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Hilary Lichterman
So what energizes me is thinking about we all know what curiosity looks like in children. We can pinpoint it. We can point to it. I love that you talked about in young children, or the beginning of a relationship or a new job, and then something happens. I think your research shows about three years in that there’s a little dip there. And what I love is, what gets me excited is this has gotten me thinking more deeply about my own leadership style and how I show up, how I approach others, how I do my own work as a leader, and my own self awareness and self discovery, my gaps, my strengths, so on and so forth. But it has me really thinking about, you know, and this comes from observation of my staff, team currently, and my colleagues and that own work I’m doing, that the leader has a tremendous role in cultivating the environment.

Keith Edwards
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs. Now I’m your host. Keith Edwards, today, I’m joined by some people who take curiosity very seriously. Stefaan Van Hooydonk wrote the Workplace Curiosity Manifesto, and Dr Hilary Lichterman has been a big advocate for curiosity in higher education, and has joined Stefaan’s global curiosity Institute as a fellow. We hope to be joined by Dr Kelly Dixon, unfortunately, she was ill today and was not able to join us at the last minute. Kelly, I hope you’re feeling we all hope you’re feeling better and recovering soon. I’m excited to learn with and from all of you. I’m very curious about curiosity. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com This episode is sponsored by Routledge Taylor and Francis view their complete catalog of education titles at routledge.com/education this episode is also sponsored by Huron, a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. As I mentioned, I’m your host. Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he? Him, His? I’m a speaker, author and coach, helping hired leaders and organizations advance leadership, learning and equity. You can learn more about me at keithedwards.com and I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the ancestral and current homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. I’m really excited to get to the conversation Hilary, you have been on before. Stefaan is here for the first time. Why don’t we begin Hilary by you telling folks just a little bit more about you.

Hilary Lichterman
Yeah, hello, everyone. My name is Hilary. Dr, Hilary Lichterman, I use she, her, hers pronouns. I’ve served in higher education and student affairs for just now, two decades now. Wow, time flies served as a practitioner, a scholar, an educator, a leader, where I’ve been most successful in this space is moving individuals and groups through change and creating energy in a way that we all arrive to the destination that makes sense for our environment, makes sense to us and is effective. So that’s been a commonality throughout my career. I think about when I think about who I am as a human being and who I strive to be. I’ve always considered myself to be a curious person. It truly all started with Curious George. I was enthralled with his shenanigans and wondering what would come next. And now, when I think about myself as a higher ed practitioner, I’ve always valued inquiry and critical thinking and collaborating with others. I come from the place that learning is socially constructed, and so I’m really excited to unpack this more and to be here with both of you today.

Keith Edwards
Well, and how long ago did you get that doctorate? Because you still had to remember to put it in there,

Hilary Lichterman
right? I know, eight years, eight years, you know, I celebrate every year.

Keith Edwards
So those of you who are new to it and forget to add it in there, just know that some of us who’ve had it for a while forget to sneak that in there too. And Hilary, you mentioned, yeah, you mentioned going, Yeah, keep going. Keep going. I’ll finish. You mentioned Curious George. I think that’s a lovely intro. I think we might also get into some Greek philosophical perspectives and everything in between along the way. So I’m excited about that. And Stefaan’s book is really what got you really ramped up about this. So Stefaan, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience and share a little bit more about you.

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
Thanks. Keith and Hilary, it’s lovely to be here on the program the Stefaan. Stefaan Van Hooydonk. I’m I’m trying to be a global citizen. I launched the curiosity Institute about four years ago, after a career and as an executive in big companies, small and big companies, I’ve lived in many countries. I’ve lived 13 years in China, a couple of years in Finland, in Saudi Arabia, in UK, and Belgium and India and some other places. And about four years ago, I set up the institute because I really got excited about the notion of curiosity. We’re going to talk about it more. So I’m not going to talk about too much about curiosity for now, but, and I’m dialing in here from from our farmhouse, because next to curiosity, I’m also a part time farmer in the beekeeper, which is trying to keep me safe, to do both the cognitive and as well as the handwork, all together. And it’s been a wonderful day. You can see I’ve been a bit sunburned,

Keith Edwards
yes, and you’re joining us late in the evening for you, early in the afternoon for me, late in the morning for Hilary. So we’re bounding three really different time zones, so I really appreciate you staying up late. Into your evening to join us. As you mentioned, you wrote the workplace curiosity manifesto Stefaan, Tell us. Tell us all about it.

