228: Fostering Genuine Curiosity and Building Trust at Work with Julie Pham

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:02]:

Julie, you’re so welcome to the half here at work podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself to listeners a little bit about your career history and how you got to doing what you’re doing today?

Julie Pham [00:00:12]:

Yes. I’m Julie Pham. I founded and head a company called Curiosity Base where we help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours. And I’m based in Seattle.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:25]:

I love that. And what got you into this? Like, was there something that really sparked you into into doing what you’re doing?

Julie Pham [00:00:35]:

So, Ifa, I gotta tell you, I didn’t I wasn’t always curious in the way that I think about curiosity now. So I used to think about curiosity in terms of just outward curiosity accumulating knowledge, and now I think actually a lot about how curiosity has to do about relationship building and about practicing inward curiosity. And so in terms of what sparked it was it was actually my community building. So I have a lot of, background in volunteering and community building, community organizing. And and what I realized is when you bring together people from really diverse backgrounds, there’s gonna be friction that emerges. And and you have to build trust, especially if you want to do things when people aren’t actually getting paid to do them. And and what really helps with that is relationship building, self awareness, clear communication, all those I think of as the the elements of of practicing curiosity. And I saw in one particular, I’ll share a story here.

Julie Pham [00:01:33]:

I remember I ran this program where it was a cross sector collaboration program, and there were some people who really struggled and some people who really thrived. And the people who are really struggling were those who are so focused on getting a particular outcome and following a particular plan. And the particular people who are really thriving were those who were just, oh my gosh. Look at what we’re learning. I had no idea. We created something out of nothing. And what I saw is on these teams, because we have these project teams, if we had a critical mass of those who were and then I identified, oh, this is curiosity. You know? And and if we had on any team, if we had a critical mass of those who are who are practicing that curiosity, it could uplift the morale of a team.

Julie Pham [00:02:15]:

And the inverse is true as well. If we’ve had a critical mass of those who are so focused on just achieving the outcomes, they could actually take down the morale of a team because, Aoife, there are a lot of bystanders. Now there are a lot of people who are just, like, waiting to see who talks the most, what’s the dynamic. And so that’s that was my kind of moment. Oh, it’s about curiosity and how to and if we can do this in with volunteers, imagine what we could do with people who are paid to work together. So that’s that’s what got me to start my company.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:48]:

I love that. I suppose taking a step back from this and I think I know the answers to this already, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. But do you think that curiosity is something that we can learn or that we just naturally have this innate curiosity within us?

Julie Pham [00:03:07]:

I think we are all curious. Okay. I think we all have it, and I think it can be I think it can be fostered and nurtured and encouraged. Yeah. So and practiced. So not so much, learned, but definitely practice. And so because I’d mentioned, I think, of curiosity as a practice, a lot of people talk about curiosity like it’s a trait. You either have it or you don’t.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:30]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:03:31]:

And and, you know, Eva, what usually they need to be more curious. And you know what that means? I’m curious and they’re Yeah. Right? Like, there’s that Yeah. Yeah. There’s that kind

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:41]:

of person.

Julie Pham [00:03:41]:

Yeah. Alright. But I actually think we’re all curious, and it’s actually about how do we encourage it because, I mean, one of my favorites, stats to to cite is 70% of of people face barriers asking questions at work. 70%. And there and, actually, in my work, I find a lots of different reasons for that. And yet so many leaders, workplace organizational leaders talk about we need to have curiosity. And yet why is it that people don’t feel safe asking questions. They actually people report not feeling curious on a regular basis.

Julie Pham [00:04:18]:

So I actually think it is something that that we need to nurture and foster.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:23]:

Yeah. So if I’m kind of reading between the lines here a little bit, curiosity should foster innovation, but maybe people are so intent on following the plan that’s been laid out that there’s little room for curiosity and they’re so hung up maybe on following the strict plan that’s been set out that they they maybe feel frustrated or they’re they’re kind of locking themselves because they’re not looking for solutions or they’re not they’re not kind of going into it with a curious mind. They’re so focused on, but this is the plan that we agreed to. This is the plan that I need to execute on.

Julie Pham [00:05:06]:

Mhmm. And and, also, this is the plan that worked before.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:09]:

Ah, yeah. Of course.

