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Entrepreneur Victor Kiam had an interesting take on the art of negotiation. A negotiator, he said, “should observe everything. You must be part Sherlock Holmes, part Sigmund Freud.”
Chip Massey and Adele Gambardella would likely agree with that perspective. Massey is a former FBI hostage negotiator and Gambardella is a public relations consultant. In 2020 they teamed up to form a Washington, D.C.-based communications and crisis management firm, which they dubbed the Convincing Company.
Their book is CONVINCE ME: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results in Any Business Situation.
The authors advocate something they call “forensic listening.” Massey explains how that differs from the “active” listening familiar to many people.
“Active listening is primarily used for calming someone down in the moment,” he says. “Typically, it’s used in high-stress situations and seeks to build rapport with someone who has heightened emotions. While it’s a helpful skill, active listening has limited applications in business settings.”
Massey says that by combining his FBI background and Gambardella’s entrepreneurial skills, they created a technique anyone can use to better understand people. They call it Forensic Listening, which they define as the art and science of analyzing a conversation after it has occurred. Why? Because they believe words and behaviors leave clues.
They suggest taking “forensic notes”—which they describe as a supercharged way of taking notes that can provide insight you need to make an impact.
“There are four things to watch closely in any business setting that most people ignore,” Massey says. “Those things include heighted emotions, themes and word choice, body positioning and voice: pitch tone, and cadence.”
He says that when and how people pause, what they emphasize, and what their tone of voice communicates can be every bit as revealing as the words they use. “It’s finding and analyzing those clues and deconstructing aspects of the conversation,” he says. “The Forensic Listener can play back what was said to reveal a hidden narrative others may have missed.”
Chip Massey
How can forensic listening be useful to someone leading a team in a business setting?
“It’s a strategic way to monitor and manage people’s feelings as deliberately as you do their mindset,” Massey says. “Once you have a baseline for what’s at play emotionally with members of your team, you can delve deeper to uncover their emotional motivators. People need to feel their emotional needs will be met by leaders before they take a chance on a product, service or idea you’re selling.”
Gambardella says “targeted validation” can be used to deal with someone who’s resisting a workplace change effort.
“The first step is to identify where they have the most energy,” she says. “It’s what they like and what they value. You want to validate what they believe is the most important thing to them.”
For example, Gambardella received a report from her son’s teacher that he had a bad day in school. “Like any third grader, he had some good days and bad days,” she says. “That’s just the nature of being nine. I told my son, ‘Hey, listen, I heard you had a bad day yesterday. Let’s talk about that.”’And he said, ‘You know, Mom, I had a really good day today. I think we should talk about that.’”
Adele Gambardella
From this conversation, Gambardella reached a few conclusions. “The first is I have a lot to learn about convincing from this third grader,” she says. “Second, I realized the most effective thing I could do was to practice targeted validation. By saying, ‘Well, tell me about your day today then.” And he did. Then I said, “That’s great. You should have more days like that, and not so many like yesterday.”
With people resistant to change at work, Gambardella says it’s important to understand how the change will impact things they care about. “Show them how they can succeed with the change and how their specific skills and know-how will make this change positive for them,” she advises”. You must be genuine, even if what to validate is difficult to identify. For example, “’I know this change may be hard, but your perseverance and attention to detail will make help make this company meet its revenue goals.’”
The authors say confidence plays a key role in a person’s ability to be effective in convincing others to change their behaviors.
“The confidence to be convincing comes when your intention and actions become the same,” Massey says. “Are you an emotional convincer or do you tend to lean more on facts and statistics? When someone you need to convince has a different convincing style than yours, do you have the confidence and know-how to be flexible? Can you modify your approach? You must own your own convincing abilities and have self-awareness to be effective.”
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The authors quote Zig Ziglar as saying, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” How does that apply to leadership?
“Not only do you want to help other people get what they want, you must tell them what you want in return,” Gambardella says. “Reciprocity is currency in convincing. Research shows that if you do someone a favor in a professional setting, you only have a few hours to ask for a favor in return. If you wait longer than that, the person’s likelihood of doing you a favor back diminishes by almost half. It’s your job to show people how they can help you. And be specific. For example, ask for a recommendation, an email to your boss or a referral.”
A lot of communication these days is virtual. In terms of good convincing skills, what works best for someone who’s communicating via Zoom or some other virtual platform?
“With most of my law enforcement career spent coaxing targets on analog phone lines, high-definition video calls are a luxury,” Massey says. “It’s like a firehose of vibrancy and color. Video calls are great leverage because you can learn so much about a person’s relationship to money by observing their home and asking a few questions about their background. For example, if you can get them to open up about their latest vacation, the details will tell you a lot about what they value. How do they talk about where they stayed or the experience they had? Do they value the experience or the cost? This will tell you how to structure your business dealings with them.”
Massey explains how hostage negotiation techniques apply to a business negotiation.
“Your job is to control one thing: you,” he says.
He offers these tips:
- Reverse the focus to make the person feel heard and seen. It works in business and in hostage negotiation.
- Whether it is closing a sale, handling a merger, selling a company or trying to get others to take a chance on a new idea – it can feel like going through a crisis. While lives may not be at stake in business, making people feel heard and that you have their best interest in mind will set you apart.
- Know thyself. You and only you are in control of your response to the other person. Don’t allow yourself to be ‘triggered’ in an emotional response. Pick up the phone. Never respond to a conflict with an email or text. People will read your email or text with the tone in their head, and it will likely be wrong.
