How to Succeed at Hard Conversations | Chris Voss

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine my guest today is Chris Voss Chris Voss spent more than two decades as an agent with the FBI or Federal Bureau of Investigation where he was a lead crisis negotiator and a member of The Joint terrorist task force Chris is also the author of a phenomenal bestselling book entitled never split the difference in addition he has taught courses in negotiation at Harvard at Georgetown and at the University of Southern California as a world expert in all forms of negotiation today Chris teaches us about how to hold hard conversations where we are seeking particular outcomes or perhaps where we don't know what the optimal outcome could be he talks about this in the context of business in the context of relationships including romantic relationships but familial and work relationships as well and he talks about how we should think about ourselves in the context of negotiations so that we can all arrive at the best possible outcomes indeed during today's episode you will learn to pay attention to emotions not just other people's emotions but your own emotions in order to determine whether or not you are processing the information you're hearing accurately and equally important whether or not you are being heard accurately when you are in a discussion of any kind but especially heated discussions in in addition we discuss the role of both physical and mental stamina in the context of difficult conversations negotiations and decision-making because in the real world context often times those can take place not just within a single conversation but over the course of several days or even several weeks months or years Chris also teaches us about deception that is how to determine if somebody is lying by asking particular types of probe questions thanks to Chris voss's both breadth and depth of expertise in the negotiation process that he gleaned during his more than two decade service in the FBI as well as his generosity in sharing that information by the end of today's episode you will have an excellent understanding of what the negotiation process is really all about and how to better carry out those negotiations so that they can best serve you and others before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is plunge plunge makes what I believe is the most versatile atome self-cooling cold plunge for deliberate cold exposure I've talked numerous times on this podcast about the many benefits of deliberate cold exposure deliberate cold exposure 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eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality I've spent a lifetime working on the biology the visual system and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly in different environments Roa understands the biology of the visual system and has designed their eyeglasses and sun glasses so that you always see with Crystal Clarity originally their glasses were designed for performance that is for running and cycling and for sport and indeed they can still be used for performance they won't slip off your face if you get sweaty they're extremely lightweight but I should mention that Roa eyeglasses and sunglasses come in some of the Aesthetics more typically associated with performance glasses like those cyborg style glasses but they also have a number of styles that you would be perfectly comfortable wearing out to dinner or to work I wear readers at night or when I Dr drive and I wear sunglasses during the day if I happen to be driving into bright light or outside and it's just overwhelmingly bright I do not wear sunglasses when I do my morning sunlight viewing to set my circadian rhythm and I suggest that you do the same if you'd like to try Roa eyeglasses or sunglasses you can go to roka.com and enter the code huberman to save 20% off your first order again that's roka.com and enter the code huberman at checkout and now for my conversation with Chris Voss Chris Boss welcome Andrew pleasure man I've been wanting to talk to you on record for a while you are quite the what we call in SS n of one when somebody is a true sample size of one uh I realize that yes you are because you have this incredible skill set from your time in the FBI you but you also have an incredible understanding and knowledge of how to communicate about that skill set so that people can glean useful information from it you are also the guy that I text or call every once in a while when I've run myself into a jam or when I think I might be in a jam and I won't reveal details but you tell me whether or not things are okay unfortunately the last couple times I reached out you said you're good so thank you always happy to help man thank you well I have a lot of questions today but what I'd like to start off talking about is negotiations take many forms but if we could break those down into their broad categories that will be useful but before we do that I want to know about the mindset that you have when you go into a negotiation and whether or not there are any sort of practices I realize you've been in this profession a long time and so perhaps became reflexive to you at some point but all of us at some point are going to go into negotiations business negotiations relationship negotiations Etc is there a process of getting one's mind and body right for a negotiation you know shifting from more listening and less talking or um what are there any tools that you use on the regular that could be um useful for us to keep in mind as we extend into the different categories of negotiations and ways to approach those negotiations yeah there can there can be a couple different um first of all just trying to figure out what what's really going on is is the real issue and then how can I get an approach with where I'm most likely to get the best possible outcome um so there's always more than meets to ey and there's a certain there's a certain few cliches but the real issue is there's always a better deal or um there's no deal at all so first of all trying to my first thing is I want to find out whether or not there's a deal at all or whether or not it's a bad deal and then I'm going to walk away really fast because those are going to be complete waste of time um it's not a sin to not get the deal it's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal or it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal so I you know I want to know I'm going to try to figure out real quick whether or not is there a Cutthroat on the other side of the table is it somebody I could trust I'm I'm getting I'm leaning a little more inclined to dealing with the difficult people now as long as I don't give in so I got to I want to diagnose early on what the possibilities are now if I'm curious if I'm actually interested now another aspect of the mindset is like if I'm in a great mode like if I'm just going to be playful a couple of really huge personal negotiation wins recently was when I was just trying to be playful I mean I was just I was in a great mood and I'm joking around and great negotiation is not exciting it's astonishing um I'm in a we're in ation right now with a possible non-scripted TV show and so I was telling the producers you know this ain't going to be real housewives um for to make the show properly there ain't going to be any screaming it's not going to be Bar Rescue where we're yelling at people we're not going to be Hell's Kitchen where we're yelling at people it's never going to be exciting but it is going to be astonishing like you'll get outcomes where suddenly you find yourself in a place like what in the world world how did that just happen and so I I lose a suitcase in an airport the other day and I'm walking into the lost luggage place and I'm in a great mood because I'm home and I'm happy to be home and I'm going to get a good night's sleep and even though it's late in the day I'm just happy and I get ready to walk into this the lost luggage store where these people are batter children like they expect you they know that you expect them to wave a magic wand and poof your luggage is going to be there so for whatever reason that's what I say when I walk in the door young lady says how can how can I help you well first of all how you could help me is obvious because I'm in a lost luggage there's only one reason I'm in here so that's kind of a silly question and I go I need you to wave a magic wand and she just laughs and she looks at me she ends up walking me out to the Carousel climbing up on the Carousel and she walks down a ramp the luggage comes out of and I guarantee you they're not supposed to do that and she sticks her head in she looks around she comes back out and I've never seen any of these people leave the office let alone walk back to the Carousel and she says wait here and she she disappears into the bowels of the airport which like looks like a super highway down there right like God knows what it looks like underneath the airport and pretty soon the carousel starts up again and my bag and another bag pops out this other poor schmuck is sitting there waiting and I'm like I have never seen anybody do this ever like normally they say uh here here's a number we'll call you in 24 hours it might show up at your house and I and I look around at the uh there's another young lady there and I say you know please tell her thank you for me I I got to go cuz she she doesn't come back out for like almost 10 minutes and on my way out she she comes out the door and she high-fives me and she says how's that for waving a magic wand and that was the magic phrase and I never would have said it to her if I wasn't playful in a moment and I've got a couple of others like when I was just playful and I'm joking with people almost at my expense it's shocking astonishing what you can get people to do if you if you hit them the right way so interesting I wonder what it tapped into but it sounds like it might have tapped into her sense that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand kind of ability but finally somebody just said it directly and that would be kind of fun to to actually play that role because normally they're restricted to their keyboard and their phone you know uh I love that on the opposite side of that Spectrum if ever you're feeling tense stressed jet lagged angry um you know I can think about negotiations where like people are trying to keep their egos in check they want to be right um you know the breakups negotiations there not necessarily romantic breakups it could include that but also professional breakups you know the dissolution of a of a contract or something like that do you ever have to check yourself like okay I need to I need to I mean I imagine being calm is better than not being calm for most most all things um uh do you have a process of doing that you seem like a pretty steady guy I've never seen you [Laughter] uh overall I'm pretty steady um well the late night FM DJ voice that um I'm not sure that I coined the phrase but kind of famous for to calm you down also calms me down so if I get bent out of shape um I will and uh conversation gets heated I'll switch into that voice with the intention of of calming you down cuz you know that's the that's the hostage negotiators voice but it'll calm me down too like intentionally going to that voice tamps down the negative emotions which I'm convinced make me Dumber in the moment interfere with my capacity to process information got reasons for that Layman's reasons no scientific academically rigorous studies that have been in any journals well after you're done I'm going to tell you something that will perhaps be astonishing to you as to why there's real Neuroscience behind that late night FM DJ voice having an impact on other people's brains but yeah and I'll do that because it calms me down now if I can if I can make the shift the hard part is a shift into a positive mindset if I can make that shift but I can only make it from a calm voice I also think it's the emotions are kind of a rock paper scissors sequence I don't think you can go from sadness to Elation directly uh s um depressed down I think there's something to um getting angry to pull you out of sadness and I think if you're angry you've got to go to calm next and so but if I can get out of anger and go to calm then I can say something to myself like the reality is this is a luxury problem or I was in a negotiation with a counterpart that I knew was deceiving lying to me and I remember saying to myself you know I'm lucky to be in this negotiation I mean they wouldn't they wouldn't be trying to hustle me if we weren't really good if we didn't have a product that was phenomenal I wouldn't be targeted it at all so I'm actually lucky to be in this conversation so if I can make that next shift emotionally then I'm good the hard part is making those shifts I'm going to just share with you what I learned recently about sound and emotion um I'm re searching an episode on music and the Brain fascinating topic believe it or not there's a lot known and the auditory system has this property where of course they're neurons nerve cells that respond to different frequencies of sound low low frequency you know deeper tones and high frequency squeals and that sort of thing okay that's pretty straightforward just like we have neurons that respond to different different colors or different uh you know angles of light in in the room right but what learn and I confirmed with a good friend of mine who's an auditory neuroscientist and and neurosurgeon his name is Eddie changen he was a guest on this podcast previously is that low frequency sounds of the sort that your voice is that late night FM DJ voice are responded to in the brain by neurons no surprise there but the frequency that those neurons fire is also low frequency in other words when you speak in your low voice right the other person's brain hears that and starts firing in a low frequency tone in other words it entrains to your voice not just the timing but it's actually like you're essentially playing an emotional piano down in the low keys of their all right of their mind now when you go up to the high frequencies the neurons can't follow that high frequency so there's something special about low frequency sound that actually changes the emotional tone of the people that hear that low frequency sound this is wild right I mean I mean of course the content of the words matters too but anyway there's there's real Neuroscience to support um the voice that you were endowed with and that you uh that you employed for your work well then and then also the point then too is it's not the other side is not making a choice it's an involuntary reaction that's right this is not something one can override except by perhaps plugging their ears right if they're hearing that their their mind is getting shifted toward a state of low frequency oscillation which is one of more calm yeah so yeah so that's a real thing and and were you to have a a high squeaky Chipmunks boys you might not have been The Negotiator you would all that who knows maybe there'd be another tactic there I mean I I think back to the um uh what I guess it was during one of the Gulf War campaigns where they weren't they trying to um squeeze out uh Sadam and some of uh his people by playing like Millie vanil at high volume for hours and hours is that tactic actually used um so that that was that was uh Panama when they were trying to get Nora okay so I'm only a few I'm only a few countries over see you know onece I got the trivia you know I was telling you before and the wacky fascinating useless information around terrorism and stuff like that I tried that at at Panama and and for whatever the military guys they were playing music it and sounds and then also among the many stupid things that the FBI did at Waco and late at night they tried that in the Waco compound too and it was just that was one of the things that the hostage negotiators were adamantly against adamantly against but they got overruled um by aing command among the many stupid things that were done at wakeo that was also done at wakeo it was stupid it's counterproductive hostage negotiators were always against it so for those of you don't remember Waco Waco is um Branch dividian uh David Kesh right yeah there was a um Netflix series that was out about it recently that's fair um um about the how how it went down yeah sad ending he eventually set the the building of Blaze killed himself and everybody else people inside set the building on fire yeah including a lot of children perish including some children some there are some uh FBI agents that have still not gotten over that like to talk about some different types of negotiations um oftentimes I think because you're a former FBI negotiator anti-terrorist task force this kind of thing um we tend to focus on the negative negotiations right get the hostages away we'll talk about that stuff um breakups business deals that have gone wrong um people lying cheating what about negotiations that are benevolent let's say that two people want to um come to a a true win-win around you know what they each see to be their best interest in let's say friendship two friends taking a trip together vacation who's going to pay for what who's going to pay up front people going to pay each other back um or a romantic relationship two people are considering you know fusing finances to some extent or moving in together what sorts of questions should people be asking themselves prior to those negotiations in particular is it very important that people know exactly what they want going into a negotiation or I can recall many times when I've gone into life circumstances knowing I wanted a certain set of feelings or outcomes but not being extremely specific about you know I want this salary I want to live in you know in a west facing house on this particular location you know an exploration um can of potentials um I think can also take the for of negot so how how should people think about approaching benevolent negotiations like where we're not talking about something tragic happening if it doesn't go through it might hurt it might be a little bit High friction but let's talk about how to get to a win-win yeah well there's there's a couple interesting things there first of all you know the phrase win-win um uh because win-win is just great collaboration I mean in point of fact it should be win-win which might only be emotional win-win now the phraseology win-win I know that if someone's opens a negotiation with me and they say right off the bat look I want to do a win-win deal with you that correlates extremely highly with someone who's trying to pick my pocket so I if you use that phrase in the first five minutes I already know where you're coming from you're trying to get me to drop my guards you win I lose so and this came up on an Instagram post I put up recently which is essentially watch watch out for the person that says winwin now I didn't say wiwin is bad I said watch out for the person that says it also you got to be cautious if if you like some of the win-win mindset then people set themselves up to just get slaughtered by the person who's expressing a desire for win-win and looking to pick their pocket like if I feel win-win in my heart you go let's do a win-win deal if I don't watch it I'm like okay what do you want and then I find myself giving away the store so there's a lot behind the win-win phraseology that you have to have a complete understanding of in point of fact both sides should feel good about the outcome and isn't that the definition of win-win well kind of sort of but it's how they feel about it more than really what they got so in a benevolent negotiation among friends where are we going to go to eat where we going on vacation what route are we going to take people really just want to be heard out more than anything else which operationally seems to be I don't understand how it's going to make any difference makes all the difference in the world and how what's the best way for somebody to feel her out well I'm going to start out by telling you describing to you not telling you but describing to you what my best guess is on your perspective because it's really calibrating me actually finding out what your position is and the only way I can find out what your position actually is I'm going to I'm going to increase you telling me if I start taking a guess at it first because you're immediately right away you immediately going to tell me either I'm right or I'm wrong you're going to correct me correction is um is a sad satisfying thing to do and you're going to be much more candid with me if you're correcting me than if I'm asking you so I'll and you'll feel good about correcting me so it's going to there's all these great emotional lubricants to me getting you to correct me so I'm going to start out by saying like here here's here's what I think you're thinking here's how I think you're approaching this here's what I think you're wanting out of this out of this not what you should be but what you probably are based on your perspective and that's going to accelerate the conversation exponentially like it's ridiculous how much faster things are going to go and then it becomes both an in information gathering and a rapport building process simultaneously instead of separately which is what makes this approach faster even though it seems more indirect so if we're getting ready to let's say you and I going to take a car trip to Cal uh to San Francisco from here and I'm going to say all right so my guess is you want to take the most direct route because you hate wasting time and you're probably going to say to me no no no no I want to go up the Pacific Coast Highway because this beautiful stretch of uh country like I realize it's going to be a waste of time if we go up the Pacific coast because we got to jump off it at some point but I really want to see the scenery you would have I've taken a guess of what you want and you're going to come back real quick and correct me and then maybe I'm thinking time on the trip but I've forgotten how beautiful it is to roll up the coast and so when you throw that out I'll be like oh yeah it is a beautiful ride and we might not get another shot like who knows what's going to happen so yeah know now now that we're having a conversation I'd rather run up the Pacific Coast Highway before we before we go Inland and make the trip and that and that's how we get to um we collaborate for better a better outcome maybe a better idea than what I had in mind in the first place I love that because what you just described described as hypothesis testing yes it's the way scientists are trained you know many people don't know this but they teach us in science not to ask questions but to start with a question like you know I don't know how does uh how does the brain develop or something and then you you say a hypothesis and you test hypotheses and you figure out if they're right or wrong and that takes you through a set of decision trees and you eventually get at what you hope is some core truth um and hopefully others arrive there as well and you get a consensus so I love the idea of hypothesis testing in fact when you said uh take the most direct route from where we are now uh in Los Angeles to San Francisco um I like to take one1 not the five the five is faster so I immediately think but I like 101 first of all there are a couple really great taco and hamburger spots along the way that I used to stop with my bulldog and get also you get to see at the coast and it makes those extra two hours completely worth it and so you're exactly right in um in that working through the decision tree doesn't necessarily mean um presuming that the the hypothesis is right it sounds like you'd be equally okay with the hypothesis being wrong because really what you're trying to do is just learn and in learning set up this collaboration I love that a couple things first of all when you talk about hypothesis when when my son Brandon was involved in a company he's on he's out on his own now but he used to always say hypothesis test your hypothesis he always used that term and then even now like if we were talking about it and you just said you knew some hot dog and hamburger places I'd be like holy cow I didn't even know that yeah yeah I want to check those places out so that's how you discover new stuff in a conversation I love it so um and also I'm sure people are noting to not say the words win-win When approaching any kind of negotiation what do you think it is about those little um catchphrases that that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness because you could imagine that somebody you know I come to you and say you know hey Chris like let's um I don't know let's do some collaborative thing for social media for podcast and um this is going to be a win-win for both of us now I know to never say that with you but you could imagine that somebody really means that but for you it sounds like it's a flag that um they're trying to pull one over it's it's uh it correlates really strongly with the people that are definitely trying to cut your throat and I've had I've had him admit that to me candidly amazing like I'll be um I've experienced it like if somebody throws win-win out early to me I'll say all right I think I know where this is going but let me explore it and they'll say yeah you know this great opportunity for you that's another to and we're going to put you in a room with all these billionaires and there's going to be all this opportunity for you if you just come in and speak and you know we don't have a budget yeah well I've gotten that one before the the famous the famous uh the world war just work out in your favor because cuz it's going to work out in my favor right yeah yeah exactly right ex I've I've been on the receiving end of those offers many a time um fascinating conversely what sorts of openers um do you think establish the best Rapport and um you know benevolent discovery of a topic well what I'm seeing correlates real strongly with people I want to do business with if if they figured out something that they know is valuable for me and they've just done it and just offered it like right off the bat no strings attached they they found a way to drop something on me that's valuable they didn't approach me with their hand out they approached me with some sort of generosity like U of friend of mine Joe polish runs this outfit called genius Network Joe believe says life gives to the giver um like Joe did a bunch of favors for me before I ever joined and he was trying to help me out and get my books sold and he asked me to come in and speak and he he' done a he emphasized my book on his podcast and a different conversations and I you know I I finally paid the fee to join because he had done so much for me like there's not much Joe could ask me for right now because he's done so much for me that he gets a blanket pretty much yes right away what do you what do you want what do you need because he's just generous and the generosity approach universally I'm seeing in a lot of really successful people that lead by generosity and so if if you start out that you know if you if you giv me a festar review of the book on Amazon no strings attached or anything like that goes a long long way to somebody who wants to establish a long-term relationship collaboration when I first opened my laboratory in uh 2011 I had a technician at the time uh who had been a technician for a lot of years and there this culture and science of people borrowing things from Laboratories and not giving them back or breaking them these can be little things like a you know a small instrument or a a forceps um but you know as a student or postto these are the things that you covet like a really nice par of forceps is like a great thing you know you drop them once they're not they're not good anymore by the way it's like they're they're you have to treat them with respect surgical tools have to be treated with respect these are very fine instruments and people used to come by our lab all the time and borrow stuff from us and he'd always lend it out and I was like what are you doing but anytime I went to go borrow something he'd say Do not borrow anything from anybody else because then we're going to owe them right now everybody owes us everything and I was like you're running up our budget giving away these instruments they come back with the forceps dented and stuff he said just trust me this is the way to do it and I don't recall ever quote unquote cashing in on any of that but he was exactly right when I eventually decided to move institutions we' given away so much and we had asked for so very little maybe nothing that you know it's when you leave a place typically there can be a little bad blood and all we got was sorry to see you go kind of stuff had it been me I would have been in a kind of a an exchange of oh we ask for things we give things you know it's kind of a neighborhood I grew up in a neighborhood where you'd borrow eggs or milk from the neighbor remember those days U I don't know if people do that any longer um but I think it falls well into what you're describing that you know when when you just do things for people um out of goodness then you know sure you sort of have a a a history where you could return to that they owe you but there's also just something good about just doing things out of goodness and also not asking for so much um and expecting people to provide that so I I love that and I actually um I love providing good reviews for things I like you know on the phone when um you know the airline that we don't do this anymore we book our own flight but anytime I get help on the phone and you know if it's really great help I'll say h how can I help and they'll say oh it would mean a lot if you would send an email to this to my business just saying I I did a great job or something like that and I actually really enjoy doing that so um I love the points you're making because they're very actionable as many of you know I've been taking ag1 daily since 2012 so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that's designed to meet all of your foundational nutrition needs now of course I try to get enough servings of vitamins and minerals through whole food sources that include vegetables and fruits every day but often times I simply can't get enough servings but with ag1 I'm sure to get enough vitamins and minerals and the probiotics that I need and it also contains adaptogens to help buffer stress simply put I always feel better when I take ag1 I have more focus and energy and I sleep better and it also happens to taste great for all these reasons whenever I'm asked if you could take Just One supplement what would it be I answer ag1 if you'd like to try ag1 go to drink a1.com huberman to claim a special offer they'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2 again that's drink a1.com huberman shifting slightly into the more um let's call them high friction uh negotiations or the types of negotiations where there is the potential for a truly bad outcome right um I know you've been asked this before but some of our listeners are going to be learning about you for the first time do you recall of the many negotiations that you did while in the FBI any one particular negotiation that felt like if this doesn't work out this is really catastrophic and would you be willing to share that with us well um I learned you know they tried to teach us early on that not everything's going to work out and the second negotiation I had in the Philippines uh the first one uh young man named Jeff Schilling was grabbed by terrorist group uh Abu saf and um he ended up walking away because we St we stole the bad guys long enough that we just you know sometimes if you can slow it down you wait for something good to fall out of the sky and it will and that ended up happening in that case and a bad guy ends up calling the negotiator that I coached on a phone after it was over to basically tell them that they still had a good relationship it was nuts um why does a bad guy called The Negotiator that was responsible for him losing everything and say you know you did a good job which is exactly what happened so we roll into a case um and I hadn't had anything go bad at that point in time the very next case said Burnham saarel case uh by a different faction of the terrorist group 13 months later ends up in um two of the three remaining hostages shot and killed by Friendly Fire uh on along the way um hostages have been executed American had been executed early on and it was it was a train wreck and lots of people got killed all along the way and just really ridiculous bad things happening and that that was bad all the way through um so we learn you know learned a lot from it um went back and checked everything we did and we didn't do anything wrong that we felt based on our strategy didn't didn't miss anything and that was why I ended up going uh collaborating with the guys at Harvard because my reaction was if this if we did everything we know how to do and it wasn't enough that means we're not smart enough we got to get better and so that case taught me a lot about the Dynamics that really happened on the other side and the difference between you know whether or not people are really on your side US government was not highly collaborative uh the Philippine government was not highly collaborative that everybody wanted to get their pound of flesh out of the other out of the other side I mean just everything bad that you can imagine early on when gamos sabero was murdered by the Abu saf it was a national holiday in the Philippines and the bad guys had a history of people on national holidays and we were in front of Philippines and we had no idea that that day was a national holiday and we showed up at uh Philippine national police headquarters in Manila and it was closed now we got an on I got an ongoing hostage case with bad guys threatening to kill hostages and we show up at the gates and the gates are closed and we're like what the hell's going on here and what's the national holiday nobody's working today I'm like first first of all nobody told us that secondly I don't think the bad guys really care that it's a national holiday and nobody's working our negotiator is nowhere to be found we got we got a we got a guy there that um uh the previous negotiator we worked with Philippine national police was not that happy that they didn't have him under complete control so they give us a guy that will not tell us anything until after he's told them so he's having conversations with the bad guys and we're actually hearing about him secondhand he didn't show up that day and then and of course that day the bad guys announc are going to kill uh kill a hostage uh and give it as a gift to the country of the Philippines because it's a holiday and then they go oh by the way they like doing this on holidays and so and and gabo ended up getting his head cut off with the because of all the Waring factions on our side of the table not telling each other what the hell's going on so I had assumed at that point in time that people would tell us the stuff we need to know we didn't need to ask and and after that I got like look there ain't nothing here that I don't need to know I don't if it's a holiday it's coming up then you assume I know you you got to tell us so really learned a lot about collaboration on our side of the table and also the lack of collaboration on the other side of the table just cuz we're mess doesn't mean they got their act together and the bad guys didn't have their act together and ultimately the hostages one of the reasons someone didn't come out because internally they they had double crossed each other so learned a lot about what really fundamental human nature Dynamics are on teams and your team has not got attack together and the other team does not either so what can you do as a communicator to make up for that really learned a lot about that in that case I had cases subsequent to that involving alqaeda when Al-Qaeda was killing people on a regular basis but we saw those coming and we did everything we could do to keep the train from smashing into US you see a train coming down the tracks you know it's coming down the tracks and you do the best you can to derail it and sometimes you can't I've heard it said that when people take somebody captive that they either want their money their body or their life or some combination of those yeah that's probably one of those three yeah that's very true and as The Negotiator trying to rescue the hostage is it important to identify early on which of those three or which all of those three um they're after like how serious they are are they willing to actually kill the hostage are they um you know will they go for any amount of money above X number of dollars trying to figure out their threshold right I mean because the person is on the other side is gambling right they're gambling their their freedom they're gambling Ling their um reputation with whoever their reputation matters to um is it important to get into the mindset of the person you're negotiating with quickly um using the hypothesis uh generating method um and if so uh could you give an example of of how that played out in in your previous work yeah the um uh the indicators are really there I mean once you sort of uh lose your Illusions about how you things how you think things should play out then the patterns of behavior are generally pretty quick uh and clear and just because you don't like the patterns like with Al-Qaeda we recognize the patterns and knowing what they are doesn't mean you can change what they are and al-Qaeda in 2004's time frame was very clear about killing people on Deadline and we had to recognize that so there there there becomes a pattern of behavior and it usually specificity in what they say and this is this is all this is all human nature like if if if you're in a business negotiation and they say you know we're going to do something horrible here you know we're going to walk out you know that's fairly non-specific and if they say look if we don't get this by this specific deadline if we don't get these specific things met by this specific time that's pretty specific that it's specificity you're looking for it I learned to look forward in kidnapping negotiations where working a case again in the Philippines and a bad guys say you know if uh if we don't get a ransom for the son 17-year-old boy at the time is kidnapped you know you tell his father he's going to lose an egg and that's a e e euphemism for losing a child and early on when that threat came through on our side of the table everybody's like oh my God they're going to kill him you know this is really bad we got to make sure the family can pay the ransom I'm like no no no no no it didn't they didn't say when it was going to happen they didn't say how it was going to happen they didn't say who was going to do it you know the basic specificity of who what when and where like they left themselves an out here a very clear out and we never said we were going to do it we never said when it was going to happen we never said which child you know they're just trying to scare you they're throwing out something vague I said we got we got plenty