The Science Behind Dramatically Better Conversations | Charles Duhigg | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:05So I'm going to ask you to participate in an experiment,
2. 0:10which is that when you leave this room,
3. 0:12when you go out into the world,
4. 0:14today, tomorrow, whenever you feel like it,
5. 0:16I'd like you to ask and answer one question
6. 0:20of someone who's a stranger.
7. 0:22You might meet them on the bus
8. 0:23or walking down the street.
9. 0:25And I'm going to show you the question
10. 0:27that I'm going to ask you to ask and answer.
11. 0:29The question is:
12. 0:30When was the last time you cried in front of someone?
13. 0:34Now just out of curiosity,
14. 0:35how many of you are really excited about this experiment?
15. 0:38No hands went up whatsoever.
16. 0:41And that makes sense, right?
17. 0:43Because, like, there can be nothing that seems more intimidating
18. 0:46or less fun than finding a stranger,
19. 0:48asking them when they've cried in front of someone else,
20. 0:51and then telling them about the time you cried in front of someone else.
21. 0:54But I'm going to try and convince you over the next few minutes
22. 0:57that this experiment is not only worth doing,
23. 1:00it’s worth doing whenever you can.
24. 1:01Because it will make your life better.
25. 1:04And to explain how I got to this,
26. 1:06I have to tell you a little bit of a story about me and my wife.
27. 1:09A few years ago, we got into this bad pattern.
28. 1:11We've been married for 20 years,
29. 1:13but I would come home from a long day at the office.
30. 1:15I was a reporter at "The New York Times" at that point,
31. 1:18and I would start complaining about my day,
32. 1:20about how I'm not appreciated enough.
33. 1:21And my wife, very reasonably, would offer me some great advice.
34. 1:24She would say something like,
35. 1:26“Why don’t you take your boss out to lunch,
36. 1:28and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better?"
37. 1:31And instead of being able to hear her, I would get even more upset.
38. 1:34I would say things like, "Why aren't you supporting me?
39. 1:37You should be outraged on my behalf."
40. 1:38And she would get upset because I was attacking her for giving me good advice.
41. 1:42Anyone ever had an experience like this?
42. 1:44It was not a good situation.
43. 1:46And so I started talking to researchers
44. 1:48who were studying communication.
45. 1:50I asked them, why am I getting into this pattern?
46. 1:52And they said, "You're making a mistake."
47. 1:54We're living through this golden age of understanding communication,
48. 1:57really for the first time
49. 1:59because of advances in neural imaging and data collection.
50. 2:01And they said, one of the big things that we've learned
51. 2:04is that we tend to think of a discussion as being just one conversation, right?
52. 2:08We're talking about one thing, my day,
53. 2:10or the kids' grades, what to have for dinner.
54. 2:12But what they said is that actually,
55. 2:13each discussion contains many different conversations.
56. 2:18And in general, these conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets.
57. 2:22There's these practical conversations,
58. 2:24where we're talking about what's this all about.
59. 2:27What are we really discussing?
60. 2:28But then there's emotional conversations
61. 2:30where we're talking about how do we feel.
62. 2:32And my goal is to share with you my feelings,
63. 2:34and I don't want you to solve them.
64. 2:36I want you to empathize.
65. 2:38And then there's conversations that are social conversations
66. 2:41about who we are,
67. 2:42the social identities that are important to us,
68. 2:45how we relate to each other and to society.
69. 2:47And what the researchers said is what we've learned
70. 2:49is that if people are having different conversations at the same moment,
71. 2:53they can't really hear each other, they can't really connect.
72. 2:57And in fact, this is exactly what was happening with me and my wife.
73. 3:00I was coming home and having an emotional conversation,
74. 3:03my wife was responding with a practical conversation.
75. 3:05They are both legitimate conversations.
76. 3:07But because we weren’t having the same conversation
77. 3:10at the same moment,
78. 3:11we weren't really communicating with each other.
79. 3:14And within neurology and psychology,
80. 3:16this insight is known as the matching principle,
81. 3:18which says that successful communication requires recognizing
82. 3:21what kind of conversation is occurring and then matching each other.
83. 3:25But how do we do that?
84. 3:27Well in schools, they’ve actually taught teachers to do this.
85. 3:30If you are a school teacher,
86. 3:32you'll probably learn at some point
87. 3:34that if a student comes up to you with a problem
88. 3:36or they want something to talk about,
89. 3:38you should ask them, "Do you want to be helped,"
90. 3:40which is a practical conversation.
91. 3:42"Do you want to be hugged," which is an emotional conversation.
92. 3:45Or "Do you want to be heard," which is a social conversation.
93. 3:48And it seems to work.
94. 3:49It seems like if you ask students what they need, they'll tell you.
95. 3:53But of course that is hard to do in real life, right?
96. 3:56If you go up and you ask someone at work if they want a hug,
97. 3:59HR might get involved, so you might not want to do that.
98. 4:02But luckily, there is another way of doing this for all of us normal people,
99. 4:07which is to ask questions
100. 4:09and in particular, to ask a certain type of question,
101. 4:11a special question, what’s known as a “deep question.”
102. 4:15A deep question is something that invites us to talk about our values
103. 4:18or our beliefs or our experiences.
104. 4:21And that can sound a little intimidating,
105. 4:23but it's actually much easier than it sounds.
106. 4:25For instance, instead of asking someone, where do you work?
107. 4:28You could ask them, what do you love about your job?
108. 4:30Instead of asking someone, where did you go to high school?
109. 4:33You could say, what was high school like?
110. 4:36What did you learn there?
111. 4:38What changed you there?
112. 4:41Put differently, instead of asking about the facts of someone's life,
113. 4:45we should ask them how they feel about their life.
114. 4:48Because when we do,
115. 4:50they tend to reveal to us who they really are.
116. 4:54They tend to tell us what they want, not only out of this conversation,
117. 4:57but how they hope that we'll see them and how they want to see us,
118. 5:00what matters to them most.
119. 5:03In fact, what studies show us is that this is so powerful
120. 5:06because these kinds of questions allow us to be vulnerable.
121. 5:10And vulnerability and reciprocal vulnerability --
122. 5:13when we hear vulnerability and we become vulnerable in return --
123. 5:17is the key to allowing us to connect with other people.
124. 5:21And to explain how this works, I want to tell you a story about this guy,
125. 5:25Dr. Behfar Ehdaie.
126. 5:26Dr. Ehdaie is a cancer surgeon in New York City.
127. 5:29He specializes in prostate cancer,
128. 5:32removing prostate tumor,
129. 5:34removing cancer tumors from prostates.
130. 5:37And he has this kind of interesting job
131. 5:40because every single day a patient will come into his office asking,
132. 5:43he thinks, for medical advice.
133. 5:45And what he will tell them is: “You should not get surgery.”
134. 5:50The prostate is located so close to the nerves
135. 5:54that control urination and sexual function,
136. 5:56that it's a relatively risky surgery.
137. 6:00And what's more, most prostate tumors, they grow very, very slowly.
138. 6:04It's actually one of the slowest-growing forms of cancer in existence.
139. 6:08There's a saying among doctors that if you have an old patient
140. 6:11with prostate cancer,
141. 6:12he's going to die of old age before the cancer kills him.
142. 6:15And so Dr. Ehdaie would have these patients come in
143. 6:18and he would tell them, "I don't think you should do anything.
144. 6:21In fact, I think you should do active surveillance.
145. 6:24We're going to take a blood sample every six months,
146. 6:26we're going to do a biopsy every two years,
147. 6:28and if the tumor seems to change, we'll do an MRI,
148. 6:30And if we have to, we can do the surgery.
149. 6:32But otherwise no radiation, no surgery.
150. 6:35It's going to be OK.
151. 6:37And these patients would listen to him, and then they would go home,
152. 6:40and they would discuss it with their spouse,
153. 6:42and then they would walk in the next day and insist on having the surgery.
154. 6:46They would say, "I absolutely want you to cut me open,
155. 6:48take the tumor out as fast as possible."
156. 6:50And for Dr. Ehdaie, this was bewildering, right?
157. 6:53He thought these would be the easiest conversations of his life.
158. 6:56He’s telling people that they don’t have to have surgery, and he’s a surgeon.
159. 6:59He told me that, “When this happens again and again and again,
160. 7:03you start to realize, this isn't a problem with my patients.
161. 7:07This is a problem with me.
162. 7:10I'm doing something wrong."
163. 7:12And so he goes to these folks,
164. 7:14these professors at the Harvard Business School,
165. 7:16and he asks them for advice on what to do differently.
166. 7:19And they said, "Look, the biggest mistake that you're making
167. 7:22is you are starting this conversation all wrong.
168. 7:24You are starting by assuming
169. 7:26that the patient walks into your exam room
170. 7:28looking for advice and looking for medical solutions.
171. 7:31But you don't know if that's true.
172. 7:33You're not asking them any questions.
173. 7:35What you need to do is you need to start asking deep questions."
