Chris Voss: How to Succeed at Hard Conversations

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.280 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.360 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.240 | My guest today is Chris Voss.

00:00:17.640 | Chris Voss spent more than two decades as an agent

00:00:20.520 | with the FBI or Federal Bureau of Investigation,

00:00:23.800 | where he was a lead crisis negotiator

00:00:25.780 | and a member of the Joint Terrorist Task Force.

00:00:28.340 | Chris is also the author of a phenomenal best-selling book

00:00:30.840 | entitled "Never Split the Difference."

00:00:33.240 | In addition, he has taught courses in negotiation

00:00:35.840 | at Harvard, at Georgetown,

00:00:37.900 | and at the University of Southern California.

00:00:40.440 | As a world expert in all forms of negotiation,

00:00:43.520 | today Chris teaches us about how to hold hard conversations

00:00:47.180 | where we are seeking particular outcomes,

00:00:49.080 | or perhaps where we don't know

00:00:50.600 | what the optimal outcome could be.

00:00:52.680 | He talks about this in the context of business,

00:00:55.120 | in the context of relationships,

00:00:56.840 | including romantic relationships,

00:00:58.700 | but familial and work relationships as well.

00:01:01.660 | And he talks about how we should think about ourselves

00:01:04.780 | in the context of negotiations

00:01:06.740 | so that we can all arrive at the best possible outcomes.

00:01:09.800 | Indeed, during today's episode,

00:01:11.860 | you will learn to pay attention to emotions,

00:01:13.960 | not just other people's emotions, but your own emotions,

00:01:17.100 | in order to determine whether or not

00:01:18.620 | you are processing the information you're hearing accurately,

00:01:21.660 | and equally important,

00:01:22.980 | whether or not you are being heard accurately

00:01:25.820 | when you are in a discussion of any kind,

00:01:27.760 | but especially heated discussions.

00:01:29.820 | In addition, we discuss the role

00:01:31.300 | of both physical and mental stamina

00:01:33.440 | in the context of difficult conversations,

00:01:35.660 | negotiations, and decision-making,

00:01:37.840 | because in the real world context,

00:01:39.280 | oftentimes those can take place

00:01:41.260 | not just within a single conversation,

00:01:43.160 | but over the course of several days

00:01:44.820 | or even several weeks, months, or years.

00:01:47.460 | Chris also teaches us about deception,

00:01:49.880 | that is, how to determine if somebody is lying

00:01:52.380 | by asking particular types of probe questions.

00:01:55.440 | Thanks to Chris Voss' both breadth and depth of expertise

00:01:58.620 | in the negotiation process

00:01:59.940 | that he gleaned during his more than two-decade service

00:02:02.360 | in the FBI, as well as his generosity

00:02:04.680 | in sharing that information,

00:02:06.300 | by the end of today's episode,

00:02:08.000 | you will have an excellent understanding

00:02:10.300 | of what the negotiation process is really all about

00:02:13.100 | and how to better carry out those negotiations

00:02:15.560 | so that they can best serve you and others.

00:02:18.260 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:20.900 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:23.460 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:25.520 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:28.020 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:30.560 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:31.620 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:03:46.780 | I've spent a lifetime working on the biology,

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00:04:56.400 | And now for my conversation with Chris Voss.

00:04:59.920 | Chris Voss, welcome.

00:05:01.140 | - Andrew, pleasure, man.

00:05:03.440 | - I've been wanting to talk to you on record for a while.

00:05:07.280 | You are quite the, what we call in science, N of one,

00:05:11.280 | when somebody is a true sample size of one.

00:05:15.420 | I realized that, yes, you are,

00:05:18.140 | because you have this incredible skillset

00:05:21.080 | from your time in the FBI.

00:05:23.780 | But you also have an incredible understanding

00:05:26.020 | and knowledge of how to communicate about that skillset

00:05:28.340 | so that people can glean useful information from it.

00:05:32.500 | You were also the guy that I text or call

00:05:34.460 | every once in a while when I've run myself into a jam

00:05:37.480 | or when I think I might be in a jam

00:05:38.880 | and I won't reveal details,

00:05:39.980 | but you tell me whether or not things are okay.

00:05:42.120 | Unfortunately, the last couple of times I reached out,

00:05:44.140 | you said you're good.

00:05:45.700 | So thank you.

00:05:46.540 | - Always happy to help, man.

00:05:47.580 | - Thank you.

00:05:48.780 | Well, I have a lot of questions today,

00:05:50.580 | but what I'd like to start off talking about

00:05:53.340 | is negotiations take many forms,

00:05:57.500 | but if we could break those down

00:05:59.180 | into their broad categories, that will be useful.

00:06:02.900 | But before we do that,

00:06:05.020 | I want to know about the mindset that you have

00:06:08.260 | when you go into a negotiation

00:06:10.420 | and whether or not there are any practices.

00:06:13.580 | I realize you've been in this profession a long time,

00:06:16.260 | and so it perhaps became reflexive to you at some point,

00:06:18.980 | but all of us at some point are going to negotiations,

00:06:22.220 | business negotiations, relationship negotiations, et cetera.

00:06:25.900 | Is there a process of getting one's mind and body right

00:06:30.180 | for a negotiation, shifting from more listening

00:06:33.740 | and less talking?

00:06:34.820 | Are there any tools that you use on the regular

00:06:40.260 | that could be useful for us to keep in mind

00:06:43.660 | as we extend into the different categories of negotiations

00:06:46.460 | and ways to approach those negotiations?

00:06:48.740 | - And it can be a couple of different.

00:06:50.740 | First of all, just trying to figure out

00:06:54.020 | what's really going on is the real issue.

00:06:57.060 | And then how can I get an approach

00:06:59.420 | where I'm most likely to get the best possible outcome?

00:07:03.600 | So there's always more than meets the eye.

00:07:08.940 | And there's a certain few cliches,

00:07:11.640 | but the real issue is there's always a better deal

00:07:15.300 | or there's no deal at all.

00:07:18.880 | So first of all, my first thing is I want to find out

00:07:21.780 | whether or not there's a deal at all

00:07:23.180 | or whether or not it's a bad deal.

00:07:25.700 | And then I'm going to walk away really fast

00:07:27.400 | because those are going to be a complete waste of time.

00:07:30.100 | It's not a sin to not get the deal.

00:07:32.580 | This is a sin to take a long time to not get the deal.

00:07:35.780 | Or it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal.

00:07:39.160 | So I want to know, I'm going to try to figure out real quick

00:07:43.060 | whether or not is there a cutthroat

00:07:44.420 | on the other side of the table?

00:07:45.420 | Is it somebody I could trust?

00:07:47.300 | I'm leaning a little more inclined

00:07:49.840 | to dealing with the difficult people now

00:07:52.260 | as long as I don't give in.

00:07:54.220 | So I want to diagnose early on what the possibilities are.

00:07:59.500 | Now, if I'm curious, if I'm actually interested.

00:08:02.520 | Now, another aspect of the mindset is

00:08:06.580 | like if I'm in a great mood,

00:08:08.700 | like if I'm just going to be playful,

00:08:11.720 | a couple of really huge personal negotiation wins recently

00:08:16.720 | was when I was just trying to be playful.

00:08:19.600 | I mean, I was just, I was in a great mood

00:08:21.620 | and I'm joking around.

00:08:23.220 | And great negotiation is not exciting, it's astonishing.

00:08:26.740 | We're in conversations right now

00:08:30.340 | with a possible non-scripted TV show.

00:08:34.300 | And so I was telling the producers,

00:08:36.700 | you know, this ain't going to be Real Housewives.

00:08:39.060 | To make this show properly,

00:08:41.380 | there ain't going to be any screaming.

00:08:43.460 | It's not going to be Bar Rescue

00:08:44.660 | where we're yelling at people.

00:08:45.860 | We're not going to be Hell's Kitchen

00:08:47.300 | where we're yelling at people.

00:08:49.100 | It's never going to be exciting,

00:08:50.920 | but it is going to be astonishing.

00:08:53.720 | Like you'll get outcomes where suddenly you find yourself

00:08:56.900 | in a place like, what in the world?

00:09:00.560 | How did that just happen?

00:09:03.080 | And so I lose a suitcase in an airport the other day

00:09:07.760 | and I'm walking into the lost luggage place

00:09:11.720 | and I'm in a great mood because I'm home

00:09:13.340 | and I'm happy to be home.

00:09:14.540 | And I'm going to get a good night's sleep.

00:09:17.140 | And even though it's late in the day, I'm just happy.

00:09:19.760 | And I get ready to walk into the lost luggage store

00:09:23.220 | where these people are battered children.

00:09:25.600 | Like they expect you,

00:09:27.220 | they know that you expect them to wave a magic wand

00:09:31.400 | and poof, your luggage is going to be there.

00:09:34.220 | So for whatever reason, that's what I say

00:09:36.100 | when I walk in the door.

00:09:36.940 | This young lady says, "How can I help you?"

00:09:39.620 | Well, first of all, how you could help me is obvious

00:09:41.380 | 'cause I'm in a lost luggage.

00:09:42.380 | There's only one reason I'm in here.

00:09:43.620 | So that's kind of a silly question.

00:09:45.380 | And I go, "I need you to wave a magic wand."

00:09:49.260 | And she just laughs and she looks at me.

00:09:52.180 | She ends up walking me out to the carousel,

00:09:55.220 | climbing up on the carousel,

00:09:57.460 | and she walks down a ramp the luggage comes out of.

00:10:00.600 | And I guarantee you, they're not supposed to do that.

00:10:02.860 | And she sticks her head in, she looks around,

00:10:05.120 | she comes back out.

00:10:06.220 | And I've never seen any of these people leave the office,

00:10:08.440 | let alone walk back to the carousel.

00:10:10.700 | And she says, "Wait here."

00:10:12.420 | And she disappears into the bowels of the airport,

00:10:15.100 | which looks like a super highway down there, right?

00:10:17.460 | Like God knows what it looks like underneath the airport.

00:10:20.500 | And pretty soon the carousel starts up again,

00:10:24.940 | and my bag and another bag pops out.

00:10:27.060 | This other poor schmuck is sitting there waiting.

00:10:29.500 | And I'm like, "I have never seen anybody do this, ever."

00:10:33.940 | Like normally they say,

00:10:35.920 | "Here's a number we'll call you in 24 hours.

00:10:38.240 | It might show up at your house."

00:10:40.580 | And I look around, there's another young lady there,

00:10:43.340 | and I say, "Please tell her thank you for me.

00:10:46.660 | I gotta go, 'cause she doesn't come back out

00:10:48.860 | for like almost 10 minutes."

00:10:50.820 | And on my way out, she comes out the door

00:10:54.340 | and she high-fives me and she says,

00:10:56.100 | "How's that for waving a magic wand?"

00:10:59.340 | And that was the magic phrase,

00:11:02.500 | and I never would have said it to her

00:11:04.020 | if I wasn't playful in a moment.

00:11:06.500 | And I've got a couple of others,

00:11:07.820 | like when I was just playful and I'm joking with people,

00:11:11.620 | almost at my expense, it's shocking, astonishing,

00:11:15.900 | where you can get people to do if you hit them the right way.

00:11:19.100 | - So interesting.

00:11:21.040 | I wonder what it tapped into,

00:11:22.380 | but it sounds like it might've tapped into her sense

00:11:25.300 | that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand

00:11:29.500 | kind of ability, but finally, somebody just said it directly

00:11:33.060 | and that would be kind of fun to actually play that role,

00:11:35.880 | because normally they're restricted

00:11:37.020 | to their keyboard and their phone.

00:11:38.860 | You know, I love that.

00:11:40.760 | On the opposite side of that spectrum,

00:11:44.740 | if ever you're feeling tense, stressed, jet-lagged, angry,

00:11:48.460 | I can think about negotiations

00:11:50.780 | where like people are trying to keep their egos in check,

00:11:53.940 | they want to be right, you know, breakups, negotiations,

00:11:58.740 | there's not necessarily romantic breakups

00:12:01.220 | that could include that, but also professional breakups,

00:12:03.980 | you know, the dissolution of a contract

00:12:06.460 | or something like that.

00:12:07.680 | Do you ever have to check yourself?

00:12:11.540 | Like, okay, I need to, I mean,

00:12:13.820 | I imagine being calm is better than not being calm

00:12:16.260 | for most all things.

00:12:18.380 | Do you have a process of doing that?

00:12:21.420 | You seem like a pretty steady guy.

00:12:23.180 | I've never seen you.

00:12:24.240 | Overall, I'm pretty steady.

00:12:29.060 | Well, the late night FM DJ voice

00:12:35.180 | that I'm not sure that I coined the phrase,

00:12:38.620 | but kind of famous for, to calm you down also calms me down.

00:12:43.620 | So if I get bent out of shape,

00:12:47.220 | I will, and a conversation gets heated,

00:12:52.340 | I'll switch into that voice

00:12:54.580 | with the intention of calming you down.

00:12:56.700 | 'Cause you know, that's the hostage negotiator's voice,

00:12:59.740 | but it'll calm me down too.

00:13:02.540 | Like intentionally going to that voice

00:13:05.780 | tamps down the negative emotions,

00:13:08.180 | which I'm convinced make me dumber in the moment,

00:13:11.500 | interfere with my capacity to process information.

00:13:14.180 | Got reasons for that, layman's reasons,

00:13:16.660 | no scientific, academically rigorous studies

00:13:19.300 | that have been in any journals.

00:13:20.580 | Well, after you're done, I'm gonna tell you something

00:13:22.780 | that will perhaps be astonishing to you

00:13:25.160 | as to why there's real neuroscience

00:13:26.860 | behind that late night FM DJ voice

00:13:29.920 | having an impact on other people's brains.

00:13:32.800 | But yeah, and I'll do that 'cause it calms me down.

00:13:35.580 | Now, if I can make the shift,

00:13:38.640 | the hard part is to shift into a positive mindset.

00:13:42.620 | If I can make that shift,

00:13:46.020 | but I can only make it from a calm voice.

00:13:47.980 | I also think it's, the emotions are kind of

00:13:50.660 | a rock, paper, scissors sequence.

00:13:53.200 | I don't think you can go from sadness to elation directly.

00:13:57.760 | Sad, depressed, down.

00:14:01.220 | I think there's something to getting angry

00:14:05.340 | to pull you out of sadness.

00:14:07.320 | And I think if you're angry, you've gotta go to calm next.

00:14:11.420 | And so, but if I can get out of anger and go to calm,

00:14:15.280 | then I can say something to myself like,

00:14:18.240 | the reality is this is a luxury problem.

00:14:21.880 | Or I was in a negotiation with a counterpart

00:14:25.080 | that I knew was deceiving, lying to me.

00:14:27.660 | And I remember saying to myself,

00:14:30.080 | you know, I'm lucky to be in this negotiation.

00:14:32.040 | I mean, they wouldn't be trying to hustle me

00:14:35.800 | if we weren't really good.

00:14:37.360 | If we didn't have a product that was phenomenal.

00:14:40.680 | I wouldn't be targeted at all.

00:14:43.060 | So I'm actually lucky to be in this conversation.

00:14:45.380 | So if I can make that next shift emotionally,

00:14:47.660 | then I'm good.

00:14:48.740 | The hard part is making those shifts.

00:14:50.540 | - I'm gonna just share with you what I learned recently

00:14:54.060 | about sound and emotion.

00:14:57.060 | I'm researching an episode on music and the brain.

00:15:01.900 | Fascinating topic.

00:15:03.600 | Believe it or not, there's a lot known.

00:15:05.420 | And the auditory system has this property

00:15:09.240 | where of course there are neurons, nerve cells

00:15:10.720 | that respond to different frequencies of sound.

00:15:12.500 | Low frequency, you know, deeper tones and high frequency,

00:15:16.360 | squeals and that sort of thing.

00:15:18.540 | Okay.

00:15:19.660 | That's pretty straightforward.

00:15:21.020 | Just like we have neurons that respond to different colors

00:15:24.120 | or different, you know, angles of light in the room.

00:15:27.620 | But what I learned and I confirmed with a good friend of mine

00:15:31.560 | who's an auditory neuroscientist and neurosurgeon.

00:15:36.000 | His name is Eddie Chang.

00:15:36.840 | He was a guest on this podcast previously.

00:15:38.680 | Is that low frequency sounds of the sort that your voice is

00:15:43.680 | that late night FM DJ voice are responded to in the brain

00:15:49.440 | by neurons, no surprise there.

00:15:52.580 | But the frequency that those neurons fire

00:15:55.900 | is also low frequency.

00:15:57.560 | In other words, when you speak in your low voice,

00:16:02.080 | the other person's brain hears that and starts firing

00:16:07.600 | in a low frequency tone.

00:16:09.560 | In other words, it in trains to your voice,

00:16:11.920 | not just the timing, but it's actually like,

00:16:14.900 | you're essentially playing an emotional piano

00:16:17.780 | down in the low keys of their mind.

00:16:22.160 | Now, when you go up to the high frequencies,

00:16:24.800 | the neurons can't follow that high frequency.

00:16:27.520 | So there's something special about low frequency sound

00:16:30.960 | that actually changes the emotional tone

00:16:34.260 | of the people that hear that low frequency sound.

00:16:37.780 | This is wild, right?

00:16:38.760 | I mean, of course the content of the words matters too,

00:16:42.160 | but anyway, there's real neuroscience to support the voice

00:16:45.960 | that you were endowed with

00:16:46.800 | and that you employed for your work.

00:16:49.200 | - Well then, and then also the point then too,

00:16:51.200 | is it's not, the other side is not making a choice.

00:16:53.320 | It's an involuntary reaction.

00:16:54.840 | - That's right.

00:16:55.680 | This is not something one can override,

00:16:57.480 | except by perhaps plugging their ears, right?

00:17:00.200 | If they're hearing that, their mind is getting shifted

00:17:04.160 | toward a state of low frequency oscillation,

00:17:06.920 | which is one of more calm.

00:17:09.320 | Yeah, so that's a real thing.

00:17:12.480 | And were you to have a high squeaky chipmunks voice,

00:17:15.400 | you might not have been the negotiator.

00:17:18.120 | You had all the, who knows,

00:17:19.060 | maybe there'd be another tactic there.

00:17:20.680 | I mean, I think back to the,

00:17:22.460 | I guess it was during one of the Gulf War campaigns

00:17:26.240 | where they, weren't they trying to squeeze out Saddam

00:17:31.600 | and some of his people by playing like Milli Vanilli

00:17:35.000 | at high volume for hours and hours.

00:17:36.840 | Is that tactic actually used?

00:17:39.080 | - So that was Panama when they were trying to get Noriega.

00:17:43.080 | - Okay, so I'm only a few, I'm only a few countries over.

00:17:45.960 | - See, you know, I get the trivia, you know,

00:17:48.920 | I was telling you before, the wacky, fascinating,

00:17:52.040 | useless information around terrorism and stuff like that.

00:17:55.120 | I tried that at Panama and for whatever the military guys,

00:18:01.120 | they were playing music and sounds.

00:18:03.840 | And then also among the many stupid things

00:18:07.460 | that the FBI did at Waco, then late at night,

00:18:10.340 | they tried that in the Waco compound too.

00:18:12.640 | And it was just, that was one of the things

00:18:14.880 | that the hostage negotiators were adamantly against,

00:18:17.420 | adamantly against, but they got overruled

00:18:20.400 | by on scene command among the many stupid things

00:18:24.960 | that were done at Waco, that was also done at Waco.

00:18:27.360 | It was stupid, it's counterproductive.

00:18:28.800 | Hostage negotiators were always against it.

00:18:31.200 | - So for those of you who don't remember Waco,

00:18:32.720 | Waco was Branch Davidian's David Koresh, right?

00:18:36.480 | - Yeah, there was a Netflix series that was out

00:18:39.200 | about it recently that's fair about how it went down.

00:18:44.200 | - Yeah, sad ending, he eventually set the building ablaze,

00:18:49.120 | killed himself and everybody else in it.

00:18:50.780 | - People inside set the building on fire.

00:18:52.440 | - Yeah, including a lot of children perished.

00:18:54.200 | - Including some children, there are some FBI agents

00:18:57.040 | that have still not gotten over that.

00:18:59.400 | - I'd like to talk about some different types

00:19:01.480 | of negotiations.

00:19:02.680 | Oftentimes, I think because you're a former FBI negotiator,

00:19:08.860 | at a terrorist task force, this kind of thing,

00:19:11.740 | we tend to focus on the negative negotiations, right?

00:19:15.800 | Get the hostages away, and we'll talk about that stuff.

00:19:18.660 | Breakups, business deals that have gone wrong,

00:19:22.200 | people lying, cheating.

00:19:24.220 | What about negotiations that are benevolent?

00:19:26.200 | Let's say that two people want to come to a true win-win

00:19:31.200 | around what they each see to be their best interests

00:19:36.800 | in, let's say, friendship.

00:19:38.800 | Two friends taking a trip together on vacation.

00:19:41.200 | Who's gonna pay for what?

00:19:42.880 | Who's gonna pay up front?

00:19:44.120 | Are people gonna pay each other back?

00:19:46.440 | Or a romantic relationship?

00:19:47.720 | Two people are considering fusing finances to some extent,

00:19:51.760 | or moving in together.

00:19:53.920 | What sorts of questions should people be asking themselves

00:19:57.880 | prior to those negotiations?

00:19:59.960 | In particular, is it very important that people know

00:20:02.280 | exactly what they want going into a negotiation?

00:20:05.500 | Or I can recall many times

00:20:08.440 | when I've gone into life circumstances,

00:20:11.140 | knowing I wanted a certain set of feelings or outcomes,

00:20:13.860 | but not being extremely specific about,

00:20:16.920 | I want this salary, I want to live in a West-facing house

00:20:20.700 | on this particular location, an exploration of potentials,

00:20:25.700 | I think can also take the form of negotiation.

00:20:29.140 | So how should people think about

00:20:32.780 | approaching benevolent negotiations?

00:20:34.940 | Like where we're not talking about something tragic

00:20:37.180 | happening if it doesn't go through.

00:20:38.600 | It might hurt, it might be a little bit high friction,

00:20:41.540 | but let's talk about how to get to a win-win.

00:20:44.440 | - Yeah, well, there's a couple of interesting things there.

00:20:47.780 | First of all, the phrase win-win.

00:20:50.620 | Because win-win is just great collaboration.

00:20:55.580 | I mean, important fact, it should be win-win,

00:20:58.500 | which might only be emotional win-win.

00:21:01.620 | Now, the phraseology win-win,

00:21:04.860 | I know that if someone opens a negotiation with me

00:21:08.460 | and they say right off the bat,

00:21:09.680 | look, I want to do a win-win deal with you,

00:21:12.180 | that correlates extremely highly

00:21:16.420 | with someone who's trying to pick my pocket.

00:21:19.620 | So if you use that phrase in the first five minutes,

00:21:23.740 | I already know where you're coming from.

00:21:24.820 | You're trying to get me to drop my guard.

00:21:26.140 | It's you win, I lose.

00:21:27.440 | So, and this came up on an Instagram post

00:21:31.720 | I put up recently, which is essentially

00:21:34.300 | watch out for the person that says win-win.

00:21:36.500 | Now, I didn't say win-win is bad.

00:21:40.740 | I said watch out for the person that says it.

00:21:42.980 | Also, you gotta be cautious if you like,

00:21:48.180 | some of the win-win mindset,

00:21:50.620 | then people set themselves up to just get slaughtered

00:21:53.300 | by the person who's expressing a desire for win-win

00:21:57.100 | and looking to pick their pocket.

00:21:59.060 | Like if I feel win-win in my heart,

00:22:00.620 | you go, let's do a win-win deal.

00:22:02.220 | If I don't watch it, I'm like, okay, what do you want?

00:22:05.260 | And then I find myself giving away the store.

00:22:07.220 | So there's a lot behind the win-win phraseology

00:22:11.140 | that you have to have a complete understanding of.

00:22:13.360 | In point of fact,

00:22:14.800 | both sides should feel good about the outcome.

00:22:16.980 | And isn't that the definition of win-win?

00:22:19.180 | Well, kinda, sorta.

00:22:20.340 | But it's how they feel about it

00:22:24.460 | more than really what they got.

00:22:26.240 | So in a benevolent negotiation among friends,

00:22:31.020 | where are we gonna go to eat?

00:22:32.620 | Where are we going on vacation?

00:22:33.940 | What route are we gonna take?

00:22:35.340 | People really just wanna be heard out

00:22:38.460 | more than anything else,

00:22:40.660 | which operationally seems to be,

00:22:43.120 | I don't understand how it's gonna make any difference.

00:22:45.780 | Makes all the difference in the world.

00:22:47.740 | And what's the best way for somebody to feel heard out?

00:22:52.220 | Well, I'm gonna start out by telling you,

00:22:54.560 | describing to you, not telling you,

00:22:57.340 | but describing to you

00:22:58.900 | what my best guess is on your perspective.

00:23:02.500 | Because it's really calibrating me

00:23:06.460 | actually finding out what your position is.

00:23:08.620 | And the only way I can find out

00:23:11.820 | what your position actually is,

00:23:14.200 | I'm gonna increase you telling me

00:23:16.480 | if I start taking a guess at it first.

00:23:19.300 | 'Cause you're immediately, right away,

00:23:20.780 | you're immediately gonna tell me

00:23:22.780 | either I'm right or I'm wrong.

00:23:24.020 | You're gonna correct me.

00:23:24.860 | Correction is a satisfying thing to do.

00:23:29.860 | And you're gonna be much more candid with me

00:23:33.620 | if you're correcting me than if I'm asking you.

00:23:35.920 | And you'll feel good about correcting me.

00:23:39.340 | So there's all these great emotional lubricants

00:23:42.800 | to me getting you to correct me.

00:23:44.260 | So I'm gonna start out by saying,

00:23:45.260 | "Here's what I think you're thinking.

00:23:47.740 | "Here's how I think you're approaching this.

