Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to Making Sense of Work with Jean Balfour. Hi, and welcome to Making Sense of Work. I've been playing with the idea of curiosity a lot recently. It might seem a bit strange for me to say this After all, I'm a coach and curiosity is part of my trade but recently I found a renewed appreciation for it. I've had some fresh personal insights into why it matters so much and I've seen how I can work with it in my own life, with others, to help us to be more open to ideas, to different ways of seeing the world and to new possibilities. And in this episode I'd like to share with you some of the thinking around it and hopefully open up your own curiosity.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Can you remember when someone was last curious with you? Maybe it was a coach or a friend or a colleague. They were really interested in you and what you had to say. They came to this curiosity without their own agenda. They were purely keen to help you, to help you to gain new and fresh ideas and insights, to ask you what was that like or how did you feel?

Speaker 1: 1:25

I was recently out for a walk with a friend and she did just this. She asked me a really curious question about a situation that I was grappling with and in that moment I felt safe, and that safety led me to opening myself up, to being more curious about what might be possible, what might be going on, and curious about how I could see and even approach the situation differently. I really felt the power of shared curiosity in that moment. How about yourself? Are you able to be curious and hold the space with yourself? Maybe when you're stuck or you've got a particular thing that you're wanting to resolve, are you able to sit with that question about what's possible in this situation?

Speaker 1: 2:18

Curiosity is such a powerful state. It opens up new ideas and insights and it invites in hope. It takes us from convergent thinking to divergent thinking. It leads us away from tried and tested to new and bold. If you look at the small children around you and witness their wonder and curiosity with the world, you can see it there. And with all of our serious adulting we lose this. We lose this deep and wonderful fascination with what is possible, with what might be possible. We stop seeing the magic in all that is around us. Einstein famously said I have no special talent, I'm only passionately curious.

Speaker 1: 3:09

I think that curiosity moves us away from fear and towards creativity. It moves us towards wonder, and wonder is a magical concept. So what if we decided to make curiosity a bigger part of our daily existence, to do just that to let go of fear and to move towards possibility? It starts with being curious with ourselves. Have you ever wondered why you think the way you do, why your thinking is focused in a certain way? Do why your thinking is focused in a certain way? Or maybe about why something's happening, or why it's happening in a certain way, or how you feel about it? This is us starting with curiosity with ourselves. But of course, curiosity sits with others, whatever role we're in, if we're a leader or a coach or a parent, a partner, a friend. We can be curious at work and at home. It sits with our teams and our organizations. It sits with current state and future state, people and processes, strategy and planning, and curiosity belongs in our wider world. How can we bring hope and ease to a world that is struggling? We can be curious about the small part that we can play in bringing about big change.

Speaker 1: 4:31

In the podcast today, I'm primarily focusing on how we can be curious with ourselves. I've chosen this as a way of starting, but each of the ways I describe how we can be curious with ourselves can be applied to others. It can be applied to our organizations, our families, to wider society. I started with us, as we're often the best testing ground, and I want to start with a personal example of something that happened recently. Our body gives us a place for curiosity. It offers up so much wisdom and advice and often we're not tuning into it, and I recently had an experience of this. I had this kind of tension, pain in my stomach, which of course caused loads of terrible worries and of course that's curiosity in an unhelpful way, fantasizing about all that could possibly be wrong. But my mind was saying there's something wrong with me. But in my heart I knew that something emotional was happening and I thought that that was to do with a thinking pattern, something that was roaming around in my mind, but I couldn't quite make the connection. So I decided to become really curious with it and every time it happened to just ask the question what's going on here?

Speaker 1: 5:52

I became really curious about my thinking. What was I thinking before I felt the nagging pain? What was I feeling? What was I worried about? I was curious about my anxiety about it and my anxiety about what might be causing it. And slowly, slowly, I got to the bottom of it and I identified a couple of things that I thought it could be, but I still knew that they weren't the one. And so I just kept being curious and I kind of kept going on this inquiry with it. Every time I felt the pain I would wonder okay, so what's going on here? What is this? And then a few weeks ago I saw a direct line between a particular concern I've got and this pain. So then I just sat with this idea for a few days and noticed it and, sure enough, every time I felt that pain I tracked back what were my thoughts over the past 15 minutes, and there was this one thought and worry. So now I knew that that was what was causing the pain and I kindly and gently calmed myself. I addressed the concern and invited my body that it could stop shouting at me. Basically and curiosity really helped me to do that Over the next few days the pain disappeared. It was me inquiring, noticing the thought, interrupting the thought, that then enabled me to go back to feeling well and whole.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Our bodies hold so much intelligence and if we approach them with this curiosity, then we offer them the opportunity to tell us what it is that they're trying to tell us. This, of course, is one small example, but there are so many parts of us we can be curious about. We can listen in to our values, our feelings, our beliefs. We can ask whether we're integrity with ourselves in a moment. Or we can look at our actions. We can be aware of actions, even those that we feel shame about, and we can be curious about those. And when we do that, when we're curious about our less proud moments, we remove some of the self-blame, we move to a place of understanding and learning. We can be curious about our inner guidance. We often ignore what our intuition or our heart is suggesting is right and good for us in each moment. We can tune into this and we can ask why, self? What do you suggest for me today? We can seek that self-guidance. We can be curious about what we want for the next stage of our career. We can be curious about what will serve us best and how we can spend our weeks and weekends.

