Welcome to this negotiation masterclass edition of Negotiate Anything.
With over 1600 episodes featuring some of the world's brightest minds, we've carefully curated three powerful conversations for you.
What makes this so special is that you'll hear how different experts from different industries approach the same challenge in their own unique ways.
Our goal is to give you multiple perspectives so you can build your own unique style.
Success doesn't look the same for everyone.
And in this masterclass, you will see exactly why.
Let's dive in.
So what is bluffing?
Bluffing is a threat to do something that you don't plan on doing.
So let me give you a non-negotiation example just to make it really clear.
If I'm walking down the street and somebody says, hey, I'm going to punch you in the face.
And I say, no, you're not.
And then the person says, yeah, you're right.
I'm not going to do that.
That would be a bluff.
The person told me they were going to do something and they didn't follow through.
Now, let's say same situation.
They say, hey, I'm going to punch you in the face.
And I say, no, you're not.
And then they punch me in the face.
Then that wasn't a bluff.
That was more like a promise.
So essentially, a bluff is another version of a lie.
So the reason why bluffing is effective is because it creates pressure on the other side.
And in an effort to alleviate that pressure, the other side gives the bluffing party what they want.
So what are the dangers of bluffing for the bluffer?
So credibility is on the line.
Credibility is established through consistency and follow through.
If someone calls you on your bluff, you lose credibility.
And that's bad.
In order to be persuasive, you need to be credible.
Your threats need to be credible.
And also your reputation is at stake too.
If you get a reputation for lying or bluffing, not only do you lose credibility, but your words also lose persuasive value.
Not only will it hurt you in this specific negotiation, but going forward, as the word spreads throughout the community, you're going to find it very difficult to negotiate with other people because you've developed a reputation and people are going to be very skeptical of what it is that you say.
Here's what I do instead of bluffing.
I can use a technique that gives me the exact same effect of bluffing without any of the consequences.
I don't bluff.
I offer warnings.
And so what is the difference between a bluff and a warning?
When I warn people, I alert them of the ramifications of their actions.
So let's give an example here, another non-negotiation example.
Let's say I'm driving around the Grand Canyon and I am approaching a cliff and I see a sign that says you are approaching a cliff.
You should stop your car.
If you don't, you will fall off this cliff.
Now, did that sign seem hostile, aggressive, or unfriendly?
No.
Actually, it was closer to helpful.
Now I am aware oh, let me stop driving forward, because if I fall off this cliff I am likely to die.
So thank you, sign, for letting me know, for warning me of the consequences of my actions.
So how do I deliver this warning in a way that doesn't sound threatening, because the result of a threat is hostility.
When somebody is threatened, they typically respond in a hostile manner.
They want to fight you as a result of the threat.
So how do I deliver this warning in a way that doesn't cause that fight or flight response in the other party?
The technique I use is called the warning sandwich.
It starts off with one saying something positive constructive, and truthful.
And then number two, saying something negative, worrisome, and truthful.
And then number three saying something positive, constructive and truthful, and then ending with an invitation to continue negotiations.
So what would this look like in a real world situation?
So I've represented a client one time who wanted to get out of a lease where the apartment subsequently became uninhabitable.
And of course, the landlord wanted them to stay in the apartment and not break the lease.
And so in my communications with the landlord, what I said to him was listen, we appreciate your willingness to negotiate and your willingness to try and settle this amicably outside of court.
However, if we're not able to make a deal today that's beneficial to all of us and my clients can live with, we're going to have to settle this in court to make sure that we get what we need.
So again, I appreciate your willingness to talk and hopefully we can work together to find a solution that works for both of us.
So you see, that wasn't particularly threatening or aggressive.
It was truthful.
I was offering a warning, letting him know what happens next.
So let's switch gears for a little bit.
Let's talk about how you protect yourself against somebody who's bluffing.
Let's start off with a word of caution.
People will legitimize their bluff with confidence.
Never let somebody else's confidence persuade you.
Only allow yourself to be persuaded by substantive arguments or substantive facts.
Just simply because somebody is confident about what they said doesn't really add to the veracity of the statement.
One example of this comes out of the studies of eyewitnesses in court cases.
Jurors found eyewitnesses that were more confident to be more believable.
What those studies also found was that eyewitnesses that were more confident in their memory were not significantly more accurate in their recollections.
So, even if somebody is genuinely trying to tell the truth, confidence really has little bearing on the quality of the statement that is said in confidence.
Similarly, people will use emotion to try and intimidate you.
So you should be skeptical if someone gets emotional and upset and the emotion is coupled with a threat.
Think about it.
If somebody really has a better offer and they are threatening to walk away and now they're getting upset with you while threatening to walk away why haven't they walked away yet?
Why are they still talking to you?
In that situation, I would say something like, I can tell you're upset.
So how about we do this?
Let's take a break and gather ourselves.
I still want to continue talking to you because I believe that we can still make a deal.
I might be wrong, but I think the reason you're still here is because you see the possibility of making a deal too.
So what does a statement like this do?
Two things.
I've essentially put them in timeout.
I've given them a chance to cool off.
The second thing is I've given them the opportunity to reevaluate their threat and come back to the negotiating table in good faith.
I've also... communicated that I see their emotion and I'm not intimidated by their emotion.
And I'm not willing to give them anything as a result of that emotional or hostile threat.
What's interesting is you can actually start protecting yourself from lies, bluffs and threats before the negotiation even begins, by knowing your options.
You need to get a complete understanding of the alternatives that you have to disagreements.
And understanding your alternatives gives you confidence and relieves anxiety.
So if somebody is threatening to walk away from a deal because a certain price doesn't work for them, it's okay.
Because you know that if you were to give them the deal that they want, you would be hurting yourself, because you have another option.
In most situations, if somebody threatens you, the result of the threat, even if it is true, isn't going to ruin your career or your life.
When you know this beforehand, you'll have a lot more confidence when it comes time to let a bad deal go.
Not all deals are going to happen.
Not all deals are made to happen.
A lot of times we go into negotiations and we put pressure on ourselves because we feel like the only outcome, the only successful outcome we could have is a conversation, a negotiation that culminates in a deal.
But that's not true. negotiation isn't the art of deal making.
It's really more the art of deal discovery.
We're coming together to try and figure out if there is a deal that exists that works for both of us.
So let's say somebody bluffs, you know your alternatives and they threaten to walk away.
And you let them walk away because you know what they want isn't in line with your needs, and you let them go.
Essentially, what you're doing is you're calling their bluff.
And you're not calling their bluff with bravado.
It's almost you're calling their bluff in a matter of fact way.
Oh, okay.
If that's what you want, then this deal isn't going to work out.
Bye.
And then they leave, but then they subsequently come back.
Then in that case, now you know that they don't have a good alternative and you have more leverage in the negotiation.
Another thing you could do when somebody bluffs, and this is something that I think is a rule of thumb.
We should do this every time you're, you're taken aback.
Or somebody comes at you in an aggressive way.
Is take your time.
Take a break.
Remember, bluffs create pressure.
And when you're under pressure, you're going to make mistakes.
So one thing that I hate about Hollywood and actors is that you see these really high pressure conversations.
And the protagonist always seems to know exactly what to say.
And he or she says it flawlessly.
And I just look at them and I'm like, man, I wish I were that cool.
The reality is it's fake.
Nobody's that cool.
I'm not that cool.
I need to take some time and prepare.
So if somebody hits me with a threat or a bluff that I wasn't anticipating, I'll say oh, that kind of catches me by surprise.
How about this?
Let's take a little break and let me think this through, so I can come back with something that's productive.
Another option you have to combat bluffing is to expose the bluff.
And you do this by asking open-ended questions to show that, you know it's not true.
So you ask.
So let's say you sell office supplies and one of the companies you sell supplies to wants to renegotiate the deal.
And you know your numbers, you know what you can and cannot do.
And the person is asking for something that you can't do.
And then they say that they have other options and they're willing to use those other options.
Then you could ask, oh, which other companies are you talking to?
What deal were you able to get with them going deeper and deeper and deeper and trying to get more and more specific?
And then once you get that information, then you could do your own research and see if that's true.
This technique is a little bit more aggressive than what I would suggest doing, but it is an option for you.
My personal favorite move is to ignore the bluff.
Here's an example.
Do you know why I don't talk to the ghost in my bedroom?
I don't talk to the ghost in my bedroom because it doesn't exist.
Why would I engage with something that isn't real?
Similarly, if someone hits me with a bluff, if I've done my research, I should be reasonably certain that the situation they are threatening me with isn't real and therefore can be ignored.
Also, the more you engage with a bluff, the more real it becomes.
By engaging with a bluff, you're inadvertently giving it more credibility and power.
So I just want to end with this.
For me, negotiation isn't a game.
It's not about sleight of hand or deception.
It's really about two things.
It's about creating an agreement that works for both parties and strengthening the relationship at the same time.
If I'm ever in a situation where I need to be deceptive to make a deal happen, that is just a signal that that deal isn't meant to happen.
Now let's say I use deception to make a deal happen.
Somebody subsequently finds out about that deception.
Not only do i lose credibility, not only is my reputation hurt, but the second part of the overall goal of the negotiation strengthening and creating relationships is ruined, because i've created a relationship where the foundation is built upon a lie, and no relationship can stand if the foundation is in shambles.
And, as entrepreneurs, It's really important for us to remember that the business relationships that we create are, without a doubt, our most valuable assets.
That was the first part of today's masterclass.
Up.
Next we'll hear from another expert with a different approach, giving you even more strategies to add to your toolkit.
Let's keep it rolling.
Dan, thanks for joining us today.
Kwame, it's my pleasure, man.
Thanks for the invite.
No, it's a pleasure to have you.
Listeners, make sure you check out Dan's LinkedIn page.
Just constant. high quality content.
So I am super excited to have you on and share some of your brilliance with the audience.
Oh, stop it.
Yeah.
Thanks so much for pointing them that way.
We call it a listening tribe.
It's free to join.
It's free to stay.
We just ask that you join the commentary, join the dialogue.
Fantastic.
Well, how about we start off by giving you an opportunity to tell the listeners about yourself?
My name is Dan Oblinger.
I come to you, Kwame, from the middle part of America, the heart of America, as we say.
I am based in and around Wichita, Kansas.
My background is in police crisis negotiations, but I have made that transition to a business negotiator as well, running a small business centered on speaking and conducting workshops and listening in negotiations, but also running.
I have a bunch of rental properties.
So managing those as a real estate investor, and I have five children.
So those are a totally different sort of negotiation that requires a lot of emotional control.
And My background being in police work and then in the business world and running a large family with young people becoming adults, I deal a lot with deception.
And I think that's why we're hooking up today for a nice conversation.
Given your background, you are uniquely qualified to talk about this.
And I know there are three parts about the deception that you want to talk about or three topics within it.
How about you just give us that quick outline?
Yeah, so let me preface it.
I'll just preface it briefly by saying that The other thing that's going to come out as we talk is that my background prior to law enforcement was as a student of philosophy.
So I studied to be a Roman Catholic priest for a time.
My background is in ancient philosophy and ethics.
And so you'll hear that.
I think that's very useful when we talk about things like deception.
So you'll hear that come out as well.
And my academic training, that's one lens, right?
But then being a street cop working narcotics and vice working gangs, working violent crime, and then becoming a hostage negotiator, doing that for about 10 years for a large metropolitan city here in the Midwest.
This is what you know, is that deception is complex.
It is a complex human behavior, and it's a dangerous human behavior.
It's dangerous in a physical sense when you're a police officer, but it's really dangerous from the sense of lasting agreements and business relationships when it's in a corporate environment.
So you have to have a complex strategy and some robust skills if you really want to tackle deception.
And what I will say, and Kwame, I think you might agree, is most people don't.
Most people ignore deception, even if they recognize it.
They just move past it because they don't know what to do with it.
And it's like the elephant in the room.
And it prevents us from having our best value in these corporate relationships and our best value in our personal relationships as well.
So you need a complex system.
So this is what I recommend.
You got to prepare for it.
You have to prepare for the likelihood that you will encounter deception when you're crafting an important agreement, no matter what you're crafting.
You have to, you must, must listen well.
Listening is the secret sauce, man.
That's how you detect the deception.
And that's how you manage your own emotions, as you begin to suspect and then confirm that you're being lied to.
And then the last thing is, you need a really reliable and repeatable method to confront deception in a way that paints yourself as a very professional person who is not going to be lied to, but also gives them, it's a courtesy, right?
It's a kindness to allow them to retract the deception and actually give you the truth.
There's your three prongs, man.
Prep, understand you see it, control your own reaction to it and then deliver a really deft, a really nice technique for confronting the deception and turning it into something that's actually useful.
Deception can actually be a great thing.
And we'll talk about that, I'm sure.
Oh, that's fascinating.
Okay, yeah.
Great.
Well, let's talk about the homework and preparation, because that is something that we have harped on for a long time on the podcast.
And I'm really interested in seeing how the preparation needs to shift slightly, or if it does need to shift slightly when we have that specter of deception coming up on the horizon.
Great.
So homework and that's a nasty word in America for anybody that grew up and went to our schools, right.
It's really important.
You have to know what you know and you have to know what you don't and know the difference.
So you know, if I'm entering a corporate agreement, I want to know as much as I can about the likely positions that my adversary or my I like to say my negotiations partner is going to adopt.
I want to know as much as possible about the issue that we may be resolving or coming to consensus upon.
I want to know whatever I can.
This could involve developing a relationship and listening well to people that have similar arrangements with this entity that you're going to be negotiating with.
It could be using open source, even social media.
A lot of companies put a lot out about their positions and about their values.
You know, you might ask, well, how do I know who they've had prior agreements with?
Just get on their social media page and they'll talk about all these partnerships and collaborations.
And reach out to those people and just get their perspective on your potential partner.
Find out kind of what they, how they negotiate.
Find out what they prefer. find out what some of their strategies or techniques might be.
And again, if you develop a relationship of trust with these other entities, you might get some insight.
They're not probably going to give away the farm, but they might tell you what it looks like.
And I think this is key.
You can find a lot of data.
Most companies, most larger companies, have access to commercially purchased data about businesses and corporations.
There are so many different sources of information and intelligence.
It really behooves you to know as much as you can.
Understanding that you'll have an incomplete picture, that's just the nature of it.
But The more information you have, the better picture and better anticipation you can have for this negotiation, the faster you'll begin to detect deception.
And, as you're doing this research, what are some things that could come up that could give you that little hint that hey, some deception might be coming?
Well again, depending on how well what's funny is, the second prong of this strategy comes into play in the first.
If you listen well to these third-party sources of information, If you earn their trust, they may tell you hey, I think they kind of lied about this and we didn't do anything with it and we just made the agreement.
But, or they may flat out tell you we came to an agreement and then they didn't keep their word.
So this would be signs of trouble, right?
Ripples in the water, something that you'll be.
Your radar should be on as you begin to enter this negotiation of your own.
And I think it's really, this might be a good point to just let your audience know.
Deception is a natural human reaction, right? to stimuli, right?
There are many, many reasons people lie.
Just because your listening partner may have been deceptive in the past, or maybe they weren't 100 integral in their actions and their deeds and their words, doesn't mean it will be a deal breaker to negotiate with them, because that's a really common occurrence.
It's so common that I'm glad we're talking about it.
I think everybody should be interested in this topic.
So you just need to be prepared for it.
And doing your homework, developing your sources is very helpful to know what kind of risk you're coming into, specifically to deception.
And so let's say we discover that in the past they haven't been completely honest or truthful or transparent with their previous partners.
Where do you draw the line, when it comes to these difficult conversations, between saying this is just not somebody I want to deal with and this is somebody I will still be interested in dealing with, but I'm going to watch my back.
Two things I would look for again as you're developing these sources, as you're looking at your data and comparing it to how they behave.
One, is this the exception or is it the rule?
So in other words, frequency.
Frequency is really important when we look at behavior.
So if everyone you talk to has a similar experience with this entity, with this corporate entity or this person, that's a problem.
This is how they do business.
Some cultures.
I will tell you.
If you detect that it's a cultural thing like they're expected to lie to represent the positions of their company, that's a problem.
If it's just episodic, sometimes deception is not even deception.
It is a difference in perspective or perception.
Maybe it was miscommunication in the truest sense.
Like one person thought an agreement meant one thing and they didn't do a good job of hammering it out and getting it on paper.
And the other group or partner or person thought it was something else.
So this is one thing is you might be talking to the sources, like I'm doing exactly what Dan said, man.
I'm developing my Coast Watcher network here on these folks.
And all of a sudden somebody says, yeah, I felt like they lied to me.
And you're like, aha.
And then you leave.
Like, that's the end of it.
And you're like, all right, now I know.
Dan said, now I know.
They'll probably lie to me.
No, you need to dive into that story.
Okay, why do you think that you were lied to?
Tell me the circumstances.
Like, what was your perception on this?
And then what happened?
And what led you to believe it?
And what were all the behaviors?
And you have to get the whole story to know how applicable that information, that knowledge, becomes to the situation that you're creating now with this new negotiation.
The other thing, so that's frequency.
The other thing is magnitude, like how big of a lie is it?
And I'm not one to just whitewash small lies, but it does make a difference on whether you're going to do business with them or not.
If one part of a 10-part agreement didn't come true, if they represented a position, one position out of seven and you learned later that wasn't correct, that's a pretty small magnitude.
But if consistently everything they said they were going to do, they don't, that's a big magnitude problem.
A big lie is not a big problem for them.
And again, that should give you pause.
And there's no bright line.
But if there's a high frequency and high magnitude, maybe we don't get into bed with them, you know.
That makes sense.
No, that's really, really helpful, I think, for the people who are in the business world.
And that's the tough part when it comes to these difficult conversations.
There typically isn't a bright line.
It's always a personal determination and it's going to be different every time.
And when it comes to doing the homework and preparing, one of the things that I always tell my students and the people in my workshops is that when it comes to deception, I think about it kind of like bullying on the playground.
So imagine if you have a bully who's a third grader.
That bully is going to bully other third graders, second graders, first graders, and kindergartners.
But that third grade bully is unlikely to bully an eighth grader.
And it's simply because that bully doesn't think They can bully the eighth grader.
And so sometimes, if we do our homework and we can somehow demonstrate to the other side that we are prepared and they can't take advantage of us in that way, it makes us less likely to be taken advantage of in that way.
They'll be less inclined to try to deceive you.
I agree.
And we'll talk when we get into kind of the second part of the strategy or the second part of these.
You know, this complex system to deal with the deception.
I think it's important to note, yeah, deception is an aggressive behavior.
You could say a bullying activity.
It's kind of an imprecise term, but I think that's really vivid for people.
They get it.
And this is the thing about bullying behavior or those kinds of aggressive human behavior.
And you've given a really nice anecdote to explain it.
That third grade bully is going to keep bullying.
He's going to increase frequency and magnitude.
And he's going to start expanding the target pool until what?
Until he meets a natural barrier to the behavior. until somebody says, uh-uh.
And that's why he can't go bully that eighth grader because they're not going to tolerate it.
Probably the fourth graders.
Just by virtue of that difference in authority denomination of authority, they're like I'm not going to get picked on by a third grader.
But a second grader, like you said, I mean, that's the natural order of things, right?
Is he going to bully the teacher?
The interesting thing is he may try.
And if the teacher doesn't do a good job of establishing that that behavior is unacceptable, then we've seen situations where children bully their superiors, including teachers.
And it's because we didn't put a boundary around the behavior.
And that's going to be a theme for the rest of the system is we want to put a boundary around the behavior when it comes to dealing with us?
Like we can't control if they're going to bully other companies, but they will not bully us.
Best word I think is it's unacceptable.
And there's one more thing you need to do to prepare.
Accept the fact you're going to be lied to.
Accept the fact you're going to be deceived.
Just accept that this is going to happen.
If you don't think it's going to happen, you'll miss it, or it'll be too late, or you won't be prepared and you'll miss the opportunity.
You might recognize the behavior, but miss the opportunity.
So this is kind of a stoic philosophy thing.
But just accept the fact you're going to be deceived.
And you'll be ready when it happens.
You'll be looking for it.
And if it doesn't, then it's a pleasant surprise.
And this is a great person to do business with, hopefully.
So that's it.
So do your homework.
Have your data.
Encounter stories of similar experiences from previous negotiators with the same negotiating partner.
And just anticipate that you'll be deceived.
Anticipate they're going to try.
Now you're ready to start.
I think one of the...
