Brett McKay

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John Richardson

Thanks Brad. Thanks for having me.

Brett McKay

So you recently put out a book you co authored. It's all about negotiation. It's called Never Settle. You teach negotiation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. This has been a big part of your life. How'd you end up doing what you do? Like, what's your history with negotiation?

John Richardson

That's really interesting because people ask me, well, how do I get into this? And I kind of respond, well, I don't know. It kind of just happened to me I was in law school, and first semester, all your courses are mandatory. Second semester you get one elective. And I didn't know what to take. My next door neighbor in the dorm was like, I'm signing up for negotiation, but don't bother because it's too hard to get into. There's going to be 200 people applying for 24 spots. But I didn't know what else to put, so I put it and I got really lucky. The reason it was so hard to get into then was because Fisher, Roger Fisher, the guy wrote Getting the S, was the main instructor and he was taking the year off. So his assistant guy, Bruce Patton, who's also one of the authors of Getting yes, was for the first time, was soloing. And they gave him a tiny little class at 24 people. But then the next year, Fisher was back and he went back to having 144. And so all of us who were in that little tiny class got invited to be TAs for the bigger class. And so. And I thought it was a great class. It was super fun. I really enjoyed it. So I signed up for that. They liked me, they thought I did a good job. They kept hiring me back. But then I went down to New York to be a litigator, you know, and what I was doing was security fraud defense. So you sell crooked stocks and I get you off. And it was extremely well paid, and it was super fun in a chess game sort of way. And I didn't feel like I was on the wrong side because I kind of felt like the people on both sides were dirtbags. I mean, they were all people who were trying to, you know, because the stuff I was defending was a bunch of, like, real estate, limited partnership, tax shelters. And the stuff that my clients were doing wasn't technically illegal, but I wouldn't have left them alone in a room with my mother. So I felt like, well, is this what I really want to do in my life? At the time, my wife or I was dating this girl, and then we got engaged and she was still back up at Harvard. She had been a year behind me. And we had met because we were teaching assistants together for Fisher. She was from Nebraska. So I was like, okay, I'm going to get her to move to New York. So I got an apartment down on St. Mark's Place, you know, Lower east side. And I thought, she's going to see the sophistication of the big city. She'll fall in love with it. Game over. But the first day she came down and dumped her stuff. And we were gonna drive her car back to my parents in Connecticut the next day. We get out the next morning, and car's not there. So that kind of New York took a hit with that. And then her counter move was she waited until I was really frustrated with life at the law firm, and she got Fisher to offer me a job helping him write a book. And so then I was like, ah, you know, that's promoting negotiation. It's for the good of the world. And I'm sick and tired of this law firm stuff. And she waited to do that until I had paid off all my law school loans, you know, because we were getting paid really well at the firm. And so I got out, manipulated by my girlfriend. That's how I ended up back working at Harvard. And then the next guy who took over after Fisher, when he retired, decided to appoint a whole bunch of people as lecturers instead of just having TAs in the class. So then I ended up just by being around. I was on the Harvard faculty, but then my wife was also Harvard faculty, and it was kind of a little too nepotistic to have us both working there. So I went over to mit.

Brett McKay

Okay, yeah. So a few things there. I went to law school, too. I remember I took a negotiation class.

Sheila Heen

Yeah.

Brett McKay

And I remember reading Getting DS and having to do mock negotiations over settlements and, you know, litigation cases. And then also, your wife is also a negotiation professor. We've actually had her on the podcast Sheila Hin a long time ago, talk about how to have difficult conversations. So, yeah, I mean, it's negotiations all around you. Your wife's a negotiator. You've got this education history with negotiation. You did it as work. And this is not really related to negotiation, but this interesting fact about you. You're also a volunteer EMT with your volunteer fire department. How did a negotiation professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management end up moonlighting as an emt?

John Richardson

You know, I probably spend more time doing that than I do at Sloan. So partly it was we were all teaching negotiation at Harvard. The thing about it is, people who taught negotiation in law schools and business schools were either lawyers, you know, especially on the law school side, or economists or psychologists. And I thought, well, we, the lawyers actually understand negotiation the best because we do it all the time. And you don't really do a whole lot of negotiation. I mean, okay, you're still negotiating with your wife and kids and your neighbor.

Chris Voss

Neighbors.

John Richardson

As an economist, but your job isn't all day negotiating with people like Lawyers. I thought we lawyers understood the topic better, but we just made good arguments about why we were right. We didn't have experimental design and statistical analysis and that kind of stuff. So I thought, people are listening to the economists and the psychologists instead of us. So one of us needs to go and get a PhD in psychology and learn all that stuff, and then we will crush them and conquer and take over the world. So I went to go do that, and then I realized the kind of work you need to do to get promoted and to get tenure in the PhD line of things I thought wasn't terribly useful to people. I wanted to write stuff like getting to yes. Or like this book that would help actual normal people. And that's not what helps you get ahead in academia. And at the same time, I was having trouble with my dissertation committee. And then I got offered the MIT job. So I said, okay, great, I'll take that. I'll still get to teach negotiation, and then I can write whatever I want. But while I had been doing the PhD, my wife had been building a consulting firm, and she was making stacks of money and she was, you know, flying out and doing work with clients a lot. You know, there's a whole line of research about when a wife makes more than a husband in a marriage like that can, that's greatly increases your risk of divorce. But really what our family needed was someone to pick up the kids after school and go to the grocery store. So I figured, all right, what if I do that? But on the other hand, you know, then am I still the man in the marriage? You know, when we first got married, I was the one making tons of money at the law firm. And then I saw the sign, you know, firefighters wanted at the place, and I thought, well, you know, who's a man is a fireman. So if I do that, then I've still got the manliness thing on lockdown, even without making more money. And I can do that while the kids are in school. And, you know, I've still been doing that 15 years later.

