The Jordan Harbinger Show - 963: Charles Duhigg | Unlocking the Secret Language of Connection

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

How can we build rapport and optimize our connection with others? Supercommunicators author Charles Duhigg brings us the practical steps here! What We Discuss with Charles Duhigg: The three categories of conversation: practical, emotional, and social. The biological underpinnings of communication — such as neural entrainment — that make humans unique. How to become a better active listener through looping — ask a question, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words, and ask if you got it right. The difference between matching and mimicry in communication — and which one will serve you better. Understanding and overcoming stereotype threat. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/963 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Looping for understanding is a habit. Like, I find myself all the time without even thinking about it. Ask a question, preferably a deep question. Repeat back what you just heard the person say

in your own words and ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. When we're talking to each other, there's something in the back of your head that's wondering, is he actually listening or is he just waiting his turn to speak?

And when I repeat back what you just told me, when I ask a follow-up question that shows that I was paying attention, when I prove that I'm listening, we are hardwired to want to listen back. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to, to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional gold smuggler, economic hitman, astronaut, hacker, real life pirate, special operator, or tech luminary. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs, these are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, cyberwarfare, crime, and cults, and more.

That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Now, if it sounds like I'm recording this at 4 o'clock in the morning before a flight to Japan, that's because I'm recording this at 4 o'clock in the morning before a flight to Japan. So, pardon my definitely not yet warmed up voice. I think the best part about this voice is that I can say, you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. To really hit that low baritone, you know. But it doesn't matter, because today, we've got a brilliant thinker, writer, and communicator, and one of my favorite repeat guests, Charles Duhigg back on the show again today. We'll explore, wow, where do I

even begin. This episode was just packed with powerful and practical tech for communication and rapport building. We'll explore different types of conversations, what we should be doing in each type of conversation, and how do we evaluate the type of conversation that we're in. We'll also hear how our brains actually synchronize when we get this stuff right. That actually seemed like science fiction to me before Charles got into it. Also, vulnerability and rapport, emotional contagion, something called stereotype threat, which I found absolutely fascinating and a whole lot more. Here we go with another highly practical conversation with Charles Duhigg. I love highly practical books like this and practical conversations because I feel like this stuff,

it really hits home when somebody can apply something right out of the box and have something concrete to use after they listen. So I appreciate you writing a book like that. Thank you. Thanks. No, I feel the exact same way. And the goal when I was writing super communicators was really to say I was having communication problems. Like this is an excuse to call the experts and be like, why do some people manage to connect with everyone else so effortlessly? And then there's times when I talk to my wife and like, we cannot connect with each other. And it turns out it's just a set of skills, right? Like it's just literally a set of skills that super communicators know and that any of us can

learn and become super communicators ourselves. That's kind of a, well, it's good news, first of all, because I think there's a lot of people who listen, I know there are because they write in emails and they go, oh, I can't use your six-minute networking course, which is like a really easy networking. course that I offer for free. They're like, I just can't do it. I'm introverted or, you know, I've never been good at this stuff. I'm not going to start now. I'm 58. I'm not going to learn this. It's just a, basically they have a medical excuse for not being good with people. And I just don't buy it. I don't want to blame them, but I get it. They've been dealing with it their whole lives and they're like,

you know what, giving up feels good. I don't just have to feel bad about this anymore. I'm just not that person. That's absolutely right. And yet here's what we know about people who become super communicators, is that, first of all, all of us know a super communicator. We are often super communicators ourselves, right? Like, if I was to ask you, if you had a bad day and you wanted to call a friend who you know would make you feel better, does the person you would call, do you know who that person is? I have a few options. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, they pop into your mind right away, right? Yeah. And so for you, those people are super communicators, and you're probably a super communicator back to them. But then there's these other people who can do this consistently, right? Who can do this with almost anyone. And going into this, I thought to myself, oh, they must be like, extroverts are really charismatic. And it turns out that when I talk to researchers, they said,

no. Like, some of them are extroverts and some are introverts. Some are really charismatic and some aren't. Some are people who like, you know, like to be at home and don't like talking to strangers and some are people who are outgoing. They said, it doesn't matter what your personality is like because nobody is born a super communicator. It's entirely just a set of skills that some people learn through intuition or they learn through osmosis, picking up from other people. Or you read a book and it tells you how to do it. And once you have those skills, you know how to connect with anyone.

And that doesn't mean you have to connect with everyone, right? You can still stay home from the party, but it means that when you want to, when it's important to you, you know what to do. That's an important, a few important notes there because I think sometimes people will say also about six minute networking. I don't want to do this with everyone.

I already have friends or like, I'm retired, I don't need this. And I'm thinking, just because you know how to relate to people doesn't mean, all right, Now you never get privacy. You have to live at this local coffee shop and be the life of the party because you have the skills. It's like, no, you're not Superman where you feel morally obligated to be everywhere at once and solve the world's problems. You just can be that person when you take your glasses off and go into the phone booth and, you know, shed your Clark Kent costume socially.

You know, for me, that really was driven home. One of the stories in the book is about Jim Lawler, the CIA officer. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, he was sent overseas to like recruit spies. He'd wanted this job for so long. He worked so hard to get it. And he was terrible at it. He was just, he was so bad at recruiting spies.

He would go to parties and people would say things like, if you talk to me again, I'm going to report you to the authorities so you get deported. Stop asking me to spy for you, right? And the CIA basically told him, you're going to get fired unless you like get better at this job. And there was this, the only potential candidate he had was this young woman from the Middle East who was on vacation in Europe. he pitched her on the idea, tried to persuade her. She said, no, she said, I don't want to talk to you ever again. He convinces her head of dinner one more time.

And at that dinner, he just basically gives up. And he's just honest. And he's like, look, like, I know you're not going to work with me. But like, I just want to be honest. Like, I'm so bad at this job. Like, I understand when you say you're depressed about yourself or you're disappointing yourself, I feel the exact same way, which is when she could start to hear him, right?

That's when they connected. And she decided she ended up being one of the best assets in the Middle East for the next 20 years. But when I was talking to Jim, what he told me was he said, said, you know, I learned how to do this. And at first, I thought I had to do it all the time. Like, I had to be honest with everyone. I had to be authentic with everyone. And it was exhausting. And then someone took me aside and they were like, you don't owe this to the world. Like if this is something, if you want to connect with someone, you have this tool in your back pocket. But when you're feeling tired and overwhelmed, you don't have to do this. And he said it was like,

it convinced him this is a tool, right? This isn't a behavior. This isn't a personality type. This is a tool that once we learn we can use when we want to use it. The idea that some spy is just like, I need to recruit you or I'm going to get fired. And the other person's like, you know, I didn't like those I atola guys anyway. They're weird and they have funny hats. I'll spy for America. What the hell? It's just like such a hilarious image somehow.

Yeah. But I think that's kind of what life is like, right? Like I think that, you know, there's another story in the book about the creation of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and basically how these guys. the writers figured out how to make the show work. Because at first it was a flop. Like, they recorded a pilot, and people hated it. Because they couldn't figure out how to get the characters to share emotions with each other,

which is really important in a sitcom, because all the characters are these awkward physicists. Right. Emotionless guys, yeah. Yeah. And it was really interesting when I was talking to them about it. I was like, so, like, was there a scientific process to figuring out, like, what the solution was? Or did you guys run experiments? And they were like, no, no, we just sat around our living room, like, going through draft after draft until eventually we're like, oh, okay, I think we got it.

We fixed this problem. And then I asked my wife, and she said, yeah, you need to go another 10%. So we went another 10%. And like, that's it. That's like how much of life works, right? It's very real. That shows funny and ingenious in many ways. You pointed it out in the book.

You say it better than I'm about to. But since these guys are so analytical and scientific, kind of, not robotic. It's not quite that. I mean, Sheldon is because he's supposed to be this sort of like spectrum-y. type of genius guy. But if you watch Friends, right, I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that talks about this. You watch Friends, and when Ross is surprised, he's like, oh, my gosh, and his eyes go big, and his mouth drops open, and then they freeze frame, they sort of like show his face for a good

10 seconds so that you know he's surprised. Like, hey, everybody, Ross is surprised. Even with the sound off, you can tell exactly what every character is feeling. Right. In Big Bang Theory, it's like, we don't want to show anybody doing anything like that, because these guys are pretty much devoid of that. So they have to, with a stone face, say something or indicate in a much more subtle way

that they're surprised, but oh my gosh, how are we going to do that without Raj just going, I am very surprised right now. And of course, no one's going to be entertained by that. No. And part of the problem is that the humor comes from their awkwardness, right? It comes from their inability to sort of communicate easily.

And so what the writers figured out was this kind of brilliant thing, which is, and we know this from biology, that all of us have this little sensor in our head that when we meet someone or we encounter someone, we usually pay attention very quickly to their energy and their mood. Like if they're high energy and their mood is negative,

that probably means they're angry. So like we don't want to get too close. But if they're low energy and their mood is negative, that might mean that they're sad, that like they need us to console them. And so our brains are trained to notice this within split seconds of seeing someone. And so they just decided

this is what we're going to do. We're going to start using this for the show. So we can have a character come on and they can say something that's completely emotionless. But as long as they nail the mood and the energy in their voice, right, and in their gestures, then you're going to know when two people are connecting with each other or you're going to know when they're not connecting with each other.

