It can be a humbling experience to catalog all the ways one screws up conversations. If you’re like me there are too many to easily recall. I’ve written about a few, as when I talked over a friend to “help her” explain something that I thought might be difficult to articulate. Or the times I haven’t responded well to feedback.

Most of us have had conversations that we found bewildering at best and terrifying at worst. Perhaps a performance review that didn’t go the way we envisioned. Or a discussion with a sibling or spouse that suddenly turned into a confrontation. I have had times after a conversation where I was sure we had agreed to one approach, only to find my conversation partner heading off in a totally different direction.

Conversation and connection are at the heart of living together as humans. “To communicate with someone, we must connect with them.” But we consistently make a mess of this basic task. “The single biggest problem with communication,” said the playwright George Bernard Shaw, “is the illusion it has taken place.”

Misunderstandings and miscommunication seem to be a way of life. Yet there are some people who appear to have a superpower. They really hear what others say, and they are the people others want to listen to.

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection (2024) by Charles Duhigg is the best-selling author’s most recent deep dive into ways we can navigate the basics of life. Similar to his exploration of habits, Duhigg blends timely research and top-level storytelling chops to help us understand how to connect with others. Whenever we speak, Duhigg asserts, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). In this insightful and very practical book, Duhigg makes the case that we have to understand what kind of conversation we’re having before we can connect.

The stories he uses to describe these various types of conversation are compelling and (for the most part) relatable. We go inside a jury room to learn how one juror “leads a starkly divided room to consensus.” Duhigg has us accompany a surgeon as he tries, and fails, “to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment.” The story of a young CIA officer recruiting a reluctant foreign agent is instructive, if not quite relatable for the average reader.

Duhigg looks at some of today’s most difficult conversations—around race, vaccines, and polarized politics—to help us understand ways to make better connections. Early in the book he notes that during the most meaningful conversations, the best communicators focus on creating a learning conversation. They do this by paying attention to what kind of conversation is occurring, sharing goals to determine what others are seeking, asking about feelings, and exploring if identities are important in the discussion. He then suggests,

The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth?

That’s when I realized I really needed to read this book.

Duhigg’s writing doesn’t just consist of insightful stories and deep research. For each section he begins with an overview and then ends with a guide to using these ideas. He’ll restate the rules (and puts them in easy-to-follow graphics) and suggest ways to implement them. Want others to go first? The easiest way is by asking open-ended questions, which are easy to find if you focus on:

• Asking about someone’s beliefs or values (“How’d you decide to become a teacher?”)

• Asking someone to make a judgment (“Are you glad you went to law school?”)

• Asking about someone’s experiences (“What was it like to visit Europe?”)

Connecting with others is vitally important in a world where we are tempted to stick with our tribe, vilify those who don’t look or think like us, and spend way too much time in conversation with our screens as opposed to humans. Charles Duhigg has written an important and helpful book for those seeking to make better connections.

More to come . . .

DJB

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The Weekly Reader links to the works of other writers I’ve enjoyed.

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Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash