November 13, 2024 • 27 mins
Journalist Charles Duhigg shares strategies for making any conversation better
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and their advice
(00:25):
for the rest of us. So today I am delighted
to welcome Charles Duhig to the show. Charles is the
author of several books, including the Power of Habit and
his latest Super Communicators, which is about how to unlock
the secret language of connection. So, Charles, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, so, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah. So, I live in Santa Cruz, California. I have
two kids, both of them teenagers, both boys, And I'm
a writer at the New Yorker magazine And as you mentioned,
the author of a couple of books, and Super Communicators,
the one that came out earlier.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This year Awesome. And do you consider yourself a good communicator?
Are you learning better at it now?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
You know, this book actually started because I fell into
this bad pattern with my wife, which I'm imagining many
people listening can relate to which is I would come
home after a long day at work and I would
sart complaining about my day, and you know, my boss
doesn't appreciate me, and my coworkers don't understand what a
genius I am. And my wife would offer this really
good advice. This is something like, why don't you take
your boss out to lunch and you guys can get
(01:28):
to know each other a little bit more, And instead
of being able to hear her advice, I would get
even more upset and say, like, you're supposed to be
supporting me, why aren't you outraged on my behalf? And
then she'd get upset because I was attacking her for
giving me good advice. And so that's kind of how
the book began, is me calling researchers and saying, I'm
theoretically a professional communicator, right, I'm a journalist. Why do
I keep falling into this pattern again and again and
(01:51):
again of miscommunicating?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, because we all have different ways of communicating, it
turns out, and one of the interests things about super
communicators is you talk about how there are three kinds
of conversations, and most of us don't necessarily think about
what kind of conversation we are having sounds like you
and your wife were having two entirely separate conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
In that case, that's exactly right. Yeah. So what researchers
have found, and we're actually living through this golden age
of understanding communication for really the first time because of
advances in neural imaging and data collection, And what they
found is that when we have a discussion, we tend
to think of it as being about one thing, right,
We're talking about my day, where to go on vacation,
or the kids' grades. But actually every discussion is made
(02:35):
up of different kinds of conversations, and those conversations they
tend to fall into one of three buckets. As you
just mentioned. There's these practical conversations where we're talking about
making plans or solving problems together. But then there's also
emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling and
I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want
you to empathize and relate. And then there's social conversations,
(02:57):
which is about how we relate to each other in
society and the identities that are important to us. And
what researchers have found is that if you're having different
kinds of conversations at the same moment, it's very, very
difficult to completely hear each other and it's almost impossible
to connect. And you're exactly right, that's what was happening
with me and my wife. I was having an emotional conversation,
she was having a practical conversation, and they're both equally
(03:20):
legitimate conversations, but because we weren't having the same kinds
of conversation, we couldn't really hear each other. It's within
psychology this has become known as the matching principle. The
successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at
the same moment, and then you can move from conversation
to conversation together as long as you're aligned.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well, it sounds like then, in order to kind of
be a better listener, which I'm sure many people would
like to be, one of the first things you need
to do is figure out what kind of conversation. Yeah,
the person you're talking with is hoping to have.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's exactly right, and one of the best ways to
do that, well, so I'll tell you how how to
do it. With kids. They actually teach this in schools,
is that when someone comes up to you, a student
or one of your kids with a problem, you say, look,
do you want for this thing that you're talking to
me about? Or not even about a problem, just about
anything they want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
You say, do you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Want me to help you? Do you want me to
hug you? Or do you want me to hear you?
Which are the three kinds of conversations, right, the practical, emotional,
and the social. And what you'll find is kids can
tell you right away like no, no I don't. I
don't I just need you, like I don't need your help,
I just need a hug, right or or no, no,
I don't need a hug. I just need you to
hear what's going on and listen to me, because it's
(04:34):
important that I get this across. Now. For adults, you know,
in the business world, for instance, it's hard to say
do you want to be helped, hugged or heard because
they might go to HR so.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The hug might not work so well exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So the better way to do this is to ask questions,
and in particular to ask a kind of question that's
own as a deep question, which asks about our values
or beliefs or experiences, which can sound a little intimidating,
But it's as simple as like, if you meet someone
who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, you know what
hospital do you work at, asking them, oh, what made
(05:09):
you decide to go to medical school? That invites them
to tell you something about who they are.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well, it sounds like, you know, you're asking deeper questions.
It's kind of the opposite of small talk. I mean,
I know you have a section in the book about
taking some shallow questions and making them deeper. I wonder
if you could give some examples of them.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah. Yeah, it's anything that basically asks people, instead of
the facts of their life, asking them about how they
feel about their life. Right, So let small talk questions
just shallow questions would be like, you know, and these
are the easiest things to do. Oh you meet someone
at a party and you're like, oh, you know, what
part of town do you live in? You know, do
you know my friend Jim he lives up in the
(05:50):
heights too. A better question would be like, oh, you
live in the heights, Like what do you like about
the heights? Like is there a real sense of community there?
What drew you to that? Or were you find out,
you know, you bump into someone who's from your hometown,
and an inevitable, shallow question is you know, where'd you
go to high school? But then the next question, if
it's a deep question, could be what was high school
(06:10):
like for you? Like did you enjoy it high school?
I was at a meeting where I was sitting next
to a guy and we were like just making conversation
before the meeting started, and he mentioned that his I
asked him when he did that weekend and he said, oh,
I went to my kids graduation, and he was like
it was fantastic. Now the easiest thing to do and say, oh, congratulations,
that's great, But instead I asked him a deep question,
(06:32):
I said, and it doesn't seem like a deep question,
but it just seems like an interesting, interested question, which is, oh,
that's amazing. What did it feel like to watch your
kid walk across that stage? Like like were you proud
or like sad? That's the kind of question that invites
someone to share who they are. And more importantly, when
someone talks about their kid going to graduate, going to
(06:53):
their kids graduation, that's probably a somewhat emotional topic for them,
and instead of simply saying graduate. I matched him and
I said, oh, tell me about that. What how did
it feel to watch your kid walk across that stage?
