Supercommunicators

Supercommunicators is a guide to connecting more genuinely and efficiently with other people thanks to identifying 3 kinds of recurring conversations, and then aligning with others to help everyone feel heard, validated, and get what they want.

When he was 18, Alex Hormozi worked for a fur coat dealer. One day, a lady made a scene about a button coming off. Instead of defending his product, John, the store owner, got worked up on the lady’s behalf. “Mrs. Johnson! This is outrageous! Who sold this coat to you? We’ll fire them immediately!”

Ironically, this quickly calmed the lady down. “Oh, it’s not so bad, this happens. If you just repair my coat, I’ll be happy!” The lesson for Alex? “There can only be one person in the angry-boat.” As soon as she saw John getting angry for her, the customer changed her mood and tone to resolve the situation smoothly instead of escalating it.

In the book, Duhigg calls this “the matching principle.” It’s the most important aspect of being a great communicator. “Effective communication requires recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring, and then matching each other,” he writes.

Aligning with others is about more than just mimicking them. “To become a supercommunicator, we need to listen closely to what’s said and unsaid, ask the right questions, recognize and match others’ moods, and make our own feelings easy for others to perceive.” These are not easy tasks, let alone when you must perform them habitually and at the same time. But they are all learnable skills — and that’s what we’ll get into next!

To align with people, you must quickly identify what kind of conversation is taking place. That requires a framework to place conversations in, and said framework marks the core of Duhigg’s book. These 3 conversations are our most common: The “What’s this really about?” conversation, which is logical and analytical in nature and requires a decision-making mindset. The “How do we feel?” conversation, which is dominated by our emotions, beliefs, and memories. It requires an emotional mindset. The “Who are we?” conversation, which touches on “our relationships, how we are seen by others and see ourselves, and our social identities.” This one asks us to be in a social mindset. When we’re in “What’s this really about?” mode, we must determine what to talk about and how we’ll arrive at conclusions together. That means understanding we are negotiating, figuring out what everyone wants, and then using either data and reasoning or stories and compassion to achieve consensus. In “How do we feel?” conversations, “we need to listen for vulnerabilities, hear what is unsaid—and, just as important, we must show we are listening,” Duhigg writes. That…