Super Communicators – how to unlock the secret language of connection with journalist and the author Charles Duhigg.

On this episode we discuss Charles’ new book “Supercommunicators – How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection”, to help us understand and improve interpersonal communication, exploring how different types of conversations impact connection, and detailing the importance of matching conversational styles for effective communication.

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and the author of several books including “The Power of Habit”, which spent over three years on bestseller lists and has been translated into 40 languages, “Supercommunicators – How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection”, also a bestseller published in 2024, and “Smarter Faster Better”, a third bestseller.

Charles writes for The New Yorker magazine and is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Business School. He previously wrote for The New York Times, and is a frequent contributor to CNBC, This American Life, NPR, and Frontline. He was also, for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
[We receive commissions for purchases made through these links (more info)].

• Supercommunicators – How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg
• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

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Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:15):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. My name is Henry Lopez and my guest today is Charles Duhig. Charles, welcome to the show.

Charles Duhigg (00:24):

Thanks for having me.

Henry Lopez (00:25):

Absolutely. I look forward to this conversation. I’ve been a fan of Charles and his previous books, and now we get to talk about his most recent book. But Charles Duhigg is on the show today, discuss his new book, super Communicators, how to Unlock the Secret Language to Connection. And really the way I look at it is to help us understand and improve interpersonal communications, exploring how different types of conversations impact connection with people, whether it’s our partners, our peers, our employees as small business owners, and also the importance of matching conversational styles. We will highlight on that so that we have the most effective communication possible. We’re only going to scratch the surface on it. Obviously you got to get the book Super Communicators, but that’s what we’re going to focus on today. You can find all of the Howa business resources, including the show notes page for this episode where you’ll find all of the links.

Henry Lopez (01:19):

And to learn more about my coaching programs, just visit the how business.com. I also invite you to consider supporting this podcast on Patreon and wherever you might be listening. If you’ll subscribe, make sure you don’t miss any future episodes. I release episodes once a week. Lemme tell you more about Charles and then we’ll get into the conversation. Charles Duhig is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of several books, including The Power of Habit, one of my favorite books, which spent by the way over three years on the bestseller list and has been translated into 40 languages. And now most recently, what we’re going to focus on today, super communicators, how to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, which is also already a bestseller, published just this year, 2024. And also he’s the author of Smarter, faster, better, which was also a bestseller. Charles writes for the New Yorker magazine, one of my favorite publications, and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School. So he’s also smart. He previously wrote for the New York Times and is a frequent contributor to CNBC, this American Life n PR and Frontline. And he was also for one Terrifying Day, which I’ll have to ask him about back in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco. I’ll have to understand why Charles lives in New York City. And so once again, Charles Duhigg, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So you live in the city now in Manhattan, or where do you live?

Charles Duhigg (02:52):

Actually, we moved just recently. I now live in Santa Cruz, California. So we were in Brooklyn for 16 years and then moved to Santa Cruz. My wife is a marine biologist and so we moved out here for her career.

Henry Lopez (03:06):

Wow, big change. Big change.

Charles Duhigg (03:07):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (03:08):

Yeah. My daughter currently lives in the Upper East Side, so that’s one of the reasons I was curious, but fascinating. So tell me about this bike messenger for a day back in.

Charles Duhigg (03:19):

Oh, so before I went to business school, I had started a company and there was this little gap between where I could run the company sort of remotely and live with my girlfriend. Now my wife and she was going to school in Berkeley, and so I needed a job, but it couldn’t be a job that I wasn’t going to be at the job for too long. I had just gotten into business school. It was just for a month or two, something to do during the day. And this is back during the time when bike messengers were much in the culture.

Charles Duhigg (03:54):

So I went in and I applied to this bike messenger, this shop, and they were like, sure, absolutely, you can absolutely do this job. And they gave me a pager and I had my own messenger bag and my own bike, and I figured this would be not the hardest job on earth. It was impossible there Was it person

Henry Lopez (04:12):

In downtown San Francisco?

Charles Duhigg (04:13):

Yeah, this is in downtown San Francisco. Yeah. So first of all, you’re riding your bike in between cars, right? Whipping past moving cars just to hoping nobody turns or opens the door, opens the door, open the door and kills you.

Charles Duhigg (04:27):

And then the other thing is that basically all the people I worked with, I’d say about 50% of them were drug addicts of one kind or another. So they were always peeling off to go shoot up or do something like that. And I was like, wow, this is not my people. And then on the first day they gave me this assignment that was at the top of this super huge hill, and I know in retrospect now that there was an easier way to get up this hill, but I went straight up it and it took me half an hour and I was thinking like, oh, this is probably some hazing thing to do with everyone. When I’m going to get to the top, there’s going to be someone to offer me a beer, and this is the hazing process. I get to the top, I drop off the package, and the guy who comes to the door says, you’re really late. What took you so long? And I was like, this is a terrible job. I’m not going to do this job anymore. So that was the end of my bike messenger career.

