FBI Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss on How to Get a Raise, a Better Job Offer, and Everything Else You Want

25:58What does that mean? You just got to find out what's going through their mind. And the angry face, they're either listening or they're angry or they're thinking about something else that's bothering them.

26:09Nicole Lapin:But isn't that more about the other person? interpreting what they think you're thinking. We don't know what someone else is thinking. I can say to you, seems like something's on your mind. And the chances of you telling me are really high. I can also say, I can't tell if you're listening or if you're mad. And my son goes dead silent a lot. So then you don't even have the visual feedback. We'll be talking on the phone. He'll go dead silent. I'll literally say to him, I can't tell if you're thinking or if you're mad. and he'll tell me which one it is. Which one is it more often? More often it's thinking.

26:48Yeah, he goes, but you can't tell if you don't have the visual feedback. But even if you got the visual feedback, they could be thinking intensely. I was in a very brief negotiation a number of years ago with Jack Welch. I was pitching him on coming and speaking to my class that I was teaching at USC at the time. And when I pitched him, he looked furious and it scared me to death. Jack? Jack Welch.

27:15Nicole Lapin:Like Jolly Jack. Jolly Jack, you know, when he was alive, he's not deceased. RIP, yes. This is an intense look. And he didn't say anything for the longest time. And he looked back at me and we made the deal. So he was thinking, he wasn't furious. And thank God I sat there and I just waited. and waited and waited and waited. And finally, he actually, his furious look was him thinking through the implementation details of me, him coming to speak in my class. And he says, look, all right, so this is after he had this furious look on his face, he said, this is my personal assistant's name. This is a special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her.

28:06I will call her and tell her who you are and what you want. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall. If we are, we're coming to speak to your class. So as an experienced businessman, he understood if you made a deal, you have to have steps. Who do I got to talk to? How do they know to expect to hear from me? What's the timing look like? He thought through every single step. So he was focused on the steps while he looked angry.

28:29Nicole Lapin:Chris, I'm so surprised that you say this because you've negotiated in the craziest, gnarliest negotiations over decades. are you still when you're in the middle of a negotiation freaking out shit in your pants like when somebody's silent is that still happen what's going on if i haven't if i haven't dialed in enough if i don't have enough data at the moment like i got an amygdala too i'm tired sometimes too you know every our our issue the the biggest chance we have as human beings is decision fatigue like the best time to make a deal is is roughly about 10 o 'clock in the morning your time You got plenty of mental gas in a tank.

29:09You're resilient. You're probably still in a good mood. You're not dealing from food coma from lunch. You're not hungry. Your nutrition is dialed in. You're at your peak. And those are the times that cut great deals. And so what we deal with the rest of the time is what if I'm tired? What if four or five things happened to me that made me mad, disappointed me? And so by the end of the day, my game has dropped by the end of the day. I'm more likely to snap at somebody or, you know, I'm working really hard to try to get back in a good mood because it's been a long day and this didn't work out, that didn't work out, this didn't work out.

29:50And, yeah, you know, I'm human. I got all the same human responses.

29:54Nicole Lapin:Okay, Chris, can we do some role playing? Of course. So let's say it's 10 o 'clock in the morning. Right. You work for me. You put some time on my calendar to come and ask me for a raise. Right. Action. Hey, Chris. Hey, you know what? Everybody that walks into your office at 10 o 'clock in the morning comes in here with their hand out begging for more. You are used to people that nobody comes walking into the boss office and say, hey, boss, how can I help you? Yeah, no one's offering me money at 10 a.m. I would love that. Right. And so you're bracing yourself trying to find out what the bad news is.

30:29And you know what? What is it? You're going to hate me.

30:32Nicole Lapin:No, I could never. How can I be more viable to the company? I don't think I could love you more now that you say that. I wish everybody would walk into my office asking for that. All right. So, you know, let's lay it out. I want to bring more to the table. I want to do more. I want to work on our future.

30:51Secondarily, I want to get paid more. But primarily, I want to build my career and I want to actually be more valuable, which leaves you in a position where it's easy for you to pay me more.

31:01Nicole Lapin:How much more are we talking about? Triple. Get out of here. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Yeah, well, I wouldn't go for a number right away. Tough thing about salary is really both sides got to be comfortable, which means there's a real danger in overpaying people without the performance. Because if a boss is overpaying you, then the boss is going to be really demanding, which is going to create a negative vibe. Nobody needs that. I don't need to have unrealistic, as a boss, I do not need to have unrealistic expectations for you. I have overpaid people in the past on the hope that they would rise to the occasion.

31:49Nicole Lapin:So don't throw out a number. We've heard on the show other experts say if you don't throw out a really high number, you'll never get anywhere in that vicinity. And you'll also often get shown the door. The problem with high anchoring is it drives deals from the table. and you high anchor with me, I'm most likely to plan on showing you the door. Because the high anchor in a salary is to really not take into account the impact on everybody in the organization. So you have just defined yourself as not being a team player. So back to our role-playing where you were joking and jovial and saying triple.

32:35Nicole Lapin:you know you were intending it sounded like to pivot toward the value of what you could bring to the table not actually the value of what you would want well i'm gonna actually yeah i'm gonna want to find out what you think is valuable how i can move the needle so ask more questions yeah or ask some questions or here's a really counterintuitive thing about the black swan method which is what makes it better than anything else. I'm going to get information out of you without asking you any questions. Oh, how so? They're called labels. And if I say to you, all right, so what's really valuable? That's an exhausting question for you to answer.

