Pod Insights Modern Wisdom Inside the Mind of a Hostage Negotiator - Scott Walker About this episode Scott Walker is a former Scotland Yard detective, world renowned hostage negotiator and an author.
Having successfully resolved over 300 cases, from hostage negotiations to piracy, ransom and cyber extortion attacks, Scott has gained deep insights into how human communication works and today we get to find out his wildest stories and best tips.
Expect to learn how the science of negotiating actually works, the questions should you ask at the beginning of a negotiation to set the tone, how you can deal with overwhelm and nerves in high pressure situations, Scott’s advice for negotiating with difficult people, how to avoid the most common negotiation mistakes and much more...
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#communication #negotiation #hostage
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00:00 Scott’s Unique Background
03:46 The Reality of Kidnap Response
07:21 A Negotiator’s View of Human Nature
15:36 Differences Between Extortion Vs Human Kidnapping
18:20 Reacting to Apple TV’s ‘Hijack’
22:16 Core Components of Successful Negotiating
28:50 Strategies to Build Rapport
31:03 How to Prepare for Negotiation
39:02 Balancing Empathy & Rationality
46:13 The Don’ts of Negotiation
51:43 Where to Find Scott
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chris Williamson? What is your background?
0:02 Speaker 01 My background is a kidnap for ransom negotiator or a crisis response consultant, as it's known in the industry.
0:12 Chris Williamson? Kidnap for ransom, is that a specific subset of kidnap negotiating?
0:18 Speaker 01 Well, it also includes things like extortion as well, typical for a shop owner that Matthew used to get involved in, or maybe a cyber attack. But yeah, pretty much every single kidnapping would involve some kind of ransom demand, hence kidnap for ransom.
0:36 Chris Williamson? Interesting. Yeah, 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?
0:59 Speaker 01 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.
1:20 Chris Williamson? How many people were at your level when you were doing this role?
1:28 Speaker 01 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 it certainly sounded good. It'd stroke our egos, which actually means it's a very small team of highly switched-on people who've got each other's backs, but become very, very proficient in that certain skill set.
1:57 Chris Williamson? 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?
2:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, funny enough, when I was at school, I went to see the career advisor. They'd 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. Loved 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 informants or taking a bit of time out to become an as an interrogator in Iraq for the military for a while, or as a negotiator.
2:53 Speaker 01 And so it's all this, this really interesting, 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. And so having done that career, and I wanted a career change, just turned 40. Some people call it midlife crisis, they go and buy a Ferrari or marry a model. I go and join a kidnap negotiation firm and have a second career. And 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
3:32 Speaker 01 in the world, which actually in reality turned out to three live kidnappings that I was shadowing. One in the Philippines and two Nigeria.
3:41 Chris Williamson? Right. A baptism of fire, I think, is called, is it as glamorous as it is in the movies?
3:49 Speaker 01 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, we call it 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, et cetera. And then we all want to take a nice, big, deep breath and just relax as much as possible.
4:31 Speaker 01 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, what's we waiting for a call? And the phone does ring and then it's like headless chickens are running around and the heartbeat's going, but having done it quite a few times now, even at times, there may be like a swan gliding gracefully, but underneath the heart's pounding. Actually, it's muscle memory. You get right. I've been here before. We know what we need to do. Trust the training. Trust the process and we're off and running.
5:10 Chris Williamson? You as a negotiator, you just insinuated there that not only dealing with the kidnapper, but you're also potentially dealing internally with stakeholders in what is what has been kidnapped. Is that right?
5:26 Speaker 01 Yeah. Dealing with the kidnappers is the easy bit.
5:32 Speaker 01 We call it honestly, 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 we'll go into 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 set of 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 gets into this field and is
6:14 Speaker 01 good at it? It's somebody with that antennae who can go, right, something's going on with that person over there. Their mannerisms or their energy is not congruent with what they're saying, or they're getting a bit agitated. And so it's constantly picking up on these cues. So you can then A, make sure that you're balanced yourself emotionally.
6:35 Speaker 01 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. We want cool, calm heads, which is why I named the book Order 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.
6:57 Chris Williamson? 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 Dwayne The Rock Johnson? Why has he taken this role? Or whatever, whatever it might be.
7:19 Speaker 01 All of that, all of that.
7:21 Chris Williamson? What do you think that negotiators know about human nature that most normal people don't?
7:30 Speaker 01 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
8:12 Speaker 01 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.
8:29 Chris Williamson? Talk to me about some of the highest pressure situations that you've been in, illustrious career of dealing with crazy different circumstances.
