Inside the Mind of a Hostage NEGOTIATor: Mastering Influence and Inner Calm

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Arthur: Scott Walker, it's such a pleasure to have you on the Collective Institute of Ideas.

You've got a very unique experience to which you've said, I think there's less people who have gone in space than have your background in hostage negotiation. Is that correct?

Scott: Okay, let me just, lemme just put a caveat on that. Basically we were told. When I first got into this into the industry, into the kidnap for ransom industry, that more people have been to the International Space Station that did this job full-time, tier one professional, they call it crisis response consultants.

Basically, you're the one that gets the phone call at two o'clock in the morning and then you have to jump on a plane and you sort out people's problems for them and usually somebody's being kidnapped or there's a bit of a black male or extortion or similar kind of threat. And that could be with a high net worth family or with an organization and you've gotta stay there [00:01:00] until the people get released or whatever the threat disappears.

And yeah, that's what we're told. Whether or not it's true, I dunno, it certainly boosted our egos. But I think you look at the maths and. Probably there's not many people, there's not many teams in the world who, who do that job .

Arthur: I, the classic dinner party question of, if you can have five people around at a dinner party, who would it be? There's so much curiosity that lays around your world, but just to give a bit of context to Scott. So Scott you've, so you've spent over 15 years.

In this kidnapping negotiator role working in over 300 cases. And previously to that, you were in the police in Scotland Yard as a detective for over 15 years, also with a stint as a military intelligence interrogator.

Firstly, I wanna hear a bit about your time in the police. What did that teach you about yourself?

Scott: Actually what it taught me, which at the time didn't really realize, but actually when I went into my [00:02:00] second career or third career, really as as a cannot negotiator was, there's no one else behind you coming to resolve this problem. You are it, you are the last line of defense. You are the.

Calvary, so to speak, is like, as a police officer, if I would turn up to a crime scene or to some incident that's unfolding, that could be somebody with a knife or a gun or just some kind of real, or it could be a nasty car accident. You are it. You are the one that's gotta deal with it and resolve that issue.

And you didn't have time for dwelling in negativity or victimhood or anything like that. You had to basically have personal responsibility and accountability and ownership of I've gotta deal with this issue now. And that stood me in great stead years later when I would arrive in country, sit with a family of the hostages, or in the company boardroom where [00:03:00] member staff had been taken bring that, I guess cool, calm presence to what is a highly volatile, highly emotional situation.

Yet, conversely, and probably ironically the rush to problem solve actually is the Achilles heel and the worst thing a negotiator can do. And so you've gotta balance this dichotomy of being able to get a grip really early and put things in place while at the same time being able to by yourself, a little time by yourself, even if it's just a couple of seconds, a couple of minutes or a couple of hours to stop, pause and actually deal with a negotiation sequence, which we can go into in a moment to bring about some kind of influence and persuasion with other people.

Arthur: you talked about that first negotiation that you were involved in and your colleague, your more experienced colleague just tapped you on the shoulder and just completely changed [00:04:00] your view on how to deal with the situation. Can you tell us about that?

Scott: Early on in my career I was, this young, ambitious driven cop who wanted to have a really great career. And at the time the most dangerous thing I was actually faced with was getting paper cuts from all the crime reports I had to supervise and and being sat at my desk.

And then I bumped into a colleague of mine in, at a police station in South London unseen for a while and just got chatting and he'd just spent the last three or four days helping to secure the release of a young kid from a quite a violent alban in drugs gang in London. And I was just like, smitten.

I was like mesmerized by all the stuff that he was doing and the positive impact that he had. And I like, I want some of that. And in the end, he put me in touch with the unit that organized a selection and training and then the management of people who would get that phone call at usually two o'clock in the [00:05:00] morning.

And so that's how I really got into it essentially. And I did that for about five years before then leaving the police to then do it for another 10, 15 years in the private sector.

Arthur: there's the story you gave around how, you were on one of the first negotiation experiences and you were just trying to explain what the strategy was and the family were just not quite on board with it.

