Difficult Conversations Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Julia, welcome!

Julia Minson
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about disagreeing better. Could you start us off with a key thing you’ve observed time and time again like the top thing you see that folks get wrong about disagreeing?

Julia Minson
I think there’s two things that sound like the opposite of each other, but they’re actually the same thing. On one hand, people avoid disagreement because they feel, like, intensely uncomfortable with it and sort of, like, really don’t want to get into it. And then on the other hand, you see people sort of flying off the handle and getting into very aggressive disagreements.

And you see both of these problems sort of all the time, and they’re actually related, right, because it’s usually when a person is avoiding something for a long time, eventually they sort of like blow a gasket, and then end up expressing their perspective in a very unstructured and unhelpful way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, and this is a learnable thing to not do that and to disagree better.

Julia Minson
Yeah, absolutely. So I am a psychologist at the Harvard Kennedy School, and I have spent my career trying to figure out how to help people do this better. And there’s really some, like, very concrete things that we get wrong, that if we fix them, life can get easier, conversations can get more productive.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, could you tell us a cool story of someone who saw a transformation in that regard?

Julia Minson
Sure. Well, I mean, honestly, I don’t know if you’ve heard this saying, “All research is me search,” right? So a lot of the time, academics study the type of thing that gives them the most difficulty, and I am absolutely the kind of person that used to be extraordinarily argumentative.

You know, I’m pretty smart and I used to love to show it to everybody who would listen. And I just learned over time that you get a lot more mileage by trying to understand where the other person is coming from because, so often, you start arguing and you don’t actually know what the argument is about, right?

You are sort of pushing a point and you don’t understand why the other person is resisting. But if you have some sense of where they’re coming from, it just really sort of transforms the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve got a cool concept, a turn of a phrase, conversational receptiveness, and I just think that is a very handy thing to have tattooed into our brains, if you will. Tell us, what does that mean and how is it helpful?

Julia Minson
So receptiveness to opposing views is your sort of tendency to think hard about stuff you disagree with, right? So we normally, as humans, do a really good job thinking about ideas we agree with and we ignore or look for flaws in ideas we disagree with.

So, for a long time, I was sort of really interested in this thing of like, “Are some people better at putting as much thought and putting as much effort into ideas they disagree with as ideas they do agree with?” And you could think, like, “Look, that’s probably a good idea because I will end up being a smarter, more well-rounded person.”

But once we figured out how you can measure people’s receptiveness, we also realize that people are quite bad at expressing it, right? So I can be thinking really hard about your perspective, I can be like, you know, putting in all this intellectual effort, but you have no idea.

So as the person I’m speaking with, if you don’t know that I’m trying, we are just as likely to have sort of very negative conversation and experience, you know, a bunch of conflict escalation and bad feelings towards each other if you don’t know that I am trying to listen to you.

So conversational receptiveness is a way to express the fact that you’re being receptive using words, right, using language, so that it’s, like, totally obvious and totally transparent to other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you give us maybe a demonstration of some key phrases or indicators which share, “Hey, I’m receptive,” versus, “I’m not receptive”?

Julia Minson
So the best way to memorize kind of the basics of conversational receptiveness is using what we call the HEAR framework, so H-E-A-R as in, “I hear you.” And each letter stands for something, kind of a different idea.

So the H stands for hedging. So you might want to say, for example, “Look, COVID vaccines are safe and effective,” right? That’s a pretty sort of dogmatic statement, and a person who disagrees with you will start looking for holes in your argument and looking for counterexamples of, you know, they heard that somebody had some kind of vaccine side effect.

Instead, you could say, “Look, most physicians tend to believe that COVID vaccines are largely safe and effective,” right? So “most tend to” and “largely” are all ways of kind of hedging my claim. So it’s words like perhaps, maybe, occasionally, some people, right?

And what it does is it really kind of takes this wind out of your counterpart sides. It’s, like, you’ve demonstrated with your words that you understand that there is, in fact, another perspective, and you’re leaving a little bit of room for it. So that’s the H.

The E stands for emphasizing agreement. So the idea behind conversational receptiveness is not that we have to agree. It’s not that I have to, like, change my mind, I have to compromise, you know, I have to like meet you in the middle and give you a hug.

It’s that I recognize that any two humans agree on some stuff. It could be that we’re both concerned with something. It could be that we’re both upset about something. It could be that we just have some values that are in common.

So words like, “I also want to,” or, “I am also concerned with,” or, “We both would like to see, you know, XYZ happen,” just sort of puts us on the same side of the table for a second.

The A stands for acknowledgement. So taking a couple minutes to restate your counterpart’s perspective before you launch into your own argument, you know, “I hear that it’s really important to you that this project is delivered at a particular level of quality.”

Or, “I understand that you’re very concerned about the hours that the team has been working.” So it’s using my own words to demonstrate to you, like, unambiguously, that I was listening when you were talking.

And, finally, the R stands for reframing to the positive. So dropping negative and contradictory words like no, can’t, won’t, don’t, terrible, hate, kill, and replacing them with some more positively balanced words like, “It would be wonderful if,” or, “I appreciate it when,” or, “Great.”

So, “I hate it when people push me into stressful decisions.” Stop. It could be replaced with, “I really appreciate it when people give me more time to consider important choices. Thank you for understanding.” So kind of like same content, but a very different flavor. So H-E-A-R.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then you said using words. I mean, those are all words. I guess I’m curious also if there’s a degree of nonverbal things that convey receptiveness or lack thereof.

Julia Minson
Yeah, certainly. I mean, you can imagine, right? Like, if a person is nodding, if they’re smiling, if they’re not interrupting you, all of those things seem more receptive than the opposite. It tends to be the case that words are easier to control than our bodies, and actually easier to interpret than our bodies, right?

So a lot of the time, when people are listening hard, they look very serious and they kind of look sullen and they look like they’re staring into space. And it’s not because they’re not listening, it’s actually because they’re working really hard.

And so it’s very easy to interpret, or it’s very easy to misinterpret body language to mean something different. And people, like, misinterpret language language all the time, but language is clearer. So it’s, like, when we’re choosing between two imperfect tools, words are clearer than body language.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to acknowledging the other perspective, are there any tweaks you might put on the traditional notions of active listening, or is that just what this is?

Julia Minson
Yeah, so active listening is a really sort of interesting idea because it’s a mix of, like, stuff that happens in your head, the actual listening, and nonverbal stuff like nodding and smiling and eye contact, and some sounds, like uh-huh, and hmm, and huh, and then some restating.

And it’s really unclear from that whole kind of like menu of stuff what’s important, what really does the work for you. Like, if I’m nodding but not smiling, like, does that work? Or do I have to also be smiling? We focus on the language because you really can’t fake it.

Like, for me, to restate what you said in a way that’s accurate, I had to have listened to you. I can nod and smile all day long and have no idea what you’re actually saying. But for me to restate your words, that’s unfalsifiable proof that I was actually paying attention when you were talking. So that’s sort of why the focus on restating.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when it comes to the nods and uh-huh’s and okay’s, am I hearing you say that it’s unknown in the research if that is getting it done or not?

Julia Minson
So it’s not that it’s unknown. So we actually ran a very fun study where we wanted to see, like, you know, people always talk about how important it is to be a good listener, right? We all kind of agree on the fact that good listening is important.