8:39 Speaker 01 Probably my first case actually is when I was at Scotland Yard and it's based 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, we're in this small flat, lots of family members around, high emotion, and we're coaching myself and 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 it's a bit of, almost like a mock execution, the background, we can hear the hostage in a bit of pain. And then the kidnappers say, right,
9:20 Speaker 01 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 their 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 one of the most deadliest weapons you can ever use, particularly in the hands of people who 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 at my colleague and he looks at me and we're like, hmm, is this a bluff? Are they just 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
10:03 Speaker 01 gang in London, the Metropolitan Police. So we actually got two big armed response vehicles.
10:08 Chris Williamson? We've got more guns than you.
10:10 Speaker 01 And there was literally six heavily armed SO-19 officers there. And actually that blew our cover in a way because we wanted to be discreet, but far better that than, you know, a family full of victims in a flat somewhere, including myself and my colleague. So that was the first.
10:28 Chris Williamson? How did that end up getting resolved?
10:31 Speaker 01 Oh, in the end, we managed to get the brother back. 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 a 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.
11:14 Speaker 01 And so our job is actually see if we can negotiate the release, but it's also to buy time as well.
11:20 Chris Williamson? What was that story of a pirate hijacked ship thing that you were involved in?
11:30 Speaker 01 Okay, there's, there's been a few.
11:35 Speaker 01 Well, there's one where
11:38 Speaker 01 six hostages got taken.
11:41 Speaker 01 And they got taken off the ship and into West African country, which won't be a surprise to people. And
11:53 Speaker 01 and the conversation, we didn't hear anything about 10 days, two weeks and then the negotiations start.
11:59 Speaker 01 But then after one point, because the kidnappers weren't getting what they wanted, you know, they came in at $3 million or something. And we're offering at that point about 70,000 because it's about managing expectations.
12:13 Speaker 01 And after the point, the kidnappers got really frustrated. And then when we on the call one day, the guy I'm using as a communicator, because of the language barrier. He says, well, you know, you must look after our crew, my friends, they're your responsibility whilst you've got them held hostage. And then there's this really booming voice from the kidnapper on the other side going, 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 realised 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 calm when my friends are gonna die.
12:58 Speaker 01 Now, I know they're not gonna die. I know for what this is just a tactic, but he stands up and walks out. And in that moment, I know, right, Kate, I need to take a bit of initiative here and a calculated risk. Which is, I can leave the kidnappers, they're good for 24, 36, 48 hours. We're in a good position with them in terms of the 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 gonna go nowhere and the hostages are gonna die.
13:34 Speaker 01 So I'm there, sitting down with him, doing all of the, you know, all the active listening, all the, I mean, genuinely empathising with him and validating where he's at. And then, you know, the next day, the day after, he comes in, showered, shaved, new man. And then we get a deal and the hostages are released.
13:52 Chris Williamson? 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 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. There's this really great story from Winston Churchill. And he is in the 40s, taking a young MP through the Houses of Parliament.
14:34 Chris Williamson? And he's explored, this is the fucking toilets and this is where, you know, we have lunch and this is whatever. And they enter into 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 day to day in our own lives. We don't help ourselves the way that we should do. Most of the business problems that I see occur due to inefficiencies or lack of
15:16 Chris Williamson? good communication 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 tides that are turning. So one of the other things you mentioned before, which I think is a really, really interesting line of this.
15:45 Chris Williamson? You've got certain types of kidnapping situations held for ransom where it's an individual. But then there are other ones where company data presumably, there was that one. What was that pipeline in America that got done and it was for Bitcoin?
16:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:02 Chris Williamson? So you have scenarios like this. What is the difference in the, what are the differences between those two different kinds of scenarios?
16:12 Speaker 01 Okay, let's take the cyber extortion, for example. It is normally a reputational risk then. Appreciate that's there in 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 on others. And so it's slightly different there. Whereas in a kidnap negotiation, there's only going to be the hostage.
16:55 Speaker 01 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 they haven't made a copy or kept a copy back for releasing it on the dark web or to sell it to competitors. So it's slightly nuanced there. But like in anything, I say to the clients, there's no guarantees here. It'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.
17:40 Speaker 01 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 well, 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, but it's up to you. You may want to consider paying that.
18:03 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
18:04 Speaker 01 If it's costing you half a million, okay. Okay, I'm simplifying the example there. But it's all these things that 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?
18:19 Chris Williamson? Have you watched Hijacked on Apple TV?
18:24 Speaker 01 I have.
18:25 Chris Williamson? 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. So for the people that don't know, Idris Elba, handsome black man, gets on a plane from Dubai to the UK. And the plane gets hijacked by some bastards, most of whom are from London, but one of whom's a Geordie. So 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. I, have you noticed in that series, how accurate do you think they have portrayed
19:09 Chris Williamson? the industry that you know so well? Do you think Idris is doing a good job with his negotiation skills?
19:16 Speaker 01 Funny 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.
19:39 Chris Williamson? Oh, no, Idris.
19:41 Speaker 01 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'm Idris Elba on board, okay, I mean, I probably really wouldn't be doing the things he's doing. I'd be making sure I'm staying calm. I'm reassuring other people. I'm not going to antagonize the hijackers, let alone take the gun off them and hand it back and all the sort of stuff he's done. That said, if it was a kind of nine eleven scenario where I think, hey, they're going to 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 going to crash this plane, there'd be a bit of a muting on the plane,
20:26 Speaker 01 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 who haven't 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 in 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
21:06 Speaker 01 bit. Another bit I'd say about the series is, in terms of the 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 looks, sounds and feels like, until it gets into a steady rhythm.
21:23 Chris Williamson? Yeah, again, you know, hierarchies of power. It's the foreign secretary is getting involved, the home secretary is getting involved. People are getting ransom notes. And 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 a 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 contain.
22:07 Chris Williamson? Step three, we do the whatever, whatever, whatever. And yeah, the externalities internally of that. Okay, so 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 conceptualize the fundamentals of it? Like, what are the core components? Or what is the science behind negotiating?
22:37 Speaker 01 Often people will 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, 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, it's again, it's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. Seek first to understand before being understood.
23:14 Speaker 01 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,
23:55 Speaker 01 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.
24:12 Chris Williamson? Dig into those, dig into those techniques for me, paraphrasing and labeling.
24:17 Speaker 01 So labeling would be saying emotional labeling. So if I'm sensing you're a little frustrated with something right now, say with this conversation, I would just say something like, you sound a little frustrated here, Chris. It seems like you're a bit annoyed, or it seems like I've actually missed something here. And you may go, no, 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 emotion's there, somebody's not quite in a good place. We kind of skirt around the issue, whereas actually, we want to call it out.
24:57 Speaker 01 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 do it 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 and go, okay, so what you're saying is this, this, this and this. And they go, yeah, that's it. Great. There are those two techniques, for example.
25:42 Chris Williamson? Very cool.
25:42 Speaker 01 The other thing I'll say on that, actually, the other thing I'll say on that 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 encouragers such as saying, okay, or nodding 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.
26:05 Chris Williamson? Hmm. Yeah. So be led by the genuine desire to know what it is that they want. When it comes to, you, 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?
26:25 Speaker 01 Okay, it's what or 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 will 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 wanna lose weight or I wanna achieve this business thing. Okay. Well, how will 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 we want to tap into, really.
27:04 Chris Williamson? When I do 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 breaking into the United States market. This company is looking to improve their brand equity. This company wants to sell in 18 months' time. They're trying to drive top line revenue. They're trying to do whatever, whatever, whatever. And it gives me so much information, but you're right as well by saying, what would success look like to you?
27:48 Chris Williamson? What is it that you want out of this? How will you know when we have reached it? First off, 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 a thing. I just want more stuff, 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.
28:26 Speaker 01 And often people haven't asked those questions of themselves in the first place.
28:29 Chris Williamson? Correct, correct.
28:30 Speaker 01 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.
28:50 Chris Williamson? What about building rapport? Is that done through the same way? Or is there a different strategy when it comes to that?
28:58 Speaker 01 Again, rapport without sounding 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 whoever 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 empathy is a doing word. You're then building the rapport and then you're bringing a bit, you've earned the right,
29:41 Speaker 01 you've earned the trust to start maybe influencing and persuading somebody to change their behaviour perhaps.
29:48 Speaker 01 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're having a conversation with, because then it just demonstrates, A, 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.
30:29 Chris Williamson? 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 fuck 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 lamps him in the face. That's when it becomes a different sort of conversation. I'm thinking as well about how people should prepare themselves before they go into a negotiation.
31:09 Chris Williamson? One of my friends, Alex Hormozi, 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 they've got shit memories, your short term memory is awesome. You can keep a hold of, you know, five things, a couple of little tripwires in your mind. Someone knocks one of them over. Oh, that's interesting. Didn't I? I know that you've got a golden retriever, actually. Didn't 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 job interview.
31:54 Chris Williamson? 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 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.
32:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a couple of parts to 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 in those difficult conversations. So accept 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 fingers and a thumb, the bunch of fives.
33:01 Speaker 01 And they were, okay, what are the top three to five challenges, issues, threats that in my case, the kidnappers or the hostage 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.
33:45 Speaker 01 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.
33:56 Chris Williamson? 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 a 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?
34:18 Speaker 01 I call it the immediate action drill or the IA drill. And it's similar, just keep in my 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. I'll just interrupt the pattern. So if I'm sat down or just stand up, take a couple of breaths and might go outside. I'll 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 whoever's in. And then the second thing is, is realise that that wave of emotion, the cortisol that's running through your body.
35:01 Speaker 01 Theoretically, it lasts for 90 seconds. Biologically, that's all it goes to your body for when you get that trigger. Any longer and you realise you're just pressing repeat inside your head on that story. So knowing that it's tuning into your body and go, 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.
