Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

by Charles Duhigg

Never manipulate or threaten. Ask lots of questions, and, when someone becomes emotional, cry or laugh or complain or celebrate with them.

He explained that one reason she felt so at ease was likely because of the environment they had created together, how Felix had listened closely, had asked questions that drew out people’s vulnerabilities, how they had all revealed meaningful details about themselves.

“It’s a set of skills,” he told the scientists. “There’s nothing magical about it.” Put differently, anyone can learn to be a supercommunicator.

When starting a dialogue, it helps to think of the discussion as a negotiation where the prize is figuring out what everyone wants. And, above all, the most important goal of any conversation is to connect.

Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a “learning conversation.” Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.

Some people have learned to spot these opportunities, to detect what kind of discussion is occurring, to understand what others really want. They have learned how to hear what’s unsaid and speak so others want to listen.

Supercommunicators aren’t born with special abilities—but they have thought harder about how conversations unfold, why they succeed or fail, the nearly infinite number of choices that each dialogue offers that can bring us closer together or push us apart. When we learn to recognize those opportunities, we begin to speak and hear in new ways.

To communicate with someone, we must connect with them.

like: They were the friends everyone called for advice; the colleagues elected to leadership positions; the coworkers everyone welcomed into a conversation because they made it more fun.

Miscommunication occurs when people are having different kinds of conversations. If you are speaking emotionally, while I’m talking practically, we are, in essence, using different cognitive languages.

Shifting layers in a conversatio

Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other.

When we match someone’s mindset, a permission is granted: To enter another person’s head, to see the world through their eyes, to understand what they care about and need.

Negotiation, among its top practitioners, isn’t a battle. It’s an act of creativity.

The What’s This Really About? conversation is a negotiation—only the goal is not to win, but to help everyone agree on the topics we’ll discuss, and how we’ll make decisions together.

Are we going to make decisions through analysis and reason, or through empathy and narratives?

Asking deep questions is easier than most people realize, and more rewarding than we expect.

“It is easier to judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers,”

trait: A general social incompetence, a tendency to misread others’ emotions and miscommunicate their own feelings. It would be a show about how even the smartest people can struggle with the people part of everything.

As we grow older, however, this capacity can atrophy. We start to pay increasing attention to what people say rather than what they do, to the point where we can fail to notice nonlinguistic clues.

One of the reasons supercommunicators are so talented at picking up on how others feel is because they have a habit of noticing the energy in others’ gestures, the volume of their voices, how fast they are speaking,

It’s not breaking news to suggest we are living through a time of profound polarization.

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.”

The first step is recognizing that within each fight is not just one conflict, but, at a minimum, two:

This is the real reason why so many conflicts persist: Not because of a lack of solutions or because people are unwilling to compromise, but because combatants don’t understand why they are fighting in the first place. They haven’t discussed the deeper topics—the emotional issues—that are inflaming the dispute.

And the best way to do that is by repeating, in our own words, what we just heard them say—and then asking if we got it right.

Paraphrase

“I’m more tolerant when I’m talking to people with different points of view. I used to be intolerant of people with extreme positions, [but] now I’m able to have conversations with these people, and listen to them, while also getting my point through,”

A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts.

A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel.

Asking a deep question should feel like sharing.

There are two benefits to looping: First, it helps us make sure we’re hearing others. Second, it demonstrates we want to hear.

Finally, temper your claims. Don’t make sweeping statements such as “Everyone knows that’s not true” or “Your side always gets this wrong.” Rather, use words like somewhat or “It might be …” and speak about specific experiences (“I want to talk about why you left dishes in the sink last night”) rather than broad generalities (“I want to talk about how you never do your part around the house”).

other. But when it comes to vaccines, it’s like everyone’s reading from the same hymnal.”

Numerous studies have shown that social identities influence our thoughts5 and behaviors in profound ways.

Our social identities push us unthinkingly to see people like us—what psychologists call our in-group—as more virtuous and intelligent, while those who are different—the out-group—as suspicious, unethical, and possibly threatening.

Social identities help us relate to others, but they can also perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice.

The fact that it had no basis in reality didn’t make the stereotype any less pervasive.

Illogical thoughts percolate more

Would it help the average woman’s math performance to think about social identities other than being a woman, even if those other identities suggested no extraordinary math talent?”

“And those identities became more important than religion because they were related to winning.”

One advantage of this culture, though, was that it made it easy to discuss nearly anything. “Nothing is off the table,” a high-ranking executive told me. “You think your boss is making a mistake? Tell them. You don’t like how someone runs meetings? Say it. You’re more likely to get promoted than punished.”

When we critique an underperforming employee, criticize a spouse, or tell a boss they aren’t giving us what we need, it can easily come off as a denunciation of who they are, a swipe at their abilities and judgments, or an attack on their sense of identity.

The first insight is that, as we’ve seen before, preparing for a conversation before it begins—thinking just a little bit more when we open our mouths—can have enormous impacts.

The second lesson is that just because we’re worried about a conversation, that doesn’t mean we ought to avoid

“most of the work is about gaining awareness of yourself, your culture, and the culture of others.” The goal is to recognize our own biases, “who we might be excluding or including.”

Conversations about identity are what reveal these connections and allow us to share our full selves.