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Chris Voss: Better Every Day | E11 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Chris Voss: You shouldn't be humiliated. By losing, you should be humiliated if you don't learn from it. The only real sin is to not learn, you're not going to be perfect. So when that instance comes along where you get kicked in the teeth decide to get up.
• 0:20
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be to learn, educate and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential.
• 0:29
  Randall Kaplan: It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves, and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving Excellence is our goal. And it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities and surroundings and we all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. Today, my guest is the incredible Chris Voss, Chris spent 24 years working for the FBI in their crisis negotiation unit from 2003 through 2007. Chris was the FBI as chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator, where he worked on more than 150 hostage cases from around the world. He spent three years investigating the 1993 World Trade bombing, and was the CO case agent for the 1996 TWA Flight 800 explosion, which killed 230 people. He is the recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in law enforcement as well as the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and exemplary service. Chris is a regular commentator on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and many other networks. He has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times Time Magazine and hundreds of other publications. He's an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Business, and is a lecturer at USC Marshall School of Business.
• 1:49
  Randall Kaplan: He's also currently the CEO of The Black Swan group, which provides training, negotiation and leadership skills for executives. He's also the author of the awesome best selling book behind me never split the difference negotiating as if your life depended on it. Chris, welcome to In Search of Excellence. And man, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. Chris, I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality or values and the preparation for our future. You grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a small town of 9000 people. Can you tell us about your parents and how they influenced you as a young child when you're growing up? Yeah, very blue collar hard working.
• 2:31
  Randall Kaplan: My father had his own business was a sole proprietor entrepreneur, fuel oil driver, which is a wholesaler guy between the big oil company and end user, but just a very Midwestern pitch in, don't be willing to roll up your sleeves and get dirty and get the job done environment and figure it out to you know, I mean, a lot of emphasis on here's the task figured out. And that was kind of the environment that I grew up in. What were you like, as a kid? Were you popular? We will leader and what did you do for fun? I was eminently average. I was just an average kid. Average athletic ability, average size, average intelligence. Nothing extraordinary. Above me, ran around outside, my parents kind of kicked me out of the house and say, be back at dinnertime.
• 3:27
  Randall Kaplan: And if I wasn't working for my dad, I mean, all the kids, you know, I got an older sister two younger, we figured he was paying for our room and board, you get a return on his investment by putting us to work average kid, Midwestern us. Was there a point early in your life where you said yourself, I want to be great, be the best at whatever I do and be extremely successful when I grew up. I don't know that I ever thought specifically in those times, I've always thought about getting better, working hard figuring stuff out. And kind of the relentless pursuit of incremental improvement. In order to put it in today's times. I found myself very driven to get better, pretty much when I started college, but maybe even more. So after I got out because my grades were you know, I'm basically B student, B plus in high school, B minus college. But in hindsight, they if you just try to get better incrementally, you'd be shocked at how much ground you can cover. And I think that was pretty much the way that I live my life. So many successful people that I know have had many negative experience or one or two as a child which has a profound influence on them in their lives. I stuttered as a child I was bullied and made fun of for most of my childhood. Can you tell us about an experience you had when you were nine years old and how it affected you for the rest of your life? Yeah, and that wasn't the only traumatic experience. Some of the reading I'm doing these days includes a book called anti fragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who also wrote The Black Swan
• 5:00
  Chris Voss: which is the name of my company. But he talks about post traumatic stress growth, not post traumatic stress disorder, but post traumatic stress growth. And this is not a learning methodology that you can employ. I mean, you can't intentionally kick people in the face or punch them in the gut to make them better, but life is going to do that to you. And the more you work on thriving after that, the better your life is going to be. So when I was about nine years old, this bully cornered me and terrified me, I mean, just horrified me. And it was the most afraid I was my wife the first time and then he cornered me again, sometime later. I remember that being the most afraid I was my entire life. And I have sort of, especially in law enforcement and as an FBI agent, kidnapping negotiator, as a way of being I gotta admit, I kind of I target bullies I go after bullies is a kidnapping negotiator was a meet is way, not just to Free the hostage, but to get at the bad guy, and defend people from someone who was predatory when they had no other defense. And I think that's sort of been very much undercurrent, a theme to my entire life.
• 6:14
  Randall Kaplan: This kid is nine years old, and he made up a story that you broke the law, and you'd go to jail and would be executed and killed. I mean, who does that?
• 6:23
  Chris Voss: Yeah, a coward does that. Which is ultimately what a bully is, he was much bigger than me. We plan on a parking lot, not a block away from my home. For whatever reason, I think he just decided that he was going to horrify me and terrify me. And so then not only did he did he outline all this horrible thing, to time, the way my mother let us know that it was time to come over dinner, she blew whistle, we were in the neighborhood, we could hear the whistle and the whistle blew, and it was time to get home. And I can remember my mom blowing the whistle to go home and a guy wouldn't let me go. And he just ignored it. And at the feeling that I couldn't escape. At that time was was horrifying. I didn't think I was gonna get away. So yeah, I look back at my life and what was what triggered me? I mean, I hate bullies. And so defending people from bullies is really been, as I said, you know, kind of a thing.
• 7:21
  Randall Kaplan: When I come home crying, my mom would say, bullies at the end, people made fun of you when they grow up.
• 7:29
  Randall Kaplan: The most popular kids if they're even popular, I mean, today, it's not cool to be a bully, you could get in trouble for it back then no one got in trouble for it. No one complained about a really either. So it was a different time. But my mom said, Wait till you get older and let's see where the bullies are at that point in time. Do you have any idea what happened to the bully?
• 7:46
  Chris Voss: I think I saw him again. Two years later, I'm sure that he lived an anonymous, useless life is a couple of things that that's a guarantee that you will be mediocre or complete failure to be a bully.
• 7:59
  Chris Voss: I mean, you will ultimately be mediocre. You know, the flip side of it is to never pick yourself up to live as a victim.
• 8:07
  Chris Voss: And there's a lot in today's society where it's a contest to see who can be the biggest victim. And again, you've been hurt, but you don't improve your life. By wallowing in being a victim. You improve your life by saying yeah, I get kicked in, I get kicked in the face. And it was brutal. And it was unfair, and it was wrong. And I get to pick me up. So neither formula is a formula for success as a human being either being a bully or being avec.
• 8:37
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the value of education. You touched upon it briefly about what kind of student were and what kind of grades you graduated from Ohio State University with. I was, I was sorry. I was
• 8:51
  Chris Voss: thinking Come on.
• 8:51
  Chris Voss: You offend people in Ohio.
• 8:54
  Randall Kaplan: Sorry. Ohio State, oh, my god shoot me because I went to Michigan. And then he earned a master's of public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Did you graduate
• 9:05
  Chris Voss: college later?
• 9:06
  Randall Kaplan: Much later, when you graduated college? Did you know what you wanted to do? And why did you end up getting a master's degree? years later?
• 10:06
  Chris Voss: Yeah, I wanted to be a cop. from about age 16 on. I saw a movie when I was 16 called the Super cops. About true story. Two cops in New York City. And they were wildly innovative. And they did a lot of good. And they they were working in a really tough part of town, Bed Stuy back when Bed Stuy was dangerous. And they were white cops in a black neighborhood. And it didn't matter because they were doing the right things to community loved community and care what color they were as long as they were about doing the right thing. And color falls away really fast. When core values line up, particularly around doing the right thing. So I was inspired by these guys. The other thing I didn't realize was they were Mavericks that didn't do what they were told. That's kind of been my formula for my life too. Uh, but yeah, then I went to college, kind of a deal with my father. He told his kids, I'll pay for four years of college period in graduate or not, and those four years, but the money runs out after four years, and then you're on your own. And so then I went to school planning on being a cop study business as a backup, and then went down to join the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department pretty much soon as I got out of college,
• 11:17
  Randall Kaplan: you're a street cop. They're walking the beat.
• 11:19
  Randall Kaplan: Can you tell us about that? And can you tell us about the most interesting experience you had on the beat? Either crazy arrest or time where you felt like you were in a lot of danger, or something else you were doing?
• 11:30
  Chris Voss: Yeah, you know, alright, so and we, you know, we didn't foot patrol, we drove in one man cars, one man car patrol. Occasionally, we'd have two people in a car. But mostly, it was by car, I started out in a commercial area, which is a lot activity on the street. And then there was a section of Kansas City called The West Bottoms, which was all warehouses. And that was in the first district that I had that I own that was given to me. And I do remember that most Kansas City is really well laid out.
• 11:56
  Chris Voss: KCMO, nice grid system, very well organized, but the West Bottoms was a maze. And cops go down there and get lost all the time. And I, you know, my sergeant said, Look, man, you're gonna, it's easy to get lost on there. So I made it a point to get go down and find my way around, I learned that I loved it. And then there was, there was a bar that was right on the state line, State Line Road, which was the literal street that separated Kansas, from Missouri. And it was a bar down there called Tony's corner. And if you ever want that in either state, that's where you went to drink, because all you had to do was cross the street to get away from the police, you know, be in another state. And I loved working down there. I loved the challenge down there, and it was a little bit of shooting fish in a barrel. Chances are if bad guys were down there, they either wanted or thought they were so high percentage shot to go down and patrol. And then I love the fact that I was one of the few cops that really knew his way around the area.
• 12:56
  Randall Kaplan: Did you ever have any life or death situations when you were in that job?
• 12:59
  Chris Voss: Yeah, you got to see trouble common life or death. If you thought you were gonna die, you put it out assists the officer, which is where I need help. Now, I don't ever remember asking for an assist the officer, I'd like to see things coming. Now as a uniformed police officer, you're gonna stick your neck out a little bit. But whether or not it gets bad really depends upon a lot more on your ability to interact with the community. Are they going to gang up on you? Because you're a jerk? Are they going to be supportive of you? Because you're trying to do the right thing. So I had my gun out a couple of times, never fired. It never got fired. And I always liked seeing things come,
• 13:39
  Randall Kaplan: then you're going to switch from being a street cop to being on the Kansas City SWAT team. And then the FBI hired you for their SWAT team and they're Pittsburgh office where you were for two years. You had some local training and you went to Quantico and then you transferred to New York, can you? It's not an easy transition, or it doesn't seem like one can you tell us about that? And did you ultimately, as a kid, did you want to work for the FBI.
• 14:02
  Chris Voss: The FBI came up just sort of out of the blue. My father started encouraged me to go federal law enforcement because he wanted me to excel.
• 14:09
  Chris Voss: And he saw federal as being a step up from local, which is not necessarily the case. But that's how a lot of people saw he introduced me to secret service agent. And at the time, I had no idea what the difference was between ATF FBI CIA secret service, I have no idea. I'm talking to the Secret Service guy. And he said, You know, I traveled all over the world with the service. And I thought, Now, that sounds interesting.
• 14:35
  Chris Voss: Somebody else is going to pay for you to go around the world.
• 14:38
  Chris Voss: I want to find out some more.
• 14:41
  Chris Voss: Secret Service wasn't hiring but the FBI was, it was a big hiring push with a relatively mediocre resume at that point in time, but I scored very high on their tests. I got into Quantico and then they academy training at Quantico was phenomenal. I mean, it was really impressed with the training, which was both law enforcement smarts, book training, classroom training, physical fitness, firearms, defensive tactics, 16 weeks of awesomeness if you want to work hard, and then they transferred me to Pittsburgh, got on the SWAT team there. That was an amazing experience. And then I get transferred to New York, and became part of the terrorist Task Force and life changed again. It was great.
