What I Learned This Week: Charles Duhigg — Be a Supercommunicator

Do you consider yourself a “bad” communicator, a “better” communicator, or the “best” kind of communicator — someone author Charles Duhigg calls a “Supercommunicator”?

Charles is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of books about habits, productivity, and communication. In his best-selling book, “Supercommunicators,” Charles defines a Supercommunicator as someone who is exceptionally skilled at connecting with others — not because they talk more, but because they understand how conversations really work.

He believes most conversations don’t break down because people are bad communicators, but because people are having different conversations at the same time.

Duhigg says there are three types of conversations happening in most interactions:

• Practical – What are we doing? What’s the plan?

• Emotional – How do we feel about this?

• Social – Who are we? What does this say about me or us?

If someone is sharing feelings and we respond with solutions, we miss them, and if someone wants clarity and we give empathy only, we miss them too. Not understanding social dynamics and identity can cause us to miss people altogether.

Here are his four rules to becoming a Supercommunicator::

1. Clarify your goal. Before the conversation, ask yourself: What do I want to learn? What do I want to share?

2. Match the conversation. Getting everyone on the same page at the beginning of the conversation builds trust, reduces defensiveness, increases influence so people are more open to solutions after building a connection, and saves time solving real issues instead of surface ones.

3. Ask deep questions. Going beyond surface talk and asking about values, beliefs, and motivations like, “What do you love about your job?” “What was your hometown or school like?” or, “What do you hope to learn or accomplish here?” can help build meaningful connections quickly.

4. Loop for understanding. Repeat back what you heard and ask if you got it right.

My biggest takeaway from Charles is that Supercommunicators ask 10–20 times more questions than the average person.

Many of those questions are small and natural — things like “What did you think about that?” or “What happened next?” and others are the deep questions mentioned earlier. Asking questions invite people into the conversation, signal curiosity and listening, not just waiting to talk, and help people share who they really are, which creates connection.

Great communicators talk less and ask more. The questions open the door for real conversation. Supercommunicators don’t dominate conversations—they guide them with questions.

Sources:

- Charles Duhigg on the Power of Supercommunicators podcast