Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies
Speaker 2: and our brains change. Our heart rates starts to match
Speaker 2: each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other,
Speaker 2: our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: the neural activity within our brains starts to look more
Speaker 2: and more similar. This simultaneity, the similarity, is at the
Speaker 2: core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
Speaker 2: and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
Speaker 2: we feel wonderful.
Speaker 3: Journalist Charles Duhigg is interested in the science of what
Speaker 3: makes for a good conversation, and one thing he's learned
Speaker 3: is the importance of asking the right kind of question.
Speaker 2: Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
Speaker 2: ask them how they feel about their life. If you
Speaker 2: get into this habit of saying like I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask a question that invites the other person to tell
Speaker 2: me how they see themselves in the world, what they
Speaker 2: feel about something, what they think about it, rather than
Speaker 2: the facts about it, what you'll find is that it's
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3: On today's show, how to Connect More Deeply with Others,
Speaker 3: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 3: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 3: in the face of a big change. Charles's latest book
Speaker 3: is called Super Communicators, How to Unlock This Secret Language
Speaker 3: of Connection. It's an exploration into how we can improve
Speaker 3: our communit nication skills, and it was inspired by challenges
Speaker 3: Charles was facing in his own life.
Speaker 2: I found that at home I was having these conversations
Speaker 2: with my wife and my kids that were not as
Speaker 2: meaningful and as deep as I felt like they should be.
Speaker 2: And then I felt like at work. I was a
Speaker 2: reporter at the New York Times at that point, and
Speaker 2: they made me a manager, and I figured I'd be
Speaker 2: great at it, right, like I've had managers my whole life,
Speaker 2: And I was fine that like the logistics and planning
Speaker 2: and strategy, I was terrible at communication, like just just
Speaker 2: shockingly bad and so unprepared and surprised by that. And
Speaker 2: so I basically decided, like, I'm going to start calling
Speaker 2: experts and ask them, if I'm a professional communicator as
Speaker 2: a journalist, why am I so bad at this? And
Speaker 2: what I learned when I called them was that they said,
Speaker 2: we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication
Speaker 2: for really the first time. So we have answers to
Speaker 2: give you that even just.
Speaker 4: A decade ago, we might not have been able to provide.
Speaker 3: What kind of signals were you receiving at home and
Speaker 3: then at work that you were a crappy communicator?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, you know, sometimes my wife would come home
Speaker 2: and she'd have like a problem, like something that happened
Speaker 2: at work that she was kind of upset about, and
Speaker 2: what I would do is try and solve the problem
Speaker 2: for her, and she would get frustrated because she didn't
Speaker 2: want me to solve the problem right, She wanted me
Speaker 2: just to listen and empathize. Or I might come home
Speaker 2: from work and like, I've had a tough day and
Speaker 2: talk about how my boss doesn't understand me, and she says,
Speaker 2: why don't you take your boss out to lunch and
Speaker 2: get to know each other better? And then then I
Speaker 2: get upset and I say, you know, you're supposed to
Speaker 2: be on my side, why aren't you supporting me? And
Speaker 2: then at work, there were a number of times where
Speaker 2: people would come to me with something and it was
Speaker 2: clear that one or two things was happening. Either I
Speaker 2: was not hearing them accurately, because they would walk away
Speaker 2: upset or I was hearing them accurately and they didn't
Speaker 2: understand that I was listening. I was doing a bad
Speaker 2: job of proving to them that I'm listening to them.
Speaker 3: You talked about the science evolving, which is obviously super exciting,
Speaker 3: and you you know, your book is called super Kenmunicator.
Speaker 3: So there's this concept and we'll get into the traits
Speaker 3: of a super communicator later on, but I'd love to
Speaker 3: hear when you're in conversation with a super communicator, how
Speaker 3: is that person making you feel.
Speaker 4: It's a great question.
Speaker 2: It's a great question because you're focusing on not the
Speaker 2: super communicator, but the other person, and that's what the
Speaker 2: super communicator does too. So one of the things, and
Speaker 2: let me preface this by saying, being a super communicator
Speaker 2: is not that unique a skill. In fact, we all
Speaker 2: can be super communicators. One of the big insights from
Speaker 2: the research is that communication is a set of skills,
Speaker 2: and if you learn those skills, you can connect with
Speaker 2: almost anyone. What's happening. And this gets to how we
Speaker 2: feel in a conversation with a supercommunicator. When you and
Speaker 2: I have a real conversation, our bodies and our brains change.
Speaker 2: Our heart rate starts to match each other, our breath
Speaker 2: patterns starts to match each other, our pupils start to
Speaker 2: dilate at similar rates, and more importantly, the neural activity
Speaker 2: within our brains starts to look more and more similar.
Speaker 2: And Urry Hassan at Princeton, who I know you're familiar with,
Speaker 2: He's done a lot of this research looking at this
Speaker 2: simultaneity that our thoughts look more and more alike. And
Speaker 2: that makes sense when you think about it, because if
Speaker 2: I tell you about a feeling that I'm having, you
Speaker 2: actually experience that emotion a little bit, right. If I
Speaker 2: tell you about an idea, you experience that idea. So
Speaker 2: it makes sense that our brains would look similar. What
Speaker 2: Urian others have found is that it's this simultaneity, the
Speaker 2: similarity and what's known as neural entrainment is at the
Speaker 2: core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
Speaker 2: and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
Speaker 2: we feel wonderful.
Speaker 1: Wow, there's so much to unpack here.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the first thing that I'm hearing is we
Speaker 3: call it a conversation, but the ultimate reward is in
Speaker 3: the feeling of connectedness, because that is the thing that
Speaker 3: you're actually mapping too, right when it comes to that's
Speaker 3: the size of the brain.
Speaker 2: It's very good proving that you're listening, very you're doing
Speaker 2: a great job. You are a supercommunicator. But that's exactly right. Now,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean we have to agree with each other.
Speaker 2: But as long as the goal of our conversation is
Speaker 2: to understand how the other person sees the world and
Speaker 2: to speak in such a way that you understand how
Speaker 2: I see the world, we will feel connected to each
Speaker 2: other even if we disagree, and that connectedness is at
Speaker 2: the core of why conversation is so important.
Speaker 3: The other thing you mentioned is that anyone can become
Speaker 3: a super communicator. I want to push back a little
Speaker 3: bit on this, which is like, clearly we can't all
Speaker 3: become the same level of super communicator. So in the
Speaker 3: same way that I mean, no one's born a basketball player,
Speaker 3: like no one's born a super communicator. People do have
Speaker 3: varying levels of potential given their genetic makeup, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: let's say proclivities towards introspection or emotional intelligence, like I
Speaker 3: just have to believe that those would be correlated with
Speaker 3: better communicative skills.
Speaker 4: So you're exactly right.
Speaker 2: There are some people for whom this is more intuitive.
Speaker 2: And we should make one observation, which is that there
Speaker 2: seems to be some research suggesting that folks who are
Speaker 2: on the autism spectrum, not the entire spectrum, but on
Speaker 2: part of the spectrum, that they do have a cognitive
Speaker 2: challenge around communicating with other folks. You're exactly right. Not
Speaker 2: all of us can become NBA players, but we can
Speaker 2: all learn to play a decent game of basketball.
Speaker 3: So you say, Charles, that one of the main reasons
Speaker 3: that we struggle to communicate effectively is that each person
Speaker 3: is often entering a discussion with a different goal in mind,
Speaker 3: and that there's actually distinct kinds of conversations that are
Speaker 3: happening within any given discussion. So can you walk me
Speaker 3: through the three different types of conversations we might have.
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And this is one of the big findings of
Speaker 2: the last decade is that when we have a discussion,
Speaker 2: we tend to assume it's about one thing, right, and
Speaker 2: we tend to assume that it's the goal that I
Speaker 2: have in mind, and you think it's the goal you
Speaker 2: have in mind. Inside every discussion is multiple kinds of conversations,
Speaker 2: different kinds of conversations. They use different parts of our brains,
Speaker 2: and they tend to fall into one of three buckets.
Speaker 2: There's these practical conversations where we're making plans together or
Speaker 2: we're solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I
Speaker 2: tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you
Speaker 2: to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize, right,
Speaker 2: I want you to relate. And then there's social conversations,
Speaker 2: which is about how we relate to each other in society,
Speaker 2: the identities that are important to us. And what we
Speaker 2: know is that those three main kinds of conversations they
Speaker 2: use very different parts of our brains. And so that
Speaker 2: neural and train that I discussed that simultaneity is very
Speaker 2: hard to accomplish. And so what's important is what's known
Speaker 2: as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the
Speaker 2: same kind of conversation at the same moment, and that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean we're on train tracks. So we got to
Speaker 2: stay on that. Right every discussion. We might start emotional
Speaker 2: and then move to practical, and then go back to emotional,
Speaker 2: and then go to social But as long as we're
Speaker 2: moving together, then we're going to feel connected to each other,
Speaker 2: We're going to understand each other much much better.
Speaker 3: So I'm imagining two people in conversation right now who
Speaker 3: are trying to match one another. I think what's important
Speaker 3: to emphasize is that as the conversation progresses, I, in turn,
Speaker 3: am going to try to find ways to match you. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: So it's a constant back and forth throughout the conversation
Speaker 3: where we're both taking opportunities to either invite them into
Speaker 3: our headspace or offering ourselves up to enter theirs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're right, And when you think about it,
Speaker 2: at the core of that is reciprocity.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: A good conversation is back and forth. Yes, a great
Speaker 2: conversation If you read the transcript of it, and you
Speaker 2: know this because I'm sure you read transcripts of these
Speaker 2: all the time, it looks like a mess. A great
Speaker 2: conversation on paper looks like a total mess. It's people
Speaker 2: talking over each other, interrupting each other. You start an
Speaker 2: idea and then you get distracted and you say something else.
