#27 Chris Voss: The Art of Letting Other People Have Your Way

Negotiation expert Chris Voss teaches a masterclass on the art of negotiation. Chris is the former lead international kidnapping negotiator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish 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.

• 0:08Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Farnham Street Podcast called The Knowledge Project. I'm your host Shane Parrish, the curator behind the Farnham Street blog, which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you like this show, you'll love the website and our weekly newsletter. The Knowledge Project allows me to talk with interesting people to uncover the frameworks you can use to learn more in less time, make better decisions, and live a happier, more meaningful life. On this episode, I have Chris Voss, the former FBI Lead International Kidnapping Negotiator. This dude has literally been face to face with a range of bad people. Chris wrote "Never Split the Difference", which is how I first came across his work and was introduced to him.

• 0:51Shane Parrish?

  This interview will take you inside the world of high stakes negotiations, showing you the skills that helped Chris become so successful when everything was on the line. These are the tools and tactics you can use to be more persuasive in your personal and professional lives. Enjoy the conversation.

• 1:17Shane Parrish?

  I have to ask, how did you end up becoming a hostage negotiator? Like, was this something that you dreamed of as a kid?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Not at all, not even remotely. Becoming an FBI agent to start with was a bit of an accident. I wanted to be in law enforcement. I never thought about the FBI. And, you know, my father encouraged me to think about federal law enforcement because he had paid for a college degree and I went out and got a job that only required a high school education. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, I became a police officer. But finding out about federal law enforcement, Secret Service specifically, Secret Service guy said, you know, I traveled all over the world. And I thought, hmm, I've barely been out of Iowa. That sounds like not a pretty good idea. Ended up with the FBI as a result, um, and then I was, uh, I had a recurring knee injury.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I'd, I'd done some martial arts in college and to try to make myself more physically capable and had hurt my knee in college and was on a SWAT team with the FBI, um, and re-injured my knee again. And then instead of completely blowing it out, I still wanted to be in crisis response. I knew we had hostage negotiators, negotiators. I didn't know what they did. I figured, you know, how hard could it be? I talked to people. I could talk to terrorists. How hard could that be? I mean, I literally thought that, you know? Uh, so, you know, my, my son, my son likes to joke. It's a boss fam, one of the unofficial boss family models is how hard could it be? Which is the, you know, almost, but not quite the redneck equivalent of, hey, watch this.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  So, uh, but I got into hostage negotiation and it was by accident and it was what I was built for and I loved it. And negotiation in general, I love, you know, real good negotiation is real good emotional intelligence. And I like taking a deep dive into people and connecting with them.

• 3:15Shane Parrish?

  Were you ever scared?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  No, well, hot, you know, we hostage negotiators don't get shot over the phone.

• 3:21Shane Parrish?

  No, but I mean, the consequences of success or failure in negotiation can be huge.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think the lucky, the thing, um, I started out training on a suicide hotline and I went to the hotline initially because I was told that I had to do it to become a negotiator. So I went there for mercenary reasons. I went to learn and you're, of course, if your success rate in anything is higher as soon as you sort of forget about failing and focus on learning. And so since I was there to learn, I got, I got a tremendous confidence and a process. It, I, I didn't realize it, but I was learning a concept that my, my former boss, Gary Met, Gary Neistler used to always tell us, you know, there's no guarantee of success, but what we guarantee is the best chance of success.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Which carries an implied possibility that there might be some stuff here that's out of our control. And so with those elements and a great reliance on a process, no, I was never scared of having things go wrong. Now, that doesn't mean that I wasn't involved in situations where we could see it was gonna go wrong. And I worked a few cases like that, kidnappings where all the earmarks were there for it going bad, because we were, that was part of our training to be, to be able to recognize the profile of those, you know, the profile of circumstances and facts. And then to do what you could to try to head it off, but you gotta know a train's coming at you to get out of the way of that train. And there were a few things that went bad, there's nothing you could do about that.

• 4:49Shane Parrish?

  I want to go back to that hotline that you worked on. There's an interesting story in your book about your first performance review. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was great. I mean, that was, uh, um, because negotiation skills are perishable and you don't know, they, they wrote invisibly. You get done with your training and if you go through good training, you're sharp. I mean, you're on it. You know you're on it, you know you're very sharp. And you don't know that it's perishable. So I finished my training, I remember I was sharp because I was a bunch of people in a, that were all sharp and the training was good. And a year later, I had no idea how many bad habits I picked up and I got, I get the annual review where a supervisor listens in, Jim, who was this really great guy, upbeat guy. And I had the person on the line, actually, I, my habits were so bad that the person congratulated

• 5:43Speaker 01

  me for doing a great job, which of course, I didn't realize that was a bad sign. And I remember walking back to the room to interact with Jim and he was like, hey, man, that was horrible. And I remember thinking like, are you kidding me? Did you, did, and I said, did you just hear that guy? He, I was, I was so good. He congratulated me for being good. And Jim said, yeah, well, that, let's start there. And what's wrong with that and how far off base you are if they say that? And I was like, wow, and he was right every step of the way. And it was at that point that I kinda took, you know, I rededicated, took a deeper dive. I wanted to get better. I didn't, I don't want to get worse. I wanted to get better.

• 6:21Shane Parrish?

  As a practitioner of this for so many years, what would surprise people the most, or perhaps, I mean, what surprised you the most about how real life negotiation works versus the way that we think it works, or the way you thought it worked before you got into this line of work?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Well, if you let the other side go first, it'll take less time. You know, we used to, I had a judge in a federal trial that had a great saying. He says, "We're gonna delay things in order to save time." And we think in the, the most direct route, you know, let me just tell you what I want, so you can give it to me.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Like, that's the most direct route. And it's a mess. I mean, that, that, that going in direct is a really bad idea. It just creates so much, it creates chaos. You know, Covey's, we think that Stephen Covey, seek first to understand, then be understood, the seven habits of highly effective people. I mean, I always just, maybe my perspective is wrong. I always thought of Covey as this warm and fuzzy, nice guy. You know, seek first to understand, then be understood is a mercenary's tool. I mean, if you want to get to an out, if you want to get to your outcome faster, let the other side go first. It'll take a lot less time.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Uh, you don't waste time spinning your wheels, or you don't waste time arguing, or you don't waste time to point, counterpoint. And I think most people don't realize that. They don't understand a tremendous amount of power of letting the other side go first. Not the least of which is it takes less time overall.

• 7:50Shane Parrish?

  Are there downsides to letting the other side go first?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  You know, only if you take yourself hostage.

• 7:56Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  It's like, well, I can't, you know, I can't let you anchor first, because then that's gonna, that's gonna change, it's gonna change my expectations. Like, what? Let, you know, is your position so weak? And are you so weak-minded that you're afraid to let the other side go first? So if your position is weak, and you know it, well, then letting the other side go first because of your ego issues, is your ego weak? If your ego's weak, don't let the other side go first. But if, if, if you, if there's any strength whatsoever in your position, your ego, your ability to learn, your ability to get a better deal, you gotta let the other side go first. It's information. You're operating in a dark, otherwise.

• 8:39Shane Parrish?

  How do you step outside of your ego? Like, did you have techniques in the FBI where you were able to do this easily? Or is this something learned over time?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  You know, as soon as you learn that it's the best way to go. I mean, and then, you know, there's a couple of techniques. You know, one technique is you're really focused on using your radar, or your sonar, or whatever metaphor, your gut instinct, your intuition. If I'm really focused on what emotions are driving you, there's an instant compartmentalization that takes place where my negativity is no longer going to get in my way. I mean, just, and genuine curiosity is a hack for emotional control. If I'm genuinely, like, I'm genuinely curious as to why you're crazy. You know, that's one instant hack.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  There's a variety of instant hacks. I will use my tone of voice intentionally because I can also hear my tone. Like, on a suicide hotline, I learned real early on, the soothing, calming tone, calm the other side down.

• 9:53Speaker 02

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• 10:21Speaker 03

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• 10:52Speaker 01

  But, you know, there's a reason why if you talk to yourself, sometimes you're actually smarter. If you talk out loud in a soothing, calming voice, that voice comes out of your mouth, it goes through the air, comes back in through your ear, it hits your mirror neurons, it calms you down. So if you say to yourself out loud, not internally, but if you say to yourself out loud, you know, you got this, you got this, I got this, I can do this. You can actually calm yourself down. That's another hack. I, I came to rely on a process and knew how good the process was early on. So I just thought, look, let me, let me lay my process on you. I'm gonna get my way. So there's a variety, you know, de- depend upon which one of those you stumble over early on.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Then yeah, you can, you can learn, you can teach yourself to keep your emotions under control.

