How to communicate better (w/ Charles Duhigg)

Summary

Podcast Summary: How to Communicate Better (w/ Charles Duhigg)

Podcast: How to Be a Better Human
Host: Chris Duffy (TED)
Guest: Charles Duhigg, author of Super Communicators
Date: September 15, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores the art and science of communication with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg, focusing on practical skills and mindsets that turn everyday chats into genuine connections. Drawing from neuroscience, real-life anecdotes, and research, Duhigg and Duffy discuss what makes someone a “super communicator,” the power of vulnerability, how communication shapes trust, and actionable techniques anyone can use to improve their conversations—whether at work, at home, or anywhere else.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining “Super Communicators”

• Super Communicators: The people you immediately want to talk to when you’ve had a rough day. They are not born special—these are learned skills anyone can adopt.
• Main skills: Knowing how to ask meaningful questions, signaling genuine listening, demonstrating empathy, and choosing when to solve and when to simply support ([01:15] Charles Duhigg).

2. Communication Is More than Information Exchange

• Connection over facts: Communication is less about the words and more about building a sense of connection and trust.
  • “The goal of communication is not just to exchange information. The goal is to feel connected to each other.” ([05:15] Charles Duhigg).
• Evolutionary basis: Human success as a species stems from our “superpower” of communication, which fosters trust and cooperation.

3. The Messy Reality of Great Conversations

• Messy ≠ Bad: The best conversations are often nonlinear, filled with interruptions, tangents, and vulnerability ([06:12] Charles Duhigg).
• Vulnerability defined: Not just about sharing secrets or crying, but offering information others could judge, which creates a neurological openness to connection.

4. Neurological Synchronization (Neural Entrainment)

• Physical synchronization: As people connect, their breathing, heart rates, and even pupil dilation can sync—even via virtual conversation ([08:24] Charles Duhigg).
• Brain activity: “If we could see inside our brains…my neural activity and your neural activity are beginning to look more and more similar.” ([08:24] Charles Duhigg).
• Why it matters: This mirroring releases dopamine, creating pleasure and reinforcing connection.

5. The Illusion of Communication

• Awareness gap: Many poor communicators think they're great—highlighted by the George Bernard Shaw quote:
  “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ([10:01] Chris Duffy)
• Humor as a connector: Laughter signals a desire to connect and is an invitation to reciprocity, not just a joke ([10:20] Charles Duhigg).

6. Three Types of Conversations (and the “Matching Principle”)

• Practical: Focused on plans and fixing problems.
• Emotional: Sharing and validating feelings, not solving them.
• Social/Identity: How we relate to each other and to society.
• The Matching Principle: Successful communication happens when both parties are having the same type of conversation at the same moment ([11:29] Charles Duhigg).

Memorable Example:

• “If I go to the hardware store…trying to have a practical conversation…and they go, ‘that sounds so hard. I hear you and you are seen,’ I’d be like, what is happening?” ([13:01] Chris Duffy)

7. Communication Is a Learned Skill

• No one is born a “super communicator”—paying attention and practicing specific techniques is what builds skill ([13:52] Charles Duhigg).

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Actionable Skills and Mindsets

1. Ask Deep, Invitational Questions

• Super Communicators ask more (especially deep) questions.
• Deep Questions: Probe values, beliefs, or experiences. They need not be intimidating.
  • E.g., Instead of “What hospital do you work at?”—ask, “What made you decide to go to medical school?” ([18:37] Charles Duhigg).
  • Invitational, not mandatory: It’s about inviting stories, not prying.
• Follow-Up: It’s natural and powerful to answer your own deep question for reciprocal openness ([21:09] Charles Duhigg).

2. Prove You’re Listening

• Follow-up questions: Show investment in the conversation.

• Nonverbal cues: Eye contact, leaning in, echoing emotions (laughter, affirmations) ([21:09] Charles Duhigg).

• Looping for Understanding:

  1. Ask a (deep) question
  2. Paraphrase what you heard
  3. Ask if you got it right
  • This boosts the other person’s willingness to listen to you by 10–80% ([23:52] Charles Duhigg).

  “The goal of a conversation is not for me to convince you that you’re wrong and I’m right…The goal is to understand each other.” ([24:42] Charles Duhigg)

3. Recognize Socialization Patterns

• Gender and communication: Not biological, but habituated. Men and women are socialized differently but can learn all modes.
  • Men often default to “practical” talk even about emotional issues; learning to match emotional mindsets is key ([28:43] Charles Duhigg).

4. Matching the Conversation Type and Mindset

• Practical conversation: “What are we trying to do?”
• Emotional conversation: “How do we feel about this?”
• Social conversation: “Who are we?” ([32:05] Charles Duhigg)

5. Adapting to Different Communication Mediums

• Medium matters: Communication over email, phone, or in person each has unspoken “rules.” Overemphasize politeness and avoid sarcasm in digital forms ([36:39] Charles Duhigg).

