[Music] welcome to the Furnham Street podcast called the knowledge project I'm your host Shane parish the curator behind the Furnham Street blog which is an online community focused on mastering the best of what other people have already figured out if you like this show you'll love the website and our
weekly newsletter the knowledge project allows me to talk with interesting people to uncover the frameworks you can use to learn more and less time make better decisions and live a happier more meaningful life on this episode I have Chris Foss the former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator this
dude has literally been face to face with a range of bad people Chris wrote never split the difference which is how I first came across his work and was introduced to him this interview will take you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations showing you the skills that helped Chris become so successful when
everything was on the line these are the tools and tactics you can use to be more persuasive in your personal and professional lives enjoy the conversation [Music] before I get started here's a quick word from our sponsor this episode is brought to you by Inc tell every business needs great customer service in order to stand
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Intel can provide your company with every touchpoint including telephone email chat and social media as the listener of this podcast you can get up to ten thousand dollars off if you go to Inc Telkom slash Shane that's I and K te l comm slash Shane Chris I'm so happy to have you on the show I've been looking forward to this
conversation for weeks thank you very much it's a pleasure I'm happy to be here I have to ask how did you end up becoming a hostage negotiator like was this something that you dreamed of as a kid not at all not even remotely becoming an FBI agent to start with it was a bit of an accident I wanted to be
in law enforcement I never thought about the FBI and you know my father encouraged me to think about federal law enforcement because he had paid for a college degree and I went out got a job that only required a high school education there's nothing wrong with that I you know I became a police
officer but finding out about federal law enforcement Secret Service specifically Secret Service guy said you know I traveled all over the world and I thought hmm I've barely been out of Iowa that sounds like not a pretty good idea ended up with the FBI as a result and then I was I had a recurring knee injury
I'd I done some martial arts in college and to try to make myself more physical capable and had hurt my knee in college and was on a SWAT team with the FBI and we injured my knee again and then instead of completely blowing it out I still want to be in crisis response I knew we had hostage negotiators
negotiators I don't know what they did I figured you know how hard could it be I talked to people I could talk to terrorists how hard could that be you know I literally thought that you know so you know my son my son like to joke it's a boys fan one of the unofficial voice family models is how hard could it be which is he you know
almost but not quite the redneck equivalent of hey watch this so but I got into hostage negotiation and it was by accident and was what I was built for and I loved it and negotiation in general I loved you know real good negotiation is real good emotional intelligence and I like taking a deep dive into people and connecting with
them were you ever scared now well huh you know we hostage negotiators don't get shot over the phone no but I mean the consequences of success or failure in negotiation can be huge well you know I think that lucky the thing I started out training on a suicide hotline and I went to the hotline initially because I
was told that I had to do it to become a negotiator so I went there for mercenary reasons I went to learn and you're of course if your success rate in anything is higher as soon as you sort of forget about failing and focus on learning and so since I was there to learn I got I got a tremendous confidence in a process
it I I didn't realize it but I was learning a concept that my my former boss Gary month Gary Nestor used to always tell us you know there's no guarantee of success but what we guarantee is the best chance of success which carries in an implied possibility that there might be some stuff here
that's out of our control and so with those elements and a great reliance on a process now I was never scared of having things go wrong now that doesn't mean that I wasn't involved in situations where we could see it was gonna go wrong and I worked a few cases like that kidnappings were all the earmarks were
there for it going bad cuz we were that was part of our training to be to be able to recognize the profile of those you know the profile of circumstances and facts and then to do what you could to try to head it off but you got an or trains coming at you to get out of the way of that train and there were a few
things who went bad there's nothing you could do about that I want to go back to that hotline that you worked on there's an interesting story in your book about your first performance review is wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that yeah that was great I mean that was because the go tasted
skills are perishable and you don't know they they wrote it visibly you get done with your training and if you go through good training you're sharp I mean you're on it you know you're on it you know you're very sharp and you don't know that it's perishable so I finished my training I remember I was sharp because
I was a bunch of people in a that were all sharp and the training was good and a year later I had no idea how many bad habits I picked up and I get I get the annual review was supervisor listens in Jim who was this really great guy a beat guy and I had the person on the line actually I might have it were so bad
that the person congratulated me for doing a great job which of course I didn't realize that was a bad sign and I remember walking back to the room to interact with Jim and it was like hey man that was horrible I remember thinking like are you kidding me did you did and I said did you just hear that
guy he could I was I was so good graduated me for being good and Jim said yeah well let's start there and what's wrong with that and how far off base you are if they say that and it was like wow and he was right every step of the way and it was at that point that I kind of took you know I rededicated to the deeper dive I
wanted to get better at it I don't want to get worse I wanted to get better as a practitioner of this for so many years what would surprise people the most or perhaps like I mean what surprised you the most of it how real-life negotiation works versus the way that we think it works or the way you thought it worked
before you get into this line of work well if you let the other side go first it'll take less time you know we used to a judge in a federal trial that had a great saying he says we're gonna delay things in order to save time and we think in the the most direct route you know let me just tell you what I want so
you can give it to me like that's the most direct route and it's a mess I mean that that going and direct is a really bad idea it just creates so much it kid it creates chaos you know cubbies we think that Stephen Covey's seek first to understand then be understood the seven Habits of Highly Effective People I mean
always just maybe my perspective is wrong I always thought of cubby as this warm and fuzzy nice guy you know seek first to understand then be understood as a mercenaries tool I mean if you want to get to an out your if you want to get to your outcome faster let the other side go first it'll take a lot less time
you don't waste time spinning your wheels or you don't waste time arguing or you don't waste time a point-counterpoint and i think most people don't realize that they don't understand a tremendous amount of power of letting the other side go first not the least of which is it takes less time overall are there downsides to letting
the other side go first you know only if you take yourself hostage what does that mean it's like well I can't you know I can't let you anchor first because then that's gonna that's gonna change it's gonna change my expectations like what let you know or is your position so weak and are you so weak minded that you're afraid to let
the other side go first so if your position is weak and you know it well then letting the other side go first because of your ego issues is your ego wiet if your egos weak don't let the other side go first but if you if there's any strength whatsoever in your position your ego your ability to learn
your ability to get a better deal you gotta let the other side go first it's information you're operating in a dark otherwise how do you step outside of your ego like HAP did you have techniques in the FBI where you were able to do this easily or is this something learned over time you know as
soon as you learned that it's the best way to go I mean and then they you know there's a couple techniques you know one technique is you're really focused on using your radar or your sonar or whatever metaphor or your gut instinct your intuition if I'm really focused on what emotions are driving you there's an instant
compartmentalization that takes place where my negativity is no longer gonna get my way I mean just in genuine curiosity is a hack for emotional control if I'm genuinely like I'm genuinely curious as to why you're crazy you know that's that's an that's one instant hack there's a variety of instant hacks I will use my tone of
