How to Negotiate the RIGHT Way with Chris Voss

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1:06This is the Ed Myerling Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I wanted to have this man on for a couple of years. I'm a really big fan of his work, not just from a negotiation standpoint, but from a communication standpoint. And he spent 24 years in the FBI crisis negotiation unit. he's done over 150 different international hostage type negotiations i think he's probably the foremost expert on the planet in communication not just negotiation his work is unique uh he obviously brings an experience and a perspective that really nobody else on the planet has based on what i just told you and um i'm just a big fan of his work so by the way i got a book too it's been out for a while but i read it when it came out called never split the difference i highly recommend you guys all get that we're going to break that stuff down today with chris voss so Chris, welcome to the show, finally.

1:55Thanks, Ed. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Well, I don't even know where to begin with you because there's so much to it. But when I introduced you, I said it the way I meant it. I think most everything in life is probably negotiation, but I know most everything in life involves communication. Right. There you go. Yeah. And you've communicated with all types of different people. But the first thing I wanted to ask you is I saw a clip of you recently, which surprised me because I've been in, I just kind of got, I thought I was a great reader of people. You know, I thought I was. And as I've gotten older, I think I realized maybe not quite as good as I thought.

2:27And this guy that kind of hammered me actually kind of almost, I call it almost scammed me in something. He kept saying, man, I want to make this a win-win when he kept opening up. I want to make it a win-win. And, and, and I heard you say, that's like a red flag for you. Anytime somebody says win-win. So I know it's an odd place to start, but why? I just got to know why personally. yeah because uh the person who's going to manipulate us has learned that um people really drop their guard when they hear that i mean it's one of those things uh win-win and also you got to watch out for the f word fair fair and you can get people to drop their guard and somebody who's really desirous of collaboration i mean the people that that'll take advantage of you they learn that like if i say win-win enough i mean they're gonna like oh wow okay they'll be hypnotized and so the you know mutual win mutual benefit is definitely the goal okay and so it's a difference between are you willing to collaborate or are you just using that you know are you weaponizing uh the the phrase and there's a few things out there that uh disguises collaboration but the people have a tendency to weaponize it against you and win-win is one of those phrases And without fail, the sooner somebody uses it as a specific phrase, the more often they use it, they're bad news.

3:51But yet you recommend, Chris, in your work to use the word fair as much as you possibly can, don't you? Well, now be cautious of it. Okay. Because fair is really lacking in criteria. Okay. Fair is like beauty is in the eye of the behold. and so if uh somebody's accusing me of being unfair uh i'll say all right so let's rewind i want i want to i want you to be treated fairly at all times and so anytime that you get the sense that i'm not let's go back to it now that's a different characterization of somebody saying like look i just want one i just want what's fair now that's a highly manipulative thing to say you're probably going to drop your guard.

4:33You're going to question yourself because the vast majority of human beings think of themselves as fair. So anytime it's implied that we're being unfair, we'll have a tendency to give in. So there's a lot, there's more nuance to that. Anytime you hear the F word, it should prick up your ears and understand what it really means. And mostly there's no criteria to fair. okay that's fascinating to me because those are two of the things this particular individual used with me uh was win-win and fair fair fair and yeah you know you're very much right and by the way today guys when we're talking we're going to talk we're not going to talk a lot about fbi releases we're going to talk about communication being able to build rapport with people persuasion connection um and i think a good place to start i know you've done this a lot but for my audience I think it's so I like concepts and then you fill it in with specificity and in the book, um, never split the difference.

5:35You talk about there really being like three types of personalities in negotiation. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I read the book, you know, quite a while ago and then I reviewed it for here, but there's the accommodator, the assertive and the analyst. Right. Yep. Okay. What are those? And is that true of just humans in general? Like, is my son one of those three? Is my wife one of those three? Are you one of those three? Does everybody sort of come prepackaged when you're communicating them? Forget negotiating, even though that's sort of what it is. Is everyone one of those? Yes.

6:05Now, does that define and constrain you? No. Depends upon how much you learn. But your default innate conflict type is fight, flight, make friends. And of the wiring that we've inherited from the cavemen, Cavemen that survived fought, ran, or made friends. And those that didn't either died and have no ancestors. Now, this is cut across the globe. You know, it really does. And it's based on something called the Thomas Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument, TKI. I first got introduced to that at Harvard. And TKI divided people into five types. and my Harvard brethren threw out two of the three, two of the five.

6:53And Bob Mnookin principally led this. I'm a big fan of Bob's book, Beyond Winning, by the way. And so one day I said, okay, I buy in, but I want to know why you threw out the two types and are left with those three. And he said, because the other two were learned, They're combinations of the three, and these are the three basic types. Now, TKI uses slightly different terms, and we've changed the terms, the questions a little bit to come up with our own model. Like, for example, the assertive was known as the competitive type. And I thought that meant, all right, so the other types aren't competitive.

7:38And I found all three types to be very competitive. So that was a bit of a red heron. So fight, flight, make friends. And then there's a world split evenly into thirds. Is it rule of thumb? Chinese, Indian, we have given this test to literally 10 ,000 people globally. I saw it split up evenly into thirds when they were doing it at Harvard. a global audience. Harvard students are drawn from all over the world. In the business schools that we taught in, a global audience. American business schools draw from all over the world. The U.S. is the place to get an MBA, whether you're in China, whether you're in India.

8:27And then one time we were doing some training a number of years ago, all Chinese, Chinese development bank executives were training them in Germany. It sounds like the UN of training, right? Yeah. But we're told in advance, you know, Chinese this, Chinese that. And we saw all three types manifested in the Chinese. So what does that mean? Typically, it means your impasse is usually type mismatch and a misinterpretation of a dynamic most common one is silence i go dead silent on you i'm an analyst i'm thinking and um lex friedman very analytical dude he's talking about silence on his podcast one time and he says to him intimate uh silence is a shared intimacy you go silent with lex the analyst he feels more bonded to you you're both comfortable in the silence.

9:28He shares it. Accommodator. Relationship focused. All communication. The meanest thing they could do is to go silent. An accommodator signals fury by withdrawing from communication. So imagine an accommodator and an analyst. The analyst is going like, would you just shut up? I'm trying to think. And the accommodator is going, oh, the analyst Lex is furious at me. That's why he's not talking. And so it's that dynamic that's usually a problem with impasse. How do you, and I know it's more complicated than one question, but let's just take one type, the assertive. How do you deduce that you're dealing with an assertive in a relatively quick period of time?

10:15I know there's the questions, but is there a way that, okay, I'm dealing with an assertive right now? The only person that's going to sound like an assertive as an assertive, you know, talking to, I'm a natural born assertive, Donald Trump's great poster child, not taking a position good or bad. He's a great example of the assertive. Somebody once told me when I was being my natural default assertive self, that talking to me was like getting hit in the face with a brick. I mean, we are blunt, we are direct. We see ourselves simply as direct and honest. You feel like you're getting hit in the face with a brick.

10:49now the accommodator neither the accommodator nor the analyst will ever come off that way where you might get confused the analysts analytical by nature they see the accommodators a smiling happy-go-lucky type making more deals now the deals always with accommodators always have implementation problems because they're not they're hope focused not detail focused hope is not a strategy hope is a principal strategy to accommodate so the analyst goes how does this guy just by smiling make more deals than i make and they go like oh this person smiles a lot and it seems to help and so you know the analyst will often uh be mistaken for an accommodator because they're smart enough to change their demeanor so that's sometimes you could get confused between in those two times so the assertive so everybody it's accommodator assertive and analyst the assertive is the easiest to see coming is basically what you said yeah you're gonna yeah they're they're an elephant coming through the jungle you know they're on their way well what's interesting i guarantee you for me it just happened too when you begin to describe the assertive i immediately flashed to two or three friends of mine immediately i'm like yep assertive assertive and i guarantee you everybody did in that moment as well so hey guys i want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth.

12:12And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you can get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second. Growthday.com forward slash Ed. My friend Brendan Brouchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life.

12:42Everything from goal-setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute, as do a whole bunch of other influencers, like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brendan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. The thing I've learned most from your work, though, and this is where I want to pull apart.

13:14So everybody forget negotiation. This is just life skills right here. And I think I have been by and large terrible at this most of my life, what I'm about to ask you about. And I think I'm an assertive number one, probably. And although I don't have a lot of abilities, I really don't. One of them is the ability to speak and to communicate. And I think oftentimes I rely on that as opposed to what I've really worked on the last decade is my listening skills. And I have found, like, I'll do a retreat with a bunch of people that will come in, for example, for business, right? And I'll talk for three days, give them the best information, engage them, train them up, motivate them, inspire them.