Henry Lopez (05:17):

Oh my goodness. Classic story. Well, you have it as a story to tell now, and I’m sure you’ve written about it. Well, so excellent. Alright, so let’s get into it. Where I always like to start with a book when we’re talking about a book is why did you write this book, this particular topic, and who do you think it’s for?

Charles Duhigg (05:36):

Yeah, so I think this book is for anyone who has to have important conversations or meaningful conversations, which is absolutely anyone who’s in a relationship or as a family, but equally and most importantly, people who are in business, whether you’re a business owner, whether you’re a manager, whether you’re someone who has to be able communicate with your coworkers. What we know is that communication is homo sapiens superpower, right? Communication is the thing that puts us above all the other species and allows us to form villages and towns and then cities and invent fire and build aircraft carriers. And so our brains have evolved to be very, very good at communication, but actualizing that skill. Communication and communication is just a set of skills. Being a super communicator is just a set of simple skills that anyone can learn. Doing that makes a huge difference in our success.

Charles Duhigg (06:32):

If you ask people about Fortune 500 CEOs, what sets the CEO out against all the other people who are competing for that task, they’re most often going to say communication. Like this is a person who can communicate well because then everyone knows this who’s listening. Your job as a leader is often to communicate. It’s just to get everyone rowing in the same direction and get them motivated. And so that’s who the book is for. The book is for people who have conversations, meaningful conversations, and they want to make those conversations better and more impactful. The way I got into writing this book was that about three years ago, I fell into this bad pattern with my wife where I would come home from work and I’d start complaining about my day. My boss doesn’t understand me or appreciate me and my coworkers don’t see what a genius I am.

Charles Duhigg (07:23):

And my wife very practically listened to me whine for a little while, and then she said, look, why don’t you just take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better? It’s good advice. But instead of being able to hear that advice, I got even more upset and I started saying, why aren’t you supporting me? You’re supposed to be outraged on my behalf. I want your empathy. And then she got upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. And I think anyone in our relationship knows this pattern, right? This happens all the time. It happens at work where our employees bring a problem to us and we try and solve it, and then we’re confused why they’re upset with our solution. And so I went to these researchers and I said to them, look, I’m supposed to be a professional communicator. Tell me why this isn’t working. And what they said was, well, we’re really glad you showed up because we are living right now through a golden age of understanding communication, right? Because of advances in neural imaging and data collection, we can actually see what happens inside someone’s brain as they have a conversation. And I’m sorry,

Henry Lopez (08:21):

Who did you go to for this?

Charles Duhigg (08:23):

These are neuroscientists. These are

Henry Lopez (08:25):

Neuroscientist for them. Why? Just because you knew people that were doing this kind of research or how did you end up

Charles Duhigg (08:30):

Well, no, I had this problem. I mean, most of my books start with me trying to figure out why I’m doing something wrong. And so it says, typically you go to the smart people who are looking at this.

Charles Duhigg (08:38):

Exactly, exactly. And one of the things that they said is, here’s what we’ve learned about conversations. We tend to think about that a discussion is about one thing, right? We’re talking about where we’re going on vacation or the kid’s grades or what the X year’s budget should be, but actually the

Henry Lopez (08:55):

Employee’s performance or a problem that a customer has or whatever.

Charles Duhigg (08:59):

It might. Exactly. Exactly. But actually when we have that discussion, we are having multiple kinds of conversations and these conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There’s these practical conversations where we’re discussing making plans or solving problems, but then there’s emotional conversations where I might tell you what I’m feeling and I don’t want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then finally, there’s social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other in society, the identities that are important to us. And what they said is if two, all those different kinds of conversations are equally legitimate, but if two different people are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, if I’m having an emotional conversation and you’re having a practical conversation, we won’t be able to hear each other fully. We won’t feel connected to each other.

Charles Duhigg (09:48):

And of course, that’s what was happening with my wife and me. I was having an emotional conversation. She was having a practical conversation. So it’s almost like we were talking past each other, but they said, what we’ve seen in our research is when people have the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then when they match each other, then they become aligned. They can understand each other much better. They feel connected to one another. And once you do that, you can move from emotional to practical to social, back to emotional again. But as long as you’re moving together, then the conversation will be really productive for you.

Henry Lopez (10:24):

This must be why we end up having more of the productive and good conversations with people who are like us because we just happen to be more in alignment on the type of conversations that we have typically.

Charles Duhigg (10:39):

Well, actually, I think what happens there is that the alignment is oftentimes easier to recognize,

Henry Lopez (10:45):

But

Charles Duhigg (10:45):

The truth of the matter is that if you put your mind to it, you can match and align with anyone.

Henry Lopez (10:50):

Sure. Yeah. We

Charles Duhigg (10:51):

Into is we Go ahead. This is what we know super communicators do is that they, let me ask you a question. If you were having a really bad day and you wanted to call someone who would make you feel better, do you know who you would call?

Henry Lopez (11:05):

Yes.

Charles Duhigg (11:06):

Who is that?

Henry Lopez (11:08):

It’d probably be my wife because she’s a good listener and empathizer. Okay. So for you, most of my friends, a lot of my friends are not that good at listening. I’m good at listening for

Charles Duhigg (11:19):

Them. So your wife is probably a super communicator for you, and you’re probably a super communicator back to her. All of us are super communicators at some moments in our day, in our week. The difference with a consistent super communicator is that those same skills that you almost unconsciously use with your wife, they use them with everyone. They’re more deliberate about them. They recognize those skills more easily. And that’s at the key of becoming a super communicator, is just doing what we naturally do, but doing it in settings where it doesn’t occur to us.

Henry Lopez (11:53):

Yeah, becoming consciously competent of that skill that you’re saying is there for us as humans, but fine tuning and leveraging it. Alright, I want to come back to a question here though before we get deeper here. Do you believe, or is it just me as an old guy, do you believe our communication skills have eroded or is that just a generalization that doesn’t hold true? Meaning because of all of the obvious things, because of texting, because of whatever it might be?

Charles Duhigg (12:19):

I think the answer is no. Now communication has changed because of digital innovations. And one of the things that we know about the nation right now, and this is true really for the whole world, is that people are tending to have many more conversations with people they agree with and many fewer conversations with people that they disagree with. And that’s not great. But in general, I mean, let me ask you, do you feel like you communicate less well now than you did 15 years ago?

Henry Lopez (12:49):

No, but I’m conscious of it and I focus on it. Communicating well has always been, I identified early on in my life that is a strength that I have, therefore I have worked on it. Then I was in a sales career where it was fine-tuned and developed, and I’ve been a business owner, and so I’ve been conscious of it and I think it’s a continuous thing, but no, I do not think it has eroded. But then I’m not a person that communicates very well via text, for example.

Charles Duhigg (13:22):

And that’s okay. Right? What’s important here is not that you are a master of every channel of communication, but that rather you understand how communication works and you use

Henry Lopez (13:33):

The channels that work for you and reading what is the kind of conversation that I need to have with this person in this particular

Charles Duhigg (13:38):

Moment? Exactly, exactly. Figuring out, diagnosing, what kind of mindset is this person in? Is it emotional, practical, social? And there’s a way to do that. The easiest way to do that is simply to ask questions, but not any question suffices. Some questions are more powerful than others. Something that’s known in psychology is deep questions which asks someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it’s as simple as if you meet someone who says they’re a doctor, instead of saying, oh, where’d you go to medical school? Saying, oh, why’d you go to medical school? That why invites them to talk about who they actually are. And that can be really, really powerful because what they’re going to tell you is what mindset they’re in. They’re going to say something like, oh, I went because I saw my dad get sick.

Charles Duhigg (14:31):

I really wanted to be a healer. Okay, this is someone who’s in an emotional mindset. They’re talking about how they felt about watching their dad get ill. The same person in another setting might say, oh, I wanted a job that I knew would be a steady paycheck. And medicine always seemed like there’s going to be a need for medicine. This person is in a practical mindset right now, and that’s for me to match them and invite them to match me. So that’s how we determine what kind of conversation is happening, is by asking deep questions.

Henry Lopez (15:00):

So give me an example of how I apply that in a business environment where if I’m following so far, here’s what might happen. Me somebody, an employee comes to me with a problem, they might be in an emotional mindset because it affected them or it was something they did or a customer yelled at them, and I might be as typical in a practical mindset, let’s solve this problem. So what kind of questions might I ask first to identify that this person coming to me is in an emotional mindset? I mean,

Charles Duhigg (15:34):

The easiest thing to ask is to say, look, this seems to be bothering you. Can you tell me why is this a big deal for you? What do you feel like it’s’ going? How are you feeling about this?

Charles Duhigg (15:43):

Yeah, how are you feeling about this? Or a lot of stuff happens and you just kind of brush it off. This one seems like it’s bugging you. Why is it bugging you? Tell me what this means to you. So start there as opposed to

Henry Lopez (15:54):

What I would instinct, so going back to I’m such a good communicator, I have the tendency to want to jump right into fixing the problem.

