Supercommunicators with journalist Charles Duhigg | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

one of the things I like about you is that your books are different, oh thank you, you know, it's like sometimes writers write as if here's a book and here's another book that's like the other book, you know , and I like that your books are different, I mean to the point that I think it's a good book and I think that's the good thing about your work too, which is that you're not like I'm the expert, let me tell you that you are like me. on this journey I want to come, yes, and it's a pleasure to read, bringing people on the journey is actually the most important part of teaching them the idea, yes, of course, I think that when people ask me for advice on how to tell stories, I What I usually say is a lot of people focus on the beginning and the end of the story, yes, but the middle is where everything important happens, yes, and a lot of people just skip it.

I have always thought of myself and never want to be perceived as the expert I want. be perceived as the guide, yeah, you know, and when I write and when I speak, I'm very particular and I want to avoid presenting enough evidence for my audience or my reader to come to the conclusion right before I do, so that when I don't Hay Tada, there's nothing like waiting, waiting, waiting, look how smart I am, there's nothing like that, what I want is when I give this conclusion, I say and here it is the audience goes, yes, yes, that makes yes , Yeah.

I saw that yes, that seems ineffable, that means yes, that seems to make sense, yes, that's what I want his attitude to be, it's kind of like yes, of course, you know that, and then they take him away, then he they carry it, their conclusion is not mine. just appeared they came with me on The Learning Journey is I wish there was um yeah I wish there were more one of the reasons I wrote super communicators was because I felt like we were living in this time where people had forgotten how to communicate with each other and it happened. something else, which is that in 2017, I guess it was 2016, the New York Times made me manager.

I went from being a reporter to a manager and I was terrible at it, incredibly bad and I came into this and thought, "Oh my God, I'm going to be so good at this," like I had had bosses my whole life and got an MBA from Harvard. I thought, "I'm going to kill this." and I was more like and what drove me crazy was that I was very good at the logistics part, since I could plan everything and make all the diagrams, it was the communication part that I sucked at, yes, and so bad that, I made other people angry without even understanding why they were angry and it frustrated me.

I was terrible at it and at the same time Trump got elected right and I look around and I think he's a great communicator, he's a really good communicator, but I looked at all these other people just yelling at each other, not wanting to have any dialogue at all and which of the things I thought was that we had forgotten that there are some There are lessons here that we have forgotten how we can learn. Can it be learned? Absolutely ABS. I mean, the evidence is completely clear on this. No one is born a great communicator.

No one is born a super communicator. There is no type of personality that is more. You are probably a super communicator. Literally everything is learned skills. It's fun. I have seen old images of Steve Jobs and Ronald Reagan, both considered great communicators. um and they stunk. They are terrible. They stunk. It is shocking from any point of view. They stunk. yeah, clumsy, incoherent, it sucked and then what happened there? Why should we assume that our brains have actually evolved to communicate correctly, communication is a human superpower, it is why we have been successful as a species, it allows us to form families and societies on a regular basis.

What happened to those Two Fellas and a bunch of other people is that instead of sucking and saying oh God, I don't know why that didn't work out, they sat down and thought a lot about how I can make everything work out better. and there are very obvious lessons that once you start looking for them they are obvious to you and in the last decade science has improved so much that we are living in this golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neuroimaging and data analysis. So now it's easier for us to describe those ideas, but the truth is that we are all prepared to be super communicators, it's just that some people don't think about it, so let's first define super communicator, let's start there, so the best .

