Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator - Gary Noesner

In this episode, I had interesting discussion with Gary Noesner, who spent thirty years as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. For twenty-three of those years, he was an FBI hostage negotiator, eventually becoming the Chief of the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit, a position he was the first to hold. During his tenure, Gary was deeply involved in a wide array of crises—everything from prison riots to airplane hijackings, and over 120 kidnapping cases abroad involving American citizens.

After retiring from the FBI, Gary took on the role of Senior Vice President at Control Risks, where he helped clients navigate kidnap incidents overseas. He now operates as an independent consultant and speaker, sharing his insights at numerous law enforcement and corporate events globally.

Gary's expertise has made him a familiar face and voice in media. He's featured in documentaries on channels like the History Channel, CNN, and BBC, and has been interviewed by major publications including Time, the New York Times, and more. His experiences formed the basis of his book, "Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator," which inspired a mini-series on Paramount Network and Netflix, where he's portrayed by actor Michael Shannon.

Recently, Gary has been involved with Jumpstart Mastery, an organization focused on enhancing human capacity for self-control and peaceful conflict resolution, especially relevant for today's professionals dealing with Anger, Aggression, and Violence (AAV). With such incidents on the rise worldwide, his insights are more crucial than ever.

https://www.garynoesner.com/

Transcript

Meet Gary Nesner And His Career

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this podcast, I interview successful business leaders and industry experts to help you grow your business. In this episode, I had a very interesting discussion with Gary Nestler. Gary spent 30 years as an investigator, instructor, and negotiator. For 23 of those years, he was an FBI's hostage negotiator, eventually becoming the chief of Crisis Negotiation Unit. A position he was the first to hold. During his tenure, Gary was deeply involved in a wide array of crises, everything from prison breaks to airplane hijacking and over 120 kidnapping cases abroad involving American citizens. After retiring from FBI, Gary took on a role of senior vice president at Control Risk, where he helped client navigate kidnap incidents overseas. He now operated as an independent consultant and a speaker, sharing his insights at numerous law enforcement and corporate events globally. Gary's experience has made him a familiar face and a voice in the media. He is featured in documentaries on channels like History Channel, CNN, and PBC. He has been interviewed by major publications, including the New York Times and many more. His experiences formed the basis of his new book, Stalling for Time, My Life as an FI Hostage Negotiator, which inspired a mini-series Wackle on a Paramount Network and Netflix where he's portrayed by actor Michael Shannon. Most recently, Gary is involved with Jumpstab Mastery, an organization focused on enhancing human capacity for self-control and peaceful conflict resolution, especially relevant for today's professionals dealing with the anger, aggression, and awareness. With such incidents on a rise worldwide, his insights are more crucial than ever. As a business owner, in every business leadership conversation we talk about conflict resolution, communication skills, decision process, managing, expectations, and relationships. All these skill sets are important, but considering Gary's expertise and his work as an FPN negotiator, where people's lifestyle depends on this skill set, it provides me a completely different perspective, where people's emotions are so high and the decisions are very time sensitive. Again, new perspective doing my conversation with Gary on this skill set. Hope he takes some value away from this discussion as well. If you do, please don't forget to send us your feedback, share this with your friends. Until next time, please welcome Gary Nessner. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today we have a very interesting guest, Gary Nestler. Gary, um your book is very interesting and your career has been very interesting. I'm I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to our discussion. Thank you so much for time today. It's my pleasure. I look forward to our chat. Interesting. So let's talk about you know your uh journey with the FBI. I this this program, uh Hosses Negotiation, I believe that was developed in a 72-73. I'm trying to think what they had, what approach they had before they even uh built a program. And you were early on one of the pioneers in the program. So what kind of approach they had before even uh got into negotiating?

SPEAKER_03 3:06

There wasn't much of a an approach prior to New York City and then the FBI copying what is now known as Haas' negotiation, crisis negotiations. The police merely demanded that a perpetrator comply and surrender. And if they were met with resistance, were unsuccessful in requesting the person to come out peacefully, then they went in and effected an arrest. And obviously that occasionally uh resulted in very bad outcomes, whether police officers were injured or lost their lives, or innocent hostages or victims, or the perpetrator himself. So the the concept was perhaps we should uh uh learn to be a bit more sophisticated in our conversation and our dialogue with whoever we're trying to convince to cooperate and you know kind of lower the attention and the emotion. So the program began to have pretty immediate results. Again, NYPD started it in New York, Captain Frank Boltz and Harvey Slosperg, the FBI, quickly recognized it as a very appropriate means and began to spread it around the country and overseas. The biggest shift it was primarily a bargaining approach. You know, if the perpetrator wanted a getaway car or money or food, you know, they made them work for it and exchange a hostage for anything they got. So pretty basic quid pro quo bargaining. And then in the 1990s I think we we led making the shift towards more of a crisis intervention model to reflect the reality that only 10% of what police were negotiating were technically hostage situations, but rather they were dealing with a wide range of a people, whether it was suicidal or you know, a disgruntled employee or a domestic relationship gone bad or drug or alcohol abuse, whatever it might be, that the more appropriate set of skills were active listening skills that we we borrowed from the mental health community, the teachings of Carl Rogers. And that had had a pretty dramatic and and and quick effect in terms of improving outcomes even more. You know, we we resolved situations piecely through dialogue in about 90% of the cases now, according to FBI statistics. So that's a pretty significant accomplishment and something that uh you know is fairly rare in law enforcement uh processes and procedures, you uh that kind of success rate is fairly unknown. So yeah, it it's it stood the test of time, and it was a great honor to be, you know, I didn't invent this stuff, but to be one of the early practitioners and and people who helped spread it around the country and overseas.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Did you have uh any interest, Gary? Uh a lot of this negotiating or talking to people is understanding, you know, uh people other side, um, understanding human behaviors. Did you had any interest in a psychology side of the side of it, or did you have any background in it? So how did you how did you uh you know get to learn all these uh areas?

