How to Succeed at Hard Conversations | Chris Voss

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Chris Voss. Chris Voss spent more than two decades as an agent with the FBI or Federal Bureau of Investigation where he was a lead crisis negotiator and a member of the Joint Terrorist Task Force. Chris is also the author of a phenomenal bestselling book entitled Never Split the Difference. In addition, he has taught courses in negotiation at Harvard, at Georgetown, and at the University of Southern California. As a world expert in all forms of negotiation today Chris teaches us about how to hold hard conversations where we are seeking particular outcomes or perhaps where we don't know what the optimal outcome could be. He talks about this in the context of business and in the context of relationships, including romantic relationships, but familial and work relationships as well. And he talks about how we should think about ourselves in the context of negotiations so that we can all arrive at the best possible outcomes. Indeed, during today's episode you will learn to pay attention to emotions, not just other people's emotions, but your own emotions, in order to determine whether or not you are processing the information you're hearing accurately and equally important, whether or not.

You are behaving being heard accurately when.

You are in a discussion of any kind, but especially heated discussions. In addition, we discuss the role of both physical and mental stamina in the context of difficult conversations, negotiations and decision making. Because in the real world context, oftentimes those can take place not just within a single conversation, but over the course of several days or even several weeks, months or years. Chris also teaches us about deception, that is how to determine if somebody is lying by asking particular types of probe questions. Thanks to Chris Voss's both breadth and depth of expertise in the negotiation process that he gleaned during his more than two decade service in the FBI, as well as his generosity in sharing that information. By the end of today's episode, you will have an excellent understanding of what the negotiation process is really all about and how to better carry out those negotiations so that they can best serve.

You and and others.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast Our first sponsor is Plunge Plunge makes what I believe is the most versatile at home Self Cooling Cold Plunge for Deliberate Cold Exposure I I've talked numerous times on this podcast about the many benefits of deliberate cold exposure. Deliberate cold exposure, especially deliberate cold exposure done up to the neck in water, can be used to achieve a number of important endpoints related to mental health, physical health, and performance. Plunge uses a powerful cooling, filtration and sanitation unit to give you access to deliberate cold exposure in clean water whenever you want. I've been using a plunge for more than two years now.

I can tell you that it makes.

It very easy to get your deliberate cold exposure at home. It doesn't require much cleaning. In fact, it's very easy to keep clean, which is essential. You don't want bacteria and other things growing in your cold plunge. Basically, everything about the plunge is made easy so that anyone, including myself, can get their deliberate cold exposure on a regular basis at home. If you're interested in getting a plunge, you can go to plunge spelled P L U N G E.com huberman and get $150 off your cold plunge. Again, that's plunge.com huberman for $150 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest I've spent a lifetime working on the biology, the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see.

Clearly in different environments.

Roka understands the biology of the visual system and has designed their eyeglasses and sunglasses so that you always see with crystal clarity. Originally, their glasses were designed for performance, that is for running and cycling and for sport, and indeed they can still be used for performance. They won't slip off your face if you get sweaty. They're extremely lightweight. But I should mention that Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses come in some of the aesthetics more more typically associated with performance glasses, like those cyborg style glasses, but they also have a number of styles that you would be perfectly comfortable wearing out to dinner or to work. I wear readers at night or when I drive, and I wear sunglasses during the day if I happen to be driving into bright light or outside and.

It'S just overwhelmingly bright. I do not wear sunglasses when I do my morning sunlight viewing to set.

My circadian rhythm, and I suggest that.

You do the same.

If you'd like to try Roka eyeglasses or sunglasses, you can go to roka R-O-K-A.com and enter the code huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's roka r o-k a.com and.

Enter the code Huberman at checkout.

And now for my conversation with Chris Voss.

Chris Voss, welcome, Andrew, A pleasure, man. I've been wanting to talk to you on record for a while. You are quite the what we call in science n of 1 when somebody is a true sample size of 1. I realize that, yes, you are, because you have this incredible skill set from your time in the FBI. But you also have an incredible understanding and knowledge of how to communicate about that skill set so that people can glean useful information from it. You are also the guy that I text or call every once in a while when I've run myself into a jam or when I think I might be in a jam. And I won't reveal details, but you tell me whether or not things are okay.

And fortunately, the last couple times I.

Reached out, you said you're good. So thank you.

Always happy to help, man.

Thank you. Well, I have a lot of questions today, but what I'd like to start off talking about is negotiations take many forms, but if we could break those down into their broad categories, that will be useful. But before we do that, I want to know about the mindset that you have when you go into a negotiation and whether or not there are any sort of practices. I realize you've been in this profession a long time, and so it perhaps became reflexive to you at some point, but all of us at some point are going to go into negotiations, business negotiations, relationship negotiations, et cetera. Is there a process of getting one's mind and body right for a negotiation, shifting from more listening and less talking? Are there any tools that you use on the regular that could be useful for us to keep in mind as we extend into the different categories of negotiations and ways to approach those negotiations?

