Using Curiosity vs. Judgement
Welcome to the #culturedrop. Every Tuesday, Galen Emanuele emails tools to advance leadership skills, team culture, and personal growth. No spam, just great content. Sign up now to get it in your inbox.
This is a skill every relationship and situation you encounter can benefit from.
Approaching difficult people and interactions with curiosity instead of judgement will help you build bridges instead of burn them.
In every relationship, there comes a time when someone responds in a way you wouldn’t have, or says something that makes you frustrated, etc. In these moments, what if we approached the way the other person responded with curiosity, instead of judgement? What if we looked beyond our initial judgement and reaction into what their behavior might mean?
Genuinely wanting to understand the other person is key here.
I’ll use a really concrete example of something that could happen in the workplace where this would be useful.
Say I have a coworker that responds poorly to some feedback I give them — they get upset, they become defensive, or bark back at me. They get seemingly really upset over something that to me, does not seem like a big deal.
My initial reaction might be to take that personally, also become frustrated at that person, or immediately move to judgement of that person. I might label them as being a jerk or bad at feedback, etc.
Instead, there is a great opportunity here for me to give them the benefit of the doubt and replace my judgement with curiosity. I can seek to understand why our conversation caused such a reactionary response from them.
Practice leaving judgement at the door.
Why would someone behave or react like that?
People are activated or triggered by all sorts of things that resemble negative patterns of strife or trauma in their life. Maybe that person became defensive because they grew up in a house where they were criticized all the time. Or maybe, they constantly feel like they have to defend themselves at home, so feedback automatically feels like an attack and triggers a defensive response from them.
There are plenty of reasons why someone would not respond gracefully to feedback.
Building bridges vs. walls.
As soon as you make a judgement on the situation or someone’s reaction, it builds a wall and divides you. To approach a situation from a place of curiosity allows you build a bridge with the other person by understand more about them from a non-judgmental standpoint.
“Tell me more about that”, “Where are you coming from?”, and “I want to understand” are all great conversation starters for gaining perspective on the other person’s point of view.
When you enter into a conversation with genuine curiosity — “Here’s what I heard and observed, I’m curious if there’s a different/better way I could’ve said that, and to understand why that caused the reaction it did.” you immediately disarm the other person instead of making them feel judged, which makes for a more productive conversation all around.
Here’s some other helpful guidance for how to initiate and navigate potentially difficult conversations:
Huge Bonus: Doing this greatly improves your own EQ as a result.
One key pillar of emotional intelligence is social awareness, which includes being able to accurately assess and understand other’s emotions. Another pillar, is relationship management which involves being able to resolve and settle disputes and misunderstandings.
When you hit pause on your internal narrative or casting judgement to consider and understand where someone else is coming from instead, you actually gain experience and skills in those areas of EQ.
Doing these things will hopefully also cause you to reflect on why that person’s reaction made you feel the way it did, which speaks to emotional self-awareness and understanding your own feelings. Lastly, approaching a situation this way, instead of with frustration or judgement is real practice in self management and being in control of your own feelings and emotional behavior.
Approaching situations and people like this is extremely beneficial to your own personal growth and development.
Everyone is on their own journey.
And as a note, of course, extending some grace by not judging someone who responded poorly to you does not mean that they do not own any responsibility for their behavior and the impact that may have had on you.
And the reality is that some people aren’t as far along in their personal journey with being able to effectively navigate and resolve conflict or even have reasonable conversations if there is any static or conflict present. You don’t have control over that. What you do have control over is how you react and behave towards them and approach challenging situations.
Whether it’s at work, as a leader, a coworker, with a stranger, a friend, or a romantic partner, coming from a place of curiosity vs. judgement is always going to put you in a better place to build healthier relationships across the board.
Related Articles:
The Importance of Maintenance Conversations
Want more?
This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop