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Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

Discover how to build a winning team and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report, Team Building Strategies for Your Organization, from Harvard Law School.

Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill

Negotiating skills for team building, drawn from crisis negotiation and hostage negotiation scenarios.

By PON Staff — on April 30th, 2024 / Crisis Negotiations

When involved in a crisis negotiation, hostage negotiators stress is the importance of discussing the “drill”—goals, ground rules, and operating principles—with their team before beginning talks with a hostage taker.

Such negotiation teams are likely to commit to working together as slowly as needed to resolve a standoff. This type of agreement can serve to head off sudden actions from team members.

In our article, Team Building: The Importance of Staying on Message , we discuss preparations teams undertake when preparing for critical negotiations, and crisis negotiation skills such as appointing a negotiation leader, allocating negotiating roles and responsibilities, and developing negotiation strategies and negotiation techniques to be employed at the bargaining table. Such preparations also should stress the importance of the negotiation team to “stay on message” in negotiation scenarios .

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It also helps the group present a united front if outsiders, such as police chiefs and politicians, grow impatient and try to speed up the process. In other words, negotiating teams should make sure individuals do not contradict group consensus during talks at the bargaining table. One negotiation example from real life that is cited in “Team Building: The Importance of Staying on Message” is US President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign’s efforts to keep his media team “on message” during the contest with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

When organizing your own team negotiations , be sure to take a moment to discuss ground rules and common objectives. Such conversations will save time in the long run by promoting team unity and efficiency. In our article, Hostage Negotiation Tips for Business Negotiators , we outline some of the negotiating skills and negotiation tactics crisis negotiation teams can use during and before negotiations. Also, in Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team , the negotiating skills and negotiation techniques used by the New York City Police Hostage Negotiations unit is discussed in light of integrative negotiations strategies.

What crisis negotiation skills would you like to add to your arsenal of negotiation tools?

Related Dispute Resolution Article:  Negotiation Examples: Repairing Relationships Using Negotiation Skills – Mending fences with a loved one or resolving a business dispute with a client are just two of the negotiation scenarios many bargainers will find themselves facing in both their careers and in their personal lives. How can negotiating skills and negotiation tactics help people resolve disputes, manage conflict, and repair relationships? Integrative negotiation strategies emphasize a win-win negotiation approach to bargaining with a counterpart, and it is this very mindset that a person needs when attempting to reconcile differences and repair relationships. Here are some successful negotiation examples using dispute resolution techniques for repairing interpersonal relationships drawn from negotiation case studies as well as some negotiating skills and negotiation techniques that bargainers can apply to a variety of negotiation scenarios from commercial negotiations and salary negotiations to interpersonal negotiations with family and friends.

Examples of Negotiation in Business: Business Negotiators Find the Right Fit – Examples of negotiation in business – a partnership too good to be true? How do you know your counterpart is the right fit for your business needs? Sometimes even the most well-bargained agreements fall flat in implementation due to differences in personality between negotiators. What factors should impact a negotiator’s decision to embark upon negotiations in the first place and how then should a negotiator proceed with her counterpart? Finding the perfect agreement and the perfect counterpart with whom to build a bargaining relationship is impossible but the two can be reconciled prior to bargaining if a negotiator understands exactly what she needs out of both a negotiated agreement and a potential business partner.

Originally published in 2009.

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2 responses to “crisis negotiation skills: the hostage negotiator’s drill”.

I would like to do the hostage negotiation course you offer. And what is the cost and duration of the course and requirements.

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/courses-and-training/3-day/special-three-day-combined-program/ I have included the link above for the programs we offer. We do not offer a specific course in hostage negotiation.

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Introduction to the Special Section on Hostage/Crisis Negotiation

• Published: 10 March 2020
• Volume 35 , pages 84–85, ( 2020 )

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• Wayman Mullins 1  

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Hostage/crisis negotiation in law enforcement started in 1973, when the NYPD asked two officers, Frank Bolz and Harvey Schlossberg, to start a hostage negotiation team. At about the same time, the FBI began their hostage negotiation program, along with the San Francisco Police Department. Since that time, a vast majority of law enforcement agencies throughout the country (and world) have developed and deployed crisis negotiation teams. Over the years, the term hostage negotiation has been replaced with crisis negotiation, as negotiators, whether hostage incidents or non-hostage incidents, such as barricaded subjects or high-risk suicides deal with people in crisis. The skills used today to resolve crisis incidents are based upon the same principles developed 46 years ago at NYPD: (1) use time, (2) negotiate demands, (3) use a threat of force, and (4) understand the subject’s motivation and personality.