33:22Which means if I haven't caught you at 10 in the morning, you're not going to be able to answer it.

33:31also if I say what's really valuable to you, I'm sending you the message that I don't know, which makes me less valuable. I don't want to seem clueless. If I say to you, how can I help? When you expect me to know how you can help to start with. Yeah.

33:49Nicole Lapin:Cause you're giving the other person a cognitive load. And I sound stupid. Like if I'm, I, I've, I've been here for a year and I got no idea how I can help. So what I'm going to say to you, I'm going to say it seems like there's some things that you think would be really valuable. Yeah. Tell me more, Chris. Yeah, I have my perspective, but it seems like you have some things. Yeah, I just want to make more money in this company so we can grow and scale. Sounds like you don't know how you want to make more money. Well, how do you think we should make more money? See, now we're getting into a back and forth.

34:24And if you're throwing it back on me that quickly, then you don't trust me. And my chances of us, we're not in a collaborative thing. Your defenses, if you're throwing it right back on me, your defenses are too high.

34:42Nicole Lapin:All right, I'm going to lower my defenses. Yeah, there's a lot of value that I think you can bring. I think we could continue to increase our sales effort. we could reach out to new partners to make more inroads in other verticals i'm using so much corporate speak now yeah well okay so but that kind of an answer is it's vague you're you well if you if you're really telling me the truth and you're a little vague on it yourself but your gut instinct is we need more proactive outreach to new corporate partners that's right and so then if so i'm listening between the lines right so so it sounds like if i could find a way to do more outreach to corporate partners that would help move the business forward it sounds like you think a binding constraint is we're only focused on inbound we're not doing any outbound 100 you nailed it okay so sounds like if i come up with a plan how do you that you want to review Do it and see how comfortable you are with it.

35:49Now, another thing, and this is a hard thing for an employee to do, and I'll lean back on my friend Tom telling me this. Tom loved to promote people that he could shoot down their ideas and they would learn and come back with a better idea. So the real tough thing is going into a boss. There's a pretty good chance the boss isn't going to know exactly what they want to do, but they're going to have a good idea of what they don't want to do.

36:17Nicole Lapin:It's like read more plans and paperwork. Or, you know, all right, so if I come back to you with a plan and you go like, no, that won't work for the following reasons. Now, that's very disheartening to hear that. But the boss is looking for somebody that took that into account and went like, oh, okay, and then they come back smarter. So getting shot down by the boss, and this happens to me all the time. Like I'm not sure what to do, but I'm pretty sure what not to do. And if somebody comes to me with an idea, I'm like, no, no, no, that won't work. It's probably going to trigger a better idea for me.

36:53But as a receiver of getting shot down, that's hard. So what you're looking for from people is the ability to get shot down and learn and come back. And then even if this person doesn't have good ideas, if you came back to me with a better plan or an adjusted plan, the message I'm getting is, oh, you listened. And you've processed it. And you showed that you learned from the experience. So there's a way to begin to develop yourself as an employee, which comes with, are you a team player? And did you actually listen to what the boss had to say?

37:30Nicole Lapin:So you have two ears and one mouth. Listen more than you talk. Five times. Because you get two eyes. And you should be gathering data with your eyes. Troy Smith on my team calls it listening with your eyes. And then your gut instinct, I refer to it, you know, your sense. What do I smell that's going on here? You know, that's sort of, you know, what's my gut telling me? The accumulation of everything is a sense of smell. So you should really, if you're pulling in all the data, you're really absorbing five times as much as you're talking. And what if you're in a new job situation where the salary you're being offered is less than what you thought?

38:10Nicole Lapin:This one is tough because you don't have history with the other person or camaraderie. It's a new situation that you're walking into. You can gather a lot of information in the interview. If it's a two-way interview, the most valuable person when you're being interviewed, either by individuals or panel, a person that isn't saying much because they got a ton of data. and they've been taught that they're not opening your mouth unless you're listening one of the job negotiations from one of my students at georgetown i taught them to say what does it take to be successful here which is not what are you looking for in a candidate everybody out there every you know person that works in mba programs and they're the student counselors to try to help them get jobs, say, find out what they're looking for in a candidate.

39:04What are you looking for in a candidate? That is not the same as what does it take to be successful here. And as I recall, it was a female that asked the question. Four people on the other side. One guy leans forward and says, no one ever asked us that. Here's what it takes. now she gets the job she's talking to the people afterwards and they say that guy never says anything in an interview panel that's the first time he ever spoke up we're shocked that you got this guy to talk like the level of good things that happen there first of all you want to know how you could be successful there you're actually asking as opposed to, well, I've done this and I've done that.

39:57Here's what you're looking for in a candidate, this whole nonsensical sales job. Somebody that interviews you in the process is really going to know. They are not telling you until you've shown that you're actually going to listen. And if you're in there with your value proposition and how your resume fits and all the selling points, you are not listening at all. First interview. So you need to, there are other people that are looking to see if you're going to listen from the very beginning. So you don't have to have a history with people. You just got to show right off the bat you listen.

40:36Nicole Lapin:So fine, you get the job and the offer is a hundred grand, but you're looking for 150. Right. And so you want to advocate for yourself, but you also want to have a good impression with your new employer and there's a power imbalance. So how do you navigate that? Yeah, I'd lay that out from the very beginning. And I'd say, all right, so because if they offered 100, there's a difference between what's the job market say you're worth and what can they afford to pay. Then secondarily, what's the future hold? These are not connected at all to what the job market is offering. Like I would go work as Warren Buffett's assistant for$15 an hour.

41:24I make a lot more than that right now. But that job would be worth it. So what's in the job? And ultimately, is there prospects for growth here? Do I want to learn these skills? So I would lay out from the very beginning, okay? So you got to feel for whether or not they're legitimately offering you a hundred. They're not low balling you. Now, in point of fact, they have a range. In point of fact, they're going to come in at the lower end of the range. But there is a limit to how high they could go. So you need to find out what their range is. If you got a number that you want to get to, ask them how you can get there.

42:09Nicole Lapin:But be realistic. Yeah, be realistic. and what are the attributes of the job? Because so much affects it. And the biggest thing is, let's say you want 150, they got 150, and you don't like their culture. That is blood money. You're going to be so unhappy. They're going to age you. You're going to be a miserable human being. You're not going to learn. Like there's so much that goes into real job satisfaction. Where is it taking you in your life? And are you going to enjoy the journey? Which puts a lot of latitude on kind of monetary compensation, which is necessary. There's no question that you got bills to pay.

42:59But if it's blood money and it ages you, you don't want to be there.

43:03Nicole Lapin:Yeah, because, you know, if I said I'd give you$10 million, but you would die tomorrow, would you take the money? Or if I was miserable, if it was relying completely on lying people and bamboozling them and selling products they didn't need and were exposing them to health risks that was going to shorten their lifespan. But you could make a lot of money doing it. And nobody's ever happy that way. Well, you emphasize monetary compensation. What about non-monetary compensation? How should you go about? Asking for more time off, an expense budget, whatever else is valuable to you. If it's in the context of you being a better employee, are you going to get your work done?

43:56Are you a championship player? Context and some of the simple things that make people call it just simple, but they're actually what makes you a championship player.

44:08Nicole Lapin:Context. in terms of the job not context in terms of your life so if you wanted to let's say work from home for one day it would be less focused around your kid and more focused on how you could contribute more by doing that well if i'm delivering when i work from home now it's really hard to work from home and deliver and that's why people more and more in today's competitive environment you want to work remote you want to work from home look at look at your employer's position okay you want to make 60 you want to make 175 000 a year working from home i get somebody in the philippines who works for 25 000 a year does the same job of you why do i want to pay you 175 000 when the job is the same you know you got to look at it from from the boss's point of view we made significant adjustments in my company and i got more of my assistants now all of my assistants work out of my house when they used to work remotely because we have we work hard and if you're working remotely then the only interaction you have with people is when you're working hard there's no enjoyable times like i i come walking in to the the team's office in my house every day I like to walk in about 245 230 because we work hard from 9 to 3 we don't have a lunch break but I want you to get up and take a walk and clear your head I want you to go get something to eat people who work for me walk out back and forth in front of the house all the time clear their head if I know everybody's out the door about 3 I come walking in about 245 because you know I want to tell them a stupid story about something stupid that I did or I want to chat these moments when we get a chat with each other or something occurs to me off the top of my head.

46:04If we're working remote, these golden moments that actually make us care about each other as human beings just don't occur. And if you're on a championship team, if you want A players, it's really hard to be remote and be an A player because you don't get to know people. You don't get to laugh. The stupid stuff that makes us all human beings, It just doesn't come through working remote. Now, if you want to work occasionally remote, people on my team do it all the time. Like, I'm not coming in today. I got to, you know, I want to work remote. Nate, my head of marketing, he stays in his apartment sometimes because he really wants to focus.

46:42And having the people around in these interactions, which are highly enjoyable to him, are also a distraction. I think another guy who knocks himself out for me on a regular basis. I got to work from home today. cool, you got it. You get your stuff done. I don't got to worry about you. And you're always doing extra for me. I don't have to worry about you. I don't care if you're working from home because you bring your A game all the time. So what's the context? Are you doing a better job? Have I got so much trust in you that I don't care where you are?

47:15Nicole Lapin:You don't think you can have a winning career by working from home? No. You got to get together in person some. Now, how often do you get in person my director of operations now current chelsea she lives in virginia we don't get to see each other on a regular basis but any excuse that we have we have quarterly we run eos entrepreneurial operating system so we get together quarterly for that we run a um our conferences you know we get together for that it's harder i'll call her just to shoot the breeze and I try if I if I got work related stuff I try I try to make the personal stuff always be the last end of the conversation you know I joke around with her a lot it's much harder she's one of the few people that's capable of working mostly remote but we talk a lot and we have a lot of personal interactions just to check in on each other and I also tease her a lot and she She almost always, she almost always, she bites hard on the jokes.

48:22And she's like, you're giving me a heart attack. So, you know, we joke around a lot too. But it's much harder when you're remote. If you can, as an employee, try to get in in person as much as you can. Or have personal interaction. If your excuse to work remote is so that you can focus on your personal life, how does it play out on the other side it makes you a c player so how do we use empathy and

48:51Nicole Lapin:vulnerability and connection for the most successful negotiation empathy seems like compassion it's a precursor to it it's not compassion it's it's very hard to be compassionate without being empathic first uh empathy sounds like vulnerability and a lot of um a lot of the application of emotional intelligence. Everybody's familiar with self-effacing humor. It's a combination of two of our skills put together simultaneously. One of them is playfulness. Playfulness, you're 31 % smarter in a positive frame of mind. So if you're playful, you're smarter. Emotions have a contagion for neuroscience reasons.

