welcome to the Jefferson Fischer podcast where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything if you enjoy learning tools to improve your communication I'm going to ask you to please follow this podcast and if you would leave a review or a like or a star it really matters and it means a lot to me and I look at it all so if you have any topic suggestions just throw them in the comments my new book The Next Conversation is officially out you can find the links down in the show notes this is a book that's going to give you not just what to say but how to say it and give you tools immediately to help give you the power to change everything about your life simply by what you say next i'm really proud of it everything's going well and I'm excited to share it with you also if you're wanting to continue to practice your new communication skills I'm going to encourage you to go to the Jefferson Fischer School of Communication where a lot of exciting things are happening i I have a whole library of resources having an AI that can help answer texts and emails for you from that uh difficult coworker and on top of that we have live classes and a whole lot of fun you can also find that link down in the show notes if you've ever wondered how the great communicators become great communicators well you're in for a treat on this episode today we're hearing from Charles Doohig this guy is not only a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist he is a an amazing author and somebody I am actually geeking over to talk to about as somebody who loves communication because he has a book out uh that is called Supercommunicators and I just can't wait to get into it and and talk about it but he's a dad of two I believe and uh I know you're over in California charles thanks for coming on thank you for having me this is such a treat yeah it has been so cool when as soon as your book came out um I immediately ran and got it because I just don't find that there's that many resources on communication i want to make sure that I hit this question that I've it stuck out with me in the book and is that the most persuasive people don't argue their point they ask great questions absolutely and if I could write that down and put it on my mirror every day I that's exactly what I would do can you tell us more about what that means to you and how people can people listening to it right now how how can they apply it in their everyday from the kitchen to the living room to their workplace asking great questions no it's a it it what's really interesting is you know when researchers started sort of identifying these folks that we we call consistent supercommunicators because we're all super communicators at one time or another but but some people can essentially kind of connect with anyone the number one behavior that they found was that these people tended to ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person and and and what's interesting though is and we all know people like this some of the questions you don't even register as questions they'll say things like uh you know oh what' you think about that or you know what did you say next it's these little essentially invitations to share with them but then some of the questions that they are very comfortable asking are what are known as deep questions and a deep question is something that asks someone about their values or their beliefs or their experiences and that can sound kind of intimidating right when I'm like oh you should ask people about their values or their beliefs or their experiences except that it's as simple as you know if you meet someone who's a doctor instead of saying you know oh what hospital do you work at you could ask oh what made you decide to go to medical school right that second question that invites the person to tell you something real right that invites them to tell you sort of what they believe in or what their experiences were as a kid that sort of led them to where they are yes that's a really powerful question and and so I think that the most persuasive people they recognize the best communicators super communicators recognize asking these deep questions is just as easy as asking shallow questions but when I ask a deep question I'm inviting you to have a real conversation with me and when you know that I'm listening to you you start to listen to me and then and then we're persuading each other yes absolutely it's um what I hear is this everyday small talk that people feel most people feel anxious about i I don't want to ask a question i don't to be too much you can have surface questions and deep questions and the great communicators have a wonderful skill at making the deep questions sound just like the shallow ones that's where you're not having to you know feel like what is your deepest desire tell me about your childhood like these things that like who I don't I don't know you um is that is that the way you feel about it like if you're going to conversation and instead of this what else question mark versus what else like you finding ways of sounding them make them sound like a statement so I'm trying to give the listener right now some tips on that that's definitely half of it right is that half of it is I can ask you a deep question that sounds like a shallow question so and often times that's just a matter of asking you here's here's the big tip is instead of asking you about the facts of your life ask you a question that would prompt you to talk about how you feel about your life so instead of just asking you know where do you live oh I live in the Heights oh what do you like about the Heights right or you know you can do it with almost anything it's very very easy now the thing is that that's a great way to start a conversation and there's a guy named Nick Epley at the University of Chicago who's basically studied deep questions his whole career i think that once you ask an easy to ask deep question it's actually much easier and much more welcome to ask a deep question that seems like a deep question right if I ask you you know what do you like about the Heights and you say well the sense of community is amazing up there oh yeah what like what like tell me about it like what's the community well you know my wife passed away a year ago and my neighbors have been there for me then suddenly it's totally okay for me to say "Oh I'm so sorry like tell me about your wife what was she like?" Right what research shows is that we don't have a resistance to deep questions we have a resistance to deep questions that move a little bit too quickly but you can actually move fast if you ramp up the intimacy and so if I ask you a question and this is the other thing that super communicators do and I I think you talk about this in your own work a lot that they look for opportunities where people are trying to tell them what they want to talk about right so let's take someone passing away this is the most my my own my father passed away about seven years ago and I went back to work i was working at the New York Times at that point and I went back to work and I had this this experience that I think everyone has had which is you know people say "Oh where were you last week?" And you say "Oh I was at my dad's funeral." And they all say the same thing they all say "Oh my condolences i'm so sorry." And then they move on to whatever you were talking about before right because like they don't know what to say but anyone who's been through that experience knows that if somebody were to say like "Oh like I'm so sorry like tell me what your dad was like what was Cuz that's all you've been thinking about for the last two weeks right is you've been thinking about your dad and the funeral and the eulogies and how much they touched you and so I think what super communicators do is they look for people to offer them invitations and then they accept those invitations even if accepting that invitation means I'm going to ask you something that maybe is not something that that I normally would ask right maybe maybe I sit down next to you in a in a meeting and you tell me about your fact that you went to your kids's graduation that weekend and instead of just saying "Oh congratulations that's awesome let's get down to the agenda." I say "Oh congratulations that's awesome." What did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage yeah that's when suddenly we're connecting with each other i love that not asking about facts ask about how they feel that's something that's immediately applicable that somebody could apply right now and I what I see too is in my line as in work of as an attorney in cross-examination when you're asking somebody questions a lot of the time you can tell what they're wanting to talk about based on how they end their first sentence oh that's interesting when they end their answer they might end it their answer just a little bit short because they are trying to invite you to let them in just a little bit more to talk just a little bit more so it's very telling how they end their answer they might end it on like a cliffhanger or somebody might say you know yeah and so they might they might end it with a Yeah so you know that's and they just they they've kind of hit a dead end they're not sure how to get there and so they're inviting you to kind of help me walk me through that door i think that's huge and I think that's such a such a great insight that like just by paying attention to the to the cadence of how they speak how they're telling us stuff because the truth of the matter is sometimes when we're communicating with someone we assume that they are communicating by accident right oh you mentioned you mentioned your kid's graduation but you don't want to talk about your kids's graduation you mentioned that you were at a funeral but you don't want to talk about the funeral that's not how communication works we mention things that we want to talk about right exactly we we avoid things that we don't want to talk about so if somebody has brought something up with you that shouldn't be like "Oh no i kind of touched the third rail there." That should be "Oh this this person like they want me to ask about that." That's so funny yeah so my uh my grandfather would have this habit of when we we'd be like at a restaurant altogether and he'd ask you you know Jefferson is that uh how's that that fish and I'd say well it's it's great and it was an invitation for me to say would you like a bite like that was that was always his like go-to if he's would say yeah how's that how's that chicken right there and it's his way of saying like that looks good and I it invite me to go would you like to buy he goes "Yeah I think I would." Sounds like a super communicator i think he knew what he wanted out of the conversation that's the invitation right there is is what you're hearing i love that the takeaway is instead of trying to push your point even in the small little everyday conversations you find ways to ask more questions super communicators ask much more uh than the average person on questions that they can put into somebody else's life so the takeaway is invest in the questions i think that's exactly right um exactly it i love