Unlock Negotiation Secrets: HOW Chris Voss Transforms Conversations – WHAT You’re Missing!

Chris Voss shares negotiation techniques including how to use no-oriented questions to regain attention, the difference between 'that's right' and 'you're right' in getting real agreement, and why letting people say no often works better than pushing for yes.
Chapters
So asked for the top 10 greatest negotiation responses, number one, is now bad time to talk. Now I'm going to dig somewhat into why you want to get people to say no versus saying yes. And there's a million reasons for that also. But I will tell you an initial indicator in my view, because Dan talked before about if somebody says, hey, I want to talk to you about something that's mutually beneficial, you know, that's a, that's a, an indicator of behavior of a half. Hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. Dan's come to recognize that and it immediately turns them off. We're actually developing, within my company, we've, we've developed this, we get specific profiles of what do halves say, what's an indicator of a half, and why you should want to walk away as soon as possible nicely. The last impression is lasting impression. But if you got a few minutes to talk is one of those things. So I mean, how long is a few minutes? When somebody said to you, have you got a few minutes to talk? When was it ever actually less than 5, which is a definition of a few. Right. So it's now a bad time to talk. In place of that, why is that one of our top 10 lines? There's only, there's only one of two answers. And this is, this is why I, Howard asked me to do a fill in a blank so you could take notes if you wanted to, to write it down. Because clearly if you write something down, you're more focused and you're more likely to retain it. It's an accelerator of learning. So there's only two answers you ever get. If it's now a bad time to talk, one of them is hesitation. And they say, why? No, no, it's never a bad time to talk. Go ahead. What do you got? When someone responds like that, you've got 1,000% of their focus, which is what you called for in the first place. Their focus, their attention. As Dan said, you got their attention. Now keeping their attention is a secondary issue, but you've got their attention. Now what happens when you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? Well, they think, how long is a few minutes? What do you want to talk about? When's my next appointment? That's what goes through people's minds when you say, have you got a few minutes to talk? What does that mean? You do not have their attention. You just blew the first seven seconds by put. Clouding their brain with those thoughts. So it's now a bad time to talk. They stop, they clear their head and they go, no, what do you got? Or they say, yeah, it is a bad time to talk, but I can Talk Tuesday at 1. Now you just got an appointment for their focus and their attention, which is what you were after in the first place. That's what we say, that's what we get over and over again. I remember seeing this come up in a thread on LinkedIn once. And somebody on LinkedIn, you know the level of discussion in there of people clinging to their own beliefs. Someone wrote, well, I don't want to say, is now a bad time to talk? Because what do you do if they say yes? And my thought is, do you really want to talk to somebody who says yes to that? If they're willing to say yes, now is a bad time to talk. You want to keep talking, think about how stupid that is. So it's now a bad time to talk. And if you that from this point forward, don't at least experiment with this, that loss is on you. I'm sorry, I'm blunt. All right, so extending. I never ask anybody if it's a good idea. We consistently ask over and over, is this a ridiculous idea? And this also will begin to get us some underpinnings of why no works. One of the reasons why no as an answer works is what we found from our own experience is no matter how fatigued somebody is, somebody can say no and clear their mind. Every one of you listening to me right now, we all have the same problem. We suffer from decision fatigue. No matter who you are, you have capacity for X number of decisions in a given day. You start running out of gas at some point in time. It's between the decisions that you've made. The number of clicks, every click is a decision. Your circadian rhythm, what you've had to eat, what a good night's sleep you had the night before. Doesn't matter. You've all got so much gas in a tank. We see over and over and over again. And people on my staff are, especially my assistants are told, never ask Chris a how or what question after 1 o' clock in the afternoon. Because if you say, what do you want to do? What do you want me to do? How do you want me to handle this? After one, my reaction because I'm fatigued is going to be, I don't know, stop bothering me, go away, don't bother me again. Which there's a couple of you don't want. Do not want to trigger that sort of response from somebody. Because then my last interaction with you was you annoyed Me. And the last impression is a lasting impression. So it also begins to put you on a slippery slope, if you're working for me, of a downward spiral where I don't think you're that smart because all you did was annoy me. Now, all they, they've all been taught, and I explicitly say this, never ask me a question ever after one o' clock in the afternoon where I can't say no, because if you say, do you want me to do this? I'll say, no, do this, this, this and this. And I will, in fact ask, answer. The question that they want to ask was, how do you want me to do it? But something about saying no triggers my ability to think through steps. First time I ran across this Jack WELCH Book signing LA, I'm standing in line at 200 people. They're doing everything they can to minimize the amount of time that you spend with a book signer for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which I'm at a book signing a couple years ago, there are 300 people in line. The people orchestrating the book signing walk up to me and they go like, from the moment somebody walks up to you to the moment they move on, you've got 30 seconds. Otherwise we're going to be here for six hours. We don't have that much time. We got to get everybody through this line. 30 seconds per person. We're going to ask them their name before they walk up to you. We'll write it on a piece of paper. They will hand you a book with their name. It's going to take you 30 seconds for you to look them in the eye. Sign to Bob. Nice seeing you. Good luck, Chris. And they're going to move on 30 seconds. And doing the same thing with Jack Welch, because I got to move everybody through the line. Plus, they don't want me pitching Jack Welch. They don't want me asking him over to the house, they don't want me asking him over to dinner because my wife makes a great meatloaf. All that's going to happen. They're going to want pictures. So I know I get seven seconds. When I walk up to Jack Welch, I want to pitch him on coming to speak at the negotiation course I'm teaching at usc. I ain't got time to lay this out. And he doesn't have time to listen. And it's late in the day. I walk up to him and I say, is it a ridiculous idea for you to come and speak at the negotiation course? I teach at USC and He looked at me in the eye and he started to squint. And then he looked up into the universe and he got this hideous scowl on his face and he just froze. And my first thought was, has killed Jack Welch. He got so mad because he looks furious that he had a stroke and he died and he's getting ready to fall over. So when he initially doesn't die, I'm relieved. But now he looks furious. I mean, furious. I think he's going to start screaming, scurry, scurry. Get this guy out of here. I don't know what he's going to do. He finally unfreezes. He looks at me and he says, this is my personal assistant's name. This is special Twitter account we have set up to communicate with her. I will call her and tell her who you are. I think we're going to be in Los Angeles in the fall. If we are, we'll come in and speak at your class. Reach out to my assistant. I'll let her know what's going on. Decision fatigue. He said no. And he thought through all the next step steps and he laid them out for me. Now, is it a ridiculous idea and are you against the next two going back and forth with Robert Herjavec over him sending some people in one of our courses, I had lunch with Herjavec. Generous dude, sweetheart of a guy. Completely generous. He paid for lunch. It's my favorite kind of lunch. On top of that, I was at a steak restaurant. So it was even better. He paid 90 minutes and he paid. Great guy. I look at him and I say, we got one of our in person sessions coming up in New York. Can I give you a ticket? He looks back at me and says, how many can we buy? One more indicator of a generous, decent human being. We're going back and forth on the tickets. My son, who runs my company, he doesn't care. That Robert Herjavec, he's mad because we're going to sell out and he wants to sell the ticket and he's hoping Herjavec doesn't take it so he can sell it. He's on the east coast. We're on the west coast in la. Herjavec's offices in la. I was living just up the street at the time. My son calls me at 4:30 in the afternoon, 7:30 in New York. He says, you get Herjvik on the phone and get a commitment for the tickets before the business day starts tomorrow. Or I'm selling these ticket and we're Going to sell out because we're on the verge of selling out now and you're holding up the whole circus. And I can't wait to start of the business day tomorrow because the business day starts three hours later in la and by the time we get up in la, New York's going to lunch. We're going to be out of luck. So I get needed a decision from herjavec now at 503 in the afternoon I sent him a two line email. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to three tickets for our course now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts tomorrow? That's a 503 email. Again, decision fatigue. Five o' clock in the afternoon. When was the last time you tried to close somebody with a hard decision after 3:00 clock in the afternoon? The loan after 5. The email response from herjavec comes back at 5:04. No, we're willing to commit to three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. My assistant will be within in touch with you within the hour and will pay for the tickets. Tickets are paid for at 5:23. I've got all the emails, timestamped, our favorite negotiation one liners and why all right, number four. Have you given up on what's the context? This is context driven. I see a lot of people trying to manipulate me who've learned this and they'll send me in an opening email. Have you given up on doing business with us? Well now I have because you just tried to manipulate me with one of my tools. Now I don't mind if you use my tools with me, but if you want to use them against me, I smell it really quickly. So any of you that want to try have you given up on as an opening line? It's going to sound harsh. It's out of context. You deserve to have that door slammed in your face. On the other hand, it is the most effective restarter for people who are ghosting you.
Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out in and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.
It's almost a 1,000% guarantee of a response in many cases from three to five minutes. The person receiving it, seeing it. I'm not Kidding you. When you send that one line text or one line email, sit there and wait because the response may come screaming back at you. It will restart the conversation literally. I know of two or three instances and probably 10,000 when it didn't. One instance when the answer was yes. Now, context, your system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you have achieved. If they're ghosting you, they're not responding, you're part of the problem. Which means they've gone dark on you for one of two reasons. Number one, you're not listening to them. It's a larger subset of communication with them with you is doing them no good. The first problem is probably that you're not listening, you're pitching, and they get tired of giving you the counterfeit yes or the maybes and they just can't take it from you anymore and they just stop responding because you're not listening to them. Number two, they've lost all influence on your side. Again, communication with you is doing them no good. If communication with you was doing them any good, they would still be communicating. What does that mean? Is your takeaway when you send have you given up on. And they respond five minutes later. If you go back to the same type of communication that you were using that led up to that point, you've just blown your one shot reset. I was coaching an ex girlfriend probably about five or six years ago. She says, hey, this guy, you know, we're pitching him on this investment, he's not returning our text anymore. And I said, perfect, Shoot him a text saying, have you given up on making this investment? He's going to get back to you right away. She did. He got back to her right away. She went back into the same pitch that drove him away in the first place and she never heard from him again. If you send this, you have to rethink how you got into this in the first place. Because your communication system is perfectly designed to give you the outcome that you achieved. You cannot go back to communicating with them the way you were communicating before. Chances are you were pitching and you weren't listening. You've got to go into listening and using one of our skills, principally summary, to try to get back on track. There was another point I was going to make on that, but it'll come back to me. All right, we're going into 5 and 6. Actually, Howard has a question. Go ahead. No, no, you gave me an alternative to that, which is you must have a legitimate reason for. He's saying, I don't know. Can Can. Can anybody. Howard says, you must have a legitimate reason for. We'll get it. We'll get into that in a minute. But here's the one that I wanted to get into. We're coaching. We're coaching a guy in a negotiation with Coca Cola, selling them a health care program. He says, they got to get. We gotta. We have an agreement, but they haven't signed a contract. Got to get the contract signed by the end of the calendar year or this is all going to go down the tubes. And again, I'm working with. Has heard this. So we say, perfect. You send it. You send. Send the email, send a text. Have you given up on getting the contract signed by the end of the calendar year? So we get a response every time. Silence. This guy got back to us and he said, you said, this worked. We don't know what's going on. I said, no, we do know what's going on. The answer is yes. And it's really hard for people to say yes, especially this one. That's why you get silence. So he. Here's, you know, going from certainty, uncertainty to certainty, going with Dan Sullivan. Before, you didn't know if they've given up. Now you know, whether you like it or not, you have a solid answer. They have given up. You have to recalibrate all of your communication now to try to salvage this. And here's what's going on. I guarantee you that your counterpart has lost all influence on his side of the table. Coca Cola. And the guy will coach and says, yeah, but if he doesn't sign this, it's going to hurt him. And I say, all right, you know, you know what? That. That's not good enough. Here's what this guy's looking at. He's trying to make a decision whether to get his hand cut off, which is losing your deal, or getting shot in the head, which is what he's faced with. I promise you, this guy's fighting for his life. Here's how you get him out of it. You send him another email saying, like, look, all this business nonsense, I can't take it anymore. Let's go out. Let's get a steak and a scotch. You know, we'll have a couple of drinks, we'll have a few laughs. I promise you, we won't talk business. He said, if you can get him out of the office into a social environment, and you don't ask him a single business question, if you get him out of there and get him laughing, he'll tell you what's Going on, you won't have to ask. Sends an email, they make an appointment to have dinner together. They have dinner. My buddy is not pressing business at all. A few drinks in, this guy begins to explain to him how he's fighting for his life in Coca Cola. He's worried about losing his job. They've moved him, Somebody else has got the contract now. And he offers to tell him who it is and connect. So if you ask that no oriented question and you get a yes, you have to read what you're learning. You might not like the answer, but you're actually smarter, having gone from uncertainty to certainty. All right, Moving down the line, letting out know a little at a time to encourage collaboration. Read the book. You know that how am I Supposed to do that? Is a story of how the book opens. And a lot of people have picked that up as a way to bargain. Like somebody says, one guy got back to me at lawn service. Guy said he wanted X number of dollars to do all the landscaping in his house. And he just looked at him, said, how am I supposed to do that? And a landscaper immediately cut the price significantly. A lot of people learn, how am I supposed to do that? Is a great way to get people to bargain against themselves. What it really is, is a polite way to start indicating to people that the answer is no. Friend of mine, Ned Coletti, was a GM of the Dodgers. Those of you that are baseball fans probably know who Ned is. Great guy. And Ned and I were talking about this one time a few years ago, and Ned said he liked to let out no a little at a time. What does that mean? Nobody should get blindsided with no, people should be given gently indicators that there are problems. If you got problems with what they're proposing, if you can't do it or you won't do it, or it's a bad idea to do it. No is an answer, but it's really about your fourth response and letting out no a little at a time. Now, how am I supposed to do that? A how question is principally designed to create implementation. If you don't want to do something because it's unimplementable, you say to somebody, how am I supposed to do that? Like, all right, I'll do it. Give me some implementation based on my constraints. Every now and then somebody says, well, what if they tell me how to do it? Well, you just push them to their limit without making them angry. Because when somebody turns around and gives you implementation as a negotiator, in many cases your job is to find out where the boundaries are. And maybe one time in 10, somebody will turn around and say, this is how you do it. Well, perfect. You've just learned a lot. You've been given implementation that they think is reasonable. Plus you push them as far as you can on that issue, which in many cases is your job as a negotiator. The other thing it is, again, my son Brandon, he said, how am I supposed to do that? Is forced empathy. You don't ask a how question so much as to get an answer. As you get, you ask a question in order to make them think. What Danny Kahneman would call triggering slow thinking. If you look at somebody and say, how am I supposed to do that? And you say it deferentially. You don't say like, how am I supposed to do that? Where your tone of voice says, I think you're stupid. You say it deferentially. You make them stop and look at you and see you as a human being, at least potentially as a collaboration partner who's looking to collaborate but just needs some help. So it's forcing them to empathize with you, which is one of the things that's a good thing to do in your negotiations. So it's forced empathy. Number six, your offer is very generous. I'm afraid it just doesn't work for me. That hits a number of awesome psychological buttons. Positive attributes are reinforced by the recognition of them. If someone's being stingy with you to their. In their brain, they're being generous. That's what empathy is about. What is it to them, not to you? You need more generosity at somebody when they've given you a stingy offer. You start off by saying, you've been very generous. It makes them want to be even more generous. And the story they're telling themselves in their head is that they're being generous anyway. You want to encourage more of it. It has a tendency to turn that dial up by saying, you're being very generous. And to say, I'm afraid, it just doesn't work for me, I'm afraid is important part of that statement. It just doesn't work for me. The beauty of that is that it takes away external criteria. One of the things that I think Bob Cialdini talks about a lot, or he may even speak of, because I think we're going to see him tomorrow. Some people say, well, in negotiations, go to external criteria. Go to an external set of criteria that you can both agree on. Well, look, what if the market price is X and you don't have the money. The external criteria is a market price. Does that mean you got to pay the market price if you don't have the budget or the funds? It's a stupid idea. So saying it just doesn't work for me. Takes away external criteria as a way to take you hostage. We have never had anybody say