with like psychopath, sociopath type folks that don't maybe... Everybody's got mirroring neurons. Everybody's got mirror neurons. Okay. I'm not sure on that.

You're probably right. I haven't. The psychopaths, the sociopaths, that's a result of principally of conditioning. Nobody's contending that there are functional, physical things missing from their brains. they're talking about something happened in their development. Interestingly enough, there was a syndrome. The reason why people hold babies in hospitals and in orphanages now, because if children aren't held enough in the first year of their life,

that's when they learn how to bond. And if you haven't been held enough in the first year, in many children in orphanages or abandoned or in hospitals for extended periods of time, are not picked up and held, they haven't learned how to bond. So they end up with developmental stuff? They have issues in the rest of their life bonding with people.

So that something is absent. That happened after they were born. I vaguely remember reading about this. It's just been a while. Some of these books all blur together after a while, especially with all the junk science out of it. So you just need to read one book. Yeah, just one.

Just never split the difference by Chris Voss. I'm imagining, let me guess. That's the book you recommend. Oh, interesting that you should mention it. Yeah, that's my idea. I came up with that. You identify and label emotions when people are feeling them to calm them down. I read that.

I thought that was a brilliant tactic. How does this work in practice? I'm screaming at you. Stop asking me stupid freaking questions. Sending a pizza and $2 million. I'm going to start whacking some of these dumb kids I got here, stuck on this bank. What are you doing to calm me down at this point? Yes, you're listening, but what else?

I mean, I'm just pissed off. It's been 13 hours. I got nothing left in the tank. I'm over it. I'm going to say, sounds like you're mad at this whole situation. Sounds like you want to get out of there. And what does that do, the labeling? What does that do to my lizard brain?

The simplicity of it will obscure how effective it is. What I'm actually trying to do, if I say something to you, it sounds like, when that hits your brain, you actually ask yourself, is that the way it sounds? It triggers a thought in your brain. Like a logical or a rational shot. Identif, well, it triggers an identification, a labeling of it, if you will, it causes you to contemplate it sort of as an issue, decide what you're thinking. The book is the upward spiral.

They, I wish I could remember the author's name. They did an actual experiment. They induced negative emotions in people by showing them pictures. Pitcher made them scared, made them sad, made them lonely, whatever it is. They're monitoring the neural activity. I show you a picture that makes you angry. And they're a specific. part of the brain lights up. It's a portion of the amygdala where the negative emotions are housed. And that lights up. The electrical activity is going crazy, crazy, crazy. I show you the picture and I just say, what are you feeling? And looking at it, if you're feeling afraid, you say, I was feeling afraid. And the part of the brain that was lighting up now stops lighting up.

So labeling the emotion blunts it or gets rid of it? A triggering of contemplating the emotion, not denying it, not suppressing it, not pushing it, not trying to get rid of it anyway, just a triggering of an awareness of a negative. And every time they did that, that portion of the brain that was lighting up, stop lighting up. Not some of the time, every time. So if I say, it sounds like it just tired of being here that causes you to think about it. And the part of you that was frustrated, tired, annoyed, it doesn't, you don't mean for it to happen, but that part of the brain stops lighten up. What if it's a positive emotion? Do I not want to label it then?

That's the stupid thing, because positives then reinforce positives. So I do want to, so I want to label negative emotions to blunt them and label positive emotions to reinforce it. It's like the north and south pole of a magnet has the opposite effect. Complete, exact same device, complete opposite effect. Huh. Why is that? That, I haven't, you know, well, first of all, I don't know why it caused the negative part of the amygdala to shut off. I just know it did, you know, and there's so much of the brain, they got no idea why it works.

They just know it's there. A little bit like gravity. We really have no idea how gravity works. Nobody's jumping off. You ain't going to go jump off the Empire State Building because gravity's still going to be it. I don't need to double check it. I'm confident. I don't think it works today.

Yeah. I don't understand it. Therefore, I'm not going to hit the ground. Right. So it's still there. And the emotional reactions in our brain are very much like them. You know, do we completely understand them? But their effects are unmistakable.

From practice, the effects of labeling positives are unmistakable. If you say I want a car and a million dollars, a car means you want to escape, you want to live, I'll say, sounds like you want to get out of this. And that will reinforce your positive desire to live. Yeah, so you're not necessarily even, it sounds like you're reading between the lines. You're not saying, oh, okay, let's talk about the car, let's talk about the money. You're actually reading their intention instead of what they're actually saying. The more you read between the lines are more powerful the effect is.

Huh. Why is that the case? Well, you know, it's triggering the recognition inside. And again, it's the gravity issue. I just know it works. And we see it on a regular basis. And we see it actually kind of in really funny ways. Here's a great one with customer service people.

because they're battered children, right? You call customer service. As in everybody treats them like crap. They're getting screamed that all day every day. You know, we wonder why they're in a bad mood. They're getting screamed at all day every day. I know you're being in a bad mood too. I'm on a phone with this woman, and I'm not doing a great job,

and she's like giving me short answers. She's barely standing on her phone. Her tone is really clipped. And while she's got me on hold, I'm trying to fix an airline ticket with no fees. Sure. I can just imagine her turning to her colleagues and saying, this guy's lucky. I'm on a phone with him at all. All right, so let's go into bizarre old.

