Inside the Mind of a Hostage Negotiator - Scott Walker

what is your background my background is a kidnap for ransom negotiator or a crisis response consultant as is known in the industry kidnap for ransom is that is that a specific subset of kidnap negotiating when you're saying please things like extortion as well the uh typical you know for a shop owner that Mafia used to get involved in or maybe a Cyber attack um but yeah pretty much every single kidnapping would involve some kind of Ransom demand hence kidnap for ransom interesting it yeah it's I suppose it's when you think about kidnapping in movies there's kidnaps that happen because there's just evil people out there but I suppose that is it right to Guess that in the real world most kidnaps the kidnapper actually has some sort of end goal that they want they're not just doing it because they're a bastard there may be elements of that but at the end of the day it's pretty much a business transaction now if you're the hostage or you're the family of the hostage it may be more than that but in reality and certainly from my perspective as The Negotiator this is just a business deal we need to find a solution to as quickly as possible how many people were at your level uh when you were doing this role well I'm not sure if it's true but we were told on day one that more people have been to the International Space Station than do this as full-time tier one professional negotiators so he said he sounded good it's stroke our egos um which actually needed some very small team of Highly switched on uh people who've got each other's backs but become very very proficient in that certain skill set what is the Avatar what's the classic British negotiator person where are they from what's their background what's their personality like what's their demeanor all that yeah well fully enough when I was at school I went to see the careers advisor then go Scott you could be a train driver a pilot a negotiator so most people it's their second or third career whether it's in the military as an investigative journalist and mine was as a cop so I was a detective for 16 years I had a great time I love pretty much every single day as a detective at Scotland Yard and actually looking back my career was very much around people so whether or not it was running in four months or taking a bit of time out to becoming I was an interrogator in Iraq for the military for a while um or as a negotiator and so to all this this real interest in what makes people tick what makes them feel think feel and act the way they do particularly in times of stress crisis uncertainty pretty much like the times we're living in now to be honest um and so having done that career and I wanted a career change just turned 40 some people call it midlife crisis to go and buy a Ferrari or marry a model I go and join a cannot negotiation firm and have a a second career and um I left on the Thursday the police and on the Monday I joined and they said Scott yeah we're going to give you the best negotiation training course in the world which is actually in reality turned out to three live kidnappings that I was shattering one in the Philippines into Nigeria baptism of fire I think it's called is it as glamorous as it is in the movies it depends if you think hanging around for a couple of weeks just sitting around is glamorous I don't know depends what your idea of fun is it's one of those things where there's lots of record hurry up and wait okay so in the first 24 hours of a kidnapping taking place you need to get on the plane or get on the phone reassure the family reassure the company right we've got this this is going to be the strategy I'm here to advise you I'm not going to tell you what to do or make decisions but I'll give you some recommendations pros and cons Etc and then we all want to take a nice big deep breath and just relax as much as possible we've got our strategy we know what we're going to say on the first call now we just need to look after ourselves and get into some kind of Rhythm and that's fine everybody gets used to that for the week first week 10 days whilst and waiting for a call and the phone does ring and then it's like headless chickens and running around and the heartbeat's going but having done it quite a few times now even at times and maybe like a swan gliding gracefully but underneath the heart pounding actually it's muscle memory you get right here I've been here before we know what we need to do trust the training trust the process and we're off and running you as a negotiator you just insinuated there that not only dealing with the kidnapper but you're also potentially dealing internally with uh stakeholders in what is what has been kidnapped is that right yeah dealing with the kidnappers is the easy bit we can't honestly it I can't tell you enough questions it's the easy bit because it's a business transaction okay if we mess it up people could die and all of the considerations which are going to a bit later if we get on to it in terms of logistics but the crisis within the crisis if you think about it you've got egos internal politics High emotion in probably the most stressful circumstances these people are ever going to face and so I'm almost in the middle of this so it's about developing this sensory acuity you're talking about you know what is the kind of person who who gets into this field and is good at it it's somebody with that antennae it can go right something's going on with that person over there their their mannerisms all their energy is not congruent what they're saying or they're getting a bit agitated and so he's constantly picking up on these cues so you can then a make sure that you're balanced yourself emotionally but more importantly you can somehow reduce their anxiety and stress and overwhelm to bring about that objective rational thinking which is what we want cool calm heads which is why I named the book called out of chaos because that's ultimately what this is is we want to bring some order out of what is a very chaotic and stressful circumstances maybe it is more like the Hollywood movies than you thought then because in the movies there's always it's not just the politic with the kidnapper it's the internal strife that's going on because the chief of police has come down and the CIA and the FBI they both believe that this is their case and who's this Renegade guy like why is why is Dwayne The Rock Johnson why is he taking this role or whatever whatever it might be so all of that all of that what do you think that negotiators know about human nature that most normal people don't I think there's an unbelievable resilience mentally and emotionally within all of us I've seen people held captive for months at a time Who come out pretty much unscathed it's because their mindset the way they frame this the meaning they've given their circumstances has meant they can come out and actually live just as good if not a better life as a result of their experience and actually no matter what is thrown in front of us the challenges the issues the problems actually we're more than capable of overcoming them you know there's nothing that is insurmountable and actually we're very adaptable agile creatures if we can just turn down that lousy narrative that lousy story we've got going on inside of our heads about you know we're not good enough it's not going to work blah blah blah talk to me about some of the highest pressure situations that you've been in an illustrious career of dealing with crazy different circumstances probably my first case actually is when I was at Scotland Yard and it's based in a in a cramped flat in London and one of the younger Sons had been taken by a rival drug gang and so after a couple of days when this small flat lots of family members around High motion and we're coaching myself my colleague are coaching the other brother as the communicator because obviously we don't want to advertise that police are involved and then the threats start coming in and there's a bit of almost like a mock execution the background we can hear the uh the hostage in a bit of pain and then the kidnappers say right we know where you are and they gave the address and we know you're working with the police we're going to send some guys around to spray the place with a Mac 10 machine gun and they're on the way right now and I'm thinking right okay a Mac 10 machine gun is like the weapon of choice of gang members in London it's from the most deadliest weapons you can ever use particularly in the hands of people aren't very good with using it I'm thinking Hmm this is an interesting set of circumstances to be in here and I looked up a colleague and he looks at me and were like is this a bluff are they just trying to trying to have us over here but we didn't take any chances so very quickly because at the time I'm a member of the biggest gang in London the Metropolitan Police so we actually got two big on response Vehicles we've got more guns than you yeah and there was literally six heavily armed so 19 officers there and actually that blew our cover in a week so we wanted to be discreet but far better that than you know a family full of um uh victims in a flat some way including myself and my colleague so that was the first how did that end up getting resolved oh in the end we managed to get the uh the brother back um and that's actually interesting in the UK or the US in kidnappings or hostage takings normally there's some kind of Hostage rescue okay because we've got the best teams best SWAT teams in the world whereas in other parts of the world I'd always stress for a negotiated settlement here because there's a 93 chance of a successful resolution that way I would not trust many many governments and units around the world to conduct the hostage rescue it's just fraught with too many dangers but in the UK that's pretty much how they will they will pan out and so our job is actually see if we can negotiate the release but it's also to buy time as well what was that story of a pirate hijacked ship thing that you were involved in there's been a few um well there's one where um six hostages got taken um and they got taken off the ship and into West African country which won't be a surprise to people and um and the conversation we didn't hear anything about 10 days two weeks and the negotiation start um but then after one point because the kidnappers weren't getting what they wanted you know they came in at three million dollars or something and we're offing at that point about seventy thousand because it's about managing expectations um and after the point the kidnap has gotten really frustrated and then when we on the call one day the guy I'm using as a communicator because the language barrier he says well you know you must look after our crew my friends there your responsibility whilst you've got them held hostage and then there's this really booming voice from the kidnap on the other side go no they're yours we want the money by the end of the week or they will die and you could hear a pin drop that is until this guy Mr John I'll call him his fist came banging down on the table and I'm realized in that moment it's about to come my way as well and he turns around and says how can you sit there Mr Scott so car when my friends are gonna die now I know they're not gonna die I know full well this is just a tactic but he stands up and walks out and in that moment I know right okay I need to take a bit of initiative here in a calculated risk which is I need I can leave the kidnappers they're good for 24 36 48 hours we're in a good position with them in terms of negotiation my primary aim is to look after Mr John because if I can't get him on board if I can't get him to cooperate if I can't re-establish trust with him we're going to go nowhere and the hostages are going to die so I'm there sitting down with him doing all of the you know all the active listening all the J I mean genuinely empathizing with him and