Communication Is Key, But How Do We Do It? Uncut with Charles Duhigg

We’ve said it a hundred times; communication is everything. But we aren’t really ever taught how to actually communicate. What makes someone a good communicator? And why is it so important? People aren’t just born good communicators and it’s something that we can all improve our skills on. 

Joining the podcast today is Pulitzer prize winning reporter and author Charles Duhigg. Charles’ most recent book titled ‘supercommunicators’ investigated the simple and tested methods for communicating and connecting with anyone. Charles went deep on what exactly makes someone THE person that everyone wants to have conversations with; whether it be in your romantic relationship, at work, with friends and even with strangers. 

We speak about:

• How having ‘different types’ conversations with partners is likely why you feel misunderstood or not listened to
• Becoming ‘neurally entrained’ and using the ‘matching principle’ to be a good communicator
• How to ask the right questions
• The communication of conflict and how to avoid it - ‘when you’re feeling furious, get curious.’
• Can you ‘learn’ to use communication in a manipulative way
• EQ, unlike EQ is learned, not born with
• The difference between true vulnerability and fake vulnerability

You can find more from Charles at his website 

You can follow Charles’ Instagram

His book “supercommunicators - How to unlock the secret language of connection’ is available in hardcopy and audiobook on audible and spotify. 

You can watch us on Youtube

Find us on Instagram

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Produced by Keeshia Pettit

Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford

Recorded on Cammeraygal Land

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura,
I'm Brittany.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Okay, we've said it a hundred times. We say it
on every gas Gun Cut episode. We say it pretty
much on every episode ever, every episode, six hundred and
fifty episodes we've said it. Yeah, So, I mean, it's
nice that we're like touching based on this again, but
communication really is everything when it comes to relationships.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
When we go to school, we get taught so many
different things. You get taught how to do algebra. No
one teaches you how to communicate properly with people around you.
Some people seem to be innately good at it. Some
people seem to be quite terrible at it. And I
think that we often think we either a just skilled
at this or we're not skilled at this, not that
communication is a thing that we can learn and we
can become better at if we know what it is

(00:53):
that we need to focus on. Joining the podcast today
is Politzer Prize winning reporter and author Charles Jewig. Now
charles most recent book, it's titled The Super Communicators. So
if anyone knows about communication, he is the man. Charles
is investigating the simple and tested methods for communicating and
connecting with anyone, and he also went very deep on

(01:13):
what exactly makes someone the person that everyone wants to
talk to in a room, the person that everyone wants
to have a conversation with, whether it be in a
romantic relationship, at work, with friends, or even with strangers.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Charles, Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Thank you for having me. It's such a joy to
be here.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
We're so excited to talk to you today because, as
we mentioned, it is one of those thrawaway comments that
we make but everyone makes that's constantly like just communicate.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
But we don't ever really break down what that is.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
So I am excited that we're going to get into
the nitty gritty of that today.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
But before we do, we love to throw our.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Guests under the bus, and we start with an accidentally
unfiltered Which is your most embarrassing moment? Do you have
one for us today?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah? I was thinking about this. So our last year
in high school here has got named senior year. I
don't know if you guys use the same terminology. During
my senior I took a girl to senior prom and
as we were driving back from the prom. My car
caught on fire, and it yeah, yeah, it was. I

(02:14):
would love to say it's because there was so much
heat being generated inside the car, but that's not what happened.
What happened was that literally it was an old car
and we're driving down and my date Lexi Lexie Patronas
is her name. She's great. She was like, she's like,
you know, it sort of smells like smoke and like
maybe like burning rubber or something is something going on outside.
And I was like, nah, we're good. And then suddenly,

(02:35):
like the smoke starts coming through the vents. Yeah, it
was not great.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
At least it was on the way home and not
on the way there, like that would.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Have been far worse, exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah, but there was some solid opportunities there for like,
you know, this is just because you're so hot.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
We most of it.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
I would have loved to been that suave in high school.
But the truth of matter is I was like, ah
ah ah ah, I had no game whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
How did I mean, talking about communication in general, how
did this become an area of focus for you and
something that you wanted to research and thought, you know what,
I'm going to write a book about this.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
It's actually because of a pattern I fell into with
my wife, who is not Lexi a completely different way.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
We all wonder where Lexi is now.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
She has kids of her own, she's great. But I
married a woman named Liz, who I like a lot.
She's a marine biologist. I like her a lot.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I'm glad.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
So I got into this bad pattern, which I'm going
to put it out there, and I'm going to guess
that maybe you guys are familiar with this pattern, and
everyone is listening as familiar with this pattern, which is
I would come home after a long day work and
I'd be like super frustrated or worked out. But you know,
I'd be telling my wife, like, you know, my boss
doesn't appreciate me enough and my coworkers don't realize what
a genius I.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Am and I don't have that problem.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Well my wife, Yeah, my wife would offer me this
really good advice. She would say, like, why don't you
take your boss out to lunch? And you guys came
out to know each other better, And instead of being
able to listen to her advice and hear it, I
would get even more upset and I'd be like, you're
supposed to be on my side, you're supposed to be
outraged on my behalf. Then she would get upset because
I was attacking her for giving me good advice. Does

(04:06):
this sound familiar?

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
I think it's interesting though with some of these conversations,
because sometimes you don't want someone to give advice, you
want someone to just listen and be a sounding board.
That gets old very quickly, like people don't want to
play the role of just being a sounding board to
the same problem on repeat. But sometimes I think it's
interesting to almost ask the question of like do you
want a solution or do you want me to just

(04:31):
listen to you?

Speaker 3 (04:32):
That is a great, great way of handling it, because
when I went to experts, I went to all these
neuroscientists asked them like why am I making this mistake
again and again me and all my friends, And they said, well,
look what we figured out is when you're having a discussion,
you think you're talking about one thing, but actually every
discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations, and
those conversations they tend to usually fall into one of

(04:53):
three buckets. Right. There's these practical conversations where we're like
solving problems or making plans together. But then there's a
conversations where I don't want you to solve my emotions.
I want you to listen, and I want you to
empathize exactly what you just said. And then there's social
conversations about how we relate to each other in society.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
Yeah, and it sounds like and it happens a lot,
but it sounds like you were just seeking validation. You
didn't want an answer. You wanted her to say, yes, baby,
you are a genius.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
He doesn't.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
That's exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
They don't deserve you.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
And you're like yes, and let yes, queen, And that's
how you wanted that conversation to go.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
That's exactly. I'm not sure yes Queen totally would have
been right for me, but you're exactly right. That's what
I was looking for, as I was looking for like
this empathy in this And this is what the researchers
said is they said, look, if you're having different kinds
of conversations at the same moment, if you're having an
emotional conversation and your wife is having a practical conversation,
you literally cannot hear each other fully and you definitely

(05:47):
don't feel connected to each other. But if if you
take a moment and you start having the same kind
of conversation you say something like, look, do you want
me to solve this problem for you? Or do you
want me just to like hear you out and like
empathize and offer you support or exactly what you just said.
At that moment, you become what's known as neurally entrained,
and it's the core of communication. This neural and trainment.

