← The Hardcore Self-Help Podcast with Duff the Psych
The Hardcore Self-Help Podcast with Duff the Psych
422: Charles Duhigg on Becoming a Supercommunicator
00:58:25
Loading summary
Transcript97 lines
- [00:00]
A
You can be the smartest person on earth and the most trustworthy person on earth, but if you don't know how to communicate that, if you don't know how to connect with another person, you know quickly and easily, then all of that is for naught because we won't feel that sense of connection that really allows us to create bonds when we actually do connect with each other. Our brains and our bodies change. Right. In this conversation, for instance, our. Without us realizing it, our breath patterns are becoming similar, our heart, heart rates are becoming similar. Depending on the lighting in the room that you're in, the lighting I'm in, our pupils will start dilating at the same rate. And more importantly, if we could see inside our heads like these researchers could with scans, we would see that as we go through this conversation, our thoughts, our neural activity becomes more and more similar. In fact, at some point, it will synchronize. So the first skill is trying to determine what kind of conversation we're in by asking these deep questions, which means we're usually not asking about the facts of someone's life. We're asking how they feel about their life. Then when, when they say something, what. The next skill that's really important in communication is not only listening to them, but showing them that we are listening to them. People who are super communicators again and again and again throughout their days is that they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. Really? Yeah. And some of those questions are like, we don't even register them as questions. It's a lot easier than think it is. Right? And we all know that because we have those conversations and beforehand we're kind of like, oh, this is gonna be awkward and weird. And then afterwards we're like, oh, that was great. That was really nice to talk to that person. It is less awkward and weird than we think it's gonna be. And it's often much, much more rewarding.
- [02:01]
B
Hey friends, this is the hardcore self help podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Robert Duff. Today I had the opportunity to sit with Charles Duhigg. Charles is a really great guest and I'm so happy that I was able to get him on the show. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the best selling author of the Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better. He has a new book out called Super Communicators that dives into what makes conversations truly effective in showing how skills like empathy, active listening, and emotional awareness can transform the way we connect with others. I think you will really, really enjoy this conversation. If you do, please subscribe wherever you listen or watch. And don't forget to leave a review. And if you have a a guest suggestion for the show, shoot me an email to duff the psychmail.com with that said, enjoy. All right, everybody, I'm super excited to sit down with Charles Duhigg today. Charles, welcome to the show.
- [02:51]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [02:53]
B
So I'm going to record a separate intro, kind of introducing your books and stuff like that. But can you give a little flavor to the intro with maybe some highlights of your career? You've been able to work with some really important people, some really cool stuff that you've done. Can you throw a few in there just to give people an idea?
- [03:09]
A
Sure. Absolute. Before I became a journalist, I actually started a company. And then I ended up going to Harvard Business School to get my mba. And about halfway through hbs, I decided I wanted to become a journalist. So for a long time, for about 15 years, I was a newspaper journalist, first at the LA Times, and then at the New York Times. And as I was doing that, I had a couple of experiences, one of which was going to Iraq to cover the occupation and the invasion. And I walked away from that realizing that one of the things that the US Military does really well is it teaches people new habits. And so that got me really interested in understanding the science of habits. And I started reporting on that, investigating that, and eventually out of that came my first book, the Power of Habit, which is about how habits shape our lives and what the scientific structure of them are and how we can change them and build them. And then I actually went back to the New York Times, and I continued writing for a little while, and I wrote a second book about productivity. And. And then More recently, in 2017, I left the Times to start writing for the New Yorker magazine. And one of the things that had really struck me was how important. How important listening is and how important communication is and how much I didn't know about it. And so I actually had this one experience with my wife where it was this pattern we fell into where I'd come home from work and complain about my day, and she would offer me a solution. And rather than being able to hear her solution, I would get more upset. And then she would get upset because I was, like, attacking her for giving me good advice. We've all experienced this, right? This is like a common thing in every relationship. And so I went to these researchers and I asked them, why do I. I'm supposed to be a Professional communicator. Why do I keep making the same problem? And they said, actually, you're living through a golden age of understanding communication. It's really good you came in because we're learning so much about how people communicate because of advances in neural imaging and data collection. And we think we can answer your question by explaining to you what communication really is. And that became my last book, the Super Communicators. Yeah.
- [05:20]
B
And that's taken you all over the place, right? You've been. My show is probably one of the less impressive ones that you've been on, from what I understand.
- [05:28]
A
Not at all. Not at all. But, yeah, it's been good. I mean, I think that there's a real healthy interest in how to communicate better, not just at. With your spouse at home and your kids, but also at work, you know, in politics, in. In the people that we meet on the street. If you think about it, communication is essentially Homo sapiens superpower, Right? It's the thing that makes us sort of stand above all other species and able to, you know, build communities and invent fire and build aircraft carriers and cities. And so understanding how to communicate well is actually one of the most powerful things you can do, because it's those connections with other people that tend to not only make us happy and healthy, but also make us successful.
- [06:18]
B
Yeah, I 100% agree. Like, in my realm of work, I'm a psychologist, so I'm often mentoring people who are applying for internship or graduate programs and things like that. And that's one of the things that I, you know, try to tell them. It's like everybody's impressive. One of the major things that you can work on is how you present that and how you communicate. That really does set people apart.
- [06:38]
A
No, absolutely. And when we feel close to someone, you know that the subtitle of Super Communicators is Unlocking the Secret Language of Connection. And I think that's really important because the goal of communication is to connect, right? It is to form some kind of bond with the person you're talking to, which is at the core, as you know, of why we trust other people, why we love like other people, why we think they're smart. And you can be the smartest person on Earth and the most trustworthy person on Earth, but if you don't know how to communicate that, if you don't know how to connect with another person, you know, quickly and easily, then all of that is for naught because we won't feel that sense of connection that really allows us to create bonds.