And we had a great conversation for just like five minutes,
and then we went on and we did the meeting,
but we felt more connected to each other because we
(07:14):
had become aligned.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, exactly. I mean I think it's it's partly. You know,
small talk gets this reputation as being incredibly dull, and
it often is, but that's because the questions don't invite
further conversation. Whereas you know you're passing the time talking
about a deep emotional issue, it going to make the
time go a lot faster. Yeah, we're going to take
(07:36):
a quick ad break and then we'll be back with
some more tips on being a better communicator. Well, I
am back with Charles Douhig, who is the author of
the book Super Communicators and also the book The Power
of Habit. He's been sharing some tips on having better conversations.
(07:58):
Although I think one of the issues a lot of
us have with having good conversations, and you could tell
me if this is you know something a lot of
people do. We're always thinking about what we should be
saying next, which means that your brain isn't necessarily on
what the person is.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, No, absolutely. And in the book, we have a
bunch of stories, right the Supercommunicators is really built. There's
a story about a guy who's a CIA officer as
to recruit overseas spies that is just terrible at the
job until he learns how to how to genuinely listen
to other people. There's another story about the making of
The Big Bang Theory, the TV show, where they think
(08:36):
the show was not a hit at first. It was
a total flop until they figured out how to show
that the characters were listening to each other. And one
of the things that we know about listening is that
you're exactly right. Oftentimes in a conversation, we get a
little focused on what we're going to say next, because
we want to sound smart, right, We want to we
want to sound clever, and we want to sort of
(08:56):
share something about ourselves. But the the more we listen,
the more we automatically sound clever and share with ourselves,
even if it's not premeditated. And there's a trick to
getting yourself to listen closely to another person, and it's
called looping for understanding the goal of looping for understanding
is not only to listen closely, it's to prove to
(09:17):
the other person that you've been listening to them. And
there's three steps to it. Step one is to ask
a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is to
repeat back in your own words which you heard them say.
Don't mimic them, but like really try and prove to them, Oh,
I hear what you're saying. I think what you're saying
is this. And then step three, and this is the
step I always forget, ask if you got it right?
(09:40):
Because when you ask if you got it right, what
you're actually asking is can I have your permission to
acknowledge that I've been listening to you. Now, think about
what you have to do in that conversation instead of
thinking about what you're going to say. You have to
pay enough attention to the other person that you can
repeat back what they're going to tell you in your
own words, and you're hopefully going to get it right
(10:00):
when we put.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Ourselves because if they tell you you're wrong, what do
you do?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Then? Well, then you say, okay, I'm sorry, they explain
it to me again. I missed something right, And the
goal here is like, how do we how do we
how do we get ourselves to listen more closely? We
get ourselves to listen more closely by paying closer attention.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, so lots of different tips here for being a
good listener. But part of this is about treating conversations seriously.
And one of the things you suggest in super communicators
is actually doing some preparation for a conversation, and not
(10:39):
just difficult conversations, because we're going to talk about difficult
conversations in a minute, but even just like, let's say
I'm going out to lunch with a friend of mine
I haven't seen in six months, so obviously I'm probably
looking forward to it. You know, it's a thing I've
gotten on my calendar, probably had it there for at
least a week or two, so I'm excited about it.
(10:59):
How we should I prepare for that in order to
make it more meaningful for both of us?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, So it's a great question, right because and you
probably already do. Some of this is that as you're
anticipating seeing your friend, you're thinking to yourself, I'm really
curious I'm going to ask her about this or I'm
going to ask her about that. I wonder what's going
on with her kids. Last time we talked, she was
having some middle school problems, and I wonder if they've
resolved that. You're already preparing for that conversation, and so
the question is is how can we do that all
(11:27):
the time? How can we make that a habit? Well,
there was a study that was done by Harvard Business
School where they brought in a bunch of students, Harvard
Business School students, this was like in their first month
of school, and they told them, Okay, in a couple
of minutes, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger. Now,
having a conversation with a stranger is like one of
the most anxiety producing things you can ask someone to do,
(11:48):
right like always, because we don't know what we're going
to ask about, we don't know if we have anything
in common. And they said, before you have this conversation,
what we want you to do is we want you
to do this just ten second exercise. Take out a
piece of paper and write down three things you might
want to talk about, or three questions you might want
to ask, or just three topics that are interesting to you.
They can be stupid, right, like, you know, are you
(12:09):
going to the party this weekend? Did you catch last
night's game? And they said, okay, take ten seconds, write
down those three questions and then put them in your
pocket and go have the conversation. So students did this,
They wrote down their three things, they went and they
had the conversations, and afterwards they pulled the students and
they asked them, did you guys talk about the things
you wrote down? And most of the students said no, like,
(12:30):
actually it never came up. But on the other hand, like,
the conversation was so much less anxiety producing for me
and went so much better than I anticipated, because I
knew that if we hit like an awkward silence, I
had those questions in my back pocket, and the fact
that they were in my back pocket meant that I
didn't even have to I didn't even have to ask them. Oftentimes,
(12:51):
when we're going to have a conversation with someone, particularly
an important, meaningful conversation, one of the best things we
can do is just sit down and ask ourselves, what
is one thing that I want to tell this person about, Like,
what's one thing that's important to me that I want
to share with them, and equally, what is one question
that you absolutely want to ask that person And you
might get to that topic and that question in your conversation.