Julie Pham [00:05:10]:

And I also think that again. Yeah. Right? And I also think that now I mean, I find a lot of perfectionism. And I think that’s actually a symptom of our polarized world too because they’re I I hear people feeling their needs right or wrong. There needs to be a right answer or wrong answer. There’s, and things that aren’t true must be lies. And and actually, there’s so much in between. Mhmm.

Julie Pham [00:05:37]:

And and I think actually for for us to really truly embrace curiosity, we have to also allow for multiple truths can coexist. And and a lot of this is actually just about perspective taking, which I think is quite hard. I remember actually finishing up a session and at the end, this woman asked she said, Julie, you’ve taught us how to ask questions. But what I really wanna know is how to answer questions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:06]:

Oh, that’s deep, isn’t it?

Julie Pham [00:06:08]:

Yes. Right. Because it’s like and that I think really speaks to you. There’s such a need to have the right answer that people are can actually if they ask questions, they’re afraid of being seen as, well, I don’t you don’t know the answer or or maybe being passive or being intentionally indecisive or looking like I I wasn’t listening. There’s there are there’s a lot of fears around saying I don’t know.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:38]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So people are very reluctant then not just to ask questions, but when questions are asked, how to give what they perceive as the right answer because there has to be just one right answer. And interestingly, a recent conversation that I had on the podcast, we talked about the 9 different personality types according to the Enneagram. And number 1 is the perfectionist, and the perfectionist believes inherently that there is one way to do things. There is the one right way, and it’s very hard for them to accept that that there could be alternative perspectives or there’s not just one right way or they don’t have to have everything right and everything perfect.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:22]:

So it sounds like this sort of ties in with that concept as well.

Julie Pham [00:07:27]:

Yes. And I mentioned that I think of curiosity as a practice, and that practice actually has I actually liken it to meditation. It looks easy, but it’s really hard. It’s really hard to steal our minds. And so we kind of take it I think we can actually take it for granted. We talk it and I I think a lot of people focus on why we should be curious, and yet I think that’s pretty especially for people in our space, it’s pretty obvious why we should be curious. I think we should actually focus more on the how. And so there are these three elements to practicing curiosity.

Julie Pham [00:07:56]:

The first is self awareness, the second is relationship building, and the third is clear communication. And so to to elaborate a bit more of that first part self awareness, that’s how do I be curious about myself? How do I practice inward curiosity? How do I ask myself questions and, oh, what am I actually feeling about this and why? What’s that based on? That second one relationship building is how do I be curious about other people? So, Aoife, how do I ask you questions to try to understand where what you’re where you’re coming from, and then I’ll react to your stories? And then also, how do I share myself with you so that you can ask me questions?

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:31]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:08:31]:

And that is reciprocity and that back and forth because I think a lot of people think of curiosity to this outward. And, Aoife, I’ll ask you all the questions, but not share anything about me. Right? But then we don’t have the relationship building.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:44]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:08:46]:

And then that third part is clear communication. So this is how do I listen to understand? How do I ask questions when I don’t understand? And then how do I also share specific examples and stories from my life? Because I think because people are afraid of having the wrong answer, we speak in a lot of generic terms. And we’re afraid to be specific and concrete and share specific stories from our lives. And when people say, do you want me to talk about my family? I’m like, no. It’s not. You don’t have to talk about your family or your past traumas. It could just be work as personal too. How do we share specific stories about that time we messed up or that bad manager we had or the first time we got maybe a performance review that wasn’t favorable.

Julie Pham [00:09:31]:

So how do we be vulnerable there?

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:33]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I love this.

Julie Pham [00:09:34]:

So in nurturing each of those, if we can think about them as different elements, then it doesn’t feel so be curious. Yeah. Like, well, actually, the part I need to work on, I’m actually pretty good at the relationship building, but maybe I need to make more time for self reflection.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:48]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I really like because you’re so right in saying that when we’re told that we’re not curious or when we are told that we are curious or when we talk about curiosity, generally speaking, it’s always focused on the outward, being curious about the world. Like, I feel like I’m naturally curious about the world in which we live in. I love exploring. I love traveling. But very rarely do we talk about the curiosity of and or at least I haven’t heard it phrased in this way, that going inward and raising your self awareness is about being curious about the impact about your own emotions, your own feelings, your own behaviors.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:31]:

Like, why what’s going on there, and how do I have that introspection? And, again, there is a previous podcast episode about self awareness if people want to go back and and learn a little bit more about that. But I love that this is a concept of curiosity and being curious about what’s going on for yourself. And, again, multiple times on the podcast, we’ve talked about how it’s so important as leaders. We tend to focus on those leadership skills. But actually, one of the best skills that you can get is personal leadership, how to understand and manage yourself because that’s that’s at the core of how you show up in the world. So I absolutely I love that. Any advice if someone wants to get more curious on going inward to understand more about themselves? What are you seeing out there?