Brett McKay

That's awesome. All right, let's talk about negotiation. All right. I think a lot of people are frightened or terrible at negotiation. I am terrible at negotiation. Like, notoriously terrible at negotiation. There's so many stories from, you know, my wife and I's married life where I. We've had to negotiate something, and I just. I just completely fumble the bag. The funniest story, we were at an antique store in Vermont, and there was these antique snowshoes there, and I was like, oh, that would be really cool. On our wall. Go get these. This is when I was. When we were newly married, and so Kay was like, you got to negotiate the price. You got to haggle this.

John Richardson

And so, like, of course she puts it on you.

Brett McKay

Well, and the funny thing is, my wife's actually a better negotiator than I am. Like, she's better at it than I am, but she's like, you need to go do this. I was like, all right. So I went up to the. And I just said, hey, do you negotiate?

John Richardson

And the guy's like, no, no, no, no.

Brett McKay

It's like. He was like, okay. And I paid full price for it. But I'm sure I'm not alone in being bad at negotiation.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

Why are most people frightened or terrible at negotiation?

John Richardson

So, a couple of things. One is their idea of what negotiation is is one that makes it more frightening. A lot of people think negotiation is like wearing a really bright red tie and pounding the table and yelling at them until they give you whatever you want. And I think if you start to think about negotiation, what it really means is trying to affect the decisions that other people are going to make. And in that sense, you're negotiating all the time. And, Brett, when you say you're terrible at negotiation, I'll believe you that you didn't do well in the antique store. But how have you managed to build such a giant, successful platform if you're terrible at negotiation? That doesn't make any sense. And the way I think of negotiation is you're trying to get them to say yes to you. The way you get them to say yes is to make them happier and better off if they do what you want. So you got the fundamental skill of negotiation is figuring out what do they need and how to please them. And if you can do that, then they're going to want to give you what you want to make you say yes as well. And if you think about it that way, it's really about learning about the person, forming a relationship with them, and being clever about figuring out what you can do for them, and then they're going to want to do for you. And if you think about it that way, it's a lot less scary. And once you get through that stage and you still have to fight about, okay, but how much money do we get? Then you're in a much better place together. But that part, the distributive part of negotiation, who gets how much money is the part that stresses people out. And partly, I think that's like, basically something from our caveman ancestry or real monkey stuff. How do animals solve distribution problems? Two monkeys. Who gets the last banana? By fighting. And so your brain thinks of negotiation as I'm about to get into a fight over this stuff. And when your sympathetic nervous system gets activated. Yeah, now I'm slipping into EMT talk. You know, your cortisol goes up, your adrenaline goes up, and blood and oxygen get moved out of your brain into your arms and legs because you think, I'm gonna fight or flight. And then you tend to do stupid things. And then once you've done a couple stupid things in that situation of a distributive negotiation, you learn that it's like a terrible place where bad things happen and it just gets worse and worse.

Brett McKay

So we'll talk about what you can do to better manage distribution negotiation here in a bit, but before we do is kind of talk about your overarching philosophy towards negotiation. So you, of course, did a lot of work with Roger Fisher of getting to. Yes. For those who aren't familiar with his work, what's his overarching philosophy to negotiation? And then talk about how you brought in ideas from Chris Voss, who we've also had on the podcast.

Chris Voss

Yeah.

John Richardson

So Fisher's whole thing. Well, okay, so Fisher's background is important to understand this. He was in the 8th Air Force in the Second World War. And of the. You know, I think that might. Maybe the submarine service had a higher death rate, but that was one of the worst possible things you could be doing. And one time we were at a wedding together at the Memorial Chapel at Harvard. And off to the side, there's this little room with a giant marble. It's not a little room. It's actually, you know, about 20ft tall, but there's a marble wall with something like 2000 names on it of Harvard guys who got killed in World War II. And he wandered in there, and he was older at the time, and I was one of his young guys, so I wanted to take care of him. So I go in there with him, and he's just pointing at names at the wall, and he's like, I knew this guy. I knew this guy. I knew this guy. These guys were identical twins. I never liked that guy. You know, the number of people he knew who had been killed in the war was enormous. And it wasn't just that. That what they had suffered as a group, and they were incredibly brave and suffered terribly, you know, the young officer class of the United States at that time. But it was also what they did, you know, look, we didn't start that war. We didn't start the atrocities. We didn't do the worst atrocities. But when we joined in, everybody else was already doing it. And we. We started doing things, too. We wiped out whole cities full of people with incendiary bombing. And then for Fisher, he particularly felt guilty over Hiroshima. He was a weatherman. He was an amateur weatherman before he started in the war. And they made him a weatherman in the Air Force. And you might think that's a pretty good gig. But no, it was terrible because they didn't have satellite imaging then what they did, if they wanted to know, you know, if the weather was too bad to send planes out. You send one plane out with a weatherman on it, and you see if it comes back. And, you know, he barely survived doing that in Europe. And then they sent him to Japan, and every day he would be in a B29 and you'd fly over Japan to do the weather. And they told him, you know, bring a couple of bombs and just drop them on anything you see. You know, it was a very small bomb load because they mostly gave them extra fuel and they had all this weather equipment, and they would drop a bomb or two, and Japanese fighters would come up to try to shoot him down. And he didn't like getting shot at by Japanese fighters. So he said to his commander, hey, what if we didn't bring the bombs? These guys are short of gas, but they can't let us bomb them without shooting back. But if we stop bombing them, maybe they'll let the weather plane go by without attacking us. And his commander said, no, that's never going to work, but you want to try it, fine. And they did. And after about two weeks, it worked. And the Japanese stopped trying to come up and shoot him down when alone. Beats 29 went over Japan. And he felt great about that, and he thought it was tremendously successful negotiation he had with the Japanese. But then when the Enola Gay goes over Hiroshima, they think it's the weather plane and they don't even pull the air raid siren. So the kids, the school kids are out on the playground when it happens. And, you know, he thought he had been complicit in this incredible evil that he didn't even intend. And that's why he devoted his life to improving negotiation. He was trying to stop other young guys from getting killed. And the thing is, my father, his parents died when he was really young, but he had a much older brother who was 11 years older than him, who basically raised him. And he was in the 8th Air Force as well. And he also got killed and didn't come back. So I grew up seeing that wound in my father. And so Fisher's crusade to keep that from happening to other people was really seductive to me. But that's what Fisher was trying to do. And his basic philosophy was two things. He would say interest based negotiation, and that's what we were talking about before, is figure out what each side wants, not just what they say they want, but why do they want that. And then you can try to reconcile those much more easily than you can reconcile the positions, what their demands are, if you look under the demands and see what's motivating them. But then on the distribution side that we were talking about, he called it principled negotiation, which basically meant we should try to figure out some legal or other standard, something like Kelly's Blue Book, to tell us what we should do rather than threatening each other, that we should look for a source of legitimacy rather than a source of destructive power over the other person. And so that was his fundamental thing.

