Conversation Craft: Negotiation and Communication as a Teachable Toolkit

Buyers priced out of Chris Voss still need what he sells: concrete, named techniques that survive contact with a real conversation. Vance's toolkit was earned in a different arena. Defending contested technology to hostile rooms, drawing out reluctant elders in hundreds of recorded life interviews, and mediating the loaded conversations inside family businesses.

The techniques have names and drills: mirroring, tell me more, pattern language, the two-weeks question, asking how instead of why. One alumnus called it the single highest leverage skillset he ever developed. The keynote demonstrates the moves live; the IBC course installs them.

In his own words

“I know I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, but I, I came all of this way because I have an idea and it's really important to me. And it's an idea that I have shown a lot of people and I've made it better, but I know that it's not as good as it could be. So I came here because I wanna show you and the other people that work here, this idea and see if you can tell me if it's crazy and I should throw it out, or if you can make it better, would it be all right if I drew this idea? Well, that was it, right? That was it. There's no other way to describe it. That moment right there, when I asked him, can I draw this categorically changed the nature of our relationship.”

“So by drawing your ideas, you get to increase the bandwidth, the amount of information that you share with another person. And at the exact same time, you take them from being adversarial to standing shoulder to shoulder with you.”

“The key to doing this is that when you repeat back for them, you are repeating it back for them in as high fidelity as you possibly can. And you are responsible for taking out all of the emotion on your side of the argument. You don't get to put in a barb, you don't get to treat their argument with any kind of sarcasm.”

“And maybe that's the most important part of mirroring, is that it forces you to take on the responsibility for the only thing that you can take responsibility for, which is yourself. In communications, it's so easy to imagine that the reason that the other person doesn't get what you're saying is because they're wrong or they're bad, or they're not paying attention, or they're just, they're just doing it on purpose. But even if all of those things are true, it doesn't matter because at its core, the only person you can control is yourself.”

“If you make eye contact with somebody, they will connect with you, you have their attention. And that's a great thing when you're trying to build up energy in an audience. However, it does put you in the position if you use eye contact to gain somebody's attention. You also are now staring at a dragon. And what do I mean by that? Well, when you look at somebody in the eye and they make connection with you, their emotion about what is going on in that moment is going to be written on their face.”

“You don't need any of those. You just need to have the courage to look someone in the eyes and the ability to just keep trying it until you figure it out. And it took me a long time to be able to do it naturally. But the thing that will really accelerate your progress on this is the next time you give a speech, you're standing up in front of a group of people and you try and make this eye contact and you're reading the emotion that is on someone's face as as you look them in the eye.”

Tested against real rooms

Vance has argued this material with, among others:

• Jason Bachman (Big J Bird), owner of Strange Donut (December 2019)
• Dwayne Faber, dairy farmer, Washington state (July 2019)
• Jay Delsing, professional golfer, Fox Sports commentator (July 2019)
• Steve Ernst, ICU nurse in St. Louis and Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor (March 2020)
• Jared McDaniel, Oklahoma Panhandle cattle rancher and host of Ag Uncensored (April 2020)
• [[Anne M. Stiles]] (August 2019)
• [[Camden Civello]] (August 2019)
• Razib Khan (geneticist, population genetics/ancestry consultant, host of The Insight podcast) (April 2020)
• [[Charlie Backer]] (September 2019)
• [[Jason Bockman]] (September 2019)
• Dr. Robb Fraley (former CTO, Monsanto) (April 2020)
• Heather Haymart, painter and former art teacher (October 2019)
• Matt Ridley (member of the House of Lords, author of The Red Queen, The Rational Optimist, How Innovation Works) (April 2020)
• Dr. Fred Perlak, retired Monsanto scientist (BT Cotton co-developer), Vance's former mentor (October 2019)
• Mike Rethmeyer, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach (October 2019)
• Kevin Folta (October 2019)

Common questions

Chris Voss is out of our budget. Is Vance a comparable negotiation speaker for a sales kickoff?

Comparable in kind: named techniques, live demonstration, tactical takeaways. Different in origin: Vance's material comes from ideological conflict and emotionally loaded family conversations rather than FBI standoffs, which many rooms find more transferable to their actual work.

Can he handle emotionally loaded conversations, like family business clients?

That is his home turf. Between Legacy Interviews and his succession material, he works inside families professionally. Wealth managers and family business councils book him precisely for this.

Is there training beyond the keynote?

Yes. The Interest-Based Communication course runs as small cohorts for individuals and as an executive course companies send leaders to.