Charles Duhigg | Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

Charles Duhigg: when someone can't use physical channels of communication.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I just I've noticed consistently like I don't know what it is. I don't like doing video for interviews. I find that like because the other thing is, I mean, it's kind of funny because we're talking about the ideas in your book. By the way, this was my favorite of all your books. Yeah, like I think it was the I think part of it is just because as an interviewer, I thought, OK, this is this is definitely like I could just see patterns in my own life. You know, inside of it, I was like, wow, OK, like there's so much here that I'm actually doing without even realizing it.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, thank you. That's so nice of you.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And I think that's a huge part of it is just that like we're actually all good at communication. We've evolved to be good at communication. And a lot of it is just, can we, can we figure out how to let those instincts come out?

Srini Rao: as an interviewer.

Srini Rao: Well, you know, it's funny you say that because I've been using AI probably way more than the average person and doing a pretty deep dive and I got into this really lengthy conversation with ChatGPT. You know, I'd have another note taking app called Mem where I'll actually show this to you because this might blow your mind. So basically, you know, I read everybody's books, I capture notes and I also rewrite the notes in my own words and I even turned it into an interactive note taking tool where it will actually...

ask me questions about the book, but I basically yesterday, I mean, I read the book in detail, obviously, which is why all this stuff is bold and highlighted, but I was like, okay, how do I organize this? And I literally just went into the AI and was like, hey, you know, summarize Charles Duhigg's book. Or here, I'll just show you really quick. This is pretty wild. And like, imagine being able to do this across hundreds of pieces of knowledge.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, interesting.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, it's super interesting. So you just input your notes.

Srini Rao: Yeah, hold on just a second. Okay, holy, you know what, my max, there we go. Okay, there we go.

Charles Duhigg: Gotcha. Yeah.

Srini Rao: I mean, this is the very elementary stuff that you can do. I mean, you can do like really complex things with it. Like we could, you know, I'd like, you know, take this and turn it into a blog post, take it. Now, this is an app called Mem, but, you know, we could do things like extract quotes from this book, you know, basically give me five ideas for a blog post on this book. Uh.

Charles Duhigg: And is this, this is chat GPT you're using or what's the? Okay.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, that's interesting.

Srini Rao: It's kind of endless and the thing is for writers this is because I started an entirely separate business to basically Organize, you know build these kind of knowledge management systems for people Mainly because I like the sheer volume of information I have to like deal with weekly is so much higher than the average person's because of the fact that I have interviews I have Books that I read but anyways, yeah so this is always open during my interviews because it's just a you know, like I It always shocks me when guests are like, oh you read the book

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: of the book.

Charles Duhigg: You'd be surprised how many podcasts.

Srini Rao: Oh, I know I will. This is why this was the one place where I kind of disagreed with. The only thing you're in your book was having a list of questions in advance. And I was like, I don't I don't need a list of questions. I know exactly. But I also have a scaffolding because I have your book. But it's funny because Cal, Cal Fussman and I talked about that once. And, you know, he had actually said that the problem made this is where you can spot it with podcasters is they actually don't listen if they do.

Charles Duhigg: Uh-huh.

Charles Duhigg: Right.

Srini Rao: they tend to like be thinking about their next question. Whereas I will basically, I know how we're gonna start, I know how we're gonna end. I don't know what we're gonna do in between. And to me, that's a conversation.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Totally. And I get, I think you probably, you probably get in the flow of the conversation, which is, is unlike people who are thinking about like, you know, like, what's the next thing I'm going to ask or how am I going to take it to the next place? That's where I think, which

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I don't think about that. So I don't think about that because I'll tell you what I figured out. I mean, this came as a combination of two things, one from surfing, but also just from having done this so much. Like, I realize the conversation is just like a wave, and you're adjusting to what the wave is doing. So literally, I will ask the first question, and then everything I ask you from there will be based on whatever answer you give me. And of course, I'll allude to parts of the book as we do it. But I mean, I've done this 1,000 times. So.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: I was actually really excited to talk to you about this because this book was like the one of all of them. I liked this the most.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, thanks. I really appreciate it. Where do you surf?

Srini Rao: Well, I'm in Colorado now, but I was in Southern California. I surfed for like almost 10 years. Like it was a big part. I mean, that was kind of the foundation of my first book with a publisher was surfing. But like through a let, you know, using surfing as a metaphor for business and life.

Charles Duhigg: Okay. Gotcha.

Charles Duhigg: Gotcha.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, yeah, we I live in Santa Cruz and so we surf all the time.

Srini Rao: Oh, okay. Yeah, Santa Cruz is the place where I hear that basically everybody's like, Santa Cruz is actually pretty chill. They're just really hardcore about etiquette. So if you do something stupid, like drop in on somebody, it's very frowned upon.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, I think well, it depends if you're if you're serving a longboard, I serve a longboard. And so like that's pretty chill to begin with because it's usually older guys. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I short boarded. Well, you'd be surprised. In San Diego at Swammy's, I saw two old guys just lose their shit. And I'm like, these are like 70 years old and you're gonna give yourselves a heart attack over, you know. Oh.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, there's always there's always like one or two, but it's actually it's a it's a pretty I mean, I think that like, yes, if you were doing something egregious, I think that people would be like, that was kind of egregious, or they'd call you an asshole or something. But like, it used to be 20 years ago, 20 or 30 years ago, when it was all locals, they would like, you know, knife each other. But now it's like very relaxed.

Srini Rao: Yeah, well... Yeah.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there are places that are still kind of territorial. I surf trestles a lot when I was in SoCal. And I never surfed Lowers, because it's never like, Lowers is always crowded. It's not even a matter of the wave. Because the thing is, you'll get to that takeoff point, and there'll be like three guys jockeying for the takeoff. And you know, because it's probably the most perfect wave in all of California, because it just goes forever. And as a short boarder, you can't ask for a better performance wave.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: But yeah, so like I surfed there, but yeah, I mean, I was in San Diego for a while, but I moved to Colorado, so now I'm primarily snowboarding. So, cool, I didn't realize you were in Santa Cruz.

Charles Duhigg: Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

Srini Rao: Charles, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Charles Duhigg: Thank you for having me.

Srini Rao: Yeah, so you have a new book out called Super Communicators, which I absolutely loved, all of which we will get into. But there's something that really struck me in the book that I remembered, and that was a mention of your father and the fact that you wished people had asked about it, and people rarely did. So I wanted to start by asking you, what is one of the most important things that you learned from him that have shaped your values and influenced what you've ended up doing with your life and your career?

