One of the Secrets to Negotiation | Chris Voss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | In assessing how serious somebody is, you said, it's fair, you called it the F word.

00:00:08.360 | I like that.

00:00:09.360 | I'll never forget that.

00:00:10.400 | Just ask a fair question, like, how much money do you think you deserve?

00:00:14.480 | Or would that be a good example of a very direct question?

00:00:19.200 | Or is it, how likely are you to walk away if we don't give you the money?

00:00:24.160 | Because I could imagine there's all sorts of reasons why people would be dishonest about

00:00:28.560 | answering those questions.

00:00:29.560 | Well, and then how much money do you think you deserve is a really good question.

00:00:35.920 | Not necessarily what the answer is, but how they answer it.

00:00:41.200 | You're going to get how quickly they fire back and whether or not they stop and think

00:00:45.040 | about it.

00:00:48.120 | How and what questions typically are best to judge the other side's reaction, and the

00:00:55.680 | answer is secondary, because the how or what question causes what we would refer to as

00:01:02.700 | deep thinking, slow thinking, Danny Kahneman, behavioral economics, thinking fast and slow.

00:01:10.280 | Slow thinking is in-depth thinking.

00:01:12.940 | You ask a how or what question to make the other side think first and judge their reaction

00:01:19.000 | to how they think about it.

00:01:21.560 | And do they actually think about it, or do they fire right back at you?

00:01:25.920 | It gives you a clearer picture of who you're dealing with, where the outcome is going to

00:01:30.000 | go.

00:01:31.000 | How much money do you think that you deserve if they immediately, you know, $10 million?

00:01:36.260 | So this is, I got a shakedown artist on the other side.

00:01:40.360 | Or they say, all right, if they stop and think about it and they give you a thoughtful answer,

00:01:44.760 | that's a completely different person on the other side.

00:01:47.880 | You're asking a question to get a, to diagnose how they respond first, the answer is second.

00:01:55.840 | And sometimes I, if it's a cutthroat on the other side, I'm going to start peppering them

00:02:01.000 | with how and what questions just to wear them out.

00:02:05.440 | That's passive aggression.

00:02:06.920 | If I, if I got a cutthroat aggressor on the other side, I'm going to drop into passive

00:02:11.660 | aggressive behavior to slow them down and wear them out.

00:02:17.600 | One of my hostage negotiation heroes, a guy named Johnny Pico, was John Domenico Pico,

00:02:24.600 | not Johnny like Johnny Rockets, Italian Johnny, John Domenico, got all the Western hostages

00:02:30.820 | out of Beirut in the mid 80s, wrote a book called Man Without a Gun, negotiated in person

00:02:38.760 | face to face with Hezbollah, the only guy that ever did that, got everybody out.

00:02:44.000 | And in his book, he wrote one of the great secrets to negotiation is learning how to

00:02:48.400 | exhaust the other side.

00:02:51.720 | And when you've got a really dangerous adversary on the other side of the table, you don't

00:02:55.560 | go nose to nose.

00:02:56.560 | You don't argue.

00:02:57.560 | You don't, you're not combative.

00:02:58.560 | You wear them out, exhaust them.

00:03:02.040 | And if you get somebody really combative or cutthroat on the other side, start peppering

00:03:06.840 | them with how and what questions because to even think about the answer tires them out.

00:03:13.400 | And it's passive aggressive and it's deferential and it really works.

00:03:20.080 | So if the person on the opposite side of a high friction negotiation is aggressive, the

00:03:26.440 | goal is to slow things down, fatigue them, and get them to just either relent or to reveal

00:03:35.760 | something that's a loophole.

00:03:39.520 | If I have to make the deal, then I'm going to wear them out.

00:03:45.080 | I'm interested in drilling a little bit further into this process of wearing them down and

00:03:50.200 | the passive aggressive way of reducing the aggressor's stance.

00:03:56.800 | And I want to highlight for people that what we're talking about here isn't manipulation

00:04:01.720 | to extract something.

00:04:02.960 | We're actually talking about the reverse.

00:04:03.960 | We're talking about a bad actor who's aggressive and trying to defang that bad actor.

00:04:12.680 | What does that process of wearing them down look like or sound like?

00:04:16.840 | Could you give us a couple of examples of, let's say I'm the bad actor, we could play

00:04:20.840 | this game.

00:04:21.840 | I won't be very good at this.

00:04:24.120 | And I am saying, look, I want x number of dollars by this date or you're not going to

00:04:34.160 | get what you want.

00:04:35.280 | They're going to die or disappear.

00:04:38.280 | Is that simple?

00:04:39.560 | And I'm a stonewall kind of approach.

00:04:42.920 | What is the approach that you take to wear that person down?

00:04:46.800 | Well, they're going to be questions that are mostly how and what.

00:04:52.480 | And they're going to be legitimate questions, which is how do I know you're going to follow

00:04:59.200 | through?

00:05:02.560 | What does that look like?

00:05:05.160 | Like if I do what you want, how do I know you're going to follow through?

00:05:11.800 | So get them to talk about the alternative.

00:05:13.760 | Okay.

00:05:14.760 | So if you were to, well, if you deliver by that date, I'm going to pass them to you

00:05:21.000 | without fail.

00:05:22.000 | So they're just getting kind of brief answers where the person is just, again, this kind

00:05:25.600 | of like rigid stonewall approach.

00:05:27.840 | Yeah.

00:05:28.840 | Well, and so there's a phrase that we use all the time, vision drives decision.

00:05:34.360 | So if you're really going to comply, if I give in, and when I said, how do I know you're

00:05:39.480 | going to follow through, I'm not talking about the threat.

00:05:42.120 | I'm not trying to get you to clarify the threat.

00:05:44.840 | I'm trying to get you to clarify what implementation looks like.

00:05:49.960 | So I need to know I'm based on your reaction to that.

00:05:55.400 | If you plan on following through, if I comply, you will already have that in your head or

00:06:01.840 | be open to it.

00:06:03.560 | Vision drives decision.

00:06:04.560 | You've thought it through in advance.

00:06:06.360 | What does letting the hostages go look like?

00:06:11.160 | If you have no intention of ever releasing the hostage, if I follow through, then you're

00:06:17.760 | not going to be able to answer the question and you're probably going to throw it back

00:06:20.680 | on me really quickly.

00:06:24.280 | And so then now I know like, all right, so you got no plans on complying.

00:06:29.160 | If I give in, you're not going to comply.

00:06:32.320 | So I, but you still want the money.

00:06:35.600 | Then I'm going to ask, well, how am I supposed to pay you if you don't have any plans for

00:06:41.920 | complying?

00:06:44.400 | And if you're willing to entertain a conversation about what compliance looks like, there was

00:06:50.880 | a kidnapping that my unit worked just before I was in it in Venezuela, where they weren't

00:06:58.240 | entirely sure that the bad guys were going to, the FARC I think had the hostage.

00:07:04.240 | They agreed on an exchange point to let the hostage go that was some distance from where

00:07:10.400 | they had a pretty good idea the hostage was being held.

00:07:14.120 | So they figured they're not going to drag the hostage all the way to this river crossing

00:07:17.080 | if they're not going to let them go.

00:07:18.080 | It's just too much effort.

00:07:20.480 | And then it was one of the few times there was going to be a simultaneously, theoretically

00:07:24.680 | a simultaneous exchange, but they're going to have to send the money across the river

00:07:28.840 | before the hostage was let go.

00:07:31.480 | So if we agree to this, all right, so they're not going to drag this guy all the way to

00:07:35.320 | this river crossing.

00:07:36.320 | If they don't plan on letting them go, and if it's a long way to drag them and they got

00:07:41.720 | their money, do they want to drag them back?

00:07:44.400 | Like even if they're ambivalent, once they get there, if they've gone through all the

00:07:47.520 | effort to get to the meeting location and the hostage is there, we've now just increased

00:07:52.520 | the chances significantly they're going to go ahead and comply because it's a pain in

00:07:55.960 | the neck to take them back.

00:07:58.340 | This is all human nature stuff, human nature investment.

00:08:01.880 | How do you get them to engage in actions and behaviors and then verbal commitments that

00:08:08.440 | actually mean something to them?

00:08:10.080 | When I was working kidnappings, the very last thing we'd always have the family get the

00:08:15.120 | bad guys to say it, last, not first, but last, was we'd actually get a verbal promise to

00:08:21.680 | let them go.

00:08:23.440 | Again, at the end, because we've been talking to them long enough at this point in time,

00:08:28.880 | we got a pretty good idea of what they sound like when they're lying and what they sound

00:08:31.680 | like when they're telling the truth.

00:08:34.280 | If somebody tells the truth, they pretty much tend to tell the truth the same way every

00:08:37.560 | time, if they tell the truth.

00:08:41.200 | You talk to somebody long enough, you got a line on, do they ever tell the truth?

00:08:46.040 | If they do, what does it sound like?

00:08:47.680 | People lie 20 ways, they tell the truth one way.

00:08:53.040 | We've been coaching in negotiations with the kidnappers long enough that we know what they

00:08:56.600 | sound like when they tell the truth.

00:08:58.760 | When they ask at the very end, if we paid your promise to let them go, it's not that

00:09:04.960 | they answered, but how they answered it.

00:09:08.660 | That'll be the last thing to seal the deal.

00:09:10.520 | How do you continually stack the odds in your favor for implementation?

00:09:13.360 | [MUSIC]

One of the Secrets to Negotiation | Chris Voss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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