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1:00

at meta.com/metaverse impact. Welcome

1:25

to the science of success. Introducing

1:40

your host, Matt Bodner.

1:45

Charles, welcome back to the science of success. Thanks

1:47

for having me on. I really appreciate it.

1:49

Well, it's great to have you back. I'm

1:51

really excited. And we were talking about this

1:54

in the pre-show too, but to me, I

1:56

really love the theme of super communicators and

1:58

I am a huge. proponent

2:00

of the lifelong journey of

2:02

mastering communication skills. To

2:05

me, having somebody of your talent investigate that and

2:07

dig in and find some awesome case studies examples

2:09

in science to say, hey, here's how you can

2:12

be a better communicator really gets

2:14

me excited. So I'm pumped about the book. Oh,

2:16

thank you. And I want to hear what inspired

2:18

you to dig into that topic. Yeah. So

2:20

a lot of this came from, you know, the previous book

2:22

I had written, The Power of Habit was I

2:25

started writing it because I wanted to figure out how

2:27

to improve my own habits, right? I

2:30

was so smart. Why is it so hard for me to

2:32

go running in the morning or to lose 10 pounds? And

2:34

this was very similar that I had a couple

2:37

of experiences where I realized I was not as

2:39

good at communication as I thought I was. And

2:41

I'm a journalist. I'm supposed to be a professional

2:43

communicator. They made me a manager at

2:45

work at the New York Times. And

2:47

I was really good at like the logistics part of the

2:49

job and terrible at managing other

2:52

people like just terrible at communicating with

2:54

them, terrible at hearing what they were trying to tell me.

2:57

And then I would come home and this

2:59

thing would happen again and again at home where I'd

3:01

come home after a long day. I'd

3:03

be kind of exhausted. I would be upset.

3:05

I would start complaining to my wife about,

3:07

you know, my boss is a jerk and

3:09

my coworkers don't appreciate me and X

3:12

and Y and Z. And she

3:14

very reasonably would say, well,

3:16

what, you know, why don't you take your boss to lunch and get to know

3:18

each other a little bit better? Like here's a

3:21

solution. And instead of being able to hear what she

3:23

was saying, I would get even more upset. I'd be like,

3:25

no, no, no, you're supposed to have my back. You're supposed

3:27

to be supporting me. And she would

3:29

get upset because I wasn't listening to her good advice. And

3:32

so I started calling experts and I started

3:34

saying like, look, this is what's going on in my life. Like

3:36

what am I doing wrong? And they said, well, the

3:39

thing you have to understand is that we think

3:41

of a discussion as being about one thing, like

3:44

what happened today or where we should go on vacation. But

3:46

actually each discussion is made up of

3:48

different kinds of conversations. And most of them fall

3:50

into one of three buckets. There's just

3:53

practical conversations where we're trying to solve

3:55

a problem or make plans. There's emotional

3:57

conversations where I just want to share how I

3:59

feel. social conversations, which is about

4:01

how we relate to each other. And they

4:03

said, when you were getting home, you were

4:05

having an emotional conversation, and your

4:08

wife was responding with a practical

4:10

conversation. And those are both legitimate kinds

4:12

of conversations. But because you weren't

4:14

having the same kind of conversation at the

4:16

same moment, you couldn't really hear

4:18

each other, you couldn't connect. And

4:21

I thought that was so eye opening that I

4:23

thought to myself, oh, there's probably a book here. I

4:26

love it. Yeah, and that distinction

4:28

between those three buckets, I come

4:31

at this, obviously, the science of

4:33

success, I'm very rational, science oriented,

4:36

live in the practical bucket 95%

4:38

of the time, and probably that distinction

4:41

was so powerful for me to even think

4:43

about as somebody who's spent years, almost a

4:45

decade at this point, studying communication skills, I

4:47

was like, wow, this is a really

4:50

cool framework, and one that I hadn't

4:52

seen explained in that way, which to

4:54

me really shine new light on thinking

4:56

about how we can be better communicators

4:58

by understanding the subtext or the context

5:00

for specific conversations. That's exactly right.

5:02

And most importantly, there's this thing known as

5:04

the matching principle, right, which in

5:06

psychology, you'll see this, which is, which

5:08

says that my job in a conversation is in

5:11

part to figure out what kind of conversation is

5:13

going on, and then to match

5:15

you and invite you to match me. Because

5:18

if we're having the same kind of conversation at

5:20

the same moment, and no

5:22

matter what our differences are, no matter

5:25

what divisions separate us, we're

5:27

going to be able to connect with each other. And

5:29

so that's the goal is to try and figure

5:31

out how do we match each other? Is there

5:34

just a set of skills to do that super

5:36

communicators are people who do it consistently, because they've

5:38

just learned a set of skills. So

5:40

tell me about that set of skills, or

5:42

that specific skill of even figuring out what

5:44

kind of conversation you're in, because I think

5:47

that I still struggle with, especially on maybe

5:49

the social side, I don't understand as well

5:51

the context of why we would be having

5:53

those conversations versus just trying to solve every

5:56

problem, which I write easily fall into the

5:58

bucket of. Well, here's the easiest way

6:00

to figure out what kind of conversation is going

6:02

is ask the other person a question and ask

6:04

them a kind of question that's known as a

6:06

deep question, which is a question that

6:08

asks them about their values, their beliefs, or

6:11

their experiences. And deep questions

6:13

can sound deep and heavy, right? But they're actually pretty easy.

6:15

Like it's, you know, if you meet someone and you say,

6:17

like, what do you do for a living? And they say,

6:20

oh, I'm a doctor. And you say, oh,

6:22

you know, how did you decide to become a doctor? Like, did you

6:24

always want to, as a kid, did you want to be a doctor?

6:26

Like, what was medical school like for you? What

6:28

do you like about your job? Those are all

6:31

easy questions to ask, but they're deep questions. They're

6:33

deep questions because they get at who this person

6:35

is and what they value in life and why

6:37

they believe that the work that they do is important

6:39

and where they grew up and what their childhood was

6:41

like. And when people

6:43

respond to those questions, what you'll hear

6:46

is you'll hear them telling you what

6:48

kind of conversation they're seeking. Right?

