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and information, and what to look out for.

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Each week on the show, we'll

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dig into far-right platforms, AI chatbots,

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Wired Politics Lab launches Thursday, April 11th.

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Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Hey

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y'all, I'm Erin Haines, the host

0:34

of The Amendment, a brand new weekly

0:36

podcast on gender, politics, and power, brought

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to you by the 19th News and Wonder Media Network.

0:42

You've probably heard the news that this election

0:44

year, our democracy is at stake. On

0:46

The Amendment, I'm breaking down what that actually

0:48

means, specifically for the marginalized

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folks who depend on our democracy the most. This

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is a show that dives past the headlines

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and gets clear on the unfinished work of our

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democracy. Listen

1:00

to The Amendment now, wherever you get your podcasts. The

1:06

measure of whether this conversation is successful is

1:08

not how much you persuade the other person.

1:10

It's a 3 to 5% shift. That

1:15

is not a huge shift. In politics, it's

1:17

enormous. But again, the goal of

1:19

a conversation is not to convince

1:21

the other person they are wrong and you

1:23

are right. The goal of a conversation

1:25

is to understand the other person better,

1:27

to have some type of connection with

1:29

them, even if that doesn't transcend to

1:31

changing their mind. What

1:42

could go right? I'm

1:44

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The

1:46

Progress Network, joined as always by

1:48

my co-host, Emma Varvalukas, the

1:50

executive director of The Progress Network. And

1:53

what could go right is our weekly podcast

1:55

where we look at what could go right. We

1:58

look at what's going on in the world that is. a

6:00

certain percentage of people and maybe it's one of

6:02

those things like, no, okay, I guess I was

6:04

thinking about it like walking or breathing, like when

6:06

you start thinking about it too much, like maybe

6:08

it becomes unnatural, but I guess that's not true.

6:10

I guess it's more of a learned skill. So

6:12

it's actually very much the opposite. So

6:15

it might be helpful just to sort of describe what a

6:17

super communicator is. And in fact, I can ask you guys

6:19

a question that we'll sort of illustrate it, which is if

6:21

you guys were having a bad day and you

6:24

wanted to call someone who you just know would

6:26

make you feel better, somebody who would kind of

6:28

lift your spirits, does the person you

6:30

would call, do they pop into your mind? Maybe.

6:35

It's been a while

6:37

since I've felt the particular need to call

6:40

and vent, but I mean, I think that's also a life

6:42

cycle thing. Not saying that it is a life cycle

6:44

thing. I think for me, it is a life cycle thing.

6:46

When I was a child, when I was younger, I would

6:49

have done that more. Anyway. Zach, are you telling us

6:51

you don't have bad days? That can't be

6:53

true. No, no, I've got plenty of bad days. I'm just

6:55

not likely to vent about my bad days. Let

6:58

me ask the question this way. Do you have

7:00

friends you call that you like talking to? Who

7:02

make you feel good? Yeah, that's okay. Charles,

7:04

I can think of someone in particular for

7:06

sure that anytime you have a conversation with

7:09

her, you come out feeling like your cup

7:11

has been filled. Yeah. And what's that person's

7:13

name? Jasmine. Jasmine. Or Jazzy. We

7:15

call her Jazzy. Yeah. So what does Jazzy

7:17

do? Like when you call Jazzy, what does

7:19

she do that makes you feel good? I

7:21

would say that she is a

7:23

very good listener and she always shows that

7:26

she heard what you said and

7:28

then asks more questions about

7:30

it and tries to like get at where

7:32

you're coming from. Yeah. Yeah. She sort of

7:35

proves to you that she's been hearing you, that

7:37

she has follow-up questions. And

7:39

for you, Jazzy is probably a super communicator

7:41

and you're probably a super communicator right back,

7:44

right? You're probably someone that when she

7:46

calls, she feels, she feels

7:48

great talking to you. She feels a sense of connection.