• 11:40Shane Parrish?

  In the book you mentioned, there was three, I think, three different types of voices. One, the one you just gave us was the FM DJ kind of voice.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  The late night FM DJ.

• 11:51Shane Parrish?

  Can you give us an example of the other two and how the tone and pitch is different?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Well, you know, uh, the assertive voice is the direct and honest guy. You know, just here's what I want, give it to me. Um, if you think of, and the world breaks up in a pretty much evenly into thirds. It's from our caveman days. It's fight, flight, make friends, response to threat. We either fight it, we run from it, or we make friends with it. And the world really does pretty evenly split up into thirds. And so about a third of the planet's a direct and honest. That's my natural type. You know, I'll say, look, um, I could be mean to you because I'm a jerk. Or I could be mean to you because I just don't know any better. Or I could be mean to you, uh, because I hate everybody. Or I could be mean to you because I hate you specifically.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Uh, if I explain it to you like that, then, then your reaction is like, well, you sound like a jerk. And I don't care why you don't like me.

• 12:43Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  You know, the direct and honest voice, I once had a, uh, an FBI hostage negotiator. When I was just talking to him in my natural nor- normal tone of voice. He said, dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick. That's what the direct and honest voice does. If you think of yourself as a direct and honest person. And you're just trying to get your point across, you're so blunt that it obscures your message.

• 13:07Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So that's the direct and, and then the, the, the fight, flight, make friends. The flight guy is a late night FM DJ voice. He's a guy that thinks that like, you know, it's stupid to fight. Let me, let me get, uh, let me get far enough away where I could be safe and then I'll, then I'll rethink this. And then there's make friends and that's a person who naturally smiles when they speak to you. And I just like talking to you and, and when I speak to you, I mean, I just, a Jewish. I'm really happy to speak to you. I'm happy to be in your podcast. And if I smile, you can hear it in my voice.

• 13:39Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  And you know, even every now and then I had one of the hostage negotiators on the team in New York, a guy named Charlie Bowden. And Charlie was a natural accommodator. You know, we'd walk into a bar that we'd never been in before. Maybe we're someplace, you know, working a case, we'd never been there before. Walk into the bar, Charlie walk around and literally introduce himself to everybody in the bar, one at a time, and he'd just walk up and say, "Hi, I'm Charlie." And he'd smile at people. And when we were in hostage negotiations, Charlie'd write a note on the board that said, "Smile, they can feel it in your voice." And it was very powerful. And Charlie broke down more barriers just by smiling at people.

• 14:21Shane Parrish?

  How should we prepare to go into a negotiation?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Well, it's impossible to know everything going in to start with. And it's a lot faster to hear it from the other side. So prepare to be genuinely curious. You know, like, and tell yourself, you know, that's some pretty cool stuff here, if I can just find out what it is. So, and that's part of letting the other side go first. Some people, some people say, "Negotiation is the art of letting the other side have your way." Well, you get the other side talking and you're very collaborative, you find a way to gently say no to the bad stuff. Like, "How am I supposed to do that?" Is a great way to say no to something bad. "How am I supposed to do that?" And the other side feels very collaborative, they feel a lot of collaboration there.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  And they feel very powerful. And they're more likely to throw out some more options. And then when they throw out an option that suits you. You know, the best phrase to close a deal is for you to say, "That was brilliant, let's do that."

• 15:23Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  So you just get them talking until they throw something out that works well for both of you. And the real, the real issue with any deal is implementation, it's not agreement. Yes is nothing without how. I can, I can give you fake yeses all day long and you're never gonna get what you wanted. And that's, that's why you want it to be the other side's idea because they'll implement more effectively and with fewer reminders and fewer follow-up if the implementation was their idea. And that's where the real time saver is or where the profit killer is in bad implementation or even a deal that never gets implemented. We were in competition for a, a negotiation contract with one of the major telecommunications

• 16:09Speaker 01

  companies. And through the process of that, found out that fully 50% of the deals they sign never get implemented. Half.

• 16:18Shane Parrish?

  Wow.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Of their signatures. Talk about, they're killing themselves on implementation. I mean, they are destroying their profit over bad implementation or even not even implementing at all. So yes is nothing without how. And it's one of the great, um, toxic waste dumps of profit eating microbes out there.

• 16:40Shane Parrish?

  Wasn't getting to yes based on that whole principle?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  You know, it is. And, and you know, one of the biggest differences between getting to yes and, and, and my book, Never Split the Difference is getting to yes is intellectually sound. There's nothing intellectually to be challenged on getting to yes. And unfortunately, that does you no good as soon as you involve human beings because none of us are intellectually sound. You know, we're all driven by emotion and passion and emotional intelligence. If we didn't own as much about specifically articulating emotional intelligence like we do now as we did when Getting to Yes was written, I think that would have been a different book.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  And I met Roger Fisher, uh, back in 2004, when I went through, uh, when I first started collaborating with Harvard Law School. And Roger Fisher was both brilliant intellectually and actually emotionally intelligent, incredibly emotionally intelligent. But they wrote an intellectual book and that's where it falls down.

• 17:45Shane Parrish?

  One of the key ideas out of there was BATNA, Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:51Shane Parrish?

  The idea that you consider the worst-case opportunity in any negotiation. Is this an idea you found useful, or do you agree or disagree with that in practice?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  You know, again, intellectually brilliant idea, in practice, a horrible idea. And it came, it was much easier for me to come to accept that because as a hostage negotiator, what's my BATNA? Are we walking away? You know, do I say, do I say to the bank robber, "Well, I'm not giving you a plane, so we're leaving"?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  There ain't no BATNA in hostage negotiation. So as soon as I got, I was never handicapped by BATNA. It's a great handicap. Here's, here's the problem with BATNA. That becomes your goal. And so therefore, if you say to yourself, and the vast majority of people who calculate their BATNA, you know, as long as I do better than my worst alternative, as soon as I get past that, I'm good and I can quit.

• 18:46Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Which leaves massive amounts of money on the table. Problem one. Problem two, what happens if you don't have a BATNA? If you, if you're, if you believe you have to have a BATNA to negotiate, then you've immediately taken yourself hostage and you're done. You say, "Oh, my God, the other side has all the leverage and the power. I've got no, I've got no legitimate BATNA. You know, we're hostages here." You take yourself hostage. If you could, if, if you could just let BATNA go entirely, then it doesn't matter. And that gives, that puts you in a much better mind, mindset and mind frame in so many different ways. So BATNA, which is this intellectually sound idea, I know what they were trying to do. They were trying to help people calm down in negotiations by being able to say to themselves,

• 19:30Speaker 01

  "Well, if it doesn't work out, I've got a reasonable alternative."

• 19:34Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  The practical implication of that, and even one of my, one of my colleagues, who's a, is really a business negotiator with hostage negotiation background.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  He made all the Harvard people really angry because he used to, he used to call it not Batna, but Watna, the worst alternative to negotiating agreement. And, and he said, you know, let's start, because he hated it like I did. And they got so mad at him, you know, they said, there is no Watna, it's only Batna. But he was trying to point out what a, what a bad idea emotionally that was and how many problems that, that it created as a result.

• 20:08Shane Parrish?

