Contagious Communication
I can’t make you listen to me. I can’t make you care about what I am saying. And I can’t force you to engage in an honest conversation. But I do have more influence over all three than I’ve been willing to admit.
I’ve long believed that good communication requires both parties to be engaged and vested in the outcome.
Communication isn’t something one person can simply impose upon another. Both parties bear responsibility for what happens between them.
But an element of our Convene conversation around communication this month helped me to think about it a little differently.
The video (by PsychToons – see resources below) was actually about the Psychology of Charisma. I discovered it on social media and found the content fascinating.
They called it charisma. But what I experienced was a brief masterclass in communication excellence.
The premise was interesting: Charisma isn’t primarily about how impressive you are to another person. It’s about how the other person feels when they are with you.
The video referenced research around what psychologists call “perceived partner responsiveness.” In simple terms, people feel closer to us when they experience three things:
Understanding
Validation
Caring
They believe we understood what they meant, respected their perspective, and were genuinely interested in them.
That’s a powerful truth worth remembering.
Charisma doesn’t have all that much to do with how eloquently I speak. It’s more about what happens to you – and in you – while I am speaking with you.
That’s where I started connecting charisma with communication. We spend so much time and energy thinking about how to become better communicators. We learn to organize our thoughts. Speak clearly. Make eye contact. Tell better stories. Choose better words. Be concise.
All valuable skills and worthy of our investment.
What if excellent communication requires more than that?
What if excellent communication goes beyond how clearly we communicate and includes the responsibility of helping others communicate better when they are around us?
Some people are just easier to talk to. You say more around them. You listen differently. You feel less guarded.
Why?
I believe it’s because they understand the power of presence. They aren’t simply waiting for an opening to talk. They are with you in the conversation, not just beside you.
One of my favorite practical ideas in the PsychToons video was almost embarrassingly simple: Ask the second question.
Research on conversations has found that people who ask more follow-up questions tend to be better liked. A follow-up question does something the original question likely won’t – it demonstrates you were still paying attention after the other person started answering.
Think about how many conversations work differently.
“How was your weekend?”
“Pretty good. We went to Nashville for our anniversary.”
“Oh, nice. I was in Nashville a couple years ago. We went to…”
And away we go.
We asked a question, but very quickly the conversation became an opportunity to retrieve our own related story.
What happens if instead we stay there – present – and ask a series of follow-up questions?
“What took you to Nashville?”
“What did you enjoy most?”
“How many years have you been married?”
Nothing revolutionary. But something subtle shifts in the other person.
They begin to sense you are interested in them, and they feel a different level of relevance and importance. In that shift, they begin to think differently about you.
Though they may not understand the psychology or even be able to put it into words, deep down they perk up with a subconcious thought, “This person is interested in me, and interested people tend to be interesting people. I want to continue this conversation.”
That’s where the “contagious” part of communication begins.
A skilled communicator can make the choice to engage easier for the other person.
That doesn’t mean we have to bear complete responsibility for every failed conversation.
There are people who don’t want to listen and those who have already decided what they think about a particular situation. There are moments when defensiveness, anger, distraction, history, or simple exhaustion make communication incredibly difficult.
Humanity is still at play.
But maybe we should be a little slower to settle, especially if we are the leader. Maybe there’s more we can do from our end.
What did I bring into the room? Did I make it safe to talk? Was I curious? Did I actually listen to the answer I received? Did I communicate warmth before trying to establish competence? Was I trying to understand, or was I preparing my response?
Those questions put some of the responsibility we were trying to give to the other person back on us as the leader.
And personally, I want to take ownership at this level because I understand that I can’t be my best as a leader if I don’t have excellent, highly developed communication skills.
There’s an interesting irony in all of this. The harder we work at being “charismatic” (in our old-school way of thinking about it), the easier it becomes to miss the person standing directly in front of us. Our source video notes it this way:
Attention spent monitoring our own performance is attention that cannot simultaneously be given to the other person.
That’ll preach in an executive meeting.
Communication requires two people. But servant leadership gives us an unusual opportunity. Through curiosity, attention, warmth, good questions, appropriate vulnerability, and genuine interest, we can help create an environment where the other person wants to participate.
We can’t manufacture engagement, but we can invite it.
And great communicators seem to make that invitation awfully difficult to resist.
Blessings to you, my friends!
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This Week’s Resource Recommendation(s):
"Psychology of Charisma"
- PsychToons
From YouTube: We walk through the research that actually explains it: Konstantin Tskhay's work splitting charisma into influence and affability, Harry Reis and Phillip Shaver's model of perceived partner responsiveness, Susan Fiske's warmth-before-competence findings, Erica Boothby's liking gap, John Antonakis's training studies proving charisma is learnable behavior, Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley's research on compliments, Anna Bruk's beautiful mess effect, and Richard Moreland and Scott Beach's classic mere-exposure study on simple presence.
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"Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection"
- Nicholas Carr
From Amazon: Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.
Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we’re actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What’s this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don’t know what kind of conversation you’re having, you’re unlikely to connect.
Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives—and how we see ourselves, and others—shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.
With his storytelling that takes us from the writers’ room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations—and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.
In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.
MMS 26-38
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