Modern Wisdom - #669 - Scott Walker - A Hostage Negotiator’s Hacks To Master Communication

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

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... Sponsors: Get 15% discount on Mud/Wtr at https://mudwtr.com/mw (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 15% discount on your first order from Collars&Co at https://collarsandco.com/ (use code: MW15) Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Order Out of Chaos - https://amzn.eu/d/4pEGClo Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Scott Walker. He's a former Scotland Yard detective, a 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 you should ask at the beginning of a negotiation to set the tone, how you can deal with overwhelm and nerves in high-pressure situations, scots advice for negotiating with difficult people,

how to avoid the most common mistakes in an argument, and much more. common mistakes in an argument and much more. Very, very cool. Very much enjoyed this. Got to ask about my new favourite TV show as well, which is hijacked hijacked hijacked with Idris Elba. Yeah, it's got the real deal. He's got an illustrious history and if you are looking to improve your communication, there is an awful lot to take away from today. This Monday coming, Alex Homozi, backer modern wisdom, for a three hour episode filmed in Vegas, beautiful cinema team, and it's phenomenal. It will blow your socks off, so make sure that you are ready for this Monday. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Mudwater. Mudwater is a coffee alternative with adaptogenic mushrooms and Ayurvedic herbs. It provides energy without the anxiety, jitters or crash of coffee.

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to get a free box plus 20% off the whole order if you use the code MW20, a checkout. That's houseofmacadamias.com-modernwisdom and MW20, a checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Scott Walker. What is your background? My background is a kidnapped for ransom negotiator or a crisis response consultant as it's known in the industry.

Kidnap for ransom. Is that a specific subset of kidnap negotiating? Well, you also include things like extortion as well in a typical, you know, for a shop owner that a mafia used to get involved in or maybe a cyber attack. But yeah, pretty much every single kidnapping will involve some kind of ransom demand, hence kidnapped for ransom. Interesting. Yeah, it's, I suppose it's what when you think about kidnapping, Yeah, it's, I suppose it's what 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 abasted. The maybe elements of that, but at the end of the day, it's pretty much a business transaction. Now, if you're the hostage or you're the family of the hostage, it may be more than that, but in reality, and certainly from my perspective as the negotiator, this is just a business deal we need to find a solution to as quickly as possible. How many people were at your level when you were doing this role? Well, I'm not sure if it's true, but we were told on day one that more people

have been to the International Space Station than do this as full-time tier one professional negotiators. So it certainly sounded good. It's Stroke Hour, he goes, 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. 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?

Or that? Yeah, well, fun enough. When I was at school, I went to see the career advisor. I didn't go, Scott, you could be a train driver, a pilot, aotiator. So most people is their second or third career. We're not even in the military as an investigative journalist, the mind was as a cop. So I was a detective for 16 years. I had a great time. I love pretty much every single day as a detective at Scotland Yard. And actually looking back, my career was very much around people. So whether or not it was running informants or taking a bit of time out to be coming into it, as an interrogator and your rack for the military for a while, or as a negotiator. And so it's all 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 way they do, particularly in times of stress, crisis, uncertainty, pretty much like the time is 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 middle-life crisis to go and buy a Ferrari or Mario model, I go and join a cannot-negotiations firm and have a second career. And I left on the Thursday the police and on the Monday a joint. And they said, Scott, yeah, we're going to give you the best negotiation training course in the world,

which actually reality turned out to three live kidnappings that I was shattering, one of the Philippines in two Nigeria. Right. A baptism of fire, I think, is called. Is it as glamorous as it is in the movies? It depends if you think hanging around for a couple of weeks, just sitting around is glamorous. I don't know. Depends what your idea of fun is. It's one of these 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, get on the phone, reassure the family, reassure the company, 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 and make decisions, but I'll give you some recommendations, pros and cons, etc. And then we all want to take a nice big deep breath and just relax as much as possible.

We've got our strategy, we know what we're going to say on the first call. Now we just need to look after ourselves and get into some kind of rhythm. And that's fine. Everybody gets it. Use that for the week, first week, 10 days, what's the one info call, and the phone does ring. And then it's like, let's 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 hot 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. 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 has been kidnapped.

Is that right? Yeah, dealing with the kidnappers is the easy bit. Honestly, I can't tell you enough, Chris, 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're going to a bit later if we get on to it in terms of the 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 good at it. It's somebody with an antennae who can go right, something's going on with that person over there. Their mannerisms, although energy is not congruent on what they're saying, or they're getting a bit agitated. And so it's constantly picking upon these cues so you can then, a, make sure that you're balanced yourself emotionally, but more importantly,

you can somehow reduce their anxiety and stress and overwhelm to bring about that objective, rational thinking, which is what we want. Cool, calm heads, which is why I named the book, Order Chaos, because that's ultimately what this is, is we want to bring some order out of what is a very chaotic and stressful circumstances. Maybe it is more like the Hollywood movies than you thought them, because in the movies, there's always, it's not just the politic with the kidnapper. It's the internal strife that's going on because the chief of police has come down and the CIA and the FBI, they both believe that this is their case and who's this renegade guy,

like, why is, why is Dwayne the rock Johnson? Why is he taking this role or whatever it might be? So all of that, all of that. What do you think that negotiators know about human nature that most normal people don't? I think there's an unbelievable resilience mentally and emotionally within all of us. I've seen people held captive for months at a time who come out pretty much unscathed.

It's because their mindset, the way they frame this, the meaning they've given their circumstances has meant they can come out and actually live just as good if not a better life as a result of their experience. And actually no matter what is thrown in front of us, the challenges, the issues, the problems, actually we're more than capable of overcoming them. You know, there's nothing that is insurmountable. And actually we're very adaptable agile creatures if we can just turn down that lousy narrative that lousy story we've got going on inside of our heads about,

you know, not good enough, it's not going to work. Blah, blah, blah. Talk to me about some of the highest pressure situations that you've been in, an illustrious career of dealing with crazy different circumstances. Probably my first case, actually, as well as at Scotland Yard 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 when this small flat lots of family members around high emotion and we're coaching myself my colleague a coaching the other brother

as the communicator. So obviously we don't want to advertise it, please, we're involved. And then the threat 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 kidnapper say, right,

we know where you are and they gave the address and we know you're working with the police. We're going to send some guys around to spray the place with a Mac 10 machine gun and they're on the way right now. And I'm thinking, right, okay, a Mac 10 machine gun is like the weapon of choice of gang members in London. It's one of the most deadliest weapons you can ever use, particularly in the hands of people who are very good with using it. I'm thinking, hmm, this is an interesting set of circumstances to be in here. And I look to 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 gang in London, the Metropolitan Police, so we actually got two big armed response vehicles pouring out. We've got more guns than you. And there was literally six heavy armed, so 19 officers there. Actually, that blue eye covering our wakes, we wanted to be discreet, but far better that than a family full of victims in a flat somewhere, treating myself and my colleague. So that was the first... How did that end up getting resolved?

Oh, in the end, we've managed to get the brother back. And that's actually interesting. In the UK or the US, in kidnapping or hostage takings, normally there's some kind of hostage rescue, 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. And so our job is actually, see if we can negotiate the release, but it's also to buy time as well. What was that story of a pirate hijacked ship thing that you were involved in?

There's been a few. Well, there's one where six hostages got taken and they got taken off the ship and into West African country, which won't be a surprise to people. And the conversation, we didn't hear anything about 10 days, two weeks, and then the negotiations start. 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 offing at that point, about 70,000, because about managing expectations. And after 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 must look after, I call my friends, they're your responsibility whilst you've got them held hostage. And then there's this really booming voice from the kidnap on the other side, go, no, they're yours. We want the money by the end of the week or they will die. And you can hear a pin drop. That is until this guy, Mr. John, or calling him, his fist came banging down on the table and I've realised in that moment it's about my way as well. And he turns around and says, how can you sit there, Mr. Scott? So calm when my friends are going to die. Now, I know they're not going to die. I know for well, this is just a tactic, but he stands up and walks out. And in that moment, I know, right, okay, I need to take a bit of initiative here and

