Bookworm Transcripts

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So I hope you didn't suffer too much trauma from the on the spot bookworm quiz I gave you last episode Joe.

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I survived it.

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I did fine.

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I think like I did not score well, but hey, we'll take it.

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You got the you got some bonus questions.

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So you did you did okay.

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It's true.

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It's true.

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I am grateful for the bonus potential.

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Otherwise, I would have been very ashamed of my results from that.

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I've heard a lot of people say that they really enjoyed that part of the episode.

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So I'm glad you were down.

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Otherwise, it would have been a pretty short episode 100.

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That's fair.

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That's fair.

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That was fun.

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I had fun doing it too.

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So I'm glad people like it.

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Yeah, that was a lot of fun to record.

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I was really happy with how it turned out.

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It yeah, it was a good episode.

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So thank you, everybody who has been along for the ride at any point during those first 100 episodes.

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We are going to jump back into the normal format here today.

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So we're going to cover a book here in a minute, but first we've got some follow up from episode 99, actually.

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And I'll just get mine out of the way because there's nothing interesting here.

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I had mentioned an episode 99, which was the motive by Patrick Lencioni.

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He wrote another book called the advantage.

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And I said I wanted to read that one.

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Haven't done it yet.

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It's sitting on my bookshelf found that I purchased it a while ago.

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Just haven't read it yet.

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So we will at some point, maybe I'll pick it for a bookworm book.

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You never know, but I've not read it yet.

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So that's my follow up.

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Now you've got a couple follow up items here.

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You ready to talk about these?

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Sure.

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These are real simple and easy to accomplish.

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So yeah, these are deep.

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So the main thing with reading the motive, well, before I get there, something we did for episode 100, as I posted the recording of that to our bookworm YouTube channel.

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And I don't know the interest in that, but I was looking at stats on the bookworm YouTube channel.

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I haven't been good about posting things there because I didn't think it had much interest, but there's a lot of people, a lot of you are watching those.

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The only one that actually has video is episode 100.

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So I'm planning to start uploading the video of these to the YouTube channel.

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So just going to say that.

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I don't think I've told Mike I was going to do that.

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So Mike just learned of that.

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Surprise.

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Sorry, Mike.

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You just bring a quiz on me and this is what you get.

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So anyway, the two follow up things I have from the motive.

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What I'm trying to do is take the mindset of a responsibility focused leader as opposed to a reward based leader.

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And the two areas that I'm wanting to do this in and the two areas that I have as separate action items here is one is in how I lead teams of volunteers.

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At the church and I have one, two, three, four teams that I am the top leader of, which is tricky and dicey because they have to work with each other and yet they're.

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Sometimes at odds with each other.

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So there's a fun little balance that comes with that.

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So I'm trying to change the way that I do things with them specifically in the realm of making sure that I'm.

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Finding the pain points that they struggle with and trying to alleviate those and also doing the whole management piece because I have not really done that with volunteers.

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I've always been a little afraid to do that with a team of volunteers, but hey, you know, that's kind of how this stuff goes.

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You kind of have to do that at some point.

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So that's one area that I'm working on.

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I don't know that there's ever a done with that one.

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That's kind of a change the way you operate and don't ever deviate.

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That's that's kind of the way that that operates.

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So I'm doing what I can there.

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I can't say that I've had a lot of success with that other than, you know, I've got teams operating well right now, but second.

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So that's one side of it.

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The other side of it is to start to apply that to the way I lead my family.

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And this one, this one's proving a little more challenging, which.

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It's probably to be expected.

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You know, I've heard the analogy before, like the closer to home you get, the higher the temperatures get.

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Like things just get hotter and more intense whenever you come closer to home.

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That's absolutely true with something like this.

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And as I'm trying to adopt some of that responsibility focused leadership style, it.

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It doesn't have clean lines as far as how you do that when you're talking about wife and kids, like for me in that scenario.

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So.

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I'm still learning on that one.

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I don't have clean answers on that.

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With teams of volunteers, I can kind of cleanly see the path.

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With handling dinners and logistics and such just in day to day personal life, that's kind of a different game.

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So I'm working on it again, no answers, but I am progressing, I think.

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You went full mic with those action items.

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I totally did.

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Totally did.

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Polish mitts.

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Yes, you did.

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Well, I think those are noble goals and I encourage you in the pursuit of those action items, but we will probably not bring them up again.

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Unless you've got something you want to want to repeat, we're going to mark mark those as done for bookworm purposes.

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Yeah, I would say if something happens as a result of me making those changes, I'll bring it up.

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OK, for now, I'm working on it.

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I'm totally going to pull you.

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That's that's good enough.

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You can you can do some long range follow up if you have some some breakthrough on that sort of thing.

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I'll share some right now. I don't know if I shared this with the podcast.

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I think I probably shared it with you, but one of the action items I had from a long time ago was to learn Spanish using Duolingo.

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I'm on day three hundred and seventy six in a row.

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So I'm not exactly fluent yet, but I've learned way more than I ever did in high school.

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I can't at least have a conversation now.

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Nice.

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Nice. So you're you're approaching conversational.

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Is that what you're saying?

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Yeah, I'm approaching it.

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There's still a bunch of stuff I don't know, but they have these stories that you can follow along with.

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And it's a lot easier for me to follow along with the stories now.

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Sure. So I'm good at recognizing stuff, not good at recalling it and the words coming out of my mouth still challenging.

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But that's fine.

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I'm just podcaster.

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No big deal.

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Yeah, I don't think I could say that in Spanish.

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Sorry, muffled water.

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No, Pablo Español, Muy bien.

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Come on.

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Even I know that one.

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And I took French.

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Yo leo mucho.

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Now you're going to go places.

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I don't know.

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I read a lot.

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All right.

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All right.

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Enough about that.

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Let's jump into today's book.

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Episode 101.

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Never split the difference by Chris Voss.

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This was an interesting book.

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I really enjoyed this one.

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We'll get into some of the specifics here and we'll do that.

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The style and rating, obviously at the end.

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But I want to just kind of lay out the the lay of the land.

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I've got there's 10 different chapters in this book and I've got a point under each one, basically, but some of those maybe longer.

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Some of those we may just skip skip over completely.

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There really isn't like a simple system that he teaches in this.

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It's more just like a bunch of principles that you use in the negotiation.

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So the book starts, though, with a really cool story where he's thrown into a situation and it sounds worse than it is at first.

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Because the person that he's talking to is basically saying, we're going to kill your kid in in a minute.

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And he's got a he's got a diffused the situation and it happened to be some higher upset.

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Harvard, I believe, who were putting him to the test because they had their way of negotiating based on like the business side.

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And he's coming in as the hostage negotiator.

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That's his background as a lead negotiation hostage negotiator for the FBI.

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And they're like, well, what do you really have to teach us in the business room?

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Is it two totally different things?

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And he's kind of making the point of the book.

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No, negotiation is negotiation.

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Regardless of the scenario that happens in, obviously, stakes might be a little bit different.

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But right away, it had my attention.

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Yeah, he's good at that.

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The whole storytelling thing, this whole book is stories.

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I shouldn't say the whole book.

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He explains the stories like mid story, which is frustrating.

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Come on.

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Like you were right to the point where he had a gun to his head and then you skipped over to explain some business principle.

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Come on.

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Kind of has to do it that way because he uses stories a lot at the beginning of the chapters.

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Yes.

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And then he's he uses them to illustrate the point that he's going to teach in the chapter.

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But unlike extreme ownership where they tell the whole story and then they do the whole business story,

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he kind of tells the story up until the point where the principal is going to be applied.

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Then he pauses it, jumps over, explains the principle and then goes back and says, oh, it's right, right, which I get where that's frustrating from.

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I want to know what happens next.

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Point.

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But in terms of learning the stuff and seeing how it's applied, I'm not sure this may be more effective than the extreme ownership model.

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What do you think?

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I would agree with that.

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And I'm I'm going to compare this to you may I may bring this book up a number of times.

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This is not a bookworm book.

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It was before we started bookworm.

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Actually, I read a book called What Every Body is Saying.

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And it's by Joe Navarro, who's also an FBI guy.

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And he also did well, he didn't do negotiations.

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He did interrogations.

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And it's it's fascinating to me to have read that one.

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And then now putting this one on top of it, the book, what everybody is saying is primarily nonverbal communication and how you can interpret what other people mean, despite what they say.

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Based on their body language, whereas this one is almost entirely your words and how you say them.

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Sure.

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Because so much of Chris's Chris Voss's work was done over the phone or through a wall.

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Like you can't see that other person.

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Yep.

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So it's fascinating to me to put those two side by side because in Joe Navarro's book, he would tell the entire story.

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And then back up and retell what happened as that story progressed, which helps you kind of get a feel for it.

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In extreme ownership, like you're saying, they told the whole story and then explain the principles.

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They didn't really go back through it, really.

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They would just kind of reference small pieces of it.

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Yeah.

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I really like this model way better because he would take you to the next step and then explain.

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And then like there's some stories, especially when he would show references to the business side of it that.

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He would show you the very next piece and then show you what was going on inside that person's head, the other person's mind as they were processing what to say and what the tactic was that they were doing on the next step.

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So I found it very interesting because you really wanted to know what was going on next.

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He definitely had you hooked with each of those stories and he did a fantastic job of holding your interest in that.

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And yet you got the principle as you were going through it.

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So yes, I like this model.

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I do.

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More people should do this, even though, you know, as an FBI guy, the stories from people in the military and in these secret service type scenario.

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How are you supposed to put the book down?

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You just don't.

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Yeah.

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This is the stories themselves were not exactly what I expected.

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I expected a lot of stories like the ones in the first couple chapters, but it's not just all of the crazy situations that they successfully navigated.

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He tells a lot of not his personal stories, but like pivotal moments in the negotiating world and even some of their failures, which is got to be rough to talk about.

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The times that you failed when you're talking about hostage negotiation, right?

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Right.

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That means they died and that's blood on your hands.

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Essentially, that's how I would view it.

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You know, like, what did I do wrong?

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I don't know how you like have even one of those and are able to disconnect from it and do it again.

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But let's jump in here with the first chapter.

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This is the this chapter is called the new rules.

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And the story here at the beginning is from 1971.

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And this isn't his specific story again, but this is kind of what's at the stage for these new rules is in Jacksonville, Florida, there was a hijack plane, which I guess happened all the time.

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That part kind of boggled my mind.

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Yeah.

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The hijackings happened all the time.

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I think there was like a season where there was a lot of them.

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Yeah, which I never realized.

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Yeah.

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So apparently this was a fairly common thing for at least a short period of time.

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And the guy who had hijacked this plane had landed in Florida.

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I think they were going to Cuba and they stopped in Jacksonville to refuel.

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And the old way of negotiating was brute force.

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He described it as shoot them out.

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And so they landed.

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They were going to get fuel.

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He didn't want to kill anybody.

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But as soon as they landed, the FBI agents shot out the engines because they got impatient.

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So the plane couldn't take off.

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Then he feels stuck.

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So he kills himself.

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And is there another three people?

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There was the pilot's wife, somebody else and then himself.

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Yeah.

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So there was his estranged wife and the pilot where the hostages, I can't remember if he killed both of them.

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And then he killed himself, the pilot's wife and his daughter filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

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And they want basically saying the FBI caused this, even though he's the one who hijacked the plane.

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And that was because just there's an important detail there that's missing.

