Justin interviews Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg about his groundbreaking book "Super Communicators." Discover the science behind meaningful family conversations and learn practical strategies to transform how you connect with your children and partner.
Key Points:
- Understanding the three types of conversations: practical, emotional, and social
- Why fixing problems isn't always the answer
- How our brains sync during meaningful conversations
- The power of deep questions versus shallow ones
- Why family interruptions might be healthy
Quote of the Episode: "We tend to remember the conversations that are connection, as opposed to just information exchange." - Charles Duhigg
Key Insights:
- The importance of matching conversation types (practical vs. emotional)
- How to transform common questions into deeper connections
- The value of perspective getting over perspective taking
- Why acknowledging awkwardness helps difficult conversations
Best Questions Shared:
- "What was the most surprising thing that happened today?"
- "What do you admire about [friend's name]?"
- "How do you feel about [upcoming event]?" rather than "Are you ready?"
Resources Mentioned:
- "Super Communicators" by Charles Duhigg
- Harvard Study of Adult Development
- Research on neural entrainment and conversation
Action Steps for Parents:
- Ask what type of conversation your child wants to have
- Practice transforming shallow questions into deep ones
- Allow for healthy interruptions in family discussions
- Focus on connection over correction
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Charles Duig is a Pulitzurprise winning journalist, New York Times
bestselling author who happens to be fascinated by how humans work,
from our habits to how we communicate. When he's not
writing bestsellers like the Power of Habit, which is a
personal favorite of mine and has been sitting on my
bookshelf for many years, and Smarter Fast at Better, he
is at home in Santa Cruz, California with his wife
(00:28):
and two sons, and based on what we are about
to talk about, my guess is that he's probably asking
them deep questions about their day, although fair warning, apparently
his kids sometimes tell him to stop trying out his
communication theories on them during dinner time. Charles wrote a
book called Supercommunicators. I've just finished reading it. Loved the book.
(00:49):
Doggie had far too many pages, colored in, far too
many pages, made copious notes, and it's already changed the
way that I'm talking with my family and engaging with them.
Charles joins me on the Happy Families podcast today. What
a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for reaching out, Chiles.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For having me. I really appreciate it, Charles.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I want to just kick straight on with some conversation
points about what you've brought up in your book Super Communicators.
You write about three types of conversations that people have,
practical conversations, emotional conversations, and social conversations. Can you walk
us through what these look like in general? But I
(01:29):
really want to get specific about kids because quite often
what I find is parents are having very different conversations
with their kids than the kids trying to have with
their parents.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh. Absolutely, And for me, the journey to this book
actually kind of started it at home because of conversations
with my wife and my kids. And I so my kids,
my kids are now thirteen and sixteen, almost fourteen and seventeen,
and I only have two. I know you have sex,
which is which is allure.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
There's still time for you to catch up, Charles. Just
keep at it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'll let my wife. So, yeah, we would get into
this pattern. So, like you know, when they were a
little bit younger, they would they would come to tell
me about something, and I would assume that they were
coming to tell me about it because they wanted to
be to solvent, right, because they their brother hit them,
or because they something happened at school, and I assumed
(02:22):
they were looking for my advice. I assumed, in other words,
that they wanted to have a practical conversation. But pretty
quickly what I realized, what all parents realize, is no, no, no, no.
When these children come to you, what they actually want
is they want to have an emotional conversation. And the
thing is that if what we've learned from neuroscience is
that if you're having different kinds of conversations at the
(02:42):
same time, you can't really hear each other. Right when
I'd come home from work and I would complain about
my day and my wife would say, oh, you know,
why don't you take your boss out to lunch. You
guys get to know each other a little bit better,
I would get even more upset because I wanted to
have an emotional conversation. I want to tell her how
I felt, and she wanted to have a practical conversation.
She wanted to the problem. And those are both entirely
legitimate forms of communication. But when you're not having the
(03:05):
same kind of conversation at the same moment, you can't
connect with each other, you can't fully hear each other.
So you're exactly right when it comes to kids. Oftentimes,
the first thing we have to ask ourselves is what
kind of conversation is happening? And the way that we
do that is we look for certain words that are clues. Right,
(03:26):
are they describing their feelings. I feel upset or I
feel like that was really hard, or I'm a mad
or I'm frustrated. If they're using these feeling words, what
they're really telling us is I want to have an
emotional conversation. But if they come to us with very
sort of formulaic stuff like Dad, can I go to
(03:47):
the store? Dad? Can I do X? Dad? Why is
the sky blue? What we can listen for is that
they were having a practical conversation. They're in a practical mindset.
And then there's this social mindset, which is when we
have conversations about how we relate to each other or
society or the identities that are important to us. And
particularly with kids, whenever a kid says something about themselves,
(04:09):
I'm the kind of person who acts. I like to
why that's a social conversation. They're trying to tell us
how they see themselves.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, that identity thing. When I listen to you describing that,
and I think about what I learned from the book Supercommunicators.
Something that I've started to do explicitly in my conversations
with my wife and my children and even with friends
and colleagues and clients, is explicitly and clearly ask what
is it that's important to you here? By asking that question,
(04:41):
I'm finding that they're telling me what it is that
they want. So my wife, Clytie will be telling me
about a challenge that she's experiencing, and I'll say, I'm
hearing what you're telling me, how do you how do
you want me to respond to you here? Like what
are you looking for here? And it felt clunky and
awkward to say it initially, but she looked at me.
Herrizonod up and she said, I just want you to
(05:03):
understand and hug.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It's amazing, isn't it. We do the same thing. And
I deal with my kids when they come and they
like when they're complaining about their brother hitting them, I say,
do you want me just to know about this or
do you want me to help you figure out a
solution for that? I love And inevitably they say, I
just want you to know. I just want you to
know that he did it, which of course is great.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
About think about how much effort we save with that question, though,
because when you know that they just want you to know,
you don't now have to storm into the living room
with all guns blazing and say that's it, I've had enough.
How many times have I told you? And the few
row that errupts from there. By simply knowing that they
just want you to know, you can calmly say, huh, okay,
(05:46):
well now I know, I'm so glad you told me.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's exactly right. And there's a way that they teach
teachers to do this, particularly here in the US. They
teach them if if a student comes to you and
they have something important they want to talk about, the
first thing you should ask them is do you want
to be hugged? Do you want to be helped? Or
do you want to be heard, which, of course is
the three kinds of conversations right, the emotional, the practical,
(06:08):
and the social. And if you ask a kid that,
like do you want to be hugged helped to herd,
they know exactly what they want. They will tell you
right away. They'll say like, yeah, I need a hug
or no, no, no, I don't, I don't I don't need
you to help me with this. I just I just
want you to know what Jimmy said to me on
the on the playground. It's really important that we give
them agency to tell us what they want and need
(06:32):
out of a conversation, what kind of mindset their end,
because in doing so, we're actually teaching them to become
better communicators.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
At the core of the work that I do, Charles,
I focus heavily on a theory that you may be
familiar with. It's called self determination theory. So yeah, research
is at Rochester University which Ryan and DC have spent
decades developing this profound theory. And at the very center
of that self determination theory is this concept of agency
or autonomy. People want to feel not that they are
(07:00):
completely free and independent, but rather that they are volitional,
that they get to make choices in harmony with their
values and what their long term goals are. As you
describe that heard helped or hugged. So in Australia we
could never do that because teachers and a lot of
other hug students. However, let me digress. Some years ago
I began teaching in my seminars. It sort of as
(07:22):
an offhanded joke that when my wife is upset. The
best thing and every husband should do this. The best
thing you can do is say to your wife, do
you want me to be with you? Like do you
want do you want to hug? Or do you just
want some space? And it's that same concept, right, it's
recognizing this is a person who is unloading, who is
(07:42):
experiencing really big emotions. And there's something else that I
teach explicitly and ongoing then that is that when our
emotions are high, our intelligence is low. Intelligence kind of
vacates the building once our reptilian lower brain kicks in
and we get all emotional. Brene Brown talks about how
where emotional beings first, which means that when emotions take over,
it's like our intellect has been bound and gagged and
stuffed in the butt in the boot, and the emotions
(08:03):
are driving down the freeway. And when we when we
ask that question, when we pause and say, hey, do
you want do you want to be hugged or helped
or heard? Do you want to do you want to
do you want to minute on your own or whatever
it might be, I feel as though there's this it's
almost like we hand agency back to the child. Or
back to our spouse.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And they get to step out of the emotion and say,
what what is it that I really going back to
the initial premise of my first question, we go back
to this point where we say what is it that
I most want in this conversation? Profoundly, I think.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
That's really smart and and and one thing that I
like about how we're discussing this is what we're doing,
is we're asking questions. So think about when you're in
a conversation. Oftentimes, when we're going over a conversation, preparing
for a conversation in our head, what we're focusing on
is what we want to say. Right, this is the
thing I really want to say. This is an important conversation.
I want them to understand extra Y or Z. But
(08:56):
of course you know that the in self determination theory,
this locus of can control is really important. Right. Is
the locus of control something that's forced on me I
do other Is it an external lookus of control where
people force things on me? Or is it internal where
I get to choose and I'm in control of myself
and this conversation and my destiny. And when we ask
someone a question, what we are doing is we are
(09:17):
handing them control of the conversation. That doesn't mean we're
giving it up altogether, right, That doesn't mean that we're
just that we're going to follow them no matter where
they go. But what we're showing them is, instead of
just forcing you to listen to what I want to say,
I want us to control this conversation together. And when
we do that, that's when everyone suddenly achieves a sense
(09:41):
of psychological safety that lets us actually both agree and
disagree with each other.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I have a hypothesis by someone You've just said, this
idea of yeah, the idea of control. If you're trying
to control me, I take from that, I implicitly believe
that you don't trust my capacity as ability to resolve
a situation myself. You're stepping in and saying that you
need to be the unilateral arbiter of all things related
(10:07):
to this situation because you don't trust me. In other words,
you're judging me to be inferior or incompetent, or incapable,
or something like that. And the thought that I had
as you were describing that was that we often describe
the opposite of love to be hate, but My hypothesis
is that the opposite of love could be judgment. That is,
when when a person's feeling judged, they don't feel loved.
(10:33):
And by doing what you're describing, what we're actually my
sense is we're removing judgment from it by saying, hey,
let's control this together, let's work on this as a
as a team. Let me empower you to work through this.
I believe in you, I trust you.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you had mentioned
before this concept of deep questions, and this gets exactly
to what you were just talking about, because there's an
interesting question which questions are the right questions to ask?
Why do some questions better than others and sort of
drawing people out? And what researchers have found is that
the most effective questions and conversations that would are known
(11:08):
as deep questions or questions that ask about your values
or your beliefs or your experiences. And that can sound
a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as like
if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, oh,
what hospital do you work at? Saying oh, oh, what
made you decide to go to medical school? Great? What
do you like about being a doctor? When we ask
people how they see the world rather than the facts
(11:31):
about the world, what they're doing is exactly what you
just said. We're inviting them to be able to take
authority and control in that conversation, to share control with us,
and to shape how they believe we see them. And
there's nothing more trusting. There's nothing more trusting in this
(11:52):
entire world than asking someone a deep question. Right. It
doesn't mean I have to agree with you with whatever
you say, but what I say to you, Hey, I'm wondering,
how do you see the world? What do you make
of it? Here's an open canvas. Go ahead and paint
the picture that you think is best. You to help
me understand. It's a huge act of trust, and I
think we feel that.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
The late Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits Highly Effective People,
said it's a greater compliment to be trusted than to
be loved. And I feel like that's a really profound
way of demonstrating that by bringing people in and making
that happen. So here's what I'm hearing. Super communicators on
an agency, they withhold judgment, They ask deep questions. I
(12:37):
want to come back to some deep questions a little
bit later. But overarching, they understand the purpose of a conversation.
They understand whether it's a practical conversation or an emotional conversation,
or a social conversation, a problem solving, or a hugging
or an understanding a person kind of conversation. Just let
(12:57):
me change gears for a sec You talk about in
the book in one of the first couple of chapters,
this idea of neural entrainment. Fascinating idea that our brain
waves actually sync up during good conversations. So in my home,
the very best conversations that we have are either around
the dinner table or when a child is struggling and
(13:20):
engages with me so that we can work through her
having a hard time. And I feel that in trainment.
I genuinely there's something that happens in the interaction where
you can feel, hauh, we're in sync.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Can you describe what neural entrainment is and tell me
what does this tell us about the family dinner conversations,
the bedtime chats that we're having with our kids, and
how we can create more of this neural entrainment in
our discussions with our family.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's really interesting, and this is one of the most
replicated and in some senses profound finding of the last
ten years in neuroscience. When we're in a conversation with
someone and when we and we're really understanding each other,
our bodies and our brains change, right, So without us
realizing it, our breath patterns will start to match each other,
(14:06):
our heart rates will start to match each other. If
we're in a similar lighted environment, even over a zoom
call like this are the dilation of our eyes will
begin to mirror each other, and inside our brain, if
you could look at people's thoughts, what you would see
is that as they have this conversation, their thoughts become
more and more similar. They look the same when you're
(14:28):
looking at those like little graphs that show how people
are thinking. And that kind of makes sense when you
think about it, because if I tell you about an
emotion I'm feeling, you actually feel that emotion a little bit, right,
Or if I tell you about an idea, you experience
that idea a little bit. So it would make sense
that what's going on inside my head is the same
thing that's going on inside your head. But what we've
learned is that as a product of evolution, because of
(14:49):
how our brain has evolved to make us great communicators
and humans are super communicators kind of naturally, that two
things happen. First of all, when our thoughts start to
become similar, we understand each other much better. We actually
can listen much better. It's not like as if we're
(15:11):
like you know, suddenly hearing different words from before, but
we're hearing all of the words and noticing all of
the words rather than getting distracted. So that's the first thing.
The second thing that happens is that there's often a
dopaminic release, so in a cannabi voids and dorphins. When
you have a great conversation you feel wonderful, it's because
(15:33):
your brain is actually releasing serotonin allowing you to feel
wonderful about that conversation. And the reason why is because
the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that creates habits,
it wants you to have good conversations. It wants you
to connect with other people. Throughout history evolution, people who
connect with other people tend to live longer and succeed more.
(15:56):
So there's been this evolutionary pressure for us to get
better and better better at communication, and as a result,
there's an actual neurochemical rewards signal when we connect with someone.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I'm so engaged in what you're saying that I totally
lost trying to thought.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's totally okay, it's kind of reconnected. The best conversations
the best kind of and this is actually a good point.
So the best conversations actually look like a mess, right,
Like if you were to transcribe the best conversations you've
ever had, Yeah, and look at that, the transcription would
look like a mess. Right When you talk to your
wife and you guys, really you're interrupting each other. You're
(16:33):
starting ideas without finishing them. You're like making these little
side comments because when you're in the moment, it's all
about that connection. It's not about saying things eloquently. It's
not about remembering what your next question is. It's about
being present.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
As you described that, one of the one of the
great bug bess that I have when I listen back
to the Happy Families podcast is that I get so
excited about what we're talking about that I listened to Kylie,
who is my co host for most of our podcast episodes,
I interrupt her. I interrupt her all the time because
I want to jump in and I want to say this,
or I want to say that. And I kind of
(17:09):
beat myself up about that because it means to me
that I'm not being a great communicator. I'm certainly not
being a good listener. Something that you said in the book, though,
is that we need to not beat ourselves up so
much when there's interruptions going on, because there's a really
big upside to interruptions.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
So let me ask you this. If I was to
ask Kayley whether she feels like you interrupt too much,
what would she say?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Probably? I do talk a little bit too much, and
I do talk over her from time to time, but
it's not in a male dominant way. I'm so into
what you're saying, and you've just reminded me of this
awesome thing, and I've got to tell you about it,
and it's so good. It's that kind of interruption. It's
like the interruptions around our dinner table at night, when
we're having our family conversations. It's so hard to get
(17:51):
a word in because, well, as you can imagine, with
six daughters, there's a lot of communication. There's a lot
of emotions, but there's so much interruption and no one
gets to really finish a full or a sentence, which
is infuriating in some ways, and yet it's delights.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Kind of wonderful. Yeah, it's because everyone's in the conversation.
Everyone feels like they're participing. So you're exactly right. What
we know about interruptions is that interruptions are actually a
really good signal as long as they're going two ways. Right,
So if I always interrupt you and you never interrupt me,
then often what happens is that you are speaking far
(18:28):
less because you start saying something and I interrupt you,
and then I'm monologue for a while and you don't
interrupt me. And then finally you got a chance to
say something and you start saying something and then I
interrupt you again. Right, So the interruptions aren't the problem.
It's what's known as equality and conversational turn taking. So
equality and conversational turn taking is basically just this this
(18:48):
thing that they measure and experiments how much did each
person talk compare to everyone else. And it's not even
about like the number of words you said, it's not
even about the minutes you spent It's often about how
many times you piped up, because if one person is
interrupting and nobody else says, that person is going to
pape up a lot more frequently. But if everyone is
(19:10):
interrupting each other, if everyone says, oh my god, that's
such a good idea, well what about this, then it
feels like we have that equality and conversational turntaking, and
that is critical to making people, particularly a group of people,
feel like they're connected to each other.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, Kylie's still talking to me, so I'm going to
say that we've got a quality going just fine.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Charles.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I'm a really big believer that nobody wants to be fixed.
I've never had any of my children look at me
and say, Dad, it sounds like you've got a solution
to make me better, let me hear it. My wife
has never asked me, honey, why don't you fix me?
So that everything's just right? No one is ever begging
for us to fix them. Why do we implicitly desire
to fix other people?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So I'll note that this is not a universal condition, right,
There are there are some people, probably your wife, right
who who like when a kid brings a problem to them,
they just they know that, they like to just say, oh,
I'm so sorry, honey, that sounds really hard, rather than trying.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
To fix it. Forward them okay one of those people.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
What often happens is that we get habituated in a
certain kind of conversation. So one of the questions I
get asked a lot is like, do women and men
communicate differently? Do their brains work differently? Or women from
Mars and men are from venus or whatever it is.
And the answer is no. All the research shows men
and women communicate the same way, but they are often
(20:41):
habituated differently in their younger years. Right, conversations that are emotional.
Women tend to have more of them in their teenage years,
and as a result, they're just more comfortable with them.
Men oftentimes learn to have emotional conversations that seem dressed
up like practical conversation. I come to you and I
say I've got a problem and you're doing X and
(21:03):
it's really impacting our budget. And what I'm really saying
is like, I'm really upset, and I need you to
hear that I'm upset. And the fact that I'm bringing
up all this practical language about budgets and problems. That's
actually just a disguise because I'm uncomfortable talking about emotions
and so I'm more comfortable posing it in the language
(21:25):
of practicality. But what's really important about this is to
recognize that even though we have these habits, habits can
change very, very easily. And in fact, one of the
things about habits is that they are very delicate. They're
like gossamer threads. Right. Once you recognize that a habit
is there, it takes the smallest amount of effort to
(21:46):
disrupt it. And that's why, for instance, asking these questions
you want to be hugged, helped to heard, you know,
asking deep questions. That's one of the reasons they're so
powerful is because they short circuit our habit in our head,
which is, my kid came to me with an issue,
they want me to fix it. I'm going to tell
them how to fix it. When we ask that question.
