The Secrets of Supercommunicators

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

have you ever known one of those people who seem to be able to connect with anyone

the kind of person who had the ability to make others feel understood and smoothly navigate

even the trickiest of conversations Charles Duhigg calls these folks super communicators

and he's the author of a new book by the same name today in the show Charles explains that

what underlies super communicators skill and connection is something called the matching

principle and he unpacks how it works and how you can put it to use in your own conversations

we discuss several techniques for how to figure out what kind of conversation you're having

so you can align your language and energy with the other person and because emotional conversations

can be particularly difficult we dig into tactics for successfully navigating them even when they

contain a high degree of conflict we also get into how to carry the skills of connection into

your digital conversations after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is

slash

super communicator

all right Charles Duhigg welcome back to the show thanks for having me on so last time we had you

on was back in 2016 to talk about your book smarter faster better it's all about the secrets

of being more productive in life and business we've also had you on to talk about the power

of habit and how you can be more productive in life and business and we're going to talk about

in the habit loop you got a new book out though called super communicator how to unlock the

secret language of connection I mean this is all about how to have better more meaningful

conversations what led you take a deep dive into this topic well when I wrote the power of habit

and smarter faster better you know it's very much focused on the self and and it's about how we

succeed as as individuals what do we need to do to be successful but the thing I realized is that

a huge amount of our happiness and our productivity is going to be the result of our

success and our success it depends on other people right like we work in teams we we have

partners or spouses and kids and and parents and so I realized that at the core of dealing with

other people coordinating with other people is communication it's conversations right and then

when I started doing the research I learned that we're living through this golden age of

understanding communication actually for the first time in ways we never have before because of

advances in neural

imaging and data collection and I just thought it was fascinating and more importantly I thought it

could help a lot of people including myself was there a moment you had in your own personal life

where you realized boy I really need to get better at talking because I'm not good at it oh oh yeah

there was more than one moment right I think I think we've all had that experience for me it was

I I fell into this pattern with my wife where I would come home after like a long and hard day

and I would start complaining to her like my boss is a jerk or my co-workers don't

appreciate me and she very rationally it would say oh here's a solution why don't you take your boss

out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better but instead of being

able to hear what she was saying I would get even more upset and I'd be like why aren't you supporting

me you're supposed to be outraged on my behalf and then she would get upset because I was you know

reacting very poorly to this advice she had given and so I started going to these researchers and

asking them why does this happen because it's not just me right this is a pretty common pattern

And they said, well, actually, here's what we've learned.

And this is one of the biggest insights from the last decade is we tend to think of a discussion

as being about one thing, right?

We're talking about my day or we're talking about the kids' grades or the pets.

But actually, every single discussion is made up of multiple different kinds of conversations.

And in general, those conversations fall into one of three buckets.

There's practical discussions like where we're solving problems or making plans.

Then there's emotional conversations where I want to tell you how I feel and I don't

want you to solve my problem.

I want you to empathize and I want you to listen.

And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and to

society.

And they said, the thing that we figured out is if people are having different kinds of

conversations at the same moment, then they won't really hear each other.

They won't really connect with each other.

And so the key is what's become known as the

matching principle within psychology, that in order to communicate with someone,

we need to be having the same kind of conversation at the same time,

because that actually causes our brains to align.

Okay.

There's a lot to unpack here.

I hope we can do that throughout this conversation.

And to get into this idea of the matching principle, you start out the book talking

about this guy named Felix Segala, who worked for the FBI's crisis negotiation team.

He's a master communicator.

But from the outside,

he looks pretty unremarkable.

He just looks like a middle-aged dude, mustache, maybe wears a sweater vest.

I don't know.

And so you'd see, how is this guy?

People just relate to him.

They connect with him.

He doesn't look charismatic.

And so a team of researchers went in to study Felix to figure out what made him so good

at communicating.

What did these researchers learn about communication from Felix?

So Felix is a really interesting test case because you're exactly right.

If you met him, he would not stand out for you at all.

He would not stand out for you at all until he opened his mouth.

And what's really, really interesting is that he is very typical of super communicators.

Super communicators are not necessarily the most charismatic people.

They are not extroverts.

Who they are, they're people who think just a little bit, like half an inch deeper about

how to have conversations.

And as a result, they can connect with almost anyone.

And the thing is, it's just a set of skills anyone can learn.

Any of us can become super communicators.

And so in Felix's case, what happened was these researchers,

sat down with him and they were like, look, tell us what you do that's so special.

Why did so many people tell us that we had to be in touch with you?

And he said, well, let me demonstrate.

It might be better.

And he just starts asking them questions like, you know, tell me about like what's going

on in your life.

Now, what's interesting is that the questions he's asking are a special kind of questions,

but they don't appear that special.

They're what's known as deep questions.

And a deep question asks us about our values or beliefs or experiences, but it doesn't

appear to be that deep at first.

It doesn't seem really probing or intrusive.

It doesn't force someone to reveal something.

But it's as easy like if you bump into someone and you ask them like, what do you do for

a living?

And they say, I'm a lawyer.

A deep question would be to say like, oh, how did you decide to go to law school?

Or, you know, what do you love about practicing the law?

Both those questions are pretty easy to ask.

But what they do is they ask the other person, provide an opportunity for the other person

to tell us about their experiences, why they went to law school, to tell us about their

beliefs, what it is about, you know, justice.

And the law that gets them excited every day.

And when they share that with us, then it provides an opportunity for us to engage in

what's known as reciprocal authenticity, where we can share something about ourselves and

we'll feel closer to each other.

And that's exactly what Felix would do.

He would ask these questions that were deep questions that didn't appear that deep.

And then somebody would bring up something meaningful.

You know, they became a researcher because their parents were researchers or they, the

thing that they love about teaching is to see how students develop.

And then he would share something about him.

And so he would say, oh, that's really, really interesting.

Because what I hear you saying is that you love to help other people.

And, and actually that's why I joined the FBI because I love to help people too.

And I found this way, right?

So what's happening there is that almost invisibly Felix is letting people, inviting people to

bring their full self to the, to the conversation.

He's proving to them that he's listening to them.

He's sharing his own life with them.

And as a result, they feel connected.

They believe that he wants to connect with them.

And that's the most important thing that super communicators do.

They prove to us they want to connect.

So these questions that he asks, is this what allows Felix to match up?

So he's able to sync up with the person he's talking to.

So they're on the same page and the person feels like they're communicating.

That's exactly right.

So, so these deep questions and, and I will say, so people who are consistent super communicators,

because we're all super communicators at one time or another, but, but people who can do

it all the time.

On demand, they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person.

And some of those questions are like throwaway questions are like, Oh, what'd you think of

that?

Or, Oh, what'd you say next?

We don't even register them as questions, but they invite us into the conversation.

But then about half of them are these deep questions.

And the reason why those questions are so powerful is exactly what you just said.

Is that it allows you to say something meaningful, like something that's true and authentic about

yourself.

And it allows me as the listener.

To engage in reciprocal authenticity without it seeming like I'm trying to steal the spotlight

from you or, or I, I asked where you went on vacation just because I really want to

talk about where I went on vacation.

They're really powerful.

So the matching principle is figure out what kind of conversation you're having and then

match the other person or invite them to match you.

And by asking deep questions, Felix was able to create this matching.

And we're going to talk more about how to create this kind of alignment throughout our

conversation.

So I'm going to talk about how to create this kind of alignment throughout our conversation

today.

But besides asking deep questions, how else can you tell what kind of conversation someone

wants to have?

Well, you just listen to what they're saying, right?

Cause they're going to tell you, I mean, they might not say I want to have an emotional

conversation, but if they bring up things like feelings, if they mention something that

feels vulnerable to you or feels kind of emotionally authentic, then they're having an emotional

conversation, right?

The same way that when I get home and I talk about, you know, my boss is a jerk.

And he doesn't, he doesn't appreciate me.

It's not really about what my boss did.

It's about how I feel about it.

And that's obvious, right?

Just from listening.

On the other hand, if I'm talking to my wife and I say like, look, let's figure out the

budget for our vacation next year.

Cause I really want to like, you know, go someplace exciting, but I don't want it to

be too expensive.

Well, that's clear that that's a much more practical frame of mind, right?

So it's not hard to figure out what kind of conversation is happening.

It's just a matter of listening for it.

And understanding that there's these different kinds of conversations.

Another way you suggest creating alignment is to share your goals for the conversation

and then ask others what their goals are.

So instead of, you know, being opaque and each person has to decipher what kind of conversation

is going on and what it's about, you're just upfront about that.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And think about how helpful that is.

I mean, sometimes this happens really naturally, right?

Like we have an agenda, we're at a business meeting and like, we're like, look, we're

here to discuss the budget.

So we know.

We know what everyone ostensibly wants out of it.

But if you even just take half a beat and you start by just saying like, look, and again,

this is a great deep question.

Tell me what the budget means to you.

What's important to you about this budget?

Then what I'm really doing is I'm opening it up because you might say, what's really

important to me is that we hit our numbers, right?

Practical conversation.

Or someone might say, what's really important to me is that I'm worried we're going to have

to do layoffs.

And like, I don't.

I don't want to do that to people and their families.

Okay.

Now you're signaling that's a much more emotional conversation.

And so simply by asking someone what their goals are.

And the easiest way to do that is a, to share your own goals and B, to simply ask them,

what does this mean to you?

Why is this important to you?

Okay.

So ask people what their goals are for a conversation and tell people your goals.

