670: How to Connect with People Better, with Charles Duhigg

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
We all know that we can’t lead if we don’t connect. The best leaders not only do this well, but they do it consistently with all kinds of people. On this episode, what we can learn from the best communicators to do better ourselves. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 670. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:39]:
And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. It’s no accident that the word conversations is in that sentence that I say every week here at the beginning of the show because conversations are so important for us as leaders. Connecting with people, it is such a critical aspect of leadership. And today, I am excited to have an expert with us who’s gonna help us to do this better, to be able to connect with people better, to do it a bit more quickly, and to really look at the human aspect of what we seek in our relationships and how we can lead them more effectively. I’m so pleased to welcome Charles Duhigg. He is a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist and the author of The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale College, he is a winner of the National Academies of Sciences, National Journalism, and George Polk Awards. He writes for the New Yorker and other publications and is host emeritus of the Slate podcast, How To!

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:43]:
He’s the author of the new book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Charles, what a pleasure to have you on.

Charles Duhigg [00:01:52]:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:55]:
I so enjoyed getting into this book and thinking about how do we connect with people better. And I was really struck by a passage you make reference to in the book about your dad. And I hope you don’t mind if I just read this couple of sentences. “When my father died a few years ago, and I told people I’d recently attended his funeral, Some of them offered their condolences, but almost nobody asked me any questions. Instead, they quickly moved on to other subjects. The truth was, I was desperate to talk about what I had been through. About my dad, about the eulogies that had made me so proud and sad, and how it feels to know I won’t be able to call him with good news.”

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:41]:
I read that, and I thought how many times I’ve heard stories like that from people on connecting with others. And just so often, we just don’t know what to say next, do we?

Charles Duhigg [00:02:55]:
No. And and I think that’s that’s part of the problem is because we don’t know what to say next. We don’t say anything at all, or we say my condolences, and then we we move on to something else. But, of course, the truth of the matter is when you’re talking to someone and they’ve had a loss in their life or when they’ve had a great joy, they just went to their kid’s graduation. This is some of the most meaningful moments in their lives, and it’s this opportunity for us to connect with them. And and we shouldn’t let that fear of saying the wrong thing prevent us from speaking, particularly because if we just ask a question, if they don’t want to engage, they don’t have to. And if they do, if it’s a question like, you know, tell me what, tell me what graduation was like or or tell me about your dad. It’s an invitation to the other person to share with you who they really are.

Charles Duhigg [00:03:44]:
And that’s where connection comes from.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:47]:
You write. “We know that our brains have evolved to crave connections. When we click with someone, our eyes often start to dilate in tandem. Our pulses match, and we feel the same emotions and start to complete each other’s sentences within our heads. This is known as neuro entrainment, and it feels wonderful.” And I was struck reading through your research on how much evidence and research there is behind this. I mean, one example is the example of guitar players when they’re playing in duets. Like, how much they align? It’s really fascinating, isn’t it?

Charles Duhigg [00:04:20]:
It it is. It’s totally fascinating. And, you know, we focus on those physical aspects, but the biggest alignment is what happens inside our brains. That even during this conversation, as as we’re talking to each other and becoming neurally and trained, if we could see our brain activity, what we would see is it’s starting to look similar to each other. And if you think about it, that’s kind of what communication is. Communication is human’s superpower. It is what has helped homo sapiens become such a successful species. And it’s because I can describe a feeling, or I can describe an idea.

Charles Duhigg [00:04:53]:
And simply, if I tell it to you the right way, you start to experience that feeling, or you start to experience that idea. Our brains become similar. We begin feeling and thinking the same thing at the same time. That’s what communication is. And as you mentioned, we have evolved to love the feeling of that. Think how good you feel after a great conversation. It just, it releases all these endorphins. You just feel fantastic.

Charles Duhigg [00:05:22]:
That’s because our brains want us to connect with other people.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:20]:
Yeah. And there are definitely people who are better at this. Right?

Charles Duhigg [00:05:30]:
Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:29]:
I think that and and a and a bunch of the book is about that. And part of the good news is we can all get better at this. Right? Absolutely. And I was thinking about the fact that I think our assumptions are sometimes that the people who are the most talkative and most clever, the natural leaders in a conversation, like the people that visibly look that way, are sometimes the people who are best at this. But it turns out that’s not really always the case, is it?

Charles Duhigg [00:06:00]:
No. No. In fact, it might be helpful to sort of describe what a super communicator is.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:06]:
Sure.

Charles Duhigg [00:06:05]:
And the easiest way to do it is just to say, if you were having a bad day and and you knew that there was someone you could call who would make you feel better, does that person pop into your mind? Do you know who that is that you would call to sort of just make everything seem okay? Yeah. A person pops into my mind too. Right? Everyone has this person in their life. And for you, that person is a super communicator, and and you’re probably a super communicator back to them. Now there are some people though who manage to do this more consistently. They can do this with almost anyone. And it’s not because they’re particularly charismatic.

Charles Duhigg [00:06:41]:
It’s not because they’re the funniest person you have, or the smartest friend. It’s because they’ve just thought a little bit more about how communication works. They’ve paid a little bit closer attention to how we interact with each other. And that’s all that it takes for us to become a super communicator. They’ve picked up on things that once the rest of us, once it’s pointed out to the rest of us, it becomes obvious. But until it does, it can seem mysterious. Sometimes we wanna connect with someone, and we don’t know how. Supercommunicators know how, and it’s just a set of skills that literally anyone can learn.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:16]:
And like you said, they really are gifted at not just doing it with those 2 or 3 key people in their lives, but they’re really able to do it in lots of different venues, lots of different personalities. What is it that is different about the person who is more like that super communicator who’s able to connect well in lots of different venues that that maybe the rest of us aren’t so good at?

Charles Duhigg [00:07:43]:
So there’s a couple of things. The first is that they recognize that there’s different kinds of conversations. And and for me, this really was struck out came home for me when, I would have this pattern that I would fall into all the time with my wife where I would come home from work and I had a tough day, and I would start complaining about my boss and my coworkers. And and my wife very reasonably would say, actually, there’s a solution for this. Why don’t you, like, take your boss out to lunch and you get you guys can get to know each other a little bit better? And instead of being able to hear her, I would become even more upset. Right? I would say I would say, why aren’t you supporting me? You’re supposed to be on my side. You should be outraged on my behalf.

Charles Duhigg [00:08:21]:
And then because I was overreacting, she would get upset and she wouldn’t hear what I was saying. And so when I started writing this book, I went to experts and I asked them what’s going on here? Like, why do we keep miscommunicating? And they said, well, most people think that a discussion is made up of one thing, right? That we’re discussing a specific topic, but actually each discussion contains multiple different kinds of conversations. And for the most part, all of those conversations fall into 1 of 3 buckets. There’s practical conversations where we’re fixing problems or we’re making plans or we’re trying to to reason through something. There’s emotional conversations, where my goal is to tell you how I feel, and I don’t want you to fix my problem. I want you to empathize with me. And then there’s social conversations, which is when we talk about how we relate to each other and relate to other people in society. And they said, look, the problem here is if you’re not having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you’re probably gonna miscommunicate with each other.

Charles Duhigg [00:09:21]:
You certainly are gonna misconnect. And so when you came home, you were in an emotional mindset. You were having an emotional conversation, and your wife responded with a practical conversation. And both of those are completely valid forms of communication. But because you weren’t having the same kind of conversation at the same time, you weren’t really connecting with each other. You weren’t able to hear each other.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:43]:
One of the things that really struck me in looking at your work is that the super communicators are able to adjust and adapt really well in the moment. They see that better and they are able to flex more consistently than the rest of us. It’s really it’s a differentiator, isn’t it?

Charles Duhigg [00:10:06]:
Absolutely. And and part of it is just paying attention. Right? So that you know, we mentioned before when you see someone at work and you ask them, how was your weekend? And they say, oh, my son graduated. Or they say something like, you know, it it was kind of a tough weekend. There was some stuff going on. And our instinct is to just go on to, like, whatever’s on our mind. Right? Well, let’s talk about next year’s budget. But super communicators super communicators take a beat, and it really only takes half a minute.