(06:09):
Our brains actually begin looking more and more similar, and
that's when not only can we hear each other much better,
but we feel connected to each other.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
So that's a learned character trey that you can have
in a relationship that you might not necessarily start with,
but you can work to connect further.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Is that what you're saying absolutely, And in fact, what
we've learned is that people who are supercommunicators, and by
the way, all of us are supercommunicators at one time
or another, usually during a week. But people who are
consistent supercommunicators, they have learned how to diagnose what kind
of conversation is going on and match the other person
or invite them to match them. And within psychology, this

(06:47):
is actually known as the matching principle that successful communication
requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Charles, I want to back it up a little bit
because I think it's so interesting how some people seem
like they just intuitively good at this, or some people
seem to have cracked the code with aun't having to
go through the turmoil of all the trenches of figuring
out what it is that they're doing wrong. Are there
certain personality types that are better at communicating or is

(07:14):
it purely just a kind of a lucky deal with
how we're brought up and socialized.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
So I'm really glad you brought this up, because there
is this like kind of cultural bias, right, like some
people are born with the gift of the gap, or
they're like so outgoing, And what all the research tells
us is that that's not true. Communication is a set
of learned skills, and some people learn those skills a
little bit earlier, and they might have grown up in
environments where their parents or their teachers kind of habituated

(07:40):
them to recognize the skills. But what's interesting is if
you talk to super communicators and you ask them, were
you always good at communication, they inevitably say no. They
say things like you know, when I was in school,
I had trouble making friends, and so I really had
to study how kids talk to each other or or
my parents got divorced and I had to be the
peacemaker between them. Yeah, indication is simply a learned skill

(08:02):
skills that any of us can learn, and nobody is
born knowing how to do them. But some people practice
them a little bit more, and when we practice them,
they become habits very very quickly.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
What is it that you define make someone a super communicator?

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Here's a good test of it. Okay, I'll ask you
guys this question. When you come home from a long day, right,
you're exhausted, you're you're going to a kind of bad mood,
and you want to call someone who you know just
talking to them on the phone is going to make
you feel better. Do you know who you would call? Like,
does that person pop into your mind?

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
My husband?

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, your husband, yeah, your sister and your husband. So
for you, your fiance fiance, right, well we don't want
to go Yeah, for you your sister and your fiance,
they are super communicators and you're super communicator. Back to them, right,
You know how to ask the right question. You know

(08:55):
what the right question is. You know how to show
them that you're paying attention, that you're not distracted. You
know when they want empathy and when they want a solution,
and how to sometimes give them a kick in the
pants and sometimes just say, ah, man, that sucks, I'm
so sorry that happened to you. Yeah, we know how
to be super communicators with the people who are closest
to us. What consistent super communicators have realized is those

(09:15):
same skills that you use on your sister and you
use on your fiance, you can use them on anyone,
and when you do, you have very close conversations.

Speaker 4 (09:23):
I feel like it may be a common misconception when
we talk about communication super communication that it's entirely default
back to the person that's delivering the dialogue. How important
in being a super communicator is actually the quiet?

Speaker 1 (09:37):
The listening?

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Oh h incredibly important? Right? Like, I mean we all
know people who like they just talk and talk and talk.
Nobody's like that guy is really a super communicator. Instead,
you're like, I want to avoid that guy at the party,
like the plague. Right, Listening is an enormous part of communication,
but you have to listen the right way, right, not

(09:59):
all listening is.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
I think that this is so interesting because so much
of the conversation that, especially when we're talking about relationships
or in workplaces, when you do talk about communication, it
is about voicing what you want and voicing what it
is about how you feel and telling people and setting boundaries.
And there is so much information out there around how
to be better at speaking what it is that you

(10:23):
are experiencing or your own personal moments. You know that
there's very little information out there as to how to
be a better listener and how to process what's being
said to you and how you respond to that. I
really think that that's kind of where we're let down
a little bit and how we navigate these sort of
situations and these conversations.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I absolutely agree. And there's some skills we can talk
about that make you a better listener, and one of
the first ones is paradoxically is asking questions, asking more
questions and asking the right questions. The first step of
listening is very active. It's asking someone a question, but
not all questions are as powerful as others. Some questions

(11:00):
work better, and within psychology, these are known as deep questions,
and a deep question is something that asks about your values,
or your beliefs, or your experiences. And that can sound
a little bit intimidating, but it's as easy as like,
if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh,
what hospital do you work at, saying to them, oh,
what made you decide to go to medical school? Right

(11:21):
that second question, what made you decide to go to
medical school, I'm asking them how they feel about their
life rather than the facts of their life. That's a
deep question and it invites that person to say something real.
So that's step one. Ask deep questions.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
And is this to form also like to find a commonality,
to form a connection with them, to bring you closer.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Absolutely all the better because let's imagine I say, like,
what made you decide to become a doctor and they say, oh,
you know, when I was a kid, my dad got
sick and I thought I saw those doctors, and I like,
I wanted to be a healer. I knew I wanted
to be like them. So they're in a kind of
social or emotional mindset right at that moment, it's really
natural for me to say like, oh, you know what
that's interesting because I'm a lawyer, and I became a

(12:03):
lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I
was a kid. Yeah, now, all of a sudden, and
you wouldn't necessarily think that being a lawyer or doctor
is similar, or that seeing your uncle is similar to
your dad getting sick. But when we ask those deep questions,
we see the opportunities for things that we have in common,
and that's really powerful.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
You did specify that not all listening is created equal.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (12:28):
So the first step of listening is asking these questions right,
asking deep questions, learning and getting comfortable with asking questions.
The second step is that once someone has said something
to you, it's really important to prove that you're listening,
particularly if it's a tough conversation. If you're having a
disagreement with your sister, you're having a disagreement with your fiance,

(12:49):
and there's like a little bit of tension there, or
maybe there's something that you don't necessarily see eye to
eye on. There is this sneaking suspicion in the back
of all of our minds that the other person is
not actually listening, they're just waiting their turn to speak.
So how do we overcome that. There's this technique known
as looping for understanding that they teach in law school
and business schools and has these three steps. The first

(13:11):
step is ask a question. The second step is, once
the person has answered the question, restate what they said
in your own words. And the goal here is not mimicry.
The goal is to prove that you're paying attention, to
prove that you're kind of processing what I heard you
say is this and that reminded me of something you
said last week and then and most of us do

(13:32):
step one and two somewhat intuitively right. But step three
is the step I always forget because after you say
here's what I heard you say, ask if you got
it right? Yeah, Say like, oh, did I hear you correctly?
Because what you're actually doing in that moment is you're
asking for permission to acknowledge that you were listening.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You used a really great example at the very start
of this conversation around how you'd come home, you'd vent
about your day, and then you're in this loophole about
getting and receiving a great advice and then not being
at a place where you could receive that great advice.
Where did you two come to? Like how did you
find your resolution to that?

Speaker 3 (14:08):
So now when I start complaining about my day, my
wife will often say, do you want me to help
you brainstorm solutions? Or do you just need to like
kind of like get this off your chest? Right, She's
asking me, like do you want to have an emotional
conversation or a practical conversation? It's like magic, right, I
always know what the answer is, and like it's so
nice to be asked that way. And they teach teachers
to do this too. They teach teachers that when a

(14:30):
student comes up and they have something important they want
to discuss, the first thing the teacher should say is
do you want to be helped, hugged or heard, which
is of course the practical, the emotional, and the social.
And kids know what the answer is. They'll be like, oh, no,
I don't I don't need a hug. I just want
you to know what Jimmy's doing to me. I'm just

(14:50):
what kind of conversation, thank you? I just wanted to
get in trouble.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
It's interesting And I think let's sitting in that for
a second, because I don't think many people, and in
such an emotion fueled argument, like we go back to
saying you're fighting with your partner, most people, I think,
in that situation are already planning the retort. They're planning
their counter argument, whereas they're not even it doesn't matter
what that person is saying for the next fifteen seconds.

(15:17):
And I'll openly admit that I've done that in the past,
and they're thinking about what they're going to openly admit
I do it now. Well, they come back at them
with something else. But when does it cross a line?
And I am guilty of this. I am really guilty
of doing exactly what you said. When I say, let
me just get this right, Like I just want to
confirm I've heard you're right. I say that when I

(15:38):
know I've heard them right, and it almost becomes.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
A manipulation technique.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
And I hate to say that, but I'm like, I'm
not asking you for confirmation because I know, and I
say it in a way and I shouldn't, but I'm like,
just let me get this right. What you're saying is
and I use it as a way to almost come
back at them.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
So where does that manipulation?

Speaker 3 (15:56):
You shouldn't use it as a rebuttal. You shouldn't be like,
you know, when you ask a deep question. The deep
question shouldn't be like, I'm just wondering, were you born
this stupid or did you just grow up? Like we
shouldn't We shouldn't take an argument and hide it as
a question. Yeah, but imagine that you give yourself. Next
time you're having like a tiff with your fiance, imagine
that you gave yourself this assignment. I want to repeat

(16:18):
back as accurately as I can what I think he's
trying to tell me. Yeah, when that's your assignment to yourself,
it's really hard to get into that pattern where you
just start coming up with retorts in your head because
like you're paying so much attention just so that you
can be like, look, what I heard you say is this?
Am I getting this right? As opposed to what I
heard you say was really stupid? Am I right that
it's really stupid?

Speaker 4 (16:39):
Well, I don't say that, but I guess that's the passiveness, right,
Like that's the message in the way I deliver it.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
But also, I think it's a tricky thing to only
talk about it in terms of conflict, because when you're
having conflict with someone already, you also have it loaded
with this idea of wanting to be right or winning
the argument, or making sure that like you are the
one who is correct. I guess at the end of
the day and that they come around to see your
point of view. That's probably almost the trickiest space to

(17:06):
get good at communication. I think there's so many smaller
ways that you can practice at first, so that the
next time you're in a blow up with your partner,
you're not like, oh cool, I'm going to use those
communication skills, but I'm really fucking angry, I'm super overstimulated,
and it's probably not a great platform for me to
be an incredible communicator in this moment. But I think
if you've done the groundwork and you know it and

(17:27):
you know that you're able to do it, then you
can kind of step back from it a little bit.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
When you get to that point.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Well, I think it's really smart. And think about when
you guys talk to your sisters. I'm guessing if I
was to eavesdrop on those conversations, you'd be shocked. You
would be You're proving to each other that you're listening
because you're asking follow up questions. You're laughing, you're saying,
oh my gosh, that reminds me of the time that
you did X. You're proving that you're paying attention, and
you're right. In conflict conversations we need to get a

(17:53):
little bit more formal sometimes, but in just everyday conversations,
if we build this habit of showing someone that we're listing,
then they believe that we're listening. They are much more
likely to listen to us. They feel closer to us.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Talk me through, because I mean, we can speak about
the way in which we actually speak or the way
in which we listen, but I know that there's so
many other factors that influence how we're received when we're
speaking to someone, like our body language, our eye contact.
Are there a set of other contributing factors that make
us good at this or bad at this?

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yes, the answer is yes, But it's not consistent from
person to person or culture to culture. Right, interesting, What
is consistent is that when we use nonverbal communication, we
should use it to show that we want to connect
with someone. So let's take laughter as an example, and
this is true almost across like the spectrum, from cultures
to people eighty percent of the time when you laugh,

(18:48):
it is not in response to anyone saying anything funny,
right like, and you laugh right now, but what I said,
wasn't that funny? It's not, But it's not like I
told the joke. Like, most of the time when we
laugh in a conversation, we're laughing to show the other
person that we want to connect with them, to show
them that we're listening, to show them that we like them.

