Here is the full transcript of Chris Voss’ talk titled “Never Split The Difference” at TEDxUniversityofNevada conference.
SUMMARY: Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, shares his insights in a talk titled “Never Split The Difference,” focusing on the application of negotiation skills beyond traditional hostage situations. He draws from his vast experiences to illustrate how negotiation is integral in everyday interactions and conflicts. Voss emphasizes the importance of tactical empathy, a method that involves understanding the perspective of the counterpart without necessarily agreeing with them.
He shares anecdotes to demonstrate how these skills can be effectively applied in personal and professional scenarios, including diffusing tense situations in a bar and cutting million-dollar deals. Voss dispels myths about negotiation, highlighting the necessity of integrity and reputation even in high-stakes negotiations. His talk is not only an exploration of negotiation tactics but also a deeper dive into human psychology and how understanding it can lead to successful outcomes.
Ultimately, Voss’ message is that with the right approach, empathy can transform adversaries into allies, underscoring the power of never splitting the difference in negotiations.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
My Journey as an FBI Hostage Negotiator
I was an FBI hostage negotiator. It sounds like a cry for help, doesn’t it? There were more people working in the federal building I worked in in New York City than the small town in Iowa I grew up in. My mom is still trying to figure out how all that happened.
My mom, by the way, is a loving, no-nonsense, hard-working Midwestern mom who says what she means. You know what the difference between that kind of mom and a terrorist is? You can negotiate with a terrorist. I see there are similar experiences out there.
When you’re an FBI hostage negotiator, you deal with the mad, the bad, and the sad. To quote Tom Strentz, the godfather of the FBI’s hostage negotiation program, “It means you believe you never split the difference.” How are you supposed to split the difference with some bad guy who’s got four hostages, he wants to jet to Cuba and a million dollars? You say, “Alright, we’ll take two hostages, we’ll give you a helicopter to New Jersey, and you take an Uber from there.” Of course not.
One other myth I’d like to dispel about hostage negotiators as well, it’s that we can say whatever we want to get our way because these are one-off negotiations and we’re never going to see the bad guy again. Well, hostage negotiators have repeat customers. There was a siege in a major city in the U.S.
The Reality of Negotiation
The bad guy was on the run for ten days after having murdered four people. They finally get him cornered. He’s got two hostages. The negotiator gets on the phone with him. The negotiator’s a little excited. And the bad guy literally says to him on the phone, “You’re not doing a good job, you’re supposed to be establishing rapport with me.” He’d been barricaded before. If the negotiator before would have lied to him or said what he had to say to get him out of there, lives would have been lost on down the line. So we have repeat customers. We believe in reputation. We have integrity.
So, one night, I walk into a bar with three other hostage negotiators. Now, I realize that sounds like a joke. Four hostage negotiators walk into a bar and they don’t pay for anything. But this actually happened. The four of us walk into the bar and the place is packed.
It is jumping. And I look around. I see a seat empty at the bar. And I go over and get ready to sit down. And the guy sitting next to the seat says, “Don’t even think about it.” Now, I’m a hostage negotiator. I’m going to talk to this guy. So I say, “Why is that?” He says, “Because I’ll kick your ass.” I say, “I don’t need that. I’m Chris.” And I hold out my hand.
The other negotiator is with me. We swoop in. They put their arms around me and say, “Hey, how are you doing? Let us talk to you.” You know, what’s going on? Let’s see what’s going on. We find out this guy is a former Vietnam vet. And his life is in a shambles.
Applying Negotiation Skills Beyond the FBI
It’s a mess. No job, no girlfriend. He’s out. He perceives the world as celebrating and happy. And he’s miserable. And that’s why the seat’s empty. Now, everybody tried to sit down there. He offered to fight them.
Now, I know from hostage negotiation, if you get the hostage takers to use the hostage’s name, it makes it much, much harder for them to hurt him. I’m some nameless guy. He’s ready to hit me. As soon as I become Chris, everything changes.
How was I supposed to split the difference with that guy anyway? Sit on his lap? Sit under the chair? All right, so what do you do if you’re armed with this tactical empathy from hostage negotiation after you leave the FBI and you’re looking for gainful employment?
The Power of Tactical Empathy
How do you find a real job? You write a book. I wrote the book, “Never Split the Difference,” with Paul Ross and Brandon Voss, about applying the tactical empathy from hostage negotiation to the bullies and the liars that we encounter every day, to the bad, the mad, and the sad we run into in our jobs, in our social interactions, at our family gatherings, at the breakfast table.
I saw a meme recently. I thought it was really funny. It said, “You know, this parenting is really wearing me out. I think I’ll try something less stressful like being a hostage negotiator.” Tactical empathy, weapons-grade empathy.
Did you ever imagine hearing those two words combined in the same sentence?
In “Never Split the Difference,” we define tactical empathy as simply taking an inventory of the perspective of the person you’re talking to, of the adversary, the counterpart, especially the parts that we don’t like, and then telling them what it is, describing it back to them calmly. No denials, no disagreements, calmly. Now, tactical empathy works because we all possess this human nature wiring.
