Chris Voss Speaks on Tactical Empathy at The World Economic Forum 2025

One of the things we all have to at some point in our lives figure out is how we get what we want, when it's too challenging or maybe when it's too tricky, maybe when you lack resources that you need to become resourceful. So our keynote speaker now, Chris Voss, is going to teach us how we can become resourceful with what we have, and for most of us, because I hear some of you talking, keep it down, to use our voice. So thank you very much, Chris Voss, and the stage is yours, sir. Pleasure is mine. Thank you. How have I started the negotiation already? A couple of ways. A little bit of humor, making you wonder what I was going to say next. Secondly, the late night FM DJ voice. I know that my tone of voice is going to have an immediate impact on the pace of your brain. It's a neuroscience reaction. It's things you can't stop me from changing the velocity of your thoughts. you can resist them you could fight back you can move it back but if i use the downward inflecting voice it actually slows your brain down before i finished a sentence if i smile that's actually you didn't choose to smile back it's a it's a neurochemical response it's an involuntary response now you can fight the smile but you can't stop me from starting it and a statistic that I like a lot is you're 31% smarter in a positive frame of mind source of that is a TED talk by Sean Acker Harvard psychologist I don't often quote psychologists the happy secret to better work I think is the name of the TED talk I highly recommend that it is some of the most enjoyable 12 minutes of your life of course he talks about happiness and it's in humor and how it makes you smarter and of course the TED talk is highly entertaining so it's worth listening to so I have an indecent proposal the secret to power negotiations is empathy empathy what because empathy is a secret to power relationships and those of you that are truly great negotiators realize the key to a powerful negotiation is a powerfully strong relationship a powerfully strong connection and many of you instinctively know that already but how does empathy play into that well I will indecently redefine the word is it just a transmission of information and only so it's not agreement it's not disagreement it's not sympathy at all it's not compassion the reaction to the transmission of that information is often compassion so if I use empathy with you you feel compassion from me I don't necessarily have to have compassion for you but you feel it from me and there are a couple things that are truly irresistible I don't know of any human being on earth that can resist Just compassion, no matter who you are, no matter what political, ideological, religious agenda you're propagating, because you react to compassion. It moves you more in the direction of the other person. How could it be, no matter who you are, even a sociopath, if you will, does empathy work with social paths even social paths react to compassion do they possess it for others is a separate issue but do they react to it and how do they react to it when I finish I'll tell you a story to help make the case but then I'll lay the groundwork along the way so the next indecent thing that I will do how can we all be the same and all of us be different how is that possible how is it I'm standing in front of a cross-cultural negotiation expert I think it was actually here in Switzerland about a year ago and of course his claim to fame was that well you have to know Italians you have to know Germans you have to know this you have to know that you have to be an expert in each one and he could tell from the look on my face that i wasn't buying any of it and finally just blurted out everybody just wants to know that you know where they're coming from my definition of empathy if i know where you're coming from i don't have to agree with it or disagree with it how do you know that i know where you're coming from i've got to say it out loud and that triggers changes neurochemical changes in you that you can't change you can't stop so the same and different there is a hypothesis if you will I don't know how the you rigorously prove this I'm not saying psychologists or neuroscientists really argue with it they were all born original equipment just like a car original equipment we're all born with a group of core emotions and first articulated by psychologists I need I believe Paul Ekman and there were five as I recall anger fear disgust happiness and I can't remember the fifth because since then other psychologists will not disagreeing said say well they're not five they're seven or it's not happiness it's joy academics researchers tend to want to argue with one another over nitpicking ideas but nobody wants to argue the idea that we're all born with these core emotions and then feelings are what happens when our interactions when our life interacts with reality, the world. A friend of mine writes a blog that says, well, we're all different because Eskimos have this word for an emotion that no one else in the world has, or there's a South Sea island in the Pacific where the inhabitants have a word for emotions that no one else has. Well, they're feelings, the core emotions interacting with life. So no matter who you are, no matter what your gender, your ethnicity, your religion, when you came to Earth originally, to the planet, you were born with these core emotions, original equipment and they react the same way regardless. So if I use empathy with you, you will respond no matter your age, your gender, your ethnicity. I like to joke that empathy is so powerful, it's even effective with vegans. Now that's powerful. As a joke in the United States, how do you know if somebody's a vegan? They'll tell you. And then my girlfriend was giving me a hard time recently because I grew up in a small town in Midwestern United States in the state, Iowa, the state of Iowa. And those of us that are from Iowa, we're very proud of this. We think of ourselves as very practical people. and I was bringing it up in a group conversation recently and she said, you people from Iowa, you're so proud of yourselves, you can't wait to tell somebody you're from Iowa. You're worse than vegans. And I thought, wow, all right, all right. You know, that's a mark that I would be proud to exceed. So when I originally started hearing about the difference between emotions and feelings, I'm a very practical human being. I'm a practitioner, I'm a layman. I don't think of myself as an academic. I think of myself as a very experienced practitioner. I thought I really don't care what the difference between emotions and feelings are. That's an academic distinction that academics, which I realize I'm very hard on academics, while simultaneously we need them. We need them for the advancement of our knowledge and our learning. Similarly, I tend to be very hard on governments while simultaneously we need governments. We just need to understand their limitations. But anyway, I thought it was an academic distinction that didn't matter until I came across the explanation for why do you, certain people in certain parts of the world have words for feelings that no one else has? Well, if you're born with this original equipment, emotions, and then feelings are what happens when your experience reacts, that's how everyone in this room can be completely different, but at our core, exactly the same. that's why how I approach empathy will work with each and every one of you in this room to different degrees but will work with everyone here because of these core emotions that you were born with now another point that's lost is most of those emotions are negative. In the original five, four out of five were negative. So if I've learned an ability to process those negatives that you haven't I hold a distinct advantage in communications globally over you so if you feel that you're from Italy and you're an expert on Italians and you have to be from Italy to understand Italians well I understand human emotions and if you're Italian you have human emotions or German or French or African or Greek you're born with these core emotions so I'm gonna do something else indecent I'm gonna offer each of you two different phrases that I would respectfully request challenge that you use in your interactions for the rest of this week and I can promise you conversations that you'll love and remember and then I'll break down what you do each time and what to look for the first question to ask to get to know someone faster than you could imagine would be simply this what do you love about coming to Davos you can also change and say the boss but Davos so here's what happens when you ask somebody that question and here's how I stumbled over this I'm at a function in what is now probably burned down in Bella or Beverly Hills in Los Angeles a couple of years ago Forrest Whitaker the actor phenomenal actor and a great human being has started foundations in many of the places that he's done movies he has a foundation for youth in Africa he's a foundation for youth in Los Angeles several places friend of mine is organizing his foundation and i'm there because i was delighted to be there and it's a fundraiser which i ended up donating to despite myself but then i see an individual that's a friend of my friend and i can tell right away i don't like this guy but he's a friend of a friend and he is if you will a stereotypical entertainment industry Los Angeles male who you can tell he's in love with how beautiful he is very enamored with his own and quite very handsome man and that's not my type I need to speak to him and I don't want to have a forgettable conversation you know what do you do for a living any of those questions what are you doing here how do you know Forrest how do you know Dominic he's going to say the things to me he says to everyone else it'll be a completely forgettable conversation so i look at him and i say what do you love about los angeles and this is what will happen with everybody you say this to i saw him transform in front of my eyes and he lit up in a way that I saw him energize and made him happy and then he told me things about himself that I know he never told anybody else that night so when you ask this question you actually open a portal in their brain to deep thinking the what question creates with Danny Kahneman the winner of Nobel Prize in behavioral economics 2002 for prospect theory we call deep thinking deep introspective thinking stop you in your tracks thinking which is often exhausting like in any part time of the day even when you have the most energy if I ask you a what question and you answer and I ask you a how question and you answer and I ask you another what question you'll be exhausted that's early in the day whereas if it's at the end of the day you don't even have the ability to normally answer that question those of you that had children and you say when they come home from school and you say how is your day and they say I forget because actually it's a deep thinking question and they might not have the energy to answer but if I open that portal in your brain and I ask you about what you love you watch the person energize and you can see them you see their eyes shift and you see them shift deeply into something they love and no matter what time of day it is they energize in that moment you made them feel better and I delight in that I delight in being able to walk up to anybody and in less than 20 seconds raise them to a new level because that's what love is it's this tremendously energizing positive thing and everyone has loves so i'm walking up to a ceo as head of a water company not long after that and i'm very interested in international development and this is a company that provides clean water globally and i'm inspired by that so i ask him what do you love about being the CEO of your company and he says I love leading teams I absolutely love leading teams and I love giving shareholders a great return on their investment that's very important to me and then we deliver water and then he named a fourth thing so what did I learn instantly instantly in that period of time about him the mission didn't matter now as an entrepreneur I'm a mission first person and I want to make a lot of money but not blood money not empty money so the mission is going to be first with me in my company we make good money and if we coach you and you we train you we're gonna charge you a lot and if you have a lot at stake we're not gonna charge you anywhere near compared to how much you're going to make because I want you to see the world in color instead of black and white but in this response with this individual what I learned in that amount of time was I could never work for him because I would always be a mission first person and there will always be decisions in any company where you have to decide between the mission and the profit and I'm always gonna lean in the direction of the mission at the expense of profit and that guy's gonna fire me over it simultaneously he could never work for me because there would be times and we have made decisions intentional decisions that cost us money a friend of mine has said the test of your core values are will you lose money over them and on a regular basis I make decisions that cost us money because it follows our core values so in that short period of time it was an interesting conversation with me with that man but I knew that we would never be close there's no judgment on either one of us not bad nor good it's just it will never be close because of those distinctions so what happens if they don't love what you asked them about so I'm getting it into a lift I live in Las Vegas I'm getting into a lift and I expect that if you're in the service business you've agreed almost like the terms and conditions and Facebook right you've agreed that you will provide service and I don't travel light I travel all the time I don't believe in traveling light I always have at least two suitcases full of many things mostly vitamins so I call the lift and in Las Vegas they have a choice of where they can wait for you in the airport and this guy's at the far side of the parking lot I'm dragging my suitcases over my hands full two suitcases two shoulder bags and as I'm getting close he's not moving a muscle doesn't get out of a SUV to help doesn't open the back end of the SUV I walk around to the back of the SUV he still hasn't popped out I got to figure out how to open it I gotta load my bags everything guy hasn't moved the muscle I get in and I you know emotions have a a feeling have an energy i absolutely believe that there's emotions that are projected in person through energy fields and i can just feel that he's seething and he's just waiting for me to say something of complaint so that he can kick me out of his vehicle which is his right and we take off and my instinctive anger is reacting to his anger and I can feel the downward spiral and I envision myself standing on the side of the highway while he is driving away after he's kicked me out of his vehicle because we've had an argument and I would rather not walk home on the freeway carrying my bags and it looks like he hates what he does for a living So I say, what do you love about driving for Lyft? Here's the secret. He immediately launched into why he was driving for Lyft. And it was in support of his grandson. And his daughter had had a bad relationship where she'd become impregnated. The guy abandoned her. She was lost. She moved in with him. she worked as a nurse and driving for Lyft gave him the opportunity to give his grandson a better life whenever his daughter had to be home because she had to work specific shifts so I couldn't help but be touched by his what he loved about why he was there and this is what will happen no matter what you ask anybody because they may not love where they are or why what they're doing there but they will love why they're there which is another delightful thing to go through my company's training in Dubai about ten months ago we have an exercise where we make you do this you don't get a stand on the sidelines when you come to train with me we're gonna make you try this in person to feel it and I'm looking around the room there's about 70 people in a room there's one individual that is not engaged in the exercise that makes you my victim I'm gonna come down and sit down with you and I'm gonna say what do you love and since we were in Dubai I said what you love about being in Dubai and he looked at me and he says I don't love Dubai I think Dubai is a polished piece of garbage that wasn't word used but for me then I this is fascinating because I know you're not here's a condition of your parole and I began to speak with him and I found out he was he was he was born and grew up in England but he was a Palestinian ethnicity and he was working in Dubai to send money back to his family admirable qualities someone I could be close to loyalty family hard work opportunity freedom those are core values that I learned in those few moments that I was with him so what do you love about pick it when whoever you talk to watch them shift in front of your eyes to a better place and then you will hear phenomenal things about them since one the other sentence seems like you have a reason for saying that there will not be any conversation that you have with anyone that will not draw them out you go to Washington DC today and say what do you love about Donald Trump I love Donald Trump after they tell you seems like you have a reason for saying that same person what do you love about Donald Trump I think he's the worst thing that ever could have happened to American politics seems like you have a reason for saying that they do they want to be able to tell you it doesn't matter what opinion they represent this empathy concept the feeling of compassion everybody wants to open up with you as long as you won't argue with them I could pick any leader of any Western European country sit him down with Vladimir Putin and ask him about the war and if that leader instead of lecturing him would say seems like you have a reason get him to talk and potentially hear what he's saying out loud find the things the two of you can potentially agree on even if you don't agree the act of feeling heard, being made to feel heard, triggers someone feeling compassion. There isn't a human being on earth that will not draw closer to you if they feel like they are receiving compassion from you. The secret