Episode #32: Derek Gaunt (Instructor, Expert Coach, & Author, Black Swan Group)

In this episode of the RealLifeSuperPowers podcast, we speak with Derek Gaunt. Derek is a lecturer, author of Ego, Authority, Failure©, and a negotiations trainer and coach at the Black Swan Group. Some of you may be familiar with the Black Swan Group as it is managed by Chris Voss the author of the bestselling book “Never Split the Difference”. 

He has 29 years of law enforcement experience, 20 of which as a team member, leader and then commander of hostage negotiations teams in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. 

He is a hostage negotiation and incident command subject matter expert who frequently speaks at hostage negotiations and SWAT conferences across the US. 

If you’re asking yourself what this has to do with you, the answer is a LOT.

Derek teaches leaders how to apply hostage negotiation practices and principles to their world.

Spoiler? It’s all about interpersonal communications and increasing performance by changing the way we think about communicating.

We discuss:

• How to smartly elicit required responses in a negotiation 
• Tactical empathy – seeing things from the other side’s eyes (as opposed to trying to “walk in their shoes”). 
• Deal-killers
• The power of curiosity – going into every conversation assuming you have something to learn  
• The importance of determining early in the cogeneration whether you’re the “fool or the favorite”
• Asking labels – “When you say to someone it seems like you have a vision of how this is going to work out, they immediately become a narrator of how this is playing in their head, and they tell you exactly what’s important to them”
• Identifying and navigating the black swans in every conversion (the unexpected occurrences that are bound to happen)
• The advantage of empathetic listening 
• Finding the real motivation when someone is asking you for something 
• The core reasons for someone being counterproductive in a negotiation
• And much more!

We hope you enjoy this special episode. 

And if you’re curious to learn more about him, checkout the Black Swan website and his book on Amazon

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