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Oh my gosh, that's a great question. And so, so I think what you're referencing is that my, my dad passed away, um, about five years ago now. And, and when I came back from the funeral, um, you know, I'd mentioned that I had just been to my father's funeral and, and nobody would ask me about it, right? They would, they would say like, I'm sorry, or, but nobody asked me questions. And, and, you know, and anyone who's had a parent or someone that they love died knows that like, it is, it is very sad.

but it's also one of the most interesting and meaningful parts of your life, right? You're like, and so I would have loved for someone to say to me like, tell me about your dad. What was your dad like? But people feel uncomfortable doing so. And I think that gets at some of the problems with communication. But to answer your question about, I mean, my dad was actually great at conversations. He like, and a lot of my...

my interest and passion in asking questions comes from him. He was a trial lawyer. And so a lot of his job was actually asking people questions and going to depositions and trying to figure out what's actually going on. And, and, and you have to be somewhat socially comfortable as a lawyer. And so one of the things I learned from him is just, uh, basically that nobody thinks they're a villain, right? Everyone is the hero of the story inside their head.

And so if you go into something like a lawsuit where you think I'm the hero and the other guy and the other person is the villain, then if you talk to the other person, they're saying, no, I'm the hero and you're the villain and everyone's right. Everyone's right inside their own head. And so the question isn't to try and figure out like who's the hero and who's the villain. The question is to figure out like, what story is each person telling themselves that the choices that they make seem like the right choice.

Srini Rao: Hmm.

Yeah, the thing I wonder about, particularly when it comes to losing a parent, and I probably had a handful of guests talk to me about this experience is navigating the grief of that because like I always feel like this is the one thing there's no self help book for and I had Frank Ostasecki here. And I distinctly remember telling him this was like one of my greatest fears is that I would see one or both of my parents pass before I got married or had kids. And the thing that I remember him saying is, well, don't wait for the big moments in your life. And he said, like, you know, we put all this expectation and he said, we spend all this time.

that we're gonna be able to do the work of a lifetime in a moment. But navigating that period after, like when that person is gone, because like, you know, for all of us who have our parents still, they've kind of been there, they're almost like oxygen. Like the idea of them not existing is really hard to grasp, I think.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's, it's, it's really hard to grasp. And it's really hard to put yourself in that, in that mindset. And, and, and let me say two things. The first being the point that you just raised about not waiting for this, like one big conversation is really important. I have a friend named Raj Dadada who's an entrepreneur and his daughter just went to college. And one of the conversations he had with her before she went to college was to say, look, if, if you call us when important things happen,

but that's the only time you call us when a big important things happen, then by definition, you are not going to be calling us very frequently, right? Like big important things don't happen that often. So the key to maintaining a relationship with your parents or with anyone who's kind of, you know, you don't get to see each day is to call when small unimportant things happen. Just call for five minutes and say like, Hey, what happened today? Or like, I had this funny thing occurred or I thought of a joke or I thought of you. And that's really, really important.

to like develop these relationships where we're not waiting for big, meaningful conversations. Cause the truth of the matter is a conversation that's big and meaningful to you might not be to the other person. They might not even remember it. Um, as, as I've become a parent, I have learned this more and more and more that like I think back on conversations I had as a kid where I'm like, that was like a really important conversation. And I now realize those conversations literally happen every week. It's just that when you're a kid, you don't remember most of them.

So, so it's important to get in that habit, but that period.

Srini Rao: So you kind of recognize them in aggregate really, not individually.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, yeah. I mean, which is how it should be, right? Like a relationship should be have like thousands of points rather than just one. But to answer your question about sort of after a parent passes, well, it will tell me your question because I'm not certain I totally.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I guess, you know, like you mentioned it's been five years and everybody I've ever asked about this says that even after a parent passes away, there's not a day that goes by that you don't actually think about them. Like they're always on your mind. But navigating that period after, I mean, like, I just it sounds like the most heart wrenching, painful experience to go through as a human being. And yet, like, I know that we all are going to at some point experience that in our lives, regardless of the type of relationship we might have had with a parent.

Because even if you had a bad one, that's like a different kind of grief.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, I don't think it's heart wrenching, to be honest. Like, like, I mean, at least, and I'm sure it is for some people. And so I can only talk about my experience, which was that like, you know, assuming that your parent has lived a long life, that they, that they've reached an age where, where death is a, is a natural as opposed to forced outcome.

Srini Rao: Okay.

Charles Duhigg: What I found is that often are a lot about the period afterwards is a celebration of who this person was. Like you get to remember all of the great things about them and you see all these other people who come to you and they tell you how much they love this person. And, and it's really powerful. And then the other thing that happens is that your relationship with them continues like, like they might be gone, but your relationship with your parent matures and changes and grows.

because now you get to think about them as, if you get to think about the choices they make as you make those same choices, right? As you get older, you get to realize like, oh, when my dad, when I was 15 and I was like a punk, this is what my dad was going through. And this is how he was thinking about it. So the relationship with your parent doesn't end simply because they're gone. It does for them, but for you, it continues to grow and mature. And in some ways that's actually wonderful.

Srini Rao: Speaking of the relationship with your parent, how did your parents end up influencing the way that you parent your own children?

Charles Duhigg: Like hugely, probably in ways that, probably in ways that I don't even realize. And let me ask, do you have kids? Okay.

Srini Rao: I don't. I mean, I have a one year old nephew. So like, it's been really fascinating. He's the closest thing I have to a kid and I'm gonna see him tonight after a month. Yeah. But you know, because I like the joke that I have with friends, you know, we always say like it's like parents always like, you know,

Charles Duhigg: Oh fun!

Srini Rao: Kids are always like, I'm never gonna do what you just did when I have kids. And like, I have friends who will tell me, it's like, ask them, do you find yourself echoing things that your parents would say to you that you found really annoying? And suddenly you're like, wait a minute, I'm doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Right, right, which is probably a sign of maturity. So I think two things happens, and anyone who's listening who has kids, I would imagine that this is similar for them. The first thing that happens is, when you have kids, particularly young kids, you start remembering all these things about your own life and your own parents that you had basically forgotten. Right, there's like almost this somatic memory that comes back from taking care of an infant or taking care of a two-year-old, where you're like, oh my gosh, now I remember.

My mom used to do this thing every Christmas and I have not thought of that for 20 or 30 years, but now I wanna do that with my two-year-old. So that's really wonderful is that you almost get to rediscover your own childhood. But then the second thing that happens is that, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that like, that didn't seem important at the time that suddenly starts to seem very, very important because you understand how powerful it was for you. So I mentioned my dad is a lawyer. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

and he had cases all over New Mexico. So he would like drive to like, you know, towns that were four or five hours away to take a deposition. And sometimes I would drive with him basically to keep him company. And this is obviously before the days of like podcasts and stuff like that. And so, you know, in rural New Mexico doesn't have the best radio stations. So basically to pass the time we would just talk and we talked about everything. And we talked about stuff that like, there is, you know, we talked about religion and money.

politics and family, all this stuff that, that is really, really meaningful that you don't talk about normally, but just because you don't have the time or there's other distractions. And so one of the things that I try and do with my kids, we, um, we, we just took a trip back to New Mexico and then to Arizona, which is where my wife's parents live. And we had the certain these kinds of long road trips as part of this trip. And, and so I told them they had to put away their phones and we turn off the radio and we just had to talk.

