Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing. In his new series, he provides a roadmap toward healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywireplus now and start watching Dr. Jordan Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Chris Voss is an American author, teacher, and hostage negotiator for the FBI. We talk primarily about negotiation and the psychology of listening. We re attempting to sort out and clarify exactly what it means to negotiate successfully, positing that the ultimate goal of a negotiation should be something like the establishment of a productive, long-term, generous, mutual collaboration. And if you can collaborate, then not only might you solve the problem, but you might come up with a better outcome, which is how a relationship grows. Chris shares his story of how he became a hostage negotiator and how he got interested in the field. Dr. Chris talks about why he became interested in hostage negotiation and why he thinks it s important to be a good negotiator and why it s so important to learn how to listen to people and understand what they want and what they need and how to do so. What does it mean to negotiate? What do you need to do to be good at it? How do you know what you want to negotiate and how you can be a better deal with people? What are you going to do better at it ? Why you should negotiate better than you can do better? And how you should be better at negotiating? Why do you what you should do better and why you should learn to negotiate how to be more productive why you can you do it better and what do you should you want when you want to so that you can more of an open mind a more productive relationship the best outcome? and so much more all of those things in this episode is a question you can help you do better, not less?
00:00:00.940Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420Hello, everybody. I'm speaking to Chris Voss today, an American author, teacher, and hostage negotiator for the FBI.
00:01:15.820We talk primarily about negotiation with forays into the psychology of listening, the rationale of listening.
00:01:24.440We're attempting to sort out and to clarify exactly what it means to negotiate successfully, positing, I suppose, that the ultimate goal of a negotiation should be something like the establishment of a productive, long-term, generous, mutual collaboration.
00:01:42.220And to expand even that, to understand that a good collaboration involves the joint pursuit of mutual desire, let's say, but also the joint pursuit of the ability to expand the understanding of what that desire might be across time.
00:02:02.200We talk about how to listen and do that, concentrating as well on the fact that if you listen to people, they'll tell you what they need and want, and then you can be in a position to provide that and to be of utility in the long-term, sustainable, productive, generous relationship.
00:03:12.300So tell me what you think negotiating means and how you got interested in it, and also if that, if that's how you conceptualize yourself fundamentally as a negotiator or communications facilitator.
00:03:26.240Yeah, well, for me to negotiate is to collaborate and find a better outcome.
00:03:34.340In the early days, I was always teaching the adversary is not the person on the other side of the table.
00:03:42.300And then if you're negotiating with, and negotiating with versus against people, but negotiating with somebody, you're faced with two aspects, different aspects of the same problem.
00:03:53.740And if you can collaborate, then not only might you solve the problem, you might come up with a better outcome.
00:04:01.720And I kind of backed into this because I wanted to be a hostage negotiator.
00:04:07.160I didn't really know what it was about, how complicated it was going to be, how satisfying it was going to be.
00:04:12.300And I remember I was on a SWAT team with the FBI, and I wanted to switch over to hostage negotiation because I had a recurring knee injury.
00:04:26.560You know, my son and I have always joked that the Voss family motto is how hard could it be?
00:04:31.000So stuff that looks really easy is often incredibly challenging.
00:04:37.960So I volunteered on a suicide hotline, which is just about listening to people.
00:04:43.960And suddenly, you know, you get a change in behavior in a very short period of time by listening to people.
00:04:49.700And so that's, and to your point about people not knowing what they want, in point of fact, I've learned it's impossible to know the best outcome because you don't have all the facts.
00:05:03.360And so going with an open mind and you probably discover something new and do it in a way that the person wants to talk to you again.
00:05:19.480So, well, let's dive into, you mentioned a number of things here and I'll outline them and then we'll delve into them sort of point by point.
00:05:43.060I did a lot of work with people who were trying to develop their careers.
00:05:47.040I did a lot of strategizing around things like, I wouldn't say raising people's salaries because that's not the right way to think about it, but helping them develop the skills and confidence to maximize their economic potential and to develop plans around that.
00:06:02.780So, and one of the things we could zero in on that might be of interest to people is, for example, is negotiating a raise.
00:06:11.580Now, you said that you want to collaborate and find a better solution, that you talk with someone, not against.