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The hostages had negotiated their own way of safety.

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Like they had figured out how to get out of this scenario successfully.

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And then they shot up the plane and ruined all chance of them getting out safely.

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So it was because of their shoot-em-up mentality that caused that.

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Exactly.

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It was there.

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We're bigger than you are bullying approach to solving the conflict that caused the loss of life.

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And maybe they weren't directly responsible for those people dying, but essentially they, of course, said that they were.

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So now we got to change how we do things because we can't be dealing with these lawsuits all the time.

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Right.

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Right.

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And so that's kind of where Roger Fisher and William Urey talks about this getting to yes system, which is the name of a book that I've heard a lot.

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It seems like the kind of thing that we would maybe cover for for Bookworm.

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It's questionable now.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So he's basically pushing back against this too.

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I'll just real quickly cover this system because I jotted it down in the mine.

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No file.

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You separate the person, the emotion from the problem.

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You don't get wrapped up on one with the other side is asking for it.

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But instead focus on their interests, why they're asking it work cooperatively to generate win-win options and then establish mutually agreed upon standards for evaluating those possible solutions.

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You probably see the problem with that if you're dealing with hostage negotiation.

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Because, well, not all hostage takers, he makes this point later in the book.

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We'll get to that.

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But but kind of the stereotype is I want money.

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I want respect and I want a helicopter.

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Yes.

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And the FBI, the good guys want you to surrender and nobody to die.

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So these are very much at odds.

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There is no real middle ground.

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If you think about it, it's not like you're just going to let the guy walk free if he hands over the hostages.

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So it's easy to see how as a hostage shaker, if things go sideways, you feel like you are are stuck and emotions are high and you're not thinking right.

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So logic isn't going to work at this point.

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That's kind of the main thing here in this first chapter.

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And again, this is kind of laying the groundwork for everything else in the book.

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He discusses tactical empathy here, but he discusses it a lot more in chapter three.

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So I think I want to save that for now.

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Really, the big idea here is that life is negotiation and doesn't matter if you're a hostage negotiator or not.

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Negotiation is simply communication with results and it serves two life functions, information gathering and behavior influencing.

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And so he says right in his first chapter, step one, get over your aversion to negotiation.

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You have to do it no matter what.

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And it seems like no matter what walk of life you're coming from and where you're at, what state you're in,

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you can apply a lot of this in a lot of different ways.

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Like, as we're going through this,

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think about it from a family stance, from a business stance to things going on at church, friendships, relationships,

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maybe you're doing a big salary negotiation, maybe you're trying to buy a company.

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Like, these things can go a lot of different ways.

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So just be aware that, like, as we go through this, like, there are a lot, a lot of different ways that you can interpret this.

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Yep.

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Negotiation is a fact of life, just like I mentioned at the beginning, life and death isn't always hanging in the balance.

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Granted, that's how most, well, maybe it's all of these chapters started.

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Yeah.

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They all start with his personal experience in a life or death negotiation of some sort.

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And then like he would translate it into, and then here's a business world one, and then here's a student of mine.

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And then here's like, he would have three or four of these, but they didn't all have to be this life or death scenario.

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He does do that translation for you.

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Yep.

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It does make the tone of the book very intense.

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Yes.

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It feels like you're very emotionally invested in this.

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You're really rooting for the good guys to win.

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No one to get hurt, which most of the time is how it ends, but not always.

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So you get towards the end of the book and then he starts showing failures.

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Yeah.

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We'll get there.

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Next chapter, Be a Mirror.

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This one is interesting.

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The whole point of this chapter is to teach a very simple

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principle called mirroring.

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And the story that he uses is, I think he said this was the first time he had been deployed in

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New York for a bank robbery in 1993.

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And command thought that there was a big team of guys who had taken over the bank

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and the lead hostage taker was the one communicating with Chris.

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And he had made himself to seem less important and he was feeding all sorts of all kinds of

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misinformation.

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So he was doing basically a really good job of stringing them along.

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And then what Chris did is he started mirroring what the guy was saying.

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And it's simply just reflecting back what they just said in the form of a question.

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And then when you do that, they open up more.

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And so he's doing that.

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The guy's sharing more information.

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Eventually they figure out what his name is.

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They share his name on on air and then he gets rattled.

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So he leaves and the other guy comes on.

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The other guy turns out there were only two guys who had taken over the bank.

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And the second guy didn't really want to be there.

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He had been lied to.

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He didn't know they're going to rob a bank.

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He didn't know.

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It was something like they were expecting.

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He was the second guy was expecting to go and burglarize an ATM or something.

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He didn't realize he was going into a bank and taking hostages.

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Like that's a whole different game.

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Yeah.

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Manhattan Chase, I think they said it was.

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So it's like downtown New York.

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They've got hostages.

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He's like, I don't want to be here.

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So he gives himself in eventually.

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And then the guy who Chris Watts is the guy, the mastermind behind all of this.

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Eventually he lets the other hostages go to and he gives himself up.

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So successful negotiation all based on this mirroring practice, which he says is the

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term for this is isopraxum and it's basically imitation.

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When you do this, you connect with people in different ways.

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So he uses the example of a couple walking side by side and their strides tend to match up after

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a little while that's kind of the same idea with mirroring, except he's doing it verbally

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because that's the only connection they have with these people who are calling out from

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the bank that they're they're holding down and they don't have a lot of time.

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Like sometimes they'll just make their demands and then they'll hang up again.

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So he's got limited time on the line with them.

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And he's saying basically the best thing you can do at that point is to mirror them in your late

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night FM DJ voice.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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The voice matters a lot.

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I don't know that I could replicate that voice, but if you're a no if you're a negotiator,

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I'm sure you have to master that one.

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But I found this part interesting this whole mirroring concept because we do this without

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realizing it.

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And I specifically keep in mind I read this book six years ago, this what everybody is saying.

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And I told you I was going to reference this.

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I did not think this book was going to come up like this.

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Maybe we should do it for the show now that we've done this one.

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But that's a thing that Navarro talks about in that whenever you have someone else in the

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room that you are interrogating, you can mimic the way that they are positioning themselves,

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like the way that they are seated and such.

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And it helps them think that you're relating to them.

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And they're more likely to give up information when they do that,

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which is exactly what Chris is talking about here in that it shows that relational piece.

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Like I'm trying to help you like, let's let's build this bond together.

00:23:29

As much as the hostage taker doesn't want that, he ends up building that relationship

00:23:36

without them realizing it essentially.

00:23:39

And that's what he's shooting for that whole empathy.

00:23:40

Let me understand your side and the easiest way to do that right away is just mirroring back

00:23:46

their words, word for word almost, and just turning them a little bit so that they feel

00:23:51

that connection.

00:23:52

Yeah.

00:23:53

And you kind of made the point that they do it without their knowing it.

00:23:56

That's kind of the key.

00:23:57

Yeah.

00:23:58

Is he's kind of playing dumb by mirroring things back and sometimes asking questions.

00:24:07

Like that's later on in the book too.

00:24:09

But the formula here is to use the late night FM DJ voice, which is to inflict your voice in

00:24:15

a downward way to show that you're in control.

00:24:17

And he says, when you do this properly, it creates an aura of authority and trustworthiness

00:24:21

without triggering defensiveness.

00:24:22

And so an example of this is when he took over for the previous guy who was negotiating,

00:24:28

he says, where's I forget the guy's name?

00:24:33

Where's Brandon?

00:24:34

You know, he's like, Brandon's gone.

00:24:36

You're talking to me now.

00:24:38

And he's saying it in his late night FM DJ voice.

00:24:40

So he's like asserting his authority.

00:24:44

You're not going to get to talk to the other guy anymore.

00:24:46

You're going to talk to me.

00:24:47

And then he starts with an I'm sorry statement.

00:24:50

So I'm sorry that you feel that you have no options.

00:24:55

And he's saying back, it's hard for me to come up with something off the top of my head.

00:25:00

Maybe I should dig up the actual story.

00:25:02

But he's starting with I'm sorry.

00:25:04

And then he's mirroring what he is doing, saying, or feeling.

00:25:11

And then he's just letting there be silence.

00:25:14

And the silence is the key.

00:25:16

He talks about different types of negotiators later in this book and how they view silence.

00:25:20

But the silence is basically like a signal that I'm not just going to fill the void here.

00:25:26

And then they kind of don't know what to do.

00:25:28

And they feel like, well, maybe I need to talk more in order to be more fully understood.

00:25:34

So they just kind of start spilling stuff.

00:25:36

And eventually they share more than they.

00:25:38

Right.

00:25:38

They should.

00:25:39

And then you just repeat that over and over and over again until you get the information that you

00:25:44

want, which is going to give you the leverage that you need to win the negotiation.

00:25:47

Yeah.

00:25:48

Otter in the chat has a good point.

00:25:49

Like we should watch some YouTube videos of Chris talking and demonstrating this.

00:25:53

Because I feel like it would go a long ways.

00:25:55

But there is a point after he tells his main story in this chapter where he's explaining a

00:26:02

kind of a business scenario where a lady has a boss who tends to do these drivebys.

00:26:07

And we'll at the end of a day on like a Friday would walk by and just make some requests.

00:26:16

But it's like a week's worth of work that they just dump on a Friday afternoon.

00:26:21

It's like, if you've ever worked in those scenarios, you know how demoralizing that is.

00:26:27

It's not pleasant. And this lady has the wherewithal to simply say, I'm sorry, two copies.

00:26:35

Because the boss had asked her for two copies of some paperwork, which is apparently a lot of

00:26:39

work and whatever. I think it was a law firm maybe. And it was going to be a lot of work.

00:26:43

So she I'm sorry, two copies.

00:26:45

And then that forced her boss to say, yes.

00:26:49

And I need two copies, you know, by sometime next week, I think is what it was.

00:26:55

Okay, can you just verify I need to make two copies and where would you like those to be?

00:27:00

We don't have any room in our filing system here.

00:27:03

Like, this is the line of questioning that she's putting to him,

00:27:07

essentially mirroring back the words that he's saying each time. Like, I'm sorry.

00:27:13

How do you expect that to be done? I'm getting the feeling that you are expecting

00:27:19

X, Y and Z from this. How do you expect that to go? And just trying to understand what he's

00:27:27

thinking and time it was all said and done. He told us like, well, two digital copies,

00:27:32

you know, by Monday would be fine. I don't actually need anything printed, which is like

00:27:36

five minutes of work as opposed to a week.

00:27:38

And ultimately what they wanted to have happen anyways, right, right, right.

00:27:44

Who are the two copies for once for me and once for the client? Did the client ask for that?

00:27:48

Well, no, I just know that they generally do want that. Well, would you like me to follow up with

00:27:54

them on that before we go through? You see how this goes. That was pretty genius. I love that

00:28:00

example because I could totally put myself in that situation. And I have struggled and not done

00:28:08

very well, I think with responding to those types of demands. Yeah, because I right away see,

00:28:15

well, this is pointless. Why would we do this? And I tend to say that,

00:28:18

which obviously doesn't go over well. It's because you're seeking out the conflict.