• 15:25
  Randall Kaplan: I spent my junior summer before my senior year I went to Michigan and I did an internship at the National Crime Prevention Council. We went to the FBI one day for the tour. And I said I want to work for the FBI. But I'm an entrepreneur by Gene. I just have the bug. So for years as I was thinking about what I wanted to do, I went to law school. I thought about the FBI, which seemed really cool. I would love that. But I also thought I wanted to make a little more money that the FBI agents make and but I still have this somewhat fascination with one day going back to law enforcement. The other thing is, I wrote a fiction book years ago. And the FBI was a big part of it. I was on a nonprofit board with Ollie maracas. This was after 911, three months later, and he set up a tour with me with the SEC in the Chicago office, Jim Disaronno, who gave me full access. I mean, he put a couple of people in charge, they walked me through the whole thing. And I just think it was incredibly fascinating. I mean, it said to me again, one day, I don't know if I ever retire, and I'm probably would be too old to work there. But I've always been fascinated with the FBI.
• 16:42
  Chris Voss: And the cool thing about the bureau was, which was different than any other federal law enforcement agency, because if you're a Secret Service, you're doing counterfeiting and protection, that's it. Ba working drugs, ATF guns, bombs, moonshiners, the FBI does everything. So like whatever you rent, like if if you're enthusiastic about art history, the FBI works art fraud. So like whatever you have into the Bureau's got a spot for you, which was a cool thing about being there.
• 17:14
  Randall Kaplan: It's very hard to get a job there today. I
• 17:16
  Chris Voss: don't know they right. Yeah, it was easier before, right.
• 17:20
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, I hear from some of my mentees in college who want to go into law enforcement, Secret Service, incredibly tough. The FBI very, very tough. On our path to excellence. We have a number of setbacks and challenges that we need to overcome. We don't give up we don't quit, he get transferred to the FBI in New York office. And then you go into the office of the head of the negotiations team and she summarily rejects you at some point, when we're working our way if you have a boss or a manager, it gives you incredible advice. Can you tell us what she told you?
• 17:51
  Chris Voss: Yeah, let me put two caveats on whether or not you should listen to somebody's advice. And they're real close.
• 17:58
  Chris Voss: But there's subtleties to both never take advice from somebody you wouldn't trade places with.
• 18:01
  Chris Voss: Don't take direction from somebody who hasn't been where you're going. So she summarily rejected me. I was eminently unqualified. But the real qualification is really persistence. And can you take direction? So I said, Look, there's got to be something I could do. I you know, I don't believe in passively accepting things. I've always believed that there's some action that can be taken. I'm not good at inaction, unless it's dynamic in action. But that's almost another topic. So I said, Look, there's got to be something I could do. And she said there is volunteer on a suicide island.
• 18:33
  Chris Voss: So I did. I mean, to me at the time, that just seemed like blatantly obvious. She was in charge. She was somebody and in hindsight that I trade places with running the team, she must know what she's talking about.
• 18:49
  Chris Voss: Also, are they going to be accountable for your success or failure? Is this subtle nuance if somebody's given you advice, and if you fail, it's no skin off them. You might want to think about whether or not you need to take that advice, because they're not going to care if you fake how and if you succeed, or they're going to look out for you. It's how to recruit a mentor unofficially.
• 19:10
  Chris Voss: So it just seemed obvious to me.
• 19:14
  Chris Voss: So I went, I volunteered, and I came back two or five months later, and I said, Look, I want you to know, I've been volunteering on the suicide hotline for several months now.
• 19:23
  Chris Voss: And she was shocked. I was shocked that she was shocked.
• 19:27
  Chris Voss: She said, You know, I tell everybody to do this. Nobody does it. Because of that. It moved me instantly up the rankings of who's going to take the next position. Because I listened and I acted on the advice. And it just seems so obvious. And so few people do it. And maybe it's because people get advice all the time from people who have no business giving them advice. There's no reason to think they know what they're talking about. And because they like you is not a reason, like a lot of friends and family will give you utterly useless advice. Very well intentioned. They like you, they love you. They're supportive of you, but they don't know what you're talking about. You got to have reasonably that person knows what they're talking.
• 20:10
  Randall Kaplan: So that's your first experience where you're talking to people. What you're saying in real time, can make the difference between life and death.
• 20:18
  Chris Voss: Yeah, so that was really what I learned on the suicide hotline. Not only did I learn that on a hotline, but I learned that empathy is and accelerated, like I you know, you have all these visions of what being on a suicide hotline is, by the way, it's just a masterclass in emotional intelligence is all it is. Now, I didn't know that at the time.
• 20:38
  Chris Voss: Nobody knew that. I thought it was confined to that environment. It's not it's everything. So you get there for the training. And you envision that you might be on the phone for hours talking somebody often. And right off the bat they say look, every call was limited to 20 minutes, you got a 20 minute time limit. And if you apply the skills properly, it's not going to take 20 minutes anyway. And I remember being shocked thinking like, not wait a minute, what about all the movies and TV you telling me movies and TV wrong. And lo and behold, you get on and you apply empathy, applied empathy, tactical empathy, which we refer to now. And it accelerates the interaction in ways that will astound you. And I learned that way back when on the suicide hotline,
• 21:22
  Randall Kaplan: he moved to a new location for work. And before we talk about how you became a hostage negotiator, I want to talk about planning for our future and doing whatever it takes to advance our careers.
• 21:32
  Randall Kaplan: FBI has 56 field offices around the country, many of which are in major cities, where there's a lot to do when you're not working. You move to New York, which is exciting to a lot of people. What if the FBI wanted you to move to Anchorage, Alaska, which is a great place to live for many, but maybe the last place that someone would want to live? Would you have gone there? And what's your advice to people on this front?
• 21:56
  Randall Kaplan: When your employer asks you to move to a new location? That isn't where you want to live? Or worse? seems terrible to you? Do you go?
• 22:04
  Chris Voss: Yeah, well, what's your agreement up front, like, first of all, Anchorage and the FBI is a tough get, I mean, a lot of people anchor there and a lot of openings there. And and people that want to be there, there's a line to get into. But basically, I didn't want to go to New York. I mean, it was not interested for a variety of reasons. Principal, one big cost of living at the time, there was no cost of living increase, to go to New York, and it was taking a step, a significant step back. Financially, Pittsburgh to New York, housing prices were triple what they weren't Pittsburgh, but what was my understanding going in?
• 22:38
  Chris Voss: Fortunately, you know, I had honest and candid people, and my integrity is important to me.
• 22:45
  Chris Voss: What does that mean? The recruiter said, don't take this job. If you can't go to New York, just don't do it. And I remember thinking like, Alright, cool. I'll accept that. Now, I'm in Pittsburgh. And it's looks like it's lining up for me to go to New York. And I did everything I could within the rules to steer my career in another direction. Who can I legitimately influence within the rules? You know, what cards do I have to play here? And try to play him wrote a memo? I had family in Chicago. I mean, like, if you got to send me to a big city, send me Chicago, I ended up in New York, did not want to be in New York. But first of all, my understanding was it was a possibility. And I had agreed to accept that. And secondly, it was fascinating. If you're being sent someplace, you don't want to go well in advance your career was a part of the agreement to begin with. Have you been double crossed in any way by being sent there? But did you already tacitly agree? And now you change your mind? Well, if you already agreed you got a problem. And in most cases, if you agreed to something, stick it out for years, see what happens. Like I was not interested in being in New York, and I loved it. Not only did it was it so great for me, I stayed almost triple the amount of time I needed to be there, I could have been out in New York and six years, I stayed for 14, because I had such a great time working with high quality people in a challenging environment. I was so happy in my time in New York. So the greatest things that ever happened to me.
• 24:17
  Randall Kaplan: You mentioned the hotline, great experience there, but you were originally on the SWAT team. So sometimes we need to be flexible in terms of we think our career is going this way i career isn't going that way. You're into martial arts at some point in your life.
• 24:30
  Randall Kaplan: So can you tell us about how you became a hostage negotiator and how it ultimately happened.
• 24:39
  Chris Voss: And it's it ain't a straight line, a lot of the net steps forward come from a lateral move, or have heard people in companies talk about, they didn't just take a lateral move, there was a lateral and a step back to get to someplace even higher. So I was on a SWAT team in Pittsburgh, went out on a few operations SWAT train, and then got sent to New York and didn't wasn't on the SWAT team in New York. But thought about tried for after the Bureau's hostage rescue team, which was a next level up Bureau's version of the Navy SEALs, HRT and plenty of former seals on that team, and reinjure my knee and then had it rebuilt again. And then thought I'd so I want to stay in crisis response. What else was here other than being on the SWAT team because eventually my knees gonna break and not get fixed again. And we had negotiators and I thought it like so many things that look easy. It's because the people that make it look easy, have worked really hard at it and are still working really hard. But that's why I switched over to negotiations and then when I got into it for me for the way I'm wired, it was far more satisfying than SWAT ever. So it was a circuitous route, which were fit loose fill Lose setbacks, I use the analogy sometimes it's not a U turn, it's an S curve. However, you need to look at it very rarely, or what's perceived as setbacks, anything but a path to something better.
• 26:07
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about bank robberies for a few minutes. And I want to start with a few stats on this 2019 There were 2060, bank robberies, banks lost four and a million dollars as a result of them. So a lot of money. But the crazy thing is the average robbery is only $4,000. The penalty for bank robberies is 10 to 25 years in prison, which basically means if you rob a bank, you're gonna serve 10 years in prison for what amounts to $400 a year. I don't get it. But it kind of crazy math. Man. It's also crazy. Only 60% of bank robbery cases are solved. Let's talk about bank robberies with hostages. They're extremely rare one in 20 years, but the one in 20 Was your your first case 1993. And there's a robbery at the Chase Manhattan branch. It's seven thing Carol and Brooklyn.
• 26:57
  Randall Kaplan: You walk us through that and what happened? Yeah. And the
• 27:01
  Chris Voss: whole reason why you rob banks is a whole different thing. And I love that you brought that up, I'll bring it up real quickly. Because I always wondered that myself, like robbing a bank is a stupid idea. You don't get that much money. And you're gonna get your picture taken. I mean, you're gonna walk into an environment where the cameras everywhere.
• 27:17
  Chris Voss: Why do that? I was at Landmark training a couple years ago. And in LA, you know, I'm always looking for ways to get better.
• 27:25
  Chris Voss: And is this kid talking there?
• 27:25
  Chris Voss: You know, kid is in his mid 30s.
• 27:29
  Chris Voss: He went down for bank robbery three times, like it's three times to figure out this was a bad idea. But he had in his head that it was thrilling. So was it for the money it was for the thrill. And what people see in their head vision drives decision. That's how people do dumb stuff. Human beings, on a regular basis do dumb stuff on a regular because what they see in their head, says bank robber you asked me about in Brooklyn.
• 27:54
  Chris Voss: Yeah, the guy saw on his head, that he was going to get in and get out before the police showed up. And he saw in his head, how they were going to get in, they were going to threaten away into the vault. They're gonna get past the tellers by forcing the tellers to let him come in. And we did it. When he came into bank, he had a gun that look like a 357. And he put it in one of the female tellers mouth before the bank was opened, he knew the exact timing, put the barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, which as expected would horrify and you would open a vault if you could. So he's got this all mapped out in his head. Problem is somebody sees him on the inside, bank alarm goes out, I'm going to New York office, the FBI, it's 830 in the morning, my buddy Charlie walks up says a bank robbery in Brooklyn with hostages. Let's go. Yeah, the vast majority of bank robbers get out. And it's rare that they get caught inside. So we roll out, it takes us an hour to get there. And it takes us the whole negotiation team another hour to get set up. So two hours after the bank alarm has gone out, we're bringing into the bank trying to offer them we're cold calling salesmen who are selling jail time. So I asked him to share it does he sells jail time.
