Instant Genius - How science can help you have better conversations

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Do you ever find yourself in a meeting at work or in a social occasion and notice how someone in the room seems able to effortlessly and succinctly put their ideas across while also listening to others and giving them room to speak? Chances are that person is a supercommunicator. In this episode I’m joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Duhigg to talk about his book Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. He tells us how by asking deeper questions, listening correctly and approaching difficult conversations with an open mind we can all learn how to be better communicators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com. to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Each week you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts

talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. Do you ever find yourself in a meeting at work or in a social occasion? And notice how someone in the room seems able to effortlessly and succinctly

put their ideas across, while also listening to others and giving them room to speak. Chances are that person is a super communicator. In this episode, I'm joined by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Charles Duhigg, to talk about his book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. He tells us how by asking deeper questions, listening correctly, and approaching difficult conversations with an open mind,

we can all learn how to be better communicators. Okay, so let's start with the obvious question here then. what actually is a super communicator? And how do you define that? Absolutely. It's a good question. And I think the easiest way to demonstrate it is to point out the super communicators in your life. So let me ask you a question.

If you were having a really bad day and you know that you wanted to call one of your friends and doing so, it would just make you feel better, right? They would know exactly what to say to you. Does the person you would call, do they pop into your mind? Yeah, instantly, depending on topic. Yeah. Yeah. So who's one of them? So I'm lucky enough to have a twin brother.

Okay. So he's top of the list. And I also have a partner, so she's top of the list too. Yeah. So let's take your brother. Your brother for you is a super communicator. And you're probably a super communicator right back to him. You guys know how to talk to each other. You know what questions to ask. You know how to say the right thing and to draw out the other thing that the person is maybe dancing around and doesn't want to admit to themselves. And most importantly, you know how to prove that you're listening. You really know how to show each other that you're there for them. That's what super communicators do. And all of us at one time or another, we're all super communicators. But some people, can do this consistently. Some people can be super communicators with anyone, no matter how many things they have in common or differences they have. They can connect and make a real meaningful connection with nearly anyone. And what we've learned about these folks is that when I started writing this book, I thought maybe it was because they were really charismatic or really outgoing. But actually, what we've learned is that that's not true. According to the data, supercommunicators have a sort of normal distribution through society. Some of them are really charismatic.

and some of them are very crumudgeonly. Some of them are extroverts and some of them are introverts. Rather, it's that supercommunicators have learned a couple of skills that allow them to show other people that they want to connect with them and make it easier for that connection to happen. And that's what a super communicator is. It's just a collection of skills that anyone can learn. So having said that, can we even say how common super communicators are in the population? I don't know because the answer is we haven't done really good studies, try and figure out how prevalent this is. Sometimes people are super communicators in one context and not in another, right? There's definitely those people we know who like at work, they're just amazing. And then you talk to their animals and they're like, yeah, he's kind of totally

doesn't say anything at home. And so we don't know how prevalent it is, in part because it's actually all of us, right? We all have these moments of super communication. There's that meeting you went into and you knew exactly what to say to whenever went over and you're exactly right or that friend who called and you knew exactly what question asked them to help them figure out what was going on. The goal isn't necessarily to figure out how many there are as much as to say like, oh, these are actually just simple skills, skills that actually our brains have evolved to use. And once we learn them, we can do this more often. So what are some of those common skills then? Yeah, so there's a couple of them. One of the biggest ones is asking questions. So one of the things that we know out super

communicators is that they ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average. And some of those questions are designed just to sort of like invite you in. Like, hey, hey, what'd you think about that? Oh, yeah, what'd you say next? But some of them are these special questions, what are known as deep questions. And that can sound kind of intimidating, right, to say that you should ask someone a deep question. But it's actually easier than it sounds, because a deep question is just something that asks me about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And in doing so, it allows me to expose something, to say something meaningful about myself. And it could be as as simple as, you know, bumping into someone on the street and asks him, what do you do for a living?

And they say, oh, I'm a doctor. And saying, oh, yeah, what made you decide to become a doctor? What do you love about medicine? Like, what's your favorite part of your job? Those are deep questions because they invite the other person to explain who they are, how they see the world. Put simply, deep questions tend to ask not about the facts of someone's life, but about how they feel about their life. And in doing so, it offers them an opportunity to say something real about who they are. So the kind of other side of the coin here in questions is listening. Often you'll hear other people complimenting.

people on being a good listener. It's a very highly valued quality. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And what's interesting is you're exactly right. If you ask deep questions and you don't listen, then it's almost as if you didn't ask the question, right? Equally bad, though, is if you ask a deep question and you listen and the other person doesn't realize that you're listening, then it also is a missed opportunity. And so there's two aspects of listening. One is actually listening. And then the second aspect is showing the other person that you're listening. This is where there's a technique known as looping for understanding that is often employed to teach people how to show, how to prove that they're listening. And sometimes that can just be asking a follow-up question, right? Oh, you said you became a doctor because you

saw your dad get sick. I'm just wondering, how's he doing now? Is he doing okay? Right? These follow-up questions show that we're listening. They prove that we're listening. But in some conversations, particularly in conversations where there's a little bit of conflict, right, where we disagree with each other or we're talking about something where we stand on different sides of the fence or maybe we're in a fight with each other or an argument with each other, then it becomes even more important to prove that we're listening because there's a natural instinct inside our head to assume that this person who's sitting across from me and nodding their head that actually they are not listening to me. They're just waiting their turn to speak. And this is where looping for understanding comes in

and it has three steps. First, ask a question, right? Preferably a deep question if you can. Secondly, repeat back what the person tells you in your own words. Show them that you've processed it, that you've paid attention. And then third step, and this is the one people usually forget, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because when we do those three things, if we're in an argument with someone and we tell them something that we think they're not going to like to hear and they say, okay, let me understand what I hear you saying is. And they repeat back what they hear. And then they say, did I get it right? did I hear everything you were trying to tell me?

We feel so listened to. And we have an automatic reaction to want to listen back. So by looping for understanding, not only are we helping ourselves listen and we're proving that we're listening, we're making it more likely that the other person will want to listen to us. Yeah, that brings up a point that I was interested in, which is the notion of authenticity. So what role does that play in our communications? Is it kind of baked into us to just see through this?

Oh, yeah. I mean, authenticity is critical, right? We've all been in a conversation where someone turns to us and they say, like, oh, where'd you go on vacation? Because you know they want us to ask them where they went on vacation so they can brag about like some island they went to. Authenticity is essential. And in fact, there's a couple of things that our brains have evolved to do really well.

One of them is communication. So communication is homo sapient superpower. It is the thing that has set our species above all other species and has allowed us to succeed so well. But another thing that we have evolved the capacity to do is to detect inauthenticity very, very well. And in a state of nature, this makes sense because if someone approaches your village or your tribe or your family and they're inauthentic, then they present a huge risk. If they seem like a friend, but they're actually an enemy, then they can get inside your defenses. So our brains have evolved to be very, very good at picking up on inauthenticity.

And one of my favorite examples of this is there was an experiment done where researchers recorded friends laughing together. And then they also recorded strangers laughing together who were just kind of trying to laugh together. And they would cut the tapes down and they would play one second clips, just one second of the clips for listeners. And listeners with 90% accuracy could tell the difference between the friends and the strangers. It's because we have this thing in our head that's on guard for an authenticity. And so when we are doing this, when we are asking deep questions, when we are looping for understanding and showing that we're listening, when we are engaging in reciprocal authenticity, reciprocal vulnerability,

and someone shared something about themselves, and so we're sharing something about ourselves, if it's not authentic, if it's not something that we actually feel like we're saying something that's meaningful, if it's transactional. I'm basically saying this to win you over and win your confidence, you're going to know. I mean, maybe I'll get away with it for a second or two.

Maybe I'll get away with something that's unimportant. The guy at the shopping store says, Oh, you look so great of that outfit. And I know it's because he wants to sell the outfit. I don't even care that he's being inauthentic. We're not having a conversation. I'm trying to buy some clothes. But when it's a real conversation, a meaningful conversation, authenticity is essential. So that brings me on to the idea of connection in conversations. So this would appear to me to be absolutely key. Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, the goal of a conversation is essentially connection, right? When you're in a conversation with someone,

it's reflected in your body and your brain. So we're not aware of it right now. We're separated by thousands of miles, but our eyes are most likely dilating at similar rates right now. Our breathing patterns almost certainly have started to match each other somewhat. And if we were able to look inside both of our brains, what we would see is that your neural activity and my neural activity is becoming more and more similar. And that makes sense. And when you think about it, because if I describe to you an emotion or I describe an idea, you actually a little bit experience that emotion. You experience that idea. That's what communication is, is it's the ability for me through words or gestures to help you understand what I'm thinking and feeling. It's to help us align with each other. In psychology and neurology, this is known as neural entrainment. And the more our brains become entrained, the more our thought patterns look the same, the better you and I understand each other. And that is connection. in the most visceral, most fundamental sense. Connection is the goal of conversation.

