How I build TRUST in Negotiations

[Music] If you will, please welcome to the stage, give a big New York welcome to Mr. Chris Voss. Chris Voss? Huh. Good call. All right, is that here? We go. Let's start with this. See this watch?

Love affair with the word hostage. Listen, you do not hold people hostage or engage in ransom taking to get 100 percent of your way. They're trying to hold veterans hostage, divorce Obamacare from the American people. You cannot negotiate with a hostage situation. They had to take the country hostage, whether or not it's it's it's correct to kind of use the hostage terms of by politicians.

When you see this as somebody who's negotiated a lot, when you see what's going on in Washington, what jumps out to you? Well, there's two things about that. You know, on a personal note, I like that they use the word because then it gives me a chance to be on your show. [Laughter]

Focus on anything. His company is called the Black Swan Group. That is the baddest-ass name I have ever heard. I love that. Now, what is the Black Swan Group? That's like the coolest. What is that? Thank you very much. A Black Swan is something unusual that has a great impact, and we like to think that the way we negotiate has a great impact. All right. How often you get a chance to tell a joke that makes Anderson Cooper laugh? Right.

I think that there's a communication lesson in there. There's a negotiation lesson there. There's there's a sales lesson in there. It's buried in that. What do you think it is? I'm sorry, we think the lesson is, what do you, what is it? See the thing that I love about hostage negotiation, we'll come to learn, is when we invented this back in the 1970s, we didn't know it was all neuroscience, space, you know, we're psychologist, psychologist did a great job before we could actually learn inside, look inside the brain and see how it works. Everything we did in hostage negotiations backed up by neuroscience in communication. The neuroscience and negotiation communication lesson here is you're up to 31 percent smarter in a positive frame of mind. 31 percent. That's no small jump. The mood that we have directly correlates to how efficiently the brain functions. For hostage negotiators, we would call people down, reduce this thing called the late-night FM DJ Roy, and people calm down. We didn't know why it worked; we just know it worked. It actually turned their brain down. 31 percent smarter in a positive frame of mind. What's the lesson here for you now as a hostage negotiator? You know, do I show up at a bank going like, "Hey, yeah, I'm from Iowa, just fluid boy in my arms, tired," I'm not telling jokes. You know, I didn't I didn't go out, Anderson Cooper, telling a joke, but I did use humor, humor appropriate to the context. When you you're using humor, you're up to 31 percent smarter. Think about that. You're also causing your counterpart to be up to 31 percent smarter, putting them in a mood. One about one of our terms for negotiation: flexibility. Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better. Cool. All right, so that sounds cool. I'll do that. How do I get something better to happen? Appropriate humor in the moment. I don't tell that joke. Jeffrey Toobin does not give me the best commercial my company ever had, the Black Swan Group. There's a baddest-ass name I ever heard. What is that? He does that spontaneously. I kicked, I caused him to have the opportunist; he doesn't know it came from me because I made him feel better. He gives me something enormously valuable, receiving nothing in return, but it's contextual to the moment. Context is always important.

A friend of mine was telling me he's in a negotiation, he works for Raytheon. What is Raytheon? Raytheon is the government arms dealer, right? So weapons on behalf of the US government, arms dealer around the world. They're selling weapons to Korea, South Korea. They got a problem; the relationship is breaking down. They sent my friend to South Korea to to negotiate with these guys. South Koreans are so mad at these guys, they put them in a room in the middle of in the middle of building a room that's got no windows, and you know, I'm surprised it didn't waterboard when it came in, but the guy, I'm in a room with no windows because they're trying to make it unpleasant for them, and it's an unpleasant negotiation. Well, in the middle of this negotiation, the lights go out. So if your room with no windows, you're in pitch-black. The lights go completely out. They're sitting there. He says, after a couple of minutes sitting in a pit in the pitch black, he says, "Whose hand is that on my leg?" And the lights come back on, and they all laugh, and then they make the deal. And of course, it felt better about each other, but they simultaneously felt better about each other and got smarter in the moment.

This is crazy. Here's how crazy this is, and here's how you can begin to override your system and hack your system. Because two out of three in this room are not normally in a positive frame of mind. There's a number of things we know about the types of human beings that survived on a planet in regardless of gender, ethnicity. We break down pretty much into three types: fight, flight, and make friends. Now, to make friends type from the caveman days is normally in a pretty good mood. To fight, flight guys, I'm a fight guy. You know, we're not running around in a positive frame of mind on a regular basis, so we're actually not tapping into our full mental capacity. How can you hack that if you're in one of those types? If you're like me, they did a psychological experiment where they ask people to hold a pencil in their in their mouth without letting their lips touch it. What are you doing? You're smiling, right? Can we fool ourselves if we know in a positive frame of mind? What happens if you don't know you're in a positive frame of mind? Is there a hardwired connection between the facial muscles and nerves in the brain? They did the experiment; their brain picked up anyway. Didn't know they were smiling. You forced a smile onto your face. If I look at you and I smile, I hit your mirror neurons. It's an involuntary reaction. I could pick anybody out in this room. If I smile at you, even if you frown back at me, you're gonna be fighting the smile on your face, on your fighting the smile in your brain with your frown, but that still means I'm still hitting mirror neurons. You can't stop it. If you can hear, I can hit your mirror neurons. If you can see, I can hit your marathons. It's an involuntary response.

Here's another crazy piece of information. These lines that I found out recently. They gave Botox to women who are depressed. This now, this is our sample group happens to be women. Do not be misled by the fact that they're women because I this work because they're human beings, not because they're women. Be careful the kind of daddy you get if you misinterpret data, then you say things like playing basketball makes you tall. You can understand how you interpret your data. So sample sizes, women. This works because they're human beings, not because they're women. They depress; they give them Botox so they can't frown anymore. The mood instantly elevates instantly because they override the system. If you're a natural frown or you're hurting yourself, bad news about that experiment is with Botox they also have trouble smiling, so they can't elevate the rest of the way up there. It's a neuroscience rule: make yourself smile. You'll hack your system. You'll communicate better. You will get more. You will get surprises and your deals as unexpected stuff. You get you get the Jeffrey Toobin give you something enormously valuable; you didn't give him anything in return.

So let me see if I can tell you a little bit more about myself. I was the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator. What did that mean? What that meant was any American got kidnapped anywhere in the world, it was my job to come up with a negotiation strategy that got you out, set the stage for us to follow on and get the bad guys afterwards effectively. The way that we ran the program was it's the same reason you give a bank teller bait money. Bank robber comes in; you don't want the bank teller to get killed. Money's great evidence; you actually want the bank robber to leave with some money. If he gets all the way back to his hideout, he divides up the money, then you get the people that work with him. It's a pretty good system. So that's what I did, and I worked kidnappings all over the world. So if an American got grabbed someplace, and let's make a distinction, this is not Americans getting arrested by a government in North Korea; that's an illegal detention; that wasn't my thing. What I did was kidnappers, criminals, terrorists; that was my job. So you might ask yourself, right, so how busy is the leading international kidnapping negotiator? Well, it's a big world, and a lot of Americans doing really stupid things, so you call it on a regular basis. But this instance in particular in Haiti, Haiti is a little bit different ballgame. A lot of dual nationals getting grabbed in Haiti. Bad guys don't know they're taking Americans; they're dual nationals. Now this is happening on a regular basis because do you guys know this, and this is one of the reasons why I'm an unabashed Patriot fan of the United States. We're not perfect; we got our shortcomings. I think I think we're a phenomenal place. How many countries in the world if you're born there are you a citizen? Do you know? I grew up in Iowa. I know the accent doesn't sound like I grew up in Iowa, but I grew up in Iowa. I grew up there, and I thought I was born here. I'm a title to citizenship. It's a way the world, it's it's the way things should be. No, it's not. It's argued that there are only two developed nations on the entire planet that have birthright by citizen by citizenship by birth. I believe the Latin term is just just Soleil, which is right of the soil, those who you can speak lied and forgive me for my butchering of the pronunciation. Two countries in the entire world, two developed nations: US and Canada. Not one country in Europe. You were born in England, you get citizenship now. You're born in Australia, you get citizenship now. They'd laugh at you; they think that's hysterical. United States, right of birth, as it turns out, it's largely a creature, a thought and idea of the Americas. Most of the countries in north and south America, for whatever reason, how these cultures came to be here, we believe in citizenship by birthright. Lissa's have to do with Haitian moms know the very best gift they could possibly give to their child on the child's literal first birthday. It's a gift of American citizenship and privileges and opportunities that brings. So Asian moms, one way or another, legal, illegal, or illegal, a finding a way into American soil so the child can be born an American citizen. But something that's weiss, the bad guys don't know the graben Americans; they think they're grabbin Haitians. Now, at the time, also recognition, kidnapping is a business. I I'm the most practice negotiator on international commodities and many other houses. Negotiate kidnapping is a business's commodity business to us. It's a horrible event to the kidnappers; it's a job. So what they do, it's a commodities business. Commodity happens to be human beings. They don't care; it's what they do. They get a division of labor; they get people that acquire the commodity; they got people that transport the commodity. If you got people that house the commodity, they got people to release the commodity; they got people that handle the transactions for the commodity; they got a boss that sits back and watches everybody criticizes what they do, just like your ban says it, criticizes what you do. You guys you guys saw the movie Man on Fire with Denzel Washington, right? Who do you negotiate with? The net movie, the voice, the voice's job was to negotiate. It's a business, Haitian kidnapping business, at the time the bad guys got a great business model. Exactly. I was impressed with what they'd come to as a business model. Carjacked a car with more than one person in it; let one person go, keep the other person in the car. You've immediately handled your notifications; you don't have to worry about marketing if you will; you've pre-qualified your customer. If they got a car, they got money for a ransom. Dead in Haiti, you got a car, you got some dough, you got money for a car and gas, you can pay a ransom. You pre-qualified. And what happens if you grab the one person in the family that nobody likes? You got a car. Pretty sharp, right? Very sharp business, Mom.