  One of the other bad recommendations you hear in your profession that are practiced even by practitioners?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there's a couple, there's a couple subtle ones. And, um, you know, one of the first one is, is this, you know, you gotta go first, you gotta, you gotta anchor high. Um, and, you know, in, in practice, that interferes with collaboration if you anchor high. It's, it's basically, it's starting out by not telling the truth. Um, it's defining it as a win lose scenario. And it's also taken, it's taken a risk of leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table. And one of my, one of my favorite stories was, because we never taught high anchoring. But one of my students in Georgetown, he decides he's going to go for a job interview, he's going to high anchor. He's making about eighty five K at the time.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And he wants a nice big jump and, and he wants to anchor at one ten. That's what he's after. And, um, on, on a way to the interview, you know, his father's telling him, it's like, you know, that's, that's a huge jump. You're talking about, think of the percentage jump. That's just, that's, you know, that's twenty five thousand dollars in terms of percentage, you're going for too much. And he's like, I'm determined, I'm, I'm gonna go after it. I'm, I'm gonna throw out the number one ten. So they go into the interview and they say, you know, where are your salary expectations? And he puts himself up and proudly says, one ten, one ten. And he negotiates the deal and, and they go, you know, they give in, they give him the one ten. So he's on a job after a couple of months and he's talking to a colleague hired at the same time, same basic

• 21:41Speaker 01

  pay grade, uh, and he's in, and he, and he says to the guy, he says, you know, what do you think are compen, his colleague says to him, what do you think are our compensation? He says, well, look, I got news for you. I negotiated my own deal. And this guy says, you're getting paid more than one twenty five?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  You know, you can imagine a guy's heart stopping. And I'll give you another example. Um, two fa- two fa- one founder of a business here in Los Angeles negotiate with another founder. I'm coaching. She wants to pull 10% of her business. She wants the other side to give up an additional 10% to give to her husband because her husband's really helping out. So if you wanted 10%, you were going to high anchor. You know, what do you high anchor with 25 maybe being willing to settle at 10? She doesn't high anchor. She comes in with an emotional intelligence approach that she learned from me, which is she starts a conversation by saying, I've got a lousy proposition for you, which is enormously disarming.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  I mean, and you, and you say that and you shut up. And she ended up with a third of the business for her husband.

• 22:49Shane Parrish?

  In the back of the book, you go through a negotiation. I think you call it a negotiation one sheet. Can you walk us through that?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, first of all, you know, take a, take a, a completely truthful version of what are the facts and circumstances that brought us here to get today? You know, don't put any spin on it from your side, you know, a summary, summary of the facts, just the facts, man. And not, not because say something like, well, we're the smartest people that ever lived. And if they in any sense, they should be doing business with us. Um, that's not a summary of the facts. You know, and, and really drive for a summary that the other side would agree is true. Again, the no spin zone is real hard, but try not to do it without any spin.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And so then, then start to look for emotionally intelligent. What are the crazy, wacko, bizarro schizophrenic reasons, fears that the other side might have in the back of their mind about us? And a lot of this is really counterintuitive, but if you're a bigger company than they are, then a fear that they might have in the back of their mind is that you're going to bully them or that they see you as bullies. So take the circumstances and if you were a neutral third party, what are the fears the other side might have? And lay out what those fears are because fear gets in the way of deals anyway from three to nine times more than benefits make deals.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  You know, there's an interesting stat out there that says 70% of the buy decisions are made more to avoid loss than to accomplish gain. So think of the reasons why they wouldn't do business with you first. And that's real hard because we're so used to selling ourselves and our value proposition that nobody ever spends any time thinking about why they wouldn't do business with us. But that's gonna be, that's gonna be the deal breakers, that's where they're gonna be. And you gotta eliminate deal breakers before you can make deals. You cannot leave landmine deal breakers out there. And I think most people are, you know, we're taught over and over and over in business, what's our value proposition?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Which is very one-sided point of view of things and takes into account in no way, shape or form what the deal breakers are. And that's why with that telecommunications company I was telling you about, 50% of their deals never get implemented because they're not paying any attention to deal breakers and that's how costly that is. Imagine having a signed deal that you think was gonna go and have half the time have that thing turn into a train wreck. How much money does that cost you? You don't even have to make any better deals. You just have to not have 50% of them go in the tank. And they're going in the tank over deal breakers. Now, if you have an effective summary of the facts that the other side would agree to,

• 25:48Speaker 01

  if you thought about their paranoid reasons for not doing business with you, which is where the deal breakers are, now you're ready to talk. Is that when you do the acquisition audit or the labels? Accusations audit, yeah, exactly right. Now you're ready, now you're ready to lead into what are their potential accusations against us? Okay. And the depth of how deep you go into that, I mean, that's how we start out with. And we're also gonna think about the reasons why they would make the deal with us. And it's a sequencing issue. You gotta get rid of the negative before you can go to the positive. Sometimes the negative, getting rid of it will be so powerful.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  That you don't even have to pitch the positive because the other side's gonna go ahead and pitch it for you.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So what are the accusations they might make? And if you're, if you're a bigger company than, than they are, you might wanna say like, I'm sure we seem like bullies. Yeah. You take, you take the negatives and you articulate them in a very specific structure that we call labels. Where you're just calling it out, you know, you're calling out the elephant in the room. I'm sure we seem like bullies. I'm sure it looks like we're uncooperative. I'm sure we seem like we're not paying attention to what you're really after, you know? Whatever, it, it looks like we're trying to push you around. If, if there's, if there's reason to think that there's plenty of baggage there. For example, if you're in real estate, you don't have to be a genius to know that

• 27:19Speaker 01

  every buyer and seller of a house, they all say to each other, look, your real estate agent is not on your side. Real estate agents are only there to get a fast buck. You know, I do, I do a fair amount of coaching in the real estate industry these days. And I'll say, what are the accusations the other side might potentially make against you? And they say, well, nothing. They've never met us. Right. And I'll say, look, hold on. You don't know that buyers are saying to each other, no real estate agent is on your side? That real estate agents are only in it for the commission? You don't know that? And I say, yeah, well, we know that, but that's not true of us. I said, okay, all right, let's go back. Just everybody else. Yeah, we're not talking about what's true of you. You know there's baggage in your industry.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  And so you don't have to be Albert Einstein of emotional intelligence to know that that baggage is there. A friend of mine bought a house here recently in LA. I asked him about his, his agent. He said, look, I know they're not on my side. I know no matter how much they try to befriend us, they're only, they're trying to push this into a deal so that they can collect the commission as quickly as they possibly can. He says, I know that. Alright, so this is, this is a recognition of the circumstances. Now, there are plenty of agents that that, that is not true of them at all.

• 28:32Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  But just because it's not true of you doesn't mean that it's not in, in your potential clients in the back of their mind before, before they get started. And that's how you begin to clear this up. Because if it's lurking in the back of their mind, it's a distraction. So let's, let's go back again and let's take it to circumstances that if you weren't involved, you know, what's a reputation in the industry? What's the reputation of the people in your position? Let's address that upfront and you get dialed in much faster with people. It's kind of hard for people to do because they, they know the stuff is out there. Another thing I tell people to do a lot of times are like, what, what, what would you like to deny before you get started? Every real estate agent is going to say, well, I'd like to say, look, you know, we're not one of those fast talking salesmen.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  We're not one of those agents who are just looking for a quick commission. Alright, so make a list of the stuff you want to deny. And instead of denying it, because denying things makes it worse.

• 29:30Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Just pull it out, you know, and say, look, you know, I know that my, my industry has a reputation for being fast talking salesman. I'm sure it seems like every real estate agent you ever come across is just trying to get a quick hit with minimal amount of effort and then move on. And then, then what happens when you say it to a prospective client or whatever industry you're in, the stuff you want to deny, you say, sure, it seems like, then they go like, no, no, no, no, no. But in reality, what you just did was you just cleared it out of their head and now, now their head's clear and now they can listen to you.

• 30:01Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. So after that, you moved to calibrated questions?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you, you're going to move into a calibrated question. Or, um, when you, when you, when we teach people how to take calibrated questions, because questions might, you need information, but they might not be the best way to get information. Like.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  You might say to a person, how would you like to proceed? What would you think are the next steps? Now, they may have something in mind already and you you might actually get a better answer by instead of saying like, well, what do you think the next next steps are? You might want to say, it seems like you might have some next steps in mind. And, you know, we had one person refer to that technique. They were so stunned by the effectiveness of gathering information with that label. It seems like you have some ideas in mind. Seems like you have some next steps you've been thinking about. They actually refer to that as unlocking the floodgates of truth telling.

• 31:01Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I haven't I haven't seen the neuroscience that backs it up yet. We just know that in practice all the time. If I ask you a question, it has a tendency to get you to stop and think and contemplate and formulate an answer. If I just use a label, it seems like you've got something on your mind. There's something about that that instead of you formulating an answer, it tends to just remove a barrier and I tap directly into your thought processes and your thought processes come streaming out of your mouth.

• 31:33Shane Parrish?

