Hostage Negotiator Quotes

I think we both need to work on our communication skills. (Kiara) I tried that once. (Nykyrian) And? (Kiara) Darling told me that I could never hold a job as a suicide counselor or hostage negotiator. He said my failure rate would become the stuff of legends. (Nykyrian)

Being a heterosexual woman who loved men meant being a translator for their emotions, a palliative nurse for their pride and a hostage negotiator for their egos.

Their arguments always went like this. The angrier Madeline got, the more freakishly calm Ed became, until he reached a point where he sounded like a hostage negotiator dealing with a lunatic and a ticking bomb. It was infuriating.

Speak to your darkest and most negative interior voices the way a hostage negotiator speaks to a violent psychopath: calmly, but firmly. Most of all, never back down. You cannot afford to back down. The life you are negotiating to save, after all, is your own.

Just five minutes, God, I chant like some hostage negotiator on the brink of a resolution. Five minutes alone. Please, please. Please.

Gary Noesner notes that we could all learn from the successes and failures of hostage negotiation.7 At the beginning of such situations, emotions run high. Efforts to speed matters along often lead to disaster. Staving off natural desires to react aggressively to emotional provocations allows time for the molecules of emotion to gradually dissipate. The resulting cooler heads save lives.

You ever want to negotiate a hostage situation in Quebec, I'm your man. Send me in for a little parley and the francophone miscreants will flee, hands over bleeding ears.

The kind of guy you can picture negotiating for hostages and also jumping away from an explosion.

Attention, success, and comparison hold my soul hostage and refuse to negotiate until they get what they want. Spoiler alert: They want everything. And they are never satisfied. They will never let you go.

Over time, I've found the right tone of voice for these assertions, too. It's best to be insistent, but affable. Repeat yourself, but don't get shrill. Speak to your darkest and most negative interior voices the way a hostage negotiator speaks to a violent psychopath: calmly, but firmly. Most of all, never back down. You cannot afford to back down. The life you are negotiating to save, after all, is your own.

It's like getting your girlfriend pregnant, you can't unscrew her.

Be careful, he says, the official US position will be that they refuse to negotiate for hostages, but they may try to enlist the U.N. to do it.

If you feel you can’t say “No” then you’ve taken yourself hostage.

This is the FBI Hostage Negotiations Service. Press one if you wish to surrender. Press two for a getaway car. Press three for a helicopter. Press four for a pizza

The angrier Madeline got, the more freakishly calm Ed became, until he reached a point where he sounded like a hostage negotiator dealing with a lunatic and a ticking bomb.

The Downs hijacking case came to epitomize everything not to do in a crisis situation, and inspired the development of today’s theories, training, and techniques for hostage negotiations.

He smirks, shaking his head and letting his eyes wander. I watch him carefully, wondering what I can say to get him to leave. “I’m not leaving until you answer some questions. Plus, I’m holding your sketchbook hostage, so you might want to cooperate.” I raise an eyebrow at him. I guess there isn’t much I can say. “This isn’t a hostage negotiation.” He chuckles half-heartedly as his eyes take me in, almost sizing me up. “I guess I should introduce myself.” He holds a hand out for me to shake. “I’m Nathan.” I stare at his hand for a moment. “Taylor,” I reply, meeting his eyes again without taking his hand. He lets his hand fall back to his side. “At least I got you to say something non-hostile.” “I haven’t been hostile,” I object. His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, haven’t you?” “Why don’t you leave me alone?” I snap. “Leave and don’t come back.” I move passed him, heading for my apartment. He can’t follow and annoy me if I lock the door. “Where are you going?” he demands. I look back over my shoulder and roll my eyes at him, indicating the answer should be obvious: anywhere he isn’t. Once inside, I slam the door behind me. “That was totally not hostile!” he calls after me, sarcastically. I quickly head for my bedroom door, slamming it, too.

In this nation people assume they can write your story from beginning to end, and wait for you to fall into place on the stage that has been set, it is why every conversation scans like a hostage negotiation, with your humanity being the item that's up for deliberation.

