434. Become a Supercommunicator with Charles Duhigg

Nikki Miller:

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of The Power of Habit, which has spent over three years on the bestseller list and has been translated into 40 languages. Also, the author of Smarter, Faster, Better, also a bestseller. Charles writes for the New Yorker Magazine and is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Business School. He's been a frequent contributor to CNBC, The American Life, NPR, the Colbert Report, PBS's News Hour, and Frontline. And we shared this on the podcast, but also for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco.

Jay, what an incredible communicator. I mean, aptly, aptly, because today we were talking about his newest book, Super Communicators. And I'm so excited for everyone to listen to this conversation.

Jay Papasan:

It was really magical, I just got to say. Like he was embodying throughout all the things he would eventually teach us. And I can only imagine how when you write a book about being a great communicator, how you get in your head in the middle of conversations. But if he was, you couldn't tell. He felt wholly present, and he just dropped bombs, right? And like all the writer downers, like okay, how is gossip good? And he proved that gossip wasn't just good for like humans, it's actually good for organizations, a framework for knowing what conversation you're in. It’s like lots of meaningful stuff, but also super practical takeaways on how to be a better communicator.

Nikki Miller:

So practical and such simple principles that inherently feel right and yet we don't really get taught. I mean, none of us are ever taught to be great communicators unless we go and seek out that information. Yet, it's arguably one of the most important things that we could master. And I'll say, Jay, that my favorite thing, as two people who have to communicate a lot, go to conferences and are in and out of very quick conversations, I think my favorite thing I took away is how to end a conversation. I never really had a plan for that. And I always feel awkward about it.

Jay Papasan:

Yeah. I mean I highlighted like knowing, even having one idea for the conversation when you start it. And then you're on the other side on the caboose, like it's so awkward ending a conversation, especially like a lot of the people that are listening to this are in business that go to these networking events and your goal isn't to have -- like, I'm an introvert. I'm usually happy if I have one conversation at the end of the food table for the whole night, but like, my wife is going to talk to 50 people. So how do I go from one conversation to the next without being rude? And he gave us a good framework for that.

Nikki Miller:

The whole conversation was just an incredible framework about how to be a great communicator. And to your point, he's a living example and embodiment of what he teaches in the book. This is an incredible conversation. Can't wait for you all to listen to it. Let's go listen to Charles.

Hello, everyone. And welcome back to The ONE Thing podcast. We are here with Charles Duhigg, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author of several bestsellers, The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better. He was also, most important statistic about you, for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco. Here today talking with us about his new book, Super Communicators. Welcome, Charles. We're super excited.

Charles Duhigg:

Thank you so much for having me. This is such a treat and an honor.

Jay Papasan:

I think that one of the cool things in your bio, she didn't say it is that you worked on the Colbert report.

Charles Duhigg:

That's true. That's true.

Jay Papasan:

Like, you've hung out with Stephen Colbert. He’s got to be one of the funniest human beings on earth.

Charles Duhigg:

He is. The thing that is amazing about Stephen Colbert is he's also so smart. Like all those guys are so smart. All the Late Night hosts are so, so smart. And Steven is just, I --

Nikki Miller:

Yes. I think, to be funny like that, have to be smart. You got to be quick, really quick.

Charles Duhigg:

Exactly. You have to be good on your feet and like know exactly what to say. No, they're -- it's a really talented group of people.

Nikki Miller:

For sure. Well, Jay and I are huge fans. We got to get -- you both got to geek out. I feel like I'm just a third party here, but two amazing writers on the podcast today, and we are both huge fans. We've read all your books and I got the privilege to get to read Super Communicators already, which was exceptional. I'm excited for our audience to get to listen to what you have to share today.

Charles Duhigg:

Oh, thank you.

Nikki Miller:

This is a little bit outside of what you've already written about and shared. What prompted you to write Super Communicators?

Charles Duhigg:

Well, so when I wrote power of habit, like one of the things that really came home for me was how many of our behaviors are behaviors that are small behaviors, right, things that we don't think about. You guys know this in The ONE Thing. You talk about this extensively, that choosing these small behaviors can make all the difference in how our days play out. And that has a lot to do with sort of a self-focus, right, thinking about ourselves, focusing on ourselves, helping ourselves. But once I started looking at life, I was like, you know, a great deal of my time is spent talking to other people, so it doesn't matter what I'm doing. I could have chosen the right one thing. I could choose the right habits, but unless I'm communicating my ideas effectively to other people, it doesn't matter.

And then I had this experience on, actually two experiences. One is that I was made a manager at the New York Times, and I ended up being a fine manager when it came to logistics and just a terrible manager when it came to communicating with my peers, which was really surprising to me because I communicate for a living and this thing would happen. So I basically called up all these, like fancy scientists and said, “Look, tell me why I'm so bad at this. Why? What's the mistake I keep making?”

And what I would do is I would tell them about this experience that I have with my wife, which is very often I would come home from work after a really tough day and I would start complaining to my wife. And I'd be like, “You know, my boss like doesn't appreciate me and my colleagues don't understand me”. And she very reasonably would offer some practical advice. She would say, “Why don't you take your boss out to lunch and get to know each other a little bit better?” And instead of being able to hear her, I would basically get even more upset. I'd be like, why aren't you supporting me? I want you to have my back.

Nikki Miller:

Whose side are you on?

Charles Duhigg:

Right. Whose side are you on in this thing? And I realized what was going on is that like, both of us were communicating in legitimate ways and we could not hear each other because of course, she would get upset when I did that. And so, I went to all these fancy experts and said, help me understand why this keeps happening. And that was the genesis of the book.

Jay Papasan:

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I think a lot of people who became managers, you get real stark feedback on how effective of a communicator you are, especially around the hard conversations.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely.

Jay Papasan:

The feedback is quick, and it is swift. So like if it can humble a Pulitzer Prize winner, I feel a lot better about my own performance.

Charles Duhigg:

Well, and I think the thing that's so hard about it is that it catches you off guard, right? You think like, oh, I've worked for managers my whole life. I went to this fancy business school and then you're in like live fire and you realize how little you actually know.

Nikki Miller:

Well, Charles, what came up for me while I was reading the book was exactly that. I sort of had the same aha, which is we all communicate for a living. I don't really care what you do. Like I think all of us are communicating for a living and it's the thing that we have to do more than anything else. And arguably the thing that we have to be better at than anything else because we have to do it so consistently.