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
Well, I really got into curiosity for when I was a chief learning officer of of the last company I joined was cognizant, big company, 300,000 people, full of changes, and I realized that curiosity was really driving something special. And I’m we started coming up with some hypotheses, is curiosity important, and can you teach it, and what can we do with it? And does the leader have an impact on the curiosity of their team then? And is it a thing at all? And then suddenly we we did a pilot, and we did a pilot with 15,000 people, so it’s not small pilot anymore. And we did some, some sessions with people, 45 minute sessions about giving people strategies, about what is curiosity, how can you deal with it, and also help people to reflect, and also tell people that neuroplasticity is something really important that you can actually change at any time in your career. It’s not saying I am curious or I’m not curious, therefore I cannot change anymore of people have a growth mindset, or inspiring to have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. And about three months later, after our sessions, we actually did some surveys with people, and we realized that actually they had changed dramatically, their way of looking at the world. And then one year later, we checked in with those people, and compared to the rest of the organization, those people had a double learning our account. So these people were learning much more than anybody else and I, and that taught me a couple of things. First of all, it taught me that permission is really important for the environment to say boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, it’s okay to stick out your neck to explore, etc, etc. And also, it taught me something that in order to make people change, you have to help them, because a lot of people have lost their capacity to be curious, to be exploratory and and from that, a beautiful journey started with me, because I wasn’t really sure what is in this curiosity, something that we’re born with, something that we can that we can develop over time. Is it measurable? Yes or no, and maybe talking to Curious George is an interesting one, because, as it was him some research done until the 1990s I hope I can do some research afterwards, looking at children books. How much is curiosity portrayed as a positive or neutral or a negative dimension? Because let’s remember we come from a society where, 50 years ago, Curiosity was a bad thing. We were supposed to listen to our teachers. We were supposed to kind of be, be the obedient person. Curiosity was all about looking through keyholes, and actually, until the 1990s curiosity was predominantly a negative trait. So we were teaching our kids that curiosity was a bad thing, actually, isn’t it amazing? And that’s kind of global. And of course, North American has a big footprint on on the global environment. And also thinking about Curious George, he always gets into trouble, and he always needs his master to get him out of trouble, you know, and also that somehow already a borderline tricky situation, like getting into getting into trouble, and you need somebody to bail you out, type of a thing. So, so I started my journey thinking about, indeed, what is curiosity. This is definitely socially desirable nowadays, people, even if they’re not curious, they might say they’re curious because it’s just a cool thing to say, because very, very few people that I’m asking and I’m dealing with leaders and non leaders, or even students and teachers, are saying they’re not curious. And also we realize that often we think of curiosity as as only being intellectual curiosity, kind of exploring the world. It’s like Curious George trying to figure out things. But we often forget that Curiosity has other dimensions, and, for instance, curiosity about other the people that we live with that, what do we work with, that we study with? Are we curious in them? And then the hardest dimension of curiosity Phoebe is curiosity of myself. What are my values? Why was I born? You know, why would I put on this world? And why? What are my values, type of things, and so these are the three dimensions of curiosity. Curiosity has huge benefits. It makes us learn faster. It makes us be more open to our neighbors. It makes us also be approaching change better. But it’s really hard. We’re often. Is in the beginning of a process. We’re often curious in the beginning of a relationship, or beginning when we go to a new school, or we start a new class, or, you know, or we start a new job, or we and then after a while, we slide into this area of non curiosity. The only exception is think about your passions. Think about your hobbies. There. You’re never going down in curiosity, in kind of a negative curiosity. You’re always there. We’re all just helping so these I’m I’m doing a lot of things. I’m measuring curiosity. I’m working with curiosity. I’m trying to come up with stories, best practices, and I’m trying to make curiosity really an applicable thing, because I believe it’s the, it’s the trade for the 21st century. But I’m sure we’re going to cover most many of those dimensions already. I hope I can. I planted already some ideas and yeah, and to continue this conversation with

Keith Edwards
Yeah. And I find that, I find that really interesting. You know, it had never, it had never occurred to me that curiosity was a negative trait. But when you say that, it really makes sense, right, that curiosity is how you get into trouble, and it’s, you know, like you said, looking through keyholes at things you’re not supposed to look at, and disobedience. And I think it’s a sign of just what a big shift that has been. As you say now it is very socially desirable. As you mentioned, even people who aren’t curious claim to be because it sounds like a good thing. Yeah, right, yeah. And I love you mentioning the intellectual other people and self, it seems like curiosity is kind of the roots of of empathy, right? To really understand which and empathy is the roots of compassion. So if I can be curious about you and understand what you’re experiencing, and then maybe connect with you and and want to make comfort you or help you or or join with you, I think that can be really, really powerful. The book is called the workplace curiosity manifestos. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about sort of the applications that you see and why you see it’s so important in the workplace. Because we’ve talked about childhood, we’ve talked about learning, we’ve talked about all these really good things, but what about in the workplace?

