133. From Good to Great: How Supercommunicators Unlock the Secrets to Connection with Charles Duhigg

The ability to connect and align our goals with those of others is a true superpower. Today we will explore how to be a super communicator. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to think fast, talk smart. Today's podcast. I'm excited to chat with Charles duwig Charles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently writing for the New Yorker magazine. He is the author of the hugely popular and useful The Power of Habit and smarter, faster, better. His new book, Super Communicators, now fits perfectly. In the focus of this podcast, welcome Charles, thanks for having me.

I look forward to this conversation continuing from the dialogue we had when we were walking through the place where I grew up and we didn't have. I was looking forward to it too. Let's get started. His previous two books focus on motivation, decision making, and personal growth. I'm curious to know what made you analyze the communication well. I think there were two impetus, the first was that the power of habit and smarter fasts are better, it's really about how to improve ourselves, but the more I thought about it and the more I was exposed to how people used books, I was often told that this was really helpful in helping me create an exercise habit. or quit this, stop drinking or smoking, but what do I do with other people?

Because most of our life is other people and of course that's communication, you know, it's someone who studied it their whole life and then this also happened. where I felt like I couldn't communicate well, I often want to say I'm a journalist so I'm supposed to be a professional communicator and I would come home like I was having a hard day at work and I was in a bad mood and I was complaining to my wife and she gave me

good

advice like, you know? Why don't you invite your boss to lunch so you can get to know each other and overcome these problems? problems and instead of being able to listen to her I would get madder right, I would, I would, I would say like why aren't you on my side, why AR and then she would get mad because I was, you know, being irrational and and the more than this It happened with my co-workers with my children, the more I realized that there is something here that I don't understand and that's why almost all the books that I own were born from my desire to basically call experts like you and ask them questions and and communication me It seems very important, well, you do a very

good

job of defining some of the key concepts and moving from your own focus to others.

The focus, as you say, is really about where the communication lies in super communicators. You do a really good job. To explain the role of

connection

and alignment in successful communication, can you help us understand some of the neuroscience behind it? Absolutely, this is fascinating and it's one of the things that over the last decade we've really started to appreciate for the first time, is that in this conversation, when we talk to each other, even though we don't realize it, our pupils will dilate at the same time. rhythm and our breathing patterns will start to match each other and our heart rates will actually start to match each other and if we could see inside our brains, what we would see is that your brain and mine are becoming more aligned with Al, which which is known within neuroscience as nursing and training and the reason why I think this is so powerful is because it tells us what the goal of communication is, the goal of communication is to make that

connection

to start thinking differently. the same way, which does not mean that we have to agree with each other, it just means that we understand each other, but equally what is interesting about it.

Does it tell us what communication is? I experience an emotion, a thought or an idea and I want to share it with you and if I share it well enough, you actually experience that same emotion, that same thought, that same idea that we get used to. To the degree that we think similarly, literally our brains match each other and that is communication, which is the superpower that we have as humans, the synchronization of neurological patterns is really super interesting and I think and I'm curious if you learned in your research, it's more likely to happen when people tell vivid stories and images on Emotion, so it's not just about listing information, it's actually really engaging, that's right, yes, it's absolutely true.

I know this is a big question and you spend a lot of time on it. There is no time in his book that covers this, but he identifies three types of conversations that we often alternate between. Can you detail the three types and help us understand some of the characteristics and implications of each of them so that we know that the way this came about was the same? The way I was, I had this frustration with my wife. The researchers saw that this was happening everywhere and they started to look at what was really happening and one of the first things they found is that we tend to think that an argument is something about one thing, we're talking about our day or the Jimmy's grades or where we're going on vacation, but what they found is that almost universally each discussion was made up of different types of conversations that were happening and if people were not having the same type of conversation at the same time, it wasn't They communicated with each other, they were frustrated, mhm, so most of those conversations fall into one of three groups, there is a practical conversation where maybe we make decisions together. we're just deciding what we're going to talk about today, we could be solving problems, we could be making plans, those are practical discussions, then there are emotional conversations where if I tell you what my problem is, I don't want you to solve it.

To me, it's right, I want, I want you to feel empathy, I want, I want you to tell me that you understand and maybe you share, you share your own emotions, and then there are the social conversations that are about how we relate to each other, how we relate to each other. society, how we relate. I think society sees us as how our origins where we grew up and our experiences shape who we are today and what researchers have discovered is that if two people have a different type of conversation, even if both conversations are valid, they don't connect, so that when I came home and was upset about a day at work, I was having an emotional conversation and my wife responding with advice was having a practical conversation and both are equally valid conversations, but because they weren't the same conversation at the same time, we both We would be frustrated mainly because we wouldn't hear each other, so it seems to me that there is another level of alignment that we are talking about, there is neural alignment, but there is also absolutely absolutely conversational alignment.

And I think I'd be curious because you've studied this a lot, one of the things we know about super communicators or people who are consistently super communicators because we can all be super communicators at different times, but the people who can do it on demand is that they seem Noticing what kind of conversation is going on, we have trained ourselves to look for little clues or signs that tell us, "Oh, this person," might be talking about something that seems practical, but they feel it. something, this is an emotional conversation or what that person is talking about about a plan that they want to do, but what this has to do with is how they think other people see them and how they see them, that is a social conversation, yes, so those who are more agile in their communication have a level of meta awareness of recognizing patterns of what they're doing and in the work that I do in spontaneous speech I spend a lot of time helping people develop the skills to recognize some of those things and First of all, I think it starts with listening to me and listening to me is not just listening to what is being said, but observing what is happening in the moment and understanding, so the words may not necessarily reflect the intention, so someone might ask comments, but what they are really asking for is support. correct and when you observe their non-verbal behaviors, the tone of their voice, their body posture, the context in which they ask, you begin to see that many of us, either out of anxiety or emotion, enter into a conversation without taking a breath to understand.

What is in the Circumstances that might lead us to connect better in absolute terms for that level of alignment? I think it's really interesting to think that there's this neurological alignment that happens, but as you talk about it it sounds like absolutely conversational alignment rather than having to detail. Instead of having to pay a lot of attention to your eyes and your hands and your posture, what you do is you look for a right Salt, you look for a whole image and you allow that image to register with you and the more we can step back and just give ourselves a chance I think at the end of the day it's about being patient and giving ourselves a moment to think before we open our mouths and ask ourselves why I'm about to open my mouth.

We are often so in our heads. what we are going to say and how we are going to appear that when you encourage yourself or learn habitually to focus on others, it allows you to assimilate that information and make adjustments. We are often so caught up and right? I'm going to say this the right way, what are they going to think of me? The time pressure I feel or my God, this is the boss stepping in at that moment to read those signals and I think that's absolutely right. Think it is so. absolutely true and I think there are ways to short circuit it.

I mean, one of the things we know about people who are consistently super communicators is that they have a set of behaviors that are really interesting and they tend to ask 10 to 20 times more questions than the average person, but a lot of the questions They're questions that we don't even register, they're things like what do you think about it or what's interesting, like what do you say next or, yeah, what happened after that, these little questions that invite us and I don't think they're thinking of them as questions, It's just a habit, right, it's an instinct, right, and they're looking for more information and by doing so you're giving the other person permission to share more and take up more space and time, allowing people to reveal more, yeah .

Beyond asking more questions, are there other things that consistent super communicators do that others don't do as much? There are a number of things, one of them is that they tend to ask certain types of questions, which Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago has written very well about this, they ask deep questions, so a deep question is something that asks me about my values, my beliefs or my experiences and what is interesting. It's just that deep questions don't usually seem deep, so, for example, if you meet someone and you say, like you, what do you do?

I am a doctor. Oh, did you always want to be a doctor? When did you decide to go? Your parents went to medical school as doctors. Those are three profound questions because the way someone answers them will inevitably tell you something about how they see themselves, what happened in their lives, the values ​​that led them to medicine, and what we are learning. something about them I think is wonderful and asking questions is really liberating and the nice thing about it is that you can accumulate or think ahead about some types of questions that you might want to ask, not that you write them down, but there is work you can do . you can do beforehand and, although it may sound contradictory, in these spontaneous interactions you can prepare to be absolutely spontaneous and, in fact, you can write them directly.

Allison Wood Brooks from Harvard Business School did this wonderful study in which she had people. I would talk to strangers and write down three topics they wanted to discuss before the conversation and then it would take seven to 10 seconds and then people would put the card in their back pocket and they would find that very, very few of them actually talked about things. had written, but almost everyone felt less anxious during the conversation because they knew they had this in their back pocket, so having a couple of questions up their sleeve and some of them can be so simple, I mean, at first.

At the end of the day, most deep questions are a version of what you did with it and sometimes you can just ask someone who says, I went to medical school, oh yeah, what did you do with that? How was that? Yeah, that's all it takes, absolutely my My mother-in-law, who I talked about earlier on this podcast, was a black Bel in small talk and her three magic words were Tell me more, yeah, and she gives you permission to put a lot into it. time in the book to talk. conflictive communication and maybe that's because of the situation you had with your wife that you shared, but what best practices do you suggest to help us communicate better when we're in conflict?

One of the things that the research shows, and many of This comes from Sheila Heen and her colleagues at the Harvard Professional Negotiation Project, is that many times when a breakdown occurs in a conflict conversation it is due to one of two things and possibly to both. The first is that thepeople involved do not believe the other. The person is really listening well so what's really important is not just listening but showing that you're listening and one of my favorite techniques for this is this thing called um looping for listening which has these three steps so ask a question , hopefully, deep question then repeatRemember what you heard the person say in your own words and then the third step, the one we usually forget, is to ask them if you did it right and the reason why that is so powerful is because not only It means you are really listening. you're going to listen to what they say and make sure you listen, but that shows them that you want to understand, but then the second thing that can happen, even if people think they're listening to each other, is that they can get involved. in a fight for control and it's very, very natural when you're in conflict your instinct is to control everything you can and the easiest thing to try to control is the other person, right?

If I can make you see all the events that you are going through. to agree with me, if I can get you to listen to my argument, then everything will be fine or I could tell you, you know, you start talking about something, I mean, I don't want to hear about it like I'm trying. to control your behavior I'm trying to or you say you're upset there's no reason to be upset I'm trying to control your emotions that's toxic and we actually know this from research on marriage therapy that when people try and control each other it ends up destroying the conversation alternately.

There are things that we can control together even if we are in a fight and in particular there are three that seem powerful if we can control each other well, so if I tell you, I heard what you just said I just need a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds to think on how that makes me, how to respond to that. I am showing you that I am controlling myself and I invite you to control yourself the second we can. What we do is control the environment, so instead of fighting at 2:00 in the morning when the baby screams, let's wait until 10: when we are well rested and we can do this over coffee and the third thing we we can control. are the limits of conflict, one of the most destructive things in marriages is what is known as the kitchen sink, where we start fighting about where we are going to spend Thanksgiving and, finally, the fight is over Your mother and I, she drives me crazy and we don't make enough money and that's why we can't do anything good and you know everyone looks down on us so a fight about one thing turns into a fight about everything so The third thing we can control is the boundaries of that conflict and say look, we're just going to talk about Thanksgiving, like we're not talking about each other's mothers, right?

The good thing about that is that that control impulse still exists, but instead of letting it go, it makes the conversation toxic by trying to control each other. another, I'm giving a channel where we can control things together, we are cooperating in the conversation even if we don't agree with each other, control and power around who controls what in conflict is clearly critical and I like how you broke it down what I have control over and its impact. This notion of a loop is really powerful. We've talked often on this podcast about the value of paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is very important. It doesn't just validate. I literally heard you. I heard those words and I understand them, but I took my time. listen, so I'm validating you as a person and that can be really helpful. I think if we all reflected on a recent conflict and thought about where we were exerting control or trying to exert control and the impact it had on communication we can do things very differently Can I ask you how our conflict is different in the work of our conflict at home or are they just versions of the same basic impulse?

Well, I think they're versions of the same basic impulse, I think at work. we have additional layers of power, status, tenure history, all of these things that influence now, they can also affect our personal lives, but they have ramifications and they are more encoded in some way and we have to be sensitive to that and I appreciate that, so I could having the conflict with my spouse or with my children right now, but at work it might not be appropriate to bring it up, so I have to temporarily think about how that happens, so I analyze the underlying elements and I think the advice you are giving is essential .

