Unlocking The Art of Negotiation With Derek Gaunt

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Skot Waldron (03:31.362)
All right, Derek, this is going to be fun. you’re going to tell us all how to negotiate with our partners on getting anything we want. Right.

Derek Gaunt (03:45.538)
Ideally, yeah, that’s the game plan.

Skot Waldron (03:46.71)
Okay. How easy are you to live with, man? Are you like, do you negotiate like everything? Like, are you just like playing mind games with all the people you live with? it like, what is that like?

Derek Gaunt (03:57.854)
All right, so let me recalibrate your thinking here. First of all, it’s not mind games. Mind games tends to smell of manipulation. And that’s not what these skills are all about. They’re not about manipulating the other side. The difference between influence and manipulation is the intent of the speaker. If your intent is to manipulate me, I am going to smell it on you because it stinks like a skunk.

Skot Waldron (04:01.696)
Okay, okay, let’s do it.

Uh-huh.

Derek Gaunt (04:27.298)
You can smell when people are trying to get over on you. And these skills have nothing to do with mind games. has nothing to do with manipulation. What we are trying to accomplish with the Black Swan method is, at the end of the day, remove ourselves as a threat. If I go into a conversation with you and I want or I need is in my head, or I speculate that I want or need is in your head, then

By default, I am a threat to you in that conversation. You know at the end of that conversation, you’re going to leave with something less than what you walked in with. If it’s nothing less than time, you’re going to have less of it. And so automatically, even if you were amenable to the meeting, when I hit the door or when I log into Zoom or when I pick up the phone and call you, you are in a defensive posture. And so the Black Swan method, based on tactical empathy, is all about removing us as a psychological threat in the conversation because if you’re viewing at me from a defensive position, the amygdala hippocampus, it’s all firing up. And when those things are activated in the brain, what’s supposed to be going on in the rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is not occurring, or it’s occurring at a diminished capacity. So it’s incumbent upon me to remove as many negative emotions and dynamics associated with me in the conversation as soon as possible because I want you smarter. Your brain works up to 31 % better when it is in a positive state, which means I have to do my part into putting you into that positive state because ultimately I’m going to make my ask of you and I’m going to provide data and information as to why I’m making that ask.

And so I want you to be as cognitively nimble when I get to that point in the conversation so that you can see clearer what I’m trying to accomplish in the rationale behind why I’m moving in one direction versus another.

Skot Waldron (06:36.8)
I love that. See how I set you up, man. That was so good. set you up. So the idea behind this, cause people will often talk to me about influence versus manipulation. Cause I’ll talk to them about influence and they’re like, Skot, that just sounds like I’m manipulating them. And I said, well, are you like, what’s your intent behind the thing? And it’s, one, one time I heard somebody talking about this idea too and I want to, I want to get into a story you have about a precarious situation you were in where influence needed to take place and see how, how this was exemplified in that scenario. But one thing I’ll add here is that somebody told me that if I am trying to keep control of information or the outcome, if I’m trying to control the outcome. That may lend itself to manipulation.

versus influence where also I want an outcome, but I’m not necessarily trying to control that outcome by withholding information or by putting authoritative things or domination or threats or whatever out there. So I don’t know if you have anything to say about that, but I’d like to hear about your story too. So you respond to that and then we hear the story.

Derek Gaunt (07:56.26)
All right, so.

This idea of influence versus manipulation.

It’s, we are going, if it’s a want and need conversation, I am not going to, I know what my goal and objective is, but I’m not so tied or focused on that goal and objective that I’m not ready to pivot in the moment. And what I mean by that is, you should never be so sure about what you want that you wouldn’t take something better if it came along. And for those of you who are so focused on what your goal and objective is at the end of the conversation, you’ve and you said that’s it’s that or nothing. This is this is what I’m after. The problem with that is you’re you’ve made up your mind based on incomplete information. And that’s the dumbest thing on the planet.

for you to make up your mind where you want to end up knowing that you do not have the full story. What do I mean by that? There is information that you are holding on to, that your counterpart is holding on to, that you have no clue about. And you’re only going to learn about them through this guided discovery process that we call negotiations. And so I know what my goal and objective is. It’s reasonable.

It’s attainable, but I’m not married to it because you may say something in the conversation that changes everything. It changes everything. And so I’m staying in a curious mindset while keeping my ultimate goal and objective on the back seat. so.

I need to engage in that conversation with a curious mindset to uncover that information. And it’s not necessarily information that you’re intentionally hiding, although we all do it. We all hide information. You hide it, I hide it. And that’s a fear response to engaging another person. And so I’m looking for both the blind dynamics or emotions

And I’m looking for the hidden dynamic and the blind dynamics or emotion are, are things that you’re holding onto information that you’re holding onto. And you’re unaware of it’s important to me. So it’s, it’s blind to you. And then there’s hidden that’s information that you are deliberately keeping from me. And I’m always on the hunt for what that information could be. I don’t know if I exactly answered the question, but I think that that is related to how I responded on the first question.

Skot Waldron (10:48.566)
Okay. That’s good. That’s good insight. And I, I think there’s something interesting there. want to go deeper on too, but let me hear about, I want to hear about this, story of this influence situation that you’re in.

Derek Gaunt (11:00.132)
All right, so everybody, know, unless you’re a solo operator, everybody’s got somebody that they’re reporting to. And everybody’s got somebody reporting to them. Most of us find ourselves caught in the middle. We’re never at the bottom. We’re rarely at the top, but we’re caught somewhere in the middle where we have to influence laterally. We have to influence up the chain and we have to influence down the chain. And as we were talking before we came on.

One of the stories that came to mind was probably as a hostage negotiation commander was probably one of my more It was a seminal moment. I’ll just put it you like that for a variety of reasons but I found myself in a situation where I had to negotiate with my team members I Had to negotiate with the chief of police. I had to negotiate with command staff that outranked me and I had to negotiate across the street from the SWAT operators. And so I’m in this position where I’m having sensitive conversations where I want and need something from each of those groups. this particular event was, in fact, I captured it in the book. This particular event was a person who had, in violation of a protective order had taking his biological son from his mother and barricaded himself in his home. And it was a 20 hour, 20 plus hour event. And I found myself…

Derek Gaunt (12:50.422)
engaging the incident commander when he was contemplating a specific action within the event. To give you a little bit more clarity, there’s an incident command triad. And that consists of an incident commander who sits at the top of that triangle. then the negotiator commander, that’s me, I’m at the bottom of the triangle on one side and the SWAT commander is on the the bottom of the triangle on the other side. And it was incumbent upon me to be robust in my response to what we were accomplishing or attempting to accomplish from a negotiation perspective. Because oftentimes, the instant commander has no idea what we do and what we bring to the table other than we call inside, we talk to the bad guy. And it’s so much more than that. it’s hard for them to wrap their head around.

We are working conjunctively with the SWAT team to bring this thing to a conclusion. See, when my team shows up…

We get out of the car, we’ve got on utility pants, we’ve got a backpack, we’ve got a jacket that says negotiate on the back, and we got pens and paper. And it’s really hard to tell, you know, from the outside looking in, what are we bringing to the table? When the SWAT guys show up, you can look at them and see exactly what they’re bringing to the table. And so the difficult conversation with the incident commander was, number one, acknowledging the prism through which he was viewing the incident and my team, acknowledging the pressure that he was under and the pressure that may cloud his decision making, asking him specifically what his next steps are, and then using the Black Swan method to ferret out the motivation behind those next steps, and then offer him an alternative to the next step specifically if it flew in the face of what I was trying to accomplish.

As we push through this thing We get to the house We have one contact with him where he says I didn’t call you, she’s a liar, go away. I’m in my house with my son, don’t need you. And he hung up the phone. About half an hour later, the son calls, he’s 10 years old at the time. he had Asperger’s. So that was a challenge in and of itself. So he calls us, the son, the 10 year old son and says, my daddy.

Just called my grandmother in Florida and told him that told her that he was going to start shooting if we came in Now that’s that’s pretty significant that we got a 10 year old on the phone telling us this because this guy is obviously incorporating this child in this Event to a degree that it was troubling and so to make a long story longer that was all of the contact that we had through the overnight hours He never picked up the phone again. We could see lights going on and off in the house. We had assets that we could deploy to here inside the house, which we did. But we went through the whole night with nothing. And I would have to brief each incident commander as they came on the bus as to where we are, where we were going to go. And that required demonstrating an understanding of their perspective of this event before jumping into, hey, boss, here’s what I want to do now. Where does it get tricky with my team?

Well, these things never, they never start at the beginning of a shift. They either start in the overnight hours or they start at the very end of your shift. So most of these folks had worked a full day when this thing spun up and now we are going into the next day. So obviously, there’s some relief that has to come in so that we can be backfilled because we got to go home and get rest. One of the more difficult conversations that anybody can have is telling a negotiation team somebody else is coming in to replace us. They never want to leave. We never want to go. The knee-jerk response that we always get from team members when we tell them that, this other jurisdiction is going to come in and replace us so we can get some rest is, I just need five more minutes. Five more minutes. Five more minutes, boss. I can get them out. And so I’ve got to deal with a bunch of unhappy disgruntled people who, mean, let’s face it, the teams, the people that apply for these critical incident management teams, whether it’s negotiators or SWAT, these are A types of the A types. These are the people that the police call when they can’t figure it out. And so we are the ones that get things unstuck.

And so for somebody to say, you’ve done your job enough and somebody else is going to, because the fear is the other agency is going to come in to replace us and they’re going to wind up getting this guy out. They’re going to wind up getting all the credit and all the glory and the nine, 10 hours of work that we did is going to be forgotten. And so I had to navigate that difficult conversation, coming, before leaving at about six 30 in the morning about six 30 in the morning, we get a call from the child’s godmother who said that, the father called her and wants her to come and pick up the kids so they can take them to school. Obviously we couldn’t let that happen, but we did attempt to drive a car up there to, to provide an opportunity for the car, for the kid to come out. He never came out. Interestingly enough.

As a caveat, this is to show you the threat level that we were dealing with at one point, right around the time that Sun came up, he actually pushed his kid out onto the front porch so we could see him. And the kid had on body armor.

So that’s the kind of guy we were dealing with. So anyway, back to the story. I’m telling my team now and I have to tread carefully because I know how they’re going to view this. I know how it’s going to sting. So I have to preface my directive as a boss with demonstrating an understanding of what the lay of the land looked like from their perspective. To hear them out, let them dump their buckets. And then once the negative emotions come down, the rationality comes up.

And then I can begin to explain, here’s the necessity of us going to get rest. So we all leave, go home. And at the time I lived about 45 minutes away from the city and I go home, I can’t get any sleep. I’m laying on top of the covers. I’m looking at the ceiling fan and finally I start to run out of gas and I doze off.

And it seems like two minutes later, my phone rings and it’s second in command. And she says, you need, this is going sideways. You need to get back here now. And she was not, she’s not flappable. And I could tell that she was, let’s just say she was angry. And so I get back to the scene and I could tell the entire tenor of the scene that changed that.

And it was hard to describe, but it was something in the air. There just seemed to be a lot of electricity in the air more so than what I had seen the entire overnight period. And so as I’m walking towards the command bus.

I pass a robot monitor. So there’s a, when we send a robot out, we have a monitor because obviously the robot has cameras on it, blah, blah, blah. So I’ve got two negotiators at the robot stand where they have, they have the ability to speak through the robot. And I’m looking at the monitor and I’ve got two negotiators upfront with the armored personnel carrier. They’re trying to go voice to voice with this guy.

And then I walked towards the command bus and my second command who’s supposed to be on the bus in my stead is outside of the bus and she’s fuming. And she says, they threw me out. They threw me off the bus. And I walk, I get on the bus and my counterpart from another jurisdiction sees me, he gets up and he walks off the bus immediately and he says, he whispers in my ear. This is he said, this is messed up.

He used another word, but you know what I’m saying. And he leaves. And so I go in and I engage the watch commander and I said, it seems like things have picked up pace. And he goes, yeah, we believe that he’s suicidal. And I said, I’m sorry sir, this is going to sound offensive. We knew that at 6.30 this morning, what changed? And he goes, well, we don’t know how long the kid is going to remain unharmed.

And I said, I’m going to sound obstinate here and like I’m being a thorn in your side. But mental health told us this morning that the kid is not in any danger from the father unless we try to get in between the kid and the father. So, sir, I’ll ask you again what changed. And then he gave me his answer and he said that we are going to prepare for a hostage rescue so we want our SWAT guys to go home and get some rest because at some point we’re going to execute a hostage rescue. Now, there are the two most dangerous times for a hostage are during the initial taking.