Because because if you just talk, interesting things come up. And that's definitely something I learned from my dad is literally if you just, if you have nothing else to talk about, you start talking about things that matter. And those are the conversations that hopefully shape my kids and that they hopefully remember.

Srini Rao: It's funny when you said the thing about like, you know, re-experiencing your childhood or remembering what your parents were like, it reminded me of a story my sister told me recently. You know, my parents, because they live close by, whenever she needs help, they'll come by and they'll literally find any excuse to go and see their grandson. And they're much nicer to him than they ever was they were to us.

Charles Duhigg: Right.

Srini Rao: But this was like the funniest thing. My sister said, hey, you'll appreciate this. She said, you know, my nephew made a, like, he's one so you can imagine the degree of artistic, you know, like prowess he has. He made basically literally like a handprint at daycare. You know, I think he just put his hand in some paint and brought it. And keep in mind, like, my sister and I were straight A students, nobody hung report cards on the fridge. Like, we brought like almost all of our artwork. And my mom took this like,

Charles Duhigg: me.

Srini Rao: little handprint and she's like, Oh my god, she's like, we have to get this framed. And she was like, we brought home hundreds of pieces of art, like lots of like, you know, straight A report cards and she acts like this guy is the next Picasso with a handprint, which it was just a funny moment of thinking like exactly what you're talking about. It's like, Whoa, so she's in a lot of ways experiencing exactly what you mentioned.

Charles Duhigg: Right.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, and what's funny is that like, the other thing that happens, as you know, from watching your sibling go through this, when you have a kid, you're just exhausted. Like, I'm absolutely certain your parents would have loved to have saved all of the art that you made as a kid, but probably they're like, if I can just get them into bed, like in a halfway decent hour and clean with their teeth brushed, then like, I've accomplished so much for today.

And then by the time you're a grandparent, you're like, ah, I don't have to put up with any of the like hard work. I'm just going to do all the fun stuff.

Srini Rao: Yep. Well, it's funny you say that because my sister, basically when she was I think one or two, she would go into my parents room and she wouldn't cry. My dad would be like, No, go back to your bed. And he would fall asleep and an hour and a half later, he'd wake up and she just be there with her arms crossed like staring. And my nephew did the same thing to her. He had like a good three hours standoff with her, where she kept looking at the nanny him she's like texting my dad. And my dad's like, well,

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: guess what goes around comes around and she caved she was like he won 11 like she's like he's not crying he's just standing there in his crib he won't go to sleep

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, it's, it is really, really fun to have kids and it is super exhausting.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I bet. Well, funny enough, that I think makes a perfect segue to actually talking about the book. So what was the impetus for this as the follow-up to your previous books, to write a book about communication?

Charles Duhigg: Well, yeah, a couple of things happen. And like the focus of it is, you know, the science of conversations and the science of connection. Like why do some conversations go so well and we feel so connected to people afterwards? And then at other times, sometimes with the same people, we really wanna connect with them and things kind of go astray. And I basically was asking this question because it happens in my life all the time. I was at the New York Times and they had promoted me to become a manager. And I thought I would be a great manager because like...

You know, I've had lots of bosses and I have an MBA and it turns out I was, I was good at all the logistical stuff, but I was terrible at the communication part. Like I just like people would come to me with problems and I would completely miss analyze what they were trying to tell me or how or how to respond to them in a way that showed them that I had heard them. And then I had this experience at home that happened frequently, which I think is pretty common, which is I would come home from like a long day of work and

you know, I'd be like in a bad mood and I'd start talking to my wife and telling her like, you know, my boss, you know, is a jerk and my colleagues don't understand me or appreciate me. And, and my wife would basically answer with like some pretty good advice. She would say something like, you know, why don't you take your boss to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better. And instead of hearing what she was saying and hearing this good advice for what it was, I would, I would get even more upset. I'd be like,

Why aren't you supporting me? I want you to have my side on this. And you know, like, like I want you to be outraged on my behalf. And I couldn't, and this would happen again and again and again, right? It happens in every relationship. And so when I started getting interested in trying to understand how communication works, but when I, and I'd go and I'd talk to experts, I would tell them about this situation and what they would say is like, well, the first thing you have to understand is that we think of a discussion as, as being one thing, right? Like it usually has, we think of it as having one topic.

But actually every discussion is made up of multiple different kinds of conversations. And most of those conversations fall into one of three buckets. There's, um, practical conversations, right? Where we have to make a decision together. There's emotional conversations where the goal is not to make a decision, not to solve a problem, but rather to share how we feel and hear other people reflect on that. And then there's social conversations, which is what we're, we're talking about how we relate to other people and they relate to us.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: how we believe other people see us. And so what they said what was happening with my wife is that it's pretty simple. Like I was coming in and I was having an emotional conversation. I was basically saying to her, I want you to hear how I feel and I want you to reflect, acknowledge those feelings. But she was having a practical conversation. She was saying, let's solve the problem together. And both of us were right, but because we were having different kinds of conversations at the same time,

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: We both failed to hear each other. We both failed to connect. And so the, the thing that I carried from this was there's this big insight, which within psychology is actually known as the matching principle, which is the first step in any conversation is figuring out what kind of conversation is happening and then matching each other. And that's kind of what the book is about is about teaching people to recognize different kinds of conversations. And then the skills you need to connect with each other.

Srini Rao: Well, I think what's striking to me is that you and your wife were both unaware of the fact that you were having two different types of conversations, probably not because it's intentional. But how many people even have the awareness to know? Like, I wouldn't think about this consciously because, you know, like you actually talk about sort of the conversational mindsets and growing communication. You say the first mindset, the decision.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, totally. Yeah.

Srini Rao: making mindsets associated with what's this really about conversation and it's active whenever we're thinking about practical matters as you mentioned or making choices or analyzing plans. The second mindset, the emotional mindset emerges when we discuss how do we feel and draws on neural structures, the nucleus, incumbents, the ambigdala and the hippocampus that help shape our beliefs, emotions and memories. And the third conversational mindset, the social mindset emerges when we discuss our relationships, how we are seen by others and see ourselves and our social identities. These are the who we are discussions. But the thing is that

like you and your wife mismatch, like most people probably have no idea that they're mismatching, are completely not aware of it. Like I wouldn't even be aware of this and I have conversations for a living.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, absolutely.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, no, this happens all the time. In fact, there's been studies that show that if you look at the average conversation, about 80% of conversations involve miscommunications where one person says something and they believe that the other person has heard them and the other person has heard something completely different. Right. This I mean, and this happens all the time. This is why this is why we have to why when you have a meeting, you follow up after the meeting with a memo saying, here's what we decided.

Because if you just ask people, they would all say, we decided different things or different aspects of things, or they would describe it in different ways. Conversation is, so conversation is the human superpower. Right? The reason humans have survived so amazingly as a species is because we have the ability to communicate with each other and share knowledge and coordinate, coordinate ourselves into societies, move very effectively. Conversation.

