FBI’s Top Hostage Negotiator: The Art Of Negotiating To Get Whatever You Want: Chris Voss

Chris Voss is the former lead negotiator for the FBI, and the author of Never Split the Difference, a book about how to negotiate and how to get what you want from other people which has sold millions of copies worldwide. He has handled practically every high stakes crisis management scenario imaginable. What is unique about Chris’ technique is he emphasises seeing negotiation and deal making as a partnership, not a battle of wills. You only get what you want if you make an effort to understand what the other people really wants, and help them to understand what you want to. Making deals isn’t possible without a base of human-to-human connection. In this conversation Chris opens up about a number of different type of dynamics we have to negotiate in our daily lives, from romantic relationships to friendships. We also get the inside scoop on what it’s like to handle some of the toughest situations, from bank robberies to hostage crises, anyone can imagine. What he learnt is that managing relations with other people is really about trying to help them, and all of us can do with a little of the help Chris brings us in this conversation. Follow Chris: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thefbinegotiator Chris’ book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/1847941494 Books mentioned: Start with NO... The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know - https://www.amazon.com/Start-Negotiating-Tools-that-Pros/dp/0609608002 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Two of the three remaining hostages were killed and they were shot by friendly fire. That was the first time that I'd worked anything where people had gotten killed.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Former FBI kidnapping negotiator.

• 0:10Steven Bartlett?

  Best selling co-author and founder and principal of the Black Swan Group.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  I'm Chris Voss.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  How important is it generally in negotiations to listen?

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Whether it's business or law enforcement. If I take the time to really hear somebody out in our first deal, then every deal after that will come to me faster. It's critical.

• 0:30Steven Bartlett?

  I'm so compelled to ask you, like, what is the cost that we don't get to see of your job?

• 0:34Speaker 00

  You know, you get, you get really wrapped up in your work and I think you tend to become distant in your personal life. The closer you are to someone, sometimes you just, it's really harder for you to see things from their perspective. The truth sometimes is a knife to the heart, right? Like you go through a traumatic event, are you traumatized by it and never recover? Or is there post-traumatic stress growth where you took that and decided to be better than you ever were before because you never want to let that happen again?

• 1:09Steven Bartlett?

  So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO USA edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:27Steven Bartlett?

  Chris, you've lived a extraordinary life for many, many reasons, which I'm sure we're going to go into. But I guess my first question is, what do I need to know about your upbringing, your early years, if I am to understand the man you are today?

• 1:47Speaker 00

  I think really that my father just required that, that we work hard and that we figure stuff out. My father was an entrepreneur and then no matter how old you are even, I started working for him probably when I was about 11. But the downside of working for a guy that would never ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  If there isn't anything that he wouldn't do himself, just because it needed to be done, then like you get asked to figure out some crazy stuff. Like, you know, a middle class entrepreneur, you know, a little blue collar, you know, guy. And I remember, I think I was about 11, he decided he wanted a new garage in the backyard and we had to get rid of the old garage. And, you know, he handed me and my 13 year old sister crowbars and said, go out and tear down the old garage. So you just gotta, you know, you just gotta figure stuff out. And so I really grew up in an environment of working really hard. He never preached us ethics, but we were, you know, very ethical, you know, honest,

• 2:49Speaker 00

  hardworking and figure stuff out, which is, if that's your attitude, there isn't that much you can't do. And that was kind of drilled into me at an early age. Figure it out, work hard, be honest.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  So if I hit fast forward on your, on your life from that point and I go into your days in the SWAT team for the FBI.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:11Steven Bartlett?

  How, how long were you working in the SWAT team with the FBI?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  I was, I was technically a member of the SWAT team for about a year. And then, you know, I was in, on a Pittsburgh FBI, was on that SWAT team. And then I got transferred to New York and I decided to try out for the FBI's equivalent of the Navy SEALs, the FBI's hostage rescue team. And so I tried out for that team and I re-injured my knee. So I wasn't, I, I never technically made that team, nor when I was in New York was I on the New York SWAT team, but I had been on the SWAT team in Pittsburgh for about a year.

• 3:48Steven Bartlett?

  You mean during, during training?

• 3:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I was originally, uh, tore it up originally in college. And my view was, you know, the worst things that have happened to me have always led to better stuff. I would never become a hostage negotiator if I hadn't torn up my knee. And so, you know, then when I was trying out for the hostage rescue team, then I re-injured it and, uh, I went, went to a doctor to have it rebuilt for a second time. And at that point in time, I thought, well, I don't know how many times they could put Humpty Dumpty back together. So I love crisis response because you gotta make a decision. I've been very much a decision oriented guy, you know? President Kennedy talks about the dangers of comfortable inaction. I've always hated that.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  So, you know, I wanted to stay involved in crisis response. We had hostage negotiators. Uh, my son and I like to joke that one of the Voss family mottos is how hard can it be? And I remember thinking, how hard could it be? You know, they, they talk, talk to terrorists. I talk every day. I could talk to a terrorist.

• 4:56Steven Bartlett?

  When you, um, when you injured your knee and you, you're thinking about what to do with your life, I, I read that you had a chat with a lady, um, about options and she basically rejected you and said that.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I said, go away.

• 5:09Steven Bartlett?

  Who was she?

