The FBI's Best Negotiator, Chris Voss, Doesn't Want You to Say Yes

I’ve seen Chris Voss speak at a few conferences and gone through training with him. If you don’t know the name, he spent years with the FBI and became their lead international kidnapping negotiator. He’s better known now as the author of Never Split the Difference.

You’d assume someone with that background built his career on getting people to agree with him. He didn’t. He built it on getting people to say no.

Most Of Us Are Chasing The Wrong Answer

In business, we’re trained to want yes. Did the client say yes? Did the employee agree? Did we close it? Yes feels like progress, so we chase it, sometimes without noticing how we got it.

Voss teaches the opposite. He wants no. Not because he enjoys rejection, but because no is honest in a way yes often isn’t.

Think about how often someone tells you yes just to end a conversation. A client agrees to a timeline they can’t actually hit. An employee says they’re fine with a change they’re not fine with. A prospect says “sounds good” and never calls back. None of that was ever really a yes. It was just the fastest way out of an uncomfortable moment.

That yes didn’t tell you anything. It just got you out of the room.

Why “No” Works Better

People say no when they feel safe saying it. A no means they still have control. That’s the opposite of a yes that got talked into existing.

Voss’s example: instead of asking “Is now a good time to talk?” ask “Is now a bad time to talk?”

It’s a small swap. But it hands the other person an easy out, and an easy out is exactly what makes someone honest.

Most people won’t volunteer an objection. They’ll hand it to you the moment you make it safe to say.

If they say no, you actually learn something.

Maybe the timing’s wrong. Maybe there’s a concern nobody’s raised yet. Maybe you’re solving a problem they don’t have.

That’s real information. A polite yes never would have given you any of it.

Where This Shows Up In A Normal Week

You don’t need a hostage situation to use this. You need a vendor negotiation, a client who’s gone quiet, or an employee who agreed to a deadline that’s already slipping. It shows up in the ordinary moments where somebody would rather

nod along than tell you something’s wrong.

Next time, don’t ask for confirmation. Ask for the objection. “Is this a bad time?” “Is there a reason this doesn’t work?” “Is there something I’m missing?”

You’re not trying to get someone to argue with you. You’re removing the pressure that makes people say yes when they mean no.

The Real Lesson

Most negotiation advice is about getting to agreement faster. Voss’s approach is slower, and it’s built on getting to the truth faster instead.

A fast yes that isn’t real costs you more time later than a slow no ever will. That’s the part worth remembering, long after the rest of the training fades: stop chasing agreement, and start chasing honesty.

The agreement tends to follow anyway, and when it doesn’t, at least you know where you actually stand.

I still catch myself chasing yes more than I’d like to admit, in meetings, with vendors, even with my own team. This skill takes a lot of practice, and thankfully the stakes aren’t as high in the business world as they were for Chris’s FBI negotiating team. But the habit is the same either way: ask the question that lets someone tell you the truth.