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Lessons - The Hidden Psychology Behind Persuasive Communication | Charles Duhigg - Bestselling Author of "The Power of Habit" · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how every conversation fits into one of three types.
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  Practical, emotional, or social, and how recognizing the difference can improve your relationships.
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  Learn how asking deep questions reveals the mindset behind someone's words,
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  learn how neural entrainment helps build trust and connection even across disagreements,
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  and learn how to stop talking at people and start truly engaging with them.
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  Walk me through how this even impacted your work.
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  So when you, so now at this point, this is sort of like the first phrase.
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  I know you go through a couple different frameworks in the book, but this is the first
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  framework. So three types of conversations. You have the practical decision making,
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  you have the emotional, you have the social identity. Maybe first explain them a little bit more
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  so that people can wrap their minds around them, but then talk to me about how this impacted
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  your day to day. When you, I mean, you've entered you more people than me. So when you're
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  interviewing people, when you're doing investigations, when you're talking to your wife,
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  when you're talking to your boss. Yeah, and it's worth noting in interview isn't necessarily a
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  conversation, right? Like in this interview that we're doing right now, you're going to ask me
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  a lot more questions than I'm going to ask you. And so it's not necessarily back and forth,
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  but when we're having a conversation, oftentimes what what happens, well, let me explain what happens
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  when we're having a conversation that works. When we are, when we connect with someone through
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  conversation or through any type of communication, our bodies and our brains actually change without
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  us realizing it. Like even in this conversation, even though we're separated by a continent,
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  our breath patterns are starting to match each other. Our heart rates are starting to match each
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  other. The dilation of our eyes is starting to become similar. And more importantly,
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  if we could see inside your brain and my brain, what we would see is that our thought patterns
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  are becoming more and more alike. And that actually makes sense when you think about it, because if I
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  tell you about an emotion, I'm feeling you actually experience that emotional a little bit or if I
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  tell you about an idea I had, you experience that idea. And so it would make sense that our brains
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  would become more similar, but it turns out that similarity, what's known in neuroscience as
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  neural entrainment is at the core of communication. When we communicate and we feel like we've
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  actually heard and understood the other person, they've understood us and we feel connected to them,
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  we trust them more, we like them more, even if we disagree with them, it's because we achieved
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  that neural entrainment because our thoughts became very similar and trained with each other.
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  And so what's interesting is that these two kinds of conversations that practical the
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  emotional in the social, they use different parts of our brains. So a practical conversation is when
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  we're thinking about logical, when we're thinking about logical systems in any respect, we're
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  using the prefrontal cortex. So we're making plans for a vacation, we're setting a budget, we're
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  deciding where to go to dinner tonight by sort of saying like, oh, I like Chinese, but I had it last
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  week. Anything where there's what's known as a logic of cost and benefits is using your prefrontal
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  cortex. An emotional conversation uses a very different structure or brain, it uses the deep
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  interior structures that are brain, the basal ganglia, the amygdala, and in those cases, the logic
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  of cost and benefits tends not to be as persuasive as what's known as the logic of similarities.
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  Oftentimes when I'm confronted with a situation where it's I'm feeling an emotion, someone's
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  discussing an emotion, it's clearly an emotional conversation, I try and figure out what to do next,
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  by not by asking myself cost and benefits, not by comparing alternative paths, but by looking for
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  something similar, like, oh, you just stubbed your toe. When I stubbed my toe, what I really needed
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  was someone to like say like, it's okay or like, I have a friend, as I was mentioning that they just
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  lost his house in the fires in Los Angeles, right? And like, he doesn't need me coming in and
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  being like, okay, here's what you should do about like insurance next in Y&Z. What he needs is
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  someone is like, oh my, I'm so sorry, man, that sounds so hard. And in order to figure out what to
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  say, I'm going to think about those moments in my life when I've had some tragedy and what I needed
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  and what people did for me. So that's the logic of similarities. And then the social conversation
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  is kind of different because it doesn't rely on logic as much as it relies on evidence
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  that the other person is acknowledging who I am. So a social conversation happens when I come
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  to you and I say like, look, you know, as a, as someone who grew up in New Mexico or as a journalist
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  or as a man or as a father. And I tell you something about myself based on how I see myself and how
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  I believe society sees me. At that moment, what I, what I'm looking for from you without even realizing
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  it is not empathy, like an emotions, it's not logic, like in the language of the practical
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  conversation, it's simply acknowledging that you've heard me. If I come and I say, you know,
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  I see this differently as you and here's why. The best thing that you can say in response is to say,
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  oh, I totally, like, I totally hear what you're saying. You see this differently than I do. And that's
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  that's legitimate. So when you, I'm just thinking through, now you have me thinking about all the
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  conversations I have in my life and now I'm mapping out when some things just seem to not click and
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  now it makes a lot of sense as to why the three kinds of conversations that you just mentioned,
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  I feel like I feel like when we go into a conversation, the reason why we could not pick up on the
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  type of conversation that the other person is trying to have could be because we have our own
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  agenda going into that conversation and we want our own outcomes. And I don't even know if that's
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  a conscious thought. I feel like in my case, if I'm going into a conversation, I've had this
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  conversation so many different times, I just had this subconscious outcome that I'm looking for.
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  And I'm not even, I'm not, it sounds cliche, but I'm not stepping in the other people's shoes,
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  right? I'm just saying, I'm having this conversation. I'm feeling this emotion. This is what I want
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  out of it. If I don't get that, I'm not happy with the interaction, but I'm not consciously doing that.
