- Negotiate your salary, business deals, or relationships using the same strategies as an FBI agent: by navigating emotions and leveraging influence.
- Influence is key to affecting someone's character or behavior without force or direct command.
- In his book "EQ Applied," author Justin Barison explains how an FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, used influence to negotiate masterfully.
- According to Bariso, managing an influential relationship requires three skills of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.
- These skills can help you negotiate, persuade, and more effectively manage conflict in a variety of situations.
The following is an excerpt from "EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide to Emotional Intelligence:"
Chris Voss may be the best negotiator in the world. Voss spent more than two decades in the FBI, including fifteen years as a hostage negotiator, during which he worked on more than 150 international hostage cases. Eventually, he was chosen among thousands of agents to serve as the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator — a position he held for four years.
Voss recalls one day in 1998, standing in a narrow hallway outside an apartment in Harlem, New York City. Three heavily armed fugitives were reportedly inside, the same fugitives who had engaged in a shoot-out with rival gang members some days before. A SWAT team stood at attention just a few steps behind Voss. Voss's job: convince the fugitives to give up without a fight.
With no telephone number to call, Voss was forced to speak through the apartment door. He did so for six hours, with no response. He began to question if anyone was even inside.
Suddenly, the door opened. A woman walked out, followed by all three fugitives.
Not a single shot fired. No loss of life. Not even a harsh word.
How did he do it?
Using what he describes as his "late-night FM DJ voice," Voss repeated variations of the following: "It looks like you don't want to come out. It seems like you worry that if you open the door, we'll come in with guns blazing. It looks like you don't want to go back to jail."
Afterwards, Voss was curious as to what specifically convinced the fugitives to finally come out.
"We didn't want to get caught or get shot, but you calmed us down," they said. "We finally believed you wouldn't go away, so we just came out."
Over the years, Voss fine-tuned his negotiation methods, allowing him to save hundreds of lives.
"It's not me bringing emotion in; it's already there," Voss told me in an interview. "It's the elephant in the room. There's this monstrous creature in the middle of every communication: it's what we want and it's based on what we care about.
Each one of us, we make every single decision based on what we care about and that makes decision-making, by definition, an emotional process.
"My approach is, let's stop kidding ourselves. Hostage negotiators don't kid themselves about emotions. It's all about navigating emotions, and one step leads to another, which then puts you in a position to influence others. It's based on trust and it allows you to influence outcomes.
"It allows you to change people's minds."
The world is your training field
You may never deal with a hostage situation, but every day you are faced with countless opportunities to influence and be influenced.
With each interaction with another person, a relationship is created or affected. Some of these relationships are short-lived, like a salesperson you meet and never see again. Other relationships — like those with family and friends — will last a lifetime. But every connection with another person involves both an exchange and an opportunity: to help or be helped, to harm or be harmed.
Relationship management is about making the most of these interactions. It is founded on the principle of influence — your capacity to affect others and their behavior, and their ability to affect you. But while some influence occurs naturally and unintentionally — the more time you spend with someone, the greater influence you exert on them, and vice versa — managing relationships is done with purpose. It includes using the other three skills of emotional intelligence — self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness — to help you persuade and motivate others, to more effectively manage conflict, and to maximize benefits.
In this chapter, we'll examine the nuances of influence and see what managing relationships looks like in the real world — and how it can help you be a better partner in all areas of life. The goal is simple: to get the best out of others and allow them to get the best out of you.
Defining influence
Influence is the act of affecting a person's character or behavior by means other than force or direct command. It is often unnoticeable: an American who moves to the UK may not realize the influence her new peers have on her vocabulary and accent — until she returns home and her family tells her how different she sounds.
A person could also unintentionally influence in negative ways. A young man who lacks social awareness might not realize he has a tendency to talk about himself too much — so much so that others avoid him when possible. A close friend might be so pushy with their opinions that you quit asking for them. Both are totally oblivious to how they're perceived by others.
Then there's intentional influence. Influencers use the principles of persuasion and motivation to overcome obstacles or manage conflict. They inspire others to think differently, to see things from a new perspective, and even to change their behavior.
Such attempts at influence can be short-term. For example, you might try to:
- Persuade your significant other of the need to buy something (or not buy something).
- Incline your child to clean their room, without asking them directly to do so.
- Calm down a friend who's upset.
Or, you may attempt to influence someone over a longer period of time, such as when you try to:
- Help your spouse quit smoking or get more exercise.
- Keep your boss from micromanaging you.
- Instill character and personal values into your children.
Excerpted from "EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide to Emotional Intelligence," in agreement with Borough Hall Publishing. Copyright © Justin Bariso, 2018.
Justin Bariso is the author of "EQ Applied," which uses fascinating research and compelling stories to illustrate what emotional intelligence looks like in everyday life.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: What's going on with Elon Musk