voice intentionally because I can I can also hear my tone like on a suicide hotline I learned really early on the soothing calming tone call me other side down but you know there's there's a reason why if you talk to yourself sometimes you're actually smarter if you talk out loud in a soothing calming
voice that voice comes out of your mouth it goes through the air comes back and through your ear and hits your mirror neurons and calm you down so if you say to yourself out loud not internally but if you say to yourself out loud you know you got this you got this I got this I can do this you can actually calm
yourself down that's another hack I I came to rely on a process and knew how good the process was early on so I just thought look let me let me lay my process on you I'm gonna get my way so there's a variety you know depending upon which one of those you stumble over early on then yeah you can you can learn
you can teach yourself to keep your emotions under control in the book you mentioned there was three I think three different types of voices one the one you just gave us was the FM DJ kind of voice the late-night FM DJ you give us an example of the other two and how the tone and pitch is different well you
know the assertive voice is the direct and honest guy you know just here's what I won't give it to me if you think of and the world breaks up in a pretty much evenly into thirds it's our caveman days its fight/flight make friends response to threat we do fight it we've run from that oh we make friends with it and the world really
does pretty evenly split up into thirds and so about a third of the planets the direct and honest that's my natural type you know I'll say look I could be mean to you because I'm a jerk or I could be mean to you because I just don't know any better or I could be mean to you because I hate everybody
or I could be mean to you because I hate you specifically if I explained it to you like that then the new reaction is like well you sound like a jerk and I don't care why you don't like me yeah you know the direct and honest voice I once had of an FBI hostage negotiator when I was just talking to him in my
natural normal tone of voice he said dealing with you is like getting hit in the face with a brick that's what their direct and honest voice does if you think of yourself as a direct and honest person and you're just trying to get your point across you're so blunt that it obscures your message right so that's
the director and then the the fight/flight make friends the flight guy is a late-night FM DJ voice he's a guy who thinks that like you know it's stupid to fight let me let me get let me get far enough away where I could be safe and then I'll then I'll rethink this and then there's make friends and
it's a person who naturally smiles when they speak to you and I just like talking to you and when I speak to you I mean I just joist I'm really happy to speak to him happy to be in your podcast and if I smile you can hear it in my voice yeah definitely and you know even every now and then I had one of the hostage
negotiators on a team and a New Yorker guy named Charlie beaudoin and Charlie was a natural accommodator you know we'd walk into a bar that we'd never been in before maybe we were someplace you know working a case we'd never been there before walking to the bar Charlie walk around and literally introduce himself to
everybody in the bar one at a time and he'd just walk up and say hi I'm charlie and he'd smile at people and when we were in hostage negotiations Charlie dried a note on a board that said smile they can feel it in your voice and it was very powerful and and Charlie broke down more barriers just by smiling at people
how should we prepare to go into a negotiation well um it's impossible to know everything going in to start with and it's a lot faster to hear it from the other side so prepare to be genuinely curious you know like and tell yourself you know that's a pretty cool stuff here if I if I can if I can just find out what it is so and
that's part of letting the other side go first some people some people say to go negotiation is the art of letting the other side have your way we get you get the other side talking and you're very collaborative if you find a way to gently say no to the bad stuff like how am I supposed to do that it's a great
way to say no to something bad how am I supposed to do that and the other side feels very collaborative they feel a lot of collaboration there and they feel very powerful and the more likely to throw out some more options and then when they throw out an option it suits you you know the best phrase to close a
deal is for you to say that was brilliant let's do that right so you just get them talking till they throw something out that works well for both of you and the real the real issue with any deal is implementation it's not agreement yes is nothing without how I can I can give you fake yeses all day long and you're never gonna get what you
wanted and that's that's why you want it to be the other side's idea because they'll implement more effectively and with fewer reminders and fewer follow-up if the implementation was their idea and that's where the real time-saver is or where the profit killer is in bad implementation or even a deal that never
gets implemented we were in competition for a negotiation contract with one of the major telecommunications companies and through the process of that found out that fully 50% of the deals they sign never get implemented half Wow their signatures talked about they're killing themselves on implementation I
mean they are destroying their profit over bad implementation or even not even implementing at all so yes there's nothing without how and it's one of the great cick waste dumps of profit eating microbes out there wasn't getting to yes based on that whole principle you know it is and and you know one of the
biggest difference between getting to yes and and and and my book never split the differences getting TS is intellectually sound there's nothing intellectually to be challenged on getting to yes and unfortunately that does you know good as soon as you involve human beings because none of us really it elects lease out
you know we're all driven by emotion of passion and emotional intelligence if we didn't own as much about specifically articulating emotional intelligence like we do now as we did when getting tes was written I think that would have been a different book and I met Roger Fisher back in 2004 when I went through when I
first started collaborating with Harvard Law School and Roger Fisher was both brilliant intellectually and actually emotionally intelligent incredibly emotional intelligent but they wrote an intellectual book and that's where it falls now one of the key ideas are there was a Batna the best alternative to
negotiated agreement the idea that you consider the worst case opportunity in any negotiation is this an idea you found useful or do you agree or disagree with that in practice uh you know again intellectually brilliant idea and practice a horrible idea and it it it came it was much easier for me to come
to accept that because there's a hostage negotiator what's my bad are we walking away you know do I say do I say to the bank robber well I'm not giving you a plane so we're leaving there ain't no Batman hostage negotiation so as soon as I got I was never handicapped by bad it's a great handicap here's here's the problem with
bad net that becomes your goal and so therefore if you say to yourself and the vast majority of people who calculate their Batna you know as long as I do better than my worth alternative as soon as I get past that I'm good and I can quit right what's these mad if amounts of money on the table problem
one problem - what happens if you don't have a bad net if you if you're if you believe you have to have a bad 'no to negotiate then you've immediately taken yourself hostage and you're done you say oh my god the other side has all the leverage of the power I've got no I've got no legitimate bad man
you know we're hostages here you take yourself hostage if you could if if you could just let Batna go entirely then it doesn't matter and that give that puts you in a much better mine mindset and mine frame in so many different ways so Batna which is this intellectually sound idea i know what they were trying to do
they were trying to help people calm down in negotiations by being able to say themselves well if that doesn't work out I've got a reasonable alternative right the practical implication of that and even one of my one of my colleagues who's an Israeli business negotiator with hostage negotiation background he
made all the Harvard people really angry cuz he's Houston didn't call it not battable aetna the worst alternative to negotiate an agreement and and he said you know let's start because he hated it like I did and they got so mad at him you know they said there is no way it's only Batman he was trying to point out
what a what a bad idea emotionally that was and how many problems that that it created as a result one of the other bad recommendations you hear in your profession that are practiced even by practitioners well you know there's a couple there's a couple subtle ones and you know one of the first one is is this
you know you got to go first you got you got hanker high and you know in practice that interferes with collaboration if you anchor high it's it's basically it's starting out by not telling the truth it's defining it as a win-lose scenario and it's also taking it's taking a risk of leaving a tremendous amount of money