Speaker 1: 8:46

I can notice myself being stuck, things for me like I don't know what to say or what to write about or what to share. But then I can be curious what's possible here? Sometimes for me, it's I don't know what to prepare a podcast for. Curiosity helps, and then it emerges here. Sometimes for me, as I don't know what to prepare a podcast for, curiosity helps and then it emerges.

Speaker 1: 9:03

One framework that can help us with any situation is to use three different lenses the logical self, the emotional self and the wise self. We can ask our logical self to be just that, logical and analytical, asking it what do you see, what should I do, or why did that happen? We can ask our emotional self about the feelings and the heart-centered questions why might I be feeling this way? Or what guidance do you have for me, heart? And we can ask our wise self this is the part of us that knows us best and knows what is best for us and is living with us all the time and we can simply ask why, self? What would you have me know or see? In this situation, when we're working on a particular topic or idea, we can be curious about that.

Speaker 1: 9:57

In our hectic and full worlds, I think we seldom allow ourselves to follow our curiosity. I have the image of a river. I've recently been in Bangkok, where the river flows all around the city in ways that you often can't see where it's next going, and I think about this as an example of how we can follow our curiosity. We don't see where the river's going, it's going around a bend, but we can allow our curiosity to lead us there. We can go around the corner and see what else is possible, and we may find ourselves at a destination beyond our dreams. I believe that curiosity exists in a place without judgment. I think that curiosity shrinks when it's challenged, and it opens and blossoms when we come with open questions like what else, or where else, or who else, or simply what.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Tuning into our curiosity, though, can require some perseverance. It can be tempting to ask a question of ourselves or a question of others just once and hope that we'll find the answer quickly and accept the first answer, but it's often in sitting long with curiosity that new and exciting things emerge. One of the most powerful coaching questions is what else? When we don't accept the first answer we receive from ourselves and others and explore the what else, more always emerges. You can try this today Simply ask someone what else and see what emerges.

Speaker 1: 11:38

I love what Angela Duckworth says about this. She says enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare. The combination of the two is often what's required to find out how much curiosity, how much creativity you have. I love this. We need both that initial enthusiasm and some endurance to really lean into our curiosity, to really be able to find out what's possible. It's like the idea that there's 100 uses for a paperclip. We're going to have to be really curious over a while to get to 100. We will have to persevere, to work with others and just to keep going holding the faith that we'll get there, that we'll find those hundred uses.

Speaker 1: 12:24

I noticed even as I was preparing for this that I was thinking. I really want to think a bit more about curiosity and I want to talk about it in the podcast. I can see and feel the power of it in my life and I'm curious about how I could be doing it. But then I got a bit stuck. Where do I start? So I set a timer and a commitment to spend 30 minutes to just start writing about it and see what would emerge, and I made a commitment to stick with the time and of course it emerged. I did a bit of research that triggered my curiosity and off I went. I followed the river and it took me on this journey. But what kept me being curious was discipline and persistence. What nearly stopped me a number of times was the voice in my head saying but what have you got to say about this? Or there's nothing really new, or who are you? Or this isn't interesting All those age old voices. They're trying to keep us safe, stop us moving forward. But actually, curiosity will help us to open up and find new and exciting possibilities. And that brings us to a link to neuroscience, because neuroscience has some clues about why curiosity feels so good and liberating.

Speaker 1: 13:36

We are designed for the status quo. The brain likes familiarity and to use familiar pathways and routes. And what curiosity does is it helps us to look beyond the familiar, to look for something different. It's a way of us inviting ourselves to move out of our current state into a different state, and it's inviting us to do that without tension out of our current state into a different state. And it's inviting us to do that without tension. But we want to do that in a way that helps us to move out of our comfort zone and to think about what would happen if I approached this situation with curiosity, and if you think about an example of something, maybe, that you don't want to do or you're frightened of doing, like maybe doing a presentation, your brain is trying to keep you on the familiar, stay safe, but curiosity can help you step outside of that. We can ask questions like how can I approach my preparation for this with curiosity? How could I be a good presenter in this situation? What can I do? How can I learn to do that? There's also a release of dopamine that comes with curiosity, and this activates our reward centers, so it enhances pleasure and motivation, and so, therefore, it encourages us to keep seeking new things, to keep seeking new information, to keep learning and to help us to create new neural pathways. So it's taking us out of the safe into the new, and, along with this, neuroscience suggests that when we're curious, we're more likely to linger longer in our learning. We stay in the learning stage longer and therefore we engage with it more deeply, and the learning is more likely to stick, and it's curiosity that helps us with this. The learning is more likely to stick, and it's curiosity that helps us with this. I've also talked in previous episodes about the growing research that's showing that curiosity is taking us away from our fear centers in the brain towards our creativity centers. And it seems that curiosity on its own is even generating more creativity and that's leading to a better feeling of well-being. So it seems that it's worth it for us to be doing this with ourselves.