So I'm gonna call one day. A 12-year-old boy in Haiti's been grabbed. Tovar, your boy's an American citizen; his father is not. His father knows that his son is an American citizen, and because of that, he's supposed to get help from the US government, DOS. Today, the United States government says, "My son's a citizen; he's been kidnapped," and the State Department says, "The FBI is gonna be there to help you." Put my next slide or put my slides back up, please. I'm not sure what went through his mind when he heard that, but I'm sure they're probably about 15 minutes later. He expected the eerie, and these guys would be there at his door; maybe they'd have FBI hata. But instead, 15 minutes later, he gets a call from some guy in Washington, DC, named Chris Voss, and he literally says to me in a phone, "You're in Washington, DC. How you gonna help me now? How much time do I get for this?" Guy hangs up the phone, seconds, right? How much time do I got? You or me? What do you say? How long do you have to make a first impression? Do you know? Seven seconds. Same amount of time as me when you're making a first impression. You think people aren't saying to themselves, "How you gonna help me?" You think they're not saying it to themselves in that seven seconds? What do you have to establish in that seven seconds? What did I have to establish? Trust. What else? Not confidence, close, competency, not the same thing. You got the same amount of time as me; you got to establish the exact same things I had to establish. You got somebody saying to you about you in their head the same thing that that father said to me on the phone: "How you gonna help me?" It's the same thing. What do you say? You're me; what are you saying? Now, the reason why I knew what to say to this father is because I've done it wrong in the past. First time I showed up in the Philippines on a case, we're going to talk about it in a few minutes, I did it wrong. They walked me into a room, the entire head to the government of that because this American's been grabbed. I've been invited in by the Ambassador; the ambassador's personally signed off on me coming in. The head of our office of Manila's brought me, and everybody other than the president of Philippines is in a room. The only reason the president is not there is his personal advisor is Secretary of Defense is their head of the police; everybody is there, and basically, in some in substance to what they say, "How you gonna help us?" I make the mistake of laying out my resume. Yeah, I ain't hostage negotiator with terrorism when the Attorney General's Award for Excellence to investigation, the FBI agents Association Award for distinguished and exemplary service, been on a terrorist task force in New York City for 14 years. Not only have I been trained by the FBI and Scotland Yard, I write the book; I wrote the book that we trained from. Now I will tell you they were suitably unimpressed; they may as well have yawned right in my face. I'm never walking out of that meeting. The head of our office girl, those guys are disrespectful; they challenge your credentials. I'm from Iowa; I go like, "How cool is that?" When did I ever get to argue with the Secretary of Defense of an entire country? Why is that? Why is meet you laying out me laying out my resume? Are you laying out your resume? Stupid. Number one, it's all about me, but number two, your resume correlates loosely with whether or not you know what you're doing. If your resume correlated accurately with what you did, you guys would never make a bad hire, would you? What I say to that father? Here's what I said. All right, so Haitian kidnappers are not killing kidnap victims these days. I realize it's really stupid because they kill each other at the drop of a hat, but they're not killing kidnap victims. Today is Thursday, and Haitian kidnappers love to party on Saturday night. So if you say the things that I want you to say when I want you to, Sam will have your son out late Friday, early Saturday morning. He said, "Tell me what you want me to do," and we had a son out Saturday morning. Let's break down a little bit what I said or what I didn't say. First of all, which took more time, me laying out my resume or me laying out what he was faced with? It took less time for me to lay out what he was faced with, didn't it? I will tell you also in the course of getting his son out, he never asked me how long had been an FBI agent; he never asked me how long I've been a negotiator; he never asked me how many countries I had negotiated in; he never asked me how many cases in Haiti I'd negotiated, and he never even asked me how many times I've been to Haiti. You know how many times I've been to Haiti? Never. I've never been there. Then I speak French; that I speak Creole. Did he ask me those questions? And you may have asked yourself already, you know, there's basically 168 countries in this world, a lot of languages. How many languages does Chris Paul speak if he'd negotiated all over the world? And by now you realize the answer that is barely one. He'd ask me those questions. I told him what he was facing because when someone says, "How you gonna help me?" Their first question is, "Okay, so you've been doing this for a long time. Do you see what I see? Do you know what I'm looking at?" I laid an art form, and I offered them the slightest bit of insight, and they say themselves, "Wow, if you see clearly what's in front of me, there's a really good chance you know what you're doing." Do I have to explain this to you? Do I have to explain to you my challenges? You lay it out; one of two things happen. They said, "Here, that's right," well, they say, "No, that's not it; this is it." What happens when they say, "That's not it; this is it"? You're in dialog; you're in collaboration instantly. You're trying to get to dialogue and collaboration instantly, aren't you? And many people don't realize that when somebody corrects you, that means you're in collaboration. You're in Thailand, and you're on your way with that. Here's a couple of other things I did not do, and one of them is probably the two two worst habits you have. Did I try to get him to say yes? You guys are hardwired to hear yes; you guys are desperate for it; you guys you guys got an addiction to yes. You didn't know who's gonna be that kind of a meeting, did you? Hi, hi Chris, it's so bad. Here's how bad it is, and getting you out of that. You think getting people to say yes, the yes momentum, the s it will proposition, get them to say yes, a lot of little things, and you get, and they say yes to the big thing. You're addicted to that, and getting out of that is going to be one of the most difficult things you could do. Not complicated, but here's how difficult it's gonna be. Everybody make a fist with either hand, right thumb up, left forefinger out. Now switch that. Hurt, didn't it? Switch back. Some of you going like, I got your left for I saw him right here. You look sad. CBC's this was that complicated what I asked you to do. Do you need to be do you need to be Elon Musk's to know what I was trying to get you to do? No, but it was awkward; it was difficult. I know that somebody in back room right now going like, he's the cool thing about that brain science, the difficulty that you felt trying to get that done, it's actually the creation of a new neural pathway. That's a cool idea. The neuroscience rules are the path, the synapses that fire together wire together. Now your yes habit is hardwired; that road is built, and you're used to screaming down that road, and your thought processes getting out of it. He's gonna take some repetitions. How many? 63. John Foley, Blue Angel pilot. I heard him give a speech probably about two years ago. He talked about wiring grooves into their brain, which is the same thing as there's no pathways and new habits that I'm talking about. And Nate, you know, if they don't wire a groove into the brain, these guys crash into each other in the air; people start to die instantly. And