Charles Duhigg [00:10:33]:
And they say, oh, you know, tell me about what the graduate like, what were you feeling when you’re when you watched your son walk across the stage and get his diploma? Or, you know, I I know that it it sounds like it’s sounds like it was a tough weekend. I’ve been there before. If you ever wanna talk about it, I’m here. It super communicators recognize what kind of conversation is happening, and they match the other person. And again, it’s just a set of skills that we can learn to use, but that matching shows them that they want to connect with us. And this is what super communicators do really well. Not only do they match other people really well, this is known within psychology as the matching principle, but supercommunicators show people that they want to connect with them. And knowing that someone wants to connect with us, that makes it so much easier to connect.

Charles Duhigg [00:10:33]:
That makes us feel good.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:20]:
What’s the way someone shows that shows that they wanna connect?

Charles Duhigg [00:11:20]:
Well, I think there’s 2 techniques in particular that are really powerful. The first is asking questions. And some questions are more powerful than others. So within the psychology literature, these are known as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks you about your values, or your beliefs, or your experiences. And and that can sound kinda daunting. Right? Like, it sounds like a big question, but actually, a deep question could be as simple as saying to someone, what do you do for a living? And they say, oh, I’m a lawyer. And you say, oh, did you always wanna be a lawyer? Do you love practicing the laws? Is it is it amazing? What when did you decide, what made you decide to go to law school? Those are all 3 deep questions, and they’re easy to ask.

Charles Duhigg [00:12:05]:
But they ask the other person to describe their experiences, how they decided to go to law school, their beliefs and values that led them to this career, what they value out of this work. And when someone describes that to us, they tell us something important about themselves and asking the question shows them that we wanna understand them. It shows them that we want to connect. Now there’s a second technique that’s equally powerful, and this is particularly useful when we’re talking to someone in a tense conversation. Maybe there’s some conflict. Maybe we disagree with each other. Maybe it’s just a hard chat. We have to talk about whether you deserve a raise or your performance review.

Charles Duhigg [00:12:42]:
And what studies show is that there’s a technique called looping for understanding that proves to the other person that you really want to hear and understand what they’re telling you. And there’s 3 steps to looping for understanding. The first step is you just ask a question, hopefully a deep question if you can. Do you listen to what the person says? And then the second step is you repeat back in your own words, which you just heard them say. And then the third step, and this is the one most people usually forget, is you ask them if you got it right. Now we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve been having a tough conversation, and we know that one of the things that’s hard about it is that as you’re talking, you’re wondering, like, is this other person actually listening? Are they just waiting their turn to speak? And sometimes when we’re listening, it’s hard to listen. Right? We’re preparing our rebuttals in our minds and we’re not really paying attention. Looping for understanding is something that allows us to prove to the other person that we are genuinely listening.

Charles Duhigg [00:13:39]:
We genuinely want to understand them. We ought to understand them so much that we’re actually going to resay what they said in our own words, and then ask if we got it right. When we do that, we’re showing them that we genuinely want to connect with them even if we disagree with each other. And that’s incredibly powerful because it inspires the other person to listen back as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:00]:
Yeah. And to our point earlier, we can get better at it. Right? And I was thinking when I started hosting the show, I would have a really hard time listening in the moment early on because I was thinking about the next question often or or I’d written down the next question and it really did take some time and it took some iterations to learn that I could do a better job of listening in the moment but I did get better at it, and I think that’s true for almost everyone. Like, if we zero in on some of these things, we really can get better. And so I’d love to zero in on some of the things you just said because I think there’s so much here that, like, sometimes some little shifts, which may not seem like that big a deal on their face, can really open up some doors for this. And you made the invitation to ask a question, right, especially looping for understanding. And, you know, I was thinking about those deeper questions and that the the point, I think, is to make an emotional reply easier for someone else. Like.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:14]:
Maybe they connect deeper than they would have if you had asked a different question. Maybe they don’t, but you at least open the door. And I love in one of the pages of the book, there’s a whole chart of questions of how you can take a shallow question and nudge it to be a deeper question. And I think, like, at first glance, it might seem well, it doesn’t seem like that big a difference, but I love one of them is rather than asking where do you live, the question is, what do you like about your neighborhood? And it invites someone to give more of an emotional response to make that connection, doesn’t it?

