Life UncutCommunication Is Key, But How Do We Do It? Uncut with Charles Duhigg
We’ve said it a hundred times; communication is everything. But we aren’t really ever taught how to actually communicate. What makes someone a good communicator? And why is it so important? People aren’t just born good communicators and it’s something that we can all improve our skills on.
Joining the podcast today is Pulitzer prize winning reporter and author Charles Duhigg. Charles’ most recent book titled ‘supercommunicators’ investigated the simple and tested methods for communicating and connecting with anyone. Charles went deep on what exactly makes someone THE person that everyone wants to have conversations with; whether it be in your romantic relationship, at work, with friends and even with strangers.
We speak about:
- How having ‘different types’ conversations with partners is likely why you feel misunderstood or not listened to
- Becoming ‘neurally entrained’ and using the ‘matching principle’ to be a good communicator
- How to ask the right questions
- The communication of conflict and how to avoid it - ‘when you’re feeling furious, get curious.’
- Can you ‘learn’ to use communication in a manipulative way
- EQ, unlike EQ is learned, not born with
- The difference between true vulnerability and fake vulnerability
You can find more from Charles at his website
You can follow Charles’ Instagram
His book “supercommunicators - How to unlock the secret language of connection’ is available in hardcopy and audiobook on audible and spotify.
You can watch us on Youtube
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Produced by Keeshia Pettit
Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford
Recorded on Cammeraygal Land
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This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura, I'm Brittany.
Okay, we've said it a hundred times. We say it on every gas Gun Cut episode. We say it pretty much on every episode ever, every episode, six hundred and fifty episodes we've said it. Yeah, So, I mean, it's nice that we're like touching based on this again, but communication really is everything when it comes to relationships.
Now.
When we go to school, we get taught so many different things. You get taught how to do algebra. No one teaches you how to communicate properly with people around you. Some people seem to be innately good at it. Some people seem to be quite terrible at it. And I think that we often think we either a just skilled at this or we're not skilled at this, not that communication is a thing that we can learn and we can become better at if we know what it is that we need to focus on. Joining the podcast today is Politzer Prize winning reporter and author Charles Jewig. Now charles most recent book, it's titled The Super Communicators. So if anyone knows about communication, he is the man. Charles is investigating the simple and tested methods for communicating and connecting with anyone, and he also went very deep on what exactly makes someone the person that everyone wants to talk to in a room, the person that everyone wants to have a conversation with, whether it be in a romantic relationship, at work, with friends, or even with strangers.
Charles, Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me. It's such a joy to be here.
We're so excited to talk to you today because, as we mentioned, it is one of those thrawaway comments that we make but everyone makes that's constantly like just communicate.
But we don't ever really break down what that is.
So I am excited that we're going to get into the nitty gritty of that today.
But before we do, we love to throw our.
Guests under the bus, and we start with an accidentally unfiltered Which is your most embarrassing moment? Do you have one for us today?
Yeah? I was thinking about this. So our last year in high school here has got named senior year. I don't know if you guys use the same terminology. During my senior I took a girl to senior prom and as we were driving back from the prom. My car caught on fire, and it yeah, yeah, it was. I would love to say it's because there was so much heat being generated inside the car, but that's not what happened. What happened was that literally it was an old car and we're driving down and my date Lexi Lexie Patronas is her name. She's great. She was like, she's like, you know, it sort of smells like smoke and like maybe like burning rubber or something is something going on outside. And I was like, nah, we're good. And then suddenly, like the smoke starts coming through the vents. Yeah, it was not great.
At least it was on the way home and not on the way there, like that would.
Have been far worse, exactly.
Yeah, but there was some solid opportunities there for like, you know, this is just because you're so hot.
We most of it.
I would have loved to been that suave in high school. But the truth of matter is I was like, ah ah ah ah, I had no game whatsoever.
How did I mean, talking about communication in general, how did this become an area of focus for you and something that you wanted to research and thought, you know what, I'm going to write a book about this.
It's actually because of a pattern I fell into with my wife, who is not Lexi a completely different way.
We all wonder where Lexi is now.
She has kids of her own, she's great. But I married a woman named Liz, who I like a lot. She's a marine biologist. I like her a lot.
I'm glad.
So I got into this bad pattern, which I'm going to put it out there, and I'm going to guess that maybe you guys are familiar with this pattern, and everyone is listening as familiar with this pattern, which is I would come home after a long day work and I'd be like super frustrated or worked out. But you know, I'd be telling my wife, like, you know, my boss doesn't appreciate me enough and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I.
Am and I don't have that problem.
Well my wife, Yeah, my wife would offer me this really good advice. She would say, like, why don't you take your boss out to lunch? And you guys came out to know each other better, And instead of being able to listen to her advice and hear it, I would get even more upset and I'd be like, you're supposed to be on my side, you're supposed to be outraged on my behalf. Then she would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. Does this sound familiar?
Absolutely?
Yeah.
I think it's interesting though with some of these conversations, because sometimes you don't want someone to give advice, you want someone to just listen and be a sounding board. That gets old very quickly, like people don't want to play the role of just being a sounding board to the same problem on repeat. But sometimes I think it's interesting to almost ask the question of like do you want a solution or do you want me to just listen to you?
That is a great, great way of handling it, because when I went to experts, I went to all these neuroscientists asked them like why am I making this mistake again and again me and all my friends, And they said, well, look what we figured out is when you're having a discussion, you think you're talking about one thing, but actually every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations, and those conversations they tend to usually fall into one of three buckets. Right. There's these practical conversations where we're like solving problems or making plans together. But then there's a conversations where I don't want you to solve my emotions. I want you to listen, and I want you to empathize exactly what you just said. And then there's social conversations about how we relate to each other in society.
Yeah, and it sounds like and it happens a lot, but it sounds like you were just seeking validation. You didn't want an answer. You wanted her to say, yes, baby, you are a genius.