he said they did some research on, I said it took about 63 to 65 repetitions to put a new habit in a brain, but at the very beginning, it's as hard as that was, and you quit; you give up, and you because you think it's gonna be that hard the whole time, like, "I'm not doing this anymore; hurts my head," but you don't know how close you actually are to breaking through a new habit. Everybody knows what the the bell curve looks like; it's very steep, and that Peaks, and then you take off on the other end. We're building, you're building a new habit. Some of the new habits I'm going to share with you today, at the beginning, you just see how steep this thing is initially, like it's too hard; I'm not doing the same, but I got to get you out of the yes habit. I got to get you out of that's that is the worst thing you could possibly do. I don't even bother with the word yes, and when we were working on the book, one of the guys I was working with, he said, "Hey, how'd you get as a hostage negotiator, how did you get kidnappers to say yes?" The only question I can remember being thoroughly stumped by because I'd never really thought about it that hard at that time, and I said, "No, we never did. It's a useless word, so we'd even bother with it." So some of you sitting there sitting there thinking right now like, "Okay, fine, now what do you want me to do?" Because that's all I do. And you know what? I closed deals that way too. You can't tell me that I don't close deals getting people to say yes. Now I'm not saying you can't do it; I'm just saying your batting average isn't anywhere close to what it should be. You're batting 125 when you should be batting 350 for your baseball players. Yeah, stick to 125; you want to stay there because this is what it looks like, and this is why it fails. Would you like to have a more efficient system? Would you like to have more customers? Would you like to have more free time? Buy my product now. This is maybe there was a point in time when this was a good idea, maybe, but the swamp land timeshare salesman, the coupon book, the $50,000 coupon book salesman has already batted them so hard that they're battered by yes. You guys know anecdotally what happens if you come across a battered child than you try to hug him; they still flinch and jump back from you. But wait a minute, I was trying to give him a hug; I'm a good guy; I meant well; I wasn't trying to trap him; I was trying to have integrity. It doesn't matter; they're battered. Everybody's battered by yes. You you got to stop this; you gotta stop it. Okay, fine, you convinced me. Now what? You know who this is? Jack Welch. Jack, one of the most famous CEOs, former CEO GE, author of a number of books, Jack Welch, the real-life MBA. Jack Welch coming through Los Angeles a couple of years ago. He and his wife, Suzy, the the latest book, Two Real-Life MBAs. I'm gonna go to the book signing; I'm gonna ask Jack to come speak at the class I'm teaching at that time at the USC Marshall School of Business in the MBA program, negotiation. Once Jack that come speak to my negotiation class. How many people try to get Jack Welch to say yes or something that day? Everybody. How many people in a book signing, they're trying to try to get Jack Welch to say yes to something? They can come up and say, "Hey, Jack, you want to come to the house; wife makes a great meatloaf." How many people? Everybody. You're me; what do you say? How much time do I got? Maybe not seven seconds, even less than that, because at a book signing, what happens? Guy like Jack walks, you come in when you're about five, six, seven people from Jack, somebody comes up to you and says, "What's your name?" They write your name down on a piece of paper so Jack can write your name on the book. They say, but in reality, so you don't talk to him, he doesn't say, half say to you, "What's your name?" It's a Christmas good luck; keep going. Problem one, there's 300 people on line. If I try to stop and talk to Jack Welch for even 20 seconds, we're now there for six hours, right? Problem two, Jack Welch's a legitimate celebrity; they don't know who I am; they haven't put me through a metal detector; they don't know I I don't have a gun. As a matter of fact, I have a gun, but they don't know that I'm an FBI agent; they haven't got any ID for me. I could come up, I'm gonna get within arm's length of Jack's well, I could do what I want. Jane Fonda was at a book signing a number of years ago. Vietnam vet got within arm's length of her and spit right in her face. Action is quicker than reaction. I'm gonna be arm's length from Jack Welch; he's got security people there that are worried about his safety; they know they can't stop me from doing whatever I want to do. I could walk up to Jack Welch; I could take his face in my hands and kiss him right on the lips if I wanted to. You got a disgusted look on his face, but they don't know what I'm gonna do. So everybody's more than jumping. I walk up to Jack Welch; this is what I say: "Is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak to the negotiation course that I teach at USC?" He looks up into the left; he gets this really intense scowl on his face, and he just freezes, and I think I just killed Jack Welch, cuz he's old, right? I figure you got mad, and he had a stroke, and he's gonna die cuz he's so angry; he's gonna fall right in front of me, then they're gonna tackle me; they're gonna blame me to drag me out, cuffs. Now see, but I'm an FBI agent. You kill Jack Welch? So initially, when he doesn't die, I'm relieved, but he's he still doesn't move, and I'm thinking now he's gonna start going. Security looks furious; finally looks at me, says, "This is my personal assistant's night, and this is special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I will call her, tell her who you are and what you want." I think we're gonna be in Los Angeles in a fall. If we are, we'll come and speak to your course. Cuz they triggered enough, I triggered a calibrated now calculated now. I changed the question to a no, and I'm here to tell you a calibrated no is worth five yeses. Think about think about what he thought through in the steps that he thought through before he answered me, cuz all the rest of that stuff I would have had if he just said yes. That I said, "Who do I get in touch with? How do I coordinate with them? How do I communicate them with them? Will you call them and brief them?" We're talking about the fall where you're gonna be in a full. Think of how many questions you went ahead and answered for me. It's insane. We do this on a regular basis. I don't bother with yes. We did a training in New York just about it earlier this month; it's still made right. We did about two weeks ago, very intense intensive master class. I happen to run across Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank, and you're in LA just a couple of weeks ago by the

Way, a wonderful guy. I mean, a wonderful, gracious, charming, impressive guy. I would work with him; I would work for him. He was telling me about how he develops his people—phenomenal guy. I offer him a free ticket; he’s gracious enough. Dogs say, “How many can we buy?” And so we’re going back and forth on how many he could buy, and I’m trying to get a commitment out of him. And the event—sound like it is—the door is slamming shut. And I realized that if I don’t get a nearly instantaneous commitment from him, because we’re charging people a lot of money for these tickets—we charge people just short of $2,000 per head to be there—and every, you know, we got people buying them, I can’t keep this window open for him. I don’t care if he is a billionaire; we get people won’t want these tickets. So five o’clock on a Friday, I have to get a commitment from him. Now we’re in LA; five o’clock on a Friday, it’s 8 p.m. here in New York. The other problem is business opens in New York three hours earlier than it does in Los Angeles. If I haven’t got him committed before the start of the next business day, he’s out.

