Transcription
Chris Voss, welcome. Andrew, pleasure, man. I've been wanting to talk to you on record for a while. You are quite the what we call in science N of 1. When somebody is a true sample size of 1. Uh I realize that yes, you are because you have this incredible skill set from your time in the FBI. You But you also have an incredible understanding and knowledge of how to communicate about that skill set so that people can glean useful [clears throat] information from it. You are also the guy that I text or call every once in a while when I've run myself into a jam or when I think I might be in a jam and I won't reveal details, but you tell me whether or not things are okay. And fortunately, the last couple of times I reached out you said, "You're good." So, thank you.
>> Happy to help, man. Thank you. [clears throat] Well, I have a lot of questions today, but what I'd like to start off talking about is negotiations take many forms, but if we could break those down into their broad categories, that would be useful. But before we do that, I want to know about the mindset that you have when you go into a negotiation and whether or not there any sort of practices. I realize you've been in this profession a long time, and so perhaps became reflexive to you at some point, but all of us at some point are going to go into negotiations, business negotiations, relationship negotiations, etc. Is there a process of getting one's mind and body right for a negotiation? You know, shifting from more listening and less talking or what Are there any tools that you use on the regular that could be um useful for us to keep in mind as we extend into the different categories of negotiations and ways to approach those negotiations?
Yeah, there can there can be a couple of different um First of all, just trying to figure out what what's really going on is is the real issue, and then how can I get an approach where I'm most likely to get the best possible outcome. Um so, there's always more than meets the eye. And there's a certain there's a certain few clichés, but the real issue is there's always a better deal or um there's no deal at all. So, first of all, trying to My first thing is I want to find out whether or not there's a deal at all or whether or not it's a bad deal. And then I'm going to walk away really fast because those are going to be complete waste of time. Um it's not a sin to not get the deal, it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. Or it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. So, I you know, I want to know I'm going to try to figure out real quick whether or not is there cutthroat on the other side of the table? Is this somebody I can trust? I'm I'm getting I'm leaning a little more inclined to dealing with the difficult people now as long as I don't give in. So, I got to I want to diagnose early on what the possibilities are.
Now, if I'm curious, if I'm actually interested, now another aspect of the mindset is like if I'm in a great mood, like if I'm just going to be playful, a couple of really huge personal negotiation wins recently was when I was just trying to be playful. I mean, I was just I was in a great mood and I'm joking around. And great negotiation is not exciting, it's astonishing. Um I'm in a We're in conversations right now with a possible non-scripted TV show. And so, I was telling the producers, you know, this ain't going to be Real Housewives. Um for to make this show properly, there ain't going to be any screaming. It's not going to be Bar Rescue where we're yelling at people. We're not going to be Hell's Kitchen where we're yelling at people. It's never going to be exciting, but it is going to be astonishing. Like you'll get outcomes where suddenly you find yourself in a place like, "What in the world? How did that just happen?"
And so, I I lose a suitcase in the airport the other day. And I'm walking into the lost luggage place, and I'm in a great mood cuz I'm home and I'm happy to be home. And I'm going to get a good night's sleep, and even though it's late in the day, I'm just happy. And I get ready to walk into this the lost luggage store where these people are bad at children. Like they expect you they know that you expect them to wave a magic wand and poof, your luggage is going to be there. So, for whatever reason, that's what I say say when I walk in the door. This young lady says, "How can How can I help you?" Well, first of all, how you could help me is obvious cuz I'm in a lost luggage. There's only one reason I'm in here. So, that's kind of a silly question. And I go, "I need you to wave a magic wand." And she just laughs and she looks at me. She ends up walking me out to the carousel, climbing up on the carousel, and she walks down the ramp the luggage comes out of. And I guarantee you they are not supposed to do that. And she sticks her head in and she looks around. She comes back out, and I've never seen any of these people leave the office, let alone walk back to the carousel. And she says, "Wait here." And she she disappears into the bowels of the airport, which like looks like a superhighway down there, right? Like God knows what it looks like underneath the airport. And pretty soon the carousel starts up again, and my bag and another bag pops out. This other poor schmuck is sitting there waiting. And I'm like, "I have never seen anybody do this ever." Like normally they say Here Here's a number, we'll call you in 24 hours. It might show up at your house. And I and I look around at the There's another young lady there, and I say, "You know, please tell her thank you for me. I got to go." cuz she she doesn't come back out for like almost 10 minutes. And on my way out, she she comes out the door and she high-fives me and she says, "How's that for waving a magic wand?" And that was the magic phrase, and I never would have said it to her if I wasn't playful in the moment. And I've got a couple of others like when I was just playful and I'm joking with people almost at my expense, it's shocking, astonishing what you can get people to do if you if you hit them the right way.