(13:14):
But the fact that you've thought a little bit about
what what your goals are for the conversations, that you've
tried to envision what the other person's goals are for
the conversations, that's going to make it so much more
natural to find the things you actually care about.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Wonderful a good idea for better conversation there. But you know,
some conversations, you know, probably if you're just having a
random conversation with another student at Harvard Business School, it
might be just casual, you know, not particularly fraught. I
know a lot of people, especially you know, charged political environments,
(13:49):
lots of topics that are heeded for people these days.
As you know, this will air after the election, but
I know a lot of people are going to be
visiting extended family, maybe people who have different political opinions
than them. I mean, without getting into the politics itself,
how do we have conversations with people that we know
(14:10):
disagree with us on a lot. Yeah, if we're also
trying to maintain the relationship. So maybe picture Thanksgiving dinner,
aunts or uncle who disagrees with you vehemently on everything.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
How does that work well? So the first thing I
would say is, it's not that this is unusual, right,
There's lots of things that we disagree with our best
friends on or our family members. In fact, if you
think about like America, like what's made us strong, it's
that we are really good at disagreeing with each other
and then working together. The Constitutional Convention was basically a
(14:47):
bunch of people coming together who hated each other, and
all they did was yell at each other for three
months straight, and then they wrote a constitution together. Having
conversations with people who don't agree with us, that's an
important part of conversation, and that's one of the nice
things about communication. And so the question is how do
we do it right? So the first thing I would
(15:08):
say is that oftentimes when people go into that conversation
they are feeling really anxious. They're not anxious necessarily about
the topic of the conversation, They're anxious about what the
conversation is going to be, Like, you know, is Jim
going to say something that offends me so much that
like it's really hard for me to continue having dinner
with him. Am I going to say the wrong thing?
And am I gonna set Susie off by saying something
(15:28):
that offends her that I didn't even realize was offensive.
And so one of the best things we can do
for those conversations is we can start them by saying,
I want to have a discussion about something, and I
want I know that it's going to be awkward, and
that's okay, Like it's okay for this conversation to be awkward.
It should kind of be awkward, and I might say
(15:49):
the wrong thing because in the space between my brain
and my lips what I'm trying to get across sometimes
it gets garbled. And I hope you'll forgive me if
I say if I say things wrong, and I want
you to know that if you say the wrong thing,
I will absolutely forgive you. But talking about this and
understanding how you see this situation it's important to me,
and so if you're willing, I'd love to have a
(16:10):
conversation with you about it. What study of the study
shows is if you start a conversation by acknowledging that
it might be hard, that it might be awkward, by
apologizing and saying I go into this with the best
of intentions, and I hope you do too. It can
transform how difficult that conversation is. That doesn't mean everyone's
going to agree with each other, but it does mean
(16:30):
that it's going to go much easier.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And it seems that partly it's just about being polite, right,
that use remembering our manners even when it is a
heated conversation can go a long way. And that was
one of the more fascinating studies you referenced in this
book is that when people well you can describe it,
(16:55):
and people use their manners online, they even manage to
turn down the temperatural absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It turns out that online if you say please and
thank you, it can transform the tenor of the discussion.
And I think the reason why is because you know,
when you think about it, in these conversations that are
tough conversations, what's the goal. If your goal is I
want to give that person a peace in my mind,
or I want to prove to them that I'm right
(17:21):
and there wrong, it's not that surprising that the conversation
is not going to go very well, right, But the
goal of a conversation shouldn't be to prove to make
the other person agree with you. It shouldn't even be
to impress them that you're smarter get them to like you.
The goal of a conversation is just to understand what
the other person is trying to say and to speak
in such a way that they understand you. And when
(17:43):
we set that as our goal, when we go into
a conversation, we say, look, I might disagree with you,
but I genuinely want to understand why you see the
world this way. All of a sudden, that conversation becomes
much easier, and that politeness that you mentioned, that's a
signal that we want to do that when I say
please and thank you, when I say, you know, that's
a really really good point. I disagree with you, but
I think you made that point really really well. What
(18:06):
we're really saying is it is my goal to understand
you as my primary objective. Everything else is secondary to that.
And when we feel like someone is listening to us,
we become much more likely to listen to them in response.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And I think partly it's just that when we're communicating,
we were seeing each other, or we're using our voices.
I mean, you can hear more of that, that it's calm,
that it's respectful versus online, when you're just seeing print,
it's probably easy to take the worst possible explanation for
(18:43):
somebody's sayings. So they say give me your evidence, you
imagine them shouting over you give me your evidence, as
opposed to genuinely life. I'd like to see what you're
basing this on.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, no, And think about sarcasm, right, Like, if I
said something sarcastic, you know immediately that I mean sarcastic
because you can hear it my voice. But when I
type something stark, you have no idea. You think of
just being a jerk. And I think that that's really
really important, is that different channels of communication have different
strengths and weaknesses. And when we get into trouble, it's
(19:11):
when we forget that there's different rules, different rules for
different channels. Right that when I'm talking to you, I
can say something sarcastic, but when I'm online, I shouldn't
be sarcastic because you're not going to hear the sarcasm
in my voice. It's not that these different channels of
communication are better or worse, or that some of them
are terrible it's that they each have a different set
(19:33):
of rules, and we get into trouble when we forget
those rules. But if we just remind ourselves and we
all know this, right, we know that there's a difference
between making a phone call and seeing someone face to
face and sending them a text versus sending them an emoji.
