The Exchanges

Q What are some of those other triggers that, in the context of listening to someone, you can gather more information?

A One of the things, again, you talk about mirroring in your book. Mirroring is a great trigger. We believe that a mirror is one to three words. Once you get north of five, that's too many words. Typically, you parrot it back to them word for word. You learn the skill based on the last one to three words I've just said. When you're really good at it, you can really guide a negotiation depending upon what you mirror. It's one of the really stealth, powerful methods to get people to talk. It's a great way to get people talking. The other thing that's nice about it, the reason why it's superior to a question, if I say, what did you mean by that? You'll probably repeat what you just said with the exact words, possibly even louder, sort of like an American overseas. If you repeat the exact words louder, it automatically becomes more apparent. But a mirror, you'll never repeat the same words. You'll reword it. There's something about the mirror of The message comes across for me, and it impacts you, is I heard what you said. For whatever reason, the words you used weren't exactly right for me, and it would be really helpful for me if you reworded the meaning of what you just said. All that is packed into the act of mirroring, and the other person expanding, elaborating, again, in many cases, a great way to get closely held information without the other side regretting it. So mirror is …

AI assessment note: “Mirroring is a great trigger. We believe that a mirror is one to three words.”

Q So how do you teach how to use the time wisely in the black swan method?

A We encourage people, no matter what you're doing, you got to start pulling data on what's going on. And what am I talking about? From initial engagement to close, how long does it take you, somebody that you've closed? You need to start to become aware of the people that you never close and how long they take. First, start paying attention to the behavioral profiles of the people you don't get deals with. Suddenly, you're going to find out a tremendous repetitive pattern of behavior. So what we first do when we're teaching on our people, first start listening to people, and then let's start paying attention to who you close with and who you don't. You're going to find that at least half the people you don't close with, it wasn't your fault. It was written there the whole time. If that's true, we can start diminishing our time commitment with these people. We call them halves. It's a phrase we learned from Joe Polish, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. A very specific cluster of behaviors and statements that they make. And I got my people, first of all, I said, all right, so I'm happy to walk away from the halves. We got to learn how to walk away from the people that are wasting our time sooner. The whole team has embraced it. So then we started pulling some data on it. People that we make deals with, we call them ELFs, easy, lucrative, and fun. Another Joe Polish term. So t…

AI assessment note: “We got to learn how to walk away from the people that are wasting our time”

Q What's an example of something that you would tease out so that you get corrected?

A One of the students in Georgetown is in the middle of a commercial real estate transaction. The building that they're looking to buy, commercial, mixed use in a historic area, commercial and residential, growing city, historical district as well. They ain't building any more of them. They can't knock this baby down. And it is a cash machine. It's got near a hundred percent occupancy. They got everything going for it possible. So this looks too good to be true. So he takes a shot, and he says this to the agent. Sounds like the seller's looking to sell a cash cow because they don't believe in the market fundamentals. Now, he was just articulating a read, which happened to be wrong. The agent immediately shoots back. They got problems in other buildings. They got to sell this one. Now that's proprietary information. You should not be giving that stuff up. But not only is it a correction, people feel safe when they're correcting. It just feels so good to correct. Not only does it feel good in the moment, but the other thing about an intentional correction is they never regret it. Because again, like your Maya Angelou quote, what they remember is the feeling of the moment. It's one of the best ways to tease out, maybe not proprietary, but closely held, because they don't trust you yet. Because not only do you need to get the information, but But you also need them to not regret givi…

AI assessment note: “Sounds like the seller's looking to sell a cash cow because they don't believe”

Q I'm curious in all of the work you've done the last couple of years, what's your favorite story to tell that embodies so much of these tips in a practical way?

A First big case I worked in the Philippines. Terrorist group on the other side. American having done something showing very bad judgment, which is how people usually get kidnapped. People don't get kidnapped doing smart stuff. They get kidnapped wandering into situations they shouldn't wander into. And they're always blue-collar types because the white-collar types got all kinds of security around them. They're hard targets. Blue-collar type shows up, walks onto the X, if you will, to use my special forces buddy's analogy. The X is where you take somebody down. So this guy walks onto the X, gets kidnapped. We don't have dime one to throw on the table when we start this kidnapping negotiation. International kidnapping is a lot like in a bank robbery, you give the bank teller bait money so the bank teller doesn't get killed. The bad guy leaves the bank with a small amount of money, the teller's not dead, and the money becomes evidence. That's the best analogy for kidnapping negotiations. When this starts, we don't have dime one to throw on the table. Although eventually, you can find some money someplace because, relatively speaking, nearly every American is wealthy compared to people in the south of Philippines. You want to see extreme poverty? This is one of the places to go. But we're not going to throw any money on the table. We're just going to hear the other side out. We're …

AI assessment note: “First big case I worked in the Philippines. Terrorist group on the other side.”

