Inside the Mind of an FBI Negotiator: Chris Voss Reveals All
Disruptors
Rob Moore
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rob is joined by Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator. Rob uncovers Voss's secrets to reading people, predicting behaviour, and navigating dangerous situations. From hostage crises to boardroom battles, Voss reveals how his techniques can revolutionise your business and personal relationships.
Chris Voss REVEALS:
- Fear of loss is the biggest driver of decision-making, with about 70% accuracy in predicting behaviour changes.
- Empathy is the most effective and lasting way to influence someone, with tactical empathy being a key tool in negotiations.
- There are three types of negotiators globally: assertors, analysts, and accommodators, they are evenly split regardless of demographics.
- Voss advocates for using "no-oriented" questions instead of seeking "yes" answers to achieve more durable responses in negotiations.
- Labels (e.g., "It seems like...") and mirrors (repeating the last 1-3 words) are powerful tools for guiding conversations and gathering information.
- Most lying is defensive and about self-protection, with different types of negotiators having varying views on what constitutes a lie.
- To negotiate a pay raise, consistently demonstrate value beyond your cost to the employer and focus on future contributions.
BEST MOMENTS
"Empathy is really about understanding the other person's patterns first, which means just because you don't, wouldn't do it, doesn't mean you can't understand it."
"You never give up and you can always get smarter. I'm willing to be smarter today than I was yesterday."
"The power of respect for your adversary is kind of an irresistible power. And the other side violates it when you demonstrate respect first."
"People react the same under all circumstances. They're driven by the same thing."
"Behaviour prediction is easy. Like everybody, everybody's driven, driven by patterns." - Chris Voss
"Human beings don't resent bad news. They resent getting caught off guard by bad."
"Understand what it looks like to your employer. You want a raise, you got to be consistently more viable than what they're paying you."
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ABOUT THE HOST
Rob Moore is an author of 9 business books, 5 UK bestsellers, holds 3 world records for public speaking, entrepreneur, property investor, and property educator. Author of the global bestseller “Life Leverage” Host of UK’s No.1 business podcast “The Disruptive Entrepreneur”
“If you don't risk anything, you risk everything”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Chris, what's been your most dangerous negotiation? |
| 0:05.0 | Wow, wow. |
| 0:07.0 | Yeah, well, I suppose danger is a relative term, danger to me, danger to my future, danger to the people |
| 0:11.8 | that I'm dealing with. |
| 0:13.0 | You know, as a hostage negotiator, |
| 0:16.0 | whatever you have on the line is not anywhere near what the other families have on the line. |
| 0:21.0 | The toughest part in the hostage negotiation days, and then... the no intention of making a deal. And they're trying to make it look like they want to make a deal, which is actually a really common practice in business today. But waking up to that with the harsh reality of what we were dealing with, I think is one of the big differences in the overall journey. |
| 0:44.9 | You know, a hostage negotiators have a 93% success rate, and so that means about 7% of the time |
| 0:51.7 | is just not, it's going to go bad and in the |
| 0:54.0 | 2004 time frame Al Qaeda was killing a lot of kidnap victims trying to make |
| 0:59.8 | it look like they were being fair about it and understanding what that looked like and |
| 1:06.1 | accepting when the other side is never going to make a deal. 2004 was a tough year. |
| 1:11.1 | And so could you pick the most dangerous situation you were in in 2004? Oh well I you know I wasn't |
| 1:17.3 | hostage negotiators who either negotiate on the phone or or we're coaching somebody. |
| 1:24.0 | And international kidnapping, it was an international kidnap negotiation coach. |
| 1:29.0 | Now, and we're not going to do anybody any good if we put ourselves in arms away so you know dangerous for me |
| 1:36.5 | What about dangerous? Dangerous consequences like for you the possible biggest cost or downside? |
| 1:44.0 | Well, the first time in a kidnapping that it looked bad from the outside and working a case with AlQaeda in Saudi Arabia in 2004 and we read early on that al-Qaeda on probably on |
| 1:59.5 | deadline we're trying to orchestrate murdering the hostage, a guy named Paul Johnson. |
| 2:04.7 | And our best chance, which was miniscule at best, |
| 2:09.6 | was to do an appeal through the Arab media where they interviewed his wife is what it would |
| 2:17.2 | it be and how could we tell the truth not a slanted truth the truth that nobody could argue with. |
... |
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