of time to play with this we got to we got to push this all the way through the process ESS to the end now later on in that case when the family tried to deliver a ransom and it was screwed up by God knows who the bad guys came up back on the phone and they said if we don't get paid tomorrow your son dies and I said all right now that's specific and these guys sound like they mean it and so we're going to have to make sure this thing goes down tomorrow or that's the end of this kid and at that point in time we allowed the family we weren't in a position to allow or disallow we were in a position to offer thoughts and our thoughts were they mean it now and you need to do something now or likely something bad's going to happen and now that they're this serious because you always got to worry about what we used to refer to as a double dip do they take the money and then and they come back and say nah that was a down payment that wasn't the ransom that was just a down payment you got to make sure you don't get double dipped if you let the family pay and you got to give me your honest opinion as to whether or not they're going to let the hostage go if you pay now and our our thoughts were you pay him tomorrow your son's coming out and he did the double dip is a scary thing to hear about um at a much lower level meaning more minor level um people sometimes get shaken down online you know like their password will get taken there are people everywhere who go for the click on this link you know you get a text message you know we've identified that your account has you know been changed verify you click on the link takes you someplace where you put in your login and password and boom it's gone and then they try and sell it back to you typically through cryptocurrency because it's not traceable by the way those those negotiations can be a lot of fun if you let them I well I'm hoping that our discussion about this now is going to save some people uh the trouble of having their their accounts hacked I've known people who've had their accounts hacked and these are some smart people but what's interesting is that I've also observed those situations where somebody gets to the point where they say you know I'm just going to give them what they want and I I remember in this one particular instance saying no no no do not give them the money because then they're just going to say they want more there's no there's no guarantee that they're going to give you back what you want and why would day right if you think about it why would they the money funnels in and like they just can pivot and go to the next thing so how do you um gain confidence that you are likely to be double dipped or not um well first of all I got to find out if you know if they're in a position to carry out the threat or if they're in any sort of legitimate position to begin with you know for lack of a better term it's proof of life and there are a lot of people that are try to scam you but they don't really have the ability to scam you so you got to find out you know do do some confirmation do they do they have access to your account do they do they have your dat they have your money do do they have it in a position or they just trying to make you believe that they have that position of influence on you um there a lot of a lot of the bad guys out there that are just rolling in a dice Dialing for Dollars if you will and if they don't scam you when they have no leverage on you they'll find somebody else that'll give in so there's a bit of you know authentic ticity or are are they in a position to do it and um the same rule applies in any negotiation um the other side is going to give in when they feel like they've gotten everything they can kidnappers I'd be asked by an ambassador asked by an FBI Commander when's this going to be over when the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they could not when they did but when they felt like they did so our job is just make them feel it sooner so you know how how hard do you make it innocently on the other side everybody everybody wants to feel like they did a they got a good day's pay for a good day's work so if you let them feel like they're in charge and you make a Mor by asking them innocent how and what questions which are very hard and fatiguing to answer then you're going to get to the point where you're going to get a solid outcome where you don't get double dipped and they're going to be happy that it's over CU they felt like they got everything they could it could be your data could be your bank account um could be anything the other side is going to be satisfied with the outcome when they feel like they worked for it and at business negotiations you're selling your car and some you put a price tag on your car and the guy walks up to you and says I'll give you full amount right now what's your reaction I should asked for more um maybe I won't sell my car you know every human interaction the other side wants to feel like that they earned what they got and so the idea of empathy and hostage negotiations is really just to make them feel that sooner we're going to come back to empathy because it's such a big and important topic but I've heard it said before that if somebody you don't know but maybe also somebody You Know Places a real sense of urgency on you know need the money now or um I need you to do something right away or else um not a threat of physical violence but that any request for um Expediting something is a red flag yeah that it's likely to be a scam you know very seldom do you need to click on the link within 24 hours right I mean how could that possibly be right that but we but that's one way in which people are exploited yep um that some request comes in by phone or by you know email or text or maybe even person somebody says you know you need to do this right now or else something bad is going to happen capture people's sense of urgency get them to make a mistake and then they're they're left reeling because that request for something right now or else I think hits a a a fundamental nerve in US yeah you know to want to help to be a rescuer right so um is that a good rule of thumb for people to keep in mind to to not I think that's a great rule of thumb I mean I I A friend of mine um somebody got a hold of his phone number not that long ago and um I got I was getting taxt from his number so I like look man I got some real problems look I I need some money from you now was a friend a friend's number and I remember when I first saw it actually when I first saw it I was really busy and I felt bad that I didn't get back to him that day and then I didn't hear from him again and so I thought well whatever it was he worked it out so a couple weeks later I get the text again you got a real problem you got to get it back to me right now so I'm I'm I decid if it's really my buddy I am going to help him right now I got to make sure it's really my buddy and I said hey man you know uh you didn't raise this at all last time I saw you in Vegas cuz I'd seen him in Vegas recently and he's like yeah you know I was busy I couldn't bring it up and so I'm thinking like all right so there's no direct confirmation or denial we had we had breakfast together in Vegas so then I shoot back I said like and man I got to tell you something that was such a crazy night and I still owe you money from them so you know that night when we were gambling I I still owe you money I'm happy to help now it wasn't a crazy night it was breakfast and I didn't know money and his next response was like yeah don't worry about it you know you can make it up from to me with this so I'm like all right cool so now I start making stuff up and I said you know and when we were with those strippers and that dog and the clown and the pony I'll never get over that and so now the guy's what are you talking about and I said by the way and then I started throwing in some stuff about his wife and his mother and the guy got insulted and called me names and stopped texting me and then I then I sent all those text messages to the real guy including you know what I'd said about his mother and he texted me back he's got a great sense of humor he says by the way my mom does think you're attractive oh man I think but I start I started it all by just checking the source if it was my friend I would have helped him immediately and I need to throw something at him that's going to confirm that it's him and that I'm there for him but I'm also going to have put a little bit of a curve in there that that if he doesn't catch I know it's I know it's a con and then I'm going to have fun with it incredible knowledge that you know people will hear this and they might think oh you know that's never going to happen to me but like I said I known family members and friends who they make the mistake they take the bait of clicking on the link and then now they're getting the Shakedown um actually a good friend of mine said that her parents called at some point her parents are probably in their late 70s now um someone had called their house and told them that their child this woman had been um kidnapped and that they needed to send money right and that if they called the police they'd kill her or harm her in some way right so they started sending money and they were afraid to contact her and you can see like what a bind a loving parent would be in right they obviously don't want to get this child of theirs hurt and they obviously willing to do whatever it takes in order to get them back turns out it was total scam right because eventually there was communication that made them realize that that their daughter was perfectly okay and never even interacted with kidnappers so those kinds of scams happen pretty often actually I've had that happen to a friend also yeah so the sense of urgency should have been the first flag that's a that's a great Point yeah absolutely yeah and look look even if they've got your loved one the secondary issue is if you do what they want are they going to let them go which is actually a legitimate question like if there really are bad guys one of the things we learned in hostage negotiation that I apply to business negotiation there are legitimate questions that it's okay to ask you you're not being disrespectful you're not pushing back there's there are fair you know to use the f bomb Fair legitimate questions that you can ask under any circumstances which is basically you know if I comply is just going to work out the way that you're articulating it anything that adds communication into it which gives you more information to find out what the ultimate outcome looks like even in kidnappings how do you know that how do you know that if you pay they're going to let them go that's a legitimate question there are examples somewhere in between you know getting your Instagram account hacked your bank account hacked and your God forbid your child kidnapped for instance um there's a whole practice within the legal profession of probing to see whether or not somebody is going to give up money to avoid a lawsuit for instance right this is a actually a lawyer friend of mine recently described their job very well he said in his words first person he said I scare people for money the operative word being scare people being and it's being honest yeah he's being very honest he scares people for money and he's very good at it and um and he understands how other people scare people for money and he works both sides you know in uh plaintiff for defense type situations but you know it made me realize that you know a lot of the legal profession is not okay the lawsuit slid across the table it's the okay here's what the lawsuit would look like here are all the statutes that potentially were were violated and then there's a probe of like what somebody's finances are and you know how much they're willing to pay and do they have liability insurance do they have an umbrella policy all the sorts of things that are that are really it's not necessarily an elegal Shakedown but it's you know a probing as to whether or not you know there's it's worth the effort diagnosing the other side's ability to pay right and so that happens really often I can give a specific example where um somebody had a incident at a dog park where their dog um allegedly ran into somebody maybe charged at somebody you know dog park people are standing around and the person moved and and and apparently injured their knee but rather than Sue the owner of the dog what they typically do is deliver some set of documents that say you know I was um injured your dog was responsible for this um and if you don't settle up for X number of dollars you're going to be sued for usually an exorbitant amount above right right right and then there's this question that the the lawyers have to figure out like is it puffery right are they saying I'm going to sue you for $4 million is there any basis for that and good lawyers will say that's puffery they're they're trying to scare you with a big number but a lot of people see that number and go oh my goodness what do they want you know what like I don't even know if they were injured if they were that's terrible I'd want that taken care of if my dog's responsible I'd want that taken care of but what what do they need in order to make this this go away and that happens millions of times a day throughout the country and a good portion of those probably happen here in California because there's a that's kind of the way the legal system is arranged right so this is not somebody um you know it could be somebody manipulating the law it could also be somebody who's being entirely honest about their experience of being injured by somebody else's dog so under those conditions I mean it sounds like the same set of rules apply you want to know how serious they are do they have a case so to speak that's the the work of the lawyers but in assessing how serious somebody is you said you it's fair you called it the f- word I like that I'll never forget that it just ask a fair question like like how much money do you think you deserve or um is that would that be a good example of a very direct question uh or is it um How likely are you to walk away if we don't give you the money like you know is there I mean because I could imagine there's all sorts of reasons why people would be dishonest about about answering those questions well and then uh how much money you think you could deserve uh you deserve is is a really good question not necessarily what the answer is but how they answer it like you you're you're going to get how quickly they fire back and whether or not they stop and think about it how and what questions typically are best to judge the other side's reaction and the answer is secondary because a how or what question causes what we would referred to is uh deep thinking slow thinking Danny Conan behavioral economics thinking fast and slow slow thinking is in-depth thinking you ask a how or what question to make the other side think first and judge their reaction to how they think about it and do they actually do they actually think about it or do they fire right back at you it gives you a clearer picture of who you're dealing with where the outcome is going to go how much money do you think that you deserve if they immediate you know $10 million right so this is I got a Shakedown artist on the other side or they say all right if they stop and think about it and they give you a thoughtful answer that's a completely different person on the other side you're asking a question to get a to diagnose how they respond first the answer is second and sometimes I if it's a Cutthroat on the other side I'm going to start pepp them with how and what questions just to wear them out that's passive aggression if I if I got a Cutthroat aggressor on the other side I'm going to drop into passive aggressive behavior to slow him down and wear them out um one of my hostage negotiation Heroes a guy named Johnny Pico was John Dominico Pico not not Johnny like Johnny Rockets Italian Johnny John Dominico got all the uh Western hostages out of Beirut and mid 80s wrote a book called Man Without a Gun uh negotiated in person face to face with holla the only guy that ever did that got everybody out and in his book he wrote one of the great secrets to negotiation is learning how to exhaust the other side and when you've got a really dangerous adversary on the other side of the table you don't go nose to nose you don't argue you don't you're not combative you wear them out exhaust them and if you got somebody really combative or Cutthroat on the other side start peppering them with how and what questions cuz they even think about the answer it tires them out and it's passive aggressive and it's differential and it really works so if the person on the opposite side of a high friction negotiation is aggressive the goal is to slow things down fatigue them yeah and get them to just either relent or to reveal something that's that's a loophole that right yeah if if I have to make the deal then I'm going to wear them out I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor inside tracker inside tracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you meet your health goals I'm a big believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term Health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test however with a lot of blood tests out there you get information back about blood lipids about hormones and so on but you don't know what to do with that information with inside tracker they have a personalized platform that makes it very easy to understand your data that is to understand what those lipids what those hormone levels etc mean and behavioral supplement nutrition and other protocols to adjust those numbers to bring them into the ranges that are ideal for your immediate and long-term health right now insid tracker is conducting a giveaway valued at $66,000 this giveaway includes a full year of insid tracker test a consultation with a registered dietitian and a hydro indoor rowing machine to learn more about inside tracker and to enter this zero cost giveaway go to fitness fuels longevity.com to enter that's Fitness fuels longevity.com to enter I'm interested in drilling a little bit further into this process of wearing them down and the passive aggressive way of uh reducing the aggressor stance and I I want to highlight for people that you know what we're talking about here isn't you know manipulation to extract something we're actually talking about the reverse we're talking about a bad actor who's aggressive and trying to um defang that bad actor yeah yeah what does that process of of wearing him down look like or sound like could you give us a couple of examples of let's say I'm the bad actor we could play this game I won't be very good at this um and I am saying look I want X number of dollars by this date or you're not going to get what you want they're going to die or disappear is that simple and I'm you know a ston wall kind of approach what is the approach that you take to wear that person down well what what are they're going to be how and questions that are mostly how and what and they're going to be legitimate questions which is how do I know you're going to follow through what does that look like like if I do what you want how do I know you're going to follow through so get them to talk about the alternative okay so if you were to well if you deliver by that date I'm going to pass them to you without fail like if they just getting kind of brief answers where the person is just again this kind of like rigid ston wall approach yeah well and so there's a phrase that we use all the time Vision drives de decision so if if you're really going to comply if I if I give in and when I say how do I know you're going to you're going to follow through I'm not talking about the threat I'm not trying to get you to clarify the threat I'm trying to get you to clarify what implementation looks like so I need to know I'm based on your reaction to that if you plan on following through if I comply you will already have that in your head or be open to it Vision drives decision you've thought it through in advance what does letting the hostages go look like if you if you have no intention of ever releas releasing a hostage if I follow through then you're not going to be able to answer the question or and you're probably going to throw it back on me really quickly and so then now I know like all right so you got no plans on complying if I give in you're not going to comply so I but you still want the money then I'm going to ask well how am I supposed to pay you if you don't have any plans for complying and if you're willing to entertain a conversation about what compliance looks like there was a kidnapping that uh my unit worked just before I was in it in Venezuela where they weren't entirely sure that the bad guys were going to the farc I think had had the hostage they agreed on an exchange point to let the hostage go that was some distance from where they had a pretty good idea the hostage was being held so they figured they're not going to drag the hostage all the way to this River Crossing if they're not going to let him go it's just too much effort and then it was one of the few times there was going to be a simult theoretically a simultaneous exchange but they're going to have to send the money across a river before the hostage was let go so if we agree to this all right so they're not going to drag this this guy all the way to this River Crossing if they don't plan on letting him go and if it's a long way to drag them and they got their money do they want to drag them back like even if they're ambivalent once they get there if they've gone through all the effort to get to the meeting location and the hostage is there we've now just increase the chances significantly they're going to go ahead and comply because it's pain in the neck to take them back this is all human nature stuff human nature investment how do you get them to engage in actions and behaviors and then verbal commitments that actually means something to them when I was working kidnappings the very last thing we'd always have the family get the bad guys to say it last not first but last was we'd actually get a verbal promise to let them go again at the end because we've been talking to them long enough at this point in time we got a pretty good idea of what they sound like when they're lying and what they sound like when they telling the truth if somebody tells the truth they pretty much tend to tell the truth the same way every time if they tell the truth you talk to somebody long enough you got a line on do they ever tell the truth and if they do what does it sound like people lie 20 ways they tell the truth one way so we've been coaching in negotiations with the kidnappers long enough that we know what they sound like when they tell the truth so when when they ask at the very end if we if we paid you promise to let them go it's not that they answered but how they answered it and that that'll be the last thing to seal the deal you know how do you continually stack the odds in your favor for implementation do you have a bodily like a somatic sensor for lying uh the reason I ask is years ago I had the experience of um knowing somebody and uh they turned out to be a generally good person but I sensed early on that something was like off I couldn't relax around them right I just couldn't relax around them and and I could not tell you why but it was as if my I couldn't even identify the neur anatomy of it you might say it was the Vegas nerve or something but I teach neur anatomy and I can't point to one pathway in the body there was something about my autonomic response that would just start cranking up when I was around them like something is off something is off something and I and I kid you not five years later five years later I discovered a series of lies that all ratcheted together that were actually pretty meaningless in the total context of things but I remember thinking at that moment oh my goodness like my my system knew like new and you know for all my knowledge of Neuroscience I I can't tell you to this day like what it was in in the in my biology but it had something to do with my bodily response it wasn't just a thought like that doesn't quite add up or I feel like I'm getting the runaround or or this it was it was a physical sensation are you familiar with that experience yeah well it's a little bit uh what you guys and your colleagues are still discovering the science behind the gut and what we actually teaching you know my company I we're teaching people learn the difference between your gut and your amydala for lack of a better term your fear centers and know which one is which and listen to your gut your gut is ridiculously accurate now where where does that information come from one of your podcasts recently I was listening to we were talking about Alla Factory cues right the smells like I never thought of that of course you know yeah there the the um uh was the term for the um the the molecules that you're putting off that that ohon Aeron get kicked out like of course and that's why some of the great investigators I knew would say I can just smell it I can smell it so what all is feeding your gut and what what are the senses that the science hasn't yet discovered you know you can't you can't make me believe I I will never believe that the life force stops at the surface of our skin that there's energy and that we can pick up on the energy I mean our gut is being fed by all these different inputs that we're aware of or that we have yet to be made aware of the tone of voice doesn't match their their words the the the head tilt you've got a supercomputer in your brain your gut is incredible if you listen to it instead of your fearce centers and as soon as you start listening to your gut you can't explain it at the time but you got a you got a bad feeling in your gut and later on then you saw it all it all came together well your brain was picking up these cues your your brain was probably when you're in their presence there's got to be an order somebody gives off when they're when they're intentionally deceiving you don't you didn't know that that that was a smell and maybe you you couldn't have consciously smelled it but you're still picking it up so long answer to I'm a very big believer in in the gut I think there's science that we know and yet to discover that tells us that the gut is just ridiculously accurate if we listen to it instead of our fear centers I completely agree that there are um energetic exchanges that Neuroscience can't yet explain the field of Neuroscience that is is starting to explore some of these things um there's basically uh three Apex journals the most competitive journals to publish in science nature and cell and um I only mention that because there was a series of Articles written in Science magazine about Magneto reception in humans you know the idea that humans can detect magnetic field sounds like quackery right Turtles can detect magnetic fields they migrate by them actually long distances but the idea is that humans can't do that and yet there are some well-controlled studies where people have to guess about the orientation of a magnetic field and they do it better than chance not everyone can do it but some can do it better than chance in a way that cannot be predicted by anything else except some inherent form of Magneto reception in their nervous system so there are capabilities of the nervous system that are starting to be revealed for which we don't have a lot of evidence but there's enough evidence to suggest that these things are really happening um the other example which you might find interesting is a little bit uh more little less esoteric but there was a beautiful paper published in one of the cell press journals a couple of years ago showing that when people listen to the same story the distance between their heartbeats tends to be very similar now it doesn't mean that their exact heart rates are similar but if you look at the distance between their Heartbeats they all entrain to the same Rhythm the same song and get this they're in completely separate rooms the experiments are being done on completely separate days and yet if I were to line up just you know the the distance between the the heartbeats for you they would line up like a set of columns wow for dozens of individuals listening to the same story so you know clearly there's a passage of energy from things we hear and things we see that goes into our nervous system at a level that's below our conscious detection here's the last I'll say about this um we have a series on Mental Health coming out not Mental Illness but mental health um by uh I think to be among the very finest psychiatrists in the world Dr Paul kti and he said you know we all think that the forbrain is the supercomputer right he said no the subconscious is the supercomputer that's where the real knowledge processing is happening that's the iceberg below the surface where all the real heavy lifting has taking place and that people who learn to tap into the subconscious can learn to use that information in very meaningful ways and I think that's what what you're describing he's been on with you before right he has to talk about trauma in particular and he was on Lex Friedman's podcast as well the series that we're doing with him is not about trauma per se it's really about the subconscious and the self I I think you'll find this series really interesting and it has a number of very practical questions that one can ask themselves about their subconscious and and kind of work the process of Psychiatry we're excited to release that series but it um because I don't of anything like it that's been put out there into the public but but I was so um pleasantly surprised to hear him say you know we all hear that the the forbrain is the supercomputer it's what drove our Evolution he's like no no no no it's the it's the subconscious that's where our real wisdom resids and the forbrain is just the implementation device so it's uh you know how we can convince ourselves that that we're in charge right yeah I mean I can't think of a time that my gut told me a and it turned out to be B more often than not though I've suppressed my response to the gut I override it thinking I think I made the mistake that you guys train your negotiators to avoid which is I thought well this is making me anxious and the anxiety must be like me like this must be my fault or I'm not able to calm myself in the situation um not sleeping well Etc and um and therefore like this must must represent some deficiency on my part and then um and Lord knows as your shirt points out I'm I'm a very flawed person I have many flaws I always say have 3,000 pet peeves and at least as many flaws to match those pet peeves the one to one at least relationship but um the point being that I I think our bodies really do know they know yeah yeah yeah yeah I would agree so when you're doing negotiations and you're hearing somebody's voice on the phone there are a lot of cues when you're face to face there are additional cues there's their face and then of course if the negotiations are being done by text over a computer or a phone it's a very diminished environment for information so maybe we could talk about each of those because we live in those Landscapes if we're face Toof face and we're negotiating um you're listening of course to what I want what I'm insisting on you're working that process from your your side what are you paying attention to visually it's more um are things in alignment there's Layman's data you know the words the way it's said and look on people's face and how are they weighed and how they play out there's a ratio out there that very unscientific 73855 7% words 38% delivery 55% body language people want to argue about it all the time whether or not that's accurate as a rule of thumb we throw that out there but I tell people the most important issue is do they line up so I'm not going to look for like when do you raise your eyebrow or when do you look up and to the left I'm really just going to try to get a gut feeling whether or not I think these things are lining up whether they're in alignment or whether they're out of line and then I'm going to be real careful about what meaning I assign to that you know uh affective cues changes in your tone of voice changes in your movement and that's one of the reasons why we don't teach reading people's body language because it's completely contextual to you and the moment so I if I convince myself that you know a raise of the eyebrow means this it's out of context I was in a negotiation once where I threw out a figure to somebody and I some kind of look off to the side and look back and accepted my offer and I made the mistake of not saying to them the appropriate thing for me to say at the time would have been seems like something just crossed your mind cu the only completely true observation if they look to the side and look back something crossed their mind now I read it at the moment of saying that they had more money and I found out after the fact that was wrong they were stretched to the Limit the look of hesitation didn't mean that they were holding stuff they were holding stuff back but I read it wrong and I didn't bother to check on the affective q that I saw so what am I babbling about what I'm babbling about is if we're in a negotiation and whether or not I'm listening to your tone of voice or watching your body language or your words if I see you shift at all I should pay attention that there was a shift in your affective Behavior but I need to find out what was behind it as opposed to making an assumption as to what it meant so yeah I'm going to watch I'm going to get my gut feeling and I'm going to say sounds like there's some hesitation or it looks like something just crossed your mind or even if I can't attribute it to specific affective move I might say it feels like there's something in the way here that's me listening to my gut I'll throw out an observation on whatever any of those might be just to go back over the ground a little bit and double check because the other thing about negotiating in person is you're going to give me more information physically than I can actually process and if you say something that's thought-provoking I'll stop and think about it and while I'm stopping and thinking about what you just said I'm missing all your cues so all the skills that we teach the labels the mirrors the open Ed questions which seem like we're going back and plowing the ground again we are because I didn't picked up all the information the first time there's just more there than I can get and so I need to go back over it a couple of times with you just so I get it right without making you feel interrogated you actually feel heard and you actually get to go back over it again so it becomes what seems to be an inefficient process but it's actually me just double-checking my information so if we're face to face I'm going to I'm going to ask you to repeat but I'm not going to say would you please repeat that I'm going to get you to repeat without asking you to repeat is the same true in um online or text Communications the same thing is true the the the problem with online and text is people try to bundle everything into one communication the best analogy I can think of is if you were playing chess by text would you put s moves in your in your text no you'd only put one move in so only try to get one point across in a text don't explain don't throw a whole bunch of stuff in text or emails they're all almost always too long and it's going to come off as cold so do what you can to soften soften it um there's a documentary film that's been done on my company called tactical empathy Nick Nanton uh 122 23 Emy the filmmaker DN DNA films it was finished last year it's not out yet for a variety of reasons we haven't put it out so the we screened the thing in Vegas last year I see it I love it I'm not a good judge of a film about me I'm going to love it no matter what it's about me but I tell neck that night oh man I love it this is great two days later I find out I realize there's a huge problem I've already told him it's okay so I got to get him I got to I'm going to text him and then I'm going to call him and we got to fix it now it's a Sunday text message I sent him a two-line text it's now bad time to talk I got something you don't want to hear two lines now what were my other options I could have called him Nick and I got a great relationship I call him if he's in a position to pick up the phone doesn't matter what he's doing he's going to answer the phone he was in the middle of a zoom call if I had have called he'd have picked up during the zoom call and both conversations would have been bad he immediately fires back to me I'm in the middle of a zoom call I'll call you in a half an hour he already knows he ain't G to like what he's going to hear I'm prepping him for bad news get him on the phone like look I know what I said we got a problem we got to get Derek on camera Derek is guy in my in my team and I I'm shocked that I haven't made him part of the documentary this is going to be incomplete without Derek we got to get dererk on on film we can't show this to anybody else till we get him on film and make him part of it immediately he's in problem solving mode he goes okay I got to get a crew to Derek or get Derek to a crew I need to know when we can do that I need to we got a we got another showing of the film scheduled in La less than a month away he says I I got to get Derrick on camera and we got to edit it and it's going to take 3 weeks of editing I said I'll get you access to Derrick's camera he goes done or D Derek's calendar he say it's done it's done we go through this whole conversation in less than 10 minutes now think of the normal negotiation hey Nick how are you what's going on today are you in a good mood hey hey hey how the kids doing all this time wasting conversation if I set them up with that normal he would also he he could have legitimately said are you out of your mind we've been working on this for a year you didn't bring this up in a year not only that you already told me two days ago at the at the showing in in Vegas that you loved it and now a a year year and a half into this project you're bringing up all these new problems that would have been the normal negotiation but since I since we got a highly collaborative relationship I two-line tax we're done in 10 minutes now since Nick's a very generous guy when he gets done and he says by the way you understand how much this going to cost me this is three weeks of editing this is three hours of shooting and three weeks of editing I go yeah he goes but I'm happy to do it calls him back the next day he's got a favorite asking me you got it doesn't matter what it is because we'd gone through what would have been a very complicated negotiation that started on tax and I sent him a two-line text on a Sunday and we got to solve that fast so if I understand correctly by setting the context in a very direct and succinct way right he goes into it in a problemsolving mode with you whereas if you do the um the tour of all the things that are going well in life yeah hey how are you yeah the