The Secret Habits Of Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg - #909

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What do most people get wrong when it comes to understanding communication, do you think?

**Charles Duhigg** (0:05)
I think what most people get wrong is they think that it's something that should just happen naturally, right? That it's something that the best communicators are people who don't think about communication. But what we've discovered is exactly the opposite. If you know someone who is just fantastic at connecting with people, at communicating, and you go up and you ask them, have you always been like this? Inevitably, what they're going to tell you is no. They'll say something like, when I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends and so I really had to study how kids talk to each other. Or my parents got divorced when I was a kid and I had to be the peacemaker between them. The thing about communication is it's just a set of skills. It's not even particularly complicated skills. It's a set of skills that anyone can learn. Anyone can become a super communicator. But you have to realize that they're skills and you have to practice them a little bit.
You have to commit to thinking about how you communicate to get better at it.

**Chris Williamson** (0:59)
I suppose communication is quite tightly tied to our sense of self. It's our expression of who we are. When we look at somebody that's a good or a bad communicator, that's because they are a good or a bad person. What was the sense of self-worth comes through as well?

**Charles Duhigg** (1:16)
Absolutely. That happens a lot. Of course, you can be a bad person and be a great communicator. You can be a good person and not be a great communicator. But you're exactly right that communication is very central to not only how we think about ourselves, but how we move through the world. What's interesting is if you think about it, communication is Homo sapiens superpower. It is the thing that has allowed us to do better than every other species, to build families and villages and towns, to pass knowledge from one generation to the next generation. So our brains have evolved to be pretty good at communication. We have all of the stuff in our head to be fantastic at it. As a result, because it's so important to who we are as a species, you're right. We tend to judge people like their moral worth on whether they're a good communicator or not.
That can be a little bit dangerous, but it also means that if you want to connect with someone, and you're someone who's an introvert, you're someone who has trouble connecting, it's really just a matter of learning these skills about how communication works and you can form that bond.

**Chris Williamson** (2:30)
Talk to me about the difference between introverts and extroverts. Are there advantages and disadvantages that each have? It's sort of off the top of your head, you'd think, well, extroverts have got all of the advantages here because they're the ones that are more outgoing, they're going to have more experience, they're going to find social engagements, less energy sapping. What did you come to learn about extroverts and introverts in communication?

**Charles Duhigg** (2:53)
So it turns out, to answer that question, let me tell you a little bit about what we know about the science of communication. So when I started writing Super Communicators, the reason why is because I had fallen into this bad pattern with my wife, which probably is going to be familiar to you and anyone listening to this, which is I would come home from a long day work, I'd start complaining about my day. I was working at the New York Times at that point. I feel like my boss doesn't understand me and my co-workers don't realize what a genius I am. My wife would say this very practical thing. She would say, why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. Instead of being able to hear her good advice, I would actually get more upset. I would say, you're supposed to be supporting me, you're supposed to be on my side. Why aren't you outraged on my behalf? She would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice. It was not a good scene. I think many people, all relationships have some version of this, where one person wants to complain and the other person wants to solve the problem, and there's conflict there. I was trying to figure out why this was happening. I went to researchers and I asked them and they said, well, we're actually really glad that you came and talked to us right now because we're living through this golden age of understanding communication. One of the things that we've learned by studying the brains of people as they communicate with each other is that when you're having a discussion, you think it's about one thing, right? You're talking about your day or like where to go on vacation or next year's budget. But actually, they said, if you look at someone's brain, every discussion is made up of multiple kinds of conversations.