We know that these different forms of communication require slightly
different approaches. When we remember that we remind ourselves, it
goes much much better.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Absolutely, Well, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then we'll be back with some of Charles's
personal productivity tips. Well, I am back. This is one
of the longer episodes of Before Breakfast. I am interviewing
Charles Duhig about how to be a better communicator. He's
(20:16):
also written about productivity topics in the past. We have
a lot of people who love productivity tips listening to
this show, So Charles, maybe you can tell us a
little bit about how you personally make to do lists.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, and a lot of this came from when I
was writing The Power of Habit right about how to
build the right habits that make you more productive. So
one of the things that research has shown is that Oftentimes,
when someone comes up with a to do list, when
we write it to do list, and I used to
do this myself, we're making a critical mistake. The goal
of a to do list should be to help you
figure out what your priorities are. The goals of a
(20:50):
memory list are to write down all those things that
it's hard to carry around in your brain. So I
have a memory list that has twenty or thirty different
tasks on it, all these things that like, over time,
I want to get done, because if I don't write
them down, I'm going to forget them. But that's not
my to do list, and that shouldn't be my to
do list because what will happen is when I look
(21:11):
at that list, that memory list, the thing that I'm
gonna do is I'm going to look for the easiest
task to complete because it feels so good. It gives
you what's known as a cognitive sense of closure to
get to be able to cross that thing off. In fact,
studies show that something like thirty percent of people when
they write a to do list, they'll actually include on
this to do list something they've already completed so that
(21:32):
they can cross it off and feel good.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
About that, So that's your I've never done that, Charles, never, never,
never done.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So it's important to have a memory list. You should
definitely have a memory list, but you should not make
that your to do list. Your to do list is
something that you come up with every morning. And what
you do is you look at your memory list and
you say, what is the number one most important thing
for me to get done today? Okay, that's the first
item on my to do list. If I get that done.
(22:00):
What's the second most important thing to get done today? Okay,
that's number two. Now, odds are you're only going to
get those two things done, right, Maybe you'll only get
one of them done. But just in case, just in case,
what's the third most important? And the next day, when
you wake up and you got one done and two done,
number three might become number one on your to do
list for the next day. What studies show us is
(22:22):
that you should never have more than three things on
your to do list, but those three things should be
the most important things. And in fact, in some ways,
having just one thing on your to do list is
really really valuable if it's the most important thing, because oftentimes,
if we have too many things on our to do list,
we'll skip the most important thing. We'll skip the thing
that we put number one in order to do the
(22:43):
other things that are easier. So a to do list
should be what is the most important priority for today?
What will move the ball farthest today? What do I
have to get done? And the memory list is where
I dump everything I need to remember and I use
those to figure out what goes number one, two and
three on my to do list for today.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, we have a saying around here that to do
means today. Yeah that if you're putting it on the
to do list, it means that you are doing it today.
And there's a contract with yourself, so exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And there's some stuff that you can do today, right
that like you really want to get done, but you
know it's you're not going to get a chance to
do it till next week. That's the thing that should
go on the memory list to remind yourself next week
that you want to do this, but that to do
list should be today.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, absolutely good advice. So, Charles, what is something that
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome? That is our tagline around here. We're always
looking for ways to take our days from great to awesome.
So what's something you've done recently that has made a
day extra special?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
You know? So I'll tell you this quick story that
comes from supercommunicators. There's this this study that's known as
the Adult or the Harvard Study of Adult Development, where
what they've done is for eighty years now that researchers
have fall around thousands and thousands of people to try
and figure out what are the things that make people
most successful, make them healthiest, and make them live longest.
(24:07):
And when this project started back in the nineteen twenties
and thirties, they had all kinds of crazy theories. Right.
It was being done at Harvard, so they were like, well,
if you go to Harvard, you're probably going to be
much happier in life than everyone else, which turns out
not to be true, you know. And they said things like, well,
if you come from a good family, if you get
married early, if you have kids but not too many kids.
And it turns out none of those things actually impact
(24:28):
our health and our happiness and our success. There is
one thing that does, though. You will be happy, healthy
and successful at age sixty five if you have at
least a handful of close relationships at age forty five,
because of course you're just you're not just having those
relationships age forty five, right, these are people that you
can keep in touch with. What we know is that lonely.
(24:51):
Being lonely is the equivalent of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
It's terrible for you. And the cure for loneliness isn't
having a thousand friends. It's having just a handful of
friends that you actually keep in touch with that person
that you haven't talked to and in a month and
a half giving them a call and saying, hey, let's
just catch up for fifteen or twenty minutes. So the
way that I make my day from good to great,
from good to awesome is I set aside some time
(25:15):
to have a conversation with someone that I haven't talked
to in a while. Because that feeling of connection, that
feeling of hearing each other and being heard and learning
something new about the world and renewing that connection that
makes you feel amazing. And I think it's really really important.
It makes us healthier and happier and ultimately makes us
(25:35):
live longer.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, excellent, Well, I am personally forty five years old.
So I will take that to heart and looking around
making sure I have good connections. Hopefully these people are
sticking around for the next twenty years. But we'll see,
we'll see. They mostly seem like they're good people in
willbild you know, you never know, but this is a
great stuff, Charles. So, where can our listeners find you these?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah? So my website is Charlesdohig dot com. Or if
you google Power of Habit or Super Communicators, I'll definitely
come up on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram. And the
book Super Communicators. You can buy it at any bookstore
right It's on Amazon. Your local booksellers are fantastic. The
audiobook is really popular on audible dot com. I actually
(26:16):
read it myself, but yeah, I would love to hear
from folks and I'm easy to find excellent.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So yeah, if you want to hear more of Charles voice,
go check out the audiobook and Charles, thank you so
much for joining us. Everyone could go check out his
book and to our listeners. If you have feedback about
this episode or suggestions for future topics, you can let
me know at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
(26:45):
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(27:08):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and their advice
(00:25):
for the rest of us. So today I am delighted
to welcome Charles Duhig to the show. Charles is the
author of several books, including the Power of Habit and
his latest Super Communicators, which is about how to unlock
the secret language of connection. So, Charles, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, so, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah. So, I live in Santa Cruz, California. I have
two kids, both of them teenagers, both boys, And I'm
a writer at the New Yorker magazine And as you mentioned,
the author of a couple of books, and Super Communicators,
the one that came out earlier.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
This year Awesome. And do you consider yourself a good communicator?
