644: This FBI Negotiation Trick Gets People to Say YES (By Saying NO) | Chris Voss

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0:39Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. everything in life is a negotiation and what if everything you have been taught about negotiation compromise win-win deals getting to the yes is actually destroying your leverage costing you millions of dollars without even realizing it well today's guest chris voss former fbi lead international kidnapping negotiator and author of never split the difference who spent decades in situations where a single wrong word could cost somebody's life. After talking down armed bank robbers, negotiating with terrorists, Chris discovered that the rational bargaining models taught in business schools don't just fail, they're dangerous.

1:27And now he teaches founders, CEOs, and negotiators worldwide how to use tactical empathy to really uncover hidden information, diffuse conflict, and gain leverage even when it seems like you don't have anything. This is a masterclass in conversation. You'll learn why forcing someone to say no is more powerful than chasing a yes, the exact calibrated questions that make aggressive counterparts solve your problems for you, and how to spot the verbal and tonal cues that reveal when someone is actually lying or hiding critical deal information and the daily negotiation habit that Chris believes compounds into 10x results over a decade.

2:05So whether you're raising capital, hiring executives, negotiating your next stock deal, closing enterprise deals, or navigating a crisis, this episode completely will rewire how you communicate under pressure and do deals. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. Chris, you've spent decades negotiating with terrorists, bank robbers, where a single word could get someone killed. Why do you believe the win-win compromise taught in most business schools is actually one of the most dangerous strategies a founder can rely on?

2:54Well, first of all, compromise is guaranteed lose-lose. I have to lose something and you have to lose something. That's compromise. So to start with, like, would you compromise your integrity? No. Would you compromise your values? Now, the spirit of collaboration is good. The spirit of wanting to work with someone is where you really want to be. But compromise, by definition, is lose-lose to start with. And then secondly, you're trying to typically blend two different ideas. Your desire to preserve the other side's emotional state and feeling of avoidance of loss. Now, the desire and the intent is good, but you don't get there with the compromise.

3:48A couple of years ago, I'm hearing about two CEOs, co-CEOs. Their companies have come together. One is an established player in the industry, a lot of respect, great reputation, long-term stalwart of the industry. The other CEO is the newer guy, innovative, learning. Great new up and coming partner. So they're trying to decide whether or not to build a new corporate headquarters. And the stalwart CEO is like, this is going to be really expensive. You know, we're going to look bad if we blow this money on a corporate headquarters. We can't do that. And the new guy is like, you know, to show we're cutting edge.

4:37you know we got to do it so they compromise and do both because they can't decide whose idea is better and it becomes a huge disaster two bad ideas that don't fit together and they end up losing both CEOs and wasting tons of money so the intent to collaborate was there but compromise as a mechanism is guaranteed lose-lose. So you should collaborate. You should figure out a better way. But you shouldn't just give in, give the other guy half what they want and half what you want because you're watering down both ideas. You know, get your ego out of the way, pick what the best strategy is to start with.

5:24So compromise, I mean, I go on forever about how the application of compromise as a solution is guaranteed lose-lose. Now, win-win has become a seductive terminology. And the cutthroat negotiators know like, hey, I got a great win-win deal for you. So many people that desire to collaborate and have great relationships, they will just get taken to the cleaners by being seduced by those words. And I realize now if somebody approaches me, I know somebody approaches me and their first words out of their mouth are, let's do a win-win deal. I know they're trying to pick my pocket. They want to keep all the money and my compensation is the privilege of being involved.

6:08That just happened to me over and over and over again, that if you throw a win-win at me up front, you're not planning on paying me anything. So how do I respond and respond? And as a reaction, I'll say, I'm here for mutual gain.

6:27you know let's take what you said and if you're not after mutual gain like if you're the guy who's trying to cut my throat you're like ah whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you know i'm going to tell your reaction to the phrase mutual gain whether or not you're using that to cheat me that's a diagnosis all the black swan skills you use the skill and you diagnose how the other side reacts and it gives you information. And so you shouldn't, don't use the term win-win. Let's talk about mutual gain. If I talk about mutual gain, if those words come out of my mouth, I've made a commitment that you got to gain.

7:12And now let's talk about what those gains are. So win-win has just been used to get people to give in and get take to the cleaners over and over and over again. Now you talked about Black Swan Skills and your company, Black Swan Group. Black Swan Group. Yeah. I'm curious just for the audience, what is a black swan? A black swan is the little thing that made all the difference in the world. So it could be a small piece of information. You know, Nassim Nicholas's title of the book, The Black Swan, 2007-ish, was the inspiration for the title and it was the inspiration for the name of my company because the subtitle of that book is The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

8:02What was the small and probable thing that changed everything? So the application of that idea, what are the Black Swan negotiation skills, which were derived from hostage negotiation and adjusted for the business world that are tiny little tweaks that make all the difference in the world in the acceleration of trust and collaboration and profitability. How do you gather information and increase trust? Most people gather information by asking questions. asking questions makes the other person feel questioned, which decreases trust. You know, how can I change this so that it's a comfortable conversation where I got a lot of information and you were happy to give it to me?

8:52So it's a combination of using innocuous, subtle skills, not chair kicking, shouting, hand slamming on the table skills, not demands that then have a massive impact on the deal, the tiny little changes that make the deal phenomenal, far better than you ever thought it would be because you shared information with me that was going to make it better. That's what black swans are. Now, I want to get more into some of these black swan skills and tactics, but I want you to take us back to 1993, 23 chase manhattan bank robbery what was the exact moment that you realized like rational bargaining that you were trained is was not working and how did you like force that pivot to emotional intelligence in real time well at that point in time the methodology that i'd learned really had steered away from rational bargaining you know what people thought was rational bargaining the bureau was shifting much more to crisis intervention empathy skills to accelerate outcomes and so i was really trained in that and trained in a process which then i've heard it described as zen-like or tai chi-like formless i never thought of it in those terms but being completely open to better outcomes faster by taking a gentler approach.

10:33And the first hostage negotiator that spoke to the other side's, the main bad guy, you know, he was very much into, I'm here to help. And the main bad guy was very manipulative. He was actually a model of many great CEO negotiators. A great CEO negotiator will always say, oh, I got a board I'm accountable to. You know, if I make a deal with you and my board's unhappy with me, well, they're going to fire me. I'm actually scared of my board. What did this bank robber say to us? He used to say, oh, my God, these other guys I'm in here with, they're more dangerous than I am. I'm actually scared of them.

11:18I got to be careful what I say to you because they might hurt me. You know, I had no idea at the time that was going on with this guy. Highly controlled, highly manipulative, great at laying responsibility off on others. We initially misassessed him as an inadequate personality. He was more than adequate. And because of that, my approach to him with empathy, you know, it just, he didn't know what it was, but he found it disturbing. I could tell he was disturbed by an understanding approach, you know, non-threatening approach. He wanted point-counterpoint argument approach, manipulation. And empathy works really good with highly manipulative people on the other side.

12:03Because they know, their gut tells them their manipulation is unsuccessful, which is unsettling for them. But they're still drawn to it and they don't really understand why. They don't get angry. And that's exactly the way this guy reacted. And we got some admissions out of him that he didn't mean to make, which contributed significantly to capture of his accomplice that wasn't there and also made him look much more guilty. then he initially got to the point where he was so disturbed by my gentle understanding and empathy that he didn't increase the threat level at all but he handed off the phone to another bank robber inside who was wanting nothing but to get out of there alive which is highly emotional and I had that guy surrendering to me out in front of the bank about 90 minutes later.

13:02And how did you do that? Listening to him, it was really more than anything it was tone of voice. My tone of voice got to him so that like about 90 seconds into the conversation he literally said to me, I trust you. You know, I gained trust with him just based on a calming, soothing tone of voice, which is one of the fastest way to get trust or to lose it, you know, based on a bad tone of voice. And then some of the critical instances were another member of my team read him between the lines better than I did. When you're the talker in a negotiation under any circumstances, business and otherwise, when you're thinking about what you want to say, you're missing insights into the other person.

13:55and so we teach people to negotiate in teams you got another set of ears there looking to pick up stuff that you missed somebody else on the team picked up nuances in what this guy was saying the principal one was of course there's a hostage negotiator i'm trying to get get him to let go hostages you know what am i there for get a hostage out right somebody else on the team heard that he wanted to come out. And I got handed a note that said, ask him if he wants to come out. So in the middle of working on him, you know, about hostages, I looked at the note, I'm coachable. If anything, I'm coachable.

14:38And I said, do you want to come out? Like 180 degree pivot on him, like on the spot. and there was hesitation in his voice and he said I don't know how I do that which is a great big giant yes I do just give me some implementation please get me the heck out of here and so you know I did that 180 degree turn and kept listening to him and talked about consequences and 90 minutes later you know he was in handcuffs and I was putting my shoulder around him out behind one of the SWAT trucks in front of the bank. Incredible story. Thank you for sharing. So one thing I want to talk about around that idea of building trust when it comes to any negotiation, founders often obsess about getting the yes from investors, hiring this rockstar team member, landing this big deal or sale.

15:50And you have a different approach. You argue that yes is often counterfeit. And how does saying no actually protect a founder and give them leverage and expose the truth of getting a deal? Well, saying no and hearing no. In any given moment, any given word, depending upon what side of it you're on, it's a vastly different experience for you and the other person. When you hear yes, you feel wonderful. When you say it, you worry about what you're letting yourself into, in for. Now there's a selling technique called the yes momentum or momentum selling. And basically it's get three yeses in a row.

