Read: Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

Recommended, with a caveat:

It’s not exactly what the title implies it will be, nor is it the same book at the end as it is at the start. In fact, the supposed mission of the book is truly only covered in an almost-footnote in the afterword (my final highlight captured at the bottom of this post). Nevertheless, it was full of useful information presented in useful ways.

My Reading Highlights and Notes

Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

PROLOGUE

When we “click” with someone, our eyes often start to dilate in tandem; our pulses match; we feel the same emotions and start to complete each other’s sentences within our heads. This is known as neural entrainment, and it feels wonderful.

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But scientists have now unraveled many of the secrets of how successful conversations happen. They’ve learned that paying attention to someone’s body, alongside their voice, helps us hear them better. They have determined that how we ask a question sometimes matters more than what we ask. We’re better off, it seems, acknowledging social differences, rather than pretending they don’t exist. Every discussion is influenced by emotions, no matter how rational the topic at hand. When starting a dialogue, it helps to think of the discussion as a negotiation where the prize is figuring out what everyone wants. And, above all, the most important goal of any conversation is to connect.

The first one is that many discussions are actually three different conversations. There are practical, decision-making conversations that focus on What’s This Really About? There are emotional conversations, which ask How Do We Feel? And there are social conversations that explore Who Are We? We are often moving in and out of all three conversations as a dialogue unfolds. However, if we aren’t having the same kind of conversation as our partners, at the same moment, we’re unlikely to connect with each other.

Our goal, for the most meaningful discussions, should be to have a “learning conversation.” Specifically, we want to learn how the people around us see the world and help them understand our perspectives in turn.

THE THREE KINDS OF CONVERSATION

THE MATCHING PRINCIPLE

Some people consistently fail to synchronize with others, even when they’re speaking to close friends. Others—let’s call them supercommunicators—seem to synchronize effortlessly with just about anyone. Most of us lie somewhere in between.

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Sometimes this connection occurs with just one other person. Other times, it happens within a group, or a large audience. But whenever it happens, our brains and bodies become alike because we are, in the language of neuroscientists, neurally entrained.

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Scientists like Sievers don’t call these people supercommunicators—they prefer terms like high centrality participant or core information provider—but

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.

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But the most important difference 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.

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.

The first mindset—the decision-making mindset—is associated with the What’s This Really About? conversation, and it’s active whenever we’re thinking about practical matters, such as making choices or analyzing plans.

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The second mindset—the emotional mindset—emerges when we discuss How Do We Feel? and draws on neural structures—the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, among others—that help shape our beliefs, emotions, and memories.

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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 Who Are We? discussions.

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Each of these conversations—and each mindset—is, of course, deeply intertwined. We often use all three during a single dialogue. The important thing to understand is that these mindsets can shift as a conversation unfolds.

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.

The importance of this insight—that communication comes from connection and alignment—is so fundamental that it has become known as the matching principle: Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other.

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A GUIDE TO USING THESE IDEAS PART I

THE WHAT’S THIS REALLY ABOUT? CONVERSATION AN OVERVIEW

EVERY CONVERSATION IS A NEGOTIATION

Some researchers call this process a quiet negotiation: A subtle give-and-take over which topics we’ll dive into and which we’ll skirt around; the rules for how we’ll speak and listen.

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“When it happens again and again, you start to realize: This isn’t a problem with my patients,” Ehdaie told me. “This is a problem with me. I’m doing something wrong. I’m failing at this conversation.”

The simplest method for uncovering everyone’s desires, of course, is simply asking What do you want? But that approach can fail if people don’t know, or are embarrassed to say, or aren’t certain how to express their desires, or worry that revealing too much will put them at a disadvantage.

“It’s important to ask what they want,” Ehdaie told me. “It’s an invitation for people to tell you who they are.”

Fisher and his colleagues wrote, might seem impossible, but “it is increasingly recognized that there are cooperative ways of negotiating our differences and that even if a ‘win-win’ solution cannot be found, a wise agreement can still often be reached that is better for both sides.” Since Getting to Yes was first published, hundreds of studies have found ample evidence to support this idea. Elite diplomats have explained that their goal at a bargaining table isn’t seizing victory, but rather convincing the other side to become collaborators in uncovering new solutions that no one thought of before. Negotiation, among its top practitioners, isn’t a battle. It’s an act of creativity. This approach has become known as interest-based bargaining,

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How will we make decisions together? What are the rules for this dialogue? Frequently, the best way to figure out those rules is by testing out various conversational approaches, and seeing how others react.