sort of the um we'll keep this uh PG you know the the um the mud sandwich approach you know you know they teach you that you know when you get a laboratory you know most scientists have no skill running a business right you get a laboratory all you've done is experiments and then suddenly you're in charge of people managing budgets and all this stuff I mean I mean most scientists 99% of scientists are completely unqualified to do the job they do at the level of running a laboratory when they start you learn it on the job and eventually you end up having to let somebody go and they and so the typical thing they teach you in these online training things is you tell somebody something nice then you give them the bad news and then you tell something them something nice on exit right that's kind of the the the mud so to speak sandwich right all right um this is not that what you're talking about is saying hey this is the problem you're not going to like the problem or there is a problem you're not going to like it so that they show up with the context of solving a problem as opposed to giving them the tour of all the things that are going well and then the the problem is really in contrast to that and then it's like uh you know so so you what I love about what you're describing is it's it's just it's direct it's honest you're not doing the uh the tour of the garden before you take them down to the um to the septic tank it's what I would call the difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter a straight shooter tells you the truth they just tell it in a way that lands softly let's talk about breakups business breakups romantic breakups right you breaking up with me no no um but thanks for the hypothesis test No in fact in fact I'm enjoying this conversation so much as I always do I'm learning a ton from you that um if anything I'd like to expand and deepen our relationship Chris there you got a lot of knowledge out of me um platonic and and professional but expansive um what is the process of ending a relationship and again this could be romantic relationship could be business relationship could be employer employee could be individuals could be telling a whole group or an entire group telling an individual you know the reason I rais this as a particular example is that I'm assuming that both sides don't want the same thing one side wants to continue the other side wants to end right um I'll avoid the use of the word win-win or the words win-win excuse me and just ask is there a way to have that conversation in any of the contexts I just mentioned in a as you so beautifully described it a straight shooter manner where it's direct it's honest but it lands soft because what we're talking about here is feelings of rejection and nobody likes feeling rejected I don't know anybody that likes being fired even from jobs they don't like people's egos suffer right so is there a maybe a more specific way of asking the question is is there a way to encourage the person getting the bad news to get their ego out of the way and see that if both parties don't want it it's best for everybody involved I almost want to say no uh but first what are the caveats most of the time when people struggling with this they're not trying to save the other side they're trying to save themselves so who you really trying to save by postponing it sing it you know trying to act like um uh it's it's something that it's not like there I don't know that anybody has ever been fired that didn't have a sense that it was coming the person that was getting ready to fire him opens up by saying how are you they know how the other person is and and a person getting ready to get fired has got some gut instinct that things are going wrong like you said the gut's very powerful so you gota you got to lure the boom as quickly as you can but also as gently as you can I was involved in a nonprofit a number of years ago uh affiliated with a church and we're trying struggling whether or not to let the executive director go I go to the minister of the Church Norman Vincent peele's Protegé guy a guy named Arthur calandro one of the best human beings I've ever met in my life phenomenal guy and I'm struggling with I thought firing letting this woman go was going to be bad and I thought Arthur was going to counsel me a way out and and he looked at me and he said you know there's there's no gentle way to cut somebody's head off and I thought yeah the Humane thing here is how do you to to bring it to conclusion as quickly as possible because there's no humane way to cut somebody's head off there's no humane way to terminate the relationship now what are the caveats maybe there are first caveat if you're going to fire somebody never fire somebody on a Friday fire them on a Monday fire them on a Monday they got a work week to work their way out of it you fire them on a Friday they got a weekend to be miserable and to feel horrible and they can't do anything about it caught off guard or not on a Monday they can pick themselves up they can start looking for a new job no matter who you are fire them on a Friday they can't start looking for a new job on a Saturday it's two days of misery so yeah if you're going to fire somebody fire them on a Monday not on a Friday if you got bad news to give somebody warn them it's coming the um people are ridiculously resilient to pain if warned and then that you lower the boom you're not going to like what I have to say it's going to be heartbreaking you're going to hate me hesitate no more than three seconds they got their guard up let them have the bad news that's the humane way to cut somebody's head off don't make don't linger don't make them think that how are the kids how are you I care about you you're a great human being none of the stuff at the beginning warn them bad news is coming and hit them with the bad news rip the Band-Aid off the pain is not if you try to rip the Band-Aid off slowly that's excruciating you're trying to save yourself so if you got to terminate a relationship regardless of what it is the quicker it you do it the less painless it is The Sooner people can move on stop trying to save yourself realize how human beings handle pain if anything human beings are incredibly resilient if given the opportunity to brace themselves first I agree thank you for that there's a concept that a lot of people haven't heard of and I'm confident in saying because I hadn't heard of it until recently despite spending a lot of time in the literature around dopamine and motivation and it's a term from psychology that is being used a little bit more now um and it's ego depletion yeah it's an interesting concept and I've been wanting to run this by you for a while but I saved it for our discussion today it turns out ego depletion is a lot like decision fatigue um you know we've all heard the Steve Jobs thing you know he wore a black turtleneck every day because it you know he didn't have to that decision so he had more energy to make other decisions I've been accused of doing the same because of my black long sleeve shirts but there's a whole other reason for that that um some people might know but anyway it's unimportant in the moment um but ego depletion is a little bit different than decision fatigue or decision budget um the idea with ego depletion is pretty simple it's that the molecule dopamine does many things in the brain but one of the things that it absolutely does is it holds us to goal directed Behavior that's associated with our sense of self like I want to accomplish this I want to get to that and the whole notion of ego depletion involves the the idea and this has been a data substantiated observation that when people have to fight to be right or to defend their position for a period of time eventually that depletes and it seems to be at least in part dopamine mediated because defending one's position takes work right you earlier you talked about running somebody down you know um wearing them out and I wonder as I just throw this concept out you um cold here um whether or not that calls to mind any um examples from your work where you felt like okay like this person could really hold but if I just kept pressing eventually they tilt right you know and it's different than the kind of fatigue that comes from a conversation that starts at 3:00 in the afternoon and ends at 2:30 in the morning we've all been there I've been in those conversations usually they're not very pleasant and at 3: in the morning everyone's peeling apart you just I've learned over the years you know like you clip it at 9:30 and you try and shift right right you know one of the worst pieces of advice I've ever heard um is you never go to sleep angry it's like no actually uh actually get sleep wake up and then revisit the problem if the situation allows that's my uh that's my belief anyway yeah um trying to stay up all night trying to work something it's just counter biology so ego depletion um I have a feeling a lot of what you did in your profession was um running down their dopamine to the point where then they are operating from a different place where they're not defending the ego they're actually thinking more practically about the whole situation does this do it have any kind of texture of meaning to you yeah no I would I I would agree and I would draw the distinction uh first of all in hostage negotiation there's there's two kind of Hostage takings um if there's a demand um and there's going to be contained and uncontained which is just literal definition contained is bad guys in a bank like at the Chase Bank in Brooklyn way back when you got them surrounded they can't get away and uncontained is a kidnapping you don't know where they are uncontained unknown location we're going to try to get our way in a contained situation probably by eagle depletion wearing a out get them to the point where they just they just they're just going to give in because they they're tired cuz they're going to come out we're going to put handcuffs on them um which means that if the ego gets recharged they're going to go back and they think they're going to think back over the deal so wearing somebody out in a business negotiation it's basically uncontained because even if you come to an agreement there's a whole implementation phase they're going to you did you did you get the agreement because you're warm out because they got tired because they just gave in at some point in time they're going to get recharged and they're going to get recharged while you're in implementation so they're either going to not going to follow the terms of the deal or at the slightest opportunity they're going to deviate and so yeah I think Eagle depletion is is a real thing and it's a bad way to get a business deal that's going to stick because they rest and then they come back yeah a different person yeah yeah they're going to be recharged their ego is going to be recharged and if you get the if you get the agreement based on a depletion of their ego that battery is going to get charged back up again whether it's a business deal whether it's a personal negotiation you know you have a disagreement with your significant other and you you follow that bad advice don't go to bed angry and so you stay up till 3:00 in the morning and you think you come to a resolution every body gets a good night's sleep and the next day they feel completely differently about what they said the night before yeah I might have heard of that happening once or twice saw in a movie right I saw it in a movie a friend explained that situation to me um earlier you mentioned approaching a conversation in a playful way right like all right you know this might even be life or death but let's play this like a game because you can see more opportunities now we know that when we are relaxed we see the big picture when we're tense everything tunnel vision tunnel thinking tunnel everything we lose access to the full tool kit um so you obviously take really good care of yourself you're fit you're in shape you always seem calm I'm sure you have your moments like anybody else but um what are some of the things that good negotiators do all the time so that when the bell goes off and they have to respond they are ready and the reason ask this is because you know we've been talking about negotiations in in kind of a vacuum like it's happening and then how does one handle it but like any athlete like any teacher like any parent like any kid everybody has to be ready for real life circumstances and we don't always get the warning we don't get the memo that it's happening in two weeks and uh sometimes the conversations around courtroom drama or the big day you know it implies that we we get the warning but more often than that it's a phone call or a text and it comes in and boom it just hits us and suddenly we are in negotiations and we didn't get time to prepare right so maybe we could talk about readiness and then we could talk about again like maybe this just sounds trivial to you but for me I'd be very curious to know whether or not you have any practices of stealing yourself what those look like um what you've seen other people use to to be able to get themselves into the moment of of being able to show up their best self yeah well um Readiness uh small Stakes practice for high stakes results like I will occasionally find myself in the middle of a negotiation that I didn't expect like if I've been throwing out stuff on a regular basis on my way during the day um verbal observations what we refer to is labels because the label seems like something just crossed your mind is a label in the middle of a negotiation when I see you hesitate or look to the side how do I get ready for that you know I'm I'm I'm on my way over here to this interview um I'm both talking to my lift driver the whole way getting him to talk also being careful about not tapping the gas tank out completely so that I'm fatigued when I get here like I talk I talk up the lift drivers on a regular basis I um interactions TSA guys in the airport I'll throw a label at them seems like a tough day tough day seems like you're in a good mood and whether right or wrong I'm I'm getting in I'm trying to stay loose I'm trying to keep the mental muscles limber and it just becomes a bit of a habit on a regular basis uh occasionally I'll throw something out now I'm talking about lift drivers I if I'm in a bad mood I I get into a lift a couple of weeks ago on my way home lift driver is not helpful I mean I'm coming out of the airport I'm struggling with my bags not lifting a finger doesn't open up the rear I got to open up the rear of the vehicle myself I got to load the bags everything I get in and he's just seething unhappiness now I know that if I say what do you love about what you do for a living I immediately trigger what Tony Robbins would call a state change and I'm annoyed at this guy and you know our our phermones are combative but I'm thinking like I just I just don't need this and so I go what do you love about driving for LIF this guy proceeds to unload on me on all his personal struggles that I feel like a complete jerk for being angry with him at everything that he's going through and I'm just trying to get myself out of B out of a bad mood and to keep from sending him a really negative vibe the whole way so that he doesn't drive 45 miles hour in a 65 mph Lane and make it you know inflict me with a longer and more expensive ride because I'm so annoying as a customer but I've got a habit of small Stakes practice for high stakes results and who do I get a practice on the lift drivers on a regular basis the guy behind the counter at the hotel uh the TSA guy I'm going through TSA the grocery store clerk the Starbucks person the only way I'm at my best in my negotiations is just trying to keep my negotiation muscles limber by interacting with people uh throughout the course of my day and then ideally you know leaving them better than I found him you know trying trying not to leave negative karma in my wake trying to leave as much positive karma in my wake as possible I love that um and I'm very familiar with the feeling of needing to conserve my voice for podcasting or energy for things and yet I'm somebody who's I think genuinely curious about what people's experiences are so I like the question um you know how's your day going it's pretty open-ended um it's I suppose if somebody was really upset that would perhaps the worst question I could possibly ask um from what you just described but well I'll put a fine point on it too because like I've manipulated him with what do you love about because there there's it you watch them change in the moment to immediately to shift into this concept of love which is more than like what do you like about driving for leftt what do you love about driving for LIF I I can trigger a state change in you instantaneously no matter what kind of mood you're in CU this guy was in a very bad mood plus Additionally the download from that typically is so quick I'm going to get a real clear picture on who you are really really fast I'm talking to a CEO of a company couple of months ago they're they're you know for lack of a better term they're delivering clean water to the world and I'm like that's a cool Mission like I dig this as an entrepreneur an entrepreneur want to make a dent in Universe I dig that like I'm trying to make a difference in the world so I say to him what do you love about what you do for a living he immediately fires back at me I love leading teams I Love Leading teams and I love giving shareholders a great return on their investment it's really important for me to give shareholders a great return and then yeah you know we deliver water and then he said a fourth thing and I thought this guy could be doing toilet paper he he doesn't care about the mission of the company at all he's a great CEO probably because you want a CEO to lead teams you want a CEO to deliver a corporate CEO to deliver a return on investment for shareholders but that's why he's a great corporate CEO and not a great entrepreneurial CEO so by him giving me that download real quick that was blatantly honest like do I think this is a great guy yeah do our core values line up my mission is more important to me than his mission is or his mission is making money now I like making money but it's not number one it's a strong number two but that question instead of how are you today to what do you love about you immediately put them in a better place plus you get some ridiculously candid answers that tells you who they are real fast what is the best way to approach our response to somebody who's asking to be heard perhaps they've got complaints um maybe about us maybe about somebody else you know people who are venting right people seem to vary on the propensity to vent Spectrum some people just you know they vent all the time this happened that happened and you know and they want to complain you know the uh the way it's sometimes described they love to um take other people's inventories they love to take inventories of everybody else's mistakes they did this they did that um you know it's it's a lot easier some often than taking our own inventories of of what we could be focused on and do better that's that's a universal truth in my mind but you know people approach other people that they trust and they want to vent presumably to get over whatever it is that is bothering them but all too often it seems to just amplify the feelings of frustration what do you do when somebody you care about and that cares about you comes to you to vent is it just you let them you let them vent or do you um do you try and let them negotiate with themselves a little bit in a way that could