David Kopec: Welcome to Business Books and Company. Every month we read great business books and explore how they can help us navigate our careers. Read along with us so you can become a stronger leader within your company or a more adept entrepreneur. This month we read never split the difference as if your life depended on it. By Chris Voss Never Split the Difference is considered one of the best books of all time on negotiation. Instead of focusing on economic theory or game theory, it focuses on practical techniques and psychological insight. Voss uses anecdotes from his career as an international hostage negotiator for the FBI to enliven the narrative while alternating with everyday business negotiation scenarios. We are thrilled to be joined by Chris Voss to discuss his book. But before we get into the book with Chris, let's introduce ourselves.
David Short: Hi, I'm David Short. I'm a product manager.
Kevin Hudak: And I'm Kevin Hoodak, chief research officer at a commercial real estate research and advisory services firm.
David Kopec: And I'm David Copack. I'm associate professor of computer science at a teaching college. We're privileged to be joined by Chris Voss this month. During his 24 year career with the FBI, chris Voss rose through the ranks to become the chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator. He is widely regarded as one of the world's preeminent experts on the art of negotiation. In 2007, he launched the Black Swan Group, which is hired by businesses and individuals to conduct negotiation training. Chris is the author of the best selling and highly regarded 2016 book, Never Split the Difference negotiating as If Your Life Depended On It, which is the topic of our episode. Chris has also taught negotiation at multiple top US. Universities, including Harvard and Georgetown. Chris, thanks for joining us on the show.
Chris Voss: It's my pleasure, man. I'm happy to be here.
David Kopec: Chris, can we start by going back and can you tell us about your early life and how you got into the FBI?
Chris Voss: Yeah, well, we're going to go back to just before I got into the FBI. I was a police officer, kansas City, Missouri, a uniform, street cop, KCMO. Great town, great job, good police department, learned a lot. And I got interested in federal law enforcement. Initially, I was interested in the Secret Service. One of my fathers I spoke to, and he told me that while he worked for the Secret Service, he traveled all over the world. And I remember thinking, somebody's got to pay me to travel around the world doing law enforcement. That sounds interesting because I grew up in Iowa. Small town, Midwestern guy, never really been out of the country at all. So, as it turns out, the Secret Service was not hiring in that time frame, but the FBI was had a big hiring push. So I didn't know one alphabet entity from the other. FBI. Deacia. I didn't know. So I put in for the FBI, and it turned out to be a phenomenal job.
David Short: And can you tell us how you got interested in negotiation and sort of your negotiation origin story, becoming a negotiator for the FBI, what the training was like, et cetera?
Chris Voss: Yeah, happy to. I was originally a SWAT guy. I was slated to go to the SWAT team with the PD, and the Bureau offered me a job just before I would have been transferred to the SWAT team. So they sent me to Pittsburgh, and I got on the SWAT team in Pittsburgh. And then when in process of trying to get ready to try out for the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, which is the FBI's version of the Navy Seals, I re injured my knee, had it reconstructive surgery on it for the second time, and I wanted to stay in crisis response. I figured eventually they could only repair my knee so many times. I knew we had hostage negotiators. I didn't really know what they did, but I figured, how hard could it be? I talk to people every day, and as it turns out, the things that look really simple or there's a lot of depth, they're very complicated. So I was lucky enough to go through the Bureau's negotiation training. Two weeks school of Quantico, largely regarded as one of the best schools in the world for hostage negotiation. Like, if you're a negotiator, you want to go to the FBI school, and you also want to go to Scotland Yard School under Metropolitan Police. They got a phenomenal school that they allow people, you know, to come to internationally from the law enforcement community. Ended up going to both eventually, but I went through the Bureau's two week school, and probably about a year and a half to after that, I found myself negotiating as a Chase Manhattan bank with hostages on the inside. And then once I got a taste of how the real deal I knew that it was for me, and I continue to pursue it.
Kevin Hudak: Excellent. And I thought it was interesting. Chris, one of the early stories you told, I believe it was before you were at the FBI, was when you were applying for a job and you didn't necessarily have a background in psychology or negotiating, and the supervisor had actually told you you should go and spend a few months working at a suicide line or a mental health wellness line. And you actually did go. You did your duty there. You listened to folks. And I think it really comes down to the fact that being a negotiator means being a great listener. And I was just wondering if you could tell us, why are listening skills so critical in negotiation?
Chris Voss: Yeah, it's a great question because in any negotiation instruction, no matter who you go to, listening is an advanced skill. And initially, it's hard work. Most people don't want to do it. It takes real effort. There's nuances to it, but it's surprising that it's actually an advanced skill. And the crisis hotline that you're talking about. That taught me to begin to listen on an emotional level, which, as it turns out, is how you should listen to everybody on an emotional level, really more so than a fact based level because the emotions are what drive people's decisions about the facts. So yeah, listening is proactive. Like, it's not even active. Listening is a pass, a description of it because you need to get proactive. You need to have an understanding of what's driving people and then how to steer them and guide them. So listening is a high level, complicated skill that more than pays off once you've gained any appreciation for its value.
Kevin Hudak: And ultimately this is a podcast about business books, of which yours is certainly one, Chris. And one of the first kind of business lessons I took away in your narrative was in that same meeting, or when you did go to the Crisis hotline, you came back to that hire a recruiter, supervisor, whoever she may have been. And I believe she said that you were the only person that she had interviewed who actually followed through and went and worked at the crisis hotline. It's almost a prerequisite. And I thought that just shows the importance of persistence also in the talent recruitment process.
Chris Voss: Yeah. And a couple of different things simultaneously. And one of the principal ones is who should you listen to? And there's a phrase out there, never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with. Don't take directions from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. There are a lot of people that are going to give you really well intentioned advice, but if they haven't been where you're going or you wouldn't trade places with them, the likelihood that their advice is accurate is probably really low. And so, like Crisis Hotline and went to the woman who was in charge of the hostage negotiation team, and she deemed me at the time accurately, eminently unqualified. And so I've always been persistent and a hard worker and willing to learn. So I said, what do I got to do? And she said, Volunteer on a suicide hotline. Now, following through on that advice to me seems astonishingly obvious, like ludicrously simple, like, how could you not do that? And nobody does. Maybe because they get advice from bad sources, I don't know. But I went to the person I would have traded places with and who'd been where I was going and I asked her what to do and I did it. And then I was shocked to find out that nobody else did. She once told me she told literally 1000 people to do that, and only two ever did. You want to talk about gaining a competitive advantage and getting a job, ask the right person and do what they say. Sometimes it isn't any more complicated than that.
David Kopec: Another thing that really came through in the book, Chris, was the importance of empathizing with your opponent's position, like your opponent in the negotiation. I was wondering if you could tell our audience why having empathy is so important and if there's any great anecdote from the book you wanted to share where empathy really made the difference in the negotiation.
Chris Voss: Well, yeah. First of all, let's redefine it, because empathy is a word that's almost overused in today's society, and misused, it becomes a substitute for sympathy or compassion. And don't go that far with the definition. It's not just understanding the other side's position, but demonstrating an understanding of it without agreeing or disagreeing. Bob Manukin, former head of program on negotiation at Harvard, wrote a book, beyond winning second Chapters the Tension between Empathy and Assertiveness. I ended up collaborating with Bob and the other guys at Harvard because of the following definition and description he gave of empathy. He said, It's not necessarily agreeing or even liking the other side. It's just demonstrating verbalizing an understanding of the other side's position. If you can narrow it down like that, then it becomes an unlimited skill. Now, most people think empathy is agreement. I can empathize with you. I feel the same way you do. No, not in this definition, because then if you got me as a hostage negotiator, I'm trying to save your dad's life, your brother's life, your son's life, you want me to use empathy. How am I supposed to agree with somebody from al Qaeda? How am I supposed to like what they say? Can I use empathy on them? Because it's incredibly influential. It establishes this ridiculous ability to influence people, and it does so it's several examples on how it works. And even before I became a hostage negotiator, we're working a trial, terrorism trial, civilian court, legitimate Muslim cleric who has committed crimes. And we are talking to Muslim witnesses to get them to voluntarily testify, not because they had to, just because we influenced them. And the guy that was charged had committed crimes, and they were offended that he'd committed crimes. And I remember saying to each and every one of them, you believe that there's been a succession of American governments that have been anti Islamic for the last 200 years, and they would, like, blink, and you could see them being surprised that I could understand their perspective, and they'd say, yeah, that's right. And then I would have influence with them, and then they would testify. And I never said that I agreed. I said, you believe that for the last 200 years there's been a succession of American governments that have been anti Islamic? And I never said, but that's not true. And, you know, we got a First Amendment free. You know, I didn't no follow on argument, just a demonstration of understanding of their perspective. And it's shocking the impact it has on people, because everybody wants to be understood. And sometimes that's the only obstacle in business or personal life in any relationship. In many cases, the only obstacle is the feeling of being understood. And why argue when that's all they needed? Why not eliminate those agreements? It's incredibly powerful, and once people use it, that's the way they want to approach everyone.
Kevin Hudak: This is a bit of a tease for later in the episode, Chris, but it seems like with those Muslim clerics, you were able to find a bit of a minor Black swan in terms of their the religious context, which is important, you know, in terms of getting the information that you need and getting that cooperation.
Chris Voss: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. T tease for advance the black swans, the little things that make all the difference in the world. Yeah. That's how you get it out of somebody. They got stuff they're dying to tell you if they just think it's okay to tell you. And sometimes just showing you understand where they're coming from makes them want to tell you. Yeah.
David Short: There was a great anecdote in the book where a manager had made a really ridiculous request about printing multiple copies of thousands of pages of documents, and a woman who'd taken your class was able to simply mirror his request and basically get him to withdraw the request. Could you talk a little bit about mirroring and why it's an effective technique?
Chris Voss: Yeah. And that was a great negotiation, because the lady that was a student in my class, all she really did was help her boss think out loud. And once the boss started thinking it out loud and actually started saying it, it kind of didn't make any sense to him. And so the thing you asked me about were mirrors. This is not the body language mirror at all. This is not you cross your legs, I cross mine. You fold your arms, I fold mine. It's not that at all. The hostage negotiators mirror, the Black Swan method. The Black Swan groups mirror is just repeating the last one to three words of what somebody said, or you pick specifically one to three keywords in the middle of the conversation. And so that supervisor just loved paper copies and made them feel safe and secure to know that somewhere there were paper copies, but they were running out of space and was a massive amount of work, and the logistics of it were horrible. And the woman that was in my class, she was one of these people that made stuff happen, made it look easy, which then the problem is the boss asked you to do more because you make it happen. And she just started mirroring the boss's reaction on the paper copies, and the client asked for them. The client never asked for them. And I think, as I recall, the boss said, well, the client wants it. And she said, the client wants it. Goes, yeah, well, actually, I just feel more comfortable with it. You feel more comfortable with it. And pretty soon, she let the boss talk himself into not doing it and save my student an entire week of copying documents and compiling them and storing them.
Kevin Hudak: Well, in that instance too, that student of yours could then just be more strategic with their work day too, and not as transactional. So I think that's important. But one element of the negotiation process you mentioned, or at least in the body language side of things, is the FM Radio DJ voice with a low inflection point, which I really enjoyed. And I was wondering before we move on to our next question, since it was an appropriate example, I'm wondering what you sound like when you do the FM Radio DJ voice.