So interesting. I wonder what it tapped into, but it sounds like it it might have tapped into her sense that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand kind of ability, but finally somebody just said it directly, and that would be kind of fun to to actually play that role because normally they're restricted to their keyboard and their phone, and you know, uh I love that. On the opposite side of that spectrum, if ever you're feeling tense, stressed, jet-lagged, angry, um you know, I can think about negotiations where like people are trying to keep their egos in check. They want to be right. Um you know, the breakups, negotiations, there's those not necessarily romantic breakups, it could include that, but also professional breakups, you know, the the dissolution of a of a contract or something like that. Do you ever have to check yourself? Like, "Okay, I need to I need to I mean, I imagine being calm is better than not being calm for most most all things." Um uh Do you have a process of doing that? You seem like a pretty steady guy. I've never seen you uh look >> [laughter] >> Overall, I'm pretty steady.
Um Well, what the late-night FM DJ voice that um I'm not sure that I coined the phrase, but kind of famous for. To calm you down also calms me down. So, if I get bent out of shape, um I will and the conversation gets heated, I'll switch into that voice with the intention of of calming you down cuz you know, that's the that's the hostage negotiator's voice. But it'll calm me down, too. Like intentionally going to that voice tamps down the negative emotions, which interfere with my capacity to process information. Got reasons for that. Layman's reasons, no scientific academically rigorous studies that have been in any journals. Well, after you're done, I'm going to tell you something that will perhaps be astonishing to you as to why there's real neuroscience behind that late-night FM DJ voice having an impact on other people's brains. But I yeah, and I'll do that cuz it calms me down. Now, if I can if I can make the shift, the hard part is the shift into a positive mindset. If I can make that shift, but I can only make it from a calm voice. I also think it's the emotions are kind of a rock, paper, scissors sequence. I don't think you can go from sadness to elation directly. Uh sad, um depressed, down. I think there's something to um getting angry to pull you out of sadness. And I think if you're angry, you've got to go to calm next. And so, but if I can get out of anger and go to calm, then I can say something to myself like, "The reality is this is a luxury problem." Or I was in a negotiation with a counterpart that I knew was deceiving, lying to me. And I remember saying to myself, "You know, I'm lucky to be in this negotiation. I mean, they wouldn't they wouldn't be trying to hustle me if we weren't really good, if we didn't have a product that was phenomenal. I wouldn't be targeted at at all. So, I'm actually lucky to be in this conversation. So, if I can make that next shift emotionally, then I'm good. The hard part is making those shifts.
I'm going to just share with you what I learned recently about sound and emotion. Um I'm researching an episode on music and the brain. Fascinating topic. Believe it or not, there's a lot known. And the auditory system has this property where of course there are neurons, nerve cells that respond to different frequencies of sound. Low low frequency, you know, deeper tones, and high frequency, squeals and that sort of thing. Okay. That's pretty straightforward. Just like we have neurons that respond to different different colors or different uh you know, angles of light in in the room. Right. But what I learned and I confirmed with a good friend of mine who's a auditory neuroscientist and and neurosurgeon, name's Eddie Chang, who was a guest on this podcast previously, is that low frequency sounds of the sort that your voice is, that late-night FM DJ voice, are responded to in the brain by neurons, no surprise there, but the frequency that those neurons fire is also low frequency. In other words, when you speak in your low voice, Right. the other person's brain hears that and starts firing in a low frequency tone. In other words, it entrains to your voice. Not just the timing, but it's actually like you're essentially playing an emotional piano down in the low keys of their All right. of their mind. Now, when you go up to the high frequencies, the neurons can't follow that high high frequency. So, there's something special about low frequency sound that actually changes the emotional tone of the people that hear that low frequency sound. This is wild, right? I mean I mean of course the content of the words matters, too. But anyway, there's a there's real neuroscience to support um the voice that you were endowed with and that you uh that you employed for your work.
>> Well, then and then it also the point then, too, is it's not if the other side is not making a choice, it's an involuntary reaction.
>> That's right. This is not something one can override, except by perhaps plugging their ears. Right? If they're hearing that, their their mind is getting shifted toward a state of low frequency oscillation, which is one of more calm. Yeah. So, that's Yeah, so that's a real thing. And And were you to have a a high squeaky chipmunk's voice, >> [laughter] >> you might not have been the negotiator. You would have Who knows? Maybe there'd be another tactic there. I mean, I I think back to the um uh what I guess it was during one of the Gulf War campaigns where they Weren't they trying to um squeeze out uh Saddam and some of uh his people by playing like Milli Vanilli at high volume for hours and hours? Is that tactic actually used?
Um So, that that was that was uh Panama when they were trying to get Noriega out of his bunker.
>> Only a few I'm only a few countries over.
