Charles Duhigg is a journalist, speaker, and author. Effective communication is the foundation of any strong relationship. While some excel at it naturally, others struggle to express themselves and often get misunderstood. So, what are the best tips to become a master communicator and elevate your communication skills? Expect to learn what most people get wrong when it comes to understanding communication, the biggest differences between communicators and supercommunicators, how introverts and extroverts communicate differently, the best and worst ways to communicate as a couple, how to be more charismatic, how to get better as making good decisions and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What mistakes do people make in understanding communication?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I suppose communication is quite tightly tied to our sense of self. It's our expression of who we are. So when we look at somebody that's a good or a bad communicator, that's because they are a good or a bad communicator. What was the sense of self-worth comes through as well?
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.
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.
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.
It's really just a matter of learning how learning these skills about how communication works and you can form that bond.
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Chapter 2: How does introversion and extroversion affect communication?
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.
Well, I'm aware that a lot of people get worried about that level of opening up. I don't want to be seen as sort of too keen or too serious. That doesn't seem very fun. It doesn't seem very exciting. But to fight the fight as a person that likes deep conversations, who likes small talk? No one likes small talk, regardless of what it is. And people are very publicly castigating small talk as well.
It's the worst thing in the world. We're talking about the weather. Somebody brings up the weather and it's like, I can't believe that's all they had to talk about to do the thing.
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.
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.
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.
How can people better start deep conversations in a less awkward way? And how can people better receive deep questions in a less awkward way?
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.
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.
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