00:23:49.800 | "Here's what I think you're wanting out of this."

00:23:53.540 | Not what you should be,

00:23:54.920 | but what you probably are based on your perspective.

00:23:59.060 | And that's gonna accelerate the conversation exponentially.

00:24:03.040 | Like it's ridiculous how much faster things are gonna go.

00:24:06.100 | And then it becomes both an information gathering

00:24:08.640 | and a rapport building process simultaneously

00:24:10.820 | instead of separately.

00:24:13.020 | Which is what makes this approach faster,

00:24:15.260 | even though it seems more indirect.

00:24:17.340 | So if we're getting ready to,

00:24:18.500 | let's say you and I are gonna take a car trip

00:24:20.740 | to San Francisco from here.

00:24:23.580 | And I'm gonna say, "All right, so my guess is

00:24:27.500 | "you want to take the most direct route

00:24:28.980 | "because you hate wasting time."

00:24:31.460 | And you're probably gonna say to me,

00:24:32.840 | "No, no, no, no, no.

00:24:33.680 | "I want to go up the Pacific Coast Highway

00:24:35.040 | "because there's a beautiful stretch of country.

00:24:38.260 | "I realize it's gonna be a waste of time

00:24:39.940 | "if we go up the Pacific Coast

00:24:41.240 | "'cause we got to jump off it at some point,

00:24:43.440 | "but I really want to see the scenery."

00:24:45.960 | You would have, I've taken a guess of what you want

00:24:48.740 | and you're gonna come back real quick and correct me.

00:24:51.260 | And then maybe I'm thinking time on the trip,

00:24:55.780 | but I've forgotten how beautiful it is to roll up the coast.

00:24:59.420 | And so when you throw that out, I'll be like,

00:25:01.320 | "Oh yeah, it is a beautiful ride."

00:25:04.580 | And we might not get another shot.

00:25:06.980 | Like who knows what's gonna happen?

00:25:08.460 | So yeah, now that we're having a conversation,

00:25:11.800 | I'd rather run up the Pacific Coast Highway

00:25:14.260 | before we go inland and make the trip.

00:25:17.680 | And that's how we get to,

00:25:19.960 | we collaborate for a better outcome,

00:25:23.120 | maybe a better idea than what I had in mind

00:25:25.300 | in the first place.

00:25:26.720 | - I love that because what you just described

00:25:28.620 | is hypothesis testing.

00:25:30.100 | - Yes.

00:25:30.940 | - It's the way scientists are trained.

00:25:32.960 | Many people don't know this, but they teach us in science,

00:25:36.040 | not to ask questions, but to start with a question,

00:25:38.860 | like how does the brain develop or something?

00:25:43.680 | And then you say a hypothesis and you test hypotheses

00:25:46.540 | and then you figure out if they're right or wrong.

00:25:47.900 | And that takes you through a set of decision trees

00:25:50.440 | and you eventually get at what you hope is some core truth.

00:25:53.280 | And then hopefully others arrive there as well

00:25:55.700 | and you get a consensus.

00:25:56.840 | So I love the idea of hypothesis testing.

00:25:58.760 | In fact, when you said take the most direct route

00:26:01.240 | from where we are now in Los Angeles to San Francisco,

00:26:05.660 | I like to take one-on-one, not the five, the five is faster.

00:26:09.120 | So I immediately think, but I like one-on-one.

00:26:11.520 | First of all, there are a couple of really great taco

00:26:13.500 | and hamburger spots along the way

00:26:14.760 | that I used to stop with my bulldog.

00:26:16.800 | Also, you get to see it the coast

00:26:18.840 | and it makes those extra two hours completely worth it.

00:26:21.580 | And so you're exactly right.

00:26:23.360 | And in that working through the decision tree

00:26:28.320 | doesn't necessarily mean presuming

00:26:31.980 | that the hypothesis is right.

00:26:34.460 | It sounds like you'd be equally okay

00:26:37.160 | with the hypothesis being wrong

00:26:38.440 | because really what you're trying to do is just learn.

00:26:40.920 | And in learning, set up this collaboration.

00:26:44.320 | I love that.

00:26:45.140 | - A couple of things.

00:26:45.980 | First of all, when you talk about hypothesis,

00:26:49.160 | when my son Brandon was involved in a company,

00:26:51.080 | he's out on his own now,

00:26:52.580 | but he used to always say hypothesis, test your hypothesis.

00:26:55.240 | He always used that term.

00:26:56.680 | And then even now, like if we were talking about it

00:26:58.880 | and you just said, you knew some hot dog

00:27:00.760 | and hamburger places, I'd be like, holy cow.

00:27:03.680 | I didn't even know that.

00:27:05.080 | Yeah, I want to check those places out.

00:27:07.540 | So that's how you discover new stuff in a conversation.

00:27:10.460 | - I love it.

00:27:11.300 | So, and also I've been sure people are noting

00:27:13.300 | to not say the words win-win

00:27:14.800 | when approaching any kind of negotiation.

00:27:17.260 | What do you think it is about those little catchphrases

00:27:20.780 | that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness?

00:27:25.260 | Because you could imagine that somebody,

00:27:26.680 | I come to you and say, hey, Chris,

00:27:28.660 | let's do some collaborative thing for social media,

00:27:32.500 | for podcasts, and this is going to be a win-win

00:27:34.760 | for both of us.

00:27:35.600 | Now I know to never say that with you,

00:27:37.560 | but you could imagine that somebody really means that.

00:27:40.960 | But for you, it sounds like it's a flag

00:27:43.260 | that they're trying to pull one over.

00:27:45.900 | - It correlates really strongly with the people

00:27:49.200 | that are definitely trying to cut your throat.

00:27:51.500 | And I've had them admit that to me candidly.

00:27:54.660 | - Amazing.

00:27:55.480 | - Like I'll be, I've experienced it.

00:27:59.540 | Like if somebody throws win-win out early to me,

00:28:02.360 | I'll say, all right, I think I know where this is going,

00:28:04.840 | but let me explore it.

00:28:05.920 | And they'll say, yeah, you know,

00:28:08.560 | this is a great opportunity for you.

00:28:09.980 | That's another top.

00:28:11.080 | And we're going to put you in a room

00:28:13.700 | with all these billionaires,

00:28:14.840 | and there's going to be all this opportunity for you

00:28:17.580 | if you just come in and speak.

00:28:19.000 | And you know, we don't have a budget.

00:28:21.240 | - Yeah, well, I've gotten that one before.

00:28:22.720 | - Yeah.

00:28:23.560 | - The famous, the World War would just work out

00:28:27.040 | in your favor because it's going to work out in my favor.

00:28:30.080 | - Right, yeah, yeah.

00:28:31.320 | - Exactly, right, exactly.

00:28:32.560 | - I've been on the receiving end of those offers

00:28:34.560 | many a time.

00:28:35.580 | Fascinating.

00:28:37.640 | Conversely, what sorts of openers

00:28:40.920 | do you think established the best rapport

00:28:44.400 | and, you know, benevolent discovery of a topic?

00:28:47.720 | - Well, what I'm seeing correlates real strongly

00:28:50.840 | with people I want to do business with.

00:28:52.320 | If they figured out something that they know

00:28:54.480 | is valuable for me and they've just done it,

00:28:56.640 | and they've just offered it, like right off the bat.

00:29:01.160 | No strings attached.

00:29:02.560 | They found a way to drop something on me that's valuable.

00:29:06.600 | They didn't approach me with their hand out.

00:29:09.020 | They approached me with some sort of generosity.

00:29:13.200 | Like a friend of mine, Joe Polish,

00:29:15.380 | runs this outfit called Genius Network.

00:29:17.480 | Joe says life gives to the giver.

00:29:20.520 | Like Joe did a bunch of favors for me before I ever joined.

00:29:25.040 | And he was trying to help me out and get my book sold.

00:29:28.520 | And he asked me to come in and speak.

00:29:30.480 | And he'd done a, he'd emphasized my book on his podcast

00:29:35.480 | and in different conversations.

00:29:37.080 | And I, you know, I finally paid the fee to join.

00:29:41.720 | 'Cause he had done so much for me.

00:29:43.480 | Like there's not much Joe could ask me for right now.

00:29:47.280 | 'Cause he's done so much for me that he gets a blanket

00:29:49.760 | pretty much, yes, right away, what do you want?

00:29:51.840 | What do you need?

00:29:52.680 | 'Cause he's just generous.

00:29:54.360 | And the generosity approach, universally,

00:29:57.680 | I'm seeing a lot of really successful people

00:30:00.120 | that lead by generosity.

00:30:02.440 | And so if you start out that, you know,

00:30:05.200 | if you give me a five star review of the book on Amazon,

00:30:08.320 | no strings attached or anything.

00:30:13.700 | Like that goes a long, long way to somebody

00:30:16.080 | who wants to establish a long-term relationship

00:30:18.120 | and collaboration.

00:30:19.060 | - When I first opened my laboratory in 2011,

00:30:23.560 | I had a technician at the time

00:30:25.880 | who had been a technician for a lot of years.

00:30:27.720 | And there's this culture in science of people

00:30:30.760 | borrowing things from laboratories

00:30:32.880 | and not giving them back or breaking them.

00:30:34.840 | These can be little things like a, you know,

00:30:36.680 | a small instrument or a forceps.

00:30:39.940 | But you know, as a student or a postdoc,

00:30:41.960 | these are the things that you covet,

00:30:43.080 | like a really nice pair of forceps.

00:30:44.760 | It's like a great thing, you know.

00:30:46.120 | You drop them once, they're not good anymore, by the way.

00:30:48.900 | It's like, you have to treat them with respect.

00:30:51.000 | Surgical tools have to be treated with respect.

00:30:52.840 | These are very fine instruments.

00:30:54.760 | And people used to come by our lab all the time

00:30:57.880 | and borrow stuff from us.

00:30:59.120 | And he'd always lend it out.

00:31:01.080 | And I was like, what are you doing?

00:31:02.440 | But anytime I went to go borrow something,

00:31:04.840 | he'd say, do not borrow anything from anybody else

00:31:07.700 | because then we're gonna owe them.

00:31:09.580 | Right now, everybody owes us everything.

00:31:12.000 | And I was like, you're running up our budget,

00:31:13.440 | giving away these instruments.

00:31:14.360 | They come back with the forceps, dented and stuff.

00:31:16.480 | And he said, just trust me, this is the way to do it.

00:31:19.160 | And I don't recall ever quote unquote,

00:31:21.560 | cashing in on any of that, but he was exactly right.

00:31:24.200 | When I eventually decided to move institutions,

00:31:26.540 | we'd given away so much and we had asked for so very little,

00:31:31.080 | maybe nothing that when you leave a place,

00:31:34.400 | typically there can be a little bad blood.

00:31:36.420 | And all we got was sorry to see you go kind of stuff.

00:31:39.800 | Had it been me, I would have been in a kind of a,

00:31:42.200 | an exchange of, oh, we ask for things, we give things.

00:31:44.680 | It's kind of a neighborhood.

00:31:45.520 | I grew up in a neighborhood where you'd borrow eggs or milk

00:31:48.000 | from the neighbor, remember those days?

00:31:50.040 | I don't know if people do that any longer.

00:31:52.640 | But I think it falls well into what you're describing

00:31:55.240 | that when you just do things for people out of goodness,

00:32:00.240 | then sure you sort of have a history

00:32:04.680 | where you could return to that they owe you,

00:32:06.440 | but there's also just something good

00:32:07.960 | about just doing things out of goodness

00:32:09.920 | and also not asking for so much

00:32:11.800 | and expecting people to provide that.

00:32:15.160 | So I love that.

00:32:16.960 | And I actually, I love providing good reviews

00:32:20.820 | for things I like.

00:32:21.920 | I get on the phone when, you know, the airline,

00:32:26.120 | that we don't do this anymore.

00:32:27.120 | We book our own flights,

00:32:27.960 | but anytime I get help on the phone

00:32:29.560 | and, you know, if it's really great help,

00:32:31.740 | I'll say, how can I help?

00:32:33.520 | And they'll say, oh, it would mean a lot

00:32:34.760 | if you would send an email to this, to my business,

00:32:37.120 | just saying, I did a great job or something like that.

00:32:39.640 | And I actually really enjoy doing that.

00:32:41.920 | So I love the points you're making

00:32:44.280 | because they're very actionable.

00:32:45.880 | As many of you know,

00:32:47.720 | I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012.

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00:33:02.140 | that include vegetables and fruits every day,

00:33:04.400 | but oftentimes I simply can't get enough servings.

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00:33:39.360 | Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman.

00:33:43.800 | Shifting slightly into the more,

00:33:47.260 | let's call them high friction negotiations

00:33:50.460 | or the types of negotiations where there is the potential

00:33:52.980 | for a truly bad outcome.

00:33:54.600 | I know you've been asked this before,

00:33:57.400 | but some of our listeners are going to be learning about you

00:34:00.900 | for the first time.

00:34:02.260 | Do you recall of the many negotiations that you did

00:34:06.020 | while in the FBI, any one particular negotiation

00:34:10.580 | that felt like if this doesn't work out,

00:34:13.460 | this is really catastrophic?

00:34:15.740 | And would you be willing to share that with us?

00:34:17.660 | - Well, I learned,

00:34:22.660 | you know, they try to teach this early on

00:34:24.400 | that not everything's going to work out.

00:34:26.340 | And the second negotiation I had in the Philippines,

00:34:30.780 | the first one, a young man named Jeff Schilling

00:34:34.120 | was grabbed by a terrorist group at Busayef.

00:34:37.620 | And he ended up walking away

00:34:39.900 | 'cause we stole the bad guys long enough

00:34:42.180 | that we just, you know, sometimes if you can slow it down,

00:34:47.060 | you wait for something good to fall out of the sky.

00:34:49.940 | And it will.

00:34:52.000 | And that ended up happening in that case.

00:34:53.820 | And a bad guy ends up calling the negotiator

00:34:56.660 | that I coached on the phone after it was over

00:34:59.020 | to basically tell them

00:35:01.700 | that they still had a good relationship.

00:35:04.740 | It was nuts.

00:35:06.880 | Why does a bad guy call the negotiator

00:35:10.540 | that is responsible for him losing everything

00:35:13.180 | and say, you know, you did a good job,

00:35:15.180 | which is exactly what happened.

00:35:16.740 | So we roll into a case,

00:35:19.180 | and I hadn't had anything go bad at that point in time.

00:35:23.300 | The very next case, a Burnham-Sibero case

00:35:25.700 | by a different faction of the terrorist group,

00:35:29.820 | 13 months later, ends up in two or three remaining hostages,

00:35:34.820 | shot and killed by friendly fire.

00:35:38.620 | Along the way, hostages have been executed,

00:35:41.980 | an American had been executed early on,

00:35:43.860 | and it was a train wreck,

00:35:46.460 | and lots of people got killed all along the way,

00:35:48.860 | and just really ridiculous bad things happening.

00:35:52.060 | And that was bad all the way through.

00:35:55.140 | So we learned, you know, learned a lot from it.

00:35:59.240 | Went back and checked everything we did,

00:36:03.820 | and we didn't do anything wrong

00:36:05.540 | that we felt, based on our strategy, didn't miss anything,

00:36:08.680 | and that was why I ended up going,

00:36:10.940 | collaborating with the guys at Harvard,

00:36:12.380 | because my reaction was if we did everything we know

00:36:15.940 | how to do and it wasn't enough,

00:36:17.020 | that means we're not smart enough, we gotta get better.

00:36:20.240 | And so that case taught me a lot

00:36:22.460 | about the dynamics that really happened on the other side,

00:36:26.100 | and the difference between, you know,

00:36:30.640 | whether or not people are really on your side.

00:36:32.760 | The U.S. government was not highly collaborative.

00:36:36.060 | The Philippine government was not highly collaborative.

00:36:40.100 | That everybody wanted to get their pound of flesh

00:36:43.400 | out of the other side.

00:36:44.880 | I mean, just everything bad that you can imagine.

00:36:48.080 | Early on, when Guillermo Saburo was murdered

00:36:51.440 | by the Abu Sayyaf,

00:36:53.140 | it was a national holiday in the Philippines.

00:36:56.100 | And the bad guys had a history

00:36:57.400 | of killing people on national holidays.

00:37:00.100 | And we weren't from the Philippines,

00:37:01.680 | and we had no idea that that day was a national holiday.

00:37:05.520 | And we showed up

00:37:06.560 | at Philippine National Police Headquarters in Manila,

00:37:10.580 | and it was closed.

00:37:12.160 | Now, I got an ongoing hostage case

00:37:14.880 | with bad guys threatening to kill hostages,

00:37:17.420 | and we show up at the gates, and the gates are closed.

00:37:20.680 | And we're like, what the hell's going on here?

00:37:22.760 | And it was a national holiday, nobody's working today.

00:37:25.760 | I'm like, first of all, nobody told us that.

00:37:29.480 | Secondly, I don't think the bad guys really care

00:37:31.480 | that it's a national holiday and nobody's working.

00:37:34.320 | Our negotiators, nowhere to be found.

00:37:36.600 | We got a guy there that,

00:37:38.600 | the previous negotiator we worked with,

00:37:41.960 | Philippine National Police was not that happy

00:37:44.400 | that they didn't have him under complete control.

00:37:48.040 | So they give us a guy that will not tell us anything

00:37:51.120 | until after he's told them.

00:37:53.140 | So he's having conversations with the bad guys,

00:37:55.200 | and we're actually hearing about him secondhand.

00:37:57.840 | He didn't show up that day.

00:37:59.480 | And then, of course, that day,

00:38:02.120 | the bad guys announce they're gonna kill a hostage

00:38:05.360 | and give it as a gift to the country of the Philippines

00:38:08.460 | 'cause it's a holiday.

00:38:10.160 | And then go, oh, by the way,

00:38:11.160 | they like doing this on holidays.

00:38:13.480 | And so, and Guillermo Saburo ended up

00:38:17.240 | getting his head cut off.

00:38:18.480 | Because of all the warring factions on our side of the table

00:38:23.480 | not telling each other what the hell's going on.

00:38:26.580 | So I had assumed at that point in time

00:38:30.180 | that people would tell us the stuff we need to know,

00:38:32.380 | we didn't need to ask.

00:38:33.260 | And after that, I got like,

00:38:34.700 | look, there ain't nothing here that I don't need to know.

00:38:37.140 | I don't, if it's a holiday, it's coming up,

00:38:39.440 | then you assume I know.

00:38:40.560 | You gotta tell us.

00:38:42.680 | So really learned a lot about collaboration

00:38:44.960 | on our side of the table,

00:38:46.940 | and also the lack of collaboration

00:38:49.900 | on the other side of the table.

00:38:50.920 | Just 'cause we're a mess

00:38:51.760 | doesn't mean they got their act together,

00:38:53.180 | and the bad guys didn't have their act together.

00:38:55.500 | And ultimately the hostages,

00:38:57.200 | one of the reasons someone didn't come out

00:38:59.640 | because internally they had double-crossed each other.

00:39:03.420 | So learned a lot about what really fundamental

00:39:06.160 | human nature dynamics are on teams,

00:39:09.000 | and your team has not got its act together,

00:39:11.400 | and the other team does not either.

00:39:12.800 | So what can you do as a communicator to make up for that?

00:39:16.280 | Really learned a lot about that in that case.

00:39:18.440 | I had cases subsequent to that involving Al-Qaeda

00:39:21.780 | when Al-Qaeda was killing people on a regular basis.

00:39:25.880 | But we saw those coming,

00:39:27.440 | and we did everything we could do

00:39:28.920 | to keep the train from smashing into us.

00:39:31.600 | You see a train coming down the tracks,

00:39:34.240 | you know it's coming down the tracks,

00:39:36.560 | and you do the best you can to derail it,

00:39:38.640 | and sometimes you can't.

00:39:39.840 | - I've heard it said that

00:39:42.760 | when people take somebody captive

00:39:45.080 | that they either want their money,

00:39:48.400 | their body, or their life,

00:39:50.280 | or some combination of those.

00:39:52.100 | - Yeah, that's probably one of those three.

00:39:53.840 | Yeah, that's very true.

00:39:54.940 | - And as the negotiator trying to rescue the hostage,

00:40:01.120 | is it important to identify early on

00:40:05.540 | which of those three or which all of those three

00:40:08.540 | they're after, like how serious they are?

00:40:10.540 | Are they willing to actually kill the hostage?

00:40:13.400 | Are they, you know, will they go for any amount of money

00:40:17.420 | above X number of dollars?

00:40:19.740 | Trying to figure out their threshold, right?

00:40:22.140 | I mean, because the person is on the other side

00:40:24.220 | is gambling, right?

00:40:25.060 | They're gambling their freedom,

00:40:27.000 | they're gambling their reputation

00:40:29.700 | with whoever their reputation matters to.

00:40:31.860 | Is it important to get into the mindset

00:40:35.580 | of the person you're negotiating with quickly

00:40:38.220 | using the hypothesis generating method?

00:40:42.620 | And if so, could you give an example

00:40:46.860 | of how that played out in your previous work?

00:40:50.300 | - Yeah, the indicators are really there.

00:40:53.140 | I mean, once you sort of lose your illusions

00:40:56.740 | about how you think things should play out,

00:41:00.620 | then the patterns of behavior

00:41:01.880 | are generally pretty quick and clear.

00:41:05.120 | And just 'cause you don't like the patterns,

00:41:07.980 | like with Al-Qaeda, we recognize the patterns

00:41:10.340 | and knowing what they are

00:41:12.500 | doesn't mean you can change what they are.

00:41:14.380 | And Al-Qaeda in 2004's timeframe

00:41:17.820 | was very clear about killing people on deadline.

00:41:20.180 | And we had to recognize that.

00:41:22.700 | So there becomes a pattern of behavior

00:41:26.880 | and it's usually specificity in what they say.

00:41:29.620 | And this is all human nature.

00:41:31.840 | Like if you're in a business negotiation

00:41:35.180 | and they say, you know,

00:41:38.260 | we're gonna do something horrible here.

00:41:39.520 | You know, we're gonna walk out.

00:41:42.580 | You know, that's fairly non-specific.

00:41:44.620 | And if they say, look, if we don't get this

00:41:47.540 | by this specific deadline,

00:41:49.280 | if we don't get these specific things met

00:41:51.140 | by this specific time, that's pretty specific.

00:41:54.860 | It's specificity, you're looking for it.

00:41:57.540 | I learned to look forward in kidnapping negotiations.

00:42:00.380 | We're working a case again in the Philippines.

00:42:03.400 | And the bad guys say, you know,

00:42:05.460 | if we don't get a ransom for the son,

00:42:07.300 | 17-year-old boy at the time is kidnapped,

00:42:10.560 | you know, you tell his father he's gonna lose an egg.

00:42:13.640 | And that's a euphemism for losing a child.

00:42:17.520 | And early on, when that threat came through

00:42:19.600 | on our side of the table, everybody's like,

00:42:21.400 | oh my God, they're gonna kill him.

00:42:22.560 | You know, this is really bad.

00:42:23.800 | We gotta make sure the family can pay the ransom.

00:42:25.760 | I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:42:28.080 | It didn't say when it was gonna happen.

00:42:30.800 | They didn't say how it was gonna happen.

00:42:32.800 | They didn't say who was gonna do it.

00:42:36.140 | You know, the basic specificity of who, what, when and where.

00:42:39.940 | Like, they left themselves an out here, a very clear out.

00:42:43.140 | And we never said we were gonna do it.

00:42:44.860 | We never said when it was gonna happen.

00:42:46.640 | We never said which child.

00:42:48.720 | You know what, they're just trying to scare you.

00:42:50.160 | They're throwing out something vague.

00:42:51.440 | I said, we got plenty of time to play with this.

00:42:54.020 | We gotta push this all the way through the process

00:42:57.520 | and to the end.

00:42:58.360 | Now, later on in that case,

00:43:01.040 | when the family tried to deliver a ransom

00:43:04.480 | and it was screwed up by God knows who,

00:43:07.760 | the bad guys came up back on the phone

00:43:09.460 | and they said, if we don't get paid tomorrow, your son dies.

00:43:12.400 | And I said, all right, now that's specific.

00:43:16.800 | And these guys sound like they mean it.

00:43:18.840 | And so we're gonna have to make sure

00:43:21.160 | this thing goes down tomorrow

00:43:22.800 | or that's the end of this kid.

00:43:27.200 | And at that point in time, we allowed the family,

00:43:29.920 | we were in a position to allow or disallow.

00:43:34.440 | We were in a position to offer thoughts

00:43:37.760 | and our thoughts were they mean it now

00:43:41.480 | and you need to do something now

00:43:44.260 | or likely something bad's gonna happen.

00:43:46.480 | And now that they're this serious,

00:43:50.920 | 'cause you always gotta worry about

00:43:52.080 | what we used to refer to as a double dip.

00:43:54.800 | Do they take the money and they come back and say,

00:43:57.680 | nah, that was a down payment.

00:43:59.100 | That wasn't the ransom.

00:44:00.520 | That was just a down payment.

00:44:02.640 | You gotta make sure you don't get double dipped

00:44:04.240 | if you let the family pay.

00:44:06.560 | And you gotta give them your honest opinion

00:44:08.000 | as to whether or not they're gonna let the hostage go

00:44:09.640 | if you pay now.

00:44:10.860 | And our thoughts were, you pay them tomorrow,

00:44:15.520 | your son's coming out.

00:44:16.920 | And he did.

00:44:17.760 | - The double dip is a scary thing to hear about.

00:44:22.580 | At a much lower level, meaning more minor level,

00:44:27.540 | people sometimes get shaken down online.

00:44:31.040 | You know, like their password will get taken.

00:44:32.720 | There are people everywhere who go

00:44:35.920 | for the click on this link.

00:44:37.160 | You know, you'll get a text message.

00:44:38.560 | You know, we've identified that your account has,

00:44:40.520 | you know, in change, verify.

