Curiosity Is a Leadership Skill, Not a Personality Trait

As companies scale, the habits that got them here often end up being the bottlenecks that stop them from going further.

It's culture drift, Josh. Those same leadership habits that drove early success can quietly create bottlenecks and friction.

Exactly. We call that paying the invisible tax on scaling, and frankly, no one wants to pay it.

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Oh yes, they do. They're experts in all of it, masters of none.

Correct. We have found That great leaders are curious.

And ask for help.

Oh my gosh! Clutch my pearls and perish the thought.

I know. My ears.

Oh my goodness. This week we are talking about how you can use curiosity as a leadership skill. And if you aren't, you really need to be curious about this episode. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need—

The Business Fix.

I remember a time when I first got into leadership and the, like, the people supporting me, the leaders above me were the most, like, untrusting, accusatory, like, and so, yeah, for me, like, as the leader, I had zero curiosity because I had to know everything.

Yes.

Because the people above me assumed that they knew everything. And the downward just pressure on that was ridiculous. Therefore, my employees had to know everything also. And at that point, we had a business of a bunch of know-it-alls who knew absolutely nothing.

Oh, that's not fun.

No, it was, it was. I got like, to tell you how ridiculous this place was, I got yelled at once. I was on my way back to my desk. They're like, come into our office real quick. And I'm like, oh, what? What? And they're like, if you're gonna go to the bathroom, you need to walk with authority, Josh. Walk with intention.

Excuse me?

Correct. Correct. I didn't walk to the bathroom with as much— with enough intention.

Intentional urination.

Right. Well, it was intentional urination because I waited till I got to the bathroom, even though I very much thought about doing it in their office.

Is—

yeah, yeah. These are the stories that I love telling because once again, and, and I know you see, you, you see things from a different lens coming in on the, the Clarity HR side, um, you get a different perspective on it. But you having worked primarily in one place through, yeah, and my career being scattered all over the place, I have a sample size. I have a large sample size.

You do, you do. And I think some of these things for me is I get to observe a lot, but then I also have deep appreciation for what, what we have really worked on building. And it's not perfect, but there are moments where we have conversations, I'm like, I, I don't have that frame of reference.

No, no, no.

I'm really glad I don't.

No, I, I am very glad you do not also. Um, those were some stressful, stressful times.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, it was interesting because like, if you're gonna get yelled at for not walking to the bathroom fast enough, That's not okay. Like, what else? What else? I mean, you just knew that no matter what you did—

Yeah, you're always wrong.

You're always wrong. And, uh, they were not curious about anything, um, because they were always right.

Yeah. Or people are just defensive. You give feedback and someone's immediately defensive. Oh my gosh.

Yes. Yes. And it's just terrible, terrible, terrible environment to exist in unless you're that owner. And you— I mean, it's still terrible, but they just— they, they seem to find their groove with that. With that, I mean, so many, especially founders.

Yeah.

Many in leadership, they default to that defensive posture. They, or they just want that ironclad control.

Yeah.

When bad news hits the desk or the fan.

Yeah.

Whether the bad news hits the desk or the fan.

Bad news, they're just, they freak out.

Yeah. So from that HR visionary standpoint of it, like, how does that lack of leadership curiosity lead to the catastrophizing and just destroy the safety of the team. Did I ask that dramatically enough?

I think you really did. And I think we can define curiosity first as like what we're looking for is when instead of things being, it happens and someone is reacting immediately, we're asking questions. We're not asking questions as an interrogation. We're just asking questions. It's a help me understand. I think that curiosity is truly a leadership skill. It is not a personality trait. I think sometimes people are like, oh, that's just your personality. No, trust me, it is not. I had to build this as a skill. So I think when the bad news hits, a lot of founders do not respond to the facts first. They respond to fear. It's that immediate gut reaction.

Yes.