Another suggestion you make in the book that I really like is to come prepared internally

for a conversation, like mentally prepare.

You know, think beforehand.

Think about what you want to get out of the conversation and what you want to talk about

with someone.

And that can help you get more out of the conversation.

There was this study that was done by some researchers who went into an investment bank.

And this was a place where like people screamed at each other all day long.

We just got in fights constantly.

And they told everyone for the next week before each meeting, write one sentence where you

describe what you want to accomplish in this meeting and the mood you want to establish.

It took about 10 seconds for people to get into it.

They would literally like scribble down one sentence about the upcoming meeting.

And then they'd usually just stick the paper into their pocket and walk into the meeting.

And people didn't even usually announce what their goal was.

They didn't announce what they had written down.

But the incidence of conflict in those meetings went down by 80%.

And the reason why is because everyone knew what they wanted.

And so they were able to express that to others.

Knowing what we want, just taking like literally two or three seconds before we,

start a conversation to figure out why we're having the conversation.

It pays enormous dividends.

No, that's something that my wife and I do whenever we get together with friends before they come over,

before we meet them for dinner on the drive over, we might say, what are the things we want to talk to these people about?

Like, what do we want to catch up on?

So we make like a list so that whenever we see a friend we haven't seen in a long time, it's like, oh, I want to follow up with this.

And our friends do the same thing with some really good friends of ours.

We have a, we called a quality conversation.

So QCs.

Um, and we only see each other maybe once or twice a year because they've, they moved away from us, but we, we each come with our list of like, here's the things we want to talk about.

And we don't get to all of them, but because both of us have an idea of what we want to talk about, like we can, we can go really deep with our conversations.

That's really, really smart.

And in fact, there was an experiment done at Harvard business school by Alison Wood Brooks, who's a professor there, where what she did is she had all of her students.

She told her students, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger.

And then what I want you to do is I want you to write down three topics you might discuss.

And again, this was like 10 seconds of thought, right?

Like people would write down like, you know, last night's TV show and the game this weekend.

And you know, where are you going on vacation?

And then they would just stick that list in their pocket.

And most of the people never discussed one of the topics that they had written down, but almost all of them reported feeling much less anxious during the conversation and that the conversation went much, much better than they expected because they had this, this list to fall back on just like you and your wife.

And, and my guess is that.

Because you guys are creating a list of stuff you really want to discuss.

You do get to a lot of it because it's, it's stuff that's important to you, but just having that list, it makes the entire conversation easier.

And it probably doesn't take you guys long on the car ride over to come up with what you want to talk about.

Yeah.

Yes.

Just a few minutes.

Another useful tip you provide to help people figure out what the conversation is about, because again, everyone could be going into conversation with a different agenda.

You might be thinking, I'm just going to focus on just practical things.

This person wants to have a more of an emotional.

Conversation.

You talk about thinking of every conversation as a negotiation.

Yeah.

How can thinking of conversation as a negotiation help you get that matching principle going?

So this is really interesting and there's a lot of research on this and, and the word negotiation might be a little off putting or, or misleading to people because within psychology, this is referred to as a quiet negotiation where the goal is not to win anything.

The goal is to figure out what each person wants.

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So think about how most of your conversations start is subconsciously.

You actually probably conduct a couple of experiments at the beginning of every conversation without even realizing it, right?

Like sometimes when you start talking to someone at the beginning of a conversation, you might try, you might interrupt them just to sort of see like, you know, and then you, you pay close attention to their reaction to try and figure out like, are the rules of this conversation that we can interrupt each other?

Or is it like, no, we each have to wait our turn.

You might make a joke.

And then you'll pay close attention to see if the other person laughs to try and figure out, is this a casual, fun conversation or is this a little bit more serious?

Like we need to be a little bit more formal.

We already engage in this quiet negotiation when we conduct those experiments.

The difference is that for super communicators, they just pay a little bit more attention to how other people react and they take lessons from them.

And most importantly, if they tell a joke and the other person doesn't laugh, they don't assume that that means that the other person doesn't like them.

They don't assume that that means that they made a mistake.

Rather, what they just did was conduct an experiment and they got data from it.

And the thing about experiments is they're not all supposed to work, right?

Like my wife is actually a scientist.

If every experiment she did was a success, she'd be the worst scientist on earth.

Like the reason you do experiments is to learn things.

And so super communicators treat the beginnings of conversations just a little bit more like a series of experiments to figure out what does this person want?

So you could.

OK, so you're going to throw out a question.

Maybe throw out one of those deep values questions.

We'll talk more about that.

And the person doesn't bite on it.

They don't really talk about what drove them to become a lawyer.

It's just like, well, it's more of the practicality.

They paid a lot of money.

So you can understand where this person might want to talk about how to finance a 401k or something.