on the table and one of my one of my favorite stories was because we never taught high anger but one of my students at Georgetown he decides he's gonna go for job interviews kind of high anchor he's making about 85 K at the time and he wants a nice big jump and he wants to anchor one and that's what he's after and on a way
the interview you know his father's telling us like you know that's that's a huge jump you're talking about think of the percentage jump that's just that's you know it's $25,000 in terms of percentage you're going for too much and he's like I'm determined imma go after it I'm I'm gonna throw out the number
110 so you go into the interview and they say you know where do you sell are your expectations and he puffed himself up and proudly says 110 110 and he negotiates the deal and ago you know they give him give him the 110 so he's on a job after a couple months and he's talking to a colleague hired at the same
time same basic pay grade and he's in any and he says to the guy says you know what do you think our company his colleague says to him what do you think our about compensation he says well look I Got News for you I negotiated my own deal and this guy says you're getting paid more than 125 you know you know you
can imagine a guy's heart stopping and I'll give you another example - found - found one founder of a business here in Los Angeles negotiate with another founder I'm coaching she wants to pull 10% of her business she wants the other side to give an additional 10% to give to her husband because her husband's
really help helping out so if you wanted 10% you're gonna hire her you know woody a high anchor with 25 maybe being willing to settle at 10 she doesn't high anchor she comes in with an emotional intelligence approach that that she learned for me which is she starts a conversation by saying I've
got a lousy proposition for you which is enormous ly disarming I mean and you and you say that and you shut up and she ended up with a third of the business for her husband in the back of the book you go through a negotiation I think he call it a negotiation one sheet can you walk us through that yeah you know first
of all you know take a take a completely truthful version of what are the facts and circumstances have brought us here to get today you know don't put any spin on it from your side you know a summary summary of the facts just the facts man and not not because say something like well were the smartest people that ever
lived and if they had any sense they should be doing business for us it's not a summary the facts you know and really drive for a summary that the other side would agree is true again the no spin zone is real hard but try not to do it without any spent and so then then start to look for emotionally intelligent what
are the crazy wacko bizarro schizophrenic reasons fears that the other side might have in a back of the mind about us and a lot of this is really kind of intuitive but if you're a bigger company than they are then a fear that they might have in the back of their mind is that you're gonna bully well that they see you as bullies so
take the circumstances and if you were a neutral third party what are the fears the other side might have and lay out what those fears are because fear gets in a way of deals anyway from 3 to 9 times more than benefits make deals you know there's an interesting stat out there that says 70% of the buy decisions
are made more to avoid loss and to accomplish gain so think of the reasons why they wouldn't do business with you first and that's real hard because we're so used to selling ourselves on our value proposition that nobody ever spent any time thinking about why they wouldn't do business works right that's gonna be
that's going to be the deal-breakers that's where they're gonna be and you gotta get eliminate deal-breakers before you can make deals you cannot leave land mind deal breakers out there and I think most people are you know we're taught over and over and over again in business what's our value proposition which is very one-sided
point of view of things and takes and takes into account in no way shape or form what the deal-breakers are and that's why with that telecommunications company I was telling you about 50% of their deals never get implemented because I'm not paying any attention to deal breakers and that's how costly that is
imagine having a signed deal that you think was going to go and have half time had that thing turned into a trainwreck how much money does that cost you you don't even have to make any better deals you just have to not have 50% of them going a tank and they're going into the tank over deal-breakers
now if you take if you have a if you have a effective summary of the facts that the other side would agree to if you thought about they're paranoid reasons for not doing business with you which is where the deal-breakers are now you're ready to talk is that when you do the acquisition audit or the the labels
accusations are yeah exactly right now you're ready now you're ready to lead into what are their potential accusations against us okay and you got you in and the depth of how deep you go into that I mean that that's how we start out with now we're also going to think about the reasons why they would
make the deal with us and it's a sequencing issue you've got to get rid of the negative before you can go to the positive sometimes the negative getting rid of it will be so powerful that you don't even have to pitch the positive because the other side's gonna go ahead and pitch it for you so what are the
accusations they might make and if you're if you're a bigger company than they are you might want to say like I'm sure we seem like bullies yeah it's a you take the negatives and you articulate them a very specific structure that we call labels were you just calling it out you know you're calling out the elephant or wrong I'm
sure we seem like bullies I'm sure it looks like one cooperative I'm sure we seem like we're not paying attention to what you're really after you know whatever it looks like we're trying to push you around if there's if there's reason to think that there's plenty of baggage there for example if you're in
real estate you don't have to be a genius to know that every buyer and seller of a house they all say to each other look your real estate agent is not on your side real estate agents are only there to get a fast buck you know I do a fair amount of coaching in a real estate industry these days and I'll say where
the accusation see other sides might potentially make against you and they say well nothing they've never met us right and I'll say look hold on you don't know that buyers are saying to each other no real estate agent is on your side that real estate agents are only in it for the Commission you don't know that
I say yeah well we know that but that's not true of us I said okay all right let's go back just everybody else yeah we're not talking about what's true of you you know there's baggage in your industry and so you don't have to be Albert Einstein of emotional intelligence to know that that baggage is there at a friend of mine bought a
house here recently in LA I asked him about his agent he said look I know they're not on my side I know no matter how much they try to befriend us they're only there trying to push this into a deal so that they can collect the Commission as quickly as they possibly can he says I know that all right so
this is this is a recognition of the circumstances now the plenty of agents that that that is not true of them at all right but just because it's not true if you doesn't mean that it's not in in your potential clients in the back of their mind before before they get started and that's how you begin to
clear this up because if it's lurking in the back of their mind it's a distraction so let's let's go back again and let's take it to circumstances that if you weren't involved you know what's a reputation in the industry what's the reputation of the people in your position let's address that up front and
you get dialed in much faster with people it's kind of hard for people to do because they know they know the stuff is out there another thing I tell people to do a lot of times like what what would you like to deny before you get started every real estate agent is gonna say well I'd like to say look you know
we're not one of those fast-talking salesmen we're not one of those agents who are just looking for a quick Commission alright so make a list of the stuff you wanted to deny and instead of denying it because denying things makes it worse right just pull it out you know and say look out you know I know that my rep my
industry has a reputation for being fast talking salesmen I'm sure it seems like every real estate agent is just trying to get a quick hit with a minimal amount of effort and move on and then then what happens when you say it to a prospective client or whatever industry you're in the stuff you want to deny you say sure
it seems like then they go like not but in reality what you just did was you just cleared it out of their head and now now their heads clear and now they can listen to you I like that a lot so after that you move to calibrated questions yeah you you're gonna move into a calibrated question or we when
you when we teach people how to take calibrated questions because questions might you need information but they might not be the best way to get information like you might say to a person how would you like to proceed what would you think are the next steps now they may have something in mind already and you you might actually get a
better answer bias instead of saying like what do you think then that next steps are you might want to say it seems like you might have some next steps in mind and you know we had one person refer to that technique they were so stunned by the effectiveness of gathering information with that label
