CHAPTER 3

DON’T FEEL THEIR PAIN, LABEL

IT

It was 1998 and I was standing in a narrow hallway outside

an apartment on the twenty-seventh floor of a high-rise in
Harlem. I was the head of the New York City FBI Crisis
Negotiation Team, and that day I was the primary
negotiator.
The investigative squad had reported that at least three
heavily armed fugitives were holed up inside. Several days
earlier the fugitives had used automatic weapons in a shoot-
out with a rival gang, so the New York City FBI SWAT
team was arrayed behind me, and our snipers were on
nearby rooftops with rifles trained on the apartment
windows.
In tense situations like this, the traditional negotiating
advice is to keep a poker face. Don’t get emotional. Until
recently, most academics and researchers completely
ignored the role of emotion in negotiation. Emotions were
just an obstacle to a good outcome, they said. “Separate the
people from the problem” was the common refrain.
But think about that: How can you separate people from
the problem when their emotions are the problem?