Use These PSYCHOLOGICAL TRICKS To Win ANY ARGUMENT | Chris Voss

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11You can be very assertive without being aggressive. You don't have to give up that much assertion. You don't want to be that mean. You don't want to be that hard. For example, what do you mean? There's a great guy here in town. His name is Tom Girardi. Voted top trial attorney in California several years in a row by the Bar Association. He gets to vote a top trial attorney so many times that when they put it on the front page, they say, again. So he comes in and he's a guest in my class at USC. and he stepped in. I know he's a top trial attorney, but I don't know his style. I figure he's going to be an attack dog because I spent so much time in New York, you know, he used to attack dog attorneys.

0:44And Tom walks into the class and he says, you know, the key to negotiation is being nice and gentle. And what Tom does by being nice is get you to drop your guard. And Tom is an immovable, unrelenting opponent. And that's why he's so successful and he's ridiculously nice about it. Like he smiles And he chats with people And he always talks about how we'll collaborate With each other in the future You get into an argument with him and immediately he'll bend it Where he's talking with you about how you and I Are going to be successful together 10 years from now So you don't have to be aggressive Secret to gaining the upper hand In negotiations is giving the other side The illusion of control Now I'm coming at you as a very control oriented negotiation As soon as you don't struggle with me Over control you actually begin to gain an advantage because then you feel like you're in control.

1:33Right. You don't have to try to gain it anymore. Right, right. I'm more than likely going to start dropping my, if I'm a control freak guy, if I want to talk all the time, I'm a control freak guy. Control freak negotiators who want to talk all the time, they feel out of control when they're not talking. So you want to get them to the point where they don't talk, but they don't talk because they're relaxed, not because they're trying to seize control. I teach how to say no. You want to feel other ways of saying, because just like at the very beginning of my book, You're supposed to look at me and say, how am I supposed to do that?

2:03So, poise it back to a question. Right. Not just open it, how. Okay. How is the key to life. Yes is nothing without how. You could also start talking about how without talking about yes. Would I say I'd love to get you what you need? How would I do that? Just how would I do that? How would I do that? So, give them the control to figure out the solution. Right, right, right. How am I supposed to get you the car in that time frame? Because that's what you're trying to express. There actually is a time problem here. In 60 seconds, how am I supposed to get you a car? Right, right. That's different than we can get a car, we just need 60 more seconds.

2:36Right, we need more time. Right. Now I think you're ducking me. But if instead you say, like, of course the cars are out here right away, but first of all, I've got to tell everybody what we're going to do. I don't need anybody to get surprised. Let's talk through the details of how this is going to get done. In the meantime, what got you here in the first place? How do you find yourself in this kind of a situation? you take what you want and make it the path to what I want. You know, how am I supposed to get you in here if it doesn't benefit me also? As soon as in any negotiation, what I want is now a means of getting what you want, then that changes the dynamic right away.

3:18So how do you deal in a negotiation with the kind of person who has to win, who has to get everything they want, they're very controlling, alpha, and it's their way or no way? Well, getting everything they want is actually third on their list. First of all, being in control is number one on their list, and that's emotionally satisfying. The second thing is the alpha type. We refer to that as the assertive. The one thing that's more important to them than actually getting what they want is being respected and making sure that you know everything about what they're coming from. And it's a classic guy who's working for his boss and said, you know what, my boss didn't do what I wanted him to do.

3:58but he heard me out or she heard me out. I can live with the direction we're going as long as I know that my boss knows my opinion. And so that assertive type of negotiator, it's really more important to them that they felt that they conducted themselves respectably, that you respected them and that you knew what they were coming from. And once they know those things, they'll actually soften up on what they want. If they feel disrespected, they'll probably be more frustrated and angry and demanding. Right, right, right, right. because when they're very demanding, what they're really saying to you subtly is, I want you to know how important this is to me.

4:32I want you to know how important I am. So how do you meet that person? Just come to them with respect or with calm? You could say, look, you're impressive. You're phenomenal. You thought it's all out. This is very... Yeah, I mean, clearly you know where you're coming from. You know what you want. I'm lucky to be talking to you at all. Right. I mean, were I to sit down with Donald Trump, I would, in fact, be lucky to be in the same room with him. That would be the first thing I'd say to them. I'd say, you're an American icon. You're the symbol of American business, certainly in New York City. Yeah, stroke and their ego is not a bad thing.

5:06It's a version of empathy because that's how they see themselves. Emotional currency is not going to solve every deal. I just don't want to try to solve any deal with money when I could have solved it with emotional currency. I'm saving my money. With emotional empathy, currency, intelligence. Right, right. My money's too important to me to waste it when I could buy something with satisfaction. So many people, especially men in business deals, I feel like there's a lot of alpha men who are trying to get what they want. So somehow they'll lose money because they're not able to have empathy or they're not able to drop their ego.

5:42A lot of money's left on the table over stuff like that or what they value themselves out. Like price is the most emotional term in a negotiation because you value yourself based on price. But if I can get you to value yourself in another way, put you on a magazine cover. Stroke the ego in some other way. It used to be you'd get Donald Trump in any magazine you wanted to if you put him on a cover. And then he would knock himself out for the people doing the articles. Oh, yeah. On access. Anything. Answering questions. Imagine how valuable his time was. They got a cover to the magazine anyway. I got to put somebody on it.

6:17Right. You know, now they're trading something that costs them nothing. and he's giving them dynamic interviews and he's promoting them hard and he's sharing them with everyone and he's framing it everywhere interesting so you're buying Donald Trump with emotional recognition so what are the characteristics that make a great negotiator in your field and also how do those translate into the business and relationship world well let the other side go first most people they're burning with their argument here's why you should make this deal they're not going to listen to a word you say until they get it out.

6:52So trying to talk to them is really like trying to talk to a paranoid schizophrenic. Because they're rehearsing their speech in their head and their logic. Ned Coletti, former GM of the Dodgers, a friend of mine here in town, phenomenal negotiator. Ned always likes to let the other side go first. You know, he did the Barry Bonds deal. He's done a ton of deals across the board. And Ned says, well, you know, in a two-hour phone call, there's going to be 90 seconds of solid gold where the person I'm talking to, based on changes that they made in their tone of voice and the adjectives that they used, he's got an instinct for it.

7:26He couldn't identify. He's just always saying, there's 90 seconds to suck gold. And I'd say, what is that? We talk it through and he says, well, yeah, it's going to be a change in a tone of voice. It's going to be a different kind of adjective. So Ned wants you to go first because he wants to know what it's going to take to make the deal. What they want. Right. Yeah, what they're burning for or how they characterize what they have. Or what they're not saying too, maybe. Exactly right. What someone has failed to say is often a lot more important than what they have said. I actually like to look for more of what they haven't said, what's glaringly missing.

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9:15Thank you.