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  • - What I find in negotiations in real life

  • is the absolute failure on the part of so many people

  • to not anticipate what you will be asked.

  • I'm Joe Navarro, former FBI agent and body language expert.

  • Asking for a raise, haggling in a market,

  • deciding where to go for dinner, interviewing a suspect,

  • all of these are a form of negotiation.

  • Every successful negotiation follows a pattern.

  • There's the assessment phase, the engagement phase,

  • and the transactional phase.

  • If any one of these fail, at worse you have a disaster,

  • at best this process takes forever.

  • [words clicking]

  • So if you were to ask me, "When you were in the bureau,

  • "what things did you do to negotiate effectively?"

  • Right off the top I would tell you planning,

  • sitting down with, you know, yellow legal pads

  • and writing out what is my objective.

  • Clearly define what is the objective here.

  • What words am I gonna use with this individual?

  • If you're talking to a CEO that has two degrees,

  • what are you gonna use, fourth-grade words?

  • You have to think of the audience.

  • You have to think of what potentially

  • they're gonna throw at you.

  • And not just what they may throw at you,

  • how quickly they will throw it at you.

  • Somebody that thinks fast, speaks fast,

  • you're gonna have to be able

  • to throw that arrow back immediately.

  • So it's planning, it's coordinating, it's rehearsing,

  • sitting down with fellow agents and saying,

  • "Okay, you're gonna play the part of the bad guy."

  • And yet I've been to, you know, observer

  • of many a negotiation where there's this absolute failure

  • to think about what will be asked.

  • And this all goes to, you know, winging it,

  • thinking that negotiations is just about the transaction.

  • Showing up and saying what maybe you thought about

  • when in fact the front end

  • should be what takes up the most time.

  • [words clicking]

  • One of the jobs of the FBI was to recruit individuals

  • who were working for hostile intelligence services.

  • [images clicking]

  • They would often be in the United States

  • under different cover,

  • as students working with companies and so forth.

  • But it's not like you can walk up to somebody and say,

  • "Hey, hi, I'm Joe and we know you're spying

  • "and please tell us everything."

  • So it was a matter of letting them know

  • that I was an agent of the FBI

  • and how can we begin to at least talk to each other.

  • And what I found useful always was

  • I would find them on the street

  • and I would just begin to walk with them.

  • And if they carried the newspaper and the left-hand,

  • I carried the newspaper and the left hand.

  • By mirroring their behavior, they don't feel threatened,

  • but then next time when they see me again

  • walking next to them, they're saying, "Wait a minute.

  • "There are no coincidences in counterintelligence work."

  • And then I can begin a process of engagement that is benign.

  • So one of the things that I found as an FBI agent

  • in just trying to get people to either confess

  • or cooperate with us was what came to be known

  • as the empathic model of social interaction.

  • And the empathic model basically looks at

  • human communications and says in every effective negotiation

  • you have the assessment phase, the engagement phase,

  • and then the transactional phase.

  • We look at assessment as all the information

  • that we can gather ahead of time,

  • plus what we can read from this person

  • the minute we come into visual contact

  • and then throughout the process.

  • And so subconsciously, by approaching this individual

  • and just mirroring their behaviors,

  • they're thinking this is a pro.

  • This guy knows how to do it.

  • This guy knows that I may be under surveillance,

  • but this looks natural.

  • The engagement phase is thinking about, well,

  • where's the best place to meet him?

  • How? How many people?

  • Look, I'd like to meet you at this bar,

  • but if that's gonna cause you problems

  • or it's gonna force you to have to report it,

  • then you tell me where you wanna meet.

  • And then lastly, it's the transactional phase

  • where at some point we now cross over

  • into what is our goal and objective.

  • I want this person to cooperate,

  • but that's not gonna take place

  • until I can coordinate the assessment and the engagement.

  • Then it allows us to move into the transactional phase,

  • much more easier.

  • I'm always assessing.

  • I'm always trying to figure out the best way to engage.

  • And then what is the best way to transact?

  • [words clicking]

  • One of the things that I always looked at

  • is a term we coined called chronicity,

  • and that is how we use time.

  • We know that, for instance, for doctors,

  • surgical accidents increase after the lunch hour.

  • Parole boards are more willing to be lenient

  • in the morning hours, less so in the afternoon.

  • So a lot of that has to do with both the circadian rhythm

  • and blood sugars.

  • And so, as I look at negotiations in law enforcement,

  • I need to factor when is this person

  • the most able to resist me versus, okay, at this point,

  • there's gonna be less resistance.

  • Negotiations are temporal.

  • Whoever dominates time is in charge.

  • So you call a little time out, let's go talk.

  • That changes the rhythm.

  • That changes where this is going.

  • When do I remain silent?

  • There's a client I've worked with and he said,

  • "Joe, I can't tell you how many times I've used silence.

  • "In fact, I was negotiating for a building

  • "with a father and a daughter,

  • "and they made an offer that was supposed to be

  • "like their final offer.

  • "And I just sat there and lowered my eyes

  • "and it drove them crazy.

  • "And finally, the daughter said, 'Okay,

  • "'we're gonna throw in another million dollars.'"

  • And he wasn't expecting that.

  • He was just expecting them to say, "This is it."

  • [words clicking]

  • One of the things that I learned as an agent,

  • especially dealing with extremists,

  • is that you just let them vent.

  • And not just let them vent once,

  • but let them vent over and over and over and over.

  • And just when you think they're shutting down, you say,

  • "Well, tell me about that again.

  • "Or would you cover that again?"

  • And what happens is second law thermodynamics: entropy.

  • After awhile, they've grown so tired.

  • They've got so much negative emotion poured into this

  • that eventually they wear out,

  • and it leaves you in a better position to then negotiate.

  • I've talked with a lot of airlines over the years.

  • And one of the things that we say is

  • that when you have a customer, especially at the gate,

  • and they're being very vociferous, let them vent,

  • let them vent, let them vent.

  • And then eventually all that energy is just dissipated,

  • entropy takes over, and then you can say,

  • "Look, this is what we can do for you and that's all."

  • [words clicking]

  • One of the most difficult cases that I ever had

  • involved a man, he was in his late 30s

  • and he was a pedophile.

  • We knew there were at least two photographs

  • of what he had done,

  • but we knew that these individuals collected a lot more.

  • And the question was, number one, where was it?

  • Number two, would he cooperate with us?

  • And number three, would he confess to all these crimes?

  • And the difficulty was when we assessed this individual,

  • he seemed like a nice guy

  • in the sense that if you ran into them on the street

  • you wouldn't perceive him as being a pedophile.

  • But at the same time, I was assessing myself

  • and that was how angry I was

  • that I was sitting with this individual.