#402: Conflict into Connection: The Art of Effective Communication with Charles Duhigg Pulitzer Prize-winning Reporter & Bestselling Author

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

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Fasten your seatbelt. I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet our guest this week. Charles Duhig is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and the author of the Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he's a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism and George Polk Awards. He writes for the New Yorker, was a reporter at the New York Times, and is host of the podcast How To. Charles, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so excited to get into your new book, Super Communicator. I'm so interested, selfishly in this, in these ideas of difficult conversations and how to connect with others. So why did you actually write this book?

So I wrote this because I found that I was having trouble communicating in my own life. I'm a journalist at the New Yorker and, and I was at the New York Times previously. And so I'm theoretically a professional communicator. And yet I would find this thing that would happen when I came home, which I assume is probably familiar to many people who are listening, is I would have a tough day at work and I would come home and I would start complaining to my wife and I'd tell her about how my boss is a jerk and my co workers don't understand me. And she very reasonably would offer some practical advice. She would say, you know, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. But instead of being able to hear what she was saying to me, I would get even more upset and I would say, no, you're supposed to be on my side and you're supposed to like be outraged on my behalf. And then she would get upset because I was not taking her advice. And so I went to all these researchers and I asked them what's going on here? Like why are we having this pattern where we seem to fail to hear each other? And what they said was, okay, here's the big finding from the last decade. We tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing, right? About, you know, what happened at work today or what we're going to do about our kids grades. But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And in particular, there's three kinds of conversations that most discussions fall into. One of them is a practical conversation about how to solve problems. A second is an emotional conversation where I want to tell you how I feel and I don't want you to solve my problem, I just want you to empathize. And then thirdly, there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other. And they said the key is if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you fail to connect. And so when you were coming home from work and you were in an emotional conversation and your wife responded with a practical conversation, you guys couldn't hear each other. You have to learn how to align how to, and in doing so you'll be able to connect with each other.

Well, sadly, this is not well known. Hence you writing this book.

Right.

So when you're equipped with the information, now that we know that we need to know what type of conversation we're entering into with somebody else, how do we know which strategy to deploy and how do we educate the other person on that same information?

Yeah. Well, okay, so let me ask you a question. You know, there are these people who are super communicators. If I was to ask you, like if you were having a bad day and you wanted to call someone who you know would make you feel better, does that person pop into your mind? Like, do you know who you would call?

Of course.

Who is it?

My girlfriend, Samantha. And to your point, she's team me. She's going to empathize with me, she's going to encourage me. She's just there to listen, not to solve any problems.

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

Right.

So actually listening to me and hearing what I'm saying, not, you know, how some other people you might talk to and they're rushing, they're doing 25 and you can tell you're not a priority.

Yeah.

She really makes, you know, total focus. And she'll relate it to other times in my life and remind me of other situations. She kind of goes that extra mile with me that she's really, really present and then helping me to, to know I'm not alone or this isn't the first time a challenge this has happened. It's very, very comforting.

Yeah. And that feels really good. Right? That feels good to know that she's proving to you that she's listening to you. Which this is. The other thing that we know that super communicators do is they prove that they're listening. And my guess is that Samantha does this in one of two ways. First of all, she probably asks follow up questions. Right? She asks you deep questions and then she asks follow up questions to show that she's heard what you've said. And then the second thing, and tell me if this is something Samantha does, is this thing known as looping for understanding. Particularly if we're in conflict with someone that we can prove to them that we're listening. We can show that we want to hear what they have to say, which is really powerful because oftentimes when we're in a tough conversation, we don't know if the other person is really listening or if they're just waiting their turn to speak. And so looping for understanding actually has three steps. There's you ask a question, hopefully a deep question, you listen to what someone says, and then you repeat back in your own words what you just heard them say. That's step number two and then step number three. And this is the one we tend to forget, is they ask, did I get that right? And the reason why that's so powerful is because it shows the other person that we're listening to them. It proves that we really want to understand them. Now, when you're talking to Samantha, does she ever kind of say back to you what you've just told her or you mentioned that she reminds you of other times that you've been in the situation, like this, kind of reflecting back that there's some similarities here. How does that make you feel so good?