I sent him an email that says, “Are you against making a commitment for these tickets? Now, are you against paying for them before the start of business tomorrow?” And I get an email back instantly, says, “No, we’re gonna take three in total; we’ll pay for them before the before business starts tomorrow.” Less than 20 minutes later, I’m getting emails from his assistant to pay now. What would you have done normally? No, how many would you like? Would you please commit now? Can you pay before the close of business tomorrow? Would be the normal thing, but it’s gonna be too late. But I—you help people think by switching out of yes and then—no. I don’t bother with yes; we don’t bother with yes. I could, I could go, I could belabor it at length—yes. This commitment—commitment creates anxiety. No, it’s protection; protects and makes people feel safe and secure and helps them think. Anxiety interferes with people’s thought processes. Every time you try to get somebody to say yes to something, you’re creating anxiety because they say themselves, “What if I let myself in for? What’s the catch? What’s the hook? Where’s it’s gone? What are you trying to do to me?” These are anxiety-creating instances which interfere with their ability to make decisions. It’s not me telling you this; this is neuroscience. Anxiety slows the brain. Don’t take my word for it. Okay, fine. So what if no is not enough? This is, this is, this is what—this is really what sold the book to the publisher. They’d never seen anything like this before. It’s—and you know, utter disdain for yes because what’s the most famous negotiating book in the world anyway, right? Everybody knows “Getting to Yes,” right? Yes, it’s supposed to be what you want to get people to say—yes. It’s not what you want people to say. This is what you want them to say after the no. Now that’s kind of disappointing, right? Like that’s not special; that doesn’t make me feel good. Well, yes makes me feel good. I love yes; I got a bad addiction to yes. I’m happy when I hear yes. That’s right. It’s—it’s not what it is to you when it comes out of their mouth; that’s what it is to them. That’s right. Is what people say when they think that what they’ve just heard is the total and complete truth. There’s two simultaneous things that happen; it triggers a subtle epiphany in people’s brains. There’s a chemical change with epiphany; they feel better, they feel smarter, they feel clarity. Stephen Covey’s advice from way back when: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” And so we thought, okay, all we got to do—say to somebody, “I understand,” and then—then you get a talk, right? Because they’re ready to hear you. Know it’s the changes—show understanding first—trigger that. That’s right. Then, and only then, are they ready to hear you—whatever your political—whatever political side of the aisle you’re on. I’ll give you an example to prove it to you. Last presidential election, the two candidates—or on TV, engaged in a debate. Whichever candidate you loved, when you decided to vote for them, they said something in the debate you thoroughly believed in. You didn’t look at the TV and say, “You’re right.” You looked at the TV; you went, “That’s right.” That’s what people say when they’re all in; they say, “That’s right.” Also, I had somebody stop me and say, “I think it’s when the person is telling you they feel empathy from you.” Empathy is this powerful mystical tool. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is not sympathy. I don’t know how many times I could say that—empathy is not sympathy. And it triggers a moment when they feel bonded to you, and that’s where you build trust-based influence. You know who the greatest practitioners of empathy are on the planet? Do you guys know? Sociopaths. Very close social paths. Why do you think it’s a preferred communication approach of social paths? Cuz they like ya? Because it works. Because they like to work hard? Cuz sociopaths have a great work ethic. Yeah, well, higher social pet—they look really hard; it’s efficient; it sticks at last; it’s the most durable form of influence there is. Social paths are lazy; they want to wind you up once and then keep you wound up with a minimal amount of effort. Alright, fine. So they like it—does it work on them? I love this question—does empathy work on sociopaths? We think—here’s a sociopath. You have a slight back—please gap on the right guy at the bottom is American overseas doing stupid stuff. He gets grabbed by this guy—guy in sunglasses and a black bandana. Make no mistake—is a murdering, raping, straight out of the movies, bad to the bones sociopath. He’s a killer; he’s got the blood on his hands, literally, of no shortage of people that he is physically and personally cut their heads off. These guys got a method of chopping heads off that day I was shown to me and explained to me; they actually kind of proud of—they’re so effective at it—like a contest—how, how efficiently can you chop a head off of a human being? This guy’s done it a bunch of times—and a rapist—and he finds a woman that he likes; he rapes her enough she becomes pregnant—him and his buddies shove it down a hill so she miscarriages so they can keep her. These are not nice guys; these are the definitions of sociopaths. They’ve got this American—I am coaching this guy because I was in international negotiation coach—is what I really was. All I need to do is find somebody that’s coachable. If you’re coachable, I don’t—here what you’re faced with; I can make you pretty effective because I know how the brain science works. By the way, is this stuff cross-cultural? Do you guys know—every hostage negotiation team uses the same skills? The hostage negotiation team in Tokyo, Japan, and in Cape Town, South Africa, both use the same skills. Wait a minute—Japan, Africa? You got to be kidding me, right? What’s the commonality? They’re human. So that’s the limitation. My approach to negotiation only works where humans are involved. So our social path is holding this American, and there’s a ten million dollar demand, but he’s not saying it’s a ransom; he’s saying it’s for ten million dollars for five hundred years of