Charles Duhigg
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
What do most people get wrong when it comes to understanding communication, do you think? I think what most people get wrong is they think that it's something that should just happen naturally. That it's something that the best communicators are people who don't think about communication. But what we've discovered is exactly the opposite.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And the way that I can coordinate with a society is I can talk to them and we can become, we can share goals together. So communication is clearly adaptive, but then there's this question about like, why would vulnerability be something that's, that's adaptive instead of maladaptive, something that helps us.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And the answer is that once we build a society, it's very, very hard to police that society without it being really expensive. So if we have rules like you should not murder someone or you should not steal or And we have to get cops on every single corner to watch people all the time to see if they're stealing. It's incredibly expensive. It's not efficient.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It undoes all the advantages of society. So what we need is we need some system where people learn the rules and they just want to live by the rules, right? They want to stick by the rules. And more importantly, if somebody breaks those rules, they take real offense at it. In a system like that, when a stranger comes to town,
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I have to determine whether that stranger poses a risk or not because I can't follow them around with a police officer for a long time. And so one of the things that happens is if they show me something that I could use against them, if they show me their underbelly, if they admit something to me that I could judge, they're giving me a little bit of leverage.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
They're giving me a little bit of power. And if I do the same thing back to them, we've given each other some power. And in that situation, we don't have to worry about the police keeping everyone in line because you and I now know something about each other. We owe something to each other. We've taken the measure of the other person by giving them a chance to attack us.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So if they're the type of person who's an attacker, we gave them a perfect opportunity and they didn't do it. And that doesn't mean that like everyone in that society is going to be moral and ethical all the time. But it does mean that in a very when I need to very quickly evaluate whether you're a risk or not, looking to the vulnerability and whether it's authentic vulnerability.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
is going to be a real test. And there's another interesting part to this, which is when people aren't authentically vulnerable, we detect it almost immediately. It's incredibly. Yeah. So like, if I say like, Hey, you know, I just wanted to let you know, like, um,
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
you know, I spent all this money on this yacht and like, I'm a little stressed about like how much money I spent on it, but bro, it's a sweet yacht. Like that does not, that's, that's clearly not me being vulnerable. Right. That's, I mean, I said something that is, it's a humble brag. I said something that you could judge.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You could be like, yeah, you spent too much money, but like, so that's, that's inauthentic. Or if I go, if I ask you where you went on vacation and, It doesn't take you long to figure out. I don't care where you went on vacation. I just want to tell you where I went on vacation so I can brag about this cool safari I went on.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And as a result, because it's so important to who we are as a species, you're right. We tend to judge people like their moral worth on whether they're a good communicator or not. And, and that, that can be a little bit dangerous, but it also means that if you want to connect with someone and you're someone who's an introvert, you're someone who has trouble connecting.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, that's exactly. That's a fantastic deep question. Because what you just did is you admitted something vulnerable to me and it didn't cost you much. It's not like I think like, oh, this guy's like such a jerk because he went on a vacation with his girlfriend. Like there's no cost to that type of vulnerability, but it is authentic.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You're trying to share something real and meaningful with me as opposed to trying to like send some signal. Yeah. And so we're very good at detecting authenticity BS.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It's really just a matter of learning how learning these skills about how communication works and you can form that bond.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I care about her so much, I have to bring it up.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And what's really interesting about that, and I think this is true of parasocial lismens in general, is... Lismens? parasocialism.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah. Is that there is something authentic happening there, but the authentic thing is I hate Joanna so much that I want to spread shit about her. Right. Like, like, like that's actually an authentic thing. And so oftentimes when we see people who engage in performative vulnerability, It's very easy for us to say like, oh, if they're doing it for thousands of people, it must not be real.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But of course, you know, that's not true, right? Sometimes we say something to thousands or even millions of people and it is very real. It's very authentic. The thing that makes the difference is Are you committed to saying, first of all, do you know your own mind? Do you know your own feelings? Are you genuinely committed to trying to understand what you're feeling and thinking?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And if that's like, I hate Joanna and I want to smear her, then own that. Live up to that. Accept that that's your goal. And once you do that, if you share it with other people in an authentic way, if you say, look, I really want to tell 10,000 of my closest friends that I have cancer and I'm terrified.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
that's not inauthentic that's real but it's real because the person thought about what they're thinking and feeling they questioned their own motives and values and then they tried to be as transparent with the audience as possible they weren't trying to use any subterfuge they're trying to say i want you to understand me so i'm going to speak to you in as clear and direct a way as i can i suppose there's um yeah the the yacht example is kind of interesting it's almost like a
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it, is that I'm telling you something that actually you could use against me.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Okay, so the final skill is once you're asking deep questions, once you're proving that you're listening, looping for understanding and sort of showing that, once you're willing to be vulnerable under the correct definition of what vulnerability is, It's really important that we pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I mentioned before that there's these three kinds of conversations, the practical, the emotional, and the social. And in the book Supercommunicators, there's all these stories about a CIA officer who's recruiting overseas spies and why the Big Bang Theory became such a hit because it was a flop when they made the pilot. And at the core of it is this thing that
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
if I, if I become attuned to diagnosing what kind of mindset you're in, if I can just ask myself, like, does this seem like he's in a practical mindset or an emotional mindset or a social mindset? And then I can just do the smallest thing to try and match you there, right? Like, Like you mentioned that you went to your kid's graduation this weekend.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And I say, instead of saying like, just congratulations, that's awesome. I say, oh man, what did that feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage? Because clearly you are, this is kind of an emotional experience for you to go to your kid's graduation. I'm just going to ask about it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
If you know someone who is just fantastic at connecting with people, at communicating, and you go up and you ask them, have you always been like this? Inevitably, what they are going to tell you is no.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
When we can pay attention, just the smallest amount to what kind of conversation is happening, when we can match others and we can invite them to match us, all of a sudden our conversations get much, much better. And there's actually a scientific basis to this, which is because of, again, how our brains have evolved, because communication is so important to our species.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
When you're in a good conversation like this conversation we're having right now, without us realizing it, our bodies start to match each other. So you and I are breathing at basically the same rate. Our heart rates are matching each other. Actually, even the dilation of our pupils is starting to mirror each other.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So it turns out, to answer that question, let me tell you a little bit about what we know about the science of communication. So when I started writing Super Communicators, the reason why is because I had fallen into this bad pattern with my wife, which... probably is going to be familiar to you and anyone listening to this, which is I would come home from a long day of work.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And more importantly, if I could see inside both of our brains, what I would see is our thoughts are becoming more and more similar. Literally, we're using the same parts of our brain with the same type of energy. We're moving through similar neural pathways.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And that kind of makes sense that our brains would become similar because if you think about it, when I tell you about an emotion I'm feeling, you actually experience that emotion a little bit, right? Or if I tell you about an idea, you experience that idea, right? So it makes sense that our brains become aligned.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But what the neuroscientists that I mentioned earlier have found, and there's a guy named Uri Hassan at Princeton who's kind of the grandfather of this research, is that the more our brains become aligned, the more we're thinking the same thoughts at the same time, the better we understand each other, the more we feel connected to each other.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And most importantly, the more we like the conversation. Within neuroscience, this is known as neural entrainment. We become neurally entrained. And when we are neurally entrained, it releases this reward sensation, this cascade of neurotransmitters that make us feel good. And in part, this is adaptive because, you know, our brains want us to communicate with people.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
