The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 323: Ian Leslie - The Desire To Know & Why Your Future Depends On It

Episode Date: August 11, 2019

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Text LEARNERS to 44222 #322: Ian Leslie Ian Leslie is a London-based journalist and author of critically acclaimed books about human behavior. He is currently writing a new book on "productive disagreement", which will be published in 2020. Ian also created, wrote and performed in the BBC radio comedy Before They Were Famous. Notes:  Leaders who sustain excellence = Have the ability to think about their own thinking -- Step outside and reflect Know that you'll say "I don't know" frequently Breadth -- A range of interests Interested in building knowledge and an awareness that it might not pay off (and being ok with that) Ian built his life around curiosity -- He was a strategist for ad agencies.  He needed to deeply understand his clients.  That is a job built on curiosity. "I am a curiosity driven writer." Children are born curious... "People are born with habits/knowledge to survive."  And then they stop.  There's no evolutionary impulse to keep going. It becomes a conscious choice to cognitive resources and time The two types of curiosity Diversive: Hunger for new information.  It comes from an information gap.  Agatha Christie understands how to create an information gap to keep you turning the page Epistemic: Desire to acquire knowledge/build/assimilate into networks in your brain.  It requires discipline.  It's engendered.  It's diversive curiosity grown up. "There is a rising premium on people with a high need for cognition."  NFC (need for cognition) is a scientific measure of intellectual curiosity "Taking action.  Doing... is a form of learning.  They are intertwined." Reflecting on own habits -- use self as a lab experiment... Then talk with others. Empathically curious -- Being curious about what's inside of other person's head.  How they think and feel. "You're going to be come a better communicator being a better listener." Atul Gawande -- Ask the unscripted question.  Make a human connection. Have 10% of your brain switched on to "Am I talking too much?" How to have productive disagreements: Don't avoid it Have disagreements we both can live with "You'll have more productive disagreement if you're curious about the other person." People who have a higher level of scientific curiosity... They don't rush to judgement.  Think, "Oh, I wonder why I think that?" "Nobody has trained us in how to disagree with each other." "You have this choice in judgement and curiosity." Life/Career advice: "Be interested in everything.  Go deep in one area." Have core people in your life and foster the weak ties. Everyone is born curious. But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning and discovering as they grow older. Which side of the "curiosity divide" are you on?

You're going to become a better communicator and a better storyteller if you are a better listener and a better observer of other people. So if you are curious about other people, just habitually curious about everyone you meet, including and especially the people you work with, your team, your boss, then you just will become a better communicator, right? I mean, I think if you spend all your time thinking about your presentation skills and how you talk and how you hold yourself and how to tell a good story, yeah, all that can be valuable. But unless it connects to a sense of wanting to understand the people on the other end of that communication, then it's not going to be as powerful. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show, brought to you by Brixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4-4-222. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, become part of my book launch team, receive Mindful Monday updates when I'm watching, reading, writing, thinking about.

Text learners to 4-4-222. Now on tonight's feature, leader to the great Ian Leslie, best-selling author of critically acclaimed books about human behavior. My favorite is called Curious, the desire to know and why you're first. future depends on it. He also created, wrote, and performed in the BBC comedy before they were famous, and he counsels CEOs on brand strategy communications and thought leadership. A few of the topics we got into. The two types of curiosity and why the second is more valuable in a leader. Then from an evolutionary perspective, why do we lose curiosity as we age? And how can we reverse that? then how to have productive disagreements with others.

And the one question to ask yourself before judging other people. Really good stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Ian Leslie. All right, welcome. Ian Leslie, so good to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Ah, thanks very much, Ryan. Good to be here.

I am fascinated by some of the areas that you specialize in. To get us started, though. I have a quick question. When thinking about the people that you surrounded yourself with, the people you've read about, that you're curious about, that you study, even your own, the qualities that made up a great career for yourself, what have you found to be the commonalities among leaders specifically who have sustained excellence? A few different things, but a couple of things spring to mind. one is an ability to kind of think about their own thinking, to kind of step outside their own mental processes and habits and analyze them.

