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The Home Service Expert Podcast · Mastering the Art of Negotiation with Chris Voss · 13 Dec 2024 podcast

And so I think a lot of it is either intentional or even subconscious testing behaviors. You know, how do we disagree and still remain collaborative? Right. And so how do you test that without making the other side, without offending the other side? And how do you stand up for yourself?

I was an FBI agent, FBI hostage negotiator. I was in charge of all of our international kidnapping negotiation response. So domestically in U.S., domestic hostage negotiations usually sell side. Somebody's trapped at a bank. I'm going to call in and try to get them to come out. It's the same thing as a cold caller does. Cold caller calls somebody on the phone.

Person on the other end of the phone doesn't really want to talk to them. International kidnapping is mostly by side. So by side all over the world in every country, pretty much every culture on the planet. It was kind of a wild thing to do because I'm originally from a small town in Iowa. So it was all over the world. That was cool.

After that, wrote Never Split the Difference, taught business negotiation at Georgetown and USC. And the book is done quite well based on the emotional intelligence stuff we used in Haas's negotiation. And then proved it in the business schools, and then also have a masterclass out there that's done really well too. So the book and the masterclass have done really well.

Well, still do a lot of keynotes, do a lot of keynote speeches for corporations and associations, you know, sales kickoffs are bringing our whole professional association together. It doesn't really matter what industry, you know, anybody where people are dealing with other people. And then we coach and train a lot.

And then when I first started the company, I thought all we would really do would be train and train mostly corporations. And we train mostly entrepreneurs now, not corporations, some, but entrepreneurs really want to learn. They really want to get better. They like to be innovative. And then we coach a lot. I didn't think we would be coaching that much. We coach people through deals a lot.

We coach. And that's a lot of fun because it's live skills based. You know, the rubber meets the road right now.

Yeah. Well, if I was in a conversation, I dig into it a little bit deeper. And you might not change it, but my first reaction is say something that is true based on a dynamic. It's really hard for the other side, but it's true. So to me, one of my responses would be it sounds like you got a closed mind. Because he's telling you he's got a closed mind about a bunch of things.

You're not accusing him of anything. We would call that a label. And you're slapping a label on something that's there. And in a way where you're not making an accusation, you're making an inquiry. But to lay it all out like that, I want to know, have you really heard what you're saying? Have you really heard what you're asking me to digest?

I just want to make sure as to whether or not I'm hearing it or not. And That's the great thing about it. That particular skill label is like, this is what this sounds like. Yeah. And it might like, oh, because some of it in negotiations, like Mark Cuban is one of my favorites. A lot of it is he's testing you. Yeah, you can tell he is. And I'm convinced that Mark talked to him a couple of times.

You know, I'm not on a first name basis with him, but I'm convinced that part of it is if we're going to be partners, I need to know that you can stand up for yourself without making other people angry. So how do you push back on me without me feeling like you're pushing back? Yeah. How do you turn an opposition into a collaboration?

And I think that's one of the main secrets in negotiation because in any deal, and particularly in the circumstances you're talking about, they want to know how good a partner you're going to be, how good an ambassador you're going to be. If you can't stand up for yourself, then how can you stand up for them?

And so I think a lot of it is either intentional or even subconscious testing behavior. You know, how do we disagree and still remain collaborative? Right. And so how do you test that without making the other side, without offending the other side? And how do you stand up for yourself? Because then you're a great ambassador.

That's a little bit of the Jim Camp approach, too, from Start With No back in 2002. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's when I first started reading Camp's book back then, opened my eyes a lot. And Jim's approach was, you can say no to me at any time. And people are more collaborative if they feel like they're not being forced. Jim called that the right to veto.

As long as I preserve your right to veto your autonomy, you're more likely to say yes because you don't feel shoved into it. And then consequently, you have fewer regrets. if you feel like you made a decision voluntarily. So just saying, look, man, just tell me this doesn't work, that's cool. And it's a really soft way to say, take it or leave it.

Yeah, it's really helpful to slow down. I mean, I slow down on purpose because you want your brain to continue to process. And most of the time, people are either talking or processing, or they're talking or waiting, and there isn't that much processing. So if I slow down and I work my way through it, more thoughts will occur to me. So, yeah, I'm trying to sit back. I'm trying to process.

That's trainable. Learnable, I mean, there's a couple of books out there that claim that everything's learned. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, I think, contends that everything is learned. Like you can't learn to be seven feet tall. You can't learn to be as big as Shaq. But there are a lot of people as big as Shaq that were never in the NBA. So he learned something.

But you can learn to slow down. You can learn to listen more. Some people are horrified at slowing down or even gaps in the conversation at all. For very different reasons. Some people are horrified because when they go silent, they're indicating anger. So if the other side goes silent, they must be angry. Well, you know, you sit down and talk to Elon Musk, ask him a question.

You're going to have to wait till he answers because he's going to think the thing through. He's not angry. He's thinking. Yeah. And then other people, if they're silent, they feel out of control. I got to keep talking. I got to stay in control. So those two types have trouble keeping their mouth shut.

But when you learn how much you can gain and how much more you can think just by slowing down or even having a pause in a conversation. And I've had to teach myself that I'm the type that the assertive that wants to talk all the time to stay in control. But when I learned how much more I could get by slowing down and listening, then I like, oh, this is a better way.

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