Charles Duhigg [00:15:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. And more of a personal response. Right? And Yeah. And in some ways, it’s a matter of instead of asking for facts, asking for perceptions, asking for opinions. Right? Because it’s our instincts to ask for facts. Where do you live? Where’d you go to high school? What do you do for a living? But if we just shift those conversations a little bit, you know, what do you love about your neighborhood? Neighborhood? What was the best part of high school for you? Right? You know, did you always want that job or is it something that you’ve always loved or did you find it later in life? What those questions are not only inviting is emotionality, but even more, it’s inviting someone to answer it authentically, right, to to present some aspect of themselves, to reveal something about themselves. And particularly, when we hear that and we reciprocate that vulnerability, we reciprocate that sharing.

Charles Duhigg [00:16:47]:
Our brains are hardwired to trust people more when they engage in reciprocal vulnerability. So if we say something real and meaningful and someone replies showing that they’ve heard us and share something about themselves, we trust them more. It’s a basically built in aspect of how our neurology works.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:08]:
Yeah. And that really struck me as a key point that the people who do this really well are reciprocal. It’s not just I’m curious about you, and I’m asking all of these deep questions, but they also bring themselves into the conversation. And I’m wondering, Charles, like, how what you found that people who do this well, really do kind of balance that without making the conversation about themselves? Because we don’t wanna go on that side too. Have you found a way or or or seen, like, what do people do to kind of bridge that gap well?

Charles Duhigg [00:17:46]:
So I think let’s say I say to someone, do you love being a lawyer? And they talk a little bit about how they decided to be a lawyer. And then I say, you know, it’s interesting you say that because like the way that I decided to become a journalist, and I love being a journalist, is that when I was in business school, I had this experience. Right? So in some respects, when someone answers a question, even if they don’t ask that question back, we can answer the same question we asked. And that feels like sharing. Now, the key is you’re exactly right. Sometimes it can not feel like sharing, right? If if I turn to someone and I say, how was your weekend? And they say, oh, you know, actually, my dad passed away. And I say, oh, I know what that’s like. My aunt died 12 years ago, and and I totally know what that’s like. That’s not really sharing.

Charles Duhigg [00:18:34]:
Right? That’s trying to steal the spotlight for myself to try and make it about me. Right. The way to to the way to share in a situation like that, if someone has revealed something that’s that’s really deep is to say, oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Tell me about your dad, or how are you feeling right now? That asking another follow-up question is a form of emotional reciprocity and vulnerability that showing that we are there to hear them feels as vulnerable as saying something in the first place. And a simple rule for figuring out when this is appropriate is ask yourself, did this person tell me something that they enjoyed telling me? If so, I should tell them something about myself that I enjoy describing. Or did they tell me something that was kind of hard? And if they did, then probably the next best step is just to ask them a question, to give them space to explore and explain who they are.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:33]:
And what’s really interesting is the research is pretty clear on this. The people who are practicing reciprocity, who are not just asking questions to the other person and just having more of a, I don’t know if interrogation is the right word, but really only focusing on the person and not sharing some of themselves. They don’t connect as well as the people who are.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:55]:
It’s really fascinating, and it’s kinda counterintuitive.

Charles Duhigg [00:19:58]:
There a story in the book about, the CIA officer who who is gets hired and is sent to go recruit overseas spies. And he’s just terrible at the job. He’s just he he, like, literally cannot recruit anyone to save his life. And the only time he get he becomes successful is when he decides to stop recruiting. He just kind of gives up, and he has an honest conversation with a woman who he’s been he’s been trying to recruit for months months months, and she’s told him no again and again. And, eventually, he just says, like, this isn’t gonna happen. Like, I I’m just gonna give up. And he starts telling her about how scared he is that he’s gonna get fired because he is just terrible at this job.

Charles Duhigg [00:20:42]:
Like, he wanted this job for so long, and it turns out he’s not good at it. And it’s then when he says something honest and true and vulnerable, it’s then that she can hear what he’s saying for the first time. And she says, no, no. I wanna work with you. We can do this together. And she ended up becoming one of the top assets in the Middle East. And Jim Lawler, the the CIA officer, ended up becoming one of the top recruiters in the CIA. But it’s not about it’s not about trying to manipulate someone.

Charles Duhigg [00:21:13]:
It’s not about trying to use a tactic. It’s rather about learning these skills so that we can be more authentic when we speak to other people because they’ll recognize and they’ll appreciate that authenticity and they’ll respond with authenticity of their own.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:28]:
One of the other pieces of guidance you’ve given is in that looping for understanding, repeat back in your own words, like, after you’ve asked that deeper question, repeating back what you think you’ve heard and I think all of us have been the, maybe I don’t know if victims is too strong a word but we’ve had a conversation with someone else, and they sort of pair it back to us. Like, what they like, they’ve gone through whatever the sales 101 course and learned.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:53]:
Yeah. And it’s it’s technically like they heard you, but it’s clear that it’s like following a road pattern. And we sort of all know when we hear that. And then on the other side, we have all had the experience too where someone repeats back in their own words and you’re like, wow. Yeah. They got it.

Charles Duhigg [00:22:16]:
And and sometimes, it’s just a matter of taking a beat. Right? So if if you describe something to me, and I’m quiet for, like, 2 or 3 seconds because I’ve been listening closely. I’ve been processing what you what you’ve been saying. And I say, look, what I hear you saying, I know that we’re talking about your kids, but what I hear you saying is you’re really concerned about what’s going on with your wife. It sounds like this is this is bigger than just a problem with your kids. This is a problem with your whole family. Am I getting that right? Do you think that’s true? Then suddenly, that person has given us a gift. They’ve helped us hear ourself.

Charles Duhigg [00:22:55]:
And you’re right. If if we do it in a clumsy way, if we don’t actually try and listen to what the person is saying, but we just took that sales 101 class, it’s not gonna work. But if we just take a minute, if we think before we speak, then we’re probably gonna find some way to say something that’s real and that person’s gonna know that we want to connect with them.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:16]:
And there’s an element there in what you just said of kind of the meta bigger picture. Like, if you stop and think about it for a moment, like, what is this conversation actually about? Right? Going back to what you said earlier. And like taking that pause helps us to center a little bit on that bigger picture. And if you get the meaning, then the connection is so much more profound.

Charles Duhigg [00:23:37]:
Absolutely. And at the beginning of every conversation, there’s what psychologists have started referring to as a quiet negotiation. And the goal of that quiet negotiation is not to win. It’s not to, not to beat the other person. The goal of the quiet negotiation is to try and figure out what each person wants out of this discussion. And sometimes it can be as simple as saying like, you know, Jim, why’d you call me in today? What do you wanna talk about? But sometimes when we bump into someone or we’re having a more casual conversation, it takes a little bit more effort to figure out not only what they want to talk about, what they want need out of this discussion and what we want to need, but also the rules for this conversation. Right? Do we interrupt each other? Is this a formal conversation or a casual conversation? Can we make jokes and go on tangents or do we need to stay on, on topic? And so often what people do at the beginning of a conversation is they conduct little experiments often without realizing it Right? At the beginning of our conversation, we were interrupting each other more and then we kind of learned, no, no, we gotta take turns. Yeah.

Charles Duhigg [00:24:41]:
And, you know, I’ve laughed a couple times, and and you’ve laughed in response, meaning that we can we can laugh and be casual with each other. Super communicators just pay attention to those experiments. And if and if one doesn’t work, that’s okay. They don’t see it as a failure or an awkwardness. They see it as a piece of information that they’ve learned from. And figuring out what each of us actually wants from that conversation is really, really valuable. There was actually an experiment that was done where they went into an investment bank and they, this was like a super competitive place. People would like scream at each other all the time.