In 1973, Jan Erik Olsson walked into a small bank in Stockholm, Sweden, brandishing a gun, wounding a police officer, and taking three women and one man hostage. During negotiations, Olsson demanded money, a getaway vehicle, and that his friend Clark Olofsson, a man with a long criminal history, be brought to the bank. The police allowed Olofsson to join his friend and together they held the four hostages captive in a bank vault for six days. During their captivity, the hostages at times were attached to snare traps around their necks, likely to kill them in the event that the police attempted to storm the bank. The hostages grew increasingly afraid and hostile toward the authorities trying to win their release and even actively resisted various rescue attempts. Afterward they refused to testify against their captors, and several continued to stay in contact with the hostage takers, who were sent to prison. Their resistance to outside help and their loyalty toward their captors was puzzling, and psychologists began to study the phenomenon in this and other hostage situations. The expression of positive feelings toward the captor and negative feelings toward those on the outside trying to win their release became known as Stockholm syndrome.

Latin America taught me a lot. It's a market leader in kidnap.

The basic issue here is that when people feel that they are not in control, they adopt what psychologists call a hostage mentality. That is, in moments of conflict they react to their lack of power by either becoming extremely defensive or lashing out.

Sitting people down and lecturing them rarely works, because it makes them defensive—and when they’re defensive, they hide things from you. Work side by side with them in a cooperative activity, however, and you’ll lower their guard and get them to open up. That’s why hostage negotiators try to get hostage takers to commit to a shared activity, such as allowing food or medical supplies into a building. It’s also why the elders at an Amish barn-raising or quilting bee uncover more deep secrets than a spy in bed with a drunken politician.

To successfully gain a hostage’s safe release, a negotiator had to penetrate the hostage-taker’s motives, state of mind, intelligence, and emotional strengths and weaknesses. The negotiator played the role of bully, conciliator, enforcer, savior, confessor, instigator, and

Attention, success, and comparison hold my soul hostage and refuse to negotiate until they get what they want. Spoiler alert: They want everything. And they are never satisfied. They will never let you go. We need a rescuer to come and save us from the bondage of the lie that whispers we have to build and grow and be known by all.

As a negotiator, Abby could face deranged criminals armed to the teeth, holding numerous hostages, while her voice remained measured, each word de-escalating the situation. But when she talked to the guy she was married to for twelve years, her voice automatically adopted the style of nails dragged on a blackboard, and she couldn’t think of a single word to utter aside from expletives.

The Sniper Bird by Stewart Stafford "Look out!" the crowd shouted to me, "There's a Sniper Bird in those trees!" A whooshing sound shot past my ears, Making me duck down to my knees. He must have gone rogue, I reckoned, Someone cheated him over birdseed, Then he took a squirrel as his hostage, Get a negotiator quickly up those trees. He threw up his wings and surrendered, They brought him down in a gilded cage, Never again sniping at innocent people, He studies elocution with a parrot sage. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Try this the next time you have to apologize for a bone-headed mistake. Go right at it. The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it. Whenever I was dealing with the family of a hostage, I started out by saying I knew they were scared. And when I make a mistake—something that happens a lot—I always acknowledge the other person’s anger. I’ve found the phrase “Look, I’m an asshole” to be an amazingly effective way to make problems go away. That approach has never failed me.

The problem with offering up the top guy, in addition to encouraging other desperate little people to try the same thing, is that you lose your maneuvering room. You always want to negotiate through intermediaries, which allows you to stall for time and avoid making promises you don’t want to keep. Once you put the hostage taker in direct contact with someone he perceives as a decision maker, everyone is backed against the wall, and if you don’t give in to his demands, you risk having things head south in a hurry. The longer you keep them talking, the better.

Pandora looked dully at the red wax seal on the envelope, stamped with an elaborate family crest. If Gabriel had written something nice to her, she didn’t want to read it. If he’d written something not nice, she didn’t want to read that either. “By the holy poker,” Ida exclaimed, “just open it!” Reluctantly Pandora complied. As she pulled a small folded note from the envelope, a tiny, fuzzy object fell out. Reflexively she yelped, thinking it was an insect. But at second glance, she realized it was a bit of fabric. Picking it up gingerly, she saw that it was one of the decorative felt leaves from her missing Berlin wool slipper. It had been carefully snipped off. My lady, Your slipper is being held for ransom. If you ever want to see it again, come alone to the formal drawing room. For every hour you delay, an additional embellishment will be removed. —St. Vincent Now Pandora was exasperated. Why was he doing this? Was he trying to draw her into another argument? “What does it say?” Ida asked. “I have to go downstairs for a hostage negotiation,” Pandora said shortly. “Would you help put me to rights?” “Yes, milady.