I calculated risk, which is I need, I can leave the kidnappers there, give 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 reestablish trust with him, we're going to go nowhere and the hostages are going to die. So I'm there sitting down with him doing all of the active listening, all the genuinely empathizing with him, I'm validating where is that. And then the next day, the day after, he comes in, shouts, shave, new man, and

then we get a deal. And the hostages are 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 really great takeaway. 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 and he's exploring this is the fucking toilets and this is where you know we have lunch and this is the 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 occurred due to inefficiencies or lack of 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. one of the other things you mentioned before, which I think is a really, really interesting line of this. You've got certain types of kidnapping situations held for ransom where

it's an individual, but then there are other ones where company data, presumably there was that one, what was that pipeline in America that got done and it was for Bitcoin. So you have scenarios like this. What is the difference in the, well, what are the differences between those two different kinds of scenarios? Okay, let's take the Cyric Stortion, for example. It is normally a reputational risk then. I'll push it, 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 that 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 health care which we've seen that a lot of ransomware attacks over the last few years. There's one to cry and others. And so it's slightly different there. Whereas in a kidnap negotiation, there's only going to be the hostage.

They can't copy them. They can't keep clones of them. So when we negotiate the release and we 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 now I'm going to pay them again in future. But there's no guarantees I haven't made a copy or kept a copy back from releasing it on the dark whereble 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. There's never going to be 100%. You just need to, on the balance of probabilities, do a risk cost benefit analysis and work out what you want to do, do in a negotiate and engage? But this is costing you maybe a half 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. My opinion, my advice to you is, it's up to you, you may want to consider paying that. If it's cost 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, not where, put in there, for example. Have you watched hijacked on Apple TV? I have. Of course you have. I absolutely love this series at the moment. I think maybe five episodes are out, or six episodes are out at the moment as we're doing it.

So for the people that don't know, Idris Elba, Hanson Blackman, 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 Jordi, so I'm fully supportive of her. And Idris then begins, he is a, I think he's an 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

the industry that you know so well? Do you think Idris is doing a good job with his negotiation skills? Faring the follows interview by the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper here at the UK, a 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 evolving one hijacking before. I'm still hooked, okay, as a series, but that's where it ends. Oh, no, Idris. What the absurdity level is as high as the altitude of the plane, okay? Because if I'm a passenger, if I'm a Idris Elvron board, okay, I mean, I probably wouldn't

be doing the things he's doing. I'll 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 is done. That said, if it was a kind of 9-11 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, 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 it, I think the people haven't seen it it in terms of the relationship between the brothers on the plane for example and so That is one of the first golden rules and 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 to the person tick one of 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 bit. Another bit I'd say about the series is in terms of the, the, the, he also is going on back in London and trying to manage it, that is normally how the first few hours of any kind of crisis look sounds and feels like until it gets into a steady rhythm? Yeah, again, you know, high rarkies of power. It's the foreign secretaries getting involved, the home secretaries 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. Step three, we do 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? What are the core components?

What is the science behind negotiating? Often people say to me, what is I need to say? What can I say to get money off or get an upgrade and all this kind of stuff, which is a starter? I get asked all the time, and I always turn around and go, you're asking the wrong question because you're wrapping it all around you and what you, what we're actually, what in your 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 listen better which goes back to the goal and rule of it's not about you you know and it's again to cliche but to cliche for a reason seek first to understand before being understood and that way to the 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 you,

where you're listening for the jest, or you're listening, waiting to talk, so you can rebut what they're saying. Whereas actually we wanna go below that and listen to the emotion, maybe the underlying emotion that's not being expressed and then really what's there in the model of the world, what's there beliefs, what are the rules. And with the way we do that is yes by asking really powerful open questions but by some simple tools and techniques that have been around

for decades, you know, the active listening techniques such as, you know, your paraphrasing or your labeling, and this is you just being curious, rather than assuming you know what they mean when they say it. Dig into those techniques for me paraphrasing labeling. So labeling would be saying emotional labeling. So if I'm sensing your 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 the emotion, we can't tame it. And it's like the big elephant in the room. You know when

the emotions there, somebody is not quite in the good place, we kind of skirt around the issue, whereas actually we want to call it out. We want to name it so we can tame it for ourselves, particularly, you know, tuning into what's going on for you But particularly within the 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 person is saying.

