The 6 Second Trick That Wins Every Negotiation: FBI's Hostage Negotiator || Chris Voss

**Chris Voss** (0:00)
That's the kind of human being who says to themselves, if the experience is the best teacher, it's going to be my only teacher. And you learn, but you learn slow with that attitude.

**Jessica Neal** (0:07)
Yeah, agreed.

**Chris Voss** (0:09)
And so, best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. If you've never bought a book to read to get better, you're not going to now, especially once you've cleared age 30

**Jessica Neal** (0:22)
What would happen if we just told the truth?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:25)
Welcome to Truth Works, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work.

**Jessica Neal** (0:30)
And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:33)
And I'm Patty McCord.

**Jessica Neal** (0:35)
Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:43)
So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us.

**Jessica Neal** (0:50)
Let's dive into another episode.
Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of Truth Works. I am your host, Jessica Neal, and I'm here with my favorite co-host, don't tell Jeff, Peter Clark. Hi, Pete, how's it going?

**Peter Clark** (1:15)
Going well, thank you, yeah. Glad to be here, glad to be asked back.

**Jessica Neal** (1:19)
We have an interesting guest today.

**Peter Clark** (1:21)
Yes, super excited.

**Jessica Neal** (1:23)
I know, I'm excited, because I, you know, I just, I feel like this guest is going to give us all a lot of information. We're gonna learn a lot.
I have always thought about myself as being a good negotiator, but after kind of digging into what our guest talks about, I don't know if I am. I negotiated my entire career, but I learned a lot from him. And so today, everyone, we have Chris Voss on the show. He is a former FBI negotiator for kidnapping. I mean, I don't even know where to start with all of that. He's the founder of the Black Swan Group, which helps everybody figure out how to get good at this. And he's the author of a wonderful book that has sold many, many, many, many millions of copies called Never Split the Difference. We're going to talk about how to negotiate better with this expert. And we're going to learn all kinds of things today, like being silent and, you know, which is hard for me. But, but, but welcome to the show, Chris. We're so excited to have you.

**Chris Voss** (2:36)
Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Happy to be here. Thank you.

**Jessica Neal** (2:40)
Yes, you're welcome. Well, I always like to go back in time because I, I love the stories of what led people to get to where they are. And you have had, like, I don't know, a fascinating career that not many people get to have. I don't know, there's not many, I don't know. Maybe there's more than I think, but I don't think that there's a ton of, you know, kidnap negotiators running around out there, freeing the world. Maybe I'm wrong.

**Chris Voss** (3:11)
Now, I was fortunate, the circumstances came together to create the position and I held it for about seven years. So yeah, I was very lucky.

**Jessica Neal** (3:20)
Yeah. So how did that happen? How did you get into the FBI and become this master negotiator in high stakes, mind you, situations?

**Chris Voss** (3:30)
Well, you know, you're born in a small town in Iowa, you go up about an hour north, Interstate 80, you make a right.

**Jessica Neal** (3:38)
Okay. That's where you grew up.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

**Chris Voss** (3:42)
I grew up in a small town in Iowa. I know I've got an accent slightly different from that. But yeah, I'm a blue collar.
Really, I mean, I think the essence for a kind of character like me, blue collar is just hard working. I'm going to dig in. I think of myself as a team player and maintain a sense of humor and get stuff done. I mean, just whatever the mission is, you got to get it done.

**Jessica Neal** (4:04)
What did your parents do?

**Chris Voss** (4:06)
My father was an entrepreneur.

**Jessica Neal** (4:08)
Okay.

**Chris Voss** (4:08)
Owned a small business, sole proprietorship. He never had any more than really two people working from directly at any time. As I got older, the gas station business, which is kind of what he was in back in the 1960s and 70s, evolved into the convenience store business. So by the time I graduated college, he had a string of convenience store gas stations that he owned and operated.