And at that point, it hardly even matters what the words are because it's all about how I'm matching your mood and energy and what you're showing me about yourself. I want to put a little, what is it, the dagger? crossed instead of the asterisk next to this because I think this is, the energy thing is what a lot of people find exhausting about communication. They're going right now, these people who are listening, they're going, this is why I don't do this, because I can't put energy into everything. I'm 49. I don't have energy. That left in my, you know, the 80s or something like that. So I understand that

being energetic all the time, like right now what I'm doing, I talk like this for a few hours a day at most. And other days, I'm like, no thanks, you know. Yeah, no. And it doesn't necessarily mean being high energy. And in fact, what we know is that if you're having the right kind of conversation, it actually feels very effortless, right? Everyone has experienced this. And I'll actually talk about my own example. So in part this book started because I fell into this pattern with my wife where I would come home after a long day and I would start complaining about my boss and she would very sensibly like suggest a solution. Like, why don't she take him out to lunch and get to know each other a little bit better? And instead of being able to hear her, I would get more upset. And then she would get

upset because I was upset. Right. And that was really energy taxing, right? Those instances of miscommunication, that's when we feel like we have to over-emphasize or we have to be energetic. So I went and I talked to these researchers to ask them like, how do we get better at this? And they said, well, here's the mistake you're making. We're living through this golden age of understanding communication for really the first time because of advances in neural imagery and data collection. And you, like most people, are assuming that a discussion is about one thing, right? That a discussions about your day or your kids' grades. But actually, every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations.

And in general, they fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're solving problems, making plans. There's emotional conversations where I want to tell you how I feel. And I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you just to empathize. And there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and our social identities. And they said, if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment,

not only do you not hear each other, you're exhausted. it, right? That feeling of like, I was coming home and having an emotional conversation and my wife was having a practical conversation and we were not matching each other. We were not connecting with each other. And they said, that's what feels tiring is when you feel like you want to connect and you can't. But if I'm having an emotional conversation and my wife matches me or if she invites me to match her, which is what she does now, I'll come home and complain and she'll say, like, do you want to come up with solutions together or do you just need to vent? Do you just want me to listen. When that happens, it actually feels almost like it takes no energy to have that conversation,

because then we're on the same wavelength. And it's actually very rejuvenating as opposed to taxing. This is sort of the crux of the book, right? The three kinds of conversation, practical decision-making conversations, emotional conversations. I think what was the other conversations about identity? Social. Yeah, social conversations, yeah. And I think each one of these has, what, a different mindset or different strategy. It uses different parts of our brains. Yeah. So when you're in communication with someone, your bodies and your brains actually become kind of linked. Like, even though we're doing this over Zoom, you're on the other side of the country from me, our pupils are actually dilating at the same rate right now. Our breathing patterns are starting to match each other. This happens

when you're in a conversation, when you're in a real conversation, a meaningful conversation. And most importantly, the activity inside my brain is beginning to look like the activity inside your brain and vice versa. I'm sorry about that, by the way. No, it's good. It's good. But that's what communication is. When you think about it, if I describe a feeling or an idea, if I do it well enough, you experience that same feeling and you experience that idea.

Your brain and my brain become what's known within psychology and neurology as nerly and trained. And the problem is that if I'm having an emotional conversation, I'm using the deep core of my brain, right? The amygdala and parts related to that. If I'm having a practical conversation, I'm using the prefrontal cortex. And so if you're having a practical conversation and I'm having an emotional conversation we don't match each other,

it's very hard for our brains to become entrained, aligned because we're using, we're literally speaking different cognitive languages. So I would imagine, and by the way, it's funny that your wife is the one who tries to solve problems while you're venting, because isn't it usually the other way around?

The stereotype is the other way around. It also flips the other way sometimes. Yeah. The sort of stereo, have you seen that video, it's not about the nail? Have you seen this? No.

It's, oh man, this is like perfect for any in your next keynote or something. So there's a video, this is an old video. It's a woman saying, and you can't quite see her head, her whole face. And she says, I just have this pounding headache. And it doesn't stop. And I can't sleep. And the guy, they zoom out and they show she's talking to this guy.

And he's like, have you? And he's pointing at her. And she's like, just listen, okay? And as she talks and complains, they zoom out. And she's got this giant nail sticking out of her forehead. And he's like, have you? tried take just pulling that thing out and she's like you always do this you always try and make it about what i can do and they start arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing and she's like

it's not about the nail right and then he has to sort of like pretend to listen empathetically and then of course it all goes wrong yeah it's such a good video because of course everybody can kind of relate to this like i just it's such an obvious solution she's like you just need to listen to me you never listen to me well and what this has given rise to situations like the one you're describing an extreme is this thing that's known as the matching principle in psychology, which says that in order to connect with each other, we need to be having the same kind of conversation at the same time. If you have a nail in your forehead, but you're having an emotional conversation, you're telling me about how you feel, it does not matter if I

point out the nail in your forehead. You're not going to be able to hear me, right? You're going to think that I'm just ignoring you. But that if we match each other, once we become aligned, then we actually move from conversation type to conversation type together. And that's really, really powerful. In schools, they actually teach teachers how to do this by telling them, if a student comes in and he's upset or she's upset, start the conversation by asking them, do you want me to help you, do you want me to hear you, or do you want me to hug you? Oh, I like that. Which are the three, the practical, the emotional, and the social. And even kids are like, no, no, no, I don't need a hug right now. I just need you to hear what I'm saying. I don't need your help right now. I just need

you to hear. It's really powerful. That is powerful. So helped hugged or heard, basically. That's Great. I feel like I sometimes, my life and I do this, we catch ourselves sometimes where she'll say something and I'm like, well, you know, what we can do is, and I'm like, oh, wait, I think, are you venting right now? And she'll be like, yeah, it's just an annoying thing that happened today. And I'm like, okay, this is a, she's not fishing for solutions here. And she'll let me know when she's looking for solutions. She'll say, what, okay, here's this thing that happened. What do you think I should do in this situation? It's not always that clear cut, but because sometimes you don't even know why you're venting, right? I might vent and then someone gives me advice and I get annoyed and I go, oh, why am I annoyed? that this person is trying to help me, oh, because I actually don't want that right now. I guess that makes sense. And there's a way to sidestep that, which is, so one of the things that we know about consistent super communicators is that they ask a lot of questions. They ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of the questions are throwaway questions like, oh, what do you do next or what do you

think, sort of inviting people in? But some of them are what are known as deep questions. And a deep question asks about values, beliefs, or experiences. And most deep questions don't appear deep, right? So if you bump into someone and their lawyer, a deep question might be, oh, you know, what made you decide to go to law school? Or like, what's the best case you ever worked on? Or what do you love about your job?

They invite the other person to tell you something real about themselves, right? However they answer those, you're going to learn something about their backgrounds, their values, the experiences that they've had. And what we've found is that at the start of a conversation, when we need to take a break and figure out what kind of conversation is happening, sometimes we can just ask, do you need a vent or do you want to solve this problem? But sometimes if you just ask a deep question, like, why is this bothering you so much?

Like, tell me what's going on. Like, why is this such a, this seems to be bothering you more than usual. What's going on? That deep question, that reveals what kind of conversation we're all seeking. And you appreciate getting that question, right? Because sometimes you don't know if you need to vent

or you're looking for a solution until someone asks you. It is interesting that these conversations often mesh together, right? So somebody, I think people might go, oh, this is tricky. I don't know what kind of conversation this is. An example is that somebody might ask for advice about what to do at work, and then you start solving the problem, but it's not quite clicking or they're getting annoyed or they're getting more worked up or whatever, but really the conversation will then like shift to, and Angela's always doing this thing, and she's so irritated, and you're like, oh, okay, so you don't want

to necessarily solve the problem with your boss. It's mostly that Angela ticks you off every day, and that sort of spilled over into the performance review or whatever. And just being aware of the three different kinds of conversations, our brains are programmed to make this easy for us because they evolved to be good at communication. Just being aware of those three different kinds of conversations means in that situation that you're able to say like, oh, I don't need to solve this problem, right? Like this is actually, she needs to talk to me about how she relates to Angela. That's what we're actually talking about here. Or it creates opportunities. You know, if you're at work and you're before a meeting starts, you're sort of like just shooting the breeze.

And you ask someone, what did you do this weekend? and they say, I went to my kid's graduation. It was great. The easiest thing to do is to say, like, oh, congratulations. Let's move to the budget, right? But if you just take a split second and you're like, oh, wow, congratulations. Like, what did that feel like to watch your kid walk across the stage? To meet them, they've signaled to you that they have this emotion thing that they're feeling, this pride.

And then to meet them there and say, just tell me, what was that like? Tell me about it. What were you feeling? That's so powerful. And that takes a minute to have that conversation. but now we're aligned. Now when we move on to the agenda, we're moving on the agenda together.

That's fascinating and it's sort of a cheat code, right? Because people are throwing these things out there that we're usually ignoring because we have our own, I don't know, conversational agenda. Yeah. But we just have to put that aside for a second. That's probably the tricky part that people need to practice, right?

It's going, oh, that was one of those flags that I usually ignore and then get back to work. Maybe I need to pick up on that. And it's totally fine to miss them, right? Like the thing that's good is if you recognize later that day, like, oh, I could have asked about this thing. And I should have asked about this thing. Or do you get in the habit of asking these deep questions, which often are just like, tell me what this means to you. Like, why is this important to you?

And particularly when we're when we have conversations around conflict, this becomes even more important, right? In the book, there's a chapter about this experiment where a bunch of, um, gun control enthusiasts came in and a bunch of gun rights activists. And these are people who like usually just scream at each other. And they brought them all together in Washington, D.C., and the goal was not to have them convince each other of anything, just to see if they could have a civil conversation. But before the conversation started, they taught them this technique known as looping for understanding

and has three steps. The first is ask a question, preferably a deep question. Secondly, repeat back what you just heard the person say in your own words. And thirdly, and this is the one everyone always forgets, ask if you got it right. And the reason why this is so powerful is because it proves that I'm listening to you. when we're talking to each other, there's something in the back of your head

that's wondering, is he actually listening or is he just waiting his turn to speak? And when I repeat back what you just told me, when I ask a follow-up question that shows that I was paying attention, when I prove that I'm listening, we are hardwired to want to listen back. And so to the point that you just raised,

a lot of what we do is just get into the right habits. Like, looping for understanding is a habit. Like, I find myself all the time without even thinking about it saying, like, what I hear you saying, and tell me if I'm getting this right, is, and once you're in those habits, it becomes automatic. You know when someone's doing the opposite, right? Because if this is, you feel it. Someone will say, welcome to whatever.

And you're like, oh, yeah, how are you? And you're like, man, today, da, da, da, da, da. And they go, what can I get for you? And you're like, you don't care at all. I mean, I guess I should have expected that because you're just working here, but ouch. Or people who ask a question because they actually want to answer themselves, like, oh, where'd you go on your last vacation?

And you're like, oh, I went to go see my aunt. How about you? And they're like, oh, I went to Hawaii and I lived on a yacht for a week, right? Like, they didn't actually want to know where I was going on vacation. They just wanted me to ask them where they were going on vacation. And we can always feel that. It feels bad. It feels like we're not connecting.

They bust out there. Let me show you some photographs. How was your ass house anyways? Yeah, look at the fourth course meals. The chef cooked for us every single day. Oh, this is one of those guys, huh? Yeah. So one thing I want to clarify, the matching principle, I want to highlight that matching is not

mimicry, right? Because you see these clunky folks who learn, from books or YouTube, and they're the worst at this. And it's so bizarre. Like weirdo kind of hypnosis, body language mirroring copy folks. And you put your elbow down like this and they do it. And you're like, why are you?

Eventually you just kind of go, why are you doing that? And then they try and gaslight you. And they're like, actually, I'm leading you and you're copying me because something, something, NLP. And I'm like, no, you're just being really weird right now. And I feel like kind of itchy.

And I want to get away from you. It's exactly right. So you're exactly right that matching is not mimicry. In fact, it can't be mimicry. And there's all kinds of experiments that have shown how this is true. One of my favorites is that these researchers, they had a bunch of friends laugh together and they would record the sound of their laughter.

And then they had strangers laughing together and they would record that as well. And then they would find people and they would play one second of laughter. And with 90% accuracy, the listener could tell if they were friends or if they were strangers. What? That sounds impossible.

I know, right? But our brains are so fine-tuned to detect inauthenticity. Because particularly in a state of nature, inauthenticity is incredibly dangerous. Yeah, it's dangerous. Yeah, exactly. If you're going to trust someone with your life, if you're going to trust them with your food, if you're going to trust them with your family, you are hair trigger to detect when they're being inauthentic. And so that's why mimicry doesn't work is because mimicry is inauthentic.

I'm not actually having a real experience. I'm just imitating your experience. But on the other hand, if you say something vulnerable or authentic, and I engage in what's known as reciprocal authenticity, you just told me about a story growing up. I don't necessarily tell you a story about growing up. A, I might just ask a question and show that I'm listening. Or B, I might tell you about a meaningful experience in my life. If I'm matching you, that's very different from mimicry. And as long as it's authentic, it's going to work. But to be authentic, you have to be true to yourself. you have to look for the thing that feels true, as opposed to just saying, oh, he just mentioned a girlfriend.

I should mention a girlfriend, too. Yeah, and sometimes it's even more clunky than that, right? It's like the body language stuff is what really sort of initially made me realize, oh, man, this is worse than not matching someone at all. Yes, absolutely. And we've all been in that situation where someone says, you know, my aunt passed away last week. And they want to mimic us. And so they say something like, I know how hard that.

is like I had a pet who died seven years ago. And you're like, that's not exactly. Like that is not the same at all. Like the way that you might match someone in a situation like that is to say, oh, I'm so sorry. I know how hard that is. Like, tell me about your aunt. What was she like? Because that is a form of matching to say, I understand that you're feeling something.

I want to learn more about it if you're willing, but you don't have to. And instead of stealing the spotlight onto myself, I'm going to give you some comfort. That's a form of matching, but it's not mimicry. The example is almost like something from a ridiculous movie or sitcom, right? Like, oh, yeah, I remember when my mammy died. Oh, your mammy died too. Yeah, she fell out of her cage. Wait a minute.

What? Yeah, my gerbil, you know, and you're just thinking like, what is wrong with this person? What's going on here? Yeah. It's like that Galaphanakis bit or something. Yes, that's exactly right. And it's funny because you just think, wow, how misattuned is this person to what's going on? And what we know is that like, actually, once you learn these skills or even are just introduced to these skills, our brains evolved to become amazing communication devices, right?

Communication is homo sapiens superpower. It is the thing that as a species has helped us succeed because it allowed us to build families and then villages and towns and countries. And so our brains evolved to be really good at communication. And that means, now, they obviously evolved in a very different time, right? pre-telephones, pre-internet. But it means that when you get exposed to certain skills, those skills become habits much more quickly. Like you internalize the lessons very, very fast

because your brain is predisposed to be able to access them and make them into habits. And so part of the reason I wrote super communicators is because it's a description of these different skills, these different tools. And once you hear them, you almost start doing them thoughtlessly. And that's why they're so powerful.

Part of the Lawler CIA agent, part of, I guess, why this great story went down is just because he was so, he had just given up, right? All the pretense was gone. I mean, you mentioned people were like, hey, spy, don't ask me to spy. Just eat your cheesecake and shut up or whatever at these diplomatic parties. That's exactly right. I have to say, I've met quite a few CIA case officers, and some of them are really good at this stuff. But candidly, it's a little scary how many of them are not that good at the same. this. Well, it's interesting. So Jim actually became, he started training recruiters. And I asked him

about this. I was like, and he said, the people who aren't good at it are the ones who think they're great communicators. No surprise. They think they have nothing to learn. Right. And this is actually borne out by the evidence that like when we talk to people who are super communicators, as I mentioned, they're not one kind of personality, right? Anyone can become a super communicator just by sort of learning these skills. But what's interesting about many of them who've done it sort of intuitively done it on their own, there was a period in their life when they were not good at communication. They'll say things like, I didn't have very many friends in high school. I had to really, like, study how to talk to other kids.

Or my parents got divorced, and I had to be the peacemaker between them. And it was that experience that just forced them to think like half an inch deeper about how conversations work, about how we connect to other people. Once we start thinking about it, we get better at it. And we don't have to think hard about it. We just have to be aware of what's going on. But to your point, the CIA officers who aren't great at this are the ones who say, I'm really good at communication because they just stop thinking about it. I have read books by some of these folks and then talked with them on the phone and they'll talk over me.

They don't listen. They don't respond directly to the question. And I'm thinking, you were the source for this particular area? How is that even remotely possible, especially when it's like they were in the Middle East somewhere where people are. slow and value the conversation and the connection. And I'm just like, how did it go talking over Sheikh whatever that you were supposed to get to know? And like, I mean, he probably really didn't appreciate that because I didn't.

That's exactly, exactly right. And we know that like within our lives and within our companies, we know how destructive that is, right? Everyone has had a manager who's bad at communication and like, you just want to run away from that person. And then everyone's had a manager who like is just really good at it. And even if they're not. great at everything, you want to work with that person. Because you feel like they're listening

to you. They're doing this thing, looping for understanding. They're proving that they're listening to you. You feel like you understand, like you click with them. And the same is true in romantic relationships or relationships with our kids, right? That feeling of clicking feels amazing because our brains have evolved to actually reward it. I know people are going, oh, well, the CIA guys, they just don't care about you because you're a podcaster. The reason this doesn't check out and tell me what you think. If you can do this, it makes all your relationships a lot easier. So if you can do this, you would do it all the time. It's like actors, right? Denzel Washington. He's Denzel all the time. He did no way does he just like go home and be like, oh, now I can

stop being the coolest guy in the world for a second and just be myself again. No, he's Denzel all the time. He's Denzel at the bodega and he's Denzel on the silver screen. Come on, man. That's exactly right. And it becomes very second nature, right? Like, good communication. once you start doing it, it becomes the easiest thing to do. It doesn't take more energy. It takes less energy. Because instead of having to carry a conversation that you're like, what am I going to ask next, like, what am I going to talk about?