They want us to have real conversations. They want us to connect and bond. And so when we feel good, even if we disagree with each other, we still feel good about the conversation. We still feel like the conversation was a success. Now, the thing is, these three types of conversations that I mentioned, they use different parts of our brains, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So when I'm talking to my wife and I'm in an emotional mindset, I'm using the basal ganglia, the interior structures of my brain. And when she responds by giving me some practical advice, she's having a practical conversation. She's using her prefrontal cortex. So it's very hard for our thoughts to become similar if she's using the front of her brain and I'm using the interior of my brain.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
That's why matching each other is so powerful is because literally what I'm doing when I ask you, oh, what did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage at graduation? What I'm doing at that moment is I'm activating the same part of my brain that I know is active in your brain. And it's going to make it so much easier for us to become neurally aligned.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And then once we're aligned, we can move from emotional to practical to social and back to emotional all together. And we'll understand each other so much better the entire time.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, there's a ton. There's a ton of studies that have looked exactly at this, right? Like you mentioned the Dartmouth study. They would have people watch these confusing movie clips together. And then they would actually turn off the sound. And they were oftentimes foreign movies. So the people were actually not even speaking English and there was no subtitles. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I'd start complaining about my day. I was working at the New York times at that point. Be like, my boss doesn't understand me and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am. And my wife would say this very like practical thing. She would say like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch? And you guys can get to know each other a little bit better.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And they would have people just watch these movies, these movie clips. They were super confusing. And they would put them in groups to try and have them answer a bunch of questions, like what's going on in that scene, X, Y, and Z. The group has to come to a consensus. And what they found is that some of the groups came to a consensus faster and easier than others.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And when they put them in MRIs and they showed them, the clips again, what they found was that those groups that came to consensus really, really quickly, and not quickly, but easily, fully came to consensus, their brains all looked like each other after they had had this conversation.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
The first time they were watching the movie in the MRI, their brains all looked different, but the conversation somehow got their brains to look similar, to remember and watch these scenes as if they were all sharing kind of the same perspective. Yeah. And so they're trying to figure out why does this happen in some groups and it doesn't happen in other groups.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And Bo Sievers is the name of the researcher who did this research. And what he found is that in the groups that came to consensus in the groups that became nearly aligned, there was at least one person who was a super communicator. There was someone who like would just ask a lot more questions than the average person.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And again, a lot of the questions were like, Oh, like what, what did you, what'd you think of that scene? Or like, you know, Oh, what'd you think of what happened next? They're just questions that invite us into the conversation. Yeah. They would also do things like repeat what other people said a lot more often. You know, Jim, you had a really interesting thought.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You mentioned that you thought that this one scene was about death, right? They're proving that they're listening. And in that group, people begin modeling themselves after that behavior. So other people start- It's so pro-social that it sets a tone everyone else wants to follow. Absolutely. One super communicator in a group can cause everyone else to become nearly entrained.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And when they're nearly entrained, they hear each other so much better. They like each other so much better. And that doesn't like, they had people in these rooms who like were like conservatives and liberals and people who are from the South and from the North.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like these weren't people who necessarily like all naturally would have been friends, but just putting that super communicator in the room, having them model those behaviors, it made everyone else feel like that group came together, that it clicked. And that's really powerful.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And instead of being able to hear her good advice, I would actually get more upset. Right. And I would say like, you're supposed to be supporting me. You're supposed to be on my side. Why aren't you outraged on my behalf? She would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. It was not a good scene, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It's way easier. And there's this quote that I'm sure you've heard from Maya Angelou that no one remembers what you said. They only remember how you made them feel. And it turns out that actually the science tells us that's right.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like if you think back to a great conversation you had in the last week and I had asked you to tell me what people talked about, you could probably come up with like two or three topics that came up and you will remember nothing specific about what anyone said, right? Like when we're in a conversation, it's not like we're transcribing it. We're not paying attention to the words.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And I think many people, all relationships have some version of this where one person wants to complain and the other person wants to solve the problem and there's conflict there. And so I was trying to figure out like why this was happening.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
What we are paying attention to. Now, if I asked you how you felt about, during that conversation, you'd actually be able to tell me with like surprising accuracy how you felt at different periods in the conversation. And you'd certainly remember how you felt at the end of it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I know Adam. I didn't know that he was on the... Apparently.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And I went to researchers and I asked them and they said, well, we're actually really glad that you came and talked to us right now because we're living through this golden age of understanding communication, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So this gets to these deep questions again. So I give a lot of speeches, right? I give speeches about, and it's usually like a room of say, you know, a thousand or 5,000 people who are like in a trade show. And so when I'm talking about super communicators, I always start it the same way. I say in 30 minutes, I'm going to ask you to turn to the person next to you and ask and answer one question.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And that question is, when is the last time you cried in front of another person? And then I ask, who's excited about this? And literally no hands go up, right? Nobody wants to do this. They just came to some conference. They're at Vegas. And now here, this guy on a stage is telling them, I'm going to force you to have a therapy session with this stranger who's sitting next to you, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And one of the things that we've learned by studying the brains of people as they communicate with each other is that when you're having a discussion, you think it's about one thing, right? You're talking about your day or like where to go on vacation or next year's budget.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Nobody likes this idea. And then I spend the next 30 minutes explaining why this is a good idea, what we know about deep questions, what we know about neural entrainment. And then we do the experiment. And I ask people, and this is based on some work that Nick Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago, has done, because he's done this experiment thousands of times.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And I ask people to estimate how much they think they're going to enjoy this conversation that they're about to have, right? How awkward they think it'll be, whether they're going to feel close to the other person. And when Nick does this, he actually has them take a poll on a phone. And what he finds is that people say, before they have this conversation, this is going to be super awkward, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like this is not, I'm not, they actually say that they, they might enjoy it a little bit because like if you're sitting next to your boss, everyone, everyone doesn't mind hearing how their boss cried last time. So there's a little bit of terrorism, but it's not, it's not a huge amount of enjoyment they anticipate.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And most importantly, they do not think they will feel closer to the person afterwards. They think, they think they will feel even more distant from them because it's just weird to talk about crying with this stranger. So then, and I do this from the stage, we do it. You turn to the person next to you, spend two minutes asking and answering the question.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Then you switch places, spend another two minutes. The room like fills with this cacophony of noise. And then finally, if I can get people to shut up fast enough, I asked them what that experience was like. I asked them for a show of hands. How many people enjoyed that experience much more than you thought you would? Every single hand will go up.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Because people are bad at estimating what a real conversation is going to feel like. So this gets to small talk. The problem with small talk is not small talk. The problem with small talk is the anxiety we feel when we go into it and the anxiety we feel about asking a deep question. And yet...