Charles Duhigg [00:25:17]:
And they asked everyone for a week before each meeting you go into write down on an index card what one sentence that says what you’re hoping to accomplish in this meeting and the mood that you hope to establish. So people would jot down, you know, like I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna ask everyone to come up with a budget, but I want us to all be on the same the same page. Or I’m gonna take Maria out to lunch and I wanna ask her, you know, know, if she wants to go on vacation with me, but I wanna make it easy for her to say no because I don’t want it to be weird. And what they found is that when people did this, when they just jotted this down, again, it took 10 seconds, that most people would just stick the card in their pocket. They wouldn’t share what they had written down to other people, but the incidence of fights and shouting and conflict went down 80%. And the reason why is because people knew what they wanted out of this discussion. Sometimes we don’t know ourselves.

Charles Duhigg [00:26:09]:
And if we just take a minute before we open our mouth to ask ourselves, why am I about to speak? What do I really want out of this? Suddenly, we’ll see what the right thing to say is.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:21]:
Speaking of the right thing to say, you mentioned in the looping for understanding, especially when something may be a little bit more contentious, a final step that a lot of people miss. Ask if you got it right. Yeah. What does that sound like?

Charles Duhigg [00:26:38]:
Oh, it can be as simple as saying, like, you know, Dave, what I hear you saying is that you want us to be able to connect better. The am I hearing you right? Did I get that right? Or sometimes you can even do it at the beginning, and they can you can say, look look, what I’m hearing you say, and and tell me if I’m getting this wrong, is it’s really easy. And the reason why it’s so powerful is because you’re asking someone’s permission to understand them. And it might be that you don’t understand them. It might be that they actually didn’t say what they meant clearly enough. And, and this helps them understand. No, no, no, no. You almost got it.

Charles Duhigg [00:27:12]:
But there’s this thing that you’re missing. This thing that’s important to me. And this asking permission is really, really valuable. Like, particularly in tough conversations, there’s there’s a question, like, how do we transition from an emotional conversation when I come home from and I’m complaining to my wife? How do we transition from that to the practical conversation that she wants to have? And a simple way to do it is to say, look, I hear that you’re really upset and and thank you for sharing that with me. Do you mind if I, if I share with you something that I think might help? The reason why that’s so powerful, asking that permission to change the conversation to a different kind of conversation is because it invites the other person to say yes. Instead of forcing on you that I want to have a different kind of conversation. It gives me an opportunity to ask you if it’s okay to change and then we’ll change together. Then we’ll both feel good about it.

Charles Duhigg [00:28:06]:
And just asking that permission. And of course, if you say, do you mind if I share with you this thing? Of course, they’re going to say yes. Right. In fact, they’re going to appreciate it. And they’re gonna be ready to hear your practical conversation. They’re gonna be ready to hear your solution.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:18]:
The key is asking the question, right? Rather than just assuming or deciding the permission piece.

Charles Duhigg [00:28:25]:
Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:26]:
You write this also about deeper questions, and I thought it’s such a fascinating point. These kinds of deeper questions can help fight the unfair discrepancies in how men and women, as well as other groups, are allowed to express emotions. We all know that how emotion show up in the workplace. We see gender bias and Absolutely. Bias from underrepresented groups all the time and how this shows up. This helps combat that interestingly, doesn’t it?

Charles Duhigg [00:28:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. And studies show this. My wife is a scientist. And when I was working on this chapter, one of the things she said is she said, look, I cannot be emotional at work the same way that men can. Right? If and in fact, studies show this. If a if a man cries at work, he’s seen as really caring deeply about this issue, about about really putting himself out there. If a woman cries at work, it’s seen as a weakness.