Scott: Y Yeah. Again I'd allowed my own ego to get in the way of this, and I was, yeah, pretty much it was my first case, and I'm eager and keen and I'm giving advice to the family. I'm like this junior cop who's in this environment and my job really just to sit alongside the family and support them and help them work out what we're gonna say to the kidnappers.

Meanwhile, loads of stuff, loads of activities going on behind the scenes to try and locate. Locate the bad guys and but the family aren't listening to me. They're just [00:06:00] not paying any attention. And I'm getting more and more frustrated and eventually I turn around and say, where's to the effect of this poor family, whose young son has been taken?

We're in this tiny apartment in East London, family of nine or so, were living there. We'd already had threats from the kidnappers over the phone, giving the address and talking to the family, saying we know you're working with the police. We're gonna send people around to spray the place with a Mac 10 machine gun.

Which for those who don't know, all machine guns are deadly. But this is just literally a gun that you pull the trigger and it just sprays chaotically everywhere and in the wrong hands. It's. Lethal. So I'm thinking, why can we got that to deal with?

And I'm just allowing my emotions to get the better of me. And I turn around to the family and just say, what's wrong with you people? Why can't you just listen to what I'm telling you, what I'm advising you? If you did what I say would get your son back, just pull yourself together kind of thing.

[00:07:00] Imagine how that went down, not very well at all. So I nearly had the shortest career in negotiation ever. And then is my, as you mentioned, my far more senior experienced Yoda like Jedi Knight colleague called Steve, who, he wasn't even a squeeze as such. He just gentle pressure on my shoulder.

But that was enough to interrupt my pattern, to stop me spiraling. I'd been emotionally hijacked myself, my amygdala, that part of our brain that's responsible for the fight or flight. I'd just been activated. Today people call it being triggered or the hot button's being pressed, and I was going into this spiral and he's interrupted my pattern, enabled me to take a step back and then watch him take over and just deliver a masterclass and how to influence and persuade and bring about cooperation and collaboration.

Particularly people are a bit reluctant to do so when the stakes couldn't get any higher. And from that moment onwards and over the [00:08:00] next 15, 20 years, I saw how it didn't matter where in the world we were working. Didn't matter what culture, generation industry sector, language. Human beings are very similar.

Okay? There's some nuances, but generally we're very similar and that gave me a ringside seat into what makes people think, feel, and act the way they do. And over the years, I just created this framework, which it didn't. It didn't matter whether or not I was dealing with a kidnapping. It didn't matter whether or not I was sitting in a business context, trying to get a client or potential client to sign on the line or resolve some workplace conflict or even deal with my own teenage kids.

The same principles applied. If you want to bring about some kind of influence and persuasion, particularly when you don't necessarily have direct authority, there's a process you need to go through because anybody can get somebody to do [00:09:00] something. If you've got the role, the job title, the rank, or whatever it is.

But that's easy. The real skill comes in mastering this ability to bring about that cooperation and collaboration, which has to be always where possible. The long the desired outcome for any kind of negotiation. And let's just clarify that right now in terms of, that's what a negotiation is.

It's a conversation with a purpose where you are looking to bring about some kind of cooperation or collaboration. And all of us, Arthur are doing it every single day, even when we don't realize it.

Arthur: So Scott, so give us an idea on what that, on that structure and that framework looks like. Perhaps in a, from an example of, a kidnapping or maybe it's a day-to-day. E example where you've just got two people reading a situation in a very different way.

Scott: Yeah, sure. A one end, you imagine you've got six, there's six steps to this. Really the one end at the right hand side where you want to be is this cooperation and [00:10:00] collaboration. But to get there, people just rush. As I was saying to you, there's a rush to problem solve, but by doing that, you may resolve what you think is the issue, but actually it's just on the surface.

Because a real reason why people say yes and mean it, whether or not that's kidnappers a client or your kids is when you've been able to understand and manage emotion, what's really going on. Because at the end of the day, we're feeling creatures that think, not thinking, creatures that feel, we make decisions emotionally and then look to justify them rationally afterwards, however logical we think we are, and also to about understanding identity. Is me saying yes to this opportunity, this deal, is this gonna increase or decrease my status in the eyes of others? Okay. And we need to also understand [00:11:00] what are the needs, the human needs people have above and beyond what their surface level wants are. I'll give you an example. Kidnappers will say, okay, I want $10 million for Arthur.