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, she was the head of the hostage negotiation team for FBI New York. She was on, uh, one of the terrorism squads close to mine and I knew she was in charge of the program. And, you know, I thought, you know, the willingness to learn was adequate. And so, you know, I sought her out to express my interest and kind of presented myself like ta-da, here I am. I'm wonderful. Look at me. I'm willing to learn. And she was just like, go away. Everybody wants to do this. It sounds cool. Everybody wants a T-shirt. She asked me about, you know, any previous experience or credentials I had. I didn't have any. One

• 5:53Speaker 00

  after another, I was like, nope, nope, no education, no background, no experience, none of this, none of this, none of this. And finally she just said like, no, you can't do it. Stop bothering me. It was like, gotta be something I could do, you know? I've always kind of been proactive. I didn't know I was, there's a theory that I, uh, principle that we operate on now, which is never ask advice from somebody who wouldn't trade places with, or never take direction from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. I just thought it made sense to go to the right person and ask, which is kind of how I got into the FBI in the first place.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  And I said, there's gotta be something I could do. What is it? And she said, you know what? There is. Go volunteer on a suicide hotline. But until you've done that, don't bother me.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  And it just seemed really obvious to me. Okay, you know, this is somebody who knows. I'll do it. And that's how I got in the FBI, really. And so I went and did it. And I went back to her and I said, you know, I've been volunteering on a suicide hotline for the last five months. And she's like, what? She was shocked. She said, I tell everybody to do that. Nobody ever does it. When I went back to her, I said, I'm including the story in the book.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  She said, you know, I told over a thousand people over the course of my career to volunteer on a hotline, and only two people did it, and you were one of them. And I thought, that's just...

• 7:25Speaker 00

  It's so obvious.

• 7:27Steven Bartlett?

  What was that like, that suicide hotline? Five months you did that?

• 7:30Speaker 00

  I actually volunteered there for a total of three years. And then I got involved in the board and the funding and the operation. And I taught there too. Uh, because I was so into it. It was so valuable. Um, I went there to learn a skill. And I ended up learning a skill and serving the community, which then was very no better secondary bonus than to do something that benefits you and have it benefit everybody else too.

• 7:56Steven Bartlett?

  Difficult, no?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Uh, well, if you take the training you're willing to learn, the training was phenomenal. And I went there to learn. So I soaked it up like a sponge.

• 8:05Steven Bartlett?

  Emotionally difficult?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  It can be, depending upon how vulnerable you make yourself. Now, since, and what I used to tell the volunteers there, because crisis hotline, suicide hotline, the biggest problem is volunteer burnout. It is difficult emotionally. If you go there to help, and you want so much to help, and there's a lot of people that make it extremely difficult to help them. And that can be emotionally draining. Now, I went there to learn versus help, and the help was a secondary benefit. So the really difficult types, we used to call them frequent callers. They didn't suck the life out of me. They fascinated me. Like, this is crazy. I gotta learn how to communicate with these people.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  These are no different than the people that are very difficult in business negotiation, because how you do something is how you do everything. Way back when, I learned this thing called the drama triangle, which was kind of three archetypes of difficult people. And we're seeing that show up exactly in business negotiations. So, human behavior is human behavior, period.

• 9:15Steven Bartlett?

  What is that triad?

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Well, the way, I learned it way back then was, you know, there's, there's the victim, the protector, and the persecutor. And someone who comes on a hotline, really portraying themselves as a victim, they're trying to draw you into being the protector, or to give advice. You know, I'm, I'm, I need your advice. Might be what they would literally say. And then if you're dumb enough to give advice, then they switch from being victim to the persecutor, and they attack you for your advice.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  And then as soon as you back off, then they go back to being a victim again, to try to lure you into giving them advice so that they can attack your advice. And so what they told us, you know, the earmarks of watch out for somebody trying to lure you into giving advice versus being a great sounding board, helping them discover the answer on their own. And then in 2002, much later, I run across Jim Camp's book, Start with No. And he talked about effectiveness in business negotiation, helping your counterpart discover the best answer. Because if they discover something mutually beneficial versus if you offer it,

• 10:42Speaker 00

  if they discover it, it's their idea and they're gonna do it. If you offer it, you're giving them advice, and they got no emotional ownership, and they're less likely to do it. So he called it helping them discover the best deal. And back in the, on the hotline days, it was just guided discovery, helping them discover the best outcome.

• 11:05Steven Bartlett?

  From those three years volunteering at the suicide prevention line, was there anything else that you really learned about the nature of human beings? That has stayed with you still to this day in business and your days as an FBI negotiator?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, still, still, still actually going back and pulling the lessons out of it.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  And it's, you know, people are, their thoughts are most dominated by loss.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  What are they worried about losing? What's their vision of loss over the future? Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 2002. Behavioral, uh, prospect theory, economic Nobel Prize on human behavior, which is loss looms larger than gain. Some people are putting it at a two to one ratio. Nobody ever puts it a less than two to one. Lost things twice as much as an equivalent game. I've heard people talk about it being as much as nine to one, which is why researchers are having trouble putting an exact number on it. So sometime, somewhere between two and nine times loss. Your vision of the loss is going to determine your behavior.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  And that was really, and we taught on a hotline and taught in hostage negotiation, look for the loss. Somebody's taken hostages. They've suffered a personal identity, identity loss somewhere along the line. And it's probably a triggering event in the last 24 to 48 hours, but look for the loss. And then Kahneman comes across in 2002. Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Tversky had died by the time they awarded the Nobel Prize, which is why he didn't get it along with Kahneman because they're not giving it after somebody's died. Saying that, no, this is just human behavior, period. Period. Not just hostages, not just people in crisis,

• 13:01Speaker 00

  but it's the single dominating influence of all human decision making. Not the only influence.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Just the biggest. And so learning how to cope with that on the hotline is exactly what we're doing these days in all our interactions.

• 13:15Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a way to like leverage that to your favor when you're negotiating with someone?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  You can, you have to be really careful with it, which is really the whole reason to be in use empathy as an approach. Cause if you don't use empathy, um, then you're the hostage taker. Or you're trying to use leverage against them. I mean, it's, it's such a blunt force trauma concept.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  That if, if you don't do it gently, uh, with empathy versus sympathy. You know, empathy is, is not the same as sympathy. But you're going to seem like a hostage taker yourself. If you start out by saying like, look, man, I know you got a lot to lose if you don't make this deal. Well, that's trying to trigger loss, but you, I seem like a hostage taker myself if I do that. So I gotta work my way into a position where I gotta get you to realize that that's the case.

• 14:17Steven Bartlett?

  When you became a hostage negotiator, when was your first real job?

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was a Chase Manhattan bank robbery.