Charles Duhigg (16:03):

And the problem is that perhaps the employee doesn’t actually need you to fix the problem. And even if they do, they’re not going to be able to hear you. They’re not going to be able to hear what you’re saying to them. Now let’s say you say, why is this such a big deal to you? And they say, I feel really disrespected. I come here every single day and this guy’s disrespecting me and it’s really bugging me At that point, as a leader, what we can do is we can match them. That doesn’t mean we say like, oh, I feel disrespected all the time too. That’s not matching, that’s mimicry. Matching is saying, look, I totally hear what you’re saying, that you deserve the respect of this institution and that this guy is not delivering it to you, and I know how much that can hurt. Am I getting that right? And if they agree that you’re getting it right, then you can say, now that we’ve figured out what the problem is, can I suggest some solutions that might make it better? So what I’m doing there is I’m saying, okay, we’re in an emotional conversation. Do I have your permission to transition to a practical conversation? And inevitably they’re going to say yes, because you’ve recognized what they’re feeling, they’ve gotten it off their chest, they know that you’ve heard it,

Charles Duhigg (17:13):

And now they’re ready to move into the practical way.

Henry Lopez (17:15):

Or if not, they might say, yeah, I’m so upset about it and I just want to talk about, they might signal to me, no, I need to talk about it a little bit more the emotional side of this. Yeah,

Charles Duhigg (17:23):

Sure.

Henry Lopez (17:25):

And it could be that I have to judge that, okay, in this conversation we’re just going to get past the feelings and then we’re going to come back to this to solve the problem.

Charles Duhigg (17:33):

Exactly. Exactly. And you and I know, and everyone who’s listening knows that if you do that with an employee, it doesn’t take that much more time, but it means that when you have a solution, they’re going to hear the solution. Otherwise, if we’re an emotional state and someone comes in and they say, what you want to do is this, even if we are listening to their words, they’re not penetrating, we’re not actually focusing on them, we’re not processing that information and turning it into knowledge or plans. We have to get aligned with the person in order to have the same kind of conversation at the same moment.

Henry Lopez (18:06):

Otherwise, I can see, obviously resentment builds or is that feeling of Henry is all about what’s best for the company. He doesn’t listen to how this is affecting me or how it affected us, that kind of thing. Alright, so related to this, you also talk about in the book, how do you hear emotions? No one says that loud. So this is part of what we’re talking about here, but tell me a little bit more about that concept, if you would.

Charles Duhigg (18:30):

Yeah, one of the things that we know is that there’s a lot of nonverbal communication and some of it is verbal. So nonverbal is a little bit of a misnomer. It’s actually non comprehensive communication. So the gestures that someone uses, the expressions on their face, the noises that they make while you’re speaking to them like, huh, or Oh, that’s interesting. All of these are signals as to what is going on and what they’re trying to communicate to us. The problem is that it’s so easy to focus on someone’s words. It’s so easy. Words are so clear, they’re so easy to use that oftentimes we can forget to pay attention to the rest of a person. And yet this nonverbal communication is really, really important. And what is important about it is that if my words are different from my nonverbal communication, if you come up and my arms are crossed and I’m looking really upset, and you say What’s wrong?

Charles Duhigg (19:24):

And I say, oh, there’s nothing wrong. I’m fine. If you don’t know how to respond to my body language, you don’t know how to show me that you’re listening to me. And one of the ways that we know that’s easiest to respond to someone’s body language to show that we’re listening is again, the matching principle. It’s to match their affect and their energy. So if you come upon someone who’s really upset, their affect is upset and their energy is high, they’re yelling, that’s someone who’s probably angry. And so the first thing you need to do, you don’t get angry yourself.

Henry Lopez (20:00):

Right? You’re I’m not going to match that component of

Charles Duhigg (20:02):

It. No, but what you are going to do is you’re going to find a way to match the, so instead of coming up and going, okay, now Henry, I see that you’re upset. I want to be calm. Let me ask you what’s wrong. That’s just going to make you even more angry. But if I come up and say, Henry, you seem like you’re really upset what’s going on? This is serious. Tell me about it. I’m matching you in my energy and I’m acknowledging your affect. And that’s going to make it much, much more effective for us to

Henry Lopez (20:32):

Instead of potentially insulting me for. And really what it highlights is, Henry, you’ve lost control. And I’m highlighting that for you here. In other words,

Charles Duhigg (20:41):

But I’m also joining you

Henry Lopez (20:42):

Minimizes that you’re also joining me in this frustration or whatever it might be. So you’re acknowledging that feeling that I’m feeling and expressing and showing you. Yes,

Charles Duhigg (20:54):

That’s exactly right. And I’m showing you that I’m listening and I’m showing you that it’s important what you’re saying. Now, that doesn’t mean I agree with you. That doesn’t mean that we should be angry, but rather than saying, you’re angry, you’re on the outside. I’m calm, I’m on the inside. I’m saying, look, I’m going to come outside with you a little bit and hopefully together we can get on the inside and both calm down. And

Henry Lopez (21:15):

Then once, now that they see, okay, I am listening, then of course I can use my techniques to calm them down though, right?