  So it's almost like you eliminate the system two thinking and just get the raw system one?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. And you're clearly a fan of Daniel Kahneman and his description of how the brain works, right? Prospect theory, Nobel Prize winning psychologist.

• 31:48Shane Parrish?

  Is that how you think about that? Or do you have different terms in mind that?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Um, you know, our terms are a little more layman's terms because and and this goes right to why hostage negotiation has direct application to business. Because when I learned hostage negotiation back in the in the in the early 90s, they used to tell us, all right, look, some guy, some poor guy got himself in a jam. He's barricaded someplace. He's taken hostages. Look for the loss. You know, there's going to be a loss. All our all our techniques are designed to get the guy talking, find out what his loss is and address that. So look for the loss. So something would have happened. And we just figured that it was only the loss was a driver of bad behavior, bad criminal behavior.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And then Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky come along and unfortunately, you know, when the Nobel Prize is handed out, Amos Tversky has already died of cancer, otherwise he would have got it also. Kahneman and Tversky come up with prospect theory and win the Nobel Prize for it after hostage negotiations been invented, which is the fear of loss is the single biggest driver of human behavior. Prospect theory says, you know, loss stings things twice as much as an equivalent gain. Not that it's the only driver, but it's the biggest driver. And when I found that out, I said, you know, we've been operating like that for years, looking for the loss. We just figured it was hostage takers. We didn't know it was everybody.

• 33:19Shane Parrish?

  And that it's hardwired into us.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And since if it's hardwired into everybody, then this set of emotional intelligence schools, tools designed to uncover it as quickly as possible, diffuse the negativity around it, get somebody talking in a more balanced state of mind. And then you can move to people to solve the problems much more quickly. You know, so that's the hack. The hack is, the shortcut, is look for the loss and factor it into your thinking, which again is why 70% of buy decisions are made based on avoiding a loss as opposed to accomplishing a gain.

• 33:57Shane Parrish?

  Do you think that relates to the old saying, like, you never get fired for hiring IBM?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, because, well, then the other, the other crazy thing is navigating people's fears, people aren't afraid to fail, they're afraid to fail in a new way. So you never get fired for hiring IBM is, like, if we hire IBM and we fail, it's already been demonstrated to be a socially acceptable outcome. But let's say, let's, if we go out, you know, when, when was, when was Apple started? When, when did they first make their first Mac? If we go out and hire these guys, you know, named Jobs and Wozniak, they built some stupid computer in their garage, you know, that could go bad. Whoever heard of those guys?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  So let's hire IBM first because that's that's the safe failure.

• 34:46Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  And so the the safety in your failure is and a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around this, but it's not that we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to fail in a in a new way, in a different way from everybody else because that's humiliating. It's embarrassing. And and and then that loss is the the bigger loss is a loss of self esteem, which is an even bigger hit for us.

• 35:08Shane Parrish?

  So if you're a new company and you you have no real established track record, how is there a way to use that to your advantage or shape the perceptions of somebody taking a risk on you?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, because again, then then you call it out. You know, the elephant in the room, so to speak. You can call it out and it's not that it's guaranteed that you're gonna make the deal if you call it call it out. It just increases your batting average. You know, it increases your your win percentage. There's there's no there's no guarantee of success. There's just a guarantee the best chance of success. So any negative that's there. Ignoring it is leaving a landmine, but calling it out gives you your best chance at eliminating it as an issue. Whether you're an unknown startup. Or whether or not you got a strong competitor.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  I used to, you know, before the book came out and and, you know, been been very happy with the success of the book. It's been called one of the seven best negotiation books ever written. It leads its category. Um, the audible version of the book has been leading the business category on Amazon basically since the book came out.

• 36:14Shane Parrish?

  Oh, it's phenomenal book. Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And but before all, you know, before we've had this kind of success with the book. If I stood up in front of a group, I I would say to them, why in God's name would you ever listen to a hostage negotiator? Because that's what's going on in their head.

• 36:28Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  They're asking themselves that question. So I'll just go ahead. I'll call it out from the very beginning. Boy, it seems like listening to a hostage negotiator is a really dumb idea. And people go like, no, it's not. Maybe you might you might not. You might know something we don't know.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay, good. I got you to say it. That's the way I don't have to.

• 36:46Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. And then it sits in a lot more than if you say it yourself.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:51Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. And I think the final section to the negotiation one sheet you had in the book, if I'm remembering correctly, had to do with money. Like, is money always the primary motive? Or how important is money in a negotiation?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Well, it, it, it, let's talk about money in the sections in the book too. We're also looking from black swans. Like if, if, uh, we want you to write down the things you learned in that negotiation, you didn't know going in. And if you can't write those things down, you didn't do a good job. Cause there's stuff to be discovered. And it's usually, um, and, and then on money or whatever your objective is. You know, we, we, we do want you to pick out a, a good goal to begin with, cause human beings are goal oriented. But we don't want your goal to be your best alternative or your worst alternative. You know, come up with a lofty goal and then think of how you're going to beat it. So, human beings need to, do in fact, need to be goal oriented in order to perform.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Which is the whole batting a problem, because the batting of your goal then is very low. Pick a high goal and then challenge yourself to beat it by discovering new information.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  So, your high goal may, may, shouldn't actually be money. Because you, you gotta hit a range in money. Let's say, let's say you beat somebody on the money issue really badly. Well, your implementation is gonna be horrible. Or you're gonna put them out of business. So, you need to come up with a dollar figure the other side is comfortable for. An analogy to that would be a friend of mine was running a magazine. When he ran Washingtonian magazine in Washington DC. And we talked about salary negotiations and he said, you know, I tend to pay slightly on the higher end of people's expectations because. If I pay them lower than they hoped for, they tend to be really anxious throughout

• 38:41Speaker 01

  the term of their employment and they're not going to do a good job. If I pay them more than they expected, they actually, they're going to think they were worth that all along and they're not going to be that appreciative, they're going to take it for granted. But if I can pay them at the higher end of their expectation, they're going to feel really good about the salary, they'll be very comfortable, and that's when they're going to be at their best. And then they're going to do a great job for me. So, overpaying people is as much a problem as underpaying people. Which one do you think is more prevalent? Ah, wow, I think, well, people, I think, um, they're probably underpaid more.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And, but then, you can actually fix that too, depending upon how you take care of them as an employee, like if, you can underpay somebody and if you're really focused on their growth and development as people and professionals, they'll be really happy in the job and they'll do great. Because, you know, the old phrase, money's not a motivator, what is a motivator? The meaningful work within that profession, to be involved in stuff that's going to matter to everybody else. You know, being involved in critical strategic projects, or I had a, an executive from the General Services Administration who got ahead really fast, he once said, "Run to trouble."

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Like, if you like working on the company's biggest problems, there's a couple good things about that. I mean, if the company's really having some serious problems in a certain area, number one, you're not going to make it any worse, you're not going to be the guy that screwed that up because it's already screwed up. So it's like a fail-safe area to be in.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Here's your report.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks, Jane. I wish I could hire someone just like you.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Try LinkedIn Hiring Pro. It's more than a job board. It's like the recruiter you always wished you had. Hiring Pro uses real-time insights to match your role to LinkedIn's unique network of professionals and delivers a shortlist of best-fit candidates. You'll spend less time sorting applicants and more time talking to the right people.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Let's do it. You're irreplaceable, Jane, but another you would be great.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at LinkedIn.com/quality.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And then if you succeed, you become known as a troubleshooter. You worked on stuff that helped the entire company. Your job satisfaction is through the roof, which actually then puts you in a position to get paid a lot more down the line because you're so valuable. And if they don't pay you more, then it gives you an incredible resume because then you go to another company and say, "Look, I'm a problem solver. I'm a fixer." And somebody else is going to pay you a lot more.

• 41:46Shane Parrish?

  That's pretty counterintuitive, yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And that's how people get ahead.

• 41:53Shane Parrish?

  Are there cases where negotiation's not really a negotiation? Like, how do you recognize that's the situation you're in and what are the alternatives?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I mean, we like to believe the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in. So first of all, anytime the word "yes" is in the air, somebody's trying to get a yes out of somebody or something, you're in a negotiation. Or if "I want" is in your brain, you're in a negotiation. And there's no two ways about the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don't know you're in. That either plays for you or against you. And of course, in the most common commodity, the commodity that's in each and every negotiation is time. Not price, not money. Dollars are not always involved, but time always is.