to power negotiations is power relationships, the application of empathy, not you understanding but you demonstrating to the other person that you understand. I I first started doing this in New York City when I was an FBI agent and we had a case that was tried in open court against an individual who was a legitimate Islamic cleric. Even though we had charges against him, none of us have ever disagreed whether or not he had credentials that justified that he was a legitimate cleric. There are things that he did that were against American law, but those two things could be simultaneously true. We had Muslim witnesses testifying in open court against someone that they thought it was wrong to advocate murder on behalf of political religious beliefs. Those are interesting arguments. What did I say to get them to voluntarily testify? I would sit down with them and I would say, you believe that for the last 200 years there's been a succession of American governments that have been anti-Islamic and they would look startled and say yeah now did I agree I said you believe did I disagree I never said but we have a First Amendment and the First Amendment promises this and that and our country was founded on the belief of freedom of religion I never agreed or disagreed or explained and they were shocked that I could say that and they would bond with me and they would be honest with me and they would be willing to be open and honest from that point forward so empathy is not agreement empathy is not sympathy empathy is not compassion it's a precursor to compassion you'll feel compassion from me I don't necessarily have to feel it and the important thing is how does it feel to you because you will draw closer to me and you will be more honest with me because of those five core emotions that i talked about from the very beginning that each and every one of you possesses which makes you vulnerable to the feeling of connection regardless of how the world has treated you after you were born because you were still born with this The last point I'll make is I started this negotiating with an al-Qaeda terrorist about 20 years ago. I was holding an American for hostage, $10 million ransom demand. The terrorist said the ransom demand was not ransom but war damages for 500 years of oppression in the Philippines from the colonial powers that have been through the Spanish, the Japanese, and the Americans. And he further contended that they weren't Filipinos, but they were Moros from a separate Moro Islamic homeland that was being held up and was being oppressed by puppet government in Manila, dominated by the most recent colonial power of the United States. And we argued and debated, what does an American today have to do with what happened that the Spanish did 500 years ago? and how is that 10 million dollars and finally one day we decided to no longer debate or argue or show a counterpoint we were going to say everything back to him that he was saying to us and a negotiator that i was coaching i said you will summarize his facts not ours his and he will say that's right and everything will change and everyone said sure right of course no go ahead go ahead try it we got the terrorist on the phone and the negotiator that i was coaching and he was only coachable he knew nothing about negotiations prior the only thing i would ask of you is are you coachable and he repeated everything It went on and on, 500 years, colonial powers, Islamic homeland, and then went silent, and the terrorist on the other end of the phone said, that's right, and in that moment, the ransom went from 10 million to zero. Now, the kidnapping took a couple more twists and turns over the course of a couple of coming months no ransom was ever mentioned again non-monetary demands came up we were relentless with empathy and then on monday thursday the thursday before easter on the anniversary of the night that jesus prayed in gethsemane our hostage walked away he simply walked away military found him flew him back to Manila press conference we rescued him gave him a ride we rescued him but the important thing was I was back in the Philippines three weeks later I went to the negotiator that I've been coaching and he said you're never going to guess who called me on the phone I don't know the Al Qaeda terrorist what did he say He said, have you been promoted? I don't know what you said. I was going to kill the American. You stopped me from doing it. You should be promoted. What did he say? No matter how it turns out, he still felt respected and connected and would talk to the negotiator that I spoke to under any circumstances again. This is what I'm asking. The tides of history change. You are the captain of your ship. The tides may change, but as long as you approach people with respect and empathy, they will always be willing to talk with you again, regardless of how the tides have separated you, the governments, whatever they may be. Always leave people willing to speak to you again. That's all I ask of you, to always leave people willing to speak to you again. you will make a difference that will echo across the world thank you so if you learn something from uh from chris we're going to be doing this again a little bit differently in two days so on the 22nd here he will be on a panel with myself a cia station chief of a department of justice head attorney for the district of columbia and a u.s ambassador we're going to talk about diplomacy we're going to talk about the state of the world and you'll be able to learn more from Chris Voss but I have to ask you because you love to learn it's all over you Chris what are you learning today oh wow um the different takes and the different opinions on AI and the biohacking um everyone that I've met here so far and had any kind of a conversation your journey to this room is utterly fascinating and I'm loving hearing about it and how you developed and how you see things so to me this is this is a this is a buffet of ideas Chris I'll see you in a couple days my friend

Chris Voss Speaks at The World Economic Forum 2025. He will return to speak at the World Economic Forum in 2026!

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