EASY STEPS TO BECOME A SUPER COMMUNICATOR (THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND)

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now? This is The Admirate Show.

1:00And the reason he's way more qualified than me is this guy is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. He's a New York Times bestselling author. And he's a renowned expert on habits. And also now, after reading his work, he's an expert on communication. So, Charles Dewey, welcome back to the show, brother. Thank you, Ed, for having me on. This is such a treat for me. Yeah, I love you, brother. You're going to listen to a big brain today, everybody, on a topic that you need to know more about. I've got to tell you why I love your book so much. We were just talking about kids off camera. There's a few things I want my kids to have left my house with.

1:29One, I want them to have some faith, which is their morals and ethics. I want them to have some work ethic, self-confidence. And if I could give them a fourth thing, it would be the ability to be an outstanding communicator. And I just think it's one of the things that is the most important elements of life. I'm sure you agree. I think that's absolutely right. And I think the things that you mentioned before that are really important. Because if you, you could be a great communicator. And if you don't have values, if you don't have discipline, then it's not necessarily going to get you anyplace.

1:54But the difference between people who have those first three things and then don't know how to communicate is that they stall out at some point, right? They have trouble in their marriage. They have trouble communicating with their spouse or their partner. They oftentimes stall out at work because the thing that made them successful at work, once you become a manager, it's not just doing that. It's about helping other people learn how to do that. and also there's a huge amount of self-discovery that comes from conversation right like when i talk to you and you talk to me we learn things about ourselves through what we say and it takes someone talented a super communicator to draw that out to know how to how to make the space for that that's interesting you learn about yourself i didn't think about it that way but you're right you know i i almost feel like after i was reading your book and by the way everybody it is outstanding This man does not write average books.

2:48He just doesn't, and he sells a lot of them for a reason. And I almost feel like after reading it, I think I thought this before, but almost your ability to communicate will be the cap on your life to some extent. It's the cap on your relationship. The intimacy level in your relationship, for example, to some extent is limited or enhanced by your ability to communicate nonverbal cues, verbal cues, your ability to lead and move people in business, your family environment, friendships. I mean, the cap on your success level in those areas is almost directly correlated to communication. I absolutely, so my father passed away about six years ago, and I went to his funeral, and there were so many more people there.

3:27There were people that, like, I hardly remembered, like, people, I was so surprised, and I was talking to them, and I was like, you know, like, thank you for coming, and they would all say the same thing. They'd say, like, I loved talking to your dad, right? That's why they showed up is because they had this, they had a connection with them. Do you think it's because of, I think one thing human beings have, Charles, is you're always making people feel something. Yeah. Yet, I think most people are oblivious to that fact. They're feeling something from you in a moment. Your interest level, your energy, your frequency, your trustworthiness, your ability to elevate them.

4:01So do you think with your dad, for example, it wasn't just, you know, talking with him, but it was how he made other people feel. That's exactly what it was. So sometimes when people ask me, like, how do you define a super communicator? The easiest answer is to say, okay, think of the person you would call if you were having a bad day. Right? Like you're having a terrible day. There's someone you call. You know they're going to make you feel better. Like who would that person be for you? It would have been my dad for sure before he passed away. That came right to me. Call my dad. And my guess is that if I met your dad, what I would see is he's not the funniest person in your life.

4:34He's not the most charismatic person in your life. but what he did is he proved to you that he was listening to you that he heard what you said and then he he reciprocated your vulnerability or your joy or your sadness he shared it with you and as a result you walked away feeling like what i'm experiencing what i'm thinking what i'm feeling this is like this is profound and this is real you're right and it's been validated and you don't need your dad to validate it like it's still real to you but to have someone else feel like have them feel like they genuinely want to understand you that's right that feels wonderful in fact it's hardwired into our brain to feel wonderful yeah i just did this and i did a podcast on it so i'll ask you this how much of communication do you think is actually the ability to listen correctly a huge amount a huge amount so and and and let me say that that there's this thing about listening, which is when I'm talking, whatever you're doing, I'm probably not going to pay attention to it because it's so cognitively intense to try and speak that even though I'm going to make eye contact with you and I'm going to kind of notice if you're frowning or smiling or whatever it is, I'm really not going to pick up on the signals you're sending me.

5:44So listening is not just hearing what the person is saying. It's what you do after they finish talking. Because if you do this thing where you prove to me that you've been listening, And in the psychology literature, this is actually referred to as looping for understanding. That particularly if you have a conflict with someone, the best way to sort of bring the tension down is ask a question, repeat back what you hear the person says in your own words. And then step number three, which is the one we usually forget, is ask them if you got it right. And if I do that, so when you think about it, so I'm listening to you.

6:20I have to listen closely to you because I'm thinking I've got to repeat back what you're saying in my own words. I got to process it. But most importantly, you know that I've been listening based on what I say after you're done speaking. And that's really what active listening is. It's about not just passively receiving. It's about amplifying. Very good. That is really good. It's, I mean, and the thing is, it's so easy to do. Like once I learned this, like I find myself doing it all the time without even realizing it. Like I'll be like, what I hear you saying is, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong.

6:51And like, it just feels so natural. It feels so good to have somebody say that back to you. Right. Because you do get the feeling with most people. I think they do two things. One, they're really more concerned with what they're about to say back to you. Yes. And two, I call them verbal nudges where they're interrupting you too often or uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, which you think is a form of agreement. But I think to some extent, sometimes you're almost saying, I got it. Okay. Can I say something now? Yeah. That's exactly right. Nudging them to finish rather than letting them finish. That's it. I think that's exactly true.

7:21And I think that part of this is understanding what the goal of a conversation is. So it's easy to go into a conversation and think the goal is to convince this person I'm right. Or maybe even the goal is just to come to agreement on something. That's wrong. The goal of a conversation is simply to understand what the other person is trying to tell you. So that means that if I'm listening to you and you say something that I think is crazy. You wouldn't say this. But lizard people run the world or whatever it is. if I, I'm not going to agree with you and I'm probably not going to convince you that you're wrong.

7:55But as long as I understand how you see the world, as long as I ask you a question that's known as a deep question where I say like, why is this important? Like, what is it about this? That seems really meaningful and important to you. You're going to tell me something about who you are. I'm going to repeat back what you've told me about. Like, I care about lizard people because I really think the elites of this world are, are like, are like having this pernicious effect on, on the working class. I'm going to repeat that back to you. I'm going to ask you if I got it right. I'm not going to agree with you and you're not going to agree with me, but simply understanding each other means we have succeeded and it feels good, right?

8:29It does. I'm just thinking of like political discourse, you know, like just really understand where they're coming from. I'm not going to win this. I have to tell you your work's so good because it's actually the part of conversations. I think it's why I have a podcast. I really enjoy not only understanding what somebody's saying but also like why they're saying it what's this come from i'm in an uber i basically interview almost every driver i ever have right but i i love that by the end of a good 20 or 30 minute ride i find out where these belief systems stem from yeah too i've had i was in one recently where this guy was way right like way way right and uh no matter what you believe politically but i mean i was like whoa and i'm like trying to understand and trying to understand and i've also had this conversation with someone who's way left but it ended up that at the end i I found out that he had come from a communist country.

9:17He had actually had family that were murdered by communists. And whether I agreed with him or not, that's not the point of this show, but I actually had a much deeper understanding of the basis from which he's formed these opinions, and I really felt connected with this person. Absolutely. So you're right. Okay, so let me ask you a question, if you don't mind. Sure. So when you're in that Uber, when you're having that, what's the second or third question you ask? Because you could be like, hey, where are you from? Oh, I'm from Europe. like what are you asking next to get you from the shallow to the deep oh that's a really good question i usually ask them i open them up a little bit i say give me your craziest story oh interesting so i actually ask them to give me one of their crazy ride stories i'm actually fascinated by that so it kind of opens them up and they get loose i didn't do it tactically but i found that like wow you're kidding me that do that and then typically for me just because i'm most intrigued by it i love to know about people's families and i actually also think people love to talk about their families typically too so usually i'll ask them are you married do you have children and i know that sounds like basic stuff but i find for me that that's an entree into learning an awful lot about these folks what i love about that yeah is that what and i think you got this by intuition is is that so these deep questions if we ask people deep questions deep questions are things that ask us about our values our beliefs or our experiences okay so what's the craziest ride you've ever given someone is asking this guy about his experiences very good right tell me about your kids like what are your kids like is at some point he could just be like i have two kids but at some point you're probably going to say like oh you know do they like school what are they like where do they go to school are you are you worried about their future you're going to ask something that's going to get him to reveal to you who he really is you're right and by the way i always look at people like i i this is an overall belief system this person's a gift i want open them up it's really how i look at them and in this guy's i love that i just got to tell you in this guy's case really quick just an interjection this dude was amazing it turns out that the reason he's driving uber is he has a daughter at harvard and a son at stanford right and he's putting them through school and if you knew where this man came from it was remarkable and the pride he had in his children and his wife that they had raised them and they were there and it became this like really beautiful conversation where not only did i admire i was like whoa this is incredible the life you've built the sacrifice you're making and had a full-time day job drove and it became kind of this conversation we talked about our children and by the time i was done i actually really had a connection with this man that i probably won't i'm talking about him on my podcast yeah right so let me ask you this okay the details of the work guys we're going to get into now there are really three conversation types okay i didn't know there were i was kind of oblivious to this but i think just this alone would enlighten people so they know which conversation they're in and they can identify it.

12:05So share some of that. This is a big discovery from the last decade. And we're kind of living through this golden age of understanding communication for the first time in a new way. And the first thing that researchers have found is that we think of a discussion as being about one thing. We're talking about my book or we're talking about your kids. But actually every conversation is made up, every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations that ebb and flow. And most of those different kinds of conversations fall into one of three buckets. There's a practical conversation where we're talking about plans or making decisions together or we're fixing problems.

12:39Politics is often this. There's an emotional conversation where if I tell you how I'm feeling about something, I do not want you to fix it for me. I want you to acknowledge that you've heard it and I want you to tell me to sort of be vulnerable with me. And then there's a social conversation. And a social conversation is about how we relate to each other in society, how we think other people see us, how our identities shape how we see the world in different and interesting ways. And the key is there's this thing known as the matching principle, which is if I'm having an emotional conversation and you respond with a practical conversation, even though both of what we're saying is legit, we're not going to hear each other.

13:21That is outstanding. This happens at home with my spouse all the time. I come home. I've had a tough day at work. I'm complaining about my boss. my wife says she solves the problem she says why don't you go and like take him out to lunch and get to know each other better and instead of being like that's really good advice i'm like you don't understand you're not listening to me very good charles so so if she matches me and then invites me to match her then we're having the same kind of conversation then we can hear each other you just explained 25 years of problems no because i'm coming home to an emotional conversation and I'm I'm not in one sometimes yeah what about what advice would you give to somebody who I can't we're talking about socially I just moved and you're asking about the move and I said yeah I said you know I kind of revert back to myself socially and uh I think I would categorize myself would surprise most people listen to the show but I'm very quiet and very shy and I find a lot of public speakers are by the way a lot of entertainers privately are very i'd call an introvert yeah you have any advice for an introvert as it comes to communication like this so i think one of the things i heard you just say when you're talking about that uber driver is you got into the car yeah and he had one identity which is right wing yeah and you asked him some deep questions that were easy to ask like they didn't seem intimate and he started telling you about his other identities and once he once he complicated himself once he said like look I'm not just one thing I'm three and four and five things all of a sudden it's easy to feel close to that person because some of those things he is you are too and so I think when it comes to introverts or when you move to a new place like one of the things that I like to do is you meet someone at a party or a barbecue or whatever it is and like I often ask them you know what do you do for a living and then I'll often say you know they say I'm a lawyer and I say you know do you love practicing the law like did you just did what made you decide to become a lawyer like when was the moment you decided to become a lawyer what inevitably they say is something that tells me about their other identities which is i became a lawyer because i saw my dad get arrested and i wanted to fight for the for the underdog or i became a lawyer because we were poor and i wanted to always have enough money or i became a lawyer because i love intellectual stimulation like think of those those three answers just told me so much about those different people and at that point i can say to them yeah i took i grew up poor too like i understand what that's like and now suddenly we feel safe with each other i think this isn't necessarily true for introverts but when we're in new social situations and we were talking about how hard it is to make friends when you don't have friends in a place the thing that often stops us is just a little mild anxiety.

16:09You're right. Oh, I, at least mild with me. Yeah. Yeah. And, and how are we going to start the conversation? How are we going to get out of the conversation? How like, okay, that's mine. Okay. That's mine. And candidly, so I love that we're going there. So, Hey guys, as you know, I've partnered up with my good friend, Brennan Brouchard, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called growth day. There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every monday for myself and other influencers there's an opportunity for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free it's incredible go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out i'm okay opening a conversation how are you you know for me it's how does this end how does this end i bet everybody driving or listening is like no that's something i would like to know more about if i'm on this bus i have the most awkward finishes of conversations of any dude you've ever met in your life i'm like okay well hey and i usually end up the conversation with some sort of bs or something you're like i'm gonna use the restroom right i don't know how to get away from you i have to go refresh my glass so okay so so actually um daniel gilbert at harvard actually did an entire study trying to figure out how people end conversations yeah and do does the other person want to end at the same time you do and what he found was two things number one he found that you think i want you to end the conversation because i'm i'm getting bored and actually i am enjoying this conversation we do a difficult job of gauging the other person's interest in the conversation okay but then sometimes we want to end the conversation right and so this is this is what super communicators do they forecast it without committing to it immediately so they say something like oh man this is so interesting i totally got to go like freshen up my drink but before i do like let me ask you like x because oftentimes the the end of the conversation feels hard because it feels awkward yes but if you've already set the table and you're like you're like i gotta step away but this is so fascinating let me ask you one more thing then when they're done answering the question you're like oh man thank you so much and you just turn away that's not awkward i love that that's that's pre-framing the conclusion that's exactly right very good that's exactly right a lot of what you're saying i'm listening is it has to do with the questions you're asking.

18:29I think a lot of people look at conversations or communication like, what am I telling somebody? What am I saying? And I'm sure there's an element of that that we'll get to in a minute too. But so far, a lot of the things you've been suggesting involve questions you're asking somebody. And I have to say this to you. I'm amazed how many people I talk to in social environments and business environments that don't ask any questions. I know. I know. And I can't figure out. I think that for some of them, they're just not practiced at it. And it is like, that's the thing about super communication. Anyone can be a super communicator.

19:01It's literally just a set of skills. Like you just have to practice the skills and make them into habits. Nobody's born knowing how to do this, but I have the same, it drives me crazy. I ask question after question and then they, they answer and then they stop talking and they're waiting for my next question. I'm like, like, does there any, so here's the thing, here's the thing that you're exactly right. 50 if not more of a good conversation is asking good questions but then something happens there's a difference between a conversation and an interrogation right or an interview and this gets into what's known as emotional reciprocity and emotional reciprocity is basically one of the strongest impulses that all humans have if somebody engages in emotional reciprocity we can't help but feel a little bit closer and a little bit more trusting of them so emotional reciprocity says if you say something vulnerable yes and then i recognize i acknowledge that vulnerability but i also show that i can be vulnerable then we're going to feel like we can trust each other and so and that's about speaking so that doesn't mean if you say my dad passed away i should be like oh i understand completely because my aunt passed away 12 years ago like that's stealing the spotlight from you right okay but if you say my dad passed away and i say oh man i like I know how hard that can be like tell me about your dad what was he like oh gosh that was good right and then like and then and what I'm signaling to you is a I'm interested in you I want to hear from you I want to understand you but b you learned something about me and if you're interested you can you can say like like tell me tell me how you know about this like what happened what about being being the server first serving the vulnerability absolutely absolutely there's a guy named Nick at the University of Chicago who's in the book and like Nick is so good at this every conversation I've ever had with him he says something in the conversation near the start of the conversation that feels so intimate yeah and as a result I'm just like I love this guy like I just want to talk to him and again when I look at the transcripts because I'm oftentimes talking to him for reporting and when I read the transcript it doesn't seem too intimate it doesn't seem overly intimate but he says things like you know hey Nick how are you doing like instead of saying oh fine says something like yo it's great i like went to my son's soccer game this weekend it was and like we adopted these kids from ethiopia and like just watching them now as these like strong young men like it was it was a great weekend brother and then right and he's offered that up and at that point i'm like man i'll tell you all about myself let me tell you about me i think i also trust you more when you do that absolutely i think when someone's so surface all the time And by the way, this applies for a lot of you that are in sales too.

21:46Yes. Being willing to be a little bit vulnerable, not always the expert, but a little bit vulnerable, a little bit transparent, a little bit revealing. I believe it's one. I think it's just a better way to live, but it does bond and connect you. It makes you human. Oftentimes when you're in sales, people look at you like you're almost their adversary. Like I can't trust this guy or this lady. But when you begin to show some vulnerability and some authenticity, I think that's when you start to break down the barriers. I found that in my own life. Absolutely. and over trust is huge right i mean so so we have communication is humans superpower like it's the reason as a species we have been so successful is that we can talk to each other and we can build we can share knowledge we can build families and communities all of that is based on communication and communication over the millennia has been hardwired into our brain and so as a result when when somebody communicates well with me i trust them because i literally have two million years of evolution in my head that says trust the guy who it seems like can wants to understand you and that is sharing with you i agree this is so good this is probably going to go a little longer than normal guys no i love it i really love this right um i just think i hope those of you that are listening or watching understand the importance in your life as i said earlier of getting good at this because it's the cap on your bliss.

23:09It's the cap on your laughter. It's the cap on your intimacy. It's the cap on your influence and persuasion. Yeah, absolutely. What about difficult conversations? Yeah. Are those different in nature? And are they, I mean, having to, you know, say, listen, your job performance isn't very good, or I'm frustrated with you or, you know, something that's, you know, you're going into it knowing, gosh, I wish I didn't have to have this conversation but i do yeah or sometimes they catch you off guard right we're like i'm talking about one thing and all of a sudden i realize you're furious at me like i didn't pick up on that until just now and so the answer is they abide by the same rules but the fact that you're in conflict changes the context enormously because we were just talking about trust right i can establish trust by by sharing something about myself but if you go into a conversation where there's conflict trust is already out the window right like you're you're your fight or flight is going off in your head like crazy.

24:06You can't trust someone easily just because like they ask you a question. So, and this has been a focus of a lot of study. How do we make conversations in conflict better? And there's basically two things. The first one is I mentioned this looping for understanding, right? Asking a question, repeating back what you heard, and then asking if you got it right. That's enormously powerful in conflict because the first thing, the first suspicion i have if you disagree with me and we're in conflict with each other is you're waiting your turn to speak you're not hearing what i'm saying right you're just waiting there and like i'm going to tell you my piece and then you're going to just bulldoze over me and i'm going to bulldoze back so if you interrupt that by proving you are listening using looping for understanding to prove i really want to understand what you're saying help me understand i'm taking a huge amount of mistrust off the table the second thing that often happens in conflict and this happens a lot in marriages this actually comes from marriage therapy and studies of marriage therapy is that it is natural when we feel threatened to want to control things and the easiest thing to control is the other person so you tell me your thing and i'm like no no you don't know the evidence let me show you the evidence you say something and you're like i'm not even going to listen to this i try and control you i try and tell you what you should believe what you should feel that's toxic right in a marriage that is the thing that destroys marriage the alternative is i have a need for control you have a need for control we feel threatened can we find things to control together so for instance can we control the timing of this fight instead of having it at two in the morning can we wait till it's 10 a.m and we're both a little bit more rested can we control ourselves can i let you know i'm going to take a second before i speak and i'm to think about what you just said can i show you that i'm trying to control myself and invite you to control yourself and the third thing is we can control the boundaries of the conflict itself so one of the most toxic patterns in marriages is this thing called kitchen sinking where we start arguing about like where we're going to go for new years and then like five minutes later it's like and your mother hates me and you don't earn enough money and like why are you such a jerk all the time right so a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything the healthy way to do that is to say we need to have a fight like we have a disagreement on something let's control the boundaries of it we're talking about new year's eve if my mother comes up and your money comes up like we're just gonna set it aside that's another conversation another day very good but then when we're controlling these three things we're controlling we're controlling ourselves we're controlling um the conversation the environment and we're controlling the boundaries of the fight or the the conflict we're controlling those as partners right we're on the same side of the table we might not agree on the topic we're discussing right but you and i are partners now in controlling the right things in this fight instead of trying to control each other that's outstanding when you're talking about relationships and family where my first off i've made those mistakes me too i'm a pretty good kitchen sinker now that you term it that way yeah and so i think i've gotten better at it i also think the longer with you you're with somebody you have more stuff in the sink and so it's even more important to uh avoid that and have that control of the parameters around the conversation right how long have you been married for 26 years okay so i'm coming up on 20 and there and i'm sure this has happened to you but tell me if if i'm getting this wrong which is there there are these things literally i can say two words and i know the entire fight in my in my wife's head right it's like it's like and sometimes i don't even mean to say them i'm just like i like i'm like i'm like well you know it's because like i earn more money than you and then i'm like oh nuts like i just stepped in it like all to kitchen sink it all i had to say was literally three words you brought the whole thing yeah and so the immediate thing i do is i'm like i'm like i'm sorry whoops yeah i did not mean to do that yeah like tell me what you're feeling because i want to i want to give you a chance but like you know what i've gotten better at that charles with my kids too of saying you know what i'm sorry let me take that right back whereas before i'd almost double down or they didn't really feel it that bad it'll it'll be brushed under and no sometimes you just have to in the moment go i'm gonna yank that one back and not only are you connecting with them but think about the modeling you're doing right you're teaching them how to communicate with other people like i'm absolutely certain your kids are going to copy that without even realizing it comes from dad yeah you're making me think of young people when you say that i want you to give you can we teach this to young people i'll tell you why i ask yeah i have great conversations with my kids bella don't take this the wrong way sweetheart when you're listening to this but lately with my daughter i love doing kind of dates with my daughter and i she's a she's a sophomore in college and i watch her with other people she's quite the conversationalist but with me and she's not disinterested but when we're talking there's a lot of yep yeah right uh-huh and at one point we were taking a walk on the beach over christmas and I said, Bella, this is kind of a serve and volley type thing here.

29:14Like I serve and you return the serve and then I hit the ball back to you and you hit it back to me to your point of ask me something. Right. So it made me wonder, is there anything different? And maybe she's not even quite at that age I'm talking about, but if I have an 8, a 9, a 10-year-old, I'm always blown away when I meet a child who is a tremendous communicator, makes eye contact, shakes her hand. Mr. Mylett, how are you? What do you do? Like when they ask, I'm like, automatically what I think, these are great parents. Yes. I think immediately, these are tremendous parents. So is there anything with young people that these skills can be taught?

29:50Anything unique that you would say that goes with young people? Absolutely. So I think that there's two things. Let's talk about the older kids first, like your daughter's age. So I had a friend whose daughter just went to college, and he had a conversation with her before he left, which I've now imitated and I love. He sat down with her, and he was like, look, you're definitely going to call us when something important happens in your life. But if that's the only time you call, then by definition, you're not calling us that frequently. Like we're going to lose contact with each other. So what I want you to do is I want you to call me for the unimportant things.

30:22You had a bad day, but it's not a big deal. You ate something good for lunch. You're working on this paper and it's kind of interesting. We don't have to talk for more than five or seven minutes, right? But I want you to call me and tell me about the unimportant stuff because the important stuff will take care of itself. and that and and so my son went off to boarding school he's at boarding school right now um here in california and it's his first year there he's in 10th grade and i told him this he calls me every day very i actually talk more to this kid with him at boarding school than i did when he was at home yes so for older kids that's the thing is to is to say this is a priority like conversation is something none of us are born super communicators we can all learn how to do it this is a skill you should practice and it's because it's important for the younger kids it's a little bit harder right yes but i think for them this is where the deep questions become so powerful so my younger one same thing how was school today good what'd you learn nothing right like so and and so some of the advice is like be like oh well you know did pirates show up today and you can do that a couple times but at some point if you ask them a question where where you're asking them to tell you who they are like like what like uh i know that you said that you like science more than you like math i'm just wondering like why like what is it was it about science like i mean is science important to you like you you told me you wanted to hang out with your friend and i'm just wondering like what is it what do you like about that friend like what is special to him what's great about that is that first of all it's clearly not judgmental right whereas if i'm like what'd you learn today i'm kind of judging like a point yeah you better should have learned something today very good point but second of all i'm i'm matching him and i'm allowing him to set the stage it's not that he's playing on my ball court i'm saying to him tell me your ball court and that's powerful

32:21you do a lot of gestures when you talk oh yeah i don't know if you noticed that well you're expressive in your face this is um this may not even be in the book but i want to ask you about it. So you're expressive with your face, you use your hands. And I'm wondering if nonverbal cues are part of being a super communicator. Because I've had people say, I'm really excited to be here. And I'm like, you should tell your face. You should email your face and let them know that you're excited to be here. So I think a lot of it is I'm reading things you're not saying when I talk to somebody as well. Yeah.

32:51And I think that's exactly right. And to be a super communicator, you don't have to have nonverbal, right? Because there's people who like on the phone are fantastic if you're good at one thing you're usually good at everything okay but but similarly with you like you you clearly should telegraph non-verbally or non-linguistically you telegraph your interest you telegraph what you're hearing and that's very very powerful and there's a kind of a science behind it and we've learned a lot of it from looking at laughter so the interesting thing about laughter is studies show that about 80 of the time when all of us laugh it is not in response to something funny okay right so we've laughed a couple of times in this in this interview but i haven't said anything that funny right like you just laughed yeah i'm not that funny a guy okay so what happens when we laugh what a laugh actually is is it's saying to the other person i want to connect with you i'm going to show you that i want to connect with you and then when they laugh back and 90 of the time when i laugh the person i'm talking to will laugh back they're saying i want to connect back that's tremendous so that's a non-linguistic communication and what i love is actually nasa for a time i was gonna ask this yeah so glad so they were trying to figure out how to find emotionally intelligent astronauts yeah and and like the problem is everyone who applies to be an astronaut if you make it to the final stages you're you're like a golden boy or girl right like thousand percent yeah you know how to answer every question you've practiced everything and they're like we can't figure out who's actually emotionally intelligent and who fakes it really really well but when they're in space on a six-month mission the difference is going to matter a lot huge yeah so this one psychologist he started realizing if i pay attention to how people laugh most importantly do they match my laughter so he would come into a room and he would accidentally spill papers accidentally he actually did it on purpose and then he would laugh uproariously and he would watch what that candidate would do some candidates would be like because you know you're supposed to laugh right and then other people would be like that's let me help you with that like i the astronauts who matched him not just on laughter but he would tell a sad story and see if the other person if the other person empathize if they if they engaged in reciprocity if they asked him questions about it so that's non-linguistic but it tells us whether that person wants to to connect and that's ultimately i think when i'm making gestures i'm inviting you to i'm inviting you in right i'm saying like yes like here here i am like i want you to see what i'm seeing i hope what everybody's getting out of this is like these are skills that can be learned there's an art and a science to this you said uh i'm glad you asked that i was going to ask you about the nasa thing you also said emotional intelligence so i just feel like that's at the root of what we're talking about here so how big of a component is just being sort of i think also let me say this so emotionally aware is another word that i would use as well emotionally aware it's a part of having emotional intelligence you agree with that absolutely so i this phrase emotional intelligence is actually kind of a misnomer because it makes us think it's like iq right we're either born with it or you're not but it's not emotional intelligence is emotional awareness if i say to myself and i train myself to say a priority is noticing when someone else is feeling something and matching that and and giving them the space for that that is emotional intelligence that's the thing that's going to make make it make it feel like you understand them that you can empathize with them and it's it's it's not hard right it's just about making it a priority yeah there's a there's in the book a lot of examples of that there's actually just great stories in the book give me one because i want them to get the book so i don't want to do the whole book but give me one story from the book that's sort of illustrative of just you thought one of the more interesting stories in the book so they have an understanding because what's great about the way charles writes this book is that there's like points and tactics and then i like the story to sort of reinforce it that may and i for me facts tell stories sell i remember stories and so i like the way that you weave these into the work and that's why there's so many stories in there is because it's there's so much easier to remember so one of my favorite stories is is early in the book it's about jim lawler the cia agent so good so jim jim is this guy who i've talked to a number of times he he's he's awesome he um he became a cia officer when he was in his 30s and he wanted this so bad he like he struggled for the like he just ran after this so hard it was like he was desperate to be cia officer they accept him they send him off to training and then they send him to europe to recruit foreign assets and he finds out he's the worst recruiter on earth like literally he would go to like parties and he's and like he couldn't make conversation he would like try and buddy up with people and they're like you're a spy aren't you you're trying to get me to be a spy they're like i'm gonna report you to the to the authorities you're gonna get deported so he's like freaking out because he's like i'm terrible at this and then someone in his in his office says look there's There's this woman coming into town.

37:55She's from the Middle East. She works for the foreign ministry. Why don't you get to know her a little bit and see if there's anything there? He bumps into her to a restaurant the next day, right? Bumps. He introduces himself as an oil speculator, strikes up a conversation, takes her to lunch the next day. They start sightseeing together. He sort of develops a little bit of a relationship. He goes and he says to his boss, I think I'm recruiting this woman. I think she's going to be an asset for us. His boss is like, that's fantastic. I'm glad to hear it. he goes he has dinner with this woman fatma and he says i'm not an oil speculator i work for the cia now fatma had been telling him she comes from a he never told me which nation but it's pretty obvious which one it is right she comes from a nation that recently had a religious theocracy revolution and so the the fundamentalists have all taken over and she hates it she's like she's like they're making women wear hijabs or telling us we can't go to college i want to fight this but I don't know how.

38:53And so Jim Lawler says to her, the most practical thing possible. He's like, we want the same thing you do. Like, we want to free the people of your country. We want to empower women. Work for me for the CIA. And she grabs the table and starts shaking her head. And she starts crying. And she goes, no, no, I'm not going to do it. And just has a meltdown. And she says, they kill people in my country for doing this. i cannot believe that you have put me at risk simply by striking up a friendship because if they ever find out you're in the cia they're gonna think i'm in the cia and she just she just bolts and lawler's like ah i'm terrible at this like i'm such a bad recruiter so he goes back to his boss and he tells him what happened his boss is like dude i already told washington dc you recruited her as a spy like like you're gonna get fired if you can't close the deal on this this is this is your last chance that's why we gave it to you so jim spends all this time trying to figure out how do i what do i do and he he keeps on calling fatima and eventually she picks up and he invites her to go to dinner but a couple nights before she's going to fly back home and she says yes because he says he's taken to a expensive restaurant and he has a notebook full full of ideas on how to convert her and he knows none of them are going to work like you cannot trick someone into taking a suicidal risk right right it's just not gonna so he goes to dinner and she's in a she's really down because she's like you know i came to europe i thought i was going to learn something about how to how to be more myself or how to change the world and i'm just going home and i'm the same person and what he starts doing trying to do is cheer her up he tells her little stories he um reminisces about when they you know went sightseeing together and she just gets more and more glum and finally dessert comes and they're kind of by themselves at the table and jim thinks to himself like should i try to like recruit her again and he's like if i do that she's literally going to stand up and walk away so what he decides to do is he decides like this isn't going to work i'm giving up i'm just going to have a real conversation i'm going to be honest and he starts saying to her look i know how you feel because i feel exactly the same way i like i wanted this job my entire life and it turns out i'm terrible at it i am so disappointed in myself and i don't know how i'm gonna go home and tell my dad that like i failed i got fired by the cia and he talks this way now what he's doing obviously without even realizing it is he's matching her matching right she was she was glum and he was trying to cheer her up that's not matching yep he was matching her and she's she's listening to this and she starts crying and he's like i'm such a jerk and in the cia you have to report every conversation so he's gonna have to write up a memo and he's like those guys are gonna fire me within seconds like they're just gonna laugh and he reaches over and he pats her arm and he's like i'm so sorry i did not mean to make you cry i am sorry and she says no no i think i can do this and then and he's so inexperienced he actually the first things out of his mouth is like no no no you don't have to do that like you don't have to like because he wasn't trying to manipulate her he was just trying to finally wasn't yeah he finally wasn't trying to manipulate her and he's like no no i don't want to put you at risk you don't have to do it and she's like she says no no what you want is important i i think we can do this together so for the first time she was able to hear him she was able to hear all those things that he had said over weeks and weeks and weeks about helping the women of her country she couldn't hear it until he matched her next day she goes to a safe house she gets trained in covert communications and other stuff she's the best source in the middle east for the next 20 years unbelievable and jim lawler becomes one of the top recruiters in the entire cia he teaches it today it's one of the best stories ever i love that story let's go i'm gonna pick it apart a little so people understand the dynamic in there so when you say matching was it that she was in an emotional conversation and he wasn't is that what you mean by that that's a huge part of it He was also vulnerable.

42:57But he was also vulnerable. So she was, not only was she in an emotional conversation, but he was listening to the type of emotion that she was transmitting, right? Okay. Instead of saying like, oh, you shouldn't feel bad. I'm going to cheer you up. He was saying like, look, you feel bad. Like, let's just acknowledge that. And that matching feels good because it feels like someone's hearing us. I think it's a huge thing. I don't ever like saying gender specific stuff because I don't believe it. But I do think, by and large, those two elements, women are better at naturally, meaning I think they're more naturally vulnerable in a conversation than a man can be.

43:30I just, and I don't even like saying this, but I just, I think in general, most people would agree with me. And then secondly, I think men try to fix things often, more often, so that when there is an emotional conversation you're in, we just want to fix it or solve the problem or be the savior or be valuable or be important. Yes. Rather than just be with somebody and acknowledge their emotion. And it's not always men and women, right? Sure. It's definitely not, but it's more prevalent, I think. And I think what's happening there is we're falling back on what feels comfortable to us. Right. It is for sure.

44:00So if you're saying something emotional and I get super practical and it pisses you off, it's not so much that I actually think we should be practical. It's that I'm uncomfortable with emotion. There you go. And so I'm going back to my safe place. There you go. And actually, that safe place is emotional, right? Like, like, like the reason I'm trying to solve your problem is like, it really bothers me that you're upset. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you're upset. I want to make you feel better. I feel like that's my job and I feel like I'm letting you down and myself down. Like that is emotional, right?

44:33Right. I'm just, I'm just disguising it as a practical conversation because that's my, that's my safe space. That's my pattern. That's how I hide. Yeah. That's a zillion percent right. I told you we're going to go a bit long, so we're going to. Absolutely. Okay, let me ask you this. This is a hard one. And so I keep using the term nonverbal. I've used that. Let me couch it a little differently. Okay. Literally nonverbal. Okay. So types of communication that are not done verbally. Okay. Mail. Mail, written, email, text, whatever. Yeah. I have found for me, if I'm transparent with people, I feel like I'm a pretty darn good verbal communicator.

45:12I've also found my friends that are hyperverbal people in general again another generality aren't so good in the written word and for some reason when I write or text it comes across as harsh curt sometimes aloof I my writing style does not make the impact in text or email that my verbal style does and I I'm really not very good at that so what about tips or keys on that So what's going on there? So it's interesting. If we were having this conversation about 100 years ago, a little bit under 100 years ago, when phones first became popular, what we would be talking about, and there were all these articles that said this, no one will ever be able to communicate on the telephone well.

45:56Because unless you can see someone, you're not going to figure out what's going on in their voice. Telephone communication is basically going to be for sending over grocery orders. Now, you and I are both Gen X, right? Like when we were kids, we were on the phone for like seven hours a night. 100%. I can have, I have a friendship, I have friendships where I only talk to the person on the phone. So do I. And I still remember the phone numbers of my friends when I was a kid. I don't know anybody's phone number now, but I know Andy Quirin's phone number. Yes. Right. It's like in there. Right. It's true.

46:26And so what's interesting is if we were to watch ourselves talking on the phone, what we would find is that we behave a little bit differently on the phone. When you're on the phone, people tend to over enunciate because they know that they can't see us. Right. We tend to explain ourselves a little bit more. And when we make a joke, we laugh faster to let the other person know it's a joke. We know that they don't have the visual signal. And so we're trying to compensate by giving them more audio. Wow. So now the thing is, we've been talking on the phones for over 100 years. We've been communicating face-to-face for millennia.

46:59The first email was sent in 1982, right? Most people didn't get an email account until the late 90s. We basically have 20 years of learning how to communicate digitally. Good point. We have not, the rules about how that channel is different have not become intuitive yet. So the solution is we have to think about it more when we're texting or emailing. And we have to say to ourselves, okay, and these are the tips. When I am online and I'm communicating that way, politeness matters a lot more than when I'm face to face. And study after study has shown this, that if you say please and thank you in an email, there's like 70 % higher response rate.

47:38Okay. Because I need to signal it, right? if i'm now if i'm texting you i can be short but if i send you an email and i treat it like a text unless we're good friends that's my problem like it's gonna it's gonna rub you the wrong way right so part of it is just saying what are the rules for this particular channel because our instinct is to say the rules for one channel is the rules for every channel you're right so we treat email and text and slack and everything exactly the same way but the truth is if you just take a second you say like oh i don't have to say please necessarily in this text because it could be short but every email i should like bend over backwards be a little bit more polite it works wonders brother i'm such a bad emailer i i'm so lazy with emails i sometimes don't even put my name at the end of it you know i mean never mind a thank you i think i'm the worst emailer that's ever lived and i've had a lot of people even that i've worked with you know even like in the podcast space with like man when i met you you're so nice and kind but i read your emails you're scary i'm like really I didn't mean it that way.