Because, you know, she gets it, she gets, she understands what you're going through.

Yeah. And that's really, really important. Right. That's the key about how this works, is that when, when we prove that we're trying to listen to someone, they feel listened to, they really want, they want us to understand.

Okay.

So I can understand how I'm talking about one of my best friends in the world. So to me it makes sense that she would do these things because she generally cares. Right. She's truly interested. But how do you create that same type of a banter if it's a work situation or a more casual contact, but you still want to empathize, you still want to be present?

Absolutely. It's a great question and it's not that much harder because one of the things that we know is that asking a deep question is possible with anyone. So for instance, let's say you meet someone who a stranger on the bus or someone at a party and you say, what do you do for a living? And they say, well, I'm a lawyer. Then the next deep question can be something like, oh, what made you decide to become a lawyer? Like, do you love practicing the law? Like, is it what you always wanted to do? How'd you decide to go to law school? Those are three really easy questions to ask. Right. But what they do is they ask the other person to reveal something meaningful about themselves. They're going to tell you what it was like growing up, how they decided to go to law school, which is a big decision, what they love about their job and what they don't love about their job, and all of those things are going to help us understand who they really are. And then if we show them that we're listening through follow up questions that through a question that restates what they just told. What I heard you say was that you love being a lawyer because, you know, you love fighting for the underdog. And I'm just wondering, like, what do you do when you have someone who you think might be guilty? And then you ask these follow up questions that draw them out and repeat what you've heard them say, then they really feel like you're listening to them. They're doing what Samantha does to you.

And.

But that we can do with anyone.

So it's really coming from a place of genuine curiosity, is what it sounds like to me.

That's exactly right. And it's curiosity that's been kind of presented the right way. Right. Because I might be curious about you and have a difficult time showing it. But if I know how to show you that I'm curious about you, then you're going to feel somewhat flattered. You're going to feel like you like me, like you want to answer my questions and tell me about yourself. And then once you've told me about yourself, it's very natural for me to say, oh, you know what? I'm actually a doctor, and I decided to go to medical school because right now we have a conversation where we're going back and forth. We're engaging in what's known as conversational reciprocity. And that's the key to how conversations really become meaningful, is that I share something with you and you share something back. That's how we learn what kind of a conversation we're in.

The.

That's how we learn to match each other.

Okay, so you said there's three different types of conversations, and we just got into the emotional one. What are the other two?

So the second one is a practical conversation, right? If I come up and I say, oh, how'd you decide to become a lawyer? And someone says, oh, you know, growing up, my dad struggled for work, and I always wanted to have a steady job. Like, I wanted to find a job. And I felt like if I was a lawyer, I would never ever, you know, be worried about finding a job. Okay. This is a person who's in a more practical mindset, right? Then I can ask a couple questions. And I say, I went to medical school because, like, you know, I always wanted to live in a big city, and I figured I could always get jobs in a big city as a doctor. Or if somebody comes up and you're talking with your partner about vacations, right. Or you're talking with your boss or coworker about setting budgets. Those are practical conversations. Those are conversations where not only do we have to decide what we want to talk about, but we have to decide the rules for talking about it with each other. Do we interrupt each other? Is this formal or casual? And oftentimes we decide those rules almost subconsciously by conducting little experiments. I might interrupt you and you interrupt me, and we study to see how the other person reacts. And it's important. What super communicators do is they tend to do these experiments a little bit more deliberately. Right at the beginning of a conversation. They might try telling a joke, or they might try being casual or try being formal, and then they watch how the other person reacts. And if the other person doesn't react the same way, that doesn't mean that they've made a mistake or a faux pas. It means that they're engaging what psychologists refer to as a quiet negotiation over how we're going to have this conversation, where the goal is for us to both figure out what we want from this discussion.