00:28:24

Yeah. But when you just use the formula and you say, I'm sorry, two copies,

00:28:30

you're kind of implying this is ridiculous. I don't understand why, like explain it to me,

00:28:36

but you're not a jerk about it. Just where I mess up. And then they have to kind of think

00:28:42

out loud and process this and explain it in a way that the person that they're talking to

00:28:48

understands the motivation behind it. And a lot of times, like what happens in this scenario is that

00:28:54

the higher up who's asking for this is they're trying to explain it out loud,

00:28:58

not in their heads, they realize, oh, this isn't such a great idea. Actually, we can do this other

00:29:03

thing. Yeah, because what she learned in the process was this boss really just didn't think

00:29:08

things through and just assumed things needed done would throw the request on his subordinates and

00:29:15

they would make up for his lack of thinking. So don't do that.

00:29:21

And this is at this point in the book, getting into something that he talks about later on about

00:29:28

giving the other person the illusion of control. He's not called the illusion of control, but letting

00:29:34

them think basically that they're controlling the negotiation. Because the boss at that point

00:29:41

is thinking through things out loud and they think they're just changing the way that this

00:29:45

thing is going to get done on the fly. But the person who is receiving the request,

00:29:50

they in a way are manipulating that by the questions that they're asking to get the outcome

00:29:57

that they want. But the boss doesn't have to know that.

00:30:02

No, never, never, never tell the boss. So that's interesting.

00:30:07

I think he does call it illusion of control later on.

00:30:10

Does he? I forget the exact term that he talked about. But yeah, I mean, when you think about

00:30:14

hostage negotiation, that makes total sense. You want a person who has taken the hostages to feel

00:30:20

like they are in control, not just so that they'll let their guard down. But because, you know,

00:30:25

like mentioned at the beginning, it's an emotionally charged situation. They're not thinking straight,

00:30:29

you're not going to logic a hostage negotiator into a right course of action.

00:30:34

And I feel like I'm guilty of that one too. But what we'll get there, let's go on to the next

00:30:41

chapter. Number three, don't feel their pain label it. So this combined with mirroring is really

00:30:49

80% of the book, probably the takeaways from the book. The story from this one is a couple of heavily

00:30:56

armed fugitives who are hold up in a 27th, 27th floor apartment with a hostage and they try to

00:31:04

negotiate through the apartment door for six hours, no response. And then Chris comes in and he

00:31:10

basically is saying things like, it seems like you worry that if you open the door, we'll come in

00:31:14

with guns blazing. It looks like you don't want to come out. It looks like you don't want to go

00:31:18

back to jail because they're not even responding. He's saying, he's labeling their fear basically.

00:31:25

And as he's talking out loud, they're like, yeah, yeah, you're right. And eventually they just come

00:31:29

and they give themselves up. Right. They didn't even know they were in there. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:31:34

So it was like six hours and they weren't even certain they were in the room. They were so quiet

00:31:39

and they didn't respond. But they just kept talking through the door. Just like, here's what it looks

00:31:45

like. Here's what we're seeing. Is this true? And then all of a sudden they open the door and come

00:31:51

out. Yeah. Well, not even saying is this true, but it seems like, because really what you're saying

00:31:57

at that point is, it appears to me that this is what's going on. And you're giving them a chance to

00:32:04

respond. And what you really want is for them to get to the point where they confirm that that

00:32:12

is actually what's going on. That's right. That's the key. We'll get to that. But yeah,

00:32:16

labeling is just basically recognizing and verbalizing the predictable emotions in the situation.

00:32:22

And it diffuses those negative emotions and it can reinforce the positive ones.

00:32:28

I think this is a section where he tells the story of his son on the football team.

00:32:36

Does it sound right? Is this the right section? So he, so his son. I think that's later on with the

00:32:44

two words. I think that's chapter five. I know a story you're talking about, though.

00:32:48

Okay. You can bring it up here if you want. Yeah, I think because this ties in two different ways.

00:32:53

And I think I'm going to bring it up here because there's a section of that story where,

00:32:58

okay, so his son is a little over six feet tall, 250 pounds in high school,

00:33:05

which means he can run over just about anybody he wants on the football team. So he was a lineman

00:33:12

and just loved hitting people. That was his thing. And I think it was his senior year,

00:33:18

junior senior year, I forget his coach realized he would be phenomenal as a linebacker.

00:33:26

If you know football positions, he's now behind the lineman on the defensive side of things.

00:33:32

And it's his job to read the line, figure out where the ball carrier is and seek them out and

00:33:37

destroy them as his son would adopt. You still get to tackle people, but your job until you tackle

00:33:44

the person is to avoid what he was doing, just hitting people. Yes, because then you get stuck.

00:33:50

But the problem was his son kept engaging with everyone that tried to get in his way. Like he

00:33:56

would just run them over, but then he wasn't doing his one job, which was to seek out the ball carrier.

00:34:02

So his dad, Chris Voss, pulls him aside and walks him through this process. He's like,

00:34:10

it looks like you're avoiding people. It seems like you feel it is your duty to be a man and engage

00:34:18

anyone who wants to fight against you. It looks like that's what your job is, but your real job is

00:34:25

to destroy the ball carrier. And his son says, that's right. Now, we'll get to that particular

00:34:32

phrase here in a couple chapters, but his son then goes on to become very skilled at deflecting

00:34:39

tacklers until he gets to the exact person who has the ball and then proceeds to destroy them.

00:34:44

Becomes good at being a linebacker in the process.

00:34:48

Yeah. And since he brought up that story, I'll just mention the key piece to that is he understood

00:34:53

what changes to make logically, but he didn't ever make those changes because he just like

00:35:01

hitting people. And when his dad would sit down and explain things logically, hey, you should

00:35:08

avoid getting caught up in the line so you can make tackles. Yeah, you're right. Like that's always

00:35:11

the phrase you're right. And then when he started using the other tactics, that's when it switched

00:35:17

from your right to that's right as he's labeling his feelings. And then that's when the changes

00:35:22

happened. Yeah. And I think this is and I think part of the reason I'm bringing this story up now,

00:35:27

it's a little bit out of order because the whole year right versus that's right thing is in chapter

00:35:32

five. But this is where like in this book, he has a tendency to have like at the very beginning,

00:35:40

he's got two or three things. He's got the mirroring piece. He's got these questions of like the

00:35:45

empathy piece that we're on right now, like trying to label what other people are feeling and show

00:35:50

that you understand their feeling. Like those pieces are kind of the core that the rest of

00:35:58

what he does revolves around. Almost everything else. I mean, there's some tweaks to it. There's

00:36:03

some adjustments and some nuances that he goes through in these later chapters. But like that's

00:36:07

the core of it. And you're building off of those pieces in every other aspect. Yep. So I think

00:36:13

that's why like some of these stories like yes, technically he's referring to it later on, but at

00:36:19

the very beginning, like it does apply because he's going to use it later on as well.

00:36:23

Yep. And the shift there is in focusing on the other person and their motivations. Like one of

00:36:32

the action items I jotted down from this book comes from this chapter three, which is don't use the

00:36:37

word I because it doesn't matter how you feel. It really matters how the other person feels. If

00:36:46

your goal is a successful negotiation, I mean, from a relationship level, you could make the

00:36:53

argument that yes, your feelings do matter. But when you're using it through the lens of the

00:36:57

perspective of a hostage negotiation, it doesn't matter how Chris feels. His only job is to get the

00:37:01

people out alive. Right. Right. Have one task. Yeah. So recognize that. But I think using the word

00:37:10

I like I just did right there will result in not as effective communication in general, not just

00:37:17

negotiation, because it's no one likes it when you make it about you. Those are the people that I

00:37:24

can't I can't stand to be around the people who like don't even notice don't even don't really engage

00:37:32

like they talk to hear themselves talk. And then they're thinking you can tell even they're thinking

00:37:37

about what they're going to say next. They're not interested in what you have to say. Well, when you

00:37:42

use the word I you're basically saying I'm not interested in what you have to say. Right. Right.

00:37:46

So yeah, it's a tough one. But yeah, this whole labeling thing is is fascinating. Another way to

00:37:51

use this, by the way, is to list the worst things that your counterpart can say about you and say

00:37:57

them before the other person can. So something like you probably feeling like I'm a complete jerk

00:38:05

who's gonna try to bleed you drive every cent that you have. You know, and then you say that and

00:38:11

you didn't even have to respond. But something inside of them, if they're any sort of decent,

00:38:15

is probably like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying.

00:38:17

The very first thing I thought of when he was explaining is like, okay, when you start this

00:38:26

process, just explain all of the shortcomings that you yourself have. Yeah, or the like the

00:38:33

perception that the broader picture shows. The very first thing I thought about was eight mile.

00:38:38

You've seen eight mile haven't you seen eight mile? Have not you haven't. Okay. Welcome to the

00:38:44

world of wrapping and Eminem. Do you know Eminem, the rapper? I do. Never been my my cup of tea.

00:38:52

Well, even if you're not a rapper, I got an interesting, you know, it's interesting to watch

00:39:00

eight mile because essentially it is freestyle wrapping. And in that world, whenever you're doing

00:39:08

the competitions, generally you're making fun of the other rapper. Like that is what you're doing.

00:39:12

And towards the end of it, you know, Eminem, of course, is playing the underdog through the

00:39:19

whole thing. And towards the end of it, he's now facing up against his rival, who has completely

00:39:26

destroyed him in the past. I'm ruining the book or the movie for anybody who hasn't.

00:39:31

That's okay. It's like 20 years old, isn't it? It's it's not new. No, this is where the middle

00:39:37

age label might come in. And at the end, what Eminem does in the rap, he begins it. He starts.

00:39:48

So there's always a back and forth. And he starts. And instead of making fun of the guy he's against,

00:39:54

he simply makes fun of himself the entire time. And he takes everything that this other rapper

00:40:02

was going to use against him. And he does it instead, which leaves the other guy with nothing.

00:40:09

He labels it. Yeah. And he doesn't even try to wrap against him. So there is no competition there.

00:40:14

And Eminem wins the rap, the rap off. So anyway, that's what I thought about whenever he was

00:40:19

explaining the process of show your own weaknesses and the flaws on your own side,

00:40:26

maybe where you've screwed up in the process as a way to give them the opportunity to say,

00:40:30

"Oh, no, no, no. It wasn't that bad." That's essentially the response you're trying to elicit

00:40:35

in that process. But I couldn't help to think about rap battles with Eminem. Sorry.

00:40:40

Wasn't expecting me to tell that story. To not anticipate we would be discussing Joe's experience

00:40:48

with rap battles on Booker. Here we are. I think that's kind of... Oh, there's one other thing

00:40:59

from this chapter, which I mentioned in chapter one, the tactical empathy. This is probably worth

00:41:04

explaining just real briefly. This is the opposite of playing dumb. He says it's emotional

00:41:09

intelligence on steroids. So right away, I like that definition. Sure. Tactical empathy is

00:41:14

understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind

00:41:19

those feelings. So you increase your influence in the moments that follow, which maybe sounds a

00:41:24

little bit heartless when you define it that way. But again, remember his perspective, he's a hostage

00:41:31

negotiator. Yes. So his job is not to create a win-win scenario. It's to get people out alive.

00:41:40

And he makes the point here, which I thought this was really good. Empathy is not sympathy.

00:41:45

And I think that is very important. This is when I started to think about that phrase,

00:41:50

we don't negotiate with terrorists. And he calls it out later. So we won't deal with that right now.

00:41:55

But this kind of made me think like, well, okay, so you don't have to sympathize with a terrorist

00:42:03

if you are negotiating with them. But you do have to empathize with them. You have to understand

00:42:10

where they're coming from, whereas sympathy is agreeing with those values and beliefs. You

00:42:15

don't have to agree with them, but you do need to understand them. Right. And there's a big,

00:42:21

big difference there, obviously. Yep. Because I'm not going to go into the details, but a couple

00:42:26

nights ago, there's a ton of major rioting going on in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis specifically.

00:42:33

And although I don't understand a lot of what's going on, I mean, there's a lot of charged

00:42:41

feelings from both sides of the coin there. You don't have to have sympathy

00:42:49

for one side or the other, but you can understand the feelings for both sides,

00:42:56

like people who are for or against whatever is going on. Like you can easily start to understand

00:43:02

the feelings behind both sides, which is why I take a very neutral stance on it,

00:43:06

because I understand both ends of that. And it's difficult to say, this side's right,

00:43:12

that side's wrong, because they're kind of both right and they're kind of both wrong.

00:43:17

So when you start coming at it from that side, let's have the empathy for both ends here.

00:43:22

I think if a lot of the people there would take that approach, the whole situation wouldn't exist.

00:43:29

But that's all another topic in itself. But so much of this is when you're trying to

00:43:36

come to not necessarily a middle ground, but a solution,

00:43:39

understanding how the other person feels or the other group feels and the way your actions can

00:43:47

be perceived, whether they're accurate or misinformed doesn't matter. But just being aware of how

00:43:54

the other person is going to feel based on your actions, that goes a very long ways.

00:43:58

And I think that's the core of so much of this book is just be a friend, essentially,

00:44:06

to somebody you don't want to be a friend with. And try to understand where they're coming from

00:44:11

and build a little bit of rapport and a relationship with them.

00:44:14

Exactly. And you don't even have to be a friend, you just need to

00:44:21

understand where they're coming from and not advocate quite so much for what you want

00:44:28

and listen to what they want and what they need. Which, if all you did was that,

00:44:35

like your opinion of the people that you're talking to doesn't have to change. If that was

00:44:39

the only thing that happened, politics in the US would look so different.

00:44:42

So, so ridiculous. Anyways, let's just leave that where it is.

00:44:50

Let's go into the poll to go. We can go on.

00:44:54

No, it is a lack of empathy. I mentioned that before. Was it leaders eat last by Simon Sinek?

00:45:03

How that kind of blew my mind? How when they stopped going to the same schools,

00:45:07

they stopped living in the same areas, they stopped humanizing the other side. And so,

00:45:13

now it's us against them. That's not good for anybody.

00:45:17

The next chapter kind of takes that empathy and the negotiation and how you get to a solution.

00:45:25

It takes it to the next level. This is Beware Yes and Master No. He makes the point that for

00:45:30

good negotiators, No is pure gold and how No is really the start of the negotiation,

00:45:36

not the end of it. Later on in the book, he talks about some ways to get that first No

00:45:42

and use it as an anchor and stuff like that. But at this point, I feel like this is a really

00:45:48

important thing for people who maybe haven't heard that before.

00:45:52

How Yes seems to be the thing that you're striving for because that indicates agreement.

00:45:59

But he talks in this chapter about three different types of Yes. The counterfeit Yes,

00:46:04

which is when your counterpart just they want to say no, but they say yes just to get you to

00:46:08

shut up and go away. It's an easier escape route. And when you define that, I'm like,

00:46:12

totally done that myself. I never do that one. The confirmation Yes,

00:46:18

which is innocent and reflexive. It's a response to black and white questions.

00:46:24

This is what happens a lot of times when people will get you on the phone and ask a bunch of

00:46:29

questions because they're trying to sell you something and they try to build that Yes ladder.

00:46:34

You know, I have a totally different view of that now having read this book. It doesn't matter how

00:46:39

many times they say Yes, if it's a confirmation Yes, and you're going for the third type of Yes,

00:46:44

which is a commitment. This is the real deal, the true agreement that leads to action. If you

00:46:48

really want them to take any sort of action, you need to get to that point and you can't just like

00:46:54

lead them into it. You can't get them to say Yes, enough at a lower level that eventually they will

00:47:01

do that. They have to be invested in it. And kind of the way to do that is to keep saying No,

00:47:06

and to hear them say Yes over and over and over again, as you force them to make these

00:47:11

decisions for themselves. So it's different than the Yes ladder where it's just like,

00:47:14

obviously the answer to this is Yes, you're asking stupid questions like, is the sky blue,

00:47:18

you know, Yes, of course it is. And the belief is from internet marketing that if you get them to

00:47:25

say Yes, enough, then when you say, Hey, will you give me your money? Well, Yes, because I've said

00:47:28

Yes, a bunch of times. But that is a commitment. Yes, the other ones were like, Are you sick of this?

00:47:34

Are you? You know, those are confirmation Yes, is and they're not the same thing at all. It's really

00:47:38

the point that he's making. So you need to make the person feel safe and secure and feel like they

00:47:42

are in control. If you really want to get to that commitment, Yes, and the easiest way to do that

00:47:46

is to give them the opportunity to say No. And I feel like we need to do that more.

00:47:51

Like just in day to day, like we'd. There's so many things like, Yeah, I feel pretty good about

00:47:58

things. Yeah, I think, you know, these are good, good commitments to make. Yes, I'd would like to go do

00:48:03

that. Yes, I would like to help you with that. Yes, you should do that. Correct. No, crossroads,

00:48:11

if anybody didn't catch that reference. I think there's a lot of potential in changing some of

00:48:21

our default answers. We've talked about this a lot with the whole habit routine obsession that we have

00:48:27

in changing default answers to a lot of different things and

00:48:32

changing some of those responses that are just kind of confirmations. Like, Yeah, I think it's

00:48:39

going pretty well, changing that to, No, I could see some improvement on that. Like, you know,

00:48:46

that's minor and it might change. Like it could lead to a pretty long conversation depending on who

00:48:52

you're talking to. But if you make that slight change, I feel like in the long term, you're

00:48:58

going to solve a lot of issues that really are just skipped over in so many scenarios. And that's a

00:49:03

lot of what he's getting at here is by saying, No, you're opening the door to a conversation,

00:49:10

to trying to figure out why it's not working or what is actually going on and how do we get past it.

00:49:19

If you're just saying, Yes, it's just a let's just swipe that off the table and move on.

00:49:25

Now with me being a little more upset about it because I've committed to something most likely.

00:49:30

But but you get my point saying, No, I feel like it could help us out in a lot of ways. But

00:49:36

we've talked about saying no in the past too. And yet, Joe says yes. Yeah, it's the kind of thing

00:49:41

that's easy to understand, but difficult maybe to implement, especially if you have any sort of

00:49:46

people pleasing tendencies like I do for sure. I don't. None. I just wanted to say no.

00:49:53

Well, good for you because there's a lot of good that comes with saying no. He talks about no has a

00:49:59

lot of skills in this chapter. It allows the real issues to be brought for it to protect people

00:50:04

from making and lets them correct ineffective decisions. It slows things down so people can

00:50:10

freely embrace their decisions that helps people feel safe, secure, emotionally comfortable and

00:50:14

in control of their decisions and it moves everyone forward. And this is the thing I think you're

00:50:19

getting at is that the goal should not be get to yes. And then let's move on, but it should be

00:50:26

effective communication and a resolution that's implemented, implemented well, and everybody's happy

00:50:32

with. And if you've gone through iterations of that where you agree to something, you don't want

00:50:38

to do it. And then you resent the fact that you're doing it eventually is going to fall apart. And

00:50:43

then you have to renegotiate the fact that you're going back to the table and having these discussions

00:50:47

over and over again, that's the part that always drives me nuts. It's like we talked about this

00:50:52

once. Why do we got to do this again? Because we sucked that at the first time. Because we weren't

00:50:57

real with each other. We weren't willing to show how we really felt, which if you're dealing with

00:51:05

relationships people close to you, that's when things can get really tricky. But it's better for

00:51:10

everyone if just all the cards are on the table. And this is difficult. Like, I don't know the

00:51:16

correct formula for this. I don't think there really is one. Because you do have to balance like,

00:51:22

well, if I tell them how I really feel, they're going to feel hurt. You have to figure out in

00:51:27

each of those situations, I think, a way to do it in a way that is that minimizes the amount of

00:51:34

damage to the other person. But you can't shy away from this is a lot of times anyways, you

00:51:40

can't shy away from, well, this is what's really going on here. This is how I see this situation.

00:51:45

Almost every time that I've tried to just kind of sweep that under the rug, this will be fine.

00:51:50

It's never fine. It blows up eventually. It's better to just do it of your own volition at the

00:51:57

beginning. Sure. As the one who seeks out confrontation, I feel like you'd be fine at this.

00:52:02

Depends. It depends. If I know I'm going to see you every week at an organization, or even worse,

00:52:15

I think is at work. If I have to work with you on a regular basis every day, then I'm going to

00:52:22

think a little bit more about bringing the conflict. Because even if I see it as productive in addressing

00:52:30

the thing that's really there, there's got to be an agreement, I think, from the other side to

00:52:33

address the thing that's really there. If you and I are at odds about the future of bookworm,

00:52:40

and I'm like, "No, Joe, we got to talk about this right now." You don't feel like you're in the

00:52:45

place where you want to tell me right now, "Sorry, Mike. I'm done with this." It doesn't matter how

00:52:51

much I feel I'm bearing my soul and we're having this great heart-to-heart conversation because

00:52:57

you're not really in it. That's a totally fictitious example that is not real people, so don't worry.

00:53:03

There is no truth to that one. There are not back office conversations about canceling bookworm

00:53:11

those do not exist. Now, I might be an odd cat in that I feel like I have people bring

00:53:20

confrontational things to me fairly regularly. I have spent a lot of time telling people,

00:53:26

"If you have issues, please come tell me." I have told people that for a long time. I feel like

00:53:32

whenever people have something that's either me directly or something that I have influence over,

00:53:37

generally people feel comfortable bringing that to me. I know you and I have had some

00:53:42

conversations about how do we change things up for bookworm? I don't ever feel like I've been

00:53:46

difficult to approach. Maybe you would argue with that. No. I do not think you're difficult

00:53:52

to approach. I'm very a pain. We also don't work together daily. We meet every other week.

00:54:02

We have text conversations, random phone calls here and there. It's not like it's a daily thing,

00:54:06

so maybe that would change it? Right. Possibly. I think the frequency gets taken into the

00:54:12

equation, basically. Sure. If you're dealing with somebody regularly and you're not confident

00:54:20

that getting to the root of the issue is really going to produce the change that you want right

00:54:25

now, then I could foresee a scenario where you're just punting that conversation until later.

00:54:30

Sure. Sure. All right. Let's move on to chapter five. We talked a little bit about this already,

00:54:35

so there's not a whole lot I think we need to discuss here. But this chapter title is "Trigger

00:54:40

the Two Words That Immediately Transform Any Negotiation." You talked about the football

00:54:45

example already, which I think was great because that's the real life anybody can picture themselves

00:54:49

in that scenario. A kidnapping story here, though, was fascinating to me. There was an Islamic

00:54:58

terrorist group Abai Sayaf that kidnapped an American, Jeffrey Schilling, and it was led by

00:55:06

Abu Sabaya, who wanted $10 million as a ransom. He wanted this $10 million as payment for what he

00:55:15

termed as war damages. There's no way the hostage negotiator is going to view these war damages.

00:55:25

What war damages? He just got to let that stuff go that's in the past. He was holding on to this,

00:55:33

and he was working through a translator named Benji who absolutely hated this guy,

00:55:39

and he had to convince him to try this approach. Once he got him on board, then he talked to

00:55:47

Abu Sabaya, and at that point, he's mirroring and he's labeling, and he's putting himself in

00:55:55

their shoes. I forget what exactly the statement was, but he was basically saying, "Well, I can

00:56:02

understand how you would feel betrayed by filling the blank." At that point, Abu Sabaya said the

00:56:09

two words they were trying to hear, which is, "That's right." At that point, he's like, "Okay,

00:56:15

they get me." From that point, they dropped the war demands part of the hostage negotiation.

00:56:21

They held a monologue enough that eventually, Jeffrey Schilling escaped, and he was rescued by

00:56:27

the Philippine commandos. This breakthrough happened right before that happened. He was upset when

00:56:34

it happened because he's like, "Well, I want to know what I would have been able to talk him down

00:56:37

to from 10 million," because that was the point of breakthrough. Then everything changed after that.

00:56:43

This militant guy who is a fanatic, it's tied to his religion and how he views the world, so you're

00:56:52

not going to change his mind. Then just by labeling and understanding, having the empathy,

00:56:58

well, this must really be upsetting to you. It's like, "Oh, finally, they get it. Okay, I'll talk to

00:57:05

you now." Right. Then afterwards, there was a time when he called back in after Schilling escaped,

00:57:13

and it was like, "I don't know what you did, but I really wanted to kill him." Like, "What?"

00:57:18

Yeah. He was planning all these things, and he's like, "I'm not sure what you did in these

00:57:25

negotiation processes, but I was really going to go somewhere with this."

00:57:29

Yeah, and he talked to Benji again, and he's like, "I hope they promoted you because you're amazing."

00:57:32

Yeah. He's basically just puppeting what Chris was telling him to say.

00:57:36

Again, it's like some of these stories. Really? Yeah. It's crazy.

00:57:43

There's a little bit of this that's like, "Okay, these are tactics. There are specific words,

00:57:51

specific ways of saying these words, and ways to communicate with people, and it has a profound

00:57:58

effect on them." It's kind of weird. When you're reading these stories, it's like,

00:58:04

"Did it really go that way? That's all he did." All he did was just say, "This is how you

00:58:13

feel through an empty door, and they just gave themselves up and walked out the door." Really?

00:58:17

Really? There's a little bit of that element with some of these stories, this being one of them.

00:58:23

I do not doubt that it went that way at all. I have zero hesitations in saying that that's

00:58:31

exactly how it went. It just, man, we really are that fickle of a creature, it seems.

00:58:39

We make things way too hard. We think we got to outthink this. He's basically,

00:58:45

no, this is really a simple formula. You just mirror, and you label, and eventually,

00:58:52

you get to the point where they feel like they've been heard, and then they soften, or they crack.

00:58:56

A big thing from chapter five is get to that's right. Those are the words that you want to hear.

00:59:05

Not your right, that's actually the worst answer. You use that when you want to get people to shut

00:59:09

up and go away. You can use the summary to trigger that's right response, but that's right is a

00:59:15

stealth victory, he says, in a lot of ways it's better than yes. I think this has a lot of application

00:59:22

to every day negotiating. This is something I want to apply is I want to get better at the

00:59:29

active listening process, where you're repeating back what somebody just said. That's a great way

00:59:33

to get someone to say that's right. I think not because I want to get more in a negotiation or

00:59:38

anything, but just because I want more effective communication, that's something that I want to

00:59:43

do a better job of. I don't have an action I'm associated with that because I think it has to

00:59:47

kind of depend on the situation, but it's totally something I'm going to be more aware of and try

00:59:52

to prioritize now in my conversations and negotiations. That's right. All right, number six, bend their

00:59:58

reality. This one, he talks about the Haitian political figures nephews, political figures nephew,

01:00:09

who called and said that his aunt was kidnapped from her car, they wanted $150,000 ransom. Again,

01:00:13

something that happened to all the time. At this point, the family is like, no, I just pay it,

01:00:19

get her back, but they don't really have the money. So they're like, can you talk them down?

01:00:24

And he talks them down to $4,751 and a CD stereo from their initial demand of $150,000.

01:00:32

Yes. Because they noticed a couple themes from these kidnappings, which were happening

01:00:36

frequently Mondays, there were a lot of these kidnappings and the thugs grew increasingly

01:00:40

eager to get paid as the weekend approached. So they just kept kind of asking the questions,

01:00:45

saying no without saying no, stringing along till it got later on, and then asked things in a way to

01:00:53

kind of show that they didn't really have that much money, even though they were prepared to

01:00:59

be to give like 50,000 or 100,000. I forget what it was. It was significantly more than what they

01:01:03

ended up at. They followed this formula where they anchored their emotions, they looked the other

01:01:10

guy go first, they established a range. Eventually they pivot to non monetary terms. And then when

01:01:17

they gave a number, it was an odd one, like the $4,751. And then you add something that doesn't

01:01:24

have any monetary value on top of it like the CD player. So you go back and forth, this is what

01:01:29

you end up at, and this is what they'll take is kind of a takeaway from this chapter.

01:01:34

Yeah, you're essentially, this is where they introduced, I believe this is the

01:01:39

where they introduced like, what happens when we run out of money? Like asking that to the hostage

01:01:46

taker, we're going to run out of money at some point. What happens at that point?

01:01:50

And he made the comment, it will, it'll all be all right, which is a huge win in the negotiation

01:01:58

process, because that tells them that he has no intention to harm the hostage. He's just after a

01:02:04

payout. That's it. So that told them like, well, this is just a string along game until we can

01:02:11

find something that works for both of us. And it's a pure monetary negotiation. That's what it told

01:02:15

the negotiators. So that was a big win. But that whole like, in doing that, you're giving them

01:02:22

that, that sense of, I suppose this is kind of the next one, but you're giving them the appearance

01:02:30

that they have all the leverage, they have the ability to control the entire situation. Again,

01:02:37

this is where things kind of start to go chapter over chapter, and they kind of flow together a

01:02:42

little bit. But I thought that was an interesting way to pose things like, okay, when this happens,

01:02:46

then what? And just asking that question, because now you're, you're essentially putting the onus on

01:02:52

the person who is wronging you in this case, on the other side of the fence, like you're putting

01:02:59

the onus on them to solve your problem. And it puts them in a spot where they feel like they have

01:03:06

the power, even though you're saying, Hey, you have a problem. This is your issue to deal with.

01:03:12

What do you want me to do about it? So it gives them that appearance of full power in the scenario,

01:03:17

even though you're telling them that they have a big issue. So the big thing from this chapter

01:03:24

is the appearance of the deadline, how that causes people to rush and to make bad decisions. And this

01:03:30

is really where the title of the book comes to, where splitting the difference never makes anybody

01:03:34

happy. And the example that he uses here is that a woman wants her husband to wear black shoes to

01:03:39

this event with his suit, he wants to wear brown shoes to split the difference is ridiculous,

01:03:44

where you wear one brown shoe, one black shoe, that's the worst possible solution. Don't ever do

01:03:49

that. Yeah. And so he says, we don't compromise because it's right, we compromise because it's

01:03:54

easy. And he makes the point that no deal is better than a bad deal. So you take all that, and then

01:04:02

you apply that in the next chapter, chapter seven, creating the illusion of control. This is kind

01:04:06

of what you were talking about. This is where the secret to gaining the upper hand in negotiation

01:04:11

is to give the other side the illusion of control. And so this is where the calibrated questions come

01:04:17

in. This, I think, is a really important point. This is where you were talking about they're asking

01:04:23

the questions like how, and they say specifically use words like what how and sometimes why, but

01:04:29

be careful with why because that can be a little bit accusatory and then that can

01:04:34

come backfire. But you want to use words designed to get your counterpart to think and then speak

01:04:38

expansively, get them to solve your problems, which is why to your point, they were basically saying,

01:04:43

it'll be all right, because they were basically saying, well, this is the problem, we're going

01:04:48

to run out of money. We don't want you to kill this guy. How do we know? It's going to be okay.

01:04:54

At that point, you know that they really don't have any intention of killing the person, but the

01:05:00

story that they tell, this is one of the failures they had, like the hostage negotiation story. This

01:05:05

is Manila 2001 again, Abu Sabayyaf, he raided this private diving resort, he's taken 20 different

01:05:12

hostages. And the day after the president of Manila declares all out war on this terrorist group.

01:05:22

The army and the Marines have a turf war, they've got several botched raids, the US, because there's

01:05:29

hostages from the US involved, the CIA, FBI and US military intelligence are all called in.

01:05:34

And at this point, the kidnappers are just ticked off. And so they do a lot of bad stuff. And then

01:05:40

9/11 happens and they're linked to al-Qaeda. So he's like, in short, this was a disaster,

01:05:44

because we didn't give them the illusion of control. They called in all the cavalry.

01:05:50

Right. And they had them all lined up ready to shoot their way out, you know, and a positive

01:05:56

application with this, though, is that story that you were talking about where they're trying to

01:06:00

keep this person alive. Eventually they escape, you know, because you're putting another person

01:06:05

in control by offering these calibrated questions. But this is brilliant to me, because a lot of

01:06:11

times the way I think I try to create the solution, present the solution, hey, what do you guys think

01:06:16

about this? And I want to not do that so much. And I want to start asking these questions in the

01:06:21

meetings and be like, so what do you think we should do about this? Or how would you solve this

01:06:27

problem and just kind of see what happens with this? I've tried this a couple times already,

01:06:31

since I read this with mixed success. I think with the right group, this totally works,

01:06:42

especially in a business situation, though, you have to have people, you have to have an organization

01:06:48

that is open to doing things a little bit differently. Thinking critically, like they're not just

01:06:52

walking through the stereotypical meeting. It's not going to work in that scenario. I can tell

01:06:58

you from experience. Sure. If they got their webcams off and they're just trying to like sit and

01:07:03

endure the meeting until someone eventually says, okay, that's enough. They're not going to

01:07:08

want to think and solve these problems. It's not going to go anywhere. But everybody's there

01:07:12

actually trying to solve problems. And yeah, I totally see this working.

01:07:16

I've had a couple of cases where I've used this in the last week, where people are posing

01:07:22

some grand technical thing at the church. And in one case, it involved a live stream

01:07:32

on an extra day of the week. Sounds minor. But if you know that space, you're aware.

01:07:40

That means I got a computer person. I got three camera people. I got a sound person. I got a tech

01:07:47

person. I got close to eight people involved. When you say, yes, we're going to live stream that.

01:07:53

And I'm going to have extra setup. And we've got extra tear down because of normal operations.

01:08:00

So simply posing the question sounds great. How do you expect that to happen? What is your

01:08:08

expectation of how this is going to work and when do you expect all the rehearsals to happen?

01:08:14

Well, I didn't know we needed rehearsal. You got a lot of logistics you're going to want to run

01:08:19

through when you want to do that. Well, I'm not sure we're going to have time for a rehearsal.

01:08:23

How much planning are you going to plan it to do for this? Like, you got to give me something.

01:08:29

Like, there's a lot involved here. This is not just a flip a switch. You're going to have to do some

01:08:35

talking and explaining it. So I've used this. Great. How do you expect that to go?

01:08:43

And me being the tech person, I'm supposed to be the one with the answers that just comes in and

01:08:48

says, let's get it done. But I don't have the bandwidth or the people to do that.