help them more than if you were to just let them vent I'm really leery of letting people vent because a lot of times it just they never it seems to be a spiral that just spirals out of control um so H how do why is somebody Venom they don't feel hurt they feel ignored they feel like they've been wasting their time talking they're frustrated that's the feedback I'm going to give you feedback on what I'm guessing CA is causing you to vent in just an observation like it it sounds like this is this is driving you crazy because nobody listens to you sounds like you've been struggling with this for a long time sounds like this is very frustrating for you um what's the emotion the particular negative emotion frustration is about somebody being denied a goal in the future anger is about somebody's upset about something happened in the past the type of negative emotion begins to focus you in on where they is it Forward Thinking or is it backward thinking and frustration and anger can be two very different versions of the same negative emotion but they're focused on different points in time so I'm going to try to intuitively if I don't if I don't know um from what you've told me I'm going to start taking educated guesses on making an observation on what it is that's driving you if you need the vent you've been talking and people have been ignoring you or you've been taking actions and people have been ignoring you it's a it's you need to event because your communication or your actions have been ignored there are some Clues here and the sooner that I get at the heart of what's bothering you the sooner you're going to be able to let it off so I'm going to encourage letting the steam off without trying to correct you without giving you advice um without frustrating you by not listening to you by trying to recognize verbally what some of the motivators are which will deactivate the anger much more quickly it's the whole basis for a crisis hotline to begin with people are venting and so how do you most effectively vent somebody so that instead of going on a rant for an hour and the rant introduced toxins into their system where they're poisoning themselves I think negative emotions put toxins in our system you know how do I deactivate that as quickly so that you're not hurting yourself as much and and you you feel heard you feel relieved you feel listen to so I'm and if it involves me if it's a close friend who's venting to you you're involved in a situation to some degree and I might even say boy it feels like you're probably frustrated because I haven't listened to you up till now you know I'm going to talk start taking some emotionally educated guesses on what I think is driving you and I'm going to put in the form of a label which is just an observation seems like sounds like looks like then if I get it wrong and you go that's not it at all I can say well that's just the way it seems it just seems that way it puts you in a position to to just let somebody know you see them and you're doing your best to understand I'm I'm not a fan of venting I if if I go on a rant personally I always feel worse so I want to activate that negativity so I get get my feedback under me emotionally very useful knowledge you just shared with us do you meditate a tiny little bit I mean I'm and trying to make my day more effective I have a gratitude exercise that um I do almost every morning um other ways of making myself effective actually I'm looking at the nonsleep deep bre practice or the because I you know I like to make use of my time so and you know I'm spiritual so um I'm I'm talking to the almighty on a regular basis you pray I do yeah the morning and night when you need to both yeah both I mean I think you know whether or not you believe in one God or or the universe or whatever it is I think spiritual spirituality is an important component of Health whatever your spirituality is and you should recogn I it and and you should you'll be better off if you engage in some sort of a spiritual practice doesn't have to be any of the three major religions you know but spirituality is a component of who we are so yeah I practice it on a regular basis so sense of higher power or um to better Define higher power it could be as you said with aligned with conventional religion or just aligned with the idea that there are things outside of us that are important to pay attention to that we can all do better by being in recognition of or service to or or both something like that yeah pretty pretty much like that and and then leaving it as as open as as possible because there I think there's a spiritual nature to us period I agree what about your physical training I I must say you know you're um you're an excellent shape I imagine that went along with the FBI thing I mean I saw Silence of the Lambs at the beginning she's running around uh with agents yeah um shooting targets and running and lifting and doing their situps and their you know that was a I think it was 1980s film so it's a little bit dated now probably now they're they're doing other stuff as well um but you know nothing nothing works like the basics so um was the FBI the first time you got serious about Fitness or prior to that were you were you an athlete and into fitness and what are you doing nowadays to maintain your frankly impressive shape um well thank you for the comp lients um I uh Sports Athletics Fitness was always a part of my life I was into sports but not particularly good at them uh football basketball um they you know I'm a last century guy so what long before the conditioning is invol as evolved as it is now with interval training and and the rest of the stuff which is phenomenal you know weightlifting was introduced in my high school my senior year you know I lifted weight some continued through college uh little bit of time in the martial arts RI my knee apart in college in the marshal arts but yeah Fitness has always been a part of my life as much for liking to be in condition and you know the spiritual regeneration of it whether I knew what it was or not um these days you know I'm looking for every hack there is I know you don't like the term hack well we like we like mechanisms scientists like mechanisms yeah hack sort of implies that we're using one thing to accomplish something different I like mechanisms but at the end of the day if people want to call something a hack because it gets them the result they want or that they're more it's more appealing to to apply the tool that's what matters to me you know tools sitting in a box don't do anything so people are using them then I'm good with the term yeah yeah so what these days C plun sauna principally I'm struggling with issues with a couple of joints that I know science will eventually help me regenerate so in the meantime good diet you know the basic pillars diet uh not a uh not a perfect diet but by and large overall my diet's pretty good um and then you know the uh the little little things spiritual keeps me in shape physically uh hitting a cold plunge uh is is challenging psychologically and physically and a shifter there that's for sure you don't need science to know that uh 30 seconds or a minute in that cold water is going to change your Chemistry for a long while afterwards and for the better I believe yeah once you get out people forget this they're like I hate the cold the the point is not how you feel while you're in it you can feel proud of how you navigate that portion but the point is how you feel afterwards well that's the old the old saying why do you hit yourself in a in the hand with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop I like that I like that um smoken like somebody who worked in New York City for a long time um out here we'd probably say something different um you know it's like crystals and lava lamps or something although there aren't many lava lamps anymore I think that the idea that California is all hippie dippy that that's not true anymore I think it's been overrun by by other um a different ethos in any event um thanks for sharing that because I think that we can't separate the physical from the psychological right I mean we've been talking about the mental and fatigue status of the people you're negotiating with often times during this conversation but then of course there's how you show up to the job I mean if you're run down three days and you've been in a fight with your spouse and that's still in the back of your mind and you're um and you're hungry tired sick what you know um not connected to your higher power all those things that there's no way you can be as effective at any job so it's great to hear and not surprising to hear that you have um Bedrock practices that you you implement um espe yeah it's interesting point almost everybody I knew that was really good at anything they did for a living they probably took pretty good care of them yeah I agree you know there's this the the language around self-care get I think gets really distorted I'm going to editorialize for a second here I think it um but I'm going to editorialize in line with with what you just said um you know I think self-care sounds like Naval gazing where people think that it's all about self but it's actually taking care of oneself so that we can show up better for everybody else more energy more capacity more staying power to have those heart conversations with the people we care about and that move our life forward so it's really refilling the the fuel tank in my mind as opposed to um the kind of uh egocentric narcissistic you know stance that a lot of people take towards that they and and I understand why they do you know people scroll through Instagram and they see um people you know selfing every every muscle and like and all this stuff and listen I'm not disparaging what people want to do but at the end of the day today selfcare is about being more ready to do better for the world if you're or if you're Mission oriented agreed completely agree do you think there's been a change in the um FBI uh over the last 30 40 years around that you know I have this image in my mind of Agents like sitting in cars for 20 hours eating hogy sandwiches and um you know and uh looking through binoculars and running themselves into the ground with it like this kind of Bulldog like persistence to get to solve the puzzle I mean put differently I imagine there were some negotiations that were very long and fatiguing so um do you recall one of the longer negotiations that you had and how do you sleep at night Midway through a hostage crisis um so the longest one that I was I was directly involved in on almost dayto day and hour to hour one went went about 3ish days Washington DC uh 2003 started the second Iraq war guy named white Watson rolled a tractor into the middle of DC and claimed he had four bombs and he left four bombs scattered around the city had he actually done that or he was just call he was bluffing he was bluffing he he hadn't done either um and started on St Patrick's Day kind interesting a coup you know like like the like the thing in um you said in was in uh the Philippines it's like national holiday yeah yeah holiday right interesting uh for a whole bunch of reasons now I and and I had to go home and go to sleep uh when one night and when we were in the middle of that and then it was just I don't remember having trouble going to sleep because I felt like I did a good job um and that we handed I handed the shift off to another hostage negotiator from the bureau was effectively the team leader Vince Alonso and Vince was a brilliant negotiator so and the team that he was with I you know everybody was in good hands as a matter of fact Vince almost kicked me out of the scene cuz I didn't want to go and he just kept saying go home get some sleep go home get some sleep and finally the fifth time he said it to me I went home so I felt like I was leaving uh things in really good hands and when we working kidnappings we expected them to go for long periods of time and you just you just kind of got to it if you have faith in the process and you feel like that you're doing the best that can be done then then I think you could sleep at night um I guess to answer that question you you have to be careful whether you're working a a a case a Siege or um anything in in the in the bureau that you don't run yourself into the ground and there was some cases I worked in the 90s where I mean like we we knocked ourselves out like we would we worked hard on anybody we ever saw but we occasionally we took time off too you know I worked with guys that realized that sometimes you got to go out and have a beer kick back and blow off some some steam so I think everybody that I ever worked with we occasionally cautious enough to recharge the batteries and then depending upon the nature of the challenge in front of you it was a Siege in St Martin's Parish and went six days I don't think those guys got a lot of sleep but the nature of those sies that particular type of Siege only last five or six days anyway you just got to gut it out were there ever instances where you're just trying to keep the person on the line so they can just raid you know I never I never had to do that personally you had to be prepared to do that from the very beginning of any siege that you might have to get some you you might have to orchestrate an assault of some sort I was fortunate enough early on in my training there's kind of a famous Siege in if you know hostage negotiation history in London called the princess gate Siege where um a legendary British hostage negotiator David vaness had the bad guys on the phone while the SAS was hidden hid in the building and I remember that we were shown like look there may come a time when you have to keep somebody on the phone when SWAT comes in that goes with the territory so expect that's a possibility from the very beginning and it was a great Siege um the bad guy Salem the photos of him after he was shot the phone is within his reach David kept them on the phone I've heard the tapes the breaching explosions were going on and um Sim says I gotta go I gotta go there's suspicious noises and David veness and his classic British accent said Salim there are no suspicious noises now let's get back to talking about how many people are going on the bus to the airport bam and and they went in and and I caught up with David a number of years later I had a FBI I had a presidential intern from the White House intern with me in the bureau we're drinking in a bar with David veness I got a lot of stories where I'm drinking in a bar with somebody and the intern walked around everybody and tapped David on the shoulder and and he says uh Chris says you kept the Terrorist on the phone up to the moment that the SAS came in the door and David says yeah and I'd have kept him on the phone even longer if the SAS hadn't come in so soon so why am I telling that story if you're going to get into that line of business you got to accept all the things that go with it and realize that um it's not you that made the decision somebody else did you got to implement the strategy do you remember a case uh in Sacramento where um I think it was a youth gang May um took over like an electronic store guys Siege yeah I remember this when I was a kid there two things that r that stand out of my mind from when I was a kid one was the um Good Guys was the name of the electronic store right good guys was the electronics store and uh bad guys so to speak went in there took them hostage and um I must have been a kid this must have been like late this was a late 80s 80 or something like that um I remember that case um about 1990 it was either 89 or 90 I knew one of the negotiators I was there so I was born in 75 so um and as I recall they ended up opening fire on a bunch of hostages who were laying down on the ground is that right they um they they knew that they were getting ready to execute the hostages because they put bags over their heads and that whenever the bad guys do anything to dehumanize a hostage it's easier to shoot somebody with a bag over their head than it is not because you can't see their face and so the bad guys had begun that process and they knew they needed to assault God forbid anyone should ever be taken hostage I realize circumstances differ but you just mentioned putting bags over their heads there's this notion of sheeple that you know people will describe um post talk after something about how you know somebody walks into a building tells people to you know put zip ties on their own ankles or go into a back room that nobody resists and that in retrospect had somebody caused a commotion they might have caused enough of a commotion to either run out or be let go um and yet of course there's a very logical part of everybody's brain I would hope that thinks listen this person is an aggressor there's a gun in my face don't be an idiot right because we also have heard of the case in New York City that I read about this in the newspaper so presumably it's true uh where someone was held up at gunpoint and one of the women in the group that was held up said what are you going to do shoot us and the person shot them right so that happens too so you know um I don't know if there's a a fair and safe answer to give people on this but if you're told to do something by somebody and it's all happening in real time I mean you have to ask do they want my money my body my life or some combination of the three right in real time while under presumably significant duress um but for hostages like if they if they disobey cause a commotion is that extending their life or is it shortening their life I guess it it's very context dependent right um the only thing that I could without knowing the context anything you could do to humanize yourself and comply with what the bad guys want uh increases your chance of survival so let's say you got ordered to go in a back room you could look at the hostage taker and say I'll do whatever you say I'm Chris you know drop your name on them in a way so that you go from being a faceless person to somebody with a name that increases the chances of survival humanization whatever you can do to comply simultaneously become more of a human being because it's the opposite of what I was talking about before if you're easier to kill if you've been dehumanized you're harder to kill if you've been humanized you're harder to harm like maybe they're not going to kill you they're just going to they're just going to hurt you they're less likely to harm you if they know your first name how do you get them as a hostage negotiator if they if they talk about a hostage I I'll say you know you mean you mean Sheila do you mean Rex you know I'll I'll find a way to drop the person's name into the conversation so as soon as if if you can humanize just by getting them to know your name you increase the chances of survivability you increase the chances of being treated better and and comply I'll do what I'll do whatever you say I'm Chris is going to is going to start to move the ads in your favor you know that what you just described extends to science um you know I've talked before about my stance on animal research and um why I choose to no longer do it um I do think it has its place in making important discoveries that cannot be made on humans but that eventually extend to but you don't want to do it I don't want to do it personally I don't want to do it and I don't want to do primate work or large carnivore work or small carnivore work but um the point I was going to make is that when you do primate work um they strongly discourage near forbid you from giving them names right they give them numbers right right right right so it uh it all falls