Where the parties speak different languages the chance for misinterpretation is compounded. For example, in Persian, the word “compromise” apparently lacks the positive meaning it has in English of “a midway solution both sides can live with,” but has only a negative meaning as in “our integrity was compromised.” Similarly, the word “mediator” in Persian suggests “meddler,” someone who is barging in uninvited. In early 1980 U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim flew to Iran to seek the release of American diplomats being held hostage by Iranian students soon after the Islamic revolution. His efforts were seriously set back when Iranian national radio and television broadcast in Persian a remark he reportedly made on his arrival in Tehran: “I have come as a mediator to work out a compromise.” Within an hour of the broadcast, his car was being stoned by angry Iranians.

the greatest inspiration for institutional change in American law enforcement came on an airport tarmac in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 4, 1971. The United States was experiencing an epidemic of airline hijackings at the time; there were five in one three-day period in 1970. It was in that charged atmosphere that an unhinged man named George Giffe Jr. hijacked a chartered plane out of Nashville, Tennessee, planning to head to the Bahamas. By the time the incident was over, Giffe had murdered two hostages—his estranged wife and the pilot—and killed himself to boot. But this time the blame didn’t fall on the hijacker; instead, it fell squarely on the FBI. Two hostages had managed to convince Giffe to let them go on the tarmac in Jacksonville, where they’d stopped to refuel. But the agents had gotten impatient and shot out the engine. And that had pushed Giffe to the nuclear option. In fact, the blame placed on the FBI was so strong that when the pilot’s wife and Giffe’s daughter filed a wrongful death suit alleging FBI negligence, the courts agreed. In the landmark Downs v. United States decision of 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals wrote that “there was a better suited alternative to protecting the hostages’ well-being,” and said that the FBI had turned “what had been a successful ‘waiting game,’ during which two persons safely left the plane, into a ‘shooting match’ that left three persons dead.” The court concluded that “a reasonable attempt at negotiations must be made prior to a tactical intervention.” The Downs hijacking case came to epitomize everything not to do in a crisis situation, and inspired the development of today’s theories, training, and techniques for hostage negotiations. Soon after the Giffe tragedy, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) became the first police force in the country to put together a dedicated team of specialists to design a process and handle crisis negotiations. The FBI and others followed. A new era of negotiation had begun. HEART

It is our policy not to negotiate with terrorists." I stared at the phone, my eyes wide. I was speechless and very, very angry. "Are you still there?" The voice belonged to an unnamed official in the NSA. Perston‐Smythe introduced him as one of Cox's supervisors. "What the fuck do you mean by that?" "It is the policy of this government not to negotiate with terrorists." "Do you mean to tell me that you consider me a terrorist?" He sounded almost prim. "Certainly. You've taken a hostage." "Terrorists," I said, gritting my teeth, "attack the innocent to achieve their goals. If you're about to tell me that you consider Cox an innocent bystander, then this conversation is over." "Terrorists are—" "Oh, fuck it! You want a terrorist action so you can consider me a terrorist? There's no way you can keep me out of your nuclear arsenals. Where do you want the first one to go off? The Pentagon? The White House? The Capitol building? How about Moscow or Kiev? Wouldn't that be interesting? Do you think they'd launch?" His voice was a lot less prim. "You wouldn't do that." "Well, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't. BECAUSE I'M NOT A TERRORIST!" I slammed the phone down on the hook and jumped.

