Ep. #1167: Charles Duhigg on How to Be a “Supercommunicator”

Charles: What’s important is to think about what do I want to communicate? How do I communicate that? That’s what matters. That’s what super communicators do. They say, what do I want to say before they open their mouths? And then they try and figure out how do I connect with this person? How do I show them that I want to connect so that we actually hear each other?

Mike: Hello friends. I am Mike Matthews, and this is a new episode of muscle for life. In which I interview the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author Charles Duhigg about his newest best selling book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. And as you can probably guess, in this episode, Charles is going to share insights on the skills.

That set apart effective and extremely effective, super effective communicators from the rest of us. And how we can all improve our ability to use communication to connect with others. For example, Charles talks about the three different layers of conversation and why it’s important to understand their differences and their uses.

He talks about how to effectively transition between these different types of conversation. For example, how to transition from an emotional conversation to a practical conversation. It’s important to know how to do that if you want to be able to effectively work with other people. For instance, Charles also shares his thoughts on technology and how that’s reshaping our communication habits and what it means for personal connection going into the future and more.

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I’m an admirer of your work. So thanks. I really appreciate it. That’s very kind of you to say. Absolutely. So we’re here to talk about the topic of your newest book, which for people watching us can see right over your shoulder there, and that is super communicators. So I think the obvious place to start is a question I’m sure you’ve answered many times, but it’s why you chose this for the title of the book.

And that is the question mark of what do you mean? What is a super communicator exactly? Absolutely. 

Charles: Yeah, so the best way of answering that is to is to ask you a question, which is if you were having a bad day and you wanted to call someone who you knew would just make you feel better, right?

Like just talking to them would help the day go along. Do you know who you would call? Does that person pop into your mind? 

Mike: It seems odd that I don’t have a flash answer to that only because I basically never Do that. But however, when I say that, I think of if I’m having a bad day, it’s probably related to business and work somehow.

And I would probably call a friend of mine, Neil. He’d probably be the guy. 

Charles: So for you, Neil is probably a super communicator and you’re probably super communicator back for Neil, right? There’s certain skills that you guys use that you don’t even think of as skills, but that you use when you’re talking to each other.

Let me ask, does Neil, does he tend to ask you questions? Yeah. And what kind of questions what are those questions like? So our 

Mike: discussions are primarily business related. So he’s an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. He’s had a lot more success than I’ve had. So he’s been able to help me avoid pitfalls.

And he’s been able to pass on some of his. He’s his hard one wisdom. So typically he’ll be asking about the business, how it’s going about specific initiatives, projects that we’re working on things that are underway and where do those things 

Charles: stand? And do you feel like when you’re, when he’s asking those questions, do you feel like he’s listening closely?

Do you believe he’s paying attention to what you’re saying? Yeah. And why is that? What does he do? 

Mike: One is he remembers details from previous discussions. And if you’re not really listening, you’re not going to remember what, what was discussed previously. And he doesn’t cut in.

Like he’s not asking a question because he has something to say himself and is just waiting to say what he wants to say. And so that experience is question. And then I give my answer. Sometimes it’s a shorter answer. Sometimes it’s a longer answer. He’s quiet. Yeah. 

Charles: So all the things that you’re describing are skills, right?

They’re skills about what kind of questions we ask and how we show someone that we’re listening to them. And the truth is Neil could use those skills. It probably feels pretty intuitive to him to use those skills with you, but he could also use the skills with anyone and probably does, right? So Neil is probably a super communicator, not necessarily because he has skills that are different from everyone else, but because he recognizes what he does well as a skill and recognizes that skills can be used in any setting.

And that’s what super communicators are. Communication is a set of skills not actually even very many of them. And. When we recognize those skills and we get into we practice using them with not only our close friends, but also our coworkers or strangers or clients, then they become habits.

And when they become habits, we become a super communicator. Someone who has the ability to connect with almost anyone, regardless of topic or background. 

Mike: And then what are some of those specific skills then that it. We can learn practice in grain. 

