How to Win Any Negotiation and Become a Master Communicator
Strategies from a kidnap for ransom negotiator.
Scott Walker is the person you want on your side to negotiate the toughest deals and work with the harshest kidnappers. He was a Scotland Yard detective and kidnap for ransom negotiator for 16 years. These days he is working with executive leaders and sales teams to be better communicators and negotiators.
In my raw conversation with Scott, we talked about his career, about his mom taking her own life and how it changed his life - he held nothing back.
We also dove into specific strategies about how to win any negotiation. He has a strong belief that negotiation is NOT about having a magic line to say or a specific tactic to deploy. Most of the work is actually internal.
His tips has helped me not only become a better communicator, but also a better parent! Getting triggered while trying to persuade my little kids to get ready for school is still a daily battle 😂, but practicing his techniques has helped (I still need practice and I get a lot of chances!)
Scott is the real deal.
“Life is too short to regret the conversations we wished we had or wished we didn’t have… the key thing in life is the: how can we have better conversations?”
Scott Walker
Insights on Scott’s Journey to becoming a world expert negotiator:
1/ Lean into your fascination when you were a kid
Scott has always been a curious and inquisitive kid - that was sometimes an annoyance to his parents and it’s something that up till this day his family still brings up.
This reminded me of this Tedx talk from best selling author Josh Shipp: Your children’s most annoying trait may just reveal their greatest strengths.
2/ Just say ‘Yes’ and work out how you do it afterwards
Scott has a philosophy of saying ‘yes’ to things, taking on opportunities that presented themselves instead of shying away from it. It led him to Iraq working on military intelligence, it led him to becoming a kidnap for ransom negotiator and now a highly sought after speaker and trainer in this space. (Watch Scott discuss in 2023 how to get hostages out of Gaza on CNN - he said YES.)
“Say yes more often than you say no, especially in the beginning.”
Scott Walker
3/ Use the pain from failure to gain new skills
Scott was a young officer at Scotland Yard and a disastrous presentation made him volunteer for every speaking opportunity to get good at communicating in front of an audience. Lo and behold, years later, Scott is being interviewed on T.V., giving training and keynotes all over the world.
He created an empowering future that took away the pain of what he felt during that presentation and it drove him to lean into the discomfort of doing it over and over again until he gained this new skill.
“I had to give a briefing to a team of officers, but my knees and hands were shaking so much… the presentation bombed… I remember standing there dripping in sweat, with a pounding headache. I gotta get a grip on this.”
Scott Walker
Legendary lesson: Win Any Negotiation by starting from the inside
The most important lesson from Scott is that negotiation starts on the inside, your own internal state rather than focusing externally on your “opponent”.
A winning negotiation is where everyone is good with they they got.
Two key strategies:
ONE: 3 Steps to any negotiation
Information gathering
You always start by absorbing and figuring out the lay of land. What’s the context, what are the top five issues (“bunch of fives” as mentioned in his book: Order Out of Chaos) and who is involved?
Relationship building
This is the most important part of the negotiation, but most people spend the least time here, including himself when he was starting out.
Problem solving
Once you have the first two pieces, you can go about solving the problem at hand to arrive at a win-win situation. Most people go right to this part and trip up the entire process.
I can immediately think of a time (many times) where I tried to solve a problem straight away, without going through steps one and two and ended up with a terrible outcome. Have you?
TWO: Emotional self-regulation
The most critical thing in any negotiation is to regulate your own emotions and demonstrate empathy. This is essential to building relationships.
Pause (Don’t react, extract)
When you are in the midst of conflict (when someone says something triggering), the first thing to do is to not react and extract yourself from the situation. Breathe, allow the feelings to wash over you and don’t apply any meaning to what is happening. Go back into the negotiation after you’re in a better state.
“The power lies in the pause…feel the feeling, drop the story.”
Scott Walker
Practice level 5 listening
Level 5 listening is getting the point of view of the person, what are their beliefs about themselves? Really listen to understand everything they are trying to get across, verbal and non-verbal. (Read this LinkedIn post about the 5 levels of listening.)
Demonstrate empathy
Empathy is an action word. It’s not about agreeing with them, it’s about letting them know you understand where they are at. One way to demonstrate empathy is to name their emotion. “You are feeling angry right now.”
“Name it to tame it. Deal with the emotion that is the elephant in room”
Scott Walker
BONUS TIP: Don’t be afraid of conflict. Practice emotional self-regulation in low risk situations to get good at it.
The magic lies in our ability to reframe things. We can choose the meaning we give to any situation so we might as well choose a meaning that serves us. When we experience more positive emotions, we’ll communicate better, negotiate better, and live a better life.
Howie Chan
Creator of Influence Anyone
Don’t miss:
The Influence Anyone Podcast
Scott shares some emotional and disturbing stories on his experiences with kidnappers (WARNING!) and how we can use his expert techniques to make an impact.
🎧 Listen to it on Apple, Spotify, the web or wherever you get your podcasts.