The Art of Negotiating and Active Listening

Hey there, confident communicators. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson. Do you watch or listen to enough crime programming on television or listen to podcasts that you feel like you could walk into an interrogation room as that second cop and get the perp to confess? Or are you the negotiators speaking in the bullhorn to get the suspect to come out of the bank? Or I guess these days it's on a cell phone. Well, this week's guest was that guy, the guy on the cell phone, not the guy in the bank. And he has parlayed that particular talent into helping business leaders become better negotiators. But not in a bank heist, but in the boardroom or in front of a television news camera. So my guest this week is Scott Harvey. He is an FBI trained hostage negotiator who brings a rather unique perspective to crisis management or issues management. But before we get to Scott, I want to let you know that this week's episode is brought to you by the Confident Leader Network. It is the online learning platform for leaders who can learn about the how to's in communication, social media, and reputation management from the comfort of your own home or office. So don't spend all your time googling for answers on how to do something simple or asking a teenager for help who hopefully would have even the time to give you when they're not rolling your eyes trying to tell you how to use LinkedIn. Join the confident Leader Network for monthly trainings and live chats with me.

Foreign.

Scott. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

And already I can tell just by your accent, you are central rural middle America.

I am central Kentucky. Yeah. Proud born and. Or not born here, but pretty much lived here for 20 plus years, so they don't count me as a native Kentuckian, but I do.

Okay, well, we will too. Yes, but you served for a number of years with the, with the local police force there outside of Lexington, Kentucky, is that correct?

I did. Right in the middle of horse country. I served 20 years for the Nicholasville Police Department and retired in 2018 as a sergeant.

Okay, so you retired as a sergeant. So that tells me you have a lot of experience with a lot of different, oh, I don't know, very cops like experiences, would you say?

Yeah, I do. I did my time and I should write a book on the police stories. But the problem is most people wouldn't believe some of them.

Really. So. Well, just to pivot for a moment, what is A big action in horse country in Kentucky if you're a sergeant on a police force.

So the big thing we have here, like any city, is we have kids with a lot of free time, and that leads to a lot of car break ins, which are aggravating, but they're not a huge deal. But interestingly enough, just this morning I saw that one of our officers was involved in a shooting last night. And so first thing I started this morning was contacting a friend of mine, just checking to make sure everybody was okay. You know, those are the kind of things that kind of keep you up at night, that it is a relatively small town outside of Lexington, Kentucky, but anything can happen anywhere. And I know what that officer is going through or the officer that's managing the story, because that's what I used to do. And I know there's not been any sleep and there won't be any sleep for quite some time because, you know, police work, they say, is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. They're dealing with the sheer terror right now.

Wow, that is quite a 24 hours on that police force. Did everything work out? Those.

Everything is okay. Unfortunately, the person that they shot did not survive, but he was trying to, you know, kill another officer, and you just can't do that, so.

Oh, my goodness. That's. That's a news story.

Obviously it is a news story.

News story where you are in Lexington. Wow.

Yeah, it's a huge story.

Well, certainly that is an incident that illustrates, I mean, the high impact that you're going to deal with in the work that you do in law enforcement. I know a number of people who work in law enforcement in the FBI. As a little side note, I applied to the FBI and I got all the way to the end, but I had to move right when it was time that I could get. So in my. In my old life, I'm an FBI agent, very cool. But law enforcement, I find it. Well, one, of course, it's fascinating for its newsworthiness, but also, and the good work, obviously, that our officers do. But it is so high impact and you're dealing with high highs and low lows. And you just mentioned the monotony as well. And it's interesting how you have taken your experience serving on a police force and you've been able to transition it into a career where you, I assume, speak with a lot of business leaders, a lot of entrepreneurs, and you take that experience and you're able to help people become better communicators. Correct?

Yeah, that's what I do today. And I knew when I signed on at the Police Department at 23 years old that I knew I was signing on for a 20 year retirement. It's 25 now because budgets are getting tighter. But I knew at 43 that sit at home and collect a pension was never the plan. And that's a good thing because the pension is a nice check, but it's not enough to support a family. It's just not. And so I started about nine years ago speaking at conferences that I was already attending and doing some school assemblies to kind of build a business, get the boat closer to the dock, if you will, so that I could step onto it comfortably when I retired in 2018. So it was a process that, you know, took about nine years to get to where we are today.

Okay, and this is where we intersect. You worked as a pio, which is a public information officer. I did that for the federal government. So you did that on a local police force. But so you understand. The same thing that I understand is how critical working with the press, working with the media when an incident happens, how without it can really make an impact to a situation. So share with the listeners how you view that relationship with the press, whether you're on a police force or you're in a business.

You know, I always, as a public information officer, I always built relationships with the media because I saw us as being on the same team. They have a story to tell and, and I want to be one to tell it to them because what we dealt with in police world, there are, there are agencies who kind of do the no comment thing. Can you tell us about this story? No comment. Well, no comment makes me think that you're hiding something. And two, it doesn't make my story go away. As a media person, I have to get it. And so if we don't give it to them, whether it's our business or the police force or whatever, they're going to get the story. And I always say they get the redneck report if we don't give it to them. And the redneck report is the guy that was, the guy that was sitting on the porch didn't have a shirt on, didn't bother to put a shirt on before the news interviewed him. But he seen the whole thing and he's happy to tell even if he didn't see the whole thing. They have to have a talking head. And why would we not want to be the talking head? Why would we hide behind something even if we messed up? And I would Say, especially if we messed up. You can get a lot of public trust by getting on the news and saying we have made a mistake, we have trained on this and we're in the process of fixing this so this doesn't happen again.

Oh, of course. Now the redneck report. I'm trying to think what is the Midwest version of the met of the redneck report? What's the New England Boston version of the redneck report? But I understand they are going to get anything in the absence of an official spokesperson. They're going to find a non official spokesperson. That's just against what you're trying to accomplish.

Absolutely. And you know, there are people who say, well, we can't release what we know. I've done five minute interviews and not told them a thing. You know, case in point, we had, years ago, we had a kid who had made a list of people he didn't like and wanted to hurt at his elementary school. So this is like an 8 year old, right. But it was at the time when school shootings were all in the news, which is today and has been for the last few years. But we can't release anything on that because of the juvenile situation. But the media wanted a story and there was a story. So I got on the news and said, we investigate every threat to our students safety. We take student safety as a top priority for our agency and we will investigate and prosecute any crime that we find committed in our schools today.

You created your own talking point or you framed it how you wanted them to report it. That's interesting. Now you obviously couldn't speak about it in this case because it was a juvenile. But I know just from being a bit of a crime junkie that there are a lot of stories that happen when there's a crime. And the news, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, they want that story. And you cannot compromise a case by giving away too much information, especially if you have a suspect out there. I know that you know, because you're gonna have to get that information later in an interrogation. How can you take those types of tactics of saying everything while saying nothing? How do you transition that in the business world?

So in the business world, if you're dealing with a crisis type situation, and let's be honest, when our customers or our clients call us, it's usually not to tell us we're doing a great job. It's usually because they're in some type of crisis or having an issue with your product or your service. So we've got to Listen to them when they call. And we've got to not offer solutions in the beginning. One of the things as a HOSA negotiator that I learned very quickly is emotion and reason are on two opposite ends of a teeter totter.

We have emotion. Okay, Emotion of reason. Okay, I'm with you.

Emotion is on one side, reason is on the other. So when emotion is high, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm stressed, I'm whatever. Reason is low, which means they're incapable of hearing reason at that point. So as a negotiator, when I got on the call with somebody who was in crisis, I knew the first 30 minutes to an hour was not going to be pleasant. I was going to be yelled at, I was going to be threatened, I was going to be cussed at. But if I allow them to vent and use active listening, give minimal encouragers, all of that stuff, you can't maintain that level of high emotion for long. And if they actually feel like I'm listening to them through their venting, then emotion comes down and by extension reason comes up. We want to offer solutions in the beginning when they're not capable of hearing them. If emotion is too high, you can.

Use the teeter totter analogy. Oh, let me see. With teenagers with a partner or spouse you're arguing with.

Yes.

With a co worker, with a colleague. I mean there's so many places where you could use that.

Yes.

You mentioned the word active listening. So calm. Let's go back to negotiating heated in your previous world. What are some of the tips of active listening? Like what are you listening for while you're just letting the situation run out? Because obviously it's a timing thing too. Like you're just running the clock and you just want them almost to exhaust themselves. But transition that again into the real world, to the business world. How can you parlay hostage negotiation in day to day life?

So almost never the first thing out of somebody's mouth is their legitimate problem.

Oh, interesting.

If we start to try to solve that first thing, generally that's a symptom or an offshoot of the initial problem.

Okay, give me an example from law enforcement and then give me an example of a business like where someone would give you the false problem.

Okay. When I'm on negotiator and I get on the phone with somebody, their problem at that point is that they're in a situation they can't get out of and they make it the police's fault. You guys showed up, you guys are doing this, you guys. But that's not. That's what I can control as a negotiator. So I can say I can back some people up, I can give you some breathing room, and that immediately establishes me as the one who can help them. But that's not their problem. The problem started six months ago or six years ago when they started making poor decisions that got them to today. And so, from a law enforcement standpoint, let's not focus on today. Let's focus on how we got here and tomorrow, how we can keep from getting here again. Because one of the things we know in law enforcement is people who talk to negotiators, host negotiators. They have a high recidivism rate, which means they will do the same thing generally, again, because they're poor decision makers, they're impulsive, they have a substance abuse problem. And if we successfully negotiate, it worked. They survived. There wasn't a huge issue at the end. And they know that it's a way to get some attention and get some help because we will always take those people to help. And sometimes it's a cry for help that caused the recidivism.

Okay. And. Well, when you give them help, isn't it? You bring them to jail Sometimes.

Sometimes. Because sometimes, you know, we call it hostage negotiation, but it's the truth. Title is crisis negotiation. Because I may or may not have a hostage. I may be. And one of the big things is I may be suicidal. And I have barricaded myself in my house. I'm trying to do suicide by cop, which is where I point a weapon at an officer, hoping they'll shoot me because I can't kill myself. So those people may or may not have committed a crime, but they get immediately transported to a mental health facility where we can start the help train rolling.

Okay, so let's make it more, let's say low impact, and we'll bring it to a business situation or an organization or a company.

Right.

Give me an example of something similar where you have to talk a client off the ledge, so to speak.

So my favorite example, as everybody's favorite example, is I'm an Apple fan. I have Mac products, I have Apple. Everything Apple has, I use. One, because they work, for the most part, and two, their customer support is through the roof. So the other day, I was getting ready to do a student presentation that afternoon, and I got my MacBook out and started it up in the morning to run through the presentation, make sure it was going to work and it would not load. So I immediately go into this panic of, I have a show this afternoon. Now I keep two MacBooks because they can fail and I keep an extra one just in case. But then I was only down to one. So when I called customer support, I was in a tailspin of, I've got a presentation today, this has to work. And the fact that they talked to me like a human being and the lady on the other end actually said, that really sucks. And I'm like, it does suck. She goes, but I'm going to fix this. And the confidence that that gives me, my concern was, my computer isn't working. That's what I told her. But really the issue was, this is my business, this is my reputation, this is everything. And she pivoted it to say, this is now my problem and we're going to fix this.

Yeah, that's a great example. And as you were speaking, it's true. Like, active listening is so key. And when people just want to feel heard, I guess that the same could apply to employees. If you're a leader and you have an employee, and I hear employee issues coming up a lot more. Like, I was just in a workshop yesterday and now I do communication workshops. Media. I was doing media training and employees always come up. They worry about the press, sure. They worry about public opinion and their customers. But then now they're starting to worry about their employees. So if you're a boss, you're a CEO, you're an executive, and you have an unhappy employee walking into your office, you're going to employ the same form of tactics, correct?

Absolutely. And you have to listen not only to what's being said, but what's not being said. And one of the things that I did as a negotiator through, and it works in the business world as well, which is one of the great transfers is I do something called emotional labeling, where when someone is kind of frustrated venting, I might look at them and say, man, you sound really frustrated by that. And that phrase is key because I'm not saying, well, you're frustrated because that implies that I know what they're thinking. If I say, you sound frustrated by that, they may correct me and they may say, I'm not frustrated, I'm angry. Okay, now we know what we're feeling, we know the emotion, the emotion is valid. So let's kind of drill down and find out why we're angry. So my natural follow up question is, well, tell me why you're angry. And it may be the fact that I came in because I Didn't get the day off I wanted. And, you know, that put my family into this situation. That makes me feel like you don't care. And I don't even know if I want to work here anymore. And that's an extreme example. But those are the little things that turn into big things if we don't have the necessary conversations.

And it's so simple what you're saying. As I'm hearing you, of course, you focus on the word negotiation. Whenever anyone hears a negotiation, it's either hostage negotiation or sales negotiation or, oh, I have to negotiate to buy a car. But truly, negotiations come up in life constantly. You are constantly negotiating the situation. So you could take that formula and apply it to anything, really, in life and in business.

Correct. And I know the word formula comes up a lot. And to me, communication, if it was a formula, everybody would do it. And I know you didn't use that intentionally, but it's more of an art, and it's an art of listening. When we're looking for a new negotiator, we don't care if you can talk your way, if you can sell ice to an Eskimo. We care whether or not you can listen, because that's really what it comes. Because if you listen for what's being said, for what's not being said, you can help solve the problem. And that's really what we all do in business, is we solve problems.

And we solve problems. Oh, what an excellent message. Let me tie up a loose end. We were talking about the press originally, and I had asked you about not being able to tell an entire story, which in many cases, people legitimately can't do it because it might be private information, information that can't be shared, but there could be information that should be shared, but they just don't want to do it because they feel they don't have to.

Right.

Do you have any type of strategy for speaking with the press and speaking about an issue? And they're asking you a very direct question, but you don't want to answer it.

So here's one of the things that I learned. Almost never are you doing a live interview with the media. They happen, but almost never. And then they don't air the reporter's question if it's not a live interview. They air your response. They ask you a question you don't like, you can answer completely differently. And what we did as a police agency, and I think what we should do as business owners is reassure our customers, because they ask you a question that is Supposed to strike fear because as you said, if it bleeds, it leads. And we need to pivot that to reassure. We are looking into this. We are solving this issue. We care about our customers, our clients. And so this is priority one for us right now.

Oh, my goodness, that's wonderful. Now let's transition into another area of communication that I know is key, and I'm sure you know a lot about it, is social media in terms of messaging. 20 years ago. So when you were a PIO 20 years ago, I was a PIO 20 years ago. It was television, it was newspaper, maybe it was radio here and there. Social media was not there. And it's a completely different business now. Okay, tell me the journey now, how you've been able to transfer those types of strategies into social media.

So most of my law enforcement career I was in prevention focused areas. So I did patrol, I did hostage negotiation my whole career because that was an extra duty. But I was in crime prevention, so I was teaching the DARE program, I was supervising school resource officers, I was teaching our citizens police academy, I was organizing community events. All of that stuff. That was what we in the business world would call public relations. So I was doing all of that stuff. And the social media came out of all of my work with students because as they got involved in this, they're the early adopters, I gotta be relevant. And so I got involved in it. And for an extrovert like me, you know, it was just amazing. It opened up ways for me to help, for me to communicate, for me to track with people, because that's what I love doing, I love communicating. And social media was the next level communication for me. But it did vastly change the police world. It used to be a cycle of news where you were about every 12 hours there was a newscast. And now with 24 hour news, they expect updates at 1 o' clock in the morning. And with social media, you can give those updates and you can give them briefly. You know, even if it's something as simple as we've had to shut down this road due to a fatal accident, we'll notify you when it's open and we'll put that on Twitter from the police department. As soon as it's open, we'll let people know, you can reuse this area. It's back open again. So those are real time communication things that we just couldn't do 20 years ago. Mm.

Now all would you say that all businesses should have a relatively 247 presence on social media? And if they don't have a person, they should have some program in place or something implemented where people can get information from social media.

Yeah. Especially if it's a crisis. I think that, you know, if it's a, if it's normal everyday stuff, I'm fine that somebody uses a scheduler for their social media, so they're putting stuff out. You have to be careful with a scheduler, though, because if some tragedy hits and you're scheduled to make a joke about something six hours from now, that wouldn't be funny. After that tragedy, you can really get yourself into a public relations nightmare.

Oh, absolutely.

I think schedulers can cut both ways, but I think you have to be putting out content. One of my favorite Instagram accounts, believe it or not, is TSA Transportation Safety Administration, which is nobody's favorite time of travel. Nobody loves TSA when it comes to travel. I like them because I don't like blowing up on airplanes, so I'm a fan of what they do. But their Instagram account gives out all kinds of information. It's done with the appropriate level of snark and humor that shows they don't take themselves too seriously. And kind of in a joking way, they're just highlighting the fact that their agents are doing their jobs. And so when I go through tsa, I'm thinking of this account and I'm thinking maybe they'll find something that will help me and then they'll post about it in a. In kind of a funny tongue in cheek way, even though it's not funny. But in law enforcement, we, with the other officers, we would joke about sometimes things that the public wouldn't understand because that's a coping mechanism. You know, we saw the worst of the worst. And sometimes to keep from crying, you crack a joke.

You had mentioned tsa and I follow TSA as well. And one thing I admire about them and one thing I noted is that when you are a maligned agency, it's good to go with that tongue in cheek. Like, we get it. We understand that 90% of you hate us, but you only love us when you know when there's something happening at an airport. I know that experience just working at fema. I worked in an agency when everyone hated fema. So you understand that feeling. And I would assume on the police force it's quite similar. Everyone loves a police officer when you need them, but if you have to get somewhere and you get pulled over for speeding, then you don't like them and you need to have that type of humor show up or that understanding that shows up on social media. Right. And I think that's what that really sets apart, like a really clever social media team or person is when they understand who they are and what they represent. And if they can pull off tongue in cheek, it works well.

Yeah. And there are some agencies that are doing this really, really well. There are some people who are paying a lot of people to manage their social media. And I like that. But at the same time, you have to be careful with who in your agency is managing your social media. Because KitchenAid, a long while back during a presidential debate, tweeted something to the effect of even Barack Obama's mom knew it was going to be bad. So she died before the debate, which clearly was not KitchenAid. They took it down immediately. They apologized. It was the employee who thought it was their personal account. And as someone who managed both the police department and my personal Twitter account, Twitter makes it very difficult to see which one you're actually tweeting from.

Yes.

But the takeaway from that is if someone in your organization tweets with that level of snark, do you really want to give them the keys to your social media? Because that came from their public account. And so give people access, but make sure they're the kind of people that if they accidentally tweeted from the wrong account, would it undo your company? And I'm not blaming KitchenAid at all. That was in the early days of social media when we were all learning how to do it. And I think we have to extend grace to people who say we messed up and that will not happen again.

Yeah. And I think you heard a lot of those, you saw a lot of those social media blunders when I think people were trying to capture the snark in a clever way. And then it just, it lands with a thud. A very similar happened. A similar tweet happened with the State Department, I believe it was two years ago, where they had talked about traveling overseas and if you're not a 10, meaning looks wise. And I had tweeted something about it because I saw it right away. I went, oh, this is bad. And I knew, like, there's probably some 24 year old Internet. It would be funny. And it's funny. Then my Twitter blew up because Fox News picked it up. And then I called from Utah and said, I think you're on Fox News right now. But that was. Scott, you're right. That was the time that I think people were trying to claim that humor mantle. And then when it didn't work, they would Use the excuse. Oh, we thought it was personal, but many times I thought it was just unintentional humor that fell from flats.

Yeah. Or my favorite, our account was hacked. That was what everybody said about seven, eight years ago.

Yeah. And you can't do that anymore, can you? Yes. Yeah. You cannot do that. Yeah. Okay, so before we leave, I have to ask you one question. So we've started with hostage negotiation and how it can like negotiating with a teenager. Let's just talk about personal social media use, because I can't let a former sergeant go without asking this question. Especially since you're a resource officer. What would be some top tips that you could give parents, just from your law enforcement experience about social media use and safety?

