937: Speaking the Hidden Language of Connection with Charles Duhigg

Pete Mockaitis

Charles, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Charles Duhigg

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to be chatting. I read your prior book The Power of Habit many years ago, and you got a fresh one, Supercommunicators coming out here. I can’t wait to dig into your wisdom. But first, I got to hear, so in addition to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and graduating from impressive places, you’ve also served as bike messenger. Tell us this tale.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, so before I went to business school, I was living in San Francisco and didn’t have a real job. And so, I was like, “You know what I could do, I could become a bike messenger.” And this was back in the late ‘90s when bike messengers were super cool. And so, I signed up for it, and I lasted, literally, one day. I actually got pneumonia from being a bike messenger for one day because San Francisco, of course, was filled with hills, and I was not physically ready to be a bike messenger.

It was interesting though because I would say probably about half, I mean, I did spend time with the other bike messengers, and probably about half of them were more active drug users and had some real serious health issues going on. And I do remember there was this one guy, I took the bus over with him in the morning, and we were driving over the bridge on the way to San Francisco, past the IKEA, and someone was like, “I hate IKEA. IKEA is corporate awfulness.”

And he’s like, “No, bro, IKEA is the best. They got that play area for kids. Me and the wife sometimes will just bring our daughter there, and then we just take off for like six or seven hours, man. It’s amazing.” And I was like, “Okay, this is bike messenger life.”

Pete Mockaitis

Bike messenger life. Well, I’m thinking you have to be in great shape. If they’re using drugs, which drugs are we talking about?

Charles Duhigg

I don’t know. I did not really ask. There seemed to be a lot of conversation about the various drugs, which, of course, I knew nothing about. No, they’re in great shape. Like, if you ride your bike all day long all over San Francisco, you’re in pretty good shape. The other thing is I just didn’t know how to navigate San Francisco, and it’s a hard city. There are ways around the hills and I knew zero of them.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, you lived to tell the tale, and I would be most terrified of getting hit by cars.

Charles Duhigg

Yes, I was terrified of a lot of things. That was definitely one of them.

Pete Mockaitis
But if you’ve got the cool bag, the bike messenger bags are the coolest. Like, the seatbelt buckle and that material.

Charles Duhigg

And at the end of that one day that I spent as a bike messenger, when I was on the bike coming home, I felt like the coolest thing on earth, I was like, “Yeah, I’m a bike messenger. Just, like, messaging stuff,” and then I got pneumonia.

Pete Mockaitis
Mercy. Well, I’m glad you’ve recovered and I’m glad we’re here now chatting about Supercommunicators. It’s a great title and a great premise, and you were something of a supercommunicator in your world, although I think you’ll tell us times that maybe that was not as much the case. But before we get into all that, can you maybe kick us off with anything particularly startling or surprising that you discovered as you’re researching and putting this together?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, absolutely. This has really changed how I communicate. And you mentioned that I’m a supercommunicator. Actually, the truth is all of us are supercommunicators at various times. We all sometimes walk into the meeting and we know exactly the right thing to say, or a friend calls and they’re upset, we know exactly how to make them feel better.

And the point is that, actually, we all have this talent. In fact, it’s actually hardwired into our brains, it’s how we evolved but sometimes we can forget it. And so, the goal of this book is actually to remind people or teach them how to think about communication so that it’s easier to remember what to do to be a supercommunicator.

And, for me, this really started when I was talking to these marriage therapists, and one of them described the situation that I’ve had a lot in my own life, which is sometimes I would come home from work after a long and hard day, and I would start complaining to my wife. I’d be like, “My boss is a jerk, and my coworkers don’t appreciate me, and blah, blah, blah.” And my wife, very, very wisely, would offer some practical advice. She’d say something like, “Why don’t you take your boss out to lunch, and you guys can get to know each other better?”

And instead of hearing what she was saying, I, of course, would like explode, and be like, “Why aren’t you supporting me? I want you to be outraged on my behalf.” And so, when I was talking to these therapists, I was like, “What is going on here? We’re both bringing sort of our best selves in this conversation, we’re both bringing good intentions.”

And they said, “Look,” and this is the big insight of the core of the book. They said, “Look, most of us think about discussions as just being one thing, it’s a discussion about one topic but that’s totally wrong. Every discussion is actually made up of multiple kinds of conversations.” And, in particular, there’s these three buckets that most conversations fall into.

There are practical conversations, “Why don’t you take your boss out to lunch? Here’s a problem, let’s solve it. We need to make a plan for how we’re going to get to my mom’s for vacation.” Then there are emotional conversations. And in an emotional conversation, I do not want you to solve my problem. I want you, literally, to just kind of give me encouragement and validate how I’m feeling.

And then, finally, there’s also social conversations. And social conversations are about how we relate to each other, how other people see us, how sort of we exist within society. And, oftentimes, when we’re having a conversation, we will move, or having a discussion, we’ll move from conversation to conversation. But if we’re not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, we really won’t be able to connect. And that was what’s happening.

Pete Mockaitis

We, meaning, like, party A and party B, both on the same page, the same style and level of conversation.

Charles Duhigg

Exactly. When I came home and I was upset, I was having an emotional conversation and my wife replied with a practical conversation, and so I could not hear what she was saying and she got frustrated by what I was saying because we weren’t, what’s known within psychology as the matching principle, we weren’t having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.

Pete Mockaitis

Understood. And so, when you say, to complexify, often the conversation is not just one, it’s multiples.

Charles Duhigg

Oh, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis

Sort of simultaneously, or weaving back and forth, or all those things.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, absolutely. You’re usually moving from emotional conversation, to practical conversation, to social conversation, and then back to emotional. And what’s important is just that everyone who’s in that conversation, whether it’s two people or many people, that we look for the clues about what kind of conversation is happening, and we match others, and we invite them to match us.

So, when someone says something really emotional and they’re sending us a signal about, like, “Look, we need to talk about how we feel. This is not about solving the problem. This is about airing out why the problem exists,” our ability to pick up on that and then match them, and then, after that, invite them to move to solutions, to move to a practical conversation, that’s really powerful. That’s how you connect with, really, anyone.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. Well, that sounds powerful. I suppose, if I may be so bold, can you prove it? Can you tell me, really, what’s at stake or what’s unlocked if we upgrade our super communication frequency from once in a while when I’m on fire to fairly regularly?

Charles Duhigg

It’s hugely powerful. Think about at work how many conversations you have that if the conversation goes well, things get so much better, and if the conversation does not go well, things don’t get better. Like, let me ask you. So, just think about the last week, what’s the most meaningful conversation you had in the last week?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m in the process of buying a company, so we had a meeting with the buyer-seller accountants, so I think that seemed important from just a dollars and cents perspective.

Charles Duhigg

That seems really meaningful. And I’m sure that that’s like taking up a bunch. Now, my guess is that a lot of those conversations are practical, but buying a company also brings up a lot of emotions. Like, it can be scary, it can be exciting, you can have partners who are saying, “I think we’re moving too fast,” or, “We’re not moving fast enough.”

A big transaction like that, have you found that some of the conversations you’ve had with your spouse, or with your partners, or anyone else that they’ve been emotional instead of just purely practical?

Pete Mockaitis

They have been emotional in that you see emotions are there but it hasn’t been super intensely emotional in either way.

Charles Duhigg

That’s fine.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, maybe between my partner and I, like, “Oh wow! This will be such a cool opportunity if we did this, or this, or this, or this. This will unlock this,” so there’s that. But never have we been super intensely emotional in terms of, like, angry, or, “You’re screwing me over,” which is great. None of us feel that.

Charles Duhigg

Which is great. And, by the way, most emotional conversations are not super emotional, they’re not super intense. We all have those conversations sometimes, and knowing how to navigate them is really important but most of the conversations we have every day are at a lower temperature, and that’s fantastic.

But if your business partner came, and he’s like, “I’m so excited. This is going to be amazing,” and you didn’t engage with that excitement at all, you didn’t sort of invite him to share that excitement, it’d be hard going forward. And then if you came in super practical-minded, and you’re like, “Look, I don’t care how excited you are, we got to figure out the dollars and cents on this,” and all he talked about was like the excitement and how he feels, it’d be super frustrating for you.

But just helping us recognize what kind of conversation is happening, that helps us figure out how to communicate.

Pete Mockaitis

It does. And what’s intriguing, though, is the interconnectedness. Like, let’s say, “I’m super excited about this specific possibility of integrating some staff here over there,” and they go, “Oh.” And so then, in some ways, the optimal response, for me at least in that moment, is not so much, “Yeah, that’s really cool,” although that’s not bad. I mean, I wouldn’t shun that, I’ll take it.

But I think, for me, I guess maybe next level stuff is hitting both, which is like, “Oh, my gosh, that is really exciting, and it will be so easy to just do this.” It’s like we hit the emotion and extended the practical at the same time.

Charles Duhigg

Exactly. So, the book is filled with stories of sort of supercommunicators who are just normal people who sort of figure something out about a particular conversation. And one of them is about the CIA officer in his early 30s, he’s just been hired, and his job is to go recruit spies overseas. So, they send them to Europe, and they’re like, “Come back with some spies.”