35:45 Speaker 01 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. Again, it's bringing more curiosity than assumption to the table. So if we 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, once you're 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 in 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 and on the giving end of those.
36:31 Chris Williamson? 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, imagine 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's 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 were sat in traffic, you would think, what the fuck is going on? I need to crash through all of these cars and get myself to the hospital.
37:15 Chris Williamson? 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 this guy, 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 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 a surfer analogy too. You've got this concept of a red center as well. Is that similar?
37:57 Speaker 01 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 kidnapping 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, I call it.
38:40 Speaker 01 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 our nervous system. And then once we've done that, reengage and do whatever it is we need to do.
39:01 Chris Williamson? 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 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 do the drop the story, feel the feelings thing.
39:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mentioned this in the book, the caveat around sympathy, empathy and compassion. And the 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 or 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
40:10 Speaker 01 just wants money for doing this. Now, I need to demonstrate empathy to him. Otherwise, he's not going to agree to deal. Or he's 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 empathy is that's just me demonstrating my understanding or reflecting back what the other person is feeling.
40:37 Chris Williamson? I understand. One of the other 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 my trade is in listening, right? This is what I do. I listen, I listen to the guests. And I was really trying to reflect on what, what I try and pick out of the people that I'm listening to. 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
41:20 Chris Williamson? 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.
41:28 Speaker 01 Absolutely. It's not rocket science, but our tension 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. I'll come back with a response. Whereas actually, we just need to perhaps slow down 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.
42:07 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I 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 Dean will and the guests that come on the show. If the 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 yap, yap, keep going. I can hear you. This is good. I can do the thing. But and I'm just bouncing my head up and down. 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,
42:50 Chris Williamson? mm hmm, 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 armoury. And yeah, I think the nod, a widely underused tool in the arsenal of the potential listener.
43:21 Speaker 01 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 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 are, okay, what's important to them? What's this about for you? I'm going to be nodding without even realising it. 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 who's 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. That's what I just want to say on that point.
44:06 Chris Williamson? Danny Trejo, the guy that played Machete, you know him? Hollywood actor, massive chest tattoo, 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 gangbanger, you know, living in LA. And 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 Jon Bernthal went out to Russia and learned like ballet for a year before he even began acting, all, you know,
44:51 Chris Williamson? the 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?
45:37 Chris Williamson? Just do that. Like, you don't need to pretend to do the thing, like 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.
46:01 Speaker 01 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.
46:12 Chris Williamson? You must have a hierarchy of the biggest negotiation mistakes or the things that are able to, the biggest no-nos that you would have done, whether it be high-stakes stuff or small-stakes stuff. What are the most common errors that people make that kind of ruins a negotiation or at least damages it for a little while?
46:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, 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 particularly in a, in a work environment or you're in a friend environment, somebody comes to you, want to kind of share a problem or a challenge with you and you just give them loads of advice about what they need to do, that never really goes down particularly well. 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.
47:18 Speaker 01 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,
47:37 Speaker 01 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 and listen. So I think that's the key one is when we just allow that emotion to run off on a course of its own.
48:12 Chris Williamson? Looking at it from a more personal perspective for yourself. What are the strategies that you've used to overcome regrets around the way that you behaved during these sorts of interactions? Or the, I guess, ambient anxiety when you still have a bunch of open loops. You partway 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 of it and let go?
48:56 Speaker 01 There's two questions I ask myself. I've 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, you know, the stories. So at the end of a day where
49:14 Speaker 01 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, he didn't 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 gonna ambush them. We're gonna rip them off. We're gonna napalm their jungle hideout, all this crazy stuff.
49:40 Speaker 01 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, thinking and decision. In the end, we did manage to get tribal elder to go down, speak to the chief of police, who then released the courier and the money.
50:01 Chris Williamson? I was gonna say, where was the courier?
50:04 Speaker 01 Like he was, he'd been detained by the, um, by the local police.
50:07 Chris Williamson? For having carried a ton of money in a briefcase or something.
50:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, a couple hundred thousand dollars from across the border, from one country to the next, which he shouldn't have done. But anyway, we managed to get them released. And we think, great, the courier 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 kidnappers, I was managed to lay their concerns for one more day. And so we needed to find another courier the next day. So I go back to the, to my room in the embassy compound. And I'm thinking, right, what was going on there? Well, how did that happen? How do we not foresee
50:56 Speaker 01 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 and 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 worked well? What could we do better next time? And not to take it personally.
51:42 Chris Williamson? I love it. I love it. Very, very cool. Scott Walker, ladies and gentlemen, why should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing?
51:51 Speaker 01 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 newsletter and all the other good stuff.
52:03 Chris Williamson? Scott, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.
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