00:44:42.060 | You click on the link, takes you someplace

00:44:44.440 | where you put in your login and password and boom, it's gone.

00:44:47.620 | And then they try and sell it back to you,

00:44:49.000 | typically through cryptocurrency because it's not traceable.

00:44:52.360 | - By the way, those negotiations can be a lot of fun

00:44:54.760 | if you let them.

00:44:55.600 | - Well, I'm hoping that our discussion about this now

00:44:59.280 | is going to save some people the trouble

00:45:01.360 | of having their accounts hacked.

00:45:03.140 | I've known people who've had their accounts hacked.

00:45:04.840 | And these are some smart people.

00:45:06.880 | But what's interesting is that I've also observed

00:45:09.880 | those situations where somebody gets to the point

00:45:12.000 | where they just say, you know,

00:45:12.840 | I'm just going to give them what they want.

00:45:14.480 | And I remember in this one particular instance saying,

00:45:17.580 | no, no, no, do not give them the money

00:45:20.100 | because then they're just going to say they want more.

00:45:22.960 | There's no guarantee that they're going to give you back

00:45:25.400 | what you want and why would they, right?

00:45:27.720 | If you think about it, why would they?

00:45:28.760 | The money funnels in and like,

00:45:30.040 | they just can pivot and go to the next thing.

00:45:32.160 | So how do you gain confidence

00:45:35.800 | that you are likely to be double-dipped or not?

00:45:39.740 | - Well, first of all, I got to find out

00:45:43.560 | if they're in a position to carry out the threat

00:45:47.380 | or if they're in any sort of legitimate position

00:45:50.040 | to begin with.

00:45:50.880 | You know, for lack of a better term, it's proof of life.

00:45:53.740 | And there are a lot of people that are trying to scam you,

00:45:55.880 | but they don't really have the ability to scam you.

00:45:58.400 | So you got to find out, you know, do some confirmation.

00:46:01.060 | Do they have access to your account?

00:46:03.880 | Do they have your data?

00:46:05.160 | Do they have your money?

00:46:06.140 | Do they have it in a position

00:46:07.540 | or are they just trying to make you believe

00:46:09.880 | that they have that position of influence on you?

00:46:12.520 | There are a lot of the bad guys out there

00:46:15.420 | that are just rolling a dice,

00:46:17.220 | dialing for dollars, if you will.

00:46:19.720 | And if they don't scam you,

00:46:21.100 | when they have no leverage on you,

00:46:22.560 | they'll find somebody else that'll give in.

00:46:25.040 | So there's a bit of, you know, authenticity

00:46:27.440 | or are they in a position to do it?

00:46:30.480 | And the same rule applies in any negotiation.

00:46:35.480 | The other side is gonna give in

00:46:37.660 | when they feel like they've gotten everything they can.

00:46:40.820 | Kidnappers, I'd be asked by an ambassador,

00:46:44.240 | asked by an FBI commander, when's this gonna be over?

00:46:46.580 | When the bad guys feel like

00:46:47.800 | they've gotten everything they could.

00:46:49.140 | Not when they did, but when they felt like they did.

00:46:53.340 | So our job is just make them feel it sooner.

00:46:58.200 | So, you know, how hard do you make it?

00:47:01.780 | Innocently on the other side.

00:47:04.560 | Everybody wants to feel like they did a,

00:47:07.200 | they got a good day's pay for a good day's work.

00:47:10.400 | So if you let them feel like they're in charge

00:47:14.420 | and you make 'em work by asking 'em innocent

00:47:18.680 | how and what questions,

00:47:20.340 | which are very hard and fatiguing to answer,

00:47:24.760 | then you're gonna get to the point

00:47:27.520 | where you're gonna get a solid outcome

00:47:29.120 | where you don't get double-dipped

00:47:30.300 | and they're gonna be happy that it's over

00:47:31.680 | 'cause they felt like they got everything they could.

00:47:33.360 | It could be your data, could be your bank account,

00:47:35.920 | could be anything.

00:47:39.300 | The other side is gonna be satisfied with the outcome

00:47:42.440 | when they feel like they've worked for it.

00:47:44.960 | And in business negotiations, you're selling your car

00:47:48.240 | and some, you put a price tag on your car

00:47:51.800 | and the guy walks up to you and says,

00:47:52.960 | "I'll give you full amount right now."

00:47:54.920 | What's your reaction?

00:47:56.760 | I should've asked for more.

00:47:58.120 | Maybe I won't sell my car.

00:48:01.880 | Every human interaction, the other side wants to feel like

00:48:05.460 | that they earned what they got.

00:48:07.520 | And so the idea of empathy in hostage negotiations

00:48:12.360 | is really just to make 'em feel that sooner.

00:48:14.560 | - We're gonna come back to empathy

00:48:17.000 | because it's such a big and important topic.

00:48:19.460 | But I've heard it said before that

00:48:21.900 | if somebody you don't know,

00:48:25.720 | but maybe also somebody you know,

00:48:27.800 | places a real sense of urgency on need the money now,

00:48:32.800 | or I need you to do something right away or else,

00:48:37.840 | not a threat of physical violence,

00:48:40.280 | but that any request for expediting something is a red flag

00:48:45.280 | that it's likely to be a scam.

00:48:49.440 | Very seldom do you need to click on the link

00:48:52.600 | within 24 hours, right?

00:48:54.040 | I mean, how could that possibly be, right?

00:48:56.960 | But that's one way in which people are exploited,

00:49:01.080 | that some requests comes in by phone or by email or text

00:49:06.680 | or maybe even person.

00:49:08.200 | Somebody says, "You need to do this right now

00:49:10.120 | "or else something bad is gonna happen."

00:49:11.480 | Capture people's sense of urgency,

00:49:13.320 | get them to make a mistake,

00:49:14.880 | and then they're left reeling

00:49:17.260 | because that request for something right now or else,

00:49:20.480 | I think hits a fundamental nerve in us.

00:49:24.160 | - Yeah, they wanna help, to be a rescuer.

00:49:26.240 | - Right.

00:49:27.160 | So is that a good rule of thumb for people to keep in mind?

00:49:30.680 | To not--

00:49:31.520 | - I think that's a great rule of thumb.

00:49:33.060 | I mean, a friend of mine,

00:49:35.640 | somebody got a hold of his phone number not that long ago,

00:49:38.180 | and I was getting texts from his number.

00:49:41.200 | So I'm like, "Look, man, I got some real problems.

00:49:44.500 | "Look, I need some money from you now."

00:49:46.540 | It was a friend, a friend's number.

00:49:49.760 | And I remember when I first saw it,

00:49:51.600 | actually, when I first saw it, I was really busy,

00:49:53.920 | and I felt bad that I didn't get back to him that day.

00:49:57.160 | And then I didn't hear from him again,

00:49:59.080 | and so I thought, "Well, whatever it was,

00:50:00.400 | "you worked it out."

00:50:01.980 | So a couple weeks later, I get the text again.

00:50:04.360 | You got a real problem,

00:50:06.560 | you gotta get back to me right now.

00:50:08.700 | So I decide, "If it's really my buddy,

00:50:12.700 | "I am gonna help him right now.

00:50:14.320 | "I gotta make sure it's really my buddy."

00:50:17.160 | And I said, "Hey, man, you didn't raise this at all

00:50:21.360 | "last time I saw you in Vegas,

00:50:23.300 | "'cause I'd seen him in Vegas recently."

00:50:25.360 | And he's like, "Yeah, I was busy, I couldn't bring it up."

00:50:30.000 | And something like ours,

00:50:31.000 | so there's no direct confirmation or denial.

00:50:33.740 | We had breakfast together in Vegas.

00:50:36.720 | So then I shoot back, I say like,

00:50:38.200 | "And man, I gotta tell you something,

00:50:39.720 | "that was such a crazy night,

00:50:41.260 | "and I still owe you money from them.

00:50:43.560 | "So that night when we were gambling,

00:50:46.240 | "I still owe you money, I'm happy to help."

00:50:49.320 | Now, it wasn't a crazy night, it was breakfast,

00:50:51.640 | and I didn't owe him money.

00:50:53.440 | And his next response was like,

00:50:55.040 | "Yeah, don't worry about it,

00:50:56.340 | "you can make that up to me with this."

00:50:59.180 | So I'm like, "All right, cool."

00:51:00.880 | So now I start making stuff up.

00:51:02.460 | And I said, "And when we were with those strippers,

00:51:07.080 | "and that dog and the clown and the pony,

00:51:10.240 | "I'll never get over that."

00:51:11.600 | And so now the guy's, "What are you talking about?"

00:51:14.880 | And I said, "By the way," and then I started

00:51:16.720 | throwing in some stuff about his wife and his mother,

00:51:19.400 | and the guy got insulted and called me names

00:51:21.360 | and stopped texting me.

00:51:22.880 | And then I sent all those text messages to the real guy,

00:51:26.120 | including what I'd said about his mother,

00:51:29.320 | and he texted me back, he's got a great sense of humor,

00:51:32.520 | he says, "By the way, my mom does think you're attractive."

00:51:35.600 | - Oh man, I think--

00:51:38.080 | - But I started it all by just checking the source.

00:51:42.560 | If it was my friend, I would have helped him immediately.

00:51:46.120 | And I need to throw something at him

00:51:48.080 | that's gonna confirm that it's him,

00:51:50.380 | and that I'm there for him.

00:51:51.720 | But I'm also gonna put a little bit of a curve in there

00:51:55.700 | that if he doesn't catch, I know it's a con.

00:51:59.460 | And then I'm gonna have fun with it.

00:52:01.760 | - Incredible knowledge that, you know,

00:52:03.960 | people will hear this and they might think,

00:52:05.260 | "Oh, you know, that's never gonna happen to me."

00:52:07.000 | But like I said, I had known family members and friends

00:52:10.300 | who, they make the mistake, they take the bait

00:52:13.520 | of clicking on the link,

00:52:14.560 | and then now they're getting the shakedown.

00:52:16.660 | Actually, a good friend of mine said

00:52:21.140 | that her parents called at some point,

00:52:24.300 | her parents are probably in their late 70s now,

00:52:26.740 | someone had called their house and told them

00:52:31.020 | that their child, this woman, had been kidnapped

00:52:35.020 | and that they needed to send money.

00:52:39.460 | And that if they called the police,

00:52:41.540 | they'd kill her or harm her in some way.

00:52:43.980 | So they started sending money

00:52:46.140 | and they were afraid to contact her.

00:52:47.480 | And you can see what a bind a loving parent would be in.

00:52:51.220 | They obviously don't want to get this child of theirs hurt.

00:52:55.060 | And they obviously are willing to do whatever it takes

00:52:58.580 | in order to get them back.

00:52:59.400 | Turns out it was total scam

00:53:00.900 | because eventually there was communication

00:53:02.580 | that made them realize that their daughter was perfectly okay

00:53:06.180 | and never even interacted with kidnappers.

00:53:08.460 | So those kinds of scams happen pretty often.

00:53:10.620 | - I've had that happen to a friend also.

00:53:12.460 | - Yeah, so the sense of urgency

00:53:15.260 | should have been the first flag.

00:53:17.180 | - That's a great point.

00:53:18.820 | Yeah, absolutely.

00:53:20.300 | And look, even if they've got your loved one,

00:53:23.140 | the secondary issue is if you do what they want,

00:53:26.760 | are they gonna let them go?

00:53:28.820 | Which is actually a legitimate question.

00:53:31.620 | Like if there really are bad guys,

00:53:34.220 | one of the things we learned in hostage negotiation

00:53:37.720 | that I applied to business negotiation,

00:53:40.460 | there are legitimate questions that it's okay to ask.

00:53:43.060 | You're not being disrespectful.

00:53:45.780 | You're not pushing back.

00:53:47.180 | There are fair, to use the F bomb,

00:53:52.740 | fair legitimate questions that you can ask

00:53:54.840 | under any circumstances, which is basically,

00:53:58.380 | if I comply, is this gonna work out the way

00:54:02.260 | that you're articulating it?

00:54:04.380 | Anything that adds communication into it,

00:54:07.560 | which gives you more information

00:54:09.740 | to find out what the ultimate outcome looks like,

00:54:12.540 | even in kidnappings.

00:54:14.200 | How do you know that if you pay, they're gonna let them go?

00:54:18.880 | That's a legitimate question.

00:54:20.340 | - There are examples somewhere in between

00:54:24.140 | getting your Instagram account hacked,

00:54:26.900 | your bank account hacked,

00:54:29.140 | and God forbid, your child kidnapped.

00:54:33.420 | For instance, there's a whole practice within

00:54:37.980 | the legal profession of probing to see whether or not

00:54:42.720 | somebody is gonna give up money

00:54:44.160 | to avoid a lawsuit, for instance.

00:54:46.120 | Actually, a lawyer friend of mine recently

00:54:48.840 | described their job very well.

00:54:50.000 | He said, in his words, first person,

00:54:52.120 | he said, "I scare people for money."

00:54:54.760 | The operative word being scare people.

00:54:56.840 | - And that's being honest.

00:54:57.800 | - Yeah, he's being very honest.

00:54:58.940 | He scares people for money and he's very good at it.

00:55:01.160 | And he understands how other people scare people for money

00:55:04.300 | and he works both sides,

00:55:05.820 | plaintiff for defense type situations.

00:55:09.360 | But it made me realize that a lot of the legal profession

00:55:12.940 | is not, okay, the lawsuit slid across the table.

00:55:16.540 | It's the, okay, here's what the lawsuit would look like.

00:55:19.600 | Here are all the statutes that potentially were violated.

00:55:23.120 | And then there's a probe of what somebody's finances are

00:55:26.100 | and how much they're willing to pay

00:55:27.600 | and do they have liability insurance?

00:55:28.920 | Do they have an umbrella policy?

00:55:30.160 | All the sorts of things that are really,

00:55:32.400 | it's not necessarily an illegal shakedown,

00:55:35.820 | but it's a probing as to whether or not

00:55:39.240 | it's worth the effort.

00:55:42.020 | - Diagnosing the other side's ability to pay.

00:55:44.480 | - And so that happens really often.

00:55:47.160 | I can give a specific example

00:55:48.560 | where somebody had a incident at a dog park

00:55:53.560 | where their dog allegedly ran into somebody,

00:55:58.000 | maybe charged at somebody.

00:55:59.520 | You know, dog park people are standing around

00:56:01.200 | and the person moved and apparently injured their knee.

00:56:05.160 | But rather than sue the owner of the dog,

00:56:08.360 | what they typically do is deliver some set of documents

00:56:11.680 | that say, you know, I was injured,

00:56:15.760 | your dog was responsible for this.

00:56:18.840 | And if you don't settle up for X number of dollars,

00:56:23.080 | you're going to be sued

00:56:23.960 | for usually an exorbitant amount above that.

00:56:26.920 | And then there's this question

00:56:28.000 | that the lawyers have to figure out,

00:56:29.520 | like, is it puffery, right?

00:56:30.880 | Are they saying, well, I'm going to sue you

00:56:31.880 | for $4 million, is there any basis for that?

00:56:34.000 | And good lawyers will say, that's puffery.

00:56:35.880 | They're trying to scare you with a big number.

00:56:38.160 | But a lot of people see that number and go,

00:56:40.560 | oh my goodness, what do they want?

00:56:42.900 | You know what, like, I don't even know if they were injured.

00:56:44.880 | If they were, that's terrible, I'd want that taken care of.

00:56:47.520 | If my dog's responsible, I'd want that taken care of.

00:56:49.800 | But what do they need in order to make this go away?

00:56:53.200 | And that happens millions of times a day

00:56:57.280 | throughout the country.

00:56:58.600 | And a good portion of those probably happen

00:57:00.160 | here in California, because that's kind of the way

00:57:02.520 | the legal system is arranged.

00:57:04.080 | So this is not somebody, you know,

00:57:08.120 | it could be somebody manipulating the law.

00:57:09.760 | It could also be somebody who's being entirely honest

00:57:12.220 | about their experience of being injured

00:57:14.200 | by somebody else's dog.

00:57:16.720 | So under those conditions, I mean,

00:57:18.800 | it sounds like the same set of rules apply.

00:57:20.420 | You want to know how serious they are.

00:57:23.220 | Do they have a case, so to speak?

00:57:24.800 | That's the work of the lawyers.

00:57:26.160 | But in assessing how serious somebody is,

00:57:28.840 | you said it's fair, you called it the F word, I like that.

00:57:33.240 | I'll never forget that.

00:57:34.520 | It just asks a fair question.

00:57:35.880 | Like, how much money do you think you deserve?

00:57:38.700 | Or would that be a good example of a very direct question?

00:57:43.420 | Or is it how likely are you to walk away

00:57:46.800 | if we don't give you the money?

00:57:48.080 | Like, you know, is there, I mean,

00:57:49.240 | 'cause I could imagine there's all sorts of reasons

00:57:50.700 | why people would be dishonest

00:57:52.360 | about answering those questions.

00:57:54.000 | - Well, and then how much money you think you deserve

00:57:58.360 | is a really good question.

00:58:00.200 | Not necessarily what the answer is, but how they answer it.

00:58:03.520 | You're gonna get how quickly they fire back

00:58:08.160 | and whether or not they stop and think about it.

00:58:10.520 | How and what questions typically

00:58:14.680 | are best to judge the other side's reaction

00:58:19.920 | and the answer is secondary.

00:58:22.920 | 'Cause the how or what question causes

00:58:25.280 | what we would refer to as deep thinking, slow thinking,

00:58:29.040 | Danny Kahneman, behavioral economics,

00:58:33.020 | thinking fast and slow, slow thinking is in-depth thinking.

00:58:36.360 | You ask a how or what question

00:58:38.680 | to make the other side think first

00:58:41.840 | and judge their reaction to how they think about it.

00:58:44.760 | And do they actually think about it?

00:58:48.160 | Or do they fire right back at you?

00:58:50.640 | It gives you a clearer picture of who you're dealing with,

00:58:53.360 | where the outcome is gonna go.

00:58:55.280 | How much money do you think that you deserve

00:58:57.400 | if they immediate, you know, $10 million?

00:58:59.600 | All right, so this is,

00:59:01.320 | I got a shakedown artist on the other side.

00:59:03.480 | Or they say, all right, if they stop and think about it

00:59:07.600 | and they give you a thoughtful answer,

00:59:09.040 | that's a completely different person on the other side.

00:59:12.200 | You're asking a question to get a,

00:59:14.160 | to diagnose how they respond first, the answer is second.

00:59:19.800 | And sometimes I, if it's a cutthroat on the other side,

00:59:24.300 | I'm gonna start pampering them with how and what questions

00:59:27.720 | just to wear 'em out.

00:59:29.560 | That's passive aggression.

00:59:31.240 | If I got a cutthroat aggressor on the other side,

00:59:34.840 | I'm gonna drop into passive aggressive behavior

00:59:38.920 | to slow 'em down and wear 'em out.

00:59:40.680 | One of my hostage negotiation heroes,

00:59:44.480 | a guy named Johnny Pico was John Domenico Pico,

00:59:48.520 | not Johnny, like Johnny Rockets, Italian Johnny,

00:59:51.720 | John Domenico, got all the Western hostages

00:59:55.340 | out of Beirut in the mid '80s.

00:59:56.940 | Wrote a book called "Man Without a Gun,"

01:00:00.040 | negotiated in person, face-to-face with Hezbollah.

01:00:05.200 | The only guy that ever did that, got everybody out.

01:00:08.280 | And in his book, he wrote one of the great secrets

01:00:11.320 | to negotiation is learning how to exhaust the other side.

01:00:15.960 | And when you've got a really dangerous adversary

01:00:18.520 | on the other side of the table, you don't go nose to nose,

01:00:20.960 | you don't argue, you're not combative, you wear 'em out.

01:00:24.440 | Exhaust 'em.

01:00:26.040 | And if you got somebody really combative

01:00:28.080 | or cutthroat on the other side,

01:00:30.640 | start pampering 'em with how and what questions

01:00:33.600 | 'cause to even think about the answer, it tires 'em out.

01:00:36.360 | And it's passive aggressive and it's deferential

01:00:41.420 | and it really works.

01:00:44.400 | - So if the person on the opposite side

01:00:47.040 | of a high friction negotiation is aggressive,

01:00:50.720 | the goal is to slow things down, fatigue them,

01:00:54.800 | and get them to just either relent

01:00:58.820 | or to reveal something that's a loophole, right?

01:01:03.240 | - Yeah, if I have to make the deal,

01:01:05.540 | then I'm going to wear 'em out.

01:01:08.860 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:02:17.640 | I'm interested in drilling a little bit further

01:02:20.360 | into this process of wearing them down

01:02:23.500 | and the passive aggressive way

01:02:25.580 | of reducing the aggressor's stance.

01:02:30.060 | And I want to highlight for people

01:02:31.560 | that what we're talking about here

01:02:33.420 | isn't manipulation to extract something.

01:02:36.320 | We're actually talking about the reverse.

01:02:37.340 | We're talking about a bad actor who's aggressive

01:02:40.600 | and trying to defang that bad actor.

01:02:45.600 | What does that process of wearing them down look like

01:02:49.400 | or sound like?

01:02:50.240 | Could you give us a couple of examples of,

01:02:52.320 | let's say I'm the bad actor.

01:02:53.920 | We could play this game.

01:02:54.840 | I won't be very good at this.

01:02:56.240 | And I am saying, look, I want X number of dollars

01:03:02.320 | by this date or you're not going to get what you want.

01:03:08.480 | They're going to die or disappear.

01:03:11.560 | It's that simple.

01:03:12.800 | And I'm a Stonewall kind of approach.

01:03:16.120 | What is the approach that you take

01:03:18.280 | to wear that person down?

01:03:20.520 | - Well, they're going to be questions

01:03:23.500 | that are mostly how and what,

01:03:25.760 | and they're going to be legitimate questions,

01:03:27.960 | which is how do I know you're going to follow through?

01:03:33.160 | What does that look like?

01:03:38.400 | Like, if I do what you want,

01:03:40.180 | how do I know you're going to follow through?

01:03:45.040 | - So get them to talk about the alternative.

01:03:47.600 | Okay, so if you were to, well, if you deliver by that date,

01:03:51.200 | I'm going to pass them to you without fail.

01:03:55.160 | Like if they're just getting kind of brief answers

01:03:57.080 | where the person is just, again,

01:03:58.720 | this kind of like rigid Stonewall approach.

01:04:01.800 | - Yeah, well, and so there's a phrase

01:04:03.560 | that we use all the time, vision drives decision.

01:04:07.560 | So if you're really going to comply, if I give in,

01:04:11.560 | and when I said, how do I know you're going to follow through

01:04:14.200 | I'm not talking about the threat.

01:04:15.840 | I'm not trying to get you to clarify the threat.

01:04:18.820 | I'm trying to get you to clarify

01:04:20.400 | what implementation looks like.

01:04:22.120 | So I need to know, I'm based on your reaction to that.

01:04:27.080 | If you plan on following through, if I comply,

01:04:33.100 | you will already have that in your head or be open to it.

01:04:36.580 | Vision drives decision.

01:04:37.840 | You've thought it through in advance.

01:04:39.600 | What does letting the hostages go look like?

01:04:42.380 | If you have no intention of ever releasing the hostage,

01:04:48.740 | if I follow through, then you're not going to be able

01:04:51.820 | to answer the question and you're probably going to throw it

01:04:53.940 | back on me really quickly.

01:04:55.340 | And so then now I know like, all right,

01:04:59.660 | so you got no plans on complying.

01:05:02.460 | If I give in, you're not going to comply.

01:05:05.580 | So I, but you still want the money.

01:05:07.700 | Then I'm going to ask, well, how am I supposed to pay you

01:05:13.180 | if you don't have any plans for complying?

01:05:15.940 | And if you're willing to entertain a conversation

01:05:20.440 | about what compliance looks like.

01:05:22.760 | There was a kidnapping that my unit worked

01:05:27.820 | just before I was in it in Venezuela,

01:05:31.020 | where they weren't entirely sure that the bad guys

01:05:33.220 | were going to, the FARC, I think, had the hostage.

01:05:35.940 | They agreed on an exchange point to let the hostage go

01:05:41.380 | that was some distance from where they had a pretty good idea

01:05:44.740 | the hostage was being held.

01:05:46.520 | So they figured they're not going to drag the hostage

01:05:49.180 | all the way to this river crossing

01:05:50.580 | if they're not going to let them go.

01:05:51.700 | It's just too much effort.

01:05:53.500 | And then it was one of the few times

01:05:56.360 | there was going to be a simultaneously,

01:05:57.580 | theoretically a simultaneous exchange,

01:05:59.300 | but they're going to have to send the money

01:06:01.500 | across the river before the hostage was let go.

01:06:04.780 | So if we agree to this, all right,

01:06:06.260 | so they're not going to drag this guy

01:06:08.140 | all the way to this river crossing.

01:06:10.580 | They don't plan on letting them go.

01:06:12.980 | And if it's a long way to drag them

01:06:14.820 | and they got their money, do they want to drag them back?

01:06:17.740 | Like even if they're ambivalent, once they get there,

01:06:19.860 | if they've gone through all the effort

01:06:21.360 | to get to the meeting location and the hostage is there,

01:06:24.200 | we've now just increased the chances significantly,

01:06:27.360 | they're going to go ahead and comply

01:06:28.740 | 'cause it's a pain in the neck to take them back.

01:06:31.660 | This is all human nature stuff, human nature investment.

01:06:35.140 | How do you get them to engage in actions and behaviors

01:06:39.380 | and then verbal commitments

01:06:41.740 | that actually mean something to them?

01:06:43.420 | When I was working kidnappings,

01:06:45.780 | the very last thing we'd always have the family

01:06:48.020 | get the bad guys to say at last, not first, but last,

01:06:51.900 | was we'd actually get a verbal promise to let them go.

01:06:56.060 | Again, at the end, because we've been talking to them

01:07:00.260 | long enough at this point in time,

01:07:02.220 | we got a pretty good idea of what they sound like

01:07:03.960 | when they're lying and what they sound like

01:07:05.300 | when they're telling the truth.

