425. Negotiating a Raise — and a Better Life | Chris Voss
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Hello, everybody. I'm speaking to Chris Voss today, an American author, teacher, and hostage negotiator for the FBI. We talk primarily about negotiation with forays into the psychology of listening, the rationale of listening. We're attempting to sort out and to clarify exactly what it means to negotiate successfully, positing, I suppose, that

The ultimate goal of a negotiation should be something like the establishment of a productive, long-term, generous, mutual collaboration. And to expand even that, to understand that a good collaboration involves the joint pursuit of mutual desire, let's say, but also the joint pursuit of the ability to expand the understanding of what that desire might be across time. That's how a relationship grows. So we talk about how to do that.

We talk about how to listen and do that, concentrating as well on the fact that if you listen to people, they'll tell you what they need and want, and then you can be in a position to provide that and to be of utility in the long-term, sustainable, productive, generous relationship. So welcome to the discussion. So Chris, let's start with this. Why don't you tell me and everybody who's watching and listening

what it means to negotiate. And let me put a little context around that. One of the things I really noticed as a clinician was that people are remarkably bad at negotiating and they're not trained in it ever. And so that really hurts people because it means that they, frequently it means they don't know what they want. They don't know what the person who they're dealing with wants. And even if they do know what they want,

They don't know when to talk about it. They become bitter often about the fact that they're not talking about it, and they have no idea how to proceed. And that's, it's unbelievably common. So tell me what you think negotiating means and how you got interested in it. And also if that's how you conceptualize yourself fundamentally as a negotiator or communications facilitator. Yeah, well, for me to negotiate is to collaborate.

and find a better outcome. In the early days, I was always teaching the adversary is not the person on the other side of the table, the adversary is the situation. And then if you're negotiating with, and negotiating with versus against people, but negotiating with somebody, you're faced with two different aspects of the same problem. And if you can collaborate, then not only might you solve the problem, you might come up with a better outcome. And I kind of backed into this

uh because i wanted to be a hostage negotiator i didn't really know what it was about how complicated it was going to be how satisfying it was going to be and i remember i was on a swat team with the fbi and i wanted to switch over to hostage negotiation because i had a recurring knee injury and i like crisis response and i thought you know i could negotiate those yeah i could talk to terrorists how hard could it be you know my son and i have always joked that divorce family motto is how hard could it be so

Stuff that looks really easy is often incredibly challenging. So I volunteered on a suicide hotline, which is just about listening to people. And suddenly, you get a change in behavior in a very short period of time by listening to people. And to your point about people not knowing what they want, in point of fact, I've learned it's impossible to know the best outcome because you don't have all the facts.

And so go in with an open mind, and you'll probably discover something new. And do it in a way that the person wants to talk to you again. And then there's a long tail. So those are some of the high points, I think. Okay, okay. So, well, let's dive into, you mentioned a number of things here, and I'll outline them, and then we'll delve into them sort of point by point. You're paying close attention. I worked with people. I'm doing my best, man. Okay.

I worked with my clients a lot, practically. I did a lot of business consulting. I did a lot of work with people who were trying to develop their careers. I did a lot of strategizing around things like, I wouldn't say raising people's salaries, because that's not the right way to think about it, but helping them develop the skills and confidence to maximize their economic potential and to develop plans around that. So,

And one of the things we could zero in on that might be of interest to people is, for example, is negotiating a raise. Now, you said that you want to collaborate and find a better solution, that you talk with someone, not against. And that reminded me as well of the necessity of developing a joint vision. So let me tell you what we used to do.

In practical terms, when I was setting someone up to have a conversation with their boss about advancement, including a raise, sometimes people don't necessarily want a raise. They want opportunity and they want advancement. And the only way they can conceptualize that is as more money. And so you have to get that straight too. But so, you know, I said my principles were something like,

It's very difficult to negotiate if you are not in a position to say no, no matter what. So I would make sure my clients had their CV well prepped, that we had filled in any gaps, that they knew the job market around them, and that they were ready and willing to look for another job if necessary. So then they weren't terrified. Right. They weren't taking themselves hostage. Right.

Exactly, exactly. Because it also meant they had a better sense of their actual market value, right? Because that's something you actually need to do if you're going to negotiate for advancement or a raise. It's like, well, what evidence? You can't get a raise just because you want one. Everyone wants a raise, right? And you have to understand that your manager is dealing with financial constraints and the fact that everyone wants a raise.

So you have to make a case. And then you might say you could make a case with a threat, and one threat might be, well, if you don't give me a raise, I'll leave. But generally, all you do is put people's back up with an approach like that. You may need to have that in your back pocket just to make you confident. But my notion was, and I was dealing with people who either were credible or who had put themselves in a position to be credible before.

What they would deliver to the boss was, first of all, a statement of their value and a description of that. Because you don't know how much your boss knows about the work you do, especially if you're one of those people who does your work quietly and well and sort of invisibly. And that's even worse if you're agreeable so that other people can take advantage of your work and pretend it's theirs. So the first thing you might want to do is make sure that your boss actually knows what you do without being chest-thumping about it.

And then you might say what it is that you could offer if you were offered additional opportunity. And that might be,

You know, like the observation that if you don't believe that you're making what you're worth in the market, that your motivation is less than it might be or that you don't feel that you've been valued by the organization. And so if you had a pathway forward, you'd be more committed to the joint goal that you share with your boss. And hopefully you have one in relationship. You have to make a case for both.

what it is that's in it for him too, and also, or her, and also ensure that if he has to go make a case to his superior, that he's completely armed and ready to do that. So you don't assume that you're in an antagonistic relationship with your boss. And if you are, and that's intractable, then it might be time to think about either a radically new approach to your work or a different job. But if not, you assume that

You could present him with a solution. So anyways, those were some of the ground rules that we established. And so I'm kind of curious about how you might elaborate on that and what you think about that. Yeah, I love it. I mean, those are great ideas. Those are great starting points. And what I might add to the basis of that conversation, like the first part about having a resume, knowing what the market is, not taking yourself hostage.

One of the things that I loved, that I learned from being a hostage negotiator is how to negotiate without a net. And my Harvard brothers and sisters would call that BATNA, what's the best alternative to negotiated agreement. And that's so that you release yourself of fears, that you don't take yourself hostage. You can go in with no alternative and have enough faith in a process to just be engaged, to be curious, to listen, to discover the better outcome.

And so the BATNA idea or the alternatives idea is a good starting point if you feel like you're taking yourself hostage. But what it really is, is it's to create this psychological construct so that you don't freeze up, so that you don't take yourself hostage. And as hostage negotiators, you know, we just never, theoretically, we never had a BATNA. You know, you got to make the deal. You got to work it out. And you kind of get used to walking that tightrope without a net.

And then it's no big deal. But the principle to begin with is how to not take yourself hostage. And that's a brilliant principle to start with. Okay, what does it mean? Give me some examples of what it would mean for someone in a practical situation or even in a dire situation to take themselves hostage and maybe a story or two about that and also some illustration of how you circumvent that error. Yeah, well, it's like, I don't have a better job. I got to take this job.

And I'm coming out of, you know, I did, right after I left the Bureau to sharpen up my resume and to create some better opportunities. And I went to Harvard Kennedy School of Government, got a master's there, which is astonishing that they let me in. You know, very average blue-collar dude from the Midwest. And then afterwards, job market was horrible. Come out of Harvard, 2008, depth of financial crisis.

I mean, not no jobs anywhere. And one of my one of my colleagues is a fellow students. He's like, look, I'm trying to negotiate for a job and I got to take the job. There aren't any jobs out there. And they're going to ask me what I made in my last job. And it's going to be half of what I need to make now. And I can't answer that question. And I said, like, all right, so here's what you're going to do. You're going to.

you're going to go in with some great calibrated questions. Calibrated questions, in my vernacular, Black Swan method, is not questions to get answers, but questions to create thoughts in the other side's mind. Open their brain up a little bit. You want to get completely out of the concept. The fact that you don't have alternatives doesn't change your value to this company. And the fact that you don't have alternatives does not change anything about their ability to pay you.

and how much you could contribute if you're the right guy that gets dropped into the right job. And so you got to ask them, what happens if you guys don't fill this role? How can I be most successful for you? And how am I supposed to accept a salary that's half of what I'm worth? You know, these are deferential questions. Okay, so let me ask you about that. So

One of the things I want from someone that I partner with, and this would include someone I'm hiring as well, say, as a peer relationship, I want to know what agreement we can come to

that I'm thrilled about that I know they're equally thrilled about. And there's a technical reason that I want that. I mean, there's two sources of motivation fundamentally. There's goading by negative emotion, like pain and fear, and there's enticement by positive motivation. And that's usually associated with hope in relationship to a goal. And so for the gentleman that you just described, who's feeling constrained because he only has one option,

which is take the job or leave it, and he thinks the only option is take it, he still has a question to ask himself. And this is a really profound question. It requires honesty. And the profound question is, what circumstances do I have to be, do I have to have in place so that I can devote myself wholeheartedly to this job?

So, how can I exit the interview and accept this new job feeling that I have a landscape of opportunity in front of me and bereft of resentment? And that will require, if someone's going to ask themselves that, that will require that they prioritize their needs and wants. And salary may be one of those things, but, you know, you could imagine that there might be other ways of even moving around that, so to speak, because...

you might be able to offer your new employer the following deal. It's like, well, I'll take a starting salary that's less than I would regard as optimal or even necessary. But I want to know that if I hit a certain set of standards within a certain time, that there's a pathway to improve financial returns that opens up to me that we all agree on. And you tell the person you're negotiating with that the reason you want that is because, like, we're not playing around here. We're trying to...

negotiate optimal motivation. And I want to be able to assure you when I leave the motivation or the negotiation that I am thrilled with the outcome. And because who the hell wants to hire someone who starts the job feeling like they've been taken advantage of and being resentful? That's a really bad way to get things going. Okay, so you pointed out that your guy who thought he had to have the job still was in a position to tell

his potential employers what it was that he had to offer to make a case for the value of his services and to point out what that is not only worth from the market perspective, but also in terms of his own motivation.

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Business relationship, close relationship, significant other. You got to get a fit. And my favorite question actually is to ask in job interviews, every job interview and every annual review. Talked to me by a friend of mine who's Tom McCabe, extraordinarily successful guy, CEO of an international bank. We talked about this extensively. We went to high school together.

His question is, how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of this organization? And I said before, the calibrated question is designed to trigger thought. That question immediately changes their perspective of you when you ask it. Like you're telling them, look, I want to advance everybody's life here. I want to play in a big game. I want to be with the people that are at the highest levels of performance in your company,

and I want to move everybody forward with that one question. And it completely changes the outcome because then it's not just what your skill set is for this particular job. Maybe they got a job for you in a mailroom, but you want to be the head of the division and you want to know how to get there and you want to get there by succeeding and taking everybody with you. Now, that's a completely, that's a game-changing conversation. That's a completely different conversation. Maybe they thought they were bringing somebody in to push a mail cart around,

And now you're somebody that says, yeah, not only will I do the little jobs to learn this from the bottom up, but I want to make everybody's life better. I want to help everybody succeed. Now I'm willing to learn. I'm coachable. Now it's a different conversation. So say that question again. Well, I'm willing to learn and I'm coachable and I want to make everybody's life better. I'm doing a virtual keynote a couple of years ago.

the CEO of the company and his entire sales team. And we got a keynote going and one of his sales team had literally asked me while he's on the call, "How do we negotiate with this guy to get more money?" And everybody's kind of holding their breath. What am I gonna say? Am I gonna say it in front of him? And I said, "Ask him this question." And it was a question that I just gave you. How can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to our strategic future?

And when I said that question, he interrupted and said, I wish everybody on this call would ask me that. Absolutely. Well, you know, psychologically speaking, so again, with regard to motivation, people live on hope and opportunity to a large degree. And hope and opportunity are experienced in relationship to a goal. And so to have hope and opportunity, you need two things. You need a goal first.

And then you need to observe yourself walking on a pathway to that goal. And so the lines that you just laid out there, how can I be positioned? I'm going to paraphrase it. If I get it wrong, let me know. How can I position myself?

so that I'm in the company of and accompanying those who are moving forward to the destination the company actually wants to achieve? How can I make sure that I'm doing that? Well, you said on the one hand, you're opening up the vision of the people that you're speaking to, and you're indicating to them very clearly that you want to be where the action is, and you're going to be a part of that. But for yourself, what you've done

is you've opened up the door to meaningful engagement with the company. Now, the price you're going to have to pay for that is responsibility. And that's why you can't use these sorts of questions as a technique, right? If it's a technique, you're a liar. If you've thought this through and that's what you want, well, then you're also the sort of person that anyone with any sense would want to hire. Because it's certainly the case that when I'm

If you have any sense as a manager, when you hire someone, what you're actually doing them is offering a set of indeterminate opportunities. And you're hoping that the person you're hiring is more qualified than they would need to be for the position that you're hiring them for. Now, you may not...

regard that as a requirement, but you're certainly hoping for it. And the best conversations I have with people that I might want to work with or have worked for me, let's say, are the conversations where they clearly indicate that they know where the enterprise is going and why they're

They're perfectly willing to do the tasks that are part and parcel of the specified job, but they've got an eye to the broader vision. And then they have enough perspicacity and intelligence now and then to contribute. Perspicacity? Come on now, I'm a regular guy from Iowa. There you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah. You went to Harvard. You should be able to handle perspicacity. So, and then, you know, you're...

Well, if you surround yourself with people like that, then you always have people who are looking out for where you're going with fresh sets of eyes and who are offering opportunities for you to go there too. And that speaks to the idea that you had that a negotiation is a collaboration.

And you might say, well, I'm not collaborating with my boss. It's like, well, if you're not collaborating with your boss, well, that's it. Well, if you're not, you should think about if that's your problem or his problem or both your problems, or maybe it's time really to go look for some greener pastures. Exactly. Because if it is an adversarial relationship...

all the way to the bottom, and you're being forced or compelled to do things you don't want to do against your wishes, then you're not optimally situated in your life. Now, I know that sometimes by necessity, people can be stuck in situations like that for some period of time. But man, you need an escape route. Like you need to plot an escape route if you're in a situation like that. Yeah, yeah. And I'd like to touch on something else you mentioned just real quickly and talking about that, you know, when you ask that question that you really mean it.

I mean, we've had these discussions in my company and with the people that are running my company and who we're hiring. And one of the things we make clear, like if you can work for me, you're going to work hard. We're going to work you hard. You got to want it. And the phrase that I'm using now is pressure makes diamonds, but you got to want to be a diamond. And we're telling people that up front. You want to be a diamond, we're going to take you there. But you got to want to be a diamond. You got to be willing to be doing the work. And you want to coast. You want it to be

you know, something you do when you're not at home. All right, there are jobs out there like that, but it ain't with me. You know, pressure makes diamonds. You got to want to be a diamond. Yeah. Well, one of the things I would also do to prepare with my clients to prepare them for movement forward was to work through the blind spots of

in their vision, let's say, and the knots in their life that might be interfering with their desire to be a diamond, you know, because people will also misconstrue that. They'll think, well, I don't want to work too hard. It's like, you're not thinking about the work properly if that's your attitude. Because first of all, if you love what you're doing, you might really want to work hard. And if you don't love it, that means you don't really see the point. You don't see the end goal. You don't see the value in it. And then, you know, maybe...

You do see the value, but you're lazy and undisciplined. And maybe you have your rationales for that too. And so all that needs to be worked through. You know, because I do think that, first of all, most of the meaning in people's lives comes from the adoption of voluntary responsibility. And most people do actually want to be diamonds, but they're afraid of the work. And they're also afraid that it's going to be imposed on them, right? And they're going to be forced into it. And they don't have a vision of their own. And so one of the things...

that everyone who's listening and watching might want to understand is that before you go into a job interview,

You know, you might want to have done some serious thinking about just exactly why it is that you want this job. And if the answer is, well, I need to pay next month's rent, like fair enough, you know, but that is not a good enough reason. That's not a vision for your life. And that's not the sort of vision that's going to make you a compelling interviewee because you're shallow, right? You haven't thought through why it is that you're going to do what you're doing. You know, we have this program online called Future Authoring.

And it helps people develop a vision for their life. And so the game is this. And you can think about this as preparation for a crucial job interview. It's like, imagine yourself five years down the road. Okay, so here's the game. You can have what you want, but you have to specify what it is.

And then someone might say, well, you know, I don't really know what I want. And fair enough, because that's a pretty vague and global question. But the program then asks people seven questions. It's like, what would your relationship look like, your primary relationship, your marriage, if it was functioning the way that you would want it to? What about your friendship? What about your business relationships?

Are you educating yourself? How are you going to do that? How do you keep yourself in mental and physical shape? What are you going to do with your time outside of work? How are you going to serve the community? And so that starts to differentiate it, right? And then the game you play there with yourself is, okay, under what conditions would I be motivated to pursue success in those areas? And people are scared of this partly because they don't want to reveal to themselves success.

what they actually want because they might betray themselves or be betrayed by the world. And partly because they're afraid of the responsibility and they don't have enough faith. But it's impossible to hit a target that you don't aim at. And then you might say, well, why is that relevant to a job interview? And there's a bunch of reasons. Is that

If the job interview goes well and you actually start to have a discussion rather than just a staged interview, if you have a vision for your own life, you're going to be able to see if this job will work for you. And that also puts you in a good position in the interview because you pointed out earlier as we were talking that, you know, even in a job interview, that's a negotiation.

And the reason it's a negotiation is because, well, you want the job, but hopefully they want you and you're the right person. And so really the interview should be establishing the preconditions for the collaboration that you described rather than, you know, pulling the wool over some idiot's eyes so that they'll hire you so you can slack off, which seems like a pretty damn dismal vision of what your life might be. Right. Yeah, I agree.

- Agreed, and thinking those things through, I mean, we've interviewed, I've had some interviews for assistants at my job recently that were cut short because the people that were doing the interviews didn't know what company they were interviewing for. They got it mixed up.

And we're like, all right, so there's a certain lack of degree of preparation here. Thank you very much for your time. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, yeah, well, you're going to ask yourself, aren't you, if someone comes in and they don't know what it is that you do or what they would do, then the first question that would come to mind is something like, well, then what do they know? Because...

That's such an elementary error that it's essentially catastrophic. That's an indicator of what they're going to put into the job.

How you do anything is how you do everything. That's right. It's what they already did put into the job. Because the most important task they had as a potential hiree was preparation for the interview. And if they failed that, well, that's not a great start. And that's especially true. You know, another thing for everybody watching and listening to think about too is that

It is the case that first impressions are lasting. There is a very long and dense psychological literature establishing that, you know? And so you want to be prepared enough in the interview so that people walk away from talking to you thinking, geez, you know, it'd be a good thing if we got that guy. And certainly you're in a much better position to do something like

salary negotiation, if that's the impression and the valid impression, right? That's another thing is this can't be, look, man, if you're going to start your new job on a stack of lies, you've already ensured your failure in some fundamental sense.

And so if you're afraid before you go into the interview that you're not prepared, you want to get prepared so that you're not afraid like that. And you can admit your inadequacies, honestly, as long as they're not so, you know, absolutely multiple. There's not so many of them that you're obviously not the candidate for the job. Hey, Jordan, I'm going to have you coaching me on my next job interview. You talked about listening.

Yeah. Okay, so tell me about that and about paying attention. And tell me how you learned why that was so important. And tell me what you learned about how to listen. Wow. All right, so actually listening as opposed to staying silent. It accelerates the process. And you need a set of tools to keep you on track.

to dig into the information without the other side feeling interrogated. And that was really what I learned way back when on the hotline. You know, I get there first day, we get into the training, and I remember the thing that struck me first was they said, "All right, your calls are limited to 20 minutes." And I remember thinking like, "What? 20 minutes? You gotta be kidding me." Like, you know, on TV, they're on the phone with people for hours, if not days. 20 minutes! And they said, "No, as a matter of fact,

If you actually use the skills correctly, it'll take less than that. And so you get taught a set of listening skills on how to dial in and the clues of what to listen for and then how to get the person interacting with you without making them feel interrogated. And suddenly there were astonishing changes in behavior in a person on the other side. You get somebody on the phone who's genuinely suicidal and 15, 17, 18 minutes later, they're in a good place.

And they're ready to go back and take on the world based on the experience. So, and then I started learning some of the science after it, you know, science, pseudoscientists. You know, I'm a layman. I'm not a scientist. But in our capacity, our capacity to hear words exceeds the amount of information we can keep in our head. But the amount of information in your tone of voice is going to tell me more than the words are.

So how I learned to listen was the words are the starting point, but the tone of voice and the body language and what's the alignment. And then if there's a shift in the alignment in that moment, you know, to look for it and then anticipate. I know now that you as a human being, you in general terms, the negativity is going to cloud your thinking more than anything else. So I'm listening for those negatives.

And from the hotline, and now what we do in a Black Swan method, how do I deactivate those negatives to clear your head or even anticipate them? So it's applied emotional intelligence. And then why listen? Because what we would call in hostage negotiation a change of behavior, and in business negotiation or personal interactions, you changing your mind is to the best outcome.

is going to come much more quickly and effectively and in a lasting way than if I talked you into it or if I misled you. You know, I want whatever agreement we come to to be durable, to last, without me having to come back to you daily to see where we are. And that's what listening is really about, understanding the nuances of

of what's now backed up by neuroscience and what people in hostage negotiation and you as a practitioner in the field of human nature for years came to learn was the reality of how human beings think and how they react. Ever heard of a data broker? They're the middlemen collecting and selling all those digital footprints you leave online. They can stitch together detailed profiles which include your browsing history, online searches, and location data.

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You can become a micromanager because you have a certain obsessiveness of character, let's say, and a certain intrinsic distrust. And then that's something you should work on. But you can also become a micromanager if you negotiate a very bad agreement with someone. Because if you've talked them into it or forced them into it, then...

and they feel that they've been taken advantage of, then their heart won't be in the task. And what that will mean is that they will be looking for escape routes all the time instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing, and that you'll have to go back to them in the most frustrating of manners and use up all your valuable time and energy trying to enforce a stupid agreement that you shouldn't have made to begin with. You know, and this is part of the problem. You said, you know, you don't want to talk someone into something.

Now, that's not the same as informing them about an opportunity that they might not have conceptualized and laying out a different route. But really what you're aiming for is voluntary agreement, like full voluntary agreement. And part of the reason, and you touched on this, part of the reason that listening is so necessary is because if you listen to the person, you can find out and help them find out

what it is that they actually want and how that could conceivably be delivered to them. And, you know, you might think the person already knows that, but it's not necessarily the case. You know, people think, well, they're talking. In fact, that's how most people think, period, is when they're talking. And it also means if no one's listening to them, they almost never have an opportunity to think. You know, you could imagine, like, even if you're running a restaurant, I shouldn't say even, it's very difficult to run a restaurant. If you're running a restaurant, you're hiring a dishwasher.

One of the things you're going to be concerned about is whether that kid is going to show up to work because absenteeism in entry-level jobs like dishwashing is rife. And the probability that the guy won't show up is pretty high. And so that drives restaurateurs mad. So what you want to find out from the dishwasher, at least in principle, is...