• 42:41Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  So as soon as you begin, collaboration is time. Internal collaboration among colleagues.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Trying to implement a project, trying to get somebody just to support you in what your proposal is. Those are all negotiations. And recognizing those early on or, you know, the, the other thing is, uh, you know, out here in Los Angeles, I, I had, I was talking to a, a woman whose job was securing the rights to music for songs, uh, the rights to music for movies. And she says, you know, this isn't a negotiation. You know, we, we call Sony on the phone, we tell them, we want the rights to this song. The person on the other end of the phone has no latitude whatsoever. He just tells us what, he or she just tells us what the price is. She says, that's not a negotiation. I got news for you. That is

• 43:30Speaker 01

  a negotiation and here's why. Uh, never be mean to somebody who could hurt you by doing nothing. So the reality is that's probably true of everybody you interact with because you're interacting with them because you want them to do something. What's the negotiation on this thing over the music? All right. So depending, if she takes the other person for granted, that person writes down her information and her order. Does he put it on the top of his pile or does he put it on the bottom of the pile? Cause he didn't like being treated by, like an order taker. If, if she approached him in an emotionally intelligent way, maybe not only does he not put it on the top of the pile, maybe by hand,

• 44:11Speaker 01

  he walks it down the hall to the next person in the chain because if time is money and time is always an asset in a negotiation, even when somebody's taking an order, there are no shortage of people who were taking orders that didn't like how they were spoken to, that take the person's request and either put it at the bottom of the pile or maybe goes in file 13, maybe goes in a trash can and it's forgotten. So the implementation terms are always there. And if, if everybody could hurt you if you're mean to them, then by the same token, with the right emotional intelligent approach, they could help you if they feel like it. And I like to get every edge I can, so I want people to feel like helping me, or even offering to help me in ways I didn't even know they could do.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  And, and that's where we gain our edges across the board, with everybody in my company and also with the people that we coach. Cause the better your relationship is, the more the other side is gonna wanna help you out if they have an option to. And people have tons of options that most of us don't even know about.

• 45:10Shane Parrish?

  And I think one of the keys you mentioned in the book to figuring that out is active listening. I imagine, I mean, that was a huge part of your job and is one of the keys to empathy and understanding. How can I learn to be a better listener?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, you know what, and then it's even beyond active, it's proactive listening. Because, alright, so what am I proactively going after? I know that the negatives are a bigger deal. I'm proactively listening for where the negatives are. I'm proactively listening for their fear of loss. Having heard it, now I have a very specific toolkit designed to deal with that exactly. And the, the, the practice of hostage negotiators since 1972, when it was invented, pretty much, have taught us exactly what works and what's the fastest way into somebody's emotional system, so that I can hit the triggers and move on.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  And with those tools, and I get this done, done, done much more quickly. Uh, one of my students did a, an actual study on it. And her conclusion was empathy saves time. You don't use empathy because you're a missionary, because you're soft touched. Use empathy because you wanna get stuff done faster and you've got other stuff to do to get after.

• 46:25Shane Parrish?

  How does it help you save time?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Well, uh, we're not spinning our wheels as quickly. You know, if I'm, if I'm, I'm rooting out the problems earlier. Uh, I'm figuring out what you can throw on the table that you'll only throw on the table if you feel like it. If you feel connected to me. Or when some, when you're trying to telegraph there's a problem in your tone of voice. If you ask me if something is possible, and I say, okay. Or if you ask me if it's possible, and I go, okay. With empathy, I know the difference between those two things. I got a set of tools proactively where I go right after the second one and I'll say, You know, it sounds like there's more here than meets the eye.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  As opposed to what's the problem?

• 47:13Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Uh, that, you know, I heard something in your tone of voice. What's the problem? Or sounds like there's something here I'm just not getting. Now, the second one is going to trigger a floodgate of information. What you would like to tell me, as long as you don't feel you're going to be attacked as soon as you tell me.

• 47:31Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And that's how I'm going to save time.

• 47:33Shane Parrish?

  What do you do? I mean, it, it sounds like empathy works really well in particular situations. Are there situations where it doesn't work well? Like what if your opponent, uh, in it? I don't even want to use the word opponent, but the person you're negotiating with. Uh, maybe it doesn't have an, as many emotions or is way on the rational end of the spectrum.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, um, it'll, again, it only works where people are involved.

• 47:59Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  But e- even somebody who doesn't have a full range of emotions still got, uh, and I, I don't care what the range is. I just need to use my proactive skills, you know, my tactical empathy skills to figure out where your drivers are. Everybody's driven by loss, you know, our, our sociopaths, which there's no shortage of them functioning in the business world. They're self-interested. They have desires. They're driven by loss, loss aversion. There's no getting around that. You know, and unless, unless you're catatonic, there's going to be emotions that are driving you, just not the full spectrum that ever, that everybody has. I don't care what the spectrum is. I'm going to use the tools to get in there to figure out which ones are driving you and simply adapt to them.

• 48:46Shane Parrish?

  You've said something previously along the lines of there can be great power in deference. Can you explain what you meant by that? Like what are some examples of when deference is the best strategy?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the power deference is insane. And not to get political because we, you know, we don't want to talk political, but I, I, I wish I'd remembered the guy's name. There's an article, I think I read in, I read it online on MSN recently. One of the guys who has the most influence whatsoever over Donald Trump is a billionaire from New York who is more successful, he's older, and he's got more money than Donald Trump. And, and the guy's not involved in politics whatsoever. But he uses deference on Donald Trump because it gets Donald Trump to listen. Now, he doesn't use deference because he has to. Right. He doesn't need a job, he doesn't need any deals with Donald Trump. He doesn't need Donald Trump for anything, for whatever reason they have a relationship.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  He's older than Donald, so he doesn't need to be deferential to him because he's younger. He's got more money than Donald Trump, so he doesn't need to be deferential to him because he needs the money. He's more established socially in New York than Donald Trump. There's nothing he needs from Donald Trump. If you were to do just a plain assessment, and I, you know, I hesitate to use the word superior because it's very judgmental, but his, his life is on a higher functioning level across the board, other than the fact that he's not as well-known as Donald Trump, but this guy doesn't care to be well-known. And he calls Trump on a regular basis, President, and he's deferential to him. Because people loves when somebody doesn't have to be deferential, but is. Hmm. And so deference is this great tool for 360 degrees of influence.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  If someone is, perceives themselves to be superior to you, and you're deferential to them, they love it because they think that they, they, they're entitled to it. So it makes them very happy. If you're on a peer level with them, and you're def, you treat them with deference, they love it because you didn't have to, and they felt tremendous respect and appreciation for it. If you're subordinate to them in any way, and you're deferential to how they feel, they love it even more and they're wonderfully appreciative of it. Because you didn't have to do it, and they see you as being a very generous, gracious, and nurturing person. So deference kind of works on everybody where and as a mercenary, I like the skills

• 51:07Speaker 01

  that work on everybody. I do not want the negotiation approach that I use to be restricted because I have to have common ground with you or because I have to have power over you. Those are all restrictions. If I don't have common ground, where am I? I'm not willing to be handicapped by that. If I don't have leverage on you, where am I? I'm not willing to be handicapped by that. I want an approach where I'm not handicapped by what other people perceive to be strengths.

• 51:33Shane Parrish?

  What are the other skills that work over everybody?

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Um, you know, the, the phrase, the technique that I use different times that we refer to as labels, you know, it seems like you've got something in mind here. That's actually a very specifically worded hostage negotiation skill adapted for business use. What we found on our three types, the fight, flight, and make friends, the, uh, the flight, the analytical type guy is very leery of questions. And if I ask you a question, even if it's a really good opening to question or really good calibrated question, like, what do you think the next steps are? Our analytical flight oriented guy, which is basically not fight every battle,

• 52:18Speaker 01

  but fight only if I have to and they need to, and it's smart. But the analyst is going to want to think about that answer for an extended period of time because they want to think through all the implications of the answer before they come up with it. So if I say, what are the next steps to an analyst, the analyst is going to say, you know, let me get back to you in a week.

• 52:35Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  But if I say, for whatever reason, seems like you've got some next steps in mind, the analyst is very likely to blurt them right out. So this label skill, which interestingly enough, when I first left hostage negotiation, I didn't think it was that applicable, but through our constant practice in the laboratory, which was the MBA program that I taught in at Georgetown University, the part-time program, which mean everybody had a job during the day. So I'd said, take these skills back to your day job and try them. We found out the labels were the most universally applicable skill of all the tools.

