Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Supercommunicators with Charles Duhigg

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

How does someone become a great communicator? Sharon McMahon talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg about his latest book, Super Communicators. He explains being a strong communicator isn’t some magical, innate talent but a skill that anyone can learn. How do top executives talk to others? How can you deal with people who insult or talk down to you? And what can you say to someone to tells you to calm down? Charles breaks down the three types of conversations and shares tips on how you can improve your relationships through better, clearer communication. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Hello friends, welcome. Delighted to have you with me today. My guest is super communicator, Charles Duhigg. He has a book out called,

Surprise Super Communicators. And gosh, I really think this conversation is going to be illuminating, eye-opening. We think that some people are born great communicators and Charles says that that is absolutely not true. That is 100% a learned skill and we can all learn to be better communicators and have better, deeper connections with people we care about. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I have been wanting to talk about super communicators for months, and I'm so glad we are finally

able to make this happen. Thanks for having me. This is a real treat. Communication is something that people feel a tremendous amount of anxiety around. They feel like, I don't know how to talk to my family and friends. Every conversation I have with them, I end up leaving angry. Every Thanksgiving dinner is like, oh no, not them again. The entire communication discourse feels fraught with landmines, like you can go wrong at any moment.

And I'm wondering, first of all, is our challenge with communication, is this new in human history from your perspective? Has the internet ruined us, Charles? Where's our problem with communicating coming from? If you think about it, I mean, what's actually kind of amazing is how well we communicate all the time, right? I mean, you bump into people that you've never met before and you oftentimes manage to find something in common with them and have a conversation that's actually a fairly fulfilling and satisfying conversation. And one of the reasons why is because

if you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower. It's the reason our species has been so successful. It's how we build families and villages and towns and fire and aircraft carriers and video game consoles. Communication is at the core of everything we do. And so as a result, our brains have evolved to be very good at communication, to make new skills that we learn about communication into habits very quickly. Now you're right though,

the conversations that stand out in our minds are oftentimes the ones that went poorly, right? It was Thanksgiving and we had a fight with our brother-in-law or things didn't go as well with our wife or our husband as we hoped it would when we said the wrong things to our kids. And part of what's happening there is that oftentimes people don't understand how communication works, what the skills are that make communication successful. That's one of the reasons I wrote Super Communicators was because to become a

Super Communicator and we're all Super Communicators at one time or another, it's literally just a set of skills that you can practice until they become habitual and then you can connect with almost anyone. Are some people just born better at it? No, no, nobody's born better at it. Nobody's born better or worse at communication. It's entirely a learned set of skills. Then in fact, if you talk to people who are great communicators and you ask them, have you always been a great communicator?

They'll say something like, no, in high school I had trouble making friends. So I really had to study how kids talk to each other. Or my parents got divorced when I was younger and I had to be the peacemaker between them. People who are good at communication are just people who think a little bit more about communication. And it's really that thinking that makes us recognize what we need to do to get better at it. So no, there's no one who's born with the gift of the gab. There's just people who grew up in environments

where these skills were habituated a little bit earlier than others. But we can all learn them at any time. But isn't it true, though, that temperament has a propensity to make somebody more extroverted or more introverted, somebody who really seeks out and wants to be around people? Wouldn't those sort of innate temperament characteristics give somebody a leg up when it comes

to being good at communication versus not? There's really no evidence that introversion or extroversion is an inherent state. All the research that's been done shows it's entirely a set of preferences that people habituate around. So no, no one is born shy or born as an introvert. And if you grow up in an environment where you don't get pushed much, where you learn to like sort of amuse yourself and enjoy reading and being alone, then you become habituated to that behavior and it feels more natural to you.

It feels more calming, more easier. But that doesn't mean that you have something inside your brain that makes you an introvert or an extrovert. In fact, all the evidence is pointed to the alternative. And there's a lot of research by a guy named Nick Apley at the University of Chicago that shows that people who self-identify as introverts

can very easily act as extroverts in a very natural way where it doesn't feel costly to them, it doesn't feel awkward to them, because they recognize that socialization is, again, just a set of skills. Communication is a subset of socialization, and it's a set of skills that any of us can learn. I've always sort of pictured introversion

versus extroversion as being, you know, the way your brain is wired, how you prefer to recharge your brain. People who are extroverted have this tendency to want to recharge by being around more people. And people who are introverted are like, leave me alone, please. Well, let's put it this way.