That's so interesting, because as you're seeing it, I'm thinking in my mind of different situations and scenarios, specifically on zoom when I'm in business, conversations with people, and I just start working with them. And this whole. It's hard to know when someone's going to speak because you don't know their cadence. You don't know them very well yet. That exact situation you just described happened to me very, very recently, within the last week, where I cut this woman off, and then she cut me up and we backed up. And then you started getting a handle for, okay, this person wants to interject. And I can see she's leaning forward. You're starting to understand how they operate in a conversation.

Yeah. And it's a little bit of a negotiation that happens every time. Right. And the key is, if you're aware of that negotiation, if you're sensitive to it, then you're inviting the other person to speak. The fact that you were paying attention and you saw that, like, oh, she wants to interrupt me. She's leaning forward. She has something to say. Some people might just say, oh, this woman's so rude. She's interrupting me. But you, you recognized that what's going on is that she was actually enthusiastic about this conversation. She really wanted to participate. And it's just a matter of training ourselves to look a little bit more closely for what people are doing so that we can pick up on those cues.

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Confidence. I asked you to try to find your passion. And why is that so important? Because it makes us more likable, more trustworthy. What do we get out of it?

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

That kind of sounds like the opposite of most this polarizing world we live in right now with politics and all of these challenging events in our world. People so often, I feel like, are shouting at each other and not listening, just wanting their opinion to be heard. But, but what you're saying is by deploying some of these tactics that you share in the book, you can become more understood, more liked, and people will be more interested in what you have to say.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And when you think about it, you know you're right. There's a lot of shouting going on right now. But oftentimes the people who are shouting the loudest are not the ones that we're most interested in listening to. Rather, it's the people who seem to say something that cuts through the noise. And they're doing that by listening closely to other people and then repeating back what they've heard the smartest of them say. And they're also saying to us, rather than, you're wrong and I'm right or here's my idea, I want to beat you over the head with it. They're asking questions, they're saying things like, you know, why do you support that candidate? Or what is it that you find is important about this issue? And when you answer that question, they show you that they're listening, and then they share something about themselves. You know, the reason I like my candidate is for very similar reasons. And I think we see things just a little bit differently. That's someone that we want to listen to, that we want to invite into the conversation. On social media, it's very easy to scream, right? But the truth of the matter is that for millennia, humans have been talking to each other, and we've done it successfully by listening and sharing. You know, the interesting thing about America is this is a country that was born in conversation. The Constitutional Convention was essentially people who hated each other having a conversation until they came to an agreement about how to write a constitution. And it's always been one of our biggest strengths, and it's something we forget at our own peril.

So what are some of the tactics that you suggest, people entering into when you know you're going into a difficult conversation? Sometimes we don't know. Selfishly, I have a difficult conversation coming up later this week at work. And I'll give you this hypothetical that you're working with someone, you don't know them well. It's still a new situation. So you don't have all that insight into the person and what triggers them or doesn't trigger them. You know, that you're delivering information they're not going to be happy about. It's not what they planned on. However, you need to do your job and be fair and giving all of the information, and you know it's going to be met with resistance and. Or upset. What's some of the direction or advice, Charles, that you can give me heading into a conversation like that?

Well, okay, the first question I would ask is, do you want it to be a conversation? Because sometimes I talk to my kids and I say, I'd like to talk to you about your room. And I'm not actually looking for a conversation about their room.

Right.

I'm looking to tell them that they need to clean up their room. The first question is, do you want this to be a conversation, or do you just have some information you need to deliver this person and you don't actually want it to be a conversation?

Listen, we're adults. It's not children. I'd rather have the conversation to know how we move forward with it, even if it means that, you know what, Heather? I don't want to know what you're about to tell me, so. But I'd least like to hear that person have that option and wanting to know how to feel about it.