00:06:19.560And that reminded me as well of the necessity of developing a joint vision.
00:06:23.620So, let me tell you what we used to do in practical terms when I was setting someone up to have a conversation with their boss about advancement, including a raise.
00:06:36.640Sometimes people don't necessarily want a raise.
00:06:39.280They want opportunity and they want advancement.
00:06:41.560And the only way they can conceptualize that is as more money.
00:06:45.120And so, you have to get that straight too.
00:06:46.720But, so, you know, I said my principles were something like, it's very difficult to negotiate if you are not in a position to say no, no matter what.
00:06:57.580So, I would make sure my clients had their CV well prepped, that we had filled in any gaps, that they knew the job market around them, and that they were ready and willing to look for another job if necessary.
00:07:48.080And then you might say you could make a case with a threat, and one threat might be, well, if you don't give me a raise, I'll leave.
00:07:54.760But generally, all you do is put people's back up with an approach like that.
00:07:58.720You may need to have that in your back pocket just to make you confident.
00:08:02.780But my notion was, and I was dealing with people who either were credible or who had put themselves in a position to be credible.
00:08:12.240What they would deliver to the boss was, first of all, a statement of their value and a description of that.
00:08:19.780Because you don't know how much your boss knows about the work you do, especially if you're one of those people who does your work quietly and well and sort of invisibly.
00:08:28.060And that's even worse if you're agreeable so that other people can take advantage of your work and pretend it's theirs.
00:08:33.540So, the first thing you might want to do is make sure that your boss actually knows what you do without being chest-thumping about it.
00:08:41.820And then you might say what it is that you could offer if you were offered additional opportunity.
00:08:48.520And that might be, you know, like the observation that if you don't believe that you're making what you're worth in the market,
00:08:56.180that your motivation is less than it might be or that you don't feel that you've been valued by the organization.
00:09:01.300And so, if you had a pathway forward, you'd be more committed to the joint goal that you share with your boss.
00:09:09.240And hopefully, you have one in relationship.
00:09:11.140You have to make a case for what it is that's in it for him too and also, or her,
00:09:17.960and also ensure that if he has to go make a case to his superior that he's completely armed and ready to do that.
00:09:25.520So, you don't assume that you're in an antagonistic relationship with your boss.
00:09:31.720And if you are, and that's intractable, then, you know, it might be time to think about either a radically new approach to your work or a different job.
00:09:39.100But if not, you assume that you could present him with a solution.
00:09:43.620So, anyways, those were some of the ground rules that we established.
00:09:47.340And so, I'm kind of curious about how you might elaborate on that and what you think about that.
00:09:57.760And, you know, what I might add to the basis of that conversation, like the first part about, you know, having a resume, knowing what the market is, not taking yourself hostage.
00:10:10.720One of the things that I loved, that I learned from being a hostage negotiator is how to negotiate without a net.
00:10:20.420And my Harvard brothers and sisters would call that bat now.
00:10:23.580What's the best alternative to negotiated agreement?
00:10:27.060And that's so that you release yourself of fears, that you don't take yourself hostage.
00:10:31.680You can go in with no alternative and have enough faith in a process to just be engaged, to be curious, to listen, to discover the better outcome.
00:10:43.180And so, the bat now idea or the alternative's idea is a good starting point if you feel like you're taking yourself hostage.
00:10:51.580But what it really is, is it's to create this psychological construct so that you don't freeze up, so that you don't take yourself hostage.
00:10:59.540And as hostage negotiators, you know, we just never, theoretically, we never had a bat now.
00:12:39.860And I said, like, all right, so here's what we're going to do.
00:12:44.520You're going to go in with some great calibrated questions.
00:12:49.480Calibrated questions, in my vernacular, Black Swan Method, is not questions to get answers, but questions to create thoughts in the other side's mind.
00:13:01.420You want to get completely out of the concept.
00:13:03.680The fact that you don't have alternatives doesn't change your value to this company.
00:13:06.960And the fact that you don't have alternatives does not change anything about their ability to pay you and how much you can contribute if you're the right guy that gets dropped into the right job.
00:13:19.860And so you've got to ask them what happens if you guys don't fill this role.
00:13:43.560So one of the things I want from someone that I partner with, and this would include someone I'm hiring as well, say, as a peer relationship.
