How to Win: Master FBI Negotiator’s Secrets for Getting What You Want | Chris Voss

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So let's dive in. Empathy is a world-changing skill.
True empathy is a demonstration of understanding. Soft interrogation is 14 times more effective because somebody feels understood, they're bonding with me and they're going to tell me the truth.

Be nice or friendly or even charming

because in our default mode,

we're going to be direct and honest.

You're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind.

You can do the little things

to put yourself in a positive frame of mind.

I think of it as mental hygiene.

Your currency has to be authenticity,

credibility,

that people can count on what you say. Today I have an incredible, incredible story.
It's actually somebody I've been following for a while, and I love bringing them to the show. I want you to hear from him.
Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator. How incredible is that? He's now the CEO of Black Swan Group, and they actually help people negotiate better.
He's a co-author of a book I highly recommend, Never Split the Difference. We're also going to talk about his documentary.
But how did you get started, Chris? Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh my God, I'm going to be a FBI hostage negotiator. How does that work, Chris? Yeah, it was kind of crazy.
I mean, one left turn after another, which is, I've always looked at life as an adventure. And I was a police officer.
I was going to be on a SWAT team with a police department when I got the offer from the FBI. So I joined the FBI and then I was on a SWAT team, on the SWAT team, FBI Pittsburgh.
And then in the process of trying out for the Bureau's hostage rescue team, which is the FBI equivalent of the Navy SEALs, and there are former SEALs and former Delta guys on that team. And I reinjured my knee, and I love crisis response.
Life is about making decisions. John F.
Kennedy had a quote-unquote comic ago about the risks and costs of comfortable inaction. And so even though I knew I wasn't going to stay in a SWAT team, you know, we had negotiators and I like crisis response, make a decision.
And the negotiators, you know, that job didn't look that hard. We worked hard all the time.
We repelled off buildings and all that crazy stuff. And the negotiators, they showed up and they talked on the phone.
I figured, I could do that. How can I be? I talk every day.
And then getting on the team was a bit of a circuitous journey. I was initially rejected.
I want to hear that story was the cold calling. Let's go there.
Yeah. All right.
So I figured because I wanted it was enough. And I was impressed with my own background.
You know, everybody should be impressed with yourself. You should have some self-confidence.
So I went up to the woman who was in charge of the negotiation team in New York. And I just went, ta-da.
Here I am, Chris Voss. Want to be a hostage negotiator.

And she went, sure you do.

Everybody does.

And she started walking through my experience.

She says, yeah, I know who you are.

I know you were a cop.

Were you a negotiator in a police department?

I'm like, no.

And she said, all right, so do you got any psychology degree, anything related to that?

Nope.

Got any experience at all?

Anywhere in your resume along these lines?

I'm going to go. And she's like, okay, no, you can't do it.
We don't need you. You're eminently unqualified.
I was eminently unqualified. So I remember just being really frustrated a moment.
I'm sure I felt like stamping my feet and like a five-year-old going like, but I want it. So instead I said, there's got to be something I could do.
She said, you know, there is. Go volunteer on the suicide hotline.
And until you've done that, stop bothering me. You know, New York chick.
I love tough New York chicks. Very, very, I love tough people.
My mom was tough. So I went, I volunteered on the hotline, and I wanted to have been there for a while before I got back to her to show that I was committed.
So after I'd gone through the training, been there about five months, I came back to her office, to her desk, and I said, hey, you know, I just want you to know I've been on the hotline for about the last five months. And she's like, you can't.
And I'm like, no. I mean, you told me to.
She says, and I tell everybody to do that. Nobody does it.
What hotline do you want? And I said, well, helpline. She says, that's the one I volunteered on.
And so there were five other people in line in front of me she'd given advice to. None of them had lifted a finger to do anything that she told them to do.
I take initiative and I take instruction. I mean, that's what it really boils down to.
And she lead me over everybody else. And a couple months later, I was in a negotiation training at Quantico.
It was amazing. I loved SWAT.
And negotiation was 10 times more satisfying, more complicated, more nuanced than anything else I'd ever done. And I've been addicted ever since.

What you're basically saying, and we see it again and again,

there is no traffic jam in the extra mile. If you're willing to be the person that will go the extra mile,

that's where you get out of the people's pile, right?

Suddenly you differentiate yourself.

So what did you learn, though, from being on those calls in the suicide line? I mean, that's not easy either. And I'm sure there's a lot of learning from that too.
Yeah. And I went there to learn.
I mean, if I have any advantages, because I've been asked, did you always want to be a natural born? I'm coachable. You want to get ahead, be coachable and try.
And so it was emotional intelligence. They didn't call it then.
They use the term empathy, you know, now I use tactical empathy for a variety of reasons. But I get there and right off the bat, they say, your phone calls are limited to 20 minutes.
And I was like, what? No. I read Richard Branson's book about his early days.
He's trying to talk somebody out of suicide overnight. You know, this takes eight hours.
People are up all night with people. And they said, no, as a matter of fact, if you follow our training, you'll get it done in less than 20 minutes.
And they were right. It's at least a 14x accelerator to a decision when you use empathy.
And it's very counterintuitive. It seems indirect.
It seems imprecise. And it's astonishing, like literally 14 times faster.
So when I started doing it on the hotline, I remember thinking, I wonder if this will work in everyday life. Is it only people in crisis that if they feel understood, suddenly they're in decision-making mode 14 times faster? So I really just learned to apply it in my day-to-day life, learned the nuances, the differences as to why a certain skill works in one way on the hotline, and yet it makes your spouse burst into flames.
I had that happen. But then I thought, well, it's not the skill, it's the way it's being applied.
So I've constantly been intrigued by it since. And I think the main thing that I learned is that true empathy, which is not sympathy or compassion, true empathy is a demonstration of understanding without agreement.
It's a 14 times accelerator to getting a decision clearing a problem. It's ridiculous.
You do talk about it, I think both in your book and in your film, basically you say, hostages don't necessarily remember what you said, but they'll say, I like how you said it, right? Or something along these lines. Can you share an experience? You know, my former boss, Gary Nessner, that's what he said in the doc.
And, you know, decisions are made on gut instinct. I read a long time ago, you know, we take in information visually, we take in information through our ears, but our decisions are gut.
And if you really dig down into it, that's emotion.

You make a decision based on what you care about that, by definition, makes decision-making emotion.

You can follow directions without emotion, but you can't make decisions without it. There's a lot of neuroscience that just backs that up.

So if I get you to feel good, it means that you'll make a decision in my favor or with me.

Just shoot through the moon.

One of our phrases is never be mean to someone who could hurt you by doing nothing. So what does that mean? You were mean to them.
They decided passive aggressive. They're like, nah, there's nothing I could do.
And that's pretty much true with everybody that you deal with. If you're talking to anybody, they can hurt you by simple inaction.
Nah, it's out of my hands. No, I don't know.
Somebody else's responsibility. It's not my job.
Whatever it is. Think about how often it's true.
So the flip side is, imagine what they could do if they felt like. And that's how, getting back to your original line, people don't remember what you said.
They remember how you made it feel. Maya Angelou, quote, so many, it shows up all over the world.
Put somebody in the right emotional mindset and you're waving a magic wand on getting things done. Tell us a story, Chris, because your book is packed with stories.
Tell us a fascinating story where you managed to make somebody basically feel something and actually take action in your favor because of that? How about where I waved the magic wand? You know, I stumbled over this one just a couple of months ago. And now we got a number of phrases that we refer to as the magic wand phrases.
Don't fly home and I'm on the road all the time. What does that mean? My luggage gets lost all the time.
And I'm a direct flight back into Vegas. And it's funny.
I flew into Vegas before I lived there and I get excited. I fly into Vegas now and I just get calm because I'm going home.
So I fly in direct flight, standing at the luggage car, so I'm in this port of the schmuck is standing there. And our bags do not come up.
Got to head over to Lost Luggage. And fortunately, even though I'm exhausted, I'm in a really good mood because I'm home.
I'm going to get a good night's sleep that night. And that was the differentiator.
And I'm getting ready to walk in the Lost Luggage room. And this is a tough spot to work.
These people get yelled at for stuff that they didn't do. And everybody that

goes in there is exhausted and angry. And as I'm walking in, because I'm in a good mood, I'm thinking, what are these people saying to themselves? True tactical empathy is saying what is really on the other person's mind.
And I know that they're saying to themselves based on circumstances. These idiots think we got magic wands.
They think that if we walk in and say my bag is lost, I'll wave a magic wand to prove it'll be there. So I walk in, this woman says, how can I help you? And I go, I need you to wave a magic wand.
And I'm playful and I'm upbeat. And she says, what's going on, your luggage? And she'd give her the number.
She says, it says it's here. And I go, well, it isn't because I've been standing out there at the carousel for the last 15 minutes and it ain't there.
And she says, come with me. And she comes out from around the counter.
Now, this is not the first time my suitcase has been lost. And I have never seen anybody come from around a counter.
Normally they take a number and they say, when we find it, we'll ship it to you. And it's at least a 24 hour time.
Like, does it come with me? And she heads for the council. And I'm like, okay.
And we're on our way. And she says, what's it look like? And I go, this one's big brother.
I got matching green suitcases with these big white duct tape stripes on them with my name. She says, what if somebody walked off with it? By accident.
I go like, oh, no, that ain't going to happen because it's got these big stripes of my name and I'm going to see it from a hundred yards away. And then I got to take it by accident.
So we walk over to the carousel, which has stopped spinning now. It's been so long.
She climbs up on the carousel, and then she goes down the ramp. The suitcases come out.
Now, this is not Union OSHA approved. There ain't no way that they're allowed to do that normally.
And I see her go down there, and she parts the plastic curtains and looks around. Like I've never seen underneath the airport, but I'm told it looks like a superhighway of conveyor belt.
And she comes walking back out the ramp. She says, wait here.
And this other guy standing there watching us go down too. Like he's wondering what he should be doing.
And so she takes off and she walks about 50 yards away and disappears in the side door. And I'm standing, I'm standing, I'm standing, pretty soon the carousel starts spinning again.
And pretty soon my suitcase pops up. And so does his.
And I'm like, I've never seen this. And I want to stick around.
And I want to wait for her and thank her. And I wait about five, 10 minutes.
I don't know how long I waited. Finally, I got to go.
You know, I got to get home. There's another young lady standing there.
I say, you know, you tell her, thank you so much for me. I so appreciate that.
And so I head for the door. And just as I'm almost to the door, she pops out of the one that she came out of and she walks by me and she goes, how's that for waving a magic wand? And she gives me a high five.
This is so good, Chris. And I think that's such a great example that when you make people feel heard, understood, they're willing to massively walk an extra mile for you.
It's incredible negotiation tactic. And it makes the world more beautiful and friendly and kind, which I think is a lot of focus in Black Swan as well, right? So tell us more about that because that's sometimes, again, it's not intuitive and you want to just flip, but if you actually put their lens on, it's not only what you say, it's how you say it.
Talk to us more about it. Well, you know, and it can be intuitive.
Intuitive is just based on whether or not we've learned it. I'm a 100% believer that everything is learnable.
Daniel Coyle maybe wrote a book called The Talent Code, which I'm a fan of that book. He's written a couple of books that I really like, The Talent Code and The Culture Code.
But he contends that everything is learned, that we're a total blank slate. And then our intuition is the supercomputer

sum total of our knowledge, experiences.

And separating our intuition from our limbic system,

our amygdala is a challenge.

What am I afraid of, but what's my gut really telling me?

So it can be learned.

How do you learn it?

Get some of the instruction and try it out.

And it's a combination of attitude.

What's the attitude playful?

A Harvard professor whose name escapes me at the moment did this great TED talk called, I think, The Happy Secret to Better Work. And he said that you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind.
Now, I believe that that's true. And Stephen Kotler, a big world expert on the mindset of flow, he talks about flow, which is your most capable performance level, being borderline euphoric, highly positive.
You can do the little things to put yourself in a positive frame of mind. I was a little bit lucky that day because I was home and I was relieved.
Despite a long day of travel, I had something to look forward to. So I'm in a positive mindset.
And then playful. Playful is a little bit of a hack.
Emotions are contagious. When you're in a good mood,

for neuroscience reasons, not psychology reasons, but for neuroscience reasons,

emotions are contagious. Not overwhelmingly so, but you're going to get every advantage you can.

So if you smile at somebody, if you get a playful tone of voice, you're making the two of you

smarter in the moment. The flip side of it is if you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind, what happens when you're in a negative frame of mind? You're at least 30% dumber.
And so there's a downward spiral there. So how do you trigger the upward spiral? It takes work.
It's training. It's not a natural mindset.
I think of it as mental hygiene. Did I brush my teeth this morning? Of course.
But wait a minute, I brushed them last night. Does that mean I got to brush them again today? Well, yeah, you know, self-survival because your natural systems are going to put you in a negative mind.
So the first thing is, is allowing yourself to believe that you can build your intuition. Then you start to build it with approach, attitude, upbeat.
It's not giddy annoying. And it's not unlimited.
There are times when you need calm. You need smooth.
You need relaxed. But most of the time, you need to be upbeat.
Then that opens you up at that moment. What's empathy? What's in the other side's brain? What are they going to say? What are they saying to you? What they're probably saying in the lost luggage thing is these people think we got magic wand or whatever it might be.
You get ready to say something where, look, I need you to help me solve this. What's you the person say immediately? That ain't my problem.
That's your problem. That's what they say in their head.
That's their reaction. So how do I increase the likelihood that you're going to work with me? I say, look, this is my problem.
This is not your problem. This is my problem.
I'm coaching a guy yesterday, as a matter of fact. He's got a vendor.
He knows he owes his vendor money, but he's not getting the value out of the service that he wants, and he wants to maintain a relationship. And that's what he told me.
He said, so what do I do? He said, well, first of all, you got to tell him you want to maintain a relationship because his first thought is you want to fire me. How am I going to make the rent next month? I got bills to pay.
They start that way. Look, I want to solve this because I want to team the relationship.
Now, what's he going to say if I haven't been getting the value that I've been paying for, haven't been getting it? That person's, because they're human on the other end of the line, they're going to say, well, it's your problem. That ain't my problem.
You know, you underutilized it. You did it wrong.
You did this. You did that.
That's what they're going to say. So I told them, how do you start out saying, well, this is my problem.
It's my problem. It's not your problem.
And when you get ready to tell them that their service has been inadequate, They're going to think you're a jerk. So this is my problem.
And when youth get ready to tell them that their service has been inadequate, they're going to think you're a jerk. So this is my problem.
And I know when I say this to you, I'm going to sound like a complete jerk. These are the things that are going to go through their head or are going.
You just say it out loud. Don't be afraid of it fearlessly.
And then you lay it on them. Hey, I'm pausing here for a second.
I hope you're enjoying this amazing conversation. Don't forget to subscribe and download.
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Now back to the show. Would you use the same thing? I'm sure a lot of our audience is wondering, can I use this to also negotiate a sale or negotiate my salary or negotiate an offer? What would you say to them? Yeah, absolutely.
At one point or another, we got a video. Our newsletter is Negotiation Mastery.
Our YouTube channel is Negotiation Mastery. You can do certs on our YouTube channel or in our newsletter articles.
And we're going to hit that topic exactly, because this is what people are struggling with on a daily basis. How do I negotiate a rate? Well, the key issue to that is how do you get the other side to see you different? How do you become aware of how they do see you and how do you change it? Here's how they do see you.
And this is the harsh reality of life. From your boss's perspective, your employer's perspective, no employee ever goes to them or walks into their office to offer to help.
They always go in because they want something for themselves. They're conditioned that when the employee comes walking in the door, employees are selfish.
They never come in here and say, hey, boss, how can I make your life better? I don't have enough to do. I want to do more.
Nobody says that. They say, I've been doing so much.
Isn't all my hard work worth something? That may be true. Simultaneously, you got a human being on the other end of the line, their condition, you're selfish.
How do you deal with that? Say, look, I know I'm just going to sound like another selfish employee that's coming in here trying to grab with both hands. Articulate the negative that they either are thinking or could be thinking probably that you contributed to in no way, shape, or form.
That doesn't mean they're not still in their head. Don't deny the elephant in the room based on the entirety of the circumstances.
Just call it out. How does an employer pay you more? Well, if you're ambitious and you want to make a bigger contribution that's even more viable, how do you do that? Two questions that are critical.
One of them, always give attribution. Close friend of mine, Tom McCabe, we both grew up in the same small town in Iowa.
Tom is the head of an international bank, one of the most successful people I know. In all of his job interviews, he's always said, how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of the organization?

Now, number one, you got to meet, and he does.

But number two, suddenly your boss is like, holy cow.

He just asked me how not only can you be a team player, but how can you be a team player that makes the most impact positively for the entire organization? Like you're seeing a future. You're the definition of a team player that makes the most impact positively for the entire organization.

Like you're seeing a future.

You're the definition of a team player.

That immediately transforms you in front of their eyes.

It's the magic wand.

It's astonishing.

I'm doing a Zoom call for large corporation, mid-pandemic, all their salespeople.

And the CEO has got me on because he's a fan of how never split the difference. Tactical empathy applies to sales.
So we get to the Q&A section and he's the salespeople. So they're ambitious, competitive.
Sure enough, one of them says, how do we get this guy to pay us more money? And I'm sure collectively, a couple hundred of them are, everybody holds their breath. I know the CEO is holding his breath.

I said, here's what you do.

You go into his office and you say this question,

how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects

critical to the strategic future of this organization?

He immediately interrupts and says,

I wish everybody on this call would ask me that.

That's how effective it is.

You got to mean it.

Everything that I advise is your currency has to be authenticity, credibility, authenticity that people can count on what you say. If you didn't say it, but if you said it, you can take it to the bank.
So if you really want to play in a big game, every employer is looking for those people. And what happens to the one in 10 that It gives you those great projects and stiffs you? You know what you just did? You just gave yourself a phenomenal resume of achievement and you can go out and shop yourself on the open market because there's the extra mile is not a traffic jam.
And the right person is going to hire you. If they stiffed you on it, you're in a bad place anyway, and it's time for you to move on.
I love what you just said. I think the intention is so, so, so important.
The intention in which you're going into every conversation, what you feel before it, how you look at it, it's just so critical. And then you slowly build this muscle to make that almost an automatic response from your side, to always come with that intention, to always look at the other person's lens and to use massively tactical empathy, which is so fascinating.
And I do want to take you to the movie documentary, Tactical Empathy, which again, I literally just reviewed it and said, this is a must see in my mind. And I did get literally chills.
You talked about the Columbia story, which basically you either have an army or you're poor, right? And that creates hostage and you literally need to negotiate like your life depends on it, which is a whole different level of fear, right? Talk to us a little bit about making this documentary and some of these examples, Chris. All right.
So it's on Amazon and there's some places outside of North America. It's not available.
I wish that weren't true, but it's on Amazon. And what we're also doing, for those that have watched it, if you email us and let us know that you've seen it, then we're going to give you a credit to attend some of our online training.
So we'll give you a direct credit if you watch the doc, because we think it should get out there. Now, why should you watch it? To me, the origins of what we do is so cool.
To be using the negotiation methodology in your day-to-day life that has been shown to work on tariffs, the depth and the origin of it is cool. And we talk about several cases.
Not everything is a success. There is no guarantee of success.
There's only the best chance of success. Again, to borrow a phrase from my mentor, Gary Nessner, he used to always say, this is the best chance of success.
What does that mean? It works more than anything else does. Navigating emotions and high intensity situation.
So we talk about a case in Washington, D.C., where a guy drove into the middle of D.C. claiming to have four bombs, and we saved his life.
And we talk about a case in the Philippines that went bad. Just before that, I had a huge success in the Philippines, and the next thing just turned into a train wreck.
The Burnham-Somberro case. And Gratia Burnham, the last remaining American hostage that was wounded and survived, she's got a couple of books out.

One of them is In the Presence of My Enemies.

Moving stuff.

But what we learned from it and how we raised the level of our gain, because our skills were inadequate.

And if you crash and burn, your choice is to lay there and feel sorry for yourself, post-traumatic stress, or to get up, post-traumatic stress gain. Everybody talks about post-traumatic stress disorder, but everybody gets crushed sometimes.
And what happens when you finally decide to pick yourself up, do you take yourself to the next level? it's my philosophy that the unfortunate nature of the harsh reality of life is

that's what it takes to really take you to the next level. It's my philosophy that the unfortunate nature, the harsh reality of life is that's what it takes to really take it to the next level.
And that's when, after that case, started to collaborate with Harvard, program on negotiation, Bob Mnookin, the head of the program, and learning from the Harvard guys. And they were enlightening.
I gave a bit of a hard time at the beginning. I never split the difference, probably too hard of a time.
But I learned, they taught me so much and they validated so much of what we were doing. And so we show that, how that really evolved into business negotiation.
Then we got some other stuff going on in there too. So it's a fun ride.
And for me, it's the hope for the fact that empathy is a world-changing skill. Wow.
And you do give their example, even from big things, like, how can I agree with Al-Qaeda or with the Palestinian territory, you know, terrorists, but it is more about making them feel like you're trying to understand, if I'm not mistaken. Can you talk a little bit about it? Yeah, you know, I mean, making somebody feel understood is transformative.
There's a difference between being understood and being made to feel understood. Now, let's take somebody from Hamas.
I'm not going to agree with how they're implementing what they want, but I can say what they're feeling. And I can say you feel that you're being crushed by an occupying colonial power that's bent on your extermination.
Now, I never said I agreed. And I never said that's true.
You know, the caveat up front is you feel. Now, what happens when someone feels understood? The transformative nature of it is neuroscience.
When you feel understood, you're going to get a dose of both oxytocin and serotonin. What does that do? Oxytocin bonds you to me, and oxytocin inclines you to tell the truth.
That's why that whole approach, soft interrogation versus harsh interrogation, soft interrogation is 14 times more effective. That's why I keep getting this 14X thing.
Because somebody feels understood, they're bonded with me, and they're going to tell me the truth. And then serotonin is a drug of satisfaction.
A tremendous amount of dissatisfaction which refers people to violent action by simply not being heard. Violence is a choice when the other previous choices have failed.
Just an escalation, an inability to solve problems. So how much of it can I deactivate earlier in the process if I can put you into the feeling understood mode, clearing your anger, deactivating your anger, where you're dumber.
The other thing about anger in terms of being wrong is you get very self-righteous and you're even more convinced that you're right. And the self-righteousness of anger and the indignation is a downward spiral, which is why people start choosing violence.
So now, what am I looking for? I'm looking for solutions. I'm not looking for justice.
You ain't never going to get justice in anybody's eyes. That's a way to make it an unending cycle of violence.
Let's talk about how we can collaboratively work together to find a better answer. Because if we're not collaborative, we're never going to find a better answer.
And life is not a zero-sum game, but you can convince yourself that it is when you're in this downward spiral of self-righteousness. And I do want to dig there because right now you're a professor at Harvard Law School and then I think you've been on, I don't know, CNN, Fox, NPR, right? Times, et cetera.
I think one of the things that you talk about is what actually needs to happen in negotiation, in practice, based on the practice that you learn versus the theory that has been taught for a while. And you talk about some tools that I probably didn't hear much.
Can you talk a little bit about some of these tools, like getting people to say no instead of yes, which is what I learned all my life, right? So I want to talk a little bit about some of these things that you found through practice. One of the short hacks, one of the short mechanisms that will clear up a massive amount of friction in everybody's life is switching from yes to no as the operative answer.
And instead of saying, do you agree, I'll say, do you disagree? Instead of saying, we'd just still like to engage in this project. I'll say, have you given up on this project? We actually have a list of the 10 most common yes-oriented questions switched to no-oriented questions just to accelerate your life.
And that little hack, it is the first thing that everybody comes to work for me to learn.

As soon as they discover it, like we try to teach them at work and we make them in my company, we use the skills on each other all the time.

So they're like, okay, you know, I'll do this.

But then they go home and suddenly they're using it on their family and their friends

and like, wow, my life, wow.

It's a sudden accelerator.