One thing goes wrong and immediately your brain is saying, we are going to lose the client. No one cares. No one is taking this issue seriously. I'm the only person that loves this business. I'm the only one who sees the problem. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And then of course, I'm going to be homeless. We're going to lose everything. I can't believe this is— I mean, and suddenly that mistake Turns into a full documentary about how the business is falling apart. And that is not curiosity. That is catastrophizing. And listen, every business owner has that moment. Sometimes you have those moments like once a week or once a day. I mean, catastrophizing is just part of being an entrepreneur. You're going to do it. The issue is not having the thoughts. The issue is when you lead from it.

Oh, that's terrible.

When we lead from Catastrophe instead of curiosity.

So I've got to go back to something real quick. As soon as you said full documentary, I started in my head narrating your business like David Attenborough.

Yes. Yes. We come to the conference room.

Right. Right. Where the owner watching the unsuspecting employee. Right.

Right. So we combat catastrophizing. We combat having that documentary by building our resilience, right? So the framework for this episode and how to navigate and build curiosity is building our resilience skills. And we do that through regulate, reflect, and respond. So we've got 3 Rs. We are not a pirate today. We are not doing Cs. We're in Rs. I don't want to be a pirate. Well, too bad. So regulate, reflect, respond. So regulate before you react. So we do not let our first emotional surge become everyone else's emergency. And we've talked a little about this when we covered transparency, tiny bit. I mean, don't transfer your anxiety to your employees, right? Regulate yourself. Don't transfer your anxiety to your employees. Move through your own emotions first and ride that wave before you open your mouth.

Before?

Before.

Oh.

Go through the emotions first, then you can open your mouth. So regulate. Next is reflect before you decide. So ask yourself questions. This is where your curiosity is really important. What actually happened?

Yes.

And ask yourself in that type of tone, not what actually happened, what actually happened, right?

Don't ask it like your mother.

Don't ask it like my mother. That would not be my mother. She listens to this podcast.

My mother asks, what happened here?

What happened here?

No.

What do we know? What don't we know? Is this a people issue? Is it a process issue? Is this a communication issue? What type of issue is this? Or am I just triggered because it feels personal?

Ooh, that's the tough one to get a hold of. Is this communication?

Is this people? Is this a systems issue? Or is this just because they triggered me because they did the thing that just makes me lose my ever-loving mind? And that's it. And then as you figure some of that out, that's the data gathering exercise. That's where you're going to be curious. And then you're going to respond, that 3rd R, with clarity instead of control. All right. So when leaders skip those steps, psychological safety disappears. Employees learn not to bring you bad news early. Employees learn not to bring you bad news, period.

Period.

They just, yes, they stop admitting uncertainty and they stop asking those clarifying questions. They're hiding the issues until everything gets too big to be ignored. They are shoving it under their bed like you did in junior high until your mom was like, your room looks clean. And then they look under your bed and you're like, your whole room Mine went in the closet. Yeah.

Yeah.

Both. I mean, and so when we talk about this, we know that curiosity interrupts, it destroys that catastrophizing.

Yes.

So instead of asking, who let this happen? Curious leaders are gonna ask, what do we need to understand before we decide what happened? And that one shift keeps that standard high, but it lowers the threat.

Ooh, the threat, the threat is the big piece there.

Absolutely.

Like, this should not feel threatening.

No.

We've talked about the curiosity over ego before, um, because it is— it's, it's a thing to put aside. You, you really hit it when you said this feels personal. Yeah. Especially if you're the founder, when someone screws up in your business, you're like, they're attacking me.

Yeah, they're taking my baby, right? Trying to shank it. Right.

Yeah, they're, they're, they're honestly not. No, like, they really aren't. So to me, like, the curiosity over ego, like Non-negotiable state for healthy cultures. How does a leader cultivate that culture where employees feel safe enough where they can bring the bad news early rather than, once again, shoving all the bad news in the closet until eventually you see the closet door bulging open?

Yeah. Well, I think that the story that leaders tell themselves sometimes is that leaders or the people that they work with love chaos.

