Hi everyone! Welcome to Episode 19 of the Negotiate X in Rewind series, where we revisit standout conversations from the Negotiate X Podcast. In this episode, Crisis Negotiation Skills Every Leader Needs, retired SWAT hostage negotiator Scott Tillema joins Nolan and Aram to explore how crisis communication principles strengthen everyday leadership.
Scott explains why influence begins with human connection and shares the four principles that guide every high-stakes negotiation: understanding, timing, delivery, and respect.
Nolan opens by asking Scott about the essential steps in crisis negotiation. Scott explains that influence relies on a bond, not commands. He describes his four guiding principles: understanding, timing, delivery, and respect. Understanding means listening to words, tone, emotions, and body language, especially in video-based communication. Timing requires knowing when emotions must settle before offering direction.
Delivery shapes how messages are received, especially under stress. Respect acknowledges how emotions drive decisions and helps people feel valued and autonomous. Scott teaches negotiators to stop focusing on compliance and instead focus on connection, because influence follows trust.
Next, Nolan asks if these principles apply outside policing. Scott says they absolutely do because leaders everywhere try to influence outcomes. He notes that ego blocks progress, while clarity of goals creates better conversations.
Leaders must understand what others need, remove the fear of “no,” and keep the focus on the people they serve. Influence grows when leaders listen without defensiveness and act with patience and purpose.
Moving on, Aram asks Scott the question he gets most often: “What do you say that makes someone surrender?” Scott explains there is no magic phrase. He uses a simple opening script, then settles in for a long conversation.
He shares a story where someone surrendered immediately, leaving him unsatisfied because the deeper process never unfolded. He calls this the IKEA effect — outcomes feel meaningful when earned through effort. He reminds leaders that listening is not passive. It is a disciplined process that helps people feel heard and reduces emotional intensity.
Lastly, Nolan asks if skills like patience, understanding, and respect can be taught. Scott says they can, but growth depends on commitment and practice. He compares communication training to fitness. One workout brings no results, but steady effort produces real change.
He adds that many people believe they are good communicators simply because they communicate often, yet few practice deliberately. Scott stresses that these skills save lives in crisis settings, and they build trust in everyday leadership when practiced consistently.
Scott Tillema shows that powerful leadership starts with influence, not authority. Crisis negotiation principles help leaders connect, understand, and guide others through stress and uncertainty. Real influence grows from listening with patience, communicating with intention, and treating people with dignity. These skills strengthen teams, resolve conflict, and create outcomes built on trust rather than pressure.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Write to us at team@negotiatex.com. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us on Apple Podcasts to help others find Negotiate X and support our growth.
Thank you for your time!
What did you see as an essential steps of crisis negotiations?
Yeah and this comes together from not only the educational pieces, but having done this type of work. And for me, I work off of four principles of understanding, timing, delivery, and respect. And not only knowing what these principles are, but how we visualize them.
And for me, I visualize them in a circle. And the reason this circle is important, I say this, I want you to see this. And the circle represents the bond that we have that we are trying to create with the people that we’re talking to. Our goal is not to get someone to free the hostage or drop the gun or put the knife on.
Our goal is to form a bond. And once we have that bond and a connection, then we have the influence. Then we can get where we need to go. So the principles are. Understanding. We always try to work to understand, and this comes from the active listening skills, but it’s more than that because negotiation has evolved. 30 years ago when the behavioral change stairway model came out, active listening is a foundational piece, but we need more than that now because we’re having conversations by FaceTime, by Skype, by Zoom.
This whole next generation is completely comfortable being on camera. This is how they’re being raised. Maybe the rest of us who are a little bit older. This is still a bit new to us. So not only do we have to listen, but are we paying attention to gestures, facial expressions, body language.
Everything we see here is providing us with information. The second principle is timing. Knowing when to deliver your message. I think that not only can you not get what you want, but you can hurt your position if your timing’s off. I remember negotiating with a guy who was in his house and he started popping off rounds and the SWAT team’s calling out, hey, we got shots fired.
And he is really angry, I think is this the time to tell him, hey, put the gun down, you just need to come out. Of course not because we need to attend to his emotions and what’s going on with him here first. What’s important right now, and then the delivery. I don’t want to minimize the words and the content of what’s being said, but if you’re preparing for your negotiation, you’re already putting together your content.
Watching people under stress, they don’t have any awareness of their delivery. And I’m talking the rate, the rhythm, the pressure, the volume, the tone. These are things that we can adjust in our delivery to let people experience us differently. And then respect. I think this is a piece that most people who are successful and professional get.
Yes, please. No, thank you. Yes, sir. No ma’am. But respect is more than just being polite. It is about emotion and understanding that we make decisions based on emotion, not just logic and reasoning. And if we can understand behavioral economics, cognitive biases, and all these things that influence how we make these decisions, then we are going to get better at respecting this person, having them feel respected, and giving them a bit of autonomy to let them choose the outcome while we’re working in the background as a trusted coach.
But the reason that you have to see the circle, I do scenario-based training with police officers. I work with them. One of the scenarios we run is a bad day. The bad day scenario where they’re looking for a guy who is suicidal and I’m the role player and I come out at them and I got a knife to my neck, they come at me. And of course we’re gonna get the tactics first to make sure that tactically they’re correct.
But the focus of this isn’t tactics. It’s about having a crisis negotiation. And they just go to, they default to this behavioral change step of, put the knife down, put the knife down, I order you to put the knife down and it never works. So how about we take a timeout and say, think about your mindset.
Instead of getting this person to drop the knife, make your goal to be, to form a bond and form a connection. And once you form a bond, then you got influence. So then they start asking, “How do I form that bond?” And we teach ’em these principles, so understanding, timing, delivery, and respect, and it becomes a little bit easier for them and they realize, I can find success if I’ve got this structure, this mental model that I can use during these difficult conversations.
So thanks for sharing that, Scott. There’s a ton of value there. I really appreciate it. So do these steps have application in the corporate world or public sector or even people’s individual lives?
Of course, because we’re always trying to get what we want as leaders. We have a team. We have to drive ourselves, our team, our business to success, and how can we do that if we’re just, if we’re just guessing and doing what we think is right.
I trust that there’s a lot of people who are doing what they feel is good. But sometimes they’re not effective as leaders, so why not give them the tools of influence to help them get to where they want to go so they can be successful? It’s tough to get this criticism. It’s tough to get feedback sometimes, but ultimately, what is your goal?
And that’s what I say in negotiations. What is your goal? If it’s about being right, if it’s about your ego, you shouldn’t be engaging in negotiations, right? Because it’s not about you. It’s about the people that we’re working with. So think about that. It’s not about you, it’s about the people you serve.
We know you get this question a million times. I know that because I was watching your TEDx talk, which is fantastic. People need to go see that. Watch some of your other interviews too, Scott, but I wanted to ask you, ’cause I think you have a great response. I wanted to have it on here, what is it that you magically say that gets people to come out?
There’s no magic phrase, right? Everybody wants to know, hey, what’s this one thing you say? I can share with you one story when I get into negotiations there, there’s a script we follow to get started. Hi, my name is Scott. It’s a personal introduction. I’m with the police department, so identifying you’re not from the radio show or whatever.
Hi, my name’s Scott. I’m with the police department. I’d like to help some trainers say don’t say help because it feels like you. There’s a power differential. Hi, my name’s Scott. I’m with the police department. I like to help. Is everybody okay in there? And now we’re starting to create the question and then the statement of purpose very early.
I’d like for you to come out and speak with me so we can get this resolved. And that’s my opening script. And then after that, I go to take my boots off. The reason is because you want to get comfortable. The FBI says that these things statistically last two to four hours, so this isn’t going to be a quick conversation and it shouldn’t, there’s an important process that needs to occur.
But in one of these negotiations, after I say, I’d like for you to come out and speak with me so we can get this resolved. The guy goes, okay. I was like, what do you mean okay? And he goes, yeah, come out. And so I let the arrest team know, hey, this guy’s coming out. And sure enough he did.
And I remember driving home that night or that day. It was Christmas Eve, it was cold and snowy, and I just remember feeling, eh, I got the outcome that I wanted, which is a safe and peaceful surrender, but the process wasn’t there. And this is what’s called the IKEA effect and cognitive bias that I didn’t work very hard.
So the outcome has no value. And the IKEA effect is we get this furniture that’s got a guy with the Allen wrench and there’s not even directions in any language. And you work really hard to put this shelf together for $29. You built this bookcase and it’s not quite straight and not very good. But you’re so proud, you tell everybody, hey, come look at my bookcase. And it’s the IKEA effect. Anybody could have gotten on the phone with this guy and said, hey, I want you to come out so we can get this resolved. And he would’ve. He was just waiting for that invitation, or he didn’t wanna have a standoff.
So sometimes you just need to ask. And one of the things that we trained in our negotiation class is don’t worry about, no, let’s stop being afraid of the word no. And in police and crisis negotiation, that’s just where we begin. I just expect we begin with no. And so many people are afraid just to hear the word “no” that they won’t even ask. And that’s where I again, say, you’re not negotiating for you. It’s not being selfish. It’s about your team, your business, the people you serve, and you can get more.
Yeah. And that’s that shift in mindset that I think you were talking about before. Whether it’s what your mindset is around your goal, your mindset is you’re just saying right now around how I respond to a no. And even your mindset around process, which you were talking about so much earlier in terms of timing and delivery and being very intentional with kind of how you negotiate.
Yeah, the process is critical that so many people are happy, just that they had someone who listened to them as a supervisor and in my police department for many years.
People will be surprised to know that sometimes people call in and wanna talk to a supervisor because they’re dissatisfied with the service that they received. No problem. But I’ve learned that by thoughtfully listening to them and letting them talk and letting them share everything they need to share, and then asking the question and what else and what else.
We get everything out. Sometimes that’s, I would say, more than half the time, just being listened to goes a long way. There’s, what? I might not be able to get you what you need, but I wanna listen to you. I wanna hear what you have to say because if we can do things better, I need to know that.
And sometimes they don’t believe that at first, but when you spend time truly listening to them they’ve almost exhausted themselves and it’s tough for them to have a lot of emotion left to come and attack you when you’re such a good listener. So it takes time. It is difficult to do because you need to be patient. And I realize I’m not very good at being patient sometimes.
Scott, you’ve talked about the importance of seeking to understand others and showing other people respect. Is it actually possible to teach or train people to do these things?
Yeah, and I heard you ask Kurt Canal a similar question on an earlier episode about can you teach these things?
Of course you can teach them to the level that they are received. Now this is gonna be a little bit different. So some of it falls on having good instruction and some of it falls on the student to say how good. Do I wanna be? Because we can learn all of these things and sometimes we just dismiss it and say, hey, I’m not very good at it, so I’m not going to do it.
And sometimes we don’t get the results we’re looking for. You go to the gym one time, hey, I’m not seeing any muscles. What’s going on? I’m done with that. You really need to commit yourself. And naturally, some people are. Better at this than others. But for me, this is a skill that I’ve had to work hard on developing.
So I know that it can be done and it’s just a matter of are you going to take the time and effort to commit to being good at and having seen the results? And for me this is life or death. People are truly alive today based on conversations that my negotiation team has had with them. So I know that this is powerful tools and tactics to get what you want.
So why wouldn’t you put in your very best effort to be great at this? And people get confused. They say, I’m already a good communicator. I’m doing it all the time. Just because we’re doing it doesn’t mean that we’re great at it.
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