Hear the Words, Listen to the Music, Watch the Dance

While reading the book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, written by hostage negotiator Chris Voss, I was surprised to learn how much the FBI has borrowed from therapy to improve the effectiveness of their hostage negotiations. Much attention is given to understanding and managing the emotional state of the hostage-taker. To learn about what the hostage-taker is feeling, negotiators observe three different aspects of his communication. Voss writes, “Most of the time you’ll have a wealth of information from the other person’s words, tone, and body language. We call that trinity ‘words, music, and dance.’ ”   

This information can help the negotiator speak in ways that lead the hostage-taker to feel safe, making it more likely that they arrive at a peaceful resolution. When hostage-takers feel threatened, they are more likely to become desperate and violent. One way to lead them to calm down is to label and mirror back to them the emotion that is inferred from their tone and body language. Voss recommends using the phrases, “It seems like…, it sounds like…, or it looks like…” The negotiator might say, “It sounds like you don’t want to go back to jail.” Voss writes that because a label is “a neutral statement of understanding, it encourages your counterpart to be responsive…[its] power is that it invites the other person to reveal himself.” 

One last crucial step after labeling is to remain silent. You need to provide space for the other person to elaborate on or disagree with what you’ve said. Either way, the end result is greater understanding.

In order to catalyze greater understanding during your conversations, I invite you to practice mindfulness in your communication by asking: 

What message is the other communicating with their words? With their tone? With their body language? 

What message am I communicating with my words? With my tone? With my body language? 

Practice labeling by using the neutral phrases, “It seems like…, …it sounds like, …it looks like” to mirror the emotion you are inferring from the other person’s words, tone, and body language.  

God Bless,
Dan