📌 Negotiate Like a Pro

By Scott Walker | March–April 2024

During his former career as a kidnapping and extortion negotiator, the author handled sensitive cases all over the world. Through his experiences, observations, and conversations with other experts in the field, he developed a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t in high-stakes negotiations. Now he advises executives and corporations about what he calls the level-five mindset, which involves deep listening to better understand and interpret a counterpart’s self-perception and perspective. He offers eight tools to both ensure and demonstrate that mindset: minimal encouragers, open questions, reflecting back, emotional labeling, paraphrasing, “I” statements, effective pauses, and summarizing. Using them, he writes, will “boost your capacity for empathy, your ability to find common ground, and your chances of gaining your counterpart’s cooperation.”