Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

by Charles Duhigg

Whenever someone said something emotional—even when they didn’t realize their emotions were on display—Felix had reciprocated by voicing feelings of his own. All those small choices they had made, he explained, had created an atmosphere of trust.

When we “click” with someone, our eyes often start to dilate in tandem; our pulses match; we feel the same emotions and start to complete each other’s sentences within our heads. This is known as neural entrainment, and it feels wonderful.

paying attention to someone’s body, alongside their voice, helps us hear them better. They have determined that how we ask a question sometimes matters more than what we ask. We’re better off, it seems, acknowledging social differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist. Every discussion is influenced by emotions, no matter how rational the topic at hand. 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.

The first one is that many discussions are actually three different conversations. There are practical, decision-making conversations that focus on What’s This Really About? There are emotional conversations, which ask How Do We Feel? And there are social conversations that explore Who Are We? We are often moving in and out of all three conversations as a dialogue unfolds. However, if we aren’t having the same kind of conversation as our partners, at the same moment, we’re unlikely to connect with each other.

What’s more, each type of conversation operates by its own logic and requires its own set of skills, and so to communicate well, we have to know how to detect which kind of conversation is occurring, and understand how it functions.

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.

We can all learn to hear more clearly, to connect on a deeper level.

It’s no secret the world has become increasingly polarized, that we struggle to hear and be heard.

But if we know how to sit down together, listen to each other and, even if we can’t resolve every disagreement, find ways to hear one another and say what is needed, we can coexist and thrive.

Every meaningful conversation is made up of countless small choices. There are fleeting moments when the right question, or a vulnerable admission, or an empathetic word can completely change a dialogue. A silent laugh, a barely audible sigh, a friendly smile during a tense moment: 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. This, then...

Conversation is the communal air we breathe.

“Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation,” wrote Oscar Wilde.

“My life feels

empty,” he told the interviewer. “I want to be part of something meaningful.”

How we communicate—the unconscious decisions we make as we speak and listen, the questions we ask and the vulnerabilities we expose, even our tone of voice—can influence who we trust, are persuaded by, and seek out as friends.

at the heart of every conversation is the potential for neurological synchronization, an alignment of our brains and bodies—everything from how fast each of us breathes to the goose bumps on our skin—that we often fail to notice, but which influences how we talk, hear, and think. Some people consistently fail to synchronize with others, even when they’re speaking to close friends. Others—let’s call them supercommunicators—seem to synchronize effortlessly with just about anyone. Most of us lie somewhere in between. But we can learn to connect in more meaningful ways if we understand how conversations work.

knew, at most, I had one more

chance to talk to her,” he told me. “I had to figure out how to break through.”

Sometimes we only get one chance…we have to make our communication count

“Human beings have the rare capacity,” she wrote, “to connect with each other, against all odds.”

To communicate with someone, we must connect with them. When we absorb what someone is saying, and they comprehend what we say, it’s because our brains have, to some degree, aligned.

“Because if you’re the kind of person who’s easy to talk to, then lots of people are going to want to talk to you.” In other words, the high centrality participants were supercommunicators.

So, to become a supercommunicator, all we need to do is listen closely to what’s said and unsaid, ask the right questions, recognize and match others’ moods, and make our own feelings easy for others to perceive.

Each of those tasks is difficult on its own. Together, they can seem impossible.

What’s This Really About?, How Do We Feel?, and Who Are We?