Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

We reciprocate vulnerability by… Looping for understanding, until you understand what someone is feeling. Looking for what someone needs: Do they want comfort? Empathy? Advice? Tough love? (If you don’t know the answer, loop more.) Asking permission. “Would it be okay if I told you how your words affect me?” or “Would you mind if I shared something

There’s a technique for this—looping for understanding. Here’s how it works: Ask questions, to make sure you understand what someone has said. Repeat back, in your own words, what you heard. Ask if you got it right. Continue until everyone agrees we understand.

But since it’s easy to mistake, say, frustration for anger, or quiet for sadness, it is critical to be attuned to two things: Mood: Do they seem upbeat or glum? How would you describe their expressions? Are they laughing, or shouting? Are they up or down? Energy: Are they high energy, or low energy? Quiet and withdrawn or talkative and expressive?

To hear what a person is saying, we also need to pay attention to their nonlinguistic emotional expressions—the sounds they make, their gestures, tone of voice and cadence, how they hold their bodies and their expressions.

Asking a deep question should feel like sharing. It should feel, a bit, like we’re revealing something about ourselves when we ask a deep question.

A deep question asks people to talk about how they feel. Sometimes this is easy: “How do you feel about…?” Or, we can prompt people to describe specific emotions: “Did it make you happy when…?”

Nearly any question can be remade into a deep question. The key is understanding three characteristics: A deep question asks about someone’s values, beliefs, judgments, or experiences—rather than just facts. Don’t ask “Where do you work?” Instead, draw out feelings or experiences: “What’s the best part of your job?”

“It’s a complicated world, you know?” Godfrey said. “You need friends who are different if you want to figure it out.”

Methods like looping for understanding, says Sheila Heen, are powerful because even when people lead very dissimilar lives, they can often find emotional similarities with one another.