Most of the time, we are having three types of conversations:

  1. What is this about? → Decision making, logical
  2. How are we feeling? → Discuss what we are feeling
  3. Who are we? → Social conversation, identity
  • All super communicators effectively synchronize neurologically.
  • Neurological synchronization is alignment of our brains, bodies, and everything from breath, eye pupils, gestures, etc.
  • Super communicators don’t just mirror but rather they gently let people nudge them to hear one another and help them explain themselves clearly.

Recognizing Conflict

  • When conversation veers toward argument, ask the question:
    Do you want to talk about an emotion? Or do we need to make a decision together? Or is this about something else?

Matching Principle

  • Effective communication requires recognizing what type of communication is occurring and then matching that.

Good Communicators Try to Identify Type of Conversations

  • A good communicator tries to learn what type of conversation is occurring.
    Some rules to identify the type of conversation:
    1. Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring.
    2. Share your goal and ask what others are seeking.
    3. Ask about others’ feelings and share your own.
    4. Explore if identities are important in this discussion.

What is this about? Conversation.

How to Find Out What This is About?

  • All communication is a form of negotiation.
  • First, determine what does everyone really want.
  • Then, decide how we will make choices together.

Understanding Conversations: Two Types of Thinking

When discussing what this is about, conversations involve two kinds of thinking:

  1. Logic of Cost and Benefits

    • Focuses on pros vs. cons, practical cases, reasoning, and costs.
    • Lean into data and reasoning.

  2. Logic of Similarities

    • Goes beyond costs, emphasizing feelings and past experiences.
    • Lean into stories and compassion.

Recognizing the type of conversation occurring helps align with others and invites them to align with us.

Tactics to Use This Idea

  • Prepare for conversations beforehand (rough notes, bullet points):
    1. What are some topics you might want to discuss?
    2. What is one thing you hope to say?
    3. What is one question you will ask?

Asking Questions

  • Questions about values, beliefs, judgments, and experiences are extremely powerful.
  • ❗ Don’t just ask about facts—make it emotional!

Notice Clues During Conversations

Interested

  • Leans towards you
  • Makes eye contact
  • Smiles
  • Uses backchanneling (e.g., “hmm…”)

Not Interested

  • Becomes quiet
  • Uses passive expressions
  • Eyes fixed on somewhere else
  • Takes your comments without adding their own thoughts

Experiment When Possible

  • Tell jokes
  • Ask unexpected questions
  • Try Interuptting then don’t Interrupt

How Do We Feel Conversation?

  • When you open up to someone, they get drawn in.
  • The key is to ask a specific kind of question that seems non-emotional but makes it easier to share emotions.
  • A question that pushes people to describe their values, beliefs, or meaningful experiences.

Emotional Contagion

  • Emotional contagion is at the root of how we feel conversations.

  • We become prone to emotional contagion when:

    • We hear someone else express their emotions.
    • We reveal our own deeply held beliefs and values.
    • We disclose past experiences that were meaningful to us.
    • We express something else that opens us to others’ judgments.

  • The act of exposing ourselves to someone’s scrutiny triggers a sense of intimacy.

Reciprocity is Critical

  • Show empathy, acknowledge someone’s emotions, and show you care.
  • Be responsive to others’ needs.

How to Connect with Someone

  • Ask what they are feeling, then reveal your own emotions.
  • After they express their emotions, reveal your own experiences.
  • If others describe a painful memory or a moment of joy, we should:
    • Share our own disappointments.
    • Express what makes us proud.
  • Provides a chance to harness the neurochemicals that have evolved to help us feel closer.
  • Creates opportunity for emotional contagion.
  • Don’t talk only about yourself, ask shallow questions, or inquire about things that don’t reveal anything.

How Do You Hear Emotions? (Nonverbal Cues Matter)

Key principle: Match energy & mood of the other person.