Charles Duhigg (21:22):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Henry Lopez (21:24):

Okay, I’m making

Charles Duhigg (21:25):

You there. And there’s a specific technique, particularly in conflict related situations. When we disagree with someone or we’re talking about something that’s really sensitive, it’s a technique to prove that we’re listening. That’s known as looping for understanding, and they teach it at Stanford and Harvard all over the place. And the technique is this, it has three steps. The first step is to ask that person a question, preferably a deep question. The second step is once they’ve answered the question, to repeat back what you heard them say in your own words, right? Again, this shouldn’t be mimicry. This should be your own words. Prove to them that you’re hearing them. Prove to them that you’re paying attention. Prove to them that you’re thinking about what they said. And most people do this intuitively. This is something that everyone learns to do. Step three is the one that I always forget, which is after you say, what I hear you saying is when you’re done repeating back what they said, say, did I get that right? Ask them if you got it right. And the reason why that’s so powerful is because when I ask you if I got it right, what I’m actually doing is asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. And what we know, and again, this comes from our neurology and evolution, if you acknowledge that I am listening to you, you automatically become more willing to listen to me

Henry Lopez (22:47):

As opposed to what we often have the tendency to do is to skip that step and now move to problem solving or move to addressing the issue or whatever the case

Charles Duhigg (22:57):

Might be. What I heard you say is you don’t like your coworker. Okay, here’s what you should do, right? Go out and move your desks five feet to the left. That’s not really resolving the problem. Whereas if we say, what I hear you saying is that you don’t like your coworker. Am I getting that right? Yeah. Yeah. I think you got it right. Okay. So with your

Henry Lopez (23:17):

Question, or they might say, well, now that I think about it, that’s not really the issue. My problem is he smells or whatever the case

Charles Duhigg (23:24):

May be. Sure. And so then you listen to more root cause of what’s really going on. Yeah, you’re getting down to what’s going on. And then to say, then you say, look, I totally hear you. I understand how frustrating that is. Can I propose a solution? And when they say yes, they’re ready to hear your solution prior to that, they’re not ready to hear it.

Henry Lopez (23:46):

This is Enri Lopez with a quick message about our show sponsor and trusted service partner, the franchise guide. Giuseppe Grammatical is the franchise guide, and he provides expert consultation services to help you find the right franchise small business. If you are considering a franchise business, I recommend consulting the franchise guide. Giuseppe is a franchise veteran who simplifies the process of franchising and excels at guiding his clients to the franchise model that best suits them. He helps people like you find flexibility and freedom in their lives through franchise business ownership. And as your guide, he will help you answer any of your questions about franchises once he gets to know you and what you’re looking for. He creates your own personalized model and shows you which franchise opportunities are a best match for your needs and preferences. The best part, it’s all free. There’s no catch. Like with real estate or business brokers, Giuseppe’s fees are paid by the franchise company. So if you’re interested in a franchise business, take the first step and schedule a free no obligation call with Giuseppe. To learn more and to schedule your consultation with the franchise guide, please go to the show notes page for this episode at the how of business.com. There’s also a link to the show notes page in a description of this episode. How does this get the reading of physical body cues? How does this get exacerbated by remote workers?

Charles Duhigg (25:04):

So it’s obviously harder to read nonverbal language when we’re working remotely, but what’s interesting is that we actually have learned how to deal with that for technologies that we’ve grown up with. So about a hundred years ago when telephones first became popular, there were all these articles that appeared that said, no one will ever have a real conversation on the phone. Isn’t that interesting? Because up until then, all conversations had been face-to-face, right? So people could not fathom that

Charles Duhigg (25:32):

You would have an intimate conversation without that. And what’s interesting is they were right for the first 15 years after phones became popular. Really? People did not know how to use them. They used them like telegrams, like telegram? Yeah. Or telegraphs. If you look, it could be communicated fact. And that was it. Just exactly. Here’s my stock order. Yeah, exactly right? Or here’s what I’d like for groceries. Did you get that? Yes. Okay. Hang up the phone. Now, by the time you and I and everyone listening was in middle school, we could talk on the phone for seven hours a night. They felt like the most real conversations of our life. So what changed? Well, what changed is we learned how to use phones. Even today without realizing it, when you’re on a telephone, you will over annunciate your words by about 25%. Interesting. You’ll put about 30% more emotion into your voice.

Charles Duhigg (26:24):

Now, you’re not doing this deliberately, you’re not even aware that you’re doing it, but part of your brain knows this person can’t see me, so they need to hear the emotion in my voice. We’ve learned how to use phones. Now when it comes to more recent types of technology, texting dms, our kids are learning how to use them. Our kids have real robust conversations over texts. They know how to use emojis to have an emotional conversation. You and I, it’s a little bit harder. And so what we need to do is we need to remind ourselves that there’s different rules for different forms of communication. If emailing someone is different from texting, someone is different from giving someone a call. And when we get into trouble is when we’re in such a hurry that we don’t remind ourselves of the rules and we send someone a text that really should have been an email, or we send someone an email that really should have been a phone call. Absolutely. But once we remind ourselves of the basic stuff, oh, just remember, satire doesn’t work online because they can’t hear the satire in your voice, and so they’re going to take you seriously. Once we remind ourselves of those rules and that becomes a habit, our digital communication will get much, much better.