01:08:53

Sure. I'm trying to be a great leader with my team, which also means giving them space

01:08:58

whenever they need it. And when I've got other folks, like, hey, we're going to do this thing.

01:09:04

Cool. Who's in charge? Who's doing what? How do I know it's going to go off? Okay. What happens

01:09:13

afterwards? Are you posting a recording? Have you thought through all these details? No.

01:09:18

When's the first one supposed to happen in a week? We better go have a two hour meeting.

01:09:23

Like, we got a lot to discuss. We had a lot of decisions to make. So when you start explaining

01:09:30

that very quickly, it gets pushed to a, nope, we're not going to do that because they start to

01:09:34

realize the difficulties there. But that all came from, sure, how would you expect that to happen?

01:09:41

When you make that decision to go live, how do you see it coming to fruition? And just asking

01:09:49

that question in that way goes a very long distance. And that's important that you ask the question.

01:09:55

That's why he gives specific words to use because it forces them to think through the details.

01:10:00

You can't just say, so if I'm hearing you right, you want this, this, this, that, and the other

01:10:07

thing, he says, avoid verbs that can is our do or does because if you were to list out all the

01:10:14

things and then let them say a simple yes or no, it's easy for them to say yes. And then it's on

01:10:20

you to go make it all happen. But when you throw it back at them, kind of play dumb in a sense.

01:10:26

And like, okay, so can you explain to me what this all looks like? And then they have to connect

01:10:34

all those dots, then, oh, you're right, this is a major undertaking.

01:10:39

Right. One of the questions I've asked whenever somebody poses doing a live stream,

01:10:44

I simply present the scenario and say, okay, traditionally, when you have a service with a start

01:10:52

time, streaming on Twitch and such isn't as big a deal because there's no official like program

01:10:59

that starts at a set time. Bookworm's a little odd in that we do have that, but we always have

01:11:04

like a little bit of banter and stuff we have before we say now we're recording, which if you're

01:11:10

interested in that, you can jump on the streams. But whenever I've got streams for a church,

01:11:15

there's a set time, there's a countdown timer for when that service starts. And if you say,

01:11:22

we're going to turn on a stream at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night, I got to have something about 10

01:11:30

minutes prior to that so that there's a feed that exists that gives people time to get it up and

01:11:35

get it ready. Sure. So there's a prep time. Personally, I prefer to have about 20 minutes of just

01:11:40

something up to give people time to get their home tech and stuff in place.

01:11:45

Whenever anyone mentions something about like cool idea, what would you like to have up on the

01:11:54

screen for 20 minutes before we go live? I don't know how many live streams have been decided against

01:12:01

because of that one question. Because no one knows. Like there's not like, like, you know,

01:12:08

in one case, we just had a static slide with a countdown timer. Totally fine. I don't have

01:12:12

an issue with that. It lets me gives me something to put up on a feed. But the simple difficulty of

01:12:18

putting together a graphic to put a timer on is insurmountable for most of these.

01:12:23

Okay. Anyway, it gets me out of a lot of work. That's all I'm saying.

01:12:29

Yeah. And the goal is not necessarily to get out of the work. It is to help the people that

01:12:36

you are working with because everybody there has got the same goal that we're able to make the

01:12:41

best use of our resources. It's true. I will say, I only tend to do this when I question the

01:12:46

motives behind live streaming it. If I understand the mission behind it right away, I'm on board

01:12:52

and I usually use make it work. I make it work. I'll find ways to make it happen. But when I'm

01:12:59

questionable about is that actually is anyone actually going to watch that? Then I start posing

01:13:06

questions like somebody's got to help me out here because I'm not on board. Right. Anyway,

01:13:12

I've run a lot of live streams. That's all I'm saying. The live stream pro.

01:13:16

Can we go on to the next one? I want to tell the story about a drug dealer.

01:13:20

Guarantee execution chapter eight. Why don't you tell your story about the drug dealer?

01:13:25

All right. So there's a line of thinking that Chris, Voss and team have struggled with

01:13:33

in that there's a series of questions they would generally ask to try to determine if the hostage

01:13:38

was still alive. A lot of times they would coach the family members who were actually in conversation

01:13:44

with the hostage taker, the kidnapper. There's simple questions like, can you tell me what

01:13:52

Josie's favorite dog's name was? It's these kind of like security question type things.

01:13:59

And anytime that question comes up, that's the traditional way you're saying, right?

01:14:03

Yeah, that's the traditional way. And the kidnappers, whenever they would hear this,

01:14:06

they know that that person's being coached by the police in some way. And Chris struggled with this

01:14:12

and could not figure out a way to get around it. Well, he was in a situation where he was

01:14:17

negotiating. It went south and they had two missionaries that ended up being killed and one

01:14:24

that was severely injured. I don't remember if she died afterwards or not. But he found out after

01:14:28

the fact that there was a kind of a rebellious senator in the local government that managed to

01:14:37

get one of these hostages on the phone when he never got anywhere close to that. And this guy

01:14:42

had zero training. He was purely a nobody in the name of negotiating, but he had something to win

01:14:48

by trying to get one of these hostages back. And it bothered him that he wasn't able to get this

01:14:56

hostage on the phone. And yet this nobody was able to do it very quickly with no training.

01:15:02

The proof of life. Yep. Proof of life scenario is what they were trying to do,

01:15:06

which is a huge win in the world of negotiations with hostages. He was called in as a consultant

01:15:14

for a situation where there was a drug dealer in a bit of a war with another drug dealer.

01:15:21

Drug dealer A, kidnapped drug dealer B's girlfriend and drug dealer B contacts the FBI to help him

01:15:29

get girlfriend back. And first off, the irony of a drug dealer going to the FBI in the middle of a

01:15:36

war with another drug dealer. Really? Again, you can't make this stuff up. He is coaching and he shows up

01:15:48

drug dealer B is on the phone with drug dealer A. And in the midst of conversation, just says,

01:15:55

"Hey, dog, how do I know the girl's still alive?" Yeah. He literally says, quote, yo, dog.

01:16:00

Yo. Do I know? How do I know? And the kidnapping drug dealer pauses, it's like, well, let me go

01:16:08

get her for you and you can talk to her. Like what? Yeah. All he did was like, ask the question,

01:16:15

how do I know she's still alive? And it's that open ended question that then puts, again, the

01:16:21

onus on the other party to come up with a solution to that problem. Now, there are a lot of ways that

01:16:27

he could have answered that question. Like he could have gone and picked up information and

01:16:32

relayed that information. He could have done a lot of different things, but he chose to just put her

01:16:37

on the phone. Like that was the easiest way to do that, which solves the proof of life scenario.

01:16:44

And in my head, when he was explaining all of these, like the tasks, tactics, and the security

01:16:49

questions in my head, I was thinking, why not just ask? Maybe that's just me. Like I'm told I

01:16:56

have a strong intuition. Maybe that's me. I don't know. But in my head, I'm like, well, why not just

01:17:01

ask? Like then they'll have to figure it out. That was what my thought was. So it was fun to see

01:17:07

that he came around to that too. Yeah. I think the reason that they hadn't done that initially is

01:17:12

they figured that the people they're working with are working against in this scenario are really

01:17:17

smart. And they know they're not going to want to just put the person on the phone. And so they view

01:17:25

the specific questions as like a way of asking for a little bit less. But by labeling, mirroring,

01:17:36

using all these tactics, calibrated questions, you're able to just say, well, how do I know this

01:17:42

person is still alive? Again, you're kind of playing dumb and you're saying, okay, you

01:17:47

prove it to me. And then instead of having them say, well, let me go find out their favorite, you know,

01:17:52

the name of their kindergarten teacher. They're just like, well, let me go get them on, put them

01:17:57

on the phone. But yes, that would be better. Thank you. Yes. That solves a lot of issues.

01:18:02

Yeah. So it's kind of that part was interesting to me in that like we make these assumptions

01:18:07

based on things and they're not always correct. So that's a big piece to a hostage negotiation.

01:18:16

And literally just by asking them to help solve this problem so the conversation can continue,

01:18:21

the negotiation can continue, they're able to get everything that they want at that

01:18:25

particular stage of the negotiation. So I mean, this is this is an interesting section to me,

01:18:31

because like guarantee execution. And it's basically you got to figure out how the result of what you

01:18:39

come to is going to happen. Yes. So there was another story. I think it was in this one where they were

01:18:46

the prison inmates had taken over the prison, right? And they didn't really want to take it over.

01:18:53

They had captured the warden in the guards and they realized basically, oh man, we're in big trouble.

01:19:00

So they wanted to go back, but their solution was, well, we'll give this first guy a radio.

01:19:05

And when he gets back, he'll tell us that I made it and nobody beat me up.

01:19:09

And one of the smart guy guards along the way is like, this guy was trying to smuggle in a

01:19:16

radio and he took the radio. So now all the inmates who have the warden in the guards,

01:19:20

they're like, they're about ready to go nuts. And Chris is like, you idiot, what are you doing?

01:19:24

That was part of the deal. So he's basically saying in this point, like, it can be a

01:19:30

a bit player that can make or break a deal. So you can't just negotiate with like the CEO,

01:19:38

if you're going to put this in a business context, there has to be buy in from the people below that

01:19:43

too, who will actually help implement it. Yeah, for sure. And this is where like there,

01:19:50

this can come up in a lot of different ways. You were requesting money, like the kidnapper

01:19:54

asking for money. I want $10 million. Sure, that's fine. How on earth am I supposed to get $10 million

01:20:01

to you? I can't just go walk in with it. I don't have it on me. I'm trying to get it. It can take

01:20:09

four days just to move money around. Like, what do you want me to do? How am I even supposed to

01:20:13

get that to you? You want it in 20 hours, like, logistically, I can't do that. So that's where,

01:20:21

like, okay, we got to have this conversation about how is the result of our conversation

01:20:25

actually going to be executed? Do we have to put it in paper? Do we have to

01:20:30

put up a whole logistical system that we both agree to? Like, what is that? And that's where

01:20:37

you got to ask those questions in order to get it all figured out. Yeah, and that kind of gets into

01:20:42

the whole section in this chapter of dealing with liars and jerks, because he defines the process

01:20:48

for a multi-step no, which the first part you already labeled. When someone makes a request for you to

01:20:54

do something, maybe it's a price that they're asking you to pay for something. The initial no

01:20:59

that you say without saying no is, how am I supposed to do that? Again, asking them to justify

01:21:06

and create a solution for you of how you can possibly meet the demand that they've had.

01:21:13

So typically, at that point, they come down. And at that point, the next step is your offer is

01:21:18

very generous. I'm sorry. That just doesn't work for me. Okay, so now they have to figure out another

01:21:23

solution. And then the third no is, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I just can't do that. And then the last

01:21:29

one is just, I'm sorry, no. And they didn't have an example of this from a hostage negotiation

01:21:36

standpoint, because I don't think you can ever get to that point where you say the last no if you

01:21:41

are really concerned about getting the person out. That would be really hard, I think. But from a

01:21:47

business perspective, it would have been cool to see, you know, this sort of thing happen. He does

01:21:51

share some stories about like the he's buying the Jeep and stuff like that, where he is able to use

01:21:58

these to like negotiate down a lower lower price. And again, underlying all this is the fact that

01:22:04

a bad deal is worse than no deal. So you got to be willing to walk away. But I thought this was kind

01:22:09

of genius, this multi step no. Yeah, yeah, for sure. One other thing from this section, which I

01:22:15

thought was really cool, by the way, is the 738 55% rule. And this is the rule for how much we like

01:22:22

somebody 7% of how much you like somebody is based on their words. 38% is based on their tone of

01:22:30

voice and 55% comes from their body language and their facial expressions. I don't know how accurate

01:22:38

that formula is, but it makes sense to me. And it's really, I think it's, it's cool to think about it

01:22:42

that way. It's fun to put numbers to it for sure. Yep. Yep. Especially considering like the part

01:22:48

he works with is the 7 and 38 and the 55 isn't there at all. Right. So he's not working with much.