How am I going to impress this person? What are they thinking about me? Once you get in the habit that you're like, oh, actually I have a couple questions in my back pocket that I can ask at any time, then all of a sudden it's easy. Like, in fact, there was a study that was done by researchers at Harvard Business School where they were going to have students have conversations with strangers, which is one of the most anxiety-producing kind of conversations that exists. And before they did it, they said to everyone, write down three topics that you might want to discuss.

Like, don't take more than 10 seconds doing this. And for most people, it took like four or five seconds. And they would scribble down like last night's game and the movie this weekend. And, you know, do you like to ski? And then they would shove the piece of paper in their pocket and they would go have their conversation. And most of the time, those topics they wrote down never came up. But afterwards, they all said they were so much less anxious. They were so much more confident.

The conversation went so much better than they expected because they knew they had something to fall back on. Because they knew that if there was a silence, that they knew what to fill it with. And we can do the same thing really easily just by saying like, oh, you know, when I meet people, I should try and ask a deep question. Like, instead of asking about the facts of their life,

ask them how they feel about their life. And if you have that to fall back on, it makes conversations so much easier. It takes less energy. I love the idea of having that plan in your pocket. And you could use the same plan for probably almost every single conversation

with a stranger, right? Absolutely. Or with a friend, right? And now I find that like when I'm calling up a friend or I'm about to have a conversation, I just take two seconds before I dial their number

to say like, in a sentence, like what's the thing that I really hope we get to in this conversation? And sometimes it's just like catching up and hearing how each other's doing and I want it to be an easy,

fun conversation. And sometimes it's like, I need to ask about like, do you want to go on a vacation with me? But I don't, I don't want to make it hard for them to say,

know because I don't want to make it awkward. And just elucidating that for yourself, which literally takes two to three seconds, that makes the conversation so much better and so much easier. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Charles Duhigg. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it is because of my network. And now I'm teaching you how to build your network, the circle of people that you know like and trust for free over at six minute networking.com. Yes, It includes some of the rapport building stuff that we learned today on this show.

And that's what the course is all about. Improving your relationship building skills, inspiring other people to develop relationships with you. But in a non-cringy, non-networking-y, very down-to-earth way, no awkward strategies, no cheesy tactics that are going to make you look like a, you know what, just practical exercises that will make you a better connector,

a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer, in just a few minutes a day because let's admit it, we are all busy. And many of the guests on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course at six minute networking.com.

And again, of course, it's free. And now, back to Charles Duhigg. You mentioned earlier the brain synchronization stuff, and I assume that's a little bit of kind of what's going on here on the phone, for example. Yeah. Speaker, listener, neural coupling, I think you said it was called. Yeah, neural entrainment is another way of saying it. Neural entrainment, yeah, sorry, I don't know where I got the other thing.

No, no, that's actually another name. for it. Oh, it is. Okay. I was like, how would I make something like that up that sounded Yeah, usually when I make up something, it sounds ridiculous. Okay. And that's the scientific, that's a scientific name for it. Okay. Must be in the book. So we're clearly, we're hardwired for this, right? And did we know if animals do it? I'm guessing whales and dolphins kind of have to, right? Because so it's really interesting. Like, the thing that sets humans apart from every other species, other animals can communicate with each other through sound or through other means. They cannot entrain the way that humans.

Really? Even apes? I mean, a little bit. But what you don't see is you don't see a sharing, you know, if an ape is upset and worried, they'll make a certain noise and other apes might get worried. But it doesn't necessarily follow their word the same way that the first ape is. I see. This is what's made humans special, is that we've evolved this capacity for this neural entrainment through words.

I can make you happy just by telling you a story. I can make you sad by telling another kind of story. If I feel happy and I feel sad when I'm telling them, you're going to pick up on that. And if I'm, if I know how to tell that story, you're going to feel the same things I'm feeling. That's kind of amazing. It is amazing.

Animals can do it a little bit, but this is what really pushed homo sapiens into the fore. When watching comedy, I kind of am aware of this, right? There's certain comedians right now that are really popular, but all of their humor, almost all, kind of negative, and I don't like it, right? Because I don't want to feel that way. And I notice that it's almost geared towards, like, look at these idiots over there and

we're the smart ones. And I'm like, oh, I don't really want to feel that way. But there's a certain demographic of people where that is just, that, that is welcome, because maybe they're on the other end of that all day. And those comedians, they know how to listen to that audience. Yeah. They know how to pay attention. So it's interesting you mentioned comedians because laughter is actually one of the non-linguistic

ways that we connect with other people. There's been studies that show that in about 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to something funny. It's because we're basically in a conversation and we're saying to someone, I want to connect with you. I laugh. And then when you laugh back, you're saying, I want to connect back. It's the most natural reaction on Earth. And what's interesting is that you can actually use this. NASA at one point wanted to start finding astronauts who were more emotionally intelligent.

And they found that the way to do that was to pay attention to how candidates laugh. If I came in, there was this one psychologist, he would come into a room, he would spill all of his papers all over as if on an accident, but it was actually on purpose. And he would like go, ha, ha, ha, ha, and laugh really, really big. And then pay attention to how the candidate that he was about to interview responded. Because everyone knows you're supposed to laugh along. And some people would be like, huh, yeah, that's funny. And then other people would be like, let me help you pick up the papers. It's the people who match us that are signaling, I'm good at emotional intelligence, I'm listening.

to your emotions. I want to connect with you. So comedy is a big part of that, right? Like, if we laugh about the same thing, we know and we laugh at each other, we share our laughter together. We know that we both want to connect. That's a great, by the way, that person who invented that, it was brilliant, right? The guy coming in to drop the papers to see how people react. It's one of those tests that you think doesn't exist, but that Hollywood would put that in a movie, and you'd be like, whoa, the CIA is really tricky. But apparently this is a real thing that NASA did. and it's a genius. The guy was named Terrence McGuire.

He's passed away now, unfortunately, but I talked to him before he passed, and he loved this stuff. In interviews, he would mention that his sister had died when he was young to see how people reacted. He didn't actually have a sister. And what was really interesting

is there was two tests going on. The first is to see if someone would comfort them. The second was if they could pick up on the fact that he was kind of being inauthentic. And they would actually ask afterwards, like, during that conversation, anything weird happened with Terry. And some people would be like,

he mentioned his sister, and it just, for something about it, it sort of felt off. And they're like, you're a super communicating. You are detecting that inauthenticity. So he loved stuff like this. He was really, he was a character.

My wife is good at that. So we'll have someone on the show. I got to be really careful about how I put this out there. And she'll go, I didn't like that episode. And I'm like, let me guess. You didn't believe the person. And she's like, you know, I think that's it.

I just didn't believe him. And I'm going, oh, we can never say that because it'll be somebody with this crazy, tragic story that's awful. And she's like, yeah, not that I don't believe things like that don't happen, but there was just something about it because she'll start checking her email, like, instead of listening in the production area. And I'm like, that's unusual, you know? And then so I'm like, she knows.

She knows. She feels it. And she's been right a few times where somebody, a few years later, they get outed. And it's like, oh, this person actually is like embezzling money from the company. and sexually harassed somebody else. And she's like, I knew he was just not cool. I don't know what it was. Not all the things were aligned properly in her brain.

You know, the cord that was struck didn't resonate. It didn't work. No entrainment. And part of that, like, A, there's no entrainment. Part of that is probably the reciprocity, right? That, like, I mean, this is particularly true if you're telling a lie. It's hard to maintain a lie, right? It's hard to remember, like, what the lie is.

And so this is why authenticity often takes way less energy is because you just remember, way easier what the truth is. You don't have to tell a story about yourself. But equally, one of the things that can be disastrous is this constant self-monitoring where you're like thinking like, what am I going to say next that proves that I'm smart? What am I going to say next to keep this conversation going? That becomes really, really distracting. And in marriages, we see this a lot. One of the things that we know about marriages and communication marriages is particularly when we're in a fight with our spouse, we have an instinct to try and control something. Because we feel overwhelmed, we feel tired, we feel angry, and it's very natural to look for something

that we can control, like a sense of stability. And the most obvious thing is to try and control the other person, right? And so people will say things like, oh, you got upset at that. You shouldn't get upset at that. That's not a big deal. I'm trying to control your emotion. Or they'll say things like, I'm not going to talk about that. Like, you keep on bringing this topic up and it's just, I'm done talking about it. I'm trying to control what the conversation is. And that's toxic. Yeah. That is absolutely toxic to try and control each other. But you can't ignore that instinct for control. We both feel an urge for it.

So the right thing to do is to find things we can control together. Like, let's control the environment. If a fight starts at 2 o'clock in the morning, let's agree. We're going to wait until 10 a.m. When we're both better rested to talk about this. There's this thing known as kitchen sinking, which is really one of the most toxic things in a relationship, where we start fighting about, like, where to go over Thanksgiving. And it becomes a fight about, like, your mother hates me and we don't have enough money.

like a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything, that's really toxic. So let's control the boundaries of this discussion or this argument together. Like, we're just going to talk about Thanksgiving. We're not going to talk about moms. We're not going to talk about money. We're controlling it together. And when we start controlling things together, that's when it becomes much easier to connect, even though we might disagree with each other.

That's a good strategy. I think people will probably usually learn in therapy when it's too late. I don't know. So thanks for that. I think that's probably. Right now people are like, Pause, write this down, rewind 30 seconds. Yeah, I think that's a, and we've all done this in relationships at some point,

whether it was in high school or college or like last week with our spouse. Yeah. And you know it's gross. It's totally natural. And the most authentic thing to say is not like, I don't need to control anything. The most authentic thing to say is like, I'm feeling this need for control and I don't want to control you. Let's find things we can control together.

