You Are You: Understanding, Respect, and Unity

Because you are you, remember URU. What does that mean?

1. “You Are You” honors you as an individual.
2. “URU”—Understanding, Respect, and Unity— honors how individuals can effectively connect with one another.

A point that I’ve repeatedly made throughout this blog is that power, influence, and persuasion are complex and multi-faceted. Part of the reason it’s so difficult to be consistently influential and persuasive is precisely because of how complex human interactions can be. For this reason, there’s no single magic formula for being persuasive. Rather, there are many different strategies and tactics you can use as an individual, and the question of which would be most effective depends on the individuals and situations you’re interacting with.

If you overthink it, interacting with others can get overwhelming at times. For example, which of Cialdini’s seven principles of persuasion would be best in your situation? Which of the 10 sources of power should you draw from? Which of the top seven mistakes of squandering power are you potentially making?

Fortunately, despite the different situations you may find yourself in, and the different approaches and tactics available, you’ll be happy to know that there are certain approaches that may be applied in a wide range of situations and with a wide array of individuals. An example of such a near-universal principle is the “one mantra.” It’s hard to imagine a situation in which controlling your impulses and doing or saying what’s effective instead of whatever you feel like is the wrong thing to do. It’s a near-universal principle. In this post, I’ll focus on another one: URU.

Three Things That Nearly Everyone Wants

“You are you” speaks to an internal focus consistent with the self-awareness component of emotional intelligence. Conversely, URU has an external focus, and it stands for three things that nearly everyone wants from other people no matter who they are or what their personalities are like (well, maybe unless they’re a psychopath). Those things are Understanding, Respect, and Unity (URU). And because you are you, remember you are not alone in the desire to be understood, respected, and in unity with others. (Especially considering the opposite is to be misunderstood, disrespected, and cut off from others.) We might not go about soliciting URU in the same way and, and sometimes we behave in ways that undermine them such as by “otherizing” people. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that people in general want understanding, respect, and unity even if they’re sabotaging their own chances of getting them.

Think about it. People want to be understood. That probably strikes you as being true just on an anecdotal, intuitive level. But there’s also a lot of research that shows how important the feeling of being understood is for well-being. Not everyone might openly admit to wanting to be understood since it suggests a level of vulnerability, and some might even profess not to care, but these are often emotional coping strategies. Also, not everyone wants to be necessarily understood by everybody, but almost everyone wants to be understood by certain people: for example, at least their family and friends. Either way, virtually no one will actively turn down sincere attempts by colleagues, acquaintances, or even strangers to understand them.

Next, respect. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me,“ Aretha famously sang. But if you want to be influential and persuasive, you have to find out what it means to others. Here, again, the desire for respect doesn’t always look the same for everyone. Some go about it unassumingly; some can be quite domineering about it. For some, it means being treated as an equal; for others it might mean acknowledging their legitimate power or coercive power (i.e., their authority), whether real or imagined. But despite these variations, Aretha was right. We’ve all got to have a little respect. Respectful communication has been shown to reduce intergroup bias and conflict, quite useful in a hyper-politicized and polarized age when people view each other as ideological enemies.

Lastly, unity. Human beings are social animals and we want to feel accepted and unified with others. An hour spent on social media might cause you to doubt this, but just like with understanding, it’s not that people want to feel unified with everyone, necessarily. You see, another psychological trait of the human animal is tribalism. The primal part of our brains wants to feel unified with people we perceive as part of our “tribes” because, to our ancestors, unity with the tribe ensured safety and survival. Unfortunately, this desire for unity with the tribe often involves antagonism towards “out-groups.” This is how the desire for unity can take the form of disunity. But there’s a way to hack this tendency, and you don’t even have to adopt other people’s ideologies or identities. If you can just manage to create a sense of unity through ordinary, non-ideological conversation, people will be more likely to treat you as part of their tribe” even if you’re technically not.

Conveying URU During Disagreements or Conflict

Let’s say that you now understand the importance of URU. Well, it’s one thing to cultivate URU when a conversation or negotiation is going smoothly. What about when there’s tension or disagreement or, worse, things have already escalated into a full-blown conflict?

One of my colleagues in trade, trial lawyer and social media influencer Jefferson Fisher, recommends what he calls his top three ways to diffuse arguments:

1. Start with what you can agree with. A solid way to get a conversation or negotiation back on the right track is to start with something you agree with. You don’t even have to agree with what they’re actually saying. Rather, you can go macro and reaffirm the validity of the other person’s concerns. For example, you can say things like, “I agree that’s a very good point,” or “I agree that you should be concerned about this,” or “I agree we should be having this conversation.” Those two words “I agree,” even when used in this macro way, are powerful and immediately bring the tension down a notch.
2. Tell them what you’ve learned. Technically, there’s almost always some new bit of information that you’ll learn in every interaction, even if it’s just a tiny or mundane detail. Even these tiny details can be useful. This is even true, or maybe especially true, in tense or uncomfortable interactions. Again, if you’re stuck about how to use this statement, just think macro. You could say, “Yes, I understand. I’ve learned that this issue is very important to you and I respect that.”
3. Say that it’s been helpful. Again, this is always technically true. All information can be helpful to you, but only if you use it to say or do what’s effective and not whatever you feel like. #2 and #3 can both work well on their own but they can also be used together in the same conversation. You could even use them in the same sentence. For example, “I’ve learned this issue is important to you and this has been a very helpful discussion. Thank you.”

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All of the above statements convey understanding, respect, and/or unity in some way. Using just one of them will help, using two will help more, and if you can find a way to use all three the effects can be like magic. Just don’t awkwardly squeeze them all in just so you can say you did. Space them out, using each statement when it feels logical and natural, and only use all three if you can make it feel unforced. As a general rule, #1 tends to be good early in the discussion, while #2 and #3 work well in the middle or towards the end.

Finally, it’s crucial to avoid the temptation to weaponize any of these statements. Tone of voice is everything. If there’s any sarcasm, patronization, or passive aggression in your voice, the other person will sense it and you’ll have just made a bad situation worse. Say it with sincerity or don’t say it at all. By not saying anything, you’ll at least not make things worse. But if you’re able to say the statements above with real sincerity, you’ll have turned even a tense situation into an opportunity to influence and persuade. It isn’t easy, but if it were easy then everyone would be persuasive and clearly that isn’t the case.

This approach happens on an individual level, which is one of its strengths. Given how tribalism often triggers disunity, it is helpful to think of others as individuals rather than simply writing them off as members of some group you dislike. As Brené Brown says, “People are hard to hate close up. Move in… Be civil." Our polarized society is replete with competing groups who reflexively detest one another in the abstract in ways they might not if we learn to practice URU—Understanding, Respect, and Unity—on an individual level.