Active Listening Techniques of Hostage & Crisis Negotiators
Active listening is arguably one of the most important set of skills a person must successfully employ while interacting with someone when there is something you are trying to achieve. This can include negotiating a contract, salary, sale or purchase of a house, or it can involve trying to resolve a dispute amongst friends or co-workers.
Research has consistently demonstrated active listening as being critical for communication and conflict resolution experts to successfully and peacefully resolve conflicts and disputes. This includes mediators and hostage and crisis negotiators. As you can imagine, their work entails a wide variety of situations ranging from noise disputes between neighbors to million dollar contract disputes and hostage incidents where lives are at risk.
...Below are the seven techniques of active listening that are taught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crisis Negotiation Unit (FBI CNU) to their special agents and other law enforcement officials from around the world.
Read more [HERE].
Hostage & Crisis Negotiators: Nonverbal Communication Basics
Law enforcement crisis and hostage negotiators are world-renowned for their ability to apply expert conflict resolution and communication skills in situations that are tense, (potentially) volatile, and where lives can be at risk.
Learning the skills that these professionals apply to their distinct negotiation setting is not only interesting but it can also help you. Although their work is very different from yours most likely, the tools they use to effectively communicate and resolve a situation is still applicable to you and your work.
Nonverbal communication plays an important role during hostage and crisis situations involving law enforcement personnel. Nonverbal communication is not limited to solely “body language” but rather includes a variety of other elements.
Read more [HERE].
Don’t rush the process.
A crisis and hostage negotiation is a tense situation that can be volatile with lives being at risk so is it absurd that a critical skill for hostage and crisis negotiators is to slow the process down? That is exactly a mistake that has been made however by negotiators- rushing the process.
Reflecting on what these negotiation experts have done effectively can allow other conflict resolution practitioners to apply it to their practice that includes other negotiators, mediators, ombuds, and conflict coaches. Equally, understanding actions that these negotiators have done that are detrimental to a peacefully resolution can also help as it sheds light on what to avoid.
Read More at Columbia University's AC4 website [HERE].