The Role of Language in Negotiation: Insights from Yuri Kruman

Hello my fellow negotiators. Did you know I once had a listener share that after listening to our podcast, she was able to negotiate a $53,000 raise. And you know what I told her? Where is my commission? Just kidding. But the real story is this was after years of being too afraid to negotiate. But after listening to a couple of episodes on Salary Negotiation, she felt equipped with with the confidence and tools to ask for the payment she deserved. And that, my friends, is the power of negotiation. And through a subscription to our new membership community Negotiate Anything Premium, we're taking that power to the next level. With customized playlists based on our most popular topics, you'll be able to find the episodes you're looking for much faster and much easier. A tool that comes in handy as you're getting ready to prepare for an important negotiation. Even I find myself asking which episode should I listen to before heading into a high stakes negotiation? And you might be saying, but Kwame, you're the ones having the conversations. But I forget. So I listen to the episodes multiple times. Okay, now here's the thing about Negotiate Anything Premium. It'll allow you to dive deeper into the specific situations you're facing, whether it's a salary negotiation, an important business meeting, or an emotional conversation with a loved one. Bonus for you. In addition to ad free and extended episodes, Premium members will have exclusive access to solo episodes and insights from yours truly. And as you know, it will be very dry and very boring. Because I have no sense of humor and this is something that you all have been asking for. I'll also be offering personalized answers to some of your most burning questions through our Ask Me Anything feature. If you've been enjoying our traditional feedback, imagine the value a premium subscription can offer. I've felt the benefit of negotiation firsthand and it is life changing. Many of you don't know this, but my journey has taken me from people pleaser to a confident negotiator. Because I was able to do two simple things through negotiation. I was able to first change my mindset and then I was able to improve my skill set. And that is what will happen for you when you join Premium. I've already seen the impact of these skills and the power of this model not only in my own life, but also in the lives and careers of our clients all around the world. My family, my friends, and our team here at A&I, and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Now, are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Check the link in the show notes to learn more. I'm excited to continue the conversation. I'll catch you later.

Yuri. Thanks for joining us today, my friend.

I mean, thank you so much for, for having me on. Really excited to have this conversation.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. My name is Yuri Kruman and I do HR consulting, that's my main gig. And then on the side I also do executive coaching. Usually I bake those in together. In my engagements I go into fast growth companies to really help them to grow and scale and to do that the right way by getting their people strategy right and building up systems. But most importantly, coaching their people right, helping them to get good feedback, helping them to understand where they're going in their career pathway and then also doing learning and development because in a way that's the most valuable thing they can get from their work. And then aside from that, I also write a great deal for outlets like Forbes, Entrepreneur, I just joined Newsweek and Fast Company as well and just put out a book which we'll probably touch upon. Be your own Commander in Chief. And aside from that I do keynote speaking and you know, just general tomfoolery, whatever comes down the pipe.

Fantastic. That is great. Kudos to you on the book and all of the writing. I think it's fair to say that you are prolific at this point. So everybody, we will have links to the book and links to your different outlets in the description below. So we're excited to share those resources. And today this is going to be a great discussion. And I know from our pre interview chat that this is going to be a lot of fun because we're going to talk about the impact of bias on negotiation, but not just what it does, but what you can actually do about it. I think this is fantastic. And so the three main topics that we're going to focus on today are first, understanding the importance of language. And we're not just talking about the external language, we're also talking about internal, our internal dialogue, which is fascinating. The next thing is recognizing your biases and then how you can actually fix them and why it's important to fix them. And then lastly, understanding the importance of managing expectations. All right Yuri, so let's talk about the importance of language. Where should we start?