(19:10):
And when they laugh back, the most natural thing we
can do, they're showing us that they want to connect
in return. Now, think about how we apply that to
the other things we do. You're right, like, sometimes they
tell you don't stand with your body closed off, But
why why shouldn't we stand with our body closed off?
Because there's lots of people who can cross their arms
and still look really welcoming. It's about how we're conveying

(19:30):
our energy to the other person, whether we want to
connect with them or not. And there's so many small
making eye contact there's another great example. You know, in
some places making eye contact is considered kind of rude,
like you shouldn't do it, But if you're doing it
in a culture, and to try and show the other
person you're paying attention.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Then they feel that it's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
This idea of how different cultures receive and understand it differently.
There was information that came out about the Olympics when
the Olympics was in Russia and they were trying to
teach people smile, that it's not rude, that if someone
smiles at you passing you on the street, and it
was because it's culturally just not what you do. You
don't smile at people passing by, it could be seen
as though you were laughing at them, You're mocking them. Culturally,

(20:12):
it was a different way of communicating. And when the
Olympics went there and there were so many tourists in Russia,
they were like, well, if people are smiling at you,
it's not because they're mocking you. You know, there's just
a different barrier here for how we engage with people
we don't know.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
And it's how we get how we get habituated. Right.
If you live in a place where people smile at
each other, smiling becomes a habit it's very easy. And
if you live in a place where people don't smile
at each other, you don't totally You're exactly right.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
You go to some places where people are like morning,
and then you've got other places where you're like if
you did that, you're the weirdo.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Australia is exactly Yeah, we're a very morning country. Yes,
say hello to everyone that you pass.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
Physiologically, Charles, what happens to our brains when we are
speaking to someone that is a good communicator?

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah, so I mentioned this neuralin trainment. Here's what happens
when you're having a good conversation. You're breath pattern starts
to match each other, your heart rates start to match
each other. You're, of course not aware of this, right,
The rate of pupil dilation will become similar. Our bodies
actually become like each other when we're in a good conversation.

(21:14):
And what's more important is if you could look at
people's brains, which some scientists have done, what you would
see is that as those two people or three people,
or however many are having a conversation within their brains,
their brain activity is becoming more and more similar, more
and more alike. And that kind of makes sense when
you think about it, because if I tell you about
an emotion I'm feeling, you kind of experience that emotion

(21:35):
a little bit right, or or if I tell you
about an idea, you kind of experience that idea. So
it makes sense that our brains become similar. But what
researchers have figured out is this is actually the goal
of communication. The reason we evolved to be such good
communicators is because when our brains become similar, not only
can we understand each other much much better, but we

(21:56):
just automatically feel closer to each other. We feel like
we're connected, and that sense of connection is really important
to how humans exist, how we succeed, how we build
families and nations and villages. So when we talk to
each other, in fact, right now, we would see that
our brains look more similar now than they did when

(22:18):
we first started this conversation.

Speaker 4 (22:20):
I think that's a very fascinating You're an award winning everything,
so I'd love.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
My brain to make sure, yes, it is fascinating them.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
The more you think about it now and even as
we're discussing it, my brain is going to these places.
But so many arguments are based around not what the
argument started at, but the fact that people are not
understanding what they're trying to say because they're that clarification,
isn't there, So like the argument started at a but
it became about f because you've miscommunicated the whole way

(22:55):
and the argument's turning to something else, And I thought
you were you know, four days later when you do communicate,
it's like I thought you were trying to say this.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, that happens a lot, right, And it kind of
gets to this thing about like, what's the goal of
a conversation. The goal of conversation is not to convince
you that you're wrong and I'm right, or that like
I'm smart and you should listen to me. It's not
even to convince you that you should like me. The
goal of a conversation is actually just to understand how
you see the world and to speak in such a

(23:22):
way that you understand how I see the world. And
so you're exactly right. If we go into a conversation
saying my goal is to win, and it's really easy
to do that, right, I do that all the time.
We get worked up and we get angry. But there's
this saying when you're feeling furious, get curious, which really means,
you know, start asking questions, because if I can understand

(23:43):
what you're trying to tell me. If that's my goal,
you become much more likely to listen to me and
try and understand what I'm saying, and that understanding helps
us resolve the issue.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
So fascinating because we speak about it genuinely, we answer
listen to questions, right, and so like I would say
ninety percent of those like you.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Just have to have that conversations about X.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Y Z.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
But it's really easy to say that to people. But
if they're not equipped or don't know how to have
those conversations, that's then the next biggest hurdle in terms
of establishing, like what makes a good communicator? I also
think it's pretty important to establish like what are the
key things that make someone quite terrible at communicating? What
do you think are the biggest red flags when it
comes to someone who is a bad communicator.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, that's a great question, And so let's go over
the three skills that we've like kind of learned, because
the opposite of them sort of tell us what's bad.
Number one, just pay attention to what kind of conversation
is happening right just as you're talking to someone, are
they talking about their feelings? Like is this an emotional conversation,
or are they asking you for advice. That's a practical conversation.
And whatever it is, match them and invite them about you.

(24:46):
That's step one. Step two, ask questions, Ask deep questions. Right,
it's easier than you think it's going to be. And
then step three is prove that you're listening, sometimes by
looping for understanding and repeating it back, sometimes just by
smiling and asking follow up questions or telling a funny
story about yourself. So that's what good communicators do. They
have those three skills. Bad communicators kind of do the opposite. Right,

(25:09):
bad communicators, it does not matter what kind of conversation
you want to have. I'm going to tell you all
about me. I'm going to tell you about what I
want to talk about. And when they ask questions, the
questions aren't genuinely curious. They ask you, oh, where'd you
go on vacation? And you realize pretty quickly they don't
care where you went on vacation. They just want to
tell you about where they went on vacation, and like

(25:30):
the big fancy yacht that they rented. Yeah, another really
bad sign of that someone's on a great communicator is
that they just are not practiced at asking questions. And
it doesn't mean that they don't want to be a
good communicator. It just means that they don't have enough practice.
And there's actually a way around this. I imagine you
guys have been at parties where like, you find yourself

(25:50):
becoming the person who asked question after question and the.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Other person that's literally the story of my life.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
It also tends to be the case because of what
we do for a living, now come that person. So
you're always mining for information and sometimes you get to
the end of it and you're like, oh god, I mean,
they didn't ask a single thing, but that conversation would
have been way easier if they at least asked something
about me, like I could have, right, It would have
been a two way, not a job interview.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
I just have a moment that comes to mind. Recently,
I ran into someone who I've known from a past life.
We were at a thing together, so we're kind of
stuck with each other for a while, and it was
two hours of just me basically catching up on the
last ten years of their life. And I think also
probably because they've seen on Instagram or whatever, that you
know X y Z that I've been doing, but not
a single question was asked, And I was so exhausted