6:50

So if you talk to someone and you say,

6:52

oh, tell me, why'd you become a doctor? And

6:55

they say, oh, you know, actually, I grew up

6:57

a little bit poor, and I always wanted to

6:59

have a steady job. And I knew that medicine

7:01

would give me a steady job. Okay, that person's

7:03

in a practical frame of mind, right? They're looking

7:05

for practical conversation. But if you ask that same

7:07

question, and they say, oh, you know, my

7:09

mom got sick when I was a kid,

7:11

and I saw some doctors ignore her, then

7:14

some doctors be kind. And

7:16

I wanted to be one of those kinds of

7:18

doctors. That's a much more

7:20

emotional place that they're speaking from. Or

7:23

from a social place, they can say, you know, I

7:25

became a doctor because I grew up

7:27

in this community. And I've always wanted to help my

7:29

community. And one of the biggest problems we have is

7:31

health care. That's a person is talking about how we

7:34

relate to each other and how we relate to society.

7:36

Now, all three of those are reasonable answers,

7:38

right? And in fact, the same person might

7:40

give all three answers depending on what frame

7:42

of mind they're in. But if you just

7:44

remind yourself to listen a little bit closely,

7:46

for what is the subtext, as you put

7:49

it, what you're going to hear is you're

7:51

going to hear them inviting you to match

7:53

them to say, I want to have an

7:55

emotional conversation, or I want to have a practical conversation.

7:57

And once we align on that, then we

7:59

can move from conversation conversation to conversation together.

8:03

Very interesting. There's a bunch I want to unpack about that.

8:06

To start, how do you think about

8:08

the skill set of transitioning between, let's

8:10

say someone's in a social frame or an emotional frame

8:13

and you want to transition them into a practical frame,

8:15

how do you think about navigating that or can you

8:17

navigate that? The easiest way is

8:20

just to ask them, right? So in schools, they

8:22

teach teachers this technique, which is if a student

8:24

comes up to you and they're upset, ask

8:26

them, do you want me to help you?

8:29

Do you want me to hear you or do you

8:31

want me to hug you? Which, of

8:33

course, are just the three conversations, right? The

8:35

practical, emotional, and social. So

8:38

let's say my wife is talking to me and

8:40

I'm complaining about life and she

8:42

does this all the time. She can

8:44

often say, and she does often say, do you

8:47

want me just to listen to you or do you want to

8:49

solve this problem together? And I

8:52

might say, I just want you to listen to me. And

8:54

so she'll listen for a little while and then she says, okay,

8:56

like I hear what you're saying. Can we

8:58

talk about solutions? Like, can we talk about? And what she's

9:00

really saying is, can we stop having

9:02

an emotional conversation and start having a practical

9:04

conversation? Right? It's not a

9:06

hard thing to do. And in fact,

9:08

if you're explicit about it, the other person kind

9:11

of appreciates it because they feel

9:13

like you're trying to take their needs

9:15

into consideration. And there's other more

9:17

subtle ways to do it, right? To say like, hey, hey,

9:19

you know, I've had a similar problem. Can I tell you

9:21

what I did about it? Can I

9:23

ask for your permission to move

9:25

from an emotional to a practical conversation?

9:28

Can I bring up this new, you know, we've been talking about

9:30

like what it's like for you at your company, but like one

9:32

of the things that occurs to me and tell me if you

9:34

think this is okay to bring up

9:36

is that oftentimes this happens at a lot of

9:38

companies and this is part of how to how

9:41

sort of society works. I'm

9:43

asking permission to change the

9:45

kind of conversation that we're having and odds are that

9:47

the other person is going to say, oh, oh yeah,

9:49

that's interesting. Let's talk about that. I

9:52

like that. Like if you come in

9:54

from just straight into either a

9:56

practical frame or social frame or whatever frame you're

9:58

in, you may. butt heads

10:00

or not really have a communicative interaction,

10:03

but if you start in their mindset

10:05

or their frame and then you navigate

10:07

your way into the frame

10:09

you ultimately want to land in, you'll probably

10:11

be a lot more successful. That's exactly right.

10:14

And I think underlying this is

10:16

one thing that, you know, we're living through

10:18

this golden age of understanding communication because of

10:20

advances in neuroimaging and data

10:22

analytics and our ability to collect

10:24

data. We are understanding communication in

10:27

a way that we never have before. And

10:29

one of the things that comes through so strongly is the

10:32

goal of a conversation is

10:34

not to convince the other person you're right. It

10:37

is not even to figure out what

10:39

you have in common. The goal of a conversation

10:41

is simply to understand what the other person is

10:43

trying to tell you and to

10:45

get them to understand what you're trying to say.

10:48

If you walk away from a conversation and you still

10:50

disagree with each other or you still are butting heads

10:53

but you both understand each other, then

10:55

that conversation has been a success. You

10:58

have done something important. And the truth of

11:00

the matter is that until you understand each other, you're

11:02

probably not going to stop butting heads no matter what

11:04

you do. Yeah. I love that

11:06

frame. I've never thought about engaging

11:08

in a conversation in that way where

11:10

it's not just about accomplishing some goal

11:13

but rather having the frame of, hey,

11:15

if I can be understood and I

11:17

can understand the other person, that almost

11:19

creates the availability of

11:21

a solution or mutual cooperation or getting

11:23

to some sort of end goal. I'm

11:26

still thinking about in a practical frame

11:28

though. No, no. And it's

11:30

okay to think about it in a practical

11:32

frame. I mean, so there is a technique

11:34

for doing this which is known as looping

11:36

for understanding, right? So how do we understand

11:38

each other? This is how we

11:40

can get into different kinds of conversations. So looping

11:42

for understanding is made up of three steps. The

11:45

first step is ask a question, hopefully a deep

11:47

question if you can. Then listen

11:49

to what the person says and step number two

11:52

is repeat back what they just told you

11:54

in your own words. And

11:56

then step number three, and this is a step we always forget,

11:58

is ask a question. Ask them if you

12:00

got it right. Now imagine you're

12:02

talking to someone, maybe your wife, maybe one of

12:04

your kids, and they're clearly feeling emotional.