I reported back in any response when someone said, that just doesn't work for me, Somebody fired back say, yes, it does. You made a lot of money last year. No, it doesn't work for me. I've never had that fired back at anybody. What typically happens, one of the students in Georgetown was doing this in a negotiation in his day job in a business. And his partner sat down, some people across the table, they came in with a low ball offer. And he looked them in the eye and said, you know, you guys offer is very generous. It just doesn't work for us. He said, the people on the other side of the table looked at each other and looked back at him and said, you're right, it is low, and gave him a higher offer. How often does that happen? How often does it have to happen? All right, number seven, you call the Black Swan group on the phone and you get my son on the phone and you say to him, how are you today? And he's going to say back to you, it sounds like you got a place you want to start. And you were immediately going to get into the conversation. Now, of the number of people that ask you, how are you? How many of them actually wanted to know what is how are you really? How are you? Is a temperature check where someone's trying to get a bead on what mood you're in to find out whether or not they can lay out what they called to talk to you about in the first place. You've just gotten around all of that, dancing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and gotten right to the heart of what they had on their mind anyway, which is what they went through in their head before they dialed the phone and called you. And you just put time back in your day and in their day. Now, the only time Brandon's ever gotten any pushback on this, he said one time, one guy did say, okay, I'd love to get into that, but really, how are you? The guy wanted to know he wasn't mad that he tried to get right into it right away. And my son was like, fine, you know, and then they had the social conversation this guy wanted to have because then it was about serving the person on the Other side of the phone. And that guy who's a minority, wanted to have that how are you? Conversation, which, if it enhances the moments in the interaction, is cool. But at least two out of three times, they really don't care how you are. My back hurts, my legs hurt, I get varicose veins. They don't want to hear that. What they really want to know is, are you in a mindset where they can talk to you? So how are you? Is really a probe on the other side's part to find out if they can talk to you about what's on their agenda. And when you say, sounds like you've got a place you want to start, bang, you just hack that and you move forward. All right. Responses to questions number eight and nine. You answer a question at your peril. Everybody knows the question behind a question is much more important. So why is answering a question at your peril? Well, number one, most people usually don't have the ability to ask a good question. Like, when I ask a question, I'm pretty good at it because I listen and I actually want an answer. But most people, they ask you a question and you answer the question, they start talking about something like, good God, I had no idea that's what you were talking about. If I'd have known that before I answered, I'd have given you a completely different answer. What makes you ask again? What makes you ask? What makes you ask? Upward inflection. Genuine curiosity. Inquisitive. You got to find out what's driving them. I'm in a presentation a couple years ago while I'm still doing security stuff. Insurance company thinking about getting into K and R Insurance. Kidnapping, ransom. There's insurance for it. There's insurance for everything. They say, have you kept your government security clearance? And I have. Intentionally not. And what I think for brilliant reasons, and I think the answer to that of no is so startling that people are going to ask me, follow, why not? What's going on? And have you kept your government security clearance? No. Conversation then goes in another direction. We don't get back to this topic in the entire presentation. I never get the opportunity to come up with my brilliant explanation why I don't have the government security clearance. It never comes up and we don't get the contract. To this day, I don't know why they asked. What makes you ask might have changed.
It.
Seems like you have a good reason for asking that same thing. You're not being disrespectful by digging into the motivation behind somebody's questions. Finally, number 10. Seems like you have a good reason for not doing that. When people are failing to perform and you want them to open up.
This.
Is what you've got to say. Seems like you have a good reason for not performing. Seems like you have a good reason for not meeting the deadline. They are never going to tell you what the real reason is or what's going on behind their side of the table. If you say, why didn't you do that? Do you know you failed in an agreement? All the accusatory stuff, they're not coming out of their shell to let you know what's going on. Contractor, subcontractor, negotiation, Washington, D.C. subcontractor, completely failing to perform. Contractor sits down with the subcontractor, who's been making excuses, blaming it on other people for lack of performance. Sits down with him, says, seems like you got a good reason for not performing as per the contract. Guy on the other side of the table kind of shrugged his shoulders, said, no, I don't. And they worked it out and they fixed everything. You don't sit down to find out what's stopping them because you want to hang them. Maybe you do, but you really sit down because you want to get people back on track.
So what are the biggest mistakes that. Let's start with that. That we make with negotiating, because we're all doing it. I mean, how would you even define negotiating.
Communicating to accomplish results in real broad terms? Information gathering is part of it. That Herb Cohen wrote a book a long time ago called you can negotiate anything, and he defined negotiation as a use of power and information in a web of tension. Now, web of tension would be emotions. And the only tweak, I think, that we made in our definition is we don't just use information, we gather it and use it. Because if you're saying the use of information, you're assuming you're coming to the table, and you know you should have gathered all the information before you come to the table. The table's the best place to gather information. And a lot of people will hold themselves back from going to the table because you want to be prepared. You don't want to be caught off guard. About a third of you in the room are horrified at getting caught off guard at the table, and that's holding you back.
So, yeah. So in terms of the mistakes.
Do.
People like, what are some common ones that are easy to fix? Like, you have a whole way about no, as an example, I love the way that you. Most people want to get a yes Maybe we can talk about how yes could possibly not be the first thing you want to hear out of someone's mouth. Because everyone here is wanting to sell stuff. And you got a lot of the world's greatest marketers. And I've always, I've had the conversation with Dan, Dan Sullivan, that nos are great, yeses are great, maybes are what kill you. If someone says no, you at least know where they stand. And you can either it's done or you can now, knowing what you know, that's actually a starting point. But maybes where someone's like, oh, I'll call you back, or whatever. And so I'd love to have you talk about just the languaging and what to pursue and how to actually start the whole process of getting to, you know, something favorable and the result that you want.
Yeah, sure. All right. So yes is a useless word. There is no more useless word. And the majority probably yes addicts. And recognizing that is one thing. Getting out of it is even harder because you're hardwired. If you're hardwired to hear yes, breaking out of that dynamic is really, really hard. But it could be one of the biggest issues. And if you're hardwired for yes, of course, you're horrified at. But in any important negotiation, I don't bother with yes at all. Give you an example. We ran a training in New York a few months back, and I had recently run across Robert Herjavec. Wonderful guy. I mean, generous. On a strength of just an introduction from one person. I'm sitting down with this guy for lunch for 90 minutes, and he's talking to me for 90 minutes and he's p in. I mean, what else do you want, right? So through the course of the conversation, I tell him we got this training going on and I offer him, you know, give me a free ticket. And he says, how many can I buy? Like, wow, even better. What an even more gracious guy. He loves so much. We're talking about, he's willing to pay too. So we're going back and forth on the tickets, how many he's going to buy. And the window's closing, it's going to slam shut, and he's not going to get in. And my people are bugging me. They're mad at me because I'm giving away tickets for free that we'd be selling otherwise. So I'm in a doghouse already. Anyway, so it's. I'm in Los Angeles, my team is in New York, east coast. We three hour handicap in la and they're screaming at me and he hasn't pulled the trigger on the tickets. So I sent him an email. Are you against committing for three tickets now? Are you against paying for those tickets before the start of business tomorrow? Because we're going to be three hours behind the clock. If they wait until tomorrow morning, they're going to be gone and then I'm going to be embarrassed. I get an email back in less than 30 minutes. We'll commit to three now. We'll pay for them and they pay for them within the hour after 5 o' clock in Los Angeles. So every, every time it's really, I mean, we don't bother with yes. You can flip any kind of question, any kind of commitment question from a yes to a no. And you'd be shocked at what people will say no to. I mean friggin shocked.
