Words That Win: How Supercommunicators Unlock the Secrets to Connection with Charles Duhigg

Unlocking the Secrets of Super Communication: Words That Win! What if I told you that the way you communicate could be the key to your success in relationships, business, and life? In this episode, I’m sitting down with the brilliant Charles Duhigg, author of Words That Win, along with insights from legendary communicators like John Maxwell, Chuck Wisner, Les Brown, and others, to uncover how super communicators connect deeply, influence others, and make their words truly impactful. We explore the three types of conversations that shape every interaction—practical, emotional, and social—and why mismatching them can cause disconnection. Charles and I discuss the art of active listening, including his game-changing concept of “looping for understanding,” which transforms not just what you hear but how others feel heard. Plus, we dive into how asking meaningful, deep questions can unlock hidden stories and values in others, forging connections that last a lifetime. You’ll hear Charles’s incredible story of a CIA recruiter whose career pivoted when he learned how to match emotions and communicate vulnerably. We also discuss how communication isn’t just verbal—your tone, gestures, and even laughter can build trust or erode it. Non-verbal cues and emotional intelligence play pivotal roles, as Bedros Keuilian and Les Brown share how they use these tools to inspire and lead. Key Takeaways: - The three conversation types and how to identify and match them for stronger connections. - Why active listening is more about what you do after someone speaks than during. - How vulnerability and storytelling break down barriers and build trust. - The role of non-verbal communication and emotional reciprocity in creating lasting bonds. - Practical strategies for handling tough conversations and reducing judgment in disagreements. This episode is packed with actionable techniques to elevate your communication skills and become a master of connection. By the end, you’ll have the tools to strengthen your relationships, lead with influence, and truly be heard. Start applying these skills today because your ability to communicate could be the key to unlocking the life you’ve always dreamed of. Thank you for watching this video—Please Share it and get the word out! What part of this video resonated with you the most? Comment below! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com/ed. That's growthday.com/ed. I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m. And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time too.

• 1:30Ed Mylett?

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• 2:08Speaker 01

  This is the Ed Mylett Show.

• 2:13Ed Mylett?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. This guy is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. He's a New York Times bestselling author, and he's a renowned expert on habits. And also now, after reading his work, he's an expert on communication. So Charles Dewey, welcome back to the show.

• 2:34Charles Duhigg?

  Thank you, Ed, for having me on. This is such a treat for me.

• 2:36Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I love you, brother. You're gonna listen to a big brain today, everybody, on a topic that you need to know more about. I gotta tell you why I love your book so much. We were just talking about kids off camera.

• 2:45Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Ed Mylett?

  There's a few things I want my kids to have left my house with. One, I want them to have some faith, which is their morals and ethics. I want them to have some work ethic, self-confidence. And if I could give them a fourth thing, it would be the ability to be an outstanding communicator. And I just think it's one of the things that is the most important elements of life. I'm sure you agree.

• 3:04Charles Duhigg?

  I think that's absolutely right. And I think the things that you mentioned before that are really important, because if you, you could be a great communicator, and if you don't have values, if you don't have discipline, then it's not necessarily gonna get you anyplace. But the difference between people who have those first three things, and then don't know how to communicate, is that they stall out at some point, right? They like, they have trouble in their marriage. They have trouble like communicating with their, their spouse or their partner. They oftentimes stall out at work, because the thing that made them successful at work, once you become a manager, it's not just doing that. It's about helping other people learn how to do that. And also, there's a huge amount of self-discovery that comes from conversation, right? Like, when I talk

• 3:47Charles Duhigg?

  to you and you talk to me, we learn things about ourselves through what we say. And it takes someone talented, a super communicator, to draw that out, to know how to, how to make the space for that.

• 3:58Ed Mylett?

  That's interesting. You learn about yourself through, I didn't even think about it that way. But you're right, you know, I- I almost feel like after I was reading your book, and by the way, everybody, it is outstanding. This man does not write average books. He just doesn't, and he sells a lot of them for a reason. And I almost feel like after reading it, I think I thought this before, but almost your ability to communicate will be the cap on your life to some extent. It's the cap on your rela- the intimacy level in your relationship, for example, to some extent is limited or enhanced by your ability to communicate non-verbal cues, verbal cues, your ability to lead and move people in business, your family environment, friendships. I mean, the cap on your your success level in those areas is almost directly correlated to communication.

• 4:40Charles Duhigg?

  I absolutely, so my, um, my father passed away about six years ago and I went to his funeral. And there were so many more people there. There were people that like I hardly remembered, like people, I was so surprised. And I was talking to them and I was like, you know, like, thank you for coming. And they would all say the same thing. They'd say like, I loved talking to your dad. Right? That's why they showed up is because they had, they had this rela- they had a connection with him.

• 5:02Ed Mylett?

  Do you think it's because of? I think one thing human beings have, Charles, is you're always making people feel something.

• 5:09Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Ed Mylett?

  Yet, I think most people are oblivious to that fact. They're feeling something from you in a moment. Your interest level, your energy, your frequency, your trustworthiness, your ability to elevate them. So do you think with your dad, for example, it wasn't just, you know, talking with him, but it's how he made other people feel?

• 5:27Charles Duhigg?

  That's exactly what it was. So, so sometimes when people ask me like, who, how do you define a super communicator? The easiest answer is to say, okay, think of the person you would call if you were having a bad day. Right? Like you're having a terrible day, there's someone you call, you know, they're gonna make you feel better. Like, like who would that person be for you?

• 5:44Ed Mylett?

  It would have been my dad, for sure, before he passed away. That was, it came right to me. Call my dad.

• 5:49Charles Duhigg?

  And my guess is that if I met your dad, what I would see is he's not the funniest person in your life. He's not the most charismatic person in your life. But what he did is he proved to you that he was listening to you, that he heard what you said. And then he reciprocated your vulnerability, or your joy, or your sadness. He shared it with you, and as a result, you walked away feeling like, what I'm experiencing, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, this is like, this is profound and this is real.

• 6:20Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 6:21Charles Duhigg?

  And it's been validated, and you don't need your dad to validate it. Like, it's still real to you, but to have someone else feel like, have them feel like they genuinely want to understand you.

• 6:30Ed Mylett?

  That's right.

• 6:30Charles Duhigg?

  That feels wonderful. In fact, it's hardwired into our brain to feel wonderful.

• 6:33Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. I just did this, and I did a podcast on it, so I'll ask you this. How much of communication do you think is actually the ability to listen correctly?

• 6:41Charles Duhigg?

  A huge amount, a huge amount. So, and let me say that, that there's this thing about listening, which is, when I'm talking, whatever you're doing, I'm probably not going to pay attention to it, because I'm so, it's so cognitively intense to try and speak, that even though I'm going to make eye contact with you, and I'm going to kind of notice if you're frowning, or smiling, or whatever it is, I'm really not going to pick up on the signals you're sending me. So, listening is not just hearing what the person is saying, it's what you do after they finish talking. Because if you do this thing where you prove to me that you've been listening, and in the psychology literature, this is actually referred to as looping for understanding.

• 7:19Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 7:20Charles Duhigg?

  That particularly if you have a conflict with someone, the best way to sort of bring the tension down is, ask a question, repeat back what you hear the person says in your own words. And then step number three, which is the one we usually forget, is ask them if you got it right. And if I do that, so when you think about it, so I'm listening to you, I have to listen closely to you, because I need to, I'm thinking, I got to repeat back what you're saying in my own words, I got to process it. But most importantly, you know that I've been listening based on what I say after you're done speaking. And that's really what active listening is. It's about not just passively receiving.

• 7:58Charles Duhigg?

  It's about amplifying.

• 8:00Ed Mylett?

  Very good. That is really good.

• 8:03Charles Duhigg?

  It's, I mean, and the thing is, it's so easy to do, like, once I learned this, like, I find myself doing it all the time without even realizing it. Like, I'll be like, "What I hear you saying is, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong." And like, it just feels so natural.

• 8:14Ed Mylett?

  It feels so good to have somebody say that back to you.

• 8:17Charles Duhigg?

  Right?

• 8:17Ed Mylett?

  Because you do get the feeling with most people, I think they do two things. One, they're really more concerned with what they're about to say back to you.

• 8:23Charles Duhigg?

  Yes.

• 8:24Ed Mylett?

  And two, I call them verbal nudges, where they're interrupting you too often, or uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, which you think is a form of agreement, but I think to some extent, sometimes you're almost saying, "I got it. Okay, can I say something now?"

• 8:35Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Ed Mylett?

  And you're almost nudging them to finish, rather than letting them finish.

• 8:39Charles Duhigg?

  That's, I think that's exactly true. And I think that part of this is understanding what the goal of a conversation is.

• 8:46Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 8:46Charles Duhigg?

  So, it's easy to go into a conversation and think the goal is to convince this person I'm right, or maybe even the goal is just to come to agreement on something. That's wrong. The goal of a conversation is simply to understand what the other person is trying to tell you. So that means that if I'm listening to you, and you say something that I think is crazy, you wouldn't say this, but lizard people run the world, or whatever it is. If I, I'm not gonna agree with you, and I'm probably not gonna convince you that you're wrong, but as long as I understand how you see the world, as long as I ask you a question, that's known as a deep question, where I say like, "Why is this important? Like, what is it about this that seems really meaningful and important to you?" You're gonna tell me something about who you are, I'm gonna repeat back

• 9:29Charles Duhigg?

  what you've told me about like, I care about lizard people because I really think the elites of this world are like, are like having this pernicious effect on the working class. I'm gonna repeat that back to you, I'm gonna ask you if I got it right. I'm not gonna agree with you, and you're not gonna agree with me, but simply understanding each other means we have succeeded. And it feels good, right?

• 9:50Ed Mylett?

  It does. I'm just thinking of like, political discourse, you know, like... Just really understand where they're coming from. I'm not gonna win this. I have to tell you, your work's so good because it's actually the part of conversations, I think it's why I have a podcast. I really enjoy not only understanding what somebody's saying, but also like why they're saying it. What's this come from? I'm in an Uber. I basically interview almost every Uber driver I ever have, right? But I, I love that by the end of a good 20 or 30 minute ride, I find out where these belief systems stem from, too. I've had, I was in one recently where this guy was way right, like way, way right. And, uh, no matter what you believe politically, but I mean, I was like, whoa. And I'm like trying to understand and trying to understand and

• 10:32Ed Mylett?

  I've also had this conversation with someone who's way left, but it ended up that at the end I found out that he had come from a communist country. He had actually had family that were murdered by communists. And it, whether I agreed with him or not, that's not the point of this show, but I actually had a much deeper understanding of the basis from which he's formed these opinions and I really felt connected with this person.

• 10:51Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely.

• 10:51Ed Mylett?

  So you're right.

• 10:52Charles Duhigg?

  Okay, so let me ask you a question if you don't mind.

• 10:53Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 10:54Charles Duhigg?

  So when you're in that Uber, when you're having that, what's the second or third question you ask? Cause, cause you could be like, hey, you know, where are you from? Oh, I'm from Europe. Like, what are you asking next to, to get you from the shallow to the deep?