16:42This builds the yes momentum. Each yes is a micro agreement or a tie down. And then they have to say yes to the big thing. Would you like clean water? would you like to be healthy would you like to have clean water at the best possible cost would you like to buy my water filter bang the hook is coming now nearly everybody learned the yes momentum globally worldwide and they went from making no sales to some sales and so they say like yeah I make deals all the time with yes but the problem is it's been used so much and there are some industries that are notorious for looping people into bad deals that everybody has been bamboozled with the yes momentum Every human being on earth.

17:45And I got data from coaching hostage negotiations globally to coaching business negotiations globally. China, India, Russia, South America, Western Europe. Everybody learned the yes momentum. It's been out there for 75 years. Everybody's been bamboozled with the yes momentum. This is like being a better child. So a battered child doesn't care that you just wanted to give it a hug. They see the arms raised. They think they're going to get hit. They pull away. Everybody's yes battered. So it's so pervasive that frequently people give you a counterfeit yes because they want to hear the hook. They want to hear what you have to say.

18:36They want to back out. or they just want you to finish their sales pitch so they can move on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the sooner I say yes, the sooner we get to the conclusion of this and the sooner I can get back to my day. And I'll say, let me think about it. And since I said yes, you're all excited. And you say, let me think about it. And then I never hear from you again and get ghosted. You know, I promise you, if you're being ghosted, you were trying to get the other side to say yes and they felt bamboozled. You didn't mean to be bamboozling them. I'm not saying that was your intention.

19:14The problem is it's the impact residue from the people that did. So the stupid thing is get them to say no. Instead of saying, do you agree, say, do you disagree? What will happen then is, yes, triggers anxiety, feelings of anxiety. no saying it triggers feelings of safety

19:44so if i say to you i mean for you to agree and tell me problems i say do you disagree you're hoping i'd say yes but here are the problems nobody's ever willing to say that because they feel like getting themselves digging themselves digger and deep more deeply into the whole. So when I say, do you disagree? You'll say, no, but here are the problems and you'll give them to me freely. And that's the information that you need. Whether you're a founder, business owner, whoever you're negotiating with, you need to identify the obstacles. And so make them feel safe by telling you no. So then they feel it's okay to share obstacles.

20:27People don't give a counterfeit no. It's saying no that makes them feel that they're okay to continue talking. And that's really what you want. And that's the whole difference. Are you saying it? Are you hearing it? What happens when you say it? What happens when you hear it? You want the other side to feel comfortable telling you things. They're more comfortable if you get them to say no. So just flip the question. So one thing that I had to ask you that was coming to mind as you're telling me this is I'm putting myself in similar situations where, you know, I've done deals and all sorts of things.

21:07And you talked about the infamous, I'll have to think about it. I need a day. Like, I need some time. Let me come back to you. And it hurts, man. Like, it hurts. do you ever get that anymore no because i i mean i just don't um we dial in really quickly whether or not the other side's sincere

21:43so i know if having um demonstrated to you i'm not trying to push you into a corner I'm going to say out loud what your perspective is. I'm going to smell early on whether or not you were just pumping me for information. And there's two issues. Were you pumping me for information? Were you doing due diligence? Are you playing me off against somebody? Or did my approach create anxiety in you? Now I'm going to know early on whether or not you're doing due diligence, playing me off against somebody pumping me for information. So if I get to, I need time to think about it, I'm going to say to them, it sounds to me like you're still shopping around.

22:34It sounds to me like we're not going to be able to do it this time around and there's somebody else, you have a preferred provider. I want you to know if they ever disappoint you, that I want to have a long-term relationship with you where we prosper together for 20 years. and when you're ready to make a mutual commitment, please get back to me. Now, at that point in time, I'm not in limbo wondering if you're ever going to get back to me. I've effectively said goodbye. The door is always open, but I'm moving on. Now, I'm not going to make you feel uncomfortable getting to that point because I'm not going to try to get you to say yes.

23:19i'm gonna try to show you that i understand your problems you don't you want me to understand you but you really want me to understand your problems more like you could care less if i know that you play golf you care a lot more about if i know the challenges that you're up against if i understand your problems and the people that I do business with, we exchange no common ground. I don't care where they're from. I don't care their gender, their ethnicity. I don't care their sexual preference. I care whether or not they understand my problems. That's the filter for me because I found out I could have a lot of things in common with you demographic-wise and you will be clueless as to solving my problems.

