The Jordan Harbinger Show - 969: Scott Walker | Persuasion Tactics of a Hostage Negotiator

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

If you want to understand communication, emotional regulation, and bargaining under pressure, join us here with former hostage negotiator Scott Walker! What We Discuss with Scott Walker: The role of trust in successful negotiations. How emotional intelligence plays into hostage negotiations. The minimalist toolkit of a hostage negotiator. Navigating legal and ethical boundaries in negotiations. The perils of fame in kidnapping situations, and the importance of ransom discipline and social media caution. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/969 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Agreement is one thing, but it's not the same as the release and safe recovery of the hostages. It's only when they're back with us in a safe territory,

back in the camp or the embassy compound or the medical center. Everybody can kind of breathe a sigh of relief and can have a hug and, you know, pat on the back. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, with you code the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life

and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional former cult member, Mafia, Enforcer, 4-star, general legendary, actor, or tech luminary. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs is a great place to begin.

These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, hostage negotiator Scott Walker. Scott served as a Scotland Yard detective for 16 years investigating all kinds of serious and organized crime, including kidnappings and terrorism. He also deployed overseas as part of a military intelligence interrogation team to gather

intel on high-value targets. Now he specializes in kidnap for ransom negotiations and resolving other similar perils all over the world. So if you get nabbed by pirates in Somalia or drug dealers in Ireland or whatever, Scott's your guy, and I know we've done a few shows on kidnapping and hostage negotiation in the past, but somehow this just doesn't get old because it's so unusual. It's such a unique job that has nuances in each. country in which it's done. Oh, and just a quick note, we recorded this a few months back,

so some of the Hamas hostage info may be way out of date, but of course the rest of this is still fully standing up quite well. So here we go with Scott Walker. More people have been to the ISS, the space station, than have your job. That's a claim most people can't make. I mean, even, I guess, astronauts, right? Can't make that claim. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure if it's accurate or not, but it's sunny sounds good. He was made that shit up. Well, no, he was given to us on day one. or becoming what's known as a crisis response consultant or kidnapped negotiator, you know, day one week one, it's, hey, more people have been to the space station and do what you do full time. Wow.

It certainly sounding good at the time. Yeah, it does sound good. I think it's funny that it's just like, ah, that's just something they say. But, I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean, there are quite a few astronauts from every country that has a space program that have been to the ISS and probably some even that don't have a full-on space program of their own. and I don't know how many kidnap hostage negotiators you need on a police force. Maybe what, actually, how many do you need on a police force in a major city, like New York or London? Like two?

In the law enforcement teams around the world, they've got reasonable-sized teams. But in terms of in the private sector, outside of law enforcement, you've got maybe a dozen, 20 insurance companies that gave molding kidnapped and cannot ransom stuff. And in terms of the response consultants, the negotiators, You're probably not looking at more than 25, maybe, 2025 who do it. You know, full-time, tier one, have got the breadth and depths of experience, of dealing with many cases in many parts of the world. And so it's probably pretty accurate in fairness. Yeah, that's interesting.

Because you would think how many people are getting kidnapped in London or any major city in the West in any given month? Do you have any idea? I mean, you must. In terms of when I was in the police, it was, you. usually about one a week. So we get 50, 51, 52 in London that we knew about that would be reported. Right. And usually there'd be, we used to call them bad on bad. So it'd be criminals kidnapping other criminals. And then they come to the front office of a police station or flag down a patrol car and go, my brother, my son, my cousin, whatever, has just been taken. And we know

these people. We knew what he knew they were criminals. Right. You're like, aren't you the leader of the Albanian mafia in the neighborhood? Like, all right, buddy. But in terms of In terms of worldwide, obviously the figures are pretty unclear because the countries where this takes place, you know, the governments don't want to advertise the fact that they're the kidnapping central of the region. But there's tens of thousands of kidnappings a year worldwide, most of which will be local nationals. And occasionally there'll be the transnational and expats involved.

Look, if someone's in Syria and they're an aid worker and they get kidnapped, they're all equally horrible. Actually, that's even more scary, right, because you're being kidnapped in Syria. But that's not as surprising as some of the stuff that I was reading in your book where it's somebody in London getting kidnapped and you think, wow. And this isn't just like kidnapped. This is kidnapped for ransom by a criminal group. This isn't like a parent kidnapping a child or something along those lines. Or like a jilted lover's like, you're staying with me and they kidnap that person, right? This is like, they kidnap the person and then they call and they say, I need $100,000 and I'm going to send you fingers until I get that money.

That's a very specific crime. And the fact that there are two of those every week is like alarming. That's an alarmingly large number, I think. It is. And when you think about it, it's not necessarily the amount of money that's been demanded in ransom that would indicate the severity of the threat or the risk there to the hostage. In fact, some of the most barbaric kidnappings in treatment of hostages have been for hundreds of pounds, or maybe a couple thousand.

Really? Whereas the multi-million ransoms you read about, actually the hostages are treated pretty well, almost like an official guest because they sit as a business deal. So there's two ends of the spectrum there. And also, I would imagine, you don't want your hostage getting sick

if they're going to be worth $5 million. You want them like in a decent mental state, I would suppose, so that they're not self-harming. You want them healthy. You don't want them to get some sort of weird infection or disease. I mean, this is your meal ticket. But I guess, yeah, if you're a thug and you're like, I want 2,000 pounds for this guy,

you're feeding him whatever food you don't want after you're done eating it. And if it doesn't smell right, it's not your problem. And he's in a basement for three months. I can imagine the circumstances are quite different. And at the lower end of that scale, they're probably likely to torture or mistreat the hostages. Whereas out of all the cases I doubt with,

I'd far rather deal with a professional, organized, criminal gang or network who took this seriously and it was in their interest to look after the hostages as much as possible because my job as a response consultant, particularly in the private sector, was to bring about lots of discipline and calm and stability and manage their expectations of everybody involved. And if we could deal with a group of professionals, they got this. They knew how this worked. And the deal was, we'll pay you an appropriate amount of money, and you guarantee the safe and time in the release of the hostages.

And that's it. So the dumber they are, the harder they are to work with because they don't know what they don't know, and they think they're making the rules when really, it seems like the rules are sort of established and you're negotiating with. So a professional criminal gang is like, here's what happens. We kidnap them.

We call this guy. We go dance for 90 days. They make small incremental adjustments. we finally get our thing, we leave the guy on the corner of this, and then they give us our bag or whatever, whereas the dumb guys are like jittery and high on meth in wondering when they're going to get paid and upset all the time. Is that accurate? Absolutely, yeah, 100%. It's the unpredictability.

And I know you've spoken about this in previous podcasts around particularly these express canaps, you know, where it's, we'll get them to the ATM, we'll get them to draw some money, we'll hold them to after midnight and try again. And okay, that's fine. But when there's the unpredictability, when there's alcohol or drugs, involved, it's quite scary, to be honest. Yeah, that's interesting. I have experienced, express, kidnap stuff. And if you know that that's all it is, it's way less scary. But the problem is you don't. And then also when the person who's driving you around is on their fifth pill of whatever it is and like drinking hard liquor in the front seat, it starts to get really

concerning really quickly, even if it is three o'clock in the morning and your card stops working. Like, they're still, you don't know what they're going to do after that. So I would imagine that when people ask you what you do, 100% of the time it results in a conversation. It does, which is why sometimes depending on who I'm talking to, will depend on actually how I introduce myself. Yeah, I was wondering about that. But I always see, when I ever meet somebody at a party or in a social or business setting, it's hard while into me because the nature of the work I've done is to be curious about

them. So I'm the one who's normally asking questions or really trying to dig into, you know, what makes this person tick. But you're right inevitably, it will come around to, I bet you've got some exciting stories. Yeah. And I have to kind of disappoint them saying, if the cases I've been involved in, I've got really exciting and challenging. I've done something wrong. Because if it's all going wrong, if it's all like in the movies, actually we've missed the trick somewhere and someone's going to get hurt. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I also completely familiar with the idea that it's hardwired into you to start asking questions.

my wife will tell me, you're talking too much. It parties if people ask me questions and I start talking, or if I get them talking, she's like, you're asking too many questions. Because people will stop talking, and you know this, right? They'll stop talking if you're really controlling a conversation by asking questions and engaging with the other person. People will just stop because you're doing a good job and it's interesting.

And when all the attention is on you, it can be a little awkward when it's not supposed to, like maybe it's not supposed to be that way at that particular social engagement. So yeah, I'm quite familiar with that. And I've started introducing myself differently. You must have that problem times 10 because podcaster is a 50-50 coin flip as to whether or not anybody gives the shit. Hostage negotiator, I think you probably have more like a 98% chance of having somebody

be like, what? Right? Especially given that, like you said, more people have been to the space station than have your job, regardless of whether or not that's complete bullshit made up by your supervisor or your trainer. You mentioned you were working on or a friend was working on a case where a drug dealer had been kidnapped by a rival Albanian gang, like the bad on bad stuff that you mentioned. And that sounds exciting. I got to ask, no BS.

Is it somehow slightly less rewarding to negotiate the release of a criminal kidnapped by other criminals as opposed to an innocent civilian in a hostage situation? As a detective, it was a sense of professional pride that we were going to get the hostages. back, irrespective. In fact, even more so because of they were, they were criminal themselves, because you'd have been so easy to go, do you know what, Sodom? Yeah, screw these guys.

They brought on themselves, who really cares if it's one less bad guy on the street? But then when you're sitting down with their families, as it was in that particular case, you're in the kitchen, in the apartment, and you've got the mom who's absolutely losing it emotionally. The kidnappers are sending through torture videos of their son, And you think, do you know what, actually I'm dealing with human beings here.

I can't afford to bring judgment and becoming judge's jury and executioner, so to speak, in this. I'm just going to bring the humanity of, do you know what, I'm going to let somebody else worry about the calm around this. I'm going to do my thing. Yeah. Get these people back and see it as a sense of professional pride to do that irrespective of who we're talking about here. That makes sense. I mean, at some level, you're also doing this for the parents, right? like you said, you're talking with somebody's mom,

you're sitting at the kitchen table, she's a hardworking immigrant. Her son turned out to be a POS, you know, whatever level of culpability parenting has and that is not really your position to judge. Yeah, I could see that. I would almost have to focus on the parents because it would be tough to be like,

so this guy's murdered a bunch of people, he's a drug dealer, he, last girlfriend that he had vanished under mysterious circumstances, and you want me to get him away from these other guys who were like, maybe the same kind of human garbage, I would almost have to just focus on the parents only because it's really tough.

It would be tough for me to care. But I get maybe that's why you have that job and I don't because the professionalism has to trump, like you said, the karma of the situation or whatever. I've heard you say you're always negotiating. And I wonder what you mean by that. Does that mean like nonverbal and verbal communication? What are you aiming at with that? It can mean that. But ultimately you think, okay, what is a negotiation?

Negotiation is a conversation with a purpose. it's where you're looking to maybe influence or persuade, but ultimately it's when you're looking to bring about some kind of cooperation or collaboration. And if you stop and think about it, you're doing that all day long, with your kids, with your spouse or your friends or your co-workers, or even in the street or the store. So if you see life as one big negotiation where the ultimate outcome is going to be

cooperation and collaboration, actually you can start to approach it. in a better way at times, as opposed to, particularly now, everybody's shouting, no one's listening in the world, you've only got to go on social media, and everybody's looking to prove that they're right and the person is wrong, whereas actually what we need is people just to maybe listen to better, approach it as a negotiation, go, well, let me understand what's going on for this person, what's their map or model the world, their beliefs, how are they interpreting it? Let me try and demonstrate an understanding of it. And let's come to some kind of

solution where we may disagree agreeably, but we'll both feel heard in the process. In the book, you describe validating the criminal or validating the targets model of the world. What does that mean exactly? Okay, what the means is if I start getting bringing some judgment around their views, their beliefs about how they see things, that's going to leak, even if I'm implicit, it's going to leak out in my conversation, the words and the tone. So actually, I just need to suspend that judgment, suspend my own ego and articulate, okay, this is how you see things. And particularly now in, let's say, the Middle East, where one of the challenges is that neither side is recognizing or verbalizing and understanding of where the side is coming from.

And that is the first step to bringing a bound establishing trust, which actually counterintuitively is the number one factor as to whether a kidnapping gets resolved or not. Yeah, it's interesting. Even more surprising when you think it's the most unregulated, ungoverned industry in the world, the most horrendous supply chain. Murphy's Law is alive and well. If you can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Yet the only thing that guarantees a to 93% success rate is trust, trust on both sides, trust that we're not going to ambush or try and interdict. the kidnappers. And likewise, if we paid them a reasonable amount of money, they're going to release the hostages safe and well. The trust thing is really tough. I know somebody is working on the current Israel-Palestine situation hostage negotiations. And one of the big problems is that neither side trusts each other, in part because I don't want to get two in the weeds on this, but one side will be like, okay, here's this list and the other side's like, ah, we don't,

so we're not going to give you that person anymore. And it's like, well, wait, wait, are they safe? Yeah. Well, can we send in the Red Cross and have a look at them? No. okay, now I don't believe you. You changed the list. Why aren't you giving us these young women? And it's just like a whole thing. They're just fear the worst. And it's like, man, this is so nonproductive

because especially in this kind of situation, I mean, trust is kind of like the only thing you have is last time we did this, they performed and it went off without a hitch. That's like the only thing you have, especially when there's no money involved. I would imagine it's even harder. Because now you can't motivate them with cash. It's just trust.

It is. And I mean, if we just take a little step back out of that particular highly nuanced, highly fragile situation, you've got to be able to establish a trusted open means of communication. And in that particular case, the Qataris have done a good job there. But just generally speaking, you need to be able to know the person I'm speaking to, A, we've established proof of life. But actually, we need to establish a proof of possession. You need to prove. You need to prove. that you're not just some wisecrackers just happen to hear about this and I've got on the phone to us, we actually need to know that you have control over them and that you're going to follow through if we continue with this negotiation. And there are other ways we can demonstrate trust on our side as well. It's, you know, are we going to pick up the phone when we say we're going to pick up the phone? Are we going to do our bit by offering, you know, an increased offer perhaps? But this applies to day-to-day stuff in business in life. Do you follow through what you say you're going to do?

And then again, it's how can I demonstrate trust with this other person? Particularly, and this is even more powerful is if you disagree, if you're on opposite ends of the argument, if you can demonstrate that and the validation piece would be around, well, is it okay for just share where I think you're at right now, Jordan, with where you are with this deal? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then we can go from there. It seems like with the, and again, I did not plan to talk about this, so let me formulate my thoughts here.

It seems like with the Israel-Palestine stuff, with the Qataris, the trusted third party of Qatar is kind of the key here, right? Because the other two sides, they don't trust each other at all. So you really need this bridge where they just refuse to lie to each side, or they refuse to let people get away with nonsense, right? Because otherwise their function is, well, their function doesn't, it doesn't work, right? So you need, like, you need a referee who says, well, it's not fair that you change the list, get the list right. If you do this, then they can change something else. Do you want them to change something? Like, you need somebody like that so that they're not just screaming at each other over a phone line or shooting at each other instead of trading hostages.