Brett McKay

That's kind of what you do. And then later on, you brought in the ideas of Chris Voss, who has this experience as a hostage negotiator.

John Richardson

Yeah, so I met Chris because he had a knee operation. And so he was off duty for the FBI for like three months. And he figured he had just been through. He had a great record of success as a hostage negotiator, but he didn't win them all, of course. And he just come off one that went really badly. And he wanted to. He said, okay, we gotta learn more. And he said, I'll go up to Harvard and see if there's anything that they have that we can steal and make part of our practice. And I think he got some good stuff. But, dude, we got so much more out of him because at that point, like, law enforcement negotiation and university negotiation teaching weren't really in contact with each other. And he was the guy who bridged that gap and started the ideas flowing back and forth, which even if he had never done anything else in his career, that would have been a tremendous achievement. But then Chris came and taught a course at Harvard with me. And then he invited me to come with him when he retired from the FBI to teach negotiation to friendly governments in the Persian Gulf. And, man, that was one of the greatest experiences of my life. And I learned so much from them. But even more, the thing that struck me was we tried really hard to get people to be Better at things like listening instead of talking. But it's very hard to change people's behavior on that. And we would find that if you really drill it into people, you can get them to change for about a week, and then they start to drift back to what they've been doing before. But Chris and his guys got massive behavioral change much faster than I ever thought was possible. And I was trying to figure out, well, what is it that they're doing that's so much better? And I think it was two things. One, it was. They talked about ideas much less and just did a lot more practice, like, very much more brass tacks. Okay, what do you say? Not what's the theory behind it. So some people learn from top down from what are the big theories, and then work on how do you implement that. Other people. And I think there's probably a lot more people like this who go up from the specifics, and if they ever need to get to theory, maybe they'll get to it. But the important thing is the specifics of how you do it. So they would break down negotiation skills. Instead of saying, hey, be really empathetic listening to them, they would say stuff like, all right, you should make a minimal encourager about, you know, ten times a minute. And a minimal encourager is like the little noise you make when somebody's talking, like, uh, huh, huh, wow. Whoa. You know, so they were at a much greater level of specificity. And then they just did drill again and again and again. And it was like, it's the same as when I was coaching little League. You know, you don't explain the theory of baseball. You just have the kid, you know, first hit it off a tee, then you pitch it to them slow, underhand, you know, and at each step, you got to go like, okay, keep your back elbow up. Okay? No, like, turn more. And that was the way they taught negotiation. And I thought it was hugely effective. But, you know, hostage negotiation is a very specific kind of negotiation. There are a lot of parts of negotiation that really don't come up there. Like, for example, using standards of legitimacy. That's not as much a thing there. Or inventing creative options. Usually not much of a thing. What you're mostly focusing on is information gathering and relationship building, and they got incredibly brilliant at that stuff. But then I thought, well, all the other stuff that's in Fisher's work, we need to do the same kind of breakdown that they did and turn it into little, very specific, you know, things that people can drill again and again.

Brett McKay

All Right. So, yeah, you're combining the. The theory of Fisher for business negotiation, life negotiation with the brass tack tactics of Chris Voss.

John Richardson

The tactics and also the, I guess you'd say pedagogy. But how do you teach it?

Brett McKay

Yeah, no, I think before a conversation, we were talking about Mark Rippeto.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

You. You got into barbell training and we were talking about how what Riptoe is really good at is breaking down relatively complex movements into step by step things where like, anyone can go to a seminar or watch a video of Rippito teaching and like, you'll be deadlifting. Perfectly.

John Richardson

Yeah, exactly. Or another great example of it is the series you had on barbecuing, you know, of like, well, how do I make a charcoal fire? Well, how do I make, you know, three heat zones on my grill? Well, what do I do differently for a steak or a hamburger? That. It's the exact same kind of thing applied to negotiation.

Brett McKay

Yeah, I remember when we did that. I did that negotiation class in law school. You know, we read getting to. Yes. And then they're like, all right, go do a mock negotiation. I had no clue what I was doing.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

They didn't give you any specific things to say or to do or how to carry it out. So you're trying to do this with your book. All right, so let's talk about some of these skills. So you and your co author break down negotiation to a discrete set of skills and you give people exercises that they can do in their day to day lives so they can practice these skills. The first skill is called give them a sandwich.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

What's this skill all about?

