Negotiating uncompromisingly via communication: manipulation techniques in the light of the FBI

Negotiation has a lot more to do with tactics and communication skills than most people think.

Money or love

I felt intimidated. I had spent more than two decades in the FBI, including fifteen years as hostage negotiator from New York to the Philippines to the Middle East, and I was a master of my profession. The FBI employs around 10.000 agents, but only one leading international hostage negotiator. That was me. However, I had never before experienced a kidnapping situation that was so personal and got under my skin. “We have your son, Voss. Either you pay a million dollars or he dies. ”Pause. Wink. I forced my heartbeat back to normal.

Certainly, such situations were not new to me. I had seen her a thousand times. Money or life. But none was like this. My son's life was never at stake. It was never about a million. And the kidnappers had never had catchy titles and decades of experience in negotiating. You have to know that the people on the other side - my negotiating partners - Professoren for negotiation skills at Harvard Law School. I signed up for a crash course in negotiation techniques at Harvard Executives enrolled to see if I could learn anything from the business world. It was meant to be a quiet little professional development activity for an FBI agent trying to broaden his horizons.

When Robert Mnookin, director of Harvard's research project on negotiation, found out I was there, he invited me to his for coffee Office a. To chat a little, he said. I felt honored, but also a little intimidated. Mnookin is an impressive one Personality, which I'd been following for years: He's not just a HarvardProfessor, but also one of the outstanding capacities in the field of conflict resolution and author of the book “Negotiating with the Devil: Das Harvard-Concept for the nasty cases "

The new rules

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Um Honestly To be honest, the fact that Mnookin wanted to discuss negotiation with me, a former Kansas City patrolman, felt like a very odd handicap. But it got worse. As soon as Mnookin and I were seated, the door opened and another HarvardProfessorwalked in – Gabriella Blum, specialist in international negotiation and the Solution armed conflict and counter-terrorism, who previously worked for eight years as a strategic adviser to Israel's National Security Council and the Israeli Army's International Legal Department. A badass military negotiator.

Next, as if at the push of a button, Mnookin's secretary walked in and placed a tape recorder on the table. Mnookin and Blum smiled at me. I had been tricked. “We have your son, Voss. Either you pay a million dollars or he dies,' said Mnookin with a smile. “I'm the kidnapper. What are you going to do?” I panicked, but that was normal. One thing never changes: even after 20 years of negotiating human lives, you still feel it Anxiety. Even in a role-playing game. I forced myself to calm down. Sure, I was a patrolman turned FBI agent who had to go up against some real heavyweights. And I wasn't a genius. But there was a reason I was in this room.

The tactics of communication

Over the years I had been in the field of interpersonal Communication Developed skills, tactics, and a comprehensive approach to handling sticky situations that not only helped me save lives but, I see in retrospect, began to transform my own life. Years of negotiating had changed everything from the way I interacted with customer service staff to mine Behavior as father. "Come on. Give me the money or I'll slit your son's throat right now,' Mnookin said. Provocation. I gave him a long, penetrating look. Then I smiled.

"How am I supposed to do this?" Mnookin paused. In the expression on his face spiegelthere was a touch of amused pity as a dog watches the cat it has been chasing suddenly try to turn the tables. It was like we were playing different games with different people Regulate play. A moment later his face turned serious again and he frowned at me as if to remind me that he was the hunter and I was the hunted. "Then it's in for you Order, if I kill your son, Mr Voss?' 'Excuse me Robert, how do I know he's even alive?' light submissive phrase and his first name to infuse our dialogue with a little more human warmth - two tactics designed to target my counterpart's subconscious and to make it more difficult for him to intimidate and corner me. "I'm really sorry, but how can I pay you anything, let alone a million dollars, when I don't even know if my son is alive?"

The tactic of fine-tuning questions

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It was quite an interesting sight to see such a brilliant man thrown off guard by an objection that might at first seem foolish. In fact, my answer was anything but simple. I had used one of the FBI's most effective negotiating tools: an open-ended question answer. After my consulting firm, The Black Swan Group, further developed this tool for the private sector, we now refer to this tactic as "fine-tuned Ask«. These are questions that are precisely tailored to the respective situation, but to which there are no fixed answers. They serve to gain time and give your counterpart the illusion of Control, because he is in possession of the answers and thus supposedly has power. All of this happens without his realizing how these questions ultimately corner him. Predictably, Mnookin began to think uneasily, the conversation shifting from my reaction to the threat of my son's murder to how Professor would solve the logistical aspects of handing over the money – that is, as he puts it Problems would solve. I always countered every threat and every demand by asking how I was supposed to give him the money and how I could know that my son was still alive.

After about three minutes of this back and forth, Gabriella Blum stepped in. "Don't let him play cat and mouse with you," she said to Mnookin. "Well, try it then," he replied, raising his hands. Blum started. She was tough - the result of her years in the Middle East. However, in response to her aggressive threat, she got the same answers that I had asked earlier. After a short time, Mnookin switched on again, but did not get any further. His face was starting to flush with anger. I could see that his irritation made it difficult for him to think.