12:06

And your impulse is to be practical, right? Is

12:08

to try and solve their problem. But if you

12:11

just take a step, just ask them a question,

12:13

listen to what they're saying and say, here's

12:15

what I hear you saying, tell me if I'm getting this right. You're

12:18

saying that your mom is driving you crazy because

12:20

she keeps asking you about this thing, but at

12:22

the same time you love her and you don't

12:24

wanna be rude to her. And

12:27

so you're struggling with how do you manage

12:29

her in a way that's not rude, but also

12:31

tells her to back off a little bit. Did I get

12:33

that right? Like that's a pretty

12:35

easy thing to say. And your wife would

12:37

feel wonderful. She would feel like you understood

12:39

her. More importantly, that you wanted to understand

12:42

her, that you were listening. And

12:44

that's the thing that allows us to know, this

12:46

person wants to connect with me. Even

12:48

if it's much more natural for you to come up with a

12:50

solution, how to solve the problem with your mom. Just

12:53

by showing you I've heard you through looping

12:55

through understanding, now you're more ready to listen

12:57

to my solution. Or to start

12:59

brainstorming solutions together. I really like

13:01

that. And that almost makes me think of a

13:04

fundamental sales skill, right? Which is parroting back

13:06

what somebody's saying and then asking them if

13:08

you understand their pain points or their needs.

13:11

It's funny because sales a lot of ways mirrors,

13:13

it's almost a weaponized version of communication science, right?

13:15

Well, and it doesn't have to be weaponized. I

13:17

mean, I think one of the things that good

13:20

sales people know is, if you're

13:22

not being authentic in your curiosity, you're

13:24

probably not gonna close the sale, right? If you're

13:26

just doing it because somebody told you to

13:29

pair it back, then it's probably not gonna work. In fact, there was

13:31

this one study that was done just

13:34

to prove how easily we can pick up

13:36

in authenticity. These researchers had a

13:38

bunch of friends who were, they recorded friends

13:40

who were laughing together, and then they recorded

13:42

a bunch of strangers who they told to

13:44

laugh with each other, as if they were

13:46

hearing a joke together. And what

13:48

they would do is they would only play

13:50

one second of these recordings,

13:53

and people with a 90% accuracy

13:55

could tell who was the friends and

13:57

who were the strangers. That's why.

14:00

And it's because our brains

14:02

are hardwired to detect inauthenticity.

14:05

Inauthenticity is such a potentially dangerous thing

14:07

to a society that when we hear

14:09

it, when we see it, the alarm

14:11

bells go off, right? And

14:13

so if in fact you're asking questions,

14:15

not because you actually care what the

14:17

answer is and you're just parroting back

14:20

what someone says instead of really processing

14:22

what they said and trying to understand

14:24

them, that person's going to know. Maybe

14:26

you can get away with it once if you're selling them like a

14:28

car. But anything more meaningful

14:31

than that and it's probably not going to

14:33

work. And frankly, it's not going to work for the car salesman either.

14:37

And the most successful salespeople usually

14:39

aren't the hardcore use car salesman

14:41

vibe, right? It's much

14:43

more about actually building rapport, seeking to

14:46

understand what somebody's trying to accomplish and

14:49

helping shape the conversation towards meeting their

14:51

needs. And showing them I want to

14:53

connect with you. This isn't a

14:56

transactional relationship. I don't just want you

14:58

because I want your money. I actually want

15:00

to understand like your needs and your wants

15:02

so that I can help you satisfy them

15:04

because then you're going to be happy with

15:06

my product. It's all about the connection.

15:10

You touched on this concept earlier and I want to dig a little bit

15:13

deeper which is the idea of asking deep

15:15

questions. How do you think about shaping or

15:17

asking better deep questions or if I felt

15:20

unsure about how to ask a really good

15:22

deep question, what guidance would you have to

15:24

be better at doing that? So

15:26

I think the best thing to do and the easiest thing

15:28

to do is just to ask a why question. Where

15:31

did you go to high school? Montgomery Bell Academy.

15:33

Montgomery Bell Academy. Okay, did you like Montgomery

15:36

Bell Academy? Yeah, it was great. I loved

15:38

it. Yeah, why? What was it

15:40

about it that like... Okay, we're getting deep. All

15:42

right. And I guarantee you whatever you're about to say

15:44

next is going to tell me something about who you

15:46

are, right? I was on the debate team. That's what

15:48

I liked about it. There you go. There you go.

15:51

So here's what I know about you now. I know that you're a

15:53

little bit geeky, right? Because I was on the debate team too. I

15:56

didn't know that. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. I

15:59

did Lincoln Douglas debate. life here. Oh,

16:01

okay. It was my whole life when I was in

16:03

high school, right? It was the most important, meaningful thing.

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16:51

So we're not that deep into

16:53

this conversation. And we already know

16:55

something that we both like connect

16:57

over, which is like, yeah, you

17:00

were both debaters. Now the truth

17:02

of matter is, there's

17:04

1000 different things. It's not the debate that

17:06

matters. It's that you when I

17:08

say, Oh, I was a debater too. And you

17:10

say, Oh, I love debate. What we're doing is

17:12

we're showing each other that we want to connect.

17:15

And that demonstration of intention

17:17

is the powerful thing in making the

17:20

connection. That's why laughter is so

17:22

powerful, right? 80% of

17:24

the time that we laugh, it is not in

17:26

response to a joke. It is not because something

17:28

had said something funny. 80% of the time when

17:31

we laugh, we laugh to show someone else I

17:33

want to connect with you. And when they laugh

17:35

back, which is like the most automatic natural response

17:37

on earth, when they laugh back, they're saying, I

17:39

want to connect with you too. This

17:42

is how super communicators move through the

17:44

world. They ask more questions 10 to 20

17:46

times as many questions as the average person.

