Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi, it’s Nicky Lowe and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host and for nearly two decades now I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here. And let’s get on with today’s episode. If you’ve ever had to defend a budget, sell a strategic project to a skeptical executive, or secure headcount without ruffling feathers, you already know.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:00]:
Negotiation isn’t just for deal makers. It’s the daily craft of modern leadership and layering motherhood. And you’re navigating high stakes influence at work and the quiet negotiations of time, energy and mental load at home. Today, we’re going behind the scenes with someone who’s negotiated in the most high stakes situations imaginable, former police hostage negotiator Nigel Taberna. Over a decade on the negotiation front line, Nigel successfully resolved over 130,030 life at risk incidents, from armed sieges to suicide interventions with no loss of Life. Across a 30 year career with Greater Manchester Police, Nigel rose to detective inspector in counterterrorism operations before turning his skills to helping leaders communicate under pressure and negotiate when you have nothing to give away. He’s also helped train new generations for negotiation in the UK and overseas, and even the FBI. And in this conversation, we’re lifting practical tools from the front line so you can influence more effectively in the boardroom and create more understanding at home.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:15]:
So think less confrontation and more connection. And I hope you enjoy Nigel and this conversation as much as I did. Although he’s kind of working in an elite space, his approach is so down to earth and he shares real practical insights that might just blow your mind on the superpowers behind negotiation and they might not be what you think they are. So I won’t keep you any longer. Let’s dive in. So welcome Nigel. Thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Nigel Taberner [00:02:48]:
Hey, it’s no problem. It’s nice to be with you.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:51]:
This is a conversation that I’ve been really looking forward to having. I think we connected via somebody that we mutually know in our network. Mike and I had heard Mike raving about you and this is a subject that I think is such a powerful one and your background and experience. I can’t wait to dive into it.

Nigel Taberner [00:03:11]:
Oh, grief. Don’t put me under that kind of.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:13]:
Pressure on the fact that’s thrown out.

Nigel Taberner [00:03:18]:
Give me a man with a gun anytime.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:20]:
But we did have a quick chat, didn’t we, God, quite a few weeks ago now. And I just loved the brief conversation that we had and I just knew that, like, we’re going to have fun with this.

Nigel Taberner [00:03:31]:
Cool. Right, what do you want to know? It’s very rarely you get a term hostage negotiator sat in front of you. So what do you want to know? Where do we start?

Nicky Lowe [00:03:37]:
I want to know everything, but I always love to start, like, how do you get into doing what you do? That always fascinates me about people. So tell us a bit about what led you to become this hostage negotiator.

Nigel Taberner [00:03:49]:
Yes, it was a long journey for me. It was one that started when I was probably six or seven years old when the idea entered my head that I wanted to be a police officer. I had no idea why. It was. It was all to do with tv, it was to do with TJ Hooker and stuff like that back in the day. But I kind of planted the seed. I wanted to be. Be a police officer all the way through school.

Nigel Taberner [00:04:09]:
Kind of maintained that. But I was your typical teenage boy, you know, I switched on about six months before my all levels, worried my parents sick, completely blue mayor levels. So the plan of joining the police, sorry, going to sixth form college, then university, joining as a graduate, whistling through the ranks, that was just dead in the water. I was working in a bus building factory in Wiggin, age 16. But I never lost that itch, you know, it was still there. So I went to night school, reset me exams and applied for Greater Manchester Police when I was 21, which was the age, the minimum age they were recruiting. I got here and I suppose I just had a kind of. Just a really normal policing career.

Nigel Taberner [00:04:53]:
I mean, it started off in Moss side, which was a bit. Which was interesting back in the early 90s. So it was. It was a great place to learn your trade. I enjoyed it. It’s probably wrong to say it, but it was exciting, you know, for, for a young. A young police officer, a young lad. It was exciting.

Nigel Taberner [00:05:10]:
All fast cars and drugs and the odd gun and stuff like that. But there’s a saying in the police that, you know, a moving target is harder to hit, so we tend to move around a little bit. And so I went to riot squad, went into training and eventually found me way to Manchester Airport. But all the time I’d been looking at an advert that kept coming out periodically for hostage negotiators. And I was looking at that job and thinking, that is just the job for me. It’s not a full time role. You do it on top of your day job. It’s a bonus role on top of your day job.

Nigel Taberner [00:05:47]:
But you have to be quite a high ranking officer. It started off as superintendent, but it started sort of gently ticking its way down until at one point it said you needed to be a supervisor. And that was me straight in there. Because it ticked every box for me in terms of why I joined the police. So I wanted to join the police for two reasons. I wanted to fight crime at the highest level and I wanted to protect vulnerable people. Those were me drivers. That was what got me up in the morning.

