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Speaker 1

00:03

Hello, everyone. My name is Maren Chesney, and welcome to this Talks at Google event. For much of his career, Chris Voss has been at the forefront of negotiation technique. He was a member of

Speaker 2

00:14

the New York City Joint terrorist task force for 14 years and lead crisis negotiator for the New York City division of the FBI before becoming the FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator. He currently teaches business negotiation in the MBA programs at the University of Southern California and Georgetown University as well as having taught at Harvard University and guest lectured at Northwestern University. He is the founder and CEO of the Black Swan Group and author of the new book, Never Split the Difference, Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.

Speaker 2

00:45

Talks at Google is honored to welcome him here today.

Speaker 3

00:48

Thank you very much. And I got to tell you, with that introduction, it makes it sound like I can't keep a job, doesn't it?

Speaker 2

00:54

So to begin, you and I were talking earlier, and I was telling you about how I read your book. And it is full of incredibly practical tips and great stories. And I told you about something that happened to me this morning.

Speaker 2

01:10

In preparing for this talk, I was going through all of my notes and all of the tickets and making sure that everything was in line. And I realized that I had forgotten to request directors' chairs for us to sit in. And so I sent out a quick email of, oh, shoot, I'm so sorry. I forgot to request these chairs.

Speaker 2

01:26

Is there any way that we can get some chairs for the day? And the response was, no, we're cleaning up from I.O. Sorry, but we can't get them to you today. And 1 of the lessons in the book is that no is not the end of the conversation.

Speaker 2

01:41

It's the beginning of a conversation. And me, before reading this book, would have said, oh, OK, I got to know. That must be the end. But I really did think of the book and think, OK, no.

Speaker 2

01:52

No does not mean absolutely not. It means what's a different approach? What's a different question that can be asked? And so I responded, well, is there any way that I can go pick them up somewhere?

Speaker 2

02:01

I understand you can't drop them off, but can I go pick them up? To which I got a response, actually, I was able to arrange it so that they can be dropped off for you. And it worked. It was amazing.

Speaker 2

02:13

So Yeah, that was just 1 of the many, many topics that you highlight in this book.

Speaker 3

02:19

All right, so first of all, thanks for getting me a chair. I appreciate that. Now, the interesting thing about that story, though, is 2 really important points.

Speaker 3

02:26

First of all, there's a lot more space between yes and no than most of us realize. Sometimes we get into sort of a binary on-off, yes-no sort of thing, and we don't realize how much space there really is there if we just give the other side a little bit of time to sort of think, a moment, if you will. There's some data out there that indicates to us that a moment is just 3 seconds. And the 3 seconds can be an eternity for mind process.

Speaker 3

02:50

So the other thing that's also really interesting about that, and I think it's 1 of the completely different approaches we take in a book, is what happens after the other side says no. Now, early on in my career, I came across a book that I still refer to all the time called Start With No by a guy named Jim Camp. And Camp's theory was if you make the other side feel free that they can say no at any time, then it respects their autonomy. They'll relax a little bit more.

Speaker 3

03:17

They'll be more willing to work with you, just knowing that it's OK to say no. So we decided to take it 1 step further and see what happens when someone actually says no. And since yes is protection, or no, yes is commitment, And we don't know what we've gotten ourselves into, which is why we're scared to say yes. But no is protection.

Speaker 3

03:38

That typically what we find is as soon as somebody says no, if they feel protected, they tend to relax, they center a little bit more, and they can think more quickly, which is exactly what happened with you. You inadvertently trigger to know. You remain very pleasant in the way you talk to her. And we know that if we're pleasant to interact with, it actually helps the other person think better.

Speaker 3

04:03

Because your mind works up to 31% more effectively if you're in a positive frame of mind. So when you're in a positive frame of mind, it triggers in somebody else and it makes them smarter. Just by smiling at them, You've got a wonderful tone of voice. So she's already making this person smarter by the way she interacts with her.

Speaker 3

04:22

She says, your counterpart says no, which she now sort of centers herself and triggers. You give her a moment in time. And the next thing you know, She's throwing ideas at you and working it out. And that's finding that space between yes and no.