As much as we're asking them what do you really
(22:07):
care about, we're also doing a service to ourselves to say, oh, habit,
let me like put the brakes on really quickly. Let's
just take a step back before I respond automatically and
think through like what this kid really needs.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yesterday had one of my daughters come to me really
struggling with something, and I so badly wanted to fix it.
I so badly wanted to fix her. I so badly
wanted to step in and say, well, I think blah
blah blah blah blah, if you just do this. I mean,
I've got a PhD in psychology, i know how to
be useful, I've got decades more life experience. There's all
of these reasons why I can simply step in and
(22:41):
make the problem go away. But thinking about our conversation
that was scheduled for today, I paused, and I looked
at her, and I put my hand in hers and
really softly just said, well, that sounds really tough. And
it was just this gorgeous moment where she leant into
me and she gave me a really big hug, and
after she hugged me, she said, I love you, Dad,
(23:02):
and whooped. Why a super communicator, And it was like
the problem was fixed, it was solved, and all I
had to say was, Wow, that sounds really tough. It
was well and gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
And the best example of this. I love that story because, like,
if you think back to the conversations you had with
your parents, or I think back to the conversations I
had with my parents. There are very few conversations that
stand out in my mind where my dad gave me
a piece of advice and I was like, gosh, darn it,
he's right, everything right. It might have happened. It probably
did happen, but I have managed to forget all of them.
(23:38):
But the conversations I remember with my dad were the
ones where either I told him how I was feeling,
or he asked me something and I said something in
response that kind of surprised me. We tend to remember
the conversations that are connection as opposed to just information exchange,
and it's really hard. It's really hard to connect when
(23:59):
like one person and has all the answers and one
person has all the questions. That's not a meeting of equals,
and as a result, it's very hard to intrigue with
each other.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
That is just beautiful. I love as you said that
I reflected on the conversations that I've had with my
parents that mean the most to me, and it's exactly
the same. It's those connection conversations. Now, Charles, you you
slay a sacred cow in some ways in this book.
For years, I've been teaching about the importance of perspective taking.
(24:29):
A wonderful research from the sixties and seventies. Martin Hoffman
talks all about the power of perspective taking, and then
we've got people like him Ginnott, and we've got John Gotman.
All these people teach about how we've got to stand
in the shoes of another person and take their perspective
to communicate well and be empathic. But you suggest in
Super Communicators that perspective taking can sometimes backfire, and you
(24:53):
make a recommendation for what to do instead. This is
not to discount the validity or usefulness of taking bit
to hot life, that it doesn't always work. Can you
describe how it might be our undoing in some circumstances
and what you suggest to do instead.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah. Absolutely. And there's been a number of researchers who
over looked at this Nick Epley at the University of Chicago,
a number of them particularly looking at at prejudice and
how we fight prejudice. You're exactly right, perspective taking hand work.
But it assumes that I have the ability to put
myself into your shoes in a way that is accurate. Right, So,
(25:32):
if you and I are talking about parenting and you
mentioned some parenting problem that you have, I can probably
stand in your shoes and see how you saw the situation.
But if, on the other hand, we were talking about
what it's like to live in Gaza, and I'm an
American who's never been to the Middle East, it's ridiculous
to say that like, perspective taking is gonna work. I
(25:54):
have no idea what that's like. I can't imagine myself
into that person's shoes, or to imagine myself as an Israeli. Right,
How am I going to figure out how to take
the perspectives of these two people who see things so
differently than I do and as each other, without having
any basis to put myselves in their shoes, to imagine
what it would be like to be them. And so
(26:16):
into this breach, these researchers have coming forward and they said, look,
perspective taking work sometimes, but there are times when it
doesn't work, when when it's just the experience that someone
is having is too foreign, too alien to your own
experience to actually it's presumptuous to assume that you know
what it's like for them. And in that case, instead
of doing perspective taking, what we should do is perspective getting.
(26:40):
Just ask some a question, Ask them like, what is
it like to live in Gaza right now? What is
it like to be an Israeli citizen right now? I
know that you guys see this thing differently. I really
want to understand how both of you see it. We
don't have to guess what it's like to stand in
their shoes. We can ask them to tell us what
it's like to stand in their shoes, and then when
we ask follow up questions, we start to find ways
(27:03):
to relate to their experience. And so this isn't to
say that we shouldn't teach perspective taking, but perspective getting.
Teaching people to ask questions, particularly hard questions, is really important.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Charles, Let's change up the pace for a moment and
do a lightning round.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The idea of a lightning round, as I'm sure you know,
is we could spend half an hour in each of
these questions. By the way, but just the first thing
that pops into your head as I asked the questions.
We'll see how we go. First question, favorite question to
ask your kids at dinner.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I asked them, what was the most surprising thing that
happened that day or the most interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Huh, okay, most surprising thing that you've learned. As you've
written this book about communicating with children or teens.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
How good we are at it? You know. One of
the theories of the book is, and this is held
up for the research, we are all super communicators at
one time or another, and oftentimes becoming a consistent supercommunicator
is just about learning to listen to our instincts and
learning how conversations work. But if you think about it,
parents have meaningful conversations with their kids all the time,
(28:11):
and that's kind of amazing because besides their genetics, oftentimes
they have nothing in common.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I was really surprised by that answer. Question number three.
Best way to start a difficult conversation with your spouse
or partner.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, the best way, and again the science backs us up,
is to start by saying, this is going to be
an awkward conversation, and I apologize in advance that it's
going to be awkward, and actually the awkwardness is part
of the reason I want to have it with you.
And I might say the wrong thing, because sometimes like
the gap between my brain and my lips is too big,
and I hope you'll forgive me. And if you say
the wrong thing, I promise I'll forgive you, like I'll
(28:46):
give you a chance to like rewind the tape and
say it a little bit better. When we do that,
when we acknowledge the awkwardness, when we give each other
the grace to make mistakes, we're lowering the temperature, and
that's critical.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I recommend the same approach when talking about tricky topics
with children. I want to have one of those awkward
conversations that some people really struggle with with their parents
and children. And the kids are suddenly a little bit intrigued,
but also defenses are down. It's like, Okay, this could
be awkward, but this is obviously important.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's in the car. When I'm in the car with
my kids, I often will say, like, okay, let's talk
about puberty, because they go da, they're not going anywhere.
The security the dolls are locked, do you know what?
Like it takes like thirty seconds for them to be like,
I do have a question.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Actually, what's the worst communication happened that you had to unlearn?
I mean you say that this book was about you
learning to be a better communicator.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
One of the things that's most toxic to a conversation
is when we control, try to control the other person
in the conversation. And as you know, there's this there's
this thing that happens in when we're talking to spouses
called kitchen sinking. We start arguing about one thing, and
suddenly we're arguing about everything. Right, we're not just where
we're going to go out for Christmas, but like your
(30:02):
mom hates me, and I wish that if you made
more money, we could go on nicer trips like you're
just And that's toxic. That is that is a clear
sign that something is wrong in a relationship. And I
think the reason why we do this kitchen thinking is
because we want to try and control the other person.
We want to try and control what the conversations about.
We want to try and control control what you're allowed
(30:23):
to say and what you're not allowed to say, and
whether you're on the defense or the offense. And when
we change that and we say, look, I have the
sensing to control things, but instead of trying to control you,
I'm going to control the environment with you like, like,
let's have this conversation, you know, not at two o'clock
in the morning, Let's wait until we're both well rested
and have it at nine in the morning. Or I'm
going to control I'm going to I with you. I
(30:45):
want to control the boundaries of the conversation, Like we're
going to talk about where we're going on holiday, We're
not going to talk about moms, We're not going to
talk about money. When we share control and this is
something I feel like I learned to do better. What
we're really doing is we're empowering the other person to
have a conversation with us. So it doesn't it's not
an argument, it's a it's a cooperation.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Just a few more. What's your gout to phrase when
you've messed things up with your family?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's a good question. I mean usually just say I'm sorry.
I try and apologize to my kids a lot because
I want to show them that that making mistakes is
part of life. And so yeah, so I just say like, hey, Ali,
I'm really sorry, Like you asked me that question, I
was short with you and that that was not appropriate
and I'm sorry I did that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Charles, what's the most unexpected place that you've had a
great conversation.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Oh my gosh, I mean all the time, like in
an Uber, Like sometimes you have these conversations with Uber
drivers and like and some and it's okay not to
have a conversation with Uber driver. Sometimes you get an
Uber you just want to check your phone. But sometimes
you have this conversation with an Uber driver, and like,
they have these amazing life stories, right, they like cross
the oceans and send money back to their families, and
(31:58):
you're part of something important by connecting with them.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I really really struggle with those conversations. I get off
an airplane, jump in the uber or or the cab
and think, ah, can I just put my headphones on
and pretend? But as you've said, some wonderful and enriching
conversations have been the result of being willing to engage
with another person. I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And you absolutely can just put your headphones on, like
there's no obligation of a conversation. But I think oftentimes
we hesitate to have that conversation because we're worried about
how it's going to end. We're worried about how we're
going to like tie it off, or or what if
they like, start telling me some story and I'm bored
and I want to do something else. And yet yet
that all the research shows those worries are overblown in
(32:43):
our mind, because every single person who has those worries
they have managed to curtail a conversation pretty effectively and easily.
Yeah right. Sometimes it's just a matter of being like, oh,
that's so interesting, I gotta I gotta check my phone now,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna do that, or sometimes just
like being like, oh, good, good, good to hear you know,
and you stop asking questions and the music comes on.
We all know how to stop conversations if we want
(33:05):
to stop a conversation, it's but we sometimes we forget
that we know how to do that, and it's the
awkwardness of it that sets us off.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Two more questions for the Lightning Round. Number one, Best
conversation starter at a party?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Oh so, I think the best one depends what kind
of party you're at. My favorite question is when is
the last time you cried in front of another person?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Oof? Yeah, you talk about that in the book. Yeah,
I thought to myself, I don't know if I'm courageous
enough to ask somebody that I've just you know it
that question.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Decide that it's going to be the third question you
ask someone, and by the time you ask it, it's
going to feel so natural because those first two questions,
those first two questions are going to be questions that
are real questions.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Last one, what's the most powerful question that someone has
ever asked you?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Ooh, that's a really good question. I don't know. I
don't know, because if a question is asked in the
right spirit, they're all powerful, right, Like, I don't know.
Maybe when like one of my parents asked me why
I wanted to propose to my wife or what I
liked about her? But that's not it. That's it. This
was in college. That's not a question that like was
(34:15):
a deep question for them. We were literally in the
car and my mom was like, oh, yeah, tell me
about telling me about Liz. What's you like? What do
you like about her? And like it was at that
moment that I was like, oh, oh, I'm in love
with her. I'm going to marry this person.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I have two quick responses to that. First of all, Yeah,
I was with some friends in Sydney and they were
asking me what I loved about Kylie, And it was
that same question that made me realize that I needed
to go home and propose that day.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Really, yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Was literally just that question of what do you like
about her? And the more I answered the question, the
more I thought, why are we not already married? I mean,
it was really that profound and that powerful. And I
guess the follow up to that is you mentioned that
this was a long time ago. Kylie and I are
about to celebrate our twenty seventh wedding anniversary, congratulations. And
I was telling someon about that just the other day,
(35:01):
and that person looked at me and asked, so sincerely
and so beautifully, what do you think you've done to
have such a happy marriage for twenty seven years? And
I sat there and I almost started weeping as I
thought about the beauty of the relationship that we share,
but also the just the I loved the question. I
just wanted to sort of sink into that person's arms
(35:23):
and say, thank you so much for asking. Let's just
talk about relationships and let me tell you about Clylie.
For the next hour or two, it was, Oh, I
just wanted to open up everything to this person because
it felt like such a deep and vulnerable question.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, and I think that gets that so beautifully illustrates that.
Sometimes we say, like, what's the best question, right, We're
looking for that magic question, We're looking for that magic answer.
But actually, any deep question is the perfect question if
it's asked with the great spirit, if it's asked to
someone who's ready to respond and connect with you, if
(35:57):
you show them that you're listening by sharing of your
self and not judging them but instead allowing them to
be vulnerable and being vulnerable yourself, any question can be
the best question if we allow ourselves. It's what happens
after we ask the question that matters much much more.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
The Lightning round has evolved into a regular conversation again,
which happens all the time. But our time is starting
to run really short, and there are two more questions
that I want to discuss with you. The first one
comes from one of my favorite There were three parts
of the book that I loved the most, but one
of those parts was on page ninety seven, where you
(36:34):
describe how shallow questions can become deep. Now, we've referenced
deep questions a number of times, and we've just talked
about one of those a moment ago. You've talked about
how these deep questions are going to create better connection,
and I want to hit you with a handful of standard,
shallow questions that we often ask our children. Sure I
love it, and get you to give me a deeper,
more connective version. This is the really practical stuff, right,
(36:58):
How do we deepen questions like how was school today?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
What was the most surprising thing that happened at school today?
What was the best thing that happened to you at
school today?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
It's such a slight tweak and even if they look
at you and say nothing, that opens up more conversation, right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And as long as we change it up right, like
what's the worst thing that happened today? What did someone
say in class that was like the weirdest thing you've
ever heard?
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Charles? In our family, we have a series of values,
things that we just prioritize in terms of the way
we interact with others, and so our questions, either at
the dinner table or as we're discussing school, our questions
will often revolve around those values. So we'll say, who
were you kind to today? Or how did you show
determination and perseverance in the face of adversity and challenge.
(37:46):
We'll ask those questions and the children's sometimes they've grown
and say, but more often than not we get really great.
They're just deeper questions.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And I'll mentioned something I asked my kids. It's very
much in keeping with this is rather than asking them
like how's Jasper? What's going on with Jasper? I like
to ask my kids like, what do you admire about Jasper?
It seems like you really like them, Like what do
you admire about them? Right? And then suddenly you're empowering
them to tell you how they see the world.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Here's another one, why didn't you clean your room?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Sometimes when you ask that question, you you're not actually
looking for a conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
You're just like, you're just looking to send a message.
I just want yeah, and that's okay, that's okay. But
a better way to do it if you do want
to have a conversation is I know that the cleaning
is important to me, and you told me it's important
to you. What's the thing that's stopping you from keeping
your room clean? Let's let's let's analyze this.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Okay, I have two more of these ones. What do
you want for dinner? Again, this is a very practical,
and my parent really cares, like, we're so sick of
thinking every day about what we need to do for dinner.
But yeah, there's got to be a better way that
we can ask this question.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
So this is how I do it at home. I say,
if you could have anything for dinner, any thing on earth,
but you're you're deciding this in the future because you're
looking back and seeing what you should eat, what would
you choose? And it never really they say ice cream? Right,
I'm like, five years from now, do you think that, like,
you're you're gonna really wish that you had ice cream tonight? No,
(39:18):
I guess five years from now, I wish that we
had some broccoli and then some ice cream. So the
variety is the spice of life in this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, if you could have your last meal and it
was to night, what would you choose? That kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah, it's a great one, right, all right.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And the last one that I wanted to ask is
just this is another tricky one because as parents were
so functionally oriented, it's so much about getting things done.
It's so often practical, but a question around are you
ready for your test? How would you deepen that or
how would you improve that question?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
You know, we think about this a lot because we
work with our kids and they're in school, and we
spend a lot of time talking to them about how
do you feel all about the test that's coming up,
Like how do you feel about the work you've done,
how do you feel about the test tomorrow? Do you
how do you think you're going to feel afterwards? Feel?
(40:11):
And in part that's because it's a little bit different,
but also because that's actually what we're supposed to be doing, right,
We're supposed to be teaching them this internal compass about
where they can rely on their feelings to tell them
whether they're prepared or not, or to tell them whether
they should be anxious or not, and if they're feeling anxious,
to try and figure out why and do something to
(40:32):
relieve it.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I love that, Charles. For a couple of decades now,
I've been talking to people about the Harvard Study of
Adult Development, otherwise known as the Grant Study, one of
the longest running, if not the longest running study of
human development and flourishing and well being in the history
of the world. It's it's spoken about by so many
people in so many different contexts. In the last chapter
(40:53):
of Supercommunicators, you put a perspective on the Grant study
that kept me riveted. It was my favorite part of
the book, and not by a little bit.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I just thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I loved it so much that I pulled my whole
family together and a couple of the kids had their
friends over, and I said, I don't care, everyone around
the dining table now, and.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I read them.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I read them the entire final chapter out loud for
about thirty or forty minutes, and we talked about it
as we went through. I loved how you wrapped up
this well.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Thank you. That's so nice to be to say.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
What I would love for you to do for everyone
who's participating in this podcast conversation is, let's wrap this
up with a discussion about why. Why does communication matter?
Why does the book matter? Why is the idea of
being a super communicator matter? How do you explain why
we need to communicate and connect better?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
You know you mentioned that study, the Harvard Study of
Adult Development, and for those folks who aren't aware of it,
it's been going on for almost eighty years now. Researchers
have followed around thousands of people trying to figure out basically,
what are the things that make you happier and healthier
and more accessful. However, you define success into your old age.
(42:03):
And they had all these theories, right, They've done at Harvard,
so they're like, well, if you go to Harvard, you're
definitely going to be happier when you get older. And
it turns out that's not true. If you're married and
you stay married and even if it's bad marriage, you
don't get divorced, you're going to be happy and successful. Nope,
that's not true either. The researchers basically found only one
thing that could predict people's happiness, health, and success at
(42:24):
age sixty five, and that was having at least a
handful of close relationships at age forty five, which means,
of course, that you've had those relationships for a while
and that you're going to continue to have them for
a while. And I think this gets to why communication
is so important. We are a social creatures. We are
a social species. Our brains literally have evolved to make
(42:48):
a supercommunicators. If you think about it, communication is our superpower.
It's the thing that puts us above every other species.
That's the thing that allows us to build families and
villages and towns and cities, aircraft carriers and game boxes.
Communication is at the core of how we experience life
(43:09):
and when we connect with other people. When we have
other people who it's easy to communicate with, who we
communicate with on a regular basis, who we have those
meaningful conversations. It is the thing that only brings our
life meaning. It literally makes us healthier, we live longer.
When we do that, we get exposed to opportunities we
wouldn't have known about otherwise, and so we end up
being more successful. Communication and connection is everything, and for
(43:34):
anyone who has it or who doesn't have it, they
know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Super communicate is how to unlock the secret Language of Connection.