Hilary Lichterman
And part of the subtitle of it is in transformational time. So hopefully you can talk about that too. That’s the part that I want to get me excited.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, that seems relevant. Feels like we’re in those transformational time, very transformational. Well,

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
I think it’s very relevant. Also for these audience, I think a higher ed are corporations in their own rights, no. And also the students that we’re catering for, they’re going to end up in some part of society later on, being corporates, big or small, or education institutions or something yet different. It’s actually quite simple. I come from a business background. Been my entire life in business executive, and so for me to write something about curiosity in the workplace environment was much more easy than, for instance, in other environments. Now I’m starting to lean my next my second book is just out. It’s also more about systems and about organizations and but I’m leaning in for the next book to start thinking about what is curiosity for teachers, what is curiosity for young parents and see trying to do something in those areas, because there’s a lot of beautiful research that we can share there. But back to the workplace, they also when we when we just talked about curiosity something high and the beginning of things, you see often startups are much more curious than grown up organizational scale up organizations. For instance, in my research, I found that startups are four times more ready to or be open to failures one compared to scale up or grown up organizations. I did a session a couple of months ago and with a German giant chemical company, and they said, whenever we want to make a change in our quality manual, we need 700 signatures. We’re not going there. We’re not doing it, and just just highlighting. That’s a function of the opposite of curiosity, which I did call conformity. And so it’s so important to focus on curiosity in the 21st century. For me, the 21st century is a century of ideas, and we can kind of compare that to the century of what I call in the 20th centuries, the century of scale and scope, where we needed big companies. We needed hierarchies. We needed structures. But nowadays we need less of this. We need ideas. Companies can can pop up in in different places, in Africa and Asia, and there’s beautiful companies being created there or in suburbs of companies where people don’t really expect it. We didn’t expect the Netflix to to emerge, you know, or we didn’t emerge. And these companies become bigger and bigger and and that’s for the century of ideas. So if companies, big and old are starting to embrace this concept of curiosity, exploration, being open to the unknown, always a bit scary, and train their managers and allow it and lean into that anxiety then. And actually Magic, magic happens. And maybe also for students. There was some recent research comparing the commencement speeches about 10 years ago, 1015, years ago, and nowadays you have just the likes of Steve Jobs or or Elon Musk or, you know, people kind of making commencement speeches. And what they found is that 15 years ago, it was all about, I followed my passion, and here I am, forward, kind of or look at me and follow my lead and and you’ll get there. And nowadays, commencement speeches are probably also with the influence of covid. Boys and girls life, ladies and gentlemen, life is messy. It’s okay to fall and to be resilient and to and to come up again. And curiosity is a really important thing now nowadays in those commencement speeches as well. So it’s not about kind of these forward looking things, because what researchers found is often following my passions for like, 15 years ago, young people have many, many passions. Older people have many, many passions. Which What should I choose? And it’s always easy to say after the fact, look at me, I followed my path, and here I am not realizing that there’s a lot of a lot of randomness in that process, and that’s why I like more in these commencement speeches to focus on curiosity and being open and being open to the unknown and leaning into your anxieties and trying many things. And that’s that’s linked, that’s very relevant also for professionals.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, it does. Thank you. So Hilary, you’ve you’ve gotten very excited about this and have advocated for it and joined Stefaan’s global curiosity Institute. Tell us, what has you so energized? What are you really connecting with here as a higher leader? Yeah,