6. “High Centrality Participants” and Group Influence

• Certain people, super communicators, can synchronize groups—often without pushing their own ideas but by echoing and amplifying others’ contributions ([38:42] Charles Duhigg).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Communication is Homo sapiens’ superpower.” – Charles Duhigg ([05:15])
• “Vulnerability…is a neural cascade that happens in our brain when I tell you something you could judge.” – Charles Duhigg ([06:12])
• “If you ask super communicators…if they’ve always been good at communication, they almost inevitably say no.” – Charles Duhigg ([13:52])
• “Try and ask a deep question that you normally wouldn't ask…What you'll find is…the other person…is going to love being asked that question.” – Charles Duhigg ([40:50])
• “We can live peacefully side by side [even if we disagree] if we feel like the other person understands us and we understand them.” – Charles Duhigg ([24:42])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:15] – What is a “super communicator”?
• [05:15] – The real purpose of communication: connection, not just information
• [06:12] – Messy conversations and the neuroscience of vulnerability
• [08:24] – Neural entrainment: The science of how brains and bodies sync up
• [10:01] – The illusion that communication has happened
• [11:29] – The three types of conversations
• [18:33] – Key skills: How to ask questions like a super communicator
• [21:09] – Invitations vs. mandates in deep questions
• [23:52] – Looping for understanding: the technique for tough conversations
• [28:43] – Socialization and communication styles (especially for men)
• [32:05] – The three core questions behind every conversation type
• [36:39] – Adapting communication for different mediums
• [38:42] – High centrality participants and group influence
• [40:50] – Charles Duhigg’s daily challenge: Try a deep question

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Practical Takeaways

• Challenge for listeners: Ask one deep, invitational question today or tomorrow—notice the difference it makes in the connection.
• Build habits: Practice these small skills—deep questions, active listening, and matching conversation types—to make them automatic over time.
• Reciprocity wins: Demonstrating understanding encourages others to do the same; real communication is a two-way, messy, and rewarding process.

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Final Thought

Duhigg’s research and insights make the case that anyone can become a “super communicator” by developing simple—yet powerful—habits of curiosity, empathy, and active listening. Even imperfect, messy conversations are valuable when approached with the right mindset.

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This summary covers all essential insights from the episode while capturing the engaging and friendly tone of host Chris Duffy and the practical expertise of Charles Duhigg.

Transcript

[Chris Duffy]

You're listening to how to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. One time in college, early in my relationship with my now wife, we went out to dinner with her roommate's parents. And at this dinner, I was chatting up a storm. I told all my best stories. I had everyone laughing. I felt like I was absolutely crushing it. And then afterwards, I said something to that effect to my girlfriend, Molly. And I thought that she would say something like, that's right. You're the best. And instead, she was like, that was awful. You did not let anyone else speak. You just talked the whole time. And you know what? She was right. It turns out that there is a big difference between talking and communicating, and that is a difference that I had to learn. And that, honestly, I am still learning. After all, you might notice that right now I am currently in the middle of giving a monologue. You know, communication is this incredibly important foundational skill of being human, and it's also an art. And today's guest, Charles Duhigg, has been studying the masters of the craft of communication. He's the author of the book Super Communicators how to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. And here's a clip from our conversation where Charles is explaining what exactly it means to him to be a super communicator.

[Charles Duhigg]

Okay, so everyone who's listening, I want you to think for a second. If you came home from work and you just had, like, a tough, terrible day and you want to call someone because you know just talking to them is just gonna make you feel better. Most people listening, someone just popped into their mind. They know exactly who they're going to call, right? It's my friend Greg or my friend Don. And I'm going to call them up because I know just talking to them is just going to make me feel like. Feel at least like 10% better. The person that you call is a super communicator for you, and you are probably a super communicator back for them, right? There are these things you do in your conversations. You. You know how to ask the right kinds of questions. You prove to each other that you're listening. You know when to empathize, and you know when to try and solve someone's problem. Same thing probably happens with your parents. Same thing probably happens with your wife. Now, what's interesting is those are just a set of skills. And once we recognize them as skills, we can say, look, I'm going to practice these skills until they become habitual, and then I can actually use them. With anyone, with my boss, with my co workers, with a stranger on the bus. I can get that same level of kind of connection and meaningful dialogue with anyone. Once I understand that there's just a couple of skills behind it.

[Chris Duffy]

We are going to talk to Charles about those skills, how to master them and why they matter, right after this break. But first we have to communicate a few ads.

