The Art of Manliness - The Secret Skills of Master Negotiators

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00:02:01.880 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured

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00:02:29.840 Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

00:02:41.440 When most people think of negotiation, they picture big, high-stakes moments,

00:02:45.720 haggling over the price of a house,

00:02:47.440 negotiating a starting salary,

00:02:49.040 or hammering out the terms of a business deal.

00:02:51.160 But negotiation is also something we do every day.

00:02:53.640 It's working out who's taking on which chores

00:02:55.200 with your spouse, convincing a coworker

00:02:57.140 to help on a project, or even deciding

00:02:58.960 where to go for dinner with friends.

00:03:00.780 The better you understand negotiation,

00:03:02.620 which is really about influencing other people's decisions,

00:03:05.020 the better you'll be at navigating conflicts

00:03:06.640 and opportunities, both big and small.

00:03:08.980 My guest has spent decades studying the art

00:03:10.880 and science of wielding that influence.

00:03:12.980 John Richardson teaches negotiation

00:03:14.520 at MIT's Sloan School of Management

00:03:16.140 and is the co-author of Never Settle.

00:03:18.980 Today on the show,

00:03:19.800 John shares what he learned

00:03:20.620 from negotiation legends

00:03:21.660 like Roger Fisher,

00:03:22.840 co-author of Getting to Yes,

00:03:24.360 and FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss.

00:03:26.880 He unpacks the skills of master negotiators,

00:03:29.220 including how to build reciprocity,

00:03:31.140 uncover what people actually want,

00:03:32.860 and keep your emotions

00:03:33.660 from hijacking your judgment.

00:03:35.160 We also get into the part of negotiation

00:03:36.640 that makes people the most uncomfortable,

00:03:38.500 back and forth over hard numbers

00:03:39.840 like price and salary,

00:03:41.120 and how to handle those conversations

00:03:42.280 with greater confidence

00:03:43.120 and better results.

00:03:44.520 And if the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash negotiation.

00:04:00.860 All right, John Richardson, welcome to the show.

00:04:03.760 Thanks, Brad. Thanks for having me.

00:04:05.120 So you recently put out a book you co-authored. It's all about negotiation. It's called Never Settle.

00:04:10.160 You teach negotiation at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

00:04:13.900 This has been a big part of your life.

00:04:15.440 How did you end up doing what you do?

00:04:16.900 Like, what's your history with negotiation?

00:04:19.080 That's really interesting because people ask me, well, how do I get into this?

00:04:22.820 And I kind of respond, well, I don't know.

00:04:25.240 It kind of just happened to me.

00:04:27.040 I was in law school and first semester, all your courses are mandatory.

00:04:32.240 Second semester, you get one elective.

00:04:34.760 And I didn't know what to take.

00:04:36.260 My next door neighbor in the dorm was like, I'm signing up for negotiation, but don't

00:04:41.000 bother because it's too hard to get into.

00:04:43.280 There's going to be 200 people applying for 24 spots.

00:04:46.640 But I didn't know what else to put, so I put it, and I got really lucky.

00:04:50.900 The reason it was so hard to get into then was because Fisher, Roger Fisher, the guy who wrote Getting the Yes, was the main instructor, and he was taking the year off.

00:04:59.060 So his assistant guy, Bruce Patton, who was also one of the authors of Getting the Yes, for the first time was soloing, and they gave him a tiny little class of 24 people.

00:05:07.880 But then the next year, Fisher was back, and he went back to having 144.

00:05:13.080 And so all of us who were in that little tiny class got invited to be TAs for the bigger class.

00:05:19.680 And I thought it was a great class.

00:05:21.560 It was super fun.

00:05:22.500 I really enjoyed it.

00:05:23.880 So I signed up for that.

00:05:25.100 They liked me.

00:05:25.780 They thought I did a good job.

00:05:26.960 They kept hiring me back.

00:05:28.620 But then I went down to New York to be a litigator.

00:05:31.180 You know, and what I was doing was security fraud defense.

00:05:34.120 So you sell crooked stocks and I get you off.

00:05:36.840 And it was extremely well paid.

00:05:38.820 And it was super fun in a chess game sort of way.

00:05:41.920 and I didn't feel like I was on the wrong side because I kind of felt like the people on both

00:05:46.680 sides were dirtbags. I mean, there were all people who were trying to, you know, because the stuff I

00:05:50.920 was defending was a bunch of like real estate limited partnership tax shelters. And the stuff

00:05:56.300 that my clients were doing wasn't technically illegal, but I wouldn't have left them alone

00:06:01.620 in a room with my mother. So I felt like, well, is this what I really want to do in my life?

00:06:06.740 At the time, my wife or I was dating this girl, and then we got engaged, and she was still back up at Harvard.

00:06:14.540 She had been a year behind me, and we had met because we were teaching assistants together for Fisher.

00:06:19.120 She was from Nebraska, so I was like, okay, I'm going to get her to move to New York.

00:06:22.580 So I got an apartment down on St. Mark's Place, you know, Lower East Side, and I thought, she's going to see the sophistication of the big city.

00:06:30.180 She'll fall in love with it. Game over.

00:06:31.600 But the first day, she came down and dumped her stuff, and we were going to drive her car back to my parents in Connecticut the next day.

00:06:38.500 We get out the next morning, and car's not there.

00:06:42.300 So that kind of New York took a hit with that.

00:06:45.100 And then her counter move was she waited until I was really frustrated with life at the law firm, and she got Fisher to offer me a job helping him write a book.

00:06:56.500 And so then I was like, ah, you know, it's promoting negotiation.

00:06:59.740 It's for the good of the world.

00:07:01.140 And I'm sick and tired of this law firm stuff.

00:07:02.980 And she waited to do that until I paid off all my law school loans, you know, because

00:07:07.040 we were getting paid really well at the firm.

00:07:09.000 And so I got out manipulated by my girlfriend.

00:07:11.440 That's how I ended up back working at Harvard.

00:07:14.240 And then the next guy who took over after Fisher, when he retired, decided to appoint

00:07:20.060 a whole bunch of people as lecturers instead of just having TAs in the class.

00:07:23.660 So then I ended up just by being around, I was on the Harvard faculty, but then my wife

00:07:29.340 was also Harvard faculty and it was kind of a little too nepotistic to have us both work

00:07:33.660 in there.

00:07:34.000 So I went over to MIT.

00:07:35.940 Okay.

00:07:36.500 Yeah.

00:07:36.900 So a few things there.

00:07:37.780 I went to law school too.

00:07:38.900 I remember I took a negotiation class.

00:07:40.860 Yeah.

00:07:41.020 And I remember reading, getting to yes and having to do mock negotiations over settlements

00:07:45.540 and, you know, litigation cases.

00:07:48.340 And then also your wife is also a negotiation professor.

00:07:53.320 We've actually had her on the podcast, Sheila Heen, a long time ago, talking about how to

00:07:57.760 have difficult conversations.

00:07:59.420 So yeah, I mean, it's negotiations all around you.

00:08:01.940 Your wife's a negotiator.

00:08:03.740 You've got this education history of negotiation.

00:08:05.980 You did it as work.

00:08:07.360 And this is not really related to negotiation, but this is an interesting fact about you.

00:08:10.600 You're also a volunteer EMT with your volunteer fire department.

00:08:14.840 How did a negotiation professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management end up moonlighting

00:08:19.800 as an EMT?

00:08:20.420 I probably spend more time doing that than I do at Sloan. So partly it was, we were all teaching

00:08:27.360 negotiation at Harvard. The thing about it is people who taught negotiation in law schools

00:08:32.000 and business schools were either lawyers, especially on the law school side, or economists

00:08:36.960 or psychologists. And I thought, well, we, the lawyers actually understand negotiation the best

00:08:43.220 because we do it all the time. And you don't really do a whole lot of negotiation. I mean,

00:08:47.680 OK, you're still negotiating with your wife and kids and your neighbors as an economist, but your job isn't all day negotiating with people like lawyers.

00:08:56.960 I thought we lawyers understood the topic better, but we just made good arguments about why we were right.

00:09:03.540 We didn't have experimental design and statistical analysis and that kind of stuff.

00:09:07.500 So I thought people are listening to the economists and the psychologists instead of us.

