Chris Voss:

Are you negotiating with someone or against them? If you're with them, they're hoping to work it out with you long term. Then the other potential issue is are we walking the talk? Am I negotiating with you to get you to shut up or am I negotiating with you so that we can collaborate, that we can climb towards a goal together?

Chris Do:

First off, I just want to say I'm super excited to talk to you. I've done this dance with you and your team to try to get you on. I'm so glad, and I just have to give a quick shout out to Marshall Jones who connected us, and so I'm thrilled we're having this conversation.

Chris Voss:

Yeah, I appreciate Marshall for making a connection. I'm happy to be here. Thank you.

Chris Do:

I was reading in your bio, it says that Chris is a former lead FBI negotiator and dynamic speaker who debunks the biggest myths of negotiations. I would just love to start there. I've read the book, I've watched your masterclass, I've read and watched as many things as I can watch, and so I'm just coming from this from trying to pretend I don't know anything about you so that new fans can be enrolled in what it is that you're doing. So what are some of the biggest myths that people believe about negotiations?

Chris Voss:

Yeah, myths. And we've even tried to distill them down. I think we call them our 12 commandments of negotiation. We can get into some of them here. First one is thou shalt not covet yes.

First of all yes is not agreement. Yes is almost always counterfeit yes. There are three kinds of yeses, commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. You get people to say yes to the little things. Each one is known as a micro agreement or a tied down, and then consequently you can get them to say yes to the big thing because you got them tied down. You got these micro agreements. Well, that's really bad. People get started on this yes momentum nonsense, I would imagine because let's say they were failing entirely. They're not making any deals. If you're a student in a class, you'd be getting an F and somebody turns you on to the yes momentum, and suddenly you go from being an F student to a D student. Or maybe you even become a C student and you look at the distance that you improved and you, and you're like, wow, I was failing before.

Now I'm not failing. Now I might even be doing well enough to not get fired because if you're a C student at a college, you're going to make your grade point. You're not going to get kicked out. You just made the minimum. However, from your perspective, you don't understand that you are nowhere near a B student or even an A student. So many people have been hustled with the yes momentum that it immediately makes people feel concerned. If you're trying to get me to say yes to something, where's this going? What's this taking me? Every group that I speak to, I do a lot of keynote speeches and I'll say to them, all right, so you pick up the phone and the voice on the other end of the phone says, have you got a few minutes to talk? What's your gut reaction? And everybody in the room says, concerned, worried, or some people even say no.

Well, this was just a simple yes. Have you got a few minutes to talk? And everybody's instantaneous reaction is to be concerned. So if that's the case, whenever you try to get somebody to say yes to something, it creates tension. It creates concern, it hurts your relationship. It makes them hold back information. So if you're learning the Black Swan Method, we teach you how to get out of yes and get into actual agreement that could be implemented. So the first thing is thou shalt not covet yes. Because you think you got a yes, you do not have a deal. You probably got a false yes. And you're going to wonder what happened afterwards.

Chris Do:

I'd like to ask you a little bit more about this because I think from my observation, there's a big sales culture out there that teaches people, salespeople in particular, that this is the way that you get to yes and you get these micro agreements, these little commitments that are happening. And we having been perpetrated on this sales technique, have grown an allergic reaction to this. So much so that this is a kind of funny story. Several years ago, my wife and I are driving a car and we're pulling up in Venice, and this random guy walking the street is trying to pick up my wife in my own car.

And he asked her, what is your name? So he asked her a question she couldn't say no to, but instead of saying her name, she's like, no. And I just, I'm like, my wife is brutal, but this is what's happening. So every time somebody reaches out to me, either in DMs or in real life, I'm reluctant to say yes, because I know where this is going. You're going to ask me for something. But yet, sales culture seems to still continue down this path. So despite the good work that you're doing, why are we still stuck on this idea? What else is driving us towards this even though we know it's not working?

Chris Voss:

Well, I think there's a number of things that are out there, and first of all, there are some people that are making deals on yes. And they'll say to me, look, you can't tell me I'm not making deals. And I say, yeah, let me give you the Las Vegas analogy. You're playing on the 10% win table, and if you learn how to do it the way I can teach you, you're going to move on the 80% win table. Now, on the 10% win table, you're making deals. And I think a lot of people, especially if they view where they've come from, and many people have learned the yes momentum weren't doing any sales at all beforehand. So yeah, you were a total failure. And if you go from being an F student to a C student, maybe at best you're like, look at the distance I've covered.

You know before I was worried about staying here at all. I was failing. I was flunking. And now not only am I passing my classes, I'm not going to get kicked out of school. And that's, people only see the distance they've covered, they make a comparative to where they've been. It's very hard to see where you could possibly go and until you see somebody else that suddenly the guy next to you is making deals and you never hear him ask a single yes oriented question and you don't know what's going on because it's very invisible, but suddenly that person is making way more deals than you are. They're getting appointments, they're not wasting their time. And you don't know because it's not obvious, but you only have a comparison to where you were.