Charles: Yeah, so one of them is asking questions, right? Asking the right kinds of questions.

One of the things that we know about consistent super communicators is that they ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are what are known as deep questions. Then a deep question is something that asks us instead of about the facts of our life. It asks us about things like our values and our beliefs and our experiences.

It gives us a chance to express something real and meaningful. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it’s as simple as if you meet someone who is, for instance, a doctor, right? Instead of asking them, Oh, where do you practice medicine? What hospital do you work at? Which is about a fact of their life.

You ask them instead, what made you decide to go to medical school? What do you like about being a doctor? Those are questions that invite someone to talk about who they really are and how they see the world. And so these deep questions are really powerful in helping us understand what someone wants to talk about and what kind of mindset that they’re in.

Mike: In your book, you discuss three layers of conversation, practical, emotional, social. Can you explain these layers? 

Charles: Yeah, so these are three different kinds of conversations. So one of the things that researchers have found is that when you’re having a discussion, we tend to assume that the discussion is about one thing, right?

We’re talking about where to go on vacation or, the movie that we saw. But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. They tend to fall into one of three buckets. A number of those conversations are generally practical, right? We’re talking about making plans together or solving problems together.

But then there’s other conversations that are emotional where I might tell you what I’m feeling and I don’t want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize and I want you to relate. And then finally, there’s social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and to society and the social identities that are important to us.

And one of the things that matters a lot is if we’re not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it’s very hard to communicate with each other. So if if I come home and I start telling my wife about my day and, I really worked up, my boss doesn’t understand me and appreciate me.

And my coworkers don’t see what a genius I am. And my wife, instead of Empathizing if she proposes a solution Oh, why don’t you take your boss out to lunch? You guys can get to know each other a little bit better. I am unlikely to hear that good suggestion, right? I’m in like, it’s unlikely to make me feel better.

In fact, it’ll probably make me feel even more upset. And I’ll say like, why aren’t you on my side? You should be having my back in this. And then she’d get upset because I’m attacking her for giving me a good advice. What’s happening there is that I’m having an emotional conversation, and she’s having a practical conversation, and both of those conversations are equally legitimate, right?

They are both important kinds of conversations. But if we’re not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it’s very hard for us to hear each other, and it’s very hard for us to connect. Now, if we do get aligned if we are both having an emotional conversation, then it becomes much easier for us to move from the emotional to the practical to the social and back to the emotional again.

To move together. And at that point we’re aligned. We’re ha we’re really hearing each other and we’re connecting. 

Mike: And that’s a great example, a very practical example of one person is trying to have an emotional conversation. And the other person is trying to have a practical conversation. Just get to the point, get to this, the solution.

And everybody listening has experienced that conflict before. What is a workable? Way to have that emotional conversation and to bring it to practical, to bring it toward some sort of solution. No, that’s not always possible, but I’m thinking in the context of work, even where it can start as an emotional conversation, but it has to get to the practical because ultimately we have to do, yeah let’s commiserate over what happened.

Understood. Now we have to do something about it. We do have to solve this thing. And if you can make that transition smoothly, it’s just a better experience than if you’re grinding the gears, trying to move from the emotional to the practical. 

Charles: Yeah. I think you just answered your question, right?

Which is that oftentimes you can say something like, Oh man, I hear what you’re saying. I understand that you’re upset. It seems like it was a really tough day. Let’s talk a little bit about that and then say, I have some thoughts on solutions. Like I have some thoughts on ways that we could make this better.

Do you mind if I share those with you? What I’m really doing there is I’m asking for permission oh, we were having an emotional conversation. Can we have a practical conversation now? Or sometimes once we’re in sync, we It just happens naturally, right? Like you bitch and moan with your coworker.

And then at some point someone says okay here’s a way that we can fix this. And everyone else is okay, yeah, let’s get practical. It’s not that hard to signal what kind of conversation you’re in and what kind of conversation you want to move to. We do it all the time. 