in line with what you were what you were talking about because the moment something has a name it moves from being a research animal to a pet of sorts and that makes it a relationship right so interesting how a name turns something from a you know it elevates something to a relationship however insignificant it it's up a notch and into our empathy circuitry yeah yeah yeah yeah which is uh perhaps the appropriate segue to talk about empathy this is a topic that uh you're spending a lot of time AG you you uh you mentioned tactical empathy documentary by the way when is that going to be out or do we have some sense my guess is uh we'll finish jumping through all the hoops and probably have out at the beginning of next year where um I'm currently working with William Morris and deor on a couple of different projects they've been enormously supportive great and we've asked for their guidance on uh how to how to the best time to get the documentary out and very happy with the people I'm dealing with there and actually stroke a universe was looking out for me funny set of circumstances and just really enjoy with the people that I'm working with there so probably first part of next year fantastic what's your take take on empathy I think of empathy in the pop culture sense of you know somebody's feeling pain and we feel their pain but of course empathy extends Way Beyond that yeah yeah yeah and that was um uh Rob malanka yeah my colleague at Stanford yeah I was I was really fascinated by the conversation that you you had with him on that recently and so and he said a lot of people use empathy a lot of different ways sort of for their own meanings so um my take on empathy tactical empathy also to keep throwing names out because people give me thoughts and I want to Source them out I'm I'm very close to stepen kotler's perspective on it and Stephen would say empathy is about the transmission of information compassion is a reaction to the transmission I like that and by the way I'm I'm a fan of of Stephen's work I think he I think he's quite astute and boy is he a hard worker he writes like a beast I think he's up at like 4 in the morning he also has like 50 Chihuahuas or something crazy he's way in the dogs yeah and apparently well you can fit more chihuahua in a room than any other gotcha Stephen but yeah so um and and that was what when I was with the FBI we started collaborating with Harvard because the Harvard definition um was empathy was not liking the other side it was just demonstrating an understanding of their perspective um Bob minukin book beyond winnings chapter the tension between empathy and assertiveness he says empathy is not agreeing disagreeing or even liking the other side which sort of falls into what Stephen talked about you know it's about the transmission of information now empathy is a very compassionate thing to do but it doesn't necessarily equate to compassion itself if I'm if I if I let you know if I make you feel heard by me saying to you what your perspective on something is you're going to feel cared for you're going to feel understood it's going to land with you really well I don't necessarily have to feel compassion for you I know it's a precursor to compassion so I would separate it from sympathy clearly and I would even Seath separate it from compassion although I know it's a very compassionate thing to do it's about tactical empathy is about me actively demonstrating verbally to you that I understand where you're coming from tactic from the experience in hostage negotiators backed up by Neuroscience is that people largely react negatively so the smarter move for me instead of trying to reinforce a positive is to First deactivate the negative by simply calling it out calling the elephant a room out don't deny the elephant don't ignore the elephant call The Elephant a room out say it probably going to sound like I'm greedy if I expect that you're going to think I'm overreaching I'm not going to say I don't want you to think I'm greedy I'm going to say it's probably going to seem greedy so simply well-educated emotional intelligence influence G Instinct influence on what the other side is thinking and feeling if I can Define it in that way then it becomes an unlimited skill if it requires me for to have compassion for you when I don't then that limits my ability to use empathy and I'm not interested in having that ability to be limited I want it to be an unlimited skill so if you just if you just Define it strictly in terms of transmission of information then it's not sympathy or Compassion or liking or greeing it has a very powerful effect it at least feels like compassion to the other side it reacts with the emotional circuitry the neurochemicals that everybody has to some degree if they're alive even if they're on this the spectrum they have some of that going on inside and of what I've read on even even the mental illnesses uh in my last century training I saw people who were paranoid schizophrenic is it effectively be more of a wiring problem than a chemical problem for for Layman's description and a lot of what I've read said empathy is even affected with paranoid schizophrenics people regardless of how uh disarray the circuitry in their head is it's uh it helps them on some level to feel understood so empathy is just about letting somebody feel understood example when I'm I'm working terrorism we had a lot of Arab Muslims testifying open civilian court against a a legitimate Muslim cleric who was also a criminal who also committed crimes and I would sit down with him and I'd say to him right off the bat CU I know where they're coming from you believe that there's been a succession of American governments for the last 200 years that have been anti-islamic and they'd look at me and they go like yeah I never said I it was true I never said I agreed I never said I disagreed by me simply articulating what their perspective on the interaction was they were so startled by it it was empathy and and we were so good at that empathy frequently in that in that time frame they would say are you are you Muslim and I'd say no I respect the religion you know if you need to know you know I'm a Christian but I respect your religion and I I got no problem saying to you where you're coming from that's empathy from my definition and then it becomes an unlimited skill I I don't have to feel it I don't have to necessarily want to do anything about it you know Gman says there's cognitive empathy me just recognizing where your emotions are coming from there's emotional empathy me feeling your emotions and there's empathic concern me wan to do something about your distress my version of tactical empathy probably brings those into play in sequence on a Continuum of sorts but none of them are precursors it's just me showing to you that I understand understand where you're coming from and it has a phenomenally favorable impact on the interaction tell me about mirroring as a tool yeah mirroring is um one of the simplest easiest um and most effective of the skill set takes the least amount of brain power it's just repeating one to three-ish words of what somebody has just said uh can be one it you should never usually be more than five hostage negotiators learn it by repe the last one to three words that somebody's just said it doesn't have to be the last one to three words and the mirroring is not the body language mirror it's not mimicking anybody physically and it's not mimicking their tone of voice or their affect or anything about them it's just repeating one to three-ish words we found that accesses for whatever part of brain you uh that you got to energized to do it it's it's a different part of the brain than labeling people are usually either good really good at labeling like I I label almost everybody on my team labels a lot sounds like this is bothering you sounds like seems like you just not really sure where this is going and the mirror I got to consciously make it a point to mirror and what's a mirror used for it's in place of what did you mean by that or would you please go on or I don't understand could you repeat that again so I'll listen for stuff that either I don't understand or I need you to talk more about and instead of saying could you say some more about that I'll just mirror the words now for whatever reason it connects the thoughts in your head the message the way that lands is I heard what you said the words I got the words because I just repeated him and I still don't understand so I need a more in-depth explanation without using the same words that you just used because if you say um I think axpress aism is useless and I might say what do you mean by that and you go isopraxism is useless you repeat the same words only louder you figure that saying it louder will make it penetrate my Cranium that doesn't work I need you to read to explain to go into more depth to expand using different words and for whatever reason we found as hostage negotiators and I find in business that if I mirror you you'll expand and you'll connect so it's I use it in that context I might use it to get you to hear yourself out loud like if what you just said doesn't make sense I'll repeat it back word for word one to three words and I'll upward and flect I'll say that that doesn't make sense you know use use my tone make it land with my tone so you can hear yourself out loud somebody else just pointed out to me the other day that if you're talking to somebody and they're in midth thought and they kind of their voice Trails off because they sort of lost their train of thought if you mirror them there that helps them get their train of thought back and expand so it's a it's a ridiculously effective communication tool to get people to expand and feel heard its Simplicity puts some people off there are some people that say yeah it sounds stupid I don't I don't see what good that will do I always notice if somebody's really wants to know about mirroring my description is they're both high IQ and high EQ and why does that work a high IQ guy is going to want to know something that's really simple that doesn't take any effort to do and that's what a mirror does it's really really effective and it's almost no effort on your part at all interesting I must say that Neuroscience has a um an unfortunate dirth of knowledge about how brains interact this is starting to change but most of what we know about how brains work is from putting people into functional magnetic resonance imaging machines so-called MRI um exposing them to movies or games that they have to play Etc and then looking at brain state activation there are a few laborator starting to look at how people interact in real time with both people in separate MRI machines that hopefully we'll be able to parse some of this and um I'm certain that somebody hearing this will um use this knowledge to go do the experiment if not I'll I'll run up the flag pole to some uh highly qualified people at Stanford who could who could do this because it' be fun to see what's happening but I have the sense that what's happening is that there is a real merge of cognition when one hears their own words right spoken back to them that um well you know you now got two brains processing the same information and that has to lead new places so um I don't have any um uh insight as to where what exactly is happening but um certainly that something is happening there right evidenced by the real world results that you're getting we don't need experiments to tell us that um but it'd be interesting to to see and learn a bit of what's happening if there's a fusion for instance of a coactivation of emotional centers coactivation of um you there's something about hearing our own voice that's very different than hearing other people's voices most people cringe when they hear their own voice on recording right um most not all um some people are in love with their own voice um we know these people but we know that our auditory system cancels out the hearing of our own voice did you know that as we're talking now our auditory system is suppressing our own voice we don't really hear ourselves speak the same way that when you speak I hear you speak yeah so um it's an active neurochemical inhibition of the response and it's amazing too because as we grow up our voice changes puberty and so forth and other ways too that the vocal cords change in thickness Etc and our voice changes but we always know self from other in terms of voice and we cancel out our actual auditory perception of our own that's fascinating and breathing and heartbeat we shut down our response to self actively within the brain that's fascinating so maybe hearing back some of what we just said allows us to actually hear what we just said yeah well true and that's why people sometimes all somebody needs is a sounding board so they can they can somebody else can hear hear they can hear themselves out and get it repeated back to them and then they go like wait a minute did I just say that yeah interesting interesting useful indeed proactive listening tell us about proactive listening we're all told that we need to be better listeners you know the other day someone said we got two ears in one mouth as if that's supposed to remind us um most people have two ears in one mouth um but I get the point they were saying hey there's value in listening and more often than not we default to broadcast but no reception we're mostly broadcast less reception right um hence the uh the call for nasal breathing it's useful in a lot of circumstances uh because it keeps us it keeps our mouth shut um what is proactive listening how do we do it what's it good for I'm really trying to get people out of the notion of active listening just because active listening has been so overused that people have lost track of it and it most of it is taught poorly and it's interactive or it's proactive and so we learned as hostage negotiators first of all just to label the presenting emotion and we just assumed that and the presenting emotion was always anger of some form anger upset uh on certain rare instances the guy was under control but they were almost always negative emotions so we just assumed that it was uh defined to what was uh confined to what was driving hostage takers was negativity now if I may because now I feel like an an impostor talking about Neuroscience to you your knowledge of Neuroscience is is is spoton uh Voss I I want say numerous times you you've asked me about things in neuroscience and you you've never been off the mark so you've clearly done your homework too we keep trying to learn about it but um Layman's terminology the survival brain is largely negative ballpark I would say 75% negative your reactions are going to be negative so number one I believe that's principally backed up by the experiments of Neuroscience e fmis if you alluded to and so then in hostage negotiation we were taught to basically label the presenting emotion and then I've seen experimentation or reporting of experiments um I think the first time I read about it was in a book called The upward spiral and that book is a good 10 years old I think which means you know the Neuroscience is evolving but primarily the experiment there that I remember reading about and read about in other places that if people were uh undergoing a negative emotion in my Layman's paraphrase of the experiment is they they shown a picture that induced the negative emotion in their head and then they asked people to Simply call out what the emotion was and when they self-labeled then the emotion diminished now the degree of diminishment varies but the percentage of time that it diminishes by simply by calling it out is just darn near all the time so if we're largely 75% negative and we can deactivate the negativity by calling it out well let's be proactive if you're a human being and we're engaged in in a negotiation there's going to be certain very predictable negativity that's going to be there and I should be proactive in calling it out anticipating the negativity is going to be there based on a circumstances highly predictable and your gut instinct before that you were referring to when you want to say look I don't want you to think I'm being greedy your gut's telling you it's highly predictable you're going to come off as greedy so let me be proactive and say it's probably going to seem like I'm being greedy and that's the dialing over to what is eminently predictable in the interaction and just being proactive to deactivate the negative emotions that either are taking place or what our experiences found and I haven't seen any science that has yet that has had the opportunity to back this up it inoculates I can create a barrier if I call out a negative that's not there it doesn't plant it it actually inoculates you from it if and I've done this in practice I've I was given a lecture a couple of years ago anybody asks a question I try to find the value in the question no matter how bad the question is this poor guy asked me a question that I just cannot not find a single component in his question that demonstrates that he was listening or paying attention there was nothing about it that I can congratulate him on and so I said this going to sound harsh because I know the answer I'm getting ready to give him is going to make it sound like to the group that I think he's stupid I just I can't think of a way to respond to this without saying effectively like what are you thinking about that's got nothing to do what we're talking about so I go this is going to sound harsh and I answer the question and he just kind of goes okay and I start answering somebody else question and he goes that wasn't harsh now if I hadn't said this is going to sound harsh and answered the question I guarantee you my answer would have embarrassed him and embarrassment is one of the worst negative emotions you can inflict on anybody and he would hate me to this day for embarrassing him so I got a moment coming at me that is predictably negative and I can let it I can let that train run me down or I can call it out in advance and get a reaction where the guy says that wasn't that bad and that's what being proactive about the emotions is about I love it uh and I'm recalling an instance during graduate school or my graduate adviser who sadly has passed away but was a phenomenal scientist I mean just so so pure insist on getting the answers could emotionally detached from the answers I mean she's just was a was a ninja she used to come into the laboratory when we were working on a paper and she'd sit down and she'd say you're going to hate me for what I'm about to ask you to do and I think oh no like I'm going to have to redo all the analysis or I'm G like some you know Monumental thing and then she'd say you got to change the like fonts in figure two my Godly what do you mean I want to hate you but it but it was relief but I wanted nothing more than to make her happy with my work because I I respected the standard that she held so so greatly um I mean she could have asked me to you know stand on my head and do the experiments 50 times I would probably would have done it if I thought they would make the the project better and as a consequence she would have been pleased um because she was the standard for me and in many way still is but I'm wondering if she read your book because uh she used to pressage these um requests with like you're going to hate me and then she'd asked me for something I'm like I don't hate you like that's nothing but now I wonder if uh if I would have been taken back if she had just said uh you know um hey by the way figure two needs redoing I might have been kind of bristled by that so um maybe she read your book