No.

No. People do not hide mistakes because they love chaos. They don't. No. They hide mistakes because they're calculating the cost of what that honesty is.

Ding, ding, ding.

Exactly. So in some workplaces, honesty is expensive.

Oh, that's a great way to put it.

Yeah. I mean, because if every— if some— every time someone brings forward a problem, they get blamed, they get embarrassed, they get drug into an office for a dramatic lecture, they get told that they need to walk with more intention as they're going to the bathroom. They learn really quickly Exactly. I'm not going to talk to anybody. I'm going to say a word. Silence is safer.

Yes.

Right? And that's not a character flaw. That's a culture lesson. So if leaders want employees to bring them bad news early, they have to prove that the truth is survivable, that it's not going to kill that employee. They're not going to be miserable by telling them the truth. So before some of you freak out, because I know you're going to, and you're going to say that I'm allowing organizations to have no standards or consequences, that's not true. That's not what I'm saying. Calm down. All right? Some of you might be brilliant jerks, because I Sometimes in our Facebook, we get these comments about like, oh, you just don't believe in standards. No, I believe in a lot of standards. Okay? I am not saying that, that, that needs to happen. I'm also not saying that we need to celebrate mistakes like they're wins. Okay? We're not going to throw a party every time somebody makes a mistake. We're going to talk about it. All right? We are running a business. Don't be dumb. So I simply mean the first response that you have to someone when they bring you a problem or an issue cannot be punishment.

Right.

The first response has to be curiosity.

Yes.

That's it. What happened? What do we know? What don't we know? What's the next right step? Those questions. And again, said it in the last question, tone is important. Help me understand how this went where it did. You may be, in your mind, you may have a lot of words. Hold those in. That's why we regulate first, right? So leaders, you have to use the right tone.

And the fewer adjectives, the better.

Yes. We do not treat this like an interrogation. We do not treat this like a deposition. All right? You are not going to get what you want if you do those things. When you use regulate, reflect, and respond, proper tone, you get dialogue. So that's how you get that curiosity over ego. Ego wants to be right. Curiosity wants to get it right.

Well put. Well put. I think it's funny when you say, do not treat this like a deposition or interrogation. To me, like every deposition, I do not recall.

I don't remember. You really want me to do—

I do not recall.

If you need me to have certainty, we've had this conversation in our family because we have someone in our house that absolutely wants certainty. Well, if you want certainty 100%, the only thing I can give you, Josh, is uncertainty. So you are always going to go, I think I did. I'm not sure if. And then that person gets really frustrated because it's never a straight answer. I'm like, because that's what you've demanded because you want certainty. To have certainty is to have uncertainty. So I would say too, something else that I would say, when you talk about ego wants to be right, curiosity wants to get it right, I would say that when, if a leader practices ego, their team is practicing protection.

Yep.

And if the leader practices curiosity, the team practices honesty. So think about it that way.

Yes.

You want honesty, you gotta practice curiosity.

We've all sat through those keynotes.

The ones where everyone nods, feels great for an hour.

And then leaves without a single tool that they can actually use on Monday morning.

It feels good in the room, but it doesn't fix the bottleneck, the culture drift, or the manager who's afraid to have a hard conversation.

That is why we created The Business Fix Live. You know that we aren't interested in empty motivation at all.

No, we bring the practical side of leadership. Josh handles the operations and accountability. And I handle the culture and the people stuff.

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Let's stop the fluff and start fixing your business. It truly is the right way to look at that. But how do you model that curiosity? Like, let's say during an interpersonal conflict, or let's say performance reviews, where like the employee wants to see this feedback as an investment in their growth rather than an attack on their identity? Because let's face it, sometimes—

Yeah.

We've talked about how you and I both like 1, 2, 3. If you've got to give someone a 1, you need to approach that 1 with some curiosity.

Yes.

How do you do that?