That's real. And that's how you create a connection. Going back to something you said about laughter, it just occurred to me that it's, that's why it's so awkward when we're, if you're laughing in a room and no one else is laughing, you know that feeling and you're just like, you feel yourself getting hot and turning red

because actually you're like, oh, everyone's looking at me and I can't stop laughing. Oh, it's the worst. And it's that mismatch, or if we're cry laughing at something and someone else is just playing along because they didn't find that thing as funny as we do and we feel like vulnerable

because we are out of control laughing. And they're like, yeah, That gag was hilarious. And you're just like, oh, God, I feel so stupid right now. No, it happens. Think about being, like, that feeling when you're in, like, a movie theater and something happens on the screen and everyone else laughs and you don't because you don't think it's funny.

Right. Like, you feel different. You feel alienated from the people who are around you. It's just really powerful. Like, we have this instinct, this craving for connection. That's why when we have a good conversation, it feels like so wonderful is because there's a part of our brain that literally evolved to make. us feel good when we connect with another person. And when that connection doesn't happen, that craving

doesn't go away. We want to figure out how to do it, but sometimes we get in our own way. Hollywood's figured this out with the laugh track, right? It's like, cue the laughing. Oh, I want to match the laughing so that I don't feel left out. So you start laughing. And it's, here's something that I've noticed. I watch comedy. And I'm like, this guy is not funny at all, or at least for me right now. But they pan to the audience and everyone's laughing. And I go, I bet, and maybe I'm the only person in the world that does that. But I'm like, I bet if that guy right there who's laughing so hard with his girlfriend was at home on his couch right now, he wouldn't even move a muscle.

That joke was trash. Yeah. But he's in the audience. And everyone's like, oh, ha, ha, ha, this is hilarious. And I'm like, well, you can't sit there and be like, that suck. That was done. And when you're in the audience, it doesn't feel like it's work to laugh. No.

You want to connect with these other people who are around you. Right. You know, and it's interesting. If you go to political rallies, right? The same thing happens. At a political rally, we want to connect with the kids. candidate, we want to connect with each other. The best candidates, they prove that they're listening to us, that if we're angry, they show how they're angry. If we're worried and we need a plan,

they show that they're worried and they're working on a plan. Communication isn't something that happens just one to one. Sometimes it's one to many, but the same principles still hold up, the same matching principles necessary. You're still having practical or emotional or social conversations. And the people who are really good at this, the people who are up on stage and everyone's cheering for, they're the ones who recognize, I need to listen to my audience. I need to match them and I need to prove that I'm listening so that they want to listen to me. There's this constant adjusting of how they talk to others in order to match them. That's unconscious, right? Yeah. For most people. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Once you get in the habit of it, it just happens,

again, your brain is designed to do this. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you like, oh, by the way, just for the next week, try and notice like what kind of conversation is going on here. And then after a week, you just do it without thinking about it. When I read the book, this thing that I, I guess I say used to do, but I'm sure I'd still do it at some point. When I used to ride a lot in taxis when I lived in New York City, my friends, you know, we go out like every night because we were 20-something years old living in New York. And my friends and my girlfriend, especially at one time, she was like, wow, that was so weird. Do you do that on purpose? And I said, what are you talking about? And she goes, you started to imitate the cab driver. And I'm like, no, I didn't. I didn't do that. And she's like,

yes, you did. And it would be really obvious if the guy was from, like, Haiti or something, right? And he had a really strong accent. I'm not doing this. She's like, I thought you were, like, making fun of him or something?

I don't know. You started talking with this little, like, accent. But the cab driver, we would cut across three lanes of traffic and be like, Jordan, you know, three days later because he remembered me. And I'm like, okay, so that guy wasn't mad. That happened several times.

And it was very cool and very confusing to girls that I was dating because the hell has that happened to them ever. It's a very natural reaction. So you're probably someone who's predisposed to, you probably think about communication. Obviously, you do. You're a podcaster now. But even back then, you probably thought about communication.

And so part of your brain sort of picked up on the benefits of this matching. And what will happen in conversations is if one person uses a kind of weird word, the other person will oftentimes use that same word later on without like doing it on purpose. It just becomes part of the lexicon. Our grammar structures will become very similar. So if you kind of have like a weird way of saying something, I'll start saying that the same way. And the reason why we do that is because, again, this isn't mimicry.

And if it's just mimicry, if we're just doing it and it's not authentic, it's probably not going to do much. But when you're having that conversation with the cab driver and it feels very authentic to you and you don't even notice that you have like a little bit of an accent or you're echoing them in some way, it's because your brain wants to match them. It wants to form this connection. and it knows how to do it. And sometimes we just have to get out of our own way.

Now that does not mean we should put on funny accents when we're talking to people, right? Not on purpose. When it happens accidentally, it's not something that's wrong with us. It just shows that we're actually good at communication. It kind of scared me a little bit after the fact, right? Because people have to tell you about it.

You're thinking, I'm talking normally, and they're like, no, you're not. You went full on, you know, Sean Paul, like kind of Jamaican accent with the cab driver or whatever, and it was weird. So I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is the Southwest. And when I go to the South,

like I find that like I start saying y'all. And like I never say y'all normally. But the thing is it doesn't feel unnatural to say y'all, right? Because I'm surrounded by people. It's important to make that distinction for yourself. What are you doing that feels natural versus what are you doing that feels forced? So for an important conversation, it seems like is there value trying to plan out what kind of conversation we're

going to have, or do we just go with the flow? But that wouldn't work, right? Because if we're trying to solve a problem, we kind of need to get into problem-solving mode at some point. So what's really, really useful, there was this experiment that was done where these researchers went into an investment bank. And this was a place where, like, people would scream at each other, like, all day long. What they did is they told every single person, okay, for the next week before each meeting, write down one sentence. And in that sentence, just say, your goal for this conversation for this meeting. And again, this took about four to seven seconds on average, right? Like, people would just scribble it down, stick it in their pocket, walking in the meeting. Nobody ever read what they

had written down to each other. But the angle, the incidence of conflict in those meetings went down by 80%. And the reason why is because when we know what we want to talk about and what kind of conversation we want, it's much easier for us to recognize what other people want and what other kind of conversation they need to have right now. And so very often this preparation, now again, it doesn't have to be a lot of preparation, right? It can literally, as I mentioned before I call my friend, just I basically write that sentence in my head, what I want to talk about the mood I hope to establish. But that preparation is really powerful. And there's another kind of preparation that's equally powerful, which is when we are going to talk about something hard, if we come in and both of us say,

this conversation is going to be awkward, we're both going to make mistakes, and that's okay. Think about conversations about race or gender. Think about giving someone feedback, right? right, like a performance review or listening to a performance review, those are really sort of anxious conversations. And if you start them and study after study shows us by saying, look, let's have a conversation about race. Let's have a conversation about your performance, about gender. But I'm just going to acknowledge that start like, this is going to be awkward and that's okay when it's awkward. And I'm probably going to say the wrong thing. There's things that I mean and I'm going to say them the wrong way, you know, maybe in an offensive way. And I'm just going

ask you to like, if I do that, just tell me like you don't understand and I'll try and say it differently. You can do the same thing. Like I want you to be honest with me. When you take that anxiety off the table, it makes a huge difference in how well that conversation goes. So there's there's, I'm not connecting one of the cables here. You mentioned that preparing what kind of conversation we want is going to help us get to the type of conversation the other person wants. Why would me preparing what I want to have happen in the conversation, prepare me to get to what the other person wants? I'm not like connecting that. Because it raises our antenna to detect what other people are needing.

I see. Okay. Like if I walk into a meeting and I'm like, look, my goal is to come up with a budget and I want everyone to walk away from this feeling content and happy. And we walk in and you're, you're just kind of complaining, you're distraught, you're upset. I'm going to notice that so much more because I'm thinking like, I want this to be easy. I want everyone to be content. You're not content. Like you're telling me right now.

Now, if I hadn't thought this through, I might think that you're upset about whatever you're complaining about. But now my antenna is so primed to be like, why is he upset? What's going on here? And it might be because you actually need to have an emotional conversation first.

We're going to talk about the budget. You're really anxious that we might have to do layoffs. And until we discuss that anxiety, until we get it off the table, and I say, like, look, I hear you saying that you're anxious about this and you're upset, I promise you, layoffs will be the last, last step. We will do anything to avoid them.

Now we've both had like a little bit of an emotional conversation. We've acknowledged the emotions. Now we can move on to that practical conversation about the budget without that distraction. So me knowing myself a little bit, just even half an inch more, it makes me sort of more sensitive to the cues and the messages you're sending me. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for addressing that because I was just like, this is one of those things where normally people, I would just nod and be like, yeah, and then I'd listen to this later

and go, but why? Was I just not thinking. No, I'm glad you asked. Thank you for asking. Yeah. Yeah, this is a lot of this show is just me not understanding things until somebody finally gives up and explains it to me, like I'm five. So I appreciate that.

The idea that we can sort of figure out what kind of conversation is happening at any given moment is pretty powerful, right? Because you're no longer stumbling in the dark, banging your knee against the proverbial desk trying to navigate your way through a conversation, once we realize, oh, okay, it's this kind of conversation. We can start maybe, well, asking open-ended questions or eliciting what this person wants to hear or wants to talk about, like you mentioned, with the layoffs thing. And you're really, you're sort of like hitting the bullseye every time, eventually, every time. We know how to listen really closely. Again, this is programmed into our neurology and our biology.

if you just tell yourself, like, just listen for someone saying something practical or saying something emotional or saying something social, all of a sudden, you start noticing it left and right. Right. A friend comes to you and they're like, hey, I got to discuss this problem at work. And then they say, there's this like one woman I just cannot get along with. Like she rubs me the wrong way and I rub her the wrong way. If you're listening for it, you're like, oh, no, actually, this is a social conversation. Like this person needs to talk about how he sees himself, how he thinks this woman sees him.

how he sees her. Like, instead of trying to solve his problem, I need to ask him questions and to help him think through what's going on from a social identity perspective. And when you do that, once we just tell ourselves

to pay attention, we can actually detect what kind of conversation is happening very, very easily. You write in the book, and I'm paraphrasing, if someone's using facts and data, okay, it's a decision-making combo.

If someone's discussing an event that includes a story, especially if that story has feelings, it's a quote unquote emotional conversation. And you give some clues to heed. Like has someone told a story or a joke? Maybe they want to share and relate. Are they not offering their own thoughts

and they're simply taking it what you're saying? Which often, by the way, I think you note this looks like listening because they're just being quiet, but it's not necessarily that. And then maybe we throw out different types of conversations instead. And we've all had this experience, right? Where we go in and maybe we're feeling kind of like caffeinated and we walk in and everyone's like, well,

how's it going this morning? And you're like, oh, man, on the way here, da-da-da, and you tell the story and you think it's funny and everyone else is like, so are we ready to start? And you're like, oh, okay. You know, like, we're not in that mode.

Nobody cares. Right. And you're exactly right. So there are a bunch of clues, right? So if someone is telling stories, narrative tends to reflect an emotional or a social mindset, but oftentimes there's some emotion there

that's driving the story. If I'm not telling a narrative, if I'm just coming in and I'm like, look, let's look at the numbers. Or like, you know, we've got to figure out where we're going to go on vacation next year, then I'm not looking for an emotional conversation. I'm looking for practical conversation. And you can tell that from how I'm phrasing things. Or if I keep talking

about other people, even in the context of myself, she doesn't understand me, or I really like that guy, or I'm having trouble getting, like figuring out what this team is doing, or accounting all seems crazy. Like, why do they keep fighting with marketing? When we talk about groups and when we talk about how people relate to each other, that's a social conversation. And each of them require slightly different tools, right? But it all comes down to fundamentally the same thing, which is, I want to show you that I want to connect with you. Like when you say something about being proud about your kid,

and I ask you, like, what was that like to watch them walking across the stage? What I'm really saying is, I want to connect with you. Like, I want to match, I want to align with you. And it doesn't matter what your answer is. Because what your answer is probably going to be is, you know, I was so proud, I felt so amazing. but what you're really saying is thank you for noticing what I'm saying, I want to connect with you back.

That's the important thing. That's what super communicators do. They show that they want to connect. In that kind of example or situation, let's say the graduation one, right? And you say, what was it like watching your son cross that? Go over there and get his diploma and you get the follow-up questions and they're talking, what was touch and go at first? You know, he wasn't very good in school and we got him a tutor and he was hanging out

the wrong crowd. Do we then reply with a similar kind of, here's what I would do, tell me if this is on the right track or not. I would say, well, my son is, he's only four and a half, and so we're not thinking that far ahead. But I will say the closest we've come to him graduating is him not being deathly afraid to get in the pool at swim class. So I've got like a 1% feel for how you might feel right now. Like he's not hanging out with the wrong crowd. He just won't get in the water. And then maybe we have a laugh about that. Yeah. No, that's, that's. great because what you're saying is I listen to what you said, right? I'm proving to you that I listen to you. And I'm not trying to mimic you. I'm not saying like, oh, I've had the

same experience with my four year old or my five year old. But what you are saying is like, I hear what you're saying that like raising children is hard, that there's some anxiety in raising children. And I'm going to go ahead and acknowledge like I feel that same anxiety. Like the fact that I asked you about your son's graduation and you mentioned like it was touch and go for a while there probably means that like there was a lot of anxiety and now you're really proud or relieved that you made it through. And that's something as a parent I can understand too, even though my kid is younger. And so the more that I make it obvious that I've really heard what you've said and help us connect on that level, get on the same wavelength, the closer we're

going to feel to each other. And in fact, the more trusting will feel towards each other. To clarify what you said was subtext, right? I don't have to say, I see that you had a lot of anxiety. No, you don't have to say all that. No, no, no, right. Exactly. Exactly. And you don't even have to think it. You don't even think it. Your instincts, because you've practiced this, your instincts are exactly right. And it's more just a matter of like telling myself, like, I'm going to let my instincts come out. I'm going to listen to my instincts. Because like I said, they have evolved to make us good at communication. You mentioned in the book that the best listeners trigger emotions in others and then reciprocate with their own. Can you give me an example of that? Because I feel like

me asking about the graduation, is that what you mean by triggering an emotion? Is that what you mean by triggering an Yeah, so trigger might be the wrong word in this context. Usually when you ask an open-ended question, instead of asking you, like, where did you grow up? Like, what was it like to grow up in Albuquerque? Or like, you know, instead of saying, you know, where do you live, saying like, oh, like, what's your favorite thing about your neighborhood? What you're doing is you're triggering the person to talk about something authentic.

And sometimes this is something that's vulnerable. And vulnerability kind of has a weird definition to it, right? What vulnerable means is simply, I'm exposing something. that you could judge. I might not care about your judgment, but the fact that I'm exposing something that you could judge feels vulnerable. So if I say, the thing I love most about my neighborhood

is like just the community is so strong. Like we all really like each other. In theory, you could judge me for that. But when you engage in reciprocal authenticity or reciprocal vulnerability, when you say something like, oh man, I totally know what you mean. Like, when I went to college, like, it just felt like everyone had each other's back

and it felt so good. when you reciprocate that same vulnerability, that same intimacy, it feels like you are closer to each other. In fact, in the book, we talk about this thing called the fast friends procedure, which is this experiment where they found 36 questions that if people asked them back and forth, they would actually feel like they were really good friends afterwards, even if they were strangers, we had nothing in common.

And that's kind of the power of this reciprocal authenticity. Because if one person would ask the questions and the other answer and then they would trade places, didn't work. Yeah. But when they went back and forth, it felt close. This is that falling in love questions test that made the rounds a few years ago, right? Where it was like 36 questions that make you fall in love. Yeah. I remember reading this to me like, I'm going to use this. And then it was like not at all remotely. I mean, it's just completely awkward, right? Because this is a lab setting and everyone's like,

okay, we're going to do this thing. And you bring it to a bar and people are like, get away from me. Yeah, yeah. But what's interesting is so there's a guy named Nicholas Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago. And one of the questions that's in the fast friends procedure is, when's the last time you cried in front of another person? He's done this experiment a couple of times. And he did it in this room, this hedge fund conference.

He had all these hedge funders in the room. And he said, look, in a couple of minutes, I'm going to sign you to go talk to a stranger. And here's the question you both have to ask and answer of each other. When's the last time you cried in front of another person? Now, before we do that, how many of you think this is going to be a disaster?

Every single hand goes up. and then he sends them off to have these conversations and like he can't get people to shut up right not a dry eye in the house 20 or 30 minutes yeah he's like he's like please stop talking to each other please please we got to get back to this because the truth of the matter is that like

some of those questions they are hard to ask at a bar or on a first date but there's versions of them that like people love being asked deep questions yeah right and you don't have to ask when's last time you cried in front of another person you can say like I'm just wondering like what was the

best moment and the worst moment from the last year. That's a super normal question to ask on a first date. But that's exactly the same thing. That's a good one. People can use that. If you're out there dating, that's a solid one. I wouldn't recommend rolling up to somebody and be like, hey, girl, when's the last time you cried in front of somebody? Call the police. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. What if the other person doesn't feel safe with sharing anything, right? we're like, okay, I'm going to be vulnerable. And I see somebody has like an Albuquerque jacket on. I'm like, what was it like growing up there?

And they're like, I don't friggin' know you. You're doing? Why are you talking to me? Do we go first? Is that the idea? How do we make it safe for them? So one thing to keep in mind is not everything has to be a conversation. Right.

And sometimes we say we want a conversation. We really don't. Like when I talk to my kids and I'm like, I want to have a conversation about your rooms. What I'm really saying is go clean your rooms, right? I don't actually want a conversation. So part of it is we don't have to put that pressure on us to have a conversation with everyone. We have the conversations that we want to. And that's where paying attention to some of the nonverbal cues are so useful. So we tend to get them wrong sometimes. As you mentioned, if we're

talking and someone else is like interrupting us and joining in, that's actually a very good sign. Like, not necessarily like talking over each other, but being like, oh, yeah, that's, oh, what do you next? And here's what happened to me, right? They're in the conversation. Oftentimes, they're listening really well. Oftentimes when someone's very quiet and just sort of listening, we think they're listening, but that passivity is actually a signal that they're not aligned with us, that they don't necessarily want this kind of conversation. And the best super communicators, what they do is they see things as a series of experiments. In psychology literature, this is referred to as the quiet negotiation that happens at a start of a conversation. And it's a quiet negotiation because the goal is not to win.

the goal is just to figure out what each other wants. And so sometimes the way that we do that is we do ask a vulnerable question or we say something vulnerable about ourselves. And when the other person is like, okay, no, that's not really my jam. If we pay attention to that and if we see it as an experiment, then we know we just got a piece of data. We didn't just make a faux pa. We just learned that this person doesn't want to talk about backgrounds, right?

Maybe they're in a more practical mindset. At the beginning of a conversation, people will actually, will actually, will often experiment with interrupting each other. They'll experiment with laughing. Is this a formal conversation? Is this a casual conversation? This is a conversation where we talk over each other? Is this a conversation where we take turns? No one thing is right or wrong. It's the mindset of saying, I don't mind conducting experiments at the beginning of this conversation. And if the experiment doesn't work, that's okay. Because my wife is a scientist. If every experiment she did was the success, she'd be the worst scientist on Earth. That's not why you do experiments is to prove what you

you already know. So trying those little experiments, paying attention to how people react, what you'll find is you ask that question, you kind of get the sense like they're not into talking about this, you shift to something else, and suddenly you've connected. Because instead of trying to force it, you're really paying attention. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Charles Duhigg. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, all of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And if you can't remember the name

of a sponsor, you can't find a code, shoot me an email Jordan at jordanharbinger.com. I am more than happy to help surface that code for you. Yes, it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Charles Duhigg. So it almost seems like the beginning of a conversation, if it's going to be a longer interaction, and by that I mean maybe it's new colleagues at work that you're going to see a lot. Yeah. It almost seems like one of the best things you could do is experiment with different conversation types, like you said in the beginning, like maybe you tell a story and if nobody bites, you move on to something more practical, and then maybe they loosen up later and you try the story thing again or the emotional thing again, or you listen for somebody else to do it,

or you try and trick someone else into telling a story. I don't know, to see if you can shift the conversation. And I feel like at some level that happens, like you said, subconsciously, but you really kind of have to be, it does help to have your hand on the steering wheel a little bit, right? Yeah. I mean, the more you're aware of it, so the next meeting you go into, notice what happens at the beginning of the meeting, because what you're going to see is you're going to see people almost unconsciously doing these experiments, trying to figure out, like, how is this meeting going to work? How are we all going to talk to each other? And what you'll notice is that Some people will do something, and if it doesn't work, they just shut up.

They, like, go into the background. And some people, and these are usually the leaders, these are usually the super communicators, these are the people who influence things. Some people, they'll try something, they'll tell a joke, and nobody laughs, and then they try something else. And they figure out, like, what do we need right now? Now, I know this is an abrupt shift, and I'm just going to acknowledge that, but we have a limited amount of time.

I would love to talk about some of this social identity stuff. that you mentioned. It's a huge topic. There's probably a whole different episode of the show in here, but there were some interesting tidbits on this, especially stereotype threat. And again, this is like,

this is a complete non-sequitur, but whatever. I thought this was fascinating, man. Can you explain what this is? Yeah. So stereotype threat is this thing that was essentially discovered by this guy, Claude Steele,

who's a social scientist. He noticed, even in classes where students were equally prepared and had scored very similar on, for instance, the SAT. he noticed that in many of those classes, black students would get worse grades than white students. And at first he thought maybe like the instructor was like biased

or unconscious bias or something like that. But it turns out that was not what that was going on. There's this thing known as stereotype threat, which is if I know that there's a stereotype out there about me, I'd become a little preoccupied with trying to prove that stereotype wrong. And it turns out that the places where the black students were performing lower than their white peers, were always on timed tests.

If there was no time limit, it was completely even, the scores. But if it was timed, for some reason, the black students would underperform. And when Claude started interviewing them and doing research on this, what he found was,

it's because oftentimes these were in courses where they knew there was a stereotype that because of the color of my skin, I'm not as good at this, right? Particularly courses that around language, use, and rhetoric, English classes. And, like, I want to disprove that, I don't want to prove it right.

And that's enough of a distraction that it makes me double-check my answers and I run out of time. And stereotype, it's been documented again and again and again. It is why stereotypes are so dangerous. It's because you don't even need someone in the room saying the stereotype. It exists in people's heads, and it changes how they behave. And this is why it's really important. This is how it applies to conversations is that what we found is that the way you overcome that is you acknowledge all the different identities that people possess, right?

So in the book we tell the story of, for instance, anti-vaxxers and how doctors were trying to talk to anti-vaxers. And at first, National Institutes of Health said, okay, here's what you do. Just give them the facts. If someone comes in and they're like, the vaccine is dangerous for COVID. Just give them the facts.

Once they know the facts, they'll change them on. This graph's going to change everything, trust me. Yeah, exactly. And the doctors are like, are you kidding me? Like, these guys have been researching on the web for like the last three weeks. Like, I'm not going to show them a graph that's going to change their mind. What they found was the way to have those conversations is to ask questions that draw out other identities. I know that you're worried about the vaccine.

You've heard some stuff about it. I'm just wondering, as a parent and as a member of the local fire department, the volunteer fire department, does that give you a different perspective on these questions? As somebody who grew up during the polio era, or I'm going to tell you about my different identity. Like, say, like, I'm a doctor and, you know, the science is important to me, but I'm also a parent myself just like you. And the thing that kills me is that sometimes kids come in and they've already gotten sick and they ask for the vaccine and I can't give it to them at that point. Like, it's too late. When we bring up all those other identities and all of us possess dozens of identities, right? When we bring them into the conversation, what we do is we erase the stereotype threat.

Instead of saying you're a black student or you're a white student or you're a woman in a math class or you're a man in nursing school, instead of forcing people into that stereotype, forcing it into their head, when we say, you're so much more than that one thing I just mentioned. And all of those identities belong in this conversation. That's when stereotype the threat goes away. Man, that's fascinating. This whole, I know I'm harping on the social psychology element instead of the communications element here, but it would be fascinating. fascinating, and they probably did this, but it would be fascinating to see if you took a bunch of African-American students and who have the stereotype in their head, but then you found,

I don't know, some folks from France or something, or from Africa who are like the top of their class, and then they were in the exact same situation, and there's a stereotype. The stereotype is, I'm the smartest one of my class. Like, that's the program that's running in the back of my head. You know, what do you mean? I'm not as good at math. I'm the best at math. They've actually done that.

It's amazing. It's amazing what we infer and what we worry about without. actually completely being conscious of it. And so in one of the experiments that Cloud Steel did, one of the stereotypes that's very pernicious is that African Americans will do worse on tests of general intelligence. If you grew up black,

you've been exposed to people who would say things like you can't do as good on an IQ test. Blackstone do as well as IQ tests. It's completely wrong. The bell curve thing, right? That whole thing. Yeah, exactly. There's no truth to it whatsoever,

but that stereotype exists. And so if you tell students, this is a test of general intelligence. This is a test of IQ. What we'll see is the stereotype threat. We'll see this pattern of minority students doing worse than white students, scoring lower, not doing worse, scoring lower because they run out of time. But if you tell them the opposite, if you say, I'm going to give you this test, same test. I'm going to give you this test. It is not a test of general intelligence.

It's a test of this very specific thing. And we know from studies that, like, there's no racial bias here. then they will perform the similar way. When you acknowledge the stereotype and you take it off the table, then you help eradicate stereotype threat. And one way to do that is to take it off the table. But in society, it's really hard to do that, right? Like, I can't say like, oh, by the way, like,

there's no racism in New York City. I mean, you're going to bump into it at some point, right? It's filled with crazy people. So instead of trying to take it off the table, what we can do is we can say, you are so much more than one identity. And in fact, one of the researchers who worked on this, who's black herself, she said that every day before her son would go to school and he had a big test, she would say, look, you've studied hard for this test, you're going to do well on it, but I want you also remember, you're a great athlete, you're a great son, you're a great friend, you do all these other things well. You are so much more than just a kid in a math class. That didn't mean that he hadn't studied for it, but it means that that stereotype threat went to, way and he was able to actually perform at his best. That's so powerful. The fact that

stereotype threat exists, I'd never heard of this, obviously. It makes a lot of sense. And it's, man, what an annoying, to say the least, thing to have going on in the back of your head when you're taking a test or doing anything for that matter, because it's already hard. That's the point to freaking test. Yeah, no, it's true. And both of us are white, so we don't really know. I don't really know. Yeah. But I do think that one of the things that happens is that it's really easy to stop thinking about how we're communicating. It's really easy to stop thinking about what's going on until we get in the habit of it. And that's why this vaccine example is such a great example.

For a doctor, the most natural thing to do is to say, like, look, I'm a doctor. Like, I know the science. But the really good doctors are the ones who do this thing called motivational interviewing, where they say, I know that, like, as a pastor, you feel one way about vaccines. And as a parent, you probably feel a little bit different. and as a member of our community, you probably feel a little bit different. And by the way, I'm all those things.

I'm also a parent. Like, help me think through, how should we think about this with these different hats on? That's when people start becoming malleable and start saying things like, I can see it from a different perspective or I can see it from your perspective.

And that doesn't mean we're necessarily going to agree with each other, but it means that we understand each other. There's so much here that I think people can apply right out of the box that we can be more aware of to help guide our conversations. I know we have a little tiny,

bit of time left. We'll see. What about tips for online communication? Because, look, we're doing a lot of of this in real life. A lot of what we just talked about works really well for real life communication. But, man, I'm doing a lot of online communication, maybe almost certainly more than in real life now. Well, and what's interesting is I talked about how I mentioned that our brains have evolved to be good at communication. Of course, they evolved before they were even telephones, right? So one of the things that's really important about online communication, about any change in communication, is to recognize that different channels, different forms of communication, have different rules. So a great example of this is that when telephones first became popular about 100 years ago, there were all these articles that

said, no one will ever be able to have a real conversation on the phone. Because you can't see each other, it's not going to work. And at first, they were right. People, if you read the transcripts of early telephone conversations, it's basically people like giving each other grocery lists or stock trades. They used it like a telegraph, not like a telephone. But of course, by the time you and I were teenagers, We could talk on the phone for like 12 hours at a stretch, right? They were some of the most important conversations of our life. And it's because we learned how to use telephones differently than face to face. And in fact, if you're talking to someone on the phone without realizing it,

you'll start to over-enunciate your words. You'll put more emotion into your voice because you know that they can't see you. The same thing is true of different forms of online communication. And oftentimes we forget to remind ourselves that different forms of communication have different rules. So sending someone a text with emojis Is different from sending them an email Is different from sending a slack Is different from having a conversation on the phone

Is different from talking face to face But when we get really busy And we stop thinking about that We treat them all the same And so I write something to you That's sarcastic And I can hear the sarcasm in my head And I forget you can't hear that sarcasm

Right, right? You're going to read it as serious And you're going to be offended And so just taking a split second to remind ourselves, I need to sort of think a little bit differently about whether it's a text or an email. Once we get in the habit of doing that, it becomes very, very natural. And one of the things, particularly for online communication, is simple politeness.

Like we found that there's been all these studies where people are like arguing online. If one person starts saying please and thank you, then it actually makes the entire conversation better. Everyone else starts getting more polite. And if one person says, you should never try and be sarcastic online. unless you're using like a little winking face emoji, unless it's a close friend. And when people are just more polite and less sarcastic, online conversation dialogues get so much better.

That's fascinating. Turning the conversation around online is tough, right? Because a lot of people, they don't even, they're not interested in that. And I know this because unfortunately, I also get in these moods where I'm like, you're going to start some shit, I'm going to do that. And then I'm never going to check it again. Or I'm just like in a certain mood. And then three hours later, I see the reply.

And I'm like, I'm not engaging with that. It's like, oh, I kind of started that, though. Oh, well, delete. Yeah. Right. No, it happens all the time. But if we're just in the habit of being like, okay, let's think about, like, what does this channel of communication require?

It's very easy to figure it out. Have you noticed much of a difference between, let's say, Zoom or online face-to-face communication like we're doing right now versus us sitting there? I mean, as an interviewer, it seems like there's something in person that might be kind of sort of missing over the internet, but I can't put my finger on it. It's not body language, really, because I'm sort of, I mean, I can see you. You can see me. Maybe we can't see the lower half of the body.

I don't know if that matters. What do you think? The answer is that we can have almost as pure conversation through any channel. But you're exactly right. The less information that we have through that channel, the harder it's going to be, right? So, like, if I text you versus send you an email, a text is going to be fast, it's going to have little emojis in it. Like, you're not going to get as much information as if I write an email or if I'm

talking to you on the phone or face-to-face. So what happens when we're face to face is that when I look at something, you know what I'm looking at. Oh, yeah. So if I stare off into the corner and we're face to face, you know that I'm staring off in the corner. But if we're on a Zoom screen and I go like this and I look off into the corner, you don't know if I'm distracted or if I'm just kind of gazing. And so as a result, there's just a little bit less information. That doesn't mean that we can't compensate for that. We can't overcome that, the same way that we put more emotion into our voice when we talk on the phone.

But the key is to tell ourselves, like, if my natural habit is to, like, look off in the corner all the time, it's important to come back and make eye contact sometimes, right? To show you that I'm listening, to prove that I'm listening. Just think about, like, what are the strengths and weaknesses of this particular format of communication? Because we can't be face-to-face all the time. Right. I have a production screen over here that makes sure my backup is going or, like, stuff like it. So I look over there occasionally, but I always try and hide it. It's impossible to do because you're looking.

at me, right, almost the whole time. So I look over there real quick and I just kind of come back and I look over there real. I try to minimize it because I was, man, it was so embarrassing. I was interviewing Anderson Cooper and at the end I was like, do you have any tips? I really get a chance to ask an expert and he's like, who's over there, your producer? And I was like, kind of, but no, it's just a screen that shows that I'm still recording. He's like, yeah, it's a little bit weird that you just kept looking over there.

And I was like, gosh, darn it. What a, right? I really didn't want to hear that from Anderson Cooper. And it means that like sometimes, sometimes just at this thing at the start of a conversation, I'm going to be looking over here. It's just because I have this screen that shows me if it's getting backed up. I do that now.

That's really powerful. Yeah, I have to do that now. And I forgot during this episode and I was like, oh, man, I should probably say something about that. It's okay. I knew that you were in the conversation. I could feel it. Yeah, but you're right.

I now go, by the way, if you see me looking over here, it's a production screen. I'm not, you know, making faces at somebody else or whatever. So anything you see that I'm doing that, just ignore it. I'm just making sure it's still recording. But you're right. There's all these little subtle things that we have Now, I would imagine there's somebody who's on Zoom calls regularly that has to look at a graph while they're talking and they're just never looking at the camera.

And it's got to be so bizarre for everybody else. It's hard. It's really hard, right? Like, we've all been on that Zoom call where everyone's like looking over. They have a screen over here. And so all of us aren't really, no one's really looking at each other. And it feels harder. Like, unless somebody says, by the way, all of us have to look at this thing over here, it's okay.

Then, like, once we acknowledge it, then it takes that anxiety away. The weird part of that is, though, you're right. If we were all in the same room, we would also all not be looking at each other at all. We'd be looking at the wall where the screen is, but since I already know that that's where I'm looking, I know what you're looking at, and so we don't have to say it. So you're right. We have to call out all this weird stuff. Like, hey, guys, this over here is the thing that's important.

And it's like, okay. And it sounds weird at first, but you're right. If you don't do it, it's like, what is his prize? Hello, are you here or what? Yeah. Are you paying attention? No, totally. And I find that I do it automatically now on Zoom calls.

I'm like, I have to read. from this thing, so I'm going to look away from the camera. I hope that's okay. And once you say it once, you never have to say it again. Right. Right. Like, it's like giving everyone permission to look away from the camera because we're acknowledging that like, I'm not just paying attention to my producer over there. I'm actually reading something. Yeah, man. And we're never

going to kind of go back to that. Right. We're never going to get rid of communication modes like this. So, and our brains aren't going to evolve to the point where I can see what you're seeing. That's never going to happen either. So we're kind of like, this is like the new thing you've got to. do every time. Yeah. And it'll become second nature. Like for our kids, by the time they're our age, using Zoom will feel as natural as talking on the phone. Yeah. Man. Well, thank you very much, man, for joining us. I know we went through a lot today. I know that I jumped around a little bit.

No, I loved it. It was great. Thank you for having me on. This was so much fun. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, you're about to hear a preview of my interview with a former FBI agent on how he gets people to reveal the truth. With elicitation, don't realize that you're using elicitation techniques on them. You're just setting up a psychological environment that predisposes them to want to tell you information they wouldn't otherwise tell you. Typically, elicitation doesn't use questions. There's a human predisposition to correct others. If I want to get information from you, I will just give you what we call a presumptive statement. You're going to corroborate and say, yes, that's true, or you're going to say, no, that's not true.

It's this. We'll tell our students, see that person. over there, go get their pin numbers for their bank accounts. If I can get some stranger to like me, the brain automatically ascribes all the rights and privileges of a friendship that took maybe years to develop. For more on how you can use elicitation techniques used by the FBI to negotiate better salaries and more, check out episode 467 on the Jordan Harbinger show with Jack Schaefer. Again, you all know I love practical stuff like this. In the book, there is so much more that we just didn't even get to.

because of time. Now remember, there's four basic rules. One, pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening. Two, share your goals, ask what the others are seeking in that conversation. Three, ask about others' feelings and share your own. And four, explore if identities are important to this discussion. Now, of course, we touched on all of this during the show. If you want to do a deeper dive on at the book, it's something I can recommend. And by the way, it's like six, seven hours long. It's not one of those like 15 hours. Oh, my publisher wanted six more chapters. So it we could pump the price up by $3. Like it is a decently packed book

that is not extra long just for the sake of being long. So you can actually consume this thing in like a day or a weekend depending on how fast you read. All things Charles Duhigg will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. You can also ask the AI chat bot also on the website,

which is new and improved. There's new version up there for you now. Transcripts are in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. We've also got the newsletter

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My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's passionate about communication, loves a little social psychology, definitely share this episode with him. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

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Their site even has photos so you know even the most bizarre stuff you're hearing is somebody's real life. Listen to what was that like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever app you're using right now. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know Podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

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