How can we get you here 15 minutes early every day? It's got to be a serious question. It's like, I want you to think about this for a minute. You're 15, let's say. You got your entry-level dishwasher jobs. Under what conditions would you be pleased enough to come to this meeting

workplace so that you actually come? And what impediments can you imagine that might arise? And how can we set the situation up so that that probability is decreased? And that is all you want to know from the kid that what he thinks might sideline him so that you can circumvent it if possible. And obviously, the same thing applies as you scale up the sophistication of the negotiations. How can we make this work? That's a good question.

guideline for a successful negotiation not how could i come out of this ahead that's such a stupid way of looking at a situation because it's so temporary right if i screw you over while we're talking because i'm better at verbally manipulating you and i think you won't take that out on me opportunity by opportunity as we move forward into the future i'm an absolute bloody damn fool

Exactly, yeah. You're going to take it out on them, you're going to look for outs, or even when problems arise, you're just going to keep silent. You'll be like, "Ah, you know what? I know people will hurt you by doing nothing, and you don't want that to happen either." The Black Swan technique that you referred to, tell me about that. Well, it's a collection of the emotional intelligence skills that started with hostage negotiation. There were eight FBI hostage negotiation skills.

And I came out thinking like, you know, there's some adaptability here. After I went through the Kennedy School, I was lucky enough, I got into Harvard Law School's negotiation course as a student when I was an FBI agent. And I worked with some brilliant people there, Sheila Heen, Doug Stone, Bob Mnookin, Bob Bordone, brilliant people. And I just did my hostage negotiation thing while I was going through the course.

And they said to me, you know, you're doing the same thing we are. The stakes are different, but the dynamics are the same. So I thought, all right, so I'll use these. FBI called them active listening skills. Harvard called them active listening skills. We had made them very definable, very practical, very usable. Because when you're teaching skills to cops, if it's not usable and practical and clear, you get booed off the stage fast. They want practical stuff.

And when Harvard really gave me the green light, like this stuff works, I started teaching at Georgetown. Afterwards, my son Brandon was a critical part of the development of those skills. And we just took the eight skills. We got them nine now. We made some slight tweaks in some of the thoughts as we applied them to business and personal life. But it's a collection of emotional intelligence, tactical empathy skills that work because of the way human beings are wired emotionally.

worldwide. Just they work on the limbic system, which is the emotional components, the circuitry, the wiring in the brain that everybody has by virtue of the fact that they're human. And it pretty much operates the same regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, geography, diet, because you're human.

So I want to have you walk us through two things. Maybe you can take us through what a hostage negotiation situation might look like and how it is that that desirable outcome can be negotiated under those circumstances. So I'd like to know that. But

You talked about active listening skills, and you mentioned that there were nine components to that. Is it possible to walk through those nine? Sure, yeah. And I think a better term these days is really proactive. You know, you're anticipating, you're paying really close attention, you're understanding how the person is wired, and you're understanding what sort of neurochemical changes take place when you feel understood.

I stand up in front of a group of business people on a regular basis and I'll say to them, how much time do you have for somebody who's not listening to you? And they don't have any time for it. Now, they'll test them a little bit. They'll interact shortly. But somebody's only pitching or somebody's only got answers. It doesn't even matter how good those answers are because if somebody's not listening, at some point in time, they're going to need an adjustment.

And if they're not listening, they're not going to make that adjustment. You know, salesperson, counterpart of any kind. You come up to me with the perfect answer. Maybe you got four perfect answers. You're most interested in giving me your answers as opposed to hearing me out first. I know at some point in time, you're not going to have a perfect answer. And if you haven't been listening, you're not going to catch it. And we're going to have some real problems. So you start showing how you listen first.

intermittently, proactively, then it's really gonna accelerate our conversation. And I know that when there's a problem, you're gonna catch it instead of me having to come back to you after the problem's become very damaging. It's about anticipating and staying ahead of the game.

In general terms, that's what it's all about. Well, that's part of establishing a relationship, eh? Instead of selling. You know, I went out to sell 20 years ago, probably out of academia. I was still practicing as a professor, but I also started to sell some products that I had designed. And I had the wrong idea about sales really to begin with. I had a solution to a set of problems that I thought were rife in the business world.

And I wanted to convince, probably, with evidence that the solution I had developed was going to work and it was a hiring solution. But what I didn't understand, it took me a while to understand, was that I was actually introducing a problem into the mix because they already had a way of hiring. And so if they were going to switch to me, there was a lot of retooling that needed to be done. And I didn't actually know what their problems were.

And so I learned eventually that there was no such thing as selling. There was the establishment of a relationship and also the feeling out. It's like if you go talk to someone in a given company, it isn't necessarily the case that they're going to want what you're buying. You've got to figure out what their problems are. And one of the things that's really cool about that, too, is that if you're entrepreneurially oriented and you've made a product,

and you go out and you try to sell it to 10 people, and they don't buy it, but all 10 of them tell you about a different problem and all of them have it, you now know what your next product could be, at least in principle, because you know where the actual marketplace problem is. And I learned after that, that software designers, for example, who have a track record, if they're designing a new piece of software, they do it in collaboration with their customers.

They build a bit of it, they go ask them, you know, how do you think about this? Does it solve the problems that you have? And if they say no, they modify it. Like there's a constant dialogue between the market, let's say, and the producer. You don't build a better mousetrap and have the world beat a path to your door. You do it in collaboration. And if you can get people to tell you their problems, then you can be the person who can work with them for a solution. And then they're going to be pretty damn happy when you show up for a sales call, right?

Right. So, and you talked earlier about iterability too, you know, that you want to make sure that you've conducted the conversation so that the person would like it if the conversation happened again. And that is the, that's like the definition of a relationship. Like you have a relationship with someone who,

with whom you would like to continue the conversation indefinitely. And the great salespeople, they're relationship managers, man. That's what they do. And they have their Rolodex full of the people they know. And they listen to them. They don't go sell them junk that doesn't work to rip them off to make a quick buck and vanish. That's what psychopaths do. And it's not a very good strategy. So, all right. So you talked about proactive listening. And you give the person an opportunity to lay out what they have to say.

What other steps are associated with this nine-step process? Well, it's nine tools as opposed to nine steps. You want to gather information and establish a relationship simultaneously. Now, most people think you do one or the other. Hey, how are your kids? Where did you go to school? What do your kids do? Are your kids in Little League? The small talk.

that's people, this common ground thing, which is, it's for C players. Common ground, in my opinion, was designed initially like, if we got similar common ground, then ideally you understand where I'm coming from. But in point of fact, it's highly inefficient. Look at your siblings.

- How much more common ground could you possibly have than with the people you grew up with? Talk about common ground in geography, ethnicity, diet, religion, as much as possible. And how many family gatherings around holidays or screaming matches? That's what common ground will get you. But what people really want to know is do you understand what my problems are? Do you understand my perspective? Do you understand where I'm coming from? So if I dial in to start out understanding,

and feel you out. And I'm gonna say, seems like this whole process has frustrated you. Seems like there's a reason that you're struggling with this. You know, I'm actually, I'm taking emotionally intelligent, educated guesses, and I'm listening. Now that gives me, gets me into an information gathering process and relationship building process simultaneously instead of one and then the other, which is highly inefficient.

which is why this ends up being a much, this indirect route ends up being much faster. I'll look at you and I say, look, look, it seems like you're having a good day. If you look like you're having a good day. I don't ask people how they are. I make a guess as to how they are based on what I'm seeing because that tells them right away, I'm dialing into you. I'm seeing you as you are. I'm not trying to make you something you're not.

That gives me an advantage right off the bat. I get help in airports and in places where people are constantly interacting with people and customer service faster than anybody else does. Because if I see the lady behind the counter at LAX who's clearly worn out and distressed by the last five people that were demanding, and I walk up and I go like, seems like it's been a tough day.