that i want to tell you about a sponsor of this podcast called Cozy Earth the reason why I went with Cozy was because I already used their products their sheets are on my bed right now my wife loves their pajamas i love their hoodies their sweatshirts their blankets if you're like me and just want to be comfortable look no further than Cozyear you can go to cozyearth.com/jfferson and use the code Jefferson for 40% off that's cozyearth.com/jfferson use the code Jefferson for 40% off if you're a blanket person if you're a sheet person if you're a towel person they're who you want go to cozy earth in your book Supercommunicators which is fantastic i encourage everybody right now while you're listening to this episode just go run and buy it it's it's it's wonderful thank you you talk about three types of conversations that people could be in really at any given time and that to me when I read it was just going "Oh that's really cool." And kind of breaking it up into I'm very visual of like anytime you're in a conversation you have like a yellow wire a blue wire and a you know a green wire and you never really know which one to pull and what you do so well is you synthesized these and to say "Hey really anytime you're in conversation you're in one of these three boxes can you tell us about that?" Yeah absolutely and this actually started um a couple years ago before I wrote the book because I got into this bad habit with my wife which is I'd come home from work and I'd start complaining about my day you know like my boss doesn't appreciate me and my co-workers don't realize what a genius I am and and she would give me this really good advice she would say "Why don't you take your boss out to lunch and get to know each other a little bit better?" and instead of being able to hear what she was saying I would get more upset right which I think every couple has experiences this and so I went to researchers and I was like "Look I'm a professional communicator why do I keep falling into this same trap like why do why do I try and solve her problems when she just wants me to listen and empathize why does the exact opposite occur?" And they said "Well here's what we figured out just actually in the last decade with neural imaging is that when you're in a discussion you think you know what that discussion is about and you usually think it's about one thing you think it's about uh where to go on vacation next year the budget right and they said "What's actually true is that if we could see inside your head what we would see is that that discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations right and and all these conversations are all happening during one discussion and they tend to fall into one of three buckets as you pointed out so in general our conversations are either practical conversations where we're making plans or solving problems together or they're emotional conversations where I'm telling you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings i want you to empathize or they're social conversations about how we relate to each other and how what how we relate to society and the identities that are important to us and they said all three of those kinds of conversations are all equally legitimate and all three of them will probably happen during a discussion if it goes on long enough but the key is if you and the person you're talking to aren't having the same kind of conversation at the same moment you will not feel connected to each other in fact you'll have trouble actually hearing what the other person is saying and so that's what was happening with me and my wife right i was having an emotional conversation she was having a practical conversations they're both equally legitimate but because they weren't the same kind of conversation at the same moment we couldn't hear each other yeah that's where somebody says "You're not listening to me." You're like "Yes that's exactly right." Right right and you're like I can repeat back exactly what you just said but the truth is you're not actually listening you think you're listening but because you're not in the same mindset as this other person because you're not hearing that oh this is an emotional conversation this isn't practical conversation you're missing the important parts of what they're saying yeah i I find that in those moments it's um the person is not looking for reciprocal words they're looking for reciprocal feeling if you're having that emotional conversation when you're complaining about your day you're looking for a feeling from that other person the the acknowledgement words don't do it words don't give it it's the the emotion the feeling that you go "Okay now we've connected the your white wire with my white wire and now I now we're connected." Well and what's amazing is that our words can actually disagree with us and we'll still feel connect so like let's say we're talking about politics and we're both voting for different people and but you say like you know the thing that's most important to me is security because my own family has been threatened by crime in my area now I could say like oh but crime's down across the nation right you're saying you're making an emotional statement i could say respond with something practical but if I say you know I totally I I feel that fear i know what that fear is like now my solution is I think a little bit different from your solution but but I think that we have this thing in common even though we're our words will disagree with each other we will feel more connected there there's actually something that has evolved in our brain social reciprocity that makes it impossible for us not to feel a little bit more connected when we're having the same kind of conversation at the same moment that's wild it's really fun isn't it fun like that that we can be excited about communication like this we're part of the weirdos man this is definitely well and yet at the same time everyone communicates all day long right this is the number this is the most important skill you can have as an attorney you could be the I I'm you tell me but I imagine you could be the finest legal mind on the planet and if you can't communicate it doesn't matter it doesn't matter a lick no it doesn't matter a lick i mean and and it um it's so funny that you might have these brilliant minds but then the clients don't want to work with them because they don't feel like there's that service like they can talk but this person's yet brilliant and there's so such a difference between your trial litigators and the people that are let's say more transactional uh and so it's just so funny to to hear that and and experience that but yeah communication is a wonderful wonderful thing now I know that you also um you've done so much research in fact have a whole separate book on just habits the power of habits uh and of course everybody's looking for better habits what would you say to the person listening right now is one habit that they can work towards in their life right now to simply improve their communication so it so asking those deep questions is a great habit right that's one thing and it's and it literally is a habit if you just kind of practice it you get it you start doing it without thinking about it but there's another habit that's really really useful which is proving that you are listening so one of the things that the research tells us and I'm sure you know this as as an attorney is that often times simply listening is not enough because the other person they have this sneaking suspicion particularly if this is a tough conversation if this is something we disagree about they have this sneaking suspicion you're not actually listening you're just pretending to listen and you're waiting your turn to speak right like like you're just you're just staying silent until I shut up for a minute and then you're going to jump in so one of the things that we found is really important particularly in what are known as conflict conversations right where we just might we might disagree with each other or we might be talking about something that's hard to talk about like politics or religion in those conversations it's really really powerful to prove that we're listening and actually the proving part is is a habit so there's a technique for it known as looping for understanding that they they teach basically in every law school now and it has these three parts the part one is to ask a question preferably a deep question right part two step two is when the person has answered that question try and repeat back in your own words what you heard them say and you've actually already done this a couple times in this conversation right what I hear you saying is and I'm going to prove to you not only am because the goal here is not mimickry I'm going to prove to you that not only am I paying attention I'm actually processing what you're thinking right or what you're saying i can I can put it into different words and maybe even give you a little insight on it that you didn't have when you said it and most of us do step one and step two intuitively step three is the one I always forget and this is where the habit comes in is once I repeat back what I heard you say ask if I got it right did Did I hear you correctly i mean because when we do that what we're actually doing is we're asking for the other person permission to acknowledge that we were listening and if I believe you are listening to me I become much much more likely to listen to you in return so when I ask you permission to acknowledge that I was listening and you say yeah I think you heard what I was saying you suddenly become much more likely to listen to me even on a subconscious level and that looping for understanding that's entirely a habit yes i I I could not agree more listen I care about you if you're listening to this podcast I care about you and because I care about you as somebody who also loves communication and conversations I know that you can't just have all these conversations in your head yeah I can give you advice but sometimes you need more you need to talk to somebody else who's trained in helping guide you through this and that's where therapy comes in i go to therapy it's incredibly helpful and a sponsor of this podcast is BetterHelp what they do it's an online platform where they can connect you with online therapists all you have to do is fill out a quick questionnaire and they match you with a therapist and if it doesn't work out with somebody else they can easily switch you to somebody new but the point is you're getting it out and diving deeper for better answers because conversations come with questions therapy comes with answers you can go to betterhelp.com/jffersonfisher for a discount on your first month that's betterhelp.com/jffersonfisher uh to put it in a nutshell how I interpret this is that for anybody listening number one if you can ask a question instead of the response so anytime somebody's sharing something with you we make a mistake when we all of a sudden start talking about ourselves like like Charles was saying you're just kind of waiting to be like "No actually you know what I did the other day and instead of actually listening to somebody you can cure all that simply by asking one question." One that I like to ask is asking them "What was your favorite part?" Because everybody has a favorite part i do this with my kids and I'm sure you have the same thing with yours day is done and if I say "How was your day?" It was good like they're not Yeah what did you learn i don't know like nothing exactly right but if I ask what was your favorite part they almost always come up with something that was like uh this is the thing that is my favorite part and if you can just ask that one question it makes them feel like you're actually what they said has value instead of trying to step on their their story or step on what they're trying to share because you're really trying to be relatable but in some sense you're you're taking that away so asking just one question and then almost repeating back what they said to make you feel that connection is just a brilliant strategy and and it works every time i mean I've seen it work every time and what I love about that question is what what's your favorite part is that what you're actually asking is how do you feel about your day what was the part of your day that made you feel good what was the part of your day that that didn't make you feel good right that's that's why I think that question is so powerful with my kids i try and um I have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old you know when I ask them about their friends I ask them questions like "What do you admire about Jasper?" Like it seems like you like him a lot right because at that moment what I'm actually asking them is I'm asking them "How do you feel about friendship how do you feel about this particular guy how do you what are the things you look for you value in another person?" And we like being asked questions like that right we really do we really do anytime we get to um I think talk about the emotion behind the words we're really searching for that i I that's exactly I hear you on that a thousand% because when you when you say what's your favorite part it's not something practical it's not saying what you know did you receive it's a being a favorite or having a favorite it's a feeling of just this is what I gravitated towards the most maya Angelou has this quote that that research has borne out that nobody will remember what you say but they will remember how they how you made them feel and it's exactly right now I did want to address something that you had said before because you're you're exactly right asking these questions can be really powerful and and there's a there are times when sharing about ourselves can feel really selfish right if somebody says you know oh you know I if if we ask where'd you on vacation and they say "Oh I went to you know I went to Spain." And then you realize pretty quickly they only ask because they want to tell you about their vacation and the fancy yacht that they stayed on right exactly yeah that's not great but there are times when looping for understanding proving we're listening does call on us to share something about ourselves but the the takeaway here is when you share something about yourself it should be because you want to connect with the other person you want to show them that you want to connect as opposed to I want to steal the spotlight from you yes and so often times what we'll see is you know someone will say "Oh you know my aunt passed away last week." And someone will say "I know exactly what that's like my dog died seven years ago and I still think about like that's not I'm not trying to share to connect with you i'm trying to steal the spotlight from you and aim it on myself." But to say to someone "Oh I you know I was really close to my aunt too." And it she was such an important part of my life like tell me a little bit about your aunt like like what was she like in that case what I'm actually doing is I'm sharing of myself i'm engaging in that social reciprocity right which feels really good and meaningful and trustworthy but I'm doing it in the service of trying to connect with you show you that I want to connect with you and learn from you i find that even if somebody's telling me let's say about their hard day you just say "How was your day?" And they go on and on and on and you simply just say that sounds hard they're like "Oh yo that yes like that's all they needed that's all they needed was oh that's oh that's for if they're complaining about what somebody did to them you go yeah that sounds rude." Like isn't it like and it's just it that's all they're wanting the feeling i was just going to say they teach teachers to do this by telling them that if if a student comes in they want to have a you know a conversation start the conversation by asking them "Do you want to be helped do you want to be hugged or do you want to be heard?" Which is the the practical this emotional and the social conversation because to exactly your point if a kid says "No no I just need you to like I just need you to know what's going on." Then you can say "Oh that sounds really hard." Like that's all that you need you've told me that's all that you need to feel to feel good about this that sounds difficult that sounds hard yeah yeah i mean all of that it it's much more powerful than just the words themselves in your book uh you have a section in fact several different parts where you talk about jury deliberations and I got into that and I was like "All right here we go." Because I of of course in my legal background I love this kind of stuff uh also if you've never seen the movie 12 Angry Men fantastic movie that I think illustrates a lot of the points that were being made and what I took away from it is that anytime you you take 12 people they go back to do any kind of jury deliberation whether it's civil case uh criminal case there has to be a foreman somebody who's kind of the ring leader a lot of the times it happens to be a teacher because teachers just naturally Oh interesting are one Oh yeah gathering people believe it or not in trial uh when you're picking a jury most people won't pick teachers huh um because most people tend to go the teachers way and so if a teacher is on the jury they are very opinionated and they're very good at teaching others to match their opinion and to me that's fascinating it's too much of a risk on a jury to have a teacher because you don't know are they going to go for your side or the other side if they're on your side great that means most people are going to be on your side uh it's just so funny how a lot of times teachers are very polarizing because they are very quick and they pick up on a lot of different things and they're great at just teaching and juries they'll jury deliberations they'll teach other people uh and so some people like that some people don't can I ask you something actually when you're choosing when you're choosing your jury you're going through voadier and you're asking them questions and you're listening to what they're saying how accurate do you think you can be in figuring out what kind of mind like what what frame of mind that person is in what they're going to bring to the jury room yeah so uh first off for anybody hearing you said voadier in Texas we call that vorire and it's uh what it is it's the process of asking a jury questions so uh if you ever got a jury summon you go into the room and there's a whole bunch of uh prospective jurors that they call the veneer and attorneys get to ask them questions and then they attorneys get to pick the people they want to be in the jury it's a whole process that's supposed to push in fairness now the question is do you think that there's a way that we can kind of sense this person's personality which way they're going to go what's their temperature i would say yes so what I like to do and what I've gotten good at is you use a prospective juror almost as an early witness so I might ask a question i've done it before where you know the officer let's say at an accident officer really didn't pay attention to my client he was going to get talking to other people in the accident but never really asked my client any questions and so I asked the the jury you know have you ever been in an accident hands raised you have are police officers involved yes you ever had it to where a police officer really didn't ask you anything few people answered so I get to talk to them well how did that make you feel well I kind of felt dismissed by that okay noted and so anybody else ever felt dismissed you know in a in a case where you felt like you you weren't hearing your point out and you knew what you knew and some other hands were raised and you kind of get to use that person as a as a voice almost as a megaphone to influence the other people's opinion and it's putting a temperature and tone to where my position is going to be and then if I'm going to try and get that person on the jury most likely they're not if they answer if you want to get knocked out of a jury uh all you have to do is talk a lot in and or dire you're almost guaranteed to not be yawning because you're you've already shown you're very opinionated so that means one side isn't going to like you but that means when I'm asking my questions to the witness I'm going to ask those "Have you ever felt dismissed?" You know what I mean i'm I'm bringing that theme up again every single time so it's trying to It's those little things like that that's really interesting i love it and what you do so well in the book is you pu pull together these concepts of how people interact what you called I believe it was like a quiet negotiation of who's going to talk first how are we going to how are we going to set the structure around how we are to communicate and I was curious what you see as our daily application of the quiet negotiation so I think quiet negotiations happen all the time and I I love that story about the jury um you know I tried to throughout the book I tried to tell a bunch of stories just because I think it's more interesting like a story about a CIA officer recruiting overseas spies and how the Big Bang Theory became such a big hit but in that story in particular this idea of quiet negotiation comes up which is and research sort of shows this that every time we engage in a conversation the at least the beginning of it is often times a quiet negotiation and a quiet negotiation the goal of a quiet negotiation is not to win the negotiation the quiet the goal of a quiet negotiation is to understand what the other person wants right so when when I sit down with my wife and we talk about where to go on vacation next year I might start the conversation by saying you know like tell me like what what do you want out of a vacation like like what did you like about last year what do you like about next year and and she's going to give me some answers and I'm going to respond to those i'm going to tell her "Oh you know I liked that too but here's something I didn't like." And what we're doing is we're engaging in a little bit negotiation not just about where to go on vacation but also what kind of conversation we're going to have is this a conversation where like you tell me what you want and I it's it's