Unlocking Leadership: The Power of Curiosity with Doug Hensch

Guest today is Doug Hinch. He's an accomplished author, leadership coach and speaker known for his expertise in fostering curiosity and resilience in leaders. With a background in psychology and organizational development, Doug has dedicated his career to helping individuals and teams unlock their full potential.

His latest book, rethinking how to lead when you don't have all the answers, explores innovative approaches to leadership that emphasize the power of asking questions and embracing uncertainty. Doug's insights have inspired countless leaders to cultivate a culture of curiosity and continuous learning within their organizations. We welcome Doug to the podcast. Well, Doug, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today, my friend? I'm doing well, Keith. Thanks for having me. So good to have you on.

Looking forward to having this conversation. Yeah, it's always fun to talk about leadership, curiosity, humility, wherever we want to go. I'm open. As I mentioned earlier, let's, let's, let's go there. There we go. But before we get started, I'm ask my favorite question of all my guests. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? I hate to be self serving because I wrote, just wrote a book about it, but it's be curious. I love that. Just, just be curious.

I think, Keith, you know, as an executive coach, I have found that it is very rare. Look, there are times when we have to make split second decisions to, you know, if we're a first responder, if you're a war fighter, if you're somebody in the military. Right. Being curious might not be your best bet for just about every other point in time. Activate your humility and be curious. And I, and I think it's a recipe for connection with other people, better decision making.

We can get into all that or we can go someplace else. But that's just, that's my humble opinion about it. I always tell my kids, don't be curious in a disaster though, because that'll get you killed. But yes, I like that. That might be my second best advice I've ever gotten. Right. Run away when it gets, when something looks really odd. Don't work, don't run toward danger. Unless you're the cops.

Yes. So I'm curious, Doug. I always love to ask my guests, kind of tell us about your personal journey, some of the things you've done, places you've gone, jobs you've had, whatever you want to take that direction, but kind of give us a little bit of insight into who Doug is and what made Doug what Doug is. All right, boy, I got, how can I, how can I Make this concise, being squeezed 55 years and meaning into a quick, you know, minute or so.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, where my parents, my wonderful parents still live. And I was an athlete and I guess my dad liked to say student scholar, right? An athlete scholar. So I was lucky enough to get recruited to play football in college. I played at the University of Pennsylvania. And I say that just because I identify as an athlete and I identify as somebody who just loves to learn. I think those are two big things with me.

And so I took a lot of turns career wise after college, got a couple of master's degrees. I've done everything from product management. I coached a year of college football. I coached at the high school level. I was a sales rep for adp, the payroll company. I ran a very small company based out of Philadelphia that focused on positive psychology and so forth, which really was a big turning point for me. And eventually I started my own business.

I've written a couple of books and I'd say, you know, if you ask me what do I do for a living, I say I'm an executive coach. And I do like to write a book every couple of years. So I've written three so far and just trying to get the word out. I love that. What a great story. So what led you and motivated you to write? Rethinking curiosity. Well, as I thought about what makes great leaders, I just started pinging friends, trusted people, coaches, great leaders.

And the three things that kept coming up were humility, curiosity and connection. So the first book, so in my, my, again, my opinion, because I don't really have, I can't say there's a ton of science to support my three, you know, my triangle model. My opinion is that humility is the foundation. Right. Intellectual humility. This idea of I'm not going to take all the credit. I'm going to stay back a little bit and I'm also going to be very aware of my strengths and my weaknesses.

And I'm going to be open to the idea that I might be wrong if Keith and I are disagreeing with something. I'm actually probably going to be more influential if I listen and I'm open to his ideas because there'll be the principle of reciprocity. Right.

So get it. To answer your question, the next leg, I think the next step was to talk about curiosity because I think it is so invaluable for us, not only as leaders, but team members, parents, individuals for our well being and, you know, just trying to do the right Thing and be as effective as possible. So I wanted to get the word out. I wanted to get it down on paper. I'm curious. You use Ted Lasso in your book. And I watched that show. It's hilarious.