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Again and again and again, if we ask that deep question, we will discover the other person loves to answer it. They want to hear us answer our own question. And we will walk away having enjoyed that conversation.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But actually they said, if you look at someone's brain, every discussion is made up of multiple kinds of conversations, right? And in general, these conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're like solving problems or making plans together.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Okay, so practically... But let's take the weather as an example, because you're exactly right that nobody likes small talk. But you don't have to ask that. If someone brings up the weather, you don't have to ask them the last time they cried in front of another person. You can say something like, yeah, it's really been rainy and you mentioned you don't like the rain.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So I'm wondering, what got you to move to Seattle? Why'd you move here since it's kind of a rainy place? What was it about the city that you like? And suddenly that's an easy question to ask, right? That doesn't seem like a deep question, but it actually is. Because inevitably that person is going to say something like, oh, I fell in love with someone and I moved here to follow them.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Or I got this job opportunity and it just seemed so great, but then it didn't work out. And now I'm working someplace else. Small talk is kind of what we talk, the word we use to describe boring talk. But you can transition almost immediately to something that's real and meaningful.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, it's a great question. So this guy, Nick Epley, I mentioned, who basically he studies deep questions. Once a month, he'll get on a bus in Chicago and he'll sit down next to a stranger. And his goal is to ask that person about their hopes and dreams within three questions, right? And when he told me this, I was like, oh, this sounds miserable, man. This sounds like I don't want to do this.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
This sounds terrible. And he's like, no, no, it's the easiest thing I've ever done because it usually only takes two questions. Like usually I sit down, I introduce myself and I'm like, hey, what do you do for a living? And they say, oh, I'm an accountant. And he goes, oh, did you always want to be an accountant? Was that your dream as a kid? And they say, no, no kid wants to be an accountant.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and society.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
I want him to be an astronaut. But now suddenly he's like, oh, so what happened? Did you try and become an astronaut? Now they're actually having a conversation, right? They're talking about like, oh, I had kids and I had to raise them. And Nick can say like, I have kids too. I have five kids actually. And I know there's these challenges to raising kids. Now you're having a real conversation.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So I think the way to start it and to respond is, is to ask something that you're actually curious about. When I ask you, where do you live? Basic small talk question. I do not care where you live. It is not something I'm actually interested in. Maybe it is, right? You live in Austin and I wanna learn a little bit about Austin.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But if I'm asking you something that's genuinely interesting to me, like why did you decide to move from the UK to the US? What was it about that? That's actually like really fascinating to me. That's something that could seem like a small talk throwaway question. But if I'm actually curious about it and I ask it with curiosity, we're going to be having a deep conversation within minutes.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah. So this is one of my favorite stories from the book. So about 15 years ago, NASA started developing plans to build the International Space Station. And they realized that in addition to all the technical plans they came up with, there was actually this big problem that they needed to solve, which is up until then, the longest NASA mission had been about 10 days in space.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And they had basically realized you can send like the biggest jerk on earth up into space for 10 days and it's going to be fine, right? Like they're going to pick fights with their co, with their co astronauts are going to pick fights with mission control. They're just going to be like a pain in the ass, but it's fine. It's only 10 days.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And they said, what we've discovered is if two people are having different kinds of conversations at the same time, they usually aren't even aware of it, but they literally can't hear each other. They literally can't understand what the other person is trying to say, and they don't feel connected at all.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But the thing about a space station is you're sending astronauts up there for three months or six months or 12 months at a time. And if you send a jerk into space for 12 months, he's going to drive everyone else crazy. So NASA realizes we need to start choosing astronauts, finding astronauts who have emotional intelligence.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
This is actually a lot harder than it sounds though, because the problem for NASA is when you make it to the final rounds of an astronaut interview, you are awesome, right? You're like, you're handsome or you're beautiful. You have like two PhDs. And most importantly, you've been doing interviews your entire life. Like, you know, the right answers to every question.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And what they realized is they couldn't tell the difference between the people who were faking emotional intelligence from the ones who actually had it. So they turned to this guy, Terry McGuire, the lead psychiatrist for manned spaceflight at NASA. And they asked him to come up with an interview question that will let them figure out who actually has emotional intelligence.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And for nine months, he works on this problem and he can't come up with anything. He tests a bunch of questions. None of them work. And then one night he's listening to recordings of old interviews with old candidates. And he knows which of those candidates went on to be really good leaders inside NASA and which kind of like washed out.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And as he's listening, he realizes the really good leaders, they're laughing differently than everyone else in the interview. So he comes up with this whole new way of doing his interviews. Now, what he does is he brings the astronaut candidate into a room. They're sitting there by themselves.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
He walks into the room and he's holding this big stack of papers and he trips as if on accident and he spills the papers all over the floor. And then he laughs his big boisterous laugh. He goes like, I cannot believe I did that. And then he pays attention to how the candidate reacts because everyone reacts in one of two ways. Some people go like this. That's really silly. Let me give you a hand.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
They'll say something like, when I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends, and so I really had to study how kids talk to each other, or my parents got divorced when I was a kid, and I had to be the peacemaker between them. The thing about communication is it's just a set of skills. It's not even particularly complicated skills. It's a set of skills that anyone can learn.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And some people go, that's really silly. Let me give you a hand. Everyone knows what's going on in that moment, right? You made a mistake by dropping the papers and then you made the mistake even worse by overreacting, by laughing this huge kind of like inappropriately big laugh. Like we've all been embarrassed that way. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But if you can figure out what kind of conversation is happening and you can match the other person or invite them to match you, then suddenly you feel connected. Even if you don't agree with each other, you suddenly feel like you have some type of connection and it feels like a conversation. So what does this have to do with introverts and extroverts?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And some of the candidates were like, oh, I'm just going to pretend this didn't happen. I'm going to just help you put this under the carpet. And some of the candidates were like, you know what? I know what you're feeling right now. Like, I know that you're embarrassed. And the best way I can remove that embarrassment is I can jump in the boat with you.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So I'm going to laugh this big, boisterous laugh. I'm going to match you. I'm going to mirror your energy and your affect. Those were the people who had emotional intelligence, and those went on to be some of the best leaders in NASA's history. And it's all just paying attention to how they laugh in an interview that makes a difference. Why do humans laugh? Did you look at this? What is it?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It's really interesting. There's a guy named Provine, Robert Provine, who's now passed away. He was at the University of Maryland. He actually studied laughter for years. He would go to malls and restaurants and hide tape recorders so he could tape people talking to each other. And what he found is that about his initial thought was like, we laugh when we see something funny.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And he actually wanted to figure out what the science of funny was. But what he discovered was totally unexpected. He discovered that 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to anything humorous. Right? Like, you're not a comedian. I'm not a comedian. Our friends aren't comedians. And yet we laugh all the time. So what's happening when we laugh?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