I think for me there's a very simple way to look at this subject in Hebrew. So I'm Jewish, so for me that's one place to start. If you look in The Old Testament, the word for word, and the word for thing in Hebrew is dava, which seems like just a word, but if you think about it, word and thing are the same thing. So what you say, what you formulate becomes a thing. When you speak, you create. When God spoke, he made the world or made in God's image. So when we speak, we create reality. Now, when we speak, we're not just speaking to other people, we're speaking to ourselves as well. Because imagine, you know, maybe a lot of people don't think about it this way, but we have internal dialogue and we're like, well, yeah, yeah, okay, that's like. That's very fungible. Sometimes I believe that, sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's stress, sometimes it's, you know, whatever. I'm excited about something. It's exactly the same thing. In fact, if you look at neuroscience research, you can see very quickly that you have mirror neurons, meaning when you see a person, there's a unique neuron. Imagine this one unique neuron that lights up based on you seeing a person that you know. And imagine how that works with language. It's the same idea with specific words, specific context, you know, concepts, a particular context. Different systems work when you speak different languages. In fact, I remember seeing an Atlantic article about this maybe three, four years ago. Apparently, we're different people in just the neuroscientific sense when we speak different languages, right? So imagine what that does inside our head, whether we speak different languages to ourselves, which that would be pretty interesting. Or if we just look at the way we talk to ourselves about ourselves, but also about other people, right? So this kind of has correlates out in the world. So how do I talk about myself? I am my LinkedIn tagline, or I am my profession, or I am my bank account size. This is New York, right? This is just the unfortunate reality. Or if you're out in the Midwest, it might be, I'm. I don't know, I'm just, you know, I run a store or I have a farm, or, you know, I breed horses, whatever. God bless. I grew up in Kentucky. Okay? But inside our heads, like, well, I'm, you know, it could be I'm a good for nothing, I didn't go to this school. Who am I to speak up, right? We have all these doubts of all this, all these ways that we almost like we kind of whip ourselves and we harm ourselves, right? And the problem is we essentially internalize the feedback from other people onto ourselves, right? That's from childhood when we're impressionable. We're kids, you know, when we're adults, we take all that baggage with us and we continue the same habits. Okay, I'm not good. I'm this or that. Or we overreact to that, because let's say I, you know, you want to overcompensate. So I was very, you know, I don't know, was very introverted as a kid. And now I'm on Wall street, and now I have to go prove to everyone that I'm, you know, the whatever, the hottest thing in town. So all of this kind of stuff, there's a constant back and forth between what we have inside our head, what we project, what we take in, right? So if you want to think about it like a cellular membrane, right? I'm someone who grew up with science in the house to scientist parents. Think about a cellular membrane. So you have two parts to it, right? And essentially you have holes in there that are for receptors. And the receptors can open up or close, depending on the signal. So you want to send something through. It's sugar, sodium, you know, it's some kind of neurotransmitter. Something has to activate this thing. So it might be, you know, when we're talking about language and psychology, it's words, it's triggers, right? So something triggers this to open up, and I let it in. I internalize. Makes me think that I am that which I've been called, right? And the same, vice versa. We find a way to call something like, you know, I don't know. I'm like, you have trouble. Sort of what I coach about, right? People have trouble synthesizing their story. You know, it's just like, well, I'm my LinkedIn tagline. No, you're much more than that, right? What's in your closet full of baggage? Like, who are you really? What trauma do you have? Let's bring that to the table and let's make sense of it. It's a map with different points on it. So how do we connect that? How do we give you a sense of your purpose, your mission? Once you have some words around that, suddenly you put it out in the world and you keep doing it, and you keep doing it, and it reinforces how you feel about yourself, how others feel about you. And there's this cycle, what you take in from the outside inside and what you project from the inside to the outside. And that's how you circulate, either in a vicious cycle if you're in the wrong place, or in a virtuous cycle. So with that said, we're starting to see kind of this interplay between internal language and external language. And when we're talking about biases, the interesting thing is we live in a time where conversations about bias are front and center. They're right here, right in your face. They're in the news, they're in universities, they're talking about HR circles. Obviously, that's a big topic of conversation, usually comes up in diversity, equity, inclusion, et cetera. And that means we need more representation, et cetera. Great. That's an incredibly important and timely subject. But no less important is to understand biases against yourself.

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Right? A lot of biases we have about other people are reflections of biases we have about ourselves. So if you think about just growing up, right, we grow up as kids, not all of us have the opportunity to, let's say, live in New York City and be exposed to hundreds of cultures and languages and cuisines and all of that stuff, right? And that's great, right? As people who look at cosmopolitanism in a positive light, because we came from other countries or cultures to America, and we're in the melting pot. But not everyone has that opportunity. I mean, obviously around the world, most people stay very close to where they grew up and with the culture that they know. So when something different comes along, they tend to project either things that they've heard from their parents, the inputs, right, from their culture, their language, their family. And they tend to project them onto other people. And it's not to take away anything from, you know, fault and maybe not educating yourself, but this is the way of the world for the most part, except in large cities. So let's say you have the bias that you project onto other people, but what about the opposite as well, right? People are notorious for seeking shortcuts, Right? Our brain is a shortcut machine for making the most we can of limited information and trying to deduce level of risk with that limited information. And unfortunately, our wiring is such that fight or flight, you know, usually unfortunate things happen when we meet someone from a totally different place or culture when we were not exposed to that. So again, I'm not taking anything away from the larger sort of context of the conversation, but the essence is that this bias process is also. It's a cycle, right? So let's say you're very open to other people. Like I, I grew up thing, got very open to other people because, you know, being in an academic town, you meet people from all over the world, lived in New York, lived in Philly, College was like, wow, all these people from all over the world, right? But about myself, I just was like, well, okay, but who am I? What am I? Like, I'm just going along, I'm trying to make, I don't know, my mom happy. God bless my mom, it's not her fault, right? But I was like thinking, I have to do MD, PhD. My grandparents are both doctors, my mom is a PhD. Like, I have to do that because it's like that's what you do when you're a Russian, Jewish immigrant and that's your family background. So it wasn't about me, it was always about other people. Wow, interesting. Cool. But I never sort of cognized the variety and interesting things inside my own head. I didn't have the words for it. I didn't create that inner reality until much later when I had the language for it, when I had the concepts from psychology and other languages and cultures to really crystallize my thoughts, to bring all of that around. I had biases against myself because I did not have a way to express what I thought about myself or who I am or where I'm going, who am I serving and all of these kinds of things. So I didn't have mild posts, if you will. I didn't have reference points. I had to create those from scratch. So what does that have to do with biases? So actually the longest chapter in my book by a long shot is about biases and notions. So the biases, you know, you have everything from a Dunning Kruger effect to select selectivity bias and, you know, 150 plus others. So there are all of these different shortcuts that our brain takes. It's not just about other people and meeting, you know, gauging risk and understanding danger, Right? It's also about ourselves. Our wiring, again is such that unfortunately, unless we condition our brain to regularly enter a higher cognitive state where it's not about fear, it's not about fight or flight, it's not about the lizard brain, we unfortunately tend to just get stuck, right? So life, in a way, is all about, you know, why do you need, let's say, to stay healthy, or why do you need the right mental models, or why do you need to be good in dealing with other people? It's so that you can regularly enter a higher cognitive state. And in that higher cognitive state, you can free yourself from all of these limitations of your biases and notions and background and language and inability to express. Right. You start formulating certain higher level concepts that give you reference points. Okay. And that in turn is what helps you to free yourself, to first of all understand what your biases are and secondly, to start freeing yourself from them.

Yeah, this makes so much sense. And I think one of the things that is easy for people to overlook that you hit is the fact that words have power. Words have power to create. And we often, as negotiators and people who are having these difficult conversation leaders, whatever it is that brought people to the this podcast, we often think about it in terms of what do I need to say, what words do I need to speak externally to receive the outcomes and the results that I'm looking for? But what you're saying is that that's just the surface level part, because oftentimes what we're saying is nothing more than an external manifestation of our internal dialogue. And so really, if we're going to focus on improving our skills as a negotiator, we have to go through this introspective process to see how we're talking to ourselves, how we're describing the situation, how we see ourselves too. Because that's going to dictate how we express ourselves in the external world, and then that is going to dictate the feedback that the world gives to us.

Exactly. So actually it's very interesting that negotiation is a particularly good construct and context in which to analyze the distance between action and reaction. Right? Which is, after all, the whole point of human behavior. If we're supposed to be so highly evolved, then why do so many of us so often just kind of stimulus, response, stimulus response. We just think, what are we, just a pass through entity? So negotiation gives us that ability, provided we do it well, to take time, take a pause and say, okay, here's the action, here's the offer, and before I formulate a way to answer that offer with some kind of revised terms. I want to really understand what are their goals, what are my goals, where can we meet in the middle, how can we create a win win, and what is it that we can build here for the long term? This doesn't have to be just a single transaction. And that kind of just taking pause again, entering into a higher cognitive level where we're not dwelling in the lizard brain. It's not like, how dare you this and that night we say, okay, I get it, thank you for your offer, we will consider it. We will get back to you what that does. Just like in any, essentially, in any human behavior, it's all about, here's the action, what's your reaction? Most people don't really get that second part that you can, you can choose. You're not, you're not an automaton, you're not an animal. Right. That's what distinguishes humans from animals. We have that ability to decide what is the reaction.

Absolutely, yeah. And here's the thing, it goes back to what you said earlier about the value of mental models. So replicable systems that we have in our minds that help us to make better decisions. And when you talk about accessing that, that higher level of thinking, it makes a lot of sense. And I know a lot of people are going to say, yes, that makes sense. But when I'm livid, when I'm frustrated, when I'm disappointed, all of those things. Now I'm responding with the lizard brain. Now it is the base level of my humanity that's taking over. And so in the midst of this interaction, how do you access that higher level thinking in order to put this mental model into action?