Speaker 3

04:36

And many times, it's triggered when the other person actually says no, because they feel protected and they feel safe. And people are more likely, once they feel protected and safe, to interact with you. So just in a few moments, you were brilliant.

Speaker 2

04:50

Thank you. So after that first no, in general, what's the correct response? Earlier when we were chatting, you said, well, you don't want to ask a, you don't want to attack in any way.

Speaker 2

05:06

You don't want to. So what's the right approach after that initial no?

Speaker 3

05:10

Well, first of all, just to hesitate, give them a chance to think. Because You never know what's going through the other person's mind when you start talking with them. There's probably 4 or 5 things that have been going through their mind throughout the day.

Speaker 3

05:21

So giving them a chance to sort of focus on you is the other thing that no does. And I'll give you another hint. We never call anybody on the phone and say, have you got a few minutes to talk, ever. Because if you say that to somebody, a whole bunch of things start going through their mind.

Speaker 3

05:35

How long is a few minutes? 5 minutes, do I want to talk to you? Do I even like you? All these things go through their mind.

Speaker 3

05:41

Whenever we call someone, we say, is now a bad time to talk? And you get 1 or 2 responses on that. The person will say, no, no. It's never a bad time to talk.

Speaker 3

05:51

What do you want to talk about? And they're very focused. Or they'll say, yeah, as a matter of fact, it is. But I can talk at 2 o'clock tomorrow.

Speaker 3

05:58

And you get a scheduled time to talk. Now, the follow up to that, if nothing good happens in that space that happens after that, the next most important thing to do is get the other person to say, that's right. Not you're right, but that's right. And you get a that's right when you summarize a situation from the other person's point of view.

Speaker 3

06:21

Don't be afraid to summarize a situation that sounds like it's against your best interests. I mean, that's actually the key to it. And we've broken open a number of negotiations. But it's a summary of what the other person, the facts, and how the other person sees them.

Speaker 3

06:38

And that's right will then move you forward in like ridiculously phenomenal ways. It's actually, there's a number of different reasons why we think that it works. 1 of the reasons is my co-writer, Tal Raz, is brilliant. And read anything he's written.

Speaker 3

06:54

Tal Raz, T-A-H-L-R-A-Z. If he's written it, it's well written, and it's worth reading. But We were going through this, and he said, I think it triggers a subtle epiphany. Because think of the number of times when you've heard someone on TV, or you've seen a slogan, that you totally agreed with.

Speaker 3

07:11

And your reaction is, that's right. That's right is when you completely agree with something and you think it's the complete truth. So that's a powerful thing to get somebody to say. The other thing I think it is, we think it is, is if someone you're talking to says that to you, they're telling you they feel empathy with you at that brief moment.

Speaker 3

07:33

And there's a difference between empathy and sympathy. But when they feel empathy from you, they feel connected with you. And they want to collaborate. So if you get a no, the very next most important thing to try to get out of somebody's that's right.

Speaker 2

07:49

And so it sounds like the that's right is similar to, oh, you get it. And there are a couple of times where, in different ways, you sort of highlight the importance of your counterpart feeling like you get it, finding their religion and triggering a that's right. And so how is this empathy and the oh, you understand important in a negotiation?

Speaker 3

08:18

You know, it's a great question because we believe the entire world breaks down into 3 basic approaches to conflict. And it's basically fight, flight, or make friends. And Each 1, something is more important to them than making the deal.

Speaker 3

08:34

The deal is secondary to each 1 of those 3 types. And 1 particular type that I happen to belong to, the assertive type, the natural born assertives, We think of ourselves as being very direct and honest. It's more important that you actually understand where I'm coming from than you agree with me. I want to know you know what I mean.

Speaker 3

08:58

If you know completely what my perspective is and I'm satisfied that you've heard me out, then there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to agree to your deal, as long as you know where I'm coming from. I mean, it's sort of like if you work for a boss who wasn't doing what you want him or her to do, well, if you understood, if they knew that you knew where you were coming from, they accepted everything that you said, you actually wouldn't have a problem if they didn't follow your advice. Just as long as you were 1, 000% sure they knew where you were coming from. So the other 2 types, what we call the accommodator, friend-oriented person.

Speaker 3

09:39

They want to make sure that we have a great relationship. We don't make a deal that's fine, but as long as you know that I like you and I feel you like me, That's important. And then the third type is the analytical. And they're highly pragmatic, try very hard to make dispassionate decisions.

Speaker 3

09:58

As long as they have the opportunity to share their reason for what they want, their thinking, the results of their analysis, then they're happy also. So there are things more important than making a deal to all of us.

Speaker 2

10:12

Do you find that people usually fall pretty strongly into 1 of these 3 camps? Or are some people a combination of 2, or even a combination of all 3? Well, you end up, the more experience you get,

Speaker 3

10:22

you tend to pick up traits from the other 2 types. Because to be a complete negotiator, even a rainmaker, you need all 3. You need to be able to assert your best position.

Speaker 3

10:34

You need to get along with people. And you need to be able to assert your best position. You need to get along with people. And you need to be able to analyze.

Speaker 3

10:39

So very few people are just like stone cold 1 of the 3. And then as we learn, we begin to pick up the other types. So the assertives and the analysts tend to pick up the accommodators' characteristics because there's some solid data out there that indicates that you're 6 times more likely to make a deal with somebody you like. And as an assertive, I want to know a better way to come to agreement.

Speaker 3

11:07

So if you enjoy interacting with me, that increases the chances that I'll get what I want. I'm good with that.

Speaker 2

11:12

And then Do you have to adapt your technique, depending on who you're dealing with, as well?

Speaker 3

11:18

Well, you learn, and then you begin to understand that if you have impasse, if you have a disagreement, how the other person might be looking at it in really broad characteristics. Like, for example, just silence, dead silence. Each 1 of those 3 types looks at silence very differently.

Speaker 3

11:40

As an assertive, if you're quiet, I think that means you want to hear more from me. And so I talk. Where if you're an analyst and you're quiet, you just want to think. And I could completely misinterpret that.

Speaker 3

11:56

And you're happy when I go silent, because you're like, thank god he shut up so I can think. And then the accommodator, who's very relationship-focused when there's silence, well, the only time the accommodator goes silent is when they're mad. So if we're talking and you go silent on me, I'm afraid you're mad at me. So When there's an impasse, when there's a difference, when you're having a problem, it's usually a result of the 3 types.

Speaker 3

12:21

My co-writer, Tal, is highly analytical. He's brilliant. I mean, he's a brilliant guy. And I sent him an email once when we were working on the book.

Speaker 3

12:32

And there was some wording that I wanted to have changed. And what we were working on, I want it written a little bit differently. And a writer will say, change whatever you want. But that's their baby.

Speaker 3

12:41

You start changing words, they don't like that. So I sent him the email. I didn't hear anything from him, like 4 or 5 days. And now I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, this has got to be bad.

Speaker 3

12:52

So I call him on the phone, and he'd been on vacation with his family. And he could tell that I was concerned. And he goes, what's with all the concern? You never get worried about anything.

Speaker 3

13:02

Why are you worried? It's 4 or 5 days since we spoke, and I sent you this email. And he said, OK. Well, a lot of people tell me going silent on them bothers them, too.

Speaker 3

13:13

So I just interpreted it wrong.

Speaker 2

13:15

You started your negotiation career in hostage negotiation. Is that correct?

Speaker 3

13:20

Well, I started it actually when I was about 3, trying to get out of trouble with my parents.

Speaker 2

13:25

Professionally. Professionally, yes. Technically. And so I was wondering if you might talk a little bit about how you found Hostas Negotiation and then how that's led into the rest of your career, founding the Black Swan Group, and how negotiation has been a part of your life.

Speaker 3

13:43

Sure. Completely indirectly, everything sort of fell out of the sky. I was on a SWAT team with the FBI, had a recurring knee injury, and then just decided before the knee was completely shot, whether you could still put it back together, try something different. And in the crisis response, I always like crisis response, We had hostage negotiators.

Speaker 3

14:05

And that sounded cool. I didn't know what they did, but how hard could it be? Talk to people, right? That can't be hard.

Speaker 3

14:10

And so I decided I was going to be a hostage. And I very definitely distinctly remember thinking, yeah, I'll talk to Terrace. I can do that. So I went to the head of the New York office, this team, a woman named Amy, phenomenal, tough New York agent.

Speaker 3

14:27

And she said, you got any experience? I was like, No. Do you have any training? No.

Speaker 3

14:33

Do you have any education in the area? No. Any background whatsoever in this that would make you a good negotiator? No.

Speaker 3

14:43

She was like, go away. I'm like, come on. She says, no, go away. Everybody wants to be a hostage negotiator.

Speaker 3

14:48

Everybody wants to do it. No, go away. And I said, there's got to be something I could do. And she said, there is.

Speaker 3

14:55

Go volunteer at a suicide hotline, which I did. I recontacted Amy recently because I wanted to put the story in the book. And she said, you know, I had to have told 1, 000 people to volunteer at suicide hotlines, and 2 people did, and you were 1 of them. 1 of the things I learned was Ask the right person, do what they tell you to do.

Speaker 3

15:17

You've got to ask the right person. But be willing to do it. And so I volunteered at the hotline. I came back 5, 6 months later.

Speaker 3

15:24

And I said, yeah, I've been volunteering. She said, you're kidding me. She said, I tell everybody to do that. Nobody does it.

Speaker 3

15:29

Where are you volunteering? I told her it was a suicide hotline. It was founded by Norman Vincent Peale, the power positive thinking guy in New York. She said, that's where I volunteered too.

Speaker 3

15:40

So I was the only 1 that did what I was told to do. She moved me past 5 other people. I got the next training slot. I went down to the FBI's crisis hostage negotiation school.

Speaker 3

15:53

It was phenomenal. Phenomenal experience. It's almost moving. And then came back and was lucky enough, not terribly long after I got back, there was a bank robbery with hostages in Brooklyn, which is actually a very rare event.

Speaker 3

16:09

They happen in the movies. They happen on TV every other week. In real life, it happens in the entire country about once every 20 years. And we showed up.

Speaker 3

16:20

And it was a great operation. The first bank robber to surrender surrendered to me personally. So it went well. We got everybody out.

Speaker 3

16:30

And then I started to teach that incident and tell everybody how it went and found that I liked teaching. And then 1 thing led to another. And next thing I know, I'm sitting here in Google.

Speaker 2

16:43

I wondered if you also might talk about the Black Swan Group a little bit and what you do there.

Speaker 3

16:49

While I was still with the Bureau, talked my way into Harvard Law School's negotiation course. I'm the only agent that ever did that. And while I was there collaborating with my now colleagues at Harvard, we decided we were doing the same thing, only same techniques, different stakes.

Speaker 3

17:08

Basically, that means I had better stories. And then after that, I decided that this was an area that hostage negotiation does apply to business and personal negotiations. Did very well with it there. And I was encouraged by my colleagues there, Sheila Heen, John Richardson, Doug Stone, phenomenal people have been very supportive of me ever since I came across them.

Speaker 3

17:32

Very good friends to this day. And so I just decided it would be something new to do. Because most of my career, I've liked going in new directions, trying stuff that other people hadn't tried. So about the time I retired, which was in 2007, which I know already seems like a long time ago, there was a book out called The Black Swan.

Speaker 3

17:54

And it was about very small, little, innocuous things that had massive impacts. And that's the whole design of these skills. I mean, these skills, even if the other guy knows that you're negotiating with them, they're still OK with it. It's very subtle.

Speaker 3

18:12

1 of the cases I talk about in the book, It was a very long kidnapping in the Philippines. And ultimately, 1 of the turning points was getting the terrorists to say that's right on the phone. Changed everything. There was a $10 million ransom demand on the table, going from $10 million to 0 in 1 conversation, space of about 5 minutes.

Speaker 3

18:31

It had been going on for a while, and our negotiator got the bad guy to say, that's right. And this was a bad, bad guy. Murdering, raping, head chopping bad guy. Got him to say, that's right.

Speaker 3

18:42

And it changed everything. So a couple of weeks after that case was over, I was back in the Philippines on another case. And the negotiator that I was coaching is a phenomenal, patriotic, wonderful human being, a guy named Benji. He says, hey, you're never going to guess who called me on the phone 2 weeks ago.

Speaker 3

19:02

So I was like, I don't know. And he said it was our terrorist, a bad guy named Sabaya. He said, Sabaya called me. Really?

Speaker 3

19:11

What'd he say? Because he didn't know who Benji was. He just knew Benji had to be the government military cop, some high-ranking official, but didn't know who he was. He said, hey, have you been promoted yet?

Speaker 3

19:27

I don't know what you said to me on the phone. I was going to kill Jeffrey. He kept me from doing it. They should promote you.

Speaker 3

19:35

He hangs up. See, even when they know, they're still OK with it. And that was the whole approach to negotiation. Someone will deal with you, and they won't feel worse as a result of it.

Speaker 3

19:53

Most people I know, if they got a negotiation story, they'll be like, oh, yeah, I had these guys over a barrel. Boy, I really hammered them. There's nothing they can do. Well, the problem with that kind of approach is if you hammer somebody in a negotiation, they're going to wait for the rest of their life to pay you back.

Speaker 3

20:10

And you don't hammer people that you never see again. There's no such thing as a one-off. They're going to be people that stay in your world 1 way or another, either your day-to-day life, or they will see you again. So you want to negotiate successfully with people where afterwards they call you up on the phone and they say, nice job, Nice job.

Speaker 3

20:31

I'd talk to you again, which is exactly what happened in the Philippines.

Speaker 2

20:36

You do make the point in this book that your counterpart is also your partner, which I thought was an interesting point in the negotiation of that you're not necessarily going head to head. You're trying to work towards a conclusion. But you also make the point that compromise is a little bit of a dirty word sometimes in negotiations.

Speaker 2

21:00

It's a

Speaker 3

21:00

horrible word. And I hope they don't bleep that out on the tape, right? You said it's compromise.

Speaker 2

21:06

So what about compromise? What about negotiations do you think involves working together? And then what about compromise is so negative?

Speaker 2

21:15

And there's

Speaker 3

21:16

a difference between a high value trade and compromise. Compromise, splitting the difference, meeting halfway, that's usually kind of a lazy approach. And you leave money on the table.

Speaker 3

21:28

You leave better outcomes on the table. When you compromise, you meet in the middle. I like to say, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better. And so you want to interact with someone because the adversary is the situation.

Speaker 3

21:42

If you're talking to someone, actually you both have a problem that the 2 of you talking together will likely solve. And even if it's what's the most effective high value trade, what can I give you that's really valuable to you that might be fairly easy for me to give? I did a talk for the Memphis dispute resolution for the Memphis Bar Association a number of years ago. They were putting out a magazine.

Speaker 3

22:12

They had to put somebody on the cover of the magazine. They said, we'll put your picture on the cover of the magazine. Getting my picture on a cover of a magazine to get some distribution is extremely valuable to me. Something very hard for me to get, that I don't get on a regular basis, something they've got anyway that they've got to do every month.

Speaker 3

22:33

So that's a perfect definition of a high value trade. And the idea was they wanted some training on negotiation. And they wanted to hear somebody that came in from a different point of view and some stuff that's fairly easy to understand. I mean, I've had a lot of people tell me that the ideas are digestible.

Speaker 3

22:50

They're easy to apply. They're not hard to figure out. Everything is designed to be very user-friendly, that you can figure it out and you can use it, and you start making a difference right away. So yeah, the adversary is a situation.

Speaker 3

23:03

The person you're talking to, they might feel like that they've got to be your adversary. And you can get them out of that eventually with enough time. People are really far more defensive than they are attacking. But the adversary is the situation, so I've got to partner up with this person.

Speaker 3

23:20

So I'm going to engage in behaviors that's going to make you tend to want to collaborate with me. And if we get into some really serious hard bargaining, I can do that too. I can hold a really strong line, but ideally, you're still going to feel good about the entire interaction.

Speaker 2

23:36

Hostage takers and kidnappers are crazy. So there's no way that those same techniques are going to work on sane people.

Speaker 3

23:45

But yeah, the perception is that hostage takers are crazy. And they're not. I mean, everybody has patterns.

Speaker 3

23:53

Everybody is driven by emotions. You know, now that there's much more of a recognition of emotional intelligence, it's not that hard to make that case. But if we were in a business meeting and I were to say, it sounds like you're emotional about this, that still would be an insult. But if I were to say, it sounds like you're passionate about this, you'd be like, that's right.

Speaker 3

24:12

Yes, I am. That's right. That's right, remember? So what's the difference between passion and emotions?

Speaker 3

24:22

I don't know. It's a matter of terminology. And then also, we were talking about Danny Kahneman's book, thinking fast and slow. There's more and more data out there that indicates there's an emotional component to every decision we make, each and every decision.

Speaker 3

24:37

We make our mind up based on what we care about. Therefore, what you care about is an emotion, how you feel about things. So let's start with the idea that we're emotional to begin with. A hostage taker, if he's upset, is just more of himself or herself.

Speaker 3

24:55

They're not different. They're just more themselves intensely. So hostage negotiations is a set of tools and skills that can deal with people in very intense emotions. They're equally effective when the emotions are less intense.

Speaker 3

25:09

And the flip side is, half the time we act like things are the end of the world anyway. I mean, Anybody that's had trouble getting to sleep at night means you were tossing and turning over something that was bothering you. It bothered you enough so that you couldn't get to sleep. Anybody that's ever felt stress, you're just taking yourself hostage because you're worried about losing something.

Speaker 3

25:35

So when we start running it backward, then actually there's some emotional wiring and everything that happens. So let's start from the premise to begin with. Let's have some tools that work really well, our emotional intelligence tools. You know, there's still a very intense drive to be rational.

Speaker 3

25:52

You know, getting to yes, which is a fundamentally, phenomenally sound book, but it really is based on a drive to become rational. Or even the recognition says separate a person's positions from their interests. OK, wow, that sounds very rational. Why don't you tell me why you want what you want?

Speaker 3

26:15

Well, most people think if I tell you why I want it, then you've just got all the power over me. You've just gotten at my deepest, darkest secrets, or I've revealed all my weaknesses, and I've revealed all my vulnerabilities. So that is an idea that just doesn't work. Tell me why you want this.

Speaker 3

26:32

Oh, because I can't pay my bills. Oh, then I've got leverage, quote, leverage. And most of the books that have come out have been along this drive for rationality. How can we approach this in this methodical, pragmatic, rational approach to negotiation?

Speaker 3

26:49

More and more comes out in different degrees and other ideas. Again, Jim Camp's book, Start With No, it's still got a phenomenal chapter about opening to questions. And it's a completely different approach. And it's written from a layman's point of view.

Speaker 3

27:06

His philosophy is a combination. He was a football coach. He was a fighter pilot in the Air Force. And he was a salesman.

Speaker 3

27:12

So it's got all that kind of terminology mixed in together, which makes it entertaining. Bob Mnookin, the head of the program on negotiation, the first story is me negotiating with him in a simulated kidnapping negotiation. His book, Beyond the Winning, has still got a fantastic chapter on empathy, the tension between empathy and assertiveness. I still assign it.

Speaker 3

27:36

I still review it every now and then. And my Harvard brothers and sisters are now very much more recognizing that empathy is the tool for negotiation effectiveness. And in my book, we call it actual tactical empathy, understanding what we can do with someone's emotions and help sort of frame their decision making.

Speaker 2

27:57

You highlight in here that there are these unknown unknowns that really can be the answer to finalizing negotiation and to figuring out what it is that both of you want. And so I was wondering if you could talk about finding these unknown unknowns, what it means to be an unknown unknown, and how we become better at really tracking those down in a negotiation.

Speaker 3

28:23

All right. So there's 2 kinds of pieces of information that your counterpart, the other side has, that are really important to you. It's The stuff that they know is important to you, and the stuff that they have no idea is important, but it is.

Speaker 3

28:36

And that's why detecting deception is not that helpful. Because detecting deception in an interaction, you only know to cover up what you know is important. And I've got to trigger a lot more conversation with you to get this sort of accidental stuff. Now, the other thing is there's never a negotiation that anybody is ever in when they're not holding cards, if you will.

Speaker 3

28:59

If you're not hiding pieces of information, there will never come a time when you're in a negotiation that you don't have proprietary, important information to you that you're worried about letting the other side have, ever. So if that's true for you, it's also true for the other side. So here's 2 people holding pieces of information that they're not showing the other side. They know the other side doesn't have.

Speaker 3

29:23

And the unknowns are kind of when those 2 things overlap. Because I don't know what you're hiding, and you don't know what I'm hiding. There's going to be a lot of stuff in the space there that could be huge if we could just figure it out. Some of it might be just why you want what you want, which again, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better.

Speaker 3

29:43

1 of my students, a male, was negotiating with his wife over a Christmas tree. Very practical guy. Practical guy. Wants an artificial tree.

Speaker 3

29:54

Lots of practical reasons for an artificial tree. Doesn't catch on fire. You buy it once. You never have to, you know, all the reasons.

Speaker 3

30:03

And he can't understand why she won't go along with having the artificial treat. It makes so much sense. And so sometimes it's like, well, why is this person crazy? Where are they coming from?

Speaker 3

30:15

And he searched his mind a little bit. And he thought, well, the only thing that could possibly be driving her was maybe something from when she was a kid. So he said to her, use the tool that we call Label. And he just labeled it.

Speaker 3

30:28

And he said, it seems like Maybe you had real trees growing up? And immediately, she starts to tell him about her memories of Christmas as a child and how they stuck with her and how important it was to her that their children have those same kind of memories through life. And they get a real treat. Because as soon as he found out why she wanted what she wanted, he completely came over to her side.

Speaker 3

30:56

He knew that that was a better outcome. Nearly every negotiation is like that if we give it a chance. And getting to the point where the other side is comfortable sharing that information is really what the point of everything in the book is about. There's always going to be information you don't have.

Speaker 3

31:17

And that the other person doesn't know it's important, which is why the more the conversations get going, the stuff that comes out, the innocuous information, could make all the difference in the world. Not just little differences. The black swan is something little that makes a huge difference. And that's really what you're looking for.

Speaker 3

31:36

It also saves time. It keeps you from having to renegotiate. It keeps you from having to do it over again. You move forward in a better partnership.

Speaker 3

31:45

A great summary from somebody is when you summarize it in a way that they would never be able to say themselves. The story in the book is when I got my son to change the way he was playing football. And he was a lineman. And linemen are great football players.

Speaker 3

31:58

It's a very blue-collar skill, kind of a combination of a hard hat construction worker and an asshole scientist. Because they've got to hit things. They put their heads down. They crash into stuff.

Speaker 3

32:09

And the stuff they're trying to crash in is trying to get away from them. So it's like trying to shoot a missile with another missile. A football lineman is a very complicated, complicated job. And as a quarterback, I never appreciated how complicated the job was, because they just did it.

Speaker 3

32:23

And they moved him from lineman to linebacker. And he went from being told to hit everything he saw to get out of way of everything. You don't only hit 1 thing, it's a guy with the ball, everything else, you duck. He wouldn't do it.

Speaker 3

32:36

And the other way you know you're wrong is when you're trying to explain something to somebody and they look at you and say, you're right. Somebody says you're right to you, what they're really asking you to do is shut up and go away. They don't want you to talk anymore. And so as my coach, or as his coach and me are both explaining to him how he's supposed to be playing linebacker, guess what he would say to us?

Speaker 3

33:00

You're right. And we'd be like, well, yeah, because we like hearing that. We love being told that we're right. And then he'd go right back to it the very next day.

Speaker 3

33:08

It was, do it the wrong way. And I thought, what is going through his mind? What's the matter with him? And finally, I took him off to the side 1 day, and I said, you think that dodging a block is unmanly.

Speaker 3

33:27

You feel like getting out of the way of somebody who's trying to hit you makes you a coward. And he got real quiet for a second. And then he said, that's right. And he started ducking blocks the next day.

Speaker 3

33:44

And he told me the other day, because we talk about this a lot, he said, I never would have been able to explain that for myself. Until you said it, I didn't know it was true. And never in a million years would I would have thought doing it was acting like a coward. But it was absolutely what was driving me.

Speaker 3

34:02

And so when you can summarize it, again, from the other, because if you say that to him like that, it was almost like I was trying to talk him into it. Well, it's cowardly. But I was just recognizing it for him. Even though it sounded like it was against what I was trying to get.

Speaker 3

34:16

It just gave him an epiphany, and it was really a black swan for him. How do negotiation strategies and tactics change when there's emotional entanglement with your adversary, such as your spouse?

Speaker 2

34:28

So the question was, How do negotiation techniques change when there's emotional entanglement with someone such as your spouse?

Speaker 3

34:36

Well, it's harder for us to fairly reward it in a way that they would say that's right to. I mean, we get in our own way so much more the closer we are to someone emotionally. And it's harder to do that.

Speaker 3

34:51

There's something we call, I call an accusations audit. It's very disarming, but I will take all the things that you might be harboring against me, whatever names you might call me, and I would say, look, it seems like I've been a jerk the entire time here. Seems like I've been in the wrong the entire time here. And the closer we are to someone, the harder it is for us to make those accusations.

Speaker 3

35:16

It could be a spouse. It could be a business partner where things have gone bad. I mean, I've advised people that we're working on trying to divide their business up with someone that they can no longer get along with. And I said, look, you've got to articulate everything bad that he would say about you.

Speaker 3

35:34

And I'm not doing that. I don't care. I'm not doing that. So that's us getting in our own way.

Speaker 3

35:42

And I get in my own way on a regular basis. And it's hard for me. I'm not trying to make it sound like it's easy. It's not.

Speaker 3

35:48

Most of the things that are simple are also very hard. And the closer we are to someone, the harder that often is, is to completely recognize how angry they are if the anger is at us. And we feel that we're not responsible. We know they're holding us responsible.

Speaker 3

36:07

1 of my first negotiations after I got trained on the hotline was with the woman who's now the ex-Mrs. Voss. And I had learned on the hotline that when you heard anger in somebody's voice, that you would say, you sound angry. And it would make it go away.

Speaker 3

36:24

And it was like magic. It worked for me on the hotline all the time. And someone calling on a hotline, there's going to be anger that's going to be driving them 1 way or the other. So I'm in a conversation with the now ex-Mrs.

Speaker 3

36:37

Voss over a discussion of something that was fundamental to our relationship at the time. And I heard anger, so I'm kind of like, ah, I've Got my hostage negotiation skills here. I can handle this. It's going to be easy.

Speaker 3

36:49

So I look at her and I say, you sound angry. Yes, I see you shaking your head over there. You know that probably didn't go well. And she like blew up.

Speaker 3

37:03

She was like, I'm angry. And I remember at the time going like, ah. But I'm a hostage negotiator. That's not supposed to happen.

Speaker 3

37:17

Well, the problem was it wasn't just that she was angry. She was angry at me, and she held me responsible for it. And what I said stopped short of that. A more accurate thing would have been, It seems like I've been unreasonable.

Speaker 3

37:32

It seems like I've been unfair. It seems like I have never given you a chance. It seems like I haven't respected you. It seems like I haven't respected your autonomy.

Speaker 3

37:40

Something closer that you could have said that's right to. And it's harder when we're closer to them. Or if we don't feel responsible, if they think we're responsible, it's harder for us to recognize that. So long answer to your question.