Finding Brave 72: How Expanding Your Curiosity Increases Your Engagement & Success, Diane Hamilton

Hello, everybody. Kathy Caprino here, and welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. We're so happy to have you. And I'm so excited to welcome my guest, Dr. Diane Hamilton. Diane, thank you for being here.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Kathy.

Oh, I love what you've got going on, Diane. I love your key focus now. And what we're going to be talking about is how expanding your curiosity increases your engagement, innovation and success. I don't think we know enough about curiosity. I don't think we hear about it enough. Right. It's not a skill or a trait that we really train a lot about. Well, you do, but I can't wait to dig in. Dig in, dig in. So, folks, let me tell you all about Diane. Dr. Diane Hamilton is the founder and CEO of Tonera and a nationally syndicated radio host, keynote speaker, and the former MBA program chair at the Forbes School of Business. Gosh, I'd love to hear more about that. She's the author of multiple books, including her new one that came out in January, cracking the Curiosity Code, the Key to Unlocking Human Potential and Creating the. Oh, and creator of the Curiosity Code Index, which we're going to the assessment, which we're going to hear all about. Her groundbreaking work in the area of curiosity is required reading for universities around the world and has been endorsed by some of the biggest names in leadership, including Steve Forbes, Keith Kroc and Ken Fisher. And she has shared the stage with top speakers including, oh, we love Marshall Goldsmith, Martha Stewart and Jeffrey Hazlett, and has been featured on Forbes, abc, NBC, cbs, fox, and it goes on and on. So, wow, what an illustrious bio. Diane, thank you. Oh, pleasure. All right, let, let us jump right in. First of all, how did you get even interested in curiosity and what drew you to it that, you know, you know, we all need to know more about curiosity?

Well, you know, it's interesting because like you, I have a show. You know, I interview some of the people who you listed on that list. And I've interviewed so many billionaires and geniuses and just unbelievable people. And, and as I started to interview them, you notice a trend that they talk about how much they read, they talk about all the things they're interested in, all these things. And I've taught more than a thousand business classes. And so when you look at students and all the people you've taught, I don't really see the same level of curiosity in a lot of people. And I kept thinking, well, I wonder why these people are so much this way. And then some of my students wanted you to give them the fish instead of teach them to fish. And I wanted to have them to have that desire to figure things out. So, you know, all the years I've been in sales and all the background I've had from working at Forbes and different things, I really learned so much from just every industry of how everybody thinks. And it just started to come together that I wanted to figure out why people weren't more curious.

Oh, my gosh. And, you know, I want to just highlight. Validate something, and it's really playing out in my life right now. When I first wanted to write my first book, Breakdown Breakthrough, I really thought I had all the answers about what professional crisis is for women. I truly did. And then I met with an editorial consultant, big top lady Janet Goldstein, and she said, look, you're a fine writer, but this is not your big idea. And I said, what do you mean? She said, I think you need to research. And I remember thinking, what is she talking about? What do I need to research? But I kind of cried, left her office, and I am driving home, and I went, how do. What does she mean? And then it hit me. Why don't you interview a hundred women across the country about what is professional women's crisis and how do they overcome it? And from the minute I did that, my whole world changed. And I think what we're talking about is curiosity. Instead of thinking, you know, all the answers, instead of thinking of how to shortcut things, instead of. Of thinking, how can I get my message out? It became a year of curiosity. And 10 years later, I'm doing that with this next book, Close youe Power Gaps. Is that part of what you're talking about getting out of yourself? And, you know, tell us how you define curiosity and what it is and what you learned about people who have it and who don't. I'm fascinated.

Well, curious. I think that's a great story. I think it shows what I'm trying to get people to get out of that status quo. Thinking of just doing the things that feel comfortable always. You know, I mean, you may be a great writer. You may be a great researcher. You may not be great at both. Maybe you need to explore the other side or whatever it is in your example. But I think that what I was trying to do was look at curiosity from the standpoint that no one else has looked at it from, which is what keeps us from being curious, because there's books about drive and motivation. I mean, Daniel Pink Simon Sinek, Carol Dweck, name them, They've written great books, right. But they don't go back all the way to the level of curiosity. And as I started to write about curiosity, everything that I consult about or they have, you come in and speak about in terms of leadership issues, soft skills, emotional intelligence, you name it, it all kept coming back to curiosity. I mean, you have a problem with engagement. Well, you have a problem with curiosity, you have a problem with communication, you got a problem with curiosity. I thought, well, this is really fascinating because it really is the spark that lights, the drive and motivation to do all the things that improve engagement, innovation, and all the things that we talk about that we want to fix in the workplace.

