#454: SUMMER BEST-OF: STOP Arguing & START Communicating: The Secrets to Connection with Charles Duhigg Pulitzer Prize-winning Reporter & Bestselling Author

0:00What do you want out of this conversation? What are you hoping that we can walk away with from this discussion today? Now you're getting them to think a little bit about what they want and what they need and what kind of mood they hope to create. And if they say something to you like, I just want the facts, like tell me what's going on, then you know, I can get practical right away. And if they say, look, I don't think I'm going to agree with everything I hear and some of it might make me defensive, but if I know it, then we can find a solution. Now, you know, they're a little bit more emotional.

0:30I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow. That's a no-sameer. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest this week. Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and the author of The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better, a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College. He is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Folk Awards. He writes for The New Yorker, was a reporter at The New York Times, and is host of the podcast How To.

1:09Charles, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to get into your new book, Super Communicator. I'm so interested selfishly in this, in these ideas of difficult conversations and how to connect with others. So why did you actually write this book? So I wrote this because I found that I was having trouble communicating in my own life. I'm a journalist at the New Yorker and I was at the New York Times previously. And so I'm theoretically a professional communicator. And yet I would find this thing that would happen when I came home, which I assume is probably familiar to many people who are listening is I would have a tough day at work and I would come home and I would start complaining to my wife and I tell her about how my boss is a jerk and my coworkers don't understand me.

1:53And she very reasonably would offer some practical advice. She would say, you know, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. But instead of being able to hear what she was saying to me, I would get even more upset. And I would say, no, you're supposed to be on my side and you're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. And then she would get upset because I was not taking her advice. And so I went to all these researchers and I asked them, what's going on here? Like, why are we having this pattern where we seem to fail to hear each other?

2:22And what they said was, okay, here's the big finding from the last decade. We tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? About, you know, what happened at work today or what we're going to do about our kids' grades. But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And in particular, there's three kinds of conversations that most discussions fall into. One of them is a practical conversation about how to solve problems. A second is an emotional conversation where I want to tell you how I feel and I don't want you to solve my problem. I just want you to empathize.

2:53And then thirdly, there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other. And they said, the key is if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you fail to connect. And so when you were coming home from work and you were in an emotional conversation and your wife responded with a practical conversation, you guys couldn't hear each other. You have to learn how to align. And in doing so, you'll be able to connect with each other. Well, sadly, this is not well known, hence you writing this book, right? So when you're equipped with the information now that we know that we need to know what type of conversation we're entering into with somebody else, how do we know which strategy to deploy and how do we educate the other person on that same information?

3:34Yeah. Well, okay, so let me ask you a question. You know, there are these people who are super communicators. If I was to ask you, like, if you were having a bad day and you wanted to call someone who you know would make you feel better, does that person pop into your mind? Like, do you know who you would call? Of course. Who is it? My girlfriend, Samantha. And to your point, she's team me. She's going to empathize with me. She's going to encourage me. She's just there to listen, not to solve any problems. Yeah. And probably, Samantha, for you is a super communicator. And you're probably a super communicator back to her.

4:06And there's some people who can do this a little bit more consistently. They can kind of connect with anyone. They're that person everyone wants to call. And what they do differently is they tend to ask more questions, 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And many of those questions we don't really pick up on because they're things like, so what happened next? Or what'd you say then, right? But some of them are what are known as deep questions, questions that instead of asking you about facts, ask you about your values, your beliefs, and your experiences. So let me ask, when you call Samantha and you tell her about a bad day, what does she do?

4:42Like, what's the first thing you notice that she does that makes you feel better? Truly listen, right? So actually listening to me and hearing what I'm saying, not, you know, how some other people might talk to me and they're rushing, they're doing 25 and you can tell you're not a priority. She really makes, you know, total focus and she'll relate it to other times in my life and remind me of other situations. She kind of goes that extra mile with me that she's really, really present and then helping me to, to know I'm not alone or this isn't the first time a challenge has happened. It's very, very comforting.