Is there something in your brain that makes it easier for you to speak English than other languages? Like if you had grown up in another country, do you think you'd be just as fluent in the language of the country you grew up in? Of course, of course, yes. So we have no problem identifying language as something that's a required skill. And language is a set of behaviors that's really, really important and very complicated to learn.

Most human behaviors are very similar. Now that being said, you're exactly right. There are some people who can find energy in different ways, right? Whether they're habituated to it, whether it's something that they just prefer, because we know that there are some preferences that emerge based on our neuro structure. But in general, to say that those are determinative is not accurate. Those are instincts that we might follow or we might ignore. You might have had an instinct to learn Spanish and you might have followed it or you might have ignored it. But that doesn't mean that because of something in your brain, you either

can or can't learn Spanish. Oh my gosh. Interesting. Okay. We keep talking about this, but I want to talk a little bit more about what these learned skills are about what makes somebody a super communicator. I don't know if you know this about me Charles, but I have won a communicator of the year award. Wow. Communicator of the year. Thank you. Very big honor, almost as good as an Oscar, almost as illustrious. Maybe only to you, maybe only to you, the person who studies communicators. I'm just teasing, but I did really win that award.

I won the Communicator of the Year award, but I want to know what are some of the characteristics of people who are good communicators? What commonalities do they have? What are the skills they have learned? Well, a great way to answer this is to just ask you a question. You were having a bad day and you came home and you wanted to call someone that you know would make you feel better. Just talking to them was sort of improved your mood.

Do you know who you would call? Does that person pop into your mind? Yeah, it would either be my husband or my sister or my mom. Yeah. Okay. So for you, those people are super communicators, right? They know how to ask you the right question. They know how to show you that they're listening. They know that when you're talking about something that sounds kind of practical, but you're really feeling kind of emotional about it,

they should lean into that emotional part. And you're probably a super communicator back to them. You know how to talk to them in a way that you feel connected with each other. So we're all super communicators at one time or another, but consistent super communicators, because there are some people who can do this every single day and to anyone that they want to.

There are people who recognize that the skills that your husband is using with you or that your mom is using with you, skills that they might not even recognize are skills, right? They might just think of them as this feels very natural. They recognize them as skills and they say, look, I can talk to strangers the same way that I talked to my mom. I can talk to my coworkers the same way I talk to my husband.

And in doing so, I might be able to connect with them just as strongly as I'm able to connect with these people who I already have connections with. So what are these skills? What is it that helps us feel like we are being communicated with in a way that is useful to us, that helps us make connections? Because you talk about in the book too that one of the biggest purposes of communicating is connecting with other people, which humans have a biological drive to need.

What are these skills that people have apparently learned how to develop that they were not born with? Skills you can only learn. What are some of these skills? To explain that, I should tell a little story about how I started researching super communicators, which is that I fell into this bad pattern with my wife, where I would come home from work. And I think this is pretty familiar to anyone who's listening. I would come home from work and I think this is pretty familiar to anyone who's listening.

I would come home from work after a long day and I would start complaining about my day. My boss doesn't appreciate me or my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am. And my wife very practically would offer me some good advice. She would say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. Instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get even more upset, right? And I would tell her like, you're not supporting me enough.

You got outraged on my behalf. She would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. I think this is a pretty familiar pattern to anyone who's been in a relationship, right? One person has a problem, the other person tries to solve it. That solution is not appreciated.

And the thing is that I knew that this would happen again and again and again. I kept walking into the same trap. And so I went to researchers and I asked them, why does this happen? What's going on? And they said, well, we're really glad that you came by because we're actually living through this golden age

of understanding communication. For really the first time, because of advances in neural imaging and data collection, we can sort of see what happens inside people's brains as they have conversations with each other. And one of the things that we've noticed is that we tend to think about a discussion as being about one thing. Right, we're talking about my day

or where to go on vacation or next year's budget. But actually they said, if you look at someone's brain, what you'll see is that during that discussion, there's multiple kinds of conversations that are occurring. And oftentimes these conversations, they fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations, which are about solving problems or making plans together.

There's emotional conversations, where I might tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize and I want you to relate. And then there's social conversations, which is about how you and I relate to each other and society and the identities that are important to us. And they said, what we've discovered is that

if two people are having different kinds of conversations at the same time, even though both of them are equally legitimate conversations, it's actually impossible for them to hear each other fully. It's really hard for them to connect. And this has given rise to what's known as the matching principle in psychology, which says successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.

And that, of course, explains why my wife and I were having this problem. Right. I was having an emotional conversation. She was having a practical conversation. And it was only once we got aligned that we could fully hear each other. And then we could move from practical to social, to emotional, back to practical conversation. And it was only once we got aligned that we could fully hear each other. And then we could move from practical to social to emotional back to practical together. But we'll be able to really hear

what the other person is saying. So that's the first skill. Paying attention to what kind of conversation is happening. Is this practical? Is this emotional? Is this social? And then matching the other person or inviting them to match you.

For example, when your significant other is upset about something, telling them, calm down, how does that usually work out Charles? Not so well, not so well, right? Calm down is a surefire way to ramp it up. Don't tell me to calm down. Yeah. Cause oftentimes in a situation like that, and that's exactly what we can see there, right, is that one person says something emotional

and the other person says something very practical. Calm down. You're overreacting. I'm going to treat this very rationally. And it feels like that person isn't listening to you, right? It feels like that person is hearing you and they don't care about what you're trying to tell them. And so as a result, it simply increases your sense of

emotional anxiety. Yes, it makes it worse. And it absolutely does feel like there's a disconnect instead of a connection. Like now I'm not just upset about the original thing. Now I'm upset about the fact that you're not listening to me and you're not paying attention to what I need right now. Why are you telling me to calm down when I'm very, very legitimately upset about whatever it is in your mind? Whatever it is, is very legitimate thing to be upset about. So it's a great point that you're making that when somebody is telling you calm down or take your boss out to lunch or why don't you just try writing him an email or whatever, you're having different conversations and that disconnect is very uncomfortable for people.

Yeah, it's very uncomfortable. It also feels like you can't connect with each other. We know from a neuroscience perspective, a neurological perspective, that you aren't getting that feeling that you get with your mom or with your husband or with your sister. So that's the first skill.

Another important skill though is this question, how do we actually figure out what kind of conversation is happening? Yeah. And when it comes to kids and partners, you can just ask, like, you know, Another important skill though is this question, how do we actually figure out what kind of conversation is happening? And when it comes to kids and partners, you can just ask. In New York and New Jersey, they teach teachers that if a student comes to you and they have something important they want to discuss, you should ask them, do you want to be helped, hugged or heard?

Which of course is the practical, the emotional and the social. And if you ask a kid, do you want to be helped hugged or hurt? I have two kids and I ask this all the time. They know exactly what they want, right? They'll tell you, no, no, no, I don't need you to help me with this. I just want a hug. Or I just want you to know that Jimmy's been being mean to me. You don't have to do anything.

I just want you to know, right? We know what kind of conversation we want to have most often, but obviously asking someone, do you want to be helped, hugged or heard at work is a little awkward. And so there's another technique and another skill that we can use to figure out what kind of conversation is happening. And that's to ask questions.

But not all questions are created equal, right? There's some questions that are known within psychology as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks about my values or my beliefs or my experiences and invites me to tell someone what's going on inside my head. And that could sound kind of intimidating, right, to ask a deep question, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who's, for instance, a doctor instead of saying, what hospital do you work at? Asking them, what

made you decide to go to medical school? That second question where I'm asking you how you made a decision, what your values are, what experiences you've had, that's gonna yield a much deeper answer. And at that point, I'm gonna know what kind of mindset you're in, and whether you're looking for a practical conversation or emotional conversation or a social conversation,

but it's also gonna be really easy for us to find things that we have in common, because it's very natural with a deep question to answer it yourself. Oh, you went to medical school because you saw your dad get sick as a kid. I went to law school because I saw my uncle get arrested. Suddenly we're having a real conversation with someone. We're getting to know them and we're connecting with them. So that's the second skill is learning to ask questions, particularly deep questions. And in doing so to listen for clues as to what's on the person's mind.

