732: How to Find What’s Missing, with Jeff Wetzler

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
We place our organizations at risk when we miss stuff. Often, the things we miss aren’t what we don’t know. Instead, they’re the assumptions we don’t even question. In this episode, the practices that work to find what’s missing. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 732. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:38]:
Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Mark Twain said, “what gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” Today’s guest mentioned that quote in his TED talk, and it is the reality of leadership for so many of us that it’s not even the things we don’t know. It’s the things we don’t see coming because we’re so sure of it, and we haven’t found the things that we’re missing. Today’s guest is gonna help us to actually do a bit more to be intentional about finding what we’re missing so we can lead better for our organizations. I’m so pleased to welcome back to the show Jeff Wetzler.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:23]:
He is cofounder of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization and an expert in learning and human potential. His experience spans twenty five plus years in business and education as a management consultant to top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders, and as chief learning officer at Teach for America. He’s the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. Jeff, welcome back.

Jeff Wetzler [00:01:54]:
Thank you, Dave. It’s really great to be back with you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:57]:
I loved getting back into your work from a year ago. As you know, I’m a big believer in asking questions.

Jeff Wetzler [00:02:04]:
I know. Yes. I know that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:05]:
Your book appealed to me right away when we I first came across it a year ago in our first conversation. And when we last talked, I asked you what you changed your mind on as I often do for folks. And you told a story about taking an Uber ride a while back. And I’ve learned more about that story since that first conversation. And I actually would love to start our conversation where we left off last time on that Uber ride. And for those who didn’t hear the past episode, I’m wondering if you could put us in that situation you were a few years ago and what happened and what you noticed when that ride began.

Jeff Wetzler [00:02:43]:
Sure. I had just spent a week on vacation with several of my guy friends, and we had had just a very relaxing week. We were paddling canoes and, you know, in the remote wilderness and just had spent a whole lot of time reconnecting with each other, getting to know each other, asking each other questions. And then when we finally got back to civilization, I needed to get to the airport. So I called an Uber just like so many times before, thought nothing of it. And as the Uber is pulling up, I take a look at its bumper sticker. And on the bumper sticker, I see a symbol of a black and white American flag with a thin blue line running through this. And then I looked up at the driver, and I noticed on his hat, he had that same blue lives matter flag.

Jeff Wetzler [00:03:38]:
Now for many people, this may not mean anything as a symbol, but for me, I was coming from a context in, you know, in various parts of my work and my life where that particular symbol really triggered me. I had it associated at the time, at least, with things that brought up fears for myself, fears for the safety of the public, questions about racial justice, questions about white supremacy. It all came flooding up for me. And my immediate reaction was, I don’t actually feel safe getting in the car with this driver because I don’t know what’s gonna both happen to me, but also, you know, how could I be with someone who might have such abhorrent views as well as what I had as associations for the flag. And so I literally looked down and I thought to myself, should I cancel this car? Can you cancel a car right when it’s pulling up right in front of you? And I decided to take a deep breath and get in the car. But what I immediately did when I got in the car is I just looked down at my phone, and I dove into the emails. And I just thought maybe if I don’t have to talk to this person, we could just get to the airport. It was about a forty five minute ride, and we’ll it’ll be okay.

Jeff Wetzler [00:04:56]:
And then I would say maybe about ten or fifteen minutes into the ride, I realized something. I said, how often do I actually have the opportunity to be sitting one-on-one with someone who probably has a vastly different world view and set of values than I do, what can be the harm in at least, you know, starting a conversation with the person? Maybe there’s something here. And I was but I I was I was definitely conflicted because there was a big part of me that just said, you know, keep your distance, essentially, even though you’re sitting in this person’s car, don’t even start it. But I I decided to dip my toe in the water. And I just said to him, hey. I noticed your hat. And are you affiliated with the police? And I didn’t know where it was gonna go. And I was I kinda held my breath after asking the question.