Oh, I love it. You're so right. So, you know, let's get deep here. Is curiosity a naturally occurring thing in some people? Like, they don't really have to work it, whereas other people. And, you know, I'm an extrovert, I'm an ambivert, actually. But I'm starting to look at the real differences between introverts and extroverts and how. And I'm guessing curiosity, you know, exists across the board in any kind of personality type, but I bet it's communicated differently. I bet there are different ways we share our. Is that right? What are you finding about that?

Well, you know, because I studied Myers Briggs and all the different personality tests, because I wrote my dissertation on emotional intelligence, and when I did that, I started to look, you know, become certified in MBTI and, you know, different assessments. And I am an extrovert as well. I'm an estj, an entj, apparently. So they say we're pretty close. And I think that Susan Cain's book really brought out a lot about introverts and extroverts and the importance of all that. I think introverts are good at asking questions better than extroverts. And I think that that is good, of course, for curiosity. Sometimes we don't ask as many questions being extroverts, except for when we do our radio shows. That makes us better at it, right? It's really true. It's really true. Yeah. I think that there's a difference. I think, though you asked about in childhood, and we're all born very curious. You ask. We all have this and we do. We all have this. But the thing is, you start to see when they're four years old, the charts way up here, and as they 5, 6, 7, and by the time they're 18, it drops and it's the same thing with creativity. And you look at 2 year olds, they're 98% are creative geniuses at 18, 2%. And it's because, you know, you get into these situations where life and the environment and different things that actually I found four things hold us back from being curious in my research.

What are they?

Yeah, well, what I did was as I started to write this book, I thought, well, I don't want to just write about curiosity. Even though I was fascinated by it, I love to research things because the nerd PhD in me, of course. So I am writing this book and I'm thinking, well, okay, so this is what it is. But what good does I want to fix it? And you can't fix it just by talking about it. You have to figure out where people stand. Right, right. So I decided I wanted to create my own assessment because I thought it was interesting becoming certified to give the EQI and the MBTI and all those. And I thought, well, it'd be kind of interesting to create a curiosity assessment. Yeah, I started to look, I figured there must be some out there measure curiosity. And there were, but they measured how curious you are. They didn't measure what size stopped you from being curious. And so there's nothing like it. And I think that's why this is really impacted so many people. If you look in the book, all the people who have endorsed my book are just unbelievable people. I'm just honored, you know, to endorse it. But I think it's because really there's nothing like it out there. And so what I did is I did all the years of research like you did and going asking people and all that. But then once I started to developed the questions, I hired psychometric statisticians and then I started doing a lot of my own statistical analysis. And we went through years of all the question design and we finally came up with questions that could determine the things that keep people from being curious. And there were actually four factors and the acronym is fate, F A T E and it stands for fear, Assumptions, technology and environment. So those are the four factors.

Tell us all about it. I love it. Tell us.

Well, fear wasn't surprising to me. I mean when you. I was on LinkedIn originally asking people what held it back. I wanted to get some initial insights and a lot of people listed fear, so I expected that to be pretty high.

Can I just understand. Let's frame it for a minute. When we're talking about curiosity, are you talking about curiosity about everything? Curiosity about the world, about people. About, you know, what are we talking about exactly? And how does fear hold people back? Let's really break it down from a.

Work standpoint, more than anything, I didn't want this to be a book for children. I didn't want it to be a book about just exploring, you know, random things. I wanted very focused for leadership and business. So a lot of the questions have business related kind of issues with them.

Okay, so how would fear hold us back from being curious in the way you're talking? Can we have an example?

Yeah, there's a lot. Well, I can give you one of my examples. I had a boss who, since I was older, I didn't find him very intimidating, but he tried to be intimidating. And I think if I was young, he would have intimidated me. But he was the kind of guy that was very cranky. And I remember he asked me to do something one day and I said, sure, I'd be happy to. I just have never done that before. How do you do it? He looked at me and he said, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that.

Oh, gosh.

And I was just.

So what killed your curiosity right there? Didn't he?

And also, would you ever ask him another question? Would you ever. You know what I mean? You'd never go back to this guy again. He completely shut me down, and there was no reason I should have ever had to have done this. I never needed to. Nobody ever taught me how.

And he shamed you as well?

He's trying to make me feel little.

Right.

So later I actually brought it back up to him because I said, you know, that was kind of rude.

Why didn't you say to that?

He was so surprised I even had. He goes, what? I said what you did was rude. And he said, what? What? What I do? And I told him what he said. And you could tell he had absolutely no idea that that was a bad thing to do, because I think his leaders did that to him. And he was a young guy trying to, you know, puff himself up maybe a little, you know, and.

And can I also add another dimension? It's a gender. Gender thing. The research. Women ask questions as a way to build on their skill and engage men don't. Not all men, not all women, but men see question asking as weakness and inability?

No. I don't even know if he thought it was bad that I had never done the task or that somebody hadn't taught me how to do it or whatever his reasoning was. Didn't make it clear. You know what I mean?

You Just got right.

So if that had happened to me when I was really young, I would have never said anything to him. I would have shut down. I would have been fearful. You know, different stages in your. You get more, you know, brave as you get older sometimes because you're like.

I don't care what you think.

I think it helped him that I brought it up to his attention, though, because I don't think he was aware that that would shut me down, you know, And I think that a lot of people don't bring it to the attention if there is an issue like that where people are saying things that are just rude or, you know, don't mean to. So if I had been in that company and stayed, you know, that might have shut me down there, but I might have left that company kind of somewhere else. And you don't even know where the fe. Stemming. So your next employee comes in, had that guy as their boss.

Right.

Never's gonna ask another question. Right.

So we're talking here. You had a curiosity about expanding your, you know, doing this task at the highest level.

Oh, how do I do this? Yeah, wonk.

You know, don't ever ask that, you dummy.

Right.

So there's fear of looking stupid, fear that you should know, fear that you're.

Not smart enough, fear, Fear of all that. And it's just there's so much that leaders don't even realize how they come across. You know what I mean? And I think that it was a good learning experience for both of us because it taught me, gave me an example to give you and a little insight as to that. Maybe it wasn't the best thing that you say to people. So sometimes.

Can I say one more thing, Diane? Sure. You're also framing your question as a question from curiosity rather than a question of in. It's a question of inability or inexperience. You were curious, and I think that that is a wonderful way to frame these questions. It's not that you're stupid. It's not that you should have known. You're curious about how to do this better.

Love it.

Give us the other.

I think that that's a really important one, though. Fear. And then the second one was assumptions. And assumptions really is the voice in your head. And that's, you know, what tells you, I'm going to find this boring. I did it in the past. I didn't like it. I often say I always like the like. And when I think about the voice in our heads. There was a cartoon at Dr. Katz, which was on Like Nickelodeon or something. I used to watch it. All these guest comedians come on that were really funny. I remember one guy who was on the couch and he said, you know, I don't mind the voice in my head so much. I just wish it didn't have a stutter or, you know, something like that. That's what I think of when I listened to, you know, the voice in your head. It tells you you're. You had a teacher who taught this. Boy, was it boring or you had, you know, there's so many things that in your childhood you might not have found interesting that you would find interesting now or given in a different. You know, I remember finding history really boring as a child. And then I went to Pearl harbor and I'm thinking, wow, this is just awful. This is amazing to see what happened. And then I was interested in looking for it. So our experiences can change what we find interesting. But a lot of it is, you know, we've had past bad experiences. Maybe you were given a task or you gave a suggestion, say, hey, Kathy, I think this is a great. Yeah, a company should do that. And then you go, well, here, Diane, you do it and don't get paid for it, you know, and then you go, well, I'm not going to suggest that again because, you know, you had great ideas, but then there was a punishment, associate punishment in your assumptions. Right.

Wow.

We all make assumptions that are incorrect. You don't know. You know, our perceptions are really fascinating thing of how we view things, and that's what I'm writing about now and in my next book, which is a long ways out. But perception is very important to our.

Assumptions that we make pretty much everything, isn't it?

Yeah.

Wow, interesting. What's the third one?

