Not long ago I got into a technical conversation with a guy at work, and I was dead certain I was right. Certain he was being short-sighted. Certain he wasn’t really hearing what I was saying.
He wasn’t hearing me. But not for the reason I assumed. I hadn’t framed my thinking well enough for a man with his expertise to even know what I was talking about. So I kept working at it, kept reframing, until finally he looked at me and said:
“I understand what you’re saying now. And you’re wrong.”
That’s a moment. You get about half a second to decide who you’re going to be in it.
I told him he’d done this more than I had, and asked him to tell me why I was wrong.
He did. And I was.
I don’t tell that story because I came out looking good. I tell it because I almost didn’t ask. The frustrated version of me walks out of that conversation still convinced, still wrong, and now also annoyed at him for it.
Here’s what I’ve come to notice about myself: when I stop being curious, I get grumpy. Every single time. It’s so consistent it’s basically a diagnostic. If I’m short with people, if I’ve gone quiet at the table, if my wife is wondering why I’m being moody — nine times out of ten it’s because somewhere in the last hour I quit asking questions and started defending a position.
It happens everywhere. It happened this week with a piece of software, of all things. I brought it an idea I was sure about, it poked reasonable holes in the idea, and instead of getting curious about where my thinking had gone sideways I got frustrated and shut down. At a computer. Doing exactly what I’d asked it to do.
The trigger changes. The tell never does.
There’s a question I ask right before I give up on something. It sounds like this:
Why is this not working? This should work. I know what I’m doing.
Look at everything packed in there. It isn’t really a question. It’s a complaint with a question mark stapled to the end. It presupposes the plan was sound, the variables are accounted for, my understanding is complete, and the universe is simply being uncooperative today. There’s no door in that question. It’s a wall with a “why” painted on it.
The question that actually gets me moving again is smaller and a lot less flattering:
What am I not thinking of?
What did I miss. How could I look at this differently. Who has this answer even though I don’t. Same problem, completely different posture. The first question protects my ego. The second one is willing to trade it for a solution.
That’s the whole difference. Not intelligence. Not effort. Posture.
I’ve been treating curiosity like a technique, and I don’t think that’s what it is.
If I’m in a disagreement with somebody, I still owe them the respect a person is owed. Not because they’ve earned it in the argument — because that’s how I’d want to be handled when I’m the one who’s wrong. And I have been the one who’s wrong plenty of times.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There’s no exception clause for when you happen to be right.
Curiosity is what love looks like in the middle of a disagreement. It’s the practical form of it. Asking a real question and then actually waiting for the answer tells a person: you matter here, and I’m not done learning who you are.
Curiosity is not a personality type some people got issued at birth. It’s a choice you make daily, and it’s one you can forget to make.
You’ll know you forgot, because you’ll be irritable about it.
David Willis 