Three Communication Strategies- I Learned from an FBI International Hostage Negotiator

When I found out the Black Swan group was coming to Seattle, I signed up immediately for their seminar. The Black Swan group is composed of Chris Voss the former lead International Hostage Negotiator in the Kidnapping Division for the FBI, and his team of equally talented and skilled Negotiators. I read Chris’s book Never Split the Difference about 7 months ago and felt enlivened by its content. The book was packed full of counter-intuitive insights and high stakes negotiation skills. I went through it with a fine-toothed comb, highlighted, used page markers, and even wrote cue cards to acquire as much as possible from the book. Even after intensively studying the book, I wanted to learn the information in a more active and less passive way. The seminar gave me a chance to learn actively and the concepts became further ingrained. Below are just three of the many insights that I learned at the seminar.

The Surprising Power of Verbal Mirrors and Labels- When people think of Negotiation Mirrors, they often think of body language mirrors or replicating someone else’s body language. While replicating body language can be very useful, it will likely not single- handedly unearth a ton of information. A verbal mirror is simply stating or repeating the most important one to three words of your counterpart’s last sentence, after they have spoken. While a label often starts with: “It seems like, It sounds like, It looks like, or It feels like.”

Here are two versatile labels: 

“It seems like there are issues here that I am failing to be sensitive too.”

“It sounds like you are under a lot of pressure.”

At one point during the seminar, we were told to pair up with someone at our table in order to practice our labels and mirrors. Once we paired up, we were allowed to ask each other only one simple question, which was: “what are you passionate about?” We were then told to exclusively label and mirror each other to continue the interaction. This got the nerves going, as my partner and I didn’t know each other beforehand and we were being observed by the worlds best Hostage Negotiators.

What truly surprised me is that the labels and mirror exercise allowed us to discover core values much quicker than asking actual questions. Despite, having a personal reputation among my friends of being a little too stoic at times, we started to elaborate on our family values as well as our world views, at a pretty deep level. According to Brandon Voss: “Questions are not the best way to discover information in a negotiation, labels and mirrors are actually more effective.” One of the reasons for this is that questions, sometimes even open questions, can trigger defensiveness.

 The Accusation Audit: Addressing the Negative to provide a more Positive State of Mind- The Black Swan group claims that the accusation audit is one of their most effective negotiation tools. When I spoke earlier about counter-intuitive information, there was nothing in the workshop that was more counter-intuitive than the accusation audit. “The first step of doing so is listing every terrible thing your counterpart could say about you… [It] is really, really hard for people to get their minds around” (C. Voss, p. 65) The role of the accusation audit is to lay out a lot of negative information in the negotiation at the very beginning. The accusation audit is then verbalizing almost everything that your negotiation counterpart could potentially say about you or even think about you. It is meant to be exhaustive list. As Chris Voss pointed out: “Just because no one has discussed the pink elephant, doesn’t mean it is not there.”

Two examples would be:

1) “You might think that were not trustworthy.”

2) “You could think that we are inexperienced.”

One of the major reasons the accusation audit is performed is a concept called Loss Aversion. To paraphrase Psychologist and Noble Prize winner Daniel Kahneman: Loss Aversion is the single biggest determinant of human decision making. In negotiations it would be difficult to deny that we often need to reduce distrust.

Formerly, Negotiators were afraid to state the negative about themselves, because they were worried that it would somehow reinforce the negative or entrench positions. However, according to the black swan group, this has been proven untrue by both 30 + years of FBI negotiation experience as well as through Neuroscience research. Though I am normally hesitant to speak too far out of my realm, at the seminar it was stated that people hooked up FMRI machines, would show decrease activity in the brain’s emotional centers, including the amygdala when negatives were addressed. (This was discussed during Emotional Labeling.) An accusation audit is a great way to assuage the majority of your counterparts’ fears, apprehensions and anxieties. Once those fears have been dealt with, the brain can work at a higher capacity and the negotiation will likely be more productive. “The brain works up to 31% better when you are in a positive state of mind” (C. Voss, Never Split the Difference).

To learn more about labels and mirrors, as well as accusation audits, – I would highly recommend Never Split the Difference. The lessons above I learned partially from the book, but the true magnitude to which the skills can affect a negotiation, I now fully understood from taking the seminar.

Thank you for reading,

Here is link to Never Split the Difference: https://info.blackswanltd.com/library .

Here is link to the blog: https://blackswanltd.com .

Cold read and Accusation Audits: https://blog.blackswanltd.com/the-edge/how-to-use-a-cold-read-and-accusation-audit-to-achieve-success