Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
by Charles Duhigg
30 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection:
“The best listeners aren’t just listening,” said Margaret Clark, the Yale psychologist. “They’re triggering emotions by asking questions, expressing their own emotions, doing things that prompt the other person to say something real.”
“The underlying mechanism that maintains closeness in marriage is symmetry,” one prominent researcher, John Gottman, wrote in the Journal of Communication. Happy couples “communicate agreement not with the speaker’s point of view or content, but with the speaker’s affect.” Happy couples ask each other more questions, repeat what the other person said, make tension-easing jokes, get serious together. The next time you feel yourself edging toward an argument, try asking your partner: “Do you want to talk about our emotions? Or do we need to make a decision together? Or is this about something else?”
“Miscommunication occurs when people are having different kinds of conversations. If you are speaking emotionally, while I’m talking practically, we are, in essence, using different cognitive languages. (This explains why, when you complain about your boss—“Jim is driving me crazy!”—and your spouse responds with a practical suggestion—“What if you just invited him to lunch?”—it’s more apt to create conflict than connection: “I’m not asking you to solve this! I just want some empathy.”)”
“The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth? Unless we know what kind of discussion we’re hoping for—and what type of discussion our companions want—we’re at a disadvantage.”
“During any conflict—a workplace debate, an online disagreement—it’s natural to crave control. And sometimes that craving pushes us to want to control the most obvious target: The person we’re arguing with. If we can just force them to listen, they’ll finally hear what we’re saying. If we can force them to see things from our point of view, they’ll agree we’re right. The fact is, though, that approach almost never works. Trying to force someone to listen, or see our side, only inflames the battle.”
“Laughter might seem like a strange place to look for emotional intelligence, but, in fact, it’s an example of a basic truth of emotional communication: What’s important is not just hearing another person’s feelings but showing that we have heard them. Laughter is one way of proving that we hear how someone feels.”
“1. A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts. Don’t ask “Where do you work?” Instead, draw out feelings or experiences: “What’s the best part of your job?” (One 2021 study found a simple approach to generating deep questions: Before speaking, imagine you’re talking to a close friend. What question would you ask?) 2. A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel. Sometimes this is easy: “How do you feel about …?” Or, we can prompt people to describe specific emotions: “Did it make you happy when …?” Or ask someone to analyze a situation’s emotions: “Why do you think he got angry?” Or empathize: “How would you feel if that happened to you?” 3. Asking a deep question should feel like sharing. It should feel, a bit, like we’re revealing something about ourselves when we ask a deep question. This feeling might give us pause. But studies show people are nearly always happy to have been asked, and to have answered, a deep question.”
“Hearing people describe their emotional lives is important because when we talk about our feelings, we’re describing not just what has happened to us, but why we made certain choices and how we make sense of the world.”
“Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other. On a very basic level, if someone seems emotional, allow yourself to become emotional as well. If someone is intent on decision making, match that focus. If they are preoccupied by social implications, reflect their fixation back to them.”
“To communicate with someone, we must connect with them. When we absorb what someone is saying and they comprehend what we say, it's because our brains have, to some degree, aligned.”
“John F. Kennedy told students at American University in 1963, five months before he was assassinated. “In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
“The single biggest problem with communication,” said the playwright George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion it has taken place.”
“So, to become a supercommunicator, all we need to do is listen closely to what’s said and unsaid, ask the right questions, recognize and match others’ moods, and make our own feelings easy for others to perceive. Simple, right? Well, no, of course not.”
“I learned that if you listen for someone’s truth, and you put your truth next to it, you might reach them.”
“Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.”
“But the most important difference19 between high centrality participants and everyone else was that the high centrality participants were constantly adjusting how they communicated, in order to match their companions. They subtly reflected shifts in other people’s moods and attitudes. When someone got serious, they matched that seriousness. When a discussion went light, they were the first to play along. They changed their minds frequently and let themselves be swayed by their groupmates.”
“Rather, the groups with the greatest synchrony had one or two people who behaved very differently from Participant 4. These people tended to speak less than dominant leaders, and when they did open their mouths, it was usually to ask questions. They repeated others’ ideas and were quick to admit their own confusion or make fun of themselves. They encouraged their groupmates (“That’s really smart! Tell me more about what you think!”) and laughed at others’ jokes. They didn’t stand out as particularly talkative or clever, but when they spoke, everyone listened closely. And, somehow, they made it easier for other people to speak up. They made conversations flow. Sievers began referring to these people as high centrality participants.”
“Roger Fisher, who had recently written Getting to Yes,”
“So if a listener wants to prove they’re listening, they need to demonstrate it after the speaker finishes talking. If we want to show someone we’re paying attention, we need to prove, once that person has stopped speaking, that we have absorbed what they said. And the best way to do that is by repeating, in our own words, what we just heard them say—and then asking if we got it right. It’s a fairly simple technique—prove you are listening by asking the speaker questions, reflecting back what you just heard, and then seeking confirmation you understand—but studies show it is the single most effective technique for proving to someone that we want to hear them. It’s a formula sometimes called looping for understanding.”
“But what’s important is wanting to connect, wanting to understand someone, wanting to have a deep conversation, even when it is hard and scary, or when it would be so much easier to walk away. There are skills and insights that can help us satisfy that desire for connection, and they are worth learning, practicing, and committing to. Because whether we call it love, or friendship, or simply having a great conversation, achieving connection—authentic, meaningful connection—is the most important thing in life.”
“Good relationships keep us healthier and happier.” And, in many instances, those relationships were established, and kept alive, via long and intimate discussions. This central finding has been replicated in hundreds of other studies over the past few decades. “We now have robust evidence indicating that being socially connected has a powerful influence on longevity, such that having more and better relationships is associated with protection and, conversely, that having fewer and poorer relationships is associated with risk,” reads one paper published in 2018 in the Annual Review of Psychology. Another study, published in 2016, examined dozens of biomarkers of health, and found that “a higher degree of social integration was associated with lower risk” of illness and death at every stage of life. Social isolation, the researchers wrote, was more dangerous than diabetes and a host of other chronic diseases. Put differently, connecting with others can make us healthier, happier, and more content. Conversations can change our brains, bodies, and how we experience the world.”
“In fact, there was only one method the Arons tested that could reliably help strangers form a connection: A series of thirty-six questions that, as Elaine and Arthur Aron later wrote, elicited “sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure.” These questions eventually became known as the Fast Friends Procedure, and grew famous among sociologists, psychologists, and readers of articles with headlines such as “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.”[*1]”
“On the other hand, people who had not invested in relationships—who had prioritized their careers over families and friends or had struggled to connect for other reasons—were mostly miserable.”
“Having loving parents made it easier to find happiness as an adult.”
“session lasted only sixty minutes. The questions had been selected ahead of time by the researchers, and they ranged from the frivolous (“When did you last sing to yourself?”) to the profound (“If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone?”). Afterward, each pair of participants went their separate ways; no one was instructed to stay in touch. However, when researchers followed up seven weeks later, they found that 57 percent of them had sought out their conversational partner in the days and”
“The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth?”
“Looping for understanding, until you understand what someone is feeling. Looking for what someone needs: Do they want comfort? Empathy? Advice? Tough love? (If you don’t know the answer, loop more.) Asking permission. “Would it be okay if I told you how your words affect me?” or “Would you mind if I shared something from my own life?” or “Can I share how I’ve seen others handle this?” Giving something in return. This can be as simple as describing how you feel: “It makes me sad to hear you’re in pain,” or “I’m so happy for you,” or “I’m proud to be your friend.”
“A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts. Don’t ask “Where do you work?” Instead, draw out feelings or experiences: “What’s the best part of your job?” (One 2021 study found a simple approach to generating deep questions: Before speaking, imagine you’re talking to a close friend. What question would you ask?) A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel. Sometimes this is easy: “How do you feel about…?” Or, we can prompt people to describe specific emotions: “Did it make you happy when…?” Or ask someone to analyze a situation’s emotions: “Why do you think he got angry?” Or empathize: “How would you feel if that happened to you?” Asking a deep question should feel like sharing. It should feel, a bit, like we’re revealing something about ourselves when we ask a deep question. This feeling might give us pause. But studies show people are nearly always happy to have been asked, and to have answered, a deep question.”
“However, emotional contagion must be triggered by something, and one of the most reliable triggers is vulnerability. We become more prone to emotional contagion when we hear someone else express—or when we reveal our own—deeply held beliefs and values, or when we describe past experiences that were meaningful to us, or when we expose something else that opens us to others’ judgments.”
“What do you hope to accomplish? What do you most want to say? What do you hope to learn? What do you think others hope to say and learn? If we have elucidated goals before a discussion, we’re more likely to achieve them. How will this conversation start? How will you ensure that everyone has a voice and feels they can participate? What is needed to draw everyone in? What obstacles might emerge? Will people get angry? Withdrawn? Will a hesitancy to say something controversial prevent us from saying what’s necessary? How can we make it safer for everyone to air their thoughts? When those obstacles appear, what’s the plan? Research shows that being preemptively aware of situations that make us anxious or fearful can lower the impact of those concerns. How will you calm yourself and others if the conversation gets tense, or encourage someone who has gone quiet to participate more? Finally, what are the benefits of this dialogue”