- [07:24]
B
Yeah. Do you mind if I back up a little bit?
- [07:28]
A
Sure.
- [07:29]
B
What. What do we need to understand about you to understand why you fell into journalism as opposed to just staying within businessy stuff?
- [07:38]
A
Oh, yeah, It's a good question. I mean, so what happened was when I was in business school, we actually sold the company I started midway through my first year, and so suddenly I had all this freedom.
- [07:49]
B
What kind of company was that?
- [07:50]
A
We built medical education campuses in other states. It's. It was very strange and random, but. But it was interesting. And during my. Between my first and second year of business school, I went back to New Mexico, where I'm from Albuquerque, and I was working for a private equity real estate group. And what I would do is most of my job was building spreadsheets, right? I'd come in and look at a particular property we might want to buy, build a spreadsheet associated with it, do like four or five of those a day, see if any of them make sense for us to approach. And. And because it was a little isolating and boring, I would start playing this American Life in the middle of the day. And this is like, you know, 20 years ago, so there weren't that many this American lives. And I would allow myself to have listened to one a day so I wouldn't run out of them. And if it was a really tough day, I'd allow myself to listen to two. And that was by far the best part of my day. And at the end of the summer, I realized if the best part of my day was not building the spreadsheets, it was listening to this American Life, then I should probably go do the thing like making this American Life. And so that kind of pushed me into journalism, and in part because I think, you know, I'm really curious and I like to learn. That's been really fun for me. But more importantly, I love stories. Like, I love not only just listening to stories, I love trying to understand why some stories work and others don't. Or what is the thing that makes a story successful. And the nice thing, as I thought about my future and I thought about, I'm 50, I'm 60 years old, I'm going into work. What's the thing that's going to be just still captivating? To me, the thing was trying to figure out how to tell stories that people are desperate to listen to. And journalism lets you practice that and play with that a lot.
- [09:42]
B
Have you always been that way in terms of just, like, loving the idea of a story? And I think so I think so, yeah.
- [09:49]
A
I mean, I think I've always been nosy, so that's good if you're a journalist. But I think equally. Yeah. I just find, and I'm sure many people listening to this also do. I find stories just captivating in a way that I'm almost powerless against. Right. If it's a good story, a well told story, which means it has a long middle and some suspenseful elements and a payoff that I don't, that I anticipate, but I don't completely anticipate, then yeah, I find it to be really, really enrapturing. And one of the things I do with my books, you know, my books are about science. They're about what we've learned from science, about habits or communication or productivity. But I try and embed each of those books in stories because the truth of the matter is, no matter how powerful an idea is, if you can't remember the idea, it's somewhat worse, worthless. But when you take an idea and you embed it in a story, people remember stories very, very easily. And as long as they remember the story, they oftentimes remember what the idea propelling that story is because the story exists to tell them. You know, in super communicators, there's stories about like CIA officers trying to recruit overseas agents or, you know, what happened at Netflix when there was this like huge controversy that emerged, or, or what happens in a jury room after a trial when they're trying to decide whether to send someone to jail or not. And it's the stories that we remember really easily. And if we can, then the ideas get embedded into our heads.
- [11:29]
B
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Journalists aren't typically the ones writing self help books. It's. You have a really interesting approach. What did, were you nervous at all about the idea of writing this type of material?
- [11:44]
A
No, no, actually exactly the opposite. I would have been nervous about writing something else. I mean, every book that I write sort of is born of me first saying, this is a problem I have, I want to solve it. Right. Like, like with the habit, with power of habits or power of habit. The question was like, if I'm so smart and so talented, like, why am I having so much trouble losing weight and getting myself to exercise every morning? Right. Like, if you're so smart. Yep. Yeah. So like, and then I realized, like, oh, it's habits. Like, I need to figure out how to change my habits. And that's surprisingly hard if you don't understand how a habit works. The same thing with super communicators. I just, I was so frustrated by my inability to communicate sometimes with my wife, sometimes at work. They had made me a manager at the, the New York Times and I, I didn't do a particularly good job communicating with the, the people who are reporting to me. And I just wondered like, again, like, if I'm so smart, why am I so bad at this? So the book starts as me trying to, out of a very real need for myself to, to try and solve a problem. And as a result I sort of imagine that if I have a problem, many other people have that same problem. And, and there's lots of like terrible self help books out there. Right. It's one person who's like, here's my take on the world and here's how I think you should change. And that might work for them, but it's not stress tested by science or empiricism or reporting or research. And so one of the things I wanted to do is to say like, look, I want to write a book that like actually someone who's not interested in self help could read this and find it really entertaining and really interesting. But more importantly, if you do need help with this, which I think most people do, then what I'll do is I'll actually deliver to you the useful practical tips on how to become better that you can use tomorrow. So maybe this was hubris. It never occurred to me that other people might not be interested in that.
- [13:42]
B
It makes sense. It makes sense. You're scratching your own itch, which you assume other people would have. And I appreciate that you're going about it in a way that's not just self help for self help sake. There's an issue. You research the issue, you found the people who research the issue. Because I agree there's a lot of kind of BS out there. So that's great. Why don't we dig into it a bit? What are some of the foundational skills that you think people, anybody should learn about communication to kind of get them moving in the right direction?
- [14:12]
A
Yeah. So I think the first idea that that's really, really important. And this is what happened when I went to these researchers and told them I'm having this pattern with my wife, why is it happening? And they said, well, look, first of all, we're glad you came because this is a pretty golden age for understanding communication. And second of all, here's one of the big things that we've learned. When you have a discussion with someone else, you imagine that discussion is about one Thing, right? We're talking about. About my book or we're talking about, you know, what to get for dinner or where to go on vacation or, you know, do you think. Who do you. Who do you think should win in the election? We think it's about that one thing. But actually, when we're having that discussion, there are multiple kinds of conversations happening. We know this from neural scanning. And these conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're talking about making decisions or solving problems. But then there's also emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. I want you to relate to me. And then thirdly, there's social conversations where we're talking about how we relate to each other and society, the identities that are important to us. And what the researcher said is all three kinds of discussions are really important. But if you're having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, it's really hard to hear each other. In fact, it's almost impossible to feel connected. And the reason why is because we're using different parts of our brains. When we actually do connect with each other, our brains and our bodies change. Right? In this conversation, for instance, our. Without us realizing it, our breath patterns are becoming similar. Our heart rates are becoming similar. Depending on the lighting in the room that you're in. Lighting I'm in, our pupils will start dilating at the same rate. And more importantly, if we could see inside our heads like these researchers could with. With. With scans, we would see that as we go through this conversation, our thoughts, Our neural activity becomes more and more similar. In fact, at some point, it will synchronize and we will. That's when we'll. We will not only really understand each other, but we will feel connected. And within neuroscience, this is known as neural entrainment. And what the researchers said is, look, if you're having a practical conversation and I'm having an emotional conversation, we're using different parts of our brains. You're using the prefrontal cortex. I'm using the amygdala and the basal ganglia. And as a result, it's very hard for our thoughts to synchronize. It's very hard for our brain activity to start to look the same. But if we are having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it's much, much easier for our thoughts to align and to synchronize. And that doesn't mean we have to stay in that conversation. Right. Once we are aligned, we can move from emotional to practical to social, back to emotional together. And in doing so, we will not only feel closer, we will really understand each other. And this is known within academic psychology as the matching principle, that successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. And so that's one of the big ideas, is learn to diagnose what kind of conversation is happening and then match others or invite them to match you.
- [17:37]
B
Okay. So definitely, I hear the connection to what you were talking about with your wife, that situation that you ran into. Right. You were having an emotional conversation, she was having a practical conversation, and that create friction. So how do you do that? How do you diagnose that awareness?
- [17:53]
A
So there's a couple of different ways. So one of the things that, like, teachers learn to do, they actually teach this to them is if a student comes up and they. And they have something they really want to talk about, start the conversation by saying, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged? Or do you want to be heard? Which, of course, the course of the three conversations, the practical, the emotional, and the social. And what's interesting is if anyone listening has kids. Do you have kids, Robert?
- [18:18]
B
Yeah, I have two small kids.
- [18:20]
A
Okay. So, yeah. So if you ask them this question, they will immediately know what they want. They will be able to immediately answer it and say, like, I want to hug, or I just want you to listen to me, or I need your help. Now, in the workplace where we do a lot of communication, it's hard to do that. Yeah. Because if you ask someone, do you want a hug? They're gonna go to hr. So the key is, instead of asking those three questions, is to ask another kind of question. And within psychology, these are known as deep questions. And deep questions are questions that ask me about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating. But it's as simple as, for instance, if you meet a doctor, instead of saying, you know, oh, yeah, what hospital do you work at? Asking them, oh, you know, what made you decide to go to medical school? That doesn't seem like a big question or like a weird question to ask, but what it does is it invites the person to tell you about their values. Right. I went to medical school because I really wanted to heal, or their experiences. I went to medical school because I saw my dad get sick when I was a kid. Deep questions are the way that we get the other person to tell Us what mindset they're in. They're going to say something that indicates they're in an emotional mindset or a practical mindset or a social mindset. And once we hear that, we will know how to match them and how to invite them to match us. Right. To start by saying, oh my gosh, that's so hard. You know, I actually became a lawyer when I saw my uncle get arrested. So I know what it feels like to have a family member kind of, kind of be in a tough place. And I'm wondering, can I ask you, you a question about like a, a medical issue that I, I, I've encountered recently? Right. So what I'm saying there is I'm going to match you on with an emotional conversation and then I'm going to ask for permission to move to a practical conversation. And you, because you've aligned, I've aligned with you for just a few seconds, you are going to be willing to move with me to a practical headspace. And, and then we're going to be able to connect with each other.
- [20:22]
B
I imagine of different version of that might be. If you ask, you know, this doctor that we're hypothetically talking about, why'd you get into medicine? And they go, that we don't need to get into that right now. Let's just figure out what's, what's going on. And you go, oh, we're in practical land.
- [20:37]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, or they might say something like, oh, you know, I just wanted a really steady job and I knew that medicine would give me a steady job. They're in a practical headspace now in a different time and place. They might say that thing about seeing their dad get sick. So it's not that there's only one answer to that question, but the answer we choose will be guided by what kind of mindset we're in. Now. Let me ask you, can I ask you a question? Is that okay?
- [21:05]
B
Of course, yeah.
- [21:06]
A
So when you're in clinical practice, how do you do this? Like, how do you determine? Because I imagine people come in and there's some people who are, are often emotional, but then there's probably some people who come in and they really are genuinely practical. Like, this isn't as much an emotional problem for them as it is a practical one. How do you determine what kind of mindset they're in and how to match them?
- [21:33]
B
Yeah, I mean, with clinical work, there's also this awareness of, so there's both sides, right. Trying to match somebody and figure out where they are. And go with them. Various similar. And also we listen with what we call a third ear to see the kind of underlying message there. And sometimes that we have to guide them too. Right. So if somebody is experiencing a lot of kind of top level, big symptoms, right. They're having constant panic attacks. I know that we need to start with very practical because they need to stop doing those things in order to get deeper. So there's a little bit of guidance there too. But what you did in terms of asking kind of consent to shift gears or ask me a question, I do a lot of that in therapy too. Of. Okay. Is it okay that we're still talking about this or we've kind of dove into this. But before we continue, was there something else that you wanted to bring up? Can we go back to that or are we okay here?
