and so we got this bad guy trapped in a bank very manipulative dude uh the bank robber was a great example of a great CEO negotiator and I came to learn that a really influential negotiator on the other side is always going to diminish their power they're going to talk about you know CEO is going to say I got a board of directors if I sign this deal my board's gonna fire me you know I got a team I can't do anything that's the most influential person there that's the former International hostage and kidnapping negotiator for the FBI he has worked on more than 150 International hostage cases in Iraq Gaza the Philippines Colombia and Haiti today I ask him his best negotiation advice um Chris Voss I wrote Never split the difference negotiating is if your life dependent on it I'm a former FBI hostage negotiator was the FBI's lead International kidnapping negotiator after I left the FBI I started teaching business negotiation and Business Schools NBA programs at uh Georgetown and then USC and at Harvard also to start I asked Chris why mirroring a tactic where you repeat what the partner has just said is so important I'd love to hear you talk about that and and maybe share with the listeners why mirroring it's so important share why mirroring is so important share why mirroring or just in your own words is mirroring something you would advise listeners to do if they were going into a negotiation okay so I I I I know I know you caught that and you're playing along with me but I'd ask every listener when they're listening to this to rewind the podcast because he asked me the question and I mirrored it and then he gave me a great he gave me a great response you know you expanded you're comfortable you moved on you rewarded the question and you added a lot of clarity to it and it went really smoothly and that's exactly the way a miror works now miror is just repeating the last one to three is words that some just said could be one word it's really never more than five because you get to be more than five you're you're getting more into what's paraphrasing which is another skill of making the other side feel heard and getting the other side your counterpart uh to comfortably expand notice I don't say adversary the adversary is a situation the person you're negotiating with is really your counterpart that you're trying to trigger collaboration so the miror a simple little skill in the hostage negotiators mirror the Black Swan mirror is not the body language mirror that so many people say where you know if they say like you're doing now you got your hand to your mouth if I put my hand to my mouth that suddenly you feel we're like and suddenly you feel drawn to me now that you know and in point of fact if we're if we're having a great conversation we will sort of start to fall into line in our body language will begin to be very similar but the problem with that is the manipulators overdo that and so we get uncomfortable like I sit down and as soon as we started talking if I started to immediately mirror your body language you'd notice it and then you'd experiment a little bit like you'd shift to see if I'm going to shift and pretty soon you know intention has a smell you're going to smell that I'm trying to manipulate you that that I'm doing it not to get in sync with you because we're feeling in sync but because I'm trying to take advantage of you and that's one of the one of the things about the body language mirroring that people have to be very careful about because the the pure transactional pick your pocket short-term relationship person will use that to try to accelerate the deal so you got to be careful in using techniques that the hustlers use that the PE that people can't can't trust now the the Black Swan mirror the Tactical empathy mirror just a repetition of words it connect something in your head uh it's a better way of saying what did you mean by that typically if you ask somebody what did you mean by that they'll repeat it with the exact same words only lder kind of like an American looking for directions to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and if I stop somebody in the street and I go where is the Eiffel Tower even louder I'm expecting you to understand what I'm saying so and that's what you get most of the time if you say to somebody body genuinely genuine inquiry what do you mean by that they'll say it again with the same words but with the mirror something happens in their brain where the the the person talking gets a message from me and the message is actually I heard what you said and I'm really interested and I want to know more but I need you to use different words because by mirroring the words I told you I got the words you know my hearing works and I and I do understanding English and for whatever reason I need more and it just comes across in this really gentle compelling way people feel drawn to and they say more and they talk even more so the mirror is is one of those skills where when you first start using it you feel awkward I'm guaranteeing you anybody starts mirroring right off the bat the awkwardness you think the other side's going to burst into flame and Point At You and go how dare you use tactical empathy on me that's Voss ISM I know you're Voss of me don't Voss me and that's what you think's going to happen the other side doesn't even notice you know they they they just keep talking they just they just keep rolling and if you if you mirror and they don't say anything to you you just sit there quietly waiting for them to get their comfort