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[0:08] Back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem. Now, this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionally resilient so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks. Now, on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills, and strategies that you can use to impact your life and those around you. Now, with that said, let's slip into the stream.
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[0:45] Hey folks, welcome back to It's an Inside Job. I'm your host, Jason Liem. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your week. Well, today we are going to discuss the fascinating trait of curiosity or being curious. You know, in today's episode, I'm excited to dive into the fascinating topic, the powerful connection between curiosity, resilience, and equanimity.
[1:09] Now, curiosity isn't just about seeking new information. Well, no, it's much more than that. It's a vital trait that helps us navigate challenges, adapt to change, and maintain a balanced state of mind. You know, by staying curious, we can approach life's obstacles and challenges with a sense of wonder and openness, which in turn, well, it fosters resilience and a calm, composed demeanor. And so today's episode, to do a deeper dive in this connection between curiosity and resilience and equanimity, well, I'm joined by an author who has just launched a new book on curiosity.
[1:43] And at this point, you may be curious to know who this guest is. And my guest today is Doug Hensch. He just wrote the book, Rethinking Curiosity, How to Lead When You Don't Have All the Answers. And the question still remains, who is Doug Hench other than an author? While he's also an executive coach deeply committed to fostering growth and leaders in their teams. His approach is rooted in humility, curiosity, and a profound understanding of the human potential. Now, Doug specializes in guiding individuals and groups to achieve their goals and exceed their own expectations. His coaching methodology is highly personalized, often utilizing a blend of 360 feedback and assessments to establish a strong foundation for transformative growth. Now beyond coaching, Doug is also an accomplished author, sharing his insights through two notable publications, Positively Resilient, Five and a Half Secrets to Beat Stress, Overcome Obstacles and Defeat Anxiety, and his second book, Rethinking Humility, How Thinking of Yourself Less Makes You a Better Leader. Now these works highlight his dedication to enhancing leadership,
[2:49] team dynamics, while emphasizing the importance of humility and self-reflection. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet.
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[3:11] Hensch with me today. He is an author of the book, Rethinking Curiosity, How to Lead When You Don't Have All the Answers. Welcome to the show, Doug. Great to be here. Thanks, Jason. I was wondering if we could just maybe simply kick off by you briefly introducing who you are and what you're about. Sure. I guess first and foremost, I'm a dad and a husband.
[3:35] And after that, you know, I'm I'm an executive coach, and I spend a lot of my time working one-on-one with executives. I split my time also running workshops on various content topics, also team building, problem solving, decision making for executive teams.
[3:55] And, you know, it's funny, I just realized I didn't put author in there because I don't think of myself that way. I think of myself as more of a reader and consumer of these things. But I guess I'm getting to that place now with three books. books and I'm just happy to continue to be learning and hopefully exhibiting some curiosity myself. And today that's what I'd like to reach out for you. Originally I reached out because you wrote a big book on resilience but I thought curiosity is your latest work and it's rethinking curiosity and I thought that triggered my intrigue just the title in itself. I guess to kick off what inspired you to write this book? I mean, there's scores and scores of books on leadership and innovation. And I'm curious, what was your motivation? Yeah, it's funny you say that, Jason, because, you know, if you do a Google search, excuse me, a search on Amazon, even a Google search for leadership books, I mean, the numbers are baffling. And I've stopped reading them, quite frankly. However, I know that my clients are hungry for becoming better leaders.
[5:04] What I have discovered over the course of my 54 years on this earth, soon to be 55, is that I don't have all the answers, nor do my clients, but collaboratively, we seem to get to better places. And absent life and death situations, You know, I'm thinking military. I'm thinking first responders.
[5:29] Curiosity is my go-to for making decisions in life, understanding what's in front of me, solving problems. And I've just paused so many times in my life and slowed down to speed up by just trying to ask better questions and be curious about what's in front of me. Yeah, because I think everyone likes the idea of curiosity, but I don't think many of us pay so much heed to it, especially in the professional corporate environment where it seems we're jumping from one thing to the next to the next thing. We may have succeeded on a project or finished a task or something, but before we celebrate and explore, or even when we fumble the ball and things didn't go right, sometimes we don't really sort of decompress and understand what it is and we just move on to the next thing. We say we're going to learn from it, but because of the speed of everything, at least this is what I hear, and this is from my experience working with corporate clients, they're on to the next project because that's what's coming down the conveyor belt. I mean, what's your take on that? I mean, how can we encourage more curiosity?
