December 16, 2024 • 36 mins
Charles Duhigg is a journalist who is interested in what makes for a good conversation. He talks to Maya about some science-backed techniques we can try to improve our conversational skills, including the art of asking deep questions.
To learn more, check out Charles' book, “Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.”
If you enjoyed this episode, you might like our episode with champion debater Bo Seo, "Let's Agree to Disagree More."
Connect with Maya on instagram @DrMayaShankar.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies
and our brains change. Our heart rates starts to match
each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other,
our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly,
the neural activity within our brains starts to look more
and more similar. This simultaneity, the similarity, is at the
core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
(00:54):
and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
we feel wonderful.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Journalist Charles Duhigg is interested in the science of what
makes for a good conversation, and one thing he's learned
is the importance of asking the right kind of question.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
ask them how they feel about their life. If you
get into this habit of saying like I'm going to
ask a question that invites the other person to tell
me how they see themselves in the world, what they
feel about something, what they think about it, rather than
the facts about it, what you'll find is that it's
overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
On today's show, how to Connect More Deeply with Others,
I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. Charles's latest book
(02:01):
is called Super Communicators, How to Unlock This Secret Language
of Connection. It's an exploration into how we can improve
our communit nication skills, and it was inspired by challenges
Charles was facing in his own life.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I found that at home I was having these conversations
with my wife and my kids that were not as
meaningful and as deep as I felt like they should be.
And then I felt like at work. I was a
reporter at the New York Times at that point, and
they made me a manager, and I figured I'd be
great at it, right, like I've had managers my whole life,
And I was fine that like the logistics and planning
(02:35):
and strategy, I was terrible at communication, like just just
shockingly bad and so unprepared and surprised by that. And
so I basically decided, like, I'm going to start calling
experts and ask them, if I'm a professional communicator as
a journalist, why am I so bad at this? And
what I learned when I called them was that they said,
(02:56):
we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication
for really the first time. So we have answers to
give you that even just.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
A decade ago, we might not have been able to provide.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
What kind of signals were you receiving at home and
then at work that you were a crappy communicator?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, Like, you know, sometimes my wife would come home
and she'd have like a problem, like something that happened
at work that she was kind of upset about, and
what I would do is try and solve the problem
for her, and she would get frustrated because she didn't
want me to solve the problem right, She wanted me
just to listen and empathize. Or I might come home
from work and like, I've had a tough day and
talk about how my boss doesn't understand me, and she says,
(03:34):
why don't you take your boss out to lunch and
get to know each other better? And then then I
get upset and I say, you know, you're supposed to
be on my side, why aren't you supporting me? And
then at work, there were a number of times where
people would come to me with something and it was
clear that one or two things was happening. Either I
was not hearing them accurately, because they would walk away
upset or I was hearing them accurately and they didn't
(03:56):
understand that I was listening. I was doing a bad
job of proving to them that I'm listening to them.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
You talked about the science evolving, which is obviously super exciting,
and you you know, your book is called super Kenmunicator.
So there's this concept and we'll get into the traits
of a super communicator later on, but I'd love to
hear when you're in conversation with a super communicator, how
is that person making you feel.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
It's a great question.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It's a great question because you're focusing on not the
super communicator, but the other person, and that's what the
super communicator does too. So one of the things, and
let me preface this by saying, being a super communicator
is not that unique a skill. In fact, we all
can be super communicators. One of the big insights from
the research is that communication is a set of skills,
(04:44):
and if you learn those skills, you can connect with
almost anyone. What's happening. And this gets to how we
feel in a conversation with a supercommunicator. When you and
I have a real conversation, our bodies and our brains change.
Our heart rate starts to match each other, our breath
patterns starts to match each other, our pupils start to
dilate at similar rates, and more importantly, the neural activity
(05:05):
within our brains starts to look more and more similar.
And Urry Hassan at Princeton, who I know you're familiar with,
He's done a lot of this research looking at this
simultaneity that our thoughts look more and more alike. And
that makes sense when you think about it, because if
I tell you about a feeling that I'm having, you
actually experience that emotion a little bit, right. If I
(05:25):
tell you about an idea, you experience that idea. So
it makes sense that our brains would look similar. What
Urian others have found is that it's this simultaneity, the
similarity and what's known as neural entrainment is at the
core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
(05:46):
and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
we feel wonderful.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Wow, there's so much to unpack here.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Okay, So the first thing that I'm hearing is we
call it a conversation, but the ultimate reward is in
the feeling of connectedness, because that is the thing that
you're actually mapping too, right when it comes to that's
the size of the brain.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's very good proving that you're listening, very you're doing
a great job. You are a supercommunicator. But that's exactly right. Now,
that doesn't mean we have to agree with each other.
But as long as the goal of our conversation is
to understand how the other person sees the world and
to speak in such a way that you understand how
I see the world, we will feel connected to each
other even if we disagree, and that connectedness is at
(06:27):
the core of why conversation is so important.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The other thing you mentioned is that anyone can become
a super communicator. I want to push back a little
bit on this, which is like, clearly we can't all
become the same level of super communicator. So in the
same way that I mean, no one's born a basketball player,
like no one's born a super communicator. People do have
varying levels of potential given their genetic makeup, right, I mean,
(06:53):
let's say proclivities towards introspection or emotional intelligence, like I
just have to believe that those would be correlated with
better communicative skills.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
So you're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
There are some people for whom this is more intuitive.
And we should make one observation, which is that there
seems to be some research suggesting that folks who are
on the autism spectrum, not the entire spectrum, but on
part of the spectrum, that they do have a cognitive
challenge around communicating with other folks. You're exactly right. Not
(07:23):
all of us can become NBA players, but we can
all learn to play a decent game of basketball.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So you say, Charles, that one of the main reasons
that we struggle to communicate effectively is that each person
is often entering a discussion with a different goal in mind,
and that there's actually distinct kinds of conversations that are
happening within any given discussion. So can you walk me
through the three different types of conversations we might have.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Absolutely, And this is one of the big findings of
the last decade is that when we have a discussion,
we tend to assume it's about one thing, right, and
we tend to assume that it's the goal that I
have in mind, and you think it's the goal you
have in mind. Inside every discussion is multiple kinds of conversations,
different kinds of conversations. They use different parts of our brains,
and they tend to fall into one of three buckets.
(08:13):
There's these practical conversations where we're making plans together or
we're solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I
tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you
to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, right,
I want you to relate. And then there's social conversations,
which is about how we relate to each other in society,
the identities that are important to us. And what we
know is that those three main kinds of conversations they
(08:36):
use very different parts of our brains. And so that
neural and train that I discussed that simultaneity is very
hard to accomplish. And so what's important is what's known
as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the
same kind of conversation at the same moment, and that
doesn't mean we're on train tracks. So we got to
stay on that. Right every discussion. We might start emotional
(08:57):
and then move to practical, and then go back to emotional,
and then go to social But as long as we're
moving together, then we're going to feel connected to each other,
We're going to understand each other much much better.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So I'm imagining two people in conversation right now who
are trying to match one another. I think what's important
to emphasize is that as the conversation progresses, I, in turn,
am going to try to find ways to match you. Absolutely,
So it's a constant back and forth throughout the conversation
where we're both taking opportunities to either invite them into
our headspace or offering ourselves up to enter theirs.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, and you're right, And when you think about it,
at the core of that is reciprocity.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Right, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
A good conversation is back and forth. Yes, a great
conversation If you read the transcript of it, and you
know this because I'm sure you read transcripts of these
all the time, it looks like a mess. A great
conversation on paper looks like a total mess. It's people
talking over each other, interrupting each other. You start an
idea and then you get distracted and you say something else.