Charles Duhigg [00:29:22]:
It’s seen that it’s her being too emotional. And so Liz asked me, how do we how do we be vulnerable at work when we know that there is this difference? And what the research says is exactly what you just said, which is when we ask deep questions, we tend to bypass the stereotypes in people’s minds. Right? So if someone has been vulnerable with us and as a woman, I say to them, I really want to understand what you’re feeling like. Tell me more about what the relationship was like with this person and why it upsets you so much. Or what what happened when you were a kid and you you had to deal with a bully like the clients being a bully? How did that make you feel? Like, what how did you deal with them? The reason why that question is so powerful is because in doing so, we’re introducing a safe space for emotional vulnerability without triggering the stereotypes in people’s heads. And similarly, as a male coworker, as as an ally, when we ask a deep question of one of our colleagues who might be underrepresented minority or might be a woman, what we’re doing is we’re saying to them, this is a safe space for you to bring your full self to work. I am not going to assume that you are emotional.

Charles Duhigg [00:30:42]:
I am not going to assume that you are irrational, or that you’re defensive. Instead, I’m gonna ask you a question that invites you to explain to me who you really are, because inevitably what you’re going to say is going to confound the stereotypes because you’re a real person. You’re bigger than just one identity and one label. And the more I hear that, the more we can actually have a conversation with each other.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:08]:
And I think especially if you’re the person who is has the title, has power, you leading that is key. Like, you starting that, what you just said, being the person who starts to ask the deeper question, being the person who opens the door. And like we said earlier, people may or may not walk through it. That’s their choice, of course. But creating the space where some of that deeper connection can happen. Wow. Like, what a gift.

Charles Duhigg [00:31:33]:
And that doesn’t mean there’s obviously labor rules. Right? Like, it it doesn’t mean if we’re at work, I should ask something inappropriate, or I should pressure my my direct reports to to be personal or be emotional with me. But it does mean that when that direct report signals to me that they have something personal they wanna talk about, that I create a safe space for it to happen. And I ask them permission to share with me. And that’s what’s really, really important. Right? And the other thing is not everything has to be a conversation. Right? Not everything has to be a deep conversation. When I when I say to my kids, look, I wanna talk to you.

Charles Duhigg [00:32:14]:
I wanna have a discussion about about cleaning your room. I’m not really looking for a discussion about cleaning their room. I’m looking for them to go clean their room. Right? I’m just being polite. And so part of this is deciding when we do want a conversation to happen and when we don’t, but when we do want it to happen, what super communicators do is they pay attention to the other person. They pay attention to whether this person seems like they’re in a practical frame of mind. They don’t need to deal with what they’re feeling right now, or they’re in an emotional frame of mind, in which case I need to create space for you to share with me if you choose to. And I should ask a question maybe that gives you the opportunity to do so.

Charles Duhigg [00:32:52]:
And then if you don’t follow through on that, that’s okay too. It’s really about paying more attention to but not only ourselves and how we communicate, but to what the other person is telling us.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:05]:
I think that’s what’s so powerful, especially about the distinctions and the examples in the book about the shallow questions and the deep questions is almost every situation in fact almost every professional situation, there’s a way to ask a question that’s, yes, transactional informational, which of course we all do. And then there’s also a way to ask the question where it invites a deeper response and maybe people go there, maybe they don’t, but just thinking about the opportunities in daily conversation just to open the door for that with our colleagues, with our peers, like, what a what a neat place to explore a bit if you’ve not done that before.

Charles Duhigg [00:33:41]:
And it also signals to them and and that person, your direct report, they might not be ready to talk about what’s on their mind right now. But now they know that they can have that conversation with you, that you’re open to it, and that it won’t be awkward, and it won’t be weird. It’ll be casual. It’ll be easy. You you know, you mentioned one of the things about power differentials. It’s interesting. I spent a lot of time at Amazon because I wrote an article for the New Yorker about the company. And one of the rules that they have is that during every meeting, the meeting starts with the most junior person speaking, and then the most senior person does not speak until they speak last.