He doesn't.
That's exactly.
They don't deserve you.
And you're like yes, and let yes, queen, And that's how you wanted that conversation to go.
That's exactly. I'm not sure yes Queen totally would have been right for me, but you're exactly right. That's what I was looking for, as I was looking for like this empathy in this And this is what the researchers said is they said, look, if you're having different kinds of conversations at the same moment, if you're having an emotional conversation and your wife is having a practical conversation, you literally cannot hear each other fully and you definitely don't feel connected to each other. But if if you take a moment and you start having the same kind of conversation you say something like, look, do you want me to solve this problem for you? Or do you want me just to like hear you out and like empathize and offer you support or exactly what you just said. At that moment, you become what's known as neurally entrained, and it's the core of communication. This neural and trainment. Our brains actually begin looking more and more similar, and that's when not only can we hear each other much better, but we feel connected to each other.
So that's a learned character trey that you can have in a relationship that you might not necessarily start with, but you can work to connect further.
Is that what you're saying absolutely, And in fact, what we've learned is that people who are supercommunicators, and by the way, all of us are supercommunicators at one time or another, usually during a week. But people who are consistent supercommunicators, they have learned how to diagnose what kind of conversation is going on and match the other person or invite them to match them. And within psychology, this is actually known as the matching principle that successful communication requires having the same kind of conversation at the same moment.
Charles, I want to back it up a little bit because I think it's so interesting how some people seem like they just intuitively good at this, or some people seem to have cracked the code with aun't having to go through the turmoil of all the trenches of figuring out what it is that they're doing wrong. Are there certain personality types that are better at communicating or is it purely just a kind of a lucky deal with how we're brought up and socialized.
So I'm really glad you brought this up, because there is this like kind of cultural bias, right, like some people are born with the gift of the gap, or they're like so outgoing, And what all the research tells us is that that's not true. Communication is a set of learned skills, and some people learn those skills a little bit earlier, and they might have grown up in environments where their parents or their teachers kind of habituated them to recognize the skills. But what's interesting is if you talk to super communicators and you ask them, were you always good at communication, they inevitably say no. They say things like you know, when I was in school, I had trouble making friends, and so I really had to study how kids talk to each other or or my parents got divorced and I had to be the peacemaker between them. Yeah, indication is simply a learned skill skills that any of us can learn, and nobody is born knowing how to do them. But some people practice them a little bit more, and when we practice them, they become habits very very quickly.
What is it that you define make someone a super communicator?
Here's a good test of it. Okay, I'll ask you guys this question. When you come home from a long day, right, you're exhausted, you're you're going to a kind of bad mood, and you want to call someone who you know just talking to them on the phone is going to make you feel better. Do you know who you would call? Like, does that person pop into your mind?
Yeah?
My husband?
Yeah, your husband, yeah, your sister and your husband. So for you, your fiance fiance, right, well we don't want to go Yeah, for you your sister and your fiance, they are super communicators and you're super communicator. Back to them, right, You know how to ask the right question. You know what the right question is. You know how to show them that you're paying attention, that you're not distracted. You know when they want empathy and when they want a solution, and how to sometimes give them a kick in the pants and sometimes just say, ah, man, that sucks, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Yeah, we know how to be super communicators with the people who are closest to us. What consistent super communicators have realized is those same skills that you use on your sister and you use on your fiance, you can use them on anyone, and when you do, you have very close conversations.
I feel like it may be a common misconception when we talk about communication super communication that it's entirely default back to the person that's delivering the dialogue. How important in being a super communicator is actually the quiet?
The listening?
Oh h incredibly important? Right? Like, I mean we all know people who like they just talk and talk and talk. Nobody's like that guy is really a super communicator. Instead, you're like, I want to avoid that guy at the party, like the plague. Right, Listening is an enormous part of communication, but you have to listen the right way, right, not all listening is.
I think that this is so interesting because so much of the conversation that, especially when we're talking about relationships or in workplaces, when you do talk about communication, it is about voicing what you want and voicing what it is about how you feel and telling people and setting boundaries. And there is so much information out there around how to be better at speaking what it is that you are experiencing or your own personal moments. You know that there's very little information out there as to how to be a better listener and how to process what's being said to you and how you respond to that. I really think that that's kind of where we're let down a little bit and how we navigate these sort of situations and these conversations.
I absolutely agree. And there's some skills we can talk about that make you a better listener, and one of the first ones is paradoxically is asking questions, asking more questions and asking the right questions. The first step of listening is very active. It's asking someone a question, but not all questions are as powerful as others. Some questions work better, and within psychology, these are known as deep questions, and a deep question is something that asks about your values, or your beliefs, or your experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as easy as like, if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, oh, what hospital do you work at, saying to them, oh, what made you decide to go to medical school? Right that second question, what made you decide to go to medical school, I'm asking them how they feel about their life rather than the facts of their life. That's a deep question and it invites that person to say something real. So that's step one. Ask deep questions.
And is this to form also like to find a commonality, to form a connection with them, to bring you closer.
Absolutely all the better because let's imagine I say, like, what made you decide to become a doctor and they say, oh, you know, when I was a kid, my dad got sick and I thought I saw those doctors, and I like, I wanted to be a healer. I knew I wanted to be like them. So they're in a kind of social or emotional mindset right at that moment, it's really natural for me to say like, oh, you know what that's interesting because I'm a lawyer, and I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid. Yeah, now, all of a sudden, and you wouldn't necessarily think that being a lawyer or doctor is similar, or that seeing your uncle is similar to your dad getting sick. But when we ask those deep questions, we see the opportunities for things that we have in common, and that's really powerful.
You did specify that not all listening is created equal.
What do you mean by that?