Chris Do:

I think you've talked about this before about our unhealthy addiction to Yes.

Chris Voss:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

And when I talk to salespeople, they talk about listening with happy ears. And my audience is mostly people in the creative space, right? And so they're frustrated because they thought they had a deal and then they walked away and the client's ghosted on me. Because you're listening for something, you want the deal so bad that you're going to engineer or construct the conversation so that you can get the yes because you're afraid of rejection. So I love your approach because it means we can actually embrace a, I think you call it like a tactical no, which is better than five yeses and asking questions in the no. Can you expand on that please?

Chris Voss:

Well yeah, and a couple things because I want to, I'm going to back up just a little to what you said, the happy years we thought we had a deal. And then it goes to this, there's a simultaneous problem out there of what we teach. Something called the favorite of the fool or proof of life is there deal is the deal with you. And there's pretty good data out there that at least 20% of the time you're being used for a competing bid, due diligence or free consulting. And since we've been teaching people this methodology, we think that numbers is higher than 20. It might be as high as 80%. Now, a lot of sales books realize that that's true. And I can't remember the name of the book I was reading the other day, but they teach salespeople to say, are we the vendor of choice?

Now the idea is you're trying to find out whether or not you're the favorite of the fool. Are you due diligence? Are you free consulting? Are you the fool in the game? If you don't know who the fool in the game is, it's probably you. But notice that question is a yes oriented question. Are we the vendor of choice? Now, you are going to get an answer to yes, no matter what. If you are the vendor of choice, you're going to say yes, and it really hasn't taught you anything. But if you're not the vendor of choice, they're never going to say no.

They would be stupid to say no to you under those circumstances, they have been playing you up to that point anyway. And if someone's been playing you either accidentally or on purpose for a while and you say, Hey, listen, are you playing me? They're not going to admit to that. So they're taught yes oriented question. And literally in this book it said, ask the client, are we the vendor of choice? They're never going to admit to it if they were lying to you already. It's like asking a liar, are you lying to me? That dude is not going to tell you. And there's a lot of issues that even extend beyond the problems there are with yes. So that answered a question that you didn't ask.

Chris Do:

Okay, so we understand this. When clients have a choice and they have many vendors they can choose from, it's important to know where we stand. So if people ask, am I the vendor of choice? You're not going to get an honest answer because people are polite. They're not going to say this. What is a better way to ascertain if, and we do this too, we ask sometimes if you need a third bid because you just need an estimate and you already have a vendor you want to work with, I'm happy to provide a bid. I just don't want to go through the exercise of earnestly going through this. Tell me what number you need to hit. How would somebody ask that question to see where they stand in terms of what the clients are considering?

Chris Voss:

One great thing is, and I had an salesperson say this to me once, he said, say the client on a scale to one to 10, what's the number that percentage chance that we're going to get the deal.

Now, what question causes people to stop and think in their tracks now? So even if they're playing you, they're going to stop and think like, oh wow, what kind of number do I have to put out here? It's not so much that they answer what the answer is, it's how quickly they answer. If you are the favorite, they're going to go, ah, nine out of 10, eight out of 10, they're going to immediately give you a very high number. That question will catch them off guard enough that if they got to think about it, Houston, we have a problem.

Chris Do:

I love that. So this goes into a concept that I heard you talk about before. One way to tell the truth. It's very easy to tell the truth. There's many ways to lie to you. And so that time to think gives them, it should give you pause because you're clearly not the one.

Chris Voss:

If there's hesitation there. But if they should go, wow, nine, 10, or if they go, why?

10, of course 10. I mean all that hesitation in there and trying to decide do I tell them the truth? How do I peg this number? How am I going to be convincing? And that sort of plays into another one of the skills which is dynamic silence. You know, you shut up. Now what do you do while you shut up? You go to gather data with your eyes. Dynamic silence is the opportunity for you to actually look at the other person and read what's going on on their face. Their face is going to be a direct reflection of what's going on in their brain. Now what if there's no reaction at all on their face? They have taught themselves to think with a blank face, which means they're filtering, they're considering. There's stuff there that they're thinking about that you don't know. How do you react?

The simple label seems like there's some stuff going through your mind right now. Is the label for the blank stare that you get on your face or that they get on their face, why you're gathering data? Otherwise, look, if, first of all, you should have been gathering data with your eyes from the beginning. Instead of thinking about what you want to say next, every moment there's a massive amount of data coming off the other side visually if only on their face, you should start gathering that data from the very beginning versus thinking about your next point versus thinking about your rehearsed value proposition or your arguments if you will, as to why they should do what you want them to do in a negotiation, there's a massive amount of information there for you to start soaking up visually from the very beginning.