Henry Lopez (27:34):

Brilliant, brilliant sticky with the difficult conversations where I am seeing this being so much more powerful in the context of a business owner, those challenging conversations, whatever the case might be. Anything else there that you think that you see people get wrong or that we could improve in this area?

Charles Duhigg (27:59):

So one of the thing that happens a lot is social conversations can be challenging. And when I say social conversations, I mean conversations about who am I and who are you?

Charles Duhigg (28:09):

So in the book, there’s a chapter about Netflix. Netflix had this controversy erupt where they had an executive inside the company use a racial slur in a meeting. And he wasn’t using it in an attacking way. He was describing a show that Netflix had produced and used the word as part of that description. But there were people in the audience who got very, very offended. And so they went to read Hastings, the boss and founder of CEO, and they said, this guy needs to be fired. And it set off this whole controversy inside the company because there were some people who said, look, he made a little mistake, but it’s not a big deal. You’re making too big a deal out of it. And there are other people who said, look, I work at this company and if a senior executive can say something like that, that is not a friendly place for me. And so people were at each other’s throats. And so Netflix had to figure out how do we get past this? How do we have a conversation where everyone gets to say they’re due, but it doesn’t inflame anger and controversy? And so what they did is they came up with this strategy where they asked people to have conversations about race, but they started them by saying, look, this is going to be an awkward conversation.

Henry Lopez (29:24):

And I’m assuming because the slur was racial in its nature.

Charles Duhigg (29:29):

Charles Duhigg (29:33):

Yeah, exactly. And so the idea, okay, let’s facilitate a conversation about race. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to pair you up into small groups and everyone should say something at the beginning of the conversation, and this is what they should say. Look, this is going to be an awkward conversation. I want you to know that I’m a little stressed about having it, and I might say the wrong thing. The gap between my brain and my lips is so big that sometimes I mean something and it comes out the wrong way, and I hope you’ll forgive me. And let me also say that if you say the wrong thing, I promise you I will let you know and not assume that you intended to offend, but forgive you for screwing up what we say. They found that that actually changed the tenor of the conversations entirely. And then what they said is they said, look, everyone has an equal seat at this table.

Charles Duhigg (30:22):

We’re talking about racial experiences, and someone who’s black clearly does someone who’s Hispanic clearly does, but someone who’s white also has racial experiences. And it’s only when we can all share and really prove that we’re hearing each other, that we begin to come to a consensus and come to a connection. And so this company that was kind of in the midst of a civil war, they did this. They set up all these workshops where they basically had these conversations and it worked. The controversy just kind of went away. And in fact, Netflix became a stronger company as a result because people felt so much more connected to each other, and that doesn’t mean everyone agreed with each other, right? There were some people who said, I think we should get rid of these kinds of shows because they’re offensive to trans populations. And there’s other people who said, actually, those shows are really popular and we believe in artistic freedom. We’re not going to censor the people who make films. They don’t agree with each

Henry Lopez (31:22):

Other conversations.

Charles Duhigg (31:23):

But they had that conversation and they both were able to say what they believed and they believed that the other person heard them, and that made all the difference a

Henry Lopez (31:31):

Stronger environment as a result. So there was a decision to have social category type conversations to address this much more serious, bigger

Charles Duhigg (31:42):

Issue. But I think it’s also true when we have, if you’re giving someone negative feedback, if you have to have a hard conversation with them, in many ways that is actually a social conversation. It might not seem like it on the face, but when I sit down with you and I say, look, you’re not doing a great job. What I’m actually doing is I’m saying your self image of yourself does not line up with the reality that I see, and that can feel really threatening,

Charles Duhigg (32:11):

Even if I agree with you that like, oh, I should have done that budget better and I should have made that widget a little bit faster. Even if I agree with you, I still feel this identity threat. I feel like you’re telling me I’m bad and I don’t see myself as bad. And so the same thing. If we do the same thing in those situations and we start by saying, look, this is going to be awkward, and I want you to know my goal here is to help you improve. I think you are great, and I think if we made a couple of changes, you live up to that greatness. So my goal here is that I see who you are and I think who you are is fantastic. And then say, but here’s the things that you’re not doing as well as you could that makes it all the different. Right?

Henry Lopez (32:53):

Love that. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. I want to go back to, in this example, with a company like Netflix, where did this idea, do you know where this idea come from or can we assume that a super communicator, whether it was Hastings or someone else, thought this is the way we might address this?