Julie Pham [00:11:23]:

I think it can be helpful to think about it and, take common common concepts and then to go deep on them. So one of the concepts one of the I’m really interested in respect. And so let’s take and we say we use the word respect all the time. Be respectful. We want a respectful culture. And, yeah, what does that actually mean? What does that word actually mean? Because I actually think we we can agree on how respect feels to feel seen, heard, appreciated. What we disagree about is what does it look like? Aoife, do you want to be cc’d on all emails or not? Right? Some people are just no. Send me everything.

Julie Pham [00:12:02]:

I feel excluded if if you don’t. And others are just, why are you sending me all this stuff? Only send me an email if you need me to do something or if there’s there’s a reason. And so the going back to how that links to curiosity, though, is so to curiosity, though, is so we take a concept like respect, and then I can going through those three elements. 1st one, self awareness. How do I want respect? What’s that based on? And then the second element, relationship building. If how do you want respect? Mom, well, what’s that based on? What are the stories around that? And then and if I’m gonna tell you how I want respect, and you will ask me questions. And then back and forth, we’ll actually have new ideas just from sharing that. And then that third part, the clear communication is being specific with our stories.

Julie Pham [00:12:49]:

So I’ll give you an example. A lot of times people say, well, punctuality is respectful. Why is it respectful? Because it’s important to do that. Well, why is it important? Because it’s respectful. Right? And and I’ll share you with you a specific story. Growing up, my mom was always like picking me up from school. So the school staff had to wait with me, and I felt so much anxiety waiting for her. And every time I saw a car coming through the parking lot, is that her? And I still carry that to to this day.

Julie Pham [00:13:19]:

Mhmm. You know? And so and so we can also have that’s all that story also shows how we can have positive and negative examples.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:25]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:13:26]:

Right. Like, if someone else could have that’s my story. And if I tell that to you, you will remember Julie feels anxiety around time. And if someone else could have that exact same experience and be like, what’s the problem? Like, time is flexible. Right? We can have the same experience in different reactions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:46]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:13:47]:

So that’s why it’s so important to not just share the story, but share how it impacted us. And so in any case, this is a long winded way of saying, when I when we say practicing curiosity, we can actually take concepts like respect. Another one that we do a lot is what does success mean to you?

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:06]:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:14:07]:

Yeah. What’s that based on? Who are the who are the models in my life? What does it mean to someone else? And because how often in workplaces are we talking about goal setting? And some people are talking about it in terms of tangible measurable goals and other people are talking about in terms of feelings. They’re literally talking past each other and that’s because we haven’t we haven’t slowed down and said, oh, well, we need both what success looks like and what it feels like and we’re just seeing it differently. How you’re talking about it in terms of tangible, and I’m talking about in terms of feeling. Maybe I should try tangible and you should try feelings and we can both learn.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:47]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think the the success thing in particular is so relatable because I think the society that we’ve grown up in, success is a promotion, a nice job title, a nice car, a big house, a family, a partner. All of these things are deemed as, oh, you’ve had success by doing that. But I think by flipping it because and I don’t know. Do you have stats around this? But do most people think about it, or do they think about how they want to feel about success? I would argue that there’s a limited number of people who who want to understand what success feels like, but I think it’s important to understand what it feels like.

Julie Pham [00:15:29]:

So when I so, actually, I’m gonna share the story of how I got to this, and then I’ll share what I see with with my clients. So because my moment was a friend. This is about maybe 5 years ago now, 4 years ago. She asked, What does success look like to you? And I really struggled, even though I’ve been asked that question numerous times and even though I’ve asked that question of other people. And I don’t and that time when she asked me, I was really struggling. This is before I started my business. And and I realized, it’s why do we always talk about what does success look like? Why don’t we ask what does success feel like?