Totally.

Or maybe they don't even play along at all.

Maybe you say like, oh, what made you decide to go to law school?

And they just say, I just seem fun.

Seem like a good idea.

OK, I just conducted an experiment to figure out.

Is.

Is talking about careers a way for us to connect?

And the answer, the results you just gave me are no.

So then I might try a completely different topic and say something like, oh, you know, the Super Bowl is coming up.

Are you who you're rooting for in the game?

And then when someone says, oh, you know, I'm rooting for the Niners.

Oh, yeah.

What do you love about the Niners?

Like, why the Niners instead of the instead of Kansas?

By conducting these little experiments and just paying attention to how people react a little bit more, we figure out how they want to connect with.

OK, so to figure out what kind of conversation you're having and what it's about, you listen, you ask questions, you tell a person what your goals are for the conversation.

You ask them what their goals are.

You think of the conversation like a negotiation.

You throw things out there.

Maybe you throw in a joke and see how they respond to that.

If they respond to the joke, maybe they just want to connect.

So you're going to.

Or sometimes you don't even have to throw out a joke.

You could just laugh.

Right.

80 percent of the time when we laugh in conversations, it is not in response.

It's something funny.

It's to show the other person we want to connect with them.

And then the most natural thing to do is to laugh back.

Right.

They're showing us that they want to connect with us.

So, I mean, think like I'm laughing right now.

Think about how many times in a conversation you laugh, but nobody's told a joke.

That's a little experiment.

OK, so we've talked about how to tell what kind of conversation you're having.

And I think emotional conversations are some of the hardest.

I'd like to dig in more into that.

If you're having an emotion.

Conversation.

Your advice is to ask about others feelings and share your own.

Yeah.

So once we're in emotional conversation, once I've said like you've brought up something that seems clearly to have to do with feelings.

And the most natural thing for me to do is empathize.

Oftentimes people are very scared of asking about this question.

I mean, the best example of this in my life was that about six years ago, my dad passed away and I came back to I was living in New York at the time.

I came back to New York from the funeral.

And like this was the most meaningful thing that had happened in a long time.

Right.

Like the most profound experiences of many people's lives.

And I would tell people I bumped into.

They'd say like, oh, how are you doing?

They said, oh, you know, my dad passed away.

I was here last week for the funeral.

And they would usually they would almost always say like, oh, I'm so sorry.

Or, oh, my condolences.

And then because it felt uncomfortable to them, they would go on to something else.

They would be like, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry to hear that.

But thank you for coming in today because I really wanted to talk about the budget.

But for me, this was the most profound thing I had been through.

Like I was desperate to talk about it.

I didn't want to talk about anything else.

And if somebody had said to me like, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.

Tell me about your dad.

What was he like?

I would have appreciated that so much.

And exactly what you just said, when we're having emotional conversations, oftentimes instead of asking about people's feelings, we avoid asking.

And as a result.

We deny ourselves that opportunity to connect on an emotional level, which often is one of the most profound connections we can have.

I'm curious.

Do all conversations have an emotional undercurrent?

Even when it's brass tacks, you know, where we're going to go for vacation or who's taking the kids where?

Is there typically?

Absolutely.

Yeah?

Absolutely.

From the second you open your mouth, emotions in some small way are shaping what you say and how you hear other people.

Going on vacation, right?

Like I say to my wife, I'd really like to go to Hawaii.

And she says, I'd really like to go to Japan.

And suddenly I'm like, well, Japan's twice in my head.

I'm like, Japan's twice as expensive as Hawaii.

And that makes me kind of anxious.

And also we went where you wanted last time.

So it seems like fairness would dictate I get to choose this time.

Right?

Those emotions are all there.

Now, that doesn't mean that we have to make this into an emotional conversation.

But it does mean that if we're having problems connecting with each other on this practical discussion of where to go on vacation.

It might be because actually we want to have an emotional conversation.

And we need to recognize that and let that out.

Well, I think sometimes too people don't even know when there's emotion tied to something they're saying.

Right?

They think it's completely practical.

You might see this in, I don't know, it could be a business meeting or a meeting that you have with a group you belong to.

And you're trying to make a decision that on the surface seems very brass tacks.

What are we going to do for the budget?

Who are we going to assign to this task?

Whatever.

And whenever you see people coming out of just loggerheads, just butting heads.

In my experience, there's always been, there's some emotional hang up there.

Like someone feels strongly about this.

It's not even logic.

It's just you have to dig deep.

Like why is this person so stubborn about this thing?

Or why am I so stubborn about this thing?

And then once you get that on the table, things, it might not resolve right away.

But at least you know where everyone's coming from.

That's exactly right.

And one of the things you just said is really important is listen for conflict.

Listen for, this isn't going the way I planned it going.

Listen for, I just feel like we're not connecting with each other.

