Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

by Charles Duhigg

The group’s moderators had been trained to serve as “models of curiosity, civility and careful listening” and to work to “establish conversational norms.” But online, the moderators discovered, those approaches sometimes fell short. They tried to emphasize various listening techniques. They tried to train people to speak with civility. But it proved less useful online than it had in person in D.C. There were all the normal problems of online communication: Comments intended as sarcasm but read the wrong way; garbled phrasing that implied an offense the writer never intended; posts that seemed innocent to some but like fighting words to others. And one problem, in particular, that kept popping up was the same issue that marriage researchers had found was derailing spouses: On Facebook, people kept trying to control one another. These struggles for control weren’t the only thing disrupting conversations—but when they emerged, they tore dialogues apart. Some Facebook participants, for instance, tried to control what others were allowed to say, which opinions were permitted, what emotions could be expressed: