How to Be a Supercommunicator

Vulnerability, identifying the type of conversation, and "looping for understanding"

There is a famous adage about communication: The trouble with communication is assuming it happened.¹

This came to mind frequently as I read Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Communication, by

Charles Duhigg

, science writer and author of the previous bestseller The Power of Habit.

Supercommunicators is packed with stories of people talking to one another and yet somehow not really hearing one another. It’s also filled with research about how to ensure that communication actually happens.

I’m constantly working on my own communication skills, so I invited Charles to discuss the book. At the end of our chat, as you’ll see below, he dissected my recent experience in the comments section of this Substack—highlighting what I did well and what I might have done differently to improve communication with a commenter.

A shortened version of our conversation is below.

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David Epstein: One of my takeaways was that we often think we have to trust people first to be vulnerable, but that in fact vulnerability leads to trust.

Charles Duhigg: First, I think it’s important to understand what vulnerability actually is, because I think most people hear this word “vulnerable” and they think I need to cry on your shoulder, or I need to talk to you about when my mom was mean to me—some deep, heavy thing. But for neuroscientists, vulnerability has a very specific definition. Basically, when I say something that you could judge, it puts me in a certain mindset. It could be something small, like I think Star Trek is better than Star Wars—

DE: Outrageous…

CD: And you might think that's the dumbest thing on the face of the planet! And it could be, but it’s not like this is a fundamental pillar of our friendship, right? But because of how our brains have evolved, I will pay very, very close attention to how you react, even without me realizing that I was paying close attention. And if you respond by judging me, I will deem you less safe and therefore less trustworthy, less likable, less all the good things. But if, instead, you withhold judgment, or even better if you tell me something about yourself that I could judge in return, like you like Star Wars better than Star Trek, then I will trust you more. I will feel more connected to you. And when you say that thing, you're looking to see how I react. So that's what vulnerability is—just saying something that the other person might judge.

DE: Does that idea of sharing something vulnerable in return relate to the “matching principle” that you write about, where you want to make sure you’re having the same type of conversation as your conversation partner?

CD: Let me first explain the primary conversation types. When we're having a discussion, we tend to think that we know what that discussion is about, right? We're talking about where to go on vacation, or budgets for next year. But actually, now that neuroscientists can actually see people's brain activity as they're communicating, what they find is that we're actually having many different kinds of conversations at once that each use different parts of the brain. In general, these different kinds of conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets.

There are practical conversations where we're making plans or solving problems. There are emotional conversations, where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings; I want you to empathize. And finally, there are social conversations, which are about how you and I relate to each other, how we relate to society, how we think of other people. Basically, what researchers have found is that any good discussion will actually have all three conversations within it. But if you and I are having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, it's very hard for us to fully hear each other, and it's very hard for us to feel connected.

DE: What’s an example of where this goes wrong, with two people having different conversations at the same time?

CD: This basically started because I would come home from work when I was working at the New York Times and I would start complaining about my day. You know: My boss doesn't appreciate me; this co-worker did this thing that annoyed me. And my wife would very reasonably offer some good advice. She would say something like, “Why don't you take your boss out to lunch, and you guys can get to know each other better?” And instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset. I'd be like, “Why aren't you supporting me? Why aren't you on my side? You should be outraged on my behalf!”

I was having an emotional conversation and she was having a practical conversation. They're both equally legitimate conversations, but because we weren't having the same conversation at the same moment, we felt disconnected from each other. It’s the same thing when in a couple someone says: Here are the logistics for bringing the kids to school. And the other person says: “I feel like this is really unfair. You’re expecting me to do more than you. It’s like you’re prioritizing your job over mine.”

There are clearly two different conversations happening. Both of them are legitimate. You should talk about both of them, but you can't expect those people to communicate with each other if one keeps on talking about practical logistics and the other keeps on talking about the emotions that these are bringing up.

DE: This reminds me of a story in the book you tell of a doctor who gives patients diagnosed with cancer a lot of excellent advice—which they don’t follow. The doctor later realizes that the patients want to have a conversation about what the diagnosis means to them before they get all the recommendations. Eventually, that makes a huge difference in the doctor’s ability to get patients to follow his advice, when he realizes he needs to have that emotional conversation first. But is it realistic for most of us to stop and try to actually think about what conversations are occurring?

CD: I do this all the time. Now when I come home and complain about work, my wife says, “Do you want me to help you sit down with a solution, or do you just need to get this off your chest and vent?” And I say, “Oh, I just need to vent. This isn't a big deal. It’s just annoying me so I want to tell you about it.” I think that kind of meta conversation, where we're talking about how we communicate with each other is really, really important and really easy and fast. The best communicators, the consistent supercommunicators, will engage in a ton of meta conversation without you even realizing it, because they pose it as, “Hey, that sounds like something that was hard. Did it bother you a lot? Tell me about that.” What they're really asking is, was this an emotional issue for you, or was this a practical issue?

DE: As I was reading Supercommunicators, it occurred to me that a bunch of the recommendations in the book are things that I do in my professional role when I’m doing long book interviews. I prepare for the kind of conversation I think I’ll be having; I often share about myself; I’m intensely curious about the other person and nonjudgmental. And I often do one other thing that jumped out to me in the book as one of the single most important concepts: “looping for understanding.” Can you explain that one, because I feel like it’s really important?