And this guy, his name is Jim Lawler, he’s a great guy, he spends, like, a year trying and just strikes out again and again and again, and he is terrible at this job. He can’t make a real connection with anyone he’s trying to recruit. And then he meets this woman Yasmin who, she’s in town, she works in foreign ministry in her home country in the Middle East, she’s like the perfect, perfect candidate.

And he goes, and he “bumps” into her at lunch, and then invites her to lunch next day, tells her he’s an oil speculator, and eventually they get to know each other, and they kind of start investing in each other a little bit. And then, at one point, he’s like, “Look, I lied to you. I’m not an oil speculator. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Will you help us by telling us what’s going on inside your ministry because we want the same things you do? We want to stop the repression of women. We want to bring down this theocracy that’s ruling your country.”

And she just looks at him and starts crying, and she’s like, “They kill people for that,” and she just bolts out. And so, this guy, Jim Lawler, he’s told his bosses already that he’s recruiting Yasmin, and when he goes and he tells them, like, “I tried to close the deal and she ran away,” his boss was like, “You’re going to get fired. You’ve been here a year, she’s your only possible recruitment, and you just screwed it up.”

So, Lawler knows that he has one more opportunity, one more meal that he can ask Yasmin to have with him. And so, he takes her to the meal, and she’s really depressed, and she’s depressed because she’s about to go back to her home country, and she’s kind of depressed in herself. She’s depressed that she hasn’t changed more on this vacation, and he tries to cheer her up. He tries to tell her stories about when they were sightseeing, and it just doesn’t work.

And then towards the end of the meal, he just decides, like, “You know what, this isn’t going to happen. I’ve screwed this up.” And so, he just gets honest with Yasmin, and he says, “Look, I know that you’re disappointed in yourself. I’m super disappointed in myself. Like, I thought I was going to be a great CIA officer, and it turns out I’m terrible at this. And I see other guys who got hired with me, and women who got hired with me, and they’re doing so much better. They all have this confidence I don’t have.”

And he just starts talking about how he’s going to have to go back to Texas, and work for his dad. And his brother is a better salesman than he is. And while he’s describing all this, he’s just being as honest as he can, matching Yasmin, unintentionally she was glum and wanted to talk about how she felt, and now, finally, he is also talking about how he feels, she starts crying. And Lawler reaches across the table, he said, “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” and she goes, “No, no, what you want is important. We can do this together.”

And she becomes one of the best assets in the Middle East over the next 30 years, and Lawler actually goes on to be one of the top recruiters in the CIA. But I think the point here is that, unless we know how to look for what’s happening in a conversation, unless we are a little bit conscious, and it’s not hard to get conscious of this, a little bit conscious about how to match someone, we can totally miss what they need, and they can miss what we’re asking them for.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yes, thank you, that’s a lovely tale. And so, let’s just go ahead and do more, please, Charles. So, that’s a demonstration of the emotional vibe, like, “What’s up?” And so, in that instance, there’s crying, there are some dramatics. So, give us more of the tale showing how that unfolds marvelously in the practical flavor and the social flavor?

Charles Duhigg

Well, okay, and I would actually say that conversation, there are emotional aspects but there’s also practical aspects because she’s agreeing to become a spy for him. So, one of the things that we know is that when researchers have looked at people who are consistently supercommunicators, they found that these kinds of people, on average, ask 10 to 20 times as many questions than other people.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, no kidding?

Charles Duhigg

But we’re oftentimes not aware of it because the questions are like, “Hey, that’s interesting. What do you think about that?” or like, “Huh, what did you do next?” or just little things that make it easier for us to enter a conversation. And there’s actually an experiment I like to do. So, think for a second, if you were having, like a really bad day, like just a terrible day, who would you call that you know would make you feel better?

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, we got a few options.

Charles Duhigg

Sure, but I don’t know, who comes to mind first?

Pete Mockaitis

I’d say my wife.

Charles Duhigg

Okay. Now, let me ask you this, is your wife, like, the funniest person you know, like standup comedian funny, like just kills it every time?

Pete Mockaitis

She is among the funniest people I know.

Charles Duhigg

Okay. Okay. But you described her as a wife, you don’t describe her as, like, my comedian wife.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Charles Duhigg

What about is she the most successful person you know, like earns the most money?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, depending on how we measure success, yes. From an income-generation perspective, she is not.

Charles Duhigg

Okay. And what’s interesting is the audience probably thought of someone that they telephone to make them feel better. And that person probably is not their funniest friend, or their smartest friend, or their most successful friend, so why telephone that person? What’s that person doing that makes us feel so good?