Hilary Lichterman
well, I’m so glad that we got to hear a little bit about Stefaan’s book. Books are truly one of my love languages. So when I found Stefaan’s book, I have to tell you, I’ve read it three times, cover to cover, and every time I see things differently in there I get from the anecdotes, the story, the research, the reflection, questions. So what energizes me is thinking about we all know what curiosity looks like in children. We can pinpoint it. We can point to it. I love that you talked about in young children, or the beginning of a relationship or a new job, and then something happens. I think your research shows about three years in that there’s a little dip there. And what I love is, what gets me excited is this has gotten me thinking more deeply about my own leadership style and how I show up, how I approach others, how I do my own work as a leader, and my own self awareness and self discovery, my gaps, my strengths, so on and so forth. But it has me really thinking about, you know, and this comes from observation of my staff, team currently, and my colleagues and that own work I’m doing, that the leader has a tremendous role in cultivating the environment. I think about every day, the identities I bring, the identities I don’t have, the privileges I have my positionality, and I try to think about through the lens of curiosity. And what gets me so excited every day is it’s no longer what we know or how, it’s how, it’s the process. How do we know what we know? How do we unlearn what is no longer serving us well or getting us in our own way. There’s more excitement in my mind around the process of what we’re doing in higher education, and particularly in this learning beyond the classroom space, right? We have such hectic, busy days. Change happens so quickly, sometimes at the speed of light, that as a leader as a practitioner. Think that curiosity helps us ask better questions. It creates more of a dynamic energy and current to the work that we’re doing. So that’s really fun when I think about the global curiosity Institute. I love learning. I love resources, but to see articles on there about curiosity and color curiosity and climate change, right? There’s so many fun ways that we can think about this. In the higher ed context, and when I think about organizations, anyone who knows me knows I love thinking about culture and human resources and strategic initiatives and assessment. The question that keeps coming every day for me is, what makes an organization want to be curious, and by the way, the organization is not, we can’t personify that, that I learned in my dissertation edits, but it’s the people what makes curious people then create the culture that helps our organizations thrive and multiply and innovate and get beyond the common truths that I think we can name today. Of yes, we have antiquated systems check we understand that we have ways. We’ve the I’ve we’ve always done it that way will no longer work and should be thrown out the window. But I think curiosity gives us a framing context, while simultaneously keeping the sky is the limit for what we could do for ourselves, our team members, our colleagues and our organizations at large, I’ll say on a fun note, Stefaan, you know this already? I’m so excited. In a couple weeks, we’re going to have a team call of all the fellows across five different time zones. So now, not just three. We have London, Brazil, right all over the place. And I think it’s so fun to exchange ideas and energy, and I’m really looking forward to the fact that no one else in that space works currently in higher education and student affairs, and I know that just from that conversation, I will come back to the spaces I lead and learn and serve in with a different mindset that hopefully will do good in those spaces.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I’m making lots of connections here. I mean, we’ve talked about Greek Well, we haven’t talked about Greek philosophy. Maybe we’ll work that in when we talk about children’s books. We’ve talked about neuroscience. I’m thinking about Zen Buddhist teachings around the beginner’s mind, which is really about curiosity. So I’m seeing really the breadth of here, and then also thinking about growth mindset, but also thinking about Brene Brown, talking about the shift from leaders who know and want to be right to leaders who are learning and want to get it right, and that shift in curiosity. And you’ve also talked about curiosity as questions. But I, and I think Stefaan You mentioned this curiosity just as listening, just as really being open to what might you say, what don’t I expect? And I think a lot of us listen to confirm what we know or what we think, rather than listening to what’s different here, what am I not expecting? What what’s surprising,

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
or what, uh, what questions are we not asking? I’ve been working with the CEO of an American company in the oil business, and what he’s changed his question strategies is for every month they have these updates and looking at data and graphs and all that jazz, and his standard question is, now, what are we not seeing in the data, and he’s telling me that the discussions are hugely different. Now it’s not about reporting, it’s about thinking through the data with the data you know, or what is it not seeing and and people’s preparations are so much deeper because of that. I’d love to pick up what, what Hilary was saying so beautifully, beautifully about leaders. I call curious leaders. I call them a shadow using no confident humility. I call it is because many leaders are not ready to say that they don’t know, because they have positional power, they’re making more money, and they’re supposed to have all the answers, type of thing. Then when our research shows that the more a leader says that he or she does not know, the more engagement She’s inviting into the team, and the more

Keith Edwards
trust, and the more trust, and the

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
more trust, absolutely, and a lot of leaders don’t really realize this, or I also the learning leader. Could say, a lot of leaders are saying, Oh, I’m more curious than everybody else. And I say, Okay, how much are you learning really? How much are you exploring? How much are you reading? What’s the last book you’ve read? And I’ve been able to prove that the more a leader learns anything looking at podcasts, like listening to this part this podcast, or YouTube or reading books, the more the team learns, because the team is sensing that it is desired behavior, and the manager would talk, and the leader will talk about it, or I’ve just read this book, or explored. This or I had this new insight, and the team will follow suit, and that’s beautiful. So the more the manager learns, the more the team learns. But the opposite is sadly also true. If the manager does not learn, is flat on learning, the team also falls flat. So it’s not about the team. It’s about the leader. Really. It’s a huge shadow that a leader is casting onto the team, a positive shadow in uplifting the team, but also not so much, not so uplifting shadow, if he or she is not interested in growing and asking new questions, in listening and etc. And that’s

Keith Edwards
I wanted to ask you said that curiosity can be scary, and I was really curious about that. And I’m wondering if it’s maybe a bit of what you just pointed to. To be curious, we have to have the humility that we don’t know, that we don’t have all the right answers, that we don’t have all the information, that we don’t have the decisions, and that, I think what’s hard for leaders is leaders all want to be trusted, which is great, and we’ve been socialized that how you gain trust is always make the right decision, always have the answers, never make a mistake, always know, always be right. But when leaders show up that way. We don’t trust that. We don’t think, what are you hiding? This is this isn’t genuine. And when leaders are I just, I’m so curious, I don’t know, what do you think we should do or what? What’s your perspective? As you mentioned, we get engagement, but we also get trust. Because when leaders make mistakes and are curious about it, when they when they fail and apologize and take responsibility, we go, Oh, wow. This is, this is refreshing. Oh, so I think that counterintuitive, that that vulnerability leads to trust rather than always being right, is maybe the the parallel here to humility and curiosity, and that can be scary to admit what you don’t know

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
absolutely and but also from the from, from the the employee’s perspective, who would you like to be more close with the know it all, manager, or the manager who says, Well, I don’t know. Let’s figure it out together. Or, what do you think, type of thing, you know? And the more, the more, let’s call them curious managers. I’ve the more they they can invite better teams. They work like magnets, because everybody wants to work with them and for them, which is, and the other ones say, yeah, they’re just hoping right.

Hilary Lichterman
Choice is so important and giving options. We know that in the classroom, whether it’s assigning, you know, homework or different experiential projects. And so when I think about the organizational content context and us as leaders, think we also have to do our due diligence to create those environments. You spoke beautifully about that, Stefaan and the, I think, in your book, you talk about the shadow effect of what you just described. And that can be really positive or negative, but that can’t be without cultivating the psychological safety and the trust and create a leader must have the ability to to bring, bring to the center of that that we can’t be asking big questions. We can’t be talking about books we’ve read if there’s no regard for individual identities, the diversity that is held the trauma, using a trauma informed approach, recognizing that in a previous organization, maybe there was a slap on the hand for asking a question or saying, what if, but that that doesn’t need to carry into maybe the current environment. And so I think there’s such a an appreciation we can have more. There’s a depth of out there about good leadership, but Curiosity has me thinking in a deeper and a different way of how do we cultivate those environments where we can do what we’ve just named? I don’t know. Right? It starts with honoring the humanity in the space.

Keith Edwards
It also seems that in these times, when with with AI and pretty much any bit of information readily at our hands, that things are the pace of change is so rapid that that knowing and having the information seems like just such an outdated thing. I mean, there was a time where you could lead these organizations in higher education with what you learned in a master’s program. Hilary, you live, you lead a very large, complex organization. My guess is that although you love your master’s program, very little of what you learn there is actually what you’re applying today. I mean, that didn’t anticipate covid, it didn’t anticipate AI, it didn’t anticipate the human resource challenges. Didn’t anticipate enrollment cliffs, and so that humility to not rely on what we know, but to be in that curiosity and be learning and be asking questions about, is this search result valid or reliable? Is this AI paragraph? Did someone write this or was this AI? And how does this fit that realm of Q? Curiosity seems to be what’s so needed in these times. It’s

Hilary Lichterman
a different way of thinking. Curiosity can be magical in a way, Savannah, you’ve said that before earlier in the chat, but it can engage our heads and hearts, and that’s what I think so many of us are so called to do in our work, as we think about what is the purpose of higher education. Who and what are we trying to cultivate? Right? It’s, it’s about connecting the head and the hearts.

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
I remember doing a speech with, uh, for an Indian audience, this Asian audience, and there was one teacher who said something as if it was shy. I was kind of having an own little opinion, which she articulated, and she says, Oh, curiosity, that’s for kids. It’s also for kids, but it’s maybe also something for the teachers to allow this. And I’m starting to use this simple three prong approach. First of all, it’s about permission, giving yourself permission, but also making sure the environment gives permission. The school gives permission, the body of teachers, of admission, staff, families, society, and then once we have given permission, and it’s time to become aware, deeply aware. Am I curious about the world, others and self, and what does my group Tell me? What is the language we’re speaking about curiosity? Is it is it positive? Is it negative? Is it allowed? Is it not allowed? Is this how far can we go? And once we’re we’ve become a little bit more aware that it’s a time to become intentional about it, not leave it to chance, but really go out there and create routines and creating strategies to really make sure it happens when making sure that the manager asks the last question and or ask the first question is his last to speak. Type of environment I was, I was doing a session on two weeks ago, and the manager was the first to speak, and she spoke for a long time, and nobody else was speaking. And I said, Well, maybe that can’t be the objective of of of doing a session on curiosity. So So those three, permission, awareness and intentionality are beautiful kind of together in in helping teams and organizations and leaders to think about it. Yeah, yeah.

Keith Edwards
I work with a lot of leaders who struggle with that, and I tell them, I mean, you know, frame, frame the conversation, and then be the last to chime in. If you are the leader with all that positional authority, that’s a really great strategy. And then they say, but I gotta prove to them that I know what I’m talking about. I gotta prove to them that I’m capable. I gotta right? And it’s all about their their own imposter phenomenon and self doubt and insecurities, rather than about what is effective for the team. And engaging gets back to how curiosity can be scary and how getting past that can really increase engagement, increase trust, increase effectiveness, and hearing 12 different people’s opinions rather than just yours, and everybody going well, that was a waste of the meeting, but we’ve clearly talked about learning and kids, as you just mentioned, and students. I think that all makes sense to folks as we think about higher ed, but I’m really curious, Hilary, how do you see this as really relevant for for higher education, for staff and for faculty? How is this really critical there?