Well, the third thing is technology and technology can overlap with fear. Of course, you can have fear of technology. Technology, you have to be really curious to want to understand the basics of it. Some of us just want to use it and not understand it. Others don't want to use it at all because we grow up with it. Or, you know, there's a range. You know, my mom calls me like every day for technology things. I remember when I first gave her a computer, she took the mouse and instead of doing this, she did it in the air.

Oh, that makes sense too.

So, you know, when you do technology, you have to question, well, why is it doing it this way? Why aren't we doing it that way? And I think a lot of people are afraid of breaking it or they're afraid of. Or they're just relying on it as a crutch because it's easier to ask your echo to figure it out and then you to know how to look up something or do something. So I think there's a twofold, you know, too much, too little kind of thing, and then a lot of it's exposure as well. And I think that some people are more impacted by, you know, in technology than others, but that can be one of the main factors. And then the last factor is environment, which is a big one for a lot of people. Like me. I grew up in a family where I was kind of like the different one, and everybody was into sports, and I wasn't really that much into sports. I didn't, you know, but everything was sports. And so if you had brothers or I had an older brother who's eight and a half years older and an older sister was five years older, so. And everything was so super competitive. And it's really hard to compete when you're that much younger.

Yeah, you're not gonna. You're not gonna be a winner here. Oh, no, you don't win.

You're like, you know, and, you know, my family was so ultra competitive. You know, my dad, you know, he would just, like, shove pixie sticks down my throat to make sure I won the swim team, you know, event or whatever, you know, I mean, everything was so sports oriented and. But it. If you had a different interest, it just wasn't cool, you know? I mean, you just should go down this narrow path.

Wow.

And so I think environment, not just your family. I mean, you get into school, remember, at 5, and then as you age, the chart went down. You know, you get into school, and they can't answer all your questions. I can remember being on a bus with a little girl. She was a Hispanic woman with her little darling little girl in the back of the bus. As I was in, we were going skiing, and I could hear the little girl in the back going, porkay, mama porkay. She said it, like a hundred times. And of course, that means, why, Mom? Why instead? And I just thought it was so adorable. And then I turned around to look, and you could tell that this woman had heard it a lot more than, I don't know, ask Alexa. So it was like that kind of thing where, you know, you can't answer every question without losing your mind sometimes, you know, and you've got teachers that have teach to the test. You have curriculum, you have all these things, and it's a challenge for a lot of people to keep that curiosity. And I think there's. If you ask if some people have it more than others, you know, And I've met Steve Wozniak, and he was really fascinating. And so it made me want to read his book. And I read the Iwas book, and I like the beginning of it because he talks about how his dad writes about. I should say, how his dad helped him to build things when he was a kid, you know, different mechanical devices or whatever. But he said he explained in great detail why you needed the wire to attach to this to make this, you know, and of course, it's gonna make you much more curious person and more interested in why things work the way they do. So I think that environment is a big one for a lot of people, good and bad.

And we, you know, sadly, we can really get shut down very early. I remember, and I love my beloved mom. She's still doing great 94, but in the kitchen, she's Greek. My dad, who passed away, is Italian. The kitchen was a very.

What's the word?

Tumultuous place. I mean, a lot of, yeah, Joe, don't do it like that. You know, as a young kid, I'd be like, I'll help peel the potato. And I remember she went, oh, give it to me. Because it was going so slow and I was so tired. Well, speaking of environment, I'm not terribly comfortable in the kitchen at my age. I mean, I can cook, but it's not my happy place. So, you know, I hope everyone's listening to Diane here. Also, as a parent, how do we set the stage to allow our children to ask questions, to not be. And if you ever grew up in a narcissistic family, questioning curiosity can feel like challenge. And a lot of parents don't. Don't dig that. They feel like you're challenging them. Right.

I'm sure that came up leaders, you know, because, you know, they look at it as insubordination.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Right.

And that. That'll lead to status quo thinking. That'll lead to, we don't do it this way. We never have done it that way. You know, all those kinds of things. And then they're gonna end up being blockbuster Kodak. Good luck with that kind of thing.

Right, Right.

So that's why I created this certification program for the Curiosity Code Index that I train leadership consultants and I train HR professionals. I'm gonna be speaking at SHRM this summer. I'm talking to all the people who do these personality tests like MBTI Disc and All the different ones. Yeah, because they, they, they like engagement, they like all these topics, they like emotional intelligence. I speak about all those things. They're really important. But this really ties it all together because if you don't solve the main problem of your workers being, you know, curious and how they can express, explore that development, then you're not going to reach all these other goals of engagement and innovation.

