[00:03:13] Patrick Donley: Writing is super difficult from my own experience. So tell me, why, how did you choose to become a writer? 

[00:03:20] Charles Duhigg: And just so folks listening know, so a deep question is this thing from psychology that asks someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And you’re exactly right. That’s a great deep question, because it doesn’t seem overly intrusive.

[00:03:33] Charles Duhigg: It just seems curious, but it invites me to say something meaningful. And so in my case, so I, I went to HBS for my, to get an MBA. And in the year between my first and second year that summer, I, went back to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I grew up to work with a private equity company that did real estate.

[00:03:52] Charles Duhigg: And so my job was that every morning I’d wake up and I would start building spreadsheets, looking at various properties, trying to figure out which ones we should bid on. In particular, they love to buy hotels and golf courses. And, as anyone who’s built spreadsheets knows it’s not the most exciting activity.

[00:04:09] Charles Duhigg: And so I would let myself listen to this American life that, that podcast, and this is. This is 20 years ago. So is it like the not, podcasts weren’t as popular. I’d let myself listen to one, this American life to help pass the time. And if it was a really tough day, I’d let myself listen to two of them.

[00:04:24] Charles Duhigg: And I got to the end of the summer and I was like, if the best part of my day is listening to a podcast at this job, I should probably go make podcasts or write stories rather than build spreadsheets. And so that was kind of the decision that I made. I made the during my second year at HBS. I decided I wanted to become a journalist in part because I just thought it would be really interesting.

[00:04:47] Charles Duhigg: And I thought that the question of how to tell stories would be something that captivated me for the rest of my life. And yeah, for the 1st, 7 years after we graduated, I think I was the lowest paid member of our graduating class from HBS. Luckily things have changed since then and it’s been pretty well, it’s worked out pretty well, but yeah, that’s how I decided to become a journalist.

[00:05:08] Charles Duhigg: And I have to say it was a fantastic choice. I’ve really enjoyed it. 

[00:05:12] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I mean, you’ve done incredibly well, what I think The Power of Habit has sold over 10 million copies. Is that am I close? That’s incredible. I have got to say I’m a little intimidated to be interviewing You you’ve been on Rich Roll and all these Lewis Howes and it’s just really cool to be able to talk.

[00:05:29] Patrick Donley: Were you always into writing? as a kid, like in high school and college, did you enjoy the actual process of writing? 

[00:05:37] Charles Duhigg: Yeah, I do. I find writing very satisfying. And what’s interesting is I’ve looked at a lot of studies about this. Cause one of my kids is a big reader and writer and the other kid is really into sports.

[00:05:45] Charles Duhigg: And we tend to think that some people are like, that our brains are predisposed to something. Actually, that’s not true. What we found is that particularly when we’re young, we find a method of self, soothing. And that method of self soothing becomes a habit. So it’s not that you’re born bookish or you’re born sporty.

[00:06:07] Charles Duhigg: It’s that when you’re trying to deal with like excess energy and excess, you almost by happenstance happen to pick up a book or happen to pick up a basketball. And the more and more you do that, the more it becomes ingrained. This is a way to kind of comfort myself to push myself to find interest in the world.

[00:06:24] Charles Duhigg: So I think for me, because my parents weren’t particularly sporty. That books and writing was a way of self soothing that I came to very young. And so I’ve always kind of enjoyed it as a result. 

[00:06:36] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear a little bit about you when you came out with The Power of Habit, huge bestseller. You were also a Pulitzer prize winner that same year.

[00:06:43] Patrick Donley: I think what was that? 2013 or 14. 

[00:06:46] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. 

[00:06:47] Patrick Donley: Tell me a little bit about that experience of achieving that kind of level of success that anybody listening to this is like pushing and trying to improve and, reaching for these ambitious goals. Talk to me about that process and what it was like for you.

[00:07:01] Charles Duhigg: I’m obviously very thankful. I’m very thankful that I’ve won a Pulitzer prize. I’m very thankful that The Power of Habit found an audience. I will say that was actually one of the hardest years of my life, because I think what happens is that for success to be best appreciated, it should really come slowly, but sometimes it happens all of a sudden, right?

[00:07:20] Charles Duhigg: Sometimes you spend a bunch of time writing a book and the book comes out and it’s a bit, it’s a bestseller, which is great. Sometimes you write a series and it wins a Pulitzer prize. And what happens is that All of a sudden, there’s a whole new set of opportunities that become open to you, but they’re all happening so quickly that you’re unprepared to deal with them.

[00:07:39] Charles Duhigg: So there’s a bunch of stuff that sort of you wish that you could take advantage of and you can’t just because you’re literally overwhelmed and you don’t have enough time. There’s other stuff that you do try and take advantage of, but you don’t know enough yet how to really use that opportunity and how to make it sustainable.

[00:07:54] Charles Duhigg: And so that what I felt that year when The Power of Habit came out and I won the Pulitzer Prize. It felt like a year where, I was just screwing up all the time. finally, life had served up this, cherry cake to me on a silver platter, and instead of eating it, I was, like, throwing it, smashing it against my face.

[00:08:11] Charles Duhigg: And so that was really, challenging. Now, that being said, it’s a good experience because I think that as my career developed, and as I wrote more books, and now with the Supercommunicators, I’m much better prepared to take advantage of and recognize and understand those opportunities.