• 53:12Shane Parrish?

  And what was the success rate on them as reported by?

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Uh, well, the success rate, it, it went from, it, it increases everybody's batting average, but that one of the best, the best things it did was it then it created some responses and people that were going completely silent otherwise. Where the batting average was zero.

• 53:31Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Um, so, um, the, the labels, the labels across the board probably raises everybody's effectiveness no less than thirty two, thirty three percent. You know, so whatever your effective rate is, if you're not using labels, it's going to drop that in on top of, on top of that. The other thing, um, while we're talking, which has the most, most universal, uh, success rate. And somebody on the phone was telling me today that rate, the success rate was a hundred percent is intentionally getting people to say no. Um, that, that rewarding all your yes oriented questions into no oriented questions. Instead of would you like to do this, say, are you against this?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  That's an insane success rate. And people, you know, have literally gone out and gotten on the phone as soon as we taught them how to do what we refer to as a no oriented question. And simply said, instead of would you like to try this option? Said, are you against this option? And the person gives them a no, and instead of rejecting the deal, it makes a deal. I mean, that one, that one's really insane. That, that's crazy and all three types like that.

• 54:42Shane Parrish?

  You have kids, I mean, how do you negotiate with them? Do you use labeling and getting them to know? Like, walk me through what you do at home.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, uh, labels and mirrors, open ended questions, calibrated questions, those are all real good. Depend upon the age of the child, you know, you want your kids to think. And, and a good label is designed to encourage the counterparts thinking. You want your kids to think, you want your counterparts to think. And your child says, you know, dad, can I, can I have the car late this weekend? Or Friday night, can I have a car Friday night? And your answer could be like, it, it seems like you think you don't have to earn that privilege. You know, draw them in, get them engaged. Um, how can I give you the car on the weekend if you're not responsible during the week? You know, draw them into the thought pattern, in- increase their thinking. That, it's a great thing to do with kids.

• 55:33Shane Parrish?

  Are there any other things you do with your kids that parents who are listening to this podcast can take away and implement differently?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Uh, another one that a lot of parents have a lot of success with is also the mirror, which is just repeating the last one to three words of what someone has just said. I mean, and you know, sometimes your kids say stuff to you where you wanna say to yourself, "Did you actually hear what you just said?" Am I the only one that heard how crazy that was?

• 56:04Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  But the mirror actually gets them to re-articulate it again with slightly different words. And, you know, a lot of it is not a parent-child problem. A lot of it is a human being-to-human-being problem. We just happen to mistake it because it happens to be adults and children involved in the interaction. It's a little bit like the analysis of saying, "Playing basketball makes you tall."

• 56:29Speaker 01

  You know, you're seeing it said as facts and you're misinterpreting the facts. And so, some of this is just human being-to-human-being. They just happen to be the human beings that were engaged with a lot at this point in time. So, we do want the counterpart to think, and you do want your kids to think, and you do want them to hea- you do want them to hear out loud and be a good sounding board sometimes to make them reword what they just said. Cause it increases their thinking.

• 56:55Shane Parrish?

  Have your kids ever out-negotiated you?

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Uh, well, um-

• 56:59Shane Parrish?

  Just through sheer persistence?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  You see, tha- that brings up a- another one, that- that we think kids are persistent, you know? We say, you know, teenagers are really tough on their parents because they don't take no for an answer. Again, it's a human being-to-human-being thing. Teenagers have learned that once a parent says no, they're probably actually more persuadable. Because the act of saying no makes people feel safe. Like, when my son was seventeen and he said, "Dad, can I?" And I would say, "No!", before he finished his sentence.

• 57:29Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  But then I would also, having said no, having felt like I protected myself, I would almost always find myself saying, "All right, now talk me through this again. Let me hear this." Cause I've already said no, so I can't be heard. Uh, and now I'm- now I can hear- I- I can hear him out. And again, this is, you know, basketball playing doesn't make you tall. It's not kids learning not to take no for an answer. It's a set of human beings who happen to be young, learning how eminently open-minded a counterpart can be once they've said no.

• 57:59Shane Parrish?

  Do you ever actively coach your kids on how to negotiate better? Like, not necessarily negotiating with you, but in seeking what they are getting what they want to achieve?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  See, here's- here's- here's the bad thing about growing up the son of an FBI hostage negotiator, which is what happened to my so- my son. I found out in when he was in his twenties, how much trouble he got himself out of when he was in his teens using hostage negotiation skills.

• 58:28Shane Parrish?

  That's awesome.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  He was around it all the time. He learned early on about, you know, going after problems and defusing problems. Like he was, he played, he played football.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Junior high, high school, college. So, and this isn't in a book. He'd go to school and he would, I had him in a Catholic school where they had a uniform. And every now and then, because he was a kid, you know, he'd, he'd go, go to school and there'd be something wrong with the uniform. And one student say, hey, you know, you made, you did, you screwed this up today. You're not wearing this properly. Watch out for the vice principal. Most kids are going to spend the entire rest of the day running from the vice principal because they don't want to get in trouble. As soon as he realized he'd made a mistake, the very next place he would go would be the vice principal's office. He'd knock on the door and he'd go straight in. And he was telling me one time, he walked in and he's, he's telling the vice principal, you know,

• 59:22Speaker 01

  he's a disrespectful student, you know, he doesn't have any, you know, he's, he's not paying attention to the rules. You know, he's empty headed and the vice principal stopped and said, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. He said, who sent you? And he said, said, nobody, I, you know, as soon as I realized I was wrong, I came in. And the vice principal, you know, scribbled him a note that gave him a free pass for the rest of the day. And said, get out of here now, get back to class.

• 59:46Shane Parrish?

  That's awesome.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  And he knew that was a way to avoid detention.

• 59:49Shane Parrish?

  And those are only the stories you know about.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:54Shane Parrish?

  What about relationships? I mean, should you change how you negotiate or engage with your partner? I mean, you had some interesting advice on compromise in the book. Does that apply to relationships?

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it, it applies, it applies based on where you're coming from. You know, there's, Adam Grant wrote an art, a great article called The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence. Like, you know, we joke around, use your, use your, use your powers for good and not evil. But emotional intelligence is a really powerful thing. It is potentially ridiculously manipulated. Use it in your relationships if you're trying to make things better. Like, are you, are you trying to get the other side to just lay off of you so you can go back to what you're doing? Or are you trying to actually understand more so you can have a, a better relationship? These skills are absolutely required if you want to understand your counterpart more and have a better relationship.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  So much so, that Silicon Valley, uh, female executive one day is talking to her fiancee. And she says, why do I like talking to you all of a sudden? Last couple of days, our conversation's been great. What's going on? And he said, well, I'm taking this training and they're making me use it with you.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  And she found out the book was Never Split the Difference. And she went out and she bought 10 copies and gave them to all of her girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends. Because, you know, seek first to understand and be understood. It's great for relationships. It's also, there's, you know, you can use it for manipulation as well, but if you want a better relationship, absolutely use this stuff for it.

• 1:01:27Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. Walk me through the compromise thing in the book about, um, why we should never compromise.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Compromise is, I got this killer gray suit. And I got a pair of black shoes that I love, and I got a pair of brown shoes that I love. I think I should wear the black shoes. You think the brown shoes are gonna look great. Let's compromise. I'll wear one black and one brown.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  I mean, compromise, in, in, in theory, supposedly, you're open to the other side's position. Theoretically, that's a great idea. In practicality, its implementation is absolutely one black shoe, one brown shoe. Heard, heard a story recently of a horrible compromise. Two companies are merging.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Um, and it's progressive new company in the industry, and it's an old line, historical, you know, uh, a very dignified company. And they come together and through the process, they find out there's this phenomenal building worth $800 million for sale. And they get a chance to get it for $200 million. They can, and they want to build a new learning center, and it's big enough for this state of the art learning center and their corporate headquarters. The CEO from the prestigious, high reputation, long-term reputation firm says, "We can't do that because we'll look like it'll violate what we stand for. It'll look like we're spending far too much money on our headquarters. We'll look self-indulgent if we buy that building."

