CHAPTER 07: Create the Illusion of Control

Summary

• The episode is about a case of a group of radical Islamists named the Abu Sayyaf who took hostages at a private diving resort in the Philippines, including three Americans.
• The Philippine president's declaration of "all-out war" on the Abu Sayyaf created a confrontational dynamic and the kidnappers were further angered by the Philippine army and marines' botched raids.
• The situation was further complicated by the involvement of the CIA, FBI, and U.S. military intelligence and the kidnappers' subsequent rape and killing of hostages.
• The episode's speaker, an FBI negotiator, reflects on the failure of the negotiations and how it led to a shift in the FBI's negotiation techniques.
• The FBI learned that negotiation is about coaxing and co-opting rather than overcoming and that successful negotiation involves getting the other side to do the work for you and suggest your solution themselves.
• The tool developed is called the calibrated or open-ended question which removes aggression from conversations by acknowledging the other side openly.
• The speaker also notes that negotiation is impossible in the middle of a firefight and the Philippine military was less than a trustworthy partner.
• The episode is about a case involving a group of radical Islamists named the Abu Sayyaf who took hostages in the Philippines and the FBI's failed attempts to negotiate with them.
• The $300,000 was stolen and communication with the kidnappers was poor, culminating in a botched "rescue" mission where two of the three hostages were killed by friendly fire.
• The speaker, an FBI negotiator, reflects on the failure of the mission and the need for a new way to negotiate, communicate, listen, and speak with both enemies and friends.
• The speaker also learns that there was a parallel negotiation by a crooked Philippine politician who had more success in communicating with the hostages.
• The speaker realizes that the FBI's one-dimensional mindset was a major reason for the failure of the mission and the need for change in their negotiation techniques.
• The episode is about a technique for negotiation which involves using calibrated or open-ended questions to give the other side the illusion of control.
• The speaker, an FBI negotiator, realized the power of this technique when he witnessed a drug dealer using it successfully with a kidnapper.
• The speaker reflects on how this technique can be used to overcome resistance and create trust and cooperation in negotiations.
• The speaker also refers to psychologist Kevin Dutton's concept of "unbelief" as the friction that keeps persuasion in check and notes that the goal of persuasion is not to get others to believe what we say but to stop them from unbelieving.
• The speaker provides an example of a senior physician using the calibrated question technique to suspend the patient's unbelief and keep him from leaving.
• Calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart on what the problem is rather than causing conflict by telling them what the problem is.
• Calibrated questions are not just random requests for comment, they have a direction: once you figure out where you want a conversation to go, you have to design the questions that will ease the conversation in that direction while letting the other guy think it’s his choice to take you there.
• Calibrated questions avoid verbs or words like “can,” “is,” “are,” “do,” or “does.” Instead, they start with a list of words people know as reporter’s questions: “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how.”
• The best words to start with are “what,” “how,” and sometimes “why” as they inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively.
• It's best to avoid using "why" as it's accusatory and can backfire.
• Having just two words to start with might not seem like a lot of ammunition, but trust me, you can use “what” and “how” to calibrate nearly any question.
• Use calibrated questions early and often, and there are a few that you will find that you will use in the beginning of nearly every negotiation.
• Examples of calibrated questions include: "What is the biggest challenge you face?", "How can I help to make this better for us?", "What about this is important to you?", "How would you like me to proceed?", "What is it that brought us into this situation?", "How can we solve this problem?", "What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here?" and "How am I supposed to do that?"
• The implication of any well-designed calibrated question is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his intelligence to overcome the problem.
• Calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart on what the problem is rather than causing conflict by telling them what the problem is.
• Calibrated questions are not just random requests for comment, they have a direction: once you figure out where you want a conversation to go, you have to design the questions that will ease the conversation in that direction while letting the other guy think it’s his choice to take you there.
• Calibrated questions avoid verbs or words like “can,” “is,” “are,” “do,” or “does.”
• The best words to start with are “what,” “how,” and sometimes “why.”
• The implication of any well-designed calibrated question is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his intelligence to overcome the problem.
• The first and most basic rule of keeping your emotional cool is to bite your tongue.
• Another simple rule is, when you are verbally assaulted, do not counterattack. Instead, disarm your counterpart by asking a calibrated question.
• The basic issue here is that when people feel that they are not in control, they adopt what psychologists call a hostage mentality.
• In a negotiation, like in the one between my client and the CEO, this always produces a negative outcome. So we have to train our neocortex to override the emotions from the other two brains.
• If you were able to take an armed kidnapper who’d been surrounded by police and hook him up to a cardiac monitor, you’d find that every calibrated question and apology would lower his heart rate just a little bit.