Reciprocal Curiosity

Speaker: 00:00:01

This is Social Skills Coaching, a podcast brought to you by Newton Media Group and Patrick King Consulting. This is Tuesday, November 21st. Make friends easily. Not a charm and connect at record time, written by Patrick King, narrated by Russell Newton. Picture this. You’re at a party and get to chatting with a person you don’t know, and they seem interesting. They ask what you’re up to at the moment, what you do for work, and so on. You answer them, but each question and answer seem to go a little like this: You: “I’m ready to start growing the business at this point, but I’m kind of not sure exactly what that will look like, so it’s like being in limbo.

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I know there needs to be a next step, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet ... ” Them: “Uh huh, sure. Tell me about it. I know how that goes. You’re just scared. I went through the same thing last year." Then later ... You: “My wife and I seldom come to these things, but we had a free weekend, so we decided we’d—” Them (interrupting): “Oh, totally, yeah, you decided you’d give it a shot. That’s cool.

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You have to force yourself to get out there." And then again ... You: “Man, my back’s been killing me, though." Them: “Let me give you the number of my chiropractor. He’s the best, hands down." Now, looking at the above, you wouldn’t say there is anything wrong with these interactions, right? And yet somehow you leave the conversation feeling a mixture of boredom and irritation. The other person was polite and you talked well enough, so why did something feel so “off”?

Speaker: 00:02:05

The reason may be a simple one: They lacked curiosity. If you go back and read the interactions again, you’ll see that the other person has an attitude of already knowing who you are and what you’re saying. To put it bluntly, they’re not really interested. They do not view the interaction as a possible way to learn something new or encounter something they aren’t already familiar with. They don’t ask any questions or listen to the answers because, on some level, they don’t believe that you as a person have anything new or interesting or valuable to give them. Sounds extreme, but imagine having another conversation later on at the same party, and saying all the same things again, except it goes like this: You: “I’m ready to start growing the business at this point, but I’m kind of not sure exactly what that will look like, so it’s like being in limbo. I know there needs to be a next step, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet ... ” Them: “So, you’re basically an independent publisher? Have I got that right?"

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Or ... You: “My wife and I seldom come to these things, but we had a free weekend, so we decided we’d take a look, you know, try something new." Them: “Oh yeah? Sounds great. Who was playing the last time you were here? This is my first time, so I have no clue what to expect!" And then ... You: “Man, my back’s been killing me, though."

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Them: “Oh no, don’t tell me you’ve got back pain, too! Do you think we’re all getting old or something? You’re the third person to tell me about back pain this week ... ” Bearing in mind the idea of curiosity, can you see the difference between the first person’s approach and the second person’s? Social skill experts often tell people to ask more questions. But it’s worth understanding why they give this advice so often. The fact is that the best conversations are real, spontaneous, respectful ones. They’re conversations in which we are fully present, open-minded, and receptive to whatever new thing we might learn about the fascinating person in front of us. Questions are good because they keep us curious—and curiosity is the secret sauce.

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The worst conversations are those where we’re not really paying attention, where we make assumptions that we don’t bother to confirm the truth of, where we judge the other person or simply go through the motions rather than have a living, breathing conversation in the present moment. Curiosity makes all the difference. It’s the lifeblood of a genuine, authentic interaction. You can spend your whole life talking to people, being polite, being “interesting,” etc. But if you are genuinely not curious about them, or about the potential for your interaction as it unfolds in that moment, then your interactions will always feel a little small, hollow, and flat. Be honest with yourself: Do you find people interesting? Do you genuinely enjoy learning about them and having them show you their unique new ways of looking at the world? Do you let them change your mind or steer the conversation in the ways only they can?

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Do you like them? Do they inspire or comfort or teach or entertain you? Do you leave interactions feeling honored that you got to peek into their special world for a brief moment? If truth be told, most of us are more interested in convincing others how fascinating we are than finding what is truly fascinating about them. But think about the last time you really enjoyed someone’s company. Did you enjoy them because they said all the right things and were clever and impressive? Or did it simply feel good to roll with the moment as it came, learn something new, and uncover something unexpected? Something real?

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A good conversation is a thing of beauty, and it’s about reciprocal curiosity. When the first person at the party says, “Uh huh, sure. Tell me about it. I know how that goes. You’re just scared. I went through the same thing last year,” what they are doing is making sure that you think they are interesting. They want you to know that they are smart and experienced and know what you’re talking about. They’ve seen it all before and have the answers.

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They’re clever. This is an understandable human impulse, but it misses the fact that it doesn’t feel good from the other person’s perspective. To them, it sounds like: “You are nothing special or interesting. I’m not really that interested in hearing about you. You’re not unique. Your situation doesn’t really grab me or warrant any further investigation." When you say “you’re just scared,” you are closing the potential of the conversation down. You don’t care to learn more about the other person, because you think you already know what they’re going to say.

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When you ask a question and instead say, “Do you think you’re scared?" then suddenly everything is different. You are opening the conversation and allowing it to be what it is. You’re curious. And the more curious you are, the more alive your conversations will be—and the more people will like having them with you! The first person at the party was essentially in a monologue. The second one was letting you know that they wanted the conversation to be a collaborative effort. The best conversations are co-creations.

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They are mutually steered by both parties, and neither of them knows exactly where it’s going to lead—that’s the fun part, right? A boring conversation is where both people are uninterested and inflexible. They stand next to one another and take turns telling the other person what they know, while the other person waits for their turn to do the same. Boring, huh? How to Build Curiosity Curiosity means connection and authenticity. Unless something is connected to the other person, or connected to the present moment, it’s not really alive. Curiosity, like the quality of charisma we’ve already explored, is something you are rather than something you do. The most important thing, then, is to first make the mindset shift and genuinely want to know and connect with people.

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This is a massive hurdle! But unless you cross that hurdle, your attempts to “seem” curious will always fall flat and be inauthentic. From there, consider these simple rules for maintaining a frame of curiosity in your conversations: 1. Listen deeply 2. Never assume 3. Focus on the person, not the story Listen Deeply Listening is a profound act. When we listen, we open ourselves receptively to learn something new. We’re not just gathering data when we listen. We’re suspending ourselves and paying close attention to someone else—their world, their experiences, their system of meaning. We’re prepared to be surprised. The golden rule is: listen to understand, not to respond.

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You’ve probably been in a conversation with someone before and could feel that they were just waiting for you to stop speaking so they could jump in and argue with you or add their two cents. They were listening, yes, but only enough so they could insert themselves into the conversation. It’s invalidating, and it quickly turns conversations into competitions, or, as we saw above, parallel monologues. When you sit down to talk to someone, be an alien who has never talked to anyone before. Pretend you know absolutely nothing, and listen attentively for the other person to tell you. Listen for nuance. Even if you think you’re familiar with what they’re saying, be humble enough to imagine that the way they’re expressing it may be completely novel to you. You might catch your brain wandering off and trying to tell its own story about the details its hearing—pull it back when it does that and remind it to listen to the other person’s story about what is happening.

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That is what you’re listening for. Another good rule of thumb is to listen for emotion, not fact. Person A might tell Person B a long list of everything that has bothered them that day, listing a broken-down car to an irate customer at work to a mother-in-law who made a mean snipe for no reason. Person B could latch on to one of these details—let’s say the broken car—and start to “help” by suggesting solutions for fixing the car. The problem? They’ve listened ... but not really. Person A is communicating one overall message: I’m stressed and overwhelmed today and need to vent. Person B pays attention to the details but misses this bigger point.

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Person B is not listening to the emotion behind all these separate little facts—frustration, annoyance, etc. They’re also not “hearing” the reason Person A is talking to them in the first place—i.e., Person A wants someone to hear them and acknowledge their emotion. Person B could instead say, “Wow, sounds like you’ve had a day from hell! Let’s get a drink and you can tell me all about it." It would then feel like they had truly listened. Good listeners are great at noticing patterns, and they pay attention to things that stand out. They notice when someone keeps mentioning the same phrase or word over and over, for example, and they use that word themselves, or paraphrase it when trying to demonstrate that they’ve heard and understood. They notice body language and speech patterns and infer the overall context of what’s being communicated.

Speaker: 00:13:40

They’re not just listening to the words spoken, but to everything around those words. Assume Nothing This is basically the same as being curious. If you find people boring, it’s usually not that they themselves are boring, but rather that the categories you’ve put them in are too narrow and limited. So, you see a teenage boy in front of you and make the kneejerk assumption that he’s probably immature, that he spends too much time gaming, or that he’s a little awkward or untidy at home. But if you hold on to this stereotype too tightly, it may stop you from seeing the genuine human being in front of you: That teenage boy may be incredibly mature, self-controlled, creative, sensitive, thoughtful, and unconventional. The only way you will see all that, though, is to drop your assumptions. When you listen to such a boy, then, you are not listening to confirm what you already think of him. When you perceive him without bias, assumptions, and filters, you are also “listening” on a deep level.

Speaker: 00:14:57

You are willing to discover who he is, rather than to come to a lazy conclusion that’s based on nothing. After all, wouldn’t you want people to approach you in the very same way? It’s human to “fill in the details." We see a middle-aged woman in tweed carrying a briefcase on a university campus and we assume she’s a lecturer or professor. Chances are, she is—but what about all the times she isn’t? Our mental shortcuts and assumptions are fine when we are aware that we’re using them, but we need to be able to ditch them when faced with a real person, not a stereotype. Another way that assumptions can creep in and spoil connection is when we are too hasty to interpret a situation according to our frame of reference, forgetting about the other person. Someone announces a pregnancy and you say to them, “You must be so excited."

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But must they be? In being so quick to assume that excitement is the only response to a pregnancy, you’ve lost sight of the other person and their unique experience. Your goal with listening is not to guess things accurately or come up with some compelling theory or explanation to feed back to the other person. Your goal is simply to be there as a witness to the experience they are sharing. Give yourself this permission and you will notice how much easier conversations are—for you as well! Person, Not Story This is an extension of the last rule, which is to focus on the person behind the story and not so much on the story itself. The details are beside the point—what’s interesting is how they experience those details. What do the details look like to them, in their world, from their frame of reference?

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What does it all mean to them? Imagine a conversation where someone is telling a friend a story where they feel persecuted unfairly at work. If the friend goes into Private Investigator mode and immediately starts trying to figure out who is “really to blame,” they have missed the point entirely. It doesn’t matter how they make sense of the story, or how others would. That’s irrelevant. What matters is how the first person has experienced the story. A good friend will say something like, “How are you feeling about the whole thing?" or, “What do you think you want to do now?"

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rather than, “Oh, I’m sure you’ve just misunderstood. You’re being too sensitive." Conversation is not about finding out who’s right; it’s about support, connection, and understanding. So, instead of having a conversation about whether a colleague was or wasn’t rude, you simply focus on the fact that the person in front of you believes they were. Internet forums often have sections devoted to people asking the anonymous public if, in some personal situation, they were being unreasonable or were in the wrong. But this kind of conversation is never satisfying, for obvious reasons. Conflict is never resolved when people find out what is rationally “true” or “reasonable." And someone’s hurt feelings don’t go away just because everyone else feels like they shouldn’t feel that way.

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The fact is they do. So, instead of focusing on who is right and who is wrong, forget the story and look at the people underneath. How do they feel? Does someone feel guilty? Ignored? Confused? Misunderstood? Never mind about what you think of the situation, or what anyone else does.

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What do THEY think of it? Follow that thread and it will lead you to richer, more real connections. You Go First Before we close this chapter, let’s look at one unexpected way you can show that you’re willing to really listen to people: Disclose something about yourself. This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s really about emphasizing the reciprocal in reciprocal curiosity. If one person repeatedly feels called on to self-disclose while the other person doesn’t, it can feel unbalanced and create weird power dynamics. Especially if someone feels like they’re already on the back foot, asking too many questions while you reveal nothing of yourself can actually make the situation worse. Taking the initiative to disclose something real about yourself can be a way to correct this and almost invite the other person to do the same. It creates trust and sets the tone.

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Take another look at this interaction from the second person at the party: You: “Man, my back’s been killing me, though." Them: “Oh no, don’t tell me you’ve got back pain, too! Do you think we’re all getting old or something? You’re the third person to tell me about back pain this week ... ” Notice the very subtle self-disclosure and how they are creating a sense of shared experience and trust by this little word “we." There is a teeny tiny gesture of vulnerability in there. The self-disclosure, no matter how small, is paired with a question and an invitation for the other person to disclose—it’s balanced. Questions are great. Too many questions without any personal disclosure from you will feel intrusive and disempowering.

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The trick with self-disclosure is to use it sparingly, use it wisely, and be sincere. If you don’t really know how someone feels, for example, then don’t say “I know how you feel”! Put it into practice: In your next conversation, imagine that you are switching out your normal ears for “emotion ears” that can only detect emotional content. Without making any assumptions, ask yourself why this person is telling you what they’re telling you. There’s no need to necessarily act on what you “hear” with these ears, but practice turning them on in social interactions and notice how different the situation appears to you when you take in this stream of information, rather than perceive only the verbal and factual. This has been Make Friends Easily. How to Charm and Connect in Record Time, written by Patrick King, narrated by Russell Newton.