Success with practical experience

“Okay, okay, Bob. That's all,' I said, putting his frustration out of him. He nodded. My son would see another day. "Nice," observed Mnookin. "It looks like the FBI might have something to teach us." Not only had I stood my ground against two outstanding Harvard leaders on this occasion; I had competed against the best of the best and I had won. But maybe I just got lucky? For more than 30 years, Harvard has been the measure of all things in terms of theory and practice of negotiation. On the other hand, all I knew about the techniques we used at the FBI was that they worked. In the 20 years that I worked for the FBI, we had one System developed, with which we were able to solve almost all cases of kidnapping and hostage-taking. But we didn't have any elaborate theories.

Our techniques were the result of our hands-on learning experiences: they were developed by the agents on the ground, working in real crisis situations negotiate and shared their experiences of the tactics that worked and those that didn't. This was not an intellectual process, but an iterative practical process, in the course of which we constantly refined the tools we used every day. And it was a process that was always under great pressure to succeed. Our instruments had to work because if they didn't, someone died. But what made our techniques so successfully? That was the question that got me to Harvard and the Conversation lured with Mnookin and Blum. my practical Background was on my tight Welt limited. I had to learn to articulate it and combine it with the theoretical knowledge of the Harvard experts - a real treasure trove - in order to be able to better understand, systematize and expand my own knowledge. Yes, there is no doubt that our techniques in dealing with mercenaries, drug dealers, terrorists and brutal murderers proved their worth.

A Harvard patrolman

But so I asked myself, would they also prove themselves in dealing with "completely normal" people? As I was soon to discover in the venerable halls of Harvard, our techniques were intellectual useful and proved themselves in every situation. It turns out that our approach to negotiation is the key to igniting constructive interpersonal dynamics in every area, interaction and relationship of life. The Smartest Non-Academic in the Room A year later, in 2006, I managed to get accepted into Harvard Law School's fall semester negotiation class to get my questions answered. The best and brightest compete for a spot on this course, which has been attended by brilliant Harvard law and economics students, as well as promising students from other top Boston-area universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts. A kind of Olympics in negotiation. I was the only non-academic.

On the first day of the course, 144 students streamed into the lecture hall for the introductory lecture. Then we split into four groups, each led by a lecturer in negotiation. After a short introductory talk with our lecturer - mine was called Sheila Heen and is still a good friend of mine - we had to form pairs and simulate a negotiation talk. The constellation was very simple: one sold a product and the other was the buyer, and both had one klare Asking price they tried to push through.

Down to the last cent

My interlocutor was an elegiac redhead named Andy (pseudonym) and one of those guys who wear their intellectual superiority like their clothes: with easy-going confidence. We went to an empty lecture room overlooking the park-like lawns of the campus and used our respective negotiation tools. Andy threw an offer on the table and offered a watertight rationale as to why it was a good offer—an inescapable logic trap—and I responded with a variant of the question, "How am I going to do this?" This went back and forth a few times before we were able to agree on a final price. When we left the room, I was satisfied. I thought I did pretty well for a fool. After all the groups returned to the classroom, Sheila asked each group what price they agreed on and wrote the results on the board. Finally it was my turn. "Chris, how have you been with Andy?" she asked. "How much did you get out of him?" I'll never forget the look on Sheila's face when I told her what Andy was willing to pay. First she blushed like she was struggling for breath, and then a little squeak escaped her, like the excited squeak of a hungry baby bird. And finally she started laughing. Andy squirmed. "They literally took everything he had from him," she said. 'He had been instructed to reserve a quarter of the sum for future ones Tasks Andy sank deep into his chair. The following day the same thing happened with another partner. In other words, I took the last cent from each of my negotiating partners.

What was going on here? This was no longer a one-time stroke of luck, rather crystallized here Pattern out of here. With my practical, reality-tested knowledge, I repeatedly defeated my young negotiators, who knew every sophisticated trick that the technical literature had to offer. The thing was, these sophisticated theoretical techniques seemed outdated and outdated. During our conversation simulations, I always had the feeling that I was Roger Federer and had let a time machine take me back to the 1920s to take part in a tennis tournament between distinguished gentlemen in short white pants who had done amateur training for a few hours a week and with played wooden clubs. And then I came along with my titanium alloy racquet, a dedicated personal trainer, and a computerized serve-and-volleyStrategy. The guys I was up against were just as smart, if not smarter than me, and we were essentially playing the same game with the same rules. But I had skills they didn't have.

Negotiate with open questions

'Your special one Style Makes you famous Chris,” said Sheila after I reported my second day's results. I smiled like a Cheshire cat. wins Fun. "Chris, why don't you explain what you're doing to everyone?" Sheila asked. "It seems you limit yourself to simply 'No‹ and stare at your negotiating partners until they give in. Is it really that simple?” I knew what she meant. I hadn't even said the word "no," but the questions I'd answered each of her demands sounded like it. My questions seemed to suggest my counterpart was being unfair and dishonest. And that was enough to make him doubt that he started to negotiate with himself. Answering my finely tuned questions required a high level of emotional resilience and tactical psychological insight not found in the tool kit the students had been given.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm just asking questions," I said. “It's a passive-aggressive approach. I keep asking the same three or four open-ended questions. Eventually they'll get worn down by answering and agree to my terms.” Andy jumped out of his seat like a wasp sting. he cried. 'So that's what happened. I had none Idea.« By the end of the winter semester, I was friends with some of my fellow students. Even with Andy. If Harvard taught me anything, it's that we at the FBI could teach the world a lot about negotiation.

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