Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett FBI’s Top Hostage Negotiator: The Art Of Negotiating To Get Whatever You Want: Chris Voss About this episode 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
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Transcript 10,146 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 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.
0:08 Speaker 01 Former FBI kidnapping negotiator.
0:10 Steven Bartlett? Best selling co-author and founder and principal of the Black Swan Group.
0:14 Speaker 00 I'm Chris Voss.
0:15 Steven Bartlett? How important is it generally in negotiations to listen?
0:19 Speaker 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.
0:30 Steven Bartlett? I'm so compelled to ask you, like, what is the cost that we don't get to see of your job?
0:34 Speaker 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?
1:09 Steven 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.
1:27 Steven 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?
1:47 Speaker 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.
2:06 Speaker 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,
2:49 Speaker 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.
3:03 Steven 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.
3:10 Speaker 00 Right.
3:11 Steven Bartlett? How, how long were you working in the SWAT team with the FBI?
3:15 Speaker 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.
3:48 Steven Bartlett? You mean during, during training?
3:50 Speaker 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.
4:35 Speaker 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.
4:56 Steven 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.
5:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, I said, go away.
5:09 Steven Bartlett? Who was she?
5:10 Speaker 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
5:53 Speaker 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.
6:32 Speaker 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.
6:44 Speaker 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.
7:12 Speaker 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...
7:25 Speaker 00 It's so obvious.
7:27 Steven Bartlett? What was that like, that suicide hotline? Five months you did that?
7:30 Speaker 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.
7:56 Steven Bartlett? Difficult, no?
7:57 Speaker 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.
8:05 Steven Bartlett? Emotionally difficult?
8:10 Speaker 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.
8:53 Speaker 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.
9:15 Steven Bartlett? What is that triad?
9:16 Speaker 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.
9:58 Speaker 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,
10:42 Speaker 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.
11:05 Steven 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?
11:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, you know, still, still, still actually going back and pulling the lessons out of it.
11:26 Speaker 00 And it's, you know, people are, their thoughts are most dominated by loss.
11:34 Speaker 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.
12:18 Speaker 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,
13:01 Speaker 00 but it's the single dominating influence of all human decision making. Not the only influence.
13:07 Speaker 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.
13:15 Steven Bartlett? Is there a way to like leverage that to your favor when you're negotiating with someone?
13:19 Speaker 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.
13:43 Speaker 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.
14:17 Steven Bartlett? When you became a hostage negotiator, when was your first real job?
14:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, it was a Chase Manhattan bank robbery.
14:25 Steven Bartlett? Bank robbery?
14:26 Speaker 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.
15:11 Speaker 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.
15:56 Speaker 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.
16:39 Speaker 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.
17:20 Speaker 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.
17:50 Speaker 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.
18:20 Steven Bartlett? And what was your job at that point? What was the bank robber asking for? And what was your job, your objective?
18:27 Speaker 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.
19:12 Speaker 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.
19:55 Speaker 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.
20:20 Speaker 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,
20:55 Speaker 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?
21:39 Speaker 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.
22:24 Speaker 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.
22:56 Speaker 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.
23:11 Speaker 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."
23:23 Speaker 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,
24:09 Speaker 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.
24:18 Steven Bartlett? How did that case end?
24:20 Speaker 00 Everybody came out.
24:21 Steven Bartlett? Why, why did the bank robber concede in the end? Did he get anything he wanted?
24:24 Speaker 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?
24:31 Speaker 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.
24:48 Steven Bartlett? Right.
24:49 Speaker 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.
25:27 Steven Bartlett? Was he treated with dignity and respect when he came out?
25:29 Speaker 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.
26:14 Speaker 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.
26:40 Steven 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.
26:50 Speaker 00 Right.
26:51 Steven Bartlett? Um, what do you, what's the first thing you say to me?
26:54 Speaker 00 You wanna try?
26:55 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, let's do it.
26:56 Speaker 00 Alright.
26:57 Steven Bartlett? So I'm the.
