Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

by Charles Duhigg

(This explains why, when you complain about your boss—“Jim is driving me crazy!”—and your spouse responds with a practical suggestion—“What if you just invited him to lunch?”—it’s more apt to create conflict than connection: “I’m not asking you to solve this! I just want some empathy.”)

“The underlying mechanism that maintains closeness in marriage is symmetry,” one prominent researcher, John Gottman, wrote in the Journal of Communication. Happy couples “communicate agreement not with the speaker’s point of view or content, but with the speaker’s affect.” Happy couples ask each other more questions, repeat what the other person said, make tension-easing jokes, get serious together.

On a very basic level, if someone seems emotional, allow yourself to become emotional as well. If someone is intent on decision making, match that focus. If they are preoccupied by social implications, reflect their fixation back to them.

we need to genuinely understand what someone is feeling, what they want, and who they are. And then, to match them, we need to know how to share ourselves in return. When we align, we start to connect, and that’s when a meaningful conversation begins.