49:34So if I'm in a highly positive, playful state of mind, the chances that you're going to catch it is extremely high. so self-effacing humor, we got playfulness going on there, right? Self-effacing is you making fun of yourself. Like, you know, I probably seem like the biggest idiot you ever met. Said like that. Well, the accusations audit, one of our superpower skills, is saying the negative things on your mind about me. so self-effacing humor is me playfully you know if i think if i'm if i can sense you think i'm an idiot because i'm not catching on i won't say i don't want you to think i'm an idiot i'll say i probably seem like an idiot and i throw in this playfulness so that's the application of emotional intelligence now is that vulnerability for me to say and i probably look like a great big giant dope

50:35Nicole Lapin:um vulnerability is the eye of the beholder so interesting because i lean on self-deprecating humor all the time and i've been criticized for that the saying that by whom somebody who's giving me a compliment and then i put myself down or i dismiss it doesn't lend for more connection context context yeah um if somebody was complimenting me i'm not sure that i would throw it in that sequence now you're using self-effacing humor a lot because you're finding it to be an extremely high value strategy in a lot of circumstances not all circumstances and in point of fact you're running your own human performance laboratory which means self-effacing humor worked here.

51:26Let me experiment to see if I can develop a gut instinct to where it does work better or it doesn't work at all. Nothing works all the time. You just want the stuff that works more than anything else.

51:37Nicole Lapin:What can kill a negotiation before it starts? There are three conflict types. And what kills a negotiation before it starts depends upon each one of the types. the types are fight flight make friends which is assertive analyst accommodator they're the cavemen that survived when the caveman and we have caveman wiring we've all inherited it human nature has not changed since we've been aware of human nature now it gets affected and influenced by the social media of the day but the basics of human nature has been the same for 10 ,000 years. So what we inherited from the caveman, we all had. It's gender agnostic.

52:23The world splits evenly into thirds. The Black Swan group has more than enough data to back that up. Fight, flight, make friends. So what kills the negotiation before it starts? The highly analytical person sees conflict as extremely expensive, extremely counterproductive. the loud negotiator, the analyst will never come to the table with them. It's the elephant crashing through the jungle. I heard you coming a long way away. We're not even going to talk. The assertive is the loud negotiator. Everybody thinks that the best negotiator or the best salesperson, a cliche is the loudest person in a room.

53:09The analyst never gets to the table with them. They were driven from the table before anybody ever approached it because they know the assertive is not going to listen and it's going to steamroll over them and it's not going to be thoughtful. So that kills the deal before it ever gets started. That's the biggest thing. Getting an analyst to the table with an assertive is very, very hard because they saw the assertive coming from 1 ,000 miles away. Now, assertive will talk to anybody. assertives emotions heal up the way wolverine heals up from being scarred or deadpool like you could you could stab an assertive in the heart and an hour later he or she's ready to talk to you again they get over it fast the analysts you know they're like all right you stabbed me in the heart you're going to do it again i'm not sitting down with you and then finally the accommodator to make friends person very hope oriented the only thing that really drives them from the table or It's hard to get them back if they've been hurt and you don't apologize.

54:13Now, the analyst and assertive could care less about apologies because they don't see it as being solution-oriented. An analyst would be like, okay, you apologize, number one, were you the one that committed the sin? If you weren't, then your apology means nothing. If you were the one that committed the sin, was your apology, I'm sorry, you feel that way? That tells me you ain't going to change. So analysts and assertives tend to never apologize. Accommodators have to know, have to hear the apology. And they're a third of the planet, and that causes a disconnect an awful lot also because the assertive is going to hurt the accommodator and then not apologize because they see the apology as being useless and they feel it's insulting to apologize.

55:08And the accommodator can't hear anything until the assertive apologizes. When you see the three types, your question started off with, how do negotiations get killed before they started? It's going to be because of type mismatch. The same sort of question is, most impasses in negotiation are a result of type mismatch. And not necessarily that they actually saw things differently, but they offended the other side without realizing it, and it's a type mismatch. Here's how it manifests itself. An analyst is a thinker and loves silence. Two classic examples. Elon Musk is being interviewed on Lex Friedman's podcast.

55:57They're both analysts. So Lex asks Elon a question, and Elon sits there in silence for 22 seconds before he answers. Now, most people can't get past three seconds.

56:09Nicole Lapin:The other person? Either person. Because it's weird. If you're not comfortable with silence, Elon's sitting there for 22 seconds. In a later podcast, I'm listening to Lex, and he's talking about how when he sits in silence with someone, he shares the silence, and he feels more and more connected with you by sharing the silence. That's how an analyst feels about silence. The accommodator, the relationship hope-oriented person, when they're furious, they give you the silent treatment. it they signal fury stonewalling by silence so in a moment of silence if you got an accommodator a third of the world talking with an analyst a third of the world the accommodator is going like oh my god oh my god he's furious i gotta say something he hates me right now he's angry and the analyst is thinking like thank god they shut up thank you know give me i need this silence to think You see this massive type mismatch over silence where they're not in disagreement.

