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March 1 - March 11, 2025
Felix would ask the scientists questions, and occasionally talk about himself. When someone revealed something personal, Felix would reciprocate with a story from his own life.
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.
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.
“We don’t need clearer roles. We need to do a better job of respecting each other.”
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.
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.
“Find ways to connect,”
How do we create a genuine connection with another person? How do we nudge someone, through a conversation, to take a risk, embrace an adventure, accept a job, or go on a date?
“Human beings have the rare capacity,” she wrote, “to connect with each other, against all odds.”
said. The “extent of speaker-listener neural coupling predicts the success of the communication,”
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.
High centrality participants tended to ask ten to twenty times as many questions as other participants.
the high centrality participants were constantly adjusting how they communicated,
more “likely to adapt their own brain activity to the group,” and “played an outsized role in creating group alignment by facilitating conversation.”
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.
What’s This Really About?, How Do We Feel?, and Who Are We?
The first mindset—the decision-making mindset—is associated with the What’s This Really About? conversation,
The second mindset—the emotional mindset—emerges when we discuss How Do We Feel?
The third conversational mindset—the social mindset—emerges when we discuss our relationships, how we are seen by others and see ourselves, and our social identities.
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.
The importance of this insight—that communication comes from connection and alignment—is so fundamental that it has become known as the matching principle: Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other. 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.
Instead, we have to learn to distinguish a decision-making conversation from an emotional conversation from a social conversation. We need to understand which kinds of questions and vulnerabilities are powerful, and how to make our own feelings more visible and easier to read.
In other words, CIA recruiters are taught how to synchronize.
The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth?
The first goal of this negotiation is determining what everyone wants from a conversation.
The second goal in this negotiation is to figure out the rules for how we will speak, listen, and make decisions together.
The best negotiators didn’t battle over who should get the biggest slice of pie. Rather, they focused on making the pie itself larger, finding win-win solutions where everyone walked away happier than before.
conversation: How will we make decisions together? What are the rules for this dialogue?
Are we going to make decisions through analysis and reason, or through empathy and narratives?
once we know what people want from a conversation, we next need to work out how to give it to them—how to engage in a quiet negotiation—so that their needs are met, as well as our own.
How do people signal what they want to talk about? How, in other words, do we determine What’s This Really About?
When someone makes noises as they listen (“Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” “Interesting”), it’s a sign they’re engaged, what linguists call backchanneling. When someone asks follow-up questions (“What do you mean?” “Why do you think he said that?”), it’s a clue they’re interested, whereas statements that change the subject (“Let me ask you about this other thing”) are hints they’re ready to move on.
Researchers at Harvard and other universities have looked at exactly which kind of prep work is helpful. Participants in one study were asked to jot down a few topics they would like to discuss before a conversation began. This exercise took only about thirty seconds; frequently the topics written down never came up once the discussion started. But simply preparing a list, researchers found, made conversations go better. There were fewer awkward pauses, less anxiety, and, afterward, people said they felt more engaged. So, in the moments before a conversation starts, it’s useful to describe for
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The easiest way to do that is by asking open-ended questions, just as Dr. Ehdaie did with his patients. And open-ended questions are easy to find, if you focus on: Asking about someone’s beliefs or values (“How’d you decide to become a teacher?”) Asking someone to make a judgment (“Are you glad you went to law school?”) Asking about someone’s experiences (“What was it like to visit Europe?”)
Do your companions lean toward you, make eye contact, smile, backchannel (“Interesting,” “Hmm”), or interrupt?
Do they become quiet, their expressions passive, their eyes fixed somewhere besides your face? Do they seem overly contemplative? Do they take in your comments without adding thoughts of their own?
What’s This Really About?
remember the lesson of interest-based bargaining: Get creative.
Has someone told a story or made a joke? If so, they might be in an empathetic logic of similarities mindset. In this mindset, people aren’t looking to debate or analyze choices; they want to share, relate, and empathize. Or are they talking about plans and decisions, or evaluating options? Have they brought up politics or finances or choosing a place for next year’s vacation? (“Is Maine or Florida better in June?”) If so, they might be in a more practical logic of costs and benefits mindset, and you’re better off getting analytical yourself. Listen for attempts to change the topic. People
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THE HOW DO WE FEEL? CONVERSATION AN OVERVIEW Emotions shape every conversation. They guide what we say and how we hear, often in ways we don’t realize. Every conversation is, in some respect, a discussion about How Do We Feel? Because this kind of dialogue is so important, the next three chapters are devoted to emotional conversations. When it comes to discussing emotions, listening is essential. We need to listen for vulnerabilities, hear what is unsaid—and, just as important, we must show we are listening. Good listening, when it works, reveals new worlds beneath the surface of people’s
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things. In particular, he believed people should talk about their emotions.
Regardless of your decision, it is certain that emotions are already influencing your discussion.
because if we acknowledge someone else’s vulnerability, and become vulnerable in return, we build trust, understanding, and connection.
