So as just a concept, as a negotiator, as a communicator, as a man, as a human, how important is active listening and listening in general to persuasion and connection with people? Because I think it's a lost art.

It's an advanced skill.

And in many cases, like as an assertive, and you sound very much like an assertive, your description for a variety of reasons.

Assertives are time is money people.

And so if you're given instructions, like I'm going to jam, you know, time is money.

Every moment, no moment can be wasted.

I'm going to download as much value as I possibly can.

So can you talk about the question to ask when someone says that, because I probably phrased it wrong, and why it matters so much?

For a lot of men who aren't as emotionally articulate i'll say that uh they they're rough around the edges that and they hear that empathy word and they're like it's just it seems so soft chris like talk them out of that it just seems so soft empathy get out of here

yeah because the word has been so twisted over the years um to be synonymous with sympathy.

It's not.

And when I first learned it, like I learned this stuff, again, 1990s, volunteering on a crisis hotline.

And they made, that was the first thing they taught us.

You're going to be no good on a crisis hotline if you're sympathetic to someone who's suicidal.

And we're like, what? They go like, empathy isn't sympathy.

Tell me why no is so valuable, whether it be in a negotiation, getting to no, or orienting towards no for people to give them that comfort.

Okay, so when you show someone that you've heard them and you understand them, what happens there? Is there a connection? What happens for the person? What do they feel?

Yeah, great.

That's a perfect question.

Because when you feel heard, you get a dose of two of your own neurochemicals.

They're oxytocin and serotonin.

Now, everybody knows oxytocin is a love drug or the bonding drug, whatever you want to call it.

It's a bonding drug.

wrong.

What do you think are some of the most important things that leaders need to focus on when it comes to negotiation?

Wow.

Um, you know, understanding how it looks to the other side or understanding how to get the, the point across to the other side.

You know, Jim Camp said a long time ago, he wrote the book, uh, Start with No back in 2002, and Camp was also a football coach at one point in time.

He was a football coach, he was a, a salesman, he was an Air Force fighter pilot, and he said, "You can't tell anybody anything." What does that mean? You gotta get them to feel it.

You gotta get them to f- uh, uh, under- feel that you understand them.

That's the first thing to opening up, up somebody's mind.

Why is the negotiation community that you've built so important for people to learn and grow and to become better in terms of growing their businesses in, in negotiation and life?

Whoa.

And so most of the FBI is wrapped up in responding.

And I'm in D.C., so the Pentagon got hit.

And thinking about the anniversary and everything that happened in that.

And so I'm in the midst of a kidnapping of people getting killed in the Philippines.

People have been getting killed.

An American had already been murdered once.

And how can we use it to be better at negotiating? Like, should we have it do our resumes? Should we practice with it as a bot? What are your AI hacks for negotiating?

How do you handle a difficult audience using your FBI techniques?

Yeah, you know, nothing works all the time.

You just have to do the stuff that gives you the best chance of success.

Now, I will do my best to dial into the audience.

And sometimes there are external conditions that you can't do anything about.

Could be time of day.

I spoke to a group recently at the city when I got there.

That you do over differently, maybe.

When you were starting out, did you have somebody that kind of took you under your wing? Somebody that like served as one of your mentors?

Well, you know, there were informal mentors along the way.

And what I love about that question is, you know, if somebody takes you under their wing, it's because you asked them how to do something and you were asking the right person.

You know, there's never taken by somebody you wouldn't trade places with, never taken direction from somebody who hasn't been where you're going.

So it's a critical issue of there's trust and competence.

Can you trust them? And do they know what they're talking about? A lot of people you can trust, they don't know what they're talking about.

They're very well-meaning, but they just don't know.

Explain that to

So how do you go slow to go fast?

Well, you go much faster by articulating what's in their head.

And we've actually got some exercises we've been doing recently with some of our top-tier clients, which is about organizational change, adopting our methodology organization-wide because our leaders, we got some super smart CEOs and every kind of CEO, whether it's a legacy CEO, whether it's a founder, whether it's a hired gun, those are basically the three kinds of CEOs.

and once they get it they're like why don't the rest of my people get it so they sit down with them and the one of our people role play and they go like you went on some management retreat without even involving us and you didn't tell us anything you're out on a beach someplace you know and you're sitting in the sun you come up with these brilliant ideas you don't even check with us and you come back and expect us to change on the spot why don't you let us go back to the way we were doing things before and let me go back to making money for you and we'll be fine well that's we know that's what they're thinking so the strategy is what we refer to as the accusations audit you sit down with a person and you say look this probably looks like i went out on some management retreat drank daiquiris and Mai Tai on a beach.