Shocked.
And yes is yes is commitment, yes is hesitation, yes is concern. That's why people are really good at the false yes.
Yeah, we'll talk about the falsehood. So you know, with, you know. Versus. That's right. Versus, you're right. Yeah, this is a really good distinction and real, you know, something I never never knew or realized until that's what.
Tim was talking to me about that one time when we met.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, I should say that too. When I first met Chris, it was a couple years ago. And Tim Larkin, who many of you know, has been a genius in the work for, you know, known Tim for 20 years and he, Tim actually is. He's been on the COVID of Black Belt magazine. He's trained lots of Navy SEALs, MMA fighters, everyday people, men and women. And he, his book, the Science of Violence is the title of his book. And he has this great.
Violence is the answer.
Violence is the answer.
Violence is the answer.
Yeah.
And I've interviewed him on it. You think I would know this stuff? And when Tim is, he's a badass and he's a great guy and he said that, you know, violence is never an option unless it's the only option. You know, what do you do in a situation where someone is going to hurt or kill you? And when Brian Kurtz actually organized a dinner and invited Chris to it and Tim, I sat next to Chris and Tim was there and it was a small group. There's maybe like, I don't know, 10 of us or something. And Tim said, you know, he's like, I don't mean to be total fanboy, but I love your book. And Tim said this is the best book on negotiation he's ever read. And so right from the get go, I was like, wow, this is an important guy. So there's lots of little things that most people would have no idea about, but you identify those and you teach people how to actually use them. So let's talk about the false yeses and what you really want to accomplish to know that you are successfully, I guess, negotiating.
Right. Right. All right, so.
And the thing that Tim talked about to me about that one time, too, Somebody tells you you're right, what are they telling you they are right? No, they're telling you to shut up and go away. I want to maintain a relationship with you. I still like you, either because I want to or I have to. But I'm really. This is. It's designed to preserve the relationship. But please, please stop talking and please go away. And we might like your right more than we like. Yes. Because we think we have to make a case.
You think?
You got to make a case. You think to negotiate, you got to make an argument. You got to make a compelling case. You got to give your value proposition to the other person and you think you scored. When they look at you and they go, you're right. And what happens is you get real happy and you shut up, and you probably walk out of the office, you probably walk away, or, you know, you think you made the point with your significant other or whoever may be. And Tim sits down next to me. He goes, like, you know, you saved me so much money because I was. He was on a rant with a senior team, and he'd read the book, and he's trying to get everybody on the same sheet of music. This is the direction we're going. And he says, one of his executives said, tim, you're right. And he. And he said, holy cow. If I'm so far off track with my guys that they're trying to politely get me to shut up, I need to stop the meeting right now.
I need to back up.
I need to find out where I'm off track, and then I need to go to everybody and get myself corrected. Which it kind of blew me away that he was that enlightened about it. And that's what he did. He stopped the meeting, he went back, he talked to everybody, found out where he was wrong. Because if people are telling you, look, shut up, you're probably off track. A 2 millimeter difference is. Use a Tony Robbins phrase. Right. Another 2 millimeter difference, you want to get people to say, that's right, because that's right. To what you say. When you hear the complete and total truth, you agree 1000%, no matter which side of the political aisle you're on. The last presidential election, the last presidential debate, whichever candidate you loved, when they said something that you love, you didn't look at the TV and go, you're right. You looked at the TV and you said, that's right. And that's right. What people, when they say, when they're all in and what they just heard is a complete truth. Now, the invisible fairy dust magic to that is they feel incredibly bonded to you in that moment. They don't know that. That's the other thing that's really powerful about it. Somebody once told me that's somebody saying to you that they feel empathy from you, and that's so powerful. For example, the greatest practitioners of this in the world are actually sociopaths.
They're also vulnerable to it.
Interestingly enough, the idea that sociopaths either can't feel or use empathy, they do feel it and they do use it. But if you were willing to accept this premise, this outlandish idea that sociopaths are good at empathy, you should ask yourself why. Why is because it's quick and it's sustainable and they're lazy, and it's the way that they maintain really solid relationships with very little maintenance from them. So empathy saves time. You put less time into relationships to keep them strong. Once you've established empathy, bridge and you've established it. When somebody looks at you and says, that's right. What I really was was an international negotiation coach. I coached negotiations in every culture on the planet. And they didn't. They weren't asking for ransom for the American. They were asking for war damages for 500 years of oppression from the Spanish, the Japanese to the Americans, violations under Blackjack Pershing, all this sort of nonsense. This is another story that you should be tuning out right now because you were never in an argument with someone where they were bringing up stuff from the past that didn't matter anymore.
Where are you? So we, you know, we tried all.
Sorts of logic, all sorts of in and out, you know, tried to be clever. I thought I knew terrorism. I thought I knew Islam and thought I knew all this stuff. And finally one day we just said.
We'Re gonna get a.
That's right. Out of the guy on the other side, the sociopath. And make no mistake, a raping serial killer chopped lots of heads off. Personally was proud of it. And no shortage of rapes to his credit. And I coached my guy to get on the phone. And you just keep. Make their case. It's the Stephen Covey advice. Instead of seek first to understand, then be understood, demonstrate understanding. You gotta make their case. Not your case, but just recognize it, don't agree with it, but lay it out the way they see it. Lay out everything that this sociopathic terrorist has been laying out of all the nonsense of why $10 million is a bargain basement price for 500 years of war damages.
And he laid it out, and he laid it out, and he laid it.
Out, and he laid it out. I said, and if you're not laying it on thick, you're not laying it on thick enough. My guy finished it, and there was a short silence on the other end of the line. And the terrorists said, that's right. And we said, okay, let's talk again in a couple of days. And the $10 million ransom demand went away. They never brought it up again, ever. It went away. It was gone. It was completely gone. A couple of months later, the American walks away. We had done a number of things. We'd gotten them disorganized. We completely disorganized them. They didn't know we did it to them through our communication techniques. American walks away. A couple of months later, military picks him up, flies him out. We take him back to the U.S. i'm back in the Philippines about three weeks after this on another case, and the guy that I coach says, you're not gonna believe who called me on the phone. I'm like, I. I don't know who called you on the phone. The terrorist guy's name was Sabineh Sobia. Still knew his undercover name, still had his undercover phone number, was smart enough to know that he had to either be with the police or the military, but didn't know and didn't care. Called him on the phone and said, have you been promoted yet? I have no idea what you said to me on the phone. You're really good at it. They should promote you. And also think about what he's saying, because would he deal with him again? Was he really saying when he made that call, I respect you, I deal with you again? So it's an example. Who would imagine that you can get to somebody like that?
I would think that most people would agree that when it comes to negotiation that all of us could have a little bit of improvement. Now, even if you are a seasoned negotiator, there are some times that you believe that you could maybe have said something a little different. So this talk is for you if you want to increase your negotiation skill sets, but also take it to the next level of how do you have deep connection in every one of your conversations. So through this three step approach, I'm going to be teaching you that. So before we get into this, how do we define high stake environments? Well, it's anything that is a negotiation, a high stake conversation or presentation. And it's also an area where we have to connect on a deeper level because we're going through maybe a challenge or a struggle. And it can also affect your time, your money, and even how you perceive your reality. So even your values. So even if you aren't in the situation where you might be fundraising hundreds of millions of dollars in your life, you're in difficult situations and conversations every single day. How many people in here are parents? Awesome. So having those deep connection conversations with your loved ones and being able to have that effect that you want, what about.
You?
Your spouse or intimate relationships, how many people are in those? Right. So it's slowing down, being able to get the most out of those situations so that you can get the results you're looking for. Team members and business partners, all of us, I'm assuming, even if we have that remote team member, we want to be able to connect with them, get to the heart of the matter. And then we have clients and customers and patients. How many people are connected to them? Yes. Only three or four. Come on. And then we have also team members and we have investors, board members and advisors. And so looking at how we navigate those situations. And so you're probably looking at me and saying, how did she get into negotiations and sales? Where did that start? Well, it started at the kitchen table. My parents were in real estate and real estate sales for over 40 years. So growing up in a very highly entrepreneurial atmosphere, I saw the highs and, and I saw the lows and everything in between. And so in the early 90s, I was a teenager and as you know, real estate, we're going through it right now, has some cycles and we're in a deep recession. And it was a time where I got to wake up to a time in my life where I realized that if I was going to have something in my life, I had to own my results, I had to take ownership, I had to take responsibility and I had to make a decision. So you all in your seats right now and at home you might be in a spot where today is that decision to make that you want to take your relationships to the next level so that you can live the life that you want to live. And so that was a very impactful experience that led me to be in sales and to understand it on all different aspects and doing extremely well at a young age, making a lot of money and helping a lot of people and how to take things to the next level.
Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.
So where we got to start here is negotiation strategy. And so in negotiation strategy we have distributive and we have integrative. Distributive is that tug of war that you have that maybe that one time negotiation where you don't know if you're going to see that person again. And so it's a lot of bargaining. It's, you know, cards are close to your chest and so you're trying to get that result, but you might not see that person again. What I really focus on is integrative, which integrative is looking at long term relationships that we all benefit, that we all win. But don't worry, Chris Voss. I'm not going to say win win, right? So it's looking at how do we get to that deeper connection. So this is an ongoing relationship that everyone benefits. So as you know, in negotiation there's a technical side which I could go into, which would be a two to five day intensive where we could go into things like pre framing, reframing, framing to agreement frame to anchoring to sales cycles, all these different things. And what I'm going to do today is really focus on the artistic side because that's something that you have a lot of control over. And it's really looking at how we have this technical and artistic side combined which really makes it so that we are able to be authentic and have your true essence come out. So the first concept that we're going to go over is to breathe. And I love this group because we have Jason in the back right here who's done such an amazing job. I love being in groups and environments where there's so much pre framing and people are ready to go with breathing. And what I'm gonna try to do is take that breathing, how do we bring it into our high stake environments, how do we get that artistic side with our breathing and start connecting those dots into those high stake situations. So here's just some basic takeaways is you wanna elongate your breath, especially the exhale, because that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which is really where we wanna be in our rest and digest. So rest and digest. So we want to slow down and elongate that breath, especially the exhale. Because at the end of the day, our breath is the entry point to increase our life force energy and really have that essence that we're looking for. And as you've heard, I'm sure from Jason too, but a lot of different cultures talk about this. In ancient wisdom we have Ki Mana Prana chi. And so it's understanding that there is this thing called energy. And how does that we have this access point of our breath and using that and to be able to slow down and the big thing that you're looking for is to have that alignment, embodiment and congruency. Our breath is connected to so many things. It's connected to how we look at our values, which creates our beliefs and attitudes, which creates our thoughts, emotions, actions, behavior and our words and how we have clarity in how we execute. So slowing down and being able to body your breath really gives you that range of what we want to look at. So something too looking at your breath, a part of my background experience, probably thinking like, okay, she's teaching us negotiation sales. Why is she slowing down? Talking about meditation and breathing. And so something that happened to me over 14 years ago as I was a corporate sales executive and I was also, also a competitive triathlete. I was in two consecutive accidents where I had to rebuild my whole entire body and relearn how to walk. And it was a crazy time and literally I didn't know what to do. It was one of those things. And it's something you could relate to too. When you're in a situation where the difficult things become simple that you're not, you just don't know how to navigate. You've had these strategies your whole life and you don't know what to do. And so I wanted to give, contribute to some teachers that I met along the way that taught me this information. Narazi Magnolia he was my first teacher coming out of these accidents where I could barely walk. And if it wasn't for this man, I probably wouldn't be here today. And he was a huge believer in Tai chi and qigong and yoga and he even got me to live in an ashram in India where I Had a lot of healing and going through my breath work. I also studied with Harada Roshi for over 10 years doing silent meditation retreats in Japan and all over. And he taught me just the connection of our breath and how that is connected on all different levels and what we can do with it. And then I also wanted to highlight just one more person was our two people, Katherine Vitz, Morris and Saul. And I did voice work for three years because I had major PTSD after my accidents. And so what I wanted to do is just go over some basic things you want to do with your breath. So you want to speak at the top of your inhale. So when you're in high stake environments, you want to be able to be at the top of your inhale so that you have that range with your exhale. And you can be able to do a lot of different things with your voice. So it's something to practice. You want to also do a 360 degree breath. Most people do 180 degree breath. And so you want to use your whole entire body, your lungs are in your back. And so to be able to do.
That.
And you want to do four to seven cycles of breath cycles a minute. So something to focus on there as well. Most people do 14 to 17 breath cycles per minute. And this is all to increase being in the present moment. So breathing. The next thing we're going to go over, the number two thing is listening. So remember we have a three step approach, so listening and that is really looking at the levels of listening and breaking that down. And so the levels of listening, the first level is the level zero, which is really no listening at all. It's no listening speaking only. How many people have been that experience? When you're in a conversation, you're not really even in that conversation. So it's something to slow down and look at. What level are you at? Level one is looking at subjective listening. This is all about the listener and their agenda. And this is where 80 to 90% of people are and this is where they're taking their reality through their filter and reacting to it. Level two is looking at listening and not being in the present moment. When you start slowing down and looking at the how and coming out of this to be present. A lot of times we're thinking about the past or we're thinking about the future or something that is on our mind or what we're going to say. And so it's being able to slow down five minutes a day and just being present with our breath and Remember elongating, especially the exhale. Level three is objective active listening. So being able to objective active listen is really about problem solving. It's looking at the facts versus the story. How can we get to the solution? What is actually going on here? We can move it forward, which is great in work environments. Level four is looking at intuitive listening. And this is where you're taking all five of your senses. So that's visual, auditory, kinesthetic, augustatory and you're able to see what's happening in between the lines. Because most of the time we're in these surface structures and we want to get to the deeper structures. So you want to slow down and be able to actually ask questions and look at how this all connected. And so within listening we have the levels and then it's also looking at active listening and looking at things like it seems it sounds what I've heard and then asking, is that right? And with that asking questions. So these are some of my favorite questions just to go through this quickly, to wrap up questions you want to ask when you're in negotiations because it's really about the other person and listening. So what does success look like? What are you looking for specifically? Tell me the next step in the process. Tell me how you make decisions. These are all really great questions to ask. So here's a summary of that. Take a picture. And so it's about practicing and tuned listening and elongating your breath in low stake situations so you can do in high stakes situations. And the last area I want to talk about is connection because that really when you're able to breathe, listen, we're all looking to have deep connection. And so deep connection starts with us being able to slow down and connecting to ourselves first. So how do we do that? How do we connect to ourselves first? And how do we look at kindness, empathy and compassion for ourselves first and then we're able to do for others. Because most of the things that happen, that happen is that when in most cases anything we do to ourselves, we do to others. So it's being able to slow down and be able to connect with ourselves first. Because at the end of the day we're meaning making machines because that's what we do on unconscious levels. We're making meaning out of our experiences and events. And I'm always curious what other people are meaning and making out of their events. And so understanding meaning is how do we bring the heart and the mind together and when we're talking to people and connecting with them and that we might be Talking about something and agree on something, but it might mean something different. So how do we slow down and actually ask what do you mean by what you're saying? Or what do you mean by this? So you can connect on those deeper structures I was talking about and so you can move the conversation forward and actually get to the heart of the matter of what's most important. And then just really quickly, I think people know about verbal and nonverbal communication because it's such a huge component of connection. You have physiology. We already talked about breathing and posture and being able to do conscious gesturing. You have tonality. And what I want you to take away from this is tonality. The most two important things is volume and speed. So having that range, especially when you elongate the breath, you're able to do that. And then you have your words, which is only 7%. Everyone's always surprised by this. And I know some people have seen this before. And so it's looking at predicates, which is your verbs, keywords, common experiences and content checks, chunks. And so just to look at this all together, which is always interesting to me, that 93% of communication is so non verbal and to slow down and really connect to all those different aspects of how we're communicating. And to wrap up, it's looking at intonation patterns. So especially when you're in big deals and you're negotiating or you're in that difficult conversation with your spouse or your loved ones to when you're getting to certain important parts, especially when you're closing, for instance, you really want to be aware of your pitch. So where are you? Do you naturally go upward sometimes when it's a little awkward or uncomfortable, or do you go flat or neutral or a command? So for instance, I'm working with a security company right now that is pretty high up. They're doing a lot for Ukraine and they work a lot with the DoD military. And so one of my CEOs and clients, we have to work on his intonation pattern of doing a command language, because military is very command like language at the end of a sentence. So these are just some things to think about. So what you can do is in your next high stakes environment or negotiation or high stakes conversation, you can breathe better, listen better and connect better. And what I imagine for all of you is to slow down. And in that next conversation or negotiation, that maybe the last time it didn't go the best way, it did. But for some reason this time with having that right approach and thinking about these three things Everything comes into place.
I was fascinated by you talking about arguing the other side, which is a classic debate technique, as we know. And one of the things that I thought of is you're good friends with Chris Voss, who uses that technique, in a way, in his negotiations. And I was wondering if there was a way to have a conversation with Chris to see how he would handle what's going on in the Ukraine to try to resolve that. Because, in effect, Putin is holding this whole world hostage right now, and Chris is an expert, as most of you know, in hostage negotiations. So I think that would be a wonderful input from him that we could all use in trying to make sense about all this craziness that's going on.
Yeah.
You know, that's interesting. Let me see. I'll ask Eunice and Gina to make a note. Let me run that by Chris and see if he'd be open to doing a. Like, a genius mornings or a discussion just on. Like, ask him anything about that, because I would be curious to see how he would respond to a question like that. You know, how do you actually.
Yeah.
And, you know, the other thing, too, Joe, is we tend to ascribe when we talk about genius. Someone is a genius. One genius in one field, we tend to ascribe them to be geniuses in the other field, and that's just not accurate. We want to field a team that represents the values that we have who have Chris's amazing genius in negotiations.
Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a. There's a post that I. Because I sit and I just looked at the comments. Amber said, well, my heart breaks for people in both Ukraine and Russia. I'm not sure if what we're hearing is actually true. The people on either side didn't ask for war. Yeah. That's the most unfortunate thing about all of this. What I, you know, what my. My understanding and experience with the media is what is shown, you know, the real story and the real motivation and what's really going on. That's, you know, it's a complex issue that's way beyond what we have time or ability to even, you know, I could ever properly address at the same time. And everyone has, you know, different perspectives. There was a. What was that movie called? About the. Is. Oh, boy, the Israeli army years ago. Shen Yan. Is that how they pronounce it? The Israeli military? And there's that line in there, that one, you know, one man's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist. And the unfortunate thing about all of this is the sheer and I don't just say this for Ukraine and Russia, just the sheer amount of innocent people's lives that get destroyed and decimated as a result of so much of this complexity. It's very difficult. I mean, I'm going to actually ask Jordan Peterson some of these questions, because, you know, Jordan Peterson, what I like about Jordan, he, you know, he has a thing where he's like, some questions don't have an easy answer. Some questions you can't answer immediately, some take hours, some take days, some take weeks, some questions require years, and some require lifetimes to properly answer the question. And this is one of those things. It's just difficult and it's incredibly sad that so many people suffer in so many ways. And, yeah, I guess the best way that I don't have an answer for that, I mean, I will say to your original question of asking Chris, I'd be curious to see how quick Chris would respond to this. One thing that I try to often do every day is think, okay, what can I do? What should I do? And knowing that we can all do a lot in different ways. You know, the whole star thrower story where there's different versions of this, but a man's walking along the beach and sees a figure down by the beach. And as he gets closer, he notices it's a little kid that is, you know, bending over and picking up starfish and throwing the starfish into the ocean. And the old man goes up to the. The kid and he goes, son, what are you doing? And the son's like, well, I'm throwing. I'm throwing the starfish in the ocean because if I don't do that, they're going to drown. And the old man's like, well, son, there's starfish stone for miles. What sort of difference do you think you're going to make? And the little boy picks up a starfish, throws it in the ocean and says, it made a difference for that one. And so I think we can all make a difference, even if it's in little ways, even if it's just telling someone any form of encouragement. But these are very complex issues. These are very complex issues. But to go to your thing, I will ask Chris. I'll see what he says, Gabby. And maybe we can have him as a guest and we can do a Q and A with him.
Excellent. Thank you, Joe.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
I'll just answer questions until my team tells me to. To shut up. Jonathan.
I think Natalia might have been before me, if you want to.
Oh, yeah, I'm Sorry, Natalia, please go ahead and then we'll come. Thank you, Jonathan.
Thank you, Jonathan. Hi, Joe. Amazing meeting. I really have a lot of notes. Taking notes and learning from me. Thanks for that. And particularly I felt excited about the idea about building small towns, especially in this period. I think, like, you know, many young people can really have this idea and it's, you know, it's something that's really cool. Right. And other people done their. Everything in their lives. You know, I've seen everything being everywhere and stuff. And this is something that can really be interested for those two. So I really feel excited about that. Thanks for sharing. And another thing I'd like to. I'm Russian, based in Italy and I do want to say that a lot of Russian people going through a very hard time right now, not compared to Ukrainians, of course, but those two very close countries always been from the very old age, you know. And yes. And you know what, what is propaganda is saying it's not true? Because it also depends on how you form the question. Like people who actually they're saying that people who are pro war, like looking for war or something like that, they actually have been asked, are you agree with the special operation in Ukraine? So it really depends how you present the question. That's what I want to say that a lot of people who are going right now through a lot of shame, a lot of pain, a lot of, A lot of families in Russia were formed by Russian and Ukrainians, the same in Ukraine. So I think both nations are suffering greatly right now. Yeah. Just wanted to share that and thanks.