There can be a couple different first of all, just trying to figure out what's really going on is the real issue. And then how can I get an approach where I'm most likely to get the best possible outcome? So there's always more than meets the eye, and there's a certain there's a certain few cliches. But the real issue is there's always a better deal or there's no deal at all. So first of all, my first thing is I want to find out whether or not there's a deal at all or whether or not it's a bad deal and then I'm going to walk away really fast because those are going to be complete waste of time. It's not a sin to not get the deal. It's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal, or it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. So I want to know, I'm going to try to figure out real quick whether or not is there a cutthroat on the other side of the table? Is it somebody I could trust? I'm leaning a little more inclined to dealing with the difficult people now, as long as I don't give in. So I want to diagnose early on what the possibilities are. Now if I'm curious, if I'm actually interested. Now, another aspect of the mindset is if I'm in a great mood, like if I'm just going to be playful. A couple of really huge personal negotiation wins recently was when I was just trying to be playful. I mean, I was in a great mood and I'm joking around and great negotiation is not exciting. It's astonishing. I'm in a con. We're in conversations right now with a possible non scripted TV show. And so I was telling the producers, you know, this ain't going to be Real Housewives for to make this show properly. There ain't going to be any screaming. It's not going to be Bar Rescue where we're yelling at people. We're not going to be Hell's Kitchen where we're yelling at people. It's never going to be exciting, but it is going to be astonishing. Like you'll get outcomes where suddenly you find yourself in a place like, what in the world? How did that just happen? And so I lose a suitcase in an airport the other day and I'm walking into the lost luggage place and I'm in a great mood because I'm home and I'm happy to be home and I'm going to get a good night's sleep. And even though it's late in the day, I'm just happy. And I get ready to walk into this, the lost luggage store where these people are battered children like they expect you. They know that you expect them to wave a magic wand and poof, your luggage is going to be there. So for whatever reason, that's what I say when I walk in the door. This young lady says, how can I help you? Well, first of all, how you could help me is obvious because I'm in a lost luggage. There's Only one reason I'm in here. So that's kind of a silly question. And I go, I need you to wave a magic wand. And she just laughs. And she looks at me. She ends up walking me out to the carousel, climbing up on the carousel. And she walks down a ramp. The luggage comes out of. And I guarantee you they're not supposed to do that. And she sticks her head and she looks around, she comes back out, and I've never seen any of these people leave the office, let alone walk back to the carousel. And she says, wait here. And she disappears into the bowels of the airport, which, like, looks like a superhighway down there, right? Like, God knows what it looks like underneath the airport. And pretty soon the carousel starts up again. And my bag, and another bag pops out. This other poor schmuck is sitting there waiting. And I'm like, I have never seen anybody do this ever. Like, normally they say, here's a number, we'll call you in 24 hours. It might show up at your house. And I look around at the. There's another young lady there. And I say, you know, please tell her thank you for me. I got to go. Because she doesn't come back out for, like, almost 10 minutes. And on my way out, she comes out the door and she high fives me. And she says, how's that for waving a magic wand? And that was the magic phrase. And I never would have said it to her if I wasn't playful in a moment. And I've got a couple of others, like when I was just playful and I'm joking with people almost at my expense. It's shocking, astonishing what you can get people to do if you. If you hit them the right way.

So interesting. I wonder what it tapped into. But it sounds like it might have tapped into her sense that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand kind of ability, but finally somebody just said it directly. And that would be kind of fun to actually play that role because normally they're restricted to their keyboard and their phone. I love that. On the opposite side of that spectrum, if ever you're feeling tense, stressed, jet lagged, angry, I can think about negotiations where people are trying to keep their egos in check. They want to be right. Breakups, negotiations, there's those, not necessarily romantic breakups that could include that, but also professional breakups, the dissolution of a contract or something like that. Do you ever have to check yourself, like, okay, I need to. I mean, I imagine being calm is better than not being calm. For most all things. Do you have a process of doing that? You seem like a pretty steady guy. I've never seen you.

Overall, I'm pretty steady. Well, the late night FM DJ voice that I'm not sure that I coined the phrase, but kind of famous for, to calm you down also calms me down. So if I get bent out of shape, I will, and the conversation gets heated, I'll switch into that voice with the intention of calming you down. Because, you know, that's the hostage negotiator's voice. But it'll calm me down too. Like intentionally going to that voice tamps down the negative emotions, which I'm convinced make me dumber in the moment, interfere with my capacity to process information. Got reasons for that? Layman's reasons. No scientific, academically rigorous studies that have been in any journals.

Well, after you're done, I'm going to tell you something that will perhaps be astonishing to you as to why there's real neuroscience behind that late night FM DJ voice having an impact on other people's brains.

