Transcript: Collaboration NOW: Decision Making in an Uncertain World

All out there in online land. Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, depending on what time zone you're in. I'm really excited to have this collaboration now discussion today. Actually, in preparation for this interview, I listened to a book. Actually, our guest wrote this book.

It's called Ego, Authority, and Failure, Using Emotional Intelligence by the Hostage Negotiator to Succeed as a Leader. Also, and you guys might find this a little bit petty, but I also watched Money Heist, which was completely unrealistic as it relates to negotiation, but it was a really good show. Any of you who've actually watched Money Heist, it's so riveting. Anyway, I bet our guest doesn't even bother with things like that. We're going to ask them later if you watched Money Heist.

So that being said, I'm going to go ahead and introduce my guest today so that you know who he is. Derek Gont is an accomplished trainer and negotiations coach for Black Swan Group. He has over 17 years of experience in providing negotiations and leadership training to corporate, government, and law enforcement professionals. A 29-year law enforcement veteran, the majority of Derek's career was spent as a member and leader of hostage negotiation teams. During this time with these teams, he became one of the most respected hostage negotiation leaders in the Washington DC area.

Derek has conducted leadership trainings around the world, teaching leaders how to apply hostage negotiation practices and principles to their work. So let's bring Derek on. There we go. Welcome, Derek. Thank you for having me.

I appreciate the invite. So I think I'm a little crazy. You're going to be unrealistic and have gone out of my mind. Mm-hmm. A bit unrealistic for me, too.

Be a little bit nervous interviewing a hostage negotiator. No, it's not. And in fact, I know you're prepared for this because of the way you framed that question. All right, so you did see what I did there. I did see what you did there.

All right, so that being said, hopefully we get into a little bit of that later today about what I did and how I was doing a little framing. But that being said, we do have a lot planned for this discussion. But I do want to ask those out there watching, how many of you listening right now, answer yes if you always get what you want? Answer yes in the chat if you always get what you want. All right, see four people on.

OK, those of you wherever you are, Facebook, LinkedIn, answer yes if you're watching on YouTube. And if you don't, answer no. Be truthful if it's your husband or wife, and you're like, no, no, I don't get what I want. And be honest. Be honest if it's your kids.

What about getting that promotion? What about simply just getting a clear decision? Do you always get the answer? I see Derek nodding. Do you always get the answer, Derek?

93% of the time. So the answer is still, no, you don't always get what you want. That's exactly right. OK, that's good. All right, so I see two people responding.

Marcus says yes, which is incorrect because he is my husband and my business partner. And we know that's not true. So Rafi, he says no. OK, all right, so that being said, I'd like for us to recognize that this conversation, Brent says no, awesome. This conversation is not what that's about.

It is not about always getting what you want. I'd like to share that it is a little bit more about empathy. A little bit more about listening and connecting with the people that you're actually speaking with when you're having a conversation and negotiating with them. It's more about having a skill that teaches. It's a skill in caring.

It's a skill in truly understanding what the other person's desires and their desires are so that you can have a productive conversation with them. So that being said, we have the right person with us to share with us about empathetic listening. Derek uses this skill to aid business owners and their ventures teaching programs the power of communication, de-escalating situations, emotional situations, and promoting behavioral change. So that being said, Derek. Yes.

How does FBI or Hostile Negotiation General skills, how do they become valuable for the corporate workplace? They become valuable because of what you just said. Tactical empathy and listening. You want to know why my success rate was 93%. That is to say, when I say my success rate, I'm talking about hostage negotiators in general.

Their success rate at influencing other people to do what they want them to do is around 93% because we knew how to listen, because we knew how to employ tactical empathy. You use the words understanding how they view the world. And that's critical in order for you to maximize your chances at getting what you want. That's critical for you to increase by one degree your performance, the way you communicate, the way you conduct business. And I use that metaphor of increasing your performance one degree because think about water.

Water boils at what? 212. What's it doing at 211? Nothing. One degree turns you from hot water to kinetic energy.

One degree change in the way you think about communicating one person to another. And it starts with you embodying the mindset that it's not about you. It's not about your goal. It's not about your objective. It's about how does the other side view the lay of the land?

How is my ask going to impact them? How is what I want going to change their world? And the sooner you can understand that and then articulate that back to them, the less resistance you will get in the conversation when you ultimately get to your goal or your objective. So the skills that we espouse in the world of hostage negotiations were tested and proven in some of the most difficult conversations on the planet. Therefore, they're appropriate in any conversation on the planet.

Because if I can get the guy to put the gun down and release the nine people that he's holding inside of the pawn shop, you can get that person to sign the contract. You can talk to your team about change without getting a lot of pushback. And so we know that it's applicable to the business world because it's not based on anything other than the human nature response. Once you get your head around that, you put yourself at a distinct advantage when communicating one person to another.

The human nature response. That's another great technique that you just did there. The human nature response dictates that the single biggest driver of human decision making, and by extension, human behavior, is fear, usually the fear of loss. The fear of loss. People will work harder, twice as hard, in fact, to avoid a loss as they will to get an equivalent gain.

And that's a change in the mindset. We have to change the mindset because we're conditioned to go into these conversations and throw our data and information on the table and say, here's why you should make this decision. And the other side goes, nope, not ready to do it. OK, so you framed this really well for our next question, this next point that I think we need to dig into. And maybe those who are listening, I think it looks like we have eight people on, please let us know if at any point in time this year, have you been uncertain or have you encountered fear this year 2020?

Just type yes in the chat. I know I have. That being said, there's a lot of situations in this world that have driven us to feeling uncertain, feeling fearful, feeling uncomfortable, feeling challenged, even defensive, when we ourselves unknowingly are feeling those things. And it's simply just because of societal things. We have this pandemic right now, change, we're adapting to change.

We're doing many things that are just different and there's not a comfort level like there was before. All of the social unrest, even politics, I see Raffi and Mike. Yep, yes, yes, everybody, everybody has experienced fear, uncertainty, and it's heightened for everyone right now. So now more than ever, this is collaboration now, now more than ever, it makes more sense for people to understand what the other person is going through, that they're having a conversation with, and understanding that human nature. So how important, in your opinion, Derrick, is negotiation now that we live in this virtual society, not just socially distant, but sometimes emotionally distant, mentally distant?

How important is negotiation right now? It's extremely important. Look, we were emotionally distant before this pandemic, most of us. Why? Because the type of listening that we talk about within the Black Swan method, which is built on the foundation of tactical empathy, it takes too much work.

It's hard. You've got to really dial in. This goes beyond just active listening. This goes into what I call aggressive listening. This is listening at the deepest level.

What is their worldview? What is the emotion and the logic that they associate with this worldview? How do they identify with the environment and the situation that surrounds them? At the deepest level, if you don't understand what the other person is going through, you don't understand them. And if you don't understand them, it's going to be like a stench.

They're going to be able to smell it. And the opportunity, the chances that there's going to be a connection and a collaboration are dramatically reduced. Most people spend the better part of their day listening at levels one and two. Level one is intermittent listening, where you're listening just long enough for you to get the gist of what the other person is saying. And then who do you start listening to then?

You start listening to your own internal monologue. Or we're at level two, rebuttal listening, where we're listening long enough till we hear something that we know we can argue with. And then we're just waiting for the other side to shut up so we can tell them how brilliant we are. And so in this day and age, we know people are under tremendous pressures. We know people are under a lot of stress.

We know people are being fueled with fear that is a byproduct of that uncertainty that you speak of. And so it's important for us to, and it's not that hard. This is not rocket science. This stuff was developed by cops for cops. And if you know anything about cops, we like things simple.

And so that's why it's incumbent upon us to demonstrate even in the smallest way that we understand what their perspective is with their frame of references. Because people, I don't care who you are, what corner of the globe you come from, the pigmentation of your skin, it doesn't matter. People love to have other people understand how they feel. And listening is the cheapest and most effective concession that you can make to another person. Wow.

So what I'm hearing is there is now more than ever the necessity because of the uncertainty driving fear. In human being broadly today, it is that much more important for us to be keen to having skills around having better conversations in order to get to the position. True. You know what message you have to convey. You know what decision has been made that you're going to have to relay.

Take the time to understand and demonstrate that understanding, the impact that it's gonna have on the other side. If you go into those conversations and you subordinate yourself to your counterpart, I don't care what the relationship is. I don't care if it's peer to peer, if it's subordinate to superior or superior to subordinate, it's incumbent upon each of us to take a step back and defer, subordinate yourself to the other side first. That's always the sequencing. It's always tactical empathy first and then whatever your goal objective is, whatever your ask is comes last.

Okay, so you just got started with talking a little bit about the how. We've dug into the why quite a bit up to this point. So let's talk a little bit about how can we be a little bit more convincing and actually what are some steps, what are some tactics that we can actually do in order to get towards getting to a decision? The first, and we may go into this in a little detail later, I don't know. But the first is we have a technique, we have a technique that's called labeling.

Labeling is simply it looks like, it seems like, it sounds like you're providing a verbal observation of a driving force or a dynamic that is either expressed by the other person or is unconsciously communicated in their affect. Beneath that, or as a subset of that, we have a preemptive label, which is called an accusations audit where we are making a situationally intelligent guess. A situationally insightful intelligent guess about what they're going through. If it's nothing more, if I'm gonna call you up because I need you to give me your opinion on X, I'm gonna call you up and I'm gonna say, Brittany, I know you're tremendously busy right now and you're probably gonna wonder why you picked up the phone anyway.

And this is going to be a complete waste of your time. I know that soon as she picks up the phone and she hears it's me, those three things are gonna go through her mind immediately. So what do I do? I take care of them before she has a chance to say them or think them. And as a result, there's no clear demonstration that I'm looking to collaborate because I've already initiated the conversation by stepping to her side.

And if you do it effectively enough, you almost look like a mind reader because internally, Brittany's going, wow, I didn't even say anything. How does he know I'm thinking that? And so accusations audits, getting out in front of the negative opinions, assumptions or impressions that the other side has about you, has about the circumstance, will have about whatever message you're going to relay. Something as simple as you're talking to your team and you've made the decision, Brittany, you're going to move the water cooler from one side of the office to the other side.

I don't care how large your team is, somebody's going to have a problem with you moving that water cooler. So you mitigate that before you even start. I know this is going to make some of you upset. I know for a fact that you're going to look at me and say, you guys cannot make up your mind. You're always changing things.

We probably look disorganized. It probably looks like we're indecisive. And you're wondering why you even came to work today. And then you hit them with it. I'm going to move the water cooler from this side of the office to that side of the office.

What happens when you do that? When you start off your conversation like that, is your counterpart now goes to the far end of the fear spectrum. Because they don't know what's about to come out of your mouth, because you're laying it on thick. And they go to that far end of that fear spectrum and they're like, what is he about to tell me? That there's going to be layoffs, there's going to be changes in the work project, there's going to be demotions, there's going to be a buyout.

What is he about to tell us? And when I ultimately get to what my decision is or what my ask is, it's so much better than what they had imagined. They're relieved to go along with it. That's how powerful this stuff is. So I started off the conversation with you today with an accusations audit that was super outlandish and ridiculous.

And I asked you, I said to you, you're going to think I'm crazy, you're going to think I'm ridiculous. You're going to think that I am out of my mind, but I'm a little bit nervous to have a conversation with a former hostage negotiator and trainer on this topic. And you said I used it well. That is something that can be done. But how did I do?

I loved your accusations audit. If I could, my job is to make you better, right? And if I'm not making you better, I'm failing in my mission. The only thing I would have gotten rid of is the butt. Okay.

Get rid of the butt. Butt erases everything that you said before. Sure. If I say Brittany, listen, have you heard this? How many times have you heard this?

No disrespect, but you know, whatever follows that butt is going to be something completely disrespectful. Very true. And so that's what I would tell you to do. Get rid of the butt. Butt is an erasing word.

Not only did you lay out the accusations audit with me, you also followed it with a no-oriented question. And you said, would it be ridiculous? I can't remember what the actual question was, but you started it off with a no-oriented framework. Would it be ridiculous? And a no-oriented framework is where you're turning your yes-oriented question into a no-oriented question, and the importance of that is people are yes-addicted and they're yes-battered.

They know when you're driving them for a yes, and they feel it and they get defensive immediately. So to mitigate that, to take care of that, take any yes-oriented question, turn it into a no-oriented question, where the purpose is to generate a no coming out of the mouth of your counterpart, but the result of their response is tantamount to a yes. Instead of going in to the restaurant and say, can we sit in the reserve section over there? That's a yes-oriented question. You're clearly driving for a yes.