- [22:26]
A
And I think that's really powerful. I mean, I love that idea of the third ear because I think that really good communicators, and I should mention we are all super communicators at points in our lives, right? When, when you're talking to your best friend, you're a super communicator. They're super communicator. Back to you. I think that when we have those moments that we, that we really feel like we're hearing someone else, we're using that third ear, right? There's. There's sort of like, what are you saying? What are you telling me? And then what do I think is underneath that? Like, what's really driving this? And. And when somebody shows us that they can hear that, when they ask permission to change the topic or when they say, what I hear you saying is that you're scared of this thing, even though you haven't described it that way. We feel really seen and heard. Right. It feels enormously rewarding to have someone pay that much attention to us and help us see something about ourselves that we might not be able to see on our own.
- [23:25]
B
So do you find in your work, in your research that it's also okay if you're wrong when you take a guess about that?
- [23:31]
A
Yeah, it's totally okay. In fact, it's okay. Particularly if you ask someone, am I wrong? Right. Like so. So I think there's this. So. So you were asking about the skills. So the first skill is, is trying to determine what kind of conversation we're in by asking these deep questions. Which means we're usually not asking about the facts of someone's life. We're asking, asking how they feel about their life. Then when, when they say something, what. The next skill that's really important in communication is not only listening to them, but showing them that we are listening to them. You could be the best listener on earth. And if you don't show the person you're listening, then they're not going to believe, they're not going to trust you, they're not going to think you are listening. And there's a technique for this which is very similar to what we were just talking about, about asking, asking permission, and being wrong, which is to. It's called looping for understanding. They teach it like Harvard Law and Stanford and a bunch of places. And what it says is, when you're in a tough conversation, particularly a conflict conversation, when you disagree with someone, when you're talking about something that's a little touchy, what you should do is you should first of all ask a question, preferably a deep question. Then when the person replies to that question, you should repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. So you're basically proving to them that you are paying attention. And that's where we say, like, what I hear you saying is X and Y and Z. And it seems like there's actually like even something else in there that you didn't. You didn't fully vocalize. But I wonder if you're feeling also A, B and C. So those are the first two steps, and most of us do those almost intuitively. The third step is the one that I always forget, which is to say, here's what I heard you say. Did I get that right? Am I understanding you? Because what happens at that moment when we ask, did I get that right? Did I understand you? Is one of two things. Number one, they can very well say, no, I don't think you heard me completely. Which is good to know, right? And that's. If we are wrong, they'll tell us that we're wrong. And it actually will feel good to them because we've tried to listen. But they're going to help clarify for us and for themselves what's really going on. But much more commonly, what happens is someone says, yeah, I think you got that right. And what's happened in that moment is that by asking that question, asking, did I get it right, I am asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. And one of the things that we know about our neural circuitry, the way that our brains have evolved, is that when I acknowledge that you, you are listening to me, I become much, much more likely to listen to you. I start to Hear what you're saying more deeply. And so this looping for understanding, this act of asking, proving to someone that I heard what they said, asking them if I got it right, it's incredibly powerful, particularly in the most important conversations, because what it does is it not only helps us align, but it helps us both hear each other much more clearly. Right.
- [26:33]
B
And if that is your goal, then you want to think about that. Right?
- [26:36]
A
Absolutely.
- [26:37]
B
We've all had the experience of having a conversation where one or more people are waiting for their turn to talk because they want their point across, and they're actually not very interested in communication. They want to speak.
- [26:48]
A
They want a monologue. Yeah. And that's, you know, sometimes that when I tell my kids, like, I'd like to have a conversation about the state of your rooms, I don't actually want to have a conversation about the state of the rooms. I want the them to go clean up their rooms. And I'm trying to be polite in giving them a lecture, but most of the time we do actually want to have a conversation.
- [27:05]
B
And it's some questions for the room thing.
- [27:07]
A
Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm like, I'm not interested in your opinion of the room. I'm telling you that the clothes need to be picked up. So. But. But most of the time we do want to have real conversations, and it's important to have the skills in our back pocket to be able to do it.
- [27:23]
B
Yeah. Do you, as you've gone into this work, what are some mistakes or common things that you see that you think people could do better with communication just in everyday life?
- [27:34]
A
Yeah. I think one of them is not completely understanding what matching is, that oftentimes people hear matching and what they think is mimicry. Right.
- [27:46]
B
So.
- [27:46]
A
So, for instance, if. If, you know, I told you a story about going on a vacation to Bali that was really, you know, it was a really trying trip, and you respond with, oh, oh, you know, I've been to Tahiti, and here's what I did. That's not necessarily showing that you're listening. It's not necessarily having the same kind of conversation. The way that this comes up in the worst possible place is if someone says, you know, oh, my aunt passed away last week, and someone says, I know exactly what you feel like, I had a dog that died seven years ago, and I think about them all the time. That's. That's not the correct response. So oftentimes matching doesn't mean having the saying the exact same kind of thing. Sometimes it can be as simple as asking a question, like saying, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Tell me about what your aunt was like. That's matching. Because what we're really doing there is we're not mimicking. We're rather trying to. To show this person that we're listening to what they're saying, that we. We have some sense of what they're going through, but that we want to understand more about their experience. And in fact, I would say this actually gets to, you know, one of the top questions that I end up getting, which is, what do I say to someone when they've had a recent death in their family? What do I say to someone? And oftentimes what we do is we. We say, oh, I'm so sorry, my condolences. And then we just move on to something else because we don't know what to say. It's very awkward. But the. One of the best things you can do is if someone says, you know, I was at my father's funeral last month to say, like, I'm so sorry, what was your father like? Like, tell me a little bit about him. Because that's all this person has been thinking about. Right. Is their father and their relationship to them and what he was like. And there's sometimes this instinct to shy away from what feel like big conversations. But the truth of the matter is the people we love the most, the people we feel closest to, we feel closest to them because we've had big conversations with them. And inviting someone to have that big conversation, giving them the space to talk about what they're thinking about feeling, that feels like a gift to the recipient. And so. And so at the core of this, this matching is just trying to show the other person, I want to connect with you, rather than saying, like, oh, you had this experience. Here's another experience I had that was similar. That's mimicry and not matching.