And they say, okay, they're not gonna get $10 million for a start off. That's a separate conversation. But after understand, okay, what else do they need? They need to save face. They need to feel as if they're in control. And actually they need to be able to walk away from this conversation feeling as if.

They've they can sell the deal to other people their heads of the organization, the criminal organizations. And we're really talking about the private sector negotiations now with kidnappers, not necessarily in the police because in the police would always arrest them, whereas in the private sector, I wasn't interested in that.

My so aim was to the safe and timely release of the hostages not the apprehension of the kidnappers. And so we want to be able to understand [00:12:00] what's really driving the decision making behind these conversations. And so we have to start at step one, which is mastering the inner game. And this is our ability to stay cool, calm, and collected.

To develop what I call the red center. I call this the red center framework. And the red center was a place physically in a negotiation where the phone calls would be taking place between us and the kidnappers. And to start with, it's a highly emotive high stakes high pressured, stressful environment.

But one of my jobs was to bring the calm, bring, order out chaos here, which is why I called my first book Order Outta Chaos. 'cause that was our primary role in a way. And so I also realized that this red center is this metaphor, metaphors this place within us that we can tap into that when we are gonna have a negotiation.

We need [00:13:00] to be able to rely on this inner fortress that we are not going to get emotionally hijacked like I did in the first case I spoke about. Okay. So that's the first step. Mastering the inner game, being able to not be emotionally triggered. And one of the ways we can do that is imagine you are stood on a riverbank and in front of you there's a flowing river and they're the emotions and the highs and lows of life.

And you are stood on the riverbank and occasionally life forces you into the river. And most of us stay and just get out, dry ourselves off and get on with our day. But occasionally what happens is we fall in the river and then we start drowning and we get taken out to sea. So what we really need to do is be able to be still in the river bank and observe, but not absorb, particularly when it comes through emotions.

Okay? It doesn't mean that we suppress or push away emotions. What it means is that when we're gonna have a high stakes, difficult conversation with [00:14:00] somebody, we need to be able to feel the soles of our feet on the floor, take a deep breath, and actually observe and absorb what's going on. And from that place we can then do our preparation, which is moving to step two, which is, we used to call it on every single call a bunch of fives.

Imagine that you, your hand, and you've gotta think through what are the top five issues, threats, challenges, problems, demands, that if you were the other side, you would levy against you. So when it does happen, so when the kidnappers in my case, would make the threats or the ridiculous demands, or in a business context, somebody would potentially look to at the very end of the deal, just when you're thinking about to close a deal, they'll go actually we want an extra 20% off.

They call it 11th hour sabotage. You can prep for [00:15:00] this. So when it does happen, or if it does happen, you can go, yes, I knew this was gonna happen and you've already prepared for it. Okay, so we're gonna master the, in a game, we're gonna do our bunch of fires. We're gonna prepare to engage. Then we are gonna move into step three, which is really understanding their world. Okay? What? What's really driving them? What's their life about? How, what are their beliefs and values and rules? And the way we do that is by listening at a really deep level. I call it level five listening. 'cause as far as I'm concerned, I don't know anybody who has listened their way out of a job or out of a relationship.

Usually we talk away out of it. And so by listening at a deep level, not listening for the gist, not listening, just to rebut what somebody is saying, as we generally will do these days, we don't even wait till somebody's finished. Talking before we interrupt them with [00:16:00] wanting to prove that we are right and they're wrong.

But if we listen to listen for emotion, listen for points of view, listen for what's not being said, is there some kind of incongruency here between what's being said and the tone of voice perhaps? And so once we understand their world and we know what influences them, then we can start to overcome some obstacles, particularly if egos are getting in the way.

And then move through the other steps four, five, and six, which is really about really developing that rapport, demonstrating empathy, which is just me demonstrating an understanding of where you are coming from. And that's particularly powerful if we're actually disagreeing. And then that enables us to move through to getting that cooperation and collaboration.

