The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Chris Voss: FBI-Backed Tactics for Better Communication
Tue, 11 Mar 2025
Ever walked into a conversation and felt like you were on the losing end before it even started? Whether it’s a tough negotiation, a disagreement at home, or just trying to get someone to see your side, there’s a right and wrong way to do it—and Chris Voss is the guy to teach it. I’ve been a fan of Chris’s work for a long time, and getting to sit down with him was a masterclass in negotiation, tactical empathy, and human connection. Chris is a former FBI hostage negotiator, the author of Never Split the Difference, and the CEO of The Black Swan Group. His negotiation tactics aren’t just for high-stakes situations—they work everywhere. And in this episode, he breaks it all down for us. Buy Chris’s book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It This episode is sponsored by Cozy Earth. Upgrade Your Every Day. Get 40% off at cozyearth.com/jefferson or use code JEFFERSON at check out. Listeners will get an additional 5% off for orders placed March 14-16 in celebration of World Sleep Week using my code JEFFERSON. Relationships come with questions, therapy comes with answers. Find them with my sponsor BetterHelp. Click https://betterhelp.com/jeffersonfisher for a discount on your first month of therapy. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Order my new book, The Next Conversation, today! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show! Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter. Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube Follow me on Instagram Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Chris Voss and what makes him a negotiation expert?
Well, I brought you somebody that is the master of all negotiations, Chris Voss. You know him, you love him, former FBI negotiator, author of Never Split the Difference, an international bestseller and CEO of the Black Swan Foundation. network, a group. So focus is to improve your negotiation skills, no matter where you're at in life. Chris, my friend, good to see you again.
Yeah, Jefferson, absolute pleasure. I always enjoy talking with you. Yeah, it's so cool to be able to talk. You're such a hero of mine. I know I've told you this. We've been able to have a friendship outside of this right here. And it's just been a huge role model to me. So I want to make sure I have it on the record. I've always loved your stuff.
And tactical empathy is right in line with my mission in the world. So thanks for putting this out here for us. Yeah, man, it's my pleasure.
I think our thoughts overlap in our approach to life collaborative. I love your book. And so, yeah, it's a pleasure talking with you. Thanks, man.
I have a quote that I pulled from your book. Now, anybody listening right now, if you if you don't have never split the difference, you're missing out on something that I'm going to tell you is going to immediately make you a better communicator. especially when it comes to positions of negotiation. And that doesn't mean just in the workplace, also means at home too, and it's this right here.
For those people who negotiate, who view negotiation as a battle of arguments, it's the voices in their own head that are overwhelming them. I love it because I think there's so much truth to that, that people get so caught up in that anxiety because it's not what you're saying. It's the voices in their own head of what they're telling themselves.
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Chapter 2: How do voices in our head affect negotiation?
I want you to expand on that some more because I love this quote.
Yeah, well, you know, it's sorting out which voice in your head you're going to listen to also. And most of the time, the voices in your head are your amygdala, your fear centers. They're kicking into gear on you, and they're just not your friend. They're just not. You know, a friend of mine, Sean Stevenson, was a great guy, died tragically five-ish years ago.
And I just started to get to know Sean and collaborate with him. And I knew right away that we were on the same sheet of music because he just flat out said to us, like, our biggest enemies are amygdala. A fierce center in our brain. It just...
was necessary to keep us alive when we were actually being chased by saber-toothed tigers and being, you know, chased down outside the cave away from the campfire by all sorts of creatures that wanted to eat us on a regular basis. But just not our friend these days. And the voice in your head can just make you do stupid things and make you paranoid and overreact and it...
And what voice should you listen to? Like the intuition, if you can sort your fear centers from your intuition. And I even sometimes say to myself, like, what is my gut telling me? Because I get problems over covering my amygdala too.
You know, if you're tired, it's been a long day, you didn't get a good night's sleep the night before, like your amygdala just spoiling for that opportunity to take over the controls. And if you can listen to your gut instead, your gut's really accurate. It's a real help. It's just sorting the two out.
