The Curious Coach

A Series on the Power of Curiosity and How to Make it Work for You!

Here’s a coaching question: What are you curious about right now?

One of the reasons I coach is that I have always been fascinated with human behavior. Always. Even as a very small child.

My parents, when they were newly married, owned a very modest row of ground level apartments. In the summertime, everyone’s back doors were wide open to the breeze, as well as the interest of a small curious child. I remember quietly going door to door, my face pressed against the screens, just…watching silently as the big people went about their business; eating, laughing, arguing, sometimes holding each other and sometimes crying. I was too young to make sense of what I was seeing - but it was powerfully fascinating to me.  Every once in awhile, the adults would get the feeling they were being watched….and my parents would get a phone call - “She’s doing it again.”

Do you have a story you love about yourself when you were a child?

This one resonates deeply with me because it speaks to my curiosity and quiet persistence in pursuing what fascinates me. And because curiosity, as an adult, is a quality that can be challenging for many of us to keep alive.

In my book, Head, Heart & Hands Listening in Coach Practice, I devote a fair amount of space to cultivating and reclaiming authentic curiosity because it is absolutely essential to effective listening. And effective listening is foundational to building trust.

Think about the people you know who you truly trust.

Most likely, these are people you feel know you best, people who make you feel heard and seen. So would you say that, over time, these individuals have expressed genuine curiosity about you? If not, what feelings come up in you when considering that question?

There is a lot to this topic - too much to explore in one post, so this is the beginning of a series of posts for this month on the topic of curiosity; how we can amplify it, and why we might want to. And I’d love to get your input in crafting these!  If you send back an answer to the question below- I’ll include it in the next post (let me know if you’d like to be credited).

Question: What are you curious about right now? And what’s one small simple action you might take to explore it?

Example: I’m curious about unusual herbs I might grow in my location… I could search online under “Unusual herbs that grow in Zone 6B”.