Q So you said no one can listen to you until they feel heard. And we've talked about some of those techniques. Are all of those techniques ways of allowing someone to feel hurt?

A Definitely part of it. Paraphrasing. Typically, you really want to make sure you got it right. You're going to throw the labeling and the paraphrasing together and bundle it all up and summarize. Like, if you're going to summarize the other person's perspective, it's a combination of what happened and how they feel about it, which is actually how we structure teaching people to summarize. So far, you've told me X. As a result, you feel Y. If you've done a really good job, what you're driving for is that that's right. That's right is what people say when they feel heard. When they feel that what's been repeated back to them is true. If you got a full on summary and you get like a that's right out of the other side, and possibly even add some insights based on what they've said, what you trigger in them is an epiphany. You're trying to trigger an epiphany in the other side, or a bonding moment of some sort. Bonding moments come from oxytocin. Oxytocin is the bonding drug Interestingly enough, while we've always talked about oxytocin as a bonding neurochemical, listening to Andrew Huberman, my favorite podcaster, a couple of podcasts back, he talks about oxytocin also increases the chances you'll tell the truth. So when people feel heard, they bond to you, and the likelihood that they will be honest with you increases dramatically, which is what you want from the negotiation. You …

AI assessment note: “Definitely part of it. Paraphrasing. Typically, you really want to make sure you got it right.”

Q I want to ask you about overcoming fear. In negotiations and all these things, there's an aspect of being afraid of not getting what you want. How do you handle that?

A The short answer is Curiosity at all times. I read Nassim Nicholas Taleb stuff. He wrote the book called The Black Swan, which inspired the name of my company, in 2007. I came across his book from 2012 called Anti-Fragile, where he talks about curiosity is an anti-fragile characteristic. What does it mean to be anti-fragile? To gain from problems, to gain from disorder, to gain from trauma, post-traumatic stress growth. Fear is dramatic. So what's curiosity? Curiosity is highly positive. Derek Gaunt, one of our two top coaches, over and over and over again, he said, stay curious, stay curious, stay curious. When you're curious, you also have pushed fear out of your brain. You can't be afraid and curious simultaneously. When you're curious, you're in a positive state of mind, which is smarter. You hear better. You see patterns more quickly. You see deals faster. When you're genuinely curious, and so the automatic hack to eliminate fear is simply to be curious. It sounds too simple to be true. You got to try it to find out.

AI assessment note: “The short answer is Curiosity at all times.”

Q We hear a lot about open-ended questions as a good thing compared to closed-end questions. So now you have open-ended questions at certain times a day, and then you have labels, maybe all day, but in particular, other times a day. What are some of those other questioning tools that are effective in eliciting information?

A Well, really getting a no-oriented question. What I've also found is, no matter how tired I am, I can answer, I can say no, and I can probably, having said no, throw in some more information. Guidance. I had an intern that I told, never ask me a question after two o'clock in the afternoon, I can't answer with no. Do you want me to do this is much better than, what do you want me to do? Because if I don't want him to do it, I go, no, don't do that, do this, bang, bang, bang, and I'll give him immediate guidance right away. I think it's one of the reasons why it's very difficult for executives and companies. Friend of mine, Tom McCabe is head of the DBS for the Americas. He was talking to me about how to thrive as an executive is going to the boss, be willing to get shot down, take his feedback, and come back with a smarter idea. So boss got limited time. Walk in, make a proposal. If it isn't dead on, boss going to say no. Now you're going to be crushed. But instead of being crushed, The boss is probably going to give you some great guidance in a really short period of time, show them that you've learned, and come back again, having gotten wiser as a result of the guidance he gave you after he said no. And we're seeing very consistently across the board that if you get somebody to say, no, are you against this? They'll say, no, I'm not against this, but here are the following pro…

AI assessment note: “Well, really getting a no-oriented question.”

Q How do you think about setting the stage? So you're engaging with someone, whether it's a hostage negotiation, a business negotiation, just a conversation with someone that you want to engage with. What are the things you think about setting the stage so you can have that good conversation?

A The first thing really is everybody's got something to say. Now, the people that are most closed mouth and tight lipped are the guys and gals fed up with not being listened to. You set the stage, you create an environment right away that lets them know you're actually going to listen. You're not going to pretend to listen. You're not going to wait for your turn to talk. You're going to take an educated guess on state of affairs, their mental state, their business state, What they're up against, and then you're going to throw an educated guess out. The real critical thing that a lot of people are really scared of is being corrected. 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. I have been perusing your book, Capital Allocators. I like the quotes. I'm finding it really interesting, and at the beginning of, I think, the interviewing chapter, you got a quote from Maya Angelou, About the real impact on somebody is how you made them feel. Well, it feels so good to correct that a lot of people don't realize what an advantage it is to get corrected. They're horrified that the person doing the correcting is going to think that they're an idiot. In fact, correcting is such a satisfying thing to do that people that we train the black swan method, we get them used to being correct…

AI assessment note: “You set the stage, you create an environment right away that lets them know”

Q What's the latest addition to your repertoire that you've figured out over the last stretch of time?