validating where he's at and then you know the next day the day after he um he comes in showered shaved new man and then we get a deal and the hostages oh dude I'm so fascinated by the fact that most of your job isn't negotiating with the kidnappers but it's negotiating with the internal politics I think that's such a such a really great takeaway and it's so um representative or symbolic of many of the challenges that we come up against whether it be in our personal lives whether it be in business dealings that we always see the world outside as the adversary or as the enemy uh there's this really great story from uh Winston Churchill and he is in the 40s taking a uh young MP through the houses of Parliament and he's explode this is the [ __ ] toilets and this is where you know we we have lunch and this is whatever and they enter into uh the chambers and this young MP who's sort of all full of testosterone he starts gesturing at the other benches and he keeps calling them the enemy and Churchill turns to him and says that's the opposition Dear Boy the enemy is behind you and I think it's just so perfectly symbolic of how we become our own worst enemies uh day to day in our own lives we don't help ourselves the way that we should do um most of the business problems that I see uh occurred due to inefficiencies or lack of good communication and and politics and strife that go on inside of a company not between companies like you know that the people that are out there have there is something that they need from you there is something that they want and the parameters are relatively fixed it's all of the Myriad different dials and knobs that are going on inside those are the the tides that are turning so one of the other things you mentioned before which I think is a really really interesting uh line of this you've got certain types of kidnapping situations held for ransom where it's an individual but then there are other ones where the company data presumably um there was that one what was that pipeline in America that got done and it was for Bitcoin yeah um so you have scenarios like this what is the difference in the um what are the differences between those two different kinds of scenarios okay let's take the Cyber extortion for example it is normally a reputational risk then I appreciate that staring kidnapping but from a cyber extortion normally data has been extracted and or encrypted as well and usually there's some reputational risk to the company the longer it continues or they just can't do business they're going to lose money as well it changes slightly when you're dealing with maybe Healthcare which we've seen that a lot of ransomware attacks over the last few years there's one a cry in others um and so it's slightly different there whereas in a kidnap negotiation there's only going to be the hostage they can't copy them they can't keep clones of them so when we negotiate the release and we've physically got the hostage we know we're good whereas if we pay a ransom to an extortionist in a cyber case okay the business model is they're more often than not going to keep their word because no one's going to pay them again in future but there's no guarantees I haven't made a copy or kept a copy uh back for releasing it on the dark web or to sell it to competitors so it's slightly Nuance there but like in anything I say to the clients there's no guarantees here there's never going to be 100 you just need to on the balance of probabilities do a risk cost benefit analysis and work out what you want to do do you want to negotiate and engage but this is costing you maybe let's say half a million dollars a day in Lost opportunity costs but how much is the extortion demand for and what we don't know we're not checked okay well maybe we want to check oh it's for 20 000 Euros okay well my opinion my advice to you is it's up to you you may want to consider paying that yeah if it's costing you are familiar okay um okay I'm simplifying the example there but it's all these things I need to weigh up and actually can we make sure that the RIT system is clean and doesn't have any kind of malignant malware put in there for example have you watched hijacked on Apple TV I have of course you have I absolutely love this series at the moment I think maybe five episodes are out or six episodes are out at the moment as we're doing it um so for the people that don't know Idris Elba handsome black man gets on a plane from Dubai to the UK and uh the plane gets hijacked by some some bastards uh most of whom are from London but one of whom is a Geordie so I I'm fully supportive of her and Idris then begins he is a I think he's a negotiator for high stakes mergers and Acquisitions and stuff like that sometimes hostile takeovers and stuff too uh I have you noticed in that series how accurate do you think they have portrayed the industry that you know so well do you think Idris is is doing a good job with his negotiation skills but enough I was interviewed by The Daily Telegraph the newspaper here in the UK last week on this around as an entertainment value it is outstanding it's exceptional writing you know bear in mind I do this for a living I've been involved in one hijacking before I'm still hooked okay as a series but that's where it ends oh no Idris what were the absurdity level is as high as the altitude of the plane okay because if I'm on if I'm a passenger if I lead to a seller on board okay I mean I probably really wouldn't be doing the things he's doing I'll be making sure I'm staying calm I'm really showing other people I'm not going to antagonize the hijackers let alone take the gun off them and hand it back and all this sort of stuff he's done that said if it was a kind of 9 11 scenario where I think hey they're gonna crash this plane and that's a different situation that's a different scenario and I think actually a lot of people on board flights now would do something about it if they thought they're gonna crash this plane there'd be a