It's not a speech. That's what makes the conversation great
(10:03):
is this reciprocity where we're deciding together what we're going
to talk about next.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, you share a story about a doctor struggling to
communicate with his patients, and I think that this really
helps illustrate the benefits of matching.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
So this is one of my favorite stories.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So there's a physician in New York City named doctor
Bifar Adai who is probably one of the world's leading
authorities on prostate tumors, how to remove prostate tumors, how
to treat prostate tumors. And so every day a new
patient comes into his office having just learned the prostate
cancer and doctor d assumed that they were coming in
asking for his advice, and so what he would do
(10:40):
is he would tell them, Look, here's the thing about
prostate cancer. It's very, very slow growing. In fact, we
have this saying in medicine that for older patients, they'll
die of old age before they die of prostate cancer.
And the most certain way that I can cure you
is I can go in and I can cut out
the tumor. If I cut it out, the cancer's gone.
The problem is that the prostate is located close to
(11:00):
the nerves that control your nation and sexual function, and
so for some percentage of patients there's going to be
lifelong side effects even if the surgery is a success.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
So what he says is, here's my advice. Do nothing.
Pretend you don't have cancer.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Do this thing called active surveillance, where you take blood
every six months and you do a biopsy every two years,
and you go to the MRI if the biopsy shows anything.
But otherwise, don't do any treatment. Don't do any radiation,
no chemotherapy, don't do any surgery. And he would say
this to these patients and they would listen and they'd
say thanks, Doc, and then they'd go home and they
talk it over with their spouse. Then they'd come in
the next day and they'd say, you know, I thought
(11:35):
about it last night, and I'd like you to cut
me open as fast as humanly possible.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Like you cut me open, take it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Out, get it out.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
So doctor yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And Doctor Die was bewildered because they're coming to him
because he's an expert. He's giving them advice and they're
ignoring his advice. But he realizes it's not that they're
ignoring his advice, it's that they can't hear him, he's
doing the conversation wrong. So he goes to these researchers
at Harvard Business School. We specialize on what's known as
everyday negotiations or quiet negotiations, the kind of negotiations we
(12:04):
have with our spouses and our kids, where the goal
isn't necessarily to win, the goal is to like actually
understand what everyone wants. And they say to him, you're
starting this conversation with your patients all wrong. You're assuming
you know what they want. What you need to do
is you need to ask them what's known as a
deep question. You need to ask them a question that
(12:24):
invites them to talk about their values and their beliefs
and their experiences, the things that matter to them. So
two weeks later, patient comes into doctor Die's office. Sixty
two year old man, you just learned that he has
prostate cancer. And instead of going into a song and
dance about don't do anything. Here's what the studies show
doctor and Die starts the conversation by saying, can you
(12:47):
just tell me what does this cancer diagnosis mean to you?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And the man kind of sits for a minute.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
He says, you know, when they told me I had
cancer The first thing I thought about was my dad,
because he died when I was seventeen years old, and
I did not want to put my wife through that,
and I do not want to put my kids through that.
And at work, if they find out I have cancer
at work, I'm only sixty two. I want to work
for another eight twelve years. If they know that I've cancer, work,
suddenly all the young people are gonna see me as
the old sick guy is gonna change how they see me.
(13:16):
And Doctor D realizes this man is then an emotional mindset.
This man needs to have an emotional conversation. And so
what Doctor D does is he matches him. Doctor Did says,
you know, I know exactly how you feel because my
dad got six seven years ago and he had the
same concerns you did. But I got to tell you,
like it ended up being less bad than he thought
(13:38):
it was gonna be, and there were these like unexpected benefits,
Like we had these conversations that we had never had before.
My dad completely rethought like what was important to him,
what he wanted to do with his retirement. Doctor Die
matched and shared some emotional perspectives of his own. He
reciprocated and then he says to the man, look, I'm wondering,
(14:00):
can I can I tell you about a couple of
treatment options that I think you should think about in
this thing called active surveillance. In other words, he says,
can I move from an emotional conversation into a practical conversation?
And the man says, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that,
and he goes over active surveillance. The man says that
sounds like a great idea. I'm not going to do
any treatment, never changes his mind. The number of patients
(14:20):
who are listened to doctor Dye's advice went up astronomically
after this one little change, which is starting the interview
by asking the person a question rather than assuming he.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Knew what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, you're teaching me in this moment that when it
comes to thinking about this body of work, I was
approaching this conversation today thinking about it through the lens
of connection, but you're now opening my eyes to see
it through the lens of influence. Right, you can't just
bulldoze your way past the other person's intention because they're
building up a wall and whatever you share with them
(14:55):
will just be inaccessible to them. So only in breaking
down that wall. Do you even penetrate enough such that
whatever messages you're trying to communicate even have a chance
of being registered.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And it's funny that you use this word influence because
because we tend to sort of look down our nose
at influence.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Right, he's trying to influence me. He's an influencer.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But when you think about it, a lot of our
communication is influence. It's soft influence. If I tell you
a joke, I'm trying to influence you to see something
as funny that I see as funny. If I tell
you that I'm excited, like I want to really want
to go see that movie, don't you want to see
it too, I'm trying to influence you to see the
world that what I do. So communication and influence are
tied up together. But influence doesn't mean I'm trying to
(15:39):
manipulate you. Influence means I'm trying to share with you.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I think the point you're making is really critical. We're
doing ourselves a favor by allowing someone to ask those
deep questions of us and vice versa, because we're just
we're opening up the gates so that new information can
come in and then we decide on our own terms, right,
whether or not we are influenced, but we're at least
giving that information a chance.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's exactly right. And it gets to this question of
what is actually the goal of a conversation, right, What
is the goal of communication? And one way of thinking
about it is, my goal is to convince you that
I'm right and you're wrong, Or my goal is to
convince you that I'm smart. My goal is to convince
you should like me. Right, none of those are the
goals of conversation or communication. The goal of a conversation
(16:26):
is to speak in such a way that the other
person can understand you, and to listen in such a
way that you can understand them. If you both understand
each other, the conversation is a success. Now, you might
walk away not liking this person. You might walk away
thinking they're an idiot or disagreeing with.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Them, or that their views are reprehensible.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right exactly, and yet if you understand how they see
the world and they understand how you see the world,
then that conversation has been a success. And I guarantee you,
even if you do disagree with the person you feel
more connected to them.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. If we want to be better communicators, Charles says,
we need to ask deep questions. So I asked him
(17:26):
how we can start practicing this.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
It's the easiest thing on earth.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
ask them how they feel.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
About their life.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
So if I meet you and I know that you're
a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you
work at, which is a fact, I ask you, Oh,
what meets you decide to go to medical school?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Right now?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
What I'm doing is I'm asking you about your values,
Like what is it that led you to this career?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Oh? What do you like about? What do you like
about being a doctor? Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
You live in the heights. That's interesting. I live in
the heights too. I'm just wondering, like, what is it
about the heights that you like?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Like?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Is it a sense of community that you feel up there?