I so love that. Diane, can I tell you, when I was in my most unhappy two years as a vice president in the corporate world, we had an off site and we did the mbti and I, I, I was called an E entj. But there was something and I answered the questions to the best of my ability, but there was something about the result of it that wasn't me at all. So I went up to the facilitator and I said, look, I answered it really as truthfully as possible. What do you think could be happening? And you know what? And I think he should have had more curiosity about what came out. But he said, you are ENTJ is 90% of the top leadership tier are ENTJ. And what I've seen before is people will mold themselves to what the leadership style is unconsciously in order to be accepted. So to me, if I were the facilitator and I saw that, I would be curious and I would want to say, let's talk about that. Let's even have a discussion right here with the leaders.

Definitely.

Right. No, but I'm sorry, go ahead.

Or do you think was off?

I think I'm an extrovert for sure. I felt like the, the N and the T might not have been it.

Yeah, but a lot of times people are right on the border of the middle. You know how it goes both ways and zeros in the middle. Yes. If you're right on the border, you could flip flop so easily. That could have been all.

Yeah, but, but ironically, I didn't feel like an authentic person in my entire corporate career. I never really felt like who I really was. And I think I did try to fit in. But my gosh, curiosity, I think can change absolutely every aspect of what we do. All right, so that's what undermines curiosity. So if you were giving me I'm your leader leaders, you know, I'm in your class and I want to become more curious and also build a more curious culture. Diane, what do we do? What do we practically.

Well, when they go through the training program, we have two exercises. The first one is a personal exercise, so you develop your own levels of curiosity. You go through those four letters that have nine sub factors underneath, and you create action plans that are measurable with kind of like a SWOT analysis sort of thing, where you look at your weaknesses and your threats and come up with a plan to overcome. And so we do a first personal type of thing, then the second part of the training, which for groups that we work with them on a leadership report to bring back to leaders that they create ideas for leaders, how to make them more curious in certain aspects, like in terms of helping them with engagements, helping with critical thinking, helping with innovation, all the issues. You get all the top issues from leaders of what they want to repair, and then you get it from the horse's mouth of what they need to make them more curious. They give this whole report back to the consultant or trainer, and the trainer brings that back to leadership. So it's an amazing process.

So let's take the top two things you hear over and over that you, you know, you can, you could coach, you know, in your sleep. What, what do you. For all of us listening and, and so you focus on leaders. If the people listening to this are, are also wanting to just engage more in their career and be more successful and more impactful, what are the two things you see over and over? And can you give us a strategy or two about, about how we can become more curious and why that helps with innovation even or success?

You know, the real thing is I focus on helping the leaders, but the assessment's meant for everybody.

Okay, great.

For anybody that's got a job, that's basically who needs to take.

Okay, wonderful.

So the leaders are the ones who are complaining about the issues, but a lot of the employees don't even realize that this is something that's holding them back.

So let's give a. Let's. Let me use a real life example, Diane, and you can coach me right here. Right. So, you know, I'm a Forbes writer. I have a big following on LinkedIn 900 and whatever it is, 11,000. But I love engagement. And the more that I hear from people about what they're struggling with, the better my programs will be. But if I wanted more engagement as a personal brand, as Kathy Caprino.com and I wanted to really expand what I offered to people so that it tackled their deepest career issues, what would you tell me that I need to do? In terms of curiosity, what should I do?

That's interesting because that's a different kind of engagement. But for that type of engagement, I would definitely pose questions More often in social media, you know, that's a curiosity, questions, just like that. What kinds of things would you like me to help you with? What kinds of things people often ask me. And then ask yourself a question or two. Just like if you give a speech and you run out of time and I mean, you run short on time and you got 15 minutes left and nobody's asking questions, you can say, you know, people often ask me, you can ask your own questions of what you think people are interested in knowing, and that'll start up a conversation. I think there's some really great social media people out there that they know how to ask questions, that they also get people involved through fun things. You know, people want to know what's, what's behind something or what's the answer? Here's the most asked question ever, and then leave them hanging kind of thing, you know, but you have to click on this, you know, Right. There's a lot of things that get.

Them to be curious, get their curiosity. Right.

Right. That's a huge part of engaging with people in social media.

I love it.

A lot of it is how would you fill in the blank? You know, then they make them think it's really true.

Like the ones I, the posts that I've done that I think have gotten the most responses are something like, if you could say in one word what you want more of this year in your life, what is it? Oh, my gosh. I mean, people love it. People love to answer that, and it's very telling. All right. And for leaders who want to build, let's say they're leaders of a small business or a startup and they want to build a more curious, open culture where there's more innovation. What do they need to do better? Diane?

Well, they need to recognize the importance of anything. Cultural change, wise and leadership. All the changes come from the top, as we know. And if we want to fix the culture, if you want to embrace a truly curious culture that's not status quo thinking, you have to look at your code of conduct, code of ethics, code of everything that you expect of everybody in the company, and you have to embrace that. You have to model that for people. Once you tell them that you want to make changes, you get their input. How can we make this a more curious culture? We, of course, get everybody to take an assessment. I would hope to get them to know baseline, to understand the importance of it and to get the feedback from them. And then you, you model it, you know, fear leaders, how often do they have the imposter syndrome, afraid they're gonna be found out, that they don't know what they're supposed to know. And you just say, hey, I don't know everything. I'm gonna show you right now, this meeting. I'm asking a question that I normally would think would be stupid because I don't want, you know, and to say that, you know, the old way of thinking that if you don't come to me with a problem unless you have a solution, we're not going to do that anymore because that shuts out all the problems from people who can't possibly recognize the solutions because they're not trained to. So, you know, if we do things like that, we model what we really want people to do.

Oh, I love it. I'm guessing diversity is enormously important in this whole thing, wouldn't you agree? In other words, if we're only surrounding ourselves with people who think like us, who we can't be curious, I mean, we're just almost self fulfilling sameness. Is that right?

Creative as well. I mean, you might remember in the Myers Briggs training, if you put all the same people in a group and you gave them Legos and asked them to build a house. So we build a little boring little house, but you give them a diverse group, you say build a house, you bring castle and moats, you know, and it's like a whole different thing. So you do want a diverse teams and diverse workplace, otherwise you're going to keep building the tiny house instead of the unbelievable thing. But with that comes the challenge of getting along. And that's why you have to be curious to build empathy. When I wrote my dissertation, I read a lot of course about empathy. And when you're dealing with teams, you have to be able to understand things from somebody else's perspective. So we get back to perception, which again is what. These are my areas of interest because this is all so important for teams to get along. But you really do have to understand if you have everybody, you look around, everybody looks and look, acts just like you and nobody's asking any questions, you got a problem with curiosity?

Oh gosh, that really struck my heart, the empathy part. You know, my kids, when they're grown now, but whenever we go like to the AT&T store, they come out going, mom, why is it that everyone stops and talks to you for 20 minutes and says everything about their life? And number one, I am curious, but I, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I do think there's a degree of Empathy as well, that whatever you're going to share with me, I'm going to have respect for your situation, whether I agree or understand at all. Boy, empathy. I think in some ways. What do I want to say about this? I think that leaders need so much more of it, but in some ways, I think it's almost become a cliched term, like they think they can take a little course and become more empathic. And it takes a hell of a lot more than that, doesn't it? Don't you think?

It really does. You know, I had Daniel Goleman on my show recently. We were talking about it, and.

It'S.

Hard to get a really accurate assessment of your emotional intelligence unless you get it from somebody else.

That's humorous to me. Yeah. You can't really look at how empathetic you are. I mean, you're not the one that's receiving it, you know.

You know, it's such a fascinating discussion, and I get to talk to so many amazing people about this, from Harvard billionaires to whatever, you know, whoever, and they really all have great insight on different things that have them. And that's why. Isn't it fun doing these shows?

Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun. You know, let me ask. I've got to go soon with you. But take someone like Steve Jobs who was not empathic, who didn't have emotional intelligence. How is it that someone who's really lacking in that can. Can innovate, can create that kind of culture? What. What did he have in spades that he didn't. That he made up for it?