And the answer is what they’re doing is they are inviting us to share who we are, and then they’re proving to us that they are listening. So, you asked for an example of how this happens in the everyday world. There’s a guy named Nicholas Epley who’s a professor at the University of Chicago, and one of the things that he’s done a lot of work on is trying to figure out, “What kinds of questions can we ask that make people feel closer to each other, almost like without it being obvious?”

And what he found is that there’s this category of question known as a deep question. And what a deep question is that it’s something that asks you about your values, or your beliefs, or your past experiences in a way that invites you to open up and explain who you are. So, an example of this is to say to someone, like, “Where do you work?” and then they say, “I’m a lawyer.” You say, “Oh, have you always wanted to be a lawyer? Like, do you love practicing the law?” Those are deep questions.

Now, they don’t seem like overly intrusive or awkward but they’re deep questions because they invite the other person to expose something a little bit that’s vulnerable. And if when we hear that vulnerability, if we reciprocate that vulnerability, that other person will feel closer to us. So, my guess is that a lot of the conversations you have with your wife, and tell me if I’m getting this wrong, involved you asking her the deeper question rather than the surface question, her telling you something that’s real, and then you responding with something real yourself, and that you probably feel closer as a result. Is that fair?

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah, sure, that happens.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah. But we don’t think about asking deep questions, and yet it’s something that we know helps us figure out what the other person wants to talk about, it helps us align.

Pete Mockaitis

So, let’s hear some more examples of these deep questions. So, “Have you always wanted to be a lawyer? Do you love practicing law?” What are some other examples here?

Charles Duhigg
Really, I mean, anything. Like, where did you grow up?

Pete Mockaitis

Danville, Illinois.

Charles Duhigg

Okay. Like, what was the best part of growing up there?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, what’s deep is that I have to think for a while. There’s a lot of good things.

Charles Duhigg

That’s a good sign though.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s so funny. When I hear questions, I really like to answer them masterfully or accurately. But, in some ways, I could say any great thing about growing up in Danville. So, I’ll say. I just had a lot of fun meeting so many different folks. And it’s almost like divisions of, in my experience, like divisions of race or class or whatever didn’t even matter. It was just like, “Oh, well, Ruhini’s parents have a huge house. That’s kind of cool,” and that’s that. And then onto the next. It doesn’t matter.

Charles Duhigg

So, here’s what’s interesting about the answer you just gave me. First of all, you’re telling me a little bit about what it was like to grow up in this place. And so, you’re telling me about your experiences. You also told me about your values, like you value people who are kind, you value kindness. It sounds like you value kindness more than financial success or professional success.

It sounds like you’ve had some experiences where, like, you’ve had friends who are more wealthy than you and probably friends who are less wealthy than you but you found something really meaningful in creating friendships that aren’t defined by demographic lines. That’s a pretty easy question for me to ask, like, “What’s your favorite part of growing up there?” And yet, when you answered that question, I now know so much more about you, and you also told me something kind of intimate.

Now, in the language of psychology, you’ve exposed a vulnerability. Like, you put me in a place where I can judge you. You might not care what my judgment is, and you probably don’t, like if I was, “Oh, man, that sounds like a terrible place to grow up,” you wouldn’t care because I’m some idiot that you just met.

But the fact that you opened yourself up and exposed little bit of vulnerability means that you’re ready to feel closer to me, and if I reciprocate with vulnerability, if I tell you that I grew up in New Mexico, Albuquerque, which is true, I’m going there pretty soon, and one of the things that I loved most about it was that it was a place, like my high school was on 89% Hispanic or Native American. And that’s true of a lot of New Mexico and to grow up as a white guy, to get a chance to feel like a minority is really powerful and it creates empathy.

Like, A, I’ve told you something about myself by answering the question that I asked you, but, B, by reciprocating your vulnerability, we feel closer to each other. We can’t help but feel closer to each other. Literally, our brains are hardwired to feel closer to each other.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, and what’s interesting is, as we super-communicate with each other, is that it’s funny how the monkey mind just has all these associations, in like, where it just might naturally want to go. So, you say Albuquerque, I’m thinking, “I love the show Breaking Bad,” and so I have a desire to say something about “Breaking Bad.” But, really, from a connecting perspective, that doesn’t really do much for us here.

Charles Duhigg

So, here’s a good example here. I said I’m from Albuquerque, you definitely could’ve broken in and been like, “Oh, my God, I love Breaking Bad. That’s the best show ever.” But because you are a good communicator, you intuit it, like, that would actually disrupt the flow of this conversation. That’s a fun conversation, maybe a practical conversation, and I’m revealing something about who I am. It’s an emotional conversation or social conversation. And so, instead of interrupting me and stealing the spotlight in saying, “Man, I love Breaking Bad. Do you like Breaking Bad?” you knew to match the kind of conversation I was having.