Hilary Lichterman
Yeah, well, truth be told, as I’ve been thinking about this, this could be a whole separate podcast, but I will go in for the remaining time here. I think we’ve laid great, a great foundation, right? And really unpack some of the misnomers. I think curiosity can be viewed as just another buzzword in the pipeline of the world in higher education, but I don’t see it that way, and hopefully our listeners and viewers will agree with that by now thinking higher education, starting with our students, I think this creates such a beautiful conversation around how to help students ask for help and navigate resources. Right? A lot of times, I we know from our data that students can feel I’m the only person who doesn’t have friends to go with to the dining hall, or there are so many clubs they don’t even know where to begin getting involved. So maybe I’ll wait until the next term to do that, right? So I think curiosity, the more we cultivate, that in our conversations, in our experiential ways of being with and for our students, that can be so powerful to the the work that we’re doing for belonging, helping students know we can never name and ask, you know, name and kind of dictate, hey, do you feel like you belong? Here it starts with the student and how they navigate the campus, what they do and don’t navigate, and how we work as educators and leaders to dismantle those barriers and those mishaps and those kind of disconnects in the environment. It. And so I think that’s huge opportunity. I think about this is not this isn’t a stranger to any of us, but anytime we’re entering new organizations, departments, changing organizational structures, new units are reporting in different ways, I think there’s always this newness and this new beginning, new leaders arrive, and so I often have found in my career we can spin out in a lot of directions. We can also get stuck in the the shoulds Eve. I know you talk a lot about that in your work of we should be just reading the fantastic book the first 90 days. Love that book. We should do that. Then we can go on our listening tour, and then we should get to work. And I think that’s no longer the end of the sentence there. I think we have so much that we can lean into with curiosity to think about, who are we? Our self awareness, how do we get our egos out of the way, and how do we identify what’s really going on? So in my experience, I’ve encountered new teams, organizations, departments, units, where there’s burnout, there’s trauma, there’s misunderstandings, misperceptions within the department. Who’s that cute? East of fun, so cute. You know? There’s misunderstandings, there’s misperceptions across the the campus, or whatever the case might be, there might be recollection of a past leader, and well, that was their philosophy. So of course, it’ll be the same in this new way. And so I think with curiosity, this helps us as a great tool, a great lens, a great leadership approach, to ask different questions, to listen that third level listening what’s not being said, to do the social listening, and to get in the heads and hearts of all of the stakeholders, right? And to think about what are truly the underlying problems, challenges, opportunities. And then, how do we use, most importantly, curiosity as a muscle. If we don’t use our muscles, they atrophy. We can’t go to the gym on a Saturday once a month and expect to be in shape. I’ve tried it, but our curiosity muscles have to really we have to keep honing that and through. And that can’t feel like an obligation, right? So it comes back to the conversation we’ve talked about, how do we create the psychological safety within our teams, our colleagues, the trust, the rapport, but then how do we also know when we can just pilot and move forward? Keith, you know, I love how you remind us of that all the time. When do we just try? When do we accept failure as a learning opportunity and failure is not a four letter word. How do we get a common language going? And that’s what’s really lit me up my whole career. But now bringing this language, the research, the ability to think about curiosity beyond just good questions, right? But it’s the self awareness, it’s the empathy, it it has me thinking about how we can continue to dismantle the silos. It still hurt. Pains me to hear, you know, us versus them on a college campus or in an environment we don’t know it doesn’t need to be that way, or our institution is better because of this or that than another institution. But how do we think about even our own Promising Practices in a different way based on this research and promising practices might we might view that differently? I think that’s a whole separate podcast. But to me, I think those are some pragmatic ways that bring truth to power in this and take this from a buzzword to how do we define our own culture? How do we how do we do that? And I love that you’re doing that with different government agencies. I know you’ve been doing extra work with that recently, with organizations within and beyond, all kinds of sectors. I think there’s so much I’ll leave it there.

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
Maybe Can I jump in with two little cases? There’s one company I working with, and we were working around the notion of the cat is still with the we’re working around the notion of empathy and empathic curiosity, and they’ve designed a process saying, Never Eat Alone if people in the cafeteria, they’re inviting nobody to leave, to be alone. And you can kind of maybe in dorms as never leave one person not going to a party, or not going there, or going to sports. And there’s being, being, being inclusive. And there’s another, a beautiful quote I sometimes used by Abraham Lincoln. I don’t like that person. I need to get to know him better. When we don’t like a person, we have two strategies, either we we push away the other person and blame the other person for not being likable, or we embrace the person and we are very few of us do this and say, maybe I can learn something and I. Often a challenge I’m giving into teams up is, why don’t we have lunch or have a cup of coffee with the person we dislike the most? I promise you, there’s so much we can learn from that person. Also, we can learn about ourselves in the process, if we allow it, if we let this curiosity in the midst of the relationship. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
I love where you’re going, and I want to just bridge this from what Hilary is bringing up, because Hilary has brought up our identities and belonging, and you’re bringing about our differences and maybe people we dislike, and getting to know them, and sort of the bias. But I’m also thinking about even broader and more systemically around systemic privilege and oppression and how curiosity might be read, and those of us with privilege as humility and leadership might be read in someone who doesn’t speak the language as well as incompetence, right? And so the intersections of that and Stefaan, I’m really curious, because you’ve mentioned so many different cultural contexts that you’ve talked about curiosity in, I’m wondering how you help. Might help those of us who experience oppression, who’ve experienced racism or classism or things like that, and are worried how showing up curious might be read differently, might not have the positive connotation for us that others and how we might navigate some of that?