From Bargaining To Active Listening

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Yeah, I'm I I didn't have uh an academic background in psychology, but I I think it would be fair to say that I was always very interested in that aspect of interpersonal communications and how do we use our words to gain cooperation from someone, how do we avoid conflict, and how do we uh engage in a manner that helps enhance a positive interaction? So that stuff always interested me. And then, of course, being in the FBI, the way you interviewed perpetrators and interrogated, all that sort of blended in with my regular investigative work and learning more about that. And you know, it's the old saying, you get more with honey than with vinegar, you know. So, you know, our goal in law enforcement is to get cooperation, to get the FBI, it's to gather information, whether it's from a witness or to get a confession from a perpetrator, to recruit a spy or to uh get one in org someone in organized crime to cooperate with us, whatever it might be. And all that is basically interpersonal communications. So, you know, I think it became pretty clear that the approaches we had taken weren't quite as effective as they might be until we focused on what we call active listening skills. And they're they're called active because you know, people view listening as a passive endeavor. You you talk and I sit there and nod my head and listen and so forth and so on. But active listening is to engage with the person, to give them the feedback, whether it's through asking an open-ended question, or I might say, could you tell me more about that? And I don't understand, could you explain that to me? So, and then when I hear that information, I feed it back to you. So I want to make sure I understand this is the problem or the issue that that you have, the concern that you have, the the feeling that you have about what's happening. If I'm really good at reflecting that back, then it's it's a clear pathway to building a relationship of trust. You know, you it's not like you're gonna take the police officer's gonna take that person home for dinner and and exchange Christmas cards, but nonetheless, you come across as non-threatening, non-judgmental. I'm here to try to understand what you're going through and to try to help you. I'm not here to make your day worse. And, you know, it met with resistance early on because you know, law enforcement's a paramilitary organization, and we have authority, we have a badge, we have a gun, we have handcuffs, and when we tell people to do things and they say, I'm not doing it, screw you, we take exception to that. And you know, and police officers, FBI agents are human beings, and you know, that doesn't sit well with us. So in the past, you know, we would be perhaps too quick to discard our verbal judo efforts and and segue right into okay, well, now I'm gonna make you do it. Yeah and and that obviously uh generally leads to more resistance. Uh you know, what we call the paradox of power. The harder you push, the more likely it is that you get resistance. So it's a it's a really good technique, and it's not just for crisis intervention, it's for you know business, it's for relationships, it's for interaction with your children, your neighbors. You know, being a good listener and demonstrating to someone out else that that you're open to hearing and learning more about what's on their mind is a powerful way to create a relationship. You know, the the business guru Stephen Covey put an old truth into Nistring phrase called, you know, first seek to understand and then to be understood. I mean, he certainly didn't invent that, but but it's a nice way of of succinctly explaining the process. You know, my my jolt job is not to show up and immediately tell you what I think and what I want you to do, but to invest the time and energy into hearing what what you're going through and what you feel about a situation. Earn the right, as it were. Now it's my turn to make some suggestions or to offer some different perspectives.

Managing High Emotion And Power

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah. One thing I you know, book is very interesting, uh uh Gary. One thing I noticed when we go into uh you know your story after story, very touching stories, you're trying to build a relationship with these people who are who are in a hostage uh environment. And and and I'm trying to understand when you you know, every time you got into a situation, the emotions are so so high. When emotions are high, it's not only one side, every side, the people you're trying to manage on your side, you know, hostage yourself. There's so much emotions running, emotions so high. And you mentioned active listening and you're trying to listen and trying to build that relationship with these people and build the trust. How difficult is that when emotions are so high and you get to the bottom of the problem and trying to build the right relationships, not the wrong one, and trying to take them to the next step to where it's where they are right now. How how challenging is that that you know when the emotions are high, nobody's rational around you, and you're trying to make sense of it?