00:13:53.620I want to know what agreement we can come to that I'm thrilled about, that I know they're equally thrilled about.
00:14:00.840And there's a technical reason that I want that.
00:14:04.480I mean, there's two sources of motivation, fundamentally.
00:14:07.540There's goading by negative emotion, like pain and fear.
00:14:10.960And there's enticement by positive motivation.
00:14:13.720And that's usually associated with hope in relationship to a goal.
00:14:18.220And so for the gentleman that you just described, who's feeling constrained because he only has one option, which is take the job or leave it.
00:14:25.720And he thinks the only option is take it.
00:14:28.700He still has a question to ask himself.
00:14:32.380And this is a really profound question.
00:14:35.760And the profound question is, what circumstances have, do I have to be, do I have to have in place so that I can devote myself wholeheartedly to this job?
00:14:49.340So how can I exit the interview and accept this new job feeling that I have a landscape of opportunity in front of me and bereft of resentment?
00:14:58.840And that will require, if someone's going to ask themselves that, that will require that they prioritize their needs and wants.
00:15:07.080And salary may be one of those things.
00:15:09.360But, you know, you could imagine that there might be other ways of even moving around that, so to speak.
00:15:14.780Because you might be able to offer your new employer the following deal.
00:15:20.140It's like, well, I'll take a starting salary that's less than I would regard as optimal or even necessary.
00:15:25.460But I want to know that if I hit a certain set of standards within a certain time, that there's a pathway to improve financial returns that opens up to me that we all agree on.
00:15:38.120And you tell the person you're negotiating with that the reason you want that is because, like, we're not playing around here.
00:15:43.840We're trying to negotiate optimal motivation.
00:15:47.300And I want to be able to assure you when I leave the motivation or the negotiation that I am thrilled with the outcome.
00:15:54.240And because who the hell wants to hire someone who starts the job feeling like they've been taken advantage of and being resentful?
00:16:01.380Like, that's a really bad way to get things going.
00:16:03.640Okay, so you pointed out that your guy who thought he had to have the job still was in a position to tell his potential employers what it was that he had to offer to make a case for the value of his services.
00:16:18.820And to point out what that is not only worth from the market perspective, but also in terms of his own motivation.
00:16:26.680Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:16:32.960Most of the time, you'll probably be fine.
00:16:35.020But what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:16:40.720In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury.
00:16:45.680Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:16:55.040And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:16:58.360With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:17:05.740Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:18:19.300And my favorite question, actually, is to ask in job interviews, every job interview and every annual review, talked to me by a friend of mine who's Tom McCabe, extraordinarily successful guy, CEO of an international bank.
00:19:08.020I want to be with the people that are at the highest levels of performance in your company, and I want to move everybody forward.
00:19:15.260With that one question, and it completely changes the outcome, because then it's not just what your skill set is for this particular job.
00:19:23.600Maybe they got a job for you in the mailroom, but you want to be the head of the division, and you want to know how to get there, and you want to get there by succeeding and taking everybody with you.
00:19:36.500Now, that's a game-changing conversation.
00:19:39.120That's a completely different conversation.
00:19:41.120Maybe they thought they were bringing somebody in to push a mail card around, and now you're somebody that says, yeah, not only will I do the little jobs to learn this from the bottom up,
00:19:51.860but I want to make everybody's life better.
00:19:54.940I want to help everybody succeed, and I'm willing to learn.
00:20:03.860Well, I'm willing to learn, and I'm coachable, and I want to make everybody's life better.
00:20:07.560I'm doing a virtual keynote a couple years ago, the CEO of the company and his entire sales team, and we got a keynote going, and one of his sales team had literally asked me while he's on the call, how do we negotiate with this guy to get more money?
00:20:24.780And everybody's kind of holding their breath.
00:20:52.460Well, you know, psychologically speaking, so again, with regard to motivation, people live on hope and opportunity to a large degree, and hope and opportunity are experienced in relationship to a goal.
00:21:07.980And so to have hope and opportunity, you need two things.
00:21:12.120You need a goal, and then you need to observe yourself walking on a pathway to that goal.