>> You know, I I got Well, I got the trivia, you know, I was telling you before I I'm the wacky yet fascinating useless information around terrorism and stuff like that. They tried that at at Panama. And and for whatever the military guys, they were playing music at and sounds. And then also among the many stupid things that the FBI did at Waco, then late at night they tried that in the Waco compound, too. And it was just That was one of the things that the hostage negotiators were adamantly against adamantly against. But they got overruled um by ants in command among the many stupid things that were done at Waco. That was also done at Waco. It was stupid, it's counterproductive. Hostage negotiators were always against it. So, for those of you don't remember Waco, Waco is um Branch Davidians, uh David Koresh, right?
>> There was a um Netflix series that was out about it recently that's fair. Mhm. [clears throat] Um uh about the how how it went down. Yeah, sad ending. He eventually set the the building ablaze, killed himself and everybody else in it. And the people inside set the building on fire.
>> Yeah, including a lot of children. Perished.
>> Including some children. Some There are some uh FBI agents that have still not gotten over that. Mhm. Love to talk about some different types of negotiations. Um Often times, I think because you're a former FBI negotiator, at the terrorist task force, this kind of thing, um we tend to focus on the negative negotiations, right? Get the hostages away. We'll talk about that stuff. Um breakups, business deals that have gone wrong, um people lying, cheating. What about negotiations that are benevolent? Let's say that two people want to um come to a a true win-win around you know, what they each see to be their best interests in let's say friendship. Two friends taking a trip together, vacation. Who's going to pay for what? Who's going to pay up front? Are people going to pay each other back?
Um or a romantic relationship. Two people are considering, you know, fusing finances to some extent or moving in together. What sorts of questions should people be asking themselves prior to those negotiations? In particular, is it very important that people know exactly what they want going into a negotiation? Or I can recall many times when I've gone into life circumstances knowing I wanted a certain set of feelings or outcomes, but not being extremely specific about, you know, I want this salary, I want to live in, you know, in a west-facing house on this particular location. You know, an exploration um can be of potentials.
Um I think it also take the form of negotiation. So, Yeah. how do how should people think about approaching benevolent negotiations? Like where we're not talking about something tragic happening if it doesn't go through. It might hurt, it might be a little bit high friction, but let's talk about how to get to a win-win.
Yeah, well, there's there's a couple interesting things there. First of all, you know, the phrase win-win. Um uh because win-win is just great collaboration. I mean, in point of fact, it should be win-win, which might only be emotional win-win. Now, the phraseology win-win, I know that if someone opens a negotiation with me and they say right off the bat, "Look, I want to do a win-win deal with you." that correlates extremely highly with someone who's trying to pick my pocket. So, I if you use that phrase in the first 5 minutes, I already know where you're coming from. You're trying to get me to drop my guard, so you win I lose. So, and this came up on an Instagram post I put up recently, which is essentially what watch out for the person says win-win. Now, I didn't say win-win is bad. I said watch out for the person that says it. Mhm. Also, you got to be cautious if if you like some of the win-win mindset, then people set themselves up to just get slaughtered by the person who's expressing a desire for win-win and looking to pick their pocket. Like if I feel win-win in my heart, you go, "Let's do a win-win deal." >> [sighs] >> If I don't watch it, I'm like, "Okay, what do you want?" And then I find myself giving away the store. So, there's a lot behind the win-win phraseology that you have to have a complete understanding of. In point of fact, both sides should feel good about the outcome. And isn't that the definition of win-win? Well, kind of sort of. But it's how they feel about it more than really what they got.
So, in a benevolent negotiation among friends, where we going to go to eat? Uh where are we going on vacation? What route are we going to take? People really just want to be heard out more than anything else, which operationally seems to be I don't understand how it's going to make any difference. Makes all the difference in the world. And how what's the best way for somebody to feel heard out? Well, I'm going to start out by telling you describing to you, not telling you, but describing to you what my best guess is on your perspective. Because it's really calibrating me actually finding out where your position is. And the only way I can find out where your position actually is, I'm going to I'm going to increase you telling me if I start taking a guess at it first. Cuz you're immediately right away you you're immediately going to tell me either I'm right or I'm wrong. You're going to correct me. Correction is um is a satisfying thing to do. And you're going to be much more candid with me if you're correcting me than if I'm asking you. So, I'll and you'll feel good about correcting me. So, it's going to there's all these great emotional lubricants to me getting you to correct me. So, I'm going to start out by saying like here here's here's what I think you're thinking, here's [clears throat] how I think you're approaching this, here's what I think you're wanting out of this out of this. Not what you should be, but what you probably are based on your perspective. And that's going to accelerate the conversation exponentially. Like it's ridiculous how much faster things are going to go. And then it becomes both an information gathering and a rapport building process simultaneously instead of separately, which is what makes this approach faster, even though it seems more indirect.
So, if we're getting ready to let's say you and I are going to take a car trip to Calif- uh to San Francisco from here. And I'm going to say, "All right, so my guess is you want to take the most direct route because you hate wasting time." And you're probably going to say to me, "No, no, no, no, I want to go up the Pacific Coast Highway because there's a beautiful stretch of country like I realize it's going to be a waste of time if we go up the Pacific Coast cuz we got to jump off it at some point, but I really want to see the scenery." You would have I've taken a guess at what you want, and you're going to come back real quick and correct me. And then, maybe I'm thinking time on the trip, but I've forgotten how beautiful it is to roll up the coast. And so, when you throw that out, I'll be like, "Oh, yeah. It is a beautiful ride, and we might not get into the shot. Like, who knows what's going to happen? So, yeah, I know now now that we're having a conversation, I'd rather run up the Pacific Coast Highway before we before we go inland and make the trip. And that And that's how we get to um we collaborate for better a better outcome, maybe a better idea than what I had in mind in the first place.
I love that, because what you just described is hypothesis testing. Yes. It's the way scientists are trained. You know, many people don't know this, but they teach us in science not to ask questions, but to start with a question like, you know, I don't know, how does this uh how does the brain develop or something? And then, you you say a hypothesis, and you test hypotheses, and then you figure out if they're right or wrong, and that takes you through a set of decision trees, and you eventually get at what you hope is some core truth. Um and then, hopefully others arrive there as well, and you get a consensus. So, I love the idea of hypothesis testing. In fact, when you said uh take the most direct route from where we are now uh in Los Angeles to uh San Francisco, um I like to take 101, not the five. The five is faster, so I immediately think, but I like 101. First of all, there are a couple really great taco and hamburger spots along the way that I used to stop with my bulldog, and yet Also, you get to see it the coast, and it makes those extra 2 hours completely worth it. And so, you're exactly right in um in that working through the decision tree doesn't necessarily mean um presuming that the the hypothesis is right, it sounds like you'd be equally okay with the hypothesis being wrong, because really what you're trying to do is just learn. And in learning, set up this collaboration. I love that.
A couple things. First of all, when you talk about hypothesis, and when when my son Brandon was involved in a company he's on he's out on his own now, but he used to always say hypothesis, test your hypothesis. He always used that term. And then, even now, like if we were talking about it, and you just said you knew some hot dog and hamburger places, I'd be like, "Holy cow! I didn't even know that. Yeah, I know I Yeah, I want to check those places out." So, that's how you discover new stuff in a conversation. I love it. So, um and also, I'm sure people are noting to not say the words win-win when approaching any kind of negotiation. What What do you think it is about those little um catchphrases that that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness? Because you could imagine that somebody, you know, I come to you and say, you know, "Hey Chris, like let's um I don't know, let's do some collaborative thing for social media for podcast, and um this is going to be a win-win for both of us." Now, I know to never say that with you, but you could imagine that somebody really means that.
Um but for you, it sounds like it's a flag that um they're trying to pull one over. It's It's uh it correlates really strongly with the people that are definitely trying to cut your throat. And I've had I've had them admit that to me candidly. Like, I'll be um I've I've experienced it. Like, if somebody throws win-win out early to me, I'll say, "All right. I think I know where this is going, but let me explore it." And they'll say, "Yeah, you know, this great opportunity for you." That's another tell. And we're going to put you in a room with all these billionaires, and there's going to be all this opportunity for you if you just come in and speak. And [clears throat] you know, we don't have a budget. Yeah, well, I've gotten that one before. Yeah, the the famous that the famous the world will just work out in your favor because because because it's going to work out in my favor. Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly right.
>> I've been I've been on the receiving end of those offers many a time. Um fascinating. Conversely, what sorts of openers um do you think establish the best rapport and um you know, benevolent discovery of a topic?
Well, what I'm seeing correlates real strongly with people I want to do business with if if they figured out something that they know is valuable for me, and they've just done it. And they've just offered it. Like, right off the bat. No strings attached, they They found a way to drop something on me that's valuable. They didn't approach me with their hand out. They approached me with some sort of generosity. Like uh a friend of mine, Joe Polish, runs this outfit called Genius Network. Joe believe He says like gives to the giver. Um like Joe did a bunch of favors for me before I ever joined. And he was trying to help me out and get my book sold, and he asked me to come in and speak, and he he'd done um he'd emphasized my book on his podcast in the different conversations. And I you know, I I finally paid the fee to join. Cuz he had done so much for me. Like, there's not much Joe could ask me for right now. Cuz he's just generous. And the generosity approach universally, I'm seeing a lot of really successful people that lead by generosity. And so, if you if you start out that, you know, if you if you give me a five-star review of the book on Amazon, no strings attached, or anything, like that goes a long, long way to somebody who wants to establish a long-term relationship, collaboration.