On Becoming a “Supercommunicator”

Insights from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist on how to understand others better - and how to be understood

[Source: Active listening isn’t enough. It’s time for Adaptive Listening™, Duarte]

When I was interviewing to be a management consultant after business school, the most subjective (but highly important) assessment was what is often referred to as “the airport test”. The interviewers ask themselves, “If I was stuck in an airport with this person for three hours, would I be excited about that?”

In the years that followed, I realized the real-life importance of the “airport test”. I often found myself stuck in airports for several hours with fellow consultants on my projects. We would have dinner together, talk about anything and everything – ranging from our client, to the cities we were flying back to, my rowing practice and their yoga classes, our families, our hopes, dreams and desires and more. When those hours flew by, we boarded our planes back home with a smile and came back the next week with a more productive working relationship than before.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Charles Duhigg’s latest book terms these excellent travel companions, networkers and dinner party guests as “supercommunicators”. All of us know these supercommunicators who speak in ways that make it easier for you to listen, get everyone on board with their ideas in a meeting, and find it easy to put people at ease and steer their way through difficult topics.

Many are at their conversational best only with those they know best. While conversational chemistry can feel intangible, we can all learn from those situations that we thrive in conversationally and apply those skills and tools more broadly. Charles Duhigg offers three concrete ways to connect better with larger networks, to drive greater social, professional and even romantic success.

1. Understand conversational goals, and adapt to the subtleties associated with the format of the conversation.

We enter a conversation with a specific objective in mind, even if we are not aware of the objective. Duhigg categorizes conversations into primarily three main types:

1. Practical (for example, “Where should we go to dinner?”, “We need to figure out the budget for next fiscal.”)

2. Emotional  (for example, “How do I feel?”)

3. Social (for example, “This is who I am, from an identity perspective”, “I want to learn where you come from.”) 

For example, if you’ve had a bad day at work and are aimlessly venting with your spouse, you are unlikely to react well to pragmatic suggestions. You simply need someone to understand how you feel. In Duhigg-speak, you’re trying to have an emotional conversation, while your spouse is trying to have a practical one. The most likely result is that both walk away feeling frustrated. 

In order to avoid this frustration, it is important for all parties to be trying to have the same kind of conversation at the same time. Sometimes it’s as easy as simply stating your own goals upfront and asking about the other’s. At other times, it requires some preparation and adeptness to invite someone to join us in a conversation that evolves from turn to turn, and ensure a meeting of minds. 

Further, with globally distributed work teams, text messages to communicate with our oldest friends, and apps to meet people we’ve never met in person before, we also need to be cognizant of the different rules for different formats of conversation. Sarcasm, for example, may not travel well over email, but you may be able to communicate tone more concisely with an emoji in a text message than through voice over a phone call.

2. Build rapport by being interested, not interesting.

When we meet someone new, we want to create a good initial impression so we often make statements about ourselves, or news or the context around us. But more often than not, the person across the table is equally nervous and not as concerned about whether you are interesting, as they are about “Are they interested in me?”. 

Duhigg suggests that asking a question, and then a follow-up question based on what the other person says, demonstrates that you appreciate what a person says and want to know more. This proof that you have been listening to the other person in a grounded manner keeps the conversation going on a topic they’ve already revealed a preference for talking about and helps build instantaneous rapport. 

UChicago behavioral psychologist Nicholas Epley’s research takes it a step further by suggesting that those who ask a deep question as quickly as possible will leave a conversation, even with a stranger, feeling happier and more connected. For example, if your first question was, “Where did you go to college?”, a follow-up question about “What was the most valuable thing you learnt at college?” is not overly intimate, but allows you to have a meaningful conversation and feel close to even a stranger you have seemingly nothing in common with, especially  if you reciprocate that conversational candor and vulnerability. 

3. Have a productive conversation about a disagreement by “looping for understanding”.

 Duhigg writes about an experiment to enhance dialogue between both sides of the gun debate in America. Participants were taught a formula for active listening called “looping for understanding”. It entailed disarming the conflict by asking a question about what the other person said, and then repeating their response back to them to check if you’ve got it right. Using this method, the group was able to talk honestly and openly without descending into a raging row. “They were able to have a conversation in person,” says Duhigg, “then they went online and it was something like 40 minutes before someone was calling someone a ‘jack-booted Nazi’.”

Most people do not feel heard most of the time, but what people want most in a conflict situation is to be heard. Looping for understanding makes people feel heard - and then they act differently. Even if you can’t give them what they want as an outcome, it is hard for them to see a person demonstrating such conversational receptiveness as the enemy and you are likely to find places where you do agree.

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(Hustle Fuel represents my own personal views. I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of my employer, Microsoft Corporation.)