Leadership, Love & Curiosity

It’s February and as we’re being bombarded with messages of love, visions of red roses and the smell of chocolate candy everywhere, I’ve been pondering on the most loving thing we can do for ourselves and our people. What came up, not surprisingly, happens to be one of the most important leadership competencies in business today.

Curiosity.

“It’s all data”. I find myself saying this quite a bit with clients, especially at the beginning of our engagements. Without fail, they arrive at a session with a guilty look on their face and a sad story about how their dog ate their homework. I remind them yet again, “Whatever happened, it’s all data”. 

In our society, we’ve been conditioned to treat and label every failure, misstep, error, accident, unexpected outcome or anything that isn’t productive, planned or perfect as “bad”, “wrong” and something to be avoided at all cost. So when a client shows up with an incomplete assignment, they assume that I (like many in their lives) will be disappointed. But, I’m not. I’m curious. 

What’s been going on since we last met?

Has something big, important or unexpected happened? How’s that affecting you?

Did the homework not resonate or excite you? Or was it uncomfortable and did you just not want to “go there”?

Is the subject or assignment no longer important or relevant? 

You can get a sense (and maybe even feel in your own body) how this line of questioning keeps someone open and connecting honestly versus feeling defensive, shut down or wanting to protect themselves (or that scrappy little ego that always rears its head when we think we’re in trouble). 

But, but, but… how do we hold people accountable and get anything done (I can hear some of you thinking)?  When we choose to be curious, it’s not that we are letting people off the hook.  We are finding a different, better or more aligned way to get something done, to advance the cause. Which, in the end, leads to more productivity and higher quality work. 

How Curiosity Works for Ourselves

Because all great leadership starts with keen self-awareness and self-management, we’ll start here.

Staying IN curiosity and OUT of judgement is one of the kindest, most life-giving, healthiest, energy-saving things we can do for ourselves.

And it’s a practice most people need to learn. We are taught from a very early age that you should do what you’re told or what you are supposed to do or there will be consequences (usually a punishment) and that is bad and to be avoided. This is important in keeping children and adolescents safe and teaching them accountability and responsibility. However, unfortunately, there is no class or training in our 20’s to unlearn or reframe this concept, so we keep on doing what we are supposed to and feeling bad about ourselves when we don’t. 

Let’s get curious about this.

Who or what are we letting dictate what we are supposed to be doing anyway? This giant kettle of fish I will save for another blog post.

But seriously, once we decide what is truly and authentically ours to do, how can we get curious when it doesn’t happen, whether that’s one item on a to-do list, an entire project, a lifestyle change or even a dream job?

For me, it all starts with awareness that something didn’t go as planned and that I’m starting to be really hard on myself. (As a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser, I’ve had a lot of practice here). Once I’m aware of what’s happening, I stop, breathe and then mumble something along the lines of, “Huh… that’s interesting. I wonder why I had that huge reaction? Said that weird thing? Felt run-down yesterday? Wasn’t excited about that? Didn’t complete that task I knew was important? Avoided that situation or conversation? Wasn’t completely honest with that person?” 

Again, you can feel in your body how these types of questions would create an entirely different internal experience than beating one’s self up or going into shame and blame. Yes, we are responsible for our actions (and non-actions), but staying curious about what’s happening gives us the space, grace, energy, creativity to course-correct so that we can be more productive, innovative, connected and at peace. 

How Curiosity Works with Others

Just as it takes awareness to know when we are being hyper-critical of ourselves, it also takes practice to catch ourselves reacting judgementally with others. Yet, we know from mounds of research that being curious with others is required to build trust and psychological safety, create stronger and more open relationships, promote creativity and innovation and is healthier and less stressful for everyone. 

One key to staying curious with others is not taking other people’s choices personally. In the classic book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz tells us, “Don’t Take Anything Personally”, but we’ll just start with choices.

I had a client recently (let’s call her Tina) who was devastated by her new manager's choices for restructuring her department. Tina had been working tirelessly, stepping up into a leadership role, filling in and closing the production gaps while this position had been vacant for months. With the new restructuring, however, she was now reporting to someone she considered a peer and was a peer with someone she had been managing. Naturally, she felt this was a punch in the gut, a demotion, of sorts, and she was questioning her worth and value as an employee and as a person. Her instant reaction was to immediately start looking for a new position, both in and outside the organization. While a different position might be a great career choice eventually, job-searching from this panicked and reactionary place was unlikely to result in the best career move. 

After normalizing her reaction and talking through the experience, she was able to get curious. Once she could calmly look at the situation from many points of view and was genuinely curious about how and why this happened, she realized that her new manager was under a lot of pressure to complete the restructure quickly and without historical data. Tina knew that she was highly revered as she had greatly excelled in her current position, so the new manager may be making her own job easier by keeping Tina where she was instead of promoting her into the position for which she was qualified. Tina’s understanding that the choices made were motivated by things that had nothing to do with her value or worth helped her move away from panic and self-judgement and back into her calm, confident, compassionate and curious nature.

While this was still uncomfortable, from here, she was able to have a much more productive conversation with the new manager about her experience and what she wanted in her career and also to enthusiastically reach out to new and interesting mentors to discuss what might be next for her. 

Whether it is a manager, direct report, stakeholder, business partner, significant other, friend, parent, sibling, child or even a cashier at the store, staying open and curious and not taking their choices personally is a huge gift to them, but more importantly, it’s a huge gift to yourself - one that supports you in staying in integrity, in alignment, in your power and operating from the most creative, authentic and expansive place possible. 

We are all growing all the time. What I know for sure is that we all grow best under conditions of love. And as Casanova says, “Love is three quarters curiosity”.

Be leaderful, be loving, be curious. It’ll make the world a better place, I promise.