Srini Rao: Yeah

Charles Duhigg: and communication is our superpower. But that being said, that does not mean that it is a simple superpower, or that it is a superpower we know how to use well every single time. In fact, exactly the opposite. The reason it's a superpower is because it is so complicated. When we are in a conversation, we're literally making dozens to hundreds of choices, oftentimes without even realizing it. We're trying to decide whether we should be formal or casual.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: whether we should speak quickly or slowly, we're trying to gauge how the other person is responding to see if they're hearing us or they're not hearing us. But we've evolved, our brains have evolved to be good at communication. And in many ways, the point of this book is to say, everyone is actually a super communicator. Every single person at times has gone into a conversation with a friend and they've known exactly what to say to make that friend feel better.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: where they've gone into some meeting and they've known exactly how to pitch their idea. So everyone else gets on board. We all know how to be super communicators. We all have instincts for it, but sometimes in modern society, we need to understand certain things to let those instincts come to the surface. And that's kind of what the book's about.

Srini Rao: Well, you say that super communicators know how to evoke synchronization by encouraging people to match how they're communicating. And I think that, you know, you just kind of identified like. So if I were to just analyze our conversation in the last 20 minutes, I would say we were in an emotional conversation talking about your dad. But now we're in a practical one talking about your book. Was that accurate? So.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. And let's, let's get even deeper. So, so you started with a question about my dad, right? Knowing, knowing that my dad had passed away, which is an invitation, an invitation for me to join you in an emotional conversation. And, and I responded emotionally. I talked about kind of how I felt that, that after my dad's funeral, like what I was feeling and, and then I think you very, very adeptly.

matched my emotionality and we had an emotional conversation. And then, then we, we entered into a more practical conversation talking about how the ideas in the book apply to what we've just been discussing about. And you invited me, again, by asking a question about the book, you invited me to move into a different kind of conversation with you. And, and we can't see each other right now, but if we could, and if we had enough machines to measure it, what we would see is that as we're communicating with each other,

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: we begin to synchronize. Our eyes would start dilating at the same rate, even though we're in different places. Our heartbeats would start to match each other as would our breath patterns. Most importantly, the activity within our brains would begin to synchronize. I would begin to think like you and you would begin to think like me, which is what communication is, right? I'm describing to you an emotion or an idea and you're experiencing to some degree that same emotion or that same idea.

and our brains become what's known within psychology and neurology as neurally entrained. That's communication. That's connection. And so to your point, the reason that we're able to do this is because we're both good communicators, and most importantly, because you're asking questions. And questions are the most powerful tool for learning what kind of conversation someone else wants to have and for inviting them to align with you.

Srini Rao: So this is actually out of morbid curiosity based on everything that you just said. When we started this, I had you turn off video. How do you think that affects the dynamic based on the research you've done here?

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: I think it depends on the kind of conversation. There's some situations where being able to see another person is really, really helpful because there's a lot of nonverbal signaling that occurs. But for a conversation like this, where it's being recorded, oftentimes, I think turning off the video is really helpful because rather than allowing me to rely on visual signals, my brain realizes I need to infuse my voice with many more signals. I need to make my voice.

as broad a channel of communication as possible. And so when I do interviews, for instance, for recorded interviews, I often ask people to turn off their video because I want them to rely on their voice to tell me, to transmit to me what they're trying to communicate rather than relying on expressions that the listener can't see.

Srini Rao: Hmm. Well.

One other aspect of this you talk about is this idea of matching. You say that simply mirroring another person's gestures or moods or tone of voice doesn't forge a real connection. Giving into someone else's desires and preoccupations doesn't work either. Those aren't real conversations. They're dueling monologues. Instead, we have to learn to distinguish a decision-making conversation from an emotional conversation, from a social conversation. We need to understand which kinds of questions and vulnerabilities are powerful and how to make our own feelings more visible and easier to read. We need to prove to others.

that we're listening closely. So for example, if I tried to match your tone and your inflection points, that would be incredibly disingenuous and it wouldn't sound like me. But how do we actually do this? Like without it coming across like, you know, like some sort of sociopath.

Charles Duhigg: How do we do it right?

Charles Duhigg: Well, OK, so let me let me ask you a question. So think first, like if you've had a very bad day, who's the one person you know you can call that would just make you feel better to talk to them? Is there is there someone who pops into your head when I asked that?

Srini Rao: Yeah, I mean, my dad can be hit or miss on this kind of stuff, but you know, he's usually pretty good about it. Probably my friend Matt would be the person I would call.

Charles Duhigg: Okay.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Okay. So Matt, so let's take Matt for, for a second. So, so is Matt like the smartest or the funniest friend you have? Is he like the most like charismatic or outgoing person, you know,

Srini Rao: No.

Srini Rao: I mean, you'd get pissed off if I say no, but no.

Charles Duhigg: Right, right. Yeah, I and actually that's a good thing. That's why he's a super communicator, particularly for you. So let me ask you, what is it that Matt does that makes you feel makes you feel so good when you talk to him?

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Srini Rao: I figured it out. He listens. He doesn't give advice.

Charles Duhigg: Oh, interesting. And how do you know that he's listening?

Srini Rao: Well, I mean, he'll I lived with him for two years, so it's really hard to verbalize this. Uh, it's almost like we have, you know, sort of where so the way we're described is really yin and yang. Like he's the eternal optimist. I'm the practical person. So like when he comes to me with any idea, I'll basically be like, all right, here are the holes you need to poke in it before you go and do this. But when I have something, he'll be like, Hey, this is how you're gonna make a million dollars off of this. And I'm like, okay, well, let's, you know, come down to earth here. So we kind of balance each other out in that.

Charles Duhigg: Hehehehe

Srini Rao: Um, it is the way I see it.

Charles Duhigg: And that sounds, that's exactly like what most people say. Something like that is what people say when you ask them, like, who's the super communicator in their life? Now, my guess is that if I, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong, my guess is if I was to watch you and Matt talk, here's some things that I would notice. A, I would notice that you're a super communicator for Matt the same way that he is for you. He would come to you with his problems. Number two, I bet you when you guys are talking to each other, you ask each other a lot of questions.

I in studies show actually people who have habitually super communicate. They ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person, but we oftentimes don't notice it because they're not like interrogation questions. There are things like, huh, what do you think about that? Or that's interesting. Tell me more about that. Or, or what happened next? They're these small questions that invite the other person to reveal something or to expose something. And then the other thing that I would bet I would see is that you and Matt laugh with each other a lot.

Srini Rao: Yeah, a lot.

