The Psychology of Being a Super Communicator | Charles Duhigg

11:04Charles Duhigg:Absolutely. Well, and here's what I would say. And I'm curious your thoughts on this because you obviously communicate and you teach communication for a living.

11:10Dr. Michael Gervais:Not like you. I think I just do it. Right. Well, yeah. And I don't know how to necessarily teach any of this.

11:17Charles Duhigg:I think that, so the reason why I'm saying you don't have to be like a superhuman to do this, that anyone can do this, is because if I'm in my own head and I am anxious and I'm thinking about myself and I'm wondering, oh, does he think that I'm cool? Does he like, like, is my answer impressive? It's hard for me to connect with you, right? Right? So what's the way that I break myself out of that? I ask you a question. And the thing is, anyone can ask a question, right? Learning to ask a question is not a hard skill to learn. It's a habit that anyone can build. And particularly if I ask you what's known as a deep question, if I ask you a question that invites you to talk about your values or your beliefs or your experiences, I'm going to figure out what kind of mindset you're in right now.

11:56Charles Duhigg:Like, are you looking for an emotional conversation? Are you looking for a practical conversation? And that can sound kind of intimidating, but it's as simple as instead of saying, you know, what team are you working with right now? Saying, you know, what made you excited about sports? Like what was it about sports psychology that really like attracted you? That second question, that is not an overly intrusive question. That is not a too personal question, but it invites you to tell me so much about yourself, right? What you're passionate about, the experiences you've had.

12:21Dr. Michael Gervais:Because what that does is now, if you're a great communicator and what your job now at this point is, is you've kind of thrown the ball up in the air. There's a lob, so to speak, as a metaphor. And depending on how I go get it, I might say, oh, let me tell you when I was a kid, like I was, and I'm going to an emotional place. Then you're like, oh, okay. I know the mindset that he's in. So let me parallel path.

12:45Charles Duhigg:Yeah, that's exactly right. And you might just as easily say, depending on how you're feeling in that moment, might say, you know, I just, I really, I heard a lot about Sabre metrics. And I think the stats of sports are really compelling to me because we can measure stuff. Okay. You're using words to tell me you're in a practical mindset right now. That's right.

13:01Dr. Michael Gervais:Or look, it was sport was so much fun and I loved it. And like me and my friends and da, da, da. And you're like, oh, social. This is how I bonded with my dad.

13:08Charles Duhigg:Right. Exactly. This is how me and my friends got to know each other.

13:11Dr. Michael Gervais:So it's fun. Like in my training, which I don't talk about much, you know, like I think, I want to tell you a funny story in a minute, but I don't talk about my training. And one of the things that I think was this amazing gift that one of my professors just hammered. This was in graduate training. And he said to me very clearly, he's like, Mike, what are you listening for? I go, I'm just, I'm really attuning and following the story and just want to make sure I really understand. He goes, you're missing most of the story then. I go, what do you mean? He says, there's two conversations that are happening within a person.

13:47Dr. Michael Gervais:Which one are you listening to? I said, well, the story. He goes, right, well, the story is emotional. So listen to the words, but let them fall away as best as you possibly can and work to understand the emotional experience that's happening, that happened or is happening now.

14:05Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

14:05Dr. Michael Gervais:Right, and so there's the talk track and there's the emotional track. And if you can get both of those lined up, like you've really got an understanding, but I was just busy trying to be like clocking, you know, all the beats. Right. And then the other person wants to tell their story over and over and over and over. Now they've perfected their traumatic story.

14:25Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

14:26Dr. Michael Gervais:Now we've got a different problem that I'm introducing. But the idea that there's at least two was part of my training. I love that. Yeah, it was a really, it was an important.

14:34Charles Duhigg:Well, and I think the best example of that is that if you look at the research on communication and you ask people, what did you guys talk about in that hour-long conversation you had? people on average will be able to remember two, maybe two and a half topics, and they won't remember anything specific that was said. But if you ask them, how did you feel throughout that conversation? They'll be able to say, oh, at the beginning, I felt like really good. And then we talked about this one thing. I started feeling really bad about myself, as Maya Angelouans put it. Nobody remembers what you say. They remember how you made them feel.

15:06Charles Duhigg:And that emotional level is so critical. So let me ask you something, actually, because oftentimes my experience of sports is that particularly coaches, particularly in the training room, particularly is that that can become a very practical conversation. How are you going to react? What are you looking for? But I imagine emotions for those players and for anyone who's performing as an elite executive or artist or athlete, those emotions must be a huge part of how they're making decisions. You know what I love about sport is that it's really honest.

15:38Dr. Michael Gervais:So there's two rooms I'll talk about in sport and then I'll move it outside of sport. Sport for me is like what I liked about it is it's so concrete. And I am fascinated by the invisible world. Like thoughts are invisible. We can't see them. We don't know how much they weigh, where they come from, where they go. We don't know really what the immaterial world of thought is at this point. And so it's hard to wrestle it down because you can't get your arms around it in any meaningful way. But we know that thoughts matter, but the artifact of thoughts are behavior. Okay. So follow me on that. And then we can observe performance is the cauldron, if you will, when you put some pressure on it to see how behavior and thoughts work and what's the stitch between our emotions.

