What Speakers Can Learn from FBI Negotiators – A Masterclass with Chris Voss - 325

Hello, you are watching and listening to Sarah Archer and episode 325 of The Speaking Club podcast, and I want to open this show with a quote from the man himself. When the pressure is on, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your highest level of preparation.

Chris Voss.

I started this podcast for 2 reasons: because I want to help people recognise the power of stories and humour in speaking, and because I believe it's your message that counts, not the number of ums and ahs you use. There are some organisations that want to create robot speakers. They want you to sacrifice your personality in order to speak perfectly. But I want to let you know that you can be yourself and a sensational speaker. So if you want to be a speaker that connects and engages authentically through stories, a speaker that gives value as well as a great performance, then welcome home. Hey, how you doing? Great to be here with you again. Uh, thanks for watching or listening. Uh, it's great to be here with you. Now I have been a fan of the guest this week. For years. So when the opportunity came up for me to share a stage with him earlier this year in Lithuania, I knew I had to make my move. And right, what the thing is though, right, this guy is the master negotiator. So I was like, I can't just ask him to come on the show. I need to like, maybe try and use his own tactics on him. So, when he was on stage, he was the opening keynote, so I was like, oh, what's he gonna say? Is there anything that I could use there and leverage? And he obviously has an organisation, and he has courses and whatnot, and his techniques are brilliant for communicators. So, when he came off stage, not like right away, I didn't like ambush him, when he came off stage, I was like, how am I gonna do this? Okay, so I used a no-based question and couched it in the context of the show reaching people that may be his target client, and I was absolutely chuffed to bits when my no-based question got the right type of no, and he agreed to come on the show. Uh, so yeah, I was chuffed to bits. Now, if you don't know Chris Voss, what rock have you been under, first of all? No, no, I'm only joking. It's not everyone knows him, you know, and if you haven't, you are in for a treat, that's— let's say that. Um, he is the former head of the FBI International Hostage Negotiation Team. He is the author of one of the top best business books ever. It's still on— you go and look at the sort of top 20 shelf or whatever, it's still like topping the charts, and it's been out for years. Uh, it's become a bible for business, for sales, for leadership, communication. Um, it's got some amazing tools, tactics, tips in there to help you, um, create those situations where you win but other people also You know, kind of get what they want. It's very helpful. Anyway, more than that, what, what really jumps out about Chris is that he is someone who understands how to influence without people feeling pushed or conned. There's no pretense, and no one feels like they're lost, as I just said. So having him come on the show, I knew that I'm a fan, and I know there's other fans out there in my network. So I wanted to give people the chance to ask a question of Chris, uh, that might help them. And I want to give a shout out to Nikki Kinton, to Lucy Wicks, and to Eileen Boyle, whose questions made the cut into the show. So thank you very much for, for doing that, and I hope Chris's answers give you what you need to sort your stuff out. So if you are a speaker, coach, a business leader, a salesperson, Um, if you want to get booked, if you want to close deals, or you want to create real change with your message, then I reckon you are going to love what Chris has to share. So let's buckle up, baby, and head over to my chat with Chris Voss. Welcome to The Speaking Club, Chris Voss.

Thank you, Sarah. It's a pleasure to be here.

I'm very excited. This has been a long time in the making since we met in Lithuania in May, but I'm absolutely delighted to have you on the show.

Thank you.

I'm a fangirl. Quite a few people in my network are fangirls and boys, and there's a question in here or two from the audience, but I wanted to start off by just talking about a little bit about your journey. So, You went from SWAT to surveillance, undercover, finally negotiation. And I think you even did a stint on a suicide hotline to help with that. When you look back, which parts of the journey were intentional and which felt like the universe was gently nudging you or not so gently nudging you in that direction?

Yeah, well, uh, the, the universe was always nudging me in the direction of hostage negotiation, I think. But, uh, I needed to sample a few other things, find things out. The undercover stuff especially, because that thing sort of— it sounds sexy. It sounds like a lot of fun. I managed to— I got a chance to do some of it when I was on surveillance in Pittsburgh. And I was— I found that I was never comfortable with it because fundamentally undercover, being undercover is about lying. And I'm not, uh, it goes against my grain more than I expected. And hostage negotiation, negotiation in general should be about telling the truth and even especially not withholding the truth, which a lot of people, I've heard people say, always tell the truth or at least don't lie. And I'm like, wait a minute, you know, what are you saying where you have to say that? Well, it's people who are withholding the truth.

Yeah.

Uh, deception by omission, if you will.

Yeah.

And so I needed the undercover opportunities to find out that it just didn't sit well with me. In law enforcement, it needs to be done, just somebody else can do it. It's not for me.

Yeah.

So that was a nudge. SWAT, I loved. It was phenomenal. But my injuries got me out of that. And I think the universe was pushing me in another direction. Everything ultimately, I get to sample a lot of stuff. Everything ultimately guided me to hostage negotiation.

One of the things that I read, I remember reading in the book was around your fascination with no, which is one of your sort of big tactics that you mentioned it in relation to surveillance. Can you just share a bit more about that as well?

Fascination with the word no or the answer?

No, with like Getting people to say no versus push to say yes.

Yeah, you know, it took me a really long time to realize it, but the hostage negotiation skills in the FBI, not a single one of them is designed to get somebody to say yes. You know, there are 8 FBI negotiation skills. None of them are the closed-ended question, were you fishing for yes? And we had a video that we played over and over again, a training video that we used, and I must have watched it a thousand times before I realized, and not any point in time did somebody— did we try in the training to get somebody to say yes. It was always effectively to get a response, to elicit information. Yes isn't information. Some people think it's confirmation, but it's— that's right ultimately is the best confirmation there is.