Yeah. And I'll do that because it calms me down. Now, if I can make the shift, the hard part is to shift into a positive mindset. If I can make that shift, but I can only make it from a calm voice. I also think it's the emotions are kind of a rock, paper, scissors sequence. I don't think you can go from sadness to elation. Directly sad, depressed, down. I think there's something to getting angry to pull you out of sadness. And I think if you're angry, you've got to go to calm next. And so. But if I can get out of anger and go to calm, then I can say something to myself like, the reality is this is a luxury problem. Or I was in a negotiation with a counterpart that I knew was deceiving, lying to me. And I remember saying to myself, you know, I'm lucky to be in this negotiation. I mean, they wouldn't be trying to hustle me if we weren't really good. If we didn't have a product that was phenomenal, I wouldn't be targeted at all. So I'm actually lucky to be in this conversation. So if I can make that next shift emotionally, then I'm good. The hard part is making those shifts.

I'm going to just share with you what I learned recently about sound and emotion. I'm researching an episode on music and the brain. Fascinating topic, believe it or not. There's a lot known. And the auditory system has this property where, of Course, there are neurons, nerve cells that respond to different frequencies of sound. Low frequency, deeper tones, and high frequency squeals and that sort of thing. Okay, that's pretty straightforward. Just like we have neurons that respond to different colors or different angles of light in the room. But what I learned, and I confirmed with a good friend of mine who's an auditory neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, his name's Eddie Chang, who was a guest on this podcast previously, is that low frequency sounds of the sort that your voice is, that late night FMDJ voice are responded to in the brain by neurons. No surprise there. But the frequency that those neurons fire is also low frequency. In other words, when you speak in your low voice, the other person's brain hears that and starts firing in a low frequency tone. In other words, it entrains to your voice not just the timing, but it's actually like you're essentially playing an emotional piano down in the low keys of their mind. Now, when you go up to the high frequencies, the neurons can't follow that high, high frequency. So there's something special about low frequency sound that actually changes the emotional tone of the people that hear that low frequency sound. This is wild, right? I mean, I mean, of course the content of the words matters too, but anyway, there's real neuroscience to support the voice that you were endowed with and that you employed for your work.

Well, then, and then also the point then too is it's not the other side's not making a choice. It's an involuntary reaction.

That's right. This is not something one can override except by perhaps plugging their ears.

Right, right, right.

If they're hearing that their mind is getting shifted toward a state of low frequency oscillation, which is one of more calm. Yeah, yeah. So that's a real thing. And were you to have a high squeaky chipmunks voice, you might not have been the negotiator. You would. Although, who knows, maybe there'd be another tactic there. I mean, I think back to the. I guess it was during one of the Gulf War campaigns where they. Weren't they trying to squeeze out Saddam and some of his people by playing like Milli Vanilli at high volume for hours and hours.

Is that tactic actually used?

So that was Panama when they were trying to get Noriega out of his trip.

I'm only a few countries over in one ocean or.

I get the trivia I was telling you before, the wacky yet fascinating useless information around terrorism. Stuff like that. I Tried that at Panama. And for whatever reason, the military guys, they were playing music and sounds. And then also among the many stupid things that the FBI did at Waco and late at night they tried that in the Waco compound too. And it was just. That was one of the things that the hostage negotiators were adamantly against. Adamantly against. But they got overruled by Onsyn Command. Among the many stupid things that were done at Waco that was also done at Waco was stupid. It's counterproductive. Hostage negotiators were always against it.

So for those of you who don't remember Waco, Waco is Branch Davidians. David Koresh, right?

Yeah. There was a Netflix series that was out about it recently. That's fair. About how it went down.

Yeah. Sad ending. He eventually set the building ablaze, killed himself and everybody else.

Had people inside, set the building on fire.

Yeah. Including a lot of children perished.

Including some children. There are some FBI agents that have still not gotten over that.

Like to talk about some different types of negotiations. Oftentimes I think because you're a former FBI negotiator, anti terrorist task force, this kind of thing, we tend to focus on the negative negotiations. Get the hostages away and we'll talk about that stuff. Breakups, business deals that have gone wrong, people lying, cheating. What about negotiations that are benevolent? Let's say that two people want to come to a true win win around what they each see to be their best interests in, let's say, friendship. Two friends taking a trip together, vacation. Who's going to pay for what? Who's going to pay up front? Are people going to pay each other back? Or a romantic relationship? Two people are considering fusing finances to some extent or moving in together. What sorts of questions should people be asking themselves prior to those negotiations? In particular, is it very important that people know exactly what they want going into a negotiation or. I can recall many times when I've gone into life circumstances knowing I wanted a certain set of feelings or outcomes, but not being extremely specific about I want this salary. I want to live in a west facing house on this particular location. An exploration of potentials I think can also take the form of negotiation. So how should people think about approaching benevolent negotiations? Like where we're not talking about something tragic happening. If it doesn't go through, it might hurt. It might be a little bit high friction. But let's talk about how to get to a win win.