In the room, the clocks tick, unseen. It has been a day of shadows and redirection, revelation and lies. Diane gets the vague sense that Kotey — with his confi dence and his silence — might think himself to be the smartest person in the room. He is intelligent yes, but it’s an intelligence that needs to wear a disguise. And besides, the smartest person in the room is the one who knows she, or he, is never the smartest at all: herein lies the contradiction. She wonders now if he has just said exactly the things she wanted to hear? She knows herself to be naïve at times: she admits this to herself. Yes, it is true, she has often been far too open to people in the past. She has been stung. Government offi cials who have deceived her. Pretenders from the FBI. Misdirection from the State Department and White House. Politicians. Negotiators. Informers. Conmen. And, perhaps now, Kotey. But she also knows that the naivety is necessary to cultivate something deeper. She wants to remain open to the world. Compassion, Lord. And mercy. And patience. There will be one more session tomorrow. Perhaps they will achieve something more than this intimate stand-off . But then again, perhaps nothing. She pulls back her chair and thanks him. It is dangerous, she knows, to thank him, her son’s murderer. But she must do it anyway. Perhaps it’s only politeness. Perhaps it’s something more. “In another life,” she says, “you and Jim might have been friends.

■​Let what you know—your known knowns—guide you but not blind you. Every case is new, so remain flexible and adaptable. Remember the Griffin bank crisis: no hostage-taker had killed a hostage on deadline, until he did. ■​Black Swans are leverage multipliers. Remember the three types of leverage: positive (the ability to give someone what they want); negative (the ability to hurt someone); and normative (using your counterpart’s norms to bring them around). ■​Work to understand the other side’s “religion.” Digging into worldviews inherently implies moving beyond the negotiating table and into the life, emotional and otherwise, of your counterpart. That’s where Black Swans live. ■​Review everything you hear from your counterpart. You will not hear everything the first time, so double-check. Compare notes with team members. Use backup listeners whose job is to listen between the lines. They will hear things you miss. ■​Exploit the similarity principle. People are more apt to concede to someone they share a cultural similarity with, so dig for what makes them tick and show that you share common ground. ■​When someone seems irrational or crazy, they most likely aren’t. Faced with this situation, search for constraints, hidden desires, and bad information. ■​Get face time with your counterpart. Ten minutes of face time often reveals more than days of research. Pay special attention to your counterpart’s verbal and nonverbal communication at unguarded moments—at the beginning and the end of the session or when someone says something out of line.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain. The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to appease. During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts. In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.” For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Most Americans do not know that the payments in ransom and Jizyah tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800. Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast. The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all fought. In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves. During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbled as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines. They finally agreed officially to abandon slavery and piracy. Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn with the line “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Okay,” Mason said, feeling a surge of hope. The protocol now was to force the hostage- taker to make decisions about trivial things like the kind of getaway vehicle he wanted. The object was to get the hostage-taker so worn out and emotionally dependent on his negotiator that he gives up without a fight. That was the way it was supposed to go–in theory anyway.

Candles and waterproof matches.” “Check.” “Weather radio, flashlight, batteries…” “Check, check, check…” “Hurricane-tracking chart, potable water, freeze-dried food, can opener, organic toilet paper, sensible clothes, upbeat reading material, baseball gloves, compass, whistle, signal mirror, first-aid kit, snake-bite kit, mess kit, malaria tablets, smelling salts, flints, splints, solar survival blanket, edible-wild-plant field almanac, trenching tool, semaphores, gas masks, Geiger counter, executive defibrillator, railroad flares, lemons in case of scurvy, Austrian gold coins in case paper money becomes scoffed at, laminated sixteen-language universal hostage-negotiation ‘Kwik-Guide’ (Miami-Dade edition), extra film, extra ammunition, firecrackers, handcuffs, Taser, pepper spray, throwing stars, Flipper lunch box, Eden Roc ashtray, Cypress Gardens felt pennant, alligator snow globe, miniature wooden crate of orange gumballs, acrylic seashell thermometer and pen holder, can of Florida sunshine…” “Check, check, check…. What about my inflatable woman?

If the hostages’ deaths were going to mean something, we would have to find a new way to negotiate, communicate, listen, and speak, both with our enemies and with our friends. Not for communication’s sake, though. No. We had to do it to win.

for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective.

Can he say to a bank robber, “Okay, you’ve taken four hostages. Let’s split the difference—give me two, and we’ll call it a day?

A successful hostage negotiator has to get everything he asks for, without giving anything back of substance, and do so in a way that leaves the adversaries feeling as if they have a great relationship. His work is emotional intelligence on steroids.

Remember, a hostage negotiator plays a unique role: he has to win.

Before we can influence others we must first listen and understand.