• 11:07Ed Mylett?

  Oh, that's a really good question. I usually ask them, I, I open them up a little bit. I say, give me your craziest story.

• 11:12Charles Duhigg?

  Oh, interesting.

• 11:13Ed Mylett?

  So I actually ask them to give me one of their crazy ride stories. I'm actually fascinated by that. So it kinda opens them up and they get loose. I didn't do it tactically, but I found that like, wow, you're kidding me, that, do that. And then typically for me, just cause I'm most intrigued by it, I love to know about people's families. And I actually also think people love to talk about their families typically too. So usually I'll ask them, are you married? Do you have children? And I know that sounds like basic stuff, but I find for me that that's an entree into learning an awful lot about these folks.

• 11:41Charles Duhigg?

  What I love about that is that what, and I think you got this by intuition, is, is that, so these deep questions, if we ask people deep questions, deep questions are things that ask us about our values, our beliefs, or our experiences. So what's the craziest ride you've ever given someone is asking this guy about his experiences.

• 11:59Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 12:00Charles Duhigg?

  Right? Like, tell me about your kids. Like, what are your kids like? Is, at some point, he could just be like, I have two kids, but at some point you're probably gonna say like, oh, you know, do they like school? What do they like? Where do they go to school? Are you, are you worried about their future? You're gonna ask something that's gonna get him to reveal to you who he really is.

• 12:17Ed Mylett?

  You're right. And by the way, I always look at people like, I, I, this is an overall belief system. This person's a gift. I want to open them up. It's really how I look at them. And in this guy's case, I just got to tell you in this guy's case really quick, just an interjection. This dude was amazing. It turns out that the reason he's driving Uber is he has a daughter at Harvard and a son at Stanford, right? And he's putting them through school. And if you knew where this man came from, it was remarkable. And the pride he had in his children and his wife and that they had raised them and they were there. And it became this like really beautiful conversation where not only did I admire, I was like, whoa, this is incredible. The life you've built, the sacrifice you're making. And he had a full-time day job, drove. And it became kind of this conversation. We talked about our children and

• 13:01Ed Mylett?

  by the time I was done, I actually really had a connection with this man. That I probably won't, I'm talking about him on my podcast now, right? So let me ask you this.

• 13:09Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 13:10Ed Mylett?

  The details of the work, guys, we're going to get into now. There are really three conversation types, okay? I didn't know there were. I was kind of oblivious to this, but I think just this alone would enlighten people so they know which conversation they're in and they can identify it. So share some of that.

• 13:26Charles Duhigg?

  This is a big discovery from the last decade and we're kind of living through this golden age of understanding communication and for the first time in a new way. And what, what, the first thing that researchers have found is that we think of a discussion as being about one thing. We're talking about my book or we're talking about your kids. But actually, every conversation is made up, every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations that ebb and flow. And most of those different kinds of conversations fall into one of three buckets. There's a practical conversation where we're talking about plans or making decisions together or we're fixing problems. Politics is often this. There's an emotional conversation where if I tell you how I'm feeling about something, I do not want you to fix it for me.

• 14:08Charles Duhigg?

  I want you to acknowledge that you've heard it and I want you to tell me to, to sort of be vulnerable with me. And then there's a social conversation and a social conversation is about how we relate to each other in society. How we think other people see us, how our identities, right? How our identities shape how we see the world in different and interesting ways. And the key is there's this thing known as the matching principle, which is if I'm having an emotional conversation and you respond with a practical conversation, even though both of what we're saying is legit. We're not gonna hear each other.

• 14:41Ed Mylett?

  That is outstanding.

• 14:42Charles Duhigg?

  This happens at home, like I, with my spouse all the time. I come home, I've had a tough day at work, I'm complaining about my boss. My wife says, she solves the problem. She says, why don't you go and like take him out to lunch? You get to know each other better. And instead of being like, that's really good advice. I'm like, you don't understand, you're not listening to me.

• 15:00Ed Mylett?

  Very good, Charles.

• 15:01Charles Duhigg?

  So, so if she matches me and then invites me to match her, then we're having the same kind of conversation, then we can hear each other.

• 15:11Ed Mylett?

  You just explained 25 years of problems. No, because I'm coming home to an emotional conversation and I'm, I'm not in one sometimes. What about, what advice would you give to somebody who, I, we were talking about socially. I just moved and you were asking about the move and I said, I said, you know, I kind of revert back to myself socially and uh, I think I would categorize myself, it would surprise most people to listen to the show, but I'm very quiet and very shy. And I find a lot of public speakers are, by the way, a lot of entertainers privately are very, I'd call an introvert.

• 15:43Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Ed Mylett?

  You have any advice for an introvert as it comes to communication like this?

• 15:48Charles Duhigg?

  So I think, one of the things I heard you just say when you were talking about that Uber driver is, you got into the car.

• 15:54Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Charles Duhigg?

  And he had one identity, which is right wing.

• 15:58Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Charles Duhigg?

  And you asked him some deep questions that were easy to ask, like they didn't seem intimate. And he started telling you about his other identities. And once he, once he complicated himself, once he said like, look, I'm not just one thing. I'm three and four and five things. All of a sudden, it's easy to feel close to that person because some of those things he is, you are too. And so I think when it comes to introverts or when you move to a new place, like one of the things that I like to do is you meet someone at a party or a barbecue or whatever it is. And like I often ask them, you know, what do you do for a living? And then I'll often say, you know, they say, I'm a lawyer and I say, you know, do you love practicing the law? Like, did you just, did, what, what made you decide to become a lawyer? Like, when was the moment you decided to become a lawyer?

• 16:43Charles Duhigg?

  What inevitably they say is something that tells me about their other identities, which is, I became a lawyer because I saw my dad get arrested and I wanted to fight for the, for the underdog. Or I became a lawyer because we were poor and I wanted to always have enough money. Or I became a lawyer because I love intellectual stimulation. Like, think of those, those three answers just told me so much about those different people. And at that point, I can say to them, yeah, I grew up poor too. Like, I understand what that's like. And now, suddenly, we feel safe with each other. I think, this isn't necessarily true for introverts, but when we're in new social situations, and we were talking about how hard it is to make friends

• 17:24Charles Duhigg?

  when you don't have friends in a place. The thing that often stops us is just a little mild anxiety.

• 17:30Ed Mylett?

  You're right. Oh, I at least smiled with me.

• 17:32Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:33Ed Mylett?

  At least smiled with me.

• 17:34Charles Duhigg?

  And, and how are we gonna start the conversation? How are we gonna get out of the conversation? How, like?

• 17:38Ed Mylett?

  Okay, that's mine.

• 17:39Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 17:40Ed Mylett?

  I'm okay opening a conversation. How are you? You know, for me, it's, how does this end? How does this end? I bet everybody driving or listening is like, no, that's something I would like to know more about. If I'm on the bus next to- I have the most awkward finishes of conversations of any dude you've ever met in your life. I'm like, okay, well, hey. And I usually end up the conversation with some sort of BS or something. You're like, I'm gonna use the restroom.

• 18:04Charles Duhigg?

  Right, right, right.

• 18:05Ed Mylett?

  I don't know how to get away from you.

• 18:06Charles Duhigg?

  I have to go refresh my glass. I'm still half-full. So, okay, so, so actually, Daniel Gilbert at Harvard actually did an entire study trying to figure out how people end conversations.

• 18:17Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Charles Duhigg?

  And do, does the other person want to end at the same time you do? And what he found was two things. Number one, he found that you think I want you to end the conversation because I'm, I'm getting bored, and actually, I am enjoying this conversation. We do a difficult job of gauging the other person's interest in the conversation.

• 18:35Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 18:35Charles Duhigg?

  But then sometimes we want to end the conversation, right? And so this is, this is what super communicators do. They forecast it without committing to it immediately. So they say something like, oh, man, this is so interesting. I totally gotta go, like, freshen up my drink. But before I do, like, let me ask you, like, X. Because oftentimes, the, the end of the conversation feels hard because it feels awkward.

• 18:57Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 18:58Charles Duhigg?

  But if you've already set the table, and you're like, you're like, I gotta step away, but this is so fascinating. Let me ask you one more thing. Then, when they're done answering the question, you're like, oh, man, thank you so much. And you just turn away. That's not awkward.

• 19:09Ed Mylett?

  I love that. That's, that's pre-framing the conversation.

• 19:11Charles Duhigg?

  That's exactly right.

• 19:12Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 19:13Charles Duhigg?

  That's exactly right.

• 19:14Ed Mylett?

  A lot of what you're saying, I'm listening, is it has to do with the questions you're asking. I think a lot of people look at conversations or communication like, what am I telling somebody? What am I saying? And I'm sure there's an element of that that we'll get to in a minute, too. But so far, a lot of the things you've been suggesting involve questions you're asking somebody. And I have to say this to you. I'm amazed how many people I talk to in social environments and business environments that don't ask.

• 19:39Charles Duhigg?

  That never ask you questions. I know. I know. And I can't figure out, I think that for some of them, they're just not practiced at it. And it is, like, that's the thing about supercommunication. Anyone can be a supercommunicator. It's literally just a set of skills. Like, you just have to practice the skills and make them into habits. Nobody's born knowing how to do this. But I have the same, it drives me crazy. I ask question after question, and then they answer, and then they stop talking, and they're waiting for my next question. I'm like, like, does there any? So here's the thing. Here's the thing that, you're exactly right. Fifty percent, if not more, of a good conversation is asking good questions. But then something happens. There's a difference between a conversation and an interrogation, right? Or an interview.

• 20:22Charles Duhigg?

  And this gets into what's known as emotional reciprocity. And emotional reciprocity is basically one of the strongest impulses that all humans have. If somebody engages in emotional reciprocity, we can't help but feel a little bit closer and a little bit more trusting of them. So emotional reciprocity says, if you say something vulnerable.

• 20:41Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 20:42Charles Duhigg?

  And then I recognize, acknowledge that vulnerability, but I also show that I can be vulnerable. Then we're going to feel like we can trust each other. And so, and that's about speaking. So that doesn't mean if you say, my dad passed away, I should be like, oh, I understand completely, because my aunt passed away 12 years ago. Like, that's stealing the spotlight from you, right?

• 21:03Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 21:03Charles Duhigg?

  But if you say, my dad passed away, and I say. Oh, man, I like, I know how hard that can be. Like, tell me about your dad. What was he like?

• 21:11Ed Mylett?

  Oh, gosh, that was good.

• 21:13Charles Duhigg?

  Right? And then like, and then, and what I'm signaling to you is, A, I'm interested in you. I want to hear from you. I want to understand you. But B, you learned something about me.

• 21:22Ed Mylett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:23Charles Duhigg?

  And if you're interested, you can, you can say like, like, tell me, tell me how you know about this. Like, what happened?

• 21:29Ed Mylett?

  What about being, being the server first, serving the vulnerability first?