John Richardson

Well, that title is ripped off directly from Chris and his FBI people. So in hostage negotiation, you know, there's different kinds of things. There is. Well, what if you get captured by, you know, a gang in Mexico versus get captured by Al Qaeda. One of the ones they talk about is an unplanned barricade, which is, let's say you go in to rob a bank and you're not planning to take any hostages. You just want to wave a gun around and get money. But the cops show up before you get away. And so, you know, you point your gun at the customers and the tellers and you say, all right, here's what I want to the police. And that kind of situation used to be about 50, 50. Is someone going to get shot today or not? You know, because what they would do is they say, all right, you got 10 minutes to surrender and then we're coming in. And what they do now is they surround the bank and let you see them surrounding it so you know you can't get away. And they throw in a phone to talk to you. And they just start asking you questions like, hey, are you okay? Like, do you need any medical help? Okay, what about the other people in there? Are they okay? And they'll just keep talking to you forever. Cause they can do a shift change if they get tired and you can't. So they're just tiring you out. But then what they're really waiting for is for you to get hungry. Cause you didn't have a plan to do this. And then when you get hungry and you say, hey, I want some food. Oh, that's when they're perfectly happy. And they'll talk to you for like a half hour about, well, what's your favorite kind of sandwich do you want? Like, okay, we're gonna go get that. And then they give it to you. And then they say, hey, you know, the lieutenant here is really mad at me cause I gave you that sandwich. But I think you're a good guy, so I wanted to help you out. Could you help me out and let one of those people go? And almost always they do. And then you give them some water and you get somebody else out. And you just keep doing nice little things for them and, and asking for something in return. And Bob Cialdini, he was at University of Arizona, had a wonderful book that I recommend all your listeners called Influence. And he talks about reciprocity in there. And you know, you see this happening in car dealerships when they give you a cup of coffee. You know, when a charity sends you mailing labels or something like that, they want to give you a little thing that's really cheap for them to give. And that triggers a reflex in you of, oh, I owe them, and now I have to give them something back. But people are really, really terrible about measuring how much they got and how much they give back. It's what they call accounting insensitivity in the economics literature. And so you give somebody a tiny little thing and very often they'll give you back much, much more. But even more importantly, they start thinking of you as a friend and an ally.

Brett McKay

So, yeah, it's all. It's all about reciprocity. Building reciprocity.

John Richardson

Yeah. So, for example, like an exercise I would recommend to your listeners is, let's say you're in college and you're going to go get a cup of coffee before class. Don't get a cup of coffee. Get Two cups of coffee and give one to somebody else. Anytime you have the chance to do a little favor for somebody, always do it. And then you're going to start getting things back from those people without even asking for it. Like, so when one student we had was international student from Japan, and she was making some traditional Japanese soup, and so she made an extra big batch and she brought some to the guys who lived across the hall from her in the dorm. And about a week later, there was a huge snowstorm in Boston, and she goes down to shovel her car out, and it had already been shoveled out, and there's a note on her windshield from the guys across the hall going, oh, man, that soup was great. Thank you so much. So what I'd recommend to people is experiment with that. Start doing little favors for people. And the reason a sandwich is a great metaphor is because, all right, if I gave him a sandwich and I don't get anything back, that's fine. You know, don't give them half off on the price of a house and hope to get something back. Give them something that you don't care about if you never get anything back for it, and then just see what happens and you'll, you'll really be shocked, I think, at how much people respond to that little gesture.

Brett McKay

Okay, so give people a sandwich and you can have genuine good intentions behind this. Like, maybe you're thinking it'll develop reciprocity, but you also just want to be nice. Like, you generally want to connect with someone without caring if you get anything back. But how do you respond when someone is giving you something to you and it does feel manipulative and gross? Because I get this a lot. I have these priorities. People reach out to me via email and they'll say, oh, hey, Brett, I love your podcast. I gave you a five star review on Spotify, and here's a client that I like to have on your podcast. And I'm like, and I don't, I don't like that.

John Richardson

Well, okay, so you're, you are resistant to accounting insensitivity. That's great. If you're on the receiving end of somebody else's making this effort, one thing to do is to just very consciously say, okay, what did they give me? What did that cost them? What do I owe them as a response? That's one step and another is, yeah, you can give them something else that you don't care about. Oh, yeah, great, I'll give you a five star review on Spotify. What do you want me to review? But the other thing is, what if you do want a better relationship with this person, that's a great opportunity for you to say, ah, that was really nice. Okay, now I'm gonna do something nice for you. And now there's something else I want from you. So, you know, step one is categorize this person. Do I want a relationship with them? Well, how much did they give me? What do I actually owe them? Do I want to give them the thing they asked for or something else to be polite? Or if I think this person is a jerk and they're just trying to manipulate me. You don't have to give them anything. But that reflex that you have of noticing what they're doing and then saying to yourself, well, what do I want to do about this? That's like 90% of the battle.

Brett McKay

I usually just ignore those emails because I don't even know. Did they actually give me a five star review on spot? I can't even verify. They can just say that, yeah, yeah,

John Richardson

yeah, I think that's exactly right. Especially for things, you know, all the time I get, hey, I love your work and I want to be, you know, your research assistant. I get like dozens of these a day from people in India and they're just like sending it out to lists of every academic in America. Like, you know, I wish you well, kid, but you know, I don't owe you anything.

Brett McKay

Yeah, but I'm sure if someone reached out to you with something like, you know, hey, here's a memo I've created for you that I think might be useful. You can do whatever you want with it. And they didn't ask for anything in return when they reached out and instead were just like, yeah, hey, I thought of you. Here's something you might like. You probably think, oh, this is actually really useful.

John Richardson

Yeah. And now you like that person. So, like, that's what we're recommending to your listeners.

Brett McKay

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John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

Why does this work? And how do you. Here's the thing. How do you do this in a way so it doesn't feel gross? I'm sure everyone's encountered a salesperson, and every, like, five words. It's Brett. Well, what do you think? Brett. Brett. And I'm like, jesus, gross. You're.

Chris Voss

No.

John Richardson

You're really laying it out thick here, man. Yeah. So first on the technique, which is people. If you're trying to get someone's attention, the thing that their brain is most wired to pay attention to is their own name. To the extent that you can get people who are in a coma or in a vegetative state, and if you say their name and you're measuring brain activity, there's a little spike in brain activity. That's the last thing your brain loses, because that's the. The first word you learn is, you know, your mother whispering your own name to you. And people will tend to think that if you know their name and you use their name, that you must be friends. Now, about overdoing it. A lot of these things are about skill level. One of the skills that the hostage negotiators use in listening is. Is what they call mirroring, where you'll repeat a word or two that somebody uses, and then they'll usually talk more about whatever that was. And I had had people use that technique on me in a way that was really fake and annoying. So I was talking to Chris, the FBI guy, when we were teaching together, and I was like, dude, some of your techniques, like, you know, minimal encouragers, those are fantastic. But this mirroring thing, it's really fake, and it's really annoying. He goes, it's really annoying. I was like, yeah, it totally cheeses me off. Cause, like, this guy's trying to manipulate me, and I'm a negotiation expert. He goes, you're an expert? And I was like, I've been doing this for, like, 20 years. And, you know, he did it, like, four or five times in a row before I realized, and I was so pissed off. But he's practiced it a lot, and he's really good at it. And there's a big difference between someone who's learned the idea of a technique and is doing a terrible job at it, which makes it come across as fake and annoying, versus somebody who's really got it dialed in. And Chris practices incessantly all the Time. I mean, one time I went to a diner with him for breakfast, and he knew the names of everybody who worked at the place. All the waitresses, the cashier, all the busboys. He knew where their kids went to school. And he just does that kind of thing all the time as practice. And if you do that where you're just practicing a little bit every day, you know, it's just like working out each day of practice doesn't make a big difference. But if you do it solidly for a year, it's going to be a huge transformation.

Brett McKay

All right, so use people's name, but you have to practice it, and you might kind of be awkward at it. So I think an everyday practice, as you're having conversations with people just every day, learn how to drop their name in throughout the conversation.

John Richardson

And especially, I think this is great for young people today because being on screens tends to isolate us from other people. And a lot of people go through life, you know, their only contact with other people is on, you know, social media. But by learning people's names, you learn the name of the person at the counter at the coffee shop you go to, you know, you learn the name of the guy who sweeps up in your office. Now you're turning your own environment into an environment of human connection instead of isolation, you know, and anonymity. And that's. That's like a huge help for your mental health.

Brett McKay

All right, the next skill you talk about is managing your emotions during negotiation. And I think it's a big one because, like, you know, whenever I have to negotiate, I can start feeling cortisol. The cortisol dump. What can we do to get a handle on our emotions? Because as you said, our brain recognizes this as a conflict, a fight.

John Richardson

Yeah, well, your brain recognizes a conflict, but your brain doesn't realize it's not the stone age anymore. And this is very unlikely to turn into a violence conflict.

Sheila Heen

Right.

John Richardson

So your brain still thinks, I, you know, I might have to kill this guy.

Brett McKay

So what do you do to manage that?

John Richardson

Okay, so a couple things. One is, you know, if you know this is going to be an emotional thing, you can try, you know, you can imagine it ahead of time and imagine how scary it's going to be and imagine your own emotional reaction and kind of have your freak out in advance. You know, anything gets easier the more times you do it. But the interesting thing is just visualizing it and walking through it mentally counts as one of those times you do it. And so there's some benefit there. A technique That I really love, which again I learned from Chris, is what they call emotion labels. And this is a thing that they used in hostage negotiation. If the guy you're talking to is freaking out and you think he might start getting violent, you say, wow, it seems like this is really upsetting to you. And you got to be cautious about saying it. Seems like. Because if you say to the person, oh, I see right through you and I know exactly what's going on in your mind, that's going to piss them off even more. So you want to say, it seems like this is making you mad. And the interesting thing is like we were talking about, when you get that cortisol dump the oxygen and glucose, you know, the blood flow leaves, not all of it, but some of it goes out of your brain and into your muscles. And that makes you measurably stupider. If we make you angry and have you take an IQ test, you'll score about 20 points lower. So what you want to do is to get the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain that's right behind your eyes and your forehead, back in the game. So you wish you had like jumper cables hooked up to that. If you could get them thinking again instead of feeling upset, then they'll be able to be more rational. And the way you do that, okay, what we know is that these emotion labels have a huge calming effect on people. There are different theories about why that works so well, but one theory is that there's a thing in the back of your prefrontal cortex, the superior frontal gyrus. And that's the part of your brain, the part of your thinking brain that looks at and observes your own emotional state. But it's in the thinking brain. So if you activate that, you will trigger more activity in their rational, non emotional brain. But the reason it's hard to retrigger the non emotional brain is because when you're angry or afraid, you tend to reject any stimulus that's not connected to the threat or the target of your anger. And the reason that's such a cute spot to go after is because it's connected to the emotion, but it's triggers their rational brain into a higher level of activity. So, you know, I listened to this one conversation where there's this guy, he was a marine sergeant who disappeared out of Basra In I think 2004, you know, during the height of the Iraq war. And he shows up a week later, nobody knows how he got there, at his ex wife's house in Hawaii. And he's got a gun. And the cops show up and he says, well, you know, I found out she was cheating on me, so now I have to kill her. And, you know, of course we don't like that at all. And there was a hostage negotiator there, and she says, wow, so it sounds like you've been a good and loyal husband and she hasn't acted the same way, and that's not okay, and you don't wanna live that way anymore, and that's why you're so mad. And the guy goes, yeah, and never threatened her again because she heard the emotion that he. You know, the reason why people do crazy stuff often is because they don't know how to express what they're feeling with words. And if you express it for them and tell them that you've heard their emotion, that typically makes them much calmer. But the thing is, you can do that to yourself as well. If you were feeling emot like this morning, you know, I was like, I got this podcast with Brett today. I was a little bit nervous about it. You know, I was like, oh, Brett's so cool. I've been watching him for so long, so I'm nervous. But I just said to myself, wow, it seems like I'm feeling pretty nervous about this. In fact, I actually am quite nervous about this. And just by saying that, I felt much less nervous. Like, the nervous part of my brain felt heard and was like, okay, now I can relax.

Brett McKay

All right, so you name the emotion that's super easy and it takes the power away from. You can do this for yourself, and then you can do this with other people who might not have really a good ability to express their emotions. It just brings your thinking brain back on. I love that.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

All right, let's talk about another skill. And it's a skill that you think people would know how to do, but I think a lot of people don't. It's like actually figuring out what everyone wants in a negotiation or even what you want. Like, a lot of people, even when they go into negotiations, they don't actually really know what they want. Why don't we typically know what we want in a negotiation even though we're there to negotiate?

John Richardson

You know, that's interesting, and I think it's partly. We're talking about emotion before. People mostly make their decisions through emotion, and then they, with their rational brain, explain the reasons for it. But, you know, there are people who are cut off from their emotions because they get a brain injury. Like, there was one famous case Of a guy who got a nail gun, you know, shot into his head. And what it did is separated his rational brain from his emotions. And you might think, well, okay, then that guy would be a fantastic decision maker. Cause he's never emotional. Emotions never get in his way. But you know what those guys do? They sit in a chair and don't do anything all day, because without emotions, they don't want anything. And I think a lot of times you say, okay, I need to have this negotiation, and so I should ask for this or ask for that. But they haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about what they want and why. And what are the emotional drivers of what they want. I mean, I'm just thinking about your snowshoe story when you got these antique snowshoes. Well, well, I mean, it's a negotiation, and I'm at an antique store. So what I should be focusing on is getting a lower price. I mean, how much are you really going to get the price lower? I don't know, 10 bucks or something. Mostly what that would do, it's not like you're ever going to miss that money, but you would feel like you won, you had done a good job. So a lot of what people are trying to do in negotiation is just feel like they won. But if you know that about other people and about yourself, you can let them think that they won, or you can figure out a way in which this is a win for you, and then you're happy. You know, maybe a bigger thing would be, hey, you know what? I think these antique snowshoes are great. Why do I think they're so great? Well, they sort of reflect an older time of when people did a lot more strenuous activity. What else do you have that's like that? Maybe he's got an antique set of skis or, like, something else. Figuring out why you even want them in the first place would allow you to try to get more of whatever that is. And that might be a much bigger thing than, you know, the. What is it, like, 5% discount you might be able to get.

Brett McKay

Okay, so let's say you get a, like a beat on what you actually want. How do you figure out what the other person wants? Because I think oftentimes people are reluctant to share what they really want.

John Richardson

Oh, sure.

Brett McKay

Because they think it gives them leverage. I don't actually want to say what I actually want, because then I can use that somehow.

John Richardson

Yeah. There's a guy, Jim Camp, who wrote a very interesting book. It's called Start with no. And it's kind of an anti getting to yes polemic. There's a lot of good, smart things in there, but there's also some things I disagree with pretty strongly. And one of them is you should always find out what the other person wants and never tell them what you yourself want, because knowledge is power, and you want as much power as possible, and you want to be the one who has the power. And so, look, the easiest way to find out what somebody wants is to ask them. But you're right, a lot of people are going to resist telling you because they have some version of the camp theory that. That if I tell you what I want, then you'll be able to take advantage of me. One way to go at that is just to guess what they want, like in advance. The antique store guy who's selling you the snowshoes, what does he care about? Well, he doesn't want to set a bad precedent. He doesn't want everybody coming in here and demand, you know, yes, he wants the extra five bucks, but he really doesn't. Maybe he finds negotiation very unpleasant. Maybe that's the reason why he doesn't want to talk about price. Or maybe he's afraid that you're going to tell other people that, like, he's a soft touch and they can come in and get a discount off him, too. It's not that hard to guess what's motivating the other person if you just sit down to do it. A great example of this, and this is in the book. I had a teaching assistant working for me one time, and she's doing an exercise. There's a law school negotiation class. We got one of these simulated cases, and what they were doing was sitting down and prepping for the negotiation. And part of that was guessing what's motivating the other side. And one of the students said, look, this is totally fake because the only way you could guess this is a fake case. And so we're pretending that you can guess what the other side wants, but in real life, you can't guess what the other side wants. That's ridiculous. And she goes, all right, let's test that. And she had really bright red hair that was like all the way down her back. And she says, let's see how well you can guess. I've been thinking about getting a pixie cut and cutting all this hair off. You go through what are my reasons I want to do it and that I don't want to do it. And I'll tell you how close you get. And they were like 90% accurate. You can do this with a friend of yours. Actually, this is a great thing to do, either on a first date or, you know, with your wife on a long car trip. Tell me about a decision that you have to make that's hard, and I'll see if I can guess what are the reasons you want to and the reasons you don't want to. And I think most of your listeners are going to be surprised at how accurate the guesses are. And very often, if the guess isn't something you were thinking, it's something that they could go, oh, well, actually, that's a good point. I probably should be thinking about that.

Brett McKay

Yeah. Okay, so you can guess. This is easy to figure out.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

You know, as you were talking about my experience with the snowshoes, I wanted the snowshoes, but what I really wanted was just like, I wanted to feel like I got a really good deal. And the antique seller, you could have guessed that and use that to his advantage. He could have been like, yeah, this guy just wants to feel like he got a great deal and say, well, I can't give you the discount on the price of the snowshoes, but I can throw in, you know, this little thing that doesn't mean much to me.

John Richardson

Exactly.

Brett McKay

You know, And I'd walk away thinking, oh, man, I got a great deal. I only got these snowshoes. I got this cool, cool magazine.

John Richardson

But now you go back to your wife and you're like, look who just conquered.

Brett McKay

Yeah, right. Yeah, I just wanted the deal. Okay. So, yeah, figure out what people want. And I think oftentimes when people are negotiating, they just want to feel like they got the upper hand somehow.

Chris Voss

But.