She's helping me right off the bat. I don't walk up and say, how are you today? As if I'm trying to make her happy. I'm letting her know that I see her as a human being. And I'm starting off much faster with far less friction than

By actually paying attention to people with this proactive listening set of skills than other people are. So you're putting yourself in her position, really, and by using nonverbal cues and so forth to occupy the same conceptual space that she has. Right. Well, and I was thinking, too, while you were saying that, you know, that you're also approaching...

Because if you're selling something, you might think that your goal is to sell, like the product, right? But you see, the thing is, too, you don't know if that's your goal, because you might not want to establish a short, medium, or long-term relationship with the person that you're talking to. You might really want to, but you might not, too. You might not be the right vendor for them.

You might not be offering a solution to a problem they have. They might be a psychopathic son of a bitch. That's unlikely, but it's possible. It's possible. It could be a real problem. Well, and also, especially if you're dealing with big companies, you know, if you...

enter into a sales agreement with a company, so you've hit a home run from the monetary perspective, you can easily end up as the employee of someone you don't want to work for, right? So you have to be very careful. And so one of the things I try to do this with my podcast is like, we haven't talked before and

I want to get myself in the headspace before the podcast, like, well, who is this person? Like, what is it that they're up to, you know? And why have they had the course of success that they've had? The encounter in some ways is open-ended. It's like, I'm here because I think something might arise out of this that's positive, but I'm not exactly sure what it might be. And so I need to know what they want, for sure, maybe more than anything else. And then I want to see if there's something here for both of us that we couldn't accomplish on our own.

And then that, it also stops you from using the club, say, if you're a sales, if you're selling or if you're negotiating. And that's a very ineffective way of moving forward anyways. People hate that fundamentally and they get resentful and bitter about it. And so, okay, so you try to put yourself in another person's position and that's not a technique. Again, you're doing that by actually paying attention. And there's a bit of an open-endedness about what it is that you're

that you're aiming at and how you're going to go about it. So you have the proactive listening element, you have the close attention. You're not too concerned with that sort of formulaic small talk that might establish a false consensus or similarity and that can easily become manipulative. Okay, so what else? What else? Our friends over at Legacy Box offer a simple and safe solution for digitizing all your memories. Do you know where that old box of home movies is? Have you checked to make sure it isn't in an environment that's too hot or too damp?

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Yeah, well, then I'm going to tease out, you know, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better, which is a little bit of the point you were making a moment ago. What do you really want from the person? What are they like? A friend of mine, Joe Polish, has a phrase, don't deal with people who are half. And Joe says half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. They suck the life out of you. And they're very inefficient, and they make your life miserable.

So I'm going to want to try to find out what kind of person you are, how good of a match we are, how our core values line up, because I want a long collaboration that's prosperous for both of us. Now, you might not want that, and you're entitled to not wanting that. But then I'm entitled to move on because I want to find somebody that wants that.

Well, and you also definitely want to figure that out. Because if that's your goal, because that is the establishment of a productive, generous, collaborative, goal-oriented relationship that's mutually desirable. And

You want to let the other person reveal themselves because you don't want to delude yourself, even as a consequence of your own verbal ability. You don't want to delude yourself into thinking you've established the kind of relationship you wanted and find out that you were wrong. That's another reason to listen. It's like you want to be sure you got the picture. Yeah, yeah. So you know what sort of thing you're stepping into. Right, right. And I know it's going to sound very harsh.

But when I was teaching at USC, I had a female come up to me in a class and she's like, you know, a lot of employers out there that want to pay me less because I'm a female. If I got an employer that's paying me less because I'm a female, how do I negotiate a better deal? And I said, all right, so I'm going to ask, answer you as if I was your dad. And you just asked me, hey, the guy I'm in a relationship with treats me badly. How do I get him to treat me better? My answer to you is go someplace else. There are plenty of places where

You want to be somewhere where they value you. And if their core value is to pay you less based on your agenda, they're going bankrupt anyway. That's a bad strategy. And you don't want to go down the tubes with them. So you want to be someplace where somebody values your work. Don't try to fix a bad employer any more than you try to fix a bad significant other.

There's somebody out there better for you and you're far happier and far more productive and have a far better life by moving on. So if the person, whether you're in sales or whether it's your employer, if their core values don't line up with yours, they're entitled to their core values, move on and line up with a team that's going to move you farther ahead in your life than anybody else that doesn't line up with you ever would.

You said that you shouldn't try to fix a bad employer. The managerial literature indicates very clearly, too, that you shouldn't try to fix a bad employee. Two-way relationship. I'd like your thoughts on this. Well, absolutely. First of all, it's not easy to fix someone. It takes a long time.

It's a dubious enterprise and they need to be bloody well fully on board with that and willing to make the appropriate changes. And the probability that you're going to have an errant employee with a history of bad behavior and that you as a manager, say with 20 people to attend to, are going to make substantive changes in that person's basic psychological makeup is...

Well, the evidence suggests very strongly that you're just not going to. And all the literature I read that was at the crossover between the clinical and the managerial suggested that

you spend all your time as a productive manager with your best people. And what that also implies is those are the people that you hire. You know, and with regards to firing people, which is also a kind of negotiation, you know, I had this friend who's one rough guy and companies used to hire him to fire people. And I didn't like firing people and I still don't. And I asked him how he tolerated the emotional pressure

stress that came along with that. And he said that he liked doing it. And I said, what do you mean you like doing it? Because I was just like outside of my wheelhouse. But I knew this guy and I respected him. And he said, look, I go into companies and I find the people who kiss up and punch down

I find the people who take all the credit. I find the people who don't distribute any of the benefits. I find the manipulators. I find the people who are lying about their motivation or even who are just in the wrong place doing something they shouldn't be doing. And I let them know that I see what they're doing and I'm pretty damn happy when they leave. And I thought, hey, man,

Fair enough, you know. And the negotiation there, like if you do have an employee that isn't performing well, part of the negotiation there is to say something like, look, it should be evident to both of us that there's something that isn't right about what's happening here. And we could drag this out painfully, kicking and screaming, bitter and resentful for the next 15 years, or we could just like cut our losses and maybe you could go find something that would suit you.

And, you know, I've seen this in my clinical practice because I had lots of people who came to me in the aftermath of being fired. And, of course, that was often, almost always, to some degree devastating. But it wasn't that uncommon for people six months later, especially if they actually did try to put themselves back together, to be immensely relieved that they no longer had that particular noose around their neck.

Yeah, there's so many reasons why the severing of a bad relationship is better for both parties. And who has to do the severing is often the hard part. I was involved in trying to let somebody at a charitable organization go a number of years ago, affiliated with a church, and I'm going to the minister of the church for guidance.

And I'm expecting him to say to me, because this was a great man. Man's name was Arthur Caliandro, minister of Marble Collegiate Church, New York City. Phenomenal human being, one of the best guys I've ever known. And I thought Arthur was going to counsel me on, you know, guidance and, you know, all the stuff I expected. And he looked at me and he said, there's no gentle way to cut somebody's head off. And I thought, wow. You know, and for Arthur to tell me that,

was the reality of business relationships, personal relationships. Like if it's bad for you, it's bad for them too. And they're going to be better off. If they're half for you, if they're hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, you are for them too. So you're not doing anybody a favor by hanging on to a bad relationship. It's hard to sever it.

And in many cases, the jolt that comes from it leaves both sides much better off. Yeah, well, I know a phrase like that, too. I don't know if this was something specific to northern Alberta, but if you have to cut the tail off a cat, you don't do it an inch at a time.

Yeah, well said. Yeah, that's rough, but it makes sense. All right, so we wandered a fair ways through the nine tools that you associated with proactive listening. Is there more to flesh out there? Well, they're mostly the different skills label is a verbal observation. It sounds like there's something on your mind. It sounds like what I just said is causing you hesitation.