Energy Positive Mood Negative Mood
High Enthusiastic Angry, insulted
Low Blissful, content Frustrated, annoyed

Matching Energy and Mood

  • When people genuinely laugh together, their energy matches.
  • Mood & energy are unlinguistic tools to connect.
  • Match with others you want to connect with.
  • Sometimes you don’t want to match (e.g., if someone is sad), but you should still acknowledge their emotion.
    • The goal is to send a message: “I hear you.”
  • Super communicators match others’ emotions and pick up on emotional cues.

Connecting Amid Conflicts

  • Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with it.
  • Each conflict has two things:
    1. Surface-level disagreement — We disagree with each other.
    2. Emotional conflict underneath — Unresolved deeper emotional issues.

Why Conflicts Remain Unresolved

  • The real reason conflicts don’t get resolved is that people don’t understand why they are fighting in the first place.
  • They don’t discuss deeper emotional issues.

Learning Through Conflict

  • In a conflict, we learn why we are fighting by discussing emotions.
  • If you want someone to share emotions, the most important step is to show them you are listening.

Active Listening Loop

  1. Ask a question
    ↓
  2. Summarize what you have heard
    ↓
  3. Ask if you got it right
    ↓
  4. Repeat until everyone agrees
    ↓
  5. Looping helps ensure mutual understanding.

Managing Conflict in Relationships

  • Unhappy couples try to control each other when fighting.
  • Happy couples focus on controlling themselves, their environment, and the conflict itself.

Key Strategies

  • When in conflict, try to find control together.
  • Listen to others — truly listen to understand, even if you don’t agree with them.

How to Use These Ideas

  • Ask about others’ feelings and share your own.
  • Ask deep questions about beliefs, values, judgments, and experiences.
  • Match mood & energy.
  • Humans reciprocate feelings naturally.

Reciprocal Vulnerability:

  1. Looping for understanding.
  2. Asking permission.
  3. Giving something in return (e.g., sharing your own feelings).

When in Conflict

  1. Acknowledge understanding.
  2. Find specific points of agreement.
  3. Temper your claims (be subtle).

How This Works Online

  1. Overemphasize politeness.
  2. Try to avoid sarcasm.
  3. Express gratitude, deference, greetings, and apologies.
  4. Avoid criticism in public forums.

Who Are We? Conversation

  • The desire to belong is at the core of “Who Are We?” conversations.
  • Don’t stick to a single identity.
    • Remember and remind people that we all have multiple identities.

How to Make Difficult Conversations Safe

  • People become irritated if you:
    • Generalize their identity to a group.
    • Deny the identity they want to be part of.
  1. Telling someone thing they abhor ↓
  2. Trigger defensiveness ↓
  3. Cause counterattacks ↓
  4. say things other person hate

How to Use These Ideas

  • Explore if identities are important in this discussion.
  • Consider our actions before, during, and at the beginning of discussions.

Before a Discussion, Ask Yourself:

  1. What do you hope to accomplish?
  2. How will this conversation start?
  3. What obstacles might emerge?
  4. When those obstacles appear, what’s the plan?
  5. What are the benefits of this discussion?

At the Beginning of the Discussion

1. Establish Guidelines

  • Blame, shame, or attacking others is not allowed.
  • Share your feelings, but don’t criticize others.
  • Asking questions is okay.
  • Everyone is encouraged to speak.
  • Speak out your own experiences and describe your own story.

2. Draw out everyone’s feelings.

3. Acknowledge and keep acknowledging that discomfort is natural and useful.

During Discussion

  1. Draw out multiple identities

    • Ask people about their background, communities, and organizations they support.
    • Share common identity and interests.

  2. Work to ensure everyone feels equal.

    • Make sure everyone has an equal say.
    • Don’t try to be a doctor/engineer-be a parent, mother, father, son, etc..
    • Be fair, not dominant.

  3. Acknowledge people’s experiences and look for genuine similarities.

  4. Manage your environment.