Listening for Emotions

In a negotiation, a negotiator has to listen for several things at once:

• Verbal content

• Emotions

• Values

Every sentence that comes out of a person’s mouth contains two different types of information. There’s the verbal content: the literal meaning of the words. Then there’s the emotional content: the meaning that comes from the way a person expresses it. A lot of times emotions tell you more than the words themselves.

Listening for the subject’s emotions is very important in a hostage situation. For one thing, they can be a clue to their personality and mental state. But more important, listening to a person’s emotions gives you a way to establish a rapport and to communicate with them. Without that basic rapport, there is no sound basis for emotions. In most cases in a hostage situation, a connection is established emotionally first.

Emotional communications are important in other negotiations as well. If you’re negotiating a curfew with a teenager, believe me, 95 percent of what that communication is about is emotion; rely solely on verbal content and you’re going to be grossly uninformed.