• 21:34Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a guy named Nick Appley at the University of Chicago who's in the book. And like, Nick is so good at this. Every conversation I've ever had with him, he says something in the conversation, near the start of the conversation, that feels so intimate.

• 21:49Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 21:50Charles Duhigg?

  And as a result, I'm just like, I love this guy. Like, I just want to talk to him. And again, when I look at the transcripts, because I'm oftentimes talking to him for reporting, and when I read the transcript, it doesn't seem too intimate. It doesn't seem overly intimate. But he says things like, you know, "Hey, Nick, how are you doing?" Like, instead of saying, "Oh, fine," says something like, "Yo, it's great. I like went to my son's soccer game this weekend." It was, and like, we adopted these kids from Ethiopia. And like, just watching them now as these like, strong young men. Like, it was, it was a great weekend.

• 22:22Ed Mylett?

  Brother, you're on it.

• 22:23Charles Duhigg?

  Right. And he's offered that up. And at that point, I'm like, man, I'll tell you all about myself.

• 22:27Ed Mylett?

  Let me tell you about me. I think I also trust you more when you do that.

• 22:31Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely.

• 22:31Ed Mylett?

  I think when someone's so surface all the time, and by the way, this applies for a lot of you that are in sales, too.

• 22:36Charles Duhigg?

  Yes.

• 22:36Ed Mylett?

  Being willing to be a little bit vulnerable, not always the expert, but a little bit vulnerable, a little bit transparent, a little bit revealing. I believe it's, well, I think it's just a better way to live, but it does bond and connect you. It makes you human. Oftentimes, when you're in sales, people look at you like you're almost their adversary. Like, I can't trust this guy.

• 22:54Charles Duhigg?

  That's right.

• 22:55Ed Mylett?

  Or this lady. But when you begin to show some vulnerability and some authenticity, I think that's when you start to break down the barriers. And I've found that in my own life.

• 23:03Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. Trust is huge, right? I mean, so, so we have, communication is humans' superpower. Like, it's the reason, as a species, we have been so successful, is that we can talk to each other and we can build, we can share knowledge, we can build families and communities. All of that is based on communication. And communication over the millennia has been hardwired into our brain. And so as a result, when- When somebody communicates well with me, I trust them because I literally have two million years of evolution in my head that says, "Trust the guy who it seems like can, wants to understand you and that is sharing with you."

• 23:43Ed Mylett?

  I agree. This is so good. This is probably gonna go a little longer than normal.

• 23:47Charles Duhigg?

  No, I love it. I love it.

• 23:49Ed Mylett?

  I really love this, right? Um, I just think, I hope those of you that are listening or watching, understand the importance in your life, as I said earlier, of getting good at this because it's the cap on your bliss, it's the cap on your laughter, it's the cap on your intimacy, it's the cap on your influence and persuasion.

• 24:04Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 24:05Ed Mylett?

  What about difficult conversations?

• 24:09Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Ed Mylett?

  Are those different in nature and are they, I mean, having to, you know, say, "Listen, your job performance isn't very good," or "I'm frustrated with you," or, you know, something that's, you know, you're going into it and going, "Gosh, I wish I didn't have to have this conversation, but I do."

• 24:25Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, or sometimes they catch you off-guard, right? Where like, "I'm talking about one thing and all of a sudden I realize you're furious at me. Like, I didn't pick up on that until just now." And so, the answer is, they abide by the same rules, but the fact that you're in conflict changes the context enormously. Because we were just talking about trust, right? I can establish trust by, by sharing something about myself, but if you go into a conversation where there's conflict, trust is already out the window, right? Like, you're, you're, you're fight or flighters going off in your head like crazy. You can't trust someone easily just because like, they ask you a question. So, and this has been a focus of a lot of study. How do we make conversations in conflict better? And there's basically two things.

• 25:08Charles Duhigg?

  The first one is, I mentioned this looping for understanding, right? Asking a question, repeating back what you heard, and then, and then asking if you got it right. That's enormously powerful in conflict. Because the first thing, the first suspicion I have, if you disagree with me and we're in conflict with each other, is you're waiting your turn to speak.

• 25:28Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 25:28Charles Duhigg?

  You're not hearing what I'm saying, right? You're just waiting there and like, "I'm gonna tell you my piece and then you're gonna just bulldoze over me and I'm gonna bulldoze back." So if you interrupt that by proving you are listening, using looping for understanding to prove, "I really wanna understand what you're saying, help me understand," I'm taking a huge amount of mistrust off the table. The second thing that often happens in conflict, and this happens a lot in marriages, this actually comes from marriage therapy and studies of marriage therapy, is that...

• 25:57Charles Duhigg?

  It is natural when we feel threatened to want to control things. And the easiest thing to control is the other person. So you tell me your thing and I'm like, no, no, no, you don't know the evidence. Let me show you the evidence. You say something and you're like, I'm not even gonna listen to this. I try and control you. I try and tell you what you should believe, what you should feel. That's toxic, right? In a marriage, that is the thing that destroys a marriage. The alternative is, I have a need for control, you have a need for control, we feel threatened. Can we find things to control together? So for instance, can we control the timing of this fight? Instead of having it at two in the morning, can we wait till it's 10 a.m. and we're both a little bit more rested? Can we control ourselves?

• 26:42Charles Duhigg?

  Can I let you know, I'm gonna take a second before I speak and I'm gonna think about what you just said. Can I show you that I'm trying to control myself and invite you to control yourself? And the third thing is, we can control the boundaries of the conflict itself. So one of the most toxic patterns in marriages is this thing called kitchen sinking, where we start arguing about like, where we're gonna go for New Year's? And then like five minutes later, it's like, and your mother hates me and you don't earn enough money? And like, why are you such a jerk all the time, right? So a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything. The healthy way to do that is to say, we need to have a fight, like we have a disagreement on something. Let's control the boundaries of it.

• 27:27Charles Duhigg?

  We're talking about New Year's Eve. If my mother comes up and your money comes up, like, we're just gonna set it aside. That's another conversation, another day. But then, when we're controlling these three things, we're controlling, we're controlling ourselves, we're controlling the environment and we're controlling the boundaries of the fight or the conflict.

• 27:47Charles Duhigg?

  We're controlling those as partners. Right? We're on the same side of the table. We might not agree on the topic we're discussing.

• 27:53Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 27:53Charles Duhigg?

  But you and I are partners now in controlling the right things in this fight, instead of trying to control each other.

• 27:59Ed Mylett?

  That's outstanding. When you're talking about relationships and family, where my, first off, I've made those mistakes.

• 28:06Charles Duhigg?

  Me too.

• 28:06Ed Mylett?

  I'm a pretty good kitchen sinker, now that you term it that way.

• 28:09Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Ed Mylett?

  And so, I think I've gotten better at it. I also think the longer with you, you're with somebody, you have more stuff in the sink. And so it's even more important to avoid that and have that control of the parameters around the conversation.

• 28:22Charles Duhigg?

  Right. How long have you been married for?

• 28:24Ed Mylett?

  Twenty-six years.

• 28:25Charles Duhigg?

  Okay, so I'm coming up on twenty, and I'm sure this has happened to you, but tell me if I'm getting this wrong. Which is, there are these things, literally, I can say two words, and I know the entire fight in my wife's head. Right? It's like, and sometimes I don't even mean to say them, I'm just like, I'm like, I'm like, well, you know, it's because like, I earn more money than you. And then I'm like, oh, nuts.

• 28:47Ed Mylett?

  There we go.

• 28:48Charles Duhigg?

  I just stepped in it, like, to kitchen sink it, all I had to say was literally three words.

• 28:53Ed Mylett?

  You brought the whole sink?

• 28:54Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, and so the immediate thing I do is I'm like, I'm like, I'm sorry.

• 28:58Ed Mylett?

  Whoops.

• 28:58Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, I did not mean to do that. Like, tell me what you're feeling, because I want to, I want to give you a chance, but like...

• 29:04Ed Mylett?

  You know what? I've gotten better at that, Charles, with my kids too, of saying, you know what, I'm sorry, let me take that right back. Whereas before, I'd almost double down, or they didn't really feel it that bad, it'll be brushed under, and... No, sometimes you just have to, in the moment, go, I'm gonna yank that one back.

• 29:19Charles Duhigg?

  And not only are you connecting with them, but think about the modeling you're doing.

• 29:22Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 29:22Charles Duhigg?

  You're teaching them how to communicate with other people. Like, I'm absolutely certain your kids are gonna copy that, without even realizing it comes from dad.

• 29:29Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. You're making me think of young people when you say that. I want you to give you, can we teach this to young people? I'll tell you why I ask.

• 29:35Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Ed Mylett?

  I have great conversations with my kids. Bella, don't take this the wrong way, sweetheart, when you're listening to this, but lately with my daughter... I love doing kind of dates with my daughter and I. She's a sophomore in college. And I watch her with other people, she's quite the conversationalist. But with me, and she's not disinterested, but when we're talking, there's a lot of, yep. Yeah. Right. Uh huh. And at one point, we were taking a walk on the beach over Christmas, and I said, Bella, this is kind of a serve and volley type thing here, like I serve and you return the serve, and then I hit the ball back to you, and you hit it back to me, to your point of, ask me something.

• 30:11Charles Duhigg?

  Right.

• 30:11Ed Mylett?

  You know, so, so it made me wonder, is there anything different? And maybe she's not even quite at that age I'm talking about, but if I have an eight, a nine, a 10-year-old. I'm always blown away when I meet a child who is a tremendous communicator, makes eye contact, shakes your hand. Mr. Mylett, how are you? What do you do? Like, when they ask, I'm like, automatically what I think? These are great parents.

• 30:33Charles Duhigg?

  Yes.

• 30:34Ed Mylett?

  I think immediately. These are tremendous parents. So is there anything with young people that can, that these skills can be taught? Anything unique that you would say that goes with young?

• 30:43Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. So I think that there's two things. Let's talk about the older kids first, like your daughter's age. So I had a friend whose daughter just went to college, and he had a conversation with her before he left, which I've now imitated and I love. He sat down with her and he was like, look, you're definitely going to call us when something important happens in your life. But if that's the only time you call, then by definition, you're not calling us that frequently. Like, we're going to lose contact with each other. So what I want you to do is I want you to call me for the unimportant things. You had a, you had a bad day, but it's not a big deal. You ate something good for lunch. You're working on this paper and it's kind of interesting. You know, we don't have to talk for more than five or seven minutes, right? But I want you to call me and tell me about the unimportant stuff, because the important stuff will take care of its, of itself.

• 31:28Charles Duhigg?

  And that, and, and so my son went off to boarding school, he's at boarding school right now, um, here in California, and it's his first year there. He's in 10th grade, and I told him this. He calls me every day.

• 31:40Ed Mylett?

  Very, very.

• 31:40Charles Duhigg?

  I actually talk more to this kid with him at boarding school than I did when he was at home.

• 31:44Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 31:45Charles Duhigg?

