statement inane and naïve, and even a sign she had
embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Some said that she had
blown her chances at a presidential run.
The problem with all of that hot air is that she was right.
Politics aside, empathy is not about being nice or
agreeing with the other side. It’s about understanding them.
Empathy helps us learn the position the enemy is in, why
their actions make sense (to them), and what might move
them.
As negotiators we use empathy because it works.
Empathy is why the three fugitives came out after six hours
of my late-night DJ voice. It’s what helped me succeed at
what Sun Tzu called “the supreme art of war”: to subdue the
enemy without fighting.
LABELING
Let’s go back to the Harlem doorway for a minute.
We didn’t have a lot to go on, but if you’ve got three
fugitives trapped in an apartment on the twenty-seventh
floor of a building in Harlem, they don’t have to say a word
for you to know that they’re worried about two things:
getting killed, and going to jail.
So for six straight hours in that sweltering apartment
building hallway, the two FBI negotiating students and I
took turns speaking. We rotated in order to avoid verbal
stumbles and other errors caused by tiredness. And we
stayed relentlessly on message, all three of us saying the
same thing.