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A | Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Chris Voss. Chris Voss spent more than two decades as an agent with the FBI or Federal Bur... |
B | A pleasure, man. |
A | I've been wanting to talk to you on record for a while. You are quite the, what we call in science n of one, when somebody is a true sample size of one. I realize that, yes, you are, because you have this incredible skillset from your time in the FBI, but you also have an incredible understanding and knowledge of how t... |
B | Always happy to help, man. |
A | Thank you. Well, I have a lot of questions today, but what I'd like to start off talking about is negotiations take many forms, but if we could break those down into their broad categories, that will be useful. But before we do that, I want to know about the mindset that you have when you go into a negotiation and whet... |
B | There can be a couple different. First of all, just trying to figure out what's really going on is the real issue. And then how can I get an approach where I'm most likely to get the best possible outcome? So there's always more than meets to eye, and there's a certain few cliches, but the real issue is there's always ... |
A | So interesting. I wonder what it tapped into. But it sounds like it might have tapped into her sense that everybody's always asking me for a magic wand kind of ability, but finally somebody just said it directly, and that would be kind of fun to actually play that role, because normally they're restricted to their keyb... |
B | Overall, I'm pretty steady. Well, the late night FM DJ voice that I'm not sure that I coined the phrase, but kind of famous for to calm you down, also calms me down. So if I get Ben out of shape, I will. And the conversation gets heated, I'll switch into that voice with the intention of calming you down. Cause that's t... |
A | Well, after you're done, I'm going to tell you something that will perhaps be astonishing to you as to why there's real neuroscience behind that late night FMDJ voice having an impact on other people's brains. |
B | But, yeah, and I'll do that. Cause it calms me down. Now, if I can make the shift. The hard part is a shift into a positive mindset. If I can make that shift, but I can only make it from a calm voice. I also think it's the emotions are kind of a rock paper scissors sequence. I don't think you can go from sadness to ela... |
A | I'm going to just share with you what I learned recently about sound and emotion. I'm researching an episode on music and the brain. Fascinating topic. Believe it or not, there's a lot known, and the auditory system has this property where, of course, there are neurons, nerve cells that respond to different frequencies... |
B | Well, then. And then also, the point then, too, is it's nothing. The other side's not making a choice. It's an involuntary reaction. |
A | That's right. This is not something one can override, except by perhaps plugging their ears. If they're hearing that, their mind is getting shifted toward a state of low frequency oscillation, which is one of more calm. |
B | Yeah. |
A | Yeah. So that's a real thing. And were you to have a high, squeaky chipmunk's voice, you might not have been the negotiator. You would. Although, who knows? Maybe there'd be another tactic there. I mean, I think back to the. I guess it was during one of the Gulf war campaigns where they, weren't they trying to squeeze ... |
B | So, that was Panama when they were trying to get Noriega. |
A | I'm only a few countries over and one ocean. |
B | I get the trivia. You know, I was telling you before, and the wacky, yet fascinating, useless information around terrorism and stuff like that, I tried that at Panama. And for whatever reason, the military guys, they were playing music and sounds. And then also, among the many stupid things that the FBI did at Waco, th... |
A | So for those of you who don't remember Waco, Waco was branch Davidians. David Koresh, right? |
B | Yeah. There was a Netflix series that was out about it recently. That's fair. About how it went down. |
A | Yeah. Sad ending. He eventually set the building ablaze, killed himself and everybody else had people inside. |
B | Set the building on fire, including a. |
A | Lot of children perished, including some children. |
B | There are some FBI agents that have still not gotten over that. |
A | I'd like to talk about some different types of negotiations. Oftentimes, I think because you're a former FBI negotiator, anti terrorist task force, this kind of thing, we tend to focus on the negative negotiations. Get the hostages away and we'll talk about that stuff. Breakups, business deals that have gone wrong, peo... |
B | Yeah. Well, there's a couple of interesting things there. First of all, the phrase win win, because win win is just great collaboration. I mean, in point of fact, it should be win win, which might only be emotional win win. Now, the phraseology win win. I know that if someone opens a negotiation with me and they say ri... |
A | I love that. Because what you just described is hypothesis testing. |
B | Yes. |
A | It's the way scientists are trained. Many people don't know this, but they teach us in science not to ask questions, but to start with a question like, you know, I don't know, how does the brain develop or something? And then you say a hypothesis and you test hypotheses, and then you figure out if they're right or wron... |
B | A couple of things. First of all, when you talk about hypothesis, when my son Brandon was involved in a company, he's out on his own now, but he used to always say, hypothesis test your hypothesis. He always used that term. And then even now, if we were talking about it and you just said you knew some hotdog and hambur... |
A | I love it. And also, I'm sure people are noting to not say the words win win when approaching any kind of negotiation. What do you think it is about those little catchphrases that signal lack of authenticity or trustworthiness? Because you could imagine that somebody, I come to you and say, hey, Chris, let's, I don't k... |
B | It correlates really strongly with the people that are definitely trying to cut your throat. And I've had them admit that to me candidly. |
A | Amazing. |
B | Like I'll be, I've experienced it. Like, if somebody throws win win out early, to me, I'll say, all right, I think I know where this is going, but let me explore it. And they'll say, yeah, you know, this great opportunity for you, that's another towel. And we're going to put you in a room with all these billionaires, a... |
A | Well, I've gotten that one before. |
B | The. |
A | Famous the world war. Just work out in your favor because it's going to work out in my favor. |
B | Right. Exactly right. |
A | I've been on the receiving end of those offers many a time. Fascinating. Conversely, what sorts of openers do you think establish the best rapport and benevolent discovery of a topic? |
B | Well, what I'm saying correlates real strongly with people I want to do business with. If they figured out something that they know is valuable for me and they've just done it and they've just offered it, like right off the bat, no strings attached, they found a way to drop something on me that's valuable. They didn't ... |
A | When I first opened my laboratory in 2011, I had a technician at the time who had been a technician for a lot of years, and there's this culture and science of people borrowing things from laboratories and not giving them back or breaking them. These can be little things, like a small instrument or a forceps. But as a ... |
B | Well, I learned, you know, they tried to teach us early on that not everything's going to work out. And the second negotiation I had in the Philippines, the first one, a young man named Jeff Schilling, was grabbed by terrorist group Abu Sayyaf and he ended up walking away because we stole the bad guys long enough that ... |
A | I've heard it said that when people take somebody captive, that they either want their money, their body, or their life, or some combination of those. |
B | Yeah, that's probably one of those three. Yeah, that's very true. |
A | And as the negotiator trying to rescue the hostage, is it important to identify early on which of those three or which all of those three they're after? Like, how serious they are? Are they willing to actually kill the hostage? Are they, you know, will they go for any amount of money above x number of dollars? |
B | Right, right. |
A | Trying to figure out their threshold. Right. I mean, because the person is on the other side is gambling. Right. They're gambling their freedom. They're gambling their reputation with whoever their reputation matters to. Is it important to get into the mindset of the person you're negotiating with quickly, using the hy... |
B | Yeah, the indicators are really there. I mean, once you sort of lose your illusions about how you think things should play out, then the patterns of behavior are generally pretty quick and clear. And just because you don't like the patterns, like with al Qaeda, we recognize the patterns, and knowing what they are doesn... |
A | The double dip is a scary thing to hear about at a much lower level, meaning more minor level. People sometimes get shaken down online. Their password will get taken. There are people everywhere who go for the. Click on this link, you get a text message. We've identified that your account has been changed. Verify, you ... |
B | Negotiations can be a lot of fun if you let them. |
A | Well, I'm hoping that our discussion about this now is going to save some people the trouble of having their accounts hacked. I've known people who've had their accounts hacked, and these are some smart people. But what's interesting is that I've also observed those situations where somebody gets to the point where the... |
B | Right? |