Those are the easiest things to do, And we can convince.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Ourselves that asking deep questions is hard because because we're
worried about doing it, and yet we know is that
communication as a skill, if you practice it, it becomes
a habit very very quickly. And if you get into
this habit of saying, like, I'm going to ask a
question that invites the other person to tell me how
they see themselves in the world, what they feel about something,
(18:23):
what they think about it, rather than the facts about it,
what you'll find is that it's overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You talk about it finding your book, which is that
super communicators ask like way more questions in conversation than
someone else. And I think you call them why questions, right,
it's like, well, why did you go to medical school?
Like why did you move to the neighborhood? Just tell
me about that finding it's quite powerful.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So there was a study that was done by a
guy named Bo Sivers, who's a wonderful researcher, and he
looked at groups and tried to figure out why some
groups of strangers would become more closely bonded than others
and would understand each other better. And what he found
is that in those groups that became really successfully bonded,
there was at least one person who was a super communicator.
(19:08):
So one of the things that they did is that
they asked, as you point out, ten to twenty times
as many questions as the average person. Now, what's interesting, though,
is that most people don't pick up on those questions
because there are questions like, oh that's interesting, what happened next?
Or oh oh what'd you think about that?
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Oh? Oh yeah, did you like that?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
There are questions that are invitations to participate in the conversation,
But some of the questions are deep questions like how
did you feel when you heard him say that? Right,
I'm just wondering, like was that something you when you
saw that scene?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Did you like it? Or did you not like it?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Those are deep questions that are basically saying, tell me
how you see the world. And again, it's not hard
to learn these skills.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So I think one challenge I face, and I'm curious
to know Charles, if you face this too, because you're
a journalist and I'm a podcaster, is like I I
always worry, Oh my god, am I coming on too
strong in conversation because I sit down, I'm like, all right,
to hell with the pleasantries, right to get straight to business, Like,
tell me about the hardest moment of your life. And
(20:12):
I'm so used to being licensed to do that in
an interview. Contexts that I sometis forget that over coffee
with a friend. I don't know, maybe a few warm
up questions would have been appropriate, right, I just want
to hear your reflections on my approach and whether I
need to kind of back off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
You know you're doing exactly right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So one of my favorite experiments in this is that
a number of years ago, these two research psychologists named
Arthur and Elaine Aaron.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
They were a husband and wife.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
They wanted to try and figure out if there was
a method that they could use to make any two
strangers into friends.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
And so they tried all these different things.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
They would have people make puzzles together, or tell each
other stories, or they tried pairing people based on similar interests,
right like they went to the same church where they
were both smokers, or they both hate smokers. They had
some of them just tap their fingers together to see
if that made them feel closer.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
None of the interventions really.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Worked, Like you basically just saw a completely sort of
normal distribution of some people liked each other and some
people didn't. And then they came up with this new idea.
They wrote a list of thirty six questions and they
were deep questions, and some of them started kind of easy.
The first question is if you could have a dinner
party with anyone from history, who would it be. Okay,
(21:22):
that's an easy question. But by question number six, it's
things like tell me about your mother, do you have
a suspicion about how you're going to die and when
it will happen? Question number thirty five of the thirty
six is when's the last time you cried in front
of another person? So they give that people these lists
of questions, they go back and forth, ask an answer, question,
(21:42):
take so just forty five minutes, and then they send
everyone home and everyone assumes that the experiment is over,
but actually the experiment is just beginning, because seven weeks
later they contact all of those people who had been
in those rooms two by two and they ask them,
I got a question for you. Since you did that experiment,
have you actually talked to that person that you did
it with? And people would say things like, yeah, you know,
(22:05):
I didn't catch his last name.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
I know it was like John R. Something that started
with R.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I got out the student directory and I called
every single John R in the student directory until I
found him or or you know, for professionals, they would
say things like, you know, I would just walk around
the park at lunch looking for for that person that
I talked to. One guy said, you know, it's funny
you asked, because like, we got together for a beer
about two weeks after the experiment, and then we saw
(22:30):
a movie a week later. And when they got married
a year after the experiment, they invited everyone in the
lab to come to the ceremony.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So this has become known as the fast friends procedure.
Sometimes it's own as the thirty six questions that lead
to love, because that was a headline.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, I've seen it in like the New York Times,
Yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
And what what's interesting about this is two things. Number One,
we have discovered that you don't actually need those warm
up questions.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
The assumption was that you need.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
To move from less intimate to more intimate to get
people comfortable. But people can get deep immediately. But the
other important thing is that someone else tried to do
the experiment and slightly different way, same questions, list of
thirty six questions. What he did is he had one
person answer all thirty six questions to the other person,
and then the second person would take the list and
answer all thirty six questions. Afterwards, people never felt close
(23:22):
to each other. They said it was boring, it was awkward.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, you need that back and forth.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
It's the reciprocess.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yes, yes, it's the reciprocity of vulnerability and authenticity that
makes us feel close to someone else.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
There's a confounding factor here, which is in an experimental setting,
you are explicitly licensed to go straight into those deep questions.
So what tactics can we use in real life with
our friends or someone we've just met to go straight
into those deep questions?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Absolutely, So the number one thing you can do is
you can say I was listening to a podcast and
the person on the podcast told me I should ask
you this question, when's the last time you And now
if you don't want to say that, then that's.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Where we can do those preliminary questions. Oh, where'd you
go to high school?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Went to valley?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Man, what was it like to go to valley? Did
you like high school? It's as easy as just making
that pivot, and we tend to assume it's going to
be less well received. It's going to be harder to
do that we're going to feel awkward as we do it,
that it's not going to go well and our expectations
are completely wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
So we've talked through one big strategy, Charles, which is
the importance of matching, and you've given us the advice
that one way to do this is to ask deep
questions and of course to pick up on other cues.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Right, I mean, if you.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Laugh heartily and their face turned sour for probably that
wasn't you know you're not quite matchem Let's talk about
some of your other recommendations for how we can become
better communicators.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So what do we do once we know what kind
of conversation is happening and we've started to match each
other well, at that moment, it's really really important that
we listen to each other. What's interesting, though, is that
listening is not enough oftentimes, particularly in hard conversations, particularly
when there's conflict we're discussing, when we disagree with each other.
I need to not only listen to you, I need
to prove that I'm listening to you. So there's this
(25:17):
technique that they teach it in business schools. It's called
looping for understanding as three steps. Step one is that
you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two
is that you repeat back in your own words what
you heard the person say. And then step three, and
this is the one I always forget, ask if you
got it right? Because when you ask if you got
it right, what you're actually asking is can I have
(25:39):
your permission to acknowledge that I'm listening to you?
Speaker 4 (25:43):
And again, because of how our brains.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Have evolved, because of the sociality that we've all sort
of developed, when we believe someone is listening to us,
we become much much more likely to listen to them
and return. It's a reciprocity that we almost can't deny ourselves.
We can't even fight it. So, like, let's say, you know,
so one of my younger kids, he wanted to like
(26:06):
hang out at his friend, spend the night at Jasper's house.
His friend Jasper, and I didn't want him to go
suspend the night at Jasper's house.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I wanted him to be home.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
And so, but rather than have a fight, rather than
I have a conflict, what I did is I did
looping for understanding. So the first thing I said it
is I said, you know, I'm just wondering like, what
is it about Jasper that's important to you? And he said, oh,
you know, the thing about Jasper is that he's really
really brave. And I was like, he's brave, Like what
does that mean? Like what it seems like you admire him?