Mike: But I think it’s good advice to just think about exhausting the emotional component, because I’ve made the mistake of moving to the Quickly passed an emotional conversation and with the purpose of getting through things, getting to the next thing and let’s just get to the solution.

And I have a house under construction, so I’ve dealt with a lot of this actually with my wife, where I’ve made the mistake of skipping over. Okay. They messed it up. Understood. Whatever. Here’s the solution. What we could do this or this. And so I’m thinking just for myself and. Yes, I’ve done it correctly, of course, many times, but I’ve done it incorrectly, where I’m ready to rush through the emotional part of the conversation and just get to the point and get to the solution.

And in the case I’m thinking of here, okay, I can think of some museums with my wife, but it could be the other way around or whatever. 

Charles: Yeah, no, I think it happens a lot. And I think the key is to be aware of it, right? There is no magic order that we should go in of conversations. Sometimes I might match you, or I might invite you to match me, but what matters is that we’re trying to match each other.

Okay. That if your wife is upset and you come in and you basically signal to her, I don’t care how upset you are, like, let’s just get this fixed as fast as possible. I don’t want to deal with this. She’s going to feel like you’re not listening to her. And when she gets even more emotional and gets more upset, you’re going to feel like she’s not listening to you.

And sometimes it’s just a matter of saying look, I hear that you are frustrated and upset, and that is totally legitimate. And I want to talk more about that before we do, because we have to make a decision. Can we talk about how we’re going to fix this? At that moment, what we’re doing is I’m saying, let’s get aligned.

Let’s be, let’s have the same kind of conversation. Then we’ll move through these conversations together. But let’s start out being aligned. 

Mike: And speaking of emotions, obviously heavily influence how messages are received. What advice would you have for helping us better manage our emotions and the emotions that people were speaking to achieve?

Clearer and more effective communication. What 

Charles: do you guys have kids or? Yeah. Yeah, too. Okay. So your kids probably get upset on a regular basis, right? Yeah. Yeah. Standard kid stuff. So how do you help them manage their emotions? 

Mike: Stay calm and it really depends on the context of what’s going on, but let them explain what’s going on and acknowledge that I understand what’s going on and why they feel that way.

And it may then shift towards something practical. Or it may just end there in some cases, also in the case of kids in particular, helping them understand that it’s normal to feel that way. There’s nothing wrong because of that’s how I would feel as well. And yeah, I guess that’s the general approach.

Charles: Yeah. So I think what you’re doing there is you’re probably asking them a deep question, right? Your brother hits you and you’re upset. Tell me why you’re upset. Tell me what you’re feeling. Like, why does it seem like everyone’s like being mean to you today? Yeah. Those are deep questions.

Those aren’t questions about what did you have for lunch? Those are questions about, like, how do you make sense of the world? And we talked about that, the importance of deep questions. The second thing that I heard you say is that you’re proving to them that you’re listening. And this is another critical skill that super communicators have, is proving that we’re listening.

You’re saying to them, what I hear you say is, or, that seems really hard to to have someone tell you that. I imagine that you feel bad. I think I would feel bad, too. There’s actually a technique in conflicts That’s has been studied a bunch called looping for understanding, which has these three steps, and it’s entirely designed to prove to the other person that we’re listening to them.

Step one is that you ask a deep question. Step two is that you repeat back in your own words, what you heard them say. And what’s important here is not mimicry. What’s important is proving that you’re paying attention and even more important that you’re processing it. You’re thinking about it.

You’re seeing the, you’re seeing the leaps that you can make with this and showing them that you’re thinking about it. And then step three is asking, Did I get that right? Did I hear everything that you’re telling me? Because one of two things will happen. The first is that they’ll say, no, you didn’t get it right.

You’re not actually listening to me. That’s good to know. That’s helpful. But the second thing is if they say, yeah, I think you understand what’s going on. What we’ve really done in that moment is I’ve asked you for permission to acknowledge. that I was listening. And one of the things that we know is hardwired into our brain is that when I believe you are listening to me, I become more likely to listen to you.