There's something we refer to as a mirror that's just repeating one to three-ish words of what somebody just said. It's not the body language mirror. It actually really opens up people's thinking. Paraphrasing, you're putting yourself in a position to come up with a great summary for the other side, summarize their perspective. If you can summarize the other side's perspective, the two of you are on the same sheet of music. There's calibrated questions, what and how questions that are designed to cause somebody to think about somebody.

I might say, instead of me saying to you, like, look, you got to take action because the status quo is killing you. Instead of, if I want to put that thought in your head, I'm going to say, what happens if you do nothing? How are you better off by failing to address this problem? You know, those are two different questions designed to uncover the same thing, which is pointing out to you,

The comfort of inaction, I think Kennedy made some statement about that, the long-range consequences of comfortable inaction far outweigh addressing the problem. That's an absolutely crucial point. I mean, one of the things that

And this is an impediment to negotiation in marital relationships constantly. And it's an absolute killer. You know, like, I don't like conflict. But I learned something a long time ago. And I learned that conflict delayed was conflict continued and multiplied. And so if I have an issue with my wife, I would rather... You know, I read a paper yesterday. I really like this paper. It was really smart.

They were doing fMRI scanning, looking at activation of pain systems in relationship to other people's pain. And there's quite a variability in that. So people high in trade agreeableness who are easy to get along with and who are sympathetic and empathetic, but who can be easily taken advantage of, by the way. That's one end of the distribution. The other end is disagreeable people who can be callous and hurtful, blunt.

Now, slightly somewhat disagreeable managers, by the way, are more successful. And many people who seek therapy are agreeable people who are being taken advantage of. So the fact that you're empathetic and sympathetic is not a virtue without its vices or dangers. The brain research revealed that the more empathic people had a larger degree of pain

activation in the pain systems when they saw the pain of other people. Okay, so now if you don't like conflict, part of the reason you don't like conflict is because if you see the person you're having conflict with in pain, you're going to mirror that pain. So that's uncomfortable. And I'm an agreeable person. So if I see someone in pain, it strikes me to the core. But I learned that if I deferred conflict, then it's like the cat with its tail being cut off an inch at a time. It's like

we don't have the blowout and so we're minimizing the pain in the present but we're radically prolonging it across our iterated interactions. And so it's much better just to call a spade a spade and to say, "Look, I see the elephant under the rug, I see the snake's tail poking out from the cabinet. We're going to sort this out right here and now and we're going to straighten it out and that's going to be delving into the depths and there's going to be discomfort in that."

But if we can identify the problem and negotiate a compelling mutual solution, we don't have to have this problem anymore. And man, it's such a... You know, I saw couples all the time who had the same bloody fight every day for 30 years. You know? It's just... That's hell. And it's much better just to have, like, the discussion, even though that's that inaction, you know, that you pointed to, that you described Kennedy as pointing to. It's the...

Classically speaking, even theologically, there is much more stress placed on sins of commission, right? Things you do that are clearly wrong, but avoiding doing something right. That does people in, man, especially if they do that repeatedly. And they do it because they don't want to cause trouble, because they want to avoid conflict. It's like there's no avoiding necessary conflict. It's a downward spiral.

Yeah, it ends up, you end up having your discussion in divorce court, right, for $200 an hour, right, while your bank accounts are drained. Making the lawyers rich, yeah. Lawyers buying a new car, we're keeping the argument going. Yeah, now you said when you were trying to circumvent the proclivity for inaction, you'd ask questions like,

This is something I used to do when I was talking to people about, say, negotiating for a raise if they were resentful about their current situation, something like that. One of the things we would do is say, okay, think about how you feel about the situation you're in right now. Okay, now imagine yourself 10 years older. You're in the same position, okay, except you're 10 years older. You're 10 years older, yeah. You bet, man. You've put yourself through an awful lot of misery before.

for 10 years. You're weaker because you've backed off, right? You're more bitter, you're more hopeless, you're suffering from more pain. Like, think about that. Like, empathize with that future person and tell me what you do in the present to avoid that fate. People would think, oh my God, you know, that's the last thing I want. Because everyone thinks, well, I'll deal with it tomorrow. But you can say, well, yeah, you haven't dealt with it for the last five years.

And how's that gone for you? Like, would it have been better if you would have dealt with it five years ago? And now, you know, stretch that out 10 years into the future. See, because that's so, it's such an interesting thing to do because the person has this impediment of the conflict in front of them that's causing them to be afraid. And what you do is you swing that behind them. It's like getting the devil behind them. Get the behind me Satan, I think is the right word. It's like, this is the thing you're afraid of.

But you should have a different fear pushing you forward that's way more profound, and that would be the fear of the consequences of inaction, right? And

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Yeah, the first one is the what and how questions. I can trigger you into really a very sort of narrow, confined mental state without you feeling it's narrow or confined. I can put you right there with a what question or a how question. You know, one of my favorite ones these days is if somebody, whatever they're doing for a living, and if I ask them what they do for a living, they're going to give me pretty much a Vakian response. I help people do this or whatever.

I help people do that. Or they're going to give me a memorized response. It's not a conversation. First time I did this, I'm at a Hollywood party a couple of years ago, fundraiser for Forrest Whitaker, I believe. And I'm talking to one of the self-involved people there. Forrest is a great human being, by the way, phenomenal human being.

But I'm talking to this self-involved guy and I don't want to hear his self-involved conversation. So instead of asking him what does he do for a living, I go, what do you love about what you do for a living? Now what I've done with that what question is I have put him right square in to a part of his brain focused on love. And he transformed in front of my eyes. And I saw him light up. So I took the what question and I put him right there.

And he lit up and he started talking to me about all the things that made him come alive as a human being. And it ended up being a really satisfying question. Now, it's one of my stock questions in nearly any interaction because I want to find out about what you're about. What are you into? It's going to give me your core values almost right off the bat in a very quick way.

Every now and then. Can you ask what people are afraid of the same way, or do you focus on the positive? Now, you're bringing in the secondary point, which I know you know. Many psychologists, many human nature practitioners believe that everything we do is motivated by either love or fear. So I will also ask in a business context when I'm trying to find out what the motivations are, I'll say, what are you afraid of happening here?

Because then, now, I've got them into a different headspace. And I know that fear is a very substantial, significant, motivating factor in people's lives. I'm not going to wield it like a weapon. I'm going to want to become aware of it with you in a collaborative way. And I will ask a question that's very similar to that in business conversations when we're talking about whether or not we're going to collaborate. Because I need to know the fears are going to drive you.

The love is going to drive you, but fear has a tendency to overcome fear of loss, a limited number of fears. They'll overcome the love if you're not careful. So I want to know what the fears are so I can map out better how I can help you. I would say, you know, if you're having a conversation with your wife and it starts to get choppy, this probably occurs in any conversation, right?

I suppose the way you would construe that from a psychoanalytic point of view is that you're starting to encounter resistances. The person doesn't want to move in that direction. Maybe that's even a direction that you jointly had negotiated would be desirable, at least in principle. But then you do want to find out, okay, what are the obstacles? What are the fears? Because

the fears will become obstacles. And if they're not cleared out, there'll be invisible barriers to progress, right? And it's so interesting, you know, when you get people to lay out what they're afraid of and then what they perceive as obstacles, sometimes merely letting them describe what it is that they're afraid of will make the fear evaporate because they realize that that's a fear that applied in a different situation or that, you know, that they've actually grown out of without really noticing.

