3 Takeaways - Learn How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection with Charles Duhigg (#201)

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Want to become a super communicator? You can, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg. Here, the author of Supercommmunicators shares the neuroscience and key principles everyone can use in their daily life. One example: Ask others how they feel about their life, rather than about the facts of their life.“Being charismatic or clever or smart is not an ingredient of being a super communicator.”“People who are good at connecting ask questions … 10 to 20 times as many questions.”

It's been said that the way we communicate ultimately determines the quality of our lives. Are you a good communicator? A lot of people think they are, but might not be. What makes a conversation work and how can we all have better, more satisfying conversations? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. One night, and I know this sounds a little strange, today's podcast guest, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Charles Duhigg, sat down and scribbled

a list of all the times over the last year that he screwed up a conversation. All of us carry some version of this list in our heads. I know I certainly do. But writing this list forced Charles to confront his failures and his missed opportunities. It also led him to study the art and science of conversation and to write his wonderful new book, Super Communicators. Stay tuned and you'll hear how an expert on the topic of communication actually communicates. I'm looking forward to finding out what makes a conversation work and how we can all have better conversations in all areas of our lives. Welcome, Charles, and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today. Thanks for having me.

Charles, you say you were a bad communicator. Can you give some examples of how bad you actually were? I think one of the reasons I decided to write this book is because I got into this bad pattern with my wife, where I'd come home from a long day at work and I would complain about my job. And she very reasonably would offer some practical suggestions, like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get even more upset and say, like, why aren't you supporting me? You know, you should be outraged on my behalf. And she would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. And so I went to researchers and I asked them what's going on here. And they said, well,

we're living through this golden age of understanding communication for really the first time because of advances in neural imaging and data collection. And one of the things that we've learned is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? We're talking about my day, or we're talking about our kids' grades, where we're going to go on vacation. But actually, every conversation is made up of different kinds of conversations. And in general, they fall into one of three buckets. There's practical conversations where we're talking about plans or solving problems.

Then there's emotional conversations where I tell you how I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. And then finally, there's social conversations and social conversations about how we relate to each other and to society and the social identities that are important to us. And what they said, what's important is that you're having the same kind of conversation at the same time. Every discussion includes all three conversations. And sometimes we'll go from an emotional conversation to a practical, to a social, back to an emotional. But if we're not having the same kind of conversation

at the same moment, we're failing to really hear each other. We're probably failing to connect. And that's what was happening with my wife and myself. I was having an emotional conversation and my wife was having a practical conversation. And both of those are fine ways to communicate. But if you're not doing the same thing at the same time, you're not going to connect. And how did you learn about communication and connecting? How did you approach your problem? Well, by calling up a bunch of experts and asking them what's going on. You've landed on the concept that some people are super communicators. Can you talk about some of

the behaviors of the people who are really good at connecting? Yeah. So I think people who are good at connecting are people who want to have conversations, right? They want to have a back and forth. They want to share some aspects of themselves and share and learn about others. They, for instance, ask questions 10 to 20 times as many questions. But then what's really important is not just asking questions, but reciprocating and engaging in what's known as reciprocal vulnerability and reciprocal authenticity. And so an important part of a conversation is not just asking questions, but actually participating in the conversation, bringing some of ourself to it.

So these are not necessarily people with lots of charisma who dominate, dominate conversations, dominate rooms. No, I think in general, people who dominate conversations. I mean, let me ask you, when you're in a conversation with someone and they dominate it and they don't ask you questions, does that feel like a like you're connected to them or does it feel very one sided? It feels more one sided. Yeah. Yeah. And so as a result, I think that there's a kind of obvious lesson there, which is that part of a conversation is having exchanges with people, is sharing, not only asking them questions about themselves, but sharing about ourselves and in doing so, hopefully establishing a connection. So these are essentially people that make it easier for other people to speak up?