So the first step of listening is asking these questions right, asking deep questions, learning and getting comfortable with asking questions. The second step is that once someone has said something to you, it's really important to prove that you're listening, particularly if it's a tough conversation. If you're having a disagreement with your sister, you're having a disagreement with your fiance, and there's like a little bit of tension there, or maybe there's something that you don't necessarily see eye to eye on. There is this sneaking suspicion in the back of all of our minds that the other person is not actually listening, they're just waiting their turn to speak. So how do we overcome that. There's this technique known as looping for understanding that they teach in law school and business schools and has these three steps. The first step is ask a question. The second step is, once the person has answered the question, restate what they said in your own words. And the goal here is not mimicry. The goal is to prove that you're paying attention, to prove that you're kind of processing what I heard you say is this and that reminded me of something you said last week and then and most of us do step one and two somewhat intuitively right. But step three is the step I always forget because after you say here's what I heard you say, ask if you got it right? Yeah, Say like, oh, did I hear you correctly? Because what you're actually doing in that moment is you're asking for permission to acknowledge that you were listening.
You used a really great example at the very start of this conversation around how you'd come home, you'd vent about your day, and then you're in this loophole about getting and receiving a great advice and then not being at a place where you could receive that great advice. Where did you two come to? Like how did you find your resolution to that?
So now when I start complaining about my day, my wife will often say, do you want me to help you brainstorm solutions? Or do you just need to like kind of like get this off your chest? Right, She's asking me, like do you want to have an emotional conversation or a practical conversation? It's like magic, right, I always know what the answer is, and like it's so nice to be asked that way. And they teach teachers to do this too. They teach teachers that when a student comes up and they have something important they want to discuss, the first thing the teacher should say is do you want to be helped, hugged or heard, which is of course the practical, the emotional, and the social. And kids know what the answer is. They'll be like, oh, no, I don't I don't need a hug. I just want you to know what Jimmy's doing to me. I'm just what kind of conversation, thank you? I just wanted to get in trouble.
It's interesting And I think let's sitting in that for a second, because I don't think many people, and in such an emotion fueled argument, like we go back to saying you're fighting with your partner, most people, I think, in that situation are already planning the retort. They're planning their counter argument, whereas they're not even it doesn't matter what that person is saying for the next fifteen seconds. And I'll openly admit that I've done that in the past, and they're thinking about what they're going to openly admit I do it now. Well, they come back at them with something else. But when does it cross a line? And I am guilty of this. I am really guilty of doing exactly what you said. When I say, let me just get this right, Like I just want to confirm I've heard you're right. I say that when I know I've heard them right, and it almost becomes.
A manipulation technique.
And I hate to say that, but I'm like, I'm not asking you for confirmation because I know, and I say it in a way and I shouldn't, but I'm like, just let me get this right. What you're saying is and I use it as a way to almost come back at them.
So where does that manipulation?
You shouldn't use it as a rebuttal. You shouldn't be like, you know, when you ask a deep question. The deep question shouldn't be like, I'm just wondering, were you born this stupid or did you just grow up? Like we shouldn't We shouldn't take an argument and hide it as a question. Yeah, but imagine that you give yourself. Next time you're having like a tiff with your fiance, imagine that you gave yourself this assignment. I want to repeat back as accurately as I can what I think he's trying to tell me. Yeah, when that's your assignment to yourself, it's really hard to get into that pattern where you just start coming up with retorts in your head because like you're paying so much attention just so that you can be like, look, what I heard you say is this? Am I getting this right? As opposed to what I heard you say was really stupid? Am I right that it's really stupid?
Well, I don't say that, but I guess that's the passiveness, right, Like that's the message in the way I deliver it.
But also, I think it's a tricky thing to only talk about it in terms of conflict, because when you're having conflict with someone already, you also have it loaded with this idea of wanting to be right or winning the argument, or making sure that like you are the one who is correct. I guess at the end of the day and that they come around to see your point of view. That's probably almost the trickiest space to get good at communication. I think there's so many smaller ways that you can practice at first, so that the next time you're in a blow up with your partner, you're not like, oh cool, I'm going to use those communication skills, but I'm really fucking angry, I'm super overstimulated, and it's probably not a great platform for me to be an incredible communicator in this moment. But I think if you've done the groundwork and you know it and you know that you're able to do it, then you can kind of step back from it a little bit.
When you get to that point.
Well, I think it's really smart. And think about when you guys talk to your sisters. I'm guessing if I was to eavesdrop on those conversations, you'd be shocked. You would be You're proving to each other that you're listening because you're asking follow up questions. You're laughing, you're saying, oh my gosh, that reminds me of the time that you did X. You're proving that you're paying attention, and you're right. In conflict conversations we need to get a little bit more formal sometimes, but in just everyday conversations, if we build this habit of showing someone that we're listing, then they believe that we're listening. They are much more likely to listen to us. They feel closer to us.
Talk me through, because I mean, we can speak about the way in which we actually speak or the way in which we listen, but I know that there's so many other factors that influence how we're received when we're speaking to someone, like our body language, our eye contact. Are there a set of other contributing factors that make us good at this or bad at this?
Yes, the answer is yes, But it's not consistent from person to person or culture to culture. Right, interesting, What is consistent is that when we use nonverbal communication, we should use it to show that we want to connect with someone. So let's take laughter as an example, and this is true almost across like the spectrum, from cultures to people eighty percent of the time when you laugh, it is not in response to anyone saying anything funny, right like, and you laugh right now, but what I said, wasn't that funny? It's not, But it's not like I told the joke. Like, most of the time when we laugh in a conversation, we're laughing to show the other person that we want to connect with them, to show them that we're listening, to show them that we like them. And when they laugh back, the most natural thing we can do, they're showing us that they want to connect in return. Now, think about how we apply that to the other things we do. You're right, like, sometimes they tell you don't stand with your body closed off, But why why shouldn't we stand with our body closed off? Because there's lots of people who can cross their arms and still look really welcoming. It's about how we're conveying our energy to the other person, whether we want to connect with them or not. And there's so many small making eye contact there's another great example. You know, in some places making eye contact is considered kind of rude, like you shouldn't do it, But if you're doing it in a culture, and to try and show the other person you're paying attention.
Then they feel that it's fascinating.
This idea of how different cultures receive and understand it differently. There was information that came out about the Olympics when the Olympics was in Russia and they were trying to teach people smile, that it's not rude, that if someone smiles at you passing you on the street, and it was because it's culturally just not what you do. You don't smile at people passing by, it could be seen as though you were laughing at them, You're mocking them. Culturally, it was a different way of communicating. And when the Olympics went there and there were so many tourists in Russia, they were like, well, if people are smiling at you, it's not because they're mocking you. You know, there's just a different barrier here for how we engage with people we don't know.
And it's how we get how we get habituated. Right. If you live in a place where people smile at each other, smiling becomes a habit it's very easy. And if you live in a place where people don't smile at each other, you don't totally You're exactly right.
You go to some places where people are like morning, and then you've got other places where you're like if you did that, you're the weirdo.
Australia is exactly Yeah, we're a very morning country. Yes, say hello to everyone that you pass.
Physiologically, Charles, what happens to our brains when we are speaking to someone that is a good communicator?
Yeah, so I mentioned this neuralin trainment. Here's what happens when you're having a good conversation. You're breath pattern starts to match each other, your heart rates start to match each other. You're, of course not aware of this, right, The rate of pupil dilation will become similar. Our bodies actually become like each other when we're in a good conversation. And what's more important is if you could look at people's brains, which some scientists have done, what you would see is that as those two people or three people, or however many are having a conversation within their brains, their brain activity is becoming more and more similar, more and more alike. And that kind of makes sense when you think about it, because if I tell you about an emotion I'm feeling, you kind of experience that emotion a little bit right, or or if I tell you about an idea, you kind of experience that idea. So it makes sense that our brains become similar. But what researchers have figured out is this is actually the goal of communication. The reason we evolved to be such good communicators is because when our brains become similar, not only can we understand each other much much better, but we just automatically feel closer to each other. We feel like we're connected, and that sense of connection is really important to how humans exist, how we succeed, how we build families and nations and villages. So when we talk to each other, in fact, right now, we would see that our brains look more similar now than they did when we first started this conversation.
I think that's a very fascinating You're an award winning everything, so I'd love.
My brain to make sure, yes, it is fascinating them.
The more you think about it now and even as we're discussing it, my brain is going to these places. But so many arguments are based around not what the argument started at, but the fact that people are not understanding what they're trying to say because they're that clarification, isn't there, So like the argument started at a but it became about f because you've miscommunicated the whole way and the argument's turning to something else, And I thought you were you know, four days later when you do communicate, it's like I thought you were trying to say this.
Yeah, that happens a lot, right, And it kind of gets to this thing about like, what's the goal of a conversation. The goal of conversation is not to convince you that you're wrong and I'm right, or that like I'm smart and you should listen to me. It's not even to convince you that you should like me. The goal of a conversation is actually just to understand how you see the world and to speak in such a way that you understand how I see the world. And so you're exactly right. If we go into a conversation saying my goal is to win, and it's really easy to do that, right, I do that all the time. We get worked up and we get angry. But there's this saying when you're feeling furious, get curious, which really means, you know, start asking questions, because if I can understand what you're trying to tell me. If that's my goal, you become much more likely to listen to me and try and understand what I'm saying, and that understanding helps us resolve the issue.
So fascinating because we speak about it genuinely, we answer listen to questions, right, and so like I would say ninety percent of those like you.
Just have to have that conversations about X.
Y Z.
But it's really easy to say that to people. But if they're not equipped or don't know how to have those conversations, that's then the next biggest hurdle in terms of establishing, like what makes a good communicator? I also think it's pretty important to establish like what are the key things that make someone quite terrible at communicating? What do you think are the biggest red flags when it comes to someone who is a bad communicator.
Yeah, that's a great question, And so let's go over the three skills that we've like kind of learned, because the opposite of them sort of tell us what's bad. Number one, just pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening right just as you're talking to someone, are they talking about their feelings? Like is this an emotional conversation, or are they asking you for advice. That's a practical conversation. And whatever it is, match them and invite them about you. That's step one. Step two, ask questions, Ask deep questions. Right, it's easier than you think it's going to be. And then step three is prove that you're listening, sometimes by looping for understanding and repeating it back, sometimes just by smiling and asking follow up questions or telling a funny story about yourself. So that's what good communicators do. They have those three skills. Bad communicators kind of do the opposite. Right, bad communicators, it does not matter what kind of conversation you want to have. I'm going to tell you all about me. I'm going to tell you about what I want to talk about. And when they ask questions, the questions aren't genuinely curious. They ask you, oh, where'd you go on vacation? And you realize pretty quickly they don't care where you went on vacation. They just want to tell you about where they went on vacation, and like the big fancy yacht that they rented. Yeah, another really bad sign of that someone's on a great communicator is that they just are not practiced at asking questions. And it doesn't mean that they don't want to be a good communicator. It just means that they don't have enough practice. And there's actually a way around this. I imagine you guys have been at parties where like, you find yourself becoming the person who asked question after question and the.
Other person that's literally the story of my life.
It also tends to be the case because of what we do for a living, now come that person. So you're always mining for information and sometimes you get to the end of it and you're like, oh god, I mean, they didn't ask a single thing, but that conversation would have been way easier if they at least asked something about me, like I could have, right, It would have been a two way, not a job interview.
Yeah.
I just have a moment that comes to mind. Recently, I ran into someone who I've known from a past life. We were at a thing together, so we're kind of stuck with each other for a while, and it was two hours of just me basically catching up on the last ten years of their life. And I think also probably because they've seen on Instagram or whatever, that you know X y Z that I've been doing, but not a single question was asked, And I was so exhausted by the conversation because I had to keep on otherwise it just stopped.
