Supercommunicators with journalist Charles Duhigg | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

one of the things that I like about you is your books are different oh thanks you know it's like sometimes writers they they're they write like here's a book and here's another book that's kind of like the other book you know and I I like that your books are different I mean the whole point of I think a good book and I think it's what what's so nice about your work as well which is you're not like I'm the expert let me tell you you're like I'm on this journey want to come yeah and that's joyous to read bringing people on the journey is actually the most important part of teaching them the idea yeah right we I think when people ask me for advice on storytelling um what I usually say is a lot of people focus on the beginning and the end of the story yeah but the middle is where everything important happens yeah and a lot of people just skip over it I I I've always thought of myself I never want to be perceived as the expert I want to be perceived as the guide yeah you know and my when I write and when I speak I'm very particular that I want to prevent present enough evidence that my audience or my reader will come to the conclusion right before I do so that when there's no Tada there's no like wait for it wait for it wait for it look how smart I am there's none of that what I want is when I provide this conclusion I'm like and here it is that the audience is going yeah yeah that makes yeah yeah I saw that yeah that seems inev that means yeah that seems to make sense y yeah that's what I want their attitude to be it's kind of like yeah of course you know and then they carry it away then they carry it away they conclusion not mine they just came on the they came on The Learning Journey with me it's I wish that there was um yeah I wish that there was more one of the reasons I I wrote super communicators was because I felt like we were living through this time when people had forgotten how to communicate with each other and something else happened which is that in 2017 um I guess it was in 2016 the New York Times made me a manager I went from being a reporter to a manager and I was terrible at it like like fantastically bad and I went into it and I was like oh my God I'm going to be so good at this like like I've had bosses my whole life and I got an MBA from Harvard I was like I'm gonna I'm gonna kill this and I was ter like and the thing that would made me crazy was that I was really good at the logistics part like I could like plan everything out and do all the diagrams it was the communication part that I sucked at yeah and so badly that like I would make other people angry without even understanding why they were angry and like get frustrated I was terrible at it and but then also was at the same time that Trump got elected right and I'm looking around and I'm thinking like he's a great communicator he is a very good communicator but I looked at all these other people just screaming at each other right not wanting to have a dialogue at all and and what one of the things that I thought was like we've sort of Forgotten there's some lessons here that we've forgotten about how to can we learn is it learnable absolutely ABS I mean the evidence is like like completely clear on this nobody is born as a great communicator nobody's born as a super Communicator there is no personality type that is more likely to be a super Communicator it's literally all just learned skills it's fun I've seen old footage of Steve Jobs and old footage of Ronald Reagan both considered great communicators um and they sucked they're terrible they sucked it's shocking by any standard they sucked yeah bumbling incoherent sucked and so what so what happened there like why let's take as a given that like actually our brains have evolved to communicate right communication is human superpower that is why we have succeeded as a species allows us to form families and societies so so what happened to those Two Fellas and and a bunch of other people is that instead of sucking and being like oh gosh I don't know why that didn't go well they sat down and they thought hard about how can I make it go better and there are these very obvious lessons that once you start looking for them are apparent to you and and in the last decade science has gotten so good we're kind of living through this golden age of understanding communication because of advances in neuroimaging and data analytics so now it's easier for us to describe those ideas but the truth of the matter is all of us are prepared to be super communicators it's just that some people don't think about it so Define super Communicator first of all let's start there so the best way to is um if you're having a bad day M and you know that there's one person if you call them they're going to make you feel better MH who is that person my sister that person for you is a super communicator and my guess is your sister is actually a super Communicator to many people yeah she just knows how to make you feel listen to she knows what you need she knows how to like she knows how to have a conversation you're a super Communicator right you you establish a flow with everyone who who comes on your podcast so a super Communicator is someone who has thought deeply about how to communicate and as a result they have the ability to invite others into the conversation they have the ability to to break through and make a connection even in the most unlikely