Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one, part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and their advice for the rest of us.
Today, I am delighted to welcome Charles Duhigg to the show.
Charles is the author of several books, including The Power of Habit and his latest, Super Communicators, which is about how to unlock the secret language of connection.
Charles, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me on.
Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Yeah. I live in Santa Cruz, California.
I have two kids, both of them teenagers, both boys.
I'm a writer at the New Yorker magazine, and as you mentioned, the author of a couple books, and Super Communicators being the one that came out earlier this year.
Awesome. Do you consider yourself a good communicator?
Are you learning? I think I'm better at it now.
This book actually started because I fell into this bad pattern with my wife, which I'm imagining many people listening can relate to, which is, I would come home after a long day at work and I would start complaining about my day, and my boss doesn't appreciate me, and my coworkers don't understand what a genius
I am. My wife would offer this really good advice.
She'd say something like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit more.
Instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset and say like, you're supposed to be supporting me.
Why aren't you outraged on my behalf?
Then she'd get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice.
That's how the book began, is me calling researchers and saying, I'm theoretically a professional communicator.
I'm a journalist. Why do I keep falling into this pattern again and again and again of miscommunicating?
Yeah, because we all have different ways of communicating, it turns out.
And one of the interesting things about super communicators is you talk about how there are three kinds of conversations, and most of us don't necessarily think about what kind of conversation we are having.
It sounds like you and your wife were having two entirely separate conversations in that case.
That's exactly right.
Yeah. So what researchers have found, and we're actually living through this golden age of understanding communication for really the first time because of advances in neural imaging and data collection.
And what they found is that when we have a discussion, we tend to think of it as being about one thing, right?
We're talking about my day or where to go on vacation or the kids grades.
But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations.
In those conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets, as you just mentioned.
There's these practical conversations where we're talking about making plans or solving problems together.
But then there's also emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings.
I want you to empathize and relate.
And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and society and the identities that are important to us.
And what researchers have found is that if you're having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, it's very, very difficult to completely hear each other, and it's almost impossible to connect.
And you're exactly right.
That's what was happening with me and my wife.
I was having an emotional conversation.
She was having a practical conversation.
And they're both equally legitimate conversations.
But because we weren't having the same kinds of conversation, we couldn't really hear each other.
Within psychology, this has become known as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.
And then you can move from conversation to conversation together as long as you're aligned.
Well, it sounds like then in order to kind of be a better listener, which I'm sure many people would like to be, one of the first things you need to do is figure out what kind of conversation the person you're talking with is hoping to have.
That's exactly right.
And one of the best ways to do that.
Well, so I'll tell you how to do it with kids and they actually teach this in schools is that when someone comes up to you, a student or one of your kids with a problem, you say, look, for this thing that you're talking to me about, or not even about a problem, just about anything they want to talk
about. You say, do you want me to help you?
Do you want me to hug you?
Or do you want me to hear you?
Which are the three kinds of conversations, the practical, the emotional and the social.
And what you'll find is kids can tell you right away.
No, no, I don't need your help.
I just need a hug. Or no, no, I don't need a hug.
I just need you to hear what's going on and listen to me because it's important that I get this across.
Now for adults in the business world, for instance, it's hard to say, do you want to be helped, hugged or heard because they might go to HR.
The hug might not work so well.
Exactly. So the better way to do this is to ask questions.
And in particular, to ask a kind of question that's known as a deep question, which asks about our values or beliefs or experiences.
Which it can sound a little intimidating, but it's as simple as like, if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, you know, what hospital do you work at?
Asking them, Oh, what made you decide to go to medical school?
That invites them to tell you something about who they are.
Well, it sounds like, you know, you you're asking deeper questions.
It's kind of the opposite of small talk.
I mean, I know you have a section in the book about taking some shallow questions and making them deeper.
I wonder if you could give some examples of that.
Yeah, yeah. It's anything that, that basically asks people instead of the facts of their life, asking them about how they feel about their life.
Right? So, so small talk questions, shallow questions would be like, you know, and these are the easiest things to do.
Oh, you meet someone at a party and you're like, Oh, you know, what part of town do you live in?
You know, do you know my friend Jim, he lives up in the Heights too.
A better question would be like, Oh, you live in the Heights?
Like, what do you like about the Heights?
Like, is there a real sense of community there?
What drew you to that?
Or where you find out, you know, you bump into someone who's from your hometown and inevitable shallow question is, you know, where'd you go to high school?
But then the next question, if it's a deep question could be, what was high school like for you?
Like, did you enjoy high school?
I was at a meeting where I was sitting next to a guy and we were like just making conversation before the meeting started.
And he mentioned that his, I asked him what he did that weekend.
And he said, Oh, I went to my kid's graduation.
And he was like, it was fantastic.
Now the easiest thing to do would be them and say, Oh, congratulations, that's great.
But instead I asked him a deep question.
I said, and it doesn't seem like a deep question, but it just seems like an interesting interested question, which is, Oh, that's amazing.
What did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage?
Like, like, were you proud or like sad?
That's the kind of question that invites someone to share who they are.
And more importantly, when someone talks about their kid going to graduate going to their kids graduation, that's probably a sort of somewhat emotional topic for them.
And instead of simply saying congratulations, I matched him and I said, Oh, tell me about that.
What, how did it feel to watch your kid walk across that stage?
And we had a great conversation for just like five minutes.
And then we went on and we did the meeting, but we felt more connected to each other because we had become aligned.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it's, it's partly, you know, small talk gets this reputation as being incredibly dull.
And it often is, but that's because the questions don't invite further conversation.
Whereas, you know, you're passing the time talking about a deep emotional issue, it can make the time go a lot faster.
We're gonna take a quick ad break, and then we'll be back with some more tips on being a better communicator.
Well, I am back with Charles Duhigg, who is the author of the book, Super Communicators, and also the book, The Power of Habit.
He's been sharing some tips on having better conversations.
Although I think one of the issues a lot of us have with having good conversations, you could tell me if this is, you know, something a lot of people do, we're always thinking about what we should be saying next, um, which means that your brain isn't necessarily on what the person is.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And in the book, we have a bunch of stories, right?
The Super Communicators is really built, there's a story about a guy who's a CIA officer has to recruit overseas spies, and it's just terrible at the job until he learns how to how to genuinely listen to other people.
There's another story about the making of the Big Bang Theory, the TV show, where they think the show was it was not a hit at first, it was a total flop, until they figured out how to show that the characters were listening to each other.
And one of the things that we know about listening is that you're exactly right.
Oftentimes in a conversation, we get a little focused on what we're going to say next, because we want to sound smart, right?
We want to, we want to sound clever, and we want to sort of share something about ourselves.
But the more we listen, the more we automatically sound clever and share with ourselves, even if it's not premeditated.
And there's a trick to getting yourself to listen closely to another person.
And it's called looping for understanding.
The goal of looping for understanding is not only to listen closely, it's to prove to the other person that you've been listening to them.
And there's three steps to it.
Step one is to ask a question, preferably a deep question.
Step two is to repeat back in your own words, which you heard them say, don't mimic them, but like, really try and prove to them, oh, I hear what you're saying, I think what you're saying is this.
And then step three, and this is the step I always forget, ask if you got it right.
Because when you ask if you got it right, what you're actually asking is, can I have your permission to acknowledge that I've been listening to you?
Now think about what you have to do in that conversation.
Instead of thinking about what you're going to say, you have to pay enough attention to the other person that you can repeat back what they're going to tell you in your own words, and you're hopefully going to get it right.
When we put ourselves - Because if they tell you you're wrong, what do you do then?
Well, then you say, okay, I'm sorry, explain it to me again, I missed something, right?
And the goal here is like, how do we get ourselves to listen more closely?
We get ourselves to listen more closely by paying closer attention.
Yeah, so lots of different tips here for being a good listener.
But part of this is about treating conversations seriously.
And one of the things you suggest in super communicators is actually doing some preparation for a conversation and not just difficult conversations, because we're going to talk about difficult conversations in a minute.
But even just like, let's say I'm going out to lunch with a friend of mine I haven't seen in six months.
So obviously, I'm probably looking forward to it.
It's a thing I've gotten on my calendar, probably had it there for at least a week or two, so I'm excited about it.
How should I prepare for that in order to make it more meaningful for both of us?
Yeah, so it's a great question, right?
Because you probably already do some of this, is that as you're anticipating seeing your friend, you're thinking to yourself, I'm really curious, I'm going to ask her about this, or I'm going to ask her about that, or I wonder what's going on with her kids.
Last time we talked, she was having some middle school problems, and I wonder if they've resolved that.
You're already preparing for that conversation.
And so the question is, how can we do that all the time?
How can we make that a habit?
Well, there was a study that was done by Harvard Business School, where they brought in a bunch of students, Harvard Business School students, this was like in their first month of school.
And they told them, okay, in a couple of minutes, you're going to have a conversation with a stranger.
Now, having a conversation with a stranger is like one of the most anxiety producing things you can ask someone to do, right?
Because we don't know what we're going to ask about, we don't know if we have anything in common.
And they said, before you have this conversation, what we want you to do is we want you to do this just 10 second exercise, take out a piece of paper and write down three things you might want to talk about, or three questions you might want to ask, or just three topics that are interesting to you.
They can be stupid, right?
Like, are you going to the party this weekend?
Did you catch last night's game?
And they said, okay, take 10 seconds, write down those three questions, and then put them in your pocket and go have the conversation.
So students did this, they wrote down their three things, they went and they had the conversations.
And afterwards, they polled the students and they asked them, did you guys talk about the things you wrote down?
And most of the students said no, like actually, it never came up.
But on the other hand, like the conversation was so much less anxiety producing for me and went so much better than I anticipated.
Because I knew that if we hit like an awkward silence, I had those questions in my back pocket.
And the fact that they were in my back pocket meant that I didn't even have to ask them.
Oftentimes, when we're going to have a conversation with someone, particularly an important meaningful conversation, one of the best things we can do is just sit down and ask ourselves, what is one thing that I want to tell this person about?
Like, what's one thing that's important to me that I want to share with them?
And equally, what is one question that you absolutely want to ask that person?
And you might get to that topic and that question in your conversation, but the fact that you've thought a little bit about what your goals are for the conversations, that you've tried to envision what the other person's goals are for the conversations, that's going to make it so much more natural to
find the things you actually care about.
Wonderful. A good idea for better conversation there.
But some conversations, probably if you're just having a random conversation with another student at Harvard Business School, it might be just casual, not particularly fraught.
I know a lot of people, especially charged political environments, lots of topics that are heated for people these days, as this will air after the election, but I know a lot of people are going to be visiting extended family, maybe people who have different political opinions than them.
I mean, without getting into the politics itself, how do we have conversations with people that we know disagree with us on a lot?
If we're also trying to maintain the relationship?
So maybe picture Thanksgiving dinner, aunt or uncle who disagrees with you vehemently on everything.
How does that work?
Well, so the first thing I would say is it's not that this is unusual, right?
There's lots of things that we disagree with our best friends on or our family members.
In fact, if you think about America, like what's made us strong, it's that we are really good at disagreeing with each other and then working together.
The Constitutional Convention was basically a bunch of people coming together who hated each other, and all they did was yell at each other for three months straight.
And then they wrote a constitution together.
Having conversations with people who don't agree with us, that's an important part of conversation.
And that's one of the nice things about communication.
And so the question is, how do we do it, right?
So the first thing I would say is that oftentimes when people go into that conversation, they are feeling really anxious.
They're not anxious necessarily about the topic of the conversation.
They're anxious about what the conversation is going to be like.
Is Jim going to say something that offends me so much that it's really hard for me to continue having dinner with him?
Am I going to say the wrong thing?
And am I going to set Suzy off by saying something that offends her that I didn't even realize was offensive?
And so one of the best things we can do for those conversations is we can start them by saying, I want to have a discussion about something, and I know that it's going to be awkward.
And that's okay. It's okay for this conversation to be awkward.
It should kind of be awkward.
And I might say the wrong thing because in the space between my brain and my lips, what I'm trying to get across, sometimes it gets garbled.
And I hope you'll forgive me if I say things wrong.
And I want you to know that if you say the wrong thing, I will absolutely forgive you.
But talking about this and understanding how you see this situation, it's important to me.
And so if you're willing, I'd love to have a conversation with you about it.