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, no, that that's an essential aspect of it that you're talking about, you know, to illustrate that we use the childhood playground equipment, the teeter-totter, the seesaw, you know, when one kid's up, the other one's down and they push off back and forth. But the law of physics are that when one is high, one is low. They can't both be high, and they can't both be low. So as negotiators, we show up and emotions are running very high before, and this is rational thinking and behavior, before we can begin to have a you know, a full conversation about what we might do to avoid violence and resolve the situation, we have to lower the emotion. And you see what happens when the emotion comes down, the person's ability to think and behave more rationally. I think everyone has experiences in their personal life where they've dealt with a friend, a loved one, a coworker, who knows what, when someone is just, you know, foaming at the mouth, angry, red in the face, something bothers them, whether justified or not. Well, that person's not particularly receptive at that particular moment to a logical idea. You know, a guy's mad because his boss is fired him, he holds a gun to his head, he wants to kill his boss. Well, I can come up and say, if you kill your boss, you're not going to get your job back. You know, that makes sense. It's true, it's logical, yeah, but he's not ready to hear that yet. I have to, I have to invest the time in creating a relationship, diverting his attention away from his boss, trying to find out what the issues are, and eventually, you know, see if we can come to some equitable solution where he has some way to address his grievances other than homicide. And so that's kind of how the process works. But you also touched on the fact that sometimes that challenge is internal. Sometimes it's the uh anger and frustration of police officials that you, as a negotiator, have to contend with in addition to the person who's engaged in the criminal activity. So it it puts the negotiator, you know, in a challenging spot. You know, we don't expect everyone in law enforcement to have the in-depth level of training that we would as negotiators. So part of our job on the scene is educating ultimate decision makers. Now, boss, this is why we do this. You know, we found out that if we approach it this way versus that way, these are the problems that we're likely to see. So you become sort of an instructor or an educator at the scene. Some leaders in law enforcement are smart enough to know this is a specialty area they don't have, and perhaps they should listen to their experts. Others, you know, feel like, well, in the pecking order, I'm the top dog, so I'm making the decisions, you know, as sort of an expression of demonstrating power and control and and and strong leadership. But that that can be counterproductive in some of these cases. So all of that can serve to complicate, you know, a cohesive response to a crisis, man.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And and uh, you know, different outcome comes out of these, right? So you know it's it's it looks like you're managing expectation from one side that that your side, and then you managing the person other side and in the middle and trying to are you give have you given during the situation most time, are you have you given that authority to make a decision right on a spot, or do you have to go through levels of approval before you can, you know, I'm thinking about the case of Charlie where he was asking for a helicopter. You know, did you have to go through a hoops to get that approval, or what were you given that right on a spot, Gary? You go with the whatever you think is right.

Time As A Tactical Advantage

SPEAKER_03 14:56

Well, one of the no, you have to get approval. One of the uh tenets of negotiations is the negotiator presents himself or herself as having limited decision-making authority. And I'll give give you a good example. Back in the 80s, I worked the hijacking in Algiers, and the hijackers wanted to speak to a government official. So the vice president of the country walks out to the plane and talks to them way too high, way too much authority. You know, it would have been better to have Sergeant Mohammed go out there, and the guy said, Well, we want this and we want that, and these are our demands. And and the sergeant could say, Okay, well, I'm not in a position to say yes or no, but let me go back and talk to my boss, see what he has to say, you know, and then boom, boom. So we slow it down, we buy time, we you know, we don't come across right away and say, that's never happening. Don't that's a stupid demand. You're not gonna get that. I mean, that's not helpful. So we build in that delay and that limitation of decision making. But also, you know, in the law enforcement context, at least, the on-seen commander, whoever he or she is, chief, the sheriff, the special agent in charge, they are indeed the ultimate decision maker. So when you say, I'm not authorized to make that, you know, uh here'd be a better example. And we try to avoid saying no. Say a bank robber says, you know, he's trapped. He goes into the bank, you know, he's he's having a bad day. He's not the smartest criminal in the world. He he took too long to get the money. And next thing he knows, he looks out the front of the bank and there's police cars there. Now he's trapped. So now he says, I'm taking hostages. If anybody comes in there, I'm gonna kill a hostage. And then he gets around to saying, I want a getaway car and I want it out here in you know, 20 minutes or 15 minutes, and I'm gonna take these hostages and drive down the road and I'll let them go. Well, that's not gonna happen, you know. But the negotiator's not gonna say, Are you kidding me? You know, forget about that. Yeah, the negotiator's gonna plant a seed of doubt and say something like, you know, that's that's gonna be a real challenge, and that's gonna be difficult. I I hear what you're saying, and I'm gonna go to my boss and tell him this is what you have said and what you've asked for. But I think I think we both know that's gonna be really tough to do. Now, I haven't said no to him, but I've totally dampened his expectations. And, you know, and and and you might come back later at certain times, you know, my you know, we're gonna have to work out something else. My boss is just not gonna, it's just not safe to there's too many people out here. You drive away in a car, somebody's gonna get hurt. You know, we just can't do that. You know, what happens when somebody holds hostages, they feel empowered. You know, by threatening the life of this hostage, I can make you do whatever I want. I'm in control. And that's when we slow the process down, we make them work for everything they get. After the passage of time, and this is why my book's titled Stalling for Time, they come to the realization that they're not as powerful as they thought. They can't make us jump whenever they say jump, and they're not in as much control. And therefore, they ultimately, and fortunately for us, most want to live more than they want to die. They ultimately are left with a very simple decision. You either cooperate with the police or you run the risk of being seriously injured or killed by the tactical team. For us, it it you know almost always works out. I shouldn't say almost over, but very high percent works out where they come to the realization that they don't want to die. And and so they comply. So that's kind of how the process works in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, and adding time back to your point you made earlier, adding time also the emotional part we talk about, it gives them time to think it through, and emotions come down a little bit, probably, right? And they become more rational over time.