And I was like, wow, imagine dating that.
Imagine dating someone who only responds and doesn't isn't curious, isn't inquisitive.
So I'll give you, like this technique that I learned when you're in that situation, help, which is run. It might it might not be. It might not be that the other person doesn't want to ask you questions. It might be that they're just really unpractice to ask you questions. It's just not it doesn't. I mean, you guys get a lot of practice, right you have a show where you ask questions. So here's what I do. After I ask three or four questions and the person has asked me anything in response, I say, oh, man, I apologize. I've been peppering you with these questions. You probably have some questions for me. Let me take a break and give you a chance to ask me whatever you wanted to ask.
That is so putting someone on the spot, though, And they're.
Like, the thing that's amazing is that the floodgates will open. Like these people your friend will be like, oh my gosh, I wanted to ask you about this one thing you posted on Instagram. Right, they just need permission to ask questions, whereas if you're more practice at it, you don't wait for the permission.
Yeah.
Yeah, So yeah, you speak about a few different scenarios or examples in your book that I found really interesting. I'd love you to explain. But one in particular is the example you give about.
The jurors and how one dura tried to get the other juror on their side so that there wasn't a mistrial. Talk to us about that.
Yeah, yeah, this is this guy named Leroy Reid got arrested for carrying a firearm, which in the US, if you're a felon, if you've already been convicted of a crime, you're not allowed to own a gun. And so he gets arrested, and the guy like, he has no idea what's going on, Like he didn't he never actually touched the gun. He bought it because he a magazine told him if you go buy a gun and you jog every day, you can become a private investigator. So he like, yeah, and so the jury is because he's clearly he clearly broke the law. But the jury is debating, like should we convict this guy. And there's this one guy on the jury who's a super communicator to this guy named John Bowley, and he recognizes that one half of the jury is having a conversation about justice, which is kind of a social conversation, right, it's talking about like what's fair and what's right, and the other half of the jury was having this practical conversation where all they were talking about was whether the guy broke the law or not, right, like, here's what the statute says, and did he violate it or not. And so as a result of these two groups, they just literally couldn't hear each other. It was like two ships passing at a night. So what he does is he starts coaching them without even being obvious about it, coaching them to talk in each other's language. Like he starts asking the practical folks who just want to talk about the laws, Like he starts asking them, you know, what's the case when you wouldn't want to apply the law where you think it'd be unfair. Right, He's getting them into this social mindset. And then he's talking to the other guys. The guy's talking about justice. He's saying to them, you know, if you were to write a law, a statute that you think would be fair, that would be fair at work, how would that statute read? What would it say? He gets them talking each other's language, and that's how they come to a verdict, and they end up setting the guy free. But it took them hours and hours because they literally couldn't hear each other. And we do that all the time, right, Yeah.
We also don't want to be proven wrong, Like you were pretty emotionally mature to be in a position where you can say, oh, you know what I'm wrong, and I can see what you're saying now, and I'm going to change my opinion.
Like it's not every every one has that capability.
So I think that if you can get to that situation where you can literally listen and have your mind changed. Also, not that we need to go into it now, but I think that's a big problem with society today is we don't want to change our mind and if no one else agrees with us, we want to cancel everyone.
Like it's I guess that that kind of links into like how imperative is having a high EQ in order to be someone who can communicate well.
I mean, EQ is really important. But what's interesting is that EQ is also a learned skill, really right. One of the things that we know, yeah, is that if you look at people with high EQ, it's oftentimes because they've practiced trying to determine the emotions that they're hearing. All of us are basically basically born with the same EQ. Unlike IQ, which is very genetics dependent, somewhat genetics dependent, EQ is even much more environmentally determined. If your parents raised you talking about emotions, teaching how to listen for emotions, then you have a lot of EQ. But just if you're if your parents didn't do that, that doesn't mean that you can't develop that skill. It just means you have to be a little bit more aware of it. You have to sort of remind yourself, like, oh, that guy, just like that guy was talking about his son's graduation and he kept on talking about how he felt. I'll bet you that guy he's like kind of feeling emotional about this. I'm going to ask him, like, how did it feel to watch your kid walk across that stage.
As a parent though, saying that this is something that you can teach. How can we build really strong communication skills and also EQ in our kids.
So the number one thing we can do is we can ask them to tell us what they're feeling. Because when they see that we are patterning for them that talking about feelings is okay, then it becomes something that they become habituated in. So that thing that I mentioned, the help hugged or herd, that's really really powerful to use with your kids because what you're saying to them. As you're saying to them, tell me what kind of conversation you want to have. And one of the kind of conversations is that you just need a hug, like you're just feeling bad and you want to tell me that you're feeling bad. That's okay. That's a whole conversation in itself. You don't have to have anything else you want to talk about. And by the way, when I'm talking to you, you can ask me, mommy, do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard? Because what you're asking me is if I want to talk about my feelings. The more we talk about feelings and we invite kids to talk about their own feelings. The more it just seems like something normal, it becomes a habit. Can I ask you guys a question? Yeah, you both seem like you have very high EQ. Is that fair to say?
Can you right yourself like that?
Okay, I'm going to say it.
You could be a hot mess and still have a high IQ.
Well, I would say that I do.
Yeah, So let me ask you why, Like, what was it about experiences you've had that has made you want to pay attention to other people's feelings and emotions?
Personally, I think you hit the nail on the head at the very beginning.
My family.
There's been a lot of divorce in my family, and I think I constantly was scanning as a kid for how everyone was feeling about everything. I always just said I was very, like intuitively good at like reading people, and sometimes it would get me in trouble because I'd be like, oh, I know what's going on because I would feel like I could read people's minds, especially in relationships. But that is because I felt like now looking back on it, as a kid, I did have to read people's minds because I didn't know whether I was going to get into a lot of trouble or it was quite volatile at times. There was a lot of having to just read people's body language for peace and harmony in a household.