seems like you have some ideas in mind seems like you have some next steps you've been thinking about they actually refer to that is unlocking the floodgates of truth-telling what does that mean I haven't I haven't seen the neuroscience that backs it up yet we just know that it in practice all the time if I ask you a question it has a
tendency to get you to stop and think and contemplate and formulate an answer if I just use a label it seems like you've got something on your mind there's something about that that instead of you formulating an answer it tends to just remove a barrier and I tap directly into your thought processes and
your thought processes come streaming out of your mouth so it's almost like you eliminate the system to thinking and just get the raw system won exactly yeah and you're clearly a fan of Daniel Kahneman and its description of how the brain works right prospect theory Nobel Prize winning psychologist is that how
you think about that or do you have different terms in mind that you know are terms a little more layman's terms because and this goes right to why hostage negotiation has direct application to business because when I learn hostage negotiation back in it in the in the early 90s these to tell us all right look
some guy some poor guys got himself in a jam he's barricaded someplace he's taken hostages look for the loss you know there's gonna be a loss all our all our techniques are designed to get the guy talk and find out what his loss is and address that so look for the loss so something would have happened and we
just figured that it was only the loss was a driver a bad behavior bad criminal behavior and then Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky come along and unfortunately you know when the Nobel Prizes handed out Amos Tversky has already died of cancer otherwise he would have got it all so the kind of and Traverse could come up with prospect
theory and win the Nobel Prize for it after hostage negotiations been invented which is the fear of loss is the single biggest driver of human behavior prospect theory says you know law strengths things twice as much as an equivalent game not that it's the only driver but it's the biggest driver and
when I found that out I said you know we've been operating like that for years looking for the loss we just figured it was hostage takers we didn't always everybody know that it's a hardwired into us yeah exactly and since if it's hardwired into everybody then this set of emotional intelligence school tools designed to
uncover it as quickly as possible defuse the negativity around it get somebody talking and in a more balanced state of mind and then you can move to people to solve the problems much more quickly you know so that's the hack the hack is the shortcut is look for the loss and factor it into your thinking
which again is why 70% of buy decisions are made based on avoiding a loss as opposed to accomplishing it again do you think that relates to the old saying like you never get fired for hiring IBM yeah you know because well then the other the other crazy thing is in navigating people's fears people aren't
afraid to fail they're afraid to fail in a new way so you never get fired for hire an IBM is like if we hire IBM and we fail it's already demonstrated to be a socially acceptable outcome but let's say let's if we go out you know when when was when was Apple started when do they first make the first Mac if we go out and hire these
guys you know named Jobs and Wozniak that built some stupid computer in their garage you know that could go bad who ever heard of those guys so let's hire IBM first because that's that's the safe failure right and so the the safety and your failure is and a lot of people have trouble wrapping their
minds around this but it's not that we're afraid to fail we're afraid to fail in and in a new way in a different way from everybody else cuz that's humiliating it's embarrassing and and and then that loss is the the bigger loss is a loss of self-esteem which is an even bigger hit force so if you're a new company and you have no real
established track record hey is there a way to use that to your advantage or shape the perceptions of somebody taking a risk on you yeah because again then then you call it out you know the elephant in the room so to speak you can call it out and it's not that it's guaranteed that you're gonna make the
deal if you caught it call that out it just increases your batting average you know it increases your win percentage that there's there's no there's no guarantee of success is just a guarantee the best chance of success so any negative that's there ignoring it is leaving a land mine but calling it out
gives you your best chance at eliminating as an issue whether you're an unknown startup or whether or not you got a strong competitor I used to you know before the book came out and and you know been very happy with the success of the book it's been called one of the seven best negotiation books ever written
it leads its category the audible version of the book has been leading the business category and Amazon basically since the book came out oh it's phenomenal book yeah and but before all you know before we've had this kind of success with the book if I stood up in front of a group I would say to him why
in god's name would you ever listen to a hostage negotiator because that's what's going on they're on in their head right they're asking themselves that question so I'll just go ahead I'll call it out for the very beginning boy seems like listen to a hostage negotiators a really dumb idea and people go like no it's not
maybe you might you might not you might know something we don't know and I'm like okay good I got you to say it that's why I don't have to yet and then it sits in a lot more than if you say it yourself exactly yeah and I think the final section to the negotiation one sheet you had in the book if I'm remembering correctly had to do with
money like his money always the primary motive or how important is money in a negotiation well let's talk about money in the sections in a book too we're also looking from black swans like if we want you to write down the things you learned in that negotiation you didn't know going in and if you can't write those
things down you didn't do a good job because there's stuff to be discovered and it's usually and then on money or whatever your objective is you know we do want you to pick out a good goal to begin with cuz human beings are goal oriented but we don't want your goal to be your best alternative or your worst
alternative you know come up with a lofty goal and then think of how you're gonna beat it so human beings need to do in fact need to be goal-oriented in order to perform which is the old bat and a problem because a battement your goal in is very low pick a high goal and then challenge yourself to beat it by
discovering new information so your high goal mei-mei shouldn't actually be money because you gotta hit a range in money let's say let's say you beat somebody on the money issue really badly well your implementation is gonna be horrible or you're gonna put them out of business so you need to come up with a dollar figure
the other side is comfortable for an analogy to that would be a friend of mine was running a magazine when he ran Washingtonians magazine in Washington DC and we talked about salary negotiations and he said you know I tend to pay slightly on the higher end of people's expectations because if I pay him lower
than they hoped for they tend to be really anxious throughout the term of their employment and you're not going to do a good job if I pay more than they expected they actually they're gonna think they were worth that all along and they're not gonna be that appreciative they're gonna take it for granted but if I can pay him
at the higher end of their expectation they're gonna feel really good about the salary they'll be very comfortable and that's when they're gonna be at their best and then they're gonna do a great job for me so over paying people is as much a problem as under paying people which one do you think is more prevalent Wow
I think was people I think that they're probably underpaid more and but then you can actually fix that too depending upon how you take care of them as an employee like if you can under pay somebody and if you're really focused on their growth and development as people and professionals they'll be really
happy in the job and they'll do great because you know the old phrase money is not a motivator what is a motivator the meaningful work within that profession to be involved in stuff that's gonna matter to everybody else you know being involved in critical strategic projects or I had a an executive from the General
Services Administration who got ahead really fast he once said run to trouble like if you like working on the company's biggest problems there's a couple good things about that I mean if the company's really having some serious problems in a certain area number one you're not gonna make it any worse
you're not gonna be the guy that screwed that up because it's already screwed up so it's like a failsafe area to be in and then if you succeed you become known as a troubleshooter we worked on stuff that helped the entire company your job satisfaction is is through the roof which puts you in and which actually
then put you in a position to get paid a lot more on down the line because you're so valuable and if they don't pay you more then it gives you an incredible resume because then you go to another company and say look I saw I'm a I'm a problem solver I'm a fixer and somebody else is gonna pay a lot more it's pretty
