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

Well, I mean, I was involved in one kidnapping that lasted over six years. Oh, shit. Columbia, the FARC, and I worked there for multiple years, and I left the Bureau before it was resolved. Because at that point in time, I'd lost any ability to influence the outcome of the case. And some other things happened where I was working for a supervisor that was undermining everything I did.

So not only did I lose the ability to do the case, like I had a boss that he and I just didn't align. And the last time I had a boss that I didn't align with and I left, my life got better. So this was another one where I'm saying, all right, the universe is telling me to move on. I'm good with that. So that case lasted over six years.

But one I really loved, I had changed our approach in our kidnapping negotiations from the old standard proof of life to sort of a more innocent question. How do we know the hostage is alive? Basically, which is a powerful thing to ask. So we start this case and the guy gives proof of life right away. And I'm like, oh man, this guy just screwed up my new idea. I want to implement this.

But there was something about this guy that bothered me. Kidnapping is a company activity, a gang activity, a group activity. And they're organized like any other business, which means the boss is never on the phone. There's an underling with constraints handling the negotiations. And this dude was, I thought, we're talking to the boss, right? We don't have an underling here.

We got the boss on in connection. Now, this guy turns out to be a lone kidnapper, the only one I'd never heard of a case, let alone dealt with one where there was only one bad guy on the other side, lone kidnapper. And if I hadn't heard of it, at the time, I knew about as much about kidnapping as anybody in the world did. So if I hadn't heard of it, it probably hadn't happened.

And that's what we got on this case. And he's already given proof of life, but I got a highly coachable, I'm coaching a brother, highly coachable. And we have hammered him so much on opening the questions, what we now call calibrated questions, designed to accomplish, to make you think as opposed to make you answer. Going back and forth, guy wants a daily rate to keep the hostage alive.

We're arguing about that because it's gonna be, they're gonna hold him for a year if we paint him to keep him alive. And finally on his own, the guy I'm coaching comes up and he says, when we run out of money, paying the daily rate, what's gonna happen? And there's a long silence and bad guy says, it'll be all right.

Now my negotiators in country call me on the phone and go like, this sounds significant, but what just happened? I go, are you kidding me? We got him. He just promised never to hurt the hostage. We didn't know it at the time. This guy was also a serial killer. So we got a serial killer on the other end of the line who's just promised not to hurt the hostage.

We're going back and forth with Philippine National Police. They tried to rescue once. The night they tried to rescue the first time, I was convinced I was going to wake up in the morning with a dead hostage. They missed by so far that night. This guy was really cagey, hooked up an antenna on top of another house that was three blocks away.

When a guy calls the next morning, he's just like, hey, you know, where's my money? Like nothing happened. And like, how the hell do we have a rescue last night? They missed by so far. He didn't even know what happened. So we're going back and forth on this. We got the hostage. A bad guy promising he ain't going to hurt the hostage.

We're down to within a reasonable amount that we can make a payment of bait money. Just like in a bank. You use bait money. You make a payment. You know, it's bait money. It's a trap if you get them to take it. And my negotiators call me. I'm getting ready to switch them out, pull the people out of in-country, put two more in. They say, why don't we just let them pay?

I'm like, nah, we're going to push the bait money down even lower. Philippine National Police come up with another location to hit. And the intel the second time looks really good. That's not up to me whether or not they hit the place. It's a family decision. Family wants to know what we think. And I'm like, I'm not going to hold them back. I think there's good odds here. They hit the house.

It ain't the right house, but it is a house the bad guy owns and his wife is there. They roll up the wife. Where's your husband? Well, I don't know where he is, but we do own this other house. They go hit the other house. Bad guy's not there, but the hostage is in the basement. They rescue the hostage and they sit there and wait for the bad guy to show up. And they lock him up.

And that's when we found out that he was a serial killer, too. Oh, my gosh. So we rolled everybody up. I had a change in strategy. Good strategy creates great outcomes that you might not expect. Let something good happen. It did not achieve the intended objective. It achieved a better one and faster than we ever thought we would have been possible.

So that was one of the ones that I was happiest about because we got a rescue. We got the bad guy, kept him from hurting anybody else. I'm sure he is, you know, Philippine, you go to jail in the Philippines. You're not doing good. You're going to end up under the jail.

Well, first of all, the other side, although they want a minute, they have a timeline too. They're running a business. You're a commodity. It's their job to get as much as they can as quickly as they can. it's not did they get as much as they could, it's did they feel like they did. And in point of fact, they have a timeline. It's not open-ended for the other side.

So you ask a legitimate question. How can we pay you if we don't know that you're going to let us go? That's an unavoidable question because the answer there is like, If you're not going to let the hostage go, if there's no point in me paying you and you're not going to let us go, I'm not paying you. But you don't want to say that. It's triggering a thought in the other side's mind.

So the approach is, and this happens all the time, business executives are used to their normal way of doing business, which is just, they want to intimidate, they want to impress with how smart they are, their business acumen. Business executives dig themselves, I know a couple companies that actually

negotiate these deals based on the principles of my book, because they've come to me and told me that. And so it's a realization about who's really on the other side. They, in fact, have a timeline. And stop trying to show off your resume, which works really good at whatever bar you drink at, but these guys are not impressed by it.

And then there becomes an unavoidable issue, which is if you're not going to give us our company back, how are we supposed to pay you? And that's a question they can't get around. And then as you communicate with them, one of the points always was in negotiation, it's not whether or not you're going to lie to me. My job is to pick up when you're telling the truth.

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