So now I've just gone through quite a big framework there and I've gone through it quite quickly. Normally it's a half day workshop or even a day's workshop that I go through this. But hopefully that just gives you a flavor of [00:17:00] we have to start with ourselves. We have to make sure we're in the right place emotionally.

We have to do our preparation. We have to seek first to understand before being understood. And gradually as we do that, we then earn the right 'cause. We build trust. We then earn the right to then start influencing and persuading others.

Arthur: And, in these situations where you've negotiated, often money's involved with with the kidnapping, it seems so, almost counterintuitive the concept of negotiating over the amount that is gonna be paid in, in some senses. Tell us about, how do you keep, how do you hold your own when you are, when you know they're happy to, when you are literally just trying to bring down a number maybe there's a story that you can tell us about that really puts us in that room where the heat's high and things have worked out.

But it's just, there's been so many points where it doesn't feel like [00:18:00] the end is gonna come, but it just, it does, and it's just a process.

Scott: Yeah, I mean there's one of the stories I normally talk about here. 'cause obviously, as you can imagine, I signed NDAs for every single case. But what I can do is give you an account where a few years ago we had there were six people taken from a ship in the Gulf of Guinea. And I was working for a foreign government and a company who were involved here.

And my job, again was to advise them about what to say, how to say it, what the strategy was about. What we were gonna pay, if at all, and how we were physically gonna get the hostages back. And a few, probably just over a week had gone by maybe 10 days and we hadn't heard anything. And which is a bit unusual in that part of the world.

We should have heard something by now. And so we sat at this long wooden table. In the middle of the table is this old Nokia mobile phone, which is we were going to use as the [00:19:00] clean phone with the kidnappers for them to call on. And everyone sat around. We knew what we needed to do. And then the phone rings and everybody jumps.

And the guy who's who sat next to me, who I'm going to use as the communicator because of the language barrier, he presses the button and he goes, hi, how you doing? And then this booming voice comes out the phone. Yeah, we have your people. We want $5 million, or we gonna kill. Every one of the hostages and this guy I'm using as the communicator, these are his friends.

These, he feels responsible for getting these people back. Emotions, it is quite tense. Emotions are quite high here. And then over the course of the next few weeks, we look to bring them from 5 million. We get 'em actually down to about $500,000. And the reason we want to do that, and the reason we do it is because we want the kidnappers to think that there's no more money left.

We call it [00:20:00] squeezing the orange. There's no more juice left. 'cause if same in business as well, if you think there's money metaphorically or literally left on the table, what are you gonna do? You're gonna hold out for more, right? And so it's the ability, the willingness and the ability to pay money. We'll talk about hard cash here.

You have to be able to liquidate and get the cash, which is different from just having a net worth of a certain amount. So we get the money and it's about 500,000. But these negotiations, they're taking their toll on this communicator. And then on one call he is on the phone to the kidnap and he's Hey, we need more time.

You're demanding too much money. We're a poor company. We just need some more time. And also you need to look after the hostages because they're your responsibility. And the kidnappers took real umbrage to this, and they turned around and went, no, they're yours. And they said, we want the money by Friday, or we'll kill them all.

And they [00:21:00] hung up. And then you can hear a pin drop. A pin drop. That is until. The colleague here, just his fist came down onto the table. He stood up, he turned to face me. And I'm thinking, okay, being punched by the client is never a good look. And he storms out. But then I'm realize, okay, I have to do, there's three elements to all successful negotiations really.

The first one is you've gotta take the initiative and a calculated risk. You can't always play it safe. And so in that aspect, the first aspect wasn't right. What's my, okay, I need to use my initiative here. I need to take a risk. Kidnappers are actually, I've got them where I want them. They're not gonna harm the hostages.

I'm convinced of that. Okay? The second step to this is I now need to bring about cooperation and collaboration. I need to focus my time on, on the colleague, the guy who's the communicator, because without [00:22:00] him. We're not gonna get the deal. He's the key to this. So I now need to spend the next few hours or day or however long it takes to get him back on site to make him feel seen, heard, and understood, validated, to empathize with him, to really understand his concerns, to then bring him back in.

