969: Scott Walker | Persuasion Tactics of a Hostage Negotiator

25:02when 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 being made by them but then what we can do in response is a bit like with kids we don't reward bad behavior just like you want to do in a business negotiation and so we could play our own game at that where actually we don't offer any more money. We can even go a bit silent to ourselves. We want to reward good behavior and actually try and get it back onto that even keel. So there's lots and lots of learning from that.

25:41Yeah, 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, an infrastructure to keep the person healthy, fed, whatever, and secure. That's not something that like two meth heads in a crack house can really do. This is like a full on organized crime organization doing something like this, right?

26:12And so you'll 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 will 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.

26:48And there's almost a bit of theater 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 a 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 will, they'll take the money and then they'll just use it as a down payment.

27:29They'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 of 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 oh yeah this is an oil tanker it's 200 million dollars or 300 and they want 20, just give them the 20.

28:10And then next time they're like, well, we 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? Like anchoring the price of the hostage. So like, we want 2 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 hostage is, you know, if they're CEO versus if they're the wife of a local national somewhere in Africa or the Middle East.

28:49And who else have they been taken by? Who have 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 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.

29:35So say they come in with a demand for a million dollars and we think, 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 a few increases, but we're not really going to go anywhere near what they're looking for.

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32:25makes 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 sixminutenetworking.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 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 is only going to end one way.

33:24And 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 it's a 90, 93 % chance of success through a proper structured negotiation. If there's the kidnap for ransom insurance, when you get professional negotiators getting involved, that rises to about 96, 97%. And 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 a trial and testing method.

34:05Let'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 cop, yes, that would be the aim to arrest them. But in the private sector, 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 a safe and timely release of the hostages. And that's what I promised the families.

34:42I'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 their voices and in a way that's quite reassuring because you know right 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 they're businessmen 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.

35:20He'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 gonna 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.

35:57Everybody knows if we stay within this ballpark, everybody's going to be okay. Everyone's going to be looked after. This is the 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 who don't know what they're doing, or people trying to represent the family or the companies or they 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 messes, it almost messes it up and actually increases the risk to people to get taken hostage further down the line. It's funny you mentioned ego problems because it does sound like a lot of the problems people have when negotiating are ego-based.

36:33Does that maybe make women better negotiators in that sense or am I just stereotyping men in an unfair way here? And I think it's an accurate assessment there, Jordan, in my experience that actually women seem to be able to tap into 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, female.

37:24Yeah, 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 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 Heathrow.

37:58And 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 it. As I said, a lot of them make really good negotiators. I think it's the lifestyle and the tool that it 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.

38:35I 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 exchange at the same time, right? Because in movies, it's like, we got the girl. She's in the back of the car, throw the duffel bag across the pavement.

39:07That'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 three 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.

39:47And 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 counted. 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 but what happens quite frequently is the the hostage takers 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.

40:52It'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.

41:32But 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 one of 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 the 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.

42:27I 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, it's 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 my girlfriend's uncle got kidnapped in Nigeria literal example and I was like don't post anything don't try and crowdfund 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.

43:15Again, 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 thing you can do because it will raise the perceived value of the hostages in the kidnapper's 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 out 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.

43:55Yeah. Bad time to be a YouTuber. Those guys are largely broke, but really famous. That's the worst kind of 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 the 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 while back now where again it was a brother got taken and so with the other brother and we go to a hotel suite we walk in the in the in the room myself and another negotiator.

44:31The brother's like, what is this? Where's all the monitors and the satellite feeds and Defcon 1 and all the red phone? I went, mate, there's three things that are going to get your brother back. There's his pen, there's his 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 was involved, that's all we needed. 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.

45:15The 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 what was that 40 or 400 yeah 40 or 14 yeah exactly 14 or whatever and so we play back time and time and time again to go actually that's exactly what they said and actually they then try and contradict or play some funny business later down the line we can go well actually no actually remember you saying you know a couple of days ago it was 14 as opposed to four for example And so that's one of the reasons why we do it.

45:57Do 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.

46:52But 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 am 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 or 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 Abu Sayyaf or we're Al-Shabaab. And actually, no, they're not.

47:24They just want to appear to be more threatening. 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 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.

48:06They won't pay you 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 wanting to introduce me to somebody and I'm thinking, right, they kind of sound a bit like the Taliban or even the Haqqani network here.

48:48I'm thinking, that's just not going to happen. 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 is 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 are either capable of or try and do or might happen either deliberately or inadvertently.

49:27So there's always that kind of questioning at the back of my mind as to, OK, 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, identify the risks, make recommendations, and then be on that shoulder of the family or the company 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?

50:07Because 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 doing it, we would get somebody else involved. involved so it'd 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-aged middle-class British guy who suddenly speak into people in West Africa or the Middle East or whatever 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 i see yeah that makes sense as well what if they already know the hostages are worth something like they kidnapped 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 gonna 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.

51:13So yes, okay, Jordan, my name's John and 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. How are they going to put that on the balance sheet? Again, the banks won't release 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's usually there it's about minimizing the chances of this dragging along that it needs to as well as preventing any further kidnappers particularly if that company wants to stay doing business in that region for decades to come yeah they just sent a clear message to the kidnappers hey don't come kidnapping our staff again.

52:06Do 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. 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, you 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.

52:34So 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. Yeah. But that's what it's about. It's about the expectation management and making it clear where this is likely to end.

53:12And again, you could apply that to all areas of your life where you have your boundaries or you have your red lines 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 commonplace, but it does happen. If I were like, very first cases was with a family, there's about nine of them in a really tiny flat in East London.

53:50On one of the calls, the kidnappers said, we know that the police are working with you. We're going 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 set 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 under the radar we want to stay discreet but the way we armed response vehicles with six heavily armed police officers, SWAT teams basically, stood outside the front of the apartment block, which allowed us to just crack on with the negotiations.

54:39And again, kidnappers 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 didn't 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 blood? Because honestly, any punk that thinks they're going to hit anything with a MAC-10 in the first place is full of crap.

55:13That'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 hit anyone else. 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.

55:46If 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 at jordanharbinger.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.

56:16Are these people who do this, this is not a PC question and I don't want to get canceled, But are these local Londoners or 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 organized violent criminality in London, you'd get different parts of the city would be run by different nationalities.

56:52So, 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 action 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 would 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?

57:26Is it like some take a long time, some are more expensive? Yeah, generally speaking, the Latin American, like the Mexican, kidnap things were 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 kidnap things may be going for a few weeks, a month, maybe slightly longer. Generally well looked after. The Middle East, well, that was just like, how long was a piece of string really? And then the Philippines, generally, It will be a lot longer, you know, potentially months and for much higher amounts of money as well.

58:02So 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. Okay, fine. 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 at 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 about 99 % of kidnappings can be avoided with just a bit of forethought about what you're doing and where you're doing it.

58:37So 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 viewers to this, particularly, you know, London. London is one of the safest capitals in the world. 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.

59:20I suppose if you're super high net worth, all bets are off because that's what organized criminal gangs want. It'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 question? 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.

1:00:12And some people are just generally better than others at it. So whilst you can train 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 and go, what's really showing up for me right now? What am I feeling and 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?

1:00:53How do you select for these EQ talents on the job or even trainability on the job? 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?

1:01:41Are they able to demonstrate their understanding without making it all about themselves, for example? Likeability is a factor here. It's 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. Because 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.

1:02:17What 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 head and you need to be able to keep these people on side without alienating them. Because if you mess up, people can die. 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.

1:02:52You 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 certainly 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 get 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.

1:03:32What 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, yeah, do the opposite. 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. He's not moving as quickly as possible.

1:04:03And so again, you're validating, you're emotionally labeling 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 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 can't 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 and 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 okay in my experience this is what is likely to happen first of all There's going to be a period of silence.

1:05:28Then 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. We're then going to counter 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 have you 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.

1:06:04So straight away, 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 hotshot negotiator, you need to listen to me. Yes, I'm a loof prick, not going to go over. 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.

1:06:37Right. OK, 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.

1:07:07It 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 say, 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 theater 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 theater. that. It seems like patience is a superpower in these cases and emotional management skills and the ability to withstand uncertainty.

1:07:43But then you also have to teach that to the family in real time as they're going 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 on 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. It's actually look after yourself as much as possible, which is why we'll turn the phone off apart from certain call windows.

1:08:18It's why we'll encourage them 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've 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.

1:08:50And I've seen it when people don't look after themselves and where we saw with the 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 the master class of how he then 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 at after yourself as much as possible.

1:09:26Yes, 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, wait, 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 nine 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 even 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 really screw up so many lives for such a long time just for money.

1:10:04It'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 once I 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 life and to approach life completely differently than before. And these were the ones who, they didn't have some naive optimism or false positivity.

1:10:43They 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.

1:11:18Yeah. 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, some 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 been run from. But there's no countries I'd worry about going to now, in fairness, because the countries where often the kidnappings would take place, I wouldn't necessarily go to that country in any event.

1:12:02Right. 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.

1:12:32I think that's probably a reasonable assessment, to be honest. Hamas will have the main majority of the 240-odd hostages. But as you said, Islamic Jihad 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 on that side whereas probably that's a bit of wishful thinking.

1:13:15And I certainly think there is more coordinated joint 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 interests the most. You've got 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 on the most difficult, challenging hostage 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 America negotiating, but then you, I mean, all it, it seems like if Belgium comes in and is like, we want our two nationals, we're going to pay$10 million for each one.

1:13:59Then 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 that 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 a simple.

1:14:41And 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-helpy stuff in there.

1:15:16So 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 chatting to you about it. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Amanda Catarzi, 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.

1:15:50And 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 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 MMA. And my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches. Then he's like, you know, I like you.

1:16:32And 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 now you're gonna be raped a girl ran a red light and t-boned my truck so i pull out my phone and i text my trafficker and i say hey i almost just died in a car accident he said is your face fucked up and i'm like no he said well you're still fuckable then something isn't right here This isn't who I want to be.

1:17:25This 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 I'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 jobs. 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.

1:18:05In 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.

1:18:39One 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.

1:19:12yep, 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 jordanharbinger.com or just ask the AI chatbot also on the website.

1:19:45Transcripts are in the show notes. Advertisers, deals, discount codes and ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.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. jordanharbinger.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 is the tricky part.

1:20:16Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well. It's over at 6minutenetworking.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 in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when 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 them.

1:20:49In 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 Conspirituality 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 mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality 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.

1:21:27An 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 the show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored in part by Everything Everywhere Daily.

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