Are You a C-Suite Super Communicator?
Not everyone is a super communicator, yet, as CxOs we aspire to and are believed to be. This post explores Charles Duhigg's new book Super Communicators and how to win others over through connection.
Charles Duhigg’s new book, Super Communicators, is about how to unlock the secret language of connection with others is a must read for CxOs.
In the C-Suite we are faced with difficult conversations all the time such as layoffs, performance reviews, managing up, down, and across the table, and making strategic directional decisions for a company. What if we were all super communicators, would the end result be different?
A well aligned GTM team who communicates regularly and who is on the same page, grows a lot faster than those who operate in silos. In order to have alignment you need to have connection. By that I mean you don’t have to agree with someone, but you do need to understand them.
Duhigg says there are a few key attributes to super communicators and methods they use which enable them to establish deeper connections through conversation. But first let’s define what is a super communicator?
What is a super communicator?
It’s a person who is able to get what they want out of a conversation, a relationship, a job, an experience, without ever making the people they are engaging with feel like they’re being deceived or fooled in any sort of way.
Super communicators create emotional personal connections with ease through being curious, seeking to understand, thus creating trust and exuding empathy. It’s a soft skill for sure in the C-Suite, and one not everyone has.
Steve Jobs was a super communicator. Oprah Winfrey is a super communicator. Winston Churchill was a super communicator.
Key behavioral traits to super communicators
How do they do it? They ask questions to understand more of why a person acts, thinks, responds, or does something in a certain way. After a series of questions, they may offer up their own relatable experiences, showcasing vulnerability, to establish a connection.
They seek to understand through asking questions
They show they understand by offering up relatable experiences
They show their own vulnerability
They use a method called loop to understand in conversation which is essentially repeating back to someone what they just said, resulting in them feeling they’ve been heard
Other characteristics of super communicators are:
They tend to have larger social networks
They’re more likely to hold leadership positions of authority and power
They are the ones people turn to for advice
Why people respond positively to super communicators
Everyone wants to be heard. Our brains naturally crave connection.
When you ask questions you open the discussion up for a two-way dialogue that allows the other person to describe their feelings, emotions, rationale, and points of view.
It creates an environment of trust. The most important goal of any conversation is to connect, and you can only connect if there is trust.
People need empathy, not necessarily a solution right off the bat. Often times we immediately jump to the solution because we think we’re being helpful, when in fact, the other person just wants you to actively listen and support them.
How do you begin to become a super communicator?
Being a super communicator involves more than just actively listening and asking questions. The first thing you need to do is identify the type of conversation you are having with the other person(s). According to Duhigg, there are three types of conversations:
Practical/decision making which explore the question of what’s this really about?
Emotional discussions exploring how we feel about something
Social conversations that dive deep into who are we?
As a dialogue unfolds, we often move in and out of all three of these, however, if you don’t recognize which type of conversation you’re having with the other person at the same moment, then you wind up speaking different languages and unlikely to connect.
‘What’s this really about’ conversation
Perhaps the most common type of conversation we have at the C-Suite level is decision making and understanding what’s this really about?
So when someone says, “How can we increase pipeline?” our brains immediately, and often subconsciously, go into decision making mode evaluating what are the motives behind this conversation, wondering whether we should listen or offer a solution as we try to understand the goals of the conversation.
The goal of every conversation is to connect and learn why someone is thinking or feeling the way they are in a conversation.
Every meaningful conversation you have is made up of smaller gestures such as a smile, a nervous laugh, a shift in the eyes, tone of voice, whether they sit forward or lean back in a conversation. Super communicators have learned to recognize both the physical and auditory tiny moments in a conversation to help them detect what type of conversation is really occurring and understand what the other person really wants. This in turn allows them to offer up empathy, share something vulnerable about themselves, or ask the right question to make that connection with the other person/group.
Achieving alignment with others requires being engaged with the other person at the same time, thus speaking the same language.
For example, if someone complains at work that their manager/co-worker is being unfair, they’re not looking for a solution from you, they’re looking for empathy.
Speaking and listening in a new way
When you are speaking the same language as the other person, you develop neural synchronization. When you start thinking like the other person, you understand them better. However, some people are better at this than others.
When you dominate a conversation and are direct, you push others into their own separate thoughts rather than in alignment. But when you ask questions or interrupt awkward silence with a joke, for example, you make it easier for people to participate and align.
People that are super communicators tend to ask 10-20x more questions than those who are not. For example, in a meeting you might say to someone, “that’s smart, why do you think that?” as opposed to just commenting “that’s smart,” which doesn’t really open up the conversation for more dialogue.
Super communicators also constantly adapt their speech and how they communicate to match other participants in the conversation, which encourages further dialogue and alignment. In a nutshell, they:
Listen closely to what is said and unsaid
Ask the deep questions - ask about values, beliefs, or experiences, such as “what was that like?”, or “why do you think that?”
Recognize and match other’s moods
They loop to understand
Make their own feelings easy for other people to perceive
But these are hard to do all at once. It’s a lot to consider and think about during a conversation.
Three things you can practice in your next meeting
When we have conflict in our lives or in work, it’s often because we think the other person is not listening or not hearing what we’re saying. And when we’re in conflict we often instinctively want to control the situation, and the easiest thing to control is the other person. (if you can just make them see it your way, you know they’ll agree with you).
However, in your next meeting, you can try these three things:
Understand the type of conversation you’re engaging in. Is it practical, emotional, or social? Or all three?
Focus on and think about the outcome you want to get out of the conversation and try to direct the conversation through asking unassuming questions by probing deeper.
Practice listening and observing others first before asking any clarifying or curious questions. Read the room. Look at other people’s body language.
It’s hard not to read a book like this and reflect on your own life, both personal and your career, and understand how conversations you’ve had impacted the outcomes and the relationships with the people you’ve interacted with along the way.
I believe that super communicators are not born, but learned. We can all do better at being super communicators in work and in our personal lives. It just takes practice.
Do you know of any super communicators? Share in the comments, I’d love to hear about them.
p.s. If you haven’t read the book, you can get it on Audible (free for subscribers) or on Amazon ($15-$20 for Kindle/hardback/softback). This is NOT an affiliate link and I’m not getting any kickback for this, I just thought it was a really good book. :)
If you don’t have time to read the book, watch this 35-minute interview with the author.