Are you learning better at it now?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
You know, this book actually started because I fell into
this bad pattern with my wife, which I'm imagining many
people listening can relate to which is I would come
home after a long day at work and I would
sart complaining about my day, and you know, my boss
doesn't appreciate me, and my coworkers don't understand what a
genius I am. And my wife would offer this really
good advice. This is something like, why don't you take
your boss out to lunch and you guys can get
(01:28):
to know each other a little bit more, And instead
of being able to hear her advice, I would get
even more upset and say, like, you're supposed to be
supporting me, why aren't you outraged on my behalf? And
then she'd get upset because I was attacking her for
giving me good advice. And so that's kind of how
the book began, is me calling researchers and saying, I'm
theoretically a professional communicator, right, I'm a journalist. Why do
I keep falling into this pattern again and again and
(01:51):
again of miscommunicating?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, because we all have different ways of communicating, it
turns out, and one of the interests things about super
communicators is you talk about how there are three kinds
of conversations, and most of us don't necessarily think about
what kind of conversation we are having sounds like you
and your wife were having two entirely separate conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
In that case, that's exactly right. Yeah. So what researchers
have found, and we're actually living through this golden age
of understanding communication for really the first time because of
advances in neural imaging and data collection, And what they
found is that when we have a discussion, we tend
to think of it as being about one thing, right,
We're talking about my day, where to go on vacation,
or the kids' grades. But actually every discussion is made
(02:35):
up of different kinds of conversations, and those conversations they
tend to fall into one of three buckets. As you
just mentioned. There's these practical conversations where we're talking about
making plans or solving problems together. But then there's also
emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling and
I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want
you to empathize and relate. And then there's social conversations,
(02:57):
which is about how we relate to each other in
society and the identities that are important to us. And
what researchers have found is that if you're having different
kinds of conversations at the same moment, it's very, very
difficult to completely hear each other and it's almost impossible
to connect. And you're exactly right, that's what was happening
with me and my wife. I was having an emotional conversation,
she was having a practical conversation, and they're both equally
(03:20):
legitimate conversations, but because we weren't having the same kinds
of conversation, we couldn't really hear each other. It's within
psychology this has become known as the matching principle. The
successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at
the same moment, and then you can move from conversation
to conversation together as long as you're aligned.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well, it sounds like then, in order to kind of
be a better listener, which I'm sure many people would
like to be, one of the first things you need
to do is figure out what kind of conversation. Yeah,
the person you're talking with is hoping to have.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's exactly right, and one of the best ways to
do that, well, so I'll tell you how how to
do it. With kids. They actually teach this in schools,
is that when someone comes up to you, a student
or one of your kids with a problem, you say, look,
do you want for this thing that you're talking to
me about? Or not even about a problem, just about
anything they want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
You say, do you.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Want me to help you? Do you want me to
hug you? Or do you want me to hear you?
Which are the three kinds of conversations, right, the practical, emotional,
and the social. And what you'll find is kids can
tell you right away like no, no I don't. I
don't I just need you, like I don't need your help,
I just need a hug, right or or no, no,
I don't need a hug. I just need you to
hear what's going on and listen to me, because it's
(04:34):
important that I get this across. Now. For adults, you know,
in the business world, for instance, it's hard to say
do you want to be helped, hugged or heard because
they might go to HR so.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The hug might not work so well exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So the better way to do this is to ask questions,
and in particular to ask a kind of question that's
own as a deep question, which asks about our values
or beliefs or experiences, which can sound a little intimidating,
But it's as simple as like, if you meet someone
who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, you know what
hospital do you work at, asking them, oh, what made
(05:09):
you decide to go to medical school? That invites them
to tell you something about who they are.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well, it sounds like, you know, you're asking deeper questions.
It's kind of the opposite of small talk. I mean,
I know you have a section in the book about
taking some shallow questions and making them deeper. I wonder
if you could give some examples of them.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah. Yeah, it's anything that basically asks people, instead of
the facts of their life, asking them about how they
feel about their life. Right, So let small talk questions
just shallow questions would be like, you know, and these
are the easiest things to do. Oh you meet someone
at a party and you're like, oh, you know, what
part of town do you live in? You know, do
you know my friend Jim he lives up in the
(05:50):
heights too. A better question would be like, oh, you
live in the heights, Like what do you like about
the heights? Like is there a real sense of community there?
What drew you to that? Or were you find out,
you know, you bump into someone who's from your hometown,
and an inevitable, shallow question is you know, where'd you
go to high school? But then the next question, if
it's a deep question, could be what was high school
(06:10):
like for you? Like did you enjoy it high school?
I was at a meeting where I was sitting next
to a guy and we were like just making conversation
before the meeting started, and he mentioned that his I
asked him when he did that weekend and he said, oh,
I went to my kids graduation, and he was like
it was fantastic. Now the easiest thing to do and say, oh, congratulations,
that's great, But instead I asked him a deep question,
(06:32):
I said, and it doesn't seem like a deep question,
but it just seems like an interesting, interested question, which is, oh,
that's amazing. What did it feel like to watch your
kid walk across that stage? Like like were you proud
or like sad? That's the kind of question that invites
someone to share who they are. And more importantly, when
someone talks about their kid going to graduate, going to
(06:53):
their kids graduation, that's probably a somewhat emotional topic for them,
and instead of simply saying graduate. I matched him and
I said, oh, tell me about that. What how did
it feel to watch your kid walk across that stage?
