The video explores the nuances of negotiation, highlighting the importance of understanding the situation rather than viewing it as an adversarial battle. Negotiation is portrayed as a collaborative effort where each party must clearly specify their needs and desires. The speaker emphasizes the need to find places or opportunities that value you and align with your core values, as attempting to fix something that's inherently flawed is ineffective. They further expand on the notion that self-awareness is vital before entering negotiations or taking on new roles.

Understanding people's problems and perspectives is crucial in effective communication, especially in negotiation contexts. Instead of relying on superficial common ground, the video suggests an approach rooted in emotional intelligence and active listening, understanding how people's attitudes and needs can often be deduced more accurately through non-verbal cues than words alone. It highlights how listening can lead to more enduring agreements and better results than simply presenting proposals without understanding the other party.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. adversary [ˈædvərˌsɛri] - (noun) - A person, group, or force that opposes or attacks. - Synonyms: (opponent, antagonist, rival)

The adversary is not the person on the other side of the table.

2. intractable [ɪnˈtræktəbl] - (adjective) - Not easily controlled or dealt with; hard to manage. - Synonyms: (unmanageable, stubborn, obstinate)

And if you are, and that's intractable, then, you know, it might be time to think about either a radically new approach to your work.

3. misconstrue [ˌmɪskənˈstru] - (verb) - To interpret something wrongly; misunderstand the meaning of. - Synonyms: (misinterpret, misunderstand, misjudge)

You know, because people, people will also misconstrue that.

4. voluntary [ˈvɑːlənˌteri] - (adjective) - Done, given, or acting of one's own free will. - Synonyms: (optional, by choice, elective)

Most of the meaning in people's lives comes from the adoption of voluntary responsibility.

5. nuance [ˈnuˌɑns] - (noun) - A subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, or response. - Synonyms: (subtlety, intricacy, refinement)

That's what listening is really about, understanding the nuances of what's now backed up by neuroscience.

6. anticipate [ænˈtɪsəˌpeɪt] - (verb) - To expect or predict something. - Synonyms: (expect, foresee, predict)

And in the moment to look for and then anticipate.

7. intermittently [ˌɪntərˈmɪtəntli] - (adverb) - Occurring at irregular intervals; not continuously or steadily. - Synonyms: (sporadically, irregularly, occasionally)

So you start showing how you listen intermittently, proactively.

8. strategic [strəˈtidʒɪk] - (adjective) - Carefully designed or planned to serve a particular purpose or advantage. - Synonyms: (tactical, calculated, planned)

Projects that are critical to the strategic future of this organization.

9. compelling [kəmˈpɛlɪŋ] - (adjective) - Evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a powerfully irresistible way. - Synonyms: (enthralling, captivating, persuasive)

And that's not the sort of vision that's going to make you a compelling interviewee.

10. neurochemical [ˌnʊrəˈkɛmɪkəl] - (adjective) - Relating to the chemical processes and compounds that occur in the neural system. - Synonyms: (neuroscientific, biochemical, neurological)

Understanding how, what sort of neurochemical changes take place when you feel understood.

THE TOP 1% KNOW THIS TRICK! - Hostage Negotiator's Trick to Get You Anything You Want

You know, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn't take something better. What do you really want from the person? What are they like? You can have what you want, but you have to specify what it is. Yeah, well, for me, to negotiate is to collaborate and find a better outcome.

In the early days, I was always teaching. The adversary is not the person on the other side of the table. The adversary is the situation. When I was teaching at USC, I had a female come up to me in a class, and she's like, you know, there are a lot of employers out there that want to pay me less because I'm a female. If I got an employer that's paying me less because I'm a female, how do I negotiate a better deal? And I said, all right, so I'm going to ask. Answer you as if I was your dad, and you just ask me, hey, the guy I'm in a relationship with treats me badly. How do I get him to treat me better? My answer to you is, go someplace else. There are plenty of places you want to be, somewhere where they value you. And if their core value is to pay you less based on your agenda, they're going bankrupt anyway. That's a bad strategy. Don't try to fix a bad employer any more than you try to fix a bad significant other. There's somebody out there better for you.

You don't know how much your boss knows about the work you do, especially if you're one of those people who does your work quietly and well and sort of invisibly. And that's even worse if you're agreeable, so that other people can take advantage of your work and pretend it's theirs. So the first thing you might want to do is make sure that your boss actually knows what you do without being chest thumping about it. And then you might say what it is that you could offer. If you were offered additional opportunity. You have to make a case for what it is that's in it for him, too, and also or her. And also ensure that if he has to go make a case to his superior, that he's completely armed and ready to do that.

So there was the division. So you don't assume that you're in an antagonistic relationship with your boss. And if you are, and that's intractable, then, you know, it might be time to think about either a radically new approach to your work or a different job.

You want to be a diamond? We're going to take you there. But you got to want to be a diamond, you got to willing to be doing the work. And you want to coast. You want it to be, you know, something you do when you're not at home, all right? That job's out there like that, but it ain't with me. You know, pressure makes diamonds. You gotta wanna be a diamond. Now. Most people think you do one or the other.

Hey, how are your kids? Where'd you go to school? What do your kids do? Are your kids in Little League? The small talk, that's people. This common ground thing, which is. It's for c players. Common ground, in my opinion, was designed initially. Like, if we got similar common ground, then ideally, you understand where I'm coming from. But in point of fact, it's highly inefficient. Look at your siblings. How much more common ground could you possibly have than with the people you grew up with? Talk about common ground in geography, ethnicity, diet, religion, as much as possible, and how many family gatherings around, holidays or screaming matches. That's what common ground will get you.

What people really want to know is, do you understand what my problems are? Do you understand my perspective? Do you understand where I'm coming from? So if I dial in to start out understanding and feel you out, and I'm going to say, it seems like this whole process has frustrated you. Seems like there's a reason that you're struggling with this. You know, I'm actually. I'm taking emotionally intelligent, educated guesses, and I'm listening.

Now, that gives me. Gets me into an information gathering process and relationship building process simultaneously, instead of one and then the other, which is highly inefficient, which is why this ends up being a much. This indirect group ends up being much faster.

I'll look at you and I say, look, look. It seems like you're having a good day. If you look like you're having a good day. I don't. I don't. I don't ask people how they are. I make a guess as to how. How they are based on what I'm seeing, because that tells them right away, I'm dialing into you.

Our capacity to hear words exceeds the amount of information we can keep in our head. But the amount of information in your tone of voice is going to tell me more than the words are. So how I learned to listen was the words are the starting point, but the tone of voice are the body language. And what's the alignment?

And then if there's a shift in the alignment in that moment to look for and then anticipate, I know now that you, as a human being, in general terms, the negativity is going to cloud your thinking more than anything else. So I'm listening for those negatives and from the hotline.

And now what we do in a black swan method, how do I deactivate those negatives to clear your head or even anticipate them? It supplied emotional intelligence.

And then why listen? Because what we would call in hostage negotiation, change of behavior, and in business negotiation or personal interactions, you changing your mind as to the best outcome is going to come much more quickly and effectively and in a lasting way than if I talked you into it or if I misled you.

You know, I want whatever agreement we come to to be durable, to last without me having to come back to you daily to see where we are. And that's what listening is really about, understanding the nuances of what's now backed up by neuroscience and what people in hostage negotiation, and you as a practitioner in the field of human nature for years came to learn was the reality of how human beings think and how they react.

You know, you're anticipating, you're paying really close attention. You're understanding how the person is wired, and you're understanding how, what sort of neurochemical changes take place when you feel understood.

I stand up in front of a group of business people on a regular basis, and I'll say to them, how much time do you have for somebody who's not listening to you? And they don't have any time for it now. They'll test them a little bit. They'll interact shortly, but somebody's only pitching, or somebody's only got answers.

It doesn't even matter how good those answers are, because if somebody's not listening, at some point in time, they're going to need an adjustment. And if they're not listening, they're not going to make that adjustment. You know, salesperson, counterpart of any kind. You come up to me with the perfect answer.