So you go into that conversation. The first thing I would say is, before you even walk into that room, you should sit down and you should figure out what you want and hope from this discussion. And there's two important things to figure out. Number one, what is the tangible things that you need to get done? My guess is, first of all, you need to tell this person some hard news. Second of all, you need to know that they've understood it and heard it. And third, you probably want to know what they make of it, like, if they're able to really listen to you and come up with a plan. But in addition to the tangible things that you want, you should also decide what kind of mood you want. Is this going to be an emotional conversation? Is this going to be a practical conversation? Is this going to be a social conversation? My guess is that for something like this, it's going to start practical and then it's going to become emotional. So you need to be prepared for that and decide, okay, how am I going to create the mood that I want when it's practical? Is this business only? Do I come in and sort of say, here's some tough love, and when it gets emotional, how do I change to match this person and invite them to match me? So let me ask you, this conversation that's coming up. What is the one tangible thing and what is the mood that you hope to accomplish?

Well, the tangible thing is what you're saying. Sharing this information is probably not going to be received very well, but it's very factual and the objective was to do an assessment. So you're going in and doing that job and sharing that information. But emotionally, of course, there will be some charge in receiving this information because it wasn't what was in anticipated or planned for. So knowing that, to me, I would want to empathize with the person that I know. It's difficult to hear something like this from when you bring people from the outside to work with you or, you know, you're planning or forecasting something, an outcome very different than we're hearing. I know that can be really uncomfortable. I would want to be empathetic to that person.

Yeah. So what I hear you saying and tell me if I'm in this wrong, is that you want to deliver some factual information to them and that you want to show them that you are listening to them and that you're empathetic to how they receive it.

Yes.

Which is great. Okay, so now we know that. Okay, we've sort of figured out exactly what we want out of this conversation. The next question is, how do we want to start the conversation? There's two ways, right? You could go in and you could say, here's what I want to talk to you about. Like, let me tell you all the details. You could also start by asking a question and say, look, I want to have a tough conversation with you, and you might. You might have an instinct about what I'm going to share with you. I'm wondering, how are you feeling about this discussion? Like, how are you feeling about this performance review? Do you feel like everything's okay, or do you feel like there's some things that we need to work on? If you do that, what you're doing is you're. First of all, my guess is they're going to say to you, there's some things I need to work on. And they're going to say the same things that you were about to tell them. So now you've got them on the same side of the table. Now you guys are about solving that problem together. And that doesn't mean you should hesitate to tell them things. If they say, well, I think I need to be on time more for work, it's fine to say, you know, I appreciate you saying that. And in addition to being on time, I think one thing that would help is if you were more prepared, if you were doing more homework before you got to work. But now, instead of saying you're always late and you're never prepared, now we're working together to try and identify the problem, and we're trying to solve it together. And this is really important because one of the things that happens in conversation, particularly in conversations with married couples or with romantic partners, is that everyone has an instinct to control things. When we feel threatened, when we're having a tough conversation, when someone is telling us something we don't want to hear, we have an instinct to try and control what we can. And oftentimes the easiest thing to control is the other person, right? To say, like, listen, I'm going to tell you how it is, or if. If I can just get you to listen to me, then this. Then you'll understand and you'll see things from my perspective. But the problem is none of us like being controlled by someone else. So what we need to do is find things that we can control together. And if we both identify a problem together, then we're controlling what the boundaries of this discussion are. We're controlling how we react together to this problem, whether we see it as an attack or an Opportunity to find a solution together. So that's the first thing. So let me ask you, when you're going into this tough conversation, how do you think you want to start it.

As an opportunity to solve a problem together? I liked how you just framed that up.

What's the question you can ask that you think would get this person to see this as an opportunity for solutions?

Maybe it could be something around. I know that we had had conversations in the past couple of weeks in regards to what our goals were. However, I've been surprised by some of the findings that we hadn't anticipated. Do you think that you're going to be surprised by some of these, or were you expecting a different outcome than what we'd initially discussed? Maybe asking that person the question to see, because that person definitely knows there's for sure they know, they just didn't disclose it.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's great. Giving them an opportunity to tell you from their perspective how they see the situation. And that doesn't mean you have to agree with them. That doesn't mean you have to say, you're right. But it does mean that rather than you, because I assume you're kind of the boss in this situation, like you have more power than the other person. Is that fair?

I'm the consultant, so I'm an outsider.

Oh, okay. Okay. So by asking them that question, giving them a chance to explain their perspective, one of the things that you're doing is you're allowing them to not have to feel defensive, Right. Because they're participating in this conversation. So we prepared for the conversation. We figured out how we want the conversation to start. Now we're in the conversation, and the question is, how do you offer your perspective? How do you match this person and invite them to match you? The first thing to do is to show them that you're listening, right? To engage in that looping for understanding. Once you've asked that question, repeat back what you hear them say. Say, am I getting that right? And then before offering your own thoughts, and this is the most powerful thing you can do, ask permission to tell them what you think. Right. It's really easy to say, like, look, I hear what you're saying. That like, you think that there isn't a problem here. Do you mind if I was to share with you what I've learned as the consultant, what other people have told me? Because I think they have a slightly different perspective on this. At that point, when that person says, yeah, yeah, yeah, I give you permission to tell me what you think now, instead of being something where, again, you're trying to control them, you're trying to attack, now they're inviting you in and you're actually giving them information that they want. So we ask that permission. And then once we've shared the hard things that we need to say, all of your direct reports say that you, you expect too much of them and you don't give them enough time, maybe put it a little bit more kindly than that, then we can say, tell me what you think of that. If somebody came to you with this problem, how would you help them solve it? Because again, you're inviting them to solve the problem with you rather than merely respond to it.

What's the importance of mirroring? And what does mirroring mean exactly?

So mirroring is just about matching, right? If you do mirroring for mirroring sake, like you use a word and I use a word, or you cross your arms and I cross my arms, it won't really have much impact. And in fact, it can kind of come off as disingenuous or inauthentic. But what mirroring really means is saying to someone, I understand what you're saying. I want to understand what you're saying. Let me repeat it back to you. Or I understand that you're feeling anxious, and I'm going to show you that I understand that anxiety, that I empathize with that anxiety. So, for instance, think about if you go and you talk to someone and you say, how was your weekend? And they say, oh, it was really tough. I went to a funeral for a close friend. A mirroring thing that's not very effective might be to say, oh, I understand exactly what that's mean. My aunt died 12 years ago, and I understand how hard it is that's not trying to connect with someone that's trying to steal the spotlight, right? To say, like, oh, look, now let's shine it on myself. But think about how powerful it can be if you say, oh, man, that's so hard. Like, I know how hard it is. What was your friend like? Tell me about them. Right? That's mirroring an expression of interest and of empathy that you're showing that person that you want to share the feelings that they're having. And some of those feelings are sadness that they're gone, but some of them are also joy for having known this person. And if you help them remember that and share that with you, they feel closer to you.

Okay, I really like your strategy. I like the tone of voice. You're like, I like, like, you're connecting to me. You got my number. However, and this is. I'm super interested and curious to hear your perspective on this. Are you familiar with Chris Voss, the negotiation? He's been on the show a bunch of times. I love his books. I love him. He's a great person. He's a proponent for this negative first. Leading with negative first. Like, this is going to be a difficult conversation or would it be crazy for me to move forward telling you something that you really weren't prepared to hear? He loves these, like, negatively charged questions. What are your thoughts on that approach or have you researched any of that?

I mean, what's interesting is if I say to you, you know, do you mind if I share with you some stuff that you're going to be surprised to hear? Some people might call that negative, but it's actually not necessarily negative because it's asking permission, right? I mean, there's a difference between saying, I'm about to tell you some stuff you don't want to hear, that's going to get everyone on their back heels. But if you say, look, I've learned some stuff, do you mind if I share it with you? Because I think it's going to surprise you. That's basically saying the same thing. I don't think Chris is wrong. I will also say I think Chris in particular, he's talking about situations where we are negotiating, where each person wants something different. And that's not necessarily a conversation. A conversation is where we want to understand and connect with each other as opposed to win something in this discussion. But the second thing I would say is that if you look closely at what Chris says, oftentimes what he's saying is announce your intentions and ask permission to continue. So it's not necessarily negative to announce my intentions. When you go into that meeting with your coworker or with your client, they know that you are there for a tough conversation. Right? They don't think you're coming in just to tell them how awesome they are. They know that this is going to be a hard conversation. And so it's not necessarily negative to just acknowledge, like, this is going to be a tough conversation. I have some stuff to tell you that you might not like hearing, but it's important for you to hear it. Do you mind if I share it with you? That's not necessarily a negative thing. It's announcing your intention, announcing what you want out of this conversation, and then asking permission to proceed. What it does is it shares power with the other person rather than telling them, I have the power you need to sit and listen. It says, I have some information to share with you. Let's consider it together.