His coaching style was interesting because here's a guy who coached a different sport in a different country, all of a sudden now transported to England and coaching an entirely different sport. And I remember the first thing, it's like, what are we coaching again? Kind of a thing. So why did you use him as your. One of your models or one of your examples of leadership in your book? Well, I think he does. First of all, I agree with you, Keith. He's. It was an unbelievably entertaining show.

And my story with that was a client of mine actually texted me on a weekend. I don't normally interact with my clients. They're mostly for profit and nonprofit business leaders. Right. So they're on there on weekend time just like I am. But I got one in the middle of the weekend and said, hey, are you watching Ted Lasso? And I said, I have no idea what that is. And he said, it's on Apple tv. And I said, I don't have it. And that was my I'm not going to watch it comment.

And he said, I'll pay for it. I really want you to watch it. And I thought that's a pretty strong statement. And I went in, I turned it on, turned on the seven day trial, and I got 15 minutes into the first episode, Keith and I hit pause and I said, Tammy to my wife, I was like, you have got to watch this. And we were just laughing and laughing and at the same time we were crying. Right. Because there are episodes that just bring out your humanity.

And his leadership lessons, by the way, let's also be honest, this could never happen. An American football coach could not coach a Premier League soccer team. It would be cool to watch, but it'd be a huge risk. But the lessons that he teaches are absolutely phenomenal. And it gets you thinking. Whether or not it's true or could happen, I think is irrelevant. It forces you to think a little bit about the way you lead and why, why not ask the team, hey, this, is this working?

If so, what do we do? What do you think we should do? And I. And, and, and slowing down the judgment. Right. I think that's a big, that's a big theme in the show as well. You know, I have a little bit different view on it. It's. I don't think we can not Be judgmental. We are. We're. We're judging beings. That's what our brains do. It's what we do with the judgment. Do we hold it or do we act on it? We put it aside and try to be curious.

And I think that's just a little bit more realistic in my mind. What I could either show from my perspective or what kind of resonated with me was when you put people in a position to fail and you hope they fail and you hire them to fail. I've been there before, maybe not intentionally, but people put you in situations where you can't succeed and don't expect you to succeed. And I remember that was the motivation to me when I was in school was, well, you'll never be able to do this.

And my response back was, watch me. So I kind of resonated with Ted going, you brought me in here to really fail at this, but I'm going to show you that I don't intend on failing because there's something inside of me that says, we're going to do everything possible not to fail. And he did it with kindness, right? Exactly. It wasn't. It wasn't revenge, it wasn't vengeance, it wasn't anger. I mean, remember there's the episode where Rebecca comes clean to him and says, I hired you to fail.

And what does he do? He gives her a hug and says, I forgive you. I mean that. I get goosebumps even just thinking about it. I wish I could. If that ever happens to me, I hope that I act and react in a similar fashion. It was inspiring. It was inspired. So tell me why in your book and you talk about this idea of curiosity, why is that such, I would say, such a superpower for leaders? So I think there's a number of reasons. Keith, I'll start with.

I think parenting, marriage, and leadership are three of the most difficult things people will ever do.

Okay, so let's talk about leadership. And those other things are partially leader. Have leadership in them as well. Right. Why is it a superpower? Because I for. And I work with a lot of consulting firms. I work with a lot of high tech. So we're dealing with things where the leaders have, in some cases, not a lot of knowledge about how the end product is developed, what the customers are thinking. They're very far from the front lines, per se.

And to have a command and control approach, I think just doesn't work, particularly when you have to make very difficult decisions and when you have complex problems, it's when you have to Bring people in and then you've got, your brain is much, much bigger. You know, I like to say, and I think it's curiosity and creating safety by, you know, by being intellectually humble. They bring other people in and then it's.