You flip it around and say, would it be ridiculous if we sat over there? Their autonomy is protected, and I'm continually amazed at what people will agree to by you allowing them to say no, that they otherwise would not. Just a small two-millimeter shift, and it generates tremendous benefit going forward. Ah, that's cool. Well, thank you for the feedback.

I appreciate that. Obviously, I appreciate you wanting to help us all get better because it's not just me, everybody who's listening and everybody who will listen to this will gain from this experience. So you mentioned labeling as well. Let's dig into that a little bit more. What does that look like?

It's simply you verbalizing the words, it looks, it seems, it sounds, it feels, or you look, you seem, you sound. It's a verbal observation of a dynamic or an emotion. It's not judgment. It's not you saying, what I'm hearing is, it's not the same thing. It's simply you look, you seem, you sound, it looks, it seems, it sounds, or it feels.

It's you hanging a tentative label based on the data that you're picking up from the other side. And you're always on safe ground because you're not making anything up. With the Black Swan method, if you think about American baseball, you're always at bat and you're swinging at the pitches that you want. You never have to play the field. You're always at bat.

And you're taking what the other side gives you, you're repackaging it, and you're giving it right back to them. And because of that, those are their words. That's their perspective. You're telling them, this is the data that you're giving me. What if you get it wrong?

If you get it wrong, one of the laws of negotiation gravity kicks in, the desire to correct is irresistible. So if you get it wrong, what are they going to do? They're going to correct you. So either way, you're good. And if they correct you, what have you gotten?

You've gotten smarter. If you hit it on the head, what have you gotten? You've gotten smarter. You've gotten more data. When you go into these conversations, you should be in information gathering mode.

There are things that you're counterpart, regardless of the circumstances, there's information that they're holding on to that if you uncover, will change the course of the conversation and change the results. So you should be in constant curiosity mode. You need to go into these conversations, assuming that I have something to learn. I don't care if it's with somebody in the office or I don't care if it's between you and Marcus, you guys are getting into a difficult conversation that you have to go in with the frame of mind.

I live with this man, I've married this man, I've got something to learn in this conversation. If you stay genuinely curious in the conversation, it's almost impossible for you to get triggered. Your brain does not work like that. You can't be mad and curious at the same time. You can't be mad and anxious at the same time.

You have to be one or the other, easy. Stay curious. Before you respond to anything in that conversation, the first question that you should ask yourself is, why did she just say that? Why did he just ask that? Because we have found people ask terrible questions.

They ask question A and they want the answer to question B. But they, for whatever reason, don't ask question B. They're afraid that they can't articulate it or they're afraid of the response. And so they ask question A. So before knowing that, before you answer a question from anybody, if it's not blatantly obvious why they ask the question, find out what's the motivation.

And simply use a label. It seems like you have a reason for asking. That will get you to the true motivation. Example, I say to you, Brittany, what are you doing tonight at five o'clock when you get off work? What goes through your mind immediately?

A, based on my response, how's my life gonna change at five o'clock? What is he setting me up for? You don't know the answers to that. And so there's some hesitation on your part. And instead of asking, or instead of answering the question you're gonna respond with, sounds like you got a reason for asking.

And then my response to you is, yeah, my car's in the shop. Don't feel like taking an Uber. I know you drive by the shop on your way home. Would you give me a ride? And you're thinking to yourself, well, stupid, why didn't you just ask me for a ride?

And the fact that, yeah. And the fact of the matter is, people have a hard time asking questions. And the motivations for the questions vary. So find out where it's coming from. Likewise, if they make a statement that doesn't make sense, it doesn't line up, you think there's an ulterior motive?

Sounds like you got a reason for saying that. Wow. It's all so simple, isn't it? I told you, Kyle. And you know what?

So Marcus listened to the book with me and we've been trying this out on each other. And it's actually been quite fun. I believe that because we know we're using these tools with each other, we know it's coming. Do you think if somebody's prepared for the approach or the specific tactic that someone's using, that they are more primed to come back with similar tactics or anything like that? All right.

So let's unpack that because we get that question often, especially as the gospel of the Black Swan group spreads around the globe. If we're all about motivation, what's motivating the behavior? We rarely get caught up into what people do or what they said. Or what they said, our constant question is, why did they do it? Why did they say it?