And I can do that because of the third element, which is trust. I've actually built up a bit of trust with the kidnappers I'm in danger of breaching and losing trust with my communicator. And trust is the golden thread to all successful negotiation, regardless of the context, which is why there's a 93% chance of hostages coming back through a negotiation.

It's 'cause we build trust with people who are untrustworthy in the most dangerous, ungoverned, unregulated industry in the world. So I work with my colleague here, the communicator. He comes back in the next day. [00:23:00] In a better place. Showered, shaved, suited, and booted. He comes in, he gets on the phone, and then we close the deal for about 300,000, down from 5 million.

But now we've got this dilemma of actually getting the cash, which is on a table in one country across the border to another country, to the kidnappers who then need to count it, release the hostages. Un harmed. We need to get 'em back to safety. What could go wrong? He managed to find a courier who takes the money and he needs to phone in every four hours to check in and make sure everything's okay.

And meanwhile, the kidnappers are phoning in to make sure the kidnapper's on route. Four hours go by, we don't hear anything. Eight hours go by, still don't hear anything. And in 12 hours, and then I'm thinking, I'm starting to get worried, and in the end we get a phone call and he's been arrested by the local police.

He were refusing to let him or the money go. So we managed to [00:24:00] negotiate with the chief of police. He releases the courier and most of the money, obviously we need to pay local taxes and everything. And then, but then the courier wants no more, wants nothing more to do with this. And he legs it, I'm thinking okay.

We've got most of the money, not all of it. Meanwhile, kidnappers are going apoplectic thinking, we're ripping them off and they now need to find a way of getting this money to them and the hostages back. And so we managed to find somebody else who takes the money, has to hire a boat, goes out to Waypoint at sea, and this is the only time it's ever worked out.

Like in the movies where the kidnappers come alongside, they count the money, they release the hostages over simultaneously, and then they turned around to the hostages, give them a clean brand new mobile phone and said, we're gonna escort you to safety now. And if you get into any of the trouble whilst you're in country, give us a call and we'll come and help you out free of [00:25:00] charge.

And there's great customer service, right? And so they escort them back and then in the end we managed to get them and get 'em checked out. And they're all fine. But that just shows you how it's not a simple process, as you can imagine. But also, as I said, we need to be willing to take risks.

We need to be looking to demonstrate empathy and build trust, not rush to problem solve, but be mindful that ultimately we need to bring about some kind of cooperation and collaboration. And we can only do that if all of us are cool, calm, and collected. We're grounded. We don't allow ourselves to be emotionally hijacked, and then we just take it step by step. .

Arthur: sadly I hear there's a lot of kidnappings in Venezuela, and if one gets kidnapped in Venezuela, , what I'm told is you hope that they're very professional, kidnappers. , Is there a time or a story you can think of where life's easy if everything's straightforward and as you've inferred, yes, you've gotta [00:26:00] work with people, listen, and there is a playbook there.

But also there'll be countless times when I'm sure, you've had to switch to plan B and. The negotiate the negotiation element. Just, you, you've had to you, you've had to really change tack and maybe it's about just getting people out, out of a situation. And has there been a situation like that abroad?

Because what you've also talked about is how in the UK if someone gets kidnapped, generally we've got specialist teams that would typically move in at a certain point. Whereas abroad, there isn't that infrastructure, it's really more around the negotiation process.

Scott: Yeah, what I understand you're asking me is you are right in the UK or the US or Western Europe. Yes, it's going to end up in a hostage rescue for sure, but there, but did not want to hear that option being presented in certain parts of the world because it just increases the [00:27:00] risk. Excuse me. Which, which meant that the only way the hostages were gonna come back was us having really difficult conversations with difficult people. The plan B is there is no plan B , and there's never gonna be miraculously any more money that suddenly becomes available if the money's not there in the first place.

And we're certainly not gonna pay more than what is that the client is willing and able. But also what is, a going rate? Unfortunately human life does have a going rate in some parts of the world and be, because otherwise that just encourages more kidnappings obviously. And so we just have to be able to hold our own and engage in, and we call it the conflict call.

And it's the same in life. We, people run away from conflict and it doesn't mean you have to be rude or belligerent. But if a kidnapper says, okay, I want $10 million for Arthur, and the client can only come up with a [00:28:00] hundred thousand there's a big gap there and I need to be able to manage the bad guy's expectations sooner rather than later.

So then we can get to the real negotiation. But that's the same in life. So many of us now will shy away from feeling uncomfortable and giving bad news or being able to share some information that they know that the person is not gonna and so we have to move towards that and be willing to engage in that, have boundaries, but still be professional.

Remember, I need to still be able to influence and persuade and bring about cooperation and collaboration. Now we may need to get through a few, over a few hurdles to get there, but I have to work with what to deal with. We've got a hundred grand. I can't go in with a hundred grand straight away 'cause the kidnappers will go, okay, we, if you can come up with that straight away, we're gonna hold out for more.

But if that's all there is. So I need to come in even less than a hundred grand if that's my, if that's my end point. And they wanna come in at 10 million. So you can [00:29:00] see that there's no, the plan B is, there's no plan B. We just need to work through this and find a way. And that is hard. It's really tough.

Which is why I mentioned you've gotta master the, in a game, you've gotta do your prep, you've gotta be in a great place, you've gotta be resilient. And take your time to get through this.

Arthur: You talked about people who have gone through, being kidnapped and come out the other side in some instances where they've been stronger in certain ways. And through the worlds you've been operating and through your experiences, you would've come across so many people who have faced so many adverse situations.

What learnings have you taken around that? .

Scott: Yeah. Resilience is one of the few buzzwords around now, and I think people buy a mug or a t-shirt with hashtag resilience on it, and they think it makes them. Super resilient, but resilience it is a practical thing that it's a doing word, okay? You have to go through tough times to develop [00:30:00]resilience and the hostages we spoke to and we debrief, the ones who got through it were ones who are able to take control of the meaning.

They gave things, yes, physically, they could be in a bad place and all of that, but actually mentally they stood guard at the door to their mind and they would, okay, kidnappers, you can chain me up. You can give him minimal food and water in really pretty inhospitable conditions, but I'm gonna stay mentally stronger.

They decided it was gonna be a conscious decision. I'm gonna take a bit of personal responsibility for me, for what I can control, which is my mental state Now, it's not easy. And it wasn't some kind of naivety of we're gonna be home by Christmas kind of approach. And they developed something called wise optimism, which is, things as they are, but not worse than what they are.

You don't [00:31:00] catastrophize. Yeah. Okay. I've been kidnapped. I'm in a really perilous situation. I can't actually control many things, but I'm gonna take control of my mindset. And actually I'll know in the background there'll be people working hard to try and secure my release now that it doesn't sugarcoat things, but it also doesn't catastrophize things as well.

And that just develops its ability to, when you come out, you can reintegrate and learn from the situations. And actually some people came out and have a better life than what they had before because then new found appreciation for life and things that may have bothered bother them before, certainly didn't bother them afterwards.

Whereas the ones who struggled, came out and continued to struggle were the ones who who took on and couldn't shake off the victim kind of mentality, victim mindset. And unfortunately, in society now, there's more and more of us who do tend to take on this victim approach and [00:32:00] want to blame something or someone else outside of their situation for how they feel.

And ultimately, it's all down to you. I'm not saying, I'm not saying bad things don't happen and people shouldn't take account for that. But ultimately we have to take personal responsibility and ownership for how we feel and how we now show up for every day for the rest of our lives. And people have been held hostage for months.

And those with that mindset came out. Super strong, super resilient as a result of it. And there's something called post-traumatic growth. We talk about post-traumatic stress and the negative impacts, but actually there's a sway of research and evidence that actually with the right mindset, you become stronger as a result of the experiences.

Arthur: How do you think people can take more of a approach to life?

Scott: [00:33:00] By doing that, by going, actually, I'm taking ownership and responsibility for the meaning I give things and what I do as a result of that. So where I'm gonna, what am I gonna focus on, the meaning I give it, and then the actions I then take as a result of that. And that's all day, every day. It doesn't have to be on the big stuff just every day.