Technology’s Impact On Negotiations

SPEAKER_03 18:52

And it's and it's fatigue, you know. You using our continuing example of the hospital taker in the bank, you know, if he's in there for a couple hours, it's a pretty strenuous job. One guy holding six people hostage, worried about the police outside, talking on the phone with the negotiator. It's exhausting. And, you know, and and maybe he didn't get something to eat, he's hungry, he's tired. All of these things tend to help nudge them towards a place where they're more receptive to the alternatives that the negotiator offers. Now, again, there there are situations that end badly. A guy's so desperate he doesn't want to go back to jail, he'll engage in what we call suicide by cop. He'll come out and purposely aim his gun at the police, forcing the police to use deadly force against him. He may kill a hostage, uh to be very, very rare to force the police to come in. So, you know, or become suicidal. They don't all have a happy outcome, but as I mentioned, the percentages of success are in the 90 percentile, and that's all because we slow things down and we allow time to lower emotions, to and there's other benefits too. With the passage of time, we've now got to interview the doctor, one of the hostages, who tells us about his heart condition. We get to talk to the perpetrator's wife who tells us some important piece of information about why he needs money. We you know get a drawing of the bank, the SWAT team practices, if they have to go in, this is the most efficient, effective, safe way to do it. On and on and on and on. So, time you know, the only time time works against us is maybe some uh hostage or police officer is bleeding to death on the front steps and we have to get them out of there. Short of that, you could almost always say that the more time passes, the better off we are. Now, we're not purposely wasting time, but we're not in a rush either. And uh, and that's where the pressure comes from the other side, because sometimes police decision makers say, well, this is tying up the city, it's costing a lot of money, you know, we don't have a budget in the overtime budget for this, you know, this guy's making us look like fools, the mayor's saying clear the streets, you know, what whatever it might be. So those are pressures that do come up. Increasingly, as time has gone by over the last couple decades, police officials realize that while it may be a short-term cost by by slowing things down, in reality it it saves reputation, it saves lawsuits, it saves unwanted deaths and injuries. So it's the smart way. You know, in law enforcement, we tell the public we will use no more force than is absolutely necessary. Well, we don't always live up to that, but this approach clearly uh is a manifestation of that philosophy. You know, if we have to use deadly force, we want the chief or the sheriff or whoever to stand in front of the be able to stand in front of the the the news cameras or in in A court during a some sort of civil suit, and say the perpetrator did the following things. And because of that, we were left with no option other than to try to rescue the hostages for fear that he said he was going to kill one in five minutes, he had fired off a shot, his my negotiators tell me that he's becoming less and less stable, his language is more violent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We we can have a set of articulable facts that we can present to the public or a jury or the court of public opinion saying this is why we were left with no alternative. And I think when we do that and invest the time so that we're trying to resolve it peacefully and only use force when we have no other choice, the public will support law enforcement when we do that. When we just get there and say, this guy's a jerk, let's go get him, and it has terrible consequences. That's pretty hard to defend.

Emotional Toll And Team Resilience

SPEAKER_00 22:57

From from the program when it was developed by 73, uh Gary, till now the technology changed, a lot of items changed, socially we changed quite a bit. Does the program a little bit change the you know, big part of that, what you what he what we're talking about is a communication other side, right? There's so many channels of communication, you know, whether it's a video or this and you know, a lot of stuff has changed. Does the program or approach from FBA change over the years because of all the changes in technology?

SPEAKER_03 23:20

I I don't know that the if you call it the strategy or the psychological approach has changed very much. However, the technology has impacted. I mean, yeah, there are some negotiations now that take place over the internet or text messaging or cell phones, all of these things have had an impact on the manner with which police respond to these situations. So, you know, yeah, that that does have uh an impact. I mean, we don't, for example, historically, if if you're in a jewelry store and you've robbed a jewelry store and you're holding hostages, I would want to isolate you so that the only person you can talk to would be the negotiator. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

But nowadays, you know, is your is your mother calling you on the phone and and and and giving you a chance to say goodbye, mom. I always loved you, which we wouldn't want. You know, does some citizen call in and and harass you? I mean, who knows? So all of these, how the law enforcement agencies will try to capture cell phones or cut off external communications, those are all challenges that that are increasingly difficult in our technological age.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah, because you don't know who the person would be connected to inside that store, right? It could be on a phone, video, whatever, you know, store internet, his internet, it it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

We you know you you've heard those stories about someone on a overpass threatening to jump, and it's blocking traffic. And the police are trying to talk to him, and then there's some people say, Go ahead and jump. Uh, you know, I want to get home. You know, this guy's a jerk. I hope he dies, you know, whatever. Well, that's the same thing that could happen, you know, in a different sort of way over the phone. That's why we don't want external forces calling in. I mean, even in the famous Waco siege we were involved in, early in the situation, a television station called into David Koresh. And the operator got on the phone and said, I have a call from you know, whatever news show it was for David Koresh. And the negotiator said, I'm a law enforcement negotiator. I'm this is a critical situation. Do not cut me off. And the operator cut him off because he said, Yeah, I'll talk to the news people, you know, and and that's that's irresponsible. And I helped devise some guidelines for the Radio and Television News Directors Association many years ago that sort of told them not, you know, it's not appropriate for them to get involved in these situations. This should be just between the police and and the perpetrator. But we still have some of those complications that we have to deal with. It's not an easy business.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yeah, definitely. So when you're dealing with that negotiating, you know, whether whatever the outcome comes out of it, is it a good in our favor or it's against, you know, that you don't want, but you get to learn about this person's life, that what the person's gone through in a short, you know, you're working around the clock and you're trying to communicate with the person and and you invested into it. How much how big is the impact on a personal level, Gary? You know, whatever the outcome comes in, when you go away from that, the case is solved, you know, how do you how do you how do you deal with that that that uh you know uh trauma in your head that listen, you know, I I wish he made this kind of decision, uh, you know, it could have been better outcome for the family or for the person. You know, how how are you invested personally in into those kind of stories? Because they they're probably gonna stay with you for forever.