Well, I think that's one of the things that they do. And I think that they also show that they're listening. So they prove that they're listening in order to demonstrate that they are following along. They ask follow-up questions. They share aspects of how they think and they feel and they react to what people are saying. All of those are important things to show that you want to connect with someone. So showing that you want to connect is more important than being charismatic or being particularly clever or smart or anything else?

I don't know if it's more important, but being charismatic or clever or smart is not an ingredient of being a super communicator. There's lots of people who are good communicators, the people that you might call after you've had a bad day. Those might not be the most charismatic people, you know, or the most clever people, you know, but they're doing something that you appreciate and that you value. They're oftentimes asking you questions, deep questions. They're showing you that they're listening.

And all of that is important in helping helping establish a connection. Interesting. So they're asking questions. Did they also speak less? Did they repeat the ideas of others? What kind of other things do they do? So they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions. And some of those questions are deep questions, right? So those are questions about people's values and beliefs and their experiences. They're questions about how they feel about life rather than the facts of their life. Instead of asking, where did you go to medical school? You might ask someone, why did you become a doctor? That's a deep question. And then in general, what they're doing is they're showing that they're listening either by asking follow-up questions or by particularly when we're in a disagreement with someone repeating back what we've heard them say

in our own words showing them that we're paying attention and then asking if we got it right so interesting and is there one most important characteristic of what you call these high centrality people no there's not one most important characteristic. Like almost everything on life, there's multiple characteristics that contribute to how we behave. In general, many of the tools that super communicators use are designed to help them show someone that they want to connect with them. One of your interesting ideas to me is that they constantly adjust how they communicate to match the people that they're with, to match their moods and their attitudes.

But they're not just mimicking those people. They're doing much more. Can you explain? Yeah, so one of the things that they're doing is they're trying to pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening, whether this is a practical conversation, emotional conversation or social conversation. And they're trying to match that other person, which is different from mimicry.

Mimicry is where I'm showing that I'm listening to that either by asking sensitive follow up questions or I'm sharing sensitive things about myself and engaging in that emotional conversation. So simply mimicking someone is not sufficient. What is helpful is to have an actual conversation. And do these super communicators, these high centrality people, do they generally hold strong opinions and try to sway others to get other people to buy into what they think? Some of them may and some of them may not. What's important is that oftentimes they understand that the goal of a conversation is not to change someone else's mind. It's not to get them to

agree with you. It's not to get them to think you're smart or to like you. The goal of a conversation is to understand what the other person is saying, trying to tell you and to speak in such a way that they can understand you. And as long as you achieve that understanding, then the conversation has been a success. But the point is that we need to be able to focus not necessarily in trying to persuade someone or having we might have a strong opinion that we want to share and we might not. But if our first goal is to try and understand what the other person is saying and help them understand us, then we're more likely to have a good conversation. So interesting. So they're more likely to essentially be open minded, respectful of the other person, want to hear the other person, and they let themselves

get swayed by other people's opinions and perspectives. They don't necessarily let themselves get swayed, but they certainly show that they understand other people's opinions. I can have a conversation with you. And if you say something that I disagree with, but I show that I'm trying to understand it and I genuinely do understand, I ask questions, I try and understand why you believe that the Nazis were right, then that doesn't mean that I have to agree with you about that. But the goal of the conversation ought to be for us to understand each other. If in fact, we want to have a conversation and sometimes we don't want to have a conversation. Not everyone has to have a conversation. Not everything has to be a

conversation. And so I would say that in general, trying to prioritize understanding is what's most important. That's a key point that not everybody actually wants to have a conversation. A lot of times I think people just want to express their own perspective and get the other person to change their mind. That tends to not be particularly effective, right? We know from study after study that when you do that, it doesn't actually help. These kinds of people, these kinds of conversation that you're talking about are so important. Do these kinds of people play an outsized role in creating group alignment or decisions? Yeah, very often having a super communicator in a group

will make it easier for that group to come to a consensus, to agree with each other. One of the things that they do is they facilitate listening. They model listening themselves. They often engage in activities like looping for understanding where they're asking questions, preferably deep questions. They're restating what people said, and then they're asking if they got it right. And when we model that, not only do we inspire other people

to listen more deeply, we inspire them to show how they're listening more deeply. And as a result, oftentimes consensus is easier because if everyone feels like everyone else is actually listening to them, then we tend to find things where we can agree on consensus. These kinds of people, is their influence almost invisible? It can be, and it can be obvious. You've probably been in groups where it's clear that someone's really helping you all hear each other and other groups where looking back on it, you say, oh my gosh, you know, this person ended up being really critical, although I didn't even realize it at the time, right?

For sure. I think most people don't have that ability to really listen and show they're listening and show that they actually hear and understand the other person, which is what you're talking about. Oh, everyone has the ability. Our brains have evolved to be excellent at communication and our brains have evolved to be really good at listening. When you're listening to a joke that you enjoy, you don't have any problems hearing that joke. Or when you're talking to a friend who's telling you a story that you like and that you're interested in, we don't have to work hard to listen to them and to pay attention. Rather, what we need to do is we need to learn some basic skills that allow us to listen more closely when listening might be a little bit more challenging and to show the other person that we're listening to them. Can you explain synchronization, how it works and how it forges connection? When people are in a conversation and they begin connecting with each other, and this comes from the work of Uri Hassan at Princeton

and Talia Wheatley at Dartmouth and a number of others, that connection that we have, the communication tends to be mirrored in our bodies and in our brains. So often during a conversation, our pupils will start dilating at the same rate. Our breath patterns will start to match each other. And equally importantly, the neural activity within our brains will become increasingly similar if we feel connected to each other, if we're having a meaningful conversation. And that makes sense because when I describe an emotion to you or I describe an experience or an idea, you kind of experience that same emotion or that same idea. And it's that simultaneity, what neurologists refer to as neural entrainment that is at

the core of communication and connection. And so when we are in dialogue with each other, a genuine dialogue, then our brains are becoming more and more similar. And we're sort of we're actually having the same thoughts at the same moment. That's how we communicate. Charles, can you summarize how we can be better at communicating and connecting? There's kind of three things you can do. The first is you can ask deep questions, right? Ask people about how they feel about their lives

instead of just the facts of their lives. If someone says, I'm an accountant, ask, oh, did you always want to be an accountant? Rather than where are you an accountant? Instead of asking, where do you live? Which we could ask as an introductory question, you can say, what's your favorite thing about your neighborhood? Like, why do you enjoy living there? These are things that give people an opportunity to say something real and meaningful. Then the second thing is if it's a conflict conversation to show that we're listening, because if this is a conversation that's difficult, we always suspect that the other person isn't listening. They're just merely waiting their turn to speak. And so when we show that we're listening, when we make it a conversation, when we ask follow-up questions or we repeat back

and say, what I think I heard you say, and tell me if I'm getting this right, then what we're doing at that stage is we're proving we're listening and it makes the other person want to listen to us. And thirdly, is this reciprocity. A conversation cannot be a interview. It needs to have both people participating in it. And in doing so, you achieve that simultaneity, the neural entrainment that's at the core of connection. What are the three takeaways that you would like to leave the audience with today? The three takeaways are ask more questions, preferably deep questions. Show that you're listening by asking follow-up questions or repeating back what

someone is saying that shows them that we want to connect with them. And engage in reciprocity. If you don't bring yourself to a conversation, it's unfair to ask someone else to do so. And so the more that we authentically bring ourselves to a discussion, the more we're going to connect with the other person. Thank you, Charles. This has been great. Thank you. Charles Duhigg is the author of the book Super Communicators. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at threetakeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. And if you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

It really helps get the word out. I'm Lynn Toman. This is Three Takeaways. And thanks so much for listening.