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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Ask your boss, "How can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects critical to the strategic future of this company?" Chris Voss presents this as the single most important calibrated question for salary negotiations, because it signals that you are focused on the team's success rather than only your own gain. He says the question came from a high school friend who now heads an international bank and used it in job interviews and annual reviews.
Key Points
- The question works because most employers see employees as selfish; asking it shifts the conversation from "I want" to "how can I make your life and the team better."
- It triggers empathy and reciprocity: by going first with a team-focused offer, you invite the other side to respond in kind.
- Nothing makes you bulletproof. The friend lost a job after refusing to go along with mistreatment of people by senior leaders, showing that the question improves your odds but does not guarantee outcomes.
- Voss says a CEO told him, "I wish everyone would ask me this question," after hearing it from a salesperson in a Zoom session.
- Being a genuine team player matters: the Black Swan Group changed its core value to "team first," and people who wanted solo recognition or their own name in lights were not a fit.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Ask the question in salary negotiations, job interviews, and annual reviews, and ask the other calibrated questions too, since this one is "probably the single most important" but not the only one.
- Concrete instructions: Before asking, be genuinely willing to take on high-profile, high-visibility projects and to "run toward trouble" rather than avoid it.
- Concrete instructions: Lead with what you can do for the team and the employer's future, not with what you want (money, responsibility, recognition).
- Concrete instructions: Be willing to step back and play a supporting role when the team needs it. Voss uses Chris Rock's line that sometimes you have to play the tambourine.
- Concrete instructions: Consider framing your own team values as "team first" and expect to show it through behavior, since almost everyone claims to be a team player.
- The friend's background: he grew up in a small Iowa town of fewer than 7,000 people in a sole-proprietor family, with no elite educational pedigree or powerful alumni network (Voss notes he himself attended Iowa State).
- Voss says he was asked to give a motivational and informational keynote to a sales team, where the question came up in response to an employee asking how to negotiate for more money.