00:21:18.540And so the lines that you just laid out there, how can I be positioned, I'm going to paraphrase it, and if I get it wrong, let me know, how can I position myself so that I'm in the company of and accompanying those who are moving forward to the destination the company actually wants to achieve?
00:21:36.480How can I make sure that I'm doing that?
00:21:38.520Well, you said, on the one hand, you're opening up the vision of the people that you're speaking to, and you're indicating to them very clearly that you want to be where the action is, and you're going to be a part of that.
00:21:51.440But for yourself, what you've done is you've opened up the door to meaningful engagement with the company.
00:22:00.360Now, the price you're going to have to pay for that is responsibility.
00:22:04.820And that's why you can't use these sorts of questions as a technique, right?
00:22:11.520If you've thought this through and that's what you want, well, then you're also the sort of person that anyone with any sense would want to hire.
00:22:18.300Because it's certainly the case that when I'm—if you have any sense as a manager, when you hire someone, what you're actually doing them is offering a set of indeterminate opportunities.
00:22:30.420And you're hoping that the person you're hiring is more qualified than they would need to be for the position that you're hiring them for.
00:22:38.740Now, you may not regard that as a requirement, but you're certainly hoping for it.
00:22:43.320And the best conversations I have with people that I might want to work with or have worked for me, let's say, are the conversations where they clearly indicate that they know where the enterprise is going and why.
00:22:56.920They're perfectly willing to do the tasks that are part and parcel of the specified job.
00:23:01.820But they've got an eye to the broader vision.
00:23:04.420And then they have enough perspicacity and intelligence now and then to contribute.
00:23:16.640You should be able to handle perspicacity.
00:23:18.520So, and then, you know, you're, well, if you surround yourself with people like that, then you always have people who are looking out for where you're going with fresh sets of eyes and who are offering opportunities for you to go there too.
00:23:32.420And that speaks to the idea that you had, that a negotiation is a collaboration.
00:23:37.760You know, and you might say, well, I'm not collaborating with my boss.
00:23:40.380It's like, well, if you're not collaborating with your boss, well, that's it.
00:23:44.920Well, if you're not, you should think about if that's your problem or his problem or both your problems, or maybe it's time really to go look for some greener pastures.
00:23:55.640Because if it's, if it is an adversarial relationship all the way to the bottom and you're being forced or compelled to do things you don't want to do against your wishes, then you're not optimally situated in your life.
00:24:08.460Now, I know that sometimes by necessity, people can be stuck in situations like that for some period of time, but man, you need an escape route.
00:24:17.540Like, you need to plot an escape route if you're in a situation like that.
00:24:21.760And I'd like to touch on something else you mentioned just real quickly and talking about that, you know, when you ask that question that you really mean it.
00:24:28.620I mean, we've had these discussions in my company and with the people that are running my company and who we're hiring.
00:24:33.140And one of the things we make clear, like, if you can work for me, you're going to work hard.
00:25:08.020Well, one of the things I would also do to prepare with my clients, to prepare them for movement forward, was to work through the blind spots in their vision, let's say, and the knots in their life that might be interfering with their desire to be a diamond, you know, because people will also misconstrue that.
00:25:29.540They'll think, well, I don't want to work too hard.
00:25:32.060It's like, you're not thinking about the work properly if that's your attitude.
00:25:36.740Because first of all, if you love what you're doing, you might really want to work hard.
00:25:41.560And if you don't love it, that means you don't really see the point.
00:25:47.400And then, you know, maybe you do see the value, but you're lazy and undisciplined.
00:25:52.020And maybe you have your rationales for that too.
00:25:54.380And so all that needs to be worked through, you know, because I do think that, first of all, most of the meaning in people's lives comes from the adoption of voluntary responsibility.
00:26:06.080And most people do actually want to be diamonds, but they're afraid of the work.
00:26:09.960And they're also afraid that it's going to be imposed on them, right?
00:26:12.780And they're going to be forced into it.
00:26:14.400And they don't have a vision of their own.
00:26:16.360And so one of the things that everyone who's listening and watching might want to understand is that before you go into a job interview, you know, you might want to have done some serious thinking about just exactly why it is that you want this job.
00:26:31.780And if the answer is, well, I need to pay next month's rent.
00:26:34.520Like, fair enough, you know, but that is not a good enough reason.