Nigel Taberner [00:06:14]:
And the job was absolutely perfect. Nearly didn’t apply for it. You know when you get that silly little voice in your head, the one that goes something like, oh, come on, Nige, you hostage negotiator, you’re in a force of 8,000 people. There’s so many officers who are more resilient than you, better communicators than you, better connected, you know what, just better than you. I took advice off far too many people. It was, it was going to affect me mental health. I wasn’t going to be able to protect my family from the sort of that I was going to. It wasn’t going to be the career development move that I thought it was going to be.

Nigel Taberner [00:06:52]:
Well, they were dead right about that because I spent more time negotiating with my bosses about negotiating than I did negotiating with the people I was actually supposed to be negotiating with. There was a real kind of rub between what they considered to be my day real job and what many people actually considered to be kind of a hobby. But I filled the application form in and it was grief, it was, it was life changing for me that the skills that I learned on those first kind of crazy courses that I went on didn’t just make me a good hostage negotiator, they made me a better police officer for certainly made me a better leader. But it had an impact in ways that I never envisaged. You know, it made me a better husband, a better father, a better friend. Because the skills that I was learning just transcended all those different areas of my life. And the only thing that was different was, was the level of risk. I was using the same skills with my kids that I was using with people with guns, with kidnappers, and I was using the same skills with my staff in work, the team I was running, and the same skills as, you know, share now with business.

Nigel Taberner [00:08:06]:
It’s just hostage negotiators rarely negotiate.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:10]:
And I remember you saying this to me and my brain went, what? So tell me more about that, then.

Nigel Taberner [00:08:18]:
Well, the sort of incidents that you go to, you’ve got nothing to give away. So people think that hostage negotiators go to these incidents because they’re highly trained and they’re experienced, that they’ve got this suite of Jedi mind tricks that they can use to get people to do things differently. And there are no Jedi mind tricks. My job as a negotiator is to connect with somebody, to get them to like me, to get them to trust me. And at that point, I’ve actually earned the right to be able to influence them and persuade them to do things differently. So actually, hostage negotiation is all about connection, influence and persuasion. It’s not about negotiation. If there’s an armed siege in a bank and somebody’s in there with stockings over their head and sawing off shotguns and they’ve got 40 hostages, there’s no deal.

Nigel Taberner [00:09:11]:
It’s not. Well, I’ll tell you what, you have 20 and I’ll have 20. I’ve got to win, but I’ve got to get that individual on side. I’ve got to create a relationship with them, I’ve got to get them to like me, get them to trust me, and then I can get them to do things differently. So actually, we’re, we’re, we’re influencers, not negotiators. But hostage influencer just sounds a little bit rubbish.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:34]:
Because your website, you’ve got a phrase on your website, haven’t you? And when I clicked on that, it really is powerful. It’s negotiating when you’ve got nothing to kind of give. And that, I think, is so powerful, as you say. I think you said to me, the best that I can do is maybe you walk out and we don’t shoot you, or, you know, we have a conversation about what your sentence might be, but that’s out of your hands.

Nigel Taberner [00:09:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. So if, you know, if I’ve got a man barricaded in a house, he’s got hostages, he’s got a gun in there, what’s the deal? What can I possibly offer him to get him to come out? And the only deal on the table that I can strike with him is if you come out now with your hands Up. We won’t kill you. You’re not going to get shot. That’s not a very compelling deal. And actually it gets worse because if you come out now with your hands up, we won’t kill you. We. But what we will do because of the offences that you’ve committed is we’ll arrest you, we’ll put you before a court, you’re going to get 15 to 20 year custodial sentence and you’re going to come out in 15, 20 years time with no job, no home, no money, no prospects.

Nigel Taberner [00:10:43]:
Who on earth is going to buy a deal like that?

Nicky Lowe [00:10:48]:
When you put it like that, it’s powerful.

Nigel Taberner [00:10:51]:
Well, negotiate with people like that, it’s like going into a high stakes poker game and looking down at your hand and you’ve got two uno cards and a beer mat, you know, the worst possible hand imaginable. But I’ve, I’ve got to win.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:07]:
Yeah. So tell me about that then. What have you learned over this kind of amazing career? And you’ve gone to over, is it.

Nigel Taberner [00:11:14]:
130, 130 incidents in 10 years and thankfully never lost anybody. And that was a wide variety of different types of incident. But what did I learn? I suppose ultimately I learned that hostage negotiation isn’t difficult. It is really not difficult if you get your head around a couple of key concepts. So first of all, it’s not a negotiation. Don’t have negotiations. Don’t go into work and negotiate with union leaders. Don’t, please don’t try negotiating with your kids because you’ll only lose anyway.

Nigel Taberner [00:11:55]:
But don’t try negotiating with them. Have a conversation with a purpose. Have a meaningful conversation. That is all a negotiation is. It’s a conversation with a purpose. I know where I am now, I know where I want to get to ultimately. And all I’ve got to do is find my way from A to B. And how do we do that? It’s dead simple.