The way to do it is um, if you are having a bad day M and you know that there is a person that if you call them will make you feel better MH, who is that person, my sister, that person for you is a super communicator and my I guess that your sister is actually a super communicator to many people, yes, she just knows how to make you feel, listen, she knows what you need, she knows how to please, she knows how to have a conversation, you are a super communicator, right? a flow with everyone who participates in your

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, so a super communicator is someone who has thought deeply about how to communicate and, as a result, has the ability to invite others into the conversation, has the ability to break through and establish a connection. even in the most unlikely situations and, most importantly, they have the ability and recognize the importance of achieving what scientists call neural entrainment right where right now in this conversation if we had enough machines we would see that our pupils are actually dilating. at the same rate and our heart rates are starting to match each other and our breathing rates and the electrical impulses in our skin and most importantly, if we could see inside our brains a deep reflection, it's a deep reflection inside our brains, we would see that our brain waves started to look similar our brain activity started to look similar that's what's called communication bibiological connection like we have a connection it's literally biological connection wow that's cool and if you think about it it makes sense because the goal of communication is I have an idea or I have a feeling and I want you to understand it I want you to experience it well so if our brains align you are actually experiencing what I am what I am describing and vice versa so tell a story of what consider a great communicator or what you do then, one of the stories in the book, one of the stories in the book is the story of this guy, Jim Lawler, who is a CIA officer and had just been hired as a CI Officer and They sent him to Europe and told him to go recruit assets overseas, like go find spies, basically make them work for the CIA and he's terrible at it, like he liked it, he told me all these stories like he wanted to go. to all these bars and I would try to chat in Tachet and they would say: I don't want anything to do with you.

There's a guy he finally befriended, a guy from the Chinese embassy, ​​and he gives him a ride. to lunch about seven or eight times and at the end he says, hey, would you consider telling me some of the gossip that you're here and that I could pay you for that and the guy says you know my family is actually very rich and they kill people in my country for doing that, let's not meet again, so he's terrible at this, he didn't even make a real friend, no, he didn't even make a real friend, so he's at this point when it's been a year and basically his bosses say We think they're going to fire you, you're just bad at this and a woman comes to town who works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of her home country in the Middle East, yes, and she never told me which country, but It will be Pretty obvious which one it is, so he goes and introduces himself as an oil speculator she likes, she stumbles upon a restaurant and they develop a relationship and he takes her to lunch and he's trying to recruit her and she finally says I don't really work for a company. oil company, work for the CIA, do you consider helping us because she hated what was happening in her home country, it was just taken over by the revolution, uh, Islamic revolutionaries and religious revolutionaries, she was a woman. she in approximately 1979, yes, exactly exactly, you are guessing what country that is and she opposes the regime and he says we believe in the same thing, why are you helping us? and she just starts crying and gets scared.

She says, "No, I'm not going to do this at all. They're going to kill me for even meeting you, so she went to her boss and she already told them that she was trying to recruit her and they said." no, we told Washington DC that you did this, we told Washington DC that you had your first spy, if you don't turn her in, they'll fire you, so Jim Jim says I'm screwed, like I don't know what to do and So basically He asks this woman Fatima to eat with him one more time and he comes in and has all these ideas about how and how to get to the food and says this is just not going to work, I can't convince this person. take a suicidal risk, then she's a little depressed because she's about to go back to her home country and she's a little disappointed in herself and Jim is trying to cheer her up and make her feel better and then after a while it's like if it's just not working out and she's not really like they're not connecting and when dessert comes he's like I'm GNA be totally honest with you like I'm about to get fired and the reason why I'm about to getting fired is because I'm really bad at this job, like everyone else in my class, they had something like confidence or something that I don't have and I'm not.

I'm not even going to try to get you to work for me. Just If you've been honest with me I want to be honest with you like I feel terrible about myself like you keep saying you're disappointed in yourself. I get it because I'm so disappointed in myself. I wanted this job. my whole life, yeah, and I've ruined it and she hears it and starts crying and he comes over and says I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry and she's like no, no, I think I can do this and he's like and he was so scared that he actually said wait, wait, no, no, no, you don't have to do anything.

I don't want you to like like he's so scared and she's like, no, no, I think what you, I think what you. I said before that we both want the same thing. I think you're right. I can help you and she goes to a safe house the next day. She gets all this training and, like covert communications, for the next 20 years, she's the best source in the Medium. Wow, and when I asked Jim why and Jim became one of the CIA's top recruiters, he ended up training other officers how to do this when I asked him what's the secret that you train, you teach people, what He said you have to do it. unite people where they are, yes, Fatima was upset and I was trying to cheer her up, yes, or Fatima was scared and I was trying to convince her that she shouldn't be afraid, yes, one time I gave up and said, look, you're disappointed in yourself and I'm disappointed in myself, that's when she was able to hear me for the first time, yeah, and within literature, this is known as the principle of correspondence between these different types of conversations and that you have to match with the kind of There is a conversation that happens to connect, but a lot of it comes down to listening to those instincts that we probably evolved over millions of years and that are sometimes difficult to hear in contemporary society, but you know that if someone feels something that If you feel it with them you feel more connected, but he was honest, yeah, that's a big part of it, it has to be authentic and that's part of the problem, which is, do you know how long you can fake these things?

Can super communicators fake these things? Maybe not once or twice, but what's amazing is that, once again, research has shown that our ability to detect inauthenticity is like a laser. There was actually one of my favorite experiments. They see that these researchers took a group of people, friends laughing together and strangers trying. to pretend they were laughing together and act out people's laughter for half a second and ask them which is which and people could detect it 92% wow we just know we like it so you're right our survival depends on it . absolutely absolutely our ability to form friendship and community means that I can trust you to be on the lookout for danger while I sleep, that's exactly right, and if you do betray me by the way, yes, I'll be a lot angrier than if you just did the same thing.

Same thing, but for benign reasons, it's an evolution, it's grown as a prosocial instinct, are you a better communicator now that you've written the book? Oh my God, much better, what tell me something? Tell me how you appeared. In different circumstances, now you present yourself differently, so it's okay, then, in two ways: the first is that I ask a lot more questions and I ask what are known as deep questions, so a deep question is something that make someone about their values ​​or beliefs. or their experiences and they usually start with why so it's um and they can be very easy it can be like oh you're a lawyer like you always wanted to be a lawyer like why are you going to law school you know what in what Did you decide that law was the thing? suitable for you?

Yeah, those are easy questions to ask, but they're all deep questions because you're asking someone about their values ​​or their experiences, yeah, and that's the first thing I do. I try to ask deeper questions and try tolisten closer, but then the second thing is that there is a big perception that we think that a discussion is about one thing, but in reality every discussion is made up of multiple conversations and most of them are divided into one or three groups , so these practical conversations are correct. When making a decision, we are solving a problem, there are emotional conversations where the goal is not to solve someone's problem, it is simply to share, hold space, yes, hold space, and then there are social conversations that are about how we relate with other people, how we think.

Society sees us and that's why I used to come home and have a bad day at work and complain to my wife and she would respond with practical advice and say, look, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and meet him? a little better and instead of listening to her I would get even angrier, but now I know it's because she was having a practical conversation and I was having an emotional conversation, we couldn't connect, so now One of the first things I do is try to figuring out what kind of conversation we're having, how do I match this other person, how do I invite them to match with me, and sometimes it's as simple as saying like my wife says all of this. the moment you want me to solve your problem or just listen to your problem, yeah, yeah, or it can be as simple as saying you know we're going to have a conversation, like what's important to you about this conversation.

I love the idea of ​​tagging the conversation I had. It happened when I was in a bad place and I called someone for advice and they started to fix it and I told them I appreciate your intention to try to fix it. I need you not to fix it. I need you to just listen to me so I could give you instructions for pairing right then and they probably appreciated how well they did, yeah, and they and I are in the middle of trying to fix some, do you need me? to offer you solutions, now you know, I love this idea of ​​labeling and it seems like everyone can remember three things, they're easy, social, we're having fun, emotionally, how you feel practical, you know, do you want to fix something or do you want to talk? about something intellectual exactly is that they're easy to understand, they're easy to remember and I love the idea that it's not a deep internal skill, you just have to make it known what's happening so we can be on the same page. reflecting that is exactly right and I think that's what Steve Jobs and Ronald Reagan and other people do: they walk away from a bad conversation and instead of it being like this it was a bad conversation, they think to themselves what did I miss and what should I do? . look next time, yeah, and if you start paying attention, what you notice is like if you're talking to a friend or a colleague and they're going to tell you something in a practical conversation right at work, they're going to tell you something emotional and it's very easy. ignore it, they will say that my son just graduated.

I'm very proud or sorry. I didn't respond to his email yesterday. It was like something was happening and our instinct is to stay on that practical path. true, but if you're like Oh, that's amazing, tell me about your son or yeah, what happened yesterday? It's something like this? It's helpful to talk, yes, that person, suddenly we are, we are matching them, yes and they are more willing to listen to us and, more importantly, when we say let's talk about this topic and then go back to the planning budget, they will go there with you. I love that idea too, okay? off the script, yes, in fact, in fact, you have to go off the script or the script hardly exists, it is a falsehood that we think that there is a script that we must stick to, yes, that is so good, that is so good, is that so good? that?

This is your hope for the book. I know it's a big question, but my hope is twofold. I hope people read this book and get something so powerful from it that it improves their own lives. use it and then secondly, this is a big aspiration, but I hope to be part of fostering a broader discussion about how we can, as a nation and as humans, yes, have conversations with people who are different from us, yes, where we make. connect, yes, of course, those are the most if you think about the origin of the United States. America was born in a conversation, the Constitutional Convention were people hating each other, yeah, having a conversation until they had a constitution and our finest moments, the finest moments for South Africa.

The best moments for the UK, yes, around the world, our best moments are the moments when we have a difficult conversation with someone who is difficult to have that conversation with. You can't make peace with your friends, yeah, yeah, exactly, can you tell me a story about something? you wrote an article, a project that you worked on in your professional career, it doesn't matter if it was commercially successful or not, but you loved this project, you loved this and if every project you worked on was like this. You would be the happiest person ever, yeah, so there's um.

I wrote this article for the New Yorker about two years ago about spaxs. Do you remember? Yes, about this guy, chamath pal palaha. um, well done, yes, thank you. I think I have some. bad um I loved this article I loved writing this article I loved writing about chamat I loved it like it was so colorful and fun and I love it Finance yeah no one read it like it was like one of these things like it was like oh the new thing A the York audience doesn't like finance the way I like finance or they don't like this guy who's bombastic and weird like me, but I was so gloriously happy I wrote it that I thought if I read this article I'd would do. read the ending or like if I buy this, I would read the ending of this piece like I love it, okay, so you've written some amazing things that you want to extract or value, what specifically is it about this piece that you illuminate?

When you think about it, I like when you talk about it, it's a very good question because one of the reasons I decided to leave Times was because I couldn't stand that series I wrote about Apple that won the Pulitzer. reading it no one liked it it was just boring it was boring reading it wasn't fun and this article about chth and spaxs was funny like this guy likes to drop F bombs all the time he likes it he tries to piss off other people because he thinks it helps him sell things like he says ridiculous things that he left his wife when she had cancer to marry someone younger like it's just this story where you say this is ridiculous I can't believe this guy exists it was so funny but you've written things funny before, yeah, so what's with this one?

I don't know, you answered this question very quickly, honestly I think it's because it wasn't popular, yeah, I like it. I just felt like for the first time it's something I can point to, that I'm like I wrote it for myself uhhuh uhhuh and the thing when you're a professional writer and you know this is that you become a professional writer because you love Writing it's easy to fall out of love with it. writing, yeah, it's hard and it's like you enter this place where it doesn't feel anymore, it doesn't feel like it used to feel good, it doesn't feel special anymore and I.

I had been feeling this way for a long time and then I wrote this piece and thought, oh yeah, this is what I liked. I liked the surprise. I like to write things that surprise me because of what ends up coming out of my fingers. and it felt like that and actually the interesting thing is that literally the next thing I did was I wrote the proposal for super communicators like I was like I was like okay now I think I'm in a place where I can write, put you in a great mood. I remember what it's like to love writing, yes, tell me an early, specific, happy childhood memory, something specific that I can relive with you, that's a very good question.

I have a terrible memory, well okay, I'll tell you two. one who's happy and one who's not um when I was a kid, I once made this newsletter about how I wanted to be a babysitter, so I put it together. I spent like three days on this newsletter advertising myself and it was fun and it was Ry and it was like I had terrible twos and I thought it was funny, my parents thought it was funny and they said if you put this up, no one will hire you as a babysitter, so this is not is what they're looking for, but that's one of the The first times I discovered that writing felt so good, then when I was in high school I became an MH debater and was so focused on winning that it actually woke me up. and I looked at myself in the mirror.

This is crazy. I would look in the mirror and say you're shit if you don't win this weekend because I felt like I needed you to like how that made you feel. It made me feel both bad and good. I feel like I was trying as hard as I could, but then when I lost tournaments or rounds, I felt terrible and to this day I can't remember a single round I ever won and I can tell you every debate round I participated in. lost like I remember them all, you know what's so interesting about those stories, which is when you make it about something external, when you make it about the winner? um, you're not at your best, yeah, whereas when you wrote the babysitter newsletter it was for fun, yeah, and when you get excited about the story of, uh, the CIA, uh, recruiter, you, you, you, you relate to him in such a way, that is when he set out to win, he couldn't do it and when you, when you, I mean.

It sounds cheesy, but when you practice what you preach, when you're just yourself and you're in life for fun and you're a curious writer who sees the world as a magical playground and you're not writing for anyone, it all works. but and but the question I have and maybe you have an answer to this is how can we remember that when it's hard to remember well? Do you know George Saunders, the writer of St., he's a wonderful person and a wonderful writer, and he said that? Basically the question he asks himself all the time is: he knows how good it feels to be nice, he knows how much he likes himself when he's a nice person, MH, so why the hell are there these moments where it's cruel, yes, and sorry? in the same way, how do we remind ourselves to listen to that inner voice that tells us this is what you love this is what how do we ignore it so there are multiple answers um and some of them and I think you need? multiple answers because it's not like that, not all of them are easy to do at the same time, so you have multiple solutions.

I mean, one is to start with Y, which is to have true north and then have this filter on am. I do that because my why is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. It's literally this doing that and I'm surprised like I'm tired. I'm in a bad mood. I'm at a Starbucks. I'm not friendly. I tell myself everything, I will literally catch myself and say, are you inspiring the barista? It's not right, well, change, you're like you have to do this all the time, you know that's what you're right and that's what Joy brings you, so do it, idiot, you know, I'll catch myself and I've got little reminders, so I wear the color orange somewhere on my person almost always and that's not there for decoration, it's there because it stands out. so bright and the color orange is this color of

optimism

just reminds me to keep this disposition, to show up to inspire and I think your disposition is really to encourage people to be themselves.

I think that's right and I think you know that I think that's your best work and when you're your best self that's when you just smile and say I guess I'm human and I just enjoy it. I think that's absolutely true. I think it's very and there's something that I find. that I'm happier when I'm more humble many times because something humiliates me exactly not by right choice it's not that I'm just a humble human being it's like I screwed up something really bad I used to joke I'm the most humble Humble person I know I could talk to you forever.

This has been very fun. Thank you very much for coming. I really, really, your work helps us be more human and I really hope everyone reads your book because I think. We all need to be a little more human today well and I feel the same about your work. I just liked it, I, I, I didn't do it from the outside, I assumed you were a writer because it's because I felt like it started with why it is that way. Funny written, but as long as I think there are a lot of people committed to asking tough questions, yeah, I think we're fine.

Thank you very much, thank you for inviting me. Great if you enjoyed this

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