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:03]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:16:04]:

And how would we answer that differently? Because then I realized, oh, success feels like for me freedom.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:11]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:16:12]:

And and then to also follow this up with what do we need to do and what do we need to stop doing? Because I think oftentimes this we’re constantly thinking about the to do’s. I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. And we don’t think about the what I call the to don’ts. What do we need to stop doing?

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:26]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:16:27]:

And so for me to feel freedom, what I needed to stop doing was asking permission. Mhmm. Yeah. And that’s and that’s when I realized I had to go from being an employee to an employer. And so now, Aoife, I’m gonna share what I hear from my clients because it’s actually surprising. So I haven’t just I’ll usually just do hand polls or polling. I don’t track. Right? Because we’ll take them through this exercise of what a success look like for you personally.

Julie Pham [00:16:58]:

And then and, and then some people will say at work. It’s really important here as we were talking about earlier, the personal, we have to start with the personal. And if people can’t define success in their own personal lives, how are they gonna do it on the team? So starting with that first. And so then I’ll I’ll take them through what does success look like to you, and then what does success feel like to you, and then compare. And then I’ll ask, raise your hand if it was easier for you to think about what it looks like and what it feels like. And it’s always so interesting to see there is a mix. And then people around in the room can see, like, what you thought it was easier to do feels. You thought it was easier to do.

Julie Pham [00:17:39]:

Look, I mean, I’ve been in organizations where it would be 75% feels.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:44]:

Wow. Okay.

Julie Pham [00:17:45]:

And I’ve been in organization where it’s just, like, 5050 or the flipped. Right? And then I’ll even ask, was it easier when you think about your personal life versus you on the team? Yeah. Because that and so in a lot of my work, Ashley, is around helping people analyze for themselves, practice that inward curiosity. What all of this is dynamic. It depends on the context. So what are what’s happening here? Maybe I feel like I have more control over my life, my personal life versus my work life or vice versa. And and, so in any case, that’s when we practice curiosity, we can take something as so something we take for granted, like the idea of success or the idea of respect and really talk about it in that way. We actually get, a lot of people think my work is teaching them how to be respectful.

Julie Pham [00:18:39]:

And I always have to say, no, I’m not teaching you how to be respectful. You already know how to be respectful. I actually wanna guide you on how to be curious about respect. And that, to them, really opens them up because, I mean, Aoife, people think, here’s here’s the trainer gonna teach us how to be respectful. But I have to dispel that. And then it really you can see their bodies relax. And it’s like, oh, you think I’m respectful already? Oh, we’re just gonna talk about it looks different for each of us.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:13]:

Love that. There’s so much I want to unpack there. This whole idea, I think, of success, first of all, and, like, how to define that. And the looks versus feels, I think I’ve been very much a looks person. Mhmm. And for anyone who’s listening today, maybe ask yourself, try and see what what does that look like for you and what does it feel like and which one was harder. For me, the feels, I think, is harder. But then I kinda think that maybe the feels is what it should be.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:50]:

And I always think it’s a journey and we shouldn’t be deferring, let’s say, happiness, like our happiness at work. We shouldn’t be striving and striving. We should feel challenged but we shouldn’t be striving and striving and saying I’m gonna be happy when this project is over or when I get the promotion or when I move teams or whatever it might be. It shouldn’t be about that. It should be about how you feel along the journey. And it’s okay to feel challenged, but you should still be feeling like you’re thriving as opposed to surviving or striving, you know, that you’re you’re not quite getting there. I love the idea of defining personal success. And, Oprah has this famous clip where she’s talking to Trevor Noah, and she’s, Trevor asks her, what does like, what’s getting in the way? Like, why can’t people get what they want? And she said, people can’t get what they want because they don’t know what they want.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:50]:

Mhmm. And so, again, an invitation for people to be curious about what is it that I really want. I think our default mode is to look at what other people have or what other people are doing and say, I want that or I want to do that, as opposed to thinking internally, how do I want to feel about my life? How do I want my life to look like? Who do I want to be in my life? And then define our success based on this is what I want from my life, and I’ll know that I’m successful when it feels like this or when it looks like this, whatever it might be. Any any thoughts on that? Or are you seeing

Julie Pham [00:21:28]:

Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:29]:

People find it really hard to define what that actually means.