But short of me going out and looking for resources to become a better communicator, I don't know about you all, but I was never taught to be a good communicator. It really isn't something that we're taught how to do, but we have to do it all day, every day.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's absolutely true. And what's really interesting is that I think this is one of the reasons why we're not taught it, and we should be taught it is that our brains have evolved to be good at communication. Right. Communication is essentially the human’s superpower. That is why humans have succeeded over time as a species is that we can communicate so effectively with each other. And so we all have these instincts within our head, within our bodies about how to be super communicators.

But of course, those instincts evolved thousands or millions of years ago, way before computers, definitely before Facebook, before telephones., before when in a normal day you might talk to people all over the place. And so part of what Super Communicators is about is about explaining the neurology of communication and the psychology of communication so that we can let those instincts come out. Because if we know how to cultivate those instincts and what to look for, if we understand how conversations work, we can all basically connect with almost anyone.

Nikki Miller:

You're sort of in my thought track right now because in reading the book, you sort of debunk this idea that super communicators are just born with some like blessed and born with some innate special ability to communicate that the rest of us miss that day in school or don't have that special skill. And you offer that instead they've mastered an infinite number of, you call them choices in the conversation about how to take that dialogue forward.

Charles Duhigg:

That's exactly right. And it really is practice. Nobody is born a super communicator, right? It's all about training ourselves to look for the right signals in a conversation because we understand how that conversation is working and then just practicing. And some of it's very, very tactical and easy. Like we know from study after study that if you sit down and you come up with two topics you want to discuss before a conversation starts, even if you never discussed those topics, you're going to be way more relaxed in that conversation because that anxiety of like, what are we going to talk about next, that anxiety is going to disappear.

And so literally taking 10 seconds and jotting down, like, I want to talk about TV shows, and I want to ask him whether he thinks the Eagles are going to win this year. Like, that's all it takes for that conversation to get better. And there's dozens of these things that we can do that make us into super communicators.

Jay Papasan:

I love that one because that lines up. In college, I was a late bloomer. So I was very nervous and shy about small talk, especially with the other sex. Like, if I had to meet someone, I would go to the cafeteria. I would read the newspaper, work the crossword. And one of my goals was, was there one story, anything, that I could have in the back of my head and I would carry it around, oh, did you hear about the car that drove into the Grand Canyon? And all I needed was that in my back pocket. And then I could go out arms into the world of social people.

Charles Duhigg:

And you probably didn't bring it up that frequently, right? It was like something. Right, right.

Jay Papasan:

And it was weird when I did.

Charles Duhigg:

Right. That's exactly right. I mean, a lot of conversation -- in fact, there's been a lot of work by Dan Gilbert at Harvard looking at it. He’s fantastic.

Jay Papasan:

Love Dan Gilbert. Stumbling on Happiness.

Charles Duhigg:

Yep. Same guy. Same guy. And this is research he's done more recently, and it looks at how we end conversations. And what it's found is that basically people get so anxious about ending conversations that they don't know how to do it until you tell people how to end conversations. And of course, once you tell them it's the easiest thing on earth. You say, “Hey, you know, I don't want to monopolize your time the entire evening. Let me let you go talk to everyone else at the party.” Or “I need to go meet my husband. But I have one more question for you.” Like, once you give someone the smallest script on how to end a conversation, all that anxiety disappears. And as a result, people are actually jumping into more conversations as a result.

Jay Papasan:

Now, we don't have to lie and say 15 times, excuse me, I've got to go to the bathroom.

Charles Duhigg:

Right, exactly.

Jay Papasan:

I don't know any other way. I don't know any other way to get out or, you know, that's great.

Nikki Miller:

Ironically, given how much Jay and I both have to communicate with people and what we're doing on here, we're both introverted at our core. And so as I was reading through this, it was so helpful and all very simplistic too, but not something that I would have thought of to do. Like to your point, it's like, just go into the conversation with a plan. And I thought to myself, well, Doug, yes, I should go, but we don't, no one teaches us to do that.

Charles Duhigg:

And again, that's our intuitions, right? When we read this stuff, we know, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense because our intuition tells us it's true. And it's worth taking a step back just to explain what we do know about how conversations work, which is when I went to these researchers and I talked about my wife and me having this problem, what they said is they said, look, okay, so we tend to think of a discussion as one thing. We're talking about where to go to dinner tonight, or we're talking about the fact that our kids’ grades aren't as where we want them to be. But actually, every discussion is made up of multiple kinds of conversations.

And on the whole, these conversations fall into one of three buckets. There are these practical conversations we have where we're making plans or making decisions or solving problems. There are emotional conversations where the goal is not to solve a problem. The goal is just to explain how we feel about something and share our emotional experience. And then there are social conversations. And those social conversations are about how we relate to each other, how we see ourselves when we think other people see us.

And the key is if you're not having the same kind of conversation at the same time, that's when miscommunication occurs. So when I came home and I told my wife, my boss is a jerk. He doesn't understand me. I was having an emotional conversation and my wife responded with perfectly legitimate practical advice, take him out to lunch. She was having a practical conversation. Both of us were having legitimate conversations, but because they were different kinds of conversations, we couldn't hear each other. And once you know to look for that in a conversation, then suddenly the entire world opens every time you open your mouth and listen to someone else about what does this person want and what do I want?

Jay Papasan:

It's so funny. You're making me think of our youngest. And well, as a parent, like we were struggling with being parents to our youngest colicky and some other things going on. And we went to see a neurologist talk and she talked about the, I think she used the metaphor, I don't know if it's still apropos, but you've got your lizard brain and then your monkey brain and your human brain. And it goes so much with children as they move into that lizard brain, like fight or fright. And when they're hysterical, they're having a meltdown, you can't calmly be explaining to them how to tie their shoes. They're incapable of listening to you because they're very much and they're emotional, right? They're having an emotional conversation with you. And our instinct is to come in and fix it, right? And it's just like, I love that. Like we have to match, go where the conversation versus --

Charles Duhigg:

Exactly. And actually, within psychology, this is known as the matching principle that in order to communicate, we need to actually match each other, and we need to invite the other person to match us. And there's -- we were mentioning teaching this in school. And Jay, how old is your youngest now?

Jay Papasan:

Oh, I'm almost an empty nest. My youngest Edward is now a senior in high school.

Charles Duhigg:

So I assume he no longer cries over tying his shoes. He's got --

Nikki Miller:

I have a three-and-a-half-year old though, Charles. So any advice you have on how to deal with these monsters, I'm all ears.

Charles Duhigg:

So one of the things that they found in schools works really well around this is they tell teachers, okay, if you have a student who comes to you and they're upset, or they just are excited, anything, ask them, do you want me to hear you? Do you want me to help you? Or do you want me to hug you? Right.

And those three things correspond to the three different kinds of conversations. And of course, what we're asking is like, if you want to hug, you don't want me to fix your problem. You just want me to hug you and tell you, you belong here, you're okay. Or you might just want me to listen, right? When I come home and I'm upset about my boss, I want my wife to hear me not to help me or hug me, but just to say like, you know what, that sounds hard. And I think that this here help hug is really useful because it's something we can all use.

Nikki Miller:

For sure. And I think anyone who's in a marriage is resonating with this right now, because we've probably all been there where our spouse comes home, or we come home and we're on one side or the other of that same scenario. And then what you talk about in the book, which I'd love for you to expand on some skills around this is that, again, all of it seems obvious and yet in practical application we have to remember that you also have to listen and respect what the other side has requested.

Because I know I've personally had this with my husband where I'll say, do you want my feedback? And he'll say, no, I just want to get this out. And then I'll start giving him feedback and coaching and he's like, no, no, no, no. Like I said no.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think it's actually this, you bring up a really good point because one of the important parts, of course, of a conversation is listening, listening to the other person. But what we know is that oftentimes one of two things can happen that can derail this. Number one, we can pretend to listen and we're not actually listening, right? We're basically waiting our turn to say what we want to say, regardless of what the other person is saying. That's a bad instinct. When we recognize that in ourselves, we should stop.

But the second thing that can happen is that we can listen, listen really closely, and the other person doesn't realize it. So oftentimes, particularly in hard conversations, particularly when there's tension, you have to prove to the other person that you're listening. And one of the techniques for this that they actually teach in like negotiation programs and Harvard law is called looping for understanding. And it has these three steps, right? I ask you a question about what's going on. Then once you tell me, I repeat back to you in my own words, what I've heard you say.

And then, and the third step is actually the most important step. I ask you if I got it right, because what's going to happen is one of two things, either they're going to say, you got it exactly right and they know, I proved to them that I'm listening, or they're going to say, no, actually you're off a little bit. Let me explain why you're off, which means they're going to realize that they're not explaining it well enough or that I'm going to realize that I didn't really listen as closely as I should.

And that proving that I'm listening, that looping for understanding, in like 80 percent of situations, that resolves the tension. Even if we disagree with these, even if we're talking about gun control or we're talking about abortion or we're talking about politics and we don't like each other, we might not change our minds, but we will be able to hear each other and we will believe that we have been heard. And that's really important.

Jay Papasan:

It's so funny. I was taught a version of that in my first -- I actually wore a headset for a brief period of time and help people set up websites.

Charles Duhigg:

Oh, wow.

Jay Papasan:

But like, but in customer support, like the wisdom was, you need to make sure that they know that you have received the feedback. And we probably would then finish it with some sort of an acknowledgement that they're in an emotional place. Right. I'm sure that's very frustrating, right, but did I capture the problem right? And just so you know, I'm sure I would be very frustrated if I were in your shoes.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely. And so --

Jay Papasan:

And I was like, I'm just putting the pieces together, not to, I wanted to be a smart aleck and do the loop for understanding and mirror exactly what you said. But it is like, yeah, you repeat it back and then you ask for confirmation. And that step for me was you also add the emotional connection.

Charles Duhigg:

I love that. I love that. Because I think what you're doing in a situation like that is you're recognizing that there is a practical aspect to this conversation and there's also an emotional conversation going on. And if I acknowledge your emotional conversation and I say, look, I understand like this isn't just about like trying to solve this problem. This is that you're upset, you have to solve this problem in the first place. You hate me. You hate computers. By doing so, oftentimes we take some of the poison of that passion away. And it lets us focus on the practical question or to focus on the emotional question, which will help us come together.

Nikki Miller:

And I want to bring that back to Charles, just preparing yourself with some questions before you walk into the conversation, especially if you know it's going to be a hard one, or especially if you know that every time me and my spouse have this discussion, somebody gets frustrated. And you talked about it in the concept that runs through the book is what is this really about? And to me, what I took away from it was just the ability to ask enough questions that you get to the core of what it's really about. Do you have a few that are like always in your pocket that you can give us?

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely.

Nikki Miller:

Please do. So that's what I wanted to ask. I was like, I need some I can pull out at any time.

Charles Duhigg:

So, one thing we do know about super communicators is that they tend to do a -- people who are consistently super communicators, right? We're all super communicators at one time or another, but there's some people who can do it a little bit more consistently, more on demand. And there are these patterns that they have. One of which is that they tend to laugh more than other people. But a second one is that they tend to ask what are known as deep questions, and they tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the rest of the population.

But we often don't register it because they're questions like, oh, what'd you think about that? Or, oh, what happened next? Or how'd that make you feel? Right? There's these little questions that invite us to talk about what we want out of this conversation and who we are. And so the thing about a deep question is that a deep question is something that asks us about our values, our beliefs, or our experiences. It allows us to share who we are.

And when I say this word deep question, people think it's going to be like this really intimate, like tell me about your mother. But a deep question could be as simple as saying to someone, “Oh, you're a lawyer. Did you always want to be a lawyer?” Like, “How old were you when you decided you wanted to practice law?” That's a deep question. It's a totally easy question to ask. It doesn't seem intimate, but what it does is it invites the other person to explain who they are to say, “Oh, I grew up in this place. My dad was a lawyer and I saw how important justice is.” Now, you're seeing something about who this person really is.

And my favorite deep question is simply to say, tell me what that means to you. Like when someone says, I feel this way about politics, or my kid is doing well in school, tell me what that means to you. That's a super easy, deep question to ask. And what it does is it invites the other person to tell you what matters to them. And they oftentimes tell you what kind of conversation they want to have. If you ask a question like that, tell me what this means to you, then what they're usually going to do is they're going to answer either practically, or they're going to answer emotionally, or they're going to answer with a social issue. And then, you know, okay, this is the kind of conversation we're having right now. That doesn't mean I can't invite the person to have my kind of conversation, because in a discussion, we're going to talk about practical and emotional and social issues. But now I know where their head is at, and I can match them and invite them to match me.

Jay Papasan:

I love how the -- I wrote it down, 10 to 20 times more questions.

Charles Duhigg:

It's crazy, right?

Jay Papasan:

It is, but I've seen it. Like you've hear it in great interviewers. Like, well, what does that look like? And what it speaks from is this intense curiosity to get the full picture.

Charles Duhigg:

That's exactly right.

Jay Papasan:

Right. You're saying fill in the blanks, fill in the blanks, fill in the blanks for me, fill in the blanks. And there are very few places in our life where someone is intensely curious and asking and listening to us. And that is an incredibly wonderful feeling to have someone shed that light on you. I am curious. I want to know more about you, and you feel truly seen is one of the -- it's got to be like a deep human need to be seen for who we are. And apparently this person is really interested in that.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a second part to that too, right? Because it's not just that I'm asking you questions. It's not that I'm just interrogating you or interviewing you. It's that if we're having a conversation back and forth, in addition to being seen, I want to show you who I am and you want to know who I am.

And so there's this thing known as emotional reciprocity, which tends to be the most important ingredient in creating trust and liking between people. And what emotional reciprocity says is if I bring up something that's vulnerable, then if you respond in a similar way, we'll feel closer to each other, even if we come from different backgrounds, even if we don't like each other, we will feel closer to each other.

Now, that doesn't mean that you say, for instance, my aunt has cancer. And then suddenly I say, “Oh, I totally understand because like my aunt had cancer last year”, and then I just go off monologuing about my own problems. I don't want to take the spotlight and shine it and steal it away from you. But what I do want to do is I want to at least acknowledge that you've said something personal and vulnerable.

So that when you say my aunt has cancer and I say, “I'm so sorry, I know how hard that can be. Can you please tell me more about it? I want to hear how you're dealing with this.” That's a reciprocity of vulnerability. I'm showing them that I care about their problems, similarly with excitement. And I think that's important because when we are asking those questions, particularly when we're asking those deep questions, we're going to hear people say things are intimate and are vulnerable and are meaningful. And we need to step up and show them we have heard that and we're willing to have that conversation with them.

Jay Papasan:

Does it work to go first, right? If you're trying to build that rapport, can you go first? Like, if you know that, and you can tell, like, they're going practical, practical, practical, and you know that the conversation maybe needs to go to emotional, you lead the door.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely.

Jay Papasan:

Open the door.

Charles Duhigg:

That's inviting them to match you. So we can match other people and we can invite them to match us. And in fact, in the book, I tell the story of Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago. And he’s just a wonderful, wonderful guy. And he has a story that he almost got arrested when he was a kid because like he was so bad at communication. And then his parents basically made him go talk to this therapist, just like two or three times. And it changed his entire life and it changed his life because all she did was ask him questions and it forced him to start listening to what he was saying.

And the thing is the first time I talked to Nick and, and I think everyone has this experience, he says very intimate things very easily. Like he told me about his kids and his wife and medical issues. And this is like in the first three minutes of the conversation, right. And I'm a reporter, I usually don't jump into the deep end right away.

But as soon as someone does that, when they're being honest and vulnerable and authentic, it's impossible not to respond and to say like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Or like, I know how hard that is because I've been through something similar myself. And then suddenly we're on the same plane and that doesn't mean we're not going to get practical, right? I mean, we could get practical right away, or maybe we talk about our emotions a little bit more and then we get practical.

But once we're aligned, that's when we begin sending signals back and forth to say, here's what I want to talk about, here's the kind of conversation I want to have. And the other person can pick up on those signals and respond back.

Jay Papasan:

Love that. Can I just ask one clarifying question. Like practical and emotional, they seem very clear to me. Can you succinctly describe what a social conversation is by comparison to those two? Just so I know exactly what that quadrant looks like.

Charles Duhigg:

And it's interesting because studies show that 70 percent of our conversations are actually social conversations. A social conversation is when we are talking about how we relate to other people in society. Right. So for instance, Jay, I know you live in Austin because we were talking about that. So you're not just Jay, you're an Austinite, you're a Texan. You're someone who has made a decision to move to this place. It's a little frontier like. There's an aspect of your identity that's informed by that.

And if you're telling me about what Austin is like, you're also telling me a little bit about what you're like. Or if I'm asking you how do you guys run the company? How do you and Nikki like coordinate your work and how do you guys get along? Are there ever places where you disagree with each other? How do you resolve those disagreements? That's a social conversation because we're talking about how we relate to other people.

It also is true at any time we're talking about just society at large, when we talk about politics, we're oftentimes having a social conversation. When we talk about our work, most of our work is about coordinating with other people. When we indulge in office gossip, which is actually very important according to studies and in making workplaces run right, that's a social conversation. So

Jay Papasan:

Wait, you're saying gossip is good?

Nikki Miller:

I was just about to say, woah, woah, woah, we're not going to just skate over that, Charles.

Jay Papasan:

Controversy, yeah.

Nikki Miller:

Go back.

Charles Duhigg:

Oh my gosh. There's so many studies to this. It's so interesting.

Nikki Miller:

You’re telling me that we should have kept the water cooler.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. Well, so it turns out that if you look at how companies function, particularly as they get larger, there's a huge amount of norm setting that you can't do through formal channels, right? I can tell you like, look, here's our sexual harassment policy, right? So you know what you definitely shouldn't do. But like, is it okay to ask someone like, hey, where'd you get that dress? That's a nice dress, right? Like, is that creepy or is that curious?

Office gossip is what allows us to figure out what the norms in an organization are or in any setting, because if somebody comes up and they say to you, hey, he asked me about my dress and that's kind of creepy. Now, you know, don't ask anyone about their dress. That's sort of like a not a great thing to do. Office gossip is actually how most information gets transmitted within an office place.

And so yeah, It can be toxic, right? You don't want to let it get out of hand. You don't want to let it get too far, but it's really important to give people opportunities to talk to each other in less formal ways because that's how we learn how this company actually works.

Nikki Miller:

It's so interesting and so true. If I look backwards at most of the norms that I've been able to acquire in any business, and by the way, even when we do corporate consulting, that it's sort of the -- I always say it's the sideline conversations that inform the thing that we wouldn't even know to ask about.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's also the conversations, by the way, we enjoy the most, right? Those are more fun. They're more interesting.

Nikki Miller:

We all want to spill the tea, Charles.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's a social conversation. It can also be something like, me and my wife talk about our kids a lot. I'm sure you guys do as well. Particularly if you have a three-and-a-half-year-old, you probably talk about your kid for 90 percent of your days. And that's a social conversation because what we're really talking about is we're talking about how do we relate to this child, and they relate to us? How does our opinion of ourselves change knowing that other people see us as parents now and that that informs how they see us and how they relate to us.

Jay Papasan:

The social stuff is like amazing contextual information for navigating the social. I mean, you said that is our superpower. I think that Neanderthals were actually smarter and stronger and bigger, but because we figured out the social thing, like how do we actually coordinate, we kind of survived.

Charles Duhigg:

That’s exactly right. And in fact, if you look at the history of the evolution of the human race, what you'll find is that in places where there was pro social instincts, where -- I mean, pro sociality has a lot of downsides, right? If I take care of the sick, if I take care of the old, I am using up resources on someone who might not be able to replenish them. But what we've discovered is that despite that drawback, pro social communities tend to do better over time because that caring for each other, that taking care of each other means that actually we progress faster, we can specialize faster.

And that's what communication is. Communication is a way for us to establish pro sociality. And in fact, you can see it inside people's brains. So in this conversation we're having right now, and I love this, there's this guy named Beau Sivers, who's at Dartmouth, who has done a lot of this work. If we were hooked up to these machines measuring our brains and our bodies in this conversation right now, when we match each other, our eyes are dilating at the same rate. Our heartbeats, even though you're in different cities than me, our heartbeats are starting to match each other. Our breath rates are starting to match each other.

And if we could see inside our brains, what we would see is that your brain activity is starting to look like my brain activity. And my brain activity is starting to look like your brain activity. That's what communication is. It's known as neural entrainment. I'm trying to explain an idea well enough that you understand that idea or you feel that emotion. I'm trying to get your brain to look like my brain because that's when we've connected with each other.

Nikki Miller:

So cool. Well, I want to go back to something that you said earlier because I think it's relevant here. I love the story in the book of Eppley.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah, Nick Eppley. Yeah.

Nikki miller:

And yeah, I love the story because you said something after you sort of go through the evolution of your conversations and you talk about him asking you these really deep questions. And at the end he closes it off with the clothes that you gave us, which was so sorry to waste your time and your aha, your light bulb in that moment was like, you didn't waste my time at all. I loved this conversation.

And I sort of had an aha sitting there thinking, well, it's interesting because to me, what I'm gathering from all of this is that the best communicators are actually the ones that communicate the least. They're just the people that ask the best questions. Like they're actually the ones that are talking the least in the conversation.

Charles Duhigg:

So I think that's part of it, but I think that like the thing about talking to Nick is that he does talk as much as I do. You're right. He's asking questions and that feels so wonderful, but his questions are often wrapped up in telling me something about himself. Like, I think that's why the vulnerability is so easy to achieve is because he says, I once had an aunt and she had cancer and this thing happened to me and that thing, and I'm wondering, you had mentioned that your father passed away. Like, how does that make you feel today? Right. So he's not only asked me a question showing he's interested in me, but he's also sharing with me.

Nikki Miller:

And that's what keeps it from feeling like an interrogation, right?

Charles Duhigg:

Exactly.

Nikki Miller:

Because I know we've all been on the other side of someone who's just peppering us. And you're like, you feel like you're on the ropes in a boxing ring. You're like, please stop.

Charles Duhigg:

Well, and you guys are actually really good at it. If we just look at this conversation, you guys are really good at this, right? Because you're asking me questions and I'm asking you not enough questions. I should be asking more questions. But your questions are also --

Jay Papasan:

We are here to --

Nikki Miller:

I was just about to say, we do actually -- this is a scenario where we do want you to be the one speaking.

Charles Duhigg:

But you guys are sharing a lot with me about who you are in the process of asking those questions. And my guess is I'm talking a little bit more than the two of you, but not actually that much more. And that's the sign of a really good conversation. There's another story in the book about this CIA officer who tries to recruit his first spy and it's like a total nut, like everything goes wrong. He's going to get fired. And then he basically decides, to your point of like, I'm sorry for wasting your time asking questions.

He's at this final meal with her. Her name is Fatima and he's trying to recruit her. And she said, no, and no, and no. And he's going to get fired. And he just decides like, I can't do this. Like, this isn't going to work. I'm just going to give up. So he just starts talking about how scared he's going to get fired and like how hard it's been because like all the other new officers are like much more talented than he is.

And he goes through, he talks for like five minutes about like his own problems. And at the end of it, she says, okay, I can do this. I can help you. And she becomes one of the best spies in the Middle East for the next 25 years. And it's entirely because he did something that felt like wasting time, but also felt true and real and authentic. And that's how we connect.

Jay Papasan:

Wow. What's funny -- okay, so you're actually, I got to listen to an interview, very close, no recordings, anything of an active CIA person who recruits. Same thing. And like the things I walked away with were that friction creates intimacy and this idea that they were trained to run all the stop signs. Because so much of like social convention is the person sends a signal that they don't want to go there, and you obey it.

And so like she related, she was there with her partner trying to recruit a very, very bad person. And she asked him something like, well, what do you like when you're angry? And he goes, oh, I don't get angry very much. And she goes, that was a stop sign. I don't want to talk about when I'm angry. And so she flipped it and said, well, when I got divorced, you should have seen the things I did to my ex. And then he leaned in. And it was that friction of running through his stop sign and then, I think reciprocating, what do you call, the emotional --

Charles Duhigg:

Emotional reciprocity, yeah.

Jay Papasan:

But starting with that, leaned in. And it was just fascinating. You talk about people who have studied the art of communication, these people in those frontline situations where it's life and death. And they've learned the high art of how to kind of get there in a unique way.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely. Well, and even you mentioned that you did like customer service, right, that you were interacting with folks. Like that --

Jay Papasan:

Not quite as high stakes.

Charles Duhigg:

Not quite as high stakes.

Jay Papasan:

It was a website. Not a country or a coup.

Charles Duhigg:

But definitely as intense and tension filled that as do a CIA recruitment. I am certain that you got yelled at a lot and called some names.

Jay papasan:

Oh, yeah.

Charles Duhigg:

And you become an expert, right? You become an expert in understanding, okay, this person is saying -- this person is throwing up a stop sign. They're saying you're the worst person on earth. Your company is awful. I hope you all die. And I need to blow through that. And the way I'm going to blow through it is I'm going to remind them that I'm a human. And say like, “I'm so sorry you feel this way. I felt that way myself.” Like, I know how frustrating it is to order something and it doesn't arrive the way you want it to. Let's solve this problem together. And then suddenly, they’re like your best friend on earth, right?

And I think that's really wise, like looking for those moments where you see the stop sign. That's the type of thing that usually causes us anxiety. But what we should see it as is an invitation to ask a new question. There's actually this great phrase that if you're feeling furious, get curious, which is a, yeah, it's a good thing to remember when you're in the --

Nikki Miller:

That’s true. That’s a right or downer, Charles.

Charles Duhigg:

-- in the heat of the moment, because what it basically says exactly what we've been saying. Like if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling upset, just ask a question and you're probably going to learn something that makes it easier to have this discussion.

Jay Papasan:

And I just have to say that little role play you did. Like you have a future in customer service if you want. That was good.

Charles Duhigg:

I'm not sure that I want it. I don't know

Jay Papasan:

No.

Nikki Miller:

I don’t know if that's the highest and best use of your skills, Charles.

Charles Duhigg:

Constant abuse is not my idea of a good time.

Nikki Miller:

Say that will wear anybody down. Well, I love this idea that I think, again, you talked about this at the very beginning of our conversation, which a lot of this is just going back to our instincts. You said it resonates with you because it's instinctual. And I remember taking my first negotiation class, it was when I took a masterclass with Chris Voss, who wrote Never Split the Difference, that book, one of my favorites.

And the very first principle is about mirroring. And it's not just physical mirroring, which I think every salesperson ever learns, but it's also the emotional mirroring which you -- or tone, speed, all those things, all the mirroring that you can do. And when you hear it, you're like, oh yeah, that feels really natural, that feels really normal to me. And then I looked up and realized we do that naturally everywhere.

Charles Duhigg:

All the time.

Nikki Miller:

It's the equivalent of my husband works in film and had to go to another country for a while. And I swear, came back with the slightest accent. Swear it. Like because we start to mirror whomever or whatever were around.

And so, it's this idea that these principles that you're giving, we need a roadmap in order to follow, but they are actually very natural communication steps for us.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, if you, and you know this because you have a three-and-a-half-year-old. If you smile at a baby, the baby will smile back at you, right? If you are in a conversation -- so there was a guy named James Provine who did a bunch of studies looking at laughter. And what he found is that 80 percent of the times that we laugh have nothing to do with humor. Like nobody has said anything funny, but what a laugh is, is a laugh is showing the other person I want to connect with you. And when they laugh back, they're showing us that they want to connect with us as well.

The same thing is true, actually, of expressing almost any emotion. And so to that point, we think about mirroring and there's definitely ways to use mirroring in a manipulative sense, right? I think that sometimes when Chris and when we're talking about negotiations, we're trying to entice the other person against their will to connect with us.

But in most conversations, when we're mirroring with someone, what we're really doing is we're trying to show them, I want to connect with you. That's why if you have, if you say something emotional and I respond, having an emotional conversation with you, that's why it feels so good is because you're showing me, I want to understand you. And that feels great. In fact, our brains have been hardwired to feel good about that.

Jay Papasan:

Is a lot of the book -- and I'm sorry, I haven't seen it yet. I'm just like the rest of the people listening, like, where do I get my hands on it? How much do you go into the nonverbal stuff, like the mirror?

Charles Duhigg:

There's a whole chapter on that. In fact, it's really interesting. So I assume you guys know the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, the sitcom. So what's really interesting is when the writers of that show were trying to figure out how to make it, they have this basic problem, which is the main characters are supposed to be awkward. They're supposed to be emotionally awkward and socially awkward. They're not supposed to be good communicators.

But the thing about a sitcom is a sitcom only works if the audience knows exactly what someone is feeling and thinking as soon as they walk onto the screen. There can't be any subtlety in a sitcom. So the question became, how do we transmit what these characters are thinking and feeling, if they can't do it through their words, because the character is supposed to be awkward? And the answer was entirely nonverbal, right? Or actually, it's not necessarily nonverbal because they are making sounds. It's non-linguistic. So it's about how you hold your body. It's about the noises you make. Even some of them when you're like, hmm, that's interesting or tell me about.

Like these little asides, what are known within psychology is back channeling, that's how we show when people want to connect, when we can't give them the dialogue to allow them to connect. And it turns out that NASA actually figured this out on their own and they used it to figure out who would make for good astronauts. Because one of the problems that they had is that they needed people who had high emotional intelligence, high EQs, and basically everyone was good at faking it, right?

Like when you get to that stage, you're really good at faking emotional intelligence, regardless of whether you got it or not. So this one guy, he started paying attention to how the astronaut candidates would laugh or how they would respond to him expressing sorrow or how they would respond to him bringing up something from his past. And he found that's the way to figure out who has a high emotional EQ is if they matched him, then they actually wanted to understand what he was thinking and feeling.

Nikki miller:

Wow.

Jay Papasan:

I laughed at that. It's not funny just because it's surprising, right? So now I'm like all meta in the middle of that conversation.

Charles Duhigg:

Totally. Totally.

Jay Papasan:

How do you not get in your own head? Like, am I leaning in too much? Yeah, yeah.

Charles Duhigg:

It's a good -- like, it's a good question because it can feel overwhelming, right, as we're describing it and talking about it. But again, that kind of goes back to the most important idea, which is we all know how to do this. Like once you learn the framework, you get to stop thinking about it because your instincts will take over and it will point you in the direction of what to pay attention to and what you can safely ignore. And then you don't have to think about it all the time.

Jay Papasan:

With the wisdom of your three kinds of conversation and just starting with an awareness of what conversation are we having, I'm not going to tell you that's the one thing in your book. For me, it's the simplest framework, kind of like your habit loop, which I'm sorry, I mean, I don't know if you studied BJ Fogg, but like, it mirrors every bit of research I've said, but you said it so eloquently and perfectly. Like you gave me a simple approach to understanding how habits work.

Charles Duhigg:

Oh, thank you.

Jay Papasan:

And that framework I'm going to remember is like, oh, there's really basically three kinds of conversations. And if I really understand which one we're having right now, I can be appropriate in the moment, which will allow this to go just a little bit better.

Charles Duhigg:

Exactly. Absolutely. Okay. So let me ask you guys a question if it's okay.

Jay Papasan:

Oh yeah.

Charles Duhigg:

If you were having like a terrible day, like the worst day, and you just wanted to call someone who you knew was going to make you feel better. Who would you call?

Jay Papasan:

My wife.

Charles Duhigg:

Okay. And it comes immediately into your mind, right? You know exactly who that. How about you Nikki?

Nikki Miller:

I'd call my husband.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. Yeah. And, okay. So now let me ask you some questions about what --

Jay Papasan:

This actually happened yesterday when someone slammed into my Bronco.

Charles Duhigg:

Did it?

Nikki Miller:

I must say Jay did have a bad day yesterday,

Jay Papasan:

Oh my gosh. That sounds terrible.

Jay Papasan:

Like before I call the police, before I call like the insurance, I called my wife and I was just like, you know.

Charles Duhigg:

Okay. And take me to that conversation. So you call up your wife, you say, some jerk just rear ended me. What did she do next? What did she say back to you?

Jay Papasan:

Oh, gosh. I was really hyped up on adrenaline at this moment because he was going fast, and it was a good lucky thing. But I think the first thing she asked is, was I okay?

Charles Duhigg:

Okay.

Jay Papasan:

How bad was it? What happened? Right? Curiosity. And then what can I do? She's like, I will call the insurance, right? Because I was saying, I don't even like, I'm so jacked up right now. I got it out of the intersection. He parked. Just remind me what I need to do because I couldn't think straight. And she goes, don't worry about it, I'm going to call Crump. He's not even our insurance agent. It's like, since 2002, you. The Farmer's Company is just known by the first representative, a guy named Crump. She’s like, I'll call Crump and I'll call you back. And I'm like, thank you. And then I was suddenly calm. And I walked over, crossed the highway carefully and it was made -- checked on the other driver.

Charles Duhigg:

And what I love about what you just said is, okay, so you call up, you're probably in an emotional place, right? But a little bit of a practical place too, because there's a problem that you just got hit. And your wife, instead of trying to solve your problem right away, instead of trying to tell you all about her day and how upset she was, she asks you questions, and she asks you deep questions. Like, how are -- like, are you hurt? Right. Which can be mean both like, are you physically injured, but also like, how are you feeling right now? She asked you a couple of questions.

And then to prove to you that she's heard what you say, she says, let me help you. Like what I hear you saying is we just talked about the emotional aspect of this, but now there's this practical aspect that I'm sure is weighing on you that I'm hearing you talk about. You probably said something about insurance. You probably said something about the car. And she says, I hear what you're saying. I'm going to prove it by saying, here's what I'm going to do to help.

And super communicators -- and the reason she's a super communicator with you, and my guess is she's a super communicator in general, if she's anything like my wife is that she's not thinking hard about what kind of conversation you're having. She is instead listening to her instincts, but she has in the past, I'll bet you thought hard about what makes conversations go well and poorly. And all the things we're talking about is probably something that she knows.

Jay Papasan:

You are very good at deduction. And yes, my wife is a world class salesperson and has spent a lot of time focus on listening. And she's also just, I think, showed up in the world as an extrovert with really decent emotional intelligence. Like she's clearly the champ of that in our household. And I'll be the student every day.

Charles Duhigg:

And Nikki, what about for you? Like when you call your husband, what do you find that he's doing that's important to you?

Nikki Miller:

What I was thinking about as Jay was sharing that story, and as you were giving him feedback was that sometimes I call my husband with my intent to have one conversation and I swear he just knows me better than I know myself and knows that I need the other one. Like I'm thinking of this week, I had unfortunately last week I had a dear friend who passed away very unexpectedly.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, I'm sorry.

Nikki Miller:

And so I've just been super emotional about it and I called him yesterday and I was just a wreck. Like it was just one of the days and I called him, and I said, I just got to get it together, I'm a wreck. Like I can't get a word out. I'm a hot mess. And he said, it's okay to just be a hot mess sometimes. Like, it's just okay. It's just okay for you to have a bad day. And it's okay for you to be emotional about it. And I was like, well, this is not helping. This is not making me get it together, bud. And yet it was, it was exactly what I needed. Like, if he had said, well, like, just put that brave face on and get back out there, kid, it wasn't what I needed in the moment. And I didn't even know that, but he knew me well enough to know that.

Charles Duhigg:

And what I love about what you just said is that in your head, you were thinking this is a practical problem, this is a practical conversation. I want him to like fix it. But what you said to him as you relate it now is I'm a hot mess, which like is basically like a big billboard saying emotional, emotional, emotional, right. You're not saying like, I got to figure out who's going to pick up the kids and who's going to get dinner tonight. You said, I'm a hot mess. And so, he listened to you. You listen to what you're saying. I'm so sorry about your friend.

Nikki Miller:

Thank you for saying that.

Charles Duhigg:

Is this someone who's close by or someone?

Nikki Miller:

Not physically close, but close in friendship.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. It's hard. It's hard. It's really hard. And I started talking about this a little bit in the book. My father passed away about six years ago and I found this thing happened after I came back to New York where I was living at the time after the funeral, which is when someone that you're close to passes away, you think about it all the time. Right.

And it's a really meaningful experience. Like you think about yourself and you think about them and you think about mortality. And it's interesting and it's sad and it's hard. And you, I'm sure experiencing this yourself. Nobody asks you about it. Like I was kind of desperate to talk about my dad's funeral.

Nikki Miller:

Yeah, totally.

Charles Duhigg:

Like he was super interesting. And like to tell them, tell other people about like what the eulogies were like and what he had meant to me and other people. And yet no one ever says like, tell me about your dad or tell me about your friend. And I think that's because it's an example of a kind of conversation that we used to know how to have and that little kids can have with each other, no problem. But that as we get into adults and we think of ourselves as professional, we forget how to have it. And if we remind ourselves, then we really help other people.

Nikki Miller:

I think with kids, it's that -- and you tell me what you see from the actual science of it, is that when I look at my daughter, the thing I admire most about her, and also want to muzzle sometimes is that there's just no filter. Like there's nothing in between what comes into the head and what comes out of the mouth. And as we become adults, I think sometimes that filter inhibits us from communicating because it's like, well, I don't want to say the wrong thing, so I just won't say anything and I don't know how to ask about it and I don't know if you want to talk about it, so I just won't ask at all. I don't want to put us in the awkward position.

Charles Duhigg:

That's exactly right. And I think -- and look, some of those filters are good, right, as your daughter is going to learn, like not everyone has to hear all your business. But that being said, it's oftentimes the anxiety about the filter that is stopping us. And if we can reduce that anxiety, then it gives us a -- it lets our instincts come out to sort of pick up on when someone does want to talk about something and to know that, like, actually, if this is something I share, even though it seems a little bit intimate, like I'm going to, I'm going to put it out there. And if they respond in kind, then that's a way for us to connect. Sometimes it's just about planning ahead of time, kind of how we hope this conversation.

In fact, there's a study that was done. This researcher went into an investment bank, and this is like a place where like people like we're competing with each other for deals and just screaming at each other all day long. There were fights in almost every meeting and he told everyone, okay, before each meeting, write down two things, write down what you want to discuss and what mood you want the discussion to have. And so this took like literally like 15 seconds. People would be like I want us to decide next year's budget. And I want everyone to feel like they had some input into this. When they did this, nobody shared their cards with each other. They all kept them private. The incidents of conflict went down 80 percent in those meetings for exactly the reason because it reduced the anxiety.

Nikki Miller:

Yeah. Just by you having clarity.

Charles Duhigg:

Just by you having clarity of what you want to do and to know that the other people in that room, they have clarity too, that reduces the anxiety and as a result, that reduces the conflict.

Jay Papasan:

Well, there's real space for that. I remember when my uncle died, I was so concerned about overstepping boundaries because I was going to go and have to read at the funeral and do all this stuff and I wanted to say the right thing. But that was right, not long after Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant wrote the book, was it Plan B or am I mangling it?

Charles Duhigg:

No, no. That’s Plan B.

Jay Papasan:

But there were literally scripts in there about what you can say and what you shouldn't say, right? And it was like, I found it so helpful to get practical instruction around a difficult emotional conversation.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely.

Jay Papasan:

And now, my dad passed away last year.

Charles Duhigg:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Jay Papasan:

Same thing. But you know, oh, it's horrible. And we might can go on this, but maybe not while we're recording. But it's like -- but thank you for that sentiment. And I know people wanted to, and you can see them fighting, like they want to ask the question, but they're not sure how it's going to land.

Charles Duhigg:

Exactly.

Jay Papasan:

So like, what a great book that you're putting out there. Like, if you're even giving us one more tool so that we can have the things, those conversations that probably need to happen to make us a better place to live. Just give us a few tools so that we can lean into them with less anxiety because that anxiety shows up in the conversation.

Charles Duhigg:

It totally shows up, right? And we've all been in those conversations where the other person is nervous and it's like it's so painful to watch someone else's anxiety hijack a conversation and you try and calm them down. You start talking more slowly. But like a lot of contemporary life is us being pushed into situations that in a historical sense are relatively new.

Like we've been talking to each other for two millennia. We've been sending letters, written letters where we edit ourselves for over, what, a thousand, almost a thousand years now. We've only been talking online since 1982, right? Like for all intents and purposes, our online conversations are in their infancy. And when it comes to like texting and social media, that's like less than a decade old. All of this stuff is new and hard. And so the more that we understand how it works, the better we are at doing it and letting those instincts that we've honed come out and guide us.

Nikki Miller:

Charles, I'd love your perspective on that point on one of the challenges I see in communication or rather I should phrase it as that I feel in communication is that we just have so much communication, so many texts, so many messages, so many emails, and I want to make every interaction count, but the digital deluge makes it absolutely impossible.

And as a result, I find myself when I get in these conversations, well, I mean, maybe not these ones, but when I'm in a one-on-one, I'm sort of in that same speed, if that makes sense. Like I'm just trying to rapidly get through whatever the next thing is. Do you have an exercise, a tool, or do we just all need like to slow it down? Or do we just need to slow it down?

Charles Duhigg:

Well, I think one of the things that's really important is to recognize that there are times that we want to have conversations and times that we don't. And that's okay. That's totally okay. Like when I'm talking to my kids and I say to them, do you think you should clean your room today? I'm not actually looking for a conversation about the ups and downs of cleaning the room. Right. I'm basically telling them, it's not a conversation, it's me giving a --

Nikki Miller:

It's cleaning room day.

Charles Duhigg:

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of conversations I have with colleagues that are very similar. It's not actually a conversation, it's that we both want to basically data dump on the other person. And that's fine. That's fine. It's okay. We don't have to have conversations with everyone. But when we want to have a conversation, we need to be aware that we want to have that conversation and give it the space and the instincts that we have to let it flourish.

And so I think one of the things is that oftentimes, and I think super communicators, again, people who are consistent super commuters do this. Before they open their mouth or before they go into a discussion, they usually just take 30 seconds to take a little bit of an inventory of themselves. Like what do I want out of this? You're right, and with texts and everything else, we don't have to take that 30 seconds because they aren't conversations. They're just, here's where to be at seven o'clock tonight or something like that.

But sometimes they are conversations, and oftentimes my guess is, when they are conversations, we're all pausing before we reply. We're taking a second to say, I want this to be a conversation to take an inventory of ourselves. This is something that's important to me. And if it's important, then let me remind myself that a lot of this is going to be about back and forth, give and take, rather than just trying to get this done as fast as humanly possible.

Nikki Miller:

I love that. Thank you for answering.

Charles Duhigg:

Sure. No, thanks for asking.

Nikki Miller: Charles, at the end of every one of these interviews, we always ask, what's the one thing that you would want our audience to take away? I know I took many one things, so thankfully I get to ask you this question. You don't have to ask me. But what's the one thing that you would want our listeners to take from this conversation?

Charles Duhigg:

I think the biggest one thing is to know that you can be a super communicator. You can be a super communicator when you want to be a super communicator. Sometimes it happens just by accident, or you feel like you can't control it. Anyone can be a super communicator. You have that instinct. The key is just to learn and understand yourself and how conversations work.

And once you do that, once you have a framework, your instincts will come out and they will allow you to connect with the people that you want to connect with. You can have the most meaningful conversations you want, and they will go better if you understand what you want going into them and you understand how to listen. So anyone can be a super communicator and the right conversation at the right moment, they can change people's lives.

And so it's worth doing.

Nikki Miller:

Such an incredible conversation today.

Jay Papasan:

Absolutely.

Nikki Miller:

Thank you so much.

Charles Duhigg:

Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

Nikki Miller:

Book comes out February 20th, Super Communicators. I got lucky enough to get the early copy. I'm going to send mine to Jay so he can read too, but it was just such an incredible read. So thank you, Charles. I'm excited for everyone to get to read this and to get to hear this conversation. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you?

Charles Duhigg:

If you just Google my name, Charles Duhigg, I'm at charlesduhigg.com. I actually have my email address on there and I read and respond to every single email I get from a reader. So it might take a couple days or a week, but I will definitely respond to you. And yeah, I'd love to hear from folks about how they communicate.

Nikki Miller:

Thank you so much, Charles.

Charles Duhigg:

Thank you.

Jay Papasan:

It's great to meet you. Thanks for sharing.

Charles Duhigg:

Absolutely. Thanks so much.

Outro:

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