Nigel Taberner [00:12:20]:
We get people talking, we keep them talking and we listen like our life depends on it. And if we do that, nine times out of 10, the problem actually the situation resolves itself. Because if, if I can get you talking and keep you talking, you will tell me things that you never intended. And all the time as a negotiator, I’m thinking, what did you say? What did she mean? How can I use that? And that is how we get the information that we need to be able to create that picture, to find out what’s going on in their world, to get them to tell us their story. So that we actually understand what’s going on and at that point we can help them. We can help them by making suggestions, reframing the situation, all those things that we’re able to do. Whereas most of the time as we go through life without busy in work, that busy at home, we just go straight into problem solving mode straight away, before we even know what the problem is. We’ve got a solution and we’ve got a backup if that doesn’t work.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:34]:
Yeah. So could you give me an example of where this might play out? It, you know, I imagine the stuff you can’t talk about, but an example that you could perhaps share, where you got somebody talking that may not have wanted to kept them talking and then did that, listening like your life depended on it.

Nigel Taberner [00:13:53]:
Yeah. So it was, it was a guy who was barricaded in a house. It was, it was East Manchester. I’m trying not to give too much away so you can’t find it online, but it was, it was, it was East Manchester. One of the first, it was actually the first incident that I ever went to. Barricade inside the house. He’d got a gun. He said that he poured petrol around the ground floor of the house and there was a baby in there with him.

Nigel Taberner [00:14:17]:
So it was a, it was a high risk negotiation and he wasn’t giving us the time of day. It just wouldn’t connect with me. I was trying every trick in the book and, and actually the, the key to the, to the door with him was just finding something that connected us, finding something that we’d got in common and just starting that conversation. Because the most difficult thing about the. These kind of. You look at it and you think, oh, where on earth I’m gonna start? We start with finding something that connects us and then we move on from there. Because the most difficult part of the conversation is actually getting them talking. Once you’ve got them talking, actually keeping them talking is actually quite straightforward.

Nigel Taberner [00:15:03]:
It’s all about keeping the focus on them. It’s not about me as a negotiator, it’s not about me going in and solving their problems, making all these suggestions. It’s about giving them room in the conversation. So if I’m Talking more than 20% of the time, I’m talking too much. Because if I’m talking, I’m learning nothing. If you’re talking, I’m learning stuff and I’m going to use that in order to influence you. And it’s no different whether you’re dealing with people that you supervise at work. Whether you.

Nigel Taberner [00:15:36]:
Whether you’re chatting to your kids, whether you’re interviewing somebody on a podcast. I mean, you listen to this podcast back afterwards and you tell. And you have a look at how much talking you’re actually doing. I bet you’ve been talking for less than a minute in total. But you’ve got me absolutely spilling me guts and telling you all sorts of stuff. And if you keep me talking, I will tell you things that prior to this podcast, I was thinking, right, I’m not going to say that, and I’m not going to say that, and I’m not going to say that. But you give me room in the conversation and it’ll come out. It always does.

Nigel Taberner [00:16:07]:
And that’s how we get the information that we need, how we paint that picture, how we deal with emotions, because it’s cathartic. When they start getting this off the chest, you know, when somebody turns around to me and I mentioned dad and. And he says, don’t even mention his name again. We’re not talking about him. It’s like, oh, who. Who do we need to talk about? We need to talk about dad. But I’ve got to develop a relationship with him that allows me to kind of work my way around the problem and start talking about dad from her from a different angle, sometimes without them even noticing.

Nicky Lowe [00:16:44]:
So going back to that situation, then this guy barricaded himself in. What was the outcome, what. What happened, and if there’s any little bits that you can share. So you were trying to find this point in connection. What did you find and how did you find that? Because as you say, if they’re not giving you much, is it just a lot of luck or are you using your sensory acuity to pick up?

Nigel Taberner [00:17:07]:
There’s a lot. There’s a lot of luck in it. I mean, it’s pretty much it’s about being yourself. Most people who fail hostage negotiators, courses fail for one reason. It’s because they try to be a hostage negotiator. I’ve just got to go in and be me. But not just me, the best version of me that is going to influence you. And that might be completely different person from the me that I’ve got to be to influence somebody else.

Nigel Taberner [00:17:39]:
So right from the very start, I’m thinking about kind of personal branding as I walk in there. Which version of me do I need to be? I’m thinking about this balancing act that we very often as negotiators have to kind of dance around, really, between competence and warmth. What balance do I actually need there to be able to influence you. Do I need to just push that warmth a little bit or will that be seen as weakness? So I need to just bring that down a little bit and just show that, you know, I’m competent, I’m well meaning. I can sort this mess out for you. I can help you to sort this mess out. I’m the right person to be here to speak to you. So yeah, it’s about people and it’s about being the best version of you to be able to influence that person, connect with them, get them to trust you.