It's, people go on social media and their hot buttons get pressed and outraged and, we love to be outraged these days over stuff. And it's that that's down to you, control the controllables, control your own hot buttons, rather than looking to project and blame other issues or other people.

And that's not to say change doesn't need to happen or things don't need to be improved, or you, neglect needs to be dealt with. I'm not saying that, but we have to be able to take ownership of how we show up in the world and how we present ourselves. And from that place, we can then bring about far more meaningful change [00:34:00] rather than lots of shouting and noise and naming, blaming and shaming, which doesn't really work.

Arthur: , it's quite hard to I'm thinking of man of fire the bit around, the intensity of being in these situations. And a lot of that is being a leader. When you think about leadership,

what is that to you

Scott: leadership to me is, can be summed up in one word and that's influence, because if you're not influencing anybody, then. You are not really leading, are you? And ideally, it's influencing when you are not in the room. This comes back to ultimately this is influencing persuasion without direct authority.

If you can do that is a real measure of leadership. Because I said if you've got, if you are relying on your job title, rank, or position to get people to do things, any fool can do that. But if you can do it without that or without relying on that, then that is the real sign of leadership. And that could be within your family or [00:35:00] community workplace or whatever level, level it's at.

And I think, history is littered with fine examples of people who demonstrate it's having the courage to do what is right and difficult. With the right kind of, virtues for the right reasons and can influence and bring people with them.

Arthur: There's so many things going on in anyone's life. How do you to bring you in, into the best mode version of yourself to be having the best focus for you, Scott do you spend time thinking about channeling your brain into thinking in a certain way?

Or not?

Scott: I do a little process where just before I have a, like a difficult phone call with the kidnappers or I'm about to go on stage and give a keynote, talk to a thousand people, or sit down and do a really challenging task that needs my undivided attention. I'll go through a little process [00:36:00] and it's a, you could call it mindfulness.

You could just bring it, call it focused awareness. I literally, I mentioned it earlier, I will literally take a couple of deep breaths and I will feel the soles of my feet flat on the floor, and by doing that. It interrupts anything else that you are thinking about. It brings you completely present and into the moment.

I just tune in and I almost, as I said earlier, just observe, but not absorb what's going on in me and around me. And I just notice, I don't look to change anything. I just notice what's going on ground myself, and that could take a couple of seconds or it may take a few minutes. And from that place, I can, it gives me clarity, it gives me space.

It buys me a few seconds with which then to consciously choose my next step, my next action. All right. And [00:37:00] so it is tapping into that inner fortress, that red center I spoke about before. It's okay, right? I'm in a good place. You've got a lot of stuff going on, but actually I can't be drowned out by the. I'm here to support and serve the client, the family, the audience, whatever it is, or some whatever shizzle is going on, left field, back at home, or whatever. That's just gotta wait until I've dealt with what's in front of me. Because again it's saying the kidnapped negotiation, I can't, if I rock into the boardroom or the family home and I'm emotionally dysregulated, that's not gonna end well as I explained in the very first case I got involved in.

Which is why emotional self-regulation is the number one skill. It's the number one skill of the world's best negotiators and you have to be able to manage that [00:38:00] in whichever way works for you. And the way I've just described it, how it works for me. I'm in that place. I can then pick up the phone, press, connect on the zoom call or step out onto the stage.

Good. Good to go.

Arthur: It's yeah high pressure environments. Indeed. Do, are you doing this then, are you continually doing new hostage situations?

Scott: I obviously a couple of years ago I was just so mindful of all the crossovers and hundreds of cases, including things like extortion and everything else where the crossover into business and life was so evident and actually 80% of my time on a case was dealing with my own side.

The client, the family, we called it the crisis, within the crisis. And actually dealing with the kidnappers was the easy bit. They're just businessmen looking for a good deal. So I wrote my first book All Out of Chaos which took all the practical tools and techniques and insights. From nearly 20 [00:39:00] years into how people can apply in their business and life.