Thank you. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there's going to be so much generational trauma as a result of not only this war, but the pandemic and everything like that. I mean, you know, when I sit and look at just the work I do in addiction, I mean, we have the greatest addiction crisis in human history right now. And even, Even World War II, what many people don't know, there's a book called Blitz. The entire, you know, German army was almost. The entire German army was given being given, I believe they called it perpetine. But Nazi Germany invented crystal meth in 1932, I believe. And when you see Hitler doing these, you know, intense speeches, he was high as a kite because Hitler was being given drugs every day. And then the entire German army was being given perpetine. And they would fight harder, more aggressively, eat less, sleep less. And when you have long term exposure to crystal meth as an example, it removes empathy. And then they were able to do concentration camps and horrendous things. And what many people probably don't know about a lot of the armies is how many of them are being fed drugs. And it's. So much of this has to do with. With addiction. There's a book called wars of Force that gives us meaning. And it is a fascinating. But, I mean, I could look at the entire lens of what's going on in the world through the lens of addiction, and that's a much deeper conversation. But it is, yeah, it's. It's extremely, sometimes very difficult to look what's going on in the world and just. But also having the empathy that you can. To know what you can and cannot do. And I have a friend who has been texting me all morning. He's in Ukraine right now, and.
They'Re.
Trying to get orphans out of the country. And he sent me the last text. They've safely got 268 orphans near. So. Jesus, I mean, so buckle up, people. The world's in a shitty place in some places. And also, you know, don't. Don't get yourself drowning in the misery either, because it requires leadership, it requires responsibility, it requires, you know, you loving and caring for yourself. You know, I don't quote the Bible that much. There's a verse where you can't fix the world with broken hands. So in the middle of it all, we have to make sure our hands are not broken so we can do whatever part we can do. And I'm trying to say everything I'm saying not because I don't know, you know, I don't know what's the site. Everyone has a side. Everyone has a perspective. And, and even when people are doing terrible, difficult things in their mind, most of the time they think they're right. And that's what's.
That.
That's what's complex. It's as complex. So. But, but thank you. You're a pretty social guy. I mean, do you consider yourself an introvert? An extrovert?
Extrovert.
I mean, you ever thought about that?
Slightly introverted, I think. Yeah, I don't. I've only known one real extrovert in my life, and that was Ethel Merman. You remember, she was a big star. Most people in showbiz who appear to be extrovert are really introverts who are. Who are throwing up some armor. That's. That's extroversion.
That's an interesting point.
And they're hiding an introverted thing. But not Ethel Merman. She was. We were talking, talking one Time on a. There was a television special we were both on for some charity and in break time we were talking about stage fright. She said, I've never understood that. She says, what, what is stage fright? And I said, well, you're there on stage and people may have paid to get in and, and it's scary. She said, what? What's scary? Are you afraid the audience is going to storm the stage and do you bodily harm?
Wow.
I said, no. She said, well, then what's to be afraid of? I believe her. I think she was a true extrovert.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. To even say something like that, that's. Well, I mean, I remember the first time I actually did any public speaking. I was, it was nerve wracking. I was sweating bullets.
Me too.
Oh, it was.
But I did it because my philosophy is anything that you fear and you don't face controls you. Anything that you fear, but you take steps.
That is so wise. Yeah, that's absolutely true. If you, if you afraid of something, then dive into it and confront it. Because you're not going to do yourself any good by just hiding all the time.
Absolutely. And I think part of accomplishment is getting out of your comfort zone, going out there and doing things. I mean, one of the gauges are if I'm a little afraid of it. I kind of know that I'm moving in the right direction because it's pushing me up against my self imposed limitations and I always want to break through.
Good advice.
One thing I want to ask you, I mean, you certainly have had to sit down with. Did you ever get nervous sitting down with the President or talking to someone or how did you.
I've always been a little bit nervous. You don't want to be too nervous. It derails you. But if you're, if you're utterly unnervous, you're not likely to do as good a job as if you had a little adrenaline going to help you be alert.
Right.
So, yes, I've been a little nervous and maybe more with some than with others toward the end, the last few decades. Really. I haven't, I haven't been nervous about either being on the air or who I'm talking to, but I may feel alert and respectful, you know, talking to a president or somebody like that.
How do you deal with difficult people?
Oh, this is interesting. One time we, we had a. Oh, we had an awful. Another awful guy on. He wore a red, white. He had red, white and blue shoes. He was farther right than anything you can imagine. And in this interview Live on Today show. I said something about poor people. I don't know what it was. And he said, there are no poor people in America. I said, there are no poor people in America. He said, no. He said, there are a few Arawak Indians and Eskimos that are too lazy to work. And I thought, oh, boy, how do I deal with this, right? And I didn't. I thanked him and dismissed him and went to a commercial. Oh, that's funny, because I didn't want. I didn't really want to have anything to do with the guy. And I had. I had to get rid of it. And I had some words with the person who had booked him, as you can guess, but that very seldom happened.
But what is, what is some memorable stuff that's happened on the air either extraordinarily insanely crazy or embarrassing that you think are always have stuck in your mind.
One that was embarrassing because you can't joke your way out of a religious thing. And I had. It was a charming story, really, of a group of Kalmuk Buddhists who had fled the banks of the Don river under Salin, and they fled to Germany at the time Hitler was rising, which wasn't a great place to flee to. And they finally then fled from there and made it to New Jersey and they put up a temple that had been there ever since. And the story was they were going to move the stones of the temple back to the banks of the Don because it was now safe to do. Charming story, really. So this was live on the Today show. And they sent a priest and a translator and they get there in the morning. Now dig this. I asked the first question. I did a little layup. I asked the first question and the priest smiled at me and nodded and everything. And. And I thought, well, maybe. And I looked at the translator. I thought maybe. I didn't ask that. So I re asked the question a little more clearly and I got smiles and nods and that was all. And I went to another question. The same thing happened. And then I put out my knowledge of Kalmuk Buddhism, which took about 11 seconds, and asked another question. I got nothing. And finally I was sweating and thinking, is this April 1st? And they've set me up for some April fool joke and finally had to dismiss them. And I went to a commercial and I said what was going on? And you know what did that. The translator, in the middle of the night, was taken ill, and he didn't want to disappoint us, so he sent his brother, who didn't Speak both languages.
Oh my God.
Had a complete language barrier on a live network program. And that made me sweat because it wasn't, you know, you know, a religious thing you can't joke your way out of. Right. And I just had to terminate it. But that was a memorable.
Well, when you have to terminate something like that, what do you do with the time?
I mean, I hid behind the time. I could go to the next commercial and then figure out what to do and maybe discuss it if necessary later. And because I found out what it was, I could explain to the audience why that happened and do so with maintaining some shred of dignity. But that was the. We used to have those five minute periods where the local people come in and bought 80 stations, dumped out. We still had to fill the time for those stations that didn't do something locally. And we used to have fun with that because they didn't show in Washington or New York so our bosses weren't watching. And one time Barbara Walters and I were talking and subject came or she called me a wasp. And I said, do you know what WASP means? And she said, yeah, white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant. I said, well, I'm not white, first of all, because nobody is. I said secondly, I'm not Anglo Saxon, I'm Celtic. And I said third, I'm not Protestant, I'm a Buddhist. And I said, why did I say that? I'm going to get hate mail or something.
And you did.
I did get a little weird mail for a time. But that's the kind of thing we like to do with those five minute things.
I imagine having to tap dance as an art and a science. Once you.
And you know, filling a minute or a minute and a quarter is a lot tougher than filling five minutes because five minutes you can develop some kind of a thing. But if you've got a minute and a quarter to discuss when television satellites first came up, who was it? I forget the guy in the Comic Congress that voted in favor of making them commercial and he swung the vote instead of making them purely government. That was a wise decision. And somebody asked me, I know they asked whether what was NBC's attitude toward that? Because NBC was owned by RCA. And I said at that time General Sarnoff was still in charge of. And I remember saying on the air, because I had such a short time to deal with this, I said, I don't know what NBC or RCA's attitude is. And I said it doesn't matter to me because they have no influence on what my attitude is. And I Thought, no, I've just ended my career. And I got a letter, got a phone call from Sarnoff's office. He wanted to compliment me on saying that because he was trying to prove that he wasn't dictating the policies that go on his broadcasting network.
That's funny.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, that's scary.
