Whether you’re negotiating with a hostile regime or your neighbor, there’s one rule to always keep in mind, Mickey Bergman told Business Insider’s Maggie Cai in a recent interview.
Bergman has been a hostage negotiator for over 17 years and is CEO of Global Reach, a nonprofit established to bring home Americans being wrongfully held abroad.
His work includes direct negotiations with the captors, managing the relationship with the family of the captured, and negotiations with the US government.
“The role of emotional intelligence, to me, is the single most important thing that we have to keep in mind when we try to engage with people that disagree with us,” Bergman said, adding, “There is a very important rule in emotional intelligence that says only get angry with purpose.”
In other words, don’t let emotions get the best of you. That’s the fastest way to ruin a negotiation, he said.
How emotional hijacking works
Courtesy of Mickey Bergman
Whenever you experience a strong emotion, such as anger, there’s a brief period of time between feeling the emotion and processing it rationally. If you act on that feeling before you process it, that’s called being emotionally hijacked, Bergman said.
“The worst thing you can do to screw up negotiations is to allow yourself to get emotionally hijacked, because that is often the fundamental reason why negotiations break down,” he said.
Bergman added that in many of his negotiations, people say things to try and trigger him, but he doesn’t jump to respond. “I don’t lose anything by not objecting,” he said, adding that he takes time to process the triggering information before replying.
Courtesy of Mickey Bergman
That’s not to say Bergman doesn’t get emotional during negotiations. “You can get angry with purpose, but don’t do it out of emotional hijacking.”
How getting angry in negotiations can backfire
The best example Bergman has seen of emotional hijacking and emotional intelligence, in general, is actually not from one of his negotiations. It’s from the US Open in 2018, with Serena Williams in the final against Naomi Osaka.
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It was the singles final in New York, and the umpire issued Serena a code violation for “coaching,” which means a player is seen getting coaching from the sidelines during a match.
Serena took the violation as a slight to her character. She got emotionally hijacked and yelled at the umpire for accusing her of cheating. She continued fighting and arguing with the umpire, who then gave her another violation for verbal abuse. Ultimately, Serena lost the match and lost the US Open.
“By the way, she was right in her argument,” Bergman said of the code violation for coaching. “But it was against her own interest. And that is such an example of emotional hijacking in which you act against your interest.”
Courtesy of Mickey Bergman
Then, during the award ceremony, Serena Williams did the biggest emotional intelligence transformation Bergman said he’s ever seen:
The whole crowd of over 20,000 people was booing on Serena’s behalf because of what happened. Serena sees Naomi Osaka next to her, and she’s crying. Once Serena has the microphone, she addresses the audience, saying everybody should stop booing and start cheering.
“This is Serena Williams. After losing the final, turning to 20,000 people who were cheering for her and booing the institution to cheer for her opponent that won,” Bergman said, adding that it must have been a very hurtful moment for her.
“That to me is such a manifest, and I keep it in my head when I think about it. I keep it in my head when I teach. I use it a lot. That is how you either screw up negotiations or make negotiations work.”
