I'm curious

Morning.

I’m curious…

When was the last time you had a conversation with someone who seemed genuinely interested in you - your perspective, your world, how you see things?

Not just politely interested. Not waiting for their turn to speak. Not listening for the bit they could respond to.

Genuinely curious.

I hope you don’t have to cast your mind too far back.

This week, I was being interviewed on a podcast (sit tight, I’ll share it when it’s out) and one of the questions the wonderfully curious host James Stewart asked me was about the art of conversation - and whether it’s waning in the age of short-form content, the AI tsunami and algorithmic opinion bubbles.

My immediate reaction was that I’m not sure conversation itself is the thing we’re losing.

I wonder if it’s curiosity.

Because I don’t think we’re short of opinions. I’m just not sure we always feel it’s worth sharing them.

Why bother offering a different perspective if you suspect the other person has already made up their mind?

What feels rare is a willingness to stay with someone else’s perspective for a while. To wonder why they see something differently. To ask another question before offering an answer.

Which got me thinking about the work I do with leadership teams.

A lot of teams say they want to get better at debate. Better at challenge. Better at having the robust conversation rather than the polite one.

But that’s hard to do if we’re not genuinely curious about what other people see. Without curiosity, we’re not just listening badly. We’re not particularly interested in understanding a different perspective in the first place.

The best debate happens when people actively seek out difference, rather than relying on someone else to summon the courage to offer it.

If I know you have a genuine appetite to hear a different view, I’m going to be much more willing to offer one.

So how does a team get better at curiosity?

By practising it.

Rather than assuming curiosity is something you either have or you don’t, I reckon teams can build the habit of being curious together.

Here’s one simple practice I’ve been encouraging teams to try.

Once a month, ask someone on the team 10 minutes to bring something real to the group. A project, a decision, a problem they’re wrestling with. Something that’s proving challenging.

Everyone else then has just one job.

To ask curious questions.

And listen.

No solutions allowed. No recommendations, no opinions. No “have you tried…?”

• Just try to understand them.
• What’s going on in their world that I hadn’t appreciated?
• How are they seeing this?
• What’s actually hard about it for them?
• What am I learning that I didn’t know before?

Then stop. No solution - for now, at least.

Take a moment to debrief: what does the group understand now that it didn’t understand ten minutes ago?

Do this once and it’s an interesting exercise.

Do it regularly and something else starts to shift.

People start to understand each other’s worlds a little better. They make fewer assumptions. They’re a little less quick to judge and, perhaps, a little more willing to ask another question before offering an answer.

Empathy, in other words.

So perhaps the question isn’t whether your team is good at debate.

Maybe it’s whether you’re curious enough about each other to actually want to hear a different view.

Until next time,
Simon