When we make a joke, or ask a probing question, or suddenly get serious or silly, we are, in a sense, conducting a test to see if our companions will accept our invitation, if they’ll play along.

These discussions call for analysis and clearheaded reasoning. Psychologists refer to this kind of thinking as the logic of costs and benefits. When people embrace logical reasoning and practical calculations—when they agree that rational decision making is the most persuasive method for making a choice together—they’re agreeing to contrast potential costs with hoped-for benefits.

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In general, in these kinds of discussions, we make decisions not by analyzing costs and benefits, but instead by looking to our past experiences and asking ourselves, “What does someone like me usually do in a situation like this?” We are applying what psychologists call the logic of similarities.

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matching is understanding someone’s mindset—what kind of logic they find persuasive, what tone and approach makes sense to them—and then speaking their language.

A GUIDE TO USING THESE IDEAS PART II

When someone makes noises as they listen (“Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” “Interesting”), it’s a sign they’re engaged, what linguists call backchanneling.

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in the moments before a conversation starts, it’s useful to describe for yourself: What are two topics you might discuss? (Being general is okay: Last night’s game and TV shows you like) What is one thing you hope to say? What is one question you will ask?

Once this exercise becomes second nature—and it quickly will—you can make your preparation even more robust: What are two topics you most want to discuss? What is one thing you hope to say that shows what you want to talk about? What is one question you will ask that reveals what others want?

Sometimes, we want others to go first. The easiest way to do that is by asking open-ended questions, just as Dr. Ehdaie did with his patients. And open-ended questions 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?”)

Do your companions lean toward you, make eye contact, smile, backchannel (“Interesting,” “Hmm”), or interrupt? Those are signals they want to accept your invitation. (Interruptions, contrary to expectations, usually mean people want to add something.)

Do they become quiet, their expressions passive, their eyes fixed somewhere besides your face? Do they seem overly contemplative? Do they take in your comments without adding thoughts of their own? People often misperceive these responses as listening. But they usually aren’t. (In fact, as the next few chapters explain, listening is much more active.) These are signals that someone is declining our invitation and wants to talk about something else—in which case, you need to keep searching—and experimenting—to learn what everyone wants.

THE HOW DO WE FEEL? CONVERSATION AN OVERVIEW

THE LISTENING CURE

instead of perspective taking, we ought to be focused on perspective getting, on asking people to describe their inner lives, their values and beliefs and feelings, the things they care about most.

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]

To the Arons, the idea that vulnerability was important made perfect sense, in part because it lined up with a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as “emotional contagion.” In the early 1990s, a series of experiments had shown that humans typically “synchronize their own emotions with the emotions expressed by those around them.” This synchronization is sometimes deliberate, like when we choose to empathize with another person; more often it is automatic, happening outside of our consciousness, causing us to tear up or get angry or proud on someone else’s behalf, whether we want to or not.

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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. These are the same factors the Arons used to distinguish deep questions from shallow ones.

we become more susceptible to emotional contagion, and more emotionally contagious ourselves, when we share something that feels raw, something that another person might judge.

If you want to connect with someone, ask them what they are feeling, and then reveal your own emotions.

They found that during successful conversations, people tended to ask each other the kinds of questions that drew out replies where people expressed their “needs, goals, beliefs [and] emotions,” as the researchers later wrote. In unsuccessful conversations, people talked mostly about themselves, or they asked shallow questions, the kinds of inquiries that didn’t reveal anything about how their partners felt.

Questions about facts (“Where do you live?” “What college did you attend?”) are often conversational dead-ends. They don’t draw out values or experiences. They don’t invite vulnerability. However, those same inquiries, recast slightly (“What do you like about where you live?” “What was your favorite part of college?”), invite others to share their preferences, beliefs, and values, and to describe experiences that caused them to grow or change. Those questions make emotional replies easier, and they practically beg the questioner to reciprocate—to divulge, in return, why they live in this neighborhood, what they enjoyed about college—until everyone is drawn in, asking and answering back and forth.

What’s more, these kinds of deeper questions can help fight the unfair discrepancies in how men and women, as well as other groups, are allowed to express emotions. In part, these kinds of questions succeed because they allow vulnerable replies without mandating them. They don’t seem pushy or out of place within, say, an office. But they undermine double standards by nudging people to think a bit more about how to respond.

This is how to ask emotional questions in the real world: Ask someone how they feel about something, and then follow up with questions that reveal how you feel.

deep, vulnerable questions were easier to ask—and more enjoyable to answer—than most people realized.

Science has provided guidance: Ask others about their beliefs and values. Ask them about experiences and those moments that caused them to change. Ask how they feel, rather than about facts. Reframe your questions so they are deeper. Ask follow-ups. And as people expose their vulnerabilities, reveal something about yourself. It will be less uncomfortable than you imagine. It will be more fascinating than you think. And it might lead to a moment of true connection.

HOW DO YOU HEAR EMOTIONS NO ONE SAYS ALOUD?

Psychologists refer to this kind of communication as nonlinguistic emotional expressions, and they comprise a vast portion of how we convey our feelings in everyday life.

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We laugh, in other words, to show someone that we want to connect with them—and our companions laugh back to demonstrate they want to connect with us, as well. This is the same kind of reciprocity that powers the Fast Friends Procedure. It’s an example of emotional contagion.

Laughter, and other nonlinguistic expressions such as gasps and sighs, or smiles and frowns, are embodiments of the matching principle, which says that we communicate by aligning our behaviors until our brains become entrained.

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When we laugh together, it’s not just the laughter that’s important. It’s similar intensities—the evidence of a desire to connect—that is critical.

What matters isn’t speaking and acting alike, but rather matching one another in ways that convey the desire to align.

In one study published in 2016, participants who listened to one-second recordings of people laughing could accurately distinguish between friends laughing together, and strangers trying to laugh alike. Laughter, like many nonlinguistic expressions, is useful because it’s hard to fake. When someone isn’t genuinely laughing, we can tell. The participants listening to the recordings in that study, based on just one second of decontextualized sound, could tell when people felt aligned and when they were likely forcing it. A joke might not be funny, but if we both agree to laugh in similar ways, we’re signaling to each other that we want to connect.

Even if we genuinely want to know and match someone’s emotions, that’s hard to do, because we don’t know precisely what they are feeling. So, instead, our brains have evolved this quick-acting system to examine mood and energy, which provides a general sense, in a split second, of someone’s emotional state. That’s usually enough to figure out how to align, and whether we should feel safe or alarmed.

We exhibit emotional intelligence by showing people that we’ve heard their emotions—and the way we do that is by noticing, and then matching, their mood and energy.

What mattered most, though, was whether they paid attention to McGuire’s emotional displays and then matched his energy and mood. For some candidates, matching seemed like an instinct; for others, a learned skill. And for some, it didn’t happen at all.

It’s hard to tell exactly what someone is feeling, to know if they are angry or upset or frustrated or annoyed or some combination of all those emotions. The person, themself, might not know. So instead of trying to decipher specific emotions, pay attention to someone’s mood (Do they seem negative or positive?) and their energy level (Are they high energy or low energy?). Then, focus on matching those two attributes—or, if matching will only exacerbate tensions, show that you hear their emotions by acknowledging how they feel. Make it obvious you are working to understand their emotions. And when you, yourself, are expressing your own emotions, notice how others are responding. Are they trying to align with your energy and mood?

CONNECTING AMID CONFLICT

Emotional intelligence comes from showing someone we have heard their emotions. But when we’re in a conflict or a fight, simply showing often isn’t enough. In those moments, everyone is skeptical and untrusting: Are they listening, or just preparing their rebuttal? Something more is needed, an extra step. To convince others we are genuinely listening during an argument, we must prove to them that we have heard them, prove we are working hard to understand, prove we want to see things from their perspective.

most people don’t know how to prove they’re listening. They try things like making eye contact with the speaker, or nodding their head to show agreement, and hope the speaker will pay attention. But speakers usually don’t.

When we’re speaking, we’re frequently so focused on what we are saying that we don’t pick up on how our listeners are behaving. We miss the signals that listeners are trying to send to show they are following along. 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.

Among happy couples, however, the desire for control emerged quite differently. Rather than trying to control the other person, happy couples tended to focus, instead, on controlling themselves, their environment, and the conflict itself.

Happy couples also focused on controlling their environment. Rather than starting a fight at the moment a conflict arose, they would put off a tough discussion until they were in a safer setting.

Finally, happy couples seemed to concentrate more on controlling the boundaries of the conflict itself.

unhappy couples let one area of disagreement spill into everything else. “They start arguing about, ‘Are we spending the holidays with my family or yours?’ and pretty soon it becomes, ‘You’re so selfish, you never do the laundry, this is why we don’t have enough money.’ ” (In marriage therapy, this is called kitchen-sinking, a particularly destructive pattern.)

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One advantage of focusing on these three things—controlling oneself, the environment, and the boundaries of the conflict—is that it allowed happy spouses to find things they could control together. They were still fighting. They still disagreed. But, when it came to control, they were on the same side of the table.

If we focus on controlling ourselves, our environment, and the conflict itself, then a fight often morphs into a conversation, where the goal is understanding, rather than winning points or wounding our foes.

Trying to force someone to listen, or see our side, only inflames the battle. Instead, it is far better to harness our craving for control so that we’re working together, cooperating to find ways to lower the temperature and make this fight smaller.

This explains why looping for understanding is so powerful: When you prove to someone you are listening, you are, in effect, giving them some control over the conversation. This is also why the matching principle is so effective: When we follow someone else’s lead and become emotional when they are emotional, or practical when they have signaled a practical mindset, we are sharing control over how a dialogue flows.

Sometimes, when we try to exert control, we don’t realize we’re doing it. We think we’re simply stating our opinion, or offering advice, and don’t understand that others will perceive it as attempting to strong-arm a conversation’s direction.

A GUIDE TO USING THESE IDEAS PART III

There is a moment, in many conversations, when someone says something emotional, or we reveal our own feelings, or we want to understand why we keep fighting, or we hope to get closer to someone who feels distant. That is when a How Do We Feel? conversation might begin, if we allow it to. And one of the best ways to start is to ask a deep question. Deep questions are particularly good at creating intimacy because they ask people to describe their beliefs, values, feelings, and experiences in ways that can reveal something vulnerable. And vulnerability sparks emotional contagion, which makes us more aligned.

A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts.

A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel.

Asking a deep question should feel like sharing.

Once we ask a deep question, we need to listen closely to how others reply. Listening requires paying attention to more than just the words they say. To hear what a person is saying, we also need to pay attention to their nonlinguistic emotional expressions—the sounds they make, their gestures, tone of voice and cadence, how they hold their bodies and their expressions.

it is critical to be attuned to two things:

Mood: Do they seem upbeat or glum? How would you describe their expressions? Are they laughing, or shouting? Are they up or down?

Energy: Are they high energy, or low energy? Quiet and withdrawn or talkative and expressive? If they seem happy, is it calm and content (low energy) or excited and outgoing (high energy)? If they are unhappy, are they sad (low energy) or agitated (high energy)?

Mood and energy levels often tell us all we need to know in order to align emotionally. Sometimes, we might not want to match emotions: If someone is angry, and we become angry, it may drive us apart. But if we acknowledge their mood and energy—“You seem upset. What’s wrong?”—we can start to align.

One of the most important aspects of emotional communication is showing others we hear their emotions, which helps us reciprocate. There’s a technique for this—looping for understanding. Here’s how it works: Ask questions, to make sure you understand what someone has said. Repeat back, in your own words, what you heard. Ask if you got it right. Continue until everyone agrees we understand.

The goal of looping isn’t parroting someone’s words, but rather distilling another person’s thoughts in your own language, showing them that you are working hard to see their perspective, and then repeating the process until everyone is aligned.

We reciprocate vulnerability by… 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.”

When we are in conflict with someone… First, acknowledge understanding. We do this through looping and statements such as “Let me make sure I understand.” … Second, find specific points of agreement. Look for places where you can say “I agree with you” or “I think you’re right that…” These remind everyone that, though we may have differences, we want to be aligned. Finally, temper your claims. Don’t make sweeping statements such as “Everyone knows that’s not true” or “Your side always gets this wrong.” Rather, use words like somewhat or “It might be…” and speak about specific experiences (“I want to talk about why you left dishes in the sink last night”) rather than broad generalities (“I want to talk about how you never do your part around the house”).

One of the biggest problems with online discussions, of course, is they lack the information usually provided by our voices and bodies: Our vocal tones, gestures, expressions, and the cadence and energy we bring to our speech. Even when we write letters, we tend to include nuances and subtleties that come from editing ourselves and thinking about what we want to say.

