Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Mick Unplugged. Let us uncover the because, that thing that drives you, that thing that fuels you. I'm ready if you are. Let's go. But I'd be humble today, man. Like I told you when I finally got to meet you face to face, there's three people that really changed my life.
Chapter 2: What drives Chris Voss and fuels his passion?
From a business standpoint, you, Damon John, Robert Irvine, like you're my three keeks. And life would not be the same without you three, man. So I just wanted you to know that. Thank you.
Thank you.
You know, I always ask. Folks about your because. You know, Simon Sinek did the start with why's. Great concept. But I believe that there's a different fuel that gets people to a Chris Voss level. And it's your because. Your why to me is somewhat superficial, but your because.
Chapter 3: How can ordinary people achieve extraordinary results?
That's that thing that's deeper than your why, your true purpose, your true passion. That thing that keeps you doing what you do. So if I say, Chris Voss, what's your because? Why do you keep doing the things that you do?
Well, yeah, we're ultimately set with suffrage. I mean, it makes me feel really good to actually help people. You were talking a little bit on the way over here. I think everybody's capable of really incredible stuff. Like, not everybody. Every person on earth. In fact, I do think of myself as just like this regular guy.
You know, like I was a B-plus student in high school, B-minus student in college. You know, it's not like I'm on the honor roll. You know, I'm not super high IQ. average looking dude, not a great athlete, but everybody's capable of being extraordinary. If they just say, okay, I could do this. And it frustrates me the more people don't see that.
And I think that because I'm a regular dude, like if I could do well, you could do well. You know, there ain't that much to it. And I like helping people have better lives. It's just enormously gratifying to me.
You say you're a B plus student, right? B minus in college, is that what you said? Yeah. But you're an A plus fucking human being, bro. And I really mean that because, again, the lives that you impact, and we'll talk about your history and all the things that you've done. But I get to see it in this view, right? I see the lives that you impact.
We were talking about your extraordinary staff and team that you have and then the circle of friends that you have. Sometimes, Chris, I don't think you realize how just impactful you are as a human. I really don't.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
I try to be around good people. I try to be around really good, hardworking, regular people that are fun to be around. And everywhere I've gone, if we've managed to coalesce a group of fun, hardworking, regular people, extraordinary things happen.
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Chapter 4: Why is empathy considered a superpower in negotiation?
When I was in New York working on the terrorist task force, you know, the hardworking regular guys. We found each other in terrorism. And New York's a big enough place. Like, it was the same thing. The organized crime guys, white-collar crime guys, you know, whatever. The regular hardworking guys got together and made extraordinary cases.
You know, we made, in terrorism, we made cases they wrote books about and they made movies about. The organized crime guys did the same thing.
Yeah.
If you get those regular people together that just have a ball, just laugh at stupid stuff. Don't take themselves too seriously. Work like crazy. And then you get a chance to do extraordinary stuff.
That's fun. Yeah. Let's talk about this journey you've had, though. Not everyone can say they were the number one rated FBI hostage negotiator of all times. We can. There's situations that you've seen that not even the elite have seen. But you always focus on the mission at hand. And I remember talking to you and you were like, the mission is the mission until the mission changes. Right. Yeah.
Talk to us about how you got into hostage negotiation.
Yeah, it was just one thing out of left field after another. Like I never even imagined being a hostage negotiator. It wasn't a goal. Being an FBI agent wasn't even a goal. Kind of found myself there by the circumstances lined up. When I applied for federal law enforcement, I originally applied for the Secret Service because that's what I heard about.
And I was told Secret Service traveled all over the world. I'm like, wow, that's cool. While I grew up in Iowa, it was a big deal going to another state. I crossed the river into Illinois. That was a big deal. That was a big deal. So I traveled, and Secret Service wasn't hiring me. I was. I put in my application. I was slated to go to the SWAT team in the police department just before I left.
If the Bureau would have delayed by three weeks hiring me, I'd have stayed with the PD because I was two weeks away from going to the SWAT team. Got on the SWAT team in Pittsburgh and I remember an exercise we did, you know, it was this supposed bad guy takeover of a nuclear facility. We got negotiators inside.
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Chapter 5: How does kindness enhance leadership and negotiation?
So catching somebody on the inside, like it hadn't happened in New York City for 20 years. Oh, wow. On the one that I was on. That's how rare they are. Okay. Yeah. So, and it turned out really well. It was combined effort, FBI, NYPD, blended negotiation team. First bad guy to surrender, surrendered to me personally outside the bank.
And so then I, FBI hostage negotiated as part of our protocol of staying good is teaching. If you're not doing something, even if you're doing it on a regular basis, you want to really immerse yourself, try to teach it. Yeah. Because you're going to get called out. I mean, you really got to stay the hell out of it. And you're going to get called out.