01:07:07.560 | If somebody tells the truth,

01:07:08.860 | they pretty much tend to tell the truth

01:07:10.320 | the same way every time, if they tell the truth.

01:07:14.580 | You talk to somebody long enough, you got a line on,

01:07:16.880 | do they ever tell the truth?

01:07:18.420 | And if they do, what does it sound like?

01:07:20.860 | People lie 20 ways.

01:07:23.180 | They tell the truth one way.

01:07:25.000 | So we've been coaching in negotiations

01:07:27.900 | with the kidnappers long enough

01:07:29.340 | that we know what they sound like when they tell the truth.

01:07:31.500 | So when they ask at the very end,

01:07:33.780 | if we paid you, promise to let them go,

01:07:37.920 | it's not that they answered, but how they answered it.

01:07:41.420 | And that'll be the last thing to seal the deal.

01:07:43.840 | How do you continually stack the odds

01:07:45.340 | in your favor for implementation?

01:07:47.440 | - Do you have a bodily, like a somatic sensor for lying?

01:07:52.440 | The reason I ask is, years ago,

01:07:54.260 | I had the experience of knowing somebody,

01:07:57.280 | and they turned out to be a generally good person,

01:08:00.260 | but I sensed early on that something was like off.

01:08:05.260 | I couldn't relax around them.

01:08:07.520 | I just couldn't relax around them.

01:08:09.400 | And I could not tell you why, but it was as if my,

01:08:13.560 | I couldn't even identify the neuroanatomy of it.

01:08:15.560 | You know, I'd say it was the vagus nerve or something,

01:08:17.280 | but I teach neuroanatomy,

01:08:18.320 | and I can't point to one pathway in the body.

01:08:20.780 | There was something about my autonomic response

01:08:23.600 | that would just start cranking up when I was around them,

01:08:26.200 | like something is off, something is off, something goes.

01:08:28.460 | And I kid you not, five years later, five years later,

01:08:32.900 | I discovered a series of lies that all ratcheted together

01:08:37.900 | that were actually pretty meaningless

01:08:40.760 | in the total context of things.

01:08:43.280 | But I remember thinking at that moment, oh my goodness,

01:08:46.220 | like my system knew, like knew.

01:08:51.220 | And you know, for all my knowledge of neuroscience,

01:08:54.040 | I can't tell you to this day,

01:08:55.240 | like what it was in my biology,

01:08:58.640 | but it had something to do with my bodily response.

01:09:01.680 | It wasn't just a thought, like that doesn't quite add up,

01:09:05.060 | or I feel like I'm getting the runaround,

01:09:06.800 | or this, it was a physical sensation.

01:09:10.420 | - Are you familiar with that experience?

01:09:13.140 | - Yeah, well, it's a little bit what you guys

01:09:16.440 | and your colleagues are still discovering,

01:09:17.800 | the science behind the gut.

01:09:19.840 | And what we are actually teaching, you know,

01:09:22.120 | my company now, we're teaching people,

01:09:24.480 | learn the difference between your gut and your amygdala,

01:09:27.440 | for lack of a better term, your fear centers,

01:09:30.120 | and know which one is which and listen to your gut.

01:09:32.480 | Your gut is ridiculously accurate.

01:09:34.720 | Now, where does that information come from?

01:09:37.800 | One of your podcasts recently, I was listening to,

01:09:40.320 | we were talking about olfactory cues, right, the smells.

01:09:43.880 | Like I never thought of that, of course.

01:09:46.200 | You know, yeah, what was the term

01:09:50.200 | for the molecules that you're putting off

01:09:53.480 | that-- - Oh, pheromones.

01:09:55.020 | - Oh, pheromones.

01:09:55.860 | What are the powerful molecules gonna get kicked out?

01:09:58.920 | Like, of course, and that's why

01:10:00.040 | some of the great investigators I knew would say,

01:10:03.040 | I can just smell it, I can smell it.

01:10:05.360 | So what all is feeding your gut,

01:10:06.960 | and what are the senses that the science

01:10:10.720 | hasn't yet discovered?

01:10:11.720 | You know, you can't make me believe,

01:10:15.120 | I will never believe that the life force stops

01:10:18.000 | at the surface of our skin, that there's energy,

01:10:20.880 | and that we can pick up on the energy.

01:10:22.640 | I mean, our gut is being fed by all these different inputs

01:10:26.120 | that we're aware of or that we have yet to be made aware of.

01:10:30.980 | The tone of voice doesn't match their words, the head tilt.

01:10:35.980 | You've got a supercomputer in your brain,

01:10:38.020 | your gut is incredible.

01:10:40.480 | If you could listen to it instead of your fear centers,

01:10:43.220 | and as soon as you start listening to your gut,

01:10:45.660 | you can't explain it at the time,

01:10:47.920 | but you got a bad feeling in your gut.

01:10:50.840 | And later on, then you saw it all came together,

01:10:53.200 | where your brain was picking up these cues.

01:10:55.880 | Your brain was probably when you were in their presence.

01:10:58.240 | There's gotta be an odor somebody gives off

01:11:00.040 | when they're intentionally deceiving.

01:11:01.880 | You didn't know that that was a smell,

01:11:05.560 | and maybe you couldn't have consciously smelled it,

01:11:07.960 | but you're still picking it up.

01:11:09.020 | So long answer to, I'm a very big believer in the gut.

01:11:13.940 | I think there's science that we know and yet to discover

01:11:18.100 | that tells us that the gut is just ridiculously accurate

01:11:21.540 | if we listen to it instead of our fear centers.

01:11:24.000 | - I completely agree that there are energetic exchanges

01:11:28.840 | that neuroscience can't yet explain.

01:11:31.500 | The field of neuroscience, that is,

01:11:32.940 | is starting to explore some of these things.

01:11:35.600 | There's basically three apex journals,

01:11:39.720 | the most competitive journals to publish in,

01:11:41.180 | Science, Nature, and Cell.

01:11:42.740 | And I only mention that because there was a series

01:11:45.360 | of articles written in Science Magazine

01:11:47.740 | about magnetoreception in humans.

01:11:49.880 | The idea that humans can detect magnetic fields

01:11:53.280 | sounds like quackery, right?

01:11:54.860 | Turtles can detect magnetic fields.

01:11:56.360 | They migrate by them, actually, long distances.

01:11:59.160 | But the idea is that humans can't do that.

01:12:01.320 | And yet there are some well-controlled studies

01:12:04.840 | where people have to guess about the orientation

01:12:08.240 | of a magnetic field and they do it better than chance.

01:12:11.680 | Not everyone can do it, but some can do it better

01:12:13.480 | than chance in a way that cannot be predicted

01:12:15.720 | by anything else except some inherent form

01:12:18.720 | of magnetoreception in their nervous system.

01:12:21.000 | So there are capabilities of the nervous system

01:12:23.400 | that are starting to be revealed,

01:12:25.060 | which we don't have a lot of evidence,

01:12:27.000 | but there's enough evidence to suggest

01:12:28.780 | that these things are really happening.

01:12:30.820 | The other example, which you might find interesting,

01:12:33.540 | is a little less esoteric,

01:12:37.280 | but there was a beautiful paper published

01:12:38.860 | in one of the Cell press journals a couple of years ago

01:12:41.300 | showing that when people listen to the same story,

01:12:44.820 | the distance between their heartbeats

01:12:46.780 | tends to be very similar.

01:12:49.340 | Now, it doesn't mean that their exact heart rates

01:12:51.960 | are similar, but if you look at the distance

01:12:53.800 | between their heartbeats, they all entrain

01:12:57.160 | to the same rhythm, the same song.

01:12:59.960 | And get this, they're in completely separate rooms.

01:13:02.200 | The experiments are being done on completely separate days.

01:13:05.080 | And yet if I were to line up just the distance

01:13:08.800 | between the heartbeats for you,

01:13:10.660 | they would line up like a set of columns

01:13:13.160 | for dozens of individuals listening to the same story.

01:13:16.800 | So clearly there's a passage of energy

01:13:19.400 | from things we hear and things we see

01:13:21.600 | that goes into our nervous system

01:13:22.840 | at a level that's below our conscious detection.

01:13:24.640 | Here's the last thing I'll say about this.

01:13:26.660 | We have a series on mental health coming out,

01:13:28.460 | not mental illness, but mental health,

01:13:31.000 | by I think to be among the very finest psychiatrists

01:13:35.480 | in the world, Dr. Paul Conte.

01:13:37.400 | And he said, we all think that the forebrain

01:13:39.640 | is the supercomputer.

01:13:41.320 | He said, no, the subconscious is the supercomputer.

01:13:45.080 | That's where the real knowledge processing is happening.

01:13:48.060 | That's the iceberg below the surface

01:13:49.900 | where all the real heavy lifting has taken place.

01:13:52.680 | And that people who learn to tap into the subconscious

01:13:57.520 | can learn to use that information in very meaningful ways.

01:14:01.080 | And I think that's what you're describing.

01:14:02.880 | - He's been on with you before, right?

01:14:04.240 | - He has to talk about trauma in particular.

01:14:06.440 | And he was on Lex Friedman's podcast as well.

01:14:08.680 | The series that we're doing with him

01:14:09.820 | is not about trauma per se.

01:14:11.080 | It's really about the subconscious and the self.

01:14:13.120 | I think you'll find this series really interesting.

01:14:15.240 | And it has a number of very practical questions

01:14:17.020 | that one can ask themselves about their subconscious

01:14:19.440 | and kind of work the process of psychiatry.

01:14:21.520 | We're excited to release that series,

01:14:23.780 | 'cause I don't know of anything like it

01:14:25.980 | that's been put out there into the public,

01:14:27.720 | but I was so pleasantly surprised to hear him say,

01:14:32.720 | we all hear that the forebrain is the supercomputer.

01:14:35.200 | It's what drove our evolution.

01:14:36.460 | He's like, no, no, no, no, it's the subconscious.

01:14:39.560 | That's where our real wisdom resides.

01:14:42.060 | And the forebrain is just the implementation device.

01:14:45.360 | So it's, you know.

01:14:47.360 | - How we can convince ourselves that we're in charge, right?

01:14:50.880 | - Yeah, I mean, I can't think of a time

01:14:52.240 | that my gut told me A and it turned out to be B.

01:14:54.880 | More often than not though,

01:14:56.180 | I've suppressed my response to the gut.

01:14:58.160 | I override it thinking, I think I made the mistake

01:15:00.800 | that you guys train your negotiators to avoid,

01:15:04.120 | which is I thought, well, this is making me anxious

01:15:06.560 | and the anxiety must be like me,

01:15:09.240 | like this must be my fault

01:15:11.320 | or I'm not able to call myself in this situation,

01:15:14.140 | not sleeping well, et cetera.

01:15:17.360 | And therefore like this must represent some deficiency

01:15:21.080 | on my part.

01:15:21.920 | And then, and Lord knows, as your shirt points out,

01:15:25.700 | I'm a very flawed person.

01:15:27.580 | I have many flaws.

01:15:28.420 | I always say I have 3000 pet peeves

01:15:30.000 | and at least as many flaws to match those pet peeves.

01:15:32.520 | I wonder one at least relationship.

01:15:34.440 | But the point being that I think our bodies really do know.

01:15:39.360 | They know.

01:15:40.200 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:15:41.040 | - Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

01:15:42.400 | - So when you're doing negotiations

01:15:44.880 | and you're hearing somebody's voice on the phone,

01:15:47.600 | there are a lot of cues.

01:15:48.840 | When you're face-to-face, there are additional cues.

01:15:51.720 | There's their face.

01:15:52.760 | And then of course, if the negotiations are being done

01:15:54.900 | by text over a computer or a phone,

01:15:57.480 | it's a very diminished environment for information.

01:16:01.040 | So maybe we could talk about each of those

01:16:02.660 | because we live in those landscapes.

01:16:05.260 | If we're face-to-face and we're negotiating,

01:16:08.340 | you're listening, of course, to what I want,

01:16:12.900 | what I'm insisting on.

01:16:14.380 | You're working that process from your side.

01:16:16.960 | What are you paying attention to visually?

01:16:20.860 | - It's more are things in alignment.

01:16:25.000 | There's layman's data.

01:16:27.980 | You know, the words, the way it's said

01:16:29.620 | and look on people's face and how are they weighed

01:16:32.820 | and how they play out.

01:16:34.520 | There's a ratio out there that very unscientific,

01:16:36.860 | 738, 55, 7% words, 38%, delivery, 55% body language.

01:16:41.860 | People want to argue about it all the time,

01:16:44.180 | whether or not that's accurate.

01:16:45.840 | As a rule of thumb, we throw that out there,

01:16:48.700 | but I tell people the most important issue

01:16:51.140 | is do they line up?

01:16:52.460 | So I'm not going to look for like,

01:16:56.500 | when do you raise your eyebrow

01:16:58.580 | or when do you look up until the left?

01:17:00.420 | I'm really just going to try to get a gut feeling

01:17:03.180 | whether or not I think these things are lining up,

01:17:05.740 | whether they're in alignment or whether they're out of line.

01:17:09.080 | And then I'm going to be real careful about

01:17:11.540 | what meaning I assign to that.

01:17:14.360 | You know, affective cues,

01:17:17.760 | changes in your tone of voice,

01:17:20.720 | changes in your movement.

01:17:22.120 | That's one of the reasons why we don't teach

01:17:25.180 | reading people's body language

01:17:27.020 | because it's completely contextual to you and the moment.

01:17:32.540 | So if I convinced myself that a raise of the eyebrow

01:17:37.360 | means this, it's out of context.

01:17:41.560 | I was in a negotiation once where I threw out

01:17:43.700 | a figure to somebody and I some kind of look off to the side

01:17:46.140 | and look back and accepted my offer.

01:17:50.000 | And I made the mistake of not saying to them,

01:17:53.440 | the appropriate thing for me to say at the time

01:17:55.100 | would have been, seems like something just crossed your mind

01:17:59.260 | because the only completely true observation,

01:18:02.460 | if they look to the side and look back,

01:18:04.540 | something crossed their mind.

01:18:07.180 | Now I read it at the moment of saying

01:18:09.820 | that they had more money.

01:18:11.220 | And I found out after the fact that was wrong,

01:18:16.140 | they were stretched to the limit.

01:18:19.100 | The look of hesitation didn't mean

01:18:22.380 | that they were holding stuff, they were holding stuff back,

01:18:24.900 | but I read it wrong and I didn't bother to check

01:18:29.580 | on the affective cue that I saw.

01:18:32.280 | So what am I babbling about?

01:18:33.920 | What I'm babbling about is if we're in a negotiation

01:18:38.020 | and whether or not I'm listening to your tone of voice

01:18:39.960 | or watching your body language or your words,

01:18:42.240 | if I see you shift at all, I should pay attention

01:18:48.100 | that there was a shift in your affective behavior,

01:18:51.680 | but I need to find out what was behind it

01:18:54.200 | as opposed to making an assumption as to what it meant.

01:18:57.520 | So yeah, I'm gonna watch and I'm gonna get my gut feeling

01:19:00.980 | and I'm gonna say, sounds like there's some hesitation

01:19:05.360 | or it looks like something just crossed your mind.

01:19:08.520 | Or even if I can't attribute it to specific affective move,

01:19:13.060 | I might say, it feels like there's something in the way.

01:19:18.160 | That's me listening to my gut.

01:19:22.200 | I'll throw out an observation on whatever any of those

01:19:25.160 | might be just to go back over the ground a little bit

01:19:29.800 | and double check.

01:19:30.880 | 'Cause the other thing about negotiating in person

01:19:33.840 | is you're gonna give me more information physically

01:19:38.700 | than I can actually process.

01:19:40.560 | And if you say something that's thought provoking,

01:19:45.360 | I'll stop and think about it and while I'm stopping

01:19:47.880 | and thinking about what you just said,

01:19:49.160 | I'm missing all your cues.

01:19:51.920 | So all the skills that we teach, the labels, the mirrors,

01:19:56.200 | the opening of questions, which seem like we're going back

01:19:59.560 | and plowing the ground again.

01:20:01.520 | We are because I didn't pick up all the information

01:20:03.560 | the first time, there's just more there than I can get.

01:20:06.600 | And so I need to go back over it a couple of times with you

01:20:09.480 | just so I get it right without making you feel interrogated.

01:20:15.660 | You actually feel heard and you actually get to go back

01:20:20.120 | over it again, so it becomes what seems to be

01:20:23.760 | an inefficient process, but it's actually me

01:20:25.800 | just double checking my information.

01:20:27.560 | So if we're face to face, I'm gonna ask you to repeat,

01:20:31.700 | but I'm not gonna say, would you please repeat that?

01:20:34.120 | I'm gonna get you to repeat without asking you to repeat.

01:20:37.740 | - Is the same true in online or text communications?

01:20:41.640 | - The same thing is true, the problem with online and text

01:20:44.360 | is people try to bundle everything into one communication.

01:20:47.960 | The best analogy I can think of is if you were playing chess

01:20:52.480 | by text, would you put seven moves in your text?

01:20:57.000 | No, you'd only put one move in.

01:20:59.180 | So only try to get one point across in a text,

01:21:01.760 | don't explain, don't throw a whole bunch of stuff in,

01:21:04.180 | text or emails, they're all almost always too long.

01:21:08.760 | And it's going to come off as cold,

01:21:12.480 | so do what you can to soften, soften it.

01:21:17.660 | There's a documentary film that's been done on my company

01:21:20.060 | called Tactical Empathy, Nick Nanton won 22, 23 Emmys,

01:21:25.060 | the filmmaker DNF, DNA Films, it was finished last year,

01:21:30.180 | it's not out yet, for a variety of reasons

01:21:32.900 | we haven't put it out.

01:21:34.000 | So we screened the thing in Vegas last year,

01:21:38.720 | I see it, I love it.

01:21:39.760 | I'm not a good judge of a film about me,

01:21:42.440 | I'm gonna love it no matter what, it's about me.

01:21:45.340 | But I tell Nick that night, oh man, I love it,

01:21:47.320 | this is great.

01:21:48.700 | Two days later, I find out,

01:21:51.320 | I realize there's a huge problem.

01:21:53.500 | I've already told him it's okay.

01:21:56.480 | So I gotta get him, I'm gonna text him,

01:22:01.540 | and then I'm gonna call him, and we gotta fix it now,

01:22:03.620 | it's a Sunday.

01:22:05.300 | Text message, I sent him a two line text.

01:22:08.800 | It's now a bad time to talk.

01:22:12.020 | I got something you don't wanna hear.

01:22:16.980 | Two lines.

01:22:19.340 | Now, what were my other options?

01:22:20.840 | I coulda called him, Nick and I got a great relationship.

01:22:23.280 | I call him, if he's in a position to pick up the phone,

01:22:26.460 | doesn't matter what he's doing,

01:22:27.880 | he's gonna answer the phone.

01:22:29.280 | He was in the middle of a Zoom call.

01:22:32.100 | If I'da called, he'da picked up during the Zoom call,

01:22:35.480 | and both conversations woulda been bad.

01:22:38.120 | He immediately fires back to me,

01:22:40.400 | I'm in the middle of a Zoom call,

01:22:42.340 | I'll call you in a half an hour.

01:22:44.480 | He already knows he ain't gonna like what he's gonna hear.

01:22:47.440 | I'm prepping him for bad news.

01:22:50.780 | Get him on the phone, like look, I know what I said,

01:22:54.900 | we got a problem, we gotta get Derek on camera.

01:22:57.400 | Derek is a guy in my team, and I'm shocked

01:23:01.600 | that I haven't made him part of the documentary.

01:23:03.260 | This is gonna be incomplete without Derek.

01:23:04.960 | We gotta get Derek on film, we can't show this

01:23:07.100 | to anybody else 'til we get him on film

01:23:08.880 | and make him part of it.

01:23:10.400 | Immediately, he's in problem solving mode.

01:23:12.240 | He goes, okay, I gotta get a crew to Derek

01:23:14.800 | or get Derek to a crew, I need to know when we can do that,

01:23:18.240 | I need to, we got another showing of the film scheduled

01:23:21.840 | in LA less than a month away.

01:23:24.320 | He says, I gotta get Derek on camera, and we gotta edit it.

01:23:27.640 | It's gonna take three weeks of editing.

01:23:29.760 | I said, I'll get you access to Derek's camera.

01:23:31.560 | He goes, done, or Derek's calendar.

01:23:33.840 | He says, done, it's done.

01:23:35.880 | We go through this whole conversation

01:23:37.720 | in less than 10 minutes.

01:23:41.160 | Now think of the normal negotiation.

01:23:43.000 | Hey, Nick, how are you, what's going on today?

01:23:47.840 | Are you in a good mood?

01:23:48.960 | Hey, hey, hey, how the kid's doing?

01:23:50.760 | All this time-wasting conversation.

01:23:53.860 | If I'd have set him up with that normal,

01:23:56.360 | he would also, he could have legitimately said,

01:23:59.400 | are you out of your mind?

01:24:00.680 | We've been working on this for a year.

01:24:02.980 | You didn't bring this up in a year.

01:24:05.360 | Not only that, you already told me two days ago

01:24:07.640 | at the showing in Vegas that you loved it.

01:24:10.560 | And now, a year, year and a half into this project,

01:24:13.840 | you're bringing up all these new problems.

01:24:16.000 | That would have been the normal negotiation.

01:24:18.780 | But since we got a highly collaborative relationship,

01:24:21.920 | I two-line text, we're done in 10 minutes.

01:24:27.080 | Now, since Nick's a very generous guy,

01:24:28.760 | when he gets done, and he says, by the way,

01:24:31.160 | you understand how much this is gonna cost me.

01:24:32.760 | It's just three weeks of editing.

01:24:33.920 | This is three hours of shooting and three weeks of editing.

01:24:37.040 | I go, yeah.

01:24:37.880 | He goes, but I'm happy to do it.

01:24:40.200 | Calls me back the next day.

01:24:42.440 | He's got a favor to ask of me.

01:24:43.960 | You got it.

01:24:46.280 | It doesn't matter what it is.

01:24:48.500 | Because we'd gone through what would have been

01:24:50.960 | a very complicated negotiation that started on text.

01:24:54.660 | And I sent him a two-line text on a Sunday.

01:24:59.280 | And we got to solve that fast.

01:25:00.780 | - So if I understand correctly,

01:25:03.400 | by setting the context in a very direct and succinct way.

01:25:07.040 | - Right.

01:25:08.040 | - He goes into it in a problem-solving mode with you.

01:25:11.520 | Whereas if you do the tour of all the things

01:25:15.120 | that are going well in life.

01:25:16.480 | - Yeah, hey, how are you?

01:25:17.460 | - Yeah, the sort of the, we'll keep this PG.

01:25:21.280 | You know, the mud sandwich approach, you know?

01:25:25.620 | You know how they teach you that?

01:25:26.880 | When you get a laboratory, you know,

01:25:27.900 | most scientists have no skill running a business, right?

01:25:30.120 | You get a laboratory, all you've done is experiments.

01:25:32.020 | And then suddenly you're in charge of people

01:25:33.360 | managing budgets and all this stuff.

01:25:34.880 | I mean, most scientists, 99% of scientists

01:25:38.760 | are completely unqualified to do the job

01:25:40.440 | they do at the level of running a laboratory.

01:25:41.880 | When they start, you learn it on the job.

01:25:43.320 | And eventually you end up having to let somebody go.

01:25:46.180 | And so the typical thing they teach you

01:25:48.560 | in these online training things is,

01:25:50.800 | you tell somebody something nice,

01:25:52.480 | then you give them the bad news.

01:25:53.840 | And then you tell them something nice on exit, right?

01:25:56.560 | That's kind of the mud, so to speak, sandwich.

01:25:59.080 | - Right.

01:25:59.920 | - All right.

01:26:00.740 | This is not that.

01:26:03.920 | What you're talking about is saying,

01:26:05.400 | hey, this is the problem.

01:26:08.040 | You're not gonna like the problem.

01:26:10.000 | Or there is a problem, you're not gonna like it.

01:26:11.940 | So that they show up with the context of solving a problem.

01:26:14.880 | As opposed to giving them the tour

01:26:16.160 | of all the things that are going well.

01:26:17.200 | And then the problem is really in contrast to that.

01:26:20.480 | And then it's like, ugh.

01:26:22.520 | You know, so what I love about what you're describing is,

01:26:25.600 | it's just, it's direct, it's honest.

01:26:28.840 | You're not doing the tour of the garden

01:26:31.560 | before you take them down to the septic tank.

01:26:36.120 | - It's what I would call the difference

01:26:37.800 | between being blunt and being a straight shooter.

01:26:40.360 | A straight shooter tells you the truth.

01:26:43.880 | They just tell it in a way that lands softly.

01:26:47.480 | - Let's talk about breakups.

01:26:50.880 | Business breakups, romantic breakups.

01:26:52.640 | - Right.

01:26:53.780 | You breaking up with me?

01:26:55.240 | - No.

01:26:56.080 | [laughing]

01:26:56.920 | No.

01:26:58.160 | But thanks for the hypothesis test.

01:26:59.640 | - No, in fact, I'm enjoying this conversation so much.

01:27:03.120 | As I always do, I'm learning a ton from you.

01:27:05.760 | That if anything, I'd like to expand

01:27:07.960 | and deepen our relationship, Chris.

01:27:09.520 | [laughing]

01:27:11.820 | There, you got a lot of knowledge out of me.

01:27:13.960 | Platonic and professional, but expansive.

01:27:19.140 | What is the process of ending a relationship?

01:27:27.440 | And again, this could be a romantic relationship,

01:27:29.020 | could be business relationship,

01:27:30.640 | could be employer, employee,

01:27:33.720 | could be individuals, could be telling a whole group

01:27:38.720 | or an entire group telling an individual.

01:27:41.280 | The reason I raised this as a particular example

01:27:45.440 | is that I'm assuming that both sides

01:27:50.220 | don't want the same thing.