17:48

They laugh more. But the laughter, the laughter

17:50

is an easy laughter. It's not like they're

17:52

waiting for someone to tell a joke. They're

17:56

just laughing because it makes it easy to talk

17:58

to each other. They match other

18:00

people more actively. If you say something serious,

18:02

if you say something sad, rather than skating

18:05

over it and pretending like I didn't hear

18:07

it, they ask a question and say, tell

18:09

me more about that. Why was

18:11

this important to you? That's how

18:13

we create a connection. That's an amazing stat.

18:16

10 to 20 times more questions. Well,

18:19

and what's interesting is that in studies,

18:21

if you look at super communicators, what you'll see is

18:24

the questions they ask, many of them don't even

18:26

register as questions. They ask things like, oh yeah,

18:28

what'd you make of that? Oh, what happened next?

18:32

What'd you say after that? They ask these questions that

18:34

are almost throwaway questions that you don't even pick up

18:36

on, but what they're doing is

18:38

they're inviting other people into the conversation. Now,

18:40

they also ask deep questions, right? They ask

18:42

some questions that aren't throwaway questions, but

18:45

their habit is to ask

18:47

a question that makes it easier for someone

18:49

else to participate. I really

18:51

like that. I've found in my

18:53

personal experience at least that using

18:56

Socratic influencing methods, right, which is basically

18:58

using a lot of questions is

19:01

almost always the best way to start to

19:03

build a bridge of rapport with somebody. Absolutely.

19:06

Because the truth of the matter is that we're

19:09

all predisposed to think that the other person

19:11

just wants to bloviate in front of us,

19:13

right? They're looking for an audience rather than

19:15

a dialogue. And when we ask a

19:17

question, we're showing them that we

19:19

actually wanna understand who they are. So

19:21

can I ask you a question? Sure. So

19:24

you were a debater in high school, and

19:26

then did you do it in college too? So

19:28

I debated freshman year, and then I

19:31

decided I actually wanted to enjoy college,

19:33

and I retired from my debate career after

19:35

freshman year debating. And do you

19:38

wish now that you still had that kind

19:40

of activity in your life? Like debate

19:43

was amazing, and I feel like

19:45

I got every ounce of, I

19:47

extracted a lot of value from it. Definitely from

19:49

an 80-20 standpoint, I got my 80%. I

19:52

miss it to some extent, but I, and

19:54

you may have the same experience, but I'd be

19:56

curious to hear your perspective on it. I feel like the skills

19:59

that I got from debate. I learned

20:02

more in debate than I learned in –

20:04

if you took everything I learned in all

20:06

of high school and probably college crammed it

20:09

together, debate was probably 10 times more valuable

20:11

in terms of communication skills, researching, presenting, speaking,

20:13

all the above. And

20:16

I still go back and look at my old debate

20:18

files and reminisce about making

20:20

arguments and putting things together. So I guess to some

20:22

extent I miss it. So I

20:24

feel very similarly that like I felt like I

20:26

learned a lot from it. I also felt like

20:29

there was a lot of stuff that I had to unlearn, right?

20:32

That it didn't necessarily teach me how to

20:34

be a good friend to someone. That's true.

20:36

And what I hear you saying is that

20:38

debate was powerful to you because it gave

20:41

you these skills. It sort of – it probably

20:43

gave you some self-confidence if I'm getting

20:45

that right, that you can carry

20:47

yourself through the world. And I think

20:49

it definitely gave me that. The thing that when I

20:51

got to college I found I was lacking was how

20:55

not to be competitive, how not to be

20:57

self-confident, how to let my guard down and

20:59

really get to know someone else. And

21:02

so I want my kids to debate but I also

21:04

want them – I want them to do other things

21:06

that help develop other parts of their

21:08

brain. I'm still working on the how not

21:10

to be competitive. It's

21:12

okay. Give

21:16

it some time. I got

21:18

to work on my emotional and my social

21:21

communication skills a little bit more. But

21:27

I think

21:30

that hits on a really interesting piece

21:32

of the puzzle which is these communication

21:34

skills certainly can get them from an

21:36

arena like debate. Your

21:40

kids will beat it out of you. Yeah, that

21:42

is true. But

21:44

I think that hits on a really

21:46

interesting piece of the puzzle which is

21:49

these communication skills certainly can get them

21:51

from an arena like debate. You can

21:53

also apply them across a huge array

21:55

of contexts. You

21:58

mentioned doctors. I know you have some really cool examples

22:00

in the book about surgeons. I know you can

22:02

look at it from a CIA

22:05

and sort of spy recruiting perspective.

22:07

You know, I think the universality and

22:10

cross applicability of some of these communication

22:12

skills is what makes

22:14

them so powerful in my mind. And

22:16

I think the reason why they're so cross applicable

22:19

is because when you think about it, communication

22:21

is human's superpower, right? The reason

22:23

why homo sapiens have succeeded so

22:26

well, better than any

22:28

other species is because we can communicate

22:30

more richly with each other. And that

22:32

communication allows us to build families and

22:34

it allows us to build communities and

22:36

societies and cities and countries, right?

22:39

It allows us to transfer knowledge more

22:41

easily. So communication

22:43

actually undergirds everything that we do.

22:45

Like if you think about art,

22:48

what is the goal of art? It is

22:50

to communicate something without necessarily using

22:52

the words to communicate it. Maybe even

22:54

things you can't put into words. If

22:57

you think about why the iPhone was

22:59

so successful, the iPhone was successful because

23:01

you look at it and it communicated

23:03

to you how it should be used.

23:06

It communicated how easy it was to

23:08

use that screen, the touch screen. Communication

23:10

is our superpower. And people

23:12

who know how to communicate better, people who

23:15

are super communicators, people who can consistently not

23:17

only connect with other people but show them

23:19

that they want to connect with them. Those

23:22

are people who end up

23:24

being much more successful than everyone else.

23:26

I love that phrasing. It's not just

23:28

connecting, it's showing that you want to

23:31

connect. That's exactly right. Because think about

23:33

how many times you're listening

23:35

to someone and you don't show them that

23:37

you're listening. Or you genuinely want to connect

23:39

with someone and you don't know how to

23:41

show them that you want to connect. And

23:43

the truth of the matter is, it's actually

23:45

really easy once we realize what we need

23:47

to do. If you're telling me a story

23:49

and it's a sad story that if I

23:51

match your sadness, if I use the matching

23:53

principle to lean into that

23:55

discussion, to ask you how that felt,

23:58

to say, you know, I know how hard

24:00

it is to lose someone because I lost my own dad

24:02

six years ago. What I'm really

24:04

saying to you is, is I hear what

24:07

you're saying and I want to connect with you.