Speaker 2: It's not a speech. That's what makes the conversation great
Speaker 2: is this reciprocity where we're deciding together what we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you share a story about a doctor struggling to
Speaker 3: communicate with his patients, and I think that this really
Speaker 3: helps illustrate the benefits of matching.
Speaker 4: So this is one of my favorite stories.
Speaker 2: So there's a physician in New York City named doctor
Speaker 2: Bifar Adai who is probably one of the world's leading
Speaker 2: authorities on prostate tumors, how to remove prostate tumors, how
Speaker 2: to treat prostate tumors. And so every day a new
Speaker 2: patient comes into his office having just learned the prostate
Speaker 2: cancer and doctor d assumed that they were coming in
Speaker 2: asking for his advice, and so what he would do
Speaker 2: is he would tell them, Look, here's the thing about
Speaker 2: prostate cancer. It's very, very slow growing. In fact, we
Speaker 2: have this saying in medicine that for older patients, they'll
Speaker 2: die of old age before they die of prostate cancer.
Speaker 2: And the most certain way that I can cure you
Speaker 2: is I can go in and I can cut out
Speaker 2: the tumor. If I cut it out, the cancer's gone.
Speaker 2: The problem is that the prostate is located close to
Speaker 2: the nerves that control your nation and sexual function, and
Speaker 2: so for some percentage of patients there's going to be
Speaker 2: lifelong side effects even if the surgery is a success.
Speaker 4: So what he says is, here's my advice. Do nothing.
Speaker 4: Pretend you don't have cancer.
Speaker 2: Do this thing called active surveillance, where you take blood
Speaker 2: every six months and you do a biopsy every two years,
Speaker 2: and you go to the MRI if the biopsy shows anything.
Speaker 2: But otherwise, don't do any treatment. Don't do any radiation,
Speaker 2: no chemotherapy, don't do any surgery. And he would say
Speaker 2: this to these patients and they would listen and they'd
Speaker 2: say thanks, Doc, and then they'd go home and they
Speaker 2: talk it over with their spouse. Then they'd come in
Speaker 2: the next day and they'd say, you know, I thought
Speaker 2: about it last night, and I'd like you to cut
Speaker 2: me open as fast as humanly possible.
Speaker 4: Like you cut me open, take it.
Speaker 1: Out, get it out.
Speaker 4: So doctor yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And Doctor Die was bewildered because they're coming to him
Speaker 2: because he's an expert. He's giving them advice and they're
Speaker 2: ignoring his advice. But he realizes it's not that they're
Speaker 2: ignoring his advice, it's that they can't hear him, he's
Speaker 2: doing the conversation wrong. So he goes to these researchers
Speaker 2: at Harvard Business School. We specialize on what's known as
Speaker 2: everyday negotiations or quiet negotiations, the kind of negotiations we
Speaker 2: have with our spouses and our kids, where the goal
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily to win, the goal is to like actually
Speaker 2: understand what everyone wants. And they say to him, you're
Speaker 2: starting this conversation with your patients all wrong. You're assuming
Speaker 2: you know what they want. What you need to do
Speaker 2: is you need to ask them what's known as a
Speaker 2: deep question. You need to ask them a question that
Speaker 2: invites them to talk about their values and their beliefs
Speaker 2: and their experiences, the things that matter to them. So
Speaker 2: two weeks later, patient comes into doctor Die's office. Sixty
Speaker 2: two year old man, you just learned that he has
Speaker 2: prostate cancer. And instead of going into a song and
Speaker 2: dance about don't do anything. Here's what the studies show
Speaker 2: doctor and Die starts the conversation by saying, can you
Speaker 2: just tell me what does this cancer diagnosis mean to you?
Speaker 4: And the man kind of sits for a minute.
Speaker 2: He says, you know, when they told me I had
Speaker 2: cancer The first thing I thought about was my dad,
Speaker 2: because he died when I was seventeen years old, and
Speaker 2: I did not want to put my wife through that,
Speaker 2: and I do not want to put my kids through that.
Speaker 2: And at work, if they find out I have cancer
Speaker 2: at work, I'm only sixty two. I want to work
Speaker 2: for another eight twelve years. If they know that I've cancer, work,
Speaker 2: suddenly all the young people are gonna see me as
Speaker 2: the old sick guy is gonna change how they see me.
Speaker 2: And Doctor D realizes this man is then an emotional mindset.
Speaker 2: This man needs to have an emotional conversation. And so
Speaker 2: what Doctor D does is he matches him. Doctor Did says,
Speaker 2: you know, I know exactly how you feel because my
Speaker 2: dad got six seven years ago and he had the
Speaker 2: same concerns you did. But I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: like it ended up being less bad than he thought
Speaker 2: it was gonna be, and there were these like unexpected benefits,
Speaker 2: Like we had these conversations that we had never had before.
Speaker 2: My dad completely rethought like what was important to him,
Speaker 2: what he wanted to do with his retirement. Doctor Die
Speaker 2: matched and shared some emotional perspectives of his own. He
Speaker 2: reciprocated and then he says to the man, look, I'm wondering,
Speaker 2: can I can I tell you about a couple of
Speaker 2: treatment options that I think you should think about in
Speaker 2: this thing called active surveillance. In other words, he says,
Speaker 2: can I move from an emotional conversation into a practical conversation?
