Tactical Empathy
Demonstrate you understand their world without agreeing with a word of it.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Tactical empathy is the mercenary's definition of empathy, built by FBI hostage negotiators who could never plausibly sympathize with their counterparts. It is the pure demonstration of understanding: you articulate the other side's perspective back to them without agreeing, liking, or conceding. Voss's test case is a terrorism trial where he got Muslim witnesses to testify voluntarily by saying 'you believe there's been a succession of United States governments for the last 200 years that have been anti-Islamic' — an empathy statement containing zero agreement. When it lands, people say 'that's right', and the resulting oxytocin release makes them bond and collaborate. It is an indirect route that saves enormous amounts of time.
Origin
Voss developed it as an FBI hostage negotiator, where sympathy was structurally impossible — no one from Al Qaeda or a Marxist guerrilla faction in Colombia would believe an FBI agent was sympathetic to their cause. He later found Bob Mnookin's Harvard work said exactly the same thing: empathy is not agreement and not even liking the other side, it's just stating what their opinion is — which validated the FBI's approach and led Voss to collaborate with Harvard.
Core principles
- 01Empathy is not sympathy, agreement, or even liking the other side.
- 02It is the demonstration of understanding of the other side's position — nothing more.
- 03Stating what someone believes costs you nothing and concedes nothing.
- 04Feeling understood triggers oxytocin, which is a bonding drug — bonded counterparts collaborate.
- 05You can use it with anybody, including people whose position you find repugnant.
How to run it
- 1
Work out their actual position
Before speaking, identify what the counterpart genuinely believes about the situation, about you, and about the deal — not what you wish they believed.
Pro tip Their energy is a dead giveaway. Distracted means other pressures and probably no deal; aggressive energy actually signals intent to deal with you.
- 2
State it back with zero agreement
Use the construction 'you believe X' or 'you probably feel X' and stop there. Never append your own opinion, correction, or endorsement.
Pro tip The full stop after their position is what makes it empathy rather than a concession.
Watch out The moment you say 'I agree' or 'I understand, my dad was the same', you've left empathy and entered sympathy or agreement.
- 3
Strip out the sympathy reflex
Delete any impulse to share your own comparable experience or to help them 'get over it'. Sympathy is climbing into the quicksand with them.
Watch out 'I understand' followed by your own story carries an unspoken message: I got over it, so it's time for you to get over it too.
- 4
Listen for 'that's right'
Wait for the counterpart to signal complete understanding. That's the epiphany moment where oxytocin fires and the bond forms.
Pro tip Variations count: 'that's it exactly', 'you got it'. Judge by energy — did they feel relief or a new idea arriving?
Watch out 'You're right' is the opposite signal. It means they want you to stop talking.
- 5
Only then advance your own position
Once they feel represented, they will collaborate and share information. Now you can make your ask.
Pro tip In polarized topics, make it a hard rule: you're not allowed to state your view until the other side says 'that's right' to your summary of theirs.
In the wild
Voss needed Muslim witnesses to testify voluntarily in a terrorism trial. Sympathy was off the table. He sat down with each of them and said: 'You believe that there's been a succession of United States governments for the last 200 years that have been anti-Islamic.' No agreement, no claim that the US government was anti-Islamic — just a demonstration of understanding.
→ The witnesses testified voluntarily.
Voss's friend Nicole Benham set up an Israeli-Palestinian discussion on Clubhouse during active bombing in Gaza, exhausted by social media shouting matches. The rule was that participants had to articulate the other side's position before stating their own. One young woman, deeply emotionally embroiled and coming off a week of screaming matches, could not articulate a single element of the Israeli point of view.
→ No breakthroughs that night, but also no arguments and no name-calling — and the woman's emotions never got out of control. She left no worse off, which Voss argues is itself reason enough to try the approach.
Common mistakes
Confusing empathy with sympathy
Sharing your own comparable experience ('my dad was an arrogant hot-headed jerk too') is sympathy. It carries an implicit demand that they get over it, and it shows no awareness that your own approach might be the problem.
Treating 'you're right' as success
'You're right' is the polite phrase people use to make someone they love or need to keep a relationship with shut up and go away. It signals you're off track, not on it.
Chasing common ground instead
Common ground is for C-level negotiators. Trump bonded with a Republican base with whom he shared no common ground as normally defined — the bond came from 'that's right' moments, not shared demographics.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone negotiating with a counterpart whose position they cannot or will not endorse — adversarial deals, hostile stakeholders, polarized conversations.
Not ideal for
Situations where the counterpart genuinely wants a purely transactional exchange with no relationship, or where you have no ability to listen first.
From the transcript
“I never said the US government was anti-Islamic. I just said you believe this, period. That's empathy. It's kind of that simple.”
“Empathy is not agreement, empathy is not even liking the other side. It's just stating what their opinion is. So all right, cool, I can…”
“When you experience an epiphany, among the neurochemicals that are triggered internally are oxytocin, and oxytocin is a bonding drug.”
From the episode
Chris Voss: Advanced Negotiation
Chris Voss