Problems that people have in negotiations and I talked about this with Matthias Schreiner is that a lot of times it seems as though the people in the business world are trained for peacetime, not for wartime.
And so if everything's going swimmingly, there's no problem.
But then when things start to go poorly or the negotiation gets difficult, we don't know what to do.
We're not anticipating that.
We're not trained for that.
And I love this stoic mentality that you have, because you come to the reality and accept the reality that people are going to lie to you.
And at the same time, you are equipped with the skills to handle it.
You can still find success anyways.
And so since you're accept, you're more likely to identify it when it's in your presence.
Yeah, I anticipate it and therefore I'm looking for it.
So when it when it begins to appear, then you have it.
And here's the beautiful thing as we lead into this kind of the second part of this system.
It is a beautiful, glittering opportunity.
When you are lied to for a brief moment, there's this huge opportunity to advance this negotiation and have a real agreement with people.
And that may sound absolutely insane until I unpack it.
But you have to just like, I want deception.
That is a beautiful thing for me as a police negotiator.
It's a beautiful thing for me as a landlord.
And actually...
It's dangerous.
That's the nature of true opportunities is there's a risk.
But it's a wonderful opportunity when I'm raising children.
And we can talk about this as we get into the second part of the system.
Absolutely.
Oh, man, this is good.
I'm getting excited.
Let's move on to number two, tactical listening.
I want to dig deeply into this because I know this is your forte.
Yeah, this is my jam.
This is my little baby.
So tactical listening is just one way to look at what I call active listening or empathetic understanding.
Tactile listening really kind of refers to how we mix it up with people, that we don't have control over them and we're trying to come to an agreement with them but we don't want to do it through authority and control and power.
And that's a great way to look at negotiations.
I mean, that's what it's about.
We need the consent of both parties to get this agreement, but each party has to look out for themselves and we don't have authority over the other person.
There's so many parallels between business negotiations and police crisis negotiations.
The context, the language is very different, but we just have to translate that.
Now, here's what you want to do.
Tactical listening says, and this is a general rule of thumb, let them talk 80% of the time.
Get them talking so that they talk 80% of the time.
And then 20 of the time, you're reflecting on what they've said and you're inviting them to tell you more.
Now, in this listening, part of the system right which should be like the vast majority of the time you're negotiating with people is you're listening to them to find out what they want and to develop their motives, to try to understand why they're asking for that.
That's how you can find extra value in these negotiations, or you can switch from fees to terms, all right.
So you can protect your dollar amount by making concessions in terms of the agreement, or vice versa if you're after the money right.
So listening lets you do all that too.
In business negotiations it's not as important as in crisis negotiations to develop true empathy and rapport and a wonderful relationship with a person.
That is not as important, but I still think it is important.
And the reason why is, number one, You're less likely to attempt to deceive someone that you love.
You're less likely to attempt to deceive somebody that you trust and respect.
So in the process of listening, we also earn trust and respect.
But the other nice thing that happens is, if we're practicing tactful listening, we're asking big, hairy questions, huge value questions.
They're open-ended.
They invite the story of the negotiation.
They invite the story of the position.
They invite the story of the interest, which are all different things.
They invite the story of the perception of your negotiations partner.
If I asked you, Kwame, will you honor this agreement?
Yes or no?
How can you answer?
You have to say yes.
Yes?
Yeah.
Or you could say no and not be deceptive if you didn't intend to, but nobody's going to do that.
They're going to say yes.
How easy is it to lie and say yes when it's actually no?
It's super simple.
If I know it's no in my heart and you're like, you're going to do this, right?
And you're like, yep.
Are you ever going to detect deception?
No.
But what if you said, hey, describe to me how you're going to fulfill this part of the agreement.
Describe for me how you're going to honor this agreement. part of our negotiation.
For instance, describe to me how you'll deliver this by next Friday as we agreed.
What's that going to look like so that I can assist in the process?
And they're like, well, you know, right away we've got a problem.
It's not concrete in their mind.
They're making an agreement without having the facts.
So again, this is how deception begins to surface.
It's not going to be, you know, it's a yes and they say no, you know, it's purple and they say blue.
What happens is you develop a sense they're not confident in their ability to deliver on the agreement.
And you should ask more probing questions that are still open-ended and inviting the story.
They're non-accusatory.
They're non-judgmental.
We're not ready to confront the deception yet because we haven't drawn it out into the open.
That's the key part of tactile listening.
It draws the deception out into the open.
If deception is an animal, you want to see the whole animal.
I think it might be a beaver.
Okay, but how big is the beaver, right?
I mean, this is trying to use an analogy.
You want to see the whole beast you're dealing with before we go to that last step of confronting.
So listening, asking great questions, reflecting upon their answer, inviting them to tell you more.
If you begin to encounter emotions, especially in a business setting, that is a concern and they should be directly addressed.
And you've probably experienced that in legal negotiations when it should be about the law, but all of a sudden emotions rear its ugly head.
That is a point of analysis because deception is an emotional behavior.
So we need to begin to drill down into what's causing it.
I think a lot of times, in the way that we approach these difficult conversations, we invite deception unwittingly because we have a deal making bias.
We are having these conversations in many of the situations.
We want this deal.
And so we ask these questions in a way that makes it more likely for us to get the answers we want.
Whether or not that is the truth,
And so that is one of the just our approach. sometimes can invite deception.
It is better to know than not know.
That's a motivation for a police negotiator.
It's better to know than not know.
And one classic thing a lot of you've mentioned Matthias Schroeder.
You know you've got the camp school that Alan Zhang comes from.
You've got certainly Chris Voss and his work.
Like they talk a lot about.
This is if you were to negotiate with me and we all just said yes yes yes yes, yes.
That's not a negotiation.
If we haven't found the boundaries of yes, if we haven't found the boundaries of value, then we haven't negotiated.
No is likely true.
And if all your negotiation partner says yeah sure yes yes yes, then they're probably lying because they're not representing their interests accurately.
A yes is a problem.
Like that's where I want to ask more questions to see if it's really yes.
When I hear no, boom, that's a foundation usually of truth that we can build an agreement upon.
So it concerns me two things when they just say yes, and also when they don't have a plan to carry out the agreement or they don't have a plan for the future with you and your company, because that tells me they're being disingenuous.
So those are the questions I love to explore when I'm working with individuals in a crisis negotiation.
Do you have a plan for next week?
No, that's a problem.
You're telling me that you don't wanna hurt yourself, but then you're telling me you have no plans for the future.
This is a problem.
And so it's deception.
We have to begin to explore it with listening.
Nonjudgmental, big questions that require them to tell stories.
It's much harder to lie in stories, and it's not just yes or no, all right?
I think there's one thing that is really helpful.
As you're listening to the story and it's not making sense.
As you're listening to the story and examining it from the basis of what you learned when you did your homework.
And you begin to realize, ah, this doesn't add up.
We got problems.
I think this is deception.
There is a really critical tactical listening technique, active listening technique that applies.
And that is paraphrasing.
And you must understand that commonly, when people deceive others, when that bullying activity comes into the playground, they don't respect you and they don't trust you.
And it may not be their fault.
So look at it as behavior that's trying to communicate to you.
I don't trust you, I don't respect you.
And then this is where it gets dangerous.
Because, I mean, if I told you that, Kwame, I don't trust you and I don't respect you.
How do you not respond emotionally to that?
That's an emotional trigger for anybody that has any kind of self-respect, right?
And you can't.
If you practice tactile listening, you'll realize people are trying to tell you I don't trust you, I don't respect you.
And instead of responding emotionally, ask more questions.
Reflect upon that and even ask them if that's true.
You can paraphrase it by saying, It seems like you don't trust us yet.
And they may tell you, yeah, you know, we've never done business with you.
And they may unpack that for you.
And that's incredible insight into what might be motivating deception.
And a couple of things that I want to kind of dig deeper on, because a few of these were drive-by gems that I really want to make sure that the listeners caught.
You said it's harder to lie in stories.
Can you expand on that?
So one technique we use when we're investigating crimes is lies.
We try to have a chronological series of events.
And what I try to do, practicing tactile listening within the context of an interview.
I don't just say this happened and then this happened and this happened right.
Tell me the story, man.
Tell me about the story of your evening that led up to this event.
And they tell the story.
And it's much harder to write a vivid and rich deception as opposed to a simple white lie kind of one word deception.
When it should be no and you say yes, that's simple.
When I'm like, tell me the story and there is no story, It's a fabrication.
Only about 1%, 2% of the population can just off the bat just give you this rich, deceptive story.
It's just we're not wired for that because stories are based on our reality.
It's based on our memory and our experiences, and it's really hard to fudge all that.
So stories are the best way.
What's really interesting is there's a technique where you have people tell stories in reverse, and it's even harder for people to lie if they're trying to go in reverse.
If something happened in the past and you're asking them about it, you ask them to go reverse chronological.
It's nearly impossible it would take again a sociopath or someone like that to be able to pull that off in my experience.
So there's some literature on that.
It's it's a technique that i've found to be useful.
It's not as applicable to negotiations, but it just tells you the importance of storytelling.
Right and just out of curiosity, because i've heard that too.
When i was at school getting the psych degree, it made sense to me but practically speaking I wasn't sure how to pull that off in a conversation without it sounding offensive.
And like you said, it's less applicable in the business world.
But in your experience, just out of curiosity, during the crisis negotiations, how could you get the person to tell the story backwards?
Would you explicitly ask that question?
In a criminal investigation, you could.
We don't use that in negotiations very often.
It's something more for when we're trying to figure out something that happened in the past and the perceptions and knowledge of the person that we're dealing with.
You get the story one way forward and then you can go backwards the second time around.
So in a negotiation, it's not as relevant.
We try to really focus on the now.
So not as relevant.
Gotcha.
That makes a lot of sense.
And one last point before we move on to the other one.
You said it was in deception is often an issue of a lack of trust and a lack of respect.
And a few of the previous episodes.
We talked about establishing trust and building trust in the other party, but we haven't talked about respect.
And I feel like that's a little bit more of a nebulous concept.
And so in your experience, before we get to these difficult conversations, how can you earn the respect of the other side?
I think respect has a special relationship with rapport, but I think respect is also about your professional image and your professional reputation.
So I can respect you when I know where you're coming from and what you say and what you do are of the same kind when they are in harmony.
And respect also flows out of demonstrated professional skill.