Before we can influence others we must first listen and understand. Listening is the cheapest concession we can ever make.

talking to Frost had become less like negotiating with a small angry hostage

At a recent sales conference, I asked the participants for the one word they all dread. The entire group yelled, “No!” To them—and to almost everyone—“No” means one thing: end of discussion. But that’s not what it means. “No” is not failure. Used strategically it’s an answer that opens the path forward. Getting to the point where you’re no longer horrified by the word “No” is a liberating moment that every negotiator needs to reach. Because if your biggest fear is “No,” you can’t negotiate. You’re the hostage of “Yes.” You’re handcuffed. You’re done.

It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective. By

He claimed to employ different tactics for different ships, but the basic strategy was crude in its simplicity. In attack groups spread amongst several small and speedy skiffs, Boyah and his men approached their target on all sides, swarming like a water-borne wolf pack. They brandished their weapons in an attempt to frighten the ship's crew into stopping, and even fired into the air. If these scare tactics did not work, and if the target ship was capable of outperforming their outboard motors, the chase ended there. But if they managed to pull even with their target, they tossed hooked rope ladders onto the decks and boarded the ship. Instances of the crew fighting back were rare, and rarely effective, and the whole process, from spotting to capturing, took at most thirty minutes. Boyah guessed that only 20 per cent to 30 per cent of attempted hijackings met with success, for which he blamed speedy prey, technical problems, and foreign naval or domestic intervention. The captured ship was then steered to a friendly port – in Boyah's case, Eyl – where guards and interpreters were brought from the shore to look after the hostages during the ransom negotiation. Once the ransom was secured – often routed through banks in London and Dubai and parachuted like a special-delivery care package directly onto the deck of the ship – it was split amongst all the concerned parties. Half the money went to the attackers, the men who actually captured the ship. A third went to the operation’s investors: those who fronted the money for the ships, fuel, tracking equipment, and weapons. The remaining sixth went to everyone else: the guards ferried from shore to watch over the hostage crew, the suppliers of food and water, the translators (occasionally high school students on their summer break), and even the poor and disabled in the local community, who received some as charity. Such largesse, Boyah told me, had made his merry band into Robin Hood figures amongst the residents of Eyl.

Kashmareck went out, returning a few moments later with a woman who set all the men’s eyes ablaze. About forty, she had long legs, blond hair, and the face of a Russian doll. She quickly scanned the group, settled into a chair that seemed to be reaching out for her, and opened a memo pad. With her firm, decisive movements, she must have been used to subduing the troops. She explained briefly, in discursive tones, that she worked for the military, customs, and the police, especially in antiterrorism and hostage negotiations. A heavyweight in her field. Lucie had never felt such attention around her. The testosterone level was rising. At least this bombshell had the power to capture their minds.

It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective. By repeating back what people say, you trigger this mirroring instinct and your counterpart will inevitably elaborate on what was just said and sustain the process of connecting.

We each have a unique way of looking at the world. Our personal world view has been shaped by the things that have happened to us as children and as adults. It has been shaped by the points of view put forward by the people who have influenced us over the years. It has been shaped by our disappointments, our victories and our defeats. Our experience has meant we have developed coping mechanisms that enable us to survive. For me to believe that I can understand you so well that I can even understand your coping mechanisms is arrogant beyond belief.

For some reason, law enforcement has a propensity only to fix things after a significant event when it is brought to light that these items should have already been in place.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

People spend years making a wreck of their lives. Negotiators cannot expect to turn these years of turmoil around in one incident.

Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

What happened to Kenny? The short answer is that Mike doesn’t know. Mike did not follow up. This was one of the techniques or practices that he used to protect himself so he could sleep at night. Mike said he has two reasons for this philosophy. “First, our job as a negotiator is finite time-wise. It is not the negotiator’s task to solve all of the deep-seated underlying psychological problems of those with whom we negotiate. Those with a lot more letters after their names handle that. We are all about the here and now. Get them down off the bridge and into the hands of someone more qualified to handle the complex mental disorders that cause these individuals to do the things they do.” “Second, there is a kind of selfish reason. I had about six hours of my life invested in Kenny. If he got out of rehab or didn’t complete rehab and went back to the neighborhood and started hanging around with his crack-smoking friends and went back to drugs, I would feel as if that part of my life had been wasted time. If we look at statistics, that likely is what happened. I would prefer to think that Kenny is happily working on cars in a shop, factory or dealership and leading a happy and productive life.” Mike added that there is no feeling in the world that competes with rolling up on an incident where an individual is attempting to take his/her life and sometime later walking away with the individual well and on his way to getting help. What happens after that is out of our hands.

