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

0:00What 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 kidnapped negotiating? Well, you also include things like extortion as well in a typical, you know, for a shop owner, that the mafia used to get involved in or maybe a cyber attack. But yeah, pretty much every single kidnapping would involve some kind of ransom demand, hence kidnapped for ransom. Interesting. 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.

0:47But 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. There may be elements of that, but at the end of the day, it's pretty much a business transaction. Now, if you're the hostage or you're the family of the hostage, it may be more than that, but in reality, and certainly from my perspective as the negotiator, this is just a business deal we need a finer 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.

1:40So it certainly sounded good. It's Stroke Hourry 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 at school, I went to see the career advisor. Then go, Scott, you could be a train driver, a pilot, a negotiator. 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.

2:28So I was a detective for 16 years. Had a great time. I love pretty much every single day as a detective at Scott and Yard. And actually looking back, my career was very much around people. So whether or not it was running informants or taking a bit of time out to become an interrogator and Iraq 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 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.

3:14Some people call it mid -life crisis, they go and buy a Ferrari or Marriott Model. I go and join a cannot negotiation firm and have a second career. And I left on the Thursday the police and on the Monday adjoined and they said, 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.

3:58It'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 or get on the phone, reassure the family, reassure the company, right? We've got this. This is going to be the strategy. I'm here to advise you. I'm not going to tell you what to do 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.

4:39And that's fine. Everybody gets it. Use that for the week, first week, 10 days, what's the one in for a 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 and maybe like a swan gliding gracefully underneath. It's pounding. Actually, it's muscle memory. You get right, Kyle. Being 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.

5:24Is that right? Yeah, dealing with the kidnappers is the easy bit.

5:33Honestly, it's a kind of thing enough, Chris, it's the easy bit because it's a business transaction. Okay, if we mess it up, people could die and all other considerations which we're going to a bit later if we get onto it in terms of logistics. But the crisis within the crisis, if you think about it, you've got egos, internal politics, high emotion in probably the most stressful set of circumstances these people are ever going to face. And so I'm almost in the middle of this. So it's about developing this sensory acuity. You're talking about, you know, what is a kind of person who gets into this field and is good at it?

6:15It's somebody with an antennae who can go right. Something's going on with that person over there. Their their mannerisms or their energy is not congruent with what they're saying or they're getting a bit agitated. And so it's constantly picking upon these cues so you can then, and 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. We want cool, calm heads, which is why I named the book, Ordara Chaos, because that's ultimately that what this is, is we want to bring some order out of what is a very chaotic and stressful circumstances.

6:56Maybe 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 wise, wise, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, wise he taken this role or whatever, whatever it might 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.

7:37I'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 give in 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. 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 we're not good enough it's not going to work blah blah blah.

8:28Talk to me about some of the highest pressure situations that you've been in. An illustrious career of dealing with with crazy different circumstances. Probably my first case, actually, as well as a Scotland yard, and it's based in a cramped flat in London. And one of the younger sons had been taken by a rival drug gang. And so after a couple of days, we're in this small flat, lots of family members around, high emotion, and we're coaching myself, and I'm calling it coaching the other brother as the communicator. Obviously, we don't want to advertise that police are involved. And then the threat start coming in and there's a bit of almost like a mock execution, the background we can hear the hostage in a bit of pain.

9:19And 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 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 looked at my colleague and he looked at me and was like, is this a bluff?

9:54Are they just trying to try 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. We've got more guns than you. And there was literally six heavily armed, so 19 officers there. Actually, that blue eye covering a wake. So we wanted to be discreet, but far better that than a family full of victims in a flat somewhere in Trinidad, 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.

10:34And that's actually interesting. In the UK or the US, in kidnappings or hostage takings, normally there's some kind of hostage rescue. Okay. Because we've got the best teams, best SWAT teams in the world. Whereas in other parts of the world, I'd always stress for a negotiated settlement here. because there's a 93 % chance of a successful resolution that way. I would not trust many, many governments and units around the world to conduct the hostage rescue. It's just fraught with too many dangers. 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.

11:20What was that story of a pirate hijacked ship thing that you were involved in? I got into this, 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

11:50and the conversation we didn't hear anything about 10 days, two weeks, 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 were offing at that point about 70 ,000, because it's about managing expectations. And after a point, the kidnappers got really frustrated. And then when we on the call one day, the guy I'm using as a communicator because the language barrier, he says, well, you must look after, I agree, my friends, they're your responsibility whilst you've got them held hostage.

12:28And then there's this really booming voice from the Kinnap 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'm realizing that moment, it's about my way as well. And he turns around and said, how can you sit there, Mr. Scott? So car when my friends are going to die. Now, I know they're not going to die. I know for while 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 an initiative here in a calculated risk, which is, I can leave the kidnappers.

13:14They're good for 24, 36, 48 hours. We're in a good position with them in terms of the negotiation. My primary aim is to look after Mr. John, because if I can't get him on board, if I can't get him to cooperate, if I can't 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, you know, all the active listening, all the, I mean, genuinely empathizing with him. I'm validating where is that. And then, you know, the next day, the day after he comes in, shout, shave, new man, and then we get a deal and the hostages release.

13:52I did. I'm so fascinated by the fact that most of your job isn't negotiating with the kidnappers, but it's negotiating with the internal politics. I think that's such a 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 explored 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.

14:57And 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.

15:37So 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 ransomware. 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 of reputation or risk then. I appreciate that's there in kidnapping, but from a cyber extortion normally, data has been extracted and or encrypted as well.

16:30And usually there's some reputation or risk to the company, the longer it continues or they just can't do business. They're gonna lose money as well. It changes slightly when you're dealing with maybe healthcare, which we've seen that a lot of ransomware attacks over the last few years. There's wanna cry on 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've physically got the hostage, we know we're good. Whereas if we pay a ransom to an extortionist in a cyber case, okay, the business model is they're more often than not going to keep their words, because I was going to pay them again in future.

17:16But there's no guarantees I haven't made a copy or kept a copy backed from releasing it on the dark web or to sell it to competitors. So it's slightly nuanced there, but like in anything I say to the clients, there's no guarantees here. There's never going to be a hundred percent. You just need to, on the balance of probabilities, do a risk cost benefit analysis and work out what you want to do. Do you want to negotiate and engage? But this is costing you maybe say half a million dollars a day in lost opportunity costs, but how much is the extortion demand for? And well we don't know, we're not checked.

17:53Okay, 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 costing you half a million. Okay, I'm simplifying the example there, but it's all these things that 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.

18:35So for the people So that don't know, Idris Elba, handsome black man, gets on a plane from Dubai to the UK and the plane gets hijacked by some bastards, most of whom are from London. But one of whom's a 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 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? Funny enough, I was interviewed by the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper here at the UK, a last week on this, around as an entertainment value, it is outstanding.

19:28It's exceptional writing. You know, bear in mind, I do this for a living. I've been evolving one high jacking before I'm still hooked. Okay, as a series. But that's where it ends. Oh no, Idra. What the absurdity level is as high as the altitude of the plane. Okay, because if I'm on, if I'm a passenger, if I'm a digital celebrity on board, okay, I mean, I probably really wouldn't be doing the things he's doing. I've been 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.

20:06That 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 anything for people who haven't seen it in terms of the relationship between the brothers on the plane, for example?

20:46And so that is one of the first golden rules in negotiation is, well, actually, I'm not going to be as arrogant enough to think it's all about me. I need to understand what makes 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, they also going on back in London and trying to manage it, that is normally how the first few hours of any kind of crisis looks sound and feels like until it gets into a steady rhythm. Yeah, again, you know, hierarchies of power, it's the foreign secretaries getting involved, the home secretaries getting involved, people are getting ransom notes.

21:33And 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 just speak and explain. Step two, we calm down and contain. Step three, we do whatever, whatever, whatever.

22:11And yet the externalities internally of that. Okay, so we've sort of danced around and some of the stories, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of persuasion and negotiating, how do you conceptualize the fundamentals of it? Like what are the core components? Or what is the science behind negotiating? Often people say to me, Scott, what is, what is I need to say? What can I say to get money off or get an upgrade and all this kind of stuff, which is a starter? I get asked all the time and I always turn around and go, you're asking the wrong question because you're wrapping it all around you 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 better, which goes back to the golden rule of it's not about you, you know, and it's again to cliche, to cliche for a reason seek first to understand before being understood.

23:14And that way to the side, we'll 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 want to go below that and listen to the emotion. Maybe the underlying emotion that's not being expressed. And then really what's there in model the world? What's their beliefs? What are their 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, the active listening techniques such as your paraphrasing or your labeling.

24:06and 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. Yes, sure. 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 miss something here. And you may go, 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.

24:47And 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.

25:23And this is particularly helpful if people go on for quite a long time. I've been with my kids. I've got two teenagers and they just like to talk and talk and talk and talk and I have to interrupt them and go, okay, so what you're saying is this, this, this and this and they go, yeah, that's it. Great. They're those two techniques, for example. Very important. The thing I'll say on that actually, the thing I said that 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.

25:57I just need to just genuinely 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 favourite 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 what you wanted?

26:40People say, you know, some of my clients, now they'll go, well, I want to, you know, I want to lose weight or I want to 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 want 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 I always asked absolutely everybody is what would success look like and That helps me to work out.

27:26Okay, this particular company is really really interested in Breaking into the United States market this company is looking to improve that brand equity this company wants to Sell in 18 months times. They're trying to drive top line revenue. They're trying to do whatever whatever whatever And it gives me so much information, but you're right as well by saying what would success look like to you? 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.

28:02And 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 would stop. More what? What is it that you need? Like, and by forcing them to actually assess what it is, you create a parameter from which you can then measure performance or success. 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?