Charles Duhigg (33:12):

Oh, no. They hired someone. They hired someone who said an idea name is Renee Myers, and she spent her whole career essentially facilitating conversations like this. I see. She did it for the Massachusetts Department of Justice. She did it as an independent consultant. So in that case, again, it’s Netflix and they’re dealing with a really critical problem, but it’s also the type of thing that someone who hasn’t done it before, if they think about it, if they read books on how to have these conversations, they’re not hard tactics to use. They’re just really important.

Henry Lopez (33:48):

But nonetheless, though I agree with you, however, some of this is habitual how I currently respond, again, with the scenario of somebody comes to me with a problem or a crisis, and so I must certainly in a small business environment, it seems to me like I need to become a better or move towards being a super communicator. I’m not saying I’m the only one responsible for that, but it seems to me that if I’m going to be the leader of my small business, I need to adapt and develop these skills. Is that fair?

Charles Duhigg (34:17):

I think that’s exactly entirely fair. And I think the other thing I would say is the biggest difference that we know about consistent super communicators, why they’re consistent super communicators is just because they think about communication a little bit more. If you ask them, were you always a great communicator? Inevitably they’ll say no. In high school, I had real trouble making friends, and so I had to really study how kids talk to each other, or my parents got divorced when I was young and I had to be the peacemaker between them. These are not skills that are hard, and these are not skills that only some people can master. Anyone can become a super communicator. The key is to get into the habit of thinking about communication because the things that we think about are the things that we’re really good at, and the things that go on autopilot are the ones where problems can emerge.

Henry Lopez (35:07):

Okay, excellent. Alright, those are the things that I wanted to explore. Is there anything else that comes to mind as we’ve talked about this, again, from the perspective of a small business environment, whether it’s me as the owner or as I help my leadership team or everybody in the organization to have these conversations, what else comes to mind?

Charles Duhigg (35:26):

I think there’s two things. The first is in sales, and I know you have a background in sales, so there’s a bunch of stories in the book, there’s a story about a CIA officer trying to recruit overseas agents. There’s a story about a jury room where they’re trying to decide whether to send someone to jail or set them free, and one of the jurors is a super communicator and really helps shape the conversation. There’s a story about the TV show, the Big Bang Theory and why it succeeded. And at the core of that is actually sales, right? When I’m a CIA recruiter, I’m in sales When I’m writing a TV show and I want the audience to my TV show, I’m in sales. And so what do we know about what works in sales? Oftentimes the thing about sales is that we have to ask those questions, right?

Charles Duhigg (36:16):

We have to ask the questions to figure out what someone cares about, and then we have to show them that we’re listening. We have to prove we’re listening by looping for understanding, and we have to match them. We have to say, look, your problem is a problem that I really understand. I understand how frustrated you are. Let’s talk about how frustrating that is, and then do I have your permission to propose some solutions, which of course happened to be the thing that I’m selling. So I think in sales, these same principles, they’re not only true there, they’re actually critical there. The difference between the greatest salespeople and the non greatest salespeople is it the greatest salespeople, they tend to form a connection with the client. They tend to make the client feel like they’re really listened to. This person has heard their concerns and has sort of entered their head and seen it from their perspective. They feel like they’re connected to the salesperson, and these tactics that we’ve talked about, these are the building blocks of connection. When we do these things, ask deep questions, match the kind of conversation that’s occurring, prove that we’re listening through things like looping for understanding. What we’re really doing is we’re saying, I want to connect with you. And when people see that, when they hear that I want to connect with you, they’re often willing to connect with us back

Henry Lopez (37:31):

In particular when it’s genuine based on the skills that you’re sharing, and what it leads to is then trust, and people buy from people, but more specifically they buy from people they trust.

Charles Duhigg (37:43):

That’s exactly right,

Henry Lopez (37:44):

And what I love about this as well is, and when you were talking about this at the outset, I thought about this as well. Sales also and small business owners often get this wrong. It’s not just the traditional sales, although your business might require that, and it may well require that of you as the business owner, but we’re always selling whether it’s a point of view or where I want to go to dinner or why we should go in this direction in the business, or why we should abandon a particular product line or bring up a new one or expand into new markets. Were always, especially as the CEO and owner selling and selling, I completely agree with you completely. In my experience and career, having been I think a pretty good salesperson, but having worked with brilliant salespeople, this is the differentiator. Their ability to communicate and connect with people.

Charles Duhigg (38:33):

I totally agree.

Henry Lopez (38:33):

And be able to do so in a relatively short period of time.

Charles Duhigg (38:37):

Right? Yes. Right.

Henry Lopez (38:39):

Going back to your example, I’ve also struggled with that I’m naturally an introvert, and what that means for me typically is if you put me in a party where I don’t know anybody, I’ll be in the corner by myself unless I turn it on and say, Henry, you got to go connect, and then I can do it because it’s a skill that I’ve developed, but it’s not what I want to do necessarily naturally, but I can do it. I’ve learned to do it so that, and it’s genuine. It’s not fake, but I do have to kind of push myself to do it. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I think that’s exactly right. Yeah. Okay. The book, again, that we’ve been talking about, great book, super Communicators, how to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. My guest today, of course has been Charles Duhig. Speaking of books, I know, and not only you an author, but a big reader. Is there a book that comes to mind that you would recommend to us, especially from the perspective of a small business owner?

Charles Duhigg (39:36):

Yeah, absolutely. There’s a book named The Culture Code by a guy named Dan Coyle, who’s actually a friend of mine. This book I think is wonderful because it actually spells out what are the tactics we can use to build culture. Everyone listening knows how important culture is. If we get the right culture at work, it makes employees more effective, it makes them happier, they work harder. And yet, even though we know the importance of culture, there’s oftentimes we don’t spend a lot of time talking about the nuts and bolts of culture.

Henry Lopez (40:09):

Maybe gives such a, I don’t know what the right word, but it’s such a

Charles Duhigg (40:13):

Ephemeral

Henry Lopez (40:14):

Yeah, ephemeral thing that’s not physical. It’s hard to

Charles Duhigg (40:16):

Define and what goes into it. Yes. And so what Dan does in the Culture code is he says, here’s what culture is, and here are the tactics to build that culture. Now that doesn’t mean you have to build a good culture or a bad culture. You can build whatever kind of culture you want, a sales culture versus a thinking culture. But once you know the tactics, then you get to build the culture rather than the culture just kind of emerging on its own, which can oftentimes be counterproductive.

Henry Lopez (40:44):

Agreed. That’s the thing I’ve talked about often on our podcast is there is a culture, whether you want to know what it is or not, you have a culture in your organization. Brilliant. Thanks for that recommendation. Alright, we’ll wrap it up with this. Charles, what’s one thing you want to stick away from this conversation we had about this secret language of connection, improving our communication, becoming super communicators? What’s one thing you want us to take away from the conversation?

Charles Duhigg (41:10):

So the book ends by describing this thing called the grant study, or as it’s known today, the Harvard Study, the Harvard Study of Adult Development. And basically what researchers at Harvard have done is they’ve followed for 80 years thousands of people around trying to figure out what makes them healthy and happy and successful. And what they’ve discovered is that the only thing that predicts whether you’re happy, healthy, and successful, however you define success at age 65 is having at least a handful of close relationships at age 45 because of course that means you haven’t just had them in your 45th year, you’ve had them for decades and you’re going to continue to have them. When we invest in other people, in connecting with other people, we actually make ourselves healthier and happier and more successful. Being lonely, the Surgeon General has said is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Henry Lopez (41:59):

That’s amazing.

Charles Duhigg (42:00):

So how do we do that? Well, oftentimes we do it through conversations. We connect with people by having a conversation with them, and so the thing I hope people carry away is if you have some friend or person you like and you haven’t talked to them in a year or year and a half, send them a note and say, Hey, can we jump on the phone for 15 minutes? I just want to catch up with you. I promise you that you will walk away from that feeling closer to that person, feeling better about yourself, maybe learning something that helps you in business that you didn’t know and wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, and most importantly, it gives our life meaning. So I hope that’s something, and I hope that the tools we’ve talked about today makes that conversation a little bit easier to have. Absolutely.

Henry Lopez (42:44):

Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for summarizing that. Tell us where you want us to go online that learn more about you and about the

Charles Duhigg (42:49):

Book. Sure. Yeah, if anyone wants to find me, I’m at charles duhig.com, just my last name. You can also just Google the Power of Habit or super communicators and I’ll come up, I have a newsletter on substack called The Science of Better that I’d love to encourage people to sign up to subscribe to. And then if you want to buy super communicators or the Power of Habit or any of my books, they’re on sale on Audible and Amazon and Barnes and Nobles in your local bookstore. The Audible version, which is the audio book, is actually read by me, so it’s kind of fun.

Henry Lopez (43:21):

Yeah, that’s Wonder. No doubt. I think it’s a great book not only for our SOS but is a great book to gift to others as I’m thinking in the mindset of a business owner gifting it to team leaders and so forth. Not that everybody can’t benefit it from it, but I think it’s a great book to give to others on our teams. Okay. And Duhig is D-U-H-I-G-G, right? Right. So Charles D-U-H-I-G g.com. Perfect. Charles, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today. This has been great conversation. Good Talk to you for hours, obviously, because a communicator and so thanks for being with me today. Thanks for having me. This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for listening to our episode today by guest today. Again, Charles Duhig. I release episodes every Monday morning. You can find the show everywhere you listen to podcasts, including at the How Business YouTube channel, and at my website, the How business business.com. Thanks for listening.