So we tie feedback to behavior. So the what, the action, not the who or their identity, right? So we tie it to behavior. So I think one of the simplest phrases a leader can use when someone brings something up is saying, thank you for bringing this up early. Because what that tells the individual is that you are not in trouble for telling the truth.

Right. You can be in trouble for screwing it up, but you're not in trouble for telling me.

Yeah, because feedback gets messy when leaders make it about identity instead of behavior. So here's what I will say too, and this is something that we've talked about a lot in Clarity, and we talk about too in our family, because sometimes, you know, business, family, it all kind of meshes together. There is a huge difference between tying things to a behavior and tying things to identity. So If you say you're careless, you are immediately assaulting that person's identity and character, as opposed to saying, the report that you gave me had 10 mistakes, and we had to rework it. So, I mean, one attacks the person, the other addresses the work. So curiosity, when we really use that as a leadership skill, it separates identity from performance. And that matters because if someone feels attacked, they are naturally going to defend.

Yes.

And so when I deal with managers, Not in my company, but in other companies, because my managers are really good at doing this. They're like, I said this, and then all of a sudden this person got so defensive. I'm like, how did you say it? They're like, I told them they're unreliable. I'm like, when you tell someone they're unreliable, you are naturally going to get a defense because they're going to give you all of the times that they are reliable. And I realize that by definition, they may be unreliable, but you've got to say, over the last 6 weeks, you've been late 4 times. That makes it difficult for us to make sure that we can get things done on time. You can't just say you're unreliable. I mean, the other thing I would say too, when you're reviewing conversations, you have to make sure that you walk in regulated, right? I mean, I talk about being regulated again. So do not walk into a meeting hot. We do not unload 6 weeks of performance frustration in one meeting. Don't make the employee pay interest on every conversation you didn't have.

All right. I have been there so many times.

We're regulating. Then we're going to reflect and we're going to ask ourselves as we're being curious, what's the actual issue here? Because often when something has built up over time, the problem is not the problem.

Correct.

The problem is 5, 10, 15, 5,000 other things that have made this one the explosion. All right? So you got to think about that. And then you're going to respond. And the curious, smart leader may say, I want to talk about a pattern I'm seeing. That's a great way to bring something up as opposed to saying, you are blank. I'd like to talk about a pattern. The last 3 client updates that you were assigned went out late. We need timeliness to be something that you focus on.

There is a difference between you're an idiot and you've done poorly on the last 4 things.

Exactly. Yeah. And when you give people an explanation, when you give them context, and we've talked about this, I think, in our episode on feedback, it's really easy for them to understand where they need to go, as opposed to just looking at somebody and saying, you need to be more proactive. Like, that's, tell me how. You gotta give them the information. So curiosity forces clarity, because I think that when we talk about be more proactive, it's often code for I'm frustrated, but I haven't clearly defined the behavior. So you've got to be able to define the behavior, which again, if you don't know what you're trying to coach around, this is really where curiosity's important.

Yep.

You've got to be able to diagnose it. be able to, you know, what exactly needs to change? What does good look like? What support is needed? Those are questions that you can ask and continue to be curious. I mean, and for those of you who don't believe in feedback, I will tell you, giving feedback the proper way, it becomes an investment, not because it's soft, because it's specific.

Yes.

And for those of you who want more resources and aren't good at these conversations, I would encourage you to go back to some of our other episodes, like the Sweaty 10-Minute Conversation, the Employee Review episode, maybe our Resilience episode. I mean, it's kind of something we talk about a lot.

We have a whole library of this.

We do.

There's a theme to our— there truly is a theme to our podcast.

There is.

We talk about a lot of different subjects, but they all kind of center around this theme.

Yes, about how to be a good leader. Clarity, consistency, and care.

How not to be a jerk and get people to do stuff for you.

Yeah. So as we're talking about curiosity, I think it's really easy for visionaries to say to people, be curious, Yes, I'm supposed to be curious. What should I do in my role? I need you to be curious. Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Chrissy. But when deadlines are crashing, the CEO's asking questions, curiosity feels like a luxury.

It does.

Like, really? I need time to be freaking curious? So how does an operator make time for that diagnostic curiosity without slowing down execution?

That is the balancing act, because the problem is too, as operators, we like, as soon as you say, Here's where I need to go, and you say go.

I just want to execute.

100%. Like, let's go, let's go, let's go. I mean, and this is where the good operators take that time to have that plan, to have that, okay, let's sit back. Like, the best operations people I know are typically very, very, very calm, and you can tell them the sky is falling and they'll look first. So to me, there's, there's these The 5 Whys operational audit. So when the, as I like to say, when the fan needs a pressure washing because someone threw a large bucket of poo at it, lazy management will stop at Bob screwed up. I want you to go to assume Bob is working within the system that you, the leader, have provided to said Bob.

Oh, that sounds very ouchy.

It is. It is. What's funny is we find that so much of leadership is looking in a mirror. So like, first off, like I call this the toddler method. You being a parent to 2 children, you went through the why, why, why.

At varying, yes, times in their lives. I got a teenager and a young adult now. Why still, yes.

Still a thing. Be more like a teenager. How often are we going to tell you to do that? Why was the— why was the order on— was the order late? Well, it's because Bob didn't ship it on time. So now I have to ask, why? Why didn't Bob ship it on time? Because he didn't receive the handoff from sales. This isn't a Bob problem. This is a sales problem. Well, why was the handoff delayed? Because the CRM field wasn't mandatory. Oh, this is an SOP problem. So now we're actually figuring it out. Why wasn't the CRM field mandatory? Because SOP wasn't updated. Why wasn't the SOP updated? Because leadership didn't run a downstream debt check. Once again, guess what? Look in the mirror, people. This, this is the type of thing that I like when I see these asking the whys. The example that I always want to give to people is it's a headache.

Yeah.

Why are you having a headache? Because there is a big difference between I'm stressed and dehydrated and I'm having a stroke. You don't do the same things for those.

No.

Figure out what's causing the headache. Don't just try and solve for the headache. So that's— but too many people are just like, I'm popping Tylenol, I'm yelling at Bob, and I'm going about my business.

Yeah, and Bob's been here for 30 years, so it's Bob's fault. No, not necessarily. Correct.

Bob can take it.

No.

To me, it's once again, it's figuring out where that problem was. Now, this is the piece where you have to look at continuous improvement on this, because if you are not curious, you're never going to get any better. This is where the we've always done it this way comes into play. I don't hear we've always done it this way out of curious people. I truly don't.

No, that's change-resistant people.

Correct. So as leaders, we have to look to improve things every step of the way. If your operational processes aren't actively getting smoother, easier, and/or faster, your machine's falling behind. Because someone down the street, they are doing this. So you need to— like, you need to get on this. So start asking the right questions. Stop asking the binary or passive check-in questions like, did you finish the task? This is where I'm going to go into my background on podcasting and getting people to Like, ask the right questions.

Oh, okay.

It's the— I, I give the same, like, same thing. How's your day? You're gonna get a crap answer.

Yeah.

Fine. Or living the dream.

Living the dream. Living the dream.

So I want you to start asking, like, these questions. Carry them around on your phone, like, on a piece of paper, whatever. Um, what is currently getting in the way of you doing your job cleanly? If you've got a decent culture, someone will have an answer. Yeah, they will have an answer to this. What step in your workflow felt harder or took longer today than it needed to?

That's a good one.

Ask people these questions occasionally.

Where am I dragging you? Or as a leader, where am I dragging you down? Where am I preventing you from doing your job efficiently?

If you could eliminate one repetitive manual workaround or annoyance this week, What would it be?

That's another really good one.

People are going to have answers to these questions. And even if they don't say— if they don't right off the bat be like, hey, I'm coming back, I'm coming back a week from today.