If I label somebody and they immediately label me back, what are they telling me? If I mirror somebody and they mirror me back immediately, what are they telling me? They're telling me, A, I know what you're doing. B, I don't trust you. And you got to ask yourself, what did I do to damage the trust?

You got to ask yourself, how can I fix it if it's fixable? You got to ask yourself, are they doing that to try to manipulate me? What is their intent? And so the first thing I would say to you, if you know that the person that you're dealing with is Black Swan trained, you should feel good because there's nothing in our quote playbook that says we want you to use these skills to manipulate the other person. It's not about manipulation, it's about influence.

The difference between the manipulation and influence is the intent of the speaker. We had a guy that when we were doing live events, we were doing a live event in Orlando, packed room, these people paid top dollar to get a seat in the room for eight hours of training. This guy shows up and he wants a seat in the room and he starts using Black Swan stuff on us. And he's pushing, he's adamant about getting a room, getting seats, so we said, we're never gonna turn down a quote unquote fan.

So we said, all right, well, we're at capacity, but since you drove across the state, we'll accommodate you. And then he starts breaking us down for half price. I got a room full of 30 people that paid full freight and not only does this guy want to disrupt the operation and come in and do the work, he wants to disrupt the operation and come in five minutes before we're gonna start and get a seat. He wants it at a reduced rate. And he's going at the time one of our newer employees who wasn't as experienced and I hear what's going on.

I'm making my way over there, the president of the company, Brandon Voss, hears what's going on and Brandon got to the guy before I did and the guy is clearly trying to manipulate us with Black Swan skills. And at one point he says, it sounds like you don't wanna give me a seat. Brandon said, no, I don't. And he goes, well, what makes you say that? I mean, he's throwing all the skills out there.

And he said, it's your attitude, it's your intent. You sat in your car with your wife, drove across the state and told her unequivocally, you are gonna use these skills on these hostage negotiators and get a reduced rate on a seat. That was his intent was to get over on us and we sent them out, we sent them packing. So that's a long way for me to say, what is the intent of the other side? Your intuition is going to tell you, your intuition is that's your gut, that's your subconscious.

Your subconscious, your gut processes 20 million bits of information per second. Your conscious mind, 40 bits of information per second. Don't ignore what your intuition is telling you. It will tell you if they're trying to manipulate you and you gotta make a decision at that point. You wanna continue the conversation?

Do you wanna do business with this guy that's trying to manipulate you? Or do you wanna move on to the next person who's not gonna try to manipulate you? That's the decision you have to make. Yeah, so it makes sense. I mean, you have to constantly put yourself in the other person's shoes as much as possible.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Oh, what's that? Not put yourself in their shoes. That's tantamount to feeling what they feel. You don't need to feel what they feel.

You need to see through their eyes, not walk in their shoes. Okay. See what they see. Tactical empathy doesn't mean that you agree with, doesn't mean that you even like the other side. It just means that you understand where they're coming from.

How many people in my previous life do you think I liked? The guy that snatched nine hostages or eight hostages at the pawn shop. Do you think I liked that guy? Do you think I agreed with anything that he was saying? No, I don't use this stuff because I'm a nice person.

I use it because it works. The two best purveyors of tactical empathy on the planet are hostage negotiators and sociopaths. And both of us use it, not because we're nice people necessarily. We use it because it works. Ted Bundy was not able, Ted Bundy was executed for one murder in the state of Florida.

Ted Bundy was probably responsible for 50 to 70 homicides. Women we will never find. How do you think he was able to get them in compromising positions? He knew the power of tactical empathy, how to display it and how to force it back on himself. And so it's not about feeling what they feel.

It's not about agreeing with them. It's not about liking them. It's about seeing through their eyes. Well, thanks for the correction and clarity because it is a big distinction to do your best to understand perspective. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, okay, that's good. I'm getting a couple comments in here. Raffi is saying that this content is simple yet profound. Kevin is saying, this is great. Thanks for doing this.

If you ask a question from different angles, would you and would you have that gut feeling that they're withholding information? How would you address this? So you go in with the assumption that they're always holding information. They're always, listen, Kevin, you do it. You withhold information.

I do it. Brittany does it. We all do it. And so if we're doing it, guess what the other side is doing as well. So that's always your assumption that they're holding information.