00:27:09.140You can have what you want, but you have to specify what it is.
00:27:14.280And then someone might say, well, you know, I don't really know what I want.
00:27:18.560And fair enough, because that's a pretty vague and global question.
00:27:21.920But the program then asks people seven questions.
00:27:25.060It's like, what would your relationship look like, your primary relationship, your marriage, if it was functioning the way that you would want it to?
00:27:40.220How do you keep yourself in mental and physical shape?
00:27:42.580What are you going to do with your time outside of work?
00:27:45.740You know, how are you going to serve the community?
00:27:49.460So those are, and so that starts to differentiate it, right?
00:27:52.240And then the game you play there with yourself is, okay, under what conditions would I be motivated to pursue success in those areas?
00:28:02.020You know, and people are scared of this, partly because they don't want to reveal to themselves what they actually want, because they might betray themselves or be betrayed by the world.
00:28:13.400And partly because they're afraid of the responsibility and they don't have enough faith.
00:28:17.140But it's impossible to hit a target that you don't aim at.
00:28:21.840And then you might say, well, why is that relevant to a job interview?
00:28:25.020And there's a bunch of reasons, is that if the job interview goes well and you actually start to have a discussion rather than just a staged interview, if you have a vision for your own life, you're going to be able to see if this job will work for you.
00:28:38.280And that also puts you in a good position in the interview, because you pointed out earlier, as we were talking, that, you know, even in a job interview, that's a negotiation.
00:28:48.800And the reason it's a negotiation is because, well, you want the job, but hopefully they want you and you're the right person.
00:28:55.760And so, really, the interview should be establishing the preconditions for the collaboration that you described, rather than, you know, pulling the wool over some idiot's eyes so that they'll hire you so you can slack off, which seems like a pretty damn dismal vision of what your life might be.
00:29:13.400And thinking those things through, I mean, we've interviewed, I've had some interviews for assistants at my job recently that were cut short because the people that were doing the interviews didn't know what company they were interviewing for.
00:29:35.820Well, you know, because, yeah, well, you're going to ask yourself, aren't you, if someone comes in and they don't know what it is that you do or what they want?
00:29:43.400If someone comes in and they don't know what they would do, then the first question that would come to mind is something like, well, then what do they know?
00:29:51.080Because that's so, that's such an elementary error that it, well, that it's essentially catastrophic.
00:29:58.700Well, it's an indicator of what they're going to put into the job.
00:30:02.860How you do anything is how you do everything.
00:30:05.100It's, well, what they already did put into the job because the most important task they had as a potential hiree was preparation for the interview.
00:30:15.300And if they failed that, well, that's not a great start.
00:30:18.720And that's especially true, you know, another thing for everybody watching and listening to think about, too, is that it is the case that first impressions are lasting.
00:30:27.060There is a very long and dense psychological literature establishing that, you know, and so you want to be prepared enough in the interview so that people walk away from talking to you thinking, geez, you know, it'd be a good thing if we got that guy.
00:30:42.840And certainly you're in a much better position to do something like salary negotiation if that's the impression and the valid impression, right?
00:30:52.340That's another thing is this can't be, look, man, if you're going to start your new job on a stack of lies, you've already ensured your failure in some fundamental sense.
00:31:05.620And so if you're afraid before you go into the interview that you're not prepared, you want to get prepared so that you're not afraid like that and so that you can go and you can admit your inadequacies, honestly, as long as they're not so, you know, absolutely multiple.
00:31:22.800There's not so many of them that you're obviously not the candidate for the job.
00:31:28.600Hey, Jordan, I'm going to have you coaching me on my next job interview.
00:31:37.280Okay, so tell me about that and about paying attention and tell me how you learned why that was so important and tell me what you learned about how to listen.
00:32:23.240Like, you know, on TV, they're on the phone with people for hours, if not days, 20 minutes.
00:32:31.260And they said, no, as a matter of fact, if you actually use the skills correctly, it'll take less than that.
00:32:38.780And so you get taught a set of listening skills on how to dial in and the clues of what to listen for and then how to get the person interacting with you without making them feel interrogated.
00:32:51.080And suddenly there were astonishing changes in behavior in a person on the other side.
00:32:56.340You get somebody on the phone who's genuinely suicidal.
00:32:59.760And 15, 17, 18 minutes later, they're in a good place and they're ready to go back and take on the world based on the experience.
00:33:11.920So, and then I started learning some of the science after it, you know, science, pseudoscientists.
00:33:19.220But in our capacity, our capacity to hear words exceeds the amount of information we can keep in our head.
00:33:30.100But the amount of information in your tone of voice is going to tell me more than the words are.
00:33:36.020So how I learned to listen was the words are the starting point, but the tone of voice and the body language and what's the alignment.
00:33:42.380And then if there's a shift in the alignment in that moment, you know, to look for it and then anticipate.
00:33:50.480I know now that you're, you as a human being, you in general terms, the negativity is going to cloud your thinking more than anything else.
00:34:04.640And from the hotline and now what we do in a black swan method, how do I deactivate those negatives to clear your head or even anticipate them?
00:34:18.620Because what we would call in hostage negotiation a change of behavior and in business negotiation or personal interactions,
00:34:26.720you changing your mind as to the best outcome is going to come much more quickly and effectively and in a lasting way than if I talked you into it or if I misled you.
00:34:39.480You know, I want whatever agreement we come to, to be durable, to last without me having to come back to you daily to see where we are.
00:34:51.180And that's what listening is really about, understanding the nuances of what's now backed up by neuroscience
00:34:57.500and what people in hostage negotiation and you as a practitioner in the field of human nature for years came to learn was the reality of how human beings think and how they react.
00:35:09.960Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is easier than ever.
00:35:17.380Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business.
00:35:21.500From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage, Shopify is here to help you grow.
00:35:28.240Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products and track conversions.
00:35:36.720With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing, accounting and chatbots.
00:35:48.240Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout, up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms.
00:35:56.020No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level.
00:36:03.020Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash jbp, all lowercase.
00:36:08.980Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in.
00:36:19.340Yeah, well you said you want to negotiate a durable solution.
00:36:24.900And that means one that will sustain itself without you having to come back.
00:36:31.440And so you could put it this way, barring, you can become a micromanager because you have a certain obsessiveness of character, let's say, and a certain intrinsic distrust.
00:36:44.640And then that's something you should work on.
00:36:46.740But you can also become a micromanager if you negotiate a very bad agreement with someone.
00:36:50.840Because if you've talked them into it or forced them into it, then, and they feel that they've been taken advantage of, then their heart won't be in the task.
00:37:01.940And what that will mean is that they will be looking for escape routes all the time instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing.
00:37:09.620And that you'll have to go back to them in the most frustrating of manners and use up all your valuable time and energy trying to enforce a stupid agreement that you shouldn't have made to begin with.
00:37:20.100You know, and this is part of the problem you said, you know, you don't want to talk someone into something.
00:37:25.240Now, that's not the same as informing them about an opportunity that they might not have conceptualized in laying out a different route.
00:37:32.300But really what you're aiming for is voluntary agreement, like full voluntary agreement.
00:37:36.740And part of the reason, and you touched on this, part of the reason that listening is so necessary is because if you listen to the person, you can find out and help them find out what it is that they actually want and how that could conceivably be delivered to them.
00:37:54.000And, you know, you might think the person already knows that, but it's not necessarily the case.
00:37:57.680You know, people think, well, they're talking.
00:37:59.900In fact, that's how most people think, period, is when they're talking.
00:38:03.380And it also means if no one's listening to them, they almost never have an opportunity to think.
00:38:08.660You know, you could imagine, like, even if you're running a restaurant, I shouldn't say even, it's very difficult to run a restaurant.
00:38:14.040If you're running a restaurant, you're hiring a dishwasher.
00:38:16.940One of the things you're going to be concerned about is whether that kid is going to show up to work because absenteeism in entry-level jobs like dishwashing is rife.
00:38:26.860And the probability that the guy won't show up is pretty high.
00:39:18.900That's a good guideline for a successful negotiation, not how can I come out of this ahead?
00:39:25.760That's such a stupid way of looking at a situation because it's so temporary, right?
00:39:30.260If I screw you over while we're talking because I'm better at verbally manipulating you and I think you won't take that out on me opportunity by opportunity as we move forward into the future.