Charles Duhigg [00:34:22]:
And the reason why they do that is because the junior person is gonna have some interesting ideas and you don’t want them to feel shut down, but they might also say something that’s a little bit off or odd. And you wanna create the space for them to experiment with that. You can learn a lot from it, but also they can learn how to communicate better. And I think that that’s such a powerful thing is that what’s happening there is that when Jeff Bezos is in a room and he turns to the most junior employee and he says, why don’t you share your thoughts on this new product with us first? He’s giving that person permission to be honest, to say something that everyone that that person recognizes, everyone knows might not be might not be the final answer, but he’s given them permission to bring their full self to work. And that’s really powerful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:12]:
Charles Duhigg is the author of Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. Charles, thank you so much for your work.

Charles Duhigg [00:35:20]:
Thanks for having me on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:28]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, several related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 5 28 where you may be provoking anxiety. Erica Dhawan was my guest on that episode. We looked at the reality for many leaders that often it’s us that’s getting in the way of connecting well because there’s something we’re doing. Sometimes we’re conscious of, often not, that’s provoking anxiety in our communications with others or in how they perceive us. We did a deep dive on that in episode 528 and looked at some of the things we can do to do a better job of lessening that anxiety that might show up for others. Good compliment to this conversation, of course.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:05]:
I also recommend episode 560, the way to get people talking. Andrew Warner was my guest on that episode. I’ve known Andrew for 20 years, and we had a conversation about his book on how to interview people well. And while interviewing may not be a core skill of most leaders, although we all do it at least occasionally, the skills from how to interview well are the same kinds of skills that often help us to allow other people to say what they need to say. And in Andrew’s case, the invitation, what we can do to get people talking to make them feel comfortable, interviewers do that all the time. A conversation with Andrew on that episode on how he utilizes those tactics and what he teaches others to do to help get others talking, a key competency for leaders, of course.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:53]:
And then finally, I’d also recommend episode 654, the way to help others be seen and heard. Scott Shigeoka was my guest on that episode, and we talked about the process of curiosity and how to do a better job at being curious. We talk about that on the show often, but how do we actually do it practically? What are some of key things to keep in mind? We covered 4 key principles in that conversation. Again, a good compliment to the invitation today to connect to better. Again, episode 654 for that.All of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. If you haven’t yet before, I’m inviting you to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com because it opens up a whole suite of benefits they have access to on the website. We have about 20, 30 people a day who are jumping in these days to register for the first time with free memberships. So welcome if that’s been you in recent days weeks.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:49]:
And those of you have have uncovered several of the key benefits, and one of the things you’ll receive as part of your free membership is a weekly update from me, a weekly guide, that usually comes out later in the week. I have in that guide a little bit about the guest expert that was on this week’s episode. Also, some of the key notes, some of the resources that are mentioned, and I’ve also been listening all week to what’s going on in the world and what our articles and other podcasts and other videos that I think will be helpful for your leadership development. I include that every week in the weekly guide and also usually a snippet from one of our past guests from one of their books or writing that I think is something you should come back to and reflect on. Lots of resources in that one message. It’s one of the benefits of free membership. So if you’d like to receive that, just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. You’ll have access to all that, and I’ll get you up to speed very quickly on what you can do to be able to leverage all of those resources.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:47]:
And if you’ve had your free membership for a bit, I hope you’ll consider coaching for leaders plus. One of the changes I’ve made in the recent past to coaching for leaders plus is, previously, I was writing a long form monthly article and had sent out some feedback asking for input from our members, and folks said, hey. Those are great and love you to do them more often but shorter. So we get shorter snippets. If you’d like to hear more from me, Coaching for Leaders plus is a great way to do that. And as I’ve been doing that, I’ve gotten such wonderful feedback from all of our members, who’ve been loving getting that short concise message once a week comes an email. It’s a snippet for me, something that I think you should be thinking about that will help you to continue to grow your leadership skills. If that’s something you’re interested in, go over to coaching for leaders dot plus for more details on that and more of the benefits inside of Coaching Leaders Plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:40]:
Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next week, I’m glad to welcome Guy Kawasaki to the show. He hosts a podcast as well called Remarkable People, and we’re gonna be having a conversation on how to recognize remarkable people in our lives and in our work. Join me for that conversation with Guy, and I’ll see you back next Monday.