Jeff Wetzler [00:05:42]:
And one thing led to the next. And, you know, lo and behold, he basically, in a very kind and very soft surprisingly soft spoken way, shared with me his life experience as a police officer and as a member of a family who was really dedicated to serving the public through the law. And so shared some very, I would say, to me, incredibly shocking stories of sacrifices that he personally made, that his family made, of violence that they endured, of threats that they endured to such a point where he actually had to step away from the police force given the jeopardy that he was in and that his family was in based on his dedication to to to to serving people. And I was really blown away. I I just hadn’t humanized, quote, the other side of a symbol before to, you know, to the point where I felt comfortable enough to say to him, and what do you think about some of the criticisms of the police? And what do you make of that of people who would say we should defund the police? And the answers that I got from this guy were so nondefensive and so balanced where he basically said things like, I understand why people have those views, but I would have questions for them too. Like, who would they call if their house got robbed? And who would they wanna call? What would happen? And I thought these were very fair questions. And then he talked about how his own personal commitment to anti bias and to fair policing and building relationships with the people he arrests and to get especially valuing the dignity of the people that he arrests, including things like offering them a final cigarette before they get booked. And so my entire worldview really got, I would say, nuanced.

Jeff Wetzler [00:07:30]:
It’s not that I don’t still have visceral reactions when I see symbols like this, but I then remember there’s a person behind the symbol and that that person might have an entirely different life story or reality than I was assuming. And chances are, as it was the case in this situation, there’s more that we share in common than I realize. So it was definitely a humbling moment. It was a connecting moment, and it was a moment that I think truly changed me forever.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:58]:
You say in your work that we perceive that what we’ve latched onto is the full reality.

Jeff Wetzler [00:08:05]:
Yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:05]:
And I think about the story you just shared, and thank you for sharing it, and how many situations come up for me as I think about that as well too, and how many times, like, I miss things, we miss things because we just index on our first thing we’ve grabbed onto and we don’t think about what we are missing, do we?

Jeff Wetzler [00:08:29]:
Totally. And that’s the dangerous thing as human beings. We’re wired. And and especially when we might be emotionally activated, we’re wired to see one thing and just latch right onto that. Forget that we’re missing tons and tons of other things going on and just assume that one thing is the totality, quickly make it mean something, quickly jump to a story, quickly that story can tell us, alright, this is danger or this is what I should do. When in reality, there’s so much more that we’re overlooking. And and even the things that we do latch onto can be interpreted in so many different kinds of ways. And so that’s a lot of how I think about pathways into curiosity these days.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:05]:
I’m sure you have had this experience as well in working with leaders as have I that it seems as as folks recognize more, get more experience, there’s more of a consciousness around what am I missing and being concerned about that in organizations and in teams. And one of the things that really struck me profoundly was noticing where we might be missing things. Because by definition, when we miss something, we miss something. But there are often times some cues that are a starting point for us maybe taking a moment and a step back to find out more. And you point out some hidden feedback cues in your work. And you say that one of those is repeated questions or suggestions about seemingly small details. Tell me a bit more about that. Why is that a cue, and what is it that noticing that helps with?

Jeff Wetzler [00:10:10]:
Yeah. So if the the basic idea behind hidden feedback is that as leaders, we’re surrounded by people whose whose perspectives and ideas and suggestions could be quite valuable to us. Sometimes, you know, are vital for us to know. For example, if our client is about to walk away from us or our boss is about to fire us or our top performer is about to leave. But even when those the stakes are not quite that high, there’s really important information that quite often we miss. It stays hidden because either people don’t tell it to us or they think they’ve told it to us, but they haven’t told it to us directly. Or maybe they’ve dropped some hints, but we haven’t picked up on those hints. All of those are versions of kind of, you know, the the masking or the hiding of feedback.

Jeff Wetzler [00:10:58]:
And so one example, as you just said, is, you know, sometimes people might express their feedback in the form of what seems like a micro suggestion, you know, maybe a question about our timeline or a question about a certain, you know, angle of the data that we we think is pretty insignificant. Why do they keep asking about this? Or a question about product readiness or whatever it might be, or maybe just suggestions that feel micro or overly tactical relative to the level that we should be operating at. And all of those signs can be masking a deeper concern, a deeper point of view, a deeper suggestion. And so if you see yourself dismissing what might seem like this is just a trivial question that keeps coming up or a trivial thing, that can be a cue to get curious. That can be, you know, a sign to say, is there something else going on here? And it’s not always the case that there is. But quite often, if it continues to come up again, there that, you know, there’s something underneath it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:59]:
Yeah. And I’m thinking particularly if that’s not common for, like, how a person interacts with you in Yes. Role your team. Like, I all of a sudden, there’s just repetitive questions. There’s these details. And I think all of us have come out of a situation. I know I have times of, like, why does she keep asking about this? Right? And Right. And and, like, our sort of, like, gut reaction to that, at least mine is, like, like, what’s going on with her? You know? And and the invitation I’m hearing from you is, like, hey.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:29]:
That’s the time to, like you know, maybe there is something going on with the other party, but that’s the time actually to turn back at ourselves and to be thinking about, like, what am I missing that’s maybe triggering this person’s behavior to change in a pretty substantial way?

Jeff Wetzler [00:12:44]:
Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, if your gut reaction is what’s going on with her, I would say that you’re even more evolved than many because that’s still a question. Many of our gut reactions, I think, is just to be annoyed or just to put an end to it or just to try to, you know, redirect or whatever else. But I think the more that we could take it in the direction of, there’s something going on here. It’s a sign. Let me let me get a little more curious about it. The more the the better served we are.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:09]:
One of the other things you suggest we watch for as a hidden queue is increased involvement in tactical decisions. What is it about that that’s an indicator?

Jeff Wetzler [00:13:18]:
Well, if you you know, let’s say that your client typically says to you, you know, I trust you to run with it, or, you know, I trust you to develop this final product or this final marketing campaign, whatever it is, or your boss in the same way or your colleague or whatever, and they start to show up a little bit more, that can be a sign that they feel a need to show up more for some reason. And, again, many of us can, you know, can dismiss that and say, you know, they’re not making good use of their time, or don’t they trust me? Don’t I have I got it. But if there if we can look at it as a cue to say, there must be some reason why they’re feeling the need to do this, and we can get curious enough, that can start to give us kind of the mental degrees of freedom to open up a conversation with them and ask.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:02]:
And there’s a different lens to look at this through too because you also say a cue is unexpected decreases in engagement. And at first glance, those may seem a bit opposite of, like, okay. Someone’s getting way more involved in the technical stuff, but at the same time or maybe a in a different lens, like, decrease in engagement. Are those opposites? And if not, like, what’s the distinction between them?

Jeff Wetzler [00:14:24]:
Well, I do think that they’re opposites in some sense because, on you know, the first one is people are getting more involved. The second one is people are getting less involved. What they have in common, though, is people are changing their pattern of behavior. And so on the less involved side, it can be a sign that people are deprioritizing this or handling it through some other means that doesn’t involve you or, you know, or thinking this is not the right use of my time or their time or whatever. And so for a different reason, it’s just as as important to think about that as a potential cue to say, is there a reason they stopped coming to the meetings or that they keep showing up late and can only stay for a part of the time or that they are sending someone else in their presence instead. All of those can be signs to say, you know, there might be something deeper going on here to get curious about.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:12]:
Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it as consciously as I am right now of, like, I maybe subconsciously, like, people change behaviors and, like, ask you know, it’s sparking some questions or some wondering. But, like, this is really helping me think, okay. When I see a change of pattern of behavior, especially someone’s, like, work with some a stakeholder or team member or employee that I work with all the time to really, like, come through the lens of, like, what might I be missing? Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s unrelated, but I think it’s like, there’s not a lot that can go wrong by being more curious. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:15:46]:
That’s exactly right.

Jeff Wetzler [00:15:47]:
That’s exactly right. Yeah. And even if it’s not a big deal, they may still have a small suggestion for what would make this a better use of their time, for example.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:54]:
Yeah. And I think, like, I mean, one of the things you point out is, like, when we’re curious about people, they actually like us more. Like, it creates more empathy.