But I had to establish the fact that I wasn't under the influence of any big corporation.
Well, I mean, you were. I imagine people in reporting are constantly. I don't know if bribe is the right word, but there's constantly people trying to influence them with their agendas. How do you deal with that?
I think so. And some weird things came out of that, because one time, way back in the early 60s, Boeing wanted to buy time. And at that time, today was really watched by Washington, the Congress and everything, and the White House. Lyndon Johnson used to call up after a thing to compliment some guest or to raise hell of why we had had somebody on. He did that a lot.
Wow.
And so Boeing had. We had this big thing for doing Boeing commercials, and they suddenly quit. They suddenly bombed out, and they weren't going to do it. And we found out the reason was they didn't want to be accused of going on a Today show to influence. Influence the legislation that might affect them. And we lost the account because of that, which was kind of flattering to their idea of what our influence might have been. But you're right, there is a lot of influence. Although never has a network said to me, we want you to soft pedal this or promote this. They never have said that. I'll give them that credit. And I don't think they've done it to any of the major newscasters in the network.
And listen, I love. And thanks that we can look at this. Eunice prepares these for me so that we make sure we get exactly the best things that we can get out here. So. Because sometimes you get. I get caught up in the moment of the conversations and we could just go, you know, deeper. I'm very curious about things. So I. And I'm Add Squirrel. And we end up all down the thing and we're talking about something, so it's nice to have our true north to come back to here.
Great, great. Well, we have to be trustworthy. We send something, so we have to deliver, right?
That's right.
So here's what great communicators do. And it's simple, but not easy. Right. So the main goal of all communication is not to persuade, to sell, to convince it's not the primary goal. And now think about what I said, about establishing the active empathy and active listening. The main goal of all communication, first and foremost, is to establish a connection. Because if you don't have a connection with somebody, yes, your message will fall on deaf ears. And that's what happens when I yell across the room to my husband. He might not be listening to me. I think I told him. I think I got my message across, but it wasn't the connection. And that's why so many times you have. And it creates distrust. You didn't tell me. No, I did. And you're both right. You're both right. So the main goal is to connect first, followed by your message. Now, why Theodore Roosevelt said, nobody will care about how much you know until they know how much you care. And without a connection, how can you possibly know how much somebody cares? Now, to bring this full circle, Dean, a connection is a prerequisite for establishing empathy, for establishing understanding. And without empathy, you can't have a healthy relationship, and you will never be able to. And very few absolutes in life, but you will never be able to resolve conflict.
Yeah, it's really. It's an interesting thing that the. I've been thinking a lot about. Know you like you trust you. We talk about that. No, like, trust, right.
As.
As. But when we're saying it, they. It reads as one thing. No, you, like, trust you. I don't think that people value the incremental step, like, to go from not knowing you, not knowing you exist. Like, this may be the first time that somebody's ever heard the words Dr. Patty Dublin never. Maybe don't know that. Right. So to be able to go from I don't know that to okay, now I know that you exist. And then we've had this experience of being able to. The more that they get to kind of look at you and, you know, the neurons testing. And Jerry Spence has this great thing about how our psychic tentacles are reaching out, kind of measuring and testing things, and they can detect what he calls the thin clank of the counterfeit that we're testing on a deeper level for authenticity. Is this person the real. Do I like this person? And can I trust this person? And I think you can get to that stage quickly. But it's okay too, I think, to know that you can get to. It doesn't all have to happen instantly either.
Well, so. So I'm going to talk out of both sides of my mouth for what you just said. So, on the one hand, yes, that first impression, that gut. Right. Like don't ignore your gut. Right. That evolutionary history telling you something.
Yeah.
On the one hand. On the other hand, you don't ask someone to get married on the first date.
Exactly. Yeah.
Right.
So. So it's almost like the Ronald Vegan Reagan Trust but verify. Now to complicate things, once you think you like somebody, then the conscious bias kicks in. So you're only going to see things you like.
Right.
But people aren't stupid.
Right.
You know, I used to say I'm fooled. When I was younger, I'd say like, you know, 90, 10, 90 10. I'd be full 10% of the time. As I've gotten older, I think it's 80, 20.
Yeah.
Now I'm smart enough to know that I'm full 20% of the time, but when I was younger, I didn't realize it. I was too dumb to know.
Yeah.
So go. Go with what your gut tells you. And I am a huge one of. Eyes are the windows to the soul, right?
Yes.
Look at people. Look people. And if someone doesn't look you in the eye, I'm not talking about people on the spectrum and stuff very respectfully.
Right.
But if you're talking to somebody and they can't look you in the eye, their eyes are shifting. What's that about?
Right.
Exactly.
Now it's just a curiosity question. Right. I'm not judging. I'm not saying it's game over.
But.
Now I did. I actually once had that encounter with the woman and I said, listen, I'm having a hard time talking to you because you're not looking at me. And you know, she told me I was raised in a cult and women were not allowed to look you in the eye when they were spoken to.
Oh my goodness.
So that changed everything.
Wow.
But I had to ask.
Yeah. Most people wouldn't even have the awareness to know that that was what the thing was. That was. Seemed unusual. They might not even just be aware that something's off with this and looking for those, for those, those cues. Is there any, I mean, things like when you're doing those things, are there simple things that you can do that are going to raise the. You know, I know that smiling is one thing or making eye contact maybe is the one thing.
Nodding, actually smiling. Here's a good one with, with non verbal communication. I think when you smile, if you. I can demonstrate this. Great. Right. If you don't see someone's crow's feet. I got a million of them.
Right.
Not a genuine smile.
Really.
So then you're like, is it or Botox or something?
Just listen to any politician talk?
Yeah, right, exactly.
I stop talking to people when they're on their cell phones or whatever because I want to let them finish what it is they're doing. Because even if I try to continue to talk to them, they're like, no, I can hear what you're saying. All you can hear is mumbling, but you're not comprehending anything.
This week we're on the same page of that 100%.
Because I know for myself if someone's trying to talk to me and I'm trying to do. I'm like, I can't pay attention to two things. So. So people that. But you're right, though. I mean, becoming skilled in communication and studying that is incredibly useful. Becoming a communication expert, I think is important. You know, coming from the world of marketing, marketing is pretty much what you say and who you say it to. It's all about communication. It's all about making a connection. And people ask me all the time, you know, well, how do you do it? Well, like anything else, you learn it. I mean, I mean, anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly in the beginning. Now, if you keep doing it poorly, you're probably not set out to do that. So I'm not a big believer in get strong at the things you're weak at, because like my friend Dan Sullivan says, if you spend your life strengthening your weaknesses, at the end of your life, you have a lot of really strong weaknesses. So I'm a real big believer in whatever you have a propensity to get good at. But learning how to interact with other humans is critical as getting through life. Learning how to sell, learning how, you know, I mean, those are all the most important skills. The technical skills of something are far easier to learn than just becoming a communications expert.
Well, I think the secret is you gotta love it and you gotta really love people because there's too many people that don't like people very much. I mean, I'm telling you, I'm in a world right now where. Where people love their dogs more than they love people. And I get it, because I didn't understand to begin with. Every single person that comes in to gets their dog washed tells us about their rescue story, and they're passionate about it. Oh, he's a rescue? Oh, yeah. Let me tell you, we found him on the side of the road and he had one ear bitten off. And, you know, look, everyone's passionately engaged. And I've learned that it's the unconditional love that the dogs are giving these people, that whatever their family upbringing or relationships are with their colleagues at work, whatever, they don't get the unconditional love. But this little dog that they've got, they get the unconditional love. So they're putting everything and all their energy into that. And tolerating the rest of society is what I really feel is going on with this particular area.
Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here.
Do it now.
Come on.
Thank you.
Watch them.
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