This may sound funny, but it's really all about gamification. This has to be a game that you play with yourself. It's not a game you play with anyone else. You're not negotiating because your fee size is bigger than that guy's like, okay, whatever. You're competing with yourself. And that's kind of the most important, important takeaway. Right. One of the reasons why it's called be your own commander in chief is because in the end, what matters, it's, it's your own internal reference points. Right? How are you doing against your own potential? That's the only thing that really matters about your peak performance, so to speak. Right. I mean, I'm not going to go play for the NBA tomorrow. Right. I mean, I'm 37, I'm probably, you know, overweight, and I Don't know if that my basketball skills are that great to begin with. Right. So. But it's fine. I don't need to do that in order to be, you know, impactful or to live a meaningful life or to have clarity in my life or frankly, to have success. I mean, there are so many other models outside of looking left at this guy, right at that one, and saying, well, no, everyone has their particular modalities that they're born with, that they're given, you know, as gifts, other things in which they're limited. So what is the point of measuring yourself by someone else's moving goalposts? It's just the silliest thing in the world. So, you know, in the end, I want to kind of segue into the next subject. One of the most important, I think, underrated skills, and this is something I talk about at great length under mental models and life skills, is managing expectations. Okay, why is this so important? Again, what is managing expectations? It's like, well, I'm going to be late by 10 minutes. That's managing expectations. You're saying, okay, I don't want to mess this up, but I'm running late because of traffic. Okay, thank you. Maybe most people wouldn't do that. That's not the only way of managing expectations. It's not just saying, I will under promise and over deliver. Because that's the most common kind of sexy thing, like over, under promise, over deliver, and you'll be fine. Great consultant. All right. It doesn't work like that within yourself because again, this conversation, we keep talking about this kind of internal and external, internal, external. And you're kind of the filter in one direction and the other. If you think about it, life is essentially one really, really long conversation, you know, between yourself and your environment, the people in it, you know, with God as well, and with your body. So these are all kind of vessels, right? These are. You're. You're kind of one vessel which processes language and psychology through. Through you, through your head, through your body, with God and with other people, right? So there's these kind of cycles that always go on in your life. No matter where you are, what culture, what language, what profession, none of these things matter. You're kind of like that constant purveyor of this flow. So why is managing expectations important? Because for yourself, one of the places where most people suffer, especially higher intelligence, like more highly intelligent people and people that are more accomplished, they always feel imposter syndrome, like, well, I expected to win the Nobel Prize, or, you know, what If I don't make it to Carnegie Hall, I'm nothing. Because they come from parents, maybe, that are immigrants, that had huge expectations. Like, if you're not a doctor, lawyer or financier, who the hell are you? Right? And it's unfortunate, but it's also, you know, parents that go through their own trauma, maybe they went through dictatorship back home, they went through discrimination, repression, terrible, terrible stuff, right? So all of us, unfortunately, we have our blocks, we have our ways where we're flowing. So again, one of the reasons for managing expectations is to create better flow. So you're not burdened by saying, well, who am I? What am I? You know, I didn't make it to Carnegie Hall, I didn't win a Nobel Prize, so I must be worthless. No, it's just you haven't found your mission. So whatever, your mission is sexy. Not sexy. Highly compensated. Not highly compensated. Do you have clarity about yourself, right? Do you have meaning in your life? Are you making impact with every little action toward your mission, toward fulfilling it? And success is almost a byproduct. It's a byproduct of doing those things, right? Seeking clarity in your life, creating meaning, showing impact through your work, and also, yes, through your words and your actions. If nothing else, if you have absolutely nothing in this world, okay, you're somewhere in the slum of the slums and you have not a penny to rub against another. And you have no family. You're a nothing and a nobody in nowhere land. You can always control three things, always. No matter who you are, what your ability, thoughts, speech and action. Those are three things you can always, always, always control. Can control your genetics, can control a lot of things. But if you're able to control your thoughts, speech and actions, you're way ahead of most other people, even that are much more sophisticated and rich and well developed. So managing expectations internally is usually much harder because let's say you're a millennial and you're growing up in the greatest, most privileged generation of all time and like, oh, what's a recession? What's another recession you should be doing? Well, come on, where's your six figure paych by 30? Where is your, you know, suburban house with a two car garage and 2.1 kids and whatever in suburban Westchester County? Like, come on, get with it. And you internalize that, right? And you, again, you speak to yourself like, I'm. But, but I'm not performing. I'm not performing. Like I. Yeah, that's, that's not an excuse. Like I, you know, you Beat your chest and who am I? What am I? And you fold the behind. Instead of focusing on building yourself up, you're tearing yourself down. So expectations are a huge thing in both directions. What you expect of other people. I strongly believe that you should expect nothing, 0 of other people. Except for, of course, by contract, by law, or by ethics, by social contract. Those things are very important. And yes, you have to expect if you sign a contract, you're going to do what you say. Otherwise, go to court or arbitration. Otherwise, if you live in a religious community and everyone agrees that, okay, we go to religious court, if there's a dispute, fine, okay, go to religious court. But we have a clear way of resolving the dispute and then managing expectations of yourself. You should not expect that I'm going to live up to my aspirations. You probably won't. And that's probably a good thing. That's a healthy thing. Because if your aspirations are to, you know, check boxes and reach certain income levels and whatever, that's not. That's not the real thing. Your aspiration should be to be the best person and the best professional and just the best human you can be. And yes, to achieve impact and to have the best kind of positive effect on the world in your 120 years on this earth.

Right.

