Chris Voss: FBI Hostage Negotiator | Lex Fridman Podcast #364
- A crazy thing in the kidnap business. We used to get asked by FBI leadership, "When is this gonna be over?" And the answer would be, "When the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they can." Now dissecting that statement, you're talking about when they feel like they got everything they can. So the key to kidnapping
negotiations are the feelings. They're the bad guys. We're talking about feelings,
kidnapper's feelings, which drives everything. Doesn't matter what human endeavor it is. - The following is a
conversation with Chris Voss, former FBI hostage and crisis negotiator and author of, "Never
Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your
Life Depended On It." This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please
check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Chris Voss. What is it like negotiating
for a hostage with a kidnapper? What is the toughest part of that process? - The toughest part is, if it looks bad from the beginning, and you gotta engage
in the process anyway. - What are the factors that make it bad? That makes you nervous? That, if you were to observe a situation where there's general negotiation, or it's a hostage negotiation, what makes you think that
this is going to be difficult? - If they wanna make it look
like they're negotiating, but they're not. Like in the 2004 timeframe, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was
executing people on camera for the publicity, and they wanted to make it look
like they were negotiating. So they'd come on and they say, "If you don't get all the women out of, Iraqi women out of the
jails in Iraq in 72 hours, we're gonna kill a hostage." That was one of the demands in one of the cases in that timeframe. Now, first of all, even
if we'd have been willing, the US government, the coalition, would've been willing to do that, it wouldn't have been able
to happen in 72 hours. So it was an impossible
ask from the beginning. And so then that looks really bad. Like they're trying to make it, they're trying to make it look like they're talking
reasonably, but they're not. So your hostage is in bad shape there. They've made a demand that you just, even if you wanted to do, you couldn't do. So then what makes that very difficult is, in kidnappings especially, you're working with family members, you're coaching people, bad guys are in touch with family members, or if they're not directly
in touch with family members, the other thing that Al-Qaeda was doing at that time was they didn't
give us a way to talk to 'em. They're making statements in the media, but then not leaving their
phone number, if you will. So that's one more thing. Like they're intentionally blocking you. They're asking you to do
something you can't do. They're not giving you
a way to talk to 'em. So you gotta get with the family and discuss with the family how you're gonna approach things. Now the family definitely wants to know, "Is this gonna help?" There was a bunch of cases
like that in that timeframe. And you gotta be honest with 'em, "It's a long shot. Our chances here are slim and none." And when it's slim and
none, I'll take slim, but it's still very, very slim. And there were a number
of people that were killed in that timeframe before
the tide finally got turned. And it was, it was hard dealing with
families at the time. - Can you negotiate in public versus like a direct channel in private? - Oh yeah. Bad guys picked the media. They're making statements in the media. So, and that's a big clue. Their channel of choice
tells you an awful lot. And if they're choosing the media, then that means there's people
they're trying to appeal to. That means, in their view, there's such a thing as good media. So if there's good
media, there's bad media. How do you make it bad? And we made it bad for 'em. It just, unfortunately it
had to go through a number of iterations before they
got the message and quit. - In that negotiation, do you think about the
value of human life? Is there a dollar figure? Is there, how do you
enumerate, not enumerate, quantify the value of human life? - Yeah, that's, it's like beauty. It's in the eye of the beholder. So that was the first lesson
on any hostage negotiation. Really any negotiation. Like it doesn't matter what it is to you, matters what it is to the other side. One of the things, especially
in your conversation I listened to with Andrew. By the way, you guys, another thing I really liked
about that conversation, first of all, I think the world of him. - [Lex] Andrew Huberman. - Yeah, Andrew Huberman. And you released it on my birthday, I appreciate that.
(Lex chuckles) It was a nice birthday present- - [Lex] I tried to time
it perfectly just for you. - Yeah, nice job. Thank you. But empathy is in the eye of the beholder in every negotiation. Whether it's over a car, a house, collaboration in your
company, with the bad guys. How does the other side see it? Now the nice thing about
kidnapping for ransom, if there's an actual ransom demand that's an actual demand, is it's a mercenaries business. They're gonna take what they could get. And they tend to be really good at figuring out how
much money somebody has. So, and again, I'll keep
drawing business analogies. You're looking for a job with an employer. There's a market price of the job, and then there's what
the employer can pay you. Now, maybe the market price of the job, market's 150 grand, employer can pay 120. But it's a great job. You know, we were talking
about Elon a minute ago. Like, I'd work minimum
wage to follow him around. You know, that would be worth it. More the value other than the dollars. And how hard is it to get the dollars? And how quickly can you get to them? These are all things that
the bad guys are good, in kidnapping, are good at figuring out. So the value of human life to them is gonna be what can they get? A crazy thing in the kidnap business. We used to get asked by FBI leadership, "When is this gonna be over?" And the answer would be, "When the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they can." Now dissecting that statement, you're talking about when they feel like they got everything they can. So the key to kidnapping
negotiations are the feelings. They're the bad guys. We're talking about feelings,
kidnapper's feelings, which drives everything. Doesn't matter what human endeavor it is. - So it's not reason, it's emotion. - There's no such thing
as reason. (chuckles) - (laughs) I should say for
a little bit of context, I just talked yesterday with a guy named Sam Harris. I don't know if you know Sam, but Sam, and because I was preparing for a conversation with you, I talked to him about
empathy versus reason and he lands heavily on reason. Empathy is somewhere between useless and erroneous and leads you astray and is not effective. That reason is the only way forward. - Well, let's draw some fine lines there. And the two fine lines I would draw is, first, what is your definition of empathy? And then secondly, how do people actually
make up their minds? And I'm gonna flip it. I'm gonna go with how
people make up their minds. You make up your mind based
on what you care about. Period. That makes reason emotion based. What do you care about? You start with what you care about. You see some guy swimming out
in off the coast of the ocean and you see a shark coming up behind him. Who are you cheering for? If it's Adolf Hitler out there, you're cheering for the shark. You might actually feel bad for the shark, 'cause it's gonna taste bad. Who do you care about? - You mean the human
will taste bad? (laughs) - Yeah, you know, if he eats Adolf Hitler, you know, it's gonna leave
a bad taste in your mouth, even if you're a shark. So you're making up your
mind on every circumstances based on what you care about. So then what does that do to reason? Your reason is based on what you care about from the beginning. Now then empathy. If you define it as sympathy, which it was never meant
to be sympathy, ever. You know, etymology, I think is the word. I keep getting etymology
and entomology mixed up. Etymology being right, you know, where words came from, the origin. Entomology being bugs. - [Lex] (laughs) Got it. - Right? So I like etymology. Where did something come from? I also like entomology. Anyway, etymology. My understanding from my research, the original definition of empathy was an interpretation of a German word, where people were trying to figure out what the artist was trying to convey. It was about assessing art. And so it was always about understanding where somebody was coming from, but not sharing necessarily
that same thing. So then when I was with the FBI and I first started
collaborating with Harvard, Bob Mnookin wrote a book "Beyond Winning," second chapter is, "The Tension Between
Empathy and Assertiveness." Still the best chapter on
empathy I've ever read anywhere. And Bob writes in his book. Bob was the head of the
program on negotiation. He's also agreed to be
interviewed for a documentary about me and my company that
hasn't been released yet, but it should be released
sometime this year. - [Lex] What's the name
of the documentary? - "Tactical Empathy." - [Lex] Good name. - So Bob's definition of empathy, he said, "Not agreeing or even
liking the other side." Don't even gotta like 'em, don't gotta agree with 'em. Just straight understanding
where they're coming from and articulating it, which requires no agreement whatsoever. That becomes a very powerful tool, like ridiculously powerful. And if it, if sympathy or compassion or agreement are not included, you can be empathic with anybody. I was thinking about this when I was getting ready to
sit down and talk to you, 'cause you use the word empathy a lot. Putin. I can be empathic with
Putin easy. It's easy. I don't agree with
where he is coming from. I don't agree with his methodology. Early on, Ukraine/Russian war, I saw an article that was
very dismissive of Russia. That said, "Russia's basically
Europe's gas station." And I thought, "All right." So if you are in charge and the way you feed your people is via an industry that the entire world is trying to quit. The whole world is trying
to get out of fossil fuels. If that's how you feed your people, if you don't come up
with an answer to that, the people that you've
taken a responsibility for are gonna die alone in
the cold, in the dark. They're gonna freeze
and they're gonna die. Right, so that doesn't mean that I agree with where he is coming
from or any of his means, but where is, how does this guy see things in his distorted war? You're never gonna get
through to somebody like that in a conversation unless
you can demonstrate to them you understand where they're coming from. Whether or not you agree. Early '90s, last century. I'm a last century guy, I'm an old dude, refer to myself as a last century guy. Also a deeply flawed human. So terrorist case, New York City, civilian court. Terrorism does not have to be
tried in military tribunals. That's a very bad idea. It was always bad. The FBI was always against it. I'm getting ready. We have Muslims testifying in open court against a legitimate Muslim cleric. The guy that was on
trial had the credentials as a legitimate Muslim cleric. The people that were
testifying against him didn't think he should
be advocating murder of innocent people. We'd sit down with them, Arab
Muslims, Egyptians mostly. And I would say to them, "You believe that
there's been a succession of American governments
for the last 200 years that are anti-Islamic?" And they shake their head and go, "Yeah." And that'd be the start
of the conversation. That's empathy. You believe this to be the case. I never said I agreed. I never said I disagreed, but I showed 'em that I wasn't
afraid of their beliefs. I was so unafraid of
'em that I was willing to just state 'em and not
disagree or contradict. 'Cause I would say that and then I'd shut up and let 'em react. And I never had to say,
"Here's why you're wrong." I never gave my point of view. Every single one of 'em that
testified. That's empathy. Not agreeing with where the
other side is coming from. I'm not sure how Sam would de define it, but common vernacular is its
sympathy and its compassion. And that's when it becomes useless. - And there is a gray area,
maybe you can comment on it, is sometimes a drop of compassion helps make that empathy more
effective in the conversation. So you're just saying you believe X, doesn't quite form a strong of
a bond with the other person. - You are imagining it doesn't. - Maybe you're right, yes, I'm imagining it doesn't. I'm imagining you need to show that you're on the same side. That you need to signal a little bit about your actual beliefs, at least in that moment. Even if those, that signaling is a, is not as deep as it sounds, but at first, you know, basically patting the person
on the back and saying, "We're on the same side, brother." - You know, that's what most people, when they're really learning the concept, that's the basic human reaction. And in application, especially in highly
adversarial situations, like, I need a regular guy, Muslim, but how's that guy gonna say "Buy it, if I like, you know, dude, I'm on your side. I've been there, I feel you." No, no, no, no, no, no. People get conned by that so much. Like, if we're on opposite
sides of the table and I try to act like I'm
not on the opposite side of the table, that makes me disingenuous. So I would rather be honest. You know, my currency is integrity. And at some point in time, if you go like, "You know where I'm coming from?" My answer's gonna be like, look, I can agree on
maybe where we're going, but if we're talking about, you know, am I on your side now? As a human being, I wanna
see you survive and thrive. Not at my expense. I think the world is full of opportunity. I'm optimistic. I got more than enough
reason for saying that. There's enough here for both of us. So I got no problem
with you getting yours. You know, just don't take it outta my hide and I'm gonna be honest about it. About both of those things, I'm not interested in you
taking it outta my hide. I think there's plenty
here for both of us. Now, I don't need to be on your side except in a human sense. But I don't, do I have to side with you over the war? No. Or how we're distributing the stock? Or how much you get paid, or how much you make off this car. I think people, my experience as a layman is that empathy's not got a downside. That you don't need me to act like I'm on your side for
us to make a great deal. - Great deal. Well, we'll
talk about two things. A great deal and a great conversation. They're often going to be the same thing, but at times they're
going to be different. And that's a, you
mentioned Vladimir Putin. There is some zoom level
at which you do wanna say, "We're on the same side." You said the human level. It's possible to say, kind of zoom out and say that
we're all in this together. Not we Slavic people, we Europeans, but we human beings. - We're on the same planet.