00:09:12.240 So one of us needs to go and get a PhD in psychology and learn all that stuff, and then

00:09:18.540 we will crush them and conquer and take over the world.

00:09:21.160 So I went to go do that.

00:09:22.580 And then I realized the kind of work you need to do to get promoted and to get tenure in

00:09:29.200 the PhD line of things, I thought wasn't terribly useful to people.

00:09:33.440 I wanted to write stuff like Getting to Yes or like this book that would help actual normal

00:09:38.920 people.

00:09:39.440 And that's not what helps you get ahead in academia.

00:09:41.400 And at the same time, I was having trouble with my dissertation committee and I got and then I got offered the MIT job.

00:09:49.640 So I said, OK, great, I'll take that. I'll still get to teach negotiation and then I can write whatever I want.

00:09:54.980 But while I had been doing the Ph.D., my wife had been building a consulting firm and she was making stacks of money and she was, you know, flying out and doing work with clients a lot. 0.57

00:10:06.100 You know, there's a whole line of research about when a wife makes more than a husband in a marriage like that can that's greatly increases your risk of divorce. 0.58

00:10:16.540 But really what our family needed was someone to pick up the kids after school and go to the grocery store. 0.72

00:10:22.480 So I figured, all right, what if I do that?

00:10:24.720 But on the other hand, you know, then am I still the man in the marriage?

00:10:28.880 You know, when we first got married, I was the one making tons of money at the law firm.

00:10:32.300 And then I saw the sign, you know, firefighters wanted at the place.

00:10:36.640 And I thought, well, you know, who's a man is a fireman.

00:10:39.640 So if I do that, then I've still got the manliness thing on lockdown, even without making more money.

00:10:44.880 And I can do that while the kids are in school.

00:10:47.060 And, you know, I've still been doing that 15 years later.

00:10:49.840 That's awesome.

00:10:50.780 All right.

00:10:51.080 Let's talk about negotiation.

00:10:52.900 All right.

00:10:53.260 I think a lot of people are frightened or terrible at negotiation.

00:10:57.520 I am terrible at negotiation, like notoriously terrible at negotiation.

00:11:02.300 And there's so many stories from, you know, my wife and I's married life where we've had

00:11:07.640 to negotiate something and I just, I just completely fumble the bag.

00:11:12.380 The funniest story, we were at an antique store in Vermont and there was these antique

00:11:17.360 snowshoes there.

00:11:19.080 And we thought, oh, that'd be really cool on our wall.

00:11:21.140 We'll go get these.

00:11:22.080 This is when I was, when we were newly married.

00:11:24.160 And so Kay was like, you got to negotiate the price.

00:11:26.740 You got to haggle this.

00:11:27.700 And so like, of course she puts it on you. 1.00

00:11:29.520 Well, the funny thing is my wife's actually a better negotiator than I am.

00:11:32.580 Like she's better at it than I am, but she's like, you need to go do this.

00:11:35.260 So I was like, all right.

00:11:35.640 So I went over to the guy and I just said, hey, do you negotiate?

00:11:38.760 And the guy was like, no.

00:11:39.840 No, no, no.

00:11:41.660 And so I was like, oh, okay.

00:11:42.580 And I paid full price for it.

00:11:43.900 But I'm sure I'm not alone in being bad at negotiation.

00:11:46.740 Yeah.

00:11:47.200 Why are most people frightened or terrible at negotiation?

00:11:51.140 So a couple of things.

00:11:52.760 One is their idea of what negotiation is, is one that makes it more frightening.

00:11:58.380 A lot of people think negotiation is like wearing a really bright red tie and pounding the table and yelling at them until they give you whatever you want.

00:12:07.460 And I think if you start to think about negotiation, what it really means is trying to affect the decisions that other people are going to make.

00:12:16.580 And in that sense, you're negotiating all the time.

00:12:19.400 And Brett, when you say you're terrible at negotiation, I'll believe you that you didn't do well in the antique store.

00:12:26.000 But how have you managed to build such a giant, successful platform if you're terrible at

00:12:31.320 negotiation?

00:12:31.920 That doesn't make any sense.

00:12:33.420 And the way I think of negotiation is you're trying to get them to say yes to you.

00:12:37.180 The way you get them to say yes is to make them happier and better off if they do what

00:12:43.580 you want.

00:12:44.480 So you got the fundamental skill of negotiation is figuring out what do they need and how

00:12:49.660 to please them.

00:12:50.940 And if you can do that, then they're going to want to give you what you want to make

00:12:55.720 you say yes as well.

00:12:57.400 And if you think about it that way, it's really about learning about the person, forming

00:13:02.040 a relationship with them and, you know, being clever about figuring out what you can do

00:13:08.720 for them and then they're going to want to do for you.

00:13:11.400 And if you think about it that way, it's a lot less scary.

00:13:14.540 And once you get through that stage and you still have to fight about, okay, but how much

00:13:19.280 money do we get, you know, then you're in a much better place together. But that part, the

00:13:23.920 distributive part of negotiation, you know, who gets how much money is the part that stresses

00:13:28.600 people out. And partly, I think that's like basically something from our, you know, caveman

00:13:36.380 ancestry or, you know, real monkey stuff. How do animals solve distribution problems? You know,

00:13:41.760 two monkeys, who gets the last banana? By fighting. And so your brain thinks of negotiation

00:13:48.360 as I'm about to get into a fight over this stuff.

00:13:51.860 And, you know, when your sympathetic nervous system

00:13:53.920 gets activated, yeah, now I'm slipping into EMT talk,

00:13:57.480 you know, your cortisol goes up,

00:13:59.160 your adrenaline goes up and blood and oxygen

00:14:02.900 get moved out of your brain into your arms and legs

00:14:07.400 because you think I'm going to fight or flight. 1.00

00:14:09.580 And then you tend to do stupid things. 1.00

00:14:12.640 And then once you've done a couple of stupid things 1.00

00:14:14.880 in that situation of a distributive negotiation, 1.00

00:14:17.860 you learn that it's like a terrible place

00:14:20.860 where bad things happen

00:14:22.000 and it just gets worse and worse.

00:14:24.800 So we'll talk about what you can do

00:14:26.820 to better manage distribution negotiation here in a bit.

00:14:29.760 But before we do,

00:14:30.620 let's kind of talk about your overarching philosophy

00:14:32.720 towards negotiation.

00:14:34.500 So you, of course, did a lot of work with Roger Fisher

00:14:37.400 of getting to yes.

00:14:38.940 Yeah.

00:14:39.280 For those who aren't familiar with his work,

00:14:41.300 what's his overarching philosophy to negotiation?

00:14:44.380 And then talk about how you brought in

00:14:47.560 ideas from chris voss who we've also had on the podcast yeah so fisher's whole thing well okay

00:14:54.140 so fisher's background is important to understand this he was in the eighth air force in the second

00:14:59.840 world war and of the you know i think that might maybe the submarine service had a higher death

00:15:07.240 rate but that was one of the worst possible things you could be doing and one time we were at a

00:15:13.520 wedding together at the Memorial Chapel at Harvard. And off to the side, there's this little

00:15:19.020 room with a giant marble. It's not a little room. It's actually, you know, about 20 feet tall.

00:15:23.900 But there's a marble wall with something like 2000 names on it of Harvard guys who got killed

00:15:29.880 in World War II. And he wandered in there and he was older at the time and I was one of his young

00:15:34.960 guys. So I wanted to take care of him. So I go in there with him and he's just pointing at names

00:15:39.300 at the wall. And he's like, I knew this guy. I knew this guy. I knew this guy. These guys were

00:15:44.440 identical twins. I never liked that guy. You know, the number of people he knew who'd been killed in

00:15:50.680 the war was enormous. And it wasn't just that, that what they had suffered as a group, and they

00:15:57.940 were incredibly brave and suffered terribly, you know, the young officer class of the United States

00:16:03.780 at that time. But it was also what they did. You know, look, we didn't start that war. We didn't

00:16:09.260 start the atrocities. We didn't do the worst atrocities. But when we joined in, everybody

00:16:14.320 else was already doing it. And we started doing things, too. We wiped out whole cities full of

00:16:21.160 people with incendiary bombing. And then for Fisher, he particularly felt guilty over Hiroshima.

00:16:28.420 He was a weatherman. He was an amateur weatherman before he started in the war.