And then the second most dangerous time for them is when we go in and try to save them. That’s when they’re more likely to get hurt versus any other time during the event. So I tell you that to say it’s not something that should be taken lightly. And so once he told me that.

I summarized his position.

And the summary was just, so what you’ve told me so far is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And as a result, you feel blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Here’s why that’s not a good idea. And then I laid it out. I said, and just the way I laid it out with you, the two most dangerous times. And he backed off of, they backed off of the plan on doing the hostage rescue.

And each time that the incident commander would suggest an idea, now is my time to speak with the SWAT commanders to say, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish. How does that dovetail or differentiate from what you’re trying to accomplish? So with all three categories, for lack of a better term, my team, the incident commander, the SWAT commander, it was imperative for me to get out of my own way and to first demonstrate that I understood what their perspective was. If all of us would do that in our daily lives, the things that we need, the things that we want, the things that we desire will come to you so much easier when you just first take the time. See, what we normally do when we’re trying to influence people is think of us standing on opposite sides of the street, Skot, and I’m beckoning you to come across the street. That’s the conventional way of thinking about influence. But the reality is I don’t need to beckon you across the street. What I need to do is cross to your side of the street, stand shoulder to shoulder with you and look exactly what you’re looking at before I try to explain, pitch.

Ask.

Skot Waldron (26:27.358)
So that perspective, that curiosity is what leads to that. Because you can be on one side of the street yelling at somebody to come to the other side, but going back to this idea of the hidden information of things that they’re not explaining or telling you, we don’t know why they’re honestly not coming across the street, but we create all kinds of stories in our brain about why they’re not coming across the street. Either they don’t like me, they don’t respect me. They are lazy. They are incompetent of walking across the street. Like we make all we create all these story loops, right? Which which holds us back from really building the influence that we want.

Derek Gaunt (26:59.203)
Right.

Yep. Yep.

Here’s the thing that you mentioned that I love we make up all of these stories and that’s fine, but we never test the stories We make assumptions about everything going on with our counterpart and we never test the assumptions and that’s where curiosity comes in because people don’t always ask what they really want to know. They don’t say what they really mean. And so I’m going to be wondering what does Skot really mean by that? And most people leave it at that. Where I am going to use one of the black swan techniques to highlight something that you said to get you to expound on it. And when I get you to expound on it, it usually doesn’t look at all like what you just said. And so, we all make assumptions about what’s going on with our counterpart. We can’t help but to do that. As we’re sitting, as we’re talking intuitively, our subconscious is telling us we’re gathering data with our eyes as well as our ears. And we’re picking stuff out of the environment. And we wonder, we assume, and that’s healthy. But to take it to the next step, you have to test those assumptions. Because I would much rather go from wondering to know it. And the only way to do that is to embrace this curious mindset and rely heavily, heavily, heavily on your subconscious. It has never, ever failed us. It’s you knowing something without knowing how you know it. And so when you start to parse people’s questions. When you start to parse people’s statements, you will find that what they asked, they really didn’t want to know. They will ask you question A, knowing that they want the answer to question B, but they’re afraid to ask you question B. They will say things that don’t line up with the realities of the environment. And your intuition, your subconscious is going to be like, what? That’s weird. But most people will pivot away because they don’t want to get it wrong. They don’t want to embarrass themselves.

And I’m telling you now, forget the Black Swan Method. If you just go out and start demonstrating a genuine interest in another person, they’ll be more than happy to give you exactly what you need, exactly what you want. We are so, as a species, we are so starved for somebody to articulate their recognition of our perspective. so, and it’s good for people who want to listen at a deeper level because they’re so starved, they vomit up a lot of information and they will keep vomiting up that information because subconsciously they’re obligated to you. They want to be reciprocal with you. You’ve extended the the active or not the active listening. You extended the tactical empathy olive branch and they feel obligated in returning the favor and that reward usually comes in the form of more information, which is what again, it’s what negotiation is all about. It’s not about getting what you want. It’s a guided discovery process. You are seeking information.

The information that you need to influence them into doing what you need them to do. And from the world of hostage negotiations, in the States, we’re good at it. In the States, our success rate at influencing people into doing something that they originally say, I’m never gonna do, is 93%, or close to 93%. And if I were to poll the people who are gonna eventually watch this and ask them what their success rate at influencing people into doing what they needed to do, I would bet that the best that are going to be watching this or somewhere around 30 to 40 percent Which begs the question why is there a disparity in those numbers? It certainly is not because hostage negotiators are smarter than everybody else what it has to do with is our appreciation of the human nature response which dictates Negative emotions and negative dynamics drive decision-making and drive behavior period and once you get your head around that you

You put yourself at a distinct advantage because people start to become predictable. You can start to predict what they’re going to do and what they’re going to say next. Just because you understand that negative emotions and dynamics are driving their decision making.

Skot Waldron (31:57.624)
Can you define two things for me? I want you to define the black swan method for those who don’t know. And I want you to define tactical empathy for those who don’t know.

Derek Gaunt (32:06.404)
Well, they’re almost one in the same. So the Black Swan method is the use of specific skills and a specific skill set to demonstrate tactical empathy. Tactical empathy is the game changer for influencing other people. And so, think of tactical empathy as a tent. The Black Swan methodology are the poles that hold that up.

And so the Black Swan Group itself is a strategic business advisory firm where we focus specifically on teaching individuals and teaching organizations how to apply hostage negotiations, practices and principles to their world. What makes it so effective is this idea of tactical empathy, the use of emotional intelligence to make deliberate attempts at not only recognizing the perspective of the counterpart, but articulating that recognition. And the articulation is more important than anything else in that definition, because the recognition part of it is easy. As I mentioned, all of us have the same capability. Our subconscious is a supercomputer on steroids. Our subconscious allows us to process 20 million bits of information per second. Your conscious brain only processes 40. And so this goes back to what I was saying earlier, this is you knowing something without knowing how you know it. And so this idea of articulating, if I understand what Skot’s perspective is, it does Skot no good if I don’t articulate that understanding. You follow? So when I…

It’s like a secret I’m keeping to myself. If I know that you are angry and you are frustrated and you feel betrayed and I do not verbalize each one of those, you’re gonna think to yourself, he doesn’t get it. And if he doesn’t get me or my worldview, meaningful dialogue is not going to take place. So tactical empathy is about you subordinating yourself, deferring to the other side for the majority of the interaction.

And that’s what I did as a hostage negotiator, deferred to the other side. It would drive people crazy. This insane person who’s holding a child against their will in their home. And I’m on the phone talking to him about his feelings. It would drive people absolutely crazy. But there’s a method to the madness. The best purveyors of tactical empathy on the planet are hostage negotiators and sociopaths. And we both use them, use it for very different reasons.

Ted Bundy was executed for the murder of a seven year old girl. On death row, Ted Bundy confessed to the murder of at least 30 other women, which means he was probably responsible for closer to 70 or 80. Because when you’re talking about murder, nobody really low balls that number. mean, nobody high balls that number. It’s usually gonna be a low ball number. But my point is, he’s a sociopath. How was he able to get otherwise smart individuals into compromising positions that cost them everything? He knew the effectiveness of tactical empathy. They didn’t call it tactical empathy back then. It was just empathy. But he knew the effect and how powerful it was.

Skot Waldron (35:48.494)
I’m so I come from this, this world of, of branding and, and, marketing back in my previous life. And now I train a lot of leaders and teams and communication and strategy and whatnot. But I’ve, I’ve often heard this idea of get them, get some confirmation, get them nodding their head. Yes. Get them saying yes. Get them to get buy-in because if you can get people to say yes, then you get them to show yes, then they’re more likely to jump on board with that thing that you’re offering. You’re creating harmony between each other. If people say no, then it’s creating a barrier. No, I’m creating a boundary. I’m creating a border. I’m creating something that I don’t want you to cross and I’m a line in the sand.

But you have an interesting philosophy on this no thing. I love it. Actually, I want you to, I want you to share your idea of no as a leadership strategy.

Derek Gaunt (36:52.836)
Yeah, so no is where you get started. No is actually a counter offer in disguise. Because if they’re saying no to something, there’s something that they will say yes to. And your job is to figure out what that is and make a determination as to whether or not modification or concessions are possible. Yes is worthless.

Most… gosh, this drives me up the wall.

Most sales training, a lot of leadership training proposes that if I can get Skot to say yes multiple times in this conversation about whatever, when I get to the big ask, he’s more inclined to say yes to the big ask. They call this, at least in sales training, they call these things tie downs. Think about that term for a second. You’re using a technique to tie your counterpart down and you think they like that? You think that’s going to end up well for you? In the short term, yes, that’s why they’re still selling that crap, those courses. In the short term, yes, you can make money from it. But the other side feels you taking them in a direction that they have not volunteered to go.

Go back to what I talked about earlier, removing yourself as a threat. You’re using techniques to tie them down. How is that tantamount to removing yourself as a threat? And so from our perspective, I don’t want to hear a bunch of yeses from you. I want to protect your autonomy. I want you to feel like you have the wiggle room or the flexibility to say yes or no. The yes-oriented questions are designed to get a yes, period, to tie the person down. The no-oriented question protects autonomy. Yes is always commitment and obligation. No is always protection. And I’m continually amazed at what you can get other people to agree to when you allow them to say no instead of yes.

Skot Waldron (39:26.542)
Can you give me, can you give me an example? I want to, I want to hear, cause I’m, I’m trying to rephrase them. I’m trying to get this in my brain of how do I set up a question? How do I create a question that gives them the permission to say no almost draws a no out so that I can start to discover the hidden information that I just don’t realize.

Derek Gaunt (39:46.692)
All right, first of all, I want to explain that the Black Swan methodology based on our skill set is not magic fairy dust. You’re not going to throw out one or two of these skills and all of a sudden it’s sunshine, rainbows, unicorns. It’s the cumulative effect of all the skills throughout the course of the conversation. So is one yes-oriented question going to blow up your interaction? No. Is one no-oriented question going to save your interaction? No. Good or bad, we’re looking at the cumulative effect of your performance within the conversation. So going back to your original question, an example. If I were to call you up out of the blue and say to you, Skot, you got a couple minutes to talk?

Immediately several thoughts go through your head before you even open your mouth. The first thought that goes into your head is how long is a few minutes? The second thought is if I have a few minutes, do I want to talk to you? The third thought that goes through your head is if I have a few minutes and I want to talk to you, am I going to want to talk about what you want to talk about?

And the fourth thing that goes through your head is how can I bail on this call as fast as possible? Less than a second, Skot, those four things go through your head and they go through your head because you are in a defensive posture because I’m trying to take your autonomy away and force you into a yes. Clearly, it’s good time for me to talk because I’m the one that made the phone call. So, clearly I am driving you for a yes because it’s convenient for me. 2 millimeter shift is, do you have a few minutes to talk now becomes, is now a bad time because I want you to say no, it’s not a bad time. But you still have the option of saying yes, it is a bad time. That’s usually what you’re gonna get. If you get the yes, it’s gonna be yes, call me back, or yes, what is this about? But either way, they now feel like they have a choice in the matter. One of my favorite no-oriented questions, and this is for your group to use as they see fit because it is gold guy that you’ve been thinking about partnering with. He had a conversation with him in early May or early April and he said by mid May you’d hear back from him as to one way or the other and now we are at May 22nd and he still has not gotten back with you. You sent several emails, you texted him, no response. He is in effect ghosting you.

One of the best no-oriented questions to jumpstart a conversation is, in the subject line of your email only, the no-oriented question, have you given up on the possibility of us working together?

Now, probably close to 95 % success rate from everybody that I’ve ever coached into using that and don’t send and nothing in the body of the email. Subject line only. Have you given up on the possibility of us working together? Nothing in the body of the email, but my caution to you is don’t send the email unless you’re ready to talk to him or her right then and there because more often than not if they’ve got a minute to burn, they’re going to call you up at the very least to tell you, here’s why I’ve been ghosting you. we will right this ship in a few days. I’ve never seen, the longest I’ve had someone have to wait for a response to that question was 72 hours. And that was because the woman was in labor. And so that’s a great way to jumpstart the conversation. Now flip side of that, Skot, is if I send you the email, have you given up on?

And your response to me is, yes. What’s your next move? I get that question all the time. Hey, I sent the email like you said, and he responded with, yes. What’s my next move? And my response is always the same. It’s time to move on. Stop chasing business you’re not going to get. And let’s go find somebody that wants to work with you. And so that’s the idea behind the no-oriented question. Protects autonomy.

Great way to jumpstart a conversation, great way to break an impasse. it’s, we’re looking for the cumulative effect of all of the skills that the no oriented questioner, a great one to demonstrate to the other side that you care as much about them as you do about your own position.

Skot Waldron (45:22.67)
Okay, that’s, that’s good. Is now. So as a leader, have somebody I’m giving. I I’m giving, I I’m approaching that person has a lot of defenses up. They’re thinking I’ve got a lot of crap to do. They’re thinking I’m really stressed. They’re thinking, this is my boss. I can’t say no, or I have to say yes, or like.

Derek Gaunt (45:41.144)
Yep. Yep.

Skot Waldron (45:51.832)
There’s authoritative things in there. mean, a boss can come up all day and say, is now a bad time? And that person’s obviously gonna say, well, obviously, more likely than not, they’re gonna go, my boss is calling. Like, I gotta take this. No, it’s not a bad time, right? And in the meantime, they’re still processing this idea of like, yes, it really is a bad time, like kind of thing.

Derek Gaunt (46:17.944)
It be. It could be. This is my point with saying that it’s not a one and done. As a leader, you ask that no oriented question because that’s your first salvo at showing deference. Deference to your subordinates. Is that what I’m suggesting? Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. Let me put it to you like this. As a hostage negotiation commander, as a hostage negotiator, I had the authority and the resources to negatively impact the environment of the person on the inside of the crisis site anytime I want it. I could fix bayonets and chop heads off anytime I want it as a leader, different context, but you have the authority to fix bayonets and impact your direct reports environment anytime you want. What’s the purpose of carrying yourself like that? What’s the purpose of conveying that overtly? They know based on the org chart where they fit in. And so here you come not flaunting that authority. Here you come demonstrating that I’m more to be mindful of your time is now a bad time. Now they could say, no, it’s not a bad time. my God, it’s going to be awful. He’s going to all of those negative things that you pointed out. And this is why it’s imperative that early on in your interaction with your direct report, you list those things out just the way you did for me. I know you’re probably thinking I’m here to put more work on your plate. You’re thinking to yourself, these people in authority positions within this organization can’t make up their mind.

You’re frustrated because we’re constantly giving you new directives. We start you out on one project and then pull you over to another. You throw out those, now what I just said there, those are all accusations on us. Those are all preemptive labels. Those are you asking yourself, if I was in my direct report shoes, what would I be thinking about me? What would I be thinking about this organization? What would I be thinking about this conversation?

What are all the negative opinions, assumptions, or impressions that may be bouncing around in their head based on the context? And you go after them early on. The more you mitigate, the clearer their mind becomes, the more receptive they’re going to be once you actually give them their directive towards the end of the conversation. When you actually tell them, here’s what we’re doing now. But it starts off with that accusations on it. So no oriented question is, is now a bad time and then you follow it immediately with accusations on it. You’re probably going to think that we are talking out both sides of our face. You’re probably wondering why you agreed for me to come in and sit down with you to begin with. This may be a complete waste of your time, et cetera. As many as you can think of based on the context. And then one of the things that I love to do is to ask them to go first simply by asking, what’s your vision on X?

The thing that I’m going to talk to them about, the thing that I’m going to try, the direction I’m going to try to move them. I’m going to say, what is your vision on X? You’ve been with the company for X number of weeks, months, years. You probably have a pretty decent vision on how effective we’ve been with X. Would you be against me? I’m sorry. Would you be against walking me through that vision? And now let them dump their, but I don’t care what they say. It doesn’t really matter. I’m listening, but it doesn’t really matter what they say because I know where I want to end up.

So it doesn’t really matter what they say. This is another example of me demonstrating tactical empathy and I’m using it for that person’s purpose and that person’s almost exclusively to show them that because no boss comes into a direct report and says, what do you think about us doing this? That’s not the way those conversations start.

And so here you are talking to this direct report and asking them what their vision is for next steps.

I’m listening intently because I’m going to highlight those things that benefit my position I’m gonna make a mental note of those that don’t and then I’m follow their vision with a summary and Then another no oriented question. Would you be against me walking you through the realities of the environment?