Yeah.

So I didn't really see it until Jim Camp's book, Start with No. I came across that in about 2002, and I very distinctly remember doing a double take, you know, walking past a bookstore, seeing it on the shelf. I'm like, Start with No? I thought you were supposed to get to yes. And Jim, Jim just pointed out in his book, he called it, uh, everyone, you need to preserve their right to veto or their right to say no. And he didn't even try to get people to say no. What he just said to 'em was, it's okay to say no. He'd sit down with 'em and he was a salesman. He was, an Air Force fighter pilot. He was a football coach. He had a tremendous life experience. And he said he found when he told people it was okay to say no, he'd say, you know, you can tell me to go away at any time. I want to talk to you about this deal. You know, I got this opportunity. I'm trying to sell you something. He actually sold water softeners door-to-door at one point in time.

Yeah.

And he'd say, yeah, you can tell me to go away at any time. And as soon as he gave them the right to say no, or he preserved their right to veto, as he would say, Yeah. He made more deals. And then one of my hostage negotiators, I was sharing this idea with her. She said, yeah, you know, did I do this with my supervisor? Because she was in trouble and he was jealous. She didn't do anything wrong in his eyes. Her sin was overshadowing him. And so He was going to remove her from a duty that was making— that was causing him to be overshadowed. And she said to him, do you want the FBI to be embarrassed? Which is clearly designed to elicit somebody to say no. And I remember her telling me that story, thinking like, oh my God, that's so manipulative. He had to have just exploded when, when you said that. And She said, no, you know, he just, he sat back and he seemed really, he got very calm and he could clearly, he felt very much in charge by having the opportunity to say no. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. And then I looked back over some other things that I'd seen over the years and I thought, yeah, saying no makes people feel powerful. There was a lieutenant on the police department that once told me, Uh, Chris, a lieutenant's job is to say no. And I thought, at the time I thought, geez, dude, you're not a leader, you're not a manager. Like, I would hate to work for a guy that feels his job is to reject his subordinate's ideas. But I remember, you know, how he just kind of got all strong and powerful when he said that. And I thought, And then with Marty's experience with her supervisor, I thought, wow, there's something to this. And we have just really extended that in our methodology and across the board. It's, if you can just switching from yes to no as a response, your effectiveness will take an astonishing leap forward. And what do I mean by astonishing? The first stat we ever saw, one of my students at Georgetown was doing solicitations at night for political fundraising.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody's in sales. Everybody that asks for money, everybody that asks for anything, they talk to 3 questions where the answer's yes. And then you ask for the money, you ask for the commitment. I know of a a minister that used to, his call to Jesus, would you like to have a better relationship with Jesus? He'd ask 3 yes questions, ask for people to come down and commit their lives. Everybody does this. So the first time as Georgetown students switched from, would you like to see Republicans back in the White House in November, to have you given up on taking the White House back in November? And they were 23% more effective with that switch. And I recently had an executive recruiter His job is to recruit executives that aren't looking for work. A company identifies a position, he scours the landscape for the best candidates and calls them cold. Cold calling. Cold calling salesman is what he is. And to offer somebody a better life who's not looking for a better life. And of course, his first question was, would you be interested in finding about an opportunity where you can make more money and be happier? Obvious yes question. And he said that previously he would have to make 300 calls to get 3 candidates. And when he switched his yes question to a no question, are you against hearing about, then he, to get 3 candidates, it only took him 75 calls.

Wow.

From 300 attempts to 75 attempts. Like the increase, just the change to that word alone is stupid how much difference it makes.

That's amazing. That's amazing. I think what's really interesting with the, what you, you know, the things you've just said and what I can see from the book and so on, Is that, and I don't know if this is true, this is an assumption which I guess I'm testing, is that the FBI had a set of tactics that they used because the sort of academic stuff wasn't working. And then that stuff started to work. I don't know if it was sort of intentionally informed by Daniel Kahneman's work at that point, But certainly, it's something that you bring up, that it was all around acknowledging that human beings are emotional and not rational. And what you seem to have done is sort of done the meta of what was working for the FBI and taken that and explained it to people, the sort of the concepts behind it. Is that true? Or was that, you know, it seems like you've expanded it and made it accessible and also explained why it works. Is that fair?

Yeah, definitely across the board. And I love that you mentioned Daniel Kahneman. I'm such a fan. And he was academic proof because hostage negotiators, it was trial by fire. We had to collectively, the profession, we had to find what worked or people were going to get killed.

Yeah.

And so they originally, you know, NYPD is credited with starting hostage negotiation. You know, probably the same circumstances that caused them to discover it, you know, they were lit in other places. There are other law enforcement agencies that said, yeah, we're doing the same thing at the same time. You know, just NYPD got all the publicity and the FBI first recognized NYPD. But it was originally thought basically bargaining or yeah, they just, they thought it was going to be bargaining and studying bargaining skills. But there were people like Frank Bolz, the guy who really led the charge with NYPD, had great people skills. And so while they studied bargaining and then of course classic psychology, Harvey Schlossberg was with Bolz. And they thought, all right, it was a starting point, but it wasn't exactly psychology and it wasn't exactly bargaining. And their people smarts, emotional intelligence, EQ, which we now call it, started to come through. So negotiators across the United States and then around the world were finding empathy, and then they found the word. Yeah, we must be doing empathy. And so, and then we started running across the academics and I think there was a woman in crisis intervention, her name was Shirley Ruppel. And in the FBI, the people that were really leading the charge, my old boss Gary Nessner, and I'll think of his Fred, Fred Lansen, they were huge. And they were like, you know, this, this isn't bargaining. there's something else here. It's really crisis intervention. And so they, I think they got the original list of skills from Shirley Ruppelt. And, but they had the lists, but then you talk about accessible. How do we make it accessible?