00:16:32.180 and they made him a weatherman in the air force and you might think that's a pretty good gig but

00:16:37.060 no it was terrible because they didn't have satellite imaging then what they did if they

00:16:40.880 wanted to know you know if the weather was too bad to send planes out you send one plane out

00:16:46.400 with a weatherman on it and you see if it comes back and you know he barely survived doing that

00:16:52.600 in europe and then they sent him to japan and every day he would be in a b-29 and you'd fly

00:16:58.860 over Japan to do the weather. And they told him, you know, bring a couple of bombs and just drop

00:17:04.720 them on anything you see. You know, it was a very small bomb load because they mostly gave them

00:17:08.740 extra fuel and they had all this weather equipment. And they would drop a bomb or two and Japanese 1.00

00:17:14.700 fighters would come up to try to shoot them down. And he didn't like getting shot at by Japanese

00:17:19.240 fighters. So he said to his commander, hey, what if we didn't bring the bombs? These guys are short

00:17:23.880 of gas, but they can't let us bomb them without shooting back. But if we stop bombing them, 0.97

00:17:29.320 maybe they'll let the weather plane go by without attacking us. And his commander said,

00:17:33.920 no, that's never going to work, but you want to try it, fine. And they did. And after about two

00:17:38.740 weeks, it worked. And the Japanese stopped trying to come up and shoot him down when a lone B-29 0.93

00:17:43.940 went over Japan. And he felt great about that. And he thought it was a tremendously successful 0.97

00:17:49.860 negotiation he had with the Japanese. But then when the Enola Gay goes over Hiroshima, 0.91

00:17:56.360 they think it's the weather plane and they don't even pull the air raid siren. So the kids,

00:18:01.920 the school kids are out on the playground when it happens. And, you know, he thought he had been

00:18:07.200 complicit in this incredible evil that he didn't even intend. And that's why he devoted his life

00:18:14.140 to improving negotiation. He was trying to stop other young guys from getting killed.

00:18:18.340 And the thing is, my father, his parents died when he was really young, but he had a much older brother who was 11 years older than him who basically raised him. And he was in the Eighth Air Force as well. And he also got killed and didn't come back. So I grew up seeing, you know, that wound in my father.

00:18:37.560 And so Fisher's crusade to keep that from happening to other people, you know, was really seductive to me.

00:18:44.160 But that's what Fisher was trying to do.

00:18:46.320 And his basic philosophy was two things.

00:18:48.720 He would say interest-based negotiation.

00:18:50.860 And that's what we were talking about before is figure out what each side wants, you know, not just what they say they want, but why do they want that?

00:19:00.520 And then you can try to reconcile those much more easily than you can reconcile the positions.

00:19:06.120 you know, what their demands are, if you look under the demands and see what's motivating them.

00:19:12.080 But then on the distribution side that we were talking about, he called it principled negotiation,

00:19:17.760 which basically meant we should try to figure out some legal or other standard, something like

00:19:24.400 Kelly's Blue Book, to tell us what we should do rather than threatening each other, that we should

00:19:30.540 look for a source of legitimacy rather than a source of destructive power over the other person.

00:19:36.740 And so that was his fundamental thing. That's kind of what you do. And then later on,

00:19:41.660 you brought in the ideas of Chris Voss, who has this experience as a hostage negotiator.

00:19:46.620 Yeah. So I met Chris because he had a knee operation. And so he was off duty for the FBI

00:19:53.560 for like three months. And he figured he had just been through, he had a great record of success as

00:19:59.360 a hostage negotiator, but he didn't win them all, of course. And he had just come off one that went

00:20:04.100 really badly. And he wanted to, he said, okay, we got to learn more. And he said, I'll go up to

00:20:09.300 Harvard and see if there's anything that they have that we can steal and make part of our practice.

00:20:14.840 And I think he got some good stuff, but dude, we got so much more out of him. Because at that point,

00:20:20.360 like law enforcement negotiation and university negotiation teaching weren't really in contact

00:20:26.820 with each other. And he was the guy who bridged that gap and started the ideas flowing back and

00:20:32.260 forth, which, you know, even if he had never done anything else in his career, that would have been

00:20:36.860 a tremendous achievement. But then Chris came and taught a course at Harvard with me. And then he

00:20:46.400 invited me to come with him when he retired from the FBI to teach negotiation to friendly governments

00:20:52.980 in the Persian Gulf. And man, that was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And I learned so

00:20:59.460 much from them. But even more, the thing that struck me was we tried really hard to get people

00:21:05.620 to be better at things like, you know, listening instead of talking. But it's very hard to change

00:21:10.460 people's behavior on that. And we would find that, you know, if you really drill it into people,

00:21:14.920 you can get them to change for about a week and then they start to drift back to what they've

00:21:18.800 been doing before. But Chris and his guys got massive behavioral change much faster than I

00:21:25.800 ever thought was possible. And I was trying to figure out, well, what is it that they're doing

00:21:30.420 that's so much better? And I think it was two things. One, it was they talked about ideas much

00:21:35.920 less and just did a lot more practice, you know, like very much more brass tacks. Okay, what do

00:21:41.120 you say? Not what's the theory behind it? You know, so some people learn from top down from

00:21:47.840 what are the big theories and then work on how do you implement that. Other people, and I think

00:21:52.680 there's probably a lot more people like this who go up from the specifics. And if they ever need

00:21:57.980 to get to theory, maybe they'll get to it. But the important thing is the specifics of how you do it.

00:22:03.500 So they would break down negotiation skills instead of saying, hey, you know, be really

00:22:07.960 empathetic listening to them. They would say stuff like, all right, you should make a minimal

00:22:12.400 encourager about, you know, 10 times a minute. And a minimal encourager is like the little noise you

00:22:17.520 make when somebody's talking like uh-huh uh-huh wow whoa you know so they were at a much greater

00:22:23.560 level of specificity and then they just did drill again and again and again and it was like it is

00:22:31.040 the same as when i was coaching little league you know you don't explain the theory of baseball you

00:22:35.620 just have the kid you know first hit it off a tee then you pitch it to him slow underhand you know

00:22:41.980 and at each step, you got to go like, okay, keep your back elbow up. Okay, no, like turn more.

00:22:47.860 And that was the way they taught negotiation. And I thought it was hugely effective. But,

00:22:53.760 you know, hostage negotiation is a very specific kind of negotiation. There are a lot of parts of

00:23:00.340 negotiation that really don't come up there. Like, for example, using standards of legitimacy,

00:23:06.580 that's not as much a thing there or you know inventing creative options usually not much of

00:23:12.980 a thing what you're mostly focusing on is information gathering and relationship building

00:23:19.100 and they got incredibly brilliant at that stuff but then i thought well all the other stuff that's

00:23:24.900 in fisher's work we need to do the same kind of breakdown that they did and turn it into little

00:23:31.360 very specific you know things that people can drill again and again all right so yeah you're

00:23:37.420 combining the the theory of fisher for business negotiation life negotiation with the brass tack

00:23:44.260 tactics of chris voss the tactics and also the uh i guess you'd say pedagogy but how do you teach

00:23:51.360 it yeah yeah i think before our conversation we were talking about mark ripeto yeah you got into

00:23:56.040 barbell training and we were talking about how what ripeto is really good at is breaking down

00:24:00.860 relatively complex movements into step-by-step things where like anyone can go to a seminar

00:24:07.020 or watch a video of rip a toe teaching and like you'll be deadlifting perfectly after that exactly

00:24:12.360 or another great example of it is the series you had on barbecuing you know of like well how do i

00:24:18.320 make a charcoal fire well how do i make you know three heat zones on my grill well what do i do

00:24:23.180 differently for a steak or a hamburger that's it's the exact same kind of thing applied to

00:24:27.780 negotiation. Yeah. I remember when we did that, I did that negotiation class in law school and

00:24:31.940 we read getting to yes. And then they're like, all right, go do a mock negotiation. I had no

00:24:36.600 clue what I was doing. They didn't give you any specific things to say or to do or how to carry

00:24:41.320 it out. So you're trying to do this with your book. All right. So let's talk about some of

00:24:45.140 these skills. So you and your coauthor break down negotiation to a discrete set of skills

00:24:49.700 and you give people exercises that they can do in their day-to-day lives so they can practice

00:24:54.360 these skills. The first skill is called give them a sandwich. What's this skill all about?