So I started teaching at Chase Bank all over the place. And it was a lot of fun. And because I like teaching and I like doing it, I can continue to pursue it. I was in the right place at the right time. A lot of times I worked my ass off.
and working your ass off really determines whether or not you're in the right place right time there you go I totally agree with that you know when we were in Chicago my cousin Rami asked you a question of if you had to do it all over again what would you tell the younger version of Chris Voss and you said I tell him to be nicer right tell us about what that means um
All right, so there's how you approach conflict. There's basically three types. We believe, I believe, my team believes that this is true. And we have the anecdotally, we've got enough data to sort of back it up, even though we have a rigorously testicle. So your approach to conflict approach is fight, flight, make friends. Assertive analyst to commenter. Caveman response to threat.
Fight it, make friends with it, run from it. And the world really does pretty much split evenly into thirds. Doesn't matter gender, ethnicity, religion, nothing. It's kind of the caveman wireman. So as an assertive analyst, natural born assertive, I'll tend to be too blocked, too direct. And so I wouldn't change sticking to my values or what I stood up for, what I believed in.
I'd just be nicer about the way that I express. I'd be kinder, if you will, nicer, friendlier, you know, whatever word works. I always believed in you need to know where I'm coming from and sort of primary currency is respect. If you respect me, we could probably make a deal.
Even if you don't give me the deal that I originally wanted, if you treat me with respect, I'm going to be enormously collaborative. And one of the poster children for assertives these days that everybody knows, of course, is Trump. Jeff Bezos also is, in my view, is an assertive.
Look at how collaborative Donald Trump is when the world leaders show up to the White House to treat him with respect. You know, he's basically dismissive of almost every European leader in his first round. Unhappy with NATO for legitimate reasons. You know, we're paying their bills and they're badmouth us.
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Chapter 6: What led Chris Voss to become a hostage negotiator?
No, but you know, it's that gift. It's been a gift. It's very gratifying. It's been a gift. I've been very happy with it. And I'll tell you the thing that I'm happiest most about it. To me, it's a proof of concept of human nature because the book's about collaboration with people, trust, long-term relationships of trust where you collaborate, both people do well. And they're happy.
And it sells well globally, which to me says the vast majority, not everybody in the world, but the vast majority of the world wants to collaborate. You know, we're not against each other. We're not at odds. The criticism of the legacy media is legit in that it's there to keep us divided. And many of the social algorithms are there to feed what makes us angry.
Right.
and continue to feed our anger if we bite. And then even if we don't bite, it tries to get us to bite anyway. I read a lot of reporting on President Trump, mostly because I'm trying to read between the lines to see what he actually said as opposed to what they're saying he said. And so because I read a lot of these, I get a fair amount of stuff fed to me.
Can you believe President Trump said this? President Trump doubles down. You know, the inflammatory stuff. Because they're guessing that I want to be angry. I'm just trying to see what the hell he actually said. And so the majority of us don't want that. You know, the majority of us, more of us want to collaborate than not.
It's a legacy media and social media is designed to keep sanguine at each other's throats.
So true. So true. So powerful. And we agree on so much, right? Like I'm all about emotional intelligence when I speak to leaders. That's what I'm there with. You've got your empathetic leadership amongst many things. Why do you think leaders today are missing the boat on it?
Because they don't see it around them. First of all, it's not in the media. It's not getting fed to them. In entertainment, it's not in entertainment. How are we picking up what social behaviors affect? Every movie and TV show, when somebody's down and upset, Somebody looks at him and says, I know how you feel. I was at the same place you were in.
And the other person goes, oh, my God, thank you. And I feel so much better. And in real life, when you say, as soon as the words I know how you feel start to come out of your mouth, the other person starts to withdraw. There are some people that teach communication called story stealing.
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of emotional intelligence in negotiation?
The more fun my life is.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. While I have you here, I can only ask you this question. And I'm kind of asking selfishly for me. But a lot of leaders truly don't understand negotiation. If I talk to a leader about negotiation, Fortune 100 leader, their immediate thought goes to salary negotiation. Right. Every time. And I'm like, that's probably 10 on the list. What about Tyne? What about effort?
But people don't understand that those are things that you're also negotiate. So for the leaders that are out there, I'd love for you to take a moment and talk about why negotiation is important for a leader and what you miss when you don't do about.
Because when you start talking about time and effort, where you're really negotiating with somebody is their future. Where's that time and effort going to take them? And how painful is it going to be? Like all the emotional things, but you're really asking somebody to trust you with their future. And this trust is this, you know, this bond, this sort of imaginary bond.
To get somebody to trust you with their future, they have to feel that you understand what's important. Not that you agreed to it.
Yeah.
or that you're aware of what they're afraid of, or that you even appreciate. And so one of the things that I've been, just over the last three years, I've been trying to, my appreciation dividend has grown very high. Because I'm trying to remember on a regular basis to appreciate people as much as possible. Yeah.
And I would have simply, from the way that I was raised, I was just expected to do a good job. And, you know, my father didn't show me a lot of appreciation. It was tremendous amount of love in my faith. It was unquestioned that I was loved unconditionally by my parents. But the modeling that was done for me, there wasn't a lot of appreciation.
And so I just took it for being like, look, do your job. Do what you're asked to do. Do your job. Have integrity. Do all that stuff. And just do it. And so I've been guilty of expecting people to just do a good job most of my life. And now as I'm showing more appreciation for the little things, I'm getting people working harder and working longer hours and having more fun.
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