Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations, 9:176–179, 2009

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1533-2586 print / 1533-2594 online
DOI: 10.1080/15332580902865268

Up Close and Personal

Dr. George Mount, Feature Editor
Making Negotiations a Focal Concern:
Enhancing Active Listening Skills

MICHAEL J. McMAINS
Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Negotiations Team, San Antonio, Texas, USA

For the last several years, there has been growing concern among some
negotiators about the difficulty in getting negotiators to use active listening
skills. Informal evaluations of the skills used by negotiators at contests show
that active listening is the criterion on which all teams score the lowest. All
of us have had the experience of seeing or being negotiators who jumped
to problem solving too early. What are the reasons for this and how can we
overcome the problems?
I would suggest that one of the factors contributing to our difficulty in
using active listening well is that we are immersed in and are shaped by a
system/culture of technocrats—people who are more interested in efficiency
than effectiveness, people who confuse technology with art, and people
who focus more on devices than on things. It is not just “the brass”; we as
negotiators and our society are enamored with technology, expecting it to
solve our problems for us. It is all of us.
Let me explain. Efficiency can be thought of as how quickly things are
done, using the available resources. Time is the focus. Consequently, we
hear, “You have two hours to negotiate, then we go tactical.” Or “Look at
how many people we have out here. We are going to have to pay a lot of
overtime. Can’t you speed this thing up?” Or, as negotiators, we get involved
in debates over whether or not we walk away from a suicidal person because
it is not an efficient use of our resources; after all, taking time to negotiate
with a person who is suicidal takes us away from serving others who need
protection.
Technology can be thought of as things, including processes and pro-
cedures, that solve problems. We tend to assume that if we use the right
gadgets, techniques, processes, or procedures, we will solve the problem.
We focus on getting a throw phone or a mobile command post. We focus on

Address correspondence to Dr. Michael J. McMains, PhD, Bexar County Sheriff’s Office,
1419 Brook Meadow, San Antonio, TX 78232. E-mail: mjmcmains@yahoo.com

176
 Focal Concerns 177

training rather than education; teaching skills—how, where, when—without

understanding the whys of the skills. We focus on doing things right rather
than doing the right thing.
There is an ancient Celtic tradition of the poet–warrior. The tradition
emphasizes the importance of being an artist and a warrior. It tells us that
we need a deeper understanding of life—its value, its structure, and its
meaning—than we get from developing the skills of a warrior. It says that
there are underlying, eternal principles/values to which the warrior must
attend and which a warrior needs to understand and apply with flexibil-
ity and creativity to be effective. It says, Art needs to balance technology
and that efficiency is not the only yardstick for measuring the success of
negotiations.
The social philosopher Albert Borgman has drawn a distinction between
“devices” and “things.” Devices are objects, tools, gadgets, or concepts that
serve a function that we do not usually understand. Devices lie behind the
delivery of services. Devices facilitate efficiency and hyperactivity. Borgman
(1984) defines hyperactivity as “a state of mobilization where the richness
and variety of social and cultural pursuits, and the natural pace of daily life,
have been suspended to serve a higher, urgent cause” (p. 14). Devices tend
to give us the illusion that all things can be solved quickly with minimal effort
and without much involvement on our part. We are a society of devices: cell
phones, throw phones, computers, instant messages, and blogs that we do
not understand but use. We expect them to work fast and without error. We
do not expect to have to understand them.
“Things,” according to Borgman, are the events, objects, and activities
that have a natural flow to them. They have their own timing and depth. They
do not always lend themselves to efficiency and technology. They require a
broad understanding, not just technique. We need to know the whys of the
event, not just the hows, wheres, whens.
Negotiation is a “thing” in the Borgman sense. For instance, most of
the time, we can defuse intense emotions by using reflection of feelings; the
technique usually works efficiently and we do not think about it. Sometimes,
reflection of feelings aggravates people. They get more agitated, not less.
Reflection does not defuse the situation. What do we do and why when the
technology does not work? People are “things,” not “devices.” They have
a depth and timing of their own. We need to understand their depth and
flow, and we need to resist the assumption that people can be treated like
devices. It is called “empathy” and cannot be rushed. For years, one of my
favorite one-liners has been, “Negotiation is not rocket science; it is much
more difficult,” because people are more complicated than the technology
involved in space travel.
So, if it is true that we are products of our technocratic society and
we need to resist the pull toward efficiency, technology, and “devices” to
be effective negotiators, how do we do this? How do we, as negotiators,
178 M. J. McMains

overcome the present-day focus on technology, fast action, and shallowness

that lie behind our poor use of active listening skills?
One way is to allow negotiations to be what Borgman (1992) calls “a
focal concern.” He characterizes a “focal concern” as an event, activity, or
relationship that has:

1. A commanding presence—that is, an activity that demands that we re-

spond with energy, effort, discipline, and attention. We have to work at
negotiations, not just during the callout or during our training, but between
incidents and training. It demands that we study, read, discuss, and are
actively involved in understanding negotiations, people, communications,
crises, and all the other knowledge bases that lead to our skills. How
much reading have you done this month related to negotiations? How
many discussions have you had about it? How many papers or blogs have
you written? In short, how much time have you devoted to understanding
the depths of negotiations?
2. A deep connection with the others—that is, we begin to see others as
having more depth than just what they say or do. We understand and
learn to recognize that people have deeper feelings and thoughts that
drive their overt behavior. We learn that they share many of the same
goals, needs, and motives that we do; they often have learned poorer
ways of achieving these goals. We need to empathize and connect. And,
we need to know and explain to others that this understanding takes time.
3. An orienting quality—that is, it puts us in touch with something greater
than our individual selves. In allowing negotiations to become a focal
concern, negotiators are able to put aside our personal agendas to listen
and understand the depth of others, and we recognize that understanding
and connection as being in line with the universal value of human life.
We are able to ethically perform our function. We are committed, not
just involved, meaning that we will make sacrifices in time, energy, and
finances to function as effective negotiators.

Seeing negotiations as a focal concern will lead to better use of active lis-
tening skills, because it will help us see beyond the technocratic worldview.
It will help us recognize the importance of values in our art, the importance
of depth in our relationships, and the need for commitment to underlying
principles in our skills. It will facilitate the learning that provides the knowl-
edge that will generalize beyond the skills of active listening and allow us to
deal effectively with novel situations/people in creative and flexible ways.
Have a question about whether or not your team is on the road to
making negotiations a focal concern? Ask yourselves if you can say yes to
each of the four Borgman Affirmations below when engaged in negotiator
activities:
 Focal Concerns 179

There is No place else I would rather be;

There is Nothing else I would rather do;
There is Nobody else I would rather be with;
I will remember this well.

REFERENCES

Borgman, A. (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosoph-

ical enquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Borgman, A. (1992). Crossing the post-modern divide. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.