You know, I talk about that a lot. And I told you, I teach so many courses. I still teach, and I talk about that a lot in my courses. And I asked Daniel Coleman, I asked a lot of people about him because. Yeah, I mean, what did they say? Well, I think a lot of people say that there were two Steve Jobs. There was the first Steve Jobs, the first time that got kicked out, and then when he came back, he was more humbled and he was better than he was the first time. Some people have said that Steve Jobs that they knew was actually empathetic in the way that he knew how people thought, but he knew how to push buttons that pushed them into what would make them actually be the most productive, which I thought was an innovative.

There's a new twist on it. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a nice kind of empathy. It was almost like a manipulative kind of understanding, you know, but all with.

The Goal of let them be as.

Innovative and reach their best. But almost knew how to push buttons in a way. And so I find him endlessly fascinating because I've asked a lot of people who work for him. I've had a lot of people from Apple on the show, and, you know, they said, you know, I've had people tell me that he's threatened them. I've had people tell me all kinds of crazy stories. It's really kind of fun to talk about Steve Jobs. I would have loved to have met him, but he. I think that he was really very challenging to work for. But I think a lot of people saw his genius of what he. His vision was, and he was great at being strategically aligned and certain parts of him of emotional intelligence. So he, you know, not every aspect of emotional intelligence did he excel, but in some areas, he actually did.

And maybe people were just darn curious to be around that kind of genius. I would have been like, okay, this. This is hard on my ego, but, gosh, I'm curious, you know, how much.

Pain can I endure? There's a level of cure.

All right, what. What should you leave us with here, Diane, that's going to help all of us become more curious right this moment? What's one great tip?

I think that recognizing that there are these four factors is one of the most important things you can do. Even if you don't take the curiosity code index, you can just in your mind, kind of figure out where has fear, where has my voice in my head, where has technology, how has environment all these things, how have they impacted me, how? And it's a huge realization once you start writing down some of this stuff. Okay, so maybe this is holding me back. And then you could just try reading a different section of a newspaper, try going to work a different direction. Try just adding little tiny things, baby steps throughout your day, just to explore. Not status quo thinking, just to see what it feels like. It's kind of fun because it builds dopamine. So it's actually. And if you live 30% longer, oh.

Man, you know, to me, you don't. This is one thing I love. No matter what people come to bring their special gifts, it's all about finding brave. To be more curious, you have to be more brave. No question.

So you're old to do it, because the younger you start, the better, you mean. There's just so much to explore. And don't let people like my boss hold you back. That was not nice.

I'm so good for you. You found brave to Tell him.

Yeah, I think I scared him a.

Little, but you know, he wasn't expecting, oh well, tough.

He needed to hear it later after that. I gotta give him credit.

Oh, you helped him.

I don't know if I did, but I think that he, you know, a lot of people are like him who had leaders who kind of turn them that way because that's what they're modeling. You model your leader.

So don't be like, oh, I love it. Now where can people take your curiosity code index? Where can they learn all about you? Diane?

Well, you can take the curiosity code index or the training to become certified if you're a trainer and that type of thing is all@curiouscode.com the book's there. It's also on Amazon and all the bookstores and everything else. But Everything is on CuriosityCode.com for my speaking and my radio show and everything else. It's all@drdianhamilton.com and you can find me on all the social media sites. Rdian Hamilton, Wonderful.

Oh, I'm so happy to have you. I'm more curious. I'm actually, you know, one thing I love about this show is I literally learn life changing strategies. It's not just me sitting here. I'm actually going to absolutely take your index and take, and you know, you said this, I want to leave everybody with this. It's one thing to think differently, but that's not enough insight. Doesn't change us, does it? It's action. And you know, you've given us a lot of reasons why. Being more curious is just going to enrich our lives in every possible way along with finding Grace. So let's all do it and please share with us, folks. We would love to hear. I took the, the assessment and wow, this is what I learned and here's what I did and here's how it affected me. We would so love to hear that. Thank you for being here. And folks, I hope that's given you a dose of curious, curious curiosity to how to find more brave. And let us know, we'd love to hear from you and Diane, come back again. I can't wait to hear more. And your next book, what's your next book going to be on?

Perception.

Oh, that's right, that's right.

Let's go a long ways.

That's a series and that's an encyclopedic series, isn't it?

I'm still working on this one because this is really my main focus in life is to get people more curious.

It's a beautiful focus. I love it. Thank you so much. All right, everyone, we'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye. Bye.