  So for older kids, that's the thing, is to, is to say, this is a priority, like, conversation is something, none of us are born super communicators, we can all learn how to do it. This is a skill you should practice and it's because it's important. For the younger kids, it's a little bit harder, right?

• 32:01Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 32:01Charles Duhigg?

  But I think for them, this is where the deep questions become so powerful. So my younger one, same thing, how was school today? Good. What'd you learn? Nothing, right? Like, so, and, and so some of the advice is like, be like, oh, well, you know, did pirates show up today? And you can do that a couple of times. But at some point, if you ask them a question where, where you're asking them to tell you who they are? Like, like, like, uh, I know that you said that you like science more than you like math. I'm just wondering, like, why? Like, what is it? Was it about science? Like, I mean, is science important to you? Like, you, you told me you wanted to hang out with your friend and I'm just wondering, like, what is it? What do you like about that friend? Like, what is special to him?

• 32:44Charles Duhigg?

  What's great about that is that, first of all, it's clearly not judgmental, right? Whereas if I'm like, what'd you learn today? I'm kind of judging.

• 32:52Ed Mylett?

  Good point.

• 32:52Charles Duhigg?

  You, you better, she should have learned something today.

• 32:54Ed Mylett?

  Very good point.

• 32:55Charles Duhigg?

  But second of all, I'm, I'm matching him and I'm allowing him to set the stage. It's not that he's playing on my ball court. I'm saying to him, tell me your ball court. And that's powerful.

• 33:07Ed Mylett?

  Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. This episode is sponsored by Ro. A lot of people assume GLP-1's cost a fortune and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment. Ro helps people find a more affordable path to FDA-approved GLP-1 treatment. Ro wants to help people lose weight. That's why they have more affordable GLP-1 options, whether you're paying with insurance or cash. Ro's free insurance checker makes it easy to see if you're covered for GLP-1 injections. Just submit your insurance card and Ro handles the rest. No paperwork, no waiting on hold, no confusing phone calls. And if insurance doesn't cover treatment, there are still options.

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• 35:22Ed Mylett?

  You do a lot of gestures when you talk.

• 35:24Charles Duhigg?

  Oh, yeah?

• 35:25Ed Mylett?

  I don't know if you noticed that. Well, you're expressive in your face. This is, this may not even be in the book, but I want to ask you about it. So you're expressive with your face. You use your hands. And I'm wondering if nonverbal cues are part of being a super communicator. Because I've had people say, I'm really excited to be here. And I'm like, you should tell your face. You should, you should email your face and let them know that you're excited to be here. So I think a lot of it is I'm reading things you're not saying when I talk to somebody as well.

• 35:52Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, and I think that's exactly right. And to be a super communicator, you don't have to have nonverbal, right? Because there's people who, like, on the phone are fantastic. If you're good at one thing, you're usually good at everything.

• 36:01Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 36:01Charles Duhigg?

  But similarly with you, like, you clearly telegraph, nonverbally or non-linguistically, you telegraph your interests. You telegraph what you're hearing. And that's very, very powerful. And there's a kind of a science behind it. And we've learned a lot of it from looking at laughter. So the interesting thing about laughter is studies show that about 80% of the time when all of us laugh, it is not in response to something funny.

• 36:26Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 36:26Charles Duhigg?

  Right, so we've laughed a couple of times in this, in this interview. But I haven't said anything that funny, right? Like, you just laughed. I'm not that funny a guy. So what happens when we laugh? What a laugh actually is, is it's saying to the other person, I want to connect with you. I'm going to show you that I want to connect with you. And then when they laugh back, and 90% of the time when I laugh, the person I'm talking to will laugh back. They're saying, I want to connect back.

• 36:53Ed Mylett?

  That's tremendous.

• 36:54Charles Duhigg?

  So that's a non-linguistic communication. And what I love is actually NASA for a time.

• 36:59Ed Mylett?

  I was gonna ask you this, yeah, so glad, yeah.

• 37:00Charles Duhigg?

  So they were trying to figure out how to find emotionally intelligent astronauts.

• 37:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, you're going to.

• 37:06Charles Duhigg?

  And, and like, the problem is, everyone who applies to be an astronaut, if you make it to the final stages, you're, you're like a golden boy or girl, right?

• 37:12Ed Mylett?

  Thousand percent.

• 37:13Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah, you know how to answer every question. You've practiced everything. And they're like, we can't figure out who's actually emotionally intelligent and who fakes it really, really well. But when they're in space on a six-month mission, the difference is going to matter a lot.

• 37:26Ed Mylett?

  Huge, yeah.

• 37:27Charles Duhigg?

  So this one psychologist, he started realizing, if I pay attention to how people laugh, most importantly, do they match my laughter? So he would come into a room and he would accidentally spill papers accidentally. He actually did it on purpose. And then he would laugh uproariously and he would watch what the candidate would do. Some candidates would be like, haha, because you know you're supposed to laugh, right? And then other people would be like, haha, that's, let me help you with that. Like, I, the astronauts who matched him, not just on laughter, but he would tell a sad story and see if the other person, if the other person empathized, if they, if they engaged in reciprocity, if they asked him questions about it.

• 38:08Charles Duhigg?

  So that's non-linguistic, but it tells us whether that person wants to, to connect. And that's ultimately, I think when I'm making gestures, I'm inviting you to, I'm inviting you in, right? I'm saying like, like, here, here I am, like, I want you to see what I'm seeing.

• 38:26Ed Mylett?

  I hope what everybody's getting out of this is like, these are skills that can be learned. There's an art and a science to this. You said, I'm glad you asked, I was gonna ask you about the NASA thing. You also said emotional intelligence, so. I just feel like that's at the root of what we're talking about here.

• 38:41Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Ed Mylett?

  So, how big of a component is just being sort of, I think also, let me say this. Emotionally aware is another word that I would use as well. Emotionally aware is a part of having emotional intelligence. Do you agree with that?

• 38:54Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely. So, this phrase emotional intelligence is actually kind of a misnomer because it makes us think it's like IQ.

• 39:01Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 39:02Charles Duhigg?

  We're either born with it or you're not, but it's not. Emotional intelligence is emotional awareness.

• 39:07Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 39:07Charles Duhigg?

  If I say to myself, and I train myself to say, a priority is noticing when someone else is feeling something. And matching that, and giving them the space for that. That is emotional intelligence. That's the thing that's gonna make, make it feel like you understand them, that you can empathize with them. And it's, it's, it's not hard, right? It's just about making it a priority.

• 39:30Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. There's, in the book, a lot of examples of that. There's actually just great stories in the book. Give me one, because I want them to get the book, so I don't want to do the whole book. But, give me one story from the book that's sort of illustrative of just, you thought was one of the more interesting stories in the book. So they have an understanding, because what's great about the way Charles writes this book, is that there's like, points and tactics. And then I like the story to sort of reinforce it. And for me, facts tell, stories sell. I remember stories. And so I like the way that you weave these into the work.

• 40:01Charles Duhigg?

  And that's why there's so many stories in there, is because it's, they're so much easier to remember. So one of my favorite stories is, is early in the book. It's about Jim Loller, the CIA agent.

• 40:10Ed Mylett?

  So good.

• 40:10Charles Duhigg?

  So Jim, Jim is this guy who I've talked to a number of times. He, he's awesome. He, um, he became a CIA officer when he was in his 30s. And he wanted this so bad. He like, he struggled for the, like, he just ran after this so hard. It was like, he was desperate to be a CIA officer. They accept him, they send him off to training, and then they send him to Europe to recruit foreign assets. And he finds out, he's the worst recruiter on earth. Like, literally, he would go to like, parties, and he's, and like, he couldn't make conversation. He would like, try and buddy up with people, and they're like, you're a spy, aren't you? You're trying to get me to be a spy. They're like, I'm gonna report you to the, to the authorities. You're gonna get deported. So he's like freaking out, because he's like, I'm terrible at this.

• 40:52Charles Duhigg?

  And then someone in his, in his office says, look, there's this woman coming into town. She's from the Middle East. She works for the Foreign Ministry. Why don't you get to know her a little bit and see if there's anything there? So he bumps into her at a restaurant the next day, right? Bumps. Okay. And he introduces himself as an oil speculator, strikes up a conversation, takes her to lunch the next day, they start sightseeing together, sort of develops a little bit of a relationship. He goes and he says to his boss, "I think I'm recruiting this woman, I think she's gonna be an asset for us." And then he, and his boss is like, "That's fantastic, I'm glad to hear it." He goes, he has dinner with this woman, Fatma, and he says, "I'm not an oil speculator, I work for the CIA." Now Fatma had been telling him, she comes from a, he never told me which nation, but it's pretty obvious which one it is. Right.

• 41:37Charles Duhigg?

  She comes from a nation that recently had a religious theocracy revolution. And so the, the fundamentalists have all taken over and she hates it. She's like, she's like, "They're making women wear hijabs, they're telling us we can't go to college, I wanna fight this, but I don't know how." And so Jim Lawler says to her, the most practical thing possible, he's like, "We want the same thing you do, like, we want, we wanna free the people of your country, we wanna empower women. Work for me for the CIA." And she grabs the table and starts shaking her head and she starts crying and she goes, "No, no, I'm not gonna do it." And just has a meltdown. And she says, "They kill people in my country for doing this.

• 42:19Charles Duhigg?

  I cannot believe that you have put me at risk simply by striking up a friendship, 'cause if they ever find out you're in the CIA, they're gonna think, 'I'm in the CIA.'" And she just, she just bolts. And Lawler's like, "Ah, I'm terrible at this, like, I'm such a bad recruiter." So he goes back to his boss and he tells him what happened. His boss is like, "Dude, I already told Washington DC you recruited her as a spy, like, like, you're gonna get fired if you can't close the deal on this. This is, this is your last chance, that's why we gave it to you." So Jim spends all this time trying to figure out, "How do I, what do I do?" And he, he keeps on calling Fatma and eventually she picks up and he invites her to go to dinner. A couple nights before she's gonna fly back home.

• 43:02Charles Duhigg?

  And she says yes, 'cause he says he's taking her to an expensive restaurant. And he has a notebook full, full of ideas on how to convert her. And he knows, none of them are gonna work. Like, you cannot trick someone into taking a suicidal risk. Right. Right? It's just not gonna... So he goes to dinner and she's in a, she's really down, 'cause she's like, "You know, I came to Europe, I thought I was gonna learn something about how to..." How to be more myself or how to change the world and I'm just going home and I'm the same person. And what he starts trying to do is cheer her up. He tells her little stories. He reminisces about when they, you know, went sightseeing together. And she just gets more and more glum.

• 43:46Charles Duhigg?

  And finally dessert comes and they're kind of by themselves at the table and Jim thinks to himself like, should I try to like, recruit her again? And he's like, if I do that, she's literally going to stand up and walk away. So what he decides to do is he decides like, this isn't going to work. I'm giving up. I'm just going to have a real conversation. I'm going to be honest. And he starts saying to her, look, I know how you feel because I feel exactly the same way. I like, I wanted this job my entire life and it turns out I'm terrible at it. I am so disappointed in myself. And I don't know how I'm going to go home and tell my dad that like, I failed. I got fired by the CIA. And he talks this way.

• 44:28Charles Duhigg?

  Now, what he's doing, obviously, without even realizing it, is he's matching her. He's matching. Right? She was, she was glum and he was trying to cheer her up. That's not matching. Yep. He was matching her and she's, she's listening to this and she starts crying and he's like, I'm such a jerk. And in the CIA, you have to report every conversation. So he's going to have to write up a memo and he's like, those guys are going to fire me within seconds. Like, they're just going to laugh. And he reaches over and he pats her arm and he's like, I'm so sorry. I did not mean to make you cry. I am sorry. And she says, no, no, I think I can do this. And then, and he's so inexperienced. He actually, the first thing's out of his mouth is like, no, no, no, you don't have to do that. Like, you don't have to like, because he wasn't trying to manipulate her. He was just trying to- He finally wasn't. Yeah, he finally wasn't trying to manipulate her. And he's like, no, no, I don't want to put you at risk. You don't have to do it.

• 45:13Charles Duhigg?

  And she's like, she says, no, no. What you want is important. I, I think we can do this together. So for the first time, she was able to hear him. She was able to hear all those things that he had said over weeks and weeks and weeks about helping the women of her country. She couldn't hear it until he matched her. Next day, she goes to a safe house. She gets trained in covert communications and other stuff. She's the best source in the Middle East for the next 20 years.

• 45:41Ed Mylett?

  Unbelievable.

• 45:42Charles Duhigg?

  And Jim Lawler becomes one of the top recruiters in the entire CIA. He teaches it today.

• 45:46Ed Mylett?

  It's one of the best stories ever.

• 45:47Charles Duhigg?

  I love that story.

• 45:49Ed Mylett?

  Let's go, I'm gonna pick it apart a little so people understand the dynamic in there. So when you say matching, was it that she was in an emotional conversation and he wasn't? Is that what you mean by that?

• 45:56Charles Duhigg?

  That's a huge part of it.

• 45:57Ed Mylett?

  Okay, he was also vulnerable.

• 45:58Charles Duhigg?

  But he was also vulnerable. So she was, not only was she in an emotional conversation, but he was listening to the type of emotion that she was transmitting, right? Instead of saying like, "Oh, you shouldn't feel bad, I'm gonna cheer you up." He was saying like, "Look, you feel bad. Like, let's just acknowledge that." And that matching feels good, because it feels like someone's hearing us.

• 46:17Ed Mylett?

  I think it's a huge thing. I don't ever like saying gender-specific stuff, because I don't believe it. But I do think by and large, those two elements, women are better at naturally. Meaning, I think they're more naturally vulnerable in a conversation than a man can be. I just, and I don't even like saying this, but I just, I think in general, most people would agree with me. And then secondly, I think men try to fix things often, more often, so that when there is an emotional conversation you're in, we just wanna fix it or solve the problem, or be the savior, or be valuable, or be important, rather than just be with somebody and acknowledge your emotion.

• 46:50Charles Duhigg?

  It's not always men and women, right?

• 46:51Ed Mylett?

  Sure, it's not. It's definitely not, but it's more prevalent, I think.

• 46:55Charles Duhigg?

  And I think what's happening there is, we're falling, falling back on what feels comfortable to us.

• 47:00Ed Mylett?

  Right, it is for sure.

• 47:01Charles Duhigg?

  So, so if you're saying something emotional, and I get super practical and it pisses you off, it's not so much that like, I actually think we should be practical, it's that I'm uncomfortable with emotion.

• 47:12Ed Mylett?

  There you go.

• 47:13Charles Duhigg?

  And so I'm trying, I'm going back to my safe place.

• 47:15Ed Mylett?

  There you go.

• 47:16Charles Duhigg?

  And, and actually... That safe place is emotional, right? Like, like, like, the reason I'm trying to solve your problem is like, it really bothers me that you're upset. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you're upset. I want to make you feel better. I feel like that's my job and I feel like I'm letting you down and myself down. Like, that is emotional, right?

• 47:34Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 47:35Charles Duhigg?

  I'm just, I'm just disguising it as a practical conversation because that's my, that's my safe space.

• 47:41Ed Mylett?

  That's my pattern. That's how I hide.

• 47:42Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 47:43Ed Mylett?

  That's a zillion percent right. I, I told you we're gonna go a bit long, so we're gonna.

• 47:46Charles Duhigg?

  Absolutely.

• 47:47Ed Mylett?

  Okay, let me ask you this. This is a hard one and, and so I keep using the term non-verbal. I've used that, I, let me, let me couch it a little differently.

• 47:55Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 47:55Ed Mylett?

  Literally non-verbal.

• 47:56Charles Duhigg?

  Okay.

• 47:57Ed Mylett?

  So, types of communication that are not done verbally. Meaning.

• 48:00Charles Duhigg?

  Email.

• 48:02Ed Mylett?

  Mail, written, email, text, whatever.

• 48:04Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Ed Mylett?

  I have found for me, if I'm transparent with people, I feel like I've, I'm a pretty darn good verbal communicator. I've also found my friends that are hyper-verbal people, in general, again, in other generality, aren't so good in the written word. And for some reason, when I write or text, it comes across as harsh, curt, um, sometimes aloof. I, my writing style does not make the impact in text or email that my verbal style does. And I, I'm really not very good at that. So, what about tip, tips or keys on that?

• 48:39Charles Duhigg?

  So, what's going on there? So, so it's interesting. If we were having this conversation, um, about a hundred years ago, a little bit under a hundred years ago, when phones first became popular, what we would be talking about, and there were all these articles that said this, no one will ever be able to communicate on the telephone well. Because unless you can see someone, you're not gonna figure out what's going on in their voice. You're, you're not like, like, telephone communication is basically gonna be for like, sending over like grocery orders. Now, you and I are both Gen X, right? Like, when we were kids, we were on the phone for like, seven hours a night.

• 49:09Ed Mylett?

  A hundred percent.

• 49:09Charles Duhigg?

  I can have, I have a friendship, I have friendships where I only talk to the person on the phone.

• 49:14Ed Mylett?

  So do I. And I, I still remember the phone numbers of my friends when I was a kid. I don't know anybody's phone number now, but I know Andy Querin's phone number.

• 49:21Charles Duhigg?

  Yes, right? Right, it's like, in there.

• 49:23Ed Mylett?

  Right, it's true.

• 49:24Charles Duhigg?

  And so what's interesting is if, if we were to watch ourselves talking on the phone, what we would Find is that we behave a little bit differently on the phone. When you're on the phone, people tend to over enunciate because they know that they can't see us. Right? We tend to explain ourselves a little bit more and when we make a joke, we laugh faster to let the other person know it's a joke. We know that they don't have the visual signal and so we're trying to compensate by giving them more audio. So. Now, the thing is, we've been talking on the phones for over, over a hundred years. We've been communicating face to face for millennia. The first email was sent in 1982, right? Most people didn't get an email account until the late 90s. We basically have 20 years of learning how to, how to communicate digitally.

• 50:06Ed Mylett?

  Good point.

• 50:08Charles Duhigg?

  We have not, though, the rules about how that channel is different have not become intuitive yet. So the solution is we have to think about it more when we're texting or emailing. And we have to say to ourselves, okay, and these are the tips. When I am online and I'm communicating that way. Politeness matters a lot more than when I'm face to face. And study after study has shown this, that if you say please and thank you in an email. There's like 70% higher response rate.

• 50:35Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 50:36Charles Duhigg?

  Because, because I need to signal it, right? If I'm, now, if I'm texting you, I can be short. But if I send you an email and I treat it like a text, unless we're good friends.

• 50:49Ed Mylett?

  That's my problem.

• 50:49Charles Duhigg?

  Like, it's gonna, it's gonna rub you the wrong way, right? So part of it is just saying, what are the rules for this particular channel? Cause our instinct is to say, the rules for one channel is the rules for every channel.

• 51:01Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 51:02Charles Duhigg?

  So we treat email and text and Slack and everything exactly the same way. But the truth is, if you just take a second and you say like, oh, I don't have to say please necessarily in this text, because it could be short. But every email I should like bend over backwards, be a little bit more polite. It works wonders.

• 51:17Ed Mylett?

  Brother, I'm such a bad emailer. I, I'm so lazy with emails. I sometimes don't even put my name at the end of it. You know what I mean? Never mind a thank you. I think I'm the worst emailer that's ever lived and I've had a lot of people. Even that I've worked with, you know, even like in the podcast space with like, man, when I met you, you're so nice and kind about read your emails. You're scary. Really? I didn't mean it that way. I was just trying to get to the point so we could go do something else. I thought email was the faster way, but you're 100% right. The rules of engagement, so to speak, are something that I've been oblivious to. That right there was huge for me.

• 51:46Charles Duhigg?

  And sometimes you can establish new rules, right? Like if you say to your employees, like, "Look, I just want you to know, I'm gonna send you brusque emails because like I'm moving a million miles an hour. You should not read anything into that."

• 51:58Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Charles Duhigg?

  Now we know the rule.

• 52:00Ed Mylett?

  Well, now I've pre-framed it, but I don't do that.

• 52:02Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Ed Mylett?

  And I treat everybody like they should know better. And they don't. And by the way, the worst thing I'll do is I'll get a nice, long, you know, six paragraph email and I reply with like seven words.

• 52:11Charles Duhigg?

  Right.

• 52:11Ed Mylett?

  And I wonder why they feel dismissed.

• 52:13Charles Duhigg?

  Sounds great.

• 52:13Ed Mylett?

  In a conversation, that's my daughter. Yep.

• 52:15Charles Duhigg?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Ed Mylett?

  Uh huh. Right. That's my, that's the extent of my emails. So you're 1000% right.

• 52:20Charles Duhigg?

  My son texts me, "K." He doesn't even put, "Okay." He just puts "K." I'm like, "How much lazier can you get?"

• 52:26Ed Mylett?

  I relate to that.

• 52:27Charles Duhigg?

  But that, that setting the ground rules, setting, like figuring out the rules together, we can do that in a conversation too. So if we're talking about, say, race, right? Which is a tough, a tough topic. If I start that conversation by saying, "I'd like to talk to you about this, and I just want to acknowledge it's gonna, it will likely be awkward." I will probably make mistakes and say things that I don't really, I'm not saying it the right way. You're probably gonna make mistakes. Like, I think just as a, as a ground rule, like, let's just say it's okay to say things and forgive each other.

• 52:58Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 52:59Charles Duhigg?

  For not getting it right. So now we've established that, now all of a sudden that conversation about race feels so much easier.

• 53:04Ed Mylett?

  Right. We're both open, we're both vulnerable, we've both given ourselves some space to make a mistake and share our real thoughts. And the other thing is, if you don't create that space, then you're really not saying what you really think either, and it's not an authentic exchange.

• 53:16Charles Duhigg?

  That's exactly.

• 53:17Ed Mylett?

  I agree. When you ask for permission. I'm gonna ask you two more things.