Julie Pham [00:21:32]:

Yeah. And and so I’ve actually talked I’ve I’ve taken this, senior leader as executives through this exercise, and it’s and it’s always fun to see them react with I’ve never asked myself that question for me personally.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:45]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:21:46]:

We talk about it in terms of what are the what are the goals for the org? The other thing is I actually think that both of them are important. So it’s not that success feels like it’s more important than success looks like. It’s more about how finding alignment and then Yeah. Being able to define each of them so that there is because sometimes if people only when once they have to articulate both, they could say, for example, I’ll do personal examples. Someone could say, oh, I wanna be I wanna lose this much weight. I actually have this when I was developing. I I talked about this with a friend. I wanna lose this much weight.

Julie Pham [00:22:17]:

And it’s just like, well, how do you wanna feel? Like, I wanna feel sexy. I wanna feel healthy. It’s like, well, all this dieting is not making you feel great along the way. Right? And and, and so sometimes the the looks like goal can actually clash with the feels like.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:32]:

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:22:34]:

You know? And so it’s about getting them in alignment. And also and so sometimes and so just wait a minute. Is my if I wanna feel this, do I actually need to do the looks like? Do I, for example, I might say I want to I I want to feel fun and I and I think, oh, I need to look successful. It’s like running a marathon. But if I think running is boring, then maybe I could do some one of those obstacle races, right, instead, and that will align. And then there’s also we also have to think about the feeling. So maybe I say, like, I wanna feel stable.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:07]:

Right?

Julie Pham [00:23:08]:

I wanna feel stable. And, well, my maybe my looks like goal needs to have some I need to get my finances in order.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:17]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:23:18]:

And that can help inform the looks like. So, actually, if we start with 1, then it could inform the other one because what we want is alignment, not that one is more important than the other. It’s just how do we make sure that as we are as we’re working on this that our looks like in our feels like are in alignment because sometimes they clash.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:39]:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really that’s really interesting. And it is, again, this how do you want to feel along the journey as opposed to how do you want to feel when you reach that destination?

Julie Pham [00:23:52]:

And I’ll give you a workplace example since this is happier at work. And so is is you’ve seen those teams who are just like, oh, we can just get this many in sales. And at the end of the day, they feel exhausted. Right? They’re just and they feel they they they don’t feel that sense of accomplishment because they’re just exhausted. Right? And or is that the cost of that? So it’s it’s actually or here’s another example. You could say, hey, you wanna feel for a sales team, we wanna feel empowered. Well and then the looks like is we want all the sales managers to be checking the sales people’s funnel to make sure that they are appropriately doing their work. Or are they gonna feel micromanaged? Maybe.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:40]:

Definitely not.

Julie Pham [00:24:41]:

Is there another way to feel empowered? Is there another looks like? And so that’s just it’s about getting an alignment because this works. What’s nice about this framework is because we call it what is explore what success looks like and feels like is it’s a it can work, you start with your personal life. And once people practice it in their personal life, then they can move to the team. Because if we go straight to the team, because sometimes I have people who are like, no. Let’s just go straight to the team. I don’t wanna talk about the personal. Yeah. What happens there is, you know, when we make team goals is, oh, well, if we didn’t get it, well, that’s because, you know, those that department didn’t do their job.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:18]:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same certainly.

Julie Pham [00:25:20]:

Like, it’s so easy to basically say to blame it on other people when we don’t meet our goals. And that’s why it’s so important to practice that personal accountability so we can get used to that so that we can then apply it to the us in as a part of a team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:37]:

Yeah. So building that that self awareness, which includes a sense of accountability, responsibility. And then in terms of the relationship building, this idea of reciprocity. And when you were speaking earlier about that, Julie, this what sprung to my mind was I could be asking you lots of questions, but you’re not asking me questions. So it appears that you’re not really curious about what I have to say and you don’t really care. And if you wanna translate that then into that means that you don’t respect me or you don’t care, whatever whatever that means, how do we build curiosity into our relationships? Do you have some examples of things that we could do or questions that we could ask to to build that?

Julie Pham [00:26:22]:

So sometimes, if you’re experiencing, oh, this person’s, I’m I’m asking them a bunch of questions. They’re not asking me any questions. Sometimes that’s literally because they don’t know how to ask questions or they’re they don’t have the self awareness. So if you’re close enough, and I I sometimes done this with family, it’s just, do you have any questions? Ask me. Yeah. You can give cues to, like, hey, let me share some things. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:26:51]:

Share some things, about yourself to see if they if they pick that up.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:55]:

Mhmm.

Julie Pham [00:26:56]:

And or you can even just say, hey, feel free to ask me about anything to I like

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:02]:

I give an invitation.

Julie Pham [00:27:04]:

Yeah, give an invitation because I think we can perceive that as, as they are being selfish or not curious about us. I think learning culturally, sometimes it’s considered rude to ask questions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:21]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:27:22]:

Yeah. So just being aware of that as well. I mean, I’m actually really proud of with my partner, his son, at some stage, I think when he was 10, I started saying, do you have anything to ask me? And now he’s really good at asking questions. You know, I’d say, how are you doing? And then he would tell me and then I’d be like, do you have anything to ask me? And then it got to this point where he would come into the room. How are you doing? Because he didn’t want me to prompt him.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:48]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:27:49]:

Right. And and now as a 17 year old, he’s really good at asking questions. Yeah. So

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:55]:

Yeah. Brilliant. Love that. And I I suppose something else that’s going to mind, and I can’t remember where I saw this or where I read it, but was this idea that for someone who asks a lot of questions, maybe you’re perceived as being nosy, not just curious, that you’re asking questions because you’re intruding or you’re being rude or something like that that it’s perceived in this way. And then equally, when you don’t ask questions, you’re perceived as being rude because you’re not that interested or you you don’t seem to care or want to know anything about the person. So I guess with each individual or within each relationship, it’s about finding that balance of you’re not asking too many that you’re coming across as being too nosy, but you’re not asking too few that you’re not really genuinely curious about the person.

Julie Pham [00:28:41]:

Yeah. And I think that there are different intentions at play. Right? Because sometimes people ask a lot of questions because they wanna build a relationship. They want connection. They wanna find I wanna get information so I can find that connection point with you. And then sometimes people are asking questions because they they actually just want to know, and maybe they’re just, oh, I want to know what they know or study their behavior. It’s actually not with the intent to build a relationship. And and I don’t think that’s necessarily it’s it’s kind of that’s just that’s just the way that person thinks.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:16]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:29:16]:

Right. And we all think differently. And you know what’s interesting about that is that’s actually very much of an outcomes oriented problem solver mindset. Okay. Right. So the things that we’re just and, you know, you you fight sometimes people get criticized for being too much of a relationship builder. Right. And so and so I look at it as we all approach these things differently.

Julie Pham [00:29:40]:

There’s no right or wrong way. And in conversation with one another, it’s just how do we how do we adjust? I’ve also heard people say, it’s not my job to educate you, so I’m not going to share anything with you. Go read in a book. Right? And and, you know, it’s not my job to educate you about blah, blah, blah, about my personal lived experience. And the way that I react to that is I’m not looking for an education. I’m looking for engagement. I’m looking for back and forth. If you think that you only have things to teach me and and you don’t have anything to learn from me, then I actually don’t want to be part of this conversation either.

Julie Pham [00:30:20]:

Yeah. So how do we have that back and forth? And I’ll just lastly say, sometimes I think we focus so much on I think questions can questions that we don’t want to answer or that we feel uncomfortable answering can provoke outrage. I can’t believe you asked that question. I can’t believe they asked that question.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:38]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:30:38]:

And we are so focused on that outrage. We’re not then practicing the inward curiosity of why am I bothered by that question?

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:44]:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:30:46]:

Can I can I share an example?

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:48]:

Yeah. Of course.

Julie Pham [00:30:49]:

Okay. So this is this is, this happened about 10 years ago. And I remember, I was I was working my family’s newspaper, and I was desperate to leave the family business and enter the corporate world. And so I was doing tons of informational interviews. And I talked to this, young woman who was working at a, at a tech company. And I want this is the tech company I wanted to work at. And and so she’s asking me all these, she’s she’s asking some questions. And then she says, do you, do you mind if I ask you if you have a degree? And then I say, yes, I have a PhD and I get off the phone and this is an acquaintance, so it’s not a total stranger.

Julie Pham [00:31:32]:

And I am so outraged if I’m so outraged. How dare she ask me that? Right. And she looked down on me. And I actually carried that underdog story for years. I actually even spoke about it. Like, look at that as an example of her being condescending. And then someone asked me, Julie, why were you offended by that? And then I was just, wait. Why was I? Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:31:55]:

And I realized, oh, I because I actually have lots of friends who didn’t get there, didn’t go to college. Yeah. I had this. Well, obviously, she would know that I’m educated. Right. And and so I had to kind of look at my own internal assumptions about what it means to be educated and not and practice some inward curiosity there.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:20]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:32:20]:

So so I think that sometimes we focus so much on the outrage that we don’t pause and go like, why is this bothering me?

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:27]:

Why is that triggered me so much?

Julie Pham [00:32:29]:

Yeah. Because we can also Yeah. Ask, hey, can, can I can I ask you why you’re asking? Because now I look back at it and she’s I could have maybe there’s a special program for people who go to college.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:42]:

Yeah. I don’t know

Julie Pham [00:32:43]:

why she asked me that question because I was just so absorbed by the outrage.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:47]:

Yeah. No. It’s funny. I think we have our blinkers on when we get asked something that’s a bit triggering and you’re like, answer the question and feel really angry about it rather than saying, like, I’m curious. Why is that important? Like, is is that is there some special reason that, like, do you need to have a degree to work here? Do you need you know, whatever the answer might be, but to get curious about it as well. But everything that you’re saying ties back with this idea of reciprocity. So when you’re talking about, oh, you go educate yourself. I’m not here to educate you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:19]:

It’s like, no. We can learn from each other. The whole point of a relationship is reciprocity. It’s not one way. Otherwise, one or other of the people are gonna get really annoyed, and there won’t be a relationship anymore. But the third aspect is around clear communication. And I I love this first part of it, which is the listen to understand. Because I think oftentimes when we’re communicating with people, we’re trying to think of, what we’re going to say next, what am I gonna ask next, rather than really listening to what they’re saying.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:52]:

Again, going back to this fear of, am I going to look stupid if I have to take time to process what they’ve said before I can formulate a response or a question or whatever it might be. Do you wanna talk us through the the steps in the clear communication aspect?

Julie Pham [00:34:07]:

Yes. So with the for leaders, the talking muscle is so much more obvious than the listening muscle. Muscle. Right? And so listening can be quite difficult for we can lose them, we can lose the practice of it. And so in this, there are these there’s listening to understand asking questions when we don’t understand. I think we’ve talked quite a bit about asking questions and sharing the specific story. So for the listening, it’s actually my big role here is just to is just to listen to the other person. And so when I’ll go back to an exercise we do when we take people through the success.

Julie Pham [00:34:44]:

And so after we they share, we’ll put people in partners, share what your vision for what a success look like to you. They’re listening to each other. And the thing I tell people, just listen, don’t give advice. Because when you hear someone say, this is what I wanna do, it’s so tempting to say, oh, well, this is what you need to do. Have you tried this to give each other advice to try to problem solve? Because they see that hearing a goal as a problem that needs to be overcome. Yeah. And what if we were just to listen? And it’s so just in that, just by putting that framing around it, people then have to they actually have to listen, and then they are learning different things. And it’s also kind of giving permission because oftentimes in the workplace, we’re expected to solve problems when we when we talk.

Julie Pham [00:35:30]:

It’s just like, oh, yes. Well, how do we how do we approach that? Versus just let me just understand where you’re coming from and give you the space to share something. Because if we actually just listen long enough, sometimes people will share things that they didn’t even expect to share.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:46]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think we’re so often focused on you hear something and we’re rewarded for solving problems at work as well. We tend to move up the ranks because we’ve been able to solve problems. But I think I’m seeing this more and more that leaders are using this coaching approach, which is curiosity. It’s asking questions without an agenda. It’s asking questions because you’re curious. You want to help people to find solutions to their own problems.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:15]:

But that doesn’t even necessarily have to be the case in this scenario. It can just be a listening thing without the need to jump in and say, do you know what I would do? Or do you know what

Julie Pham [00:36:24]:

