Given the unforeseen nature of conflicts in today's workplaces, including instances of workplace violence (WPV), de-escalation training...

Active listening is a core skill taught across all IXI negotiation courses and a foundational component of science-based interviewing. In crisis negotiations, it is a life-preserving tool that helps negotiators identify emotions, values, and unmet needs behind demands. By reflecting feelings and summarizing concerns, conversations shift from confrontation to problem-solving without coercion.

Open-ended questions are foundational to science-based interviewing because they elicit free narratives that reveal unknown unknowns—information investigators could not anticipate or know to ask about in advance. These narratives allow investigators to be surprised, opening new lines of inquiry, better follow-up questions, and more case-relevant data than closed or leading questions ever produce.