And so when that came out, it did far better than I or anyone else probably expected, became a Sunday Times bestseller. And as a result of that, I wrote a second book. I have a storm. And so now my, I sometimes do a bit of strategic advice on cases, but most of my time is spent going into organizations and companies and delivering keynotes and workshops about how their teams, when, like sales, business development, how they can influence and persuade other people, particularly when the stakes are high.

Arthur: Yeah. And as you say, life is just filled with negotiations every day.

Can you give us two other books we should consider? Looking at the help with negotiation or communication.

Scott: one book called Nonviolent Communication and provides a real masterclass in how to [00:40:00]suspend your own ego when you want to be passive aggressive, maybe in a conversation how you can really.

Enable the other person, particularly in times of conflict when there's disagreement, how you can dissipate and bring down the tension and enable the person to feel seen, heard, and understood, which enables real progress to be made. And I'll say another one probably is how to have difficult conversations by a couple of authors from the Harvard Negotiation School as well. .

,

Arthur: We're gonna move to the quickfire questions now. Scott, three things that bring you joy.

Scott: Usually the simple things in life, as it always is the case. So spending time with people I care about really good coffee and probably sitting down reading a book silence.

Arthur: a mantra you want to embrace now would be.

Scott: [00:41:00] A mantra would be, everything happens for a reason and your job is to find out the reason, what that is

Arthur: One unusual thing that gives you pleasure?

Scott: Maybe do an experience that I wouldn't normally do. Like doing a zip wire with the kids over a lake somewhere or down a canyon. I do get pleasure from that and it's not necessarily expected.

So hopefully that counts.

Arthur: Yeah. Is it addictive? The energy from the negotiation? .

Scott: No, 'cause most of the time you are 99% of the time you just sat around waiting. So it's a great masterclass in and a muscle workout of patients. But then obviously there's lots of frantic activity, particularly when the calls are happening, and then you've got to move money and get people back and stuff.

So there's a sense of satisfaction in bringing all that together, but it, yeah, it's not an adrenaline rush like jumping out of a plane in that sense.

Arthur: Actually I've got a question I'm dying to ask. [00:42:00] Trust is such a big part of what you've been doing, whether it's like finding someone to bring cash from A to B or 101 situations. Do you have any tricks or ways that, that you work out if you can trust someone?

Scott: Yeah, again I'd move away from using words like tricks. 'cause if we approach it a, some as a trick or a hack we're coming out from the wrong place. Really. We've gotta come in from a genuine place of person needs to trust me. So I also need to be trusting. Trust is a two-sided coin. If you want to, we need to be trusting.

If we want to be trusted ourselves, and funnily enough, the bar for others to trust us, we usually set really low. But the bar for us to trust others, we set really high. And so trust really is a case of what you say you're gonna do, follow through if you're gonna be available on a call between two and four o'clock every afternoon. Be available between two and four every afternoon. If you say you're gonna get the report done by 10:00 AM tomorrow, [00:43:00] get it done by nine 30. 9 45. Don't wait till half past 10. So just follow through with what you say you're gonna do, and that's a really good quick way to start building trust with others.

Arthur: I love that. A favorite film book or artist that isn't obvious, that's a really friend friender hack. The last part that isn't obvious

Scott: My favorite film is is Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Arthur: best advice ever received

Scott: it'll always turn out right in the end.

Arthur: The world works in a certain way. If you could change one thing about that, what would it be? Yeah.

Scott: Say people just need to take more personal responsibility for their situation in life

Arthur: Yeah. I think that's such an interesting one and not a message that's necessarily out there probably enough

Scott: And that's the, and you can do that in a compassionate way. I'm not saying, Hey, everyone f for themselves, survive of the fittest. I'm like, Hey, you don't expect someone else. Don't rely on someone else to come along and fix your problems for you. [00:44:00] You gotta do it yourself. You can get outside help, but you've also gotta play your part.

You got, basically, there's a great Sanger, her ones, you've gotta take part in your own rescue.

Arthur: Yeah. I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been such a pleasure.

Scott: You most welcome. Yeah. Really enjoyed the conversation.