00:24:59.960 Well, that title is ripped off directly from Chris and his FBI people. So in hostage negotiation,

00:25:06.980 you know, there's different kinds of things. There is, well, what if you get captured by,

00:25:10.100 you know, a gang in Mexico versus get captured by Al-Qaeda? One of the ones they talk about is

00:25:15.640 an unplanned barricade, which is, let's say you go in to rob a bank and you're not planning to

00:25:21.560 take any hostages. You just want to wave a gun around and get money. But the cops show up before

00:25:25.760 you get away. And so, you know, you point your gun at the customers and the tellers and you say,

00:25:31.460 all right, here's what I want to the police. And that kind of situation used to be about 50-50,

00:25:38.240 is someone going to get shot today or not? You know, because what they would do is they say,

00:25:42.020 all right, you got 10 minutes to surrender and then we're coming in. And what they do now is

00:25:47.060 they surround the bank and let you see them surrounding it so you know you can't get away

00:25:51.860 and they throw in a phone to talk to you and they just start asking you questions like hey are you

00:25:57.400 okay like do you need any medical help okay what about the other people in there are they okay

00:26:02.080 and they'll just keep talking to you at forever because they you know can do a shift change if

00:26:08.300 they get tired and you can't so they're just tiring you out but then what they're really

00:26:12.280 waiting for is for you to get hungry because you didn't have a plan to do this and then

00:26:16.940 when you get hungry and you say, Hey, I want some food. Oh, that's when they're perfectly happy.

00:26:21.440 And they'll talk to you for like a half hour about, well, what's your favorite kind of sandwich do

00:26:25.680 you want? Like, okay, we're going to go get that. And then they give it to you. And they, then they

00:26:30.920 say, Hey, you know, the Lieutenant here is really mad at me because I gave you that sandwich, but I

00:26:35.420 think you're a good guy. So I wanted to help you out. Could you help me out and let one of those

00:26:40.080 people go? And almost always they do. And then you give them some water and you get somebody else

00:26:45.140 out. And you just keep doing nice little things for them and asking for something in return.

00:26:51.020 And Bob Cialdini, he was at University of Arizona, had a wonderful book that I recommend to all your

00:26:56.280 listeners called Influence. And he talks about reciprocity in there. And, you know, you see this

00:27:01.420 happening in car dealerships when they give you a cup of coffee, you know, when a charity sends you

00:27:07.100 mailing labels or something like that. They want to give you a little thing that's really cheap for

00:27:11.840 them to give. And that triggers a reflex in you of, oh, I owe them and now I have to give them

00:27:18.840 something back. But people are really, really terrible about measuring how much they got and

00:27:24.480 how much they give back. It's what they call accounting insensitivity in the economics

00:27:29.280 literature. And so you give somebody a tiny little thing and very often they'll give you back

00:27:35.380 much, much more. But even more importantly, they start thinking of you as a friend and an ally.

00:27:41.680 So yeah, it's all about reciprocity,

00:27:43.320 building reciprocity.

00:27:44.660 Yeah, so for example, like an exercise

00:27:46.780 I would recommend to your listeners is,

00:27:49.300 let's say you're in college

00:27:51.220 and you're gonna go get a cup of coffee before class.

00:27:53.840 Don't get a cup of coffee, get two cups of coffee

00:27:56.100 and give one to somebody else.

00:27:58.800 Anytime you have the chance to do a little favor

00:28:01.740 for somebody, always do it.

00:28:03.840 And then you're gonna start getting things back

00:28:07.300 from those people without even asking for it.

00:28:09.920 Like, so when one student we had was a international student from Japan and she was making some traditional Japanese soup.

00:28:17.320 And so she made an extra big batch and she brought some to the guys who lived across the hall from her in the dorm.

00:28:22.780 And about a week later, there was a huge snowstorm in Boston and she goes down to shovel her car out and it had already been shoveled out.

00:28:30.300 And there's a note on her windshield from the guys across the hall going, oh, man, that soup was great.

00:28:34.380 Thank you so much.

00:28:35.580 So what I'd recommend to people is experiment with that.

00:28:38.320 Start doing little favors for people.

00:28:39.920 And the reason a sandwich is a great metaphor is because, all right, if I gave him a sandwich and I don't get anything back, that's fine.

00:28:47.120 You know, don't give him half off on the price of a house and hope to get something back.

00:28:51.520 Give them something that you don't care about if you never get anything back for it.

00:28:56.780 And then just see what happens.

00:28:58.440 And you'll really be shocked, I think, at how much people respond to that little gesture.

00:29:05.860 Okay, so give people a sandwich.

00:29:07.300 And you can have genuine good intentions behind this.

00:29:09.940 Maybe you were thinking it'll develop reciprocity, but you also just want to be nice.

00:29:15.300 You generally want to connect with someone without caring if you get anything back.

00:29:19.140 But how do you respond when someone is giving you something to you and it does feel manipulative

00:29:26.760 and gross?

00:29:27.960 Because I get this a lot.

00:29:29.400 I have these PR people reach out to me via email and they'll say, oh, hey, Brett, I love

00:29:34.380 your podcast.

00:29:35.380 I give you a five-star review on Spotify.

00:29:37.300 and here's a client that I'd like to have on your podcast.

00:29:41.080 And I'm like, eh, I don't like that.

00:29:43.400 Well, okay, so you are resistant

00:29:45.540 to accounting insensitivity, that's great.

00:29:48.040 If you're on the receiving end

00:29:49.540 of somebody else's making this effort,

00:29:53.380 one thing to do is to just very consciously say,

00:29:57.080 okay, what did they give me?

00:29:58.460 What did that cost them?

00:29:59.500 What do I owe them as a response?

00:30:02.320 That's one step.

00:30:03.500 And another is, yeah, you can give them something else

00:30:06.180 that you don't care about.

00:30:07.300 oh yeah, great. I'll give you a five-star review on Spotify. What do you want me to review?

00:30:12.240 But the other thing is, what if you do want a better relationship with this person? That's a

00:30:17.300 great opportunity for you to say, oh, that was really nice. Okay, now I'm going to do something

00:30:21.480 nice for you. And now there's something else I want from you. So, you know, step one is categorize

00:30:27.200 this person. Do I want a relationship with them? Well, how much did they give me? What do I actually

00:30:32.840 owe them do i want to give them the thing they asked for or something else to be polite or you 0.98

00:30:39.260 know if i think this person is a jerk and they're just trying to manipulate me like you don't have 0.97

00:30:43.140 to give them anything yeah but that reflex that you have of noticing what they're doing and then 0.98

00:30:49.880 saying to yourself well what do i want to do about this that's like 90 of the battle i usually just

00:30:55.980 ignore those emails because i don't even know that they're actually giving me a five-star review

00:30:58.860 I can't even verify they can just say that.

00:31:00.920 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:02.280 I think that's exactly right, especially for things, you know, all the time I get,

00:31:07.180 hey, I love your work and I want to be, you know, your research assistant.

00:31:11.440 I get like dozens of these a day from people in India.

00:31:14.800 And they're just like sending it out to lists of every academic in America.

00:31:19.320 Like, you know, I wish you well, kid, but, you know, I don't owe you anything.

00:31:24.260 Yeah.

00:31:24.720 But I'm sure if someone reached out to you with something like, you know,

00:31:27.160 hey, here's a memo I've created for you that I think might be useful. You can do whatever you

00:31:31.640 want with it. And they didn't ask for anything in return when they reached out. And instead,

00:31:36.600 we're just like, yeah, I thought of you. Here's something you might like. You probably think,

00:31:41.140 oh, this is actually really useful. Yeah. And now you like that person.

00:31:44.740 So that's what we're recommending to your listeners.

