What Makes Someone a Supercommunicator with Charles Duhigg

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:00)
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This is Remarkable People.

**Charles Duhigg** (0:57)
There's this kind of myth that listening is about closing your mouth and opening your ear, and that's a good first step. We should actually give the other person a chance to speak. But what we do next is really important. Are we asking them follow up questions? Are we proving that we're paying attention? Are we really trying to process what they're saying? Or are we just waiting our own turn to speak? Because if they believe that we're just waiting our own turn to speak, they're not going to listen to us any more than we're listening to them. So those are three skills that Supercommunicators are good at, that all of us can practice and get better at.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:32)
Hello, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. And I'm coming to you from Watsonville, California. And our guest, I just learned, is in Santa Cruz, California. I always thought it was an East Coast kind of elite intellectual. But no, my guest is Charles Duhigg. And he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. If I have my facts right, he's now at the New Yorker, right, Charles?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:57)
That's exactly right.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:59)
And he has written two great books. One is called The Power of Habit and the other is Smarter, Faster, Better. I actually said that wrong because I implied that he wrote two great books.
But he has a third great book and that third great book is about Supercommunicators and that's what we're going to discuss today. Welcome to the show.

**Charles Duhigg** (2:23)
Thank you for having me on, Guy. It's so good to see you. It's been a long time since we've seen each other. So this is a real treat for me.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:28)
So we got to start it this way. Hi, Charles.

**Charles Duhigg** (2:32)
Hey, how are you guys? Good to see you.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:35)
No, Charles. Charles. Oh, man. This is my lead joke and how. Oh, yeah. Oh, wait.

**Charles Duhigg** (2:40)
What was I supposed to say?

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:41)
You're supposed to say hi and then I'm going to say hi and then you're going to say hi and then I'm going to say hi.

**Charles Duhigg** (2:49)
Because we're matching each other. Let's try again.
Hi.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:51)
We're matching each other.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:53)
Hi.

**Charles Duhigg** (2:53)
Hi. Hi.
This could go on for a while.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:57)
Now, people are wondering what the hell are these two people talking about? In part of this book, he talks about the Big Bang and the development of Big Bang as a sitcom.
And one of the most, I don't know, quintessential Big Bang scenes is when neighbors meet each other and these physicists, tech weenies, they don't know how to socially engage and have a good conversation. So it's hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. So yeah, I was trying to, I was trying to, I like it.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:28)
I like, I like it.

**Charles Duhigg** (3:29)
I think, I think the problem is for both of us are too good super communicators to actually fall into the trap of the Big Bang characters.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:38)
So I just want to establish Charles that I really read this fricking book, man. It's not like Madison just gave me a Wikipedia entry and said, Hey Guy, have at it. I read this book from cover to cover.

**Charles Duhigg** (3:48)
Thank you. I really appreciate it.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:52)
All right. So let's start off with the basics. How do you define a super communicator?

**Charles Duhigg** (3:58)
I'll actually ask you a question. So if you were having a bad day and you came home and you wanted to call someone, they just talking to them would make you feel better. Do you know who that person is? Like does that person pop into your head who you would call?