- [30:19]
B
I can really relate to that.
- [30:21]
A
Right.
- [30:21]
B
Again, a lot of the stuff you're talking about is very similar, similar to helping skills that are used in therapy. So that's probably a good sign, right?
- [30:28]
A
Yeah.
- [30:29]
B
But as a therapist, you can't have had every experience in the world, yet you might work with any number of different experiences in the people that you're working with. So being able to empathize and match without saying, oh, I've also done this, or, oh, I know somebody who had that.
- [30:44]
A
Right.
- [30:45]
B
It's much better.
- [30:46]
A
And what do you do when someone comes to you with an experience that's so far outside of your. Your Set of experiences, your personal experiences. Right. Someone comes with, like, a fetish or. Or.
- [31:00]
B
Or sister mind. So what's that?
- [31:02]
A
Okay.
- [31:02]
B
That's pretty close to my experience, so.
- [31:04]
A
Okay.
- [31:04]
B
Okay.
- [31:05]
A
Or they. Or they. They've. They've accidentally murdered someone. Right. And. And hopefully that you don't fall in that same comments. What do you.
- [31:13]
B
Yeah, I hear what you're saying.
- [31:14]
A
How do you connect with them? How do you show them? Is it a lack of judgment? Is it a. Is it something generative? Like, how do you. What happens there?
- [31:26]
B
I will be honest, for one. So there is a temptation to do that mimicking that you were talking about. Right. To. To norm. To feel like you need to normalize something by saying you can relate to it. So I try to be honest. If that's not the. The case, like, this is really outside the realm of what I personally experience. I do want to understand more about it, though, that I appreciate you telling me. I might ask what. What's important for me to understand about that? Why did you tell me things of that sort? To get to the bottom of what do they want me to know about that thing, or is there something else related to that that they want help with?
- [32:01]
A
Yeah.
- [32:01]
B
And in some cases, I mean, if things are so far outside of the realm of what I deal with that, like, let's say somebody. I'm not transgender, but say somebody comes in that I'm working with that is transgender, and it's really important for them to have somebody who truly gets it in their core, then that's totally okay. So we'll talk about that. If that is important for them, you know, to get the kind of help that you need and work through this, is it important that we find somebody for you that, like, really, really gets it? I'm open to either.
- [32:31]
A
That's really. And what I love about what you just said is one of the questions is, why is that important to you? Like, tell me about why this. And that's actually at the core of every deep question. Right. Is that we're asking. You know, you brought up this thing. Not. And I'm not. You don't have to tell me about the specifics of it or the practice, the facts of it, but tell me why this is important to you. Like what? In fact, in the book, we have this one story about A guy named Dr. Dr. Adai Bafar Adai, who's a prostate surgeon, and patients would come to him who had just gotten prostate cancer, a tumor on their prostate, and he would say to them, look, I don't think you should have surgery, because surgery is the most certain way to remove the tumor. But prostate tumors are very, very slow growing, and you can live with this for decades. And. And the surgery, the prostate is located very close to the nerves that control urination and sexual function. So there's some side effects even if the surgery is successful for some men. So just don't do nothing. Pretend you don't even have cancer. And they do these things where they do tests every six months and then take a biopsy every two years and an MRI if they need to. So it's not like they're not paying attention to cancer, but just live your life as if you don't have cancer. And he would say this to patients who came in, and they would kind of agree with him in the exam room and then go home and talk it over with their spouse or think about a little bit more. And they would usually come in a couple days later and say, like, actually, what I'd like to do is I'd like you to cut me open as soon as humanly possible. Like, I want you to cut the tumor out. And doctor. Dr. Badai, he was completely confused by this because they had come to him for advice, and they weren't hearing the advice he was giving them. And so he went to some researchers, actually, at Harvard Business School to help him figure out why this was happening. And they said, you need to ask a deep question. And so what he did is he changed his. The way he dealt with patients in just this one small way. When a patient came in, the first thing that Dr. Adai would say to them is, tell me why. Tell me, like, why this cancer diagnosis is important to you. Like, what did you think about when you. When you heard you had cancer? And what he found was that most of the people would say things like, oh, I thought about my dad who died when I was 17 years old, and I. I wouldn't want to put my wife or my kids through it. Or. Or I thought about, like, you know, I'm the old. Like, I'm older than most people at work, but they don't see me as the old guy. But if they know I have cancer, they're going to see me as the old guy, and it's going to screw everything up. They would start talking about these things that had nothing to do with cancer, right? That had no. They never asked about mortality or pain or treatments. They were in a headspace where the cancer had triggered a whole other set of thoughts in their head. And all Dr. Adai needed to do in order to get at that was ask, tell me why this matters to you. What do you make of this diagnosis? And then he could match them and he could say, you know, actually, I totally understand. Like, it's, it's really hard to contemplate, you know, abandoning your wife and children because of, because of death. And in fact, my, my father got sick seven years ago and, and he had the same, the same concerns, but. But he also found that he had these conversations that he had never had before that were really meaningful. And, and he'll sort of match them for a little while in an emotional conversation or social conversation or practical conversation. And then he would say something like, you know, do you mind if I tell you about some treatment options? Basically, do you mind if we move from an emotional conversation to a practical conversation? And the patients would say, yeah, that sounds great. And Dr. Adai would tell them all about, you know, what's known as active surveillance, the biopsies and the blood tests, but besides that, do nothing. And he found that 70% of patients started taking his advice once he, once he just started the conversation by asking this deep question, which is what you just said, right? Tell me why this is important to you. Tell me what this means to you.