bit of a mutant on the plane I reckon but in terms of negotiation no that said what he is good at is getting into the minds of the hijackers what makes them tick where's the leverage which he did and without spoiling anything for people having seen it in terms of the relationship between the brothers on the plane for example and so that is one of the first golden rules of negotiation is well actually I'm not going to be as arrogant enough to think it's all about me I need to understand what makes the person tick what are their beliefs motivations needs that are there often below the surface but I need to get curious to find them out so that's that another bit I'd say about the series is in terms of the uh the chaos that's going on back in London and trying to manage it that is normally how the first few hours of any kind of Crisis look sounds and feels like until it gets into a steady rhythm yeah again you know hierarchies of power it's like the foreign secretaries getting involved the home secretaries getting involved people are getting Ransom notes and um again I suppose it doesn't matter each time that a kidnapping occurs there is only a very small number of people that have done this before you your support team but unless you're really really Reckless it's probably the first time you've been kidnapped and it's probably the first time that your family has had to deal with the kidnapping which means that it must feel a little bit like Groundhog Day every single time having to go through this same rigmarole of okay so step one we speak and explain step two we calm down and and contain step three we do the whatever whatever um and yeah the um externalities internally of that okay so we've we've sort of danced around some of the stories when it comes to the nuts and bolts of persuasion and negotiating how do you um conceptualize the the fundamentals of it like what are the core components or what is the science behind negotiating often people say to me Scott what is what is I need to say what can I say to get money off or get an upgrade and all this kind of stuff which is a starter I get asked all the time and I always turn around and go you're asking the wrong question because you're wrapping it all around you and what you want we're actually why don't you ask okay how can I really find out what's going on for the other person or what they value the most or how can I listen better which goes back to the golden rule of it's not about you you know again it's a cliche with a cliche for a reason seek first or understand before being understood um and that way the other side will actually tell you what their pain points are what they're looking for what would be a good deal for them if you listen properly and in the book I talk about level five listening you know the top few levels are all about all about you where you're listening for the gist or you're listening waiting to talk so you can rebut what they're saying whereas actually we want to go below that and listen to the emotion maybe the underlying emotion that's not being expressed and then really what's their model of the world what's their beliefs what their rules and with the way we do that is yes by asking really powerful open questions but by some simple tools and techniques that have been around for decades you know the the active listening techniques such as um you know you're paraphrasing or you're labeling and this is you just being curious rather than assuming you know what they mean when they say it dig into those techniques for me paraphrasing yeah so labeling would be saying emotional labeling so if I'm sensing your little frustrated with something right now I'll say with this conversation I would just say something like you sound a lot frustrated here Chris it seems like you've been annoyed or it seems like I've actually missed something here and you may go no no it's not that it's this instead because we have a saying that we need to name it to tame it if we can't name it the emotion we can't tame it and it's like the big elephant in the room you know when the emotions there somebody is not quite in a good place we kind of skirt around the issue whereas actually we want to call it out we want to name it so we can tame it for ourselves particularly you know tuning into what's going on for you but particularly with the other person but that's not a one-time tick box exercise it's continuous through your negotiation or through your communication that's the first thing and then the paraphrasing or the summarizing is just reflecting back your understanding of what the other person is saying and this is particularly helpful if people go on for quite a long time I deal with my kids I've got two teenagers and they just like to talk and talk and talk and talk and I have to interrupt them I'm going okay so what you're saying is this this this and this and they go yeah that's it great so there are those two techniques for example very on that actually doesn't really quickly sorry is again the caveat I give to people is again don't use this as a tick list oh I need to use paraphrasing or minimal encourages such as saying okay I'm not in my head I just need to just genuinely listen and be curious about the person and I'll do a lot of that stuff automatically um yeah so be led by the genuine desire to know what it is that they want when it comes to you mentioned before open questions as being one of them what are some of your favorite questions or question types that people should use in order to find out what it is that the other person wants okay it's model what or how questions really you know those seven Kipling's friends really around okay well what does that look like for you or how are we going to make that happen or how would you know that you've got what you wanted people say you know some of my clients now they'll go well I wanna you know I want to lose weight or I want to achieve this business thing okay well how would you know then you've achieved it what needs to happen so it's getting them to do the heavy lifting intellectually to work through exactly what does that look sound and feel like that's what you want to tap into really when I do uh partner negotiations for the show and this for the fledgling content creators that are listening is a really really great tool if you're having a discussion with a partner especially if it's a new one or even if it's just a renewal with an existing partner one of the first questions I always ask to absolutely everybody is what would success look like and that helps me to work out okay this particular company is really really interested in uh breaking into the United States Market this company is looking to improve their brand Equity this company wants to uh sell in 18 months times they're trying to drive top line revenue they're trying to do whatever whatever and it gives me so much information but you're right as well by saying what would success look like to you what is it that you want out of this how will you know when we have reached it first off it it does cause them to do the heavy lifting secondly it protects you from making assumptions that could be incorrect and thirdly it actually ensures that they know what it is that they want a lot of the time people come into a negotiation and they just they want thing I just want more oh stuck more what what is it that you need like and by forcing them to actually assess what it is you create a parameter from which you can then measure performance or success and often people haven't asked those questions of themselves in the first place correct correct yeah they want I want Financial Freedom okay to do what well you know just travel more have more freedom okay well what does freedom look like for you what does that mean you know those kind of questions where people go oh right yeah I've never really thought of that I don't know okay well there you go what about building Rapport is that done through the same way or is there a different strategy when it comes to that without and to repeat myself here it's not a tick box exercise people think oh I've got Rapport that's it no I'm good it's a continuous process of where you are in alignment with wherever you're talking to now Rapport can be you could be having an argument with somebody but you could be in Rapport depending on how you're having the argument and so it is a vital step in bringing about that cooperational collaboration so if you imagine at one end you've got all these active listening skills that we've touched on you're building the empathy or you're demonstrating empathy because empathies are doing word you're then building the rapport and then you bring a bit you you've earned the right you've earned the trust start maybe influencing and persuading somebody to change their behavior perhaps But ultimately to bring about cooperation and collaboration so in the case I gave earlier that could be Mr John my Communicator it could be with the kidnappers and this is particularly powerful if you disagree with somebody that you have a conversation with because then it just demonstrates hey you can get out of your own way and park your own ego but secondly actually I might disagree with you but I respect you as a person as a human being therefore I'm not a threat to you so you can balance your nervous system out yeah I'm going to come back out fighting towards me and then we can try and find some kind of collaboration and that's how it works um yeah it reminds me of that the difference between the opposition and the enemy that with one of them you are playing a game you know the opposition is Roger Federer versus Novak Djokovic right in a game but they're playing the game together There are rules of the game there is expected conduct there is a degree of mutual respect each wants to win and each would probably happily [ __ ] the other one over to win but at least you know kind of what to expect it's when those rules go completely out of the window and Federer jumps over the net and blams him in the face that's when it becomes a different sort of conversation and thinking as well about how people should prepare themselves before they go into a negotiation at one of my friends Alex homozy says that you would be absolutely amazed how much better you perform with just 15 minutes of preparation before you do anything and it's so true that the bar is set so unbelievably low and your short-term memory is really good even people that say that they've got [ __ ] memories your short-term memories awesome you can keep a hold of you know five things a couple of little trip wires in your mind someone knocks one of them over and that's interesting I know that you've got a golden retriever actually did you you did you go oh my God look at all of the preparations I read that 10 minutes ago so talk to me about what people should be doing before they go into it's a a job interview it's a renegotiation for their car deal it's them looking to get a pay increase it's them looking to do a complaint it's them giving a business presentation what are you doing in order to set yourself um physiologically to keep the nerves nice and calm to stay cool but it once you get in there stuff just starts happening it's the before time I think where the highest amount of discomfort is felt yeah there's a couple of parts of that the first one is accepting that you might get a bit nervous the emotions are going to show up in you and the other person this is particularly no difficult conversations so except that you might be uncomfortable at times in it but that's okay and once you've done that you know well actually I need to manage my own emotions first and that could be some breathing techniques for example just to kind of regulate when you're in there but once you are in there it's the preparation is key and we used to call it the bunch of fives you know we used to have you know hold our hands up these five fingers four things in a thumb a bunch of fives and they were okay what are the top three to five challenges issues threats that in my case the kidnappers or the hostess takers might Levy against me as a negotiator if I can think about what those are ahead of time I don't have to think on the hoof I can actually plan my answer to that accordingly and the same applies in any kind of business meeting or in the examples that you gave if I can think okay what are the likely objections perhaps to me asking for a pay rise what might my boss say if I was my boss and I wanted to turn this down what might I say because by working out what these could be ahead of time means I can do my research I can do my preparation so when that that question comes to you or that challenge comes to you it doesn't take you by surprise and you can just deal with it in your flow very interesting okay so let's say that you're having a discussion with somebody and the emotions really do start flying that they're particularly difficult interlocutor what can be done to bring down the volume the intensity of that situation both externally to them and then internally in terms of your emotional control during the during the event I call it the immediate action drill or the Ia drill and it's similar just keep in the back pocket metaphorically all the time there's three steps to it if I can feel this is just spiraling a bit out of control here either for me or for them or just interrupt the pattern so if I'm sat down or just stand up take a couple of breaths and might go outside or just say excuse me I just need to go and get some fresh air I might go for a short walk I might just turn on some random music just to interrupt that pattern to get you out of that lousy state that that whoever's in then the second thing is is realize that that wave of emotion the court is all that's running through your body theoretically it lasts for 90 seconds biologically that's all it goes for your body for when you get that trigger any longer and you realize you're just press pressing repeat inside your head on that story so knowing that it's tuning into your body okay what's showing up okay there's a churning in my stomach or tension across my shoulders I'm just going to sit with that for a minute or so and I'm just going to have this complete awareness I'm going to drop the reason why we call it feel the feeling and drop the story just really feel it 90 seconds two minutes tops and then that will balance your nervous system and then you can ask the third step is ask some better questions okay what was all that about where did that come from and usually it's something within yourself and not the other person which is a great Insight usually so your game is bringing more curiosity than assumption to the table to interrupt the pattern we ride the wave imagine you're a surfer or a skier for 90 seconds and then you're asked some really powerful questions afterwards wouldn't you balanced and then you can come back in whether or not it's five minutes later five hours or five days later and pick up where you left off far better that than what usually happens particularly from family set things is there's lots of naming shaming blaming shouting you know I'm sure we've all been been both on the receiving end on the giving end of those I like feel the feeling and drop the story I think that's a lovely cue and I had Sam Harris on the show not long ago he's got this really great example he uses where he says um imagine that you've just finished a hard workout and you're laid on the floor doing a sweat Angel and your lungs are burning and you're sweating and you can taste metal in the back of your throat your heart rate at 175. that is actually quite an enjoyable experience in in some regards because you feel proud of what you've done you know that you've worked hard for it you are contributing to your health being better this is something that you can be proud of if this happens spontaneously while you are sat in traffic you would think what the [ __ ] is going on I need to crash through all of these cars and get myself to the hospital so the story that you tell yourself about your experience largely determines your experience of it and I think allowing yourself to just sit with disco it's like okay so your heart rate's high and you you feel flush and okay so you feel angry at this person and there is as soon as you ask that next question of so what like what what do what does this mean it's just a sensation that's arisen am I able to make a better decision when I'm like this or if I'm able to get myself through the other side of this by just allowing it to wash over me and I like the idea of of a uh a surfer analogy too you've got this concept of a red Center as well is that similar yeah I mean red Center physically is the geographical location where the negotiation will take place so it could be a family kitchen dining table office but over the years I just thought you know what there's more to this it's actually something within all of us deep within us this ability to you know to rely on Equanimity more than anything else to be balanced to be calm at the sense of a raging Storm around us because is it fair to say that things are not going to go according to plan it doesn't have to be in a kidnap negotiation it could be with your kids with traffic with work and so if we accept that actually we can tap into this inner part of us this red Center call it and that's where all our tools and techniques that we've picked up over the years are just lying there waiting for us to use them but we just need to go looking for it and it's there within us all the time and so that is about being able to be calm regulate a nervous system and then once we've done that re-engage and do whatever it is we need to do talk to me about this tension between empathy which is presumably useful at understanding what the other person is feeling but being sufficiently detached that you can make rational decisions it feels to me like there is uh there's a little bit of a battle going on between