your way or the highway or is this a conversation where we kind of go back and forth and we share with each other or is this a conversation where like we're just dreaming like we dream as big as we want to and we know that there's no consequences we're probably not going to end up going to you know on three safaris in one year the the quiet negotiation is something that happens in every conversation and it's how we figure out how to talk to each other how formal am I going to be can I make jokes or is this like a serious conversation like what And we do Yeah you're filling them out and it's we do this subconsciously right we do it almost without noticing it but the people who do notice it just a little bit they're the ones who end up being very persuasive and very good communicators because when we say "This person is telling me what kind of conversation they want to have," we become a little bit more attuned to paying attention to what kind of conversation they want to have because they might give us a clue they might they might they might sound really serious we might be talking about budgets for next year it seems like this is a practical conversation and they say something like you know I'm just really I'm really anxious we're going to have layoffs if I'm listening to that quiet negotiation I'm hearing you say "Oh this is actually an emotional conversation for you before it's a practical conversation you are anxious and you're worried those emotions are driving your decisions." And until we acknowledge those and we kind of like put them on the table we're not going to be able to have a practical conversation about the numbers yeah i love that point of there's this silence before the conversation that you're looking for clues you're feeling them out like uh maybe you meet somebody new for the first time and maybe y'all spent kind of 10 minutes around each other and you you learned what they're like that maybe there's somebody who has really dry humor or somebody that just kind of you silently kind of start roasting the other people in the room or maybe you start you know um you you or it could be on the other side somebody comes into your office and they're in tears you know it's it's about to be a very serious confidential conversation or when somebody goes leans in it's like "Hey uh real quick just just between me and you." It's like "Hey all" all of a sudden we we've now zeroed in on each other of how we're going to communicate so that feeling this person out uh it's funny how we almost do that programmatically just we absolutely there's no words that need to be said but I'm going to adjust my behavior simply by the energy that I'm matching with the other person and that's a really important word energy because we we let's talk for a second about what's happening inside our brains at that moment so when we're in a conversation and it's a good conversation a conversation where we feel like the other person understands us we understand them what's happening is that our bodies and our brains are changing so even in this conversation even though we're we're separated by many thousands of miles right the our heart rates are are matching each other more and more our breath patterns are matching each other more and more even the dilation of our pupils will start to sync up and most importantly our neural activity what's happening inside our brains if we could look inside both of our brains what we would see is that they are starting to look more and more similar and within neuroscience I hate that for you honestly I hate that for you i love it i love it i'm I'm good with it within neuroscences is known as neural entrainment and this is actually the goal of communication the goal of communication is for our thoughts to become aligned because when they are aligned I understand what you're saying and I feel connected to you and you understand what I'm saying and so when you mentioned before we're trying to pick up on their energy what we're really trying to pick up on there is how are they expressing to us through not only their words but everything around their words which part of their brain they're using how their brain is functioning this is why the three different kinds of conversations because they use three different parts of our brain that's why matching each other is so powerful is it makes us easier for us to entrain with each other if we're having the same kind of conversation absolutely i love it this uh this last question I it's really me this this I'm this is a selfish question for me how has your own communication changed in your life now having written an amazing communication book u you know I mean I'm familiar with maybe the the personal side of like you might be like oh okay this is the best you got i think you wrote a book about this and we're now in this argument yes you know there's a My wife often says there's a book you should read yeah so so you get that from your wife too she's like you know there's some videos you might want to watch about your communic right um I would say so I think twofold that the first thing is I just pay a lot more attention to what kind of conversation is happening now you know when my kids come to me it's so easy when your kids come up to assume that they're just asking for help and to solve their problems for them but you know do do they want to be helped heard or hugged and sometimes sometimes they don't want to be helped they just want me to hear what's going on and to understand and be able to say like "Look it is it is okay that you feel that way cuz I feel that way all the time." Or sometimes they just need a hug you just need to say like "Look it's not necessarily going to get better tomorrow but today I can give you a hug and I can." So I try and pay a lot more attention to what signals is someone's sending me about what kind of conversation they want to have but then the second way it's impacted my life is that there's a study known as the the Harvard study of adult development where they they followed thousands of people around for over 80 years and they were trying to figure out what are the things earlier in life that make you healthy and happy and successful at age 65 however you define success they had all these theories like if you had a if you because it was done at Harvard they were like if you went to Harvard you're definitely going to be happy healthy and successful turns out that's not true that that if you get married early and you stay married longer that you're definitely going to be happy healthier and successful not necessarily a lot of overlap there the only thing that they found was a predictor at age 65 was if you had a handful of close relationships at age 45 and that the way that we maintain those relationships is through conversation right if I have people I feel close to by the time I'm 65 and I've been close to them for a while then I'm going to live longer i'll live up to seven years longer i'll oftentimes be more financially successful because I'm exposed to different kinds of opportunities and most importantly I'm just happier like spending time with other people and communicating with other people is as you've pointed out in so much of your work that is the thing that gives life meaning m and so I have tried very deliberately to think about maintaining those relationships there's people who I feel close to who I talk to twice a year but I make a point of talking to them twice a year and I set up you know an hour 90 minutes to catch up with each other and you know the first five minutes are going to be kind of awkward right it's going to be like "What's your kid's name again how old are they?" But then you're going to be in it and you're going to feel close to each other and that that is an investment that pays off over the long term like you wouldn't believe that hit me like a ton of bricks what you said about your kids how so often we see it as when they come to us we're assuming they're asking for help and that is not always the case cuz like my daughter she's learning how to tie shoes and so she really doesn't want my help she's wanting me to watch it's always "Hey dad watch this hey daddy watch this." Same with my son it's just they're wanting me to observe and acknowledge and be part of it rather than me trying to be like "What what do you need?" "No you're fine you don't need my help." Like "Yeah yeah you're good oh do you do me to do it for you?" No no no no no that's that's not it oh man that's That's beautiful that's really Can I ask you because you've been thinking about this stuff for a long time how do you feel like your communication has changed as a result of thinking about it so deliberately and explaining it to other folks i got this weird habit that I've always had Charles of hearing phrases and being like "Oh I like that." Even if it's somebody that's against me if there's a way that they're going about the conversation I have this thing where I can kind of see it and so I I like to visualize conversations and try to watch them happen even when it's me being involved with them and so I think having now invested in communication work and written something and hopefully joining this league of you know wonderful authors like yourself is it's made me all the more conscious of the bigger picture and that is the ways that I can slow down in my own life and listen a whole lot more and it's a it's kind of different because not everybody nobody wants to be told to be a better listener like one of my worst videos that ever performed ever was a video I made on how to be a better listener really like nobody nobody wants to be a better listener but what I have found is that the more I have invested in saying the richer I've become in learning how to not say anything and listen and so that that is feels like much more of a a strength that I did not anticipate going into this that's really interesting we got some great takeaways the So what we're going to do for people who want to be a super communicator and you told me if you agree with this Charles number one ask more questions so when somebody tells you something find a way to just as create a habit like we talked about of just asking one maybe two questions have one that talks about how they feel about something and two if you can repeat exactly paraphrase what you heard to make them feel acknowledged and connected another takeaway that we had is that anytime you're in a conversation you're typically in three type of boxes is it something very practical is it very something social uh or for your reputation or is it something that's more emotionbased and when you can match that person there's going to create connection in the conversation and three what I'm going to personally take away is when somebody's coming to you it's not always asking for help it is simply asking to be heard i love it this has been awesome love yeah it was a that's a fantastic summary you got listening yeah working on the listening yeah if you ever need a book summary somebody to help with your book summaries uh let me know i volunteer it's been a wonderful time talking with you thank you for your time on the podcast thank you so much Jefferson thank you for having me