I see conflict as a problem that needs to be solved and the best way to solve problems is to collaborate rather than trying to force someone in that direction, yes, and at work in some ways that might be It's easier simply because the work is designed around problem solving at home, it's not necessarily like that, so I think each context has its own challenges, but underlying I think this notion of the control that you have and the control that you try to exert is really what's at stake . Well, I think raising this question of power and hierarchy and differences, I think it's really important.

I spent several months with Amazon writing an article about them and they basically have a rule that Jeff Bezos has created, which is when a meeting starts. the younger person speaks first and then the more senior person speaks last because and and and that's sometimes difficult because you sit there and say this is a budget meeting, what you really want to know is what the boss's business is because that's what that we're going to end up doing it, but the boss can't start and as a result you have to almost without a network give your opinion, but what it does is ensure that you have a voice in that room and as a result you may change your mind, He or she may change their mind, they may not change their mind, but the fact that you know they have heard what you have said means that you are more invested in the ultimate solution and I know it.

You and I know Amy Edmonson and this notion of Psychological Safety: the feeling that your voice matters is really important and we've seen this especially with hybrid communication, where some are in the room and others are chatting virtually. Fairness is really important. and having processes and procedures that bring all voices to the table, uh, are really important, which brings me to my next question: you also spend some time in your new book talking about online communication, yeah, and I I'm wondering if you have any rules or ideas beyond what you just suggested about what Amazon does to help us communicate better when we're virtual in some way, maybe it's visually virtual like WebEx Zoom teams or slack or text or even social media, what do you think about that?

It's one of my favorite chapters because it's this chapter about this group that brought together gun control and gun rights enthusiasts and brought them together in Washington DC to have this big meeting and their goal wasn't to get people to agree. The goal wasn't even for them to find common ground, they just wanted to see if they could have a civil conversation, if they could sit down, the bar was low, yes, if they could talk to each other without shouting. Halfway through the day and it worked. Okay, so when they were in person, they taught them things like looping to understand different techniques and they said this is

great

and I actually talked to several people who had attended and they said, you know, I was getting on the plane to go to home. and I was thinking if I could tell all my friends about this, we can change the world this way, it's amazing.

They got home and had actually created a private Facebook group to continue the conversation and had invited a few more. People came on it and within 45 minutes of connecting, people were calling each other. Jack kicked the Nazis like he completely fell apart and I think one of the main reasons he fell apart is because people assumed I can communicate online the same way. The way I communicate face to face, which of course isn't true, but it's even less true than we think. When phones first became popular, there were all these articles about how we could never have a meaningful phone. conversation because you can't see the person, you can't see their expressions and the phones were just going to be used for stock transactions and the people, the funny thing is that they were right at that time if you listen to those first The conversations are people, the People don't know how to talk to each other on the phone, but of course now everyone knows that when you're a teenager, you have hours-long conversations on the phone and you feel so close to that person that it's because we've learned a set of skills. for telephone conversations, Internet communication or online dialogue are very, very young.

The first email was sent in 1982. Most of us don't start sending emails if we're old enough until the 2000s, the turn of the century. Texting only really took off once the iPhone and as a result each of those modes of communication has its own rules, its own logic, but if we assume that we can talk to someone the same way on the phone, we can talk with that person. by email we're probably going to make a mistake right, sarcasm works

great

if you can hear the tone of my voice, if I send you a sarcastic text message you have no idea I'm trying to be sarcastic and then you think I'm idiot, so that's one of the things that I think is helpful to recognize is to just say oh, actually, if you're about to send a text or if you're about to send an email or if you're about to about to call someone." Take a second and ask yourself how this mode of conversation that I need to adapt works.

Being aware of the channel really makes a difference, it makes a big difference and all of us are constantly changing channels and we have to take a breath as you say. Thinking about one is this the best channel for this message, yes, and then secondly, what are the limitations or advantages of this channel and how can I take advantage of them instead of just communicating the way I always communicate and yet , much of what has happened with digital? The revolution is that it has pushed us to talk faster, to say, oh, I can send, I can text, I'm not even G to think about what I'm saying, I'm just going to drill it as fast as I can and press send I'm G to post something online I'm GNA send you a quick email the more we slow down to just half a second the more we can communicate through that channel.

I'm starting to hear threads throughout our conversation and they are clearly there in your book. This notion of alignment? This notion of deceleration. These are things that super communicators do that really help them be more effective. I want to go back to that walk you and I took. my hometown and as we were walking we talked about the power of storytelling and clearly you are an incredible storyteller and your new book includes many memorable stories when you think about conveying the information you convey, when do you plan to use story? How do you conceptualize the story?

What is your process for telling stories? There is a story in the book about non-verbal communication. I wanted to write about non-verbal communication, particularly laughter. Yeah, because I thought laughter was really interesting and I had talked to this guy once. who was a psychologist at NASA who was his job to find out who was emotionally intelligent and who was pretending very well and he said he could do it until he started paying attention to how different people laughed and he discovered that he started By doing this he would get in at the beginning of an interview.

These are applicants carrying a bunch of paperwork and wearing this flashy yellow tie. He would spill the papers like it was an accident, but he did it on purpose and then he would start laughing. so loud and he was like, I can't believe I just did that, not only that, but my son made me wear this tie today and now I look like a clown and he was paying attention to whether the canon sitting there was laughing politely. Like or if they matched her energy and his affection because if they matched his energy or an effect, they were making an offer.

I want to connect with you. Those were people who were good at connection and good at emotional intelligence. The reason that story was I think it's powerful because now when we think of laughter, we think of someone walking into a room and astronauts and NASA, right, it's easy to remember that lesson about laughter, yeah, and One of the things I try to do is, frankly, incorporate as much as I can into the stories, so it's the arc with the details that you really look for as you craft your stories, so I think actually the detail is great, but not as necessary as the arc, okay, so every story has a beginning, a middle and an end and when people think about stories they tend to focus on the beginning and the end.

You know I needed to make some money, so I went and got a job at McDonald's. The interesting thing is that it's in the middle where people really listen. in the middle it iswhat matters and the reason why it matters is because it gives me the opportunity to see you learn something, to see you try an idea. That idea may fail at first, but you learn something from it that allows the idea to work. through that process it actually helps me understand the idea if you just tell me what the idea is, I don't absorb it as completely as if you said I tried X and it didn't work for this reason and I tried Y and it worked.

It didn't work for that reason and then I found Z and z. Now I understand why Z was so powerful, but if you had started with Z I wouldn't have known that I love Mantra, that the medium matters, yes, there is so much pressure in communication. Focus on primacy and recency, the beginning and the end, and it's in the middle where some of the magic happens. I think you should absolutely focus on how you start and how you end, but that arc in the middle really matters as we carry our conversation. In closing, I have one last question before we continue with our battery of quick-end questions uh, you're probably better known at least currently we'll see if that changes based on your new book about your work on habits what new communication habits have you adopted as a result of your new research and new book and how did you go about instilling those habits?

That's a great question, first of all, just getting really comfortable asking questions. I think sometimes people are hesitant to ask questions because they're worried that they'll seem too curious or that the other person won't want to answer or is just anxious and yet what I found and what all the studies have shown is that if you You ask someone a question, it doesn't matter what the question is. They love to answer it correctly. I love talking about myself. Talking about yourself and asking a question gives us the opportunity to let the other person do something they love.

Asking a deep question is even better because it gives me the opportunity to learn who you are and remember this moment that was important to you. so I think one of the habits is to ask this question and then the second one and we have. I haven't done much of that in this discussion, but I find that loop to understand almost instinctively now when I talk to someone. and they describe something to me, I say, okay, okay, let me tell you that and tell me if I'm wrong. I think what you were telling me was and I don't even think about doing it, but people really love that they like it when you do it and that means I'm listening more closely, so those are the habits that have been most powerful for me. .

You are certainly an expert at asking questions and in fact I would say that your asking questions is meant to be a loop because after having been engaged in conversations with you, your follow-up questions clearly demonstrate that you heard and understood what I say, which I think fulfills that loop obligation absolutely and in fact there's some really interesting research by uh. Michael Yans, who's at Imperial College London, got exactly to the point that if we ask a follow-up question, if we ask someone a question, they answer it, and then we ask them a follow-up question, they think we've heard. what they said and that's all it takes absolutely and and that's yet another paraphrasing and looping tool that we could all work on developing absolutely so before we wrap up I'd like to ask my guests questions in a quick format The first question I make it unique for you and the other two are consistent among all the guests, are you ready for that?