- [36:45]
B
I bet his reviews went up.
- [36:46]
A
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. No, absolutely.
- [36:49]
B
People, People have the, unfortunately, very common experience just being told. Told what to do by a doctor just being prescribed things or told this and that and it being. Being bang, boom, very practical, and then feeling like the standard of care isn't as high, even if clinically it's still rigorous.
- [37:09]
A
Yes, that's exactly right. And it's interesting. I asked him, like, did this take a lot more time? Like, did you have to make your sessions longer? And he was like. And he said, no, actually, they ended up being shorter. Because if I spent the first five or six minutes matching the person in the kind of conversation they want to have, when we finally got to the practical stuff, they were so much less skeptical. They asked so many fewer questions. So he actually was able to get time back by using this approach. And I think for exactly the reason you just mentioned, which is when we feel like someone is actually listening to us, we become more likely to listen to them. And so you, you have to spend, you don't have to spend as much time trying to persuade them.
- [37:52]
B
Yeah, do me a favor.
- [37:54]
A
Train.
- [37:55]
B
Train more doctors on that.
- [37:58]
A
Train more doctors on that.
- [38:01]
B
Yeah, I think that's, that's completely right. I, I want to, you know, before we run out of time, make sure that I address a subset of my population that that's listening. I know there are a lot of people that listen to this that struggle with socializing for a variety of reasons. It could be just introversion. For a lot of people, it's social anxiety. What sort of tips or information would you like to give to people who struggle with that idea of just going somewhere and interacting with other people?
- [38:31]
A
Yeah, there's been a lot of experiments that have been done about this. And it's interesting. There's a guy named Nick Epley who's a professor at the University of Chicago who's done a lot of work on deep questions. And he has a slightly different take on introversion and extroversion. That rather than sort of a default state that we cultivate, that it's actually a habit we fall into. And as a result, that habit can be changed. But so what do we know if you have social anxiety, if you feel like you are an introvert, if you just dread going to the company party? Well, there's a couple of things that will really help. The first is there was this experiment done again at HBS Harvard Business School, where they took a bunch of students and this is like in the first week of school and they told them, okay, in about 10 minutes, you actually, in like five minutes you're going to have a conversation with a stranger. And this is one of the most anxiety producing things that you can ask someone to do is to have a conversation with a stranger. And they said, okay. Before you have the conversation though, we want you to take two minutes or even just 30 seconds. And we want you to write down on a note card three things you might talk about, like anything, like a question you might ask, anything you might like. You know, what did you do last night? Are you going to the party this weekend? Just anything. And so the people did this. They scribbled it down and then they told them, okay, put the card in your pocket and now go have the conversation with a stranger. And afterwards they asked them, how did that go? You know, did you, did you did the questions or the topics you wrote down, did they come up? And about 80% of people said no, they never ever came up. But I felt so much more relaxed and comfortable in that conversation than I thought I was going to like. It went so much better than I anticipated. And the reason why is because oftentimes when we say social anxiety, it's the anxiety part that is crippling, right? It's the anticipatory discomfort, not knowing you Know if there's a silence in the conversation, what am I gonna say? But when you just jot down a couple of things you might talk about, suddenly that anxiety has essentially been, been disappeared. And as a result you can be much more in the moment. You can, you. And, and honestly the things that you write down, probably not going to come up. But it's the, it's the treating the anxiety that makes the social part so much easier. Now there are other things that people sometimes say about those kinds of conversations, right? One thing, and Dan Gilbert has the psychologist who wrote Stumbling into Happiness, he just didn't experiment about this. Sometimes people will say, I don't know how to end a conversation. So like I can start it and I can be in it, but then it's really uncomfortable and awkward because I don't know how to end it. And so I will tell you the easiest way to end it, which is you say to someone, oh, you know, it's been so interesting talking to you. I, I don't want to keep you the, like, keep you the whole night because I know there's other people you want to talk to or, or I need to go get a fresh drink. But before I go, let me ask you one more question. And then you ask them some, whatever question you want. Some dumb question like, you know, what are you doing this weekend? Or do you like working here? And they will answer that question in about 20 seconds because they know exactly what you're doing. You are providing a way to gracefully end a conversation without saying I'm bored talking to you. I know we have to end this conversation, but you're so interesting. I have to ask you one more thing that makes it so easy to end a conversation. It's, it's, it's just very, very simple to do so. And there's a lot of stuff like that. The, the other thing that sometimes I hear from folks who, who get social anxiety or just like don't like small talk is they say I got into a conversation and I, I asked the other person a ton of questions and they never asked me any questions, right. And it felt very one sided and, and like not that much fun. What should I do? And what we know, again, this is what been studied, is that in those situations it's not that the other person isn't curious about you, is that the other person doesn't know how to ask questions. Right? Asking a question is kind of a learned skill and they might be a little socially uncomfortable or not have a lot of contact. And so what you can do in those situations is you can say, you know, after you've asked a couple questions, say, you know, I've been asking questions all night. I'm sure that you have some. Some questions to ask me. So I don't want to hog the conversation, let you know, what do you want to ask me? And then they'll come up with a question right away because they are actually curious about you, but they need to be invited. So oftentimes in conversations, we can shape the conversation for ourselves and the other person in a way that feels very restorative and feels very unawkward. And when we step into our role and say, like, like, I'm not just a participant in this conversation, I'm one of the directors of this conversation. Oftentimes a lot of that social anxiety, a lot of that awkwardness, it fades away because. Because we're making choices instead of just reacting.