24:15So I'm completely agnostic about that. I want to know what you know about what I'm up against. You could be a space alien with four arms. If you understand my challenges, let's do business. Yeah, I love that, man. That was awesome. I'm going to use that. That was incredible. I'm going to have to go back to this and take notes and try that. That was great. Thank you. Another thing that came to be coming, just kind of us speaking, is I'm going to get a bit personal here. My mom, she's incredible at reading people. she's been she was a nurse for 40 50 years and she always said to me Nathan I've just met so many people in my life I can just I can just tell I can read what's going on and my dad on the other hand always says your mom thinks she knows what other people are thinking but that is impossible to know what somebody else is thinking all the time.

25:34What would you say to that? And do you believe you can always tell what somebody else is thinking, reading them, working them out, and knowing what the move is? Because you feel great if you do. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you're in a situation, because we were constantly in discourse, where I'm constantly meeting people, all sorts of things. and you know human naturally you're trying to work out this person like you said are they trying to work me what's going on here what's the angle right so you it feels good if you think you know what is going on but do you believe you do always can you can always read people or is it impossible well it's a couple different things like um my reader view and what you're thinking specifically don't exactly align.

26:18So intention has a smile. And your mother has gotten really good at sensing intention, which is not exactly the same thing as what are they saying to themselves in the moment. So she's reading something differently than what your father's really talking about. So those aren't contradictory. I have found that the more I dial into how you're feeling and identify what you're feeling, because your thoughts and your actions are going to be driven by your emotions in a moment. And it's hard to ignore what you're saying to focus on your emotions that are driving you. I can't do it all the time. But I've literally had people say to me, you're reading my mind.

27:11And inside I'm saying like, no, I'm reading your emotions. And so I'm reading your emotions. I'm reading your intent. Now, over a long period of time, exposure. You said your mother was a nurse? Yeah. And did you say emergency room or just the nurse? No. She practiced different, all types of nursing, midwifery. I think she did do some time in emergency, but also psych. So she's done a lot of different fields in nursing. So there's a real short timeframe between impact and consequences in a medical profession. So you got to get in, you got to dial in on a read real quick because if they're there for a health reason or not, that's going to become fairly apparent fairly quickly.

28:04So people in those sorts of positions have got to get good at a quick read as, you know, where's this person coming from? Are they hypochondriac or have they got an accurate diagnosis? Or is their reaction a combination of the two? Are they panicked? How do I diagnose this? Now, every human being is capable of doing that. You're going to increase your capability the more often you got to be put in the middle of the battle on a regular basis. Like I think when my emotional intelligence was probably at its highest point when I was on the crisis hotline twice a month, four hours at a crack and I was sticking to the process and making sure that I stuck to the process.

28:52And there were times that I let my skills deteriorate and consequently my reads and my reactions were poor. So they're perishable skills. And over a long period of time, your mother probably got her gut instinct for sensing people really wired in really quickly, which again, that is not always doing what somebody else is thinking simultaneously your father's reaction this is a close intimate relationship of close personal action over a long-term period of time what important effect does that mean with a significant other the closest of the relationship interferes in your read the closeness of the relationship may interfere in your reactions to the read.

29:45Your mother and your father being that close and having that much contact with each other is far more higher rate of frequency with exponential penalties for mistakes where your mother is in a hospital, the sporadic interaction with people that she has a relationship with that's not as intimate as an extended period of time. What does that mean? Intimate relationships are tougher because the two of you are likely to have overlooked things just based on a sheer number of hours you spent together. Yeah, that makes sense. So you do believe that it is possible to get a read on people and know their emotions and where they're at purely from trained skills.

30:41I think everything is learned ultimately. And so, yeah, you can get good at it. It's just an issue of how open are you to learning, how much you enjoy it, and how much time you spend on it. So one thing you talk about is body language and tonality. these are things that i think founders don't truly unless unless you're like really into sales these are things that are often overlooked that people can pick up very very very quickly tonality body language facial expressions all these different things that can very very quickly even in like before that person even starts speaking if you trust them or not what advice would you give to founders in when it comes to having that level of self-awareness and and being conscious of these things because we're not often in conscious control of what we're actually doing right no yeah it's well these things it's uh it's very similar to your breathing like your breathing sort of runs along on its own and I'd ask you can you control your breathing you say of course and I go like all right so hold your breath but I never tell you when you can stop you know your system's going to go back on autopilot you're going to start breathing again you don't have to consciously breathe but you can't consciously interrupt it what's that have to do with body language so um first of all the other side's going to notice what they perceive to be if it's incongruent.

32:27That's going to disturb them.

32:32Secondly, tone of voice is usually more important than body language because body language is lex. It's hitting people through the visual images. I mean, it's a little more convoluted. Like I can begin to have a positive impact on you as soon as I start speaking based on my tone of voices, which is what I did at a bank robber. at the Chase Manhattan Bank. Now he's a downward, inflicting, calm, confident voice. And he says, I trust you. So voice is huge. As Derek Gaughan on my team, also co-author of one of the books behind me, Fight Less, Win More, great book. It's a supplement to Never Split the Difference, companion book.