5:16Yeah. And that feels really good, right? That feels good to know that she's proving to you that she's listening to you. Which this is the other thing that we know that super communicators do, is they prove that they're listening. And my guess is that Samantha does this in one of two ways. First of all, she probably asks follow-up questions, right? She asks you deep questions, and then she asks follow-up questions to show that she's heard what you've said. And then the second thing, and tell me if this is something Samantha does, is this thing known as looping for understanding. particularly if we're in conflict with someone, that we can prove to them that we're listening.

5:48We can show that we want to hear what they have to say, which is really powerful because oftentimes when we're in a tough conversation, we don't know if the other person is really listening or if they're just waiting their turn to speak. And so looping for understanding actually has three steps. There's you ask a question, hopefully a deep question. You listen to what someone says, and then you repeat back in your own words what you just heard them say. That's step number two. And then step number three, and this is the one we tend to forget, is they ask, did I get that right? And the reason why that's so powerful is because it shows the other person that we're listening to them.

6:20It proves that we really want to understand them. Now, when you're talking to Samantha, does she ever kind of say back to you what you've just told her? Or you mentioned that she reminds you of other times that you've been in the situation like this, kind of reflecting back that there's some similarities here. How does that make you feel? So good, because you know she gets it. She gets, she understands what you're going through. Yeah. And that's really, really important, right? That's the key about how this works is that when we prove that we're trying to listen to someone, they feel listened to.

6:52They really want, they want us to understand. Okay. So I can understand how I'm talking about one of my best friends in the world. So to me, it makes sense that she would do these things because she generally cares, right? She's truly interested. But how do you create that same type of a banter if it's a work situation or a more casual contact, but you still want to empathize, you still want to be present? Absolutely. It's a great question. And it's not that much harder because one of the things that we know is that asking a deep question is possible with anyone. So, for instance, let's say you meet someone, a stranger on the bus or someone at a party and you say, what do you do for a living?

7:29And they say, well, I'm a lawyer. Then the next deep question can be something like, oh, what made you decide to become a lawyer? Like, do you love practicing the law? Like, is it what you always wanted to do? How'd you decide to go to law school? Those are three really easy questions to ask, right? But what they do is they ask the other person to reveal something meaningful about themselves. They're gonna tell you what it was like growing up, how they decided to go to law school, which is a big decision, what they love about their job and what they don't love about their job. And all of those things are gonna help us understand who they really are.

8:00And then if we show them that we're listening through follow-up questions, that through a question that restates what they just told. What I heard you say was that you love being a lawyer because you love fighting for the underdog. And I'm just wondering, what do you do when you have someone who you think might be guilty? And then you ask these follow-up questions that draw them out and repeat what you've heard them say. Then they really feel like you're listening to them. They're doing what Samantha does to you, but that we can do with anyone. So it's really coming from a place of genuine curiosity is what it sounds like to me.

8:33That's exactly right. And it's curiosity that's been kind of presented the right way, right? Because I might be curious about you and have a difficult time showing it. But if I know how to show you that I'm curious about you, then you're going to feel somewhat flattered. You're going to feel like you like me, like you want to answer my questions and tell me about yourself. And then once you've told me about yourself, it's very natural for me to say, oh, you know what? I'm actually a doctor. And I decided to go to medical school because, right? Now we have a conversation where we're going back and forth.

9:03We're engaging in what's known as conversational reciprocity. And that's the key to how conversations really become meaningful, is that I share something with you and you share something back. That's how we learn what kind of a conversation we're in. And that's how we learn to match each other. Okay. So you said there's three different types of conversations and we just got into the emotional one. What are the other two? So the second one is a practical conversation, right? If I come up and I say, oh, how did you decide to become a lawyer? And someone says, oh, growing up, my dad struggled for work and I always wanted to have a steady job.

9:36I wanted to find a job and I felt like if I was a lawyer, I would never, ever be worried about finding a job. Okay, this is a person who's in a more practical mindset, right? Then I can ask a couple of questions and I say, I went to medical school because I always wanted to live in a big city and I figured I could always get jobs in a big city as a doctor. or if somebody comes up and you're talking with your partner about vacations, right? Or you're talking with your boss or a coworker about setting budgets. Those are practical conversations. Those are conversations where not only do we have to decide what we want to talk about, but we have to decide the rules for talking about it with each other.

10:13Do we interrupt each other? Is this formal or casual? And oftentimes we decide those rules almost subconsciously by conducting little experiments. I might interrupt you and you interrupt me and we study to see how the other person reacts. And it's important what super communicators do is they tend to do these experiments a little bit more deliberately. Right at the beginning of a conversation, they might try telling a joke or they might try being casual or try being formal. And then they watch how the other person reacts. And if the other person doesn't react the same way, that doesn't mean that they've made a mistake or a faux pas.

10:46It means that they're engaging with psychologists refer to as a quiet negotiation over how we're going to have this conversation where the goal is for us to both figure out what we want from this discussion. That's so interesting because as you're saying it, I'm thinking in my mind of different situations and scenarios, specifically on Zoom, when I'm in business conversations with people, I just start working with them. And this whole, it's hard to know when someone's going to speak because you don't know their cadence. You don't know them very well yet. That exact situation you just described happened to me very, very recently within the last week where I cut this woman off and then she cut me up and we backed up.

11:25And then you started getting a handle for, okay, this person wants to interject and I can see she's leaning forward. You're starting to understand how they operate in a conversation. Yeah, and it's a little bit of a negotiation that happens every time, right? And the key is, if you're aware of that negotiation, if you're sensitive to it, then you're inviting the other person to speak. The fact that you were paying attention and you saw that like, oh, she wants to interrupt me. She's leaning forward. She has something to say. Some people might just say, oh, this woman's so rude. She's interrupting me.

11:54But you, you recognized that what's going on is that she was actually enthusiastic about this conversation. She really wanted to participate. And it's just a matter of training ourselves to look a little bit more closely for what people are doing so that we can pick up on those cues. Meet a different guest each week. I'm not entertained. Confidence cleared. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day.

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15:09They never sell your data and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash confidence free. I ask you to try to find your passion. And why is that so important? Because it makes us more likable, more trustworthy. What do we get out of it? Communication is human superpower, right?

15:56It's the reason why homo sapiens have been so successful is we have the ability to communicate with others. I can have a feeling or an idea. And if I describe it to you, you'll start to experience that same idea. You'll start to experience that same feeling. Our brains have evolved to crave that kind of connection. Our brains have evolved to like people who can communicate with us better, really to like them a lot, to trust them more, to think that they give us better advice and that they're more reliable. And so when we're able to connect with someone else through looping for understanding, by asking deep questions, by engaging in this slight negotiation and understanding what you want from this conversation, you are almost hardwired to trust me more and to like me more and to want to participate in this conversation and want to tell me things about yourself.

16:46That kind of sounds like the opposite of most this polarizing world we live in right now with politics and all of these challenging events in our world. People so often, I feel like, are shouting at each other and not listening, just wanting their opinion to be heard. But what you're saying is by deploying some of these tactics that you share in the book, you can become more understood, more light, and people will be more interested in what you have to say. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And when you think about it, you know, you're right. There's a lot of shouting going on right now.

17:19But oftentimes the people who are shouting the loudest are not the ones that we're most interested in listening to. Rather, it's the people who seem to say something that cuts through the noise. And they're doing that by listening closely to other people and then repeating back what they've heard the smartest of them say. And they're also saying to us rather than you're wrong and I'm right, or here's my idea, I want to beat you over the head with it. They're asking questions. They're saying things like, why do you support that candidate? Or what is it that you find is important about this issue?

17:51And when you answer that question, they show you that they're listening, and then they share something about themselves. The reason I like my candidate is for very similar reasons. And I think we see things just a little bit differently. That's someone that we want to listen to, that we want to invite into the conversation. On social media, it's very easy to scream, right? But the truth of the matter is that for millennia, humans have been talking to each other and we've done it successfully by listening and sharing. You know, the interesting thing about America is this is a country that was born in conversation.

18:25The Constitutional Convention was essentially people who hated each other having a conversation until they came to an agreement about how to write a constitution. solution and it's always been one of our biggest strengths and it's something we forget at our own peril. So what are some of the tactics that you suggest people entering into when you know you're going into a difficult conversation? Sometimes we don't know. Selfishly, I have a difficult conversation coming up later this week at work and I'll give you this hypothetical that you're working with someone, you don't know them well, it's still a new situation so you don't have all that insight into the person and what triggers them or doesn't trigger them, you know that you're delivering information they're not going to be happy about.

19:05It's not what they planned on. However, you need to do your job and be fair in giving all the information and you know it's going to be met with resistance and or upset. What's some of the direction or advice, Charles, that you can give me heading into a conversation like that? Well, okay. The first question I would ask is, do you want it to be a conversation? Because sometimes I talk to my kids and I say, I'd like to talk to you about your room and I'm not actually looking for a conversation about their room, right? I'm looking to tell them that they need to clean up their room. The first question is, do you want this to be a conversation or do you just have some information you need to deliver this person and you don't actually want it to be a conversation?

19:40Listen, we're adults, it's not children. I'd rather have the conversation to know how we move forward with it. Even if it means that, you know what, Heather, I don't want to know what you're about to tell me. So, but I'd at least like to hear that person have that option and want to know how to feel about it. So you go into that conversation. The first thing I would say is before you even walk into that room, you should sit down and you should figure out what you want and hope from this discussion. And there's two important things to figure out. Number one, what is the tangible things that you need to get done?

20:13My guess is, first of all, you need to tell this person some hard news. Second of all, you need to know that they've understood it and heard it. And third, you probably want to know what they make of it. Like if they're able to really listen to you and come up with a plan. But in addition to the tangible things that you want, you should also decide what kind of mood you want. Is this going to be an emotional conversation? Is this going to be a practical conversation? Is this going to be a social conversation? My guess is that for something like this, it's going to start practical and then it's going to become emotional.

20:42So you need to be prepared for that and decide, okay, how am I going to create the mood that I want when it's practical? Is this business only? Do I come in and sort of say, here's some tough love? And when it gets emotional, how do I change to match this person and invite them to match me? So let me ask you this conversation that's coming up. What is the one tangible thing and what is the mood that you hope to accomplish? Well, the tangible thing is what you're saying, you know, sharing this information is probably not going to be received very well, but it's very factual. And the objective was to do an assessment.

21:14So you're going in and doing that job and sharing that information. But emotionally, of course, there will be some charge in receiving this information because it wasn't what was anticipated or planned for. So knowing that to me, I would want to empathize with the person that I know it's difficult to hear something like this from when you bring people from the outside to work with you or you're planning or forecasting something, an outcome very different than we're hearing. I know that can be really uncomfortable. I would want to be empathetic to that person. Yeah. So what I hear you saying, and tell me if I'm doing this wrong, is that you want to deliver some factual information to them and that you want to show them that you are listening to them and that you're empathetic to how they receive it.

21:54Yes. Which is great. Okay, so now we know that. Okay, we've sort of figured out exactly what we want out of this conversation. The next question is, how do we want to start the conversation? There's two ways, right? You could go in and you could say, here's what I want to talk to you about. Like, let me tell you all the details. You could also start by asking a question and say, look, I want to have a tough conversation with you. And you might have an instinct about what I'm going to share with you. I'm wondering, how are you feeling about this discussion? Like, how are you feeling about this performance review?

22:27Do you feel like everything's okay? Or do you feel like there's some things that we need to work on? If you do that, what you're doing is you're, first of all, my guess is they're going to say to you, there's some things I need to work on. And they're going to say the same things that you were about to tell them. So now you've got them on the same side of the table. Now you guys are about solving that problem together. And that doesn't mean you should hesitate to tell them things. If they say, well, I think I need to be on time more for work. It's fine to say, you know, I appreciate you saying that.

22:53And in addition to being on time, I think one thing that would help is if you were more prepared, if you were doing more homework before you got to work. But now, instead of saying you're always late and you're never prepared, now we're working together to try and identify the problem and we're trying to solve it together. And this is really important because one of the things that happens in conversation, particularly in conversations with married couples or with romantic partners, is that everyone has an instinct to control things when we feel threatened. When we're having a tough conversation, when someone is telling us something we don't want to hear, we have an instinct to try and control what we can.