Jeff Wetzler [00:16:04]:
Totally.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:04]:
Curiosities more makes us more resilient. So even if there isn’t anything there, like, going in on the assumption of, like, how could I be a little more curious? How can I be maybe a little bit, like, take a step back and find out what I might be missing? There’s a lot of benefit to that regardless in addition to figuring out what changed.

Jeff Wetzler [00:16:19]:
100%. Yeah. Even if even if all you wanna do is get people to like you more, or all you wanna do is be more influential to people. Let it let putting aside what you can learn, curiosity has those benefits. And I think, you know, one of the side benefits, though, is you’re gonna learn something new if you’re genuinely curious.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:38]:
Yeah. Which is the, which is like so much of like what leadership is about. Right. It’s like asking the right question. It’s like seeing the bigger picture. So we have a more accurate view. In fact, I was just having a conversation this past hour with one of our members, and we were talking about, like, an initiative they’re working on and to build something. And the question came up of, like, well, what is it people are dealing with right now that’s that you’re trying to address? And there wasn’t a clear answer to that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:06]:
And it’s interesting how often we do, like, go down the path of trying to put something together to answer a need, and yet we’re not entirely a % sure about what’s there or worse to the Mark Twain quote. We think we know exactly what it is, and we haven’t really stopped to ask the question.

Jeff Wetzler [00:17:24]:
Exactly. Well said.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:25]:
Which brings us to some of the sparks for curiosity. And you’ve got a few of them that you invite us to do as far as, like, actually moving into the space on how could I find out a bit more if I’m missing if we’re seeing some of those queues. And one of the questions you invite us to consider is, what might I be missing? What’s the power of that question?

Jeff Wetzler [00:17:46]:
So the power of that particular spark is it goes right back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, which is that when we whenever we walk into a situation, we latch onto one thing out of, you know, hundreds, thousands of data points or pieces of information that we could be latching onto. And the dangerous thing is that we do it in split seconds, and we don’t even realize that we’re doing it. And so then the thing we’ve latched onto is our reality. But a spark like, what might I be missing, brings us back to that moment when we’ve latched on to something and reminds us there’s more going on here than what we initially picked out to focus on. And especially if you can then start to kinda pull the thread on that question and say, alright. Maybe let me think about what might I be missing that the other person could be up against. What might I be missing that could be about my own impact on the other person and how I’m contributing to their behavior? What could I be missing about their intentions? Because other people’s intentions are, you know, opaque to us. We can’t know them for sure.

Jeff Wetzler [00:18:51]:
So you can start to get curious about those different kinds of things when you ask that question. What might I be missing? I mean, it just kinda jolts us out of our own certainty that there’s anything we could be missing and and begins to to not tell us that our story is wrong or our beliefs are incorrect, but it allows us to just hold our beliefs a little bit more loosely to make room for new information to come in.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:15]:
Yeah. And it gives us a bit of the thinking space to consider, like, yeah, I probably don’t have it all here. And when you invite people to ask that question, I mean, part of it’s like asking it to ourselves. Right? And I’m wondering if that ever, like if you ever verbalize a question like that, either literally, like, what am I missing here or some version of that. And do you find that it’s helpful to, like, just say that out loud and and get get the other party maybe talking about that?

Jeff Wetzler [00:19:43]:
Absolutely. I mean, literally, you can sometimes just say, here here, this is what I’m thinking. I think this is the direction we should be going in for these reasons, but I don’t see everything. So what might I be missing? And when you ask a question like that, it creates an invitation for someone else to give you what’s called disconfirming data. Essentially, it’s information that might disconfirm your views. And especially if there’s any kind of barrier to their feeling safe to tell you that, when you ask a question like, what might I be missing, you begin to display a level of receptivity and humility and resilience to disconfirming data that begins to make it more comfortable for other people to take that risk and share that with you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:28]:
I’ve experienced that too, and I find myself sometimes asking the question a slightly different way. What did I miss? And it’s very it’s just very assumptive. And it’s interesting when I and I’ll often ask it in a context of, like, someone’s just said a whole lot. Like, they’ve talked for a few minutes or they’ve explained the situation and are sort of like a natural endpoint to the story or the situation or the context or whatever. And I’ll just say, you know, what did I miss? Or I’ll reflect back, and then I’ll say, what did I miss? And it’s interesting, like, if I shut up after that and then be quiet, about half the time, something else will come out that wasn’t said already.