What study after study shows is if you start a conversation by acknowledging that it might be hard, that it might be awkward, by apologizing and saying, I go into this with the best of intentions and I hope you do too, it can transform how difficult that conversation is.
That doesn't mean everyone's going to agree with each other.
But it does mean that it's going to go much easier.
And it seems that partly it's just about being polite, right?
That remembering our manners, even when it is a heated conversation can go a long way.
And that was one of the more fascinating studies you referenced in this book is that when people...
Well, you can describe it.
People use their manners online.
They even manage to turn down the temperature a little bit.
Absolutely. It turns out that online, if you say please and thank you, it can transform the tenor of the discussion.
And I think the reason why is because when you think about it in these conversations that are tough conversations, what's the goal?
If your goal is, I want to give that person a piece of my mind or I want to prove to them that I'm right and they're wrong.
It's not that surprising that the conversation is not going to go very well, right?
But the goal of a conversation shouldn't be to make the other person agree with you.
It shouldn't even be to impress them that you're smart or get them to like you.
The goal of a conversation is just to understand what the other person is trying to say.
And to speak in such a way that they understand you.
And when we set that as our goal, when we go into a conversation, we say, look, I might disagree with you, but I genuinely want to understand why you see the world this way.
All of a sudden, that conversation becomes much easier.
And that politeness that you mentioned, that's a signal that we want to do that.
When I say please and thank you, when I say, that's a really, really good point, I disagree with you, but I think you made that point really, really well.
What we're really saying is it is my goal to understand you as my primary objective.
Everything else is secondary to that.
And when we feel like someone is listening to us, we become much more likely to listen to them in response.
And I think partly it's just that when we're communicating, we were seeing each other, or we're using our voices, I mean, you can hear more of that, that it's calm, that it's respectful, versus online, when you're just seeing print, it's probably easy to take the worst possible explanation for somebody saying
something. So they say, give me your evidence, you imagine them shouting over you, give me your evidence, as opposed to genuinely, I'd like to see what you're basing this on.
Yeah, no. And think about sarcasm, right?
Like, if I said something sarcastic, you know immediately that I mean sarcastic, because you can hear it in my voice.
But when I type something sarcastic, you have no idea you think I'm just being a jerk.
And I think that that's really, really important is that different channels of communication have different strengths and weaknesses.
And, and when we get into trouble, it's when we forget that there's different rules, different rules for different channels, right?
That when I'm talking to you, I can say something sarcastic, but when I'm online, I shouldn't be sarcastic, because you're not going to hear the sarcasm in my voice.
It's not that these different channels of communication are better or worse, or that some of them are terrible.
It's that they each have a different set of rules.
And we get into trouble when we forget those rules.
But if we just remind ourselves, and we all know this, right?
We know that there's a difference between making a phone call and seeing someone face to face and sending them a text versus sending them an emoji.
We know that these different forms of communication require slightly different approaches.
When we remember that we remind ourselves, it goes much, much better.
Absolutely. Well, we're going to take one more quick ad break, and then we'll be back with some of Charles' personal productivity tips.
Well, I am back. This is one of the longer episodes of Before Breakfast.
I am interviewing Charles Duhigg about how to be a better communicator.
He's also written about productivity topics in the past.
We have a lot of people who love productivity tips listening to this show.
So Charles, maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you personally make to -do lists.
Yeah, and a lot of this came from when I was writing The Power of Habit, right, about how to build the right habits that make you more productive.
So one of the things that research has shown is that oftentimes when someone comes up with a to -do list, when we write a to -do list, and I used to do this myself, we're making a critical mistake.
The goal of a to -do list should be to help you figure out what your priorities are.
The goals of a memory list are to write down all those things that it's hard to carry around in your brain.
So I have a memory list that has 20 or 30 different tasks on it, all these things that like over time I want to get done because if I don't write them down, I'm going to forget them.
But that's not my to -do list, and that shouldn't be my to -do list because what will happen is when I look at that list, that memory list, the thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to look for the easiest task to complete because it feels so good.
It gives you what's known as a cognitive sense of closure to get to be able to cross that thing off.
In fact, studies show that something like 30 % of people when they write a to -do list, they'll actually include on the to -do list something they've already completed so that they can cross it off and feel good about that.