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
Oh, it’s a beautiful question. I think in interpersonal relationships, if people are using compassion and are coming from the right space, Curiosity is never going to be frowned upon, because sometimes people feel and sometimes culture they see look at curiosity, asking too many questions, being prying and being being too intrusive. But I’d say that if you come from a space and a place of compassion and of caring, none of this ever happens. You can actually invite this discussion with strangers. And more and more research is pointing actually talking to strangers uplifting. Next time you go to your favorite coffee shop and you have the barista in front of you, instead of saying how you’re doing or just saying some formulaic sentence. Maybe you can say, Oh, I see your name is Janet. And when Janet asked you how you doing, you say, oh, Janet, today I’m a 7.2 What about you change your script in the relationship with the other person, and suddenly you start talking. And this this other barista might be thinking about and coming up with another number jokingly, and then you started having a discussion type of things, and it makes the barista a happier person. It also makes you a happier person, because you they have a stronger feeling of belonging to your environment. So if you’re coming from a curiosity. Back to your question, Keith, Curiosity is sitting in between. You could probably say, if you haven’t, in psychology, you call it, there’s an under expression of curiosity more close to depression, because depressed people are not interested in anything new, even changes in light and so, so, so that’s not the place to go. And if you’re coming from too traumatic an environment, you might be more on that side of the spectrum. On the other side, an over expression of curiosity is, what do we call it? Again, is that people are too excited, and they might be butterflying from one thought to the other. And that’s also not really productive in some in some part of society, that Curiosity has that connotation and being not focused and being in this rabbit hole. So but curiosity, what we’re talking about is somewhere in the middle. It’s about interested in the world, is interested in others, and interested in yourself, genuinely, through this permission, awareness and intentionality, especially intentionality, is really key in there, I think so. I don’t know whether I fully answered your question.

Keith Edwards
I think Hilary, what do you want to add?

Hilary Lichterman
Yeah, I think you did. And you know, I was thinking about, I just ran into a graduate student. Had the pleasure I teach our student development theory course in our master’s program. And I ran into a graduate student recently who talked about this intentionality. And we were talking, keep you all have appreciation of all our theories and scholarship in the profession, yaso did some beautiful work about essentially sharing that our students come with all forms of capital to the institutions that could be family capital and navigational capital, various different and I think that’s what came to my mind when I think about curiosity. We can create those environments where across cultural uniqueness and opportunity, we can draw out from an asset point of view, right that our colleagues and those around us are not working from a deficit. It’s not I think we can create narratives in our spaces and through one on one conversations and group conversations and written work in all the different ways that we all bring it starts with recognizing what’s there and what is unique and not starting from the deficit of you haven’t had that experience or mid level manager you, there’s no way you could weigh in on this big budget decision, because you haven’t done that yet. I think that is what comes to mind. It’s starting from the place of asset.

Keith Edwards
Well, I think it’s a great point, and I think we need to this is why you’ve both talked about leaders not just doing themselves, but creating an environment, right? And I think creating an environment where Curiosity is permission to be curious, but also an expectation and role modeled and rewarded and valued, I think can help address some of that and make a little bit more of an equal playing field for curiosity. And also, you know, Hilary you pointed out the trauma experiences, and Stefaan, you mentioned that too, that might be really hard. You’ve been in a place of trauma from previous boss or previous organization or a previous thing where you’re curious and there was a deeply felt consequence, but also if you’ve experienced depression at being curious, but but how do you recognize maybe this is a new environment? What are new things? How can we navigate through that

Hilary Lichterman
we lift others into that? You know, we’ve talked a lot about leaders, but I think I know you both very well to know that none of us mean leader from the hierarchy of the seat down the hall with the window right. We’re all leaders in our different ways, and I think about generosity with others. How do we on a pure level? How do we lift up others? How do we dismantle hierarchy and create the spaces and the environments where we have talked about, right the leader who has a title or a position, but I know I think that’s such a wonderful space for this work to thrive is, how do we create curiosity to say, What could this graduate student who’s studying Higher Education and Student Affairs add to this session at the National Convention? Where could their voice be in writing? Right? It’s not always about certain positionality or title, but how will we bring others and lift others voices, something I appreciate very much about both of you. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
well, we are, believe it or not, we are running out of time. This podcast is called Student Affairs NOW, and so we always like to add and by asking, What are you thinking? Troubling or pondering now today, I think I want to mix that up and say, What are you curious about now? What is something that you’re really curious in this moment? Maybe it’s related to our conversation, or maybe it’s related Stefaan to your farm and the work you were doing out in the sun today. But what’s something that really is has your curiosity now, and if you also want to share, where people can connect with you who want to learn more. I think that would be great.

