Episode 151: Negotiate as if Your Life Depended on it With International Hostage Negotiator and Author Chris Voss

Chris Voss is the author of “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It” and the CEO and Founder of the Black Swan Group Ltd.

Chris has used his years of experience in international crises and high-stakes negotiations to develop a unique program and team that applies these globally proven techniques to the business world.

He was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. During his government career, he also represented the U.S. Government at two (2) international conferences sponsored by the G-8 as an expert in kidnapping. Prior to becoming the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator, Christopher served as the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI. Christopher was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years.  He was the case agent on such cases as TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheikh Case – Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe, and negotiated the surrender of the first hostage taker to give up in the Chase Manhattan bank robbery hostage-taking.

During Chris’s 24-year tenure in the Bureau, he was trained in the art of negotiation by not only the FBI but Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. He also received the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.

Chris has taught business negotiation in the MBA program as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.  He has taught business negotiation at Harvard University, guest lectured at The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, The IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, and The Goethe School of Business in Frankfurt, Germany.

Learn more about Chris and his work at www.blackswanltd.com