And what we wanted to see is how good are folks at judging whether the other person is being a good listener, right? So imagine the setup where there’s a small lab room, it’s a little, like, slightly larger than your bathroom probably. And people go in there and it’s two strangers.

And what we tell them is that, “You need to have a conversation with this other person and get to know them, for example, as if you wanted to have them be a roommate. Like, what are the things you would ask them about and learn from them if you were interviewing them as a potential roommate.”

And in the room there’s two chairs. And behind one of the chairs, there’s a screen on the wall. And this screen is playing this, like, ongoing loop of commercials that are on mute, okay? And so one person sits down and their back is to the screen, and they walked in and they noticed the screen, and we’re like, “Ah, just ignore the screen. It doesn’t matter.”

The other person sits down and they’re facing the screen, right? So they’re facing their conversation partner and this person also has the screen behind them. And that person got special instructions. And so their special instructions are, “Either ignore the screen, talk to your counterpart, get to know them, or pretend you’re listening, and we will pay you extra money if you can memorize all the products for which there are the commercials on this screen.”

So it’s like if you go on a date, and there’s, like, a football game playing above the bar, and you’re wondering if your date is listening to you or, like, watching football above your head, like this is the experience.

And so then the person who had their back to the screen, what they have to do is they have to guess which condition their partner was in. So afterwards, we tell them, we’re like, “Hey, some people were instructed to listen carefully and some people were instructed to memorize commercials behind your head. Which condition do you think your person was in?” It turns out that people are terrible at this task.

Pete Mockaitis
Terrible at guessing?

Julia Minson
They’re terrible at guessing because they all think that the person sitting across from them, who is nodding and smiling, is listening to them, even though they’re not actually listening because they’re trying to memorize this other thing because they’re getting paid extra money for memorizing this other thing.

And so you can imagine, like in a meeting, for example, at work, you see this all the time. There’s a room full of people that’s, like, nodding and smiling and maybe even, like, typing on their laptops, right, but what they’re actually typing is their grocery list, or, like, they’re writing whatever, an email to their family, right? You have no idea what information is actually getting through.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating in and of itself. So I guess one takeaway is, “Hey, if you fake that you’re listening, you’re going to fool the other person. So I guess, good to know, but that doesn’t seem like a great strategy to do.”

Julia Minson
Well, it depends, right? Like, it depends on whose perspective you are looking at, right? So if you are trapped in an awkward situation and you’re just killing time, people are, like, very good at faking, you know, listening, smiling, like enjoyment, all of those things. Like, we are good at sort of getting along with people.

If you’re the person who’s trying to make sure that something is getting done, if you’re running this meeting, if you’re trying to brief people on a new project plan, if you need to make sure that everybody’s ducks are in a row, then you need to look for more reliable signals of listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s super handy. Well, that HEAR framework, I like it and it seems to make great sense as you lay it out there for us. I’m curious if there are any finer points or distinctions or hiccups or little things that trip people up when they’re trying to execute this.

Julia Minson
The most common, I think, first experience is that it’s harder than people imagine it to be. So it seems super easy, you’re like, “Oh, H-E-A-R, I can memorize the words and I can say them.” But when you are in a disagreement, what you’re mostly thinking about is how to win. You’re thinking about how to come up with the best argument.

And so now, I’m asking you to do this extra thing that you have to do on top of thinking how to win, which might also feel like it’s going to prevent you from winning, because you now have to think about your counterpart’s argument and you have to take it seriously.

And so people just find that it takes some cognitive effort and it takes some practice. In the beginning, I always liken it to playing piano. Like, the first time you play piano, it does not sound like music. And so this feels awkward and effortful.

And then with some rounds of repetition, people start kind of getting into the groove of it, and becoming much more fluid at it. So I would say, the first thing to do is to not give up when it feels awkward the first time.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s a really key point there. We have a lot of our attentional resources on how to win, generally. And it sounds like that may not be the ideal stance in order to really listen and hear and receive someone’s perspective in the first place.

Julia Minson
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, it kind of brings up another really fascinating idea for me, which is that, how many times have you walked into a conversation and thought, “Okay, what is my goal here? What am I trying to accomplish? Do I have strategies that are going to help me achieve my goal? And are those the right strategies?”

Like, most people don’t think about their goals unless it’s sort of a very important conversation that you have been planning for a long time. And so when we enter a disagreement, it’s usually spontaneous, right? Like, you’re sitting there having a conversation, somebody says something and you’re like, “Oh, no, like you’re wrong. Let me fix you.”

So our first immediate goal sort of stems from this assumption that, “I’m right. You’re wrong. I’m going to tell you how it is,” right? And quite often, that doesn’t serve us well. So the question of, “What am I trying to do? And what’s the right strategy to do it?” I think, is a really, really important piece of all of this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s super. So it sounds like you may be saying, if we don’t take time in advance to thoughtfully consider our goals, the default goal is winning, fixing them, and being right.

Julia Minson
That’s right. That’s right. And then, of course, if you have two people who are both pursuing that goal with some gusto, what you end up with is a stalemate, right? Nobody gives in, nobody is listening, and eventually people get frustrated with each other and, either it escalates into a fight or you just walk away from it, and you’re sort of like, “Yeah, this person isn’t going to listen to reason.”

And that’s terrible, in the workplace because both people are frustrated, nothing got done, and you have sort of soured a potential relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if the default goal is how to win, can you suggest some alternative goals that may very well be worth focusing on and pursuing in a given conversation?

Julia Minson
Yeah, so what’s interesting is that there are so many that people don’t think about. Like, if I’m with my manager, right, I might just want to impress them with, like, how smart I am, right? Or I could want to be funny. Or I could want to just pass the time because we’re stuck at the airport together. Or I could want to show that I’m sort of really well versed in a particular topic.

My favorite goal, and I think the goal that serves disagreements the best is the goal of understanding what exactly your counterpart believes and why they believe it. So in order to make any kind of progress on the disagreement, I need to know sort of, like, what you’re all about.

And quite often, and I have this experience all the time. People come to me with a disagreement. Since my book has come out, I’ve had these totally wild conversations where I’m signing books and somebody sort of stops the line and says, you know, “Julia, can I ask you for advice on like this?”

And then they start telling me sort of, like, this long extended story about their friend or their life partner who doesn’t do this or does something else. And I always say to them, I’m like, “Have you asked them why they think that’s the right way to behave?”

And I often get one of two responses. Either a person is just completely baffled and they’re like, “No, I haven’t asked them. Thank you for pointing that out. I’m going to go ask them,” which, to me, just sort of boggles my mind that somebody’s been in the conflict for days or weeks or years and has never asked their counterpart why they believe what they believe.

Or, I think the more potentially risky one is people say, “No, I haven’t asked them, but I know they’re this kind of person and they were brought up in this kind of family and this is why they are like that.” And so there’s sort of, this set of assumptions about, you think the other person believes what they believe for some set of reasons that you have, essentially, made up in your head and haven’t tested by asking the question, like, “Tell me more about your beliefs.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, a set of assumptions, and I have found my assumptions are often incorrect, and so it’s well worth asking. You said ask why they believe what they believe, and you used the phrase, “Tell me more.” I’ve heard that sometimes a why question can trigger defensiveness. Do you have any favorite approaches or questions you like to use in unearthing this stuff?