It's such a mess. Have you done media appearances about this particular situation? It seems like it's so relevant now. Yeah, absolutely. Probably 40 to 50 TV shows and radio shows from CNN and ABC and all across the globe, really. Most countries I can think of have been on one of their shows and because, but again, just on that, it's interesting as, okay, why was I doing it? It was to provide context and insight into a challenging situation. Hopefully people can get a great understanding of what is going on from the negotiation. But also it was bringing the principles of, let's call them your standard normal, quote unquote, kidnappings that you get out there where it's about bringing some emotional self-regulation. It's about demonstrating

or trying your best to understand what is going on from another person's perspective and trying to bring about some kind of cooperation or collaboration, as I mentioned. And this was a perfect example of actually doing my best trying to do that. It's the old seek to understand before being understood principle from the sound of it. Absolutely. Yeah. And I always say that in the book I write about that. First of all, it's not about you.

And secondly, if you can approach any kind of particularly challenging or difficult conversation, negotiation. Hey, I need to understand what makes this person tick? Why does they do what they do? I can't influence somebody unless I know what already influences them. Right, sure. So somebody who's motivated by cash is not going to be, you're not going to have the same strategy as somebody who's a religious fanatic and thinks that if they get blown up, they're going to go to whatever paradise or whatever. Either way, right? So you need a totally different approach, I would imagine, to something like that. Exactly. Yeah. Tell me about, about this brother who wanted to negotiate his CEO brother's ransom? This guy sort of blew it.

Tell us what happened. Absolutely. Being going on for a while, high net worth family and younger brother sees his moment. Big brother's being taken. Huge ransom demand. And he thinks this is my moment. My time to shine. And does his best or worse to actually negotiate. He wasn't really listening to our advice, which was a shame really because he could have really shortened the length of it went on for. It highlighted so many key learnings and takeaways that are so applicable here around you've got to be able to manage your motions, as I said just now. It's about being able to get into some kind of routine or rhythm with these things. You can't go to these 18 hours a day for three, six weeks, two months, four months without having some kind of payback on that.

And it was around actually being able to bring a bit of discipline and control and calm to the proceedings. And because he was driven by his emotions, actually one day he turned around because he was tired. He wasn't using a clean phone. So after what we like to do, he'd bring a clean phone where the only people on the planet who know that number are us and the kidnappers. And so every message, every text message, every WhatsApp or email notification, he thought it was a message. the kidnappers all his brother. And so, you know, not sleeping and all of this kind of stuff.

And then he just loses it one day and actually threatens the kidnappers that is going to hunt them down and kill them. Oh, gosh. The professional kidnappers were far smarter. And obviously read the playbook here and the super cool. They went, no, we're going to kill him. And that's it. And they hung up and they didn't hear anything for six months.

Wow. As you can imagine the meal times around that. that kitchen table, particularly with that brother. And over the next couple of months, we've managed to get another family member who was willing to kind of take the advice and the guidance to step in. And eventually, you know, six months later, they re-engage and when he comes out. That is, oh my gosh, that was a smart play from the kidnappers, right? Because they know that every day is going to be miserable. And they know that everyone in the family is going to be like, you're an idiot. Why did you do that? If you got my.

son killed, I'm disowning you every single day. So when they call again, it's just like, tell us what you want. We'll do anything now. Absolutely. And actually, the kidnappers have got a great toolkit when you think about it. And they can deploy all of these psychological tools to extract as much money from the other side whilst bringing about as much fear as possible. And they'll do this through threats, mock executions. But the most powerful one is silence. When they go quiet and they can just do that at their leisure, it has such a powerful negative impact on the family, on the company, because we don't know what's going on, particularly if this comes after a threat that's been made by them. But then what we can do in response

is, bit like with kids, we don't reward bad behaviour, just like you want to do in a business negotiation. And so we can play our own game at that where actually we don't offer any more money. we can even go a bit silent ourselves. We want to reward good behavior and I actually try and get it back onto that even keel. So there's lots and lots of learning from that. Yeah, so it's a mind game, right? They'll keep somebody for months with no forward motion.

But that's tricky, right? That's the mark of a professional because you have to hide that person from the police. You have to keep them healthy. You have to keep them fed. You have to make sure nobody else knows about it. So you need a full infrastructure, like a prison essentially, guards for the prison,

in infrastructure to keep the person healthy, fed, whatever, and secure, that's not something that, like, two methods in a crack house can really do. This is, like, a full-on organized crime organization doing something like this, right? And so, come a point where the cost of keeping the hostage or hostages is outweighed by the likely amount of money they're going to get paid out in a ransom. But we want to make them work for it. We're not going to make them more millionaires. Yes, they'll probably offer stuff to cover their costs, but actually we've got to get to the stage where the kidnappers think there is no more money left. And we call it squeezing the orange. Literally, they've got to think that they've squeezed every last drop out of the family.

And that starts right at the very beginning on the very first call. And there's almost a bit of theatre to the whole negotiations, even though both sides really know what's going on. There's kind of a play to go through and you can't speed it up, you can't rush it, both in the crisis negotiation side of things when people are struggling with, you know, potential suicide or harm or is the hostage taking in a bank, if we're trying to rush the problem solve, if we're rushing the process, that person is likely to come to harm. And just like in a kidnapping, kidnapped for ransom, if we try and rush the process, what is likely to happen is the kidnappers were,

They'll take the money and then they'll just use as a down payment. I'll go, thanks for your deposit. Now we're ready to negotiate, but you've given all your money over. And it's likely for them to keep them longer because I think there's more money. We're paying too much too soon. And that was one of the problems with Somali piracy is the reason the demands went from maybe one or two million in the early days of the mid-2000s to tens of millions a dollars later is because governments as well were getting involved

and they were just paying too much ransom money too quickly and there wasn't really the discipline there. Right. So yeah, this is an oil tanker. It's $200 million or $300. And they want $20, just give them the $20. And then next time they're like, well, shit, we've got to ask for $50 million. That was way too quick. Instead of dragging it out for a year and being like, well, we got $4 million. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

When you get somebody who doesn't contact you, when you squeeze the orange, what are you doing? anchoring the price of the hostage. We want two million. Well, actually, we were talking about 400,000 a year ago. Let's start back at 400,000. And they're like, oh, crap, we're not able to make this big jump. Well, there'll be a growing rate, so to speak, depending on who the hostages, you know,

if they're CEO versus if they're their wife of a local national somewhere in Africa or the Middle East. And who else are they being taken by? Who has they been taken by? And so we'll kind of get a feel for where, and actually what are the company or family willing and able to pay? Because don't forget we're talking about hard cash. Usually dollars in a bag or a couple of bags that we need to get from one country to another across the border maybe. And so right at the outset, we're going to have a bit of a conflict with the kidnappers.

And in every case it happens. There's a call. There's a phone call where you know full well you're about to manage the ex. expectations of the kidnappers. And it's one where the family and the company don't want to have, just like in real life. You don't want to have that difficult conversation you know you need to have, but you've got to have it in order to progress. So say they come in with a demand for a million dollars and we think, do you know what, we're probably going to end up at about 300,000. Well, actually, we want to start off maybe round about, I don't know, 75,000 maybe or whatever, depending on who it is.

And so straight away, the kidnappers know they're going to get nowhere near the million dollars. And maybe the first few phone calls, there'll be, you know, a few increases, but we're not really going to go anywhere near what they're looking for. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Scott Walker. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it is because of my network. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at six-minute networking.com.

This course is all about improving your relationship-building skills, which you are learning right here in this episode, inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. It's funny how much this stuff overlaps with hostage negotiation in many ways, the connections, the interpersonal skills. This is not cringy. It's not going to be weird stuff that makes you feel gross when you do it, and it just takes a few minutes a day. Many of the guests on the show already subscribe and contribute to this course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course

at six minute networking.com. Now, back to Scott Walker. When I first started looking at this stuff and reading books like yours, I was like, wow, these ransoms, they usually get paid. Because on TV, it's like, all right, we trace the call, send in special forces to jump in through the skylights. It's like, no, usually you just show up with a duffel bag full of cash and they win. And that's why they keep doing this stuff. It's not usually... In the, let's go it in the West or in the States, Europe, in law enforcement, get involved, there is inevitably going to be some kind of hostage rescue because of the teams are set up, the infrastructure's there, but when you go a bit further afield, the thing I want to hear

last in any kind of boardroom or family setting is when someone suggests a hostage rescue. Because I'm thinking, that's only going to end one way. And even if you speak to the hostage rescue guys from special forces or law enforcement SWAT teams, they'll say there's a highly probable chance that either the hostages will get killed, the kidnappers or one of us. It's highly risky. Whereas actually, there's a 993% chance of success through a proper structured negotiation. If there's the kidnapped ransom insurance when you get professional negotiators getting involved, that rises to about 96, 97%. And so, So not 100%, but whenever I sit down with a family in those early days, I'm thinking,

this works more often than not. We've got to try it and test the method. Let's stick to it. So how do you dismantle these gangs? Surely you were part of that too, because it's like, okay, let's pay the ransom. Now what we need to do is find these pieces of crap so they don't do this every single week to somebody else. Do you track them down after the money is delivered somehow?

As a cult, yes, that would be the aim to arrest them. But in the private sector, in Nigeria, the Middle East, Philippines, Latin America, if the cops or the military want to go after them, fine, but I've got one single outcome, and that's the safe and timely release of the hostages. And that's what I promised to families. I'll do whatever I can to do that. And I'm actually not interested in getting the kidnappers in that sense. And there's been cases where it's been the same gang, come along two or three times,

and you know, you recognize the voices. And in a way, that's quite reassuring because you know, actually they do this a certain way, they look after them. You know, it's not a five-star hotel, but they look after the reasonably well considering, and they don't mess around, they don't play any funny business, and they're just, to all intents and purposes, their businessman at the end of the day.

Yeah, it must actually be quite reassuring to have you walk in and go, okay, well, he didn't confirm it, but I recognize this guy. He's the chief negotiator for this gang. Last time I've got three people out from this gang, they came back, they weren't sick, they were fed the whole time, they were kept in a place that didn't have scorpions crawling all over them, this is probably going to be fine. I've never lost a hostage with these guys. It's the new gang that's scary, right?

Like the unknown quantity has to be way more nerve-wracking than somebody you've dealt with repeatedly. Yeah, it's in everybody's interest then to make it work. Because the kidnappers, they get paid, not so much as to, almost jeopardize the rhythm, if that makes sense, the pace and the rhythm of these things. Everybody knows if we stay within this ballpark, everybody's going to be okay, everyone's going to be looked after this, just a way of doing business in this part of the world. It's when you get these rogue actors who come in on both sides, the kidnappers, I don't know what they're doing, or people trying to represent the family or the companies or they'll allow

egos to get in the way and they pay too much, too soon. as I said, if we saw in the Somali days, and it just almost messes it up and actually increases the risk to people to get taken hostage further down the light. It's funny, you mentioned ego problems because it does sound like a lot of the problems people have when negotiating are ego-based.

Does that maybe make women better negotiators in that sense, or am I just stereotyping men in an unfair way here? I think it's an accurate assessment there, drawn to it in my experience, that actually women seem to be able to tap in, to that the empathy, muscle, so to speak, and they seem to be able to do that, you know, often better than men. Interestingly, within law enforcement, you know, quite a few negotiators are women because they're

very good at that. Within the private sector, less so. But I think it's, you know, the learnable skills. You can train people how to do this. As long as I've got like that core attitude of curiosity, being able to suspend that unhealthy ego and looking to do these things for the right reason, you can train a lot of people to do that, male or female. Yeah, of course, you can train people to do it.

It just seems like if I have a room full of 10 guys and 10 gals, and I had to pick somebody who had a low ego, I probably would start on one half of the room and not the other, generally speaking. Why do you think less women enter the private sector for negotiation? It's not, why would that happen? I think it's because when you think of a lifestyle, you've got one or two, sometimes times three different mobile phones. They all could go off at two, three o'clock in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday,

and you've got to be on the next flight out of heat throw, and you're going to go to Abuja or Manila or somewhere for six weeks by yourself. And it just seems to be with that lifestyle doesn't necessarily appeal to women, although there's no reason why they couldn't do. And as I said, you know, a lot of them make really good negotiators. I think it's the lifestyle and the toll that he can have that may put some of them off. I suppose if you want to have a family. I mean, it's literally the same reason why women don't go into other fields, right?

They want to have kids and they don't want to fly to Abuja for six weeks and leave their kids with their husband who can't cook anything but a burnt pancake some of the time. I mean, I know, again, I'm stereotyping. I'm just talking about myself at this point. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, it'd be great to see more get into it because they can bring a different skill set. They can work with families and clients differently. They can, you know, they've got sometimes better intuition than men around how things are going. But unfortunately, it's just the way that it's panned out through the lifestyle.

No, that makes sense. I heard you say that hostages and kidnappers rarely exchanged at the same time, right? Because in movies, it's like, we got the girls. She's in the back of the car. Throw the duffel bag across the pavement. That's not really how this goes, eh? Yeah, and I always used to think it was we're going to meet at the center of the bridge. Yeah.

With like the fog, it's 3 o'clock in the morning, the briefcase gets put down and the hostage walks towards you. Right. But it's nothing like that. No. And again, it comes back to that trust piece where we will use a courier or somebody who is willing to do the ransom drop, somebody that both sides can trust. And they'll probably get sent on some wild goose chase with various checkpoints to make sure they're not being followed. You know, there's one case where they had to go to a particular fishing boat. And obviously the captain on the boat was friends with the kidnappers

who got taken out to a waypoint out at sea where another boat would come alongside and the money would be handed over and county. Then the boat will go off. And then we just have to sit and wait. And hours or days later, the hostages may get dropped off at a safe point. Well, what happens quite frequently is the hostages will want to make sure that the hostages get back safely, that they're not intercepted by another criminal gang, and it starts off all over again, because then the reputation of that first gang actually gets threatened about they're really poor on their customer service, for example.

Oh, man. They failed to deliver the package on time and in one piece, three stars. Negotiations are smooth, but the delivery handoff was terrible. that is kind of funny but also tragic, right, for the person who gets intercepted by another criminal gang on the way to being delivered after all that. It's got to be so freaking dangerous

to meet somebody in the jungle or on a boat or whatever. It's just, how do you ensure compliance? Just the trust, right? Just like, hey, if you want to keep kidnapping people and getting paid for it, you better do this. Otherwise, next time somebody gets kidnapped,

all we're going to do is bomb your village because we don't know where anybody is. That's got to be the thing, right? We can only stop you. If you won't accept cash, the only thing we can use to stop you is force. And that's a bad trade for everybody. It is, which is why that ransom discipline and actually trying to slow the process down so they think they've got as much money as possible, it's no longer in their interest

to keep the hostages for whatever reason, then we know we've got the way we need to be. But if they think, actually, you know, it could be on the way to do the ransom drop, the hostage handover, and then suddenly there's a social media post that pops up and you think just because in the jungle they don't have access to social media, you'd be mistaken they do. And they'll see a relative or somebody who's on the hostages is driving a sports car or they're celebrating a promotion at work and which could just upend everything, which is why one of the things we may do is actually try and get some of those social media accounts shut down for obvious reasons. Until I say that agreement is one thing, but it's not the same as the release

and safe recovery of the hostages. It's only when they're back with us in a safe territory, back in the camp or the embassy compound or the medical center. Everybody can kind of breathe a sigh of relief and can have a hug and, you know, pat on the back. I did an episode a few years ago with Daniel Levin, episode 617, he's really, it's a freaking one of my favorite episodes. And one of the things that he was very adamant about was one of the biggest mistakes people make is they raise the profile of the hostage. Whenever people go to the media is always a really bad idea. And I've had, unfortunately, I've had show fans who are like, hey, I know you've done episodes on this. I had it. My girlfriend's uncle got kidnapped in Nigeria, a literal example.

And I was like, don't post anything. Don't try and crowd fund it. And then the family didn't listen. And then they were like, oh, you were right. They saw that and they saw that we crowdfunded and asked for stuff and the post got a lot of comments and now they're asking for more money and they say, we know you have it from all these people that you crowdfunded. Again, one of the worst things that can happen, as you say, is to raise the profile. Yeah. Even though it's in the family instinctively, they want to keep it front and center. But actually, that could be most cases, most cases, it's the worst. you can do because it will raise the perceived value of the hostages in the kidnappers' mind,

even if the reality is different. You know, just because you've got a big house doesn't mean you can kind of liquidate that and turn that into cash anytime soon, for example. And so actually, in the minds of the kidnappers, high profile equals high worth. However wrong there may be. Yeah. Bad time to be a YouTuber. Those guys are largely broke, but really famous.

That's the worst kind of, it's the worst situation. Don't get kidnapped if you're a YouTuber. It sounds like you don't need a ton of high-tech kit, man. Paper, a pen. You mentioned a recording device. What are you doing with a recording device? Obviously, you're recording the phone calls, but why are you playing the calls over and over?

What are you listening for? Well, first off, there was a case I was involved in a war back now, where again, it was a brother, got taken, and so with you other brother, and we go to a hotel suite. We walk in the room, myself and another negotiator, the brother's like, what is this? Where's all the monitors and the satellite feeds and Defcom One and all the red phone?

I went, mate, there's three things that are going to get your brother back. There's this pen, this piece of paper, and there's this recording device. Oh, man. I mean, there were things going on in the background, but as far as he was concerned, as far as the actual communicating with the kidnappers were, was involved, whereas that's all we need it. And the reason why we record the calls is it's not going to be as clear as this conversation between you and I. You know, at best you're going to be speaking to somebody on a satellite phone,

in the middle of the jungle or the desert somewhere. This reception is going to be intermittent. It's going to be heavily accented. And it's going to cut out multiple times, which is the one thing. And then the other thing is you don't want any doubt as to what was said. You know, was that 40 or 400? Yeah, 40 or 14, yeah, exactly. 14 or whatever.

And so we played back time and time and time again to go, actually, that's exactly what they said. And actually, if they then try and contradict or play some funny business later down the line, we can go, well, actually, no. Actually, I remember you saying, you know, a couple of days ago, it was 14 as opposed to 4, for example. And so that's one of the reasons why we do it. Do you do some sort of linguistics analysis? You know, if I'm negotiating with somebody on a satellite phone, I want to record that, and then I want to say, okay, is this Moroccan Arabic, Somali Arabic,

is this a non-native speaker of Arabic? Where do you think people who talk like this live? That can be important when there's some suspicion perhaps, or it's in a location where there could be some terrorist groups and prescribed terrorist organizations. And then so we'd have a conversation with the powers that be, maybe share some of the recordings and they'll go, yeah, you're okay to continue negotiating. Or it will be, you need a step away now.

And the reason for that is obviously because of depending on the nationalities, it's illegal to negotiate with prescribed terrorist organizations with a view to making some kind of financial concession to them. And so it can be helpful from that perspective as well as building up an intelligence picture. But primarily, they're recorded so we can actually understand and capture what is being said. What do you do? If somebody gets kidnapped by, I don't know, Al-Shabaab, what do you do then, if it's like you can't pay them $300,000? What are I supposed to do? Just leave my grandpa over there? You hand it over to the government? Is that who handles this kind of thing?

It's happened quite a few times where you know where you suspect there's a terrorist group involved. Although saying that, there'd be a number of criminal gangs who will say, no, we're, I'll be saying, or we're El Shabab. And actually, no, they're not. They just want to appear to be more threatening. Right. And so once it's been clarified who we're negotiating with, we'll have to be really clear in what our remit is going to be.

So then it might be we take a step back, we work alongside the government maybe, and then just support the family more so than actively negotiating. Negotiating with them isn't the issue. It's giving into unreasonable demands. and or with a promise to pay money. So it's quite nuanced and every time, you know, you want to get legal advice around actually, are we good to go? Because if it's linked to kidnap for ransom insurance, for example, the insurance company won't pay out. They won't pay your fees. They're the

compliance department. You've got the government regulators and OFAC in the state's Office of Financial Asset Control. Who, they'll come after you if they think you're partaking in this. Yeah, that's, oh man, that just makes it even more complicated and messy if you can't even do the negotiation without other parties saying, well, in the interest of our national security, you're not going to give them a ransom. I can see a way where you could just end up stuck. Yeah, I mean, there was one case where it was in Afghanistan and the intermediary we're using wanted to introduce me to somebody. I'm thinking, right, they kind of sound a bit like the Taliban or even the Kani network here. I'm thinking, that's just not going to happen. Yeah. And so then you have to bring all your diplomacy and having difficult conversations with everybody

as to actually why I'm not going to fly to Kabul and sit down with this person, but actually this isn't what we can do instead. Do you ever, and this is probably a dumb question, but do you ever get the idea that maybe they're trying to trick you into meeting them so they can get another hostage or do something with you? Potentially, it's like never be surprised at what happens.

I mean, there's very, very little can surprise me now as to what people either capable of or try and do or might happen, either deliberately or inadvertently. So there's always that kind of questioning of the back of my mind as to, okay, what's really going on here? What am I missing? What am I not seeing here? What are the risks? And actually, that was principally one of my main jobs as the crisis response consultant or the negotiator would be, I'd come up with the options, the pros and cons, I did. identify the risks, make recommendations, and then be on that shoulder of the family or the company about for them to make the right decision for them. If you're the police negotiating this hostage situation, why are we like, hey, let's have the family do this? Why don't the police actually do the negotiating?

Because often one of the conditions will be don't get the police involved. And so both when I was in the police and definitely when I was in the private sector, to doing it, we would get somebody else involved, so it would be a family member or some kind of trusted third party who could speak directly with the kidnapper's own version of a communicator. And that would be usually for language barrier, for that kind of aspect. But also, if I just rock up this kind of middle age, middle class, British guy who suddenly speaking to people in West Africa or the Middle East or whatever, they're like, well, hang on, if you're getting involved, then the hostages who we thought were just some local nationals,

well, they must be worse something. I see. Yeah, that makes sense. As well. What if they already know the hostages are worth something? Like, they kidnap the CEO of a company. It wouldn't be weird to have an expert run that. It seems weird to be like, oh, we're going to have his dumb hothead cousin handle it. That seems more weird to me.

Absolutely. And so then you're probably doing as the company that's negotiating. So, yes, okay, Jordan, my name's John, and I'm... I've been asked to speak to you on behalf of the company. But then, just because he's a CEO, doesn't mean that the company can suddenly get X millions of dollars. Right. How they're going to put that on the balance. Right.

You know, again, the banks weren't released the money. They won't be able to sign that off. And so where do you go with that? Which is why it's about trying to play down the amount of money that's available. And kidnappers, you've got to work for this. And it's not about saving money. The money is usually there. It's about minimizing the chances of this dragging no longer that it needs to,

as well as preventing any further kidnappers. Particularly, that company wants to stay doing business in that region for decades to come. Yeah. They need to send a clear message to the kidnappers. They don't come kidnapping our staff again. Do you have to downplay the value of the hostage? Like, oh, that CEO, you think he's valuable, but truth be told, he is a terrible CEO. We're going to replace that guy.

He's in fact, he's already been replaced. You did us a favor by taking him off our hands without severance pay so far. That guy was doing all kinds of damage to the company. I mean, he could probably have to be careful with that, but I would imagine there's some element of like we really don't care that much about this guy. So don't get your hopes up. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it could be, do you know what?

He's about to go bankrupt or he's got huge debt. So he personally, he doesn't have the money to pay. And as a company, we're a publicly traded company. We can't get hold of $5 million for you. what we can do is we've managed to scrape around amongst all the colleagues here and family members and the church group, you know, 40,000. We've got that in cash for you right now. We can let you have that.

Man, you must hear some disappointed sighs on the other end of those satellite phones when you finally drop the bomb that there's no money. Yeah, but that's what it's about. It's about the expectation management and making it clear where this is likely to end. And again, you could apply that to all areas of your life where you have your boundaries or you have your red lions. And it's, yeah, no, this is where I'm going to get to, but no further. Some of the stuff happening in London that you wrote about in the book, it sounds a little bit more like Sinaloa, Mexico drug cartel stuff than it does anything I would have expected in London. I mean, you're talking about torture and kidnapping.

I did not expect that out of London. Yeah, it's not that common place, but it does happen. If one of my very first cases was with a family, there was about nine of them in a really tiny flat in East London. On one of the calls, the kidnappers said, we know that the police are working with you. We're going to send some of the boys around with a Mac 10 machine gun to spray the place up.

And I'm thinking, is this what I signed myself up for? I thought I'd just be chit-chatting with people on the phone and helping them get released. and then, and they gave the address where we were. Like the police station, or were you at someone's house? No, it was at someone's house. We're in the apartment. And in the end, normally we want to stay on the radar, we want to stay discreet.

But the way we dealt with it, we got two big, heavily-armed four-by-four land cruiser, armed response vehicles with six, heavily armed police officers, SWAT teams basically stood outside the front to the apartment block, which allowed us to, you know, just crack on with us. negotiations. And again, Canappas will make what would sound like genuine threats and is about staying cool and calm and not giving in or rewarding those as well. And we did it in that case. We just

played it down and we said well, making threats won't help and you need to look after the hostages and when you're ready and you're serious to talk about this, then phone us back. Do you think they drove by, saw the cops and then they were like, oh, oops? Maybe. Or do you think that was just all the block? Because honestly,

any punk that thinks they're going to hit anything with a Mac 10 in the first place is full of crap. That's like stormtrooper level of accuracy. I don't think anybody, but maybe you can't, I don't know, it's the UK. Maybe it's hard to get a gun that actually fires in a straight line unless you're a cop or in the military. Yeah, your automatic weapons aren't that common in Britain. And a Mac 10, you know, spray and pray because you pull the trigger and you're probably going to hit the ceiling before you hear anyone else. Yeah. But I didn't want to be one of those people that got a stray bullet, to be honest with you.

This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Scott Walker. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do. What other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And if you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code.

Just go ahead and email me, Jordan atjarbinger.com. I am more than happy to surface that code for you. Yes, it is that important that you support those. who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Scott Walker. Are these people who do this? This is not a PC question, and I don't want to get canceled,

but are these local Londoners? Are they like immigrants from a more violent place? And I mean, East Europe could be. I'm not talking about the race or ethnicity, but it just seems like you have Britain, the cops aren't even armed because they don't need to be, and then you have these other gangs coming in. They just have a whole different idea

of what violence is allowed or acceptable in the culture. In terms of an organised violent criminality in London, you'd get different parts of the city would be run by different nationalities. So, you know, the Albanians or the Turks or whoever would have different parts of London. And depending on where you were, you're more likely to come into interaction with those gangs. But again, it translated into other parts of the world where you knew that if you had a Latin American kidnapping, that will be handled in a certain way, whereas if it was West Africa, it would be handled slightly differently. It would take perhaps a different amount of time to resolve, compared to

if you're in the Philippines, for example. So that's interesting. What are some of the chief characteristics of these different nationalities? Is it like some take-a-long time, some are more expensive? Yeah, generally speaking, the Latin American, like the Mexican can have things quite quick. They didn't last very long, you know, a few days maybe, but they were renowned to be very violent really quickly. You know, the West African-type kidnappings maybe going for a few weeks, a month, maybe, maybe slightly longer,

generally well looked after the Middle East, well, that was just like how long was a piece of string, really. Right. And then the Philippines generally, it would be a lot longer, you know, potentially months and for much high amounts of money as well. So if you're going to get kidnapped, get kidnapped by Africans.

Is that the takeaway here? Well, actually, don't get kidnapped in the first place. One of my jobs when I wasn't on a case would be advising companies and families about how to avoid in the first place because even though you could be in the wrong place and the wrong time and people do get taken, by and large you become a target because of your behavior in certain parts of the world. So actually, most, if not, well, 99% of kidnappings can be avoided with just a bit of forethought about what you're doing or where you're doing it. So that's for if you're living abroad, Is it safe to say if you're in London, you're probably not going to get kidnapped for ransom unless you're a criminal or is that not?

Yeah, just to kind of emphasize to any listeners or views to this, particularly London. London is one of the safest capitals in the world. Yeah. And actually, you know, you're walking down the street, the chances of you being kidnapped are extremely, extremely unlikely. You've got to be really unlucky. It's going to be normally because you've annoyed if you've ripped off a drug dealer. or another rival gang, I'm talking about in the UK now, which is why you're likely to get kidnapped

as opposed to you go to your local supermarket or store you happen to get taken. I suppose if you're super high net worth, all bets are off because that's what organized criminal gangs want. That's a bit different. Yeah, that makes sense. It seems like high EQ is key in your line of work. I know you kind of touched on that at the top of the show.

Do you think that can be trained and developed or is a lot of EQ social intelligence? Is that inborn, in your opinion? Nature or nurture questioner. Yeah. Probably the element of both, you can certainly train it. And ultimately what it is, is can you walk into a room, particularly in high stress, high stakes, high pressure environment, and tune into what is showing up for you in your own emotions and being able to regulate that and have the sensory acuity that you can tune into what is showing up for other people and help them regulate and bring that. down if it's in a high stakes. And some people are just generally better than others at it. So

whilst you can trade it, some are better than others. And it's having that ability to go into any setting anywhere in the world in those high pressure environments and being able to bring about, hence the title of the book, order out of chaos, which is what it was about. But again, you can apply that before you go and do a business presentation or you're about to do something with your family or whatever it is, it's being able to tune into it. What's really showing good for me right now? What am I feeling of why is that? And actually, you know, the person I'm with, they're displaying a few signs of anxiety maybe

and how can we help them with that? How do you select for these EQ talents on the job or even trainability on the job? You know, do a lot of people try out for the position that you had and people just go, look, this guy's a knucklehead, he's not going to make it, or this guy's way too much of a hothead. I'm sure there's some of that selection or failure, but do you select for it initially when you're bringing somebody into the department?

