Can’t Wait to Share This! My Nationally Televised Interview with Chris Voss

Sitting down with Chris Voss on That's Right, which recently aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX affiliates nationwide, was one of those conversations I hope will help you and/or your team tremendously.

Chris built a career reading people under the highest possible pressure as a lead FBI hostage negotiator. I have spent 25 years coaching high-performance women leaders to do the same thing in boardrooms, negotiations, and high-stakes moments where the margin for error is razor-thin. When our two frameworks met in that conversation, what emerged was something I want every woman I work with to hear.

What Chris and I talked about is how we can shrink and lose our voice under pressure. Because pressure has a way of amplifying whatever is already unresolved inside us. When we have not done the internal work of understanding our own emotional signals, those signals do not disappear. They go underground. And then they start quietly running our decisions and ability to be heard.

I shared the framework I call the ADD Blueprint: Awareness, Distance, Decide. It is the same three-step process I teach senior executives for negotiating job offers, leading difficult conversations, and making real-time calls when the stakes are high. The core idea is simple. Without awareness, emotions operate unconsciously. Without distance, they drive your behavior. Without a deliberate decision, they stay unresolved and carry forward into the next moment.

One of the things Chris said that has stayed with me: when people feel heard by others, or by themselves, they make better decisions. That is the whole game right there. Because self-awareness is not a soft skill. It is the precondition for all the other skills we have.

I watched a senior executive apply this exact approach during a high-stakes job negotiation. She recognized that fear of losing the offer was starting to shape how she was showing up in the conversation. By first stabilizing her internal state, she was able to bring tactical empathy into the room, understand the hiring manager's real constraints, and negotiate not just better compensation, but a fundamentally better outcome. That is not luck. That is a trained skill.

If you take one thing from my conversation with Chris, let it be this: the leaders who perform best under pressure are not the ones who feel the least. They are the ones who have learned to feel, observe, and choose, without letting the emotion choose for them.

I’d love for you to watch the entire episode and see exactly how this plays out in real time.

🎥 Watch My Video Interview with Chris Voss to Get a More In-depth Perspective.

If I can support you or your organization through speaking, one-on-one coaching, or peer advisory masterminds, please reach out to me directly.

To your and your organization’s continued success!
- Sheryl