So is this why I sort of speaking from a personal point of view here? Whenever I do an interview with somebody, as I've done dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, so I have a hierarchy. The sort of favorite gold standard is meeting in person. The next best is video call, and then if I have to do it, it's audio only. Yeah. So I think what I would say is this. We definitely know that you can have deeply meaningful conversations

just on the telephone, right? You can have deeply meaningful conversations just by writing each other letters. Now, you're exactly right that when we're face to face, there's more data for us to grab onto. There's easier cues. And so oftentimes what happens is that we don't have to pay quite so much attention to how we're communicating and how the other person is communicating because the environment is so rich in information. Now, that being said, what happens is that when we're speaking on the phone, for instance, without realizing it, we tend to over-enunciate our words. Because we know that there might be some static or some loss, right? We also tend to put more emotion into our voice because we know the other person can't see us.

So as a result, we need to send that emotion through our vocal tone rather than our expressions. And so we can have as rich a communication through almost any channel as long as we recognize that each channel has different rules, that there's different principles that guide how that channel functions. And so my guess is that when you feel like you have a better conversation face to face, you do on a video call, it's not actually that it's necessarily a better conversation. It's that it's easier for you face to face because you have so many things to pick up on, but that you can have just as rich a conversation on a video call or on a telephone call if you pay attention to how that channel functions differently.

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Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So obviously we're talking about conversations here, which of course is the stock in trade of a super communicator. And something I found interesting in the book is that you break conversations down into three different types, practical, emotional, and social conversations. So could you break down what you mean by that for us, please? Yeah, absolutely. So here's what we've learned in the last decade, and we're kind of living

through this golden age of understanding communication like never before, because of advances in neural imaging and data collection. And one of the big insights that researchers have had is that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? We're talking about, you know, my day or the kid's grades or where we're going to go on vacation next year. But actually, every conversation is made up of multiple kinds of conversations. And in general, all those different kinds of conversations, they tend to fall into one of these three buckets, right? There's these practical conversations. We're solving a problem together. We're figuring out a budget. Where are we going to go to dinner tonight? Where do we want to go on holiday? Those are very practical conversations. Then there's

emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling. And I don't want you to solve my feelings. I don't want you to get practical on my feelings. I want you to empathize. I want you to empathize. I want to show me that you care about me. And then there's social conversations. And in a social conversation, we're talking about how we relate to each other, the social identities that are important to us, how we relate to society. And each of these three kinds of conversations is important because they all use slightly different portions of our brains. And as I mentioned before, the goal of a conversation is for us to become nearly and trained, to be thinking the same way, to be using the same parts of our brains together. And so if I'm having an emotional conversation

and you're having a practical conversation, it's going to be very, very, hard for us to hear each other. It's going to be very hard for us to feel connected. But if you match me, if I say something vulnerable and you say something vulnerable in return, or if you invite me to move on to say, that sounds so hard, can we talk about solutions to the problem? Because I feel like that might help. Then I want to join you. I want to match you. Then all of a sudden the conversation gets better. And within psychology, this is known as the matching principle, that having the same kind of conversation at the same moment is critical. So you also mention three types of conversations. It's a little more colloquially, if I may say so.

And that's the, what is it really about conversation, the how do we feel conversation, and the who are we conversation? Yeah, those are the questions associated with the practical, the emotional, and the social. And so let's talk about the sort of meat and bones of conversations then. You also mention what you call the four rules for a meaningful conversation. Are you able to break down those for us? Yeah, yeah. And this is a lot of rules and a lot of like different kinds of conversations. But I'll say in general, everything that we do in a conversation is designed to show the other person that we want to connect with them and to help them tell us that they want to connect back.

This is the main thing that super communicators do so well is they signal to the other person that they want to connect. So the first rule is oftentimes to try and figure out what kind of conversation we're having right now, right? And oftentimes the way you do that is if you just ask a deep question, oh, what do you make of that? like, oh yeah, what was high school like for you? And you listen, what people will tell you is what kind of mindset they're in, what kind of conversation they're seeking. They might say something like, oh, you know, high school, I learned a lot there. And it was great because it helped me get into college. Well, that's kind of a practical mindset, right? Or the same person might say, you know, high school was kind of tough. I had trouble making friends. And I don't know,

that other kids were kind of, there were all these clicks. That's more of an emotional conversation, perhaps even a social conversation. And so if we listen as the first step to try and figure out what kind of conversation is happening, we're more likely to be able to match each other. Then the next step is we've got to figure out why we're having this conversation. And the best way to ask that is what do people want out of this conversation? What do I want out of this conversation? What is this other person telling me that they want out of this conversation?