counterintuitive yeah yeah exactly and and and that's how people get ahead are there cases were negotiations not really a negotiation like how do you recognize that's the situation you're in and one of the alternatives well yeah I mean we like to believe the most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know you're
in so first of all anytime the word yes is in your is in the air somebody's trying to get a yes out of somebody or something you're in a negotiation or if if I want is in your brain you're in a negotiation and there's there's no two ways about the most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know you're
in that either place for you or against you and of course in the most common commodity the commodity that sin needs in every negotiation is time not price not money dollars are not all dollars are not always involved with time always is right so as soon as you begin in collaborationist time internal internal
internal collaboration among colleagues trying to implement a project trying to get somebody just to support you in what your proposal is those are all negotiations and recognizing those early on or work you know the the other thing is you know out here in Los Angeles I I had I was talking to a a woman whose job
was securing the rights to music for songs the rights to music for movies and she says you know this isn't a negotiation you know we call Sony on the phone we tell them we want the rights to this song the person on the other end of the phone has no latitude whatsoever he just tells us what he or she just tells
us what the price is she says that's not a negotiation I get news for you that is a negotiation and here's why never be mean to somebody who could hurt you by doing nothing so the reality is that's probably true of everybody you interact with because you're interacting with them because you want them to do something
what's the negotiation on this thing over the music alright so depending upon if she takes the other person for granted that person writes down her information and her order does he put it on the top of his pilot as he put it on the bottom of the pile because he didn't like being treated like by like an order
taker if if she approached him an emotionally intelligent way maybe not only does he not put it on the top of the pile maybe by hand he walks it down the hall to the next person in the chain because of time is money and time is always an asset in the negotiation even when somebody's taken an order they no shortage of
people who were taking orders it didn't like how they were spoken to to take the person's request and either put it at the bottom of the pile or maybe goes in file 13 maybe goes in a trash can and it's forgot so the implementation terms are always there and if if everybody could hurt you if you're mean to them
and by the same token with the right emotional intelligent approach they can help you if they feel like it and I like to get every edge I can so I want people to feel like helping me or even offering to help me in ways I didn't even know they could do and and that's where we gain our edges across the board with
everybody in my company and also with the people that we coach because the better your relationship is the more the other side is going to want to help you out if they have an option to and people have tons of options that most of us don't even know about and I think one of the keys you mentioned in the book to
figuring that out is active listening I imagine I mean that was a huge part of your job and is one of the keys to empathy and understanding how can I learn to be a better listener yeah and it's you know what in it and then see beyond active it's proactive listener because all right so what am i proactively going after I know that the
negatives are a bigger deal I'm proactively listening for where the negatives are I'm proactively listening for their fear of loss having hearted now I have a very specific toolkit designed to deal with that exactly and the the practice of hostage negotiators since 1972 when it was invented pretty
much have taught us exactly what works and what's the fastest way into somebody's emotional system so that can hit the triggers and move on and with those tools then I get to stun dump done much more quickly one of my students did an actual study on our conclusion was empathy safes don't use empathy because you're a
missionary because you're a soft touch use empathy because you want to get stuff done faster and you've got other stuff to do to get after how does it help you save time well we're not spinning our wheels as quickly you know if I'm if I'm I'm rooting out the problems earlier I'm figuring out what you can throw on the table that
you'll only throw on the table if you feel like if you feel connected to me or when some when you're trying to Telegraph there's a problem in your tone of voice if you ask me if something is possible and I say okay or if you ask me if it's possible I go okay with empathy I know the difference between those two
things I got a set of tools proactively where I go right after the second one and I'll say you know it sounds like there's more here than meets the eye as opposed to what's the problem mmm that you know I heard something your tone of voice what's the problem or sounds like there's something here I'm just not get
now the second one is gonna trigger a floodgate of information which you would like to tell me as long as you don't feel you're gonna be attacked as soon as you tell me right and that's how I'm gonna save time what do you do I mean it it sounds like empathy works really well in particular situations so other
situations where it doesn't work well like what if your opponent in it I don't even want to use the word opponent but the person you're negotiating with maybe doesn't have an immense or is way on the rational end of the spectrum yeah well you know I don't again it only works where people are involved yeah but even
somebody who doesn't have a full range of emotion still got and I don't care what the range is I just need these my proactive skills you know my tactical empathy skills to figure out where your drivers are everybody's driven by laws you know are our social paths which there is no shortage of them functioning
in the business world they're self-interested they have desires they're driven by loss loss aversion there's no get around and unless unless you're catatonic there's gonna be emotions that are driving you just not the full spectrum that ever that everybody has I don't care what the spectrum is I'm gonna use
the tools to get in there to figure out which ones are driving you and simply adapt to them you said something previously along the lines of there can be great power in deference can you explain what you meant by that like what are some examples of when deference is the best strategy yeah the power deference is insane
and not to get political because we you know we don't want to talk political but I wish would remember the guy's name there's an article I think I read in a reddit online on MSN recently one of the guys who has the most influence whatsoever in the over Donald Trump he's a billionaire from New York who is more
successful he's older he's got more money down from and and the guy's not involved with politics whatsoever but he uses deference on Donald Trump because it gets Donald Trump to listen he doesn't use deference because he has to write doesn't need a job he doesn't need any deals with Donald Trump he doesn't
need Donald Trump for anything for whatever reason they have a relationship he's older than Donald so he doesn't need to be deferential tone cuz he's younger he's got more money than the Donald Trump so he doesn't need to be deferential to him cuz he needs the money he's more established socially in New
York and Donald Trump there's nothing he needs from Donald Trump if you were to do just a plain assessment and I you know I hesitate to use the word superior because it's very judgmental but his life is on a higher-functioning level across the board other than the fact that he's not as well-known as Donald
Trump but this guy doesn't care to be well-known and he calls Trump on a regular basis president and he's deferential to him because people loves when somebody doesn't have to be deferential but is mmm and so deference is this great tool for 360 degrees of influence if someone is perceives themselves to be superior to you and
you're deferential to them they love it because they think that they a they're entitled to it so makes them very happy if you're on a peer level with them and you're deaf you treat them with deference they love it because you didn't have to and they felt tremendous respect and appreciation for if your subordinate to
them in any way and your deferential to how they feel they loved it even more and a wonderfully appreciative of it because you didn't have to do it they see you as being a very generous gracious and nurturing person so definite scandal works on everybody where and I as a mercenary I like the
skills that work on everybody I do not want the negotiation approach that I used to be restricted because I have to have common ground with you or because I have to have power over you those are all restrictions if I don't have common ground where am i I'm not willing to be handicapped by that if I don't have
leverage on you where am i I'm not willing to be handicapped by that I want an approach where I'm not handicapped by what other people perceive to be strengths what are the other skills that work over everybody um you know the the phrase the technique that I use different times that we refer to as labels you know it seems like you've got