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  And the guy from the newer cutting-edge company was like, "How can we pass this up? It's got a state-of-the-art facility. We can put our education in it. It's a $600 million value savings. We can move our people in. They're going to feel phenomenal being in this new facility." And so what'd they do? They compromised. They bought the building for the new learning center. They kept their old headquarters for the images. In fact, they're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars because of the compromise. And a bunch of the executives who never agreed with the compromise in the first place are going to leave the firm. So they're losing a tremendous amount of leadership over compromise.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  And that's what happens with compromise. You put half-masures in and it destroys everybody's idea instead of finding out what's the best course of action.

• 1:03:54Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. What fields of knowledge outside of negotiation itself, and I guess your own experience, have you found most valuable in adding to your repertoire of tools and finding new insights?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  You know, some of the stuff that I'm finding really interesting now has to do around the mental state of flow. Because historically, we're supposed to be dispassionate in negotiations. You know, you drive to be dispassionate, a drive to get into a neutral frame of mind. Well, flow is where your padding recognition and your decision-making is at its peak. Your mental endurance increases and your overall performance is much better. Like, X Games athletes are doing things that the world thought was previously physically

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  impossible. Can an X Game athlete, is their vertical jump five feet instead of two feet? No. But their performance and what they're doing is the equivalent of taking a vertical jump and doubling it or tripling it. But they're physically the same specimen. The state of flow, which borders on, is a highly positive frame of mind, bordering on, it's fun. They're having fun. Bordering on euphoria. Their pattern recognition and their decision making is near perfect in that state of mind. That's what we need in business. We need more mental endurance. We need better pattern recognition. We need fearless decision making.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  As soon as fear drops away, we can think better. It's a positive frame of mind. So the whole psychology of flow, in terms of people's performance in business, is stuff that I'm finding fascinating. And it happens to also, it's emotional intelligence rolled into flow. So that also plays a role in the decisions we're making and what negotiation tools we want to use.

• 1:05:52Shane Parrish?

  When you lose your flow temporarily, like when you were on the job, what did you do? I mean, it happens to all of us. We get distracted, something comes up, you know, there's more information coming at us than we can handle. How did you get back into that?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the old remedy was just rest. You know, an exhausted hostage negotiator, at the end of the day, I just gotta take him off the phone and let him get a good night's sleep. But, you know, the new remedy, what are the hacks? How can we get this guy recharged? I mean, it's one of the reasons why I think people are meditating a lot more now. You know, 10 minutes of good meditation might give you enough of a brain reset that you're back in the game 10 minutes later. I mean, that's a hack into flow. What can I do to change my mental state of mind that'll give me a quick recharge? I mean, it's kind of what Tony Robbins is doing in his seminars.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Tony Robbins is, before the neuroscience was there, he figured out the physical hacks in the flow. That's why he sleeps four hours a night. You know, that's why he can stand up and do a 14-hour seminar essentially with no breaks. I mean, if you, if you, if you go to his, one of his seminars, Robbins is on a stage for anywhere from, you, you, you, you gotta be prepared to sit there for anywhere from 12 to 14 hours. On top of that, Robbins is gonna make you do a number of things physically to put you in flow. Why, how, how can you dial in to a Tony Robbins seminar for 14 straight hours, only leaving your chair for bathroom breaks, sitting in a, in a, in a col-, in a stadium,

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  an indoor basketball arena on a concrete floor, in a, in a tiny little wooden chair, squeezed into a bunch of other people and not get tired? Robbins is putting you in flow. How do you pay attention that whole time? That is direct application to the business world, to your day-to-day performance. So there's a number, there's a number of things that you can do. 10 minutes of meditation, stand up and move around. You know, he has people, he has people do what we used to call primal scream therapy. I mean, just kind of let loose for a couple of seconds. There's an, there's an instant reset, an instant body reset. You know, there's a whole bunch of things you could do through the course of a day that can give you a quick smile and laugh. Um, you get an instant chemical change when you laugh.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Don't laugh because you're in a good mood. Force a laugh and you'll actually feel better chemically. It'll trigger a chemical change. It's a lot of different things that you could do. I, you know, 20 years ago, if a hostage negotiator was running out of gas, we wouldn't take, I would never have thought to take him off the line, tell him a couple of jokes.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Now maybe I would.

• 1:08:31Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. When you're in your negotiations with somebody, how do you separate out somebody on the other, other end of the phone or the negotiation like you, versus somebody who's read a book? Like the people who know what they're talking about from the people who pretend they knew what they're talking about?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  You know, one of the biggest things is where's the other side coming from? Because I, you know, I'll, I'll get people that'll try my techniques on me because they're trying to communicate with me better, and I'm good with that. Or I, I get somebody who's, who's trying some of this stuff on me because they're just trying, they're trying to prove that they're smarter than me and they're still gonna exploit me and take advantage of me. I, you know, you can sniff that out pretty fast. So a lot of it really has to do with, you know, not as the other person... Trying to collaborate with me, but really they're trying to hurt me. And I, and I, and I'm good. I'm absolutely good with somebody negotiating with me as long as they're trying to make a better deal.

• 1:09:26Shane Parrish?

  Right. Not if they're actively seeking to hurt you.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even then, at that point in time, I just want to know for sure because I might not back out of that deal. That, you know, I might not like them and, and we, we have some people we're doing business with that I really don't like. But it benefits my company a lot. And so I'm not kidding myself about who I'm dealing with. There's, there's nothing wrong with having a tiger by the tail. As long as you know, you got a tiger by the tail.

• 1:09:53Shane Parrish?

  Does that cause you a lot of stress?

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  If I let my, if I let it causing me stress, I, I realize now that every now and then the people that we're doing business with that, that are trying to exploit us. That isn't, as they say, a first world, first world problem or a success problem.

• 1:10:08Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  You know, I'm only dealing with these because the book is so good.

• 1:10:13Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And because we make a difference in people's lives. I mean, make no mistake, we make a difference in people's lives. You go on, you go on Amazon and look at the reviews. And it's person after person after person, but we made a difference in their lives. We made their lives better. Men and women. Um, Facebook posting the other day, a woman gave her daughter my book and she went out and negotiated a 30% salary increase for herself.

• 1:10:38Shane Parrish?

  Nice.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Shane Parrish?

  It's a really good positive impact.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so you, you get trolls because you're successful. You get attacked. Only by being successful. And when I remind myself of that, then I can deal with it.

• 1:10:51Shane Parrish?

  Want to switch gears a little bit, talk about some personal questions, um, just outside of negotiation per se, but. Stuff that I found interesting or that came up while I was reading your book that I was curious about. Uh, the first one I want to ask you is like, after a long career in law enforcement, negotiation. How do you personally determine if you can trust someone? Has your experience made you more trustworthy of other people or less?

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  All right. So we've got, we've all got the intuition to pick this up. And as soon as you start focusing on implementation and seeing what people do in front of you.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Then, and you know, trust is a funny word. Take the word trust out and put in predictable. What am I gonna predict these people are gonna do?

• 1:11:34Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  If you can substantiate the word predict for trust or predictable for trust, then puts you in a much more rational frame of mind and you and you can see things easier and then you can make better decisions. And the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. So if I'm dealing with a company that has horrible follow up, I should expect them to continue to have horrible follow up. I can't trust them to suddenly be smart. Or, you know, I'm out here in Los Angeles now. Number of different conversations going on about TV shows. And and these guys cheat each other or set each other up to be cheated on a regular basis. Um, so I can't expect them to be any different.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Dealing with me just because I'm a hostage negotiator, they're still gonna try to set me up and take the intellectual property and cut me out and not leave me in a role. And I can get bent out of shape over that or I can just expect it to happen and keep my guard up.

• 1:12:29Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  And not not kid myself. Or, you know, another analogy I like, I think everybody knows the story of the scorpion, a frog trying, scorpion tried to get across a river and he jumps on a frog's back and frog says, you know, if you sting me, then we'll both drown and we'll both die. Scorpion says, why would I ever do that? And they get halfway across the river, the scorpion stings him and the frog says, why'd you do that? The scorpion said, I'm a scorpion.

• 1:12:55Shane Parrish?

  It's in my nature.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the frog's mistake not was not in helping the scorpion. The frog, you know, put put the scorpion on a twig and tore him across so that he can't stab you.