A | If you think about it, why would they? The money funnels in and, like, they just can pivot and go to the next thing. So how do you gain confidence that you are likely to be double dipped or not? |
B | Well, first of all, I gotta find out if they're in a position to carry out the threat or if they're in any sort of legitimate position to begin with, for lack of a better term, it's proof of life. And there are a lot of people that are trying to scam you, but they don't really have the ability to scam you. So you gotta... |
A | We're going to come back to empathy because it's such a big and important topic. But I've heard it said before that if somebody you don't know, but maybe also, somebody, you know, places a real sense of urgency on, you know, need the money now, or I need you to do something right away or else, not a threat of physical ... |
B | They want to help, to be a rescuer. |
A | Right? So is that a good rule of thumb for people to keep in mind? |
B | I think that's a great rule of thumb. I mean, a friend of mine, somebody got a hold of his phone number not that long ago, and I was getting text from his number. So I'm like, look, man, I got some real problems. Look, I need some money from you now. It was a friend, the friend's number. And I remember when I first saw... |
A | Oh, man. I think. |
B | But I started it all by just checking the source. If it was my friend, I would have helped him immediately. And I need to throw something at him that's going to confirm that it's him and that I'm there for him. But I'm also going to have put a little bit of a curve in there that if he doesn't catch, I know it's a con, ... |
A | Incredible knowledge that people will hear this and they might think, oh, that's never going to happen to me. But like I said, I had known family members and friends who they make the mistake. They take the bait of clicking on the link, and then now they're getting the shakedown. Actually, a good friend of mine said th... |
B | I've had that happen to a friend also. |
A | Yeah. So the sense of urgency should have been the first flag. |
B | That's a great point. Yeah, absolutely. And look, look, even if they've got your loved one, the secondary issue is, if you do what they want, are they gonna let them go, which is actually a legitimate question, like if there really are bad guys. One of the things we learned in hostage negotiation that I apply to busine... |
A | There are examples somewhere in between getting your Instagram account hacked, your bank account hacked, and I, God forbid your child kidnapped, for instance. There's a whole practice within the legal profession of probing to see whether or not somebody is going to give up money to avoid a lawsuit, for instance. Actual... |
B | And it's being honest. |
A | Yeah, he's being very honest. He scares people for money, and he's very good at it. And he understands how other people scare people for money. And he works both sides, plaintiff or defense type situations. But it made me realize that a lot of the legal profession is not okay. The lawsuit slid across the table. It's th... |
B | Diagnosing the other side's ability to pay. |
A | That happens really often. I can give a specific example where somebody had an incident at a dog park, where their dog allegedly ran into somebody, maybe charged at somebody dog park. People are standing around and the person moved and apparently injured their knee. But rather than sue the owner of the dog, what they t... |
B | How much money do you think you could deserve? You deserve is a really good question. Not necessarily what the answer is, but how they answer it, you're gonna get, how quickly they fire back, and whether or not they stop and think about it. How and what questions? Typically our best to judge the other side's reaction. ... |
A | So if the person on the opposite side of a high friction negotiation is aggressive, the goal is to slow things down, fatigue them, and get them to just either relent or to reveal something. That's a loophole. |
B | Yeah. If I have to make the deal, then I'm going to wear them out. |
A | I'm interested in drilling a little bit further into this process of wearing them down and the passive aggressive way of reducing the aggressor's stance. And I want to highlight for people that what we're talking about here isn't manipulation to extract something. We're actually talking about the reverse. We're talking... |
B | Well, they're going to be questions that are mostly how and what? And they're going to be legitimate questions, which is how do I know you're going to follow through? What does that look like? Like, if I do what you want, how do I know you're going to follow through? |
A | So get them to talk about the alternative. Okay, so if you were to, well, if you deliver by that date, I'm gonna pass them to you without fail. Like, if they're just getting kind of brief answers where the person is just, again, this kind of like, rigid stonewall approach. |
B | Yeah, well, and so there's a phrase that we use all the time, vision drives decision. So if you're really gonna comply, if I give in and when I said, how do I know you're gonna, you're going to follow through. I'm not talking about the threat. I'm not trying to get you to clarify the threat. I'm trying to get you to cl... |
A | Do you have a bodily, like a somatic censor for lying? The reason I ask is, years ago, I had the experience of knowing somebody, and they turned out to be a generally good person. But I sensed early on that something was, like, off. I couldn't relax around them. I just couldn't relax around them. And I could not tell y... |
B | Yeah. Well, it's a little bit what you guys and your colleagues are still discovering the science behind the gut. And what we're actually teaching my company now, we're teaching people, learn the difference between your gut and your amygdala, for lack of a better term, your fear centers and know which one is which. And... |
A | Oh, pheromones. |
B | Pheromones. What, are pheromones gonna get kicked out? Like, of course. And that's why some of the great investigators I knew would say, I can just smell it. I can smell it. So what all is feeding your gut? And what are the senses that the science hasn't yet discovered? You know, you can't make me believe, I will never... |
A | I completely agree that there are energetic exchanges that neuroscience can't yet explain. The field of neuroscience, that is, is starting to explore some of these things. There are basically three apex journals, the most competitive journals to publish in science, nature, and cell. And I only mention that because ther... |
B | He's been on with you before, right? |
A | He has to talk about trauma in particular. And he was on Lex Friedman's podcast as well. The series that we're doing with him is not about trauma per se. It's really about the subconscious and the. I think you'll find this series really interesting. And it has a number of very practical questions that one can ask thems... |
B | Convince ourselves that we're in charge, right? |
A | Yeah. I mean, I can't think of a time that my gut told me a and it turned out to be b. More often than not, though, I've suppressed my response to the gut. I override it, thinking, I think I made the mistake that you guys train your negotiators to avoid a, which is I thought, well, this is making me anxious and the anx... |
B | Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would agree. |
A | So when you're doing negotiations and you're hearing somebody's voice on the phone, there are a lot of cues. When you're face to face, there are additional cues. There's their face. And then, of course, if the negotiations are being done by text over a computer or a phone, it's a very diminished environment for informa... |
B | It's more, are things in alignment? There's layman's data. You know, the words, the way it's said and look on people's face and how are they weighed and how they play out. There's a ratio out there that very unscientific. 738 55 7% words, 38% delivery, 55% body language. People won't argue about it all the time whether... |
A | Is the same true in online or text communications? |
B | The same thing is true. The problem with online and text is people try to bundle everything into one communication. The best analogy I can think of is if you were playing chess by text, would you put seven moves in your text? No, you'd only put one move in. So only try to get one point across in a text, don't explain. ... |
A | So if I understand correctly, by setting the context in a very direct and succinct way, he goes into it in a problem solving mode with you. Whereas if you do the tour of all the things that are going well in life. |
B | Yeah, hey, how are you? Yeah. |
A | The sort of the. We'll keep this pg, you know, the mud sandwich approach. They teach you that when you get a laboratory. You know, most scientists have no skill running a business, right? You get a laboratory, all you've done is experiments, and then suddenly you're in charge of people managing budgets and all this stu... |
B | Right. |
A | All right, this is not that. What you're talking about is saying, hey, this is the problem. You're not going to like the problem or there is a problem, you're not going to like it. So that they show up with the context of solving a problem as opposed to giving them the tour of all the things that are going well, and th... |
B | It's what I would call the difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter. A straight shooter tells you the truth. They just tell it in a way that lands softly. |
A | Let's talk about breakups, business breakups, romantic breakups. |
B | Right? You breaking up with me? |
A | No. No. But thanks for the hypothesis test. No, in fact, I'm enjoying this conversation so much as I always do. I'm learning a ton from you that, if anything, I'd like to expand and deepen our relationship. Chris, there, you got a lot of knowledge out of me, platonic and professional, but expansive. What is the process... |
B | Right. |
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