Persistently Curious
Curiosity
If I had to pick one word to describe me, I would choose “curious”.
Early last year, my good friend Adam Lupu was giving praise to the idea of curiosity. He said something to the effect of “Curiosity is probably the most important attribute anyone can have”.
I felt like he was speaking my language so I jumped right in:
“100%. Totally get you. Totally agree”.
His reply stopped me cold.
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you’re curious.”
“If you were curious, when I said that curiosity was the most important thing, you would have asked what I meant by that”.
I didn’t respond very well to this. It probably sounded something like this:
“That’s not fair! I should be allowed to agree with statements! Not every reply I give should have to come in the form of a question! You don’t think everything I say should have to be a question do you?! DO YOU???!!!”
Persistence
Now that I was on the defensive: insecure, upset, and disoriented — I really stopped being curious.
I had a point to make and Adam needed to see it.
“You make statements some times! You don’t always ask questions! You don’t always ask questions, do you?!”
I’d show him. How dare he challenge my identity.
The thing is, as a talented debater it is relatively easy for me to pin people into logical booby traps.
With enough persistence, enough effort invested in trapping someone else to a narrow line of thinking, it’s relatively easy to get someone to begrudgingly agree that I have a point.
But here is the interesting question:
What do we gain when we start with persuading someone else to agree with us?
I don’t want to say “nothing”. There are plenty of valid answers.
In business contexts, when someone comes around to agreeing with us we gain the opportunity to move on to other important questions. We also gain internal validation. It gives us the ability to tell ourselves that we’re useful — after all, they agreed, didn’t they?
In personal contexts, when our friends, partners, siblings, children, or parents agree with us we usually gain some form of internal confidence. Years of competitive environments — school, sports, work etc. have pushed us to feel uncomfortable with “losing” too often.
We carry this mentality into our personal relationships. I know I’ve previously kept track of the ratio of how often a good friend and I have “succeeded” in proving the other wrong.
If I force myself to be explicit about why I’m afraid of “losing” too often, my answer is that I have an underlying fear based on a faulty belief that “If I’m always open to being wrong, then no one will respect me”
Louis C.K. has a phenomenal example of how absurdly this so often plays out in our daily lives. He’s arguing with his 3-year old. Watch 30 seconds of it.
His 3-year old daughter is insistent that “Fig Newtons” are called “Pig Newtons”. Louis loses his shit. Can’t take it. He HAS to show her that he’s right. It’s unacceptable for him to have his truth so flagrantly ignored. How can he stay sane if he can’t even convince his 3-year old that he knows the name of this stupid cookie better than she does.
Persistently Curious
But here is the interesting part.
She’s got to have a reason why she thinks these cookies are called Pig Newtons. It has to come from somewhere.
Even if that somewhere is just her imagination. Even if when pressed for how she came up with the name she says something even MORE mind-numbingly logic defying like:
“Because pigs can fly!”
It’s an opportunity to learn.
To learn how a 3-year old thinks. To learn how we might relate to her better. To love her better. To empathize with her better.
This is not to say that we can or should spend *all* of our time asking 3-year olds why they think what they think.
At some point we have to make a decision and move forward.
But it is an argument that discovering the best ideas requires a challenging level of humility — and that consistently implementing the best ideas requires a willingness to genuinely listen to those who disagree with you.
When a colleague says that the business needs to move slower, even though revenue is nowhere near the impossibly high targets that have to be hit. Start with “Why?”.
When 6 months later, a different colleague says that the business needs to move faster, even though product quality is plummeting at a terrifying and obviously unacceptable rate. Start with “Why?”.
You’ll get your turn. You’ll always have an opportunity to state your beliefs.
If you feel threatened, if your identity, your vision, or your dream feels under attack — start with “Why?”
If you are striving to be a leader, it will be hard to inspire the most talented partners if you are not brave enough to understand how other people believe you are misguided.
That doesn’t mean you are misguided. That doesn’t mean that you have to end up believing that Nabisco© is now making pork cookies.
You don’t have to ultimately change your position, but holding the balance of open-mindedness and assertiveness provides an invaluable opportunity to stress-test the quality of your ideas.
I strongly believe that being persistently curious is a reliable path to higher quality ideas.
What do you think?
Post-script:
AFTER SHARING THE ABOVE PIECE WITH A FRIEND, THEY ASKED, “WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS?”
BELOW IS MY RESPONSE:
I’ve been noticing in recent reflections — that most of my professional life I have advanced by being reflexively assertive.
I’ve “moved up the ranks” by thinking that I am smarter than people and demanding that they see the ways that my ideas are clever.
In the last handful of months I’ve started to listen a bit more, and to ask why a bit more often.
It has been uncomfortable, rewarding, powerful, and good for both me and Andela.
I figure that if I’ve had 5+ years of “business experience” that seemed to reward me for a behavior I am trying to outgrow, that maybe others will also find inspiration and support to listen better by reading these reflections.
I’ve also learned that explicitly writing out my beliefs crystallizes and strengthens those beliefs and pushes my behavior further in the direction I am trying to grow.