Julia Minson
Yeah, I think people, in general, struggle with asking questions or making statements that signal their willingness to understand, their desire to understand, and aren’t, like, gotcha phrases in sort of question form, right?

So you could say, “Why do you believe that?” That sounds like an attack. Or I could say, “Look, you know, I’m really curious to understand why you believe that.” That sounds more like curiosity, right?

And the why is there, but I think the real, you know, I have sort of this mental bar that I set for myself is, you know, if I asked a question that makes me feel superior in a disagreement, I shouldn’t have asked it.

Like, if I feel I just scored a point, then I’m actually losing, I’m losing at my own game of sounding curious and trying to gather information from the other person. Almost everything in disagreement that feels really good to ourselves is probably destructive to the relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I hear you. So if you’re disagreeing on a science issue, you say, “Well, then why is it numerous systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials have showed, in fact, the exact opposite is what happens in experimental conditions? Suck on that,” you know?

Julia Minson
Right. Or, “Well, then how do you explain…?” blah, blah, blah, you know, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. Okay. That’s a nice little internal emotional indicator there. All right. Well, I’d also love to hear, in the whole emotional game here, in terms of you want to win, there’s high stakes, you feel threatened or intimidated or disrespected, we can get hijacked in this emotional land. Any pro tips for dealing with all that?

Julia Minson
So emotional regulation, right, is something that people struggle with but is doable and it’s not just for conflict. It’s for all sorts of other things. A lot of the times, I mean, I’m going to say things that, after the fact, sound totally obvious but are profoundly true.

Our emotions come from our brains, right, which are, ultimately, physical organs that need rest and food and water. And so, quite often, if you are feeling yourself overtaken by emotions, what that means is it’s time to take a break. It’s time to take a break from this conversation or it’s time to take just, like, a break break, right?

And it goes back to this point of planning. Quite often, we end up in disagreements spontaneously with no forethought. And often, we fly off the handle because we are tired and because we’re stressed out and, you know, it’s Thanksgiving dinner, and, like, everybody has had a drink or two, and it’s in the evening and there’s all kinds of physiological and situational reasons why we are not at our best at that moment.

And so, one, if we have the ability to plan a conversation, prepare yourself to do it at a time when you’re at your best. And if you don’t have the ability to plan the conversation, you can always pause it and say, “Look, this sounds important. I’d like to talk to you about this thoughtfully. Can we schedule coffee for next week?”

So, like, when somebody comes after you over dinner about, like, “Well, why haven’t you guys gotten married yet?” or something incredibly sort of personal and triggering and random that can come up at a strange time, you don’t have to entertain it right then and there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s super. So just having it planned for a time when you’re at your best and you’re sort of mentally prepped for it, as opposed to, you know, surprised, shell-shocked, like, oof, getting disrupted. I’d love to hear if, for whatever reason that’s not so possible, “Oh, we got a meeting with the big account or the big executive, and I’m not going to be able to get back on that calendar for months,” do you have any pro tips for in the moment dealing with the stuff?

Julia Minson
Yeah, so, back to sort of this idea of question-asking and inquiry and showing curiosity, there’s two ways of thinking about this. There’s sort of like, “Are you trying to help your counterpart have a better experience? And are you trying to calm yourself down?”

And those things are intimately related, right, because when we are in a conversation, when we’re in a disagreement, the way you’re reacting to me is what’s causing my emotions. So if I can slow it down long enough to get you to calm down, it will also calm me down. I mean, I think one of the things that people really sort of forget about disagreement is that it is a dynamic interpersonal process. Like, you can’t disagree by yourself in a vacuum.

And so if I can stop myself from trying to make the argument and, instead say, “Hey, I’d like to understand where you’re coming from, I’d like to understand why this matters to you. Tell me why this is a big deal,” that very simple action tends to make the other person calmer, explain their perspective, kind of appreciate the fact that they were asked, and then that gives me a chance to calm down.

So the two things, really, like, reinforce each other. The contrast is I make a forceful argument, you make a forceful argument, I have to make my argument even more forceful. The next thing you know, we’re yelling at each other.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s really quite brilliant because you get a moment to regroup and the spotlight is off of you. So maybe they do ask, and you can’t escape or reschedule. It’s, like, “Why haven’t you gotten married yet?” And you’re like, “Whoa! What the heck, man? Kind of none of your business. We’re going to live our life the way we see fit. Thank you very much.”

But instead of saying that with that question of, “Oh, this seems like this timeline is really important to you. Can you tell me more about that?” A question along those lines shifts the spotlight off of you and can make them feel appreciated, and lets you take a breath and recollect all at the same time.

Julia Minson
Right, exactly. And, I mean, honestly, you can keep going and going, like, “Oh, are you married? How long have you been married? How is it going? Do you have kids?” Like, you can ask many questions, which serves dual purposes, right? One is what you just mentioned, which is, you know, giving yourself a break.

But, two, part of the reason that the person asked the question is because they have an opinion about what you should be doing with your life, and they want to share something. They feel like they have wisdom or advice or insight to offer.

And so you’re asking them, and they’re going to tell you, right, and they will feel wonderful about it. And they’re going to feel like you’re a great listener. And then by the time all is said and done, hopefully, you have a way of talking about your perspective that sort of resonates with what they are concerned about.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot because many of the times, it’s not really about you at all. They have a belief about how things should be with marriages and timelines and, I don’t know, you name it – fertility, population, furthering the species, whatever.

They may have an opinion and they’re not even directly attacking you. They just, generally, have some kind of worldview, and so you can inquire about that. And in so doing, they like it, they can talk about it, and they might not even have to return to you at all.

Julia Minson
Right. And this is sort of like, great, we’re running with the marriage example because I just spontaneously brought it up. But you can imagine, you know, let’s say these are your parents or, like, your uncle or whoever it is who has some stake.

And maybe they want you to get married because they want you to have kids, which is, one conversation. It could be that they want you to get married because they think that it’s, like, financially more responsible to put all your pennies together and invest in the American dream. That’s a totally different conversation.

And so the way you sort of talk about it would be different depending on what it is they are concerned with. Or it could be sort of this entirely different thing you were suggesting, which is it’s not about you at all. It’s about their, like, world views about the institution of marriage, which is a third type of conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And, Julia, could you share with us any of your most favorite and least favorite words, scripts, bit of verbiage when it comes to doing this conversational receptiveness thing well?

Julia Minson
So, the way I think about a whole conversation, right, is like having basically two big activities that you’re trying to pursue. You’re trying to understand where the other person is coming from. You’re trying to gather information. And then at the same time, or like in the same conversation, you’re also trying to convey your own set of beliefs and make your own argument.

And so, overall, people spend way too much time in the second part, the part where you’re trying to make your own argument. So the first thing I would advise folks to do is to re-balance your attention and your time to spend a lot more time in the place of sort of inquiry, and signaling curiosity.

So all those kinds of phrases around, you know, “I’d like to know more about how you came to hold this belief. I would love to understand why this is important to you. What would you like to see happen here? Have you seen this thing…” whatever it is, “…done very successfully? Would it be helpful if I did X, Y, and Z?” So they’re all questions that sort of are like getting around this person’s beliefs and values.