Chris Do:

If you have a hard time reading people's faces like say you're neuro divergent or on the spectrum, are there things that you can teach us so that there's clear signs that they're interest or disinterested, something just real tangible that we can lock down on?

Chris Voss:

Well, that's a great question because so there's a lot about psychiatry that I don't know. My understanding of somebody that's on the spectrum doesn't mean that they still aren't able to process information. Maybe they simply just haven't been taught how to process the information or the recognition of it. Because what I'm offering here is you're just gathering data with your eyes. This is not an emotional reaction on your part. This is a read of what's going on. On the other side, if you can tell what color a tree is or what color the wall is, you can gather data with your eyes. And somebody that's on the spectrum can tell a green wall from a blue wall because they've gathered data with their eyes and there's a comparative there. So if you're having trouble processing information, emotion, I would simply ask that you look at it as no different than gathering any other data and then the label so to speak, labeling what you believe you see, it seems like something is crossing your mind is not a read of an emotion.

It's to pull out of them what their emotion is and how they respond to that is more data, more information to process. I've got a friend of mine who runs an AI investment firm and he's got a guy that works for him that he would contend is on the spectrum who can solve Rubik's cubes behind his back. And the guy doesn't express a lot of emotions, but if he can solve a Rubik's cube behind his back, that means that he's brilliant at gathering data with his eyes. He looked at the Rubik's cube once and his brain processed every movie he needed to make and he could do it behind his back. So I would suggest that emotional intelligence in many cases is simply a matter of gathering data.

Chris Do:

I like that explanation of it. So in a situation, going back to that one where you realize all of a sudden you're clearly not the favorite, there's long pause, there's the stammering. What are we supposed to do? Do we give up or do we ask other kinds of questions? How do respond?

Chris Voss:

Where do we go from here? How do we get back to earth without getting killed, right?

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Chris Voss:

All right, so you got to understand now you got a new landing spot. If we're going to continue with the space analogy, your new landing point is to position yourself for when they do need you. There's something that we currently refer to as the Oprah rule, which is the last impression, is the lasting impression as a company and as a person, I want long-term relationships of prosperity with everybody that I deal with. That deal might not be now. I want you to know that when we are a good fit, that I'd be happy to do business with you. When you're ready to do business with me, I want to be a long-term partner that where we both prosper and I can accept that you're not ready right now.

So what are the steps to get to that point so that the last impression, the lasting impression is of someone that will always be there for you when you're serious about doing business with me, I would probably say, look, it seems like you're still shopping around. It seems like you're still in the information gathering phase. It seems like you've got somebody else you really want to do business with there. Each one of these labels is designed as a diagnostic to trigger a response both verbally and visually for you to get a feel for you, to let your gut instinct to start making an assessment of where we are and then say, look, it sounds like right now you're not ready to do business with us. And as a really good chance that you don't trust me enough for me to be your trusted advisor, I want you to know we'd love to do business with you and here's what a great deal with me would look like.

I never want that. It'd be any doubt in anybody's mind as to what a great deal looks like to me because then not only does that leave you feeling good about the interaction with me, I've just outlined my vision of mutual prosperity. And there's no doubt in your mind what that looks like. And there's no doubt in my mind as to whether or not you had the opportunity to make a conscious decision to know what you were walking away from and having planted those two seeds, that's the best possible position I can leave myself in with you for a profitable deal. I'm not going to spin my wheels now, but when we got traction, this is what that traction's going to look like. And then we end the interaction. Some people, if someone is intentionally playing you, this is very predatory behavior. They're going to try to keep you in the interaction because they want more information from you.

They may often get very angry with you. They may call you names. We teach this methodology for residential real estate agents all the time. They're much happier, they're much more successful, they're much more prosperous. I teach it with a guy named Steve Shull. We got a book out called the Full Free Agent, and one of his clients walked away from a prospect. We teach real estate agents to not make listing presentations, which is crazy. It scares the hell out of them. Listing presentation is a due diligence process. I mean it really is. It's a massive waste of real estate agents' time and nobody's listing presentation is any different than anybody else's. They're so common. Doing a listing presentation makes you look common and nobody wants to look common.

So anyway, they had a potential client and they said, when we're your trusted advisor, we're happy to outline our marketing plan for you. But until we're trusted advisor, we think you should go with the person that you trust. And a potential client emailed them back and said, just because you wouldn't give us this presentation, we have crossed you off our list. Now that's a very predatory move, and it's a complete confirmation that they were being played because the predator will become angry with the victim for escaping. And if you ever need confirmation that they were playing you, then that's when they're vindictive because you refuse to continue to be played.

Chris Do:

So that's a client that you don't ever want to work with anyways. So it's not a loss for you at that point.