And sometimes what we both want is just to chat and have a nice time, right? To catch up with each other. I haven't seen you in a while. like, how are you doing? Or it's one of our best friends we see all the time. We want to kind of entertain each other and make each other laugh. But sometimes someone comes to us and they say, look, I really need to talk to you about the budget. And you realize pretty quickly that even though they're talking about the budget, what they're really saying is, I need you to tell me if we're going to have layoffs. Because if we have layoffs, I need to start making decisions differently right

now. I need to start emotionally preparing myself for that. And so listening for what other people want in a conversation, but equally asking ourselves, what do I want out of this conversation is very, very clarifying. The next step is to see and invite emotions into a conversation. Because the truth of the matter is every conversation at some point is an emotional conversation. If you are talking about politics, you are definitely having an emotional conversation. It might seem practical, right? If you're talking about your finances with your partner, I guarantee you, there are some emotions there. And so at some point in that discussion, you should invite those emotions out. How are you feeling about this? Talking about this causes you like stress and anxiety.

Like, why does this feel stressful to you? Let's talk about that. That's really, really important because, again, it's inviting the other person to say something meaningful. And when they say something meaningful, when they say something vulnerable, it's important that we reciprocate, that we say something meaningful and vulnerable in return. And then the fourth rule is, and this isn't necessarily something that happens in every conversation is figure out if social identities, our social identity, if this has an impact on how we see things and what we're talking about, if we're discussing race and you're black and I'm white, to not acknowledge that is to miss an opportunity for us to share how we see the world differently. And in a social conversation,

it's often just as important to acknowledge our differences as it is to acknowledge our similarities. Because it's the differences that are interesting. It's the differences that tell us how the other person sees the world differently than us. And to create a safe space, a space where folks can talk about that, where we can share our full selves, that's really, really important. So kind of a danger of making myself sound like a bit of a psychopath. How can I tell the conversation's going well? Well, I don't know. Let me ask you. So tell me, tell me, how many, tell me about the best conversation you had yesterday. Oh, yesterday. Oh, I had, my brother had just come back from Norway, so I spoke to him about that. Oh, okay. Okay. And what did he say about it?

Well, lots of interesting things. He was on an electronics workshop. That's kind of his hobby. So he told me about that. And he also told me you could get macarons in McDonald's. Oh, wow. I did not know that. Is it cool having a twin brother? Does it feel special or something you appreciate? That's a really difficult question because he's my only sibling. So I don't know any other way. But I would say, yeah, it is. And I think it is a special bond. And it, massively affects the way that we communicate, incidentally. We have a sort of semi-owned language that no one can understand because it's based entirely on references to experiences, to art, and to films and things. Yeah. So when you're having a conversation with your brother and you know

it's going well or it's going poorly, how do you know? I can tell he's enjoying it. I can tell he wants to be there. So he's involved in the conversation, he's smiling, he's laughing, he's listening to me, he's making intelligent responses. Yeah, maybe he's interrupting you. Like, he's like, oh, I got something to tell you. That's really exciting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So what you're doing is you're paying attention to how he's experiencing the conversation. Now, in another setting, if someone was interrupting you, it might mean that they're not enjoying the conversation, right? It might be a signal that like, they don't want to listen to you. They just want to speak their own piece. But I think that we're very, very well attuned at picking up on how a conversation is going. Now, sometimes we get anxious.

Sometimes we get anxious, like, anxious, like, how am I going to get out of this conversation? How are we going to end things? Does this person enjoy talking to me? Do I enjoy talking to them? And we can let those anxieties overwhelm our instincts. But the truth of the matter is, and study after study shows us, people love to have conversations. We have conversations all day long, not because they're, like, unpleasant or burdensome. We do it because it feels so good and natural.

And so that's the important thing is that if you really are present in that conversation, If you engage in that conversation, you make it much more likely that something real will happen, that you will connect with another person, and that you'll both love it and walk away feeling wonderful. So we're speaking there about conversations that are fun and that we actively seek to engage in. But how about difficult conversations? Say we just disagree with somebody. For example, you see an uncle on holidays who has entirely different opinions on politics. Yeah. From what you do, you know, is there anything we can do to approach that in a better, sort of more thoughtful way? Absolutely. And let me just say, those conversations are very important,

right? We all have uncles who we disagree with. We all have neighbors who they put a sign on their lawn for some political candidate, and we're going to vote for the other guy. And it's very easy to allow those differences to overwhelm our perceptions of each other, right? To say, like, I don't even want to talk to my uncle. I don't want to talk to my neighbor. He's like going to vote for that jerk. And yet, none of us really want that, right? We want to be able to have a conversation with our neighbor and talk about all the other things in the world besides politics where it's fun to talk with each other. You want to have a relationship with your uncle where it's not always about like immigrants or Brexit or whatever it is that like is making you crazy. You want to be able to connect with him.