Hmm.

The thing in the Bureau that was a big advantage was they required us to teach as soon as we got trained, sort of, Doing it doesn't keep you sharp. It doesn't make you study it. Try to teach somebody something, you take a deep dive on explaining it.

Yeah.

And so they put a lot of pressure on us to teach, which I responded to because I enjoyed it. And then who, who were teaching? Mostly local police officers. And when you mentioned accessibility, Like, if you can't explain it in plain English to a local police officer, you know, they're going to throw a coffee mug at you or something. You know, you're going to, you're going to get booed off the stage. They got no patience for impractical explanations or academic explanations. So I loved making it accessible. And Einstein is credited as saying, if you can't explain it in plain English, you probably don't understand it.

Absolutely.

And so you wrap all that together and you end up with Never Split the Difference, which is an accessible and entertaining book.

Absolutely. And I mean, it's absolutely loved and used by so many people. And I just, what I'm also interested in is obviously you had this story career, you're leading the FBI hostage negotiation team, And was it your love of teaching that made you want to go out and share this stuff? You know, firstly in Georgetown, I think it was, and then, you know, through the book and so on.

Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, that had a lot to do with it. If you're a good teacher, you gotta be entertaining. And so I'm a bit of a ham, you know, I love to stand up in front of people and tell jokes. You know, my girlfriend Wendy, Uh, Lexi teased me. She says, you're the king of the dad jokes. And, uh, so it's, it could be a lot of fun, you know. It's so, yeah, my, uh, I, I, I love helping people get better. Uh, in our training now, and we're designing, uh, I was just reviewing with my colleague a training we're getting ready to do in a couple weeks. I want people to close deals before the end of the day. You know, we got a half a day with this particular group, and by 1 o'clock, I want them to have fixed and closed the deal that was dead in the water when they walked in the door at 9:00 AM. So, you know, I love the teaching. I love people having a good time. I love people learning. And learning without application is useless. And so I want people making deals before the day is out. And I enjoy that.

Yeah, that's cool. There's no, that's like proof beyond like it's practical implementation, holding your feet to the fire to show this stuff actually works. It's great stuff. And okay, I've got some, people are going to want to know, you know, if they've not come across Never Split the Difference, there's a whole bunch of things in there that people can use, like you said, in all sorts of situations, From negotiating with the other half, who's gonna empty the dishwasher, to all sorts. What I'm— one of the questions that I had for you was, what's the one negotiation tactic that never worked for you, even though it should have on paper?

Wow. You know, I suppose, well, sometimes, first of all, did it never work or was it effective short-term but really bad long-term?

Mm-hmm.

Like coming in with an extreme ask, extreme anchoring, that tends to work short-term. It feels like it works short-term. The deals that you make, you tend to do really well short-term, and then the other side never wants to deal with you again, or they want to hurt you. And it could be really addicting. To come in with an extreme ask and make that deal because you feel like, you know, you just are at the other side and they never talk to you again or they don't go through with it. And then the real problem with the extreme ask is a lot of deals go away on the spot and you don't really see, understand how that's a fair— you drive deals from the table. So the extreme ask can be very damaging to your relationships, but it feels good in the moment. Very similar to that, Kate, is a tactic known as strategic umbrage. And there's actually a study that says strategic umbrage works, you know? Sorry, tactical anger. Sorry, tactical anger, if you will.

I might.

And so we're working on the book and I absolutely do not believe in it, either being angry or intentionally making the other side angry. Those are 2 separate tactics. And being angry, I'll tackle being angry and making the other side angry intentionally separately. But we're working on the book. We, my son Brandon, big contributor to the book, helped fantastically. And Tal is a writer. Tal's a genius business writer. And one of the genius things about Tal is he did his research. Most co-writers, most people that you can employ to help you write a book will not do any research at all. All they're going to do is they're going to try to accurately capture what you said in your voice and put it down. Tal Raz, fantastic researcher. So we're working on the book and Tal says, hey, there's a study out there that says strategic umbrage works. And I know you guys don't believe in it. And I said, yeah, it's a stupid idea. And he said, well, you're going to have to explain it more than that. Say that it's stupid. And because there's this study that says it works. So I looked at the study and I can tell you exactly what's wrong with it. It's simulated negotiations that are one-offs. What does that mean if it's simulated? You're not using your own genuine actual emotions. So if it's simulated, neither you nor the other person are reacting genuinely. Hmm. Number 2, it's a one-off. It was student negotiations taken, uh, participating in, um, uh, a negotiation course. They don't have to face each other again. It's a pretend situation where they don't have to suffer the consequences of having hurt the other side's feelings. And if it's a student negotiation, they're going to talk to each other one time. They're going to talk for something less than an hour because that's what every student does. I did it when I took courses. We're going to sit down, we're going to talk for almost an hour. If we haven't reached a deal, the only failure is to not reach a deal.

Yeah.

So if somebody starts getting mad, you're like, ah, you know, it's, it's, look, look what time it is today. It's been 50 minutes. Okay, I'll sign off. And you move on. And that's completely false data. And strategic umbrage in real life, you bully somebody into a yes, then either they don't comply, they ghost you, they don't return your calls, Or if you've got a written agreement, you find your penalty clauses are more important to you than the bottom line because you gotta penalize 'em 'cause they're not implementing. Like everything goes bad with using anchor.

Yeah.

Now, so I'm going on forever, but the flip side—

No, that's cool. I was gonna say it's kind of like the opposite of tactical empathy. And it feels like I was thinking, this is just an aside, I feel like a session or a whole course with you should be prerequisite for any national leader because I feel like a lot of stuff would be avoided.

Oh yeah, telling Vladimir Putin he's stupid, that's worked really well, hasn't it?

Yeah, maybe not that, but yeah, although yeah, I think you're stupid. Anyway, here's another question around techniques. If you could keep just one technique that you advocate for the rest of your life, which would it be?

Um, labeling.

Yeah, I think that's cool.

Yeah. You know, saying to somebody, it seems like something just crossed your mind, uh, is a great way to get people to talk. Um, seems like you're hesitant. It seems like you're under a lot of pressure. Labels. Yeah, that'd be the one I could live on that.

What's really interesting about labeling and the role it plays in the way that you advocate it, what I noticed was a real crossover. There's a book called Play Bigger, and in the book they say whoever This is in marketing, whoever articulates the problem best wins. And I actually think that labeling is about articulating the problem and the pain. And that, you know, and it works. That's the way that it's been interpreted in marketing speak, but I just think it's your technique of labeling, but applied to problems and the pain that people have. So that, I just thought that was really interesting when I was reading. I don't know if that feels like it might fit or align with it for you.

Yeah, it does. And you know what I love about that is if you're fascinated by human behavior and then you start to pick up the same ideas in different places, you know, 'cause my book's about negotiation. Some people say it's a great sales book. It is.

Yeah.

You're reading a book about marketing and then you see the piece over here that matches this piece over here. And then you go like, ah, that's gotta be human nature truth. And yeah, that's cool. I love that.

Yeah, no, it's great. Okay. I have another question. What's something that people think is negotiation? It might be that we've covered it with strategic umbrage or something else, but actually kills deals faster than anything. Is there anything— is strategic unbridged that, or, or, or is there something else that comes to mind?

Effectively making your case. Um, people think that's negotiation, you know, here's what I want, here's how I see things, and then it starts to wander. My Harvard brothers and sisters have this thing called the yes-able proposition, and academically It sounds so smart. You know, just come up with a proposition that so meets their interests, not their positions, but their interests, that they can't help but say yes to it. That sounds so good. And the problem is, if I lay out to you The perfect prescription, even if it is. You feel talked down to. You feel excluded. You feel your autonomy's been taken away. You're not invested in the process. You just don't care. And you're almost insulted by it because I presumed to think for you. I presume to be your parent or your guardian. And so you just feel demeaned by that.

Yeah.

And it sounds so brilliant when proposed, but the reality is the other side, just at, at best, they're indifferent.

Mm-hmm.

And frequently they're insulting.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I don't know if this is right in terms of the way that I've interpreted this, but it's almost like when you did that course at, I think it was at Harvard and they were tactically using this at you, you used one of your tactics around questions. And I wondered if you could just share about that question tactic, because I think that's really good. And I think it's exactly this situation that you used it in. I might be wrong, but I think so.

Yeah, no, no. I, by that, by the time I went through the class at Harvard, I had learned a great way to just really disable the other side is to say, how am I supposed to do that?

Yeah.

And so the Harvard Law School students, uh, they're entertaining. I'll tell you, they're very entertaining. Some of the biggest brains in the world. Like, if you're, if you're at Harvard Law School, Like you have just knocked the admissions test, the LSAT, out of the park. Like you just hit a home run and you get straight A's and you've blown everyone away with the size of your intellect. So they come into class, they are super smooth, very inexperienced. You know, we would say in the US, wet behind the ears. But their intellect is so big, it's never mattered. And so they'd sit down and they'd lay out this yes-able proposition that they'd thought through in such detail with their giant brains. And I just looked at them and say, how am I supposed to do that? It was that you could just almost watch them short circuit. What? I thought you were supposed to say yes.

It was real life hitting you in the face.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, and some of the instructors, uh, they got the biggest kick out of it cuz when I, yeah, when I say, how am I supposed to do that? It's effectively saying no in a really nice way. And the, uh, instructors go like, Voss just tells 'em no and stares at 'em and they fall apart.

I bet that was really satisfying.

I have to admit, you know, I was— there ain't nothing better than beating a lawyer in a negotiation.

I love that. Now, I put out to my network to give people the opportunity to ask you a question because time with you is valuable and I wanted to share it around. Now, What seemed to be coming up consistently, and I guess it's sort of aligned with the program that you were talking about that you're going to be doing in some ways, but it's like how— so I had people in the credit control space who were asking me, how do you move someone who won't commit to a deadline for making payment to agreeing one and confirming that commitment? And then other questions similar were around, how do you get A company or a person to, to, you know, overcome the price objection. So there's a lot around shifting positions, uh, in a sales or, you know, payment context. And I don't know if you've got any advice to people around that.

Yeah, the first, the first one, uh, commitment triggering a decision. Uh, whoever's listening to this, uh, the questions that you ask to try to get Commitment. Um, you'll find every one of them, you're seeking a yes. Would you like to do this now? Are you capable of meeting this deadline? Take it. If you don't realize it, uh, record your conversations, play them out in your head, write down the questions you're asking. You're going to find that they're all almost seeking yes. Yes-oriented, if you will. So the stupid thing about this is the minute that you switch from yes to no, are you against? Does this sound impossible? Is it impossible? Would it be ridiculous? My company, we've got a list of the 10 most common no-oriented questions to switching from yes to no. If you go to the website, you could get it or you could even email us, info@blackswanltd.com. We'll send you a QR code. Yeah, we want your email address. Whoever you are, I want you to be a better negotiator. I want you to enjoy it more. I want it to be less painful for you and more effective simultaneously. And it doesn't matter who you are. We've got a skill that will help you. If you're a billionaire, if you're a hundred uh, centimillionaire, if you're flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant, if you're the fry person in a fast food restaurant, we can help you get better. I'm very selfish that way.

So yeah.

Like, you know, let us, let us, let us have a shot at helping you get better. So first of all, learn to switch from yes to no. I, I mentioned, um, uh, the minister, uh, Protestant minister, uh, Tim Ross is called to— called to God, called to Jesus used to be, you know, would you like to have a better relationship with Jesus Christ? He changed it to, are you against having a better relationship with Jesus Christ? Switching from yes to no. First of all, make that switch. Now that's about triggering a decision.

Hmm.

Now people, secondarily, the rest of it, People feel more likely to comply, to want to cooperate if they feel understood. How do you make them feel understood? You don't say, I understand. That didn't make anybody feel understood. Say out loud how they're feeling. What's an example? You talk about people that are on credit trying to collect The most extreme example, one of my negotiators who also had a security business on the side, woman's got a million-dollar debt.

Wow.

Million dollars. She's on the run. He's got a subpoena for her, civil action. He's being paid to track her down and lay the subpoena on her. Finds an address. Rings the doorbell, Ring doorbell, starts talking to a female through the Ring doorbell. It's her, he suspects. She doesn't admit it's her. And if it's a Ring doorbell, she's not necessarily in that house. She could be 1,000 miles away.

Mm-hmm.

He makes it all about her. What does that mean? He says to her, this seems really unfair to you. This is destroying your life. You didn't ask for any of this to happen. Articulating to the other side how they see the things, especially the negative emotions. Negative emotions are what, uh, disable people and stop them from making good decisions.

Mm-hmm.

How do you deal with it? Say what they're thinking. Now, a, a fair, uh, a judge would say, wait a minute, you did this. You have to be held accountable. You can't run forever. That ain't making it about the other side. Somebody's on a run is gonna be saying to themselves, this isn't fair. The world is against me.

Mm-hmm.

I tried really hard. So he's saying these things to her through the doorbell. You didn't ask for this. You're a regular human being trying to do the best she could do. Now, she'd been on the run for over 8 months. He'd been handed this job because nobody else could find her. After being on the run for 8 months, he has a couple of conversations with her. He has a conversation through the Ring doorbell. They exchange a phone number. He has a couple of phone calls with her. After being on the run for 8 months, 14 days later, she invites him to meet her for coffee.

Wow.

Knowing that when he shows up, he will hold in his hands a million-dollar obligation.

Wow.

That when he serves her, she's served. It's about making the other person, making it all, he says, make it all about them. Make 'em feel heard, make 'em feel understood. If you're trying to get somebody to comply and credit, your best chance of success is making them feel understood.

Yeah. And it's that, that's right thing, you know, the distinction that you make in the book and made on stage when you were speaking was that distinction between that's right as opposed to you're right.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's a big difference.

Because he could say, look, he could have said, you know, you're right, which is, you know, shut up and leave me alone. He could have said, you know, this obligation isn't going away.

Yeah.

You know, you can't get on with your life until you accept this obligation. Because he's going to say you're right, You'd never hear from them again.

Yeah. Yeah, that's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. That's great. Okay. One of the things that I'm curious about before we switch into some questions around speaking that I wanted to ask you, because this is The Speaking Club, was have you been using your late-night radio talk show host voice so far in this interview?

Why, no, I would never do that. Why would I do that? No, of course not. Cool. Cool.

I wanted to give you a task to do that. That's cool. Um, now you are a, a, a speaker, uh, I would call you a celebrity speaker who also delivers value given the, uh, given the popularity of the book.

That's nice. Thank you.

One of the things I was curious about, and I don't know what the answer to this is, is how does your FBI experience, if at all, shape the way that you speak?

Yeah, I think it does. I mean, the desire to connect. The FBI agents that I worked with who were great investigators, who, you know, the guys that made cases nobody else could make. And I look back on those guys and what I learned from 'em, and they came off as just very regular human beings.

Mm-hmm.

Non-threatening, you know, self-effacing, um, easy to get along with. The greatest investigators are so non-threatening. And, you know, that's not to be underestimated. Derek Gaughan, who's my head of coaching, says, you know, the first thing to do in a business negotiation or personal negotiation is remove yourself as a threat. And in law enforcement, a lot of guys do interrogations and you see them in the movies where they're very threatening throughout the years. I think it's this anger thing that we were talking about earlier. You know, using it is very satisfying, makes you feel powerful. It doesn't really do any good. What a great investigator. They were just— they're so non-threatening. NYPD had a guy, Jerry Giorgio. He taught a negotiation— he taught an interview and interrogation course I sat in on. And I'm with all these NYPD detectives sitting in this class. I'm the only FBI agent there. There's probably 100 detectives. And, you know, one of them turns to me and he's like, you know, that's either, you know, you got charged, you got to have a hammer. If you got a hammer on them, you know. And that's the only way you're gonna get a confession. And then we listen to Jerry Giorgio and the same guy looks at me and says, anybody sits down with him is gonna confess. Hammer or no. And Jerry was just—

It's a bit like Columbo, isn't it?

Well, he, you know, uh, Columbo's, yeah, non-threatening.

Yeah.

And just, uh, and so Jerry was, you know, Columbo's like, ah, I'm not that smart. Which has tremendous value. But Jerry Giorgio was also endearing.

Yeah.

Okay. As well. You know, I would say also charming, but you know, some charming people, you know, they feel slippery and that's not real charm. To be endearing is really charming. And I remember Jerry Giorgio was just this really non-threatening, Uh, endearing, understanding dude. And if they ever had a suspect that just would not give it up, but they knew that it was the bad guy, especially if the bad guys walked around free, they just put Jerry on him and before long the guy's giving it up.

And so you transpose that energy into, uh, your talks when you get on. Is it, is it At the start? Is it all the way through? How, and does, do you sort of manage the transitions or how does it work?

I, you know, I think it's, it, um, you think about it enough and it eventually you want it to become part of your wiring. And yeah, everything is learned.

Yeah.

Like everything is learned.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't learn to be 6'7. All right. I'll give you that. But I, I can learn it and then I repeat it enough times that it, it, it becomes part of my wiring.

Yeah.

So I, hey, I think about it a lot. Um, I listen to it in other people. I reflect upon how Jerry Giorgio sounded.

Yeah.

Or, uh, how Larry Wax sounded. Or there was, I wish I could remember his name. There was, there was one guy from, in Kansas City, Missouri Police Department. His tone of voice was extraordinary. I think about how he sounded, and then I, I think about saying it, you know.

Mm-hmm.

Thinking it through properly is the same as doing it properly to your brain.

Hmm.

So you can rehearse in your head. And, and then in my conversations, I, I try, I try to implement it and eventually it It becomes part of your wiring.

Excellent. Cool. Now, the other thing that I was curious about looking at things from a speaking lens is whether you intentionally label the room, your audience when you speak, whether you do that before you, when you're prepping the talk or when you step on stage.

Yeah, sometimes. I mean, for an audience, there's a whole bunch of different approaches. It could be labeling, It could be humor. Yeah. Humor is one of the best memory encoders. You deliver valuable information, make people laugh at the same time, they're probably gonna be able to pull it back up. There's something else that I, we've come across recently that we call the gratitude audit. I think you're probably familiar with what we refer to as the accusations audit.

Yes.

You know, calling out, uh, the negativity that somebody's thinking.

Yeah.

When my son taught alongside me, when he's part of the company, he was an integral part of it. He'd stand up and these executives that are 20, 25, 30 years older than him, he knew that they were thinking like, you're only here 'cause you're Chris's kid.

Mm-hmm.

And I got socks older than you. So he'd stand up and say that. He'd say, I know, I know some of you got socks that are older than I am. I know right now some of you are thinking like, the only reason this guy's standing up here is because it's Chris's kid. That's labeling.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's the accusations on it. And what it is really is when you step up in front of the group, what do you just know they're saying about you?

Yeah.

So the flip side, the gratitude audit, what can you say What appreciation, gratitude, appreciation, purpose that they stand for that you can say genuinely? It almost sounds like flattery. When is flattery empathy? Number one, when it's accurate, it's how they see things. Therefore, you say it with integrity. And I sat down in front of a group of people from YPO, Young Presidents Organization, in Southern California, 6, 7 months ago. And I said accurately, you know, it's a privilege to be here because you guys represent 80% of the employment in your region. You guys are the founders and operators of the businesses that provide 80% of the employment, 80% of the economy in Orange County. You guys drive the economy here. You're the reason people have jobs. And the reason they can send their kids to good schools. It's just, uh, and I'm lucky to be here talking to you because you're that important to this area. Because I know ahead of time they're saying to themselves, do you realize how important we are? Do you know who we are? We provide 80% of the jobs in this region. You should be grateful to be in front of us. That's what they're saying to themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah.

Yeah. So why can't I say that too? So that's the gratitude audit is, uh, gratitude, appreciation.

That's lovely. That's cool. And one of the things, I don't know if this is related to that. The next question I had was when, if you have a view on this, what's the black swan every speaker should be looking for in their audience?

The black swans really, they're saying to themselves, do you understand us? Do you have any idea what our challenges are? And this is a great advantage we have now of AI. I happen to use Perplexity. Some other people, mostly some other people using ChatGPT, you know, I don't think it matters. The black swan. How do they know me? I literally say in Perplexity, what's the vernacular of the challenges that salespeople selling X in this region use?

Hmm.

And it'll throw me 2 or 3 or 4 terms.

Hmm.

Or the description of the challenges. that it'll pull it right up. And so I find that to be enormously helpful for me to show them that I have some understanding of them by just by using a term or two that I would not have known if I hadn't done the research. The black swan is how do I make them feel like I understand their challenges? Because it doesn't matter where you are, every human being on earth, it's got the same 3, 4, 5 challenges. You're selling gold jewelry in a souk, which is a term for the street exchange, the street market.

Yeah.

You're selling gold in a souk in Iraq, or you're hustling newspapers on the street in San Francisco or you're in a boardroom on Wall Street, the human challenges are pretty much the same 4 or 5 ways. Now they disguise behind different masks and the masks have terms. And so really the black swan is, am I going to be able to pick up that terminology? We used to ask, I'd set up for a keynote talk, you know, I'm giving a speech someplace.

Yeah.

And I'll ask my host, you know, what's you guys' terminology? What's your vernacular? You know, what are the words that you guys use all the time? And I'd always get a blank look because it's so unconscious. They can never tell you. If you asked them, they have no idea. But if you use, if you use an AI tool, the AI will pull it out for you and that'll make a big difference.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really, really good tip. It's true. You cannot see the label. From inside the jar, as they say. So next question, there's a couple more questions for the standard questions. You talk about the illusion of control and people will take more action if they feel in control, even if you are the one setting the boundaries is what you say. How can speakers use that principle to guide audience behavior or buying decisions without being manipulative?

Yeah. And it's usually a what or a how question.

Okay.

Because asking someone— people love to be asked what to do or how to do it. They love it. Makes them feel magnificent. Makes them feel as if you're looking for guidance. And a well-framed what or how question frames the conversation. But since they feel in control, They don't feel framed. They don't feel hemmed in. And some of those, one of those questions could be, you know, what happens if you do nothing?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, what happens if you sit through my talk, give me an hour of your time, and you walk outta here with no new ideas? And so what that does is make a person think like, oh, I'm here to get a new idea. So yeah, it's shaping thought, if you will. And it's usually a what or how question. I love that.

I talk about it in similar, I talk about Scrooging your audience because I think Charles Dickens did an amazing job in going, what happens if you don't take action? What's the future going to be like? Versus what's it going to be like if you do? And I kind of— it is a similar, you know, uh, kudos to Charles Dickens there. I'm literally just channeling him, but that's— it feels quite a similar approach to, uh, what you're advocating there. Yep.

Yeah, well said.

Cool. Excellent. Okay. Well, look, in a minute, I've got a couple of questions to ask you, and then we're going to reiterate where people can find out more, pick up, uh, the 10 no questions and so on. Um, but first, uh, a few questions. First question, what's the best thing that speaking has done for you, Chris?

You know, just, it, it's, it, it's fun for me. Um, I get to travel a lot, uh, and people are upbeat. You know, if it's a professional conference, if it's a, for a company, it's a sales keynote, like people are happy to be there. They're in a good mood. They're up for new ideas. Like it's a steady diet of just positive interactions and it makes me happier. I like that.

Now, second question, has there been a time when things haven't gone so well and you're like, I wanna put that experience to the back of my mind and never think about it again? Has that fallen to you?

Well, I, um, um, there have been times that things have not gone well and it's not that I put it to the back of my mind, but I think about all the things that I did that contributed to it, and I learned from it. You know, to quote the great Irish philosopher Conor McGregor, you win or you learn.

Mm-hmm.

And I've had things go bad. I had one about a year ago that there was like a 50-50 contribution as to why it went bad. You know, I contributed at least 50%. The host did too. But I focused on what I did wrong and what I missed. And it is the amount I've gotten out of it and learning has been really huge. So I don't put things that are bad behind me and forget about 'em. I study 'em.

Perfect. I love that. I have not heard that quote before. Perhaps I should have, but I haven't. I like it. Next question. What's the book that's had most impact on your life and why? Wow.

Um, Camp's books, Start With No, that, you know, it's up there. You know, there's, there's 3 or 4 books that have been huge for me. Yeah, Start With No, 2002, which really opened my eyes to the whole, uh, it was a gateway to no-oriented questions. Got us talking about it. It just, it made me realize that hostage negotiation empathy applied in everything. That one, principally negotiation. Steven Kotler's got a couple books that I love, The Rise of Superman and Stealing Fire.

Okay, cool.

And that's, you know, it's about the mindset of flow. Both of those are tremendously fascinating books. And Steven's a great guy. He's a wacky dude too. Like, Steven is a different guy. which is one of the many things that make him so delightful. And so those, those 2 books are phenomenal. And then Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture, The Talent Code is really good for learning. I like, I like Coyle's got a couple books and The Talent Code is one of 'em.

Cool. It sounds like it's, it's going to be an ever-movable feast for you. There's, you, you've— oh yeah, it's like you love learning. So that's That's great.

That's right.

That's right. Good. Excellent. Cool. Next question. What's the best bit of business advice you've had and why?

All right. So first piece, Dan Sullivan. I get coached, strategic coach. It's individual executive coaching. Dan Sullivan harps on 2 things. Find out what your unique ability is. And delegate everything else as much as possible, which is really hard. And then even have one day a week where you do nothing but your unique ability. Have one day a week where you don't do nothing at all. You don't work. He calls them free days. That's enormously valuable. Instead of trying to be the master of all trades, even if you do stuff better than the other people in your organization, if it's not your unique ability, it's sucking the life out of you. And you're the tentpole. So that's not good management of the, the million-dollar racehorse that you should think of yourself as. Uh, the other one is, uh, Jonathan Smith is our EOS coach, Entrepreneurial Operating System. And Jonathan has also become a collaborator in negotiation training and coaching. But the first thing he made us do when we were introduced to EOS was focus on our core values. And I remember thinking like, that's a waste of my time. Your core values are be honest, work hard, learn. What else is there? And he is like, no, no, no, no. First of all, you gotta get a little more granular than that. And secondarily, he said, all your relationships, all business or personal, all are gonna succeed or fail based on core values. So your hires, Your, uh, your love interests. It doesn't matter. So when you can articulate your core values to people up front, number one, they're like, all right, let's get this out in the open. Here, here, here's who I am for us to have a great relationship. Secondarily, when they don't line up, it's, it's not a judgment on anybody else. It's just, you gotta accept that your core values don't line up. The relationship's not gonna work.