And they say no. They feel obligated to say no because of everything that I’ve done up to that point. And then one or two more accusations, audits. This is going to feel like a punch in the stomach. When I’m done, you’re going to want to reach across the table and stab me in the eye with a pen.

And then I get into it. And now I can explain. Now I can pitch. Now I can draw my line in the sand or otherwise make my ask or give my directive. And they’re more likely to follow through with less pushback and reluctance and hesitancy because I first demonstrated for them that this is what the lay of the land looked like from their side of the street.

Skot Waldron (52:14.072)
That, that is good. Okay. I can see the framework. I can see the, I guess the key word I also put into some of these is collaboration. The idea of collaboration of, of it’s not me talking at you. It’s not me. You know, flexing my authority and putting you down here. Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. Yeah. I know better. know better. but it’s really drawing out.

Pulling, it’s this idea of push and pull. We push, we pull, and that harmony is what’s going to create that influence that probably is going to help us over time. Well, that will help us over time for sure.

Derek Gaunt (52:56.836)
Yeah, and it’s, you know, and the influence is born out of, again, I’m going to sound like a broken record. It’s born out of curiosity. Curiosity is irresistible. People are starving for it. If you don’t believe me, Skot, and I would challenge your viewers and listeners in the same vein, go to a coffee shop, ask the person behind the counter how they’re doing regardless of their response, you label what you heard. So you go into the coffee spot and the person says, you say, how you doing? The person goes, sheesh and you say to that person, seems like you’ve been getting kicked in the teeth all day long today. And watch how they respond to your picking up on their perspective and verbalizing it. They will vomit up so much information about what’s going on in their day. And here’s the interesting thing is that there have been before you, there would have been 99 people that came up and asked, how are you today? Or some iteration of that.

Ninth and night those 99 people didn’t care and here you are being that one-off Watch what happens? Watch what happened and the beautiful thing about it is that you don’t there’s no script There’s nothing there’s nothing you have to memorize You are repackaging exactly what you’re getting from the other side and you’re giving it back to them

And so there’s no pressure on you on air quotes have to think of what to say. You take what they give you, you repackage it, you give it back to them. And that’s, that’s, it’s, it’s, it demonstrates listening and listening is the cheapest and most effective concession that you can make one person to another. The most valuable tool in our toolbox and yet the most underutilized. We cannot shut our mouths. We just can’t. We are driven.

To speak, speak, speak, speak, speak, very few of us listen at a level deep enough to satisfy the other side. Most of us spend their time either at intermittent listening or rebuttal listening. The intermittent listening is when you’re listening long enough to get the gist of what the other side says and then you refocus on your own internal monologue. The rebuttal listening is where you listen long enough to hear something you know you can argue with and now you’re just waiting for them to shut up so you can jump into the conversation and tell them how dumb they are and how smart you are. That’s low-hanging fruit. It takes almost no effort to do that. Real listening, empathetic listening, I would challenge you to be able to do that effectively for longer than 20 minutes. It’s that taxing. So it’s all about demonstrating a certain level of curiosity and that only comes with you listening at the deepest level.

Skot Waldron (56:06.316)
you man brilliant your book ego authority failure it’s out it’s been out where where can people get a hold of that where can people get a hold of you if they want more of this.

Derek Gaunt (56:10.338)
Yes, sir.

Yeah, we’ve got an S load of free resources on the website. The YouTube channel is going very well. Ego authority failure, you can pick it up at Amazon. Audible has it, Kindle has it. And of course, you can order the actual soft copy. If you want to reach out to us for discussion about what we offer on the corporate level, what we offer on the individual level, info at blackswanltd.com and somebody will reach out to you and answer whatever questions that you might have.

Skot Waldron (57:02.99)
So cool, man. You’re all over the place. You’re speaking, you’re writing. you’ve got podcasts out there. I’ve, I’ve found lots of them. So, keep spreading the word, man. Keep doing what you’re doing. I think what you have, you know, it, it, it puts, I guess puts your spin on things that I think people get in the rut of thinking about, like the typical sales ideology, for example, on the way you

Derek Gaunt (57:03.928)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Skot Waldron (57:32.558)
Twist that and make us think about it, I think is brilliant. So keep pushing it. Thanks for being on the show, man.

Derek Gaunt (57:37.656)
Thank you, I appreciate the invite and best of luck to you. Hopefully we can circle back.