• 14:25Steven Bartlett?

  Bank robbery?

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, with hostages, which although it happens all, you know, in the movies all the time, you know, Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Eddie Murphy, they're negotiating the hostages out of banks and every movie about it. In real life, it's a really rare event. Like it was a bank robbery with hostages in New York City and there hadn't been a bank robbery with hostages in New York City for over 20 years. Now, people get taken hostage in bank robberies, but generally the bad guys are gone before the police show up. Because they know if the police get the place surrounded, their chances of getting away are low. So they're going to be gone.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  But to trap bank robbers in a bank with hostages is really, really rare. And that happened about a year and a half after I got out of the negotiation training. And I was still volunteering on suicide hotlines. So my skills, you know, you fall to your highest level of preparation. I was ready, I was ready to go when they put me on the phone because I'd been. Negotiations are perishable skill and I'd been working at it. My skill level was really high at the time. Are you nervous when you get that phone call about that bank robbery? I know, I was ready to go. I mean, I was doing it because I wanted to, I wanted to get involved. I wasn't doing it to get the T-shirt. You know, I was doing it because I wanted to get involved.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  And as a matter of fact, like, I was never asked to go. A friend of mine had taught me, and having made a mistake previously, I'd learned the lesson of just show up. If something's going down, show up. I heard this advice from a government official not that long ago, and he said, run to trouble. Always run to trouble. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that, whether it's business or law enforcement. One of the nice things about running to trouble, running into, you know, figuratively, theoretically, running into the burning house, you don't get criticized as much. You know, you run to trouble.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  If you're running into a static situation or something that a bunch of people have been dealing with for a while, and it's just been sitting there in deadlock, and whatever you do, people are going to criticize you. You know, because they failed and you're doing something different, then they don't want to see you succeed. But if you're running at, you're running to chaos, you're running to trouble. You know, the criticism is much lower. You know, nobody's dealing with it. Somebody's got to do something, decisions have to be made. It's a great strategy, run to trouble. And, and I had, and I had come to, to like that a lot. So I'm sitting at my desk in New York.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  My buddy Charlie walks up and says, there's a bank robbery with hostages in Brooklyn, let's go. I looked at a police detective colleague because I had an interview scheduled that morning. I said, can you cover the interview? He says, yeah, I got it. And we go, head to the bank, and we show up. And a team forms, FBI and NYPD both show up because it's a bank. We know the PD negotiators really well, Commander Hugh McGowan, super sharp guy, knew what he was doing.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  He integrated the team. First negotiator on the phone was a PD detective. He points at me, says, you're the coach. We stood up the rest of the team around Joe, the original negotiator. Joe talks the situation into stalemate, which is not a bad thing because the threat level's not coming up. And Lieutenant McGowan looks at me and he says, okay, you're up. And they handed me the phone.

• 18:20Steven Bartlett?

  And what was your job at that point? What was the bank robber asking for? And what was your job, your objective?

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Well, we didn't know it at the time. Like, the bank robbery was actually the classic great CEO negotiator. Like, the great CEO negotiator is gonna act helpless at the table because he doesn't want you to force him into a commitment. And I found this out some years later when I was learning negotiation at Harvard. You know, they call the business strategy blame somebody who ain't in the room. So a great CEO negotiator is gonna be like, look, man, I got a board of directors. Like, I gotta be careful what I commit to here because this board of directors, I, you know, I do the wrong thing, these guys are gonna fire me. You know, they're gonna throw me right out of this company. And if the guy does that, he's got all the power in the world. He don't care about his board of directors.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  He just doesn't want to get backed into a corner. So the bank robbery, we get on the phone with this guy, the guy who orchestrated the whole thing. And he's like, man, I'm scared of these guys in here. These other, these other guys that I'm with, man, they're dangerous. Like, I'm scared of them. They might hurt me. So I gotta be careful what I say to you. Oh, here they come now. And I gotta hang up the phone. And he was, he was making it all up. You know, initially, our initial assessment is this guy's inadequate personality. He's scared to make a decision. Complete smokescreen on his part. So, you know, we're in the, we're in the, in the negotiation for several hours. And we got the bank surrounded and then the investigators on the outside.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  And this is a residential commercial area of Brooklyn. So there are cars everywhere. And they identify the owner of every vehicle on the outside and talk to them, except there's one van out there and it belongs to this guy. And as it turns out, this guy is running a cash courier business that services this bank.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  And they can't find this guy. He is nowhere to be found. So they go to his address and they say, hey, do you know this guy? And will you come to the scene of the bank and listen to the voice? Cause we're running the negotiations on speaker outside to the commanders. And the witness comes in and says, yeah, that's, that's, this guy's name happened to be Chris also. So they voice ID this guy and he has never given us his name. This is another great technique. If we meet and I don't give you my name,

• 20:55Speaker 00

  it unsettles you. You don't feel you've connected with me. And this guy would not give us his name. So, you know, we're, we got a voice ID on him. When the lieutenant says you're up next, he says, I want you to confront this guy about his name as quick as you can. And we're not going to do a normal, smooth handoff. You're just going to start talking. Normally the protocol is if you hand off from one negotiator to another, the, the second guy comes on, he says, look, I've been here the whole time and I've heard everything that's going on and here's everything that I've heard. Cause you don't need the other guy on the other side saying like, where do I start with this guy? You know, have you been here listening? Do you have any idea what's going on?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  It's a smooth transition, but a lieutenant, his gut instinct is like, yeah, we're not going to do this. This guy's a manipulative guy and in a really subtle way, we're going to start taking back control. And we're going to start by not doing a smooth transition. So I get on the phone, I'm talking to this guy. Now this is a cagey dude. We shift with no intro. So what does he do? In order to remind us that he's got hostages, but also not raise the threat level. Cause he's got to genuinely be, be concerned that the sniper is going to put a red dot on his forehead. And the next thing that's going to happen is he's going to be at the pearly gates, explaining his actions over the last 24 hours. He goes and gets a hostage and puts her on the phone.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  We haven't, we've been here five hours. We had no confirmation of the condition of the hostages other than him saying, "I'm taking care of the girls. Everything's fine." As a matter of fact, I gotta hang up the phone because they're hungry and they wanna get something to eat. All, all kinds of smokescreens. So I'm on the phone and I hear this female voice come on and go like, "I'm okay, I'm okay." And I'm like, "Who, uh, who's this? What's your name?" "I'm okay." And then that's the last I heard of her. He comes back on the phone, pretends like this didn't even happen.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  So I'm like, "All right, this is a cagey dude. We're gonna go forward. I'm gonna find a way to hit him with his name, but do it gent- gently." So I start talking about his van outside, which he knows is out there. He just doesn't know that we've identified it.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  And I said, "You know, we got a van out here and we found the owners of every van and spoken to them except one."

• 23:23Speaker 00

  And he goes, "We have more than one van." Now, I got no idea what this guy is talking about. So I did what we refer to as a mirror. I just repeat the words. Because I'm, my brain is like, "What is this guy talking about?" So I go, "You have more than one van?" He goes, "No, we only have one van." I go, "You, you, you only have one van?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, and, and you chased my driver away." I go, "We chased your driver away?" He says, "Yeah, when, when he saw the police, he cut and run." Now this super control freak guy is now blurting stuff out as a result of my mirror, my technique,

• 24:09Speaker 00

  that he did not mean to say. This ends up convicting his getaway driver who had gotten away and we didn't even know there was a third guy.

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  How did that case end?

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Everybody came out.

• 24:21Steven Bartlett?

  Why, why did the bank robber concede in the end? Did he get anything he wanted?

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Well, the, uh, no, didn't, you know, he, and, and, you know, how do you negotiate when you're not gonna give him anything?

• 24:31Speaker 00

  You know, you help them see a different vision of the future. Is what it really boils down to. And what you really want them to see is a vision of future where they live. And then you're hoping the survival instinct kicks in. And when the second guy got on the phone with me, his principal concern was getting killed.

• 24:48Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  And his secondary concern was being handled roughly when he came out. Of course, he knew that they had beaten the women on the inside. And that may contribute to his being handled roughly when he came out. But he, number one, didn't want to get killed. And number two, my opening line was, look, when you, when you come out, you'll be treated with dignity and respect. And I said that to him enough times that he decided it was going to be true. And he asked to meet me face to face out in front of the bank.

• 25:27Steven Bartlett?

  Was he treated with dignity and respect when he came out?

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Thousand percent. You gotta keep, you gotta keep your promises, cuz. And you know, this was, this was one of the things when I was teaching negotiation at Harvard. You know, my academic brothers and sisters up there were like, were like, would you lie to get the guy out? And my answer was no. And they'd say like, yeah, but let's say, let's pretend, let's imagine that a terrorist has got a nuclear bomb in Boston. And you know that if you lie to him, he won't set the bomb off. So how do you answer that one? And my answer is, well, number one, the guy's probably testing me to see if I'll lie.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  So I gotta watch out that it's not a trap. Number two, if he's not testing me, he's gonna be a better liar than I am. And he's gonna sniff it out. You can't lie to a liar, you just can't. They're too good at it. And then number three, even if I lied to him and get him out, somebody's gonna find out that I lied and I will always have the reputation of being a liar. And I can't risk my reputation.

• 26:40Steven Bartlett?

  So if I'm a, if I'm a, if I've got hostages and I call you and I say, listen, I want a car. I think I saw this one on your YouTube channel. I want a car in sixty seconds outside.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  Um, what do you, what's the first thing you say to me?

• 26:54Speaker 00

  You wanna try?

• 26:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 26:57Steven Bartlett?

  So I'm the.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  You're the bad guy.

• 26:58Steven Bartlett?

  I'm the bad guy. Okay.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:01Steven Bartlett?

  Chris, I'm gonna blow this woman's head off if you don't give me a car in the next sixty seconds.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  How am I supposed to do that?

• 27:12Steven Bartlett?

  Not my problem. You've got fifty-five seconds.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Alright, so if I wanted to do it, it's just, it's madness out here. It's chaos. I mean, this is Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus is organized compared to the nonsense that's going on out there. So even if I wanted to do it, I can't do it in that timeframe.

• 27:36Steven Bartlett?

  I'm sure you're, you're the FBI. You're the police. You can make anything happen. Fifty seconds.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Sounds to me like you're not gonna give me a chance.

• 27:45Steven Bartlett?

  I'm giving you a chance right now. Fifty seconds, Chris. There's plenty of cars out there. Go get one of the cars and pull it up outside, or I'm gonna blow her head off.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Sounds like you have a reason to live.

• 28:00Steven Bartlett?

  I do have a reason to live. That's none of your business.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  No, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to find out why. I mean, my first number one thing is to make sure that you live.

• 28:11Steven Bartlett?

  So get me a car and I will drive off. Honestly, you've got forty-five seconds. I don't wanna talk anymore.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  If you're not gonna give me a chance, how am I supposed to do it?

• 28:20Steven Bartlett?

  I'm giving you a chance. Forty-five seconds. That's plenty of a chance.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Like, to me, even find, get all the commanders together and get them to think about this, which they're probably not gonna do anyway.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Ah, well, go and talk to them.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  But how am I supposed to find them all, talk to them, get them to think about it in forty-five seconds?

• 28:48Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, how long do you need?

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Alright, now, first of all, I want you to understand.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  I don't think they're gonna do it.

• 28:58Steven Bartlett?

  Well, then I'm gonna blow their head off.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  That would be your choice.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  See now, so the other thing too is hostages negotiators are successful 93% of the time.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Which is one of the things that I learned in the business, which means 7% of the time, they just ain't coming up.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Now, I, we have to do everything we could possibly do in the meantime, but our number one goal is not putting any additional people at risk. Like, I get this question all the time, like, if you think it's gonna save a hostage, why don't you just give him a car and save those hostages? Well, I can't put additional people at risk. And by the way, while we were doing that, I don't know if anybody put a clock on us, but we went more than 45 seconds.

• 30:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's true.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  And what were you thinking when, as we were going through it?

• 30:06Steven Bartlett?

  Um, there was, all the questions were provoking me into, all the questions you asked me, felt like they were dragging me away from my objective in a, quite a tactical way. So I was thinking, ah, this is annoying, he's making me talk and I don't wanna talk. That's kind of what I was thinking and then, yeah, I mean, the questions you asked were making me ponder and they were making me abandon my focus, which was to just get this car and kill this woman.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Right, see, which was, I wasn't asking you that stuff to get you to answer. What I was really doing was doing exactly what you talked about, get you to ponder, get you to think. You know, what Kahneman would, has talked about in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Pondering, he would call slow thinking, in-depth thinking, where you really think about stuff. And then you really make the decision and you really make up your mind. Instead of me trying to hustle you, like I could hustle you into something really quick, but it wouldn't be your decision. And the whole point of getting somebody to ponder something is so that when they do come to a decision, they own it.

• 31:15Steven Bartlett?

  When you said the thing about even if I wanted to do that, like I couldn't do that in forty five seconds or whatever. I liked that sentence because obviously there was a degree of empathy there. So even if I wanted to, it wasn't, you know, shitting on my parade. It wasn't attacking me too much. And you made me ponder the reality of the fact that it's not even possible. My demand is not even possible, even if you, you know, were on my side. So that was a very good question to, to make me ponder myself, to realize that what I'm asking for is not gonna happen.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  See, there's, there's another reason why I said it like that too. Um, because, you know, a lot of people, if you ask for something in a, in a business deal that they're not gonna give you, they give you the classic American lie, I'll try. You know, and, and, and maybe it's not an American lie, maybe it's a lie in the English language. Like, but you know, in any kind of deal, if somebody looks at you and says, I'll try, you don't get a good feeling.

• 32:11Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  And you get, I'll try enough times, you know, right away, it ain't never happening.

• 32:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  So I didn't do, I'll try. You know, I, I basically said, I don't think it's gonna happen, but I'll check. Cause I'm trying to shift us out of an adversarial into a collaborative conversation. And so then what I'm basically saying is like, I don't wanna mislead you. I don't think this is gonna happen. I will be your advocate.

• 32:40Steven Bartlett?

  How important is that collaboration?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  No relationship survives long-term without collaboration. Just, just ain't gonna happen.

• 32:47Steven Bartlett?

  So you're giving me the impression that you're actually on my side to some degree and that we're collaborating to find an outcome together.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and in point of fact, see, the crazy thing is hostage negotiators have repeat customers. If I get you out alive.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  The chances of you straightening out your life are not great. And the chances of you ending up in another hostage siege are high. If you don't get killed otherwise. And you gotta have a memory of the last hostage negotiator trying to work with you. Versus the guy hustled you and lied to you, guy or gal. So if you always look at all interactions as if you're gonna have to pay for everything you said eventually. Which means if you lie, you're gonna pay for it. If you did everything you could to be collaborative, then your counterpart's gonna remember that in the future. Like, well, I didn't go my way, but at least you got in line with me.

• 33:49Steven Bartlett?

  It's karma, isn't it?

• 33:50Speaker 00

  It's karma. A thousand percent it's karma. I'm a big believer in karma, very much.

• 33:55Steven Bartlett?

  How important is it generally in negotiations to listen? Cause a lot of people, you know, kinda think they can overpower someone with just talking at them.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. And what they're called is, they can't hold a job.

• 34:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  You know, and there are a lot of people that are very visible that are doing that. And in the moment, they might look very good. But what ends up happening is they're frequently initially extremely successful. And then their success rates drop off a cliff. And then they don't hold the job because they were awesome in their first quarter and it had a continuing steady decline in their productivity till it went to zero. And they can't be tolerated anymore. But everybody sees a really loud guy or gal getting deals. Or, and they're the ones that make the most noise about it. So your original question is how is important is listening?

• 34:58Speaker 00

  There is no negotiation methodology that doesn't list listening as an advanced skill. No matter what school of thought somebody's in, in negotiation, they all list listening as advanced. Far more difficult than simply keeping quiet. It's critical. And you will actually end up... Increasing the velocity of your deal cycles by listening, which a lot of people think it's really counterintuitive. But, you know, I did, I did an interview with Mark Cuban six or seven months ago, and I talked about listening. And he's like, yeah, you know, if I take the time to, to really hear somebody out in our first

• 35:43Speaker 00

  deal and pay attention to what's important with them, then every deal after that will come to me faster, having done it right up front. And it'll increase the velocity of my ability to make deals with them. Cause they'll trust me, they'll know that I hear them out. They know that I'm looking out for them. And consequently, you know, it doesn't take me a long time to establish trust. And we come back, we come to the table, we get right down to it. And it really increases the velocity of my ability to make deals. And a lot of people can't see that because I gotta hear them out. I gotta, you know, blah, blah, blah. I gotta find out what their point of view is. It seems highly efficient.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  But what it is, is incredibly efficient long term.

• 36:30Steven Bartlett?

  And then as it relates to speaking, when you're talking, when you were talking to me then in our little dummy negotiation, I noticed the tone of voice you took was very, very calm. You list in the book, three different voices available to negotiators.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:49Steven Bartlett?