Tactical empathy is what's the other side of view, not what's your view or what's true? Tactical empathy is what now? Tactical empathy is what we use in the book. Daniel Goldman would call it cognitive empathy. We call it tactical because since we know how the brain works, we might as well use it in a tactical fashion. So if she's saying that I'm lucky that she's talking to me at all, in her view of the world, she's being generous. Oh, I see.

So she gets back on a phone with me, and the first thing out of my mouth is, I appreciate how generous you've been with me so far. And I can feel her mood instantly change, and her tone instantly changed. And she says, give me another moment to look into that. Yeah, turns out I can solve your problem pretty easily.

I just didn't want to before. She didn't want to before. Yeah, of course. Why should I help this? She put, because this guy's being a jerk. Right. Like everybody else. But I, you know, I, I, in between the lines, I know there's a positive emotion in there

that if I can punch it, if I can hit that target and dial it up, it's a pretty good chance she's going to change her mind. And that's exactly what happened. She says, you know, let me, I have something else I got to check. She puts me on hold. She comes back on all fees away. They got the ticket changed. So we reinforce people's, what, current opinion of themselves?

Or we just try to read their mind in the moment and then tell them what, Yeah, well, yeah, it's all kind of going to be implied. It's current opinion of themselves, depending upon which you want to reinforce. What are they telling themselves in a moment? You know, if they're acting stingy, then their view is, if you're lucky to have any of their time, they're actually being generous. You know, sometimes with a little practice, you can hear around this stuff pretty fast. And that's really all it takes.

It's just practice. Huh. Okay. I like that example a lot, actually. So this dovetails nicely with what you call the Black Swan Rule, which is don't treat other people the way you want to be treated. Treat them the way they need to be treated. Right. Yeah.

So can you flesh that out? Or is that kind of what we just talked about or is there more to it? No, it's really more that, you know, the assumption that everybody assumes they're normal. When in fact, at best, you're maybe normal with a third of the people out there. So you get into this thing called, well, I want to treat you the way I want to be treated. You know, if I'm an assertive, I want to. want answers. So give me answers. And I think I'm treating you the way I want to be treated. I like people to be direct with me. I'm going to be direct with you. Well, that's probably not true.

You know, you may not want to be spoken to that directly, that bluntly. If I'm doing a golden rule, I like to be asked. I love clarity. I crave clarity. I once had colleagues say that. I crave clarity. Eric Barker writes a fantastic blog and book of the same name, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. He says clarity is violence. You know, trying to get clear, let's get clear about this. It often is perceived as a very violent exchange, verbal exchange.

So, you know, you've got to be real careful about assuming how you're wired is how somebody else is wired, because you're going to put something on them that they just might not resonate with. So we try to read what they need and give them what they need instead of assuming that they need the same things as us. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. And what sort of principal factors do you look for?

You look for the communication style, whether they're assertive, cooperative. What was the other one? Fight, flight, make friends. Fight, flight, or make friends. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, really, to some degree, everybody's going to want to be heard out, you know, which is everybody wants to be heard.

That's why I show up in a negotiation. I want you to hear me. So if I start hearing you out, plus it's going to give me a good read on which are the types you are. You know, have you thought through every detail? You pride yourself on the details. Have you done a lot of research on me because you pride yourself on relationships? Are you really firm in what you want because you pride yourself on getting what you want? Those are basically the three times.

You know, so I'm going to let you start talking. And I'm going to start to get a real clear feel for where you are. Plus also, when I see maybe some holes, if I adapt to how you are, you're going to let me show them to you. You know, where does this not add up? Well, the book is loaded with very detailed negotiation examples from both hostage situations and business situations. There's a lot more than we could get to here. And I think it's probably got to be one of the most widely regarded books on negotiation, even if you do say so yourself. So thank you very much for your time.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me in. So not bad. Hostage negotiator, really interesting guy. I've been a friend of his for a while. I mean, he always brings it, Jason. He totally does. And we did this one in person in my studio.

And I finally got to meet him in person. He just has that FBI vibe. You know, he looks at you and he's just like, you can tell that he's got something behind those eyes that he's just checking you out and knowing everything you're about. It was a little unnerving. But, man, he's a smart guy. I feel like he seems like an undercover cop type. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Because when you meet him, you're like, if he was like, yeah, I'm a criminal and I sell guns, you'd be like, yeah, that checks out, right? Like, he just looks like the type of guy who would sell you guns, sell guns to a biker gang behind a saloon somewhere. Yeah, 100%. I can totally see that. So a great big thank you to Chris Voss. The book title is Never Split the Difference.

One of the best books on negotiation anywhere. I'll link to that in the show notes. If you want to know how I managed to book great guys, like Chris Voss, check out our level one course. It's free. Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. Even if you don't book guests, of course, it's about networking, relationship development. Do it now.

Don't wait. You can't make up for lost time with relationships. Don't be that guy who's like, I know I should have sent this email earlier, but I hate that. All that says is you knew better and you didn't do it anyway because you were too lazy. Jordan Harbinger.com slash level one. And speaking of relationships and building them, tell me your number one takeaway here from Chris Voss. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Stockholm Syndrome, DePhilippo, and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful. You can definitely find that in this episode, so please share the show with those you love, and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipe, and we're very excited to bring it out.

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