And then, at some point, you’re going to feel like, “You know, I think I get it,” right? And you might want to say, “Okay, so I think I get it. Let me tell you what I think I just heard, and you tell me if like I did get it or not, right?”

And so that’s sort of a transition because, once you restate what you heard, they might say, “Well, kind of, but not really, and there’s this other thing. And I forgot to mention…” blah blah blah blah blah, right? And so then you might have to spend a little more time there.

Or they might say, “Yeah, you know, that’s right. You got it. Thank you for listening to me. I think that’s exactly what I was trying to say.” And then you switch to the part where you are now making your own argument. And that’s where you use the HEAR framework, right?

So there, you can do your H-E-A-R to show that, “I have a point of view here, I have a set of beliefs, but I’m going to express it in a way that still, like, recognizes the fact that I just spent 20 minutes listening to you and I was actually paying attention.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Julia, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Julia Minson
I think that a lot of the time, people are hesitant to think about these topics, especially, like, if we are, for example, debating how to do a project at work, maybe I’ll say, “Well, you know, receptiveness is good. I need to understand where this person is coming from because I need to work with them.”

But sometimes we get into these topics that feel very moralized, like, if we talk about a company’s environmental policy, if we talk about affirmative action and hiring, if we talk about medical policies that support reproductive care. Like, there’s a lot of places, there’s a lot of topics even in the workplace that feel very, very moralized.

And I think people are afraid to approach those topics because it feels like, “Well, you know, how can I possibly condone that crazy perspective?” And that, to me, seems like a mistake because if you have a passion around a policy area and around a way that you would like to see the world changed, it’s very hard to wield influence if you keep walking away from people and walking away from conversations because you don’t think that they are sort of worthy of being engaged with.

So that’s something that I really like people to think about as, like, “How am I going to wield influence if I don’t engage?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very well said. And when you talk about the moral piece of it, perhaps there’s a dimension of us that feels, even hearing out and providing a respectful opportunity to air the alternative view, which we may even see as evil, is to, in some way, support, condone, approve, welcome, entertain, negotiate with, whatever, the evil.

And I think that, if we evaluate that, that’s really more of an emotional vibes thing as opposed to a logical thing.

Julia Minson
Well, you know, it’s back to assumptions, right? Like, how do you know they’re evil. Like, that’s a big word, like evil with a capital E, that’s like a big accusation, right? So how do you conclude that without really thoughtfully engaging with a person and their beliefs, you know?

And most of the time, when you really listen to people, they say things that kind of make sense, at least in some dimensions or from the perspective that they see the world from. And, frankly, even like the people who are evil, if you’re in a conversation with them, it is often because you need them to achieve a certain goal.

If you can sort of, relegate them to the eighth circle of hell and never have to deal with them again, that’s great. But most of the time, we don’t have that power. Most of the time, we actually need to get things done. And so, again, if you’re going to get things done, you have to understand the other side.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, we’ve had Chris Voss, and other folks who’ve done hostage negotiation, on the show. And, in fact, even folks who are committing evil actions, in terms of they have hostages, they’re threatening to take their lives, providing some of this understanding stuff is tremendously helpful in untangling that dangerous situation.

Julia Minson
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. And I had a student last year who worked for an immigration non profit. And he said, “Well, how can I possibly have a conversation with these people that work for the government, and they’re hauling children away from their parents, and etc?”

And I said, “Well, if you want to help these children, do you think it would be effective to tell this person who is doing their government job, ‘You’re a horrible human being and I hate everything you stand for’? Like, do you think you’re going to get anything out of them after you say that?”

So there’s sort of the impulse to tell people what exactly we think of them. But, again, is it serving your goal?

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Julia Minson
William Wrigley Jr., remember, like, Wrigley’s chewing gum, Wrigley’s Field? So a hundred years ago, he said, “When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”

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

Julia Minson
The famous Milgram experiments. The reason they’re so important to me, so, you know, in the Milgram studies, right, you had participants who gave other people, trained actors, but of course, they didn’t know that they were trained actors, gave them electric shocks, and they thought that they were participating in a study on learning.

And there was this experimenter in a white lab coat who kept telling them to give this other person electric shocks. And, in reality, it was a study of obedience to authority. And for Milgram, this was sort of this whole illustration of what happened in Nazi Germany and how easy it is to get people to obey authority through sort of very subtle changes to the situation.

Well, as a little girl, I grew up in Russia. And the reason I’m a psychologist is because my mom was a psychologist, and the reason she was a psychologist was because she read the Milgram studies. So, you know, she was a Jewish woman in the Soviet Union, and it, like, really resonated with her to the point where she learned English and got a PhD, and here I am, you know, a generation later.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And a favorite book?

Julia Minson
I read a lot of fantasy. And I really like an author named Alix Harrow. She’s got a new novel called The Everlasting that I wish I could wipe from my brain and read all over again so I could have the experience again.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Julia Minson
Espresso maker.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Julia Minson
Sitting on the couch after dinner, piled up with, like, my youngest child who’s ten, and our dog who’s 70 pounds, and we all watch an episode of “Modern Family.” And thank God, “Modern Family” is so long that, like, one episode at a time, we’ve been doing it for, I don’t know, two years.

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?

Julia Minson
“Everything is negotiable.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Julia Minson
So my website is DisagreeingBetter.com.

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

Julia Minson
Yeah, next time you disagree with somebody, pause and think about whether you understand where they’re coming from. And if you don’t, ask.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Julia, thank you.

Julia Minson
Thank you very much. This was great.

Pete Mockaitis
Charles, welcome back!

Charles Duhigg
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk more about super communication. I think that is an important topic and, congrats, you’re now in paperback, I understand, Supercommunicators.

Charles Duhigg
Thank you. Yeah, it’s great. It’s wonderful.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, tell us, since February, what sorts of things have bubbled up? Any new insights or twists or nuances or finer points of super communicating to share?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, I think one of the things that I’ve heard from readers, in particular, and I don’t think this will come as a shock to anyone, that we are living through this time that feels very polarized, right? It feels like it’s very hard to connect with people who hold different opinions from us. It feels very hard to go online and see people saying things about our side, or other people saying things about their side, and it can feel kind of toxic.

And so, as a result, we often shy away from having hard conversations. But the thing that’s important to remember is that hard conversations, they, A, don’t have to be that hard and, B, they are the thing that make us human, right? Nobody wants to be in a fight with their neighbor, particularly over the lawn signs that you have in front of your homes. We want to get along with our neighbor. We want to be able to talk about the weather or talk about the local school or the local sports team.

Equally, if you think about those times in our nation’s history that we’re proudest of, they’re usually moments when we have disagreed with each other, but we’ve managed to disagree with each other respectfully. If you think about World War Two, people were very divided over World War Two. If you think back to the founding of the country, the Constitutional Convention, it was basically a group of people who all hated each other, getting together for months at a time to argue and fight and then write a constitution together.

The thing that makes us unique, the things that makes us American, is our ability to live with each other even when we don’t agree about everything all the time. And what I’ve heard from people is that they want to get back to that. And so that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book is to give us the tools to do so.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, I’d love to, if you could share with us a story of some folks who were able to get back to that by applying some of the perspectives from Supercommunicators.

Charles Duhigg
Yeah. So, in the book, we tell the story of this guns experiment, where there were people who were big gun advocates, they believed that the Second Amendment was the most important thing, and people who are gun right, or gun control activists, many of whom had been involved in shootings themselves or had children who had been at schools where shootings had taken place. And these were communities that knew each other, right? They yelled at each other over protest lines. They testified against each other in legislative hearings.

And so, this group decided, “Look, we want to try and bring these people together.” And the goal here is not to get them to agree with each other. The goal is for them to manage to have a conversation where both people walk away from it, saying, “I’m really glad I had that discussion.”

And what they found is that one of the keys to that was not only listening to each other, but proving that we’re listening to each other. They taught them this technique known as looping for understanding, that I think we mentioned last time. And looping for understanding has these three steps. Step one is that you ask a question.

Step two is that, when somebody has replied to that question, you tell them what you heard in your own words. And the goal here is not mimicry. The goal is to show them, to prove to them, that you’re listening to what they’re saying, you’re paying attention, and you’re thinking about it, you’re making connections.

And then step three, and this is the step I always forget, is to ask if you got it right, “Did I hear you correctly?” Because what we’re actually doing when we ask if we got it right, is we’re asking for their permission to acknowledge that we were listening. And here’s what happened in this guns conversation when they did that.

People did not convince each other that, “They were wrong and I’m right.“ People did not change each other’s minds in huge ways. But when they proved that they were listening to each other, the first thing is they actually listened more closely. If your job is that I need to repeat back to you what you’re telling me in my own words, I really have to pay attention to what you’re saying, instead of coming up with counter arguments in my head, instead of going off on tangents on what I want to say next.

But secondly, it feels really good to be listened to. In fact, it feels so good that there’s an instinct in our brain – social reciprocity – that if I believe you are listening to me, I become much more likely to listen to you in response. And so, people actually had conversations. And people who are gun rights advocates would say, “Guns are important to me because it’s how I learned to bond with my dad. We went hunting together.”

And people who were gun control activists would say things like, “You know, I totally understand that. But when I send my kids to school, I’m scared for their safety.” All of those are emotions and experiences everyone is familiar with. And understanding where the other person comes from, it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to stand up for our own point of view, it doesn’t mean that we might still disagree on what path to take forward, but it does mean we understand each other and we feel connected to each other. And that’s what matters.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And I really did enjoy that looping piece because, you know, there’s many potential frameworks for listening, and that is among the simplest. And I think you nailed that point just right there in terms of it takes a substantial amount of mental effort to pull that off. And just knowing that you’re being put to the test, it’s like I think we just naturally want to rise to the challenge and not fail and look like we screwed up.

Charles Duhigg
Right. Yeah. I think when we set expectations for ourselves, there’s this thing known as meta communication, which tends to help conversations a lot. When I go into a conversation, I say, “Look, I wanted to talk to you because I’m hoping we can figure out where we’re going to go on vacation next year.”

I’m engaging in meta conversation. I’m telling you what I want, my intent for this conversation, my goal for this conversation. I might ask you, “Is that okay? Can we set a plan for next year? Like, what is it that you hope that we sort of accomplish here?”

When we engage in meta conversation, what we’re doing is we’re making that conversation clear. And the best communicators, super communicators, consistent super communicators, they tend to engage in meta conversation all the time. They sort of say, like, “Hey, the reason I was calling you was because…” or, “You know, you asked this question, and it made me wonder what you think about this topic. And so, I really wanted to ask you about this topic,” right?

Those kinds of meta conversations, what they do is they help us orient ourselves within the conversation. They’re what’s known as a quiet negotiation over what this conversation is going to be, how it’s going to unfold. And that tends to make those conversations much, much better.

Pete Mockaitis
And if we could have maybe a two-minute recap of, I think, one of one of your biggest most powerful ideas there was to clearly understand, “Hey, what kind of conversation are we in right now? Is it a practical one versus emotional versus social?” Can you review that bit for us in just about a minute or two?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, absolutely. So, what neuroscientists told us is that when we’re in a discussion, we think we know what that discussion is about, “We’re talking about next year’s vacation plans.” But actually, we’re oftentimes having multiple different kinds of conversations all in one discussion. And, in general, as you noted, these conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets.

There’s these practical conversations where we’re making plans together or solving problems. But then there’s also emotional conversations where I tell you what I’m feeling, and I don’t want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize with me. And then there’s social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and how we relate to society, the identities that are important to us.

And what researchers have found is that all three of these kinds of conversations, they’re all equally legitimate, right? And, in fact, in a discussion, you’ll probably have more than one kind of conversation. You might go from emotional to practical and back to emotional again, and then social. But what’s important is that if you and I aren’t having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, it’s very, very hard for us to hear each other.

Even if I can make out the words you’re using, I can’t fully absorb them. And more importantly, we will not feel connected to each other. So, this has given rise to what’s known as the matching principle, which is this principle in psychology that says successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same time.

So, part of my job in a conversation is to diagnose, “What kind of conversation are you having right now?” And also, to invite you to join me and match me in the kind of conversation I want to have. When we can match each other, we become aligned, and then we can move from different conversation type to type together in a way that feels really meaningful.

Pete Mockaitis
And that metacommunication is so handy because that just makes it super easy and clear, it’s like, “Oh, okay, this is what we’re doing right now. Okay, got it.”

Charles Duhigg
Exactly. When I come home and my wife tells me about, you know, that she feels bad about something and I try to solve her problems, so she’s in an emotional mindset and I’m in a practical mindset, and she says, “Hey, I don’t need you to solve this for me. I just need you to like listen to me and help me feel better.”

She’s engaging in meta conversation. What she’s doing is she’s telling me, “Can you join me in an emotional conversation?” And then later on, we can move to a practical together, “But let’s match over this emotional conversation.” That kind of meta conversation tells us where we are. It orients us in a really helpful way.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Well, now when you emailed me, saying, “Hey, we’re in paperback. Let’s chat again,” you brought up a specific juicy issue, which I thought would be fun to dig into, the notion of, if there’s a person who just isn’t having it with regard to collaboration. They’re kind of checked out or they’re just saying, flat out no, or they agree, but then there’s really kind of no movement on the stuff once you’re trying to get into it. Tell us, what are your pro tips in dealing with this situation?

Charles Duhigg
So, I think in a situation like that, when there’s kind of a first thing to figure out, “Does this person actually want to interact with you?” So, there are times that we walk into situations and the other person says, “You are my enemy. My goal is to thwart you,” and it’s very hard to co-opt to that person. But that’s very, very infrequent. It doesn’t happen very much.

What often happens more frequently is that we walk into a situation and we think that someone is trying to thwart us, or we think that they don’t want to communicate with us, and it’s because we haven’t figured out what’s going on inside their head yet.

So, in that situation where we walk in and we bring up an idea at a meeting, and every time we bring up an idea, Jim says, “Oh, that’s a terrible idea. Like, we can’t do that. This is all the reasons why it can’t work.” At that moment, what we should do is we should ask them a question. We should particularly ask them a deep question. And a deep question is something that asks about our values or beliefs or our experiences.

And that can sound kind of intimidating, but, in this case, it would be as simple as saying to Jim, instead of saying, “Why won’t that plan work?” saying, “Jim, I’m wondering, it seems like you can see a lot of obstacles, and I’m wondering what’s the ultimate goal for you? Like, what do you feel like we should ultimately be achieving because I want to get aligned with that.”

Okay, that’s a deep question. It’s pretty easy to ask question, but it’s a deep question because it’s asking them, “What do you want? Like, what do you value in this situation?” And if Jim says something like, “Look, I definitely want to, like, you know, I definitely want to have, like, a party for our suppliers, but I don’t want to spend too much money. And every idea you’re bringing up seems like it’s really expensive. And I don’t think there’s going to be any return on investment there.”

Now we know what Jim wants. Jim wants to do things that are economical. He doesn’t mind our goal. He doesn’t mind having a party for our suppliers, but he doesn’t want to spend a ton of money on it. Now we know how to craft. And, in fact, matching him would be perfect. You could do this looping for understanding.

You could say, “What I hear you saying is that you have nothing against us throwing this party. You just don’t want it to break the bank. Okay, so let’s talk about, like, what’s a budget for this event that would work for all of us? And how do we plan the event within that budget?”

Oftentimes, when we see someone as being obstinate, and we see them as being a naysayer or someone who just reflectively says no, or doesn’t cooperate with us, it’s because we haven’t taken the time to ask them what they want out of this conversation or this meeting or this or this project.

They’re at the meeting. They’ve made time in their schedule to come and show up. They want something, so let’s ask them what it is. And they might not even be completely aware of what they want themselves. And so, when we ask them, it helps them clarify for themselves what they object to and what they don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, this example is resonating with me a lot, Charles, because, I remember, after my wife and I moved into a new home and she wanted a number of things done. And so, I got a little bit spooked when, once one thing was done, she said, “Oh, well, now that that color doesn’t match very well.” So, she also wanted to get this painted. And then, “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that,” I was like, I became very, very apprehensive because I thought, “Oh, dear, if one renovation leads to another one that was not previously planned upon, this is a road to bankruptcy.”

Charles Duhigg
Yeah. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I was having some feelings there. We had an emotional conversation at that point. And she’s like, “Well, I mean, we never really established a budget. You said just don’t spend all the money.” And so, I was like, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, I guess I was thinking, you know, every money is movable. But I mean, if we would go past, you know, X dollars, you know, we’re going to have to start, you know, making some sacrifices elsewhere that doesn’t really feel that worth it.”

And she’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, that’s actually very helpful. I can work with X dollars.” It’s like, “Oh, okay.” And then later, when she brought up a new thing in the kitchen, which was totally not on the original list, I was like, “Well, I mean, if you think we can keep it within X dollars, I mean, sure, have at it.”

Charles Duhigg
Yeah. And what I love about that example is that, oftentimes, conversations about money, we think that they’re practical conversations, but they often start as emotional conversations. They start as someone saying, “I don’t understand why you’re saying no to me because, before you told me I should spend what I need to spend, and it feels like you’re blaming me for doing what you asked me to do.”

And the other person is saying, “I don’t understand why you’re spending so much. I’m really kind of, like, panicked about how much we’re spending. Like, how are we going to afford all of this?” And it’s not until we acknowledge those emotions that we can move on to the practical conversation. And it’s not until we acknowledge, to say, “Look I’m not blaming you for this. I should have been clear previously, and I’m sorry for doing that. And let me tell you what I’m anxious about.”

And the other person is saying, “I understand completely. I misunderstood you. I see why you’re anxious. That makes a ton of sense.” Now we’ve matched on this emotional conversation and it’s off the table. And then we can move into a genuinely practical conversation, which most money conversations want to be, because, ultimately, we’re trying to figure out, “How much should we spend? Where should we spend it?’

And it sounds like you and your wife did that very elegantly, without necessarily even having to call it out. But oftentimes, when we do call it out, it helps a lot. That’s the meta conversation. When we say, “Look, I understand that we have some feelings about this. Let’s discuss our feelings. And then we can talk about a plan.” It’s, oftentimes, going to make it easier to get to that point of resolution.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like what you had to say about zeroing in on the goal and connecting that to what you said previously. Yes, just about never has anyone said to me, “My goal is to thwart you.” And if they did, I would find it refreshing, it’s like, “Oh, okay.”

Charles Duhigg
Right. “Now I know. Now I know where everyone stands.” Right.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, it’s game on. We’re having a full-on debate. Let’s see what we can do.”

Charles Duhigg
But the truth of the matter is, if their only goal is to thwart you, then they’re probably not showing up for the meeting in the first place, right? Like, there’s no fun in just going in and kicking your coworkers around. If they’re in that meeting, it’s probably not because they hate you and they see you as their enemy. It’s probably because they have a different priority than you have, but those priorities can become aligned once you actually know what each person wants.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love that a lot because it can feel as though their goal is to thwart you because, from your perspective, that’s what you’re seeing again and again and again.

Charles Duhigg
That’s exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Okay, roadblock, roadblock, roadblock, roadblock. Oh, my gosh, this guy just has it in for me.” But, I think, for the most part, we don’t care that much about other people’s being thwarted so much as we just care about our own interests and goals and values.

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, and that’s totally natural. And, you know, there’s this thing in psychology called perspective-getting, or perspective-taking, that they say, “You know, before you have a conversation with someone, you should try and put yourself in their shoes and see the world through their eyes.” The problem with that is it turns out we’re really bad at it. Like, if you tell, you know, a soldier, “Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy,” they actually have a difficult time doing it.

So, perspective taking is, it’s really, really hard. We can’t put ourselves in the shoes of people who are really dissimilar from us. But there’s another approach, which is called perspective-getting where I just ask you, “What is your perspective?” Like, I ask you, “It seems like we disagree on this thing. Can you explain to me your perspective so that I understand it fully?” Perspective-getting is always better than perspective-taking because it’s just much more reliable.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. This brings me back to consulting days, it’s, like, “We could try to answer a question by doing all kinds of elaborate statistical modeling, or we could just ask the customer, ‘Hey, what is it that you want?’”

Charles Duhigg
That’s exactly right. And we shy away from asking the customer because we don’t want to feel like, we don’t want to admit to them that there’s things we don’t know. But actually, anyone who’s been in that situation, as the customer knows, when your supplier comes to you or your consultant comes to you, and they say, “Hey, I want to be the best supplier consultant possible. I have some questions. I don’t totally understand what you want.” We love being asked that question. It’s a sign of intelligence to ask that question, not a sign of weakness.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to hear, you also mentioned that there’s some surprising neuroscience behind why this stuff is difficult. Can you expand on that?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah. So, when we’re in a conversation with someone, there’s these changes that occur in our brain and body, even in this conversation. Without us realizing it, our heartrates have started to match each other. Our breath patterns have started to match each other. Even the dilation of the pupils of our eyes are becoming more and more similar. And if we could see inside our brains, what we’d see is that my thought patterns and your thought patterns are becoming more and more aligned.