Yeah, well, there's a couple interesting things there. First of all, the phrase Win win. Because win win is just great collaboration. I mean, in point of fact, it should be win win, which might only be emotional. Win win. Now, the phraseology, win win. I know that if someone opens a negotiation with me and they say right off the bat, look, I want to do a win win deal with you, that correlates extremely highly with someone who's trying to pick my pocket. So if you use that phrase in the first five minutes, I already know where you're coming from. You're trying to get me to drop my guards. You win, I lose. So, and this came up on an Instagram post I put up recently, which is essentially, watch out for the person that says win win. Now, I didn't say win win is bad. I said watch out for the person that says it. Also, you got to be cautious if you like some of the win win mindset, and people set themselves up to just get slaughtered by the person who's expressing a desire for win win and looking to pick their pocket. Like, if I feel win win in my heart, you go, let's do a win win deal. If I don't watch it, I'm like, okay, what do you want? And then I find myself giving away the store. So there's a lot behind the win win phraseology that you have to have a complete understanding of. In point of fact, both sides should feel good about the outcome. And isn't that the definition of win win? Well, kind of, sort of. But it's how they feel about it more than really what they got. So in a benevolent negotiation among friends, where are we going to go to eat? Where are we going on vacation? What route are we going to take? People really just want to be heard out more than anything else, which operationally seems to be. I don't understand how it's going to make any difference. Makes all the difference in the world world. And how. What's the best way for somebody to feel heard out? Well, I'm going to start out by telling you, describing to you, not telling you, but describing to you what my best guess is on your perspective, because it's really calibrating me actually finding out what your position is. And the only way I can find out what your position actually is is I'm going to increase you telling me if I start taking a guess at it first. Because you're immediately, right away, immediately going to tell me either I'm right or I'm wrong. You're going to correct me. Correction is a satisfying thing to do. And you're going to be Much more candid with me if you're correcting me than if I'm asking you. And you'll feel good about correcting me. So there's all these great emotional lubricants to me getting you to correct me. So I'm going to start out by saying, like, here's, here's what I think you're thinking. Here's how I think you're approaching this. Here's what I think you're wanting out of this, out of this. Not what you should be, but what you probably are based on your perspective. And that's going to accelerate the conversation exponentially. Like it's ridiculous how much faster things are going to go. And then it becomes both an information gathering and a rapport building process simultaneously instead of separately, which is what makes this approach faster, even though it seems more indirect. So if we're getting ready to, let's say you and I are going to take a car trip to San Francisco from here. And I'm going to say, all right, so my guess is you want to take the most direct route because you hate wasting time. And you're probably going to say to me, no, no, no, no, I want to go up the Pacific coast highway because this beautiful stretch of country, like, I realize it's going to be a waste of time if we go up the Pacific coast because we got to jump off it at some point. But I really want to see the scenery. You would have. I've taken a guess at what you want and you're going to come back real quick and correct me. And then maybe I'm thinking time on the trip, but I've forgotten how beautiful it is to roll up the coast. And so when you throw that out, I'll be like, oh, yeah, it is a beautiful ride and we might not get another shot. Who knows what's going to happen? So yeah, now that we're having a conversation, I'd rather run up the Pacific coast highway before we go inland and make the trip. And that's how we get to. We collaborate for a better outcome, maybe a better idea than what I had in mind in the first place.

I love that. Because what you just described is hypothesis testing.

Yes.

It's the way scientists are trained. Many people don't know this, but they teach us in science not to ask questions, but to start with a question like how does the brain develop? Or something. And then you say a hypothesis and you test hypotheses and then you figure out if they're right or wrong. And that takes you through a set of decision trees, and you eventually get at what you hope is some core truth, and then hopefully others arrive there as well, and you get a consensus. So I love the idea of hypothesis testing. In fact, when you said take the most direct route from where we are now in Los Angeles to San Francisco, I like to take 101, not the 5. The 5 is faster. So I immediately think, but I like 101.

First of all, there are a couple.

Really great taco and hamburger spots along the way that I used to stop with my bulldog and get. Also, you get to see the coast, and it makes those extra two hours completely worth it. And so you're exactly right in that working through the decision tree doesn't necessarily mean presuming that the hypothesis is right. It sounds like you'd be equally okay with the hypothesis being wrong. Because really, what you're trying to do is just learn and in learning, set up this collaboration. I love that.

A couple of things. First of all, when you talk about hypothesis, when my son Brandon was involved in a company, he's out on his own now, but he used to always say, hypothesis, test your hypothesis. He always used that term. And then even now, like, we were talking about it and you just said you knew some hot dog and hamburger places, I'd be like, holy cow, I didn't even know that. Yeah, yeah, I want to check those places out. So that's how you discover new stuff in a conversation.

I love it. And also, I'm sure people are noting to not say the words win win.

When approaching any kind of negotiation.

What do you think it is about those little catchphrases that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness? Because you could imagine that somebody, you know, I come to you and say, you know, hey, Chris, like, let's, I don't know, let's do some collaborative thing for social media, for podcast, and this is going to be a win win for both of us. Now, I know to never say that with you, but you could imagine that somebody really means that. But for you, it sounds like it's a flag that they're trying to pull one over.

It correlates really strongly with the people that are definitely trying to cut your throat. And I've had them admit that to me candidly.

Amazing.

Like, I'll be. I've experienced it. Like, if somebody throws win win out early to me, I'll say, all right, I think I know where this is going, but let me explore it. And they'll say, yeah, you know, this is a Great opportunity for you. That's another tell. And we're going to put you in a room with all these billionaires and there's going to be all this opportunity for you if you just come in and speak. And, you know, we don't have a budget.

Well, I've gotten that one before. The famous. The world will just work out in your favor because.

Magic.

Because it's going to work out in my favor, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.

I've been on the receiving end of those offers many a time. Fascinating. Conversely, what sorts of openers do you think establish the best rapport and, you know, benevolent discovery of a topic?

Well, what I'm saying correlates real strongly with people I want to do business with. If, if they figured out something that they know is valuable for me and they've just done it and they've just offered it, like right off the bat, no strings attached, they found a way to drop something on me that's valuable. They didn't approach me with their hand out. They approached me with some sort of generosity. Like a friend of mine, Joe Polish, runs this outfit called Genius Network. Joe says life gives to the giver. Like, Joe did a bunch of favors for me before I ever joined and he was trying to help me out and get my book sold and he asked me to come in and speak and he'd emphasized my book on his podcast and in different conversations. And I finally paid the fee to join because he had done so much for me. Like, there's not much Joe could ask me for right now because he's done so much for me that he gets a blanket pretty much, yes, right away. What do you want? What do you need? Because he's just generous and the generosity approach universally, I'm seeing a lot of really successful people that lead by generosity. And so if you start out that if you give me a five star review of the book on Amazon, no strings attached or anything, that goes a long, long way to somebody who wants to establish a long term relationship. Collaboration.

When I first opened my laboratory in 2011, I had a technician at the time who had been a technician for a lot of years. And there's this culture in science of people borrowing things from laboratories and not giving them back or breaking them. These can be little things like a small instrument or a forceps, but as a student or postdoc, these are the things that you covet. Like a really nice pair of forceps is a great thing. You drop them once, they're not good anymore, by the way. It's like, you have to treat them with respect. Surgical tools have to be treated with respect. These are very fine instruments. And people used to come by our lab all the time and borrow stuff from us. And he'd always lend it out. And I was like, what are you doing? But anytime I went to go borrow something, he'd say, do not borrow anything from anybody else, because then we're gonna owe them. Right now, everybody owes us everything. And I was like, you're running up our budget giving away these instruments. They come back with the forceps dented and stuff. And he said, just trust me. This is the way to do it. And I don't recall ever, quote, unquote.

Cashing in on any of that, but.

He was exactly right. When I eventually decided to move institutions, we had given away so much, and we had asked for so very little, maybe nothing that, you know, when you leave a place, typically there can be a little bad blood. And all we got was, sorry to see you go kind of stuff. Had it been me, I would have been in a kind of an exchange of, oh, we ask for things, we give things. It's kind of a neighborhood. I grew up in a neighborhood where you'd borrow eggs or milk from the neighbor. Remember those days? I don't know if people do that any longer, but I think it falls well into what you're describing. That when you just do things for people out of goodness, then, sure, you sort of have a history where you could return to that they owe you. But there's also just something good about just doing things out of goodness and also not asking for so much and expecting people to provide that. So I love that. And I actually, I love providing good reviews for things I like on the phone. When the airline. We don't do this anymore. We book our own flights. But anytime I get help on the phone and if it's really great help, I'll say, how can I help? And they'll say, oh, it would mean a lot if you would send an email to my business. Just saying, I did a great job or something like that, and I actually really enjoy doing that. I love the points you're making because they're very actionable.

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that's designed to meet all of your foundational nutrition needs. Now, of course, I try to get enough servings of vitamins and minerals through whole food sources. That include vegetables and fruits every day. But oftentimes I simply can't get enough servings. But with AG1, I'm sure to get enough vitamins and minerals and the probiotics that I need.

And.

And it also contains adaptogens to help buffer stress. Simply put, I always feel better when I take AG1. I have more focus and energy and I sleep better. And it also happens to taste great. For all these reasons, whenever I'm asked if you could take just one supplement.

What would it be?

I answer AG1. If you'd like to try AG1, go to drink ag1.comhuberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.comhuberman shifting slightly into the.

More, let's call them, high friction negotiations or the types of negotiations where there is the potential for a truly bad outcome.

Right.

I know you've been asked this before, but some of our listeners are going to be learning about you for the first time. Do you recall of the many negotiations that you did while in the FBI any one particular negotiation that felt like if this doesn't work out, this is really catastrophic? And would you be willing to share that with us?