16:26Dr. Michael Gervais:So sport at the highest level and same with business and same with relationships are for big emotions. So you asked the question about emotions really. And if the conversation between coach and athlete or executive and manager or husband, wife, fill in any relationship pair you want is transactional in nature and it's information sharing, you're missing. I'm missing if I'm in one of those people, so much of the information, if it's true that to live an extraordinary life and do extraordinary things like the Olympics or the Superbowl or like boardroom pitches that could change the world or the business.

17:03Dr. Michael Gervais:There's a lot of emotion involved in there. And the idea that we haven't taught our people, our children, how to work well with emotions has provided a massive opportunity for me and people like me to say, hey, let me show you how thoughts, emotions and behaviors work together so that you can literally dissolve pressure because you're in control of the things that you actually can control. And once that starts to open up and the coaches in elite sport that are not untrained, let's say, but like very sophisticated, they are working at the emotional level.

17:37Charles Duhigg:They must be, right? There's so much going on there that, I mean, every conversation that we have is colored by emotions. And if I'm talking about the thing I love most, right? The way I define myself is I am an athlete. I get on that field and I perform well every single time. Then of course, there's a huge amount of emotions and social issues and identity issues, right? All that, it's all. I recently went to Indian Wells to see the tennis tournament. Oh, you did? Yeah. I haven't been, but I hear it's really fun. It's awesome. It was my first time at a professional tennis tournament and it was just amazing.

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20:37Charles Duhigg:But you see, you see those tennis players. It's the loneliest game on earth, right? You see them on that court. They just lost a point. They have to get their mind in the right place for the next serve. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to talk to. And it's entirely emotional, right? Whether it's the yips on a golf course, whether it's what my team does for me. Do we come together as a team or are we just individuals who happen to be playing with each other? And of course, the exact same thing is true in business and in relationships. Yeah.

21:10Dr. Michael Gervais:I think that if on the surface level, if you just look at sport, you're like, oh, it's so transactional. It's so aggro. It's so whatever. But when you look at the sophistication of the best of the world, it is marrying that or merging that with the high emotional kind of context that's taking place. And here's the thing. I don't know, 300 ,000 years ago, our ancestors passed on this gift. When something matters, your body's supposed to respond with emotions. Survival matter. Our brains are wired to find the threats and kick on the emotional kind of all the kickers that happen. But you know what?

21:41Dr. Michael Gervais:performing well, that matters. Yeah. So we're dealing with this,

21:44Charles Duhigg:like a circuitry that's pretty ancient. Absolutely. Well, and this gets to language. Like one of the things that I think is really interesting about language is that it did not evolve as a knowledge or information sharing device. It's a nice secondary benefit that I can tell you, oh, the code for the lock is 0894, right? We can use it as an information sharing device. But the reason why language evolved was to help us connect with each other. And if you think about 90 % of the conversations you had yesterday, you weren't really sharing that much information. You were talking to your wife and you were saying, hey, how was your day?

22:20Charles Duhigg:Not because you really wanna know exactly what she did that day, but because you wanna connect with her, right? Or you're saying to a friend like, hey, I saw this movie, it was pretty good, like we should hang out sometime. When we communicate, and the reason why communication, which is our superpower, homo sapien superpower is our ability to communicate. When we communicate, it is not to share information. It is to feel connected to each other.

22:43Dr. Michael Gervais:Did you just go practical for social and emotional? What do you mean? So your mindset.

22:50Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

22:51Dr. Michael Gervais:I'm listening to your mindset. I'm listening to the words, but also tracking the mindset that you're in.

22:55Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

22:55Dr. Michael Gervais:And you're just explaining the utility for language is to connect. But you went very practical. Were you in a practical mindset just now? Yeah. But for the utility of driving home two points, which is social and emotional valiance or value of using words well.

23:10Charles Duhigg:And because we're connected, so, and you probably know this research, within the neuroscience, this is called neural entrainment. That if we could look at our bodies right now, we'd see our pupils are dilating at the same rate. Our heart rates are starting to match each other. More importantly, the activity in our brain is looking more and more similar. It's becoming very simultaneous as we share ideas, as we share emotions. And so if I get practical, because we're entrained, because we've matched each other, you can get practical with me right away. And then if you say, you know, that reminds me of this conversation I had with my son that made me feel like just amazing, then you're emotional.

23:43Charles Duhigg:And I'm gonna go emotional right with you. We don't even have to think about it. Very cool.

23:47Dr. Michael Gervais:So, all right, so let's kind of go backwards to take maybe a couple of steps forward. Maybe give a definition if you can about, or just describe the practical one more time, the social and the emotional, and how to help people tune to those better and then how to help with the entrainment piece so they can become a super community.

24:04Charles Duhigg:Exactly, each of these three kinds of conversations. And this is what researchers, neuroscientists have kind of found is that we're having multiple different kinds of conversations every time we have a discussion with someone, but they tend to fall into one of these three pockets. And the practical is exactly what it sounds like. In a practical conversation, we are usually sharing information or we are solving problems together or we are coming up with plans together. We're doing something where there is an outcome that is not only practical, but is oftentimes maybe transactional, but maybe also just like an itinerary.

24:38Charles Duhigg:But then there are times that I tell you about what I'm feeling. And I don't want you to solve my feelings. I don't want you to come up with a plan for me to improve my feelings. What I want in that case is I want you to empathize with me. Right? I want you to show me that you understand what I'm feeling. And you might say like, oh, that's a really hard problem. I don't know if we're gonna be able to solve that, but I'm so sorry that you're going through that. That sounds so hard. I'm not looking for you to solve it, right? All I'm looking for you is to empathize. And then finally, the social conversation is when we're talking about how we relate to each other, how we relate to society, when we're talking about other people, when we're talking about the identities that are important to us.

25:17Charles Duhigg:And in that conversation, I'm not looking for you to solve anything. I'm also not looking for you to empathize. I'm looking for you to acknowledge. So if I say something like, you know, as the father of a 17-year-old, like it's really, really hard to like raise kids right now. I'm not looking for you to say, oh, I understand what it's like to be the father of a 17-year-old. You also have a 17-year-old. So you can, you can empathize. But simply to say, you know, that's a really interesting perspective. Like you have a unique experience there that's giving you some perspective on this. Just acknowledging the identity that you just voiced, that's clearly important to you, that's what we're looking for in that conversation.

25:52Charles Duhigg:So how do people actually do this? Okay, so one of my favorite ways of explaining this is that if you're a teacher, one of the things you learn in teacher training is that if a student comes up and they have something important that they want to ask you about, you should start by asking them a question. And the question you should ask is, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged? Or do you want to be heard? Which of course is the practical, the emotional, and the social, right? And what's amazing is that if anyone listening has young kids at home, next time they come up to you with something, ask them, do you want to be helped hugged or heard?

26:24Charles Duhigg:And they'll know exactly what they want right away. They'll tell you like, no, no, no, I don't need you to help me. I just need you to know that Jimmy's been mean to me, right? I need to tattle on him. I need you to hear me, right? Or I don't need you to fix this problem. I just need you to give me a hug and make me feel better about it. What about when the response comes back and is like,

26:41Dr. Michael Gervais:you should know the answer to that? You've been talking to my wife, haven't you?

26:46Charles Duhigg:don't you know me by now damn it i need a hug or whatever it is yeah well i so so one of the things i mean the other place is that in the workplace you can't really ask people if they want to be helped hugged or heard right they're gonna call hr so in those cases asking a deep question is the next best thing we can do and sometimes you can just ask a question about what kind of conversation they want when i come home and i start complaining about my day my wife will often say do you want me to help you solve this problem or do you just need to get it off your chest.

27:13Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. That hinge between those two ideas has been really important for my wife and I. Are we in problem solving mode? Right. I'm just asking, like, do you want me to go problem solving with you or is this calibration? Yes. You know, problem solving or calibration. And it's like, not calibrate. Like, I just, I need to talk it through, you know, or like, no, I'm looking for a solution. Come on, get with it.

27:32Charles Duhigg:Got it. You know, so. And we can do that in any conversation. That's why I say being a super communicator, it's not really something, a superhuman thing. It's something that any human can do because at any point we can ask, you know, that sounds like a really tough time you're going through. Do you want me to help you think through some solutions to it? Is that helpful? Or do you want to just tell me sort of like what it's like to be living with this?

27:52Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. But what you're doing that's, I think, materially important, that's almost kind of the trick in plain sight. So let me go back to my training one more time is when you're going to ask a question, have a general idea of where it's going to go.

28:04Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

28:05Dr. Michael Gervais:And if it zigs when you thought it was going to zag, no problem. But you have a general idea of where it could lead. And that's exactly what you're doing. You're having a general idea. Am I going towards practical? Am I going towards social? So you're giving a pretty innocuous, thoughtful question. You're lobbing it, back to that support analogy. And then you're watching where they go. Yeah.

28:26Charles Duhigg:And what I love about what you just said is if I have a vague hypothesis in my head, and my hypothesis is this might be emotional, like we should probably, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to your answer. I'm going to listen a lot better. That's exactly it. Because I want to see if the hypothesis in my head is true. So let me ask you a question, because I have this theory about psychology, particularly about therapy, which is that one of the most powerful things that we do as psychologists, as people who are helping other people, whether we're trained or untrained, is that we're helping them recognize the story they're telling themselves, sometimes without realizing it, and helping them recontextualize that story a little bit.

29:04Charles Duhigg:You know, it sounds like you're having a really hard time. Tell me, what was it like last time you were in this? Well, last time I was like in this, it all turned out fine. So now I'm changing the story in my head. The story isn't, I'm on the path to doom. The story is, this is kind of like last time and everything worked out okay.

