What He Walks In With

Judge Giovanni Falcone knew more about Cosa Nostra than any investigator in Italy. Files, nicknames, photographs. Who was married to whom, who had done time with whom. He was missing one thing. The language.

The language came from Tommaso Buscetta, the first big boss to talk. It took hours and hours of questioning. Falcone said afterwards that Buscetta had been for them “something like a professor of linguistics who sends his students to Turkey and forbids them to use sign language.” A strict teacher. You want to understand, you learn the words; pointing won’t get you anywhere. Out of those sessions the judge’s team put the whole picture together: how the organisation was built, how it was run, how it thought.

I start with Falcone for one reason. The other man’s words you hear straight away. What he walked in with, you have to learn like a foreign language. Two men say the same thing: “Let’s talk about the price.” One has come to solve a problem. The other has come to save his skin. And they will have two very different conversations.

Your Heart Does the Sums Before You Do

For years the American psychologist Jim Blascovich and his colleagues sat volunteers down in front of something hard. Do mental arithmetic out loud. Give a speech to a camera. And they measured what the heart and blood vessels were doing.

Two pictures came out. When a person decided the task was beyond him, his vessels tightened and his heart beat fast but pushed out little blood. They called that the threat state. When he decided he had enough in him, the heart pushed out more and the vessels relaxed. That was the challenge state. From the outside both look equally nervous: racing pulse, damp palms. Inside, different work is going on. But they measured it with sensors, in a lab. A sensor won’t tell you how a conversation ends. Nor will you read it on the other man’s face. All you can do is guess: he looks scared right now.

Notice what it depends on. Not just the task. On the bill the person has written himself: what do they want from me, and is what I’ve got enough. Change one half of that bill and the person often changes. Not always. Some fear is older than any bill.

Two Sheets

Once the manager of one of the hotels came to see the Don. White as a sheet, and straight from the doorway: two sheets had gone missing. The owner had told him that next time he would answer for it himself.

Our arrangement was that for every sheet we lost we paid double. The Don paid. The manager took the money and stayed just as white. That surprised me at the time. But the Don saw it at once: the man wasn’t afraid of us. He was afraid of his boss, and money didn’t cover that fear.

So the Don said, “Show me how you count the linen on each floor.” The two of them spent an hour walking the storerooms. They found it: the chambermaids left one bag in the service lift, and it rode up and down until evening. The manager left a different man. His problem was the same as before. But now he had something to show his boss.

The Don didn’t get any softer with him and didn’t give him a discount. He simply gave the man more strength, and the threat became a task. That costs less than any discount. And it lasts longer.

How I Won and Lost

I once walked into a conversation in a threat state myself and didn’t even notice. I was twenty-something. The Don sent me to agree a price with the manager of the new hotel by the station. I was afraid of coming back empty-handed, so I fought. I squeezed out five per cent more than the Don had asked for and came back a hero.

The Don heard me out and asked, “How many years were you planning to work with him?” Many, I said. “Then why did you talk to him as if you’d never see him again?”

A year later the hotel went over to the competition. The manager didn’t complain and didn’t make a scene. He just left. I won the conversation and lost the client. My blood vessels that day, I imagine, were clenched good and tight. My fists too.

A man in a threat state isn’t bargaining with you. He’s bargaining with his fear. You can give him everything and the fear stays. He can give you everything and remember it as a defeat. Neither one is what you’d call a deal.

The Last Minute

In 1993 Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues had volunteers put their hands in cold water. Once for a minute. Another time for the same minute plus another half-minute, only at the end the water got a little warmer. Then they asked people which one they would repeat. Most chose the long one. It had more pain in it, but it ended more gently. So in experiments like these, memory is bad at adding up minutes. The overall verdict on an unpleasant episode is pulled hard towards the sharpest moment and the last one. Not for every episode and not for every person. But often.

The Don knew this without any water. After the toughest argument over the price of oil he would walk the restaurateur to his car himself. And on the way he’d talk about something the man had got right: the new dining room, the new menu, the son who’d got into university. Afterwards the man remembered not the argument but the walk to the car.

For a long time I took this for an old man’s good manners. Then I understood it was bookkeeping. The argument took an hour, the walk two minutes. But in people’s memory, as far as I could tell, the walk weighed a great deal more than its two minutes.

The Bottom Line

Before you talk business, work out what bill the man across from you has written himself. If he’s in a threat state, don’t lean on him and don’t butter him up. Give him something to stand on: a fact, a task, an ally. Then it’s easier for him to get down to business. And check yourself. If you’ve come to save your skin, you’ll win the words and lose the people.

Now the other way round. When they hurry you, drop hints about somebody else’s boss and a last chance, maybe the point is to make you uneasy. You don’t know why they do it, and pressure can push you to give in or to walk away. But a hurried signature is more often one you wouldn’t have put down on a calm day. And if after a hard deal they suddenly give you a warm send-off, enjoy it. Then reread the paper in the morning, once the send-off has worn off.