One of the other things I'm taking from what you're saying is the intentionality, the time and preparing. That's what I think. Most people, myself included, I don't know that I'm always sitting around before a meeting saying, okay, how am I approaching this? How am I going to open it? How am I going to shift to emotion or not? But I don't think that I've spent that much time. Is that typically what you find, that people just walk into a conversation not thinking?

Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, that was some great looping. You just. You just repeated what I said in your own words, which makes me feel like I've been heard. But, yes, you're exactly right. Think about how many times we go into a hard conversation. We know it's going to be tough, and instead of thinking about it, even for 10 or 15 seconds, we just plunge right in, right? And then suddenly a minute in, everything's falling apart, and we're like, how did this get so bad so quick? So there was a study that was done that some researchers went to an investment bank, and this was a place where people, like, would scream at each other all day long and fight with each other. And they told every single person, okay, before you go into a meeting for this week, what we want you to do is just write down on a card your goal for the conversation and the mood you hope to establish. Write exactly what we said everyone should do before any kind of big conversation. It usually took them about 15 seconds to write this down. It was not something that took a lot of time, but they would scribble it on a piece of paper. Then oftentimes they would just stick the piece of paper in their pocket, not sort of forget that it existed. But what they found is that when people did that, the incidence of conflict in those meetings went down by 80%.

Oh, my. That's insane.

And the reason why is because people were just a little bit more prepared for how they wanted this meeting to go. And it's not just that I'm prepared, and I've prepared myself. I know that you. Across the table, you've also spent 15 seconds scribbling down a sentence for yourself. So you know what you want. You know what kind of atmosphere we want to create. Now, before you go talk to your client, you can't tell them, spend 15 seconds and write down, but you can at the beginning of the conversation, that can be. The question that you can ask is to say, look, I've done the work that you asked me to. I have some hard things to tell you, some things that you might not like hearing. What do you want out of this conversation? What are you hoping that we can walk away with from this discussion today? Now you're getting them to think a little bit about what they want and what they need and what kind of mood they hope to create. And if they say something to you like I just want the facts like tell me what's going on, then you know, I can get practical right away. And if they say, look, I don't think I'm gonna agree with everything I hear and some of it might make me defensive. But if I know it, then we can find a solution. Now you know they're a little bit more emotional. This is a conversation that should start with emotions. And you say, here's the what I've learned. How does that make you feel? Those are really powerful because just thinking for 10 or 15 seconds before you open your mouth, before you walk into that room, what you want to accomplish and how you're going to try and invite the other person to tell you what they want to accomplish, that can overcome almost all of the conflicts that you'll find once a discussion starts.

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I asked you to try to find your passion. That's incredible. I'm shocked at how high that number is and so impressed. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's super, super powerful.

Thank you.

So to me, one part of this that I'm picking up on is the self awareness part. Part like being thoughtful, being intentional but also being self aware. Because as you're talking I'm thinking myself. Sometimes I'm aggressive, sometimes I can intimidate. The more mindful I am of that and who I'm sitting with, the more I can adjust how loud I'm speaking. All of those things can impact if it's an emotional person or emotional situation. What about for the people out there that are genuinely shy and are suffering even listening to us talk about this right now, what advice do you have for them?