Chris Voss:

Not only do you never want to work with those people cause they're vindictive.

But it's also complete confirmation of your gut instinct that they failed, they were using you for free consulting. It doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that it's just something called the drama triangle, which gives a lot of insight into man manipulative behavior. The three points of the triangle, the rescuer, the persecutor, and the victim and the persecutor. The person who wants to manipulate moves back and forth on the triangle between victim and persecutor, freely just to keep you off balance. And when you start seeing persecuting behavior, that's a hallmark of the manipulative predatory human being.

Chris Do:

You said a lot there. Allow me to quickly just play back what I heard, because you're moving so fast Chris and I was thinking our audience are going to drive off the road. Let me try and keep up with what Chris is saying because you're dropping a lot of things here.

Chris Voss:

They should listen to this interview more than once.

Chris Do:

I sure hope they do. All right, so when you're in a conversation and that there are multiple bids going on, instead of asking are we the vendor of choice? Ask what question on a scale of one to 10, what would you say is our percentage of getting the job? And then listen to what they say. If there's hesitation that's telling you you are probably not the vendor of choice. And what you want to do is to demonstrate emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness by understanding that you're not the right choice right now for a number of different reasons. And you can label those things by saying it sounds like, and you follow up with this series of it sounds like statements. And then you play the high road. I think you exit with some grace and some dignity and you establish a potential for a relationship down the line.

And I love the way that you think about this because unfortunately, I think a lot of people in my community and just in sales in general, they're so desperate for the sale right now that they'll do anything to get that sale in the moment. And they're not really thinking it's much better to have a client long term. And so if things don't work out in this instance with whoever they chose, at least you're ending on a very high note and there's a probability that they would reach out to you again on more favorable terms next time, right?

Chris Voss:

Yeah, exactly. You have to maximize the likelihood that they'll come looking for you when whoever they're doing business with has failed them.

Stuart Schuster:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Chris Do:

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this week's episode as much as I am. Now, before we dive back in, I want to ask you a quick question. Are you an established creative service provider, coach or consultant looking to scale your business without losing your soul in the process? If so, the Futur Pro Membership was created just for you, and I'd like to see you inside with us. Go to thefutur.com/pro to learn more and join.

Stuart Schuster:

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do:

Now, before we get into some of the other commandments, I just wanted to say something. I'm sure you're aware of this and I see you do this for a fact on stage and in the masterclass you'll change your voice very dramatically and I think you always get a reaction from everybody. So I want to just, can we just talk about your voice, your specific voice, Chris Voss, and what people can learn from how you use your voice because it's an instrument and it's an important part about communicating meaning just in the tone of your voice.

Chris Voss:

Yeah, absolutely. A thousand percent, and I work on it all the time. The great examples, the great communicators that I studied among many, Chris Rock, if you read Chris Rock's comedy routine in a monotone voice, it would not be funny. Like Chris Rock is hysterical based on delivery. Lewis Black is another guy, just read anything they say in a normal tone of voice, brilliant tonality, brilliant pacing. And the idea is comedians in many cases, especially Chris Rock, trying to make socially relevant comments in a way that people will absorb and listen to and accept rather than be offended by. How do I get these ideas across? And many comedians are really great social commentators. We laugh at them because they say very insightful things about our life and our world, and they say them in a way that we don't feel attacked, we're entertained, and we laugh with them, at ourselves and as much as at each other.

But really a great comedian gets us to laugh at ourselves, which is a really hard thing to do. And I listen to these guys all the time, and Chris Rock is a great example and many of them are like that. Kevin Hart delivery, pacing, changing, the tone of voice, Lewis Black, I mean all these guys, phenomenal. So yeah, I try to study great communicators as much as possible. I believe this is all a learned skill because I think, well, I know based on people that have gained phenomenal success with the Black Swan Method, you know, you get the life you negotiate and you negotiate for the life you want. And I want people to have great lives. I had 350 million people in the United States and going on 8 billion people on planet Earth, there's enough room out there for us if somebody else being prosperous is not going to take away from my prosperity. I want as many people to be prosperous as possible. So how do I get this across as I try to be as at least as entertaining as I am informative.

Chris Do:

So when you talk about this, and I'll hear you, I think you talk about there are three kind of tones of voice that you want to use, and when you slip into the FM DJ voice the way you say it, you are actually changing your voice as you say it. And if I was an audience, I'd like giggle a little bit. Like here he goes, he's going to do it. So can you tell us, for people who haven't read the book, Never Split the Difference or watched your masterclass or seen anything from Black Swan, can you tell people what the tones of voice are and when you want to use it and why they're so effective?