26:58 Speaker 00 You're the bad guy.
26:58 Steven Bartlett? I'm the bad guy. Okay.
27:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
27:01 Steven Bartlett? Chris, I'm gonna blow this woman's head off if you don't give me a car in the next sixty seconds.
27:10 Speaker 00 How am I supposed to do that?
27:12 Steven Bartlett? Not my problem. You've got fifty-five seconds.
27:16 Speaker 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.
27:36 Steven Bartlett? I'm sure you're, you're the FBI. You're the police. You can make anything happen. Fifty seconds.
27:42 Speaker 00 Sounds to me like you're not gonna give me a chance.
27:45 Steven 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.
27:54 Speaker 00 Sounds like you have a reason to live.
28:00 Steven Bartlett? I do have a reason to live. That's none of your business.
28:04 Speaker 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.
28:11 Steven Bartlett? So get me a car and I will drive off. Honestly, you've got forty-five seconds. I don't wanna talk anymore.
28:18 Speaker 00 If you're not gonna give me a chance, how am I supposed to do it?
28:20 Steven Bartlett? I'm giving you a chance. Forty-five seconds. That's plenty of a chance.
28:25 Speaker 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.
28:37 Speaker 00 Ah, well, go and talk to them.
28:41 Speaker 00 But how am I supposed to find them all, talk to them, get them to think about it in forty-five seconds?
28:48 Steven Bartlett? Okay, how long do you need?
28:50 Speaker 00 Alright, now, first of all, I want you to understand.
28:56 Speaker 00 I don't think they're gonna do it.
28:58 Steven Bartlett? Well, then I'm gonna blow their head off.
29:01 Speaker 00 That would be your choice.
29:13 Speaker 00 See now, so the other thing too is hostages negotiators are successful 93% of the time.
29:22 Speaker 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.
29:31 Speaker 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.
30:01 Steven Bartlett? It's true.
30:02 Speaker 00 And what were you thinking when, as we were going through it?
30:06 Steven 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.
30:33 Speaker 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.
31:15 Steven 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.
31:45 Speaker 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.
32:11 Steven Bartlett? No.
32:11 Speaker 00 And you get, I'll try enough times, you know, right away, it ain't never happening.
32:15 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:16 Speaker 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.
32:40 Steven Bartlett? How important is that collaboration?
32:42 Speaker 00 No relationship survives long-term without collaboration. Just, just ain't gonna happen.
32:47 Steven 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.
32:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, and in point of fact, see, the crazy thing is hostage negotiators have repeat customers. If I get you out alive.
33:04 Speaker 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.
33:49 Steven Bartlett? It's karma, isn't it?
33:50 Speaker 00 It's karma. A thousand percent it's karma. I'm a big believer in karma, very much.
33:55 Steven 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.
34:07 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah. And what they're called is, they can't hold a job.
34:14 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
34:15 Speaker 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?
34:58 Speaker 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
35:43 Speaker 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.
36:24 Speaker 00 But what it is, is incredibly efficient long term.
36:30 Steven 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.
36:47 Speaker 00 Right.
36:49 Steven Bartlett? Give me a flavor of those three voices that are available to negotiators.
36:53 Speaker 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.
37:38 Speaker 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
38:23 Speaker 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
39:05 Speaker 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
39:50 Speaker 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.
40:02 Steven 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.
40:10 Speaker 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.
40:27 Steven Bartlett? Oh, that's a very kind compliment. Thank you. But she's still gonna die.
40:34 Steven Bartlett? In chapter three, you talk about labeling their pain. I find, I find that a really interesting concept.
40:39 Speaker 00 Right.
40:40 Steven 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.
40:47 Speaker 00 Right.
40:47 Steven 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?
40:58 Speaker 00 You know, um, think of whatever their negative emotion that they're feeling is, the elephant in the room.
41:04 Steven Bartlett? So if I'm, if I'm, you know, I'm holding someone hostage and I'm crying.
41:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:10 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
41:10 Speaker 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.
