I can’t pinpoint when I recognized that I’d gone too far. In a small group setting not long ago, I’d invited scrutiny toward an issue only to have it turned back toward me. It was not what I expected to happen, and it activated belief in me that I was being unjustly accused. So I began asking questions, and as I did so, I could feel the space for exploration in the room closing down. That I may have sounded more like a prosecutor, much less one seeking exoneration, didn’t help. 

It’s easy to be curious when little is at stake. Once your mind has closed, opening it back up seems really difficult, at least for me.

Our embodied minds are continually vigilant and work fast to make sense of what’s happening and allocate internal resources for it, mostly beyond our awareness. All of the time, I attend to some things and not others. I organize meaning–with labels for categories that guide efficient explanation from prior experience, with the complementary emotional valence. Feeling better or worse. For purposes here, let’s say that what’s overtaking me feels worse, with a touch of agitation that has room to grow in intensity. This readies me to engage in a way that oozes out, subtly, from my inner demeanor.

Even if I am long-skilled at tamping that down, I probably still don’t seem curious enough to others. Not open, not welcoming and, well, not disarmed. Rather, to cite one of Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Mindtraps, my inner state can become certain. Right. Not believing that there could be another way to make sense of something. 

My closing into certainty can happen fast. After the moment described earlier, I could see more clearly what I was taking care of, so certain about what the moment needed me to. I tried to coach myself in real time to recognize something that I was missing and to ask for it in a better way. But it was too late, too clunky for that moment to be redeemed (thankfully, I got a second chance). Still, it was a good measure of progress and the work still to be done by me.

The tool that first helped me see myself in such motion was called the “ladder of inference” by way of Chris Argyris. I have my own update here that I introduce to coaching clients. I’ve labored to catch myself falling into my closed state so that I can check it and see if my automatic, sure-fire draw on prior experience is really necessary. I am proud to say that I’ve become moderately better over time at recognizing the false positives of danger warnings. I still worry whether others experience me as curious when it matters most.

The Best of Not Knowing

In recent years, I’ve experimented with a new tactic (however unsuccessfully deployed in the situation noted earlier). To start, I’ve given myself what perhaps is an unwarranted break:  To no longer equate curiosity with warmth or friendliness (not that I am against either!). I try to take advantage of my basic, if fallible, ability to catch myself becoming certain and declare internally in the strongest possible way: “There’s so much you don’t yet know about what’s going on.” Not much new here, other than the goal I take on: a state of knowing that knows it doesn’t know. A state that includes not knowing. It gives me a better place to act from, a different readiness that makes something else possible. I’d like to believe I give off a different vibe: open enough, such that what I want to say can be more easily received and understood.

How? My states of not knowing become what I call meta-emotions. When I get to meta-emotions (emotions about emotions), other negative emotions–such as the sadness, anger, or disappointment that came from “knowing”–dissipate in my not knowing. Here’s a tour of the three meta-emotions that help me most in how they capture my not-knowing relationship with what’s going on. 

Surprise. My activated agitation that becomes certain occurs when something happens that I didn’t expect, something that seems somehow harmful or wrong. Getting from agitation to surprise is a minimum necessary place from which to communicate. “I was surprised when you ____. It wasn’t what I expected. It has thrown me off a bit. I realize I don’t fully know what to make of it. I think I need to learn more.” 

Confusion. This is the meta-emotional state I hope to get to when things “don’t make sense.” My Cultivating Leadership colleague, John Sautelle, helped me tease this one out. It is not unlike surprise, but it has a broader application. So many things, especially in organizations, don’t make sense. You or I might not be wrong about that, but that doesn’t make us right. Nor do our attributions of idiocy or incompetence to others help in any way. Again, if I can interrupt the train of certainty just enough and recognize confusion rather than double down on explanations, something better can happen. I might say, even to my leader, “I am trying to put a couple of things together that I confess I find confusing. We said we wanted X, and now I see us doing Y. It doesn’t make sense to me, though I recognize there are things about this I probably can’t see. What am I missing?” 

To some, this might sound confrontational. How it is experienced likely depends on many things, including something about us that seems genuine. Part of genuineness comes from sharing more, not less, of why the issue raised matters—to us and possibly to others. Importance grounds the conversation and makes it compelling to consider. Even if the moment feels uncomfortable.

Doubt. My confidence in something or someone is slipping, and my “ready” state is becoming–and perhaps oozing–discomfort. Here, I tend to be less certain and more brooding–and probably ready to look for the worst. While not exactly certain, I may be stacking the deck in favor of my conclusion. If I can become honest in my doubt, perhaps it can become discussible. “I thought we were making progress on ______. After _____ and _____, which seemed like setbacks, I find myself doubting. Perhaps I have jumped to conclusions or am missing something. What do you see?”

Shifting My State, Meta-Style

All of these meta-emotions are my way of disclosing something about me and my state, hopefully in a way that shows I am taking responsibility for myself and not coming at someone like a dangerous object. I refuse to say “I am curious,” not only because that’s too easy but also because I am still getting there. I need to be more of it, not claim it with words as though you should trust me. My good-enough not knowing becomes an opening for the others to step in. When that not knowing is vindicated by someone else sharing new information back, I become more open still. You might hear me say, “Oh, that didn’t occur to me that ____.” 

My rightness and my wrongness. I am learning to enjoy both together. So I can stay with things that seem difficult, including when my embodied mind senses something is at risk for me. 

More than claiming curiosity in some casual way, I want to be a person who can change my state–really, change the disposition of my mind so that it can take in more and with enough vulnerability that others might offer me something valuable in return. I don’t have to–and don’t want to–agree with anyone in advance. I just have to not know, an embodied suspension of judgment for a time, and see what can happen from there: who can be drawn in safely enough, discomfort and all, for something real.

I am interested not just in what can happen for me, but for us. When we can better live with not knowing and disclose more about how we are experiencing what’s going on in helpful ways, we are keeping it all more human. When we ante in and take the mystery out of how we are experiencing what’s going on, we can take each other more seriously and more lightly. From there, not just “something” is possible. Magic is possible.

Picture note: Soren, considered to be a very curious troll, is one of many such trolls created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo for the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.