something in mind here that's actually a very specifically worded hostage negotiation skill adapted for business use what we found on are three types of fight fly to make friends the flight the analytical type guy is very leery of questions and if I ask you a question even if it's a really good opening a
question a really good calibrated question like what do you think the next steps are our analytical flight oriented guy which is basically not fight every battle but fight only if I have to and they need to and it's smart but the analyst is going to want to think about that answer for an extended period of
time because they want to think through all the implications of the answer before they come up with it so if I say what are the next steps to an analyst and now it's gonna say you know let me get back to you in a week mmm but if I say for whatever reason seems like you got some next steps in mind the analyst is very likely to board
him right out so this labels skill which interestingly enough when I first left hostage negotiation I didn't think it was that applicable but to our constant practice in the laboratory was the MBA program that I've taught in at Georgetown University the part-time program which mean everybody had a job
during the day so I said take these skills back to your day job and triumph we found out the labels were the most universally applicable skill of all the tools and what was the success rate on them as reported by uh well the success rate it went from it increases everybody's batting average but that one
of the but the best things it did was it then it created some responses and people that were going completely silent otherwise where the batting average was zero right so the labels the labels across the board probably raises everybody's effectiveness no less than thirty to thirty three percent you know
so whatever your effective rate is if you're not using labels it's going to drop that in on top of on top of that the other thing while we're talking which has the most most universal success rate and somebody on the phone was telling me today that rate the success rate was 100 percent is intentionally getting people to say no
that that rewarding all your yes oriented questions into no oriented questions and said would you like to do this say are you against this that's an insane success rate and people you know have literally gone out and gotten on the phone as soon as we taught them how to do what we referred to as a no
oriented question and simply said I said would you like to try this option said are you against this option and a person gives them a no and instead of rejecting the deal it makes a deal I mean that one that one's really insane that that's crazy and all three types like that you have kids I mean how do you negotiate
with them do you use labeling and getting them to know like walk me through what you do at home yeah you know labels and mirrors open into questions calibrated questions those are all real good depend upon the age of the child you know you want your kids to think and and a good label is designed
to encourage the counterparts thinking you want your kids to think you want your counterparts to think and you chose is you know dad can I can I have a call late this weekend or Friday night can have a car Friday night and your answer could be like it it seems like you think you don't have to earn that privilege
you know draw them in get them engaged how can I give you the car on the weekend if you're not responsible during the week you know draw them into the thought pattern increase their thinking that it's a great thing to do with kids are there any other things you do with your kids that parents who are listening
to this podcast can take away and implement differently another one that a lot of parents have a lot of success with is also the mirror which is just repeating the last one two three words on what someone has just said I mean and you know sometimes your kids say stuff to you what you want to say to yourself
did you actually hear what you just said I the only one that heard how crazy that was right but the mirror actually gets them to realated again with slightly different words and you know a lot of it is not a parent-child problem a lot of it as a human being to human being problem we just happen to mistake it
because it happens to be adults and children involved in the interaction it's a little bit like the analysis of saying playing basketball makes you tall you know you're seeing it set as facts and you're misinterpreting the facts and so some of this is just human being the human being they just happen to be the
human beings they were engaged with a lot at this point in time so we do want the counterpart to think and you do want your kids to think and you do want them to hear you do want them to hear out loud and be a good sounding board sometimes to make a reward what they just said because it increases our
thinking have your kids ever negotiated you oh well just through sheer persistence you see that that brings up another one that the we think kids are persistent you know we say you know teenagers are really tough on her parents because they don't take no for an answer again it's a human being to human being think teenagers have learned
that once a parent says no they're probably actually more persuadable because the act of saying no makes people feel safe like when my son was 17 and he said dad can I and I'm saying now before he finished his sentence yeah but then I would also having said no having felt like I protected myself I would almost
always find myself saying I not talk me through this again let me hear this because I've already said no so I can't be hurt uh and now I'm now I can hear I I can hear them out and again this is you know basketball playing doesn't make you tall it's not kids learning not to take no for an answer
it's a set of human beings who happen to be young learning how eminently open-minded a counterpart can be once they've said no do you ever actively coach your kids on how to negotiate better like not necessarily negotiating with you but in seeking what they are getting what they want to achieve say here is is is the bad thing about
growing up the son of an FBI hostage negotiator which is what happened to my son my son I found out in when he was in his 20s how much trouble he got himself out of when he was in his teens using hostage negotiation skills he was around it all the time he learned early on about you know just going after problems and
diffusing problems like he was he played he played football junior high high school college so and this isn't in the book he'd go to school and when I had him in a Catholic school where they had a uniform and every night and because he was a kid you know he'd go go to school and be something wrong with the uniform
and when a student say hey you know you may you did you screwed this up today you're not wearing this properly watch out for the vice-principal most kids are gonna spend the entire rest of the day running from the vice-principal because they don't want to get in trouble as soon as he realized he'd made a mistake
the very next place he would go would be the vice principal's office he'd knock on door he'd go straight in and he was telling me one time he walked in and he's telling the vice principal you know he's a disrespectful student you know he doesn't have any you know he's not paying attention to the rules you know
he's empty-headed and the Vice Principal stopped and said hold her hold her hold on-hold he said who sent you and he said said nobody I you know soon as I realized I was wrong I came in and the Vice Principals you know scribbled him a note the game of free pass for the rest of the dance he'd get
out of here now get back to class stop that's awesome and he knew that was a way to avoid detention and those are only the stories you know that ha ha ha what about relationships I mean should you change how you negotiate or engage with your partner I mean you had some interesting advice on compromise in the
book does that apply to relationships yeah well it deploy it applies based on where you're coming from you know there's an Grant wrote an order great article called the dark side of emotional intelligence like you know we joke around use your use your use your powers for good and not evil but
emotional intelligence really powerful thing it's potentially ridiculously manipulative use it in your relationships if you're trying to make things better like are you are you trying to get the other side to just lay off of you and go back to what you're doing are you trying to actually understand more so you could have a
better relationship these skills are absolutely required if you want to understand your counterpart more and have a better relationship so much so at the Silicon Valley a female executive one day is talking to her fiance and she says why do I like talking to you all of a sudden last couple days conversation
great what's going on and he said well I'm taking his training and they're making me use it with you and she found out the book was never split the difference and she went out and she bought 10 copies and gave them to all of her girlfriends husbands and boyfriends because you know seek first to understand and be understood it's great
for relationships it's also there's you know you can use it for manipulation as well but if you want a better relationship absolutely use this stuff for it yeah walk me through the compromise thing in the book about why we should never compromise compromise is I got this killer gray suit and I got a
pair of black shoes that I love and I got a pair of brown shoes that I love I think I should wear the black shoes you think the brown shoes are gonna look great let's compromise I'll wear one black and one brown I mean compromise in in in theory supposedly you're open to the other side's position theoretically that's a