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  That's almost like a subconscious entrained. Well, and there's a way, there's a way to
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  side step this, right? So this is, this is one of the first big skills is how do we figure out
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  what kind of conversation we're in and how do we get ourselves out of our head? Because oftentimes
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  before we have a conversation, we might think about it like if it's an important conversation or
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  something we're kind of uptight about, we'll think about it and what we think about is what I want
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  to say. Like here's what I want the other person to know. Here's what I want to say. That's not
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  really a conversation, right? That's a monologue. That's, that's what most people
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  cling to. That's, that's totally, it's totally natural. So what do we do when we start that
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  conversation to make it an actual conversation? The first and most important thing we can do
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  is to ask a question, but not all questions are created equal. Some questions are much more
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  powerful than others. And within psychology, these are known as deep questions. And a deep question
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  is something that asks about your values or your beliefs or your experiences. And that can sound
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  a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple like if you met someone who's a lawyer, you know,
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  instead of asking them, oh, what law firm do you work at asking them, oh, what made you decide
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  to go to law school? Right? But do you like being a lawyer? Like what do you love about it?
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  When we ask those kinds of questions, when we ask people not about the facts of their life,
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  but how they feel about their life, what we're doing is we're inviting them to tell us what kind
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  of mindset they're in. Because that person who's a lawyer, you know, at one party, he might say,
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  oh, you know, like I just, I wanted to study job and I knew that there's always going to be
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  demand for lawyers. And so I did. So he's in a practical mindset, right? At another party, the
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  exact same person might say, oh, like I actually saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid.
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  And I felt like it was really unjust and I wanted to help fight against that. Okay, so that's
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  that's much more of an emotional, maybe even a social conversation, asking a deep question
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  allows us to not only figure out what's happening in the other person's head,
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  but it interrupts that subconscious thing that you're talking about. Because instead of just
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  barreling in and being like, here's what I want you to know about me. I'm asking you a question,
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  we're starting a dialogue. And the great thing about deep questions is that as soon as you ask
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  that question and they answer it, it's very natural for you to answer your own question, right?
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  Oh, you became a lawyer because you saw your uncle get arrested. That's really interesting.
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  I'm a doctor and I became a doctor because I saw my dad get sick when I was a kid.
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  So that's the that's the first and most important step is their skill is learn to ask the right
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  questions and then ask them. When you ask these, first of all, it's sort of a two-pronged question
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  this. The first part is when you ask these, or how practical is it to ask these deep questions
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  before every interaction that you have? Because that's what you're alluding to. This is what you,
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  this is what your team, before you have any kind of conversation, you have to get almost a
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  barometer reading of where that person is at to a degree. You've been at, well, sometimes,
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  sometimes like, I mean, sometimes you you walk up and like you're in gyms, your co-workers,
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  like we got to discuss the budget and you're like, okay, let's discuss the budget.
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  Like you know that he's in a practical mindset, right? He's announced it. Sometimes people just
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  announce what what mindset they're in. I think it's some situations when you're not,
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  when it's not announced. And those moments, that's when asking this deep question. And I think
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  what you're really asking is like, man, that seems like so much work, but actually asking a deep
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  question usually takes a couple of seconds and the reply usually takes no more than 20 or 25 seconds.
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  Right. Like, like you mentioned that you lived in Miami. So like a deep question I would ask
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  you would be like, oh, you know, what made you guys decide to move to Miami? Like what,
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  like what was going on that like, and you're going to answer that question and you're going to tell
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  me something about yourself. You're sick of the cold or you wanted to get away from your in-laws
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  or whatever it is. Something, something was going on that gives me some insight into who you are,
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  what kind of mindset you're in right now. But it's not going to be a big like cry on each other
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  shoulder moment. No. In fact, in schools, they teach teachers to do this by saying, look,
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  if a student comes up and they want to have a conversation with you, start the conversation by asking
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  them, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged? Or do you want to be heard? Which are
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  the three kinds of conversations that practical the emotional and the social? And if anyone listening
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  has kids at home, try this with your kids, they will tell you exactly what they want immediately.
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  They will say like, no, I don't need your help. I just want you to hear what's going on or I need a hug.
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  When you at the second part to that question that I was just asking was when you have,
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  when you ask these deep questions, is there a greater degree of connection made with that person?
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  Is there some sort of deeper level of understanding or empathy, like some bond that's formed?
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  Well, so you're starting to entrain, right? Like if I say to you,
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  you know, why'd you come a lawyer? I saw my uncle get arrested and they say, oh, I became a doctor
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  because I saw my dad get sick. Now, we're both having the same kind of conversation, right? We're
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  finding something that we have in common. We are starting to entrain with each other. And the
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  thing that's interesting about entrainment is you can't help but feel closer to the person
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  when you entrain with them. Like literally, like, even if you dislike each other, even if you
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  disagree about everything on earth, entrainment doesn't mean you're going to change your mind.
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  It doesn't mean you're going to, you're going to walk away saying I agree with you.
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  Entrainment is something that we achieve with another person that makes us feel connected.
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  And when we feel, when we are entrained with someone, we like them more, we trust them more,
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  we're more persuaded by them. And that doesn't mean that we really like them or that we really
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  trust them. But it does mean that we feel connected to them in some way. Thanks for tuning in.
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  If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an
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  episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the
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  description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.