174. 7:39So two weeks later, after having this conversation,
175. 7:41a 62-year-old man comes into Dr. Ehdaie’s office
176. 7:44for the first time.
177. 7:45He had just gotten his diagnosis of having prostate cancer.
178. 7:49And Dr. Ehdaie, instead of giving him advice,
179. 7:52instead of telling him what he ought to do,
180. 7:54he asks the question,
181. 7:55"What does this cancer diagnosis mean to you?"
182. 8:01And the man starts talking,
183. 8:02about how his father had died when he was 17 years old.
184. 8:07And this had just been so hard for him,
185. 8:09and it had been so hard for his mom.
186. 8:11And then he starts talking about his grandchildren
187. 8:13and his fears for the world they're inheriting,
188. 8:16what with climate change and everything else that's going on.
189. 8:19Dr. Ehdaie had expected this guy to at least bring up cancer,
190. 8:22to at least mention mortality or pain,
191. 8:26but it never came up.
192. 8:28And at that moment, Dr. Ehdaie realized,
193. 8:30because he had asked this deep question,
194. 8:32that this man wanted to have an emotional conversation.
195. 8:35He wanted to talk about how do we feel?
196. 8:38He needed to be hugged.
197. 8:40And so, Dr. Ehdaie didn’t actually hug him.
198. 8:43But he did the verbal equivalent.
199. 8:44And then Dr. Ehdaie says,
200. 8:47"Look, do you mind?
201. 8:49There's some medical options I'd like to talk over with you.
202. 8:52Is that OK?"
203. 8:53And they move into a practical conversation together,
204. 8:56and within seven more minutes,
205. 8:58the man decides to do active surveillance and never looks back.
206. 9:01Dr. Ehdaie’s patients overwhelmingly now opt for active surveillance,
207. 9:05his advice, because of this approach.
208. 9:08And the thing is, we can do this in any conversation.
209. 9:11It doesn't have to be an important conversation,
210. 9:13it doesn't have to be life or death.
211. 9:15We can always connect more and better
212. 9:19and in a really profound way with the person that we're speaking to,
213. 9:22if we want to.
214. 9:24Which brings me back to that experiment.
215. 9:27So just to remind you what you're supposed to do.
216. 9:29Walk out of the room, find a stranger, ask them,
217. 9:32"When was the last time you cried in front of someone?"
218. 9:35And then as soon as they answer, you answer the question yourself,
219. 9:38and you tell them when you last cried.
220. 9:40Let me just say, this experiment has been done thousands
221. 9:43and thousands of times,
222. 9:44most notably by a guy named Nick Epley
223. 9:46at the University of Chicago.
224. 9:47People hate this experiment.
225. 9:50Nobody who participates comes in and is like,
226. 9:53"This is going to be a great time."
227. 9:55Instead, what they say is, "I do not want to do this.
228. 9:58This sounds terrible."
229. 10:00But they’re in an experiment,
230. 10:02and they basically have to do it, right, they're in the room.
231. 10:05They get paired with a partner, they ask the question, ask and answer.
232. 10:08And then Nick Epley afterwards asks them, what was that like?
233. 10:13And what people say are things like,
234. 10:15"Oh my gosh, I felt so connected to that person,
235. 10:17more connected than to people in other conversations in a while.
236. 10:21I felt more caring towards them
237. 10:23and I felt like they were really caring about me."
238. 10:26So why is this so powerful?
239. 10:28Why is asking this question,
240. 10:30why does it help us connect so well?
241. 10:32Because it's a deep question.
242. 10:34It allows us to say something real.
243. 10:38And when we ask deep questions,
244. 10:39we figure out which of the three conversations we're in,
245. 10:43what we're talking about,
246. 10:44what everyone really wants out of this dialogue.
247. 10:47And that is how we connect with each other.
248. 10:51We are living through a time of polarization and division.
249. 10:57We have forgotten how to have conversations.
250. 11:02But there's a science to it.
251. 11:05There are these folks who are known as supercommunicators.
252. 11:08They are not special,
253. 11:10they’re not more charismatic,
254. 11:11or they're not more outgoing than anyone else.
255. 11:15They've just learned skills that allow us to connect with others.
256. 11:20And they're skills that all of us can learn.
257. 11:23And that feeling you get after a wonderful conversation,
258. 11:26that glow that you experience,
259. 11:29our brains have evolved to give us that,
260. 11:33to crave connection.
261. 11:36So I hope you go out,
262. 11:38I hope you find a stranger,
263. 11:40and I hope you tell them all about the last time you cried
264. 11:42in front of another person.
265. 11:44And then tell me how it went.
266. 11:45Thanks.