550: Super Communicators with Charles Duhigg
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Welcome to The How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez. The podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host. Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. My name is Henry Lopez, and my guest today is Charles Duhigg. Charles, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I look forward to this conversation. I've been a fan of Charles and his previous books, and now we get to talk about his most recent book.

But Charles Duhigg is on the show today discussing his new book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language to Connection.

And really the way I look at it is to help us understand and improve interpersonal communications, exploring how different types of conversations impact connection with people, whether it's our partners, our peers, our employees as small business owners, and also the importance of matching conversational styles. We'll highlight on that so that we have the most effective communication possible.

We're only going to scratch the surface on it. Obviously, you got to get the book, Super Communicators. But that's what we're going to focus on today.

You can find all of the Howa Business resources, including the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find all of the links. And to learn more about my coaching programs, just visit thehowabusiness.com. I also invite you to consider supporting this podcast on Patreon. And wherever you might be listening, if you'll subscribe, make sure you don't miss any future episodes. I release episodes once a week. Let me tell you more about Charles, and then we'll get into the conversation.

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the author of several books, including The Power of Habit, one of my favorite books, which spent, by the way, over three years on the bestseller list and has been translated into 40 languages. And now, most recently, what we're going to focus on today, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, which is also already a bestseller, published just this year, 2024.

And also he's the author of Smarter, Faster, Better, which was also a bestseller. Charles writes for the New Yorker magazine, one of my favorite publications, and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School. So he's also smart. He previously wrote for the New York Times and is a frequent contributor to CNBC, This American Life, NPR, and Frontline. And he was also, for one terrifying day, which I'll have to ask him about,

Back in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco. We'll have to understand why. Charles lives in New York City. And so once again, Charles Duhigg, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

So you live in the city now in Manhattan or where do you live? I actually, we moved just recently. I now live in Santa Cruz, California. So we were in, we were in Brooklyn for 16 years and then moved to Santa Cruz. My wife is a Marine biologist. And so, and so we moved out here to, for her career. Wow. Big change, big change. Yeah. Yeah. My daughter currently lives in the Upper East side. So that's what, one of the reasons I was curious. Um,

So tell me about this bike messenger for a day back in the day. Oh, so before I went to business school, I had started a company. And there was this little gap between when I – where I could –

I could run the company sort of remotely and live with my girlfriend, who's now my wife. And she was going to school in Berkeley. I see. And so I needed a job, right? But it wasn't, it couldn't be a job that like, I wasn't going to be at the job for too long. I had just gotten into business school. I was just for a month or two, like some, something to do during the day.

And this is back during the time when bike messengers were like much in the culture. And so I went in and I applied to this bike messenger, this shop, and they were like, sure, absolutely. You can absolutely do this job. And they gave me a pager and I had my own messenger bag and my own bike. And yeah,

I figured this would be not the hardest job on earth. It was impossible. Like there was, it was downtown San Francisco. Yeah. This is in downtown San Francisco. Yeah. So first of all, you're like riding your bike in between cars, right? Like whipping past moving cars, just a hoping nobody like turns or opens the door and kills you. Yeah. And then the other thing is that basically all the people I worked with, I'd say about 50% of them,

were drug addicts of one kind or another so they were they were always like peeling off to like go shoot up or do something like that and i was like wow this is not my people and then on the first day they um they gave me this assignment that was at the top of this super huge hill and i kind of i know in retrospect now that there was an easier way to get up this hill but but i went up i went straight up it and it took me like half an hour and i was thinking like

Oh, this is probably some hazing thing they do with everyone. When I get to the top, there's going to be someone to offer me a beer. And like, you know, this is like the hazing process. I get to the top, I drop off the package and the guy who comes to the door says, you're really late. What took you so long? And I was like, this is a terrible job. I'm not going to do this job anymore. So that was the end of my bike messenger career. Oh my goodness. Classic, classic story. Well, you have it as a story to tell now, and I'm sure you've written about it as well. Exactly.

Excellent. All right. So let's get into it. Where I always like to start with a book when we're talking about a book is why did you write this book, this particular topic, and who do you think it's for? Yeah. So I

I think this book is for anyone who has to have important conversations or meaningful conversations, right? Which is absolutely anyone who's in a relationship or has a family, but equally and most importantly, people who are in business, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a manager, whether you're someone who has to be able to communicate with your coworkers. Yeah.

What we know is that communication is homo sapiens superpower, right? Communication is the thing that puts us above all the other species and allows us to form villages and towns and then cities and invent fire and build aircraft carriers. And so our brains have evolved to be very, very good at communication, but, but actualizing that skill of communication and communication is just a set of skills. Being a super communicator is just a set of simple skills that anyone can learn.

Doing that makes a huge difference in our success. You know, if you ask people about Fortune 500 CEOs, what sets the CEO out against all the other people who are competing for that task, they're most often going to say communication. Like this is a person who can communicate well because everyone knows this who's listening. Your job as a leader is often to communicate. It's just to get everyone rowing in the same direction and get them motivated.

And so that's who the book is for. The book is for people who have conversations, meaningful conversations, and they want to make those conversations better and more impactful. The way I got into writing this book was that about three years ago, I fell into this bad pattern with my wife where I would come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day. My boss doesn't understand me or appreciate me and my coworkers don't see what a genius I am. And

And my wife very practically listened to me whine for a little while. And then she said, look, why don't you just take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit. It's good advice. But, but instead of being able to hear that advice, I got even more upset.

And I started saying, you know, why aren't you supporting me? You're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. I want your empathy. And then she got upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. And I think anyone in a relationship knows this pattern, right? This happens all the time. It happens at work where our employees bring a problem to us and we try and solve it. And then we're confused why they are upset with our solution. And so I went to these researchers and I said to them, look, I'm supposed to be a professional communicator. Tell me why this isn't working.

And what they said was, well, we're really glad you showed up because we are living right now through a golden age of understanding communication.

Because of advances in neural imaging and data collection, we can actually see what happens inside someone's brain as they have a conversation. And I'm sorry, who did you go to for this? These are neuroscientists. You went to them, why? Just because you knew people that were doing this kind of research? Or how did you end up here? Well, no, because I had this problem. I mean, most of my books start with me trying to figure out why I'm doing something wrong. And so it's as typical, you go to the smart people who are looking at this. Exactly, exactly.

And one of the things that they said is, here's what we've learned about conversations. We tend to think about that a discussion is about one thing, right? We're talking about where we're going on vacation or the kid's grades or what next year's budget should be. But actually they said- Like a police performance or a problem that a customer has or whatever it is. Exactly, exactly. But actually when we have that discussion,

we are having multiple kinds of conversations, right? And these conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're discussing making plans or solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations where I might tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings. I want you to empathize. And then finally there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other in society, the identities that are important to us. And what they said is,

If two, all those different kinds of conversations are equally legitimate. But if two different people are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, if I'm having an emotional conversation and you're having a practical conversation, we won't be able to hear each other fully. We won't feel connected to each other. And of course, that's what was happening with my wife and me. I was having an emotional conversation. She was having a practical conversation. So it's almost like we were talking past each other.

But they said, what we've seen in our research is when people have the same kind of conversation at the same moment, then when they match each other, then they become aligned. They can understand each other much better. They feel connected to one another. And once you do that, you can move from emotional to practical to social back to emotional again. But as long as you're moving together, then the conversation will be really productive for you. This must be why...

We end up having more of the productive and good conversations with people who are like us because we just happen to be more in alignment on the type of conversations that we have. Well, actually, I think what happens there is that the alignment is oftentimes easier to recognize. But the truth of the matter is that if you put your mind to it, you can match and align with anyone. Sure. Yeah. And in fact, this is what we know. Yeah, go ahead. This is what we know super communicators do is that they...

Let me ask you a question. If you were having a really bad day and you wanted to call someone who you know would make you feel better, do you know who you would call? Yes. Who is that? It'd probably be my wife because she's a good listener and empathizer. Okay. So for you- Most of my friends, a lot of my friends are not that good at listening. I'm good at listening for them.

So your wife is probably a super communicator for you and you're probably a super communicator back to her. All of us are super communicators at some moments in our day and our week. The difference with a consistent super communicator is that those same skills that you almost unconsciously use with your wife.

They use them with everyone. They're more deliberate about them. They recognize those skills more easily. Right. And that's the key of becoming a super communicator is just doing what we naturally do, but doing it in settings where it doesn't occur to us. Yeah. Becoming consciously competent of that skill that you're saying is there for us as humans, but fine and tuning and leveraging it. All right. I want to come back to a question here, though, before we get deeper here.

Do you believe, or is it just me as an old guy, do you believe our communication skills have eroded or is that just a generalization that doesn't hold true? Meaning because of all of the obvious things, because of texting, because of, you know, whatever it might be.

I think the answer is no. Now, communication has changed because of digital innovations, right? And one of the things that we know about the nation right now, and this is true really for the whole world, is that people are tending to have many more conversations with people they agree with and many fewer conversations with people that they disagree with. And that's not great. But in general, you know,

I mean, let me ask you, do you feel like you communicate less well now than you did 15 years ago? No, but I'm conscious of it and I focus on it. Communicating well has always been, I identified early on in my life that it is a strength that I have, therefore I have worked on it. Then I was in a sales career where it was fine-tuned and developed and I've been a business owner and so I've been conscious of it.

And it's, I think it's a, you know, a continuous thing, but no, I do not think it has eroded, but then I'm not a person that communicates very well via text, for example. And that's okay. Right.

So what's important here is not that you are a master of every channel of communication, but that rather you understand how communication works and you use the channels that work for you. And reading what is the kind of conversation that I need to have with this person in this particular moment. Exactly. Exactly. Figuring out, diagnosing what kind of mindset is this person in? Is it emotional, practical, social? And there's a way to do that.

The easiest way to do that is simply to ask questions, but not any questions suffice. Some questions are more powerful than others. There is something that's known in psychology as deep questions, which asks someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as if you meet someone who says they're a doctor, instead of saying, "Oh, where'd you go to medical school?" Saying, "Oh, why'd you go to medical school?"

Right? That why invites them to talk about who they actually are. And that can be really, really powerful because what they're going to tell you is what mindset they're in. They're going to say something like, oh, I went because I saw my dad get sick.

And I really wanted to be a healer. Okay, this is someone who's in an emotional mindset, right? They're talking about how they felt about watching their dad get ill. The same person in another setting might say, oh, you know, I wanted a job that I knew would be a steady paycheck. And medicine always seemed like there's going to be a need for medicine. Okay, this person is in a practical mindset right now. And like, that's an opportunity for me to match them and invite them to match me.

So that's how we determine what kind of conversation is happening is by asking deep questions. So give me an example of how I apply that in a business environment where if I'm following so far, here's what might happen. Me, somebody, an employee comes to me with a problem.

They might be in an emotional mindset because it affected them or it was something they did or, you know, a customer yelled at them. And I might be as typical in a practical mindset. Let's solve this problem. So what kind of questions might I ask first to identify that this person coming to me is in an emotional mindset? I mean, the easiest thing to ask is to say,

Look, this seems to be bothering you. Can you tell me why is this a big deal for you? What do you feel like is going on here? How are you feeling about this?

Yeah. How are you feeling about this? Or, you know, like I've seen, you know, a lot of stuff happens and you just kind of like brush it off. This one seems like it's bugging you. Why is it bugging you? Tell me what this means to you. So start there as opposed to what I would instinct. So going back to, I'm such a good communicator, right? I have the tendency to want to jump right into fixing the problem. Right. And the problem is that perhaps the employee doesn't actually need you to fix the problem.

And even if they do, they're not going to be able to hear you. They're not going to be able to hear what you're saying to them. Now, let's say you say, why is this such a big deal to you? And they say, I feel really disrespected. Like I come here every single day and this guy is disrespecting me and it's really bugging me. At that point, as a leader, what we can do is we can match them.

And that doesn't mean we say like, oh, I feel disrespected all the time too. Right. That's not matching. That's mimicry. Matching is saying, look, I totally hear what you're saying that like you deserve the respect of this, of this institution and that this guy is not delivering it to you. And I know how, how much that can hurt. Am I getting that right? And if they agree that you're getting it right, then you can say, you know, now, now that we've figured out what the problem is, can I suggest some solutions that might make it better? Yeah.

So what I'm doing there is I'm saying, okay, we're in an emotional conversation. Do I have your permission to transition to a practical conversation? Yeah.

And inevitably they're going to say yes, because you've recognized what they're feeling. They've gotten it off their chest. They know that you've heard it. Right. And now they're ready to move into the practical way. Or if not, they might say, yeah, I'm so upset about it. And I just want to talk about, you know, they might signal to me, no, I need to talk about it a little bit more of the emotional side of this. Yeah, sure. Sure. Then it could be that I have to judge that. Okay. In this conversation, we're just going to get past the feelings and then we're going to come

back to this to solve the problem. Exactly. Exactly. And you and I know, and everyone who's listening knows that if, if you do that with an employee, it doesn't take that much more time, but it means that when you have a solution, they're going to hear the solution. Cause otherwise, if we're in an emotional state and someone comes in and say like, what you want to do is this, we, even if we are listening to their words, they're not penetrating. We're not actually focusing on them. We're not processing that information and turning it into knowledge or plans. Right.

We have to get aligned with the person in order to have the same kind of conversation at the same moment. Yeah. Otherwise, I can see, obviously, where resentment builds or is that feeling of, you know, you know, Henry is all about, you know, what's best for the company. He doesn't listen to how this is affecting me or how it affected us, that kind of thing. Right.

All right. So related to this, you also talk about in the book, how do you hear emotions? No one says that loud. So this is part of what we're talking about here, but tell me a little bit more about that concept if you would. Yeah. One of the things that we know is that there's a lot of nonverbal communication and some of it is verbal. So nonverbal is a little bit of a misnomer. It's actually non-comprehensive communication. So the gestures that someone uses, the expressions on their face,

the noises that they make while you're speaking to them, like, huh, or, or, oh, that's interesting. Right. All of these are signals as to what is going on and what they're trying to communicate to us. And the problem is that it's so easy to focus on someone's words. It's so easy. Words are so clear. They're so easy to use that oftentimes we can forget to pay attention to the rest of a person. Right. And yet this nonverbal communication is really, really important because

And what is important about it is that if my words are different from my nonverbal communication, if you come up and my arms are crossed and I'm looking really like upset and you say, what's wrong? And I say, oh, there's nothing wrong. I'm fine. If you don't know how to respond to my body language, you don't know how to show me that you're listening to me. And one of the ways that we know that's easiest to respond to someone's body language to show that we're listening is

is again the matching principle it's to match their affect and their energy so if you come upon someone who's really upset their apps their affect is upset and their energy is high they're like yelling that's someone who's probably angry

And so the first thing you need to do, you don't get angry yourself. Right. You're not going to match that component of it. No. But what you are going to do is you're going to find a way to match. So instead of coming up and going, OK, now, Henry, I see that you're upset. I want to be calm. Let me ask you what's wrong. That's just going to make you even more angry. But if I come up and say, Henry, you seem like you're really upset. Like, like, what's going on? This is serious. Tell me about it.

I'm matching you in my energy and I'm acknowledging your affect. And that's going to make it much, much more effective for us. Instead of potentially insulting me for, and really what it highlights is,

Henry, you've lost control and I'm highlighting that for you here. In other words, it minimizes that. You're also joining me in this frustration or whatever it might be, right? So you're acknowledging that feeling that I'm feeling and expressing and showing you, yes? That's exactly right. And I'm showing you that I'm listening and I'm showing you that it's important what you're saying.

Now, that doesn't mean I agree with you. That doesn't mean that we should be angry. But rather than saying like, you're angry, you're on the outside, I'm calm, I'm on the inside. I'm saying, look, I'm going to come outside with you a little bit. And hopefully together we can get on the inside and both calm down.

And then once I have, now that they see, okay, I'm listening, then of course I can use my techniques to calm them down, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And there's a specific technique that particularly in conflict related situations, when we disagree with someone or we're talking about something that's really sensitive, it's a technique that to prove that we're listening, that's known as looping for understanding. And they teach it at Stanford and Harvard all over the place.

And the technique is this, it has three steps. The first step is to ask that person a question, preferably a deep question. The second step is once they've answered the question to repeat back what you heard them say in your own words, right? Again, this shouldn't be mimicry. This should be your own words. Prove to them that you're hearing them. Prove to them that you're paying attention. Prove to them that you're thinking about what they said.

And most people do this intuitively. This is something that like everyone learns to do. Step three is the one that I always forget, which is after you say, what I hear you saying is when you're done repeating back what they said, say, did I get that right? Ask them if you got it right. And the reason why that's so powerful is because when I ask you if I got it right, what I'm actually doing is asking you for permission to acknowledge that I was listening. Mm-hmm.

And what we know, and again, this comes from our neurology and evolution. If you acknowledge that I am listening to you, you automatically become more willing to listen to me. Okay. As opposed to what we often have the tendency to do.

is to skip that step and now move to problem solving or move to addressing the issue or whatever the case might be. What I heard you say is you don't like your, your, your coworker. Okay. Here's what you should do, right? Like go out and like move your desk five, five feet to the left. That's not really resolving the problem. Whereas if we say, what I hear you saying is that you don't like your coworker. Am I getting that right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think you got it right. Okay. So with your, or they might say, well, you know, now that I think about it, that's not really the issue. My problem is he smells or whatever the case. Sure. Sure. And so then you listen to more root cause of what's really going on. You're getting down to what's going on. And then to say, then you say, look, I totally hear you. I understand how frustrating that is. Can I propose a solution? And when they say yes, they're ready to hear your solution.

Prior to that, they're not ready to hear it.

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So if you're interested in a franchise business, take the first step and schedule a free, no obligation call with Giuseppe. To learn more and to schedule your consultation with the Franchise Guide, please go to the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com. There's also a link to the show notes page in the description of this episode. How does this get the reading of physical body cues? How does this get exacerbated by remote workers?

Yeah, so it's obviously harder to read nonverbal language when we're working remotely. But what's interesting is that we actually have learned how to deal with that for technologies that we've grown up with. So about 100 years ago, when telephones first became popular,

There were all these articles that appeared that said, no one will ever have a real conversation on the phone. Right. Because up till then, all conversations have been face to face. Right. Right. So people could not fathom that you would have an intimate conversation without that. And what's interesting is they were right.

For like the first 15 years after phones became popular, people did not know how to use them. They used them like telegrams. Like telegrams, yeah. Yeah, or telegraphs. If you look at the early times. To communicate its facts and that was it. Exactly. Here's my stock order. Yeah, exactly. Right. Or here's what I'd like for groceries. Did you get that? Yes. Okay. Hang up the phone. Now, by the time you and I and everyone listening was in middle school, we could talk on the phone for like seven hours a night, right? They felt like the most real conversations of our life.

So what changed? Well, what changed is we learned how to use phones. Even today, without realizing it, when you're on a telephone, you will over enunciate your words by about 25%. Interesting. You'll put about 30% more emotion into your voice. Now you're not doing this deliberately, right? You're not even aware that you're doing it. But part of your brain knows this person can't see me. So they need to hear the emotion in my voice. We've learned how to use phones. Interesting.

Now, when it comes to more recent types of technology, texting, you know, DMs, our kids are learning how to use them. Our kids have real robust conversations over texts. They know how to use emojis to have an emotional conversation. You and I, it's a little bit harder. And so what we need to do is we need to remind ourselves that there's different rules for different forms of communication.

If I emailing someone is different from texting someone is different from giving someone a call. And when we get into trouble is when we're in such a hurry that we, we don't remind ourselves of the rules and we send someone a text that really should have been an email or we send someone an email that really should have been a phone call. Absolutely. But once we remind ourselves of basic stuff, right? Like,

you know, Oh, just remember satire doesn't work online because they can't see your, they can't hear the satire and voice. And so they're going to take you seriously. Once we remind ourselves of those rules and that becomes a habit, our digital communication will get much, much better. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. Sticking with the difficult conversations. Cause that's, you know, that's where I'm seeing this being so much more powerful in the context of a business owner, those, those challenging conversations, whatever the case might be.

Anything else there that you think that we, that you see people get wrong or that we could improve in this? Yeah. So the one other thing that happens a lot is social conversations can be challenging. And when I say social conversations, I mean, conversations about who am I and who are you? So in the book, there's a chapter about Netflix. Netflix had this controversy erupt where they had an executive inside the company use a racial slur in a meeting.