Well, I learned they tried to teach us early on that not everything's going to work out. And the second negotiation I had in the Philippines, the first one, young man named Jeff Schilling, was grabbed by terrorist group Abu Sayyaf and he ended up walking away because we, we stalled the bad guys long enough that we just, you know, sometimes if you can slow it down, you wait for something good to fall out of the sky and it will. And that ended up happening in that case. And the bad guy ends up calling the negotiator that I coached on the phone after it was over to basically tell him that they still had a good relationship. It was nuts. Why does a bad guy call the negotiator that was responsible for him losing everything and say, you know, you did a good job? Which is exactly what happened. So we roll into a case and I hadn't had anything go bad at that point in time. The very next case, Burnham Soberro case by a different faction of the terrorist group 13 months later, ends up in two of the three remaining hostages shot and killed by friendly fire along the way. Hostages had been executed. An American had been executed early on and it was a train wreck and lots of people got killed all along the way and just really ridiculous bad things happening, and that was bad all the way through. So we learned, you know, learned a lot from it, went back and checked everything we did, and we didn't do anything wrong that we felt based on our strategy, didn't miss anything. And that was why I ended up going collaborating with the guys at Harvard, because my reaction was, if this. If we did everything we know how to do and it wasn't enough, that means we're not smart enough. We got to get better. And so that case taught me a lot about the dynamics that really happen on the other side and the difference between whether or not people are really on your side. The US Government was not highly collaborative. The Philippine government was not highly collaborative. Everybody wanted to get their pound of flesh out of the other side. I mean, just everything bad that you can imagine. Early on, when Garam Sobero was murdered by the Abu Sayyaf, it was a national holiday in the Philippines, and the bad guys had a history of killing people on national holidays, and we weren't from the Philippines, and we had no idea that that day was a national holiday. And we showed up at Philippine National Police headquarters in Manila, and it was closed. Now I got an ongoing hostage case with bad guys threatening to kill hostages. And we show up at the gates, and the gates are closed, and we're like, what the hell's going on here? Well, it's a national holiday. Nobody's working today. I'm like, first of all, nobody told us that. Secondly, I don't think the bad guys really care that it's a national holiday and nobody's working. Our negotiator's nowhere to be found. We got a guy there that the previous negotiator we worked with, Philippine National Police, was not that happy that they didn't have him under complete control. So they give us a guy that will not tell us anything until after he's told them. So he's having conversations with the bad guys, and we're actually hearing about him secondhand. He didn't show up that day. And then. And of course, that day, the bad guys announced they're going to kill a hostage and give it as a gift to the country of the Philippines because it's a holiday. And then go, oh, by the way, they like doing this on holidays. And so. And Guillermo Sombrero ended up getting his head cut off with the. Because of all the warring factions on our side of the table not telling each other what the hell's going on. So I had assumed at that point in time that people would tell us the stuff we need to know, we didn't need to ask. And after that I got like, look, there ain't nothing here that I don't need to know. I don't. If it's a holiday, it's coming up, then you assume, I know you got to tell us. So really learned a lot about collaboration on our side of the table and also the lack of collaboration on the other side of the table. Just because we're a mess doesn't mean they got their act together and the bad guys didn't have their act together. And ultimately the hostages. One of the reasons someone didn't come out because internally they had double crossed each other. So learned a lot about what really fundamental human nature dynamics are on teams. And, and your team has not got its act together and the other team does not either. So what can you do as a communicator to make up for that? Really learned a lot about that in that case. I had cases subsequent to that involving Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was killing people on a regular basis. But we saw those coming and we did everything we could do to keep the train from smashing into us. You see a train coming down the tracks, you know it's coming down the tracks and you do the best you can to derail it, and sometimes you can't.

I've heard it said that when people take somebody captive that they either want their money, their body or their life or some combination of those.

Yeah, that's probably one of those three. Yeah, that's very true.

And as the negotiator trying to rescue the hostage, is it important to identify early on which of those three or which all of those three they're after, like how serious they are? Are they willing to actually kill the hostage? Will they go for any amount of money above X number of dollars trying to figure out their threshold? Right. I mean, because the person is on the other side is gambling. Right. They're gambling their freedom, their gambling their reputation with whoever their reputation matters to. Is it important to get into the mindset of the person you're negotiating with quickly using the hypothesis generating method? And if so, could you give an example of how that played out in your previous work?

Yeah, the indicators are really there. I mean, once you sort of lose your illusions about how you think things should play out, then the patterns of behavior are generally pretty quick and clear. And just because you don't like the patterns, like with Al Qaeda, we recognize the patterns and knowing what they are doesn't mean you can change what they are. And al Qaeda in 2004 ish timeframe was very clear about killing people on deadline and we had to recognize that. So there becomes a pattern of behavior and it's usually specificity in what they say. And this is all human nature. Like if you're in a business negotiation and they say we're going to do something horrible here, we're going to walk out, that's fairly nonspecific. And if they say, look, if we don't get this by this specific deadline, if we don't get these specific things met by this specific time, that's pretty specific. It's specificity. You're looking for it. I learned to look for it in kidnapping negotiations. We're working a case again in the Philippines and the bad guys say if we don't get a ransom for the son, 17 year old boy at the time is kidnapped, you tell his father he's going to lose an egg. And that's a euphemism for losing a child. And early on when that threat came through on our side of the table, everybody's like, oh my God, they're going to kill him. This is really bad. We got to make sure the family can pay the ransom. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. They didn't say when it was going to happen, they didn't say how it was going to happen. They didn't say who was going to do it. You know, the basic specificity of who, what, when and where. Like they left themselves an out here, a very clear out. And we never said we were going to do it. We never said when it was going to happen. We never said which child. You know what, they're just trying to scare you. They're throwing out something vague. I said, we got plenty of time to play with this. We got to push this all the way through the process until the end. Now, later on in that case when the family tried to deliver a ransom and it was screwed up by God knows who, the bad guys came up back on the phone and they said, if we don't get paid tomorrow, your son dies. And I said, all right, now that's specific. And these guys sound like they mean it. And so we're going to have to make sure this thing goes down tomorrow or that's the end of this kid. And at that point in time, we allowed the family, we were in a position to allow or disallow. We were in a position to offer thoughts. And our thoughts were they mean it now and you need to do something now or likely something bad's. Going to happen. And now that they're this serious, because you always got to worry about what we used to refer to as a double dip. Do they take the money and then. And they come back and say, nah, that was a down payment. That wasn't the ransom. That was just a down payment. You got to make sure you don't get double dipped if you let the family pay. And you got to give them your honest opinion as to whether or not they're going to let the hostage go if you pay now. And our thoughts were, you pay him tomorrow, your son's coming out, and he did.

The double dip is a scary thing to hear about at a much lower level, meaning more minor level. People sometimes get shaken down online. Their password will get taken. There are people everywhere who go for the click on this link. You get a text message, we've identified that your account has been changed, verify. You click on the link, takes you someplace where you put in your login and password, and boom, it's gone. And then they try and sell it back to you, typically through cryptocurrency, because it's not traceable.

By the way, those negotiations can be a lot of fun if you let them.

Well, I'm hoping that our discussion about this now is going to save some people the trouble of having their accounts hacked. I've known people who've had their accounts hacked, and these are some smart people. But what's interesting is that I've also observed those situations where somebody gets to the point where they say, you know, I'm just going to give them what they want. And I remember in this one particular instance saying, no, no, no, do not give them the money, because then they're just going to say they want more. There's no, there's no guarantee that they're going to give you back what you want. And why would they?

Right?

If you think about it, why would they. The money funnels in and, like, they just can pivot and go to the next thing. So how do you gain confidence that you are likely to be double dipped or not?

Well, first of all, I got to find out if, you know, if they're in a position to carry out the threat or if they're in any sort of legitimate position to begin with. You know, for lack of a better term, it's proof of life. And there are a lot of people that are trying to scam you, but they don't really have the ability to scam you. So you got to find out, you know, do some confirmation, do they do they have access to your account? Do they, do they have your data, they have your money? Do they have it in a position or are they just trying to make you believe that they have that position of influence on you? There are a lot of, a lot of the bad guys out there that are just rolling a dice, dialing for dollars, if you will. And if they don't scam you when they have no leverage on you, they'll find somebody else that'll give in. So there's a bit of, you know, authenticity or are they in a position to do it? And the same rule applies in any negotiation. The other side is going to give in when they feel like they've gotten everything they can. Kidnappers, I'd be asked by an ambassador, asked by an FBI commander, when's this going to be over? When the bad guys feel like they've gotten everything they could. Not when they did, but when they felt like they did. So our job is just make them feel it sooner. So you know, how, how hard do you make it innocently on the other side, everybody, everybody wants to feel like they did a, they got a good day's pay for a good day's work. So if you let them feel like they're in charge and you make them work by asking them innocent how and what questions which are very hard and fatiguing to answer, then you're going to get to the point where you're going to get a solid outcome where you don't get double dipped and they're going to be happy that it's over because they felt like they got everything they could. It could be your data, could be your bank account, could be anything. The other side is going to be satisfied with the outcome when they feel like they worked for it. And business negotiations, you're selling your car and some, you put a price tag on your car and a guy walks up to you and says, I'll give you full amount right now. What's your reaction? I should have asked for more. Maybe I won't sell my car. Every human interaction, the other side wants to feel like that they earned what they got. And so the idea of empathy in hostage negotiations is really just to make them feel that sooner.

We're going to come back to empathy because it's such a big and important topic. But I've heard it said before that if somebody you don't know, but maybe also somebody you know places a real sense of urgency on, you know, need the money now or I need you to do something right away, or else not. Threat of physical violence. But that any request for expediting something is a red flag.

Yeah.

That it's likely to be a scam. You know, very seldom do you need to click on the link within 24 hours. Right. I mean, how could that possibly be? Right, right, right. But that's one way in which people are exploited.

Yep.

That some request comes in by phone or by, you know, email or text or maybe even person. Somebody says, you know, you need to do this right now or else something bad is gonna happen. Capture people's sense of urgency, get them to make a mistake, and then they're. They're left reeling. Because that request for something right now or else, I think hits a fundamental nerve in us to want to help.

To be a rescuer.

Right. So is that a good rule of thumb for people to keep in mind to not?

I think that's a great rule of thumb. I mean, a friend of mine, somebody got a hold of his phone number not that long ago, and I was getting texts from his number. So, like, look, man, I got some real problems. Look, I need some money from you now. It was a friend. A friend's number. And I remember when I first saw it, actually, when I first saw it, I was really busy, and I felt bad that I didn't get back to him that day, and then I didn't hear from him again. And so I thought, well, whatever it was, you worked it out. So a couple weeks later, I get the text again. You got a real problem. You got to get back to me right now. So I decide if it's really my buddy, I am going to help him right now. I got to make sure it's really my buddy. And I said, hey, man, you didn't raise this at all last time I saw you in Vegas. Because I'd seen him in Vegas recently, and he's like, yeah, I was busy. I couldn't bring it up. And so I'm thinking, like, all right. So there's no direct confirmation or denial. We had. We had breakfast together in Vegas. So then I shoot back, I said, like. And, man, I gotta tell you something. That was such a crazy night. And I still owe you money from them. So, you know that night when we were gambling, I still owe you money. I'm happy to help. Now. It wasn't a crazy night. It was breakfast, and I didn't owe money. And his next response was like, yeah, don't worry about it. You know, you can make that up to me with this. So I'm like, all Right, Cool. So now I start making stuff up. And I said, you know, and when we were with those strippers and that dog and the clown and the pony, I'll never get over that. And so now the guy's, what are you talking about? And I said, by the way. And then I started throwing in some stuff about his wife and his mother, and the guy got insulted and called me names and stopped texting me. And then I. Then I sent all those text messages to the real guy, including what I had said about his mother. And he texted me back. He's got a great sense of humor. He says, by the way, my mom does think you're attractive.

Oh, man.

But I started it all by just checking the source. If it was my friend, I would have helped him immediately. And I need to throw something at him that's going to confirm that it's him and that I'm there for him. But I'm also going to put a little bit of a curve in there that if he doesn't catch, I know it's a con, and then I'm going to have fun with it.

Incredible knowledge that people will hear this and they might think, oh, that's never going to happen to me. But like I said, I've known family members and friends who. They make the mistake. They take the bait of clicking on the link, and then now they're getting the shakedown. Actually, a good friend of mine said that her parents called at some point. Her parents are probably in their late 70s now. Someone had called their house and told them that their child, this woman, had.

Been.

Kidnapped and that they needed to send money and that if they called the police, they'd kill her or harm her in some way. So they started sending money, and they were afraid to contact her. And you can see, like, what a bind a loving parent would be in. Right. They obviously don't want to get this child of theirs hurt, and they obviously are willing to do whatever it takes in order to get them back. Turns out it was total scam because eventually there was communication that made them realize that their daughter was perfectly okay and never even interacted with kidnappers. So those kinds of scams happen pretty often.

I had that happen to a friend also.

Yeah. So the sense of urgency should have been the first flag.

That's a. That's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And look, look, even if they've got your loved one, the secondary issue is if you do what they want, are they going to let them go? Which is actually a legitimate question. Like, if There really are bad guys. One of the things we learned in hostage negotiation that apply to business negotiation, there are legitimate questions that it's okay to ask. You're not being disrespectful, you're not pushing back. There are fair, you know, to use the F bomb. Fair, legitimate questions that you can ask under any circumstances, which is basically, you know, if I comply, is this going to work out the way that you're articulating it? Anything that adds communication into it, which gives you more information to find out what the ultimate outcome looks like. Even in kidnappings, how do you know that if you pay, they're going to let them go? That's a legitimate question.

There are examples somewhere in between getting your Instagram account hacked, your bank account hacked, and God forbid, your child kidnapped, for instance. There's a whole practice within the legal profession of probing to see whether or not somebody is going to give up money to avoid a lawsuit, for instance.

Right.

This is actually a lawyer friend of mine recently described their job very well. He said, in his words, first person, he said, I scare people for money. The operative word being scare people.

And that's being honest.

Yeah, he's being very honest. He scares people for money, and he's very good at it. And he understands how other people scare people for money. And he works both sides, plaintiff or defense type situations. But it made me realize that a lot of the legal profession is not okay, the lawsuit slid across the table. It's the, okay, here's what the lawsuit would look like. Here are all the statutes that potentially were violated. And then there's a probe of what somebody's finances are and how much they're willing to pay. And do they have liability insurance, do they have an umbrella policy? All the sorts of things that are. That are really. It's not necessarily an illegal shakedown, but it's, you know, a probing as to whether or not, you know, there's.

It's worth the effort diagnosing the other side's ability to pay.

Right. And so that happens really often. I can give a specific example where somebody had a incident at a dog park where their dog allegedly ran into somebody, maybe charged at somebody, you know, dog park, people are standing around and the person moved and. And apparently injured their knee. But rather than sue the owner of the dog, what they typically do is deliver some set of documents that say, you know, I was injured, your dog was responsible for this, and if you don't settle up for X number of dollars, you're going to be sued for usually an exorbitant amount above that. And then there's this question that the lawyers have to figure out, like, is it puffery? Right. Are they saying, I'm going to sue you for $4 million?