John Richardson

But once you have a guess of what they want, you can say, I. I could imagine that if I was in your shoes, I would want this. And the number of people who are willing to volunteer the information is a lot lower than the number of people who will say, oh, you know what? You're exactly right. Because, like, it seems to take away their desire. Like, well, first of all, they're like, oh, the guy already guessed, so what's the point? Hiding it? But the other thing is, if you say, I was thinking about what would make you happy, and this is my guess, the first reaction most people have is, oh, what a nice guy. He's thinking about what would make me happy. Now other people are thinking, oh, you're thinking about what I want so you can manipulate me. And that shows that you're actually a sneaky. Enemy. But if they don't like you and don't trust you, it's very seductive to tell you what an idiot you are and why you're wrong. Oh, you think I want that? You fool. That's not what I want at all. I actually want this. And then you're like, oh, okay, now I know what he wants.

Brett McKay

All right, so had you win, tells you win.

Chris Voss

Yeah.

John Richardson

Now you know, could somebody really hardcore resist and never tell you no matter what you do? Sure, there's still a free person they can do you want. But by asking, guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly, you get that information out of the great majority of people.

Brett McKay

All right, so let's say you've built this, this relationship of trust. We figured out, like, what people want or have an idea of what people want. What I want, let's talk about the part of the negotiation process that people get hung up on. Is that distributive negotiation. This is like when you're trying to hash out how much money someone gives you or what the workload is during the job or how much the price of a, you know, like a landscape job is going to be. We talked about why this is not comfortable because it reminds us of being cavemen and fighting over resources.

John Richardson

Yeah.

Brett McKay

What can people do to make distributive negotiation where you're talking hard numbers about things, less uncomfortable? I mean, maybe we can use the example of asking for a starting salary or raise.

John Richardson

Sure. I think the most important thing you can do is do some research about the market so you'll be well informed about that. Like, let's say you're starting for your first job at a law firm, because that's an industry we both at least know a little bit about. You want to do is find out what are other first year associates getting paid at other law firms in this city. And if you know that and they offer you something less than that, you say, well, hey, how come you guys are paying less than the competition? I mean, I want to get at least as well paid here as I'd get paid if I worked somewhere else. So what I would do, what I would advise anybody, is research what other people are getting in the same position at other firms. And then the highest number you can find with good research, ask for that. Say, hey, you know, 110,000 is what they're paying at Wachtel. So I'd like that. And very often they will agree with you. You'd be surprised at how often when you just add an explanation. If you just say, I want 110,000. The natural thing they're going to say is like, ah, that's ridiculous. Like, I'm going to offer you 85 if you say the guys across the street are paying 110,000. Well, they can't say it's ridiculous because now they know that's one of the market standards. And now they have to come up with a reason why it should be different. And that's a lot of work. And that might make them uncomfortable. And now all the discomfort of pushing for a different number is on them instead of on you. And I think you end up, you know, most people are lazy and afraid and if you put the burden on them to justify something different than what you're saying, a lot of people don't want that burden and they'll agree.

Brett McKay

So this is going back to that Roger Fisher idea. When you're doing distributive negotiation, find like an objective thing you can use to base the number off of.

John Richardson

Exactly. And it's giving yourself an ally in the sense that. Okay, so the first time my wife and I bought a condo, it was in Cambridge. And one of the things she liked about it was there was like a Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom. Okay, great. We get the house inspection done and the inspector says, hey, here's a problem. It's a 60 gallon tub and you've got a 25 gallon hot water heater in the basement. Like you're going to be able to fill it up not even halfway. So you need to get a bigger hot water heater. I call up the seller, hey, you know, we need to get a better hot water heater. And he says, listen, I've been upgrading houses for 20 years. I've been working in this business of fixing up properties and flipping them. And that hot water heater is plenty for that tub. You know, you've never owned anything before, so guess what, kid, you don't tell me what size hot water heater it needs. And you know, this guy's like 30 years older than me and is much more experienced in this line of work. I'm never going to win a pissing match with him. So I said, does the tub manufacturer have a recommendation on the size of hot water heater? And the guy said, well, okay, I'll have a new hot water heater in there on Monday because he's never going to back down to me. But he doesn't want to say that he's a bigger expert on the tub than the people who made the tub. So you're looking for someone else who's on your side, you know, who's like your gang backing you up. And, you know, market standards give you that.

Brett McKay

Yeah. And so if you're again, like, looking for a landscape number, like, you have to do some research, figure out what is the market in Tulsa for the landscape job that I'm looking for, and then you can use that.

John Richardson

Yeah, or get. Get a couple bids from a couple of different places. Exactly right. Because then it's not you saying, oh, I'm going to push your number down and you don'. Feel like a jerk. It's, oh, well, what's everybody else doing? Let's just do what everybody else is doing. And that's a lot harder to fight against.

Brett McKay

Is there anything to the idea that you should never make the first offer? That's typical, like, kind of boilerplate negotiation advice. Never make the first offer.

John Richardson

That's true some of the time. I think it really depends, and I think what it depends on is how much do you know? Are you familiar with anchoring? The anchoring effect?

Brett McKay

Yeah, but you explain it for our listeners who aren't.

John Richardson

Yeah. So Kahneman, Tversky got the Nobel Prize for this, or Kahneman did, because Tversky was dead, and you can't get it when you're dead. They did a series of experiments where they would do stuff like, say, they'd say, okay, to a classroom of psychology students. How many countries do you think there are in Africa? And by the way, we're in room number 13, and the average guess is 17. Or you say, how many countries are there in Africa? By the way, we're in room 52, and the average guess is 47. It's a random number that shouldn't influence anything. But their analysis was when they're trying to figure out a number, people start somewhere and then they ask if it should be higher or lower than that. But they typically don't move very far from wherever they started. And so if you supply a starting point, you often have a huge amount of influence in that. The problem is knowing what the starting point you should start at is. I had one student who had been a public school teacher, and this is like 1990s first.com bubble. And he got an offer from a distance learning firm to work there. And he says, all right. He goes in there and says, ha, your biggest competitor has made me an offer for $100,000, and you're going to have to match that, which he was completely making up. And they just looked at him like we were going to say 175. But if you want 100, okay, and wait, who made you an offer of 100? That's very interesting information. If you don't know what the market is, you're going to say something stupid or there's a very high risk of you saying something stupid. So if you haven't done that research, if you haven't done your blue book, if it's a car, or if you haven't gone on Glassdoor for a starting job, don't make the first offer. Let's say you're selling rugs in Istanbul and an American tourist walks in. Don't make the first offer because you're hoping that American tourist says something really, really stupid. But if you know what you're talking about, and especially if they also know what they're talking about, then going first gives you that anchoring benefit. And so I'd say if you're smart and you've done your research, it's better to go first.