oppression—for war damages—from the Spanish to the Japanese to the American city—atrocities committed by the Americans in the early 1900s under Blackjack Pershing. And we’re not even Filipinos anyway; we’re a separate independent nation; we’re Moros, and we’re currently being oppressed by a puppet government in Manila; it’s held up by an American colonial invader. So we’re not asking for ransom; we’re asking for war damages for 500 years of oppression, which actually makes it ten million dollars seems kind of, kind of, kind of small. And I realized right now most of you are tuning this out of your mind because you’re saying, like I was—never in an argument with somebody where they’re bringing up stuff from the past; it didn’t matter—is it happened to me; all my arguments are logical, rational, right? So we go back and forth with this guy literally for months, and finally I say to my guy, “We’re gonna hit the reset button here,” and this is my son’s referred to this as a “birth of that’s right” moment, because I used to take this for granted; I didn’t realize the extraordinary power of it. I said, “The next time we get this sociopath on the phone, we’re gonna get him to say ‘that’s right,’ and you’re gonna repeat the entire situation from his perspective, especially the bad stuff about us—that might be the most critical part of it—the bad stuff about you.” So my guy gets back on the phone with this terrorist, and he says, “You know what, you’re not asking for ransom for the American, but you’re asking for war damages from 500 years of oppression from the Spanish to the Japanese to the Americans—the violations, the atrocities—and Blackjack Pershing of the Americans in the 1900s—and you’re not—you’re not Filipinos; your Moros; your separate independent nation; been fighting for your freedom for 500 years, and you’re being oppressed currently by a puppet government in the middle; it’s held up by the—by the American colonial invaders—and it’s unjust and it’s wrong,” and he went on and on—if you know—and he laid it on thick. And I’m here to tell you, if you’re not laying it on thick, you’re not laying it on thick enough—the bad stuff, not the good stuff—the bad stuff. And probably—and it didn’t seem like it took that long, but it seemed forever—they took my guy to lay this out—and it was a moment of silence—and a sociopath on the other end of the phone said, “That’s right.” And it was dead silence for another couple moments, and my guy says, “Let’s talk again in a couple of days,” okay, hangs up the phone. We went from ten million dollars to zero in that moment. Ten million dollars went off the table, never to be mentioned again for the rest of the kidnapping.

Lasts a couple more months. Kidnapping took a couple twists and turns. Finally, one day, the Americans out in the swamp—we’ve so diffused everything they’re doing; they’re not even watching them anymore; they’re not angry; they don’t know that we’ve diffused them; they don’t know what sort of an upper hand we have on them; they just don’t know what’s going on. The American—they’re checking—I remember three days—he’s sitting out there in the swamp—says, “I’m leaving,” and he walks away. Local farmer sees him, says, “You must be Jeffrey Schilling, the American.” He says, “I am.” How many black guys walk around south of Philippines, right? Suz am—they looked at military—the military flies down and helicopters picks him up; they take him back to Manila; they hold this monumental press conference; he’s got the president of Philippines on one side, secretary defence on the other. Secretary of Defense says, “We have rescued the American, Jeffrey Schilling, at a daring military operation.” They gave a ride; it was a daring operation at the Newark Airport yesterday where I was rescued. He’s sitting there; he doesn’t say anything. We fly him out—back—back to the United States. And back in the Philippines about three weeks later, on another kidnapping, I connect back up with my guy. He says, “You’re not gonna believe who called me.” I don’t know who called you. The terrorist guy—names Abaya Sabai—a call? Really? What do you say? Have you been promoted yet? I don’t know what it was he said to me on the phone. I was gonna kill the American; they should promote you. He hangs up. What’s he saying when he made that call? Terrorist sociopath called to pays respects—called to pays respects to say he felt respected by you. He’s also saying, “I’d talk to you again if we meet again.” I talked to you—everybody you deal with, regardless of the outcome, should feel that solid about the interaction when it’s over—no matter how the interaction went—that they’d still deal with you—everybody you deal with. And you’d be amazed at the impact that I’ll had—not just on your business, party, personal relationships, but everybody in life that matters to you. All right, we’re gonna do a little bit of QA here in a minute, but I want you to know if you want more besides the book, if you want to add to it—only if you want more—we’ve got a newsletter comes out once a week; short, sweet newsletter; it’s very digestible; it’s not one of those—it’s an encyclopedia that you got to take a nap after you’re done reading—text FBI empathy—all one word—don’t like your autocorrect—put a space between FBI and empathize—send that to 2-to-8-to-8; you get a dialog box back that’ll sign you up for the newsletter. A lot of people love it as a great supplement to the book, and it’s also the gateway to everything that we do—when we—when we do training sessions—open enrollment training sessions—it’s a gateway to the website, which is BlackSwanLtd.com, but the newsletter will take you there. Read past issues; find about other stuff that we have—we have—we have quite a bit of free content on the newsletter, on the website—a lot of articles in the newsletter; you can search them; you find a lot of stuff there that’ll help you. Subscribing to the newsletter is a great tool, and it’s free; it’s complimentary. For those of you like me—for more federal—federal employees—you love free. All right, QA. Thank you all. All right, we have time for just a few quick questions, so if there’s anybody that is dying to ask Chris something, raise your hand and speak loudly. I see a hand over there—that’s—yeah, there you go. Go ahead. There you go. I got a car-buying story in the book, and—and—and we just—and on our YouTube channel, a friend of mine—the guy I told you about—was a negotiate with South Koreans—he tells his car-buying story, and we—we get good prices. That’s good. Yes. Well, I say that’s a great question. Go for an own; you get a yes. You didn’t hear the question. Um, first of all, no—like nobody—nobody will do that. All right? And I already know—I know how hard it is for anybody to say yes; I mean, it’s—it’s insanely hard. And my son used to challenge me on this. We’re walking out of a building in—with a client here in New Jersey, across a river, and they got a security guard who’s checked us in, and we’re checking out, and he’s—he’s a security guard, and he’s got Allied Security, and some of my senses—I don’t think it’s always hard for somebody to say yes to something. And the security guard’s right there, and I go—I look at him; I go, “Do you work for Allied Security?” Now he’s at work, on duties—the same guys to check this in in the morning; he remembers us from the morning before; he’s got a uniform on—says Allied Security. I said, “You work for Allied Security?” And goes, “What do you want to know?” Yeah. And I look at my son, and I go, “Now, in the unlikely event the answer is yes, what you are going to get is silence; they’re just not gonna say yes. Now, one in 10,000,” because we like asking ridiculous—no, you’d be shocked at the no questions we ask. We coach employees to ask their bosses, “Do you want me to fail?” And you know—and every now and—if the answer is yes, you will get silence. And also part of negotiation is you go from knowing—from wondering to knowing, and you’re never worse off; you might not like the answer, but you cannot move forward until you know what ground you’re standing on. And so if the answer is—have you give you no question we send out all the time—have you given up on doing business with the Black Swan group? If they don’t respond, you know what we do next—pursue someone else. How many non-responders do you have? You know how many we have? None, because we don’t pursue that business. If they’re not going to do business with us, there are lots of people who will, and I’m not wasting my time on people who won’t do business—ones love that—absolutely—fast lose fast. Who else? And a quick question? I’m not seeing—here I have one really interesting—in the book, you make this argument that the smarter you are, the more difficult it is to be a good negotiator, so there’s hope for a lot of us in the room. Yeah, talk about that. Why is that? Smart people—people with higher degrees than once they want—they won’t show you how smart they are; you can’t get him to shut up; you can’t—they just—they just want to show you how they thought—they’ve thought stuff through; they want—they want you to appreciate how much they’ve thought stuff through, and so they want to lay it all out for you; they want to help. I mean, it’s very well-intentioned stuff, but it’s really hard to get those kind of people that—to shut up. And this is—this is about shutting up, asking the question, and getting information from who you’re talking to—getting them to talk, not me to talk. Your counterparts should be talking five times more than you. Yeah, we like to see—like to say, “He who talks most loses.” That’s good; that’s good. He who talks most loses. Who has a question? Actually, you have time for four. Yeah, yeah. Frank? Yeah. Wife and kids negotiating with that—we don’t have a lot of time. Oh, senior—senior executive—although very young lady executive in Silicon Valley is talking to her then-fiancé—now husband—one day, and she goes, “Why do I like talking to you all of a sudden? So you know, this last couple days, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.” He’s like, “Hey, taking his class, and they’re teaching this book—‘Never Split the Difference,’ and I’m making a store with the—with our wise.” She went out and bought books for all her girlfriends’ husbands. That’s good; that’s good. I slide here. Yeah. All right, so he break that down; he pitched like crazy, right? Yes. What he—he did a nice job; he took his ridiculous idea—for me to clear my schedule—florescent rest of the day—and then it—he three, four sentences to lay out the pitch, and then he said, “I understand,” which is bad; you should never say “I understand.” You had a really good start; your pitch needs to be a lot shorter, but you—I didn’t—did I pitch with that father? No. Yeah, I didn’t—that was the other thing I didn’t do; I didn’t pitch the father; I didn’t pitch solutions; I didn’t pitch answers; I said, “Here’s what you’re looking at,” and waited to see if he was going to interact with me on what he was looking at. So you got a good start; that’s the first fact that you already picked up on—to starting out with a—with an oriented question is—but you’re still wired to pitch; you’re still wired to pitch. And getting that—“that’s right”—out of the other side before you proceed—seek first to understand before you can be understood—you should get that—“that’s right”—before you make the pitch. On top of that, when you get the feedback from—back from your counterpart, you guys have a broad value proposition—how do you know what portion of that proposition is valuable—you’re kind of—part—you—you got—you got seven selling points; you kind of pop—might be interested in—every time spent on the other five—top five—is your counterpart is starting to go to sleep on you. So the—the guidance that you want to get—you want to know exactly which part of your pitch matters to them, and then—now that you’ve honed—you know which part of the value proposition is actually there for them, now you can go into it. Yeah, so you want to write track; good start; and—and there’s a coachman—you have a good example that on the podcast was just released, Chris, where you know—we roleplay a little bit where we say, “Hey, you know, Chris, I was at your—at your website; saw one of your videos; really liked it; would love to understand more about—about Black Swan—give