I've never done that, Charles.
Never, never, never.
So it's important to have a memory list.
You should definitely have a memory list, but you should not make that your to -do list.
Your to -do list is something that you come up with every morning, and what you do is you look at your memory list and you say, what is the number one most important thing for me to get done today?
Okay, that's the first item on my to -do list.
If I get that done, what's the second most important thing to get done today?
Okay, that's number two.
Now, odds are you're only going to get those two things done, right?
Maybe you only get one of them done, but just in case, just in case, what's the third most important?
And the next day, when you wake up and you got one done and two done, number three might become number one on your to -do list for the next day.
What studies show us is that you should never have more than three things on your to -do list, but those three things should be the most important things.
And in fact, in some ways, having just one thing on your to -do list is really, really valuable if it's the most important thing, because oftentimes if we have too many things on our to -do list, we'll skip the most important thing.
We'll skip the thing that we put number one in order to do the other things that are easier.
So, a to -do list should be what is the most important priority for today?
What will move the ball farthest today?
What do I have to get done?
And the memory list is where I dump everything I need to remember, and I use those to figure out what goes number one, two, and three on my to -do list for today.
Yeah, we have a saying around here that to -do means today.
That if you're putting it on the to -do list, it means that you are doing it today as a contract with yourself.
Exactly. And there's some stuff that you can't do today, right?
You really want to get done, but you're not going to get a chance to do it till next week.
That's the thing that should go on the memory list.
It's to remind yourself next week that you want to do this, but that to -do list should be today.
Yeah, absolutely. Good advice.
So, Charles, what is something that you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
That is our tagline around here.
We're always looking for ways to take our days from great to awesome.
So, what's something you've done recently that has made a day extra special?
I'll tell you this quick story that comes from super communicators.
There's this study that's known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development, where what they've done is for 80 years now, that researchers have followed around thousands and thousands of people to try and figure out what are the things that make people most successful, make them healthiest, and make them
live longest. And when this project started back in the 1920s and 30s, they had all kinds of crazy theories, right?
It was being done at Harvard.
So, they were like, well, if you go to Harvard, you're probably going to be much happier in life than everyone else, which turns out not to be true.
And they said things like, well, if you come from a good family, if you get married early, if you have kids, but not too many kids.
And it turns out none of those things actually impact our health and our happiness and our success.
There is one thing that does though.
You will be happy, healthy, and successful at age 65 if you have at least a handful of close relationships at age 45.
Because, of course, you're not just having those relationships at age 45, right?
These are people that you can keep in touch with.
What we know is that being lonely is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
It's terrible for you.
And the cure for loneliness isn't having a thousand friends.
It's having just a handful of friends that you actually keep in touch with, that person that you haven't talked to in a month and a half, giving them a call and saying, hey, let's just catch up for 15 or 20 minutes.
So, the way that I make my day from good to great, from good to awesome, is I set aside some time to have a conversation with someone that I haven't talked to in a while.
Because that feeling of connection, that feeling of hearing each other and being heard and learning something new about the world and renewing that connection, that makes you feel amazing.
And I think it's really, really important.
It makes us healthier and happier, and ultimately makes us live longer.
Excellent. Well, I am personally 45 years old, so I will take that to heart.
I'm looking around, making sure I have good connections.
Hopefully, these people are sticking around for the next 20 years.
But we'll see. We'll see.
They mostly seem like they're good people and will, but you never know.
But this is great stuff, Charles.
So, where can our listeners find you these days?
Yeah. So, my website is charlesdoohig .com, or if you Google Power of Habit or Super Communicators, I'll definitely come up on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram.
And the book Super Communicators, you can buy at any bookstore, right?
It's on Amazon. Your local booksellers are fantastic.
The audio book is really popular on audible .com.
I actually read it myself.
But yeah, I would love to hear from folks, and I'm easy to find.
Excellent. So yeah, if you want to hear more of Charles' voice, go check out the audio book.
And Charles, thank you so much for joining us.
Everyone could go check out his book.
And to our listeners, if you have feedback about this episode or suggestions for future topics, you can let me know at laura, at lauravandercam .com.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura, at lauravandercam .com.
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