7:51

Now there are some people, all of us are super

7:53

communicators at one point or another, right? All of us,

7:56

sometimes we walk into that meeting and we know exactly what

7:58

to say to win everyone. over or a friend

8:01

calls and we know exactly what to tell them to

8:03

make them feel better. Some people though

8:05

can do this more consistently. Some people can

8:07

do this with almost anyone. And these are

8:09

the folks that we think of as consistent

8:11

super communicators. And when I started researching for

8:14

the books super communicators, I assumed much like

8:16

you that these were people who were born

8:18

with something special, right? They were born with

8:20

high charisma or they were extroverts. But

8:23

what the data tells us is exactly

8:25

the opposite. That basically there's a normal

8:27

distribution of folks like this from all

8:29

walks of life. That some of them

8:31

are charismatic, but some of them are curmudgeonly. Some

8:34

of them are extroverts, but some of them are

8:36

introverts. And the reason why is

8:38

because it's just a set of learned skills. It's

8:41

a set of tools that much like learning

8:43

to read or learning to cook, that when

8:45

we learn those skills and they become habits

8:47

and our brain is designed to make them

8:49

into habits very quickly, that it

8:51

helps us communicate with other folks. And

8:54

then contrary to what you had mentioned before, one

8:57

of the things that super communicators

8:59

do really well is they think just

9:01

a half an inch deeper about

9:03

conversations, right? Instead of just going on

9:05

autopilot, they think to themselves like,

9:07

what is this person really saying to me? Right?

9:09

What are they really asking for? Oftentimes if you

9:12

ask super communicators like where you always go to

9:14

communication, they'll tell you no, that when they were

9:16

in high school, they had trouble making friends. And

9:18

so they really had to study how kids talk

9:20

to each other or their parents were divorced. And

9:22

so they had to be the peacemaker between them.

9:25

And so one of the things that's important is that

9:27

when we train ourselves to think a little bit more

9:29

about the conversations we're having, those conversations

9:32

tend to get much, much better. Yeah,

9:34

I think that tracks. I think Jazzy used to get into

9:36

fights in high school. That's all I was going to say.

9:38

And if she ever listens to me, I'm Jazzy, I'm so

9:40

sorry. Don't kill me for saying that. I'm not in podcast.

9:43

Go ahead, Zachary. Sorry. I just wanted to step back for

9:45

a minute and ask you how you went from book to

9:47

book to book. So you went from the power

9:50

of habit to the

9:52

power of productivity to the power of

9:54

communication. And I'm just wondering

9:56

what your process was of going from thing

9:58

to thing in this particular. or sequence, not

10:00

that you knew what you were necessarily gonna

10:02

write when you wrote the first one. Maybe

10:04

you had it all charted out, but I would

10:06

think it's more likely you went

10:09

on to other things more serendipitously. But I'm

10:11

just curious, is do you find a through

10:13

line here? Is there a series of questions

10:15

you've had for a long time? Usually

10:17

I write these books in response to an

10:20

issue that I'm having, right? I wrote The

10:22

Power of Habit in large part because I

10:24

was very successful professionally. But at the same

10:26

time, I kept on having trouble making myself

10:28

do the things that I felt like I

10:30

should be doing, like eating more healthily or

10:32

exercising in the morning. And I was

10:35

thinking to myself, if I'm so smart, like why is

10:37

it so hard for me to get myself to go

10:39

running in the morning? And so I really

10:41

wanted to understand the neurology habits. And so I started

10:43

calling experts and asking them about it. And

10:46

very similarly with communication and super

10:48

communicators, one of the things that happened

10:50

is that I fell into this bad pattern with

10:52

my wife, which is that, and we've been married

10:54

for 20 years very happily, I would come home

10:56

from work after a long day and I would

10:58

start complaining to her about my day. And she

11:01

would very reasonably respond with some practical advice. Like

11:03

why don't you take your boss out

11:05

to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a

11:07

little bit better. And instead of being able to hear what she

11:09

was saying, I would get even more worked up

11:11

and be like, why aren't you supporting me?