Is the book compelling storytelling, powerful insights. I loved it.
Charles Dewick, Thank you for communicating and connecting with us
on the Happy Families podcast today.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
Bridge Media. If you like the podcast, can we invite
you to take twenty seconds out of your day. It's
literally that quick twenty seconds. Leave us a rating and review.
We like the five star ones the best by the
way they genuinely help people to find the show and
make their family happier. Resources and ideas to help your
family thrive are available at happy families dot com dot
(44:16):
au
Charles Duig is a Pulitzurprise winning journalist, New York Times
bestselling author who happens to be fascinated by how humans work,
from our habits to how we communicate. When he's not
writing bestsellers like the Power of Habit, which is a
personal favorite of mine and has been sitting on my
bookshelf for many years, and Smarter Fast at Better, he
is at home in Santa Cruz, California with his wife
(00:28):
and two sons, and based on what we are about
to talk about, my guess is that he's probably asking
them deep questions about their day, although fair warning, apparently
his kids sometimes tell him to stop trying out his
communication theories on them during dinner time. Charles wrote a
book called Supercommunicators. I've just finished reading it. Loved the book.
(00:49):
Doggie had far too many pages, colored in, far too
many pages, made copious notes, and it's already changed the
way that I'm talking with my family and engaging with them.
Charles joins me on the Happy Families podcast today. What
a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for reaching out, Chiles.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
For having me. I really appreciate it, Charles.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I want to just kick straight on with some conversation
points about what you've brought up in your book Super Communicators.
You write about three types of conversations that people have,
practical conversations, emotional conversations, and social conversations. Can you walk
us through what these look like in general? But I
(01:29):
really want to get specific about kids because quite often
what I find is parents are having very different conversations
with their kids than the kids trying to have with
their parents.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh. Absolutely, And for me, the journey to this book
actually kind of started it at home because of conversations
with my wife and my kids. And I so my kids,
my kids are now thirteen and sixteen, almost fourteen and seventeen,
and I only have two. I know you have sex,
which is which is allure.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
There's still time for you to catch up, Charles. Just
keep at it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'll let my wife. So, yeah, we would get into
this pattern. So, like you know, when they were a
little bit younger, they would they would come to tell
me about something, and I would assume that they were
coming to tell me about it because they wanted to
be to solvent, right, because they their brother hit them,
or because they something happened at school, and I assumed
(02:22):
they were looking for my advice. I assumed, in other words,
that they wanted to have a practical conversation. But pretty
quickly what I realized, what all parents realize, is no, no, no, no.
When these children come to you, what they actually want
is they want to have an emotional conversation. And the
thing is that if what we've learned from neuroscience is
that if you're having different kinds of conversations at the
(02:42):
same time, you can't really hear each other. Right when
I'd come home from work and I would complain about
my day and my wife would say, oh, you know,
why don't you take your boss out to lunch. You
guys get to know each other a little bit better,
I would get even more upset because I wanted to
have an emotional conversation. I want to tell her how
I felt, and she wanted to have a practical conversation.
She wanted to the problem. And those are both entirely
legitimate forms of communication. But when you're not having the
(03:05):
same kind of conversation at the same moment, you can't
connect with each other, you can't fully hear each other.
So you're exactly right when it comes to kids. Oftentimes,
the first thing we have to ask ourselves is what
kind of conversation is happening? And the way that we
do that is we look for certain words that are clues. Right,
(03:26):
are they describing their feelings. I feel upset or I
feel like that was really hard, or I'm a mad
or I'm frustrated. If they're using these feeling words, what
they're really telling us is I want to have an
emotional conversation. But if they come to us with very
sort of formulaic stuff like Dad, can I go to
(03:47):
the store? Dad? Can I do X? Dad? Why is
the sky blue? What we can listen for is that
they were having a practical conversation. They're in a practical mindset.
And then there's this social mindset, which is when we
have conversations about how we relate to each other or
society or the identities that are important to us. And
particularly with kids, whenever a kid says something about themselves,
(04:09):
I'm the kind of person who acts. I like to
why that's a social conversation. They're trying to tell us
how they see themselves.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, that identity thing. When I listen to you describing that,
and I think about what I learned from the book Supercommunicators.
Something that I've started to do explicitly in my conversations
with my wife and my children and even with friends
and colleagues and clients, is explicitly and clearly ask what
is it that's important to you here? By asking that question,
(04:41):
I'm finding that they're telling me what it is that
they want. So my wife, Clytie will be telling me
about a challenge that she's experiencing, and I'll say, I'm
hearing what you're telling me, how do you how do
you want me to respond to you here? Like what
are you looking for here? And it felt clunky and
awkward to say it initially, but she looked at me.
Herrizonod up and she said, I just want you to
(05:03):
understand and hug.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
It's amazing, isn't it. We do the same thing. And
I deal with my kids when they come and they
like when they're complaining about their brother hitting them, I say,
do you want me just to know about this or
do you want me to help you figure out a
solution for that? I love And inevitably they say, I
just want you to know. I just want you to
know that he did it, which of course is great.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
About think about how much effort we save with that question, though,
because when you know that they just want you to know,
you don't now have to storm into the living room
with all guns blazing and say that's it, I've had enough.
How many times have I told you? And the few
row that errupts from there. By simply knowing that they
just want you to know, you can calmly say, huh, okay,
(05:46):
well now I know, I'm so glad you told me.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's exactly right. And there's a way that they teach
teachers to do this, particularly here in the US. They
teach them if if a student comes to you and
they have something important they want to talk about, the
first thing you should ask them is do you want
to be hugged? Do you want to be helped? Or
do you want to be heard, which, of course is
the three kinds of conversations right, the emotional, the practical,
(06:08):
and the social. And if you ask a kid that,
like do you want to be hugged helped to herd,
they know exactly what they want. They will tell you
right away. They'll say like, yeah, I need a hug
or no, no, no, I don't, I don't I don't need
you to help me with this. I just I just
want you to know what Jimmy said to me on
the on the playground. It's really important that we give
them agency to tell us what they want and need
(06:32):
out of a conversation, what kind of mindset their end,
because in doing so, we're actually teaching them to become
better communicators.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
At the core of the work that I do, Charles,
I focus heavily on a theory that you may be
familiar with. It's called self determination theory. So yeah, research
is at Rochester University which Ryan and DC have spent
decades developing this profound theory. And at the very center
of that self determination theory is this concept of agency
or autonomy. People want to feel not that they are
(07:00):
completely free and independent, but rather that they are volitional,
that they get to make choices in harmony with their
values and what their long term goals are. As you
describe that heard helped or hugged. So in Australia we
could never do that because teachers and a lot of
other hug students. However, let me digress. Some years ago
I began teaching in my seminars. It sort of as
(07:22):
an offhanded joke that when my wife is upset. The
best thing and every husband should do this. The best
thing you can do is say to your wife, do
you want me to be with you? Like do you
want do you want to hug? Or do you just
want some space? And it's that same concept, right, it's
recognizing this is a person who is unloading, who is
(07:42):
experiencing really big emotions. And there's something else that I
teach explicitly and ongoing then that is that when our
emotions are high, our intelligence is low. Intelligence kind of
vacates the building once our reptilian lower brain kicks in
and we get all emotional. Brene Brown talks about how
where emotional beings first, which means that when emotions take over,
it's like our intellect has been bound and gagged and
stuffed in the butt in the boot, and the emotions
(08:03):
are driving down the freeway. And when we when we
ask that question, when we pause and say, hey, do
you want do you want to be hugged or helped
or heard? Do you want to do you want to
do you want to minute on your own or whatever
it might be, I feel as though there's this it's
almost like we hand agency back to the child. Or
back to our spouse.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And they get to step out of the emotion and say,
what what is it that I really going back to
the initial premise of my first question, we go back
to this point where we say what is it that
I most want in this conversation? Profoundly, I think.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
That's really smart and and and one thing that I
like about how we're discussing this is what we're doing,
is we're asking questions. So think about when you're in
a conversation. Oftentimes, when we're going over a conversation, preparing
for a conversation in our head, what we're focusing on
is what we want to say. Right, this is the
thing I really want to say. This is an important conversation.
I want them to understand extra Y or Z. But
(08:56):
of course you know that the in self determination theory,
this locus of can control is really important. Right. Is
the locus of control something that's forced on me I
do other Is it an external lookus of control where
people force things on me? Or is it internal where
I get to choose and I'm in control of myself
and this conversation and my destiny. And when we ask
someone a question, what we are doing is we are
(09:17):
handing them control of the conversation. That doesn't mean we're
giving it up altogether, right, That doesn't mean that we're
just that we're going to follow them no matter where
they go. But what we're showing them is, instead of
just forcing you to listen to what I want to say,
I want us to control this conversation together. And when
we do that, that's when everyone suddenly achieves a sense
(09:41):
of psychological safety that lets us actually both agree and
disagree with each other.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I have a hypothesis by someone You've just said, this
idea of yeah, the idea of control. If you're trying
to control me, I take from that, I implicitly believe
that you don't trust my capacity as ability to resolve
a situation myself. You're stepping in and saying that you
need to be the unilateral arbiter of all things related
(10:07):
to this situation because you don't trust me. In other words,
you're judging me to be inferior or incompetent, or incapable,
or something like that. And the thought that I had
as you were describing that was that we often describe
the opposite of love to be hate, but My hypothesis
is that the opposite of love could be judgment. That is,
when when a person's feeling judged, they don't feel loved.
(10:33):
And by doing what you're describing, what we're actually my
sense is we're removing judgment from it by saying, hey,
let's control this together, let's work on this as a
as a team. Let me empower you to work through this.
I believe in you, I trust you.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And you had mentioned
before this concept of deep questions, and this gets exactly
to what you were just talking about, because there's an
interesting question which questions are the right questions to ask?
Why do some questions better than others and sort of
drawing people out? And what researchers have found is that
the most effective questions and conversations that would are known
(11:08):
as deep questions or questions that ask about your values
or your beliefs or your experiences. And that can sound
a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as like
if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, oh,
what hospital do you work at? Saying oh, oh, what
made you decide to go to medical school? Great? What
do you like about being a doctor? When we ask
people how they see the world rather than the facts
(11:31):
about the world, what they're doing is exactly what you
just said. We're inviting them to be able to take
authority and control in that conversation, to share control with us,
and to shape how they believe we see them. And
there's nothing more trusting. There's nothing more trusting in this
(11:52):
entire world than asking someone a deep question. Right. It
doesn't mean I have to agree with you with whatever
you say, but what I say to you, Hey, I'm wondering,
how do you see the world? What do you make
of it? Here's an open canvas. Go ahead and paint
the picture that you think is best. You to help
me understand. It's a huge act of trust, and I
think we feel that.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
The late Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits Highly Effective People,
said it's a greater compliment to be trusted than to
be loved. And I feel like that's a really profound
way of demonstrating that by bringing people in and making
that happen. So here's what I'm hearing. Super communicators on
an agency, they withhold judgment, They ask deep questions. I
(12:37):
want to come back to some deep questions a little
bit later. But overarching, they understand the purpose of a conversation.
They understand whether it's a practical conversation or an emotional conversation,
or a social conversation, a problem solving, or a hugging
or an understanding a person kind of conversation. Just let
(12:57):
me change gears for a sec You talk about in
the book in one of the first couple of chapters,
this idea of neural entrainment. Fascinating idea that our brain
waves actually sync up during good conversations. So in my home,
the very best conversations that we have are either around
the dinner table or when a child is struggling and
(13:20):
engages with me so that we can work through her
having a hard time. And I feel that in trainment.
I genuinely there's something that happens in the interaction where
you can feel, hauh, we're in sync.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Now.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Can you describe what neural entrainment is and tell me
what does this tell us about the family dinner conversations,
the bedtime chats that we're having with our kids, and
how we can create more of this neural entrainment in
our discussions with our family.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
It's really interesting, and this is one of the most
replicated and in some senses profound finding of the last
ten years in neuroscience. When we're in a conversation with
someone and when we and we're really understanding each other,
our bodies and our brains change, right, So without us
realizing it, our breath patterns will start to match each other,
(14:06):
our heart rates will start to match each other. If
we're in a similar lighted environment, even over a zoom
call like this are the dilation of our eyes will
begin to mirror each other, and inside our brain, if
you could look at people's thoughts, what you would see
is that as they have this conversation, their thoughts become
more and more similar. They look the same when you're
(14:28):
looking at those like little graphs that show how people
are thinking. And that kind of makes sense when you
think about it, because if I tell you about an
emotion I'm feeling, you actually feel that emotion a little bit, right,
Or if I tell you about an idea, you experience
that idea a little bit. So it would make sense
that what's going on inside my head is the same
thing that's going on inside your head. But what we've
learned is that as a product of evolution, because of
(14:49):
how our brain has evolved to make us great communicators
and humans are super communicators kind of naturally, that two
things happen. First of all, when our thoughts start to
become similar, we understand each other much better. We actually
can listen much better. It's not like as if we're
(15:11):
like you know, suddenly hearing different words from before, but
we're hearing all of the words and noticing all of
the words rather than getting distracted. So that's the first thing.
The second thing that happens is that there's often a
dopaminic release, so in a cannabi voids and dorphins. When
you have a great conversation you feel wonderful, it's because
(15:33):
your brain is actually releasing serotonin allowing you to feel
wonderful about that conversation. And the reason why is because
the basal ganglia, the part of the brain that creates habits,
it wants you to have good conversations. It wants you
to connect with other people. Throughout history evolution, people who
connect with other people tend to live longer and succeed more.
(15:56):
So there's been this evolutionary pressure for us to get
better and better better at communication, and as a result,
there's an actual neurochemical rewards signal when we connect with someone.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I'm so engaged in what you're saying that I totally
lost trying to thought.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's totally okay, it's kind of reconnected. The best conversations
the best kind of and this is actually a good point.
So the best conversations actually look like a mess, right,
Like if you were to transcribe the best conversations you've
ever had, Yeah, and look at that, the transcription would
look like a mess. Right When you talk to your
wife and you guys, really you're interrupting each other. You're
(16:33):
starting ideas without finishing them. You're like making these little
side comments because when you're in the moment, it's all
about that connection. It's not about saying things eloquently. It's
not about remembering what your next question is. It's about
being present.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
As you described that, one of the one of the
great bug bess that I have when I listen back
to the Happy Families podcast is that I get so
excited about what we're talking about that I listened to Kylie,
who is my co host for most of our podcast episodes,
I interrupt her. I interrupt her all the time because
I want to jump in and I want to say this,
or I want to say that. And I kind of
(17:09):
beat myself up about that because it means to me
that I'm not being a great communicator. I'm certainly not
being a good listener. Something that you said in the book, though,
is that we need to not beat ourselves up so
much when there's interruptions going on, because there's a really
big upside to interruptions.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
So let me ask you this. If I was to
ask Kayley whether she feels like you interrupt too much,
what would she say?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Probably? I do talk a little bit too much, and
I do talk over her from time to time, but
it's not in a male dominant way. I'm so into
what you're saying, and you've just reminded me of this
awesome thing, and I've got to tell you about it,
and it's so good. It's that kind of interruption. It's
like the interruptions around our dinner table at night, when
we're having our family conversations. It's so hard to get
(17:51):
a word in because, well, as you can imagine, with
six daughters, there's a lot of communication. There's a lot
of emotions, but there's so much interruption and no one
gets to really finish a full or a sentence, which
is infuriating in some ways, and yet it's delights.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Kind of wonderful. Yeah, it's because everyone's in the conversation.
Everyone feels like they're participing. So you're exactly right. What
we know about interruptions is that interruptions are actually a
really good signal as long as they're going two ways. Right,
So if I always interrupt you and you never interrupt me,
then often what happens is that you are speaking far
(18:28):
less because you start saying something and I interrupt you,
and then I'm monologue for a while and you don't
interrupt me. And then finally you got a chance to
say something and you start saying something and then I
interrupt you again. Right, So the interruptions aren't the problem.
It's what's known as equality and conversational turn taking. So
equality and conversational turn taking is basically just this this
(18:48):
thing that they measure and experiments how much did each
person talk compare to everyone else. And it's not even
about like the number of words you said, it's not
even about the minutes you spent It's often about how
many times you piped up, because if one person is
interrupting and nobody else says, that person is going to
pape up a lot more frequently. But if everyone is
(19:10):
interrupting each other, if everyone says, oh my god, that's
such a good idea, well what about this, then it
feels like we have that equality and conversational turntaking, and
that is critical to making people, particularly a group of people,
feel like they're connected to each other.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Well, Kylie's still talking to me, so I'm going to
say that we've got a quality going just fine.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Charles.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I'm a really big believer that nobody wants to be fixed.
I've never had any of my children look at me
and say, Dad, it sounds like you've got a solution
to make me better, let me hear it. My wife
has never asked me, honey, why don't you fix me?
So that everything's just right? No one is ever begging
for us to fix them. Why do we implicitly desire
to fix other people?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So I'll note that this is not a universal condition, right,
There are there are some people, probably your wife, right
who who like when a kid brings a problem to them,
they just they know that, they like to just say, oh,
I'm so sorry, honey, that sounds really hard, rather than trying.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
To fix it. Forward them okay one of those people.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
What often happens is that we get habituated in a
certain kind of conversation. So one of the questions I
get asked a lot is like, do women and men
communicate differently? Do their brains work differently? Or women from
Mars and men are from venus or whatever it is.
And the answer is no. All the research shows men
and women communicate the same way, but they are often
(20:41):
habituated differently in their younger years. Right, conversations that are emotional.
Women tend to have more of them in their teenage years,
and as a result, they're just more comfortable with them.
Men oftentimes learn to have emotional conversations that seem dressed
up like practical conversation. I come to you and I
say I've got a problem and you're doing X and
(21:03):
it's really impacting our budget. And what I'm really saying
is like, I'm really upset, and I need you to
hear that I'm upset. And the fact that I'm bringing
up all this practical language about budgets and problems. That's
actually just a disguise because I'm uncomfortable talking about emotions
and so I'm more comfortable posing it in the language
(21:25):
of practicality. But what's really important about this is to
recognize that even though we have these habits, habits can
change very, very easily. And in fact, one of the
things about habits is that they are very delicate. They're
like gossamer threads. Right. Once you recognize that a habit
is there, it takes the smallest amount of effort to
(21:46):
disrupt it. And that's why, for instance, asking these questions
you want to be hugged, helped to heard, you know,
asking deep questions. That's one of the reasons they're so
powerful is because they short circuit our habit in our head,
which is, my kid came to me with an issue,
they want me to fix it. I'm going to tell
them how to fix it. When we ask that question.
As much as we're asking them what do you really
(22:07):
care about, we're also doing a service to ourselves to say, oh, habit,
let me like put the brakes on really quickly. Let's
just take a step back before I respond automatically and
think through like what this kid really needs.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yesterday had one of my daughters come to me really
struggling with something, and I so badly wanted to fix it.
I so badly wanted to fix her. I so badly
wanted to step in and say, well, I think blah
blah blah blah blah, if you just do this. I mean,
I've got a PhD in psychology, i know how to
be useful, I've got decades more life experience. There's all
of these reasons why I can simply step in and
(22:41):
make the problem go away. But thinking about our conversation
that was scheduled for today, I paused, and I looked
at her, and I put my hand in hers and
really softly just said, well, that sounds really tough. And
it was just this gorgeous moment where she leant into
me and she gave me a really big hug, and
after she hugged me, she said, I love you, Dad,
(23:02):
and whooped. Why a super communicator, And it was like
the problem was fixed, it was solved, and all I
had to say was, Wow, that sounds really tough. It
was well and gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
And the best example of this. I love that story because, like,
if you think back to the conversations you had with
your parents, or I think back to the conversations I
had with my parents. There are very few conversations that
stand out in my mind where my dad gave me
a piece of advice and I was like, gosh, darn it,
he's right, everything right. It might have happened. It probably
did happen, but I have managed to forget all of them.
(23:38):
But the conversations I remember with my dad were the
ones where either I told him how I was feeling,
or he asked me something and I said something in
response that kind of surprised me. We tend to remember
the conversations that are connection as opposed to just information exchange,
and it's really hard. It's really hard to connect when
(23:59):
like one person and has all the answers and one
person has all the questions. That's not a meeting of equals,
and as a result, it's very hard to intrigue with
each other.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
That is just beautiful. I love as you said that
I reflected on the conversations that I've had with my
parents that mean the most to me, and it's exactly
the same. It's those connection conversations. Now, Charles, you you
slay a sacred cow in some ways in this book.
For years, I've been teaching about the importance of perspective taking.
(24:29):
A wonderful research from the sixties and seventies. Martin Hoffman
talks all about the power of perspective taking, and then
we've got people like him Ginnott, and we've got John Gotman.
All these people teach about how we've got to stand
in the shoes of another person and take their perspective
to communicate well and be empathic. But you suggest in
Super Communicators that perspective taking can sometimes backfire, and you
(24:53):
make a recommendation for what to do instead. This is
not to discount the validity or usefulness of taking bit
to hot life, that it doesn't always work. Can you
describe how it might be our undoing in some circumstances
and what you suggest to do instead.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah. Absolutely. And there's been a number of researchers who
over looked at this Nick Epley at the University of Chicago,
a number of them particularly looking at at prejudice and
how we fight prejudice. You're exactly right, perspective taking hand work.
But it assumes that I have the ability to put
myself into your shoes in a way that is accurate. Right, So,
(25:32):
if you and I are talking about parenting and you
mentioned some parenting problem that you have, I can probably
stand in your shoes and see how you saw the situation.
But if, on the other hand, we were talking about
what it's like to live in Gaza, and I'm an
American who's never been to the Middle East, it's ridiculous
to say that like, perspective taking is gonna work. I
(25:54):
have no idea what that's like. I can't imagine myself
into that person's shoes, or to imagine myself as an Israeli. Right,
How am I going to figure out how to take
the perspectives of these two people who see things so
differently than I do and as each other, without having
any basis to put myselves in their shoes, to imagine
what it would be like to be them. And so
(26:16):
into this breach, these researchers have coming forward and they said, look,
perspective taking work sometimes, but there are times when it
doesn't work, when when it's just the experience that someone
is having is too foreign, too alien to your own
experience to actually it's presumptuous to assume that you know
what it's like for them. And in that case, instead
of doing perspective taking, what we should do is perspective getting.
(26:40):
Just ask some a question, Ask them like, what is
it like to live in Gaza right now? What is
it like to be an Israeli citizen right now? I
know that you guys see this thing differently. I really
want to understand how both of you see it. We
don't have to guess what it's like to stand in
their shoes. We can ask them to tell us what
it's like to stand in their shoes, and then when
we ask follow up questions, we start to find ways
(27:03):
to relate to their experience. And so this isn't to
say that we shouldn't teach perspective taking, but perspective getting.
Teaching people to ask questions, particularly hard questions, is really important.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Charles, Let's change up the pace for a moment and
do a lightning round.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
The idea of a lightning round, as I'm sure you know,
is we could spend half an hour in each of
these questions. By the way, but just the first thing
that pops into your head as I asked the questions.
We'll see how we go. First question, favorite question to
ask your kids at dinner.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I asked them, what was the most surprising thing that
happened that day or the most interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Huh, okay, most surprising thing that you've learned. As you've
written this book about communicating with children or teens.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
How good we are at it? You know. One of
the theories of the book is, and this is held
up for the research, we are all super communicators at
one time or another, and oftentimes becoming a consistent supercommunicator
is just about learning to listen to our instincts and
learning how conversations work. But if you think about it,
parents have meaningful conversations with their kids all the time,
(28:11):
and that's kind of amazing because besides their genetics, oftentimes
they have nothing in common.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I was really surprised by that answer. Question number three.
Best way to start a difficult conversation with your spouse
or partner.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, the best way, and again the science backs us up,
is to start by saying, this is going to be
an awkward conversation, and I apologize in advance that it's
going to be awkward, and actually the awkwardness is part
of the reason I want to have it with you.
And I might say the wrong thing, because sometimes like
the gap between my brain and my lips is too big,
and I hope you'll forgive me. And if you say
the wrong thing, I promise I'll forgive you, like I'll
(28:46):
give you a chance to like rewind the tape and
say it a little bit better. When we do that,
when we acknowledge the awkwardness, when we give each other
the grace to make mistakes, we're lowering the temperature, and
that's critical.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I recommend the same approach when talking about tricky topics
with children. I want to have one of those awkward
conversations that some people really struggle with with their parents
and children. And the kids are suddenly a little bit intrigued,
but also defenses are down. It's like, Okay, this could
be awkward, but this is obviously important.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's in the car. When I'm in the car with
my kids, I often will say, like, okay, let's talk
about puberty, because they go da, they're not going anywhere.
The security the dolls are locked, do you know what?
Like it takes like thirty seconds for them to be like,
I do have a question.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Actually, what's the worst communication happened that you had to unlearn?
I mean you say that this book was about you
learning to be a better communicator.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
One of the things that's most toxic to a conversation
is when we control, try to control the other person
in the conversation. And as you know, there's this there's
this thing that happens in when we're talking to spouses
called kitchen sinking. We start arguing about one thing, and
suddenly we're arguing about everything. Right, we're not just where
we're going to go out for Christmas, but like your
(30:02):
mom hates me, and I wish that if you made
more money, we could go on nicer trips like you're
just And that's toxic. That is that is a clear
sign that something is wrong in a relationship. And I
think the reason why we do this kitchen thinking is
because we want to try and control the other person.
We want to try and control what the conversations about.
We want to try and control control what you're allowed
(30:23):
to say and what you're not allowed to say, and
whether you're on the defense or the offense. And when
we change that and we say, look, I have the
sensing to control things, but instead of trying to control you,
I'm going to control the environment with you like, like,
let's have this conversation, you know, not at two o'clock
in the morning, Let's wait until we're both well rested
and have it at nine in the morning. Or I'm
going to control I'm going to I with you. I
(30:45):
want to control the boundaries of the conversation, Like we're
going to talk about where we're going on holiday, We're
not going to talk about moms, We're not going to
talk about money. When we share control and this is
something I feel like I learned to do better. What
we're really doing is we're empowering the other person to
have a conversation with us. So it doesn't it's not
an argument, it's a it's a cooperation.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Just a few more. What's your gout to phrase when
you've messed things up with your family?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's a good question. I mean usually just say I'm sorry.
I try and apologize to my kids a lot because
I want to show them that that making mistakes is
part of life. And so yeah, so I just say like, hey, Ali,
I'm really sorry, Like you asked me that question, I
was short with you and that that was not appropriate
and I'm sorry I did that.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Charles, what's the most unexpected place that you've had a
great conversation.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Oh my gosh, I mean all the time, like in
an Uber, Like sometimes you have these conversations with Uber
drivers and like and some and it's okay not to
have a conversation with Uber driver. Sometimes you get an
Uber you just want to check your phone. But sometimes
you have this conversation with an Uber driver, and like,
they have these amazing life stories, right, they like cross
the oceans and send money back to their families, and
(31:58):
you're part of something important by connecting with them.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
I really really struggle with those conversations. I get off
an airplane, jump in the uber or or the cab
and think, ah, can I just put my headphones on
and pretend? But as you've said, some wonderful and enriching
conversations have been the result of being willing to engage
with another person. I love that.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And you absolutely can just put your headphones on, like
there's no obligation of a conversation. But I think oftentimes
we hesitate to have that conversation because we're worried about
how it's going to end. We're worried about how we're
going to like tie it off, or or what if
they like, start telling me some story and I'm bored
and I want to do something else. And yet yet
that all the research shows those worries are overblown in
(32:43):
our mind, because every single person who has those worries
they have managed to curtail a conversation pretty effectively and easily.
Yeah right. Sometimes it's just a matter of being like, oh,
that's so interesting, I gotta I gotta check my phone now,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna do that, or sometimes just
like being like, oh, good, good, good to hear you know,
and you stop asking questions and the music comes on.
We all know how to stop conversations if we want
(33:05):
to stop a conversation, it's but we sometimes we forget
that we know how to do that, and it's the
awkwardness of it that sets us off.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Two more questions for the Lightning Round. Number one, Best
conversation starter at a party?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Oh so, I think the best one depends what kind
of party you're at. My favorite question is when is
the last time you cried in front of another person?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Oof? Yeah, you talk about that in the book. Yeah,
I thought to myself, I don't know if I'm courageous
enough to ask somebody that I've just you know it
that question.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Decide that it's going to be the third question you
ask someone, and by the time you ask it, it's
going to feel so natural because those first two questions,
those first two questions are going to be questions that
are real questions.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Last one, what's the most powerful question that someone has
ever asked you?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Ooh, that's a really good question. I don't know. I
don't know, because if a question is asked in the
right spirit, they're all powerful, right, Like, I don't know.
Maybe when like one of my parents asked me why
I wanted to propose to my wife or what I
liked about her? But that's not it. That's it. This
was in college. That's not a question that like was
(34:15):
a deep question for them. We were literally in the
car and my mom was like, oh, yeah, tell me
about telling me about Liz. What's you like? What do
you like about her? And like it was at that
moment that I was like, oh, oh, I'm in love
with her. I'm going to marry this person.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I have two quick responses to that. First of all, Yeah,
I was with some friends in Sydney and they were
asking me what I loved about Kylie, And it was
that same question that made me realize that I needed
to go home and propose that day.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Really, yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Was literally just that question of what do you like
about her? And the more I answered the question, the
more I thought, why are we not already married? I mean,
it was really that profound and that powerful. And I
guess the follow up to that is you mentioned that
this was a long time ago. Kylie and I are
about to celebrate our twenty seventh wedding anniversary, congratulations. And
I was telling someon about that just the other day,
(35:01):
and that person looked at me and asked, so sincerely
and so beautifully, what do you think you've done to
have such a happy marriage for twenty seven years? And
I sat there and I almost started weeping as I
thought about the beauty of the relationship that we share,
but also the just the I loved the question. I
just wanted to sort of sink into that person's arms
(35:23):
and say, thank you so much for asking. Let's just
talk about relationships and let me tell you about Clylie.
For the next hour or two, it was, Oh, I
just wanted to open up everything to this person because
it felt like such a deep and vulnerable question.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, and I think that gets that so beautifully illustrates that.
Sometimes we say, like, what's the best question, right, We're
looking for that magic question, We're looking for that magic answer.
But actually, any deep question is the perfect question if
it's asked with the great spirit, if it's asked to
someone who's ready to respond and connect with you, if
(35:57):
you show them that you're listening by sharing of your
self and not judging them but instead allowing them to
be vulnerable and being vulnerable yourself, any question can be
the best question if we allow ourselves. It's what happens
after we ask the question that matters much much more.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
The Lightning round has evolved into a regular conversation again,
which happens all the time. But our time is starting
to run really short, and there are two more questions
that I want to discuss with you. The first one
comes from one of my favorite There were three parts
of the book that I loved the most, but one
of those parts was on page ninety seven, where you
(36:34):
describe how shallow questions can become deep. Now, we've referenced
deep questions a number of times, and we've just talked
about one of those a moment ago. You've talked about
how these deep questions are going to create better connection,
and I want to hit you with a handful of standard,
shallow questions that we often ask our children. Sure I
love it, and get you to give me a deeper,
more connective version. This is the really practical stuff, right,
(36:58):
How do we deepen questions like how was school today?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
What was the most surprising thing that happened at school today?
What was the best thing that happened to you at
school today?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
It's such a slight tweak and even if they look
at you and say nothing, that opens up more conversation, right, right, right.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
And as long as we change it up right, like
what's the worst thing that happened today? What did someone
say in class that was like the weirdest thing you've
ever heard?
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Charles? In our family, we have a series of values,
things that we just prioritize in terms of the way
we interact with others, and so our questions, either at
the dinner table or as we're discussing school, our questions
will often revolve around those values. So we'll say, who
were you kind to today? Or how did you show
determination and perseverance in the face of adversity and challenge.
(37:46):
We'll ask those questions and the children's sometimes they've grown
and say, but more often than not we get really great.
They're just deeper questions.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And I'll mentioned something I asked my kids. It's very
much in keeping with this is rather than asking them
like how's Jasper? What's going on with Jasper? I like
to ask my kids like, what do you admire about Jasper?
It seems like you really like them, Like what do
you admire about them? Right? And then suddenly you're empowering
them to tell you how they see the world.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Here's another one, why didn't you clean your room?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Sometimes when you ask that question, you you're not actually
looking for a conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
You're just like, you're just looking to send a message.
I just want yeah, and that's okay, that's okay. But
a better way to do it if you do want
to have a conversation is I know that the cleaning
is important to me, and you told me it's important
to you. What's the thing that's stopping you from keeping
your room clean? Let's let's let's analyze this.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Okay, I have two more of these ones. What do
you want for dinner? Again, this is a very practical,
and my parent really cares, like, we're so sick of
thinking every day about what we need to do for dinner.
But yeah, there's got to be a better way that
we can ask this question.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
So this is how I do it at home. I say,
if you could have anything for dinner, any thing on earth,
but you're you're deciding this in the future because you're
looking back and seeing what you should eat, what would
you choose? And it never really they say ice cream? Right,
I'm like, five years from now, do you think that, like,
you're you're gonna really wish that you had ice cream tonight? No,
(39:18):
I guess five years from now, I wish that we
had some broccoli and then some ice cream. So the
variety is the spice of life in this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, if you could have your last meal and it
was to night, what would you choose? That kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah, it's a great one, right, all right.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And the last one that I wanted to ask is
just this is another tricky one because as parents were
so functionally oriented, it's so much about getting things done.
It's so often practical, but a question around are you
ready for your test? How would you deepen that or
how would you improve that question?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
You know, we think about this a lot because we
work with our kids and they're in school, and we
spend a lot of time talking to them about how
do you feel all about the test that's coming up,
Like how do you feel about the work you've done,
how do you feel about the test tomorrow? Do you
how do you think you're going to feel afterwards? Feel?
(40:11):
And in part that's because it's a little bit different,
but also because that's actually what we're supposed to be doing, right,
We're supposed to be teaching them this internal compass about
where they can rely on their feelings to tell them
whether they're prepared or not, or to tell them whether
they should be anxious or not, and if they're feeling anxious,
to try and figure out why and do something to
(40:32):
relieve it.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I love that, Charles. For a couple of decades now,
I've been talking to people about the Harvard Study of
Adult Development, otherwise known as the Grant Study, one of
the longest running, if not the longest running study of
human development and flourishing and well being in the history
of the world. It's it's spoken about by so many
people in so many different contexts. In the last chapter
(40:53):
of Supercommunicators, you put a perspective on the Grant study
that kept me riveted. It was my favorite part of
the book, and not by a little bit.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I just thank you.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I loved it so much that I pulled my whole
family together and a couple of the kids had their
friends over, and I said, I don't care, everyone around
the dining table now, and.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I read them.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
I read them the entire final chapter out loud for
about thirty or forty minutes, and we talked about it
as we went through. I loved how you wrapped up
this well.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Thank you. That's so nice to be to say.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
What I would love for you to do for everyone
who's participating in this podcast conversation is, let's wrap this
up with a discussion about why. Why does communication matter?
Why does the book matter? Why is the idea of
being a super communicator matter? How do you explain why
we need to communicate and connect better?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
You know you mentioned that study, the Harvard Study of
Adult Development, and for those folks who aren't aware of it,
it's been going on for almost eighty years now. Researchers
have followed around thousands of people trying to figure out basically,
what are the things that make you happier and healthier
and more accessful. However, you define success into your old age.
(42:03):
And they had all these theories, right, They've done at Harvard,
so they're like, well, if you go to Harvard, you're
definitely going to be happier when you get older. And
it turns out that's not true. If you're married and
you stay married and even if it's bad marriage, you
don't get divorced, you're going to be happy and successful. Nope,
that's not true either. The researchers basically found only one
thing that could predict people's happiness, health, and success at
(42:24):
age sixty five, and that was having at least a
handful of close relationships at age forty five, which means,
of course, that you've had those relationships for a while
and that you're going to continue to have them for
a while. And I think this gets to why communication
is so important. We are a social creatures. We are
a social species. Our brains literally have evolved to make
(42:48):
a supercommunicators. If you think about it, communication is our superpower.
It's the thing that puts us above every other species.
That's the thing that allows us to build families and
villages and towns and cities, aircraft carriers and game boxes.
Communication is at the core of how we experience life
(43:09):
and when we connect with other people. When we have
other people who it's easy to communicate with, who we
communicate with on a regular basis, who we have those
meaningful conversations. It is the thing that only brings our
life meaning. It literally makes us healthier, we live longer.
When we do that, we get exposed to opportunities we
wouldn't have known about otherwise, and so we end up
being more successful. Communication and connection is everything, and for
(43:34):
anyone who has it or who doesn't have it, they
know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Super communicate is how to unlock the secret Language of Connection.
Is the book compelling storytelling, powerful insights. I loved it.
Charles Dewick, Thank you for communicating and connecting with us
on the Happy Families podcast today.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
The Happy Families Podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from
Bridge Media. If you like the podcast, can we invite
you to take twenty seconds out of your day. It's
literally that quick twenty seconds. Leave us a rating and review.
We like the five star ones the best by the
way they genuinely help people to find the show and
make their family happier. Resources and ideas to help your
family thrive are available at happy families dot com dot
(44:16):
au
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