00:41:28.540We made some slight tweaks in some of the thoughts as we applied them to business and personal life.
00:41:34.140But it's a collection of emotional intelligence, tactical empathy skills that work because of the way human beings are wired worldwide.
00:41:44.900Just they work on the limbic system, which is the emotional components, the circuitry, the wiring in the brain that everybody has by virtue of the fact that they're human.
00:41:55.920And it pretty much operates the same, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, geography, diet, because you're human.
00:42:05.500So, I want to have you walk us through two things.
00:42:11.220Maybe you can take us through what a hostage negotiation situation might look like and how it is that a desirable outcome can be negotiated under those circumstances.
00:43:35.360You're most interested in giving me your answers as opposed to hearing me out first.
00:43:41.220I know at some point in time, you're not going to have a perfect answer.
00:43:45.780And if you haven't been listening, you're not going to catch it.
00:43:48.500And we're going to have some real problems.
00:43:50.160So you start showing how you listen intermittently, proactively, then it's really going to accelerate our conversation.
00:44:01.380And I know that when there's a problem, you're going to catch it instead of me having to come back to you after the problems become very damaging.
00:44:10.460It's about anticipating and staying ahead of the game.
00:44:14.200In general terms, that's what it's all about.
00:44:15.600That's part of establishing a relationship, eh?
00:45:28.080It's like, if you go talk to someone in a given company, it isn't necessarily the case that they're going to want what you're buying.
00:45:33.960You've got to figure out what their problems are.
00:45:35.700And one of the things that's really cool about that, too, is that if you're entrepreneurially oriented and you've made a product, and you go out and you try to sell it to 10 people, and they don't buy it.
00:45:46.120But all 10 of them tell you about a different problem.
00:45:51.680You now know what your next product could be, at least in principle.
00:45:55.680Because you know where the actual marketplace problem is.
00:45:58.380And I learned after that, that software designers, for example, who have a track record, if they're designing a new piece of software, they do it in collaboration with their customers.
00:46:39.900So, and you talked earlier about iterability, too.
00:46:42.880You know, that you want to make sure that you've conducted the conversation so that the person would like it if the conversation happened again.
00:46:51.600And that is the, that's like the definition of a relationship.
00:46:55.600Like, you have a relationship with someone with whom you would like to continue the conversation indefinitely.
00:47:01.580And the great salespeople, they're relationship managers, man.
01:02:35.660They were doing fMRI scanning, looking at activation of pain systems in relationship to other people's pain.
01:02:43.880And there's quite a variability in that.
01:02:46.400So, people high in trade agreeableness who are easy to get along with and who are sympathetic and empathetic, but who can be easily taken advantage of, by the way.
01:02:57.720The other end is disagreeable people who can be callous and hurtful, blunt.
01:03:03.180Now, slightly somewhat disagreeable managers, by the way, are more successful.
01:03:08.300And many people who seek therapy are agreeable people who are being taken advantage of.
01:03:13.880So, the fact that you're empathetic and sympathetic is not a virtue without its vices or dangers.
01:03:20.520The brain research revealed that the more empathic people had a larger degree of pain activation in the pain systems when they saw the pain of other people.
01:03:33.460Okay, so now, if you don't like conflict, part of the reason you don't like conflict is because if you see the person you're having conflict with in pain, you're going to mirror that pain.
01:03:47.760So, if I see someone in pain, it strikes me to the core.
01:03:50.760But I learned that if I deferred conflict, then it's like the cat with its tail being cut off an inch at a time.
01:04:00.260It's like we don't have the blowout, and so we're minimizing the pain in the present, but we're radically prolonging it across our iterated interactions.
01:04:10.240And so, it's much better just to call a spade a spade and to say, look, I see the elephant under the rug.
01:04:18.140I see the snake's tail, you know, poking out from the cabinet.
01:04:22.620We're going to sort this out right here and now, and we're going to straighten it out, and that's going to be delving into the depths, and there's going to be discomfort in that.
01:04:31.540But if we can identify the problem and negotiate a compelling mutual solution, we don't have to have this problem anymore.
01:04:41.260And, man, it's such a, you know, I saw couples all the time who had the same bloody fight every day for 30 years, you know.