11:13

You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. And then she

11:15

would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me

11:17

good advice. And so I went to researchers and sort of

11:19

asked them like, what is going on here? Like this

11:22

is someone who I want to connect with. And yet sometimes

11:25

we find these times when it's very hard

11:27

for us to do so, what am I

11:29

doing wrong? And they said, well, actually it's kind

11:31

of interesting because we're living through

11:33

this golden age of understanding the

11:36

science of communication in large part

11:38

because of advances in neural imaging and

11:40

data collection. We can see what's

11:42

happening inside people's brains as they're having conversations

11:44

for kind of the first time. And

11:46

they said, one of the things that we've learned

11:48

is that we tend to think of a

11:51

discussion as being about one thing, right? We're like talking

11:53

about my day or when you call Jazzy, you're talking

11:56

about a coworker, but

11:58

actually every discussion. is made of

12:00

different kinds of conversations. And

12:03

they tend to fall into one of three big

12:05

buckets. There's practical conversations, which is about making

12:07

plans or solving problems. There's

12:10

emotional discussions where I might

12:13

tell you how I feel and I don't want

12:15

you to solve my feelings. I want you to

12:17

empathize. And then finally, there's social

12:19

conversations about how we relate to each other

12:21

in society and the social identities that are

12:23

important to us. And what they said is

12:26

all three of those conversations are legitimate and

12:28

all three will actually happen in any given

12:30

discussion. But if you're not having

12:32

the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you're

12:35

unlikely to hear each other. And

12:37

so when I was coming home and I was complaining about my

12:39

day, I was having an emotional conversation and my

12:42

wife was responding with a practical conversation. And

12:45

as a result, we had trouble connecting. And

12:47

so it was really out of my own desire

12:49

to figure out how to solve this problem that

12:51

I found the topic that brought me to super

12:54

communicators. So of course we have to ask now

12:56

if that's still happening with you and your wife, but I mean,

12:58

the more important sort of question to that

13:01

is how does one fix that? Meaning like,

13:03

how do you know that somebody is in

13:05

an emotional state and you're in a practical

13:07

one and like, do you switch or do

13:10

they switch? Or like, how does that work? Yeah,

13:13

well, so the answer is no, it

13:15

doesn't really happen anymore because we ask

13:17

each other questions and questions tend to

13:19

be really important. In fact,

13:21

we know that super communicators, consistent super

13:23

communicators, they ask like 10

13:25

to 20 times as many questions as the

13:27

average person. And so now when

13:29

I come home and I'm complaining to my wife, she'll often say like,

13:32

do you want me to help you figure out a solution for this

13:34

or do you just need to vent and get this off your chest?

13:37

Which of course, like is actually kind of

13:39

nice to be asked because oftentimes I

13:41

hadn't thought about it until that moment. But

13:44

sometimes it's hard to ask that, right? Like

13:46

sometimes you're in a workplace or you're saying

13:48

like, is this a practical conversation or is

13:50

this an emotional conversation is tough? And

13:52

so oftentimes in those moments, one of the best things

13:54

that we can do is to

13:56

ask a certain kind of question, which is known

13:59

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cure or prevent. Any disease, actually

30:00

saying to someone, what I hear you saying is

30:02

you like to go to places in the Caribbean, but

30:04

you don't like all of the Caribbean because there's

30:06

this thing that a ruba has that seemed really special

30:09

to you, right? That's why when

30:11

we repeat back sort of what someone told us,

30:13

we have to do it in our own

30:15

words. We have to show them that we've

30:17

processed it. And the goal here is not simply

30:20

to mimic. In fact, when we

30:22

match other people's conversations, when someone's obviously an

30:24

emotional mindset and we want to match them,

30:26

right? Or we want to invite them to

30:28

match us. There is a difference

30:30

between matching and mimicry and the matching has

30:32

to be authentic. So if

30:35

you're listening to someone and they're describing

30:37

something and you're processing it authentically, then

30:39

what you ought to say is what occurs to you,

30:41

which is what I hear you saying is this, and

30:44

that made me think of this other thing. And I'm

30:46

wondering, how do you think about that? Am I getting

30:48

right? What you're telling me that

30:50

feels like someone's listening to you. Just

30:52

repeating back what they said almost never does.

30:54

And it indicates you're probably not actually listening.