24:09

I want to share myself enough because

24:11

I want you to share with me. And

24:14

sometimes it's just sending that signal that

24:16

we want to connect that creates the

24:19

connection. Sometimes that's enough. I

24:21

really like that. And you hit

24:24

on something earlier that I also think

24:26

is really powerful, which is this

24:29

concept that communication is

24:31

the metaskill. It's a

24:33

skill that makes every other skill more

24:36

impactful. It's almost like a force

24:38

multiplier. Any human endeavor

24:40

that's even moderately meaningful

24:43

effectively involves the coordination of

24:45

multiple humans. If you want to

24:47

build a large company, if you want to make a huge

24:49

impact in the nonprofit world, if you want to communicate ideas

24:51

to lots of people, no matter what

24:54

it is, you have to understand how to get

24:56

someone else to understand what you're trying to do.

24:59

And that idea that communication is almost

25:01

the ultimate or one of the ultimate

25:03

sort of metaskills to me is really

25:06

powerful and underscores the importance of focusing

25:09

on understanding and building communication skills.

25:11

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And

25:13

in fact, this connection,

25:15

this metaskill is so profound that we can

25:18

actually see the evidence of it in our

25:20

bodies and our brains. So even

25:22

though you and I are separated by thousands of miles

25:24

right now, if we could detect it,

25:26

neither of us are aware of this, but if we

25:28

could detect it, what we would find is that throughout

25:30

this conversation, our pupils have started dilating at the same

25:32

rate. Our breath patterns

25:35

have started matching each other,

25:37

completely unconsciously. And most

25:39

importantly, if we could see inside our brains, what

25:41

we would see is that our neural activity starts

25:43

to look similar. And that's

25:45

what communication is. Communication is I have

25:48

an idea or I feel something

25:50

and I describe it to you

25:52

and you experience that idea or

25:54

you experience that feeling. Our

25:56

brains become what's known in the language

25:58

of neurology as neurally

26:01

entrained. And if

26:03

you think about it, this is why communication is so

26:05

powerful is because I can share

26:07

something with you, you can experience

26:09

it with me simply because I describe it to

26:11

you. That we have

26:14

an empathy for each other that comes

26:16

from conversation and words. And

26:18

it's really powerful to recognize that

26:20

because it points out to us

26:23

what we ought to be doing in conversations, which

26:25

is trying to connect. It makes

26:27

me think of, I read this

26:29

book several years ago that was Ernest Hemingway

26:31

quotes, very random, but makes me

26:33

think of one of his lines was around

26:35

how every sentence he's

26:38

trying to figure out how

26:40

best possible to communicate a

26:42

feeling with that phrase. And

26:44

it goes back to what you said a minute ago about art as

26:46

well, right? It's all about how we can

26:49

bridge that gap and make somebody feel

26:52

what we're feeling or feel seen

26:54

or communicate those things in a

26:56

way that we're establishing that

26:58

bridge. And think about how good it feels

27:01

when you do say something real and a person turns

27:03

to you and they say, oh man,

27:06

like what you said moved me so much.

27:09

Like I felt what you were feeling. It

27:11

feels wonderful to connect with other people. In fact,

27:14

our brains have evolved to give us a feeling

27:16

of wonderfulness when we connect. It's one of the

27:18

things that's at the core of why Homo sapiens,

27:20

again, were able to build societies was because we

27:23

crave connection with other people. It

27:25

feels good to connect and

27:28

it does feel good. It's something that we should

27:30

treasure. And it's also something that you

27:32

can just learn to do with a certain set of skills. So

27:35

we touched on asking deep

27:37

questions. You talked about looping for understanding

27:39

what are some of the other skills

27:41

that we can build to become super

27:43

communicators. I think if you look

27:45

at how super communicators behave, the

27:47

most important one is the matching principle, right? That

27:50

I'm going to try and match what kind of

27:52

conversation you're having. And I think that

27:54

in doing so, there's a couple of things that

27:56

can help guide us. One is paying attention to

27:58

people's mood and energy. So, in the

28:00

book, we tell the story of the creation of the

28:03

sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, right? The

28:05

Big Bang Theory went on to be literally the

28:07

most successful sitcom in history. It's made more episodes

28:09

and more awards than any other show. But

28:12

what's interesting is when they shot the pilot, it

28:14

was a total flop. People hated the

28:16

show. And the reason they hated the show was

28:18

because the idea behind the show is, for anyone

28:20

who's not seen it, is it's

28:23

about a bunch of physicists who are

28:25

completely socially awkward, right? They're like bad

28:27

at like communicating. They're bad at even

28:29

understanding what they're feeling. They're awkward. And

28:32

they inevitably are surrounded by these like

28:34

very beautiful women who make them even

28:37

more uncomfortable. And so the

28:39

problem for the writers was, how do

28:41

we write a show where the viewer

28:43

understands what people are feeling when

28:45

our characters do such a bad job

28:47

of explaining what they're feeling? When

28:50

that's the very nature of the character. That's what

28:52

makes it funny. And what

28:54

they found was that the solution was, if

28:56

they had the characters match each

28:59

other's energy and mood, then

29:01

the audience would know if they were connecting with each other.

29:04

So no matter what they were saying, if

29:06

one person comes in and they say, I'm

29:08

really upset, and the other person says, I'm

29:10

really happy. And they both say it

29:13

with the same energy. And they seem to be

29:15

having the same mood, even though their words are

29:17

really, really different. You're going to know

29:19

as a viewer, oh, these people like each other.

29:21

Like they're connecting right now. Whereas if I come

29:23

in and I say, I'm really upset, and someone

29:25

else says, oh, really? I'm

29:28

sorry to hear that. Because I feel happy

29:30

right now. Then you're going

29:32

to know those two people, they're not connecting. And

29:35

this is something that we can use in our own life is

29:37

when we're talking to someone, if we notice

29:39

their mood and their energy, we

29:42

can match that and use that as an

29:44

opportunity to connect with them. So

29:46

if you see someone who seems really bouncy

29:49

and upbeat and just

29:51

excited, give yourself into

29:54

that enthusiasm. Like you're going to find

29:56

a way to connect with them. On the other hand,

29:58

if you're feeling sedative. and

30:00

calm and you encounter someone, let

30:02

them know I'm sedate and calm

30:04

and invite them to match you. That's

30:07

how we connect with each other. I love

30:09

that analogy and it's so cool to think

30:11

about all of the nonverbal

30:14

elements of that, right? In the sense that

30:16

it's not about the words, it's about the

30:18

feeling, it's about the connectivity and

30:21

I also can't help but think about the

30:23

cast of Big Bang Theory is not that

30:25

dissimilar from a lot of the debaters I

30:27

knew. I don't know if you are. True.

30:29

That's exactly true. Yes, a little

30:31

nerdy, a little, not the

30:34

most socially suave people on the face of the

30:36

planet. Yeah, exactly. We've come

30:38

a long way though. It's true. It's

30:40

true. It's better hopefully and still

30:43

learning. That's true. So

30:45

that's a great analogy and you tell another story

30:47

which I thought was really cool which is a

30:49

much different context which is how these same skills

30:51

can apply to things like

30:53

recruiting spies or turning spies. Tell

30:56

me that story. Yeah. So this is one

30:58

of my favorite stories. This is a story

31:00

of Jim Lawler who became a CIA officer

31:02

in 1981. And this

31:04

guy wanted to be, he was really young. He

31:07

had wanted to be in the CIA so bad.

31:09

He worked so hard to get it. And so

31:11

they accept him and they train him and they

31:13

send him overseas to Europe and his job is

31:15

to recruit other people to

31:17

be spies for America. And he

31:19

is terrible at this job. He

31:21

is so bad at it. He's

31:23

like gawky and awkward. He goes

31:26

to embassy parties and like nobody

31:28

will talk with him because he's so like weird

31:31

to talk to. He tries to recruit one

31:33

guy from the Chinese embassy and the guy

31:35

is like actually they kill people in

31:37

my country for that so I'm never going to speak

31:39

to you again. So Jim Lawler

31:41

is basically failing completely at this job and

31:43

then one of his colleagues says, okay, look,

31:45

this woman Fatima is coming into town. She

31:47

works for the foreign ministry in her home country

31:49

back in the Middle East. You should

31:52

get to know her. So he goes, he manages

31:54

to bump into her at a restaurant. He tells

31:56

her he's an oil speculator. He invites her to

31:58

lunch the next day. to know

32:00

each other, they start sightseeing together. And Fatma, this

32:02

is in the early 1980s, right?

32:04

And Fatma says, you know, there's been a

32:06

revolution in my country, the religious radicals have

32:08

come to power and I hate it, I

32:11

want to fight them, but I don't

32:13

know what to do. And so one night

32:15

Jim Lawler says to her, look, you and

32:17

I want the same thing. Like you want to end the

32:19

repression of women in your country. I want

32:21

to end the repression of women in your country because I

32:24

work for the CIA. I don't work for an oil company.

32:26

Will you come work for me at

32:28

the CIA? Will you be an overseas asset?

32:31

And she starts gripping the table and her eyes

32:33

get really wide and she starts crying and saying no,

32:36

no, no, no, no. And she just freaks out,

32:38

right? She says like to kill people in my country

32:40

for that she runs out of the room. Jim

32:43

Lawler goes back to his boss to tell him what

32:45

had happened and his boss is like, no, I already

32:47

told everyone in Washington DC you had recruited this woman.

32:49

Like you got to close the deal here. If you

32:52

don't, you're gonna get fired. Like this is the last

32:54

straw because you've been here for a year and you

32:56

have accomplished nothing. So Lawler

32:58

knows that he has just one more chance to

33:01

try and he gets Fatima

33:03

to have one more dinner with him and

33:05

he spends days and days writing down

33:07

ideas for like how to recruit her.

33:09

And it's just, he knows it's pointless.

33:12

Like you cannot manipulate someone into taking

33:14

a suicidal risk for you. So

33:16

she comes to dinner and she's really down.

33:19

She's feeling really glum because she's about to fly home and

33:21

she like, she's kind of disappointed in

33:23

herself. She had hoped that she would be able

33:25

to figure out something about, about

33:28

moving through the world in Europe and it just hasn't

33:30

happened. And so Lawler, instead of

33:32

matching her, he starts trying to cheer her up. He

33:35

tells her funny stories. He reminisces about

33:37

when they went sightseeing and none

33:39

of it works of course, and they get to dessert

33:42

and Fatima is still feeling really glum.

33:45

And at this point Lawler is thinking to himself, like, do

33:47

I try and recruit her one more time? And he's like,

33:49

if I try, she's just going to stand up and walk

33:51

out. Like this is pointless. I'm

33:54

just going to get fired. I just have to accept that. And

33:57

so now that he's decided it's not going to work. Now

34:00

he starts being honest with her and

34:02

he starts matching her and he says look I know I know

34:05

what you're feeling right now Cuz like I feel so

34:07

disappointed in myself like I Came

34:10

here to work for the CIA. It's a job I

34:12

wanted my whole life and I'm so

34:14

bad at it like I see other people and

34:16

they seem to have this like natural Confidence or

34:18

something that like I just don't have And

34:22

I don't think I'm gonna be able to do this and

34:24

he talks for like 10 minutes and Fatima starts crying And

34:27

he reaches over and he's like, I'm sorry. I did not mean to make

34:29

you cry And like

34:31

this isn't this isn't what I wanted to

34:33

have happen and she's crying and she

34:35

says no, no, it's okay It's

34:37

okay. I can help you and Jim Lawler

34:39

in his inexperience says the first thing that pops into his

34:41

mind He says no, no, you don't have to help me.

34:44

No, no, I I'm not trying to recruit you I'm just

34:46

I'm just trying to like tell you how I'm feeling and

34:48

she goes no I can hear what you're saying now We

34:51

want the same thing. I can

34:53

work for you the next day. She goes to

34:55

a safe house She learns covert communications She becomes

34:57

one of the best assets in the Middle East

34:59

for the next 20 years and

35:02

she ever Lawler goes on to be one of

35:04

the best Recruiters in the CIA and it's

35:06

because he learned an important thing He

35:08

wasn't matching Fatima. He wasn't being honest with

35:10

her. He wasn't trying to really connect with

35:12

her He was trying to manipulate her and

35:15

once he let down all of his guards and

35:17

he finally said my goal here is

35:19

just to connect It's just to understand you and have

35:21

you understand me That's when

35:23

they were able to hear each other and

35:26

that's when she was able to understand They

35:28

actually wanted the same thing such

35:30

a great story And I love the

35:32

fact that not only was she an

35:34

incredibly valuable asset He was a very

35:36

successful recruiter, but he started

35:39

out as you said being super

35:41

awkward not good at communication skills

35:44

Not somebody that you would traditionally think

35:46

of as being a charismatic smooth operator

35:49

Commencing people to do stuff and

35:51

to me that lesson is really important

35:54

Because and I'm curious what your perspective on this

35:56

is too. How do you think about building

35:59

these skills? if you don't feel

36:01

super confident and like you're an amazing communicator

36:03

and you can read people and How do

36:06

you think about building and applying these if

36:08

you do feel like you're awkward and not

36:10

very good at communication? So what's interesting about

36:12

super communicators again people who can consistently do

36:14

this is If

36:17

you ask them almost all of them will

36:19

tell you that they were not good communicators

36:21

when they were younger That

36:23

you know either they weren't popular in school They

36:26

had trouble making friends or maybe their parents were

36:28

getting divorced and they had to be the Peacemaker

36:30

between their two warring parents or in high school.

36:32

They felt awkward or in college, you know They

36:34

felt like the odd man or odd woman out

36:38

And so the reason they become a super

36:40

communicator is not because they're charismatic It's not

36:42

because this is something that they're born to

36:44

it's because it's they've just studied a little

36:46

bit more deeply like half an inch More

36:48

deeply how conversations work and it's

36:50

just paying a little bit more attention that makes all

36:52

the difference And so what I would

36:54

say to folks if they're going into a conversation and

36:57

you don't feel like you're a super communicator is Okay,

36:59

there's a couple of tactics a couple of skills you

37:02

can use ask a deep question,

37:04

right? It's really easy to ask a deep question

37:06

Loop for understanding to show the other

37:08

person that you're listening when

37:11

they say something that's emotional or practical

37:13

match them Join them in

37:15

that type of conversation by saying

37:17

something emotional about yourself or saying something

37:19

practical about yourself We're talking about social

37:22

issues but overall what

37:24

we're really saying is Nobody's

37:28

naturally good at this but if you

37:30

pay a little bit more attention you get better and That's

37:32

really really important because one of the

37:35

things that we know is that it's

37:37

simply wanting to be a better

37:39

communicator That often is the first step to becoming

37:41

a better communicator There's other

37:43

things you can do There was a study that was done by

37:45

Harvard Business School where they asked a

37:47

bunch of students to have conversations with strangers

37:50

And before they did they told them to

37:52

write down Three topics that

37:54

they might want to discuss right like and

37:56

then it took seven to ten seconds It

37:58

was like, you know that movie movie I'm

38:00

going to see this weekend and last night's game

38:02

and where are you going on

38:04

vacation this year?" And everyone would scribble these

38:06

down on an index card and many of them would

38:08

actually put it in their back pocket, right? And

38:11

then they would go have conversation with

38:13

strangers. And oftentimes the topics that they

38:15

wrote down would never come up during

38:17

the dialogue. But afterwards, all

38:19

of those students said that they felt so much

38:22

less anxious about that conversation because they knew that

38:24

they had something in their back pocket. They knew

38:26

they had something to fall back on. And

38:29

I think that's another tactic that indicates super

38:32

communicators aren't people who feel natural at

38:34

this. Super communicators are just people who

38:36

have prepared themselves and

38:38

all of us can prepare ourselves. That's

38:41

such a critical concept to me, this

38:43

idea that you can learn these skills,

38:45

right? You don't have to be born

38:47

with this skill set. And in fact,

38:50

the Jim Lawler story is a great

38:52

example of how somebody could come from

38:54

basically having none of these skills to

38:56

being tremendously influential in arguably one

38:58

of the most difficult communications contexts

39:01

you can think of which is

39:03

convincing people to become spies for

39:05

more than a century, right? Against

39:07

theirs. And the fact that it's

39:09

learnable means it's not just you're not

39:11

stuck if you feel like you don't have communication

39:13

skills, you can learn, you can improve, you can

39:15

get better. That's exactly right. And

39:18

apply these tools aren't crazy difficult

39:20

to ask questions and try to connect

39:22

with somebody to match how

39:24

they're feeling or match the frame of the

39:27

conversation. If they laugh, let yourself laugh back,

39:29

right? It's something that like actually feels instinctual,

39:31

but sometimes we don't listen to that instinct.

39:34

In a lot of ways, as I mentioned,

39:36

our brains have evolved to communicate, we've evolved

39:38

to be super communicators. And one

39:41

of the things that the reason I wrote this book is because a

39:43

lot of the lessons are just about learning

39:45

to listen to our instincts a little bit

39:47

better, letting those instincts out, learning

39:49

to train ourselves just to think like again,

39:51

half an inch deeper about what's going on.

39:54

Because that way, we know which instincts to

39:56

listen to. I really like that it's almost

39:59

an element of unlearning. Yeah. With

40:01

our debate careers. In some sense, yeah.

40:04

One thing I want to clarify or just understand

40:06

better from earlier in our conversation, I think

40:09

I have a pretty good understanding of a practical

40:11

conversation. I think a pretty good understanding of an

40:13

emotional conversation. In your perspective,

40:15

the social conversations, who are we?

40:17

What are those about? Is

40:19

it who am I professionally?

40:22

How do I fit in society? What group are we? What is

40:24

our group doing? Help me unpack and understand

40:26

that piece of the puzzle a little bit better. It's all of those

40:28

things. What's interesting is that about 70%

40:31

of our conversations are actually social

40:33

conversations. When

40:35

we're engaging in office gossip, that's a social conversation.

40:37

We're talking about how we relate to other people,

40:39

how they relate to us. What

40:42

are the rules for proper

40:44

behavior in this workplace? When

40:46

I come home and I say to my wife, we've

40:48

got to talk about one of our kids' grades and

40:50

like, what's going on? Are his

40:52

friends a good influence on him or a bad influence?

40:55

That's a social conversation. When I sit down

40:57

with someone new and they live in

40:59

Tennessee and I live in California and

41:02

I say to them, look, living in Tennessee, you probably

41:04

see things a little bit differently than I do. There's

41:07

probably some social influences that you

41:09

get exposed to there that I

41:11

don't. That might mean that you

41:13

see things like the election differently, the economy

41:15

differently, things like race differently if

41:17

you're in the South and I'm not in the South.

41:19

Oftentimes, we feel like we should avoid those subjects. We

41:21

shouldn't bring those up. But

41:23

the truth of the matter is, if we acknowledge

41:26

them in a nonjudgmental way

41:28

and a curious way, then it

41:31

actually becomes much richer because you, being in Tennessee right

41:33

now, can tell me what it's like to be a

41:35

man in Tennessee and I can tell you what it's

41:38

like to be a man in California. If

41:40

there was a woman in this conversation, she could

41:42

tell us, look, the two of you see things

41:44

this way, but as a woman, I see it

41:46

a little bit differently. When we

41:48

engage with all of these many

41:51

identities that all of us possess, what

41:54

we're doing is we're actually inviting people to share

41:56

who they are with us. So

41:59

it's not inappropriate. that you can do

42:01

it ungracefully, right? You can say like, well,

42:03

you're black, so you must believe X. That's

42:05

not the right way to do it. But

42:07

it's totally appropriate to say to someone, you know,

42:10

I'm wondering, like, as

42:12

a lawyer, how do you think

42:15

about police and police use of

42:17

force? Because you're also a black man

42:19

and a black father. And I'm

42:21

wondering, does that give you a different perspective

42:23

on this? And when I asked

42:25

the question that way, it seems really respectful. And even more

42:27

importantly, it doesn't say I see

42:29

you as one identity. It says

42:31

I want to understand your many identities.

42:34

You're a black man, you're a father,

42:36

you're a lawyer, you're someone who's involved

42:38

in your community. Those are

42:40

all different aspects of who you are. And

42:43

I want to learn about how they come together

42:45

for you. That's something that feels really

42:47

good. That makes total sense. And

42:49

on the slightly less

42:51

intense side of the spectrum would

42:53

even conversations like, Oh, hey,

42:55

how many kids do you have? And how would

42:57

you categorize those as broadly sort of actual? Absolutely.

43:00

I was like, you know, totally makes sense. Tell

43:02

me about your kids. Do you relate differently to

43:04

different like, to your different kids? Are

43:07

your kids different from each other? Like now?

43:09

Yeah, now we're talking about like the social

43:11

issues, right? We're talking about, and in fact,

43:13

you might very well say something like, you

43:16

know, I worry

43:18

about different things for my sons and daughters,

43:21

which is totally

43:23

normal. You probably do right.

43:25

And what we're really talking about is we're

43:28

talking, we've talked about this a little bit. But

43:30

if you think about practically applying

43:32

these skill sets becoming a super

43:34

communicator, for somebody who's listening

43:36

to our conversation, what would be one action

43:39

step you would give them to start as

43:41

soon as they finish listening to this, to

43:44

apply these and take some

43:46

step to becoming a super

43:48

communicator today? Just choose the

43:51

deep question you're going to ask someone in

43:53

your next conversation, right? So look

43:55

for an opportunity to ask them a

43:57

question that starts with why. But Why

44:00

did you decide to do that? Why

44:02

was being a debater important to you? Why'd

44:04

you grow up where you grew up? Why do you live in

44:07

Tennessee now? All of those are questions

44:09

that invite the other person to tell you

44:11

something about themselves. And that's the

44:13

first step, because what you're doing is you're

44:15

not only asking them a question that invites

44:17

them to describe themselves, you're also

44:19

telling them, I wanna connect with you. Like,

44:21

I'm curious about you, I wanna learn about

44:23

you. And that

44:25

evidence of intent of connection is

44:28

what makes them feel more kind

44:30

towards you, it makes them want to

44:32

listen to you, it makes them like you more, it makes

44:35

them trust you more. And that's how we

44:37

start to connect with each other. I love

44:39

it, great piece of advice. And Charles, for

44:41

folks who wanna find super communicators,

44:43

what's the best place for them to find

44:45

the book and your work online? So it's

44:48

available in all of your favorite bookshops, including

44:50

your local bookshop or Amazon or Audible if

44:52

you wanna listen to it. And

44:54

in addition, if they wanna find me, my

44:57

email address is charlesatcharlesdoohig.com.

45:00

Or if you just Google me, you'll find my website

45:02

with my email address on it. And

45:04

I actually read and reply to every single reader

45:06

email that I get. You know, I feel

45:08

like if you, yeah, yeah, if you

45:10

wanna communicate with people, you have to

45:12

communicate with them. So if somebody wants to look me

45:15

up and send me a note, I can promise you,

45:17

I will read it, I will respond to you. I'm

45:19

the only Charles Doohig on the planet. So

45:21

if you Google my last name, I'm gonna come

45:23

up. That's awesome. Charles, it has been

45:25

a pleasure to have you back on the show.

45:28

I'm super excited about super communicators and thank

45:30

you so much for a great conversation and

45:33

some really cool insights into how we can

45:35

all be better communicators. Thanks for having me.

45:37

I really appreciate it. Thank

45:39

you so much for listening to the science

45:41

of success. We created the show

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