CD: Communication has two parts: what we show and say, and hearing what you show and say. What’s really important is not only that I listen to what you're saying, but that I prove to you that I'm listening. And if I do looping for understanding, particularly in conflict conversations, it makes things better. And looping for understanding has three steps. The first step is I'm going to ask you a question, preferably a deep question—about your values, your beliefs, your experiences. When you answer that question, I'm going to repeat back to you—in my own words—what I heard you say. The important thing here is that mimicry does not work. What you’re trying to do is show that you paid attention and are thinking about what was said. That's step one and two. Step three is the one I always forget: Ask you if I got it right. David, did I understand you correctly? What I'm doing at that moment is asking for your permission to acknowledge that I was listening. And if you acknowledge that I was listening, you become much more likely to listen to me in return. It's basic social reciprocity, and it's hardwired into our brains.

DE: I definitely do that in certain interviews—summarizing back what someone said and checking to see if I got it right. Generally I’m doing it because I’m basically telling the person out loud how I might write about what they’re saying, and sort of asking them to fact check it. With scientists, sometimes I’ll literally say, “So it’s like this…” and give an analogy, and if they agree then I’ll actually just use that analogy in the article or book. I had not thought about this as a technique to forge connection, though. Maybe this is why my wife—who would overhear some of my phone interviews when we lived in a small New York City apartment—used to say she wanted to be interviewed by me!

Okay, lastly: Before we started talking today, I sent you a recent contentious exchange between two commenters on a previous post of mine, which I got involved with. It was regarding the Abundance interview with Derek Thompson. I won’t rehash it here [but here’s a link to the part where I got involved]. I was trying to turn down the temperature a little, and I’m not sure I did a good job. I was wondering if you can tell me what I did well or poorly, or what I might try next time, because I don’t feel like I did a great job.

CD: I think you actually did great. So here's what I noticed: The first post is basically making this argument that Abundance is terrible because people who build houses are bad people. She uses the word “shitty,” rather than being polite; she uses a curse word, and then she says this thing about the ultra greedy developer and construction industry. So she's taking an industry and anyone who identifies in that industry, and she is pushing them into a group of the ultra greedy, so that's kind of a no-no. But it happens. Then this guy responds, and he just unloads immediately. He says, you are literally the prototypical enemy of abundance. So he's doing the same thing. She's making a general claim about who gets pushed into a category. He's actually making a personal claim. He is literally pushing her into the group of the prototypical enemy of abundance, and therefore probably all that is good.

Unsurprisingly, they get really angry at each other and start trading insults. The guy also says, you are an irredeemable leftist who doesn't understand economics or incentives. Again, I'm pushing you personally into this identity of an irredeemable leftist who doesn't understand things. And then he's sarcastic. He says, yes, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's primary reason for writing the book is to promote greedy, racist developers. That’s sarcasm, and sarcasm doesn't work in this format. And here's where you come in, and this is what's really useful. You say hi, I'm glad you're both here, and I'm very happy to have vigorous discussion. And then you do this thing, you engage in meta communication. You say I hope that people will go out of their way to be especially polite in these comments and to give a conversation partner the benefit of the doubt in terms of their intentions. So you actually engage in that meta conversation that we talked about in a really great way, and then you say if someone found their way to this particular comment section, they're a curious person and a reader, and it's only natural that given our different backgrounds we have different perspectives.

So what you're doing here is the opposite of identity threat. You're saying anyone who shows up in this space is a curious person, and by association you must be curious people who want to learn about each other. And then it keeps on going on. And the guy keeps on pushing back and arguing that he is right and the other person is wrong. And then you finish by saying I hear you, and thanks for explaining. So you're proving that you're listening. Then you say here's my main request, and I know it's easier said than done: Don't insult anyone, even if they insulted you; and if someone does insult you, and I see it, I will be sure to say the same to them.

The one thing that I would say that you could have improved is to say let me go over what the goals of this discussion should be. The goals of this discussion should be to understand each other, not necessarily to convince you that I'm right and you're wrong, or I'm smart and you're dumb, or you should like me. And this is ultimately a really powerful thing. When people understand that the goal of a conversation is understanding and nothing else, it's incredibly freeing. Because if I'm talking to you about something where I disagree with you, my goal is not to convince you, my goal is to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. Suddenly, the expectations on me are so much lower, right? I don't have to convince you to see the world the way I do on Gaza or Israel or affirmative action. I just have to understand how you see the world, and then get you to understand how I see the world. And if we do that, and we walk away disagreeing with each other, it was a successful conversation. And by the way, we're going to feel connected to each other after that, even though we disagree with each other. So that's the only thing that I would have said you could have done to take it to the next level. Otherwise, I thought you did a fantastic job. But you could have said, look, let me give you a little bit more meta conversation about what the goals should be here. The goals are understanding, not winning.

DE: I appreciate that, because I didn’t feel like I did a very good job. It even ended after my last comment in me getting a bit of a talking to!

CD: That’s not a sign that you did poorly. I think the guy who was posting, I think he understood what you were trying to say, and that last little comment, when he wanted to have the last word, I think he felt you didn’t completely understand what he wanted to say, and he wanted to make sure you understood it. But the fact that he sent that last note is not a sign to me that things went off the rails. It’s a sign to me that he felt you were actually listening to him.

DE: I appreciate that feedback. And just to end, I want to point out that I’m glad both commenters in that exchange were here. They got frustrated; it happens. I learn a lot from these comments, and that was certainly true in this case!

Thank you for reading, and thanks to Charles for his time. The paperback of Supercommunicators comes out in a week. Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on my communication in the comments below.

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Until next time…

David

1. The saying is typically credited to George Bernard Shaw, probably erroneously.