01:22:56

Yeah, you don't get to see people. All right, move on to the next one. Yes. All right. Number nine,

01:23:02

bargain hard. This is where he tells the story of how he negotiated a brand new $36,000 salsa red

01:23:08

pearl forerunner down to $30,000, even though it was the only one in the area and the guy could

01:23:15

have charged whatever he wanted. Right. Right. And all he did was say no.

01:23:19

All he did was yep, he was ready to walk away. And yeah, so, but this, this, the big thing from

01:23:26

this, I think, is the types of negotiators. He talks about analysts, accommodators, and assertives.

01:23:34

So an analyst is methodical and diligent. They're not in a big rush. Their self image is linked to

01:23:39

minimizing mistakes. They'll take as much time as it takes to get it right. They hate surprises.

01:23:44

They're skeptical by nature. Sounds to them as an opportunity to think. Then there's the

01:23:49

accommodator. And what's important to an accommodator is building the relationship as long as it's

01:23:53

free flowing information. It's time while spent. They love win-win. They want to remain friends.

01:23:57

They're very easy to talk to. They're much more focused on the person behind the table.

01:24:01

And then there's the assertives where time is money. Their self image is linked to how many

01:24:06

things they can get accomplished, how productive they are. Getting the solution perfect isn't as

01:24:13

important as getting it done. They're fiery people who love winning above all else. They want to be

01:24:17

heard. Can't listen until they've been heard. Sounds to them is an opportunity to speak more.

01:24:22

I like these definitions. Which one do you think you are? I'm an accommodator. Almost 100%.

01:24:30

[laughs]

01:24:32

If I'm not like when I deviate from that, I would be the analyst.

01:24:35

-Okay. -I'm almost certain on that. If there was a test, I would take it.

01:24:39

-Yeah. -I feel like I'm such a people-pleasing

01:24:43

yes person for the most part. I've gotten a lot better, but I tend to want to make sure that we're

01:24:50

on good footing no matter what happens. So that's where a lot of my, if I'm negotiating,

01:24:56

and that's where I tend to land. -If you had to pick one, which one would you say I am?

01:25:01

-I would say you're probably the analyst. -That's what I was going to say.

01:25:04

-Yeah. That's where I would put you. -I think I'm an analyst with honestly a

01:25:10

combinator and assertive tendencies. -You always do this. You always think you're all of them.

01:25:15

-No. I think I am primarily an analyst. -Okay.

01:25:18

-I think that I have come a long way in being assertive, and I don't like the term assertive as

01:25:23

they apply it here because assertive really is in between aggression versus deference in my

01:25:29

opinion. That's the ideal. But assertive as he defines it here is I'm just going to talk until I

01:25:36

get my way. -Sure. Sure.

01:25:38

-I don't like labeling myself that way, but as he's talking about some of this stuff,

01:25:42

if I'm honest with myself, I do do that sometimes. But I also in the past have been very, I want

01:25:49

to please everybody. I think I've grown a lot in that area where I don't. I'm better at that

01:25:55

than I used to be. I probably still deal with that a little bit, but ultimately, I want facts.

01:26:01

I'm totally the analyst, and I want to stop, and I want to think about things before I say things.

01:26:06

This is interesting to me observation I had with my experience with Toastmasters.

01:26:13

I love Toastmasters. I love giving the speeches. I hate table topics. I am so terrified of table

01:26:24

topics where they give you the topic, and then you talk for just a minute or two. I have so much

01:26:30

trouble with that. Again, I've gotten better because I've forced myself to do it, but still,

01:26:34

to this day, that scares the snot out of me. -I feel like that's a place I excel.

01:26:40

Give me enough time to research stuff. I'll talk forever, but no.

01:26:44

When I was in high school, I did extemporaneous speaking a little bit.

01:26:50

There were times I had some of the judges say, "Are you sure you didn't prepare something for this?"

01:26:57

I just can ramble on things. I'm not saying it's always 100 percent solid, but that's what I can do.

01:27:10

Sometimes. I do know there are cases like, "Yes, I'm an accommodator." I can flip over to analysts

01:27:16

in certain scenarios. I can specifically recall a couple different scenarios when I was

01:27:22

in the corporate world, in some meetings where we were discussing a decision that we needed to make.

01:27:28

We essentially ended up with two sides where we were debating back and forth around those.

01:27:34

The other person that I was in the middle of this conversation was an assertive looking

01:27:39

back at it now was an assertive person who just wanted to talk until I said yes to his side.

01:27:45

I just remember at one point- -Your counterfeit yes, just to give him to go away.

01:27:51

Totally. I remember at one point in the middle of that, I just asked, "How long are you going to talk?"

01:27:59

We'd been in there for two hours. I hadn't had a chance to really say much of anything.

01:28:06

How long are you going to talk? We're not going anywhere. You're just saying whatever you can think

01:28:12

of and we're not going anywhere. I remember telling that I apparently didn't have much

01:28:18

respect for my position at the time because this was a superior and just like, "What are we going to?"

01:28:25

I don't understand. I remember, thankfully, he just said, "Well, what do you propose?"

01:28:30

Then I pitched my side of it and he's like, "All right, I'm good with that." What do we just do

01:28:36

the last two hours? What was that? I can switch over from that. That had nothing to do with me

01:28:45

trying to be accommodating of him. Here's the raw fact. You're just talking. You're not saying

01:28:52

anything. You're just talking. -Just get me out of here. -Let's be done. The sad part about that

01:28:59

is I did learn to do that where you could just talk for a very long time and not actually say

01:29:04

anything in the world of corporate. That is a skill you have to develop to some degree.

01:29:10

Well, this is my other action item from this section is to identify other people's styles.

01:29:14

I don't know. I'm going to be able to do this 100% of the time, but I have applied this to a

01:29:21

couple different meetings and people that I know in those meetings and again, not trying to manipulate

01:29:28

or anything, but I do think understanding who you're talking to and how to speak their language

01:29:33

makes sense. He does have some tips for when speaking to analysts or as an analyst, smile when

01:29:39

you speak. When I read that one, I laughed because I've been told that a bunch of different times.

01:29:44

That right there labeled me as an analyst. I think there's value in figuring out what is the

01:29:52

right way to make the communication with this person effective. It doesn't matter what my preference

01:29:56

is. It matters that I speak in a way that they understand it. I want to try to do that going

01:30:03

forward, but there's one of those action items that I'll never be able to mark done. The typical

01:30:08

mic action. That's what you do. That's what you do. That's true. And you apparently. Now,

01:30:13

you've taught me well. Thanks, Mike. Yep. Our last chapter, find the black swan from

01:30:18

the term black swan. I think the people who are listening to bookworm probably recognize this

01:30:26

from the author of anti-fragile. He's got a book Nicholas Tilly on black swans, but it actually

01:30:34

comes from a 17th century English term. I did not know that because no one had ever seen a black

01:30:40

swan. The assumption was always the next one that you're going to see is going to be white.

01:30:44

Then this Dutch explorer went to Western Australia. He saw black swan and everything changed.

01:30:49

The kidnapping story in this section is one of the failures that he talks about because there

01:30:55

was this guy who had demanded a shootout with the police at 3 p.m. or he was going to start

01:31:01

killing hostages. He makes us demand at 2.30 and 3 o'clock on the dot. He does exactly what

01:31:08

he says he's going to do. And then basically gives himself in to be shot by the sniper.

01:31:13

So really the lesson that they learned from this is they've always assumed that they want

01:31:18

respect. They want money and they want the helicopter. That wasn't the case. This guy in particular

01:31:23

wanted to be shot by the police, which is kind of bizarre when you think about it. But that's

01:31:28

his whole point is that you can't just assume that you know what the other party wants because

01:31:33

you've been through a bunch of different negotiations like this before. And in this particular case,

01:31:38

obviously is really sad because somebody died. But there's application with this outside of

01:31:44

hostage negotiation, fortunately, for the rest of us who are not Chris Foss.

01:31:48

Right. Right. Yeah, I'm not going to even try to relay that story in its entirety.

01:31:53

That one was hard to read. It was. Yeah. It's disheartening what sad state people can get to

01:32:00

and what they'll go through. This man had no interest in negotiating from the moment he got up that

01:32:06

morning. So, yeah. All right, that aside, the concept of a black swan in the midst of a

01:32:13

negotiation or in the midst of a debate. Essentially, you're trying to pay attention to

01:32:20

the subtleties of what other people are saying because there's likely an underlying something

01:32:28

behind things. This is where the empathy piece comes in. You're trying the best you can to become

01:32:34

aware of what the background is behind this person. There's a story in here about a tobacco farmer

01:32:41

who loads up a manure spreader, I believe, and drives it to DC.

01:32:50

Parks at the National Mall says it's full of organic, organic phosphate, which

01:32:55

is technically a fertilizer and farmers can get it in big quantities, but it is highly explosive.

01:33:03

So, these people know that. He parks the tractor and threatens to blow everybody up.

01:33:12

They put snipers on him, of course, and they start negotiating. In the midst of conversations

01:33:16

with him, they find out he's a veteran. They find out that his modus operandi is to go three days,

01:33:23

and if help hasn't come in three days, they're free to sacrifice on their honor. So, they know

01:33:30

they have three days before he potentially is going to blow things. So, they know that. So,

01:33:34

now they've got the deadline. But in the middle of this back and forth, they find out he's a

01:33:39

the subtleties of what he's saying. He's a devout Christian, which I have all kinds of concerns with.

01:33:44

Like, how did you get to that point and have those beliefs? Like, I have some personal

01:33:48

things with that. But that aside, they find out that he's a devout Christian. The following morning

01:33:56

is a significant day in his religion. So, they simply mention that in the middle of their next

01:34:02

conversation with him the next morning. He pauses and then gives himself up immediately.

01:34:10

And it's all because they uncover this one little tiny detail that is behind so much of this person's

01:34:20

personal life, his personality, his entire being, his mission in life. They uncover that one detail,

01:34:28

that black swan, and that changes the entire conversation and ends the negotiation.

01:34:34

Yeah, and they define black swans in this case as information that if discovered by the other

01:34:40

side will change everything. And he's got this hypothesis that each negotiation has at least

01:34:47

three black swans. So, in this particular story, the fact that he's a veteran, and he's got this

01:34:54

honor code where they've got three days to negotiate with this guy and then his religion,

01:35:00

which again, not exactly painting a real positive picture here, but I get it.

01:35:07

Yeah. What is interesting for me is that these black swans, they are leverage multipliers.

01:35:17

You can, there's positive, negative, or normative. He explains the three kinds of leverage here.

01:35:22

Positive is the ability to provide or withhold things that your counterpart wants.