41:20 Steven Bartlett? And what does that do to me when you, when you do that?
41:23 Speaker 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
42:05 Speaker 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.
42:22 Speaker 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.
42:39 Speaker 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.
42:44 Steven Bartlett? And that makes people feel heard or seen or felt.
42:47 Speaker 00 All of the, all of the above.
42:49 Steven Bartlett? Right.
42:49 Speaker 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.
43:30 Steven 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.
43:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
43:40 Steven 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?
43:48 Speaker 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.
44:04 Speaker 00 You know, business deal. Pulling that's rights. Sends you in a great direction.
44:10 Steven 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.
44:18 Speaker 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.
44:34 Speaker 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
45:17 Speaker 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.
45:37 Steven Bartlett? Negotiations are, you know, all, all over our lives. So, I mean,
45:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
45:44 Steven Bartlett? when I was reading,
45:45 Speaker 00 Everywhere.
45:46 Steven 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.
46:00 Speaker 00 Yep.
46:01 Steven 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?
46:15 Speaker 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,
47:00 Speaker 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.
47:14 Speaker 00 You thought you were fine, when in fact, what they perceived was that you were clumsy and insensitive.
47:20 Steven Bartlett? Are you good at negotiating in a romantic relationship? Cause I can, I'll ask her when.
47:27 Speaker 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.
48:10 Speaker 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.
48:20 Speaker 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?
48:40 Steven Bartlett? In your negotiating, negotiating days, was there an instance where it really didn't go the way you wanted it to go?
48:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, and what 93% success rate means 7% of the time it's going bad.
48:53 Speaker 00 And that's just, that's just the nature of the game.
48:55 Steven Bartlett? Is there one that stands out for you as being?
48:57 Speaker 00 Well, every one of them does.
49:01 Speaker 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?
49:33 Steven Bartlett? When I say, when I say this, what is the incident that comes to mind?
49:38 Speaker 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
50:19 Speaker 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.
51:03 Speaker 00 Uh, and so that was, that was the first time that I'd worked anything where people had gotten killed.
51:09 Steven Bartlett? Does that stay with you?
51:11 Speaker 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.
51:55 Speaker 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."
52:39 Speaker 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.
53:22 Steven 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.
53:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, somebody who's naive.
53:35 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
53:35 Speaker 00 You just don't know any better.
53:37 Steven 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?
54:06 Speaker 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.
54:51 Steven Bartlett? Which is interesting, cause in your work, you have no time for that.
54:56 Speaker 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.
55:06 Steven 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?
55:25 Speaker 00 Well, hostage negotiators mirror, the black swans mirror, you know, the way that we teach in business now, it's just all verbal.
55:32 Steven Bartlett? Verbal, okay.
55:33 Speaker 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
56:15 Speaker 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.
56:24 Steven Bartlett? Ridiculously effective?
56:25 Speaker 00 Yeah.
56:26 Steven Bartlett? I did that.
56:26 Speaker 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.
57:04 Speaker 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.
57:18 Steven 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.
57:25 Speaker 00 Right.
57:25 Steven Bartlett? I saw that online. The objective of that is to, to coach people into negotiation skills and stuff like that?
57:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, worldwide, globally. Yeah.
57:34 Steven Bartlett? And what does that look like? Is it a course that people can buy? Is it a webinar? What is it?
57:39 Speaker 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.
58:04 Steven 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.
58:20 Speaker 00 Oh.
58:20 Steven Bartlett? And I get to, I only get to see it when I open the book. Okay.
58:25 Speaker 00 Oh.
58:25 Steven Bartlett? Good handwriting. So this is useful. Okay.
58:35 Steven Bartlett? Is there someone in your life that really needs your help, but you are still unsure on how to help them?
58:46 Speaker 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.
59:15 Steven 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
1:00:00 Steven 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.
1:00:08 Speaker 00 Pleasure's been mine. Thanks for having me on.
1:00:10 Steven Bartlett? Thanks, Chris.
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