When talking online, remember to… Overemphasize politeness. Numerous studies have shown that online tensions are lessened if at least one person is consistently polite. In one study, all it took was adding thanks and please to a series of online arguments—while everything else stayed the same—to reduce tensions. … Underemphasize sarcasm. When we say something in a wry tone, it signals an irony our audience usually understands. When we type something sarcastic online, we typically hear these same inflections within our heads—but the people reading our comments do not. Express more gratitude, deference, greetings, apologies, and hedges. Studies demonstrate that when we are grateful (“That comment taught me a lot”), or solicitous (“I would love to hear your thoughts”), or preface comments with a greeting (“Hey!”), or apologize in advance (“I hope you don’t mind…”) or hedge our comments (“I think…”), online communication gets better. Avoid criticism in public forums. In another study, researchers found that giving negative feedback online backfires much more than in real life. It pushes people to write more negative things, and to start criticizing others more frequently. When we criticize others publicly online, we make bad behavior into a digital norm.

THE WHO ARE WE? CONVERSATION

OUR SOCIAL IDENTITIES SHAPE OUR WORLDS

“social identities”: The self-images we all form based on the groups we belong to, the people we befriend, the organizations we join, and the histories we embrace or shun.

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The meaningfulness of various identities—the importance of gender versus race versus politics versus who we support in the Super Bowl—becomes more and less salient based on our environment and what’s happening around us.

Steele and his colleagues called this undermining effect stereotype threat, and since those first experiments in the late 1990s, hundreds of other studies have both confirmed its existence and examined its pernicious effect. Simply knowing that a stereotype exists can influence how we behave.

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Put differently, when researchers changed the environment, it made stereotypes less salient and therefore less threatening. “You can do that in a classroom, which is good,” Steele told me. “But it’s hard to do that in society, where everyone knows these stereotypes exist.”

It’s crucial, in a Who Are We? conversation, to remind ourselves that we all possess multiple identities:

“When my son goes to school, I tell him, remember, that test may be hard today, but think about who else you are,” said Gresky, the researcher at Texas Christian University. “We can make the bad voices in our head less powerful by remembering all the other voices in there, too.”

The process for drawing out those voices is relatively straightforward: In a Who Are We? conversation, invite people to talk about their backgrounds, allegiances, how their communities have shaped them. (“Where are you from? Oh, really? What was it like growing up there?”) Then, reciprocate by describing how you see yourself. (“You know, as a southerner, I think that…”) Finally, avoid the trap of one-dimensionality by evoking all the many identities we all possess as a conversation unfolds: “I hear you saying that, as a lawyer, you support the police, but as a parent, do you worry about cops pulling over your kid?”

the contact hypothesis—the theory that, if you bring people with clashing social identities together under specific conditions, you can overcome old hatreds.

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These kinds of environmental shifts point to what is needed for a successful Who Are We? conversation: First, try to draw out your conversational partners’ multiple identities. It’s important to remind everyone that we all contain multitudes; none of us is one-dimensional. Acknowledging those complexities during a conversation helps disrupt the stereotypes within our heads. Second, try to ensure everyone is on equal footing. Don’t offer unsolicited advice or trumpet your wealth or connections. Seek out topics where everyone has some experience and knowledge, or everyone is a novice. Encourage the quiet to speak and the talkative to listen, so everyone is participating. Finally, look for social similarities that already exist. We do this naturally when we meet someone new and start searching for people we know in common. But it is important to take those connections a step further and make our commonalities more salient.

the most effective approach was something known as motivational interviewing, a method originally developed in the 1980s to help problem drinkers. In motivational interviewing, a 2012 paper explains, “counselors rarely attempt to convince or persuade. Instead, the counselor subtly guides the client to think about and verbally express their own reasons for and against change.” Motivational interviewing seeks to draw out a person’s beliefs, values, and social identities, in the hopes that, once all these complexities and complicated beliefs are on the table, unexpected opportunities for change might appear.

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HOW DO WE MAKE THE HARDEST CONVERSATIONS SAFER?

the listener, offended, would become defensive as their sense of self—their identity—was attacked. In psychology, this is known as identity threat, and it is deeply corrosive to communication.

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The mere possibility of identity threat frequently stops people from talking about Who Are We?

There are lessons here for tough conversations of all types, even beyond those related to our identities. The first insight is that, as we’ve seen before, preparing for a conversation before it begins—thinking just a little bit more when we open our mouths—can have enormous impacts. Anticipating obstacles, planning for what to do when they arise, considering what you hope to say, thinking about what might be important to others: Before any challenging conversation, think for a few moments about what you hope will happen, what might go wrong, and how you’ll react when it does. The second lesson is that just because we’re worried about a conversation, that doesn’t mean we ought to avoid it. When we need to deliver disappointing news to a friend, complain to a boss, or discuss something unpleasant with our partner, it’s normal to feel a sense of hesitation. But we can reduce that tension by reminding ourselves why this conversation is important and diminish our anxieties by acknowledging, to ourselves and others, that these conversations may be awkward at first, but will get easier. Third, thinking about how a conversation will occur is just as important as what is said, particularly during a Who Are We? conversation. Who will speak first? (Studies suggest the person with the least power should begin.) What kinds of emotions should we anticipate? (If we prepare for discomfort and tension, we make them easier to withstand.) What obstacles should we expect? When they emerge, what will we do? Most important, what benefits do we expect will emerge from this dialogue, and are they worth the risks?

Establish guidelines and make sure they are clearly communicated. Invite everyone into the dialogue and give everyone a voice—and let everyone know they are expected to examine themselves. Focus on belonging, and creating a sense that everyone is welcome.

as Kiara Sanchez put it, the aim is not to “neutralize the discomfort, but rather give people a framework for persevering through it. It seems like a minor distinction, but the underlying theory is that discomfort can be helpful.” Discomfort pushes us to think before we speak, to try to understand how others see or hear things differently. Discomfort reminds us to keep going, that the goal is worth the challenge.

It is important to note that, alongside encouraging such questions, guidelines must also allow people to decline to answer. This is critical because, historically, individuals from marginalized communities have been asked to do an outsized amount of work describing their lives.

A GUIDE TO USING THESE IDEAS PART IV

consider our actions during three distinct periods: before a discussion, at the beginning of the discussion, and as the discussion unfolds.

Ask yourself: What do you hope to accomplish? … How will this conversation start? … What obstacles might emerge? … When those obstacles appear, what’s the plan? … Finally, what are the benefits of this dialogue?

As a conversation begins: First, establish guidelines. … Second, draw out everyone’s goals. … Finally, acknowledge, and keep acknowledging, that discomfort is natural—and useful.

Once we’ve prepared for a hard conversation, and have discussed guidelines and goals, we should remember to: Draw out multiple identities. … Work to ensure everyone is on an equal footing. … Acknowledge people’s experiences and look for genuine similarities. … Manage your environment.

AFTERWORD

They discovered some correlations: Having loving parents made it easier to find happiness as an adult. Possessing genes related to physical hardiness and longevity was helpful—as was getting enough exercise and eating well. Education early in life, as well as a lifelong commitment to learning, also provided a leg up. However, as important as these factors were, one thing seemed to matter much more than anything else. It didn’t come as a surprise; it had been obvious to everyone, across the decades, as they had conducted their interviews. The most important variable in determining whether someone ended up happy and healthy, or miserable and sick, was “how satisfied they were in their relationships,” one researcher wrote. “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest (mentally and physically) at age 80.”

Across the decades and surveys, similar findings emerged again and again: The happiest participants called others regularly, made lunch and dinner dates, sent notes to friends saying they were proud of them, or wanted to help them shoulder sad news. Most of all, happy participants engaged in many, many conversations over the years that brought them closer to others.

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,”

It has helped me to connect better, to be more mindful when other people reveal something personal, to know that there is always a conversation going on—be it practical, emotional, or social—and that we won’t be able to connect until we come to an understanding about what we all want and need. Most of all, it has convinced me of the importance of having learning conversations, where my aim is to pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring; to identify our goals for a dialogue; to ask about others’ emotions and share my own feelings; and to explore if our identities influence what we say and hear.

There is no single right way to connect with other people. There are skills that make conversations easier and less awkward. There are tips that increase the odds you’ll understand your companions, and they’ll be more likely to hear what you are trying to say. The effectiveness of various conversational tactics waxes and wanes based on our surroundings, the types of discussion we’re having, the kind of relationships we hope to achieve. Sometimes we get there; sometimes we don’t. 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.