Brett McKay

And what this research also does is another skill you talk about you need to develop is developing alternatives. So you know, if you're getting job offers from multiple places, you have alternatives. So if you know there's one place you really want to work because it's in the city you want to work in, you like the hours. But then you see like you're not really happy with the pay, you can tell them, well, hey, look, X firm is offering you this much money. Yeah. Can you meet that?

John Richardson

Yeah, exactly. Now, there are some circumstances that that isn't a great technique to use. You know, if you say you're talking to your wife about where you're going to go on vacation, she doesn't want to go the same place. Like, well, there's a lot of girls who would like to go with me. But if it's an arm's length business transaction, it's totally legitimate to say. I mean, it's one thing to say, well, these other companies are paying this well, why don't you go get a job with them? Actually, I do have an offer with them. And that way you'll always make a good decision if you know your alternatives in the sense that you get something better than your alternative or you don't take it. But it's not just that knowing what your alternative is has an influence on them. And I sometimes struggle with explaining how this is. Even if I never talk about my alternative, if I have a good one, it seems like they're a lot nicer to me. And I don't Know if it makes you feel more confident or like somehow they smell it on you that you're fine either way. And that seems to make them want to deal with you more related to

Brett McKay

this idea of you're fine either way, one of those alternatives could just be no.

Sheila Heen

Yeah.

Brett McKay

And I think what's funny about negotiation, I think it's because of getting to yes. People have this idea that if you don't come to an agreement, you know, a deal, a negotiation failed. But really a no can be a kind of success because I mean, you didn't lose anything to try and now you know something you didn't know before and now you can cross off an option off your list.

John Richardson

I think that's really important and makes negotiation a lot lower stress to think about it as you know, this can only be a win because right now I've got whatever I've already got. And so, you know, staying even with where I am is what happens if this negotiation doesn't work. I like to think of it as like fishing. You're going out to see if you can catch something good, but if you can't catch something good, you're still on a nice day on the water. I try to think about negotiation as I'm going to go out and learn more and learn if there's a deal here that makes everybody better off and if there's not, there's not. That's fine.

Brett McKay

But for a lot of people, saying no makes them uncomfortable because like you're negating and no one wants to be the Debbie Downer. Yeah, the wet blanket. So any field tested tactics on saying no more effectively so you don't feel uncomfortable and awkward?

John Richardson

Yeah, I think a lot of it is you want to be nice to people. And so finding a way of being nice that isn't agreeing to something that isn't good for you is important. And the more you know, that's again, reciprocity and building relationships, learning people's names is all part of that. Those all make you a nice person. And you don't have to prove you're nice by agreeing to a dumb deal. The other thing is your own alternatives are a source of power for you. But if you want to be nice to people, you can be talking about their alternatives. You know, you mentioned my wife earlier. She loves this thing when people call her up to, hey, could you come to our corporate event and give a speech? I would love to like, here's my rate. Oh my God, that's really high. Can we get you lower? She'll Say, you know, I have a colleague who's younger than me and really needs more work, and she would do it for a much lower price, and I can put you in touch with her. And that way you're being nice to them, you're showing concern for their interests, but you're also showing that, you know, you're perfectly fine saying no.

Brett McKay

And then the response might be, well, no, we want you.

John Richardson

So, yeah, so then you got them and you're fine.

Brett McKay

Yeah.

John Richardson

If they say, no, we want you, but you have to drop your price, you're like, really? Why do I have to.

Brett McKay

Yeah. So, yeah, it's possible to say no. And no one's going to die if you say no, it's going to be fine.

John Richardson

And, you know, it's sometimes that instinct of, I don't want to say no. You know, look, if there's a kid who's mowing your lawn, or in my case, the example that comes to mind is we had a nanny working for us, and we live in this old farmhouse and there's this outbuilding that used to be an ice house. And she had just gotten divorced and she and her daughter had no place to live. And we said, well, you can live in this building. We fixed it up. And then that way your daughter is in the good school district. We could have pushed really hard on salary because we were giving her this other thing that really mattered to her a lot. But I think, you know, if you want to be nice to people who are less fortunate than you, that's totally fine. That's like a good outcome. And it's also smart. Especially this person's going to be in your house taking care of your kids. You want her to feel like she's being really well taken care of. And being nicer than your alternative is sometimes a smart play, but you should do it because that's your choice, not because you're afraid of saying no.

Brett McKay

Yeah. Well, John, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

John Richardson

We've got a website, neversettlenegotiate.com and people can go there. No, space is just one word. And neversettle. Negotiate.comaom we're going to set up a series of exercises that we'd suggest to your listeners that they can try out for a couple weeks. We think that'll help them start building their skills and also get to decide if, you know, they want to invest their time and effort in this as their hobby. You know, not everybody really wants to train for a marathon. But if you want to get much better at negotiation, this will give you a little bit of a sample of what that's going to be like.

Brett McKay

So you're giving people a sandwich there, dude.

John Richardson

Giving sandwiches. Giving sandwiches all the time.

Brett McKay

Well John, thanks so much time. It's been a pleasure Brett.

John Richardson

It has been a real pleasure man. Thank you for having me on.

Brett McKay

My guest here is John Richardson. He's the co author of the book Never Settle. It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. If you go to his website neversettlenegotiate.com aom they got some free guides there just for AOM listeners. Also check out our show Notes at A Negotiate where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 podcast. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Whatever podcast player you use to listen to the show helps out a lot and if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think was something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time is Brett McKay remind listen they went podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

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