I have

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:24]:

done in the past? Or the temptation, I think, is so strong a lot of the time to to give people advice as if we are the best people to be able to tell them what to do in whatever scenario. We won’t talk about all of the different biases that we’re all coming with and all of the different experiences that we’ve had to lead us down the path that we’re on. But it I think it’s just it’s so interesting to to think about these things and to have a framework around practicing curiosity as opposed to just saying, I need you to be more curious or, you know, you need to be more curious. Like, what does that actually mean? And now we have a framework to actually to build upon, to to to use that. And I love how you talk about it not just externally, but internally to really understand ourselves and how we show up, and then that almost leads on to how we show up with other people and this idea of reciprocity and being in a relationship. And then the clear communication, which is so, so important for the basis of any sort of relationship or any sort of curiosity as well-being able to clearly ask those questions. So I love how you’ve put together that framework, Julie. Is there anything else that you wanted to share on the podcast today before we wrap things up?

Julie Pham [00:37:41]:

I will just say that all of this depends, but you can when approaching a difficult conversation, even on my own team, we say, I wanna practice some curiosity here, which is code for just we’re gonna slow down. I’m not I’m just truly trying to understand where you’re coming from. And and also all of this actually depends on both sides on on all parties wanting to learn from one another. And sometimes they don’t. I actually I was in a conversation with a a friend yesterday who was so she was I think we need to work on communication skills. And from everything she was telling me about the person, it’s like, no. I don’t think that person actually wants to learn from you. And if they don’t, then you can’t have a conversation.

Julie Pham [00:38:24]:

Yeah. It’s not about communication skills. Communication skills are just a vehicle. Alright. A channel this but if you if the person so for all this to work, we actually ask ourselves the question of am I willing to learn from someone else? Because oftentimes we go in just do I want them to learn from me? Yes. And the second question, am I willing to learn from them? And if I actually had to build this as a speed bump, this I took me a couple of years in my business to realize this because I was encountering people who when you’re these are how you ask questions. This is how you can ask questions. And I would hear people say, why don’t you ask a question when I know the answer? I know why they did what they did.

Julie Pham [00:39:08]:

And I realized I was assuming that they would want to know.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:12]:

Yeah.

Julie Pham [00:39:12]:

And so that’s when I had to build the speed bump of these two questions to slow them down and get them to reflect. Am I actually ready to enter this conversation and learn from someone else? Because if I am not, if because we can easily perform it, we can perform curiosity. We have to be honest with ourselves. Yeah. And if we aren’t, then go practice that conversation with someone else. You could actually hurt the conversation if you have it too early, if you’re not ready, if you don’t actually want to learn from Yeah. Someone else.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:46]:

I think that’s so interesting, isn’t it? And we we assume that people do things the way they do them. And if we’re not open to understanding more about why they behave in the way that they behave and we make simple assumptions about why they do what they do. And I love the kind of almost double layer because you were assuming that people wanted to learn the questions from you, so there’s almost kind of a double thing going on there. But it’s a I think it’s it’s such a great like, we we have to be willing participants basically to want to learn from other people if we’re genuinely curious. Otherwise, it’s just performative, and we’re just showing up pretending that we’re curious, but actually, we don’t really care one way or the other. So, Julie, the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Julie Pham [00:40:37]:

Feeling that I can learn in the workplace, that it’s safe for me to say, I don’t know. I I wanna explore this and that feeling that the organization is a learning organization. They’re not just extracting my labor, and and it’s not just transactional. It’s actually a mutually beneficial. We are learning and benefiting from one another.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:02]:

I love that. So it’s the learning organization is like a 2 it’s the two way street really, isn’t it? That they’re learning and they’re willing to listen to what it is that you have the experience that you have had or the stories that you want to share, whatever it might be that they’re willing to listen. And if I’m hearing again between the lines, they’ve created psychological safety where it’s okay to be curious and it’s okay to ask questions. Brilliant. And if people want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about what it is that you do, what’s the best place they can do that?

Julie Pham [00:41:38]:

The best place to reach me is on LinkedIn. I’m really active there, so just find Julie Pham. You can also go to my website curiositybased.com, or I have a book called 7 forms of respect, and you go forms of respect dotcom. And so those are places you can reach me and find out more about my work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:55]:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today, Julia. I really, really enjoyed this conversation.

Julie Pham [00:42:00]:

Aoife, thank you so much. I’ve been a big fan of the your podcast, so I feel really fortunate to get to be a guest.