Connecting for Influence: Insights from Crisis Negotiation Leader Scott Tillema

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Negotiate Anything is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 3 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made it the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm Kwame Christian and I'm the director of the American Negotiation Institute. We're growing and I want to introduce you to our new team members and new trainers. This will give you new and diverse perspectives on negotiation and conflict resolution. And that's why Shane Martin, our head of sales and partnerships, is going to serve as co host of the show from time to time. We're excited to continue to provide you with the best content that will help to make your difficult conversations easier both at work and at home. Lastly, our team conducts negotiation and conflict resolution trainings in the United States and abroad. Our trainings will give you the practical skills you need to resolve conflict and negotiate, lead and persuade with confidence. Click the link in the description below to learn more about how we can make your difficult conversations easier. Scott, thanks for joining us today.

Hi, Kwame, great to be with you. Thanks for the invitation to join you and your listeners today.

Yeah, it's my pleasure, my friend. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. My name is Scott Tillema. I'm an active duty law enforcement officer in the Chicago area. I'm a senior associate with the Negotiations Collective and faculty member with the Schronner Negotiation Institute.

Fantastic. And listeners, Scott has been a friend for a very long time, and I am so excited to have him on the show today because he has an incredible wealth of information and an incredible framework that he's going to share. And a great TED Talk links to everything that he just described and the TED Talk in the description below, below. He's too humble. He wouldn't admit it, but his TED talk is, what, 2 million views now?

Not quite. We're working toward that. Working toward that.

But thanks for joining us, man. I guess we should just start off with the framework. Your new framework. But not just what the framework is, but what led you to try to create a new approach to handling these difficult conversations.

Right. So I worked as a crisis and hostage negotiator with a regional SWAT team in the Chicago area for about seven years. And I was trained by the FBI in 2007 and taught the FBI methodology, which is kind of the gold standard for hostage and crisis negotiators. The FBI behavioral change staircase, which should be familiar to most police Negotiators and many negotiators beyond that, which relies heavily, you know, on their steps of active listening, empathy, rapport and influen and then behavioral change. And that's good and terrific. And as I've been teaching law enforcement across the country, I have a bit of a different approach. Number one, I'm not with the FBI, so I don't want to be teaching their stuff since I'm not federal law enforcement. But I see this differently. And I think that it is so important that under stress we have a mental model that we can lean on to help us find success in negotiations. That I take more of a principle based approach, which is a circular model different from the stairs. And I think that even that small change is an important difference in that if you look at behavioral economics, they'll tell you what you see is all there is. And if you are, like me, the type A personalities, your goal is to get to the top stair and there's five stairs. I am going to run up there as fast as I can and I'm probably going to skip a couple stairs on the way because I know what the goal is. So a subtle change in how we view it is that we're going to go around and around the circle and we're going to touch on each one of these four principles as we go around. And what that circle signifies to me, this is the bond that we create. And sometimes negotiators flip out when I tell them this, but I say, your goal is not to free the hostages. Your goal is not to get the person to drop the gun. Your goal is to create a bond and a connection with that person. And once you have that, then you're going to have influence.

Oh, this is great. This is great. And you know what's really interesting? It reminds me a lot of the Carl Rogers approach to therapy, if you're familiar with that. Because his approach to therapy was really revolutionary. Because everybody's saying, okay, we want behavior change, we want people to start thinking in a different way, we want them to start acting in a different way. We're trying to get to some specific destination. And his approach was unconditional positive regard. So we're going to try to create this relationship. And the behavior change needs to be completely owned by the other side. And it will happen if it does happen through the relationship. But you focus on creating that connection. And so it's almost like by not focusing on the outcome, you achieve the outcome that you're looking for. Right?