Chris Voss: You're wondering what I sound like?
Kevin Hudak: There you go, the mirroring and the FM Radio DJ voice. That's fantastic. So Chris, just another question for you. So on page 48 in the book you wrote, quote, once people get upset at one another, rational thinking goes out the window. I'm wondering how do you handle an opponent or an adversary who already comes into the negotiation upset or unbelieving?
Chris Voss: You label how they feel about it and you even say, like, look, you already don't trust me. You start pointing out the elephant in the room. You don't deny it, you don't argue against it. The negative feelings become the elephant in the room. And nobody ever got rid of the elephant in the room by saying it wasn't there or saying, I don't want you to think there's an elephant in the room. And so the crazy thing about what we refer to the Black Swan team in a Black Swan method, what we call labeling emotions, and this is labeling emotions or dynamics. It's straight out of crisis intervention. But applied to business. When you call out a negative, it tends to defuse it. Like every time. Either a little or a lot, but it works every time and a lot of negotiations. You ask a great question because people can walk in the door upset, having nothing to do with you. Like they were upset because of what happened to them in the day, or they were upset because somebody who looked like you did something to them, or somebody had a profession like you did something to them. Or the mere fact that they feel they got to give something up. So calling out the negatives, even calling them out in advance, that's being very proactive has a tendency to inoculate from negatives, which is so counterintuitive it scares people to death. But maybe one of our most powerful strategic approaches is to sort of bundle the calling out of the negatives into something we refer to as the accusations audit and then just firing those babies off. At the beginning of the conversation. You're probably thinking you're wasting your time with me. You're probably wondering what you're doing here. You're probably thinking this is going to be a money grab on our part. Any of those things that your gut instinct tells you could be there by calling them out is the best way to diffuse them, to kill those negative vampires and to keep them dead.
Kevin Hudak: Yeah, and I really enjoyed the concept of the accusations audit, in part because when you look at a lot of different selling practices and methodologies out there, there's always a stage of overcoming the objections. And I feel like a lot of times people wait until they've already made their pitch, listening, they've made their pitch. They're now in the overcoming objection stage, where the ball is really in the opponent, the adversary, the potential client's court. I love this idea of overcoming some of those objections earlier on in the conversation, so the meaningful conversation can actually happen. You have enough time in that. Speaking of the accusation audit concept, as I was reading through the book, I started thinking. So the first chapter didn't necessarily seem out of place in your book, but it definitely got a bit really deep into your experience, your feelings, as you were sitting in that Harvard class getting ready to negotiate against some of these absolute all stars who were trained more in the science of negotiation, more than the art of it. And as I read through your book, I started to think, and this may be listeners of this podcast will tell you that I can sometimes dig in a bit too deeply and be too clever by half. But it almost seemed like your book, in some ways, was a negotiation with the reader to believe you embody these practices. And almost that first chapter was the accusation audit, where you sat back and said, well, you shouldn't believe me because I'm up against these Harvard scientists and I have these things going against me. Ultimately, that ended up being a very successful interaction you had in that class. But I'm wondering, was that am I digging too deep here or was that intentional? That was the accusation audit, and a lot of this book was in negotiation with us as the readers.
Chris Voss: Yeah, well, there's a lot to what you're saying. I got to attribute that to Tall Ross, the co author. Three people wrote this book myself, Tall Ross and my son Brandon Boss. And Tall was the artist that put the whole thing together. And interestingly enough, oddly enough, crazily enough, he wrote the first chapter last. That was the last chapter that he wrote. And when he dropped that on us because he wanted to have a whole feel for the whole story, and he is definitely an artist for business books. And, yeah, he dropped that last chapter on us, and I told him a lot of stories. We told him a lot of stories. And I kind of half forgotten the Harvard story with Bob Manukin and all of that. And when he dropped it on the first chapter, I thought, yeah, this is a brilliant way to get people to read the book.
David Short: Yeah, it really was enjoyable. What would you say to someone who doubts the parallels between high stakes hostage negotiations where there's life and death on the line, and business negotiations? Are they similar? Like, what are the differences? How do you deal with that dynamic?
Chris Voss: Yeah. Well, the hard part is if you doubt it, you're spinning your wheels. And sometimes it takes a few examples to understand. Or if you really digging into human performance, you realize that how you do anything is how you do everything. People react because they're wired like human beings to the circumstances. Human beings make up their mind just based on several different parameters. Regardless, the biggest thing that came across to prove it really is in 2002, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize in behavioral economics for prospect theory, which is basically loss. The reaction to human beings reaction to loss is far greater than their reaction to gain. Well, that's really the essence of what hostage negotiations about, because we were always taught, look for the loss within the first conversations. You know, that is what driving their behavior, is some sense of loss someplace. And use these proactive listening skills, which was the basis for the Black Swan method, to develop a relationship, pull as much information out of them as fast as possible so that you can uncover their feelings about law, their loss, like I'm talking to terrorists about their feelings, if you can imagine that, and the loss. And it would have been tougher to make the argument that it applied to everything until Conaman wins the Nobel Prize in 2002, where they say, this isn't hostages. This is humans. This is the impact on human decision making, period. And then you begin to dive into neuroscience versus psychology. And our neuroscience today is unequivocal. Forget my pronunciation. I love that word. I can never say it. That we're all wired the same. The limbic system in our brain and how emotions interact with every single thought we have is wired the same. It doesn't matter your gender, your ethnicity, your religion, your diet. Human beings are all wired the same. So with that wiring, we're reacting the same under different circumstances, but the wiring still operates the same.
David Kopec: One negotiation in the book that's going to be so familiar to everybody is going to a car dealer to buy a new car. And I think you were going for a red Toyota Forerunner in the book.
Chris Voss: Wait a minute. We got to say it, right? It's not red.
David Kopec: Okay?
Chris Voss: It's salsa red. I'm sorry. With the late night FM DJ voice, too, because that sexiest color that was ever invented by any car deal say salsa red pearl.
David Kopec: Salsa red pearl.
Chris Voss: Better? Yes, much better.
David Kopec: But you came into that negotiation and you were just steadfast. I think it was like $6,000 below what they were asking. You were coming in at, and you never budged even a little bit. And it kind of speaks a bit to the book's title, never split the difference. Of course, I want all of our listeners to go pick up the book and read that chapter. But I'm wondering if you could tell our listeners just the essential techniques that let you stay at your starting point through that whole negotiation.
Chris Voss: Yeah, and anybody can do this. I would encourage people. We got a YouTube channel out there and there are several videos of other people that I've interviewed and they use the exact same skills and get the exact same results. So anybody can do it. You don't get to be a hostage negotiator. And even if you're a woman, you need a late night FM DJ Voice all you have to do to get it is drop your chin when you're talking. If you drop your chin, you naturally downward inflect. So any gender can do it as well. But I came in when you articulate the other side's point of view, it leaves them speechless. Like articulate their argument, they got nothing to say. And I was in love with this truck. It was the sexiest thing I ever saw. I'd wanted a brand new Toyota Four Runner for some time. I'd shopped all over the place. This thing was a gorgeous color, was everything I wanted. And on top of that, in the entire metro DC area for 100 miles radius, there were only three of them because I looked and they were all in the same dealership because I looked. And when the guy told me what the price was, what's he going to say? It's worth it. It's worth more than that. That's what I said to him. I said, oh my God, this truck is worth every time you're asking for it. It's probably worth more than what you're asking for. I told him I had $30,000 to spend. And I said, I feel crazy, I'm embarrassed. It's horrible that I'm offering you this amount when the truck is worth far more than that. And I said, how am I how am I supposed to pay what you want? And he just he was flummoxed. He he, you know, I said it was a late it was a late night FM DJ Voice I didn't that's.
Kevin Hudak: The calibrating question too, right? Sorry to interrupt, but the open ended question.
Chris Voss: Well, now you got a good ear. That's not just a calibrated question, but the how question is deferential and it's powerful. Like, it triggers again, what Conaman would refer to as in depth thinking, slow, stop, you in your tracks thinking, and there's great power and deference, which is late night FM DJ Voice feels very deferential on the listener. So you can drop some incredible things like a stop you in your tracks. How question preceded by empathy, a demonstration of understanding of his perspective. His perspective was the truck was worth more than $30,000 and it was beautiful and it was unique and I was in love with it. So those were all the arguments that he was going to make. And when you make somebody else's argument without no counter, you just lay it out there. It completely takes the wind out of their sales and sort of sets them up for the how question. If you've got a how or what question that really you're going to be flummoxed by. When I laid that on him, he stared him and he blanked a few times and he went back and he was gone for a long time. And I remember sitting there thinking like, man, I came in too high. He's been going for far too long. I'm going to bring him all the way down to my price if I just stay the course. And that's what I did. He came back, said, hey, talk to my manager. And he made a counter offer for about 1500 less. And I was like, oh my God, that's so generous. I mean, it was worth the 36, and now you're asking me for 34 five? Oh my God, it's worth more than I continued to lay out everything that he was prepared to say to me, and then I hit him with, how am I supposed to do that again? And he went dead silent. And he went back and it was gone. And he came back with another lower offer and he went back and forth till we came to my price and I bought the truck.
David Short: It was really a great story. You wrote about unknown, unknowns. I think these are at least some of the, the Black swans right in the book, and the importance of uncovering pieces of information whose value your counterpart doesn't understand during a negotiation. How do you surface?
Kevin Hudak: Unknown.
David Short: Unknowns. And out of curiosity, was this inspired by Donald Rumsfeld, the, the terminology?
Chris Voss: Oh, no, not really. You know, we were trying to help make it come alive by how it may have come out in the past, and Rumsfeld was sort of famous for saying that. But the idea that we derived it from really inspiration. Nassim nicholas Talib's 2007 book The Black Swan or the Impact of the Highland Problem with the little things that are going to make all the difference in the world. So the unknowns, it's kind of a two dimensional process to think through. But when you think about it, it's always there. Everybody's hiding information when they approach the negotiation. There's always stuff you are holding back, whether it's how much you want to deal, whether it's your financial situation, you might be holding back that you can more than afford to pay for the price, but you just don't want to. There's all these things that you're always holding back. We teach corporate executives, sales companies, people all over the planet, and we always ask them, when are you ever in a negotiation where you're not holding something back? And they say, well, we're always holding something. Of course we are. Of. Course, we always have proprietary information closely held. So we say, well, if you do, so do they. They're holding stuff back from you that you don't know. And then the second level of this, what about the overlap? Like, if you knew what they knew, and you could combine all this unknown stuff, there's something that lies in the middle that nobody can anticipate, and that's really kind of the unknown unknowns. It's like what lurks in the gap or in the overlap between the hidden information. That's where the deal really gets exponentially better for both sides. Now, how do you get to it? Well, the tactical application, the calibrated application of emotional intelligence, which is tactical empathy, how do you accelerate their feeling of being willing to reveal stuff to you? The feeling of being understood, of being understood of the other side. Understanding you creates a bonding feeling from the person who's been understood towards the person that demonstrated the understanding. And that bonding comes from Oxytocin. Now, here's the secondary kicker, which we always knew was there, but we didn't realize until I heard it on Andrew Huberman's podcast not that long ago. In a relationships podcast, he talks about Oxytocin, and he says, when someone gets a hit of their own neurochemical of Oxytocin, they're more likely to tell the truth. So you get somebody a hit of Oxytocin in a negotiation, they feel bonded towards you, and they're more likely to tell you the truth, thus revealing the black swans and not regretting revealing.
Kevin Hudak: That's an interesting point, and I really enjoyed the anecdote that you shared. Just to go off topic for a second, or on topic for black swans, but it was a student that you had who was negotiating a real estate deal based in Washington, but the deal was in Charleston, and it was essentially 100%, you know, occupied almost like student housing, but but a third party multifamily owner and manager. And, you know, coming from the real estate profession, I really enjoyed this example. But once he was able to go through the negotiation process, deploy that tactical empathy, he was able to hear from the representative that the ownership group was essentially running low on cash and needed this deal to happen. And as a result, they were able to go with one of their well below what they thought the price would be and well below what his target even was, it sounded like.
Chris Voss: Yeah, and one of the crazy ones about that, too, was exactly, as you say, the building was a phenomenal buy, looked too good to be true. And most people say, well, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Well, it wasn't. The problem, as you said, was the people that owned it had financial difficulties. But he uncovered that black swan, actually, by being wrong, because he threw out an observation of what he thought the dynamic was, and he got corrected with the truth. And one of the things that we've, even since the book has come out, that we put a lot more emphasis on is be willing to be embarrassed, be willing to be wrong, be willing to be corrected. Because while you're embarrassed at being wrong, that's when the other side feels so wonderful correcting you, they'll throw stuff out they shouldn't tell you. And that was exactly what happened in that instance. Like, you know that there's no way that the broker handling that building should have ever told a buyer that the seller was in financial problems, but it was a correction. And people love to correct. They say stuff that they should not say when they're correcting somebody else. And that was one of the magical things about that particular interaction and the application of emotional intelligence, is be willing to be wrong. As long as you're genuine, you're going to find out some crazy stuff.
Kevin Hudak: And before I ask my next question, too, I wanted to emphasize to our listeners that a lot of what Chris has put in his book, there's definitely acknowledgment. So, for example, that MBA student, I believe it was, or the student that negotiated that real estate deal, there was a lot of pre planning and forethought put into labels, put into those calibrated questions, how questions. And so it's interesting. And Chris does lay that out in the book. For my next question. Chris so I was just interested. This almost goes a little bit back to the Car example, the salsa, pearl salsa, red salsa. But really on that anchoring is a key technique that you brought up for feeling out your opponent's position. Particularly, choosing an extreme early anchor you cited is a really good idea, and I was wondering if you could tell us why that is. And then if you could also share a little bit about the ackerman bargaining method as well from the Xcia like Operative Mike ackerman.
Chris Voss: Yeah. And also I would offer a caution about extreme anchoring, because if you get too extreme, you could drive a deal away from the table that you should have made. And you really got to surround any anchor with a lot of empathy because you do drive deals from the table without empathy. I mean, it's a blunt object. There's a lot of advice out there to anchor extreme. It's risky, and it's playing Russian roulette with five bullets instead of five empty chambers in a gun.
Kevin Hudak: Very quickly, too, it seems like you always have empathy, not necessarily goodwill per se, but empathy for your adversary or opponent. In fact, towards the end of the book, you mentioned that this is not to say that your opponent or adversary is a bad person. You're not fighting them, you're fighting the situation, which is that we have a negotiation for something that I want or I'm giving, and you either want or you're going to give something. And so it's almost like you're deploying a lot of these tactics on the situation, on the negotiation, not on the other person.
Chris Voss: Right.
Kevin Hudak: What you're saying is you can go too far sometimes where you do lose that deal because you were fighting the person, not the situation.
Chris Voss: Right. Exactly right. Or you've anchored so extremely, especially if you haven't used empathy, that the other side is like, this is a waste of my time. I'm never going to make this deal. So the Ackerman methodology was really the idea that if you come in basically at 65% of what the other side wants, that's going to be good enough to at least be able to continue the conversation. And that's probably pretty accurate. And I think when people get in real trouble is like, if it's not even remotely near that. And I got to tell you, we were in a negotiation recently with a company we've done business with in the past, and I don't know that they came in at 10% of what we would have taken, and that was pretty much the end of the discussion. So you can take extreme anchoring too far, and you can drive deals from the table. I mean, you've got to at least have a 65% as a rule of thumb is probably not a bad rule of thumb. And that's what the Ackerman methodology was based on. And I even went back recently. I double checked my former boss, Gary Nestner, on a couple of things about our kidnapping strategies that I learned from him and others. And then he laid out for me that he had when he was running our operation before I was there, they were inviting people from the outside. They were doing it privately, and they invited him, Mike Ackerman. And Mike laid it out. And then I ran across Mike Ackerman several years later, and I asked him again. And the crazy thing he told me about his methodology, which is outlined in the book, is that he had once run the ideas past Howard Raifa. And Howard Raifa was one of the original Harvard guys. He was one of the few guys that would have both in a Harvard Business School and a law school, normally two very separate camps, separate tribes. But Howard was an icon to both, and Mike said that he ran it by Professor Rafa, and Howard Rayfa told him, yeah, this makes all the sense in the world. It will work under any circumstances. So Mike took it and used it in kidnapping. We learned it in kidnapping, and it works in business bargaining as well.
David Kopec: Chris, this question is kind of a fun one. It's a little tangential. If you don't want to answer it, I totally understand. But I was wondering if I could ask your opinion on some of the great business tycoons and whether you think they were great negotiators. So, for example, do you think Steve Jobs was a great negotiator?
Chris Voss: Yeah, well, there's a difference. I don't know. I think jobs. When Jobs felt he was understood, he was extremely reasonable. And I would point everybody to the book the Right of a Lifetime by Robert Iger. Iger was CEO of Disney when Disney bought Pixar from Jobs, and there is a phenomenal and honest description of how that went down between Uyghur and Jobs. And we talked about the accusations audit a little bit ago in that basically Steve Jobs does an accusations audit on himself. The two guys meet Bob Iger never met him personally, love the book Mutual Acquaintances. Iger is an interesting guy who applied empathy throughout his whole career, and he goes in to listen. Here Jobs out, and Job starts with all the reasons why he hates Disney and why Pixar would be destroyed by Disney and just lays it all out, which essentially is the accusations audit. And Iger is completely deflated by all this negativity that he perceives to come at him, when in fact, it's the negativity being diffused. And he literally says, after Jobs weighs everything out. And Jobs says, what do you want to add, Bob? Iger says, there's a lot of negatives. And Jobs says, yeah, but sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives, and they made the deal. So who's Jobs talking to? In my view, when he was talking to someone who treated him as an equal and hurt him out and understood him, he was far easier to deal with than a lot of people would have characterized.
David Kopec: That's great. And we actually loved that book. We read that book on the show at the Right of Life. Superb. I got to ask you another one. This one's controversial. Is Donald Trump a good negotiator?
Chris Voss: Donald Trump is a marketer.
David Kopec: Okay, fair enough. And then Elon Musk recently with all the stuff going on with the Twitter.
Chris Voss: Negotiation, let me back up a little bit, because where are the negotiations between the US. And North Korea?
David Kopec: Not in a great place right now, for sure.
Chris Voss: And you had to think about it for a minute, too, didn't you? Yeah, this is donald Trump is a natural born assertive. You know, there are three tribes in the world fight, flight, make friends, assertive, analysts, accommodators. The world splits evenly into thirds. We get the data anecdotal data to back it up. I'm a natural born assertive, so I'm wired from the very beginning, very much like Donald Trump. And the North Korean negotiation, if you look, is similar to almost everything that he's gotten involved in. It starts out with big brass bands, lots of noise, maybe some threats, a lot of saber rattling. But then it settles down, and it seems like there's tremendous opportunity, and then it just kind of goes away, and nobody really knows what happened. Now, to his credit, especially with North Korea, he inherited this insane tan of worms that no presidential administration, prior to him, neither Democrat nor Republican knew what to do with, and he engaged in those negotiations and also to his great credit, he met with Kim Jong UN, the leader. He didn't feel that meeting with this guy was beneath him. He went out and met with him, and those are great attributes. But then the way the whole thing is handled, then it filters away and there aren't immediate headlines, and people aren't really sure where they are. And then it kind of goes away, and nobody really knows what happened. And unfortunately, you see that profile time after time with the assertive negotiator that starts out making a lot of noise, but there's implementation issues, there's long term relationship issues, and then all kinds of goes away, and nobody knows for sure what happens. And that's the problem with the highly assertive negotiator.
David Kopec: He has a lot of bluster. He's a great marketer. Another great marketer is Elon Musk. He's recently been trying to purchase Twitter, but then kind of going back on it a bit. I don't know if you've been following that situation, but do you think Elon Musk is a good negotiator? Do you think he's been handling this Twitter situation well?
Chris Voss: Well, I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk, a huge fan of the accomplishments. Whether how he's handling Twitter, what's going back and forth on that. It's really hard for me to say because I don't know what else is going on behind the scenes, and I'm leery of the stuff that is being put forth in the media. I think that Elon Musk is far more of a centrist than he's portrayed. And I'm a fan, so I'm not really sure what's going on with Twitter. I would have no problem with him buying Twitter. I think he's economics focused, and I like the direction. I don't see anything about him that makes me unhappy.
David Kopec: In your opinion, who is the greatest business negotiator of all time?
Chris Voss: Probably be a tie between Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey.
David Kopec: Wow, that's an interesting yeah, Oprah's amazing.
Chris Voss: Yeah. First of all, take her starting point. Take her obvious lack of advantages from the starting point and demographic issues. Look at where she ended up, and then also look at the list of people that don't like her. She didn't get to where she's going by being a pushover, and you'd be hard pressed to think of one person that was unhappy with her. Now that's the sign of a great negotiator.
David Kopec: Absolutely. I don't want to go too far down this thread, but I was also curious about asking you about our recent presidents, how you feel we already talked about Trump, but how you feel they've been as negotiators. If we talked about Clinton, Bush, Obama, maybe we don't need to go into Biden. But which of them do you think was the best negotiator?
Chris Voss: Well, it's hard overall. I mean, I'm very much more issue focused. What different people did at different times, whether or not I thought it was really good, or whether or not I thought it was embarrassing. And one thing that President Biden did that I really liked early on, there's a real hot and button issue with Turkey, and it's whether or not there was a genocide committed by the Turkish government against the Armenians, and it's referred to as the Armenian Genocide. And the Democratic Party for a long time have pushed this as an issue. So Biden decides that he's going to come out and say that there was an Armenian genocide. And the President of Turkey, erotican, if I pronounce his name correctly, said very little in the press. And what I liked about the way that Biden handled that, clearly they let the Turkish President know this was coming, as opposed to allowing him to get caught off guard by it, which would have been deeply offensive. I was really impressed with the way that particular negotiation was handled. They didn't they warned the other side that bad news was coming. Don't get caught off guard by this. And so then the President of Turkey did not overreact in the media and became a non event in kind of.
Kevin Hudak: The consultative selling world. It's all about making sure that you have sponsors. They don't necessarily need to be your friends, but it's all about having sponsors and preventing them from being anti sponsors. And even in the book, you had a few anecdotes around folks that you thought may have been sponsors or your students may have thought were sponsors, but either deep down for items they could control or couldn't control, they were in fact, antisponsors. So I think a lot of that is having a good situational awareness. It's keeping people informed, and it's asking the right questions.
Chris Voss: Situational awareness, great phrase. I love it. Yeah, I would agree.
David Short: So it was clear in the book that throughout your career, your technique evolved. Have you changed your mind about anything that was in the book in the past six years, or are there new techniques you wish you had included?
Chris Voss: We've evolved significantly since when the book came out. I don't know that we've changed our mind about any techniques. I mean, we address the issue of leverage in the book and tried to come up with some definitions. And really there's no such thing as leverage. It's all influence. I mean, you got to get out of thinking about leverage at all and thinking in terms of influence. Since the book has come out really in the past year, one of the things that we've really brought along is the use of IMessages in a very formulaic, very specific way. Because when you're dealing with bad behavior in business, such as scope creep or feature creep, the proper execution of an Imessage we found just in the last year is phenomenal. And we don't even have a good Imessage in the book at all because they're so hard to wrap your mind around. And there weren't any great IMessages in hospice negotiation that we could use. And since I knew of them. I didn't have a lot of experience when we were in business school. We didn't really effectively teach them because I never really seen one. And then probably about two and a half years ago, a gentleman we were affiliated with says, you don't have any IMessages. And so I decided to use one in an email. I just wrote it out in an email and it changed the tone of the email. So we started digging into it and the IMessages, the proper application of them, and I've also checked the Internet, and I'm not seeing anybody demonstrating an understanding of them the way we are or sticking to the formula the way we do. And we've got some great results with it just in the last year.
Kevin Hudak: And just for the benefit of our listeners from the book, we kind of understand the we. We understand the most perfect email message, and you'll have to buy the book and read that listeners. But tell us a little bit about.
Chris Voss: The Imessage, chris well, Imessage formula breaks down into three parts. When you X name the behavior that the other person is doing, that's negative. And this is the old phrase separating the person from the behavior. And you have to start with when you because the word you is a very engaging word. It catches people off guard. And I really wonder what you're going to say next. I feel the word needs to be relatively soft, concerned, sad, even afraid, never angry. You might be angry, but that triggers something bad in the other side. You don't need to get started. And, you know, I feel sad. And then the because focuses on the outcome that's lost to the two of you as a result of the behavior, and it's got to go down exactly like that. And I've seen people on the Internet say, well, you could go. I feel when you no, you got to go when you first, and you need to be concise and the tail end has to be the cost of the behavior and you'll be surprised at how effective it is.
Kevin Hudak: No, thank you for the clarification. I think that's really important, and I've definitely seen that growing in the past few years, like you mentioned, from 2016. Next question for you, Chris. What are some of the favorite anecdotes that you have from the book that we maybe didn't have a chance to cover yet? Are there any examples or industries or any of your experiences in the hostage negotiation world that you think are important for our listeners to hear today?
Chris Voss: Yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff in there. I think one of the things that we talk about more than anything else so is the birth of that right moment, the birth of demonstrating, understanding, flipping a terrorist perspective just by getting them to say that's right. A chapter that sold the book to the publishers, we focused on the fact that the response from the other side that transforms negotiations is not yes, the response from the other side is, that's right. Not your right, but that's right. And that's the transformative moment in negotiations you're seeking that's right. Versus yes. And we're in the middle of a kidnapping in the Philippines. Bad guys are not dropping the ransom, but a dime. It's been stalemated for months, and we just decided to go for that's right. You're holding a hostage for these reasons. The governments have committed these crimes. You are separate, independent people. You've been for 500 years. We went on and on and on with their perspective, demonstrating articulating their perspective. And after we laid it out at length, in a moment of silence, the sociopathic killer, the sociopathic terrorist said, that's right. And it changed everything. They dropped a ransom demand. The ransom demand never came up again, and the hostage ended up walking away about four months later because the bad guys just lost their focus and were stymied, but weren't unhappy about it. And then the kicker was, two weeks after, when I was back in the Philippines, the negotiator that I coached said, you're not going to believe who called me on the phone. And I remember saying, like, I don't know. I don't know. Who called you on the phone and called you on the phone? He said the terrorists really? What did he say? He said, have you been promoted yet? You're really good at what you do. They should promote you, which was the terrorist calling him back to basically say, we're good. I'd talk to you again. And that's really one of the critical stories, because that translates to all behavior. People feel understood separate from the outcome. They're probably always going to be willing to engage in productive discussions with you.
Kevin Hudak: So, Chris, no, thank you for sharing that anecdote. I thought it was really interesting as well and gets to that point of there doesn't necessarily need to be friendship there, and a lot of these folks you would not want to be friends with. But that idea of empathy, the tactical empathy and reframing that conversation is important. One of the favorite anecdotes that I had from the book regarded the 60 Minutes or they're dead exercise that you do with 60 seconds. I got it wrong there, but thank you for that 60 Minutes. I'm sure that would be a lot of time to negotiate, but I was wondering, it reminded me of I'm a big Star Trek fan, almost the Kobayashi Marucast in Star Trek, where it's unbeatable unless you cheat like Captain Kirk did. But I'm wondering if there really is a solution. I had one that I had sort of mapped out, if you'd want to hear that. But has anyone ever actually successfully gotten you with that in the 60 seconds?
Chris Voss: Yeah, of course they have. What's your solution?
Kevin Hudak: So my progression would have been, do you want to let her go? Right now.
Chris Voss: Oh, you're going to ask no oriented questions.
Kevin Hudak: Are you generally a thoughtless person? It seems like you just want this person to die generally. Right. Do you think it's more important to put a little bit more thought into this then, well, how would you go about putting more thought into this? That's the open ended and then wouldn't you want to give that a chance? And so that would be my progression. Is that a pass fail or on the cusp?
Chris Voss: Well, there's elements in there that I really like. You got a nice how question in there. I think that was an calibrated question. It's not a horrible idea to start right off the bat with a no oriented question. You still got a little yes, you still got a little yes addiction in there with a couple of your questions. But there's other ways to demonstrate empathy. Like anybody's behavior, what's really screaming out that they're after. Like a guy says, I want to call it 60 seconds or she dies. And let's contrast that in Business negotiation. Somebody says, you cut your price now or I'm walking away.
Kevin Hudak: Super interesting.
Chris Voss: Yes, same thing. So what's going on with the guy says he wants 60 seconds or she dies, or a car is 60 seconds or she dies. What's he really want? To live. That's what he really wants. And so you could start out with like, wow, it sounds like you want to survive this thing. So guy says, you cut your price or I'm walking now. And let's say they say that genuinely a lot of business people make up that nonsensical threat just as a game. But let's say it really means it if somebody says something that extreme, what's the empathy label? It sounds like you're under a lot of pressure.
Kevin Hudak: It almost sounds like they need this solution, but they need it at their price that they need it at in order to survive in their job.
Chris Voss: Well, they're looking to survive their job. In point of fact. There's all this metaphorical thinking, which is true, but it's hard to wrap your mind around. Money is never the issue. What's the money going to get you? What's the value that they're after? If they say the price is bad, then what they see is the value is not there. And if they're really adamant about it, they're under a tremendous amount of pressure. And the first thing you got to do to find out what's problem with the value proposition to use an overused cliche is you got to drain some of the pressure off this guy's brain. And the best way to drain it off his brain so he can talk with you is to say it sounds like you feel like you're under a lot of pressure.
Kevin Hudak: That's fantastic, and thank you for the assessment. It shows that there's always room to learn. So I appreciate that feedback. Chris?
Chris Voss: Well, there's not just room to learn, but with negotiation being imperishable skill. Like, even I fall out of my game. Everybody on my team, we fall out of our game occasionally. I had a problem with my luggage in the Dallas airport a couple of weeks ago, and by the time I got to the lost luggage, lady is a buddy of mine, would say I had run out of personality. So everybody's skills fall below the line occasionally.
Kevin Hudak: Well, that's when you need the friendly brontosaurus. I think I read about that when dealing with airline personnel.
David Short: Chris, there are a lot of other negotiation tactics you go through in the book that we didn't really get to discuss. Tactical silence, the use of no, and fair face time among the ones we haven't talked about yet. What's the most effective tactic our listeners might use in business negotiations?
Chris Voss: Yeah, so dynamic silence, being willing to go dead quiet. The other side is going to tell you great stuff if you'll just be quiet. The other side is dying to tell you stuff. What they're really worried about is, first of all, you're going to shut up. Secondly, are you going to argue with them? So, like, the effective use of silence is an incredibly powerful skill, and two out of three negotiators just cannot do it. And the one that is good is going silent is usually going silent because they want to think. And if they're going silent to get you to talk, they've noticed that every time they shut up to try to think, you start talking. And after a while it occurs to them like, hey, okay, I get this guy to talk if I'll just shut up long enough. And since I love information, this is probably a great way to tap into what's going on in his or her brain. So being silent is one of the more effective techniques that you don't even got to remember a formula that is shut up. It's just but it's very hard for some people to do for a variety of two or three main reasons.
David Kopec: Well, Chris, it's been amazing talking to you. I know that all three of us strongly recommend the book to our listeners. And of course, we're going to put a link to the book into the Black Swan group in our show notes. I'm wondering if there's anything else you want to plug and how is there any way that our listeners can come kind of keep up with you, follow what you're up to, follow the new things you're coming out with?
Chris Voss: Yeah, that's a great question. The absolute best way to keep up with the Black Swan method because it's sharper in 2022 than it was a year ago, subscribe to the newsletter. The newsletter is free, but that's not why it's valuable. It's concise and it's actionable. That's what makes it valuable. It just happens to be a bonus that it doesn't cost you anything. Go to the website. If you're in the US. Black Swanltd.com. B-L-A-C-K-S-W-A-N-L-T-D. Like limited upper right hand corner is the tab for the blog page. There's a whole bunch of concise actionable issues that are going to be right there on whatever kind of negotiation you're after. If you sign up for the newsletter there, you'll get the latest version, which comes out weekly on Tuesday morning in your inbox after you've got Monday behind you and you're ready to get down to business, and a short concise article on usable skills that you could use that day is a great way to get you rolling. So subscribing to the newsletter keeps you up on all the cutting edge evolutions of what the Black Swan method is.
David Kopec: That sounds awesome. And of course we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well so our listeners can get right to it. Chris, thank you so much for coming on this month and we really appreciate it.
Chris Voss: That is my pleasure, guys. Enjoy the conversation.
David Kopec: So next month we're going to be reading Titan the Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Shernall. David, this was your pick. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?
David Short: Yeah, I've just been reading the first few chapters and I'm really enjoying it. It's the definitive account of the entire life of Rockefeller, from his boyhood with a bigamous father through his monopoly on the oil industry via standard Oil and his ultimate retirement and devotion to philanthropy. So, yeah, really excited to read it with you all.
David Kopec: That sounds awesome. I'm really looking forward to reading it myself. David and Kevin, is there anything you want to plug and how can our listeners get in touch with you?
David Short: You can follow me on Twitter at.
Kevin Hudak: David G. Short and you can follow me on Twitter at hoodaxbasement H-U-D-A-K sbasement.
David Kopec: And you can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Dave Kopeck. D-A-V-E-K-O-P-E-C. Don't forget to subscribe to us on your podcast player of choice, and we'll see you next month. Bye.