Gini Nelson’s Engaging Conflicts

I’m reviewing The Negotiator’s Fieldbook: The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator, Christopher Honeyman & Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Editors (ABA 2006), through the rest of 2007 and into 2008 (it has 80 chapters, more than 700 pages of substantive text, and something for everyone, from novice to expert!). I’m reviewing the book because it’s hot, hot, hot. More about the book and its editors here.

This week I’m reviewing two chapters with 6 authors between them — their bios are at the end of the reviews of the articles — specifically these chapters because I’m publishing an interview with one of the authors, Jack Cambria, in tomorrow’s issue of Engaging Conflicts Today. I previously interviewed Christopher Honeyman (announcement here), and will be interviewing the other authors as the series continues. I’ll discuss Negotiating with the Unknown today, and Reputations in Negotiation Friday.

Negotiating with the Unknown
Marial Volpe, Jack J. Cambria, Hugh McGowan & Christopher Honeyman. Here’s the annotation from the book’s Table of Contents:

What happens when all of the classic negotiation advice about preparation goes out the window? Negotiations “on the street” teach us how extensive preparation for the process itself — for teamwork, roles, communication patterns, and trust — is crucial for success when everything you might ordinarily want to know to prepare for a specific case is impossible to find out in time.

Jack Cambria and Hugh McGowan head (Jack is the current Commanding Officer) and have headed (Hugh previously was Commanding Officer and Chief Negotiator) the New York Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team, currently 100 Negotiators strong. The core argument here is that it is possible to prepare for the unknown– not in the way you do for negotiations with known individuals or institutions, of course, but, nonetheless, in a way that matters.

Fundamentally, they prepare to recognize and respect the hostage taker’s humanity even while knowing the real limits imposed on them by the need to get as many as possible of those involved out safely (including the hostage taker). The primary techniques used are: (1) greetings (it’s not just to be polite, it also serves the purpose of backing down the emotional level some); (2) making small talk (schmoozing, recognizing that the hostage taker still needs some human interaction, and, yes, it does also buy some time); (3) articulating ground rules (to help the hostage taker deal as well as possible with the police officers); and (4) clarifying assumptions:

The challenge in negotiating with the unknown is to avoid assuming that what you are doing is understood, taking the time to explain your actions even in the midst of a tremendous amount of activity and potential danger. As a result, hostage negotiators always talk about the “drill.” This means that the hostage negotiators explain to all of the people involved [including other members of the negotiating team and the other supporting police officers] what the hostage team’s role is and what will be done.

…

The hostage taker is thus given a theme. The theme is like a working paper: it is not etched in stone, and it certainly can change. But it has a continuing function; it helps the hostage taker understand that no sudden action, such as a surprise attack, is contemplated, and that also demonstrates to others that the negotiation team has a plan and has the situation under control.

The entire chapter is compelling, including its recognition of the limitations of conventional training and its polite suggestion that perception and communication training should be part of mandatory training before practitioners are put out on the street, whether they are police officers, transit authority workers, or (I loved this) attorneys:

The sense of every individual as a person of worth, deserving of individual and not rule-bound responses, is not easy for a new police officer — or lawyer, or doctor, or other new professional with sudden “status” — to learn. What price do we pay, in our unexpected negotiations, for our failure to incorporate such learning into the training of every such new professional?

In the end, the chapter is, frankly, touching for its recognition of the humanity of the hostage taker, and other persons in stress and crisis. I thank the authors for reminding us of this.

Note: Please come back Friday for Part Two, concerning Reputations in Negotiation (and sign up for Engaging Conflict Today if you want Jack’s interview tomorrow):

Reputations in Negotiation
Catherine H. Tinsley, Jack J. Cambria & Andrea Kupfer Schneider.

Here’s the annotation from the book’s Table of Contents:

Time was when a Formica plaque could often be found on the desk of a certain type of negotiator. It said “Yea, when I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.” Is it really to your advantage to have a reputation as one of the junkyard dogs of negotiation? The authors approach the question from three very different starting points. Tinsley summarizes the research on reputation in controlled settings. Schneider turns to real-life reputations of lawyers in action. Finally, Cambria shows how the life-and-death negotiations which characterize the work of the New York Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team have led to a new understanding of reputation. This chapter should be read in conjunction with Lewicki on trust.

_________________________

Maria Volpe, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology, Director of the Dispute Resolution Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice — City University of New York, and Convener of the CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium. Dr. Volpe has lectured, researched and written extensively about dispute resolution processes; mediates in educational settings; conducts skills training; facilitates intergroup sessions; administers grant funded projects; serves on editorial boards; and is a Past-President of the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution. Her current research focuses on police use of mediation, dispute resolution in educational settings, ADR Responses to 9/11, and barriers to minority participation in dispute resolution. Maria received her Ph.D. from New York University, where she was an NIMH Fellow.

Jack J. Cambria is the Commanding Officer of the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team. His duties consists of coordinating the efforts of 100 Negotiators, who respond throughout the city to all hostage and related situations. He is responsible for the training and certification of new negotiators and the retraining of current negotiators, and conducts training for many outside law enforcement agencies. He worked with the Emergency Service Unit for the three months following the attack on the World Trade Center, to assists in the rescue and then recovery efforts at Ground Zero.

Hugh McGowan, retired in 2001 from the NYPD after 35 years of service. In his last 13 years with the Department, Lt. McGowan was Commanding Officer and Chief Negotiator of the Hostage Negotiation Team (HNT). He personally responded to and coordinated negotiations at over 1500 hostage, barricade and suicide incidents. In addition to selecting and training negotiators for the NYPD, he has instructed crisis negotiators from other city, state and Federal agencies and lectured throughout the United States and Australia. Previously, Hugh spent 5 years with the NYPD’S Emergency Service Unity. He served 6 years as a Detective Sergeant in the Bomb Squad and is a veteran of the U.S. Army. McGowan has a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the CUNY Graduate School.

Christopher Honeyman is a consultant, mediator and arbitrator based in Madison, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. He has advised firms, nonprofits, government agencies, universities and foundations throughout the U.S. and in other countries on dispute resolution infrastructure issues, quality control and ethics. His specialty is managing interdisciplinary teams of experts to address complex conflict management problems, and he has led a fifteen-year series of large-scale conflict management research and development projects funded by the Hewlett Foundation. He has served as mediator, arbitrator or in other neutral roles in more than 2000 cases since the 1970’s. Chris is also author or co-author of more than 50 articles and book chapters; many have been republished electronically at www.convenor.com.

Catherine H. Tinsley is an Associate Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, and is Executive Director of the Georgetown University Women’s Leadership Initiative. Professor Tinsley is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Peace and Securities Studies, a Zaeslin fellow at the college of Law and Economics, University of Basel, and a CPMR fellow for NASA. She studies how factors such as culture, reputations, and negotiator mobility influence negotiations, as well as how near-miss events bias people’s decisions under risk. She has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and has been on the editorial board of The Academy of Management Journal, International Negotiations: A Journal of Theory and Practice, and International Journal of Conflict Management.

Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School. She has published numerous articles on negotiation and international law, and is a co-author of the recently published Negotiation: Processes for Problem-Solving, Mediation: Practice, Policy & Ethics, and Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model with Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Lela Love & Jean Sternlight. Her previous books include Coping with International Conflict and Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict, both with Roger Fisher. Andrea is also the author of Creating the Musee d’Orsay: The Politics of Culture in France. She received her A.B. from Princeton and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She also received a Diploma from the Academy of European Law in Florence, Italy.