13:55And they leave, and I think they think it's good. This is back in the day. And then another buddy of mine would come in. He's not even really that prepared. They sit around and BS for three days, and they ask them a bunch of questions. They all talk and they leave and it gets back to me. That was the greatest retreat they've ever been to in their lives. And it felt to me like it's probably because they were listened to more. So it's 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?

14:26Because I think it's a lost art. It's an advanced skill. and uh in many cases like isn't assertive uh 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 gonna jam you know time is money every moment no moment can be wasted i'm gonna download as much value as i possibly can and i'm not gonna waste a moment not giving these people value for each and every minute they're here. And so that becomes a bit of a deluge to start with. And it's hard to keep up with. It's everybody on my team, we got that problem in our instruction.

15:06We so want to give you nothing but valuable content. And so then listening, like the tiniest little things, how much time do you have for somebody who's not listening to you? Like zero. And you're going to notice it right away. And so in these tiny moments, being listened to actually increases analysis on both sides. It gives people an opportunity to do a little bit more processing. And so there's a whole variety of subtle nuances, invisible nuances that affect the proactive, not just active, proactive listening starts to kick into gear. And so I'll get, it seems less efficient. and then suddenly you're in a you've accelerated 15 steps you don't even know how to happen and that's you know and to me and it's one of the i i possess that's the magic i know the magic's coming but just these subtle little tweaks so what are a couple of tweaks you use what do you there's some active listening skills you'll use to let someone know you are right so it's one thing to be listening it's another thing for them to get the message and feeling that you're listening as well right well that the secret easiest one simplest is the mirror repeating the last one to three words of what somebody has just said um and this is the best one to open up your teenager like there have been so many moms who suddenly open up their daughters because you know kid comes home from school how was your day fine what'd you do i don't remember you didn't indicate to them that you even listened to the answer the first question so you say how was your day they go fine the parents response should be fine which is i even though you only gave me one word i just proved that i listened to now that tiny moment tends to open people up very quickly because normally you got a list of questions and you're checking them off the list mom dad i'm going to say how was your day what did you do boom boom i you know you feel like your intention to do a job as a parent to display interest is there yes it is but your method was poor because by following up immediately with your next question, you made them think you weren't listening to the first answer.

17:45And so the mirror is like the first way to get your foot in the door to open the communication up. Yeah, this is why you should be following Chris's work, why you should bring him in to speak, why you should get Never Split the Difference. That alone is simple. And I don't do it. I don't do it. Here's what I do do. That's I just learned from you recently. um i was in i am in the middle of a rather intense negotiation on something right now and i allowed it to escalate to where it got heated and uh the advantage to that though is i got to use one of your techniques and i i want everyone to have you elaborate on this because i think the foundation of what i've learned is just allowing someone to feel heard or be heard is so critical we'll talk about that in the negotiations hostage wise next but i want to ask you this.

18:33So anyway, it got elevated. This was just like a week ago, even though I learned this from you a little while ago. And the guy said something to me about what he wouldn't do. And then sort of a statement about me that wasn't flattering. And the normal me would have been just to annihilate him, right? Verbally, which would have made me feel good in the moment and gotten us further away. And I'm not kidding you. I was sitting about 30 feet from where I am right now. And I knew I was having you on the show in a few weeks. And so I was even more familiar with your work. And I actually said to him, I said, I won't say his name.

19:09I said to him, I said, listen, you must have a great reason for feeling that way and saying that. What is it? And he just opened up and it allowed him to talk. And basically what it did is it bought me time to think about other things, but it also, I got so much more information in the next seven minutes from him than I'd gotten in three two-hour full sessions previously. And we connected pretty deeply during that moment. 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? Yeah, that is like the universal magic label.

19:47Like no matter if somebody's arguing with you, somebody's agreeing with you, like there's never going to be an instance when you can't say it. You said you must have a great reason for saying that. you know, version of that is it seems like you have a reason for saying that. Seems like you have a reason for doing it. Like somebody just calls you the worst name they could possibly call you. Seems like you got a great reason for saying it. And they open up. Somebody completely agrees with what you just said. Seems like you got a reason, a great reason for saying it. And they open up. Like that is, like if I could, if I could teach people just that one label and say, here's what I want you to do for the rest of today.

20:26Nothing else comes out of your mouth. Just today. Just today. It seems like you got a great reason for saying that. You start that tomorrow morning for a sing. At the end of the day, you got to say it 15 times. Post on my Instagram what happened. At the FBI negotiating. Tell me what kind of day you had. I guarantee you, you're going to have a cooler day than you ever could have imagined. and what first of all well done and that's a great example like and it and it bought you time yeah you know and it stopped you from uh you know counter-launching your nuclear missiles and mutually assured destruction right yeah you're right Americans can I tell you the other thing it did it not only connected us I'm working on some content I'm creating right now that I just stumbled into in my life the last five years where I talk about changing the lens in your life when you're engaging with people of switching it because you're we all see them and our relationship with them through our lens our filter our lens and so I'm creating work right now that talks about creating an ability just to be a better human about switch the lens and have your mom see you through how your mom sees you you know how does she react to you less and change the lens is the bottom line and what it actually did in that moment for me so so angry is it changed the lens and I actually saw me from him.

21:50And when I started to see what he sees in me, it helped me better understand his position, but also how to respond and react and connect with him, to be honest with you. Dr. Phil told me this, and I want to know the validity of it or how valid it is. He told me that in hostage negotiation, that the number one criteria, so correct if it's wrong and then tell us how important it is okay but i think it's a bold statement that in hostage negotiation maybe he heard this from you i don't know that in hostage negotiation the number one criteria of getting the hostages back if everything were ranked is not that the needs or the demands were met of the person or anything like that but that the actual hostage taker felt listened to for why they did it true or false and if it's not true how important is that anyway true and true And I love that he caught that.

22:43He and I have had, you know, conversation in the past. He'd been generous to me. And he's mentioned my name a couple of times, which I'm grateful for. And that's it, a thousand percent. And while it sounds crazy, if you consider human beings, how do we make decisions? We escalate. And the first thing that we, if we're not heard, then the first time we talk normally, you know, we try to get listened to. All right. So it proved to us that that didn't work. So now we're going to escalate our tone of voice. We're going to escalate our rhetoric. We're going to escalate our adjectives. That doesn't work.

23:20Then we either give up or then that's when we start to get violent. But it all started from a need to be heard to begin with. And like that translates. I mean, that's why my team, we make more deals because our focus is on hearing the other side out to start with. and it's a universal need of human beings. That's just striking. I'm going to just step back from everybody and hear that. The number one thing in getting a hostage back in a negotiation is that that person feels you've heard why they took the hostages. Do you think by and large, I was just thinking about this, people in my life just right now occurred to me.

24:01I don't believe there's these huge differences and all this other stuff, but do you think by and large women are better at this than men just intuitively? Have you had any work with that? Like, I'm just thinking like in my life, my female friends certainly listen better to me. There's this great bit right now that Brian Regan has this comedy bit where his buddy's going through a divorce and he goes and plays five hours of golf with his buddy and he gets home. Regan gets home and his wife says to him, so how's Dave doing? And Regan goes, I don't know. She goes, didn't you just spend five hours with him in the golf cart?

24:34He goes, yeah. And she says, well, is he dating anybody? He goes, I don't know. you didn't ask me his dating buddy he goes no he goes i know he's got a new driver that's it you know but yet i i would think if if two ladies were together for five hours on the golf course they might listen to each other a little bit better maybe that's not gender specific at all but what are your thoughts i'm just curious your thoughts on that yeah uh all right so let me let me uh three parts to the answer okay nature versus nurture um i haven't seen hard science that says that nature gives them a head start. Now, nurture does.

25:12Women are conditioned very early on. Like, a little girl gets into trouble, and, you know, the females in her life, the female mentors are going to be like, look, you got to learn your soft skills. You know, a little girl gets into a fight with a little boy, whoops his ass. Because pre-adolescence, they're kind of even physically. But the women mentors know, eventually, a little boy's going to pass you by. and you're going to have to have soft power to win. So tremendous amount of nurturing to begin with. Little boy gets into a fight, goes home, and the male mentors are like, you know, go back there and don't ever come home here again crying and complaining.

