Curious Enough to Connect
“Stay curious a little bit longer. Rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly.” — Michael Bungay Stanier, author of “The Coaching Habit”
We healthcare professionals are expert answer-givers. We diagnose, explain, recommend, and fix. People depend on us for that. But sometimes our well-practiced instinct to have the answer follows us into conversations where an answer isn’t necessarily what is needed. A colleague shares a struggle and, almost before they finish, we are preparing our response. What if one of the most powerful ways we could support each other wasn’t knowing what to say, but being curious enough to keep asking?
I recognize the “answer-giver” in myself. Someone tells me about a challenge and my mind immediately goes to work: Here’s what I think is happening. Here’s what you might try. Here’s what I would do. It comes from a genuine desire to help. Yet I’ve increasingly noticed that when I resist that impulse and ask another question instead, something different happens. The conversation slows down. I hear things I might otherwise have missed. And the person in front of me becomes less of a problem to help solve and more of a person to know.
Michael Bungay Stanier calls this being “more coach-like.” In The Coaching Habit (which has sold more than one million copies), he offers seven simple questions, including “What’s on your mind?”, “What’s the real challenge here for you?”, “How can I help?” and perhaps his most useful question: “And what else?” These questions help quiet what he calls our “Advice Monster”, our reflexive belief that our greatest contribution is knowing the answer. Curiosity shifts the center of the conversation from what I know to what you are experiencing. And that shift does more than improve communication. It creates connection.
Think about what a genuinely curious question communicates: You are interesting to me. Your experience matters. I don’t yet fully understand you, and I want to. Perhaps that is why “And what else?” can be so powerful. When asked sincerely, and followed by enough silence to allow an answer, it says: I’m still here. There’s room for more. The first answer may describe the problem; the next may reveal the person. This is particularly important between peers, where our temptation may be to compare experiences or quickly offer what worked for us. Sometimes the greater gift is simply creating space for our colleague to share, or even discover, what is true for them.
This week, notice what happens when a colleague or PeerRxMed partner shares something that matters to them. Feel any urge to advise, reassure, fix, or tell your own story, and instead experiment with waiting. Ask one more question. What else? Tell me more. What’s that been like for you? Then listen. Perhaps being more coach-like ultimately isn’t about asking better questions. It’s about what those questions communicate: You matter enough for me to want to understand.