And so when I ask you, did I get that right? And you say, yeah, I think you got it right. What I’m really doing is I’m asking you to recognize that I am listening and that’s going to make you more likely to listen to me in return. And I think that’s probably what’s going on with your kids is that you’re asking those deep questions and you’re proving that you’re listening.

And so They felt listened to. And my guess is if they come up with something emotional, you’re not giving them practical advice right off the bat. You’re not saying Oh, Susie said that to you. She said she didn’t want to be your friend. You know what you should do go and put a frog in her locker and then go find a new friend.

You’re not saying that you’re saying, Oh my gosh, that sounds like it would really hurt my feelings. Does it hurt your feelings? You’re matching the kind of conversation they want to have something that they teach teachers to do in schools is that when a kid comes up, a student comes up and they want to Have a real conversation to ask that student, do you want to be helped?

Do you want to be hugged or do you want to be heard? And that’s actually the three kinds of conversations, right? The practical, the emotional, and the social, and oftentimes a kid will be able to tell us like no, I don’t need your help. I just want you, I just want you to hear what happened to me, or I don’t need your help but I need a hug that would make me feel better.

We know what kind of conversation we want to have. We know how to match each other. It’s just a matter of reminding ourselves of it, that we have this capacity, and to pay attention to it. 

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Charles: Stories are important, right? Because it’s one of the ways that we remember information. A story can be any number of things. Sometimes a story actually looks like a story. Like I has a beginning and a middle and an end and a character. Sometimes the story is an idea. I thought of X and then I thought of Y and then I thought of Z.

It’s a way for us to help scaffold information. So stories aren’t. Essential to supercommunication right there, but they are really helpful because they help us come up with a mental scaffold for where this conversation is going. That’s often really useful. They 

Mike: also seem to bypass critical filters in a way that facts and data.

And other such information just does 

Charles: not I don’t, the evidence would not, it would not suggest that you’re right. We tend to, 

Mike: Is there specific evidence? This is, again, I’m totally ignorant in this. 

Charles: Yeah. There’s been storytelling stories. Stories have been studied quite extensively.

And in general, what happens is that when We get to decide whether to suspend disbelief in the story, right? Nobody who’s watching Star Wars actually believes that on a planet far away, there is someone named Luke and someone named Leia. And honestly, nobody. really wonders if maybe Darth Vader is going to end up winning in the end.

Like we all know that eventually Luke is going to be victorious, but then there’s things along the way that we didn’t anticipate. We didn’t anticipate that Luke and Leia are brother and sister. We didn’t anticipate that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. Suspend disbelief. And by the way, what are the odds that this weird little family would end up being the three most important people in the entire galaxy?

But we suspend disbelief because we like the story. It’s fun. So it’s not that stories bypass the story. Critical thinking, it’s that stories give us an opportunity to decide how much critical thinking we want to apply to something. 

Mike: Specifically what I’m referring to is, would be, I guess you’d say it’d be more of the thematic elements of story.

What’s the underlying message of the story. If you want to influence people’s ideas, if you want to influence their behaviors. And again, I’m ignorant in this in this area. And so this is me, just, this is me just giving my opinion. And I’m curious to what you have to say about it, but it would seem that on average, you can influence people more easily and maybe even more profoundly with stories.

Then with facts and arguments and data and so forth, 

Except that data and arguments are stories, right? Not necessarily. It could just be very matter of fact. It could be an essay that 

Charles: even if it’s matter of fact, if I tell you, if I tell you, look, the number of when bars stay open later at night, the number of drunk driving incidents go up.

What I’m doing there is I’m creating a cause and effect. Now it’s not a very interesting story, right? It’s not a story that like, you’re like, Oh, that’s fascinating. I don’t know if it’s a story by any professional definition. But it is though. It’s a narrative, right? And that’s what a story is.

I think what’s important is stories tend to be more interesting when they have an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. And when we can identify what the conflict is. And then see the search for solutions to that conflict, then we tend to get drawn in. So it’s not that stories themselves are like somehow magical.

My guess is that if I came to you and I told you a story about if you give me 1, 000, I’m going to bury it in the garden, and then a money tree is going to grow, and I’m going to water it every single day, and I use this one fertilizer, but it didn’t work. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is.

Dynamic. My story is you’re not going to give me a thousand dollars to bury in the garden. But if on the other hand, I’m like, Hey, here’s an investment in this mutual fund. Here’s the returns on it. You’re going to be like, Oh, okay. That looks like a good investment. Stories don’t have magical powers to make us stop thinking what stories do.

Is a well told story just draws our attention more. And so we tend to pay more attention to things that are well told stories. It doesn’t mean that we become stupid or that we stop thinking about them. But in general, if I give you a big sheet with a bunch of returns on it, you’re probably not going to look that closely at it.

It’s boring, but if I have a story, you’ll at least pay attention. Now that does not mean you’re going to believe that. Money can grow a money tree, but it does mean that you’ll probably at least 

Mike: give me a little bit more of your attention. A lot of an investment pitches are about at the level of money tree, but

can you talk about technology and how that is shaping people’s and particularly social media is. Probably the primary way that a lot of people are communicating. Sure. Do you use a lot of social media? I use it really only for my work and different networks I use differently. So X, I have a kind of a whole workflow where I use X to test out ideas and test out even phrasings of different things.

And we track engagement and because then I have a short list of a bunch of things that I have been. Vetted on social media that then I can turn into essays or I can turn into chapters in a book and so forth. So I’m active on X in that way and less so on other networks because I honestly, I just don’t, I don’t like the game of social media very much beyond X.

Cause 

Charles: I like to write. Is there anyone that you communicate with via technology? Do you email folks and text? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. For many years now many emails, there are probably, there’s probably literally over 200, 000 emails sent and received in my inbox and DMs with people, but that those are very practical, almost exclusively practical conversations where people will reach out to me with questions and I try to help them out.

Charles: But you don’t ever email your wife or your friends, like little jokes or things that you saw that were funny or. That would be, that’d be texting. That’d be texting. Okay, so why do you use texting that way, but not email? 

Mike: Because I’m in a group chat, so that’s easy with some friends. So if there’s a funny meme or something, you just throw it in the group chat and everybody kind of reciprocates.

So that’s why. And then it’s just more convenient. I suppose if I’m going to text something to my wife, that’s funny. I’m already there. I probably got it from the group chat, so I’m not going to go into my email and send it, so 

Charles: I think what I hear you saying is that you have figured out some rules for yourself about different forms of communication in different channels, right?

And the truth of the matter is you said it’s easier to send a meme via text. Maybe it’s marginally easier. You’re really talking about do you hit cut and paste or do you hit forward? Neither of those are particularly hard things to do, right? Okay. Yeah, but it’s, 

Mike: I see, I have to go share text wife or share email and then start typing out the email address.

Charles: It’s right. Normally I would cry for you for the immense amount of labor that you have to do in order to send a meme. But the point is that you have developed. You have learned how to use these different tools, and you’ve learned how to use them for different kinds of conversations.

And this is what’s true about technology. There was a, about a hundred years ago, when telephones first became popular, there were a bunch of studies that appeared that said, no one will ever have a real conversation on a telephone. And what’s interesting, they had a legitimate cause for that. Up to that point, all conversations had basically happened face to face, sometimes through letters, but mostly face to face.

And they said, look, these things like they’re scratchy, you can’t see someone’s expressions, you can’t really think about what you want to say before you say it. No one’s gonna have a real conversation on the phone. And what’s interesting is at the moment they were right. If you look at early transcripts from telephone conversations, what is you see people basically using them as telegrams.

They didn’t know how to have phone conversations. They would use them to send grocery orders or stock orders or, the latest news. But there was no back and forth. Now, of course, by the time, you and I and everyone listening was in middle school, you could have a conversation for seven hours a night on the telephone, right?