Whatever your channel is, whatever value add, that's up to you. But that's. That's what I think is the meaning of life where we're getting closer there, and then you kind of. You go 360 degrees around yourself. What do I expect of myself? Well, okay. I mean, I'll do my best to have high standards and to live up to them and to train myself to raise my standards, but I'm not gonna try to live up to my aspirations because that's. That's not realistic and it just harms me. What do I expect of other people? Nothing. You know what? I'm going to always be positively surprised when someone is nice to me. When, you know, someone does something good for me without asking anything in return. It restores your faith in humanity when you expect nothing again except by, you know, by law, contract, or social contract. Okay. And then what others expect of you, what do I care? I don't care. What do they expect of me? I mean, okay, if it's my wife, yeah, she has a voice 100%. But, you know, with my kids, yeah, I mean, I got to provide for them, but other than that. Sorry, I'm not in the business of satisfying your expectations, buddy. So it's good to set. Set those Things where they should be, not where someone else thinks they should be.

Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense the way that you describe it because essentially what you're saying is that when we go through this introspective process, we're going to get clarity on what we really want. And then we're going to recognize that oftentimes there's a discrepancy between what we want and what society or our family or whoever it else it is says that we should want. And then once we get that clarity, we put ourselves in a position where, number one, from a negotiation perspective, we can actually meaningfully negotiate for what we really want. And if we were to win, we were actually get the satisfaction that we truly want. And then, number two, we're not going to have unhealthy expectations and we're not going to live a life of perpetual disappointment.

Yes.

And so with the time we have left, again, I want you to remind the listeners about your book and where you they can learn more about the writing that you do.

Sure. So the book is called Be youe Own Commander in Chief. It's up on Amazon in ebook form. It'll be out in probably early to mid June in hardcover form. And it's going to be just fair warning, it's going to be a monster. It's 850 pages. But there's a reason for that. I fought with my developmental editor, like hell. She said no, make it a series, make it three, four, said absolutely not. There's nothing that I found that does horizontal integration across all these subjects. That for me is the one thing that I've always been missing since I was a kid. I can read a thousand books on self help and could be negotiation, it could be acing interviews, career help, business help. But context, what is all this for? How do I use not just a map or a roadmap, but a philosophy? How do I organize my life with some kind of organizing principles and then everything goes from there. If I have that picture of who am I, what am I, where am I going, who am I helping? What is kind of my energetic profile through which I can add value and impact to the world If I know those things, I mean, my God, look out, right? That's what I think is missing. There's a lot of advice, a ton of listicles, a million books about vertical subjects, but very few to any. Except of course more ancient wisdom and philosophies from our forebears that actually integrate these things. Maybe it's crazy, maybe, maybe I'm A totally crazy guy who just had this crazy idea and just wants to teach his kids. If nothing else, hopefully my kids will read this right when they're grown up. But that's, that's why I wrote it. Because I really felt that someone needs to combine science. So not pulling this out of my ear, right, I'm trying to come, come from some kind of scientific studies, some kind of established principles, something that's not, not just my impressions. And it's not something that's, you know, very cynical about human nature. Because I don't think, you know, we don't need to be cynical about things. It's not rah rah, rah, kumbaya. It's saying, look, you know, life is very complicated. I'm not trying to teach anybody what to think, God forbid, because I sure as hell never took that from anybody. I'm just trying to teach people how to think. How do you approach life? Right. Through very meaningful, thoughtful ways. Some people relate to quotes, some people relate to my stories. I got some crazy stories, God knows. And then some people are very big on. 80, 20. Just give me the download. 10 steps to set up my time management. Other people are very big on. No, no, no. I want to go deep into the subject before I pull the trigger on these software. Fine. God bless. Go. All of that is in there. That's what I found to be the best approach to behavioral change. You have to start with language and psychology. That's the lowest common denominator.

I love it. Well, Yuri, my friend, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and best of luck with the book. We'll put the link in the description too.

Thank you so much for having me on, Kwame. Really a pleasure to speak with you.

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