- Same planet, right. - Several years ago, and his name is evidently been mud now, but he was very nice to me, a lawyer here in town named Tom Girardi. And no shortage of bad
reporting on him now, I have absolutely no
idea if any of it's true. I do know that in my interaction with him, he was always a gentleman
to me and was very generous. When he'd get into
conversations with people, he'd always say like, you know, "Let's look at 10 years from now, where we could both be in a
phenomenal place together. Now let's work our way back from there." - (laughs) That's a good line. - Yeah, and then, you know, I saw him do it in simulations. I was teaching a USC, we
were at a function together, and a gentleman at the
time told me who he was, and that he was really influential. So I walked up to the guy cold and I said, "Hey, you know, how about coming to talk in my class at USC?" He didn't know me other than the fact that we had a mutual acquaintance, and he graciously consented to come in. And he said, "What do you
want me to talk about?" I said, "Look, dude, just
from your success here, it doesn't matter what you talk about. You know, either I'm gonna agree or I'm gonna disagree or
I'm gonna learn from it. My students are gonna learn from it." So students wanna role
play with 'em, you know, they dispute, you know,
"Let's do a negotiation." Every single time he'd go to
"Pick a point in the future where we're both happy. 10 years, 20 years from now,
and let's work our way back." Now, hostage negotiator, same thing. I call into a bank, bad
guy picks up on the, picks up on the phone, and I'm gonna say, "I want you to live." You know, "I wanna see you
survive this, you know, whatever else goes with that. Let's pick a point in the future that we're both good with. And then we work our way back." And people make also, we were talking before about emotion and what you care about. People make their decisions based on their vision of the future. Like without question. I think there's a Hindu
temple in the United States, being, has been, or being assembled, same way that the Hindu
temples were in India a thousand years ago by hand. Volunteers, by hand. These people are knocking themselves out for a place in paradise,
a vision of the future. What you will go through today if the future portends what you want, you'll go through incredible things today. So it's a vision of the future. - So you have to try to
paint a vision of the future that the person you're
negotiating with will like. Which is tough to do. - It's find out what their
vision of the future is and then remove yourself as a threat. You know, if we can
collaborate together at all. If you think that I
could do anything at all to help you to that point and, you know, integrity's my currency, I'm not gonna lie to you. Which gets back before, did I lie to you about whether
or not I'm on your side? You know, right now, at the moment we're on opposite sides of the fence. That's not gonna stop us from
being together in the future. Inside you're gonna say, "Wow, well, you didn't
lie to me about today. Maybe you won't lie to me about tomorrow." - So going back to world
leaders, for example, whether it's Volodymyr
Zelenskyy or Vladimir Putin, you don't think it closes off their mind to show that you have a different opinion. - Depending upon when you showed it. Are you arguing from the beginning or are you displaying
understanding from the beginning? I don't think it stops you
from being adversarial. That was the thing about Mnookin's, the chapter in his book, "The Tension Between
Empathy and Assertiveness." I remember reading that, reading that name of the
chapter, thinking like, "Eh, you know, in my business
there is no tension." And then I got into it
and I read, I thought, "This is a red herring." He's drawing people in because his entire chapter is that empathy puts you
in a position to assert and that there is no tension. It's a sequencing issue. And that's why, again, I think it's, it was written for lawyers. - Yeah, sequencing issue. The timing is everything. So you emphasize the importance of, in terms of sequencing
and priority of listening, of truly listening to the other person. - I'm sorry, what'd you say? That was a bad joke, sorry.
- I forgot. Your timing is just perfect. How do you listen? How do you truly listen
to another human being? How do you notice them? How do you really hear them? - I always hated the
term active listening. If anything, it's proactive. And as soon as you start
to try and anticipate where somebody's going,
you're dialed in more. Because along the way, either you're congratulating
yourself for being right, or, when suddenly they say
something that surprises you, you really notice it. Like, "That's not what I expected." You're dialed in, you're listening. So it's proactive. And then one of the reasons, you know, we named the book "Tactical Empathy." Named the book "Never
Split the Difference," but we're talking about tactical empathy. Calibrated emotional intelligence. What's it calibrated by? First it was experience
as host negotiators, but then we'd come to find out that our experience as host negotiators is backed up by neuroscience. Another reason why I listen to Andrew Huberman's
podcasts all the time. Heavy, heavy, heavy,
heavy on the neuroscience. And so then emotional
intelligence calibrated by what we know about neuroscience. What do we know about neuroscience? And I'll talk about it from
a layman's perspective, and to even say we is an arrogant thing, you know, human beings. I didn't do the research. I'm scooping up as much of
it as I can as a layman. The brain's largely negative. I think there's ample evidence. People would argue with you
as to what the wiring is and what does what, and the limbic system and all of that. But the brain is basically 75% negative. As is in a layman I make that contention. Number one. Number two. The best way to deactivate negativity is by calling it out. And I could say, "Look, I
don't want you to be offended by what I'm getting ready to say." That's a denial. Your guard is up, you're
getting ready to get mad. If I say, "What I'm getting ready to say is probably gonna offend you." Then you relax a little bit and you go, "All right, what is it?" And then I say it, whatever it is. And you're gonna be like,
"Oh, that wasn't that bad." Because we knew from hostage negotiation by calling out the
negativity it deactivated it, and then, a number of
neuroscience experiments have been done right and left, by calling out negativity,
deactivating the negativity. - Calling out ahead of time. So like acknowledging that this is, that this is ahead of time,
that this is going to hurt. - The experiments that I've seen have been when the
negativity was inflicted and then having a person that
it was being inflicted upon simply identify it. - [Lex] Just identify? - Yeah, what are you feeling? I'm angry. And the anger goes away. - It's tough because I've had a few, and again, we're dancing between things, but I've had a few conversations where anger arose in
the guests I spoke with. And I'm not sure identifying it, that's like leaning into it
and going into the depths, 'cause that's going into the
depths of some emotional, psychological thing they're going through that I'm not sure I wanna explore that iceberg with the little ship we got. You have to decide, do you want to avoid it or do you wanna lean into it? It's a tough choice. - It's the elephant in the room. - It is an elephant in the room. It is an elephant. Especially when, I think
that's the big difference between conversations and negotiations. Negotiation ultimately
is looking for closure and resolution. I think general conversations
like this is more exploring. There's not necessarily a goal. Like if you were to put, like, if I had to put a
goal for this conversation, there's no real goal. It's curiously exploring ideas. So that'll, gives you freedom
to not call out the elephant. (chuckles) For a time you can be like, "All right, let's go to the next room, get a snack and come back to the elephant. - Right. All right. So I'd make a tiny adjustment
on the negotiation definition. 'Cause you said, I
think, "Seeking closure." You used two words, and
closure was one of them. - Goal was maybe another. Well, yeah, what is negotiation? - Well, I would say seeking collaboration. And, 'cause closure kind of puts a little bit of a finality
to it, and the real problem in any negotiation's
always implementation. That's why we say, "Yes is," I say, "Yes is nothing without how." And yes at it's very best is
only a temporary aspiration. It's aspirational. It's usually counterfeit. So if you're looking for- (Lex laughs)
Huh? - That's a good line. Yes is usually counterfeit. It's aspirational without the how. It's just a good line, yeah. (laughs) - Thank you. I've been working on it. I was practicing in front of the mirror before coming in today.
- You're pretty good. (both laughing) You got a bright future ahead of you. You should write a book or something. (Lex laughing) Your book is excellent, by the way. - Thanks. Appreciate that. What am I doing here anyway? - This? On earth? In general?
- With you? - I don't know. (Chris laughing)
We're collaborating. - Why me though? Why'd you wanna talk to me? - I've heard you speak in a few places. I was like, "This is a fascinating human." I think on Clubhouse and different places, and I listened to some YouTube stuff. And this is just, you meet people that are interesting. That's what I love
doing with this podcast, is just exploring the mind
of an interesting person. You notice people-
- Thanks. - Sometimes there's
like a homeless person, that's outside of 7-Eleven, I notice, who are you? - [Chris] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's fascinating. It doesn't, like, I
don't look at the resumes and the credentials and stuff like that. It's just being able to notice the person. - As I've been leafing through the different choices of the podcast, the young lady that, OnlyFans and the sex workers. That's a fascinating human being. - Yeah, it's fascinating.
- Like I wanna know what makes that person tick 1,000%. - The fascinating thing about her is her worldview is almost
entirely different than mine. And that's always interesting
to talk to a person who just is happy, flourishing, but sees the world, and
the set of values she has is completely different, and is also not argumentative, is accepting of other worldviews. It's beautiful to explore that. - Yeah, no kidding, I would agree. And then, yeah, thought provoking. 'Cause I consider myself, the word I was looking
for before is abundant. I think it's an abundant world. So I'm pretty optimistic. I consider myself, I don't know happy exactly
describes it, but yeah, you know I'm. So then if I'm happy,
optimistic, abundant, I got a worldview and
then you run into somebody that has a vastly different worldview and they're happy and they
think it's abundant too. And you're like, "What
is going on in your head, or mine, or what am I missing?" Yes. That's fascinating. - And the pie grows. Which is useful for kinda negotiation when you paint a picture of a future, if you're optimistic about that future, there's a kinda feeling, like
we're both gonna win here. - Exactly.
