Leading With Authenticity - Art Of Curiosity(take II) 🤩

Happy Monday. Cadre take two. We're back. We're back. Just like that. I'm going to hold space for just a few seconds. No expectations that everybody pops back in. And my apologies for the mishap on round one. I need to change my settings. Good morning, Michelle. How are you today? Hello, Jules. Hellspeak Wonder. I'm back. See you get round two. Hi. Coming in everybody. It's so great to have you here. Thank you for holding space for me as I work through some technical issues, mostly having to reset my do not disturb Monday as I tell ya.

So today as we come on in, I'm gonna invite you all to just take a deep, deep breath and a long exhale and do one more take two breaths. So as you come in, we can find some calm, we can reset, we can get into this space in the chat. What I would love for you to do is type in how are you feeling today? Hello, update. How are you feeling today? So I am going to tell you that I feel two things. I feel charged up because I made a mistake on the first time here. But I feel really excited about our conversation today and I have some fun things this week.

So charged up is my phrase. Full of energy. What's your phrase or your word for today? Energized. I love it. Jules, My fellow Gemini coming in to the chat today. So I'm also going to do a real fun quick announcement. Mark your calendars. If you live in the Twin Cities area. On June 8, we're going to have an in person Cadre meetup. We'll also pop out live. I'm not going to tell you any more information than that. Just mark your calendars that if you're in Twin Cities area, come meet us. Speak. Wonder, feeling steely resolve.

Wanted to do better for my health. Oh, we're always looking and searching for that, right? How might we do more? We do better. So today's conversation is around curiosity. Now I'm going to ask you a question. Come on. I teed you up for that one. It's curiosity. Speak. Wonder walked a mile plus and a half. That's amazing. So curiosity, here's my question for you. How many times when you think of a question do you immediately start to solve and find the answer? Let me say that again. In the space of curiosity, when you have people asking you questions or people coming to you with challenges or problems, how often do you immediately jump in, start trying to solve something?

Guilty. Be honest. So here's my take for today, the art of curiosity. And I Call it an art, because it truly is. Being curious, being genuinely curious requires us to hit the pause button on our brain. It requires us to actively listen. It requires us to explore a little bit more. So I love this speak. Wonder jumps in right away in solving mode. Jules, Some days, Google is my best friend. Yeah. Now we have. We can pop on out to chat, and we can get answers that way, too. Right? So my invitation to you is, if you are somebody that walks around with a journal or notebook to spend, I don't know, a day, maybe this week, maybe an hour each day, and simply write questions, what are you curious about?

Like, I'm sitting at my studio right now. Like, why did we choose black as our background when every marker we have in the studio we can't see on this? Why is there a red pen sitting next to this card? That's for our challenge. Why is there a sign in our window? Why does this alarm keep beeping? Don't worry. Nothing's wrong with the alarm. So my invitation to you is to write questions. Ask questions. There is a really great book called Humble Inquiry. When I get back to my home, I'm going to take a photo of it and I'm going to pop it into our comments section and leave it out there as a recommended reading.

And I think we should have a book club. I'm curious, why don't we have a book club? How might we have a book club? Now, I did something right there. One, I planted an idea. Two, I asked some questions. So ideas can lead to curiosity. So I'm going to invite you right now, type in the chat. What's the first question that pops into your mind right now? So as we get going, I'll continue to talk humble inquiry. So I have a master's degree in innovation and design thinking, and one of the foundational tenants of innovative thought is to suspend judgment.

Another to be curious. There's a process called diverge and converge. I'll explain it in easy terms. If you take in a big breath, you feel expansion in your lungs. Diverging, growing, going big, exhaling out, converging. The mushing of our lungs coming together as we squeeze out air. What else? Our heartbeat. Our heartbeat diverges as it brings in all that beautiful blood. And it converges as it pushes it back out into our system filled with oxygen. Birds, they fly. Their wings go up, Diverge. They converge.

They go down. They move forward. So diverge and converge happens every single day. It happens in our own bodies. So when we think about that diverging, it means going Big. What are all the possible ideas? What are all the possible questions? We don't have to have answers right away now. Our brains will immediately go into problem solve mode, answer mode, because that's what we're trained to do. We're trained to jump in, act, do, go, be right. So this inquiry, this pause is something that we're not used to.

