S 01 | Ep 37 Unleashing the Power of Communication Jay Johnson studies why people find each other difficult , and his answer is more interesting than you might expect . Most friction between people comes not from bad intentions but from mismatched underlying drives , the biological motivations that shape how we work , decide , and communicate . Someone wired to acquire and learn will clash with someone wired to bond and defend , and both will be convinced the other person is the problem . This episode moves from that foundation into something more practical : how do we communicate in ways that actually land , especially asynchronously ? Jay ' s framework is built around the uncomfortable fact that only seven percent of communication comes from the words themselves , with the rest carried by tone , body language , and context that digital formats routinely strip out . His solutions are low - tech but underused : name your tone explicitly at the top of an email , send a short voice note alongside a message with ambiguous content , and read your own proposals out loud to check whether they sound like someone you would want to listen to . Jay and Alex build toward a shared belief that the monologue model of communication is failing people at the exact moment when the ideas that need communicating are most complex .