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00:36:14.040 And now back to the show. All right. So the reciprocity helps you build that relationship

00:36:18.360 of trust. So you can have this conversation to figure out what everyone wants. Another

00:36:23.020 reciprocity tactic is using someone's name during a negotiation. Yeah. Why does this work? And how

00:36:31.420 do you, here's the thing, how do you do this in a way so it doesn't feel gross? Because I'm sure

00:36:34.540 everyone's encountered a salesperson and every like five words, it's Brett. Well, what do you

00:36:41.340 think, Brett? Brett? And I'm like, oh, geez, this is gross. You're, no. You're really laying on

00:36:45.260 thick here, man. Yeah. So, so first on the technique, which is people, if you're trying

00:36:51.560 to get someone's attention, the thing that their brain is most wired to pay attention to is their

00:36:58.440 own name. To the extent that you can get people who are, you know, in a coma or in a vegetative

00:37:04.560 state. And if you say their name, you know, and you're measuring brain activity, there's a little

00:37:10.800 spike in brain activity. That's like the last thing your brain loses because that's the first

00:37:17.220 word you learn is, you know, your mother whispering your own name to you. And people will tend to

00:37:23.780 think that if you know their name and you use their name, that you must be friends. Now, about

00:37:31.040 overdoing it, a lot of these things are about skill level. One of the skills that the hostage

00:37:38.440 negotiators use in listening is what they call mirroring, where you'll repeat a word or two

00:37:47.240 that somebody uses. And then they'll usually talk more about whatever that was. And I had had people

00:37:54.420 use that technique on me in a way that was really fake and annoying. So I was talking to Chris,

00:38:00.360 the FBI guy, when we were teaching together and I was like, dude, some of your techniques,

00:38:04.000 like, you know, minimal encouragers, those are fantastic. But this mirroring thing,

00:38:07.480 it's really fake and it's really annoying because it's really annoying. I was like, yeah,

00:38:11.400 it totally cheeses me off because like this guy's trying to manipulate me and I'm a negotiation

00:38:15.220 expert. He goes, you're an expert. And I was like, I've been doing this for like 20 years. And you

00:38:20.500 know, he did it like four or five times in a row before I realized, and I was so pissed off,

00:38:25.500 but he's practiced it a lot and he's really good at it. And there's a big difference between

00:38:32.080 someone who's learned the idea of a technique and is doing a terrible job at it, which makes it come

00:38:38.760 across as fake and annoying versus somebody who's you know really got it dialed in and you know

00:38:45.880 chris practices incessantly all the time i mean one time i went to a diner with him for breakfast

00:38:51.620 and he knew the names of everybody who worked at the place all the waitresses the cashier all the

00:38:58.100 bus boys he knew where their kids went to school and he just does that kind of thing all the time

00:39:03.560 is practice and if you do that where you're just practicing a little bit every day you know it's

00:39:09.060 just like working out each day of practice doesn't make a big difference but if you do it solidly for

00:39:15.180 a year it's going to be a huge transformation all right so use people's name but you have to

00:39:19.940 practice it and you might kind of be awkward at it so i think an everyday practice as you're having

00:39:23.780 conversations with people just every day learn how to drop their name in throughout the conversation

00:39:28.380 And especially I think this is great for young people today because being on screens tends to isolate us from other people. And a lot of people go through life, you know, their only contact with other people is on, you know, social media. But by learning people's names, you learn the name of the person at the counter at the coffee shop you go to, you know, you learn the name of the guy who sweeps up in your office.

00:39:50.380 office, now you're turning your own environment into an environment of human connection instead

00:39:56.860 of isolation, you know, and anonymity. And that's, that's like a huge help for your mental health.

00:40:03.580 All right. The next skill you talk about is managing your emotions during negotiation.

00:40:08.540 And I think it's a big one because like, you know, whenever I have to negotiate,

00:40:11.720 I can start feeling the cortisol, the cortisol dump. What can we do to get a handle on our

00:40:16.720 emotions because as you said our brain recognizes this as a conflict a fight yeah well your brain

00:40:21.800 recognizes a conflict but your brain doesn't realize it's not the stone age anymore and this

00:40:26.660 is very unlikely to turn into a violent conflict right so your brain still thinks i you know i

00:40:32.100 might have to kill this guy so what do you do to manage that okay so a couple things one is you

00:40:37.940 know if you know this is going to be an emotional thing you can try you know you can imagine it 0.90

00:40:42.500 ahead of time and imagine how scary it's going to be and imagine your own emotional reaction

00:40:47.480 and kind of have your freak out in advance. You know, anything gets easier the more times you do

00:40:53.420 it. But the interesting thing is just visualizing it and walking through it mentally counts as one

00:40:59.240 of those times you do it. And so there's some benefit there. A technique that I really love,

00:41:04.460 which again, I learned from Chris, is what they call emotion labels. And this is a thing that

00:41:10.080 they used in hostage negotiation, if the guy you're talking to is freaking out and you think

00:41:14.700 he might start getting violent, you say, wow, it seems like this is really upsetting to you.

00:41:21.080 And you got to be cautious about saying it seems like, because if you say to the person,

00:41:25.060 oh, I see right through you and I know exactly what's going on in your mind,

00:41:28.740 that's going to piss them off even more. So you want to say, it seems like this is making you mad.

00:41:34.000 And the interesting thing is, like we were talking about when you get that cortisol dump,

00:41:38.180 the oxygen and glucose you know the blood flow leaves not all of it but some of it goes out of 0.96

00:41:46.300 your brain and into your muscles and that makes you measurably stupider if we make you angry and 0.98

00:41:52.540 have you take an iq test you'll score about 20 points lower so what you want to do is to get 0.98

00:41:58.560 the prefrontal cortex the thinking part of your brain that's right behind your eyes and your

00:42:03.220 forehead back in the game. So you wish you had like jumper cables hooked up to that. If you

00:42:08.540 could get them thinking again, instead of feeling upset, then they'll be able to be more rational.

00:42:14.380 And the way you do that, okay, what we know is that these emotion labels have a huge calming

00:42:19.820 effect on people. There are different theories about why that works so well. But one theory

00:42:25.120 is that there's a thing in the back of your prefrontal cortex, the superior frontal gyrus.

00:42:31.360 And that's the part of your brain, the part of your thinking brain that looks at and observes your own emotional state, but it's in the thinking brain.

00:42:42.200 So if you activate that, you will trigger more activity in their rational, non-emotional brain.

00:42:50.480 But the reason it's hard to re-trigger the non-emotional brain is because when you're angry or afraid, you tend to reject any stimulus that's not connected to the threat or the target of your anger.

00:43:04.860 And the reason that's such a cute spot to go after is because it's connected to the emotion, but it triggers their rational brain into a higher level of activity.

00:43:16.080 So, you know, I listened to this one conversation where there's this guy, he was a Marine sergeant who disappeared out of Basra in, I think, 2004, you know, during the height of the Iraq war.

00:43:29.140 And he shows up a week later, nobody knows how he got there, at his ex-wife's house in Hawaii.

00:43:34.860 And he's got a gun and the cops show up and he says, well, you know, I found out she was

00:43:39.460 cheating on me. 1.00

00:43:40.140 So now I have to kill her. 1.00

00:43:41.580 And, you know, of course, we don't like that at all. 1.00

00:43:43.660 And there was a hostage negotiator there.

00:43:45.380 And she says, wow, so it sounds like you've been a good and loyal husband and she hasn't

00:43:51.620 acted the same way.

00:43:53.060 And that's not OK.

00:43:54.600 And you don't want to live that way anymore.

00:43:56.420 And that's why you're so mad.

00:43:58.560 And the guy goes, yeah, and never threatened her again.

00:44:01.440 because she heard the emotion that he, you know,

00:44:05.880 the reason why people do crazy stuff often

00:44:07.840 is because they don't know how to express

00:44:09.520 what they're feeling with words.

00:44:11.140 And if you express it for them

00:44:12.680 and tell them that you've heard their emotion,

00:44:14.880 that typically makes them much calmer.

00:44:18.660 But the thing is you can do that to yourself as well.

00:44:21.180 If you were feeling, like this morning, you know,

00:44:24.900 I was like, I got this podcast with Brett today.

00:44:28.280 I was a little bit nervous about it.

00:44:29.740 You know, I was like, oh, Brett's so cool.

00:44:31.180 I've been watching him for so long.

00:44:32.840 So I'm nervous.

00:44:33.720 But I just said to myself, wow, it seems like I'm feeling pretty nervous about this.

00:44:39.080 In fact, actually, I'm quite nervous about this.

00:44:41.940 And just by saying that, I felt much less nervous.

00:44:45.280 Like the nervous part of my brain felt heard and was like, okay, now I can relax.

00:44:50.460 All right.

00:44:50.600 So you named the emotion.

00:44:52.260 That's super easy.

00:44:53.380 And it takes the power away from you.