Speaker 2: And the man says, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that,
Speaker 2: and he goes over active surveillance. The man says that
Speaker 2: sounds like a great idea. I'm not going to do
Speaker 2: any treatment, never changes his mind. The number of patients
Speaker 2: who are listened to doctor Dye's advice went up astronomically
Speaker 2: after this one little change, which is starting the interview
Speaker 2: by asking the person a question rather than assuming he.
Speaker 4: Knew what they wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're teaching me in this moment that when it
Speaker 3: comes to thinking about this body of work, I was
Speaker 3: approaching this conversation today thinking about it through the lens
Speaker 3: of connection, but you're now opening my eyes to see
Speaker 3: it through the lens of influence. Right, you can't just
Speaker 3: bulldoze your way past the other person's intention because they're
Speaker 3: building up a wall and whatever you share with them
Speaker 3: will just be inaccessible to them. So only in breaking
Speaker 3: down that wall. Do you even penetrate enough such that
Speaker 3: whatever messages you're trying to communicate even have a chance
Speaker 3: of being registered.
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And it's funny that you use this word influence because
Speaker 2: because we tend to sort of look down our nose
Speaker 2: at influence.
Speaker 4: Right, he's trying to influence me. He's an influencer.
Speaker 2: But when you think about it, a lot of our
Speaker 2: communication is influence. It's soft influence. If I tell you
Speaker 2: a joke, I'm trying to influence you to see something
Speaker 2: as funny that I see as funny. If I tell
Speaker 2: you that I'm excited, like I want to really want
Speaker 2: to go see that movie, don't you want to see
Speaker 2: it too, I'm trying to influence you to see the
Speaker 2: world that what I do. So communication and influence are
Speaker 2: tied up together. But influence doesn't mean I'm trying to
Speaker 2: manipulate you. Influence means I'm trying to share with you.
Speaker 3: I think the point you're making is really critical. We're
Speaker 3: doing ourselves a favor by allowing someone to ask those
Speaker 3: deep questions of us and vice versa, because we're just
Speaker 3: we're opening up the gates so that new information can
Speaker 3: come in and then we decide on our own terms, right,
Speaker 3: whether or not we are influenced, but we're at least
Speaker 3: giving that information a chance.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And it gets to this question of
Speaker 2: what is actually the goal of a conversation, right, What
Speaker 2: is the goal of communication? And one way of thinking
Speaker 2: about it is, my goal is to convince you that
Speaker 2: I'm right and you're wrong, Or my goal is to
Speaker 2: convince you that I'm smart. My goal is to convince
Speaker 2: you should like me. Right, none of those are the
Speaker 2: goals of conversation or communication. The goal of a conversation
Speaker 2: is to speak in such a way that the other
Speaker 2: person can understand you, and to listen in such a
Speaker 2: way that you can understand them. If you both understand
Speaker 2: each other, the conversation is a success. Now, you might
Speaker 2: walk away not liking this person. You might walk away
Speaker 2: thinking they're an idiot or disagreeing with.
Speaker 3: Them, or that their views are reprehensible.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, and yet if you understand how they see
Speaker 2: the world and they understand how you see the world,
Speaker 2: then that conversation has been a success. And I guarantee you,
Speaker 2: even if you do disagree with the person you feel
Speaker 2: more connected to them.
Speaker 3: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 3: of plans. If we want to be better communicators, Charles says,
Speaker 3: we need to ask deep questions. So I asked him
Speaker 3: how we can start practicing this.
Speaker 4: It's the easiest thing on earth.
Speaker 2: Instead of asking someone about the facts of their life,
Speaker 2: ask them how they feel.
Speaker 4: About their life.
Speaker 2: So if I meet you and I know that you're
Speaker 2: a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you
Speaker 2: work at, which is a fact, I ask you, Oh,
Speaker 2: what meets you decide to go to medical school?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 2: What I'm doing is I'm asking you about your values,
Speaker 2: Like what is it that led you to this career?
Speaker 4: Oh? What do you like about? What do you like
Speaker 4: about being a doctor? Oh?
Speaker 2: You live in the heights. That's interesting. I live in
Speaker 2: the heights too. I'm just wondering, like, what is it
Speaker 2: about the heights that you like?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Is it a sense of community that you feel up there?
Speaker 4: Those are the easiest things to do, And we can convince.
Speaker 2: Ourselves that asking deep questions is hard because because we're
Speaker 2: worried about doing it, and yet we know is that
Speaker 2: communication as a skill, if you practice it, it becomes
Speaker 2: a habit very very quickly. And if you get into
Speaker 2: this habit of saying, like, I'm going to ask a
Speaker 2: question that invites the other person to tell me how
Speaker 2: they see themselves in the world, what they feel about something,
Speaker 2: what they think about it, rather than the facts about it,
Speaker 2: what you'll find is that it's overwhelmingly successful.
Speaker 3: You talk about it finding your book, which is that
Speaker 3: super communicators ask like way more questions in conversation than
Speaker 3: someone else. And I think you call them why questions, right,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, why did you go to medical school?
Speaker 3: Like why did you move to the neighborhood? Just tell
Speaker 3: me about that finding it's quite powerful.
Speaker 2: So there was a study that was done by a
Speaker 2: guy named Bo Sivers, who's a wonderful researcher, and he
Speaker 2: looked at groups and tried to figure out why some
Speaker 2: groups of strangers would become more closely bonded than others
Speaker 2: and would understand each other better. And what he found
Speaker 2: is that in those groups that became really successfully bonded,
Speaker 2: there was at least one person who was a super communicator.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that they did is that
Speaker 2: they asked, as you point out, ten to twenty times
Speaker 2: as many questions as the average person. Now, what's interesting, though,
Speaker 2: is that most people don't pick up on those questions
Speaker 2: because there are questions like, oh that's interesting, what happened next?
Speaker 2: Or oh oh what'd you think about that?
Speaker 4: Oh? Oh yeah, did you like that?
Speaker 2: There are questions that are invitations to participate in the conversation,
Speaker 2: But some of the questions are deep questions like how
Speaker 2: did you feel when you heard him say that? Right,
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering, like was that something you when you
Speaker 2: saw that scene?
Speaker 4: Did you like it? Or did you not like it?
Speaker 2: Those are deep questions that are basically saying, tell me
Speaker 2: how you see the world. And again, it's not hard
Speaker 2: to learn these skills.
Speaker 3: So I think one challenge I face, and I'm curious
Speaker 3: to know Charles, if you face this too, because you're
Speaker 3: a journalist and I'm a podcaster, is like I I
Speaker 3: always worry, Oh my god, am I coming on too
Speaker 3: strong in conversation because I sit down, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 3: to hell with the pleasantries, right to get straight to business, Like,
Speaker 3: tell me about the hardest moment of your life. And
Speaker 3: I'm so used to being licensed to do that in
Speaker 3: an interview. Contexts that I sometis forget that over coffee
Speaker 3: with a friend. I don't know, maybe a few warm
Speaker 3: up questions would have been appropriate, right, I just want
Speaker 3: to hear your reflections on my approach and whether I
Speaker 3: need to kind of back off a little bit.
Speaker 4: You know you're doing exactly right.
Speaker 2: So one of my favorite experiments in this is that
Speaker 2: a number of years ago, these two research psychologists named
Speaker 2: Arthur and Elaine Aaron.
Speaker 4: They were a husband and wife.
Speaker 2: They wanted to try and figure out if there was
Speaker 2: a method that they could use to make any two
Speaker 2: strangers into friends.
Speaker 4: And so they tried all these different things.
Speaker 2: They would have people make puzzles together, or tell each
Speaker 2: other stories, or they tried pairing people based on similar interests,
Speaker 2: right like they went to the same church where they
Speaker 2: were both smokers, or they both hate smokers. They had
Speaker 2: some of them just tap their fingers together to see
Speaker 2: if that made them feel closer.
Speaker 4: None of the interventions really.
Speaker 2: Worked, Like you basically just saw a completely sort of
Speaker 2: normal distribution of some people liked each other and some
Speaker 2: people didn't. And then they came up with this new idea.
Speaker 2: They wrote a list of thirty six questions and they
Speaker 2: were deep questions, and some of them started kind of easy.
Speaker 2: The first question is if you could have a dinner
Speaker 2: party with anyone from history, who would it be. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's an easy question. But by question number six, it's
Speaker 2: things like tell me about your mother, do you have
Speaker 2: a suspicion about how you're going to die and when
Speaker 2: it will happen? Question number thirty five of the thirty
Speaker 2: six is when's the last time you cried in front
Speaker 2: of another person? So they give that people these lists
Speaker 2: of questions, they go back and forth, ask an answer, question,
Speaker 2: take so just forty five minutes, and then they send
Speaker 2: everyone home and everyone assumes that the experiment is over,
Speaker 2: but actually the experiment is just beginning, because seven weeks
Speaker 2: later they contact all of those people who had been
Speaker 2: in those rooms two by two and they ask them,
Speaker 2: I got a question for you. Since you did that experiment,
Speaker 2: have you actually talked to that person that you did
Speaker 2: it with? And people would say things like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't catch his last name.
Speaker 4: I know it was like John R. Something that started
Speaker 4: with R.
Speaker 2: So I got out the student directory and I called
Speaker 2: every single John R in the student directory until I
Speaker 2: found him or or you know, for professionals, they would
Speaker 2: say things like, you know, I would just walk around
Speaker 2: the park at lunch looking for for that person that
Speaker 2: I talked to. One guy said, you know, it's funny
Speaker 2: you asked, because like, we got together for a beer
Speaker 2: about two weeks after the experiment, and then we saw
Speaker 2: a movie a week later. And when they got married
Speaker 2: a year after the experiment, they invited everyone in the
Speaker 2: lab to come to the ceremony.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So this has become known as the fast friends procedure.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's own as the thirty six questions that lead
Speaker 2: to love, because that was a headline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen it in like the New York Times,
Speaker 3: Yes exactly.
