Charles Duhigg

And so the answer is the matching principle, this thing that in psychology says, in order to communicate and connect with someone, we need to figure out what kind of conversation is happening, whether it's practical, emotional, or social.

And then we need to match each other, either by me matching you or inviting you to match me.

And then once we're aligned, what's known within psychology as neural entrainment, then we can move from topic to topic and type of conversation to type of conversation together, and we'll be able to hear each other.

Yeah, it can sound like a lot, right, as I'm describing it now.

And this is where we get lucky as humans because our brains are optimized to do this once we know what to look for.

So one of the first things you can do is you can ask one of these deep questions, right?

The reason why deep questions are so powerful is not only do they allow us to kind of get to know each other, they also often will tell you what kind of conversation the other person is looking for.

So think about the difference that if I asked you, why'd you become a lawyer?

Someone who says, well, I really wanted to be able to support my family and I knew I'd always have a job as a lawyer versus someone who says, well, I saw my dad get arrested as a kid and I always wanted to fight for the underdog.

Those are very different conversations, and they might be the response of the same person depending on the mindset that they're in.

But the first one suggests to me, oh, you're in a practical mindset.

We should talk about finance.

The second one is much more emotional or even potentially social.

They were talking about how we feel about our parents and about injustice, what's going on in society.

So the first thing to do is to ask that deep question just to figure out what kind of conversation is happening right now.

Then the second thing we can do is we can just ask permission.

So when I come home from work now and I start complaining about my day, my wife will often say, do you want me to help you solve this?

Or do you just need to get this off your chest?

Are you just venting?

And I actually love it when she asks that because sometimes until that moment, I have not stopped to figure out what I want from this conversation.