And sometimes that means that those topics come up that we do feel differently about. And sometimes we want to actually get them out into the open. We want to sort of acknowledge them. And so there's a couple things we can do to make those conversations easier. The first thing that we can do is we can just start the conversation by acknowledging that it might be awkward, right? Just saying, look, I want to talk to. I know that you and I disagree with each other politically. I don't want this to be the only thing we talk about.

But I feel like we talk about a little bit, we kind of get it off our chest and we can talk about other stuff. And I want to acknowledge, this conversation is going to be awkward, right? It's going to be hard on. And I'm probably going to say the. wrong thing. I'm probably going to have trouble making what's happening in my brain come out of my mouth the right way. And I might say something that actually offends you. And if I do, I apologize in advance. That's not my intent. And please let me know. And by the way, if you say things the wrong way, I will forgive you. Like I want us to genuinely understand each other. That lowers the

temperature. It lowers the anxiety quite a bit. It makes that conversation much, much easier. And then the second thing is to understand what the goal of that conversation is, what we both want from this. And oftentimes we go into a conversation thinking the goal is to convince my uncle that I'm right and he's wrong, or to convince him that he doesn't know all the facts and I know the facts, or to just let him know that, like, how disappointed I am in him, or to get him to agree with me, or to acknowledge that I'm smarter than he is, or that I'm funnier, or that he ought to like me. Those are all the wrong goals for a conversation. The right goal for a conversation is simply to understand the other person and speak in such a way that they can understand you.

If you walk away from that conversation and you still completely disagree with each other, but you understand each other, then that conversation has been a fantastic success. And the thing that's nice about that is it lowers the temperature, it lowers the expectations you have for yourself. You don't have to go talk to your uncle and convince him that he's completely wrong. All you have to do in that conversation is just ask him some questions and understand what he's trying to say and then say, you know, can I tell you how I see this? Because it's a little bit different from how you see it.

And I know you disagree with me. And I'm not trying to change your mind. I just want you to understand how I see this. If you do that, that conversation is so much easier. And what usually happens is you find some stuff you disagree with, but you also find some stuff where you agree with each other. And maybe the solutions that you found are different solutions. But there is something there where you can say, look, I see why you feel the way you do.

And I don't agree with it. but I understand it. That is the foundation of connection from which a real relationship can grow, even if we don't agree with each other. So having said this is someone themselves that could perhaps do the bit of advice on these things. Can anyone improve their conversation skills and perhaps become a super communicator? Everyone can. I mean, that's the thing.

We are all super communicators. When you talk to your brother, you are a super communicator. And he's a super communicator back to you. When you talk to your partner, you're a super communicator. My guess is that you're a super communicator for a number of people you work with. The point is, we have the skills and the tools. And if we remind ourselves of them, if we practice them, we allow them to become habits, then we can be a super communicator with anyone.

So there's a sort of summing up question, then. Let's look at your top habits that we can develop in order to achieve this. Yeah. I mean, there's just a handful of them, and we've discussed them. habit number one, ask more questions, deep questions if you can. You're going to find conversations are so much easier when you're asking questions, because instead of having to be smart or say something witty, you can just ask someone something about themselves and they'll share it with you. Step number two, show them that you're listening, right? Ask a follow-up

question if it's a tough conversation. If it's a conversation about some conflict, use looping for understanding to prove that you're listening, and they'll listen back. And then step number three is share yourself. When someone says something that's vulnerable or something that's joyful or something that's emotional or practical, respond by being joyful and emotional or practical or vulnerable yourself. Engage in that reciprocity. Simply because I'm asking questions doesn't mean I'm not also answering the same questions I'm asking you. It doesn't mean that I'm not inviting you to ask me questions. Once we get that back and forth going, then we're really having a conversation. And undergirding all of this is the same basic principle.

We do all of these things to show the other person that we want to connect with them. Because when someone shows us that they want to connect with us, our most natural instinct is to connect back. And it feels amazing. It feels wonderful. It's that feeling you get after a great conversation. Everyone loves connecting with another person. Everyone loves a meaningful conversation. Our brains have literally evolved to crave it.

And if we just allow ourselves to listen to our instincts and to practice these skills until they become habits, we can do it with anyone. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charles Duhigg. To learn more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favorite magazines or download us on your. preferred app store. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe to us on your preferred podcast platform. You can also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name,

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