Yes, absolutely, we've talked about how to ask questions and answer them and I'm curious if you have a favorite deep question that you ask like your go-to question if you need to have one, you know, I don't, but what I find myself falling into? It's just that I often ask people, sometimes people mention things that have happened that could be easy to avoid from my father. I passed away 6 years ago and I found out that one of the things that happened afterwards was that I went back to work and everyone said I'm sorry, they gave me their deepest condolences, but no one asked me questions about my dad and I was desperate to talk.

About my father, the only thing I wanted to talk about was what he was like and what his funeral was like, and it was the most significant and, in some ways, the most interesting thing that had happened to me in years, in months, and so on, one What I try and do is try to listen to people tell me something about who they really are or their emotional life or something that has happened and then I feel the freedom and the feeling that it is a gift to ask them about it and then Sometimes they say like I don't want to talk about this or it's too recent, it's too raw or like oh, you'll get bored, you know what, but I think asking tells them something I want to know and opens the door to a deeper relationship by comparing the Just asking questions like that with a gift.

I think it's a really nice comparison that can help free a lot of people to follow what you do when you see it as a gift and an opportunity to invite more. Detailed people can always reject it, but many people will accept it and no one, and even if they reject it, they are not offended by the question, right, they understand that you want to connect with them and they may not be ready at that moment, but they they'll remember that when they're ready, question number two, you've talked to a lot of people and observed a lot of people, so I'll be very curious to know who is a communicator that you admire and why, oh, that's a great question. um I think the easy answer is to say that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton is right, these people that even Ronald Reagan knew as the great communicator um, I mentioned Nick Epley earlier who is at the University of Chicago, so there's something interesting. that I have known.

There are a number of people who work with Nick Epley or know him and talk to him once a year or once every two years and they all tell me the same thing, they all say, you know he's the nicest guy, I love talking to him. and then I say, well, how do you know, are you close to him? Oh, no, no, no. I see him at the Christmas party once a year, but I feel very fond of him and when I called Nick for the first time I found out that's exactly what happened and the reason is because he inevitably says something vulnerable about himself.

I mean, I called him to talk about his research and within 5 minutes we were talking about these kids that he had adopted from Ethiopia and how proud he was to see his kids playing soccer and you know how meaningful it was to be a part of that. I'm serious. He has a great talent for making you feel comfortable with him by being comfortable himself, and that's one of the things I've admired. and I tried to learn from him, super communication is not charisma, many times like a super communicator, it is not the funniest person you know or the smartest person you know, it is the person you love to talk to or she is the person you love to talk to the most, is the person you know if you are having a bad day and you think that if I call this person it will make me feel better, that is a beautiful definition of a super communicator and being present showing that vulnerability seemed to be components key to that final question for you.

What are the first three ingredients that are part of a successful communication recipe? Certainly, listening, having enough self-awareness to recognize different types of conversations, so, if he's having a practical conversation with someone, if he's talking about a budget or, and they tell you something. As you know, this weekend I saw my son graduate and I was very proud or I didn't get a chance to work on this this weekend because there was so much going on, to be able to hear that and say oh this. In reality, they are also inviting me into an emotional conversation.

I should ask them about his pride. I should ask them what happened this weekend and they may not want to talk about it, but let them know I'm there to have that conversation if they want. and then the third one, I think I was actually going to say that's interesting, but I think what I really want to say is that we've talked a lot about listening to other people and understanding them, but you're also a fascinating person. Whoever is in that conversation like you has really interesting things to say and sometimes we avoid it, we feel this humility or we feel this hesitation, but sharing who you are, sharing how you see the world is interesting to other people and inevitably it's you. the expert on your own experiences in a fascinating way uh Charles, this was fantastic, you are clearly a super communicator.

I wish you the best with the book. I enjoyed getting to know you and I think the advice you give in terms of trying to get in line. not just neurologically but aligning ourselves with the conversations that we have to hear to be present at Loop and show and demonstrate that incredibly beneficial thank you, oh thank you for having me.