Thammasat University students who are interested in business, media and communications studies, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, sociology, and related subjects may find a newly acquired book useful.

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection is by Charles Duhigg, an American journalist.

The TU Library collection includes several other volumes on different aspects of interpersonal communication.

The author argues that we can learn to connect in more meaningful ways if we can understand how conversations work.

So-called supercommunicators build trust, persuade others, and form friendships because they have perfected such skills as recognizing the kind of conversation they’re having and repeating what the other person has just said in one’s own words.

Among advice offered in this guide is that at times of disagreement, rather than preparing a response in our own minds, it would be more useful to show that we are listening to our adversary by asking questions, summarizing the other person’s views, and asking for confirmation.

This may help people feel safe enough to receive someone else’s opinions and share their own.

Mr. Duhigg states that with some effort and concentration,

Connecting with others can make us healthier, happier, and more content… Conversations can change our brains, bodies, and how we experience the world.

He told an interviewer for National Public Radio:

[W]e all have moments of super communication – right? – when we know exactly what to say to a friend to make them feel better or what to say in a meeting to kind of get everyone over to our side. But you’re exactly right. There are some people who can do this consistently, and one of the things that I suspected at first was that it was really exhausting for them, that they just had more energy than I did. But I found out that’s not exactly right. Because our brains have evolved to be so good at communication, because it’s something that’s so important to how humans became humans, when we learn the right habits around communication, it tends to take up less energy. It tends to become easier, and there’s some really easy tactics or tools that help us do that. […]

Sometimes we have to prove that we’re listening, right? It’s not just enough to absorb what someone’s saying. Or sometimes we have trouble listening because we get distracted in our own brain even though we don’t want to. And there’s actually a technique that they teach at Stanford and Harvard and a bunch of other schools that’s really powerful for this, which is known as looping for understanding. And what it says is when you’re having a conversation with someone, start by asking them a question, right? And there’s some questions that are more powerful than others. And after they’ve responded, repeat back to them in your own words what you heard them say. Prove to them that you’re listening.

And then the third step, and this is the one usually we forget, is – ask if you got it right. And the reason why that’s so powerful is because not only am I showing this other person that I genuinely want to understand what they’re saying, I’m genuinely paying attention, but it also forces me to pay attention because sometimes we want to listen and we get caught up in our own heads about what we want to say next or what we disagree with. But if your assignment in a conversation is to listen closely enough that you can repeat back in your own words, showing you’ve processed it – what this other person said – it’s almost like you’re tricking yourself into listening more closely. […]

When telephones first became popular, like 100 years ago, there were all these researchers who said, we will never be able to have real conversations on a telephone because we can’t see each other. And what’s interesting is, at that time, they were right. If you read early transcripts from telephone conversations, it’s people basically using it as a telegraph, you know, sending over, like, grocery orders or stock purchases. Now, of course, by the time you and I and everyone listening was in middle school, we could talk for, like, seven hours a night on the phone, right? […]

It was some of the most meaningful conversations of our life. And what’s happening right now, I think particularly – I have young kids. I know you have young kids. Our kids are learning how to use texting and Snapchat and emojis to be real conversations. Now, the key, though, is that you still have to pay attention to how you’re communicating. You have to remind yourself that an email is different from a text, is different from a phone call, and there’s different rules for each one. And if I want to connect with someone, I have to remind myself and pay attention to what those rules are. […]

To another interviewer, he explained:

[W]hen you connect with each other when you have a conversation, it’s really easy to align, to become entrained. Now, there are some people who can do this on a more consistent basis, people who can be supercommunicators almost any time they want to, can connect with almost anyone. And what we know about them is that they’re not that different from everyone else, right? They’re not particularly charismatic. They’re not extroverts. They’re just normal people who think just a half an inch deeper about conversation and communication. And they’ve learned a couple of habits that make them much better at it.

For instance, one thing that we know about supercommunicators is they ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. They tend to mirror your nonverbal expressions. Like, if you laugh, they’ll laugh back. If you look concerned, they’ll look concerned as well. And it’s not like they’re trying to manipulate you or they’re doing it on purpose. It’s just, it’s become a habit at this point. There’s a number of things that supercommunicators do that allow them to connect with almost anyone. And the most important is, though, that anyone can learn these skills. These are not inborn traits, these are not difficult things to do. They’re things that anyone can do. And we can all become supercommunicators anytime we want to. […]

Conversation is so rich and has so much information that we tend to just listen to people’s words instead of noticing everything else. So they might say like, “Oh no, I’m feeling fine. I’m doing good.” But if their arms are crossed and their voice is kind of soft and their eyes are downcast, then that’s an indication that their words don’t really capture what they’re feeling at this moment.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)