01:35:27

Negative is the ability to make your counterpart suffer. And normative is where you use the other

01:35:32

party's norms and standards to advance your position. Obviously, you don't want to,

01:35:38

I don't want to use this negative leverage, but when you listen, listen again and listen

01:35:45

some more, you can discover these black swans. And the reason that a lot of times these black

01:35:51

swans don't get discovered is simply that we're just not going to listen. This is where that,

01:35:57

he mentions the phrase that I mentioned at the beginning, "We don't negotiate with terrorists."

01:36:02

And how that drove him nuts that this was a policy because that meant that when they're

01:36:09

negotiating or not negotiating with these radical terrorists, they're not even trying to understand

01:36:15

how they're thinking. And he's like, "That's a failure point." And he makes a point here that

01:36:22

no one is immune to this view that the other side is crazy. He also says that the moment we're

01:36:28

ready to say that the other side is crazy, that's usually the best moment for finding the black swans.

01:36:33

Sure. So it's like you're not getting anywhere, you're not getting anywhere, you're not getting

01:36:38

where you're at the point where you're saying, "This is completely pointless and then aha!"

01:36:42

Right. This is where you discover these things. And I think this is the big takeaway from the

01:36:49

entire book is that you don't need to sympathize with people in order to empathize with them.

01:36:56

Going back to one of the earlier chapters, you don't have to agree with people's values and

01:37:01

beliefs, but you do have to understand them if you want to have an effective negotiation.

01:37:06

And I think I've been guilty of the crazy in the past, and I am challenged by this whole book and

01:37:15

all of these stories that he tells about negotiating with terrorists. These are not the people that

01:37:21

you want to talk to, but these are exactly the people that you need to talk to. So applying that

01:37:27

to my own life, all of the stuff that's going on in the world right now, and I don't want to have

01:37:33

some of these conversations, but I need to. And not because I'm going to completely agree with

01:37:40

any one side, but I need to at least understand all of these sides. And I need to understand how

01:37:47

they're feeling, how they're approaching things. And I think it's so easy to just surround yourself

01:37:56

with people who are just like you, stay in your echo chamber, and it's all good. It doesn't

01:38:01

matter to me. It doesn't affect me. And I think more and more as time goes on that that's not a good

01:38:09

that's not a good approach. We should be asking these questions. We should be having these

01:38:13

conversations. We shouldn't try to avoid honest, clear conflict. But if we want to have any sort

01:38:22

of resolution, we got to go into it with an open mind and be willing to listen.

01:38:26

Yes. I don't want us to say with that. I feel like it's a good place to end things. Like, I'm out

01:38:31

of things to say about this book. So I think I'm good for action items unless there's something

01:38:34

else you want to cover, Mike. I'm good. We can talk about action items. I've got a couple. Looks

01:38:41

like you don't have any on the document anyways. I don't. All right. Well, I guess I'll go first.

01:38:46

So I mentioned both of them in the conversation, but not use the word I because that instantly

01:38:56

shifts the spotlight onto me and my feelings, which to a certain degree does not matter

01:39:02

when I am communicating with people. I want to prioritize the other side. And I'm really

01:39:07

challenged by this book to empathize with them and to understand where they're coming from.

01:39:11

Part of that, it feels the second action item, which is to identify other people's negotiating

01:39:16

style. I don't think I could be quite as brash as you were in your example. Be like,

01:39:21

okay, so why are you still talking? Yes. But I've definitely felt that. And I feel like I communicate

01:39:26

that with my facial expressions. So I want to kind of curb that, be a little bit softer in the

01:39:34

approach, and again, put myself into the person's other person's shoes and identify like, why are

01:39:40

they doing what they're doing? What are they? What are they after? Because I feel like that'll help

01:39:44

increase the quality and the effectiveness of the communication. That's fair. Well, I have no

01:39:49

action items here, Mike. And it's because like, I've, this fits into the category of developing intuition.

01:39:57

To me, this whole book does. That was the way I came away from what everybody is saying by

01:40:05

Joan Navarro. That was, it wasn't really anything that I had where this is the thing I'm going to do.

01:40:12

It was, here's just a way that I can understand communicating with other people. And I feel like

01:40:20

this is similar. Because the thing with it is it tends to paint things as like a you versus me.

01:40:29

And I don't always want things to be that way. I get that relationships kind of are that way when

01:40:33

you break them down. But for the most part, like this is adding to the box of developing intuition.

01:40:40

For me, that's kind of the way I saw it. So I didn't have anything specific for this because like,

01:40:45

this could easily play into the action items I talked about at the beginning of becoming a better

01:40:51

leader. This could fit into that. So I feel like there's some, some bigger pieces there that would be

01:40:58

more applicable, but I don't have anything specific here. All right, fair enough.

01:41:04

It's dilinating. Yeah, I really enjoyed this book. I think there's a lot to be gained from this

01:41:12

by just about everybody. It doesn't, you don't have to be a salesperson in order to benefit from

01:41:19

this. Although that's kind of the thought I had going into it. I understood that he was a hostage

01:41:25

negotiator. I figured there'd be a business application. Wasn't sure if it was really going to go any

01:41:30

further than that. I think it really does though. I also think that going through all of the ratings

01:41:40

for episode 100, kind of tempers, what I would rate this book, because I really, really enjoyed it.

01:41:47

I got a lot out of it. It doesn't however feel like a five star book to me. In the past, maybe I

01:41:54

would have just because I really enjoyed reading it. I don't know. The stories that he tells about

01:42:01

his hostage negotiations were fascinating to me, but I also kind of don't want to go back and read

01:42:07

those again. Like once was enough. It's fair. This doesn't feel like one of those timeless books to

01:42:14

me. I'm going to continually go back to never split the difference and cite things from it.

01:42:20

He mentions a lot of stuff in here, which I think is kind of like tent poles to his arguments,

01:42:25

which are things that came from other books that we've read. He mentions thinking fast and slow.

01:42:30

He mentions loss aversion, prospect theory. He mentions the black swans. So there maybe is a

01:42:39

limited amount of new material in this, but the application obviously is very unique.

01:42:48

Being told by the lead hostage negotiator for the FBI, that's not something you're going to get

01:42:55

from other leadership or communication books. So I really liked this book. I did get a lot out of

01:43:03

it. I've got some action items from it. I'm going to put it at 4.5. I think had I not just gone through

01:43:10

and looked at all the ratings and seen what is in the five star tier, especially if we made

01:43:16

some adjustments in the last episode. I might have been tempted to rate this five stars,

01:43:20

but it's a really good book. It's just not one of those that belongs in the hall of fame, I don't

01:43:27

think. That's fair. I will join you at 4.5. I think that's right where it needs to land. I don't think

01:43:34

it hits gold level as you're calling these now of bookworm books, but I think as far as books

01:43:45

that help you get a good understanding of how people tick and how to have conversations

01:43:53

so that you're on the same level and you both feel comfortable with the outcome of a conversation

01:43:58

or a debate or a decision making process, I would highly recommend this one to go through that.

01:44:05

I would probably tell you to read what everybody is saying at the same time,

01:44:08

like to read those two in conjunctions because now I'm curious about maybe we should bring that

01:44:13

one on to bookworm because I think it would be interesting to have this one under our belt

01:44:20

and then have that one as one to come to. So that one might come up soon. I like to reread that one

01:44:25

anyway. I think you've got it right on there, Mike. I think 4.5 is where it needs to land.

01:44:30

Cool. Yep, yep, yep. Which brings us to the next book, which is Pick 3 by Randy Zuckerberg.

01:44:39

I looked up Randy Zuckerberg. I was curious, is there a connection to Mark Zuckerberg?

01:44:46

I discovered Randy is Mark Zuckerberg's sister, which I was not expecting. I didn't expect there

01:44:55

to really be a connection, but Randy is his sister and used to be the director of market development

01:45:02

and a spokesperson for Facebook. So there is a Facebook connection to this one. I did not know

01:45:07

that existed. So yes, Pick 3, you can have it all just not every day. That's the tagline on it.

01:45:13

That's what we'll go through next time. I think it'll be fun. All right. And then

01:45:17

after that, I've got one which is inspired by friend of the show, Jay Miller. We interviewed Jay

01:45:26

on the Focus podcast not too long ago. And he talked about this term multi-potentialite,

01:45:32

which is interesting to me. And he mentioned a book. He said that he's been wanting us to discuss

01:45:41

this on bookworm. I went back and looked at the recommendations. Jay, you never recommended it.

01:45:45

So how could we vote for it? I feel like I've never heard of it. So I'm just going to pick it

01:45:49

since you never added it there. All right. That works. So this is How to Be Everything by Emily Wopnick.

01:45:56

And I think this is kind of a timely book, a lot of stuff kind of changing in how people work

01:46:03

right now. And multi-potentialized, basically, somebody who doesn't do just one thing for a living.

01:46:09

Kind of think maybe I fall into this category. I kind of want to find out.

01:46:13

Sure. So that's what we'll do after Pick Three. Cool. It's kind of interesting. Those two might

01:46:20

have a little bit of overlap. So we'll see how that comes together. I do not have a gap book, Mike.

01:46:25

Do you? I do. And I've started it. It is Get Together, How to Build a Community with Your People

01:46:33

by Billy Richardson. Kevin, I don't know how to say Kevin's last name. Huan Huan Huan and Kai Elmer

01:46:39

Soto. This is a really cool book. It's really well designed. It's very colorful, full color photos

01:46:46

and really cool stories about people building community. I feel like I could do a better job

01:46:51

building communities and I also see the importance of it. So I am about halfway through this one.

01:46:59

So far, it's really good giving me some ideas for for Bookworm. But I want to finish the book

01:47:04

before we we sit down and we talk about them. You're going to confront me with these?

01:47:08

Maybe. All right. Let me reread the book we just finished before we do that.

01:47:14

Oh, fun times. All right. So thank you to everybody who is a Bookworm club member.

01:47:25

Like I said, you can go to the club and you can make recommendations, get people to vote for the

01:47:30

books for what you want to see us cover. Special thanks to the Premium Club members who are willing

01:47:36

to support us by giving us a couple bucks a month to help keep the lights on. If you want to become

01:47:43

a Premium member, then you can do so by going to club.bookworm.fm/membership. And you can sign up

01:47:50

there. There's monthly and yearly options. Or if you listen to this and overcast, there's a button

01:47:55

at the bottom of your interface. And that will take you straight to the sign up page. If you do

01:48:00

decide to become a Premium Club member, you get a couple of bonuses. You get Bookworm or Bookworm

01:48:06

desktop wallpaper that I created. You get access to some gap episodes that Joe created and access

01:48:14

to all of my my node files. I mentioned that a couple times in this episode, I create these crazy

01:48:20

mind maps of the books that we read. And I upload those for club members. So

01:48:25

join the club if you want to get access to all that stuff. Yeah, those things are intense. I've

01:48:30

looked through those things a few times. Jeez, Mike. That takes a lot of time to build those. So

01:48:35

kudos to you for putting those together. And thanks to you who are watching us live right now on Twitch,

01:48:42

if that's something of interest to you and you want to, you know, critique us as we go along as

01:48:47

folks are doing in the chats, you can catch us on Twitch. These will also be posted to YouTube.

01:48:53

The videos will end up on the Bookworm YouTube channel as well. So if you want to watch us as we're

01:49:00

having this conversation, you can do that there as well. So if you're reading along with us,

01:49:05

pick up Pick 3 by Randy Zuckerberg and we'll go through it with you next time.