When we laugh, we're oftentimes showing the other person, I want to connect with you. And when they laugh back, that same reciprocity that I mentioned before, and it's because it's a little bit vulnerable, right? Like if I laugh, I'm kind of saying like, I think that's funny. And you could be like, oh my God, you're such a jerk for thinking that's funny, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So I'm showing you a little bit of vulnerability. When you laugh back, the most normal reaction, you're showing me that you want to connect right back. Laughter is how we forge connections with other people. The fact that we also do it in response to something funny is actually almost a byproduct. It's not the main function of laughter.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
That's exactly right. Well, and there's actually some... So I don't think... Someone told me this theory, and my understanding is it hasn't been proved out, but that there's some research behind it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So if you're looking at a group of primates, there's a noise that they will make... that means that there's like a lion or a danger nearby and that noise sounds like laughter. And so the theory is that laughter evolved because it's inherently pro-social. It's a noise that I make to warn others of danger.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
A lot of the research that's coming out, particularly now, says that introversion and extroversion is not necessarily something that we're born with or something that's hardwired into our brain. It's a set of habits that we become comfortable with, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And most importantly, there's a huge sense of relief associated with it because when I know that there's a danger out in the woods and I'm up in the trees, then suddenly like I actually feel a sense of relief because I'm not in danger.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And so the theory is that this is why that weird noise has evolved is it actually has these roots in this very pro-social behavior, which would also help us make sense that like oftentimes a joke is about building up tension and then saying something funny to relieve the tension.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So there's, there's a lot of, um, in, in the book there's actually like a whole chapter about, um, the story that involves, um,
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Extroverts oftentimes get more opportunities to practice having conversations, to practice having conversations such as emotional conversations, right? Or practical conversations. Or because they have practice,
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
the the growth of marriage therapy as a as a field of research and one of the things that marriage therapists have found is that there's this one pattern that's basically disastrous um they call it kitchen sinking so every couple fights that's just totally that's part of every relationship yeah right there's always like little like yeah disagreements or tension but
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
When some couples fight, a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything, right? So we start talking about like, where are we going to spend Christmas? And like within minutes, it's like, well, your mom hates me because like, and she's not nice. And by the way, if we earned more money, we'd be able to go to Hawaii instead of, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything. Kitchen sinking, that is disastrous. That will make the fight toxic. And so researchers were trying to figure out why does this happen? Because it happens pretty consistently, even to couples that are well-matched. And they found that what happens is that When we're in a conflict, when I feel threatened, I want to control something.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like that's just a normal response to find something to control. And the easiest thing for me to control is you, like the person I'm talking to. So I'm going to do things like I'm going to attack you back. I'm going to bring up your mom. I'm going to say things like, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to try and control what topics are allowed.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
If you're upset, I'll say things like, you shouldn't be upset about that. Like that's a dumb thing to be upset about. I'm going to try and control your emotions. That's toxic. That's where kitchen sinking comes from. So what's the solution? Well, the solution is not to say you shouldn't try and control something because everyone feels that impulse for control. That's very human.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But instead of trying to control the other person in the relationship, try and find things you can control together. Like controlling, for instance, the environment. You start fighting at 11 o'clock at night. If one person says, look, I really want to talk about this. Can we wait until nine tomorrow morning when we both wake up and we're not exhausted? Is that okay?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
somebody comes up to them with an emotional problem and they try and give them a practical solution and it doesn't go well and they say, okay, next time I'm going to handle this a little bit differently. I'm going to do better. I think one of the big differences between extroverts and introverts is simply how much time and space we have and we give ourselves to practice.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like now we're controlling the environment together. Or to say like, well, I want to control the boundaries of this conversation to say like, let's talk about Christmas. Let's not talk about moms. Let's not talk about money if that's okay. Like, let's just focus on making a decision about Christmas. Now we're on the same side of the table.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
We're controlling the boundaries of this conversation together. And the reason why this is really important, why the best couples, the best couples, it's not that they don't fight. It's that they fight and there's no lasting consequences of it. Because they're basically sort of teammates finding things to control together, even if they disagree with each other.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Well, because if you and I are controlling the environment together, we're on the same side of the table. We might disagree about how we should raise our kids, but we've both decided we're going to wait until 9 o'clock in the morning. We're going to do this together. We're just going to talk about whether Jimmy's allowed to eat snacks after 3 o'clock.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
We're not going to talk about how you were raised and spanking. Now, suddenly, we're kind of partners in figuring out what's our goal? How are we going to control this conversation together and what's our goal in it? Now, the reason why I think this is really important is because it turns out the exact same thing happens online with social media.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
When social media goes bad, when people start screaming at each other, when social media becomes like a cesspool, it's oftentimes because people are trying to control each other, right? You make some argument. You say, I think guns are great. And I say, you're a moron. You're not even thinking about all the guns that kill kids in schools. Why are you a fascist?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
At that moment, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to control you. I'm trying to force you into a box. I'm trying to force you into the fascist box. I'm trying to force you into... You're thinking about Second Amendment, but you should be thinking about the kids. When we try and control each other on social media, it's very, very natural.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It's very natural online because we're not seeing each other face to face. It can become toxic. But if we take a step back and we say, look, I actually want to talk about this guns thing. Let's try and figure out what aspect of guns are we talking about? Then an online conversation becomes just as good as any other conversation.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And in fact, there's all these interesting studies done by someone again at Dartmouth Where he found that even just adding please and thank you, if one person in a thread says please and thank you, the tenor of the whole conversation improves. Because please and thank you is a way of me showing you that I want to share control with you.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Because like anything that's skills-based, the first time you play soccer, the first time you play cricket, the first time you go and lift weights, you're not great at it. You got to practice it. You got to learn how to do it. And communication is exactly the same way.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, as opposed to like, I'm powerful and you're a dick, and so let me try and control you as much as I can.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So it's a good question. Well, let me ask you, because you're online a lot. Do you feel like the conversations you have online, how do they compare to the conversations that you have online?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Okay, so there's a couple of them. And we should talk about what a super communicator is, because I think that'll help people kind of visualize this in their head. So let me ask you a question, which is, let's imagine you're having like a bad day, right? Like just terrible day, you come home after work, you're like,
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
The internet is the real world. Is real world for them, yeah. That is the boundaries of your world. And so I think one of the things that's happening there, there's a researcher named J. Van Bavel at NYU who's kind of looked at this phenomenon, particularly on social media. And what he's found is that
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