While law enforcement and correctional negotiators are excellent at what they do, one need in the field is more research grounded in science into the practice of criminal justice negotiations. Many of the principles used by law enforcement (and corrections—from here forward, I will simply use LE to refer to both) have been borrowed from various fields: psychology, counseling, business, and others; very little research has been done specific to LE negotiations.

When Dr. Herndon, Editor-in-Chief, contacted me about a special section of an issue of the Journal on Hostage/Crisis Negotiations , I avidly accepted and contacted professionals in the field about submitting. These included psychologists working with LE negotiating teams, academicians with an interest in the field, practitioners and negotiators, and administrators about submitting articles. Sadly, only three submissions were received. Although all three are excellent articles and are contained within, it was disappointing that this issue was not filled with many articles about LE negotiations. Our experience is similar to that in other journals and scientific publications. It is difficult to obtain research-based articles about LE negotiations. In 2000, a new journal appeared, the Journal of Police and Crisis Negotiations . It lasted 12 years before being purchased by Taylor and Francis and incorporated into a much more general law enforcement journal, Police, Practice and Research . A review of the articles published in JPCN reveals the majority dealt mostly with issues of training negotiators, some case studies, and articles peripheral to negotiations. This is to no way imply the articles were not outstanding, because they were. They were just not research-based LE negotiation articles for the most part.

I believe there are two main reasons for the lack of solid research–based publications on LE negotiations. The first among these reasons is the high success rate of negotiators. Negotiators, if given the opportunity to speak with a subject (hostage taker, barricade, high-risk suicide, etc.), have a success rate of over 90% (FBI 1991 ; Mullins and Sandel 2014 ; Young 2016 ). Success is defined as no further injury or harm to any participant, subject, hostages/victims/innocents, or law enforcement. Thus, there is a complacency regarding research: “what we do works, why bother?” Negotiators are trained in the skills necessary to successfully resolve crisis incidents, and a general feeling is that research is not necessary. I disagree. There is a lot we do not know about the negotiation process and the operation of negotiations. For example, one of my master’s students (who is also an experienced negotiator) is doing his thesis on best practices of negotiations. After over 40 years, best practices have still not been developed. There are examples and uses of the implementation and application of negotiator practices (see, for example, Johnson et al. 2018 ; NCNA 2020 ); but the field has not defined nor identified what specific best practices are critical for LE negotiators. And this is just one of a myriad of areas that need research attention.

Second, most individuals involved in LE negotiations are practitioners, police officers, psychologists, medics, administrators, and others. Their focus is on the application of negotiations, not research related to the process. Not until the field begins to see a transition of practitioners into academia and other research-oriented fields will this change. And we are beginning to experience that transition. Many practitioners are receiving advanced degrees, retiring, and moving into those fields. One great example is that of Dr. Tom Strentz (ret. FBI), author of several books on negotiations. Drs. McMains, Mullins, and Young, authors of Crisis Negotiations: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections (6th ed.—in press), are all actively involved in researching, publishing, and presenting research-based articles on crisis negotiations. And there are many others. Hopefully, this trend will continue and gain speed in the coming years.

I believe the three articles in this issue of the Journal help move toward a research-based future for LE negotiations. All three are excellent articles that make a contribution to negotiations. The article on Emotional Age Estimate Matrix concludes with multiple suggestions for research to move the concept forward. The author presents a unique tool for negotiators to further improve performance and success, and suggests multiple research projects. The article on the National Negotiator Deployment Database presents analyses of a unique database of negotiated incidents that provides a deeper understanding of the negotiation process and lends itself to a rethinking of dealing with hostage takers. It too provides a framework for research opportunities in LE negotiations. Finally, the article on Points of Engagement examines the role of mental health consultants who work with negotiation teams and the role they play. It discusses one of the critical dilemmas mental health consultants must come to terms with when providing operational assistance or serving as a team member. As do the other articles, this article provides suggestions for research that could lead to a refinement of the role played by mental health consultants.

The world does not change overnight. It is hoped these three articles will help crack the research door open a little further and a little faster. As the vast majority of research publications are wont to say, “further research is needed.”

FBI (1991) Advanced hostage negotiation seminar. San Antonio, TX (August)

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Mullins, W.C. & Sandel, W.L (2014). Best practices results of a national crisis negotiation survey. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, Las Vegas, NV (Oct)

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Young A (2016) Police hostage (crisis) negotiators in the US: a national survey. J Police Crim Psychol 31(4):310–321

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Mullins, W. Introduction to the Special Section on Hostage/Crisis Negotiation. J Police Crim Psych 35 , 84–85 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09377-z

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Published : 10 March 2020

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09377-z

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