And so if you trust somebody, you probably respect somebody, right?
But there's also this category, I think, and this has been my experience, where I'm working with criminals, right.
And I'm trying to figure out the evil that they did.
And they tell me, hey, I really respect you.
They don't trust me now because they know I'm out to get them.
And in some cases, they're out to get me.
But They can still respect you because they know what you stand for.
They know that you're a serious person and they know that you're good at what you do.
And so respect sometimes exists outside of trust.
It's not often that you will not respect somebody you trust.
But so what we're talking about, especially in deception situations, is we may not be able to get rapport right now, but they better respect you.
That's brilliant.
No, thank you for that.
And before we move on to the proven strategies, is there anything else you wanted to address with regard to tactical listening?
Become a student of listening.
If you're an active listener, people will have less opportunities and also feel less empowered to lie to you, especially complex, debilitating kinds of lies.
Because if they know that you're about inviting stories and you're not going to ask them yes or no, they're probably just going to go with the truth.
That's easier than trying to fabricate a really robust lie.
So if you develop again that reputation, the professional reputation for being a really good listener, who makes it about them, who is inviting stories, you're going to attract, I think, a higher level of negotiation partner.
And that's nice.
Perfect.
Good deal.
All righty.
And I know there's a lot more you want to talk about with tactical listening.
So you are definitely going to be a repeat guest.
So stay tuned for that invite.
So let's move on to number three.
Tell us about these proven strategies.
This is the simplest of the three, I think.
And you have to keep it simple because this is going to be really hard.
And the reason why is something you already mentioned.
And I've seen it several times with your guests is we desire consensus.
Like we desire harmony.
We don't want to have conflict.
Conflict is so natural.
But we don't want it because we don't want to have those spiked emotional experiences.
So we will overlook bad behavior sometimes.
And if you don't believe me, look at how hard it is to manage people in any industry.
We all know the performance problems that people on our team have, but how often do we want to have that conversation?
So there's that.
So this is the thing.
Once you've done your homework and as you begin to listen and invite stories and weigh what they're saying against what you already knew, And once you really draw that animal out into the clearing right, you see the size and shape of this deception.
You must be firmly committed to directly confronting it.
And this is why, because you want that respect.
And this is how you get it.
People will probably start fudging the numbers and the data and some minor details, saying yes when they mean no.
And they're testing you.
And, like the bully, they're going to test you and they're going to keep pushing that deception boundary out.
And if you let them, they'll eat that whole agreement up.
They'll gobble it all up and all the value will be gone.
That's the nature of deception.
So at some point, once you're comfortable, that you've listened long enough and you kind of see the size of the deception and you've done your homework, then now it's time.
You have to be firmly committed.
And this strategy I've found to be the best.
Because to this point, we've not been confrontational, right?
We've not been judgmental.
We may have suspected there's deception, but again, we're drawing it out.
So we're going to continue to just use good minimal encouragers and good questions and just say hmm, okay.
But at some point you have to say, Kwame, you said, you would do this, but then you did this.
Or you might say, Kwame, we agreed that this would happen, but then you did not do it.
Whatever the deception is, it's going to be based upon some observation.
This is the time to reveal your observation.
It might be that, you know, I did my homework and I knew this, and now you're saying this.
And this is the beauty of the system.
This is the magic.
And this is a good act of listening, by the way.
And you just say, I'm confused.
So you said this would happen, and then it did not.
And now I'm confused.
And that's it.
You don't say anything else.
Tactile listening calls that a an effective pause.
It's one of the active listening skills.
And you just let them explain.
And they will explain.
I sometimes get people, what if they don't?
They will.
I've been down this road so many times.
They don't want their negotiation partner to be confused.
We don't like confusion.
In fact, we hate confusion more than we love consistency.
So when I say that I'm confused and I've given you a really clear and concise reason why I'm not understanding you well, you will explain.
And again, it's in the format of a story.
And you will learn then what kind of a negotiation partner you have.
If they retreat from the behavior, they clarify it and then retreat from it, then we're good.
If they double down, then guess what you get to do?
Ask some more questions and then tell them I'm still confused.
And what you'll see is, if you have to say that more than a couple of times, then maybe this negotiation is not going to have value, because you can't count them to fulfill any agreements you come to.
But I love to use the emotion of confused because it's not I'm scared.
It's not I'm angry.
It's not I'm disappointed or frustrated.
It's an earnest and honest human emotion that people can actually work with.
And they know right away what they need to do when you say you're confused.
They need to unconfuse you.
And they'll provide you with much more rich data to explain their position.
And they may even in the process apologize and retract the deceptive portion.
This is great.
And there are two things that I want to pull out of here, two subtleties.
I liked in your example how you used my name.
In the episode with Shane Ray Martin, when he was on the show, you used the person's name for emphasis.
It's like, hey, pay attention to this.
What's coming next is very important.
And I loved the pace, too, because you gave it time to register, Kwame.
And there was a slight pause there.
And then the way that you delivered it was non-threatening.
You didn't allow your emotions to jump in.
And tone is critical because if you sound threatening in the way that you say it now, we have more of that limbic response where they're identifying you as the threat.
And that can be problematic because then they get tunnel vision and they tend not to share when they're in that mode.
But you're conveying something with that tone.
And I don't want to put these words into your mouth.
I want to hear in your words what you're trying to convey with the tonality that you're using in this approach.
Firm, interested, and eager to resolve the confusion.
It's not problem solving in and of itself, but it's signaling that I'm open to problem solving.
But it's firm, and that's the key to earn their respect.
There's no, this is the thing.
Look at alternatives to this procedure.
You could say, I think you're lying to me.
Now you'll have an argument.
You could say, I'm not gonna be lied to.
You don't sound confident.
It lacks confidence.
It sounds like you're afraid of this.
But when you say, Using their first name with a tone that I demonstrate.
When you say their first name, point out what you're confused about and just tell them and end it with I'm confused.
With that slight upward tone, like the upward tonality there at the end, the pitch changes.
There's a question mark at the end that's understood.
And that's when they will begin to speak.
And yeah, the tone is practice for me.
You need to practice it.
In fact, you can practice all three prongs of the strategy.
You can practice your homework.
You can practice active listening.
And please do.
You can definitely practice this simple technique for confronting deception.
Now-
This is the interesting part.
So let's say this is a transactional type of negotiation where we're trying to get a deal done with the other side.
We say we're confused.
They kind of dance around the issue.
Then you outline what you've observed again.
And you say, I'm still confused.
And they dance around it.
And then you realize this person is committed to their deception.
There's no deal.
We can walk away.
All right, I'm done with this person.
Now, the dynamic shifts if it's somebody close to you.
Let's say a family member.
So we can't just walk away.
How do we approach it when we're getting that resistance where we've said I'm confused, maybe two or three times?
What's next?
I think what's next is now there's another active listening technique that could be used here.
And that is that same effective pause.
But this time without anything in front of it.
This time you're not going to say that you're confused and then pause.
Anytime they bring up that same deception.
If they're insistent upon it and you again have made a principled decision that this is not true then you just Do the effective pause.
And this is pretty extreme, but we use this as hostage negotiators.
When somebody does something that's not appropriate and they continue to do it.
Sometimes we'll instruct the primary or find the primary.
I will not respond to that.
Anything else, I'll engage with one of the more positive active listening techniques.
But when they go back to this deception, you simply, you still look like you're engaged.
You're still there.
You're giving them attentiveness, but you're not responding.
And what the message there is is I'm a professional and I respect you, but I don't respect that statement or that behavior.
It's not productive.
I'm not going to waste my time with it.
So please give me something else that we can discuss.
Or C, please give me something else that we can agree to.
But it's done with silence.
And that makes it a fairly extreme technique.
I would prefer to say you're confused and have something to work with.
But if they will persist in the behavior, then we will stop engaging that specific behavior.
What's interesting is they discover really quickly that all the other things they want to discuss are still open and on the table.
And so then we'll start discussing things that are true.
So with family members.
Sometimes you need to be much more specific about what the deception is, but it's still the same tone.
Still say that you're confused.
It's just a wonderful emotion to play with in this kind of a situation, as opposed to maybe, some of the other emotions that you're actually feeling, by the way.
And that is tricky because you will have an emotional response when you realize somebody you love is lying to you.
Sometimes with loved ones, you can't walk away in a sense.
But maybe you could walk in a circle away and come back to it and give everybody a moment to clear their heads.
I like to do that with my kids.
I think it's smart.
They say, give me a second.
I want to clear my head and walk around for three minutes and then come back.
And you might have a totally different negotiation partner when you're talking about a friend or a family.
Oh, that's interesting.
That's a really interesting approach.
Yeah.
And I think the thing that's tough about it is that in a lot of these conversations we're looking for the silver bullet.
Dan, please tell us that magic thing that makes them...
Tell us the truth.
No, that's it.
It's hard work.
And we.
At times, the best strategy is the most simple and yet the most awkward, which is you have to realize that you need to spend some uncomfortable time in silence.
And I think that is some of the most difficult thing to do in these conversations.
But time and time again it's proven to be the most effective and at the same time the safest too right.
Mm-hmm.
Well, and there's this other thing you have to understand, and it goes all the way back to the first thing we discussed when we talked about this.
Do you want to win?
Do you want to spike the deception football?
Do you want a full apology and a total retraction?
Because if so, I have nothing for you.
Because not even the three-pronged strategy, this complex system that I'm recommending it, won't do that, because that is an internal motivation on the part of this person who's trying to deceive you.
If that's what you're after, you may never get that ever from anyone.
But if what we want to do is put a boundary around the behavior.
So it might happen a couple of times in the negotiation.
But when you firmly and resolutely address it with an I'm confused technique, they will stop deceiving you because they'll realize they respect you now and they know that it won't work, and you make it uncomfortable for them without making it personal.
What happens is, this is again the bully's trying to find how far he can go, and he did not get very far.
And you've set up the boundary and you've been very firm and professional.
That's the point of all this.
Again, if you're looking for an apology, if you're looking for them to admit that they were trying to lie to you, I may have nothing for you, because even that may not be productive.
But what's productive is when you affect and influence the behavior of the person you're negotiating with, so that you get more value and you get the truth.
This is fantastic.
Man, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing this.
But before you go, let the listeners know about what you've been up to, what's coming up next and also about the book.
Yes.