• 29:11
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about mirroring, laboring and mastering delivery. Those are three techniques you use to come to a safe resolution there, which you use in every other negotiation, whether it's a criminal case or in business, the first technique is mirroring. The second is labeling. And the third is delivering the right voice and the tone of your voice. And my favorite here is the late night DJ voice video. I've been practicing that in advance of the podcast. So let's start with mirroring first, what is it?
• 29:39
  Randall Kaplan: Well, mirroring
• 29:40
  Chris Voss: is just repeating the last few words what somebody's just said. Now our bank robber at the Chase Bank. I didn't know it at the time. I learned it later. He exhibited all the attributes of a great CEO, negotiator. So what is that? A great executive, a great business negotiator has a massive amount of power and influence. He's going to appear power less at the table. I learned as much later when I was at Harvard. One of the guy says yeah, there's a limit of people that are on in the room. Like if you're a CEO, you got to say like I got a board. My board is crazy. I don't know what they're gonna do. I can't agree to this.
• 30:15
  Chris Voss: You know, my boards gonna fire me with this bank robber. He said, I gotta tell you these other guys that went there more dangerous than I am. I'm scared of them. Like I don't know what they're gonna get. I'm talking to you. What? Oh, here comes one. Now let me hang up the phone. He was blaming people that weren't there. And he was completely in charge. He was totally in control, which is he envisioned outsmarting. Even. I was a second hostage negotiator, the first guy on the phone. He literally said to that negotiator. I'm the calmest one here. And he was so they Put me on a phone, a couple hours into this after five hours of stalemate, and I'm going to confront them. The gently.
• 31:01
  Chris Voss: There's nothing wrong with confrontation, it's how you do it. You scripted in advance, you use the late night, FM DJ voice, you know, not the accusatory voice where your voice is, you know, you're wrong, you're bad, you're evil, you're a jerk. You know, your inner voice is gonna betray you out. So have a soothing voice put you in a position to tell people the truth. And the truth was at this point in time was we were sure that we had his car and we voiced it to him. He was concealing from us what his real name was, because he figured he would get away. And given us his real name would be a stupid idea. They've given up that closely held piece of information. So I confront him over the van, which catches him off guard. I'm doing it with a late night FM DJ voice. And he starts babbling about how many vans he had. And I'm because we don't we have more than one van.
• 31:57
  Chris Voss: That didn't make sense to me. So I'm married. So you have more than one van? Because, yeah, well, when the police showed up, you chased my driver away. Now I got no idea what this dude is talking about nine, which is a great thing about marriage scale, just repeating the last couple of words that somebody just said, takes no real brain power, which is why it's a great skill when you're really caught off guard. And it gets the other people the other person has say stuff they probably shouldn't say. So I said, we, we chase you drive away. He says, Yeah, when he saw the police, he cut and run. Now he just gave up his getaway drive. With that statement, that we had no clue about. None. He threw this guy under the bus while working really hard to avoid saying anything to compromise this position. And the next thing he knows he's babbling telling stuff that he should not tell us, which is a great skill about a mirror, repeating the last three words, not the body language mirror, the tone of voice mirror, you know, all that nonsense. The hostage negotiators mirror, just repeating the last couple of words. And the other side, it's shocking how it keeps them talk.
• 33:09
  Chris Voss: And and that's exactly what happened in this case.
• 33:12
  Randall Kaplan: So let's talk about the second technique. What is labeling? And can you talk about the neuroscience here?
• 33:17
  Chris Voss: Yeah, labeling is just, it's meant to be self defining label, the effect or the dynamic, not the words. But the effect of the dynamic that you hear, sound angry, sad, upset, sound frustrated. And just it's an verbal observation, and verbalizing your observation of the tone or dynamic, how you perceive them to feel, especially if it's negative. And especially if it's against, you know, the neuroscience is labeling negatives, is the most effective way to get rid of them not denying, if you sense that the other side is frustrated with you, your guts, gonna say I don't want you to be frustrated and Wrong, wrong way to do it.
• 33:58
  Chris Voss: You need to say, you sound like you're frustrated. That two millimeter shift is the most effective way to dissipate the negative defuse it, defuse it or defuse it depending upon which version of that word you want to use. Nothing more effective than simply calling out the elephant in the room calling out the negative dynamic in the room, especially if it's pointed at you, not the stuff you have pointed at them. The stuff that's pointed at you, it's shocking. Again, I get maybe I like the word, it accelerates your progress instead of the lag. And the only way you come to learn it is to try. It's magic. It's really, really effective. So I've talked about mirroring and labeling. Let's talk about the delivery. Now.
• 34:47
  Chris Voss: The right voice, the tone of your voice and the three options here. Well, the delivery is principally hostage negotiators delivery 90% of the time was a downward inflecting something we call the late night FM DJ. Now your voice doesn't have to be low, or deep voice the downward inflection. We need a lot of questions for women frequently.
• 35:11
  Chris Voss: I don't sound like Morgan Freeman. How do I how do I do late night FM DJ voice you can do it tuck your chin when you talk. That automatically helps you downward inflect it's a physical amplifier of trying to get the late night FM DJ voice Sandy Hein who teaches our women's only stuff women's power hour. She teaches on negotiation nine but she also does stuff especially for women. And in our programs at a black swan group, black swan ltd.com But and if you're a woman, Sandy really understands the nuances to help women get better and she's one appointed the chin tucked down out there. Because I had always done it. She said for women.
• 35:50
  Chris Voss: What are you Do you tuck your chin, your Downward inflect. Now that calms the other person down and makes you look and feel to the other side is more self assured. The great news anchors have mastered it, because they need you to believe in them. So the downward inflection is really great, at telegraphing, promoting, displaying confidence without being arrogant. People have faith in you and calm down at the same time, kind of a double benefit of using.