And there was probably part of your brain that felt like this was important for survival, right, and and our brains are designed to help us survive really really well. And so paying attention to my parent doesn't sound angry, but I can tell that they're angry, and if I like push them, they're going to like get really mad at me. That's something that like we latch onto and we start paying attention to. That's really interesting.
I don't know if I have an answer, really, I can't put my finger on it. As long as I can remember, since I was a small child, I've been a very empathetic person, like very empathetic. I really feel other people's emotions and animals, emotions like things make me really upset easily. But I had a very loving, safe, normal childhood. Like I didn't have trauma or nothing. Nothing was brought to me like that. I just so it's funny that you've asked me that, because I don't think I but you.
Have an answer throughout with a very emotionally in touched father who speaks about his feelings.
Your dad's true. Your dad will cry at the drop of the hat in a good way.
My dad is My dad and my mom are very different. Mum is not a motive really, and my dad is like, yeah, the proudest. He'll tell me all his feelings. He cries.
He's you know, like there's no roles in our family.
You know.
He was also cook and he was okay for men to cry.
He's always been like that, So maybe there was a big influence in them.
See, I think, And you don't have to have trauma in your background, yeah to learn EQ right, Sometimes we do, and it teaches us to pay attention to emotions. But sometimes we just grow up in an environment that's very loving and it's modeled for us that like, part of part of showing people you love them and part of just moving through the world is listening to how people feel and reacting to it.
We speak a lot about negative personality types. You know, we've covered narcissism on this podcast. Knowing that this is a learned skill that can be used. Obviously, it can be used for good, it can be used for evil. How do people who have like narcissistic personalities, disorder use these techniques to get what they want out of someone.
Yeah, so it's a really good question because I mentioned communication is just about learning some skills, right. Communication is just like a set of tools that we learn to use until they become habits. And much like other tools, it can be used for good or bad. You can use an axe to build a house, write chopped down trees and build a house. You can also use an ax to murder someone. It's up to the person whether they're going to use it for good or bad. And similarly, communication is the same thing that learning these tools and these skills doesn't necessarily mean that we're a good person. It means that we can connect with other people. Now that being said, one of the things that's really nice about humans, about how the brain evolved, is that, if you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower. Right. It's the thing that sets us above every species and basically everything that we've done as a people like that we're proud of. There's some communication inherent in it. You have to be able to communicate, to build nations together, to create social change, even to make art pieces. Art is a fact of communication. And as our brains have evolved to be really good at communication, they've also evolved to notice when people are trying to manipulate us. Because if you think about it, back in a state of nature, back when we lived in villages, if someone came to town and they said, oh, I'm really friendly and safe, and it turns out they weren't be disastrous right right with their acts. With their acts. I'm sure that you guys have encountered men people are like no, no, no, I'm such a kiddy cat like and you're like, no, it turns out you are a jerk.
Yeah.
Our intuition can oftentimes tell us when someone is trying to manipulate us, and sometimes we ignore that intuition. Sometimes we we just he's so hot, and I want him to be good, and now I want him to be the guy he says he's being, So I'm going to overlook all these red flags. I pretend like I'm not noticed.
We do have a name for that. It's called digmatized.
For the I will say, for the record, I do not believe I have ever I wish I had, but I do not believe I've ever digmatized anyone on the though I really wish that I could have claimed that that's something I was capable.
Conversation. So that's enough. That's enough.
I think he's spot on, and and it's it's it's hard because no one wants to also like take responsibility. And I don't want to say that it is the responsibility of the person who's being manipulated, because it's not.
No one should manipulate you.
But I think anyone who has been in a narcissistic relationship, they will tell you fuck the red flags were there, Like I knew something was wrong. My intuition was screaming at me, and this push and pull of the toxicity was because I wasn't listening to it. That's a very hard place to get to because often there's many reasons why people stay longer than what they should. But the sign is on the wall more often than not, and it's the will to want to stay and the will to hope that they are the potential that you see in them rather than the person that they are.
I think that's really really important. And another way of saying it is it's okay to be a bad communicator, right, Like nobody is born knowing how to avoid the jerks. Nobody is born knowing how to like connect with people in a real way. The only way we learn is the same way we learn everything. We make mistakes. We look back on something and we say, like, the red flags are there, and next time I see them, I'm definitely paying attention and running away. You are never obligated to out of conversation you don't want to have, and you are never bad because a conversation went poorly. It's just how we learn to be better communicators.
I want to talk about the power of honesty and vulnerability in communication, and.
I think it can be used for good and comus for bad.
But a lot of people say, you know, just be honest, just be vulnerable. There's so much in that to connect. And then we know that sometimes people will say things like I fucking hate you because of this is an this sorry just being honest like that. That's not the way to use honesty and vulnerability. But you have a wonderful example in your book about this CIA agent and the way his honesty ended up being so beneficial for his job. Can you talk to us a little bit about this idea and how we can use it for good.
Absolutely, I think this is a really really good point. You raised, like the role of vulnerability, because because the truth of the matter is if I say, like, you know what, you do this and this and this, and it drives me crazy and I'm just trying to be honest, I'm just trying to be vulnerable with you. I'm not actually being vulnerable. I'm attacking you being a dick. And then I'm dressing it up as if it's like in this vulnerability.
Language, yeah, or it's weaponizing honestly exactly to hurt someone exactly exactly.