Or that you've already established a pattern of behavior that indicates that they don't have to be afraid of that from you. And, you know, sometimes you can have a dialogue about that and clear away the obstacles, but often listening is sufficient to clear those away by itself. You know, these active proactive listening skills that you have been discussing, many of them have their roots in

in Carl Rogers' work. Ah, yes, of course. Yeah, much of it does. Absolutely. He was really quite brilliant at detailing out the preconditions for a conversation. And that other point you made about mirroring and summarizing, that's one of the only things I've ever really discovered that actually works in some ways as a technique. Now, it still has to be honest, but

There is almost nothing more useful in a conversation than keeping track of what it is that the person is saying, and then at the right moment saying,

here's what I think you just said you know compressing it because that's also a favor to you because you could remember it then but also to them right to to compact it in a in a in a more elegant casing let's say and it's such a relief to the person it's a mark of respect because it shows that you've been paying attention and it's such a relief to the person because they now know that

you have decided that their concerns are sufficiently worth attending to that you actually did, in fact, pay attention. Right, exactly. So when you're negotiating with a hostage in a hostage situation, because that's a high-stakes situation, what have you found has had the most effective consequence? Is it listening? Like, what do you do in a situation like that that...

that would be different perhaps, or the same for that matter, that you would do in a business negotiation or marital negotiation? Yeah, well, to some degree, every interaction that somebody's frustrated with where they've chosen an action that's adverse, to some degree, there's an element of driving them of not being heard. I'm going to deactivate the adversarial responses

to some degree, either a little or a lot, just by making them feel hurt. And whatever I don't deactivate is going to get us down to the real issues. It's going to separate the wheat from the chaff, if you will. So I'm going to start listening right off the bat, and I'm also going to start listening for, you know, what's the deep-seated problem here.

And as you said before, identifying the elephant in a room often makes, if it doesn't make the elephant disappear, it makes it diminish far much more. And then the negativity that we talked about, and you mentioned the fMRI scans, it's been shown consistently in a number of fMRI studies that simply describing negativity diminished it every time. Now, the degree it diminishes and changes

But it diminishes describing it, labeling it, calling it out, not denying it, not explaining it, just describing it, always moves you closer to the deal. Always. Now, how much it moves you. Well, partly it's because, you know, partly what happens is that imagine you're being chased by something. One of the reasons you're afraid of it is because you observe yourself running.

Now imagine you turn around and face it. You've instantly signaled to yourself that you have faith in the part of you that's looking at the problem. And that will immediately produce positive emotion and diminish negative emotion. It's unbelievably reliable. And the psychophysiological transformation is systemic. Like it's been mapped from the, literally from the level of DNA upward.

So there's a complete, it's like you're inhabited by a different spirit when you're running from something that's chasing you and when you turn around to confront it. And so if you do that collaboratively, you also indicate to the person, let's say if the person is terrified,

They're the hostage taker, but they're still terrified at the situation they've got themselves into. If they see that you're brave enough to face the reality of the situation, they're going to trust you a hell of a lot more than they would otherwise. And so you do indicate that by listening. So what kind of situations have you been in on the hostage front that... Tell me a story, if you would, about one of the situations that you've been in where...

Were you able to put what you know into practice and how did that turn out? Yeah, well, I was very early in my career, I was lucky enough to be involved in a bank robbery with hostages, which while it happens in the movies all the time, in the real world, it's a very rare event. Usually the bank robbers are long gone before the police show up and there's almost never a situation where there's a negotiation of bank with hostages.

It happened in New York City early in my career, and it had been 20 years since one had happened in New York City prior to that. That's how rare they are. And there were two bank robbers inside. One guy was a highly manipulative person who figured all along that he could outwit everybody. And he actually demonstrated a lot of techniques that I would refer to as a great CEO negotiator. He was constantly diminishing his influence on the inside.

We got on the phone with him early on. He's like, these guys I'm in here with, they're more dangerous than I am. As a matter of fact, I'm afraid of them. It's like a CEO saying like, look, I can't make this deal because my board's going to fire me. You know, I don't know. I don't have any influence in my company. I'm a figurehead. That's an important guy. The guy who's diminishing their influence has a lot of it and doesn't want to get cornered. And that's exactly what this bank robber was about. Now, I gently confronted him.

I was the second negotiator on the phone and I was coached into some gentle confrontation by the NYPD Lieutenant Hugh McGowan, brilliant guy. He said, "I want you to do this, this, and this, and I want you to confront this guy on his name first chance you get because this guy wouldn't even give us his name." What happens when you give up your name? When you give someone your name, you agree to influence. And if you refuse to give your name voluntarily,

then you're holding a barrier up. And this guy had refused to give us even his first name all along. And about five hours in, when I was called in to be the next negotiator on the phone, we'd figured out who he was. And Hugh said, you know, I want you to brace him with his name. You know, not accusingly, but let him know that we know who he is and see what happens. Triggered a bunch of changes. He immediately first said,

When it got a hostage, he put her on the phone to show us that he still had live hostages inside without making a threat. I'm talking to him and suddenly this female comes on the phone. She says, I'm okay. And I'm completely caught off guard. And he takes the phone back away from her. And it was his way of reminding us he had hostages without making a threat. Because he was smart enough that he knew that if he tempted fate too much, there's a pretty good chance that a sniper would take him out. He didn't want that. He wanted to figure his way out.

I gently confronted him on a couple of other things. It was definite confrontation, but it was gentle. He hands off the phone to the other bank robber who does not want to be there. This guy is more concerned with surviving than getting away. And I dial into him very quickly and just with what I often refer to as the late night FM DJ voice. About 90 seconds into my conversation with this guy, he says, I trust you.

And two hours later, he was surrendering to me outside of the bank. What happened to the other guy who was more manipulative and smarter and more in control? Well, he never, right up to the last minute, about 12 hours into the scenario, he got talked out. Now, the second bank robber comes out, explains everything to us about what's going on. There aren't seven people inside. There aren't seven bank robbers from different countries.

There's one guy left, and yeah, even though he still won't admit what his name is, that is the name that you have. So we get back on the phone with him, and now I'm out of the game because I'm debriefing the guy who surrendered to me. Next negotiator up is a hostage negotiator named Dominic Messino, NYPD negotiator that, to this day, Dominic has since deceased. But Dominic was one of the world's great closers. Dominic was a closer.

And he just gently, narrowly kept taking ground away from the other guy that was inside. And his first conversation with him was gentle confrontation. He said, all right, so we've got your partner out here. We know who you are. We know what's going on. What do you want me to call you? And even being told that we had his name, this guy comes back and says, call me Billy, which is not his name.

Dominic is smart enough to go like, "I'm not going to get into a fight with this guy over his name." He's like, "You want me to call you Billy? Okay, I'll call you Billy." Dominic continued to talk to him. We start working on this guy to come out. So what does he do to continue to maintain control inside and buy himself time? He lets the hostages go. He's got three of them inside. He's got hostages, you know, he's got spares.

And he knows that if he lets a hostage go, the chances of us assaulting the building now diminish radically and buy him more time. So he lets one go. And finally, he lets another one go. And the irony of this guy's nature in not collaborating with us, no matter what, was when it came down at the end, while we're

Pressuring him to let the third hostage go he agrees to come out just to spite us And these type of situations a human being trapped into in a foreign environment Which is not their home. We call it unprepared Unprepared for he's not prepared for long siege in a bank that he's walked into first thing in the morning and

He's not going to be able to get a good night's sleep. He's going to start running out of gas at about 12 hours in. It's just the nature of human beings. And almost exactly 12 hours into the siege, he agrees to come out and he is looking around. I can see the images in my head right up to the moment that we put handcuffs on him. He was still looking for a way out. And interestingly enough, while he was inside,

The part of the bank was under construction, so what he did was he took a lot of the bank money and he set it on fire in the middle of the floor, and then he hid a lot of bank money in the construction in the walls. Obviously with the plan, they're not gonna miss the hidden money in the walls, they're gonna think that it was all burned up. I'm gonna be able to come back here when I get a chance

when I'm out on bail and I'm going to grab the spare money and I'm going to get out of here. That's how he convinced himself that it was finally okay to surrender. Earning your degree online doesn't mean you have to go about it alone. At Capella University, we're here to support you when you're ready. From enrollment counselors who get to know you and your goals, to academic coaches who can help you form a plan to stay on track. We care about your success and are dedicated to helping you pursue your goals.

Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu. I want to maybe close this up with two questions, and they're somewhat interrelated. When we first started talking, and obviously all the way through this, I noted that you have a very... You mentioned you brought this up, this FM radio voice, and I noticed immediately...

Not that this is a testament to my powers of observation, but that you have a very calm and measured voice and a patient voice as well. And so I want to talk about that. And then I want to talk about something potentially associated. And that's the role of, let's say, deception versus truth in negotiation and sales. You know, the amateur salesman that I've worked

met and been for that matter. I wouldn't, I never used deception. So that's not exactly true, but the amateur salesman that I've met who think that an appropriate sales venture ends with, you know, you as the brilliant manipulator, convincing the idiot who's made the purchase that he needed something he didn't need are perfectly willing to use deception and they regard the outcome as the victory. But, uh,

My sense has been that a negotiation that you can't obtain with truth is one that's very unlikely to have any lasting staying power. And it also has complications that are just going to multiply like mad. But I'm wondering, you know, even in these tense situations that you're in, how do you view the relationship between truth and deception in negotiation? And then I'm interested, too, in the relationship between that and truth.

The communication pattern that you have developed, the voice that you use, the cadence, you know, the calmness, how much of that was practiced, how much of it is... Practiced things can be genuine too. But I guess I'm trying to differentiate, you know, persona from what's genuine. And I'm trying to see that in the relationship between deception and truth in negotiation. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I'll start on the first one, deception, first. Deception is always a bad idea. And, you know, my currency is integrity. Now, if you deceive somebody, they're going to find out. And the invitation to deceive, you know, in a hostage negotiation world, they're going to tempt us because, number one, they're better liars than we are anyway. So they're going to, since they're better at it, they're going to spot it right away. So then you just fail the test.

And secondly, they're going to find out and then your credibility is gone. If they find out that you're a liar before they come out, people get killed. And one of my favorite conversations, favorite, I mean, it was, I'm working at kidnapping in the Middle East. And it looks, Al Qaeda's got a gentleman and I'm talking to the gentleman's widow-to-be and his boss. The hostage was Paul Johnson.

And we want the woman that we're just darn near completely sure Al Qaeda is going to kill him on deadline. And it looks that way. That ends up being what ends up happening. And I want her to go into the media and do an interview before it happens. And Paul Johnson's boss, great human being, is watching out for this young lady and is not exposing her to harm and protecting her as much as possible. And he looks at me and he says, if she does this, is this going to save her husband's life?

Now, I don't think it's going to. And I look at him and I say, this is probably not within reach. And he said, I didn't think so. I just want to see if you're going to lie to me. We'll do whatever you want. And so I, you know, I, despite what the temptation was, you know, my core value, core values are what you would still do, even if it costs you. And I was willing to risk her collaboration over my integrity.

And it ended up increasing the relationship as a result. And that's the dynamic in life. I mean, people want to know that you'll tell them the truth. They want to know that you're a straight shooter. They want to know if there's bad news. You're not going to hide it from them. Even by this deception by omission. Okay, so you didn't say anything. You still know. And so I'm a very strong believer that deception by commission or omission will always cost you far more than

than sticking to your integrity ever will. How did you learn that? Wow. Yeah, no kidding. You know, I think, you know, my father was a hard man and his integrity was extremely important to him. Both my parents were that way. And I think I had that drilled into my head as a core value growing up. And then I think I probably made a mistake a couple of times

And besides the values that my parents gave me, I think I screwed up a few times and paid for it, probably. So let's sum up here a little bit, if we can. So, and I'll do a little bit of it, maybe you could do a little bit of it, filling in where I miss. So, if you're negotiating with someone, you're trying to find out what they want, and you're honest about what you want,

And you're trying to formulate a joint vision and plot a course forward for both of you that you're both very happy about and that you would abide by voluntarily. And if you're very fortunate, that's going to be a long-term reciprocal relationship. That's a pretty good summary. You're good at this summary stuff. And so you want to find out, too, if the person that you're attempting to play with, let's say, isn't interested in that kind of outcome. And so...

Part of the reason you listen to them is to find out what they want so that you can negotiate that outcome that you desire and that hypothetically they desire. But you also want to find out if that isn't what they want so that you don't waste your time or theirs. And you shouldn't regard that as a failure because...

You weren't there to convince them anyways. You were there to find out if there was something you could jointly do together. And then the tricky part, the hard part is there's a better outcome no matter what. When I was working on the book, Never Split the Difference, and my son, Brandon, very involved, and working with Tal Raz, who's the writer. Tal Raz is a genius writer. And we don't have anything in it about goal setting. And we said, like, look, here's the problem with a goal.

You quit when you get there. And the first problem, or you get close to it, you quit, you give up. Ah, you know, close enough. So you quit early. And then the other thing is since we live in a world of imperfect information, that means that there's something better beyond your goal. And you'll miss it if you're goal focused, that your goal becomes blinders. You miss better opportunities.

And so we want to leave stuff about goals out of the book entirely. And Tal's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Human beings need goals. So, okay, and we can see that, right? So what we're going to say is your goal is to exceed your goal. And that's what you jump into a negotiation with, and that's how you come to better outcomes with people. Right, right. Right, well, that's a great place to end. Like, that's a very...

That's a very successfully negotiated solution to the problem of the problem with goals. Because you were both right, right? We can't live without goals. But goals are provisional. And so you have to, the Buddhists know this to some degree, you have to hold on to what you're pursuing even with a light touch because you don't want it to be an impediment to what's better. And you don't want it to be finite. And you know, this is actually part of the reason that

You're trying to negotiate a relationship with someone because a relationship is a sequence of mutual goals.

And if the relationship is conducted properly, the expansiveness of the goals increases across time, right? And that can happen in an unforeseen direction. So part of the reason you're trying to find out who this person is, what their problems are, what do they want, is to establish the relationship that allows you to pursue proximal goals in a way that allows you to expand your vision of goals across time, right? And that can be indefinite if the relationship is good, right? That's right.

My favorite phrase. All right, sir. That was good. And so for everybody watching and listening, first thing I would say is it's a very good thing to learn to negotiate. And the things you heard today about

Making sure there's someone in it for the other person. That might even be your primary goal when you're trying to establish a relationship with someone else. That doesn't mean you take yourself any less seriously. But man, the more there can be in it for the other person, the more you can bloody well be sure within the bounds of justice that...

the negotiation, the settlement that you're aiming at is going to be sustainable. And then you don't have that concern on your mind, and that's a really good deal. And you should be encouraged to negotiate

to the end that you most truly desire, right? Again, keeping the other person firmly in mind or the other people. And it's a great skill to learn and concentrating, as we've discussed, on listening to the other person. You know, they'll tell you how to provide them. If you listen enough, the other person will tell you how to provide them with what they want.

And that is a bloody good deal. And you get there from listening. And so if you do that with everyone you meet, you'll never run out of people who want to collaborate with you. They'll line up. And that's a great deal for everyone, especially if you're, you know, if you have integrity in your offerings and you're playing a straight game.

So it's not going to work anyways if you don't. Yeah. All right, sir. So I'm going to continue this conversation on the Daily Wire side of things for half an hour. I'm going to find out what's motivating Chris and how that developed across time. And we're going to delve into that. I'm very interested in how people are motivated by call and conscience, let's say, to end up not only pursuing the things they're pursuing, but also have ended up successful in that.

And it's good to see examples of that so that you know from those examples what to do and what not to do. So we'll delve into the background, everything we talked about today on the Daily Wire Plus side. And in the meantime, thank you all for your time and attention. Thanks very much for talking to me today. It was quite a pleasure. And we'll take a bit of a break. And everybody watching and listening, well, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for your time and attention. And to the Daily Wire Plus people for facilitating this, that's always much appreciated. Good to meet you, sir.

A pleasure. Thank you.

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