And this is particularly helpful if people go on for quite a long time. I've been with my kids at two teenagers and they just like to talk and talk and talk and talk. And I've been to wrap them and go, okay, so what you're saying is this, this, this, and this. And they go, yeah, that's it. Great.

They're those two techniques, for example. Very good. You don't think I'll say on that actually. I don't think I'll say on the really quickly. Sorry. Is again, the caveat I give to people is, again, don't use this as a checklist. Oh, I need to use paraphrasing or minimal encourages such as saying, okay, I'm nodding my head.

I just need to just gently listen and be curious about the person. And I'll do a lot of that stuff automatically. Yeah, so be led by the genuine desire to know what it is that they want. When it comes to, you mentioned before, open questions as being one of them, what are some of your favorite questions or question types that people should use in order to find out what it is that the other person wants. Okay, it's what all how questions really, you know, those seven Kipling's friends really around

okay, well what does that look like for you or how are we going to make that happen or how would you know that you've got where you wanted. People say, you know, some of my clients, now they'll go, well, I wanna lose weight or I wanna achieve this business thing. Okay, well how would you know that 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 wanna to tap into really. 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 that I always ask 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, so they're trying to drive top line revenue, they're trying to do whatever, whatever, whatever. And it it gives me so much information but you're right as well by saying what would success look like to you what is it that you want out of this how will you know when we have reached it. First off it 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.

I'll start more what? What is it that you need? And by forcing them to actually assess what it is, you create a parameter from which you can then measure performance or success. And often people haven't asked those questions of themselves in the first place. Correct, correct. And they want financial freedom, okay, to do what?

Well, you know, just travel more, have more freedom. Okay, well, what does freedom look like for you? What does that mean? You know, those kind of questions where people go, oh, right, yeah, I've never really thought of that. I don't know. Okay, well, there you go. What about building rapport?

Is that done through the same way or is there a different strategy when it comes to that? Again, rapport without saying to repeat myself here. It's not a tick box exercise. People think, oh, I've got report. That's it. No, I'm good. It's a continuous process of where you are in alignment with wherever you're talking to.

Now report can be, you could be out in an argument with somebody, but you could be in report, depending on how you have in the argument. And so it is a vital step in bringing about that cooperation. 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 report and then you're bringing a bit, you've earned the right, you've earned the trust to start maybe influencing and persuading somebody to change their behaviour, perhaps, but ultimately

to bring about cooperation and collaboration. So in the case of Gave earlier, that could be Mr. John, my communicator, it could be with the kidnappers. And this is particularly powerful if you disagree with somebody that you have no conversation with because then it just demonstrates, hey, you can get out of your own way and park your own ego. But secondly, actually, I might disagree with you, but I respect you as a person, as a human being. Therefore, I'm not a threat to you. So you can balance your nervous system out. I'm going to come back out, so you can balance your nervous system out. I'm gonna come back out fighting towards me,

and then we can try and find some kind of collaboration. And that's how it works. Yeah, it reminds me of the difference between the opposition and the enemy, that with one of them, you are playing a game. The opposition is Roger Federer versus Novak Jokovich, 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. One of my friends, Alex Hormosi, says that you would be absolutely amazed how much better you perform with just 15 minutes of preparation before you do anything. And it's so true that the bar is set so unbelievably low and your short-term memory is really good. Even people that say that they've got shit memories, your short-term

memories, awesome. You can keep a hold of, you know, five things, a couple of little trip wires in your mind, someone knocks one of them over. I didn't know that you've got a golden retriever actually, didn't you, you did, did, did,, you did, you got, 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, it's a renegotiation for the 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 once you get in there stuff just starts happening. It's the before time I think whether the highest amount of discomfort is felt.