We all know when that happens, right?

When we're in that meeting and we're discussing something that seems practical.

And you can just feel at the table like we're not on the same page.

Something's happening here.

We're not agreeing with each other.

We're not building on each other's ideas.

That is a great, great clue.

That you're.

Having a practical conversation and there's something emotional that you need to discuss

that you need to shift a little bit so that you can get those emotions on the table.

Cause oftentimes once we simply acknowledge them, they become much less powerful.

Right?

Once I say like, look, I know that you are worried.

I hear you saying that you are worried that we're gonna have to lay people off and that's

going to be incredibly stressful.

And so I just want to say if it comes to that, you and I will be in this together.

We will do this shoulder to shoulder.

Now, all of a sudden that anxiety is gone.

Now we can talk about plans, but if we don't even acknowledge the anxiety, then it's, it's hopeless.

Right.

And the reason why people don't acknowledge it, cause they feel uncomfortable about talking

about emotions.

Yeah.

Or, or they simply don't recognize that, like, that this is an important part of conversations.

We're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

And now back to the show.

We'll go back to this idea that, you know, you gave that example.

Your father died.

You get back and people are like, oh, I'm sorry.

And then they just moved on to business as usual.

And you talk about people do that cause they just, yeah, they don't know what to say.

They feel uncomfortable.

They feel awkward.

And a technique that I really, I found really useful.

I got from your book and we, you mentioned it earlier.

This idea of deep questions is turning what are typical shallow questions into deep questions.

I want to go into this deeper.

Okay.

So what are some more examples of turning shallow questions into deep questions?

Okay.

So what are some more examples of turning shallow questions into deep questions?

So the basic principle of a deep question is instead of asking someone about the facts

of their life, ask them how they feel about their life.

And anyone who's listening who has kids knows how true this is, right.

I have kids myself.

When my son comes home from school and I'm like, what'd you do today?

That's a facts question.

It'll be like nothing.

What did you learn today?

Nothing.

Right.

It's like pulling teeth.

Whereas when he comes home and I'm like, hey, I was just wondering did you know that that

Hey, I was just wondering, what was the best part of your day? Or, oh, I saw that you hung

out with Jasper after school. What do you like about Jasper? What do you think is cool about him?

Suddenly, it's like opening the floodgates. Because instead of asking him about facts,

I asked him how he felt. And this is the principle that underlies every deep question.

The question doesn't have to be very profound, and the question doesn't have to be very specific.

It just has to be some version of, tell me what you make of that. What does this mean to you?

Why is that important? So instead of asking someone like, hey, where'd you go to college?

You can ask them, what was the best part of college for you? What you're really asking

them there is, what was important to you about college? And it's really easy, once you shift

your brain a little bit, to look for these opportunities. Deep questions are incredibly

easy to find, and they're so much more fun to talk about. Yeah, you talk about, you have some

other examples. Instead of asking, where are you from? What's the best thing about where you grew

up? What's the best thing about where you grew up? What's the best thing about where you grew up?

And someone might talk about their friends, and playing in the fields, and memories with

barbecues. And some people might say, well, I had a, I don't know, a really nice park system.

I mean, you'll be able to figure out what people value with their answer.

That's exactly right. What they will tell you is they'll tell you what actually matters to them.

I actually grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So if someone says, what's the best part of growing

up in Albuquerque? What I'd say is, oh, it's just I had a lot of family around me, and it was really

easy to see them.

It's not a fast-paced, high-pressure place. And so what I just told this person is I told them,

family is important to me. And so that's something we can dive into. I told them that I was born into

a place where it was a slower pace, which also implies that maybe I've lived other places that

are faster paced. I just told you so much about myself simply by telling you what I liked about

growing up in Albuquerque. And it gives you a chance to tell me about yourself, to be like,

I grew up in Boise.

And same thing. It was sort of slow-paced. And now I live in New York. It's a little bit more

fast-paced, and I kind of like that too. Now we're having a conversation where we can get

real with each other and get deep. So you didn't value Blake's Lotta Burger,

green chili burger? Oh, you know Albuquerque.

I will say a Blake's green chili cheeseburger is a pretty good way to go.

It's a good one, yeah. Okay, so ask those deep questions. You figure out what they value.

And you can even do this with things that are practical-based. If you feel like there's an

emotional undercurrent here, you can do this with things that are practical-based. If you feel like

you can turn these shallow questions into deep questions. I've been doing this with my kids

before we go to bed at night. We lie down next to them. We kind of talk about the day with each of

them. And I've been trying to ask these sort of deeper questions instead of asking, like,

what'd you do today? I ask, what was the best thing you did today? Or what'd you like about that?

Yeah, and it opens up some great conversations. Another part of having these emotional

conversations is we need to start paying attention to how the other person feels

during this conversation. We got to pay attention to their mood and energy.

