Somewhere in Europe, a man is taken at gunpoint from his BMW. He is a successful businessman, worth an estimated €200m; from the burnt-out wreckage of his car, it’s clear this is a professional operation.
In London, 48 hours later, Scott Walker is part of the team brought in to secure the man’s release. A hostage negotiator with more than a decade’s experience, Walker prepares himself for a long haul: it could be weeks before the kidnappers make contact with their demands. But the immediate negotiation is not with them – it’s with the hostage’s younger brother.
After the man was taken hostage, his brother assumed the roles of a family representative, decision maker and chief negotiator with the kidnappers: a load usually shared by three people. “He saw this as his moment to shine; his opportunity to prove himself, to himself – and he really struggled,” says Walker. Attempting to shoulder the responsibility alone, the brother unravelled into a “physical and emotional wreck”. Yet the man remained resistant to the experts around him. “We call it the ‘crisis within a crisis’,” says Walker – and it can loom large, even against a backdrop of life or death.
All of us have experience of letting our emotions or ego get the better of us; Walker has learned how to master his, in even the most volatile circumstances. But these lessons can be equally useful, he says, in day-to-day life. In his first book, Order Out of Chaos, Walker shares his hard-won insights on “how to become a world-class communicator” and achieve your desired outcome in every negotiation – whether it’s a pay rise from your boss, or a better rate from your bank.
The book had to be reviewed closely by lawyers and peers to ensure it did not reveal trade secrets, and all case studies (including those referenced here) are composites. For Walker, writing it has meant stepping into the spotlight after a career spent strategically behind the scenes. “I thought long and hard about it, having spent most of my working life in the shadows, not wanting to bring attention to myself,” he says, when we talk one morning over Zoom. “I just saw so many crossovers with the real world.”
Besides, he adds, after years of never venturing too far from a major airport, in case he got the call, he was ready for a slower pace. “I’d got to that stage where I didn’t fancy jumping on a plane every few weeks.”
Walker has always been interested in psychology, the art of persuasion and “what makes people tick”. For 16 years he worked as a police detective, investigating the full spectrum of wrongdoing, from petty theft to terrorism. “I loved being a cop,” he says. “I enjoyed every single day.”
Then a chance encounter in the canteen of Greenwich police station, with a colleague who had just successfully resolved a kidnapping, inspired Walker to apply to join the hostage crisis and negotiation unit at Scotland Yard. On being selected, Walker was told that there are more people who have been to the International Space Station than there are working full-time as “response consultants”.
He learned the ropes by travelling the world alongside more experienced negotiators. Then in 2015, not long after his 40th birthday, Walker returned home from another successful negotiation and learned that his mother had killed herself. The loss triggered a period of soul-searching.
“Some would argue that it was a midlife crisis … I was going all over the world, saving other people’s lives – and I couldn’t save the one life that really mattered,” he says. “I wasn’t going to allow myself to fall into a spiral of despair … I had to find my own path. I’m going to make the most of my life, by never wasting a moment and serving others.”
Within a few months of burying his mum, Walker had divorced his wife, quit the police force and joined a private consultancy , specialising in crisis response for large insurance companies. In the police, he’d had a large team around him, but in the private sector, he says, “you were ‘it’, essentially. Sometimes, we worked alongside the police, in other cases we didn’t and they weren’t notified or if they were, they might just let us get on with it. Sometimes, the police were complicit in the kidnapping.”
Walker has since helped to resolve hundreds of corporate cases, often kidnappings for ransom but also piracy, extortion and cyber-attacks, and through all of his work he has gained a “unique understanding of what makes people think, feel and act the way they do”.
“Negotiation isn’t some arcane, esoteric art,” he says. “It’s everyday communication: how we communicate with ourselves, first of all – but also with our friends, our family, our colleagues and our community.” In fact, he estimates that, in any given crisis, as much as 80% of his time and energy is spent negotiating with the client (often the hostage’s family or employer).
“Dealing with the kidnappers is easy,” he says; I laugh, despite myself. “It is!” Walker insists. “It becomes a transaction: they have something we want, and we have something they want – it’s just getting to the point where we can safely exchange that.” Contrast that with shadowy, unspoken family dynamics or the clashing egos and hidden agendas on an executive leadership team, and the “so-called ‘bad guys’” start to seem relatively straightforward to wrangle.
“All of the emotions, the issues and human foibles are magnified in this extremely high-pressure scenario,” says Walker. In the case of the businessman taken for ransom, his brother was so determined to retain control that he refused to use a burner phone for communicating with the kidnappers – meaning that every innocent call or notification he got on his own phone sent his cortisol skyrocketing.
Walker tried to reason with him, emphasising the importance of managing stress and uncertainty, of erecting boundaries around the negotiation, but the brother refused to listen. When – after sleepless weeks – the kidnappers finally made contact, with a ransom demand of some €20m, the brother lost his cool and threatened them with revenge. The kidnappers’ response was calm and immediate: they would kill their hostage. Then they hung up.
Walker does not blame the brother for frustrating the delicate operation: in the heat of the moment, his response was only natural. But the example demonstrates Walker’s No 1 rule, ahead of any negotiation: gain control of your own internal state. Kneejerk reactions, leading with anger or fear, and negative self-talk often lead to undesirable outcomes. “It starts with yourself, your mind and your emotions – then you work outwards,” he says. “It’s an inside-out game.”