great idea in practicality its implementation is absolutely one black shoe one brown shoe her earnest story recently of a horrible compromised two companies are merging and it's progressive new company in the industry and it's an old line historical you know a very dignified company and they come together and through the process they
find out there's this phenomenal building worth eight hundred million dollars for sale they get a chance to get it for two hundred million dollars they can and they want to build a new Learning Center and it's big enough for this state-of-the-art Learning Center and their corporate headquarters the CEO
from the prestigious high high reputation long-term reputation firm says we can't do that because we'll look like it'll violate what we stand for it'll look like we're spending far too much money on our headquarters will look self-indulgent if we buy that building and the guy from the new the newer
cutting-edge company was like we got we how could we how could we pass this up it's got a state-of-the-art facility we can put our education and we can save all this is six hundred million dollar value savings we can move our people in they're gonna feel phenomenal being in this new new facility and so what they
do they compromised they bought the building for the new Learning Center they kept their old headquarters to for the images in fact they're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars because of the compromise and a bunch of the executives who never agreed with the compromise in the first place are gonna
leave the firm so they're losing a tremendous amount of leadership over compromise and that's what happens with compromise you get you know you put half measures in and it destroys everybody's idea instead of finding out what's what's the best course of action I like that a lot um what fields of knowledge outside of
negotiation itself and I guess your own experience have you found most valuable and kind of adding to your your patois row of tools and finding new insights you know some of the stuff that I'm finding really interesting now is has to do around the mental state of flow because historically was supposed
to be dispassionate in the negotiations you know you drive to be dispassionate drive to get into a neutral frame of mind well flow is where your pattern recognition and your decision-making is at its peak your mental endurance increases and your overall performances is much better like X Games athletes are doing things that
the world thought was previously physically impossible are they physically can an X game athlete is their vertical jump five feet instead of two feet no but their performance in what they're doing is the equivalent of taking a vertical jump and doubling it or tripling it but they're physically the same specimen the state of flow
which borders on is a highly positive frame of mind bordering on it's fun they're having fun bordering on euphoria their pattern recognition and their decision-making is near perfect in that state of mind that's what we need a business we need more mental endurance we need better pattern recognition we
need fearless decision-making - as soon as fear drops away we can think better it's a positive frame of mind so the whole psychology of flow in terms of people's performance and business is stuff that I'm finding fascinating and it happens to all so it's emotional intelligence rolled into flow so that
also plays a role in the decisions we're making on what negotiation tools we use when you lose your flow temporarily like when you were on the job what did you do I mean it happens to all of us we get distracted something comes up you know there's more information coming at us than we can handle how did you get back into that yeah well
the old the old the old remedy was just rest you know an exhausted hostage negotiate at the end of the day I just I just got to take him off the phone and let him get a good night's sleep but you know the new remedy what are the hacks how can we get this guy recharged I mean it's one of the right it's one of
the reasons why I think people are meditating a lot more now you know 10 minutes of good meditation might give you enough of a brain reset that that you're back in the game 10 minutes later I mean that that's that's a hack into flow what can I do to change my mental state of mind that'll give me a quick
recharge I mean it's kind of what Tony Robbins is doing it in his in his seminars Tony Robbins is in before the neuroscience was there he figured out the physical hacks and the flow that's why he sleeps four hours a night you know that's why he can stand up and do a 14 hour seminar essentially with no
breaks I mean if you if you go to his one of his seminar ABBA's on a stage for anywhere from you you you got to be prepared to sit there for anywhere from 12 to 14 hours on top of that Robbins is gonna make you do a number of things physically to put you in flow while how can you dial in to a Tony Robbins seminar for 14 straight hours only
leaving your chair for bathroom breaks sitting in a in in a collet in a stadium and indoor basketball arena on a concrete floor you know you know tiny little wooden chair squeezed into a bunch of other people and not get tired Robbins is putting you in flow how do you pay attention that whole time that is direct
application to the business world to your day to day performance so there's a number of those number of things that you can do ten minutes of meditation stand up and move around you know he has people yes people do what we used to call primal scream therapy I mean just kind of let loose for a couple of
seconds there's an there's an instant reset an instant body reset you know there's a whole bunch of things you could do to the course of a day that can give you a quick route smile and laugh um you get an instant chemical change when you laugh don't laugh because you're in a good mood force a laugh and
you'll actually feel better chemically you'll trigger a chemical change it's a lot of different things that you can do i you know 20 years ago if a hostage negotiator was running out of gas we wouldn't take I would never have thought to take him off the line tell him a couple jokes hahaha now maybe I would yeah when
you're in your negotiations with somebody how do you separate out somebody on the other other end of the phone or the negotiation like you versus somebody who's read a book like the people who know what they're talking about from the people who pretend they know what they're talking about you know
one of the biggest things is what is the other side coming from because I you know I'll get people that will try my techniques on me because they're trying to communicate with me better and I'm good with that or I get somebody who's trying some of this stuff on me cuz they're just trying to try to prove that they're smarter
than me and they're still gonna exploit me and take advantage of me I you know you can sniff that out pretty fast so a lot of it really has to do with you know not as the other person trying to collaborate with me but really are they trying to hurt me and and I and I'm good I'm absolutely good with somebody
negotiating with me as long as they're trying to make a better deal Brent not if they're actively seeking to hurt you yeah and even then at that point in time I just want to know for sure because I might not back out of that deal that you know I might not like them and we we have some people were doing business
with that I really don't like but it benefits my company a lot and so I'm not kidding myself about who I'm dealing with is there's nothing wrong with having a tiger by the tail as long as you know you got a tiger by the tail does that caused you a lot of stress if I let my if I let it cause me stress I
realize now that every now and then the people that we're doing business with that are trying to exploit us that isn't as they say a first worth first world problem or a success problem right you know I'm only dealing with these because the book is so good right and because we make a difference in people's lives I mean make no mistake
we make a difference in people's lives you go on you on Amazon and look at the reviews and this person after person after person but we made a difference in their lives we made their lives better men and women Facebook posting the other day a woman gave her daughter my book and she went out and negotiated a 30
percent salary increase for herself yes so a really good positive impact yeah and so you're the you you get trolls because you're successful you get attacked only by being successful and when I remind myself of that that I can deal with it one of switch gears a little bit talk about some personal questions just
outside of negotiation per se but stuff that I found interesting or that came out while I was reading your book that I was curious about the first one I want to ask you is like after a long career in law enforcement negotiation how do you personally determine if you can trust someone has your experience made
you more trustworthy of other people or less alright so we've got we've all got the intuition to pick this up and as soon as you start focusing on implementation and seeing what people do in front of you then and you know Trust is a funny word take the word trust out and put it in predictable what am I
gonna deck these people are gonna do yeah if you can substitute the word predict for trust or predictable for trust then put you in a much more rational frame of mind and you and you can see things easier and then you can make better decisions and the best indicator of future behavior is past me here so if I'm dealing with a company