Chris Voss:

Sure, yeah. The three basic tones of voice are the assertives, direct and honest. Give me a call in 60 seconds or she dies. That's direct and honest. It's ordering, it's clear, it's blunt. It feels like getting hit in the face with a brick. It feels really good to use. The voice feels direct and assertive and it is just getting smacked in the face. And the three basic types correspond with the three basic types of how people approach conflict, fight, flight, make friends. We have more than enough data to support our hypothesis that the world splits evenly into thirds, not just the US, not just North America, the world globally, fight, flight, make friends and a third of us like that voice. A third of us feel good in that voice. It's our natural default voice and that voice is always counterproductive. Every time I have slipped into my natural assertive mode, here's what happens, the people on my side of the table love it. The choir behind me, they love it. It makes them feel good just standing up for us.

And the other side always feels smacked around like it is always counterproductive, always, always, always. Because the impact on the other side is the important issue. So the second voice, the accommodator's voice, the smiling voice, the relationship oriented voice, the happy tone of voice, that's a ridiculously effective tone of voice. And about a third of the people out there fall into the category that we call accommodators. They're very hope-based, very positive, very optimistic, happen to often be short on detail happen and the clinging to hope. It's one of the reasons why, and if it's a third of the human beings out there, it's one of the reasons why I believe that phrase hope is not a strategy is so prevalent because the other two types, the asserts and the analysts are tied to people that operate specifically on hope. And if it's one or three people, you get smacked around with the shortcomings of hope alone that you got to come up with a phrase for it, hope is not a strategy.

And then the analyst tone of voice who's most naturally the late night FM DJ voice. Now that's just a downward inflicting voice. It's a soothing, calming voice. It's what I was taught as a hostage negotiator. The analyst got to be careful that they may have this downward inflecting voice that ends up being totally cold and distant. It can feel very empty. So the late night FM DJ voice is the analyst's voice with just not cold and distant, definitely downward inflecting. You don't have to be a man, you don't even have to have a deep voice. Sandy High, one of our great instructors, because women ask her all the time when she's teaching the Women's Power Hour, she said, just drop your chin when you talk. And if you drop your chin when you talk, it automatically downward and flex. And it gives the person on the other side with just a downward inflection, it gives them a feeling of confidence that you feel very confident in what you've said.

And it's also a great way to take an immovable position in a negotiation without the other side feeling attacked because sometimes you got to take an immovable position. Now, I'll give you an example. In our contracts, we do not allow work for hire clauses because work for hire gives away the ownership of your intellectual property. And that's what we sell our intellectual property. And we'll typically get a contract from a corporation containing a work per hire clause, and we'll simply say to them, we don't do work for hire. Now that's different from asking them to take the clause out or making the case to take the clause out because if I ask for it to be taken out, there's some natural reciprocity triggered if I ask I owe. That's a human nature dynamic reciprocity, Robert Cialdini's book on the Psychology of Influence, reciprocity is one of the six tools of influence.

So I need to get the clause taken out and I don't want to ask for it. And so if I simply say, we don't do work for hire, it's not a threat, it doesn't land as a threat, and then I'll go dead silent and I'll wait and they'll say, oh, well we'll have it taken out. Now I don't know for that, for having accomplished that change. And if they don't say I'll have it taken out, then I'll say, doesn't sound like we're in a position to do business at this time, because if they can't take it out, which they can. But if they won't, there's no long-term relationship here for us and we are always in it for the long haul. So those are the three basic voices for people to deal with. The assertive is always counterproductive. The accommodator's voice is almost always helpful and the analyst's voice occasionally when you got to draw a firm line without making the other side feel attacked is a great voice for that.

Chris Do:

I think a lot of people in the creative space don't have the confidence or the competence that you have Chris, and for you to be able to say that they're, well easy for Chris, the world's best negotiator can say that and walk away from gigs because he knows another client will come. And so what they tend to do is they get real tense and without knowing it, I think they speak in this heard of voice and they have really rough relationships. It's hard to build rapport, it's hard to connect. And I advise them based on what you say now, I used to call it my flirting voice and I'd flirt with men, I'd flirt with women, but people find that term to be offensive.

So the speaking smile, the smiling voice, the accommodator voice, it works wonders at delivering bad information at asking questions that you're too timid to ask. But what happens is they inadvertently switch into assertive voice and it starts to feel like a lot of friction happening between two people. And we know this, oftentimes the client has way more leverage than you, especially if you're a young business needing work. And so how do you talk people off the ledge because they always throw this at me, well easy for you to say because you're X, Y, and Z. It's easy for Chris Voss to say, we don't do work for hire. Do you have any advice for those people?

Chris Voss:

Small stakes practice for high stakes results. Like nobody deploys a great negotiation skill in the midst, for the first time in the midst of a big negotiation and you can practice this stuff, you got 7, 8, 9 times a day to practice these tones of voice and these approaches. Small stakes practice every single day just to learn the voice with your Lyft driver, with the clerk, wherever you are, the Starbucks barista, like every single human being is an opportunity for you to increase your emotional intelligence if you just bring it out and start to practice it. There's a movie I cite all the time, Man On Fire, Denzel Washington. And as he's teaching this, the little girl in a movie to swim, she says, I'm not any good. And he says, there's no good or bad, there's only trained and untrained, and that's pretty much accurate. At one point in time, Tiger Woods didn't know how to swing a golf club.