29:18Dr. Michael Gervais:You know, I think we don't really know how this works. I think we have a good sense that being part of it with someone else that is not judging or critiquing or shaming or any of that kind of performative, less than stuff that there's something about just having somebody else, but the positive regard, non-judgmentally going, mm, yeah. Oof, you know, like, but honestly doing that, there's a recalibration that takes place there. And there's something about not letting people, sounds like a little directive, if you will, not tolerating people to re-traumatize themselves by telling the story again.

29:52Charles Duhigg:Oh, interesting.

29:53Dr. Michael Gervais:I'll tell you how this happened for me. I was in a tough way, freshman year in college. And there was a professor, he happened to be a psychology professor, and there was attunement that was happening. Like I felt like connected to him some kind of way. I like, I didn't know psychology was a thing really, but I liked the conversations in the class. I saw him outside of the building as we were walking to the building and I was having a tough time. I was like really anxious at this time in my life. So I came up to him. I was like, hey doc, you got a minute? He said, yeah. And I go, I just want to talk to you about something real quick.

30:21Dr. Michael Gervais:Are you going to class? So we both knew it was a short conversation. And he goes, yeah, let's walk. And so he said, what's up? And I started getting into this thing that was bothering me. and he interrupted me right in the first third of my entree into what I was struggling with. He didn't even get to the struggling piece. And he said, Mike, when the doorbell rings, do you have to answer it? And I looked at him like, what's that got to do with anything? And my thought was like, psychologists are kooks. And he looked at me and he saw that I was like, big eyed, like, what are you saying? And what has this got to do with my trauma that I'm, you know, not really trauma, micro trauma.

30:58Dr. Michael Gervais:And he peeled off and walked away. huh i didn't get it it took me another the next week i was like hey doc i came back around to him i didn't get what happened like do you have a minute i just really want to tell you he did it again he interrupted me about a third of the way through it took me years he never gave me the answers to like what he was doing but i know now he interrupted my story and in doing that he didn't allow me to rehydrate it. Yeah. He stopped it from blooming. He created a chaos that was like a gift. He wasn't going to sit in the presence of a person re-traumatizing themselves through telling their story again and again.

31:44Dr. Michael Gervais:I had the story perfected. Yeah. Yeah. So was he a good communicator? I think he was a super communicator.

31:50Charles Duhigg:Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Well, and what I love about what you just said is you had this story perfected. Like this story was so integral to how you saw yourself, how you saw what was happening to you, it didn't even occur to you. I'm guessing that there was another story you could be telling yourself, right? Or that I don't need to keep telling this story. Yeah. Or that this story is in the past and now we're writing a new story. That's right. And I think that sometimes one of the most powerful things we do as communicators, as humans, as people who feel connected, is simply listening to someone tell their story and then saying like, you don't have to answer the doorbell when the doorbell rings.

32:26Charles Duhigg:Which just for clarity means that when the thought arises, you don't have to entertain it. Exactly. Exactly. Or to say, I'm really sorry you're going through that. Let me tell you about something that's similar that happened to me. Right? Now, what's key here is it's not to steal the spotlight. Like oftentimes we'll tell a story and someone else, or even worse, we go to a party and someone says, where'd you go on vacation? And we start answering the question. We know within 10 seconds, they don't care where we went on vacation. They just want to talk about their vacation, right? They want to tell us about the fancy yacht that they rented.

32:56Charles Duhigg:So I think when we ask questions of people, when we say, you don't have to answer the doorbell, when we say, it sounds like this is tough for you. Let me tell you about something I went through that was similar. If my goal is to help you instead of stealing the spotlight away from you, you can feel that. That's cool. And I think when your professor said, you don't have to answer the doorbell and you walked away, what he was actually saying is he's saying, I'm not stealing the spotlight from you, right? Like, I'm going to let you sit in the spotlight. I'm just going to tell you, this is a spotlight I don't want to be a part of.

33:28Charles Duhigg:You don't have to be a part of.

33:30Dr. Michael Gervais:Are you using the word spotlight from Gilovich's work, you know, the spotlight effect? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. So Professor Gilovich did an experiment, right, where he identified that people are thinking about themselves way more than anyone else ever would. Right. And are you purposely using that?

33:47Charles Duhigg:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because I think that - We feel that generosity of spirit. it. We feel when someone actually wants to help us. And sometimes that help. I mean, what's amazing to me about the story you told is that you came back to the professor, right? Because it would have been really easy to be like, oh, this professor just blew me off. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to make a fool of myself again. Like I'm going to find someone else to talk to.

34:09Dr. Michael Gervais:Thank you for pointing out my inability to recognize that. But he did it in a way

34:16Charles Duhigg:that you knew he was doing it for your benefit. You knew that he was trying to help.

34:21Dr. Michael Gervais:I knew he had something that was useful, that could be useful. And I went back because I thought I missed kind of the mark. I just thought it was weird. I thought he was doing something weird, but I knew that like, if there was a moment to syncopate, he could be helpful.

34:35Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

34:35Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. Full circle. Like his name is Dr. Cusio, Dr. Perkins, and Dr. Zanka. These three professors, one was a psychologist, theologian, and the other was a philosopher. Those three were their best friends and materially changed my life. That's amazing. Yeah. The world of the invisible. Yeah. Yeah. So that interaction sounds like it was maybe casual, but it was actually really important.

34:58Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

34:58Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah.

34:59Charles Duhigg:And I'm certain that they thought about connecting with you. And for you connecting with them. That's right. I mean, these are people you look up to. These are people you admire. Yeah. Like the desire to connect is probably, you don't even have to think about it. How are you doing? with your connection in life? We're in LA right now. I'm here because I took my 14-year-old and two of his friends on their spring break trip down here to LA. And I think a lot about how to connect to my kids. I have a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old, both boys. And part of it is that I really want to have a relationship with them that as they get older, that we have a genuine relationship.

35:38Charles Duhigg:Friendship is like, I want us to be friends, but that's almost too small a word for what I want, right? But I want to know who they are in the most genuine way. And I want them to know me. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about how to connect with them because they're not thinking about it, right? They're kids. They're teenagers. They shouldn't have to be thinking about it. They should be thinking about girls or sports or, you know, riding scooters, which is what they love to do in LA. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about how do I create moments when we can actually hear each other?

36:12Charles Duhigg:How do you do it? So a lot of it's in the car, right? Because with boys and you have a 17 year old boy, you know, the shoulder to shoulder conversations are amazing. They are fantastic.

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38:02Charles Duhigg:My friends who are raising daughters, like a lot of it for them is about talking about emotions, right? Their daughters are having an emotional life in middle school and high school that often my male friends didn't have themselves because as men, we tend to mature a little bit slower than our female counterparts. And part of it is learning just to say like, tell me how you feel and not trying to solve those feelings, right? But just saying, tell me how that made you feel. Like what, why did you feel that way? Like, what do you think would make you feel better? Do you use the word feel? Oh, all the time.

38:34Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. That's cool. All the time. Yeah. I'll sometimes, if I want to slide into it a little bit easier, I'll say, what was that like for you? And then watching, if he says that I was scared, or he says like, ah, you know, I don't know, I'll go, oh, he wants to go feelings or he wants to stay practical to your, I didn't have your framework before I read your book three years ago, two years ago now, or whenever it was, but your framework is, it shows up. It's very intuitive, right?

38:57Charles Duhigg:I think it's how many of us communicate. I think that's exactly right. Is asking that question like, like, you know, what do you make of that? Like, again, at the core of these deep questions is why you just told me about something. Why is it important to you? Right. Why, why are you telling me about this? What, what does it mean to you?

39:14Dr. Michael Gervais:As you've been studying super communicators and the real thing that you're studying one more time is about connection.

39:21Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

39:21Dr. Michael Gervais:How are we doing? Just do the U.S. for right now. Like, how are we doing as communicators?

39:27Charles Duhigg:I'm going to answer that question, but let me preface it by saying this. The moments in our nation's history that we are proudest of are not when everyone agreed with each other. Let's go back to the Constitutional Convention. To write the Constitution, you get like a couple of dozen men in a room, many of whom actually hate each other, right? They were like, they were physically threatening each other. And they certainly didn't agree about what America is supposed to be, but they managed to write a constitution. The moments in our history, whether it's that moment, whether it's the civil rights movement, whether it's post-World War II, the moments that we're proudest of are not when everyone agreed with each other.

40:04Charles Duhigg:It's when we could disagree and hear each other and still live peacefully alongside each other. when we felt connected, even though we disagreed with each other. And so I look now at the test that I'm going to apply there and say, so if I voted for someone different than you voted for, for president, can we talk about that and still feel connected to each other? It's hard. It's hard. It's really hard.

40:27Dr. Michael Gervais:It's getting harder. Yeah. Like people aren't wanting to show up at family events because it could go sideways.

40:34Charles Duhigg:Yeah, absolutely.

40:35Dr. Michael Gervais:Take us through some things that we can do a little bit better here.

40:37Charles Duhigg:Absolutely. So what are the components of feeling connected even when we disagree with each other? A huge part of it is that I need to believe you're actually listening to me. Because very often if I'm in a conversation about politics and you're telling me all about why you support your guy and I'm going to tell you all about why I support my guy, as you're talking, I'm waiting my turn to speak. I'm not necessarily listening. And you know that, right? You can feel that in the back of your head. Is this person actually listening or is he just waiting his turn to speak? So I have to actually prove to you that I'm listening.

41:05Charles Duhigg:I have to say, look, here's what I hear you saying. You told me that you like your candidate because it feels like he's standing up for the little guy. And what I hear you saying is that it feels like the little guy isn't getting the opportunities that you think America is supposed to provide for them. Am I getting that right? Am I hearing you correctly? At that moment, what I'm doing is I'm proving to you that I'm paying attention. I'm proving to you that I'm processing what you're saying. Most importantly, I'm asking you if I got it right.

41:31Dr. Michael Gervais:What do you do in a situation to be a super communicator when you are listening hard, well, and you are recalibrating that you're aligned? You just heard, this is what I heard you say. And you might add a little to it to take it a little bit deeper, further, whatever. And then the person is not as interested in your experience, but wants to keep going because now they feel seen and heard. Yeah. Right? Like, would you say, fine, just let them go. like, let that happen.

42:01Charles Duhigg:You gotta be, I mean, look, you don't have to have a conversation with anyone. There is no obligation to have a conversation with someone, particularly if they don't want to dialogue with you, if they just want you to be a listening post.

42:11Dr. Michael Gervais:That's a cool framing.

42:12Charles Duhigg:I can walk away from it. Yeah. Now, sometimes though, I can just remind the other person that I belong in this conversation. The classic thing that happens is you go to a party, start talking to someone, you're asking them question after question. They never ask you a question back. Here's what I do in that situation. I say, oh my gosh, you know, I've been asking you so many questions. I'm sure you have some questions to ask me. Let me take a break and give you a chance to ask me some questions. And here's the interesting thing. They do. They have questions. That's a nice bit of judo. It's a nice little bit of judo.

42:38Charles Duhigg:And most importantly, it's not that they didn't have questions. It's that they're not in the habit of asking questions. They don't feel comfortable asking questions. They need my permission. Why do you want to ask them questions? I mean, sometimes it's just because you're at a party and you need someone to talk to, right?

42:52Dr. Michael Gervais:I was wondering if this is for you or for them or for the material understanding. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so let's go back to family.

43:01Charles Duhigg:Yeah, but let's say it's my kid, right? And I'm asking my kid questions after question. And I often use the YUM, the fast friends procedure, which I'm sure you know that. No. Oh, the 36 questions that like lead to love. It's this great experiment. If anyone looks it up, it's called the fast friends procedure. It's these 36 questions that they use in experiments to help people feel closer to each other. Whoa, what is this?

43:21Dr. Michael Gervais:Really? Yeah. How have I missed this?

43:22Charles Duhigg:Yeah, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful -

43:24Dr. Michael Gervais:It's called YUM? No, the fast friends procedure. Oh, what did I hear Yum from? I thought this was like, I thought you were saying Dr. Yum. And it's like, okay, the fast friends procedure. I don't know.

43:33Charles Duhigg:Yeah, Arthur and Elaine Aaron in Rhode Island. They came up with this.

43:37Dr. Michael Gervais:Okay, say the names again. I missed it. Arthur and Elaine Aaron, A-R-O-N. Okay, cool. Married couple. Let's find the link and put it in the show notes.

43:44Charles Duhigg:Yeah, and it's actually a fun story behind it because what happened was they wanted to come up with a system that could make any two strangers into friends. And they tried all kinds of stuff. They like had people go on walks together or do puzzles together or sing songs together. And basically none of it worked. Like some people would become friends and others wouldn't. And so one day they have a big, they have a big graduate lab and their grad students are like kind of like hippie pot smokers. And so they're like, look, why don't you guys just come up with a bunch of questions that you ask each other after you've been recreationally relaxing.

44:17Charles Duhigg:So they write up a bunch of questions and they choose 35 of them. And, and it starts pretty easy. The first question is if you could have dinner with anyone from history, who would it be? That's pretty easy, right? But question number seven is, how do you think you will die? Question number 18 is, tell me about your mother. Question 35, the second to last question is, when was the last time you cried in front of another person? Because one of the things that the errands found is they would bring people into a room, sit down kind of like this. They'd give them the list of questions, and they'd tell them go back and forth.

44:49Charles Duhigg:So I would ask you the first question, you'd answer it, and then you'd ask me the first question. Back and forth, back and forth. And people felt incredibly close to each other. In fact, so much so that seven weeks later, 70 % of the people who had sat in that room had sought out the other person on campus or in the workplace and just said like, let's go have a beer together. One of them actually got married a year after doing the experiment. It's very cool. They do the exact same experiment, but this time, instead of having them go back and forth, they give them a list. I ask you all 36 questions, you answer them.

45:20Charles Duhigg:Then you ask me all 36 questions, didn't work. I think what's important, and this gets to what we were saying before about the back and forth, the why I can't just ask you questions. You have to ask me questions too, is it is the back and forth. It is the synchronicity, the building with each other. That's what makes us feel connected. So go back to somebody who's having a hard time speaking to their brother, to their sister, to their parent, cousin, uncle. So the first thing they're going to do is they're going to prove that they're listening. Right. And they're going to indicate, I genuinely want to listen to you.

45:50Charles Duhigg:Like, I understand we voted for different people. I don't want to convince you that my guy is right and your guy is wrong. I don't want to convince you I'm smart and you're dumb. I honestly just want to understand how you see the situation. And when you tell me, I'm going to prove to you that I'm paying attention. And what's going to happen is you're going to be more likely to listen to me in return, right? It's just social reciprocity. We can't help but do it. But then the second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to try and abstract that conversation to talk about what underlies it. And this is where the why question, the deep question becomes so powerful.

46:23Charles Duhigg:Okay. You voted for your guy. I voted for my guy. They see the world really differently. Instead of asking you why you voted for your guy, I'm going to ask you, why is this important to you? Like, like of all the things we can be talking about, we can be talking about the Superbowl right now. Right. But we're talking about politics. You seem to care a lot about this candidate. Why do you care about this candidate? Why don't you? I mean, I do. I care about my candidate. Right.