Training, Case Studies, And Mistakes

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Well, particularly when there's loss of life and when it's uh a loss of innocent life. Okay, we're dealing with a bank robber, and the bank robber says, I can't go back to jail, and he shoots himself. Uh, you know, do you feel bad because a human being lost his life? Sure. But who do you blame? He said, Well, this guy made his choice.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Now, on the other hand, that same person shoots, you know, woman who he's holding hostage for no reason, then you take that person. What should we have done? What could we have stopped him from saying that? It really comes into play, uh, even in those cases, we tend to blame the bad guy psychologically. The worst cases are the suicides, because not everybody that commits, in fact, very few people that commit suicide are criminals. It's it's someone who's you know going through a traumatic situation in their life, their spouse has left them, they've lost their job, they you know, whatever it might be that's causing this depression. And you can talk to someone like that and really feel a connection with them and want to help them. And most of the time you will be successful. But as I've always told negotiators, if you respond to enough of these, someone will kill themselves. And it's not because you said or did something wrong, it's just the law of averages. You know, at some point in time when we respond to a suicide, we have what we call ambivalence. A part of them wants to live, a part of them wants to die. And the fact that they haven't made that choice yet is your salesman's foot in the door, but that doesn't guarantee success. And when someone like that takes their life, that is a good person otherwise, you feel a sense of responsibility. The only way to combat that, and what I've always done with negotiators is we work as a team. So if there's three of us talking to somebody, I might be the only one on the phone, but I have two people helping me. Between calls, we are deciding amongst ourselves, based on our experience and our training, what do we think the best approach is? And then if that's successful, we share the credit. And if it goes bad, we share the responsibility. It shouldn't fall on the shoulders of one person. You know, it's I've got much of my life from the surrenderity prayer, which you may be familiar with, you know, to know what you can do and what what you can't do and understand the difference. So when you go into these situations, I control me, the negotiator, or we control ourselves as a negotiation team. We're gonna try to influence this person. We want to sincerely, genuinely make every possible effort to everybody come out alive. But at the end of the day, we don't control it. Only this person and whatever they're going through ultimately decides the outcome. And I think if you understand that and you embrace it, it helps you to weather those storms that arise when a situation just ends tragically.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

What interesting. And that that that experience, Gary, what you just outlined, that kind of be you know, mirror in a training programs, you know, whatever training program at BR runs. I'm trying to think, what would they what do they do in a training? You know, do they how do they prepare people for this kind of situation, what you just described? Do they have something kind of you know, a simulation environment where they walk people through some some of those, you know, what the experience you had, um they're not gonna bring to the same level, but some sort of uh, you know, under training, you know, or this is just a book training, they just walk you through the book programs. Hey, listen, this is what's supposed to be.

Translating Skills To Business Leadership

SPEAKER_03 30:20

No, I mean, there's a great deal of uh simulation training, uh role-playing, as we call it. The FBI Academy, where we run our two-week crisis, national crisis negotiation course, has a fake city there. You might have heard of it's called Hogan's Alley. You know, it's got a bank and a pharmacy and a hotel and you know, a number of other tenement buildings and so forth. We actually take the negotiators there and we have role players and we put them in scenarios where they are actually engaging in the skills that they've learned. And of course, if they're gonna make mistakes, that's that's where you want it to occur, you know. So, yeah, then we we we we study abnormal psychology, we study the mechanics of negotiations, how the team functions, the challenges we face, and we do a lot of case study work. You know, this is what happened in this case, and this is why it went bad, or or why it was successful. And all of that, I think, helps prepare a negotiator to the highest extent we can. You know, then every situation is unique and has some different components. But, you know, that's that's kind of the approach we take.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Is it one of some of your stories from a book, they're also part of the case studies that they turn into case studies for records?

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Yeah, variations, you know. I mean, certainly I'm sure they have new ones now, but when when I was there, you know, that was one of the great things about being an instructor, but also responding operationally. It allowed me to the day after a situation and I'm teaching a class, I say, let me give you an example of of how this works, you know, and it also gives it validity and and it carries more weight when the instructor says, Well, here's a mistake I made that I want to share with you, and hopefully you will not make this same mistake. But when I talk about mistakes, uh, the biggest advice I I give to negotiators is you will make mistakes. There, in hindsight, if you were listening to a three-hour recording of a negotiation incident that you worked as a negotiator, in hindsight, you say I could have done that better, or I didn't hear that right. But that is really not important. What's important is do you come across generally as someone who is sincere and genuine and honest and trying to project that you want to help this person get out of a difficult situation? That's what carries the day. And I I come to that belief through a question we always ask people when they came out after a situation. We always said, What did we say that or what did I say that made you come out? And the answer was always the same. I don't remember, but I like the way you said it. And that's so powerful if you think about that. You know, your your ability to project sincerity and genuineness, uh, integrity, honesty, all those things carry much more weight than the specific items that you uh you know talk about in your conversation. Um and I think it's important for negotiators to remember that because also it frees them up from worrying so much about every single word they're gonna say, because that then inhibits your natural projection of being a human being. So if you're if you're comfortable with yourself, you you're well trained, you know what you're trying to accomplish, and you come across this person, you know, uh it's a difficult situation you're in, and you sound like a good person, and I hate to see this end badly for you. What can I do to help you work through this? Now, I'd like to think that what I just said in those last sentences or two came across as warm and nurturing and comforting, and it's not what they expect to get from cops. You know, they expect to get, sir, you better put your gun down and come out of there, you're gonna be in big trouble. You know, that's what they expect. Yeah, but instead they get, hey, this is Gary, I'm with the police, and I'd like to know what's going on in there. It sounds like there's there's a problem, and I'd like to help you with it if I can. Well, there's a world of difference between those two approaches in terms of tone and demeanor and expressed intent.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