The problem with social media and the problem with online conversations is that oftentimes they highlight one aspect of identity very, very prominently when in real life, that's one of many identities that someone contains, right? So the thing that we know is that like, if I knew that you were Republican, I would assume a bunch of things about you. That you must be pro-gun. You must be pro-Trump.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You must be anti-immigrant, right? And if you knew I was a Democrat, you would assume a bunch of things about me. I must be pro-trans. I must think Kamala was the greatest thing on Earth. I must want to just tax everyone to death. Whenever we see someone described by their label, then we tend to maximize... what we assume their beliefs are into that label.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Now in real life, oftentimes if I met you and I'm like, Oh, I'm a Democrat, but we're like at our kids' soccer game together. And you know that I'm also a journalist and like, also like I like to do model rocketry and you and I ride bikes together, right? Like that one identity, I'm a Democrat.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And there's so many other identities around it because all of us contain multitudes that it doesn't, it doesn't shape what you assume about me. Whereas when we are on Twitter and we go to our little thing, our little description in Twitter, it's like proud to be part of the resistance or like January 6th was the best day ever. Like we're actually just giving into one identity.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
We're giving into one label and it makes that conversation harder. Now you asked though, what's happening to our conversations as a result of this, right? With Gen Z spending all this time online, that the internet is their real world. So what I would say is this. There's actually a lot of room for hope. And the reason why is this story from about 100 years ago.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So when telephones first became popular around the world, but also particularly here in the U.S., when phones first became popular, there were all these articles that appeared that said no one will ever have a real conversation on the telephone. Because up till then, every conversation had happened face to face, right? And they were like, nobody will be able to do this on the phone.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
If you can't see the person and make eye contact with them, if you can't hear all the nuances in their voice, you're never going to have a real conversation. And what's really interesting is if you look at the transcripts from those early phone conversations, they were exactly right. People did not know how to use phones. They used them like telegrams.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
They would call up and they would say, here's what I, here's like, here's, here's, here's what I need on the stock market. Or they call up and say, here's my grocery order. And then the other person would say, okay. And then they would both hang up. Like there was no back and forth. There was no give and take.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And you want to call someone cause you know, calling this person will make you feel better. Like you'll just like, do you know who you would call? Like, does that person pop into your mind?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Now you fast forward a little bit to like when you and I and everyone else listening was in middle school and we could talk on the phone for like seven hours a night, right? Like we loved talking on the phone. And there were some of the most important conversations of our life at that point. And so what happened? What changed? What changed was we learned how to use telephones.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And we learned how to use that technology. And what's interesting is when you are on the phone, you actually talk differently. All of us do. You will over-enunciate your words by about 30% on the phone. You'll put about 15% more emotion into your voice than if you're talking to someone face-to-face because you know subconsciously that they can't see you. You need a signal.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
So you actually learned a bunch of skills for phone conversations. Right now, we are living through a period of people learning skills for online conversations. And we're like that first 15 years after phones came out and became popular, right? It's a lot of screaming. It's a lot of mistakes, but it's from those mistakes that we learn. And Gen Z, I have two teenagers at home, I'm about to add.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Both my teenagers, they know how to have real conversations over text. I don't know how to do that. They have emotional conversations with emojis, right? Like they are, we don't need to despair for the future because we learn how to be good at communication, uh, be good communicators. Our brains crave being good communicators and they teach us how to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Okay, okay. So Luke and George are, for you, super communicators. And you are, I guarantee you, a super communicator back to them, right? You do it without even thinking about it. You just know how to ask the right question. You know how to show that you're listening. You know how to show that you care. You know how to... each of those things that you're doing with those two guys are skills.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You stop learning, right? You stop improving yourself because you assume that something is inherent or God-given or inborn or unmutable. And the truth of the matter is all of it's just skills. Can I ask you a question actually on that? So, I mean, what's interesting about, so you moved here from the UK, right? You moved to the UK to the US. You're still clearly, still clearly a Brit.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Like I doubt anyone bumps into you and they're like, oh, that guy grew up in Austin. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Okay. Okay. So do you feel like how you communicate, has it had to change since you've moved to the U.S. ?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Well, and what I love about that, about this going native aspect is that like, it's actually like what your brain, what your brain was created to do, right. Was to make it easier and easier and easier for you to communicate. And my guess is if you went back to the UK, you would slip right back into mentioning Cadbury and, and the pluralizations. And if I moved there, eventually I would too.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And I'd start saying lift and boot and, and it's, Our brains are amazingly versatile when it comes to communication. And a huge part of it is just giving it the skills that it needs and then thinking about this and working on it and being willing to experiment and practice. And then we become super communicators. I love it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, absolutely. So if I have a sub stack, if people want to come sign up for my newsletter, it's called the science of better. Um, you can find a sign up for that on my email or on my, my website, which is charlesduhigg.com D U H I G G. Or if you just Google the power of habits, which was the first book I wrote or super communicators, um, you will definitely find my website.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And you might not recognize them as skills right now because they just feel so natural to you, but they are skills. And once we identify them as skills, they become fungible. You can talk to a stranger the same way you talk to Luke. And if you do, it'll have the same impact that it has on Luke, which is that it feels like you're the most wonderful person on earth. Okay, so what are those skills? So
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And actually, I have my email address on my website. And I will say, I read and respond to every single email I get from a reader. You may regret that after this episode.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But I would love to hear from folks. And if you do want to buy a copy of Super Communicators, you can find it at Amazon and Barnes & Nobles, and most importantly, your local bookstores.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
One of the things that we know about super communicators, and this is the first skill, is that, and as I mentioned, we're all super communicators one time or another, but consistent super communicators, people who can connect with almost anyone, is that they tend to ask more questions, like 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And some of those questions, we don't even register as questions or things like, oh, you know, what'd you make of that? Or like, oh, did you like that restaurant? Like little things that just invite us into a conversation. But some of the questions are what are known within psychology as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks us about our values or beliefs or experiences.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Anyone can become a super communicator. But you have to realize that they're skills and you have to practice them a little bit. And you have to commit to thinking about how you communicate to get better at it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's like as simple as like if you meet someone who's a doctor instead of saying, you know, oh, what hospital do you work at? Saying, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? It's as easy to ask the second question as the first, but the second question invites them to talk about who they are. It's a deep question.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It doesn't appear like a deep question, but it allows you to have a real conversation. So this is the first skill. Super communicators ask a lot more questions, and they ask deep questions. Instead of asking about the facts of someone's life, they ask how they feel about their life.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Totally. Totally. And the thing I love about that too, and I think that this is, that's a really, that's a really smart comment because what it also recognizes is when I ask you about your personal experiences, I'm asking you about something that you are an expert on.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And so, so let's say we're having a political debate and we disagree with each other and I've got all my facts in my pocket and you've got all your facts in your pocket. But if I ask you like, how did you feel on election day? Like when you saw the results come in, how did you feel? You're the expert in how you feel. I can't be like, oh, you didn't feel that way. You actually felt this way, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And then when you ask me how I felt, I'm the expert in what I feel. And so instead of us trying to out-expert each other and out-duel each other, we're both coming with these authentic experiences that we have.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And it allows us to find all the things we have in common, because if you voted for someone that if you voted for the person I didn't vote for and vice versa, my guess is actually that was the smallest part of that week. Right. It was was casting that ballot. There was also like waking up the morning after there's taking your kids to school.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