What do you mean by paying attention to mood and energy in the other person?

So, okay, when we're kids, we do this almost automatically, right? Actually,

babies, almost from birth, if you smile at a baby, they'll smile back at you.

But as we get older, instead of paying attention to nonverbal communication,

we start focusing on people's words. So we ask someone like, hey, how you doing? And they say,

oh, I'm fine. But their arms are crossed, and their voice sounds really lethargic,

and their eyes are kind of downcast. But we pay attention to their words rather

than how they look to us, the signals they're sending us. And so a big part of this is just

making ourselves a little bit more open to noticing what's going on beyond the words

coming out of someone's mouth. Are they leaning in towards us? Are they interrupting us?

Interruption, we think of interruption as being a bad thing, but oftentimes when we're interrupting

each other, it shows that it's a good conversation because it means that both of us really like what

we're talking about. We really want to connect here. Or are they someone who's just sitting

there listening?

Are they kind of like looking away? It's really easy to ignore all of those signals.

But once we just train ourselves, and again, this isn't hard. It's a habit that we can develop

really easily. Once we train ourselves to notice how people are behaving, how much energy is in

their voice, are they high energy or low energy? Do they seem upbeat or glum? That tells us almost

everything we need to know about what's going on inside their emotional mind, even without them

saying a word about their emotions.

And should we match them? So if they're high energy, should we respond by being high energy

as well?

It would feel pretty good if we do, right? Think about how, again, going back to laughter.

And in fact, NASA uses this to figure out which of their astronaut candidates or applicants

have high emotional intelligence. Think about if you tell a joke and then you go,

and you laugh really big at it. And the other person goes,

yeah, it's funny. You don't feel like you're connected, right?

You're high energy and they're low energy. They're laughing back. They're doing the same

thing you are. They're matching you. But because our energy levels don't match,

we know that we're not connecting. Whereas if we chuckle a little bit and the other person

chuckles with us, then we're basically telling each other, oh, we're on the same wavelength.

Yeah. That story about NASA, there's this guy, it was Terrence McGuire, right?

Yeah.

NASA started putting astronauts up into space stations. And so they're going to be up there

for months, even years, a year at a time. And they're going to be up there for months, even years,

a year at a time. And they're going to be up there for months, even years, a year at a time.

And so they had to figure out, how can we make sure these people don't kill each other while

they're up there? Because they're annoyed. And the thing they found, he started studying

their conversations, looking at psychological profiles. And the thing he found that determined,

it wasn't the determining factor, but a sign that someone had emotional intelligence and

could get along with other people was laughing, was laughing when other people laughed.

And laughing the same way they laughed, right? So what's really interesting is when you make

it to the final rounds of astronaut,

you know, interviews, everybody there knows how to fake into emotional intelligence really,

really well. Like these are the people who have the right stuff, right? They've practiced this

for years. But the difference between someone who can fake emotional intelligence and someone

who actually has emotional intelligence is pretty big when you're like nine months into a mission

and you've been living in a tin can for the, with five other people. And so you're exactly right.

What McGuire did was he changed how he interviewed people. So he'd walk into these interviews,

carrying a bunch of papers, and he would spill the papers.

As if on accident, but he would actually do it on purpose. And he would always wear this

yellow garish tie. And he would turn to the person who he hasn't even met yet,

who's about to interview. And he'd say, oh my gosh, my son made me wear this tie today.

And I just dropped all these papers. Like I kind of look like a clown.

And he would laugh at himself in this big kind of energetic laugh. And then without the applicant

realizing, he would pay close attention. Did the person laugh back politely? Or did they

mess up? And he would say, oh my gosh, I just dropped all these papers. And he would laugh at

his energy and his intensity of laughter. Because if they're matching him, that's someone who takes

emotional intelligence seriously. That's someone who has thought about how to connect with other

people. And to that person, it just feels like a habit, right? Like they're just doing what feels

natural. But we develop those natural instincts by thinking at some point in our past about how

we want to be in a conversation. So some of the most emotionally laden conversations are high

conflict conversations.

Yeah.

And you talk about this tool that can help you navigate these high emotion,

high conflict conversation. It's the loop of understanding. What is the loop of understanding?

Yeah. And it's actually looping for understanding. Like when we talk about how people do it.

So one of the interesting things is that when we are in a conversation that has any kind of tension

or conflict in it, even if it's small, like we're disagreeing about something, we hold different

political opinions. There's this thing in our head that immediately makes us suspect that the other

person is not listening. And that's when we start to think about how we're going to do this.

Yeah.

And we start to think about how we're going to do this. And that's when we start to think about how we're going to do this.

Yeah.

But they're just waiting their turn to speak. And that can be really frustrating. And that makes us less likely to listen to them.

So the way we overcome this is this technique known as looping for understanding. And there's three steps to it.

The first step is ask a question, preferably a deep question. The second step is once a person has answered the question,

repeat back what you just heard them say in your own words. And then the third step, and this is the one most people forget,

is ask if you got it right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the reason why this is so powerful is because what we're trying to do is prove that we're listening.

We want to prove to the other person that we're hearing what they said, that we actually want to understand what they say,

that we're not just waiting our turn to speak.

And this looping for understanding, it becomes real.

It's like a second nature.

I do it all the time now.

I'm like, oh, what I hear you saying is, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong.

And then I just repeat what they said in my own words.

And it's important that it's in my own words.

I'm not just mimicking them.

I'm proving to them that I've heard what they said and processed it a little bit.

And study after study shows if you do this in a tough conversation, in a tension-filled

conversation, or just discussing politics with your uncle, it changes the entire dialogue for

the better. Another idea you talk about to navigate high-conflict conversations is trying

not to control the other person because that just ratchets up the tension. Why do we have a tendency

to want to control the conversation and the other person? And what can we do to counter that?

So a lot of this research and insights comes from looking at marriage counseling and how

married couples talk to each other. Everybody fights. Every married couple has arguments.

Some of those arguments almost seem not to matter at all. People just like,

they have an argument, and then the next 10 minutes later, they're fine. Some of those

arguments become toxic every single time. And so researchers started looking, trying to figure out

what's the best way to counter that. And they found that it's not just about the conversation,

but it's about the conversation. And so researchers started looking, trying to figure out what's the

difference between these two groups. And what they found is that in the toxic conversations,

the toxic fights, what happens is that we're trying to control each other.

And when we're feeling attacked or when we're discussing something that's kind of

tense, it's very natural to want to control something. We actually have inborn instincts

to try and control a situation when we feel anxious. And the most obvious thing to control

is the person I'm talking to. And that control can be like, if I can just

get you to listen to me, then you'll agree with me. If I can just get you to see things from my

perspective, or I can try and control your emotions, I might say, oh, you shouldn't feel

that way. That's not such a big deal. You're making too big a deal of this.

When people try to control each other, it becomes toxic. But we have this instinct for control,

and we can't just repress it. So what we should do instead is we find things we can control

together. And there's three things in general that even if we are in a fight with each other,

we can control. And that's the first thing. And then the second thing is that we can control

together. The first is the environment. If this fight starts at 2 o'clock in the morning,

we can agree like, okay, let's wait until tomorrow when we're both well-rested and we've

gotten a chance to think on this a little bit. Let's not talk about this until 10.

That's controlling your environment together, and that's really, really positive.

The second thing you can control is yourself. And you can make this obvious. You can say things

like, look, I hear what you're saying. I just want to take like 10 seconds to think about what

you said before I respond. That's something that shows that we're both well-rested.

We're trying to control ourselves instead of the other person. And the third thing we can control

is the boundaries of the fight itself. There's this pattern in a lot of marriages called kitchen

sinking that's like one of the most toxic things that can happen, which is like, we'll start by

arguing about where we're going to spend Thanksgiving, and it becomes your mom hates

me and we don't have enough money, right? Like a fight about one thing becomes a fight about

everything. That's terrible. So oftentimes you see what the best couples do is they say, okay, look,

we got to figure out where we're spending Thanksgiving. Let's just focus on the

Thanksgiving question. Like, I don't want to talk about your mom. I don't want to talk about money.

We can talk about that stuff, but that's a different conversation. And what happens is

when we try and control our environment and ourselves and the boundaries of the fight itself,

what we're doing is we're introducing control that we can share, places where we can cooperate

with each other. And instead of controlling each other, we're controlling these things together.

And again, that doesn't mean that the fight disappears, but it makes it so much easier

for us to get through it.

No, you mentioned earlier, I've got to watch myself for that because I've done that a few

times. I do that a few times is where you're having a conversation and someone's saying,

someone says something and I'm like, you're not listening to me, but they are listening to me.

They just don't want to do what I, they don't agree with me, but I project on them and say,

well, you're actually not listening. Well, no. And there's times where like people will tell

me something and like, I understand completely what you want. I just don't agree with it.

So yeah.

And think about how good it would feel if you're in that conversation and that person says,

okay, look,

I might disagree with you, but I want to repeat back what you just said to me to make sure I

understand it and tell me if I'm getting this right. And that takes like 30 seconds to repeat

that back, right? If they did that, then you would not say you're not listening to me.

You would actually say like, oh no, you heard what I'm saying. And we might disagree with each other,

but you heard me. And actually, and this is hardwired into our brains, that would make you

more likely to listen to them. When we prove that we are listening through looping for understanding,

we make the other person more likely to listen to us.