Yeah.

And we're— I want you to have something for me.

So you can have a checklist of a couple of questions that you continue to ask people.

Oh, you should.

These are questions you should ask routinely, not like one and done. Oh, well, we fixed the problem. Like, that question can be asked again. It's evergreen.

And this is why, too, I talk with operators about asking this, because if you tell the CEO this, they're going to come up with typically from a CEO perspective, they're going to come up with this grand plan.

Yeah, you don't always want my grand plan.

No, no, no. I may just need to write, like, I may need to move something in between step 13 and step 14 and we're good. It may be 6 words may take care of this.

Yes.

And that's why I typically like to have operations in that. Now, the other thing that I want to talk about this is there was someone that Simon Sinek talked about this, and I've experienced this too. The how we talk about leadership. And I talk about leadership from the servant leadership perspective.

Yeah.

Here's where we're going. How can I help? The thing that I don't like about how can I help and what I want to— we say this, but what I want to dive into on this is think about the last time you had a friend that was going through something or a need. My default personally has always been, let me know how I can help, which inevitably is met with a polite thanks. And then there's zero response, zero requests. The same thing happens in your business. When you go to an employee that says, let me know how I can help, they're going to be like, I'm not putting any more load on him. So nobody reaches out. Now, what would happen if I asked someone how I could help, like, get— how I can help you get a very specific result? Once again, like the questions that I asked earlier, what— where in our handoff process Are you experiencing confusion?

Yeah.

Totally, totally different. And once again, you're being curious about this.

Yes.

Rather than, how can I help? How can I help is overused enough. It's kind of an automated, automatic response in our brains. When you ask what tool shortcut or SOP would make a difference in your execution?

Yeah.

I'm asking for something very specific. I'm no longer asking how your day was. I'm asking one of my favorite networking questions. What's something you're working on that you're excited about?

Yeah.

That people have an answer to it.

They do.

That asking for something very clear is— that is how, as a leader, curiosity helps you move your business, your business section forward. The asking the right questions, you are eliminating friction. It may be the smallest thing, but small things add up to big things. You'll gain velocity from this because once again, you're asking the team, where is this screwed up? And you're actually showing how— you're not asking how I can help. You're showing them, here's how I can help. You're giving them an example of follow-through to show that how can I help is not just fluff. The other thing with that is too, is we work from defense. to problem solving like you talked about. The, the defensive mindset is one that kills businesses.

Oh, always.

It just, it kills businesses. If we go to problem solving like, hey, we got to fix this, guys. This, this is our machine. It's, I mean, my name may be on the outside of the building, but it's our machine. And if it's broken, it's broken for all of us. So let's, let's make this, let's make this machine great for all of us. The other thing, whether it's 15 seconds, 15 minutes, like you said, that, that reset, that—

Yeah, just take some time.

Take some time away.

Regulate yourself.

Yes. Before you check yourself.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Yes. We regulate our emotions.

I feel like we need that as a clip too. Chrissy's saying, check yourself before you wreck yourself. So yeah, and I mean, to me, we move from— we move away from reactionary and we become intentional about what we're doing.

Yeah.

Once again, I'm gonna go to the first thing that they teach rescue swimmers in the Coast Guard, how to subdue someone that you're rescuing, because those people are flailing because they are desperate, they are emotional.

Yes, they're gonna drown you, you know.

They're gonna drown both of you. So that is the thing. Ask questions to find the answer. Don't ask questions that have the answer. Like I said, there's— there's—

I—

as soon as you said the what happened here, I heard my mother in my head. What happened here? Like, she knows. She knows what happened. She's— there's zero curiosity.

Your first— yeah, your first job at a fast food restaurant where you broke something.

Right, right, right, right. This is— there is zero curiosity in what happened here. She may as well just be, go to your room.

Exactly. I mean, there— you're in trouble, you're in timeout.

Correct, correct. Um, so to me, like, the, the, the goal of this really is it's to offer a buffer, to strip that emotional charge out of it, and that way you can ask those open, neutral questions like, like the ones I listed earlier that are going to expose the process flaw rather than blaming Pop. We've talked about Bob a lot recently. There's going to be someone in our comments that's a Bob.

Some people feel very attacked.

Bob is awesome. Sorry, Bob.

You've been here for 30 years. You've done all the things. We haven't called you the brilliant jerk, so just know you're not.

Right. If you are a Bob that is under the age of 30, let us know so that way we— To me, what I really want to get with this is you are protecting the machine through curiosity. You're trying to get You're looking for destinations, not clicks. We're trying to figure out what done looks like, and we're trying to find the most efficient path to done. And asking the right questions are what will get you there, because you've hired a bunch of people that are experts to do stuff like this.

Yeah.

Where is the boundary between curious versus nosy? Because how does a leader stay curious about operations? Without making the employees feel like micromanaged? Because I've seen it too. What are you doing? What are you doing? Why do you do it that way? Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the difference between, you know, curious and nosy is whether the employees feel supported or scrutinized.

Oh, 100%.

Curious sounds like, help me understand where this happened or how this— like, help me understand. And then, I mean, nosy is like, let me see if I can catch you doing something wrong.

Yeah. Curious is, I want you to succeed.

Yes.

Nosy is, I'm trying to catch you failing.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I would say too, if your questions make people feel like they're on trial, that's not curiosity.

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Ooh, yeah.

That's—

yeah, yeah. How do you handle like that team member that has zero interest in learning the why and just wants to execute mindless clicks?

So I don't think it's wrong that not everybody wants to be wildly curious all the time. I think that's perfectly fine. I think that some people are excellent when the lane is clear and when they've got a clear definition of what that task is and they've got good expectations that things are going to stay stable. I mean, there's value in that. So I would say So I would say, let's not shame someone for being task-oriented. But I mean, you don't promote them into a role that requires them to ask questions. That's the other part. If they're really good at that, don't promote them to a space where they're going to fail.

What about you? No, I look at it the same way because there are hundreds of thousands of jobs that require that repetitive nature that like, here's exactly what you're supposed to do over and over and over again. And you probably like, I don't really want my mailman being all that curious.

No, you do not.

Like, I don't really want curiosity in some areas. So once again, there's thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs like that. Just like, you want these people in your organization.

And applaud those people for doing the role and how it's How it's defined.

That's the other thing.

Give them good feedback about that. It's okay that they're not curious.

So how do you figure out if you're leading with the curiosity or leading with the iron fist?

Oh, okay. So we're talking about kind of like curiosity audit? How do you do that?

Yeah, like, how do you look in the mirror? Like, without it being a funhouse mirror, like, I look great.

Yeah. Okay, so a couple things. All right, so I would say first we start with your first reaction under stress, right? When something goes wrong, do you ask a question or make a declaration?

And make sure your question is not a declaration.

Exactly. Like, do you seek to understand or do you seek to prove? Like, those are 2 very different things. Do people bring you bad news early or do they only bring you bad news when they have absolutely no choice? Like the building is literally on fire and you're in the fireproof room. They're like, hey, Building's on fire. I mean—

I ran someone over in the parking lot.

Yeah, yeah, that's going to tell you a lot. So that's the first one. When something goes wrong, how does that work? What's your first reaction under stress? And then I would say the uncomfortable mirror test is to ask your team, when I ask questions, do they feel helpful or do they feel like a cross-examination? Literally ask that question to people.

Where were you on the night of—

Yeah, do I ask? I mean, Do my questions feel helpful or do they feel like a cross-examination? And that may sting, the reactions you get from people. Just be prepared and it's okay. I mean, but because it's going to tell you the truth, right? You can also ask yourself, but I think you should ask your team instead, am I asking this question to find an answer or am I asking because I already have an answer and I want them to admit it?

That's the worst.

That's the difference between curiosity and control.