There's, you know, talking to friends about the election. Those are all things that we have in common. Right. And finding that commonality really helps us also talk about what we don't have in common, which is really powerful. Okay, next skill. Okay, so first one is asking deep questions. Second skill is that once we ask those questions, we often think that it's just our job to listen to people.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And that's a little bit of a misunderstanding of what listening is, right? So what's interesting is that most of the time when we think about listening, what we think about is we think about remaining silent, right? Two ears, one mouth, remaining silent, listening to what you're saying. Maybe we'll nod our head. Maybe we'll like look you in the eyes and say like, hmm, that's interesting.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
That's not listening. That's the first condition of listening, but you need more to actually be a good listener. And in part, it's because particularly when we're talking about something that's really sensitive or really important or really controversial or something we have feel conflict over that we disagree with each other.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
There's always a sneaking suspicion in the back of our heads that you are not actually listening to me. You're just waiting your turn to speak. So what do I do to overcome that suspicion? Well, there's actually this technique. Let me give you the answer. The answer is that you have to prove that you're listening. You have to prove to the person you're paying attention.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
And there's actually this technique that they teach at like Harvard and Stanford and all these other fancy schools that's called looping for understanding. And this is what it is. There's three parts to this. When you're talking to someone and you get to that point in the conversation where like things are getting real, step one is you should ask a question, right? Preferably a deep question.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Try and use that, you know, ask someone, how do you feel about that? What does that mean to you? Why did you decide to do X? And then listen to what they're saying in response. And when they're done answering the question, repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. Now, the key here is it cannot be mimicry, right? This is what bad salespeople do.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
They just say back what you just said to them or the last thing that you said. What it has to be is you're trying to prove to them that you're actually processing this. So it has to be something like, you know, what I hear you saying is this. And that reminds me of something you said last week because I think they're connected, right?
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
You're proving to them that you're thinking about what they said, right? And most of us do these first two steps intuitively, right? This is just like, we kind of learned this in school. It's step three that I always forget. Because once you've said to them, here's what I heard you say, am I getting this right? Or you say, did I hear you correctly? You ask if you got it right.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Absolutely. I mean, that happens a lot. And of course, you can be a bad person and be a great communicator. You can be a good person and not be a great communicator. But you're exactly right that like communication is very central to not only how we think about ourselves, but but how we move through the world. And what's interesting is if you think about it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Because what you're really doing in that moment is you're asking for permission to acknowledge that you were listening. And when you acknowledge that I was listening, I become many, many times more likely to listen to you in return. This is basic social reciprocity. So that's the second skill is prove you are listening.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Ask deep questions, prove you're listening through a technique like looping for understanding, or maybe just asking follow-up questions, or maybe saying, oh man, that sounds so hard. I kind of know what that's like. I've been through something myself. Prove you're listening.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Yeah, and that's not fun, right? And by the way, if you look at transcripts of great conversations, what you see is that they're a total mess. If you have a transcript and everyone's being really eloquent, they're saying things in these really practiced ways, that's not a great conversation.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It might be a great transcript, but if you were in that conversation, you'd be like, this is the most boring thing on earth. Everyone's just waiting to hit the tennis ball.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
A good conversation is kind of messy and it has these nonlinear aspects. And that's important. That's how we connect with each other. What's the third skill? Okay, so there's two more. The third skill is that you need to understand vulnerability and the role of vulnerability in a conversation. because most people misunderstand what vulnerability is. We, we, this word has gotten used so much.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
We tend to think it means like, you know, crying on someone's shoulder or talking about like when your mom was mean to you, that's not what vulnerability is. Vulnerability has a very, very specific definition in neuroscience and psychology. And it's something that our brains have evolved to do, which is that when I tell you something that you could judge and
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
it creates a sense of vulnerability in me. Now, I might tell you something where I don't care about your judgment. I might tell you that I like Star Trek better than Star Wars. I think it's a better plot, better acting. And you could be like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Star Wars is definitely better than Star Trek. I don't care. I don't care if you agree with me.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
It's not like it's a high-stakes thing. But the act of me telling you something that you could judge, it sets off a neural cascade in my brain that creates a sense of vulnerability. And here's what we know, is that when I do that, if you don't judge me, if you choose to withhold judgment, and even more powerfully, if you share something about yourself that I could judge...
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
then it is impossible for us not to trust and like each other a little bit more. Our brains literally have evolved to use vulnerability as a signal as to whether we should trust other people. And that doesn't mean that I might agree with you. It doesn't mean that I might think you'd be a good friend.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Communication is Homo sapiens superpower, right? It is the thing that has allowed us to do better than every other species, to build families and villages and towns, to pass knowledge from one generation to the next generation. And so our brains have evolved to be pretty good at communication. Like we have all of the stuff in our head to be fantastic at it.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
But once I am vulnerable with you and you are vulnerable with me, once we engage in reciprocal vulnerability and reciprocal authenticity, we will trust each other and like each other a little bit more.
Modern Wisdom
#909 - Charles Duhigg - The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators
Oh, totally. Totally. So let's, so let's talk about like why, why communicate from an adaptive perspective, why communication is so important, why this particular trait might be even more important. Yeah. So it clearly it's adaptive to be able to communicate, right? If I can, if I can, we know that societies do better than individuals.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So asking those deep questions is a great habit, right? That's one thing. And it literally is a habit. If you just kind of practice it, you start doing it without thinking about it. But there's another habit that's really, really useful, which is proving that you are listening.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So one of the things that the research tells us, and I'm sure you know this as an attorney, is that oftentimes simply listening is not enough. Because the other person, they have this sneaking suspicion, particularly if this is a tough conversation, if this is something we disagree about. They have this sneaking suspicion. You're not actually listening.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Like, you're just staying silent until I shut up for a minute, and then you're going to jump in. So one of the things that we found is really important, particularly in what are known as conflict conversations, right? Where we just, we might disagree with each other, or we might be talking about something that's hard to talk about, like politics or religion.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
In those conversations, it's really, really powerful to prove that we're listening. And actually, the proving part is a habit. So there's a technique for it known as looping for understanding that they teach basically in every law school now. And it has these three parts. Part one is to ask a question, preferably a deep question, right?