Human Nature and Decision Making
It works on a human nature level. We’ve got something in our brains called the limbic system. Everybody has it. It’s components of the brain. It doesn’t matter what your gender, your ethnicity, or where you grew up. You have a limbic system, and everyone has that. That’s the reason every hostage negotiation team in the world, from Baghdad to Bogota to Boston, uses the same skills, because it’s human nature wiring that we all possess.
Now, that’s its shortcoming. It only works with people. So, I’ll give you another human nature secret, insider’s tip. We all have one way we tell the truth, one way. We might lie five to seven different ways, but you’ve got one way you tell the truth, and that’s the way a polygraph works, and the way Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was identified by two colleagues of mine as the mastermind of 9-11.
Now, the way a polygraph works is you come inside, they sit you down, they hook you up to this machine, they put all these wires and these gauges on you, and they ask you a series of control questions to lay down your one way of telling the truth. “What day is it? Where are you? What’s your name?” What did you have for breakfast? They get your baseline for truth-telling.
Then they ask you the hard questions. “Did the dog really eat your homework?” “Were you really in the bathroom when the fight broke out?” It doesn’t matter which of the many ways you might come out of your truth-telling, the only thing that matters is that you came out of the truth-telling baseline.
Now, a few months after 9-11, a secret government agency had a terrorist in custody in a secret location outside the United States. The terrorist was badly wounded, and they were worried that he was going to die, and they needed to get somebody in to interview him that knew the substance of the case, and two colleagues of mine were the only ones close by. And the reason why they were worried this guy was going to die and move on to the next life was the only reason that they were going to let my colleagues come in, let FBI agents come in and talk to him.
The Identification of a Mastermind
So they get together and they say, they’ve got a picture of the person they know to be the organizer of 9-11, but the picture’s not good enough for them to be able to tell exactly who it is. So they say, “We just talk to this guy long enough until we know what he looks like when he tells the truth, and then we lay the picture on him, see what he says.” So they talk to him, they show him the picture, and they say, “Who is this?” And he looks at him and says, “You know who it is.”
And they go, “No, we don’t, that’s why we’re asking.” He says, “It’s Ramzi’s uncle.” Ramzi, the Ramzi he’s talking about, is Ramzi Yousef, who’s in an American prison doing life, and he’s a mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack back in 1993. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is his uncle, in fact the organizer of the 9-11 attack, and the interesting part about this at the time is most of the U.S. government doesn’t think Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is involved with Al-Qaeda at all, let alone organizing the attack, and that’s how he was identified with that human nature truth.
Now, what’s the point? The point is that even terrorists are humans, and there are human nature rules that apply to all of us in all situations. So several years ago, while I’m still with the FBI, I am up at Harvard Law School’s negotiation course, and I’m going through their negotiation course, because Harvard and the FBI have the same definition of empathy.
Bob Mnookin, the head of their program on negotiation, says empathy is just describing and demonstrating and understanding the needs, interests, and perspective of your counterpart without necessarily agreeing. And he goes on to say, it’s not about liking or sympathy in any way. And I’m thinking, I get behind that, how am I supposed to like a terrorist? This is perfect.
In sum and substance, the FBI on one hand, and Harvard on the other, have the same definition of empathy. So while I’m up there, I’m looking for some more academic scientific evidence that backs this idea up of universal human nature wiring, and one of the brilliant instructors up there, Sheila Heen, talks about a book called Descartes’ Error. And it’s a study and scientific proof that emotions are intertwined in all of our decisions. We make our decisions based on what we care about, which makes decision making by definition of emotional process.
And I’m thinking, perfect, Eureka, this is exactly what I’m looking for. The only problem is, I’ve never heard of a philosopher named Descartes, so I write down Dick Heart, D-I-C-K… D-I-C-K-H-E-A-R-T, Dick Heart. And I go home and I Google Dick Heart and I can’t find him anywhere. I’m thinking, I don’t know why Sheila’s so impressed with this guy, nobody ever heard of him. Dick Heart‘s error is that he needs a PR person so people know who the heck he is. Eventually, though, I do figure it out. Alright, last story.
The Transformative Power of Empathy
A friend, a colleague, a client, uses a transformative skill of tactical empathy to cut million dollar deals in the tech sector. He’s enormously successful. He’s at a family gathering. His youngest sister has had too much to drink.
Now, his youngest sister is a primary caregiver of their dying father. The stress on her is enormous. And he’s seen her before at these types of gatherings, lash out at other people when she starts in on him. And he realizes now it’s his turn. He sent me an email that said, “I just wanted to make her feel heard and to not dispute a thing that she said.” It went on for an hour. The next day, she sends him an email that says, “Yesterday I attacked you and you showed me nothing but love. Thank you for being my big brother.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the bad, the mad, the sad are everywhere. They’re us. Don’t let just terrorists and bank robbers be the beneficiary of this transformative skill. You tactical empathy in the people you talk to, your adversaries, turn them into counterparts, turn them into loved ones. And never split the difference. Thank you.