And that goes along with this sense that I know that there are things that I don't know. And that makes me want to know. And it's a kind of motivational tool because you're constantly assessing what you know and what you don't know. And if you're interested in what you don't know, I mean, that's basically the definition of curiosity. So there's that. And then there's also going along with that is breadth, just kind of range of interests,

which is partly just being interested in everything, but it's also consciously building knowledge across a series of different disciplines and fields, right? And that might be, you know, computer science, business theory and so on, but it might be cultural as well. It might be, I don't know, the history of hip hop or, you know, film or whatever. And being aware that being interested in these things might not pay off right away, but A, I do it because I want to be a more interesting person,

but B, because they know that there's some, there's kind of payoff down the line to having that kind of attitude. You wrote a book called Curious, The Desire to Know, and why your future depends on it. As longtime listeners of this podcast know, I love studying this topic. And I've become much more curious since starting the Learning Leader Show because at the beginning,

I thought my knowledge level was pretty good. I thought I had figured some things out, that I was somewhat, I guess, knowledgeable when it comes to being an effective leader. and as I started doing having these conversations and recording them and listening to them, I realized that I knew very little. And I've learned so much over the course of having these curiosity conversations as I like to call them. So it seems to fall in line with as you start learning and focusing and being very deliberate about improvement,

following your genuine intellectual curiosity about learning that you start to realize, oh my goodness, there is so much more that I realized I just didn't know. Yeah. And I think there are kind of two dangers at either end of that, right, two kind of hereby dragons. One is that you don't get to that stage, right? So you don't actually think about what you don't know, right? So you kind of, you skipped that dragon.

What lies on the other side is kind of fear, almost a paralysis. Oh, my God, I don't know anything. All these people are more than me. There's so much out there. And you've got to, you know, you've got to get over that. So we all have moments like that. And I just think those are the kind of two polar opposites, which both kind of kill your curiosity.

So complacency and fear. You know, complacency is in the sense of, well, you know, I think I know pretty much all I need to know in order to get through my day or for my company to succeed versus fear. Oh, my God, what if I admit that I don't know things? What have I admitted to myself? What if I admit it to others? And both those things are likely to kind of turn down your curiosity. What made you write this book? Well, the book before this was about lying.

It's called Born Liars, Why We Can't Do Without Deceit. and the title is self-explanatory. And it's absolutely fascinating subject. And it was about how lying is kind of more central to our lives than perhaps we like to admit. Now, I really, you know, I loved writing that book. And I still love that book. But after that, I was thinking, well, I'd like to kind of approach a more obviously positive aspect of human behavior too, right? I'd like to do that next.

And it struck me that I had basically built my life around this quality of curious. and I, before I became a professional author and journalist, I worked in advertising for a long time. And I was a strategist for ad agencies and I worked for clients as well. But my job was always to kind of understand the consumer and see it from their perspective in whatever category I was in. So again, it was a job where, which was to a certain extent, built around curiosity. I had to get interested in all these different businesses, all these different industries and understand people. So then I kind of pivot in my career and think, well, I've got to try writing now because I've always wanted to do that. And I start a career as a non-fiction writer, somebody who kind of takes aspects of human behavior and talks to experts about them and looks at them in the round and then kind of tells stories that help us understand them.

So I'm a curiosity-driven writer as well. So I thought, well, you know, you built your whole life around this, but you don't really understand it. You know, I don't really analyze, you know, why I'm curious or what curiosity. years or how it works. So just from a kind of pure, you know, a substitute for therapy maybe, self-analysis. I was like, well, let's try and understand this. And then it also, the other thing that struck me at the time I was thinking about this was, why am I like this? And why are other people not like this, right? You know, it seems to be obvious to me that being curious is a better way to live your life, right? I mean, you're going to be more interested in things, which makes you

more stimulated and happier, you're going to be more interesting as a person. I think it's got obvious, talk about them in the book, but good benefits for your professional life as what is your personal life? So why is it that sometimes I find myself sitting next to people who are just plainly not very curious about me or about the world around us and they're just kind of going through the motions of a conversation? Is that something that happens in childhood at birth or is it something that we do, do we developing in curiosity as we grow older? So that's kind of the founding question of the book is, is what is this kind of divide between the curious and the incurious and why is it? And how can we, you know, stop ourselves from

falling into the wrong side of it? Why is it? So what was the answer to that question? I know it's, it's, you got to read the whole book, but there are probably some highlights to say, because I think of we were born and from the science of what I've gathered and obviously reading your work, and I don't want to make this a book report. We're going to have a conversation. So there are other topics. But we are born naturally curious for the most part. Yet along the way, some of us more than others, lose that.