Well, what's interesting is that oftentimes people who are a little bit introverted or people who are initially shy, they become the best super communicators because they're paying more attention. Conversation isn't so natural for them, so they have to pay attention to how it works. They have to learn and study how other people are reacting and what impact their words have. So it's not necessarily a drawback at all to be shy or to be an introvert. In fact, one of the things that we know is, is that anyone can become a super communicator. It's not a certain personality type, it's not an inborn skill. It's just a set of skills that anyone can learn. And the key to learning those skills is merely to practice them. So one of the things that we know is that for people who have trouble starting conversations, or people who have trouble having conversations or they feel anxious when they're talking to someone else, most of what they need to do is just develop the habits that listen to their intuition. We all know how to communicate. It's hardwired into our brains by evolution. But sometimes we have to practice to let those habits become habits. Right? Sometimes we have to put ourselves in situations. And so one of the things I would say is, and you've probably done this, is if you do have to go give clients some hard conversation, some hard facts, practice that, right? Practice doing it with your partner or with your friends and ask them to react the way that you think your client might react, that they're going to be defensive and upset. Practice it a couple times, and then when you walk into that room with the client, you're going to find actually you don't even have to think about it that much. It happens automatically. Let me ask you, I imagine this isn't the first difficult conversation you've had with a client before. When you first started doing this work and you went in and you had to give a tell a client something they didn't want to hear, was it different from how you do it today?

Yeah, of course. I was super nervous and I was green And I was doubting myself.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so how did you get better at it? What did you find happened that made you better at this skill?

Part of it for me, I guess, was listening to my own intuition, reading the room, reading the person, reading their responses, but also believing in the work that I had done ahead of time. And the more familiar I came with what I was doing, more confident I was in it. Then I was able to show up with more conviction in guiding somebody else versus not feeling certain. I hope I'm steering them the right direction. And when they kick back on, you think, oh, gosh, maybe they're right, maybe I'm wrong. A big part of it was just really that belief in the work that I had done.

That's really, really smart. Because what I hear you saying is I used to go in thinking about the other person, and now I go in. I'm still thinking about the other person, but I'm also thinking about myself. I'm grounding myself in the work that I have done, that I have the right to say these things because I've done the work to back them up. And I think that's really important is that oftentimes when we think about conversations, we tend to focus on what we want to say, or we tend to focus on what the other person might do. But there's also a conversation with ourself, a conversation that often happens before we go into that room. And the conversation with ourself is, why do I belong in this room? Why do I deserve to be here? And there's almost always a reason. You didn't end up in that room by accident. You earned your way there. But if we can remind ourselves, have a conversation with ourselves where we say, look, I might be feeling anxious and I might be feeling scared, and that's okay. That's totally natural and normal. But I have done the work behind what I'm about to say. I have practiced telling people this news. I am ready. I belong. I deserve to be in this room. Then it helps us a lot again in listening to our own instincts.

And it takes the pressure off so that you're not fearful, you're able to pay attention to how the other person's responding. That's one of the biggest things that I notice with people who are more green. If they're scared, they start sweating. Physically, they're responding and reacting in ways that aren't supporting their premise or their abilities. And the other side notices that too. And that can be really challenging.

Absolutely. And I think one of the things that we can do. And there's studies that were done by some researchers at Harvard Business School to show this is that simply choosing one or two questions and putting them in our back pocket can oftentimes reduce that sense of anxiety. So when somebody starts getting upset or they start getting heated, that's when we feel all of a sudden panicked. We don't know what to say. We feel like we're deer in the headlights. But if we have a question, a general purpose question, tell me more about why this is so important to you. Tell me what you think people don't understand about this situation that you wish you could share with them. Some question that you can easily fall back on. Then not only is it going to help because it tells you what to say when you might not know what to say, but also you're going to feel more calm. You probably won't even end up asking that question. But if it's in your back pocket, you'll know that it's there and it'll help you relax into the discussion.

This is reminding me of graduating college and going on interviews. How to prep yourself so you don't have to be reactionary and you can feel, feel confident and you can feel at ease. I mean, it's so similar. It's about being intentional, being self aware, doing the work, practicing. And you're giving everybody the guidelines and super communicators. Who did you write this book for?

You mean who do I hope the audience is. Yeah, I hope that people who are communicate in the business place find really valuable things in it. I hope the parents and spouses and partners find valuable things in it. We haven't really talked about marriage therapy, but there's whole chapters about how in our marriage, the way that we communicate with each other, the way that we ask questions, the way that we match each other can have huge impacts on the happiness and the longevity of our relationship. There's stories in there about, for instance, how someone from the CIA, a brand new officer from the CIA, learned to recruit overseas agents, spies. Because at first he was terrible at it. He had no idea what he was doing. But then he learned if you're authentic with them, they'll be authentic with you. You. And once you're authentic with each other, then you start to trust each other. There's stories about how NASA, the psychologists at NASA choose astronauts because one of the things that they look for are people with high emotional intelligence. But the problem is when you get to the final rounds of a NASA interview, everyone is super qualified, right? They can Fake emotional intelligence. Really, really. Well, the way that psychologists determine who's genuinely emotionally intelligent and who's faking it is by paying attention to how they laugh. Do people match my laughter and other emotions and other expressions? One of the interesting things about laughter, if you think about it, is that about 80% of what we laugh at every day is not something that's funny, right? Think about the last time you laughed in a conversation, the other person probably didn't tell a joke. Rather you laughed to show them that you want to connect with them. And when they laugh back, which is the most natural reaction, they're showing that they want to connect with you. So the way that we pay attention to how others match our nonverbal signals tells us whether they want to connect with us.

Gosh, there's so much to be done to better prop us up to communicate better and more effectively and more efficiently with other people. And it just starts with having these tactics, the power, like you said, of these basic standards that the more and more we do it, the more successful our conversations are going to become.

And absolutely. And not only our conversations, but as salespeople will be more successful, as partners will be more successful, as managers will be more successful. And what's really important is that one of the largest studies that's ever been done, and this is described in the book, is the Harvard A Study of Adult Happiness. And it's been going on for almost a hundred years, over a hundred years now. And one of the things that they have done in that study is they followed people to try and figure out what determines someone's future happiness, their longevity and their health and their success. And they had lots of theories, right, that like if you were born to prominent, this started back in the 1940s, right? So it was a long time ago, is that, you know, if you'd been born to prominent families, like you're going to end up being more successful and happier or if, if you came from a two parent family and none of that ended up being true. The thing that actually made the biggest difference about whether people were happy and successful in how long they lived was how many connections they had to other people. Deep, meaningful connections. You didn't have to have hundreds and hundreds of connections, but you did have to have a handful of relationships that you genuinely invest in. In fact, the depth of the relationships that you have at 45 was the best predictor of how healthy and happy you would be at 65 and how successful Then they tried to figure out, so how do we form these relationships? Where do they come from? And the answer is conversations, right? If you call someone up who you haven't talked to in a year, two years or two months or four months, and you say, hey, I was just thinking about you, wanted to hear how you're doing. That's the easiest thing on earth to do. And you'll both love that conversation. And those conversations, those connections, those are the things that give our life meaning, that keep us healthy and that allow us to see the opportunities that other people miss. It's connection that's at the core of everything.

Well then, if you want a happier life, pick up Super Communicators. Tell everyone how they can find you, Charles, and how they can find the book.

Absolutely. Super Communicators is on sale in any bookstore you like, Amazon, your local independent bookseller, Audible, if you want to listen to it instead of read it. And if you want to find me, just go ahead and Google my name. I'm the only Charles Duhigg on Earth. Or you can Google Super Communicators or the Power of Habit, which is the first book that I wrote. And my website will come up and my email address is actually Charles, Charles duhigg.com and every single email I get, I read and I respond to. So because I figure if you've taken the time to write me as a reader, then I have an obligation to reply to that and to read it. And so if anyone wants to send me a note, I would love to hear from you.

I've never heard anyone say that. That is so. It's so sweet. Thank you so much for the work you're doing to allow people to connect at such a deeper level. I love this conversation today and I'm sure everybody else did. Best of luck and get the book Super Communicators. Improve your relationships, accelerate your happiness. And thank you, Charles, for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

Alright, guys, until next week, keep creating your confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.