Yeah, there's something about the voice inside your own head. It's how our brain does that. I really don't know. It doesn't matter. It's going to happen anyway. What's the voice that you're listening to and what's really your gut? You have this line about... Getting a no isn't the end of a conversation. It's the beginning. What is the importance of getting to no in an argument or a conversation?
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Chapter 3: Why is getting a 'no' crucial in conversations?
Yeah, you know, we didn't even realize how significant that was when we first wrote the book. You know, the book's collaboration between me and my son, Brandon, Brandon Voss, uncredited co-author, Tal Raz. And Todd's doing his best there and did a phenomenal job capturing our thoughts and putting in our voice.
But like when somebody says no, something happens to them, the person who utters the word no versus the person who hears it. The person who says no feels safe and protected. And so that's how that becomes the beginning of the conversation, because having feel like they protected themselves and they feel safe. They're more open to dialogue. They're more open to listening.
You're not a threat or the issue isn't a threat. There's this Pavlovian response to uttering the word no that opens people up. And that's why in so many cases, if you're willing to give it the space, no will start the conversation.
Do you find that...
it's just because i mean as as we were little kids i mean for anybody listening i know if you have your own kids or you remember being a kid we just have a gut reaction and go no even if you know like to my son this is your favorite meal what are you talking about and he's just no or my my daughter just decides she no longer loves strawberries i'm like you couldn't eat enough strawberries yesterday it is this sense inside of us where
Maybe it's just our own independence. Where do you think that comes from, this desire for us to immediately just go, no, I'm going to go for what's safe, and that's not filling me right now. I need to just say no.
That's an interesting question. I mean... The parental dilemma is your kids don't do what you tell them to do. They do what they see you do. And your kids saw you say no. You know, your kids see you say no to them all the time. And that's how you assert your autonomy and control of the situation. So they want to be like you. They're seeing you say no. And they're like, oh, okay.
Saying no is a way to assert my autonomy, to protect myself, to gain control of my environment. It makes me feel good to say it. And that's what, that's what's happening.
Right. And that's really what's happening. Just, it feels good to say it. I think that explains it perfectly. You have a way of, which is, is brilliant of asking questions and, to get to a no. For those listening to us right now, what is the importance of flipping a question to get to a no rather than finding a way for them to say yes to it?
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Chapter 4: What is the importance of flipping questions to get a 'no'?
And as stupid as that, and true as it sounds, it seems stupid that the opposite would be true, that people feel safe when they say no. And they'll open up. But in point of fact, they do. We were teaching this. We're doing a course for a company that does business with hospitals. probably about five years ago.
And this woman in the head of their sales is trying to get the head nurse of this particular hospital to accept a system, have been a yes-oriented approach. And she says, look, this woman is in no mode. She says no to everything I say. So I'm like, all right, flip your questions. She's like, no, that's not going to work. That's stupid.
I mean, if I just reword it and she says, no, it's going to change things. And so she got up out of the room, left the training, went to the hallway, sent the head nurse a text. Are you against implementing this program? The head nurse immediately texted back, no, just let me know what we have to do to move forward. And she comes walking back in a room with her phone in her hand.
She can't believe what's on. You guys are not going to believe what just happened. And so people condition themselves that when they say no, they're safe. And they're willing to entertain stuff that they've been blocking previously just because saying yes scared them.
I think that's just so cool. I mean, just how funny to use how our minds naturally work. I mean, for a wonderful, positive way. It's just finding how our own idiosyncrasies and our defaults of saying no. If you're anything like me, when you get home, you wanna take off your work clothes and just get comfortable. One of my favorite sponsors of this podcast is called Cozy Earth.
And the reason why I went with Cozy is because I already use their stuff. Their sheets are on my bed. Right now, my wife loves her pajamas. I, when I get home, I take off my suit and I put on a hoodie and some sweatpants. You can go to CozyEarth.com slash Jefferson. And for this weekend only, March 14th through the 16th, you'll get up to 45% off on Cozy Earth.
You can go to CozyEarth.com slash Jefferson and use the code Jefferson for 45% off to celebrate World Sleep Week. Nothing better than that. For people listening right now, what are some great lean-ins or let's say lead-ins for how they might begin a question to flip it to no? So how would you teach somebody to begin a question to get a no answer? I've heard you say, are you against?
Would it offend you? Would you hate? Is there a certain way? What's the magic behind it?
How can you give yourself a lot of practice to start with? First of all, the test to see if it worked. And the most common thing is calling somebody on the phone or even stopping them and saying, have you got a few minutes to talk? Flip that to is now a bad time to talk. That will get your practice.
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Chapter 5: How can you use tactical empathy in negotiations?
That means I got to get a camera crew to him or we got to get him to a camera crew. Now we're showing this film in a month and it's going to take, once we get the film, it's going to take me three weeks to edit it in. So we have to do this now. And I'm like done and done and done. But it all started with me not
letting him have a multitasking conversation which was the point of is now a bad time to talk i need focus and yes that's what's going to happen when you throw it out there to people yeah i just like the magic that can happen that all you have to do is just the turn of phrase what i see um for those that are listening to me and chris right now
I think a good takeaway for how to get people to answer no is to begin with a negative in the first part of your sentence. So instead of asking someone, is it a good time to talk, is now a bad time to talk. So you find ways to flip the positive words and the negative words. Would it be terrible of me to ask you this? Would you be offended by, is now a bad time?
Use words that are negative in the first part of your sentence, and that's going to flip for them to have to answer also in the negative, rather than try to say something positive in the beginning. Would you agree with that? That's perfectly described. Yeah, well, I think that's a... And I'm going to do that in my own life. Also, I want to make sure we get this.
This is Tactical Empathy on Netflix? Yes.
Yeah, it's on Amazon.
Amazon. Sorry, Amazon. I'm going to put that on my cart. I want to bookmark that. Yeah, record it in my memory. I think that is one of the just magical ways by just a simple turn of phrase will create so much power in the conversation that the other person really just has... No clue about it. It's still the same thing.
You're still wanting to get that same information, but you're using the fact that we naturally want to say no because no is very comfortable. Not that they're trying to turn you down. It's just no is more comfortable to say. And so by using that to your advantage, you're going to get more of what you want. There's something else that you teach that it's called an accusation audit.
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What is an accusation audit and how can it improve communication?
Are you going to dump your garbage inside my truck? Like, I imagined something horrible. And they'll ask me something that is less than what I was worried about. And, you know, they're preempting it. And so you're going to hate me for this. Start that on your ass, on the people in your life. Now, why is everybody on my staff doing this to me instantly? Not because they're trying to show off.
They got an inkling of this and they actually started using it at home. And they changed all their conversations at home. And so they're like, hey, this works. And if it works at home, it's going to work, you know, out on the street on a regular basis. So, yeah, start trying it. You've got to ask if it's going to make somebody uncomfortable.
Yes.
And don't say, I don't want this to make you uncomfortable, which is, again, the denial. Say, you know, you're going to hate me for this. And then see what happens. Do it playfully. See what happens on small stake stuff. You know, get some data. Yeah.
What I find so fascinating about this is that it uses our contradictory nature. If I was gonna tell you, you're probably really exhausted today, naturally you're gonna be like, no, I'm not exhausted. You naturally want to find another word. Oh, no, I'm not exhausted. I mean, I'm tired, but I'm not. We naturally kind of just have this contrarian sense to us, some more than others in our lives.
And it just plays to that so well. Like if I was going to tell you where, like you talked about the bad way to do this, the wrong way to do it is to say, I don't mean to offend you, but now you've only almost confirmed that you will, you've almost guaranteed you will now offend them. Right.
But if you come at it from, you're probably going to think this is offensive, but, and then tell them that now they're going to think like the contrarian in the heads goes, no, that's not offensive. No, you can't offend me like that. Now they have to push against you.
Do you find that it's this contradiction that we like to have of just natural disagreement with somebody, no matter what it is, it's like our gut instinct. And it's that disagreement that makes this work so well.
Yeah, I think you're definitely on the right track. I think it's probably two or three things. And very similar to the contrarian correction as well. I mean, it's a correcting, not, you know, I don't feel that way. That's both contrarian and correcting. And people love to correct. I mean, you know, people love to correct. We do, yes.
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