We kicked around ideas and we got good liquor up.

We said, hey, let's try this.

And we didn't even check with you and you've been doing fine up to now.

How do these work when you're a mid-level leader?

When you're speaking to business leaders who are reading your book, what's the most common thing that they ask you for help with?

Well, most people, when they get into negotiation, they want to say, how do I say it better? How do I be more eloquent? If you're explaining, you're loosely.

How you really get the upper hand is to actually listen or comprehend.

The person is listening.

Now, if I'm listening, whatever I'm curious about, I'll guide the conversation however I go because you're going to want to talk about what I'm curious about.

So I'm kind of like an Australian sheepdog.

I'm actually guiding you, but you think you're leading the way.

videos.

Mm.

Male or female, you could have a high squeaky voice like Minnie Mouse.

If you drop your chin, you still downward inflect.

You don't gotta have a deep voice to downward inflect.

Or curiosity, and the physical movement with that is also just turning your head to the side and lifting your chin.

Either side, it does- doesn't make any difference.

And it's really encouraging.

Mm.

Mm.

Male or female, you could have a high squeaky voice like Minnie Mouse.

If you drop your chin, you still downward inflect.

You don't gotta have a deep voice to downward inflect.

Or curiosity, and the physical movement with that is also just turning your head to the side and lifting your chin.

Either side, it do- doesn't make any difference.

And it's really encouraging.

Mm.

I would love to hear what that means and how you go about doing it.

Yeah, the labeling is like the MacGyver tool, like the ridiculous superpower.

The label is, it seems like, it sounds like, it looks like.

You seem, you sound, you look, it feels like.

In Haas's negotiation, it was called an emotion label, specifically designed to just label emotions.

And when we were adapting the black swan method out of Haas's negotiation in the earlier days, number one, I didn't think labels had really any use at all.

And they turn out to be like our most effective skill.

What's the latest addition to your repertoire that you've figured out over the last stretch of time?

And how do you prevent something like that from happening?

Well, you know, in point of fact, all the earmarks are there.

You know, all the yellow flags become red flags.

Now, when you're courageous enough to approach it, we've got a methodology we call the favor and the fool.

If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's you.

Now, how do you figure it out right away? This takes a lot of nerve, but I've never had it fail me.

You and I are sitting down talking.

Can you walk us through what the idea is there?

The labelers?

The mirrorers because they're, they're a minority.

Yet when they get good at mirrors, that's all they do.

Now, the people that are really attracted to mirrors, for lack of a better term, tend to be both high IQ and high EQ.

Very smart, but also very people smart, good emotional intelligence consistently.

I don't know why that is.

I find it fascinating that you asked about mirrors before you asked about labels.

Anything would be fine.

Yeah.

Secret Service wasn't hiring- At all.

Um, the FBI was at the beginning of a beginning of a three-year hiring push where they're hiring a ton of people.

You know, I, I applied the beginning of the first year of that push.

Uh, simultaneously applied for the SWAT team Kansas City, Missouri.

And I'm number one on the list for the SWAT team.

And both, interestingly enough, both the Secret Service and the FBI kind of had a three-year rule.

Yeah.

Well, the real pressure comes from negative

emotions and fear of loss.

Fear of loss is the single biggest decision-making factor for all humans.

It's not the only decision-making factor.

It's just the single biggest.

So you begin, you want to get a figure for what their fear of loss is.

And they got to tell you, vision drives decision.

Is there a different way of approaching those situations where the balance of power is seriously out of skew and they hold all the cards?

Mm-hmm.

Which you, having felt safe, will now tell me honestly, 'cause you don't feel obligated.

If I'd have said, "Does this look like a good deal to you?" You might say, "Yes, it looks like a good deal, but," the erasing word, "I need these things." But you're afraid if you said, had said yes in the first place, you're now on the hook, so you're not gonna be as honest with me about those things.

So coming to grips with what yes and no really means is one of the major first turning points in anybody's negotiation journey as a great negotiator.

You intentionally try to get people to say no

... intentionally try to get people to say no, that that may be the only thing that some people learn.

Because I, I get emails on LinkedIn all the time, like, "Hey, I've..." I use the phrase, "Have you given up on this project? And I, my close rate is so exceeding everybody else that I, on my company, that I should come work for you."

their business, their life insurance? What are some of those that you think are probably the most important?

You know, in general terms, it's the labels.

To say it seems like, it looks like, it feels like.

You know, a label is a verbal observation of an emotion or a dynamic, and you slap a label on it.

It seems like something just crossed your mind.

Now, we're actually in the process of developing a certification program And I didn't really realize it, but of the skills, the labels are the ones that change depending upon where the other side's coming from.

Now, what do I mean by that? It's straight collaborative negotiation.

true.

Three

points.

First point is you discover a process and then you believe in that process and you just lean into it.

And you practice a lot.

You practice the process a lot.

I'd learned the process on a hotline and I leaned into it.

Now, that's point one.

hostages.

But I'm curious if you can give one example, personal life and professional life.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, there, there was, there was some different victories in hostage negotiation, um, after, uh, a really bad debacle.

Uh, second case I worked in the Philippines, second major case, the Bernabe Sabaro case.

Two to three hostages, uh, would die, die in friendly fire at the end.

That whole case, 13 months from beginning to end, a lot of people died.

Wow.

Okay, what does it mean? Give me some examples of what it would mean for someone in a practical situation or even in a dire situation to take themselves hostage and maybe a story or two about that and also some illustration of how you circumvent that, that, uh, error.

Yeah, well, it's like, uh, there aren't, there, I don't have a better job.

I gotta take this job.

And I'm coming out of, uh, you know, I, I did, uh, right after I left the Bureau to sharpen up my resume and to create some better opportunities, and I went to Harvard, uh, Kennedy School of Government, got a master's there, uh, wh- which is astonishing that they let me in.

Uh, you know, very average blue collar dude from the Midwest.

Um, and then afterwards, um, uh, job market was horrible.

Come, come out of Harvard, 2008, depth of financial crisis.

Okay, so, so, so y- you pointed out that your guy who thought he had to have the job still was in a position to tell his potential employers what it was that he had to offer to make a case for the value of his services and to point out what that is not only worth from the market perspective, but also in terms of his own motivation.

How does empathy play such a critical role in negotiations?

Well, people have a deep-seated need from the caveman days really to be understood.

And there's a difference between whether or not I understand you and whether or not I feel you make you feel understood.

And we didn't know it at the time.

We used to trigger incredible changes in people, terrorists, I mean, you name it, bad guys of all sorts, by making them feel understood, and suddenly they soften up on their stance.

Now, that was before neuroscience.

Now, with neuroscience, if you feel understood, principally that triggers two neurochemicals in you just because you're human.

It's like I'm talking about knowing the person for 10 years, always negotiating.

what you learned about how to listen.

Wow, all right, so actually listening as opposed to staying silent, it accelerates the process.

And you need a set of tools to keep you on track, to dig into the information without the other side feeling interrogated.

And that was really what I learned way back when on the hotline.

You know, I get there first day, we get into the training.

And I remember the thing that struck me first was they said, all right, your calls are limited to 20 minutes.

And I remember thinking like, what, 20 minutes? You got to be kidding me.

Tell me about that.

One maybe it's close to your heart.

Well, there are a lot of them that I learned a lot from.

I probably learned the most from the failures.

There are failures.

That's interesting.

It's unavoidable.

Hostage negotiators are successful roughly 93% of the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We also have working memory issues, so if there's too much being said, it's hard for us to hold on to multi-steps.

Yeah.

I, I think, you know, it's the supplemental stuff in the communication.

Like, um, there's a, there's a ratio that I like a lot, it's very unscientific, called seven-38-55.

Now, a lot of people that communicate verbally for a living really believe it's a good ratio.

And that, uh, seven plus 38 plus 55 equals 100.

What it is is that the communication comes across 7% in the words, 38% in the tone of voice, and 55 in the body language.

Also, can you get into the science of the brain that you've learned and quoted from Daniel Kahneman for our listeners?