Honest Answers: Interview and Negotiation Skills to Get to the Truth

© 2022 Lena Sisco

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ISBN 978-1-4002-2642-9 (eBook)

ISBN 978-1-4002-2640-5 (TP)

Epub Edition September 2022 9781400226429

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940853

Printed in the United States of America

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Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication

I am dedicating this book to my husband and best friend, who offered me sound guidance. Thank you for your patience, support, motivation, and wisdom. You are a great leader.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword by Janine Driver

Preface

Chapter 1: Why Being the Nice Guy Always Wins

Chapter 2: Plan, Prep, and Practice

Chapter 3: How to Build Rapport in Five Minutes or Less

Chapter 4: Understanding Personal Drivers, Motivators, and Needs

Chapter 5: Master Your Questioning Techniques

Chapter 6: Don’t Tell, Ask

Chapter 7: Elicit Information, Don’t Ask for It

Chapter 8: Overcome Conversational Challenges

Chapter 9: Empathic Negotiation Skills

Chapter 10: Handling the Breaking Point

Chapter 11: How to Accurately Analyze Body Language

Chapter 12: Deceptive Statements and Answers

Epilogue

Appendix A: 11-Step Strategic Interview Flow

Appendix B: Your Comprehensive Interview Checklist

Appendix C: Answers to Activities

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

FOREWORD

by Janine Driver

This should be a textbook for every criminal justice course, for every law enforcement agency, and for every HR department.

—JANINE DRIVER, CEO and founder of the Body Language Institute and New York Times bestselling author

On October 28, 2013, had you been in a chilly, small hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, along with seven other classmates getting certified in detecting deception, perhaps you would have noticed what I noticed about Lena Sisco when she walked into the room . . .

Lena was personable, polished, professional, poised, and a dead ringer for Jennifer Aniston—except with a Rhode Island accent. Because I’m originally from Boston, I picked up on Lena’s accent right away.

There was something about Lena, beyond the fact that we both used the word wicked to describe how awesome something was, that made me feel like she was a friend from high school or college whom I hadn’t seen in years. In under a couple of minutes, I found Lena, this complete stranger to me, to be warmhearted, grounded, and wise.

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re traveling in a different part of the country—or the world. Maybe you’re in a workshop, on vacation, or at a coffee shop chatting with someone who likes the same kind of latte, and you suddenly have an instant rapport with this new kindred spirit.

Perhaps, like me, you can’t explain it, but without realizing it, you let your guard down and you trusted this new acquaintance because something inside of you told you she’s a friend and you’re safe. Soon, you’re sharing with your new friend things you don’t normally share with neighbors or co-workers, let alone a complete stranger!

How is this possible? And why did I connect with Lena right away?

I didn’t read a bio about Lena Sisco. We weren’t Facebook or Instagram friends. No one I knew vouched for the quality of Lena’s character. Yet, within minutes, I felt that this stranger would become a friend for life.

I didn’t know it then, but Lena had already unlocked what is behind those disarming moments when our walls come down—and she’s sharing that knowledge in this book.

Imagine what would be possible if you were able to have a step-by-step process to channel your ability to build an ultimate level of rapport and trust—at will.

Imagine the impact you’d have when interviewing people if you had a simple, easy-to-master system to make people feel safe when asking them something they didn’t expect to tell you the truth about.

Imagine if you were able to get what Lena calls the POIs (person of interest) in your personal or professional life to let their guard down, so they would feel at ease and give you exactly what you want: honest answers.

That’s why you may want to buy this book: you are about to be able to win people over and get honest answers from them—and so much more!

You may be wondering who I am. And why might my opinion about Lena Sisco’s character or expertise matter to you.

My name is Janine Driver, and Anderson Cooper and NBC’s Today Show have dubbed me the Human Lie Detector. I’ve earned this reputation in part for being the CEO of the Body Language Institute, a business that helps people climb their career ladder more successfully through the study of nonverbal human behavior. I was the instructor in that advanced detecting deception, train-the-trainer class that Lena took back in 2013.

After seventeen years as an investigator for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), where I investigated firearms trafficking and illegal manufacturing of explosives cases, I retired at the age of thirty-eight to write a New York Times bestselling book called You Say More Than You Think (translated into fourteen languages). A couple of years later, I wrote the Washington Post bestseller You Can’t Lie to Me (translated into nine languages). For decades, I’ve trained special agents and lawyers from the FBI, CIA, ATF, and numerous state and local law enforcement agencies, judges, as well as therapists, wardens, and patrol officers. I’m also a sales, leadership, HR, and communications consultant for such companies as Microsoft, Abbott Laboratories, Sales Force, Coca-Cola, Lockheed Martin, Comcast, and Equity Prime Mortgage (EPM).

Now that we’ve officially met, let’s travel back to that 2013 class for a quick minute. I had no idea who Lena Sisco was, and I could’ve never guessed, in a million years, how deeply and profoundly she would catapult my interviewing and fact-finding skills, my reading people expertise, and ultimately . . . my life.

It wasn’t until about an hour into class that I discovered Lena was a former US Navy intelligence officer and Marine Corps certified interrogator. I didn’t know she worked for and with agencies such as the FBI, DIA, ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), and NCIS.

I don’t come from a heavy military family, so the only thing I knew about NCIS was what I had learned from watching a couple episodes of the fictional television program by the same name starring actor Mark Harmon. The NCIS series highlights a team of special agents investigating murder, espionage, and terrorism! Umm, ya, Lena was about to blow my mind.

Because it was a train-the-trainer course, this meant each student would have to present a one- to two-hour unique, dynamic, and interactive program on detecting deception. Lena started her presentation with a picture of the second airplane hitting the World Trade Center. Then, she dramatically paused, for about four seconds, before taking a deep breath and saying, I woke up one day [pause], and my job was to figure out who did this. My name is Lena Sisco, and I’m a former Department of Defense certified military interrogator, where I interviewed members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban at Gitmo. #MicDrop

We all were glued to every word Lena said next, as you’ll be when you start reading this book. She had our undivided attention. We literally sat on the edge of our seats for the next 120 minutes.

Lena took the material she learned in class and combined it with, as you’ll soon discover throughout the pages of this book, her extensive and impressive knowledge of human behavior, combined with her skills and abilities to detect deception and get to the truth. And had you been sitting toward the back of the room that late afternoon, you likely would have noticed me passing a handwritten note to my coinstructor, Chris Ulrich, fellow body language expert who had worked closely with top-level government officials for more than eighteen years. I wrote (pardon my language): OMG! Lena is a badass! We need to invite her to be an instructor for our Body Language Institute courses immediately!

That was the beginning of our almost decade-long personal and professional friendship. Since then, I’ve watched Lena do live and recorded interviews where she was able to get people to stop lying and provide her with honest answers. I’ve seen Lena teach in small groups, where she has transformed people, just like you, into master interviewers. I’ve jumped to my feet, along with thousands of other people, at the end of her keynote presentations and her TEDx talk.

Lena and I have also been the go-to truth experts on endless television shows, and we had a popular video podcast with two other reading-people experts called Profiler Task Force, where we analyzed, with precision, influential leaders like RBG and notorious criminals such as Casey Anthony, Chris Watts, Barry Morphew, and the DC Snipers. We almost had our own television show on A&E (but a new executive came to town and cut all programs in the works).

Lena Sisco, my dear friend and colleague, has significantly changed not only my inter- and intrapersonal communication skills—she’s impacted everyone with whom she’s shared her tools. We’ve all gone through a transformation that includes a change in our decoding people mindset and how we approach working with people and negotiations. We have more extreme confidence, clarity in what we want to say, emotional control, and, of course, with Lena’s elite human intelligence techniques, we are able to get information without asking for it.

When Lena asked me to write this foreword, I was honored, and I could not put this book down. I took twelve pages of notes in the blink of an eye, and I learned how to decode people in a different way than I had ever been taught before. Despite seeing Lena live for almost a decade, I still learned new tools through reading this book (laddering, how to use nonaccusatory language effectively, understanding personal drivers, motivators, and needs, and what Lena calls the Motivation Equation).

This leads me to you! I’m so excited for you because it’s now your turn to get a front-row seat to Lena Sisco’s eliciting-the-truth program in this future bestseller, Honest Answers. When you read it, you’ll automatically be connected with us, your fellow tribe of truth seekers.

Here’s exactly what’s in it for you if you choose to buy this book:

You’ll learn to accurately read people and adapt your language and your approach to build trust and ultimately grow sales.

You’ll discover how to prime people to tell the truth and stop deception in its tracks (and prevent over 89 percent of hiring mistakes!).

You’ll be equipped to build a culture of honesty, mutual respect, and psychological safety so your team feels safe and secure, which reduces turnover.

From one page to the next, Lena will generously share with you everything from why being the nice guy or nice gal always wins to how you can easily plan, prep, and practice your newfound tools. Through a series of exercises, Lena will guide you on how to build rapport in five minutes or less, understand personal drivers, motivators, and needs (this rocked my world), and master your questioning techniques. Lena will also cheer you on as you discover how to elicit information without asking for it and overcome conversational challenges, all while you build your empathic negotiation skills toolbox. Before you know it, you’ll know how to handle the breaking point, decode body language accurately, and spot deceptive statements almost as well as a special agent!

In conclusion, I’ve been practicing Lena’s techniques, outlined in this book, on my three sons (shh) in the last month, and the results have led me to call and email all my clients. I’ve primed them to get ready to buy this book for their sales, leadership, and HR teams as soon as it hits shelves because I have never, in the span of my training-filled career, read a more valuable book on how to get honest answers from people.

PREFACE

As a Navy Intelligence Specialist in 1999, I attended the Marine Corps Interrogation Prisoners of War School. Upon completion, I was a certified Department of Defense military interrogator. In 2003, I got to use my interrogation skills when I deployed to Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to interrogate members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. During that time, I discovered something invaluable about human nature: if you are nice and respectful to people, they tend to reciprocate in kind no matter what the circumstances are. My approach to interrogation at GTMO was to do something unexpected to get the truth: give respect, build rapport, and instill hope. Instead of preying on fear, I took advantage of trust. It was at this time I began to structure a rapport-based, nonaccusatory interviewing method that involved both direct and indirect techniques to get honest information. I am going to share that method and those techniques with you in this book.

I believe that once you have mastered the techniques and the science, interviewing becomes an art. You can gracefully and confidently control any conversation while gaining the other person’s trust. And this does not mean you have to be a pushover or a patsy. In fact, you need to be quite the opposite; you can be austere and firm with a smile. I experienced multiple successes during my time as a military interrogator and collected actionable high-value intelligence because I knew how to talk to people. I knew human behavior and how the slightest change in my vocabulary, pitch, tone of voice, posture, and facial expression could have a massive impact on someone from whom I wanted to get the truth but who didn’t want to give it to me.

Since leaving GTMO, I have been interrogating and interviewing various individuals in numerous settings, perfecting my strategy for winning over people and collecting pertinent data. Over the years, I have learned through trial and error what I believe is the most effective communication practices when it comes to interviewing and negotiating to obtain truthful information. After reading this book, I am confident you will have the knowledge to do the same.

Before we dive in, I need to explain that in the following chapters I will be using vernacular that may be unfamiliar to you. So allow me to take this opportunity to introduce you to a few terms. First, you will see the initialism POI, which stands for person of interest, to represent any person you are interviewing or negotiating with. A POI can be a witness, suspect, detainee, source, hostage, patient, job applicant, peer, colleague, stakeholder, even your teenager. Then I will outline what others have labeled the SISCO method of interviewing and negotiating.

Let me quickly define the SISCO interview method: SISCO stands for Strategic Interviewing Skills and Competencies; and obviously, it is my last name. My method embodies competencies that should be adopted as a procedure in every interview you conduct. My six core competencies are:

Apply non-accusatory questioning techniques including elicitation to create a safe environment for POIs to tell the truth by instilling hope instead of futility, building rapport, gaining trust, and being empathetic and nonjudgmental.

Think strategically to obtain not just a confession but truthful information, motivations, and intent.

Remain objective and aware to enhance focus, concentration, emotional control, and observation skills while eliminating assumptions, biases, and subjectivity.

Avoid the misinformation effect and false confessions.

Use the Don’t Tell, Ask practice; never tell your POI what they did or why they did it if you do not know.

Detect and assess to the best of your ability both verbal and nonverbal deceptive indicators.

When you use my method, you are focusing on the human-to-human relationship first and getting the information second. The information will come if you have a strong understanding of human behavior. When you do, almost any adversarial opponent will succumb to rapport attempts. When you are conversing with agitated POIs, it can become a game of mental sparring. If the interviewer acquires pertinent information from the POI, it is their win; if the POI can withhold relevant information, it is the POI’s win. My method aims at eliminating the adversarial mental sparring postures resulting in a win/win situation, or at least what appears to be a win/win situation to the POI. Any negotiator will tell you that in order to have a successful negotiation, you must enter the discussion thinking win/win; what do I want, what do they want, and how can we both get it? Interviewing is a negotiation; as the interviewer, I want the truth and the POI wants something in order to give it up. You will learn how to find this out in chapter 4, which is about discovering personal drivers and needs.

You can use the techniques outlined in this book in various circumstances and environments. Whether you are vetting potential new hires, interviewing employees regarding an equal opportunity issue or a workers’ compensation case, eliciting facts from potential clients to generate validated leads, questioning a firm’s accounting officer during a financial audit, negotiating with a seller, or questioning a suspect regarding a crime, use this book as your manual for planning and controlling your dialogue. These techniques can even help you elicit the truth from patients when trying to determine what is ailing them.

I have used my six core competencies in interviewing and negotiating while wearing many hats: as an interrogator, as an expert witness interviewing litigants, during fact-finding missions as a certified organizational change management specialist, and during informal coaching sessions. It is helpful when coaching others because when you coach you are not offering advice on fixing issues. In most instances, you won’t have the expertise to do so. Coaches ask a series of thought-provoking interrogative questions to help the coachee further explore and define the situation so that they can come up with the best solutions on their own.

There was a time where my interviewing skills unexpectedly became a great asset for me. An organization tasked me to perform a gap analysis for a large government agency to help them with an organizational change management issue. This agency had undergone a significant cultural change; they went from being the customer to providing customer service out of a necessity to keep their mission funded. (And if I mentioned this agency, you would all know who it is! That’s why I cannot.) I devised a plan to capture specific information from the workforce about organizational change management. After briefing my idea to the agency’s senior executives, they scheduled interviews between their employees and me. I had four days to interview as many employees as I could, both at the location I was physically at and at another site virtually. Because time was a critical factor, I had to make sure