[00:08:29] Charles Duhigg: But I will say that the thing about success is sometimes the way I used to put it is, The thing about success is that you take something you love to do, and you’re suddenly successful at it, and then you have to do it all the time, right? The reward of success is that you get to write as many books as you want, but that means you have to write more books.

[00:08:47] Charles Duhigg: So there are challenges involved in it. I think, as with many things in life, When things happen slowly, it can feel like a little frustrating that they’re not moving faster, but there’s a real lesson in value from that slowness in that it lets you really learn and adapt to the changes around you. 

[00:09:05] Patrick Donley: Tell me a little bit about like the pressures to write that second book or the third book.

[00:09:10] Patrick Donley: You like, you’ve had this in many ways, like maybe having an instant, like the first book. Being such a huge success can be, it’s almost like the worst thing that could happen because now you’ve got these expectations of having another huge hit. Tell me about that. Like what, did you feel that pressure? 

[00:09:28] Charles Duhigg: I mean, let me ask you, like when you’ve had successes, was whatever you did next, did it, was it as big a success?

[00:09:36] Patrick Donley: It’s a good question. So I’ve been involved in real estate and it’s all project based. So it’s similar to writing a book, I guess. Yeah. Each one’s different. it’s, hard to, it’s different. Each one’s totally different. And I try not to put too much expectation on what I do. It’s just do your work, put it out into the world and it’s going to do what it does.

[00:09:57] Charles Duhigg: I’m sure you’ve had one building that’s been a huge success. And then the next building is fine, right? It like, it does, fine. It doesn’t, it’s not as big a success as that first one, but it’s, I think you’re exactly right. The thing that you learn about life is that if you focus on the process rather than the outcomes, you tend up having more success.

[00:10:17] Charles Duhigg: That the goal here is not to say I absolutely want to write another bestseller. The goal here is to write the best book you can write. And if you do that and you’re lucky, it will be a bestseller, but there’s so much you can’t control, right? You could have a great building deal and you put it together and then you come out to market right as a recession starting, that doesn’t mean that you did a bad job on that deal.

[00:10:38] Charles Duhigg: It just means your timing was unlucky and we can’t control luck. So what I tend to do is I tend to focus on the things I can control. And then just feel very grateful when it does work out, but not take it as a symbol of a failure. If it doesn’t, as long as I believe that the process I’ve been disciplined about looking at the process about analyzing the process about learning from my mistakes.

[00:11:02] Charles Duhigg: That’s, I think the best you can hope for in life. 

[00:11:03] Patrick Donley: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I heard Morgan Housel say that only write a book if you absolutely have to, it’s just been burning and cooking within you. Talk to me a little bit about your latest book, Supercommunicators. Was that a book that you had to write?

[00:11:18] Patrick Donley: How did that? 

[00:11:19] Charles Duhigg: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. So The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators both came from the same place, which is me trying to figure out how to solve a problem in my own life. And with Supercommunicators, it was that I fell into this bad pattern where I would come home from work and I would start complaining to my wife about my day and she, very reasonably, she would say something like, here’s a solution.

[00:11:38] Charles Duhigg: Why don’t you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other. And instead of being able to hear her good advice, I would get even more upset. And I would say like, why aren’t you listening to me? You should be supporting me. You should be outraged on my behalf. She would get upset that I was attacking her for giving me good advice.

[00:11:52] Charles Duhigg: And everyone who’s listening, you’ve had this own pattern in your own relationships, right? This is and so I went to these researchers, these neurologists, and I said, I’m a professional communicator. Why do I keep making the same mistake over and over again? And they said, it’s actually good that you came and asked us because we’re living through this golden age of understanding the science of communication really for the first time, because of advances in neural imaging and data collection.

[00:12:16] Charles Duhigg: And they said, one of the things that we’ve learned is that most people, when we have a discussion, they We think that discussion is about one thing, right? That discussion is about, my day or kids grades or we should go on vacation. But actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations.

[00:12:33] Charles Duhigg: And these kinds of conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There’s practical conversations where we’re solving problems or making plans together. 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.

[00:12:48] Charles Duhigg: And then there’s social conversations, which is about how we react to each other and interact and social identities that are important to us and how we see society. And they said, what happens is that if you’re having all those different kinds of conversations are all equally legitimate, but if you’re having different kinds of conversations at the same time, you literally can’t hear each other.

[00:13:06] Charles Duhigg: It’s as if you’re using different parts of your brains. And so when I was coming home from work and I was having an emotional conversation and my wife was responding with a practical conversation, they’re both equally legitimate conversations. But we can’t hear each other. We can’t connect with each other.

[00:13:21] Charles Duhigg: And this has become what’s known as the matching principle in psychology, that good communication requires figuring out what kind of conversation is happening and then matching each other. And once you do that, then you can move from emotional to social, to practical, to back to emotional together. And you become aligned to what’s known in neurology as their neuroscience is nearly entrained.

[00:13:42] Charles Duhigg: And that’s why that’s when a good conversation occurs. That’s when we feel connected to each other. 

[00:13:47] Patrick Donley: It reminds me of there’s a great Saturday Night Live skit that I’m sure you’ve seen. Like the woman has a nail in her head and she’s talking about how she feels so bad and the guy’s just not.