(26:33):
Like what do you mean he's brave? And he said, oh,
sometimes we'll get up on his roof with their bikes
and he'll ride his bike off the roof. And I
was like, that doesn't sound brave, but but I'm looping
for understanding. And so what I said is that what
I hear you saying is that Jasper. You like hanging
out with Jasper because because it seems like he can
(26:54):
do these things that are scary for you. And he
says yeah, yeah. And the other thing is he can
talk to girls. And then I was like, oh, Jasper
can talk to girls. Like that's what you mean when
you say that he's brave, is that he is willing
to do scary things, not just ride his bike off
the roof, but talk to girls and put himself out there.
(27:14):
And you want to be around that because you want
to get better at that. And he said yeah, And
I said, okay, I think I totally understand, and that
is a very important thing. Like, I totally understand why
you want that. Tonight'sund a good night for it. But
I promise you that sometime next week we will find
tonight when you can spend the night with Jasper and
you can sort of build that relationship. And he was like, Okay,
(27:36):
that's fine.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
This could have been a fight, This could have been
some conflict. But instead by asking this deep question, by
repeating back and proving that I'm listening, by helping him
see his own words and a new light because I'm
repeating them, and then by asking him if I got
it right, it just resolved all of the conflicts completely.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You're a very disciplined parent to have done it in
that moment.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
I screw up all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Okay, but are you going to let him ride bikes
off the roof? Or can you just let Jasper teach
him about talking to girls?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Oh my gosh, Now you are getting at the anxieties
I wake up with.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Every morning, Kang, you might want to address that piece
hang out.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
To ride his bikes off the roof.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Okay, So how do these strategies apply when we're having
online conversations? I mean, obviously we're having I think I
don't know what the data says, but I'm having far
more online conversations in any given day that I'm having
actual in person conversations. So can I translate some of
this wisdom to the internets.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, So here's what we know about online conversations. First
of all, over index on politeness. Like there's been all
these studies that show when people are actually arguing with
each other, if just one person starts saying please and
thank you, all of a sudden, the temperature goes down significantly.
So over index on politeness, over index on explaining and acknowledging.
(29:01):
When you and I in are a conversation and I
say something, you nod your head, so I know that
you're listening to me.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
I know that you're you're getting it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But online you can't see someone nodding their head, So
you should over index on saying like. That's a good point, Jim,
what I hear you saying is x am, I getting
that right. That's a really good point. Don't criticize each
other publicly, and in fact, if you can avoid criticizing
each other in print, it's usually a better idea. Because
we tend not to hear the caveats that help soften that.
(29:30):
And then finally, the best thing that you can do
online is say, sometimes this conversation shouldn't be had online,
Like we all know when a conversation should move to
the telephone.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yeah, and it's so much easier.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Somebody says something to you mean, and there's part of
your brain that's like I should call that person up
and I should like ask them like do they really
mean that? And let them know it kind of hurt me.
But instead of what we do is we're like, oh, yeah,
well you're a jerk too, right, and now it's escalating.
So the keys to online conversations are to over index
on the things that we know are important, and to
(30:10):
also acknowledge sometimes the conversations should move offline and to
respect that when you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Feel it great.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What's your favorite testimonial or story from someone who applied
these principles and saw real life change. And maybe that's you, Like,
maybe you're the one who's had that it's kind of
transformative experience in their personal life.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
No, I've definitely had transformative experiences. Although I will say
that it's not infrequent that my wife over the dinner
table when I'm like monologuing about like how the Dune
movie should have been better, She's like, She's like, you know,
there's this book about communication that you might think about
reading because you're not doing anything that it prescribes. But
I would say that that the most powerful ones for
(30:52):
me is I get emails from readers and they say
things like I've been avoiding a conversation for years with
my mom, or or there's this person at work that
I just cannot get along with. And I thought I
thought it was a personality problem. I thought that we
couldn't I thought that we couldn't connect, that like it
was impossible to connect.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
And so I just decided to.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Like take one of your things and I went and
I asked them a deep question, and it changed everything.
Suddenly I understand them in a whole different way, and
they actually want to talk to me now. Or I've
been fighting with my mom and instead of fighting, I
just went and I said, like, tell me why this
is important to you, Like what does this mean to you?
And then I looped for understanding. I repeated it back
(31:34):
to her and I asked her if I got it right,
And suddenly it was like the angry air went out
of the room. Those emails are really meaningful because the
truth of the matter is that like it's awful to
avoid a conversation, it's awful to have your stomach up
in knots because you know you have to talk about
something and you don't want to talk about it and
you're really worried about it. And yet that conversation. You
(31:56):
will always feel better after that conversation than you did
before it, particularly if you know how to have it.
If you know it, just some simple skills to make
it better.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I mean, and sometimes they won't go well, but maybe
they go well the next time right or the time
after that.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
And that's a really important point. Nobody is born as
super communicator. Nobody knows how to do this from birth.
The way we get better at it is by practicing it.
And just because you ask a deep question and it
doesn't go well and you have an awkward conversation, that
doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. That means you're learning
how to do it, and it's going to become a habit.
It's going to get easier. But just stick with it
(32:31):
and eventually you'll be able to have the conversations you.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Want to have, Charles, You've given us so many powerful
strategies for improving our communication. Obviously, this takes a lot
of deliberate practice and effort. Right, you have to be experimental.
You have to take risks. You have to ask those
tough why questions when it feels really uncomfortable, and then
collect evidence over time that actually it wasn't as scary
(32:53):
as I thought, and oh it really paid off here.
I made better friends with this person than I thought.
Motivate us in this moment to really care about this pursuit,
to like really want to put in the effort.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
In the epilogue of the book, I describe a little
bit the Harvard Study of Adult of that it's the
study that's for eighty years. They followed around thousands of
people to try and figure out what are the conditions
preconditions that make you happy and healthy and live longer
as you get older. And they had all these crazy
theories when the experiment started in the twenties and thirties,
(33:26):
like because it was at Harvard, they basically said, like,
if you're a Harvard Man, they're definitely going to be
happier as you get older. It turns out that's not true.
You know that you should get married, that you should
belong to a good church, that you should come from
a good family. Basically, the only thing that they've found
is that your happiness and your success, however you define
success and most importantly, your health, your longevity. At age
(33:48):
sixty five, the single greatest corel it is having at
least a handful of close relationships. At age forty five,
connecting with other people is the thing that makes us
healthier and happier and more successful. And the way we
connect with other people is through conversation, learning the skills
that can make you a super communicator, learning practicing just
(34:10):
a little bit, and then calling that friend that you
haven't talked to in nine months and saying, hey, man,
I'm just wondering, like what's life like for you? Like
how you feel in these days?
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I know you went to Tahiti and it sounds amazing,
Like what about it? Like why did you go on
such a long trip? What about that was special? Just
doing that, having that conversation, it makes us happier, It
makes us healthier, and so it's worth learning to do this,
not because you have to be forced to be a
super communicator, but because it's something that makes your life better.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Thanks so much for listening. That's our final episode of
the season. We'll be back in the new year with
more episodes. In the meantime, you might enjoy my conversation
with champion debater bo So about the art of effective debating.
Bo says it starts with learning how to listen well.
The episode is called Let's Agree to Disagree More, and
(35:26):
we'll link to it in the show notes. You can
also check out our back catalog at any time. Every
episode is free and each story is timeless. You can
find them wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you
have a wonderful holiday season. See you next year. A
(35:51):
Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our
showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer Ericahuang. Louis Scara wrote
delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
(36:13):
A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course
a very special thanks.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
To Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram
at doctor Maya Schunker
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies
and our brains change. Our heart rates starts to match
each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other,
our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly,
the neural activity within our brains starts to look more
and more similar. This simultaneity, the similarity, is at the
core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
(00:54):
and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
we feel wonderful.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Journalist Charles Duhigg is interested in the science of what
makes for a good conversation, and one thing he's learned
is the importance of asking the right kind of question.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
ask them how they feel about their life. If you
get into this habit of saying like I'm going to
ask a question that invites the other person to tell
me how they see themselves in the world, what they
feel about something, what they think about it, rather than
the facts about it, what you'll find is that it's
overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
On today's show, how to Connect More Deeply with Others,
I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. Charles's latest book
(02:01):
is called Super Communicators, How to Unlock This Secret Language
of Connection. It's an exploration into how we can improve
our communit nication skills, and it was inspired by challenges
Charles was facing in his own life.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I found that at home I was having these conversations
with my wife and my kids that were not as
meaningful and as deep as I felt like they should be.
And then I felt like at work. I was a
reporter at the New York Times at that point, and
they made me a manager, and I figured I'd be
great at it, right, like I've had managers my whole life,
And I was fine that like the logistics and planning
(02:35):
and strategy, I was terrible at communication, like just just
shockingly bad and so unprepared and surprised by that. And
so I basically decided, like, I'm going to start calling
experts and ask them, if I'm a professional communicator as
a journalist, why am I so bad at this? And
what I learned when I called them was that they said,
(02:56):
we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication
for really the first time. So we have answers to
give you that even just.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
A decade ago, we might not have been able to provide.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
What kind of signals were you receiving at home and
then at work that you were a crappy communicator?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, Like, you know, sometimes my wife would come home
and she'd have like a problem, like something that happened
at work that she was kind of upset about, and
what I would do is try and solve the problem
for her, and she would get frustrated because she didn't
want me to solve the problem right, She wanted me
just to listen and empathize. Or I might come home
from work and like, I've had a tough day and
talk about how my boss doesn't understand me, and she says,
(03:34):
why don't you take your boss out to lunch and
get to know each other better? And then then I
get upset and I say, you know, you're supposed to
be on my side, why aren't you supporting me? And
then at work, there were a number of times where
people would come to me with something and it was
clear that one or two things was happening. Either I
was not hearing them accurately, because they would walk away
upset or I was hearing them accurately and they didn't
(03:56):
understand that I was listening. I was doing a bad
job of proving to them that I'm listening to them.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
You talked about the science evolving, which is obviously super exciting,
and you you know, your book is called super Kenmunicator.
So there's this concept and we'll get into the traits
of a super communicator later on, but I'd love to
hear when you're in conversation with a super communicator, how
is that person making you feel.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
It's a great question.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
It's a great question because you're focusing on not the
super communicator, but the other person, and that's what the
super communicator does too. So one of the things, and
let me preface this by saying, being a super communicator
is not that unique a skill. In fact, we all
can be super communicators. One of the big insights from
the research is that communication is a set of skills,
(04:44):
and if you learn those skills, you can connect with
almost anyone. What's happening. And this gets to how we
feel in a conversation with a supercommunicator. When you and
I have a real conversation, our bodies and our brains change.
Our heart rate starts to match each other, our breath
patterns starts to match each other, our pupils start to
dilate at similar rates, and more importantly, the neural activity
(05:05):
within our brains starts to look more and more similar.
And Urry Hassan at Princeton, who I know you're familiar with,
He's done a lot of this research looking at this
simultaneity that our thoughts look more and more alike. And
that makes sense when you think about it, because if
I tell you about a feeling that I'm having, you
actually experience that emotion a little bit, right. If I
(05:25):
tell you about an idea, you experience that idea. So
it makes sense that our brains would look similar. What
Urian others have found is that it's this simultaneity, the
similarity and what's known as neural entrainment is at the
core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
(05:46):
and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
we feel wonderful.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Wow, there's so much to unpack here.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Okay, So the first thing that I'm hearing is we
call it a conversation, but the ultimate reward is in
the feeling of connectedness, because that is the thing that
you're actually mapping too, right when it comes to that's
the size of the brain.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
It's very good proving that you're listening, very you're doing
a great job. You are a supercommunicator. But that's exactly right. Now,
that doesn't mean we have to agree with each other.
But as long as the goal of our conversation is
to understand how the other person sees the world and
to speak in such a way that you understand how
I see the world, we will feel connected to each
other even if we disagree, and that connectedness is at
(06:27):
the core of why conversation is so important.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The other thing you mentioned is that anyone can become
a super communicator. I want to push back a little
bit on this, which is like, clearly we can't all
become the same level of super communicator. So in the
same way that I mean, no one's born a basketball player,
like no one's born a super communicator. People do have
varying levels of potential given their genetic makeup, right, I mean,
(06:53):
let's say proclivities towards introspection or emotional intelligence, like I
just have to believe that those would be correlated with
better communicative skills.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
So you're exactly right.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
There are some people for whom this is more intuitive.
And we should make one observation, which is that there
seems to be some research suggesting that folks who are
on the autism spectrum, not the entire spectrum, but on
part of the spectrum, that they do have a cognitive
challenge around communicating with other folks. You're exactly right. Not
(07:23):
all of us can become NBA players, but we can
all learn to play a decent game of basketball.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So you say, Charles, that one of the main reasons
that we struggle to communicate effectively is that each person
is often entering a discussion with a different goal in mind,
and that there's actually distinct kinds of conversations that are
happening within any given discussion. So can you walk me
through the three different types of conversations we might have.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Absolutely, And this is one of the big findings of
the last decade is that when we have a discussion,
we tend to assume it's about one thing, right, and
we tend to assume that it's the goal that I
have in mind, and you think it's the goal you
have in mind. Inside every discussion is multiple kinds of conversations,
different kinds of conversations. They use different parts of our brains,
and they tend to fall into one of three buckets.
(08:13):
There's these practical conversations where we're making plans together or
we're solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I
tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you
to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, right,
I want you to relate. And then there's social conversations,
which is about how we relate to each other in society,
the identities that are important to us. And what we
know is that those three main kinds of conversations they
(08:36):
use very different parts of our brains. And so that
neural and train that I discussed that simultaneity is very
hard to accomplish. And so what's important is what's known
as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the
same kind of conversation at the same moment, and that
doesn't mean we're on train tracks. So we got to
stay on that. Right every discussion. We might start emotional
(08:57):
and then move to practical, and then go back to emotional,
and then go to social But as long as we're
moving together, then we're going to feel connected to each other,
We're going to understand each other much much better.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
So I'm imagining two people in conversation right now who
are trying to match one another. I think what's important
to emphasize is that as the conversation progresses, I, in turn,
am going to try to find ways to match you. Absolutely,
So it's a constant back and forth throughout the conversation
where we're both taking opportunities to either invite them into
our headspace or offering ourselves up to enter theirs.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, and you're right, And when you think about it,
at the core of that is reciprocity.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Right, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
A good conversation is back and forth. Yes, a great
conversation If you read the transcript of it, and you
know this because I'm sure you read transcripts of these
all the time, it looks like a mess. A great
conversation on paper looks like a total mess. It's people
talking over each other, interrupting each other. You start an
idea and then you get distracted and you say something else.
It's not a speech. That's what makes the conversation great
(10:03):
is this reciprocity where we're deciding together what we're going
to talk about next.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, you share a story about a doctor struggling to
communicate with his patients, and I think that this really
helps illustrate the benefits of matching.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
So this is one of my favorite stories.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So there's a physician in New York City named doctor
Bifar Adai who is probably one of the world's leading
authorities on prostate tumors, how to remove prostate tumors, how
to treat prostate tumors. And so every day a new
patient comes into his office having just learned the prostate
cancer and doctor d assumed that they were coming in
asking for his advice, and so what he would do
(10:40):
is he would tell them, Look, here's the thing about
prostate cancer. It's very, very slow growing. In fact, we
have this saying in medicine that for older patients, they'll
die of old age before they die of prostate cancer.
And the most certain way that I can cure you
is I can go in and I can cut out
the tumor. If I cut it out, the cancer's gone.
The problem is that the prostate is located close to
(11:00):
the nerves that control your nation and sexual function, and
so for some percentage of patients there's going to be
lifelong side effects even if the surgery is a success.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
So what he says is, here's my advice. Do nothing.
Pretend you don't have cancer.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Do this thing called active surveillance, where you take blood
every six months and you do a biopsy every two years,
and you go to the MRI if the biopsy shows anything.
But otherwise, don't do any treatment. Don't do any radiation,
no chemotherapy, don't do any surgery. And he would say
this to these patients and they would listen and they'd
say thanks, Doc, and then they'd go home and they
talk it over with their spouse. Then they'd come in
the next day and they'd say, you know, I thought
(11:35):
about it last night, and I'd like you to cut
me open as fast as humanly possible.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Like you cut me open, take it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Out, get it out.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
So doctor yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And Doctor Die was bewildered because they're coming to him
because he's an expert. He's giving them advice and they're
ignoring his advice. But he realizes it's not that they're
ignoring his advice, it's that they can't hear him, he's
doing the conversation wrong. So he goes to these researchers
at Harvard Business School. We specialize on what's known as
everyday negotiations or quiet negotiations, the kind of negotiations we
(12:04):
have with our spouses and our kids, where the goal
isn't necessarily to win, the goal is to like actually
understand what everyone wants. And they say to him, you're
starting this conversation with your patients all wrong. You're assuming
you know what they want. What you need to do
is you need to ask them what's known as a
deep question. You need to ask them a question that
(12:24):
invites them to talk about their values and their beliefs
and their experiences, the things that matter to them. So
two weeks later, patient comes into doctor Die's office. Sixty
two year old man, you just learned that he has
prostate cancer. And instead of going into a song and
dance about don't do anything. Here's what the studies show
doctor and Die starts the conversation by saying, can you
(12:47):
just tell me what does this cancer diagnosis mean to you?
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And the man kind of sits for a minute.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
He says, you know, when they told me I had
cancer The first thing I thought about was my dad,
because he died when I was seventeen years old, and
I did not want to put my wife through that,
and I do not want to put my kids through that.
And at work, if they find out I have cancer
at work, I'm only sixty two. I want to work
for another eight twelve years. If they know that I've cancer, work,
suddenly all the young people are gonna see me as
the old sick guy is gonna change how they see me.
(13:16):
And Doctor D realizes this man is then an emotional mindset.
This man needs to have an emotional conversation. And so
what Doctor D does is he matches him. Doctor Did says,
you know, I know exactly how you feel because my
dad got six seven years ago and he had the
same concerns you did. But I got to tell you,
like it ended up being less bad than he thought
(13:38):
it was gonna be, and there were these like unexpected benefits,
Like we had these conversations that we had never had before.
My dad completely rethought like what was important to him,
what he wanted to do with his retirement. Doctor Die
matched and shared some emotional perspectives of his own. He
reciprocated and then he says to the man, look, I'm wondering,
(14:00):
can I can I tell you about a couple of
treatment options that I think you should think about in
this thing called active surveillance. In other words, he says,
can I move from an emotional conversation into a practical conversation?
And the man says, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that,
and he goes over active surveillance. The man says that
sounds like a great idea. I'm not going to do
any treatment, never changes his mind. The number of patients
(14:20):
who are listened to doctor Dye's advice went up astronomically
after this one little change, which is starting the interview
by asking the person a question rather than assuming he.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Knew what they wanted.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, you're teaching me in this moment that when it
comes to thinking about this body of work, I was
approaching this conversation today thinking about it through the lens
of connection, but you're now opening my eyes to see
it through the lens of influence. Right, you can't just
bulldoze your way past the other person's intention because they're
building up a wall and whatever you share with them
(14:55):
will just be inaccessible to them. So only in breaking
down that wall. Do you even penetrate enough such that
whatever messages you're trying to communicate even have a chance
of being registered.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And it's funny that you use this word influence because
because we tend to sort of look down our nose
at influence.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Right, he's trying to influence me. He's an influencer.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But when you think about it, a lot of our
communication is influence. It's soft influence. If I tell you
a joke, I'm trying to influence you to see something
as funny that I see as funny. If I tell
you that I'm excited, like I want to really want
to go see that movie, don't you want to see
it too, I'm trying to influence you to see the
world that what I do. So communication and influence are
tied up together. But influence doesn't mean I'm trying to
(15:39):
manipulate you. Influence means I'm trying to share with you.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
I think the point you're making is really critical. We're
doing ourselves a favor by allowing someone to ask those
deep questions of us and vice versa, because we're just
we're opening up the gates so that new information can
come in and then we decide on our own terms, right,
whether or not we are influenced, but we're at least
giving that information a chance.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's exactly right. And it gets to this question of
what is actually the goal of a conversation, right, What
is the goal of communication? And one way of thinking
about it is, my goal is to convince you that
I'm right and you're wrong, Or my goal is to
convince you that I'm smart. My goal is to convince
you should like me. Right, none of those are the
goals of conversation or communication. The goal of a conversation
(16:26):
is to speak in such a way that the other
person can understand you, and to listen in such a
way that you can understand them. If you both understand
each other, the conversation is a success. Now, you might
walk away not liking this person. You might walk away
thinking they're an idiot or disagreeing with.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Them, or that their views are reprehensible.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Right exactly, and yet if you understand how they see
the world and they understand how you see the world,
then that conversation has been a success. And I guarantee you,
even if you do disagree with the person you feel
more connected to them.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. If we want to be better communicators, Charles says,
we need to ask deep questions. So I asked him
(17:26):
how we can start practicing this.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
It's the easiest thing on earth.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
ask them how they feel.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
About their life.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
So if I meet you and I know that you're
a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you
work at, which is a fact, I ask you, Oh,
what meets you decide to go to medical school?
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Right now?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
What I'm doing is I'm asking you about your values,
Like what is it that led you to this career?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Oh? What do you like about? What do you like
about being a doctor? Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
You live in the heights. That's interesting. I live in
the heights too. I'm just wondering, like, what is it
about the heights that you like?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Like?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Is it a sense of community that you feel up there?
Those are the easiest things to do, And we can convince.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Ourselves that asking deep questions is hard because because we're
worried about doing it, and yet we know is that
communication as a skill, if you practice it, it becomes
a habit very very quickly. And if you get into
this habit of saying, like, I'm going to ask a
question that invites the other person to tell me how
they see themselves in the world, what they feel about something,
(18:23):
what they think about it, rather than the facts about it,
what you'll find is that it's overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
You talk about it finding your book, which is that
super communicators ask like way more questions in conversation than
someone else. And I think you call them why questions, right,
it's like, well, why did you go to medical school?
Like why did you move to the neighborhood? Just tell
me about that finding it's quite powerful.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So there was a study that was done by a
guy named Bo Sivers, who's a wonderful researcher, and he
looked at groups and tried to figure out why some
groups of strangers would become more closely bonded than others
and would understand each other better. And what he found
is that in those groups that became really successfully bonded,
there was at least one person who was a super communicator.
(19:08):
So one of the things that they did is that
they asked, as you point out, ten to twenty times
as many questions as the average person. Now, what's interesting, though,
is that most people don't pick up on those questions
because there are questions like, oh that's interesting, what happened next?
Or oh oh what'd you think about that?
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Oh? Oh yeah, did you like that?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
There are questions that are invitations to participate in the conversation,
But some of the questions are deep questions like how
did you feel when you heard him say that? Right,
I'm just wondering, like was that something you when you
saw that scene?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Did you like it? Or did you not like it?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Those are deep questions that are basically saying, tell me
how you see the world. And again, it's not hard
to learn these skills.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So I think one challenge I face, and I'm curious
to know Charles, if you face this too, because you're
a journalist and I'm a podcaster, is like I I
always worry, Oh my god, am I coming on too
strong in conversation because I sit down, I'm like, all right,
to hell with the pleasantries, right to get straight to business, Like,
tell me about the hardest moment of your life. And
(20:12):
I'm so used to being licensed to do that in
an interview. Contexts that I sometis forget that over coffee
with a friend. I don't know, maybe a few warm
up questions would have been appropriate, right, I just want
to hear your reflections on my approach and whether I
need to kind of back off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
You know you're doing exactly right.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
So one of my favorite experiments in this is that
a number of years ago, these two research psychologists named
Arthur and Elaine Aaron.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
They were a husband and wife.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
They wanted to try and figure out if there was
a method that they could use to make any two
strangers into friends.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
And so they tried all these different things.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
They would have people make puzzles together, or tell each
other stories, or they tried pairing people based on similar interests,
right like they went to the same church where they
were both smokers, or they both hate smokers. They had
some of them just tap their fingers together to see
if that made them feel closer.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
None of the interventions really.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Worked, Like you basically just saw a completely sort of
normal distribution of some people liked each other and some
people didn't. And then they came up with this new idea.
They wrote a list of thirty six questions and they
were deep questions, and some of them started kind of easy.
The first question is if you could have a dinner
party with anyone from history, who would it be. Okay,
(21:22):
that's an easy question. But by question number six, it's
things like tell me about your mother, do you have
a suspicion about how you're going to die and when
it will happen? Question number thirty five of the thirty
six is when's the last time you cried in front
of another person? So they give that people these lists
of questions, they go back and forth, ask an answer, question,
(21:42):
take so just forty five minutes, and then they send
everyone home and everyone assumes that the experiment is over,
but actually the experiment is just beginning, because seven weeks
later they contact all of those people who had been
in those rooms two by two and they ask them,
I got a question for you. Since you did that experiment,
have you actually talked to that person that you did
it with? And people would say things like, yeah, you know,
(22:05):
I didn't catch his last name.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
I know it was like John R. Something that started
with R.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I got out the student directory and I called
every single John R in the student directory until I
found him or or you know, for professionals, they would
say things like, you know, I would just walk around
the park at lunch looking for for that person that
I talked to. One guy said, you know, it's funny
you asked, because like, we got together for a beer
about two weeks after the experiment, and then we saw
(22:30):
a movie a week later. And when they got married
a year after the experiment, they invited everyone in the
lab to come to the ceremony.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So this has become known as the fast friends procedure.
Sometimes it's own as the thirty six questions that lead
to love, because that was a headline.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, I've seen it in like the New York Times,
Yes exactly.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
And what what's interesting about this is two things. Number One,
we have discovered that you don't actually need those warm
up questions.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
The assumption was that you need.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
To move from less intimate to more intimate to get
people comfortable. But people can get deep immediately. But the
other important thing is that someone else tried to do
the experiment and slightly different way, same questions, list of
thirty six questions. What he did is he had one
person answer all thirty six questions to the other person,
and then the second person would take the list and
answer all thirty six questions. Afterwards, people never felt close
(23:22):
to each other. They said it was boring, it was awkward.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, you need that back and forth.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
It's the reciprocess.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yes, yes, it's the reciprocity of vulnerability and authenticity that
makes us feel close to someone else.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
There's a confounding factor here, which is in an experimental setting,
you are explicitly licensed to go straight into those deep questions.
So what tactics can we use in real life with
our friends or someone we've just met to go straight
into those deep questions?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Absolutely, So the number one thing you can do is
you can say I was listening to a podcast and
the person on the podcast told me I should ask
you this question, when's the last time you And now
if you don't want to say that, then that's.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Where we can do those preliminary questions. Oh, where'd you
go to high school?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Went to valley?
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Man, what was it like to go to valley? Did
you like high school? It's as easy as just making
that pivot, and we tend to assume it's going to
be less well received. It's going to be harder to
do that we're going to feel awkward as we do it,
that it's not going to go well and our expectations
are completely wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
So we've talked through one big strategy, Charles, which is
the importance of matching, and you've given us the advice
that one way to do this is to ask deep
questions and of course to pick up on other cues.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Right, I mean, if you.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Laugh heartily and their face turned sour for probably that
wasn't you know you're not quite matchem Let's talk about
some of your other recommendations for how we can become
better communicators.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So what do we do once we know what kind
of conversation is happening and we've started to match each
other well, at that moment, it's really really important that
we listen to each other. What's interesting, though, is that
listening is not enough oftentimes, particularly in hard conversations, particularly
when there's conflict we're discussing, when we disagree with each other.
I need to not only listen to you, I need
to prove that I'm listening to you. So there's this
(25:17):
technique that they teach it in business schools. It's called
looping for understanding as three steps. Step one is that
you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two
is that you repeat back in your own words what
you heard the person say. And then step three, and
this is the one I always forget, ask if you
got it right? Because when you ask if you got
it right, what you're actually asking is can I have
(25:39):
your permission to acknowledge that I'm listening to you?
Speaker 4 (25:43):
And again, because of how our brains.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Have evolved, because of the sociality that we've all sort
of developed, when we believe someone is listening to us,
we become much much more likely to listen to them
and return. It's a reciprocity that we almost can't deny ourselves.
We can't even fight it. So, like, let's say, you know,
so one of my younger kids, he wanted to like
(26:06):
hang out at his friend, spend the night at Jasper's house.
His friend Jasper, and I didn't want him to go
suspend the night at Jasper's house.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
I wanted him to be home.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
And so, but rather than have a fight, rather than
I have a conflict, what I did is I did
looping for understanding. So the first thing I said it
is I said, you know, I'm just wondering like, what
is it about Jasper that's important to you? And he said, oh,
you know, the thing about Jasper is that he's really
really brave. And I was like, he's brave, Like what
does that mean? Like what it seems like you admire him?
(26:33):
Like what do you mean he's brave? And he said, oh,
sometimes we'll get up on his roof with their bikes
and he'll ride his bike off the roof. And I
was like, that doesn't sound brave, but but I'm looping
for understanding. And so what I said is that what
I hear you saying is that Jasper. You like hanging
out with Jasper because because it seems like he can
(26:54):
do these things that are scary for you. And he
says yeah, yeah. And the other thing is he can
talk to girls. And then I was like, oh, Jasper
can talk to girls. Like that's what you mean when
you say that he's brave, is that he is willing
to do scary things, not just ride his bike off
the roof, but talk to girls and put himself out there.
(27:14):
And you want to be around that because you want
to get better at that. And he said yeah, And
I said, okay, I think I totally understand, and that
is a very important thing. Like, I totally understand why
you want that. Tonight'sund a good night for it. But
I promise you that sometime next week we will find
tonight when you can spend the night with Jasper and
you can sort of build that relationship. And he was like, Okay,
(27:36):
that's fine.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
This could have been a fight, This could have been
some conflict. But instead by asking this deep question, by
repeating back and proving that I'm listening, by helping him
see his own words and a new light because I'm
repeating them, and then by asking him if I got
it right, it just resolved all of the conflicts completely.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
You're a very disciplined parent to have done it in
that moment.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
I screw up all the time.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Okay, but are you going to let him ride bikes
off the roof? Or can you just let Jasper teach
him about talking to girls?
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Oh my gosh, Now you are getting at the anxieties
I wake up with.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Every morning, Kang, you might want to address that piece
hang out.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
To ride his bikes off the roof.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Okay, So how do these strategies apply when we're having
online conversations? I mean, obviously we're having I think I
don't know what the data says, but I'm having far
more online conversations in any given day that I'm having
actual in person conversations. So can I translate some of
this wisdom to the internets.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, So here's what we know about online conversations. First
of all, over index on politeness. Like there's been all
these studies that show when people are actually arguing with
each other, if just one person starts saying please and
thank you, all of a sudden, the temperature goes down significantly.
So over index on politeness, over index on explaining and acknowledging.
(29:01):
When you and I in are a conversation and I
say something, you nod your head, so I know that
you're listening to me.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
I know that you're you're getting it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But online you can't see someone nodding their head, So
you should over index on saying like. That's a good point, Jim,
what I hear you saying is x am, I getting
that right. That's a really good point. Don't criticize each
other publicly, and in fact, if you can avoid criticizing
each other in print, it's usually a better idea. Because
we tend not to hear the caveats that help soften that.
(29:30):
And then finally, the best thing that you can do
online is say, sometimes this conversation shouldn't be had online,
Like we all know when a conversation should move to
the telephone.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yeah, and it's so much easier.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Somebody says something to you mean, and there's part of
your brain that's like I should call that person up
and I should like ask them like do they really
mean that? And let them know it kind of hurt me.
But instead of what we do is we're like, oh, yeah,
well you're a jerk too, right, and now it's escalating.
So the keys to online conversations are to over index
on the things that we know are important, and to
(30:10):
also acknowledge sometimes the conversations should move offline and to
respect that when you.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Feel it great.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What's your favorite testimonial or story from someone who applied
these principles and saw real life change. And maybe that's you, Like,
maybe you're the one who's had that it's kind of
transformative experience in their personal life.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
No, I've definitely had transformative experiences. Although I will say
that it's not infrequent that my wife over the dinner
table when I'm like monologuing about like how the Dune
movie should have been better, She's like, She's like, you know,
there's this book about communication that you might think about
reading because you're not doing anything that it prescribes. But
I would say that that the most powerful ones for
(30:52):
me is I get emails from readers and they say
things like I've been avoiding a conversation for years with
my mom, or or there's this person at work that
I just cannot get along with. And I thought I
thought it was a personality problem. I thought that we
couldn't I thought that we couldn't connect, that like it
was impossible to connect.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
And so I just decided to.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Like take one of your things and I went and
I asked them a deep question, and it changed everything.
Suddenly I understand them in a whole different way, and
they actually want to talk to me now. Or I've
been fighting with my mom and instead of fighting, I
just went and I said, like, tell me why this
is important to you, Like what does this mean to you?
And then I looped for understanding. I repeated it back
(31:34):
to her and I asked her if I got it right,
And suddenly it was like the angry air went out
of the room. Those emails are really meaningful because the
truth of the matter is that like it's awful to
avoid a conversation, it's awful to have your stomach up
in knots because you know you have to talk about
something and you don't want to talk about it and
you're really worried about it. And yet that conversation. You
(31:56):
will always feel better after that conversation than you did
before it, particularly if you know how to have it.
If you know it, just some simple skills to make
it better.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I mean, and sometimes they won't go well, but maybe
they go well the next time right or the time
after that.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
And that's a really important point. Nobody is born as
super communicator. Nobody knows how to do this from birth.
The way we get better at it is by practicing it.
And just because you ask a deep question and it
doesn't go well and you have an awkward conversation, that
doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. That means you're learning
how to do it, and it's going to become a habit.
It's going to get easier. But just stick with it
(32:31):
and eventually you'll be able to have the conversations you.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Want to have, Charles, You've given us so many powerful
strategies for improving our communication. Obviously, this takes a lot
of deliberate practice and effort. Right, you have to be experimental.
You have to take risks. You have to ask those
tough why questions when it feels really uncomfortable, and then
collect evidence over time that actually it wasn't as scary
(32:53):
as I thought, and oh it really paid off here.
I made better friends with this person than I thought.
Motivate us in this moment to really care about this pursuit,
to like really want to put in the effort.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
In the epilogue of the book, I describe a little
bit the Harvard Study of Adult of that it's the
study that's for eighty years. They followed around thousands of
people to try and figure out what are the conditions
preconditions that make you happy and healthy and live longer
as you get older. And they had all these crazy
theories when the experiment started in the twenties and thirties,
(33:26):
like because it was at Harvard, they basically said, like,
if you're a Harvard Man, they're definitely going to be
happier as you get older. It turns out that's not true.
You know that you should get married, that you should
belong to a good church, that you should come from
a good family. Basically, the only thing that they've found
is that your happiness and your success, however you define
success and most importantly, your health, your longevity. At age
(33:48):
sixty five, the single greatest corel it is having at
least a handful of close relationships. At age forty five,
connecting with other people is the thing that makes us
healthier and happier and more successful. And the way we
connect with other people is through conversation, learning the skills
that can make you a super communicator, learning practicing just
(34:10):
a little bit, and then calling that friend that you
haven't talked to in nine months and saying, hey, man,
I'm just wondering, like what's life like for you? Like
how you feel in these days?
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I know you went to Tahiti and it sounds amazing,
Like what about it? Like why did you go on
such a long trip? What about that was special? Just
doing that, having that conversation, it makes us happier, It
makes us healthier, and so it's worth learning to do this,
not because you have to be forced to be a
super communicator, but because it's something that makes your life better.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Thanks so much for listening. That's our final episode of
the season. We'll be back in the new year with
more episodes. In the meantime, you might enjoy my conversation
with champion debater bo So about the art of effective debating.
Bo says it starts with learning how to listen well.
The episode is called Let's Agree to Disagree More, and
(35:26):
we'll link to it in the show notes. You can
also check out our back catalog at any time. Every
episode is free and each story is timeless. You can
find them wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you
have a wonderful holiday season. See you next year. A
(35:51):
Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our
showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer Ericahuang. Louis Scara wrote
delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
(36:13):
A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course
a very special thanks.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
To Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram
at doctor Maya Schunker
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.