How to win a negotiation, with former FBI hostage chief Chris Voss

- My

negotiation

experience really started even before I became an FBI

hostage

negotiator because I needed some training. And that training was really intense, focused on listening on a suicide hotline. Really learning about emotional intelligence and what motivates people, and then how to navigate that in a way that calms them down and makes them make decisions. - 'Gunmen stormed the Chase Manhattan Bank in Park Slope this morning. And negotiators have been trying to get them to surrender ever since. - 'Hostage negotiators used a megaphone to try to talk to the gunman.' - 'Billy, we're on the same page.' - 'What convinced the gunman to finally come out? - I think it was an excellent

hostage

negotiation

. - People in intense situations do not change their patterns.

They continue to work in the same way they would under less intense circumstances; They are still making the same decisions. So if you take negotiation skills hostage, which is navigating human emotions, and put them in the middle of business and personal negotiations, you actually have a great way to navigate your way through business negotiations and personal and life negotiations. everyday. If you believe that successful negotiations are due to logic, arguments, reason or compromise, you are losing money: you are leaving millions of dollars on the table. And throughout life, that could be true for everyone. Tactically, intelligent emotional negotiation is the way to do great business and have great long-term relationships.

And sometimes they miss that and think that the problem is a person on the other side of the table. And that's why people often consider it a conflict and actually treat it as a conflict. Negotiation is really about people making decisions based on what matters to them, what are their passions? Every decision you make, you make based on what matters to you, which I'm afraid, by definition, makes decision-making an emotional process. Firstly, understanding where the other party is coming from, and especially emotionally, and then being able to communicate it to them in a way that tells you that you have done well.

Understand and demonstrate that understanding. There are many negotiators who will actually compromise on a deal because being understood is more important than getting what they want. So once we fully understand where someone is coming from, then with tactical empathy, we have a much better idea of ​​exactly how they feel about things, how that drives them, and then how we can interact with the things that drive them. The reasons why you won't reach an agreement are often more important than the reasons why you will. There is a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economics theory that says people will assign a value of losses to at least twice what an equivalent gain is.

So losing five dollars hurts at least twice as much as winning five dollars. Losing $5 feels like losing $10 or even $35; It's just a ridiculous bias in our brains for loss. So, knowing that the fear of losing will likely drive someone's decision making more than anything else, I tactically want to allay those fears. I want to get them out of that fear-based thinking and I want to get them into a more rational, open state of mind as quickly as I can, so I tactically and empathetically want to address their fears first. Well, labeling is the best way to practice tactical empathy: in its strictest form, it is simply saying or writing "seems, sounds, seems," putting a label on the dynamic.

And science is now showing us that if we label something negative, it diminishes it. In fact, I tell someone ahead of time, "Look, this is going to sound really harsh, and there's a good chance that when I finish saying what I'm going to say, you won't like me at all." "And then I'll say what I have to say and they'll say, 'Wow, that wasn't so bad.' So I know I can take a very preventive approach to negative thinking because I know what a barrier it is to decision-making in people. business. The type of listening (I practice it while I teach it) goes beyond active listening alone.

We even sometimes refer to it as "listener judo" because we listen very carefully to certain things. of what people care about and what they are against at the same time. People will reveal a lot of the negative aspects, whether between the lines, a little of the adjectives, and also in every positive there is a negative side Every; negative thing has its positive side. If I propose to speak that I am for integrity, then if you go out of your way to claim that you have been betrayed in the past, that has been a problem for you in the past. a yang in everything.

And as soon as you realize that there is a negative in every positive and a positive in every negative, and you are listening to it, you can choose how you want to guide a discussion knowing that those are the things you are looking for. I remember one time I was on the phone with an airline customer service person, and it must be a tough job because those people get yelled at all day, every day. No one calls customer service unless they are unhappy. And this woman was one of those women who had clearly been yelled at 50 times during the day, and she wasn't interested in staying on the phone with me even a moment longer than necessary.

And I remember when I was hanging up the phone and she had me on hold, I remember saying, "You know, I guarantee you that this woman right now is thinking, she's telling her colleagues, 'You know, this guy is lucky that I talk to him on the phone!'" So I was thinking about the negative of that, and then the flip side. Well, from her point of view, if she thinks I'm lucky to be talking to her on the phone, then the flip side is that she's actually being generous to her mind and her world. She got back on the phone and I said, "You know what?

I really appreciate how generous you've been with your time." And I noticed immediately that her mood had changed. After that, she put me back on hold for about a minute and a half. And when she got back on the phone, she had refunded me the full amount of my ticket. Most people, if you're nice to them, can help you by doing a little if you give them the chance. If you are just nice to people, it's amazing what they will do for you. - That's great. - That was a great story. - Thank you. - Thanks for the genius. - Get smarter and faster with videos from the world's greatest thinkers.

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