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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
Today’s Leader’s Lens comes Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and bestselling author of “The Power of Habit,” “Smarter Faster Better,” and a brand new book called “Super Communicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.”
Here’s Charles:
A few years ago, I fell into a bad pattern with my wife: I would come home after a bad day, complaining about my co-workers, and my wife would reply with practical suggestions, such as ‘why don’t you invite your boss out for lunch?’
But that would only make me even more upset, and we would both would walk away frustrated.
Why? Because we were having different kinds of conversations.
It’s easy to believe that some people are born great communicators, or we need to be charismatic or an extrovert to connect with others. But what we’ve learned is exactly the opposite: Communication is a learned skill, and anyone can get better at it. We can all learn new ways to hear, and speak so others want to listen. Anyone can become a supercommunicator.
We’re living through a golden age of understanding the neurology of communication. Thanks to advances in neural imaging and data collection, research has shown that nearly every discussion is actually made up of three different kinds of conversation:
1. There is a practical conversation, where we are discussing What’s This Really About?, and the goal is to discover — and negotiate — over what each person wants out of this discussion.
2. There is an emotional conversation, or How Do We Feel?, where the aim is to recognize — and reciprocate — vulnerability.
3. And there is a social conversation, Who Are We?, where each person explains how their background — where they grew up, or where they work or went to school, or how they worship or are friends with, or how they see themselves — influences they ways they listen and speak.
Here’s the big insight: If you don’t know what kind of conversation is occurring, you’re unlikely to connect. This is known as the Matching Principle of Communication. In order to connect with someone, we need to be having the same kind of conversation, at the same time. If we want to be heard, and hear others, we need to recognize which kind of conversation is occurring, and match others and invite them to match us.
This, in fact, is what was happening with my wife: I was having an emotional conversation, and she was having a practical conversation — and so we had trouble hearing each other and connecting.
Once we learn how to recognize what kind of conversation is occurring, we need to match our companions and invite them to match us, and there’s a science to this:
In a practical conversation, there’s a ‘quiet negotiation’, with a goal of determining what everyone wants. We serve ourselves best by conducting experiments — introducing new topics to see if others are interested; telling a joke to see if anyone laughs — and then paying attention to how others react.
In an emotional conversation, if we ask ‘deep questions’ — which inquire about someone’s values, beliefs, or experiences — we’re likely to elicit vulnerability. And when we reciprocate that vulnerability, we engender a sense of trust and closeness.
In a social conversation, it is important to acknowledge differences as much as our similarities. When we show that we hear how someone’s background, or social group, or identity has influenced their life, they feel like they can be more honest — and vice versa. When we reveal aspects of our own backgrounds, we feel connected when our companions prove they have heard us.
This insight has helped save my relationship with my spouse. Now, when we talk to each other about something that might be challenging, we always start with a question: What kind of conversation are we having? My wife might ask “Do you want to solve this problem, or do you just need to get this off your chest, and you want me to listen?” It makes a huge difference. In schools, many teachers are told, when a student has something important to discuss, to ask “Do you want to be helped, heard or hugged?” Those are the three conversations — practical, emotional and social.
All of these techniques undergird the most important insight of all: Anyone can become a super communicator. This is not an inborn skill, or something available only to extroverts, or leaders, or a select group. Rather, it is a set of tools that we have all evolved to use. Most of us have moments of super communication throughout our lives. These tools can help us tap into our listening and speaking instincts more easily.
What’s important is wanting to connect, wanting to understand someone, wanting to have a deep conversation, even when it is hard and scary, or when it would be so much easier to walk away. And it is critical to show that want to connect. There are skills and insights that can help us satisfy that desire for connection, and they are worth learning, practicing, and making a commitment to. Because whether we call it love, or friendship, or simply having a great conversation with someone unexpected, connection — authentic, meaningful connection — is the most important thing in life.
A good example of this occurred in 2018, when organizers brought together hundreds of people to discuss guns in America. Half the group were guns-rights supporters. The other half were activists for gun control. The organizers goal was to see if there are communication skills that make the toughest discussions easier.
They found that one practice particularly made discussions amid conflict easer: Proving we are listening to each other. The way we do this is by ‘looping for understanding’, which consists of three steps: Ask a question; Repeat back what you heard in your own words; Ask if you got it right.
This practice transforms hard conversations. When we are arguing with our family, or have disagreements with our co-workers, if we ‘loop for understanding’, it disarms everyone, makes us feel more trusting, inspires others to listen more closely because they believe we are listening to them.
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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
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