Nigel Taberner [00:18:29]:
And then actually the influence is that top little, little bit.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:35]:
And that’s so powerful because we often think that these are specialist skills, as you say, that you would take years to hone. But there’s some fundamentals as that foundation piece and as you were talking about that competence and warmth, I’m thinking how relatable is that in a professional setting, particularly for women? Because we’re constantly making this where, you know, we want to be agreeable and we want to be seen as nice. But if we’re, if we’re, if we’re not careful, that becomes across as weak. But if we’re too leaning into the competence, we’re seen as, oh, she’s a hard nosed whatever. And we’re constantly playing that. And it’s really interesting hearing you say that in that setting.

Nigel Taberner [00:19:13]:
Yeah. And it’s a real interesting balance night. I mean there’s a lot of research that’s been done on first impressions, personal branding and they come up with that. I said that kind of seesaw really in terms of warmth and competence. So warmth isn’t about being soft and kind of pink and mushy. It’s about are my intentions good, am I a good person? And the competence, not confidence, because we’ve all worked with people who can fake it to make it. That com. Competence is about, you know, am I high performing? Can I do what it says on the tin? And as I’m, as I’m sitting there and I’m looking at this guy, I’m thinking, who do I need to be and if things aren’t working, how do I adjust that? So yeah, it’s one of the key balancing acts that we have.

Nigel Taberner [00:20:03]:
But yeah, you kind of talk about all this skill set that we have as hostage negotiators. The hostage negotiate. A superpower is actually dead simple. It’s the ability to listen. The ability to listen like a life depends on it. You know, we’re just so rubbish as a society. We are so rubbish at listening. And actually, if we did more of it, we’d get a lot more information and we would be more influential.

Nigel Taberner [00:20:33]:
I mean, the number of people who ask me, as I go around working with businesses now, you know, what’s the one thing that I need to do now to be more influential? What’s the one thing I need to do to be a better negotiator? And my answer to them is unequivocal. If you want to be a better negotiator, if you want to be more influential, you want to be a better leader, become a better listener. The number of times as a negotiator, I went to incidents, and inexplicably, after 40, 45 minutes, people would say to me, can I put the knife down now? Can I come down now? Can we end this now? And I’d say to him, yeah, sure. Come on. And as we’re walking back to an ambulance or a police car or something like that, I’d say to him, if you don’t mind me asking, why, why did you change your mind? And the number of times that people have said to me, because nobody has ever listened to me like that before.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:30]:
That’S just made me emotional, Nigel.

Nigel Taberner [00:21:32]:
Yeah, it just really tells a story about how well we listen. You can always tell when somebody’s not listening because they’ll say to you, go on, I’m listening. If you have to tell somebody that you’re listening, it’s clearly because you are doing something else. You’ve normally got a phone in your hand. You’re tapping away. Yeah, go on. I’m listening. Are you tapping away on your computer? Yeah, go on.

Nigel Taberner [00:21:57]:
I am listening. The number one rule about listening is you cannot multitask. You need to create room for it. You need to give it the respect that it deserves. But it will pay you back tenfold. It really will. It will pay you back so. So many times over.

Nigel Taberner [00:22:17]:
You know, if you want to become more influential as a business, invest more time in listening within your company. If you want to be a better sales team, listen more. You know, it’s. But we. But we don’t. It’s the first thing that goes. And it’s very often replaced by that premature problem solving right from the very start.

Nicky Lowe [00:22:37]:
I remember when I did my coach training 20 years ago, I walked into it going, I’m good at listening, and realized what a poor listener I was. I was a conversational listener, you know, So I was listening to respond. And I know for hostage negotiations. Am I right in saying that actually you will have multiple, multiple people listening at any one time so that you’re kind and you’re collaborating over actually what are we hearing here?

Nigel Taberner [00:23:03]:
So potentially it depends on the situation. We never negotiate on our own, so there’s no such thing as the hostage negotiator. There’s always at least two of us. So you’ve got one who’s in that forward facing role. They’re the only one that’s talking. It’s like one single, one song. They are the negotiator, but actually they’re not the important one. The important one is stood directly behind them, whispering in their ear, encouraging them, telling them when they’ve missed something or whispering in your ear.

Nigel Taberner [00:23:36]:
He’s mentioned his mum three times now. I haven’t clocked that because with the best will in the world, whilst I’m really focusing, I’m really listening at the kind of level two, I’m also thinking about where I’m going to take this conversation, how I’m going to respond. So somebody who’s just behind me, purely listening, is always going to pick up on more, which is why we never work on our own if it’s a very high risk involved job and we’re working remotely. So I’m not studying somebody’s garden, looking up at a bedroom window. I’m actually in a police station in a negotiation cell. Yes. There would be a group of us, probably five or six. Everybody’s got sort of headphones on, everybody’s listening.