Why do you ask me a question that you already know the answer to?

Exactly. Because curiosity says, I may not have the full picture, but control says, I already decided what happened. And we've talked about how nobody wants to work anymore. That's why nobody wants to work for you, because if you've already decided what's happened and you're coming from a place of control, it's not going to work. If you want people to be honest with you, they have to believe there is room for the truth to change your mind, not the story that you have decided.

I love all the things that you've put here. I have put mine to a simple, like, formula on something. I love it because I had to operationalize this. Count your question-to-statement ratio in meetings. If you spend 90% of the time making statements and 10% of the time asking questions, you're controlling, not leading. That's—

yes.

If you are— if that's flipped, if you spend 90% of the time asking questions and 10% of the time making statements, Congratulations, you're leading. That's, to me, it's that simple. Like, and once again, I had to find a way to put it in a spreadsheet.

Nice. Good job.

Actionable stuff.

Yeah.

For me, the 5 whys. Ask why like a toddler.

Yeah. And I would say shift your first question under stress. Replace who let this happen with help me understand.

Yeah. I mean, similarly, ask to find the answer, not trap the answer.

And I would say we really need to practice getting it right over being right. So we model what we mandate, humility, right? We publicly acknowledge when a curious question disproved our initial assumption. Yay. Thank you for explaining this to me. I had it wrong in my head.

I learned something today.

Yeah.

Can you teach curiosity to Bob, who's been there for 30 years?

Yeah, I think—

There's hesitation there. I had to think because you kept with this caveat with 30 years.

Yes, you can. I had to think for a second. I'm like, wait a sec. I was wondering if I was being set up for failure. Are we not learning from our questions that we talked in this episode? So I'd say people repeat what gets rewarded. So yeah, so if curiosity gets punished, silence is going to become the strategy. But even if you make that shift, like maybe Bob's been there in the first 30 years, this is what's happened, you can make that change. You got to reward though.

I totally agree. Like, incentivize people wanting to know more. If you incentivize that in some way, shape, or another, you will be just, just fine. What, like, to you, what is the big red flag that an organization has lost or never had Any curiosity whatsoever. For me, because we've always done it that way. Like, as soon as I hear that, I'm like, I start the turn-ta-turn in my head.

There's no point in having this conversation.

Right, right, right, right. I'll just show myself out.

Yeah, I would say it's, for me, it's like, we've tried that before. They'll never go for it. It's too complicated. When I hear those 3 things, especially when we're in an HR space, I'm like, oh, we've got resignation around things. There's no curiosity.

Oh, the resignation.

Yeah.

That's a great way to look at it.

It is, because I mean, when an organization loses curiosity, people stop asking, could this be better?

Yeah.

So they've just resigned to that. This is as good as it's gonna get.

And in many ways, that is because leadership has completely squashed it.

Yeah, and so they're just being survivors. They've learned to survive what's broken. Such a great time.

Once again, we have the hostage situation.

Yeah.

And I joked about this before, but I'm going to joke about it again, where you walk in and you see the people that are blinking in a way that you're like, are they blinking help me in Morse code?

Yeah. Or it's a staring contest. You're in the conference room with— you've got the manager and you've got the subordinate, and they're just staring at each other. And you're like, okay, how can we have a conversation about this? And they're just not going to have a feeling. No.

No, we can't have a conversation about this. Speaking of which, if you'd like to hear more conversations About leadership, go to the Business Fix Podcast. It's actually businessfixpodcast.com. No the at the front of it. We wanted to save time. We have no idea what we're talking about next week.

No.

And we need to really sit down and look at stuff. We've got a list of really cool things.

Yeah. And look at our fan mail too because we've had some requests. I think we're probably going to take a—

We have had some really good requests that we need to If you have a request, by all means, let us know. Put it in the comments, whether it be on one of the platforms or on the website. Send us an email. We would love to get email from you. That all being said, do us a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.

Bye.

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