• 53:21Charles Duhigg?

  Sure.

• 53:21Ed Mylett?

  Okay. You said earlier something about repeating back to someone, "Hey, what I think I heard you say was, help me understand this." Right? I love that and totally agree.

• 53:29Charles Duhigg?

  So, so sorry, go ahead.

• 53:30Ed Mylett?

  Go ahead. Well, I want you to reply with that. And then also, what about, the conversation's been over to me. What I think, what I feel the most listened to? You and I had lunch together, okay? And you did that. But 7:30 that night, I get a message from you. You're gone, I'm gone, and you say, I just want to tell you something. I enjoyed our conversation so much, and the way that you spoke about your wife, or what you shared about blah, blah, blah. I just want to tell you, it was so meaningful for me. To me, that's like what you suggested on steroids, that actually, after the conversation has ended, I come back later and say, not only have I listened to what you said, but I've been thinking about what you said, and it made a difference to me. I just want to share that I do that, and I think that's a way of me saying, I really value and appreciate what we discussed.

• 54:15Charles Duhigg?

  And it feels so good. I've gotten an email like that from you, and like, it felt really good to get it. And it was a great conversation.

• 54:22Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 54:22Charles Duhigg?

  But like, to know that it was meaningful to you, and it's much like laughing, it's you saying like, I want to connect.

• 54:27Ed Mylett?

  You wanted to say something, and I think I jumped in front of it.

• 54:29Charles Duhigg?

  Oh, I was just going to talk about this looping for understanding, these three. So, so looping for understanding, there's three steps to it. You, you ask a question, hopefully a deep question, repeat back in your own words what you heard someone say.

• 54:41Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 54:42Charles Duhigg?

  And then step number three, ask if you got it right.

• 54:45Ed Mylett?

  Ask if you got it right?

• 54:46Charles Duhigg?

  Because, and it's that third step that we often forget to do, and is the most powerful.

• 54:51Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 54:51Charles Duhigg?

  Because what I'm saying when I ask you if I got it right, and I, I do this all the time, I'm like, like, let me tell you what I hear you saying, and like, like, tell me if I'm getting this wrong. Is that we are saying to them, not only do I want to understand you, I acknowledge that I might have missed something, and you, you might have phrased it in a way that doesn't actually capture what you want. And so like, when someone says that to me, when they're like, tell me if I'm getting this right, and they repeat back what I just said, I actually find it valuable as the speaker, because I'm like, no, no, no, you, like, I did a bad job of explaining, like, the, the thing that, like, I really care about, because you didn't pick up on it, and you were listening.

• 55:29Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 55:30Charles Duhigg?

  I need to get better at that, and that feels good.

• 55:32Ed Mylett?

  That's outstanding. All right, last question. First off, let me say this. This is awesome.

• 55:37Charles Duhigg?

  Oh, thank you.

• 55:38Ed Mylett?

  And I, uh, both times we've had to interact together like this, it flies by for me. And frankly, that's because you're a super communicator. As are you. Well, thank you. And the quality of your work. Listen, guys, there's a lot of books. This man doesn't write a ton of them because they're so good when he writes them. There's so much in here, even in today's podcast, like, I hope you understand the value of getting good at these, what I would call almost nuances that make all the difference in the world. So this is a broad question, just framing it differently. I want to finish with it. And thank you for that, by the way. It's true. My guest today is, uh, writing his 88th book, and he's also one of the greatest communicators who's ever lived. John Maxwell, welcome back to the show, brother.

• 56:22John Maxwell?

  Ed, it's so good to be with you.

• 56:23Ed Mylett?

  You do something, you talk about in the book, we might as well just start there. You have the ability to take really complicated things and make them seem simple.

• 56:31John Maxwell?

  Yeah.

• 56:31Ed Mylett?

  And you talk about that as actually one of the laws in the book of being able to be a great communicator. Is that something that you do? I'm sure you do it intentionally, but do you do it naturally?

• 56:42John Maxwell?

  Well, I do it intentionally. Uh, let me say this. Um, I was a good, good student, but I wasn't a great student. And so a lot of times when I was in college or in a classroom, I would want the professor to break it down and make it much more simple. I would look around the room. I said, am I the only one that's having a hard time here and, and, and not maybe grasping and, and learning like I need to? And so I, really as a student, I worked on helping. When I would hear a talk, I would say, how could that be reduced so I can apply it to my life? And so it almost started as a, as a student. And, and I learned to reduce things and, and bring them down. And I tell people all the time, I'm a communicator, not an educator.

• 57:25John Maxwell?

  You know, an educator takes something simple and makes it complicated. I mean, that's just who they are. I mean, honestly, if you're in the education world, if you're not confused, they're not pleased. You know what I'm saying? And, uh, and then, but then a communicator takes something complicated, makes it simple. And so my whole goal is to make things very palatable for people. One of the things I teach in the book is the fact that if you have to keep explaining what you just said, you haven't said it right the first time. I mean, and how many times we have a person explain and explain? I just sit there and think, why didn't you take some time on the front end?

• 58:01Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 58:01John Maxwell?

  To simplify this. So that everybody can apply it to their life and and I there are three real quickly. There are three kind of I take the simplistic, I start with simplistic and and simplistic is not good. It's it's it's fast and it's it's it's easy.

• 58:20Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 58:21John Maxwell?

  But it's not really deep and helpful. And and and it's a it's a half truth, it's never a whole truth. You know, so if I say things like, um, experience is the best teacher, that's a simplistic statement. But it's not true. If it were true, then as people got older, everybody get better. And I know a whole bunch of people, they're getting they're getting older, but they're not getting better. The experience isn't helping them at all, although experience is not the best teacher. Reflection and learning from that experience is the best teacher.

• 58:50Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 58:51John Maxwell?

  So so how do I get from experience is the best best teacher? To reflection and learning from experience of a teacher? Well, you've got to go from simplistic to complicated or complex. In other words, you've got to wrestle with the statements. And and you've got and you've got to contextually take them from every angle. Until you can come to something that is really solid and something that is really true and and something that really works. And so just as simplistic is easy and fast, you know, complex, complicated is is slow and deep.

• 59:25Ed Mylett?

  Hmm.

• 59:26John Maxwell?

  But but once you come through that company and it takes a while to do that. Once you come through it on the on the simple side now, it it it's fast. But it's deep. In other words, people can grab it real quick, but then they go home and they think about it and and they just they just can't they can't can't get away from it. Like when you wrote the book, when you book the when you wrote the book, The Power of One More.

• 59:51Ed Mylett?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:51John Maxwell?

  That is so simple.

• 59:54Ed Mylett?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:55John Maxwell?

  That you can grasp it immediately. But you can't, you have to spend a lot of time on it to work it out in your life.

• 1:00:03Ed Mylett?

  What a great point. Yeah, what a great point.

• 1:00:05John Maxwell?

  And so there so here's the here's the issue.

• 1:00:09John Maxwell?

  I think in communication, uh, when I was young, when I was a young communicator, I, I saw that I had charisma and I saw that I could probably get by onstage with the, with having fun with people and enjoying them and making them laugh. And I, I came to this decision, am I gonna, am I gonna wing it or am I gonna work for it? Hmm. And I was tempted to wing it because I could wing it and I could get by with it. See, here's the challenge. When you're gifted in a certain area, you can wing it and still be successful. Right. You could be in that top 20%. Yes. But it, but to work for it, that, that's a whole different game.

• 1:00:52John Maxwell?

  And, and, and, and in the law of, of simplicity, you have to work for this. You, you have to work for, work, simple is hard work. But if you work for it, you can get in the top 2%. Yeah. And so what I tell people all the time is, the tendency and the temptation is in giftedness is you don't give it all because you just don't have to give it all. I mean, it's just, it comes. But because you don't give it all, you, you do well, but you don't do very, very well. But if you would just work on that area of giftedness, you'd get in that top 2% and you know as well as I do, if you're in the top 2%, whatever it is, you own whatever you want to own. It's, it, the world is yours. And so, simple, I decided at a very young age, in my twenties, I was gonna work for it. I'm, I'm just gonna work for it.

• 1:01:37John Maxwell?

  And I spent a lot of time, I, this morning, I was, I write every day. This morning, I was writing and I was wanting to make a, a statement. And, and, and I, I worked on a statement probably for 40 minutes. Hmm. And it, I, I would write it and I said, no, it's not quite right, gotta work, no, no, it's not, it's not, it's still, and then finally about 20 minutes, I thought, okay, I got it, that, there it is, there it is. So, I get up and I make this statement and people say, oh my gosh, that guy just, that just flows out of him. No, no, it didn't flow out of me. It, it didn't either, it had to cook and work it inside of me a long time and, and, but I get it to the place where it flows out of me. Yes. But it doesn't flow.

• 1:02:17John Maxwell?

  Good stuff doesn't happen automatically.

• 1:02:20Ed Mylett?

  I am very, very excited about today's program because I've got a legend with me here in the fitness industry and in the personal coaching industry as well, and that's Bedros Kouyli. And so Bedros, thank you.

• 1:02:30Bedros Keuilian?

  Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me.

• 1:02:32Ed Mylett?

  I told you earlier that you're a world-class communicator. And at first, when I was driving here today, because I've watched your videos, I listened to you talk, and I appreciate great communicators because I'd like to think I'm working on being one myself, right?

• 1:02:43Bedros Keuilian?

  You're a great one, but you're being very modest.

• 1:02:46Ed Mylett?

  Well, I, like you, I hate hearing the sound of my own voice, probably. Like, we'll watch this back, and there'll be a million things I wish I said or did differently. But, and that's always the case with me. But, see, it's interesting, it struck me, I'm like, well, he's in the fitness business. I wonder why that was so important? And then I started to think about it. Is there really any business where that's not critical? So, talk a little bit about, I'm sure even with your FitBody Bootcamp franchisees, the ability to communicate with people, to persuade, to influence people to do things for their own betterment. How important has that been in your journey? And do you think it is for entrepreneurs? I think, there's some guys think, well, I'm a tech entrepreneur, so this doesn't matter. You're still gonna have to market something, or hire people, or persuade them to join your firm. How important is persuasion, articulation, communication?

• 1:03:28Bedros Keuilian?

  It's a lost art these days, unfortunately, because we text so much. I saw, I saw a study, a video. The professor took two students from the same class, college students, put them back-to-back in a chair, without their cellphone, and they said, "Communicate." And it was very awkward and clunky. "Hi, hi, how are you? Good, what are you doing? Okay." Handed them their cellphones, they're still back-to-back, and they, and you could see their screens, and they started to communicate, Ed. So, with emojis, exclamation points. So, verbal communication, physical communication, the art of getting your message across and influencing others, and painting the word picture so that they can be all-in on your vision.

• 1:04:04Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:05Bedros Keuilian?

  Is a lost art.

• 1:04:06Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:06Bedros Keuilian?