Chris these are great tools mirroring and proactive listening and thank you for sharing these of course did you ever employ the family members of kidnappers friends of kidnappers as a means to of um tap into a different aspect of their psyche you know because I think that we are all as human beings very context driven so I can imagine that the person who kidnaps somebody or who's um trying to steal somebody's resources is in a particular groove of the of person and and I I do think there are people in the world who are just evil but I also know because I read about it and I trust the sources that there are people who have done horrendous things who love their dog um and genuinely love their dog and wouldn't harm an animal but I'm not trying to give these people a pass but I could imagine that um those other facets to somebody represent really good entry points for allowing them to see the kind of in congruence in their behavior um or is it the case that when these are high stress situations that you just have to basically you know you have to attack the you know disarm the aggressor and you're just focusing on the person as the bad actor not considering the other contexts of their lives all right so let's draw a distinction between uh hostage takers in a contained situation and um kidnappers uncontained unknown location so you're probably asking about somebody in a contained situation uh bad guys in a bank Dwight Watson in in his tractor in Washington DC so very counter intuitively if they're in a contained situation there's a saying out there that says the system that you're employing is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you have so bad guy Dwight Watson is on his tractor in DC the family's part of the system that put him there the blunt harsh reality of that is now at that siege that went on long enough and it was so high-profile some of his family members showed up now we can we could and and did try to use them I'm I'm walking I'm walking from one place to another from the negotiation operation uh cell component on the way to command post hostage negotiator stops me a couple of people with them it's Watson's family and they see I'm in a hurry and then I'm not interested in being stopped and they got to say to me something to stop me and get my um attention and they go look our brother's just hurting in his heart he's just hurting you know things have gone bad for our whole family and he's just hurting his heart don't kill him over that and I looked at the negotiator and I said get that on tape and we'll play that for him because if we can get that on tape exactly the way they said it that'll land but if we put them on a phone with them they're going to try to reason with them and they're going to say stuff to them that didn't help which they don't very well intentioned but it's going to be counterintuitive and it's probably going to make it worse so you have to understand family can be extremely important if you can get them to say exactly the right thing and it's probably going to need to be highly orchestrated because you know how it's going to land and unfortunately if they if you get them in a direct conversation it'll probably renew an old wound you know family members have hurt each other in ways that they have no idea even happened and so the other you know a family member my son to a day remembers when I told him Santa Claus wasn't real and I have no what I have no memory of that conversation I'm sorry I blew it for you right man wait we got oh my goodness the family members have heard each other over the years that they have no idea which comes up in these live conversations and you don't know what what wounds you don't even know what wounds are there that you caused right and so in in a contained situation a family member can be extremely helpful but it has to be it's it's a surgical shot that you have to be really really really careful with otherwise it can go the other way because the wounds and people don't even know there gosh that's such a psychologically astute way of viewing it because I'm a big fan of the so-called family systems model of psychology I mean you can't look at any human being psychology ology positive meaning adaptive or maladaptive psychology and not look at the family system which that evolved um which is not to say that some perfectly healthy families occasionally don't have issues with a child having mental illness and and I mean that happens but I'm told that 99.9% of the time you can identify a family system organization or a lineage a genetic tie Etc that that makes things start to make sense when somebody's really struggling right right and and as you pointed out sadly often times that that involves um Pains of past um wow well thanks for sharing that because I I think that um in my mind the movie version of it is you know they bring the mother in and it's like Billy don't do it you know then as you said Billy might like that might be the time when Billy's really GNA let his mother know you know childhood sucked for Billy right and that's not you want yeah goodness what a complex job what a complex high stakes High consequence job what did you do to unload some of the heaviness and I'm not just talking about getting a good night's sleep or having a a beer with your co-workers afterward although those things serve you know important roles for um for people I realize um you know do you think we can dump the hard stuff in our head and our hearts in a way that um you know allows us to be functional cuz you know people in your line of work and I think just anyone in the world you you live long enough you're GNA you're going to experience loss yeah you're GNA get kicked in the in the gut yeah and you're going to see people you care about get kicked in the gut that that's there's so much Beauty to life as well but but that's the reality so um did you do you have tools processes that you use to kind of dump the baggage so that you can lean into your relationships and your relationship to yourself um with with a restored sense of optimism um yeah I think mostly most of the people that I've always worked around we've been very reinforcing of one another um comedically uh emotionally friendship wise you know being able to laugh with each other taking it easy on each other getting people you know laughter um and genuine understanding with with uh without um you know somebody trying to tell you that you did wrong I've been lucky enough to either find myself in those groups most of the time or we we just evolved it that's just the way that we were we were attracted to one another emotionally psychologically because of that that's probably it mostly I mean I've tried to parse some of these emotions out recently like I'm not particularly proud of anything I've ever did done but I always felt like it was a privilege like you must be a proud of your accomplishments I don't know that it's Pride but there's uh there's other satisfaction that I get out of it and so thinking about what drives me also now you know that I'm running a company and I'm and and I got people also entrepreneurs that are trying to do the best for their employees you know what are we encouraging one another so that what ever we're doing people feel good about it and I tried to take a lot of that from what I learned as an FBI agent and a hostage negotiator and the people that I was around and you know we did joke with each other a lot and we did um play tricks on each other you know good good-natured humor avoid the people that are running you down but be able to uh you know take take some good-natured ribbing every now and then and I and I think humor is is uh one way or another B with hard work and an appreciation for what you're doing um has probably been most of the mental health along the way occasional bourbon love it um we did a whole episode on alcohol and so people are going to hear me say love it and think wait here I'm supporting Al listen the data say as long as you're not an alcoholic as long as you are of age um probably two drinks a week is or less is safe uh make them make them good high quality drinks if you're going to have them consume them in the right context or don't consume them at all but um but that's why I said love it I I I support your your love of bourbon um I'm not a bourbon drinker but um tell me a little bit more about what you're up to lately you alluded to it a moment ago that you're running teams that are doing a lot so you're you're in charge of a lot of people now helping people help people um providing a lot of service in the world through a lot of different channels um first of all I want to say that your book never split the difference one of my favorite books thank you um I don't say that lightly I don't endorse books very often but the books I do endorse I love love love I also have to say that it's a tossup between your book never split the dis difference and the body keeps the score for the award for best titles of any book those are just like amazing titles amazing amazing titles tall RZ our uh co-writer came up with a title yeah it's a phenomenal title that and the body keep this keeps the score just like because it's there's so much contained in in the title and then the book um exceeds expectations so uh really amazing book people should listen to it read it if they haven't already but you're doing a lot more right now than um than just writing although I want to hear about your other book projects as well but before you list off the number of things you're doing tell me first about Fireside because this sounds like a really interesting um Endeavor that frankly I haven't heard of before um what's Fireside uh brand new social media platform um it's essentially an interactive podcast it's a subscription service founded by Fallon faty and Mark cubin Fallon and I have been friends for a number of years she was Google's youngest employee she's an entrepreneur Dynamic smart hard charging person and it's sort of grew out of what's inadequate in some of the social media apps that are out there um trying to combine the best ideas of a few different things and Fallon suggested it to me and I thought I'll jump in because she's a Visionary and what it's turned out to be is it's effectively weekly Interactive Group coaching and you you get the app off your iPhone or your Android whatever platform your phone is on and then you log in we do an hour once a week and it's you're getting group coaching and you get ask questions and it's got a video component to it so if you want to ask a question we we're going to bring you up on quote stage and I get to see you and talk directly to you and you get to see me and talk directly to me or and I interviewed Mark cubin a couple of weeks ago and people got to come on and ask ask Mark questions or ask me questions and what it has turned out to be is just one of sort of U uh the the next level of how to get better at negotiations after you've read the book and probably taken a master class you know where do you go next one of the people that came on the podcast the other day the the the Fireside um episode they said well I don't have enough money yet to go to your inperson training events because those are expensive and this is how I'm going to get better in the in the meantime and and work my way in that direction and so the monthly coaching if you would to sign up for group coaching from us on a regular basis on a monthly basis it would probably easily cost you for what we're providing $25 $30,000 a month and this is a thousand a year so at scale it's an opportunity to interact directly with me and the members on my team once a week and get group coaching and it's and it's just kind of fun we're getting a kick out of it and people that really really care about interacting well with people guy comes on the first episode so that I did and he said besides the fact that you helped me make a lot more money you helped me save my marriage and he just needed to know how to talk more genuinely and honestly with his wife in a way that M made her felt heard and he didn't really have a a good way to do that beforehand and I I was just like that's a lot I don't I don't I don't know how to respond to that other than just be great ful that people can say stuff like that to us so the Fireside thing is kind of cool we're still experimenting with it it's an interactive podcast group coaching it's fun great I mean I would say uh changing lives there I mean the saving of marriage is is no small deal and I think that the ability to communicate um directly with people also I imagine gives them the opportunity to implement the the tools that you're providing in real time it's one thing to hear about something and and try it but then uh you can get feedback in real time are you on these these Fireside Chats directly or members of your team no I I do we do one every week and I'm once a month and the other thing too like I can explain something one way and if for whatever reason it doesn't land in your context you can't quite get it so that's what we found about the interactive nature of it somebody comes on and a and asks a question in their context and then I'll answer it and then they'll go like oh oh oh okay all right that helped so you get you get to hear people like you who are struggling with it the way you are but I haven't put it in your context yet and that's the other thing that's great about a Q&A a live Q&A we had a guest on here who told me that there are amazing data supporting the fact that people follow the medical and health advice of doctors that they can relate to far more than they follow the medical and health advice of Physicians that they feel aren't like them um and oftentimes this can include the physician or health care provider being someone that they would aspire to be like but oftentimes it's just some common Rapport like they both like baseball or they both like to cook or to garden and that sets a bridge right where then the patient is willing to do all these things that ordinarily they would be resistant to right and and there are really good data to support this and I I that that really stuck with me cuz it says that it's it's not just about the information or the the delivery route of the information that the context and the rapports even along something is like oh you you're a by the way I'm not a major you know a major sports fan on most things but you know like oh you're a Bills fan or something like me too like that can be the difference between somebody doing all the things to lower their blood pressure the day in changing their diet all that all those things versus not making the changes at all Rapport is a magic yeah it's kind of a magic component that changes changes everything well Fireside sounds like a great opportunity for people to not just ask questions but to build rapport with you and members of your team so um I'm going to check it out Lord knows I uh I need help improve my communications and C certain domains of life believe me I get the memos um fact um what other writing projects are you involved in if any um we're we've been toying with this uh companion uh operations manual for tactical empathy which getting it right is important so it's sort of a companion book to never spit the difference that's probably at least a year and a half out from being done so in the meantime we just do we do a lot of online training you know we got a we got a newsletter we put out weekly for for people to get our latest Cutting Edge application thoughts as much as possible we're putting information out that we charge for a lot and we put out a lot of free stuff you know I'm I I'm throwing out ideas on Instagram but we're constantly trying to put information out there so that so that people can collaborate better so specific we just finished a book for residential real estate agents uh friend of mine Steve scha we put that out last November that's sort of niched but it's mostly the Black Swan method for real estate agents CU every conversation they're in is a difficult emotional conversation sale of a house is one of the most stressful moments of anybody's life selling or buying so we just put that out in the meantime you know we're spread the gospel as much as possible we certainly point out the various places people can find you and and the different venues for for learning more I want to say that um numerous times throughout today's conversation you threw out the words sounds like as an opener and I have to say I have this kind of crazy idea in the back of my mind you know I I believe that um simple um field tested tools are immensely powerful not just for resolving the negotiations but really for changing the way that people interact with each other and themselves and you know if I have one wish uh for the world uh on the basis of our conversation how amazing would it be if kids learned early on to talk to one another from that soundslike perspective because I think that would naturally um Orient them toward listening right or at least offering a hypothesis of what they heard and how poorly they might be listening and then getting a defensive stance response that informs them about the ACT accuracy or lack of accuracy um and on and on I feel like that the sounds like um question sounds like you feel blank or sounds like you believe blank just seems to me like the um like one of the one of the most potent tools in the universe and I sure wish that all adults would implement it but that kids would learn about it too yeah that's that yeah that's a that's a great thought you know how how do how do we teach them at a younger age that that listening is actually an effective thing to do it's actually a way to think things through also so I yeah I agree I mean wave magic wand right exactly well Chris I want to thank you so much for your time today uh I mean you've joined us on this tour of so many different facets of your work prior and present and you let us uh get a little glimpse into the the portal of your future work too which I'm eagerly awaiting I also just want to thank you for everything that you do you've always struck me as such a giver of knowledge and um you know you you can't put a value on that you're constantly putting knowledge into the world on Instagram your book um Fireside and uh courses and on and on um gleaned from your experience in very very intense circumstances but really with an eye toward people getting the most out of that for their their daily lives which hopefully don't involve hostage negotiations unless they are hostage negotiator um so I just want to say um thank you ever so much for what you do and for being such a phenomenal uh communicator and also thank you for doing into that late night FM DJ voice yeah I you know I've been I wanted to be uh here sitting with you being interviewed on your podcast uh since I first discovered it you thank you several years ago and it's a privilege to be here I'm really really and I love what you're doing in getting actionable usable tools into the world so people can navigate more effectively thank you right back at you come back again all right thanks thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Chris Voss I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did to find links to Chris's website and to his excellent book never split the difference as well as to his social media handles please see the links in the show note captions if you're learning from Andor enjoying this podcast please subscribe to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zeroc cost way to support us in addition please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and apple you can leave us up to a five-star 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