That's what I said earlier. You have to remain curious. You have to assume that you have something something to learn. A label is better than a question. We started off using calibrated questions to drive out information.

And it was staring at us in the face the entire time, but we never really recognized it until just recently, within the last year. And we stopped using what and how questions to drive information out of the other side because direct questions make at least a third of the population on the planet uneasy. I'm in that third. I don't like you peppering me with a bunch of questions. And so with a third of the population in that same boat, a label, we call them asking labels, will work out just as well for you.

So instead of saying, what time do you want me to be there tomorrow? You simply turn it into a label. It sounds like you got a specific time at which you want me to arrive. You are more likely to get an unguarded, authentic response to an asking label versus a what or how question. We use our what and how questions to focus on implementation and to shape thought, to get them into a problem solving mode.

Good question, Kevin. I think that was a good follow-up here. And when you think about when you're having a conversation with anyone, there's tons of thoughts running through their head. There's tons of feelings that they're experiencing, and there's no way you're going to know all of the context 100%. But to your point about labeling, you're giving yourself the opportunity to check in and determine whether one way or another, are you correct in your thinking about what you think they might be feeling or seeing or experiencing?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And listen, when you guys go out there and start doing this today, you're going to be operating at a level higher than most of the population. You're going to be viewed as a one-off. You're going to be viewed as somebody different. You don't believe me.

The next time you go to Starbucks, you ask the person at the drive-through window how they are doing. How they are doing. They get that 100 times a day. It's a throwaway salutation, especially here in the West. We throw it away because most of us don't really care how you're doing.

That's just how we say hello. When they respond to you, regardless of what that response is, label it and watch how much more information they're willing to share with you. You drive up to that window and you say, hey, good morning, how are you today? And the person goes, it's been rough. And you simply hit them with, sounds like these customers have been kicking you in the teeth all morning.

And watch how much more information they give you because somebody is actually showing genuine interest. And what did I say at the beginning of this phone call or this podcast was people love to have other people understand what they're going through. And because you demonstrated that level of interest, don't be surprised if you've got cars behind you blowing their horn to get you out of the way because you and that barista are now in a back and forth. Don't go out and assume that this stuff works just because I said it.

You go out and you road test it and watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everybody who's planning on testing out labeling, accusations, audits, tell me what you're planning on testing out. We haven't really dug into mirroring yet. But even so, I know I did it a little bit earlier.

I can't remember exactly the word that I said, but you were describing around- Human nature response. Human nature response. So I literally picked something specific about what you were talking about and repeated simply those words. And what you endeavored to do as a result of that was to explain a little bit further about the human nature response. What does that do?

What does mirroring do for the person that you've mirrored what they're saying? Well, is there any clearer way for you to demonstrate that you're listening at a deeper level than to repeat back the words that came out of their mouth? I would submit to you, no, there is not. And even though you did it with me and it was seamless because I've been doing it forever in a day. I picked it up.

I guarantee you that, well, there may be markers, but I guarantee you that the other people that are listening to this right now did not pick it up. That's how conversational you were with it. It's almost invisible when you stay conversational with it. And the mirroring is just repeating back the last one to three-ish words that the person just gave you. Their words coming out of your mouth carry so much weight.

Their words coming out of your mouth going back into their ears. It's almost ego stroking. And we use it in place of, tell me more, please go on. What did you mean by that? It replaces all of that.

And you notice what you did with it, which I really loved is the upward inflection. You said, human nature response? You turned it into a question. You could have done something different. You could have inflected downward and said, human nature response, meaning I get it.

I'm picking up what you're laying down. So you inflect up, you turn it into a question, you inflect down, you turn it into a declarative statement. And see, that's another skill that you just did there. Did you pick that up? No, I didn't.

You surprised me. I didn't know I was actually using a skill. It's called an encourager. Those brief sounds or gestures that you make that encourages, hence the name, the person to continue talking. Nothing more than what you're doing right now, nodding your head.

That is an encourager. Nothing more than you going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Nothing more than you saying, right, yeah, really. All encourage the counterpart to continue talking. Great.

