“When everything is interesting…nothing is limiting”: make curiosity your superpower!
What could be different if instead of saying ‘I can’t’, you ask yourself... ‘what if I did’?
This week has been an opportunity for coaches to celebrate International Coaching Week so it’s been a good time to reflect on what I think of a transformational superpower that can be cultivated by us all...curiosity!
We can all be a bit more curious about ourselves. Curiosity about myself and what I can do has brought me to where I am now. I’ve written before that as someone who left school with low expectations of what I could achieve, I always seemed to be doing things a decade after everyone else! I always felt I was catching up with something but never quite sure what that elusive ‘something’ was. But over the years, I’ve stayed curious, asking myself ‘what if’ and ‘what else?’
I eventually came to the profession of coaching via a winding road that, on reflection, was always leading me here. My previous professional incarnations as a registered mental health nurse, public health specialist and lecturer had all included a focus on asking questions and supporting people to move forward and develop skills, knowledge and strategies to make the most of their potential using their unique strengths.
We are all experts in our own lives, but we are also all works in progress. So, in this complex and uncertain world, sometimes we all need support to release our inner resources to solve problems or see our goals clearly. Sometimes we just feel ‘stuck’ and are unsure how to move forward. Other times, we feel we are being held back in life or work but cannot see how to break down those barriers. Sometimes, as in my case a decade or so ago, the person holding you back is yourself! Staying curious can help us move forward...sometimes only inch by inch and to get out of your own way!
It’s been just over a year since I made the leap into life as a self employed coach. Since then, just like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, curiosity has been my constant companion as I move deeper into the ‘wonderland’ of coaching and being alongside ‘people like me’. Curiosity is more than a state of mind. It manifests as a behaviour demonstrated in the use of powerful questions — how coaches listen, respond, reframe and then listen again are all core elements of the International Coaching Federation competency framework.
Many of those I coach work in the healthcare and the public sector and are experiencing a level of overwhelm in life that often prevents them from thinking clearly. It’s not uncommon for people feeling like this to arrive at the coaching relationship wanting answers and solutions! As a healthcare professional by background, it would be easy for me to fall into a mentoring role or into a pattern of coaching that is largely transactional — offering tools and strategies to support someone’s move out of the fog and into some light and sometimes I have to metaphorically sit on my hands to stop myself getting excited about potential solutions. After all, I am not the client...I am not the client in their situation at that particular time. What might work for me may very well not work for them. Also, if I fall into ‘expert’ mode, I am taking away the opportunity for them to uncover their own resources – usually they have always got the answers within but just need safe non judgemental space with a curious thinking partner to explore and work things through.
The commitment to staying curious allows me to support those I work with to explore challenging or unforeseen circumstances in more depth, reframing them as an opportunity to find stuff out!
Depending on your unique circumstances, the type of questions I might ask you as a coach could include:
What’s important to you? What brings you joy?
What are your values and how are these playing out in your life at the moment?
What do you want more of/less of in your life?
What sustains you/drains you in terms of energy?
What is about your thinking that is helping you/getting in your way here?
What are you noticing about what is happening or going on – what impact is this having on you emotionally/physically?
What patterns can you recognise from previous behaviour or situations you have been in?
What is working for you and what has worked before?
What is in your way of moving forward?
What do you need to let go of in order to move forward?
If you are saying yes to this, what are you or might you be saying no to?
These types of questions come from a place of curiosity that keeps me from putting on my ‘expert’ or ‘mentor’ hat and allows people to focus on their own resources and solutions. Witnessing the transformation as people emerge through the coaching process feeling lighter is far more satisfying than if I had supplied them with some answers from my own perspective. This is shown in feedback from clients such as:
‘I still feel like me but with the light turned on’
“I feel lighter – I know what I need to do”
“I’ve got some clarity now, I am feeling much more positive and powerful than I did”
Or from a particularly poetic client...
“I was ready for a change so the pressure systems and weather that created the swell was already there. You encouraged the offshore wind and groomed the sandbanks that tidied and organised the waves ready to surf”!
Curiosity keeps us humble, allows us to explore and stay open to new possibilities, minimising the possibility of falling prey to assumptions. As Elizabeth Smith noted in her article on curiosity as a superpower,
‘When everything is interesting, nothing is limiting.’
In this International Coaching Week, I’m hugely grateful to be part of a network of coaches all supporting each other and our clients to fulfil our own potential, whatever that means for each of us.
So, go forth and ask yourself curious questions - instead of asking yourself ‘what if it doesn’t work’, ask yourself… ‘what it it does’? If you want a thinking partner to get you into the curiosity mindset, you can contact me on flamingoplm2022@gmail.com for a free discovery chat to see if we would work well together