Transcript: ‘Supercommunicators’ are made, not born

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘‘Supercommunicators’ are made, not born’

Charles Duhigg
When I have a conversation with you, my goal is not to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong. It’s not to impress you. This conversation has been a success if I understand what you are trying to say to me and if I speak in a way that you understand me. We might not find any common ground. But if I understand you and you understand me, we’ve connected somehow. And that connection becomes the foundation to build something together, to build a relationship together.

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Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times. I’m Isabel Berwick. No matter what your line of work, becoming a better communicator will make you better at it. Being able to really hear what your colleagues are saying, empathise with them and speak to them clearly is such an important set of skills and it only gets more crucial the more senior we get. Are some people just naturally better at communicating with others or can we all learn how to speak and listen effectively? That’s something my first guest has spent a lot of time thinking about. Here he is, in his own words.

Charles Duhigg
I’m Charles Duhigg. I’m a reporter at the New Yorker magazine, and I’ve written a couple of books, including The Power of Habit and most recently, Supercommunicators.

Isabel Berwick
Super communicators, Charles says, are people who connect with others regardless of whether or not they have anything in common with them, who understand how to speak and listen to people and get into sync with them. Having that skill would be so useful. But clearly not everyone does. Why are some of us less good at communicating than others? I spoke to Charles to find out and I started by asking him, are the best communicators just born that way?

Charles Duhigg
No, that’s what’s really interesting. I thought that when I first started working on this, that people I found that were super communicators would be born with this. But in fact, when we talk to people who are consistent super communicators, they say things like, yeah, there were these periods when I was really bad at communication. Like when I was in high school, I had trouble making friends. Or, you know, my parents got divorced and I had to be the peacemaker between them. And I think what happens in those situations is if you have to think a little bit more about communication, if you have to think about how communication works, it makes you a little bit more sensitive to being able to see how a conversation is unfolding. And it’s that thinking a little bit more, just being a little bit more conscious of what’s happening that makes us such a good communicator.

Isabel Berwick
So it’s something you can learn. It’s not something innate. And why should we look to become super communicators? How can it make us better at our work?

Charles Duhigg
When you get a job, it’s usually because you have specific skills, right? You’re good at strategy or you’re a computer programmer or something. But as you get more advanced in your career, inevitably your ability to communicate with other people becomes the determinant as to whether you are successful or not. You cannot order people to work, right? But if we’re trying to get advantage of people’s innate talents, of their intelligence, of their curiosity, of their ability to do work, we really have to be able to not only communicate with them to explain what we’re hoping that they become, but we need to know how to listen to them, because oftentimes they’ll tell us this is what’s preventing me from doing my best work. This is what I need in order to be an exceptional employee for you. But we have to train ourselves to be able to hear that. And we have to create an environment where they feel comfortable enough to say it.

Isabel Berwick
You talk about the importance of knowing what kind of conversation you’re having. Could you outline that for me?

Charles Duhigg
So every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And if we’re not having the same kind of conversation with someone else at the same moment, then we tend not to hear each other. We tend to miscommunicate. If I come home from work and I’ve had a bad day and I start complaining to my wife and I’m having an emotional conversation and she responds with some very good advice, she says something like, oh, you know, why don’t you take your boss out to lunch? You guys can get to know each other. She’s having a practical conversation. Those are both equally legitimate conversations. But because we’re having different conversations at the same moment, we won’t be able to hear each other. We won’t be able to connect.

Isabel Berwick
So we need to match.

Charles Duhigg
We need to match. That’s right. It’s known as the matching principle. Having the same kind of conversation at the same time is what’s critical.

Isabel Berwick
And you talk about experimenting with conversation . . . 

Charles Duhigg
Yeah . . . 

Isabel Berwick
How can we do that? It seems like a kind of slightly — I don’t know what’s the word — calculating?

Charles Duhigg
I think it’s more organic because I think we actually do it all the time, right? At the beginning of conversations oftentimes we run these little experiments, like we might interrupt someone just to see how they react. Is this a conversation where we can interrupt each other, or is this a conversation where we take our turns? We might tell a joke to see if the other person laughs along. Is this a casual conversation or is this a formal conversation where humour is not appropriate? We’re very accustomed to running these experiments when we meet someone new and we engage in what’s known as a quiet negotiation. And the goal of the quiet negotiation is to figure out how we want to talk to each other, but also what we want to talk about. Because it could be that, again, I’m feeling emotional, but we’re in a workplace and I don’t feel like I can share my emotions with you. And so I might say something like, this is really bothering me. I can’t get the budget to line up. And it’s just, it’s really making me frustrated. And if you’re a good manager, you listen to that and you say to yourself, oh, like, this isn’t just about a budget, this is someone using emotional language and signalling to me that there’s something going on here that they need to talk about how they feel before we can start talking about practicalities like what the budget ought to be.

Isabel Berwick
So you can keep that at the back of your head . . . 

Charles Duhigg
Yeah . . . 

Isabel Berwick
But you deal with the thing that is really the thing.

Charles Duhigg
That’s exactly right. And oftentimes the way that we get to that is by asking questions. And in particular, some questions are more powerful than others, and they’re known as deep questions. And a deep question is something that encourages me to talk about my values or my beliefs or my experiences. So instead of asking about the facts of someone’s life, if we ask how they feel about their life, what they do is they tend to tell us something that’s more meaningful. They tend to reveal something about themselves, but also they tell us what kind of mindset they’re in.

Isabel Berwick
Is that always appropriate in a workplace? I mean, if I’m an employee being asked quite probing questions, I may not feel comfortable.

Charles Duhigg
So I think the key is to make it an invitation and not a mandate, right? But I think if the question is done correctly, it doesn’t seem out of place. So, for instance, well, let me ask you. You used to be a reporter and then you became an editor. What did you love most about being a reporter versus being an editor?

Isabel Berwick
I think the freedom to follow your own instincts, whereas an editor is sort of like being in a sausage factory. But on the upside, you have a lot more teamwork.

Charles Duhigg
See? And just by answering that question and hopefully that didn’t feel too probing.

Isabel Berwick
No.

Charles Duhigg
But you told me so much about yourself. You told me that you’re someone who loves freedom, who values kind of the ability to go out on your own, but that you also value teamwork, that there’s something really rejuvenative for you in working with other people and being part of a collective. You told me a little bit about who you actually are, how you see the world. And it’s inevitable that I will feel closer to you because you’ve done that. And if I reciprocate, if I tell you one of the things I loved about being a reporter, it’s inevitable that we feel closer to each other.

Isabel Berwick
Yes.

Charles Duhigg
And that’s kind of the goal.

Isabel Berwick
So openness begets openness.

Charles Duhigg
That’s exactly right.

Isabel Berwick
Right. But that takes time. Managers often don’t have time. What’s your advice to people who are time-pressed? Is there a shortcut to all of this?

Charles Duhigg
So I actually don’t think it takes so much time. I think that if you train yourself to pay attention, you can often see within the first 30 seconds how this person is relating to you — from what they’re saying, from whether they’re turning to speak to you or they’re turned away and they’re focused on their computer. I think what often happens, though, is that we don’t pay attention. We don’t pay attention to the little clues that are available to us because we’re stuck in our own heads, right? We’re wrapped up in what we want to say, instead of trying to to really hear what someone else is trying to say.

And this is what we know about super communicators, is that they just pay a little bit more attention to what’s going on in a conversation. They just pay a little bit more attention to the clues that people send each other. And equally, they show that they want to connect. One of the things that they do is they prove that they’re listening, right? And there’s a technique for this, particularly in conflict conversations, which is known as looping for understanding. There’s three steps. There’s I might ask you a question. I start by asking you a question, preferably a deep question. Once you answer that question, I repeat back in my own words what I heard you say. I show you that I’ve heard you, that I’m processing. And then step number three, and this is the step most people forget, is I ask you if I got it right. Because in doing so, I’m giving you permission to tell me there’s something you missed here, or you’re giving me permission to say like, yeah, you understand me, you hear me. And that feels wonderful. 

Isabel Berwick
In workplaces you may not have all the information to handle. Your manager may not want to share that with you, or somebody may be very ambitious and may be talking with specific goals in mind trying to manipulate you. Is being a super communicator always predicated on being open, or are there times where we have to just try to think that there’s another agenda at play here?

Charles Duhigg
Oh, absolutely. We should absolutely be aware of what the agendas are, but just because other agendas exist doesn’t mean we can’t ask about them. Or just recognise that listening to you and hearing you and showing that I’m hearing you means recognising that you have an agenda, right? If you come and you start talking about how Jim is doing such a terrible job and my department is doing a much better job. I know that what you’re really saying is I should have more power than Jim. And if there’s a promotion coming up, I should get it rather than Jim. And if I’m your manager and I wanna show you that I’m hearing you, that I’m listening to you, I might say, look, I don’t know who’s gonna get this promotion. I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but what I hear you saying is you’re doing a better job than Jim, that you deserve this more. And that doesn’t mean that I agree with you, and it doesn’t mean that I have to agree with you. But now you know that I’ve heard you. And by virtue of the fact that you know that I’ve heard you, think about how many anxieties that helps satisfy.

Isabel Berwick
So I’ve been thinking a lot about active listening. It’s a very, you say it’s hard to listen when we’re actually in a conversation . . . 

Charles Duhigg
Yeah . . . 

Isabel Berwick
But having acknowledged that, what can we do about it?

Charles Duhigg
So I think there’s two things we can do. First of all, that looping for understanding that I mentioned. One of the benefits of it is that it shows you that I’m listening to you, but it also forces me to listen more closely. But then the second thing is, there should be a recognition of what the goal of a conversation is. When I have a conversation with you, my goal is not to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong. It’s not to impress you. This conversation has been a success if I understand what you are trying to say to me and if I speak in a way that you understand me. And we might still walk away disagreeing with each other. We might not find any common ground. But if I understand you and you understand me, we’ve connected somehow, and that connection becomes the foundation for us being able to not only understand each other, but to build something together, to build a relationship together.

Isabel Berwick
So while you’ve been talking, obviously I was listening, but it made me think about the fact that unconsciously, when we’re having conversations, we’re thinking about them in terms of moving it on. Let’s move it on to the next thing. And actually, that’s when you just slow right down.

Charles Duhigg
Oh, absolutely. A big part of conversation is giving in to the conversation. And it’s saying, I had three things I wanted to get to in this discussion. And we’re only gonna get to two of them. And that’s OK, because as long as we have a connection, as long as we feel connected to each other, then we’re doing something important. We will like each other more. We will trust each other more. We will feel satisfied to some degree.

Isabel Berwick
What about communicating with people that we feel an antipathy to or just don’t get on with? Particularly at work, you might have someone on your team who you’ve got no time for.

Charles Duhigg
You don’t have to connect with someone if you’re like, look, I don’t like this person. I’m never gonna like this person. I don’t wanna like this person. That’s totally fine. But I think what’s important is just to say, if there comes a time when you want to connect to that person, when connecting to that person is important, because now suddenly they’re your boss or your employee, if you have the skills to connect with them, that empowers you and then you get to make the choice.

Isabel Berwick
Charles, thank you so much for coming on to Working It.

Charles Duhigg
Thank you for having me.

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Isabel Berwick
Being a great communicator at work seems to have a lot in common with being a great communicator in general: listening carefully, making people feel understood, having open, vulnerable conversations. These are things we do for our friends, and there’s a lot of wisdom in what Charles says. But sometimes, talking to the people we work with requires a slightly firmer approach. I wanted to find out more about the nuts and bolts of how to have hard conversations at work, so I spoke to Ruth Girardet. Ruth has worked as a senior executive in corporate responsibility and is now an executive coach and moderator at the non-profit Aspen Institute, which works to encourage better leadership. She talks to a lot of senior managers and leaders, and my hunch is that many people get worse at listening the older they get. I asked her if that was indeed the case.

Ruth Girardet
Yeah, I think it is. I see this quite often, for example, in a boardroom environment. I think for a lot of people they’re licensed to be in that room. Their reason for having a seat at the table is the way in which they make a contribution. So for senior executives, for that contribution to be right, is how they define their own economic worth. And as a result, it becomes a lot harder to just be silent and to actually listen.

Isabel Berwick
And just to be a little bit provocative, is there such a thing as too much listening? You know, is there a point where a manager or a leader has to draw a line and say, I know what I need to know from you, now it’s time for me to act. Because there’s so much emphasis now on listening to staff, but, you know, there’s not that much time in the world.

Ruth Girardet
Absolutely. I think it’s a really important question you’re asking. We live in a society that privileges personal experience over factual debate. And as a result, this notion of I’m not being heard has become a little bit of a battle cry. But sometimes what people mean when they’re saying I’m not being heard is you’re not doing what I want. Actually, in a corporate context, sometimes we have to act on the facts as we find them, and that is going to annoy people. That’s the nature of leadership, is having to take these difficult decisions and on occasion to be able to say, I have listened, I have heard what you said and I disagree.

Isabel Berwick
OK, we’ve opened a big fat can of worms here. But are there any small practical things, or maybe we could call them rituals, that busy managers and leaders can use to help them get into the headspace to listen better?

Ruth Girardet
Yeah, I think so. Definitely. So what I recommend to all senior people I work with before they go into a difficult meeting is ask questions of understanding, make sure you establish shared definitions of common or technical terms and keep your questions open. What I personally do when I’m listening to somebody describe a situation that involves conflict, I try to do three things. I try really hard to hold back judgment, I try to avoid ascribing motives to what I’m hearing, and I resist the urge to create hierarchies. So I’m trying not to think. The most important thing I’ve just heard is X. The second most important thing is Y, so it’s all about holding back judgment, motive, and emotion for as long as you can in order to properly listen.

Isabel Berwick
Are there some benefits that better listening brings that might not be so obvious?

Ruth Girardet
You’d be surprised by how much space you are creating for others to express themselves in ways that might surprise you. And that goes hand-in-hand with another pet technique of mine, which is to be able to bear silences. Again, especially in a commercial context, we are also aware of the limited time we have, and we find it really hard to allow for pauses, but sometimes silence and sometimes just allowing the silence to develop for a brief time brings something else up that wouldn’t have otherwise come up. So better listening involves better self-knowledge but also an opportunity for others to tell you something that might surprise you.

Isabel Berwick
Ruth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Ruth Girardet
It’s been a real pleasure.

Isabel Berwick
Ruth’s attitude towards workplace communication doesn’t match Charles’s one for one, but there’s a lot of common ground there, and so much good advice for getting better at speaking and listening at work. Figure out what kind of conversation you’re having and what it’s really about. Make sure you and the people you’re speaking to aren’t talking at cross-purposes. Form a human connection and share a bit of yourself, but know when it’s time to get down to business and do the work you need to do.

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Thanks to Charles Duhigg and Ruth Girardet. This episode of Working It was produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval and mixed by Simon Panayi and Breen Turner. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for listening.

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