Why Asking for a “Chris Voss No" Gets You Further Than "Yes”, at Work and at Home

Welcome back to the Productivity Podcast where I give you a daily productivity tip so

you can get the most out of your time, your talent, and your ideas.

I'm your host Brandon White, here we go.

You finally get a few minutes with the person you need something from.

Could be your boss, could be your partner, could be a contractor who's been blowing past

your budget.

You're prepared.

You've thought this through.

You ask.

Can you help me out with this?

And they say, sure, yeah, absolutely.

And then, nothing changes.

Three weeks later, you're back in the same spot.

Except now, you've also lost a little trust in the conversation itself.

And the yes that felt like progress was just air.

You've got the wrong kind of yes.

And there's a better question to ask that changes the whole dynamic, no matter who you're

having the conversation with.

Today, we're taking a negotiation tactic straight out of the FBI playbook from former

hostage negotiator Chris Voss and showing you how to use it to set boundaries, push back

on overload and protect your time and sanity.

At work at home with a contractor, a friend, whoever, will explain what no-oriented questions

are, cover the psychology behind why no-oriented questions work so well, and then give you

three ways you can start using them right after finishing listening to this episode.

Chris Voss spent 24 years negotiating with terrorists, kidnappers, and bank robbers for

the FBI.

When he retired, he wrote, never split the difference.

And the productivity and communication world hasn't been the same since.

One of his most counterintuitive ideas, stop getting people to say yes.

After retiring, Voss attended a book signing for Jack Walsh, former CEO of General Electric,

one of the most influential business leaders of the past century.

Voss wanted Walsh to guess lecture his negotiation class at USC.

They'd never met.

Walsh didn't know him.

So instead of pitching, Voss asked a single, no-oriented question.

Walsh came to L.A. that fall and spoke to the class, and that's how well it works.

The reason it works is simple.

People are instinctively more comfortable saying no.

They see it as safe or more protective of their autonomy.

So when you ask a yes-oriented question like, can you help me with this?

Or do we agree we need to fix this?

The other person feels pressure.

They wonder what they're committing to, and they either hesitate, say yes without meaning

it, or quietly just check out.

A no-oriented question flips that.

You frame the question so that the no is the answer you want, and it relieves the other

person from wondering what they're signing up for.

A classic example.

Instead of, is now a good time to talk?

You ask, is now a bad time to talk?

If they say no, meaning it's not a bad time, you have their full attention.

And if they say yes, it's a bad time, they'll almost always offer you an alternative.

Small shift, different result.

Psychology figured out why this works decades ago.

A psychology paper published as a theory of psychological reactants by Jack Brem, first

introduced in the Journal of Personality in 1966, explains that when people feel their

freedoms are being pressured or constrained, they become motivated to push back and restore

that sense of control.

In other words, the more a yes-oriented question feels like pressure, the more the other person's

brain resists it, and it happens subconsciously.

No-oriented questions remove that friction entirely.

When you give someone room to say no, you hand them a sense of control, and that opens

the door to a real honest conversation instead of a hollow commitment they don't mean

anyway.

Your communication means less wasted time, fewer blown up expectations, and better relationships.

Here are three no-oriented questions you can use immediately covering three different

but very common situations.

Number one, at work, when you're overloaded instead of, can you take something off my

plate?

Try.

Would it be a problem to push the deadline on the Henderson report so I can give the client

proposal the intention it needs?

You're laying out the trade-off clearly, and the no feels like an easy, low-stakes answer

that actually solves your problem.

Number two, at home, when a conversation keeps getting avoided.

Instead of, can we talk about the Kitchen Remodel budget?

Try.

Is tonight a bad time to spend 20 minutes on the kitchen budget?

Asking for permission to have the conversation rather than launching into it completely changes

the energy.

You get either a, no, tonight's fine.

With their full attention, or, yes, but Saturday morning works better, either way you've

got something real in the calendar instead of another vague, yeah, we should talk about

that.

And the third no-question, with a friend who keeps flaking.

Instead of, can we please nail down a date?

Try.

Would it be crazy just to pick a day right now so we stop going back and forth?

From that way?

No, that's not crazy.

Practically answers the question right there, and suddenly you've got a plan.

I keep a printout in my work back as a reminder and read it over when I have a minute waiting

for a flight or grabbing a bite to eat because remembering these questions is really powerful.

And before we wrap up, if you are wondering what the no-question Chris Voss asked, Jack

Welsh, that got him to say yes to being a guest's lecturer, it was, would it be crazy

for me to ask you to do a guest's lecture to the class I'm teaching at USC?

Jack's response was quick and simple.

No, here's my assistance number, let's get it on the schedule, I would love to do it.

Whether it's your boss, your partner, or a friend who keeps forgetting to call you back,

don't reach for the yes, reach for the no.

The FBI figured out that the no is where the real commitment lives.

Turns out, the same is true in your Monday morning check-in, your Sunday night kitchen conversation,

and everywhere in between.

Give the Chris Voss no a try and see what a difference it makes.

You're moved.

Thanks so much for listening to the Productivity Podcast.

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We'll see you in the next episode.