All right, so we are going to transition a little bit to the industry, the industry I work in, who constructor talks to. Workplace, design, construction. We typically deal with groups that are large, where there's so many people that you need to collaborate with in order to get to an execution of a project. It's deep, it's complex, it's technical, it's relational. It has a lot of layers associated with it.

I'd imagine it's different, but just, I can't say just as complex. There's nothing like life and death. I'm not gonna say that anything is close to that, but I will tell you, it is a complex industry. And I think that because of that, there's lots of opportunity for the need to use emotional intelligence, the need to use empathy, the need to have better conversations in order to get to decisions more quickly. So that being said, how would you recommend negotiating in broad team environments?

You've got to, for lack of a better term, divide and conquer. Who is it that's on the other side of the table? Who are my deal killers? We get so consumed with finding out, I gotta get to the decision maker. I gotta be able to influence the decision maker.

When in reality, there's a group of deal killers on the other side that you need to identify, that you need to influence in order to do your bidding. Because you may never get to the decision maker. That deal killer is probably gonna be your proxy. So how do you treat them? How do you treat them?

And so dividing and conquering is determining who are your problem points on the other side? And zeroing in on them and focusing your tactical empathy efforts on them, to make them allies. If you're talking about addressing an entire group, who in the room is speaking the least? Make note of who's speaking the least. That may be your decision maker.

The guy or the woman that says, we can't do this, we can't do that, we can't do this, probably holds a little bit more power than the person that says, I can't, I can't, I can't. The we person is usually the power broker. The silent person is often the power broker. So who's using we, who's actually not saying anything within the room? Try to cold read the people.

There are three different personality types that we've identified within the Black Swan Method, and each of them has something as important to them as coming to a resolution. For one group, it's to be heard and respected, for the other group, it's data. For the other group, it's data and information, and for the other person, it's maintaining the relationship in the moment. And the world pretty neatly breaks up into thirds. So a third of us are assertives, a third of us are analysts, and a third of us are accommodators.

Who are they within the groups that you're dealing with? Who are you? What is your personality type? You need to know who you are in order to be able to borrow from the other two camps to make yourself a more well-rounded negotiator. Now I will challenge what you said a few minutes ago in that you're not trying to equate what I did in my life in law enforcement and what you do, other than to say that they were both complex.

While in your line of work, lives are not at stake, livelihoods are. True. And so, as long as you understand that human nature response, it doesn't matter how big the group is, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it doesn't matter who you're talking to, because it's not predicated on any one walk of life, it's predicated on human beings. And so as long as you're dealing with a human being, the skills work. Now, your challenge is not to expect to see a unicorn the first time that you use the skills.

This is not, Mike Tyson is one of the greatest boxers of all time, he's one of the greatest boxers of all time because he was a knockout king. He was waiting for that one punch to knock people out. That's not what we're about at the Black Swan Group. Floyd Mayweather, one of the best boxers of all time. How many times did you watch a highlight of Floyd Mayweather knocking someone out?

It was very rare. Does it exist? Exactly. He would just out point you. His defenses were impenetrable and he would just pepper you, he would out point you.

So think of the Black Swan Method as Floyd Mayweather, we're looking for the incremental effect of the execution of the skills. We're not looking for a knockout blow. And so I tell you that because many people come to us and say, I tried to label and it didn't work. What do you mean it didn't work? Well, he just stared at me, he didn't say anything.

That means you need to keep going. That means it's worse than what you thought. It's worse than what you labeled. So that means you got to keep going. Or I labeled him and he blew up at me.

Okay, it worked. Just because it wasn't the response that you wanted, doesn't mean that it didn't work. When somebody yells at you during the course of a difficult conversation, again, at Black Swan, we don't get caught up in the action. What's motivating it? So why does somebody blow up at you, blow up at you in the difficult conversation?

They're doing it for one of three reasons. A, they're trying to manipulate you. It's gotten them somewhere in the past. All I have to do is get emotional with this person and then they'll back down and compromise their position. B, they think you're not listening.

Why does anybody raise their voice? Because they think you don't understand you're not listening. C, they're under tremendous pressure on their side of the table. You got to figure out which one it is. Again, what's motivating it?

Not the fact that he just yelled at me. Where is that coming from? Find out. Most of us run from those conversations. We either pivot off of the topic that generated the response or we yell back.

Yeah. So that's actually something we were gonna dig into. That's one of the questions that I prepared kind of thinking through this conversation before we got here, Derek, about when someone blows up. Does it, you mentioned a couple of scenarios why someone does. Is there, do you think there's an assumption that it has, like people believe immediately it's around ego and authority?

Like, do you think that people have a wrong perception of people blowing up? Sure, I do. Because they don't look at it through one of those three prisms that I just presented to you. If you were to blow up at me during a conversation and I wasn't black swan trained, I would say, ah, she just got emotional. I said this one thing and it set her flying off the handle.

She's just an emotional person. Or he blew up at me because this is the way he does business. This is how he intimidates people. Because what happens when the other side blows up at you? I don't care who you are.

It happens to me, it'll happen to you. It happens to anybody listening to this podcast. What happens when somebody yells at you, blows up at you? It makes you uncomfortable. And as a human being, when you get uncomfortable, what do you want to do more than anything else as quickly as possible?

Get comfortable again. And for a certain percentage of the population, that means, hmm, what's gonna return my comfort level? I'm gonna pivot off of that topic. What's gonna return me to my comfort level? I'm gonna compromise and give into what he's asking for.

What's gonna make me feel more comfortable? I'm gonna yell back. And instead of, and those are all reactions, right? Reactions are always emotional. I don't want you to react anymore.

I just want you to respond. And your response is, remember what I said earlier in the conversation, you can't be triggered and curious at the same time. So when he opens that fire hose and hits you with it, you sit back and you take it. Unless he's a sociopath, they're not gonna be able to sustain that attack for longer than 60 seconds. At the outside, it's hard to fight with somebody who's not fighting back.

Once it starts to subside, here's something that's gonna drive you crazy. Apologize. I'm sorry. It sounds like something I just said triggered an enormous response for you. My apologies.

What caused that? Now I wanna get into why. Most people wanna run from that portion of the conversation. Ah, I got that response. I don't wanna go back there again.

No, your job is you gotta stay in the moment. Find out what's motivating it because those negative emotions, just because you're ignoring them, doesn't mean they're gonna go away. It means they're coming back somewhere else in the conversation. So if you wanna get punched in the mouth again, ignore it and watch what happens. It seems like that you kinda need to lean into the conversation.

Absolutely. And do a lot of labeling or just figure out how you can continue listening to them. And to your point about they can't, I mean, people in general can't continue that for a long time, it will diffuse the situation. That's really interesting. Is there any point in time where you would want to get someone to get to that point where they're feeling like they have an enormous response or feel, is there any point where that can benefit you?

Or they can be emotionally rattled? You can expect any difficult conversation, and I describe a difficult conversation as any conversation where I want or I need is in your head or in the head of your counterpart, it's gonna be a difficult conversation. If it is a difficult conversation, it is going to be contaminated with negative emotions. When negative emotions are high, rational thinking is low. You wanna make your counterpart smarter, you have to mitigate the negatives as they see them.

One of the ways to do that is to get them to vent, get them to dump their bucket. The more they dump, the smarter they become. If you think of a fulcrum, when emotions are high, rational thinking is low. And we wanna try to even that out. Return them to the NFL.

You know what the NFL is? What's the NFL? It's not the National Football League. It's the normal functioning level. Clear out the negatives, you make people smarter.

Negatives fire up or activate the amygdala. When the amygdala is fired up, it impedes what's supposed to be going on in the prefrontal cortex. Literally, when they are in an agitated state, they are dumber than what they should be. And you're trying to make them smarter. Once you get to your goal and objective, don't you want them to be as clear of mind as possible?

The answer is yes. The only way to do that is for you to be aggressive at targeting those negative emotions or dynamics. Excellent. Now, as much as I feel as though I can ask you questions all day about this stuff. I know we are close to the hour mark here.

Yeah. And I wanna thank you. This has been an excellent conversation. I'm getting a bunch of comments saying how much people appreciate this conversation and I wanna watch it after the fact again. But thank you very much, Derek.

I appreciate your wisdom and everything that you've had to share in our discussion today. Like I said, thank you for having me. I'm glad I was able to join you. And if the planets line up, maybe we can do it again sometime in the future. Yeah, that would be wonderful.

I'd appreciate that, yeah. All right, thanks again. And we'll talk soon. Okay, take care. Thanks everyone in the comments.

Bye.