57:17They're just misinterpreting the moment. And the assertive, if I'm an assertive and you're an analyst and you go silent, you go silent because you want to think. As an assertive, I think you've gone silent because you want to hear more. So I'm going to talk even more and even louder. And you're going like, oh, God, I wish this guy'd shut up so I could think about the last thing he said. So that's why type mismatch, it's not a disagreement. It's a misinterpretation of the moment.

57:48Nicole Lapin:So which type makes for the best negotiator, or are the best negotiators a combination of all the types? The combination of all the types. Each type has the natural attribute is both essential and inadequate. Analyst is a thinker. Plans. That's essential. planning with no action is an inadequate accommodator very hope oriented very optimistic relationship focused these things are essential and inadequate by themselves and i think the the phrase hope is not a strategy comes from the number of accommodate accommodators they're just hoping it works out without detail so but that's essential i mean i got to be optimistic i have to be hopeful.

58:34I have to want to have a great relationship with you. And the accommodators are very strong on all those things. The assertive. I got to tell you what I want. If I'm not, there's a difference between being assertive and aggressive. But if I don't tell, if I'm not assertive with what I want, I'm making you gas. And the chances of me getting it are much lower.

59:06I've done a number of deals where I've said, here's what it looks like for us to have a great relationship that will last for 20 years where we both prosper. That's when you've given me an inadequate offer. I won't reject that offer. I'm going to tell you what a great deal looks like for me. I got to be willing to be assertive and say that. Now, I don't say it aggressively. I'm putting it in light of here's how we prosper. I got to have this in order for us to prosper. Because if I don't tell you I'm making you guess, chances of you getting it right are less than if I've actually told you.

59:49Nicole Lapin:So it's a combination. All three, and people who are coachable, people who learn, they start seeing where their deals have fallen short and they start seeing what the other people are doing that might have fixed it. Then they start to pick up the traits of the other side. And I love this. It's very esoteric. And I'm trying to imagine these different types. Can you give us an example of a crazy negotiation where these types came into play? I'm going to use real visible types because everybody knows them. Donald Trump's an assertive. And he gets into a big argument with the president of Ukraine, what, a year and a half ago, two years ago, guy's first visit to the White House.

1:00:34I mean, it's his name calling, you know, everybody's back and forth. It's like two kids in a schoolyard and the people standing around him going, do you believe he said that to you? You know, the press and everybody else loves to egg on a fight. But one on one, he's at the pope's funeral with the president of Ukraine and they cut a rare minerals deal. so what he is like publicly, I think he's learned that one-on-one, if he's charming and he listens, and all the feedback, if you want to objectively look at all the feedback about him, never mind whether or not you love him or hate him, everybody that meets him one-on-one says he listens intently and that he's charming.

1:01:22Bill Maher goes and meets him in the White House, and Bill Maher's been the biggest critic of Trump forever. And he says, look, I'm sorry. The guy was charming. He was engaging. He was dialed in. He was focused. He listened to what I had to say. So as an assertive, Trump has learned that one-on-one, you need to be engaging. You need to listen. All the other attributes are the other negotiators. So that's an example of someone who has started out as one type, And I think over the years has come to learn that one-on-one he's got to dial into people to be charming and to listen.

1:02:02Nicole Lapin:I want to stay on Trump for a second because I know you talk a lot about his negotiating style. More recently throughout the Iran war negotiations, some political scientists say that Trump is using this madman theory of diplomacy, acting erratic, unpredictable to try and get leverage. Do you think that's what he's doing here? No, I think what really catches everybody off guard is like he's an economics-focused American president. He doesn't really care what regime is in charge of any other side, hence Venezuela. He takes out the president of Venezuela, locks him up, you know, kidnaps him. You know, a rendition is a kidnapping that some government said was okay.

1:02:45But leaves the government in place. He doesn't care who's in charge. Now, most American presidents in the past have wanted regime change. If we're gonna go if we're gonna have a conflict with a country We want to put boots on the ground. We want to beat them on a battlefield and then we want to change their form of government Which makes most countries very leery of cooperating with us if they don't have democracies And so Trump is a different breed of cat and he's eminently predictable like nobody's really surprised by anything he's done or said like it were you surprised when he started talking about?

1:03:21moving military assets in the direction of Iran that he was actually going to use them. Every time he moves military assets, he uses them. You know, they're not a bluff. So he's very different. He's economics-focused. He thought that Iran was going to fold up when he took out the main leadership, and the rest of them were going to say, all right, so he's going to leave us intact as long as we cooperate and play ball. I think he's been a little surprised at the fact that they haven't caught on, that he actually wants to collaborate with them. He said a long time ago, in his first term, he was talking about the problems with Iran.

1:03:57He actually said, make Iran great again. Like, if you want to collaborate with us economically, if all our deals are two-way streets, if you're not slaughtering 30 ,000 of your citizens, you know, who knows what the numbers of Iranians that were killed by the regime before Trump stepped in. There's tens of thousands of people that that regime murdered in the streets.

1:04:29If you're not doing that, I don't care if you have a dictatorship. Trump is like, just play ball economically. Let's make fair deals. Let's prosper. Let's put up some hotels. Let's increase your tourism. That's unlike any other American president we've ever had. Every other American president demanded that we put a democracy in your country, which has made every country in the Middle East leery of us because they don't have democracies. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, we want cooperation for these people. But if we keep preaching democracy, what they hear is, you want us all to lose our jobs. You put us up for open election.

