Verbal Interactional Analysis Techniques have been used for several decades to gather research data on teacher and counselor effectiveness. This article looks at the adaptation of these techniques for use by police personnel in crisis management situations, such as hostage taking, barricades, and suicide attempts. The techniques can be quickly learned and habituated so that audio tapes of negotiations can be analyzed and feedback provided to police negotiators in a graphic, non-threatening manner. The article focuses on supervisory systems concerned with verbal behavior only since the majority of supervision is done with counseling sessions recorded on audio tapes. The importance of non-verbal communication is well noted, but scholars studying non-verbal communication agree it is not possible to compile concrete, consistently accurate explanations of the meaning of nonverbal behavior. The study lends the opinion that verbal communication could be analyzed with higher reliability than could non-verbal communication.