these two things too much empathy you're so invested that now you're unable to to do the drop the story feel the feelings thing yeah I mentioned this in the book The caveat around sympathy empathy and compassion and there's a danger we get lost in semantics here so really the way I sum it all up is empathy particularly when I'm negotiating it's I don't have to actually feel your pain or care about your pain actually I just need to demonstrate I understand how I get where you're coming from and to the point where you go ah Scott gets me and again this is particularly powerful if we disagree on something now I don't like the kidnapper I've got nothing in common with him he's threatening to execute the hostages and he would if could get away with it and he just wants money for doing this now I need to demonstrate empathy to him otherwise he's not going to agree to they're always going to take a lot longer and a lot more pain to get the deal I don't need to sympathize with him and I'm not necessarily need to bring some compassion either so with the empathies that's just me demonstrating my understanding or reflecting back what the other person is feeling I understand one of the other um ideas that I've got in my head here is that listening as a skill that can be developed you know as you're listening you're being passive the person is just allowing things to wash over you but you have this conception I think it's quite right between proactive listening and just listening or passive listening and and my trade is in listening right this is what I do I listen I listen to the guest and I was really trying to reflect on what what I try and and pick out of of the people that I'm listening to it it kind of gives me the sense that the bar is set so low for good listening that there shouldn't really be such a thing as proactive listening the only reason that that exists is because most listening is people waiting for their turn to speak next or getting distracted when they should actually be paying attention absolutely it's not rocket science but our attention span is so low now is that we're constantly thinking oh yeah we should just hurry up and get to the point you know I've got 13 other things I need to do in the next minute or the danger is the first 10 to 15 words of what you're saying I'm now assuming I know what you mean and I'll try and finish a sentence for you or I'll come back with a response whereas actually we just need to perhaps slow down or or maybe just give a little breath after you've finished and then before I start talking but we just seem to struggle to do that these days yeah I um you mentioned it earlier on but it's something that I use a lot I guess the audience will never actually get to be able to see this although my editor deanwell and the guests that come on the show if the uh other camera was on while the guest is talking I would look like Churchill the nodding dog because for a lot of the time I'm just can yep keep going I can hear you this is good I can do the thing and I'm just bouncing my head up and down um but I realized first off Oprah does it and Oprah is a pretty good interviewer regardless of what you think about her politics and secondly if you're listening to somebody speak especially if it's being recorded for any reason if you have any verbal interjections yeah I understand okay like all of this it kind of disrupts the listening experience so you get to continue yep I'm here I'm still listening to you this is me being active oh that was an interesting point and I'll nod in a slightly different manner like an entire repertoire of like 15 different nods that I can pull out of the out of the Armory and um yeah I think the nod a uh widely underused tool in the Arsenal of the potential listener it is and it goes back to the point I made at the start of the interview whereas these techniques are great you need to to know the rules before you can break the rules and what I mean by that is if you are genuinely curious about what the other person is saying and you want to find out what okay what's important to them what what's this about for you I'm going to be nodding without even realizing it's like mirroring body language there's nothing more clunky oh Chris has folded his arms okay I need to fold my arms it's just no stop anybody out there has listened to any courses or any books just stop right now just take a genuine empathetic interest into the person and you will do that naturally Danny Trejo the guy that played Machete you know him Hollywood actor massive chest tattooed terrifying terrifying human he was on the show last year and he was I asked him about his introduction into Hollywood so he starts acting but he's been in jail he was a gang banger uh you know living in LA and um I asked him about this transition from being a muggle like us to being someone that acts on the Silver Screen he's opposite Nick Cage and he's in these huge movies and Productions and you know he didn't have time to go through the Myriad requisite acting schools as a kid and John Bernthal went out to Russia and learned like ballet for a year before he even began acting all you know the um upbringing he didn't have it and I asked him about what it is that he did and he said well if the scene needs me to go in sit down pick up a glass of water and take a drink I don't act like I'm going in sitting down picking up a glass of water and taking a drink I just do it I do the thing I'm not pretending to do the thing I'm not acting to do the thing I'm just doing the thing and there is a definitely an over complication that a lot of people myself included we presume that you have to go around the houses to arrive back at just being honest I guess truthful aligned working with Integrity or virtue or whatever you want to call it it's like what's the thing that you're trying to appear like you're doing just do that like you don't need to pretend to do the thing that you can just you can just do the thing now it's there's nuances