Speaker 2: And what what's interesting about this is two things. Number One,
Speaker 2: we have discovered that you don't actually need those warm
Speaker 2: up questions.
Speaker 4: The assumption was that you need.
Speaker 2: To move from less intimate to more intimate to get
Speaker 2: people comfortable. But people can get deep immediately. But the
Speaker 2: other important thing is that someone else tried to do
Speaker 2: the experiment and slightly different way, same questions, list of
Speaker 2: thirty six questions. What he did is he had one
Speaker 2: person answer all thirty six questions to the other person,
Speaker 2: and then the second person would take the list and
Speaker 2: answer all thirty six questions. Afterwards, people never felt close
Speaker 2: to each other. They said it was boring, it was awkward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need that back and forth.
Speaker 4: It's the reciprocess.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's the reciprocity of vulnerability and authenticity that
Speaker 2: makes us feel close to someone else.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a confounding factor here, which is in an experimental setting,
Speaker 3: you are explicitly licensed to go straight into those deep questions.
Speaker 3: So what tactics can we use in real life with
Speaker 3: our friends or someone we've just met to go straight
Speaker 3: into those deep questions?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So the number one thing you can do is
Speaker 2: you can say I was listening to a podcast and
Speaker 2: the person on the podcast told me I should ask
Speaker 2: you this question, when's the last time you And now
Speaker 2: if you don't want to say that, then that's.
Speaker 4: Where we can do those preliminary questions. Oh, where'd you
Speaker 4: go to high school?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Went to valley?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Man, what was it like to go to valley? Did
Speaker 2: you like high school? It's as easy as just making
Speaker 2: that pivot, and we tend to assume it's going to
Speaker 2: be less well received. It's going to be harder to
Speaker 2: do that we're going to feel awkward as we do it,
Speaker 2: that it's not going to go well and our expectations
Speaker 2: are completely wrong.
Speaker 3: So we've talked through one big strategy, Charles, which is
Speaker 3: the importance of matching, and you've given us the advice
Speaker 3: that one way to do this is to ask deep
Speaker 3: questions and of course to pick up on other cues.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, if you.
Speaker 3: Laugh heartily and their face turned sour for probably that
Speaker 3: wasn't you know you're not quite matchem Let's talk about
Speaker 3: some of your other recommendations for how we can become
Speaker 3: better communicators.
Speaker 2: So what do we do once we know what kind
Speaker 2: of conversation is happening and we've started to match each
Speaker 2: other well, at that moment, it's really really important that
Speaker 2: we listen to each other. What's interesting, though, is that
Speaker 2: listening is not enough oftentimes, particularly in hard conversations, particularly
Speaker 2: when there's conflict we're discussing, when we disagree with each other.
Speaker 2: I need to not only listen to you, I need
Speaker 2: to prove that I'm listening to you. So there's this
Speaker 2: technique that they teach it in business schools. It's called
Speaker 2: looping for understanding as three steps. Step one is that
Speaker 2: you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two
Speaker 2: is that you repeat back in your own words what
Speaker 2: you heard the person say. And then step three, and
Speaker 2: this is the one I always forget, ask if you
Speaker 2: got it right? Because when you ask if you got
Speaker 2: it right, what you're actually asking is can I have
Speaker 2: your permission to acknowledge that I'm listening to you?
Speaker 4: And again, because of how our brains.
Speaker 2: Have evolved, because of the sociality that we've all sort
Speaker 2: of developed, when we believe someone is listening to us,
Speaker 2: we become much much more likely to listen to them
Speaker 2: and return. It's a reciprocity that we almost can't deny ourselves.
Speaker 2: We can't even fight it. So, like, let's say, you know,
Speaker 2: so one of my younger kids, he wanted to like
Speaker 2: hang out at his friend, spend the night at Jasper's house.
Speaker 2: His friend Jasper, and I didn't want him to go
Speaker 2: suspend the night at Jasper's house.
Speaker 4: I wanted him to be home.
Speaker 2: And so, but rather than have a fight, rather than
Speaker 2: I have a conflict, what I did is I did
Speaker 2: looping for understanding. So the first thing I said it
Speaker 2: is I said, you know, I'm just wondering like, what
Speaker 2: is it about Jasper that's important to you? And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, the thing about Jasper is that he's really
Speaker 2: really brave. And I was like, he's brave, Like what
Speaker 2: does that mean? Like what it seems like you admire him?
