Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

by Charles Duhigg

So how do we achieve this kind of mutual understanding? The first step is recognizing that within each fight is not just one conflict, but, at a minimum, two: There’s the surface issue causing us to disagree with each other, and then the emotional conflict underneath. “Say you have a couple fighting with each other about having another kid,” Heen told me. “There’s the top-level conflict—you want another child, and I don’t—that seems, at first glance, to explain why they’re fighting. But there’s also a deeper emotional issue: I’m angry because you’re prioritizing a kid over my career or I’m scared another child will bankrupt us or I’m frustrated because you don’t seem to care what I want.” Those emotional conflicts are sometimes nebulous, difficult to pin down, but they’re also incredibly powerful—because they contain so much of the anger and disappointment driving this argument beyond the possibility of compromise. “And we know those emotions are there,” said Heen, “because whenever the couple fights, no matter how many sensible things they say, they never seem to get closer to a resolution.”