And we had a great conversation for just like five minutes,
and then we went on and we did the meeting,
but we felt more connected to each other because we
(07:14):
had become aligned.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, exactly. I mean I think it's it's partly. You know,
small talk gets this reputation as being incredibly dull, and
it often is, but that's because the questions don't invite
further conversation. Whereas you know you're passing the time talking
about a deep emotional issue, it going to make the
time go a lot faster. Yeah, we're going to take
(07:36):
a quick ad break and then we'll be back with
some more tips on being a better communicator. Well, I
am back with Charles Douhig, who is the author of
the book Super Communicators and also the book The Power
of Habit. He's been sharing some tips on having better conversations.
(07:58):
Although I think one of the issues a lot of
us have with having good conversations, and you could tell
me if this is you know something a lot of
people do. We're always thinking about what we should be
saying next, which means that your brain isn't necessarily on
what the person is.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, No, absolutely. And in the book, we have a
bunch of stories, right the Supercommunicators is really built. There's
a story about a guy who's a CIA officer as
to recruit overseas spies that is just terrible at the
job until he learns how to how to genuinely listen
to other people. There's another story about the making of
The Big Bang Theory, the TV show, where they think
(08:36):
the show was not a hit at first. It was
a total flop until they figured out how to show
that the characters were listening to each other. And one
of the things that we know about listening is that
you're exactly right. Oftentimes in a conversation, we get a
little focused on what we're going to say next, because
we want to sound smart, right, We want to we
want to sound clever, and we want to sort of
(08:56):
share something about ourselves. But the the more we listen,
the more we automatically sound clever and share with ourselves,
even if it's not premeditated. And there's a trick to
getting yourself to listen closely to another person, and it's
called looping for understanding the goal of looping for understanding
is not only to listen closely, it's to prove to
(09:17):
the other person that you've been listening to them. And
there's three steps to it. Step one is to ask
a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is to
repeat back in your own words which you heard them say.
Don't mimic them, but like really try and prove to them, Oh,
I hear what you're saying. I think what you're saying
is this. And then step three, and this is the
step I always forget, ask if you got it right?
(09:40):
Because when you ask if you got it right, what
you're actually asking is can I have your permission to
acknowledge that I've been listening to you. Now, think about
what you have to do in that conversation instead of
thinking about what you're going to say. You have to
pay enough attention to the other person that you can
repeat back what they're going to tell you in your
own words, and you're hopefully going to get it right
(10:00):
when we put.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Ourselves because if they tell you you're wrong, what do
you do?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Then? Well, then you say, okay, I'm sorry, they explain
it to me again. I missed something right, And the
goal here is like, how do we how do we
how do we get ourselves to listen more closely? We
get ourselves to listen more closely by paying closer attention.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, so lots of different tips here for being a
good listener. But part of this is about treating conversations seriously.
And one of the things you suggest in super communicators
is actually doing some preparation for a conversation, and not
(10:39):
just difficult conversations, because we're going to talk about difficult
conversations in a minute, but even just like, let's say
I'm going out to lunch with a friend of mine
I haven't seen in six months, so obviously I'm probably
looking forward to it. You know, it's a thing I've
gotten on my calendar, probably had it there for at
least a week or two, so I'm excited about it.
(10:59):
How we should I prepare for that in order to
make it more meaningful for both of us?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, So it's a great question, right because and you
probably already do. Some of this is that as you're
anticipating seeing your friend, you're thinking to yourself, I'm really
curious I'm going to ask her about this or I'm
going to ask her about that. I wonder what's going
on with her kids. Last time we talked, she was
having some middle school problems, and I wonder if they've
resolved that. You're already preparing for that conversation, and so
the question is is how can we do that all
(11:27):
the time? How can we make that a habit? Well,
there was a study that was done by Harvard Business
School where they brought in a bunch of students, Harvard
Business School students, this was like in their first month
of school, and they told them, Okay, in a couple
of minutes, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger. Now,
having a conversation with a stranger is like one of
the most anxiety producing things you can ask someone to do,
(11:48):
right like always, because we don't know what we're going
to ask about, we don't know if we have anything
in common. And they said, before you have this conversation,
what we want you to do is we want you
to do this just ten second exercise. Take out a
piece of paper and write down three things you might
want to talk about, or three questions you might want
to ask, or just three topics that are interesting to you.
They can be stupid, right, like, you know, are you
(12:09):
going to the party this weekend? Did you catch last
night's game? And they said, okay, take ten seconds, write
down those three questions and then put them in your
pocket and go have the conversation. So students did this,
They wrote down their three things, they went and they
had the conversations, and afterwards they pulled the students and
they asked them, did you guys talk about the things
you wrote down? And most of the students said no, like,
(12:30):
actually it never came up. But on the other hand, like,
the conversation was so much less anxiety producing for me
and went so much better than I anticipated, because I
knew that if we hit like an awkward silence, I
had those questions in my back pocket, and the fact
that they were in my back pocket meant that I
didn't even have to I didn't even have to ask them. Oftentimes,
(12:51):
when we're going to have a conversation with someone, particularly
an important, meaningful conversation, one of the best things we
can do is just sit down and ask ourselves, what
is one thing that I want to tell this person about, Like,
what's one thing that's important to me that I want
to share with them, and equally, what is one question
that you absolutely want to ask that person And you
might get to that topic and that question in your conversation.
(13:14):
But the fact that you've thought a little bit about
what what your goals are for the conversations, that you've
tried to envision what the other person's goals are for
the conversations, that's going to make it so much more
natural to find the things you actually care about.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Wonderful a good idea for better conversation there. But you know,
some conversations, you know, probably if you're just having a
random conversation with another student at Harvard Business School, it
might be just casual, you know, not particularly fraught. I
know a lot of people, especially you know, charged political environments,
(13:49):
lots of topics that are heeded for people these days.
As you know, this will air after the election, but
I know a lot of people are going to be
visiting extended family, maybe people who have different political opinions
than them. I mean, without getting into the politics itself,
how do we have conversations with people that we know
(14:10):
disagree with us on a lot. Yeah, if we're also
trying to maintain the relationship. So maybe picture Thanksgiving dinner,
aunts or uncle who disagrees with you vehemently on everything.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
How does that work well? So the first thing I
would say is, it's not that this is unusual, right,
There's lots of things that we disagree with our best
friends on or our family members. In fact, if you
think about like America, like what's made us strong, it's
that we are really good at disagreeing with each other
and then working together. The Constitutional Convention was basically a
(14:47):
bunch of people coming together who hated each other, and
all they did was yell at each other for three
months straight, and then they wrote a constitution together. Having
conversations with people who don't agree with us, that's an
important part of conversation, and that's one of the nice
things about communication. And so the question is how do
we do it right? So the first thing I would
(15:08):
say is that oftentimes when people go into that conversation
they are feeling really anxious. They're not anxious necessarily about
the topic of the conversation, They're anxious about what the
conversation is going to be, Like, you know, is Jim
going to say something that offends me so much that
like it's really hard for me to continue having dinner
with him. Am I going to say the wrong thing?
And am I gonna set Susie off by saying something
(15:28):
that offends her that I didn't even realize was offensive.
And so one of the best things we can do
for those conversations is we can start them by saying,
I want to have a discussion about something, and I
want I know that it's going to be awkward, and
that's okay, Like it's okay for this conversation to be awkward.
It should kind of be awkward, and I might say
(15:49):
the wrong thing because in the space between my brain
and my lips what I'm trying to get across sometimes
it gets garbled. And I hope you'll forgive me if
I say if I say things wrong, and I want
you to know that if you say the wrong thing,
I will absolutely forgive you. But talking about this and
understanding how you see this situation it's important to me,
and so if you're willing, I'd love to have a
(16:10):
conversation with you about it. What study of the study
shows is if you start a conversation by acknowledging that
it might be hard, that it might be awkward, by
apologizing and saying I go into this with the best
of intentions, and I hope you do too. It can
transform how difficult that conversation is. That doesn't mean everyone's
going to agree with each other, but it does mean
(16:30):
that it's going to go much easier.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And it seems that partly it's just about being polite, right,
that use remembering our manners even when it is a
heated conversation can go a long way. And that was
one of the more fascinating studies you referenced in this
book is that when people well you can describe it,
(16:55):
and people use their manners online, they even manage to
turn down the temperatural absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
It turns out that online if you say please and
thank you, it can transform the tenor of the discussion.
And I think the reason why is because you know,
when you think about it, in these conversations that are
tough conversations, what's the goal. If your goal is I
want to give that person a peace in my mind,
or I want to prove to them that I'm right
(17:21):
and there wrong, it's not that surprising that the conversation
is not going to go very well, right, But the
goal of a conversation shouldn't be to prove to make
the other person agree with you. It shouldn't even be
to impress them that you're smarter get them to like you.
The goal of a conversation is just to understand what
the other person is trying to say and to speak
in such a way that they understand you. And when
(17:43):
we set that as our goal, when we go into
a conversation, we say, look, I might disagree with you,
but I genuinely want to understand why you see the
world this way. All of a sudden, that conversation becomes
much easier, and that politeness that you mentioned, that's a
signal that we want to do that when I say
please and thank you, when I say, you know, that's
a really really good point. I disagree with you, but
I think you made that point really really well. What
(18:06):
we're really saying is it is my goal to understand
you as my primary objective. Everything else is secondary to that.
And when we feel like someone is listening to us,
we become much more likely to listen to them in response.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And I think partly it's just that when we're communicating,
we were seeing each other, or we're using our voices.
I mean, you can hear more of that, that it's calm,
that it's respectful versus online, when you're just seeing print,
it's probably easy to take the worst possible explanation for
(18:43):
somebody's sayings. So they say give me your evidence, you
imagine them shouting over you give me your evidence, as
opposed to genuinely life. I'd like to see what you're
basing this on.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, no, And think about sarcasm, right, Like, if I
said something sarcastic, you know immediately that I mean sarcastic
because you can hear it my voice. But when I
type something stark, you have no idea. You think of
just being a jerk. And I think that that's really
really important, is that different channels of communication have different
strengths and weaknesses. And when we get into trouble, it's
(19:11):
when we forget that there's different rules, different rules for
different channels. Right that when I'm talking to you, I
can say something sarcastic, but when I'm online, I shouldn't
be sarcastic because you're not going to hear the sarcasm
in my voice. It's not that these different channels of
communication are better or worse, or that some of them
are terrible it's that they each have a different set
(19:33):
of rules, and we get into trouble when we forget
those rules. But if we just remind ourselves and we
all know this, right, we know that there's a difference
between making a phone call and seeing someone face to
face and sending them a text versus sending them an emoji.
We know that these different forms of communication require slightly
different approaches. When we remember that we remind ourselves, it
goes much much better.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Absolutely, Well, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then we'll be back with some of Charles's
personal productivity tips. Well, I am back. This is one
of the longer episodes of Before Breakfast. I am interviewing
Charles Duhig about how to be a better communicator. He's
(20:16):
also written about productivity topics in the past. We have
a lot of people who love productivity tips listening to
this show, So Charles, maybe you can tell us a
little bit about how you personally make to do lists.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, and a lot of this came from when I
was writing The Power of Habit right about how to
build the right habits that make you more productive. So
one of the things that research has shown is that Oftentimes,
when someone comes up with a to do list, when
we write it to do list, and I used to
do this myself, we're making a critical mistake. The goal
of a to do list should be to help you
figure out what your priorities are. The goals of a
(20:50):
memory list are to write down all those things that
it's hard to carry around in your brain. So I
have a memory list that has twenty or thirty different
tasks on it, all these things that like, over time,
I want to get done, because if I don't write
them down, I'm going to forget them. But that's not
my to do list, and that shouldn't be my to
do list because what will happen is when I look
(21:11):
at that list, that memory list, the thing that I'm
gonna do is I'm going to look for the easiest
task to complete because it feels so good. It gives
you what's known as a cognitive sense of closure to
get to be able to cross that thing off. In fact,
studies show that something like thirty percent of people when
they write a to do list, they'll actually include on
this to do list something they've already completed so that
(21:32):
they can cross it off and feel good.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
About that, So that's your I've never done that, Charles, never, never,
never done.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So it's important to have a memory list. You should
definitely have a memory list, but you should not make
that your to do list. Your to do list is
something that you come up with every morning. And what
you do is you look at your memory list and
you say, what is the number one most important thing
for me to get done today? Okay, that's the first
item on my to do list. If I get that done.
(22:00):
What's the second most important thing to get done today? Okay,
that's number two. Now, odds are you're only going to
get those two things done, right, Maybe you'll only get
one of them done. But just in case, just in case,
what's the third most important? And the next day, when
you wake up and you got one done and two done,
number three might become number one on your to do
list for the next day. What studies show us is
(22:22):
that you should never have more than three things on
your to do list, but those three things should be
the most important things. And in fact, in some ways,
having just one thing on your to do list is
really really valuable if it's the most important thing, because oftentimes,
if we have too many things on our to do list,
we'll skip the most important thing. We'll skip the thing
that we put number one in order to do the
(22:43):
other things that are easier. So a to do list
should be what is the most important priority for today?
What will move the ball farthest today? What do I
have to get done? And the memory list is where
I dump everything I need to remember and I use
those to figure out what goes number one, two and
three on my to do list for today.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, we have a saying around here that to do
means today. Yeah that if you're putting it on the
to do list, it means that you are doing it today.
And there's a contract with yourself, so exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And there's some stuff that you can do today, right
that like you really want to get done, but you
know it's you're not going to get a chance to
do it till next week. That's the thing that should
go on the memory list to remind yourself next week
that you want to do this, but that to do
list should be today.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, absolutely good advice. So, Charles, what is something that
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome? That is our tagline around here. We're always
looking for ways to take our days from great to awesome.
So what's something you've done recently that has made a
day extra special?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
You know? So I'll tell you this quick story that
comes from supercommunicators. There's this this study that's known as
the Adult or the Harvard Study of Adult Development, where
what they've done is for eighty years now that researchers
have fall around thousands and thousands of people to try
and figure out what are the things that make people
most successful, make them healthiest, and make them live longest.
(24:07):
And when this project started back in the nineteen twenties
and thirties, they had all kinds of crazy theories. Right.
It was being done at Harvard, so they were like, well,
if you go to Harvard, you're probably going to be
much happier in life than everyone else, which turns out
not to be true, you know. And they said things like, well,
if you come from a good family, if you get
married early, if you have kids but not too many kids.
And it turns out none of those things actually impact
(24:28):
our health and our happiness and our success. There is
one thing that does, though. You will be happy, healthy
and successful at age sixty five if you have at
least a handful of close relationships at age forty five,
because of course you're just you're not just having those
relationships age forty five, right, these are people that you
can keep in touch with. What we know is that lonely.
(24:51):
Being lonely is the equivalent of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
It's terrible for you. And the cure for loneliness isn't
having a thousand friends. It's having just a handful of
friends that you actually keep in touch with that person
that you haven't talked to and in a month and
a half giving them a call and saying, hey, let's
just catch up for fifteen or twenty minutes. So the
way that I make my day from good to great,
from good to awesome is I set aside some time
(25:15):
to have a conversation with someone that I haven't talked
to in a while. Because that feeling of connection, that
feeling of hearing each other and being heard and learning
something new about the world and renewing that connection that
makes you feel amazing. And I think it's really really important.
It makes us healthier and happier and ultimately makes us
(25:35):
live longer.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, excellent, Well, I am personally forty five years old.
So I will take that to heart and looking around
making sure I have good connections. Hopefully these people are
sticking around for the next twenty years. But we'll see,
we'll see. They mostly seem like they're good people in
willbild you know, you never know, but this is a
great stuff, Charles. So, where can our listeners find you these?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah? So my website is Charlesdohig dot com. Or if
you google Power of Habit or Super Communicators, I'll definitely
come up on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram. And the
book Super Communicators. You can buy it at any bookstore
right It's on Amazon. Your local booksellers are fantastic. The
audiobook is really popular on audible dot com. I actually
(26:16):
read it myself, but yeah, I would love to hear
from folks and I'm easy to find excellent.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So yeah, if you want to hear more of Charles voice,
go check out the audiobook and Charles, thank you so
much for joining us. Everyone could go check out his
book and to our listeners. If you have feedback about
this episode or suggestions for future topics, you can let
me know at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
(26:45):
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
(27:08):
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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