Tahl Raz
Most leaders are operating with inherited assumptions about what persuades people, what builds lasting professional influence, and what actually separates executives who reach the top from those who plateau – and the empirical evidence consistently contradicts those assumptions. Negotiation training defaults to rational-actor models that perform poorly under pressure; leadership development programmes chase credentials and charisma while overlooking the four behaviours that large-scale CEO data shows actually predict success. The result is that organisations invest heavily in influence and leadership capability while working from frameworks that the evidence has already disproved.
An award-winning journalist and co-architect of Never Split the Difference, Never Eat Alone, and The CEO Next Door, Tahl Raz helps organisations replace inherited assumptions about negotiation, professional influence, and leadership advancement with frameworks built from FBI case experience, two decades of CEO performance data, and the science of relationship capital.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tahl Raz
- The frameworks Raz presents aren’t drawn from his interpretation of others’ research. Rather, he co-constructed them, working directly with the FBI hostage negotiator, the CEO performance researchers, and the business practitioners behind three of the most widely read business books of the past two decades.
- The CEO Next Door, which Raz co-authored based on analysis of more than 17,000 CEO and C-suite assessments, gives boards and senior leadership teams a data-validated model for identifying and developing executive talent, not one built on anecdote or convention.
- Never Split the Difference has sold more than five million copies and been translated into over 40 languages, which reflects genuine market validation of the negotiation system Raz helped shape. It is now embedded in corporate training programmes globally.
- Never Eat Alone is used as a textbook in MBA programmes worldwide, making Raz a source-level contributor to how the next generation of executives is taught to build professional relationships and organisational influence.
- His background as an award-winning business journalist gives him an ability to take complex behavioural research and make it immediately actionable in a room – a skill that is structurally different from the researchers and practitioners who generated the underlying work.
Biography highlights
- Co-author of Never Split the Difference with former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, 5 million+ copies sold, translated into 40+ languages
- Co-author of Never Eat Alone with Keith Ferrazzi, New York Times bestseller, adopted as an MBA textbook in business schools worldwide
- Co-author of The CEO Next Door with Elena Botelho and Kim Powell, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller; CMI Management Book of the Year 2019; based on analysis of more than 17,000 CEO and C-suite assessments; research published as an HBR cover story
- Award-winning journalist published in Inc., GQ, Harvard Business Review, and the Jerusalem Post
- Former CEO of MyGreenLight (online education), Chief Content Officer, and founder and editor-in-chief of Jewcy Media
- Degree in Philosophy, Vassar College
Biography
The prevailing models for negotiation and leadership development share a common flaw: they were built on theory, intuition, and case studies drawn from a narrow slice of experience. What changes the conversation is evidence. Evidence from 20 years of hostage negotiation under life-or-death conditions, from a decade of performance data on 17,000 executives, from the social science of how professional relationships actually generate career capital. Tahl Raz has spent his career working at the intersection of that evidence and the people who need to act on it.
Raz co-authored Never Split the Difference with Chris Voss, former lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI, translating a field-tested system developed in extreme-pressure environments into a framework that business leaders and sales teams now use worldwide. The book has sold more than five million copies and been translated into over 40 languages – a scale of adoption that reflects the practical utility of what the negotiation system actually delivers, not just the appeal of the source material.
His work on The CEO Next Door, developed with researchers Elena Botelho and Kim Powell, draws on analysis of more than 17,000 CEO and C-suite assessments to identify the four behaviours that statistically separate executives who reach and sustain top performance from those who plateau. The research – published as a cover article in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review – overturns widely held assumptions about pedigree, charisma, and the shape of a successful executive career. The book won CMI Management Book of the Year 2019.
Before these collaborations, Raz co-authored Never Eat Alone with Keith Ferrazzi, a study of professional networking and relationship capital that remains in use as an MBA textbook in business programmes globally. His journalism has appeared in Inc., GQ, Harvard Business Review, and the Jerusalem Post. That background – knowing how to extract what is genuinely new in a body of research and make it land for a senior audience – is what distinguishes his platform: he is not interpreting these frameworks from the outside, he helped build them.
Key speaking topics
- Negotiation strategy and behavioural influence
- Executive leadership behaviours and CEO performance
- Professional relationship capital and network strategy
- Storytelling and leadership communication
- Organisational decision-making under pressure
- Career development and leadership advancement
- The future of work and professional influence
Ideal for
- C-suite and senior executive audiences in leadership development or strategic offsites
- CHROs and talent leaders building executive assessment or succession frameworks
- Sales leadership and commercial teams focused on high-stakes negotiation
- Boards and governance teams examining executive performance and leadership pipeline
Audience outcomes
- A working understanding of the negotiation tactics developed in FBI hostage situations and how they apply in commercial and leadership contexts
- Clarity on the four behaviours; decisiveness, engaging for impact, relentless reliability, bold adaptation which CEO performance data identifies as the genuine predictors of executive success
- A reframed view of professional networking as a deliberate, structured strategic practice rather than a social variable
- Practical approaches for improving persuasion, communication, and influence in high-pressure conversations
- Sharper criteria for evaluating leadership potential – their own or others’ – against evidence rather than convention
Talks
Draws on the CEO Genome research – an analysis of more than 17,000 executive assessments – to identify the four specific behaviours that predict who reaches and succeeds in the CEO role, overturning the conventional markers of leadership potential.
Key takeaways:
- The four behaviours the data consistently identifies as separating high-performing executives from those who plateau
- Why conventional assumptions about pedigree, charisma, and career trajectory are poor predictors of CEO success
- Practical steps for accelerating leadership development based on evidence, not convention
Draws on Raz’s co-authorship of Never Split the Difference to present the negotiation system developed by former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss through decades of high-stakes international kidnapping cases.
Key takeaways:
- The core tactics of FBI-developed negotiation and why they outperform rational-actor models under pressure
- How emotional intelligence and tactical empathy function as practical negotiation tools, not soft skills
- A transferable framework applicable to business deals, salary negotiations, sales conversations, and organisational conflict
Based on the research behind Never Eat Alone, this talk presents the principles of deliberate relationship building as a strategic capability – one that determines professional trajectory more reliably than technical skill alone.
Key takeaways:
- The core principles that distinguish people who build genuinely valuable professional networks from those who accumulate contacts
- How to structure relationship-building as an intentional, sustainable practice rather than an opportunistic one
- Why relationship capital is a strategic asset and how organisations can develop it systematically
An exploration of how narrative structure shapes how ideas land, decisions get made, and behaviour changes – drawing on Raz’s career as a journalist and co-author of books that have demonstrably shifted how millions of people approach negotiation, leadership, and professional relationships.
Key takeaways:
- The structural elements that make a narrative persuasive rather than merely informative
- How leaders can use storytelling to influence decisions, align teams, and communicate change
- The difference between information transfer and genuine behavioural influence and how to close that gap
Based on Raz’s collaboration with former GE Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock, this talk examines what genuine change-readiness requires inside large organisations, and why most change initiatives fail to address the real barriers.
Key takeaways:
- Why courage and strategic risk-taking are operational requirements, not personality traits
- How to challenge institutional inertia and create space for new possibilities inside established organisations
- The mindset and structural conditions that allow organisations to move from incremental adaptation to genuine transformation