These were the most important conversations of our lives. And what changed there is that we learned how to use phones. We learned that there are certain rules for using phones. We abide by these rules, even when we’re not aware of them. When you’re talking to someone on a phone and you can’t see them, you’re likely to over enunciate by about a third, you usually put about 20 to 30 percent more emotion into your voice because subconsciously you understand that the other person can’t see you.

You need to convey this emotion some other way. We’ve learned to use telephones. Now, as your kids get older, my kids are teenagers. What you’ll find is that they have learned how to use different types of technology to communicate really effectively. If you ask if you have a teenager at home and you dare ask them to see some of their.

Their text exchanges and what you’ll see is you’ll see these strings of emojis, right? No words, just emojis. And that’s because they’ve learned to use emojis as an emotional form of communication. Now, as someone who is older, that feels foreign to me. And whenever I send emojis, my kids always tell me I’m doing it wrong.

Cause I say do you want to go on a bike ride? And then I put a picture of a bike and they’re like, you don’t have to say bike ride. If you put a picture of the bike. But what’s important is that as we use technologies, we learn how to communicate with them and we learn what kinds of communication are best for what channels of community of conversation.

So sending someone a meme in your case feels more natural and feels better on text than it does on email. And you probably know that if you have to have a serious conversation, it’s better not to do it on text. If you have to, you could do it on email, but what would be even better is to call them up and do it or do it face to face.

Yes. We learn how to use technologies, and there are different rules for technologies as we use them. And when we get into trouble, it’s usually because we’ve forgotten that different types of technologies have different rules. We’re really busy, and so instead of sending someone that email that we have a chance to sit down and really write, we just text them something really quickly, and it comes off as brusque and abrupt.

It’s when we forget that there are rules, and we forget to remember those rules, that we make mistakes. 

Mike: That’s a good segue to a question I wanted to ask, which is, are there certain types of conversations that you probably shouldn’t try to have over email? Maybe you shouldn’t even try to have over the phone that you really should have in person.

And let’s just let’s preface that with common. Types of conversation, maybe they’re difficult kinds of conversations again, that it might be, it might feel more comfortable or easier to send an email or maybe even make a phone call, but it should be in person. Or maybe it doesn’t have to be in person, but it probably shouldn’t be over email.

You probably should pick up the phone and call or. Some other scenario that you want to comment on, 

Charles: There’s no universal formula for what kind of conversation should happen in what channel, right? What is important is to try and figure out how do I communicate as much as possible? So one of the reasons why face to face communication is so useful is because there’s just it’s the most information dense channel of communication.

Because I can see you, I can hear you. I can see your expressions. I can see your gestures. I can see how you’re holding your body. I can, we’re actually sharing the same space. And so if there’s some external stimulus, we’re both experiencing at the same time, now, if you go to, for instance, texting, there’s, it’s much less information rich, right?

Now that doesn’t mean that I can’t use texts to say something that’s information rich, but it means I do have to work a lot harder at it. No, there’s plenty of. Meaningful, important conversations that have happened through email. There’s literally thousands of years, or at least hundreds of years of really meaningful conversations that have happened through letters, right?

That people write to each other. Does that mean that nobody was able to actually, convey their feelings about the war they were fighting by writing a letter to the person back home? No, but they probably had to work a little bit harder than they would have if they had been able to pick up a phone and call them.

And so what’s important here is not thinking about what kind of conversation belongs with what channel. What’s important here is thinking about what do I want to accomplish in this conversation? What’s important for me to get across? If I send someone a text and it’s just half a sentence and there’s misspellings and I’m telling them that, I really want to talk about this important topic.

They’re probably not going to be able to pick up on how important this is to me if it’s just really quick and brusque and with misspellings. Although, actually, sometimes They will write, because I’m the type of person who usually sends really well thought out texts. And the fact that I’m texting so fast and furiously means something important is going on.

