The Ledger, every show

“If you're putting penalty clauses in your contracts, that means you're not a good negotiator.”

“Getting to yes is intellectually sound. There's nothing intellectually to be challenged on getting to yes. And unfortunately, that does you no good as soon as you involve human beings because none of us are intellectually sound.”

“An intellectually brilliant idea in practice, a horrible idea... Here's, here's the problem with Batman. That becomes your goal, and so therefore, if you say to yourself, and the vast majority of people who calculate their BATNA, you know, as long as I do bett…”

“The urge to correct is so irresistible that we actually use it as one of our negotiation skills. I'll say something wrong on purpose. Because you will not be able to resist the urge to correct me with the truth. And it's a great way for me to trigger getting h…”

“No negotiation team, whether it's business or hostage, hands a negotiator off to another negotiator to be nicer. Ever. Business or hostage. If there's a change in negotiation, negotiators on the other side, it is always to take a harder line. Always.”

“Well, if they've got proprietary information that would change everything, then your must haves and your giveaways could be completely wrong.”

“Instead of, do you want to talk about what we're here for, which you're driving for yes, because that going for yes creates friction, but going for no creates protection and safety.”

“I mean, you get yourself to B level negotiator there. You'll never get yourself to A plus on leverage. Cause leverage is the ability to inflict harm. And if you're making deals based on the ability to inflict harm, these are not, those don't go for stable long…”

“So when you can decouple those, Then actually you give yourself the ability to influence people in a way nobody else can.”

“No, I don't think it's ever necessary. I'm very much against it.”

“When I first started looking at the number, you know, they used to say like one in every 112, 116, and now they're saying roughly one in 35”

“Your response to my tone of voice is a neurochemical response, which means it's not a choice. And if it's, if I can trigger neurochemicals in your brain, then you can't stop me from triggering them. Now you can fight them. But I can initiate the process, which…”

“Nine 11 was solved by FBI New York. And Mueller had just taken over, and they wanted headquarters to be in charge, but FBI New York knew what was going on, so what they did, so the headquarters were being charged, they transferred everybody into New York to he…”

“Whatever you think of Donald Trump, love him or hate him, nobody's in the middle. I think he gained so much admiration by refusing to back off of what he said. And every politician prior to him, they'd say something and they get criticized and a politician say…”

“And then they show us how a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, numbering anywhere from 50 to 2000, Can be turned into a raging violent mob by six instigators. Only six instigators to turn a peaceful crowd of a thousand into a raging violent mob.”

“And the people with the megaphones are professional instigators. They want us at each other's throats. And I think if we're just aware that their intent is to instigate, whether they be with Fox news or whether they be with CNN, Their intent is to instigate.”

“You know, seek first to understand, then be understood is a mercenary's tool. I mean, if you want to get to an out, if you want to get to your outcome faster, Let the other side go first. It'll take a lot less time. You don't waste time spinning your wheels, o…”

“Fear gets in the way of deals anyway from three to nine times more than benefits make deals.”

“You don't use empathy because you're a missionary, because you're soft touch. Use empathy because you want to get stuff done faster, and you've got other stuff to do to get after.”

“Everybody's driven by loss. You know, our sociopaths, which there's no shortage of them functioning in the business world. They're self-interested. They have desires. They're driven by loss, loss aversion. There's no getting around that.”

“Intentionally getting people to say no that, that rewarding all your yes oriented questions into no oriented questions and said, would you like to do this? Say, are you against this? That's an insane success rate.”

“And that's what happens with compromise. You get, you know, you put half measures in, and it destroys everybody's idea instead of finding out what's, what's the best course of action.”

“If you can substitute the word predict for trust or predictable for trust, then put you in a much more rational frame of mind and you can see things easier and then you can make better decisions.”

“If you're the most mercenary person in the world, and the only thing you care about is making money, then that's the fastest, easiest way to make the money.”

“And the other side will tell you if they could trust you not to hurt them with it. So your first negotiation is trust. Cause they got stuff. If they could tell you it would change everything.”

“Well, questioning somebody makes them feel cornered. Which then diminishes trust because nobody trusts you if you cornered them or interrogated them.”

“So it's compromise is to by definition, make something lose lose. And that is not compatible with a long-term relationship of trust and prosperity. It's compatible with being a C player.”

“I heard a long time ago, up to age five, treat a kid like a king. Five to 15, you know, work them like an indentured servant. At 15, let them go. There's a lot of brain science that, that overlaps very closely with that in the development of the brain.”

“And then why, if you're not angry yet, I might say to you, this is gonna make you angry. And it doesn't plant anger, it inoculates you from it.”

“No matter where you grew up, no matter what your ethnicity, your culture, your diet, your religion, I know that you've got these five core emotions. And so empathy, tactical empathy works with Arabs, works with Persians works with Latinos because you're a huma…”

“Simultaneously, I can open anybody up like anybody with my curiosity because curiosity is impossible to resist.”

“They're prepared for arguments. They're not, they were never prepared for empathy. Ever.”

“Business these days, Deception by omission tends to be accepted. And it's out of defensiveness. People don't know how to tell the truth. And you get really caught up in short term.”

“So tells per se are strictly within context to the person. And I will talk to you long enough until I get an idea of what you look like when you're telling the truth. That's what I'm looking for.”

“You can't beat a good polygrapher and it's whether or not the polygrapher is any good. And a really good polygrapher will tell you before they put you on the box, Whether or not you're lying and a good polygrapher either.”

“There are, we are never going to get away from the reality that there are going to be some people that we're going to need to lock up and never let out.”

“We believe strongly that the world splits evenly into thirds. Doesn't matter gender, ethnicity, geography, religion.”

“Media has never been accurate. And so to say that, you know, the quote, the lamestream media, if you will, well, they were never not that way. We're just a little more aware of it now.”

“But when you're being ghosted, you're going to get a response within three to five minutes of them seeing it. So when you send it, you ought to be staying by your device in case they see it right away. Cause it's coming, screaming back at you.”

“I say I'm sorry all the time in front of bad news, not after it. And it's a softener. It's a warning... If I say, I'm sorry in front, you're like, Ooh, what's coming? You're ready for bad news. You're prepped. If I give you bad news and then say, I'm sorry, th…”

“So whether we like it or not, bosses, supervisors are conditioned to think of everybody as selfish. Because every time you come to me, you want, all you want is something for yourself. That's the reality.”

“Going undercover almost ruins everybody that does it. It's such a problem that there, every law enforcement agency that has undercovers sets up a lot of psychologists to try to fix these people.”

“FBI headquarters is mostly not exclusively. They got a few great leaders there. But they're 80% career bureaucrats, and then they work ultimately for a political appointee. So they got to try to navigate that whipsaw.”

“Being corrected is a superpower, and most people are horrified at being corrected, when in fact, when somebody corrects you, they're stepping to your side.”

“It's one of the best ways to tease out, maybe not proprietary, but closely held, because they don't trust you yet.”

“Now, the label is much more likely to get a solid stream of consciousness response. It's so much better than asking questions. Once you learn how to convert over, we've got clients that say labels unlock the floodgates of truth talk. They're vastly superior to…”

“No one is comfortable referring to the following problems because they feel like everything they throw out is a commitment, is a trap, is a tie down, and nobody likes to get tied down. Having said no, you feel no obligation to continue even if you laid a whole…”

“Top performers are all alike across the generations. It doesn't matter what generation they're a part of. The top one to five percent, they're all curious, they're all ambitious, they're all learners. When you start talking about difference in generations, you…”