Supercommunicators, page 7
Or say you’ve telephoned a customer service representative with a complaint. You might assume they want to hear your story (“My son was playing with my phone and he somehow managed to order a thousand dollars’ worth of Legos”), but you quickly discover they don’t care (“Sir, please just give me the date of the transaction”). They don’t need the backstory. They’re in a practical mindset, and just want to find a solution and move on to the next call.
When John Boly heard his fellow jurors telling stories about their lives and talking about concepts like justice and ethics, he sensed that some of them were looking for a conversation that went beyond analysis and reasoning. They were in an empathetic frame of mind. Boly responded by talking about how it would feel to carry a gun, imagining what Leroy Reed was thinking. He started telling stories: “He handles it almost like it was this sacramental thing.” These weren’t profound or elaborate stories, just wisps of a narrative, but it’s enough to prompt others to start imagining what it’s like to be Reed, to start telling tales of their own. “We can’t even say,” one juror comments, “that he knew how to use a gun.”
Boly has shifted, ever so slightly, how he is speaking and the logic he is using, and that is enough to convince his fellow jurors that this conversation isn’t done.
THE NEGOTIATION CONCLUDES
The jurors have been in the room for a little over an hour when one suggests it’s time for a formal vote. Each person scribbles their verdict on a piece of paper. The foreperson tallies them. Opinions have changed: They are now at nine votes to acquit, three to convict.
But a verdict, of course, must be unanimous. Anything else triggers a mistrial. Studies of jury deliberations indicate that moments such as this—when a small group has vocally committed to a specific verdict—are perilous. Once people like Karl and the foreperson stake a strong claim to guilt, it’s difficult for them to change their minds. All it takes is one adamant juror, certain the accused should go to jail, for a mistrial to occur.
In this room, there are still three people who think Leroy Reed is guilty.
But the stories are whirring inside everyone’s heads.
The foreperson clears his throat. “I have something to say,” he announces.
He had voted guilty, he continues. But, as he listened to the other jurors, he started imagining himself in Leroy’s shoes. In particular, he later told me, he remembered a moment when he had been pulled over for a speeding ticket, and “when the cop pulled me over, I told him it’s not right to give me a ticket, it’s not justice, because I wasn’t putting anyone else at risk by going a few miles over the speed limit.”
That logic had made sense to him at the time. And now, in the jury room, it occurs to him that Leroy Reed is in the same position, accused of a crime that didn’t put anyone at risk. If you buy a gun and hide it in your closet, you may have technically broken the law, but does that mean you should be punished? Does that align with the stories we tell ourselves about justice and fairness?
“I can see a reason for somewhat of a doubt, however minor it might be,” the foreperson tells the others. He’s changing his mind.
Another juror has changed his mind, as well. Looking at the facts from Reed’s perspective, he says, made him rethink things.
Sometimes, the stories we hear are enough to help us see a situation through someone else’s eyes, to empathize and reconsider. At other times, dispassionate reason wins the day. But we can only make decisions together if we all agree on which kind of logic is most persuasive. Once we are aligned, our minds become more open to what others have to say.
* * *
—
There’s only one guilty vote remaining now. One last negotiation, and the jury’s job is done.
But that vote is Karl, and even after all this back-and-forth, he is still certain Reed should be convicted. “We’re going way too deep into his psychological thoughts,” he has told the other jurors. “We’re guessing at what he was thinking, we’re guessing at what he knew, we’re guessing at what he didn’t know.” Leroy Reed was a felon who bought a handgun. That’s all the story Karl needs.
Throughout this deliberation, Karl hasn’t told any stories about himself. Other jurors have peppered their comments with asides—tales about their lives, revelations from their pasts—but not Karl. Karl’s son told me that his father, who died in 2000, was the ideal fireman, “a real follow-the-checklist, respect-the-chain-of-command kind of guy.” Karl taught himself to rely on the practical, analytical logic of costs and benefits because, during an emergency, that kind of thinking saves lives.
So Boly embarks on a different kind of negotiation.
It begins when a juror poses a question to Karl, an open-ended inquiry: “It appears to me that your decision that this man is guilty is very important and complete in your mind. Share more of that with us, if you will.”
Karl shifts in his seat. “I can’t…” He pauses. “I don’t have the education and the training to put myself into your class as far as being able to understand the human mind and how it works and what people think,” he says. “It sounds very cold and simplistic to look at three reasons and say, yes, they meet this and this,” but, to Karl, that’s the whole case.
“Lemme ask you one quick question,” another juror says. “Do you think there’s ever a case where exceptions can be made?”
“Sure,” Karl replies. “When I get Mr. Reed out there, and I look at him, to me, he’s not a person that’s gonna harm anyone. I don’t think he had any ill intent. I don’t feel he’s a threat to society.”
But Karl explains that there’s a bigger issue to consider here, a trade-off of costs and benefits. If juries stop enforcing laws, that’s anarchy. Acquitting Leroy Reed could encourage other people to lawlessness.
If it would help public safety, Karl says, he could see himself make an exception and let someone go. But he can’t see any such benefit in Leroy Reed’s case.
Something important has just happened: Karl has revealed his deepest desire. He values public safety above all else. That’s why he’s pushing for a guilty verdict—in his practical mindset, a guilty verdict preserves law and order, keeps people protected.
Boly recognizes this as an opportunity to add something new to the table, to experiment with a different approach. For instance, what if an innocent verdict makes people even safer?
“You know,” Boly says, addressing his words to the room, though his intended audience is Karl, “I think this is a good law, and I don’t want to say or do anything that suggests that I don’t take this law seriously.” But still, he says, he’s frustrated. “Part of what’s motivating me is that I’ve got a lot of other things to do. This is finals week,” and he has a lot of work at the university. What’s more, “my students have been the victims of crime. A week ago, a woman in one of my classes was walking to my class, and she was assaulted…. Another woman in a class I was teaching at the time was assaulted. She was beaten and she was raped.
“So, I mean, I want to do my civic duty,” he continues. “I’ve got a lot of other things to do. I come down here, to the courthouse, and the DA gives me this case, and in spite of this awesome room, and these very serious people, and in spite of their lovely dog and pony show and the legal rigamarole, I’m sort of sitting to myself, thinking, this is Mickey Mouse. I mean, I really don’t feel that this is a justified expenditure of my time.” They could be putting a thief behind bars, or a rapist, or a murderer. Instead, they’re debating whether Leroy Reed—someone who poses no real threat to public safety—should go to jail. “I’m thinking of a message I’d like to send the DA’s office. Believe me, I would love to send them a message and the message would be: Dammit to hell, I’m afraid to walk to my car in the parking lot! I’ve got women students who are being mugged, who are being beaten, who are being raped. The same thing is happening to my male students. They’re being mugged. And you give me Leroy.”
If they acquit Reed, Boly tells the room, they’re sending a message to the police and the district attorney: Focus on the real criminals. Focus on keeping the public genuinely protected. By finding Reed innocent, they’re actually helping public safety. It’s a creative take on the situation, for sure, but he’s applying reason, comparing potential drawbacks with expected gains. He’s using practical, analytical logic to add new options to the conversation. He’s aligning with Karl, and arguing that if they care about stopping crime, the rational choice is letting Reed go free.
“Definitely he shouldn’t be here,” Karl says. He still isn’t completely convinced, though.
So Boly offers one last bargain: “I have an enormous amount of respect for your sense of the importance of the law,” he tells Karl. “Your sense of the importance of getting it right and your dedication to the integrity of the judicial process.”
There is a cost to changing one’s mind, Boly knows, an expense paid by our ego. But there is a benefit, as well: The esteem and self-respect that come from doing the right thing.
As the conversation continues, it’s unclear how Karl is processing all of this. But he’s thinking.
“Let’s say we take a vote on it?” the foreperson asks as they approach two and a half hours of deliberation.
Each juror takes a piece of paper and scribbles their verdict:
Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.
Leroy Reed will go free.
* * *
—
How do we connect during a What’s This Really About? conversation?
The first step is trying to figure out what each of us wants from a discussion, what we are seeking from this dialogue. That’s how we get at the deeper questions beneath the surface.
Boly connected with his fellow jurors by understanding that each person wanted something different. Some wanted to talk about justice; others wanted to focus on law and order. Some wanted facts; others craved empathy. Dr. Ehdaie connected with his patients by asking about what mattered to them most. We unearth these kinds of desires by taking the time to ask What’s This Really About?
When someone says, “Can we talk about the upcoming meeting?,” or “That memo was crazy, right?,” or worries aloud, “I’m not sure he can get the job done,” they are inviting us into a What’s This Really About? discussion, signaling there’s something deeper they want to discuss. Boly knew how to listen for those signals, and Dr. Ehdaie learned how to look for them.
Then, once we know what people want from a conversation, we next need to work out how to give it to them—how to engage in a quiet negotiation—so that their needs are met, as well as our own. That requires conducting experiments to reveal how we’ll make decisions together. This is the matching principle at work, recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring and then aligning with others, and inviting them to align with us. Boly and Ehdaie understood that matching isn’t mimicry; it’s not simply looking concerned and repeating back what others have said.