What’s important is to think about what do I want to communicate? How do I communicate that? That’s what matters. That’s what super communicators do. They say, what do I want to say? Before they open their mouths and then they try and figure out how do I connect with this person? How do I show them that I want to connect so that we actually hear each other 

Mike: something that I’ve tried to do just really through experience is not have difficult conversations, which means different things in different contexts, conversations that maybe involve some potential arguing about something or controversy over something.

Try not to do that. Over texting or over email minimally to be on the phone, ideally in person, if possible. Does that make sense to you? 

Charles: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that probably what’s happening there is that now you could do it. If you really spend some time, you could do it over email, right? You could spend some time writing a really like thoughtful email.

My guess is that in those cases, what you’re looking for is you’re not looking for just prolonged back and forth. You’re looking for a real dialogue where people are potentially interrupting each other and asking questions. And so something about the synchrony of that is important. But yeah, no it’s definitely worth thinking about if I have something to say, what form of communication am I most comfortable saying it in? But it’s not something that’s like inherent to different forms of communication. It’s something that’s inherent to what we bring to each form of communication. 

Mike: Is there something to be said for matching the mood of the other person to some degree, which also you wouldn’t be able to do, let’s say, if it’s via email, where maybe you’re not anticipating how they’re going to respond to something that you think is a benign opening, for example.

But if they’re there and you can see the offense across their face and you can correct. And then do you think it’s important to move with the mood of the 

Charles: conversation? Yeah, that’s what matching is, right? If you’re angry. And I’m not showing that I hear that you’re angry. I’m not showing you that I’m listening to you, right?

If you’re angry and I play it off, like you told me a joke, you either think I misunderstood or that I purposely am not hearing what you’re trying to say. So yeah, matching folks is really important. And sometimes that means being really deliberate saying something like, I got your email. It sounds like you’re really upset.

I want you to know that I understand that you’re upset and it’s legitimate to be upset, right? Simply. Telling someone that we are in fact hearing them can ameliorate that quite a bit, but it’s the same basic principles over and over, which is we’re trying to look for opportunities to connect, and we’re trying to show the other person that we want to connect with them 

Mike: any advice for doing that with People we are meeting newly, and you’d mentioned getting to deep questions like, Oh, why did you become a doctor?

I think that’s a great example. Think of you’re in a plane or you’re at a party or you’re meeting somebody newly, and you’re trying to create. a connection that’s maybe a little bit deeper than you happen to like to both watch the same type of sports or something like that. 

Charles: I think that’s why we ask those deep questions, right?

If you’re at a party and you meet someone and they went to the same high school as you, it’s really easy to say Oh, did you know Greg? But a better question is to say did you like what was high school like for you? Are you glad you went there? When you think of high school, is it a good experience or bad experience?

That’s a deep question. And it’s not mandating that someone tells you their whole life story or tells you all their sob stories, but it’s an invitation to say something real and more. I think that this is the point is that deep questions surround us. There are so many opportunities for them. And what’s important is.

Seeing those opportunities and seizing them. And it’s as simple as just asking someone basically what was that like for you? What does this mean to you? How do you make sense of the world? Nobody minds getting those questions, particularly when they’re invitations. Yeah, or just to talk about their experiences or to share something meaningful.

Mike: Yeah, what do they dislike? What is, what does reality look like for this person, right? I know we’re coming up on time Charles. So again, thank you for doing this. Great information. Really appreciate your work. Why don’t we just wrap up quickly with where people can find you, your work. Obviously they can find your book, Super Communicators, wherever they want to buy a book, but is there anything else you want to tell them 

Charles: about?

I have another book named the power of habit that I wrote about 10 years ago. You can find those on Amazon or audible or in your local bookstore, which is a great place to buy them. And if you want to find me, just Google Charles Duhigg or super communicators or the power of habit. And I will definitely come up.

I’m on all the social media sites and I have a website with all my contact information. Awesome. Thanks again for doing this, Charles. Thank 

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