High Performance Leadership

Do you like a good argument? Do you get excited with the adrenalin rush of proving someone wrong? I do. Except...it doesn't work that way. Do you ever really prove someone wrong with an argument? Work isn't after all debate club. No one has to cede to your cogent, meaty, precious points. Few people are persuaded by hefty logic or prolific pronouncements. They tend to turn away instead. What works better is curiosity. What is more influential is staying open to the thinking and processing of others. They might be wrong, of course. But, what if they are correct? What if at least PART of what they're saying is logical and practical? Gasp! Stranger things have happened. Stranger things indeed. Stay curious. There's mysterious, undeniable, unbreakable power in it. Curiosity is more powerful than rhetoric, dogma, or unquestioned truth. -- doug smith

Do you remember how it felt to be a young child filled with curiosity? I probably forgot until I became a parent and saw how curious my own children were. Everything was something to be explored and discovered. And then, when I became a grandfather, I felt a curiosity recharge as it surrounded me with the enthusiasm of young children. Curiosity is powerful. It opens up possibilities. It wards off our inner judge long enough to truly explore, without bias, what's going on. When we can keep that level of curiosity alive we learn, we grow, we discover. Stay curious. Curiosity is more powerful than rhetoric, dogma, or unquestioned truth. Stay curious. -- doug smith

photo of Rusty by Judi Madigan How curious are you? In my workshops on communication and achieving your goals I point out how important it is to listen with curiosity. We are most attentive when we are most curious. Instead of jumping to conclusions or judging before it's necessary, high performance leaders center their listening around staying curious. How do you do that? One way is by asking relevant questions. One of my mentors, Lester T. Shapiro (who wrote the book  The Training Effectiveness Handbook ) once said that the primary role of leaders is to ask relevant questions. Here are some questions that I've found extremely relevant and that help me to remain curious: What is your case? We are always building a case and  not  always aware of the case that we're building or why. It might not even serve our best interests, and yet we can talk ourselves into anything. Stay curious about what you really want, what you think you want and (most importantly) ...

Are you telling the truth? Don't you feel like asking that sometimes when the person you are talking to seems to be spinning the truth? Sometimes we are so close to our version of the truth that we fail to see it could be only our version of the truth. It might not be true at all -- certainly not for others. The best way around that is to stay curious. Stay curious about what other people say. Stay curious about what we say. Even stay curious about what we think. Every idea we clutch in our tight little hands comes to us filtered by factors we've forgotten about long ago: culture, ego, gender, parenting, schooling, experience, ethnicity...so many details strained thru lenses we don't even know are there. Let's work a little more to stay curious. Sometimes we're so good at spinning the truth that we don't even know it's not true anymore. That's not helpful or useful. It doesn't have to take long but it does take some serious mindful awaren...