And it's about the mindset and the process that we are not trying to get to this goal, we're creating this connection. And I'm asked to keynote and train for groups outside of law enforcement in sales. For example, I just did a sales keynote and I titled the keynote don't sell. I don't want you to sell and come in with that goal. I want you to connect and create that bond and then you're going to get those results that you're looking for. And I don't know, maybe they shouldn't take advice from me since I'm not in sales and I don't know anything about what they do. But. But it's just this different perspective. And I think, Kwame, especially right now, it's 2021. We've been living through this pandemic, through this lockdown, and the rules have changed. I mean, number one, we are just seeking connection. We're isolated and we're separated from each other. And that's what people want. We want to connect with each other. But also, I'm finding out in the field we are incredibly resistant to pressure and people telling us what to do. And I think the high pressure approach and these quick sells is really not going to work in this new era where we're all fighting for autonomy, we're all kind of fighting for freedom. We're pushing back to say, I don't want to wear the mask. I want this freedom to travel to a different state, to a different country. And we still can't do this, you know, a year and a half after this pandemic started. So we have to be so sensitive to autonomy and people's freedom to choose and allow them the freedom to choose. So I really, really push, let's be respectful of that and let's create that connection. Let them know that I'm working with you and we're working together to get to this outcome.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I think about it almost like Newton's law where they say every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A lot of times, the harder you push, the harder the resistance.

Right. Particularly now, nobody has patience anymore. And we're seeing that watch the viral airplane videos, you watch the kids little league games. We're collectively getting worse as a society. And this is why now more than ever, we need the skills of listening and connection and trying to understand each other and being good people.

Absolutely. And now so listening, connection, understanding each other, good people. It's. Everybody can say as they listen to that, they say, you know what, I got that we could do that, and then you see them in action and then they're not doing that at all. So where's the disconnect?

I think that people who study this, there's always a knowledge gap between the people who know this and the people who can put it into practice. So I like working with folks to say, let's get good at self control. And everybody complains in negotiation that, you know, it didn't go well because you're a jerk or you're a difficult person.

And.

And that's not the case at all. When we work with negotiators, say, let's start with you, let's see what you can control. Because were there pieces that could have gone better? What you said, how you said it, what you didn't ask, what you should have asked. And I think that working on ourselves is obviously the most important first step in becoming a great negotiator and being a really good person.

Absolutely. And what do you think it is that makes it so difficult for people to go through that introspective process and hold themselves accountable for their performance?

Because we're always right. We're always right. Nobody looks at themselves and say, you know what, I'm wrong about this, or my views are the ones that are irrational here. I think that it's really, really difficult because ego gets in the way. And I see that with negotiators that people don't want to focus on building their communication skills because we have this belief that, that since we are always communicating, that we must be really, really good at it and compare that to a different skill that we never work on, say, a sport that you might play or a hobby that you might have. You don't spend much time working on that. So, you know, when you're dedicating time to this. But I don't need to dedicate time to be a great communicator because I've communicated all day and I must be very good at it. So we don't see the need to. To practice or get the coaching and the feedback that really would make us much better.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And you think about the 10,000 hour rule that was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. He's citing. I think the researcher's name is Anders Ericsson, who created, who did this study on mastery. And so the thing that people often miss is the fact that it's not just 10,000 hours. It's. It's 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. And deliberate practice is going through the activity with the intent of getting better through the process. And so it's like you said, Scott, to that point, when you are communicating all the time, you're you've logged more than 10,000 hours, but it certainly wasn't deliberate practice. Right. And so those two things are different. Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more. And now back to the show.

Right. We talk in negotiation and crisis and hostage negotiation about the eight skills of active listening. But how many people use any of these really well established principles in the conversations? They have to identify emotion and to have pauses and to be curious with compassion, as you would say, and ask these great open ended questions and we just don't do it and we need to be better at it.

Absolutely. And so let's, with the remaining time left, let's walk through your unique approach to handling these difficult conversations. And I think as we go through it, it'll be helpful to show people that your approach, even though it comes from your crisis negotiation and hostage negotiation background, it can be used in all types of difficult conversations too.

Of course. And regardless of what field you might be in out there right now, I think that this has applicability to the work that you do. And none of these four principles are unique to me, but I'm putting them all together in a way that hasn't been presented before. So the four principles and under stress, it's tough to even remember four principles. So I just use four wor. It's understanding, timing, delivery and respect. So we begin by always working to understand. The timing piece is knowing when to deliver the message, which is your strategy. And we can have a great strategy, but so often the timing gets messed up the delivery. The point here is it's not what you say, it's how you say it. That we are emotional beings and we create feelings in each other by how we deliver the message and the content of it. We practice and prepare Already. But it's frustrating to learn that sometimes that's not very convincing to people. Facts and figures. And the fourth piece, respect, going back to what you mentioned a little bit earlier, truly being respectful of people all the time. And in respect, it's about more than just being respectful. It's about really appreciating fairness and how it's seen to the other side, appreciating autonomy and having that empathy and perspective. So I know that it's a fair deal from my side, but maybe I'm not communicating it well or maybe you just see it differently. So I work through the principles of understanding, timing, delivery and respect. And we just kind of go around and around, keep touching on these four areas. And this is what's going to lead us to a really strong bond. And that's going to give us the influence that we're looking for.

Nice. Okay, so when we talk about understanding, let's break that one down.

Sure. So traditionally the crisis and hostage negotiators work by telephone. So that's the first step in the FBI behavioral change. Staircase is active listening. And I think if we could go back to the 80s when this was created, or the 90s when this was created. And we asked Gary Nestner and some of the folks that put this together, I think what they mean to say is we want to understand what the problem is. So we want to be good listeners and that's important. I don't want to take that away. But now it's 2021. Look at how communication has changed. I have had zooms with people all over the world already today. And you and I can see each other face to face. So it brings in more than just skills over the phone. Let's begin with the nonverbal attending to make sure that the person can see visually. Hey, you're here, you're engaged with me. And that's a critical start. But on top of the active listening skills, are we studying gestures and body language and expressions. There's so much information that we can gather from what we see versus what we hear. And this is all available to us now. And these are skills that negotiators from decades ago didn't need to consider if they're doing their work over the phone. And we're moving from these sales calls to these sales zooms. So I challenge people out there. Are you taking time to study the non verbals? And the reason that this is so important is because when we have a disconnect between what we see and what we can hear, we will always Default to what we see. This has been ingrained in us since before language came around. We are just conditioned to believe what we see. And in my trainings, I'll do exercises with people so they can see something and know that they see it right. And then they're heartbroken to find out that what they thought was right was completely wrong. And I present to them, this is the bias that we have that we believe ourselves and we know that we're right. Would you have taken time to explore this situation if you knew that you were wrong? So it really creates a mindset of humility to think, you know, what I'm interested to know about you? I want to learn about your situation because I want it in your head. What if you're wrong? What if my belief isn't correct? And if I can open up my mind to gathering this information? That's when we become strong negotiators. We become powerful with information and options. And this is how we're gathering this before the negotiation starts and throughout the negotiation. This is just of significant importance. So I think that in the behavioral change staircase, if we could update that from active listening to just working to understand the situation using all the information we have now, we're really incorporating what it takes to be an effective negotiator in the modern day.

It makes so much sense, Scott, because what you're saying essentially is that we. With the behavioral staircase model, you are almost limiting yourself to a certain specific kind of information, just listening through your ears and nothing else. But what you're recognizing here is that there are significantly more. We're dealing with a diverse data set. I think that's a good way to say it. Where we have. We have what we can see, what we can hear, and then we can also do research before we meet with the person, Especially in the business world, we can educate ourselves and get a deeper understanding by opening our minds up in a different way. Right.

We can't solve the problem if we don't know what it is. And I think that that's what you instruct as well in your approach to negotiations. And I think that this is just where we need to begin to set our egos aside and say, you know what, I might be wrong, or I'm curious, and this is what's going to make us creative to not close you down and say, well, I already understand your situation. You know, I really don't. We're not teaching anyone to say, I understand. That's a. That's a huge error. Let's not say that and say, help me understand. Tell me more.

I like that. Yeah. Just. Just the humility. And what's funny is that you're right. We don't understand. I mean, you've been married for a while. I've been married for a while, too. We're learning things every day about our spouses and vice versa.

Right. And I'm still really bad at it.

Right? Exactly. Exactly. So if we're meeting somebody else in the business world, it's going to be very difficult for us to understand them. So I really like that humility that comes with it because that can drive our curiosity. We'll seek to learn more. If we already. If we recognize, hey, we. I don't understand now. And it's impossible for me to have a full understanding, but I'm going to try my best.

Right. And I spend so much time on this piece, not so much telling people how to understand, but showing them example after example how we can be wrong, what we believe. And even when I see it, hey, we might be wrong to really put the brakes on to say, all right, I am going to take this to heart. And instead of going into problem solving first, which is what we all want to do, let's save that for later.

I like it. And now, when you're talking about timing, I'm so glad that you included this in your methodology, because I think this is. It's underutilized and underappreciated when it comes to the delivery of a message. So what is it that we need to know with regard to timing?

I think this is the strategy piece. And everybody in preparation say, here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to do it. But they mess up the timing. And I think back to a negotiation where I was talking with a man who said to me, I want to kill you or I'm going to kill you. And those of us who are married, this is not an uncommon phrase to many of us, but this guy's legit. You know, he's got a gun in there. And all of a sudden we're hearing bang, bang, bang, and the SWAT team's calling out, hey, there's shots fire. I said, you know, I get that. I'm hearing that. Would this be. I know my goal in the negotiation is to get him to come out, but is this the time to say, hey, I want you to surrender and put the gun down and come out? Of course not. Because he is not at a place where he can even hear me. You know, he's under so much stress that he feels the need to fire a gun. And again, we want to go back to understanding and say, you know, how we was this helpful to you, you know, and understand what he's trying to do. And I can step back and see that he's just trying to take control of the situation and assert some control. Because you can see as the SWAT team showing up, you're starting to lose your autonomy and your freedom to do what you want to do. Or a hostage negotiation that we were part of talking to the hostage taker. My partner was talking to him, and as she was talking to him, he's actually vomiting when she's doing the negotiation. And nobody in the team was concerned that maybe he had a stomach bug or a variation of COVID It's a manifest of the stress. So are people in a position to hear your message? Are they still waiting to talk? Are they not interested? So we have to make sure that we've developed some type of relationship with them, that we, number one, that we have their attention, which is so difficult to get right now. I hear our attention span has gone from 18 minutes to 2 minutes to about 4 seconds right now. Once we have someone's attention, then we can deliver the message. And I think that Cialdini's book Pre Suasion really kind of speaks to this to say, let's get the timing right. Let's get them in the mindset so they're open and willing to hear our message and have it be effective.

And now people can understand that part. But how do you, as an expert communicator and negotiator, know that you have their attention and know that they would be receptive to a message?

I think when they start, the relationship changes. And sometimes I can be the one who's talking and I need to be monologue, because they're not talking, or sometimes they're the one that's talking. They're coming at me, and they've got a lot to say, and they're just giving me the emotional diarrhea of everything. All their grievances up and down. But once this starts to turn away from two monologues and into a dialogue, and we start to exchange thoughts and have thoughtful dialogue, that's when we start to turn the corner into becoming more of a trusted advisor, because we don't listen to strangers, we don't listen to people we don't know. We take advice from people who are kind of in our circle, and we can build that rapport fairly quickly. And Once the emotions come down a bit and we're not up and down, up and down, and we kind of get into a middle zone and the dialogue begins, that's when we can start exchanging ideas and start maybe giving that nudge or suggestions or asking important questions about where they want to go. And how does this deal look to you?

Very nice. And so let's say hypothetically, you're in a conversation, it was a monologue, somebody was highly emotional. And then you see the level of emotionality start to go back, go down. They're starting to listen a little bit, becomes more of a dialogue, some reciprocity in the communication style. And then you give a suggestion or you try to move them a little bit, but they become instantly defensive and it seems like they revert back to that emotional state. What do you do in that case?

That might be a really nice time to throw an emotion label on there. Hey, you sound really upset. And it's not against the rules to apologize in a negotiation. Kwame, you seem really upset and I want to apologize. If I've offended you, can you share with me what I said there about that upset you? And again, I'm opening the door to having that communication. And really I'm just gathering more information because that's not a bad thing. If I get a reaction out of you, that means that there's something there that's important to you and I might not yet understand what it is. And we all want to be understood. We want to have this connection. So I'm inviting you back into the relationship and taking a humble approach. You know, I apologize if I upset you here. Could you tell me more about why this is upsetting to you or what. What did I do so. So I don't make that mistake in the future and be open to being educated by that person. That'll bring them back into the dialogue.

See, this is great because it still is within your. Your model. Right? Because you're recognizing. Okay, so timing. I thought I had it. Maybe not the right time. I'm going to apologize. I'm going to reset and go back into understanding mode. Right. I think it's brilliant. And the thing that's great about this too is the fact that you recognize how important an apology can be. A well timed apology, and it's so strange. I don't know if you've seen this, but there seems to be a lot of reluctance in the business world to expose yourself to that level of vulnerability and apologize. I do not understand it.

I think that especially in my world, in law enforcement, we are taught early on, I am in command and you are the person in control. And what's unique about crisis negotiations is it's tough for us to admit this, but we're not in control of what's happening in there. And I think that when we acknowledge that to people say, you are in control in there and we are not, but maybe set some boundaries to that too and say, but we are in control out here. And I find that being a little vulnerable with people is really connecting to say, you know what, I'm a little anxious too. You know, I'm a little worried about this too. You're not the only one that's concerned about what might end up with this negotiation, if it's going to go good or bad or different, that I'm concerned too. And having that openness and being a real person is so important to having that connection. Because the authority driven negotiations, I just don't see how that's going to be helpful to us moving forward.

No, absolutely not. And going back to what you kept on talking about with autonomy and control, what I've recognized is that the more you try to just force somebody to flex your level of control, the more resistance you get. And if you are able to bully them across the finish line, you don't have a deal that's self enforcing. Because they will remember that and they will find ways to get out of that deal to reassert their control over their life in some way down the road.

Of course we'll all say yes, I'll say yes just to make you go away. But what happens next? What happens next?

Exactly.

So moving into the third principle, then we move from timing to answer your question in a different way. Maybe I set that person off or I got a bad reaction because of how I presented that. So we think about delivery in how physically are we going to do that? And sometimes in my line of work it's got to be with a bullhorn, which is horrible for actual communication. But I want to make sure they hear me and you know, for everybody else out there. Are you using email when it should be a phone call? Are you in zoom when it should be in person? So let's think about the different ways to actually engage. And for me, I've got a terrible poker face. My friends all want to play poker with me because I love to flash a smile when I'm amused or excited about something. So that's a huge vulnerability for me. So why not use the phone if I'm going to be giggling over here like a child, you know, so also in delivery, though, I think the components to have a terrific gold star delivery is the rate, the rhythm, the pressure, the volume, and the tone of what we say. And in my line of work, we can cheat a little bit because I have a real life coach. When I'm talking, I'm looking right at you, Kwame, and you are doing nothing but coaching me. So you can give me these signs to, hey, slow it down a little bit. Hey, take the pressure off a little bit. You know, come down on the volume. And you might not be able to do that if you're sitting at the big table in the corporate world. That's why coaching is so important that you get yourself a coach. So you can kind of regulate some of these factors. But the rate, if you're going too fast, people aren't going to believe you. We just don't have time to process this. But if you're going too slow, you've lost their attention and now they've wandered off. And the pressure indicates you're stressed when there's pressure behind the words. And not only are we regulating that in ourselves, but I'm studying that in you. All of a sudden, the pressure came off. All right, what just changed? I have moved into a nice world of comfort with you. What changed and what got us there? And we need to be curious about. Okay, there's a change here. And I have to notice that both in what I'm doing and what you're giving back to me and say, now, can we explore this further? Maybe we found ourselves the path in. So I think that if we are really disciplined in these different aspects of how we say what we say, we're going to create comfort. And once we get comfort, people start saying things that they probably shouldn't be saying in negotiations, which gives you a huge advantage.

Absolutely. Something that I've started doing, Scott, is that when I'm having difficult conversations with friends, family, or staff, after the conversation, I have started to ask for feedback. So I started to say, how did you feel during the conversation? How was my delivery? Did I make you feel safe? Was I a bit too harsh in that regard? Insanely humbling. Incredibly humbling. But it was very important for me because in the business world, you can give me a really dirty, nasty negotiation. I love it. It's fun for me. I can regulate my emotion. It's fine. But if it's family, it's so hard.

Because it's closer, because it's all emotion. We have these emotional connections with the family. And I like how you phrase the question. How did that make you feel? Is very different from, are you okay with that? Very different from, do you like this? Or anything else that doesn't touch on the emotion piece. How does that feel? Well, I'm a little uncomfortable by that. Since we make decisions based on emotion heavily, that's the question we should be asking about the feelings or do you agree with this? You're asking cognitive questions rather than emotional questions, and that's where we're going to get our deepest insight. So use that every time. I'm going to steal it. How does that make you feel?

I like it. Thank you. Yep, yep, yep. And then lastly, respect. Now, this one is very intriguing to me. So tell me what you mean when you say respect.

Everybody kind of skips this one because nobody says, you know, I'm actually a disrespectful person, or nobody says, you know what? I guess that if you have certain views that are different from mine, I can see how I can come off as being disrespectful. So you think about respect and everybody's, yes, sir, no, ma', am, and that's good. We'll start with your manners and being polite. But if you think back to the last time you were disrespected, you don't have to go through a lengthy process to say, all right, I'm thinking about what you said, Kwame, and how you said it and our relationship and who is listening. And after conducting this analysis, I've in fact, concluded that, yes, in fact, you have disrespected me, because we just. Boom. We know it right away. We know as soon as we were disrespected because it's emotion. It's how we feel. So what I teach on this is we are going to be disrespectful to people, and you don't mean it. And I spent some time instructing and teaching and speaking in Europe, and sometimes I'm in countries where I don't know the language and I don't know the culture. And I am that guy. I am that guy at the grocery store who doesn't know what question they just asked me. And I'm just handing them all the money I have and hoping that somebody helps me here and puts my groceries in a bag. And I don't mean to be disrespectful to them. I just don't quite get it. So let' swhen we encounter disrespect, let's first assume positive intent and have A positive mindset about it. When somebody gets your name wrong, mispronounces it, types it wrong, let's assume that I didn't mean to disrespect you. And if we assume positive intent and we move forward in a way that helps them save face, that when we get to closing this deal, we can still be in a good position because I don't want you worrying about me throwing it in your face when I didn't like what you said or you didn't like what I said. We don't want that because that gets in the way of a good, positive agreement. So let's work through disrespect in a positive way. But also, this is about fairness, making sure that people are being treated fairly. And I like to use the example of the prisoner dilemma to say, here's a whole bunch of money on the table, and you have to make an offer to the other team and they accept it or they don't accept whatever your offer is and you get what you keep and they get whatever you offered. And it's fun in a group because some people say, well, I'll just offer half, and that should be acceptable. But some of the tough negotiators say, well, I'm not going to offer them half. I'm going to offer them a little bit because they should say yes. And then the other team says, well, I'm not going to accept anything but a huge majority because I'm in charge here. And it comes back to it's not fair. Fairness gets in the way of the decisions we make. We know that logic and reason says, well, you know, really, if you want to give me some free money, I'll take whatever you want to give me. You want to give me 100 bucks, great, I'll take it. Nice knowing you, and here we go. But when fairness gets in the way and fairness gets triggered, we have real problems in our decision making because we will go to the ends of the earth to say, I will ruin my credit rather than paying this bill because I am being charged and it's not fair to what they're doing to me. So I'll let the house go up. I'll take on every lawsuit because it's not right. And we get this fairness piece, stock and other principles within respect, the autonomy piece, which we spoke on a little bit, and empathy and perspective, taking this all goes to creating an environment of being respectful of people who are different from us. And really, if you are so powerful and you are in control of everything, you wouldn't need to negotiate with me. You could just go do whatever it is you want. But let's be respectful of our negotiation partner. I am working with you so we can get to the agreement that we can't get separately.

Yeah, this is great. And I think one of the most important things for people to recognize is that people will perceive fairness very differently. And it circles right back to understanding, too, because we cannot assume that we would understand their conceptualization of fairness in this particular instant.

Right, Right. Let's be appreciative of the other side. Let's say, hey, share with me. Tell me this. And this is when the relationship grows, and we just keep going around and around back to the understanding, timing, delivery, and respect. And there is no end game here. We're just going to continue to go around and around. And once we have that connection and that bond, then we become influential. Now we're open to hearing that. Okay, here's what your interests are. Here's what you believe. Here's what you want to get in your company individually, in the world. Here's how I might be able to work with you as a partner to help you get exactly what you're looking for.

I love it. This is great. This is really, really great. And Scott, before you go, I want you to tell the listeners about the amazing work you're doing with police departments all around the country. Yeah.

So I love teaching negotiations, and I know that over the last year and a half or more that police department budgets have been cut and they've never been huge to begin with. And I feel that as someone who does law enforcement training, I know how important training is, and I know that that's the first area that gets cut when money is tight. And if we want business better law enforcement, which is what everybody can agree on, we want skilled, talented people out there doing good work, then we have to give them the training they need to be successful in their work. So, appreciating these different perspectives, what I'm doing now is I am teaching and training law enforcement officers in crisis and hostage negotiation. And I've put on some seminars for law enforcement across the country, and I enjoy doing this. And now more than ever, it's difficult for law enforcement to get access to good training. So what I want to offer today to one of your listeners out there somewhere that we're going to offer for law enforcement, a full day of verbal influence negotiation training for free. And this is going to be in honor of the American Negotiation Institute and your podcast that we're going to Offer this to anybody who wants to reach out and says, hey, I'm with a law enforcement agency, and I want to organize this somewhere in America, somewhere that I haven't been. Let's pick a state that I haven't been to. And we're going to do a full day of training for free. This is going to be sponsored by Negotiations Collective, the group that I'm with. Sponsored by American Negotiation Institute. If you're out there listening and you think that this is something that can benefit you, I want you to reach out to us and connect with us and say, hey, I want this class. And we're going to put this on somewhere. It's going to be for free. You don't have to pay for me to get there. You don't have to pay to attend. Let's get a great room. Put as many people in the room as we can bring in. And this will be for active duty, sworn law enforcement, folks. Come on in. And we're going to spend a great day talking about negotiation and how you can be better at what you do. And this is just a small piece to the puzzle, but hopefully something that Kwame and I can bring to all of you to say we are getting better at what we're doing and making the world a better place through negotiation.

Love it. Thank you for making that offer, and thanks for including us in that, too. It is just an honor to help share your work. So thank you for that.

And everywhere I go, I should mention that when I'm putting on these seminars, and just two weeks ago, I was in Texas at the Texas association of Hostage Negotiators, and one of the seminars I offer is negotiations PhD. All the people and resources that you need to know. And, Kwame, please know that I always share your work and your podcast and your framework of compassionate curiosity and your books with everybody, because you have been very impactful in my development. I remember you and I talking back in 2017, I mean, many years ago. I've been listening to your podcast since then, and the influence that you've had on me has been tremendous. Introducing me to some of these people and sharing these resources with me. Now I just see it as a way that I can give back to all the people who are out on the front lines. So please know that your work has been saving lives across America as I share the work that you do with the people who are on the front lines.

Oh, man, you got me. Thank you. Glad to help. Oh, man, that's good. Goodness gracious. That means a lot. Well, I'm glad that we ended the interview.

See this? We're not cutting that part out. This is the effective pause. This is the effective pause. We're not going to fill it. We're just going to let you enjoy that emotion. Wow. Because, I mean, there's many people out here who've been following your podcast from the beginning, and for you, it probably becomes routine. Here's another guest on your podcast. Here's some Scott guy. Okay, fine. But this is significant work. And there's people who have been following your work that have been finding success in whatever they do in sales and leadership and influence. This work applies to all of us. We are dealing with people. We are all dealing with people. And there's a reason that this is the number one podcast in the world in the negotiation field. And you should be proud of what you've done here. And I can't wait to continue learning from you and learning with you.

Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to open automatically, get the latest episodes of the show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later, Sam.