It may not be easier to make a decision, but I think you're more likely to make effective decisions and be better at solving complex problems. Can you share an example where curiosity led to significant breakthrough in leadership context? Maybe somebody you coach or work with? Well, I can think of the first one that popped into my mind. Well, first of all, I'll answer this two ways, if you don't mind, Keith. The first is there are almost too many examples to think of with coaching.

When I am coaching somebody and it is earlier in our relationship and I say something like, well, what if you got curious with Keith, what if you got curious with Mary and you just, you see the head tilt. But, huh. Because we're almost always thinking of what am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do right now? One of the examples that's one of my favorites around being curious was Catherine Graham, who ran the Washington Post.

And you know, she was, for better or worse, she was a homemaker, she was parenting a number of kids when her husband unfortunately and tragically committed suicide. And she was then elevated to run the Washington Post in the early 60s. What did she do? She called in experts and she asked questions and she said, what do you think I should do? One of her, by the way, one of her, one of the people advising her was Warren Buffett. Right.

What a, what a great decision on character and intelligence and curiosity to bring in. And, and then she had this unbelievably successful run for 40 something years where she actually outshone just about every other CEO in the Fortune 500. When you look at stock performance and. Financial performance overall, when you think about this idea of curiosity, what are some practical steps leaders can take to foster that culture in their organization?

Because it's easy to talk about it and you gave a great example. But if I wanted to turn my culture to that, what are some things I should be doing? I know I have to lead by example, but how can I encourage those around me to also seek that sense of curiosity? Yeah. So I'm going to give you a really specific example. I think this is for a much larger discussion.

But one of the most simple things, I was just with a client last week where the power of this, of something called looping, I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's basically paraphrasing another human being. And what I have found is we're all challenged with listening. We've got phones, watches buzzing, we've got, hopefully I've got all my no notifications coming up on my screen. You may, I don't know, it's really difficult to listen. Right.

And if you, if my goal is to ask a question is to, to paraphrase you and really help you understand. If my goal is to make sure you feel heard and understood, then I'm going to ask you a question and then I'm going to do my best to summarize what you just said. And when that is my goal, my brain is not going off in a million directions. What should I say? What should I, what should my follow up question be? Where do we go from here? What's he really thinking?

I say that and then you give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Because what I do is I summarize and I go, keith, did I get that right? And if we're in a conflict, what I've noticed is I don't get punished for it for being, for being wrong. Right. I get points for trying. Right. So my point is, I think the first thing is, yes, set the best example and make it a part of every meeting to make sure you're asking questions, you're making people feel safe.

And it's that psychological safety where people don't get punished for giving answers that might be contrary to where the team is trying to go. The organization, it was just an idea and you know, they're sharing their thoughts. So being a person, this is true confession. No one's actually listening to me say this, but in my organization I was very task driven, very results driven. How do you do, how do you keep that results drivenness, but still have time for curiosity.

Because I know if the guy who's listening is going, I don't have time to sit there and get people's feelings. I just want to get things done. So how do you, how do you balance those two things out? Because you want to make sure you're, you're pouring into people emotional intelligence. That whole idea of being in tune with people's emotions, but you're also going, but the end of the day it comes down to productivity.

How do I make sure I don't sacrifice productivity and get caught up in this whole curiosity thing? Yeah, it's a great question. And there's a couple of quick points. You know, first, if you're not comfortable asking about emotions, how do you feel that's not necessarily what coaching or curiosity is. One of the sayings that I picked up and a lot of coaches use this is slow down to speed up. If I am constantly transmitting, telling people what to do, command and control, right?

You go here, you do this. Well then that means I'm not actually getting any feedback from the environment or, or I'm getting less feedback in terms of, is what I'm saying effective? Is this the way they would do it? When I'm curious and let's say Keith is the leader, Doug is, Doug works for Keith, reports to Keith. And if you ask me, hey Doug, I need you to do X. I don't really want to tell you how to do it.

