April 11, 2024 • 43 mins
This week Scott is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and best selling author, Charles Duhigg. Scott and Charles discuss why some conversations succeed while others fail, the 3 main types of conversations, and how to be a supercommunicator.
Timestamps
2:15- How’d Charles Think of The Cover of his book?
3:33- Are there super communicator prodigies
6:40- When did Charles get interested in this topic?
8:29- What are the three types of conversations?
10:50- How can we apply super communication to politics?
18:23- People who disagree historically come together
20:36- Common mistakes people make when talking with each other
23:12- Are great therapists great super communicators?
25:01- What’s going on in “The Big Bang Theory” writer’s room?
33:51- How can you improve connection if you’re shy?
37:25- How can people who have trouble with social cues improve connection?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The goal of a conversation is to understand what the
other person is trying to tell you, and to speak
in such a way that they can understand you. Then,
by virtue of that, I'm gonna adopt some of your lens,
I'm gonna at least see the world for your lens.
That doesn't mean that I agree with your lens, and
it doesn't mean that I'm gonna walk away and we're
gonna have found common ground. But as long as I
understand how you see the world, and I get you
(00:27):
to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
is a success.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I talk with
Poultzer Prize winning reporter and best selling author Charles Duhig.
The topic of this conversation is super communicators. Super Communicators
are exactly what it sounds like, super communicators. Charles breaks
down the characteristics of super communicators and teaches us how
we can all become a better super communicator. We also
(00:58):
discuss why some conversations succeed and some fail, and the
three main types of conversations. I also enjoyed chatting about
how we can connect with others who we disagree with,
a topic I think is really important in this day
and age. I really enjoyed this chat and learned a
lot that I can apply in my life right away.
So without further ado, I'll bring you Charles Douhig. Hey, Charles, Wow,
(01:21):
welcome back to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thanks, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I was checking the last time you were on was
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so it's been a little while.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Time flies.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Imagine we both look different, at least a little bit,
a little like mildly. I don't think you had that
beard last time. Oh yeah, yeah, it's you know, the pandemic.
It took a lot out of all of.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Us, so so sure, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I could be wrong. Don'tquote me in that you may
have had a beard. It was a long time ago.
But I am so proud of you and happy for
you for this new book I think for communicators. Can
you hold it up and show everyone, because I see
it right behind you.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Oh sure, this is actually that's actually.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Okay, Sorry, I thought that was the book.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
No no, no, no no, it's like a blow up of
the cover. But actually I have one to hear it too.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Move it a little to that this way, yeah, great, excellent. Okay,
so those in the YouTube you can see that. So
let's just discuss the cover for a second. What was
the logic behind behind uh that? And how does that
tie to the topic of the book.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Well, you know, we spend a lot of time, as
you know, it takes a lot of time to figure
out what the right cover is for a book. And yeah,
I think that one of the things that happens with
what we've learned about the science of communication is that
these are skills that tend to build on each other. Right,
that our brains are basically have evolved to be excellent
communication because communication is Homo sapien superpower. It's the thing
(02:49):
that has allowed our species to succeed so well. And
so when with the cover, we thought it would be
kind of fun to to signal this like building that
the fact that that you know, we sort of we
learned to communicate as children and as we get older,
anyone can become a super communicator. It's just a set
of skills that you just need to learn and allow
(03:10):
to become habits, and once you do that, you you
can connect with anyone.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, I love that, And it's just something that any
of us can cultivate and the set of skills. But
there are super communicators out there that maybe there's there.
It's a talent for you know, because you can both
can be doing at the same time. Something can be
a source of variation. That's talent. And also we can
all to some extent learn skills. These are their prodigies
(03:36):
of supercommunicators. Maybe that's what I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
No, not really, And you're right. There are some people
who are consistent who are communicators. So we're all super
communicators at one time or another. In fact, if I
was to ask you, for instance, if you were having
a bad day and you wanted to call someone who
you know would make you feel better, the person who
had called you, they pop into your head. Who is immediately.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Jordan Feinegeld and Michael author from my prior book Choo
His Growth. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, so so Jordan, for you is a super communicator,
and you're probably a super communicator right back to him.
You know exactly what questions to ask, you know, you
know her, Sorry, my apologies, you're a super communicator. Back
to her, and you know what questions to ask and
what you can hear the emotions underneath some of the
things that she says that might not seem emotional on
(04:20):
the surface. Yeah, and there's other times that you're super
communicator when you walk into a meeting and you know
exactly what to say to win the room over, or
you you a friend calls and you know exactly what
to ask them. But there are some people who can
do this more consistently. People who can essentially be consistent
super communicator can connect with anyone. And you're when I
first started doing the reporting for supercommunicators, I assumed, kind
(04:43):
of what you just said, that maybe these people were
born with it, or maybe they're particularly charming or you know, extroverts.
But it turns out that's not right at all. In fact,
what the research tells us is that anyone can become
a super communicator, and it's essentially a random, you know,
a normal distribution through society. There's some super communicators, consistent
supercommunicators or extroverts, and some who are introverts. There's some
(05:05):
who are charming and some who are curmudgeonly. It's not
about an innate capacity you have. Rather, it's about a
set of skills that you can learn. And if you
talk to those people who are consistent super communicators. One
of the things they often say is there was a
time in their life when they were bad at communication,
when you know, they had trouble making friends in high school,
(05:26):
or their parents got divorced and they had to play
the peace maker between them. And it's thinking about communication
just even half an inch deeper than everyone else than
the average person that makes us into supercommunicators, because the
more we pay attention to how conversation works, the better
we are at it.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, paying attention seems to be such an art. Carl Rogers,
one of my heroes, wrote this wonderful book called Active Listening.
I imagine that his technique to active listening would be
quite relevant to being I bet he was a super communicator,
is what.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
No, I think he probably was.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And I think a lot of what what he wrote
about in active listening and what others have expounded upon
are at the core of these skills. And in many ways,
what the skills are designed to do is to show
the other person that you want to connect with them,
because oftentimes showing someone we want to connect by listening,
by asking follow up questions, by asking the right kinds
(06:24):
of questions, by sharing things about ourselves and engaging in
reciprocal authenticity and reciprocal vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Those are the things that show.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The other person we want to connect with them, and
that that demonstration is often the first and most important
step to actually making a connection.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, let's step back before we even get deeper in
the weeds a second, and let's not in the weeds,
but deeper into the topic. Let's step back a moment.
Why you personally you know, because you're you're a Pulzer
Prize winner, right first of all?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Amazing, and you've covered various topics across your life. When
did you start to get inter this top in particular?
How do they get on your radar? And while you
personally interested in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I think there was two things that happened. The first
is I was working I work at the New Yorker
magazine now, but I was working at the New York
Times and they made me a manager. And I was
pretty good at like the logistics part and the strategy
part of managing. And I figured I'd be a great
manager because I've had lots of managers. I got an
MBA from Harvard Business School, Like, I figured this is
something that I'd be good at and I was just
(07:25):
terrible at it. I was terrible at the communication part
of it. You know that people would come to me
and they would, you know, sort of bring me emotional problems,
and I'd try and solve their problems right away by
giving them practical solutions. I didn't hear what they were
really saying to me, and so that was kind of
bewildering to me to try and figure out why I
was so bad at this, particularly because I'm a professional communicator,
(07:46):
I'm a journalist. And then I also fell into this
bad pattern with my wife at home, which is that
I would come home from work after a long day
and I would start complaining about my day, and you know,
my boss is a jerk, he doesn't understand me. And Liz,
my wife, very reasonable, would offer a practical suggestion like
why don't you take them out to lunch and you
guys can get to know each other a little bit better,
(08:06):
and instead of being able to hear what she was saying,
I would get even more upset, and I would say, like,
why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged
on my behalf, and she would get upset because I
was attacking her for giving me good advice, and so
I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't understand why
I was having these moments whereas bad at communication, And
so I reached out to experts to ask them.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And that was really the start of the book.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I love that. Well, you write about three types of conversations,
and yeah, what are they and why the distinction between
them so important?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Well, this is what the researchers told me when I
called them. They said two things.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I said.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
First of all, we're really glad you called because we're
living through this golden age of understanding communication for really
the first time.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Because of advances.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
In neural imaging and in data collection, we can really
study conversation like never before. And they said, and the
big insight that we've had, or one of them, is
we tend to think of a discussion as being about
one thing. Right, We're talking about my day, or we're
talking about grades or a new book that I had
that just came out. But they said, actually, now every
(09:13):
conversation is made up of different kinds of conversations, and
in general, they tend to fall into one of three
big buckets. There's these practical discussions we have where we
talk about plans or you know, solve problems together. Then
there's emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling,
and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I
(09:33):
want you to empathize. And then finally there's social conversations,
which is about how we relate to each other in
society and the social identities that are important to us.
And what they said is, look, if you're not having
the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it's
very hard to hear each other, it's very hard to connect.
