Pirates have kidnapped six crew members off a ship operating in the Gulf of Guinea, near the west coast of Africa. The corporate owner of the vessel and employer of the victims has called me in from England to help negotiate their release. My first step is to calm everyone down. We can’t navigate this situation from a place of agitation and high stress. My second is to choose someone from the corporate crisis team whom I trust to interact with the bad guys—a person who can communicate in the right language and dialect, who seems emotionally stable and resilient, and who, most important, will be able to listen to and connect with the people holding his colleagues. I quickly decide on John.
Negotiate Like a Pro
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During his former career as a kidnapping and extortion negotiator, the author handled sensitive cases all over the world. Through his experiences, observations, and conversations with other experts in the field, he developed a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t in high-stakes negotiations. Now he advises executives and corporations about what he calls the level-five mindset, which involves deep listening to better understand and interpret a counterpart’s self-perception and perspective. He offers eight tools to both ensure and demonstrate that mindset: minimal encouragers, open questions, reflecting back, emotional labeling, paraphrasing, “I” statements, effective pauses, and summarizing. Using them, he writes, will “boost your capacity for empathy, your ability to find common ground, and your chances of gaining your counterpart’s cooperation.”