And you’re also under incredible time pressure. In crisis negotiation, you have the advantage that your goal is constantly right in front of your face: Get everybody out alive. Obviously, it isn’t easy to negotiate with someone you dislike-but if you’re a professional you keep your feelings separate from your work. How do you show respect to a convicted child molester? Believe me, in my line of work we routinely deal with people who have moved out of society and done things that are just horrific. ![]() That’s just good common sense.ĭon’t you find it difficult to be polite to a murderer or a rapist? When you give somebody a little something, he feels obligated to give you something back. But it makes excellent sense to be sensitive to the other guy’s needs. Obviously I’m not going to get him a car. So before the bad guy demands anything, I always ask him if he needs something. ![]() The first step to getting there is to show him respect, which shows my sincerity and reliability. To defuse the situation, I’ve got to try to understand what’s going on in his head. And the reason for this is that their anxiety level is so high: A guy armed and barricaded in a bank is in a fight-or-flight mode. This article also appears in:Ī lot of times, the people I’m dealing with are extremely nasty. This sounds trite, I know, but it is very important. When I’m negotiating, I’m constantly asking myself, “What is the simplest thing I can do to solve the problem?” When I’m dealing with an armed criminal, for example, my first rule of thumb is simply to be polite. What crisis negotiation does take is what I call applied common sense. Anyone can do it, man or woman, uniformed or civilian. I don’t think it requires special skills. What special skills does it take to be a crisis negotiator? Misino modestly describes hostage negotiation as “applied common sense.” In the following interview, edited for clarity and length, he explores what he means by that innocuous-sounding term, painting a vivid picture of the blood, sweat, and tears of hostage negotiation. Since retiring in 1995, he has taught negotiating skills to law enforcement officials, military personnel, and business executives (for more details, see his Web site, ). Misino spent the last six years of his career as a primary negotiator, handling more than 200 incidents and never losing a single life. Coutu visited former NYPD detective and hostage negotiator Dominick Misino at his home on Long Island, New York (where he can be reached at A member of the force for 22 years, Misino received international acclaim in 1993 when he successfully persuaded the hijacker of Lufthansa Flight 592 to lay down his gun and turn himself in at Kennedy Airport. To find out what businesspeople can learn about handling tough negotiations from the experience of law enforcement, HBR senior editor Diane L. Today, most law enforcement agencies in this country and others provide some kind of negotiation training, as local and national law enforcement officials face bargaining with armed criminals, terrorists, and psychopaths as part of their daily reality. Another year later, in the wake of the Munich Olympics hostage crisis, the FBI established its own program, which was modeled on the NYPD’s. Founded in 1972, in the year after the Attica State Prison riot, the NYPD program was the country’s first such training program. So where can you look for guidance? For the last three decades, the New York Police Department has been training officers in hostage negotiation, arguably the highest-stake situation of all. Who could argue with the recommendation that negotiators look for mutual gain and know their best alternative to a negotiated agreement? But you can’t help feeling that the scholarly ink and classroom simulations of Negotiation 101 don’t do enough to prepare businesspeople for the really tough negotiations-the ones where failure is not an option. ![]() ![]() The advice is often helpful, even insightful. Or that most of the country’s top business schools have entire academic departments devoted to the subject. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that the last 20 years have seen an endless stream of handbooks on business negotiation, many of them best-sellers. The breakdown of negotiations between Hewlett-Packard’s management and its founding families, for example, put the company’s future in doubt and led to an expensive proxy fight. In fact, in some languages the same term is used for both “business” and “negotiation.” But the costs of failure can be high. Every interaction-with customers, with suppliers, and even with partners and investors-involves some kind of negotiation. Negotiation informs all aspects of business life.
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