- And that's easy. We'll live in a world
where both people can win. - Yeah. And in point of
fact, that's the case. Although a lot of people
want us to think otherwise. Mostly because of the negativity that I was talking about before. - So the brain is generally cynical. - Yeah, my description of it is, the pessimistic caveman survived and we're descendants of the pessimists. The optimistic guy got eaten
by a saber-toothed tiger. - (chuckles) Yeah, but on the flip side, the optimists seem to be the ones that actually build stuff these days. - There's a switch. Like, so at what point
in time do we catch on? 'Cause the difference between
survival and success mindset. The success mindset is highly optimistic. So where do we switch or
how do we stay switched from survival to success? That's the challenge. - Yeah, somewhere we stopped being eaten by saber-toothed tigers and
started building bridges and buildings, and computers
and companies, and. - We started to experience, we got enough data back to collaborate, and we stopped listening to our amygdala and we started listening to our gut. - Let me just to return
briefly to terrorists. What do you think about the policy of not negotiating with terrorists? - Well, that's not the
policy, first of all. Now, everybody thinks that's the policy. It hasn't been the policy since 2002 when Bush 43 signed a National Security
Presidential Directive, NSPD. At the time it was NSPD 12, which basically said, "We
won't make concessions. That doesn't mean we won't talk." So I'm in Columbia at the same time and I have been intimately involved with the signing of him
signing that document. I knew exactly what it said, and he didn't inherit it from
somebody else, he signed it. And I'm in Columbia and the number two in the embassy says, "Last night on TV, the
president of the United States said we don't negotiate with terrorists. Are you calling a president
of the United States a liar?" And I remember thinking like, "All right, so he probably said that, and that's not on the
document that he signed." So I said, "Look, you know, I'm familiar with what he signed and that's not what it says." "Well, you know." And so the argument. But that's always been the
sound bite that everybody likes. "We don't negotiate with terrorists." Depends upon your
definition of negotiation. If it's just communication, we negotiate with 'em all the time. Number one. And number two. Like every president has
made some boneheaded deal with the bad guys. Like Obama released five high-level Taliban leaders from Guantanamo in exchange
for an AWOL soldier that we immediately threw in jail. And I thought that was a horrible deal, and that's putting terrorists
back on a battlefield. And then Trump turned around and topped it by putting 5,000 terrorists
back on the battlefield. So we haven't had a president
that has stuck to that on either side of the aisle, since people started throwing
that out as a sound bite. - What do you think of that negotiation? Forget terrorists, but
the global negotiation, like with Vladimir Putin, the recent negotiation over prisoners, the exchange, the Brittney Griner. Is there a way to do that
negotiation successfully? - First of all, I agree with the idea that she was wrongfully detained and she didn't deserve to be in jail. And that US government, there should be no second
class citizens ever. And whether you're an WNBA player or you're just some bonehead that walked into the wrong situation, your government should not
abandon you ever, ever. Now what they do in the meantime, there should have been a negotiation. They were desperate to
make a deal at a bad time. They'd been offered far better deals than prisoner swaps earlier
and turned 'em down. And then the heat gets turned up, and thank God for Brittney Griner that the public got enough attention. They kept pressure on the administration, they made a deal. Now if governments wanna
make those kind of deals, that's fine, as long as it, 'cause that was basically
a political negotiation. You're putting 5,000 Taliban
back on the battlefield, that ain't negotiating
with another government. You're putting five of 'em
back on the battlefield that ain't negotiating
with another government, that's directly contradicting
this thing that you claimed. And those were all bad deals. Now was the Brittney
Griner thing a bad deal? I think it was great for her. If I was in the middle of it, it would've been better and
she still would've come home. - Yeah, there's some technical
aspects of that negotiation. What do you think is the
value, just to linger on it, of meeting in-person for the negotiation? - I think it's a great idea. - Can I just follow that tangent along. There's a war in Ukraine now. It's been going on over a year. It's, for me personally,
given my life stories, is a deeply personal one, and I'm returning back to
that area of the world, I was there. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he doesn't wanna talk to Vladimir Putin. Do you think they could
get in a room together? And say you were there in a room with Putin and Zelenskyy and Biden is sitting in the
back drinking a cocktail, or maybe he is at the table participating. Is it possible through negotiation, through the art of
conversation to find peace in this very tense geopolitical conflict? - I think it's eminently possible. I think getting people together in-person has always been a good idea. Now how many, who's getting 'em together
under what circumstances and how many times are
you getting 'em together? The documentary, "The Human Factor," about the Mid-East peace negotiations mostly through the '90s, mostly under the Clinton administration, got kicked off under Bush 41. And then the documentary
continues through Trump, but just touching basically on it. But they're getting Arafat and the different Israeli prime ministers together in-person. And these guys did not
wanna talk to each other. And depending upon the prime minister, you know, the mere thought of being on the same planet
with Arafat was offensive. And they started getting
these guys together in-person regularly and they
started seeing each other as human beings. And they started realizing that there was enough
room on the planet for 'em and that people dying was stupid. And they would slowly work things out by getting these guys together in-person. So how long does it take? Who's hosting it? But it's a good idea. - But the skill of achieving that thing that you talk about a
lot, which is empathy. And I would say in that
case, not just empathy, but empathy plus a bit, you
might disagree with this, but a drop of compassion in there. - I think compassion,
compassion is helpful, but it's not essential. Like, if you just know
where I'm coming from. Like, the thought, the feeling of being understood. - Yeah, heard and
understood. That's powerful. - It is, yeah, and again, I know I picked the
vast majority of this up on Andrew's podcast, but I picked it up in other places. 'Cause early on, when we were putting the book together, Tahl Raz, the writer, my son, uncredited co-author. So the book's really a
collaboration between me, my son Brandon, and Tahl Raz. And we're driving for that's rights. You know, when somebody
feels like what you've said is completely their position,
they say "That's right." Not you're right, but that's right. So Tahl says, "You know, I think what's happening here is you're triggering a
subtle epiphany in somebody." So I'm like, "All right, I'll buy that." So I start looking up the neuroscience of the feeling of epiphany, getting a hit of oxytocin and serotonin. Oxytocin is a bonding drug. You bond to me, I don't bond to you. When you feel completely understood by me, you bond to me. Then in one of the relationship podcasts that I'm listening to on Andrew, it says, "Oxytocin inclines
people to tell the truth." You're more honest. All right, so you feel
deeply understood by me, you bond to me and you start
getting more honest with me. Serotonin, the neurochemical
of satisfaction. Epiphany, you feel oxytocin and serotonin. Being understood. All right, I got you bonding to me. I got you being more honest with me and I got you feeling more satisfied, so you want less. What more do you want
out of a negotiation? - Of course there's already, with leaders and great negotiators, there's walls built up, defense mechanisms against that, right? You're resisting, you're resisting this basic chemistry. But yes, you should have that. You should work towards
that kind of empathy. And I personally believe, I don't actually understand why, but I've observed it time and time again, but getting in a room together and really talking, whether
privately or publicly, but really talking, and like this, so I'll comment on this. So right now this is being recorded and a few folks will hear this, but when you really do a good job with this kind of conversation, you forget there's cameras. And that's much better than there being even a
third person in the room. But often when world leaders
meet there's like press or there's others in the room. Like, as you know,
man-to-man or man-to-woman, you have to like meet like in a saloon, just the two of you and talk. There's some intimacy and power to that to achieve the, if you're also willing to
couple that with empathy, to really hear the other person. - [Chris] Yeah, yep, yeah. - I don't know what that is. That's like a deep, deep
intimacy that happens. - And I think there's actually, 'cause we get asked this in The Black Swan Group all the time. Like, "How do, you know, Zoom? That's bad. You know, 'cause you don't have the same visual feedback on Zoom." And that's not true. Like you and I, I see you from the waist up right now. If we were on Zoom, I'd be
looking at you from the waist up. - I'm not wearing pants, yeah. (Chris laughs) For the internet. I apologize for that. (Chris laughs) (chuckles) Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you only see a small portion. - Usually I, that's usually where I go. But anyway. - (laughs) I'm glad we both have a ridiculous sense
of humor, I appreciate it. - But what makes this different in-person? I actually think, I think there's energy that we're unable, we don't have the
instrumentation to define yet. And I think that there's a feel, I think there's an actual
energetic feel that changes. And just 'cause we don't, again, just 'cause we can't measure it, doesn't mean it's not there. - Yeah, I would love to
figure out what that is. Folks that are working on virtual reality are trying to figure out what that is. During the pandemic everybody was on Zoom. Zoom and Microsoft, everybody is trying to figure
out how do we replicate that. I'm trying to understand
how to replicate that because it sure is not fun
to travel across the world just to talk to Snowden
or Putin or Zelenskyy. I'd love to do it over
Zoom, but it's not the same. It's not the same.
- No, it's not the same. I'd go in a room with Putin. - You would go in a room?
- I would, yeah, 1,000%. I'd get it that's right out of him. - That's right. Well, first you would give
him a that's right probably. - Ah, gettin' and givin'. You see. And here's the issue that trips
everybody up in negotiation. The difference between hearing and speaking the same
words are vastly different. And what I'm looking for is the responses I'm getting outta you. 'Cause if you can't first,
that's right especially, like if you can't appreciate
what that really means, hearing it is unsatisfying. - So those two words are
really important to you. You talk about this in your book. What does that's right
mean? Why is it important? - Well, it means that what you just heard you think is unequivocably the truth. Like it's dead-on, it hit the target. It's a bullseye. And there's been a topic of discussion, especially between my son and I, a lot like what happens? This oxytocin bonding moment. And his contention has always been like Donald Trump is the
poster child of what it means. Because Donald Trump's
addressing an audience, you know, he's in a debate with Hillary, or he's giving a speech someplace, and when the people
that are devoted to him, when they believe that what he's just said is completely right, it's insightful. They look at him or they look at the TV and they go "That's right." And it's what people say when they're bought-in
to what they just heard. Now if you're not convinced of the way that Donald Trump's
followers are bonded to him, and he also just like this, in my view, destroys the idea of common ground. Because when he first
started to run for president, the pundits all said,
"Ah, he's a New Yorker. Nobody in the Republican
party's gonna like him. It's middle America," you
know, "it's blue collar," you know, "it's regular
common folks, factory workers. They're not gonna like Trump
'cause he's from New York. And he went to Warden,
he's an Ivy Leaguer, and he's a son of a
wealthy real estate mogul. And he had a million dollars handed to him when he got outta college. He," you know, "he's born with
a silver spoon in his mouth. The Rankin-fire Republicans are never gonna accept this guy." Based on common ground. Look how smart that was. - Do you think he's a good negotiator? Do you think Donald Trump
was a good negotiator? - No, I think he's a great marketer. If you look at his
negotiation track record. All right, so I started
following Donald Trump in the '80s when I was in New York. I'm a last century guy,
he's a last century guy. We've got mutual acquaintances. The minister that married
him to Marla Maples was a friend of mine,
a close friend of mine. And in 1998 I threw a
fundraiser in his apartment at Trump Tower that he attended. So no shortage of mutual friends. We went to the same church. Still have mutual acquaintances, friends. And I've watched his track
record negotiation history, which is exactly his track
record with North Korea. Where are we with North Korea? What was the deal that
he made with North Korea? See, your answer is the
same as everybody else's. Well, I remember it started
out with a lot of fanfare. But I don't know what happened, 'cause nothing ever happens. - There's more public fanfare, so marketing-minded presentation- - Starts out with a bang. If he doesn't cut the
deal in a short period, a really short period of time he moves on and everybody wonders what had happened because there was so much
fanfare at the beginning. Now at the beginning, him even opening that
dialogue with North Korea was masterful. Like, I was such a fan. When you got a president
of the United States that is willing to sit down
and talk with the leader of another nation, when
every other president, all our advisors are saying, "The leader of North Korea is beneath you. You cannot dignify him by
responding to him directly." And consequently the Trump administration inherits a can of worms that has been simmering for 30 years. He didn't get us into that. And he opened up a dialogue where nobody else was
capable of opening a dialogue and then it just went away. Nobody knows what happened. And there was no deal made. Now great negotiators make deals. - What do you think
about these accusations that he's a narcissist? If you're a narcissist, does
that help you or hurt you? - Is there a more popular term
these days than narcissist? Like everybody's a narcissist. - Everybody you don't
like is a narcissist. - Like the homeless
guy down on the corner, he's a narcissist, that's why he is there. - Yeah, it's lost meaning
for you a little bit? - Yeah, and first of all, most psychological terms, as a hostage negotiator, and really we were never into psychology and we steered away from it, 'cause psychology at best is soft science. If it's not informed these days, if it's not informed by real studies or neuroscience, the guys that I'm impressed with these days, are psychologist neuroscientists, now I'm interested in that guy or gal. But then a psychology convention, do you get 'em all together
and they all agree? - No.
- No. - But also the interesting
thing about psychology is each individual person
is way more complicated than the category
psychology tries to create. And there's something
about the human brain. The moment you classify
somebody as a narcissist, or depressed or bipolar, or
insane in any kind of way, for some reason you don't, you give yourself a convenient excuse not to see them as a
complicated human being to empathize with 'em. I had that when I was talking to, I did an interview with Kanye West and then there's a lot of popular opinions about him being mentally unwell and so on, and I felt that that
kind of way of thinking is a very convenient way of thinking to ignore the fact that he's a human being that, again, wants to
be understood and heard. And that's the only way you
can have that conversation. - Yeah, I agree completely. That's right. (Lex laughing) I feel so close to you now. (both laughing) - It might 'cause I'm not wearing pants. (Chris laughing) All right, so, what were we- - You're funnier than
I am. That bothers me. - All right. (laughing) I'll say something stupid soon enough. Don't worry about it. But you said, we were
talking about terrorists and not negotiating with terrorists. Is there something-
- Nice job going all the way back to
where that rabbit hole started. - Oh, sh, where's rabbit, we're "Alice in Wonderland" right now. Is there something about walking away? Of not negotiating? Is there power in that? - All right, so it depends upon whether or not you're
doing it with integrity or a tactic to start with. And then also, hostage negotiators are
successful 93% of the time, kind of across the board. Which means that there's 7%
of the time it's gonna go bad. And that was my old boss, Gary Noesner, I learned so much from Gary. But a phrase that he used
over and over and over again until I finally worked
a case that went bad, was "This is gonna be the
best chance of success." Best chance of success. And then something went bad,
and I remember thinking, like, "Well best chance of success is no guarantee of success." So your question is, are there negotiations
you should walk away from? If you got no shot at
success, then don't negotiate. And you have to accept the fact there's some deals
you're never gonna make. You know, we teach in my company, it's not a sin to not get the deal. It's a sin to take a long
time to not get the deal. And, you know, Gary, in his
infinite wisdom, you know, they realized that there was something called suicide-by-cop, and that it might have, Gary was very much into
clusters of behavior, he kept us away from psychological terms and there would be clusters of behavior that would be high-risk indicators. And he wrote a block of instruction called high-risk indicators. Which meant if you start
seeing this stuff show up, this thing's probably going bad. And you're gonna need to, you're gonna need to recognize
that from the very beginning and adjust accordingly. And it's the same way in
business and personal life. I'm talking to a head
of a marketing company I had tremendous respect for, I admire what this guy
and his company does, started from scratch. He borrowed space in
the back of a drugstore to start his company. And now it's hugely successful. And he's laying out to me that he finally had to
confront a potential client and walk away from him. And he said, "How do you
think I handled this?" And my answer was, "1,000% correct. And as a matter of fact, the behavior that he
indicated, he's a type, and you should have walked
away sooner than you did, because this guy was
playing it all the time." Al-Qaeda, 2004, they're playing us. They're not negotiating. We called them out on it. We don't think you're negotiating. You wouldn't say it exactly like that, but that was absolutely
the approach, you know, confront people on their
behavior in a respectful way. - And signal that you're
willing to walk away. - And mean it, 1,000%. - And mean it. Isn't that terrifying? I mean, it's scary, 'cause you don't want to really walk away, or do you have to really
want to walk away? - Well, yeah, this core
values your view of reality. If it's an abundant world,
it's not scary to walk away. If it's a finite world
with limited opportunities, then it's horrifying. - (sighs) But you have
to use that worldview to be willing to actually walk away. - [Chris] Yeah. - It could be walking
away from a lot of money. It could be walking away from something that's gonna hurt people, 'cause if you lose a hostage. - Yeah, well, but if they're
not gonna let the hostage out? Suicide-by-cop, they ain't letting him go. - The 7%. How do most negotiations fail? - The bad guys were never there to make a deal in the first place. If it was suicide-by-cop. If they were there to, if
they're on a killing journey, it's an Israeli phrase. If they're on a killing journey and the actions that
they're currently engaged in are part of that killing journey. - Killing journey. Is there advice you can give about, you mentioned Israel
Palestine, the Middle East, taking on a few
conversations on that topic. Is there hope for that part of the world? And from that hope, is there
some advice you could lend? - Yeah, I think there's hope, there's. Then I got friends on both sides, and also, when I got my, after I left the FBI, most people listened to this, but probably not gonna remember who Rodney Dangerfield was. - [Lex] Oh, come on. - But he's a comedian. - Still doesn't get any respect, yeah. - [Chris] Yeah, yeah. - New Yorker? Is he a New Yorker? - I think he was a New York guy. - [Lex] Or like Jersey,
or something, yeah. - Yeah, and he did a
movie a long time ago, called "Back to School." He went back to school as
an old guy, back to school. So I went back to school
after I left the FBI. I did get a masters at Harvard Kennedy. And that's where, you know, I'm running across people
on both sides of that. And when they could talk, they said, "Let's start from the
premise that both sides want a better life for our kids." Which is this version that
I was telling you earlier from Tom Girardi, let's
pick a point in the future that we're all happy with. And they found that they
could talk, you know. All right, so it might
not be better for us. How do we make it better for our kids? And that's where the hope derives from. Because I think both sides ultimately want it to be better for their kids, which is why they still
engage in interactions, and which is why I think the leadership, regardless of how compromised
they might be on either side, there're few straight players in the game in the Middle East, or
anywhere for that matter, but they want a better
future for their kids. You get people to agree that you want a better
future for your kids, now you can start talking about, "Well, how do we work
our way back from that?" And then, all right, so we got
a mutual point in the future. The Israeli Palestinian negotiations are also for me interesting, 'cause you mentioned Clubhouse. About almost two years ago now, when Israel was shelling Gaza. They hit the UPI office. You know, they were hitting, they got fed up with the
rocket attacks from Hamas. And of course Hamas is putting
rockets in the UPI office or the AP office, whichever
press office it was there. How's that office gonna
be there otherwise? Hamas is running the show. You're not gonna run that
office unless they let you, unless you let them store weapons there. That's just part of the game. And are they gonna, are they gonna store 'em in specially designated ammunition dumps? No, they're gonna put 'em in schools, they're gonna put 'em in hospitals, they're gonna put 'em in all places that when Israel hits 'em,
they're gonna look really bad. So after a while, Israel gets fed up,
they start shelling Gaza and they're hitting these places. Friend of mine, Nicole Behnam, is hosting rooms on
Clubhouse and she says, "You gotta come on. The
vitriol is killing me. These are all turning
into screaming matches. Nobody's talking to anybody." I said, "All right, cool. We'll go on, we'll do it, and watch, we won't
have a single argument. And we'll invite people
on from both sides." There was one rule. Before you started to describe what you thought of the other side, you had to say, "Before
I disagree with you, here's what I think your position is." And you gotta continue to
state the other side's position until they agree that you it. Now what happened? No agreement and no arguments. That was what we were really going for. We wanted to show that
people on both sides in one of their emotional timeframes, if your only requirement was you had to state the
other side's position first, nobody got outta control. - Did it work? - That's exactly what happened. We wanted to show people that
you can have conversations that do not devolve into screaming matches with vitriol, talking
about how you're dedicated to the destruction of the other side. Just first see if you can outline
where they're coming from. - That's really impressive
because I've just, having seen on Clubhouse, people, which part of the
reason I liked Clubhouse, 'cause you get to hear
voices from all sides, they were emotionally intense. (laughs) It was, I mean, I was, I'm sweating just in the
buildup of your story here. I thought it's gonna go to hell. But you're saying it kind of worked. - Not one person lost control. Now of the two sides, the people that were speaking on behalf of the Israelis
were a little better at articulating supportive
positions for the Palestinians. Most of the people that wanna speak up on behalf of the Palestinians, they just, they'd wanna start in
like, "You're doing this." And I'd say, "No, no, no, no. You can go there, just not yet. Before you go there, you can say that all you want. Before you go there, you've gotta try to articulate to them where they're coming from. They gotta tell you you got it right." And what would consistently happen is there's a leveling out of a person to try to see the other side's perspective and articulate it. It's enormously beneficial to the person who's trying to do it. Which was really the point
that we were trying to make. - It's a really interesting exercise. I mean, that by way of advice. So if it works at Clubhouse,
for people who don't know, that's a sort of like a voice app where you can be anonymous. So it's really regular people, but regular people who
can also be anonymous. It's just, it could be chaos. If it works there,
that's really interesting for when you sit down for a conversation across the table from somebody. Don't have them even steal
me on the other side, have them just state the other side. Just explained your understanding of it. That's it. - And every now and then I would jump in, like, you know, "And is
somebody supporting Israel?" You know, whoever the heck they were. And they'd say a couple things. And the Palestinian guy
would be like, "Ah," or gal, or a supportive of
them, would say, you know, "You missed some stuff." And I'd say, "Let me jump in. First of all, I know what the Nakba is. The Nakba is a catastrophe. That's the day Israel was born. You, you know, for the rest of the world it's the birth of Israel,
for you it's the Nakba." I said, "You've got members of your family that is still walking around carrying keys to the front door of the
house they abandoned." And he'd be like, "Yeah." And I'd say, "You feel bad that, in point of fact, that in World War II the world stood back and watched while the Nazis threw the Jews off a building. The only problem was they landed on you." And they'd be like, "Yeah, that's where they're coming from." So articulating, you know, deeply what the other side feels is transformative for both
people involved in a process. - What's the toughest negotiation
you've ever been a part of or maybe observed or heard of? What's a difficult case that just stands out to you? Or maybe just one of many. - Well, the stuff we went through with Al-Qaeda in and around Iraq, Iraq in Saudi, first one was
in Saudi, 2004 timeframe. The hardest part about that
was working with family members and not deceiving them about
the possibility of the outcome. - Yeah, how do you talk to family members? Is that part of the negotiation? - Yeah, empathy, learning
empathy the hard way. And then being able to take
it up to higher levels. 'Cause at its base level, a guy that we're working with now that's coaching us in the US
and is a business partner, his name is Jonathan Smith, he pointed out to us that there's kinda, there's a Shu Ha Ri concept. Are you familiar with Shu Ha Ri? It's a martial arts concept. And Shu is, do it exactly as the master's telling you to do it. Wax on, wax off, "Karate Kid" stuff. Ha is, when you've done the
repetitions enough times, you're getting a feel for it, and you begin to see the same lessons coming from other masters. You're seeing the same thing
show up in other places. And at the Ri level, you're
still in the discipline, but you're making up your own rules. It's almost a flow state. And you don't realize that
you're making up your own rules. And if somebody asks you,
"Where'd you learn that?" You probably say, "I," you know, "my sensei taught it to me,
my master taught it to me." This will come back around the negotiating with families pretty quick. We did this once because,
there's a bunch of people that we coach, business people, that are scared of the amount of money that they're losing if we're
not coaching 'em regularly. One of these guys, Michael, we're interviewing him
for a social media posting about two years ago and Michael says, "Yeah, you know, you gotta
gather data with your eyes." And I remember, and I
went, "Woo, I like that." I said, "Where did you hear that before?" And he goes, "I, you know, I don't know. I heard it from you, I think." And I'm like, "No, no, no, no. (Lex laughing) I'd have remembered saying that. - Yeah. - That's the first time I've heard that. He's in Ri. So what's this got to do with families? Empathy, at its base
level and the Shu level, I learned it on the suicide hotline, is saying like, "You sound angry." I'm just calling out the
elephant in the room. Your emotions. What's driving you? I'm throwing a label on your affect and I'm saying, "You sound,"
or "It sounds like you are." 'Cause that's the basic "Karate Kid" wax on, wax off approach. Now there are a lot of hostage negotiators that'll tell you empathy
doesn't work at home. Not true. They've never gotten outta Shu. You're getting ready to talk
to your significant other and you wanna go someplace that you know is gonna make her angry. You wanna go do something. - Now that's real negotiation right there. - You could say to her, "You sound angry." In which case she's gonna blow up, 'cause her reaction is, "You made me angry, bozo. How can you act like you're
an innocent third party? Or that you were independent
of how I feel bad." And you learn a little bit more, and you say, the high level is, "This is probably gonna make you angry." And then, what I did with families, I knew how they felt before