  Now, English is a second language to me. I had to learn this language first, then I had to learn how to communicate with it second. Everything I've wanted in life, whether it's building this franchise, networking with amazing people like you, has been an outcome of communication. I communicate through video, through podcasts, through blog posts, through, through Facebook Lives, you name it, we communicate. And if we can't articulate well, and draw the word picture for others to get on board with our message. That's what we're doing, we're drawing a word picture. If I say, "Imagine if, Ed, you're sitting in a room that looks like a library, that looks very old-time library with a beautiful oil painting of an amazing dog across from you, which, right across the way, there's my dog.

• 1:04:46Ed Mylett?

  This man has an oil painting in his office. So, I look, there's pictures of his family in here somewhere, I'm sure. But the main picture in this office that I'm staring at is of your dog on the wall here. That's with a crown on, is it her, Ed? Is it a her or a he?

• 1:05:01Bedros Keuilian?

  Uh, it's a her.

• 1:05:02Ed Mylett?

  It's a her, yeah. So, we're staring at Cookie, she's watched this entire interview.

• 1:05:05Bedros Keuilian?

  But imagine if we weren't in this room, and I said, "Ed, imagine if," and I started to draw this word picture to you, you would picture this room. And we need to get better at that level of communication to draw word pictures, because when people can see it in their mind's eye, they now commit to it mentally and emotionally, and are willing to buy into your vision, your agenda, whatever your thing is. So, without communication, I believe that we are lost as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as teachers, as politicians. With communication, we can lead the masses, hopefully, to a better place.

• 1:05:38Ed Mylett?

  Wow, so good, man. Like, one of the things I noticed about you and your ability, by the way, I love that word pictures analogy, I'm gonna steal that from you. The other thing that you do really well, and I want people to hear this, because they're experiencing it, but I want you to know what you're experiencing. You can't transfer energy through text or email. You can transfer information, you can't transfer energy. You can't transfer word pictures. So, one of the things you do in an exemplary way is you transfer energy. The way you communicate makes me feel something, right? Like, strength, intensity, passion, empathy, whatever it is. Great communicators can transfer energy to people. You can't transfer to me something that which you're not already experiencing yourself. You can't give me what you don't have. The reason you're such a gifted communicator is you're experiencing these things yourself. You've already won, you've already been successful, you already feel these things.

• 1:06:22Bedros Keuilian?

  And I know, by the way, I know people will probably, you know, leave comments and messages, but what if I don't have the gift that he has? I just wanna reinforce to others that English was a second language to me, and this is a learned behavior.

• 1:06:34Ed Mylett?

  I should say something about that too, because I'm using the word giftedness. And so, here's what I think. I think that everybody can get to a point of being super-great communicator. I also think someone like you was you were born probably with the ability to have this and you've refined it and refined it and refined it. I think all humans have the ability to give energy. Some are better at doing it with the spoken word. Some are able to do with a look. Some are able to do with a touch. But we all have the capacity to transfer energy to one another. I just think one of yours is with the spoken word. I just think you're excellent. I think everybody can develop that skill. So I'm glad that you mentioned that too. It's like an honor for me, everybody, to introduce this man to you because today's going to be an absolute treasure with the great Les Brown. So Les, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:07:15Les Brown?

  Well, thank you so much for having me. You are the messenger and you are the message. That's me. You got people who are speaking out here. It's been hijacked with speaking to sell. We sell people on their greatness. We sell people on the things that they need to do now, the methods, the techniques, the strategy to create the next greatest version of themselves. And when we do that, we know that when we make that kind of impact, we know that we're in the place of what Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author, he said, what in the meaning and purpose of my life that will not be undone and destroyed when I'm gone?

• 1:08:00Les Brown?

  The people that listen to your program and their mind and their vision has been expanded. You give them a vision of themselves beyond the adversities of what they're experiencing in this place where we are right now and help them to begin to live their life from a place of optimism that they're going to impact other people and those people are going to impact other people. And this work that you, as much as you have chosen this, you were chosen for this and this work will not be undone. You're going to impact generations yet unborn.

• 1:08:37Ed Mylett?

  Thank you. My gosh, I'm getting chills all over. One of the, I want, I want, I'm always watching you, right? And so thank you for that. Like sincerely, I, you, someone or something could not be more special to me than what you've just said. I want you to also watch something with Les, everybody. He speaks greatness into people. I really believe that that's a, it seems small, but he speaks greatness into people. He speaks to their better self. All of his messages always end with, there's greatness in you. And I just think that all of us should just be conscious of this. I'd be making a huge mistake. I have the greatest speaker I've ever seen on my show.

• 1:09:17Ed Mylett?

  Is there anything you would impart onto somebody who's listening and says, I'd like to be a better communicator? Are there a couple of keys that the best ever would share with me about how I could become a better communicator? If I'm listening or watching the show right now?

• 1:09:33Les Brown?

  You know, the Serena Williams is considered a dominant tennis player on the planet. But she has a coach. Muhammad Ali said, I'm the greatest, but he never won a championship without Angelo Dundee. Michael Jordan considered one of the great basketball players, but he never won a championship without Phil Jackson. I was with my Angelo. I had the, the honor of spending a day with her. And she said, it aggravates me when they, they say that I'm a gifted communicator. And I said, why? She said, show me a gifted heart surgeon. I work at this.

• 1:10:15Les Brown?

  She said, do you see these books around here? I said, yes, ma'am. When I was raped and I went into a catatonic state and, and didn't speak. My grandmother brought her lady here to help me and to tutor me. And she said, I want you to start there and start reading these books and give me a report. And she said, one day she came to this lady and she had written something she was very proud of. And, and she went, and this lady said, you can talk, read it to me.

• 1:11:03Les Brown?

  She said, "You can talk," and her mother was standing there and didn't intervene. And her mother always defended her. And this woman who wrote, "I know why the caged bird sings," she said, "You can talk. Talk now." And the reason she stopped talking, when she told on her uncle, the man, the neighbor who raped her, they beat him to death. And she felt personally responsible and went into a catatonic state. And on that day, she said, she said, "Speak, you can speak." And she started reading on that day.

• 1:11:46Les Brown?

  And, and that lady helped her to get her voice back. She had swallowed her voice because of the trauma of feeling as a young kid, "I caused someone to be killed because he raped me." And, and she, that was heavy for her. And so, all of us are born the same way, dumb, naked, and speechless. We can learn. I didn't do what I'm doing now for 14 years. I told Mike Williams, I said, "Mike, I, I, I can't speak." Man, like Zig Ziglar. He said, "You can." I said, "Look, Tony Robbins and all those guys."

• 1:12:29Les Brown?

  He said, "Brownie, you go hear those guys because it's in you. That's in you." And sometimes I feel that you have to believe in somebody's belief in you until your belief kicks in. And I was at an event, I think it was a Bob Proctor event, and a guy was speaking, man. And here I am, there, and no others had moments when we feel a speaker is just talking to us. You've had people who say, "You, you, you, you, you were talking to me and, and this was my day." And this guy was speaking, he stopped. He said, "Hmm."

• 1:13:10Les Brown?

  There's somebody here who should be up here holding this mic. I'm standing in your dream. And you've convinced yourself that you can't do it, that you don't have what it takes. And I'm here to say that it's not what you don't have, it's what you think you need in order to do this. Now, mind you, you know, I'm here thinking, I don't have a college education. And so then he went on speaking, he said, I'm gonna say this, and I'm not gonna say it anymore. You're out there squirming in your seat right now. He said, he was looking over the audience, and I'm saying to myself, is this guy looking for me?

• 1:13:50Les Brown?

  And then he said, the reason I'm standing up here, and you are seated out there squirming in your seat, I represent the thoughts you have rejected for yourself. Man, that was like, he punched me in the gut. I jumped up, I had a dime. I went to a payphone, I called Mike Williams, my mentor. I said, Mike? He said, Brownie, what's wrong? I said, listen to me, Mike Brownie, calm down. No, I'm not rejecting myself anymore. Do you hear me, Mike? I'm not rejecting myself anymore. My mother has breast cancer, and she needs me. And all I got is this, this my voice, Mike. I can't get a job, I don't have a college education.

• 1:14:34Les Brown?

  All I got is, is the ability to, to, to talk to people. I, I got to use my voice to help Mama. No job is going to pay me enough money to get the help that she needs. Most people don't know, 95% of people who file bankruptcy do so because of medical expenses. And, and when he said that, I, I said, I gotta speak. There's an African proverb that says, if there's no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm. Shakespeare said, the fort de brutes is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are

• 1:15:19Les Brown?

  underlings. I was living a small life, and you can't fit a big dream or a big voice in a small mind.

• 1:15:28Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh, come on.

• 1:15:32Ed Mylett?

  By the way, as crazy as God's so good, I gave a talk this weekend. I did, I gave one quote, which was that African proverb you just quoted, but my gosh, that story. All right, everyone, I know you want less here four hours. I do too. So you know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing like on repeat all the time? That sweater that kind of just goes with everything or these perfect pair of pants? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples with premium materials like a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton. The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for every day. It's what I'm wearing right now. They give you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the price tag. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos, and

• 1:16:17Ed Mylett?

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• 1:16:57Ed Mylett?

  your supplement routine. Finally, once and for all, 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day. I've changed my mornings. The whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

• 1:17:42Ed Mylett?

  This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. The art and science of learning to have a conversation is one of the most important skills you can have in life. And I think you'd agree with me too, whether it be your personal relationships, a political discussion, a religious discussion, as a leader in your company, having a conversation about creating ideas or a new direction, whatever it might be, learning to be a better conversationalist. And I have the perfect guest. His name is Chuck Weisner. Chuck's got a book out right now called The Art of Conscious Conversations: Transforming

• 1:18:23Ed Mylett?

  How We Talk, Listen, and Interact. And I'm really excited to get into this topic. So Chuck, welcome to the show.

• 1:18:30Chuck Wisner?

  Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 1:18:32Ed Mylett?

  How do you talk to somebody if it's a difficult conversation? One of the things I saw that you said is you ask in your writing, do your patterns of judging others reflect behaviors you don't like, or want to recognize, or won't recognize about yourself? So when we're in a difficult conversation with somebody, you know, maybe we disagree with them. I want to go to the hard stuff first. Like, I'm a Republican and someone's a Democrat, or I'm a Democrat and someone's a Republican. Something like that, you know, these hard conversations. What are some of the keys in being better at doing it? So it's actually a productive experience?

• 1:19:03Chuck Wisner?

  There are definitely keys that we're going to talk about. And it's also important to know that when you're in a difficult conversation, both parties have to be willing to start with truth. And if we can't have a foundation of truth, then you're going to have a very, the conversation will remain difficult. There's opinions, and there's facts, and there's emotions. And we get all of those mixed up, right? And they all get discombobled and jumbled up in our brain. But if we realize that my opinion is just my opinion, and it's not the truth, then we can slowly, we can say, okay, what's driving my opinion? And we sort of can open our hand and go, this is why I'm thinking how I'm thinking.

• 1:19:47Chuck Wisner?

  This is what my standards are. There's four archetypal questions in the book. This is what I'm worried about. This is my concern. Here's what I'd like. We can start to just open our hands and say, okay, I have an opinion. Let's dance with that. Let's see what we can learn from each other. That's a very different conversation with fist than fist coming at each other.

• 1:20:07Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, you also say in the book that I've learned to do this myself.

• 1:20:12Ed Mylett?

  Is to fall in love with asking questions.

• 1:20:14Chuck Wisner?

  Right.

• 1:20:14Ed Mylett?

  When you're talking with somebody, whether you're a business leader and trying to create change in your company. Or whether you're in an argument with a spouse or disagreement. Or you got to talk about something different. Like I've used, I've used politics as an example because it's the big one, right? Right? Like they're good, we're bad. I'm right, you're wrong. And the idea of making statements all the time and telling stories as opposed to asking questions.

• 1:20:36Chuck Wisner?

  Right, right. And, and the, the idea of whether I'm doing it to myself and asking myself what's driving my opinion? What's driving my judgment and why am I so hooked on the thing, right? We can also, the questions help us. Like each question can help us open someone else's hand. Because we can ask, well, what, what do you, what do you really want? What do you, what do you desire here? What do you want out of this? What are your standards for measuring this, this opinion that you have? So our questions can literally help other people unlock and unfist, right?

• 1:21:11Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:12Chuck Wisner?

  And, and, but we aren't trained to ask questions. We're trained to have answers. That's one of the major dilemmas. And then we get into school and we're rewarded for raising our hand. And then we get into business and we're rewarded for being the smartest person in the room. Right?

• 1:21:25Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 1:21:26Chuck Wisner?

  And that's a counter to the, the opposite effect is asking questions.

• 1:21:31Ed Mylett?

  Well, this notion of raising your hand was my next thing. So you're reading my mind. And I think one of the art forms of being a great conversationalist is actually the art of listening. And that's why questions matter so much. And you're precisely right. In school, the teacher's still talking and asking the question, we're taught, we're rewarded. Raise your hand while they're still talking. And what that does to me, I want you to speak to this, to me. What that does to me is it means I'm really not listening to what you're saying. I'm already thinking about what I'm going to say back to you in my answer or my judgment or my assessment about you. Most people are already raising their hand. You know, metaphorically, when most other people are still talking and they wonder, why am I not connecting with this person? Why can't we find common ground? Because while they're talking, you've got your hand raised already.

• 1:22:16Ed Mylett?

  I got the answer. I know the truth. I want to say something and rather finishing and letting them finish their statement.

• 1:22:22Chuck Wisner?

  Yeah. And so our, our brain is spinning our answer. Uh, and so there's no space actually to absorb what's coming at us from the other person. Right? And, and part of that, that actually the main reason that is we are, we get addicted to our position. Our ego and our identity gets addicted to, I believe this. And if I believe this is true, then that is, that defines who I am. And that, that is often why we enter with fists or why we enter. Uh, you know, in defensively, you know, and, and can't just say, okay, I do have an opinion. I'm going to set that aside and I'm going to see if I can explore really what, what's driving this other person's thinking.

• 1:23:04Ed Mylett?

  But if I just want to go back for a second, everybody, first thing to ask yourself is. What's your ability to ask questions and to ask questions without judgment as someone's answering you? In other words, can you learn this, the art of not raising your hand metaphorically when someone's talking? And be fully present with their answer, absent as much as you can of judgment. We'll talk about triggers in a little bit because you have some brilliant stuff in there on triggers, which I teach in, in other areas of life. I never thought about in terms of a conversation, but the one thing that opened my eyes and why I wanted you on, above many things. Is this idea of there's four conversations.

• 1:23:39Chuck Wisner?

  Right.

• 1:23:40Ed Mylett?

  And one of them is storytelling, but take the time on this and elaborate, what are the four different conversations? And what do they mean?

• 1:23:47Chuck Wisner?

  So these are four types of conversations. They organized the book and the reason they that they work well to do that is they each conversation has its own lessons to learn, tools to try, practices to try on. Because each conversation demands different skill sets and they're all interconnected. We're generally without knowing about the conversation, we're just in conversation like fish in water. And as soon as we get, wait a minute, there's storytelling, there's collaboration, there's creativity and there's commitment conversations. Already we have a different lens to think about conversations.

• 1:24:24Ed Mylett?

  Right, right.

• 1:24:24Chuck Wisner?

  If I took you to spend six months with the Inuits in Alaska and they taught you there's 27 names for snow in those six months, when we came back to New England, you would never see snow the same way.

• 1:24:41Chuck Wisner?

  Because all of a sudden you have distinctions about snow that allow you to see and perceive and have a different story about snow. Right? Conversation is the same way. If we can begin to think about different conversations and different ways to listen and different ways to ask questions and why it matters, we can't be in conversation as innocently. Right?

• 1:25:04Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:05Chuck Wisner?

  We go, oh, I get, I need to wake up here a little bit because I'm locked down and I'm creating a fight because I'm locked down. Right? So that's why the four conversations are just the beginning to say, we can start looking at conversations with a better lens.

• 1:25:21Ed Mylett?

  Yo, so good. The, the four he said, by the way, I just want to make sure you get it are storytelling, collaborative conversations, creative conversations and commitment conversations. I want to give you a compliment on how your work helped me a little bit on the storytelling part or listening for someone's story. I have a friend who I was watching two friends argue, one's very right wing and one's very left wing. Both these dudes I love. I love both these guys. And I actually understand the perspectives of both of them. And so the conversation was actually about welfare. And taxes and my left leaning friend was, you know, they were kind of arguing at first. And you know, you know, you should be paying your fair share. You don't want to help the underprivileged.

• 1:26:04Ed Mylett?

  You don't know what this is like. And the other guy's like, wait a minute, you shouldn't be lazy. You should get a job and it should be temporary and the normal position. They're both really getting ingrained in it. It's like because of your work, I'm like, wait a minute. And the one guy that was for welfare. I said, I said, John, I said, brother, really? What's the story? Like, why are you so passionate about that welfare should exist, right? God wanted to build a bridge between these dudes. And anyway, John, who, by the way, you resemble John visually.

• 1:26:33Ed Mylett?

  John says, he's a really strong masculine guy. And he goes, well, man, you guys don't know this, but. I was on welfare. I was a little boy. And it saved my family. And there was a time where as a little boy, I was actually with my mother on the street begging for money so we could eat. And it was a horrible existence. And I was a scared little boy and it was traumatic for me. And thank God my mother got on welfare. And you know what? My mother stayed on welfare for quite a while and my mom didn't really turn her life around. But I did. And now I'm a major league tax player. And I know you, buddy, over there on the right side, like all the taxes I'm playing. But you don't know what it's like not to have food. You don't. And I watched him tell the story and I had to force it.

• 1:27:17Ed Mylett?

  And I watched my right leaning friend listen. And the the judgment level, which is what you talk about, the judgment level was so far reduced. Where this is the case ironically, where the story served us.

• 1:27:30Chuck Wisner?

  Yep.

• 1:27:30Ed Mylett?

  And because he, I kind of forced it because of your work to listen. And that kind of comes from questions and it goes to my next point with you. You talk about triggers often. This welfare conversation for my friend was a trigger. Why he was getting angry with the right leaning friend, like you're not sensitive. You don't care. He's triggered by that thing. So talk a little bit about. And ourselves evaluating our triggers when we're listening to somebody.

• 1:27:55Chuck Wisner?

  The storytelling conversation is the first one for a very good reason. Because unless we begin to understand the stories we tell ourselves, right?

• 1:28:07Chuck Wisner?

  Some help us, some harm us, right? But until we understand our storytelling patterns, and I use patterns in a very particular way because it's less, it takes sting out of judgment. The patterns we have around stories and patterns we have around uh how we get triggered, the patterns we have around reacting to people. We didn't even choose those. They're unconscious patterns by our family, by our culture, by our teachers, by our friends, or just our social stuff. So we have patterns, right? So we can start looking at the story I'm telling as a pattern. I can then look at myself with less judgment. And in a way, what your friend did was he was able

• 1:28:52Chuck Wisner?

  to reveal his story about his childhood, right? And and that there's a couple of things happening. He's revealing, he's opening his hand. I'm concerned because I know what it's like to be on the other side. I have my standards say that, you know, we can afford to help take care of some of these people because they do need it. And, you know, so so he revealing his hand. And also it begins to show some vulnerability. And so if I show some vulnerability, the other person, or in your case with that conversation, as your friend shared his story, that vulnerability changes the other person. That reduces that tension.

• 1:29:35Ed Mylett?

  All conversations where there's tension, there's somehow involved in that is a judgment of the other person. What does one do? Because it's hard. You're like, this guy's crazy. He's out of his mind. What a bozo. You know, like, it's very difficult to do. He really believes this crap? You catch yourself mid-sentence already raising your hand going, this dude is, I gotta, let me fix this guy, right? Let me fix this. So what do you do when you're starting to feel this judgment? Or a, because? You know, maybe the guy is crazy, right? Like I, it, but what I found out in my life is like, you're not going to change that person by attacking them. You're not going to change that person by somehow being more authoritative than them, which we'll talk about in a minute in business about the power dynamic.

• 1:30:19Chuck Wisner?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Ed Mylett?

  But what, what is a practice that I can do when I'm in mid judgment almost of somebody going, what in the world are you talking about? Is there something you do? What, what's, what's a technique or a thought?

• 1:30:31Chuck Wisner?

  One technique I like, and it's a sort of a metaphor of if, if something's coming at you and you really dislike what's going on, your automatic pattern, right, is to react.

• 1:30:42Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 1:30:42Chuck Wisner?

  Right? Because, because it goes into your system, goes through your, your brain and it, and the pattern pops out. Very little effort on your part.

• 1:30:53Ed Mylett?

  That's right. That's right. It's triggered.

• 1:30:55Chuck Wisner?

  So the idea is to begin to name your patterns.

• 1:31:00Chuck Wisner?

  So if you have a pattern of where a certain person, kind of person, or a certain kind of conversation, whether it's politics or sex or abortion, that is a trigger for you, just be totally aware of that pattern and name it. In fact, there's, there's a thing called voice dialogue where you can actually name that voice in your head. Like there's, um, there's snobby Chuck, or there's intellectual Chuck, or there's hurt little boy Chuck.

• 1:31:28Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Chuck Wisner?

  You know, you can sort of name it. And if you can name the patterns and become familiar with it.

• 1:31:34Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 1:31:34Chuck Wisner?

  Then you might be able to catch it before it enters your body.

• 1:31:38Ed Mylett?

  It loses its power over you when you become aware of it and name it. Yeah.

• 1:31:41Chuck Wisner?

  Yeah. And then you can catch it. And then if you catch it, then literally in the book, the four questions that I, that peppers through the book.

• 1:31:51Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 1:31:52Chuck Wisner?

  Just ask yourself, is there a power issue here? If I have a strong judgment, what standard is based, am I basing that on? I mean, standards are in every judgment we have.