I'd like you to tell me when you think you could get it done, how you go about it, what resources you think you might need and how we can do it a little bit better than we did the last time. Now I'm feeling all a sense of autonomy. I'm feeling a sense of connection with you. You've also set me up for us to potentially have check ins so that I can check my level of competence, Competence so that I know that where I'm going is the right way.

And I think it's that sense of autonomy too that makes me feel like, wow, I have a role here, I have a voice in this organization. And then finally, look, there are times when you make the decision and you do tell people what to do. What I'm saying is when you're a little bit further from the front lines and from the issue, the people who are doing this every day probably have just as good, if not better ideas than you do about how to go about things.

What are some common challenges you find in trying to implement this in an organization, this idea of curiosity? Well, I, I think micromanaging is really tough habit to kick, right people, we all want that sense of control to some extent. And, and let's just say if you were a salesperson in an organization just for an example, and then you move to a senior sales and a senior senior salesperson, then your sales supervisor, manager, director, vice president, now you're running the show.

Well, you were successful, right? In many cases you're promoted because of your success in the position and not always because of your potential to lead. And then that breeds, I think, a sense of micromanagement where, hey, this is the way I did it, this is the way I'd like to see everybody else do it. And this is just where some coaching and feedback come in.

To help people get some self awareness or as I like to say, put the mirror up so they realize that there may not necessarily be as effective as they thought they might be. I'm curious as I look at what you've written here, your chapter two, chapter one talks about uncertain times.

To me, it seems like curiosity in uncertain times can be a really strong force, but it's also really scary because in certain times, what do you want more than anything else? You want certainty. You want to know where you're going. But I could see how curiosity could lead you to get a much deeper understanding of where you're going. So kind of talk to me about the balance of curiosity, especially in uncertain times.

Yeah. This is again, a great and very timely question because I noticed in myself in the last probably three weeks or so, my wife and I had a great conversation about this, right? We've got, you know, a war in the Middle east, for all intents and purposes. We've got what's going on in Ukraine with Russia. We've got a very divisive election going on. Hurricane, is it Helene? I think if I'm pronouncing it correctly, I mean, just absolutely devastating things, right?

We are bombarded with absolute negativity, right? And some of the leaders in our society are also promoting cynicism. And I just finished reading Jamil Zaki's most recent book. It's called Hope for Cynics. I heard him on a podcast. He also wrote another book called the War for Kindness, which is about empathy. And I won't go into that. But the Hope for Cynics, really, it just spoke to me.

I ordered download my Kindle immediately dropped the other book I was reading because I was like, I need this right now. Because. And. And one of the things that I learned was the difference in his opinion, right, between cynicism and hopeful skepticism. So cynicism is. I've kind of lost faith in government leaders, scientists, you know, the Department of Education, you name it. Wherever, you know, wherever we're talking about. I just, I don't think it.

And that just breeds us to be more likely to fall into traps about all types of things that aren't true, right? Because conspiracy theories, in fact. In fact, the data shows that cynicism leads you to be more likely and you also shut other people off. So what I think is to just have a mindset, Keith, to say, yeah, I don't want to go all hopeful because that's. That's equally as dangerous, right? Because then you're not seeing risks and issues and dealing with them.

But to have a hopeful skepticism say, I think things can work out and I'm going to look for answers and I'm going to look for an answer that might be a way I can go to get out of this mess. I know it's a very. I'm giving you super long winded answers. I hope they're. No, these are super long winded, you know, questions. Really. They're big questions. They're big questions. Yeah. I'm curious, as you wrote this book, how did it change or impact your leadership style and skills?

I think what it does is it, I'll give you one example. What I realize happens when I do that is that neither one of us wins. The marriage loses. Right. So I am trying to do a much better job of wreck that self awareness of recognizing maybe when I'm getting heated, right. So my, my, I'm getting hijacked in a sense. And what I try to do is bring that pause, that mindfulness to what I'm doing to go, what, what am I missing right now? What, what, what am, how am I coming across this other person?

How are they feeling? You know, bring, bring empathy to it. And I think, I think that's one of the most important things we can do is take the attention off of how we feel it's unfair to us or how angry we are and go, how is this person feeling? What's, what's keeping them up at night? At night? What might be causing them to be behaving so in with so much anger? Is it fear? And if it's fear, then I can go, oh, let me help, you know, take care of you.

Whenever you write a book, there are always surprises that come out from your book. What was the biggest surprise you came, came across to you as you wrote this book? You know, it shouldn't have been a surprise. I was, I reached out to eight or nine, I don't remember what the number was, leaders, and said, hey, I'd like to interview this because I've worked with you. There are people that I've either coached or worked with in a client consulting relationship.

And I said, hey, I'd like to just get a half hour, 45 minutes with you and then I'll follow up. And I just love to make you a part of the book. And there was a point in time, Keith, where I stopped and I said, I can't believe how blessed I am to have the opportunity to have these wonderful people in my life.

They were so humble and they talked about instances where they were lacking curiosity and they realized afterwards that if they had just been curious, asked a question or two, they could have cut to the chase and been able to do a much better job and lower their own anger. So for me, it was really about, wow, I can't believe how lucky I am to work with such great people. That's cool. There are many different styles of leadership in your research.

Is there a particular leadership style that seems to be more open to being curious versus another leadership style? I think the easy answer is servant leadership. It's putting others ahead of yourself and thinking more about what they need. And I don't know how you can be a servant leader without being curious. Otherwise it's just command and control in disguise. Because how can I know what other people really want? What do they want to get out of their career?

How do they think we should proceed if I'm not asking questions, if not listening, if I'm not paraphrasing? I love that. So give me an example of a leader who successfully implemented the principles in your book. You might have to edit this part while I think a little bit. That's a good question. I should, I should be able to rattle that off. I've used one a bunch of times and I was thinking about another one.

You know, somebody that I coached, Sumit Sarbarwal is, is a high tech entrepreneur, CEO, and he has been able to actually bring curiosity into everything that he does. And he wrote me a really nice note one day when we were going back and forth about a certain aspect of curiosity. And what he said was, Doug, I believe so strongly, not just in asking questions, but in the mindset of I want to be a curious person. I want to constantly learn from other people.

I want to know how they're feeling, I want to know what's going through their heads and how I can be a better leader. He said that he actually interviews for and asks people questions, wants to know what questions they're going to ask. And for him, it is a characteristic or a trait or competency that he hires for. And that was inspiring to me.

So knowing that your book is going to totally transform leadership, as people are becoming more and more curious, I'm curious, how do you see this impacting leadership 10 years down the road? I hope it's still relevant 10 years down the road. You know, if enough people buy it. One of the things I did Keith too, with these. So by the way, I want to, I'd like to write three books on leadership, right? It's humility, curiosity, and then the next one will potentially be connection. Right.

My goal, the first one was 90 pages. This one's 100 pages. They're small and they're my, my hope is that they're, they're almost like a workbook for a leader to go and say, you know, I'm not feeling very curious or I'm not, I'm feeling like ego's getting in the way. Let me go back to that chapter that gave me all those tips. You know, I've got one of the chapters, if you remember, has 25 tips for being more curious. Right. How do I ask more open ended questions?

How do I go into a meeting more curious as opposed to projecting? So I hope that it, that there are people 10 years from now where it's dog eared, there's notes in it highlighted, it's torn up, but it's like it's in their bag that they keep it with them and it's something that they refer to often. So you kind of, you kind of alluded to this earlier in our conversation. These are very difficult and uncertain times.

If you had a word of advice for leaders trying to navigate this uncertainty, what advice would you have for leaders? Assume the best of other people. You know, maybe it's going back to this concept of a hopeful skepticism. We shouldn't necessarily believe every sales rep that comes in and tells us this software is going to make our organization, you know, an extra million dollars of profit every year. At the same time, I want to learn from this person.