Somebody trained him. Everybody was a complete and total novice with no experience at some point in time. They just got their repetitions in, they went to a coach, they learned how to do it, they were shown how to do it properly, and then they started to execute so that they got enough practice in so that they could then perform on a big stage or in the midst of a big negotiation. Michael Jordan got cut from his basketball team when he was a sophomore, like everybody started out as just another schmuck somewhere. And then they decided that they were willing to put in the practice, willing to put in the time. And you see it over and over and over again, and it's not just putting in the time, but how you put in the time. There's a great book, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, and there's a phrase that's not practice that makes perfect, it's perfect practice.

And I believe at the beginning of it, he talks about a video with this young girl that's trying to teach her how to play, teach herself how to play a song on a piano. And she was going really slow and every time she made a mistake, she stopped and she backed up and she took her time to execute properly and then every single time she executed it properly, she doesn't know. But there's a neural synaptic phenomenon going on in her head where first the neural connection is being made and then every time you repeat the repetition, there's a substance called myelin that's wrapped around the neuro-synaptic connection, which just like electricity, every time you insulate a wire, it conducts the electricity more efficiently. And so every time you go slow, well you start to pick up speed, but you focus first on executing properly before you even focus on finishing the execution. You know, take your time to get the repetition down and across the board universally human experiences, everybody started out at not being any good at it at all. They just decided to learn.

Chris Do:

I have to quickly share an experience. My son had a brilliant piano teacher prior to that. He was trying to practice the whole song and he was not great at playing the whole song. So his piano teacher said, just practice that one part until you feel really good about it. And that changed the way he played and then he was able to play for longer periods of time and hit the notes where he's supposed to hit them. And he to this day loves playing piano like nonstop. And I just would love to get your insight. What would practicing your tone of voice, what are some practical ways in our, can you give us some examples what somebody could do in their everyday interaction so they get good at this?

Chris Voss:

Yeah. Well, you can even do it in your head if you hear it in your head properly.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Chris Voss:

And I'm a big fan of Andrew Huberman and his podcast and his neuroscience podcast, and I'm fairly certain it was on his podcast where he said that when you hear something in your head, if you hear your head saying something in your head, you hear you saying something. The same mental neural connections are triggered as when you actually speak, which is why many great athletes imagine themselves doing something well and subsequently they do it better because the rehearsal they ran in their head, they don't rehearse themselves missing the shot, they rehearsed themselves in their head making the shot, you know, have control over the rehearsal in your head. If you go, I can just see myself losing my cool again, will you just rehearsed losing your cool. But if you can go back and imagine yourself saying it calmly, if you can imagine yourself reacting calmly, keeping your cool, that's practice.

And you could do that in a crowded subway, you can retreat into your head and imagine yourself doing it properly. What most people do is they rehearse doing it wrong. I just see myself, next time I talk to my sister, she's going to set me off. I'm going to start screaming at her again. That's the rehearsal to do it wrong. And you can control that film, that movie, that recreation in your head if you choose to, and so that that's a place to start. You can then practice out loud by yourself at home, going to make you feel like a psychopath, going to make you wonder if the neighbors could hear you. Hopefully they do hear you and hopefully they do think you're a psychopath, maybe then they won't steal your newspaper.

Chris Do:

Quick personal question for you here as a master negotiator, how's it negotiating with your family, with your spouse and your children? I'm curious because I think I'm a pretty good negotiator and then when it comes to my wife's like it's not, there's a whole different dynamic there.

Chris Voss:

Well, are you negotiating with someone or against them?

And if you're with negotiating with them, then what they say using these negotiation skills is thought provoking and it's encouraging because they're hoping to work it out with you long, long-term. What really happens with family and people who are close to us is one of two dynamics, usually both. There's inadvertent wounding from the past that we have no idea about, we don't know. And people we have a long-term relationship with, we probably hurt them and we have no idea we did, and they're still stinging from that.

Then the other potential issue is are we walking the talk? Am I negotiating with you to get you to shut up or am I negotiating with you so that we can collaborate, that we can climb towards a goal together? And do you trust me to go on a climb with you? What have I done in the past? Have I paid lip service to it and dismissed and placated you and that and you got a lot of history with people and you hope they have a long future with them, so they're comparative of your walk and your talk is going to be very important. That's what makes dealing with family difficult, those two dynamics.

Chris Do:

Do you find yourself emotionally getting involved in it with the history because you've been there many times before.

Chris Voss:

Yeah, I'm human. Everybody gets triggered and plus, like I said, if they've hurt me in ways, they got no idea. I'm getting mad about stuff that they don't even know they should, that I'm angry about that. That's the unfortunate portion of the human experience. We know of stuff that if they pointed out to it, we'd say, yeah, I'm guilty of that. And there's other stuff that they'd point out and he'd be like, I got no memory of that even happening and you've been carrying this for how long? I don't even know I did that and I'm not a hundred percent sure it was me and I've seen that happen with a lot of people. I've seen it happen to my son, my son Brandon, who's a brilliant negotiator. He's still got it burned in his brain. The moment I told him there was no Santa Claus, I have no memory of that at all.

He can describe every detail of that moment. And he gotten into a fight at school with some kids kid told him there was no Santa Claus and my parents told me this, the Santa Claus, my parents aren't liars and he gets into a fight with this kid, outlining this all, and he told me this just about two years ago. He goes, remember when you told me there was no Santa Claus? I'm like, no. And he goes, how could you not remember that? And he describes it in vivid detail and I'm like, yeah, all right, well you got me there kid.

Chris Do:

So because you told Matt he got into a fight at school.

Chris Voss:

He got into a fight at school because he was defending his father's honor because he felt that his father's not a liar and basically kid's calling his father a liar, liar. And he comes home and he stops me in the hall of the house and he goes, dad is there Santa Claus? And I go, no. And then I continued down the hall. So he is left there with this dilemma of how do I reconcile all this data? And that's a moment in his life that probably on my deathbed, if he's standing there, he'd probably say, tell me again, there's no Santa Claus, you're not going to let that go.

Chris Do:

Okay, now knowing what you know now, because the memory is a little fuzzy for you, I don't remember saying that. If somebody runs up to you with an urgent problem like this, how should you respond?

Chris Voss:

Well, all right, so give me a concrete example.

Chris Do:

Well, literally your son comes up to you and it's like, dad, is there Santa Claus? And in your kind of expedient manner, you answer no, how do we apply the Black Swan Chris Voss technique when somebody comes at you with a problem like that?

Chris Voss:

Yeah well, I mean, I believe in being a straight shooter and I think, however, the mythology in the Santa Claus as parents, we paint this thing, we get our kids going, we want them to be happy about Christmas. Those of us that do it, and plenty of us do. But I mean in point of fact, long term, you want your reputation to be a straight shooter. So if somebody hits you with something where the truth is going to hurt that just the truth's going to probably going to hurt you more, it's going to hurt them. Most people lie to save themselves, not to save somebody else, but you're hurting yourself long term. Tell the truth, tell it gently. Be straight shooters are people who tell the truth with emotional intelligence.

Everybody loves a straight shooter. Now, somebody who's too direct and too honest, her blunt force trauma, they're telling the truth, but they're not being careful about their tone of voice. They're not giving somebody at least a brief opportunity to brace themselves. And so there's a difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter and a straight shooter tells the truth gently with emotional intelligence, doesn't leave things out, doesn't deceive by the literal truth, doesn't deceive by omission, lets people know really what the truth is and that's the best currency to be across the board.

Chris Do:

I like that. I appreciate that. Wondering if in a situation like that, if you could just slow them down a little bit by asking him a question like, what's going on? Do I need to know something about this question?

Chris Voss:

Yeah, there's there's always a way to rehearse something and go back and do it better. Rarely is there not a way that you can improve.

Chris Do:

Right? Because clearly it creates some kind of emotional scar because prior to that moment of you telling him the truth, you told him the opposite of the truth, which is you created the fantasy that Santa Claus exists before, right?

Chris Voss:

Yeah. Or at least I contributed to it without question. I'm not sure that I'm the first one told him that, but I guarantee you I played along.

Chris Do:

Sure. I want to get to another commandment, but maybe I'll tee it up here. I love how you talk about doing an accusations audit and you use it often in the role plays. I've read about it, I've seen you do it. It's wonderful. If people aren't familiar with this, it's kind of like what happens to Eminem's character in Eight Mile, be Rabbit. He brings up everything that's nasty about what the other person's going to think of him, and he totally diffuses the situation and leaves the other person's speechless, right? Can you talk about that?

Chris Voss:

Yeah. The accusations audit as a strategic move is probably one of our single most powerful bundled strategies that's out there. It's diffusing the negative emotions that are there and those that might be there, and both of those are scary, but diffusing ones that might show up scares the hell out of people because they think they're going to plant negatives by trying to diffuse them and you can't, it's just, when you really understand the dynamics, the negatives and the positives in people's brains in a way that you deal with them, and it's completely counterintuitive because most people are used to denying negatives. I don't want this to sound disrespectful. It's almost a comedy routine. The very next thing's going to sound disrespectful. So the two, and people are used to reacting to that, and so I teach them to say, this is going to sound disrespectful. And they go like, oh, no, no, no, I said that before and it backfired.