me your pitch real quick—what do you guys do and how does this all work?” Right? Yeah. And so my answer was, “Sounds like you’re not sure we’re valuable or would be,” yeah, because I need to know what you think is valuable; I—we don’t make—we don’t pitch; we find out what matters. Yeah, and then if what you’re looking for is not us, we’re like, “You know, looking for us,” because we need to talk to people that are looking for us. So much of what you talked about is counterintuitive, and it kind of goes against how we’ve always operated. This isn’t an easy shift for people to make. The 63, I think I heard repetitions—do you ever have it—they’ll get there. Yeah, and a little bit of practice and prep. So I got a video to show you about the variety of preparation—fireman—go for it. All right, slides back up—a proof of life video—that’s what they’re called—the ultimate good news—bad news story—if you’re ever unfortunate enough to see one today—a hot-face, high-stakes rescue mission in Colombia ended a drama that has been dragging on for years. Chris Voss is the former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator; he worked on it. All right, so in terms of preparation, what are my preparation issues here? [Applause] It’s a little dark, but on the right-hand side of my head, my hair is sticking outside, so this was the first time I was ever on—seeing it—like I can tell you something—I thought this was cool—like I’m going—there are more people watching Anderson Cooper on CNN that are in my hometown back in Iowa, and there’s so much—I don’t know—like I heard they have a green room; do they have a green room? And is it green? They have a green room; it’s not green. All right, so I know you’re going to the green room; you sit down; it’s kind of a nice place; they’re very nice to you; they give you coffee; they give you water; I think that’s cool—it’s free coffee; I’m from Iowa; they don’t get free coffee. And then—then do you know where you go after the green room? Makeup. I can remember the first time I was sitting in that makeup chair, and they’re putting makeup on my face, and I thought my father’s rolling over in his grave right now—this son is putting on makeup again—a middle-class, blue-collar guy from Iowa; I didn’t wear makeup growing up in Iowa. So you go—you get out of makeup, then they take you into a room—it’s actually—actually a large, dark closet—Unitas studio with Anderson Cooper—light shines right in your eyes; you’re supposed to look right below the light—that’s Anderson talk right there—that’s Carey—you got a look at that—and they say—down to the left is a monitor, and when we go live, the monitor is gonna come on, and it’ll show the program, and you wants to leave that on. I said, “Leave that on; I never saw me on TV before; I want to watch me on CNN—leave that baby on.” So we’ve just gone live; the monitor’s on, and I’m looking down at the monitor, and I see my hair sticking out, and I am perplexed. Now the other problem here is the monitor is a mirror image, and I don’t know which side of my head the hair is sticking out, so I’m a negotiator, right? I generate options; I figure stuff out. So the first thing I gotta do is I gotta figure out which side of my head the hair is sticking out so I could address it. So this case—from the beginning until his retirement just last year—he joins me now—Chris, this has got to be kind of—I don’t know—why I thought moving my head around was gonna help—you can see from the look on my face—and go like—now that didn’t help—don’t know where it is. So I’m trying to figure out what I can do; I’m trying to generate options—one of my moves—and when can I make my move? Because they’re more people—my mom and the people she goes to church with are watching this thing; they’re gonna give her a hard time—her son don’t know how to comb his hair. I gotta fix this. So like I can’t go with two hands because you know—I kind of looked like one of the Three Stooges; I probably can’t lick my hand—try to tamp it down. So I’m trying to decide what to do; I’m sitting there—this is going through my—a remarkable day for you to be so—Anderson Cooper’s hair is perfect; why do they gotta make sure everybody sees—in my hair is out of place? Anderson Cooper could be in a hurricane; his hair would move. I know that while this was going on, a producer is going like, “Hey, hey, hey, let’s go split-screen; let’s make sure everybody sees how good Anderson’s hair is.” So they go split-screen, and now I’m even more disgusted by this—you can see that look on my face—and I’m trying to say what to do—when can I make my move? Because the clock is ticking; this is like that double-dutch jump rope thing—well, there’s two ropes going—yeah—when can you jump in? When can I go—and kind of go—when can I go? I got to take care of this; my mom’s watching; her friends are watching. So I’m sitting there, and I—when can I make my move—closely involved in this—and to finally [Laughter] see it come to fruition—dammit. So what I’m trying to say is—and then we finished the interview with Anderson Cooper, and they never—they didn’t ban me from Anderson Cooper as a result; they invited me back on. What I’m trying to say is you’ll make mistakes; it’s okay. A solid approach where people feel respected and appreciated, and you get that—“that’s right”—out of them—they feel empathy from you—you’ll make mistakes, and it’ll be okay; they’ll forgive you for. So I like everybody stand up, please. Are you guys remember at the beginning of this, I talked about the men and Blackwell—those guys actually work for me—remember a little red flashy thing—those guys had—everybody look up here, please. [Applause] All right, from this point forward—after today—everybody that you deal with will feel that they were treated with respect; you understood them—no matter how the outcome went—they felt bonded to you; they felt connected to you by the chance to talk with you and collaborate with you, and they felt that a long-term relationship was established—that they deal with you again—no matter how things went. Thank you for spending time with me this morning; it’s been a privilege to be here with you guys. Thank you. [Music]