A Spy’s World: It’s All About Influence, Persuasion, and Trust
BOOK REVIEW: Sell Like a Spy: The Art of Persuasion from the World of Espionage
By Jeremy Hurewitz/Diversion Books, New York
Reviewed by: Kenneth Dekleva
The Reviewer — Dr. Kenneth Dekleva served as a Regional Medical Officer/Psychiatrist with the U.S. Dept. of State from 2002-2016, and is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Psychiatry-Medicine Integration, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX; he is also a Senior Fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations and a Salzburg Global Fellow. He is also the author of the novels The Negotiator’s Cross and The Last Violinist. The views expressed are entirely his own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Dept. of State, or UT Southwestern Medical Center.
REVIEW — Jeremy Hurewitz is a highly regarded and experienced business consultant, business intelligence practitioner, entrepreneur, and journalist. His book Sell Like A Spy: The Art of Persuasion from the World of Espionage, is outstanding and a ‘must read’ book for experts and practitioners in the growing world of business intelligence as well as traditional intelligence, diplomacy, and business, and for those wishing to understand the peculiar nexus between government and private sector intelligence tactics and strategies.
Hurewitz’ book starts with key concepts, developed by governments and private intelligence firms, such as empathy, active listening, connection, elicitation, due diligence, recruitment, investigation, security protection, curiosity, negotiation, motivation, trust, and cultural awareness. These are well-known skills of any professional intelligence officer or private sector intelligence expert. The sentence that appealed to me – a practicing psychiatrist – early on was, “Talk to any case officer about their work, and they will often tell you that their job resembles that of a psychiatrist.” Bottom line, per Hurewitz: one must like and have a profound curiosity about people. Or as a beloved psychiatrist mentor of mine told me: “psychiatry is not a science, it’s rather about the study of man. Learn everything you can about people.” Hurewitz would surely agree: espionage and sales are about people and human relationships. And the coin of the realm is trust.
A huge strength of Hurewitz’ book lies in his use of real-world examples, drawing not only from his experience and from the experiences of numerous anonymous intelligence officers, but in also using and citing the impressive body of work and experience from senior, legendary CIA officers (many of them Cipher Brief experts), military officers, and federal special agents such as John Sipher, Marc Polymeropoulos, Greg Roberts, Stephen Romano, Joe Navarro, General Stan McChrystal, General John Mulholland, Bob Grenier, Gary Noesner, and Scott Alswang.
But as Hurewitz discusses in his book, it’s not all art. Hostage negotiators such as Chris Voss, Gary Noesner, and Stephen Romano talk about ‘verbal mirroring,’ as though they had dutifully read the psychoanalytic works of Heinz Kohut. There is increasing psychological and neuroscience research that persons assess each other – and decide whether to trust or not – within a few milliseconds. This is true for psychiatrists, therapists, spies, diplomats, salespersons, and yes, even leaders. A well-known example of the latter occurred in June 2018, when President Donald Trump was preparing for his historic, first-ever summit with North Korea’s leader, Chairman Kim Jong-un. President Trump was asked, “How are you preparing?” He replied that he did not require extensive preparation or briefings, and that based upon his decades of experience as an international businessperson, he would be able to ‘size up’ Chairman Kim within a few minutes, and thereby know, whether they could do business together and trust each other. President Trump may be right, in that experienced intelligence officers, businesspeople, leaders, and diplomats can easily fall into a heuristic of over-reliance upon intuition. Not that this is wrong, but one has to pay attention to the snares and traps of faulty heuristics and cognitive biases, as described in the writings of the late Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. Hurewitz would agree that it behooves intelligence officers, negotiators, salespersons, and business executives to pay close attention to such nuanced matters.
The latter part of Hurewitz’ book deals with familiar terrain such as elicitation, spotting, social media, and making initial connections. I would have welcomed a chapter on silence, as utilized in recruitment, sales, negotiations, and diplomacy. This domain is poorly understood, and it is perhaps the hardest skill of all to master for businesspersons, intelligence officers, and diplomats (and yes, even for psychiatrists and psychotherapists!). The legendary CIA case officer James Lawler notes (in his talk/podcast ‘’Soul Catcher’) that during his most successful recruitments of ‘hard target’ agents, he had to learn how to manage silence, and to experience the target’s emotions during such moments. I agree with Lawler. Silence can mean simply, being present with that person. And it is powerful. In his book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-Smart Executive, the late Mark McCormack (founder and then-CEO of IMG, a multi-billion-dollar management firm) described closing a lucrative business deal at Wimbledon with the CEO of Rolex. They sat together in the famed Center Court, on the day of the finals. McCormack said nothing, and let the Rolex CEO take it all in. After several minutes of quiet reflection, he turned to McCormack and said, “This is Rolex.”
Overall, Jeremy Hurewitz’ book is a terrific and insightful read. He captures the growing art and science of business intelligence, and shows, eloquently so, that even in this age of AI, these endeavors remain at their heart, human encounters.
Sell Like a Spy earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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