So, you know, the first one, counterintuitive one is, switch from yes to no. Yes is a word that's used to trap you.
Would you like to make more money? Would you like to have more free time? You know I'm going somewhere with that. And you know there's a bear trap waiting for you.
After about the third time you say yes, and you don't want to step into that baby. So you're going to stop right away.
Flip side is you condition yourself like

Pavlov's dog that every time you say no, you protected yourself. So, okay, I'm changing my

questions. It's that silly and that quick.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Another really effective one is labels. It seems like it sounds like it looks like.

I get a text on Instagram. I'm the FBI

negotiator on Instagram. Guy sends me a message and says, you know, all I've been saying for the

last two days to everybody and every conversation I've had is it seems like you have a reason for

saying, and they are opening up to me in ways that I have never seen before. One of the great

things about that label, somebody's arguing with, you can say, seems like you have a reason for

Thank you. And you say, it seems like you have a reason for saying it.
And they open up because they feel more validated.

They feel closer to you.

It's like, I can't think of a particular circumstance that if you just spend Tuesday,

make Tuesday tactical empathy Tuesday, and just don't say anything to anybody other than that.

It seems like you have a reason for saying it.

See how your day goes.

At the end of the day, you're going to be like, wow, I learned so much today.

And everybody loves me because I made them feel good in the interaction.

Thank you. and for saying, see how your day goes.
At the end of the day, you're going to be like, wow, I learned so much today. And everybody loves me because I made them feel good in the interaction.
I'm totally trying this today, especially on my kids. Let's see how that goes.
That's a good one. Yeah.
That's a good one. And I think you also just talk about the win-wins and smile and the curiosity.
You talk so much about just making people feel at ease and then they open up, which I think is where that zone of genius is so clearly there. Yeah.
And that's the accelerate. Because if you agree with them, then you don't validate what they say.
You just want to move forward. Okay.
So we agree now, let's go forward. And they don't feel hurt.
You disagree with them. And they're used to say, yeah, but, you know, and then you're going to come back and tell them why they're wrong.
And so this interim space that people are just not used to suddenly puts you in a completely different frame of mind with them. You get people to move mountains for you.
You get them to come out to the lost luggage office and go dig in a bough at the airport to find your suitcase. You've done a lot of things.
You've seen a lot of things in your life. What would you say is one of the harder things that you needed to cope with, if you're willing to share? For a period of time in 2004, Al-Qaeda was kidnapping people and killing everybody they got their hands on.
And they were making it very public and they made it look like they were negotiating. It was about recruitment.
It was about PR. It was about power.
And the writing was pretty much on the wall. And we went through a number of cases where we did everything we could.
And we were winning the long game and we were losing the battles. I mean, people get killed.
It was very predictable. But every time it happened, we painted our cut in a bad light through the spring of 2004 to the end of 2004, November-ish fall, last quarter.
And they had been made to look so bad. We made them look like the thugs that they were.
They wanted to be terrorists because if you're a terrorist, you have esteem. You know, there's a social status thing.
And there's no esteem in being a thug. And it took a while for it to catch on.
And finally, in that timeframe, they got out of the kidnap for murder business. And they went straight to kidnap for rent.
They were making a lot of money. They're still funding their operations, particularly in Africa by kidnap for rent.
That resurfaced in about 2012 timeframe, roughly eight to 10 years later, which is the way institutional generations work, about every five years. And it propped up again.
And by then it was no longer involved. And that was an early timeframe.
But being in a case where you can, when you read the indicators and the indicators are really bad and the indicators are always there, you can't make every deal. And it's the understanding the six to 7% that you're never going to make.
And then how do you react? That was a tough period of time. And the families that went through it just went through horrible things.
They collaborated with us. We didn't lie to them about what we thought the chances were.
And they collaborated with us anyway because we were honest with them about how bad things look. And people just want you to be honest.
Is it easy to sleep at night? I know you're doing everything you can, right? But it's still sometimes can suffocate you. You know, it'll kick your ass a little bit every now and then.
And I think one of my biggest wake-up calls was, I'm listening to a colleague a few years after that time frame was over, give a presentation where he worked a case where an infant had been killed. And he finished it out and he said, you know, I don't know why I'm sharing this with you guys at the class.
It was

a closed group. It was not a public presentation.
And he said, I guess I just want to share something

bad that happened to me on a winter's day, on a winter's day. And I remember thinking at the time,

happened to you? Happened to you? That wasn't your child. That wasn't a family member of yours.
And then when I said that, I thought, all right, so here you are moping around. It wasn't your father that got killed in that case.
It wasn't your brother. So stop feeling sorry for you.
Other people suffered worse losses. You did the best you could.
Pick yourself up and move on. And so, yeah, it's got me down at times, but it wasn't as bad as it was on everybody else.
Right. But that perspective is so hard sometimes to jump back to.
Do you think there's something that maybe some people don't know about you or they do, but that made you the person that you are today? Plenty of stuff that I don't even know. I've always thought of myself very straightforward.
My credibility, my integrity is a very high value to me. That doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes.
Everybody makes mistakes. You make a mistake and then you look back on it, you're ashamed of yourself.
So it's not what you've done in the past, it's what you've learned from it. I believe very strongly another good friend of mine, Michael Mogil, runs this extremely successful advertising company that does video primarily for a law firm.
And Michael says, your core values are what you're willing to lose money over. And are you going to stick to it even though it's going to cost you? And by and large, I've done that.
I'm sure that every now and then there've been times when I failed to, but understand where your core values are and stick them to them. And then when you make a mistake, spend a minimal amount of time kicking yourself.
That's wasted time. It's wasted effort.
I'm telling one of my guys that we fired a few years ago when he kept making the same mistake over and he said, you know, I'm really kicking myself, right? I said, well, all right, so you got the opportunity to kick yourself or move forward. Kicking yourself doesn't solve anything.
Moving forward does. And he never got the idea.
But I learned a lot from when he worked with us and how to properly support, nurture, mentor, manage people. So, you know,

I do the best I can.

I stick to my advice

as much as I can.

Ooh, that's a great tip.

And I think there's a saying

the challenges and the pain

are inevitable,

but the suffering

is a choice, right?

You need to decide

how much you're going to suffer

in that cycle

and when are you actually

going to pick yourself back up

and just continue

because, again, it's going to happen. I agree.
Yeah, I agree. So we have this thing in the show and we always look back a little bit and have some kind of an advice to your younger self.
What would you say to younger Chris? My advice to younger Chris is based on my natural type and there are three three basic types. Fight, flight, make friends.
Assertive, analyst, accommodator. As an assertive, my advice is be nicer, be friendlier, a little more gentle with people.
Friendlier, even charming, Jason. Because in our default mode, we're going to be direct and honest.
So the recipient of direct and honest is brutal.

A hostage negotiator with the FBI once told me it was like getting hit in the face with a brick.

Not that I was wrong, but I was a little harsh about it.

So as an assertive, you know, the younger Chris would be, you know, take a couple of miles an hour off your speedball, fastball, smile a little more, just be nicer, be friendlier.

And as an assertive, I never liked nice, but I can live with friendly. I'll be friendly.
You know, nice, that's the assertive. So if you're the analytical type, people are going to see you as a little colder, which is you're not.
It's a little bit more to be a little friendlier because instead of hitting people in the face with a brick, I mean, you just withdraw. You're giving them nothing.
So it's, again, it's a demeanor issue. And if you're an accommodator, people need you to be a little more detail-oriented.
You're afraid of hurting people's feelings a little too much. So it's going to boil down to your default type, and my default type is assertive, and I just need to be a little, I needed to have been a little friendly.
I love that. And again, I can't stress enough.

I made my team read your book. I love the documentary.
I think it's a brilliant,

brilliant, very, very important film for all of us to watch. And I just want to thank you for

everything that you're doing. I think we don't really learn, at least I never really had the chance to learn negotiation.
I know now there's tools, but at least I wasn't really aware of any when I was growing up. And I think it's just such an important skill because you negotiate all the time.
It's not just negotiation of sales or offers or whatever. You negotiate with your kids.
You negotiate with your spouse. You negotiate with friends.
You do that all the time. We don't notice, but we're actually in negotiation mode all the time.
And I think it's just so important to understand the psychology of this. And it's just passive.
Thank you very much. I agree completely.
So thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah, thank you for being in the show, Chris. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

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