Charles Duhigg: not because a lot, not because either of you are necessarily saying things that are that funny. In fact, 80% of the laughter that occurs in most people's lives is not in response to something that's funny. It's not in response to a formal attempt to humor. Laughter is how we show each other that we want to connect, that we're paying attention. And when Matt asks you questions, they're probably follow-up questions. They're probably questions that ask you about something. And then he comes back and he asks you about your answer.

he's proving to you that he's listening. Now, when it's more formal, when it's not with someone who's like a best friend who we have this real ease with, when we're, for instance, in a situation of conflict, we're in a fight with someone or we're debating something, there's ways to do this that are a little bit more structured. And one of my favorites is this thing called looping for understanding. And it's a pretty simple method, and it's the technique that has been shown again and again and again to be the most important technique you can use.

in a conflict conversation. And what it is, is it's a way to prove to the other person that you are listening to them. And what you do is it's just three steps. The first thing is you ask them a question, listen to their response, then in your own words, step two, you summarize what they just told you, right? Not repeat it, not mimic it, but rather explain what you heard. And most people know to do this, but then it's step three is the really important part.

Step three is after explaining, after summarizing what they just said, ask them if you got it right. And what studies show is that if you do this, the other person believes you are listening. The same thing you said about Matt, right? Matt is really good at listening to you. But in addition, he's probably also really good at proving to you that he's listening. And whether it's something formal like looping for understanding, or whether it's just a, an,

habit we get into with friends, that proving that we're listening, that's the thing that makes us feel close to each other.

Srini Rao: You know when I read that, I felt like you were describing my interview process, like the way that I, that interview, I literally did because I thought to myself, I'm like, wait a minute, that's because I, as I told you before, like, I don't have any questions planned in advance, which means that I have to literally listen to everything you've just said and based on, you know, what you've just said about looping for understanding, I think what we're talking about here is in some ways, like we're having a learning conversation as well. It sounds like a learn, the sense I'm getting, you know, you say in a learning conversation,

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: what's happening within our own, a learning conversation nudges us to pay better attention, listen more closely, speak more openly, express what might otherwise go unsaid. It elicits alignment by convincing everyone that we all want to genuinely understand one another and by revealing ways to connect. And based on what you said about looping for understanding, I feel like this learning conversation kind of overlaps with all the three different kinds of mindsets depending on the type of conversation.

Isn't every conversation on some level a learning conversation?

Charles Duhigg: Absolutely. Yeah, it should be. It should be. That's the goal. The goal is to basically use a conversation as an opportunity to learn about the other person and to help them learn about you. And that might seem like a pretty simplistic thing to say, but think about how frequently we don't do that, right? Sometimes we go into conversations where our goal is to beat the other person. Like, I want them to agree with me.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: And so I'm just going to like pummel them with my arguments or my evidence until they agree. Or sometimes the conversation is about going in and just trying to like avoid talking about the thing that's bothering everyone and just prove to everyone that it's not going to that issue doesn't exist anymore. Or even though we all know that it does a learning conversation says, look, you, you can walk away from this conversation, disagreeing with each other. You can walk away from this conversation.

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: hating each other, you can walk away from this conversation without resolving any issues or without having a good time. But as long as you try to learn what the other person is actually thinking and feeling, and you give them an opportunity to learn what you are thinking and feeling, then the conversation is a success. That is the definition you have connected with that person. And that's, that's the gold standard to go for. So then the question becomes like,

How do we do that? Right? Like how do we ask these questions that allow us to do to, to connect? And there's kind of two answers there. The first is we should ask very specific kinds of questions. We should ask deep questions. And this word deep question is a little, this phrase is a little misleading cause it makes it sound like we're like asking people about like their, their deepest memories. But actually a deep question is something that invites us to talk about our values or our beliefs or our experiences.

So it can be as simple as saying to someone like, you know, what do you do for a living? And when they say I'm a lawyer to say, Oh, did you always want to be a lawyer? Do you love being a lawyer? Is it, is it, what's the best part of being a lawyer? Those three questions are all deep questions, even though they don't seem intrusive, they don't seem overly personal. But what they do is they invite the other person to tell me about their values or their beliefs or their experiences in a way that allows them to expose

that's a little bit authentic, a little bit vulnerable. And then if I reply by sharing something authentic or vulnerable about myself, it is impossible for us not to feel closer to each other. Our brains are actually hardwired to feel closer when we've both exchanged something that is vulnerable or authentic. And so the, oh sorry, go ahead.

Srini Rao: Now you know why I start the show with it. Well, now you know why I start the show with the questions that I do. You've just verbalized it.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, no, I think it's really, really smart. And I think, I think what you're doing is you're inviting the other person to be vulnerable and then you're sharing something vulnerable about yourself. And it sets the temperature of the conversation. And so, so a big part of, of this process of making that connection is asking deep questions, training yourself just to look for deep questions, which is pretty easy to do once you're looking for them. And then when somebody responds with something authentic,

giving them something authentic back in return.

Srini Rao: Let's dive deeper into the who we are conversation. And I want to approach it from two angles, one that's just absolutely ridiculous, which is a personal thing, and one that's actually real. So let's start with the ridiculous one first, Eric. I'll tell you the backstory, right? So you tell you about the role of self-awareness and social identity. So my mom and I butt heads over all sorts of stupid things because she's like super OCD and you know, our house is cleaner than Buckingham Palace.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, absolutely.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah

Srini Rao: So one morning I'm like loading the dishwasher. I've mentioned this before on the show. And she's annoyed that I didn't put the stupid cups in the proper way. And it turns into like this ridiculous, just annoying blowout. So I go to the therapist office and he's like, hey, you know, we've been talking about this for six months. You realize that, you know, he said, you can either keep going to battle with your mom about this stupid dishwasher, just accept that that's how it's gonna be. And I come back and my dad's like, I could have saved you 50 bucks and told you that. So this honestly, I thought to myself, I'm like, okay, well, what can Charles teach me

how to be effective at fighting with my mom, which seems, because she's somebody I'm like, wait a minute, there is no dialogue with her. It's like my way or not. Like, so talk to me, cause I'm sure I'm not the old, this is like an example of your fights with your wife, probably kind of similar. So talk to me about that. Yeah, of course. Sure.

Charles Duhigg: Right.

Charles Duhigg: Well, okay, so can I ask you a couple, let me ask a couple of questions. The first is to figure out, does anyone actually want a conversation? So do you want an actual conversation with your mom and do you think your mom wants a conversation with you? Or is it that you both just want the other person to be like, you're right, I give up, I give in.

Srini Rao: I think it's the latter. And much, like, I don't think she's interested in having a conversation about what, if I went to her and decided to, like, have this lengthy conversation about why the way you load the dishwasher doesn't matter, and the oatmeal actually did this hilarious cartoon about it, which is where it's like, you don't load it like Jesus on Adderall, your dishwashing privileges have been provoked. But the funny thing is it's such an utterly pointless thing that doesn't matter.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, okay.