Now, why do you think it might be important to ask questions? Feel free to type in the comments. It might feel one way because I'm the video that you see, but it can be a two way conversation just by typing in the chat. So what questions do you have? What are you curious about right now? One thing, Jules. Why did I grab two different socks to wear as a pair? I love this. That's a great question. Own it, go with it. So we have the invitation to simply be curious. That's why we pull out our notebooks.

That's why you can pull out the notes app on your phone and title it Curiosity or what I'm curious about today and then just start writing those down, those questions. I do this a lot and what I found is when I'm in meetings or I'm doing work with team and I'm being mindful now, there can be days that we're super stressed, we're out of sorts. So all the rules of engagement might seem to fly out the window. But when I'm being really mindful, what I try to do is when I have questions, I try to write them down on a piece of paper.

Because here's what can happen. Sometimes when I'm listening to someone else as they're sharing something. One, they could answer my question without me having to ask it. So maybe they're already going to answer my question. Two, it gives them free space. The person that you're talking to or the team that you're working with, it gives them the free space to have that conversation and dialogue and their thoughts come out. What happens inevitably when we start asking questions too soon, people can start to feel like they're being judged.

Depending on how we ask the questions, we just start grilling them with questions. People start to think, oh, my ideas weren't enough, I'm not enough, my concepts aren't enough, I didn't do enough research, right? See where I'm going? Downward spiral. But if you've ever read Bob Zander's book, Ben Zander's book, the Art of Possibilities, the way in which we work together as a team is by thinking from a place of possibilities, being more curious, having that pause in the art of possibilities, he talks about upward spirals and downward spirals.

If I, Jean, am on an upward spiral because I start asking all these questions and I feel brilliant with all my questions, whoever is on the receiving end of all of my questions could start to go on a downward spiral. So while I rise up, I push somebody down. I might not even know that's happening. Speak. Wonder. Very deep question. Curious about how many years I have left on this planet. We might not be able to answer that question. So, curiosities. There are a few ways that we can ask more impactful questions using different language.

I'll give you an example. Have you ever tried to ask someone the age of 16 or under to take out the garbage? Can you take out the garbage? What might be a first response? Nope, I can't. When you ask a question like that, the answer you get back is, I can or I can't. Now, if we simply swap out one word in that question, how might you take out the garbage? What's the response then? I could use a wagon. I could take it one bag at a time. Possibility. Thinking. So our questions, our curiosities, opening up our mind to possibilities and walking around asking questions.

For example, why does this one tree right here, Whoops, right here have wrong tree? This tree right here. Why does this tree over here have so many empty branches and no leaves? What's wrong with the tree? So, walking around, take your walk today. Look up, look down, and simply allow your brain to ask a bunch of questions. See how it feels in your body. Sometimes when I do that, I feel a little anxious, like I should solve everything. But here's a fun fact. Not every person that comes to me with a question actually looking for me to solve their problem.

What? Sometimes people come to you with questions because they want somebody to listen, and maybe they want to process it themselves. So what if instead of having all of the solutions that are solutions to their problems, what if we allowed ourselves to ask them more questions? Why is this a problem to begin with? How does this problem make you feel? What do you need from me right now as you work through this problem? Ah. What do you need from me? You give them the opening to either ask for your ideas on their problem, or you give them the opportunity to share what they need.

Curiosity. It is an art because we are trained to solve everything. We are trained to know the answer. We are trained to now go out to Google and decide quickly what the answer should be. However, what if we just sit in the space of the unknown and see what comes up. Curiosity, my invitation to you as we round out our conversation. If you're listening on replay, write your questions. What are you curious about? Or if you have a question for me about this topic, type it in the chat. I always come back and look at the questions and the comments later.

So be curious this week. Be curious today. Give yourself an opportunity to just simply write it out. Speak. Wonder has a great poem for all of us. Look up Sarah, Cynthia, Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out. I love you for having all of this poetry. So today, this week, be curious. My invitation to you. We'll check in next week. We'll see how you did. And later today I'll post a picture of the book. Actually, I'll just go out and I'll take a screenshot of the book and I'll post it in the comments.