Nigel Taberner [00:24:17]:
Still only one person talking, but everybody is feeding that individual information.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:24]:
And I want to move on to these kind of elite listening skills in a moment. But before we do that, I was just imagining you at that specific kind of encounter. It’s your first live negotiation. You’ve got a situation where you’ve got a gun, you’ve got potential petrol, you’ve got a baby. I imagine your emotions would have been quite heightened. So what were you doing to manage yourself? Because I imagine part of this is how do you manage your own internal process?

Nigel Taberner [00:24:57]:
Yeah, I suppose there’s a couple of things. One, when I was on my way to this incident, so I was in the office, I got the phone call. It was literally my first deployment as a negotiator. Nigel, we’ve got this guy barricaded in Harry’s. He’s got petrol, he’s got a gun, he’s got a baby. Could you just go and have a chat with him? So I’m hurtling down the motorway towards this and my phone went off. My Pocket. And it’s the negotiator that I’m going to be meeting there that is going to be working with me.

Nigel Taberner [00:25:26]:
He is really experienced. He’d been doing it for eight to 10 years. He was a high ranking officer and the first words out of his mouth were high. Nige, I take it you’re going to take the lead on this one. And everything in me wanted to say no, do you know what, you take this one and I’ll sit back and watch. And I just thought if I do that, the next one becomes so much more difficult. When you put this stuff off, the next one becomes more. And I just heard it was like an out of body experience.

Nigel Taberner [00:25:57]:
I heard my own voice go, yeah, of course I will, mate. And I got there. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first job or whether it’s your 130th job. You get exactly the same physiological response. You can’t fight your own biology. Your heart is still going to be pounding in your chest, you’re still gonna have butterflies, you’re still gonna, your hands are gonna be shaking because you’ve lost that kind of fine motor control. And it’s because your body’s doing what your body is supposed to do in order to, to protect you and allow you to defend yourself. So you can’t fight it.

Nigel Taberner [00:26:33]:
It’s gonna happen. What you got to do is work with it. And you still think, you know what my stomach is, I’ve got butterflies. Because that’s the blood running away from my stomach to me to my arms and my legs so I can fight, my heart’s pounding because the big muscle groups need that. So it’s just doing what it’s doing. And it’s because thousands of years ago in, in the Serengeti when you were walking towards this thing and it got huge teeth, you had to work out whether it was breakfast or you were breakfast. And that was what your body needed. That fight or flight thing.

Nigel Taberner [00:27:10]:
You can’t fight it. You’ve just got to roll with it. I just used to look round and laugh and think, you know what? I can’t see any saber tooth tigers around here.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:19]:
Brilliant. To almost kind of reframe it.

Nigel Taberner [00:27:22]:
Yeah, there’s no servitude tigers around here. I’m good. I still get it now, you know when I speak on stage in front of 600 people, I still get it no matter how many times I do it. You can’t fight your own biology. I now look around the room and think, can’t see many X hostage negotiators in here and just make light of it because it’s still going to happen.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:43]:
Yeah. And it’s it. And that suggests to me that you really care. Like if you’re not getting on stage and going, oh, I’m just giving the same old talk that I’ve given a hundred times. I care about doing a good job here and I love that. So we were talking about the kind of listening like your life or somebody’s life depends on it. And it’s almost like these elite listening skills. So we’ve got people listening to this kind of going, maybe I could kind of up my listening ability.

Nicky Lowe [00:28:11]:
What would you suggest? Because it’s easy to go, just listen better. Like what might be some of the tips or strategies that we can use.

Nigel Taberner [00:28:19]:
You can’t just listen better. That’s just about, that’s about focus. Focus is one part of listening. It’s about pinning me ears back and kind of just trying to maintain that sense of focus on what you’re saying. That’s not, that’s only part of the picture. Listening is about actually picking out what you’re saying, the nuances in what you’re saying. Because I’m concentrating and I’m thinking not just about the words that you’re saying but how you’re saying them, what your body language is like at a time and trying to work out what’s important. The biggest problem that we’ve got when it comes to listening to conversation management and therefore getting information is that we ask too many questions.

Nigel Taberner [00:29:08]:
So there’s this perception that if you want to know more information, ask more questions. No, don’t ask more questions. Because all you do is you turn a conversation into an interrogation, you turn it into an interview. People don’t like it. Kids, if you’ve got kids, they certainly don’t like it.

Nicky Lowe [00:29:31]:
I’ve got a 12 year old son that’s tipping into teenage years and yeah.

Nigel Taberner [00:29:37]:
As soon as you start asking them questions, they will shut you down straight away. So what you got to do is use tactics that don’t make it sound like you’re asking them a question. So if they say something and you want to know more about it, don’t ask a question, just repeat the word that you want to know more about. So I mean an example would be if I said to you, I’m going on my holidays. What is the natural response? Now, no pressure here, Nikki, to get it right, but what is the normal response?

Nicky Lowe [00:30:08]:
Where are you Going on holiday.

Nigel Taberner [00:30:10]:
Excellent, well done. Yes. I’m going to go to go to Corsica. Oh, we’ve never been to Corsica before. Been to Cape Verde. Really nice Cape Verde. Went there for a couple of weeks last year. Oh, you know, the people are really nice.

Nigel Taberner [00:30:23]:
It’s only a five hour flight. You’re giving all this information about your wonderful trip to Cape Verde. You’ve completely forgotten about the fact that actually I’m the one going on my holidays because you’ve got to tell me all about that because you’re excited about it. Actually I’m going on my holidays because I need to get away, but we’re not having a conversation about that. I’d like to think if you said to a hostage negotiator, I’m going on my holidays, they would quizzically put their head on one side and go holidays. They’ve taken their turn in the conversation and now it’s your go again. So you’re going to tell me what you want to tell me without me directing you. So you might turn around and say, yeah, do you know what? Just need to get away for a few weeks.

Nigel Taberner [00:31:11]:
I’ll say, oh, get the impression that work’s getting you down a bit. No, it’s not work. My mother in law’s been a bit unwell, we’ve got us some respite care and we’re going away for a couple of weeks. We’re now having a completely different conversation than we were. The question led approach that we would all go down because we’re directing that conversation so we will. It’s like playing table tennis. Every time you say something, I’m just tipping that ball back over the net again, I’m making it your turn. And the beauty of that kind of echoing is you get zero thinking time as well.

Nigel Taberner [00:31:49]:
You know, if somebody says to you in the office, we’re supposed to be a team, you kind of think, oh, what’s the question I’m going to ask. And it’d normally be something, well, what do you mean by supposed? Which sounds really defensive or well, we are, which is actually next time somebody in the office says we’re supposed to be a team, just go. Supposed to. They have got zero thinking time. It’s now their turn in the conversation again and they’ve got to come good on what supposed actually means. So yeah, if your kid says something at the dinner table and you think, well, I want to know more about that, don’t ask a question, just echo it. Mike was a nightmare. In English, if you go, Mike was A nightmare in English today.

Nigel Taberner [00:32:29]:
Nightmare. They do not see it as a question. They see it as you taking your turn in the conversation and it’s Thursday and they will tell you more about it. And if they do turn around and give you the teenage blocking defense, which is, yeah, just go tell me about it again, a tell me question is not seen in the same way as a, well, what did he do? What did she say? Why did you do that? Tell me. Is that more inviting them to tell you something rather than actually demanding information off them? Which is what a question is seen as. So it’s just subtle stuff like that that makes it your turn. Using fog language. If I’m chatting to a guy and, and he mentions it, his daughter, I don’t immediately go, oh, you need to put the knife down because you’ve got a daughter.

Nigel Taberner [00:33:21]:
I want to know everything about the daughter. So I said, oh, tell me about your daughter. They start telling me stuff. And when they get to the end of the converse that. That sentence, I’ll go, oh, she sounds like the apple of daddy’s eye. I’ve said nothing, but I’ve taken my turn of the conversation, made it hit again. So he tells me more about daughter. Get to the end, I go, sounds like she’s got you wrapped around her little finger.

Nigel Taberner [00:33:44]:
Take my turn again, said nothing. I’ve now got three lots of information for the price of one. Just by making it their turn, keeping the focus on them, you can’t do it all. You can’t do it all the time. But, you know, we just, all we do is manipulate the conversation rules. So conversation rules are my turn, your turn, my turn, your turn. Don’t interrupt. It’s rude.

Nigel Taberner [00:34:11]:
And a conversation has got to have a natural conclusion. If somebody says something to you, you can’t just walk off. You’ve got to reply. So all we do is we just make it their time, their turn, quickly, we add as little as we possibly can, make it their turn. So they’re the one that the focus is on. They’re the one that’s doing all the talking. I’m the one that’s getting this information. And actually when I work out what their values and beliefs are, what really matters to them, what the currency is, then I’m going to use all this information to get them to do things differently.

Nigel Taberner [00:34:45]:
That is where the influence comes in. But that is the top 2%. The rest of it is all about relationship building. Get them talking, keep them talking. And everything just flows from that.

Nicky Lowe [00:34:58]:
If you’re listening and it Sounds so simple and I suppose in many ways it is, but actually that’s really difficult to do for normal human behavior. She said there’s almost like these rules or what we’ve been conditioned. The smartest person in the room is the one that speaks the most rather than actually the smartest person in the room is the one that listens the most. And. Yeah, and actually managing ourselves to that. I’m going to be open, I’m going to be curious, I’m going to hold all information lightly and then see what emerges from that. In. I’m trained in something called gestalt coaching and we talk about the fertile ground that everything has equal kind of importance and see what emerges.

Nicky Lowe [00:35:43]:
And I’m imagining you doing that as you’re talking.

Nigel Taberner [00:35:45]:
Yeah. And it is, it’s all about curiosity. That’s it. You know, people will say to me, oh, you negotiate for 12 hours. How could you listen to somebody for 12 hours? That’s not possible. It is if you’re curious, if you’re genuinely interested and curious, if you want to find out what people. For me, it was always about finding out what people’s why is. I was never particular bothered about what they were doing and how they were doing it.

Nigel Taberner [00:36:10]:
That’s not what’s going to solve this. What’s going to solve it is actually working out what their why is, what their emotions are, what the drivers are, and then using that. And that’s where it starts to become fascinating when you start to find out what’s going on underneath the surface.

Nicky Lowe [00:36:27]:
And I’m just sitting here thinking, and you’ve used that for such good in the world. You know, you’ve those 130plus incidents where you’ve made a real difference just with that genuine curiosity and desire to kind of help using your curiosity. And now obviously you’ve taken that from the police and you now go into organizations and help leaders and professionals with these skills and tell me a little bit about that work. So what do you do and how does this translate? What are the type of things that you’re seeing people do in organizations that are making a difference?

Nigel Taberner [00:37:01]:
Yeah. So when I was sat on that first hostage negotiators course, it was a light bulb moment for me. It was 10 years before I retired from the place. But I knew then exactly what I was going to do when I retired because I could see the skills that were being taught were so applicable to the world of business. It wasn’t just about negotiating, it was about good communication. It was about influence. It was about Persuasion it was on about, it was dealing with difficult people having difficult conversations and just establishing links with people, meaningful links with people, all of which is so applicable into the world of business. So now, yeah, I work with companies across the board really mainly conference speaking.

Nigel Taberner [00:37:49]:
So we’ll speak at conferences around various themes, negotiate when you’ve got nothing to give away, listening like a life depends on it, lessons from the edge of chaos, all that kind of stuff. So storytelling sessions, but with those key takeaways that make people go away, better communicators and more influential. So that’s the majority of what I do. But I also do a lot of half day workshops. So interactive workshops where we don’t just look at the stories, we look at what’s going on behind the story. So you get to work out what I’m thinking as a negotiator, the skills that I’m using to be able to influence people. So a half day interactive workshop. I don’t turn people into hostage negotiators, but I turn them into skilled listeners and communicators.

Nigel Taberner [00:38:42]:
From CEOs to people who sit in forward facing roles on the front desk of businesses. The skills are exactly the same. The only thing that’s different is the level of risk.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:55]:
Powerful stuff because I know that you’ve kind of gone over and worked with the FBI helping them with some of these skills. So to get access to that as kind of individuals in our everyday kind of organizational life, that’s powerful stuff. So if you, if there’s somebody listening going, can you give me a couple of kind of key takeaways? And it might be something that you’ve already said or another skill that you can layer on, what is it that you would want somebody listening to take away about what they can be doing to have more influence and persuasion.

Nigel Taberner [00:39:27]:
Yeah. So there’s a couple of things really. One, the best piece of advice I was ever given as a hostage negotiator was plan for the first 60 seconds of any interaction, any difficult conversation, have a strategy, know what you want to take it in the long term. But we plan meticulously for that first 60 seconds and we do it quite specifically by working out what our opening line is going to be and then practicing it out loud and in the first person over and over and over again. So as I’m, as I’m going to this job, I’m thinking there’s a guy in the house with this gun, what is my opening line going to be? And I’m practicing it out loud. If there’s Somebody with me, a traffic officer who’s taking me there. I’m saying, okay, I’m going to tell you what my opening line is. Shout at me, swear at me, cry at me, tell me you can’t help.

Nigel Taberner [00:40:18]:
I’m going to do it over and over and over again. Because it means when I get there, not only do I know what I’m going to say, I know when I open my mouth exactly what I’m going to sound like. So I’ve got an idea of that balance between the warmth and competence. Because I’ve heard myself say it, it helps you get rid of those nerves. The worst thing is the anticipation. As I’m being driven to that job, my heart is thumping out of my chest. You’re thinking the worst all the time. You go in there.

Nigel Taberner [00:40:49]:
Actually, when you get there, when you start talking, you just very, very quickly settle into it and you’re away. Which is why we say practice for the meticulously, for that first 60 seconds, because that’s your first impression. And we put horns and halos on people very, very quickly. We decide in the blink of an eye whether we like them or not, whether we trust them or not, whether they think they’re competent or capable or not. So we’ve hit that kind of first impression. Our personal branding has been established. And actually, if you think about the worst interview you ever had, the worst presentation you’ve ever had to do, 60 seconds in, you were on your bike and away because the anticipation is always worse than the main event. So the first thing I would say to anybody, if you’re going into any kind of difficult conversation, practice, but don’t just write on a piece of paper what you’re going to say and think, I’m going to read it four or five times and commit it to memory.

Nigel Taberner [00:41:44]:
Hear yourself say it. It is an absolute game changer.

Nicky Lowe [00:41:49]:
Ah, that. And I’ve never thought of that one. So that is. I’m going to bank that one, Nigel. Thank you.

Nigel Taberner [00:41:56]:
It’s a really good. You should be doing it with your introductions, stuff like that, or your opening question or stuff like that. Because you know when you open your mouth, you know exactly what you’re going to sound like.

Nicky Lowe [00:42:04]:
Yeah. And you start off on the right foot then, because I imagine if your voice was to crack in those high stakes or it just come out squeaky or whatever it might be with the nerves and anticipation, it just sets a whole different tone.

Nigel Taberner [00:42:17]:
And that. And that’s the thing with those guys. If we don’t do it, you open your mouth and start talking and it comes. Comes out two octaves higher than you intended and doesn’t sound like you. That affects your confidence and, and you’re starting off on the wrong foot. So, yeah, practice out loud in the first person so you know what you’re going to sound like. Another thing is, again, if. If you’re going to go into a tough conversation, a difficult conversation, you are not on your own.

Nigel Taberner [00:42:39]:
Negotiation is a team sport. Have the people around you that you need to support you in those roles, make sure that they’re invested, that they know exactly what their role is within that negotiation. It might be feeding me information, it might be putting stuff on a board so I don’t have to forget things, you know, it might be just sitting there and encouraging me and, and just smiling and thumbs up when you’re on the phone to somebody. Just have those people around you. I don’t know about you, but certainly when I was running teams in the police, before I became a negotiator, if I’d got a difficult conversation to have, I went in the office and I shut up the door and I locked myself away from the real world. I locked myself away from all the support that was there and available to help me while I have that tough conversation. And it came to me very late in the day. If you can have a tough conversation, make sure that you’ve got the people around you that you need so that you can be the very best that you can be.

Nicky Lowe [00:43:39]:
I love that because I think my audience particularly tend to be quite hyper independent, feeling like they’ve got to do it all on their own. And if they, if they can’t, then that somehow means that they’re not good enough or they’re weak. But to hear that, actually, no, that is a, like an elite strategy. It is not a sense of you, you can’t do it. It’s like, no, this is meant to be a team sport.

Nigel Taberner [00:44:01]:
Yeah. So, you know, if you’ve got a difficult phone call to have, don’t sit there on your own. Bring somebody into the office, somebody trust somebody that’s briefed and knows what the strategy is, what it is that you’re trying to achieve. Put the phone on loudspeaker, they can be passing post it notes or little pieces of paper to you and stuff like that. If you’ve got a difficult teams call to have, then have them sat off camera and just be honest and say, just so you know, I’ve got Peter with me, he’s just off screen taking notes. He’s not off screen taking notes, he’s writing stuff down and holding pieces of paper up and giving you prompts and encouragement. So yeah, if, if we would do that as hostage negotiators, why would you not do that in business? It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength to have the right people around you, allowing you to be the best version of yourself that you need to be to influence that individual.

Nicky Lowe [00:44:56]:
That’s a bit of a mic drop there, Nigel. I love that. And as I say for my audience particularly, I think that’s such a strong message. I know people are going to want to find out more about you and your services. So where would you direct them?

Nigel Taberner [00:45:12]:
So if LinkedIn, I kind of live on LinkedIn. So Nigel Taberna, if you find me on, on there, the my Website I think www nigeltaber.com but hopefully you’ll put a, a link out.

Nicky Lowe [00:45:26]:
I absolutely will, yeah.

Nigel Taberner [00:45:28]:
For that and, and yeah, you know, get in touch. I love having online conversations and, and kind of continuing the con, the conversation kind of after the event. So, yeah, thank you.

Nicky Lowe [00:45:40]:
Nigel. I absolutely love your approach because you’re sharing like high stakes, high pressure, high performance conversations but you do it in such a down to earth and relatable way. So I really appreciate this. I’ve loved what you’ve shared with us today.

Nigel Taberner [00:45:56]:
Thank you. And the beauty of it is I don’t feel like I’m giving any secrets away. It’s common sense. I’m not completely lifting the lid on hostage negotiators and giving all these secrets away that are going to put lives at risk. It’s just about good communication skills. It’s just about connecting with people. It’s about just forgetting about negotiating. Just have a meaningful conversation.

Nigel Taberner [00:46:22]:
If I can ignore the fact that somebody’s waving a gun around, it’s just a conversation between two guys. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be?

Nicky Lowe [00:46:33]:
And then I think in our kind of AI world, having more humanness and more human conversations is so powerful. So thank you for that, Nigel. It’s been a real pleasure.

Nigel Taberner [00:46:43]:
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. I’ve loved it.

Nicky Lowe [00:46:47]:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you. So head over to luminate co.uk where you’ll find ways to stay in touch and if this episode resonated with you One of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on itunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time. Take care.