Speaker 2: Like what do you mean he's brave? And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: sometimes we'll get up on his roof with their bikes
Speaker 2: and he'll ride his bike off the roof. And I
Speaker 2: was like, that doesn't sound brave, but but I'm looping
Speaker 2: for understanding. And so what I said is that what
Speaker 2: I hear you saying is that Jasper. You like hanging
Speaker 2: out with Jasper because because it seems like he can
Speaker 2: do these things that are scary for you. And he
Speaker 2: says yeah, yeah. And the other thing is he can
Speaker 2: talk to girls. And then I was like, oh, Jasper
Speaker 2: can talk to girls. Like that's what you mean when
Speaker 2: you say that he's brave, is that he is willing
Speaker 2: to do scary things, not just ride his bike off
Speaker 2: the roof, but talk to girls and put himself out there.
Speaker 2: And you want to be around that because you want
Speaker 2: to get better at that. And he said yeah, And
Speaker 2: I said, okay, I think I totally understand, and that
Speaker 2: is a very important thing. Like, I totally understand why
Speaker 2: you want that. Tonight'sund a good night for it. But
Speaker 2: I promise you that sometime next week we will find
Speaker 2: tonight when you can spend the night with Jasper and
Speaker 2: you can sort of build that relationship. And he was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This could have been a fight, This could have been
Speaker 2: some conflict. But instead by asking this deep question, by
Speaker 2: repeating back and proving that I'm listening, by helping him
Speaker 2: see his own words and a new light because I'm
Speaker 2: repeating them, and then by asking him if I got
Speaker 2: it right, it just resolved all of the conflicts completely.
Speaker 1: You're a very disciplined parent to have done it in
Speaker 1: that moment.
Speaker 4: I screw up all the time.
Speaker 3: Okay, but are you going to let him ride bikes
Speaker 3: off the roof? Or can you just let Jasper teach
Speaker 3: him about talking to girls?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, Now you are getting at the anxieties
Speaker 2: I wake up with.
Speaker 3: Every morning, Kang, you might want to address that piece
Speaker 3: hang out.
Speaker 4: To ride his bikes off the roof.
Speaker 3: Okay, So how do these strategies apply when we're having
Speaker 3: online conversations? I mean, obviously we're having I think I
Speaker 3: don't know what the data says, but I'm having far
Speaker 3: more online conversations in any given day that I'm having
Speaker 3: actual in person conversations. So can I translate some of
Speaker 3: this wisdom to the internets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So here's what we know about online conversations. First
Speaker 2: of all, over index on politeness. Like there's been all
Speaker 2: these studies that show when people are actually arguing with
Speaker 2: each other, if just one person starts saying please and
Speaker 2: thank you, all of a sudden, the temperature goes down significantly.
Speaker 2: So over index on politeness, over index on explaining and acknowledging.
Speaker 2: When you and I in are a conversation and I
Speaker 2: say something, you nod your head, so I know that
Speaker 2: you're listening to me.
Speaker 4: I know that you're you're getting it.
Speaker 2: But online you can't see someone nodding their head, So
Speaker 2: you should over index on saying like. That's a good point, Jim,
Speaker 2: what I hear you saying is x am, I getting
Speaker 2: that right. That's a really good point. Don't criticize each
Speaker 2: other publicly, and in fact, if you can avoid criticizing
Speaker 2: each other in print, it's usually a better idea. Because
Speaker 2: we tend not to hear the caveats that help soften that.
Speaker 2: And then finally, the best thing that you can do
Speaker 2: online is say, sometimes this conversation shouldn't be had online,
Speaker 2: Like we all know when a conversation should move to
Speaker 2: the telephone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's so much easier.
Speaker 2: Somebody says something to you mean, and there's part of
Speaker 2: your brain that's like I should call that person up
Speaker 2: and I should like ask them like do they really
Speaker 2: mean that? And let them know it kind of hurt me.
Speaker 2: But instead of what we do is we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: well you're a jerk too, right, and now it's escalating.
Speaker 2: So the keys to online conversations are to over index
Speaker 2: on the things that we know are important, and to
Speaker 2: also acknowledge sometimes the conversations should move offline and to
Speaker 2: respect that when you.
Speaker 1: Feel it great.
Speaker 3: What's your favorite testimonial or story from someone who applied
Speaker 3: these principles and saw real life change. And maybe that's you, Like,
Speaker 3: maybe you're the one who's had that it's kind of
Speaker 3: transformative experience in their personal life.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I've definitely had transformative experiences. Although I will say
Speaker 2: that it's not infrequent that my wife over the dinner
Speaker 2: table when I'm like monologuing about like how the Dune
Speaker 2: movie should have been better, She's like, She's like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's this book about communication that you might think about
Speaker 2: reading because you're not doing anything that it prescribes. But
Speaker 2: I would say that that the most powerful ones for
Speaker 2: me is I get emails from readers and they say
Speaker 2: things like I've been avoiding a conversation for years with
Speaker 2: my mom, or or there's this person at work that
Speaker 2: I just cannot get along with. And I thought I
Speaker 2: thought it was a personality problem. I thought that we
Speaker 2: couldn't I thought that we couldn't connect, that like it
Speaker 2: was impossible to connect.
Speaker 4: And so I just decided to.
Speaker 2: Like take one of your things and I went and
Speaker 2: I asked them a deep question, and it changed everything.