I want to be hopeful that we have an opportunity to turn things around. And I think that taking care of my own mental health and being a little bit curious about myself because these are such difficult times, it's actually kind of easy. I think this is one of the reasons that the coaching business is thriving right now is I've got a number of clients that will say, I'll say to them, hey, you know, I'm not sure that I'm doing a lot of coaching right now, right.

Asking you these deep questions that get you really thinking, rethinking your position. And they say, doug, I just need to talk to somebody. I just need to talk. And without being judged and with someone who I know has no agenda and on my team or my organization. And so it's just being able to listen and like I said, paraphrase or loop back to them so they hear themselves. That's awesome. So I'd love to ask my guest this question. What do you want your legacy to.

Be Somebody who made the World a little bit better place and had good intentions. And I guess I'll throw, throw on top of that was a good father, good husband, and just a good member of society. That made us in some ways a little bit closer to each other so that we can be more effective because again, going back to some of the issues we're facing, we're so divided right now, I'm not sure we can tackle them. Yeah, that's very, very, very true. That's.

As we wrap this up and this has been a phenomenal, curious conversation, what are some key tips you would have for aspiring leaders about being curious? I think the easiest one is ask more questions, be aware of the amount that you're telling versus asking. Right. And I'm not sure there's a ratio that that's best there for leaders. Just be aware of asking versus telling. And then when it comes to asking effective questions, I mean, one of the simplest things to do is two quick tips.

One is ask open ended questions as much as you can because the goal is to get other people talking and then within that is be very careful of asking, well, hey, Keith, why did you do that? Why did you hire this person? Because why makes people defensive. And it's really easy, particularly when we're hijacked to ask why questions. Turn it into a how, hey, how was the decision made to hire Bob? Right. What was the process?

What is our process for hiring people as opposed to why did we hire this knucklehead? Right, exactly. Is there anything I haven't asked you that I should have asked you? I think we covered the gamut. I mean, I could tell you read the book. Thank you very much. And you knew what was going on, what was going through my head. I think we covered the big things. My hope is that we're all just a little bit more curious with each other in these difficult times.

Particularly if where you stand on certain issues and political people is I hope that we are curious with each other in the personal sense and that we don't see each other as us and them. They're just somebody who's making a choice to vote for somebody else or think differently about guns. That's not the whole person. Right. The whole person is much more complex and they have a story to tell. So let's listen to that, let's get closer and let's.

Just as I said earlier, you can't be non judgmental. At least that's my opinion. But we can withhold that judgment and we can have conversations and we can strive to understand. Because in my walk through this life is understanding does not equal agreement. Understanding can lead to agreement and problem solving. Yeah, that's profound and it's really important, especially in this season of our life. Where can people find the book?

Rethinking curiosity, how to lead when you don't have all the answers. Wherever you buy your books, we've got it out there. There's the paperback as well as the ebook if you're a Kindle person like me. So it's out there. It should be easy to find. I think it's fairly priced and it's a quick read. So who's going to do the audible book for you since James Earl Jones? Logan with us. Who's going to read your voice? Breaking my heart. Oh my gosh. I'm a huge Star wars fan.

I'm a huge James Earl Jones fan. How about you? Would you like to narrate? I don't know if my voice is as good as James Earl Jones, but. That'S a tough one to follow up on. It is where can they connect with you on social media if they want to learn more about you and have you come by and come alongside and coach them? Best place to find me is LinkedIn and I've also got a website, drhleadership.com and I think those are the best places.

Well, Doug, thanks so much for taking the time to add in great content to the show and blessings on your book. And we hope that people will rethink curiosity and learn to ask more questions and be engaged in what's going on around us. Because as we seek to have a greater understanding of each other, I think we have less division, we find more commonality as we realize that we're not really all that different.

We may have different opinions, but we really all kind of, I think kind of want the same things in life. That is to be successful, to have a strong family and to live in peace. Kind of what I think most of us want. I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much, Keith.