Okay, so this is going to be some added value for the people that suffer through us all the way to the end, right?
I offer keynoting and workshop training on listening, tactile listening, you might say.
I call it active listening in those settings.
I have two books out.
One is called Life or Death Listening.
That's more of a how-to guide.
It talks about the listening techniques.
And then I have a book called The 28 Laws of Listening.
And that is a four-week program to actually work on your listening skills and turn them into a habit, a good habit.
Those are kind of what's out there now.
Obviously, LinkedIn's for free.
So I got videos.
The question box is becoming a popular feature.
If you want to see some wild and crazy questions people pose and the answers that I either come up with myself or I crowdsource, that's a good thing.
On the horizon.
I'm working on a book on negotiations and I'm actually getting ready to roll out offerings in coaching over the internet.
So that could be really popular.
You'll be trained by either myself or my partner, who's a trained hostage negotiator, to listen better.
That's fantastic.
Thank you, thank you, thank you again, Dan, for coming on the show.
We're looking forward to the next time as well.
Well, I'm looking forward to the sparring session.
Oh, man, that's going to be fun.
That is the incredible differentiator for your podcast, Kwame.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Listener recommendation.
So listeners, keep your eye out for that one, because this sparring session with Dan was prompted by Alan Tsang, who is going to be another guest on the show.
And it is...
It is a doozy.
So keep your eye out for that one.
You've just heard one powerful perspective, and now we're moving on to the next.
A fresh voice with a new angle on the same challenge so you can keep expanding your skills.
Let's dive in.
You are hypersensitive to the fact that person knows you're lying.
In other words, a good example is that if you have the spot on your tie, nobody notices the spot on your tie until you say look at the spot on my tie.
And that's the only thing they can look at.
The other example is if you bought a particular model of car.
The next day after buying that car, you see that car everywhere.
And it's called the spotlight effect.
So what that does is it enhances the nonverbal indicators of deception.
So I can say to you I know you're lying, because this, this and that and you go like how does he know?
Now don't ask the person, Do you know somebody?
Ask him, when's the last time you saw him?
When's the first time did you meet that person?
So now you're thinking, wow, you didn't ask me if I knew him.
He said, when was the last time you met him?
Jack, thanks for joining us today.
You're welcome.
Glad to be here.
Yes, it is an honor to have you.
This is the interview I've been waiting for since 2016 when I started this podcast.
So this is great.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Well, I spent five years... as a police officer in a suburb outside of Chicago.
And then after that, I joined the FBI for 20 years.
And in the FBI.
I spent a lot of time working crimes on the Indian Reservation, mostly homicides and those types of property crimes.
And then I went to language school to study Korean.
And I spent a year and a half studying Korean and was assigned to Los Angeles where I worked on mostly counterintelligence.
And as the last seven years of my career I spent as a behavioral analyst.
And you're probably thinking the kind of behavioral analysts you see on TV.
I did something a little bit different.
That was the behavioral analysis unit.
What they did is they went to crime scenes and tried to figure out who did the crime, based on the evidence of the crime scene.
So they didn't know who did it and they tried to figure out who did it.
We, on the other hand, in the behavioral analysis program had a target that we wanted to recruit.
Say, for example, we wanted to recruit somebody from the Chinese embassy.
We would select the people that we thought would be the best recruits.
We would do a behavioral analysis on them and then we would design interview strategies to get them recruited to work for us.
Incredible.
Oh, that's fascinating.
And after such a rich career, I know that you have a lot of incredible stories to tell.
And this will be a test of my interviewing restraints, because I would want this to go for days, Jack.
But I have to focus on one of your many skills.
And today we're going to focus on deception because this is something that comes up so frequently.
I think a lot of times when people think about difficult conversations and challenges in relationships, they go straight to some of the darkest, scariest things.
And deception is one of the things that looms large in people's minds.
And you're an expert in deception detection and understanding what to do with this.
So let's start this off in a fun place.
When you think about deception and what it means for us in difficult conversations, but also human interaction and relationships in general, what do you think is the thing that most people misunderstand about deception?
Well, deception is a little more complex than most people think, because there's lies and then there are lies.
Because If we go to a, well, let's just say we get a present from our son or our daughter.
It's an ugly tie.
What are we going to do?
Tell the truth and say, hey, that tie's ugly.
I wouldn't wear it.
No, we can't.
But is it a lie?
Yes, it is a lie.
How about if we tell somebody who put on a nice dinner for us we went to a dinner affair and the food really sucked?
What are we going to say?
Hey, I had a great time, but the food sucked.
Next time, make it better.
So is that a lie?
Well, technically it is a lie.
So we have to kind of discern, in essence, I guess, what we're looking at in a lie like that is we are just acknowledging the person's efforts that they perform for us.
So the effort of buying the gift or providing the food.
So we're actually acknowledging the effort.
So technically it's not a lie.
A lie, I think, is defined as it's an intentional act to deceive somebody else.
And the emphasis is on intentional, because a lot of times we say things not intentionally but because we don't know what we're talking about.
And is that a lie?
Well, it's not.
Technically, by my definition, it's not a lie, because we didn't intentionally want to deceive somebody else.
Now, if I did something wrong and you borrowed 10 from me and I went back to ask you for 10 and you said no, you never gave me the 10.
I never asked for the $10.
Now that's an intent to deceive.
That would be a lie.
That's the definition is where we have to start from.
Yes.
Oh, I like this.
It's really important because when you think about that, a lot of those are kind of social lies, the things that keep the world spinning.
If everybody were to tell you exactly what you thought, everybody would be broken.
The jokes would fall apart instantly.
So I think that this is a really important distinction.
But I love the fact that it focuses on intent.
And now let's go into this Jack, because when we hear this definition, I think most people would be able to get down with this.
They'll say, yeah, okay, an intentional act to deceive someone else.
100%.
Now, one of the challenges I've found is that, like you said, sometimes there might be a situation where somebody misstates the truth not because of intentionality, but because of ignorance.
And some people get really lost in that intentional piece, the intent.
And it's hard to understand what somebody's intent is outside of what they tell you.
We're kind of piecing that together from the outside.
And so when it comes to deciphering intent, how do we do that?
Or Is there any value in trying to figure that out too?
Well, the only time you have to decipher intent is when you figure out that the person lied to you or did not convey the truth.
Anything before that.
We are built as humans to accept what people tell us as the truth until we give them reason to doubt what we say.
So the only time we would look for intent is if we have some reason to doubt.
You're telling the truth.
And then we get into deciphering a lie.
But the basics...
For lie detection is when people lie, there's a fear of getting caught.
Now, if I lie to you and I think that you may catch me in a lie then what engages is the fight flight response.
The fight flight response gets us ready to run away or gets us ready to fight.
And obviously in most social circumstances, in even criminal interview situations, it's difficult to fight the police or fight your friends or run away, because it's kind of a giveaway.
You know, he ran away, he's not telling the truth.
So we have to sit and we're in this fight flight response and that gets our body ready to fight.
And we have a lot of energy and a lot of, you know, our heartbeat goes up, our respiration goes up, our begin to sweat and we can have all this energy here.
So what do we do with that energy?
We have to dissipate that energy somehow, because our bodies are looking for homeostasis or equilibrium.
And so what our bodies try to do is dissipate to return to equilibrium.
So all the stress that we built up because of the fight-flight response, we have to dissipate that.
And a lot of times it comes out in finger tapping, toe tapping, fidgeting hands, fidgeting fingers, pacifying gestures.
And you can now begin to pick up those nonverbal signals that come from or stem from the fight-flight response.
So that's what we're looking for.
That's the first way.
The second way is cognitive overload.
When liars lie, they are fully cognitively loaded.
In other words, what I mean by cognitive is their mind is fully occupied on that lie, because they have to pay attention to what they said, what they didn't say, what they left out, how their verbals are going, how their nonverbals are going.
Not only that, they have to monitor the lie target to find out, is that person believing me?
Is he buying off on my lie?
So we're fully cognitively loaded.
And so what you want to do to test for that deception is is to add cognitive load to the person.
In other words, here's what I would ask you.
If you're accused of committing a crime, and I would say, do you really want to get away with this?
And your initial reaction is yes.
And then I'll say, that's why I'm here to stop you.
Then you'll say, no, no, no, I don't want to get away.
Well, that's why I'm here to stop you.
Truthful people say what?
Get away with what?
But because their brains are so cognitively loaded.
What our brains do is when we're faced with two options.
When we're fully cognitively loaded, faced with two options, the brain selects item A or item B.
It doesn't go beyond that because of efficiency, because there's no more room to think about those alternatives.
So that's what we look primarily, fight, flight, cognitive overload.
This is brilliant.
And Jack, to be honest, first thought that came to my mind when I heard you talk about this is damn, I don't want to lie ever again.
I started to get stressed out when I heard you describe the experience.
It just seems horrible because you're absolutely right.
Because, as much as we try to hold back our emotions, a lot of times there's going to be a lot of emotional leakage, especially if it's coming from someplace as visceral and carnal as the limbic system.
It's really hard for us to hold that and hide it.
It has to escape in some kind of way.
And the cognitive load, I did not consider that because it's pretty easy to remember the truth.
What happened, happened, and then you just recite what that is.
But if you're trying to First understand what the truth is and then create an artful deviation from the truth and then keep track of everything that you've done.
That's incredibly heavy.
Incredibly heavy.
It's almost like the straw that broke the camel's back.
You ask that question and then it's kind of like a mental malfunction that happens under that pressure.
Yeah.
And what you're describing is something we call the spotlight effect.
In other words, you know you're lying.
The person you're talking to doesn't know you're lying, but you are hypersensitive to the fact that person knows you're lying.
In other words, a good example is that if you have the spot on your tie, nobody notices the spot on your tie until you say look at the spot on my tie.
And that's the only thing they can look at.
The other example is if you bought a particular model of car.
The next day after buying that car, you see that car everywhere.
And it's called the spotlight effect.
So what that does is it enhances the nonverbal indicators of deception.
So I can say to you, I know you're lying because this, this, and that.
And you go like, how does he know?
Don't ask the person, do you know somebody?
Ask him, when's the last time you saw him?
When's the first time did you meet that person?
So now you're thinking, wow, he didn't ask me if I knew him.
He said, when was the last time he met him?
So that causes you to go, maybe that guy knows more than he's saying.
Maybe he knows the truth and I don't know him if I lie.
And so you see that the spotlight enhances that.
That the nonverbal that you display.
Yes.
OK, so this makes a lot of sense.
So let's bring it back to this to this moment again where you ask that question.
First of all, the way that you ask that question, the sentence formulation is exclusive. whiz it?
Because a lot of times in negotiation we talk about the power of open-ended questions and everything, but we don't really go down deeper, beyond the surface.
And this is a really good example of one of the biggest concerns that I personally have when it comes to asking closed-ended questions is that it makes it exceptionally easy for people to lie to you.
It's easy to say yes and no.
And oftentimes there's a very clear right or wrong answer.
Any parent out there who says, hey, did you do your homework?
The kid might just reflexively say yes, because I know that's the right answer.
Oh my, And so by asking the question in that open-ended format, it gives more of a narrative response and gives you more of an opportunity to see inconsistencies in the story and see more of those indicators and gestures that show deception.
I'll give you one tip.
When you're talking to people or negotiating with people, what you want to do is use what I refer to as elicitation.
In other words, you want to get that person to tell you the truth before they have a chance to lie.
And what you want to do is create an environment where that person tells you the truth without them realizing that they've been telling you the truth.
In other words, if I ask you as a businessman, we're competing for a particular contract.
And I tell you, I say sir, I understand that your company doesn't have the capacity to deliver on the amount of product that this buyer wants to buy.
That's a presumptive.
It's not a question.
And you're automatically going to say what?
No, I think we can deliver.
I think we just put on a new line of manufacturing line to anticipate this contract.
Now I'm thinking, wow, okay.
They have the capacity.
I say but your GNA, your general overhead and administrative costs are probably running around 15 18, which puts you out of the bidding.
And they'll say, no, no, no, we're a lot less than that.
You see, so you're telling me the truth without what? knowing that you're telling me the truth.
And you can use this in real estate.
My wife and I were looking for a house.
We knew it was in a flood zone.
You know, it flooded every, you know, a hundred years or whatever, you know, those zones.
And we went to the basement of this house and it was completely remodeled.
I mean, spotless.
It had just been finished.
You could still smell the like, the drywall paste or whatever being.
You know, the paint and everything.
So I said, I wonder if it was flooded.
Now, if you ask a real estate lady, Did it flood?
They'll say, well, no, this place doesn't flood.
No, no, this just hasn't happened in 100 years.
Well, instead of asking that, you ask a presumptive question or presumptive statement.
And I said, wow, they sure fixed this up nice since it flooded.
And she says, well, yeah, they went to extra special this and that.
I said, doggone it, it's flooded.
So we excused ourselves and left.
So there's different ways to detect lies.
But that presumptive question, It's not a presumptive question.
It's a presumptive statement.
It's either false or true.
And people have a psychological need to correct others.
They have to correct it.
Like if I say you're from... I think you said you were from Ontario.
No, I'm from Columbus.
Oh, okay.
See?
There you go.
Why did you feel the need to correct that?
People are.
They're compelled to correct other people because psychologically it puts me above you, because
Now I know something and you don't.
Our egos can't handle that.
So you see how a presumptive works.
Jack, this is great.
And one thing I love about elicitation, besides its power, is that it is outside of law enforcement and counterintelligence.
It is not very used out in polite society for civilians, right?
We don't use it at all.
No.
No.
We don't use it.
And we should use it because you could get a lot of information from a lot of people and they don't even realize they're giving up the information.
As I say, the one example we used is in the book the company we wanted to know.
Somebody wanted to know if that company was relocating, so they could either make business decisions on whether a company is going to relocate or not.
The person went to the CEO and asked him at a party, hey, are you relocating?
No, you know, we're steady and we're this and that.
We don't have any intents of this and that.
So then that person then went to the CEO's wife and said geez, it's really cold here, in whatever town it was.
She said well, we don't have to worry so much about that, because we're going to move to a warmer climate soon.
Bingo.
See how elicitation works.
What's another thing that makes it a lot like really like a stealth attack?
I don't want to say sneak attack.
That seems negative.
But it is a stealthy attack is that you cannot be painted.
Oh, go ahead.
You're just looking for the truth.
That's right.
That's right.
And you're doing it in a way that doesn't damage the relationship.
Because I think a lot of times people look at Hollywood and they're like, oh okay, so I need to turn the volume all the way up and start banging on the table and they'll break down.
So let me be really, really aggressive in attacking this person who I believe is deceiving me.
But that just kind of puts them deeper into their hole and makes it harder for them to share.
But with this, you're doing this in a way that is empathetic and quite respectful.
And you're just providing them with an opportunity.
To tell the truth.
That's right.
Because if you ask people direct questions, their shields go up.
Why did you ask the question?
How is it going to be used against me?
What do you want?
What's your intent?
What's that?
So shields go up.
So with elicitation, you don't ask questions.
You just provide the impetus or the tool.
So I could say, you look about 30, 35 years old.
So what did I do?
I set up a bracket.
And so you're overwhelming people.
Notion is to say, no, I'm X, not 30 to 35.
You see what I'm saying?
Yes.
Yes.
In the truth detector we present about 16 tools that people can use to get that information from people.
And it works so effectively in the business world.
In fact, I've trained quite a few people in the business world on how to elicit information from people, which is critical in the business world.
Absolutely.
I mean, at the end of the day, negotiation is an information game.
We want to win and lose on the quality and quantity of the information that we have.
And a lot of times I think it can be very scary to negotiators who have a lot on the line to recognize just how little they truly know about the counterpart or the situation.
Because if we're talking about a big publicly traded company, there are due diligence things that we can do.
But when it is a privately held company, everything it's.
I mean, with a lot of them we can see it's smoke and mirrors.
With every year, there's some marquee fraud.
That was the darling of the media, right?
And we see high-level people being deceived because they don't have these tools and they don't have the curiosity a lot of times too.
I'll give you one more tip if you're interested.
I've got all the tips, Jack.
All of them.
This is a powerful tool to test people's veracity.
In other words, to test whether people are telling you the truth or not, without them realizing that you're testing their veracity.
And that is very simple. you ask somebody a yes or no question.
If the first word of their answer is the word well, then they are about to give you an answer.
They know you're not expecting.
So let's break this down into an example.
I tell my kid, go to your room and do your homework.
And all I hear in there is game plan and tomfoolery and no homework.
So he comes out an hour later and I say, did you do your homework?
He says, well, And I said, get back there and do your homework.
How do you know I didn't do it?
Because I'm in the FBI.
I know those things.
Get back there and do it.
But how did I really know?
I asked him a yes or no question.
The first word out of his mouth was well, which means he's going to give me an answer.
He knows I'm not expecting.
What answer does he think I'm expecting when I ask the question, did you do your homework?
And that would be, yes, dad, I did my homework.
If the answers were to word well, it's anything but yes.
Anything but yes is no.
So I'll ask my boss, am I getting a raise this year, boss?
Well, that means no, you're not getting a raise.
Can I have that day off?
Well, no, you're not getting a day off.
Now, this is different than if you said, who's going to win the Super Bowl this year?
And you go, well, that's a thinking well.
It has to be a yes or no question.
So you can test people.
Like, are you going to do something or other?
And you go, well, the answer is you're not.
Because the answer you think I'm expecting is yes, I'll get it for you.
I'm going to ask you, is that project going to be done by next Wednesday by the deadline?
And you go, well, and I go like, no, you're not even close.
Because you're expecting the answer you think I'm expecting is yes, sir, it'll be done by Wednesday.
When in fact, if you say, well, it means no, it's not going to be done by Wednesday.
And I know that well ahead of time.
Then I could ask you, well, I'll say, what do you need to help that project along?
That way, now I can know that you're lying to me and I can now say what do you need to help finish by Wednesday?
What kind of resources do you need?
Can I give you more?
And that gives you an opportunity to say, yes, sir, I would really like this, this, and that.
Okay, we'll get that for you.
Just get it done by Wednesday because I know you lied to me.
But I'm not going to tell you you lied to me.
I'm just going to know you lied to me and then take action.
Oh, this is big, Jack.
This is big because –
Again, this is where a lot of people make mistakes, because they treat this in a very combative way where hey, I just won.
I know you're in the lie.
I caught you in the lie.
Ha ha.
Liar.
Right.
But you said, no, I don't call them a liar.
We move on and work to solve the problem.
Why don't you do that victory dance?
Because it's not about me.
It's about getting that project completed on time.
It's about enabling you to feel good about you.
So that you will complete it on time.
If you complete it on time, then you will complete more assignments on time, because your confidence increases.
Our rapport between you and I increases.
I don't have to tell you you're lying.
You know you're lying.
But it's all about ego, right?
The reason we say you're a liar, you won't have it by Wednesday.
What's that going to do?
Are you going to be more or less likely to complete that by Wednesday?
Probably less likely.
What if I say, what more do you need?
If you need anything, you let me know.
We'll give so-and-so, let me know what you need to finish it.
And you'll go like, okay, boss.
And you'll tell me and I'll give you the resources and you'll say, wow, he's a good boss, right?
And that's a real win.
Yeah, it's a win for both of us.
And now, the next time I ask you to do a project, you're more likely to voluntarily put your best work into that effort because you, like me, you're working for me.
You know I'm giving you the resources you need.
Although you had to lie to me.
That has been noted.
I think this is great because I think what's really encouraging about this is that, when you think about the negotiation fundamentals of collaborative negotiation, we're trying to work together to find a solution.
In most cases,
And we want to try to be empathetic and not be unnecessarily combative.
Those same principles still apply when deception is at play here too, because we're trying to say, all right yeah, we're staying in that same mode.
Because our goal, number one, I want, here's how you get people to like you.
And it works 100% of the time.
If you want people to like you, you make them feel good about themselves.
The example I use in class when I teach at Western Illinois University and my students I'll say if a young man goes to a young woman and they have a conversation and he makes her feel good about herself, I ask the young lady what are the odds that you're going to want to go back and meet that young man again?
They go, well, they're going to increase quite a bit because I want that same good feeling.
The thing is, you have to make the conversation about the other person, not about you, but the other person.
And the way to do that is to form an empathic statement.
We all hear about the empathic statement.
You use the word a number of times so far, but how do you construct an empathic statement?
Well, here's the simple construction.
You start out with the word so you, so you, and then you describe that person's feeling, their status, their emotional condition.
So you look very upset today.