• 36:23
  Randall Kaplan: When we think about our future, we're in the workforce or in our personal lives, there are times where we all experienced extreme pressure, you're a new employee, you spent three weeks preparing a presentation, senior executives are there you've never met before, you know, it's gonna make a big influence in your career at that company, you may kill it, you may bomb it, or you're an ER doctor and someone comes in with a gunshot wound a heart attack COVID Something else you may be the best ER doctor in the planet. But you know, a fair number of your patients are going to die. Let's talk about the extreme pressure of being a hostage negotiator, which is different than being a doctor because these life threatening situations are much less frequent. Even though you don't experience them on a daily basis, what you do in the next minute, or few hours can determine if whether people live or die. You have a lot of experience. You're armed with all these techniques, but is your heart pounding inside your chest when someone's life is on the line. And a bad guy has a gun pointed at someone's head or has explosives and is threatening to detonate a bomb?
• 37:23
  Chris Voss: Well, it is if you haven't prepared, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your highest level of preparation, a suicide hotline time was great preparation. And then I understood preparation and a process. And then you lean into the process and also realize two things. There's never a guarantee of success with the best process, it's the best chance of success, like some stuff is just never going to work. So when you realize you get the best chance of success, then you begin to have faith in a process and you relieve the pressure of having to be perfect because nothing is perfect. Any other thing when you got a good process is the straw that broke the camel's back, never broke the camel's back by itself.
• 38:09
  Chris Voss: There's never any one mistake that causes a catastrophe. It's an accumulation of straws. It's an accumulation of mistakes.
• 38:18
  Chris Voss: Which means when you've worked on a good process, you also have the latitude to make an occasional mistake, because your processes. So I had come to learn that. By the time I got ready to get on the phone at Chase. I had been working to process I had my preparation. I knew that the late night FM DJ voice, which I practiced in small stakes interactions, was probably going to carry the day and it was going to give me all the latitude I needed to make mistakes. Because when I was on the phone with a bank robber, that did surrender to me personally, he agreed to meet me outside the bank. I can remember what point in time he got mad.
• 39:01
  Chris Voss: He's like, hey, look, don't try and school me. And I got latitude. This guy can get mad at me. That was a straw. But my accumulation of straws at that point of time wasn't an issue.
• 39:13
  Chris Voss: So I didn't get rattled by making a single mistake. And throughout the duration of that the negotiated the follow me on the on a phone, Dominic Massino.
• 39:24
  Chris Voss: Dominic was the star. The bank robber almost went ballistic on him several hours later into the siege, because they were trying to put a mic in a bank and I tried to saw through the wall and the position, the spot that they picked on the wall to cut through was right next to where this guy was standing. And he starts screaming at Dominic over the phone. And that's probably multiple strokes. The Dominic was a calm guy. And he didn't get rattled. And he knew that as long as he, as long as he didn't get rattled situation probably was again, gonna get out of control. So as a hostage negotiator, what you really learn is you got latitude if you got a good process, and there's no guarantee of success.
• 40:06
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about success rate and baseball. You bet 300 You're in the Hall of Fame. Clearly, in the FBI, hostage negotiation. If you're batting 300, you're you're not doing very well. And you're probably the three and Don hit that point. No one passed 1000, like you said, but what is the success rate? And have you had people die on your watch? And let's also transition into the Jarrell Carroll case. And can you tell us about that case?
• 40:36
  Chris Voss: Yeah, well, success rates by 93% which means 7% of the time is going to go bad. And whether it's domestic or whether international kidnapping. It was my gut instinct that any hostage negotiator once they were kidnappings that will climb a North a double budgets. Someone was getting ready to go bad. I mean, just just the nature of things. And then my real test was, if you hit the iceberg, if you were the Titanic and the whole thing suck, how'd you bounce back? And I looked for the negotiators that bounced back after somebody getting killed, and I would specifically recruit them and tell them that I was recruiting them because they were in a siege where somebody died and they didn't quit. They hung in there instead of given up. Those are the people that I was after. So yeah, it is gonna go bad. And I had the first time somebody ever got killed on a case I had my hands it directly was in front of Mr. Garrett subaerial case in the Philippines. My second time through the Philippines, it's I talked about in the book never split the difference. And when that train wreck was finally over a two out of three Americans with dead, we reviewed everything we did, and we decided that we did everything we could. And I'm like, Alright, so then that means we have to learn the quote, the great Irish philosopher, Colin McGregor, right? i Winter, I learned. And so yeah, you shouldn't be humiliated. By losing, you should be humiliated. If you don't learn from it. The only real sin is to not learn. But I said, we got to learn, we got to we got to get better. And if we did everything we know how to do that means that we don't know enough and we got to go outside.
• 42:09
  Chris Voss: That's when I went to arm started to collaborate with them. But you know, you wouldn't you learn and you're not going to be perfect. So when that instance comes along, where you get kicked in, right in the in the teeth, you could curl up and die. Or you could curl up, but then decide to get up. And the people that decided to get up are the people that I like to be around.
• 42:32
  Randall Kaplan: So the Jill Carroll case comes around, you have al Qaeda, free people standing over her with looks like ak 40 sevens, get one behind her, you get called. And what happens in that case?
• 42:48
  Chris Voss: Well, we read that as a high threat. The visual data that we got back looked like they were orchestrating an execution, which was their history up to that point in time. And so what do we do we tell the truth, they tried to pretend like they were negotiating. And we called them out globally, to things It didn't look like the good faith negotiation. They want to convince the world they negotiated, which then was further justification for killing a hostage because we didn't negotiate good faith. And we said, You guys aren't negotiating not only that, the thing that I think that really got him was we called them out for breaking their own rules.
• 43:19
  Chris Voss: And the rules that they broke, when they displayed her was they displayed her with her hair uncovered. Now they had complete control of how she was depicted in that video. So they chose not to cover her hair, which means they chose to be disrespectful to a woman. And that's exactly what we pointed out, not accusatory way, but officially and unofficially, through a lot of third party intermediaries, who said, You guys disrespected her, you allowed her you caused her to be videotaped and display to the world with her hair uncut. So, and then it was dead silence from the other side. We didn't call them out on our rules. We call them out on their I got a colleague of mine used to like to say, I can live by your rules, can you so we call them out on their rules. Dead silence from the other side trying to decide what to do. We put her father in the me carefully orchestrated statements. Next time they put her on video, there are no executioner standing around her.
• 44:28
  Chris Voss: She's in there by herself and her hair is covered. You know, the secret to gaining the upper hand and negotiation is give the other side the illusion of control. We told them they were in control, because they were they screwed that up. And ultimately, one of the very few kidnappings that I know ransom to my knowledge was paid or even apply a bad ad eight days. After they snatched her off the street. She suddenly appeared back on the street and pretty much the same location she was kidnapped from amazing story.
• 45:02
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the value of thing. No, this one. counterintuitive to most people. Last week, I have lunch with one of my best friends.
• 45:07
  Randall Kaplan: He's the founder of $2 billion companies. He runs a very successful venture capital firm.
• 45:13
  Randall Kaplan: He's one of the nicest guys that you'll meet in your life are sitting there at lunch, talking about how hard we work. getting very late nights after we have dinner with our families and put our kids to bed shows me his calendar that day. There's 10 Back to Back zoom meetings.
• 45:25
  Randall Kaplan: There's five in the morning, and five in the afternoon. The only break is our lunch. And I show him my calendar. He says does yours look like that? And, and I only had eight. I'd like you know, I'm not quite at 10 we're talking because he's such a nice guy and people always want meetings for him. These aren't random people by the way. These are people or referrals from friends or business people. And he says to me, I have to say Say no to people, I don't want to piss anybody off. But I just can't be doing this anymore. I'm sitting there and I nod my head and say, I have the same problem. It's really hard. So here's the question. Do we need to take meetings when somebody says, Do you have a few minutes to
• 46:06
  Chris Voss: talk? Never know, first of all, if somebody wants to talk, in terms of meetings, or they got a proposition, they probably put it in an email, like even even now, take a meeting with an agenda know why you're taking the meeting, know why you're trying to get stuff done. And a lot of people say, you know, let's talk. And my response is, what do you want to talk about? Well, we got an opportunity. I'm like, All right, so lay the opportunity out. Let me get an assessment of whether or not you know what you're talking about.
• 46:35
  Randall Kaplan: I don't like it, by the way, they don't like it when you send an email like that. I can, can tell you now they think it's insulting.
• 46:42
  Chris Voss: Cool. I got no problem with that. Because we've got an axis that we work off of now, which is, we don't do business with people that are.
• 46:48
  Chris Voss: And this is a job Polish Genius Network phrase, half hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, because execution is bad implementation is bad, like this, is this gonna go down bad.
• 46:59
  Chris Voss: Now, that doesn't mean a bad people, it just means they're bad pick for us. So if I ask you to lay your stuff out in an email, and you get mad, we're bad fit. I don't need to go any farther. Now, you might not want to lay it out in an email, because you don't have a clear picture of what you're doing.
• 47:17
  Chris Voss: Which also means you're a bad fit. Or you might just have a great idea and not realize it but you want me to do all the work, which is why you don't want to put it into an email, which also means we're bad fit.
• 47:32
  Chris Voss: If you have a game plan, which is more important than an idea, lay the game plan out. And if it looks like something we can execute, then will continue. If it doesn't, I could say no right away, and you can move on to somebody who's a better fit. So if I want you to lay something out in an email, and you don't want to lay it out in an email, you get offended, that ain't my problem. It's your problem. This is a bad fit. And we're not into bad fit these days. So if we take a meeting, and every now and then I break this rule, and I always get punished for it, and it ends up being a waste of my time. Everybody's most precious commodity is time. So protect your time, and it will accelerate your success.
• 48:13
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about success. That's one of the goals of my podcast inspire motivate people on their path to greatness and excellence. What are the three most important ingredients of success on that path to excellence?
• 48:26
  Chris Voss: I think the biggest one is really just just focus on getting a little bit better every day, you'd be surprised at how quickly you get how far you get quick, by getting a tiny little bit everyday plus, you know, the or the fringe benefit.
• 48:39
  Chris Voss: For the day, it didn't get better. You don't feel this great sense of loss, like oh my god, I'm never gonna recover that feeling of loss is probably impacts this more than anything else. So focusing on getting just a little bit better each day. Also, success you want to go fast go alone, you want to go far go as a team, be a better team player versus a team leader. That's been a real struggle for me, because I always lead diva, you guys support me flipping around? How do you support the other thing, and you start putting the team in front of yourself. That also seems counterintuitive. And again, you'd be surprised at how far you get in six months if you go as a team and want to go far go as a team. And then third was probably hear people out in people who are dying to have their say, you will also accelerate all your relationships and all your outcomes by hearing people out rather than given direction, which is you want them to listen to you. So hear people out to really strengthen your relationships, strengthen your team learn and work better, more cohesively.
• 49:44
  Randall Kaplan: My motto is anything is possible. I give talks about this at colleges and business schools. And it's one of the goals of this podcast to motivate people to believe in themselves to achieve excellence in their life in all facets of their life. Tell us about Black Swans and let's go back to the 16th century and Australia.
• 50:03
  Chris Voss: Yeah, well, you know the name of the company, the Black Swan group, our negotiation approach to Black Swan math. So Black Swan, again, Taubes book from 2007, the impact of the highly improbable and where did that really come from? In 16th century Europe, people thought that there were only white swans, there could never be a black swan. And then lo and behold, black swans were discovered in Australia. What are the tiny little things that will massively change everything? Can you look for them? Should you look for, you know, that's the whole point.