And he wasn't using it in an attacking way. He was describing a show that Netflix had produced and used the word as part of that description.

But there were people in the audience who got very, very offended. And so they went to the, to Reed Hastings, the boss and founder of CEO. And they said, this guy needs to be fired. And it set off this whole controversy inside the company because there were some people who said like, look, he made a little mistake, but like, it's not a big deal. Like, let's not like, you're making too big a deal out of it. And there are other people who said, look, I work at this company. And if a senior executive can say something like that, that is not a friendly place for me. This, and so people were at each other's throats. And so Netflix had to figure out

How do we get past this? Like, how do we, how do we have a conversation where everyone gets to say they're due, but it doesn't inflame anger and controversy. And so what they did is they came up with this strategy where they asked people to have conversations about race, but they started them by saying, look,

This is going to be an awkward conversation. Because the slur was racial in its nature. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so the idea, okay, let's facilitate a conversation about race. Right. And what we're going to do is we're going to pair you up like, you know, into small groups and everyone should say something at the beginning of the conversation. This is what they should say. Look, this is going to be an awkward conversation. I want you to know that I'm like a little stressed about having it.

And, and I might say the wrong thing, right? The gap between my brain and my lips is so big that sometimes I mean something that comes out the wrong way. And I hope you'll forgive me. And let me also say that, like, if you say the wrong thing, I promise you, I will, I will let you know and not assume that you intended to offend, but, but forgive you for, for screwing up what we say. They found that that actually changed the tenor of the conversations entirely. And then what they said is they said, look,

Everyone has an equal seat at this table, right? We're talking about sort of racial experiences. And someone who's black clearly does, someone who's Hispanic clearly does, but someone who's white also has racial experiences. And it's only when we can all share and really prove that we're hearing each other that we begin to come to a consensus and come to a connection. Right.

And so this company that was kind of in the midst of a civil war, they did this, they set up all these workshops where they basically had these conversations and

And it worked. Like the controversy just kind of went away. And in fact, Netflix became a stronger company as a result because people felt so much more connected to each other. And that doesn't mean everyone agreed with each other, right? Like there were some people who said, I think we should get rid of these kinds of shows because they're offensive to trans populations. And there's other people who said, actually, those shows are really popular and we believe in artistic freedom. Like we're not going to censor anything

We're not going to censor the people who make films. They don't agree with each other. But they had that conversation and they both were able to say what they believed and they believed that the other person heard them. And that made all the difference. A stronger environment as a result. So there was a decision to have social category type conversations to address this much more serious, bigger issue. But I think it's also true when we have... If you're giving someone...

Negative feedback, right? If you're, if you have to have a hard conversation with them in many ways, that is actually a social conversation. It might not seem like it on the face, but when I sit down with you and I say, look, you're not doing a great job. What I'm actually doing is I'm saying your self image of yourself does not line up with the reality that I see.

And that can feel really threatening. Yeah. Right. Even if I agree with you that like, oh, I should have like done that budget better and I should have done made that widget a little bit faster. Even if I agree with you, I still feel this identity threat. I feel like you're telling me I'm bad and I don't see myself as bad.

And so the same thing, if we do the same thing in those situations and we start by saying, look, this is going to be awkward. And I want you to know my goal here is to help you improve. Like, I think you are great. And I think if we made a couple of changes, you would live up to that greatness. So my goal here is that I see who you are and I think who you are is fantastic. And then say, but here's the things that you're not doing as well as you could. That makes it all the different, right? Love that. Yeah.

Yeah, brilliant. I want to go back to in this example with a company like Netflix. Where did this idea, do you know where this idea come from? Or can we assume that a super communicator, whether it was Hastings or someone else, thought this is the way we might address this?

Oh, no, they hired someone. They hired someone who said, here's an idea. Yeah, her name is Renee Myers. And she spent her whole career essentially facilitating conversations like this. I see. She did it for the Massachusetts Department of Justice. She did it as an independent consultant. So in that case, again, it's Netflix and they're dealing with a really critical problem. But it's also the type of thing that someone who hasn't done it before, if they think about it, if they read books on how to have these conversations,

They're not hard tactics to use. They're just really important. But nonetheless, though, I agree with you. However, some of this is habitual, how I currently respond, again, with the scenario of somebody comes to me with a problem or a crisis. And so I must, certainly in a small business environment, it seems to me,

Like I need to become a better or move towards being a super communicator. I'm not saying I'm the only one responsible for that, but it seems to me that if I'm going to be the leader of my small business, I need to adapt and develop these skills. Is that fair? I think that's exactly entirely fair. And I think the other thing I would say is,

The biggest difference that we know about consistent super communicators, why they're consistent super communicators is just because they think about communication a little bit more, right? If you ask them, were you always a great communicator? Inevitably, they'll say no. Like in high school, I had real trouble making friends. And so I had to really study how kids talk to each other or, or my parents got divorced when I was young and I had to be the peacemaker between them.

These are not skills that are hard and these are not skills that only some people can master. Anyone can become a super communicator. The key is to get into the habit of thinking about communication because the things that we think about are the things that we're really good at and the things that go on autopilot are the ones where problems can emerge. Okay, excellent.

All right. Those are the things that I wanted to explore. Is there anything else that comes to mind as we've talked about this, again, from the perspective of a small business environment, whether it's me as the owner or as I help my leadership team or everybody in the organization to have these conversations? What else comes to mind? I think there's two things. The first is in sales, right? And I know you have a background in sales. Yeah.

So there's a bunch of stories in the book. There's a story about a CIA officer trying to recruit overseas agents. There's a story about a jury room where they're trying to decide whether to send someone to jail or set them free. And one of the jurors is a super communicator and really helps shape the conversation. There's a story about the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, and why it succeeded.

And at the core of that is actually sales, right? When I'm, when I'm a CIA recruiter, I'm in sales. When I'm, when I'm writing a TV show and I want the audience to like my TV show, I'm in sales. And so what do we know about what works in sales? Oftentimes,

The thing about sales is that we have to ask those questions, right? We have to ask the questions to figure out what someone cares about. And then we have to show them that we're listening. We have to prove we're listening by looping for understanding. And we have to match them. We have to say, look, your problem is a problem that I really understand. Like, I understand how frustrated you are. Let's talk about how frustrating that is. And then do I have your permission to propose some solutions? Which of course happened to be the thing that I'm selling, right?

So I think in sales, these same principles, they're not only true there. They're actually critical there. The difference between the greatest salespeople and the non-greatest salespeople is that the greatest salespeople, they tend to form a connection with the client. They tend to make the client feel like they're really listened to, like this person has heard their concerns and has sort of entered their head and seen it from their perspective. They feel like they are connected to the salesperson. And

And these tactics that we've talked about, these are the building blocks of connection, right? When we do these things, ask deep questions, match the kind of conversation that's occurring, prove that we're listening through things like looping for understanding. What we're really doing is we're saying, I want to connect with you. And when people see that, when they hear that, I want to connect with you, they're often willing to connect with us back.

In particular, when it's genuine, based on the skills that you're sharing. And then what it leads to is then trust. And people buy from people, but more specifically, they buy from people they trust. That's exactly right. And what I love about this as well, and when you were talking about this at the outset, I thought about this as well. Sales also, and small business owners often get this wrong. It's not just the traditional sales, although your business might require that, and it may well require that of you as the business owner.

But we're always selling, whether it's a point of view or where I want to go to dinner or why we should go in this direction in the business or why we should abandon a particular product line or bring up a new one or expand into new markets. We're always, especially as the CEO and owner, selling. Yeah. Yeah. And selling, I agree with you completely in my experience and career, having been, I think, a pretty good salesperson, but having worked with brilliant salespeople

this is the differentiator, their ability to communicate and connect with people. I totally agree. And be able to do so in a relatively short period of time, right? Yes, right. Because going back to your example, I've also struggled with that. I'm naturally an introvert. And what that means for me typically is if you put me in a party where I don't know anybody, I'll be in the corner by myself. Unless I turn it on and say, Henry, you got to go connect, right? And then I can do it because it's a skill that,

That I've developed, but it's not what I want to do necessarily naturally, but I can do it. Right. Yeah. And I've learned to do it so that I, and it's genuine, it's not fake, but I do have to kind of push myself to do it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's exactly right. Yeah. Okay. The book again that we've been talking about, great book, super communicators, how to unlock the secret language of connection. My guest today, of course, has been Charles Duhigg.

Speaking of books, I know not only you're an author, but a big reader. Is there a book that comes to mind that you would recommend to us, especially from the perspective of a small business owner? Yeah, absolutely. There's a book named The Culture Code by a guy named Dan Coyle, who's actually a friend of mine.

This book, I think, is wonderful because it actually spells out what are the tactics we can use to build culture. Everyone listening knows how important culture is. If we get the right culture at work, it makes employees more effective. It makes them happier. They work harder. And yet, even though we know the importance of culture, we don't spend a lot of time talking about the nuts and bolts of culture. I don't know what the right word is, but it's such a...

Yeah. Ephemeral thing. That's not physical. It's hard to define and what goes into it. And so what Dan does in the culture code is he says, here's what culture is. And here are the tactics to build that culture. Now you can, that doesn't mean you have to build a good culture or bad culture. You can build whatever kind of culture you want. Let's sales culture versus the thinking culture.

But once you know the tactics, then you get to build the culture rather than the culture just kind of emerging on its own, which can oftentimes be counterproductive. Agreed. That's the thing I've talked about often on our podcast is there is a culture, whether you want to know what it is or not, you have a culture in your organization. Brilliant. Thanks for that recommendation. All right, we'll wrap it up with this, Charles. What's one thing you want to stick away from this conversation we had about

this secret language of connection, improving our communication, becoming super communicators. What's one thing you want us to take away from the conversation? So, so, you know, the book ends by describing this, this thing called the grant study, or as it's known today, the Harvard adult study, the Harvard study of adult development. And basically what researchers at Harvard have done is they followed for 80 years, thousands of people around trying to figure out what makes them healthy and happy and successful.

And what they've discovered is that the only thing that predicts whether you're happy, healthy, and successful, however you define success at age 65, is having at least a handful of close relationships at age 45. Because of course, that means you haven't just had them in your 45th year, right? You've had them for decades and you're going to continue to have them.

When we invest in other people, in connecting with other people, we actually make ourselves healthier and happier and more successful. Being lonely, the Surgeon General has said, is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's amazing. So how do we do that? Well, oftentimes we do it through conversations, right? We connect with people by having a conversation with them. And so the thing I hope people carry away is if you have some friend or person you like and you haven't talked to them in a year, a year and a half,

Send them a note and say, hey, can we jump on the phone for 15 minutes? I just want to catch up with you. I promise you that you will walk away from that feeling closer to that person, feeling better about yourself, maybe learning something that helps you in business that you didn't know and wouldn't have heard of otherwise.

And most importantly, it gives our life meaning. So I hope that's something. And I hope that the tools we've talked about today makes that conversation a little bit easier to have. Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for summarizing that. Tell us where you want to go. Want us to go online to learn more about you and about the book? Sure. Yeah. If anyone wants to find me, I'm at charlesduhigg.com.

Just my last name. You can also just Google the power of habit or super communicators and I'll come up. I have a newsletter on Substack called the science of better that I'd love to encourage people to sign up for, to subscribe to. And then, you know, if you want to buy super communicators or the power of habit or any of my books,

They're on sale on audible and Amazon and burns and nobles in your local bookstore. The audible version, which is the audio book is actually read by me. So it's kind of fun. Yeah. And I think it's a great book, not only for ourselves, but as a great book to gift to others. As I'm thinking in the mindset of a business owner, gifting it to team leaders and so forth. Not that everybody can't benefit from it, but I think it's a great book to give to others on our teams. Yeah.

Okay. And Duhigg is D-U-H-I-G-G, right? Right. So charlesduhigg.com. Perfect. Charles, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today. This has been a great conversation. I could talk to you for hours, obviously, because you're a communicator. And so thanks for being with me today.

Thanks for having me. This is Henry Lopez. And thanks for listening to our episode today. My guest today, again, Charles Duhigg. I release episodes every Monday morning. You can find the show everywhere you listen to podcasts, including at the Howa Business YouTube channel and at my website, thehowabusiness.com. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening to The How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowofbusiness.com.