here obviously like being interested in somebody that's boring is tough like you need to pretend to be interested but there are things that you can find that are interesting about what the person is saying and the more that you can do that I think you can uh Channel your inner Danny Trejo a little bit yeah I agree completely I think we just need to perhaps do less you know we want to Stack all these great techniques don't we but let's just remove some of them and just do what we need to do you must have a hierarchy of the biggest negotiation mistakes or the things that are able to uh the biggest no-nos that you would have done whether it be high stakes stuff or small steak stuff um what are the most common errors that people make that kind of ruins a negotiation or at least damages it for a little while yeah it's certainly the not listening is the is the key one but I think when people give unsolicited advice as well and start telling other people what they should be doing I I think that um particularly in a work environment or in a friendly environment somebody comes to you and want to kind of share a problem or challenge with you and you just give loads of advice about what they need to do that never really goes down particularly well the ones where I've seen it unravel really quickly is when the emotions take over now we all know now that we're emotional creatures that think rather than thinking creatures that feel we're emotional beings this is what we do this is how we make decisions and justify them later but it's when it IT spirals out of control and it's the fist bang on the table or it's the verbal abuse or we make it all about ourselves and about ego and me me me it just gets really messy and as I said in in a kidnap scenario people die if we mess that up so my which is why I said at the beginning about the crisis within the crisis I need to make sure that the ego driven CEO that's got into that top spot the very skills actually don't come to Bear here in this example I need him to be low-key really generous team player all that kind of stuff where actually I wanna I'd rather speak to somebody two three levels below him who's engaged and wants to learn a lesson so I think that's the key one is when we just allow that emotion to run off on a course of its own looking at it from a more personal perspective for yourself what are the strategies that you've used to overcome uh regrets around the way that you behaved during these sorts of interactions um or the I guess ambient anxiety when you still have a bunch of open Loops you part way through a negotiation you go to bed to grab a couple of hours before you wake up again to prep the communicator for whatever's going on with these Somali pirates what are the tools that you've used to be able to give yourself as much peace of mind as you can in those interims or if it's after the event to kind of be able to wash yourself a bit and let go two questions I asked myself I'm written down in my journal at the back and every time I get a new Journal I write them down just as a reminder so what now what and it can sound quite harsh but actually just cuts through all the BS in all the stories so at the end of the day where there's a courier who had the ransom money on one case he was supposed to call in every four hours on the way to drop the money off with the kidnappers four hours went by hidden phone eight hours went by he didn't phone you can see where this is going can't you meanwhile the kidnappers are going apoplectic they think we're going to Ambush them we're going to rip them off we're gonna Napalm their jungle Hideout all this crazy stuff and so at the end of the day I'm thinking okay okay well so what now what I need to remove that emotion from it so I can make an objective rational thought that a thinking and decision in the end we did manage to get tribal outer to go down speak to the chief of police who then released The Courier and the money I was gonna say where was The Courier he was being detained by the um by the local police for having carried a ton of money in a briefcase or something yeah a couple hundred thousand dollars from across the border from one country to the next which you shouldn't have done but anyway we've managed to get them released and we think great the Korea is now gonna be on his way to drop the money off but he wants no more to do with it so he takes his cut and he legs it meanwhile the kidnappers are not having a decent day here which comes back to that trust and the cooperation the collaboration I spoke about earlier because I'd established that trust with the kidnap as I was managed to allay their concerns for one more day and so we needed to find another Courier at the next day so I go back to the to my room uh in the embassy compound and I'm thinking right what was going on there how did that happen how do we not foresee that and this brings this sense of constant and never-ending Improvement whereas the military guys will say the unrelenting pursuit of Excellence okay so what it's happened we can't do anything about it now what we can do is how can we learn from it and how can we make sure we don't make those mistakes again and the next day we found another Courier and he got the money out he had to get a boat out to sea to Waypoint where the Handover was done um so there's that and then after each case it's it's sitting down doing an after action review and you could do this in your business or any kind of family scenario you just review it okay well what what well what could we do better next time and not to take it personally I love it I love it very very cool Scott Walker ladies and gentlemen where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing the website's probably the best place scottwalkerbooks.co.uk and they can find out more information there they can get a hold of the book and the newsletter and all the other good stuff Scott I appreciate you thank you mate if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe