Inquiriosity
Over the past few months we’ve focused on what it means to be below the line, in a reactive state and how practicing awareness is the starting point when we’ve dipped. This month we’re talking about where to go from awareness.
And where we go is toward curiosity + inquiry.
From awareness, moving into curiosity is foundational for navigating our everyday experiences, especially when stuff gets challenging either because of stuff going on inside us or outside us.
Curiosity is a sincere openness to understanding. Many leaders believe they’re curious because they love to learn and they have busy minds and they ask lots of questions. There’s nothing wrong with any of these.
However, if these leaders bulldoze conversations, get louder and more forceful to prove their point, don’t invite other points of view, or manipulate conversations to go their way, they may be bringing energy and conviction to the table but they’re not bringing curiosity.
Sincere curiosity requires letting go of our need to be right. It doesn’t mean we always agree but it has us holding our differences with others not as a threat, but lightly and open to exploration.
In this form, curiosity is a foundational mindset, a way of being. Inquiry is the form that curiosity takes—it’s curiosity in action.
Here’s how awareness, curiosity and inquiry work together when you’re feeling defensive and crunchy about the things going on in or around you:
Awareness
When something happens you notice:
Physical contraction, heat, tension
Uncomfortable emotions like anger, fear, sadness, etc.
Thoughts and stories running through your head that fuel more intense emotions
Curiosity
From awareness you choose to shift:
You sincerely want to understand what’s happening with you or others
You notice when you’re “attached” to being right* or you’re telling yourself unproductive stories
You relax into interactions with neutrality and openness
(*Watch this excellent short explainer video Choosing Curiosity over Being Right from the Conscious Leadership Group)
Inquiry
You give your curiosity a voice by asking yourself or others generative questions:
What stories am I telling myself about what’s happening and what do I know to be 100% true?
What would work better next time?
What assumptions am I making/are you making?
What is your understanding of what happened?
What facts do you have that I don’t? (and vice versa)
How did you come to that conclusion/decision?
What don’t we know? What do we need to know?
Like that.
The 5th Discipline Fieldbook, a classic in organizational development, talks about how the value of these qualities is “most apparent in their absence.” When curiosity and inquiry are absent we might:
Double down on our rightness by not hearing or considering other people’s perspectives and ideas
Argue our position by talking faster, louder, more forcefully
Not truly listen by shutting down others, or lining up our arguments before we’ve heard theirs’
See our point of view as objective and others’ as subjective
We’ve seen where this this path goes and we know it leads to mischief: low engagement, misalignment, silos and not getting the results we say we want.
The better destination depends on inquiriosity. And now you have the map.