Never Split The Difference | Chris Voss | TEDxUniversityofNevada

I was an FBI hostage negotiator, sounds like a cry for help, right? There were more people working in a federal building I worked in in New York City than in a small Iowa town I grew up in, my mother is still trying to understand. "Find out how that all happened. By the way, my mom is a loving, no-nonsense, hard-working mom from the Midwest who says what she wants to say. You know the

difference

between that kind of mom and a terrorist. You can negotiate with a terrorist, you see?" There are similar experiences when you're an FBI hostage negotiator, you deal with crazy people, evil, it's sad to quote Tom Strands from the Godfather, the FBI hostage negotiation program, that means you think you'll

never

split

the

difference

like you're supposed to. that you must

split

the difference. a bad guy who has four hostages wants a plane to Cuba for a million dollars you say okay, we'll take two hostages, we'll give you a helicopter to New Jersey and you'll take an uber from there, of course, none of the myths I'd like to dispel about the hostage negotiators he also says that we can say whatever we want to get our way because these are one-time negotiations and we will

never

see the bad guy again, well, the hostage negotiators have regular clients, this was what a siege was like in a major city in USA the bad guy was on the run for ten days after killing four people they finally cornered him he has two hostages then Yoshida talks on the phone with them the negotiators a little excited and the bad guy literally tells them on the phone you're not doing a good job you're supposed to build a good relationship with me he had been entrenched before if the previous negotiator had lied to him i said what i had to say to get him out of there lives have been lost in the future so we have repeat customers we believe in reputation we have integrity like that that one night I was welcomed to the bar with three other hostage negotiators now I realize it sounds like a joke that the hostages go, the shooters walk into a bar and don't pay for anything other than This really happened, the four of us walked into the bar and the place is packed, it's jumping and I walk around, I look around, I see an empty seat at the bar and I walk over, you're ready to sit down and then a guy sitting down. next to the seat says don't even think about that now I'm a hostage negotiator I'm going to talk to this guy so I say why does he say because I'll kick your ass?

I say I'm going to need that. I'm Chris and I extend my hand, the other negotiators listen, we rush in and they hug us and say, hey, how are you? Let us talk to you, you know what's going on, let's see what's going on, we find out this guy is a former Vietnam vet his life is a mess it's a mess no job no girlfriend he's out he perceives the world as celebrating and happy and he he feels miserable and that's why the empty seats you know everyone tried to sit down and offered to fight him now I know about the hostage negotiation forget about the kidnappers and use the hostages name it makes it much harder for them hurt.

Well I'm a nameless guy, he's ready to hit me as soon as he turns me into Chris, everything changes now, how was I supposed to split the difference? with that guy anyway, sit on his lap, sit under the chair, so what do you do if you're armed with this tactical empathy of hostage negotiation after leaving the FBI and you're looking for gainful employment, how do you find a real job? now you write a book, I wrote the book, I never split the difference with high Roz and Brandon Bloss on applying the tactical empathy of hostage negotiation to the bullies and liars who encounter the bad guys, the bad guys, the liars every day. bad ones, the sad ones we encounter in our jobs and our social interactions, a family gathering at the breakfast table.

I saw a meme recently. I thought it was really funny and I was like, you know, this parenting thing is really wearing me out. I think I'll try something less stressful like being a hostage negotiator. Nicole weapons of empathy. -Degree Empathy Have you ever imagined hearing those two words combined in the same sentence? He never split the difference we defined. Tactical empathy is simply taking inventory of the perspective of the person you are speaking to versus the opponent's adversary. especially the parts that we don't like and then tell them what is described to them calmly, without denials, without disagreements, calmly, a tactical empathy works because we all possess this wire of human nature, it works at the level of human nature that have. something in our brain called the limbic system, we all have its components in the brain, it doesn't matter what your gender, your ethnicity or where you grew up, you have a limbic system and you, everyone has, that's why all teams of hostage negotiations in the world.

From Baghdad to Bogota to Boston the same skills are used because the wiring of human nature that we all have now is its default, it only works with people, so I will give you another secret tip of human nature: we all have a way of saying the true in a way. We can lie five to seven different ways, but there is one way to tell the truth and that is the way a polygraph works and the way two colleagues of mine identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11, now the way a polygraph works if you walk in they sit you down they hook you up - this machine they put all these wires and these gauges on you and they ask you a series of control questions - it establishes your only way of telling the truth you know what day is where what is your name ?

What did you have for breakfast? They get your reference point for telling the truth. Then they ask you the hard questions. The dog really ate your homework. We were actually in the bathroom when a fight broke out. It doesn't matter. Which of the many ways you could get out of your truth? The only thing that matters is that you stepped outside the baseline of telling the truth now, a few months after 9/11, a secret government agency had a terrorist in custody at a secret location. Outside the United States, a Terrace was seriously injured and they were worried that he was going to die and they needed to bring someone to interview him who knew the bottom of the case and two colleagues of mine were the only ones who were around and the reason they were where this guy was going to die, moving on to the next life was the only reason they were going to live.

Let my colleagues come and the FBI agents come in and talk to him to meet and I say they got a photo of the person they know is the organizer of 9/11, but the photos are not good enough to so they can tell exactly who it is so they say we talked to this guy long enough until he knows we know what. He looks like this when he tells the truth and then we show him the photo, we see what he says, so he spoke on the show, they show him a speech and they say who he is and he looks at me and says: you know who he is and I don't.

I don't know, that's why we asked. He says that he is Ramsay's uncle, Ramsay. The Ramsay he's talking about is Ramzi Yousef, who is in an American prison serving a life sentence and is the mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center back in 1993. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is his uncle, in fact, the organizer of the 9/11 attack and the interesting thing about this at the time is that most of the US government does not believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is involved at all with Al Qaeda and much less in the organization of the attack. and that is how he identified with that truth of human nature.

What is the point? The point is that even terrorists are human and their rules of human nature apply to all of us in all situations, so several years ago, while I was still in the FBI. I'm in the negotiation course at Harvard Law School and I'm going to take their negotiation course because Harvard and the FBI have the same definition of empathy. Bob Manukan, the director of his negotiation program, says that empathy is simply describing, demonstrating, and understanding the needs of a perspective's interest. from his counterpart without necessarily agreeing and goes on to say that it's not about liking or sympathy in any way and I'm thinking I'm behind that, how am I supposed to like a terrorist?

This is perfect for summoning substance to the FBI on the one hand and Harvard on the other hand has the same definition of empathy, so while I'm there I look for more academic scientific evidence that supports the universal wiring of human nature and one of the brilliant instructors from there, Sheila Hien, talks about a book called the air cars and it is a study and scientific proof that emotions are intertwined in all our decisions, we make our decisions based on what matters to us, what makes the decision of decisions by definition of emotional process and I'm thinking that perfect Eureka's is exactly what I'm looking for, the only problem is that I've never heard of the philosopher called Descartes, so I write dick Hart D.

I'm looking for a DI ck HEART dick Hart and I go home and Google dick heart and I can't find it. Anywhere I'm thinking, I don't know why I was so pressed with this guy, who no one has ever heard of. Dick Hearts mistake is that he needs a PR person to let people know who he is, eventually though I'll find out, I'll tell a story. a friend a colleague a client uses a transformative skill of tactical empathy to close million-dollar deals in a technology sector he is enormously successful he is at a family gathering his younger sisters drank too much now his younger sister is the primary caregiver for the dying father and stress about her is huge and he's seen her before these types of meetings lash out at other people when she starts attacking him and he realizes it's his turn now.

He sent me an email that said, “I just wanted to make her feel.” I listened and not to argue with anything she said it lasted an hour and the next day she sends him an email saying yesterday I attacked you and he showed me nothing but love thank you for being my big brother ladies and gentlemen the bad guy the madness is a door everywhere, it's us, don't let only Terrace and the bank robbers be the beneficiaries of this transformative ability, he is tactical empathy and the people you talk to, your adversaries, time and counterparts They make them loved ones and never split the difference. thank you