(26:39):
by the conversation because I had to keep on otherwise
it just stopped.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
And I was like, wow, imagine dating that.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Imagine dating someone who only responds and doesn't isn't curious,
isn't inquisitive.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
So I'll give you, like this technique that I learned
when you're in that situation, help, which is run. It
might it might not be. It might not be that
the other person doesn't want to ask you questions. It
might be that they're just really unpractice to ask you questions.
It's just not it doesn't. I mean, you guys get
a lot of practice, right you have a show where
you ask questions. So here's what I do. After I

(27:12):
ask three or four questions and the person has asked
me anything in response, I say, oh, man, I apologize.
I've been peppering you with these questions. You probably have
some questions for me. Let me take a break and
give you a chance to ask me whatever you wanted
to ask.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
That is so putting someone on the spot, though, And they're.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Like, the thing that's amazing is that the floodgates will open.
Like these people your friend will be like, oh my gosh,
I wanted to ask you about this one thing you
posted on Instagram. Right, they just need permission to ask questions,
whereas if you're more practice at it, you don't wait
for the permission.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, So yeah, you speak about a few different scenarios
or examples in your book that I found really interesting.
I'd love you to explain. But one in particular is
the example you give about.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
The jurors and how one dura tried to get the
other juror on their side so that there wasn't a mistrial.
Talk to us about that.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, this is this guy named Leroy Reid got
arrested for carrying a firearm, which in the US, if
you're a felon, if you've already been convicted of a crime,
you're not allowed to own a gun. And so he
gets arrested, and the guy like, he has no idea
what's going on, Like he didn't he never actually touched
the gun. He bought it because he a magazine told
him if you go buy a gun and you jog

(28:20):
every day, you can become a private investigator. So he like, yeah,
and so the jury is because he's clearly he clearly
broke the law. But the jury is debating, like should
we convict this guy. And there's this one guy on
the jury who's a super communicator to this guy named
John Bowley, and he recognizes that one half of the
jury is having a conversation about justice, which is kind

(28:42):
of a social conversation, right, it's talking about like what's
fair and what's right, and the other half of the
jury was having this practical conversation where all they were
talking about was whether the guy broke the law or not, right, like,
here's what the statute says, and did he violate it
or not. And so as a result of these two groups,
they just literally couldn't hear each other. It was like
two ships passing at a night. So what he does

(29:04):
is he starts coaching them without even being obvious about it,
coaching them to talk in each other's language. Like he
starts asking the practical folks who just want to talk
about the laws, Like he starts asking them, you know,
what's the case when you wouldn't want to apply the
law where you think it'd be unfair. Right, He's getting
them into this social mindset. And then he's talking to
the other guys. The guy's talking about justice. He's saying

(29:26):
to them, you know, if you were to write a law,
a statute that you think would be fair, that would
be fair at work, how would that statute read? What
would it say? He gets them talking each other's language,
and that's how they come to a verdict, and they
end up setting the guy free. But it took them
hours and hours because they literally couldn't hear each other.
And we do that all the time, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
We also don't want to be proven wrong, Like you
were pretty emotionally mature to be in a position where
you can say, oh, you know what I'm wrong, and
I can see what you're saying now, and I'm going
to change my opinion.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Like it's not every every one has that capability.

Speaker 4 (30:01):
So I think that if you can get to that
situation where you can literally listen and have your mind changed. Also,
not that we need to go into it now, but
I think that's a big problem with society today is
we don't want to change our mind and if no
one else agrees with us, we want to cancel everyone.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Like it's I guess that that kind of links into
like how imperative is having a high EQ in order
to be someone who can communicate well.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
I mean, EQ is really important. But what's interesting is
that EQ is also a learned skill, really right. One
of the things that we know, yeah, is that if
you look at people with high EQ, it's oftentimes because
they've practiced trying to determine the emotions that they're hearing.
All of us are basically basically born with the same EQ.
Unlike IQ, which is very genetics dependent, somewhat genetics dependent,

(30:48):
EQ is even much more environmentally determined. If your parents
raised you talking about emotions, teaching how to listen for emotions,
then you have a lot of EQ. But just if
you're if your parents didn't do that, that doesn't mean
that you can't develop that skill. It just means you
have to be a little bit more aware of it.
You have to sort of remind yourself, like, oh, that guy,
just like that guy was talking about his son's graduation

(31:11):
and he kept on talking about how he felt. I'll
bet you that guy he's like kind of feeling emotional
about this. I'm going to ask him, like, how did
it feel to watch your kid walk across that stage.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
As a parent though, saying that this is something that
you can teach. How can we build really strong communication
skills and also EQ in our kids.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
So the number one thing we can do is we
can ask them to tell us what they're feeling. Because
when they see that we are patterning for them that
talking about feelings is okay, then it becomes something that
they become habituated in. So that thing that I mentioned,
the help hugged or herd, that's really really powerful to
use with your kids because what you're saying to them.

(31:50):
As you're saying to them, tell me what kind of
conversation you want to have. And one of the kind
of conversations is that you just need a hug, like
you're just feeling bad and you want to tell me
that you're feeling bad. That's okay. That's a whole conversation
in itself. You don't have to have anything else you
want to talk about. And by the way, when I'm
talking to you, you can ask me, mommy, do you

(32:13):
want to be helped, hugged, or heard? Because what you're
asking me is if I want to talk about my feelings.
The more we talk about feelings and we invite kids
to talk about their own feelings. The more it just
seems like something normal, it becomes a habit. Can I
ask you guys a question? Yeah, you both seem like
you have very high EQ. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Can you right yourself like that?

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Okay, I'm going to say it.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
You could be a hot mess and still have a
high IQ.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well, I would say that I do.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Yeah, So let me ask you why, Like, what was
it about experiences you've had that has made you want
to pay attention to other people's feelings and emotions?

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Personally, I think you hit the nail on the head
at the very beginning.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
My family.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
There's been a lot of divorce in my family, and
I think I constantly was scanning as a kid for
how everyone was feeling about everything. I always just said
I was very, like intuitively good at like reading people,
and sometimes it would get me in trouble because I'd
be like, oh, I know what's going on because I
would feel like I could read people's minds, especially in relationships.

(33:22):
But that is because I felt like now looking back
on it, as a kid, I did have to read
people's minds because I didn't know whether I was going
to get into a lot of trouble or it was
quite volatile at times. There was a lot of having
to just read people's body language for peace and harmony
in a household.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
And there was probably part of your brain that felt
like this was important for survival, right, and and our
brains are designed to help us survive really really well.
And so paying attention to my parent doesn't sound angry,
but I can tell that they're angry, and if I
like push them, they're going to like get really mad
at me. That's something that like we latch onto and
we start paying attention to. That's really interesting.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
I don't know if I have an answer, really, I
can't put my finger on it. As long as I
can remember, since I was a small child, I've been
a very empathetic person, like very empathetic. I really feel
other people's emotions and animals, emotions like things make me
really upset easily. But I had a very loving, safe,
normal childhood. Like I didn't have trauma or nothing. Nothing

(34:22):
was brought to me like that. I just so it's
funny that you've asked me that, because I don't think
I but you.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Have an answer throughout with a very emotionally in touched
father who speaks about his feelings.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Your dad's true. Your dad will cry at the drop
of the hat in a good way.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
My dad is My dad and my mom are very different.
Mum is not a motive really, and my dad is like, yeah,
the proudest. He'll tell me all his feelings. He cries.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
He's you know, like there's no roles in our family.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
You know.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
He was also cook and he was okay for men
to cry.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
He's always been like that, So maybe there was a
big influence in them.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
See, I think, And you don't have to have trauma
in your background, yeah to learn EQ right, Sometimes we do,
and it teaches us to pay attention to emotions. But
sometimes we just grow up in an environment that's very
loving and it's modeled for us that like, part of
part of showing people you love them and part of
just moving through the world is listening to how people

(35:15):
feel and reacting to it.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
We speak a lot about negative personality types. You know,
we've covered narcissism on this podcast. Knowing that this is
a learned skill that can be used. Obviously, it can
be used for good, it can be used for evil.
How do people who have like narcissistic personalities, disorder use
these techniques to get what they want out of someone.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Yeah, so it's a really good question because I mentioned
communication is just about learning some skills, right. Communication is
just like a set of tools that we learn to
use until they become habits. And much like other tools,
it can be used for good or bad. You can
use an axe to build a house, write chopped down
trees and build a house. You can also use an
ax to murder someone. It's up to the person whether

(36:00):
they're going to use it for good or bad. And similarly,
communication is the same thing that learning these tools and
these skills doesn't necessarily mean that we're a good person.
It means that we can connect with other people. Now
that being said, one of the things that's really nice
about humans, about how the brain evolved, is that, if
you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower. Right.

(36:24):
It's the thing that sets us above every species and
basically everything that we've done as a people like that
we're proud of. There's some communication inherent in it. You
have to be able to communicate, to build nations together,
to create social change, even to make art pieces. Art
is a fact of communication. And as our brains have
evolved to be really good at communication, they've also evolved

(36:47):
to notice when people are trying to manipulate us. Because
if you think about it, back in a state of nature,
back when we lived in villages, if someone came to
town and they said, oh, I'm really friendly and safe,
and it turns out they weren't be disastrous right right
with their acts. With their acts. I'm sure that you
guys have encountered men people are like no, no, no,
I'm such a kiddy cat like and you're like, no,

(37:08):
it turns out you are a jerk.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Our intuition can oftentimes tell us when someone is trying
to manipulate us, and sometimes we ignore that intuition. Sometimes
we we just he's so hot, and I want him
to be good, and now I want him to be
the guy he says he's being, So I'm going to
overlook all these red flags. I pretend like I'm not noticed.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
We do have a name for that. It's called digmatized.

Speaker 5 (37:38):
For the I will say, for the record, I do
not believe I have ever I wish I had, but
I do not believe I've ever digmatized anyone on the
though I really wish that I could have claimed that
that's something I was capable.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Conversation. So that's enough. That's enough.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
I think he's spot on, and and it's it's it's
hard because no one wants to also like take responsibility.
And I don't want to say that it is the
responsibility of the person who's being manipulated, because it's not.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
No one should manipulate you.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
But I think anyone who has been in a narcissistic relationship,
they will tell you fuck the red flags were there,
Like I knew something was wrong. My intuition was screaming
at me, and this push and pull of the toxicity
was because I wasn't listening to it. That's a very
hard place to get to because often there's many reasons
why people stay longer than what they should. But the

(38:30):
sign is on the wall more often than not, and
it's the will to want to stay and the will
to hope that they are the potential that you see
in them rather than the person that they are.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
I think that's really really important. And another way of
saying it is it's okay to be a bad communicator, right,
Like nobody is born knowing how to avoid the jerks.
Nobody is born knowing how to like connect with people
in a real way. The only way we learn is
the same way we learn everything. We make mistakes. We
look back on something and we say, like, the red

(39:01):
flags are there, and next time I see them, I'm
definitely paying attention and running away. You are never obligated
to out of conversation you don't want to have, and
you are never bad because a conversation went poorly. It's
just how we learn to be better communicators.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
I want to talk about the power of honesty and
vulnerability in communication, and.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think it can be used for good and comus
for bad.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
But a lot of people say, you know, just be honest,
just be vulnerable. There's so much in that to connect.
And then we know that sometimes people will say things
like I fucking hate you because of this is an
this sorry just being honest like that. That's not the
way to use honesty and vulnerability. But you have a
wonderful example in your book about this CIA agent and
the way his honesty ended up being so beneficial for

(39:51):
his job. Can you talk to us a little bit
about this idea and how we can use it for good.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Absolutely, I think this is a really really good point.
You raised, like the role of vulnerability, because because the
truth of the matter is if I say, like, you
know what, you do this and this and this, and
it drives me crazy and I'm just trying to be honest,
I'm just trying to be vulnerable with you. I'm not
actually being vulnerable. I'm attacking you being a dick. And
then I'm dressing it up as if it's like in
this vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Language, yeah, or it's weaponizing honestly exactly to hurt someone
exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
So Jim Lawler was this CIA officer. So he was
hired and he was sent over to Europe and told
to go recruit people to try and give him secrets.
And he tries it for like a year, and he's
literally the worst CIA officer on the face of planet.
He is just terrible at recruiting people. Like people will
say things to him like I know that you're trying
to recruit me, I'm going to report you to the

(40:41):
authorities and so you will get deported. And so he
meets this one woman, Fatima, who comes to town and
he like takes her out to lunch and dinner and
he gets a knower, and then he asks her if
she'd be willing to share information from the Foreign Ministry
she worked in the Middle East with the CIA, and
she was like, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to get Yeah, they kill people in my

(41:01):
country for doing that Ki And so his bosses basically
tell him, look, if you can't close this deal, you're
gonna get fired. Like you've been here a year and
you've recruited zero people. You need to recruit this one.
And so he goes and he has dinner with her,
and during that dinner, he's just as honest as he
can because he basically gives up. He basically is like, look,

(41:21):
there's nothing I can say that's going to convince you
to work with me. And I totally understand that it's
like suicidal for you. Yeah, and like I know you
feel really bad about like going home and feeling like
you're a loser. I totally understand because I feel the
same way. Like they're gonna fire me. I'm gonna go
back to Texas and it's gonna be you know, it's
just gonna be awful. Like I'm so disappointed in myself.

(41:42):
And he's just trying to be totally honest. He's not
trying to manipulate her, He's not trying and at that moment,
for the first time, she can hear what he is
saying to him, which is he wants to help her country.
He wants to help women in her country. And she says, look,
I think I can help you. I think we can
work together. But the only reason she was able to
hear him was because he was genuinely honest and to

(42:06):
your point, coming in and being like, oh, I want
to be vulnerable with you. It's really hard because I
I dignatize all these all these girls, and and you're
I just wish that you were hotter. I could definitely,
I'm just trying to be vulnerable and honest. Like like,
that's not being vulnerable and honest, that's being a jerk.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
Imagine we've got use of the term, and that's not
quite It really doesn't off the.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Dignitize. Am I saying it right?

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Digmatized like hypnotize with a dick?

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yes, okay, yes, no, I get I get what it is.
It just it just doesn't roll off my time.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
I also think this is I mean, I love this
example about the CIA agent. But I'm also like, is
this the only person he ever recruited, because the only
way to recruit someone is when he's on the border
of being fired.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
No, it turns out he became one of the best
recruiters in the CIA's history.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
And every time, every time you do the same thing.
He would go in and he'd be like, look, I'm
going to be as honest with you as I can.
Sometimes he would cry, Sometimes he wouldn't cry. Sometimes he
would just be like, look, I promise you I'm going
to be as honest as I possibly can. And if
you don't want to work for us, that's totally fine.
But I just want to be honest about who I am,
and I want you to be honest about who you are.
And people loved him. Now it's interesting what vulnerability is, right,

(43:25):
because we tend to misunderstand what vulnerability is. Vulnerability is
just saying something that you could judge, Like if I
tell you, oh, I like Sidney more than Perth and
you're like, no, Perth's way better. I don't know why
you would say that, But if you did say that
the Perth is way better, it doesn't matter. I've actually

(43:46):
been vulnerable with you because you had the option to
judge me. And if you choose not to judge me,
if you say something vulnerable in response, if you tell
me something that I could judge about you and we
choose to withhold judgment, that's real vulnerability and that makes
us feel closer to each other.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Vulnerability has been having a real moment though, in terms
of like psychology speak and oh, I've listened to lots
of podcasts on it. There's experts. Esteberel speaks about vulnerability
Bretty Brown. But I do worry that we've almost swung
the pendulum in the opposite direction now, especially when it
comes to things like social media. I do think that
there is an algorithm where people use vulnerability because they

(44:24):
know that it gains favor. It's almost like the abuse
of vulnerability, and it can be used as another tool
to manipulate to get what you want. I mean, a
very classical relationship example of this could be, for example,
you're in a relationship, your partner cheats on you. You
find out that this has been going on for a while,
and then things in their life are so hard. It

(44:46):
was because of how they're feeling about themselves. Like they're
so depressed. All of those factors might be true that
it's like using vulnerability as an excuse for the action,
or using vulnerability to gain more followers, because it's the
thing that binds people together.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Because it's performative, right, it's performative vulnerability. It's not real vulnerability.
And if you'll notice in the examples you just mentioned,
what that person is doing is they're putting something out there,
but they're not giving you the chance to judge them.
What they're saying is no, no, no, you shouldn't judge
me for having an affair because things were so bad
in my life. In fact, you don't have the right
to judge me. I'm just going to tell you, like

(45:22):
what was wrong with me? Or I'm going to tell
you my story on Instagram and it's going to be
so sad and like if you're the type of person
who's like, well, it's not that bad, then you're a jerk. Yeah,
I'm actually not giving you the option to judge me.
I'm telling you what you ought to feel. That's the
opposite of vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
How do we identify that when it's happening, Like, how
can we be smart enough that we can sniff out
what's real from what's performative.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I think the thing to ask yourself is like, is
this person asking me if I want to judge them
and giving me an option to either judge or not judge.
Right if I tell you about something that happened in
my life where I made a mistake, and I say like, look,
I am not perfect, and you might feel like I'm

(46:05):
not perfect, and I totally understand that, but I was
trying my best. What I'm doing there is I'm asking
you do you want to judge me? And you have
every right to say like, no, you are not perfect,
you are a bad person. You could judge me. But
it's that act of allowing you to judge that is vulnerable.
And when instead of saying you are a bad person,

(46:27):
you don't have to say I'm a good person. When
instead of saying I will judge you, you say I
don't know whether you're a good person or a bad person.
But I know how hard that is because I've had
a similar thing happen in my life and I don't
know if I handled it well or if I handled
it poorly. At that moment, you and I will feel
closer to each other. We might not agree with each other,

(46:49):
we might not have much in common, but we will
feel closer to each other because that vulnerability, that withholding
of judgment that bonds us. So let me ask you
the last argument you had with someone who you care about,
maybe your fiance, maybe your sister, maybe your parents. Tell
me that they didn't go as well as you wanted
it to.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
Tell me, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a big
one recently. What I think happened there. My fiance is
cliche of the person that doesn't listen in an argument,
and he will. He's so stubborn and he will even
if he knows he's wrong, and I can clock it.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
He'll know that he's said.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
Something or done something, but he won't be able to
admit it in the in the moment, and then a
couple of days later he will have thought about it
and then he will come back.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
But in the moment, that doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
For me because it frustrates me even more because I'm like,
I know, you know that you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
So that's why the conversations don't go well for us, because.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
I mean, maybe I'm just blaming here, and maybe I
don't listen as well, But he definitely doesn't listen.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
In an argument, I love that you're like, it's not me,
it was him, it's all him. I am still right, no,
because I in an argument.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
You don't want to argue with Britt is what we're saying.
Right now, we've been in a couple.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Can I ask you something in those moments, because I'm
sure that it feels like an attack that look to
him that you might not be intended to be attacking,
but when you're like, you know you're wrong and you're
just not willing to admit it, that feels if you
were to ask a genuinely curious question, like something like,
I'm just wondering, Like I hear what you're saying. I'm wondering,
do you think you're going to feel the same way

(48:24):
four days from now that you feel right now? Like
if we're throwing ourselves four days in the future, how
do you think you're going to feel about this issue?

Speaker 1 (48:32):
He'll say, yes, do you feel the same, but yes.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
You did your best, then you you tried. I think yeah,
I think sometimes asking that question instead of saying like,
you know you're wrong, that when we feel furious, get curious,
like sometimes just asking but It has to be a
genuine question. It can't be at an argument disguised as
a question. Don't you know that you're in four days?
Aren't you going to feel bad for saying this? That's
not a real question, But a real question is like,

(49:00):
look a couple days from now, do you think you're
going to feel the same way that you feel right now?
Or is it possible you might feel a litle bit different,
Like tell me that might be for some version true?

Speaker 1 (49:11):
What's in your brain?

Speaker 2 (49:13):
My husband is fucking He's a top notch bloke, he
really is. The Only thing we really ever fight about
is tone. And it's because like someone said something that's
not offensive, but they've said it in a way that's
been interpreted as offensive or like it's been just.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
And it's we spend so much time together. We weren't together.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
We obviously live together with parents, two children together, Like
it's you know, we do a lot, so it's very
easy to have said something in a dismissing way of
the other person.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
But yeah, it's usually.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
I mean, the one that comes to mind was we've
just been through some really big stuff. We had a
couple of deaths in our family last year, which we
were like very very sad, and happened within short succession.
And you know, they were on my side of the family,
So my nana and my stepdad both passed away. But
Matt's never had anyone pass away in his family, so
he doesn't know what that's like. He's had a close
family friend, but he's never had like a close family

(50:05):
member that he sees all the time.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
And he's probably not.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Necessarily the best person in those situations because I think
he gives them an amount of time for it.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
But then it's kind of like, Okay, Las's back to
normal NOWOG keep going.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
You know you agrieved last week, Like, yeah, the argument
purely came from like not getting the emotional response that
I wanted to something I said. I said something which
should have I thought been a stop down and we
should have had a moment to talk about something. And
he was cleaning the house, so it was like he
was kind of like, ah, in a second, and I
look at that now. At the time, I got really
fired up about it, but I'm like, well, I also

(50:40):
chose a really dumb time to try and have a
conversation about something, which I could have done in twenty
minutes and he was like super distracted and not clocked
in to have that conversation. So I expected probably more
from him than what he could provide at that time.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
I think he can put the mop down in those
in those times, so like cleaning wasn't the priority.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Like, I don't think either are to blame. I totally
gone by, you know, But I.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Also think the easiest place to get to resolution is going, okay, Well,
we both played our part in that, Like you could
have listened and I could have waited fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I didn't need to be like, hey, guess what, let's
cry now, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
Well, And one thing I hear you saying, which is
a really good thing, is that you know, all couples fight,
Like studies have shown that every couple has arguments. Having
an argument is not the bad signal. Having an argument
where both people walk away angry and then come back
angry is bad. Yeah, And the fact that you guys

(51:33):
can have this blow up and then you can go
upstairs and you can you can both laugh about it
or you or you can say like, look, I'm really sorry,
Like I should have waited twenty minutes to tell you
about this, and he says, I probably should have put
down the mop to talk about this. Like, it's not
having the fight that's worrisome, it's not being able to
reflect on how to do it better next time.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
We have this one thing that we do which I like,
really encourage if you're in a healthy relationship and you
you know, you have like the inter and blow up,
but you know you know that you're going to make
up ten minutes later. We have this thing that if
someone's gotten angry but the actual fight is stupid because
they're all stupid, like they none of the fights are
ever about anything important, then like one person will always

(52:14):
be the person that is like, we're gonna hug the
grumpies out, and it's annoying because you don't want to,
but you actually can't stay mad.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
If someone's like, squeeze all the grumpies out and it works,
it works.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
The other person very quickly stops being angry and then
things are great.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
You know, see you're getting hug themptized.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Okay, Chiles, back to you, though, what's the last big
fight or big disagreement that you've had with your wife?

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Oh my gosh, that's a really good question. Uh So
we just bought a new house, and I was not
super enthusiastic necessarily about buying this house. I wasn't unenthusiastic.
I got enthusiastic, but it was really my wife's idea
because we already have a house and it's pretty nice,
and I wasn't certain we needed another house a more
debt and by the way, it was like a good

(52:59):
decision to make, Like I was worked up about it
and instead, and so when she was like, no, no, let
me prove to you, like this is why it makes sense.
Here's all there, like like, let's go through the spreadsheet,
and I was like I don't care, Like I don't
know why you're doing this to me, at which point
we both realized, like I was having an emotional conversation
as an emotional place, and it's not about whether it

(53:20):
makes sense in dollars and cents. It doesn't. Yeah, it
doesn't matter if the spreadsheet works. It's about like does
she hear that I'm anxious about this? And does she empathize?

Speaker 2 (53:29):
So it got better, you know what, Like you could
never have an argument with Charles.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
I reckon.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
You couldn't either, Like he's like I know that you're
emotional about this. He's like, let me, let me put
it out of the emotional argument.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
If my wife was in this conversation, she'd be like,
oh no, you can definitely have an argument. He has
his head up his ass all the time.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Charles, you being an absolutely july. Thank you so much
for coming and having this conversation with us. We also
thought it would be like something very fitting in the
start of a new year. So many people have these
like ideas that they're going to better themselves. Are they're
going to you know, improve the way that they either
function at work or function in their relationships. And I
think these are such important literal conversations that help you

(54:13):
to be able to be better and to just have
a more peaceful life.

Speaker 4 (54:16):
And there's always so much room for improvement, like every
if you, I think, when you get lazy and think
that there's no more room for improvement, that's where the
damage is done. But your book Super Communicators The Key
to Unlock in a Secret Language of Connection is available
audiobook and anywhere you can get a hard copy of
the book.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I thoroughly recommend it. I loved it. I've loved chatting
to you.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
We're going to link everything in our show notes, but
you've been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Thank you. It's such a it's so so much fun
to talk with you guys. Thank you for having me