Now, think of how many times we sometimes get this wrong. Like, I get this wrong with my kids all the time. Like, if my kids come to me with something they want to talk about, they’re upset about something, or they want to talk about the social scene at their school, and instead of listening, and asking questions, and matching them, and meeting them where they are, I start trying to solve their problems, like I have all these lessons in my head that I want to shove into their head.

And, of course, they’re like, “Whatever, dad.” It’s like you breaking and being like, “I love Breaking Bad.” It’s me being like, “Well, here’s a lesson that you can learn.” I do this all the time. I still make this mistake but the more we become conscious of it, the more that we’re aware of listening for what kind of conversation is happening, matching other people, inviting them to match us, the more we end up having those special moments.

Pete Mockaitis

And it’s funny, I think if we weren’t primed in the world of, I’m thinking about deep questions and matching, and practical versus emotional versus social, I might very well have just let her rip with “Breaking Bad is awesome.”

Charles Duhigg

Yeah. Or, I might’ve like talked about growing up in Albuquerque. I mean, this is something that definitely happens, someone says. My dad passed away about five years ago, and I found that when I came back, I was living in New York at the time. When I came back to New York after the funeral, it’s the most interesting thing that had happened to me that year. It’s sad and it’s hard but it’s also just interesting and complicated.

And one of two things would happen. I would tell people that I was just back from my dad’s funeral, and they would say, “I’m sorry,” and then change the topic. And they’d usually change it to something that’s totally unrelated or totally different emotional attitude, or they would just not respond. That happened all the time. And what I really wanted was I wanted people to be, like, “What was it like? What was your dad like? Tell me about your dad.” That’s amazing when someone has passed away and someone else asks you what they’re like, you love describing them.

And I think that, to your point, oftentimes during the most meaningful conversations, we have this instinct to do that, “Hey, Breaking Bad, I love Breaking Bad” because we feel so uncertain, we feel so unsure of ourselves in the conversation. But the more that we can recognize how the conversation works, what this other person is asking for, the more certain and comfortable we become in giving it to them. And that can be incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis

It is. And I think there’s uncertainty or fear or trepidation, whatever the vibe is, in that moment. It’s like the risk is really, I think, lower than what we perceive it to be emotionally.

Charles Duhigg

Oh, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis

Because if I were to say, “Oh, man, I’m sorry. That must’ve been really hard. Tell me what are some of your favorite memories of your dad that came to mind.” I’m thinking, like, at worst, you might say, “I’m really just not comfortable telling you about that.” You’re not going to scream at me or assault me. You might just shut that down if it’s like, “Dude, I barely know you. I don’t feel like crying in front of you at this moment. It’s been a day. I’m just going to terminate the conversation.”

Charles Duhigg

And, by the way, it’s been five years, and so when I bump into other people who have been to the funeral, I ask them, like, “Tell me a little bit about your dad or your mom.” Literally, not once has someone ever said, “I don’t feel like talking about it right now.” People love talking about it. It’s like literally this thing that just happened to them. It’d be like if you got married and none of your friends asked you about the wedding, like when you get married, you want to talk about the wedding, “It was overwhelming.”

And, honestly, like going to a funeral for a parent is just as overwhelming, and sad instead of happy, but you still want to talk about it. And I think that you’re right. I think that people perceive a risk that not only is overblown, oftentimes it actually isn’t even there.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. Well, so then social, who are we, this category, it sounds like we’ve touched upon it in terms of it’s unveiling values and what we’re about.

Charles Duhigg

It’s a little bit different. So, when we’re having a social conversation, what we’re really talking about is, “How do I relate to other people? How do they relate to me? How do I see other people? How do I think other people see me?” So, think about, for instance, there’s a story in the book about Netflix. So, Netflix had an executive who, about five years ago, he used the N-word in a meeting, and he used it in a kind of benign way.

He was trying to describe something but many people in the meeting, for good reason, were offended. He ended up getting fired because of this, but it set off this whole controversy within Netflix. And they hired someone to come who was a supercommunicator, understood how communication works. Her name is Verna Myers, she’s amazing.

She kind of transformed how the conversation, across the entire company, thousands and thousands of people. She transformed how the conversation is happening to help people understand, “It is okay to say to someone, ‘I see something differently than you because of my background, and that doesn’t mean either of us are wrong or right.’”

If I’m a black parent, I might very well see cops differently than a white parent. And that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong or I’m right. It also doesn’t mean we have to agree with each other. But understanding that difference, that’s a social conversation. It’s a conversation about identities, and how identities shape how we see things. That’s actually a huge part of understanding. And if we’re comfortable having that conversation, then it makes it a lot easier to come together.

Secondarily, as part of that conversation is this emphasis on belonging, that every single person has the right to participate in a social conversation and to have an identity. Everyone has had a racial experience, a gender experience, whether you’re black or white or man or female or nonbinary. We all have these experiences that shape who we are. And sharing that with other people, it feels really good. That’s a social conversation.

A social conversation is sharing how we see ourselves in an attempt to align how others see us with our self-image, and to hear how they see themselves and how that might differ from how see them.

Pete Mockaitis

Can you give us some more examples here?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah. Well, so a lot of social conversations are like office gossip. There are actually these really interesting studies on gossip. And what they find is that gossip is really important within companies because gossip is how we not only learn information, it’s how we establish moral and social norms without having to be overbearing about it.

So, if someone is, like, “Oh, my God, Jim got so drunk at that party last night,” and they seem critical of it, then we know, actually, drunkenness is not a norm that’s accepted at this company. And it gets even down to smaller things. And once you start thinking about these kinds of conversations and the powerful role that they play, you can begin thinking about how to make them better.

So, there was a study that was done of an investment bank, and this investment bank was like a place for people who are at each other’s throats all day long. They were competing for deals, they were competing for bonuses, they would have these screaming fights on a regular basis during meetings.

So, these researchers come in, and they tell everyone, “Okay, look, before every meeting, for the next week, what we want you to do is we’re going to give you some notecards. Before every meeting, just write down, literally, one sentence on the notecard, and write down what you hope to accomplish in this meeting, your goal, and what kind of tone or mood you hope the meeting will have. And then when you start the meeting, if you want, you can read it, you can share it with other people, or you don’t have to.” Most people didn’t.

And what they found is that, when they looked at the cards people wrote, what people would write were things like, “I want to ask Maria if she wants to come on vacation with me but I want to make it easy for her to say no,” or, “I want us to figure out the budget for next year…” a pretty practical conversation, “…but I want everyone to get everything off their chest because there’s been some tension.”

Just by asking people to write that sentence before each meeting, the incidence of conflict went down 80% within the firm that week. Now that did not mean that people agreed with each other, it did not mean they stopped fighting, it did not mean that they were less competitive, but because everyone knew what they wanted out of that meeting, and because they knew what kind of mood they were looking for, they were able to signal that much more easily to other people, and we pick up on those signals.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. Well, that’s my favorite kind of thing, Charles. We have a minor intervention with a huge result, that’s cool. So, we’re writing that down, and, in so doing, that gets to the “Who are we?” in terms of, I guess, “Who are we?” in that moment in terms of how we’re showing up right then and there.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, absolutely. We’re coming together and we’re working for this firm together. We are all here trying to remind ourselves that we are on the same team as opposed to on different teams. And if I’m talking to you in a meeting, and I’m saying, like, “I want to discuss the budget but I want to give everyone a chance to get things off their chest,” then what I’m saying to the other people is, “I understand you’re frustrated. I’m your boss. I could tell you we’re just going to do the budget. It’s my way or the highway. But I’m signaling to you, in a social context, I understand you are frustrated. I understand that you don’t feel like I am being the boss I ought to be right now.”

“And once we have that conversation out in the open, then we can start talking about how do we resolve it? Are there things about how we run the social organization that is this company, that we run it in ways that make it hard for people to speak up or to bring their best selves to work? If we’re having conversations with someone else, and we’re talking about ‘How does Jim see this?’ or, ‘I have a problem. Here’s my solution.’ That’s a practical conversation. “Now let’s think about how the rest of the firm is going to react when I bring up this solution.”

That’s a social conversation because the way that other people react will not be based entirely on pragmatics and practicality. It won’t be based entirely on emotions. It might be based on power differentials or on structural issues. But once we sit down, and we’re like, “Look, let’s talk about how this is going to play out at the company from a social perspective,” then suddenly we’re having a slightly different conversation than an emotional conversation or a practical conversation. We’re trying to anticipate how other people see themselves and how that shapes what they believe.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Thank you. Well, tell me, Charles, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Charles Duhigg

No, the thing I would say is the book is filled with stories, and the reason why it’s filled with stories, there are stories about there’s this awesome study called the 36 questions that lead to love. It’s known as the Fast Friends procedure, and it was this study that try and make strangers into friends, and it worked. It worked by getting them to ask each other deep questions.

There are stories about conflict, like, “What do we do when we’re in conflict with someone?” And the answer there, and that story takes place in part online in Facebook. It’s this group that was put together of gun rights advocates and gun control advocates. And what we found is that, in conflict, it’s even more important to prove that we’re listening.

And one of the ways we can prove that we’re listening is by this thing called looping for understanding, which is pretty instinctual. It’s, ask someone a question, repeat back to them what they just told you in your own words. And then the third step, and this is the step that most people forget but it’s the most important, ask them if you got it right.

If you do that and you continue looping until they agree that you’ve gotten it right, it’s almost impossible for people to be angry at each other no matter how big their difference is. And that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with each other but it means you can take anger out of the equation. And so, my goal with these stories is, and there’s a lot of practical tips.

There are sorts of the bullet points after each chapter, but my goal is to give people these skills that they can use to become better communicators because, as I mentioned, all of us are supercommunicators. Sometimes we just do it by instinct, sometimes we’re just lucky and it comes out, but if we learn the skills then we can do it whenever we want. And for the most meaningful conversations, we can really connect with someone else.

Pete Mockaitis

Just a follow-up on the looping point, I understand you’ve also got some research associated with the asking of a follow-up question is another super powerful thing that people did.

Charles Duhigg

Absolutely. And that’s actually a form of looping. Like, sometimes if I ask you a follow-up question, it’s proving to you that I was listening to what you were saying, and that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. And so then, the good follow-up questions do just that. They prove that you were listening to what we’re saying as opposed to, “So, tell me more about that” which still is a decent question when you got nothing else. But, ideally, for a follow-up question, we want to have some content. I sort of think about it like when I’m getting emails, it’s like, “Was this a mass email sent to the whole world or was it sent specifically to me, Pete Mockaitis?”

And there are little indicators of that in the note. And so, too, with the question, one would have to have listened and shared some bits, like, “Oh, you said you think guns are a great way for teachers to prevent violence if they were all armed. Is that right?” “Yeah, that’s what I said.” It’s like, “Well, are you aware of some incidences in which folks armed up the teachers, and they saw the desired results?” So, there’s a follow-up question that shows I was listening.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, that’s a question where you are presupposing the answer, so I would say one thing that’s important is…

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I really wasn’t. I was like “Do we have that information?” “I’ll tell them and then no more problems.”

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, if you’re genuinely and curiously asking, that’s the key to ask curious questions. But you had said something like, the generic question is like “Tell me more about that.” But, again, getting back to deep questions, instead of saying, “Tell me more about that” like an easy way response, if you’re not certain what to say, is to say, “What did you make of that? You just told me about this thing. Why was it important to you?”

And that’s a deep question. It doesn’t appear deep. It doesn’t appear intrusive or it doesn’t appear overly intimate but, again, it’s asking me to explain about my values, or my beliefs, or my experiences. It’s giving me a chance to tell you about how I see the world. And I guarantee you that once you hear that, the follow-up questions are going to be almost automatic.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Can you tell us about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Charles Duhigg

I think the quote that I use most with my kids is, “It’s only a mistake if you don’t learn something from it.” And I realize this is kind of a cheesy quote. But honestly, I make mistakes all the time, we all make mistakes all the time, and it’s so easy to get down on yourself, that if you tell yourself, “It’s only a mistake if I don’t learn from it,” then it stops being a mistake. It starts being an experiment. And not all experiments are supposed to go right.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Charles Duhigg

Actually, I mentioned the 36 questions. This is an awesome, awesome study. So, what they did, it’s these two researchers at the University of Rhode Island, they took all these people in pairs, and they put them in a room, total strangers, and they would have them ask these 36 questions back and forth. And they designed the questions to be deep questions without appearing…many of them didn’t appear very deep, particularly at first.

And then they send everyone home, it only takes an hour, they send everyone home. This is pre-internet, by the way. And then seven weeks later, they tracked down everyone who’d been in that study, and they asked them one question, “Did you ever seek out the person that you had that conversation with?”

Now, they had not given them any information on how to find each other. There was no exchange of business cards or anything like that, so finding the person you had the conversation with was actually kind of hard. They found that 70% of people who had engaged in those conversations had sought out their conversational partner. They’d go out to beers and movies together. Three people ended up getting married to the person that they had the conversation with.

And it’s because of this emotional reciprocity, it’s because if we ask deep questions, and then we answer them, we feel close to the other person. And so, I just think it’s a wonderful study.

Pete Mockaitis

It is. I actually went through that list of questions on a date.

Charles Duhigg

Oh, yeah?

Pete Mockaitis

We didn’t end up getting married.

Charles Duhigg

It’s okay. It’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis

But, in a way, it was a good outcome, and then I think we…I don’t know how much that exercise contributed to things but I think we parted on good terms not too long thereafter.

Charles Duhigg

Excellent.

Pete Mockaitis

And I guess we knew some new things. And a favorite book?

Charles Duhigg

I used to always say The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, which is just one of my favorite books. And for anyone who hasn’t read it, there’s a chapter on the religion of happy-mindedness. William James, of course, is like the father of American psychology. And the religion of happy-mindedness is about people who are just happy. Like, why are they happy? And what did they know that we don’t?

But the other book that I love, that I’ll make a plug for, it’s actually a novel. It’s by Jennifer Egan, and it’s called A Visit from the Goon Squad. And very similarly, I think it’s about how we create happiness in life, and how we recognize it and sometimes fail to recognize it even when it’s right in front of us. So, it’s a wonderful book.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Charles Duhigg

So, I just read an article about AI for The New Yorker, and part of it is about Microsoft’s Copilots that are coming out. And so, I’ve been using all the different AI products, and I will say, like, I don’t think that it’s making me more productive. It’s just super fun though. Like, I sent out an email this morning, and I made an image on Midjourney for it. So, I would say, right now, AI is the tool that I’m enjoying very much.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, so lay it on us, ChatGPT, Midjourney, what else is cool and interesting?

Charles Duhigg

Oh, the Copilots. There’s going to be an explosion of Copilots over the next couple of years. And Microsoft is releasing them right now, but every company is going to be creating agents or copilots. So, in three or four years, this is totally feasible. We will wear a device that records every single conversation, and that conversation will be digitized. It will all be our data. No one else will have it.

And then 10 years from now, you’ll be like, “You know, I was once doing a podcast, and this guy talked about AI, and I can’t remember who he was, but he mentioned Midjourney. Go find that conversation.” And the AI will be able to find it. It’s what large language models index and search very, very efficiently with even vague guidance.

And so, if you think about it, our conversations are a huge corpus of knowledge, it’s a huge database, and it basically only exists between two people, or if you happen to be recording it, it exists between two people and whoever is listening to the conversation, but it’s hard to remember and you don’t know exactly who said what. And once we’re able to unlock the database of conversations, it’s going to be awesome.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And you are a habit master. Tell us your favorite habit?

Charles Duhigg

So, in The Power of Habit, there’s this whole thing about keystone habits, which are habits that set off chain reactions of other behavior changes. So, for me, I would say my keystone habit is definitely exercising in the morning. And I really dislike exercising, so what I do is I sign up for half marathons. And, by the way, I hate races. There’s nothing I enjoy about it.

But I sign up for half marathons because I’m so scared about how bad it will hurt to run that half marathon if I haven’t trained. And that gets me to go train every morning. And then after I train, I’m like, “Oh, man, I feel great. This is really good.” So, I would say my big keystone habit is trying to exercise at least once each day.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Charles Duhigg

As I’ve been working on Supercommunicators, the story with my wife, I think, is something that really resonates with people, because I think we’ve all experienced that. Like, someone comes to us with a problem, and we try and solve it for them, and then they’re frustrated, and then we’re frustrated. And so, I find that explaining, “Oh, it’s actually two different kinds of conversations are happening here,” that that’s been really powerful for a lot of people.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Charles Duhigg

If you Google me, I’m at CharlesDuhigg.com. If you just type Supercommunicators into your Google browser, I’ll probably come up, or Power of Habit. And then my email address is charles@duhigg.com, and I read every single email I get from listeners and from readers, and I respond to every single one, so feel free to drop me a note, and I will definitely respond to you.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Charles Duhigg

I think that, here’s the thing that I would say, is think about your job right now, and think about where you’re not communicating as well as you can. Maybe it’s with a coworker, maybe it’s with your boss, maybe it’s with a client, maybe it’s when you’re doing pitches. There are some times in your life where you wish that you could be an effortless supercommunicator, and it’s not happening on a consistent basis for you.

And my guess is, as a result, you’re shying away from that opportunity because you’re worried that it’s not going to go as well as you want it to go. So, just break it down. Try and think about the last conversation you had where it didn’t go as well as you wanted it to go, and try and figure out, “Were we having the same kind of conversation? Was I asking enough questions? Was I asking the right kinds of questions? Was I proving to this person that I was listening to them? Were they responding to me and inviting me to match them?”

If you do that, you’ll find that there’s this part of your work life that you probably don’t like as much as you should, but it is an absolutely solvable problem. Nobody is born a great communicator. It’s just a set of skills that anyone can learn.

Pete Mockaitis

All right, Charles. Thank you. I wish you much luck and super communications.

Charles Duhigg

Thank you so much.