So Jim Lawler was this CIA officer. So he was hired and he was sent over to Europe and told to go recruit people to try and give him secrets. And he tries it for like a year, and he's literally the worst CIA officer on the face of planet. He is just terrible at recruiting people. Like people will say things to him like I know that you're trying to recruit me, I'm going to report you to the authorities and so you will get deported. And so he meets this one woman, Fatima, who comes to town and he like takes her out to lunch and dinner and he gets a knower, and then he asks her if she'd be willing to share information from the Foreign Ministry she worked in the Middle East with the CIA, and she was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to get Yeah, they kill people in my country for doing that Ki And so his bosses basically tell him, look, if you can't close this deal, you're gonna get fired. Like you've been here a year and you've recruited zero people. You need to recruit this one. And so he goes and he has dinner with her, and during that dinner, he's just as honest as he can because he basically gives up. He basically is like, look, there's nothing I can say that's going to convince you to work with me. And I totally understand that it's like suicidal for you. Yeah, and like I know you feel really bad about like going home and feeling like you're a loser. I totally understand because I feel the same way. Like they're gonna fire me. I'm gonna go back to Texas and it's gonna be you know, it's just gonna be awful. Like I'm so disappointed in myself. And he's just trying to be totally honest. He's not trying to manipulate her, He's not trying and at that moment, for the first time, she can hear what he is saying to him, which is he wants to help her country. He wants to help women in her country. And she says, look, I think I can help you. I think we can work together. But the only reason she was able to hear him was because he was genuinely honest and to your point, coming in and being like, oh, I want to be vulnerable with you. It's really hard because I I dignatize all these all these girls, and and you're I just wish that you were hotter. I could definitely, I'm just trying to be vulnerable and honest. Like like, that's not being vulnerable and honest, that's being a jerk.
Imagine we've got use of the term, and that's not quite It really doesn't off the.
Dignitize. Am I saying it right?
Digmatized like hypnotize with a dick?
Yes, okay, yes, no, I get I get what it is. It just it just doesn't roll off my time.
I also think this is I mean, I love this example about the CIA agent. But I'm also like, is this the only person he ever recruited, because the only way to recruit someone is when he's on the border of being fired.
No, it turns out he became one of the best recruiters in the CIA's history.
That's amazing.
And every time, every time you do the same thing. He would go in and he'd be like, look, I'm going to be as honest with you as I can. Sometimes he would cry, Sometimes he wouldn't cry. Sometimes he would just be like, look, I promise you I'm going to be as honest as I possibly can. And if you don't want to work for us, that's totally fine. But I just want to be honest about who I am, and I want you to be honest about who you are. And people loved him. Now it's interesting what vulnerability is, right, because we tend to misunderstand what vulnerability is. Vulnerability is just saying something that you could judge, Like if I tell you, oh, I like Sidney more than Perth and you're like, no, Perth's way better. I don't know why you would say that, But if you did say that the Perth is way better, it doesn't matter. I've actually been vulnerable with you because you had the option to judge me. And if you choose not to judge me, if you say something vulnerable in response, if you tell me something that I could judge about you and we choose to withhold judgment, that's real vulnerability and that makes us feel closer to each other.
Vulnerability has been having a real moment though, in terms of like psychology speak and oh, I've listened to lots of podcasts on it. There's experts. Esteberel speaks about vulnerability Bretty Brown. But I do worry that we've almost swung the pendulum in the opposite direction now, especially when it comes to things like social media. I do think that there is an algorithm where people use vulnerability because they know that it gains favor. It's almost like the abuse of vulnerability, and it can be used as another tool to manipulate to get what you want. I mean, a very classical relationship example of this could be, for example, you're in a relationship, your partner cheats on you. You find out that this has been going on for a while, and then things in their life are so hard. It was because of how they're feeling about themselves. Like they're so depressed. All of those factors might be true that it's like using vulnerability as an excuse for the action, or using vulnerability to gain more followers, because it's the thing that binds people together.
Because it's performative, right, it's performative vulnerability. It's not real vulnerability. And if you'll notice in the examples you just mentioned, what that person is doing is they're putting something out there, but they're not giving you the chance to judge them. What they're saying is no, no, no, you shouldn't judge me for having an affair because things were so bad in my life. In fact, you don't have the right to judge me. I'm just going to tell you, like what was wrong with me? Or I'm going to tell you my story on Instagram and it's going to be so sad and like if you're the type of person who's like, well, it's not that bad, then you're a jerk. Yeah, I'm actually not giving you the option to judge me. I'm telling you what you ought to feel. That's the opposite of vulnerability.
How do we identify that when it's happening, Like, how can we be smart enough that we can sniff out what's real from what's performative.
I think the thing to ask yourself is like, is this person asking me if I want to judge them and giving me an option to either judge or not judge. Right if I tell you about something that happened in my life where I made a mistake, and I say like, look, I am not perfect, and you might feel like I'm not perfect, and I totally understand that, but I was trying my best. What I'm doing there is I'm asking you do you want to judge me? And you have every right to say like, no, you are not perfect, you are a bad person. You could judge me. But it's that act of allowing you to judge that is vulnerable. And when instead of saying you are a bad person, you don't have to say I'm a good person. When instead of saying I will judge you, you say I don't know whether you're a good person or a bad person. But I know how hard that is because I've had a similar thing happen in my life and I don't know if I handled it well or if I handled it poorly. At that moment, you and I will feel closer to each other. We might not agree with each other, we might not have much in common, but we will feel closer to each other because that vulnerability, that withholding of judgment that bonds us. So let me ask you the last argument you had with someone who you care about, maybe your fiance, maybe your sister, maybe your parents. Tell me that they didn't go as well as you wanted it to.
Tell me, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I had a big one recently. What I think happened there. My fiance is cliche of the person that doesn't listen in an argument, and he will. He's so stubborn and he will even if he knows he's wrong, and I can clock it.
He'll know that he's said.
Something or done something, but he won't be able to admit it in the in the moment, and then a couple of days later he will have thought about it and then he will come back.
But in the moment, that doesn't work.
For me because it frustrates me even more because I'm like, I know, you know that you're wrong.
So that's why the conversations don't go well for us, because.
I mean, maybe I'm just blaming here, and maybe I don't listen as well, But he definitely doesn't listen.
In an argument, I love that you're like, it's not me, it was him, it's all him. I am still right, no, because I in an argument.
You don't want to argue with Britt is what we're saying. Right now, we've been in a couple.
Can I ask you something in those moments, because I'm sure that it feels like an attack that look to him that you might not be intended to be attacking, but when you're like, you know you're wrong and you're just not willing to admit it, that feels if you were to ask a genuinely curious question, like something like, I'm just wondering, Like I hear what you're saying. I'm wondering, do you think you're going to feel the same way four days from now that you feel right now? Like if we're throwing ourselves four days in the future, how do you think you're going to feel about this issue?
He'll say, yes, do you feel the same, but yes.
You did your best, then you you tried. I think yeah, I think sometimes asking that question instead of saying like, you know you're wrong, that when we feel furious, get curious, like sometimes just asking but It has to be a genuine question. It can't be at an argument disguised as a question. Don't you know that you're in four days? Aren't you going to feel bad for saying this? That's not a real question, But a real question is like, look a couple days from now, do you think you're going to feel the same way that you feel right now? Or is it possible you might feel a litle bit different, Like tell me that might be for some version true?
What's in your brain?
My husband is fucking He's a top notch bloke, he really is. The Only thing we really ever fight about is tone. And it's because like someone said something that's not offensive, but they've said it in a way that's been interpreted as offensive or like it's been just.
And it's we spend so much time together. We weren't together.
We obviously live together with parents, two children together, Like it's you know, we do a lot, so it's very easy to have said something in a dismissing way of the other person.
But yeah, it's usually.
I mean, the one that comes to mind was we've just been through some really big stuff. We had a couple of deaths in our family last year, which we were like very very sad, and happened within short succession. And you know, they were on my side of the family, So my nana and my stepdad both passed away. But Matt's never had anyone pass away in his family, so he doesn't know what that's like. He's had a close family friend, but he's never had like a close family member that he sees all the time.
And he's probably not.
Necessarily the best person in those situations because I think he gives them an amount of time for it.
But then it's kind of like, Okay, Las's back to normal NOWOG keep going.
You know you agrieved last week, Like, yeah, the argument purely came from like not getting the emotional response that I wanted to something I said. I said something which should have I thought been a stop down and we should have had a moment to talk about something. And he was cleaning the house, so it was like he was kind of like, ah, in a second, and I look at that now. At the time, I got really fired up about it, but I'm like, well, I also chose a really dumb time to try and have a conversation about something, which I could have done in twenty minutes and he was like super distracted and not clocked in to have that conversation. So I expected probably more from him than what he could provide at that time.
I think he can put the mop down in those in those times, so like cleaning wasn't the priority.
Like, I don't think either are to blame. I totally gone by, you know, But I.
Also think the easiest place to get to resolution is going, okay, Well, we both played our part in that, Like you could have listened and I could have waited fifteen minutes.
I didn't need to be like, hey, guess what, let's cry now, you know. Yeah.
Well, And one thing I hear you saying, which is a really good thing, is that you know, all couples fight, Like studies have shown that every couple has arguments. Having an argument is not the bad signal. Having an argument where both people walk away angry and then come back angry is bad. Yeah, And the fact that you guys can have this blow up and then you can go upstairs and you can you can both laugh about it or you or you can say like, look, I'm really sorry, Like I should have waited twenty minutes to tell you about this, and he says, I probably should have put down the mop to talk about this. Like, it's not having the fight that's worrisome, it's not being able to reflect on how to do it better next time.
We have this one thing that we do which I like, really encourage if you're in a healthy relationship and you you know, you have like the inter and blow up, but you know you know that you're going to make up ten minutes later. We have this thing that if someone's gotten angry but the actual fight is stupid because they're all stupid, like they none of the fights are ever about anything important, then like one person will always be the person that is like, we're gonna hug the grumpies out, and it's annoying because you don't want to, but you actually can't stay mad.
If someone's like, squeeze all the grumpies out and it works, it works.
The other person very quickly stops being angry and then things are great.
You know, see you're getting hug themptized.
Okay, Chiles, back to you, though, what's the last big fight or big disagreement that you've had with your wife?
Oh my gosh, that's a really good question. Uh So we just bought a new house, and I was not super enthusiastic necessarily about buying this house. I wasn't unenthusiastic. I got enthusiastic, but it was really my wife's idea because we already have a house and it's pretty nice, and I wasn't certain we needed another house a more debt and by the way, it was like a good decision to make, Like I was worked up about it and instead, and so when she was like, no, no, let me prove to you, like this is why it makes sense. Here's all there, like like, let's go through the spreadsheet, and I was like I don't care, Like I don't know why you're doing this to me, at which point we both realized, like I was having an emotional conversation as an emotional place, and it's not about whether it makes sense in dollars and cents. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't matter if the spreadsheet works. It's about like does she hear that I'm anxious about this? And does she empathize?
So it got better, you know what, Like you could never have an argument with Charles.
I reckon.
You couldn't either, Like he's like I know that you're emotional about this. He's like, let me, let me put it out of the emotional argument.
If my wife was in this conversation, she'd be like, oh no, you can definitely have an argument. He has his head up his ass all the time.
Charles, you being an absolutely july. Thank you so much for coming and having this conversation with us. We also thought it would be like something very fitting in the start of a new year. So many people have these like ideas that they're going to better themselves. Are they're going to you know, improve the way that they either function at work or function in their relationships. And I think these are such important literal conversations that help you to be able to be better and to just have a more peaceful life.
And there's always so much room for improvement, like every if you, I think, when you get lazy and think that there's no more room for improvement, that's where the damage is done. But your book Super Communicators The Key to Unlock in a Secret Language of Connection is available audiobook and anywhere you can get a hard copy of the book.
I thoroughly recommend it. I loved it. I've loved chatting to you.
We're going to link everything in our show notes, but you've been a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. It's such a it's so so much fun to talk with you guys. Thank you for having me