1:05:12we're going to start going through the same stuff you go through every four years or that england goes through at the drop of a hat you know half the european governments they get a vote of no confidence the government falls and everything in the country's got to stop and the uk's economy is not thriving because of this volatility so do you think generally

1:05:38Nicole Lapin:unpredictability is a good negotiating strategy? I mean, we've seen it in business to Adam Newman from WeWork. It was this idea that he's a madman. We never know what he's going to do. I don't know. First of all, is it unpredictability or you just not like what the other person's doing? Most of the time when someone is, you say they're unpredictable, well, they're not behaving with the patterns that you like. And so since you're not conforming to my rules, you're the crazy one. I have the rules. So it's most of the time unpredictability. You just don't like where the other side's coming from. Like the Republicans can say the Democrats are unpredictable.

1:06:20They're not unpredictable. They're very clear about what they want. The Democrats could say the Republicans are unpredictable. They're clear about what they want. You know, there's a Democratic approach to government. It's pretty clear. The Republicans don't like it. So, you know, they want to call them unpredictable when they simply disagree. Now, the WeWork guy, you know, again, did what he did make sense? I think his pattern, from what I know of the documentary, was he was pretty much the same guy the whole time. like spending a lot of money, you know, like partying, wanting to be in control, didn't want his board to overrule him and kick him out, wrote a set of rules where the board couldn't overrule him, which they all signed off on to begin with.

1:07:16And they all thought, well, we're more experienced business people. He's going to listen to us. He wrote a set of rules where I can ignore you if I feel like it and you can't kick me out. I remember watching a documentary on Uber. And I can't remember the founder CEO's name.

1:07:36Nicole Lapin:Travis Kalanick. But he was predictable. The docuseries that I watched on it, one of his early investors said, you know, the guy run through brick walls for you. Problem is, everything's a brick wall to him. That was early on. So he was predictable the whole time. to say that somebody's unpredictable is usually you just don't like what they're doing you knew they were going to do it have you read the art of the deal i have i read it a long time ago what do you think and what do you think of his negotiating style i thought the art of the deal was very insightful i my the biggest chunk of time of my fbi career was in new york and it was at the time when when trump was really uh coming to the forefront and I got to New York when it was an extremely dysfunctional city.

1:08:27Now, there's always been periods of time New York's had its dysfunctionality. But Trump rebuilt Grand Central Station, the Grand Hyatt next to Grand Central Station. He started out because the city had dumped in thousands, if not millions, of dollars into the woman's skating rink and it never got fixed. And Trump would walk by it every day and see broken concrete and construction workers sitting around leaning on shovels and year after year after year. And he finally got fed up and said, I'm going to fix a woman's skating rink. I can't stand it anymore. And he fixed it. And everybody said, well, how could that be?

1:09:04So I read The Art of the Deal early on. I was always interested in negotiation books. And I think it's a good read. Love him or hate him, if you love him or you hate him, you're not going to look at him objectively. Like one of the things that I enjoyed reading in that book was he takes over the Plaza Hotel and he's micromanaging a little. And so the guy running the Plaza is like, OK. You want to micromanage me? I'm going to make you make every decision. So he started calling Trump for, I don't know, what kind of paperclips should we buy? He's trying to teach him a lesson. And Trump was like, oh.

1:09:51okay, I'm going to leave you alone. You're a capable, competent guy. I'm going to stop micromanaging you. So I enjoyed reading it at the time. There isn't anybody you can't learn from. If you love them or if you hate them, it's going to interfere with your ability to learn from them.

1:10:07Nicole Lapin:Okay, so I'm going to give you some negotiating strategies and tell me yes if people should use them or no if they shouldn't. All right. Silence. Silence is a great thing. learning to shut the front door and gather data with your eyes is a great strength. Saying you're willing to walk away. Only if you are. Because if you're not, you're a liar. And lying is not a good long-term strategy. Throwing out the first number. No, I don't like throwing the first number. I want to gather data first before I throw it out. This whole anchoring thing, there's a lot of discussion about anchoring. And what you see mostly but not exclusively mostly is the really experienced negotiators want to know what's on your mind before they throw a number.

1:11:05Because if you throw the first number, there's a significant portion of the time where they're either going to be too low, which means you didn't get as much as you could have. Or if you're too high, you drive a deal from the table. And you should have made that deal. And I don't like either of those circumstances. So I'm going to want to get a feel from you what your range is. And I can't do that by throwing a first number.

1:11:32Nicole Lapin:Should you ask for a higher number than you actually want? No. Because, again, that makes you a liar. Self-deprecation. It's a ridiculously strong emotional intelligence skill. I love it. introducing bargaining chips that you're willing to compromise on no um again you're a liar you're deceiving the other side you throw something out you intend to throw it away i mean that's deception and deception is not a great foundation for long-term relationship of trust and prosperity you ever heard you talk about in a hostage situation where you wouldn't compromise of saying like the bad guy wants a jet and 10 million dollars and be like you get an uber and you know 100 grand yeah right subliminal messaging so like there's a scene in the office where mindy kaling's character has a crush on idris elba's character and kind of incepts the idea when he walks into her office and says you wanted me and so she's basically saying she was incepting him with her language does that work yeah there's very little in the movies or tv that actually work in real life.

1:12:40Yeah, so, I mean, with, I mean, there are, there's a difference between planting a seed in somebody's mind and nurturing that seed. Trying to plant a seed in somebody's mind is usually some act of deception, which is, deception is never a great recipe. And there's a lot of deception by omission, which is widely accepted in the private sector and in the business world. and it always ends up badly. I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you.

1:13:13Nicole Lapin:Yeah, but you don't want to say everything. You don't want to be TMI. A lot of stuff that you're holding back could actually be reasons for a better deal if you didn't take yourself hostage. And what do I mean by that? Let's say you got a timeline. Let's say you got a bill you got to pay on Friday. I can be scared to tell you that or I can say, look, if we don't work this out, I got to move on because I got a bill I got to pay on Friday. You know, it's the holidays. You're looking for a job. Everybody in a business is busy with the holiday party. You got a divorce settlement in January. You could say, look, guys, if I can't get a serious offer from you now, I got to move on.

1:14:02So why are you holding something back?

1:14:05Nicole Lapin:Because it's honest. because you honestly have that situation. You don't want to say that if you didn't have a hard deadline. Or it could be a reason to spur action right now. Then you're being candid. People hold stuff back far more for reasons like it's a non-starter, they'll never give it to me. Well, you should bring it up. Maybe they can. You don't know for sure. I can't. I'll be vulnerable if I tell them this. Well, maybe it's a reason for them to actually take action. It's all in what you're doing to yourself in your brain. Should you play hardball? If you know what you really need, you can be nice about it.

1:14:47I think people should stick to their guns. I think if you're, do you want it because you're trying to satisfy your ego? Because you got a cousin that did it? Somebody that you want to beat got it? But stuff that you really need, you should stick to what you really need. You just don't have to be mean about it. I get, as an assertive, I get asked all the time what I do differently. The only thing I would have done differently was I would have been nicer about a lot of stuff. I played hardball plenty of times. I probably would have been nicer about the way I did it.

1:15:24Nicole Lapin:So the last one is kindness because some people say it signals weakness. No, it does not.

1:15:32My friend Conrad Gomez says that kindness is one of the, what is it, long-term success strategies. Kindness is not weakness. Kindness contributes to the karma bank, I believe very strongly in positive karma. And kindness doesn't mean you're going to get rolled over. every now and then because you're kind somebody might try but that doesn't mean you got to give in you know i'm sure i'm sure people try to roll over conrad on a regular basis he doesn't give in my friend nick nanton he strikes you as a guy you could roll over easily and you try to roll over nick in a very polite way that's your last conversation with them

1:16:21Nicole Lapin:well i think there's a difference between kindness and niceness some of it could often be in how you apply it, how you define it. So yeah, they're often synonyms. Yeah, you can be kind and give bad news in a kind way, but a nice person is giving somebody something they want because they're scared of coming across as mean or they're doing something that's not aligned so that other people will like them. Those are the people that will steamroll you. You're a natural born assertive, aren't you? What do you think? A thousand percent. I think it might be a combination. Well, that doesn't mean that you haven't learned a lot of other skills.

1:17:08The complementary skills that enhance. What was the name of your book again?

1:17:13Nicole Lapin:You know. Say it out loud. You know. You want me to say it. Yes. Rich Bitch. Yeah. And the one after that was? Boss Bitch. That's a natural, like I bring it. That's a natural born assertive. And you're very, you're kind about it. Thank you. The reason why, see, as an assertive, I always hated the word nice. And so assertives tend to react, I'm not nice. How dare you? Take that back. Guilty. You clocked me. So we share that attribute. I want to get your thoughts on a couple of dealmaking cliches. If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. There's certain things that are a little bit of a sucker move.

1:17:58And people catch on to that really quickly. When somebody says, hey, I want your help. I need your advice on this. Like, I'm going to figure out really quickly whether or not you're trying to create an emotional debt or whether or not you actually want to listen. And I figure out, I can figure out really fast if you're weaponizing this advice thing against me.

1:18:19Nicole Lapin:How? Because your reaction to whatever it is that I say, are you actually going to listen to what I said? You asked me for advice, and I know right away whether or not you're listening. If you're just trying to get me to feel like I helped you and therefore now you're going to help me get money, then I'm going to smell that real fast. When people go in really wanting money but framing it as advice because people are more likely to do it if they came up with the idea. There's a whole separate issue. Yeah, I mean, the other side has to have ownership in the outcome, in the solution. That's one of the reasons why my Harvard brothers and sisters, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, they're dead wrong on the yes-able proposition.

1:19:02Nicole Lapin:Explain what that is. And they say, you know, just come up with a proposition that fits the other side's wants and needs so perfectly that all they've got to do is say yes. Well, they're not vested. They didn't care about it. It was all your idea. They had no interaction. They had no collaboration. They had no contribution. and nobody wants to implement a deal that was not their idea at all. So how do you get somebody to think it's their idea? The what and how questions are designed to trigger somebody's thoughts, not get an answer.

1:19:39So how can I be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of the company? that then begins to invest your boss in your success which i think is what you were driving

1:19:52Nicole Lapin:at a moment ago even in the blocking and tackling way where you're repeating the last few words that you hear how do you do that how do i do that brilliant brilliant brilliant can i drop this mic can you drop the mic that was perfect uh Is that something that people should think about if they're not as skilled as you are? It's all practice. It's language. It's practice. It's equivalent to a sporting event. What does that mean? First of all, if you haven't done it at all, you can make big leaps right off the bat really quickly by just trying it at all. And so that's kind of fun. and then when you start getting some satisfaction back and getting people talking, then it just becomes that much more enjoyable and you start getting better slowly.