Charles Duhigg: Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Srini Rao: And probably you're right, neither of us would actually be willing. But the thing is, I already, one of the reasons I want to talk about the social identity is like, I think that immediately when I would go into that conversation, my bias kicks in, I'm like, she's going to lose her shit over something, even a small thing. And I already thinking that based on historical evidence. And that's a cognitive bias at work. Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah. Okay. So here's the next question. Here's the next question. What do you think this fight is actually about? It's clearly not about how you put the dishes in the dishwasher, right? Like you do not care how, how you, if, if she, but there's something else going on there. What's the deeper conversation you're actually having that this is some proxy for.

Srini Rao: You just said it that I don't care. Because this is like a version of put the crap on the toothpaste, which I've told you to do a thousand times. You know, same thing. This is, my mom was like, some girl's gonna marry you and think we didn't raise you properly because you don't do all these things. Like these are, but it ultimately is, you're right that you don't care thing. And the, and I'm thinking about it, I'm like, you're right, I kind of don't give a shit about any of these things.

Charles Duhigg: So can I propose something and you can tell me if you think this is right or wrong. Is it possible that what actually is going on here is that your mom is saying to you as a mom, the way that I evaluate whether I'm a good mom is whether I've taught you some basic stuff about life. And, and when I look at you load the dishwasher and I think about the fact that you're not married yet and I want you to get married and like part of me is a little bit paranoid.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Women look at how you'd load the dishwasher and like, of course this is not true, but as a mom, as a mom I'm thinking to myself like, look, if I can't get him to load the dishwasher correctly, maybe there's all this other stuff that I haven't done as a good mom and him loading the dishwasher correctly is actually a signal to me that I am a good mom. And from your perspective, the conversation you're having is, mom, I'm an adult and I don't want you telling me how to do stupid things. Like you should give me the freedom to let me load the dishwasher the way that I wanna load the dishwasher. And so actually,

Maybe what's happening here is that you guys are having two different conversations. You're having a conversation about freedom, which is basically a practical conversation, right? I'm an adult. I should be able to load this conversation however I want. What we're really talking about is whether I have the freedom to make this choice. Your mom is having an emotional conversation. And that conversation is I want to feel like I'm a good mom. I want you to tell me that I'm a good mom.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: That's an emotional conversation. And when you load that dishwasher the wrong way and you act like you won't take my advice, what you're actually doing is you're telling me that like, I don't get the emotional reward that I want to know that I raised you right. Is that possible?

Srini Rao: That's a, yeah, you know, it's a pretty interesting way of looking at it, I've never thought about it from that perspective before. Speaking, yeah, sure.

Charles Duhigg: So, okay, so let me ask one more question. Let me ask one more question. Let's say your mom comes in, she yells at you how you're loading the dishwasher and you just said to her and you said, Mom, I want you to know you are a great mom and I love you so much and I've learned so much from you. And then you turned and you continue loading the dishwasher the same way you always did. What do you think she would do?

Srini Rao: She would probably ask if I had taken any drugs recently. Like, chances are that would be the first question she'd be like, I think that would be so create so much cognitive dissonance that she'd be like, Wait, who are you? No, not at all.

Charles Duhigg: which might not be a terrible thing. But probably at that point, the dishwasher would become less of an issue in her galaxy of things she has to worry about. It's, I mean, I'm not like, I don't know that I'm diagnosing the situation correctly, but usually when we have dumb fights like this, it's because we are actually having different kinds of conversations or we are caring at that moment about different things.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: And the other person doesn't understand what we're actually trying to get at.

Srini Rao: Well, let's bring this back to a more serious example that people would actually find useful. I'm guessing the mom fighting with mom example is probably more relatable. You wrote about the gun control advocates and those who were people who are arms bearers and who all were pro-gun. And I thought that was such an interesting example of the role of social identities and how they came out. The then, if I remember correctly, you said when everything started to unfold online, it kind of went back to hell.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yes, that's exactly. Yeah, no, it's a suit. So just to set it up for folks. So there was this group of civic advocacy groups that wanted to do an experiment. So what they did is they reached out across the nation and they found about it was I think it was about two dozen or three dozen people who were gun control advocates who like, you know, showed up for marches. They lobbied the lobbied state legislatures and the exact same number of people who were who were gun rights

advocates. So these are people who belong to the NRA. They have leadership roles in the NRA within their state. They're on the other side of lobbying for gun on gun bills. And they brought them all together. And, you know, usually when you bring people together for something like this, the goal is to like have a meeting of the minds or here's what we agree to that, you know, we agree to disagree. That's not the goal of this group at all. What this group wanted to do is they didn't care if people agreed with each other. They just wanted to see if they could convince people to have a civil conversation.

where they actually exchanged ideas. And in order to do that, they had this theory that they're gonna train them in some specific communication skills. One of them was that looping for understanding that I mentioned, sort of proving to someone that you're listening to them. But others were to ask certain kinds of questions, particularly questions that elicit emotional responses. And that doesn't mean that you have to ask people about emotions, but it means that you can ask people questions like, you know,

Srini Rao: Mm-hmm.

Charles Duhigg: Is there a memory that you have about guns that informs why you're pro-gun or anti-gun? And almost everybody would answer that question. Everybody had some memory. And those memories oftentimes were emotional memories. They could be positive emotions, like I remember my dad taking me out hunting when we were kids. And this is a way that we bonded with each other, which was hard in other settings. Or they could be negative emotions. One woman that I wrote about, she actually was in school in Las Vegas and there was a school shooting.

and one of her teachers was killed. And so what the researchers found is that when you get people talking about their experiences or their beliefs or their values in a, in a personal way, in an emotional way, then what happens is it's, is that other people, even people who disagree with them ideologically, they recognize those emotions and they sympathize. So I might not, I might not be a fan of guns.

But when you tell me that this is how you bonded with your dad and that this is what hunting means to you is this chance to get to know your father who is distant and aloof at other times, it's impossible for me not to sympathize with that. Everyone knows what that feels like to want to break through to their parent. Or when someone says like, you know, the reason I'm anti-gun is cause I saw a teacher of mine get killed. That that produces sympathy from everyone because we know how

how traumatic that can be to see someone that you love and admire suddenly taken from you. And so even when we disagree with each other on practical issues, even when in that, what's this really about conversation, the practical mindset conversation, even if we disagree with each other, that doesn't mean we can't align in other kinds of conversations, like an emotional conversation. And once we do align in an emotional conversation, it makes those disagreements, it doesn't solve them.

but it makes them feel less divisive. We can at least try to understand what each other is saying, even if we don't agree with each other. Now you had asked about going online and you're exactly right. So they do this thing in person. They have this weekend long training and conversations for all these folks in Washington DC. And then they send everyone home and they say, look, we're gonna continue the conversation on this private Facebook group. And they invite other people to come and join the private Facebook group who again,

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: are gun advocates or gun control, gun rights advocates or gun control advocates. And once it goes online, it like falls apart immediately. Like literally within like minutes, they're calling each other jackbooted Nazis. And so one of the things that researchers are trying to figure out is like, why does this fall apart so much online? And the answer is that the way we communicate online has to be a little bit different than the way we communicate offline.

whether it's something like this, like a, like a remote conversation or whether it's face-to-face. Because we have spent literally thousands and thousands of years learning how to communicate with our voice. We've also spent thousands and thousands of years learning how to communicate by written letter, for instance, right? Where people tend to edit their letters before they send them out. We've only been communicating online since the 1980s. And so a lot of the small little signals that we use

in letters or in face-to-face conversation, they're missing from online. So when someone is, for instance, um, being ironic, it's very hard to detect that irony when it's like, you know, so a text that someone shoots off or a post that they write within minutes and hit and hit send. And so one of the big lessons and study after study backs this up is that when we are communicating online, we need to overemphasize.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: all of the etiquette things that normally we would do in a conversation. We need to avoid irony. We need to be more polite than we might usually be. We need to show that we've heard and listened more than we might in a, in a, in a voice conversation. But then when we do that, actually online conversations get much, much better.

Srini Rao: Yeah, it's funny because I think about, you know, emails that I've received from people who are pissed off because some guest said something on the podcast and it makes me think about how I would respond to that now, having, you know, like heard what you just said. But there's another part of this that really struck me and this was sort of the core ideas behind the Who We Are conversation was these sort of foundational ideas where like drawing out conversational partners, multiple identities.

Charles Duhigg: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: trying to ensure that everyone has an equal footing and you say don't offer unsolicited advice or trumpet your wealth or connections, finally you look for similarities that already exist. I think it was the don't ask for unsolicited advice which struck me most because I feel like, particularly on the internet to tie it back, like I feel like there's just like an abundance of unsolicited advice. I remember, I've literally had people who hear me say something about dating or relationships here on the show and somebody will like come in basically try to give me advice like in my Facebook message

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yes.

Srini Rao: or even get me to hire them to like be my dating coach. And I'm like, wait a minute, I didn't ask for any of this advice. And there's certain times, you know, in life where like something painful happens to somebody the cruelest thing you can do in that moment is to give them advice. Cause like I remember having a conversation with a friend and you know, she was a coach and I was like, okay, listen, I need you to stop being a coach and just shut up and listen to me whine about this girl who dumped me. That's it.

Charles Duhigg: Oh absolutely.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: But the thing I think I'm particularly interested in out of these three is this notion of multiple identities.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, it's a good thank you for bringing that up because it's a so let's go back to that when I so okay so we walk into a room and here's the identities we've been assigned. I'm against guns and your for guns. Now, if the conversation works correctly by the time we leave there's going to be dozens of identities to compliment that so I'm against guns but I'm also a father. I'm someone who was a son who has memories of my own father.

I'm someone who works with other kids and tries to teach them responsibility by taking them hunting, or I'm against guns, but I'm also a mom who's worried about my own kids, or I'm someone who tries to build stronger communities or I'm an I'm a politician within my community for safer policies. When you think about these like identity based disputes that we have, right? Oftentimes, when we disagree with each other over identity issues,

It's because we see each other as just one identity. You're black and I'm white. You're a man, I'm a woman. You're pro-gun, I'm anti-gun. But of course the truth of the matter is that like, everyone is made up of dozens and dozens of identities. And the more that we draw out those other identities, the more that we give people an opportunity, we ask questions about those other identities, the more we, we complexify the situation.

the harder it is for us to allow prejudice or stereotypes or whatever it is into a conversation that block us from understanding each other. So if I know that you are a podcast host and that you are someone who's single but wants to, to find someone to spend your life with and that you're someone who has, you know, cares about your parents a lot, but you have a difficult relationship with your mom.

and you're someone who like sometimes can have conversations with your dad. That's really meaningful. And sometimes a little hit or miss as, as you become a real person, as you become someone who embodies the multiple identities that you possess, it makes it impossible for me to stick you in a box and say, Oh, I shouldn't bother to listen. I shouldn't bother to listen to this guy, cause he's just an X.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: A lot of, in a lot of ways, like the whole goal of conversations is to see the whole person because inevitably we will find things that we have in common that we can build on.

Srini Rao: I had no idea you were a surfer, for example.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And like, and like, even if like, even if it turned out you and I disagreed about everything else on earth, the fact that we're both surfers means that we have some common ground that we can start building on. We can learn, we can figure out a way to connect.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Srini Rao: It's funny because this multiple identity thing is, as you were describing it, it made me think about sort of, I described an interview process once, like I'd written a blog post on interviewing on what it is. And I said, like, the way I see it, people are onions. And as an interviewer, your job is to keep peeling layers until you get to the core. And each one of those layers is like an identity you're talking about. And that's actually why, like often when I read pitches,

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: I almost never look at the headline. I'm always like, what's the really weird sort of thing? And you're like, why this guy, Wiley McGraw? And literally one thing that an entire pitch got me, I was like, this guy was a competitive bull rider. I'm like, that is why I'm saying yes. Yeah, like I was like, I don't that's the like headline of this guy as a performance coach wasn't what got me. It was, wait a minute, he's a bull rider. That is actually really interesting. Because publicists hate my guts, because I'm like, you know, what do you look for? I'm like, I could not tell you that because it's

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Srini Rao: just pure curiosity to the point where we baked it into the contact form. It's like, tell us something we're not going to know about you from your LinkedIn profile or, you know, your bio on your website, because this literally will determine potentially whether we say yes or no.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah. And I think that's a really smart way of doing it. And I think that you have an instinct to try and figure out, like, I really like that, that the onion analogy and, and the thing is that like very often, and this is why online is so hard is that online does push us into seeing people as one dimensional, right? Like, like you, you post something about like, you love the Eagles. And I, I'm going to assume that that's your entire identity, that you like,

love the Eagles and that there's nothing else interesting about you. And I think the Eagles are the worst. I like the, the jets. And so I'm going to respond that you're a moron. Like that's one of the hard things. Now, now think about like in real life, if you met that person and they're like, I love the Eagles are the best. And then you're like, okay, but I also see you're here with your kids. And we're, we were at this restaurant because we both live in this town. Like all these other identities become much more apparent in real life.

And yet they're hidden online unless we learn to look for them or unless we invite people to share them. And that's really important, particularly, you know, one of the chapters in the book is about Netflix and this controversy that they had when after one of their top executives used the N word in a meeting and he got fired. But, but the whole company was kind of like torn apart by this internal debate over whether it was appropriate. He should get fired or not. And

And you know, and we've seen this over the last couple of years, a lot of companies grappling with ideological or political issues or identity issues in ways that can really tear the organization apart. And one of the ways that start that, um, Netflix dealt with this is they brought in someone who's an expert in this, who basically had meetings where she said, the goal of this meeting is to talk about all of the identities that we have, because whether you are black or white, you have a racial identity.

And you have a gender identity and you have a family identity and you have a work identity. And if we put all those identities on the table, it's going to be impossible for you to see each other as one dimensional people. It's going to be impossible for you to see each other as these stereotypes that can be dismissed. And that's exactly what happened. It doesn't mean that everyone agreed with each other. It doesn't mean that everyone felt the same way, but it did mean that everyone felt understood.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: And once you feel understood, then you can, you can agree to live with differences.

Srini Rao: So in the interest of time, it's funny, because I was going to ask you how I could take this and apply it to my dating life, but my listeners have heard enough of me soliciting my guests for dating advice using their ideas. So we won't do that. I'll just use AI to like dissect that. It got me thinking about like our political discourse. And you know, when we're, the United States, I think like just based on, you know, what you see on the news and many of the conversations even I've had with people who actually have worked in our government.

Charles Duhigg: Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Charles Duhigg: Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao: Yeah, I mean, to the point where as a client literally wrote that book, why we're divided. Um, so talk to me about what it takes, what it's going to take to get these ideas to become just mainstream in terms of the way we deal with political discourse and the kinds of effects this could have on things like misinformation.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: Well, I think the number one thing is that people have to want to have conversations, right? Like we were talking about you and your mom, whether you guys actually wanted a conversation or, or she just, she just wanted you to say yes. And there's some times that we don't want to have conversations and that's fine. Right? Like when Mike, when Mike, when I asked my kids, like, can you put away your dishes? I'm not actually asking them to have a conversation with me about putting away their dishes. I'm just being polite and saying, put away your dishes. So,

Srini Rao: Hahaha!

Yeah.

Charles Duhigg: So it's okay to not want to have conversations sometimes, but let's say it's a situation where we genuinely do want to have a conversation. In a conversation, as we discussed before, it's a learning conversation. The goal is to understand the other side, not to convince the other side that they're wrong. And so, particularly when it comes to political conversations, if we go into discussions, debates, with others about politics, if we say to ourselves, look, my goal here is to understand why this person feels the way they do.

not to convince them right, not to convince them that they're wrong, but just to understand why they're saying what they're saying, then two things are going to happen. First of all, you're probably going to succeed at that. You're probably going to learn something about why they see the world they do. But number two, when you show them that you want to listen to them and you want to learn from them, they will want to listen and learn from you in return. And inevitably when that happens,

we tend to become a little bit more sympathetic to the other side. That doesn't mean we change our minds. It doesn't mean that I'm going to vote Republican, even though I'm a Democrat. What it does mean is that oftentimes I'm going to understand that you agree with 80% of what Republicans say, but 20% of it you think is crazy. And by the way, I agree with 80% of what Democrats say and 20% of it I think is crazy. And once we understand that, now we can start saying, okay, look, actually, there's a bunch of stuff that we have in common.

And so when it comes to politics, I think the number one most important thing is to say, I'm gonna go into this conversation, I want to understand why the other person sees the world the way that they do. Not convince them that my way is better, not convince them that their way is wrong, but just understand. And inevitably when you do that, you end up walking away with something richer where you both understand the world a little bit more accurately.

Srini Rao: Well, for our sake, I hope you're planning on attending the next, you know, Congress session and handing out your book just to senators and congressmen. Like just like, hey, here, you know, you guys will need this. Yeah, which is kind of crazy, right? Because isn't the whole point of these things to make decisions? And like, I remember watching, I think it was during Covid when they were trying to figure out the second stimulus thing. I was like, a bunch of five year olds could have come to a conclusion faster than this.

Charles Duhigg: Hahaha

Charles Duhigg: I'm not sure they want to have conversations.

Charles Duhigg: Yes, yes, there's a lot of stuff like that, right? There's a lot of times when, when you look at it and you're saying like, look, but, but I think in situations like that, like the truth of the matter is that in some places getting elected means not having conversations, right? Like what, what the constituents want is they want someone who's going to go like kick ass and like, you know, say ridiculous things and stand up for their, I mean, that's kind of the whole Trump campaign strategy, right? Is, is to appeal to voters who don't want to have conversations. They, they

Srini Rao: Yeah, fair enough.

Charles Duhigg: They want to win. They want to, they want to be victorious. And, and so I understand why it happens, but I also understand that there was a time in this country. I mean, look, the truth of the matter is America is a country that was built on conversations, right? We literally had a constitutional convention, which was a bunch of people debating and discussing and sharing ideas until we came up with a constitution. And ever since then, the reason why we've been a special country,

is because we manage to contain so many different identities and beliefs and values and somehow all still work together, usually through conversation. And in the last couple of years, we have forgotten how to have these conversations, but they are desperately important. And so the more that we as citizens, as residents of this country, the more that we have those conversations and model that good behavior, hopefully that means our leaders see that they should as well.

Srini Rao: Well, in the interest of time, I think this is a beautiful place to wrap up. So I have one last question, which is how we finish all of our interviews. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Charles Duhigg: Sure.

Charles Duhigg: Okay. I'm going to answer, but then I want to ask you the same question. I think it's authenticity. I think at the end of the day, you know, I'm, I'm 48 years old and the thing that I've noticed is that the older I get, the more I, the more I value and admire people who are authentic. And sometimes that authenticity is not, does not mean that they agree with me and it's not my jam, right? Like I live in Santa Cruz, California. There's a bunch of people here who basically,

just live to surf. Like they don't have interesting jobs. They don't care about their work. They just want to be amazing surfers and, and that's not a choice that I make, right? My work is much more important to me, but the fact that they are so authentic about it and that they commit to that in such a meaningful way makes them really interesting to me. And so I think the thing that makes someone amazing and unmistakable and, and remarkable.

is when they know who they are and they're willing to, to invest in that person. But now let me ask you, what's the answer for you for that question?

Srini Rao: Well, you know that when you write a book called Unmistakable, you actually have to define this, right? So, well, I defined it for me. It was this idea that is something so, I mean, it kind of piggyback, it kind of expands on the authenticity idea, but it's the idea that something is so distinctive that nobody could have done it but you, and it's immediately recognized as something that you did, where you're not trying to be better than anybody. You're trying to be the only person who could do what you do, thereby making your competition irrelevant.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, yes.

Charles Duhigg: Yeah, that's a great-

Yeah, I think that's a beautiful definition. And I think that is authenticity, right? Is to say like, the standard that I'm judging myself against is a standard in my head. And therefore it's the most meaningful one.

Srini Rao: Well, like I said, I think that makes a beautiful place to wrap up what could probably turn into a three and a half hour conversation very easily based on this. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book and everything else you're up to?

Charles Duhigg: Absolutely. And thanks for having me on. If people, if so, if you just Google me Charles Doohig, I have a website, CharlesDoohig.com. If you email me, my email address is Charles at Doohig.com and I read every single email I get and I respond to all reader emails. So, so please don't hesitate to drop me a note. And, and yeah, I would love to hear from folks and I'd love to hear what they've found in conversations is meaningful and important and, and what

tools they've cultivated to be able to connect with other people.

Srini Rao: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.