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[Chris Duffy]

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[Chris Duffy]

Today we're talking about the Art of Communication with Charles Duhigg.

[Charles Duhigg]

Hi, I'm Charles Duhigg, the author of Super Communicators and the Power of Habit.

[Chris Duffy]

Charles, I sometimes think about communication as just the words that we say to each other, but your Book really makes the point that communication is actually so much more than that.

[Charles Duhigg]

In fact, the words that we say to each other might in some ways be the least important part of communication, right? They're clearly important because those words are information. But oftentimes we think of communication as this thing where it's an information exchange service, and it's actually so much more than that. If you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower. But the goal of communication is not just to exchange information. The goal of communication is to feel connected to each other. Because when we feel connected to each other, then we start trusting each other more, we start listening to each other more. All those pro social instincts that have made our species so successful, they're all reliant on communication and connection. And so creating that atmosphere is sometimes the most important thing you can do.

[Chris Duffy]

I wonder, have you felt a lot of pressure in so much of the post? Writing of a book is like communicating about the book. You must feel a lot of pressure to be like, I gotta communicate my book well. Cause it's about communication.

[Charles Duhigg]

So one of the things that you learn about the science of communication when you're looking at the studies, is that really great conversations, they are messes, right? If you think about the best conversation you've ever had with your wife or with your best friend, if I looked at a transcript of that, it would look like a disaster, right? You're like, people are changing topics. They're making little inside jokes or getting halfway through an idea and then suddenly having a new idea. And great conversations, if you look at them on paper, they do not look eloquent and erudite. Those are. Those are great monologues. Competing monologues, right? Great conversations are messy. But what is important in that conversation is a couple of things. There's these basic skills I talk about, and at the core of them are, is this idea of vulnerability that when we connect with each other, it's oftentimes because we've expressed some type of vulnerability. Now we tend to misunderstand what vulnerability means. We think that vulnerability is like, you know, talking about your parents or crying on someone's shoulder. That is not vulnerability. Vulnerability in neuroscience has a very specific definition. It is a neural cascade that happens in our brain. When I tell you something, you could judge. Now, I might not care about your judgment, but the act of me telling you something that you could judge, it sets off this neural cascade in my brain. And then at that point, I pay very close attention to how you react. And. And if instead of judging Me, you withhold judgment. And even more importantly, if you tell me something about yourself that I could judge in return, then suddenly, and we're almost powerless against this, we will feel closer to each other. We will feel a little bit more trusting of each other. We will feel more willing to listen to each other. And so what's important to me in a conversation is not saying exactly the right things, because the conversation should be messy. It's trying to tell you things about myself that are meaningful and deep. And when you withhold judgment, returning that favor when you share things about yourself.

[Chris Duffy]

You also talk in the book about this idea of neurological synchronization, right? That, like, when we get in these moments where we are vulnerable and when we connect, we start to quite literally, be on the same wavelength.

[Charles Duhigg]

Absolutely, absolutely. Our bodies and our brains start to change, even in a conversation that's. That's just a mildly good conversation. In fact, in this conversation, I mean, this is better than a mildly good conversation. But in this conversation, mildly good. Listen, mildly good is good enough for me. If we were measuring our bodies, what we would see is that you and I are starting to breathe at the same rate. Our heart rates are starting to match each other. And even though we're talking over the Internet and you're in a different city than I am, as long as we're. There's relatively similar lighting. The dilation of our pupils is starting to echo each other. But even more importantly, if we could see inside our brains, what we would see is, is that my neural activity and your neural activity are beginning to look more and more similar. It's what creates that sense of connection. It's known within neuroscience as neural entrainment. And the reason why it's so important is because when you and I become entrained, it actually causes a dopamine reaction within our brains. We feel good. That's why you feel so great after having a really good conversation. Your brain is literally creating pleasure, you know, transmitters, in order for you to feel that way. When we want to connect with someone, when we want to show them that we want to connect with them, we start matching them. That's at the core of empathy. It's at the core of neural entrainment. It's at the core of connection.

[Chris Duffy]

I wonder about the idea of building these skills of getting more able to have, like, neurological synchronization, neural entrainment, what. All of these really technical terms, but also just at the core, really having a real connection. I think a lot about humor, and I think that sometimes the Hard part is that people who think they have a great sense of humor are often the people with the worst sense of humor.

[Charles Duhigg]

The worst sense of humor, absolutely.

[Chris Duffy]

I feel like you have a great hilarious quote from George Bernard Shaw in your book. The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. How do you deal with the fact that often people who are not good at communicating, not good at connecting, they're not aware that they're not good at communicating and not good at connecting?

