7 FBI Negotiation Secrets to Outsmart Narcissists, Liars & Manipulators | Chris Voss

**Lisa Bilyeu** (0:02)
What up, guys? I'm so excited, so let's just dive in to this episode. I'm Lisa Bilyeu. Welcome to Women of Impact.
You've spent over two decades in the FBI, negotiating with terrorists, criminals, and some of the most manipulative people on the planet. So how do you handle and outsmart someone like a narcissist or a psychopath, who lacks complete empathy and only cares about themselves?

**Chris Voss** (0:23)
Well, when you come to earth, when you're born, regardless of gender, ethnicity, anything, diet, religion, the moment you arrive on planet earth, the hypothesis which I believe in is you come basically with a set of core emotions, anger, surprise, joy, disgust, fear. Then what creates a sociopath, a narcissist, any of these bad types is then their experience with life as they evolve. They're still born with core emotions. That doesn't change. In MPI, they're always trying to figure out what created a sociopath, what created a serial killer. And one of the theories was age five or six, they do something wrong, they're severely punished. A month later, they do the same thing wrong, they're not punished at all. What they learn was there are no rules as they go through life that there are no rules. And that creates feelings, the distinction between emotions and feelings.
Even a narcissist or sociopaths are born with core emotions. They have emotional vulnerabilities. They lack certain types of feelings. They don't feel guilt for whatever reason. They don't feel sympathy, but they still feel anger, fear, disgust, happiness, joy, the core that you're born with. And they still have neurochemicals. So, these are the tools that a hostage negotiator looks, is I'm using my skills in hostage negotiation or in business or personal relationships to start to diagnose which one you are. Like if I, you know, a classic is the forced empathy from the other side. My son labeled that as forced empathy because if you and I are in interaction, you're saying something to me, it's going to be tough for me to do. And I say, how am I supposed to do that? Seven to eight times out of ten, there's 180 degree shift in your perspective because I forced you to take a look at me and consider me as a human being. If I say to you, how am I supposed to do that? And you say to me, that's your problem.
Now I know what I'm dealing with. One of the most common reactions to how am I supposed to do that is somebody says, you know, you're right, I could see how that is a problem for you. What if I were for you this? And they instantly go to collaboration. That's the majority, 70 to 80 percent of the time. So you got to know which ones are not. And the, you know, that's your problem. Now you're telling me either you're not collaborative as a person, period, or you're not collaborative under these circumstances. Now you might be backed into a corner. In a business negotiation, you might be under massive pressure.
I got to know, are you under pressure, or are you just a bad player? So my first response is going to be, it sounds like you're under a lot of pressure.
Because I need to know if you're under pressure.
Now if you are, you're going to immediately resonate with that. Immediately. It's an involuntary response.
If you slough it off, then I know you're using the attack, it's gaslighting, you know, narcissism, any of those things that are indicators of a bad player.

**Lisa Bilyeu** (3:46)
You talk about the illusion of control. And so talk to me about how you can use that in a conversation to somewhat allow the other person to feel like they have the power, but actually you do.

**Chris Voss** (3:58)
Deference, there's so much power in deference. And I know somebody needs to be in control. First of all, the what and how questions. They feel deferential when you ask somebody that. And point of fact, you got an opponent on the other side, you want to exhaust.
And what and how questions call for deep thinking, which is exhausting. The other side doesn't know you're doing that to them. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to react?
What do you want from me?
Innocently asked. But when you got a bad actor on the other side, passive aggression is an acceptable tool. Because they're probably using passive aggression on you. So deference is a way to hide how you're trying to wear them out. And they feel in control. People love to be asked what and how questions. Because a control freak wants to tell you what to do. Wants to tell you how to do it. It makes them feel larger than charge. And we stumbled across this with kidnappers globally. Doesn't matter what kind of kidnapper you can think up. There was a lone kidnapper serial killer on the other side, on a kidnapping in the Philippines. That is a bad guy.