Hilary Lichterman
Stefaan, you go first.

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
I’m very practical today. I’m really curious about ducks. I find I find hobby and farm work, any hobby, really, such a beautiful area to ask new questions, because I’m starting to explore more and more new things, and I don’t know what I don’t know in those new areas. So I start looking, and I start reading, and I start asking people, and the entire new world is opening up for me. And now it’s now, it’s now. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on the website, global curiosity institute.com, and you can also do it a personal diagnostic on the website. If you do the diagnostic, you can go to the website, and once you do the diagnostic, it takes about 12 minutes, and I will send you a report, and you’ll be joining now. More than 10,000 people have done the diagnostic, and that’s basically also the basis of of doing research on how does curiosity work across countries, across companies, etc, etc. So this is where you could find me,

Keith Edwards
yeah. And you mentioned, we were here talking about the workplace curiosity manifesto. You mentioned a new book coming. Say a little bit about that, for folks who might be curious. What is it? When is it coming?

Stefaan Van Hooydonk
Oh, thank you. It’s about the expansion of what we were trying to discuss and trying to explore in the curiosity manifesto. It’s also focusing more on systems as curiosity, because I’m great believer curious people need curious organizations to thrive, or curious goals, or curious. 80s, and I’m trying to focus more on that part now is what can societies do in terms of culture, in terms of process, in terms of practices, in terms of the same, permission, awareness and intentionality, to make sure everybody in the environment is is a curious fellow?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Thank you. Stefaan, Hilary, what’s what are you curious about now? And where can folks connect with you?

Hilary Lichterman
I’m so glad that you mentioned the diagnostic. I know there are a few of them on there. I was just with a group of colleagues last week that completed it, and everyone got their amazing report. I have mine printed on my desk. It’s, it’s high quality. You get a lot of goodness of that. So check that out. I also love that there’s one for the that one’s free, but I love that there’s one for teams and groups. And there’s just so much with this. So I’ll start with saying you can find me on LinkedIn, basically any social media platform, but definitely on LinkedIn, just my name there, also my email. I have two different emails, the Hilary.Lichterman, gmail.com and the Hilary, and also Hilary at global curiosity institute.com, so we’ll make sure that’s in the show notes, but thinking a lot about speaking of LinkedIn, thank you to the algorithm and Stefaan’s like that also brought it into my feed. I saw a post back in April, and those who know me best will not be surprised when I bring up it was a thought piece from another thought leader on LinkedIn, and the caption above the image just said the future of work. And I ended up posting my own thoughts about this back in May, so you can check that out there. But it was a thought piece about the chief curiosity officer, and it just had me. It lights me up. That was back in April. I think about it every day. I have that posted in my office, at home, in my car. I keep my eyes on the road. I trust you, trust me on that. But it’s just become a part of my being. And what really gets me excited, and it has me thinking about we’ve talked a lot about the tenants of what could be in the role of the chief curiosity officer, but it has me so excited when I think about higher education systems, institutions, divisions, departments, the profession at large, it has me thinking about the mindsets that we should continue to be talking about, but also how we can bring this to our practice. I want to be part of being in organizations where Curiosity is a guiding force in a strategic plan, and we get very specific about that. It’s not just a word, it’s not a phrase. But that’s what has me really excited, and I’m really excited to embrace that more and be part of that. So thank you, Keith, for having us. This has been really fun.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, thank you both. This has been terrific, and really thank you for joining us today and for this conversation. I’ve learned so much, and thanks for your leadership in this space. I also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode, Routledge and Huron. Routledge Taylor and Francis is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators and researchers. They have welcomed Stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching, Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. Routledge is a proud sponsor of Student Affairs NOW. You can view their complete catalog at routledge.com/education and Huron is a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation and empowering businesses and their people to own their future by embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo, Huron creates sustainable results for organizations they serve. And as always, a huge shout out to Natalie Ambrosey, who does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. We love your support for these conversations and sharing them with folks for free. You can help us out by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or our weekly newsletter. You can also leave us a five star review if you’re so inclined. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks to our fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching listening, make it a great week. Thank you all you.

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