of situations and most importantly they have the ability and they recognize the importance of achieving what scientists refer to as neural entrainment right where right now in this conversation if we had enough machines we would see that our our pupils are actually dilating at the same rate and our heart rates are starting to match each other and our breath rates and the electrical impulses on our skin and most importantly if we could see inside our brains a deep mirroring it's a deep mirroring inside our brains we would see that our brain waves started to look similar our brain activity started to look similar that's what communication bi biological connection like we have a connection it's literally biological connection wow that's cool and if you think about it that makes sense because the goal of communication is I have an idea or I have a feeling and I want you to understand it I want you to experience it right so if our brains become aligned you're actually experiencing what I'm what I'm describing and vice versa so tell a story uh of what you consider a great communicator or what they do so um so one of the stories from the book um so so one of the stories from the book is uh the story about this guy Jim Lawler who is a CIA officer and he had just gotten hired as a CI officer and they send him over to Europe and they were like go recruit overseas assets right like go find spies basically get them to work for the CIA and he's terrible at it like he like he like he told me all these stories like he would go to all these bars and like try and like chat up at tachet and they'd be like I don't want anything to do with you there's this one guy he finally made friends with this one guy from the Chinese Embassy and like he takes him to lunch like seven or eight times and eventually he's like hey would you consider you know telling me some of the gossip you here and I could pay you for that and the guy says you know actually my family is very wealthy and they kill people in my country for doing that let's not meet again so he's just terrible at this it didn't even make a real friend no he didn't even make a real so he he's at this point when like it's been a year and basically his bosses are like we think you're going to get fired you just you're just bad at this and this woman comes into town who works for the foreign Ministry of her home country back in the Middle East yeah um and he never told me which country but it it'll be pretty obvious which one it is and so he goes and he introduces himself as an oil Speculator he like bumps into a restaurant and they develop a relationship and he's taking her out to lunch and he's trying to recruit her and eventually he says like actually I don't work for an oil company I work for the CIA you consider helping us out because she hated what was going on in her home country it just been taken over by revolu um uh Islamic revolutionaries and religious revolutionaries she was a woman she in approximately 1979 in yeah exactly exactly you're guessing which country that is and and she's opposed to the regime and he's like we're we believe in the same thing why will you help us out and she just she starts crying and she freaks out she's like I no I'm absolutely not going to do this I'm going to get killed for even knowing you so he go go to his bosses and he' already told them that he was trying to recruit her and they're like no we told Washington DC you did this we told Washington DC you had your first spy if you don't deliver her you're gonna get fired and so Jim Jim is like I'm screwed like he doesn't know what to do and so he basically asks this woman fattima to have one more meal with him and he goes in and he has all these ideas of how to and like he gets to the meal and he's like this is just not going to work like I cannot convince this person to take a suicidal risk right so she's in kind of down because she's about to go back to her home country and she's kind of disappointed in herself and and Jim's trying to like cheer her up and make her feel better and then after a while like it's just not working and she's not really like they're not connecting and when dessert comes he like he's like I'm GNA be totally honest with you like I'm about to get fired and the reason I'm about to get fired is I am really bad at this job like like everyone else in my class they had this like like confidence or this something that I don't have and I'm not I'm not even going to try and get you to work for me I just I you've been honest with me I want to be honest with you like I feel terrible about myself like you just keep on saying you're disappointed in yourself I I understand that cuz I am so disappointed in myself I've wanted this job my whole life yeah and I've screwed it up and she listens to him and she starts crying and he reaches over and he's like I'm sorry I did not mean to make you cry and she goes no no I think I can do this and he's like and he was so freaked out he was like he actually said wait wait no no no you don't have to do anything I don't want you like like he's so panicked and she goes no no I think you I think what you said before that we both want the same thing I think you're right I I can help you and she goes to a safe house the next day she gets all this training and like covert Communications for the next 20 years she's the best source in the Middle East wow and when I asked Jim why and Jim became one of the best Recruiters in the CIA he ended up training other officers how to to do this when I asked him like what's the secret you train you teach people what he said was you have to match people where they're at yeah Fatima was upset and I was trying to cheer her up yeah or Fatima was scared and I was trying to convince her she shouldn't be scared yeah once I just gave up and said like look you're disappointed in yourself and I'm disappointed in myself like that's when she could hear me for the first time yeah and within within the literature this is known as the matching principle right the these different kinds of conversations and that you have to match the kind of conversation that's happening in order to connect but a lot of it comes down to listening to those instincts that that probably we evolved over millions of years that are are sometimes hard to listen to in contemporary Society but you know that if somebody is is feeling something that if you feel it with them you feel more connected but he was honest right yes that's a huge part of it it has to be authentic and that's part of the problem which is you know how long can you fake these things can super communicators fake these things not once or twice perhaps but what's amazing is and again research has shown this our ability to detect inauthenticity is like laser sharp there was actually one of my favorite experiments is they they um see these researchers took a bunch of people friends laughing together and strangers trying to to pretend like they're laughing together and they would play people a half second of the laughter and ask them which is which and people could detect it 92% wow we just know we like so you're right survival depends on it our survival absolutely absolutely our ability to form friendship and community means that I can trust you to watch for danger while I'm asleep that's exactly right and and if by the way you betray me yeah I will be so much more Angry than if you simply did the same thing but for benign reasons it's it's it's an evolution it's it's grown up as a pro-social Instinct are you a better Communicator now that you've written the book oh my gosh so much better what tell me something tell me how you showed up in different circumstances that you show up differently now so okay so two ways the first way is I ask just a lot more questions and I ask what are known as deep questions and so a deep question is something they ask someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences and they usually start with why so it's um and they can be very easy it can be like oh you're a lawyer like did you always want to be a lawyer like why' you go to law school you know what at what point did you decide that like the law was the thing for you yeah those are easy questions to ask but they're all deep questions because they're asking someone about their values or their experiences yeah and so the that's the first thing I do is that I try and ask more deep questions and I try and just listen more closely but then the second thing is there's this big Insight that that we think of a discussion as being about one thing but actually every discussion is made up of multiple conversations and most of them fall into one or three buckets so's these practical conversations right we're making a decision we're fixing a problem there's emotional conversations where the goal is not to fix someone's problem it's simply to share hold space yeah hold space and then there's social conversations which is about how do we relate to other people how do we think Society sees us and so I used to come home and I would have a bad day at work and I would be complaining to my wife and she would respond with practical advice she'd say like look why don't you take your boss out to lunch and get to know him a little bit better and instead of hearing her I would get even more upset but now I know it's because she was having a practical conversation and I was having an emotional conversation we couldn't connect with each other so now one of the first things I do is I try and figure out what kind of conversation are we having like how do I match this other person how do I invite them to match me and sometimes it's as simple as just saying like my wife says this all the time like do you want want me to fix your problem or just listen to your problem yeah yeah or it can be as simple as saying like you know we're going to have a conversation like like what's important to you out of this conversation I love the idea of labeling the conversation I've had it happen where I was in a bad place and I called somebody for advice and they started fixing and I said to them I appreciate your intention of trying to fix it I need you to not fix it I need you to just listen to me so I was able to give instruction to match me at the time and they probably appreciated that right they did yeah and they and I've cauo in the middle of trying to fix some do you need me to offer you Solutions now you know I love this idea of labeling and it's look everybody can remember three things they're easy social we're having fun emotional how you feeling practical you know do you want to fix something or do you want to talk about something intellectual exactly it's they're easy to understand they're easy to remember and I love the idea that it's not some deep internal skill you just have to make known the thing that's happening so that we can be on the same wavelength have that mirroring that's exactly right and I think that that's what Steve Jobs and Ronald Reagan and other people do is they they walk away from a bad conversation and instead of being like that was a bad conversation they think to themselves what did I miss like what should I look for next time yeah and if you start paying attention what you notice is like you're talking to a to a friend or a colleague and they'll say something in a practical conversation right over at work they'll say something emotional and it's really easy to gloss over it they'll say like my son just graduated I'm so proud or I sorry I didn't reply to your email yesterday was like a I had something going on and our instinct is to stay on that practical track right like but if you say like Ah that's amazing tell me about your son or yeah what's what was going on yesterday is it is it anything that like it's helpful to talk through yeah that person all of a sudden we are we are matching them yeah and they're more willing to listen to us and more importantly when we say let's talk through this issue and then let's get back to the budget of planning they're going to go there with you I I love that idea also which is it's okay to go off script yeah in fact it's in fact you have to go off script or or the script hardly even exists it's a it's it's a falsity that we think that there's a script that we need to hold ourselves to yeah that's so good it's so good I what is your hope for the book I know it's a I know it's a big question but like my hope is that is twofold I'm hoping that people read this book and that they get something as powerful from it that improves their own life that they can use it and then secondarily like this is very Grand aspiration but I hope that I'm part of encouraging a bigger discussion about how we can as a nation and as humans yeah have conversations with people who are different from us yeah where we where we do connect yeah right those are the most if you think about like the origin of America America was born in conversation the Constitutional Convention were people who hated each other yeah having a a conversation until they had a constition and our best moments the best moments for South Africa the best moments for the UK yeah around the world our best moments are moments when we have a hard conversation with someone whom it is hard to have that conversation you can't make peace with your friends yeah yeah exactly can you tell me a story of something you wrote an article a project you worked on in your professional career it doesn't matter whether it was commercially successful or not but that you absolutely loved this project you absolutely loved this thing and if every project you ever worked on was like this one thing you'd be the happiest person Al life yeah so there's um I I wrote this piece for the New Yorker about two years ago about spaxs do you remember yeah it about this guy chamath pal palaha um well done yeah thanks I I I think I got a little bit wrong um I loved this piece I loved writing this piece I loved writing about chamat I loved like it was just so colorful and fun and I love Finance yeah nobody read it like it was like one of these things where like it was like oh the New York audience is not into Finance the same way I'm into Finance or not into this guy who's like bombastic and weird the way that I am but I was just so gloriously happy to have written it I was like if I read this piece I would read the out of or like if I bought this I would read the out of this piece like I love it okay so you've written some amazing things you want to pullet or prize what specifically was it about this one piece that you you light up when you're thinking about it like it up when you're talking about it it's a really good question because one of the reasons I decided to leave the times was because that series I wrote about Apple that won the Pulitzer I couldn't stand to read it nobody like it was just boring it was boring to read it wasn't fun and this piece about chth and spaxs it was just fun like this guy like he like drops F Bombs all the time he like tries to piss off other people because he thinks it helps him sell things like he says ridiculous things he he left his his wife when she had cancer in order to go marry someone younger like like it's just this story where you're like this is ridiculous I cannot believe that this guy exists it was just so much fun but you've written fun things before yeah so what is it about this one that sort of I don't know you answered this question very quickly honestly I think it's because it wasn't popular yeah like it just it felt like for the first time it's something I can point to that I'm like I wrote that for me uhhuh uhhuh and the thing when you're a professional writer and you know this is that you become a professional writer because you love writing it's easy to fall out of love with writing yeah it's it's hard and it and like you get into this place where it doesn't feel it doesn't feel the way it used to feel right it doesn't feel special anymore and I had felt that way for a long time and and then I wrote this piece and I was like oh yeah this is what this is what I liked like I I liked surp I like writing things that surprise me by what ends end up coming out of my fingers and it felt like that and actually what's interesting is literally the next thing I did is write the proposal for super communicators like I was like I was like I was like okay now I think I'm at a place where I can write put you in a great state of mind I I remember what it's like to love writing yeah tell me an early specific happy childhood memory something specific that I can relive with you that's a really good question I've have a terrible memory well okay I'll tell you two one that's happy and one that's not um when I was a kid I once made this newsletter about how that I wanted to be a babysitter so I put together I spent like three days on this newsletter advertising myself and it was funny and it was Ry and it like had like terrible twos and I thought it was hilarious my parents thought it was hilarious and they were like if you put this up nobody's going to hire you as a babysit like this is not what they're looking for but that's one of the first times that I found that writing just felt so good then when I was in high school I became a debater MH and I was so focused on on winning I would actually wake up and I would look in the mirror I this is a crazy thing I would look in the mirror and I would say you are crap if you do not win this weekend because I felt like I needed to like how did that make you feel it made me feel both bad and good right it made me feel like it made me feel like I was pushing myself as hard as I could push myself but then when I would lose tournaments or lose rounds I felt terrible and to this day I cannot remember a single round that I won and I can tell you every single debate round that I lost like I remember all of them do you know what's so interesting about those stories which is when you make it about something external when you make it about the winning um you are not at your best yeah whereas when you wrote the babysitter newsletter it was for fun yeah and when you glow about the the story of of uh of the CIA uh recruiter you you you you relate to him in such a way which is when he made it about winning he couldn't do it and when you when you I mean it sounds corny but when you practice what you preach when you when you just are yourself and in life for the fun of it and your curious writer self who sees the world as this magical playground and you're not writing for anyone everything works I absolutely but and but the question I have and maybe you have an answer to this is how do we remind ourselves of that when it's hard to remember right do you know George Saunders the St story writer he's a wonderful person and a wonderful writer and he said that basically like the question he asks himself all the time is he's he knows how good it feels to be kind he knows how much he likes himself when he is a kind person MH so why the hell are there these moments when he's unkind yeah and I I feel the same way like how do we remind ourselves to listen to that internal voice that tells us this is what you love this is what how do we how do we ignore so there's there's there's multiple answers um and some of them and and I think you need multiple answers because they don't they're not all easy to do at the same time and so you have multiple Solutions I mean one is to start with Y which is to have a true north and then you get to have this filter going am I doing that so like my why is to inspire people to do the things that Inspire them so literally is this doing that and and I catch myself like I'm tired I'm grumpy I'm in a Starbucks I'm not friendly and I say to myself your entire I literally will catch myself and say are you inspiring the Barista no okay well change you're like you have to do this all the time you know like that's that is who you are right and it is the thing that brings you Joy so do it you idiot you know and I'll catch myself and I have little reminders so like I wear the color orange somewhere on my person almost always and that is not there for decoration that is there because it it stands out it's so damn bright and the color orange is this color of optimism just reminds me like maintain this disposition show up to inspire and I think your disposition is is really to be for to encourage people to be themselves I think that's right and I think you know I think that's your best work and when you are your best self is when you just sort of smile and say I guess I'm human and just enjoy that I think that's absolutely true I think that's a very and and there is this thing about I find that I am happiest when I'm humblest oftentimes because something is humbled me exactly not by choice right it's not that like I'm just a humble human being it's like I just screwed something up really bad I used to joke I'm the most humble person I know I could talk to you forever this has been so much fun um thanks so much for coming on I really I really your work helps us be more human and I really hope um I really hope everybody uh reads your book because I think we all need to be a little more human today well and I feel very similarly about your work I've just like I I I didn't from the outside I assumed that you were a writer like because it's because I felt like start with why is so gracefully written um but I as long as I think there are a large number of people who are committed to asking hard questions yeah I think we're okay thanks so much thanks for having me oh so good if you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more please subscribe wherever like to listen to podcasts and if you'd like even more optimism check out my website simon.com for classes videos and more until then take care of yourself take care of each other

Channel: Simon Sinek

Views: 27,627

Keywords: simon sinek, start with why, inspiration, motivation, leadership, career, inspire

Id: qVotsZswPo0

Length: 26min 12sec (1572 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024