Yeah, I think social media use for teens is not a right, it's a privilege. And we can't. You know, I had to teach my oldest to drive a car, which was very stressful. But we took those lessons very seriously because the consequences of crashing are serious. And we have to teach them how to navigate the world of social media and online communication because that's a very real part of their world and their future world. So we can't just not give it to them, but we can't just hand it over and say, good luck. There's an in between. And we have to have some parameters in place. And we extend the rope if they prove they're responsible. And we pull the rope back in if they show that they're not responsible. And they're gonna show at times they're not responsible because they're 13, 14, 15 years old. You know, we weren't responsible at that age, but we couldn't do it on a global scale like they can today. So one of the biggest things I tell parents is you're paying the bill for that technology, which makes it yours. You allow them to use it. We call it their phone, but in reality it's yours. And it charges in your bedroom at night. Because the studies are pretty clear, when that phone buzzes at 1 or 2 in the morning, your student will wake up, they will deal with drama because nothing good happens at 1 or 2 in the morning. They will come out of that deep sleep cycle that resets and wipes their brain from yesterday's drama. And when we're in a drama filled environment 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we are going to have increases in anxiety, depression. We're seeing PTSD diagnoses in middle and high school students because their brain never gets the eight hours it needs to rest. My phone stops making noise at 10 o' clock at night unless you physically old school, call me, if you text me, tweet me, whatever, I'll get it in the morning because I need the time to wipe the brain. And if I need it at 44 years old, of course my 14 year old needs it.

Oh, absolutely. Now, what about this is again the crime junkie in me? What about safety with kids and passwords and sharing passwords?

Yeah. So the understanding at our house is because it charges in our phone or in our room at night, my wife and I can access it. Now, that being said, I have a 19 year old also who's in college. Her phone does not charge in our room when she's at home for the summer. We stopped doing that about six months into her senior year because we let out more rope because she had been responsible. But that being said, I have all of her passwords to all of her social media in an envelope that she sealed, you know, straight out of the police world. Seal it, write your initials across it so, you know, dad hadn't messed with the envelope. And I explained to her, I said, God forbid, if you go missing someday, I want to be able to log into your social media accounts from my device and see who have you been talking to. What plans were you making? Because parents think I follow them. I know what's going on. You follow their public Persona, the real deal is happening in the DMs, on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. It's probably not Facebook if they're teenagers. It's probably Instagram, Snapchat, stuff like that. Those are only in an emergency. It's like the break glass in case of emergency thing. I tell my daughter, this is sitting here in my desk drawer. When you get married, you can come pick it up if you want. I hope you don't because there may still be an emergency that I have to locate you.

Oh, absolutely. And all of these stories that you hear in the news, you know, where someone goes missing and they can't find someone, and people immediately go to social media, they want to see the last post, the last public posts that they shared, you know, with their friends. And it's true, you cannot get to, you can't get behind the wall, so to speak. But what valuable intel, if anything happened to someone that you could find on the inside of a social media account? That's great.

Yep.

Okay. Well, Scott, fascinating. And it's, it's, it is fascinating how easily that, that you can take situations in law enforcement, real life or death, situations, but how simply and easily they can transition into the real world, into the business world, which is simple tactics such as active listening, understanding, showing empathy, showing where that, you know, understanding that you understand where that person is coming from and how they're feeling. And then working with that, like once you've calmed them down, it's really. Everything's a negotiation.

Absolutely.

Oh, fascinating. Well, Scott Harvey, thank you so much for speaking with me. If you want to reach out to Scott, of course there is your website, right?

Speakingofharvey.com that's where everything is happening. That's where the social media links are, that kind of stuff.

Okay. And also you have a podcast, the SpeakingOfHarvey podcast.

I do. That podcast is geared towards people who want to launch or grow a speaking business because that's what I've done as a side gig for about eight years and now as my full time business.

Oh, wonderful. Okay, well, good luck with all of that And Scott, thank you so much for sharing your information. Incredibly helpful for business people and of course, parents in this day of age of social media.

Thank you so much for having me. It was awesome.

All right, thanks, Scott. I want to thank Scott Harvey for joining me on the podcast this week. My goal for the next seven days is to be an active listener because I guess that's where the magic happens. And thank you for actively listening to to this podcast. And if you have a moment, check out the Confident Leader Network, that's confidentleader.network. or you go to my website, Molly mcpherson.comnetwork because that's where a lot of the magic is happening as well. Thanks for listening. Bye for now. Sat.