Rather, matching is understanding someone’s mindset—what kind of logic they find persuasive, what tone and approach makes sense to them—and then speaking their language. And it requires explaining clearly how we, ourselves, are thinking and making choices, so that others can match us in return. When someone describes a personal problem by telling a story, they are signaling they want our compassion rather than a solution. When they lay out all the facts analytically, they are signaling they are more interested in a rational conversation than an emotional one. We can all learn to get better at noticing these clues and conducting the experiments that reveal them.
The most profound gift of the What’s This Really About? conversation is a chance to learn what others want to talk about, what they need out of a discussion, and inviting everyone to make choices together. That is when we begin to understand one another, and start finding solutions that are better than anything we could dream up on our own.
Skip Notes
* You may recognize similarities with the different kinds of cognition that Daniel Kahneman describes in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman describes the brain as containing two systems: System 1 is instinctual and can produce snap judgments, like the logic of similarities. System 2 is slower, more deliberate and rational, like the logic of costs and benefits.
A GUIDE TO USING THESE IDEAS
PART II
Asking Questions and Noticing Clues
In 2018, researchers at Harvard began recording hundreds of people having conversations with friends, strangers, and coworkers, hoping to shed light on a question: How do people signal what they want to talk about? How, in other words, do we determine What’s This Really About?
The participants in the experiment spoke face-to-face and over video calls. They were provided with some suggested subjects to start—“What do you do for work?” “Are you a religious person?”—but were allowed to meander across topics. Afterward, they were asked if they enjoyed their discussion.
The answer, for many, was essentially “No.” People had tried to change the subject, had hinted they wanted to talk about something new, had indicated when they were bored, had introduced new topics. They had experimented with different approaches. But their partners had failed to notice.
The clues that someone wanted something different from a conversation were obvious, the researchers found, once people knew what to look for. But in the rush of talking, those clues were also easy to miss. When someone says something and then laughs afterward—even if it wasn’t funny—it’s a hint they’re enjoying the conversation. When someone makes noises as they listen (“Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” “Interesting”), it’s a sign they’re engaged, what linguists call backchanneling. When someone asks follow-up questions (“What do you mean?” “Why do you think he said that?”), it’s a clue they’re interested, whereas statements that change the subject (“Let me ask you about this other thing”) are hints they’re ready to move on.
“Although people filled their conversational speech with information about their topic preferences,” the researchers later wrote, “their human partners failed to pick up on many of those cues (or ignored them), and they were slow to act on them. Taken together, our results suggest that there is ample room for improvement.”
These findings aren’t exactly shocking, of course. We’ve all experienced this before. Sometimes people don’t notice the signals we’re trying to send, because they haven’t trained themselves to pay attention. They haven’t learned to experiment with different topics and conversational approaches.
But learning to pick up on those clues and conduct these kinds of experiments is important because they get at the second rule of a learning conversation.
We achieve this in four ways: By preparing ourselves before a conversation; by asking questions; by noticing clues during a conversation; and by experimenting and adding items to the table.
PREPARING FOR A CONVERSATION
A What’s This Really About? conversation often occurs at the start of a discussion, and so we’re well served to do a bit of prep work before a dialogue begins.
Researchers at Harvard and other universities have looked at exactly which kind of prep work is helpful. Participants in one study were asked to jot down a few topics they would like to discuss before a conversation began. This exercise took only about thirty seconds; frequently the topics written down never came up once the discussion started.
But simply preparing a list, researchers found, made conversations go better. There were fewer awkward pauses, less anxiety, and, afterward, people said they felt more engaged. So, in the moments before a conversation starts, it’s useful to describe for yourself:
What are two topics you might discuss? (Being general is okay: Last night’s game and TV shows you like)
What is one thing you hope to say?
What is one question you will ask?
The benefit of this exercise is that, even if you never talk about these topics, you’ll have them in your back pocket if you hit a lull. And simply by anticipating what you’ll discuss, you’re likely to feel more confident.
Once this exercise becomes second nature—and it quickly will—you can make your preparation even more robust:
What are two topics you most want to discuss?
What is one thing you hope to say that shows what you want to talk about?
What is one question you will ask that reveals what others want?
ASKING QUESTIONS
There is a quiet negotiation at the heart of the What’s This Really About? conversation that emerges when we need to make a decision or set a plan. Sometimes it’s quick—a friend says, “We gotta talk about the schedule for Saturday,” and you reply, “Okay!”—and the negotiation is done.
For more meaningful and complex conversations, however, that negotiation is longer and more subtle. We might start with pleasantries, then move to an easy topic—the weather or a friend in common—and eventually arrive at what we actually want to discuss: “I was wondering if you might consider investing in my new company?”