00:44:54.760 You can do this for yourself.

00:44:55.920 And then you can do this with other people who might not have really a good ability to

00:44:59.500 express their emotions.

00:45:00.300 It just brings your thinking brain back on.

00:45:02.340 I love that.

00:45:03.220 All right, let's talk about another skill.

00:45:05.660 And it's a skill that you think people would know how to do, but I think a lot of people

00:45:10.180 don't.

00:45:10.460 It's like actually figuring out what everyone wants in a negotiation or even what you want.

00:45:16.680 A lot of people, even when they go into negotiations, they don't actually really know what they

00:45:19.480 want.

00:45:20.460 Why don't we typically know what we want in a negotiation, even though we're there to

00:45:25.820 negotiate?

00:45:26.680 You know, that's interesting.

00:45:27.460 And I think it's partly we're talking about emotion before people mostly make their decisions

00:45:34.060 through emotion and then they, with their rational brain, explain the reasons for it.

00:45:40.320 But, you know, there are people who are cut off from their emotions because they get a

00:45:44.460 brain injury.

00:45:44.980 Like there was one famous case of a guy who got a nail gun, you know, shot into his head.

00:45:49.320 And what it did is separated his rational brain from his emotions.

00:45:53.740 And you might think, well, okay, then that guy would be a fantastic decision maker because

00:45:58.080 he's never emotional.

00:45:59.160 Emotions never get in his way.

00:46:00.960 But you know what those guys do?

00:46:02.340 They sit in a chair and don't do anything all day because without emotions, they don't

00:46:05.860 want anything.

00:46:07.560 And I think a lot of times you say, okay, I need to have this negotiation.

00:46:11.180 And so I should ask for this or ask for that.

00:46:13.860 But they haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about what they want and why.

00:46:17.640 And what are the emotional drivers of what they want?

00:46:20.660 I mean, I'm just thinking about your snowshoe story when you got these antique snowshoes.

00:46:26.100 Well, I mean, it's a negotiation and I'm at an antique store.

00:46:30.060 So what I should be focusing on is getting a lower price.

00:46:33.780 I mean, how much are you really going to get the price lower?

00:46:37.060 I don't know, 10 bucks or something?

00:46:38.840 Mostly what that would do.

00:46:39.940 It's not like you're ever going to miss that money, but you would feel like you won.

00:46:43.540 You had done a good job.

00:46:44.760 So a lot of what people are trying to do in negotiation is just feel like they won.

00:46:48.800 but if you know that about other people and about yourself you can let them think that they won or

00:46:55.340 you can figure out a way in which this is a win for you and then you're happy you know maybe a

00:47:00.600 bigger thing would be hey you know what i i think these antique snowshoes are great why do i think

00:47:05.580 they're so great well they sort of reflect an older time of when people did a lot more strenuous

00:47:10.520 activity what else do you have that's like that maybe he's got an antique set of skis or like

00:47:16.040 something else. Figuring out why you even want them in the first place would allow you to try

00:47:21.800 to get more of whatever that is. And that might be a much bigger thing than the 5% discount you

00:47:29.600 might be able to get. Okay. So let's say you get a beat on what you actually want. How do you figure

00:47:35.660 out what the other person wants? Because I think oftentimes people are reluctant to share what they

00:47:39.760 really want because they think it gives them leverage. I don't actually want to say what I

00:47:44.160 actually want, because then I can use that somehow. Yeah. There's a guy, Jim Camp, who wrote

00:47:50.620 a very interesting book. It's called Start With No, and it's kind of an anti-getting-to-yes polemic.

00:47:56.080 There's a lot of good, smart things in there, but there's also some things I disagree with

00:48:00.300 pretty strongly. And one of them is you should always find out what the other person wants and

00:48:04.740 never tell them what you yourself want because knowledge is power and you want as much power

00:48:09.800 as possible. And you want to be the one who has the power. And so look, the easiest way to find

00:48:15.000 out what somebody wants is to ask them. But you're right. A lot of people are going to resist telling

00:48:19.300 you because they, you know, have some version of the camp theory that if I tell you what I want,

00:48:24.460 then you'll be able to take advantage of me. One way to go at that is just to guess what they want.

00:48:30.700 Like in advance, the antique store guy who's selling you the snowshoes, what does he care

00:48:35.680 about. Well, he doesn't want to set a bad precedent. He doesn't want everybody coming in here and

00:48:40.600 demand, you know, yes, he wants the extra five bucks, but he really doesn't. Maybe he finds

00:48:46.640 negotiation very unpleasant and difficult. Maybe that's the reason why he doesn't want to talk

00:48:51.600 about price. Or maybe he's afraid that you're going to tell other people that like he's a soft

00:48:56.660 touch and they can come in and get a discount off him too. It's not that hard to guess what's

00:49:03.320 motivating the other person if you just sat down to do it. A great example of this, and this is in

00:49:08.360 the book, I had a teaching assistant working for me one time and she's doing an exercise, you know,

00:49:14.560 there's a law school negotiation class. We got one of these, you know, simulated cases and what

00:49:21.600 they were doing was sitting down and prepping for the negotiation. And part of that was guessing

00:49:26.140 what's motivating the other side. And one of the students said, look, this is totally fake because

00:49:30.680 the only way you could guess, this is a fake case. And so like, we're pretending that you can guess

00:49:35.560 what the other side wants, but in real life, you can't guess what the other side wants. That's

00:49:38.880 ridiculous. And she goes, all right, let's test that. And she had really bright red hair that was 0.99

00:49:45.740 like all the way down her back. And she says, let's see how well you can guess. I've been thinking

00:49:50.620 about getting a pixie cut and cutting all this hair off. You go through what are my reasons I

00:49:56.300 want to do it and that I don't want to do it. And I'll tell you how close you get. And they were

00:50:01.300 like 90 percent accurate. You can do this with a friend of yours. Actually, this is a great thing

00:50:06.800 to do either on a first date or, you know, with your wife on a long car trip. Tell me about a

00:50:12.120 decision that you have to make that's hard. And I'll see if I can guess what are the reasons you

00:50:17.460 want to and the reasons you don't want to. And I think most of your listeners are going to be

00:50:23.000 surprised at how accurate the guesses are. And very often, if the guess isn't something you were

00:50:29.700 thinking, it's something that you go, oh, well, actually, that's a good point. I probably should

00:50:34.120 be thinking about that. Yeah. Okay. So you can guess. This is easy to figure out. You know,

00:50:38.360 as you were talking about my experience with the snowshoes, I wanted the snowshoes. But what I

00:50:43.800 really wanted was just like, I wanted to feel like I got a really good deal. And the antique

00:50:48.820 seller, you could have guessed that and use that to his advantage. You could have been like,

00:50:51.720 yeah, this guy just wants to feel like he got a great deal and say, well, I can't give you the

00:50:57.120 discount on the price of the snowshoes, but I can throw in, you know, this little thing that

00:51:01.120 doesn't mean much to me, you know, and I'd walk away thinking, oh man, I got a great deal. I only

00:51:06.080 got these snowshoes. I got this cool magazine. But now you go back to your wife and you're like,

00:51:09.360 look who just conquered. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I just wanted the deal. Okay. So yeah, figure out

00:51:14.180 what people want. And I think oftentimes when people are negotiating, they just want to feel

00:51:19.760 like they got the upper hand somehow. Yeah. But once you have a guess of what they want,

00:51:25.400 you can say, I could imagine that if I was in your shoes, I would want this. And the number

00:51:31.020 of people who are willing to volunteer the information is a lot lower than the number

00:51:34.960 of people who will say, oh, you know what? You're exactly right. Because like, it seems to take away

00:51:39.780 their desire. Like, well, first of all, they're like, oh, the guy already guessed. So what's the

00:51:43.520 point hiding it? But the other thing is, if you say, I was thinking about what would make you

00:51:48.840 happy. And this is my guess. The first reaction most people have is, oh, what a nice guy. He's

00:51:54.060 thinking about what would make me happy. Now, other people are thinking, oh, you're thinking

00:51:59.440 about what I want so you can manipulate me. And that shows that you're actually a sneaky enemy. 0.61

00:52:04.800 But if they don't like you and don't trust you, it's very seductive to tell you what an idiot you 1.00

00:52:10.400 are and why you're wrong. Oh, you think I want that? You fool. That's not what I want at all. 1.00

00:52:14.700 I actually want this. And then you're like, oh, okay, now I know what he wants.