[6:42] I think first, it's got to be modeled, right? So leaders and members of the team. And by the way, when we speak about leaders, of course, I think the first thing that comes to our mind is formal leadership with formal authority, right? One step on the hierarchy. I think we're all leaders. And with that said, we can all be examples for each other. And one of the things to be really careful about is punishing curiosity. As adults, one of the biggest fears adults have, particularly in the workplace, is the fear of looking incompetent, right? And at the heart of curiosity is a lack of knowledge. So asking questions sometimes is not exactly what people want to do. So getting to the heart of your question, what can we do to encourage it? I would say praise people for their vulnerability and their humility and the fact that they're showing the courage to say, I don't know. Tell me more.
[7:49] And I think that that idea of vulnerability is a very good word, because I think many of us may wrongly characterize vulnerability as showing weakness, showing our insecurity, showing that we can fumble the ball, that we are sort of incompetent to some level, that we should be able to have the knowledge and experience to score the goal per se. say. But counterintuitively, vulnerability is actually just that. It takes a lot of strength and courage to expose that. I mean, how do you, considering curiosity and vulnerability should go hand in
[8:25] hand, what is it that you advise to your client base? What do they specifically do to instill that, to encourage that type of mindset? Yeah.
[8:40] So at the risk of maybe giving you a similar answer to the last question, it's exhibited, it's practice it. With that said, there are a number of people that I've worked with, a number of CFOs, CEOs, chief marketing officers, you name it, where when I've gathered anonymous feedback for them in the form of a 360, right? I find out, you know, I don't know Jason. Jason holds things close to the vest. Who is Jason? Why doesn't he share more information? Jason never talks about his family.
[9:17] So I ask people to consider, as a coach, I don't tell people what to do, of course, but sometimes I do try to nudge them a little bit and say, hey, how would it feel to share a little bit about your weekend? Oh, you know, I don't know. That's not for the workplace. You know, people would be bored with knowing I went to this barbecue and that soccer game. And I say, well, are you bored when your team shares that with you? No, no, I love hearing about them. You know, then the light bulb goes on. So I think demonstrating a little bit of vulnerability. And the example I give is, I said, you don't have to tell people that you got into such a fight with your wife last night that, you know, you're considering a divorce. Like, that's oversharing, right? However, to say, I'm a little nervous about this project. I'm not sure we can get it done do we have the right resources this is important to me what that does is demonstrate that it's okay to be a little vulnerable to other people because then they'll most likely reciprocate i also believe that vulnerability is so important it is the foundation of trust right when when i'm vulnerable with you you're going to be vulnerable with me and we go, wow, this guy's not out to get me. So I'll share a little bit more. And then, by the way, then my problem-solving capabilities, my decision-making capabilities, my collaboration goes up.
[10:46] I find that very interesting because some of my clients are sort of in seismic and they're in engineering and such. So it's very technical, very sort of science-oriented. And sometimes when you see these teams, especially when they're working across teams, they can be they can tend to be very transactional. And I think this is a little bit of the residue from from covid, all of us going on teams and Zoom and such. And so they can get straight to the point and they can be very transactional in the sense. But. In such sort of transactional cultures.
[11:26] I know we can sort of show it and mimic sort of curiosity, but how do you break the mold in these sort of very sort of, I don't know, almost stringent type of cultures? I can understand in creative cultures, it might be a little more easier, but what's your experience to try to break through that? Because a lot of managers in this podcast are thinking, you know, a lot of what this This guy, Doug, is saying it's right on the money, and I'd love to be able to permeate our culture, but we've been doing this for 15, 20 years this way, and it's almost in the woodwork.
[12:05] I don't think there's any one answer because, again, there are multiple cultures, and there's histories and beliefs, and there's certain values. What I will tell you is about an exercise I've recently started to use. I seem to be getting a lot of work around, hey, how do we connect better? How do we collaborate better? How do we deal with disagreement more effectively? And in particular, this exercise that I do, and I learned this from Charles Duhigg's most recent book, Super Communicators, who he took it from, I think, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. It's brilliant. So I talk about the concept of looping. Where I ask you a question and then you answer and then I paraphrase that answer, okay, to show that I'm listening and that I understand. And then I say, did I get that right?
[13:03] So, and what I tell people is you're not going to be punished for getting it wrong. You're going to be rewarded because that person now knows you're trying, right? Right. So many people have said, hey, to be a better listener, make eye contact, put your phone away, nod, smile, lean in. Right. It's all bullshit. Paraphrase. That's how you demonstrate you're listening by paraphrasing to people. And by the way, when that's your focus is I want to tell them what they've just said to me. Me. Well, guess what? Your job is now to listen. So instead of worrying about being a better listener, you have a goal. And that is to state what they've said. Now, getting back to the exercise, I give a super quick overview of looping. And then I pair people up and I say, go talk to somebody in the room that you know the least. So I just recently was with a team. I think we had close to 50 people and by the way they had their so this was their first in person since COVID.
[14:09] So there were a fair amount of people that hadn't met in person yet to make those deeper, richer connections. And they were very excited about this. So I said, go find the person in the room that you know the least. People move around. And I say, OK, question number one, you're going to ask each other. And they have to take turns asking it and answering. And I said, hey, use looping. Use yes and. Use whatever you want to engage in a conversation. You're going to need about five minutes for you guys to talk about this question. you know the first one is if you had a crystal ball what would you what would you want to know about if you could know one thing about the future what would it be fairly benign but goes a little deeper than just how long have you worked here right they answer that and then i go okay question number two what are you most grateful for so now we're getting into what someone's beliefs and values are maybe right is it family is it physical health is it your spiritual health, Is it the fact that you get to do what you love to do every day in your job, whatever it might be? And then I go, okay, now here's a really easy one, of course, because I just like to be sarcastic and have a little fun. And the question is, tell me about the last time you cried in front of another person.
[15:28] And you get the nervous giggles. You get hands in pockets, arms folded. People get a little nervous about this. So a little hemming and hawing sometimes. And then they have unbelievably deep, vulnerable conversations with each other. And what they realized, Jason, at the end of that conversation, that the trust level with that other person just went up.
[15:51] Could be, you know, on a scale of zero, you know, one to 10, it could be 0.5, it could be three, who knows, but it goes up a hundred percent of the time and they didn't get punished for being vulnerable. They were rewarded with reciprocity and a deeper connection and trust with the other person. Yeah. I mean, that's the question itself.
[16:10] I mean, it brings up a whole deeper layer that, you know, you generally wouldn't get in sort of small talk or these type of workshops. So I think that's a very intriguing or very curious question to ask someone, you know, just to start the process. And it's through just very straightforward exercises like this that people start getting the flow and understanding what vulnerability actually means. That exposing oneself per se to a certain level of course that you're not risking anything that people are there actually most human beings really do care most human beings especially if you work as a team are there to support each other 100 and so that comes back to for me it's always curious it's about the art of asking or the art and science of asking questions because one common and the one we hear a lot is that if someone does something and we ask them, oh, why did you do that? And again, we say with all best intents, but the question why is looking for a justification and a person doesn't realize it. Instead, we may want to ask questions such as what is the reason, looking for an explanation. Now, those nuances are not always picked up, but the brain kind of picks it up. Do I have to justify myself to you or can I explain myself to you? I mean, how important is when we're talking about asking questions and listening and paraphrasing and looping, what are some of your recommendations when it comes to asking good questions?
[17:39] Yeah, well, I think... To trigger curiosity. curiosity yeah well you know what one of the you know a couple of simple thoughts one is i really liked i hope the majority of my questions are open-ended and those open-ended questions start with what and how and what i tell people is just slap a what or a how on the beginning of your question it might be grammatically incorrect but you will do a better job of getting them to talk, right? So what I think about the guiding principle is I want the other person to talk as much as possible. I want to hear their opinions, their beliefs, their conclusions, and I want to hear, you know, what they see as the facts. So how do I do that? What and how questions I think give me the best. It doesn't mean close-ended questions are bad, that they're worse. It's just understanding when do I want to ask open-ended and when do I want to ask close on it and you hit on a big one too which is if it's a difficult conversation if there's some emotions involved.
[18:43] Which, I mean, quite frankly, that's every conversation, right? We can't take emotion out of any of this. But if there is a likelihood that someone's going to be defensive, you are making things worse by asking, why did you do that? Why did you hire this person? Why did we select this firm for this project? This, you know, these types of things just get people justifying and defending their position versus giving you that dialogue of unfiltered information as opposed to trying to fight you in an argument. Statement i concur i think you made a very astute point because i think there's a difference between sort of investigation and curiosity because i think investigation is understanding that the person may have some sort of negative intent right or curiosity for me and again this is just from my perspective that would suggest to me if you if you adopt a curious or a curious mindset you're thinking okay that person kind of fumbled the ball or something fumbled the ball but i'm curious But they had positive intention.
[19:53] And so I think if you adopt the curiosity or rethink curiosity, as the title of your book suggests, is that you're starting to see people with positive intention, maybe trying to understand maybe where it went wrong or where it tripped up a little.
[20:12] Does this sort of resonate or am I kind of completely off the mark here? Yeah, no, you're, you're, you're point on. And I also want to say you're a great podcaster because you mentioned the title of my book again. So thank you.
[20:25] So, you know, one of the things that I've, I've realized as a coach, so code coaches, our job is not to tell people we're not football coaches. We're not soccer coaches, right? We're not basketball, hockey, hockey coaches, Norway. We are helping people help themselves, right? All right. So if that's the basis of what we do, and I truly believe in that, then the questions I need to ask have to be for the other person. If questions I ask are for my benefit, then I might ask why, because I might think that my son made a bad decision and I want to corner him with my questions. Right and i want to i want to be a prosecutor right i just i just watched the jinx on hbo it's this fascinating two-season thing on robert durst and these murders and in the united states and all this stuff it's it's it it didn't help my sleep i will tell you that much okay i haven't seen that yet but he he the the prosecutor the la prosecutor los angeles uh district attorney attorney, had Robert Durst on the stand for nine days.
[21:39] And all he did was keep cornering him. Right. He just got him. He got him to admit that he wrote this letter that only the killer could have written in a case. And he got him. He basically without saying I killed Susan Berman, I think her name is. He said it. He said it in other words. That's not what we want. We want people, again, because this comes down to, I think, respecting another person's autonomy, right? So if I'm asking questions that get back them into a corner, well, then they're going to be like, well, he's kind of gotten me into this logic where if I don't do what he's kind of subtly suggesting, I'm going to look stupid. No, I want people to go, this is my idea. These are my values. This is my context. and based on how Doug is helping me rethink this, here's what I want to do. And then, by the way, they're going to have better engagement,
[22:41] creativity and ownership and more likely to follow through. And that's what my job is, to help them help themselves.
[22:49] And I guess it comes back to maybe that overused term of psychological safety, where people feel secure, where they feel they can contribute and value. And that, you know, whether they're performing or they haven't performed as well, that vulnerability, that curiosity the leader has to try to help him or her explore how they can improve or continue doing something well is a very important thing as you ask the questions. And I guess back to the root of my question, I think it's simple, simple rule, as you said. just their what and how in front of it, because that allows for exploration of ideas. So, so far, we've talked about a lot of the positive sides of curiosity. I was wondering, what do you feel from your experience again, and in writing the book, but I'm curious from your experience, what are some of the pitfalls or the challenges that leaders might face when they're trying to foster a culture of curiosity within their team or organization?
[23:46] Yeah, it's a good question, Jason. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book, and I searched hard and far to identify some, you know, flavors of curiosity. And there were, there's some academic ones that I won't go into. I was really, again, trying to speak to the layperson who's not looking at this from an academic, just something they could use right off the bat, right? So the two flavors I came up with were basically, you know, your natural curiosity, which is, so for me, if I'm flicking channels or around the internet and I see something around, say, World War II, I'm very interested in World War II history. It's just fascinating to me. So if a good documentary comes on, I know, uh-oh, I'm about to invest two hours in this or if it's, you know, could be two seasons, whatever, right?
[24:42] The pitfall in that natural curiosity as a leader is that you might be going down a path that's not good for your team. It's not good for your organization. It's just interesting to you. So understanding your own biases around curiosity, I think, is important.
[24:58] And here's the other thing. And we learned this. We actually commissioned a very small study where we reached out to people who had a boss. And we said, tell us about the downside of curiosity. And number one was being too nosy, right? So sometimes people who we talked about psychological safety and vulnerability, they're feeling really safe and they're feeling vulnerable and it's okay. They're not necessarily reading and empathizing with the other person, recognizing, hey, look, I've got some formal power and authority over this person. I might be asking some questions that are going in territory that this person's not comfortable with. So let me be really careful, right? Right. The second the second thing that came up in the study was indecisiveness, is that there is an impression. And by the way, I don't think that this is always necessarily accurate, but there can be an impression with a lot of questions that somebody can be indecisive. And we do look for our leaders to be decisive. Right. Although, again, that is a more of a case by case basis. Sometimes some one of the factors in decision making that I believe you look at and you ask yourself is, OK, as we're about to make this decision, solve this challenge. How much time do we have? As opposed to, like you said at the beginning, everything does seem go, go, go, go, go. Well, let's invest a little more time up front and save ourselves time on the back end.
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[26:35] In part one of my conversation with Doug, we explored the vital role of curiosity in organizations and how it can be nurtured to create a thriving culture. And here are some of the main points we discussed. First, we talked about the importance of fostering curiosity without punishing it. To truly embed curiosity into a company culture, well, it's essential to encourage employees to ask questions and to explore new ideas without fear of repercussions. This approach not only promotes a learning environment, but also drives innovation and growth. Curiosity, at its core, involves a desire to learn and understand. It requires embracing a certain level of vulnerability, which is foundational to building trust within teams across organizations. When people feel safe to express their curiosity, they develop critical skills like problem-solving and decision-making. These skills are crucial for navigating complex business challenges and change. Now, we also highlighted how curiosity enhances connections within an organization by encouraging open communication and collaboration, while curiosity fosters deeper relationships among team members. And this, in turn, well, it leads to a more cohesive and supportive work environment.
[27:49] Doug also shared a powerful exercise he uses in workshops to promote vulnerability and curiosity. He asked participants to pair up and ask each other three questions. What would you like to know about the future if you had a crystal ball? What are you grateful for? And a surprise, when was the last time you cried in front of someone? Now, all three of these questions create conversations that are both deep and meaningful, helping participants to connect on a more profound level. To help cultivate curiosity, Doug recommends starting questions with what and how. Now, these open-ended questions encourage people to elaborate on their thoughts and emotions, facilitating a deeper exploration of their perspectives and opinions. Now, the purpose of asking these questions, well, it's to support and develop the other person, helping them to grow and succeed. Now, however, Doug also mentioned some potential downsides of curiosity. If not managed properly, well, curiosity can be perceived as being too nosy or intrusive. Additionally, asking too many questions can make a leader seem indecisive. And as Doug said, it's important to balance curiosity with decisiveness to maintain effective leadership. Now, these insights from Doug highlight the powerful impact of curiosity on organizational culture and individual development. So now let's slip back into the stream with part two with my brilliant.
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[29:21] Adapt their curiosity approach when there may be culturally diverse environments you know where where global teams or different cultures themselves may perceive curiosity differently it's have a conversation about it so i was with another client a couple weeks ago.
[29:45] Who is multicultural multinational in their efforts and there were a couple things that i shared around vulnerability that they said hey doug just recognize that there are some people in this room who may not have the same beliefs around vulnerability that you do and then we had a dialogue about how would we how how would we demonstrate just a little more vulnerability ability without maybe people sharing different types of information. So again, I'll just go back to, I think it's have a conversation. Hey, Jason, I recognize you're from Canada. I'm from the United States. Let's talk about our assumptions about how we behave, right? So if you're building a team and we may be talking about thousands of people, or we could be talking about seven. This is why I think it's important to spend some time creating team norms and having that conversation. Yeah, that's what I was wondering, because that's kind of my sort of go-to. It's to sit down and create some sort of rules of engagement. You know, as important as all the cultural norms are that different people bring to the space, at the same time, we can almost...
[31:01] It's almost like walking in a minefield. It's almost, you don't want to offend anybody, so nobody says anything. And then, you know, the idea of constructive conflict goes out the window because we don't want to be seen as an ish, a chauvinist or a racist or whatever it is, right? Even though our intentions are noble. And so you sit down with a team and you try to create a conversation around, let's say, curiosity or vulnerability and say, as a team, guys, what do you want or what do you don't want? Is that what I understand you're referring to? Yeah. And again, going back to something we talked about earlier is don't punish people for having a completely opposite view of you from you. And, you know, so here's, by the way, here's another kind of, I'll call it a pro tip. And it's not from me. It's from one of my mentors. You know, when someone radically disagrees with you and we'll define radically disagreeing as it, man, it hits a nerve, right? Right. This is a closely held value of yours.
[32:02] My it's not really a question, but we'll call it that is I say tell me more because it shuts me up. One. So if I'm really if I'm hijacked. Right. There's a good chance I'm going to say something that I regret and that prevents me from doing that. And and again, what I and let's just say I do disagree with you. Say the two of us disagree about something. My talking is not going to change your mind, Jason. Your talking is what potentially will change your mind. I think that there are two, and I might be going off on a little bit of tangent here, so I apologize. There's two critical elements to influencing another human being without forcing them to do something, and that is they need to feel heard and understood.
[32:56] Right so my talking doesn't do that and that's why a tool like looping is just absolutely critical for your ability to influence somebody else now here there's another piece to this too so i'm not here to um promote you know all my books but the the book previous to rethinking curiosity was rethinking humility humility in my mind is the precursor it's the nutrient for curiosity. Because one of the elements of intellectual humility is going into a conversation, a situation, a challenge with the belief or asking yourself, I said more precisely, how might I be wrong? So if you and I are disagreeing about how to be vulnerable, how to be curious, how to run this team, I really try to pause and ask myself, how might I be wrong? Wrong what's the what's the element of truth in what jason's saying which is where things like yes and come in right so you might say something and i say yes and let's build on that as opposed to just you're completely wrong i don't disagree with i don't agree with you at all right i'm trying to make some level connection because here's the deal most things in life i think are complex. They are not simple.
[34:20] So let's accept the complexity and let's say, hey, this is not an easy thing. Let's work through this together. Again, this is why the questions need to be for you as a coach. When we're a leader, the questions are for us. So how do we get better? How do we provide a better experience for our clients, for our employees, for all our stakeholders?
[34:45] Again, a lot of what you say really resonates with me because my background, I was talking to this ad nauseum on the podcast, was in clinical psychology. And when I used to work with trauma way back in the day, part of it was always trying to understand the language of what people are saying. You know, they may say a specific word such as challenge or anxiety or stress or whatever the word may be. But sometimes being curious to understand the roots or the foundations of why they chose that word to get them to operationally define it. I have to be curious. I need to understand how they came to that conclusion or to that opinion or that belief.
[35:28] And for me, you know, there's this human operating system. We go from head to heart to hand. What I mean is that our brains assign a narrative to things, which triggers a certain emotion, which will trigger a certain behavior, how we perceive a certain situation. And sort of to rewind along that operating system, you know, this wetware that we have in our heads and to understand sometimes what is the narrative they're saying? I may not say what is the narrative you're subscribing to it, but I'm saying, how do you see this? What or the how, as you said, and to understand sort of the story or the meaning they've ascribed to a situation. And that allows me to understand how they operationally define things. And for me, sometimes I'm like completely blown away. I didn't see that answer they were going to say. I was assuming that, oh, they're going to say this. But, you know, it comes right out of left field. And it's like, I did not see that. And that triggers even more curiosity. So I just wanted to sort of riff on what you just said because that really hit home to me. Yeah, I think you nailed it. There's not much to add to that. It's when you can truly be open to what they're saying and you can help them help themselves. It's just amazing to me. I will tell you, I do believe I also agree with you that.
[36:48] Language can be very powerful. And I often hold the mirror up to my clients and say, hey, you've used the word quit five times in the last three minutes. What's going through your head? What am I, you know, what's beneath the surface, right? And they don't even realize it half the time, the words that they're using. And I should even say the words I use sometimes I don't realize I'm using. Yeah, I think all of us. I mean, we get so locked in a certain pattern of language, we're not even aware. And we have, I guess, our favorite words that we use, but we don't sometimes recognize our own patterns. But I think that comes back to a very salient point you made, Doug, is that maybe we have to address our own biases, our own unconscious biases and such. Just if we can rewind a little back, I'm just curious as to, are there specific skills you use for yourself or you use with leaders to try to understand, to find, to find the curiosity in managing or leading ourselves to, to uncover some of those biases? Is there something you do or an exercise or is it just a conversation around it?
[38:00] First thing that comes into my mind is, is mindfulness is practicing. You know, I, I explained this. So, you know, you know what it's like when you're working with, sea level people, sometimes the more new aginess of mindfulness is something you don't really want to go. So I explain it in a little bit more of a clinical or business-like fashion. And I say, typically we have stimulus and then response, right? So stimulus occurs, we respond. And I said, and this is how I broach the subject of mindfulness. That's being mind less, right? Stimulus response right back to back. What we're shooting for is stimulus response with a gap. And in that gap, we can practice asking ourselves, who do I want to be right now? And that's when our most cherished values come. I want to be compassionate. I want to be creative. I want to be collaborative. I want to be grateful. Whatever's important to you, as opposed to, look, I think anger is an important emotion, right? It involved for a reason. It's when we feel our rights have been violated that we use anger, but I don't want anger to use me. So.
[39:23] When I'm in a place like this with my hands apart and I'm being mindful, I might say, I'm going to demonstrate some anger as opposed to I am angry, right? It's a very different way of, using that tool. You notice, yeah, exactly. So you notice you're angry, but you don't identify with the anger. You take sort of a bystander or sort of an observer's perspective of your own subjective experience. Is that what I understand you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yes. And, and, you know, I'll, I'll tell you, Jason, just a more, just to go, I really try to be, as you read the book, I know you said you read it. I try to be as practical as possible and Try to stay out of the clouds completely, right? And I will tell you about a practice I've, so I've been meditating for, I'd say solidly for a good 11 years, you know, body scans, loving kindness, the whole thing. And I have without a doubt noticed a difference in my ability to handle adversity and unexpected challenges.
[40:26] A more recent practice is Wim Hof breathing. Breathing i have i have uh uh been doing that for a good i guess maybe seven months now and no no joke within a week i noticed that things that made my heart rate go up uh made my hands sweat made my maybe my forehead perspire a little bit we're not doing that and maybe maybe something else changed i'm an n of one don't take me as a scientific study wim hof breathing was um a game changer for me, along with my regular meditation practice.
[41:03] Because I think that loops back to what you said. Sometimes you have to slow down in order to speed up, right? And I think, as you said, between stimulus and response, that's just a reaction. But, you know, actually, you could actually use that almost as sign language, putting your hands apart, as you said. And is there a space between the left and right, right? And that would suggest that if there is, you're slowing down in the school zone. You're not clocking whatever, 70 in a, that's kilometers per hour, instead of 30. Right just to make sure i know you guys use miles per hour and such but but i think because i'm not good at math yeah so but i i think that idea of being reflective slowing things down which actually speeds things up and by slowing things down that it sounds like that automatically sort of uh triggers a sense of curiosity to explore our own biases and to maybe try to overcome them Because we all have inherent biases, and anyone who tells you they don't, well, I think, as you said, they're bullshitting in a sense. Yeah, 100%. And look, we've been talking for maybe a half hour, and we haven't talked about Ted Lasso yet. So he's got the whole be curious, don't judge.
[42:21] I think he's half right. We need to be curious and defer judgment. Right. Look, we're judging machines. We can't get around that. That's that if if we were not, we wouldn't make decisions, we wouldn't solve big problems. And let's be honest, as leaders, it's about taking new directions and making decisions. So you've got to what I'm just saying is hold off a little bit. Stay stay in curiosity just a little bit longer to see what you might be missing. Yeah, I think that's really good. Just for those who are watching this on YouTube, that's the Ted Lasso locker room, right, from the show, right? That's right. Yep, I can't get enough of it.
[43:07] He'll be in season three. But anyways, yeah, but it's just that we don't experience the world. Like, I'm not experiencing this Zoom call. I'm experiencing my thoughts that I assigned to this Zoom call, right? And they may be positive, negative, neutral. And so it's the curiosity to understand what are the thoughts I'm assigning to this particular situation or circumstance, and that in itself will reveal bias. And I think it comes back to your second book, Rethinking Humility. You know for me humility is one of my highest values as is conscientiousness and for me they go kind of hand in hand so i just wanted to link back to that if if we just shift gears i was i'm always curious when i talk to authors and i yes i'm calling you an author after three books you can you can take on that feather in your hat there what did you learn about yourself doing all the research talking to so many people and writing eight full chapters on curiosity curiosity?
[44:05] Uh, how, how lucky I am. You know, in fact, well, you know, you, you asked the perfect question because I think I may have just thought about this this morning because writing the book was not a, a, a really bad experience. You talked to a lot of authors. Oh, it was hard. And by the way, it is hard. However, yeah. However, much of it was all three of it, all three of these, it has been a fairly enjoyable process for me. Okay.
[44:38] And so I thought to myself, why, why am I enjoying my work so much right now? Why am I, I was reflecting on one of the stories in the book is Kira McCaffrey, who's a, an executive at a communications firm in Alexandria, Virginia. And she, she talks about a time and I asked her to be vulnerable. I just said, Hey, tell me about of time you weren't curious and you know the stories in the book about how a decision was made not to put her on a project as a lead for i think it might have been a pitch and um she was really upset about that so she worked harder and harder and harder and stayed later and everything, and then but didn't ask any questions she just thought well they don't think i'm good enough.
[45:22] She made it, she went right to judgment. So anyway, I'm going deep on the story, but it turns out she goes back to one of the partners and they assigned her to the project and she was confused. And she said, how come? And they said, well, you, we were just, we knew you were really busy. We always plan to bring you in later. You're the, you're the big guns. she said oh my gosh and she said you know doug i wish i just asked that question up front because i had three or four months of anxiety and maybe mixed in some other negative emotions of why this didn't happen all i had to do was be curious and ask some questions so going back so so the reason i tell you that story is i thought to myself wow i am so lucky to have worked with all of these amazing people. So put a label on them. They're leaders, they're husbands, wives, partners, whatever, but they're just amazing human beings. I have been so lucky. And so many of my clients have become friends.
[46:21] And that to me was a great realization because I really got a chance in this book in particular to dive a little bit deeper into their stories and i think they were able to then share it with the world yeah so through the conversation through the interviews through the relationships you've built the solid relationships you've built with your clientele as a coach as an executive coach are are they sometimes a mirror into yourself things that they've said that you actually because they said one particular sentence in a story or an experience they had that became an aha moment of self-reflection for yourself when it comes to curiosity? Again, that's a very open general question, but take it where you will.
[47:09] Yeah, I guess where I'll take it is that I find I learn from them every day and a little bit of them rubs off on me as well.
[47:20] You know, years ago, I was facilitating an onboarding program for one of the big four consulting firms. And I would co-facilitate it with a number of people from the firm. We would have three, four hundred people, you know, who had been hired. And i think the first time i ever ran the program there was a retiring partner he had helped develop the program and it was his he was retiring in a week so i i was so lucky to have him because he was so passionate about the firm and the people's experience and all this stuff and so i really paid close attention to some of the advice he was throwing out and one of the things he said was I have, his words, not mine, that he said, I have a hero's notebook.
[48:09] And in that, if I come across someone, whether they be a fictional character, somebody from history, or the person I meet on the street, I'll write their name in the notebook, and then what it is that I admire about that person, and how I want to be a little bit more like them. So, you know, immediately came to mind, I've already mentioned his name, Abraham Lincoln, right, who I talk about at length than the book on humility because, boy, he had, you know, truckloads of it or wagon loads. And he and but it's just so amazing to have a little bit of other people rub off on ourselves and to be I want to be a little bit more like each of these people.
[48:54] And again, that's curious, right? How can I adapt? How can I see, you know, you see a value that someone has and it really shines with them. It's almost, it's inherent. They were born with that value. You see it just kind of close and you're thinking, I'd like to have more of that, right? And it's understanding that. So again, I think that's a very salient point you've made. Maybe you've already answered this question, but I was, what most surprised you when you were doing research for the book?
[49:23] Yeah, what surprised me the most about this was, you know, there was there was some interesting research around how executives approach problems. And there's really, you know, two different ways we can you know, we can have a primary and a secondary strategy for, you know, challenges that come up to us. And a primary strategy is defined as, hey, our competition has lowered their price on the product. What are we going to do so we can lower our prices, we can lay people off? I mean, there's a magnitude of ways we can reformulate our product, our pitch, or how we're putting our brand out in the marketplace. Those are primary things that we can control. Secondary strategies are more around, how am I going to react? And what they found is that the most effective executives and leaders really focus just as much attention on the secondary as much as they focused on the primary.
[50:27] And I thought that that was interesting. Like, how am I how do I want to react to this? So it kind of goes back to the mindfulness thing of, boy, I'd like to be steady for my team or I'd like to be vulnerable or I'd like to be curious or I'd like to be optimistic because I think this is going to take a little bit of belief for us to get through this.
[50:51] And I thought that was that was just an interesting way to frame things once again is to pause and go okay what do I have control over yep I can I can do these these these things and I can also can control how I react so let me let me put a little effort into thinking how I what I'd like to be what are my values thank you for that that I really like that I'm very respectful of your your time, Doug. We're coming close to the end of the hour. I was wondering, is there any last tips or advice you could leave with our listeners regarding rethinking curiosity?
[51:30] You know, I think it's something to practice. You know, so something that's just top of mind for me is practice it in disagreements, you know, kind of reiterating what we talked about before.
[51:43] Don't think that your facts, your stories, your persuasive argument can change someone else's mind.
[51:51] Because, of course, we're coming into an election here, a very divisive election here in the United States.
[51:56] And I'm worried about our democracy, quite frankly. right? I wish we could all be more curious about each other. And that curiosity even goes to why am I putting a label on that person, right? Because I think these labels actually decrease our curiosity, right? I was just reading some very interesting research about couples, and the longer that they're together, the less curious they are about each other. That makes perfect sense, right? You start to think you can predict each other's moods, words, decisions, how they're going to react to certain things. And we're doing the same thing with people that disagree with us in terms of how to vote or how to handle guns or abortion or welfare, you name it, these things that we're all dealing, immigration in the United States, of course. And I'd like us to be a little bit more curious with each other, particularly when someone disagrees with us. is to say, hey, this is really cool. I'm about to learn something. Doug, thank you very much for sharing your research, your wisdom, your experience. And folks, the book is Rethinking Curiosity, How to Lead When You Don't Have All the Answers. I will be sure to leave all the links in the show notes, Doug, where people can grab the book. And if they want to reach out for you for a conversation or for your services. So thank you very much for your time today.
[53:24] Music. Well, folks, as we wrap up this episode, I just wanted to pull out a couple of things from part two of the conversation. You know, Doug highlighted that humility is a precursor to curiosity. It's about having the humility to recognize that we don't have the full picture and to ask ourselves tough questions like, how could I be wrong? Or what elements of truth is the other person saying? You know, this humility helps us to understand the complexity of issues and
[53:24] Thank you, Jason. and this was a blast. I had a great time.
[53:59] fosters a deeper level of discovery and understanding. You know, another point that hit home in the second part of the conversation was when Doug also discussed the importance of mindfulness in creating a space
[54:10] between stimulus and response. And in that space, we can reflect and decide how we want to respond. Do I want to be collaborative, helpful, creative?
[54:21] You know, by creating that space between stimulus and response, it allows us to address our emotions. We can see it from an observer's point of view. We can witness our emotions. And that means we can say something like, I notice I'm feeling angry or frustrated, instead of identifying with it. And that space is the nurturing ground for curiosity and humility. Well, folks, that was a brilliant conversation I had with Doug Hensch. And remember, his book is Rethinking Curiosity. How to lead when you don't have all the answers. I will leave the links to that book and his previous two other books in the show notes. Doug, a personal thank you from me to you. I really had a great conversation today and I learned a lot. You know, it's really resonated with me. All the points you made, they were salient and astute. And so thank you for sharing your knowledge and your experience as an author and as an executive coach. Well, folks, here we are crossing the finishing line of yet another episode. If you would take the time and rate this podcast and rate the episode,
[55:26] you would be doing me a huge solid. It helps me to spread the word of this podcast.
[55:31] Well, folks, thank you for joining me for yet another week and another episode. And until next time, keep well, keep strong.
[55:39] Music.