And so this has become known as the matching principle,
(09:53):
that communication relies on having the same kind of conversation
at the same moment. And and I thought that was
really interesting because as soon as they told me this,
it made clear what was happening with my wife, for instance,
like I was coming home and I was having an
emotional conversation and she was responding with a practical conversation,
and those are both legitimate forms of conversation communication, but
(10:14):
because we weren't having the same kind of conversation at
the same moment, it was really hard for us to
hear each other, whereas if we had been aligned, if
we were having the same kind of conversation, then we
could move from emotional to practical to social back to
emotional together.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah. I can clearly see how this is so important
for relationships. Yeah, partnerships as zero describing, but any kind
of relationship.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
At work, you know, with the kids, even you know
the barista you see every day, there's there's some element
of why we connect or why we failed to connect
the draws on.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
This, Yeah, I mean the implications for this book are
so wide ranging and relevant to the world today. I
might mind. When I was reading your book, my mind
kept going back towards how can we use this in
politics for politicians to be better super communicators as opposed
(11:10):
to dividers. I don't know what another word for it
could be, but I just see so many divisions right now,
and so many instances of people approaching conversations or relationships
with their own frame of mind, with their own worldview lens.
So do you think being part of a super communicator
is being able suspend maybe your your narrow lens for
(11:34):
a moment, to be able to kind of incorporate and
allow for an openness of a different perspective.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, the way I.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Think about it is this that I think super communicators
understand the goal of a conversation. And the goal of
a conversation is not necessarily to like convince you that
you're wrong and I'm right, or to get you to
agree with me, or even to convince you that I'm
smarter you should like me. The goal all of a
conversation is to understand what the other person is trying
(12:03):
to tell you and to speak in such a way
that they can understand you. And and once we establish
that as our goal, it changes a lot of those
things you were just talking about, right, Because I don't
know if you need to be more open minded or
if you need to. But but if I come and
I say, like, look, my my goal in this conversation,
the way I'm going to evaluate if this is a
(12:24):
success or not is to understand what you're trying to
tell me. Then by virtue of that, I'm gonna I'm
gonna adopt some of your lens. I'm gonna at least
see the world through your lens. That doesn't mean that
I agree with your lens, and it doesn't mean that
I'm going to walk away and we're gonna we're gonna
found common ground. But as long as I understand what
you're how you see the world, and I get you
(12:45):
to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
is a success.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
And I think there is.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
A kind of open mindedness that has to accompany that
because because it means that when I come into the
conversation and you're saying things I disagree with, I'm not
I'm not coming up the rebuttals in my head. That's
not really listening. Rather, I'm coming up with questions. I'm
coming up with with trying to understand what you're saying,
rather than tell you how wrong you are. And we
(13:12):
know that actually people people agree with each other more
when they adopt this approach.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, but it also doesn't mean that you there's gonna
be a lot of double negatives in this. But it
also doesn't mean that there's not that you can't disagree.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Oh, absolutely absolutely, That's part of helping you understand how
I see the world to say, like, Okay, what I
hear you saying is you think that your candidate is
the best for security and I and I hear am
I getting that right? And I'm hearing that. From my perspective,
what's more important than security is justice. And so I'm
choosing a candidate who I think, who I think brings more.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Justice to the world.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
But these are both legitimate ways of looking at the world.
And let me ask you some questions about how you
think about security and justice.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Now, that is very idealistic. I love I love that
what you said. But with emotionally charged issues, I mean,
I don't think people really think the other view is legitimate,
you know, like, you know, if there's a conversation about
reproductive rights, I couldn't imagine a conversation with something like, well,
your view is, you know, legitimate. But I just can't
(14:21):
see that. I wish, I wish people could have more
of a level headed conversation. But the second you bring
in emotions. But we do this all the time, right,
I mean I imagine that there are probably some things that
you you right, no, no, I mean humans disagreement. Are
you married?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, okay, okay, but are do you have a partner
or are you in like any relationship, Like do you
have close friends anyone that you like talk to on
aga basis?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You're like, what can I ask that would be not
too personal. Yes, okay, okay? And so do you agree
one hundred percent with your friends on everything? No? No, no,
of course not.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And yet and yet you manage to be friends, You
managed to navigate, and and if one of your friends says,
look like, I think that Star Wars is much better
than Star Trek and you disagree, that doesn't mean that
doesn't mean you can't hear his reasons or her reasons
for arguing that. And the same is true with reproductive rights. Oftentimes,
(15:21):
when we're having a conversation about something where we do
feel very passionate about it, the fact that we feel
passionate about it does not mean that we can't hear
what the other person is saying. We can't try and
hear what the other person is saying. Now, it does
mean that sometimes we have to quiet that voice within
our head and say, my goal here is to listen
and understand. It's not to come up with counter arguments
and like you know, browbeat or bully this person into
(15:44):
agreeing with me. But if you want to have a conversation,
then you can absolutely have that conversation, even on things
that you disagree with about that you feel very passionate
about because the goal again is if you go in
and you decide like I'm just going to like bowl
this person over with my arguments, we know that's not
going to work. You're you're kind of just wasting your time,
(16:04):
but understanding what they're saying and helping them understand what
you're saying. That's actually a conversation, that's a communication.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, I'm all for this kind of very productive way forward,
but it does take I'm going to just say some
trite things. It takes two to tango and good and
it takes I feel like there's a requirement here with
two good faith actors, and I feel like that's just
like a requirement for this to work. Like if I'm
having a conversation with a neo Nazi who's not good faith,
(16:41):
I mean, I don't know if it's going to work.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
To be honest, I don't know that you're having a
conversation in that case, to be totally honest, right, I mean,
if you go into that conversation you say I want
to have a conversation with the neo Nazi, you can
probably do it, but I think what you're actually saying,
and tell me if you think I'm getting this wrong
is when I talk to a neo Nazi, I don't
want to have a conversation. I want to tell them
how wrong they are. And that's totally fine. You don't
have to have a conversation. Like you know, there are
(17:05):
many times that I tell say to my kids, I
want to have a conversation about your room, and I
don't actually want to have a conversation about their room.
I want them to go clean up their room. So
it's fine not to have a conversation. But if you
actually want to have a conversation with a neo Nazi,
if you want, if you're going into this and you're saying,
I'd like to understand how they see the world, because
understanding how they see the world might help me figure
(17:27):
out how to make my arguments more compelling to them,
or it just might be might give me some insights
on what's going on within the nation. You can do that, right,
You have that capacity, even if even if they don't
necessarily want to listen to you, you have the capacity
to listen to them. And here's the thing is that
we know this from studies. If you prove that you're listening,
(17:49):
if you demonstrate that you are listening in good faith,
they become much more likely to listen to you. In fact,
we know that this like reciprocity of listening is such
a strong soul norm that people almost can't avoid it.
So if you engage in this thing looping for understanding,
where you ask a question, you repeat back what the
person told you in your own words to show that
you're really paying attention, you're processing it. You ask them
(18:12):
if you got it right, which is them giving you
permission to acknowledge that you've listened to them. The odds
of them listening back to you go up astronomically.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I wasn't even thinking in this scenario that I
wasn't the one open to the conversation. I was thinking
they would be the one not open to the conversation,
whereas your default was the think that I wasn't the
one anyway. So it's interesting. I think that what you're
saying is true to an extent. If someone isn't you know,
(18:44):
you can you can really try, or you can be
the best super communicator in the world, and there's still
going to be people who are not open to having
a conversation. And that's just that's just the way the world.
That's just what it is. You can't connect with everyone, Yeah,
you can't.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Can to someone who doesn't want to connect with you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
But I'm just going to point out that if we
look at history, or if we look at social sciences,
what we see is overwhelming evidence of the alternative of
people who disagree about things coming together and figuring out
how to live with each other peacefully and how to
have conversations. I mean, think about the founding of America.
(19:22):
The Constitutional Convention was essentially a group of people who
hated each other coming together and disagreeing and figuring out
how to have conversations so that they can write a constitution.
I mean, the history of this nation is, and the
history of the world in large part, at least the
parts of the history of the world that we feel
good about are about how we can come together despite
(19:45):
our differences and we can have conversations. So you're right,
there are some people out there who just want to
get on Twitter and they just want to scream, and
they don't want to have a conversation. But the truth
of the matter is that most of the people listening
to this, they want to have a relationship with their neighbor,
regardless of what lawn sign for which politician they have
on their lawn. Right, so they want to be able
(20:07):
to go over and say like, hey, Jim, you know,
what do you think about that's pothole on the street?
Can I borrow a hammer? And we are very very
good at connecting with each other even when we disagree
about some things, and in fact that's essential to human evolution.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah. Yeah, well it's a really good point, and the
psychologist doctor Keltner would agree with you.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So what are what are some common mistakes then that
people make when talking with each other? Well, I think
there's a couple of things, right, So first of all,
is not trying to figure out what kind of conversation
we're in. So, and this is a mistake that I've
made regularly. Right when I was at the New York Times,
someone would come to me and they would they would clearly.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Be wanting to have an emotional conversation. They would want
to talk about how they felt that they were set
or felt disrespected, or were frustrated.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And instead of having.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
That emotional conversation, I would often launch into a practical
conversation and come up with all these practical solutions, and
that's that's not what they wanted to talk about. They
wanted to know that I understood what they were telling
me before we moved on to before we moved together,
to a practical conversation. And one of the best ways
to figure out what kind of conversation is happening is
(21:26):
to ask questions, right and in particular to ask deep questions.