[00:13:57] Patrick Donley: She just wants to have him, understand how she feels. And he’s just trying to solve the problem right off the bat. And he’s like, the damn nail out of your head. Like you have a nail in your head and 

[00:14:08] Charles Duhigg: she’s that’s not the problem. You’re not listening to me. 

[00:14:12] Patrick Donley: Yeah. It’s a good thing. So I can see the, book and how the design of it. I wanted to hear a little bit first, tell me about the design of the, cover of the book. Oh, the cover. And then just after that, I want to just hear just a definition of what is a super communicator? 

[00:14:31] Charles Duhigg: Sure. So the cover, I mean, and anyone who’s ever written a book, they know this. The hardest things is like coming up with the cover and the title, right? You work forever trying to figure out. And we just kicked around the idea again and again and eventually this seemed like it was kind of like it would work like it sort of explains the concept of building and now we know what a super communicator is.

[00:14:49] Charles Duhigg: It’s a great question. And I’ll ask actually ask you a question in order to illustrate this. So if you were having a bad day and you wanted to call someone who you know would make you feel better, right? That talking to them would help. Do you know who you would call? 

[00:15:02] Patrick Donley: One of two people. Yeah, I’ve got two people that I would want.

[00:15:05] Patrick Donley: One would be my wife and then another good buddy of mine. 

[00:15:08] Charles Duhigg: Okay. So for you, your wife and that buddy, they are Supercommunicators. Yes, they are. they know exactly what to ask you. They know how to cheer you up or pose a tough question. They know how to connect with you and you are probably a super communicator back for them, right?

[00:15:24] Charles Duhigg: You know how to do that in your conversations. We are all Supercommunicators at one time or another. We all have those conversations with a friend where we know exactly what to ask, or we’re going into a meeting and we know exactly how to pitch your idea in a way that it’s going to get everyone else on board.

[00:15:40] Charles Duhigg: But there are some people who can do this consistently. There’s some people who can do this in any setting. And what’s interesting is when I started working on this book, I assumed that those people would be Extroverts are really charming or they’d be born with the gift of gab. And that’s not true at all.

[00:15:54] Charles Duhigg: In fact, this basically, so it’s not a, 

[00:15:56] Patrick Donley: it’s not a, I mean, all of this is learnable. It’s not a nature nurture thing. It’s not like you’re born with it. 

[00:16:01] Charles Duhigg: It’s all learnable skills. What those people have learned is that the skills you’re using with your wife and the skills you’re using with your friend. Once we recognize them as skills, we can use them with anyone and we can connect with anyone.

[00:16:15] Charles Duhigg: And that’s what a super communicator is. A super communicator is someone who’s learned to recognize the skills that allow them to connect with others. And the book Supercommunicators is an explanation of those skills and how to practice them. 

[00:16:27] Patrick Donley: So let’s get into that. What are some of those skills that like these Supercommunicators do that the average person neglects or doesn’t think about, or it’s just not on the radar?

[00:16:37] Charles Duhigg: So 1 of the 1st is that Supercommunicators, the consistent Supercommunicators. They tend to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions are questions like, oh, what’d you say next? Or, oh, what’d you think about that? Questions that are kind of designed to invite us in.

[00:16:53] Charles Duhigg: But some of the questions are deep questions. Questions that ask about our values and our beliefs and our experiences. And that can sound a little intimidating to people, but it’s as simple as, if you bump into someone who’s a doctor, instead of asking them, where do you practice medicine, asking them, Oh, what made you decide to become a doctor?

[00:17:12] Charles Duhigg: what do you love about, your practice? Those are questions that invite me to tell you something meaningful about who I am. So that’s, one of the first skills is ask deep questions. 

[00:17:23] Patrick Donley: Yeah. I shared with you. I went to this networking event last night and it was a bunch of accountants, right?

[00:17:28] Patrick Donley: And I went into it like, Oh, this is going to be so boring. But I, I’d read the book and I just started just asking this guy that I was talking with just a bunch of questions like, and the first one was exactly like that. How did you decide to become an accountant? Which led to him talking about his dad, who was a cop and who wanted him to be a cop and then guns and then growing up in Cleveland and like all these, I just got him talking about himself and as people’s favorite topic is generally themselves.

[00:17:58] Patrick Donley: Do you ever feel that, some of this can be manipulative, that, learning these skills can be used for, manipulating people? 

[00:18:08] Charles Duhigg: Let me ask something about that conversation last night, when you were asking, my guess is, and tell me if I’m getting this wrong, my guess is that you asked those questions, and he talked about growing up in Cleveland.

[00:18:17] Charles Duhigg: And you also shared something about yourself, right? You kind of answered those questions, even if they weren’t posed to you. this is what it was like growing up in Cleveland for me. And I decided to go into real estate, not, my dad wasn’t a cop. He was a ex. And so there was probably this reciprocal authenticity, this reciprocal, even maybe even vulnerability is, that fair?

[00:18:36] Patrick Donley: Yeah, no, definitely some vulnerability. We got into talking about kids and the challenges of raising kids and today’s science society. And Even we were talking about, I drove by the kids at the bus stop and they were all just on their phones having no communication at all with each other. Yeah, I mean there were some shared, commonalities obviously that we were sharing.

[00:18:58] Charles Duhigg: So it’s not really an interview, it’s a dialogue, and so to your point about manipulation. So the first thing I’ll say is communication is a tool, right? And much like an axe can be used to build a house. An axe can also be used to cut someone’s head off, right? It has a lot to do with the wielder of that tool and not the tool itself.

[00:19:15] Charles Duhigg: That being said, these concerns about manipulation through communication, oftentimes, what studies show is that they don’t materialize very frequently. Take scam artists. There’s been a lot of studies done of scam artists. The person that they scam, they never say, Oh, I believed his story. Yeah. What they say is I was really lonely.

[00:19:36] Charles Duhigg: And so I was willing to pretend I believed his crazy story because I wanted to hang out with someone I wanted. He brought something to my life that was real and authentic. The way that our brains evolved is that in addition to being very, good at communication, our brains have evolved to be excellent at communication.

[00:19:51] Charles Duhigg: They’ve also evolved to be very good at detecting inauthenticity. And that actually makes sense because, eons ago, if a stranger comes to your village and he pretends to be friendly, but he’s not, that’s really dangerous. So we all have a hair trigger in our brain for inauthenticity. And that usually works pretty well.

[00:20:08] Charles Duhigg: If we’ve all been to that party where someone asks us where we went on vacation, and we realized within 10 seconds. They don’t care where we went on vacation. They just want to tell us where they went on vacation, And brag about the yacht they rented. So it’s very hard to manipulate people through conversation without them recognizing that they’re being manipulated.

[00:20:28] Charles Duhigg: And so we don’t need to be worried about that. What is a much bigger worry is that at those times that you want to be authentic, you want to create a real connection that if you don’t recognize the skills that allow you to. That you falter at it. So it’s actually the opposite of manipulation where I want to be genuine with you.

[00:20:45] Charles Duhigg: I want to really share with you and I want you to share with me and I don’t know how to get over the hump to do 

[00:20:51] Patrick Donley: What are some of the challenges that present to people to becoming a super communicator? as I’m listening to you, I’m also, there’s a part of me that’s what am I going to ask next?

[00:21:01] Patrick Donley: Which is taking me away from being completely present and focused on what you’re saying. So talk to me a little bit about just some of the challenges that people have to developing this skill of being a super communicator. 

[00:21:14] Charles Duhigg: I would actually say, I don’t think you have to think about what am I going to ask next?

[00:21:18] Charles Duhigg: I used to have a podcast with slate. And one of the things that was great is that you have a producer who’s listening to all of the interviews and the producer sometimes is like coming up with questions and sending them to you. If you’re not thinking about them yourself, but what I found was that the best interviews I did is when I would get in the moment of the interview so thoroughly that sometimes the person would stop speaking and it took me a couple of seconds to figure out what I actually wanted to ask next.

[00:21:40] Charles Duhigg: And the magic of podcast is that we can, edit out that silence, right? But in the conversations we have in real life, oftentimes, if we’re really in, in the middle of that conversation, very present for that conversation, someone says something, we say something like, that’s really interesting. Let me think for a second.

[00:21:55] Charles Duhigg: Or we might repeat back what they’ve said. What I hear you saying is this. It’s okay to kind of be thoughtless in a conversation. That means that you are in the conversation. It’s when we start thinking about other people watching the conversation or analyzing the conversation or evaluating the conversation.

[00:22:12] Charles Duhigg: When you start thinking too much about it, your audience and not right back and forth, that’s when things kind of can go off the rails. And sometimes, the audience is the person we’re talking to, right? If I come into a conversation, I say. My goal is to impress you that I’m smart, or my goal is that I want you to like me or agree with me, then I’m not necessarily having a conversation with you where we’re trying to understand each other.

[00:22:36] Charles Duhigg: I’m seeing you as a participant, but also as my audience. And so I’m trying to perform for you. And that performance is where the inauthenticity comes from. 

[00:22:44] Patrick Donley: Now, I don’t know what to say. No, that’s okay. 

[00:22:48] Charles Duhigg: That’s okay. See, that’s a very natural thing. Is it like that’s what a real conversation does. And with more practice, you what’s interesting is if you look at transcripts from great conversations, the transcripts are terrible.

[00:22:59] Charles Duhigg: Like you look at it and you’re like, this did not sound like a good conversation. It’s like half completed sentences and people saying the wrong thing. and then you ask people about the conversation. They’re like, oh, it’s great. I loved having that conversation. It’s because we’re not necessarily great at saying our ideas in the most eloquent way possible in the moment, but that’s okay.

[00:23:18] Charles Duhigg: When we connect with each other, it’s not about eloquence. It’s about connection. 

[00:23:23] Patrick Donley: Exactly. I wanted to hear a little bit as you were doing the research for this book, were there any heroes that you developed that surprised you that this guy, I want to emulate this guy or this woman and I want to become like them as a communicator.

[00:23:40] Charles Duhigg: Yeah, There’s a guy named Nicholas Epley, who’s in the, book. He’s basically studied, spent his whole life studying deep questions, but also studying listening. And he’s, we tell the story in the book of growing up, he actually got pulled over for DUIs twice, as a teenager. And basically his parents would lecture him and try and break through and it just didn’t work.

[00:24:01] Charles Duhigg: And so he went to this, they made him go to this counselor and she just asked him a bunch of questions and asking those questions, particularly deep questions that seem to unlock something inside of him. And he started being more started listening to himself and listening to other people. But Nick is 1 of these guys who you spend time with and he’s just a wonderful human being.

[00:24:19] Charles Duhigg: he embodies everything we’re talking about. In fact, 1 of my favorite aspects of him is. So he has either five or six kids, and a number of them are adopted. And I think when, people adopt, there’s often like a, sensitivity around the conversation of adoption, either they don’t bring it up or they, you don’t want to imply that adopting is different from not adopting.

[00:24:42] Charles Duhigg: But what’s wonderful about Nick is this, he’ll tell you, he’s I have, I have 6 children and 2 of them are from Ethiopia and 1’s from China. and he’s so comfortable with it. and the one from China, they actually, they had gotten pregnant. He’s told this story publicly. So I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn.

[00:24:59] Charles Duhigg: They’d gotten pregnant and they discovered that their baby was going to have down syndrome and they kind of dealt with everything about that. and then they miscarried. And afterwards his wife said, we’re prepared to take a baby into our home when I was down syndrome. And it turns out it’s that’s going to be less of a, life change than we had, worried it would be.

[00:25:19] Charles Duhigg: I think we should adopt a child with downs and that’s what they did. They adopted this wonderful girl, this little girl from China. He is someone who is so present and so honest and so vulnerable and so real. And just being around that feels good. It feels instructive to be around someone who brings so much of themselves to a conversation.

[00:25:42] Charles Duhigg: And so I’ve tried, to emulate that. 

[00:25:44] Patrick Donley: Talk more about that. The importance of being vulnerable with somebody. We, a lot of us have just a fear of being vulnerable and sharing, maybe view it as weakness potentially, or just just really have a tough time being open and honest and truthful about our human experience.

[00:26:02] Charles Duhigg: And it’s important to specify what vulnerability is because I think there’s a misconception. Vulnerability does not mean crying in public or talking about the worst experience of your life. What vulnerability is it’s a feeling when I say something that you could judge, regardless of whether I care if you judge or not.

[00:26:21] Charles Duhigg: So if I tell you I like Star Trek better than Star Wars, that doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but it’s a vulnerable admission because it presents an opportunity where you could be like, are you joking? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Now, I might not care about your judgment. I might be like, I don’t care what you think about it and this is how I feel, but the fact that I’ve said something that opens me to your judgment.

[00:26:44] Charles Duhigg: Is vulnerability. It feels vulnerable. And at that moment you have a choice and the choices. You can either rebuff that vulnerability or you can reciprocate it and you can reciprocate it by saying, Oh, you’ve given me an opportunity to judge you. Let me return the favor and say, actually, I like Star Wars more than Star Trek.

[00:27:04] Charles Duhigg: And here’s why. And that gives me a chance to judge you. You’re not saying you’re dumb. I’m smart. You’re saying I have a difference of opinion. That’s vulnerability. And there’s this thing that’s been hardwired into our brain by evolution, which is when I am vulnerable and you engage in reciprocal vulnerability, I trust you more and I like you more.

[00:27:24] Charles Duhigg: I’m almost powerless to not do this. And so this is one of the things that we know about vulnerability is that vulnerability is actually a huge source of strength because it’s a way to help us. If I’m vulnerable, or more importantly, if I respond to someone else’s vulnerability with vulnerability of my own, we will feel closer to each other and we’ll like and trust each other more.

[00:27:44] Patrick Donley: You had mentioned earlier, when we first started talking about neural entrainment, and you mentioned it really quickly, but what exactly is neural entrainment? 

[00:27:53] Charles Duhigg: During the conversation, there’s these changes in our bodies and our brains. even in this conversation, it, we’re not aware of it, but you and I have started breathing at a similar rate.

[00:28:04] Charles Duhigg: Our heart rates have started to match each other. It’s very likely, given that we’re both sitting in sunny environments, that our pupils have started to dilate at the same rate, even though we’re surrounded by, they’re separated by thousands of miles. And most importantly, during this conversation, the activity within my brain and the activity within your brain have become more and more similar, right?

[00:28:24] Charles Duhigg: If we were to actually hook ourselves up to MRIs or fMRIs, what we would see is that our brains start to look similar to each other. And that actually makes sense when you think about it, because if I described to you that a feeling that I’m having or an idea, you actually experience that feeling a little bit, right?

[00:28:38] Charles Duhigg: You experience that idea a little bit. And that makes sense that our brains would look a The more similar our brains become, the better we understand each other, the better we’re able to hear each other. And so the goal of communication in many ways is to cause your brains to align. And this is known as neural entrainment in neuroscience.

[00:28:59] Charles Duhigg: And what it says is that basically, as we’re having a conversation, you and I will start to think alike. And that’s the thing that will make us feel like we understand each other, help us understand each other and make us feel close. 

[00:29:11] Patrick Donley: Where did you first turn? I’m curious about some of the books and researchers that you turned to for the book.

[00:29:18] Patrick Donley: Like where, what was some of your source material for the book? that really was foundational and super helpful for writing. 

[00:29:25] Charles Duhigg: When it comes to neural entrainment, there’s, a handful of researchers who’ve been working on this for about 10 or 15 years. So there’s a guy named Uri Hasson at Princeton, a woman named Thalia Wheatley at Dartmouth.

[00:29:36] Charles Duhigg: She had a grad student named Beau Sievers, who I spent a lot of time looking at his research. There’s a guy named Matt Lieberman at UCLA, who looks at basically social conversations and what happens inside our brains. I mean, the way that I write books is I just spend a tremendous amount of time doing internet research, right?

[00:29:52] Charles Duhigg: I use Google scholar. And then when I find a paper that I think is interesting, or a researcher who seems like they’re doing interesting work, I call them up almost as fast as I can. Like it’s always a mistake to read instead of having a conversation. So my goal is to, read as much as I need to, in order to call someone and not embarrass myself.

[00:30:11] Charles Duhigg: And then usually when I call them, what I say is something like, I’ve read a bunch of your papers and this is what’s interesting to me about them. But I don’t know enough to actually know the right questions to ask you. Can you tell me what I ought to ask you? And you just do that enough times and you end up finding out some good stuff.

[00:30:27] Patrick Donley: Years ago, I did a class with Marshall Rosenberg. I don’t know if you came across that guy. It’s the book is called Nonviolent Communication. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it was super helpful like just to basically a big part of it was just like acknowledging how somebody is feeling So I wanted to go into that you mentioned the three different types of conversations that we can have And I the confusion of knowing where you are what kind of conversation you’re trying to have I just wanted to hear your thoughts on how do you determine like what?

[00:30:58] Patrick Donley: The goal of a conversation is or what kind of conversation those three buckets we are in You 

[00:31:04] Charles Duhigg: It’s a great question. So the first thing is the goal of every conversation is at its most elemental level, the same, which is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand me.

[00:31:16] Charles Duhigg: And then when we get focused on that goal, it makes things a lot easier. So the goal is not to convince you’re I’m right and you’re wrong. It’s not to convince you that you should like me or admire me. 

[00:31:27] Patrick Donley: But don’t you think a lot of conversation is exactly the opposite? Like I’m right and you’re wrong.

[00:31:32] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. no, that’s a trap we fall into those usually aren’t great conversations and they’re certainly not conversations where a lot of people walk away being like, Oh, you know what? You’re right. I am wrong. So the thing that we should remind ourselves is the goal of this conversation is to understand each other.

[00:31:49] Charles Duhigg: And if we walk away from this conversation, still disagreeing with each other, still thinking you’re an idiot and I’m not, but we understand each other better than that conversation has been a success. Because we’ve become entrained, we’ve connected with each other, at least to some degree. The next question is, how do we figure out what kind of conversation this is?

[00:32:09] Charles Duhigg: And there’s basically two answers. The first is oftentimes asking those deep questions helps a lot because if I ask you a deep question, you kind of tell me what mindset you’re in. think about the difference between someone who I say, Hey, why did you decide to become a doctor? And they say something like, I really wanted a steady job and I knew that there was always going to be demand for doctors.

[00:32:28] Charles Duhigg: That person is probably in a practical mindset, right? They’re looking at things, right? That same person in a different setting. I asked that same question. They could say, my dad got sick when I was a kid. And I saw how the nurses and the physicians helped him. And I wanted to be one of those people.

[00:32:42] Charles Duhigg: Okay. That person is in a much more emotional or perhaps social mindset. So asking a deep question allows the other person to tell us what kind of mindset they’re in. But then equally, oftentimes, if we just look for clues, we find them pretty easily. Usually it’s not that we are, we’re in the wrong kind of conversation because it’s hard to know what the other person is thinking or feeling.

[00:33:04] Charles Duhigg: Usually it’s because we’re not looking for what the other person is thinking or feeling. My wife comes home with a problem and I start giving her advice right away. It’s not because I can’t figure out what’s going on inside her head. It’s because I haven’t stopped to bother to figure out what’s going on inside her head.

[00:33:20] Patrick Donley: So you really need to make this a huge priority. if it’s not a priority and a goal, it’s going to be really hard to develop this. Like it’s just not going to happen. Yeah, but what’s interesting is 

[00:33:31] Charles Duhigg: it can feel overwhelming to get like all this advice. Yeah, but again, Super communication is our superpower, right?

[00:33:38] Charles Duhigg: Homo sapiens have succeeded because we communicate so well in our brains have evolved to be very, good at communication. And as a result, when we learn a skill and we practice it once or twice or three times, it becomes a habit very, quickly. Our brain is basically designed to make these skills into habits almost immediately.

[00:34:00] Charles Duhigg: And so it can feel overwhelming when someone describes it to us. But if you just practice it a little bit, it becomes incredibly habitual 

[00:34:09] Patrick Donley: And fun. 

[00:34:10] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Yeah. And easy. 

[00:34:13] Patrick Donley: I, like last night, I really enjoyed using some of these principles. I wanted to talk a little bit about hard conversations and some guidelines you have for going into hard conversations.

[00:34:22] Patrick Donley: Just my wife and I went through, this may be too much personal information, but mediation with my wife’s divorced and the father of her children and his new wife. So the four of us did mediation. It was very emotional, a lot of baggage from the past. It was very Talk to me a little bit about and there was a there was a mediator who was organizing and coaching us along the way But it was very difficult.

[00:34:47] Charles Duhigg: I want to ask you what yeah, what was the most difficult part of it? what did you find to be really challenging? 

[00:34:53] Patrick Donley: It’s the baggage of the their history the two of them that turns up and I’m you know I know her side of the story. There’s two sides to every story obviously, but It churns up a lot of emotion in both of them.

[00:35:06] Patrick Donley: So there’s still like a lot of, I guess, like traumas that’s still like unresolved that, the mediator said, don’t bring up the past. We’re not even going to go there, but it’s hard because the emotions are almost like in the body as you’re talking about the daily things that we’re having issues with about money or time or things like that.

[00:35:26] Patrick Donley: It’s like the emotion is, so in the body. 

[00:35:30] Charles Duhigg: And did you find. When that would come up, how would it derail things? 

[00:35:36] Patrick Donley: At one point the mediator had to call a timeout and separate us. 

[00:35:40] Charles Duhigg: Because everyone was getting so heated. 

[00:35:41] Patrick Donley: The two of them were the, 

[00:35:43] Charles Duhigg: And paint that out for me. What was actually happening?

[00:35:45] Charles Duhigg: Were they screaming at each other? 

[00:35:46] Patrick Donley: No, it wasn’t screaming. It was just like some name calling kind of stuff. I wouldn’t say character assassination, but just calling into question, how good of a parent are you really? 

[00:35:58] Charles Duhigg: And do you feel, were either of them listening to each other at that point?

[00:36:02] Charles Duhigg: I don’t think so. No. Yeah. Yeah. So here’s one of the things they can’t. I 

[00:36:08] Patrick Donley: think they really can’t hear, 

[00:36:09] Charles Duhigg: you. It’s really hard. Yeah. So here’s one of the things that we know about conflict conversations, where we disagree with someone or we’re talking about something really sensitive, yeah, Our kids or politics or religion or race, one of the things that can derail us is that we all have a sneaking suspicion in the back of our mind, particularly during conflict conversations that the other person is not listening to us.

[00:36:31] Charles Duhigg: They’re just waiting their turn to speak. I’m going to tell you what a terrible parent you are. It’s not even going to register. You’re just going to tell me what a terrible parent I am, right? We have to figure out not only how do we get around that, but how do we convince ourselves to actually listen?

[00:36:46] Charles Duhigg: How do we prove that we’re listening to someone so that it doesn’t become us just waiting our turn to yell at each other? And there’s actually a technique that’s taught at Harvard and Stanford, a bunch of other places. That’s known as “looping” for understanding and has three steps. The first step is you ask a question, preferably a deep question, and then you let the other person answer.

[00:37:08] Charles Duhigg: Step two is once they’re done answering and you let them take as long as they want, repeat back in your own words, which you heard them say, don’t mimic them, but actually prove to them that you were paying attention. You’re processing what they were saying. You’re thinking about it. And then step three, and this is the one we always forget.

[00:37:26] Charles Duhigg: Ask if you got it right, because one of two things will happen. The first thing is that they might say, no, you didn’t understand what I was trying to say, which is useful. We didn’t hear them correctly. Or they might say, yeah, I think you understood what I was trying to say. And what’s happening in that moment is that we are asking them for permission to acknowledge that we were listening.

[00:37:46] Charles Duhigg: And another thing about our neurology is that when we believe someone is listening to us, we become more likely to listen to them. And the other reason why this technique is so important is because exactly what you just said, would you call that a bid for? Yeah. There’s a bunch of different ways of kind of, in John Gottman and his sort of all about bids and yeah, it’s all the same stuff.

[00:38:08] Charles Duhigg: It’s sort of a different nomenclature around it. But what’s important is you mentioned it was hard for them to actually listen to each other. Like it’s, So what happens is that when I get in that fight or flight mindset, it does become very hard. Even if I want to listen to you, it becomes very hard for me to listen right now.

[00:38:24] Charles Duhigg: On the other hand, though, if I give myself an assignment and that assignment is, I need to listen to you so closely that I can repeat back what you’ve said in my own words. Now I’ve actually kind of hacked my own brain because in order to fulfill that goal, I can’t come up with counter arguments as you’re speaking.

[00:38:42] Charles Duhigg: I really have to pay attention to what you’re saying. I might even have to take notes if it’s something really heated and complicated. So what this does is not only does it try and prove to the other person that I’m listening to them, which helps lower the temperature. It actually makes it easier for me to listen, because now I have an assignment for myself.

[00:38:58] Charles Duhigg: Not come up with all the reasons you’re a jerk while you talk, but rather listen closely enough that I can repeat back to you what I think you’re saying. 

[00:39:05] Patrick Donley: The mediator did something that’s interesting right off the bat was she had a whiteboard and she said, just asked each of the four of us what, our individual goals were.

[00:39:15] Patrick Donley: And kind of the rules of the road for what was going to transpire, which was a two hour emotional meeting. 

[00:39:22] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. 

[00:39:22] Patrick Donley: It was very useful to kind of get.. 

[00:39:24] Charles Duhigg: And Did you guys come to a resolution? 

[00:39:26] Patrick Donley: We did. It actually was, it was very good. Ultimately, like there was a lot of give and take, they gave a little, we gave a little, and I was dreading it.

[00:39:35] Patrick Donley: And in some ways like doing, I’d never done mediation and it would actually was a pretty good experience of watching this mediator. Who’s very skillful. Interact with all of us and like how she navigated the entire, very difficult, challenging conversation. 

[00:39:50] Charles Duhigg: And why do you think it worked? What was it about that experience that helped you guys hear each other?

[00:39:56] Patrick Donley: Because of her being in place, like calling kind of timeouts at times or pointing out when the conversation like did derail and go into like negative town or blame town or whatever you want to call it. Just having that outside coach who’s not in their lizard brain was really useful to be able to navigate the whole thing.

[00:40:16] Patrick Donley: Otherwise, I don’t think it could have happened. 

[00:40:18] Charles Duhigg: And my guess is, and tell me if this is wrong, my guess is that at some point she said something like, before we start talking about solutions, let’s just like kind of talk about how we feel about this. let’s get on the table. All the things that are happening inside our brain, but we think are important.

[00:40:32] Charles Duhigg: Yes. And then at another moment, she probably said something like, okay, I know that you’re feeling a lot, but let’s look at solutions now. Let’s not, when you feel those emotions, just go ahead and now’s the time to sort of set them aside. And we’re going to talk about. Okay. So I think one of the things that she was probably doing that’s really helpful, and this is what mediators are trained in, is she was helping you guys figure out how to have the same conversation at the same moment.

[00:40:54] Charles Duhigg: Because if I come in and I say, Hey, here’s my proposal, my proposed solution for how we split up the kids. And you say, I hate you because you cheated on me, we’re probably not like you’re having an emotional conversation. I’m having a practical conversation. I might even, or I might be feeling very emotional myself.

[00:41:11] Charles Duhigg: And I try and, but my, habit is to speak in a practical manner. And so I’m couching all of my emotional feelings in practical language. And just having someone who says, now’s the time for an emotional conversation. Now’s the time for a social conversation. How does this affect the other kids right now is the time for practical conversation?

[00:41:29] Charles Duhigg: What’s a workable plan? And the thing is, we can do that for ourselves. It’s really useful to have a mediator do it for us, but we can equally do it ourselves and say, look, let’s take a couple of minutes just to talk about how we feel. And I’m not going to tell you that your feelings are wrong.

[00:41:46] Charles Duhigg: I’m going to acknowledge your feelings. I’m going to say I understand you’re feeling this way and that probably doesn’t feel great. And after we do that, let’s talk about solutions and that act of figuring out how to have the same conversation at the same time. That’s really powerful. And in fact, they teach it in schools to teachers.

[00:42:04] Charles Duhigg: They teach teachers that when a student comes to you and they want to have a real conversation, start it by asking them, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged or do you want to be heard? And that of course is the practical, the social and the emotional conversation helped her or hugged.

[00:42:21] Charles Duhigg: Or heard. Yeah. Helped, hugged, or heard. Helped, hugged, or heard. And the thing is, every student knows what they want. They are able to say, I want to be helped, or I want to be, I want to be hugged, I’m feeling bad. Or I just want you to hear what’s going on right now. this is you don’t have to solve the problem, but I want you to tell me that this is something that’s happening.

[00:42:39] Charles Duhigg: I’m not crazy. 

[00:42:41] Patrick Donley: That’s super useful. I’m going to try this tonight. 

[00:42:45] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And we know how to do this. We intuitively know how to answer that question. It’s just a matter of teaching ourselves to ask it 

[00:42:53] Patrick Donley: Just real quickly. what are your hopes for the book? do you have any, thoughts on how you.. 

[00:42:57] Charles Duhigg: What I really hope is that people read it and that they get a sense of how to connect to the people they want to connect with.

[00:43:03] Charles Duhigg: The thing is that we don’t have to have conversations with anyone. We don’t want to have conversations with, right? Like sometimes you get in the Uber and you, don’t want to talk to the driver. You just want to check your email, right. And that’s okay. That’s totally fine. Sometimes we come home.

[00:43:16] Charles Duhigg: And we don’t want to like have a conversation with our spouse. We want to watch TV and just chill out. But what is important is that when we do want to have conversations, when we do want to connect with someone that we have the skills, the tools available to us in order to make that a success. And so that’s my goal for the book.

[00:43:33] Charles Duhigg: My hope for the book is that people read it and they say, Oh, look, here’s a handful of skills that I can practice. And then when I practice them, they become habits pretty quickly. And the next time I want to have a conversation, the next time I want to connect to someone, the next time I want to talk about something important, I know how to do it.

[00:43:50] Charles Duhigg: Rather than just feeling like I’m lost. 

[00:43:52] Patrick Donley: Right? You’ve got the tools in the toolbox. Yeah, this has been fun Charles. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the advantage or the copy of the book. I really enjoyed reading it and this has been a pleasure for.. 

[00:44:02] Charles Duhigg: Thanks for having me. 

[00:44:04] Patrick Donley: Yeah, so best of luck. I hope the book continues to do well.

[00:44:07] Patrick Donley: And, I’m looking forward to, having this come out and be released in a few weeks. 

[00:44:12] Charles Duhigg: Me too. Me too. so much. 

[00:44:13] Patrick Donley: Real quickly, how can people get in touch with you or learn more about, your books? 

[00:44:17] Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Yeah. If they, if they just Google me, Charles Duhigg, DUHIGG, my website will come up or if they Google The Power of Habit or Supercommunicators, you’ll find me pretty quickly.

[00:44:28] Charles Duhigg: Easy to find. There’s a bunch of contact information on my website and I’m on Twitter and Instagram and they’re 

[00:44:34] Patrick Donley: Not, too many Duhigg’s out there, right? 

[00:44:36] Charles Duhigg: Not too many Duhiggs, no. I’m the only one. Cool. 

[00:44:40] Patrick Donley: Thanks Charles. I appreciate your time. 

[00:44:41] Charles Duhigg: Thank you. Take care. 

[00:44:44] Patrick Donley: Okay, folks, that’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real soon.

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