  Give me a flavor of those three voices that are available to negotiators.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Well, there's, there's, there's three natural types in humans, fight, flight, or make friends. And these are the, our caveman ancestors that lived, either fought the saber-toothed tiger, ran from the saber-toothed tiger, or figured out a way to make friends with it. And the indecisive caveman got eaten by the saber-toothed tiger, doesn't have any descendants. And we've got substantive reason to believe that that exists globally, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion. The three types, the globe's splitting pretty evenly into thirds. Got a lot of that on it.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Backs it up. Our brothers and sisters at Harvard pretty much agree based on their experience. Wharton has pulled a lot of the same data, comes very, very close to the same. And each type has a voice, you know, and the voice of the assertive, natural born assertive, which I'm actually a natural born assertive, is more the Donald Trump style negotiator, you know, attacking blunt, direct, you know, Ivanka Trump once described her dad Donald and said, you know, he's not blunt, he's just direct. Well, he's just an example, but you know, what I think is direct, you feel like you got hit in the face with a brick, which

• 38:23Speaker 00

  is always counterproductive, long term, always, always, always, long term, counterproductive, inhibits your ability to make deals, people get tired of getting hit in the face with a brick. So it wears them out. Then there's the very analytical type, which was, you know, the soothing calming voice that I was using. Triggers a neurochemical response and you, it actually calms you down neurochemically. It's an involuntary automatic response. Now you can fight it, you can fight your way back out of it, but you can't stop me from getting the calming neurochemicals started in your head. And, you know, if you're careful

• 39:05Speaker 00

  not to seem either cold or condescending, that tone of voice is what the great TV interviewers use, the great news anchors, because there's a lot of, there's confidence and calm simultaneously, and people really like it. And then there's, you know, there's a smiling voice, a friendly voice, and somebody just smiles when they speak. That triggers a different neurochemical reaction. The people that you automatically like right away, as soon as, as soon as you lay eyes on them, as soon as they start speaking, you know, and there's an advantage to that. So I was using, in an emotional situation, and if you're in an emotional negotiation, you know, you want to go with the soothing voice and

• 39:50Speaker 00

  smile, sprinkle that in, and now you kind of, you get the combination of both of them, and it's, it's collaboration. You're going to want to collaborate with me. If I use that voice.

• 40:02Steven Bartlett?

  I guess it's an attempt, and as you say, to like pacify, pacify them. The other thing that I, in chapter three of your book, you talk about is.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  By the way, you got a pretty good voice. You got, you got, you got, you, you're basically downward inflecting. Your voice portrays, first of all, it's very genuine. But it portrays a guy who's actually really thinking about what he says, and he actually listens.

• 40:27Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, that's a very kind compliment. Thank you. But she's still gonna die.

• 40:34Steven Bartlett?

  In chapter three, you talk about labeling their pain. I find, I find that a really interesting concept.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:40Steven Bartlett?

  Don't feel their pain, label it. I think that's probably a mistake I've been making. I actually was thinking about that in the context of like my romantic relationships.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:47Steven Bartlett?

  When my girlfriend is talking at me as a way to kind of create that bridge, how do I create that bridge by acknowledging or labeling her pain? Can you explain to me what you mean by labeling their pain?

• 40:58Speaker 00

  You know, um, think of whatever their negative emotion that they're feeling is, the elephant in the room.

• 41:04Steven Bartlett?

  So if I'm, if I'm, you know, I'm holding someone hostage and I'm crying.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say, it sounds like you feel like you're out of control. Sounds like you, you feel that you're gonna have to do something you really don't want to do.

• 41:20Steven Bartlett?

  And what does that do to me when you, when you do that?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  All right. So, and this is one of the few, in the black swan method, that's also backed up by neuroscience. Like, we know anecdotally that this stuff works, because we're proving it over and over again. We're walking the talk. We make our own deals very effectively. And the people that we coach make their deals and accelerate their deals very effectively. So, you know, so we got no shortage of our own anecdotal information. We don't, really don't need the neuroscience. But there's been several neuroscience experiments. They put people in FMRI's, functional magnetic resonance imaging devices where they can watch the brain light up. And they induce negative feelings in people, and they

• 42:05Speaker 00

  watch the brain light up, typically by showing them some sort of photograph that causes them to feel a negative emotion, whether it's sadness, anger, whatever it is. And then they simply ask the people to identify or label.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  What they're feeling as a result of the, what they saw. And each and every time the person labeled it. The, the electrical activity in that part of the brain diminished every time. Not deny.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  But just called it out, you know, you don't deny the elephants in a room, you say, is an elephant in a room.

• 42:44Steven Bartlett?

  And that makes people feel heard or seen or felt.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  All of the, all of the above.

• 42:49Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  So, you know, whatever the emotional reaction to that is, people feel seen, heard, felt, understood. And it's probably a combination of, you know, the emotional reaction and the neuroscience reaction is it diminishes the negative emotions. Every time now that the degree that it diminishes the emotions changes. Like, you know, we call that a label and I may label the negative that I, that I hear. And it might have a minimal impact, a tiny little impact, or it might have a huge impact. But the impact is the type of impact is the same every single time. The degree of impact changes, but the nature of the impact is always to diminish the negative emotion.

• 43:30Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that I read as well, that you're looking for in these negotiations is for them to give you a confirmation. They're like, if they say, that's right.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:40Steven Bartlett?

  So you're, you're trying to get me to not blow this lady's head off. And if you can get me to say, that's right. What is that a signal of?

• 43:48Speaker 00

  That's right is what people say when they feel understood. You pull a that's right out of somebody. You're on your way in a, in a, in a direction of a great resolution, no matter what the negotiation landlord, tenant. Employee, employer.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  You know, business deal. Pulling that's rights. Sends you in a great direction.

• 44:10Steven Bartlett?

  So you've labeled something that I'm feeling. You said, Stephen, it feels like you're about to do something you don't want to do. And then I go, that's right.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Right now, so, so tall. Roz, great researcher, besides great author. He speculates, he says, you know, I think. Somebody says that's right when they've been experienced an epiphany to some degree.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  That's what you say when you, when you, what you think you've heard is completely true. You're not agreeing with a person. You're observing that what they said was true. And when he said epiphany, I'm like, ah, this is interesting. Let me look up the neuroscience of epiphanies. And among the neurochemicals that you get a hit of in an epiphany is oxytocin, which is the bonding drug. So you get a hit of oxytocin based on what I've said, and you have an involuntarily feeling of bonding towards me. And then, you know, the neuroscientist that I think the world of, Andrew Huberman, I heard him

• 45:17Speaker 00

  talking about oxytocin. And he says that oxytocin tends to make people tell the truth. So if you say that's right, you're going to feel bonded to me and you're going to be more likely to tell me the truth. That ain't a bad position for me to be in, in a negotiation.

• 45:37Steven Bartlett?

  Negotiations are, you know, all, all over our lives. So, I mean,

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:44Steven Bartlett?

  when I was reading,

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Everywhere.

• 45:46Steven Bartlett?

  everywhere, right? It's everything. It's teams, it's business, it's podcasting, it's my girlfriend, whatever. When I was reading through the, the principles in your book, Never Split the Difference, so much of it I can relate to from the context of like romantic relationships with my partner.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 46:01Steven Bartlett?

  You must find yourself in your own romantic relationships, deploying some of these skills. And which ones of them, which one in terms of whether it's just, you know, acknowledging them, making them feel heard, what are the key skills that translate really effectively to romantic relationships?

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Well, they all do. Because every human being wants to be understood. And in a romantic relationship, they want to know that you understand. You know, and, and in many cases, like any relationship, they just need, need that in and of itself. Now, the additional demands of a romantic relationship is, they're going to want you to understand and adjust. Which in point of fact, what other relationship do they not want that from you as well? Not only show me you understand, but then walk the talk. It's, the closer you are to someone,

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Sometimes you just, it's really harder for you to see things from their perspective. Like you think you didn't do anything wrong and you know, and typically male, female, but not confined to this.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  You thought you were fine, when in fact, what they perceived was that you were clumsy and insensitive.

• 47:20Steven Bartlett?

  Are you good at negotiating in a romantic relationship? Cause I can, I'll ask her when.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Well, the problem with dating a really smart girl is she starts out negotiating you pretty quickly. But the really, you know, the real issue is what's your intent behind it? Like if you're hearing your romantic partner out just to get him to shut up. Like the second or third time you pulled that on them, they have figured it out. And you're, you're disingenuous. But if you're hearing somebody out because you want things to be better. You really want the relationship to be long-term and you want it to continue to get better. Then they're happy to let you hear them out or to be, let you make them feel heard.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  Cause you're going to make the adjustments in your behavior to take that into account. And you're going to show that you care enough about how they feel.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Not just what happened, but how they feel about what happened. Which is a recipe for a great relationship, romantic or not. But as, as should be, it's even a higher standard for a romantic relationship. Cause how can you be involved long-term if you don't care how the other person feels?

• 48:40Steven Bartlett?

  In your negotiating, negotiating days, was there an instance where it really didn't go the way you wanted it to go?

• 48:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and what 93% success rate means 7% of the time it's going bad.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  And that's just, that's just the nature of the game.

• 48:55Steven Bartlett?

  Is there one that stands out for you as being?

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Well, every one of them does.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  But then, then the issue is, do you learn? Like, Nassim Nicholas Talib would call it post-traumatic stress growth. Like, you go through a traumatic event. Are you traumatized by it, which, and then damaged and never recover? Post-traumatic stress, injury, harm, disorder? Or is there post-traumatic stress growth? Where you took that and decided to be better than you ever were before because you never want to let that happen again?

• 49:33Steven Bartlett?

  When I say, when I say this, what is the incident that comes to mind?

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Well, the first one, uh, that people died in was the second case that I worked in the Philippines, the Burnham Sabero case. And early on, before we could even get our arms around, uh, like a situation that was moving really fast and the Philippine military was engaged and chasing the bad guys. And a chase had been on for weeks. Um, Guillermo Sabero was murdered, uh, by, by the Abu Sayyaf. About 21 days into that case, they had already killed a number of Filipinos prior to that. And as they moved across the landscape and the oceanscape and island to island south

• 50:19Speaker 00

  of Philippines, they would, they would kill hostages and pick up new hostages because there were people in their way all the time. So that was an ugly case from the beginning to the end. In the end of it, uh, uh, the two of the three remaining hostages were killed in a botched rescue attempt and they were shot by friendly fire. Philippines got Rangers inadvertently stumbled over the Abu Sayyaf encampment, uh, didn't realize it was one that had hostages in it, just opened fire. They recognized it as a terrorist encampment, formed a skirmish line on the trees on the uphill side and just started pouring, um, rifle fire down into the camp.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  Uh, and so that was, that was the first time that I'd worked anything where people had gotten killed.

• 51:09Steven Bartlett?

  Does that stay with you?

• 51:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it does, it does. And, and I felt sorry for myself for a long time. And it's not like I'm, um, I'm happy about it, but... For, I'll never remember the moment that I got the call, 5:30 in the morning, I was in Washington DC where I lived, and a voice on the other end of the phone said, "I've got bad news, Martin is dead." And it was just a few hours after Martin Burnham had been killed, and Deborah Yap, the Filipino hostage, had been killed. Martin's wife, Gracia, was wounded and lived. And I'll never forget, that was the worst, to that point and since, was the worst professional moment, personal moment of my professional career.

• 51:55Speaker 00

  And I used to say it was the worst moment of my personal career until I was hearing another hostage negotiator talking about a siege he was in, when an infant had died, had been killed. And I remember sitting there, watching him talk about it, and he's still very, definitely dealing with the scars and the wounds from having been the negotiator on scene. And I remember him saying, like, you know, "I don't know why I keep telling, you know, giving these presentations, maybe I just want people to know something bad that happened to me on a winter's day." And I was sitting there thinking, "Bad for you. That wasn't your blood, it wasn't your child." And I thought, you know, "We're taking on too much."

• 52:39Speaker 00

  Because it wasn't a member of our family, it wasn't my brother, wasn't my significant other, it wasn't my son that got killed. And that's when I tried to, that's when I realized I had to put that stuff in perspective. It wasn't doing anybody any good for me feeling sorry for myself. I couldn't. And, and what we, the changes we made as a result of the Burnham-Sabaro case saved lives. You know, that was, that was our mandate. All right, so Martin Burnham is dead. What do we do with that? Do we quit, or do we get better? If we get better, somebody else is gonna live. And a whole bunch of people ended up living, based on strategy adjustments we made as a result of that case.

• 53:22Steven Bartlett?

  Seems like a big, a very significant sort of burden to carry, right? It goes back to what I said at the start, you know, it takes a certain type of person to wanna be, wanna play with those stakes.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, somebody who's naive.

• 53:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  You just don't know any better.

• 53:37Steven Bartlett?

  Makes us difficult sometimes, just thinking about, you know, the traumatic things we go through. It makes us much difficult, especially in forming relationships. I was, I struggled with that a lot, struggled in having a girlfriend, probably because my, my home life was so traumatic that I would always run from commitment. But when you've lived in such, and you hear the same with like soldiers and stuff, you know, when you've lived through such sort of traumatic events and high stakes, coming home to, hey babe, you're right, can be difficult, right?

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, it, yeah, it can be. It can be, it can be difficult. Like you can, you can have difficulty unwinding. The other person, depending upon how you process information. Like the other person might genuinely doing their best to be there with you to get you to talk about it. And, you know, if you're, if, if that isn't the best way that you process it. And yeah, one of the very difficult things about me is I don't process stuff by talking about it. I'll talk about it afterwards, you know, but I, I kinda need, I need to unplug, you know, I'll need a good night's sleep. You know, I'll, I'll need, I'll need to let it run through the data banks and kind of bake on its own. I'm probably pretty good the next day.

• 54:51Steven Bartlett?

  Which is interesting, cause in your work, you have no time for that.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you know, and maybe that's why I need it more at home, cause in the work, I mean, we're gonna, you know, we're going on it right now, we're dealing with it right now.

• 55:06Steven Bartlett?

  Mirroring, something you talk about as well in the book, which I find really interesting, cause again, something with my girlfriend, I, I started to explore, which was, you know, when she says something to me, or when she does something, I, to make her again feel heard, I guess, I just kind of repeat it back to her. But also trying to, is it also a body language thing, or is it just, how, how does mirroring, mirroring work?

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Well, hostage negotiators mirror, the black swans mirror, you know, the way that we teach in business now, it's just all verbal.

• 55:32Steven Bartlett?

  Verbal, okay.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  You know, if, if, if you start lining up physically, uh, which is what the body language mirroring thing is. Like if you, if you, if that happens naturally, then so be it. Enough people try to do it as a manipulative tool that we're really leery of even coaching people on that at all. Like if we're talking and suddenly we both find us, and I'm actually listening, you're listening, and we both find ourselves leaning the same direction, that's cool, because we're dialed in. But the body language thing is a tool of manipulation. So many times the people that are just trying to exploit you, that aspect of it, we stay away from. Now, the hostage negotiator mirror, the black swan mirror, repeating just the

• 56:15Speaker 00

  last one to three words of what somebody said, or then taking surgically, picking a gist, one to three words here and there, it's ridiculously effective.

• 56:24Steven Bartlett?

  Ridiculously effective?

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:26Steven Bartlett?

  I did that.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  You did, very nice. And the thing that I find fascinating about it too is, like, if we find somebody that's really into mirroring, they'll typically be somebody whose IQ and EQ both are real high. And there are a lot of people whose IQ is real high, you know, their book smarts are good, but their people smarts aren't good. And they tend to love mirroring because it's the least amount of effort with the maximum amount of response.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  And they want to guide a negotiation in a very gentle but purposeful way, while the other side doesn't feel guided, they feel like they're expanding. And it's been real consistent.

• 57:18Steven Bartlett?

  When you think about your next phase and your next, your projects that you're working on now and what you're trying to do, you've got your, the Black Swan Group.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:25Steven Bartlett?

  I saw that online. The objective of that is to, to coach people into negotiation skills and stuff like that?

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, worldwide, globally. Yeah.

• 57:34Steven Bartlett?

  And what does that look like? Is it a course that people can buy? Is it a webinar? What is it?

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's all of it. The website is blackswanltd.com. I mean, if you're just starting out, we got free stuff. Like, how do you start to get better now if you're further on down the line? We coach people through all kinds of deals on a regular basis, and it's a really big part of what the company does. We coach a lot of people through negotiations.

• 58:04Steven Bartlett?

  And you've got your book as well, which we've talked about a bit, which is Never Split the Difference, which has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide, which is just staggering. Crazy, crazy numbers. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest leaves a question for the next guest.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 58:20Steven Bartlett?

  And I get to, I only get to see it when I open the book. Okay.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 58:25Steven Bartlett?

  Good handwriting. So this is useful. Okay.

• 58:35Steven Bartlett?

  Is there someone in your life that really needs your help, but you are still unsure on how to help them?

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Uh, there's, uh, there's someone in, in, in my immediate family that, um, I can, uh, I continue to buy the wrong gifts for. And, uh, I've got actually a conversation scheduled for me to at least say, all right, I realize I'm getting it wrong. Help me get it right.

• 59:15Steven Bartlett?

  I think we can all relate to that in some respects. Well, I can anyway. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for your time. Thank you for writing such a great book on a topic that is relevant to more than just FBI negotiations. As you know, it's relevant to my relationship with my partner, to my business, to everything in between. It's relevant to all the interactions I have with all humans. And that's clearly a testament to why it sold more than, it's almost 2.5 million copies or something crazy like that. Ben, I know that, I know the stats around books. I know that more than, I think my publisher told me that most books don't sell a thousand copies. So like 90 plus percent of books don't sell a thousand copies. So to sell 2.5 million copies worldwide is staggering, but it speaks to your experience and, and

• 1:00:00Steven Bartlett?

  the way you articulated it in the book. It's been an honor to speak to you. Thanks for your wisdom. And, um, I'm going to keep brushing up my negotiation skills.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Pleasure's been mine. Thanks for having me on.

• 1:00:10Steven Bartlett?

  Thanks, Chris.