46:44Dr. Michael Gervais:But I'm just wondering, like, but you see, you're seeing, I don't understand how you're seeing it. You're seeing it so wrong. You're missing the big point.

46:52Charles Duhigg:So instead of trying to convince you that I'm seeing it wrong, let me just ask you, because I really genuinely want to understand, how do you see it? And you're going to answer that question, and I'm going to repeat back what's known as looping for understanding, proving that I'm listening. I'm going to repeat it back. And because you and I feel like we're actually sharing with each other, we're not going to change our mind about who we vote for, but we're going to walk away feeling connected to each other. Because the truth of the matter is that if I'm talking to my neighbor and we have different lawn signs on our lawn for different candidates, that takes up like 1 % of my brain.

47:29Dr. Michael Gervais:What do you do in that conversation when you're in question mode, listening mode, and you get an uptick in emotions? You get triggered. Somehow you stepped on a wire and you're shocked. Yeah. Right? What do you do with that?

47:44Charles Duhigg:I think at that moment you say, I want to tell you how I'm feeling. You actually say like, okay, like we're having kind of a practical conversation. We're talking about who's increasing the deficit, but I'm going to ask your permission. I want, can I tell you how I'm feeling? Can we move together from a practical to an emotional conversation? You know what's cool about this?

48:00Dr. Michael Gervais:Because let's say you do that. And then if I say whatever, now you should probably walk away.

48:05Charles Duhigg:Yeah.

48:06Dr. Michael Gervais:Right. Or if I say, yeah, what happened? And you're like, oh. Yeah. So you can go into it. Yeah. That's cool. So then you're taking a moment for vulnerability. Taking a moment for vulnerability. Yeah.

48:16Charles Duhigg:And it's costless, right? Because I'm asking you, can I tell you how that makes me feel?

48:21Dr. Michael Gervais:You actually haven't said anything yet.

48:21Charles Duhigg:Right, I haven't said anything. I've just asked you if we can go there together. And the truth of the matter is that like, you're definitely not going to say no. You're not going to say whatever. I don't care how you feel, unless you're a real jerk, in which case we're not going to have a conversation anyways. But what you're probably going to say is you're going to say, no, what are you feeling? And then I'm going to talk about myself. I'm going to talk about what I am an expert on because I am an expert on my own emotions. I'm an expert on my own experiences. I'm not going to say, the reason I get super scared is because your guy just seems mean and he seems crass.

48:52Charles Duhigg:Instead, I'm going to say, sometimes when I watch the news, I feel bad. Like, I feel like there's something on that news that makes me feel bad about our country. And I don't like feeling that way. Like, I want to feel good.

49:02Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, but you're watching the wrong news.

49:03Charles Duhigg:You're watching fake news. It could be. It could be. But I don't need to disagree with you, right? All I have to do is tell you about what I'm an expert on. I'm an expert on my experiences.

49:14Dr. Michael Gervais:experience. And when you're doing that, are you enveloped in yourself because you're like accurately trying to express your emotions? When you do that, you almost kind of look within to make sure that you're calibrated. That's what most people do. Or are you doing something simultaneously, which is you're looking for signals? Is it okay for me to keep going?

49:32Charles Duhigg:I think both. I think we do the second thing almost unconsciously. But at that moment, my goal is to help you understand how I see the world. So in a tough conversation, the only goal should be, I want to understand how you see the world and I want to speak in such a way that you understand how I see the world. This seems like a non sequitur,

49:53Dr. Michael Gervais:but was it Hegel? There's a German philosopher, I'm blanking on his name right now, that introduced the equivalent of the word called worldview. And it's a German word I can't explain. We'll put this in the show notes too. It looks like Wiener Stichel in my mind, but of course that's not it. But it's the first time that the word worldview as one word was introduced. Interesting. Do you have a methodology to help people understand their own worldview or a methodology to help people understand somebody else's worldview?

50:23Charles Duhigg:So what we know from the research, and I'm sure you know this also, is that oftentimes we talk about perspective taking, right? We say like, put yourself in someone else's shoes. So if I want to explain my worldview to you, I'm going to invite you to sit in my shoes. Perspective taking does not work very well. what works pretty well because it's just hard to do is perspective getting that when i ask you questions about your perspective oftentimes what i'm doing is i'm nudging you to actually come up with that worldview the truth of the matter is we all walk around with a worldview and we don't think about it that's right it's not really clear no it's background itself yeah yeah it's water the two fish in the water one of them says how's the water boys and they go on and then one of them says, what the hell is water?

51:08Charles Duhigg:What are you talking about? We don't know what our worldview is until someone asks us about it. And so it's a gift. Okay. Our producer just put it up. It's

51:17Dr. Michael Gervais:Welten Schanung. Welten Schanung. Okay. I love it. Yeah. It was the first time worldview or world perspective was introduced as a word. So I think that there's, what you're doing is helping people, I think you use the word nudge, nudge towards understanding their worldview. Yeah. And maybe it's just thin slice to the political worldview. Perhaps. You know, but there's probably other stuff in there. I'm fascinated by people's worldview, their belief systems, which are very hard to excavate.

51:45Charles Duhigg:Yeah. They're very difficult, but they're so powerful. I think part of that is also signaling to you that I'm actually curious about your worldview. I'm interested in your worldview. I'm not just asking you about your worldview because I want to change it. I'm asking because I want to understand it. So get back. We're at the Thanksgiving table. Politics comes up. I'm going to prove to you that I want to understand how you see the world. I'm going to prove to you that I'm listening, that I'm actually taking that in. Then the third thing I'm going to do is I'm going to share something that I'm an expert on.

52:14Charles Duhigg:And that's probably going to come across as a little bit vulnerable, right? I'm going to say the reason I'm so worried about this election is that it makes me scared or it makes me excited to elect someone like this, to have my kids see that someone like this can become president, that is so exciting to me. You can't disagree with that. You might not be excited, but this is my experience. I'm telling you what I'm an expert about.

52:38Dr. Michael Gervais:Very cool. Clean, simple. It's something that I can deploy at the next kind of holiday.

52:45Charles Duhigg:And it becomes a habit. That's the nice thing about communication. Our brains have evolved to be really good at communication. And one of the things that we do is we create communication habits very, very quickly.

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55:41Charles Duhigg:100%.

55:42Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. And if there was a better way for us to do the social environment better, would you say it's asking questions?

55:49Charles Duhigg:Yeah. Well, I think that's part of it. I think definitely part of asking questions. And second of all, it's something that you said before is just transmitting nonjudgmentalism, right? Saying, look, I actually want to understand you. I don't want to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right.

56:03Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. Carl Rogers, Dr. Rogers says unconditional positive regard for the other person. And if you can hold that, you're going to do more good in this world than not.

56:12Charles Duhigg:I have a friend named Greg Nelson who like you bring him to a party and he's just like, he can talk to anyone. And, and I've studied why he's so good at this. And the reason why is because when he's in the conversation, you feel like he is genuinely in the conversation, right? He's never saying like, he's never looking over your shoulder. He's never saying like, ah, that seems like a really dumb thing for you to believe. Right. Instead he's saying like, tell me more and let me tell you about me? Let me tell you how I think about this.

56:40Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. Right. That's cool. So he gets himself in there. Yeah. He gets himself in there.

56:44Charles Duhigg:And in that positive regard, it doesn't cost us anything. It doesn't mean that you agree with the other person. It doesn't mean that I'm saying, actually, you know what? Your candidate is the right candidate. It simply means I want to understand you and I want you to understand me.

56:59Dr. Michael Gervais:Charles, well done. Always enjoy our conversation. Me too. Quick hits though. If I knew what you knew, how would I be a better leader?

57:08Charles Duhigg:I think the best leaders are people who ask a lot of questions. And what's interesting is if you look at Jamie Dimon, if you look at leaders from history, we tend to put these people on a pedestal and we tend to remember the moment when Abraham Lincoln gives the Gettysburg Address, right? He's speaking, he's not listening. And then you read a biography of this guy or you read his writings and he talks about all the questions he's asking. Very cool. If I knew what you knew, how would I parent better? I'll just speak for myself. How I try and parent better is instead of trying to teach my kids so much, I try and just ask them to teach me.

57:45Charles Duhigg:I want to understand how you see the world. I want to understand why this seems so important to you. Our instinct is to say, I know so much. I want to I want to help you avoid these missteps. But they get that if we say to them, teach me how you see the world.

58:01Dr. Michael Gervais:That's rad. And then, you know, lastly, how would I be a better spouse? If I knew what you knew, how would I be a better spouse?

58:07Charles Duhigg:Again, just speaking from my own experience, the most important things I've done in my marriage is to tell my spouse that I want to connect with them. Like sometimes just saying, because you can get so bogged down by the magnitude of life, sometimes just saying like, look, if it's okay, could we go take like an evening and just like walk around and talk for two hours? Cause I really, I like, I just want to feel close to you. Did they teach you this at HBS? They did not teach me this at Harvard Business School. This was, this was not a lesson at Harvard Business School. You've come a long way, my friend.

58:38Charles Duhigg:Yeah. Well done. Yeah.

58:39Dr. Michael Gervais:This is not what's taught there. Charles, thank you for coming through. Thank you for having me. This is so much fun. Yeah. Let's do a fourth one.

58:46Charles Duhigg:Absolutely. I love Do you have a book on the horizon? I'm working on, I'm trying to figure out what it is right now. So I'm playing with some ideas and hopefully going to figure out what the next book is. Well, I'm looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Next time on Finding Mastery, Dr. Sonia Lubomirsky joins us to explore a powerful idea that happiness may depend less on being loved and more on whether we truly feel loved. This conversation is full of practical insight on connection, curiosity, and the small ways we can create more love in our everyday relationships.

59:17Dr. Michael Gervais:So join us Wednesday, May 20th at 9am Pacific, only on Finding Mastery. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday.

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1:00:31Dr. Michael Gervais:So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring. Come on.