• 1:13:07Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  If he's gonna stab me, that doesn't mean I can't collaborate. It just means that I'd be stupid if I don't think I'm gonna get stabbed. So don't, you know, how do I now arrange this so I don't leave myself in a position to be stabbed?

• 1:13:21Shane Parrish?

  What kind of thoughts would you share with your younger self? Let's say you're you're 20 years old and just beginning your career.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  All right, so that has to do with my type. So I'm a natural born assertive, which means I'm a little hard on people. I'm a little blunt. Dealing with me can be like getting hit in the face with a brick. So I would tell me, just be a little nicer. Don't compromise who you are. Don't take any different positions. You know, I've been, I've always been highly guided by what I believe to be, you know, right and wrong, set of rules. You know, do the right thing is a phrase that matters to me. So, you know, I'll, I'll punch you in the face by trying to get you to do the right thing and thinking that my motivations are good enough to cover up my delivery. So I'd tell my younger self, just be nicer. Don't, don't change any of your positions.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Don't go in any other directions. Just be nicer about it. You get a lot farther.

• 1:14:14Shane Parrish?

  But by nicer, do you mean that the bluntness was unkind? Or do you mean in your approach to saying the same sort of thing?

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Um, mainly, mainly how I said things.

• 1:14:27Shane Parrish?

  Right, okay.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  You know, and I don't know if it's a fair analogy or not, and again, not to wade into anything politically. You know, but I'd ask you, what are the biggest differences in the overall goals and objectives of Ronald Reagan versus Donald Trump? You know, Ronald Reagan fired more people when he fired the air traffic controllers. I think that Donald Trump has his entire career. Ronald Reagan was, is seen as a nice guy, but he very aggressive, very pro-American.

• 1:14:57Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Very anti-Russia, pro-business, you know, fired their traffic controllers. I mean, that was an aggressive guy. But the, he was, he was, but he used to always say, I'm a nice guy. He smiled at people. So, but he didn't change any of his positions. So that's for me. That, you know, that's for me.

• 1:15:18Shane Parrish?

  Can you tell me about a time that you failed and what you did to recover and learn from that?

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of failures. Um, you know, one, one we talk about in the book, hostages die.

• 1:15:33Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  We didn't, we didn't expect them to die. And at that time, I mean, I, I've always, I was a big proponent of a strong team game, so I was really satisfied that, that I had included my team. We'd done everything we knew how to do, and what we knew how to do wasn't enough. So to me, I used it, I used it to get better. Um, so.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  You know, I I did everything we knew how to do. It wasn't good enough at that point in time. You know, we had we had another, we had another much lower profile kidnapping where I thought it was gonna go bad and the people that were working the kidnapping didn't wanna listen to me. Now, I'm not sure that I could have changed the outcome, but I'm like, alright, so those guys are more experienced. And I, you know, I didn't push it as hard as hard as I could have.

• 1:16:21Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  And it ended up going bad. I mean, I chose not to wade into that. I, and I don't think there's any way that we we could have made a difference whatsoever on that one because the person that had been kidnapped was unbeknownst to law enforcement at the time was doing a lot of criminal activity that he was hiding, which is the principal reason he died, but there've been, there've been, there've been plenty of, there've been plenty of times and I made mistakes and I was wrong at the and I call him a suicide hotline at the, at the end of the call, at the end of the year. I had a lot of bad habits. I didn't, I didn't know about my bad habits at the time. I think the biggest difference is I, I think I'm very open to learning. I'm, I'm a little bit like, alright, so if I'm not doing it right, tell me how to do it right and I'll do it right.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  I just wanna know the best way to do it.

• 1:17:09Shane Parrish?

  What do you think the difference is between the people who are open to learning and not open to learning?

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  I think there's a, I think there's an embarrassment factor. I think people are really embarrassed of being wrong. I, I, I, you know, that's kinda the only way I can can couch it because I, I know that I'm, I know that I'm very open to learning and I know that there are a bunch of people out there that are not, and I am kinda mystified by, by myself. And so when I'm trying, I got a few of those in, in our classes. You know, if a company brings all their salespeople in, there's gonna be some people in there that, that are, are, are, before the year is out, are gonna get fired by that company because they didn't make their numbers and they're not open to learning. Turnover sales is very high. And, and, and one of the reasons why the bosses got that person in our training

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  is because he's trying to save, he or she's trying to save that person. And that person will be incredibly blocked. I mean, new ideas is such a threat to their self-concept. They're horrified that maybe they were doing it wrong and trying to crack that code because if I can't get that guy or that gal to open their eyes, we can't save them. They're gonna get fired.

• 1:18:22Shane Parrish?

  What do you think prevents people from that though? Like the notion of being wrong? Like what's going on inside that person? Because I'm sure they also at some level feel, if they don't see it tangibly, that, you know, something has to change. And yet they're still unwilling to see reality.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's well, it's, you know, I know from, I'm satisfied from Danny Kahneman, that there's a fear of loss in there someplace. And, you know, their perception of themselves and there's some, there's something inside them that just scares the heck out of them. You know, I was, one of the things that I was talking to my girlfriend recently, I was saying like, you know, I think everybody's got two lines of code somewhere deep down inside. Somebody said something to everybody when we were little kids. There was like a two line of magic, two lines of magic code in there and figuring out what that code is, those two lines,

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  is what really drives the direction that people go. And some, you know, some, it has to do with self-esteem. It has to do with, you know, I met a guy one time who was, he was a surprise to his family. You know, they thought they were done having kids and 10 years after they were done having kids, you know, another one is on its way. And I used to love to tell this guy he was an accident. And he grew up, his two lines of code, you know, I mean, that makes, that almost made him feel like he was unwanted.

• 1:19:52Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  So, you know, what did somebody say to somebody in those two lines of code? And how do we get in there and help unravel it? Or maybe put it, you know, change, change a couple of words in there so that instead of defeating themselves, they're taking better, better care of themselves. I had, I had another colleague that I worked with that used to always say, my grandmother always said, self-praise is no praise. Well, I'm thinking like, so you, you know, you can never praise yourself? You can never, you, you can never say to yourself internally, you know, I did a good job here? So, yeah, I don't know what it is sometimes, but I, I, anybody we can reach and figure out what it is, we try to, because we want people to, you know, have more, have more satisfying and enjoyable lives.

• 1:20:35Shane Parrish?

  So Chris, I want to end on a high note. What's the smallest habit you have that makes the biggest difference?

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  You know, I think just taking a moment to let the other side articulate what's really burning on their mind. Um, the, the, the, the other person is going to be highly appreciative of that. And you're going to save a lot of time. You know, again, it's a great mercenary missionary skill. Saves you a lot of time. It has better relationships. People are going to like dealing with you even more if they get a chance to have their say. And if they feel really listened to, the amount of time it takes to have their say tends to be really short because people find being listened to being very satisfying.

• 1:21:14Shane Parrish?

  I like that a lot. Thank you, Chris. Where can people find out more?

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  All right. So the best way to connect is to subscribe to our complimentary newsletter, The Edge. Comes out once a week and it is the gateway to everything we do. It's got a short article about a couple of tips on how to get better at negotiation. It's a, it's a light read. It's a light, quick read. It's a great way to start your day. Plus it's the avenue, it's the gateway to everything we do. The website is blackswanltd.com. But the best way to subscribe is to text the word FBI empathy and make it all one word. It's not case sensitive. Don't let your spell check put a space in between FBI empathy, but FBI empathy, all one word. It's the number 22828. And the number is 22828.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  And you'll get a text response that'll sign you up for the newsletter, tell you about the training. It's free, which is a good price. And it's a way that my company can help you get better.

• 1:22:12Shane Parrish?

  That's excellent. Thank you so much, Chris. I really enjoyed this conversation.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, my pleasure. I did too. Thank you for having me on.

• 1:22:23Shane Parrish?

  Hey guys, this is Shane again. Just a few more things before we wrap up. You can find show notes from today's show at fs.blog/podcast. You can also find out information on how to get a transcript there. And if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food, go to fs.blog/newsletter. This newsletter is all the good stuff I found on the web that week, and I've read and shared with close friends, the books I'm reading, and so much more. Last, if you enjoyed this or any other episode of The Knowledge Project, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. Every review helps make the show even better. Expand our reach and share our message with more people, and it only takes a minute.

• 1:23:05Shane Parrish?

  Thank you for listening and being part of the Farnum Street community.