How to Share Bad News | Chris Voss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | The problem with online and text is people try to bundle everything into one communication.

00:00:07.500 | The best analogy I can think of is if you were playing chess by text, would you put

00:00:13.840 | seven moves in your text?

00:00:15.960 | No, you'd only put one move in.

00:00:18.600 | So only try to get one point across in a text.

00:00:21.400 | Don't explain, don't throw a whole bunch of stuff in, text or emails.

00:00:25.600 | They're all almost always too long, and it's going to come off as cold.

00:00:32.080 | So do what you can to soften, soften it.

00:00:36.080 | There's a documentary film that's been done on my company called Tactical Empathy.

00:00:41.480 | Nick Nanton won 22, 23 Emmys.

00:00:46.760 | The filmmaker DNA Films, it was finished last year, it's not out yet.

00:00:51.540 | For a variety of reasons, we haven't put it out.

00:00:54.800 | So we screened the thing in Vegas last year.

00:00:58.140 | I see it, I love it.

00:01:00.240 | I'm not a good judge of a film about me, I'm going to love it no matter what, it's about

00:01:04.360 | me.

00:01:05.360 | But I tell Nick that night, oh man, I love it, this is great.

00:01:08.220 | Two days later, I find out, I realize there's a huge problem.

00:01:14.040 | I've already told him it's okay.

00:01:17.720 | So I got to get him, I'm going to text him, and then I'm going to call him, and we got

00:01:22.340 | to fix it now.

00:01:23.340 | Sunday, text message, I sent him a two line text, it's now bad time to talk, I got something

00:01:34.140 | you don't want to hear.

00:01:37.280 | Two lines.

00:01:38.280 | Now, what were my other options?

00:01:40.340 | I could have called him, Nick and I got a great relationship.

00:01:42.760 | I call him, if he's in a position to pick up the phone, doesn't matter what he's doing,

00:01:47.480 | he's going to answer the phone.

00:01:50.060 | He was in the middle of a Zoom call.

00:01:51.660 | If I'd have called, he'd have picked up during the Zoom call, and both conversations would

00:01:56.160 | have been bad.

00:01:57.740 | He immediately fires back to me, I'm in the middle of a Zoom call, I'll call you in half

00:02:02.520 | an hour.

00:02:04.080 | He already knows he ain't going to like what he's going to hear.

00:02:06.900 | I'm prepping him for bad news.

00:02:10.360 | Get him on the phone, like look, I know what I said, we got a problem, we got to get Derek

00:02:15.740 | on camera.

00:02:16.820 | Derek is a guy in my team, and I'm shocked that I haven't made him part of the documentary.

00:02:22.780 | This is going to be incomplete without Derek.

00:02:24.260 | We got to get Derek on film, we can't show this to anybody else until we get him on film

00:02:28.420 | and make a part of it.

00:02:29.420 | Immediately, he's in problem solving mode.

00:02:31.740 | He goes, okay, I got to get a crew to Derek or get Derek to a crew.

00:02:36.260 | I need to know when we can do that.

00:02:39.140 | We got another showing of the films scheduled in LA, less than a month away.

00:02:43.140 | He says, I got to get Derek on camera, and we got to edit it, it's going to take three

00:02:47.740 | weeks of editing.

00:02:48.740 | I said, I'll give you access to Derek's camera, he goes, done, or Derek's calendar.

00:02:53.380 | He says, done, it's done.

00:02:55.420 | We go through this whole conversation in less than 10 minutes.

00:03:00.660 | Now think of the normal negotiation, hey, Nick, how are you?

00:03:05.420 | What's going on today?

00:03:07.380 | Are you in a good mood?

00:03:08.380 | Hey, hey, hey, how are the kids doing?

00:03:10.260 | All this time wasting conversation, if I had set him up with that normal, he could have

00:03:17.420 | legitimately said, are you out of your mind?

00:03:21.100 | We've been working on this for a year, you didn't bring this up in a year.

00:03:24.940 | Not only that, you already told me two days ago at the showing in Vegas that you loved

00:03:29.260 | it.

00:03:30.260 | Now, a year, year and a half into this project, you're bringing up all these new problems.

00:03:35.540 | That would have been the normal negotiation.

00:03:38.300 | But since we got a highly collaborative relationship, two line text, we're done in 10 minutes.

00:03:46.260 | Now, since Nick's a very generous guy, when he gets done, and he says, by the way, you

00:03:50.640 | understand how much this is going to cost me, it's just three weeks of editing.

00:03:53.420 | This is three hours of shooting and three weeks of editing.

00:03:55.780 | I go, yeah, he goes, but I'm happy to do it.

00:03:59.780 | Calls him back the next day, he's got a favor to ask of me.

00:04:05.020 | You got it.

00:04:06.020 | It doesn't matter what it is.

00:04:08.180 | Because we'd gone through what would have been a very complicated negotiation that started

00:04:12.840 | on text.

00:04:15.300 | I sent him a two line text on a Sunday, and we got to solve that fast.

00:04:21.940 | If I understand correctly, by setting the context in a very direct and succinct way,

00:04:27.660 | he goes into it in a problem solving mode with you.

00:04:31.060 | Whereas if you do the tour of all the things that are going well in life, and the sort

00:04:37.540 | of the, we'll keep this PG, the mud sandwich approach.

00:04:45.260 | They teach you that.

00:04:46.260 | When you get a laboratory, most scientists have no skill running a business.

00:04:49.620 | You get a laboratory, all you've done is experiments, and then suddenly you're in charge of people

00:04:52.740 | managing budgets and all this stuff.

00:04:55.140 | Most scientists, 99% of scientists are completely unqualified to do the job they do at the level

00:05:00.500 | of running a laboratory.

00:05:01.500 | When they start, you learn it on the job.

00:05:03.060 | And eventually, you end up having to let somebody go.

00:05:06.300 | And so the typical thing they teach you in these online training things is you tell somebody

00:05:10.940 | something nice, then you give them the bad news, and then you tell them something nice

00:05:15.100 | on exit.

00:05:16.100 | That's kind of the mud, so to speak, sandwich.

00:05:22.500 | This is not that.

00:05:23.500 | What you're talking about is saying, hey, this is the problem.

00:05:27.660 | You're not going to like the problem, or there is a problem, you're not going to like it,

00:05:31.460 | so that they show up with the context of solving a problem, as opposed to giving them the tour

00:05:35.540 | of all the things that are going well, and then the problem is really in contrast to

00:05:39.740 | that.

00:05:40.740 | And then it's like, ugh.

00:05:42.700 | So what I love about what you're describing is it's direct, it's honest.

00:05:48.420 | You're not doing the tour of the garden before you take them down to the septic tank.

00:05:55.780 | It's what I would call the difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter.

00:06:00.940 | A straight shooter tells you the truth.

00:06:03.420 | They just tell it in a way that lands softly.

00:06:07.180 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:06:10.180 | (upbeat music)

00:06:12.760 | (upbeat music)

How to Share Bad News | Chris Voss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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