that has horrible follow-up I should expect them to continue to have horrible follow I can't trust them to suddenly be smart or you know I'm out here in Los Angeles now number of different conversations going on about TV shows and and these guys treat each other or set each other up to be cheated on a
regular basis so I can't expect them to be any different dealing with me just cuz I'm a hostage negotiator they're still gonna try to set me up and take the intellectual property and cut me out and not leave me in a role I get bent out of shape over that or I can just expect it to happen and keep my guard up
right and not not kid myself or you know another analogy I like I think everybody knows the story the Scorpion a frog trying scorpions try to get across a river and he jumps on a frog's back and the Frog says you know if you sting me then we'll both drown and we'll both die scorpion says why would I ever do that
they get halfway across the river to skort store scorpion stings them and the folks is why'd you do that Scorpion said I'm a scorpion it's in my nature yeah so the frogs mistake not was not in helping the Scorpion the Frog you know put put the scorpion on on a twig and tow him across so that he can't stab
you right if he's gonna stab me that doesn't mean I can't collaborate it just means that I'd be stupid if I don't think I'm gonna get stabbed so don't you know how do I now arrange this so I don't leave myself in a position to be stabbed what kind of thoughts would you share with your younger self let's say
you're 20 years old and just beginning your career alright so that has to do with my type so I'm a natural-born assertive which means I'm a little hard on people I'm a little blunt dealing with me can be like getting hit in the face with a brick so I would tell me just be a little nicer don't compromise who you are
don't take any different positions you know I've been I've always been highly guided by what I believe to be you know right and wrong set of rules you know do the right thing is a phrase that matters to me so you know I'll I'll punch you in the face by trying to get you to do the right thing and thinking that my
motivations are good enough to cover up my delivery so I'd tell my younger self just be nicer don't don't change any of your positions don't go in any other directions just be nicer about it you get a lot farther but by neither do you mean that the bluntness was unkind or do you mean in your approach to saying the
same sort of thing um mainly mainly how I said things right okay you know and I don't know if it's fair analogy or not and again not to wade into anything politically you know but I'd ask you what are the biggest differences in the overall goals and objectives of Ronald Reagan versus Donald Trump you know
Ronald Reagan fired more people when he fired the air traffic controllers I think that Donald Trump has an entire career Ronald Reagan was seen as a nice guy but he very aggressive very pro-american right and very anti Russia pro-business you know fired their traffic controllers I mean that was an aggressive guy but
the he was he was video used to always say I'm a nice guy he smiled at people so but he didn't change any of those positions so that for me that you know that's for me can you tell me a bit of time that you failed and what you did to recover and learn from that yeah you know I mean there's all kinds of failures you know
one we talked about in the book hostages die yeah we didn't expect them to die and at that time I mean I I've always I was a big proponent of a strong team game so I was really satisfied that that I included my team we'd done everything we knew how to do and what we knew how to do wasn't enough so to me I used it I
used it to get better so you know I I did everything we knew how to do it wasn't good enough at that point of time you know we had we had another way to another much lower profile kidnapping where I thought it was gonna go bad and the people that will work in the kidnapping didn't want to listen to me
now I'm not sure that I could have changed the outcome but I'm like alright so those guys are more experienced and I you know I didn't push it as hard as hard as I could have right and ended up going bad I mean I chose not to wade into that I and I don't think there's any way that we could have made a
difference whatsoever on that one because the person that had been kidnapped was unbeknownst to law enforcement at the time was doing a lot of criminal activity that he was hiding which is the principal reason he died but I mean they're different playing there have been plenty of times and I made mistakes and I was wrong at the
time that calling the suicide hotline at the at the end of the call at the end of the year I had a lot of bad habits I I didn't I didn't know about my bad habits at the time I think the biggest difference is I think I'm very open to learning I'm a little bit like alright so if I'm not doing it right tell me how
right I'll do it right I just want to know the best way to do it what do you think the difference is between the people who are open to learning and not open to learning I think there's I think there's an embarrassment factor I think people are really embarrassed of being wrong I I you know that's kind of the only way I
can can couch it because I I know that I'm I know that I'm very open to learning and I know that there are a bunch of people out there that are not and I am kind of mystified by by myself and so when I'm trying I got a few of those in our classes you know for a company brings all their sales people in
it's gonna be some people in there that that are before the year is out are gonna get fired by that company because they didn't make their numbers and they're not open to learning turnover is very high and and and one of the reasons why the boss has got that person in our training is because he's trying to save
that he or she's trying to save that person and that person will be incredibly blocked I mean new ideas is such a threat to their self-concept they're horrified that maybe they were doing it wrong and trying trying to crack that code because if I can't get that that guy that that gal to open our
eyes we can't say they're gonna get fired what do you think prevents people from that day like the notion of being wrong like what's going on inside that person because I'm sure they also at some level feel if they don't see it tangibly that you know something has to change and yet they're still unwilling
to see reality that's well it's you know I know from I'm satisfied from from from Danny Kahneman that there's a fear of loss in there someplace and you know their perception of themselves and there's there's some there's something inside them that just scares the heck out of them you know I was one of the
things that talking to my girlfriend recently I was saying like you know I think everybody's got two lines of code somewhere deep down inside somebody said something to everybody when we were little kids there was like our two line of Mad two lines of magic code in there and figuring out what the code is those two lines is what really
drives the direction of people go and something you know something it has to do with self-esteem it has to do with you know I met a guy one time who was was he was a surprise to his family you know they thought they were done having kids and ten years after they were done having kids you know another one is on
his way and he used to love to tell this guy he was an accent and he grew up that his two lines of code you know that I mean that makes the animals made him feel like he was unwanted right so you know what did somebody say to somebody and those two lines of code and how do we get in there and help unravel it or
maybe put it you know change change a couple words in there so that instead of defeating themselves they're taking very better care of themselves I I had another colleague that I worked with they used to always say my grandmother always said self praises no prints well I'm thinking like so you know you can never praise yourself you can you
can never say is to yourself internally you know I did a good job here so yeah I don't know what it is sometimes but I anybody we can reach and figure out what it is we try to because we want people that don't have more more satisfying than enjoyable lives so Chris I want to end on a high note what's the smallest
habit you have that makes the biggest difference you know I think just taking a moment to let the other side articulate what's really burning on their mind the the the the other person is gonna be highly appreciative with that and you're gonna save a lot of time you know again it's a great mercenary missionaries skill saves you a lot of
time it has better relationships people are gonna like dealing with you even more if they get a chance to have their say and if they feel really listened to the amount of time it takes to have their say tends to be really short because people find being listened to being very satisfying I like that a lot
thank you Chris where can people find out more all right so the best way to connect is to subscribe to our complimentary newsletter the edge comes out once a week and it is a gateway to everything we do it's got a short article about a couple tips on how to get better at negotiation it's a it's a
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that's excellent thank you so much Chris I really enjoyed this conversation yeah my pleasure I did too thank you for having me hey guys this is Shane again just a few more things before we wrap up you can find show notes from today's show at FS blog slash podcast you can also find out information on how to get a transcript
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