So you look happy today.
So you look this today, right?
So you, because if I say, I know how you feel, what's the first thing you're thinking to yourself?
No, you don't know how I feel because you're not me.
So I'm going to say, so you look happy.
So you look tired.
You look frustrated.
You look angry.
And that two things, it says that person cares about you.
The other thing it does is it gives you a chance now to express why you're angry, why you're frustrated, why aren't things going well.
And so that gives you that whole, and that's an elicitation tool.
Because once you tell me, oh, you're frustrated because you can't get this and this done.
Well, so if we got this and this done, things would be better.
So you feel that this and this, so you feel this and this.
And the more sophisticated you want to get is drop the so you because you're in the habit.
Now drop the so you and say you look pretty frustrated today.
Good example I use is it happened to me actually at school because I was on the elevator and a girl was smiling.
What does smiling mean?
It means she's happy.
So what did I use?
I formed the empathic statement.
You look very happy today.
And what was her response?
Yes, I just passed an exam I studied really hard for.
So I told her, so your hard work paid off.
And she said, yes, it did.
Now we accomplished two things there.
The first thing we accomplished was we got the empathic statement out.
We're connecting, right?
The second thing I did was I allowed her to flatter herself.
And this is where people get in trouble with flattery.
If a student walks into my office and said oh, Professor Schaefer, you're the best professor in the whole wide world.
You're the best professor I've ever had in my whole life.
I just look at him very sternly and say, what do you want?
Because it's a direct compliment.
Sometimes direct compliments run astray, right?
So I tell the students a better way to do that is to walk in and say sir, I would like your advice on something.
So what that does is It places me in a position where I go.
Of course, you want my advice, because I'm the professor.
And it allows me to flatter myself.
When you walk into a company, when you're negotiating with somebody and you want to allow them to flatter themselves, you say geez, when I walked into this office building, everybody looks so happy.
That has to be the product of good management.
And of course, if you're the manager, you're going what?
Heck yeah, it is.
It's my management.
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
So-
If I can make you feel good about you, you're going to like me.
And that's the beginning of the rapport building stage.
So we've got to make it about the other person.
This is powerful.
And I think it's such a powerful combination, too, because listeners, you might not realize it.
We're talking to the man who literally wrote the book on being liked.
The Like Switch is an incredible book.
And so just remember, it's L-I-K-E.
It's so fascinating, I think for somebody who's not familiar with With you and your approach and just the science and psychology of all of this, it would seem almost as though you're writing two competitive books here, or multiple books, but on two competitive topics.
Likeability and deception don't seem to be closely combined or related.
But then once you start to have the conversation and you start to look into this, you can recognize there's a very clear connection as well.
And you can still maintain high levels of mutual likability, even though there aren't going to be elements of deception.
And I think also too.
The reality is, deception is a natural part of human communication and interaction.
And there are going to be different levels of deception.
Like you said, we have those kind of white lies that keep the world going.
But then we also have lies of omission.
Maybe we don't tell the full truth or you know.
Then we have the pants on fire lies, which are a different breed.
But it's important for us to be aware of it and understand how to address it without damaging the relationship, so you can still stay in the negotiation mode and still get work done.
That's exactly what the purpose of the books are is to understand the truth and find out how do we make the truth work for us and not let our egos get in the way by saying aha, you lied, and that'll end the relationship.
That's not what we want.
We want to negotiate a deal.
We don't want to end the relationship.
Isn't that you know, when you think about it?
Isn't that what we're supposed to do every day in life is to make other people feel better about themselves for having met us?
I think, you know, famous book somewhere was do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.
I can't remember what book that came from the Bible and why it works.
Ancient wisdom still reigns supreme.
It's so simple, but so easy to overlook.
And before you go, I want to focus on one thing too, because you mentioned it a couple of times and I don't want to gloss over it because I think people will hear it and they will agree with it, but they might not know how to do it.
So how do we keep our ego in check when everything within us is wanting to do that victory lap saying ha, I caught you in the lie.
How do we actually make sure that we can keep control of our ego and stay focused on the goal, in the your mind, on the objective?
The objective is to make a deal, not to spot your competitor or your client or whoever you're negotiating with as a liar.
That's not the goal.
The goal is to make the deal.
There are times where I suppose, when the goal is say, if your wife or spouse cheats on you, I guess the goal is to spot the lie and then capitalize on it.
So that's another issue altogether.
But in the business world, In the social world, what we want to do is keep our eyes focused on the objective.
We don't want to just go around pissing people off by calling them liars because we wouldn't have any friends.
So our goal is to know, you lied to me?
Okay, fine.
We can deal with it because I've lied to other people.
So let's try to work that into a positive instead of a negative.
What I call is pivot to the positive, because a lot of people come up.
We have neighbors and even our in-laws who would say you know, my kids are way better than your kids because they do this and they've achieved this and that and the other thing.
Instead of going like defend yourself, you go.
You must be very blessed to have kids that are very successful.
And that stops it.
You pivot to the positive.
And you divert your attention away from your kids and being defensive.
Just say, you're very fortunate to have good kids in your life.
So you pivot to the positive.
Well, this is incredible because i think the sign of a brilliant insight is that it seems positive.
In hindsight and when i think about those times where my ego has been inflamed and it has led me to do or say the wrong thing in at the wrong time, i've recognized if i would have just kept this in mind to pivot to the positive when i start to feel that then we would have been able to dodge all of that.
So it's funny because again, even that saying is an example of the power of the approach.
Because when we were thinking about how to control the ego, I'm thinking about the ego is out of control.
Put it in a cave.
Bury it.
Put it away.
And you're saying, no, you don't need to attack the ego.
You just need to focus on the positive, and that will orient you to the right behavior.
That's incredibly powerful.
Yeah.
I should let you know, I blog for Psychology Today magazine, and I've got like 171, 75 blogs now.
And it deals with a lot of tips, techniques, and insight that we've talked about today.
So if anybody wanted to go back and review some of the topics most of them that we covered are on the address on that Psychology Today blog.
Amazing.
Yes, we'll link to that in the description.
And then, of course, all of your books and all of the work that you've done.
Jack, you are a legend in the industry.
So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us.
Well, you know, we're starting off the year.
You're interview number two for the year.
So maybe before you go, what Parting piece of wisdom or advice would you give people?
Words are the building blocks for truth and justice.
So choose your words wisely.
That is great.
This is an example of my restraint.
I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because we'd be here for another hour.
Jack, thank you so much for joining us today.
Really appreciate it.
You're welcome.
I enjoyed it.
Oh professor, that I was listening to the episode and I really want to know how to deal with omissions, not only with deception, because when someone lies to you okay, you feel hurt and you know okay, that person is lying to me.
So I have to be careful.
But with an omission, that person.
I don't know if that person is actually lying to us, because for themselves they can say oh no, I'm not lying.
I'm just omitting things.
So how to deal with that?
Well, here's how you deal with that.
That's called a verbal technique to the deception.
When people lie by omission, they lie to the point where they want to withhold information.
They withhold the information and then they continue with the truth.
It's kind of like a road going to a river and you have to have a bridge that goes over the river and then the road continues.
So in grammar this is a little complicated, but in grammar there's something that I discovered was called a text bridge.
Whenever we lie by omission, we have to use some kind of grammatical device to bridge that gap over the river, so to speak, over the lie, the withheld information.
And I discovered there's about seven words that people typically use to bridge the withheld information.
And the word that most people use is and then.
So if you were to ask me, what did I do this morning?
I would say I got up and then I took a shower and then I had breakfast and I came to work.
I'm withholding information by using the word and then.
So what we discovered is when people withhold information, the truthful people and deceptive people use text bridges.
But deceptive people, you focus on the incident itself.
Where were you between 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock when the bank was robbed?
Well, I drove to my mom's house.
I went to my friend's house.
And then I came home.
Well, that and then tells you where there's missing information.
Now, you have to ask yourself, am I interested in that missing information?
Yeah, because you might have been robbing a bank at the time.
But now, if you ask me, what did you do?
I got up and then I took a shower.
Are you interested in all the things I would tell?
Like I disrobed, I got in the shower, I turned on the hot water, the cold water, I got the soap.
You don't want to say all that.
Are you really interested in that stuff?
No.
So you have to make a decision if you want that information.
And then there's a technique.
What it does is it's like you're drilling for oil.
Because it tells you where the oil is probably at.
And so then, what you want to do in order to extract the information.
There's something called a micro action interview.
So then you go back to the action right before the then, the and then.
And you say, so you were doing this at this time.
You go, yes.
What happened next?
Then people will try to lie.
And they'll give you a little bit more information.
And then they'll say, and then I did this.
So then you go back to the and then again.
And they'll give you a little bit more.
And as that gap narrows, by you asking what happened next, they get kicked into the fight.
Flight response.
Then they start admitting all these nonverbal indicators of deception.
And so then you start seeing them fidgeting, say, aha.
So then you use the empathic statement for your presumption.
So you feel very uncomfortable about this, about what you're talking about.
And so then you'll get, yes, I am uncomfortable.
I would be uncomfortable, too, if I did the evil deed that you just did.
That's so good.
That's a great question, Simone.
Brilliant question.
So you can work verbals and nonverbals both at the same time.
So I not only know that you're lying by your nonverbals, I listen to what you're telling me and I can tell you're lying to me by withholding information.
Unreal.
Yeah.
So there are going to be benign reasons for using a text bridge.
Yes.
Because you might want to overlook things.
But then if you have to be savvy enough to understand what's an important topic, ask the questions and then pay attention to the text.
Bridges there.
Man, it's good.
We have to use these text bridges because that's the way our grammar is hardwired in our brain.
There are some ways you can defeat it, but it's very difficult to defeat it because we're hardwired to bridge information gaps.
Yeah.
Jack, you know what's funny about this?
Because every time I think about just any type of engagement.
I'm thinking about, okay, here's a move.
Is there a counter move to that?
So if there's a liar who's listening to the podcast, what would they do and say okay, how do I avoid this and that?
And I'm recognizing.
Going back to your point about cognitive load, I mean I don't even know how you would counter these in terms of concealing the deception, because a savvy interviewer would just ask different questions in different ways and it's hard for them to keep track of everything.
Yeah.
And I'll give you another cognitive overload technique, and that is You tell me a story and I'm going to say, you know, I've just met you.
I don't know whether you're telling me the truth or not.
So why should I believe you?
And what should the person say?
Well, I'm a good person.
Well, good people lie.
My mom taught me not to lie.
Okay, that's fine.
But that's not what I asked you.
I said, why should I believe you?
The answer is because I'm telling you the truth or some derivation thereof, right?
So that's very benign.
You could say, hey, Why should I believe?
And I use this all the time with people.
Why should I believe you?
You know, I don't know you very well.
Why should I believe you?
Well, I'm telling you the truth.
Okay, thank you.
Or why would I lie?
And I say, I can think of a thousand reasons why you would lie.
To get over on me, to take advantage of me, to get a deal that's good for you, not for me.
I could think of a million ways, but that's not the question I asked.
I said, why should I believe you?
And if you ask that question twice and they don't tell you because I'm telling the truth or some derivation thereof, then the probability of a lie goes way up.
You know, it's funny.
The saying the truth will set you free is having a whole different meaning to me now, because I'm thinking about somebody sitting in the chair in front of you.
It would be like torture.
This is like mental torture.
I would be just being good, not because I want to be good, but because it is too much stress being bad, you know.
I'll give you one last thing.
I'll leave you with this.
And that is what I call the land of is.
And I don't know if you remember President Clinton about, have you had sex with that woman?
No.
What's the meaning of is?
If is means this, then it's one thing.
If it means that, it's another thing.
So here's the technique.
I named it after that.
That is, if you ask a person a yes or no question and they don't answer yes or no, because if they answer yes, they're in trouble.
And if they answer no, they're in trouble.
So where do they go?
They go between yes and no, which is the land of is.
And that is where everything gets gets tangled up and obfuscated and double entendre, innuendos and just gobbledygook, right.
So if I say, did you do this?
And you say, number one, you'll say, well, that sounds improv.
Well, I wasn't able to get around to it because of this, this, and that, and the other thing.
And I say, no, no, no, I didn't ask you that.
I asked you, did you complete the assignment?
And if they say, oh, you got to understand that I was pretty big.
Now, it's either yes or no.
If you don't answer yes or no, you're lying to me.
Yeah.
Especially if you start your sentence with the word well, which people?
Most of the time they answer well, and then they'll take you to the land of is.
And you could stop after well.
But the key is you don't tell people how you know they're lying, because then they will change their thought speech pattern.
That's why you got to be quiet.
So if you say i say is, is this truly going to be edited in in uh, to make me look good?
And you go like well, i go like we got a problem see, because it's got to be a yes or no question.
Right, you're right.
And then i'll come back if you give me some kind of gobbledygook and i'll say you know, why should i believe you if you say you're going to make me look good?
Why should i believe you?
It better, because i'm going to make you look good.
If I look good, you look good.
If you look good, I look good.
It's part of a mutual thing.
I go, okay, he's probably telling the truth.
You see how it works with the derivation?
So I can run through a series of these questions to determine whether you're lying to me or not.
You don't even know if I'm testing your veracity because I'm not telling you.
Oh my gosh, it's so good.
Because again, thinking about counters no, you're just.
It's like you're either screwed now or screwed later.
It's just a matter of time before the truth comes out.
I just thought of something else that you probably would like, and that's called a lip purse.
That's a small outward movement of your lips, like the fish lips, but it's very slight.
That means you have just formed an idea in your head that is in direct opposition to what I just said.
Yeah, I see that in school a lot.
I'm giving a lecture.
I see a student lip purse.
I say, ah, you don't agree with what I just said.
Well, how'd you know?
I'm in the FBI.
I know these things.
No, it's because of the lip purse, right?
Now the trick is, if you go to your boss and I often went to my boss I need money for this, this and that, this project or that thing or whatever we're working on.
I talk about all the benefits and all the upside and the downside and this and that and the other thing.
All of a sudden, I get to, well, boss, it's going to cost us X amount of dollars.
And I see the lip purse.
And what has he just said?
In his mind, he formed an opinion.
No, we're not spending the money on that, no matter what the benefits and everything is.
So the trick is You want to get your boss to change his mind before he has a chance to articulate no.
If you articulate no, there's something called the psychological principle of consistency.
If you say no, you're going to stick to no because that's what you articulated.
So I'm going to say, boss, this is where elicitation comes in.
Boss, I'll bet you're thinking it might be a little too expensive, but let me explain to you how that cost is going to be an added benefit on the overall project.
And so now he's thinking, oh, OK.
And he's going to change his mind in his mind and then say, well, OK, I'll go ahead and try it out.
We'll see how it works.
So that's the key is to get him to change his mind before he articulates no.
Wow.
And we learned that all from a lip purse.
And so if you're negotiating and you're hitting all these things, we got this and this and this.
And all of a sudden you hit like on time delivery.
Well, we're going to have to push delivery off two weeks.
And you see the lip purse.
What are you thinking?
They're going to turn the deal down because they want on-time delivery.
So elicitation.
I'll bet you want – I'll bet.
One of the most important things in this negotiations is on-time delivery.
And they'll go like, well, yeah.
See, now you've uncovered the problem, and you can change their mind.
You can say, well, I'll tell you what we can do.
We can add an extra shift.
We can do this.
We can do that.
We can guarantee that the products will be in your warehouse on time.
So it's almost like a –
A silent negotiation you have with them because they've verbalized a cognitive no, even though they've manifested
Non-verbalized.
Non-verbalized.
That's right.
It hasn't been verbalized yet.
And you want to make sure you can stop them from verbalizing it.
So you use elicitation to get them to respond to something else.
And then you address that before they put their flag in the ground to say, yeah, wow.
The psychological principle behind that is where we make decisions.
We experience a certain degree of anxiety.
Think about when you had a decision to make.
You were anxious.
There's a certain amount maybe a little, maybe a lot, depending on the consequences of your decision.
So when you make up your mind, you go, ah, no more anxiety because the decision is made.
Our psyche is.
We don't want to put ourselves in a position where we're more anxious than than we are now.
So it's easier to say no and stick with no, because we don't want to go through that anxiety of making a decision again.
You're right.
Wow.
So if you're in a negotiation and you see the lip purse and then you see their body get kind of like very relaxed, would you interpret that as they've kind of checked out, they've said no and they're sitting here to kind of be polite potentially?
They have.
As long as they don't say no, you got a chance to change their mind.
I would say no.
Looks like you're pretty comfortable with that.
But let me explain to you the nuances of this particular item.
Yes, no product or whatever.
Let me let me talk about this.
You may think it's a little more expensive.
But and then you say the goodwill that you give people and this and that, and the exposure and this and that and the other thing.
And they go, maybe he's right.
And so then he may say, well, all right, how about a trial?
Can we do a trial period for this product or this?
And they go like, well, all right, we'll do that versus no.
Right.
You see how that works?
I don't have any concrete examples I'm working with, so I'm kind of.
No, this is great.
We're tracking.
This is amazing.
This is amazing.
Yeah, I think it's also very interesting.
This is just kind of a broader point.
Just how, and I'm guilty of it too, how infrequently negotiation experts talk about deception.
You know, we talk about asking questions and then we almost pretend as though every single answer we get is just said with complete veracity.
You know, I feel like it's almost like a bit of malpractice to not address that.
Anita, that's good.
And this is a perishable skill.
You have to practice it, keep up on it.
But you know what's fortunate?
Anytime you go out and meet another human being, you can practice these skills.
Because one of the traits of elicitation is you can use an elicitation technique and the person doesn't know that they're a target of elicitation because of the way you phrase it.
So if I ask you a presumptive question and it doesn't work, I'm going to ask you a bracketing question.
So you're 30, 35 years old.
You make this much or that much.
Your overhead is this or that.
And if that doesn't work, I'll go to another technique.
And if that doesn't work, you can daisy chain these techniques and the person won't know that you're targeting them for elicitation.
And the reason is this.
Our brains look to the horizon for threats.
And if there's a threat, we get ready the fight flight response.
Now what the brain does for efficiency reasons, they look at all the behavior that we see every day.
And if we see that behavior and it doesn't pose a threat and it's been proven not to be threatening behavior, we kind of stuff it away in a place in our brain and we ignore it.
The brain ignores that behavior.
So what you want to do is you want to stick within that human baseline.
Because as soon as you You're outside the human baseline.
The other people will perk up because that's a potential threat.
So when I just ask you a question, that's outside the baseline.
So I'm not going to ask questions.
I'm just going to use presumptives.
I'm going to use bracketing elicitation, oblique references, you know, empathic statements, because that's all within the human baseline.
They don't even realize that you're doing it.
Allow people to flatter themselves.
See, people don't recognize that.
They automatically feel that themselves.
But if I say, oh, you're the best professor I've ever had.
Yeah, what do you want?
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
It goes back to that example.
A better way, if you're a salesperson, is to say, geez, we have a new product.
I'd like your advice on this.
And a book salesman actually came into my office and said, hey, buy this new book.
It's better than the one you have now.
Well, you just disparaged me by saying that my choice in books sucks, right?
This is getting off to a bad start, right?
So I told her, I said, stop right here.
This is not the way to approach professors.
She said, well, what do you mean?
I said, they have big eagles.
You know that?
Oh, yeah, I know that.
I said, so work it.
She said, well, how?
I said, ask for their advice.
So I want you to leave my office and come back in and say, hi, professor.
My name is so-and-so.
I'm from such-and-such publisher.
I'd like your advice on this book.
I said, oh, let me take a look at it.
So I actually read through the book there.
And I said, this is a better book than the one I'm using.
I'll start ordering the book from you.
Whoa.
Wow.
So who made up their mind?
I made up my mind.
She didn't force me.
She asked for advice.
That made me feel good, because of course she's going to ask me for advice because I'm a good professor.
Right.
And then when I'm reading it on my own mind, I'm going like, well, this is a better book.
I'm still using that book to this day.
And that company said, geez, can you do a training session for all our salespeople?
Unreal.
This is so good.
So you see how you can use these techniques in the business world, the social world, not only police work and espionage and terrorism, but across the board.
I appreciate you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
This is great.
I hope you got something of value out of it.
Oh, my gosh.
Yes.
More than you could ever know.
If you have any questions, email me.
Do I have your email address to send you that?
I'll ping you an email because I know you and Simone have been in touch, but I'll email you too.
All right.
Perfect.
All righty, my friend.
Great meeting you.
I'll see you.
Bye.
