Supercommunicators | 3. How to Have the Hardest Conversations

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Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The final installment of our series explores the conversations that most of us dread, like frank discussions of our differences or a negative performance review at work. We often anticipate that these chats will go badly—and end in hurt feelings or embarrassment—but there are proven ways to make them easier to navigate. Host Charles Duhigg talks with psychologist Jay Van Bavel about strategies for having the hardest conversations. And: Vernā Myers, Netflix’s former vice president for inclusion strategy, tells the story of what happened inside the company after an executive was fired for using a racial slur. This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. The guides we mention in this episode can be found at charlesduhigg.com/tools/ Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning. This episode includes references to racial slurs and offensive language.
0:07.0	If you were to ask employees at Netflix when the Civil War began inside their company,
0:12.0	a lot of them would probably point to an afternoon in February of 2018.
0:16.0	There were about 30 people gathered inside a conference room, and the company's chief communication
0:21.0	officer stood up to speak.
0:22.9	The executive told everyone that Netflix had recently released a new comedy special that
0:27.1	was particularly offensive.
0:29.5	In this special, the comedian, Tom Segura, makes fun of people with Down syndrome.
0:34.3	He complains that you can't say words like, retarded anymore.
0:38.0	And so the Netflix executive told everyone that they need to expect complaints and that they
0:42.8	needed to treat those complaints seriously.
0:45.8	Everyone should appreciate how hurtful those offensive words can be.
0:49.3	And then to drive home his point, he offered an analogy.
0:53.7	Hearing those kinds of slurs, he said, would be,
0:56.0	quote, as if an African-American person had heard, and then he said the N-word.
1:03.3	Netflix has fired its top communications executive. Jonathan Friedland has been the company's
1:08.9	chief communications officer for the past six years,
1:11.7	and is now leaving Netflix after allegedly using racial slurs and insensitive remarks to his
1:18.1	team during at least two meetings. To the outside world, this seemed like a very simple story.
1:25.1	But inside Netflix, the executive's firing was very, very divisive.
1:30.2	Some people thought it was unfair, that this executive was being blamed for using that word
1:34.3	in a non-offensive way, and that firing him was way out of proportion. However, other employees
	...

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