No, you didn't. You said, I don't want to sound disrespectful. The first part of that is a critical issue as to how you tee it up. So the accusations audit is going after everything negative, everything, everything, everything, everything. And being very proactive about it, and it is insanely effective because it clears people's heads and human beings are largely negative in their reactions. The data qualitative and quantitative is more than enough to support that, up to 75% negative. And most people ignore the negative and simply try to overcome it by being positive. And that's an extremely inefficient approach. It's far more efficient to simply deactivate the negatives. You don't get rid of the elephant in the room by saying, I don't want you to think there's an elephant in the room. You get people, you say, look, there's an elephant in the room. And then people go like, yeah, but it's not that bad.

But if you say, I don't want you to think there's an elephant in the room, people go, are you crazy? There's an elephant right there. What are you lying to me? Are you oblivious? Are you stupid? What's going on here? So the accusations audit is really about attacking the elephant in the room or the elephant that could be in the room. And it's very counterintuitive to think that you can keep the elephant from coming in the room in the first place, and it works. We got more than enough ridiculously successful clients that we have coached.

We got the data, we had the coaching experience over and over and over, and I think that's one of the differences in the Black Swan Group of the people that are out there talking about how to philosophically do things. We have the most robust coaching practice of any of our competitors. Cialdini doesn't coach, pick anybody that you might go to. Robert Green doesn't coach. We got a thriving coaching practice of satisfied clients implementing our ideas and making a lot of money. And the accusations audit is really one of those things that makes a huge difference. Proactively diffusing negatives, not letting them come in the room.

Chris Do:

So for people who don't know what the accusation audit, it's where you imagine the worst things that the other person's going to say about you, and then you just bring them up front, right?

Chris Voss:

Yeah. You say, and it's a slight adjustment on a label, I might say, it seems like you're angry to this is probably going to make you angry. It seems like you feel like you're wasting your time is I might be. You're probably going to feel like you're wasting your time in every given meeting that you go into at some point in time. The other side's going to wonder whether or not they're wasting their time. And among the accusations, audits, we're going to throw it right away is look, it's probably going to ask yourself, if you're wasting your time, you're probably going to feel like you're wondering why you're talking to me in the first place. You're probably going to say that what I want's unfair, you're probably going to think I'm greedy and then I'm going to shut up and let this stuff sink in. And then you decide whether or not you're going to proceed. And it's just a great way to get on track quickly without letting people's negative emotions create an incredible friction and slow everything down.

Chris Do:

What's the neuroscience behind this? I find that whenever we verbalize whatever our fears or emotions are, they tend to reduce the amount of pain that we feel around these things. Is there neuroscience that backs up what you're saying?

Chris Voss:

Yeah, there've been a number of experiments with people in FMRIs where they've used a device such as showing them a, showing them a picture, put them in a negative mindset, they see the reaction and they simply ask people to identify their emotion to label it. And very consistently, when people label it diminishes that activity and whatever sort of the part of the brain is lit up, it's been shown to be on a regular basis consistently over and over and over again, calling out negatives, labeling them, whether you're labeling your own or labeling them in someone else, it consistently shows that it diffuses it.

Chris Do:

So as a person who's like, I'm an introvert, and when it's something comes up, I feel more tense and anxious when I'm feeling something, but I just don't say it. So part of it is just like, what are you feeling inside and should you say this? And if I say it, then all of a sudden it goes down and it creates a healthier relationship because otherwise I start to resent people for things I've not even communicated to them. So it begins with us, and then now we can apply the same feeling or the same understanding when we're talking to prospects, right?

Chris Voss:

Well said. Absolutely. The best way to follow up with the Black Swan Group learn as much as possible that you can from us, is to subscribe to our newsletter, The Edge and the way you subscribe to our newsletter. You say, how do I do this? Well, here's how you do it. You go to our website, blackswanltd.com, B-L-A-C-K-S-W-A-N_L-T-D dot com. Upper right hand corner is a tab for the newsletter, The Edge, subscribe. Give us your email address. It's free, it's complimentary, it's actionable and concise.

You get the weekly article, one article, not 10, and you're trying to figure out which one to read one email to you at 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday, Monday's an admin day, Monday's clutter day, Tuesday's get down to business day. It'll help you get your brain teed up on negotiation, give you ideas you can use that day, and it's the gateway to everything. We have got a lot of stuff. We got training announcements. We got a variety of ways to help you get better at negotiation, and The Edge is a gateway to all that stuff. It's a gateway to the gold mine. So the best, absolute best thing to do is subscribe to The Edge.

Chris Do:

Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Voss:

Thank you very much. I am Chris Voss, and you're listening to The Futur.

Stuart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Stuart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris, and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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