- [43:38]
B
Yeah. Being in control a little bit more. You. A lot of this sounds very obviously question focused. Right. And I think that's really interesting because a lot of people that I do know with social anxiety, fear. Well, I don't know what to say. Like, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say to people. And asking questions, it's a different flavor from just knowing the right thing to say.
- [44:01]
A
That's exactly right. Asking questions is the most powerful thing you can do. And it's interesting. So this guy, Nick Epley I mentioned, he does this experiment where he has strangers sitting next to each other ask and answer one question, which is, when is the last time you cried in front of another person? And this comes from the Fast Friends procedure. Right. The work that was done by Arthur and Elaine Aaron about how you can make strangers into friends. And they have a list of 36 questions to ask and answer each other. Most people, if you ask them, would you be willing to ask someone how you. The last time you cried in front of another person? They would say, no, the other person is going to be so freaked out by that question. And it turns out nobody is freaked out by the question. Right. You can't spring it on someone. That's your first question. You need to ask a couple of questions to kind of build up a pretender.
- [44:55]
B
You're like, hey, when's the last time you cried in front of me?
- [44:56]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, you know, you should use a couple things to kind of. But the point there is there is no question that the other person doesn't enjoy being asked. Even asking someone, like, we would never do this. Right. But how much money do you make? People don't mind talking about how much money they made because they either have something that they like, like to brag about, like, I make a lot of money, or they like to say, like, oh, money's not that important to me. What I really care about is my art. Right. So I wouldn't recommend asking that question. But the point being that people love being asked questions. And. And no matter how, you know, weird or awkward you think the question is, the way that they'll hear that question is, this person's interested in me. They want to know something that I. That, like, is actually kind of meaningful to share. And so asking questions is incredibly powerful. And one of the things that we know about super communicators, consistent super communicators, because, again, we're all super communicators at various points in our week. But people who are super communicators again and again and again throughout their days is that they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person.
- [46:07]
B
Really?
- [46:08]
A
Yeah. And some of those questions are like. We don't even register them as questions. They say things like, you know, oh, what'd you think about that? Or, what'd you say next? They're questions to invite us into the conversation. But some of them are questions like, you know, I'm just wondering, like, when's the last time? That sounds like a really hard situation. Like, you know, is that the last time you cried in front of another person? And. And those are the questions that we notice as questions. But the questions are powerful. They signal I want to connect with you, I want to hear you. And that makes you more curious about me in turn.
- [46:47]
B
Tell me about the book itself. So, super communicators, a lot of the stuff here is obviously pulling from that, but what's the book structured? Like, what can people expect from it?
- [46:57]
A
Yeah, so. So it's a series of stories, a series of anecdotes explaining the. The ideas that we've been talking about and sort of showing how they get implemented in the real world. And it's built around these three kinds of conversations. Right. So the practical conversation, the emotional conversation, and the social conversation, they each have slightly different rules, and we haven't really gotten a chance to get into those. And. And it's okay because they. That's kind of the, like, the. The deep tracks on it.
- [47:24]
B
But the book's for.
- [47:25]
A
Right? Exactly. That's what the book's for. But, like. But when you're having an emotional conversation, when you're having a practical conversation, what people are really seeking is they're oftentimes seeking resolution. When people are having an emotional conversation, they're not seeking resolution. They're seeking empathy and understanding. And when we're having a social conversation, what people are seeking oftentimes is acceptable acknowledgement like, I don't. I don't need to resolve this issue. I don't even need you to empathize with something that's happened to me and an identity that's important to me. But I need you to acknowledge that as a black man, I've had a different set of experiences than you as a white man. And so the. The goal of the book is to say, okay, here's how you recognize what kind of conversation you're in. And when you're in that conversation, here's the slightly different rules that will help that conversation go better. And some of it is just conversations that we have on a regular basis. But there's a chapter, for instance, in the social conversation section about Netflix where at Netflix, there was this senior executive who used a racial slur during a meeting. And he wasn't using it in a way that was intended to be negative. He was actually describing something that happened in. In one of the. One of the films that they had made. But there were people in the audience in his. On his team who were deeply offended by that. And. And it set off this internal controversy at Netflix because there were some people who said, oh, he said that thing, but it's not a big deal. And there were other people who said, this is a really big deal. Like, it's very hard for me to work at a company where a senior executive can say something like that, that. And not get punished for it. He. He ends up getting fired. It just becomes such a huge controversy that they have to let him go. But that doesn't actually quell the dispute because it starts raising all these other issues about racial inequity at Netflix and how people treat each other. And the way that they solve the problem is they basically have a series of conversations where they use these same principles, right? They. And we describe the exact principles in the book. One of them is in this conversation, we are not going to blame shame or play any games with anyone, right? I can say how I'm feeling, but I shouldn't say it in a way that attacks you. The other thing that's really important, and this is true of social conversations, is that oftentimes it's really, really useful to start a social conversation by acknowledging that it could be awkward to say, like, look, I want to bring up something that, like, you know, I want to talk about race with you, or I want to talk about the fact that we belong to different religions or we voted for different people. And my goal is to understand, is to understand you. I want to understand you better. But let's just acknowledge it's. It might be very awkward. And in fact, I might say the wrong thing. I might say something that offends you because, like, the gap between my brain and my lips is sometimes a little bit big. And I hope you'll forgive me because that's not my intent. And by the way, if you say something that offends me, I promise you I will try not to take offense. I'll try and assume that you're not doing that on purpose. When we do that, oftentimes it changes the tenor of the entire conversation because instead of shying away from the potentially awkward parts, we're able to talk about the potentially awkward parts. So that's how the book is structured, is around these three kinds of conversations and the slight different rules that each conversation has. And then in between each of the sections, there's actually we call it a guide to using these ideas. Right. That sort of summarizes what you just learned and more importantly gives you very, very specific tactics. When you are in this situation, you should do X. Here's a question you can ask to help someone open up. You know, when you're having an online conversation, there's another chapter about this really interesting experiment where they brought together gun rights advocates and gun control activists to have a conversation. And they taught them these methods, particularly looping for understanding. The conversations went really, really well. They go home and they set up a Facebook private group for them to continue the discussion. And within like 45 minutes, people are calling each other jackbooted Nazis. Right? Like, it just falls apart immediately. And so one of the things that we, that we talk about in the book and in this guide is what are the different rules for online conversations? And there are things like if you over emphasize politeness, it has a disproportionate effect. If you, if you, if you try and repeat what someone else said to show them that you're listening, it can bring down the temperature significantly. There's, there's about seven or eight of these. About, oh, sarcasm just never works online. Like, like don't use it so you.
- [52:19]
B
Don'T have expression online.
- [52:20]
A
Exactly, exactly. We try and get very, very tactical in saying, here's the different rules for different kinds of conversations in different settings, and here's how you can remember them and make them easy to use.
- [52:33]
B
Awesome. It sounds like a really practical book. I definitely need to pick it up. I think that a lot of people listening to this would also really benefit from it. In the interest of starting to wrap up here, can you leave us with the listeners, maybe a challenge or a thought or something from the book that's practical that they can start right now?
- [52:55]
A
Absolutely. So. So there's this thing called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, right? It used to be called the Grant Study, and people have probably heard of this that for over 80 years now. Researchers have been following around thousands of people throughout their lives and giving them surveys, like, every two years. And what they tried to determine. Originally, the original goal of the project was to determine what makes people live long and makes them more successful. And they had all these crazy hypotheses at first because it was being run out of Harvard. They thought like, oh, if you go to Harvard, you're going to be really successful and live longer. And it turns out that's not true at all. Or if you come from a good family or if you get married and stay married, all of those were basically had no impact. The only thing they could find that really mattered is that you will be happier and healthier and more successful. However you define Success at age 65, if you have at least a handful of close relationships at age 45, because that means you don't have those relationships just when you're 45, right? These are people that you've known for usually like 10 years, and you're going to know them for the next 20 years. Right? And so what is the. So basically, having these relationships is critical to our health and our happiness and. And how successful we become. And so the question is, what does that mean to have close relationships? It does not mean that you are talking to that person every day or every week. Oftentimes people have some of their closest relationships with people they talk to once or twice a year. But when they talk to them, they set Aside, you know, 45 minutes in their schedule to, like, call up this person. And they know it's going to be awkward for the first couple minutes because it's like, what's your kid's name again? What's going on with you? But the act of making that connection brings you closer together. You know, this person cares about you, you care. You've shown them that you care about them. This is the thing that is like the magic elixir for Human life. And so the. The challenge I would offer to anyone listening is there is someone who you really like and who you feel very close to that you have not spoken to in a while. Maybe you haven't spoken to them in three months. Maybe you haven't spoken to them in a year. Maybe you haven't spoken to them in five years. Sometime this week, just pick up the phone and call them. And. And you don't have to talk for 45 minutes. You can talk for 15 minutes. But make that connection again, because not only will it make them feel wonderful, it will make you. You feel wonderful. You will feel better about yourself in the world simply by renewing this connection for someone who. Who is or was important to you. And so that's my challenge, is make the time to do that. You'll be investing in your own health, your own happiness, and your own success.
- [55:53]
B
And this is somebody that you do like, not somebody you're estranged from or something like that. Somebody that you have a connection with. With you haven't talked to and.
- [56:01]
A
Exactly. There's this guy I like from college, and I haven't talked to him in. In, you know, three years. And. And it. And. And like, a call out of the blue for most people is like, I don't want to do that. That seems really weird. But the call out of the blue, people love it. Like, they just feel like it's so. It's. They are feeling the same way that they. They really like you. And. And. And they. They're kind of disappointed that you guys aren't connected anymore. And it doesn't take much to reinvigorate that connection.
- [56:30]
B
What's the first line of that conversation? Hey, it's so and so.
- [56:35]
A
I. I think, hey, it's so and so. I was thinking of you the other day. I'm just wondering, like, how you're doing. Tell me what's new with you. Right. It can be simple. Like, it can be the easiest. Or you could. Before the conversation, you could write down, jot down three questions you want to ask them so you have something to fall back on. But it's. It's. It's a lot easier than people think it is. Right? And we all know that because we have those conversations, and beforehand we're kind of like, oh, this is gonna be awkward and weird. And then afterwards we're like, oh, that's great. That was really nice to talk to that person. It is less awkward and weird than we think it's gonna be. And it's often much, much more rewarding awesome.
- [57:12]
B
Well, thank you for the challenge. Charles. Where would you prefer people to pick up Super Communicators? What's the best place for people to get it, really?
- [57:20]
A
Wherever they want. It's available on Amazon, as is the Power of Habit or Barnes and Nobles or any website that you go to. Also in your local bookstore. Independent bookstores are the lifeblood of America, and so it's well worth visiting your local bookstore. There's an audio book on audible.com you can buy it for your Kindle, an electronic version.
- [57:44]
B
Do you really record the audiobook?
- [57:46]
A
I did. I recorded the audiobook. Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was. It was fun. It's the first time I had done that, and it was really. It was really not neat, like, to do it. But, yeah, anywhere that people. And if they want to find me, you know, I'm on. If they just Google Charles Duhigg or the Power of Habit or Super Communicators, they'll find my website and. And all of my social links and. And as well as my address, my email address, actually. If anyone wants to write to me, I'd love to hear from. From you.
- [58:14]
B
Cool. I'll make sure all that's in the show. Notes and stuff. I could talk to you for another hour and a half probably, but I know you got other appointments and stuff, so thank you very, very much for your time.
- [58:23]
A
Thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun.