Getting It Down


Probably the most overlooked job on a negotiating team is the scribe’s. Let’s face it, the negotiator and the boss get all the glory; the scribe’s just a dude with a pen. But the scribe’s role is nearly as important as the others’, and in “real” life negotiations provides an important record to check the final agreement against.

A hostage situation can go on for several hours or even days; a few have lasted weeks or more. Negotiators spend a lot of that time talking, and even more listening. Even the best listener is going to forget what someone said ten hours before. A scribe acts like a combination secretary and historian, keeping track of anything significant.

A one-man negotiator can keep track of developments by taking notes as things proceed. Too often, though, the notes are overlooked in the heat of battle. Just as a hostage negotiating team must plan to make use of all its members, an individual must build in time to review his or her notes along the way.

A friend of mine recently completed a long series of negotiations for a contract to purchase property. The negotiations, which involved a lawyer type as well as my buddy, stretched over a period of weeks. They reached some broad agreements quickly, but with the legal beagle involved, there was some rather complicated work on contract provisions. Part of the negotiating was done by e-mail, which, along with various notes, provided a good record of what transpired.

Except that—you guessed it—the lawyer neglected to review all the e-mails and ended with a deal memo that skipped a critical point. Luckily, he had copied my friend on the e-mails. In his role as commander of the team, my buddy gave the negotiator a hot blast where it would do the most good, and the lawyer went back to work.

Had there been no record, it’s very possible they would have missed the point entirely, resulting in a great disadvantage to the buyers of the property. At best, they might have caught it at a later stage and had to reopen the negotiations. That might have cost several weeks of further delay as the point was bantered back and forth.




Negotiate and Win. Proven Strategies from the NYPD's Top Hostage Negotiator
Negotiate and Win: Proven Strategies from the NYPDs Top Hostage Negotiator
ISBN: 0071737774
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 180

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net