One crucial takeaway that the team learned was that, for lack of a better term, if an individual was talking “crazy,” deep down they knew that they were not acting right, and you couldn’t enter that delusion because that would destroy any trust that they might have for you. So, if you agreed with them, they would know that you were not sincere and would lose all faith in you.

And this points out the challenging part of being a negotiator: We are praised when it goes well and criticized or second-guessed when it doesn’t. What we all need to remember is that it is the person who created the incident, and sometimes they are the ones in the end who determine what happens.

There was a sign on the wall of the squad room in capital letters that read “GOYA KOD.” This acronym reminded detectives to “Get Off Your Ass, Knock On Doors.” Occasionally, but rarely, people might come to the police with information, but they tend to be more cooperative when interviewed at their residence or stores.

That is why it is important to “talk yourself down,” to mentally go over the checklist of what to do on your arrival at the scene. A deliberate and conscious effort is necessary. Even though you may feel as if you are moving in slow motion, you will be acting and speaking very, very rapidly. Taking a few moments to pinpoint the location to which you are responding on a map before you start out will remove some degree of anxiety and concern. This will allow more total concentration on the incident of the moment.

positive foreshadowing.” This means introducing statements throughout the negotiation such as, “When you come out,” or “When this is all over, we can talk one on one.

To be a good negotiator, you don’t do all of the talking; you must also be an excellent listener.

Diogenes sums it up best: “We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.

Law enforcement officers sometimes feel that no action in a crisis situation means we are not making progress and that we should do something to elicit a response—for example, to break a window or deploy gas. In fact, what’s most important to understand about the negotiation process is that sometimes we may talk for hours with no response, but that doesn’t always mean that the subject on the other end is not listening and that the process is not working, when indeed it may be. It’s a bit of a cliché, but in negotiating, patience really is a virtue.

As soon as you articulate the other side’s point of view, they are a little surprised,” Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, said. “You’ve made them really curious to hear what you are going to say next.

Listening and checking for understanding is probably the single best way to keep conflict healthy, all through life. That’s why it is practiced by everyone who navigates high conflict with grace. Wherever you find a wise minister, psychologist, salesperson, or hostage negotiator, you will find someone who knows how to loop, even if they don’t call it that.

The Pakistani state has repeatedly turned to the Haqqanis to negotiate on its behalf with the TTP and other Pakistani militants based in the tribal areas, negotiations that have resulted in a number of infamous peace accords that have effectively ceded sovereignty in parts of the tribal areas to the Haqqanis and their allies and have included in some cases the release of TTP leaders from Pakistani prisons. According to one source, Iran even turned to the Haqqani network when one of its diplomats was kidnapped in Peshawar, and the Haqqanis allegedly secured the release of the hostage in return for the release of a number of prominent al-Qa’ida members from Iranian custody.

Troublingly, the various reports disseminated by the FBI were often misleading if not outright inaccurate. In one teletype sent to the director of the Domestic Intelligence Division of the FBI, as well as to the White House and the U.S. attorney general, at 11:58 p.m. on September 9, the Buffalo office reported that during the riot “the whites were reportedly forced into the yard area by the blacks” and Black Power militants there were rounding up not just employee hostages but also all white prisoners, which was misleading in that it suggested a race riot was unfolding.42 More inflammatory still, the FBI’s Buffalo office stated that the prisoners “have threatened to kill one guard for every shot fired [at them]”; that they “have threatened to kill all hostages unless demands are met”; and that all of the hostages “are being made to stand at attention” out in D Yard.43 None of this proved to be the case. During the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s the FBI was deeply invested in destabilizing and undermining grassroots organizations that it considered a threat to national security—as were the politicians, such as Nixon, Agnew, and Mitchell, who supported its efforts and relied on its briefings.44 One of the FBI’s counterintelligence programs in this period—COINTELPRO—was notorious for using rumor and outright fabrication stories in an attempt to destroy leftist, antiwar, and civil rights groups from within. For this reason Commissioner Oswald’s determination to keep negotiating with the men in D Yard infuriated much of the Bureau. As one internal FBI memo put it, state officials had “capitulated to the unreasonable demands of prisoners.”45 And these weren’t just any criminals; as the FBI noted on multiple occasions, “The majority of the mutinous prisoners are black.”46 As dusk fell over D Yard on the first day of the Attica uprising, FBI and State Police rumors about black prisoners’ threats and outrageous actions only multiplied. But no matter how hostile everyone else was to the idea of the state negotiating with the prisoners, Commissioner Russell Oswald insisted even more forcefully that he was going to see these talks through.

When I told friends I was going to a hostage negotiation and training session, they immediately imagined banks and a small gaggle of men in ski masks. Though the numbers are not tracked consistently, around 80% of all hostage situations in this country are a result of domestic violence,

President Carter attempted to negotiate the release of the hostages. When this failed, he authorized a military rescue mission, launched in April 1980. It was a disaster, and it turned out to be the hammer that would drive the final nail into Carter’s presidential coffin.

As a hostage negotiator, one of Abby’s core guides was the 7-38-55 rule. It was a simple equation that stated that when people talked, only 7 percent of what they felt was communicated in their words. Another 38 percent was accounted for in their tone of voice, and 55 percent in their facial expression. The words he’d uttered should have been reassuring.

Beware of the Tribes Effect A threat to identity can elicit the Tribes Effect, an adversarial mindset that pits your identity against that of the other side: It is me versus you, us versus them. This mindset most likely evolved to help groups protect their bloodlines from outside threat. Today it can just as easily be activated in a two-person conflict, whether between siblings, spouses, or diplomats. The Tribes Effect spurs you to make a blanket devaluation of the other’s perspective simply because it is theirs. It is thus more than a fleeting fight-or-flight response. As a mindset, it can hold you hostage to polarized feelings for hours, days, or years; through learning, modeling, and storytelling, it can even be passed down through generations, relentlessly resistant to change.

Getting your emotions under control isn’t just a key to being a great leader like Jim. It’s also the most important key to reaching other people, especially in times of stress or uncertainty. It’s why a cool and controlled hostage negotiator can get through to someone who seems unreachable

Yes” is nothing without “How.” While an agreement is nice, a contract is better, and a signed check is best. You don’t get your profits with the agreement. They come upon implementation. Success isn’t the hostage-taker saying, “Yes, we have a deal”; success comes afterward, when the freed hostage says to your face, “Thank you.

Another simple rule is, when you are verbally assaulted, do not counterattack. Instead, disarm your counterpart by asking a calibrated question. The next time a waiter or salesclerk tries to engage you in a verbal skirmish, try this out. I promise you it will change the entire tenor of the conversation. The basic issue here is that when people feel that they are not in control, they adopt what psychologists call a hostage mentality. That is, in moments of conflict they react to their lack of power by either becoming extremely defensive or lashing out. Neurologically, in situations like this the fight-or-flight mechanism in the reptilian brain or the emotions in the limbic system overwhelm the rational part of our mind, the neocortex, leading us to overreact in an impulsive, instinctive way. In a negotiation, like in the one between my client and the CEO, this always produces a negative outcome. So we have to train our neocortex to override the emotions from the other two brains.

And it means lowering the hostage mentality in your counterpart by asking a question or even offering an apology. (“You’re right. That was a bit harsh.”) If you were able to take an armed kidnapper who’d been surrounded by police and hook him up to a cardiac monitor, you’d find that every calibrated question and apology would lower his heart rate just a little bit.

Harness Effective Pauses Pauses harness the power of silence. Silence can be uncomfortable, so people tend to fill in conversational space. Hostage negotiators use pauses to get subjects to speak up and provide additional information, particularly when they think asking a question might derail things. Rather than asking a follow-up question, they’ll be quiet and let the suspect fill in the dead air. Pauses also help focus attention. Pausing just before or after saying something important breeds anticipation and encourages listeners to focus on what the communicator is saying. President Obama was famous for this. His campaign slogan “Yes, we can” was often delivered with a pause in between, as in “Yes… we can.” In his 2008 election night speech, his most stirring sentence contained ten of these pauses: “If there is anyone out there… who still doubts… that America is a place… where all things are possible,… who still wonders… if the dream of our Founders… is alive in our time,… who still questions… the power of our democracy,… tonight… is your answer.” Strategically pausing helps make points and hold attention.

