part0005

If your son were kidnapped, and the perpetrators are asking for one million dollars in exchange for your son’s life, what would you do?

Chris Voss, a lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI, was faced with this situation. Chris, who has been with the agency for over twenty years, has spent fifteen years negotiating in hostage situations in various countries – but those situations were nowhere as personal as negotiating for his son’s life.

The situation was just a role play in a Harvard negotiation course that Chris enrolled in as part of his professional development. He was face-to-face with two of the best-known negotiators: Robert Mnookin, Harvard Negotiation Research Project Director and a hotshot in the field of conflict resolution, and Gabriella Blum, a Harvard Professor and a fearless negotiator in armed conflicts, counterterrorism, and similar international situations. Nevertheless, Chris felt fear, which still managed to grip him after eight years of negotiating for human lives.

Chris calmed himself down and used a tactic that he learned on the job–the calibrated questions. Calibrated questions are open-ended queries with no fixed answers but create a semblance of control and buy time for the negotiator. The two negotiators tried to bully him into giving in, but Chris wore them down. It was proof that the FBI's techniques can work everywhere.

In 2006, Chris joined the Harvard Law School's Winter Negotiation Course, which is filled with the best and the brightest law and business students from top-notch universities. On its first day, students were paired off for a mock negotiation. One member played the role of the buyer, and the other member, the product seller. Both were given limits on the price they could take. Chris aced the negotiation. On the second day, Chris was paired off with another student. Again, he crushed his partner’s budget.

When asked to explain how he did it, Chris said he used a passive-aggressive approach by repeatedly asking the other party three to four calibrated questions until the other party gets worn out and give in to Chris. The calibrated questions Chris asked required emotional strength and perceptiveness that the brilliant students were not tooled for.

Chris's experience taught him that intelligence, logic, process, and a moral concept of fairness are not enough to succeed at negotiating. A negotiator must have a good grasp of human psychology, understanding that people will always act and react based on our incipient fears, desires, needs, and perceptions.

A significant milestone in hostage-negotiation happened in 1971. A deranged man by the name of George Giffe Jr. hijacked a chartered plane out of Nashville, Tennessee, and planned to head to the Bahamas. When the plane refuelled in Jacksonville, two of the passengers managed to convince Giffe to let them go on the tarmac. However, impatient FBI agents chose that moment to shot out the engine, causing Giffe to panic. The incident ended with three people dead–the pilot, Giffe’s wife, and Giffe, who killed himself.

The hijacking incident triggered the development of hostage negotiation training and techniques that are used today. Soon after the tragedy, the New York Police Department (NYPD) organized a dedicated team of specialists who would handle crisis negotiations. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies soon followed.

In 1979, the Harvard Negotiation Project was established to improve the theory, teaching, and practice of negotiation in a wide range of applications ranging from business mergers to peace treaties. Two years later, Roger Fisher and William Ury, co-founders of the project, introduced a systematic problem-solving model that would ensure successful negotiations.

Fisher and Ury’s model involved four basic precepts:

Decades of research on negotiation techniques ensued.

Meanwhile, the FBI hostage negotiating team grew and developed their problem-solving skills. However, after Randy Weaver’s siege of Ruby Ridge farm in 1992 and David Koresh's siege of Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, the FBI realized that a rational approach would not always work. Their method was lacking one crucial element: emotions.

The FBI hostage negotiating team had to re-evaluate their strategies to include psychological tactics that would calm people down, build rapport, and gain trust to change the behavior of the hostage-taker.

The team tested both new and old counselling techniques aimed at building positive relationships through listening and empathy. This strategy is what the FBI call tactical empathy.

Almost every interaction we do in our lives – at home, at school, at work, or elsewhere, is a negotiation opportunity that is based on our individual wants. Conflict is a part of our relationship with other people, and addressing a conflict to avoid damage to our relationship would require negotiation.

Every day, we find ourselves in a negotiation situation regardless of where we are or whoever we are transacting with. This chapter advises you to:

Write on or key in a learning journal your perceived weaknesses in negotiation.

You may also document one or two negotiation situations you found challenging and indicate what made them challenging.