01:27:51.700 | One side wants to continue, the other side wants to end.

01:27:58.380 | I'll avoid the use of the word win-win

01:28:01.000 | or the words win-win, excuse me.

01:28:03.200 | And just ask, is there a way to have that conversation

01:28:08.520 | in any of the contexts I just mentioned

01:28:10.420 | in a, as you so beautifully described it,

01:28:14.240 | a straight shooter manner where it's direct,

01:28:16.260 | it's honest, but it lands soft.

01:28:18.160 | Because what we're talking about here

01:28:19.440 | is feelings of rejection.

01:28:21.480 | And nobody likes feeling rejected.

01:28:23.620 | I don't know anybody that likes being fired.

01:28:25.800 | Even from jobs they don't like,

01:28:28.480 | people's egos suffer.

01:28:30.680 | - Right.

01:28:31.520 | - So is there maybe a more specific way

01:28:35.380 | of asking the question is,

01:28:36.440 | is there a way to encourage the person getting the bad news

01:28:41.100 | to get their ego out of the way

01:28:43.020 | and see that if both parties don't want it,

01:28:46.600 | it's best for everybody involved?

01:28:49.080 | - I almost want to say no.

01:28:50.940 | But first, what are the caveats?

01:28:53.040 | Most of the time when people are struggling with this,

01:28:54.960 | they're not trying to save the other side,

01:28:56.200 | they're trying to save themselves.

01:28:58.440 | So who are you really trying to save?

01:29:01.080 | By postponing it, softening it,

01:29:03.280 | trying to act like it's something that it's not.

01:29:08.280 | I don't know that anybody has ever been fired

01:29:13.080 | that didn't have a sense that it was coming.

01:29:15.320 | The person that was getting ready to fire them

01:29:17.080 | opens up by saying, "How are you?"

01:29:18.760 | They know how the other person is.

01:29:24.640 | And the person getting ready to get fired

01:29:27.440 | has got some gut instinct that things are going wrong.

01:29:29.840 | Like you said, the gut's very powerful.

01:29:31.760 | So you gotta lower the boom as quickly as you can,

01:29:37.120 | but also as gently as you can.

01:29:38.820 | I was involved in a nonprofit a number of years ago

01:29:43.760 | affiliated with a church,

01:29:45.160 | and we're struggling with whether or not

01:29:47.360 | to let the executive director go.

01:29:48.760 | I go to the minister of the church,

01:29:50.440 | Norman Vincent Peale's protege,

01:29:52.320 | a guy named Arthur Caliandro,

01:29:53.680 | one of the best human beings I've ever met in my life.

01:29:56.360 | Phenomenal guy.

01:29:57.280 | And I'm struggling with,

01:29:59.840 | I thought firing, letting this woman go was gonna be bad,

01:30:02.560 | and I thought Arthur was gonna counsel me a way out.

01:30:05.420 | And he looked at me and he said,

01:30:07.580 | "You know, there's no gentle way

01:30:09.360 | "to cut somebody's head off."

01:30:10.920 | And I thought, yeah, the humane thing here is

01:30:15.560 | how do you, to bring it to conclusion

01:30:19.880 | as quickly as possible,

01:30:21.080 | 'cause there's no humane way to cut somebody's head off.

01:30:23.600 | There's no humane way to terminate the relationship.

01:30:28.480 | Now, what are the caveats?

01:30:29.860 | Maybe there are.

01:30:31.000 | First caveat, if you're gonna fire somebody,

01:30:32.640 | never fire somebody on a Friday.

01:30:34.000 | Fire 'em on a Monday.

01:30:35.940 | Fire 'em on a Monday,

01:30:37.160 | they got a work week to work their way out of it.

01:30:39.160 | You fire 'em on a Friday,

01:30:40.640 | they got a weekend to be miserable and to feel horrible,

01:30:43.280 | and they can't do anything about it.

01:30:45.420 | Caught off guard or not on a Monday,

01:30:48.040 | they can pick themselves up,

01:30:49.240 | they can start looking for a new job,

01:30:50.800 | no matter who you are.

01:30:52.520 | Fire 'em on a Friday, they can't start looking

01:30:54.000 | for a new job on a Saturday.

01:30:55.240 | It's two days of misery.

01:30:56.400 | So yeah, if you're gonna fire somebody,

01:30:58.000 | fire 'em on a Monday, not on a Friday.

01:31:00.640 | If you got bad news to give somebody,

01:31:02.980 | warn 'em it's coming.

01:31:04.920 | The people are ridiculously resilient to pain if warned,

01:31:09.920 | and then that you lower the boom.

01:31:15.640 | You're not gonna like what I have to say.

01:31:17.000 | It's gonna be heartbreaking.

01:31:18.580 | You're gonna hate me.

01:31:20.360 | Hesitate no more than three seconds.

01:31:23.760 | They got their guard up, let 'em have the bad news.

01:31:27.440 | That's the humane way to cut somebody's head off.

01:31:31.860 | Don't linger, don't make 'em think that,

01:31:35.440 | how are the kids, how are ya, I care about you,

01:31:38.080 | you're a great human being.

01:31:39.860 | None of this stuff at the beginning.

01:31:41.960 | Warn 'em bad news is coming and hit 'em with the bad news.

01:31:45.580 | Rip the Band-Aid off.

01:31:47.420 | The pain is not if you try to rip the Band-Aid off slowly.

01:31:51.240 | That's excruciating, you're trying to save yourself.

01:31:54.160 | So if you gotta terminate a relationship

01:31:56.100 | regardless of what it is, the quicker you do it,

01:32:00.900 | the less painless it is, the sooner people can move on.

01:32:04.800 | Stop trying to save yourself.

01:32:06.900 | Realize how human beings handle pain.

01:32:09.120 | If anything, human beings are incredibly resilient

01:32:13.300 | if given the opportunity to brace themselves first.

01:32:16.740 | - I agree.

01:32:18.060 | Thank you for that.

01:32:19.000 | There's a concept that a lot of people haven't heard of,

01:32:22.620 | and I'm confident in saying that

01:32:24.060 | because I hadn't heard of it until recently,

01:32:25.980 | despite spending a lot of time in the literature

01:32:27.980 | around dopamine and motivation.

01:32:30.300 | And it's a term from psychology

01:32:32.520 | that is being used a little bit more now,

01:32:35.320 | and it's ego depletion.

01:32:38.720 | Yeah, it's an interesting concept,

01:32:40.160 | and I've been wanting to run this by you for a while,

01:32:42.020 | but I saved it for our discussion today.

01:32:43.940 | It turns out ego depletion is a lot like decision fatigue.

01:32:46.900 | We all heard the Steve Jobs thing.

01:32:50.900 | He wore a black turtleneck every day

01:32:52.440 | because he didn't have to make that decision,

01:32:54.940 | so he had more energy to make other decisions.

01:32:57.100 | I've been accused of doing the same

01:32:58.260 | because of my black long sleeve shirts,

01:32:59.660 | but there's a whole other reason for that

01:33:01.700 | that some people might know.

01:33:03.000 | But anyway, it's unimportant in the moment.

01:33:05.420 | But ego depletion is a little bit different

01:33:08.640 | than decision fatigue or decision budget.

01:33:12.340 | The idea with ego depletion is pretty simple.

01:33:15.460 | It's that the molecule dopamine

01:33:17.580 | does many things in the brain,

01:33:19.180 | but one of the things that it absolutely does

01:33:22.020 | is it holds us to goal-directed behavior

01:33:25.440 | that's associated with our sense of self,

01:33:27.540 | like I want to accomplish this.

01:33:29.700 | I want to get to that.

01:33:30.860 | And the whole notion of ego depletion involves the idea,

01:33:35.260 | and this has been a data-substantiated observation,

01:33:37.820 | that when people have to fight to be right

01:33:41.220 | or to defend their position for a period of time,

01:33:45.500 | eventually that depletes.

01:33:47.180 | And it seems to be, at least in part, dopamine-mediated

01:33:51.140 | because defending one's position takes work.

01:33:55.240 | Earlier, you talked about running somebody down,

01:33:57.540 | wearing them out.

01:34:00.380 | And I wonder, as I just throw this concept out to you,

01:34:04.620 | cold here, whether or not that calls to mind

01:34:07.700 | any examples from your work

01:34:10.320 | where you felt like, okay, this person could really hold,

01:34:14.300 | but if I just kept pressing, eventually they'd tilt.

01:34:18.000 | And it's different than the kind of fatigue

01:34:21.200 | that comes from a conversation

01:34:22.620 | that starts at three in the afternoon

01:34:23.860 | and ends at 2.30 in the morning.

01:34:25.060 | We've all been there.

01:34:26.220 | I've been in those conversations.

01:34:27.340 | Usually, they're not very pleasant.

01:34:28.580 | And at three in the morning, everyone's peeling apart.

01:34:31.560 | I've learned over the years,

01:34:33.000 | you clip it at 9.30 and you try and shift, right?

01:34:38.040 | One of the worst pieces of advice I've ever heard

01:34:40.740 | is you'd never go to sleep angry.

01:34:42.440 | It's like, no, actually get sleep, wake up,

01:34:46.300 | and then revisit the problem if the situation allows.

01:34:48.820 | That's my belief anyway. - I would agree, yeah.

01:34:52.060 | - Trying to stay up all night, trying to work something out.

01:34:53.840 | It's just counterbiology.

01:34:55.660 | So ego depletion.

01:34:57.120 | I have a feeling a lot of what you did in your profession

01:35:00.740 | was running down their dopamine

01:35:04.560 | to the point where then they are operating

01:35:07.260 | from a different place,

01:35:08.260 | where they're not defending the ego.

01:35:10.360 | They're actually thinking more practically

01:35:12.700 | about the whole situation.

01:35:14.060 | Does this have any kind of texture or meaning to you?

01:35:16.800 | - Yeah, no, I would agree.

01:35:18.240 | And I would draw the distinction.

01:35:20.240 | First of all, in hostage negotiation,

01:35:23.300 | there's two kinds of hostage takings if there's a demand.

01:35:27.580 | And there's gonna be contained and uncontained,

01:35:31.440 | which is just literal definition.

01:35:33.340 | Contained is bad guys in a bank,

01:35:35.100 | like at the Chase Bank in Brooklyn way back when.

01:35:38.420 | You got 'em surrounded, they can't get away.

01:35:40.620 | And uncontained is a kidnapping.

01:35:43.020 | You don't know where they are.

01:35:44.420 | Uncontained, unknown location.

01:35:46.040 | We're gonna try to get our way in a contained situation,

01:35:50.360 | probably by ego depletion, wearing 'em out,

01:35:54.380 | getting to the point where they're just gonna get in

01:35:58.300 | 'cause they're tired.

01:35:59.680 | 'Cause they're gonna come out

01:36:02.060 | and we're gonna put handcuffs on 'em.

01:36:03.700 | Which means that if the ego gets recharged,

01:36:08.700 | they're gonna go back and they're gonna think back

01:36:13.260 | over the deal.

01:36:14.120 | So wearing somebody out in a business negotiation,

01:36:17.480 | it's basically uncontained

01:36:18.820 | because even if you come to an agreement,

01:36:20.460 | there's a whole implementation phase.

01:36:22.860 | Did you get the agreement 'cause you warm up?

01:36:26.740 | 'Cause they get tired.

01:36:28.460 | 'Cause they just gave in.

01:36:29.760 | At some point in time, they're gonna get recharged

01:36:32.020 | and they're gonna get recharged

01:36:33.540 | while you're in implementation.

01:36:35.700 | So they're either not gonna follow the terms of the deal

01:36:38.780 | or at the slightest opportunity, they're gonna deviate.

01:36:42.360 | And so yeah, I think ego depletion is a real thing

01:36:48.440 | and it's a bad way to get a business deal

01:36:51.820 | that's gonna stick.

01:36:53.240 | - 'Cause they rest and then they come back

01:36:57.100 | a different person.

01:36:57.980 | - Yeah, they're gonna be recharged.

01:36:59.860 | Their ego's gonna be recharged.

01:37:03.140 | And if you got the agreement

01:37:05.140 | based on a depletion of their ego,

01:37:06.860 | that battery's gonna get charged back up again,

01:37:09.720 | whether it's a business deal,

01:37:10.700 | whether it's a personal negotiation.

01:37:13.300 | You have a disagreement with your significant other

01:37:15.700 | and you follow that bad advice, don't go to bed angry.

01:37:19.280 | And so you stay up till three in the morning

01:37:21.900 | and you think you come to a resolution.

01:37:23.500 | Everybody gets a good night's sleep

01:37:24.580 | and the next day they feel completely differently

01:37:26.300 | about what they said the night before.

01:37:28.180 | - Yeah, I might've heard of that happening once or twice.

01:37:31.260 | - Saw it in a movie, right?

01:37:32.100 | - Yeah, saw it in a movie.

01:37:33.300 | A friend explained that situation to me.

01:37:35.300 | Earlier you mentioned approaching a conversation

01:37:39.780 | in a playful way.

01:37:40.900 | - Right.

01:37:41.740 | - Like, all right, this might even be life or death,

01:37:43.980 | but let's play this like a game

01:37:45.720 | because you can see more opportunities.

01:37:48.080 | Now we know that when we are relaxed,

01:37:50.160 | we see the big picture.

01:37:51.220 | When we're tense, everything narrows.

01:37:53.700 | - Tunnel vision.

01:37:54.540 | - Tunnel vision, tunnel thinking, tunnel everything.

01:37:56.880 | We lose access to the full toolkit.

01:38:00.220 | So you obviously take really good care of yourself.

01:38:04.460 | You're fit, you're in shape.

01:38:05.940 | You always seem calm.

01:38:07.020 | I'm sure you have your moments like anybody else,

01:38:08.980 | but what are some of the things

01:38:13.260 | that good negotiators do all the time

01:38:17.420 | so that when the bell goes off and they have to respond,

01:38:20.860 | they are ready?

01:38:22.940 | And the reason I ask this is because, you know,

01:38:25.540 | we've been talking about negotiations in kind of a vacuum,

01:38:29.220 | like it's happening and then how does one handle it?

01:38:31.820 | But like any athlete, like any teacher,

01:38:34.500 | like any parent, like any kid,

01:38:36.340 | everybody has to be ready for real life circumstances

01:38:41.040 | and we don't always get the warning.

01:38:43.300 | We don't get the memo that it's happening in two weeks.

01:38:46.220 | And sometimes the conversations around courtroom drama

01:38:50.020 | or the big day, you know, it implies that we get the warning

01:38:53.420 | but more often than not, it's a phone call or a text

01:38:55.740 | and it comes in and boom, it just hits us.

01:38:58.000 | And suddenly we are in negotiations

01:39:00.680 | and we didn't get time to prepare.

01:39:02.580 | So maybe we could talk about readiness

01:39:05.240 | and then we could talk about, again,

01:39:07.120 | like maybe this sounds trivial to you,

01:39:09.480 | but for me, I'd be very curious to know whether or not

01:39:11.920 | you have any practices of stilling yourself,

01:39:14.640 | what those look like, what you've seen other people use

01:39:18.680 | to be able to get themselves into the moment

01:39:21.340 | of being able to show up their best self.

01:39:23.900 | - Yeah, well, readiness.

01:39:26.140 | Small stakes practice for high stakes results.

01:39:28.620 | Like I will occasionally find myself

01:39:31.140 | in the middle of a negotiation that I didn't expect.

01:39:34.200 | Like if I've been throwing out stuff on a regular basis

01:39:37.080 | on my way during the day, verbal observations,

01:39:41.080 | what we refer to as labels, 'cause the label seems like

01:39:44.580 | something just crossed your mind.

01:39:47.060 | Is a label in the middle of a negotiation

01:39:48.840 | when I see you hesitate or look to the side?

01:39:51.380 | How do I get ready for that?

01:39:54.380 | - You know, I'm on my way over here to this interview.

01:39:57.800 | I'm both talking to my Lyft driver the whole way,

01:40:00.540 | getting them to talk.

01:40:02.040 | Also being careful about not tapping the gas tank out

01:40:06.780 | completely so that I'm fatigued when I get here.

01:40:09.180 | Like I talk up to Lyft drivers on a regular basis.

01:40:13.140 | The interactions, TSA guys in the airport,

01:40:18.820 | I'll throw a label at them.

01:40:20.360 | Seems like a tough day.

01:40:21.360 | Tough day?

01:40:22.800 | Seems like you're in a good mood.

01:40:24.500 | And whether right or wrong, I'm getting in,

01:40:27.660 | I'm trying to stay loose.

01:40:29.000 | I'm trying to keep the mental muscles limber.

01:40:33.560 | And it just becomes a bit of a habit on a regular basis.

01:40:37.760 | Occasionally, I'll throw something out.

01:40:39.860 | Now I'm talking about Lyft drivers.

01:40:41.600 | Like if I'm in a bad mood, I get into a Lyft

01:40:45.680 | a couple of weeks ago on my way home.

01:40:48.380 | Lyft driver is not helpful.

01:40:50.720 | I mean, I'm coming out of the airport,

01:40:52.040 | I'm struggling with my bags, not lifting a finger.

01:40:54.180 | It doesn't open up the rear.

01:40:55.880 | I gotta open up the rear of the vehicle myself.

01:40:57.680 | I gotta load the bags, everything.

01:40:58.920 | I get in and he's just seething unhappiness.

01:41:03.140 | Now I know that if I say,

01:41:05.600 | what do you love about what you do for a living?

01:41:08.260 | I immediately trigger what Tony Robbins

01:41:10.600 | would call a state change.

01:41:12.680 | And I'm annoyed at this guy.

01:41:14.960 | And our pheromones are combative.

01:41:21.180 | But I'm thinking like, I just don't need this.

01:41:23.600 | And so I go, what do you love about driving for Lyft?

01:41:26.220 | This guy proceeds to unload on me

01:41:29.000 | on all his personal struggles

01:41:31.560 | that I feel like a complete jerk for being angry with him

01:41:34.920 | at everything that he's going through.

01:41:36.760 | And I'm just trying to get myself out of a bad mood

01:41:40.380 | and to keep from sending him a really negative vibe

01:41:42.640 | the whole way so that he doesn't drive 45 miles an hour

01:41:46.000 | in a 65 mile an hour lane and make it,

01:41:48.600 | you know, inflict me with a longer and more expensive ride

01:41:50.980 | because I'm so annoying as a customer.

01:41:52.900 | But I've got a habit of small stakes practice

01:41:57.820 | for high stakes results.

01:41:58.920 | And who do I get a practice on?

01:42:00.200 | The Lyft drivers on a regular basis.

01:42:01.840 | The guy behind the counter at the hotel, the TSA guy.

01:42:06.240 | I'm going through TSA, the grocery store clerk,

01:42:08.560 | the Starbucks person.

01:42:10.380 | The only way I'm at my best in my negotiations

01:42:12.780 | is just trying to keep my negotiation muscles limber

01:42:16.520 | by interacting with people throughout the course of my day.

01:42:20.520 | And then ideally, you know,

01:42:23.120 | leaving them better than I found them.

01:42:24.860 | You know, trying not to leave negative karma in my wake,

01:42:27.920 | trying to leave as much positive karma

01:42:29.460 | in my wake as possible.

01:42:30.680 | - I love that.

01:42:32.860 | And I'm very familiar with the feeling of needing

01:42:34.920 | to conserve my voice for podcasting or energy for things.

01:42:37.840 | And yet I'm somebody who's I think genuinely curious

01:42:41.660 | about what people's experiences are.

01:42:43.620 | So I like the question, you know, how's your day going?

01:42:48.380 | It's pretty open-ended.

01:42:50.220 | It's I suppose, if somebody was really upset,

01:42:52.900 | that would be perhaps the worst question

01:42:54.640 | I could possibly ask from what you just described, but.

01:42:59.020 | - Well, I'll put a fine point on it too,

01:43:00.560 | because like I've manipulated them with,

01:43:02.840 | what do you love about?

01:43:03.940 | Because there's, you watch them change in the moment

01:43:09.940 | to immediately to shift into this concept of love,

01:43:13.140 | which is more than like,

01:43:14.980 | what do you like about driving for Lyft?

01:43:16.780 | What do you love about driving for Lyft?

01:43:18.220 | I can trigger a state change in you instantaneously,

01:43:22.580 | no matter what kind of mood you're in.

01:43:23.660 | 'Cause this guy was in a very bad mood.

01:43:26.300 | Plus additionally, the download from that

01:43:29.060 | typically is so quick.

01:43:31.260 | I'm going to get a real clear picture

01:43:32.820 | on who you are really, really fast.

01:43:35.540 | I'm talking to a CEO of a company a couple of months ago.

01:43:39.260 | They're, you know, for lack of a better term,

01:43:42.220 | they're delivering clean water to the world.

01:43:44.520 | And I'm like, that's a cool mission.

01:43:46.360 | Like I dig this.

01:43:47.900 | As an entrepreneur,

01:43:49.860 | an entrepreneur wanting to make a dent in the universe,

01:43:53.040 | I dig that.

01:43:53.980 | Like I'm trying to make a difference in the world.

01:43:56.580 | So I say to him,

01:43:57.760 | what do you love about what you do for a living?

01:44:00.460 | He immediately fires back at me.

01:44:01.780 | I love leading teams.

01:44:03.260 | I love leading teams.

01:44:05.540 | And I love giving shareholders

01:44:07.060 | a great return on their investment.

01:44:08.780 | It's really important for me

01:44:09.820 | to give shareholders a great return.

01:44:11.860 | And then, yeah, you know, we deliver water.

01:44:13.740 | And then he said a fourth thing.

01:44:15.420 | And I thought, this guy could be doing toilet paper.

01:44:18.180 | He doesn't care about the mission of the company at all.

01:44:22.160 | He's a great CEO,

01:44:24.140 | probably because you want a CEO to lead teams.

01:44:27.840 | You want a CEO to deliver, a corporate CEO,

01:44:30.700 | to deliver a return on investment for shareholders.

01:44:33.860 | But that's why he's a great corporate CEO

01:44:38.420 | and not a great entrepreneurial CEO.

01:44:40.980 | So by him giving me that download real quick,

01:44:43.140 | that was blatantly honest.

01:44:46.100 | Like, do I think this is a great guy?

01:44:47.860 | Yeah.

01:44:48.700 | Do our core values line up?

01:44:51.100 | My mission is more important to me than his mission is,

01:44:53.780 | or his mission is making money.

01:44:57.160 | Now I like making money, but it's not number one.

01:44:59.740 | It's a strong number two.

01:45:01.260 | But that question, instead of how are you today,

01:45:05.960 | to what do you love about,

01:45:08.180 | you immediately put them in a better place.

01:45:11.360 | Plus you get some ridiculously candid answers

01:45:14.260 | that tells you who they are real fast.

01:45:16.160 | - What is the best way to approach our response

01:45:21.020 | to somebody who's asking to be heard?

01:45:23.960 | Perhaps they've got complaints.

01:45:27.240 | Maybe about us, maybe about somebody else.

01:45:30.080 | You know, people who are venting.

01:45:31.420 | - Right.

01:45:32.260 | - People seem to vary on the propensity to vent spectrum.

01:45:36.580 | Some people are just, you know, they vent all the time.

01:45:39.200 | This happened, that happened,

01:45:40.460 | and you know, and they want to complain.

01:45:42.540 | You know, the way it's sometimes described

01:45:45.280 | is they love to take other people's inventories.

01:45:47.700 | They love to take inventories of everybody else's mistakes.

01:45:50.000 | They did this, they did that.

01:45:51.500 | - Right.

01:45:52.740 | - You know, it's a lot easier often

01:45:55.320 | than taking our own inventories

01:45:57.200 | of what we could be focused on and do better.

01:45:59.580 | That's a universal truth in my mind.

01:46:01.460 | But you know, people approach other people that they trust

01:46:04.680 | and they want to vent.

01:46:07.460 | Presumably to get over whatever it is that is bothering them,

01:46:11.680 | but all too often it seems to just amplify

01:46:13.720 | the feelings of frustration.

01:46:15.120 | What do you do when somebody you care about

01:46:20.340 | and that cares about you comes to you to vent?

01:46:23.300 | Is it just you let them vent?

01:46:26.580 | Or do you try and let them negotiate with themselves

01:46:30.740 | a little bit in a way that could help them more

01:46:33.060 | than if you were to just let them vent?

01:46:36.980 | - I'm really leery of letting people vent

01:46:38.860 | because a lot of times it seems to be a spiral

01:46:43.380 | that just spirals out of control.

01:46:45.020 | So why is somebody venting?

01:46:49.140 | They don't feel hurt.

01:46:49.980 | They feel ignored.

01:46:51.180 | They feel like they've been wasting their time talking.

01:46:53.020 | They're frustrated.

01:46:54.780 | That's the feedback.

01:46:55.740 | I'm gonna give you feedback on what I'm guessing

01:46:58.900 | is causing you to vent.

01:47:01.020 | And just an observation.

01:47:02.780 | It sounds like this is driving you crazy

01:47:05.460 | 'cause nobody listens to you.

01:47:07.340 | Sounds like you've been struggling with this

01:47:08.600 | for a long time.

01:47:10.340 | Sounds like this is very frustrating for you.

01:47:12.640 | What's the emotion?

01:47:16.180 | The particular negative emotion.

01:47:18.080 | Frustration is about somebody being denied a goal

01:47:20.500 | in the future.

01:47:21.340 | Anger is about somebody's upset about something happening

01:47:24.660 | in the past.

01:47:26.220 | The type of negative emotion begins to focus you in on

01:47:29.460 | where they, is it forward thinking

01:47:32.500 | or is it backward thinking?

01:47:35.020 | And frustration and anger can be two very different versions

01:47:38.860 | of the same negative emotion,

01:47:40.320 | but they're focused on different points in time.

01:47:43.340 | So I'm gonna try to intuitively,

01:47:45.340 | if I don't know from what you've told me,

01:47:48.260 | I'm gonna start taking educated guesses

01:47:50.920 | on making an observation on what it is that's driving you.

01:47:54.780 | If you need to vent, you've been talking

01:47:59.000 | and people have been ignoring you.

01:48:00.700 | Or you've been taking actions

01:48:03.100 | and people have been ignoring you.

01:48:04.900 | You need to vent because your communication

01:48:06.780 | or your actions have been ignored.

01:48:08.620 | There are some clues here and the sooner that I get

01:48:10.900 | at the heart of what's bothering you,

01:48:12.940 | the sooner you're gonna be able to let it off.

01:48:14.900 | So I'm gonna encourage letting the steam off

01:48:18.900 | without trying to correct you, without giving you advice,

01:48:23.360 | without frustrating you by not listening to you,

01:48:27.860 | by trying to recognize verbally

01:48:29.900 | what some of the motivators are,

01:48:31.220 | which will deactivate the anger much more quickly.

01:48:34.180 | It's a whole basis for a crisis hotline to begin with.

01:48:37.180 | People are venting.

01:48:38.940 | And so how do you most effectively vent to somebody

01:48:41.060 | so that instead of going on a rant for an hour,

01:48:44.080 | and the rant introduced toxins into their system

01:48:47.800 | where they're poisoning themselves,

01:48:49.220 | I think negative emotions put toxins in our system.

01:48:53.020 | How do I deactivate that as quickly

01:48:56.480 | so that you're not hurting yourself as much?

01:48:58.180 | And you feel heard, you feel relieved, you feel listened to.

01:49:02.780 | And if it involves me, if it's a close friend

01:49:05.620 | who's venting to you,

01:49:07.060 | you're involved in a situation to some degree.

01:49:10.220 | And I might even say,

01:49:11.540 | "Boy, it feels like you're probably frustrated

01:49:14.040 | 'cause I haven't listened to you up to now."

01:49:16.220 | And I'm gonna start taking some emotionally educated guesses

01:49:20.300 | on what I think is driving you.

01:49:21.820 | And I'm gonna put it in the form of a label,

01:49:24.020 | which is just an observation,

01:49:25.540 | seems like, sounds like, looks like.

01:49:28.180 | Then if I get it wrong and you go, "Well, that's not it

01:49:30.940 | at all," I can say, "Well, that's just the way it seems.

01:49:34.460 | It just seems that way."

01:49:37.100 | It puts you in a position to just let somebody know

01:49:39.800 | you see them and you're doing your best to understand.

01:49:42.780 | I'm not a fan of venting.

01:49:45.740 | If I go on a rant personally, I always feel worse.

01:49:50.740 | So I wanna deactivate that negativity

01:49:54.100 | so I can get my feedback under me emotionally.

01:49:58.980 | - Very useful knowledge you just shared with us.

01:50:02.080 | Do you meditate?

01:50:03.980 | - Tiny little bits.

01:50:07.760 | I mean, I'm trying to make my day more effective.

01:50:10.260 | I have a gratitude exercise

01:50:12.020 | that I do almost every morning.

01:50:16.640 | Other ways to make myself effective.

01:50:20.820 | Actually, I'm looking at the non-sleep deep rest practice

01:50:25.180 | or the, because I like to make use of my time.

01:50:29.220 | I'm spiritual, so I'm talking to the Almighty

01:50:34.500 | on a regular basis.

01:50:35.340 | - You pray. - I do, yeah.

01:50:37.060 | - The morning and night, when you need to, both.

01:50:40.600 | - Yeah, both.

01:50:41.440 | I mean, I think whether or not you believe in one God

01:50:45.060 | or the universe or whatever it is,

01:50:46.940 | I think spirituality is an important component of health.

01:50:50.460 | Whatever your spirituality is and you should recognize it

01:50:53.060 | and you should, you'll be better off

01:50:56.900 | if you engage in some sort of a spiritual practice.

01:50:59.100 | Doesn't have to be any of the three major religions,

01:51:03.180 | but spirituality is a component of who we are.

01:51:05.260 | So yeah, I practice it on a regular basis.

01:51:07.420 | - So sense of higher power or to better define higher power,

01:51:11.740 | it could be, as you said,

01:51:13.460 | aligned with conventional religion

01:51:14.780 | or just aligned with the idea

01:51:16.700 | that there are things outside of us

01:51:18.700 | that are important to pay attention to

01:51:20.620 | that we can all do better by being in recognition of

01:51:25.620 | or service to or both.

01:51:28.020 | Something like that?

01:51:28.860 | - Yeah, pretty much like that.

01:51:29.920 | And then leaving it as open and as possible

01:51:34.660 | 'cause I think there's a spiritual nature to us, period.

01:51:37.900 | - I agree.

01:51:39.820 | What about your physical training?

01:51:43.000 | I must say, you're in excellent shape.

01:51:47.180 | I imagine that went along with the FBI thing.

01:51:49.200 | I mean, I saw "Silence of the Lambs" at the beginning.

01:51:51.020 | She's running around with other agents, yeah.

01:51:53.980 | Shooting targets and running and lifting

01:51:57.520 | and doing their sit-ups in there.

01:51:59.240 | That was a, I think it was a 1980s film.

01:52:01.300 | So it was a little bit dated now.

01:52:02.620 | Probably now they're doing other stuff as well,

01:52:04.940 | but nothing works like the basics.

01:52:08.400 | So was the FBI the first time you got serious about fitness

01:52:13.140 | or prior to that, were you an athlete and into fitness

01:52:15.980 | and what are you doing nowadays

01:52:17.440 | to maintain your frankly impressive shape?

01:52:19.940 | - Well, thank you for the compliments.

01:52:23.540 | Sports, athletics, fitness was always a part of my life.

01:52:29.260 | I was into sports, but not particularly good at them.

01:52:32.300 | Football, basketball.

01:52:34.860 | I'm a last century guy.

01:52:38.660 | So long before the conditioning has evolved as it is now

01:52:43.660 | with interval training and the rest of this stuff,

01:52:46.140 | which is phenomenal.

01:52:47.840 | You know, weightlifting was introduced in my high school

01:52:50.280 | my senior year, you know, I lifted weights some,

01:52:53.320 | continued through college,

01:52:54.800 | little bit of time in a martial arts,

01:52:57.660 | ripped my knee apart in college in the martial arts.

01:53:00.880 | But yeah, fitness has always been a part of my life

01:53:04.340 | as much for liking to be in condition

01:53:07.140 | and, you know, the spiritual regeneration of it,

01:53:10.820 | whether I knew what it was or not.

01:53:13.500 | These days, you know, I'm looking for every hack there is.

01:53:16.140 | I know you don't like the term hack.

01:53:18.400 | We like mechanisms.

01:53:19.340 | Scientists like mechanisms.

01:53:21.060 | - Yeah, hack sort of implies that we're using one thing

01:53:23.200 | to accomplish something different.

01:53:24.400 | I like mechanisms, but at the end of the day,

01:53:26.960 | if people want to call something a hack

01:53:28.660 | because it gets them the result they want

01:53:30.500 | or it's more appealing to apply the tool,

01:53:33.340 | that's what matters to me.

01:53:34.180 | You know, tools sitting in a box don't do anything.

01:53:36.560 | So if people are using them, then I'm good with the term.

01:53:38.700 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:53:39.540 | So what these days, cold plunge, sauna,

01:53:42.020 | principally, I'm struggling with issues

01:53:43.820 | with a couple of joints that I know science

01:53:46.660 | will eventually help me regenerate.

01:53:48.220 | So in the meantime, good diet, you know, the basic pillars.

01:53:51.740 | Diet, not a perfect diet, but by and large,

01:53:56.740 | overall, my diet's pretty good.

01:54:00.100 | And then, you know, the little things.

01:54:06.340 | Spiritual keeps me in shape physically.

01:54:10.140 | Hitting a cold plunge is challenging

01:54:14.100 | psychologically and physically.

01:54:15.580 | And the sauna too. - It's a state shifter.

01:54:17.300 | That's for sure.

01:54:18.740 | You don't need science to know that 30 seconds or a minute

01:54:21.820 | in that cold water is going to change your chemistry

01:54:25.380 | for a long while afterwards.

01:54:26.620 | And for the better, I believe.

01:54:28.320 | Once you get out.

01:54:29.380 | People forget this, they're like, I hate the cold.

01:54:31.380 | The point is not how you feel while you're in it.

01:54:33.460 | You can feel proud of how you navigate that portion,

01:54:35.980 | but the point is how you feel afterwards.

01:54:38.580 | - Well, that's the old saying, why do you hit yourself

01:54:40.640 | in the hand with a hammer?

01:54:42.060 | 'Cause it feels so good when you stop.

01:54:43.820 | [laughing]

01:54:44.980 | - I like that, I like that.

01:54:47.580 | Spoken like somebody who worked in New York City

01:54:49.100 | for a long time.

01:54:50.840 | Out here, we'd probably say something different.

01:54:52.620 | You know, it's like crystals in lava lamps or something.

01:54:54.860 | Although there aren't many lava lamps anymore.

01:54:56.380 | I think that the idea that California is all hippy dippy,

01:54:58.660 | that's not true anymore.

01:54:59.740 | I think it's been overrun by other, a different ethos.

01:55:03.900 | In any event, thanks for sharing that

01:55:06.060 | because I think that we can't separate the physical

01:55:08.920 | from the psychological, right?

01:55:10.300 | I mean, we've been talking about the mental

01:55:13.980 | and fatigue status of the people you're negotiating with

01:55:17.940 | oftentimes during this conversation.

01:55:19.900 | But then of course, there's how you show up to the job.

01:55:22.220 | I mean, if you're run down three days

01:55:23.820 | and you've been in a fight with your spouse

01:55:25.300 | and that's still in the back of your mind

01:55:26.700 | and you're hungry, tired, sick,

01:55:30.380 | not connected to your higher power,

01:55:34.260 | all those things that there's no way you can be as effective

01:55:36.980 | at any job.

01:55:38.300 | So it's great to hear and not surprising to hear

01:55:41.100 | that you have bedrock practices that you implement.

01:55:45.060 | Especially.

01:55:46.880 | - Yeah, it's an interesting point.

01:55:47.720 | Almost everybody I knew that was really good

01:55:49.380 | at anything they did for a living,

01:55:50.660 | they probably took pretty good care of themselves.

01:55:53.820 | - Yeah, I agree.

01:55:54.640 | You know, there's this, the language around self-care

01:55:58.700 | I think gets really distorted.

01:56:00.300 | I'm going to editorialize for a second here.

01:56:01.800 | I think it, but I'm going to editorialize in line

01:56:04.200 | with what you just said.

01:56:05.520 | You know, I think self-care sounds like navel gazing

01:56:09.780 | where people think that it's all about self,

01:56:12.540 | but it's actually taking care of oneself

01:56:15.920 | so that we can show up better for everybody else.

01:56:18.360 | More energy, more capacity, more staying power

01:56:21.300 | to have those hard conversations

01:56:23.000 | with the people we care about

01:56:24.700 | and that move our life forward.

01:56:26.500 | So it's really refilling the fuel tank in my mind

01:56:30.040 | as opposed to the kind of egocentric, narcissistic,

01:56:35.040 | you know, stance that a lot of people take towards that.

01:56:40.640 | And I understand why they do, you know,

01:56:42.100 | people scroll through Instagram and they see people,

01:56:45.020 | you know, selfing every muscle and like,

01:56:48.260 | and all this stuff.

01:56:49.100 | And listen, I'm not disparaging what people want to do,

01:56:51.200 | but at the end of the day,

01:56:52.620 | self-care is about being more ready to do better

01:56:56.260 | for the world if you're mission oriented.

01:56:58.940 | - Agreed, completely agree.

01:57:01.160 | - Do you think there's been a change in the FBI

01:57:04.880 | over the last three, 40 years around that?

01:57:07.060 | You know, I have this image in my mind of agents

01:57:09.360 | like sitting in cars for 20 hours, eating hoagie sandwiches

01:57:12.660 | and, you know, and looking through binoculars

01:57:16.140 | and running themselves into the ground

01:57:18.300 | with like this kind of bulldog-like persistence

01:57:21.240 | to get to solve the puzzle.

01:57:23.460 | I mean, put differently,

01:57:24.620 | I imagine there were some negotiations

01:57:26.120 | that were very long and fatiguing.

01:57:28.800 | So do you recall one of the longer negotiations

01:57:32.340 | that you had?

01:57:33.180 | And how do you sleep at night midway

01:57:34.680 | through a hostage crisis?

01:57:36.160 | - So the longest one that I was directly involved in

01:57:41.640 | on almost day-to-day and hour-to-hour one

01:57:44.040 | went about three-ish days.

01:57:47.140 | Washington, D.C., 2003, started the second Iraq war.

01:57:51.600 | A guy named Dwight Watson rolled a tractor

01:57:53.680 | into the middle of D.C. and claimed he had four bombs

01:57:56.240 | and he left four bombs scattered around.

01:57:58.720 | The city.

01:58:00.040 | - Had he actually done that or he was just caught?

01:58:02.020 | He was bluffing.

01:58:02.860 | - He was bluffing.

01:58:03.680 | He hadn't done either.

01:58:04.520 | And it started on St. Patrick's Day.

01:58:07.480 | Kind of interesting, you know.

01:58:10.400 | - Like the thing you said was in the Philippines.

01:58:15.000 | It's like national holiday.

01:58:16.000 | - Yeah, holiday, right?

01:58:17.300 | Interesting for a whole bunch of reasons.

01:58:20.440 | Now, I had to go home and go to sleep one night

01:58:25.440 | and when we were in the middle of that.

01:58:27.120 | And then it was just, I don't remember having trouble

01:58:31.760 | going to sleep because I felt like I did a good job.

01:58:35.100 | And that we handed, I handed the shift off

01:58:40.000 | to another hostage negotiator from the bureau

01:58:43.300 | who was effectively the team leader, Vince Delfonso.

01:58:46.480 | And Vince was bringing a negotiator.

01:58:48.680 | So, and the team that he was with.

01:58:50.520 | I, you know, everybody was in good hands.

01:58:53.120 | As a matter of fact, Vince almost kicked me out of the scene

01:58:55.080 | 'cause I didn't want to go and he just kept saying,

01:58:56.700 | "Go home and get some sleep, go home and get some sleep."

01:58:58.760 | And finally, the fifth time he said it to me, I went home.

01:59:02.040 | So I felt like I was leaving things in really good hands.

01:59:06.360 | And when we were working kidnappings,

01:59:07.860 | we expected them to go for long periods of time.

01:59:09.820 | And you just kind of gotta,

01:59:11.300 | if you have faith in the process

01:59:15.300 | and you feel like that you're doing the best

01:59:18.360 | that can be done, then I think you could sleep at night.

01:59:21.060 | I guess to answer that question.

01:59:25.320 | You have to be careful whether you're working a case,

01:59:29.080 | a siege or anything in the bureau

01:59:34.080 | that you don't run yourself into the ground.

01:59:37.100 | And there was some cases I worked in the '90s

01:59:39.840 | where, I mean, like we knocked ourselves out.

01:59:43.520 | Like we would, we worked hard on anybody we ever saw.

01:59:46.860 | But we occasionally, we took time off too.

01:59:48.540 | You know, I worked with guys that realized

01:59:50.000 | that sometimes you gotta go out and have a beer,

01:59:52.620 | kick back and blow off some steam.

01:59:55.280 | So I think everybody that I ever worked with,

01:59:58.060 | we were occasionally cautious enough

02:00:00.700 | to recharge the batteries.

02:00:02.940 | And then depending upon the nature of the challenge

02:00:04.720 | in front of you, there was a siege in St. Martin's Parish

02:00:07.780 | and went six days.

02:00:09.440 | I don't think those guys got a lot of sleep,

02:00:12.180 | but the nature of those sieges,

02:00:14.060 | that particular type of siege only lasts

02:00:15.860 | five or six days anyway.

02:00:17.180 | You just gotta gut it out.

02:00:18.500 | - Were there ever instances where you're just trying

02:00:21.780 | to keep the person on the line so they can just raid?

02:00:24.900 | - You know, I never had to do that personally.

02:00:28.400 | You had to be prepared to do that

02:00:30.220 | from the very beginning of any siege.

02:00:33.700 | That you might have to get some,

02:00:35.140 | you might have to orchestrate an assault of some sort.

02:00:39.320 | I was fortunate enough early on in my training,

02:00:43.300 | there's kind of a famous siege in,

02:00:45.700 | if you know hostage negotiation history in London,

02:00:49.300 | called the Princesgate Siege,

02:00:51.640 | where a legendary British hostage negotiator, David Van Ness,

02:00:56.640 | had the bad guys on the phone

02:00:58.940 | while the SAS was hitting the building.

02:01:01.640 | And I remember that we were shown like,

02:01:04.740 | look, there may come a time

02:01:07.040 | when you have to keep somebody on the phone

02:01:09.260 | when SWAT comes in.

02:01:10.420 | That goes with the territory.

02:01:12.820 | So expect that's a possibility from the very beginning.

02:01:15.780 | And it was a great siege.

02:01:17.740 | The bad guy, Salim, the photos of him after he was shot,

02:01:21.760 | the phone is within his reach.

02:01:23.560 | David kept him on the phone.

02:01:25.480 | I've heard the tapes.

02:01:27.620 | The breaching explosions were going on.

02:01:31.360 | And Salim says, "I gotta go, I gotta go.

02:01:34.700 | "There's suspicious noises."

02:01:36.240 | And David Van Ness in his classic British accent said,

02:01:40.460 | "Salim, there are no suspicious noises.

02:01:44.760 | "Now let's get back to talking about

02:01:47.280 | "how many people are going on the bus to the airport."

02:01:51.000 | Bam.

02:01:51.840 | And they went in and I caught up with David

02:01:54.320 | a number of years later.

02:01:55.160 | I had a FBI, I had a presidential intern

02:01:57.860 | from the White House intern with me in the bureau.

02:02:00.360 | We're drinking in a bar with David Van Ness.

02:02:03.700 | I got a lot of stories where I'm drinking

02:02:04.960 | in a bar with somebody.

02:02:06.880 | And the intern walked around everybody

02:02:08.780 | and tapped David on the shoulder and he says,

02:02:12.040 | "Chris says you kept the terrorist on the phone

02:02:14.020 | "up 'til the moment that the SAS came in the door."

02:02:17.820 | And David says, "Yeah, and I'd have kept him on the phone

02:02:20.440 | "even longer if the SAS hadn't come in so soon."

02:02:23.440 | So why am I telling that story?

02:02:28.180 | If you're gonna get into that line of business,

02:02:30.000 | you gotta accept all the things and go with it.

02:02:32.340 | And realize that it's not you that made the decision.

02:02:35.660 | Somebody else did.

02:02:37.280 | You gotta implement the strategy.

02:02:40.540 | - Do you remember a case in Sacramento

02:02:44.720 | where I think it was a youth gang

02:02:47.840 | took over like an electronics store.

02:02:51.640 | - The Good Guys Siege.

02:02:52.680 | - Yeah, I remember this when I was a kid.

02:02:54.600 | There are two things that stand out in my mind

02:02:56.900 | from when I was a kid.

02:02:57.740 | One was the--

02:02:58.840 | - Good Guys was the name of the electronics store.

02:03:01.660 | - Right, Good Guys was the electronics store

02:03:03.100 | and Bad Guys, so to speak, went in there, took them hostage.

02:03:07.020 | And I must have been a kid.

02:03:08.540 | This must have been like late.

02:03:10.300 | There was a late '80s or something like that.

02:03:13.820 | I remember that case.

02:03:15.660 | - It was about 1990, it was either '89 or '90.

02:03:18.580 | I knew one of the negotiators that was there.

02:03:20.660 | - So I was born in '75.

02:03:22.340 | So, and as I recall, they ended up opening fire

02:03:25.700 | on a bunch of hostages who were laying down on the ground.

02:03:28.100 | Is that right?

02:03:29.500 | - They knew that they were getting ready

02:03:32.700 | to execute the hostages

02:03:34.220 | because they put bags over their heads.

02:03:36.940 | And that whenever the bad guys do anything to dehumanize

02:03:41.020 | a hostage, it's easier to shoot somebody with a bag

02:03:44.820 | over their head than it is not

02:03:47.140 | because you can't see their face.

02:03:49.060 | And so the bad guys had begun that process

02:03:51.780 | and they knew they needed to assault.

02:03:53.620 | - God forbid anyone should ever be taken hostage.

02:03:57.920 | I realize circumstances differ,

02:04:01.060 | but you just mentioned putting bags over their heads.

02:04:04.900 | There's this notion of sheeple that people will describe

02:04:09.860 | post hoc after something about how somebody walks

02:04:15.040 | into a building and tells people to put zip ties

02:04:17.300 | on their own ankles or go into a back room

02:04:20.020 | that nobody resists.

02:04:21.340 | And that in retrospect, had somebody caused a commotion,

02:04:24.360 | they might have caused enough of a commotion

02:04:28.460 | to either run out or be let go.

02:04:31.220 | And yet, of course, there's a very logical part

02:04:33.440 | of everybody's brain, I would hope that thinks,

02:04:35.760 | listen, this person is an aggressor.

02:04:37.500 | There's a gun in my face.

02:04:39.020 | Don't be an idiot, right?

02:04:40.300 | 'Cause we also have heard of the case in New York City

02:04:42.380 | that I read about this in the newspaper.

02:04:44.540 | So presumably it's true where someone was held up

02:04:47.440 | at gunpoint and one of the women in the group

02:04:49.320 | that was held up said, what are you gonna do?

02:04:50.540 | Shoot us and the person shot them.

02:04:52.820 | So that happens too.

02:04:54.300 | So, I don't know if there's a fair and safe answer

02:04:59.300 | to give people on this,

02:05:00.900 | but if you're told to do something by somebody

02:05:05.060 | and it's all happening in real time,

02:05:07.400 | I mean, you have to ask, do they want my money, my body,

02:05:10.200 | my life or some combination of the three in real time

02:05:13.480 | while under presumably significant duress.

02:05:16.280 | But for hostages, like if they disobey, cause a commotion,

02:05:22.520 | is that extending their life

02:05:24.360 | or is it shortening their life?

02:05:25.580 | I guess it's very context dependent, right?

02:05:29.520 | The only thing that I could, without knowing the context,

02:05:32.540 | anything you could do to humanize yourself

02:05:34.260 | and comply with what the bad guys want

02:05:36.980 | increases your chance of survival.

02:05:38.760 | So let's say you got ordered to go in a back room.

02:05:43.900 | You could look at the hostage taker and say,

02:05:45.560 | I'll do whatever you say, I'm Chris.

02:05:47.580 | You know, drop your name on them in a way

02:05:52.080 | so that you go from being a faceless person

02:05:54.040 | to somebody with a name.

02:05:55.000 | That increases the chances of your survival, humanization.

02:05:58.760 | Whatever you can do to comply simultaneously,

02:06:01.800 | become more of a human being,

02:06:03.120 | because it's the opposite of what I was talking about before.

02:06:06.400 | If you're easier to kill if you've been dehumanized,

02:06:09.600 | you're harder to kill if you've been humanized.

02:06:12.320 | You're harder to harm.

02:06:13.800 | Like maybe they're not gonna kill you,

02:06:14.960 | they're just gonna hurt you.

02:06:16.480 | They're less likely to harm you if they know your first name.

02:06:19.480 | How do you get them, as a hostage negotiator,

02:06:23.200 | if they talk about a hostage, I'll say, you know,

02:06:27.960 | you mean Sheila?

02:06:29.800 | Do you mean Rex?

02:06:32.060 | You know, I'll find a way to drop the person's name

02:06:35.720 | into the conversation.

02:06:36.800 | So as soon as, if you can humanize

02:06:38.720 | just by getting them to know your name,

02:06:41.300 | you increase the chances of survivability,

02:06:43.480 | you increase the chances of being treated better.

02:06:46.800 | And comply.

02:06:48.360 | I'll do whatever you say, I'm Chris,

02:06:51.260 | is gonna start to move the odds in your favor.

02:06:56.080 | You know that what you just described extends to science.

02:07:01.000 | You know, I've talked before about my stance

02:07:02.780 | on animal research and why I choose to no longer do it.

02:07:07.780 | I do think it has its place in making important discoveries

02:07:11.240 | that cannot be made on humans,

02:07:13.360 | but that eventually extend to-

02:07:15.280 | - But you don't wanna do it.

02:07:16.240 | - I don't wanna do it.

02:07:17.080 | Personally, I don't wanna do it,

02:07:17.900 | and I don't wanna do primate work or large carnivore work

02:07:20.200 | or small carnivore work.

02:07:21.640 | But the point I was going to make

02:07:22.960 | is that when you do primate work,

02:07:25.640 | they strongly discourage near forbid you

02:07:30.640 | from giving them names, give them numbers.

02:07:34.120 | So it all falls in line with what you were talking about.

02:07:39.540 | 'Cause the moment something has a name,

02:07:41.160 | it moves from being a research animal to a pet of sorts,

02:07:45.060 | and that makes it a relationship.

02:07:47.500 | So interesting how a name turns something from a,

02:07:51.480 | you know, it elevates something to a relationship,

02:07:53.640 | however insignificant, it's up a notch

02:07:57.160 | and into our empathy circuitry.

02:07:58.840 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:08:00.320 | - Which is perhaps the appropriate segue

02:08:02.700 | to talk about empathy.

02:08:04.320 | This is a topic that you're spending a lot of time about.

02:08:06.820 | - At last.

02:08:08.160 | - You mentioned tactical empathy, this documentary.

02:08:11.160 | By the way, when is that going to be out

02:08:12.720 | or do we have some sense?

02:08:14.200 | - My guess is we'll finish jumping through all the hoops

02:08:17.680 | and probably have out at the beginning of next year.

02:08:21.280 | We're, I'm currently working with William Morris and Dever

02:08:25.080 | on a couple of different projects.

02:08:26.780 | They've been enormously supportive

02:08:29.120 | and we've asked for their guidance on how to,

02:08:32.920 | the best time to get the documentary out

02:08:34.860 | and very happy with the people I'm dealing with there

02:08:38.160 | and actually stroke of the universe was looking out for me,

02:08:43.120 | funny set of circumstances and just really enjoy

02:08:45.480 | with the people that I'm working with there.

02:08:46.840 | So probably first part of next year.

02:08:48.840 | - Fantastic.

02:08:51.000 | What's your take on empathy?

02:08:52.560 | I think of empathy in the pop culture sense of,

02:08:56.080 | somebody's feeling pain and we feel their pain,

02:08:59.520 | but of course empathy extends way beyond that.

02:09:01.920 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:09:04.280 | And that was Rob Malenka.

02:09:07.920 | - Yeah, my colleague at Stanford.

02:09:09.360 | - Yeah, I was really fascinated by the conversation

02:09:11.940 | that you had with him on that recently.

02:09:13.860 | And so, and he said, a lot of people use empathy

02:09:17.120 | a lot of different ways, sort of for their own meanings.

02:09:19.940 | So, my take on empathy, tactical empathy,

02:09:24.940 | also to keep throwing names out

02:09:28.400 | because people give me thoughts

02:09:29.940 | and I wanna source them out.

02:09:31.340 | I'm very close to Steven Kotler's perspective on it.

02:09:34.620 | And Steven would say, empathy is about the transmission

02:09:37.060 | of information, compassion is the reaction

02:09:39.480 | to the transmission.

02:09:40.440 | - I like that.

02:09:41.280 | And by the way, I'm a fan of Steven's work.

02:09:43.160 | I think he's quite astute and a boy, is he a hard worker?

02:09:47.000 | He writes like a beast.

02:09:48.380 | He's up at like four in the morning.

02:09:49.720 | He also has like 50 chihuahuas or something crazy.

02:09:52.000 | - Well, he's the way in the dogs.

02:09:53.140 | - Yeah, well, you can fit more chihuahuas in a room

02:09:56.280 | than any others.

02:09:57.500 | Gotcha, Steven.

02:09:58.440 | - But yeah, so, and that was when I was with the FBI,

02:10:03.500 | we started collaborating with Harvard

02:10:05.220 | because the Harvard definition was empathy

02:10:09.220 | was not liking the other side.

02:10:11.460 | It was just demonstrating

02:10:12.680 | and understanding their perspective.

02:10:14.940 | Bob Mnookin's book "Beyond Winning's" chapter,

02:10:18.100 | "The Attention Between Empathy and Assertiveness,"

02:10:20.940 | he says the empathy is not agreeing, disagreeing,

02:10:24.300 | or even liking the other side,

02:10:26.260 | which sort of falls into what Steven talked about.

02:10:29.860 | You know, it's about the transmission of information.

02:10:32.620 | Now, empathy is very compassionate thing to do,

02:10:35.360 | but it doesn't necessarily equate to compassion itself.

02:10:40.060 | If I make you feel heard by me saying to you

02:10:45.980 | what your perspective on something is,

02:10:47.980 | you're gonna feel cared for, you're gonna feel understood.

02:10:51.660 | It's gonna land with you really well.

02:10:54.280 | I don't necessarily have to feel compassion for you.

02:10:57.060 | I know it's a precursor to compassion.

02:10:59.780 | So I would separate it from sympathy, clearly,

02:11:03.600 | and I would even separate it from compassion,

02:11:07.500 | although I know it's a very compassionate thing to do.

02:11:09.640 | It's about tactical empathy,

02:11:12.060 | is about me actively demonstrating verbally to you

02:11:17.060 | that I understand where you're coming from.

02:11:20.500 | Tactic, from the experience in hostage negotiators,

02:11:23.900 | backed up by neuroscience,

02:11:27.040 | is that people largely react negatively.

02:11:29.740 | So the smarter move for me,

02:11:32.220 | instead of trying to reinforce a positive,

02:11:35.620 | is to first deactivate the negative

02:11:37.800 | by simply calling it out, calling the elephant room out.

02:11:41.700 | Don't deny the elephant, don't ignore the elephant.

02:11:43.860 | Call the elephant a room out.

02:11:45.340 | Say, it's probably gonna sound like I'm greedy.

02:11:49.240 | If I expect that you're gonna think I'm overreaching.

02:11:52.740 | I'm not gonna say, I don't want you to think I'm greedy.

02:11:55.220 | I'm gonna say, it's probably gonna seem greedy.

02:11:57.600 | So simply well-educated emotional intelligence influence,

02:12:02.540 | gun instinct influence,

02:12:04.260 | on what the other side is thinking and feeling.

02:12:07.260 | If I can define it in that way,

02:12:08.660 | then it becomes an unlimited skill.

02:12:10.120 | If it requires me to have compassion for you when I don't,

02:12:15.120 | then that limits my ability to use empathy.

02:12:17.340 | And I'm not interested in having that ability to be limited.

02:12:20.740 | I want it to be an unlimited skill.

02:12:23.320 | So if you just define it strictly

02:12:26.220 | in terms of transmission of information,

02:12:28.640 | then it's not sympathy or compassion or liking or agreeing.

02:12:34.460 | It has a very powerful effect.

02:12:37.280 | It at least feels like compassion to the other side.

02:12:41.220 | It reacts with the emotional circuitry, the neurochemicals

02:12:44.860 | that everybody has to some degree if they're alive,

02:12:48.180 | even if they're on the spectrum,

02:12:50.020 | they have some of that going on inside.

02:12:53.580 | And of what I've read on even the mental illnesses,

02:12:57.760 | in my last century training,

02:13:00.940 | I saw people who were paranoid schizophrenic

02:13:03.180 | is it effectively be more of a wiring problem

02:13:05.660 | and a chemical problem for a layman's description.

02:13:09.440 | And a lot of what I've read said empathy

02:13:12.280 | is even effective with paranoid schizophrenics.

02:13:14.660 | People, regardless of how disarray the circuitry

02:13:19.660 | in their head is, it helps them on some level

02:13:24.660 | to feel understood.

02:13:26.920 | So empathy is just about letting somebody feel understood.

02:13:30.580 | Example, when I'm working terrorism,

02:13:32.980 | we had a lot of Arab Muslims testify in open civilian court

02:13:37.980 | against a legitimate Muslim cleric, who was also a criminal,

02:13:43.580 | who also committed crimes.

02:13:46.060 | And I would sit down with them

02:13:49.500 | and I'd say to them right off the bat,

02:13:51.460 | 'cause I know where they're coming from,

02:13:53.220 | you believe that there's been a succession

02:13:54.920 | of American governments for the last 200 years

02:13:56.940 | that have been anti-Islamic.

02:13:59.180 | And they'd look at me and they'd go like, yeah.

02:14:03.100 | I never said it was true, I never said I agreed,

02:14:07.980 | I never said I disagreed.

02:14:10.140 | By me simply articulating what their perspective

02:14:13.420 | on the interaction was, they were so startled by it,

02:14:16.180 | it was empathy.

02:14:18.040 | And we were so good at that, empathy,

02:14:23.340 | frequently in that timeframe, they would say,

02:14:27.140 | "Are you Muslim?"

02:14:29.500 | And I'd say, "No, I respect the religion.

02:14:31.560 | If you need to know, I'm a Christian,

02:14:35.760 | but I respect your religion and I got no problem saying

02:14:39.340 | to you where you're coming from,

02:14:41.060 | that's empathy from my definition."

02:14:44.260 | And then it becomes an unlimited skill.

02:14:46.140 | I don't have to feel it,

02:14:47.720 | I don't have to necessarily wanna do anything about it.

02:14:52.620 | Goldman says there's cognitive empathy,

02:14:55.380 | me just recognizing where your emotions are coming from,

02:14:58.840 | there's emotional empathy, me feeling your emotions,

02:15:02.400 | and there's empathic concern,

02:15:04.060 | me wanting to do something about your distress.

02:15:07.060 | My version of tactical empathy probably brings those

02:15:13.420 | into play in sequence on a continuum of sorts,

02:15:17.360 | but none of them are precursors.

02:15:19.140 | It's just me showing to you that I understand

02:15:21.220 | where you're coming from.

02:15:22.380 | And it has a phenomenally favorable impact

02:15:25.180 | on the interaction.

02:15:26.180 | - Tell me about mirroring as a tool.

02:15:30.020 | - Yeah, mirroring is one of the simplest,

02:15:32.980 | easiest, and most effective of the skillset.

02:15:38.540 | Takes the least amount of brain power.

02:15:39.960 | It's just repeating one to three-ish words

02:15:42.560 | of what somebody has just said.

02:15:44.520 | Can be one, it should never usually be more than five.

02:15:48.900 | Hostage negotiators learn it by repeating the last

02:15:51.580 | one to three words that somebody's just said.

02:15:53.700 | It doesn't have to be the last one to three words.

02:15:55.720 | And a mirroring is not the body language mirror.

02:15:57.580 | It's not mimicking anybody physically,

02:16:00.780 | and it's not mimicking their tone of voice

02:16:03.740 | or their affect or anything about them.

02:16:07.140 | It's just repeating one to three-ish words.

02:16:11.120 | We found that access is, for whatever part of the brain

02:16:14.260 | that you gotta energize to do it,

02:16:15.980 | it's a different part of the brain than labeling.

02:16:17.780 | People are usually either really good at labeling,

02:16:19.780 | like I label, almost everybody on my team labels a lot.

02:16:23.700 | Sounds like this is bothering you.

02:16:26.580 | Sounds like, seems like you're just not really sure

02:16:29.580 | where this is going.

02:16:31.320 | And the mirror, I gotta consciously make it a point

02:16:34.420 | to mirror, and what's a mirror used for?

02:16:38.460 | It's in place of what did you mean by that?

02:16:40.760 | Or would you please go on?

02:16:44.280 | Or I don't understand, could you repeat that again?

02:16:47.340 | So I'll listen for stuff that either I don't understand

02:16:50.680 | or I need you to talk more about,

02:16:54.640 | and instead of saying, could you say some more about that,

02:16:57.900 | I'll just mirror the words.

02:17:00.020 | Now, for whatever reason,

02:17:01.640 | it connects the thoughts in your head.

02:17:05.340 | The message, the way that lands is I heard what you said,

02:17:11.140 | the words, I got the words, 'cause I just repeated them,

02:17:15.820 | and I still don't understand.

02:17:18.200 | So I need a more in-depth explanation

02:17:20.740 | without using the same words that you just used.

02:17:23.980 | Because if you say, I think isopracism is useless,

02:17:28.980 | and I might say, what do you mean by that?

02:17:34.880 | And you go, isopracism is useless.

02:17:36.940 | You repeat the same words only louder.

02:17:39.040 | You figure that saying it louder

02:17:40.980 | will make it penetrate my cranium.

02:17:43.700 | That doesn't work.

02:17:45.580 | I need you to explain, to go into more depth,

02:17:49.860 | to expand using different words.

02:17:52.080 | And for whatever reason, we found as hostage negotiators,

02:17:55.680 | and I find in business that if I mirror you,

02:17:59.560 | you'll expand and you'll connect.

02:18:03.140 | So I use it in that context.

02:18:06.220 | I might use it to get you to hear yourself out loud.

02:18:10.580 | Like if what you just said doesn't make sense,

02:18:14.340 | I'll repeat it back word for word,

02:18:16.120 | one to three words, and I'll upward inflect.

02:18:19.100 | I'll say, that doesn't make sense.

02:18:22.000 | You know, use my tone, make it land with my tone,

02:18:24.600 | so you can hear yourself out loud.

02:18:26.560 | Somebody else just pointed out to me the other day

02:18:29.580 | that if you're talking to somebody,

02:18:32.600 | and they're in mid-thought,

02:18:33.740 | and their voice trails off

02:18:35.500 | because they sort of lost their train of thought,

02:18:38.700 | if you mirror them there,

02:18:40.980 | that helps them get their train of thought back and expand.

02:18:45.220 | So it's a ridiculously effective communication tool

02:18:50.220 | to get people to expand and feel heard.

02:18:53.360 | Its simplicity puts some people off.

02:18:57.380 | There are some people that say,

02:18:58.460 | "Eh, it sounds stupid.

02:18:59.540 | I don't see what good that will do."

02:19:01.300 | I always notice if somebody really wants to know

02:19:05.160 | about mirroring, my description is they're both high IQ

02:19:09.480 | and high EQ, and why does that work?

02:19:12.160 | A high IQ guy's going to want to know something

02:19:14.120 | that's really simple that doesn't take any effort to do,

02:19:16.960 | and that's what a mirror does.

02:19:19.040 | It's really, really effective,

02:19:20.640 | and it's almost no effort on your part at all.

02:19:23.640 | - Interesting.

02:19:24.800 | I must say that neuroscience

02:19:26.180 | has an unfortunate dearth of knowledge

02:19:29.380 | about how brains interact.

02:19:31.860 | This is starting to change,

02:19:33.560 | but most of what we know about how brains work

02:19:35.860 | is from putting people

02:19:37.000 | into functional magnetic resonance imaging machines,

02:19:40.300 | so-called MRI, exposing them to movies

02:19:43.220 | or games that they have to play, et cetera,

02:19:45.680 | and then looking at brain state activation.

02:19:48.360 | There are a few laboratories starting to look

02:19:51.600 | at how people interact in real time

02:19:54.740 | with both people in separate MRI machines

02:19:58.520 | that hopefully we'll be able to parse some of this,

02:20:00.640 | and I'm certain that somebody hearing this

02:20:02.960 | will use this knowledge to go do the experiment.

02:20:06.380 | If not, I'll run it up the flagpole

02:20:08.400 | to some highly qualified people at Stanford

02:20:11.240 | who could do this,

02:20:12.080 | because it'd be fun to see what's happening,

02:20:13.340 | but I have the sense that what's happening

02:20:15.880 | is that there is a real merge of cognition

02:20:19.620 | when one hears their own words spoken back to them,

02:20:23.920 | and that you've now got two brains

02:20:27.200 | processing the same information,

02:20:28.720 | and that has to lead new places,

02:20:30.760 | so I don't have any insight

02:20:34.320 | as to what exactly is happening,

02:20:36.860 | but certainly that something is happening there,

02:20:40.440 | evidenced by the real-world results that you're getting.

02:20:42.500 | We don't need experiments to tell us that,

02:20:45.280 | but it'd be interesting to see

02:20:47.260 | and learn a bit of what's happening.

02:20:48.620 | If there's a fusion, for instance,

02:20:49.920 | of a co-activation of emotional centers,

02:20:52.880 | co-activation of...

02:20:54.680 | There's something about hearing our own voice

02:20:57.540 | that's very different than hearing other people's voices.

02:20:59.500 | Most people cringe when they hear their own voice

02:21:01.320 | on recording.

02:21:04.120 | Most, not all.

02:21:06.100 | Some people are in love with their own voice.

02:21:08.720 | We know these people,

02:21:10.480 | but we know that our auditory system cancels out

02:21:14.380 | the hearing of our own voice.

02:21:16.160 | Did you know that?

02:21:16.980 | As we're talking now, our auditory system

02:21:18.360 | is suppressing our own voice.

02:21:20.000 | We don't really hear ourselves speak

02:21:21.920 | the same way that when you speak, I hear you speak.

02:21:24.520 | Yeah, so it's an active neurochemical inhibition

02:21:29.360 | of the response, and it's amazing too,

02:21:31.020 | because as we grow up, our voice changes.

02:21:33.400 | Puberty and so forth, and other ways too,

02:21:35.640 | that the vocal cords change in thickness, et cetera.

02:21:38.120 | And our voice changes, but we always know self

02:21:41.440 | from other in terms of voice,

02:21:42.760 | and we cancel out our actual auditory perception

02:21:46.280 | of our own voice. - That's fascinating.

02:21:48.080 | - And breathing and heartbeat.

02:21:50.000 | We shut down our response to self actively within the brain.

02:21:54.360 | - That's fascinating.

02:21:55.680 | - So maybe hearing back some of what we just said

02:21:58.200 | allows us to actually hear what we just said.

02:22:01.400 | - Yeah, well true.

02:22:02.240 | And that's why people, sometimes all somebody needs

02:22:04.880 | is a sounding board.

02:22:05.920 | So they can, somebody else can hear,

02:22:10.160 | they can hear themselves out and get repeated back to them.

02:22:12.440 | And then they go like, wait a minute, did I just say that?

02:22:15.280 | Yeah, interesting.

02:22:17.240 | - Interesting.

02:22:18.720 | - Useful.

02:22:20.320 | - Indeed.

02:22:21.160 | Proactive listening.

02:22:23.840 | Tell us about proactive listening.

02:22:25.240 | We're all told that we need to be better listeners.

02:22:28.280 | You know, the other day someone said,

02:22:29.640 | we got two ears and one mouth,

02:22:31.000 | as if that's supposed to remind us.

02:22:33.480 | Most people have two ears and one mouth,

02:22:35.960 | but I get the point.

02:22:36.800 | They were saying, hey, there's value in listening.

02:22:39.880 | And more often than not,

02:22:41.080 | we default to broadcast, but no reception.

02:22:44.560 | We're mostly broadcast, less reception.

02:22:46.840 | - Right.

02:22:48.080 | - Hence the call for nasal breathing.

02:22:50.560 | It's useful in a lot of circumstances

02:22:53.320 | 'cause it keeps us, it keeps our mouth shut.

02:22:55.480 | [laughing]

02:22:57.720 | What is proactive listening?

02:23:00.520 | How do we do it?

02:23:01.640 | What's it good for?

02:23:02.480 | - I'm really trying to get people out of the notion

02:23:04.040 | of active listening just because active listening

02:23:06.520 | has been so overused that people have lost track of it.

02:23:09.560 | And most of it is taught poorly

02:23:12.360 | and it's interactive or it's proactive.

02:23:14.360 | And so we learned as hostage negotiators,

02:23:17.600 | first of all, just to label the presenting emotion.

02:23:21.160 | And we just assumed that,

02:23:22.280 | and the presenting emotion was always anger of some form,

02:23:24.920 | anger upset, on certain rare instances,

02:23:28.160 | the guy was under control,

02:23:29.840 | but they were almost always negative emotion.

02:23:31.480 | So we just assumed that it was defined to what was confined

02:23:36.400 | to what was driving hostage takers was negativity.

02:23:39.040 | Now, if I may, 'cause I feel like an imposter

02:23:44.080 | talking about neuroscience to you.

02:23:46.080 | - Your knowledge of neuroscience is spot on, Vos.

02:23:50.240 | I want to say numerous times you've asked me

02:23:52.840 | about things in neuroscience

02:23:54.440 | and you've never been off the mark.

02:23:56.040 | - Oh, thank you.

02:23:57.120 | - You've clearly done your homework too.

02:23:58.640 | - We keep trying to learn about it.

02:24:00.760 | But layman's terminology,

02:24:04.240 | the survival brain is largely negative.

02:24:06.560 | Ballpark, I would say 75% negative.

02:24:10.280 | Your reactions are gonna be negative.

02:24:11.880 | So number one, I believe that's principally backed up

02:24:15.520 | by the experiments of neuroscience,

02:24:16.920 | the FMRIs that you alluded to.

02:24:20.320 | And so then in hostage negotiation,

02:24:23.120 | we were taught to basically label the presenting emotion.

02:24:27.640 | And then I'd seen experimentation

02:24:31.960 | or reporting of experiments.

02:24:34.160 | I think the first time I read about it

02:24:35.640 | was in a book called "The Upward Spiral."

02:24:38.200 | And that book is a good 10 years old, I think,

02:24:41.400 | which means the neuroscience is evolving.

02:24:44.200 | But primarily the experiment there

02:24:46.520 | that I remember reading about it

02:24:47.640 | and read about in other places,

02:24:49.360 | that if people were undergoing a negative emotion

02:24:53.880 | in my layman's paraphrase of the experiment,

02:24:57.640 | they're showing a picture

02:24:59.200 | that induced a negative emotion in their head.

02:25:01.480 | And then they asked people

02:25:02.520 | to simply call out what the emotion was.

02:25:04.840 | And when they self-labeled, then the emotion diminished.

02:25:09.000 | Now the degree of diminishment varies,

02:25:13.360 | but the percentage of time that it diminishes

02:25:15.960 | by simply by calling it out is just darn near all the time.

02:25:20.120 | So for largely 75% negative,

02:25:23.760 | and we can deactivate the negativity by calling it out,

02:25:28.760 | well, let's be proactive.

02:25:30.920 | If you're a human being and we're engaged in a negotiation,

02:25:35.720 | there's gonna be certain very predictable negativity

02:25:39.040 | that's going to be there.

02:25:40.840 | And I should be proactive in calling it out,

02:25:43.880 | anticipating the negativity is gonna be there

02:25:46.440 | based on a circumstance that's highly predictable.

02:25:50.720 | And your gut instinct before that you were referring to

02:25:53.120 | when you wanna say,

02:25:53.960 | "Look, I don't want you to think I'm being greedy."

02:25:56.280 | Your gut's telling you it's highly predictable,

02:25:58.360 | you're gonna come off as greedy.

02:26:00.520 | So let me be proactive and say,

02:26:02.360 | "It's probably gonna seem like I'm being greedy."

02:26:05.320 | And that's the dialing over

02:26:07.920 | to what is eminently predictable in the interaction

02:26:11.640 | and just being proactive

02:26:13.000 | to deactivate the negative emotions

02:26:16.080 | that either are taking place or what our experience has found

02:26:19.960 | and I haven't seen any science that has yet

02:26:23.560 | that has had the opportunity to back this up.

02:26:26.640 | It inoculates.

02:26:28.560 | I can create a barrier.

02:26:29.760 | If I call out a negative that's not there,

02:26:31.600 | it doesn't plant it, it actually inoculates you from it.

02:26:35.700 | And I've done this in practice.

02:26:38.560 | I was given a lecture a couple of years ago.

02:26:41.680 | Anybody asks a question,

02:26:43.860 | I try to find the value in the question

02:26:45.760 | no matter how bad the question is.

02:26:48.000 | This poor guy asked me a question

02:26:49.520 | that I just cannot find a single component in his question

02:26:54.080 | that demonstrates that he was listening or paying attention.

02:26:56.840 | There was nothing about it that I could congratulate him on.

02:27:00.620 | And so I said, "This is gonna sound harsh

02:27:04.720 | because I know the answer I'm getting ready to give him

02:27:07.760 | is gonna make it sound like to the group

02:27:09.720 | that I think he's stupid."

02:27:11.800 | I just, I can't think of a way to respond to this

02:27:14.760 | without saying effectively like,

02:27:16.360 | "What are you thinking about?

02:27:17.800 | That's got nothing to do with what we're talking about."

02:27:20.740 | So I go, "This is gonna sound harsh."

02:27:23.080 | And I answer the question and he just kind of goes, "Okay."

02:27:26.580 | And I start answering somebody else's question

02:27:29.040 | and he goes, "That wasn't harsh."

02:27:31.660 | Now, if I hadn't said this is gonna sound harsh

02:27:36.280 | and answered the question,

02:27:39.320 | I guarantee you my answer would have embarrassed him.

02:27:42.460 | And embarrassment is one of the worst negative emotions

02:27:46.320 | you can inflict on anybody.

02:27:47.840 | And he would hate me to this day for embarrassing him.

02:27:50.580 | So I got a moment coming at me that is predictably negative

02:27:56.200 | and I can let that train run me down

02:28:00.080 | or I can call it out in advance

02:28:02.040 | and get a reaction where the guy says, "That wasn't that bad."

02:28:06.800 | And that's what being proactive about the emotions is about.

02:28:10.760 | - I love it.

02:28:12.000 | And I'm recalling an instance during graduate school

02:28:14.760 | where my graduate advisor who sadly has passed away

02:28:17.200 | but was a phenomenal scientist, I mean, just so pure,

02:28:21.760 | insisted on getting the answers,

02:28:23.160 | could emotionally detach from the answers.

02:28:25.000 | I mean, she's just was a ninja.

02:28:28.000 | She used to come into the laboratory

02:28:29.440 | when we were working on a paper and she'd sit down

02:28:32.680 | and she'd say, "You're gonna hate me

02:28:35.740 | for what I'm about to ask you to do."

02:28:38.420 | And I think, "Oh no, like I'm gonna have to redo

02:28:40.520 | all the analysis or I'm gonna like some monumental thing."

02:28:44.140 | And then she'd say, "You gotta change

02:28:47.240 | the like fonts in figure two."

02:28:49.820 | Oh my godly, what do you mean I wanna hate you?

02:28:54.900 | - It was a relief.

02:28:55.740 | - But I wanted nothing more than to make her happy

02:28:58.980 | with my work because I respected the standard

02:29:01.340 | that she held so greatly.

02:29:04.240 | I mean, she could have asked me to stand on my head

02:29:07.500 | and do the experiments 50 times.

02:29:09.060 | I would probably would have done it

02:29:10.300 | if I thought they would make the project better.

02:29:12.080 | And as a consequence, she would have been pleased

02:29:14.960 | because she was the standard for me

02:29:16.640 | and in many ways still is.

02:29:17.920 | But I'm wondering if she read your book

02:29:20.120 | because she used to presage these requests

02:29:24.180 | with like, "You're gonna hate me."

02:29:25.760 | And then she'd ask me for something.

02:29:26.600 | I'm like, "Oh, I hate you, like that's nothing."

02:29:28.720 | But now I wonder if I would have been taken aback

02:29:31.200 | if she had just said, "Hey, by the way,

02:29:35.580 | figure two needs redoing."

02:29:37.120 | I might've been kind of bristled by that.

02:29:39.640 | So maybe she read your book, Chris.

02:29:42.880 | These are great tools, mirroring and proactive listening.

02:29:46.080 | And thank you for sharing these.

02:29:47.400 | - Of course.

02:29:48.440 | - Did you ever employ the family members of kidnappers,

02:29:50.920 | friends of kidnappers as a means

02:29:53.000 | to tap into a different aspect of their psyche?

02:29:57.280 | 'Cause I think that we are all as human beings

02:30:00.000 | very context driven.

02:30:02.560 | So I can imagine that the person who kidnapped somebody

02:30:05.400 | or who's trying to steal somebody's resources

02:30:10.400 | is in a particular groove of person.

02:30:13.080 | And I do think there are people in the world

02:30:16.280 | who are just evil.

02:30:18.200 | But I also know because I've read about it

02:30:21.160 | and I trust the sources that there are people

02:30:22.940 | who have done horrendous things who love their dog

02:30:26.280 | and genuinely love their dog and wouldn't harm an animal.

02:30:28.680 | But I'm not trying to give these people a pass,

02:30:30.800 | but I could imagine that those other facets to somebody

02:30:34.600 | represent really good entry points for allowing them

02:30:38.400 | to see the kind of incongruence in their behavior.

02:30:42.320 | Or is it the case that when these are high stress situations

02:30:45.840 | that you just have to basically, you know,

02:30:48.080 | you have to attack the, you know, disarm the aggressor

02:30:51.520 | and you're just focusing on the person as the bad actor,

02:30:54.160 | not considering the other contexts of their lives.

02:30:57.320 | - All right, so let's draw a distinction

02:30:59.320 | between a hostage takers in a contained situation

02:31:03.440 | and kidnappers, uncontained, unknown location.

02:31:07.960 | So you're probably asking about somebody

02:31:10.040 | in a contained situation, bad guys in a bank,

02:31:13.720 | Dwight Watson in his tractor in Washington, DC.

02:31:17.800 | So very counterintuitively,

02:31:20.720 | if they're in a contained situation,

02:31:22.760 | there's a saying out there that says the system

02:31:24.520 | that you're employing is perfectly designed

02:31:27.240 | to give you the outcome that you have.

02:31:30.960 | So bad guy, Dwight Watson is on his tractor in DC.

02:31:35.960 | The family's part of the system that put him there.

02:31:41.920 | The blunt, harsh reality of that is.

02:31:45.520 | Now at that siege that went on long enough

02:31:48.560 | and it was so high profile,

02:31:49.840 | some of his family members showed up.

02:31:51.680 | Now we can, we could and did try to use them.

02:31:56.520 | I'm walking from one place to another

02:32:00.320 | from the negotiation operation cell component

02:32:04.920 | on the way to command post, hostage negotiator stops me,

02:32:07.960 | a couple of people with him, it's Watson's family.

02:32:10.400 | And they see I'm in a hurry

02:32:14.400 | and that I'm not interested in being stopped.

02:32:16.240 | And they got to say to me something to stop me

02:32:18.080 | and get my attention.

02:32:20.760 | And they go, look, our brother's just hurting in his heart.

02:32:24.080 | He's just hurting.

02:32:25.040 | You know, things have gone bad for our whole family

02:32:28.320 | and he's just hurting his heart.

02:32:29.920 | Don't kill him over that.

02:32:32.920 | And I looked at the negotiator and I said,

02:32:36.280 | get that on tape and we'll play that for him.

02:32:41.280 | Because if we can get that on tape

02:32:44.580 | exactly the way they said it, that'll land.

02:32:48.160 | But if we put them on a phone with them,

02:32:49.720 | they're going to try to reason with them.

02:32:51.720 | And they're going to say stuff to them that didn't help,

02:32:55.840 | which they don't very well intention,

02:32:57.480 | but it's going to be counterintuitive.

02:33:00.080 | And it's probably going to make it worse.

02:33:02.340 | So you have to understand family can be extremely important

02:33:06.600 | if you can get them to say exactly the right thing.

02:33:09.560 | And it's probably going to need to be highly orchestrated

02:33:13.280 | because you know how it's going to land.

02:33:17.520 | And unfortunately, if you get them in a direct conversation,

02:33:21.120 | it'll probably renew an old wound.

02:33:23.200 | You know, family members have hurt each other

02:33:25.240 | in ways that they have no idea even happened.

02:33:27.940 | And so the other, you know, a family member,

02:33:31.600 | my son to this day remembers when I told him

02:33:33.500 | Santa Claus wasn't real.

02:33:35.240 | And I have no-- - Wait, what?

02:33:37.080 | - I have no memory of that conversation.

02:33:39.600 | I'm sorry, I blew it for you, right?

02:33:41.620 | - Wait, we got, oh my goodness.

02:33:42.800 | - But family members have hurt each other over the years

02:33:44.880 | that they have no idea which comes up

02:33:46.620 | in these live conversations.

02:33:48.960 | And you don't know what wounds,

02:33:50.920 | you don't even know what wounds are there that you caused.

02:33:53.600 | And so in a contained situation,

02:33:55.960 | a family member can be extremely helpful,

02:33:59.340 | but it has to be, it's a surgical shot

02:34:02.960 | that you have to be really, really, really careful with.

02:34:05.960 | Otherwise it can go the other way

02:34:07.400 | because wounds and people don't even know are there.

02:34:10.000 | - Gosh, that's such a psychologically astute way

02:34:13.400 | of viewing it because I'm a big fan

02:34:14.980 | of the so-called family systems model of psychology.

02:34:17.480 | I mean, you can't look at any human being psychology

02:34:21.000 | positive, meaning adaptive or maladaptive psychology

02:34:23.860 | and not look at the family system at which that evolved,

02:34:27.000 | which is not to say that some perfectly healthy families

02:34:29.480 | occasionally don't have issues

02:34:30.680 | with a child having mental illness.

02:34:32.600 | And I mean, that happens,

02:34:34.400 | but I'm told that 99.9% of the time,

02:34:39.400 | you can identify a family system organization

02:34:44.280 | or a lineage, a genetic tie, et cetera,

02:34:46.840 | that makes things start to make sense

02:34:49.880 | when somebody is really struggling.

02:34:51.840 | And as you pointed out, sadly,

02:34:54.040 | oftentimes that involves pains of past.

02:34:57.800 | Wow, well, thanks for sharing that

02:35:00.880 | because I think that in my mind, the movie version of it is,

02:35:04.440 | they bring the mother in and it's like,

02:35:06.240 | "Billy, don't do it."

02:35:07.640 | As you said, that might be the time

02:35:11.640 | when Billy's really going to let his mother know,

02:35:14.720 | childhood sucked for Billy, right?

02:35:19.000 | And that's not what you want.

02:35:20.420 | - Yeah.

02:35:21.540 | - Goodness.

02:35:22.380 | What a complex job.

02:35:23.920 | What a complex high stakes, high consequence job.

02:35:28.640 | What did you do to unload some of the heaviness?

02:35:33.540 | I'm not just talking about getting a good night's sleep

02:35:35.220 | or having a beer with your coworkers afterward,

02:35:37.760 | although those things serve important roles

02:35:40.200 | for people I realize.

02:35:42.640 | Do you think we can dump the hard stuff in our head

02:35:48.400 | and our hearts in a way that allows us to be functional?

02:35:53.400 | 'Cause people in your line of work,

02:35:56.340 | and I think just anyone in the world,

02:35:57.880 | you live long enough, you're going to experience loss.

02:36:01.080 | - Yeah, you're going to get kicked in the gut.

02:36:03.000 | - Yeah, and you're going to see people you care about

02:36:04.880 | get kicked in the gut.

02:36:06.080 | There's so much beauty to life as well,

02:36:08.960 | but that's the reality.

02:36:11.080 | So do you have tools, processes that you use

02:36:16.640 | to kind of dump the baggage

02:36:18.980 | so that you can lean into your relationships

02:36:20.680 | and your relationship to yourself

02:36:22.360 | with a restored sense of optimism?

02:36:26.720 | - Yeah, I think most of the people

02:36:32.560 | that I've always worked around,

02:36:34.120 | we've been very reinforcing of one another,

02:36:39.560 | comedically, emotionally, friendship-wise,

02:36:46.000 | being able to laugh with each other,

02:36:47.840 | taking it easy on each other,

02:36:49.240 | getting people, laughter and genuine understanding

02:36:53.360 | without somebody trying to tell you that you did wrong.

02:36:58.360 | I've been lucky enough to either find myself

02:37:02.140 | in those groups most of the time,

02:37:03.840 | or we just evolved it.

02:37:07.700 | That's just the way that we were.

02:37:08.920 | We were attracted to one another emotionally,

02:37:12.120 | psychologically because of that.

02:37:14.960 | That's probably it mostly.

02:37:17.160 | I've tried to parse some of these emotions out recently.

02:37:20.400 | I'm not particularly proud of anything I've ever done,

02:37:23.680 | but I always felt like it was a privilege.

02:37:26.200 | You must be proud of your accomplishments.

02:37:28.440 | I don't know that it's pride,

02:37:29.720 | but there's other satisfaction that I get out of it.

02:37:33.200 | And so thinking about what drives me also now

02:37:36.720 | that I'm running a company

02:37:37.840 | and I've got people, also entrepreneurs,

02:37:41.360 | that are trying to do the best for their employees,

02:37:44.760 | what do we encourage in one another

02:37:47.840 | so that whatever we're doing, people feel good about it.

02:37:51.360 | And I've tried to take a lot of that

02:37:53.040 | from what I learned as an FBI agent

02:37:56.200 | and a hostage negotiator and the people that I was around.

02:37:59.640 | And we did joke with each other a lot

02:38:01.820 | and we did play tricks on each other,

02:38:05.360 | good-natured humor.

02:38:07.960 | Avoid the people that are running you down,

02:38:10.760 | but be able to take some good-natured ribbing

02:38:14.840 | every now and then.

02:38:15.680 | And I think humor is one way or another

02:38:19.280 | combined with hard work and an appreciation

02:38:21.280 | for what you're doing.

02:38:23.040 | It's probably been most of the mental health along the way.

02:38:27.880 | Occasional bourbon.

02:38:30.360 | (laughs)

02:38:31.560 | - Love it.

02:38:32.400 | We did a whole episode on alcohol

02:38:35.240 | and so people are gonna hear me say, "Love it,"

02:38:36.760 | and think, "Wait, here, I'm supporting."

02:38:38.280 | Listen, the data say as long as you're not an alcoholic,

02:38:41.940 | as long as you are of age,

02:38:44.200 | probably two drinks a week or less is safe.

02:38:48.120 | Make 'em good, high-quality drinks

02:38:50.120 | if you're gonna have them.

02:38:51.600 | Consume them in the right context

02:38:53.040 | or don't consume them at all.

02:38:54.120 | But that's why I said love it.

02:38:56.200 | I support your love of bourbon.

02:38:59.520 | I'm not a bourbon drinker, but tell me a little bit more

02:39:04.000 | about what you're up to lately.

02:39:05.440 | You alluded to it a moment ago that you're running teams

02:39:08.980 | that are doing a lot.

02:39:09.820 | So you're in charge of a lot of people now,

02:39:11.640 | helping people, help people,

02:39:13.840 | providing a lot of service in the world

02:39:15.120 | through a lot of different channels.

02:39:17.720 | First of all, I wanna say that your book,

02:39:19.920 | "Never Split the Difference,"

02:39:21.640 | one of my favorite books.

02:39:22.740 | - Thank you.

02:39:23.580 | - I don't say that lightly.

02:39:24.520 | I don't endorse books very often,

02:39:26.360 | but the books I do endorse, I love, love, love.

02:39:28.160 | I also have to say that it's a toss-up between your book,

02:39:32.320 | "Never Split the Difference,"

02:39:34.600 | and "The Body Keeps the Score"

02:39:37.180 | for the award for best titles of any book.

02:39:40.640 | Those are just like amazing titles, amazing, amazing titles.

02:39:43.960 | - Tal-Raz, our co-writer, came up with the title.

02:39:47.200 | - Yeah, it's a phenomenal title.

02:39:48.720 | That and "The Body Keeps the Score,"

02:39:51.720 | because there's so much contained in the title,

02:39:54.320 | and then the book exceeds expectations.

02:39:57.460 | So a really amazing book.

02:39:59.520 | People should listen to it, read it if they haven't already.

02:40:03.080 | But you're doing a lot more right now

02:40:04.440 | than just writing,

02:40:07.080 | although I want to hear about

02:40:07.920 | your other book projects as well.

02:40:09.440 | But before you list off the number of things you're doing,

02:40:12.460 | tell me first about Fireside,

02:40:14.120 | 'cause this sounds like a really interesting endeavor

02:40:18.060 | that, frankly, I haven't heard of before.

02:40:21.520 | What's Fireside?

02:40:22.600 | - A brand new social media platform.

02:40:25.160 | It's essentially an interactive podcast.

02:40:27.560 | It's a subscription service

02:40:29.480 | founded by Fallon Fattermy and Mark Cuban.

02:40:32.540 | Fallon and I have been friends for a number of years.

02:40:34.620 | She was Google's youngest employee.

02:40:37.100 | She's an entrepreneur, dynamic, smart,

02:40:39.420 | hard-charging person.

02:40:40.980 | And it sort of grew out of what's inadequate

02:40:47.160 | in some of the social media apps that are out there,

02:40:49.860 | trying to combine the best ideas of a few different things.

02:40:55.100 | And Fallon suggested it to me,

02:40:57.000 | and I thought I'll jump in because she's a visionary.

02:41:00.240 | And what it's turned out to be is it's effectively

02:41:02.660 | weekly interactive group coaching.

02:41:05.920 | And you get the app off your iPhone or your Android,

02:41:10.560 | whatever platform your phone is on,

02:41:13.080 | and then you log in.

02:41:15.000 | We do an hour once a week,

02:41:17.000 | and you're getting group coaching,

02:41:18.860 | and then you get asked questions,

02:41:21.140 | and it's got a video component to it.

02:41:22.820 | So if you want to ask a question,

02:41:24.720 | we're going to bring you up on quote stage,

02:41:27.380 | and I get to see you and talk directly to you,

02:41:29.920 | and you get to see me and talk directly to me,

02:41:32.620 | or I interviewed Mark Cuban a couple of weeks ago,

02:41:35.220 | and people got to come on and ask Mark questions,

02:41:38.500 | or ask me questions.

02:41:40.040 | And what it has turned out to be is it's one of,

02:41:43.620 | sort of the next level of how to get better at negotiations

02:41:48.620 | after you've read the book

02:41:50.760 | and probably taken a masterclass.

02:41:53.320 | You know, where do you go next?

02:41:55.140 | One of the people that came on the podcast the other day,

02:41:57.980 | the fireside episode, they said,

02:42:01.680 | "Well, I don't have enough money yet

02:42:03.840 | "to go to your in-person training events,

02:42:06.200 | "'cause those are expensive,

02:42:08.060 | "and this is how I'm going to get better in the meantime

02:42:10.520 | "and work my way in that direction."

02:42:13.400 | And so the monthly coaching,

02:42:16.040 | if you were to sign up for group coaching from us

02:42:18.700 | on a regular basis, on a monthly basis,

02:42:21.000 | it would probably easily cost you,

02:42:23.780 | for what we're providing, $25,000, $30,000 a month.

02:42:27.880 | And this is 1,000 a year.

02:42:30.660 | So at scale, it's an opportunity to interact directly with me

02:42:35.660 | and the members on my team once a week

02:42:37.780 | and get group coaching.

02:42:38.820 | And it's just kind of fun.

02:42:40.380 | We're getting a kick out of it.

02:42:41.380 | And people that really, really care

02:42:44.580 | about interacting well with people.

02:42:47.460 | Guy comes on the first episode I did, and he said,

02:42:51.420 | "Besides the fact that you helped me make a lot more money,

02:42:54.020 | "you helped me save my marriage."

02:42:57.040 | And he just needed to know how to talk more genuinely

02:43:00.260 | and honestly with his wife

02:43:03.980 | in a way that made her felt heard.

02:43:07.100 | And he didn't really have a good way to do that beforehand.

02:43:11.380 | And I was just like,

02:43:12.940 | that's a lot.

02:43:16.100 | I don't know how to respond to that

02:43:18.260 | other than just be grateful

02:43:19.480 | that people can say stuff like that to us.

02:43:22.860 | So the fireside thing is kind of cool.

02:43:24.340 | We're still experimenting with it.

02:43:26.800 | It's an interactive podcast, group coaching.

02:43:29.340 | It's fun.

02:43:31.060 | - Great.

02:43:32.940 | I mean, I would say you're changing lives there.

02:43:35.020 | I mean, the saving of marriage is no small deal.

02:43:37.200 | And I think that the ability

02:43:38.340 | to communicate directly with people also,

02:43:42.180 | I imagine gives them the opportunity

02:43:43.820 | to implement the tools that you're providing in real time.

02:43:47.820 | It's one thing to hear about something and try it,

02:43:50.460 | but then you can get feedback in real time.

02:43:52.480 | Are you on these fireside chats directly

02:43:55.540 | or members of your team?

02:43:56.880 | - No, we do one every week and I'm once a month.

02:44:00.340 | And the other thing too,

02:44:02.320 | like I can explain something one way.

02:44:04.940 | And if for whatever reason it doesn't land in your context,

02:44:08.580 | you can't quite get it.

02:44:09.840 | So that's what we found about the interactive nature of it.

02:44:13.680 | Somebody comes on and asks a question in their context

02:44:16.680 | and then I'll answer it and they'll go like,

02:44:18.220 | oh, oh, oh, okay.

02:44:20.320 | All right, that helped.

02:44:21.780 | So you get to hear people like you

02:44:24.500 | who are struggling with it the way you are,

02:44:26.540 | but I haven't put it in your context yet.

02:44:29.820 | And that's the other thing that's great about a Q&A,

02:44:32.420 | a live Q&A.

02:44:34.060 | - We had a guest on here who told me

02:44:36.500 | that there are amazing data supporting the fact

02:44:40.580 | that people follow the medical and health advice

02:44:43.820 | of doctors that they can relate to far more

02:44:47.380 | than they follow the medical and health advice

02:44:49.860 | of physicians that they feel aren't like them.

02:44:53.760 | And oftentimes this can include the physician

02:44:57.760 | or healthcare provider being someone

02:44:59.520 | that they would aspire to be like,

02:45:01.300 | but oftentimes it's just some common rapport.

02:45:03.400 | Like they both like baseball

02:45:05.120 | or they both like to cook or to garden.

02:45:07.320 | And that sets a bridge where then the patient

02:45:09.880 | is willing to do all these things

02:45:11.560 | that ordinarily they would be resistant to.

02:45:13.720 | And there are really good data to support this.

02:45:16.280 | And that really stuck with me

02:45:18.840 | 'cause it says that it's not just about the information

02:45:21.160 | or the delivery route or the information

02:45:23.960 | that the context and that rapport is,

02:45:26.400 | even along something as like,

02:45:28.060 | oh, you're a, by the way,

02:45:29.940 | I'm not a major sports fan on most things,

02:45:33.200 | but like, oh, you're a Bills fan or something like me too.

02:45:35.400 | Like that can be the difference

02:45:36.760 | between somebody doing all the things

02:45:38.580 | to lower their blood pressure, the day in,

02:45:41.180 | changing their diet, all those things

02:45:43.800 | versus not making the changes at all.

02:45:46.760 | - Rapport is a magic, yeah,

02:45:48.200 | it's kind of a magic component that changes,

02:45:51.580 | changes everything.

02:45:52.540 | - Well, fireside sounds like a great opportunity

02:45:54.520 | for people to not just ask questions,

02:45:56.200 | but to build rapport with you and members of your team.

02:45:59.040 | So I'm going to check it out.

02:46:01.360 | Lord knows I need help improving my communications

02:46:04.760 | in certain domains of life.

02:46:07.280 | Believe me, I get the memos.

02:46:09.360 | Fact, what other writing projects are you involved in?

02:46:17.120 | If any.

02:46:18.560 | - We've been toying with this companion operations manual

02:46:23.560 | for tactical empathy, which getting it right is important.

02:46:31.360 | So it's sort of a companion book

02:46:34.660 | to never split the difference.

02:46:36.360 | That's probably at least a year and a half out

02:46:38.380 | from being done.

02:46:39.220 | So in the meantime, we just do,

02:46:41.280 | we do a lot of online training.

02:46:42.900 | You know, we got a newsletter we put out weekly

02:46:46.720 | for people to get our latest cutting edge application

02:46:50.960 | thoughts as much as possible.

02:46:52.260 | We're putting information out that we charge for a lot

02:46:55.440 | and we put out a lot of free stuff.

02:46:57.820 | You know, I'm throwing out ideas on Instagram,

02:47:01.500 | but we're constantly trying to put information out there

02:47:04.120 | so that people can collaborate better.

02:47:07.680 | So specifically, we just finished a book

02:47:09.460 | for residential real estate agents,

02:47:11.920 | a friend of mine, Steve Shoal,

02:47:13.960 | we put that out last November.

02:47:16.240 | That's sort of niched,

02:47:18.200 | but it's mostly the Black Swan method for real estate agents

02:47:20.860 | 'cause every conversation they're in

02:47:22.880 | is a difficult emotional conversation.

02:47:25.400 | Sell of a house is one of the most stressful moments

02:47:27.940 | of anybody's life, selling or buying.

02:47:31.000 | So we just put that out.

02:47:33.160 | In the meantime, you know,

02:47:34.440 | we're spreading the gospel as much as possible.

02:47:38.160 | - Well, we'll certainly point out the various places

02:47:40.520 | people can find you and the different venues

02:47:43.200 | for learning more.

02:47:45.560 | I want to say that numerous times

02:47:48.960 | throughout today's conversation,

02:47:50.680 | you threw out the words sounds like as an opener.

02:47:54.200 | And I have to say,

02:47:55.320 | I have this kind of crazy idea in the back of my mind.

02:47:57.860 | You know, I believe that simple field tested tools

02:48:02.860 | are immensely powerful,

02:48:06.220 | not just for resolving the negotiations,

02:48:08.060 | but really for changing the way that people interact

02:48:10.040 | with each other and themselves.

02:48:11.180 | And, you know, if I have one wish for the world

02:48:15.520 | on the basis of our conversation,

02:48:17.780 | how amazing would it be if kids learned early on

02:48:20.840 | to talk to one another from that sounds like perspective?

02:48:26.340 | Because I think that would naturally orient them

02:48:29.220 | toward listening or at least offering a hypothesis

02:48:33.700 | of what they heard and how poorly they might be listening

02:48:37.060 | and then getting a defensive stance response

02:48:40.060 | that informs them about the accuracy or lack of accuracy

02:48:45.060 | and on and on.

02:48:46.160 | I feel like the sounds like question,

02:48:49.620 | sounds like you feel blank or sounds like you believe blank

02:48:53.240 | just seems to me like one of the most potent tools

02:48:58.240 | in the universe.

02:49:00.740 | And I sure wish that all adults would implement it,

02:49:03.860 | but that kids would learn about it too.

02:49:06.540 | - Yeah, that's a great thought.

02:49:08.800 | You know, how do we teach them at a younger age

02:49:11.900 | that listening is actually an effective thing to do?

02:49:14.940 | It's actually a way to think things through also.

02:49:18.780 | So yeah, I agree.

02:49:19.940 | I mean, we have a magic wand, right?

02:49:22.820 | - Exactly.

02:49:25.380 | Well, Chris, I wanna thank you so much for your time today.

02:49:29.420 | I mean, you've joined us on this tour

02:49:31.860 | of so many different facets of your work prior and present,

02:49:35.100 | and you let us get a little glimpse

02:49:37.120 | into the portal of your future work too,

02:49:39.640 | which I'm eagerly awaiting.

02:49:41.220 | I also just wanna thank you for everything that you do.

02:49:44.040 | You've always struck me as such a giver of knowledge.

02:49:48.300 | And you know, you can't put a value on that.

02:49:51.960 | You're constantly putting knowledge into the world

02:49:54.220 | on Instagram, your book, fireside and courses

02:49:59.220 | and on and on gleaned from your experience

02:50:02.640 | in very, very intense circumstances,

02:50:05.060 | but really with an eye toward people

02:50:06.720 | getting the most out of that for their daily lives,

02:50:09.420 | which hopefully don't involve hostage negotiations,

02:50:12.260 | unless they're a hostage negotiator.

02:50:14.960 | So I just wanna say thank you ever so much for what you do

02:50:18.740 | and for being such a phenomenal communicator.

02:50:21.940 | And also thank you for doing into that

02:50:24.100 | late night FM DJ voice.

02:50:26.440 | [Chris laughing]

02:50:28.740 | - Yeah, you know, I've been,

02:50:30.220 | I wanted to be here sitting with you,

02:50:33.300 | being interviewed on your podcast

02:50:35.620 | since I first discovered it, you.

02:50:37.820 | - Thank you.

02:50:38.660 | - Several years ago, and it's a privilege to be here.

02:50:40.260 | I really, really, and I love what you're doing

02:50:43.780 | in getting actionable, usable tools into the world

02:50:47.820 | so people can navigate more effectively.

02:50:50.680 | - Thank you, right back at you.

02:50:52.060 | Come back again.

02:50:52.900 | - All right, thanks.

02:50:54.500 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:50:56.360 | with Chris Voss.

02:50:57.680 | I hope you found it to be as interesting

02:50:59.380 | and as actionable as I did.

02:51:01.740 | To find links to Chris's website and to his excellent book,

02:51:04.800 | "Never Split the Difference,"

02:51:06.180 | as well as to his social media handles,

02:51:08.060 | please see the links in the show note captions.

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02:51:41.940 | Not on today's episode, but on many previous episodes

02:51:44.440 | of the Huberman Lab Podcast, we discuss supplements.

02:51:47.320 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

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02:52:38.840 | On all of those platforms,

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02:53:16.400 | Thank you once again for joining for today's discussion

02:53:18.640 | with Chris Voss.

02:53:19.720 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:53:22.000 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:53:23.800 | [upbeat music]

02:53:26.380 | (upbeat music)

Chris Voss: How to Succeed at Hard Conversations | Huberman Lab Podcast

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