He recalls another kidnapping case, early in his career, in which the family’s point-person was refusing to move to a safe house for the negotiation. “I was getting really frustrated with him, to the point of shouting: ‘What do you not get about this?’ And that’s when my more experienced colleague subtly put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.”
Calmly and confidently, Walker’s colleague reduced the tension by reminding the hostage’s family that their No 1 priority was simply to breathe. After that, he slowly took them through the objectives for the next call with the kidnappers – starting by reassuring them that they were all motivated to resolve the situation.
“It was then that I realised that how to get people onside is a learnable skill,” says Walker. It comes down to “emotional self-regulation”: learning to manage one’s ego and emotional responses so as to counter the deleterious effects of stress, communicate more effectively – and secure a better outcome.
For this reason, even through a live crisis like a hostage situation, Walker would encourage clients and colleagues alike to prioritise their wellbeing with rest, nutrition and movement. He would even remind the kidnappers to sleep and drink water if they seem to be struggling to function. Walker calls this entering your “battle rhythm”, whereby you prepare your mind and body for a tense, lengthy negotiation. “It’s taking control of what you can, and not worrying about the rest,” he says.
Mindfulness exercises such as box-breathing and visualising a successful outcome can also help boost resilience in the face of conflict. The chemical, bodily reaction to an emotion such as fear or anger can pass in fewer than 90 seconds, Walker says – if you choose not to feed it. “It is that ability to know, ‘I’m being hit by a tsunami of emotion here’ – and to feel it,” he says. “Don’t shy away from it, or pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Much of Walker’s advice wouldn’t feel out of place on Headspace, the beloved mindfulness app. But that’s just proof of the universality of mindset training, he says. “I’m not pretending that I’ve created some brand-new way of doing things … it’s been with us thousands of years.” Everyone from Tibetan monks to ultra-marathon runners have benefited from techniques to control the ego and quieten the mind. If it seems like a particular challenge today, Walker suggests, it may be because the times are just so noisy and reactive. He points to the polarity on social media. “Heaven knows the world needs better conversations right now … Everybody’s shouting, no one’s listening.”
With practice, he suggests, it’s possible to create a calm, balanced and objective state of mind that you can readily assume whenever you find yourself under pressure. He likens it to creating your own internal “red centre”, or crisis comms HQ, to which you can mentally retreat when faced with an unpleasant or unexpected situation, and have faith in your decision-making.
Often, Walker says, the feelings provoked in us by other people are telling us something about ourselves. “Everybody wants to blame the other person for quote-unquote ‘triggering’ them – but actually it’s a mirror.” Knowing this can be a useful tool for developing greater self-awareness, he adds: “Why’s this showing up for me? Why am I so incensed?”
But, just as vital as keeping your own emotions in check is cultivating empathy for the other side, he adds. His second rule for negotiation success is: “It’s not about you.” To get someone to see your point of view, first you must seek, in earnest, to understand theirs. This sets up a relationship that makes it possible to meet halfway.
If you are angling for a pay rise from your boss, Walker suggests asking yourself: how can you demonstrate your value to the company, or contribute more? If your landlord wants to increase the rent, Walker says to start by researching whether or not it’s a reasonable request. If not, “then it’s about articulating: ‘I pay my rent on time every month, I really like living here, I’m happy to sign up for another 12 months or two years’, etc – rather than going, ‘No, I’m not going to pay that,’” he says.
Putting yourself explicitly in your landlord’s position – by demonstrating awareness of the market from their perspective, the costs and risks – can be helpful in building rapport. “What you want to do is get to that point where they go, ‘The tenant gets me’ rather than, ‘They’re just trying to pull a fast one,’” says Walker. “I’d rather take £50 a month less from someone I really trusted and got on with.”
Good relationships can be fostered through active listening, and asking better questions, says Walker. Often we can be too quick to share our own experience or push for resolution, leading the other side to feel manipulated or dismissed. “A negotiator knows that the person is not going to open up until they feel seen, heard and understood.”
But sometimes, he adds, “walking away from a negotiation is the right thing to do”. Other times, the real reward may register at first as a loss. “You might have made the uncomfortable decision to move out, or find a new job – but actually it could end up being the best thing that ever happened. It is about that willingness to withstand uncertainty.”
In the case of the businessman, after that explosive call with his brother, the kidnappers went silent for days, then weeks. Eventually, after three months, the brother was persuaded by the rest of the family to step back. Walker and his team were able to reconnect with the kidnappers, with a more level-headed relative in the role of intermediary, and negotiate the hostage’s safe release. “Thankfully,” says Walker, “I’ve never lost a hostage from a negotiation.”
I wonder: does anybody ever say no to him? He laughs. “I’ve got a pretty good success rate.” But, he says – having shown his children how to manage their emotions when they were young – now that they’re teenagers, “they’re kind of wise to it. Sometimes they’ll know what buttons to press with me.”
Order Out of Chaos: How to become a World-Class Communicator and Win Every Negotiation by Scott Walker is published by Piatkus TPB (£14.99) on 25 May. Order a copy from Guardian bookshop here.