I've discovered in having political conversations with people that there are some questions that are disarming and sort of allow people to open up. And there are some questions that seem to put people on the defense. Well, what makes you think that? Why would you believe such a thing? And of course, a lot of this is in the way that you say it, but being asked the question, why do you think that I have found, and you can tell me maybe what the research says or what your experience is here. I found that saying, why do you think that the moon is made of green cheese, or whatever their belief is that I'm trying to sort of get to the root of, being asked why

makes people in my experience feel defensive. Like they need to now give you a big list of justifications rather than sort of getting to the heart of the matter, which is why it's important for them to believe that thing. Like what's happening for them that makes holding on to this belief, even if it's not real, feel safe and like an important thing to do in their mind. Is that supported by research, the idea that some questions are disarming and some questions put people in a defensive posture? Well, I think in general, questions that signal that you're genuinely curious are better than questions that feel like

an argument posed as a question. So asking someone why they believe in something that isn't inherently alienating, right? If somebody says, I'm really proud to vote for President Trump or I'm really proud to vote for Amala Harris, saying to them, oh, tell me about that. What is it about them that you find so compelling?

That's not gonna alienate them. That's not gonna push them away. Sure. But if you were to say, oh, why on earth would you want to vote for that person? That isn't really a question. That's not really signaling curiosity. That's signaling that I am either judging you

or that I'm making an argument, but I'm pretending it's a question. I'm just asking questions. Just asking questions, Charles. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So what matters much more, even more than the tone of voice, because tone of voice tends to follow what our motivation is, is to be genuinely curious.

Like when you ask a question about why does somebody believe something, to genuinely want to understand why they believe that thing. And this actually brings us to the third skill that is really important that super communicators do really well, which is proving that we're listening to the other person. That oftentimes, simply asking a question isn't enough, even listening to them isn't enough. Because oftentimes when it comes to things like politics, there's this sneaking suspicion in the back of our mind that this person I'm talking to, they appear to be listening, but actually they're just waiting their turn to speak.

Right, right. And so one of the important things you can do is we can prove that we're listening. And there's actually a technique for this, known as looping for understanding. And in looping for understanding has three steps. The first step is that you ask a question, preferably a deep question, right? Tell me about like, why do you like that candidate so much? And then when the person has finished answering the question, repeat back in your own words, what you've heard them say. And then when the person has finished answering the question, repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. And the goal here is not mimicry, right? The goal here is to prove to them that you're paying attention and maybe even to prove to them that you can process this.

What I hear you say is you like Donald Trump because it seems like he's tough on security and security matters a lot to you. And I remember last week you saying that you were really worried about China and it seems like maybe those are related. So those are the first two steps. Ask a question, repeat back what you heard the person say. And then number three, and this is the step that I always forget, is ask if you got it right.

Did I understand you correctly? Is that why you like Trump? Because when we ask if we got it right, what we're actually doing is we're asking for permission to acknowledge that we were listening. And one of the things that we know about our human psychology is that if I acknowledge that you were listening to me, you become much more likely to listen in return. So when I ask you, am I getting that right?

What I'm actually doing is I'm asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening, which puts you in a position where you're more likely to listen to me. Yeah, it's this principle that maybe people didn't know was supported by research, but this principle of like seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. Yeah. It's that sort of reciprocity of I listened to what you had to say. You've acknowledged that I in fact was listening because I was able to tell you in my own words what you were saying and you were saying yeah,

that is what I think. And then it puts them in the position of what are your thoughts about that? Yeah, my guess is that when you're talking to your mom or your husband or your sister, you guys are doing things like you're asking each other deep questions. You're paying attention to does she not my sister feel emotional or is this a practical problem? Are we really talking about a recipe or are we talking about that she's upset that nobody ate last night's dinner and it felt like it was kind of a wasted effort on her part? And most importantly, my guess is that you and they are proving to each other that you're

listening, right? You might not be using the total formality of looping for understanding, but you're doing things like asking follow-up questions, like saying, oh, that's interesting you say that because I remember you said this thing last week, or what I hear you saying is this. And then we're saying like, am I hearing you correctly? Even on lower-sex conversations, these skills help us get aligned with each other. They help us have the same kind of conversation at the same moment. And once we do that, once we feel connected, what's known within neuroscience is neuraly entrained.

