Over the years, I developed my interest – I flirted with Aristotle’s persuasive appeals, ‘ethos, pathos and logos’, which led to a more serious relationship with Roman Krznaric’s book ‘Empathy’ . So, when I was invited to attend an Empathy workshop with Belinda Parma , I jumped at the chance. The bonus was meeting Martin Richards , an international hostage negotiator and crisis manager. 

Martin explained that his line of negotiation relies on building empathy. Empathy is the absolute basis of trust, and trust is the absolute basis of persuasion – whether persuading a suicidal person back to safety or Middle Eastern kidnappers to release their hostages. Without empathy and trust, the other party won’t believe anything you say or do anything you ask. 

As you might expect, hostage negotiation is traditionally spoken, although Martin said that text negotiations are becoming more common. Either way, the aim is to have a conversation. There can be long delays and silences, but a two-way exchange is crucial to a resolution. Empathy must be built and maintained all the way through. 

Hostage negotiators use a range of skills to build empathy. Martin homed in on active listening, which I remembered from Krznaric’s book. Active listening keeps you focused on the other party’s agenda. It means picking up and responding to spoken cues – it shows you have heard and understood, it demonstrates you are interested, that you care and are intent on bringing the situation to a positive conclusion for everyone concerned. 

A fascinating aspect of meeting Martin was learning that a seemingly specialised skillset is totally transferrable to our professional and personal lives. Martin teaches businesses and individuals, and volunteers for the crisis charity, Shout. We chatted about many aspects of transferability.  

Thinking about negotiation skills in our world, it was easy to connect active listening with selling - conversation plays a huge part in generating the empathy needed to influence a buyer. But we also have to build and maintain empathy on the page. So, given this edition of BQ is about invention, I thought I’d have a go at mapping active listening skills into the written word. Being a lover of checklists (and good food), Martin’s ‘MORE PIES’ was just the ticket – the table below show eight active listening techniques, how they help generate empathy in a negotiation and ideas for proposal parallels. 

Just as Martin inspired me, I hope my brief encounter with a hostage negotiator will inspire you.