And on human levels, you know, these people probably I mean a hostage taking a rushman, they want to be understood. And and you just, you know, by your just tone of voice, the way you approached it, you're just simply telling them I'm on your site, I'm simply trying to help.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Yeah, 90% of what negotiators respond to are emotionally driven situations.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

So knowing that, that's why we made the shift in 1990 to an intervention crisis intervention model, because it was more reflective of what we were doing. We weren't really there bargaining with people. I mean, if a guy, I mean, I helped the police department once on the guy that climbed up a radio tower and he was gonna commit suicide and jump, you know, and and you know the police want to say, you know, well, we got to bargain with this guy. So he's not there to bargain. Yeah, his life's falling apart, and he's thinking of killing himself. So he wanted cigarettes in that case. I said, Well, he's not there to trade something for the cigarettes. Number one, he doesn't have anything to trade. So, but if you gave him a few cigarettes, it really uh only served to show that you're there not to make to mess around with him or make his day worse. You know, you're sincerely genuine trying to help him. So these are the things we have to think about clearly. Historically, the police have embraced the quid pro quo bargaining model, but it it it's not always appropriate in you know, in a pure hostage situation. Yeah, if somebody uh has a very specific demand that they can't get on their own, you know, we don't give in to that demand unless they give us something back, but that's not mostly what we're dealing with. Very interesting.

Relationships, Trust, And Follow-Through

SPEAKER_00 36:08

So you definitely, you know, I'm let me bring it to lighter note a little bit on a business side, Gary. You know, business is all about people as well. We have the whether we're dealing with the vendors, we're dealing with the partners, we're dealing with the employees or customers, all around people, right? Most business owners never gonna deal with the serious enough of the situation that you you you you know had outlined, what you've gone through in your career, but a very smaller subset of it in negotiating with the people, dealing with the people, conflict, you know, conflict resolution or crisis resolution in a business. What are some of the qualities you think of that they need to work on at least build a little bit in themselves or or or you know, use that as a professional development so they can be better at the job, what they're trying to do? You know, it's uh any any uh a word of advice for those business leaders who are trying to do that.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

I think a lot of leaders feel pressure to project that they know everything and they're in charge and you know they're gonna make a you know really firm decision right away and so forth and so on. When I think really good, effective leaders, you know, bring in their team, they're open to ideas, they recognize good ideas from others and acknowledge it. That's a great idea, Joe. You know, let's I'm glad you brought that up. That's something we really need to consider, and I hadn't thought about that. Give your people credit, be open to their ideas and suggestions, be be aware that you may have to uh accept some criticism sometimes. That's okay. Learn from it, grow from that. So I think that's the important thing. Everything in business is is about relationships, it's all about relationships. And, you know, I think in business, too many people think in terms of is ours the most competitive price? Can I make a strong argument about our deliverables and the quality of our product? Well, that's all important stuff. But that ultimate decision may be made because that client has a good feeling that you're a good, honest company. And when a problem arises, you're gonna be on it and you're gonna fix it because problems always arise. They always do. Yeah, you know, and you have to say that's that's what you get with us. You know, we can't promise you there'll never be a problem, but we can promise you that we'll fix any problem that arises right away. And you've got to follow through on that, of course. But I think doing things that encourage input from the team, if you put all the burden of decision making and thinking about strategy on your own shoulders, you're you're selling yourself short when you have perhaps a much broader, talented team that can bring into consideration these different ideas. I tell several stories about that in in our work, where you know, sometimes you can get a really great idea from somebody that might be quite junior, but it could be like, oh my gosh, that's an epiphany. You know, that's why didn't I think of that? Yeah, that's fine. That doesn't say you're you're weak as a leader, you're you're actually strong from being open to those ideas. Now, there comes a time as a leader where you you can get into analysis paralysis. You know, there comes a time where I've gotten everybody's input and I appreciate your ideas and thank you for your candor and frankness, but this is my decision. And and that's fine. But as long as you've taken that prior step of giving people the opportunity to provide you with their ideas and thoughts, you know, people they just want to be listened to and understood and appreciated. You know, I I found even as a boss in the FBI, when you know, occasionally I'd have somebody come in with an issue or a complaint, I very rarely had to solve that problem. I just had to listen, you know, and and acknowledge and demonstrate that I understood what they were saying and and why it upset them or didn't meet their expectations, whatever it might have been. I mean, that's an important key. Um people, you know, want to be understood and they want to be appreciated and they want to work with people that they like and and respect.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Yeah, and it uh to your previous point, what you mentioned, being genuine and and everything, I think that that goes a long way. If you leading with example, that makes a big difference. And you know, how many I'm gone through so many business deals for the last 10-15 years, and even a client for 10-15 years, and and if I ask him, hey, what is something you can pinpoint why we work to start working together, it back to the same thing what you just mentioned, they kind of pinpoint what what uh what was uh you know, point when they made a decision, but it's how we presented everything, how how we you know came across, how we presented, how we explain things to them, and and that's what built the trust. And I think it's very hard to pinpoint what you just you know previously mentioned, but it's it's uh genuinely showing in trust on somebody's business and showing them, hey, listen, we you know, we can solve this problem together, I think goes a long way, whether it's with the client, with the customers, or with the business leaders, right?

Current Work And Icons Of Influence

SPEAKER_03 40:48

No, I know you're absolutely absolutely right. It's a little bit different from what you're saying, but I remember when I my children are all grown now, but when they were looking for colleges and I take them to different schools to look at and to consider, you know, each of them when they got to a certain place, they said, This is the place. Now, if you said, what is it about this college versus the other three we saw? It's hard to define. But there was an overall sense of this is a good fit for me visually, you know, academically, socially, it it just feels right. Yeah. And I think you can translate that to an extent in business. You know, I want to do business with, I mean, it's happened to me, you know, in in recent months, you know, where I've had competing companies bid to do some work for me at my house. And I've gone with a more expensive company several times because I had a better feeling about the quality of the work and the responsiveness, the way they talked to me, you know, the detail, the time they spent with me, the feeling that I got that you know they were approachable and open, and and I was I was hearing what I needed to hear from them. There's a lot of intrinsic value to those things, you know. And I think, yeah, I did consulting for quite a while, 10 years after I left the FBI, and I never lost a client after I had one, because I think the client said, yeah, yes, Mr. Finance Person, the other company is cheaper than the company Gary works for, but they don't have Gary. You know, and I'm not talking about me, I'm just using that as an example. That if you forge that relationship, there's a value in that. You know that you, you know, you you are the face of the company. They know if they have a problem, they're gonna call you up. You're on it, it's gonna get fixed. Hey, you know, that product that you that they said was gonna be here last week didn't show up, and I'm getting grief from my boss. What if, you know, can you do anything? I'm on it. You know, uh I don't know if I can make it happen right away, but they know they don't have to make six more phone calls. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna work all night and I'm gonna call them back and say, okay, here's what happened. You're gonna have it two days from now. Yeah, good, thank you very much. That's value in that. There's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Yeah, they attach value to the person, right? And rather than just the numbers, right?

SPEAKER_03 43:11

So yeah, I think so. I think so. Um, how many of us hate when we call someone on the phone, a company on the phone, and we get this automated, it just drives us nuts. We want to talk to a human being, and even when you get a human being, some of them are fantastic and some are bad. You can tell the ones that are well trained, they said, Let me get your number in case we get disconnected. I'm gonna call you right back, Mr. Nessner. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they follow through, they take your time, they absorb whatever frustrations you're manifesting, yeah, and they leave you with a good feeling. You know, and then you say, you know, I had a little problem with that, but I boy, they took care of it right away. I I think if I buy another one of these products, I'm gonna go back to them.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Yeah, I think it's little things that that can carry a lot of weight.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

Yeah, definitely, and and any business uh, you know. Business one listening or watching, they can apply that to the business, right? I think so. Where where are you spending more time and energy, Gary, these days? Uh I saw Jumpstart. If you walk us our audience through what jumpstart is about, or or where else are you spending time and energy these days, Gary?

A Practical Playbook: Restate And Reflect

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Yeah, you know, I I I I've cut way back on on working. I'm I'm exploring writing another book. I'm not sure if I'll finish it, but I've pushed it down the road a bit. I do some corporate speaking, not a lot of it, but I do a bit of it now. And and the the project that you just mentioned, Andy Prisco, who runs Jumpstart Mastery, uh, which you can find on LinkedIn or Facebook or just an internet search, he does a variety of different training things. But Jack Cambria, who headed up the NYPD negotiation team for many years, and myself, along with Andy, have just uh created a six or seven part series uh where we sit around at a table and we discuss important negotiation, law enforcement-related negotiation aspects, like this conversation. Some of it has applicability far beyond law enforcement, but it's mostly centered on the law enforcement experience. And I'm very proud of the series. And part of it, I think Jack and I are both getting a little older and we're saying, you know, maybe we have some experiences that are unique and you know need to be memorialized for maybe the next generation if they want to hear what some of the old timers went through and some of the key lessons we learned. Because some of that stuff gets lost through time, you know, some of the examples that drove us to embrace certain policies, some of those cases might not even be remembered by somebody who trained a year ago as a negotiator, you know. So having some of this stuff down. So that it's called the icons of influence, highly recommended. I think it's it's I think three of them have been released so far, and they'll release another one a week coming up here. But uh I'm quite proud of those.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Yeah, I'm gonna include a link to Jumpstart and your book below the video as well. But I listened to a couple of a couple of podcasts released on a jumpstart. I think it's a great conversation from Andy and you know, you know, you know, you guys have a tons of wealth of experience behind you know behind you in and and listening to that experience and learning from it. I think uh there's so much people to learn from. So I definitely recommend if people gotta go check out the podcast. There's so much to learn from the conversation with with uh three of you.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, it's um it was kind of a fun project to be involved in. Got it.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

So, business leader who are watching, who are listening to Gary, definitely gonna recommend they you know they they're gonna reach out to you. What's the best way to connect with you, Gary?

SPEAKER_03 46:33

Yeah, you I mean, I have a website, GaryNesner.com, that has contact information, but you know, I'm I'm happy to get a direct email just at gnesner at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

I will include that below the video with your website and the email.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

Sure, send me an email, and you know, I'm I'm certainly open to some speaking engagements, you know. Now at my advanced old age, I don't want to live on the road anymore, but I'm I'm happy to do from from time to time.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

You've done that for too many years, it looks like away from a family and just start traveling with the FPA.

SPEAKER_03 47:03

Yeah, yeah, exactly. My passport's been worn out many times.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

You know, I learned so much from you. Business owner or watching or listening, I will definitely recommend, you know, reach out to you, connect with you, and and uh, you know, it's uh you know, if you have a team around you and and having you as a speaker or talking to you, just having a conversation with you and and and their team, I think your their team's gonna learn so much from you, just you know, from your experience, from from all the expertise, you know, over the year, wealth of experience, the years of you know, working with that BI, I think there's so much to learn from you. Definitely business owners recommend highly connect with you and form a conversation and see where the conversation can take them.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

Well, thank you, thank you very much. I think um I think everyone in business and life should should strive towards uh working in a collegial cooperative atmosphere. And yeah, that doesn't just happen on its own. You have to put some effort into that, you know, hiring good people, making them feel they can grow within the organization and that their contributions are recognized and their opinions and thoughts are valued. Yeah. It it sounds like such a small and easy thing, but so many don't really do that adequately. And you know, they have high turnover. You want to you want to keep talented people and they have to have a reason to stay, you know, and you need to give them that.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

And communication skills, one of those areas, Gary. You know, there's you know, there's you know, you can spend as much time you can, there's always room to improve where you are in a communication, whether it's for the team, with your client, you know, and and these these things, you know, your experience definitely there's so many examples to learn from to you know build on our communication skills and and uh you know improve your organization and and go from there.

SPEAKER_03 48:41

And I if I did I leave, you know, as we wrap this up and I uh leave you know just a quick overview for any listeners. If if you are engaging with someone, an individual or team, when you communicate, when we say active listening, your responses should be a restatement of content and a reflection of feeling. So just remember those two things.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

So there's two parts of it. You know, when when you're telling me something that's important, a project you're working on, a problem you've encountered, whatever it might be, when I repeat back to you, I say, so let me make sure this is what happened, and this is this is the complication that you're trying to deal with. And the second part, and because this has happened, it's just driving you crazy and it's keeping you from doing your other work and it's upsetting and causing you not to sleep, and you know, making you work long hours and it's upsetting your family. If I get all of that right, you know, in my few words, then I really hit a home run with you where you're saying in your mind, yes, he understood me. He he written, I have to put it in my own words. I don't want to just be a mirror, although mirroring is a good technique, but I I want to put it in my own words to paraphrase what you've said. And it's a really powerful tool because I'm not saying I understand, I'm proving it, I'm demonstrating it to you. And and the other really nice piece of that is if I get it a little wrong, what are you gonna do? You're gonna correct me. Yeah, so now I know. So, well, you know, you're really you're really angry at your coworker. And you say, Well, no, I I'm I'm just frustrated. Well, now I know frustration is the key word that I have to respond to, you know. So you can't really fail, is what I'm trying to say. You make a good you show a good sincere effort. I I'm trying to understand you. Let me see if I've got this right. And it's it's just powerful stuff, and and it's so simple, and so many don't use it.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

I I gotta use it. I'm not using it. So so first the I want to make sure I get it right this time. So the two keys, one of second was a repeat the feeling, and the first one was restate the content.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

The story of what's happening, okay, and reflect the feeling and how they feel about it. You know, it's not just what happens to us in life, it's how we feel about it. So, you know, focus on those two parts, and you know, you stand a good chance of successfully capturing the issue at hand and how it's influencing or affecting the other person. So people want to be understood, they want to be appreciated, they want to know how it's bothering them. You know, well, you sent this person on that business trip, and I was kind of expecting to go to that boss, and you know, it really pissed me off, you know. Okay, so well, it sounds like I sent Joe on this trip instead of you, Mary, and and that you were expecting to go on that, and then and I guess I didn't appreciate that. And because of that, you're kind of really upset and you're angry at me. Is that right? Yes, you know, okay, that's fine. I haven't said you're right, you're wrong. I haven't said I'm a bad guy or you're, you know, I've just said, okay, that's what you came in to see me about. I got it. I got it. Now then you might move forward to saying, like, you know, now that I reflect on it, I I think you're right. I I forgot that you had wanted to go on that trip. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna put you in for the next really exciting trip we have. We got one coming up to Paris in two months. You know, would it help if you went on that one? Because I think you'd be great for that job. And I kind of let you down on this one, but uh I'm willing to help you, you know, whatever. And and what is she gonna do? Is she gonna say, Oh, he's a son of a bitch? No, she's gonna leave and say, Okay, I feel like he did something about it. He did something. I've been stewing on this for two days. Yeah, now I came into my boss, I got it off my chest, and it's no question in my mind that he understood how I felt about this, uh, about what happened. It's it's it's simple, it's simple, but it's powerful. It is, you know, there should not nothing about this should be phony. You you should do it in a sincere and genuine way because people can read that too. Yeah, you know, so yeah, those are just a quick tip on that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

It's that's a great trip tip. I just wrote it down. I'm gonna practice that, Gary. That's a great tip. I definitely recommend. I'm gonna I just wrote it down and I'm gonna practice that. But I think it's it's a great way of understanding people, playing it back, and and then you know, converting the feelings. Weird stuff. Thank thank you so much for time, Gary. It's my pleasure. All right, thank you.