[Charles Duhigg]

So humor and laughter is a really good example. When I laugh in a conversation, what I'm showing you is I want to connect with you. And when you laugh back, the most natural reaction, what you're saying is, I accept this, I want to connect back. So laughter has become this really important part of how we communicate with each other, completely absent humor. And the same thing happens with emotional displays, with practical displays. And this kind of gets to this underlying theory that there's these three kinds of conversations. I should actually context this. So for me, writing Super Communicator started when I got into this bad pattern with my wife where I would come home from work and I was working at the New York Times at that point, and I'd complain about my day and she would basically try and solve my problems. She would say something like, why don't you take your co workers out to lunch? You guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of being able to hear her very good advice, I would get even more upset and I'd be like, why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. You know, tell me that I'm, that I'm right and they're wrong. I think probably everyone listening has some version of this in their own relationships.

[Chris Duffy]

Yeah.

[Charles Duhigg]

And so I went to these researchers and I asked them, what's going on here? Like I'm a professional communicator, why do I keep making this mistake? And they said, well, first of all, we're glad you showed up because we're living through this golden age of understanding communication. But secondly, one of the things we've discovered is that when you're having a discussion, you think you know what that discussion is about. Right. You're talking about your day or you're talking about the kids grades or where to go on vacation. But actually they said inside that discussion are many different kinds of conversations. And in general, these conversations fall into one of three buckets. There are these practical conversations where the goal is for us to make plans or to solve problems together. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I don't want to plan for feeling better. I want you to empathize with me. And then finally, there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society, the identities that are important to us. And what they said is, all three of these conversations are all equally legitimate. And in fact, in a discussion, you'll probably have all three. But if you are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, you cannot hear each other fully. And so this has given rise to what's known as the matching principle within psychology, which says that successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. And then once you get synchronized, you tend with your partner to move from conversation to conversation together.

[Chris Duffy]

It's one of those concepts that if you just apply it to your own life, it becomes really clear that there's truth to it. Like, for me, it's really funny to imagine if I go to the hardware store and I say, I'm having trouble getting up to my roof to fix something, and I'm wondering if you have a recommendation for the right kind of ladder, right? Like, if I go there trying to have a practical conversation, and they go, that sounds so hard. I hear you and you are seen. I'd be like, what is happening? And similarly, if I'm going and hanging out with a friend, and I say, like, oh, I'm really excited to watch the new Star wars movie. And then they go, the way you could make time to see the Star wars movie is by clearing out your calendar in these five ways. It's like, what?

[Charles Duhigg]

Okay, totally.

[Chris Duffy]

I want to have a social conversation now. So this actually just tracks in, like, such a funny and clear way in my own life.

[Charles Duhigg]

You know, when I talk to those neuroscientists, the reason they said we're living through this golden age of understanding communication is because for the first time, we can actually see inside people's brains as they're having conversations. We get confused about what good communication is. Right? A great example of this is if you ask super communicators, consistent super communicators, people who can connect with almost anyone. If you ask them if they've already always been good at communication, they almost inevitably will say no. They'll say things like, I had trouble making friends in high school, so I had to really study how kids talk to each other. Or my parents got divorced and I was the peacemaker between them, right? It's the act of paying attention to communication that makes us better communicators. There is no one who is born with a gift of the gab. There's no one who is born a super communicator. We learn how to be super communicators by identifying these very basic skills which we can talk about and then just practicing them. Because if you practice them, your brain will make them into habits very, very quickly.

[Chris Duffy]

We are going to take a quick break and then we will be right back with more. So don't go anywhere.

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[Chris Duffy]

We're talking with Charles Duhigg, author of the book Super Communicators, about skills that we can all develop that would help us to communicate better. Let's talk about those very basic skills.

[Charles Duhigg]

Okay.

[Chris Duffy]

And I also do want to talk about the mindsets, which I think are very related to skills.

[Charles Duhigg]

The first big important skill is asking questions. So one of the things that we know about consistent super Communicators is that they ask more questions than the average person. They're like, oh, what'd you think about that? Or, oh, you went there. Did you like it? Right. They're just kind of invitations to come into a conversation. But some of the questions that they ask are what are known as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And that can sound kind of intimidating, like you have to ask deep questions. But it's as simple as if you meet someone who is, for instance, a doctor, and instead of saying to them, you know, oh, what hospital do you work at? If you ask them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? That's a super easy question to answer, to answer. But think about what it does. It invites that person to talk about their experiences growing up. Right? It invites them to talk about their values and beliefs that brought them into medicine that get them excited every day. And that's the first important skill is that when we ask deep questions, it creates the environment that allows us to have a real conversation.

[Chris Duffy]

One example of a deep question that I know you've used in the past is like, when's the last time you cried? And that. That is a really clear, deep question to me. But it's also, in some ways, it's a scary question to imagine asking, right? I'd be nervous to ask.

[Charles Duhigg]

It can be super intimidating. And now I will say I. I give a lot of speeches about. About communication, including, like, audiences of, you know, like, five or 10,000 people. Sometimes five or 10,000, like, engineers, good software engineers. And what I tell them is, we're going to do an experiment in 30 minutes. I'm going to ask you to turn to the person next to you and ask and answer one question, which is, when is the last time you cried in front of another person? And then I ask, who's excited about this? And like, nobody raises their hands, right? For exactly the reason you just said, nobody wants to do this. They did not come to a conference to have this, like, impromptu therapy session. But then I spend the next 30 minutes explaining to them. This question, this kind of question has this magical power. It does something magical. Now, that being said, when we're at work, asking someone, when's the last time you cried? That might be a little uncomfortable, right? When we are asking deep questions, we should think about the difference between an invitation and a mandate. And there are times when that mandate is okay, but most of the time, particularly when we're just meeting someone, what's really useful is to have questions that invite someone to share but don't mandate that they share.

[Chris Duffy]

I love that distinction because I think the idea of invitational deep questions, it doesn't feel at all intimidating to ask someone one of those.

[Charles Duhigg]

The thing is, any question or any topic can be a deep question, right? Like, oh, where do you live? Oh, I live in the heights. Oh, yeah? Do you like the Heights? What made you decide to move up there? Right. That's a deep question. Suddenly I'm invited to talk about, oh, there's this community that I love, and I actually work downtown, and I love to ride my bike to work. Now we're talking about real things. The other thing that's really important about a deep question is that when I ask it, it's very natural for me to answer my own question. Oh, you became a doctor cause you saw your dad get sick as a kid. That's really interesting. I became a lawyer cause I saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid. So skill one is practice asking questions and in particular practice asking deep questions. Skill number two is after we ask those deep questions, one of the things that's really, really useful and oftentimes important in tough conversations and conflict conversations is to prove that we're listening, right? Because we've all been in that conversation where we think we're having, we're talking to someone and we realize like, oh, this person isn't actually listening to me. This person is just waiting their turn to speak. And so, so the way that we get around the suspicion which exists in, in all of our heads is that we prove that we're listening. And there's some fairly easy ways to prove that we're listening. One is just to ask follow up questions. There's something about follow up questions that makes the other person feel really good, like you're really interested in them. So that's one thing you can do is ask follow up questions. The other thing you can do is you can think about how you're reacting, right? So like, are you leaning in towards the person? Are you making eye contact? Are you making little noises like, oh, that's interesting, huh? Are you laughing when they laugh? And finally, there's actually a technique for this, for the hardest conversations, what are known as conflict conversations, where you and I might disagree about something, or we're talking about something like race or religion, that's, that's very tense. Or, or just where like we might disagree with each other. It's really important in those settings that we prove that we're listening to each other. And there's this, this technique known as looping for understanding, which has three steps. First, the first step is you ask a question, preferably a deep question. The second step is that after the person answers that question, you repeat back what you heard them say in your own words. You prove to them that you were paying attention. And most of us actually do. Step one and two, somewhat intuitively, step three is that after you summarize what they said, you ask them if you got it right. Did I hear you correctly? Am I understanding you? Because what I'm doing in that moment is I'm asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. And if you acknowledge that I was listening, you become anywhere from 10 to 80% more likely to listen to me in return. It's that social reciprocity again.

[Chris Duffy]

Yeah, I love that part in your book where you say that the goal of when you're looping is for them to say, wow, I never really thought about it that way. That's a good point in my side, like you're making an argument from my side. But the other thing that I think is really powerful about that looping idea that I hadn't anticipated before I did it, is it also allows me to have a real conversation in a high conflict area without endorsing the other person's side.

[Charles Duhigg]

That's exactly right.

[Chris Duffy]

I don't have to say I'm going to convince you or you're right. All I have to say is I want to make sure that I actually understand your side, not that your side is correct. And that really changes the interaction.

[Charles Duhigg]

It changes everything. The goal of a conversation is not for me to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right or you're dumb and I'm smart, or even to impress you. Right. The goal of a conversation is to understand each other. And so we could have a conversation. And if I walk away from it understanding how you see the world, and if I speak in a way that you understand how I see the world, that understanding means the conversation was a success. We do not have to agree with each other. The goal of conversation is just to understand and to show the other person that you understand. And when we do that, even if we are still going to vote for different people or we're going to put different signs on our lawn, if we feel like the other person understands us and that we understand them, we will feel connected to each other. That doesn't mean we agree with each other, but it means that we can. We can live peacefully side by side.

[Chris Duffy]

And also, I think when you do this, if you say, I'm going to say back what you said and I want to make sure I understood it, then it's very fair for you to say, I would like to make sure that you're understanding what I'm saying, too.

[Charles Duhigg]

Absolutely. And they're going to be willing. In fact, you don't even have to say that they're going to do it automatically. Like, this is the thing again, this social reciprocity that we were talking about. When we ostentatiously demonstrate that we are listening, other people become more likely to listen to us and to show us that they're listening to us.

[Chris Duffy]

So obviously, people who are listening to this podcast or who read your book, the vast majority of them are going to be using this in personal and professional settings, but they're not going to be like hosting a podcast where they're Interviewing people, like, I'm holding up your book right now. I have it, there are pages that are marked and to quote from the book, to show you that I actually do the research to know what you're saying. Like that changes the conversation because a lot of times when people are interviewed, someone says, so let's start by you telling me the book. And then they say back a question based on what you said. And I think the reason I bring this up is not to say like, look at me, Chris, what a great interviewer. But it's to say that I think that is the exact same thing we're saying here, which is to actually show that you're listening to the person to demonstrate their respect for what they're saying.

[Charles Duhigg]

That's exactly right. And this is why it's. The second skill is because it's so important, is because a conversation is about speaking and listening. But we tend to think of listening as a passive activity. We tend to think like, if I close my mouth and open my ears and I'm listening, and that's the first step of listening. But that is not sufficient on its own. What's important is that after you close your mouth and open your ears is that you open your mouth back up and you prove to the person, oh, I'm actually paying attention to what you're saying. I'm not just thinking about what I want to say next because I'm asking you a follow up question or I'm saying like, oh, that's so interesting, or I'm looping for understanding. It's really, really powerful and it's key to how we connect with each other.

[Chris Duffy]

Several of the things that we've talked about in this conversation, they apply to everyone. But I do think that because of the way that our society works and the way that we're socialized, they can be uniquely challenging for heterosexual men. Right. Like, for example, I think men are really socialized to look for solutions rather than it's like to go to that practical conversation rather than to go to the emotional conversation. Most men that I know, when someone says like, I'm really sad, here's all the issues, it's easier to go to, I'm going to fix that than to say, I'm going to validate that. And I think that I would be really surprised if, at least if you are in North America, in the same culture that I am in, I think I'd be really surprised that if I, when I ask you to picture someone who is bad at communicating in the way that they Talk too much and don't leave enough space. I would be surprised if that wasn't a man that you're thinking of. So, and that's not to say, like, this is biologically determined, but I think that there are some, like, socialization pieces that need to get broken in order to have someone become a super communicator, too.

[Charles Duhigg]

Yeah, so you're right. It's not biologically based. I'll tell you what the science says. And, you know, there's stories in the book about, like, a CIA officer who, like, is sent overseas to recruit foreign spies and, like, has to learn. And it's. It's a man, he has to learn how to communicate. He has to learn how to connect with people. So here's what we know from the science. Men and women do not communicate differently. What is different is that we end up usually getting habituated in slightly different kinds of communication. And so we become more comfortable with a certain approach. That does not mean that men are less emotional than women. It does mean that when men want to talk about emotional topics, sometimes they will revert to language that sounds practical, but in fact is emotional language. It's just that they're habituated. Their habit is to kind of talk about, you know, talk about it a certain way. And women who are often. Who are often grow up in environments where they're much freer to talk about emotional topics. They're habituated slightly differently. You know, let's say I come home and I say, like, hey, Liz. Liz is my wife. I say, Liz, like, I really. We got to talk about, like, the. Our family budget because, like, I think we're spending too much money, and I really want to go through the numbers and figure out what we're spending it on because I'm really, really worried. Like, it just. It feels like we're spending too much and I don't know how we're going to afford the kids college if we don't start saving right now. That sounds at first glance like a very practical conversation. Right? I'm talking about numbers, I'm talking about budgets. But pay attention to the words that I used. This is how we match each other. I'm worried. I'm looking to the future, and I'm concerned about paying for the kids college. This is making me anxious. This is, for me, first and foremost, an emotional conversation. We have to have an emotional conversation before we can get down to practicalities. And I'm signaling to you, even though I'm using all these practical words and I'm very businesslike I'm signaling to you through the words that I use that I am in an emotional mindset. And so the best thing that Liz can do is say, listen, let's talk about this, because I hear that you're worried and I don't think, I don't want you to be worried. I want us both to be really confident about what we're spending on. And I want to be your partner in this. I want to make this happen together so that we both feel really confident and really calm about our finances. Okay, so what she's done there is she's matched me emotionally, she's acknowledged and empathized with my emotions, and at that point, she could actually even say, since I understand how you're feeling, can we talk about some solutions? Like can we talk about better, better ways to spend money? In other words, can we move from an emotional to a practical conversation together? And if that happens, we're going to be in sync and we're both going to feel good.

[Chris Duffy]

This perfectly ties into the next thing that I wanted to ask you about, which is these three types of conversations, right? They also relate to mindsets. So yeah, sometimes you've explained in the book, like the three kinds of conversations are like, what is this really about? How do we feel and who are we? Those are other types of conversations and they can be a decision making mindset, an emotional mindset, or a social mindset. So we've kind of talked about practical, the emotional and the social. Let's talk about those. That other piece, the like, what's this really about? How do we feel and who are we?

[Charles Duhigg]

And those are sort of the questions that correspond to each kind of conversation. Right? When we're having a practical conversation, what we're really talking about is what's this really about? Like, what are we trying to do? Why are we having this conversation? What's our goals in this conversation? When we're having an emotional conversation, what we're really asking is like, how do we feel about this? And when we're having a social conversation, what we're asking is who are we? Like, what is it about my background or my beliefs or the way that I see myself that influence how this topic I'm talking about and influence both how I speak and listen. So those are sort of three questions that help us understand what's going on in each of those three different kinds of conversations.

[Chris Duffy]

I felt like a lot of what I loved about super communicators was this took things that I've seen in my own life or that I've thought about, but never kind of like, explicitly had terms for. And this. This explained them in a really clear way. So you cite this really interesting example where they had a very fraught conversation. People on opposite sides of the gun control debate, talking online on Facebook, which.

[Charles Duhigg]

I would have thought is a recipe.

[Chris Duffy]

For the absolute most impossible connection imaginable. Right. There's no way people are going to speak civilly. There's no way people are going to connect or feel like they're heard. And actually, the conclusion that you came to was the opposite. So can you talk about that a little bit?

[Charles Duhigg]

So we know a lot about how technology influences communication. So. So even setting aside the Internet for a second, just looking at telephones. So when telephones first became popular about a hundred years ago, there were all these studies that appeared that said no one will ever have a real conversation on the telephone. Right? Like, no one's gonna learn. Nobody's ever gonna figure out how to have real conversations on the telephone. Because up until then, almost all conversations had happened face to face. And people were like, look, if you can't see the other person, if you can't see their gestures and expressions, if you can't hear their voice with really high fidelity, you're never going to have a real conversation.

[Chris Duffy]

But.

[Charles Duhigg]

And what's really interesting is we look at that, we kind of laugh now. But if you look back, they were right for, like, the first 10 or 15 years of telephones use. If you look at early transcripts from the first phone conversations, people use them as telegrams. They didn't know how to have conversations on the phone. Now, by the time you and I and everyone listening, by the time we were in middle school, we could, like, talk on the phone for, like, seven hours a night, right? And they were like, the most important conversations of our life. So what happened there?

[Chris Duffy]

What.

[Charles Duhigg]

What made us able to talk on telephones? Well, what happened is we learned the rules for phones, and there are specific rules for phones. There are rules that you live by without even realizing it. When you're on the telephone, you will overemphasize your words. You're not consciously doing it. It's just you'll put more emotion into your voice than if you were talking to someone face to face.

[Chris Duffy]

Wow.

[Charles Duhigg]

These are things that we've come to realize. When I'm talking on the phone, I have to behave this way. And they're so automatic that we don't even think about them. They're nearly subconscious.

[Chris Duffy]

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[Charles Duhigg]

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[Chris Duffy]

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[Charles Duhigg]

So let's think about like, the Internet. The Internet has only existed for about, you know, the first email, first widespread use of email was really in the like mid to late 90s. So it's only been like 25 or 30 years. And when you're talking about Facebook or Slack or Signal or all these other things like it, we're, it's not a long time, right? We're still trying to learn the rules. We will learn the rules. Our kids are learning the rules faster than we are. But what's important is to recognize that different forms of communication have slightly different rules. And if you just take a minute to remind yourself of that, most of the problems go away. If you think about like, I need to tell this person something and you think like, how would I tell them over text? How would I tell them over email? How would I tell them over the phone? How would I tell them face to face? You'll totally recognize that each form of communication requires something a little bit different. And some of them might be better than others, right? If it's something really important, if it's bad news, it's probably better to do it face to face or over the phone than over a text. So what happens is that when we forget to remind ourselves of those rules, when we're in a hurry and we're like, oh, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna send off this text while I'm waiting in line, and I'm gonna be like, no, that's wrong. I. I'm not gonna think about the fact that the person's gonna. Gonna read a bunch of emotional content into that that I don't mean, or if I'm sarcastic in an email. I'm not gonna think about the fact that they can't hear the sarcasm in my voice. So one of the rules for online communication is overemphasize politeness under emphasize sarcasm. That's a pretty easy one.

[Chris Duffy]

That is really interesting. And it also makes me think of another idea from the book that I thought was. It was new to me, which is the idea that certain people in groups are, you call them high centrality participants that like having people in a group who are very good at communication in these ways that maybe aren't even conscious for them. Right. Emphasizing politeness, asking a lot of questions that can change the outcomes for an entire group of people.

[Charles Duhigg]

Absolutely. And what's super interesting is, and this is from work, from a guy named Bo Sivers who was at Dartmouth and is now at Apple. When a high centrality participant is in a conversation, he's helping or she's helping all the other people become neurally entrained. But it's not obvious. Right. If you were to ask someone who's the most important person in that conversation, oftentimes they won't say, oh, it was Susie, the high centrality participant. But if you ask them, who did you really like talking to in that conversation? They'll inevitably say, Susie. And the other thing that's really interesting is if you ask them, oh, how. How influential was Susie? Like, how much did she change your mind? They'll be like, oh, a little bit, but not that much. But then if you look at the data, if they have to make decisions together, whatever opinion Susie ends up landing on becomes the opinion for the entire group. So it's almost this, like, crypto influence that, that these super communicators, these high centrality participants have. And part of what they're doing is the reason why they're so influential is that they're not pushing their own ideas. Right. What they're saying Is they're saying they're echoing other people's ideas. Hey, Jim brought up this one idea, and Andy brought up this other idea, and they're restating, they're looping for understanding those ideas oftentimes more eloquently than the original speaker themselves. And then they're saying, you know, Jim's idea makes more sense to me. And everyone else is like, yeah, Jim's idea is really the one to go. And everyone thinks Jim was really influential, but it wasn't. It was that high centrality participant. Susie. She's the one who brought everyone around.

[Chris Duffy]

You have a section in your book where you talk about how you used these, and I think what was good enough for you will probably be good enough for the listener. And I especially love that. It really made me laugh that you. You say, I'm getting better at these skills, though my wife just last week asked how a rambling dinner time monologue might align with some of the advice in my book. That's. That's just. I love the idea that you're like, I'm still not perfect. And that she's like, yeah, no, not at all. Now a tool in her toolkit can be like, I wonder if you might want to check out this book, Super Communicators. So how have you tried to use these lessons that you learned? And by extension, what could people listening use?

[Charles Duhigg]

Yeah. So actually, here's the number one thing I do every day, and this would be something I would challenge all the listeners to do today or tomorrow. Try and ask a deep question that you normally wouldn't ask. Right. And that doesn't mean you have to ask someone like, when did you cry? When did the last time you cried in front of another person? It could be something just to say, like, oh, you're an accountant. Like, did you always want to be an accountant? Was that your dream as a kid? Or. Or, oh, you, you. What's it like working in that office? Is it. Is it a really fun place? Like, what do you. What do you value about working there? Right. Those are easy questions to ask, but what you'll find is that the first couple of times you do it, it's gonna. You're gonna feel awkward doing it. It's gonna feel like it's not natural for you. And yet when you ask it, the other person isn't gonna notice that awkwardness at all. And they're gonna love being asked that question. They're gonna, like, tell you all about, like, what. What's it like to be an accountant that they wanted to be an astronaut when they up an accountant or that working at this place is so great because the people are like so kind to each other. And now I know something about you that you really value community and kindness. And you'll figure out pretty quickly that asking these deep questions is a lot easier than you think it is and it's more rewarding than you expect it to be. So this would be, this is my challenge for myself every day. And my challenge for everyone listening is try and ask a deep question today or tomorrow. Just one. Just one deep question. Watch what happens and when it succeeds, say to yourself, I'm going to do this more. Because if you just do it a handful of times, it'll become a habit and then it'll feel like the most authentic automatic natural thing on earth.

[Chris Duffy]

Well, Charles Duhigg, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for super communicating with us.

[Charles Duhigg]

Thanks for having me on. This is really great.

[Chris Duffy]

That is it for this episode of how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest for Charles Duhigg. His books are called Super Communicators, the Power of Habit and Smarter, Better, Faster. I am your host Chris Duffy and you can find more from me including my weekly newsletter and other [e-mail] how to be a Better Human is put together by a team who are supernatural. On the TED side we've got telepathic level communication going on between Daniela Bellorazzo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tanzika Seungmanivong, Antonio Ley and Joseph De Bruyne. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Mattea Selles and they want me to be very clear that telepathic level communication is not a real thing. On the PRX side we've got listening comprehension savants and audio superheroes Morgan Flannery, Norgill, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening, one of the most important skills of communication. And I hope that you will share this episode with a person whose communication you admire. We will be back next week with even more how to be a better Human. Until then, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting the show and please take care.

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[Charles Duhigg]

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