Jeff Wetzler [00:21:11]:
Absolutely. That’s about my ratio too. I Oh, interesting. Find the exact same thing. People will say, well, yeah, you kinda got some of it, but there’s more to it here. And sometimes I’ll even say, you know, and what else did I miss? What else should I know? What more is there? And just continue to be asking that. And oftentimes, the most important thing doesn’t come out the first or the second or the third time, but you have to really let them know that you deeply wanna understand. And to your point, give the space for that to come out.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:37]:
Well, as you were saying that, I was thinking, there’s a whole lot of times, like, when that question comes up in a conversation either for me or someone else, people will just sort of default to saying, oh, you didn’t miss anything. And that’s the part where I’ve learned I need to really be quiet after that because then if I just let that sit for a few seconds, that’s where, like, about half the time someone will say, oh, actually, there is this one other thing. And it’s sorta like it’s interesting, especially when there’s power dynamics at play, like, how we’ve all sort of been conditioned to just, like, say, like, oh, no. You didn’t miss anything. You got it. Like, you know, and and it it even when someone does make the invitation. And so, like, just like you said, like, just get it doing a little bit more of that follow-up, a little bit more of that curiosity can go up go up go a big way.

Jeff Wetzler [00:22:25]:
Yeah. You know, it reminds me as part of the research for the book, I interviewed professional listeners, including psychotherapists. Uh-huh. And they consistently talk about this thing that they call the doorknob moment, which is that if it’s a fifty minute therapy session, and they’ve been talking to, you know, to their patient, quite often, the most important thing comes out literally as the patient is walking out with their hand on the door. That’s when they’ll say, I’m thinking about leaving my spouse or whatever the thing is that’s, like, the real thing. And so I think to myself if, you know, if trained therapists who are professional question askers and listeners, still, they only get it out at the very last second. How much must the rest of us who are mere mortals be missing in our conversations?

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:10]:
I’ve had so many meetings like that over the years where, like, it’s a forty five minute conversation and an admitted forty two, all of a sudden someone says something like, oh, this is what this meeting was really about. The last ninety seconds was what it was really about. And it’s just wow. It’s so interesting that, like, the same thing happens in a whole another context too.

Jeff Wetzler [00:23:29]:
Same thing totally happens. And people, you know, they have all kinds of theories as to why does it happen. Sometimes they think, well, maybe the person was working up the courage to say it, or maybe the person was waiting to see how I reacted to other things, or maybe the person was just working, clarifying their own thinking. I had one therapist recently say to me, I think it’s because I they really want me to think about them the whole week. And so they save it to the end thinking that I’ll it’ll keep me keep them on my mind for the rest of the week. But what you know, whatever it is, this you know, the lesson is if we really want the the real stuff from people, we’ve gotta make space for it. We’ve gotta ask again. We’ve gotta pull the thread and say, what else? Tell me more.

Jeff Wetzler [00:24:07]:
Can you elaborate? What am I missing to your point? And that significantly increases the chances that we’re gonna find the real stuff.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:15]:
Such a powerful question. Alright. And and there’s a couple others, though, too. And and one of the others is, how else might someone interpret the situation? What is it that that question does differently than the what I’m missing question?

Jeff Wetzler [00:24:29]:
So the what I the what am I missing question reminds us there there’s other information. There’s other things going on. Maybe the thing that we latched on to isn’t the whole story. But then this next question basically says, okay. Even if it was the thing that I latched on to, putting aside whatever else I might miss, there’s many ways of making sense of that. Maybe the reason that that person pushed back on me, if that’s the thing that I’m latching on to, maybe the reason they said no to the request that I made of them is not because they’re lazy or a team player, but maybe they actually have a competing deadline. Maybe someone else in the organization asked them to do something. Maybe they’re even making the right call that there’s so so it reminds us there’s lots of different stories we can tell about the same piece of information.

Jeff Wetzler [00:25:16]:
And typically, we’re just so inside our one story that we forget to think that there’s different ways. And so it really prompts us to expand our way of looking. And, again, not to say that our story is wrong, but it may not be the only thing that’s true or at play or the only way to look at a situation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:32]:
And you also invite us to consider how I might be impacting them as in the other person in the context of this. And I think there’s, like, a leadership power dynamic there too potentially for a lot of us to navigate.

Jeff Wetzler [00:25:44]:
Absolutely. I mean, I think especially for those of us who are in any position of formal authority, we can absolutely underestimate the degree to which people feel unsafe in one way or another around us. I know even in myself, in my own leadership roles, I’m thinking, it’s just me. You know, I’m just trying to, like, you know, get through the life and make my way through the world. Why would anyone be intimidated by me?

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:10]:
Right. Yeah.

Jeff Wetzler [00:26:11]:
And other people are thinking, like, this person could fire me. This person could demote me. This person could end my career, and I can be blind to that. And I can forget that. And so, you know, it’s absolutely true. I mean, even literally just two days ago, I was debriefing with somebody who works in my organization a time when I had given her some feedback, and she immediately ran with it and just implemented it. And later realized she didn’t totally agree with the feedback. So that was the impact that I had on her.

Jeff Wetzler [00:26:41]:
And I said to her, what might I have been able to do to help you make sense of the feedback more yourself? Because she said, you know, you Jeff, you did ask me for my immediate reactions, and I gave them to you. But then she said, you know, what if you had said to me, I want you to sit with this feedback. Don’t give me your reactions right now. I want you to just sit with it. Think about it. I don’t want you to tell me what resonates and what doesn’t resonate. What would be hard about it? You would have gotten a better answer for me. But I didn’t realize until she told me that that I had such an impact that she just felt like she needed to agree and run with the feedback.

Jeff Wetzler [00:27:10]:
So if we can start to get curious about the impact we’re having on other people, we can realize how we may be complicit or contributing to situations that we wish were different.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:22]:
And you say one of the most important questions is the last one. What can I learn from this person?

Jeff Wetzler [00:27:28]:
Yes. This is this to me is the, you know, the uber curiosity spark. Because if we can if we can show up with this question, what can I learn from this person? First of all, it’s just a reminder to us. There is something to learn from every single person, and I truly believe that. Even somebody who totally disagrees with us, even someone we think is completely wrong, we could be learning how come they think that. Why? Even someone that we think is dangerous and who’s our who’s our total enemy. We can be learning what’s their next move gonna be, and how do we need to navigate that next move, whatever it is. But but in a more day to day situation, there’s you know, we can be learning what someone’s ideas, what’s their life experience, how are they seeing us.

Jeff Wetzler [00:28:09]:
And so asking our that question pushes out of our minds all kinds of other questions, like, why are they such a jerk, or how could they be so wrong, or how do I get them to do this, or how do I get out of here. It just starts to clear space to say, you know what? There’s something here for me to learn. What can I learn? And it begins to to change our mindset. It begins to change our energy, and I think others can sense that too.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:32]:
You have been thinking a lot about AI as so many of us have have in the last year since the book came out. And I was really intrigued by some of the things you’re doing on helping AI to approach this and, like, enhance, like, what we’re doing as humans. Like, not to replace, but really, like, think of, like, how do we actually ask these questions better? And I’m wondering, like, what you found that’s been working to utilize the technology in order to do this more effectively.

Jeff Wetzler [00:29:03]:
Yeah. So of all the different curiosity sparks that we just talked about, sometimes it’s enough to just run them run through them in your own mind or, to your point, say them aloud or maybe journal about them. But sometimes we’re so stuck inside our own certainty that it’s hard to even use these sparks to break us out. And so I have a mentor, Phil McArthur, who used to say curiosity is a team sport. When you really, you know, need help, you should ask your colleagues and your friends to help you get curious. But now we have yet another kind of colleague or friend or mentor, which is AI. And so I discovered in writing the book that if you just take whatever, you know, strongly held point of view you have, maybe it’s a rant about a politician, or maybe it’s a rant about your spouse, or maybe it’s a rant about your business partner, or a colleague, or a teammate. Just dump it all right into AI.

Jeff Wetzler [00:29:59]:
You can type it in. Nowadays, you can just say it in, and then just ask the question at the end. What might I be missing? Or what could I learn here that I’m not thinking about? All of a sudden, what comes back is fascinating. It will show you different angles on the situation than you had thought about before. And, you know, you may not agree with every angle. It may not be right about everything, but I can guarantee you it’ll start to have you think about things you hadn’t thought about before, and it will tend to loosen up the grip of your story on you. So the first way to use it is you can just use it to get curious. Then you can also use it, take it one step further, and say to it, what are some questions I could ask my wife here? What are some questions I could ask my partner that I not might not be thinking about? And it will generate a set of questions.

Jeff Wetzler [00:30:47]:
It may it can generate infinite questions. But even if you ask it, just say, just give me a dozen questions. You probably will cross off, you know, three to five of them that you just say, I don’t like this. This is not applicable. But there will be a handful of questions in there that you had never thought to ask before. That can be super powerful.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:03]:
You completely changed my mind on this this week and using AI. I because I was reading one of your Psychology Today articles on AI and this practice. And and just to, like, maybe reinforce, like, how maybe it’s I’m too close to it, Jeff, but, like, as much as I value questions, teach them in my work, like, professionally ask questions as a coach. Like, I mean, I think about questions probably more than the average person for sure. And when I use AI, though, at least up until this week, I would often be looking to AI for answers. And in fact, earlier this week, I had a situation where I was like, oh, I you know, here’s some elements of situation I’m gonna put in AI and, like, ask for some insight on, like, what would I do in this situation? And it hadn’t occurred to me until this week to do exactly what you invite us to do, which is to put in the situation and to say, what are the questions that either I should be asking of myself that I’m missing? Or in one of the situations I was thinking of this week, it was a situation with someone else. What are the questions I should ask this other person who’s bringing the situation to me? And I tried that and wow. Like, because oftentimes, like, the answers I mean, we all have had the experience with AI if we’ve used it of, like, oh, that’s like it’s very generic or not relevant and, like or sometimes it is really helpful, but it’s it’s a little more hit and miss.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:31]:
But, boy, if you get a good question out of it, then you can, like, really open up the what you’re missing in the dynamic of what you’re thinking about or with the other person. And it like, really changed how I approach AI entirely this week.

Jeff Wetzler [00:32:45]:
Oh, I’m so happy to hear that. I had the same experience when I first started experimenting with it. And my greatest hope is that it it’s not the something that any of us will outsource our curiosity to, but that in the context of doing it, it can help to deepen our curiosity, and it can help us to grow that curiosity muscle. So that the next time we hit a situation, we might be thinking about something we hadn’t even thought about before.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:07]:
Just like we did last time, we’re only zeroing in on a few pages of the book. So I hope that if folks are hearing some really practical things, I hope you’ll go get the book for the rest. And we’re gonna link all of it up in the episode notes, this week’s weekly guide, of course. And, Jeff, you’re also starting something new that’s coming out, like, as we’re airing. I’m wondering if you could say a bit about that.

Jeff Wetzler [00:33:28]:
Sure. Yeah. So I have been collaborating on this Ask project for many years within an incredible collaborative collaborator named Emily Irving. She has been instrumental in the ideas and the research and the writing and the launch of of Ask. She is launching a new organization called Ask that is all about how to take these ideas of curiosity, of creating safety, of what are the best questions to ask, how do we listen, how do we make sense of things, And really helping teams and leaders and organizations build this into their DNA of how they function on a day to day basis. Mhmm. And I’ll be, you know, supporting and partnering and right alongside. But I’ve came to realize that books are great at building knowledge and awareness and understanding and giving you tips.

Jeff Wetzler [00:34:13]:
But if you truly want enduring impact, enduring behavior change, you need to have powerful learning experiences and reinforcements and practice and feedback, and that is what this new entity is gonna be trying to bring to the world.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:26]:
Jeff Wetzler is the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life. Jeff, thank you so much for your work and sharing it with us again.

Jeff Wetzler [00:34:37]:
Oh, it’s great to be back with you, Dave. I love how you just go so deep onto, you know, a key aspect of something and just unpacks so much out of it. So really enjoyed the conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:47]:
Same right back at you. Thanks, Jeff. If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 520, how to inspire more curiosity. Shannon Minifie was my guest on that episode. CEO of Box of Kranz, the firm behind the coaching habit by Michael Bunge Stanier. We talked in that conversation about the work Shannon and Michael have done to bring curiosity into organizations culturally in such effective ways over the years. And, some of the practices that they have used to inspire that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:24]:
Episode five twenty for more from her. Also recommended episode six fifty four, how to help others be seen and heard. Scott Shigeoka was my guest on that episode, and we talked about the principles of curiosity and how curiosity can help others to be seen. It’s so important from a leadership standpoint that we do ensure that others are seen in our organizations. And Scott and I talked about some of the key principles for doing that well. Real practical things, a great compliment to this conversation with Jeff. And then, of course, Jeff’s last conversation here on the show is a wonderful resource as well. That’s episode 679.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:01]:
Make it easier to discuss hard things. In that conversation, Jeff and I talked about how we can actually make it easier for folks to say things to us. Again, a good compliment to this conversation. We talked a little bit more on what we do in this situation. In this conversation, in that last episode, we talked more about what are the environmental things, what are the practices we can have that will help make it easier for other people to surface things to us. Episode 679. All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And if you have not already, I’m inviting you today to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:39]:
It’s gonna give you access to the entire library of episodes since 2011, searchable by topic. You can find all the episodes publicly on all the podcast apps. But what you can do is search by topic. The resource you’re looking for right now that’ll be helpful for whatever you’re thinking about right now. Maybe it’s an opportunity. Maybe it’s a struggle. Maybe it’s something on a recent performance review or some coaching you’re doing, but it’s something you wanna zero in on and you’re looking for the right resource for that. The free membership is a great starting point for that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:10]:
Just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. And once you do, you’ll not only have access to the entire library by topic, but you’ll also get my weekly leadership guide. It is a email that comes every single week to you with details about the key points of each episode, the recommended episodes I just mentioned, many of the things I’ve been finding in the news and resources over that week, other episodes from other podcasts, YouTube videos, articles from many of the publications out there that I think will help you in your leadership development. It’s one of the key benefits inside of the free membership to get more, just go over to coachingforleaders.com. You know, one of the questions that I have gotten regularly for the last, oh, twenty years or so now, when I was teaching courses on communication and public speaking years ago with Carnegie, one of the questions I would get is, well, when do you stop being afraid of getting in front of a group and speaking in front of people? And today, that question is a little different. Sometimes people ask me, well, how have you conquered fear and talking to well known people on the podcast? And the answer to that question is after 20, I haven’t. It’s not about conquering fear. It’s about working through it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:24]:
And that’s why I’ve taken the invitation from Susan Jeffers’ book from many years ago, I Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I expanded on that quite a bit in my most recent journal entry. Each week, I’m writing a journal entry just a couple of minutes to read that will give you insight on something from me, one of our guests, something practically that I’ve learned from one of our members that’ll help you to practically implement something in your work as a leader and continue to move forward. It’s one of the benefits of Coaching for Leaders Plus. If you’d like to find out more, go over to coachingforleaders.plus. Information on the journal plus all the other benefits of Coaching for Leaders Plus are located right there. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:11]:
Thanks as always for listening, and I’ll be back next Monday with the next conversation.