Charles Duhigg

There's this process at the beginning of every conversation that psychologists and economists refer to as a quiet negotiation, where we're trying to figure out not only what we're going to talk about, but how we're going to talk about it.

Is it okay to interrupt each other?

Is this a formal chat or a casual conversation?

And during that quiet negotiation, one of the most powerful things you can do is simply say,

look, you seem like you're upset and I want to understand why.

I might not agree with you, but I want to understand.

Can you tell me what's going on that's made you a little bit agitated?

And that's making the quiet negotiation a little bit louder.

But when we do that, oftentimes what happens is the reason we're upset, the reason we're agitated is because we don't feel like the other person is listening or wants to understand us.

wonder if they're just waiting their turn to speak and so if we prove to them that we want to listen through looping for understanding by asking deep questions then oftentimes it takes that agitation out of the equation and that doesn't mean we'll agree with each other but it does mean that we are trying to understand each other yeah i get that i get that so

to get the wheels turning here so i think the first thing to do is to ask a question and and to ask a deep question so for instance let's let's say i'm the i'm the one i bump into you and i say hey hey how are you like you know i could ask you things like what you do today or how are things going but those aren't gonna produce much for us to discuss right so i might say hey i'm just wondering like you know i love your podcast what's the best podcast interview you ever did

That's exactly right.

And not only that, but like one of the things we know is that people who are consistent super communicators

They are more popular than other folks.

They are elected to leadership positions more often.

They are often more financially successful.

And that totally makes sense because if you're someone who everyone likes to have in a conversation, you get invited into more conversations and you learn about these opportunities that other people might not know about.

And we tend to think of super communicators as being these extroverts, charismatic, Bill Clinton-like figures, but usually they're not.

Thank you so much, Mike.

This has been an absolute blast.