Have you ever regretted a strong reaction to something someone said or did once you realized you had jumped to conclusions? Or failed to provide effective feedback about it because you hit a wall of defensiveness?
As someone who values being direct when something needs to be challenged, and whose job involves regularly wading into contentious debates and decisions, this has happened to me often enough to care deeply about doing better.
“Lead with curiosity” is a principle I first came across while working at Unity. It encourages us to approach interactions with three basic ideas:
- Assume best intent from the other person
- Assume you don’t have the whole picture
- Ask clarifying questions instead of making accusations
To be clear, you aren’t letting them off the hook. You’re just deferring judgment until you have more information. And if your initial take turns out to be right, you’ll have laid the groundwork for effective feedback.
Your Gut Check Might Be Wrong
Your feelings are valid, but your conclusions might not be. So if you’re too quick to start slinging accusations, everyone loses. That’s a quick path to eroded trust and damaged relationships.
Our brains are a hot mess of biases and misleading behaviors:
- We have no trouble making snap judgments based on incomplete information
- We tell ourselves stories about people’s intent based on that information
- We react emotionally to the story we told ourselves, not the situation itself
Worse, correspondence bias teaches us we’re likely to attribute that intent to an inherent character flaw, which leads us to focus further on the person and not their actions.
Whether we’re ultimately right or wrong, we need to engage with the other person in a way that helps us get at the truth and keeps them receptive to critical feedback.
A Strong Start
Challenging someone’s words or actions brings out their defensiveness. They’re as vulnerable to ascribe that to ill intent as you are, and they’re just reacting to a perceived threat. If you want them to share their intent or really hear your feedback, they need to feel safe.
This comes down to two things:
- Showing you want the same thing they do (Mutual Purpose)
- Showing you care about them (Mutual Respect)
If you’ve led with curiosity instead of accusations, you’ve already avoided the biggest landmine. Assuming best intent demonstrates respect, and assuming you don’t have the whole picture communicates a desire to fill it in together.
Building and Maintaining Safety
Even carefully stated clarifying questions may initially be received with suspicion.
That’s why it’s important to be mindful of creating and maintaining a buffer of safety to keep defenses down and communication open.
If you already have an inkling how they may misinterpret your intent, try to get ahead of that by framing your questions with a contrasting statement:
“I’m not looking to do X. I am looking to understand Y better. So here are some clarifying questions.”
This approach acknowledges a potential interpretation out loud without judgment, and then re-frames it to your actual intent.
If at any point in the conversation you see the other person start to shut down or tense up, take a break, acknowledge it, try to understand it, then respond with a contrasting statement. Once you feel safety has been rebuilt, you can continue.
Be Genuine
In order to effectively lead with curiosity, you need to actually believe the things you’re trying to project. You need to accept that you may not have all the information, and that the other person might have best intent.
Otherwise, it’ll likely come off as an interrogation, or that you’re less interested in understanding than you are in gathering evidence to support your initial interpretation. And that’s a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
Focus on understanding them first before trying to be understood. If they can’t change your mind, you can at least articulate your perspective more effectively by knowing where they’re coming from.
They may not agree with you in the end, but if you show trust and respect, you’re likely to receive it in kind.