level and air does a really good job of of getting people to comfortably add to the conversation even blur stuff out occasionally they don't they don't mean to blur it out so the mirror tools is just this delightful simple skill that's so effective and some people that that may be all they do it seems simple but it works even embarrassingly on me I didn't notice that Chris was mirroring me at the start and this this Effectiveness is proven in the research one 2003 paper studied waiting staff at restaurants they found that when staff mirrored the orders the staff earned 70% more tips another paper in 2008 looked specifically at negotiations they found something quite incredible negotiations where one partner was instructed to mirror well those Partners reach settlements 67% of the time when Partners didn't mirror the settlements were only reached 12.5% of the time mirroring works but it is just one of the many tactics Chris has next up he advised me to start using calibrated questions in negotiations here's why calibrated questions are let's take a list of open-ended questions uh Camp would have called them the interrogatives the reporter's questions who what when where and let's narrow them down to really what and how because they're they get people to expand now they're calibrated to cause a specific type of thought in a very differential way and they trigger again to refer to Daniel conoman conoman would probably refer to is slow thinking or in-depth thinking so I can take a calibrated question and I can get you to stop and think on a specific area like if I want you to think about how we move forward I'll say what are the next steps if I want you to focus on what the challenges are I'll say what's the biggest challenge you face that was probably Camp's favorite question and in many cases a lot of salespeople are taught to tell say to the Mr CEO what keeps you up at night that frames someone on uncovering problems principally the what question is is something that we realized even after we publish never spit the difference that the question for what is primarily not exclusively but primarily designed to uncover problems uh what's the biggest challenge you face what keeps you up at night what happens if you do nothing um uh what what happened last time you tried this principally designed to uncover questions calibrated to put the person in that frame of mind and give it some real deep thought now whether or not the answer is actually a secondary benefit the first benefit is is to to get the person thinking about a specific Topic in a very differential way they don't realize that you put them right there and you kind of framed it and box them in on that topic when you another one is we call time travel when you when you told me a month ago that you were interested in moving forward what did you have in mind I used the word when to put you in a moment in time and I very deferentially reminded you of what you told me previously and you don't you don't feel coerced because of the design of the question now the the other calibrator question we use most of the time is how how do you want to move forward how am I supposed to do that how's that going to work how is mostly not exclusively mostly designed to develop implementation steps we used what to uncover the problem we're going to use how to tackle the problem it's very differential people love to be ask what to do what do they think how do you want to proceed feels really good to be asked that question so if you're in a question mode and you're trying to get them to think about certain things what and how pretty much helps you put the other side into that differentially like with all of Chris's advice there is a lot of evidence to back up his point a 2009 study found that you can increase survey responses by three times simply by asking passers by are you a helpful person another study from Robert chalini presu book involved asking potential customers for their advice about setting up a new restaurant those who were asked for their advice were significantly more inclined to actually dine at the restaurant when it opened than those who weren't and there's one more study from 2004 by burn crank it found that adverts containing questions are rated 14% more favorably than those with statements I've actually proved this myself I tested question-based ads on Reddit and found they improved my click-through rate by 15% questions work in my opinion They Work N Out of 10 times but why n out of 10 where did I get this specific number well it's from another one of Chris's tips see he says to persuade you should use a specific number rather than a round one yeah well you know numbers that end in zero feel like there's room to negotiate and it you know it's pricing I mean how often you walk into a store and it's exactly a dollar it's exactly $10 it's exactly $15 like in in pricing in in stores globally uh they use odd numbers there's something about numbers that that don't end in zero that feel like that they you have reasoning behind it one of the students in my class at Georgetown uh a great negotiation he was in and he was he was a playful dude I mean there's there's a tremendous amount of your uh ability increases the more playful you are and he is negotiating over the rent in his apartment at Georgetown and he's willing to pay the increase and and he tells himself you know the worst that happens is I'm going to agree to the increase and I'm still going to keep the apartment but you know let me let me have fun with this and see see what happens in the meantime and he starts throwing out ridiculous numbers to the the manager of the apartment building and he's laughing with the guy and the guy's laughing with him and it's a negotiation over two days and finally when he comes up you know he gives the guy an odd numbered amount for the rent and it's just something he he calculated making the number odd there was no data behind it at all and the the apartment manager said you must be an accountant and he lies and he goes yeah I am I you know it just it just gave him this sort of authority to his number that it was an odd number and it seemed like it was calculated and people tend to have much more faith in odd numbers when you throw them out you know I don't know why I you know I just know it is it's a nice thing about being a not being a PhD you know PhD throws something on I got to explain the mechanism the fact that it works is almost irrelevant I but I if I can't explain it I pretend like it doesn't exist so I'm not a PhD I just know what works and the odd numbered stuff works really well Chris doesn't need to be a PhD because there is already a wealth of evidence to back this tactic up Michael Santos in 1994 found that Beggars who request a specific amount like 35 cents rather than a quarter increased their donations by 60% and in 2006 Shindler discovered that ads which use specific amounts are deemed 10% more accurate so for example saying a deodorant lasted precisely 47% longer made the claim more believable than simply saying it lasted 50% longer specific numbers work because they make the request seem more believable this effect isn't only evident in studies it's identifiable in Real World Sales data from 25,000 house sales in Florida found that homes with precise asking prices sold closer to their listed price than those with rounded prices specificity Sals it's why almost every major retailer from Amazon to Apple uses it but none of these tip come close to his next suggestion and that's giving your partner autonomy the need to feel like that you're autonomous you know what are the basic human needs first of all you want to survive you want to live period and then once you know you're not going to die you're autonomy is essential as a human human driver can't point it out in his book start with no it's a reason why we had hostage negotiators globally in the first place you know we had tactical teams before before we ever had hostage negotiators but surrounding somebody with the Tactical Team and saying come out I we'll kill you is to take their autonomy and we found we the collective we in law enforcement found people were getting killed over stupid reasons and we thought well you know let's let's let's find a way to gently talk with them without making them feel like they're losing their autonomy and then I start thinking is there ever been a civilization in the history of mankind that was comfortable was slavery and there isn't you know pick a continent pick a time frame pick a religion pick a gender pick an ethnicity no human being was ever content in slavery that's an autonomy issue and unfortunately sometimes when people get into business negotiations you start if you're a threat you start making demands you start taking away inadvertently taking away somebody's autonomy using their leverage I mean what kind of Leverage have we got them Leverage is the ability to hurt am I going to harm you if you don't make this deal that's an autonomy issue and business people on a regular basis will Talk Amongst each other and say I'm going to blow this deal up you know I don't like the way these people are talking to us and boy if if you can let somebody feel like the autonomy is preserved suddenly they're more collaborative suddenly they're they're much more open and honest with just just respecting somebody's autonomy at all it's such a deep-seated need that uh you you get a tactical Advantage a collaborative Advantage a deal making Advantage as soon as you're conscious of it because seven to eight out of 10 of your your competitors are taking people's autonomy away which makes you much more attractive to deal with from the very beginning removing someone's autonomy doesn't make them a better negotiation partner it causes them to react take one Zer chance study conducted with two-year-old she invited toddlers into a room of toys some toys were right in front of them with an Arms Reach others were behind a perplex barrier and required vaulting over the frame to access them consistently the children wanted to play with the hard-to-reach toys regardless of the toy type we don't like having our autonomy restricted it's a deeply embedded behavior that all of us from 2-year-olds to kidnappers tend to follow so I wondered with all these tips if Chris had an example of him applying some of these theories in a real world hostage negotiation and he had a cracking example for me well summarizing the other side and making the other side feel heard has a really astonishing effect on the negotiation Dynamic and when I first started teaching negotiation even before the book came out you know I'm a hostage negotiator I'm teaching in Business Schools and I'm run across business people and they go let me tell you about this negotiation I had them over for a barrel I mean there was nothing they could do and they're celebrating that win it was really exciting now they don't have that very many stories like that and when they had a story like a big win early on then the big winds become fewer and fewer apart until finally you know the