I walked in the door. I knew that they were scared to death. You find out that your
husband, your father, your brother has been grabbed by Al-Qaeda, who are in the business of
chopping people's heads off, you're gonna be horrified. I can't walk into them and
go like, "You sound angry." "Of course I'm angry, you idiot." But knowing what they are, I used to walk into
family's houses and I'd say, "I know you're angry." Now what do the circumstances dictate that they should also feel? They're gonna feel abandoned
by their government. They're gonna feel totally alone. They're gonna be scared
and they're gonna be angry because they feel the
government abandoned them. Now they're, in point of fact, is this an accurate statement? That their loved one
voluntarily went into a war zone and voluntarily went someplace their government told them not to go. Are the facts that the
government abandoned them? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, the
government warned 'em, tried to get 'em to not
go and they went anyway. But that doesn't change
how they felt in a moment. And I'd walk into a house and I'd go, "I know you're angry. I know you feel abandoned and alone and I know you're horrified and I know you feel the
United States government has abandoned you." And they would look at
me and go like, "Yeah. What do we do now?" Now we're ready to rock. - Is there, with Al-Qaeda or in general, is there a language barrier too? It could be just barriers or
different communication styles. I mean, you got like a
New Yorker way about it. (Chris laughs) That might make somebody
from like, I don't know, Laguna Beach uncomfortable. (Chris laughs) Do you feel that language
barrier in communication? Is that language and
communication style in itself creating a barrier? - You got a barrier when you
think that your way is the way. - [Lex] Sure, that's the biggest barrier. - Yeah, like, and that
happens all the time. When people talk about, "What about cross-cultural negotiations?" You know, "What hand do
I gotta shake hands with, so that I can get my way?" Well, if you strip it all down, we're all basically the same
blank slate when we were born. We got, everybody's got a limbic system. Everybody's limbic system
works pretty much the same way. People are driven by the
same sorts of decisions. How's this affect my future? What am I risk of losing? How does this affect my identity? You're a Al-Qaeda kidnapper, you're a New York City businessman, you're a tobacco farmer in the south, all making those same decisions
based on those same things. So as soon as I start to navigate that and I tailor my approach, which is what empathy is, to what you think and how you see things. So I can be the biggest goofball ever from, if you live in the south, yeah, maybe I'm a New Yorker, or I'm somebody from LA
or somebody from Chicago, but my geography is foreign to you, but as soon as I start dialing in on how you see things,
suddenly you're listening. - What about the three
voices you talk about? The different voices you can
use in that communication? - Right. The assertive's
voice, direct and honest. I'm a natural born assertive. - Natural born. I thought
we're all a blank slate. If you're born-
- Well, yeah. That's it, stop catching
me on what I said. How dare you throw, accuse
me of what I've said? To quote Bono, "I stand
accused of what I've said, the things I've said." - That's a good line. (Chris laughs) He's got a few good lines. So assertive voice. You're born that way. Which one, what are the other ones? - Analyst. You're an analyst. - And I could tell you're assertive. (both laughing) What's an analyst's voice? - Well, an analyst is close-
- Smarter. (Chris laughs)
More thoughtful. (laughs) - No, as a matter of fact. (laughs) Look, you ever do a decision tree? - Yeah.
- See, you like it too, don't you? - So a decision tree is, you know, I'm a computer scientist,
so the way I have, I like mathematical, systematic
ways of seeing the world. - [Chris] (laughs) You're just an analyst. - (laughs) Yeah. - You think Donald Trump
would ever say that? Unlikely. - (laughs) What, is he
more the assertive kind? - [Chris] He's a natural
born assertive, yeah. - Yeah. Are all New Yorkers like this? Is this something in the water or? - Nah, it's the craziest thing. I mean, there's an affect
that a city can have. And, you know, New York's
Northeast, not just New York, but the Northeast is a
little more the affect of the area, of the culture of the area. The individuals, individuals still boil
down into the three types, across the board. - [Lex] What's the third one? - Accommodator. Smiling,
optimistic, hopeful. I'm 1,000% convinced that the phrase hope is not a strategy is designed at people's frustration over a third of the
population being accommodators that are hope driven. I hope this works out. And they're very
relationship, on the surface, they're very relationship oriented. They tend to appear to be very positive. And they are, but it's
really built around hope. - And the idea is you can
adopt these three voices when- - You can, yeah, you can learn 'em. They're all learnable. Analysts are often
mistaken for accommodators because, as you said before, you know, analysts are more
introspective, more analytical. They're looking at the systems at work. And, if they like to learn, they notice that
accommodators make more deals than they make. They also notice that
there's a higher failure rate of the deals. But since they notice stuff
and they think about it, they catch on faster than assertives do. That the pleasant nature
of an accommodator contributes strongly to them making deals. Like my daughter-in-law, is an analyst. You know, another descriptor we have, an analyst are assassins. You know, an analyst will snip you from a thousand yards out
in the middle of the night and you never know what hits you. And they're really happy with that. (Lex laughs) - But how has assertiveness,
the assertive voice served you in negotiation? - Poorly. The assertive voice is almost
always counterproductive. It feels like getting hit
in the face with a brick. And that's almost always
counterproductive. So for me to be more effective,
especially in a negotiation, I'll need to slow down and smile. - You know, I heard that Teddy Roosevelt was a good negotiator and that
he was extremely stubborn, and perhaps the right term
for that would be assertive, but he picked his battles. Is there some value to holding strong through principles? So, I don't even know if, that's probably the opposite of empathy, are there times when you can just stick, be extremely stubborn to
your principles to win- - Oh, we do it all the time. We just, you know, we're
just nice about it. - [Lex] Okay, it helps to
be nice, you're saying? - Well, yes, because
I need you to hear me. And the assertive tone of voice. So when we do our training, typically we do an exercise
called 60 seconds or she dies. And I play the bad guy bank robber. And I ask you to be
the hostage negotiator. And your job is to, I'll give you the four real-world constraints. And then you gotta try and
negotiate me out of the bank. Now we're doing this. Now the first voice that I
always use in that exercise is the assertive's voice,
which is the commanding voice. It's the voice that all
police officers are taught to use in the street. Issue loud and clear commands. You know, it doesn't, to me, I don't feel like I'm attacking you. I just feel like I'm being
direct and honest and clear. You, on the other hand, feel attacked. Now we're doing this exercise
in Austin couple of years ago. The first participant
has an Apple watch on. He tells us afterwards that sitting still, not even answering, when he first gets hit in the face with the assertive's voice,
his heart rate jumped to 170, which is a typical fight
or flight reaction. I come at you like I'm fighting you. Your fight/flight mechanisms
all kick into gear, which clouds you're thinking. You're automatically dumber in the moment. So if I wanna make a great
long term deal with you, highly profitable, I'm agnostic
to you being profitable. Listen, you be profitable,
well, that's fine. I'm here to make money for me. Me making you dumber will always hurt me. Me making you feel attacked
will always hurt me. - So there's never a value in being, in you making me afraid? - There's never a long term value in it. That's another thing that Tahl Raz, when we were writing a book, braced me on, 'cause he said, "There's scientific data out there that's called strategic umbrage." Well, there's data. Well, whether or not it's scientific, I would call that into question. But he said there's studies out there that show that strategic umbrage works. And another thing that I also enjoy, you probably get tired of me saying wonderful things about Andrew. He talked-
- There's never, there's never enough
wonderful things to say about the great Andrew Huberman, the host of the Huberman Lab podcast that everybody should subscribe to. You should talk to Andrew. - You're funnier than he is though. I'll give you that. - Hear that Andrew?
- He's funny accidentally. He makes me laugh all the time. Not when he is trying
to be funny. (laughs) - Yeah, he's a really, he's one of the people in
this world that's truly legit. He's a really strong scientist and a really strong communicator and a good human being. Those together don't come often. And it's nice to see. - [Chris] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, he's a treasure,
a national treasure. Anyway, you were saying. - Well, he sort of taught
me how to think about data and studies and science, and also from different books that he's turned me onto, he's really helped me
think about this stuff. So the studies about
strategic umbrage were done, the ones that I've seen,
that show it's effective, they were simulated negotiations
with college students. Now here's the problem with that. A simulated negotiation
with a college student. College students are gonna sit down as part of their assignment. They're gonna sit down one time, they're gonna sit down for 45 minutes, and they're gonna think that if they didn't come to a deal at all, that they failed. And there's no ongoing implementation, there's just the deal, and then they walk away
from a pretend situation. So they got no actual
real skin in the game. There's no deal on earth do you sit down and come to
an agreement in 45 minutes and never see each other again, 'cause there's the
implementation of the deal. Even if it's only payment. So the data is flawed based
on the way it was collected. It's a highly flawed study, and all data is flawed as
you know, as a scientist. You just gotta be aware what the flaws are and decide whether or not
that destroys the study. Or what do you think if you
take a look at the data, there's no such thing as perfect data. Look at the data, see
what you think of it. The data that says that
strategic umbrage works is based on flawed circumstances. - [Lex] Can you explain strategic umbrage? - Getting mad, scaring the
other side into a deal. Getting mad and using anger strategically to bully the other side into an agreement. - That's nice to hear, in some sense. It's nice to hear that
empathy is the right way in almost all situations. It's nice.
- Best chance of success. Not that it works every time, just it works more than
anything else does. - What is the technique of mirroring? There's a lot of cool stuff in your book. Let's just kind of jump around. What's mirroring? - Mirroring is like, it's one of the most fun skills because it's the simplest to execute. You just repeat one to three-ish words of what somebody said, usually the last one to three words. What I found about it is the people that really like mirroring, love it because it's so simple and so effortless and invisible. They typically, for lack of a better term, tend to be both high IQ and high EQ. Like, I'm not a high IQ guy. I'm an average dude. I like to think that I can learn. In EQ, emotional intelligence
is a skill you can build. And I'm always working on building it. But a lot of really regular average people will be like, "Mirroring, that's stupid. I'm not doing that." And I don't know why they don't like it. But when I find somebody
that loves to mirror, I'll always ask 'em, you know, "How'd you score on IQ?" And typically their IQ is pretty high. Now I don't know why that
combination attracts people to mirroring, 'cause there's nine skills. Eight from hostage negotiation, and the ninth really was tone of voice and we just defined that as a skill. And each one is different and focuses on different components
of the conversation. And a lot of people don't like to mirror. They find it so awkward. Like, I don't particularly, I'm not particularly strong in mirroring, I gotta do it intentionally. I'm good at labeling. - But does it almost always work? - Oh yeah. - Yeah. It feels maybe
awkward, but there's, it's true, there's gotta be ways to signal that you're truly listening. - [Chris] That's part of it. - I think you can do body
language, you can, yeah. There's a lot of ways to signal that, but mirroring is probably
just this trivial little hack. - It kinda is. - You know what, there's a situation. I had a conversation with Stephen Kotkin, he's this historian and he would say my name a lot throughout the conversation. He would be like, "Well,
you have to understand Lex." Is that? And for some reason that was
making me feel really good. I was like, "He cares about me." And I wonder if that key,
if everyone has that key, that could be a name. Just using people's
name could be powerful. - Using the name is really context driven. It can be extremely powerful with someone who's genuine, and it comes across in their demeanor, and it's used in a way that you can tell is meant to encourage you. As opposed to exploit you. And the people that are
really into exploiting will also use it to do the same thing. - So you have to be, (chuckles) you have to
avoid using the things that people that are
exploiters manipulators use. 'Cause it might signal to others that this person is trying to trick me. - Gotta be very conscious of it, yeah. - What's labeling, that you
mentioned, the thing you like? - Well, you know, I said earlier that whole progression
from you sound angry, to this is probably gonna make you angry, to I know you're angry. Labeling is hanging a label
on an emotion or an affect and then just calling it out. - Is that almost always good? Could it be a source of frustration when a person's being angry and you kind of put a label on it, call out the elephant. (sighs) Is it possible that that
will lead to escalation of that feeling versus a resolution? - Well, what would make it bad? Like, if I'm pointing out
like that blatantly obvious. Like if I say, "Look, I need you to get up and go down to the bank
and make the deposit." Let's say I'm talking to my, somebody who works for my company. "I need you to get on the
phone with this person and make the appointment." And they go, "Sounds like you want me
to talk to this person." Yes.
(Lex laughs) That would be annoying. If it's just so absurdly obvious, that there's no insight
in your label at all. And as soon as you're
demonstrating an awareness or a subtlety or an insight,
either to you or to them, now we're making progress. So the only time a label could ever potentially
be counterproductive is like if you weren't actually listening, and the label is, indicates
that you're not listening. You know, I'm teaching at USC and I'm teaching labels and, you know, one of the kids in a class, he just wants to take the skills and make his deals and just hustle 'em, and he's just looking for a hustle. So he writes up a paper about, you know, he goes, there's some malls, I think over by Palm Springs or someplace, some outlet malls, a lot
of people go to buy suits. So he goes in there and he
immediately starts the bargaining that my book teaches, with no empathy. And he's like, throws a price to the guy and the guy's like, "No." And he throws another price to
the guy and guy's like, "No!" And then he says to the
guy behind the counter, "Sounds like we can make a deal." Like no, it doesn't. I just shot down everything
that you just said. If anything, it sounds like
we're never gonna make a deal. But he tried to use this
label for manipulation. Now the guy didn't get
mad on the other side, but it's like clearly this
dude is not listening to me. - And at the core of everything, you have a bunch of like, you know, almost like hacks, like
techniques you can use. But at the core of it is empathy. At the-
- Core of it is empathy. Yeah.
- That's the main thing. You're gotta be able to
just sit there and listen. - And perceive. Yeah, and look for insights. - You know what, I like silence. Or like you're both sitting
there chilling with a drink, looking up at the stars. There's a moment the silence makes you kind of zoom out and realize you're in this together. As opposed to playing a game, or some kind of like chess
game of a negotiation. You're in it together. I don't know. There's some intimacy to the silence. And like, I'll ask a question, and just let the other
person sit there in silence before they answer or vice versa. They ask me a question, I sit there in silence. That's a big, feels like
a big intimate thing. - Yes. And the other two types, until they've experienced
that, are afraid of it. And what I'm actually gonna do is, for whatever reason, I'm really
comfortable with silence. I think because I've
experienced its effectiveness. And also my son Brandon, like he's the king of dynamic silence. Like he coaches people. He says "Go silent, count
thousands to yourself. Don't stop till you run out of numbers." - (laughs) That's a good line. He's also good, full of good lines. - He is. That he is. And so there's so much to it. But the other two types are
natural wiring against it, until they've experienced it. And you know, your gut instinct, intuition's giving you data, once you've experienced it. But your amygdala is kicking into gear, again, sorry, I realize it's
more complicated than that, until you've experienced it. So accommodators, hope-based. How do they signal fury? The silent treatment. So when you go silent, they're scared to death you're furious. 'Cause that's how they indicate it. The assertive thinks to use
the analyst when silent, 'cause you want 'em to talk some more. When a point of fact you're either, you're thinking or, and I love your description, the feeling of intimacy in silence and experiencing the moment, 'cause I'm actually gonna
factor that into trying to get. The accommodators love shared intimacy, they would love to experience a moment. And I can see that being very compelling, than be willing to cross that chasm and experience silence and
see how it works for 'em. - Yeah, it's nerve wracking. Which is why it's intimate. 'Cause you start thinking, "What's the other person thinking? Are we actually gonna do this? Are we gonna sit here
for 10 seconds and count? I mean, there's tricks to it, I guess, like Brandon says, is to just count it out and realize through data
that there's intimacy to it. I had a friend of mine, he lost his voice 'cause singing. So he couldn't, the
doctor said he can't talk for a week just to heal the voice. The vocal chords. But he hung out with other people, with friends, and didn't talk to them. He just hung out and he
said it was really intimate. They both didn't talk to each other. They just sat there and
enjoyed time together. I don't know. It's a wake up call. It's a thing to try maybe
with people in your life, just hang out and don't say anything. Like as an experiment, don't say anything the
entire day, but spend. - [Chris] Or try. Yeah, definitely. - It's interesting. I haven't tried it myself. (laughs) It seems, it's kinda
like a silent retreat, but more active as part of
like regular everyday life. Anyway. (laughs) Is there other interesting techniques we can talk about here? So for example, creating the illusion of control. - Yeah, that's principally, you know, by asking what and how questions. 'Cause people love to tell others what to do or how to do it. It does a lot. That was really the way, when
the book was first written, that we really thought about
what and how questions, is giving the other side
the illusion of control. And there's a lot more to it than that, that we've discovered. I mean it triggers deep thinking. It wears people down. Deep thinking can be exhausting. - And you want, so what's the role of exhaustion in negotiation? Is that ultimately- - You gotta be careful with that. Some people exhaust intentionally. One of my negotiation heroes, a guy now who's unfortunately suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's, Giandomenico Picco is
the UN hostage negotiator that got all the western hostages
out of Beirut in the '80s. And he wrote a book called
"Man Without a Gun." And I'm acquainted with
Gianni, at this point in time, I don't think he has any
memory of who I am at all. But he writes in his book, one of the great secrets of negotiation is exhausting the other side. Political negotiations,
that could be Gianni, was very deferential. He was in the middle of, in the '80s leading up to about 1986-ish, every negotiation involving waring parties in the Middle
East that you can imagine. He was in Cyprus. He was in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. The Iranian government had
tremendous trust in him as a westerner, a
representative of the UN. Got all the westerners out of Beirut and he was just ridiculously patient. And then, which the other side found, would often find exhausting. - So exhaustion can't be a component of finding resolution in a negotiation. - If it tamps down the negative emotions, often exhaustion will tamp
down negative emotions. And if it puts you, and getting, the real trick is really getting negative
emotions out of the way. 'Cause you're dumber in
a negative frame of mind. - So the goal is always positive
emotion as you talk about. That's what you're
always chasing together. - [Chris] I think so. Yeah. - And that's what the
that's right is about. - [Chris] Yes. - Like whatever you're triggering, whatever the chemistry you're
triggering in your brain, you're like, "Yeah, yeah,
we're doing good here." - Yeah, I think so, long
term for long term success. Absolutely. - How's the word fair used and abused? - [Chris] The F-bomb. - The F bomb as you call it. How is it used in abused in negotiation? - It's usually used, it's most frequently used as a weapon. It's abused as a point of manipulation. It's what people say when
they feel backed into a corner and they can't come up
with any legitimate reason as to why they're being
backed into a corner. Like nobody uses the word F, the F-bomb, nobody uses the word fair when they've got criteria to back 'em up. So consequently, when
somebody starts dropping it, you gotta realize the other side's got no legitimate outside criteria. They're feeling very vulnerable. They can't explain it,
but they feel defensive. And saying, "Hey look, I've just, I've given you a fair offer," is a way for me to knock you off your game if you're not not aware of it. So a lot of cutthroat negotiations, negotiators are gonna use it on you to knock you off your game. The NFL strike, probably now, it's been
a good 10 years ago, and maybe even longer than that. One of the sticking points was the owners were not opening
their books to the players. Players wanted to see the numbers. And in order to not open their books, they just sent a rep to
tell the press conference saying, "We've given the
players a fair offer." Well, if it was fair,
you'd open your books. - (laughing) Yeah. - If you gave 'em a fair
offer and it was justified by what was in your books, you'd open 'em to prove your point. So what ends up happening
though, that, well, the owners gave the players a fair offer starts to get picked up in the media and then it starts getting repeated. And now the different
people on a player's side are going like, "Yeah, maybe they have
given us a fair offer." It caused people to be insecure
about their own positions. It's an enormously powerful word that can be used and abused. And it almost always comes
up in every negotiation. It's shocking the number
of times it comes up with people who don't really understand how or why it's coming up. - So usually it's a signal of not a good place in negotiations. - Without question, I'm
completely convinced that if the person is
using the word as a means of getting what they want, then either accidentally or on purpose, either in their gut or they know they got a bad a position, or their gut is afraid that they are. Do I use the word? What I'll say is, "I want you to feel like I've treated you fairly, and if at any given point in time you think I'm not treating you fairly, I want you to stop me and
we're gonna address it." - Big ridiculous question. But how do you close the deal? How do you take the
negotiation to its end? Is implementation ultimately- - You gotta pivot to
agreed upon implementation, to really move out on the negotiation. And I may say, "How do you wanna proceed?" And if you don't know, I might say, "No one to question,
is it a ridiculous idea if I share with you some
ideas of how to proceed?" - And then you agree on the actual steps, and that's the implementation, it's not just a philosophical agreement, it's actual steps. - The big problem in all negotiations is a lack of discussion of next steps. - That is deep. Who is the best negotiator
you've ever met? - Yeah, actually probably my son, Brandon. - Yeah?
- Yeah. He's ridiculously talented. I mean, he's ridiculously talented. And he, yeah, he's, you know, and what was it, Coyle's book, "The Talent Code," says that, you know, people just noticed it and
started getting good at it. There's no such thing as a child prodigy. They just got interested
when they were a kid. I mean, Brandon started
learning how to negotiate when he was two years old, and he's been in it and
immersed in it, you know, since he could make complete sentences. Even before he could
make complete sentences. He's ridiculously talented. - What's his future? What's he want to do? - He has been involved. He run and built my company and now he's gonna be
an affiliated licensee, run his own operation. He's pretty much gonna
end up doing very much. It's gonna open his
entrepreneurial opportunities to do whatever he wants and not have his dad say no. (laughs) - [Lex] And do a better job than his dad. - Most likely. - Yeah. (laughs) Okay. Do you see some of the techniques that you talk about as manipulative? - Manipulation is whether or not I'm trying to exploit you or hurt you. Am I trying to manipulate a bank robber into letting me save his life? Yeah. So manipulation is like, what am I trying to do to you? - But so you don't see
the negative connotation? If you're trying to bring a better future, it's not manipulation? - It's not if I'm trying
to bring a better future, if I'm being genuine and honest, like I compliment you. If my compliment is genuine,
that's not manipulation. Like, and, but, you know, if I think, you know, you got a pair of shoes that are the dumbest looking
things I've ever seen, and I go, "Wow, those are great shoes." Now that's manipulation. - So there's guys like Warren Buffett who are big on integrity and honesty. What's the role of lying effective? - I think it's a bad idea. Lying is just a bad idea
for a variety of reasons. First of all, there's a really good
chance the other side is a better liar than you are. They're gonna spot it right off the bat. Secondly, they could be
luring you into a trap to see if you will lie. Thirdly, the chances are
they're gonna find out that you lied to 'em
eventually is really high. And then the penalties and the
taxes are gonna be way higher than what you had in the first place. - So long term, you wanna
have a reputation of somebody with integrity and the more you lie, the harder it is to
maintain that reputation. - Yeah, exactly. And words' gonna get out. - Yeah, so what's the, if we can just return to that question. What's the difference
between a good conversation and a good negotiation? Can we, because I think
just reading your work, listening to you, there's a sense I have that the thing we're doing now, in this conversation on
the podcast and so on, is different than negotiation. It feels like the purpose is different and yet having some of the same awareness of the value of empathy
is extremely important. But it feels like the
goals are different. Or no? - Really close, fine line. I mean, I, you know, I rolled in here not having any expectations, not looking for anything other than having an interesting conversation. And to hear what was behind the questions that you were asking me
and what interests you. And then also your description of silence and the power of silence. Something I'm gonna take
away as a learning point and help learn to teach others. But I didn't come in here. I suppose a negotiation
is when we're both aware of a problem we're trying to solve. - Right, there's no problem in the room for us to solve. Except maybe like the human
condition and. (chuckles) - [Chris] Insight, you know. Wisdom. - Insight.
- Learn. - How do you train to become
better at negotiating? In business, in life. - Yeah, just small stakes
practice for high stakes results. I mean, decide what kinda
negotiating resonates with you. I mean-
- What's that mean? Small stakes practice for
high stakes or small stakes? So small, little incremental, like picking up girls at a bar, or what are we talking about? - Well, it can be for some people that's high stakes practice. Well, you know, labeling mirrors, what are the basic tools
of great negotiation? Labeling, mirror, and
paraphrasing, summarizing. So you start labeling and mirroring people that you just having
regular interactions with, just to gain a feel for whether or not you can
read somebody's affect, or how accurate your read is to get better at it. And so, you know, label the Lyft driver, or the grocery store clerk, or person behind the airline
counter at the airport. - So putting a label on their affect. - Or throwing something at 'em that, 'cause negotiation is a perishable skill. Emotional intelligence is perishable. So seeing if you can indicate that you understand their label. One of my favorite labels
to throw out on somebody, which, you know, maybe Ri level, I might look at somebody
who looks distressed and I'll go, "Tough day?" So several years ago, I'm at the counter at LAX. Well, I'm waiting in the
line to get to the counter and a lady behind the counter is clearly making it a point to not meet my eyes so
that I don't approach. And she looks, and so like you, you know, you know when you're next in line and they're making sure
that you don't meet eyes. And I'm thinking to myself, "All right, so they're having a bad day." So I walk up and as soon
as I approach the counter, I go, "Tough day?" And she kinda snaps around and she goes, "No, no,
no. How can I help you?" And goes out of her way to help me. Now I'm practicing, but I also
know I made her feel better. It relieved some of the stress. So now I'm going through TSA, wanna look for people who
are having a tough day. - [Lex] (laughs) It's a
good place to find them. - It's a good place to find and practice. And I'm rolling through the line and I realize I haven't tossed a label out on any one of these guys. And there's this guy watching the bags come out of the x-ray machine and he's just kind of got an
indifferent look on his face. And I go, "Tough day?" And he kind of goes, I could see from his
body language like, no. And I go, "Just another day, huh?" And he goes, "Yeah, just another day." You know, he felt seen but I missed and I'm practicing and
I'm trying to stay sharp. So these are.
- Just a few words. With just a few words, you're trying to like quickly
localize their affect. - Nice.
- And deliver on it. - Very analytically said, thank you. (both chuckling) I'm not letting it go. - I love it. (both laughing) Does the same apply to just
conversation in general? Just how to get better at conversation. I think a lot of people struggle. They have insecurities, they have anxiety about conversation. I, as funny as this is to say, have a lot of anxiety about conversation. Is that, basically do the
same kind of practice? Practice some of the
techniques in your book? - Yeah, genuinely, just
trying to make sure you heard somebody out. - What's the best conversation
you've ever been in? Except this one, of course. (Chris laughs) - [Chris] Wow. - What, I mean, not the best conversation, but what stands out to you as a conversation that changed
you as a person, maybe? - Well, there's probably been
a lot of them along the way. I mean, but one that I
remember on a regular basis. Actually, there's two. But when I was in the bureau, I'm at Quantico, I'm
there for an end services, another guy from New York,
buddy of mine named Lionel. And we're both trying to decide whether or not we wanna be, try to get into profiling or negotiation 'cause they're both about human dynamics and both of us really like human dynamics. And we're sitting around talking about it and we're talking about several things. And he labels me. And I knew he didn't
know what he was doing, I think he was just, he had picked it up, and I'd been talking about my
family, quite a few things. And he said to me, and I never said this
directly that we were close, but he said to me, "It sounds like your
family's really close." And I can remember in the
moment like this feeling, just, like I felt great in the moment. I mean, what he said just
drew together everything that I'd been saying and
nailed the essence of it. And I have a very clear recollection of how good that felt in the moment. So a couple years later,
I'm on a suicide hotline. Now, I got this line
in the back of my head, you know, line, technique, reaction, read, whatever you wanna call it. Guy calls in on the hotline and I could tell the dude is
rattled by his tone of voice. I mean, just amped up. And he goes, you know, "I'm just trying to put a lid on the day, I need your help putting a lid on the day. I gotta put a lid on the day." And I go, "You sound anxious." And he goes, "Yeah." And he came down a little bit and he was a guy that was,
he was telling me about, he was battling a disease of paranoia and he is gonna go on a car trip with his family the next day. And he knew that on the car
trip he was gonna, you know, twist himself into knots. And so the night before, he is twisting himself into knots. And he's laying out everything that he is done to try to beat paranoia and how much his family's helping him. And he's going on the
car trip with the family 'cause they're gonna
take him to see a doctor. And so I hit him with the same thing that my buddy Lionel said. I said, "It sounds like
your family's close." And he goes, "Yeah, we are close." And he leveled out a little bit more. And then he started
ticking off all the things that he was doing to try to beat paranoia. And he sounded determined. And so I said, "You sound determined." And he goes, "Yeah, I am determined and I'll be fine tomorrow. Thanks." And that was all I said. So those two conversations, which are overlapping conversations, those two things really
stick out in my mind. - Do those things, like through all the
different negotiations and conversations you've had, do they kinda echo throughout? Like you basically, because when you empathize
with other human beings, you start to realize we're all the same. And so you can start to pick little phrases here and there that you've heard from others, little experiences that we're all about, like, we all want to be, to be close with other human beings. We all want love. That we're all, I think we're all deeply
lonely inside (laughs) looking for connection. We're just, if we're honest about it. And so all humans have that same, all the same different components of what makes them tick. So you kind of see yourself basically just saying the same things to connect with another human being? - Yeah, there aren't that
many different things that we're looking for,
or understanding on, or connection on or satisfaction of. There just aren't that
many of them, regardless. And so yeah, you're looking for, to manifest itself in some form or another and you're willing to take a guess on whether or not that's what
you're seeing or hearing. - What advice would you give to me to be better at these conversations? To me and to other people that do kinda interviews
and podcasts and so on. - [Chris] Wow. - 'Cause I really care
about empathy as well. Is there a kind of, there's a lifelong
journey in this process? - Yeah, well, I think, I would advise you to take that approach, which is the approach that you're taking. You care about it, you're
very curious about it. You see it as a lifelong journey. You're fascinated by it. You enjoy learning about it. And you definitely do see
it as a lifelong journey as opposed to this is what I can, if I can acquire this, then
I can manipulate people. - No, I mean, I fall in
love with people I talk to. There's a kinda deep connection
and it lingers with you, especially when I'm preparing. The more material there's on a person, the more you get to fall in
love with 'em ahead of time that you get to really
understand, not understand, but what I mean by fall in love is. - [Chris] Well, appreciate, huh? - Appreciate but also
become deeply curious. That's what I mean by fall in love. Like, you appreciate the things you know, but you start to see, like
"Alice in Wonderland," you start to see that
there's all this cool stuff you can learn if you keep
interacting with them. And then when you show
up and you actually meet, you realize it's like more
and more and more and more. It's like in physics, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. And it's like, it's really exciting. And then it could also be heartbreaking, 'cause you have to say goodbye. The goodbye, I hate goodbyes. I hate goodbyes. - Seems total, right? - Yeah. It reminds me that
I'm gonna die one day. (laughs) Like things end, good things end, it sucks. But then it makes the moment
more delicious, you know, that you do get to spend together. (laughs) Okay. I just wanna, I completely forgot I want to ask you about this. The 7, 38, 55% rule. (Chris laughs) This is really interesting. Does this, is there at all truth to it, that 7% of a message is
conveyed from the words used, 38% from the tone of voice, and 55% from body language? Is there really truth to that? - All right, so Albert Mehrabian, I think is the name of the UCLA professor that originally proposed the 7, 38, 55 ratio and discussed it in terms of that it wasn't the message, but how much the, he called it liking, like are you, not that you're, the meaning is coming across, but your liking of the message. And so it's been extrapolated heavily by people like me to this meaning of the meaning, in 7, 38, 55, from liking to the meaning. What I've seen regularly is people that communicate verbally, if they're speakers, Tony Robbins, 7, 38, 55 guy, he throws the ratio out there. Go, "That's it exactly. That's exactly how the
message comes across. This is how we gotta balance it, this is how we gotta do it." Those that communicate
principally in writing, the meaning of the words are
much more important to them, so they're deeply uncomfortable with 7 being the words, 'cause the content, the words, the meaning of the words
when you're writing, it's so important that you
hate to poo poo it that way. So I, first of all, I 1,000% believe it's an accurate ratio, but the real critical issue is not what the ratio of
those three things are, it's what's the message
when they're outta line? Like, what's the message when the tone of voice is
outta line with the words? Like, it don't matter what your ratio is, you got a problem if their tone does not match their words. - And that's hard to really
put a measure on exactly. Even in writing there's a tone. I mean, it's not just, even in writing, it's not just the words,
there's the words, but there's like a style
underneath the whole thing. And there's something like body language, the presentation of the whole thing. I mean, they're, yeah, I'm a big fan of constraint mediums of communication, which writing is, or
voice, like Clubhouse. There's a personality to a human being when you just hear their voice. That there's, it's not
just, it's, you could say, it's the tone of voice, but there's like, you can, like, what is it? The imagination fills in the rest. Like when I'm listening to somebody, I'm like, I'm imagining
some amorphous being like doing things, when they get angry, I'm imagining anger. I don't know what exactly I'm visualizing. - If you, well, and so you
may think of a funny story 'cause we were talking about
your buddy Elon before. And I told you, you know, about, you know, that I'd interacted with some
of the senior executives. So I know that they love working with him. And they think he's an interesting guy and they realized that he could be funny, you know, he jokes around. So they're telling me, they're on this conference
call, just words. And a guy on the other end
of the line says something, you know, that wasn't,
was wrong but wasn't bad. And so they said they're on a phone and Elon goes, "You're fired!" And then everybody in the room with him can see that he's joking. But the person on the other side can't, and they're all going,
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, they can't see your look
on your face right now. You gotta stop, you gotta stop, 'cause the guy on the other
side is dying right now. He doesn't realize you're joking." So there was, you know, there were the words
and the tone of voice, but it lacked the visual to go with it. - (laughs) Nevertheless
it was probably funny. - I'm sure it was very funny at the time. - Maybe not to him. Just as a interesting to ask, I don't know if you're following along the developments of large language models, there's been something called ChatGPT. There's just more and more sophisticated and effective and impressive
chatbots essentially, they can talk, and they're becoming more and more human-like. Do you think it's possible in the future that AI will be able to
be better negotiators than humans? Do you think about that kind of stuff? - Well, so definition of
better versus less flawed. Like, there, you know, chatbots have been out there for a long time and probably about five years ago now, a company approached us 'cause they were doing
a negotiation chatbot. And they said two things. First of all, I said, you know, "Why are you talking to us?" Said, "Well, on point of fact, we already spoke to the people that are teaching quote
'The Harvard methodology.' And you know, the rational approach to negotiation just doesn't work. The rational approach just does not work. Our chatbots are not getting anywhere. But we're showing in around about 80% of the interactions a higher success outcome
with these chatbots." And they showed me what they were doing and it was still a lot deeply flawed emotional intelligence wise. But the reason why that they were having a higher success rates is the chatbots were never in a bad mood. And you could reach out for chatbot in the middle of the night. So if you were talking to
somebody that was never upset and was always available, then you're gonna have
a higher success rate. Negotiations go bad when people are in a negative frame of mind. - So the natural ability of a chatbot to be positive is just going to give you
a higher success rate. - Yeah, and they're not gonna get mad and argue with you. You know, you say to a chatbot, you know, "Your price is too high." Chatbot is designed to come
back with a smiley face. You say to a person,
"Your price is too high." They go, "How dare you, I'm
trying to make a living." You know? They're gonna
go off the deep end. - Unfortunately, or fortunately, I think the way chatbots are going now, they will come back negative, because they're becoming more human, more and more human-like,
that's the whole point. To be able to pass the Turing Test, you have to be negative,
you have to be an asshole, you have to have boundaries,
you have to be insecure, you have to have some uncertainty. - Well, there's a difference
between having boundaries and being negative. Like, I can, like you
throw a proposal to me, you know, before I say no, I'm gonna say, "Look, I'm sorry, that
just doesn't work for me." I'm gonna set up a real clear boundary without being negative. And a lot of people really
struggle with setting boundaries without being negative,
without name calling, without indignation,
without getting upset. - But see there's a, when you are, when you show that
you're not getting upset, I'm not just seeing that, I'm seeing a flawed human that has underneath it a temper, underneath it the ability to get upset, but chooses not to get upset. And a chatbot has to demonstrate that. So it's not just going to be cold, and, you know, be this kind of corporate blank empty sort of like vapid
creature that just says, "Oh, thank you, thank
you for saying that." No, it's basically you have to, the chatbot has to be able to be mean and choose not to be. - Interesting. I don't know. I'd be willing to see that play out and see how it plays out. - But I guess what I'm saying
is to be a good negotiator, you have to be, have the capacity to be a bad person and choose not to. - Really?
- I think so. - See, I think you just
gotta have the capacity to set a boundary and stick to it. - Interesting. 'Cause I think, it's hard
for me to trust a person who's not aware of their own demons. 'Cause if you say you
don't have any demons, if you don't have any
flaws, I can't trust you. - Yeah, well, first of
all, it's a lie, right? So somebody's lying. It goes back to lying. - Yes, so you have to have
a self-awareness about that, but you'd be able to control it and demonstrate that
you're able to control it. I mean, this is humans. I just think humans, intelligent, effective humans
are able to do this well and chatbots are not yet, and they're moving in that direction. So it makes me think about
what is actually required for effective negotiation. That's what AI systems do, is they make you ask yourself, what is it that makes humans
special at any discipline? What is it that makes humans
special at chess and Go games, which AI systems are able
to beat humans at now. What is it that makes them
effective at negotiation? What does it make them effective at, something that's extremely difficult, which is navigating physical spaces. So doing things that we take for granted, like making yourself a cup of coffee is a exceptionally difficult
problem for robots. Because of all the complexities involved in navigating physical reality. We have so much common
sense reasoning built in, just about how gravity works, about how objects move, what kind of objects
there are in the world. It's really difficult to describe because it all seems so damn trivial, but it's not trivial. Because a lot of that
we just learn as babies, we keep running into things and we'll learn about that. And so AI systems help us understand what is it that makes humans really, what is the wisdom we have in our heads? And negotiation to me
is super interesting. 'Cause negotiation is
not, it's about business, it's about geopolitics, it's about running government. It's basically negotiating how do we, the different policies, different bills and programs and so on. How do we allocate money? How do we reallocate resources? All that kind of stuff. That seems like AI in the future could be better at that, but maybe not. Maybe you have to be a
messy, weird, insecure, uncertain human and debate each other and yell at each other on Twitter. Maybe you have to have
the red and the blue teams that yell at each other in the process of figuring out what is true. Maybe AI systems will
not be able to do that, you know, figure out the full
mess of human civilization. - Yeah, interesting. Well, I mean the two thoughts that I had along the way was, I mean, anytime you're talking
about systems or scaling, you know, you're talking, my belief is chatbots systems, things that don't require decision making, just following instructions, at least 80% of what's going on. Now, the remaining
percentage, whatever it is, does it require the human
interaction and what's required? Like I'm not like, I am not pro conflict. And I also know that
there's a case to be made in the creative world that
some of the best thinking came outta conflict. Reading interviews of Bono and U2. You know, their admiration for some of the Beatles best music came when they were
fighting with each other. And the song "One," which is I believe from
the album "Achtung Baby." Those guys were fighting. I mean, they were on the
verge of breaking up, and their appreciation that conflict could create something beautiful. And then when I was in the
crisis negotiation unit, you know, my last seven years in the FBI, there was a guy named Vince,
brilliant dude, brilliant, brilliant negotiator. And he and I used to argue all the time. And then when we had a change in the guy who was in charge, the guy who was in charge
took me off to the side and he is like, you
know, "I can't take you and Vince fighting all the time." And I said, "Well, I got news for you. I think we come up with much better stuff as a result of our battles." And he said, "You know, Vince said the same thing to me." And I'm like, "So, well, if we don't have a problem fighting, why do you have a problem with it?" But you know, there is something there that sometimes the most
difficult insights, you rack your brains as to why someone is so dug in on something that so many of you think is so wrong. Yeah, maybe there's something to it. I think there's something to it. - There's something about conflict, even drama that might be a feature, not a bug of our society. - [Chris] Interesting. - Do you think there'll
always be war in the world? - Yeah. (Lex laughs) - So there'll always be
a need for negotiators and negotiating. - Well, as it turns out. - Why do you think there'll always be war? What's your intuition
about human nature there? - Yeah, just because we're
basically 75% negative and then, for lack of a better term, I call it two lines of code. Like somewhere when you,
everybody, when we were little, somebody planted in two
lines into our head. We don't know when it got in there. But somebody said
something to us that stuck. And there are a lot of people that had some really negative
garbage dumped in their brain when they were little. And just based on the numbers. What kind of opportunity
they were given afterwards. Did they ever have an epiphany moment when they genuinely believe they can get themselves out of it? Like what is it, one
of Joe Dispenza's book is "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself." You know, like how do you
get at that two lines of code that either mean or well-intentioned, but stupidly speaking adult said to you at the wrong moment and
planted in your brain? Like, the chances of everybody on Earth getting that out. Even the majority of people on Earth, getting that out of their
heads is really small. - What advice would you
give to a young person today about how to have a career
they could be proud of or a life, maybe somebody in high school, college, trying to figure
out their way in this world? - Yeah, it's probably a take on a cliche of do what you love. But if you figure out your ideals and pursue your ideals and stick to 'em when it costs you. Like a guy I admire very much, Michael Mogill runs this operation, Crisp Video at Atlanta. In one of his talks, he would say, "Core values are what you
stick to that cost you money. It's not a value that
really matters to you unless it's costing you
and stick to your values." Now, when I was in the FBI,
I worked really hard at, you know, the number one
core mission of the FBI is protect and defend the American people. So I could pursue that value
at all times, which I did, or I could follow the rules. You don't have time to do both. - (laughs) When did you know
you found what you love? Like, when did you fall in love with whatever this process
is that is negotiating? - I think it was in a conversation on the suicide hotline that I
was telling you about earlier with the guy who was paranoid. When I thought, I can have
that significant of an impact on another human being in this
short of a period of time, that's really cool. - How hard is it to talk
somebody off the ledge? So this question, is a big question. Why the hell live at all? How do you have that kind
of deeply philosophical, deeply psychological and
also practical conversation with somebody and convince them they should stick around? - Well, it's more clearing
the clutter in their head. And let 'em make up their own mind. That was what volunteering
on the suicide hotline was really about. Just let me help, let me see how quickly I can clear out
the clutter in your head if you're willing to have it cleared out. Like, did you call here 'cause you are actually looking for help? Or did you call here to
fulfill some other agenda? So are, you know, are you willing to have, are you willing to clear
the clutter in your head? Not everybody is. - So once you clear out the clutter is there at least somewhat hopeful chance that you'll continue for another day. - Yeah. And like, if you step back, like very few people that commit suicide physically are up against it that hard. Like most of them by and large are pretty intact physically human beings, they're struggling with emotional stuff. But it's an emotional issue. It's not a physical issue. So if you were to be a complete mercenary, like a guy I'm a very big fan of, a guy named Mark Pollock,
born a great athlete, lost his eyesight and
then became paralyzed. Like, he's an emotional leader. He's about helping people
thrive and live great lives. Like Mark was born, he
was a spectacular athlete and first he lost his sight in one eye, then he lost his sight in the other eye, and then he fell out a window
in a tragic experience. Like, if there was ever a dude that was saying like, "Living sucks." You know, "And if there's
any doubt in my mind, something worse happens
to me every few years." But Mark's about being alive
and inspiring other people. So the hard part with
navigating with somebody who's tossing it in because
there's a chemical imbalance, or they're, it's the way
they're interpreting the world. There's clutter in their head. Like, how can you help clear
that clutter in their head? - And help 'em by themselves, inspire them to reinterpret that world, as one worth living in. What do you think is the meaning of life? Chris Voss, why live? (laughs) What's a good reason? - Well, I have very
strong religious beliefs. Spiritual, you know, I don't 1,000%, if you were to try to confine me in a box, I'd be a Christian. And I have tremendous
respect for the Jewish. I don't think any religion's
got it nailed exactly. I'm, again, you know,
I keep mentioning him, I'm kind of a Bono Christian. I think Bono's, he's like, what? And I'm gonna butcher it. But, you know, "My belief in Jesus is what I've got after
Christianity leaves a room." You know, the Dogma, man's application of spiritual beliefs. So, but that being said, I truly believe that my life was a gift and there's a purpose here and, you know, my creator decided that
I woke up in the morning 'cause he still had some
cool, interesting things for me to do. - And you have gratitude
for having the opportunity to live that day.
- Yeah. - Well, you do one heck of a
good job at living those days. I really appreciate your work. I appreciate the person you are. Thank you for just
everything you've done today, for just being empathic. Honestly, you're a great listener, you're a great conversationalist. It's such an honor to meet
you and to talk to you. This was really awesome, Chris. - Been my pleasure. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Chris Voss. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from John F. Kennedy. "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.