01:04:53.760And it's much better just to have, like, the discussion, even though that's that inaction, you know, that you pointed to, that you described Kennedy as pointing to.
01:05:03.240It's the, classically speaking, even theologically, there is much more stress placed on sins of commission, right?
01:05:13.080Things you do that are clearly wrong, but avoiding doing something right.
01:05:18.100That does people in, man, especially if they do that repeatedly, and they do it because they don't want to cause trouble, because they want to avoid conflict.
01:05:25.880It's like, there's no avoiding necessary conflict.
01:05:31.280Yeah, it ends up, you end up having your discussion in divorce court, right, for $200 an hour, right, while your bank accounts are drained.
01:05:41.800Lawyers buying a new car, we're keeping the argument going.
01:05:45.260Yeah, now, you said when you were trying to circumvent the proclivity for inaction, you'd ask questions like,
01:05:52.340this is something I used to do when I was talking to people about, say, negotiating for a raise if they were resentful about their current situation, something like that.
01:06:00.520One of the things we would do is say, okay, think about how you feel about the situation you're in right now.
01:06:07.100Okay, now imagine yourself 10 years older.
01:06:10.740You're in the same position, okay, except you're 10 years older.
01:09:27.080Can you ask what people are afraid of the same way, or do you focus on the positive?
01:09:32.700Now, you're bringing in the secondary point, which I know you know.
01:09:38.020Many psychologists, many human nature practitioners believe that everything we do is motivated by either love or fear.
01:09:45.140So, I will also ask, in a business context, when I'm trying to find out what the motivations are, I'll say, what are you afraid of happening here?
01:09:55.900Because then, now, I've got them into a different headspace.
01:10:00.120And I know that fear is a very substantial, significant, motivating factor in people's lives.
01:10:08.040I'm not going to wield it like a weapon.
01:10:10.660I'm going to want to become aware of it with you in a collaborative way.
01:10:14.080And I will ask a question that's very similar to that in business conversations, when we're talking about whether or not we're going to collaborate.
01:10:23.200Because I need to know, the fears are going to drive you.
01:10:26.540The love is going to drive you, but fear has a tendency to overcome fear of loss, you know, a limited number of fears.
01:10:33.760They'll overcome the love if you're not careful.
01:10:36.140So, I want to know what the fears are, so I can map out better how I can help you.
01:10:40.760Well, I would say, you know, if you're having a conversation with your wife and it starts to get choppy, this probably occurs in any conversation.
01:10:52.000I suppose the way you would construe that from a psychoanalytic point of view is that you're starting to encounter resistances.
01:11:01.240The person doesn't want to move in that direction.
01:11:03.620Maybe that's even a direction that you jointly had negotiated would be desirable, at least in principle.
01:11:09.740But then you do want to find out, okay, what are the obstacles?
01:11:15.480Because the fears will become obstacles.
01:11:18.680And if they're not cleared out, there'll be invisible barriers to progress, right?
01:11:23.040And it's so interesting, you know, when you get people to lay out what they're afraid of and then what they perceive as obstacles,
01:11:30.000sometimes merely letting them describe what it is that they're afraid of will make the fear evaporate
01:11:36.200because they realize that that's a fear that applied in a different situation or that, you know, that they've actually grown out of without really noticing
01:11:44.060or that you've already established a pattern of behavior that indicates that they don't have to be afraid of that from you.
01:11:52.660And, you know, sometimes you can have a dialogue about that and clear away the obstacles,
01:11:58.000but often listening is sufficient to clear those away by itself.
01:12:04.660Well, you know, these proactive listening skills that you have been discussing, many of them have their roots in Carl Rogers' work, you know?
01:12:21.880He was really quite brilliant at detailing out the preconditions for a conversation, you know?
01:12:26.340And that other point you made about mirroring and summarizing, that's really, that's one of the only things I've ever really discovered that actually works in some ways as a technique.
01:12:40.360Now, it still has to be honest, but there is almost nothing more useful in a conversation than keeping track of what it is that the person is saying
01:12:49.760and then at the right moment saying, here's what I think you just said, you know, compressing it,
01:12:57.940because that's also a favor to you, because you could remember it then, but also to them, right?
01:13:02.740To compact it in a more elegant casing, let's say.