Jeremy Hurewitz was an overseas freelance journalist based out of Prague and Shanghai for the first decade of his career. During that time, he built and ran the international newspaper association Project Syndicate. Upon moving back to the U.S., he joined the shadowy world of corporate security. He has worked with former spies, FBI, hostage negotiators, special forces veterans, and other former government officials. He writes about foreign policy regularly for many publications and is a policy advisor on national security for the Joseph Rainey Center. He is a Strategic Advisor to the corporate intelligence firm Interfor International and the head of Interfor Academy.
Below, Jeremy shares five key insights from his new book, Sell Like A Spy: The Art of Persuasion from the World of Espionage. Listen to the audio version—read by Jeremy himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Misconceptions.
Spies are not who you think they are. Spies are not James Bond or Jason Bourne. They don’t typically wear tuxedos, hang out at casinos, and drive Aston Martins. They’re not typically engaged in gunfights, car chases, and seduction.
The work of spies is much closer to that of a psychiatrist, therapist, or a great relationship manager like, say, a wealth management consultant. Spies, in my estimation, are the world’s best salespeople because spies must make the most difficult sale in the world: convincing someone to commit treason against their country or organization.
Spies are not superheroes. They’re incredibly good at relating to people, understanding people, and influencing people. If we can take the world of espionage away from the glamorized and sensationalized fare of Hollywood and bring it down to the everyday level where actual spy tradecraft takes place, you’ll see that their skills can be incorporated into our careers and everyday lives.
2. Connection.
When I speak with audiences, I like to share spy quotes from former intelligence officers that I use to illuminate concepts or ideas. My favorite quote is: “Every good intelligence officer has a real bond with their target on some level and in some regard.” It’s about connection, not deception. Spies, like salespeople, are trying to connect deeply with their targets. They’re trying to get to know them and find a way to build rapport, and this is where we can learn a great deal from intelligence officers.
Think about the challenges spies face in recruiting targets. They are often asked to recruit people they would otherwise want nothing to do with in their lives. Spies are ordered to target criminals, terrorists, and diplomats from some of the world’s worst regimes, and they need to establish a genuine bond with them. They leverage radical empathy, trying to find that kernel of humanity that exists in every person, no matter how odious they might be. It means the criminal who is also a devoted family man. It means the terrorist who practices acts of charitable good. A good intelligence officer focuses on these kernels of humanity rather than their target’s many flaws so that they can find a way to forge that real bond. These connections are incredibly important when it comes to asking these targets to do extraordinary things for them. We in the everyday world experience similar challenges, though the stakes are much lower.
All of us encounter people that we don’t necessarily have a great rapport with right away. There might be a situation where you don’t hit it off with somebody, but you still want to influence them. So, you need to look for areas of convergence, similarity, and things that you can admire when dealing with someone difficult.
“There might be a situation where you don’t hit it off with somebody, but you still want to influence them.”
Another important technique is making yourself vulnerable. This can be an incredibly impactful way to bridge the gap with somebody you are struggling to connect with. For me personally, a little over a decade ago, I lost all hearing in my right ear because I had a brain tumor removed. Happily, I am okay now, but this hearing loss deeply impacts my life. If you have a meal with me, I try to sit with everyone to my left. If we’re walking, I want to keep you on my left. As a salesperson, in business situations I’m often treated with some suspicion at first. But if I share this detail about myself, something extraordinary happens. I go from just being a salesperson to an actual human being. After sharing this detail, that initially cold, distant person often tells me something vulnerable about themselves or a loved one, and we bridge that gap and create a bit more human intimacy.
Everybody has a different set of experiences they can draw upon. Find the comfort level you feel okay with to make yourself vulnerable and open yourself to forging deeper connections.
3. Elicitation.
Elicitation is a way to collect information. Whether you’re a spy, salesperson, or journalist, if you meet somebody of interest, you often want to learn all about that person. But if you start peppering somebody with questions, especially very probing questions, it could lead to suspicion and defensiveness on their part.
Elicitation offers a chance to learn from somebody without asking questions that could alarm them. For example, I was told about a training exercise from the farm (the CIA’s famed training facility in rural Virginia). A cohort was taken to a little seaside village in Virginia and given the following assignment: go up to somebody, start talking to them, and learn as much as you can without asking a question.