25:50You go back there and you stand up and you fight. So it's a different kind of nurturing. Now, the black swan skills, women pick them up faster than men do. and at the top end we see no difference in gender performance but i do know consistently that women pick this methodology faster than men so my hypothesis is the you know the pre-work they got more pre-work in the nurturing to begin with and then like i said at the top end if you're coachable man or woman it doesn't make any difference funny you said hypothesis because i wanted to ask you about that one of the things i've seen you say that just is fascinating to me is a way to accelerate a negotiation or a conversation with somebody i was surprised by this um and it could be a friendly negotiation like hey where are we going to dinner tonight or it could be a hostage negotiation but is to actually state a hypothesis early in the conversation about what you believe they're feeling or thinking in order to get them to open up.

26:58That surprised me because I thought you would just want somebody to talk. So talk about the hypothesis theory of accelerating a negotiation or a connection. You know, the emphasis on that word originally came from my son, Brandon. And he said, like, look, we got to get people to test their thinking. And if you make an assumption, you might be, you know, you're kind of scared to test it. I mean, it's the reason why there's phrases criticizing assumptions is because our lack of testing our assumptions. So he said, if we can help people, if you say hypothesis to begin with, that requires some testing.

27:34And it accepts that you could be wrong and your ego's not going to get blown apart if you are wrong. That's part of the scientific method, if you will. So then you throw out a hypothesis and intention has a smell. Your intent is to collaborate with somebody. And I'm not saying for sure, that this is where you're coming from, but kind of seems that way. And then if I'm dead wrong and somebody once jumped down my throat, I said, you sound angry. They were angry, but the guy jumped down my throat, I'm not angry. And I said, well, I didn't say you were angry. I said, you sound angry. And how he seemed, how he sounded, how he was coming off was inarguable.

28:23I was just making an observation. And that actually dialed them down completely to begin with. So if your thinking starts with, I got a hypothesis I want to test, the other side gets the feel that you're willing to be corrected and you're not trying to be judgmental. So you're saying it's okay to say, hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you're saying is this or what I think you're feeling is this. That's opening doors, not closing them. Yeah, the intent by that is 1 ,000 % right. Now, you know, there's a couple of sort of nuances in the wording that I would change. Okay. The I is a self-centering word.

29:03Okay. So it's a little more effective to say, you know, you seem upset versus I'm guessing you're upset. Okay. You know, they're tiny little, each word hits people emotionally different. And there's some context to it. and I tends to be self-centering and as a general rule you want to avoid it when you're trying to make it all about the other person and then but then there are times when you drop the word I in there's there's it's there's no word that in and of itself is good or bad yes isn't good or bad no isn't good or bad it's all context and I is one of those words just understand it tends to be self-centering.

29:48There are moments when you want to self-center, but when you're demonstrating, listening, and trying to put all the emphasis on the other person, the more you can eliminate the word I, the better off you're going to be. Very good. I noticed when in your hypothetical there, when the guy came back at you angry, it sounded to me that even now you modulated your language differently because you're such a pro, but it sounded to me that you went to a more, maybe potentially slower or soothing tone in your voice just even right now when you role played by yourself was that just coincidental or did i pick up on something there no no you're picking up on it i mean the the secret magic skill like if your tone is great it's shocking what you can get away with saying and it's you know slowing down it's pacing at different points in time you know it's whether you're upward inflecting or downward inflecting and there's so much you could do like It is the magic secret Jedi mind frame because they're neurological reactions to the tone.

30:51And I know what the neurobiology is. So I practice it all the time. I love making it happen. Very good. This is so deep. Okay, so those are technical things. Conceptually, you talk a lot about empathy, which surprised me, candidly. you have a presence about you. You have a command presence about you. I think just maybe that's natural. You've obviously worked on it. And one of my biggest criticisms in the world today of all leaders that I see, I wish I saw more empathy all the way to the top. I mean, I think some of these folks have just tremendous skill sets, yet I don't see a lot of empathy. We didn't see any last Thursday night.

31:34We did not. You're reading my mind. So we're recording this about a week after the debate that you all have talked about it for sure. This will come out a few weeks after that, but that you're reading my mind. And so, and I've actually had reps from both those guys and both those guys in my life and told both those guys, man, if you showed a little empathy, I think you'd connect a lot deeper with people. That aside, just in general, that concept I've thrilled is almost like the center of your work almost. Yeah, it is. It is. So can you just talk about it, please? And that, because I think a lot of this stuff people hear, I got to modulate my tone.