Within neurosciences, this is known as neural entrainment. And it makes sense when you think about it, because if I describe, you know, an experience that made me sad, you actually experience sadness a little bit. Or, if I tell you about an idea, you experience the excitement of that idea a tiny bit. It makes sense to us that our bodies and our brains would become more aligned as we converse.

What we’ve learned, though, is that the whole point of communication is to achieve this entrainment. The reason we communicate with each other is not necessarily just to share information. And if you think about how many conversations you have where information isn’t the point, you’ll see that this is true.

The reason we converse with each other and communicate is so that we can feel connected to each other, because that pro-sociality, from an evolutionary perspective, has been enormously important and helpful in helping our species survive.

So, when we’re in a conversation with someone and we feel disconnected from them, when they bring up an idea that we disagree with and we immediately tell them why that idea is wrong, when we focus on the disconnection, it breaks up that entrainment. We’re in a much better situation if we start by saying, “Look, we disagree about who to vote for, but here’s the things that I think we have in common.”

“We both want our kids to grow up in a safe country. We both want the economy to be strong. We both want there to be safe and stable jobs. Now, tell me why you think your guy is the right choice for that. And I’ll tell you why I think my guy is the right choice. And we might not convince each other, but I just want to understand how you see the world, and I want to talk in a way that you can understand how I see the world.”

If we do that, the conversation is a huge success. Even if we walk away voting for different people, the conversation has been a success because the point of conversation is to connect with the other person. It is not to convince them that, “I’m right and you’re wrong,” or, “I’m smart and you’re dumb,” or, “I’m funny,” or, “You should like me.”

The whole point of a conversation is simply to connect. And when we do that, we make something magical happen.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Charles, boy, another thing I love about that is we’re connecting and we feel more connected as a result of having that conversation. And even though neither side has been won over or converted to the other, I think a beautiful transformation has occurred in that, subsequently, we will view the other side differently, more favorably, more kindly, more understandably, and less like enemy.

Charles Duhigg
Right. That’s exactly right. Or, usually, what happens is, when I ask you to explain your side, what you do is you answer in a way that’s easy for me to identify with the underlying issues right, “I want to vote for my guy for president because I think he’s going to make us safest.” I know what it’s like to crave safety. I know what it’s like to feel like we’re at risk. I know what it’s like to, and so I can say that.

I can say, like, “I totally understand. Like, I know what it’s like to worry that all your jobs are being moved overseas, and you just want someone to stand up for you. Now, here’s the reason I’m going to vote for someone different is because I think that they can do that same thing, and I think they can do it in a better way.”

But what I’m doing at that point is I’m saying, “Look, the values that you’re sharing with me, the beliefs or the experiences, they are valid. They are exceptionally valid, and I hear you saying them. That doesn’t mean that we have to agree on everything but we do agree that these are valid questions or issues. These are valid beliefs. These are valid worries and anxieties.” And simply knowing that somebody else agrees with you about an anxiety being a real anxiety, that’s meaningful.

But think of how frequently we’re in a conversation, and someone says, “Well, you know, I’m worried, if I let my kid drive to prom, I’m worried they’re going to get into an accident.” You say, “Oh, you shouldn’t worry about that. That’s totally fine. Like, most kids are really safe on the road.” Our goal, our intention was to put the other person at ease, but what we’ve done is we basically invalidated their anxiety. We’ve said, “Your anxiety is something that’s not real and shouldn’t be voiced.” That doesn’t help.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, while we’re in this example, Charles, lay it on us, what would be a superior response to that same prompt about worrying about their kid driving to prom?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, I think the way to say it, it would be to say, “You know, I completely understand. Like, I worry about my kids driving all the time. And one of the things I’ve done is I’ve gone and I’ve looked at the statistics to see, like, to just try and help calm myself down. And, actually, when I looked at the statistics, I saw it, like, actually the rate of incidence of accidents is much lower than I thought it was going to be.”

“Like, did you know that there’s a higher likelihood that your kid will get hurt riding their bike than riding in a car? That was kind of shocking to me. So, I totally hear what you’re saying. But I guess the place where I’m coming out is that this is a risk, but it’s it seems like it’s a small risk. And I’m just wondering, knowing that, does that make you feel differently about it?”

And now I’m inviting you to either to speak your piece. I’m not telling you, “This is the right way to think, that you should you should agree with me.” What I’m saying is, “Here’s how I think about this. Like, tell me. I want to invite you to tell me what you think of that.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Well, Charles, I’d love to get your take, in the seven-ish months since we spoke, what’s been one of your favorite stories of seeing a transformation facilitated by super communication?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah. So, I get a lot of letters from readers, which is really, really nice. And my favorite ones have been people who talk about a family break that they’ve managed to overcome, “I haven’t talked to my brother in three years because we disagree about this thing. But I called him up and I decided, instead of telling him why I’m right and he’s wrong, all I’m going to do is ask him questions and prove to him that I’m listening.”

And they find after about 15 minutes, it’s as if the relationship has been like suddenly renewed. And, actually, their brother starts doing the same thing. Because of the social reciprocity, when somebody is really listening closely to us, we end up listening closely to them. And so, the brother starts asking questions, and the brother starts listening closely. And, suddenly, you have this positive relationship.

I think I’ve also gotten letters from people at work who say the same thing, “You know, there’s this one employee I could not stand. Like, they just drove me crazy. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like their approach to work. And then I went to work and what I did was I asked them to explain why they use this approach. Not in a judgmental way, I didn’t say, ‘Why do you do it the stupidest way possible?’”

“What I said was, ‘Hey, look, I do expenses differently than you do expenses, but, clearly, the way you do it works for you, and I think you’ve probably figured something out. Can you share with me what you figured out?’” And as soon as they share with us, as soon as we’re on the same side of the table, all of a sudden, that behavior becomes much less annoying.

When I know why you’re doing the thing that annoys me, suddenly, I’m not annoyed anymore. The same way that, like, when you’re on an airplane and someone’s making a lot of noise behind you, and you turn around and you introduce yourself and, suddenly, they’re a real person, their noise suddenly stops being noise and it starts being just background.

So, those are the letters that have touched me the most, are people who say, “Look, I’ve been able to use one of these tactics, these tools, these skills that you give us, and it’s changed my conversation.”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that particular flavor of this a lot because, even that exact script, “And obviously this is working well for you so I’d like to understand how you do that,” it feels really good because, in a way, if you have devised a methodology that works for you and you’re vibing with, it’s kind of fun to be able to share that with someone, because just about no one asks or cares.

It was like, “Let me explain how I turned Evernote into my GTD cockpit,” getting things done. It’s like, yeah, no one really cares usually, but if someone opens up the floor, the stage for that, that that’s really great, it’s like, “Hey, tell me about your reps and sets and exercise routine.” It’s like, “Oh, good. I spend a lot of time thinking about this, but I know nobody cares. And now you’re offering this up for me.” It feels quite delightful.

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, no, it does. It does. It feels like we’re really making a connection to that person, right? And it actually releases neurotransmitters that make us feel good, like dopamine and endorphins and endocannabinoids. Our brains have evolved. If you think about it, communication is our superpower. It’s the thing that sets our species apart.

And so, our brains have evolved to be really, really good at communication, to crave communication. And when we connect with someone, when we communicate with them well, even if we don’t agree with them, we feel good. And that good feeling is at the core of pro-sociality.

And pro-sociality is what’s allowed us as a species to build families and then villages and towns and cities and countries, and to work together to build aircraft carriers or video game consoles. Connecting with other people is really, really important. It is the thing that has propelled us to success.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Charles, tell me, before we hear about some of your favorite things, any pro tips, nuances, do’s and don’ts that have materialized as you’ve seen this art be practiced more and more in the wild?

Charles Duhigg
I think there’s two things. The first is I would challenge everyone listening to ask someone a deep question today. And that question could be as simple as, “Oh, you live in the Heights. What do you like about the Heights? Like, why did you decide to move up there?”

That’s a deep question. It invites someone to tell us, tell me about who they are, about their values, about what they value in a neighborhood. So, I would challenge everyone to ask one deep question today because I think what you’ll find is it’s a lot easier than you think it is. And it’s a lot more rewarding than you anticipate.

And then the second thing is that, I think that as we’re moving through the world, we tend to shy away from conversations that we think are going to be tough. We get in the Uber and we don’t want to talk to the driver because we’re worried that they’re just going to go on and on about like some crazy thing, and so we just bury ourselves in our phone.

But what study after study finds is that, if you take a moment to talk to the Uber driver, you actually kind of enjoy the conversation. And that doesn’t mean you have to talk the entire drive. It doesn’t mean you have to have this, like, awkward long silences. You can say like, “Oh, you know, I got to check my email now.”

But just connecting with someone tends to make us feel good. And, particularly for the people who we think that we’re going to have a tough time having a conversation with, if we engage in that conversation, we tend to find it goes much, much better than we anticipated, and we feel much better afterwards. We feel more relieved. We feel happier. We feel like we’ve done something meaningful.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s really great is that those conversations are often, in my experience, very useful for just sort of the creative ideation life.

Charles Duhigg
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, I don’t normally get to have this kind of conversation with…” because, in a way, it’s kind of free, right, and it’s someone who’s completely outside your day-to-day social circle. So, as a result, you’re getting very fresh input, like, “Huh, it never occurred to me how it must really suck to have spent the money to get an Uber black, and then to not actually be able to reap the benefits of it.”

This was a recent Uber conversation I had, it’s like, “Huh, that’s a tough spot. I wonder if there are other, other opportunities that people might be seeking or wanting and they find lacking?”

Charles Duhigg
Absolutely. And it’s interesting because, sometimes, I ask Uber drivers, like, “What’s the worst part of your job?” And, inevitably, what they say is it’s not sitting all day long, it’s not, like, “I don’t know how much money I’m going to make.” What they say is, “I can spend the entire day not talking to anyone,” because that feels lonely.

And so, that doesn’t mean you have to have a 20-minute conversation, but even a three- or four-minute conversation is something that you’re improving someone else’s day. And you know what? They’re probably going to say something interesting. They’re probably improving your day. It’s a very easy thing to do and it makes a huge difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Charles Duhigg
There’s a quote from William James, where he talks about how our thoughts are like water that move across stone. And as water moves across stone, it grooves these lines. Water is insignificant compared to stone. But over time and over repetition, it grooves these lines. It manages to carve the stone.

And the habits that we have, the small daily decisions we make again and again and again, they’re like water. Like, it doesn’t matter what I have for lunch today, but what does matter is what I have for lunch every day. If I eat something unhealthy every day, then that’s going to have real serious impacts on my happiness and my health and my success.

And so, I think a lot about this metaphor that we tend to focus on the big choices that confront us, but those small daily choices, that’s like the water. We’re grooving the lines in our brain through our habits. And the more that we do that deliberately, rather than accidentally, the more successful we’re going to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Charles Duhigg
Sure. I mean, one of my favorite studies comes from Granovetter. It’s about loose ties and strong ties. So, this guy, this is decades ago, he wanted to figure out like how most people found their jobs. And so, he asked them, “How did you find your job?” And what people said, is that they said, “Oh, I found it through a friend.” And that totally made sense to him.

And he figured, “Oh, your best friend, you call him up, and they’ll do you a favor and do you a solid and help you get hired in a new place.” But it turns out that’s not what happened at all. Close friends, would have known as strong ties, they don’t tend to be very helpful at helping us find a new job because we’re so tight with them that, if a job comes up, we’re already aware of it. Like, we’re reading the same magazines, we’re going to the same parties. They don’t really know anything that we don’t know.

It’s the loose ties, the friends of a friend, the friend that we haven’t talked to in three or four years, the person who is kind of at an arm’s length, they’re the ones who helped people the most find new jobs because they would say, “Oh, I’m so glad you called. I know it’s been a couple of years since we talked, but this position came up in my company the other day, and I thought you were perfect for it. It probably hasn’t come across your radar because, like, why would you know anything about my company, right?” That’s how people tend to find new jobs.

And what it reifies for me is that, all of us have people in our lives that we’re only infrequently in contact with, but that we really like. We just fall out of touch because life gets busy and hard, and it seems kind of awkward to call them after three or four years and have that conversation. Because we know, at the beginning of the conversation, we’ve forgotten their wife’s name, and we’re going to be like, “What’s your wife’s name again?”

Pete Mockaitis
“How many kids do you have?”

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, exactly, it’s going to be kind of awkward. But the thing that we found is, if you call that person up and you say, “Hey, do you have like 20 minutes to catch up?” and then you say, “I totally apologize. I’ve forgotten your wife’s name. Will you remind me what it is?” that usually takes like 30 seconds, and then the rest of the conversation is great, and everyone is so much happier afterwards that they had that conversation.

So, having these good conversations, being connected to other people, we know that it makes you healthier, right? The surgeon general said that being lonely is equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which is a lot of cigarettes. It makes us healthier to be connected to other people. It also makes us more successful because we tend to learn about opportunities that we wouldn’t know about, otherwise.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Charles, you are a habits guy, can you share with us a favorite habit?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, and this is a little cliched, but the truth of the matter is, exercise is this habit that pays enormous dividends, and it doesn’t have to be a lot of exercise. Literally, if you go for a 15-minute walk every afternoon or evening, the measurable impact it has on your life is significant. And if you can get to a place where you’re building muscle or where you’re exercising a little bit more, it’s even greater.

But that habit, just committing to doing a little bit of more physical movement every single day, it can change everything.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Charles Duhigg
Yeah, so you can find me online at CharlesDuhigg.com, D-U-H-I-G-G. I also have a newsletter on Substack called “The Science of Better.” And you can find that by searching for “The Science of Better,” or for searching for Charles Duhigg, or just Googling “The Power of Habit” or “Supercommunicators.” All of it will come up. And I’d love to hear from people.

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

Charles Duhigg
Here’s the challenge that I would issue at your job. Sometime in the next week, ask your boss a deep question. And it feels like it’s going to be one of those things where you’re like, beforehand, you’re kind of nervous about it. But just ask them, “Hey, you know, I was just wondering. Like, why did you end up working at this company?” or, “What do you like about this job?” or, “What’s your favorite part of each week?” I promise you that they will say something that seems enlightening to you and that you will feel closer to each other afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Charles, thanks again.

Charles Duhigg
Thanks for having me.