Josh Wolfe (via Forbes.com) We sit down with Gary Noesner, the former Chief Negotiator for the FBI, and the first person to ever hold that position. Mr. Noesner regales us with stories of the toughest people and situations he’s ever encountered, life as a hostage negotiator, and how these skills can translate to business.
Noesner was an FBI hostage negotiator for 23 years of his career, spending the last ten years as the Chief Negotiator for the FBI. He retired as the Chief of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit, Critical Incident Response Group. He was heavily involved in numerous crisis incidents covering prison riots, religious zealot sieges, terrorist embassy takeovers, airplane hijackings, and over 120 overseas kidnapping cases involving American citizens. Mr. Noesner is the author of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator.

Have you found that there are certain personality traits that make for a great negotiator?

I think there are a lot of different personality types that can be successful as crisis or hostage negotiators, but one of the universal attributes that we see is self-control. It is important to have negotiators who don’t get flustered or react to events in a highly emotional way.

Read the rest at Forbes.com [HERE].