1:20:50Nicole Lapin:So the advice is to try and repeat the last two or three words that the other person said back to them. The mirroring, that's called a mirror, and that's a great skill. The two fundamental skills of the Black Swan Method principally are labels or mirrors. Mirrors are repeating a couple of the words. Labels, it sounds like that's important to you. That's a label. Sounds like, looks like, seems like. What we're seeing on a regular basis is people either right-handed or left-handed. People either prefer labels or they prefer mirrors. I don't know which one is going to feel more natural to you. More people are right-handed than left-handed.

1:21:29More people refer labels than prefer mirrors. One of the founders of a company we're advising, even up law, Ray, is a mirror guy. Like he will mirror like crazy. And that's almost all he does. And he's phenomenal at it. Because that fits the way that he thinks. And the mirror is the least amount of brain power required on your side for the maximum amount of talk from the other side. And I think that's one of the reasons that Ray likes it because he just says two or three words and the other side talks for 10 minutes.

1:22:09Nicole Lapin:And the why beneath that is that people want to feel heard. They feel like you're listening. It also helps them expand on their thoughts. It connects a lot of thoughts in their brain, and it helps them focus on all the connecting thoughts, and a mirror really brings out a lot more from the other side. Okay, a couple more cliches. You can't have a good deal with bad people. Yeah, I agree. you can't have a bad deal with good people you could you could you could uh the accommodators will not focus on implementation which will make a deal really bad they're going to hope that everything works out so an accommodator can be a very good people person and have left too much to chance too much to hope and you really got to focus on implementation details with someone who's really hope focused and so that would make uh with a good person a very difficult deal because nobody talked about how we're going to make it happen some people are since it's different people are scared of it well and a lot of people hate it and assertives tend to love negotiating say i was right before about you being an assertive yeah assertives tend to love it and but some people just hate it because they see it as conflict or they see it as disagreement it analysts tend to really to be negotiation adverse they want implementation and they want and they want plans and negotiation has this aura of being combat and some people that's the worst thing possible and other people like yeah let's go because they love the combat so it's it it doesn't have to be either it can be just great collaboration what about how you were raised because for me i feel like it's in my blood both my parents were immigrants and so the idea of negotiating was more natural like asking for a discount where there wasn't a discount right was something i just grew up seeing all the time that has an awful lot to do with it i mean i i have i have a basic theory that everybody's got two for lack of a better term two lines of code in your head there's certain things that were just planted in your head and you don't know that they're there, but they drive you.

1:24:27And they were probably planted in the first five years of your life because most of your memories has been wiped away. I don't know why, but nobody remembers anything from age three or rarely. And then it was probably put in your head by your primary female caregiver because in the first five years of their life, that's who you're around the most. Probably. It was probably your mother. My girlfriend, Wendy, the woman she spent the most time around was the nanny that her family hired. Head of my coaching, Derek. The woman he spent the most time around was his grandmother. But these are the people that are going to say stuff to you over and over again.

1:25:11And your parents probably said to you, like this is, you can do anything you want. And your mom probably said that to you over and over and over again. Oh, my mom didn't.

1:25:24Nicole Lapin:But I'm going to definitely do that for my daughter. So maybe. Whatever you say over and over again. The voice in your head. They said stuff. They demonstrated stuff to you that was not really. It was expectation versus encouragement. Or the encouragement was minimal. But it was expected that you could do this stuff. Not that it was that hard, but that, yeah, of course you can do this. Of course you can. And that has a lot to do with how you started. Now, you could get in there and change that if you want. It's hard, but it can be done. EQ is easier to change than IQ. Yeah, well, EQ is a big superpower too.

1:26:12But whatever those two lines are, if you find self-defeating behavior,

1:26:21Andre Norman, good friend of mine, former prison gang leader. He had a lot of nasty stuff, bad stuff playing in his head as a little kid. He is now a phenomenal human being and is making the world a better place. So he went back in there and he changed that code. However he got it, it could be done.

1:26:39Nicole Lapin:You can make new neural pathways. Absolutely. It's hard work, but it can be done. Now, I'm just going to have your TED Talk playing in the background. of my daughter's nursery on repeat. She's going to be a phenomenal negotiator. Well, I talk about my mom in my TED talk. My mom was a tough cookie, and I attribute a lot in my life to her. So she's got a great mom. She's got a great mom. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. We end all of our episodes by asking all of our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. We didn't get into personal finances. The show is money we have, of course.

1:27:16Nicole Lapin:so curious if you you look like you have your shit together but ever needed money rehab most most of the cliche stuff is the best long-term strategy you know the the high risk high gain stuff is a lot of fun and in point of fact you lose a lot of money i did you know i did silver options when i was in my i think i was in my 20s when i lost money doing that and you know You always, it's the casino. You know, somebody in every casino, they talk about, the guy won$2 million on a slot machine, or, you know, this businessman walked away from the roulette table with$3 million. That was one in 1 ,000.

1:27:58So the cliche stuff is often the best long-term strategy.

1:28:02Nicole Lapin:Back to basics.