And a lot of this comes from Nick Eppley at
the University of Chicago and the research he's done. A
deep question is something that asks someone about their values,
or their beliefs, or their experiences, which can sound kind
of hard and intimidating, but it's actually very very easy.
Right if you bump into someone who's a you know,
who's a lawyer, instead of asking like, oh, where do
(21:47):
you practice law, you can ask, oh, what made you
decide to go to law school? Like what do you
love about practicing the law? What's your what's your favorite case?
Those are questions that are deep questions that don't sing
hard to ask, They're not overly intrusive, but they invite
the person the other person to tell us something about themselves,
how they see the world, what the experiences are that
(22:09):
made them who they are. Those are really powerful and
so one of the big mistakes we make is that
we don't ask questions, and if we ask questions, we
tend to ask questions about facts, which are often dead ends.
And a lot of this work comes from Mike Yeomans,
who's an Imperial College right now, that when we ask
about facts, oftentimes it's very hard to ask follow up questions.
(22:33):
We get into a dead end very quickly. But when
we ask people how they feel about their life rather
than the facts of their life, oftentimes they tell they
tell us something that's revealing about who they are. That's
very easy to ask a follow up question, and equally importantly,
very natural for us to answer our own question, Oh,
you became a doctor because you know, or you became
a lawyer because you saw your uncle get arrested. It's funny,
(22:55):
I became a physician because my dad got sick when
I was a kid. Then we're engaging in that reciprocity
right where that back and forth it's so key to conversations.
And so the top thing people can do is ask
more questions and ask the right kinds of questions.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Do you think a good therapist is a good super communicator.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I think that can be right. I mean, we both
know enough. There are some great therapists out there, and
there's some therapists who are less good at being super communicators.
But there's also some super communicator lawyers out there, and
professors and doctors and accountants, and there's some people who
are less good at really trying to connect with other people.
(23:40):
So I would say in general, people who are therapists
probably care more about connection. They're probably spending more time
thinking about it, which is good. That's one of the
things that we know super communicators do is they think
just half an inch deeper about communication. But being a therapist,
I think does not guarantee that you're a super communicator.
If you if you don't sort of remember some of
(24:03):
the skills that are important.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But but therapists could benefit from reading your book.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Oh absolutely, absolutely a lot of I mean I think
a lot of what a good therapist does in a
session is the same skills that we describe in the book.
And hopefully this gives people additional tools to use, you know,
particularly when there's a there's a there's a portion of
the book there's a couple of stories in the book,
Like one of the stories is about the CIA officer
who's trying to recruit overseas assets and it's terrible at it.
(24:31):
And another another portion of the book is about this
conversation between gun advocates, gun rights advocates and gun control
activists that goes very well in person and then falls
apart when they when they go online, and some of
the principles that allow for the online communication to be better.
And so I think anyone therapist or or not can
(24:53):
benefit from sort of seeing these examples and thinking a
little bit more deeply about how our communication has to
change as we move into different channels.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, I love I love the stories you bring. They're
very wide ranging. Can we tell do you mind if
we discuss some of this?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Of course, of course, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Some of my favorites, some of my favorites. I liked
the one about the Big Bang writer a theory, The
Big Bang Theory Writer's Room, can you talk.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
About Yeah, it's really fun and just for anyone listening,
it's the sitcom the Big Bang Theory, not the actual
theory the Big Bang Theory.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So what's interesting about the So Big.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Bang theory is like the most popular sitcom in history,
Like it's more popular than Mash than Cheers, it's had
more people watch it, it's lasted.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Longer, it's one more awards.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
And what's funny is that when they first created that show,
it was a total flop, Like they actually created a
pilot and the pilot was terrible. Nobody thought liked the
show at all. And the basic problem they had was
the concept of the show is, we are going to
introduce all these characters who are physicists, except for one
(25:59):
engineer right, everyone looks down as knows of him. But
the rest of them are physicists who are really really
bad at communication, Like they're really bad at explaining their feelings,
they're really bad at understanding other people's feelings. They're really
bad at like just communicating men. Most of them were
male communicating with women, and and so the humor came
from this miscommunication. The problem for a sitcom, though, is
(26:22):
that the way that a stcon works, the audience needs
to understand what someone is feeling, like literally the second
they appear on the screen, and if you're not clear
on what each character is feeling, it's very confusing for
you as an audience member. That's why that's why sitcoms
fail and so, and just to give an example, like
we all know when we're watching a show, the difference
(26:44):
between two people who love each other and two people
who hate each other and two people who are pretending
to hate each other because they actually love each other
and they haven't admitted it to themselves yet, right. We
know that's that's like the premise of every single like sitcom,
and we know within seconds of the person getting on
the screen what's going on. So the question for the
(27:05):
Big Bang Theory writers was, how do we write a
show where our characters are terrible at communication, but we
need to communicate what they're feeling immediately. And they actually
went to this research that had been done about how
we display emotions and how we judge emotions, some of
which had ended up influencing how NASA chose astronauts, which.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
The little diversion.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But when in the nineteen eighties NASA decided they needed
to start finding astronauts who had more emotional intelligence because
they were going to start building the space station and
the missions were going to get longer six months or
twelve months, and so they said, like, look, we need
astronauts who actually can connect with each other and if not,
they're going to drive each other crazy in this tin
can in space for six months at a time, and.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
They couldn't fit.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But the problem is they couldn't figure out how to
tell the difference between people who had emotional intelligence from
people who who faked it really, really well. Because when
you make it to the final rounds of an astronaut interview,
you're just like amazing, right, you have like a PhD.
And you're handsome, and you're in great physical shape and
you know how to answer every single question exactly the
right way. So by the time you make it to
(28:15):
the final rounds of astronaut NASA interviews, you're really good
at faking emotional intelligence even if you don't have it.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
But they need to invite people.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Who actually had emotional intelligence because you can't fake it
for like six months at a time, and they had
had these bad experiences during some missions. So this one guy,
Terry Maguire, who's the lead psychiatrist for manned spaceflight, he
comes up with a new way to interview people. When
he walks into a room for the interview, he's carrying
(28:43):
a big stack of papers and he spills them as
if on accident, and then he laughs this huge boisterous
laugh like haha, I'm such a good I cannot believe I, like,
you know, dropped all these papers. And then he pays
very close attention to how the astronaut candidate reacts because
everybody laughs back, right, that's just social.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Politeness, we know that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But some astronaut candidates would laugh like this, that's really
silly here, let me give you a hand. And some
of the candidates would go, oh my gosh, that's really
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Let me give you a hand.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And what he realized is that the candidates who matched
his emotional intensity, they were the ones who were emotionally intelligent.
They were showing him that they want to connect, they
were making this awkward moment feel easier for him, and
they were the ones who ended up getting chosen. And
that's writers of The Big Bang Theory figured out is
that as long as the characters came on and they
(29:41):
matched each other's energy and intensity and mood, it didn't
matter what they said. The audience could tell whether these
people were feeling connected with each other or weren't feeling connected.
And that's all it took to make the show work, and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's spirit I'm gonna respond to you. Yes, Yes, I'll
match you. I'll match you. Can I just tell you
personally why I love that out of all your stories
the best. Yeah, I love that story the best out
of all your stories. You know. I think that a
big problem with a lot of people on the autism spectrum,
which I am a little bit on that spectrum myself,
(30:16):
there can be a real problem in that matching because
we almost really just there's not an automatic sort of
you know, we're very truthful, you know, I don't know
when we put a positive spin on it, because a
lot of people put a negative spin on it. We
don't like bullshit, we don't like you know, fat around things.
You know. We love to just get I'm very direct, right,
(30:39):
And I think that I have had to learn over
the years, and doing this podcast for ten years, every
week for ten years, by the way, Charles, I've done
this ten years for every week with no break, has
taught me these skills that just you know, maybe don't
don't come as naturally to me when I was born
out of the gate, you know. Yeah, So I think
(31:02):
that the whole show is about these guys on the
autim the spectrum.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
And and and it's important to note that the writers
I actually like I brought that up with the writers.
I was like, well, you know, the main character, he
seems like he's on the spectrum. And they were like, no,
and one of the writers is actually on the spectrum himself,
and and sort of very very sort of proud of it.
Not proud, but he is very open about being on
(31:26):
the spectrum. And when when when I mentioned this character
being on the spectrum, he was like, no, he's never
been tested, Like, we don't know if he's on the spectrum.
You shouldn't you shouldn't put that on him. But I
think to your point, yeah, Like, and the thing I
would say is, you know, for for we tend to
be able to identify in neuro divergent individuals having to
(31:53):
learn skills very clearly. But the truth of the matter
is learning these skills is important even if you're not neurodivergent,
because nobody is born with them. Some people are definitely
born where it's harder for them to visualize the skills,
it's harder for them to infer the skills from talking
to others and pick them up socially. They need more
(32:14):
explicit instruction about, you know, to identify that skill. But
nobody is born a super communicator. It's just that if
we pay attention to communication, if it's something that we
we study a little bit and we see these skills,
then we start to learn them and they become habits.
And I would actually argue that folks who are neurodivergent
(32:40):
that in some respects they pay more attention to conversations
because those conversations are harder for them. And as a result,
I think when when you when the skills are made
clear to them, When when when they get a chance
to identify what they ought to be doing, much like
you with this podcast, Yeah, they become very very good
at it because it matters so much to them.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, that just gave me a chill. Might be cold,
I don't know. I I love that. And I really
am a firm believer in that principle that sometimes the
people who lack the naturalness of certain things can end
(33:24):
up far surpassing you know.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Oh absolutely, we know that.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Like people who are consistent super communicators, they say there
was a time in their life when they were bad
at communication. Wow, when they were bad at making friends
in high school when their parents got divorced and they
had to play the peacemaker between them, they had to
think about conversation a little bit more deeply, and that's
what made them a super communicator.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Along similar lines,
I liked in the book how you talked about shy people. Yeah,
thank you for including them. If you're a shy or
you struggle, you know, just let's say introverted. Introversion is
not the same thing as shy. But let's say you're
someone who you don't articulate your thoughts out loud quickly,
you like to step back and pause and think a
(34:11):
little more. How can you still improve your odds of connection?
You know, I'm a big fan of Susan Kine and
all her work in that whole community. So any advice
for that community.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
There's been some really interesting research on this, And there's
two things that I think. The first is, you know,
part of communication is telling people how we best communicate.
And so I've definitely been in conversations with people where they,
you know, I'm talking a mile a minute and I'm
coming up with all these ideas and they say, this
is really really interesting.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I need.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I think I probably process a little bit differently than you.
I just need a second to think through kind of
what you're saying before I respond. And that's such a
wonderful thing for people to say, right because because they're
telling me how they like to communicate, how they're most
comfortable communicating. And when they do that, it not only
(34:59):
helps help see other person communicate with them.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
But it it helps.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Us see something about that about them.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Right. It's it's.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's an expression of authenticity and potentially vulnerability that that
gives us a chance to reciprocate. But then the second
thing that often happens, and this is there's some research
that has been done by these Harvard Busess School professors.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It's really interesting, is.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
They they told the students, Look, you're about to have
a conversation with a stranger, okay, someone from your class
who you haven't met yet, which is like the most
anxiety producing thing you can tell someone to do. Right, Like,
people hate being told they have to have a conversation
with a stranger. And they said, Okay, before you do it, though,
we want you to to just take like seven or
ten seconds and write down three topics you might want
(35:46):
to discuss like dumb stuff like, you know, like have
you seen the new Dune movie? Are you going to
the to the football game this weekend? You know, things
like that, Just little little things. And they said, okay,
just write these down. Literally takes seven to seconds. Write
these down, and then go have your conversation. And so
people would write these down, they'd stick them in their pocket,
and they'd go have the conversations, and the topics that
(36:08):
they wrote down almost never came up. But afterwards when
they when the researchers asked the students how the conversations went,
inevitably they would say things like, so much better than
I expected. I felt so much more calm and like
confident and like less anxious. And because I knew that,
like if there was an awkward silence, I had this
(36:28):
thing in my pocket, right, I had this backup topic
that I could revert to. And as a result, because
I was more less anxious, the conversation went a lot better.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Think for introverts, or actually for any of us, there's
kind of a lesson here, which is, if we just
take seven or ten seconds before a conversation to think
about what we might want to talk about. And in
doing so, we're probably going to figure out for ourselves, like,
you know a little bit, what's our goal.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
In this conversation.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Is it to like learn something or is it just
to kind of like get to know someone. What's the
mood that we hope to establish? Do we want this
to be formal or informal? If we just take a
little bit of time to think about a conversation before
that conversation starts, research shows the conversation goes much much better.
And I think particularly for people who are shy, this
is something that helps helps helps manage that social anxiety
(37:22):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yes, what about for people who they're so they have
trouble social cues with the what is unsaid? You know,
like that may seem like that's like a panic attack.
For some people to say, well you have to pay
attention to what's unsaid, it's like, well, how do I
know what's unsaid? Right? Right? Well?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Oftentimes so so oftentimes simply saying that I want to
pay attention to what goes un said. I want to
pay attention to someone's expressions. I want to pay attention
to their gestures, how they're holding their body, their tone
of voice, simply telling ourselves like, this is something you
should you should remember to do, actually makes us much
much better at it. So so it's it's not that
(38:04):
every that there's some people who are just bad at
picking up on nonverbal or non linguistic cues. It's just
that there are people who have not prioritized that and
haven't practiced it. But then the second thing is I
think again asking those questions. You know Nick Happley, I
mentioned him from the University of Chicago. He does this
thing where he'll like get on buses and he'll go
(38:25):
and talk to strangers, and his goal is to get
people to people's hopes and dreams and like two or
three questions, And so we'll ask them like, what do
you do for a living? I'm an accountant? Oh, did
you always want to be an accountant? Was that your
dream when you were a kid. And I think that
when we ask questions like that, what we do is
we give the other person an opportunity to say the
things that might go and set right. If someone's like,
(38:49):
I'm an accountant and we asked did you always want
to be an accountant? Then like what we're doing is
we're gonna have a chance to say like, no, no,
I actually wanted to become like a movie star, or
to say or if they're like an accountant, we're like,
did you always want to be an accountant?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah? I love numbers.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I love helping people like I think that that we
often expect that people should be able to hear what
goes unsaid without also the collary, which is oftentimes you
can simply ask people to say with his unsaid, and
that helps illustrate for you. And by the way, they
love being asked.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
It's great. That's great tangible advice. So a lot of
this is learning the ways that you can talk so
that people want to listen to you. You know, like
if if they're tuning out or whatever, that's not a
good start for a uh, for a conversation, for a conversation.
But you know, in a lot of ways, I like
(39:45):
your framing. I mean, you could have called this book
how to Win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
But first of all, that.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Title is taken already, and second of all, and second
of all, that's not the spirit of the book. You know,
it's you know what I mean. But but a lot
of these skills, you know, are you know, there's some overlap.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
You know, yeah, no, absolutely, and we know I mean
and you know this this research literature, Like, if your
goal is to win friends and influence people, let's take
you know, politics, There's been a bunch of really interesting
research lately and how to how to change people's opinions
on politics. And for a long time, the conventional wisdom
(40:24):
was just give them the facts, right, Like, if I
can go in and I can just show them that,
you know, same sex marriage is as stable as mixed
gender marriage. If I can show them that the vaccines
are safe and they have nothing to worry about, then
they'll change their mind. And of course that isn't actually true, right.
We saw that during the pandemic. The NIH at the
(40:45):
beginning of the pandemic said, for vaccine resistant individuals, what
you should do is you should just give them the evidence.
And all the doctors who work with these populations are like,
are you crazy? Like these people have more evidence than
they know what to do with. They spend days research
online and like reading studies. It's not that they're they're
lacking evidence or data. It's that that's the wrong conversation
(41:09):
to have, and so the right way to have that conversation,
whether it be political issues or whether it be you know, vaccinations,
is to engage in this thing known as motivational interviewing,
right where I go to you and I say like, look,
I'm wondering, I'm going from door to door talking about
same sex marriage. I'm wondering if you could tell me
what you think about same sex marriage and then just
(41:31):
let the person talk and then prove that you're listening,
say like, what I hear you saying is this, And
I want to make sure I'm getting this right. That
doesn't mean I agree with them, but I want to
make sure I'm getting this right. Did I understand you correctly?
And when we hear their story, when we hear how
they see the world, and then we're able to share
how we see the world alongside it. Very often what
(41:51):
we find are things where we're in we're in agreement
with each other, where there's commonalities you know you care about,
Like you're against same sex marriage because you think that
you know, marriage is so important to society and that
that stability is important. And it's interesting because my uncle
is gay and he's been with his partner for thirty years,
(42:12):
and all they want is that same stability they want.
They want to be able to be seen as stable
by the people around them, and that doesn't again that
what we know is that if you, if you engage
in this, if you ask questions, if you listen, if
you try and understand, if you put your own experiences
alongside someone else's experiences, you only end up changing their
mind like three to five percent of the time. But
(42:35):
in politics, changing someone's mind three to five percent of
the time is astronomical, right, most races are decided by
three to five percent totally, totally. And the same thing
is true with vaccine rates. We've seen again and again
and again that the best way to take people who
are vaccine resistant and make them and help them consider
the vaccine and get a vaccine is simply to listen
(42:55):
and understand why they're resistant, and rather than telling them
that they're dumb or wrong, to explain how we see
the world.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Charles, we got to get you on Rogan. How do
we get you on Rogan? Oh my man, it is
such a delight to chat with you. Let's not go
another eight years without talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I love it, I love it. Let's absolutely do it
again soon.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Love the vibe love. I just love the positivity of
it that we all thank you, yeah, and congratulations on
the show. I mean, I didn't realize it's been ten years.
Like that's that's a real accomplishment. That's a lot of
knowledge brought into the world. Thank you so much. I
started in twenty fourteen, so we're coming up on the
tenth year anniversary this year, and you were on it again,
(43:42):
I suppose to the second year. Was it twenty sixteen,
you're the second year. Well, thanks again, Charles and all
the best with the book tour.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Thank you so much. Take care,
The goal of a conversation is to understand what the
other person is trying to tell you, and to speak
in such a way that they can understand you. Then,
by virtue of that, I'm gonna adopt some of your lens,
I'm gonna at least see the world for your lens.
That doesn't mean that I agree with your lens, and
it doesn't mean that I'm gonna walk away and we're
gonna have found common ground. But as long as I
understand how you see the world, and I get you
(00:27):
to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
is a success.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I talk with
Poultzer Prize winning reporter and best selling author Charles Duhig.
The topic of this conversation is super communicators. Super Communicators
are exactly what it sounds like, super communicators. Charles breaks
down the characteristics of super communicators and teaches us how
we can all become a better super communicator. We also
(00:58):
discuss why some conversations succeed and some fail, and the
three main types of conversations. I also enjoyed chatting about
how we can connect with others who we disagree with,
a topic I think is really important in this day
and age. I really enjoyed this chat and learned a
lot that I can apply in my life right away.
So without further ado, I'll bring you Charles Douhig. Hey, Charles, Wow,
(01:21):
welcome back to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Thanks, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I was checking the last time you were on was
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so it's been a little while.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Time flies.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Imagine we both look different, at least a little bit,
a little like mildly. I don't think you had that
beard last time. Oh yeah, yeah, it's you know, the pandemic.
It took a lot out of all of.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Us, so so sure, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I could be wrong. Don'tquote me in that you may
have had a beard. It was a long time ago.
But I am so proud of you and happy for
you for this new book I think for communicators. Can
you hold it up and show everyone, because I see
it right behind you.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Oh sure, this is actually that's actually.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Okay, Sorry, I thought that was the book.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
No no, no, no no, it's like a blow up of
the cover. But actually I have one to hear it too.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Move it a little to that this way, yeah, great, excellent. Okay,
so those in the YouTube you can see that. So
let's just discuss the cover for a second. What was
the logic behind behind uh that? And how does that
tie to the topic of the book.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Well, you know, we spend a lot of time, as
you know, it takes a lot of time to figure
out what the right cover is for a book. And yeah,
I think that one of the things that happens with
what we've learned about the science of communication is that
these are skills that tend to build on each other. Right,
that our brains are basically have evolved to be excellent
communication because communication is Homo sapien superpower. It's the thing
(02:49):
that has allowed our species to succeed so well. And
so when with the cover, we thought it would be
kind of fun to to signal this like building that
the fact that that you know, we sort of we
learned to communicate as children and as we get older,
anyone can become a super communicator. It's just a set
of skills that you just need to learn and allow
(03:10):
to become habits, and once you do that, you you
can connect with anyone.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, I love that, And it's just something that any
of us can cultivate and the set of skills. But
there are super communicators out there that maybe there's there.
It's a talent for you know, because you can both
can be doing at the same time. Something can be
a source of variation. That's talent. And also we can
all to some extent learn skills. These are their prodigies
(03:36):
of supercommunicators. Maybe that's what I'm asking.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
No, not really, And you're right. There are some people
who are consistent who are communicators. So we're all super
communicators at one time or another. In fact, if I
was to ask you, for instance, if you were having
a bad day and you wanted to call someone who
you know would make you feel better, the person who
had called you, they pop into your head. Who is immediately.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Jordan Feinegeld and Michael author from my prior book Choo
His Growth. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, so so Jordan, for you is a super communicator,
and you're probably a super communicator right back to him.
You know exactly what questions to ask, you know, you
know her, Sorry, my apologies, you're a super communicator. Back
to her, and you know what questions to ask and
what you can hear the emotions underneath some of the
things that she says that might not seem emotional on
(04:20):
the surface. Yeah, and there's other times that you're super
communicator when you walk into a meeting and you know
exactly what to say to win the room over, or
you you a friend calls and you know exactly what
to ask them. But there are some people who can
do this more consistently. People who can essentially be consistent
super communicator can connect with anyone. And you're when I
first started doing the reporting for supercommunicators, I assumed, kind
(04:43):
of what you just said, that maybe these people were
born with it, or maybe they're particularly charming or you know, extroverts.
But it turns out that's not right at all. In fact,
what the research tells us is that anyone can become
a super communicator, and it's essentially a random, you know,
a normal distribution through society. There's some super communicators, consistent
supercommunicators or extroverts, and some who are introverts. There's some
(05:05):
who are charming and some who are curmudgeonly. It's not
about an innate capacity you have. Rather, it's about a
set of skills that you can learn. And if you
talk to those people who are consistent super communicators. One
of the things they often say is there was a
time in their life when they were bad at communication,
when you know, they had trouble making friends in high school,
(05:26):
or their parents got divorced and they had to play
the peace maker between them. And it's thinking about communication
just even half an inch deeper than everyone else than
the average person that makes us into supercommunicators, because the
more we pay attention to how conversation works, the better
we are at it.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, paying attention seems to be such an art. Carl Rogers,
one of my heroes, wrote this wonderful book called Active Listening.
I imagine that his technique to active listening would be
quite relevant to being I bet he was a super communicator,
is what.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
No, I think he probably was.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
And I think a lot of what what he wrote
about in active listening and what others have expounded upon
are at the core of these skills. And in many ways,
what the skills are designed to do is to show
the other person that you want to connect with them,
because oftentimes showing someone we want to connect by listening,
by asking follow up questions, by asking the right kinds
(06:24):
of questions, by sharing things about ourselves and engaging in
reciprocal authenticity and reciprocal vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Those are the things that show.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The other person we want to connect with them, and
that that demonstration is often the first and most important
step to actually making a connection.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, let's step back before we even get deeper in
the weeds a second, and let's not in the weeds,
but deeper into the topic. Let's step back a moment.
Why you personally you know, because you're you're a Pulzer
Prize winner, right first of all?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Amazing, and you've covered various topics across your life. When
did you start to get inter this top in particular?
How do they get on your radar? And while you
personally interested in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I think there was two things that happened. The first
is I was working I work at the New Yorker
magazine now, but I was working at the New York
Times and they made me a manager. And I was
pretty good at like the logistics part and the strategy
part of managing. And I figured I'd be a great
manager because I've had lots of managers. I got an
MBA from Harvard Business School, Like, I figured this is
something that I'd be good at and I was just
(07:25):
terrible at it. I was terrible at the communication part
of it. You know that people would come to me
and they would, you know, sort of bring me emotional problems,
and I'd try and solve their problems right away by
giving them practical solutions. I didn't hear what they were
really saying to me, and so that was kind of
bewildering to me to try and figure out why I
was so bad at this, particularly because I'm a professional communicator,
(07:46):
I'm a journalist. And then I also fell into this
bad pattern with my wife at home, which is that
I would come home from work after a long day
and I would start complaining about my day, and you know,
my boss is a jerk, he doesn't understand me. And Liz,
my wife, very reasonable, would offer a practical suggestion like
why don't you take them out to lunch and you
guys can get to know each other a little bit better,
(08:06):
and instead of being able to hear what she was saying,
I would get even more upset, and I would say, like,
why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged
on my behalf, and she would get upset because I
was attacking her for giving me good advice, and so
I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't understand why
I was having these moments whereas bad at communication, And
so I reached out to experts to ask them.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
And that was really the start of the book.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I love that. Well, you write about three types of conversations,
and yeah, what are they and why the distinction between
them so important?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Well, this is what the researchers told me when I
called them. They said two things.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I said.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
First of all, we're really glad you called because we're
living through this golden age of understanding communication for really
the first time.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Because of advances.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
In neural imaging and in data collection, we can really
study conversation like never before. And they said, and the
big insight that we've had, or one of them, is
we tend to think of a discussion as being about
one thing. Right, We're talking about my day, or we're
talking about grades or a new book that I had
that just came out. But they said, actually, now every
(09:13):
conversation is made up of different kinds of conversations, and
in general, they tend to fall into one of three
big buckets. There's these practical discussions we have where we
talk about plans or you know, solve problems together. Then
there's emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling,
and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I
(09:33):
want you to empathize. And then finally there's social conversations,
which is about how we relate to each other in
society and the social identities that are important to us.
And what they said is, look, if you're not having
the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it's
very hard to hear each other, it's very hard to connect.
And so this has become known as the matching principle,
(09:53):
that communication relies on having the same kind of conversation
at the same moment. And and I thought that was
really interesting because as soon as they told me this,
it made clear what was happening with my wife, for instance,
like I was coming home and I was having an
emotional conversation and she was responding with a practical conversation,
and those are both legitimate forms of conversation communication, but
(10:14):
because we weren't having the same kind of conversation at
the same moment, it was really hard for us to
hear each other, whereas if we had been aligned, if
we were having the same kind of conversation, then we
could move from emotional to practical to social back to
emotional together.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah. I can clearly see how this is so important
for relationships. Yeah, partnerships as zero describing, but any kind
of relationship.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
At work, you know, with the kids, even you know
the barista you see every day, there's there's some element
of why we connect or why we failed to connect
the draws on.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
This, Yeah, I mean the implications for this book are
so wide ranging and relevant to the world today. I
might mind. When I was reading your book, my mind
kept going back towards how can we use this in
politics for politicians to be better super communicators as opposed
(11:10):
to dividers. I don't know what another word for it
could be, but I just see so many divisions right now,
and so many instances of people approaching conversations or relationships
with their own frame of mind, with their own worldview lens.
So do you think being part of a super communicator
is being able suspend maybe your your narrow lens for
(11:34):
a moment, to be able to kind of incorporate and
allow for an openness of a different perspective.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, the way I.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Think about it is this that I think super communicators
understand the goal of a conversation. And the goal of
a conversation is not necessarily to like convince you that
you're wrong and I'm right, or to get you to
agree with me, or even to convince you that I'm
smarter you should like me. The goal all of a
conversation is to understand what the other person is trying
(12:03):
to tell you and to speak in such a way
that they can understand you. And and once we establish
that as our goal, it changes a lot of those
things you were just talking about, right, Because I don't
know if you need to be more open minded or
if you need to. But but if I come and
I say, like, look, my my goal in this conversation,
the way I'm going to evaluate if this is a
(12:24):
success or not is to understand what you're trying to
tell me. Then by virtue of that, I'm gonna I'm
gonna adopt some of your lens. I'm gonna at least
see the world through your lens. That doesn't mean that
I agree with your lens, and it doesn't mean that
I'm going to walk away and we're gonna we're gonna
found common ground. But as long as I understand what
you're how you see the world, and I get you
(12:45):
to understand how I see the world, then that conversation
is a success.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
And I think there is.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
A kind of open mindedness that has to accompany that
because because it means that when I come into the
conversation and you're saying things I disagree with, I'm not
I'm not coming up the rebuttals in my head. That's
not really listening. Rather, I'm coming up with questions. I'm
coming up with with trying to understand what you're saying,
rather than tell you how wrong you are. And we
(13:12):
know that actually people people agree with each other more
when they adopt this approach.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, but it also doesn't mean that you there's gonna
be a lot of double negatives in this. But it
also doesn't mean that there's not that you can't disagree.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Oh, absolutely absolutely, That's part of helping you understand how
I see the world to say, like, Okay, what I
hear you saying is you think that your candidate is
the best for security and I and I hear am
I getting that right? And I'm hearing that. From my perspective,
what's more important than security is justice. And so I'm
choosing a candidate who I think, who I think brings more.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Justice to the world.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
But these are both legitimate ways of looking at the world.
And let me ask you some questions about how you
think about security and justice.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Now, that is very idealistic. I love I love that
what you said. But with emotionally charged issues, I mean,
I don't think people really think the other view is legitimate,
you know, like, you know, if there's a conversation about
reproductive rights, I couldn't imagine a conversation with something like, well,
your view is, you know, legitimate. But I just can't
(14:21):
see that. I wish, I wish people could have more
of a level headed conversation. But the second you bring
in emotions. But we do this all the time, right,
I mean I imagine that there are probably some things that
you you right, no, no, I mean humans disagreement. Are
you married?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
No?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, okay, okay, but are do you have a partner
or are you in like any relationship, Like do you
have close friends anyone that you like talk to on
aga basis?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You're like, what can I ask that would be not
too personal. Yes, okay, okay? And so do you agree
one hundred percent with your friends on everything? No? No, no,
of course not.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And yet and yet you manage to be friends, You
managed to navigate, and and if one of your friends says,
look like, I think that Star Wars is much better
than Star Trek and you disagree, that doesn't mean that
doesn't mean you can't hear his reasons or her reasons
for arguing that. And the same is true with reproductive rights. Oftentimes,
(15:21):
when we're having a conversation about something where we do
feel very passionate about it, the fact that we feel
passionate about it does not mean that we can't hear
what the other person is saying. We can't try and
hear what the other person is saying. Now, it does
mean that sometimes we have to quiet that voice within
our head and say, my goal here is to listen
and understand. It's not to come up with counter arguments
and like you know, browbeat or bully this person into
(15:44):
agreeing with me. But if you want to have a conversation,
then you can absolutely have that conversation, even on things
that you disagree with about that you feel very passionate
about because the goal again is if you go in
and you decide like I'm just going to like bowl
this person over with my arguments, we know that's not
going to work. You're you're kind of just wasting your time,
(16:04):
but understanding what they're saying and helping them understand what
you're saying. That's actually a conversation, that's a communication.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, I'm all for this kind of very productive way forward,
but it does take I'm going to just say some
trite things. It takes two to tango and good and
it takes I feel like there's a requirement here with
two good faith actors, and I feel like that's just
like a requirement for this to work. Like if I'm
having a conversation with a neo Nazi who's not good faith,
(16:41):
I mean, I don't know if it's going to work.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
To be honest, I don't know that you're having a
conversation in that case, to be totally honest, right, I mean,
if you go into that conversation you say I want
to have a conversation with the neo Nazi, you can
probably do it, but I think what you're actually saying,
and tell me if you think I'm getting this wrong
is when I talk to a neo Nazi, I don't
want to have a conversation. I want to tell them
how wrong they are. And that's totally fine. You don't
have to have a conversation. Like you know, there are
(17:05):
many times that I tell say to my kids, I
want to have a conversation about your room, and I
don't actually want to have a conversation about their room.
I want them to go clean up their room. So
it's fine not to have a conversation. But if you
actually want to have a conversation with a neo Nazi,
if you want, if you're going into this and you're saying,
I'd like to understand how they see the world, because
understanding how they see the world might help me figure
(17:27):
out how to make my arguments more compelling to them,
or it just might be might give me some insights
on what's going on within the nation. You can do that, right,
You have that capacity, even if even if they don't
necessarily want to listen to you, you have the capacity
to listen to them. And here's the thing is that
we know this from studies. If you prove that you're listening,
(17:49):
if you demonstrate that you are listening in good faith,
they become much more likely to listen to you. In fact,
we know that this like reciprocity of listening is such
a strong soul norm that people almost can't avoid it.
So if you engage in this thing looping for understanding,
where you ask a question, you repeat back what the
person told you in your own words to show that
you're really paying attention, you're processing it. You ask them
(18:12):
if you got it right, which is them giving you
permission to acknowledge that you've listened to them. The odds
of them listening back to you go up astronomically.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I wasn't even thinking in this scenario that I
wasn't the one open to the conversation. I was thinking
they would be the one not open to the conversation,
whereas your default was the think that I wasn't the
one anyway. So it's interesting. I think that what you're
saying is true to an extent. If someone isn't you know,
(18:44):
you can you can really try, or you can be
the best super communicator in the world, and there's still
going to be people who are not open to having
a conversation. And that's just that's just the way the world.
That's just what it is. You can't connect with everyone, Yeah,
you can't.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Can to someone who doesn't want to connect with you.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
But I'm just going to point out that if we
look at history, or if we look at social sciences,
what we see is overwhelming evidence of the alternative of
people who disagree about things coming together and figuring out
how to live with each other peacefully and how to
have conversations. I mean, think about the founding of America.
(19:22):
The Constitutional Convention was essentially a group of people who
hated each other coming together and disagreeing and figuring out
how to have conversations so that they can write a constitution.
I mean, the history of this nation is, and the
history of the world in large part, at least the
parts of the history of the world that we feel
good about are about how we can come together despite
(19:45):
our differences and we can have conversations. So you're right,
there are some people out there who just want to
get on Twitter and they just want to scream, and
they don't want to have a conversation. But the truth
of the matter is that most of the people listening
to this, they want to have a relationship with their neighbor,
regardless of what lawn sign for which politician they have
on their lawn. Right, so they want to be able
(20:07):
to go over and say like, hey, Jim, you know,
what do you think about that's pothole on the street?
Can I borrow a hammer? And we are very very
good at connecting with each other even when we disagree
about some things, and in fact that's essential to human evolution.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah. Yeah, well it's a really good point, and the
psychologist doctor Keltner would agree with you.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
So what are what are some common mistakes then that
people make when talking with each other? Well, I think
there's a couple of things, right, So first of all,
is not trying to figure out what kind of conversation
we're in. So, and this is a mistake that I've
made regularly. Right when I was at the New York Times,
someone would come to me and they would they would clearly.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Be wanting to have an emotional conversation. They would want
to talk about how they felt that they were set
or felt disrespected, or were frustrated.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
And instead of having.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
That emotional conversation, I would often launch into a practical
conversation and come up with all these practical solutions, and
that's that's not what they wanted to talk about. They
wanted to know that I understood what they were telling
me before we moved on to before we moved together,
to a practical conversation. And one of the best ways
to figure out what kind of conversation is happening is
(21:26):
to ask questions, right and in particular to ask deep questions.
And a lot of this comes from Nick Eppley at
the University of Chicago and the research he's done. A
deep question is something that asks someone about their values,
or their beliefs, or their experiences, which can sound kind
of hard and intimidating, but it's actually very very easy.
Right if you bump into someone who's a you know,
who's a lawyer, instead of asking like, oh, where do
(21:47):
you practice law, you can ask, oh, what made you
decide to go to law school? Like what do you
love about practicing the law? What's your what's your favorite case?
Those are questions that are deep questions that don't sing
hard to ask, They're not overly intrusive, but they invite
the person the other person to tell us something about themselves,
how they see the world, what the experiences are that
(22:09):
made them who they are. Those are really powerful and
so one of the big mistakes we make is that
we don't ask questions, and if we ask questions, we
tend to ask questions about facts, which are often dead ends.
And a lot of this work comes from Mike Yeomans,
who's an Imperial College right now, that when we ask
about facts, oftentimes it's very hard to ask follow up questions.
(22:33):
We get into a dead end very quickly. But when
we ask people how they feel about their life rather
than the facts of their life, oftentimes they tell they
tell us something that's revealing about who they are. That's
very easy to ask a follow up question, and equally importantly,
very natural for us to answer our own question, Oh,
you became a doctor because you know, or you became
a lawyer because you saw your uncle get arrested. It's funny,
(22:55):
I became a physician because my dad got sick when
I was a kid. Then we're engaging in that reciprocity
right where that back and forth it's so key to conversations.
And so the top thing people can do is ask
more questions and ask the right kinds of questions.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Do you think a good therapist is a good super communicator.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I think that can be right. I mean, we both
know enough. There are some great therapists out there, and
there's some therapists who are less good at being super communicators.
But there's also some super communicator lawyers out there, and
professors and doctors and accountants, and there's some people who
are less good at really trying to connect with other people.
(23:40):
So I would say in general, people who are therapists
probably care more about connection. They're probably spending more time
thinking about it, which is good. That's one of the
things that we know super communicators do is they think
just half an inch deeper about communication. But being a therapist,
I think does not guarantee that you're a super communicator.
If you if you don't sort of remember some of
(24:03):
the skills that are important.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But but therapists could benefit from reading your book.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Oh absolutely, absolutely a lot of I mean I think
a lot of what a good therapist does in a
session is the same skills that we describe in the book.
And hopefully this gives people additional tools to use, you know,
particularly when there's a there's a there's a portion of
the book there's a couple of stories in the book,
Like one of the stories is about the CIA officer
who's trying to recruit overseas assets and it's terrible at it.
(24:31):
And another another portion of the book is about this
conversation between gun advocates, gun rights advocates and gun control
activists that goes very well in person and then falls
apart when they when they go online, and some of
the principles that allow for the online communication to be better.
And so I think anyone therapist or or not can
(24:53):
benefit from sort of seeing these examples and thinking a
little bit more deeply about how our communication has to
change as we move into different channels.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, I love I love the stories you bring. They're
very wide ranging. Can we tell do you mind if
we discuss some of this?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Of course, of course, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Some of my favorites, some of my favorites. I liked
the one about the Big Bang writer a theory, The
Big Bang Theory Writer's Room, can you talk.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
About Yeah, it's really fun and just for anyone listening,
it's the sitcom the Big Bang Theory, not the actual
theory the Big Bang Theory.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So what's interesting about the So Big.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Bang theory is like the most popular sitcom in history,
Like it's more popular than Mash than Cheers, it's had
more people watch it, it's lasted.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Longer, it's one more awards.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
And what's funny is that when they first created that show,
it was a total flop, Like they actually created a
pilot and the pilot was terrible. Nobody thought liked the
show at all. And the basic problem they had was
the concept of the show is, we are going to
introduce all these characters who are physicists, except for one
(25:59):
engineer right, everyone looks down as knows of him. But
the rest of them are physicists who are really really
bad at communication, Like they're really bad at explaining their feelings,
they're really bad at understanding other people's feelings. They're really
bad at like just communicating men. Most of them were
male communicating with women, and and so the humor came
from this miscommunication. The problem for a sitcom, though, is
(26:22):
that the way that a stcon works, the audience needs
to understand what someone is feeling, like literally the second
they appear on the screen, and if you're not clear
on what each character is feeling, it's very confusing for
you as an audience member. That's why that's why sitcoms
fail and so, and just to give an example, like
we all know when we're watching a show, the difference
(26:44):
between two people who love each other and two people
who hate each other and two people who are pretending
to hate each other because they actually love each other
and they haven't admitted it to themselves yet, right. We
know that's that's like the premise of every single like sitcom,
and we know within seconds of the person getting on
the screen what's going on. So the question for the
(27:05):
Big Bang Theory writers was, how do we write a
show where our characters are terrible at communication, but we
need to communicate what they're feeling immediately. And they actually
went to this research that had been done about how
we display emotions and how we judge emotions, some of
which had ended up influencing how NASA chose astronauts, which.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
The little diversion.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But when in the nineteen eighties NASA decided they needed
to start finding astronauts who had more emotional intelligence because
they were going to start building the space station and
the missions were going to get longer six months or
twelve months, and so they said, like, look, we need
astronauts who actually can connect with each other and if not,
they're going to drive each other crazy in this tin
can in space for six months at a time, and.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
They couldn't fit.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But the problem is they couldn't figure out how to
tell the difference between people who had emotional intelligence from
people who who faked it really, really well. Because when
you make it to the final rounds of an astronaut interview,
you're just like amazing, right, you have like a PhD.
And you're handsome, and you're in great physical shape and
you know how to answer every single question exactly the
right way. So by the time you make it to
(28:15):
the final rounds of astronaut NASA interviews, you're really good
at faking emotional intelligence even if you don't have it.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
But they need to invite people.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Who actually had emotional intelligence because you can't fake it
for like six months at a time, and they had
had these bad experiences during some missions. So this one guy,
Terry Maguire, who's the lead psychiatrist for manned spaceflight, he
comes up with a new way to interview people. When
he walks into a room for the interview, he's carrying
(28:43):
a big stack of papers and he spills them as
if on accident, and then he laughs this huge boisterous
laugh like haha, I'm such a good I cannot believe I, like,
you know, dropped all these papers. And then he pays
very close attention to how the astronaut candidate reacts because
everybody laughs back, right, that's just social.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Politeness, we know that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
But some astronaut candidates would laugh like this, that's really
silly here, let me give you a hand. And some
of the candidates would go, oh my gosh, that's really
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Let me give you a hand.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
And what he realized is that the candidates who matched
his emotional intensity, they were the ones who were emotionally intelligent.
They were showing him that they want to connect, they
were making this awkward moment feel easier for him, and
they were the ones who ended up getting chosen. And
that's writers of The Big Bang Theory figured out is
that as long as the characters came on and they
(29:41):
matched each other's energy and intensity and mood, it didn't
matter what they said. The audience could tell whether these
people were feeling connected with each other or weren't feeling connected.
And that's all it took to make the show work, and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's spirit I'm gonna respond to you. Yes, Yes, I'll
match you. I'll match you. Can I just tell you
personally why I love that out of all your stories
the best. Yeah, I love that story the best out
of all your stories. You know. I think that a
big problem with a lot of people on the autism spectrum,
which I am a little bit on that spectrum myself,
(30:16):
there can be a real problem in that matching because
we almost really just there's not an automatic sort of
you know, we're very truthful, you know, I don't know
when we put a positive spin on it, because a
lot of people put a negative spin on it. We
don't like bullshit, we don't like you know, fat around things.
You know. We love to just get I'm very direct, right,
(30:39):
And I think that I have had to learn over
the years, and doing this podcast for ten years, every
week for ten years, by the way, Charles, I've done
this ten years for every week with no break, has
taught me these skills that just you know, maybe don't
don't come as naturally to me when I was born
out of the gate, you know. Yeah, So I think
(31:02):
that the whole show is about these guys on the
autim the spectrum.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
And and and it's important to note that the writers
I actually like I brought that up with the writers.
I was like, well, you know, the main character, he
seems like he's on the spectrum. And they were like, no,
and one of the writers is actually on the spectrum himself,
and and sort of very very sort of proud of it.
Not proud, but he is very open about being on
(31:26):
the spectrum. And when when when I mentioned this character
being on the spectrum, he was like, no, he's never
been tested, Like, we don't know if he's on the spectrum.
You shouldn't you shouldn't put that on him. But I
think to your point, yeah, Like, and the thing I
would say is, you know, for for we tend to
be able to identify in neuro divergent individuals having to
(31:53):
learn skills very clearly. But the truth of the matter
is learning these skills is important even if you're not neurodivergent,
because nobody is born with them. Some people are definitely
born where it's harder for them to visualize the skills,
it's harder for them to infer the skills from talking
to others and pick them up socially. They need more
(32:14):
explicit instruction about, you know, to identify that skill. But
nobody is born a super communicator. It's just that if
we pay attention to communication, if it's something that we
we study a little bit and we see these skills,
then we start to learn them and they become habits.
And I would actually argue that folks who are neurodivergent
(32:40):
that in some respects they pay more attention to conversations
because those conversations are harder for them. And as a result,
I think when when you when the skills are made
clear to them, When when when they get a chance
to identify what they ought to be doing, much like
you with this podcast, Yeah, they become very very good
at it because it matters so much to them.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, that just gave me a chill. Might be cold,
I don't know. I I love that. And I really
am a firm believer in that principle that sometimes the
people who lack the naturalness of certain things can end
(33:24):
up far surpassing you know.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Oh absolutely, we know that.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Like people who are consistent super communicators, they say there
was a time in their life when they were bad
at communication. Wow, when they were bad at making friends
in high school when their parents got divorced and they
had to play the peacemaker between them, they had to
think about conversation a little bit more deeply, and that's
what made them a super communicator.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Along similar lines,
I liked in the book how you talked about shy people. Yeah,
thank you for including them. If you're a shy or
you struggle, you know, just let's say introverted. Introversion is
not the same thing as shy. But let's say you're
someone who you don't articulate your thoughts out loud quickly,
you like to step back and pause and think a
(34:11):
little more. How can you still improve your odds of connection?
You know, I'm a big fan of Susan Kine and
all her work in that whole community. So any advice
for that community.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
There's been some really interesting research on this, And there's
two things that I think. The first is, you know,
part of communication is telling people how we best communicate.
And so I've definitely been in conversations with people where they,
you know, I'm talking a mile a minute and I'm
coming up with all these ideas and they say, this
is really really interesting.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I need.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I think I probably process a little bit differently than you.
I just need a second to think through kind of
what you're saying before I respond. And that's such a
wonderful thing for people to say, right because because they're
telling me how they like to communicate, how they're most
comfortable communicating. And when they do that, it not only
(34:59):
helps help see other person communicate with them.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
But it it helps.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Us see something about that about them.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Right. It's it's.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's an expression of authenticity and potentially vulnerability that that
gives us a chance to reciprocate. But then the second
thing that often happens, and this is there's some research
that has been done by these Harvard Busess School professors.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
It's really interesting, is.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
They they told the students, Look, you're about to have
a conversation with a stranger, okay, someone from your class
who you haven't met yet, which is like the most
anxiety producing thing you can tell someone to do. Right, Like,
people hate being told they have to have a conversation
with a stranger. And they said, Okay, before you do it, though,
we want you to to just take like seven or
ten seconds and write down three topics you might want
(35:46):
to discuss like dumb stuff like, you know, like have
you seen the new Dune movie? Are you going to
the to the football game this weekend? You know, things
like that, Just little little things. And they said, okay,
just write these down. Literally takes seven to seconds. Write
these down, and then go have your conversation. And so
people would write these down, they'd stick them in their pocket,
and they'd go have the conversations, and the topics that
(36:08):
they wrote down almost never came up. But afterwards when
they when the researchers asked the students how the conversations went,
inevitably they would say things like, so much better than
I expected. I felt so much more calm and like
confident and like less anxious. And because I knew that,
like if there was an awkward silence, I had this
(36:28):
thing in my pocket, right, I had this backup topic
that I could revert to. And as a result, because
I was more less anxious, the conversation went a lot better.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Think for introverts, or actually for any of us, there's
kind of a lesson here, which is, if we just
take seven or ten seconds before a conversation to think
about what we might want to talk about. And in
doing so, we're probably going to figure out for ourselves, like,
you know a little bit, what's our goal.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
In this conversation.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Is it to like learn something or is it just
to kind of like get to know someone. What's the
mood that we hope to establish? Do we want this
to be formal or informal? If we just take a
little bit of time to think about a conversation before
that conversation starts, research shows the conversation goes much much better.
And I think particularly for people who are shy, this
is something that helps helps helps manage that social anxiety
(37:22):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yes, what about for people who they're so they have
trouble social cues with the what is unsaid? You know,
like that may seem like that's like a panic attack.
For some people to say, well you have to pay
attention to what's unsaid, it's like, well, how do I
know what's unsaid? Right? Right? Well?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Oftentimes so so oftentimes simply saying that I want to
pay attention to what goes un said. I want to
pay attention to someone's expressions. I want to pay attention
to their gestures, how they're holding their body, their tone
of voice, simply telling ourselves like, this is something you
should you should remember to do, actually makes us much
much better at it. So so it's it's not that
(38:04):
every that there's some people who are just bad at
picking up on nonverbal or non linguistic cues. It's just
that there are people who have not prioritized that and
haven't practiced it. But then the second thing is I
think again asking those questions. You know Nick Happley, I
mentioned him from the University of Chicago. He does this
thing where he'll like get on buses and he'll go
(38:25):
and talk to strangers, and his goal is to get
people to people's hopes and dreams and like two or
three questions, And so we'll ask them like, what do
you do for a living? I'm an accountant? Oh, did
you always want to be an accountant? Was that your
dream when you were a kid. And I think that
when we ask questions like that, what we do is
we give the other person an opportunity to say the
things that might go and set right. If someone's like,
(38:49):
I'm an accountant and we asked did you always want
to be an accountant? Then like what we're doing is
we're gonna have a chance to say like, no, no,
I actually wanted to become like a movie star, or
to say or if they're like an accountant, we're like,
did you always want to be an accountant?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah? I love numbers.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I love helping people like I think that that we
often expect that people should be able to hear what
goes unsaid without also the collary, which is oftentimes you
can simply ask people to say with his unsaid, and
that helps illustrate for you. And by the way, they
love being asked.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
It's great. That's great tangible advice. So a lot of
this is learning the ways that you can talk so
that people want to listen to you. You know, like
if if they're tuning out or whatever, that's not a
good start for a uh, for a conversation, for a conversation.
But you know, in a lot of ways, I like
(39:45):
your framing. I mean, you could have called this book
how to Win friends and influence people.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
But first of all, that.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Title is taken already, and second of all, and second
of all, that's not the spirit of the book. You know,
it's you know what I mean. But but a lot
of these skills, you know, are you know, there's some overlap.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
You know, yeah, no, absolutely, and we know I mean
and you know this this research literature, Like, if your
goal is to win friends and influence people, let's take
you know, politics, There's been a bunch of really interesting
research lately and how to how to change people's opinions
on politics. And for a long time, the conventional wisdom
(40:24):
was just give them the facts, right, Like, if I
can go in and I can just show them that,
you know, same sex marriage is as stable as mixed
gender marriage. If I can show them that the vaccines
are safe and they have nothing to worry about, then
they'll change their mind. And of course that isn't actually true, right.
We saw that during the pandemic. The NIH at the
(40:45):
beginning of the pandemic said, for vaccine resistant individuals, what
you should do is you should just give them the evidence.
And all the doctors who work with these populations are like,
are you crazy? Like these people have more evidence than
they know what to do with. They spend days research
online and like reading studies. It's not that they're they're
lacking evidence or data. It's that that's the wrong conversation
(41:09):
to have, and so the right way to have that conversation,
whether it be political issues or whether it be you know, vaccinations,
is to engage in this thing known as motivational interviewing,
right where I go to you and I say like, look,
I'm wondering, I'm going from door to door talking about
same sex marriage. I'm wondering if you could tell me
what you think about same sex marriage and then just
(41:31):
let the person talk and then prove that you're listening,
say like, what I hear you saying is this, And
I want to make sure I'm getting this right. That
doesn't mean I agree with them, but I want to
make sure I'm getting this right. Did I understand you correctly?
And when we hear their story, when we hear how
they see the world, and then we're able to share
how we see the world alongside it. Very often what
(41:51):
we find are things where we're in we're in agreement
with each other, where there's commonalities you know you care about,
Like you're against same sex marriage because you think that
you know, marriage is so important to society and that
that stability is important. And it's interesting because my uncle
is gay and he's been with his partner for thirty years,
(42:12):
and all they want is that same stability they want.
They want to be able to be seen as stable
by the people around them, and that doesn't again that
what we know is that if you, if you engage
in this, if you ask questions, if you listen, if
you try and understand, if you put your own experiences
alongside someone else's experiences, you only end up changing their
mind like three to five percent of the time. But
(42:35):
in politics, changing someone's mind three to five percent of
the time is astronomical, right, most races are decided by
three to five percent totally, totally. And the same thing
is true with vaccine rates. We've seen again and again
and again that the best way to take people who
are vaccine resistant and make them and help them consider
the vaccine and get a vaccine is simply to listen
(42:55):
and understand why they're resistant, and rather than telling them
that they're dumb or wrong, to explain how we see
the world.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Charles, we got to get you on Rogan. How do
we get you on Rogan? Oh my man, it is
such a delight to chat with you. Let's not go
another eight years without talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I love it, I love it. Let's absolutely do it
again soon.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Love the vibe love. I just love the positivity of
it that we all thank you, yeah, and congratulations on
the show. I mean, I didn't realize it's been ten years.
Like that's that's a real accomplishment. That's a lot of
knowledge brought into the world. Thank you so much. I
started in twenty fourteen, so we're coming up on the
tenth year anniversary this year, and you were on it again,
(43:42):
I suppose to the second year. Was it twenty sixteen,
you're the second year. Well, thanks again, Charles and all
the best with the book tour.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Thank you so much. Take care,
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