And unfortunately, potentially never regain that. Why is that? Well, you're right. I mean, that's the kind of essential theme of the book. And for me, the real central argument of the book is that curiosity is not a gift that keeps on giving, right? It is a gift because we are born curious and we can talk about why in a bit more detail in evolutionary terms and so on. But we are kind of children that do have babies and children have this kind of very powerful engine of curiosity. They really want to know about this whole kind of invisible realm of stuff they don't know, right?

Which isn't a given, right? There's no evidence that other animals have that to anything like the extent we do, if at all. But then as we grow older, that sense of curiosity declines. And what happens is, you know, to cut a long story short, is that people basically learn the habits and the knowledge that they need in order to survive, right, in whatever their world is, right, whether it's a village in West Africa or the Upper West Side in New York. So they learned that the cultural knowledge and habits they need in order to get by, at which point there's really no evolutionary impulse, you know, keeping their curiosity strong.

The curiosity gift has done its job by that stage, right? It's got you off and running in whatever environment, whatever niche that you're in. After that, it's really up to you. It becomes a conscious choice about how to allocate your own resources. Your cognitive resources and your time. You have to decide whether or not you are going to stay curious. And so that's the kind of, you know, I'm sure we'll get into this more detail. that's the kind of outline of the argument.

Right. And so there are two types of curiosity, and you briefly kind of hit on the second one there about a conscious choice that needs to be cultivated. Can you explain the two types of curiosity? Yes. So this is drawn from the psychology literature. There's lots of kind of different theories and different takes on curiosity in psychology. But what they come down to is a kind of simplified version of.

of what they come down to are these, there are these kind of two types of curiosity that interlock with each other. Diversive curiosity and epistemic curiosity. Diversive curiosity is the hunger for new information, right? It's the desire to kind of find out that thing that you don't know, right? And it comes from, the most kind of powerful theory of it is it comes from an information gap, right?

So curiosity happens, diversive curiosity happens when you have a little bit of information about something, but you realize that you don't have all the information. And that makes you go, I need to know this. Right. So this is something that storytellers understand. So Agatha Christie is a master of diversive curiosity. Right. So she will give you a little bit of information. And then she'll leave an enormous information gap. So she'll tell you that Colonel Fotherington, smy, or whatever, you know, got knocked off in the library with some lead piping. But then she won't give you this key piece of information, which you know you don't know, which is whodunit. And that motivates you to turn the page. Right. So when you have an information gap, you want to do something. It's a kind of spur to action.

And in an everyday kind of small way, it's the red dot on your Facebook icon. You know, it's the kind of the Huffington Post headline. your Twitter feed, you know, you'll never guess what happened next, right? These are curiosity gap headlines, but they are, you know, consciously designed around that, that psychological idea, those headlines. They're designed to kind of spur your diverse curiosity. So diverse curiosity is what takes you off the beaten path. It makes you go, hey, oh, I need to know this. I'm going to stop what I'm doing. I'm going to, I'm going to say, oh, there's that, that shiny thing over there. I need, I need to work out what it is. And I need to kind of scratch that

itch. However, if you just, if you just kind of go through your life, experiencing this kind of constant motivation to scratch the itch and to find out what the new thing is, then you don't allow your curiosity to kind of deepen and build into knowledge. And that's where epistemic curiosity comes in. So epistemic curiosity is about the desire to acquire knowledge, to take information and to assimilate it into networks of knowledge in your brain. So epistemic curiosity requires more commitment, requires concentration, requires focus, requires a certain sort of discipline. It requires you to kind of say, right, well, this is the thing that I want to learn about,

so I'm really going to put my mind to it. And that kind of conscious, effortful type of curiosity is the one that, that is fragile. It's easily endangered. It's endangered by just pure laziness. I mean, we're always looking for kind of cognitive shortcuts, things that we can do so we don't have to actually kind of put our minds to learn something.

And it's endangered by destruction and by entertainment. So one of the things I talk about in the book is how, you know, they're both important, but epistemic curiosity is what happens when diverse of curiosity grows up. And it's important that we, that we cultivate epistemic curiosity. It's not just going to happen to you.

It's something you have to say, right. I want to stay curious. I think you said there's a rising premium on people with a high need for cognition, which is called NFC. Need for cognition is a scientific measure of intellectual curiosity. And to relate this to the person who may be listening, and I'm thinking about that person who is, leading a team within a big company.

And part of the job of leading a team within a company is you're trying to build a great culture. You're trying to make fantastic hiring decisions. And so you have done the research behind this scientific measure of intellectual curiosity and why possessing that high level of NFC, which is need for cognition, is so valuable in somebody to potentially bring on to your team regardless of the job. And so can you talk a little bit about that for that specific person that's listening right now that has two open positions, regardless of what the jobs are, two open positions. They're looking for great candidates.

Maybe they have a few good ones and they're trying to make a decision between them. What about this need for cognition and this scientific measure of intellectual curiosity and why we should value that? Yeah, I mean, I think when you on. as somebody, you're looking at their present value and their future value, right, both at the same time. You're thinking about what they can do now for you, and you're thinking about their potential, what they may be able to do. And you really want them, I think, to be people who will grow and change and adapt with you, with a company, especially if your company is about to and your industry is about to go, is going through change of any kind, right? And most companies

are at the moment. So I think when you're hiring somebody, it's crucial to look at not just are they smart and not just are they accomplished. Obviously, those are hugely important things, but are they curious? Because do they have this kind of high need for cognition? And just to just the kind of summarized need for cognition, it's, yeah, it's a scientific measure of intellectual curiosity. And it's just kind of measure of people's relish for intellectual challenge and difficulty. And I don't necessarily mean, you know, do they want to talk about philosophical ideas? Maybe they do, but it might be, you know, we're really into coding for the intellectual challenge of it, you know, doing a crossword or whatever. But people who actually go out of their way to make things cognitively difficult for themselves because they like the challenge, right?

who just get turned on by that by by by difficulty by you know by putting their their brain to the to the challenge and those are the people who are really going to relish and adapt well to to change and to new challenges and not to be defensive when those new challenges set in because you know if you've got a really smart really accomplished person that's great but if the moment that the company heads in a different direction or you suggest a kind of new way to do their job. If at that moment they dig in because they're very happy with the way they've been doing things for the last few years and they don't really want to kind of grapple with these new challenges, then they suddenly become a problem.

So I think you're thinking about how curious they are is a great kind of way to think about, is this person's potential going to be as big as their present value. Oh, when I spoke with Kat Cole, she described the ideal. candidate slash person or she called them productive achievers where they have on one side this courage and confidence on another side this curiosity and humility and it needs to be equally balanced. But the issue is if one side is imbalanced, I mean there's too much. It could be a problem. And so for the sake of this example, let's talk about the person who perhaps is too much of just a learner or too curious and not enough action. How do you back? How do you back?

balance this when we're focusing heavily on curiosity, why it's important to have this. But we also don't, we're not suggesting that you simply sit in the corner, take notes, read a book, and never do anything. So how do you turn this curiosity into action? The Wright brothers, Ian, were famous here in the States for when they would go down to North Carolina, they would take time to watch the birds and mimic the birds' wings with their arms and their elbows and their hands. You can see me doing this on video now, which is probably humorous. But anyway, they would do that. But then they would take it to the flying machine and build the actual aircraft and then test it. So they were both learners and they were doers. How for the person listening

who may be a bit introverted, who may be more of a learner than a doer, but we need to push them to actually take action. What advice do you give to them? Well, I just think the advice, the truth is that doing is a form of learning. And, and, doing is applied curiosity. So, and actually the two are not as far apart, you know, this cognitive learning and learning through doing is sometimes they're portrayed by, you know, by other side of that. Doing things as they're, as they were working in an engineer actually doing things is also using his or her brain at the same time, right?

You know, it's, it's not like their brain's, their curiosity switches off as they, as they're kind of in the midst of action. So I think kind of understanding them as intertwined and just two different flavors of learning and two different flavors of exploring your curiosity is the best way to think about it. And really, you should be in whatever your trade is, whatever your skill, you should be bouncing between the two all the time. It's almost like kind of stepping away from a building and looking at it from different angles, right? So I'm going to take the kind of looking at the slightly more distance kind of looking and thinking and reading and reflecting. curiosity at one stage, but then I'm going to get in there and start doing things and seeing what happens. That's also a way of exploring my curiosity. I just think they're two different

approaches, but they're very much interlocked. How do you do that for somebody like you who's a regular writer? You're reflecting, you're thinking, you're doing research, you're writing, you're rewrite. How do you put this into play in your own life? I'm curious to take it outside of the work and move it more towards you now. Well, for me, it's what I talked about right at the beginning, which is just being, sort of reflecting on my own habits and mental processes, even as I'm going through them, without, you know, driving myself mad, you know,

but I'm kind of always using myself as a kind of a lab experiment or a kind of model and say, well, why am I like that? And where am I on the bell curve compared to others when it comes to this or this? But, yeah, it's also just about kind of, talking to people. I mean, that for me, I guess, is my, the closest way I get to, you know, getting inside the engine of an airplane and fiddling around, is making sure that when I'm not just reading about things or writing about things, I'm talking to people. There's a kind of third type of

curiosity that I write about in the book called empathic curiosity, which is curiosity about others and a big part of that is not the only thing but a big part of it is being curious about what's inside that other person's head you know like and how do they think and and and also how do they feel right so for instance if I might read a paper a scientific paper and I can write about that paper and it'll be fine but it's always or nearly always much richer when I actually go and talk to the scientists or the scientists behind it you just get a kind of more textured sense of where they're coming from and how they're thinking. So I guess that's my kind of form of practice.

One of the qualities that I've found that the most effective leaders possess is that they are fantastic communicators. They are in a regular position to tell stories, to share a vision, to help us, as Marcus Buckingham might say, see around the corner. They make us feel a little bit more comfortable. They can tell the future a bit because they've done perhaps enough research to be able to make predictions. Thinking of that mid-level manager who has a regular Monday meeting or who has to deliver the news to the CEO of the company, how does becoming more curious create higher levels of communication skill, whether it's storytelling, whether it's,

it's just your knowledge. I'm curious from your perspective. How can that person become a better communicator by becoming more curious? Yeah, great question. I think the answer here is you're going to become a better communicator and a better storyteller if you are a better listener and a better observer of other people. So if you are curious about other people, you know, just. habitually curious about everyone you meet, including and especially the people you work with,

your team, your boss, then you just will become a better communicator, right? I mean, I think if you spend all your time thinking about your presentation skills and how you talk and how you hold yourself and how to tell a good story, yeah, all that can be valuable. But unless it connects to a sense of wanting to understand the people on the other end of that communication, then it's not going to be as powerful. And I think the two together, I think really, really great listeners tend to be really great communicators and vice versa.

And often when you talk to or read interviews with great bosses, or you talk to people who have worked for great bosses, they say, yeah, they are people who walk around the office and are kind of interested in what I'm doing or interested in how I'm feeling. there's a great quote from Atul Gwanda, the surgeon and writer. And he talks about the doctor-patient relationship. And one of the things he talks to students about is to, he advises them to ask the unscripted question.

So in that particular case, you know, when the doctor meets the patient, he's trying to work out what the patient's symptoms are and so on. There's a kind of script that he's going to go through, right? there's a series of questions. He knows what to ask to get the information efficiently and quickly. And Guando says, you know, particularly when you're under time pressure and so on, you go through that script, all this quite kind of mechanically and you try and get the information. And my advice is almost kind of step outside the script now and again and ask the unscripted

question, which might be something like, you know, did you see the game last night? Or, oh, I see it from Dayton, Ohio. What's, you know, how's, how's Dayton these days, whatever it is. and you, number one, you're making a human connection with them, which is just nicer for them. They suddenly feel like they're not part of a machine. You know, they're actually talking to a human being. And number two, they're liable to give you more information. You know, they're liable to talk more.

I also just for the book I'm writing at the moment, I've been talking to people who do interrogations. Sometimes we're very, very, you know, hardened terrorists. and one of the things that they say is that they make a much better connection with them from a communication point of view if they are if they show curiosity about them if they're interested in them and it has to be genuine it has to be kind of look you know I really want to understand why you're here you know I want you to tell me your story and once they do that they strike up a report and the other person wants to listen to what they have to say as well So I don't know. I just think these communication and listening are part of the same package.

And I think we often go wrong when we just think about communication as the output, the thing we're transmitting. And actually the thing we're transmitting is always going to hit the mark. It's always going to be much more powerful and effective when we are genuinely listening. And we've got to know that person. And even as we're talking to them, we're observing them. We're listening to them. You know, really skillful communicators can do both at the same time. This may be a weird question. How frequently do you go on, go out to lunch with somebody that reaches out to you cold?

I would say not very often. Okay. But do you have lunches with people who maybe are introduced to you by friends of friends, people within your network? You'll go out and meet somebody for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I find these really interesting.

and I'm curious how you handle the situations. One of the things I've noticed is sometimes you get a request and then you go to lunch and you find the person just talks about themselves the entire time instead of asking questions and you'll notice 15 minutes after the food is there that my food is gone and that person hasn't touched it yet, their own food. I want us to get better at this. For that person listening who may have found themselves in that situation where they have not touched their food because they haven't stopped.

stop talking and the other person is done because they're listening the entire time. How can we be better at this? This is now tactical because we go on these meetings. They're important. We want to connect. We want to genuinely have a connection with somebody. How do we finish at the same time is the question? How do we get to the place where we're in the same time as opposed to it being so lopsided

to be more mindful of this exercise that a lot of us go on on a regular basis? Well, I mean, correct me if I'm, tell me if I'm not answering this question probably, but to me, it all depends on what your objective is. And you have to be clear about what your goal is going into any conversation, right? But including this time of conversation. And if your goal is, like with me and you, I wouldn't be, I'm not going to be that worried if I'm doing, I don't know, 75% of the talking, because that's kind of the goal for. both of us, I think. Well, in this situation, recording a podcast, you're going to do probably 90%. Right. Yeah. So that's different. I'm talking at lunch, two people getting to know each other where you'd hope it's balanced. I agree. So I'm just kind of making the distinction. It all depends on what the context is and what the, what the goal is. Or it would be like if I asked you to lunch because I was curious to learn more about you and I spoke 90% of the time. That's a, that's stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so your question is like, how can I, you know, how could one avoid being stupid in that sense, right? It's a temptation we all fall into from time to time. I think, you know, number one, just try and have like 10% of your brain switched on to like, am I talking to you much?

I do that all the time, right? And even now, you know, where I'm meant to be talking a lot, having maybe maybe. some, if you find it happening a lot, having some basic kind of rule, simple rule, like, I'm not going to talk for longer than two minutes at a time, right? And actually, you'll find that you can basically kind of wrap up your thought after two minutes, and it'll usually be fine. And if it's not fine, the person will say, you know, tell me more. They'll indicate to tell me one. You can keep talking. But actually, you know, that's not a bad rule. We'll say, well, I'm not just going, it's even better on the phone, right? Because on the phone, you're not

getting that feedback of the other person's face. You can't see their attention wondering. So I think you have to be even more careful to say, well, okay, I'm going to restrict myself to kind of short segment of talking. But I just think it's, you know, even more than that, you have to maybe give a little bit of thought to why you're interested in that other person and have some kind of rough idea of what you'd like to talk to them about, what you'd like to know from them, what you'd like to know about them, what information you'd like to get from them. And, you know, some people will go

far as to make notes and kind of make a little list. But, you know, even if it's just like two or three things you have in your head, say, you know, I did that this morning with a coffee with, yeah, somebody I've met once before. I don't know very well. But he's a fantastically interesting guy. And I was like, well, I might not see him for a while. So there's at least two or three things I want to make sure that he does the lion's share of the talking on because I know he's much more interesting on these subjects than I am. So I think, yeah, it's being a little bit more strategic about what you want from the conversation.

I love that. I've listed a couple of podcasters that I look up to say that exact thing, that they'll go, they'll have like talking points or ideas or the bottom line is it, before any big moment, be prepared, right? Be prepared for that. Be prepared for that moment to represent yourself well to. learn to be curious, to have the proper mindset. I think that's critical. Okay, let's talk about Ian some of the newest work. You've briefly hinted at it, but I want to dig a little bit deeper.

When you mix curiosity with, you mentioned hostas negotiation and I know that that's something you're talking about, but also I've followed you and what you seem to be curious about, this role of political polarization in the world right now and why curiosity could benefit probably all of us, whether it's where you live or where I live or anywhere in the world. Can you share more about what's fascinating you at the moment and what you're writing about? Yeah, of course. So the book I'm writing at the moment, which I'm just in the last stages of, and it'll be out next year, is about how to disagree productively, right? How to have productive disagreements. How to disagree about things without falling out, you know, and how to not avoid disagreement, right?

So part of the argument of the book is disagreement can be hard and uncomfortable and unpleasant. So a lot of the time we just avoid it. We just walk away, you know, or we get into it and we end up in a fight, right? So how can we avoid both those reactions and have disagreements that kind of are good for both of us or all of us? And obviously it's written against, you know, partly about the kind of the background of public and political discourse that that we that we have at the moment in the US and in the UK, many kind of countries where, you know, there's just a lot of toxic arguments going on. But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, you know, it's not just about

politics. It's about how we have disagreements and arguments at work and so on. And without, you know, without this being the plan, I found myself coming back to curiosity again. So one of the themes of the book, as it turns out, is that you're going to have much better disagreements or kind of more productive disagreements and better conversations if you are curious about the other person. So, yeah, interrogators and hostage negotiators tell me, because a lot of the book is talking to these people who have these kind of really extreme high pressure conversations. They'll tell me, I make myself get interested in the other person, even if that other person. even if that other person is terrible, right? I don't go in there thinking, right, I'm going to shout at you until you break down,

because frankly, it just doesn't work. I go in there thinking, I really want to figure this person out. And the way it connects to, you know, more directly to political polarization is, it's actually a really interesting study recently of political polarization, where they discovered that people who have a higher level of scientific curiosity, who are really interested in questions around science are less polarized in their political views than other people.

So, you know, they might have different views on climate science, you know, on climate change or whatever it is, abortion, whatever it is, but they are more willing to listen to the other side and they're just more interested in discussing it, the people who are not curious. And I think that's really interesting. And I think it applies beyond scientific curiosity. I think it applies beyond politics.

When we have a really kind of like harsh view on somebody or we've rushed to judgment on somebody, we're essentially shutting down our curiosity about them. You know, if somebody disagrees with you, it's easier to say, oh, well, they're just a bigot or they're stupid than it is for you to say, oh, I wonder why they think that. And it goes back to this question about curiosity, which is, is it worth the allocation of cognitive resource for me to do this, right? It takes an effort for me to be curious about you, right? Or the other side, right? So the other side of this question.

So why should I be? And again, I think it is worth the effort because in the end, you know, if you don't, you just end up getting into these, you know, ever more. toxic arguments. I don't know how much you study it here in the States, but I know what's going on where you live as well. Has it always been this divisive? Why do you think it is? Why do are, it feels like people are forced to choose sides?

I personally hate that. I want to think independently about each and every particular point that it's brought up and then make my own decision based on the research, on evidence, on. careful thought. And when I do that, there is, there will never be one particular party or area. It's, it's all over the place. And I don't feel like you should be forced because you, you think this one thing, well, then you have to think 12 other things. I hate that aspect of it. Why can't we be independent about each one and make those thoughts? And I may sound really ignorant and probably do. but that's how I believe about everything.

I feel like we should be able to independently think about that with reason, have conversations with differing people and ideas and thoughts, and then make up our mind and our set of beliefs, and probably most importantly, be willing to change our mind if better evidence or better reasoning comes up, which it does. It will. And so then you're able to change your mind. the best leaders I've ever worked for,

we're not afraid to realize that maybe there's, there's something better out there that they've learned and they've changed their mind. Why, I guess two parts, has it always been like this and why is it and what can we do based on what you've learned to, to change that? Yeah, I mean, great questions and big questions. I would say, has it always been like that? you know, possibly it has, but it's been kind of under the radar a bit. So if you, it's kind of

pre-internet, we really didn't have, we weren't used to having our views challenged quite as much, right? And actually, we weren't used to this kind of diversity of views that we get now, right? much of which is fantastic, right? It's good that more people from more backgrounds, you know, ethically, whether it's ethnic or gender or religion, right, have their voices heard, right? We live in a much more kind of temperamentally egalitarian culture

than we used to. Number one. Number two, now we have the technology where we can express our views and our experiences and, you know, our feelings much more often and much more impulsively and kind of instantly than we can. Again, much of that is good. But it raises this kind of difficult thing, which is nobody's trained us in how to disagree with each other. How to disagree with people that are different from us.

Where you don't have all the kind of shared culture and shared background and shared assumptions that you have with people that are close to you or from your town, go to your church, whatever it is. And it's like we've kind of been thrown into this turbulent sea and we're suddenly like, oh my God, it's just, you know, it's this big cacophony of different views and we don't know. And so that's kind of something I think we just need to get better at. We kind of need to recognize that actually disagree is a skill.

And yeah, I think a big part of it is just remembering to be curious about the other person and saying, I'm going to devote some thought and some time to try to understand the other side and not just slap a label on them and then forget about them. That part about, I think, asking yourself the question, I wonder why they think that is really useful. I found that when you're quick to judge and all of us have moments where we are, I know I certainly do. When you're quick to judge taking one step back and saying, I wonder why they think that. Now, you may still get to the same place. However, just having that habit in place is, I think, helpful and useful, especially as a leader, because if you lead a team of 17 others,

it is a guarantee that there are going to be moments where they're going to say something or present a view that you just disagree with or you think may be stupid. It is so helpful to take a step back and say, I wonder why they think that. And then have a conversation with them. I wonder, hey, let's just got a guy here, Ian. What brought you to think in that manner? Not in a judging way, not in a hostile way, but a genuineness to say, I want to learn. I want to understand better.

And maybe you'll change your mind. Maybe you won't. But I think if that's our regular place of being, that's kind of the actions of how to disagree with somebody with respect, without judgment. And who knows where we could go if we interacted in that style. Exactly right. I mean, I couldn't have put it better than myself. And really, you know, you have this choice between judgment and curiosity.

Right. Those are the choices you have when somebody disagrees with you. When somebody disagrees with you, yeah, some ancient kind of evolutionary impulse makes you go, oh, I don't like this person. Or, you know, they're stupid, right? They're a bad person, right? You judge, right? There's an impulse to do that.

If you can learn to kind of put that to one side and say, no, I'm going to switch into curiosity. I'm going to switch out of judgment mode and in curiosity mode. You're going to have a more productive conversation. You're probably going to get more information and insight from that person. That person is going to be more motivated when they leave the room. So, you know, it's worth the effort. Yes. One more question, Ian.

Let's say you probably do this regularly. let's say a younger, younger, intelligent, ambitious, hardworking person who wants to build a career where they make a positive contribution to the world. They're sitting in your office and they ask you, Ian, what are some of those pieces of advice you would give to me in order to achieve those goals that I'm willing to work? I'm willing to do what needs to be done to make that positive contribution. What are some things I should be thinking? What should I be doing? What are pieces of advice you would give that person? I would say, I've written an interview with Courtney Love recently, and she said,

my only advice would be to keep exercising and stay weird, which I thought was pretty good. I would say just with regard to curiosity, be interested in everything and in a few things really know them really well. So you've got to have both, right? The T shape, right? I've seen your speech. Can you explain real quick the T shape? Yeah. So sometimes it's used in recruitment and in a business to talk about the type of people that you want to hire where they have at least one. kind of specialist knowledge area, the thing that you're hiring for, they know that really deep, and they've got a lot of kind of deep knowledge in that area. But then you also want, that's the kind of the vertical line. And then across the top of the T, the lateral part, you want them to have

some knowledge about all the adjacent and related disciplines, right, because they're going to be working and collaborating with people from those disciplines. And if they know a little about them, those meetings are going to be go much better, right? You're going to kind of hook into the other people's minds much more quickly and much more easily. So hiring T-Shap. And so actually the T-Shap is just a good kind of model for your life really as well, knowing about a few things really well and knowing a little about a lot, combining those two things. And I think finally, I'll just say that also applies to people.

It's important to have a core of people around you that you know really well and who you know really well. But it's also important to cultivate what sociologists sometimes call your weak. ties, you know, the people that you don't know very well, but remain around the outer circle of your life, but are incredible sources of insight and new information are kind of bringing in things from different parts of your world. So, yeah, I think that kind of T-Shame applies in both senses. Well, Ian, thank you so much for being here. The book that first peaked my curiosity about you was called Curious, The Desire to Know and why your future depends on it. And

There's more work coming. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, I have a website which is Ian dash, Ian hyphen Leslie, L-E-S-L-I-E-E-D-C-C-L-E-E-D-C-C-T-E-L-E-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-E-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-E, so that's probably the easiest way to follow me. And you'll see, actually, on my Twitter bio, there's a link to my newsletter, which I sent out every few weeks. Love it. When I came across your book, didn't know you had the great accent, but that was an added bonus. So thank you so much. It's been fantastic to talk with you, Ian.

I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Oh, yes, please. Thank you very much, Ryan. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. Fascinating conversation with Ian. I really enjoyed learning directly from him. I hope you did as well.

I found a number of the topics. really interesting, particularly the two types of curiosity and why as leaders we need to drive towards being an epistemic, curious leader, that conscious choice to cultivate the skill of the desire to learn and know more and to realize that the more we learn, the more we need to know, to have that continuous drive to have a better understanding of a topic, of a situation, of a person, that the Best communicators are also the best listeners. Found that part to be really good. And then how to have productive disagreements with other people.

Don't avoid these conversations, but go in with the mindset that I wonder how and why they think that way. Instead of judging people, seek knowledge from them, seek understanding, try to do your best to be compassionate. and think of it from their perspective will all be better off, especially as you progress up the ranks in leadership positions and you lead more people. Thank you once again for continuing

to give me the opportunity to do what I love. I would greatly appreciate it if you continue to spread the word one person at a time. Word of mouth marketing is the best form and it continues to give me the opportunity to do this on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

All right. with you next week can't wait