30:57

It's become through COVID

31:00

through just the rise of social media

31:02

platforms, the way so many young people

31:05

communicate. That's okay. But it also has

31:07

meant it's people have lost the

31:09

art of being able to communicate in person. And

31:11

I'm still a believer, maybe it's old school, that

31:13

that's where some of the best conversations happen. So

31:16

how does this work? A lot of what we've been talking

31:18

about is a one on one communication dynamic,

31:21

which is very different than you alluded to beginning

31:23

to people who are very effective in

31:25

meetings or very charismatic. And you talk about that a

31:27

lot in the book too. So

31:29

how is it different when it's a series

31:31

of people and you're obviously not interacting one

31:35

on one with each one of them, and it's

31:37

a meeting of 12 people, you're not going to

31:39

go around and kind of individually, because then it's

31:41

not a meeting, it's a series of 12

31:43

one on one conversations, which

31:45

would be very bad for a meeting. So how

31:48

does that work? Like how does one communicate

31:50

with a group? It's the same basic

31:53

principles. So what we know is that

31:55

conversations with groups are basically the same

31:57

as conversations with individuals, although there's often

31:59

a higher cognitive load because

32:02

there's just a little bit more to pay

32:04

attention to. When you're having a one-on-one conversation,

32:06

one of the things that you're doing is you're

32:08

creating a sense of psychological safety. And

32:10

when it comes to groups and teams,

32:13

that psychological safety becomes even more important,

32:15

right? Because it's so easy to disrupt

32:17

psychological safety when you are talking to

32:19

a group because you can't be aware

32:22

of everyone's reactions

32:24

in a particular moment. And so there's a couple

32:26

of things that we can do to create psychological

32:28

safety within teams. And some work by Amy

32:31

Edmondson, she's at Harvard Business School now, has

32:33

been particularly insightful in this respect. And

32:36

there's two things in particular that we know

32:38

are important. The first is something called equality

32:40

and conversational turn-taking. And so to

32:42

your point, Zach, if we are in a meeting of 12

32:44

people, it actually should be a little

32:46

bit where everyone gets to have a one-on-one

32:49

with everyone else, right? If

32:52

someone's not talking, we should draw them into

32:54

the conversation as the team leader and say something like,

32:56

hey, Jim, I noticed you haven't said anything in a little while. I'm

32:58

wondering, what are you thinking about this? And

33:01

then the other thing that we know

33:03

creates psychological safety in team settings is

33:05

what's known as a ostentatious listening, which

33:08

is exactly what I just described with looping

33:10

for understanding. When you think about it, what

33:12

you're doing with looping for understanding is you're proving

33:14

that you're listening. And so in teams

33:16

where the team leader says things like, what I

33:18

hear you saying is other

33:21

people begin to mimic that same behavior.

33:23

And when people both have the freedom

33:25

to speak and feel like others

33:27

are listening to their words, it

33:30

makes it more likely that they will speak up

33:32

and that they'll feel a connection to the other people in the

33:34

room. Charles, I wanted to ask you

33:36

about finding the balance. You know, there's a

33:39

lot in your book about making

33:41

sure that you relate to people by sharing your

33:43

own experiences. And that was interesting for me personally

33:45

to read in part because I'm a journalist. I

33:48

do have a propensity to just like, let's interview

33:50

this person, you know, and forget

33:52

that I probably should share my own. Stuff.

33:54

But part of why I do that is

33:56

because I don't want to dominate

33:59

a conversation in particular, someone sharing something

34:01

sensitive or tough. So how do you go

34:03

about that? Is it like, should it be

34:05

like a 50-50? Or

34:07

how do you learn that particular skill? Well,

34:10

I think that rather than looking for a particular

34:12

ratio, I think the thing is, how do we show

34:14

that we want to connect with the other person? So

34:17

there's definitely a difference between interviewing

34:19

someone and having a conversation with

34:21

them. And the hallmark of a

34:23

conversation is that there is this back and forth,

34:25

that we're reciprocating interest and

34:27

we're reciprocating vulnerability and authenticity.

34:30

And so if you're just asking questions, you're

34:33

really not offering anything of yourself. And

34:35

it feels very one-sided to the person who's

34:37

being interrogated. On the other

34:39

hand, you're exactly right. There's times when

34:42

someone says something like, my aunt recently passed

34:44

away. And the worst thing to say is,

34:46

oh, I totally understand what you're going through.

34:49

My pet died seven years ago, and it

34:51

was really heartbreaking. That doesn't feel like you're

34:53

actually listening. That feels like you're trying to

34:55

steal the spotlight for yourself. And

34:57

so one of the things that's really important is

34:59

to recognize that oftentimes we share

35:02

things about ourselves. We engage in

35:04

reciprocal vulnerability through showing our concern

35:06

or asking a follow-up question. And

35:08

so if someone says, oh, I recently had a death in my

35:10

family, simply saying, oh, I'm so

35:13

sorry. I know how hard that is. I've been through

35:15

that myself. Tell me what's going on. Tell

35:17

me about it. That is a way of sharing

35:20

something of yourself without trying

35:22

to steal that spotlight and

35:24

dominate the conversation. And

35:26

so I would say, in many ways, if

35:28

somebody is sharing something about themselves where it

35:31

feels authentically like

35:33

your experience adds

35:35

to and contributes to the conversation and

35:39

it offers you an opportunity for

35:41

connection as opposed to an opportunity

35:44

for battling over control, then

35:46

I think that's a very valuable thing to share. And

35:58

what do you do about that? trust question,

36:00

which is in many

36:03

walks of life and unfortunately at

36:05

times interpersonally, but more likely when

36:07

you're in the business context or

36:09

political context where there can be

36:11

in the moment, a

36:13

human tendency to actually want to connect or at

36:15

least have the very similitude of seeming to connect.

36:17

The joke is always in Hollywood, you'll go into

36:19

a meeting and everybody's like, Oh my God, I

36:21

love it. That's great. I hear you doing this.

36:23

I'm so supportive. And then you walk

36:26

away and you rise. It was all, it

36:28

was simply the desire and the moment to be

36:30

seen that way, but it didn't actually

36:32

auger any agreement or any yes.

36:35

And we see that in meetings too, or someone will come

36:37

in and that's a wonderful idea. It's great. I really, I

36:40

hear that. I can totally see it. And then you hear

36:42

later on that that person is completely

36:44

torpedoed. What you had said or any variant

36:46

thereof and happens all the time in politics

36:48

and people have like a great dinner and

36:50

the next day they're just, you know, condemning

36:52

each other in public. How does that navigate

36:54

or toggle with that

36:56

moment can seem connective, but

36:58

then people go there particular ways and it's

37:00

almost can feel through a looking glass. Well,

37:02

I don't know how connective that moment really

37:05

is. If someone's being inauthentic with you and

37:07

is lying to you, if you bring them

37:09

something that is part of your creative output

37:11

and they say, this is amazing. I love it.

37:14

And you know that they don't think it's

37:16

amazing. That doesn't seem like something that would actually

37:18

be a real connection as opposed to someone saying,

37:21

you know, I really liked this aspect of it. And

37:23

this other aspect didn't work quite as much for me,

37:25

but I'd love to talk through with you what you were

37:27

thinking about and understand a little

37:29

bit more about what you were trying to accomplish

37:31

here. You mentioned politics and I write

37:34

for the New Yorker and I write

37:36

occasionally about politics, I will say

37:38

when I talk to politicians, it's not what

37:40

they don't talk about is they don't talk

37:42

about how we have authentic private conversations and

37:44

then we stab each other in the back.

37:47

What they actually talk about is they talk about the fact that

37:49

achieving that private, authentic

37:51

conversation oftentimes makes it

37:54

much easier for them to

37:56

connect with each other publicly. And

37:58

I think we see that in the Senate all the time. including

40:00

conversation. And so what I've found is

40:02

that the most powerful thing

40:04

and the thing that all these skills do is it sends

40:06

a message to the other person that you want to connect

40:09

with them. And it gives you the

40:11

ability to do so because it's that wanting to connect,

40:13

that thinking a little bit more about how to

40:15

connect and the conversation you're having that

40:17

oftentimes leads us to having a

40:19

more authentic connection. Where do you

40:21

go from here next? Do you have some thoughts? I mean, did you

40:23

know you were going to write this? You said that each of these

40:26

had been to some degree an

40:28

outgrowth of questions you were grappling with

40:30

in your own career or personal life.

40:32

Has one arisen since

40:34

you wrote this book that you're

40:36

now thinking and chewing on as

40:38

the next Duhigg opus? I'm

40:41

relatively recent in the process of it. So

40:43

no, I'm pretty focused on trying to figure

40:45

out how to communicate to people what

40:47

we know about communication. And that seems

40:50

like a worthy enterprise. I mean, as

40:52

you pointed out, we're living through a

40:54

time of polarization. And we

40:56

used to teach communication in schools, right? Like

40:58

when our parents went to school, they probably

41:01

took something called like home ec or interpersonal

41:03

relations. And as schools

41:05

became more technical, those

41:07

curriculums tended to fall out of what

41:09

was included in the school day. There's

41:11

a cost to that because

41:14

communication is simply a set of skills

41:16

that people can learn and can practice.

41:19

And to your point, Emma, sometimes when we

41:21

first try and do something, it's a little clumsy,

41:23

right? The first time we try and like loop

41:26

for understanding or prove to someone that we're

41:28

listening to them, it can feel a little

41:30

clumsy. The first time we ask a deep

41:32

question, it can feel a little unnatural. And

41:34

so we have to practice it. When we practice

41:36

it is when it becomes more natural, when it

41:38

becomes a habit. And so

41:41

in general, the thing that I'm trying

41:43

to focus on now is helping people

41:45

understand that we can get better

41:47

at communication. We can all become super communicators.

41:49

People don't want to be

41:52

divided from their neighbors because of

41:54

the lawn signs you have for particular candidates,

41:56

right? We want to be able to walk

41:58

outside and talk to our neighbors. and say

42:00

like, hey, what's going on? How's work?

42:02

Have just a normal relationship. And

42:05

throughout history, we've been able to do that.

42:08

And sometimes we've recently forgotten how. You

42:10

know, I do want to sort of celebrate that particularly

42:13

because in many ways, and I

42:15

hear this from my sons and

42:17

their experience in classrooms, at least

42:19

it's not even as if people

42:22

are bad communicators. It's often that

42:24

there's such concern and anxiety

42:26

that there's going to be an

42:28

uncomfortable argument that people become non-communicators,

42:31

let alone super communicators. Yeah. They're not

42:33

even having fights out of

42:35

the fear of they're avoiding the discussion. And I

42:37

wonder if that's how you touch upon

42:40

that, which is, I mean, there has to

42:42

be some willingness in aspiring to

42:44

being a super communicator to be

42:46

willing to go through some uncomfortable moments,

42:48

right? In communication. Oh, absolutely.

42:51

And in fact, we know a lot

42:53

about this because there's been a number

42:55

of experiments, particularly in the last four

42:57

or five years, about conversations about race

42:59

or social identities. And

43:01

one of the things that we know is

43:03

that the best thing you can do to

43:05

improve that conversation is at the beginning, acknowledge

43:07

that it's going to be somewhat awkward, right?

43:09

Oftentimes when a conversation about race, if you

43:11

start it by saying, I want to talk

43:13

about this thing, I know actually it's going

43:15

to be hard to talk about and that's

43:17

okay, like I'm willing to go through that

43:19

awkwardness. And by the way, I might say

43:21

the wrong thing, right? Like sometimes getting from

43:23

my brain to my lips, it sort of

43:25

gets screwed up. And I ask for your

43:27

forgiveness in advance. And I promise if you

43:29

say the wrong thing, I will do the

43:31

same thing. That when we

43:33

acknowledge that a conversation might be hard, that

43:36

doesn't necessarily mean that it's completely easy, but

43:38

it makes it easier. And that's really important

43:41

because that's what allows us to connect with

43:43

each other. Well, I want

43:45

to thank you for attempting to connect with

43:47

us for this conversation and for having the

43:49

conversation with us. You're a

43:51

fascinating character and the work you've done is

43:53

a delightful mix of

43:55

simultaneously quirky, but clearly touching chords

43:58

that are widely. shared at moments

44:00

that people seem to be open

44:02

to hearing. So I wish you the

44:04

best with this particular endeavor, just

44:06

like you've had some good

44:09

traction with the past ones. I hope

44:11

we all take your tools to heart

44:14

and integrate them as best we

44:16

can and we will certainly

44:18

try to do so. Emma and

44:20

I in our conversations and thanks

44:23

for your work Charles. Yeah, thank you Charles. Wonderful,

44:25

thank you so much. I really appreciate

44:27

it. So that was

44:29

a really fun conversation for me because

44:31

I've always been sort of obsessed with

44:34

wanting to give people a really good

44:36

conversational experience. That's always been

44:38

like a... I hate

44:41

to sound arrogant but I hope that I has always

44:43

been a natural town of mine and something that I

44:45

like to keep getting better at. So it's kind of

44:47

fun to see the set of skills

44:49

and tools that you can actually

44:52

put into good use. My one

44:54

question I think that remains is

44:57

what happens when you get into a conversation where

45:00

like you are a super communicator and the other

45:02

person is like a sub-communicator and then you just

45:04

feel like you're not connecting at all and you're

45:06

doing your best to try to draw them out

45:09

and they just want to you know talk about

45:11

the lunch that they had on Wednesday. What do

45:13

we do then? Yeah, it's funny. I think

45:15

I found myself more semi-chromugally

45:17

at times listening to

45:20

Charles in so far as I'm probably

45:22

a little less optimistic about the constant capacity

45:25

to communicate. I think it's always there and

45:27

we should always strive for it but

45:29

I'm not as convinced that they're in

45:32

the face of someone's lack

45:34

of openness to connecting at all that there's much

45:36

you can do about that and we don't really get

45:39

into the conversation so I'm not sure he would agree

45:42

or disagree with that. It's just that there

45:44

always has to be some degree of reciprocity

45:46

even if one person is doing a better

45:49

job creating that conduit or building those bridges

45:51

than the other because there clearly are times

45:53

where no matter what you're trying to do,

45:55

no matter what questions you're gonna ask and no matter how

45:57

much you're trying to be present, the person on the other

45:59

side is not as on board for that.

46:02

Again, that may be a minority of the times. And

46:05

it's not a reason not to try, not to aspire,

46:07

not to attempt. It's just a reflection on kind of

46:09

what you're saying, Emma, that there, sometimes

46:11

it just, it ain't happening. So

46:14

what I'm hearing you say is,

46:17

I actually, I really did mean when I said it in

46:19

the interview, I do have some friends that do that to

46:21

me and it always feels a little bit more like corporate

46:23

speak than it does like actual genuine

46:25

connection. But I'm thinking about some of the

46:28

examples that Charles writes about in his book. Like

46:30

what comes to mind is this one chapter in

46:32

Charles's book where he's talking about a jury and

46:35

there's a super communicator on the jury

46:37

that ends up leading them in one

46:39

direction for a unanimous vote when they

46:41

didn't think that they were going to

46:43

go in that direction at all. And

46:45

the point was less of reciprocity. Like

46:47

it's not like there was an even

46:49

amount of communication on both sides. It's

46:51

just that it got them into a

46:53

direction where they wanted to go, which

46:55

I would say is a superpower. I

46:57

think I would also wonder if that's

47:00

a form of manipulation

47:03

and that whether all of these tools

47:05

and techniques can be used for nefarious

47:07

as well as positive ends. That's definitely

47:09

something to be mindful of. Like the Pied

47:12

Piper presumably was a super communicator, maybe with

47:14

his flute, but maybe with his dulcet

47:16

words. A hypnotist is I guess a

47:19

super communicator. And some

47:21

of the most, most destructive leaders

47:24

in history have been able to sway

47:26

people with their words. So that's clearly

47:28

the case where it's a tool. It

47:31

may be a tool that can be abused and maybe

47:33

a tool that can be used. And that's

47:36

a whole other series of conversations. It's funny,

47:38

we're doing in this reaction to this conversation

47:40

somewhat what we say we always do, which

47:42

is there's always a degree of in

47:45

the face of something overwhelmingly positive, we

47:47

will also ask the questions and probe

47:49

in the face of something overwhelmingly negative,

47:52

we will ask the questions and probe.

47:55

So I do think it's important to kind

47:57

of hold things up to... critical

48:01

scrutiny with an open

48:03

heart to be swayed. We're

48:06

not dissing, we're

48:08

simply asking some

48:10

of the hard questions that arise for both

48:12

of us around a conversation.

48:16

I do think a lot of his work

48:18

is great and it's also fascinating to be

48:21

able to touch popular chords of the moment,

48:23

that intuitive sense of what people are in

48:25

need of and thinking about. Yeah,

48:27

he has a talent for that. And yeah,

48:29

I will say we are being somewhat critical,

48:32

I guess. But at

48:34

the end of the day, the feeling

48:37

that you meet people in your life, that you

48:39

walk away from a conversation with, that you feel

48:41

really good about, like you really feel like you

48:43

were seen and heard, that is an amazing feeling.

48:46

And I definitely agree with what he said,

48:48

that we would all be better off if

48:51

more of us knew how to do that.

48:54

I read this argument recently that particularly

48:56

in marriage now, because the traditional roles

48:58

aren't as defined. One of the reasons

49:00

why people are having a hard time

49:02

getting married is because that communication gap

49:04

has not been filled, that it requires

49:06

a higher degree of communication than it

49:08

used to. And I was very sympathetic

49:11

to that argument. So maybe we should go

49:14

back to the home ec days, but like

49:16

a home ec 2.0 communication sort of thing.

49:18

Totally, totally. Thank you for your time today.

49:20

We'll be back with you next week and

49:22

thank you, Emma, as always. Thanks, everybody. What

49:25

Could Go Right is produced by

49:28

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49:30

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49:32

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49:34

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49:36

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49:38

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49:43

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