These 2 things will make your conversations better

Charles Duhigg shared these two ideas from his new book Supercommunicators on the James Altucher podcast.
Two really simple suggestions for better communication from Charles Duhigg from his book Super Communicators that he shared on the Altucher Podcast.
"Once you know what to look for in a conversation, you don't have to think about it that hard. It becomes instinctual. There's usually three different kinds of conversations. There are practical conversation ones, there are emotional conversations, and then there are social conversations which are about how we relate to each other, how we believe that our pasts have shaped who we are today, how we deal with office dynamics and interpersonal dynamics and sort of society as a whole."
This applies in the workplace too, because sometimes your colleagues or your team members, they just want to be heard. Sometimes they really want help and pragmatic solutions to their problems. The goal of a conversation is not to convince the other person.
"The goal of a conversation is simply to understand what the other person is trying to tell you and speak in a way that they can understand you."
The other great strategy he talked about is looping for understanding. You might have heard this before, but sometimes people talk about it and they say what you're doing is just repeating the words back to the person. But a better way to think about it is explaining the idea in your own words.
"What I want you to do is I want you to listen to them. I want you to think about what they've said. And I want you to try and explain to me what you are hearing. Try and explain to me what you think they are trying to tell you."
And then always end by saying, Did I get that right? Because you really are looping for understanding. When you do that, you're making sure you heard and understood what the other person was saying, that they have the opportunity to acknowledge that or to correct you if you didn't get it right, because that's what a good conversation should be, is a real true exchange of ideas.
"If you've done that, the conversation has succeeded."