Speaker 1: 15:48

But what about with others? Well, so much of what is true about being curious with ourselves is true of being curious with others. Except there's two of us or more, we've got more brains focusing on what is creative and possible in a situation we can offer the same level of deep curiosity that we're bringing to ourselves. We can offer this to others. In coaching, we work with presence and questioning to encourage the curiosity of our coachee, of our client, but it becomes more than that. There's some absolute magic that happens. When two people are sitting together in that presence being curious, something amazing happens and new and fresh things emerge. Ideas happen and also people feel better.

Speaker 1: 16:38

But in order for us to be fully curious with others, we do often have to let go of our own preconceived ideas, ideas about the situation. We have to let go of what we think is better for the other person, because that's going to get in the way of genuine curiosity. If we're a leader or a coach or a colleague or a friend, we do often get caught up in our story and we hold on to what we are saying, what we believe should be happening, what we think is best for the other person. But when we're genuinely curious with others, we learn to suspend that and just be there, be with the person and inquire into what's going on and help them go on that journey of inquiring into what's going on. If we're solving a problem together, what solutions might they have? And then we keep going with what else and what else, what else?

Speaker 1: 17:34

If they're telling us about some unhappiness at work, we want to be really curious and help them get to the bottom of what's causing that unhappiness. We want to be really curious and help them get to the bottom of what's causing that unhappiness. It can often seem to be a surface thing, but it might be something else. It might be something really fundamental like am I in the wrong career? If we sit with them together long enough, then we can help them get to the bottom of that real cause, just like me and my stomach. We needed to get to the bottom of the issue together, me and my stomach. We needed to get to the bottom of the issue together.

Speaker 1: 18:09

We can also be really curious with our team. We can be curious with our clients, and together we can be curious about the environments we're operating in. We can be curious about our organizations. In our organizations, we can wonder. When things are not going well. Instead of looking at the usual suspects we think it's that or this we sit and ask questions about what's really causing this problem, what is happening that's taking us to this place, and what could we do or see differently. How could we approach the situation in a way that would solve this problem at a different level, the situation in a way that would solve this problem at a different level? Curiosity can also help us when we're struggling with another person. This can be at home or at work.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Being really curious about what might be happening for them or happening between you can open up new insights and help us to move away from conflict and move further in towards understanding and resolution. Life is about growth, it's about change, it's about opening ourselves up to possibility, and I really believe that curiosity helps us. When we're curious about our feelings, our thinking, our desires and our hopes and dreams, things open up. So I'm going to share with you a few ways that I've found to work with curiosity. The first is very simple and incredibly powerful. So if you start by just saying, hmm, do it now and see what you feel, and see what you notice, you could follow it with. I wonder, I wonder, see what happens. There's something incredibly powerful about a hmm. You can work with art and music. If you're stuck on something, maybe go to an art gallery and invite curiosity in looking at the art to help you with your questions. I once did this with a client. We went to the National Portrait Gallery in London and after an hour of walking he came and found me and took me to a picture of a very old and wizened man. The image had unlocked something in him and that he saw, something that was holding him back in his career, and it was simply just this exploration, this openness and this curiosity that had helped him work out what that was, and he went on to make some changes that really supported him in his future.

Speaker 1: 20:35

We can take questions in different places and stimulate our default mode network. Going for a walk is a very powerful way of walking with a curious question to see what emerges, because the walking, seeing different things in our environment, can help to awaken things, to bring new things to the surface. But you can also put that question in other places. You can put it on your screensaver on your computer or your phone, or you can put it on a post-it, or you can write it on the mirror.

Speaker 1: 21:04

I wonder what's possible? How could I using those questions? Of course I always talk about journaling because it's so powerful and it's a wonderful tool for self-curiosity. So I thought I would share some questions to help spark your curiosity. You could start with what could happen if. What else might be possible here. What have I missed? What am I not seeing? What is the connection between this and other things?

Speaker 1: 21:39

Imagine if this were possible or if I had a magic wand. This would emerge If there were no limits. What would happen? What if the opposite were true? If I was looking at this with someone else? What would they see? What would my mum see? What would a 10-year-old see? What would an 80-year-old see? What might Einstein see? If I wasn't holding myself back, I would, as you go about your day and your week, set yourself a challenge, a challenge to lean into curiosity more than you are now. Lean into how you can approach life in a curious and hopeful way, with yourself, with others, with the wider world. Let's be curious together and see what emerges. Thanks for joining this episode of Making Sense of Work. If you enjoyed it, please go and subscribe, rate and review. If you have a topic you'd like me to explore in the podcast, please follow the show notes and send me a message.