Yeah, there's a couple of parts of that. The first one is accepting that you might get a bit nervous. The emotions are going to show up in you and the other person. This is particularly those difficult conversations. So accept that you might be uncomfortable at times in it, and 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, the preparation is key. And we used to call it the bunch of fives. You know, we used to have, you know, hold our hands up, these five fingers, four things, and then the bunch of fives. And they were, okay, what are the top three to five

challenges, issues, threats? That in my case, the kidnappers or the hostess takers might levy against me as the negotiator. If I can think about what those are ahead of time, I don't have to think on the who, if I can actually plan my answer to that accordingly. And the same applies in any kind of business meeting or an example that you gave. If I can think, okay, what are the likely objections perhaps to me asking

for a pay rise? What might my boss say? If I was my boss and I wanted to turn this down, what might I say? Because by working out what these could be ahead of time, means I can do my research, I can do my preparation. So when that question comes to you or that challenge comes to you, it doesn't take you by surprise and you can just deal with it in your flow. Very interesting. Okay, so let's say that you're having a discussion with somebody and the emotions really do start flying. they're particularly difficult into lock you to 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 event.

I call it the immediate action drill or the IA drill. And it's similar. Just keep them a back pocket metaphorically all the time. The 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 from sat down, I'll just stand up, take a couple of breaths and might go outside, I'll just 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 the second thing is, is realize that that wave of emotion, the cortisol that's running through your body, theoretically, it lasts for 90 seconds. Biologically, that's that's running through your body 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 realize you're just pressing repeat inside your head on that story. So knowing that, it's tuning into your body, I'm going to okay, what's showing you? Okay, there's a churning in my stomach or tension across my shoulders. I'm just gonna sit with that for a minute or so and I'm just gonna have this complete awareness. I'm gonna 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 I can pause all that about where did that come from? And usually it's something within yourself or not the other person Which is a great insight usually again is bringing more curiosity than assumption to the table So if we interrupt the pattern

We ride the wave imagine you're a surf or a skier for 90 seconds, and then you're asking really powerful questions afterwards, wouldn't you balance? 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're 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 again, on the giving end of those.

I like feel the feeling and drop the story. I think that's a lovely cue. And I had some Harris on the show not long ago. He's got this really great example. He used his where he says, imagine you've just finished a hard workout and you're Harris on the show not long ago. He's got this really great example. He used his 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 rates at 175.

That is actually quite an enjoyable experience 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 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 happened 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. 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 disc...

It's okay. So your heart rate's high and 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? Yeah, I mean, red center physically is the geographical location where the negotiation will take place. So it could be a family kitchen, dining mean, Red Centre 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, within us. There's a ability to, you know, to rely on equanimity more than anything else to be balanced, to become at the center of a raging storm around us. Because is it fair to say that things are not going to go according to plan? Does it have to be in a kidnap negotiation? It could be with your kids, with traffic, with work.

And so if we accept that, actually, we can tap into this inner part of us, this red center, I call it. And that's where all our tools and techniques that we've picked up over the years I just lie in there waiting for us to use them But we just need to go looking for it and it's there within us all the time And so that is about being able to be calm regulate a nervous system and then once we've done that re-engage and do whatever it is we need to do

Talk to me about this tension between empathy, which is presumably useful at understanding what the other person is feeling, but being sufficiently detached that you can make rational decisions. It feels to me like there is 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. 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 summit all up here 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 just wants money for doing this. Now, I need to demonstrate empathy to him. Otherwise, he's not going to agree to deal.

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 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? 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. I was really trying to reflect on 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 that exists is because most listening is people waiting for their turn to speak next or getting distracted when

they should actually be paying attention. Absolutely, it's not rocket science, but our attention span is so low now, is that we're constantly thinking, oh, yeah, I wish you 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 and what you're saying, I'm now assuming I know what you mean. And I'll try and finish a sentence for you or I'll come back with a response. Whereas actually, we just need to perhaps slow down

or maybe just give a little breath after you've finished and then before I start talking. But we just seem to struggle to do that these days. Yeah, I, um, you mentioned it earlier on, but it's something that I use a lot. I guess the audience will never actually get to be able to see this, although my editor 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, yeah, keep going, I can hear you, this is good,

I can do the thing, 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, mm-hmm. Yeah, I understand, okay, to do, like all of this, it kind of disrupts the listening experience. So you get to continue, yeah, I'm here,

I'm still listening to you, this is me being active. Ooh, that was an interesting point and I'll nod in a slightly different manner. Like an entire repertoire of like 15 different nods that I can pull out of the, out of the armory. And yeah, I think the nod, a widely underused tool in the arsenal of the potential listener. It is. And it goes back to the point I made at the start of the interview, whereas these techniques are great. You need to 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's important to them. What's this about for you? I'm going to be

nodding without even realizing it. It's like mirroring body language. There's nothing more clunky. Oh, Chris has folded his arms. I need to fold my arms. It's just no stop. Anybody out there who's listening 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 at that point. Danny Treyo, the guy that played Machete, you know him, Hollywood actor, massive chess 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 gang banger, 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 John Bernthal went out to Russia and learn like ballet for a year before even began acting all you know the upbringing he didn't have it and I asked him about what it is that he didn't 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 definitely an over-complication that a lot of people, myself included, we presume 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 wanna call it.

It's like, what's the thing that you're trying to appear like you're doing? Just do that. Like, you don't need to pretend to do the thing. Like, you can just do the thing. Now, 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 channel your inner Danny Treyo a little bit. Yeah, I agree completely. I think we just need to perhaps do less. You know, we want to stack all these great techniques, don't we? But let's just remove some of them and just do what we need to do. You must have a hierarchy of the biggest negotiation mistakes

or the things that are able to, the biggest no-nose, 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? Yeah, certainly not listening is the key one, but I think when people given solicited advice as well and start telling other people

what they should be doing, I think that particularly in a work environment or in a friend environment, somebody comes to you and want to kind of share a problem or 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, but it's when 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 a Kinnap scenario, people die if we messed that up. So, 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 him to 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. We're actually, I'd rather speak to somebody two, three levels below him who's engaged and wants to learn the lesson. So I think that's the key one is when we just allow that emotion to run off on a course of its own. Looking at it from a more personal perspective for yourself, what are the strategies that you've used to overcome 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, then to communicate it 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? There's two questions I ask myself. I haven't written down in my journal, and every time I get a new journal, I write them down, just as a reminder, slow what, now what.

And it can sound quite harsh, but actually just cuts through all the BS, you know, all the stories. So at the end of the day, where there's a courier who had the ransom money on one case, he was supposed to call in every four hours on the way to drop the money off with the kidnappers. For us, when by, he didn't phone. Eight hours when by, he didn't phone. You can see where this is going, can't you? Meanwhile, the kidnappers are going up and plectic. They think we're going to ambush them, we're going to rip them off. We're going to napalm their jungle hide out. All this crazy stuff. And so at the end of the day day I'm thinking, okay, I can

also what, now what? I need to remove that emotion from it so I can make an objective rational thought that I think in a decision. In the end we did manage to get tribal outer to go down, speak to the chief of police who then released the courier and the money. I was going to say, where was the courier? He would be detained by the local police. For having carried a ton of money in a briefcase or something. Yeah, a couple of hundred thousand dollars from across the board off and one country to the next, which he shouldn't have done.

But anyway, we've managed to get them released and we think, great, the courier is now going to be on his way to drop the money off. But he wants no more to do with it. So he takes his, 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. So we needed to find another career the next day. So I go back to my room in the embassy compound and I'm thinking, right, what was going on

there? How did that happen? How do we not foresee that? This brings this sense of constant and never ending improvement. Whereas the military guys will say the unvalenting 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. You have to get a boat out to see to a waypoint where the handover was done. So there's that. And then after each case, it's sitting down and doing an after-action

review, and you can do this in your business or any kind of family scenario, you just review it. Okay, well, what, well, what can we do better next time? And not to take it personally. I love it. I love it. Very, very cool. Scott Walker, ladies and gentlemen, why should people go if they want to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing? The website's probably the best place. Scott Walker books.co.uk. And they can find out more information there. They can get a hold of the book and use letter and all the other good stuff. Scott, I appreciate you. Thank you mate. you