A Two things. First of all, in halves, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, can you convert a half to an elf? We've got a couple of ways of doing that successfully. Like some people are engaging in bad behavior just because they've been conditioned that it works, and they don't know how damaging it is. Scope creep is a tremendous example of that, or asking for additional things after you've cut the deal. Like there's a lot of coaching out there to continue to ask after the deal. People do it because that's the way they were coached, and it works, and they don't realize how damaging it is to the relationship. So we've got very specific skills as to how to get somebody out of that behavior. We've always coached people, let out no a little at a time. So how am I supposed to do that as a first way of letting out no? Nobody should ever be surprised when you come to a full and complete no. They should have seen it coming if they were paying attention for a while. But I didn't realize when you're saying no, you're saying no to one of four things. You're saying no to either the terms, the price, the behavior, or the person. And we taught people to say, how am I supposed to do that four different ways? Changing the emphasis, how am I supposed to do that? Which is, please take a look. Very little about this works for me. How am I supposed to do that? Focus is done either on a specific te…

AI assessment note: “Two things. First of all, in halves, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating”

Q When you've taken the lens from hostage negotiations to business negotiation, I'm curious, what have you seen in terms of what's most effective in coaching people in the business world in negotiations?

A Well, we emphasize tiny little shifts. All of it applies. We emphasize a calming, soothing voice, the late night FM DJ voice as the default voice in hostage negotiation. Smiling rarely. It's much more important to smile when you speak in business negotiations because you're driving a different emotional dynamic. I'm a firm believer in this stat from Sean Acker, a Harvard psychologist. I think his TED Talk is The Happy Secret to Better Work. That's the name of the TED Talk. Wonderful, entertaining TED talk. He says you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind. Now, hostage negotiators typically gotta turn down anger first. So if you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind, you're at least 31% dumber in a negative frame of mind. What's your starting point? You want to get people into positive frame of mind, and there's no shortage of neuroscience out there now. The mind state of flow is highly positive. Curiosity is highly positive. You're smarter in a positive frame of mind. Curiosity is a superpower, by the way. Where are you starting there? Getting a read on the other side as to which sort of emotionality that you want to put into the situation. After that, information gathered and rapport building. We've really feel like we've refined the hostage negotiation skills. The black swan method is so far beyond hostage negotiation because of our business experience. We've taken…

AI assessment note: “It's much more important to smile when you speak in business negotiations”

Q How else when you're approaching someone, whether it's a negotiation or day-to-day interaction, Do you engage with people so that they feel safe?

A It's an effort which becomes smoother with practice, but frequently it's just something as simple as practice and throwing out a cold read label on somebody, just because it's a perishable skill. There's no way around the fact that negotiations is a perishable skill. There just isn't. And anybody, if you're not working at your communication skills, you're keeping your emotional intelligence up, it goes dormant. It doesn't go away. But it does go dormant. I get a charge out of people that say, yeah, I'm a great negotiator, and I tell you about a deal that they're really proud of, which was years ago. I can always tell right away they're not keeping up on their skills, and they're picking up bad habits, and every now and then a bad habit will hit a home run. You can stand improperly and swing the bat improperly enough times you're bound to hit one out of the park, but that's the one you're going to remember. So the selection bias, people remember their victories, and they forget how few and far between they are. So you got to work at it on a daily basis just to keep your instinct up.

AI assessment note: “throwing out a cold read label on somebody, just because it's a perishable skill.”

Q trading, compliance, and more. In the AI era, asset and wealth management firms moving to Ridgeline gain a decided advantage. That's why customers call it miraculous, game-changing, and an awakening. If that's not how you would describe your investment management tech, request a demo at ridgeline.ai. And now back to the show. So let's dive into the negotiation side. When you're approaching a negotiation, how do you think about preparing?

A I'm going to want to summarize what they've got against the deal. The issue of preparation versus over-preparation. If you're interviewing, you're in a negotiation. The most dangerous negotiation is one you don't know you're right. You're starting to interview somebody, you are negotiating. And while you're interviewing, you're gathering information. Ideally, you're not diminishing the relationship simultaneously. People are going to tell you stuff faster the sooner you engage. The information that you're trying to gather on somebody is pretty much like looking at their dating profile. It's not a bad starting point, but if you have looked at somebody's dating profile and assume you got a good bead on that person, you're in for a surprise. Several years ago, a millennial was talking to me about using a black swan method. To great success. And by the way, my comment on generations, millennials versus Gen X, Gen Z, baby boomers, whatever. 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're talking about the middle of the bell curve. The C students. The C to the B minus students. You're in business. You're interested in the top performers. It doesn't matter how old they are…

AI assessment note: “I'm going to want to summarize what they've got against the deal.”