Maybe you got four perfect answers. You're most interested in giving me your answers as opposed to hearing me out first. I know at some point in time, you're not gonna have a perfect answer, and if you haven't been listening, you're not gonna catch it, and we're gonna have some real problems. So you start showing how you listen intermittently, proactively. Then it's really gonna accelerate our conversation.

And I know that when there's a problem, you're gonna catch it instead of me having to come back to you after the problem's very damaging. It's about anticipating and staying ahead of the game like any other relationship, like a personal relationship, you know, business relationship, close relationship, significant other. You gotta get a fit.

And my favorite question, actually is to ask in job interviews, every job interview and every annual review taught to me by a friend of mine who's Tom McCabe, extraordinarily successful guy, CEO of an international bank. We talked about this extensively. We went to high school together. His question is, how can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of this organization?

And I said before, the calibrated question is designed to trigger thought. That question immediately changes their perspective of you when you ask it. Like you're telling them, look, I want to advance everybody's life here. I want to play in a big game. I want to be with the people that are at the highest levels of performance in your company.

And I want to move everybody forward with that one question. And it completely changes the outcome, because then it's not just what your skillset is for this particular job. Maybe they got a job for you in a mail room, but you want to be the head of the division, and you want to know how to get there.

And you want to get there by succeeding and taking everybody with you. Now that's a completely game changing conversation. That's a completely different conversation. Maybe they thought they were bringing somebody in to push a mail card around, and now you're somebody that says, yeah, not only will I do the little jobs to learn this from the bottom up, but I want to make everybody's life better.

I want to help everybody succeed. Now, I'm willing to learn. I'm coachable now it's a different conversation. One of the things that I loved, that I learned from being a hostage negotiator, is how to negotiate without a net. And my Harvard brothers and sisters would call that bat.

Now, what's the best alternative to negotiated agreement? And that's so that you release yourself of fears that you don't take yourself hostage. You can go in with no alternative and have enough faith in a process to just be engaged, to be curious, to listen, to discover the better outcome. And so the badna idea or the alternative's idea is a good starting point if you feel like you're taking yourself hostage.

But what it really is is it's to create this psychological construct so that you don't freeze up, so that you don't take yourself hostage. And as hostage negotiators, you know, we just never, theoretically, we never had a bad day. You know, you gotta make the deal, you gotta work it out. And you kinda get used to walking that tightrope without a net, and then it's no big deal.

But the principle to begin with is how to not take yourself hostage. And that's a brilliant principle to start with, you know, and people are scared of this because partly because they don't want to reveal to themselves what they actually want, because they might betray themselves or be betrayed by the world, and partly because they're afraid of the responsibility and they don't have enough faith.

But it's impossible to hit a target that you don't aim at. Work through the blind spots in their vision, let's say, and the knots in their life that might be interfering with their desire to be a diamond, you know, because people, people will also misconstrue that. They'll think, well, I don't want to work too hard. It's like you're not thinking about the work properly if that's your attitude.

Because first of all, if you love what you're doing, you might really want to work hard. And if you don't love it, that means you don't really see the point, you don't see the end goal, you don't see the value in it. And then, you know, maybe you do see the value, but you're lazy and undisciplined, and maybe you have your rationales for that too. And so all that needs to be worked through, you know, because I do think that, first of all, most of the meaning in people's lives comes from the adoption of voluntary responsibility.

And most people do actually want to be diamonds, but they're afraid of the work and they're also afraid that it's going to be imposed on them, right? And they're going to be forced into it, and they don't have a vision of their own. And so one of the things that everyone who's listening and watching might want to understand is that before you go into a job interview, you know, you might want to have done some serious thinking about just exactly why it's is that you want this job. And if the answer is, well, I need to pay next month's rent, like, fair enough, you know, but that is not a good enough reason. That's not a vision for your life. And that's not the sort of vision that's going to make you a compelling interviewee because you're shallow, right? You haven't thought through why it is that you're going to do what you're doing.

Negotiation, Listening, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Education, Entrepreneurship, Business Motiversity