Let me give you an example of how this might look. Perhaps it’s late May, around Memorial Day weekend, and it’s unseasonably warm. I approach somebody on the street; I say something like, “My goodness, what a sweltering day. I’m originally from the Pacific Northwest, where it doesn’t get this hot even at the height of summer, so I am really struggling.” Perhaps that person replies, “I grew up in South Florida, and it’s this hot or hotter for most of the year, so I’m not really phased.” Rather than asking a question, I volunteered something about myself, and the person responded in kind. That is a human tendency, and by leveraging that, I learned something about them.
I also write about something I call the violin conversation. It gives you an opportunity to place elicitation in a conversation in a certain way to be more effective. Essentially, it involves placing that effort at elicitation in the middle of a conversation because people tend to remember the beginning and end of a conversation more than the middle.
4. Diffusing difficult encounters.
I’ve had the good fortune of working with former Chief Hostage Negotiators from the FBI in the world of kidnap for ransom consulting. They leverage skills of social influence to subtly influence fraught encounters. They’re able to calm a difficult situation through their tone of voice and the speed of their speech. If an FBI hostage negotiator is communicating with someone over the phone or through a walkie-talkie who is holding hostages, that perpetrator might be shouting and talking very fast. They’re excited, but the FBI hostage negotiator maintains a calm tone of voice and speaks in a slow, deliberate manner because behavioral science teaches us that if you have one party of a conversation insisting on this tone and speed, eventually, the other party tends to adhere to it. This calms a difficult situation.
“They’re able to calm a difficult situation through their tone of voice and the speed of their speech.”
So, if someone is angry with you and you maintain a steadfast and calm presence and speak in a slow and deliberate manner, typically, that person will calm down and revert to your baseline. In a dramatic encounter, if you’re seated in a room and someone comes in angry, don’t stand up. That will only raise the temperature of the encounter. Invite that person to sit down and tell you what’s on their mind instead. Let them vent and get whatever they want to say off their chest, even if you’re inclined to interrupt (because they’re wrong or for whatever reason); just let them fully unburden themselves. It will help calm things down. Thank the person for what they’re sharing, even if that feels difficult, and it will calm the person.
Ultimately, if you can’t get to a resolution in a calm manner, try stalling for time. Emotion trumps cognition, which is why, after a dramatic encounter, you might find yourself thinking later that day, I wish I had said a certain thing, because your brain is not working well when it’s full of emotion. If you feel your emotions rising, ask if you could get back to the person, call a timeout, and then revisit the encounter so you can handle things in a lucid manner. Time tends to calm things down.
5. Detecting deception.
A lot of former FBI agents and CIA case officers advertise the ability to be human lie detectors to corporate teams, but I have found this to be untrue. There’s no such thing as a human lie detector because people are too complex. We can’t tell with any high degree of consistency that someone is lying, but we can identify red flags that show deceptive behavior.
For example, there is what I call the Tom Brady example. Tom Brady is the former star quarterback of the New England Patriots. Many years ago, there was a scandal known as Deflategate, where the Patriots were accused of deflating footballs to gain an advantage. Tom Brady was asked by the media if he was involved in deflating the footballs, and Tom answered that he would never cheat. Well, he didn’t directly answer the question, right? He said something vague about cheating. That doesn’t mean that Tom Brady is a cheater, but it is a red flag that anybody trying to get to the bottom of this matter should take note of.
Another red flag is known as oaths. Like someone saying, “I swear on my children that I have not done this.” Typically, that is deceptive behavior because why is there a need to be so dramatic? Why not directly answer the question?
It’s also good to note that the body reveals what the mind conceals. I write extensively about body language, but for now, let’s just say if you’re concerned that somebody might be deceptive with you, watch how their body responds as they say something. Sometimes, people will even shake their head negatively when they’re saying yes because their subconscious is saying no. If you can keep these details in mind, you’ll be able to discern a little bit more about a person’s intentions.
To listen to the audio version read by author Jeremy Hurewitz, download the Next Big Idea App today:
