If you find yourself stumped on what to say, you may need to read this new book from Charles Duhigg. Brilliantly written, it's the perfect guide to polishing your communication skills. I have already implemented much of what I gleaned from the book to have better conversations.

I found this book to be boring and each chapter was so long. I also felt it ended abruptly.
I learned a few things though.

I loved Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better, so I was so excited to see his new book! Supercommunicators did not disappoint!

Supercommunicators deals with having difficult conversations and creating connection between people. Each conversation has these elements: What's this really about, how do we feel, and who are we?

I love Duhigg's story telling style of combining research and real-life examples to drive home the point. It keeps each chapter interesting and engaging as you learn about both communication and real-life events. In Supercommunicators, Duhigg pulls examples from the CIA, jury duty, The Big Bang Theory hit TV show, gun control, anti-vaxxers, and Netflix to demonstrate various communication principles and how they all tie together. Duhigg manages to address difficult topics without politicizing them and showing how differing viewpoints can engage in a productive conversation. This storytelling keeps you engaged and makes you want to keep reading to learn how these seemingly impossible conversations and situations occur. This book is not a dry repetition of facts and studies like other books.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone. It's applications can be used in your personal life and professional life. I also recommend reading the Afterword which summarizes the famous Harvard Grant study.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this eARC!

This is my first book by Charles Duhigg. I have heard so much about his previous books around adjusting your habits to reach your goals. For years I have obsessively read business books and articles related to my field of work. Communication has always been pivotal to reach goals in a corporate environment. This book is elaborating the various communication styles based on the following three elements:

"What´s this really about?"
"How do we feel?"
"Who are we?"

Training your amygdala NOT to take over a conversation with sudden emotions, but rather manage your conversation styles according to the above elements is easier said than done.
Therefore, I really loved the examples and consequences that Duhigg elaborated, when the conversation is not led in style.

Obviously, asking questions as well as listening are major skills that a human being needs to master to lead an effective and efficient conversation.

I also love the the win-win approach instead of the outdated approach to come out of a conversation as a so called "winner" whilst making your counterpart feel as a "loser".

Communication is a field that I always see room for improvement in my work as well private environment. Hence, I feel lucky to have read this ARC. Thanks to NetGalley and Charles Duhigg.

Crystal-clear recommendation for everyone who seeks to improve their conversation style as well as manage difficult conversations.

Duhigg's new book is looking at the people who are great at establishing deep meaningful connections. Duhigg contends that the art of conversation is a set of skills and “anyone can learn to be a supercommunicator.” He shares his findings and gives many tips on how to become one. Author is using a very effective technique, sort of like in nursery rhyme, The house Jack built. This is how Charles Duhigg takes you through his argument: introducing a new point and reiterating what he’s already explained which definitely makes it easier to memorize. The book has simple diagrams illustrating his points, at the end of each chapter there is an overview of the chapter ideas and the guide to using these ideas. The author even provides sample sentences you can utilize practicing your new skills. Real life examples throughout illustrate his points. Besides breaking down the techniques for three main types of conversation he identifies in his book, Duhigg also covers how to conduct conversations on the divisive topics like guns, Covid, vaccinations and race which makes this book extremely relevant. This is an excellent tool, one of the rare self-help books that can actually help. It can also work well for a book group discussion.

I absolutely LOVED this book. I ended up listening to it on audio as a part of the PRH Audio influencers program and i learned so much from it.

One thing that really resonated with me was the fact that the author was able to really zero in on the fact that a lot of us THINK we are communicating effectively, when really, we aren't. It helped to hear examples of conflicts or positive communication outcomes. I could find this being really helpful for a lot of people in both their professional and personal lives.

This book really does teach super communication skills. It goes so much deeper than the typical advice in books about your body language and eye contact, etc. in fact it mentions how some of us get so wrapped up and worried how we are presenting it takes away from our attention to the other person, which I totally relate too! This book is all about how to talk about difficult topics and disagreements and how it’s often our emotions that underlie big conversations not just the precise topic at hand. It teaches us how to take an approach of active listening and digging deeper through questions and establishing connections of identify, emotions, etc.

Thank you to @Random and #NetGalley for the digital ARC of #Supercommunicators. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

I enjoy Duhigg's writing. The topics he writes about are applicable to everyone and he makes the science/research accessible through relatable stories and examples. In today's society, where digital communication is becoming the norm, we're losing our ability to focus, listen and empathize. This book illustrates how to maintain and strengthen your communication skills.

This is a fascinating look at how and why humans communicate, and how we can all do it more effectively. Charles Duhigg’s well-research book tell us that we generally do not really connect, and so spend more time talk at one another than really communicating our feelings and ideas. Duhigg sprinkles in anecdotes and sketches to help make his points.

Social media and other platforms encourage us to talk or shout in a one-way talking-at style and I worry that we are losing the art of conversation, of actually speaking, hearing and interpreting without always applying our biases first. Supercommunicators offers practical tips to help us get back to real give-and-take styles of communicating.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

Review of Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg

I am always looking for ways to improve my performance at work and in my personal life, and I recognized a long time ago that communication is a key component of success in both these areas. Strategy and intentions are merely nice to have if you don’t have good communication skills.

I appreciate Duhigg’s research and approach to helping us learn to frame communication so we can adjust our approach, words, energy, and emotion for maximum clarity and effectiveness.

Duhigg’s stories and examples were very relatable and were very effective in conveying the concepts he was trying to get across. I found myself becoming more aware and careful of my words and more deliberate in being sensitive to the full context of my conversations with others.

I’d recommend this to anyone looking for an easy-to-read, insightful, and well-researched book on improving communication in any setting.

This was an eye-opening read. The words flowed from one ah-ha to another and I just kept thinking of situations where I could apply these insights. I will be spending more time with this book and exploring how I can bring these insights into my everyday interactions and my coaching.

For me, this book should be required reading for every student. There is not a vocation where the techniques discussed here would not be applicable.

Thank you thank you thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy!!

BLOWN AWAY by this book and can not wait to get my hands on the physical copy so I can read it again and underline and make notes.

I consider myself to be an excellent communicator and this book taught me so much about why I feel that way, and it helped me understand so much about what I am already doing well and what I can do to become an even better communicators.

In this day and age, we are forgetting how to effectively CONNECT and COMMUNICATE with each other. Social media has had a huge effect on all of us, but we still need to operate in this world by communicating with other humans around us. This book will help you do that better!

I loved the stories included to help make the points, the drawings that also helped visualize the points that were being made.

This book should be required reading for anyone who talks to other people - especially in any sort of team, community or business environment. So basically everyone.

Get this. Savor it. Underline. Practice. Be human. Talk and communicate well.

Enjoy your time in this book! I'm already jealous of how much you are going to learn and I honestly can't wait to read it again!

Supercommunicators is a book about learning how to communicate better so you can connect with people more. It’s laid out with real-world stories and pop culture references with plenty of source material to back up its points.

Though a little dry for my preference, for those who like their personal development books with less warm and fuzzy and more fact and action, this is it. Also, because I’ve learned some of the book’s points (i.e. using “I” statements, repeating back what you’ve just heard for clarity, etc.) from other personal development books and therapy, some areas seemed repetitive.

What being a supercommunicator boils down to is learning self-awareness and reading the room, so you don’t put yourself in awkward and/or contentious situations. My biggest takeaway is learning how to listen better and getting to the root of what a conversation is really about.

There are valuable lessons in there, but I feel those who may need the book most may be the least inclined to pick it up.

I quite enjoyed reading this book about how to become a supercommunicator. I'm not a huge self-help book fan, but I found this one to be well worth the read.

We all communicate and want to be able to communicate to the best of our abilities, but sometimes it's hard to know how to do that. This book presents three questions for us to use/solve when approaching a conversation. They are: What's this really about?, How do we feel?, and Who are we?.

Each concept is explained and broken down into more details. There are studies to back up these questions/methods and there are stories to go along too.

I enjoyed the stories and real-world examples mixed in with the science. Hearing how these questions/methods were used in real situations was very helpful in understanding the concepts and seeing them play out with real people. There were so many different sectors where these communication methods were used, for example, Netflix, the CIA, and gun politics. These stories are what stuck with me the most. Seeing how much each question/skill can change a conversation is huge!

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to improve their communication skills. Even if you only try one or two of these concepts, I think they'd make a huge difference.

Thank you to NetGalley for early access.

An excellent read! It was incredibly helpful for someone like me who is very introverted and needs advice on initiating deep conversations.

This was a DNF for me. I have read this author's books before but this one I just couldn't do. I was super bored. When it comes to books like this, we all know this stuff. We all understand these concepts and nothing was new. For this reason, the information needs to be presented in a way that keeps my attention, and this did not.

This book is gripping from the beginning (not something I usually say about a HOW TO book). And it is full of useful, new-to-me tips for how to better communicate with those we encounter. I also found that it was interesting to learn how others might be using their communication skills to persuade me to action--I hope I remember to put this new counter-skill to good use. Pacing was fantastic, not too many stories and not too much education but a great mix at just the right points. I can't wait to get the audio and listen, and really seal in the practicalities of a worthy goal: being a super-communicator.

I appreciate the narrative style of this book. The characters are more than they seem but they develop organically which isn’t an easy task to manage.

Overall this was good, it just took me forever to read because I kept getting a little bored reading it. There isn’t anything in here I didn’t already know, although the examples were interesting. The chapters were also a little too long and made it hard to commit to reading through onto the next one.

I've been a fan of Charles Duhigg since his book The Power of Habit. It was an instant favorite, so of course I requested this book as soon as I saw it, and it did not disappoint! I wasn't even interested in the topic initially but knew that Duhigg's compelling writing would draw me in and teach me something new, and I was right! He provided so many interesting anecdotes, from the FBI to anti-vaxxers, and so many interesting psychological studies, that this book was hard to put down.