negotiation that they're celebrating was five years ago that's exciting and it just that success doesn't last now we make a terrorist you know a bond villain if you will in a negotiation feel really heard and suddenly he's not demanding it the Shilling negotiation in the book the kidnapping negotiation we just made the terrorists feel hurt we summarized them and they feel connected to you and in the Shilling case Shilling ends up walking away which means you know our bond villains didn't get any Ransom at all got no money got got left sort of in a sense of disarray and after it was all over you know our bad guy our bond villain about two weeks later called The Negotiator that I was coaching and basically told him he respected him he called him on the phone and said have you been promoted yet and from based on his tone of voice it wasn't a resentful have you been promoted yet it was and he literally says you know you did it I don't know what you did you're good at what you do I was I was going to kill that hostage and you kept me from doing it it was an astonishing outcome an astonishing impact there was never a celebratory moment in the negotiation but making people feel heard and saying I understand doesn't make somebody feel HT saying I get it you know I get that I felt that way here's what I found you know that all that nonsense they don't know what you get you got to repeat it back to them you got to summarize it for them when you start getting somebody to say that right nobody ever said I understand to you and you would and said that's right you you you you do understand me that just doesn't happen summarizing what the other person's perspective is is really what empathy is all all about and it has astonishing results summarizing what the hostage taker was saying led to some astonishing results in this negotiation making someone feel heard provided a root to resolution but this wasn't a one-off Chris has found repeated success with mirroring too you know there was uh one of my real early negotiations and it was the use of mirroring on what I now realize uh the bank robber was a great example of a great CEO negotiator and I came to learn that a really influential negotiator on the other side is always going to diminish their power they're going to talk about you know CEO is going to say I got a board of directors if I sign this deal my board's going to fire me you know I got a team I can't do anything that's the most influential person there the more they diminish their power the more they use plural pronouns versus singular pronouns and so we got this bad guy trapped in a bank very manipulative dude he constantly saying oh these guys I'm with you know they're more dangerous than I am like I'm even scared of them I gotta get off the phone here here they come now he was in total charge the whole time and at some point in time I got to start asking him about a van because we've IDE him he's not given us his name because his name is precious to him and he realizes that as soon as he gives us his actual name we began to he's opened himself up to us and so he's not voluntarily given it to us we've been in there about five hours we got his van we got a voice ID on we know who he is I've been coached to share this information with him shortly after I get off the phone onto the phone with them we've done a handoff and j m phenomenal negotiator great emotional intelligence he's coaching me to brace this guy with his name so I'm worried about backing into it too quickly I start talking to him about the van and he says something to me like well you chased our driver away now I got no idea what this guy's talking about and so I just mirror because my training I'm falling back on my training you fall to your highest level of training your highest level of preparation and I'm so confused I just mirror him I go we chased your driver away he says yeah when he saw the police he cut and run so what he's doing with my mirror is this this highly manipulative highly conscious great negotiator who's covering up how influential he is my mirror is getting him to start giving me information and he doesn't want to give me he's implicating somebody else he's making it look much more like a conspiracy he's making himself look much more like the Leader by coming across with closely held information that is against his best interest and this this mirroring of mine in the moment which is only reflexive because of my training ends up leading to the conviction of the of the getaway driver we had no other information on him at all other than what this manipulative guy spontaneously uttered in the negotiation I I run across the case agent handling the case probably about six months later he's like we we got to give the we got we got to let the getaway driver go we got we got no uh uh uh evidence on them and I go no no no right in the middle of the conversation because we taped it we had a transcript I had the transcript on I said I'll show you where he implicates him directly uh voluntarily in the negotiation and guy says yeah got to show me he takes a transcript and he hands it to the defense attorney and they and they plead on the spot Chris has found what many behavioral scientists have since proven the secret to negotiation isn't your powerful body language your high anchor demands or your manipulative dominance it's the opposite it's giving your partner autonomy it's mirroring them to make sure they feel heard it's being precise to build their trust and asking calibrated questions rather than making demands