Life is a negotiation, with Chris Voss - Hand-Picked

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2:34Welcome to this latest episode of the High Performance Podcast. This is part of our hand pick series where Jake and I delve into the archives and pick out one special guest that we explore in greater detail. So Jake, who have you picked for this one? I have rewound the clock to quite a long time ago when we were joined by FBI negotiator and communication king Chris Voss. It's an episode that I still rely on to this day. In fact, I can't tell you very much, but I've been having a bit of a challenge and I've had to communicate some difficult stuff with some people. And I actually listened to the episode with Chris before going into that conversation.

3:13There's a great bit in the podcast where me and him role play. Do you remember it? Yeah, I do. And we were like, okay, let's pretend you want to book me for an event. And the first thing that he said to me was, oh, you sound like you've got something in mind. And I sat down with this person and they sort of said, look, I think we need to have a conversation. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you've got something in mind. Brilliant. And I just left it at that. And they just went blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and told me everything that I needed to know, which got us to a resolution. And this, you know, I want to be really careful here and remind people this isn't about catching people out.

3:47This isn't about being a shyster or doing some dodgy deal or cutting someone out of an opportunity to do well. This is about everyone getting to a place where everyone's happy. This is about the art of negotiation. Was there one particular bit that you wanted to share with us? Yeah, right at the start of the conversation, he explained that this is something we're all doing all the time. Shall we ever listen to that? Yeah, go on. anytime the words i want or i need are coming across your lips you're in a negotiation how many times a day i want a cup of coffee i need you to go to bed early i want you to do your homework i want to go to this restaurant how many times a day does that does that stuff those words cross your lips.

4:38That's how often you're in a negotiation. People think it's a negotiation only if money's involved. The commodity that's always involved in a negotiation is time. How are you going to get the money? How are you going to pay somebody? Even the transfer of money requires time, requires implementation. When I was doing kidnapping negotiations, we'd bargain like crazy over the ransom amount just to wear them down you know i knew that the real issue was i could agree to a million dollars right now try and get it out of me the devil is in the details you know i'm like well you know do you want a five dollar bills do you want a hundred dollar bills do you want it in a suitcase you want a backpack how are we going to deliver it to you how do we make sure that you're sure that i mean like the details the devil's in the details the the the money amount to me was just entertainment you know i'm i'm gonna kill you over the details that's time and that's where business negotiations break down because they think they have deals when they've agreed on a price you know a famous activist investor in the united states carl icon carl icon realized that as soon as price was settled the other side was going to dropped their guard and when he felt like it that's where he wiped people out over the details the devil's in the details you see i love that clip because i think actually we all think well i'm not currently negotiating anything so i don't need to listen to chris voss on the high performance podcast right you negotiate with your partner every day you negotiate with your children every day with your work colleagues every day sometimes even with yourself you know everything in life is a negotiation and again that's not to make it sound um like cutthroat and aggressive that's to say that like negotiation in the eyes of chris voss is about understanding people yeah i mean there was a moment where he told us that you know he was an fbi negotiator actually let me just let me just play this little clip and this will make sense so i'm negotiating we got a 20 cent floor of a high rise in Harlem in New York in the 90s.

6:55We have brought the circus to town. We got the SWAT team. We got on 27 floors in this high rise. I mean, the circus has come to town. We've made so much noise getting up there. We figure there's no way that these guys are not long gone because we brought the circus. We got elephants. We got trapeze artists. I mean, we make that much noise bringing an entire SWAT team and everybody to bear on this apartment. so I think we're talking to an empty apartment I get two baby negotiators with me they're still in training I'm like cool this is right a passage everybody talks to an empty apartment at some point in time in point of fact the fugitives are inside and they're heavily armed and so I just say look I want you to know that I know you're scared and I know you're worried about coming out.

7:45And I know you're worried about getting hurt when you're coming out. Here's what it's going to look like when you come out so that you don't get hurt. Because I said, vision drives decision, right? I got to start putting a vision in their head of them coming out safely. So we're talking to this empty apartment. I'm thoroughly convinced it's empty for six hours, six hours of this over and over and over. And six hours in a sniper on an adjacent building says, I just saw a curtain move inside. And we all go like, holy cow, they really are in there. And so then I go, look, you know, we just saw the curtains move on the inside.

8:27One of you just looked out the window. I've been telling you for six hours, we're not going away and that you're going to come out safe. And about five minutes later, without saying a word, the door opens and a pair of hands comes out exactly as I've described. So there he is saying, let me tell you how this is going to work because I know you're scared to come out of the building. What he's doing there is just making them feel safe. And I think we've seen this so often on high performance, like when Robin Van Persie delivered that amazing monologue about his son Shaquille. The first thing he said was me and your mom will love you no matter what.

9:08so one of the big things i took away from chris's conversation with us was if you can give people safety in the conversation psychological safety if you can put them at ease if you can let them know that like you're all in this together trying to get to a common ground you're far more likely to get there rather than them having this impression that you're battling each other you know yeah i like that he didn't use that phrase when he said emotion saves time and it's that idea that invest a little bit of time up front talking about these emotions that we're all going through however uncomfortable it is because it just gives you that shorthand that later on you'll be able to rely on he also you know made the point that we're all trained wrong in negotiation and i think that for the people listening to this this is an episode that will train them right who did he tell us was the best negotiator it was oprah winfrey wasn't it it was oprah winfrey it was yeah that's right here's what he said you know there's very little uh there's very few good examples of actually really good negotiation and really good negotiation you know it's never marketed as great negotiation like i think oprah winfrey's might be the best negotiator on earth explain nobody thinks of her as a negotiator you know nobody does and so i i've since i started talking about oprah i've run across a couple of people sort of behind the scenes in her world.

10:32So Oprah has taken some highly volatile people to the woodshed over their misbehavior. And nobody knows about it because of the way she handles it. She's got a tremendous demeanor. She's soft spoken. She's low key. You know, what we refer to as a late night FM DJ voice. I mean, that's Oprah's default voice. and so I've had some very explicit conversations where basically she said it's my way or the highway to high-profile celebrities that are not used to being spoken to like this to start with how about a visible conversation her interview with Lance Armstrong by the way I met Lance Armstrong on an airplane I consider him a friend I like the guy a lot she said look I'm going to put you on camera.

11:21I'm going to ask you a series of questions, bluntly asking you if you cheated, and you're going to answer yes or no. He knew that going in, and he still went on camera. That's a negotiation. If you think about where she started and where she is, I mean, by anybody's standards, forget about where she started as a black female from, I think Chicago, you know, no advantages, no privilege. She wasn't born with any privileges. Take that away and think about her net worth compared to the other billionaires on earth. She didn't start as a child of a real estate developer in New York who was given a million dollars as spending money to get started.

12:08Look where she started. And a lot of people say, yeah, well, of course you're not going to argue with Oprah because it's Oprah. Now, these high profile celebrities, they don't care who they're arguing with. If they get bent out of shape, they're happy to go on Twitter and Instagram and all sorts of social media and throw a shade at one another. And you don't see it happening with her. To me, that's great collaboration, focus on long term relationships. And it's a definition of building prosperity for you and everybody you're involved with. I'd forgotten that example that it told us about. So what was it that jumped out for you?

12:47Because you've worked in television. So when he's talking about Oprah. It was just that I never considered myself a negotiator when I worked in TV. And equally on this podcast, I don't consider us negotiators. But actually, you know, what we're negotiating with our guests on this podcast, we're saying to them, look, we're going to give you a safe space. We're going to give you an audience of millions. And you're going to come on here and reveal stuff and talk about things that maybe you're not that comfortable with or that you wouldn't normally tell someone. So we have to create the space to do that.

13:14And I think the final clip I wanted to play was this one, which I think really sums up why we get negotiation wrong so much. Have a listen. I was a hostage negotiator, taught negotiations in business school. And I would go to business events or any sort of professional gathering. And they say, hey, it's Chris Foss. He was a hostage negotiator. he teaches business negotiation at Georgetown. And every time somebody would speak up and go like, you know what, let me tell you about this deal I negotiated. I had them over a barrel. They had nowhere to go. I had all the leverage. Now, if you're in a gathering, the only person that speaks up is the person that hammered somebody.

14:01You see over and over, wow, I guess if I want to have a deal that I brag about, show off to the boys, prove to my brother-in-law how smart I am, I got to go out and I got to beat somebody down. And then I'm going to brag about it for the rest of the time. So I'm afraid our examples in real life and in movies and TV are always of somebody smashing somebody else. Those are the models that are held up to us. So let's go back to the role play then. You've already said to me, it seems like I have a plan. What's the next thing that you would normally do with someone?

14:39Well, first of all, I'm going to listen to your game plan. So if I get an idea of whether or not, have you ever done this before? Or do you have any sort of a sense for the environment? Like what are the challenges? I'm probably going to say, you know, how'd this go when you tried it in the past? What happened? What sort of obstacles you run into? I'm really more interested in whether or not you have any idea of what you're getting into and how collaborative you're going to be. Because even if you cut me a great deal financially, if dealing with you is painful, if it sucks the life out of me, if we're just not a good match,

15:33it's going to be blood money and I'm not going to want it. So that's perfect for me. You know, people who are still thinking about the one time that they did really well out of a deal, right? But how much have you cost yourself and other people in the intervening years? Oh, I turned that person. I saw it a lot when I worked in Formula One. You know, people used to use this phrase, oh, I robbed him. Oh, I robbed him. In other words, like I did a really hard deal against that person. How much has trying to recreate that hard deal cost you since then. So my message really today is listen to the Chris Foss episode.

16:05Realize that we're all negotiating all the time and that negotiation is about finding what binds us together rather than what separates us. I love that. My final question for you though, Jake, on this is, what voice do you use? Do you remember when Chris spoke about the different voices? The late night DJ was the one that he said that just slows the tempo down of the conversation. The late night DJ voice. Yeah. I probably need to use that one a little bit more often. So if people hear me on the High Performance Podcast next time going, and let's just explore that. Actually, you do it well, you know.

16:37You do the, you sort of, you disarm people by going, can we just explore that a little bit further if you don't mind? And that's your version of the late night DJ voice. So there you go. Check out Chris Voss on the High Performance Podcast. It was a cracker, wasn't it? Oh, it was. And I've loved going back over it. Like you say, it's a good two years ago now since we sat down with him on Zoom. So I love these episodes of just going back through the archives and picking out ones like that, that taught us so much and just reminding us of the basic common sense. Thanks, mate. Thank you, mate. And of course, thanks to you for listening to the High Performance Podcast.

17:13That's a brilliant late night DJ voice. See you soon.

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