At that moment, we're ready to really hear it and understand each other. What if I don't wanna have the kind of conversation the other person wants to have, Charles? It's fine, no one's ever required to have a conversation they don't wanna have. Sometimes you get in the Uber and you just wanna check your phone.

You don't wanna have a conversation with the driver. Sometimes you come home and your husband has something really fractally wants to talk about and you just want to go kick up your heels and think about something else, read a novel. Nobody ever has to have a conversation they don't want to have. But what's important is that when we do want to have a conversation, when we do want to connect with someone, that we have the skills or the tools available to us to make that easier to do. That's kind of the goal of super communicators is to give people the skills and the tools that they need to connect with others.

There's a lot of stories in the book, there's stories about how they made the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, into a hit by paying attention to how people non-verbally communicated, how they use their bodies and their expressions. It was known that non-linguistic communication. There's a story about a CIA officer who sent overseas to recruit spies, and he was terrible at this job until he learned how to really connect to other people. And the reason why I include all those stories is to drive home this point that you don't have to have conversations you don't want to have. That there are times that you want to have a conversation. There are times that you want to connect with another person and it can be hard. And this is a way to make it happen. Let's take this a little bit beyond personal connections with people because these are, I do think, very useful skills to use in interpersonal relationships.

very useful skills to use in interpersonal relationships, where it's your significant other, it's a person you're dating, it's whatever it is. How do we use these kind of skills on sort of a broader scale? How do we take these sort of super communicator skills and apply them on the world stage, so to speak? How do we communicate with the masses or with, let's say you're the CEO of a company and you have 4,000 employees. How do I take these skills and apply them writ large to a group of people instead of just a single individual I'm having a conversation with? Well, very similarly, let's say I am sending a note

to 4,000 people. I wanna use the same basic principles and just sort of scaling them. So for instance, one of the things that I might do is I might show them that I'm listening to them by saying, look, we did this survey, I've heard what you have to say. You told me that you felt like the cafeteria

needs to improve and that we're asking you to work too much. Right, I'm proving to you that I'm listening to you. And another thing that we can do in those more than one communication, but also the more scalable communication is focus on the importance of vulnerability. So this word vulnerability tends to be misunderstood.

We tend to think of it as like people crying on each other's shoulders. But actually vulnerability is something that happens in our brain. Whenever I say something to you that you could judge, I feel a sense of vulnerability, right? Now, I might not care about your judgment, I tell you that I like Star Wars better than Star Trek. And you might think that's completely wrong and disagree with me. I don't care because

it's not that big a deal. But the act of telling you something that you could judge, it triggers what's known as a vulnerability possibility in my brain. And then if you respond not by judging me, but by expressing a vulnerability of your own, or by telling me how much you appreciate that, it makes me feel like I can trust you more. Even if we disagree with each other,

even if we are talking about something where we're on opposite sides of the fence, when I say something vulnerable and you respond without judgment, it makes us feel closer, particularly if you respond with something vulnerable of your own, something I could judge. And so when it comes to communication with large groups, I think that's really important. If you look at the best leaders, oftentimes when they send out those letters to their companies, they're admitting something about themselves. They're saying, look, here's something that I care about that I'm trying for. It's something you could judge. And I'm hoping that you'll suspend that judgment just

a little bit to let me make my case and see if I can convince you. And that's really powerful to be the first to express vulnerability, oftentimes gives us more power rather than taking it. What other kind of commonalities do you find that great leaders who are known for being great communicators have in common? I'm thinking about, say, for example, people like FDR or Abraham Lincoln, people who have historically been viewed as great leaders throughout time. What other kind of communication characteristics do they share in common that have allowed them to sort of transcend a difficult moment or allow them to transcend the passage of

history and remain in the minds of people as sort of great communicators or great leaders? Well, oftentimes there are folks who work really hard to find common ground, right? If you think, for instance, about the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln could have made the Gettysburg Address about defeating the enemy. He could have made it about patriotism. He could have made it about the righteousness of the Northern Columns, why he had pushed America into the Civil War. But instead, what he did is he starts it by talking about things that we have on them, that we all know what it's like to lose someone that we love, that we all abhor war and wish that it didn't occur. Very similarly, when FDR would give his spireside chats, if you think about the most

famous one, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. What he's doing there is he's very explicitly having an emotional conversation. He says to the nation, listen, I know that you're worried. I know that you're feeling emotional. You don't need me to tell you all of the things that my government is doing, all this practical stuff. You don't need me to describe all the policies I've put into place or the laws I wanna get approved. Instead, what I wanna do is I wanna have an emotional conversation with you.

And I know that you're scared. But the only thing that we have to be scared about is what fear will make us do. We can overcome anything. So I think really great communicators, whether they be politicians or whether they be statesmen or whether they be people in our own community or a team leader at a company, what they do is they first of all try to demonstrate that we have something in common, something that we're all experts in. Not a situation where I'm the president and you're not or I'm the team leader and you're not and I know more about this and I can tell

you whether you should be worried or not, but rather I know that we are all feeling this one thing and that feeling is legitimate. And by the way, you are an expert on what you are feeling right now, right? You are the only person who can tell me what you're experiencing at this very moment. And then once they've made that connection, once they've sort of level-set what kind of conversation they're having, at that point, what they often do is they prove that they're listening and they show some vulnerability. They show something that allows everyone else to give them the benefit of the

doubt. And that's really powerful. Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And we make a TV show called Severance. On January 17th, Severance is back for season two on Apple TV Plus, and we can't wait for you guys to see it. And before the premiere, Ben and I are gonna be binging season one and putting out daily recap podcasts.

Yep, each weekday beginning January 7th, we'll be dropping an episode featuring exclusive behind-the-scenes tidbits and brilliant insights from our cast and crew and us. Patricia Arquette, Britt Lauer, Zach Cherry, John Totoro, the list goes on. All your favorite Lumen employees, their friends, families, enemies, in your feed every single weekday. And here's the best part. After that, we're going to keep going. Tune in weekly as we recap every episode of season two.

The podcast drops on the same day the episode comes out. It's The Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam on Apple podcasts, the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. You talk in the book, too too about there's sort of three mindsets or three kinds of conversations that people are having perhaps subconsciously. You might not even be aware that these are the three sort of questions or mindsets

that are existing beneath the surface. Am I supposed to be holding this in my mind when I am having conversations with people? What kind of conversation is this? Does that make you a super communicator? The practical conversation can be described as a what's-this-without conversation, where we're trying to figure out what is this conversation about? What are we trying to do in this conversation? And then the emotional conversation can be thought of as a conversation about how do we feel? And the social conversation can be thought of

as a conversation about who are we? And so those three questions, they're sort of designed to help us remember what the three kinds of conversations are. And to your point, we don't have to hold them in our mind in a really technical sense, but if somebody says something like, take that person I mentioned who you asked, why did you become a doctor? In one setting, they might say something like, oh, when I was a kid,

I really wanted a job that I just knew there would always be demand for. I just wanted a steady paycheck. And I knew that there would always be demand for doctors. So that's probably someone who at this moment is in somewhat of a practical mindset. But in another setting, that same person might say something like, I saw my dad get sick and I saw the doctors come in and help him and the nurses. And I realized I wanted to be a healer. I wanted to be one of those people that helps other people. So that's someone who's in a much more emotional mindset, perhaps even a social mindset. We don't have to have checklists in our head that we're paying attention to. What we do have to do is we have to pay attention to what the other person is saying. And it's as simple as asking ourselves, does it seem like this person is talking about feelings?

Or does it seem like this person talking about plans? Or does it seem like this person is talking about who they are? That gives us a clue as to what kind of conversation they're having. And then we're in a place where we can match them. One of the things I really liked about super communicators is the actual practical advice that you give. That it's not just about, well we know that super communicators are really good at showing empathy or expressing vulnerability. There's certainly like the research-backed larger principles. There's also like how do I use this? And I really appreciated this idea of if you are finding X, try Y.