Mm-hmm.

And so then nobody's pointing any fingers. Nobody's saying you're a bad person because of this. You can just genuinely say we're different and we don't fit, and we accept that and we move on. And understanding core values so that you can know who not to have either relationship or business deal with.

Yeah.

Without getting angry or frustrated with the other side. Look, we don't match. You know, it's cool. You know, my, my freak flag is different than your freak flag and yours is cool for you.

Well, I'm familiar with Dan Sullivan's work, so I'm aware of that stuff, but I haven't heard about the other stuff. So that's good. Thank you for sharing that. And we'll put some links in the show notes to, to that stuff as well.

All right.

Okay. Last question. If you could have one mentor and they can be alive or dead, fictional or nonfictional, who would you choose and why?

Who would I follow around? Probably Warren Buffett. I mean, that's a tough call because a lot of the other people, like I'm a big Elon Musk fan, I'm a big Jeff Bezos fan. Bezos got a— where was I listening to? In-depth interview, I think, on Lex Fridman. She can be mentored by a lot of these people if they've— if you've listened to an extended interview of them. Buffett is a quiet dude. Like, so I would, I would, I would work. I would minimum wage to be his assistant, follow him around and soak up his knowledge, see how he operated. That'd be the guy.

That might reach him. He might be on the phone asking you a no-oriented question to get you to help him out. Listen, Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure. I knew it would be. Thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing all of your experience and knowledge and the absolute gold that you have in terms of the tactics. Now, if people want to, first of all, book you to speak, they want to grab the resources, where's the best place for them to go for those things?

Yeah, really our website, blackswanltd.com, B-L-A-C-K-S-W-A-N-L-T-D.com. And we've trimmed it down recently. Because the first thing we want you to do is join our negotiation community, and that's free. And so that's what you're going to come across first.

Mm-hmm.

Now, if you think about what, where you, and that's a great place to start. Now, if you want training, if you want coaching, you're going to be able to get in touch with us right away on that. And there'll be, there'll be a link there for you to look at. But the community is people that are like-minded helping reinforce each other. And so we've got different groups that are forming within the community to role-play with each other. I got lawyers in there. We got lawyers in there that are working with each other because they're speaking the same language and they're talking to each other about their challenges. And it's free. So the community is a great starting point. If you're a fry cook in a restaurant, If it's free and you actually want to learn, we'll help you get better.

I love that. I love that. I love the fry cook. Like, this is great. We're putting a label on exactly the type, you know, it's anyone who wants to get better and learn. And this could be the leg up to help you shift out of that if it's something that you don't actually want to be doing. So that's brilliant. Okay. We'll put the link in the show notes for people to go and check all of that stuff out. Well, listen, thank you again, Chris. As I say, it's been a pleasure, and I'm really excited to share all this stuff with my audience. Thank you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me on. No worries.

Take care. Whoa, how was that for you? I loved it. It was so nice to actually get these tools and The psychology of things from the horse's mouth, to hear those real situations that he encountered and how he applied them. And that's the biggest thing I think about Chris's work is that it isn't theory that an academic has come up with, and no, you know, not to say there's, you know, there's some great stuff that, that has come that way, but this is tried, it's tested in the most high-stakes situations that you can get. So that for me just makes it You know, much weightier because of that. And that's, you know, the beauty of what he teaches too is that it's not about tricking people. It's about turning what matters to them and into, you know, the sort of center point of the conversation, guiding it there. It's about listening. It is about empathy. And that's a beautiful thing. So, I know it's going to help you when you're pitching talks, you're trying to get booked, or if you're, you know, like the guys that sent the questions, in nudging a client to commit. I think, you know, hopefully you'll get some of these tools from this conversation and get a successful outcome in those situations. Maybe you could try labelling or ask a no-base question like I did to Chris, or look for the black swan. So yeah, and if you do try something that you heard in the episode and get a win from it, then do let me know. Uh, you can pop a comment, uh, if you're watching on YouTube, that'd be fantastic. Uh, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, I'm over there, or Instagram, I'm on there too. Let me know, be smashing. And if you know someone who would benefit from listening to this interview, then do share it with them. You know, it's great to get this stuff out there into the hands of more people. I've put all of Chris's links in the show notes. You can go and pick up his other ideas for no-based questions, and, you know, getting on his newsletter would probably be a great thing to do to get those tips on a regular basis. Well, thanks so much for joining me again on The Speaking Club, whether you're listening over at Amazon, Spotify, wherever, or watching on YouTube. It's fab to be with you, and I'm grateful for your attention. Don't take it for granted. I know it's, uh, it's a precious, precious thing.

Cool.

Well, until next time, you know what I'm gonna say. Don't you forget to go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking, perhaps with some tactical empathy. Take care.

Bye-bye.

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