Speaker 2: Suddenly I understand them in a whole different way, and
Speaker 2: they actually want to talk to me now. Or I've
Speaker 2: been fighting with my mom and instead of fighting, I
Speaker 2: just went and I said, like, tell me why this
Speaker 2: is important to you, Like what does this mean to you?
Speaker 2: And then I looped for understanding. I repeated it back
Speaker 2: to her and I asked her if I got it right,
Speaker 2: And suddenly it was like the angry air went out
Speaker 2: of the room. Those emails are really meaningful because the
Speaker 2: truth of the matter is that like it's awful to
Speaker 2: avoid a conversation, it's awful to have your stomach up
Speaker 2: in knots because you know you have to talk about
Speaker 2: something and you don't want to talk about it and
Speaker 2: you're really worried about it. And yet that conversation. You
Speaker 2: will always feel better after that conversation than you did
Speaker 2: before it, particularly if you know how to have it.
Speaker 2: If you know it, just some simple skills to make
Speaker 2: it better.
Speaker 3: I mean, and sometimes they won't go well, but maybe
Speaker 3: they go well the next time right or the time
Speaker 3: after that.
Speaker 2: And that's a really important point. Nobody is born as
Speaker 2: super communicator. Nobody knows how to do this from birth.
Speaker 2: The way we get better at it is by practicing it.
Speaker 2: And just because you ask a deep question and it
Speaker 2: doesn't go well and you have an awkward conversation, that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. That means you're learning
Speaker 2: how to do it, and it's going to become a habit.
Speaker 2: It's going to get easier. But just stick with it
Speaker 2: and eventually you'll be able to have the conversations you.
Speaker 3: Want to have, Charles, You've given us so many powerful
Speaker 3: strategies for improving our communication. Obviously, this takes a lot
Speaker 3: of deliberate practice and effort. Right, you have to be experimental.
Speaker 3: You have to take risks. You have to ask those
Speaker 3: tough why questions when it feels really uncomfortable, and then
Speaker 3: collect evidence over time that actually it wasn't as scary
Speaker 3: as I thought, and oh it really paid off here.
Speaker 3: I made better friends with this person than I thought.
Speaker 3: Motivate us in this moment to really care about this pursuit,
Speaker 3: to like really want to put in the effort.
Speaker 2: In the epilogue of the book, I describe a little
Speaker 2: bit the Harvard Study of Adult of that it's the
Speaker 2: study that's for eighty years. They followed around thousands of
Speaker 2: people to try and figure out what are the conditions
Speaker 2: preconditions that make you happy and healthy and live longer
Speaker 2: as you get older. And they had all these crazy
Speaker 2: theories when the experiment started in the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 2: like because it was at Harvard, they basically said, like,
Speaker 2: if you're a Harvard Man, they're definitely going to be
Speaker 2: happier as you get older. It turns out that's not true.
Speaker 2: You know that you should get married, that you should
Speaker 2: belong to a good church, that you should come from
Speaker 2: a good family. Basically, the only thing that they've found
Speaker 2: is that your happiness and your success, however you define
Speaker 2: success and most importantly, your health, your longevity. At age
Speaker 2: sixty five, the single greatest corel it is having at
Speaker 2: least a handful of close relationships. At age forty five,
Speaker 2: connecting with other people is the thing that makes us
Speaker 2: healthier and happier and more successful. And the way we
Speaker 2: connect with other people is through conversation, learning the skills
Speaker 2: that can make you a super communicator, learning practicing just
Speaker 2: a little bit, and then calling that friend that you
Speaker 2: haven't talked to in nine months and saying, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering, like what's life like for you? Like
Speaker 2: how you feel in these days?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: I know you went to Tahiti and it sounds amazing,
Speaker 2: Like what about it? Like why did you go on
Speaker 2: such a long trip? What about that was special? Just
Speaker 2: doing that, having that conversation, it makes us happier, It
Speaker 2: makes us healthier, and so it's worth learning to do this,
Speaker 2: not because you have to be forced to be a
Speaker 2: super communicator, but because it's something that makes your life better.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for listening. That's our final episode of
Speaker 3: the season. We'll be back in the new year with
Speaker 3: more episodes. In the meantime, you might enjoy my conversation
Speaker 3: with champion debater bo So about the art of effective debating.
Speaker 3: Bo says it starts with learning how to listen well.
Speaker 3: The episode is called Let's Agree to Disagree More, and
Speaker 3: we'll link to it in the show notes. You can
Speaker 3: also check out our back catalog at any time. Every
Speaker 3: episode is free and each story is timeless. You can
Speaker 3: find them wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you
Speaker 3: have a wonderful holiday season. See you next year. A
Speaker 3: Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
Speaker 3: by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our
Speaker 3: showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
Speaker 3: producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer Ericahuang. Louis Scara wrote
Speaker 3: delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 3: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 3: so a big thanks to everyone there, and of course
Speaker 3: a very special thanks.
Speaker 1: To Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 3: You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram
Speaker 3: at doctor Maya Schunker