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. —MARK TWAIN

trembling and twitching nervously. Their faces displayed

Many people, when they hear about hostage negotiation, shake their heads and say, “Why don’t they just shoot the guy?” But those people don’t know the stats. When police launch an assault during a hostage situation, it’s the police who suffer the bulk of the casualties. Fighting may end things quickly, but the research shows it doesn’t end things well. You and I do the same thing in our personal relationships. Things go sideways and often our first response is to fight. Not physical violence, but yelling and arguing vs. discussing and negotiating. Why is this? Philosopher Daniel Dennett says it’s because a “war metaphor” is wired into our brains when it comes to disagreement. When there’s a war, someone is conquered. It’s not a discussion of facts and logic; it’s a fight to the death. No matter who is really right, if you win, I lose. In almost every conversation, status is on the line. Nobody wants to look stupid. So, as Dennett explains, we set up a situation where learning is equivalent to losing.

very soon, for two reasons. First, the Wessex fyrd could only be kept in the field for a short period. Soon their supplies would dwindle, and the need for the men of Wessex to return to their fields and shops would begin to sap away the strength of the Saxon shieldwall. Second, Alfred had a very ominous foreboding about Guthrum’s strategy. The Danish king had clearly chosen a position easily reached from the sea and well connected to the waterways of Wessex. Why would he choose what was clearly a naval base when he had come with land forces? Wareham was the perfect stronghold for a ship army. But where were the ships? Alfred knew that at any moment swarms of Viking longboats were likely to arrive, bringing thousands of Danish warriors, doubling or tripling Guthrum’s army and killing any possibility the men of Wessex had of repelling this attack. Guthrum must be driven from Warehem immediately. Alfred’s desperation showed in the approach he finally chose. Once more, he paid the danegeld. Of course this wasn’t the sort of tactic that could work over any extended period of time, but it was enough to extract Guthrum and his troop from Wareham. It should also be pointed out that, as disastrous as paying the danegeld had been for East Anglia and Mercia, Alfred’s previous payment had been temporarily successful. It had seemed to buy a few years of peace. Alfred clearly felt uneasy about this payment and made two extra demands as he negotiated the Viking withdrawal. First, the two armies exchanged hostages. A selection of Wessex men were taken into captivity by Guthrum, and Alfred chose an assortment of the most distinguished Danish noblemen to remain with him. These hostages were to ensure that the two kings honored their pledges to one another. If Guthrum failed to keep his end of the peace bargain, then Alfred would be free to exact his revenge on the Viking hostages, and vice versa. Second, Alfred insisted

It’s almost laughably simple: for the FBI, a “mirror” is when you repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. Of the entirety of the FBI’s hostage negotiation skill set, mirroring is the closest one gets to a Jedi mind trick. Simple, and yet uncannily effective.

What is that?” the woman asked. “One of your little vampires,” I said. “You send more body parts our way, we send you more heads.” “We could send you a head, too,” she yelled. “You have only two hostages; we have a dozen, and three of them are your masters, which means if they die, you die.” “Thaddeus,” Marius yelled, “you wouldn’t dare.” “Thaddeus isn’t in charge of these negotiations; I am, and I so fucking would.

The basic issue here is that when people feel that they are not in control, they adopt what psychologists call a hostage mentality. That is, in moments of conflict they react to their lack of power by either becoming extremely defensive or lashing out. Neurologically, in situations like this the fight-or-flight mechanism in the reptilian brain or the emotions in the limbic system overwhelm the rational part of our mind, the neocortex, leading us to overreact in an impulsive, instinctive way.

Consensus also creates incentives for “hostage taking,” as when someone knows that theirs is the final vote required and holds out for extreme concessions.

In complex deals and protracted conflicts, especially if hostage taking is a concern, a sufficient consensus approach can be more appropriate than seeking unanimity.