Here are some things you can do if this is happening. They're having an emotional conversation, then lean into empathy and a shared story. If they're wanting to have a practical conversation, then lean into facts and logic. The very practical application is part of what makes this book so useful, but it's not just describing the theoretical. And I'm wondering if you could share with the listener a tip that you would love for them to sort of take away,

to be a better communicator, or something you'd like to see people doing. Instead of doing X try Y what would you share with us? Well let me ask you what's a recent conversation you've had that you felt like didn't go as well as you'd hoped it would go that you wish had gone better? Great question. Have you ever experienced this Charles where people want to have a conversation that you just don't want to have and then they persist in trying to bring up that conversation with you.

Can you give me an example? Yeah, like they want to talk about that one time that something happened and like, let's go back to X, Y, and Z and you're like, I don't want to talk about that anymore. Let's move on from whatever that thing is. We've hashed that out. And the fact that you don't want to talk about it is,

again, you mentioned you don't have to have any conversations you don't want to have, but that becomes a source of contention in a relationship. Does that make sense? It sounds like though in a situation like that, that this is something that might be bothering the other person, right? That they're trying to say to you, listen, this is something that I want you to understand. This isn't something that I feel like has been put to rest. This is something that I feel like is an issue in our relationship and something that I'd like us to work through and resolve if we're going to feel close to each other. It seems worth listening to that rather than discarding it if this is someone that you

want to actually be close to. I mean, you're not wrong, but I think this is a common conundrum that people have where they have people in their lives that they want to have in their lives. It's a relative for example. They want to see them. They want to peacefully coexist. They want to have the family Thanksgiving. They just don't want to talk about the thing that the relative keeps bringing up. Whether it's political beliefs or whether it's like well you know that one time blah blah blah fill in the blank whatever it is, that conversation is uncomfortable.

And the person just doesn't want to have it, but they want to maintain a relationship with that person. You know, I'm thinking of, for example, a friend who is gay and their relatives don't approve and they want to keep bringing it up and it's not up for discussion. It's not up for discussion. I'm not going to change my mind. I don't really care what your opinion is, but yet I love you. And I want to have you in my life. Like these are the kinds of conversations that can be really difficult for

people to navigate where they're like, I just don't want to talk about this with you. So my guess is that the relatives in that case don't really feel listens to. And you're right, we don't have to have any conversations we don't wanna have. It's fine to say, look, I'd prefer not to talk about that or to change the topic and say, like, instead of talking about that, tell me a little bit about what's going on with Susie. Is she doing well in school?

But oftentimes the way to resolve an issue like that is not to simply pretend it doesn't exist because that's not really a relationship with someone. If they keep bringing something up and you keep telling them, I'm not gonna talk about it, you don't really have a relationship with them. You just have basically a series of avoidances. But what you could do is you could say something like, you've brought this up a number of times and I just want to understand why is this so important to you?

Tell me why this is something that comes up again and again because I think you know that I'm not going to change my mind and I know that you're not going to change your mind but it keeps coming up, tell me why. And they're probably gonna say something like, we're worried for your happiness or our pastor says you're gonna go to hell. So I think at that moment, we've gotten to a place where I can actually hear what you're saying and I can prove to you that I hear what you're saying. What I hear you saying is that you're worried about my happiness that you think living a

gay lifestyle that will never achieve the happiness that you and your husband have. Am I getting that right? Yeah, you're getting that right. Well, I really appreciate that because I just want you to know I am really happy. I know that it might be a different kind of happiness than you and it might be harder for you to see, but if your concern is that I'm not going to be happy, I want you to know I am so happy.

I'm so happy being the person I am and not having to hide this part of myself. And I want to be close to you. And I feel like this is something that when it comes up, pushes us apart. And so I want to ask you to acknowledge my happiness and just be okay with that. Right? In a situation like that, what we're doing is we're saying, I really want to understand what you're trying to tell me. And then I want you to understand me. And that's the goal of a conversation.

The goal of a conversation is not to convince you that I'm right and you're wrong or I'm smart and you're dumb or you should like me or you should be impressed by me. The goal of a conversation is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And we've done that.

Even if we walk away disagreeing with each other, even if we don't come to any resolution, if I understand you and you understand me, then that conversation has been a success. And more importantly, we will feel connected to each other, even though we disagree with each other. And it's that connection that's important. So simply acknowledging, listen, I don't think I'm going to change your mind and I don't think you're going to change my mind, but I want to understand why this is so important to you.

And I want you to understand why it's so important to me. that oftentimes will put the issue to rest, whereas just avoiding it again and again and again usually won't. That's a really great point. And I know that somebody is going to write in to me and bring up this idea of like emotional safety. What if somebody has proven that they're not a safe person to have those kinds of conversations with? What should be your goal in having a conversation with them? Like if it doesn't appear as though emotional connection is even

reasonable, is the best thing to do just to change the subject? Instead of talking about that, let's talk about your summer vacation. You can. I mean, the people you're describing don't really sound like people you want to be close to, to be honest with you. Like if they're people who are constantly bringing up topics you don't want to discuss, if they're not emotionally safe, it sounds like what you're talking about is not like actually being close to someone, but just basically like, how do I maintain this so it doesn't become unpleasant? Yeah, I think that's what a lot of people feel.

Yeah. I would say if your goal is simply to not to be close to someone, not to connect with someone, not to have a real conversation with them, then sure, change the topic, right? And avoid having conversations with them. Go spend time somewhere else. You probably see them once a year. It's not that big a deal. Whatever it's a tough day and you just have a glass of wine at the end of it.

I'm not certain that there's like some magical thing you can do to defang someone who you don't actually want to have a relationship with, but you're forced by circumstances to spend some time with. Now, I would say that oftentimes when that happens, when we are forced to spend time with people who we don't like, or we don't want to be close to, or we don't trust, oftentimes we can build trust with them and figure out what we have in common, what we like about each other by actually having a conversation with them. But that doesn't mean that you keep bringing things up and I basically imply to you that you're so stupid that I'm not going to talk about them.

That's not going to really bring us closer together. What will bring us closer together is if you keep on bringing up your political views is to ask, this seems really important to you. Tell me why this is so important to you. Because I know you've brought it up a number of times and you know that you're not going to convince me to vote for your candidate, but it seems important to you.

Tell me why. And inevitably what that person is going to say is they're going to say something like, well, I feel like the elite have like really taken advantage of us. Like I worked hard my whole life and I haven't gotten what I wanted, what I expected to get.

And that's something we can all relate to, right? We all know what it feels like to feel disappointed, to feel like we're being excluded. At that moment, we can say, look, what I hear you saying is, it's not so much that you like this guy because everything he does is right. It's because he stands for something that you feel like is true, which is that you've been excluded from some of the things you thought would come your way and it feels unfair. Am I getting that right? And at that moment, actually, you probably will find that you and this person have something in common. Even if it's something like gay marriage and I'm gay and you don't believe in gay marriage, we probably both agree that taking care of children and doing right by our children is what's most important. So I would say rather than putting in a situation

where we're saying, there's this person I have to spend time with and I hate, I want to pretend like I want to be connected to them. Let's just either not spend time with them or actually try and connect with them, which means not judging them, but rather trying to understand them. The not judging part, I think is real challenging, Charles. The not judging part, I think people

are like, but I do judge you. What do you hope the reader takes away when they close the last page of Super Communicators? I mean, there's like a million super incredible nuggets in the book, but what is sort of your heart's wish of like, I hope the reader carries this into the future? Well, what I hope that people carry away is to understand that we can all be super communicators, right? We don't have to have any conversations we don't want to have. And oftentimes we can just say, hey, like, let's talk about something else. But there are times that we want to connect with people.

There are times that we want to understand them. There are times that we want to understand them. There are times that we want to have conversation. And at those moments, anyone can be a super communicator. The same kinds of skills that you use with your mom and your sister and your husband and they use with you, we can use with anyone once we understand their skills. And that once we take these skills and we recognize them as skills, that trying to figure out what kind of conversation is happening, asking deep questions, the looping for understanding to prove that we're listening, when we recognize these as skills and then we practice them a little bit,

they become habits very quickly and it feels very natural and intuitive to do it in a conversation. So good. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed reading Super Communicators. I loved all of the practical advice in it and it was

a treat to be able to chat with you today. Thank you for making the time to do this. Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. You can find Charles Duhigg's book Super Communicators wherever you buy your books. If you want to support your local bookshop, head to yours or go to bookshop.org. Thanks for being here today. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed today's episode, Thanks for being here today.