• 50:37
  Chris Voss: And what do you do? What are the tiny little things that you could do that will massively change the outcome? One of those things is instead of denying negatives labeled, the other side thinks you're being disrespectful. And you want to say I don't want it to seem like I'm this Respect, tiny little shift that will make all the difference in the world. I'm sure I seem disrespectful, calling out versus than I, that would really the idea of Black Swans are and they're everywhere. There's always little things that don't take a lot of effort to do that will make a massive amount of difference.
• 51:11
  Randall Kaplan: Before we finish today, I want to play a game that I do in all my podcasts where I asked you a few questions, I start the sentence and you finish it ready to play?
• 51:20
  Chris Voss: And what do I get a prize here? What's the prize?
• 51:23
  Chris Voss: This sounds like as you know, I should get a prize.
• 51:26
  Randall Kaplan: She's, I'm gonna send you a copy of my coffee table beach drone photography book called bliss, which since it was released on Amazon in June, it's been the number one best seller in four different photography category. So I'm going to be sending gratulations Thank you, I'll be sending you a big day. Okay, copyright behind me, right there.
• 51:49
  Chris Voss: When I started my cool,
• 51:50
  Randall Kaplan: thank you. When I started my career, I wish I had known
• 51:54
  Chris Voss: to be just a little nice. That doesn't mean be more pushover just take a couple of miles an hour off the fastball, just be a little gentler, and how you deliver information. And something
• 52:05
  Randall Kaplan: I wish I had learned as well. And it's something I've been working on in my career. Throughout the years. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
• 52:16
  Chris Voss: yes, setbacks or setups. I mean, the best things that have come to me have come to me through really negative thing. So, you know, don't get rattled over setback, it's taking you someplace better.
• 52:27
  Chris Voss: Going forward, my professional goal is just to get better, just to get better to continue to learn. And then I'll see where that takes me.
• 52:38
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest personal goal is pretty much the same thing. I
• 52:42
  Chris Voss: mean, like I get some bucket list stuff, personal accomplishments that I want to do, almost, you know, I will climb Everest and want to hike the South Pole want to swim the English Channel. I mean, why not. And I'm going to try and do it in advanced age to make it make it a big deal. Anybody can do that if you're in your 30s just talking about doing it 60 Plus,
• 53:01
  Randall Kaplan: I have a bucket list too. I look at it every year. I've checked a few of them off my list, but I've got a long way to go. Hopefully I'll stay healthy and I'll be able to do.
• 53:10
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest regret is
• 53:12
  Chris Voss: I don't have a lot of regrets. I have very few as a matter of fact, and they would be intensely personal in nature.
• 53:18
  Chris Voss: And I'm not going to show
• 53:21
  Randall Kaplan: you President Biden were standing in front of me, I would tell him, you're doing a good job. The person in the world that I admire the most is a lot
• 53:31
  Chris Voss: of people that I admire probably Bonnell from YouTube,
• 53:35
  Randall Kaplan: bottlenose on my top three list of people to meet in the world than so much love the music humanitarian. He's on my top three. The one is humanitarian achievements are phenomenal, incredible. I want to give a huge shout out to my great friend, the incredible Sarah zap two years ago, you're a guest speaker to launch at her incredible organization called Beyond board. His mission is to help women get into public and private company boards. We met there for the first time, and she reconnected us for this podcast. So I'm grateful to Sarah, I want to finish, Chris, by thanking you and telling you that you made a huge difference in my life. You made a difference. After that talk with Sarah, I went back and I said I really need to recalibrate some of the things that I think and some of the ways that I do, you have no doubt made a difference in 10s of 1000s of people's lives. As I mentioned, I've been using your techniques since I heard you at the launch. And they'd been reinforced after reading your awesome book listening to your master class, which as I heard is one of the most popular if not the most popular master class of reading, which is fantastic. So Chris, I'm very grateful to you. Thanks for being here. And thanks for sharing your story today.
• 54:46
  Chris Voss: Thanks. So I like to tell people how to follow up with with me and my company.
• 54:48
  Chris Voss: Please do. Just subscribe to the newsletter. I mean, the newsletter is free. That doesn't matter. The fact is actionable is concise. It's usable. I mean, it's not so much to digest that you can't use it. subscribe to the newsletter, go to our website, Black Swan Ltd, calm, DLA CK Swa n ltd.com have arann hand corner, click on a tab for the blog. Sign up. It's delivered to your email inbox every Tuesday morning, concise, perfect time for you to integrate some negotiation skills and get better that day.
• 55:27
  Chris Voss: A lot of people get a long, long way with the book in the newsletter alone. It's also the gateway to our website, which has tons of free stuff on it.
• 55:35
  Chris Voss: The Black Swan method will help you get a long way. So let us help you as much as we possibly can.
• 55:46
  Randall Kaplan: And for those who don't know what kind of companies or people should come to you And how do they just contact you through the website?
• 55:53
  Randall Kaplan: These are people who want to improve their negotiating skills, and really, people skills.
• 56:01
  Chris Voss: Yeah. If you're curious, and you're ambitious, and you're willing to put in some work, we cater to what we refer to as the top 1%. And anybody can be in the 1% doesn't matter what you do for living, does not matter. You're curious, you're ambitious, you want to get better. You think that you can make your life better, and that you like investing in you.
• 56:24
  Chris Voss: Those are the people that we help the most.
• 56:26
  Randall Kaplan: There is no greater investment in the world than you can make in yourself.
• 56:29
  Randall Kaplan: Right. Hey, man. Hey, man, you've been awesome. Again, Chris, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you again at one of your talks. My pleasure.
• 56:39
  Randall Kaplan: Thanks for having me on. Thank you.