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Part two, step two is when the person has answered that question, try and repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. And you've actually already done this a couple of times in this conversation, right? What I hear you saying is, and I'm going to prove to you, not only because the goal here is not mimicry.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
I'm going to prove to you that not only am I paying attention, I'm actually processing what you're thinking or what you're saying. I can put it into different words and maybe even give you a little insight on it. that you didn't have when you said it. And most of us do step one and step two intuitively.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Step three is the one I always forget, and this is where the habit comes in, is once I repeat back what I heard you say, ask if I got it right. Did I hear you correctly? Because when we do that, what we're actually doing is we're asking for the other person permission to acknowledge that we were listening.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And if I believe you are listening to me, I become much, much more likely to listen to you in return. So when I ask you permission to acknowledge that I was listening and you say, yeah, I think you heard what I was saying.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And what I love about that question is what's your favorite part? Is it what you're actually asking is how do you feel about your day? What was the part of your day that made you feel good? What was the part of your day that didn't make you feel good? That's why I think that question is so powerful. With my kids, I try and I have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
When I ask them about their friends, I ask them questions like, what do you admire about Jasper? It seems like you like him a lot. That's good. Right, because at that moment, what I'm actually asking them is I'm asking them, how do you feel about friendship? How do you feel about this particular guy? What are the things you look for, you value in another person?
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And we like being asked questions like that, right?
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Maya Angelou has this quote that research has borne out that nobody will remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. And it's exactly right. Now, I did want to address something that you had said before, because you're exactly right. Asking these questions can be really powerful. And And there are times when sharing about ourselves can feel really selfish, right?
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
If somebody says, oh, if we ask, where'd you go on vacation? And they say, oh, I went to Spain. And then you realize pretty quickly they only ask because they want to tell you about their vacation and the fancy yacht that they stayed on, right? Exactly, yeah. That's not great.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But there are times when looping for understanding, proving we're listening, does call on us to share something about ourselves. But the takeaway here is when you share something about yourself, it should be because you want to connect with the other person. You want to show them that you want to connect as opposed to I want to steal the spotlight from you.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And so oftentimes what we'll see is, you know, someone will say, oh, you know, my aunt passed away last week. And someone will say, I know exactly what that's like. My dog died seven years ago. And I still think about, like, that's not, I'm not trying to share to connect with you. I'm trying to steal the spotlight from you and aim it on myself.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But to say to someone, oh, I, you know, I was really close to my aunt too. And it, she was such an important part of my life. Like, tell me a little bit about your aunt. Like, like, what was she like? In that case, what I'm actually doing is I'm sharing of myself. I'm engaging in that social reciprocity, which feels really good and meaningful and trustworthy.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But I'm doing it in the service of trying to connect with you, show you that I want to connect with you, and learn from you.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
I was just going to say, they teach teachers to do this by telling them that if a student comes in, they want to have a conversation. Start the conversation by asking them, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged? Or do you want to be heard? Which is the practical, this emotional and the social conversation.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Because to exactly your point, if a kid says, no, no, I just need you to like, I just need you to know what's going on. Then you can say, oh, that sounds really hard. Like that's all that you need. You've told me that's all that you need to feel, to feel good about this. That sounds difficult.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
No, what's really interesting is when researchers started sort of identifying these folks that we call consistent super communicators, because we're all super communicators at one time or another, but some people can essentially kind of connect with anyone. The number one behavior that they found was that these people tended to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
That's fascinating.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Can I ask you something, actually? Yeah, yeah. When you're choosing your jury, you're going through voir dire, and you're asking them questions, and you're listening to what they're saying, how accurate do you think you can be in figuring out what kind of mind, like what frame of mind that person is in, what they're going to bring to the jury room.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And what's interesting, though, is, and we all know people like this, some of the questions you don't even register as questions. They'll say things like, oh, what'd you think about that? Or what'd you say next? It's these little, essentially, invitations to share with them. But then some of the questions that they are very comfortable asking are what are known as deep questions.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So I think quiet negotiations happen all the time. And I love that story about the jury. You know, I tried to, throughout the book, I tried to tell a bunch of stories just because I think it's more interesting, like a The story about a CIA officer recruiting overseas spies and how the Big Bang Theory became such a big hit.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But in that story in particular, this idea of quiet negotiation comes up, which is, and research sort of shows this, that every time we engage in a conversation, at least the beginning of it, is oftentimes a quiet negotiation. And a quiet negotiation, the goal of a quiet negotiation is not to win the negotiation. The goal of a quiet negotiation is to understand what the other person wants.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
right so when when i sit down with my wife and we talk about where to go on vacation next year i might start the conversation by saying you know like tell me like what what do you want out of a vacation like like what'd you like about last year what do you like about next year and and she's going to give me some answers and i'm going to respond to those i'm going to tell her oh you know i liked that too but here's something i didn't like and what we're doing is we're engaging in a little bit negotiation not just about where to go on vacation but also what kind of conversation we're going to have
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Is this a conversation where you tell me what you want and it's your way or the highway? Or is this a conversation where we kind of go back and forth and we share with each other? Or is this a conversation where we're just dreaming? We dream as big as we want to and we know that there's no consequences. We're probably not gonna end up going on three safaris in one year.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But the quiet negotiation is something that happens in every conversation, and it's how we figure out how to talk to each other. How formal am I going to be? Can I make jokes? Or is this like a serious conversation? Feeling them out. Yeah, you're feeling them out. And we do this subconsciously, right? We do it almost without noticing it. But the people who do notice it just a little bit...
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
They're the ones who end up being very persuasive and very good communicators. Because when we say this person is telling me what kind of conversation they want to have, we become a little bit more attuned to paying attention to what kind of conversation they want to have. Because they might give us a clue. They might sound really serious. We might be talking about budgets for next year.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
It seems like this is a practical conversation. And they say something like, you know, I'm just really anxious we're going to have layoffs. If I'm listening to that quiet negotiation, I'm hearing you say, oh, this is actually an emotional conversation for you before it's a practical conversation. You are anxious and you are worried. Those emotions are driving your decisions.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And until we acknowledge those and we kind of like put them on the table, we're not going to be able to have a practical conversation about the numbers.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And a deep question is something that asks someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And that can sound kind of intimidating, right? When I'm like, oh, you should ask people about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. Except that it's as simple as if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you work at?
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And that's a really important word, energy, because let's talk for a second about what's happening inside our brains at that moment. So when we're in a conversation, and it's a good conversation, a conversation where we feel like the other person understands us, we understand them, what's happening is that our bodies and our brains are changing.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So even in this conversation, even though we're separated by many thousands of miles, our heart rates are matching each other more and more. Our breath patterns are matching each other more and more. Even the dilation of our pupils. Thank you. I don't know. to the
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
You could ask, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? Right? That second question, that invites the person to tell you something real, right? That invites them to tell you sort of what they believe in or what their experiences were as a kid that sort of led them to where they are. That's a really powerful question.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Thank you for watching! Thank you. Thank you.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And so I think that the most persuasive people, they recognize, the best communicators, super communicators recognize that. Asking these deep questions is just as easy as asking shallow questions. But when I ask a deep question, I'm inviting you to have a real conversation with me. And when you know that I'm listening to you, you start to listen to me, and then we're persuading each other.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So I'm trying to give the listener some tips on that. That's definitely half of it, right? Is that half of it is I can ask you a deep question that sounds like a shallow question. So, and oftentimes that's just a matter of asking you, here's the big tip, is instead of asking you about the facts of your life, ask you a question that would prompt you to talk about how you feel about your life.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So instead of just asking, you know, where do you live? Oh, I live in the Heights. Oh, what do you like about the Heights? Right. Or, you know, you can do it with almost anything. It's very, very easy. Now, the thing is that that's a great way to start a conversation. And there's a guy named Nick Epley at the University of Chicago, who's basically studied deep questions his whole career.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
I think that once you ask an easy to ask deep question, it's actually much easier and much more welcome to ask a deep question that seems like a deep question. If I ask you, what do you like about the Heights? And you say, well, the sense of community is amazing up there. Oh yeah? Tell me about it. What's the community? Well, my wife passed away a year ago and my neighbors have been there for me.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
then suddenly it's totally okay for me to say, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, tell me about your wife. What was she like? Right? What research shows is that we don't have a resistance to deep questions. We have a resistance to deep questions that move a little bit too quickly. But you can actually move fast if you ramp up the intimacy.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And so if I ask you a question, and this is the other thing that super communicators do, and I think you talk about this in your own work a lot, that they look for opportunities where people are trying to tell them what they want to talk about, right? So let's take someone passing away. This is the most, my own, my father passed away about seven years ago. And I went back to work.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
I was working at the New York Times at that point. I went back to work and I had this experience that I think everyone has had, which is, You know, people say, oh, where were you last week? And you say, oh, I was at my dad's funeral. And they all say the same thing. They all say, oh, my condolences. I'm so sorry. And then they move on to whatever you were talking about before. Right.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Because like they don't know what to say. But anyone who's been through that experience knows that if somebody were to say like, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, tell me what your dad was like. What was because that's all you've been thinking about for the last two weeks. Right. As you've been thinking about your dad and the funeral and the eulogies and how much they touched you. Right.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And so I think what super communicators do is they look for people to offer them invitations and then they accept those invitations. Even if accepting that invitation means I'm going to ask you something that maybe is not something that I normally would ask, right? Maybe I sit down next to you in a meeting and you tell me about the fact that you went to your kid's graduation that weekend.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
And instead of just saying, oh, congratulations, that's awesome. Let's get down to the agenda. I say, oh, congratulations, that's awesome. What did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage? Yeah. That's when suddenly we're connecting with each other.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
I think that's huge. And I think that's such a great insight that just by paying attention to the cadence of how they speak, they're telling us stuff. Because the truth of the matter is, Sometimes when we're communicating with someone, we assume that they are communicating by accident, right? Oh, you mentioned your kid's graduation, but you don't wanna talk about your kid's graduation.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
You mentioned that you were at a funeral, but you don't wanna talk about the funeral. That's not how communication works. We mention things that we wanna talk about, right? Exactly. We avoid things that we don't wanna talk about. So if somebody has brought something up with you, That shouldn't be like, oh, no, I kind of touched the third rail there.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
That should be, oh, this person, like, they want me to ask about that.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Oh, thank you.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Yeah, absolutely. And this actually started a couple of years ago before I wrote the book because I got into this bad habit with my wife, which is I'd come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day, you know, like – My boss doesn't appreciate me and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am. And she would give me this really good advice.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
She would say, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and get to know each other a little bit better? And instead of being able to hear what she was saying, I would get more upset, right? Which I think every couple has experiences of this. And so I went to researchers and I was like, look, I'm a professional communicator. Why do I keep falling into the same trap?
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Like, why do why do I try and solve her problems when she just wants me to listen and empathize? Why does the exact opposite occur? And they said, well, here's what we figured out. It just actually in the last decade with neural imaging is that when you're in a discussion, you think you know what that discussion is about and usually think it's about one thing.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
You think it's about where to go on vacation next year. Right. And they said, what's actually true is that if we could see inside your head, what we would see is that that discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations, right? And all these conversations are all happening during one discussion, and they tend to fall into one of three buckets, as you pointed out.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
So in general, our conversations are either practical conversations where we're making plans or solving problems together, or they're emotional conversations where I'm telling you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
or their social conversations about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society and the identities that are important to us. And they said, all three of those kinds of conversations are all equally legitimate. And all three of them will probably happen during a discussion if it goes on long enough.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But the key is, if you and the person you're talking to aren't having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you will not feel connected to each other. In fact, you'll have trouble actually hearing what the other person is saying. And so that's what was happening with me and my wife, right? I was having an emotional conversation. She was having a practical conversation.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
They're both equally legitimate, but because they weren't the same kind of conversation at the same moment, we couldn't hear each other.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
That's exactly right. Right, right. And you're like, I can repeat back exactly what you just said, but the truth is you're not actually listening. You think you're listening,
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
But because you're not in the same mindset as this other person, because you're not hearing that, oh, this is an emotional conversation, this is a practical conversation, you're missing the important parts of what they're saying.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Well, and what's amazing is that our words can actually disagree with us and we'll still feel connected. So like, let's say we're talking about politics and we're both voting for different people. But you say like, you know, the thing that's most important to me is security because my own family has been threatened by crime in my area.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Now, I could say like, oh, but crime's down across the nation, right? You're making an emotional statement. I could say, respond to something practical. But if I say, you know, I totally, I feel that fear. I know what that fear is like. Now, my solution is, I think, a little bit different from your solution. But I think that we have this thing in common.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Even though our words will disagree with each other, we will feel more connected. There's actually something that It has evolved in our brain, social reciprocity that makes it impossible for us not to feel a little bit more connected when we're having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.
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Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Yeah, it's really fun.
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
Charles Duhigg: Asking Questions That Build Instant Connection
Well, and yet at the same time, everyone communicates all day long, right? This is the number, this is the most important skill you can have as an attorney. You could be the, you tell me, but I imagine you could be the finest legal mind on the planet. And if you can't communicate, it doesn't matter. No.