Again, particularly, well, both law enforcement and the private sector, really, don't underestimate the power of likability. You know, we may not have that much in common, say, but could I sit down with this person and have a coffee or a beer and get on with them and have a really good conversation back and forth where they really seem to be keen about finding out about the person,

and are they listening properly, are they able to demonstrate their understanding without making it all about themselves, for example? Likeability is a factor here, is a real big factor as well. It sounds like consulting or most other jobs where you do your internship, and it's like the number one question is, so if you were stuck at an airport lounge with this guy for 12 hours, do you want to hang yourself or is it fine? Yeah, you could argue it's a bit like that.

And because the given, the given here is that you can do your job. No one's doubting that. You wouldn't even be having the conversation if technically you weren't capable of following through and delivering. What it is is when you haven't slept for three days, you're thousands of miles away from home, you've got whatever going on at home, and you've got four or five hostages. The ransom negotiations aren't going very well. You've got an ego-driven client. You've got a family who want to push, push, push, push and pay more money.

and you need to keep a level ahead and you need to be able to keep these people on side without alienating them because if you mess up, people can die. Yeah. So it tends to focus to mind a little on getting that bit right. I heard you say that often fear throws a monkey wrench into the deal and into negotiations.

You mentioned it manifests through, I think it was frustration, anger. There's another one. Is it jealousy or am I making that up? Not so much jealousy, but so many fear is an interesting one. And you'd see that with clients when the negotiations weren't moving as quickly as they wanted to be, particularly if they're getting an impatient executive who's used to things happening quickly, then they'd be driven by fear. They'd be like, well, actually, we need to renegotiate the strategy,

which basically just means we want to pay more money. We want to throw money at it. And that is driven by fear. And decisions made from a place of fear rarely end up working out for the long term. What do you do about that besides just telling everybody not to be afraid? Because that probably doesn't work. Yeah, imagine trying to tell somebody, don't do something? They'll be like, they'll do the opposite, don't they?

Don't just try and get your son back through paying more money? Trust me, I have another plan. Like, that's tough. But again, it's dealing with them as you would do anyone else. It's about validating where they're at. You know what? This sounds like it's really important for you to get this right, to get your colleague back.

And it seems like you're really frustrated. it's not moving as quickly as possible. And so again, you're validating, you emotionally labelling where they're at. So they end up to a point where they think, you know what? Actually, Scott understands why I'm feeling this way. And once you, if you imagine like it's a balance, a beam, where you can't bring about calm, objective, rational thinking and decision making when the anxiety, stress, and overwhelm is high.

Same with a toddler in a store. They want candy. They want some chocolate. but you don't give it to them because they're going to have their dinner when they get home, is you can't rationally explain to them whilst they're having a paddy, a tantrum. You've got to bring down that stress and overwhelm. And then you can start bringing out the objective rational decision making. How do you build trust with the family of the hostage when you walk in the room?

Because they're freaking, the first time they see you, right, they're freaking out and they don't know you. You walk in there and you've got a couple of seconds. Because you walk in there and you give it the big I am, don't worry the cavalry's arrived. They may be thinking that, but you can't go in there and doing that. See, it's about reassuring them as quickly as possible. They're not interested in your resume or, let's say, how many cases. You can have that conversation later on. It's about coming from a place of certainty.

Right, Kate, in my experience, this is what is likely to happen. first of all, there's going to be a period of silence. Then what is going to happen? They're going to make contact with you directly or somebody else. We'll look to get a proof of life. They'll make an obscenely high demand with an account to it. They're going to come back with some threats. So you map out how it's going to play out.

I see. And they go, okay. And then they'll say maybe, well, how many times you've done this before? Well, and myself and the rest of the team, we've done it hundreds, if not thousands of times before all over the world. This works. No guarantees. I'm not going to make you any promises that I can't keep. However, there is a 93% chance of success with this. So straightaway, you want to try and demonstrate that trust. And again, it comes with a likability. If I come in there as being, I'm the hot shot negotiator, you need to listen to me. Yeah, so I'm a luth prick. Not going to

go over one. It's not going to work. Whereas actually, I need to empathize. I need to demonstrate a bit of compassion and understanding and make it about them and their loved one. And actually, I'm just this person on the side is going to try and facilitate this happening for you. That's interesting. And I would imagine as the map plays out just like you said, it would, that their trust builds over time as well, right? Okay, they called.

All right, there's the demand. Yes, we countered it. They made the threats just like he said. And it probably also takes the sting out of some of that when they say, we're going to cut off his hand. It's like, well, he told us you were going to say that. And he also told us that you're not probably really going to do that. So I'm sure they're still freaking out and worried,

but at least when your predictions keep getting knocked down like ducks, then it shows that you know what you're talking about, which is probably greatly reassuring. It is. And also even though you know this, actually it's a good reassurance for yourself. It doesn't matter how many times you've done it, where it does follow the script more often than not.

And particularly if they'll make threats or they'll get the hostages on the phone and saying, oh, well, we're really ill, we're injured, we haven't eaten in a week, we haven't drunk in a week. Actually, a lot of that is just theatre on their parts. And I'll say that as well to them, is that the kidnappers aren't going to allow them to starve to death or get too ill because they know they're not going to get paid out. It's all part of the theatre. It seems like patience is a superpower in these cases and emotional management skills and the ability to withstand uncertainty. But then you also have to teach that to the family in real time as they're going to.

through it. It's like they've been thrown into the deep end. That's why it's important right at the beginning not to sugarcoat it and explain to them, I know this is going to be difficult for you to hear, but this could go for quite a long time. This is the likely rhythm. And as difficult as it is, we may go days or weeks without hearing anything. And in that time, it is so important for you to be there, to be there for your loved one, is to actually look after yourself as much as possible, which is why we'll turn the phone off apart from certain call windows. It's why we encourage him to get as much as possible, sleep and exercise and eating healthily so they stay in that emotionally good place. That is fascinating. I know you said

you set the call window and you use the burner phone so that you don't have to always be on and you have time for logistics and self-care. But it is interesting how much self-care seems to be a core skill of anybody negotiating with kidnappers. It's almost like, from what you said so far, It's almost like there's a contest to see who runs out of steam and patience and lets their cortisol response get the best of them over this prolonged period of time. And I've seen it when people don't look after themselves. And where we saw with a brother in that case, you know, my first case as well, I lost it with the family.

I ended up shouting at the family because I was getting frustrated and slept for a few days. And then the more experienced negotiator colleague just put his hand on my shoulder and a gentle squeeze. And that was enough to break my pattern. And then I watched a masterclass of how he didn't dealt with the family and the kidnappers. And that was a huge help for me right at the very outset of my career there. And so look it after yourself as much as possible.

Yes, there's going to be days where 16, 18 hours, we're on the go nonstop. And it can be exhausting. But there will be times where it's, right, everybody, we'll come back tomorrow morning, go for a walk, get some food, do whatever you need to do. and we'll resume this at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, for example. Man, it just really sucks to be the hostage in that situation, right? Your entire life is on hold, you're under stress, in poor emotional, maybe in physical health. You're not sure if you're going to make it out.

Meanwhile, your family's a mess, your business is a mess. It's almost like these guys are almost like just murder, as bad as murderers, these kidnappers, because they've really screwed up so many lives for such a long time, just for money. It's really psycho. Yeah, it can be. And I've also known hostages, when they come out, because one of my jobs was to debrief them, was so got checked out medically.

And actually, for a lot of them, if they had the right mindset, whilst they were being held captive, they actually managed to make this a pretty decent experience and they learned a lot from it. And whilst they may not thrive as a result, they certainly use this as a springboard to maybe change their lives and to approach life completely differently than before. And these were the ones who they didn't have some naive optimism of false positivity. They didn't think, hey, we're going to be home by Christmas. But it was, hey, we're here for as long as we're here. We know that our loved ones are going to do their best they can to get us out of here. And I just need to focus on what I can control, which is in my media circle here in the desert, in the jungle,

wherever. And they were the ones who actually gave an empowering story, meaning to where the situation they found themselves in, and they were the ones that benefited the most, so to speak. Jeez, well, hopefully nobody that we know has to go through that just to get that level of personal growth. Yeah. Go to a Tony Robbins seminar or something instead, instead of getting kidnapped. Are there places where you just won't travel because of your line of work where you just know, look, I've done way too many cases in this country.

I'm never going to go there. Well, there are certain countries I wouldn't go anyway, and actually say somebody got taken in Syria or Iraq, I'd probably go to a nearby country, probably go to Jordan or Egypt or somewhere where, you know, you're next door, you're close enough to maybe where there's like an incident management team running or it's being run from. But there's no countries I'd worry about going to now, in fairness, because the countries where else do the kidnappings would take place, I wouldn't necessarily go to that country in any event. Right, yeah, Syria or whatever. All right, so here's some questions that you may not want to answer or feel comfortable. answering, I'm asking you to speculate largely, but people online are saying things like, hey, maybe Hamas doesn't know where the Israeli hostages are because a lot of them weren't taken

by Hamas. They were taken by random criminal gangs, Palestinian Islamic jihad, or even civilians who then maybe are keeping them or turned them over to Hamas. What do you think about that? Because it is possible that in a crazy attack like that, they just don't have a roll call of where everybody is. I think that's probably a reasonable assessment, to be honest. Hamas will have the main majority of the 240 on hostages, where as you said, Islamogi had and any other factions and just individuals who had scores to settle or criminals who wanted to see a quick payday. And so actually, I could quite believe where initially at least they didn't know who they had, who was holding them and where.

But as time has gone on, I'm sure that some pressure has been brought to bear behind the scenes there to try and account for where everybody is. but we do assume there's some kind of joined up coordinated response on that side, whereas probably that's a bit of wishful thinking. And I certainly think there is more coordinated joint up response on, say, the Israeli side, but even so you've got multiple nationalities, lots of different governments all wanting to represent their country's interest the most. You've got, you know, the Iranians and the Qataris and the Egyptians and Saudis and everyone else, all trying to have their piece of the action here, which just makes it just completely put all the

most difficult, challenging hostess negotiations you could ever imagine. Yeah, it seems very tough if you've got Israel negotiating and you've got via third parties or directly and you've got American negotiating. But then you, I mean, all it, it seems like if Belgium comes in and is like, we want our two nationals and we're going to pay $10 million for each one, then it's like, oh, thanks a lot. Now they want $10 million for all 40 Americans or whatever that are over. there and we're not doing that. Well, we saw that back in the Somali days, Somali Piracy days, and in other cases where we'll go, we're not negotiating, we're not negotiating, or we've been

paying maybe hundreds of thousands, and then a government will just pay 20 million to get their people back. And you think, well, actually, that really doesn't help any other citizens of yours to get taken or all the other citizens that have been taken from the different countries, which is why that ransom discipline is so important. And actually, generally speaking, when governments get involved, it can kind of, it can messy the water when it's just as simple. And I'm not saying this particular case, it applies as much, but in normal cases, you know, if you can treat it as a business negotiation and it's about money or it may be about a generator for the local village or something, they're pretty straightforward in the scheme of things. But when governments start getting involved and undercutting everybody else, it tends to make it far more complicated. Scott Walker, thank you very much, man.

Really interesting subject, really interesting topic. The book, of course, goes into a lot of detail on communication and negotiation, and there's some almost like self-helpie stuff in there. So there's a lot of tactics that we didn't even come close to touching on, just because I was curious about the stories and everything behind it. And, of course, I appreciate you sharing all that. I think it must have been a fascinating career with the police and going to the private sector, no less fascinating.

Yeah, no, thanks for having me. It's been great to chatting to you about it. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Amanda Katarzi, who was raised in a cult and later sex and labor trafficked. The women were trained to be insanely submissive. Like you could never say no to any man. And then the men were trained in a very military way. These people are well-armed and well-trained. And it's a whole group that thinks that the world is evil and they need to repopulate the world with their people to bring the kingdom of.

of God. When you turn 13 in that culture, you're an adult. So to be 13 years old, being courted by men twice my age, three times my age, to see if I would make a good wife, it was just kind of outrageous. So I moved to California to go to school, and I start training in MMA, and my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches. Then he's like, you know, I like you, and so now we're dating. So this is my first adult relationship. He's twice my age at this point. And then he would always take me up to his cabin on the mountain,

which was really far away from everybody else. No phone service, isolation, and it was on a Native American reservation. So whatever they wanted to do to me, they could. Oops, you accidentally got gang raped. That was very common of going to go train, and then all of a sudden, now that you fought 12 rounds,

And so now you're going to be raped. A girl ran a red light and teabone my truck. So I pull out my phone and I text my trafficker and I say, hey, I almost just died a car accident. He said, is your face fucked up? And I'm like, no. And he said, well, you're still fuckable then. Something isn't right here. This isn't who I want to be.

This isn't what I want. And it was like I was coming out of water. I had this moment of clarity, and I knew something wasn't right, and I knew this wasn't what I wanted, and I knew I needed to act fast in order to get out of that situation because I knew it'd get sucked back in. To hear how she escaped her dire situation, check out episode 631 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Super interesting stuff. I really love these weird sort of job. I always think, like, would I have a job like this if I wasn't doing a podcast with people who have jobs like this? Probably something along those lines. The book itself gets super detailed on communication and negotiation and some self-helpy kind of topics. In my past life, I really would have dug in even more on those.

But these days, I like to hook you guys with a good hostage story or two versus a textbook on emotional communication, as interesting as that stuff also is. One mantra from the book that I really appreciated was the idea that we should never allow luck to call the shots. preparation, managing risk, managing ourselves as best we can in these situations, it means controlling what we can control to the best extent possible. Sure, bad luck is bad luck, and we shouldn't surrender to it, but work appropriately within those constraints. Lots of practicals in the book, like I mentioned, one that stood out was emotional regulation being one of the most prized skills of any negotiator. And there's a lot of info in the book on this, but there was something that really stuck with me called Batara's Box. And this is essentially

a cycle, like my attitude affects my behavior, which affects your attitude, which affects your behavior, which then affects how you treat or respond to my behavior and that of others. This is a cycle, right? So my attitude affects my behavior, of course, which affects your attitude, which affects your behavior, which then has ripple effects. So I love this idea. This is something I've been working with for quite a long time. I haven't quite put it in these terms, but we can train how people treat us by the way that we behave, of course. But that's influenced by our attitude. But not only can we train the way that other people treat us, we can train the other way that people are treated by others, which is actually kind of a superpower.

Now, this is something that I probably should get into in a different show, but I find this stuff very, very useful, kind of turning this into a positive cycle versus a negative one. All things, Scott Walker will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com or just ask the AI chatbot also on the website. Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. We've also got our newsletter. We dig into an episode of the show every week.

Drag out those takeaways and highlights. If you're a fan of the show, you want to know what to listen to next. The newsletter is a great place to do that. Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. We are working on those logical fallacy flashcards. This kind of stuff is not as easy as you think. They are made delivering them as the tricky part. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well.

it's over at six minute networking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you. This show is created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show, you share it with friends and you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in negotiation might be interested in a hostage negotiator type

episode, definitely share this one with him. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by something you should know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast, focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think,

the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you, or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch. Search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.