A lot of this looping for understanding, it's easy to do in person because you can do it real time,

right? But it gets hard when you take that conversation online. And so online conversations

can become just really fraught, just dumpster fires, as people say.

Immediately, right? There's a story in the book about this experiment that was done where they

brought together gun control enthusiasts and then gun rights activists. And the goal was just to

teach them how to have a civil conversation. And so, if you're a gun lover, you're going to have to

looping for understanding and a couple of other skills. And it worked really well face-to-face.

And then they go home and they had actually created a private Facebook group for them.

And within 45 minutes, people were calling each other jackbooted Nazis, right? It just fell apart

immediately. Why is that? What's going on? Well, I think what's happening there, and this gets to

everything else we've been talking about, because you can do looping for understanding online. You

just have to think about how to do it a little bit differently. One of my favorite examples of

technology changes these conversations.

If you look at when telephones first became popular about 100 years ago,

there were all these studies that were written that basically said,

no one will ever use a telephone for a real conversation. Because we can't see each other,

we're not going to be able to discuss real things. And in fact, the researchers were right at that

time. There were all these studies where they would transcribe people's phone conversations,

and they're stilted and weird. Basically, people used phones as telegraphs just to send grocery

lists or stock news of the day. But of course, by the time you and I and everyone listening were

teenagers, we could talk for like seven hours a night, and they were the most meaningful

conversations of our lives. And the reason why is because we learned how to speak on the telephone

differently than we learned how to speak face-to-face. And in fact, one of the things we

know is that without realizing it, when you talk on the phone, you tend to enunciate a little bit

more than you would face-to-face. And because you know the person can't see you,

we tend to put a little bit more emotional signals into our voices. We do this unthinkingly.

Now, when it comes to online communication, most people have only been emailing for like 25 years

at the most, right? Like Slack, we've been slacking for four or five years,

texting each other, using emojis to text each other. I still don't know how to do that.

And so we make this mistake when we go online, which is that we assume online conversations

are like office calls. And we don't know how to do that. And so we make this mistake when we go online,

but they're not. They have their own rules. And we know those rules. We actually intuit those rules.

But sometimes we just have to remind ourselves that if I'm talking to you over the phone,

and I say something sarcastic, you will hear the sarcasm in my voice.

But if I email you, and I can still, when I'm writing the email, I can hear the sarcasm in my

head, you can't hear it. And so you're going to read that as being serious, and you're going to

get upset. So I need to use a different way to signal to you I'm being sarcastic. Either not be

sarcastic, or I'm not being sarcastic. And so I need to use a different way to signal to you I'm

sarcastic. Or maybe I put one of those little winking emojis at the end, something to show you

that I'm being sarcastic, which I don't have to do when we're talking to each other. And if we just

take a second before we hit send to say, what are the rules of email? What are the rules of texting?

How are they different from the rules of making a phone conversation? Then we tend to communicate

much, much better online. Yeah, you have some other rules.

Over-emphasize politeness. Express more gratitude, deference, greetings, apologies,

and hedges. And studies back all that stuff up. Study after study shows that, in fact,

there was this really interesting study of Wikipedia editors where people would be fighting

with each other all day long online. And they told one person to start saying please and thank

you every other comment. And everyone else stopped fighting. It's just like we start mirroring each

other. We start matching each other. And just being a little bit more polite online has these

totally outsized impacts. And you can use looping for understanding to

deescalate these high conflict online conversations. If you see someone throw something

out there, just a total flame. They knew it was like a grenade is going to cause everyone to get

angry. You can ask. You can get curious and be like, it sounds like you feel passionately about

this. Tell me why is that instead of responding with an immediate barb. And you might find that

it forces the person to get out of their own limbic system, their reptile brain, and start

thinking like a homo sapien. That's exactly right.

Yeah.

Right. It takes advantage of those parts of our brains that have evolved to be good at

communication.

Well, Charles, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Yeah, absolutely. So the name of the book is Super Communicators. You can buy it at Amazon

or anywhere else that you get books. If you want to reach out to me or learn about me,

if you just Google my name, Charles Duhigg, I'm the only Charles Duhigg on earth, D-U-H-I-G-G.

Or if you Google like power of habit or smarter, faster, better, my website will come up. And I'll

mention on my website.

Is my email address, which is charles at charlesduhigg.com. And I read and reply to

every single email I get from a reader. So it might take me a couple of days, but I want to

connect with you and have a conversation. And so if you send me a note, I will read it and I will

reply.

Well, Charles Duhigg, thanks for time. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks for having me on. This has been so much fun.

My guest today was Charles Duhigg. He's the author of the book Super Communicators. It's

available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at

his website, charlesduhigg.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash super communicator,

where you can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

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I'm Brett McKay reminding you to listen to AOM podcast, put what you've heard into action.

It was really cool talking to you.