00:52:18.540 All right.

00:52:18.740 So heads you win, tells you win.

00:52:21.120 Yeah.

00:52:21.760 Now, you know, could somebody really hardcore resist

00:52:24.960 and never tell you no matter what you do?

00:52:26.820 Sure.

00:52:27.320 There's still a free person they can do what you want.

00:52:29.300 But by asking, guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly,

00:52:35.080 you get that information out of the great majority of people.

00:52:38.580 All right.

00:52:39.120 So let's say you've built this relationship of trust.

00:52:41.680 We figured out like what people want or have an idea of what people want, what I want.

00:52:45.160 let's talk about the part of the negotiation process that people get hung up on it's that

00:52:49.220 distributive negotiation this is like when you're trying to hash out how much money someone gives

00:52:53.840 you or what the workload is during the job or how much the price of a you know like a landscape job

00:52:59.920 is going to be we talk about why this is not comfortable because it reminds us of being

00:53:05.080 cavemen and fighting over resources yeah what can people do to make distributive negotiation

00:53:11.360 where you're talking hard numbers

00:53:12.500 about things less uncomfortable?

00:53:14.460 I mean, maybe we can use the example

00:53:15.680 of asking for a starting salary or raise.

00:53:18.440 Sure.

00:53:18.920 I think the most important thing you could do

00:53:21.420 is do some research about the market

00:53:24.100 so you'll be well-informed about that.

00:53:26.440 Like, let's say you're starting for your first job

00:53:28.380 at a law firm,

00:53:29.940 because that's an industry

00:53:31.340 we both at least know a little bit about.

00:53:33.600 What you want to do is find out

00:53:34.960 what are other first-year associates

00:53:36.780 getting paid at other law firms in this city.

00:53:39.500 And if you know that,

00:53:40.800 and they offer you something less than that,

00:53:43.160 you say, well, hey, how come you guys are paying less

00:53:45.700 than the competition?

00:53:47.320 I mean, I want to get at least as well-paid here

00:53:49.420 as I'd get paid if I worked somewhere else.

00:53:51.940 So what I would do, what I would advise anybody

00:53:54.380 is research what other people are getting

00:53:57.680 in the same position at other firms.

00:54:00.160 And then the highest number you can find

00:54:03.220 with good research, ask for that.

00:54:05.740 Say, hey, you know, $110,000 is what they're paying

00:54:09.360 at Wachtell.

00:54:10.020 So I'd like that.

00:54:12.100 And very often they will agree with you.

00:54:15.360 You'd be surprised at how often when you just add an explanation, if you just say, I want 0.73

00:54:20.780 110,000, the natural thing they're going to say is like, ah, that's ridiculous.

00:54:24.520 Like I'm going to offer you 85.

00:54:26.340 If you say the guys across the street are paying 110,000, well, they can't say it's

00:54:30.540 ridiculous because now they know that's one of the market standards.

00:54:35.360 And now they have to come up with a reason why it should be different. 0.92

00:54:39.340 and that's a lot of work and that might make them uncomfortable and now all the discomfort of

00:54:45.320 pushing for a different number is on them instead of on you and i think you end up you know most

00:54:51.800 people are lazy and afraid and if you put the burden on them to justify something different

00:54:58.500 than what you're saying a lot of people don't want that burden and they'll agree so this is going

00:55:03.100 back to that roger fisher idea when you're doing distributive negotiation find like an objective

00:55:08.060 thing you can use to base the number off of. Exactly. And it's giving yourself an ally in

00:55:15.400 the sense that, okay, so the first time my wife and I bought a condo is in Cambridge. And one of

00:55:23.800 the things she liked about it was there was like a jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom. Okay, great.

00:55:28.640 We get the house inspection done and the inspector says, hey, here's a problem. It's a 60 gallon tub

00:55:34.660 and you've got a 25-gallon hot water heater in the basement.

00:55:38.440 Like, you're going to be able to fill it up not even halfway.

00:55:41.340 So you need to get a bigger hot water heater.

00:55:43.620 I call up the seller.

00:55:44.780 Hey, you know, we need to get a better hot water heater.

00:55:48.000 And he says, listen, I've been upgrading houses for 20 years.

00:55:52.860 I've been working in this business of fixing up properties and flipping them.

00:55:57.040 And that hot water heater is plenty for that tub.

00:56:00.840 You know, you've never owned anything before.

00:56:03.240 So guess what, kid?

00:56:04.040 you don't tell me what size hot water heater it needs.

00:56:07.040 And, you know, this guy's like 30 years older than me

00:56:09.320 and is much more experienced in this line of work.

00:56:12.280 I'm never going to win a pissing match with him.

00:56:14.160 So I said, does the tub manufacturer have a recommendation

00:56:18.840 on the size of hot water heater?

00:56:20.860 And the guy said, well, okay,

00:56:22.020 I'll have a new hot water heater in there on Monday.

00:56:24.660 Because he's never going to back down to me,

00:56:27.820 but he doesn't want to say that he's a bigger expert on the tub

00:56:31.700 than the people who made the tub.

00:56:32.920 So you're looking for someone else who's on your side, you know, who's like your gang

00:56:38.320 backing you up and, you know, market standards give you that.

00:56:42.480 Yeah.

00:56:42.700 And so, uh, if you're again, like looking for a landscape number, like you have to do

00:56:48.320 some research, figure out what is the market in Tulsa for the landscape job that I'm looking

00:56:52.520 for.

00:56:52.820 And then you can use that.

00:56:54.100 Yeah.

00:56:54.700 Or get, get a couple of bids from a couple of different places.

00:56:57.660 exactly right. Because then it's not you saying, oh, I'm going to push your number down and you

00:57:04.400 don't feel like a jerk. It's, oh, well, what's everybody else doing? Let's just do what everybody 0.99

00:57:09.380 else is doing. And that's a lot harder to fight against. Is there anything to the idea that you

00:57:14.080 should never make the first offer? That's typical, like kind of boilerplate negotiation advice. Never

00:57:18.400 make the first offer. That's true some of the time. I think it really depends. And I think what

00:57:24.760 it depends on is how much do you know? Are you familiar with anchoring, the anchoring effect?

00:57:30.440 Yeah. But you explained it for our listeners who aren't.

00:57:32.900 Yeah. So Kahneman and Tversky got the Nobel prize for this or Kahneman did because Tversky was dead

00:57:37.560 and you can't get it when you're dead. They did a series of experiments where they would do stuff

00:57:41.840 like say, they'd say, okay, to a, you know, a classroom of psychology students, how many

00:57:48.160 countries do you think there are in Africa? And by the way, we're in room number 13 and the average

00:57:53.700 guess is 17. Or you say, how many countries are there in Africa? By the way, we're in room 52.

00:57:59.680 And the average guess is 47. It's a random number that shouldn't influence anything. But their

00:58:05.540 analysis was when they're trying to figure out a number, people start somewhere. And then they ask

00:58:10.900 if it should be higher or lower than that. But they typically don't move very far from wherever

00:58:16.780 they started. And so if you supply a starting point, you often have a huge amount of influence

00:58:22.320 in that. The problem is knowing what the starting point you should start at is. I had one student

00:58:28.460 who had been a public school teacher, and this is like 1990s first dot-com bubble. And he got an

00:58:36.320 offer from a distance learning firm to work there. And he says, all right. He goes in there and says,

00:58:41.740 ha, your biggest competitor has made me an offer for $100,000, and you're going to have to match

00:58:47.540 that, which he was completely making up. And they just looked at him like, we were going to say

00:58:53.460 175, but if you want 100, okay. And wait, who made you an offer of 100? That's very interesting

00:58:58.580 information. If you don't know what the market is, you're going to say something stupid, or there's 0.99

00:59:04.100 a very high risk of you saying something stupid. So if you haven't done that research, if you 1.00

00:59:08.820 haven't done your blue book, if it's a car, or if you haven't, you know, gone on glass door for a

00:59:13.700 starting job, don't make the first offer. You know, let's say you're selling rugs in Istanbul

00:59:18.660 and an American tourist walks in. Don't make the first offer because you're hoping that American

00:59:23.120 tourist says something really, really stupid. But if you know what you're talking about, 1.00

00:59:28.120 and especially if they also know what they're talking about, then going first gives you that

00:59:33.860 anchoring benefit. And so I'd say if you're smart and you've done your research, it's better to go

00:59:39.100 first. And what this research also does is another skill you talk about that you need to develop is

00:59:45.060 developing alternatives. So, you know, if you're getting job offers from multiple places, you have

00:59:51.340 alternatives. So if, you know, there's one place you really want to work because it's in the city

00:59:55.480 you want to work in, you like the hours, but then you see, like, you're not really happy with the

01:00:00.140 pay. You can tell them, well, hey, look, X firm is offering you this much money. Can you meet that?

01:00:07.600 Yeah, exactly.

01:00:08.860 Now, there are some circumstances that that isn't a great technique to use.

01:00:13.820 You know, if you say you're talking to your wife about where you're going to go on vacation,

01:00:17.500 you know, she doesn't want to go to the same place.

01:00:19.020 Like, well, you know, there's a lot of girls who would like to go with me, you know.

01:00:24.060 But if it's an arm's length business transaction, it's totally legitimate to say,

01:00:28.920 I mean, it's one thing to say, well, these other companies are paying this.

01:00:33.440 Well, why don't you go get a job with them?

01:00:35.020 Actually, I do have an offer with them.

01:00:36.880 And that way you'll always make a good decision

01:00:38.880 if you know your alternatives

01:00:39.960 in the sense that you get something better

01:00:42.620 than your alternative or you don't take it.

01:00:44.880 But it's not just that.

01:00:46.780 Knowing what your alternative is

01:00:48.380 has an influence on them.

01:00:51.100 And I sometimes struggle with explaining how this is.

01:00:54.540 Even if I never talk about my alternative,

01:00:57.160 if I have a good one,

01:00:58.340 it seems like they're a lot nicer to me.

01:01:01.720 And I don't know if it makes you feel more confident

01:01:04.000 or like somehow they smell it on you

01:01:06.380 that you're fine either way.

01:01:08.560 And that seems to make them want to deal with you more.

01:01:12.860 Related to this idea of you're fine either way,

01:01:16.140 one of those alternatives could just be no.

01:01:18.940 Yeah.

01:01:19.280 And I think what's funny about negotiation,

01:01:20.980 I think it's because of getting to yes.

01:01:22.900 People have this idea that if you don't come to an agreement,

01:01:27.200 you know, a deal, a negotiation failed.

01:01:29.700 But really, a no can be a kind of success

01:01:32.580 because, I mean, you didn't lose anything to try.

01:01:34.700 and now you know something you didn't know before

01:01:37.180 and now you can cross off an option off your list.

01:01:40.680 I think that's really important

01:01:41.960 and makes negotiation a lot lower stress

01:01:44.420 to think about it as, you know, this can only be a win

01:01:48.440 because right now I've got whatever I've already got.

01:01:51.660 And so, you know, staying even with where I am

01:01:54.600 is what happens if this negotiation doesn't work.

01:01:58.660 I like to think of it as like fishing.

01:02:00.200 You're going out to see if you can catch something good,

01:02:02.880 but if you can't catch something good,

01:02:03.900 you still had a nice day on the water. I try to think about negotiation as I'm going to go out

01:02:07.640 and learn more and learn if there's a deal here that makes everybody better off. And if there's

01:02:12.500 not, there's not, that's fine. But for a lot of people saying no makes them uncomfortable

01:02:16.740 because like you're negating and no one wants to be the Debbie Downer, the wet blanket. So any

01:02:22.620 field tested tactics on saying no more effectively so you don't feel uncomfortable and awkward?

01:02:29.700 Yeah, I think a lot of it is you want to be nice to people.

01:02:33.940 And so finding a way of being nice that isn't agreeing to something that isn't good for you is important.

01:02:41.280 And the more, you know, that's, again, reciprocity and building relationships and learning people's names is all part of that. 0.71

01:02:48.940 Those all make you a nice person and you don't have to prove you're nice by agreeing to a dumb deal.

01:02:54.220 The other thing is your own alternatives are a source of power for you.

01:02:57.920 But if you want to be nice to people, you can be talking about their alternatives.

01:03:01.680 You know, you mentioned my wife earlier.

01:03:03.700 She loves this thing when people call her up to, hey, could you come to our corporate

01:03:07.160 event and give a speech?

01:03:08.500 I would love to.

01:03:09.460 Like, here's my rate.

01:03:10.580 Oh, my God, that's really high.

01:03:11.860 Can we get you lower?

01:03:13.280 She'll say, you know, I have a colleague who's younger than me and really needs more

01:03:17.480 work.

01:03:17.840 And she would do it for a much lower price.

01:03:19.880 And I can put you in touch with her.

01:03:22.040 And that way you're being nice to them.

01:03:23.720 You're showing concern for their interests.

01:03:25.980 but you're also showing that, you know, you're perfectly fine saying no.

01:03:30.860 And then the response might be, well, no, we want you.

01:03:34.100 So then you got them and you're fine.

01:03:36.120 Yeah.

01:03:36.560 If they say, no, we want you, but you have to drop your price.

01:03:38.980 You're like, really?

01:03:40.240 Why do I have to?

01:03:41.120 Yeah.

01:03:42.260 So yeah, it's possible to say no.

01:03:44.060 And if no one's going to die, if you say no, it's going to be fine.

01:03:48.620 And, you know, it's sometimes that instinct of, I don't want to say no.

01:03:52.100 look if there's a kid who's mowing your lawn or in my case the example that comes to mind is we

01:03:58.420 had a nanny working for us and we live in this old farmhouse and there's this outbuilding that

01:04:03.940 used to be an ice house and she had just gotten divorced and she and her daughter had no place

01:04:09.780 to live and we said well you can live in this building we fixed it up and then that way your

01:04:14.420 daughter is in the good school district we could have pushed really hard on salary because we were

01:04:20.260 giving her this other thing that really mattered to her a lot. But I think, you know, if you want

01:04:25.180 to be nice to people who are less fortunate than you, that's totally fine. That's like a good

01:04:30.040 outcome. And it's also smart, especially this person's going to be in your house, taking care

01:04:34.380 of your kids. You want her to feel like she's being really well taken care of and being nicer

01:04:40.840 than your alternative is sometimes a smart play, but you should do it because that's your choice,

01:04:46.600 not because you're afraid of saying no.

01:04:49.440 Yeah.

01:04:49.820 Well, John, this has been a great conversation.

01:04:51.780 Where can people go to learn more

01:04:52.740 about the book and your work?

01:04:54.440 We've got a website, neversettlenegotiate.com

01:04:58.140 and people can go there.

01:05:00.240 No spaces, just one word.

01:05:02.820 And neversettlenegotiate.com slash AOM,

01:05:07.640 we're gonna set up a series of exercises

01:05:10.420 that we'd suggest to your listeners

01:05:12.340 that they can try out for a couple of weeks.

01:05:14.740 We think that'll help them

01:05:15.860 start building their skills and also get to decide if, you know, they want to invest their

01:05:20.480 time and effort in this as their hobby. You know, not everybody really wants to train for a marathon,

01:05:26.660 but if you want to get much better at negotiation, this will give you a little bit of a sample of

01:05:31.840 what that's going to be like. So you're giving people a sandwich there.

01:05:34.920 Dude, I'm giving sandwiches. Giving sandwiches. Giving sandwiches all the time.

01:05:38.180 Well, John, thanks so much, Ty. It's been a pleasure.

01:05:40.340 Brett, it has been a real pleasure, man. Thank you for having me on.

01:05:42.960 my guest is john richardson he's the co-author of the book never settle it's available on amazon.com

01:05:48.460 bookstores everywhere if you go to his website never settled negotiate.com slash aom they got

01:05:53.400 some free guides there just for aom listeners also check out our show notes at aom.is slash

01:05:57.800 negotiate where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

01:06:00.800 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast if you haven't done so already i'd

01:06:12.220 appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on apple podcast or spotify or whatever

01:06:15.960 podcast player you use to listen to the show helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank

01:06:19.920 you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think is something out of

01:06:23.960 it as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay reminding time

01:06:28.220 listen they went podcast but put what you've heard into action

01:06:42.220 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - July 21, 2026

The Secret Skills of Master Negotiators

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