EP 113: Curiosity as a Bridge: Uncovering Fears and Building Connections with Scott Shigeoka

How does curiosity show up in your life, work, and relationships?

Does your curiosity influence your strategy or planning? Or do you follow your curiosity to gain more knowledge or deepen your understanding of topics or viewpoints? Do you lean on curiosity to help you get to know someone better in ways that satisfy your interests or deepen your connection?

Do you keep following your curiosity even if it leads to uncomfortable or unknown places?

Our curiosity can reveal much about us, our interests, and our capacity for hope, discomfort, and imagination. But just as important is HOW we use our curiosity.

When we wield our curiosity to prove a point, we can cause division and harm. And when we use curiosity to honor others and our vulnerability, we can build the bridges necessary to cultivate the spaces we dream about and desire.

Today’s guest has combined his own lived experiences and research on curiosity and bridge-building into a powerful, nuanced book and set of practices on curiosity and how we use it in our relationships.

Scott Shigeoka believes curiosity has the power to transform your life and change the world. It’s the key to connection, healing, and personal growth. It’s a critical practice for your relationships, leadership, and life satisfaction. In his book, Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World, Scott teaches readers to strengthen their curiosity muscles with his signature DIVE method.

Scott has appeared on The Today Show, Harvard Business Review, NPR, The Guardian, and CNBC, and he has spoken at Google, Microsoft, Pixar, IDEO, Meta, Airbnb, and universities and schools around the world and teaches at The University of Texas at Austin.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Scott’s cross-country road trip showed in real-time that approaching fears with curiosity builds connection, understanding, and possibility
The limits and boundaries to approaching others with curiosity in the moment
Why we need to bring curiosity and humility when we catch our own biases
How social and structural power dynamics influence how we balance curiosity, discomfort, and anger in a group
Three key questions to ask yourself to identify if your curiosity about another person or situation is invasive or predatory
How letting go of certainty opens up possibilities and allows for growth

Learn more about Scott Shigeoka:

Learn more about Rebecca:

Resources:

Transcript:

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Scott Shigeoka: What I’m reminded of is that when I shine a light of curiosity on the things that I fear, not only do I unwind that fear, not only do I create a connection with people who I thought I never could have because I felt so different or I did not understand them, but I also saw possibilities. I also saw, wow, I see the human spirit, I see what is possible for us when we come together with curiosity, and I see a path forward towards more belonging, more justice, and all of the things I think we all collectively want.

Rebecca Ching: What’s your relationship with curiosity? How does curiosity show up in your life, in your work, and in your relationships? Do you use curiosity to help with strategy or planning or use curiosity to gain more knowledge to deepen your understanding of topics, of viewpoints of interest? Do you follow your curiosity even to uncomfortable or unknown places? Do you lean on curiosity to help you get to know someone better in ways that satisfy your interests or in ways that truly deepen connection between the both of you?

Our curiosity can reveal so much about us, our interests and our capacity for hope, discomfort, and imagination. How we use curiosity can be a powerful tool in our relationships with our own internal systems and in relationships with others. When we protect ourselves with certainty and use a kind of faux curiosity just to prove a point, we can further divide and do harm. But when we use curiosity to honor those in our presence along with the vulnerability we hold within us, we become bridge builders across divides and cultivate the kind of spaces that we dream about and desire today in the here and now.

2:00

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

I remember back in grad school in my MFT 101 class, we had a whole teaching on questions and how to ask our clients questions. At one point in this class, my professor challenged us not to use the question “why” with our clients. He encouraged us to experiment with other ways of asking questions without using why. So instead, say something like, “What led you to make that choice?” or “How did you come to that decision?” or “Who influenced your perspective on this matter?” And it’s not really a question but more like a little different spin on it saying, “Tell me about the first time that happened.”

Now, it’s been quite a while, almost two decades, two-and-a-half decades since that class, and still that teaching sticks in my brain, particularly the reason behind my professor’s encouragement to move away from defaulting using “why” in our questions. Often with “why” questions there is an answer, but there’s something that stood out to me when he noted that “why” questions don’t make us feel so great. [Laughs]

So humor me. Go with me. As I share these “why” questions with you, listen to how they land with you. What comes up inside of you when I ask the following:

Why’d you do that?

Why are you supporting this person?

Why did you let it go for so long?

Why can’t you get here in time?

Why did you say that?

Ugh, right? I feel the discomfort even asking these questions, right? Because I can say, “Why’d you do that,” versus, “Oh, how’d you come to that choice and that decision?” Why are you supporting that person?” “What led you to supporting this person?” It feels different, right? I could keep going but yeah, these “why” questions, really, they don’t land well.

4:12

Now, I want to give props and acknowledge scientists, right, who do a lot of research, ask “why” questions in a different way. They’re not necessarily in the relationship-building process, but they ask why with open-ended curiosity based on data and a hypothesis that they’re working with, right? The “why” questions take them on a path where they follow what they’re learning from their experiments, why something worked, why it did not. There’s deep probing and in the ideal goal standard sense, they follow the results regardless of whether they like them or agree with them.

But when it comes to relationships with ourselves and others, the “why” questions feel less like questions and more like judgments and shame, right? Going back to those examples I just gave on how the “why” questions can land and also be used, especially when someone’s doing something I disagree with that I’m confused by, that I don’t understand or relate to, or that I’m frustrated with, using the “why” question this way can leave others feeling attacked, judged, condescended to, and further, kind of expand disconnection between me and the other person.

Sure, sometimes we just want answers so we can understand. I know that’s how I work. Sometimes I just need to understand the basics, whether in a concept or a theory or a dynamic before I can have more open and expansive curiosity.

My Unburdened Leader guest here in this episode wrote this beautiful book based on his lived experience and some pretty solid research around curiosity and bridge building, and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read on the nuances of curiosity and how we use it in relationships. And he really got me thinking when he wrote about the difference between what he called true curiosity and predatory curiosity, and we’ll get into that more in our conversation. Really pay attention to that.

6:02

But still, I want to spend a little time here and note that I’m catching myself these days, gosh, with so much going on, checking to see if I’m in predatory curiosity mode.

We can certainly use aspects of curiosity as protective armor and to position ourselves as we want to be seen. We can use it to attack, belittle, condescend, and I’m learning that if my curiosity falls into that predatory space then that’s data for me to know that my curiosity’s happening at the expense of the other person’s experience or I’m protecting myself and fostering my agendas, regardless of the other person’s needs or wants or dignity. And I’m usually in a space where I’m puffing up and entering into self-righteousness, which is a major danger, and worst-case, I could be exploiting someone at the expense of my curiosity.

And so, now I notice if I’m using those “why” questions and it’s become a flag or a tell that I’m falling into predatory curiosity, and it usually comes up the quickest in my family, that’s for sure. Ugh, I hate saying that but it’s just so true. Sometimes I’m like, “Why did you do that?” [Laughs] I’m human. True curiosity, one that’s not in the predatory realm, one that’s not with a lot of agendas, but true curiosity, one that’s not in the predatory realm and doesn’t have a lot of agendas, it opens us up to vulnerability and connection. And as Brené Brown writes in her book Rising Strong, it wasn’t always a choice. We were born curious. But over time, we learned that curiosity, like vulnerability, can lead to hurt. As a result, we turn to self-protecting, choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, and knowing over learning. When we turn curiosity on ourselves (hello YOU-turn – love that YOU-turn, right?) and ask ourselves, “Hey, what’s going on with my reactivity around this idea, this person, this experience, this belief system, this conversation,” we can better understand our own vulnerabilities and what brings up our judgements and fears.

8:16

And true curiosity about our own reactivity can in turn help us return to those we love, live with, and work with in times of conflict and challenge in ways that keep us anchored within ourselves and connected within ourselves and with others. This requires us to be really good at self-awareness and understanding our reactivity, not exiling it like many of us were taught but befriending and witnessing that reactivity.

I am not above having strong beliefs. If you know me, that’s a no-brainer, right? And as a leader in different capacities, I take seriously how my strong beliefs show up. I do this imperfectly. We all do. And we don’t have to look far to see how we’ve lost the capacity for true curiosity. At the root of this diminished capacity for true curiosity lies a lot of fear of losing our identity, safety, and belonging. So developing a deeper capacity of self-awareness around our reactivity, self-righteousness, fears, and discomforts, if we can sit with that internally, understand it, be in relationship with it, we can exponentially increase our ability to sit with others and their emotional intensity.

Now, I’m not saying we have to take abuse. I’m not saying we have to be harmed. I’m talking about those intense conflicts, struggles, power struggles, idea struggles that happen often in our places of work. And today’s Unburdened Leader guest walks us through the nuances of curiosity and important practices he developed through his bridge-building research and lived experiences.

Scott Shigeoka believes curiosity has the power to transform your life and change the world, and he believes it’s the key to connection, healing, and personal growth, which I wholeheartedly agree.

10:09

In his debut book Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World, Scott blends cutting-edge research with vulnerable storytelling to teach us all his signature DIVE model and in a way to strengthen our curiosity muscles, which is also driven by his work at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Scott has appeared on a bunch of TV shows like The Today Show but also in Harvard Business Review, NPR, The Guardian; has spoken at a lot of places like Google, Microsoft, Meta, as well as teaching at universities and schools around the world and regularly at The University of Texas at Austin.

Listen for when Scott shares how he uses curiosity to illuminate his fears so he can unwind these fears and create space to connect with people he never would have imagined, truly. Pay attention to how Scott repeatedly shares how true curiosity serves as a means to share and witness the real suffering and inequities many experience while helping everyone feel heard. And notice when Scott shares his origin story of healing that led him on an adventure of a lifetime and deeper healing while living his research in real time. It’s quite the story! Now, please welcome Scott Shigeoka to The Unburdened Leader podcast.

Scott, welcome!

Scott Shigeoka: Thanks! I’m so excited to be on, Rebecca.

Rebecca Ching: I was so thrilled when you got back to me. When I found your book I was doing a lot of researching on bridging the divide, and your name kept coming up, and then I discovered your book Seek and fell in love with it. So I’m excited to talk about the incredible things that you wrote about in your book and your research and your experiences. But just before the call, I’d asked you if we could kind of riff on something that you do when you do a lot of speaking or group work is talk about your name, you know, when we do introductions. And so, Scott, tell me about your name.

12:19

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, and I love — you know, just for context, what is the story of your name is such a great question to go deeper.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Scott Shigeoka: You know, we’re always asking, “What is your name,” but in the question, “What is the story of your name,” you learn so much more about who this person is. Or, “Tell me more about your name,” you know, it gives you the insight of who this person is, their relationship to those that named them. If they know anything about their name, maybe there’s cultural or personal or family significance to it.

So my name is Scott Keoni Shigeoka, and my mom, actually, and I had a conversation about this because I didn’t know for a while what my name meant or why they had named me that. But I learned that it represents the three different cultures that are important to me. So Scott is the US side. Four generations ago, my family immigrated from Japan to Hawaii. So Keoni is a nod to that. I’m not Kānaka Maoli, I’m not native Hawaiian, but it’s a nod to this very important island and place I grew up, a very special culture that’s given me so much. And then Shigeoka is my last name which is my ancestral name. You know, it is the mountains that disappear into the distance is what it means in Japanese.

Rebecca Ching: Wow.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, so in Japanese you have a lot of these nature-based words, so my favorite is Komorebi, which is the sunlight that shines between the leaves of a tree, and Shigeoka, which is my last name, is no different. It is when you look out at the desert mountains, and you see them slowly fading into the distance.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, my goodness.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, and so, I remember and hold onto my culture as I navigate through this world. And so, I’m so grateful for my name.

14:04

And I’ve explored trying on new names, and no disrespect or shade to my mom or dad for naming me, but I also, like many, wondered are there other names that feel more expansive to represent who I am in the world? And so, Sky is another name that I go by as well, which feels a little bit more gender expansive for me. But I love Scott too.

So yeah, that’s the story of my name. What about you? What’s the story of your name?

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, so Rebecca Dona and then my maiden name is Bass, my dad’s side of the family. Rankin is my mom’s side of the family, and my married name is Ching.

So I’ve heard a couple stories about Rebecca is — my mom had a sister who only lived for a few days, and my mom got to name her, and she named her Rebecca. And so, I’m named after my aunt who did not survive very long, and on my father’s side of the family I’m told I had a great aunt Rebecca who was quite a piece of work, which I appreciate that. And then Dona, my mom’s father’s name is Donald, so my middle name is Dona, so Dona. And then the Bass part is my dad’s side of the family came from Eastern Europe, Russia/Poland area, Jewish heritage, immigrated here. And then Rankin I think is a very extensive history within kind of Pennsylvania Dutch area, English/Welsh area also. And then my husband has the same middle name as you.

Scott Shigeoka: Oh, wow.

Rebecca Ching: His family is Chinese and Polynesian. And so, I’m very proud to be married into the Ching clan also.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, that’s amazing.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Scott Shigeoka: Oh, wow. I’ve learned so much. See, this is what I mean! You learn so much about a person just through asking a question like, “What is the story of your name?” The quality of our questions really matter.

16:02

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, so thank you for catching that, what is the story of your name. And we’re gonna get into this more in our conversation about curiosity and the type of questions and the boundaries around our questions, but there’s something so beautiful I think when you’re asked, “What’s your story,” that’s not a drive-by question, right? And so, I just appreciate it. So thank you for doing that with me as we kick off our conversation today!

So, again, there’s a lot I want to talk about, but you wrote this beautiful book Seek. It is an incredible manual for so many leaders and I think humans navigating life in 2024, but one of the things you did as you gathered kind of anecdotal and qualitative research is you went on a road trip of The United States for several months. You live in The Bay Area, and you were intentionally seeking communities and people with whom you disagreed. So that had me at the beginning. And so, can you talk a little bit, first, what was the catalyst for this trip?

Scott Shigeoka: Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. So as a social scientist, I wanted to not be driven by fear. I knew that anytime that we fear something or are afraid of something, whether that is a phobia that we have of spiders, which is a real thing, or whether we have fear towards “the other people” that maybe vote in a very different way than us or who live in a very different way from us, or even if that fear is just not understanding and being like, “I just don’t understand why you could possibly vote for this person or why you could possibly believe this.” One of the things I know as a social scientist is that when you come into contact with that fear or that person you don’t understand and you come in with curiosity rather than fear, you’re actually able to build a relationship with that person or that thing that you fear. And over time, your fear actually gets reduced, and eventually your fear moves towards understanding, your fear moves towards possibly even connection.

18:10

And so, I was really on this mission feeling so afraid of the state of our country, which I think is a very normal thing for many of us to feel right now, and I just did not want to be afraid and angry anymore. I was also angry. And I knew that if I was curious, you know, I could possibly transform these emotions inside of myself that I was really struggling with.

So I packed up my bags and went on this road trip for 13 months, and I’d been doing a lot of work around bridging the divides of the time at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and I had my eyesight set on places like the Trump rally, a mega church. I went to live for months at a time in communities that I’d only read about like [Indiscernible] and the rural South, and I wanted to understand as someone who is physically Asian American, who is very queer, you can’t see me if you’re listening to this, and I’m wearing black today, but that is abnormal for me. I wear bright, vibrant jumpsuits and colors, and I was wondering can I be my full self and show up as who I am and be curious about those who I would encounter? And I had all of these incredibly remarkable experiences but I learned — and I’m happy to go into any of those stories, but what I learned is the research is true. The science is true. That as I came more and more into contact with a conservative voter, with a religious leader, with someone who lived in the South, I was able to move from stereotyping them and putting them into boxes and assuming things about who they are and why they are the way they are and transforming that towards a real connection.

19:57

And so, I learned a lot on the road, and I saw a lot of possibility as well, which I think was really beautiful. Initially, before I left for the trip, living out in The Bay Area I was like, “There’s no hope for our country. We are gonna fall apart and implode,” and I think it’s really easy in an election year even to feel that way too here in the US, and not even just in the US. Globally, four billion people are going through elections this year. And so, I think what I’m reminded of is that when I shine a light of curiosity on the things that I fear, not only do I unwind that fear, not only do I create a connection with people who I thought I never could have because I felt so different or I did not understand them. But I also saw possibilities. I also saw, wow, I see the human spirit. I see what is possible for us when we come together with curiosity, and I see a path forward towards more belonging, more justice, and all of the things I think we all collectively want.

Rebecca Ching: Mm, that’s a word right there. I’m curious, what did you learn about yourself on this trip that surprised you, that you did not see coming?

Scott Shigeoka: Well, I knew this lesson from a couple years back before — I did the trip in 2019, and a couple years before that I was in Joshua Tree. As one does, I took psychedelics and went on a journey with a bunch of friends, and it was a very celebratory, beautiful time. In the beginning, we were literally giving gratitude to trees, and we were reveling in the expanse of this desert landscape. But as the night went on, things just started to get really hard and challenging for me.

I had what folks would describe as a really bad trip, and I started to hear these really scary voices that were very demeaning towards me, were telling me I was disgusting, I didn’t have friends, do I even deserve to be here at this party or, you know, in the celebration with community or even on this planet, you know, just very dark thoughts. And I decided to care for myself in that moment, and I was like, “Okay, y’all, I’m gonna set this boundary. I’m gonna go back to my bed and sleep for the night.”

22:17

When I woke up, I was like, “Okay, new day. We’re gonna move through the world in a different way. That was a bad trip. That was hard. But I’m just gonna keep moving through.” And we drove out of Joshua Tree. I was with my two best friends, and we stopped by In-N-Out to get some burgers, and I started to hear the voices again, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This is so weird. It’s been over 15 hours.” And then for every day after that, I just kept hearing voices, and they were just constantly demeaning me and just, really, it was very, very scary. They weren’t delusions. I didn’t think that they were real. But they were still very confronting and very hard for me to live with, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, is this what I’m gonna have to live with for the rest of my life?” It was just this very scary moment.

I ended up going to this psychotherapist at UCSF who specializes in this. He told me what he thinks I have is hallucinogen processing perception disorder (HPPD), which is basically when the effects of a psychedelic you take continue to linger on. And I was like, okay, that’s great to name it, but is there a way for me to escape this because this is bringing up a lot of fear for me, a lot of anxiety. It’s almost like a paralysis. It’s hard for me to navigate my life right now. And he said, “Well, what have the voices told you and where do you think they’re coming from?” And I was like, “What do you mean?” And he was like, “Well, what would it look like if you actually got curious about the voices that you’re hearing?” And I was just like, “Why would I do that? I’m trying to get rid of the voices. I’m trying to extinguish the voices. Why would I get curious about it?” And he’s like, “You know, I think that could be a step in your healing journey, and there’s a lot that you might be able to find.”

24:20

You know, as I spent weeks getting curious about these voices, asking them, “What do you want from me? Where are you coming from? Are these voices I’ve heard before?” I started to realize that these were things that I heard as a kid growing up. These were things I heard when I was bullied. These were things that were sort of inside of me from past experiences that were coming out of me in full force, and I started to befriend them, which is wild. I was befriending the thing that I was so afraid of that I wanted to push away, and I started to work with them. I started to love them. And as I started to do that, I literally had a deeper understanding of my upbringing, my childhood, the ways that I unhealthily coped in hard situations or in conflict, and I worked really hard for many, many months to develop new coping mechanisms and to really heal from those voices.

And so, I think that was, like, the first moment in my life where I was like, “Wow, we can actually turn towards the things that we’re afraid of.” We can actually call them in. We can love them. We can be curious towards the voices that demean us, that we are fearful of and understand them in a deeper way, even befriend them, and we can move from this judgment and front his fear for something that’s much more expansive – towards healing, towards possibilities.

And so, I was like can we do that with society? Can we do that in our country where there’s so much division? I call it the area of incuriosity. There’s so much division, so much disconnection. Is there a way for us to use curiosity in the same way and move towards, to understand, to love, to befriend. What would that do for us?

26:13

Rebecca Ching: So I don’t know if you know this, but I practice IFS, so that’s my modality. So what you’re describing is at the heart of befriending those things, those parts of us that are demonizing us but have internalized those messages, whether it’s from family of origin or culture. So what you’re describing is so beautiful. And so, you did that inner work and then you moved it forward facing. So thank you for sharing that. That’s powerful.

I’m gonna bring you back, though, to that question, then. With that background — so you’re on the trip. It seems like this trip was an extension of that healing work where you were doing that internally, and then I suspect the social scientist in you is like, “Can we do this on a larger scale?” [Laughs]

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: And so, were there any surprises that you learned about yourself as you packed your things? You wrote about how your friends are, like, going, “Really? You’re doing what?” [Laughs] “You’re going where?” But yeah, what did you learn about yourself on this trip, especially in light of what you just shared, that surprised you?

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, I think that we put people, like I said, in boxes. We assume a lot of things about folks, and I think a big part of that is because we don’t see them in a really nuanced way. We hold onto one part of who they are, maybe it’s an identity that they have, maybe it’s a stance on a geopolitical crisis that’s happening, maybe it is a way that they’re voting in the elections, and that part of them becomes so big that we refuse or do not see the other parts of who they are, and I think what was surprising to me was humanizing folks who were voting for someone, in this case Donald Trump, that I just vehemently disagree with. And to say that you can vote for this person that I won’t even vote for, and I can understand you and I can see the other parts of you, and we can still find what we share.

28:07

And some of the shocking things that we shared — I thought that everyone that I would meet at a rally, for instance, would not think climate change was real, but a lot of the folks that I met did actually believe in “people cause climate change,” and I was like, “What? Wait, what? How is this –,” and it was hearing things that sort of contradicted my bias and starting to see the individuality of people and to see, wow, there are people of different races here, there are people of different backgrounds. I met people with graduate degrees, you know? And I was like this is a very different idea than what I came in with, right?

The same thing was happening to them as well as they were talking to me because many people told me every time they come into a conversation with someone who describes themselves as a democrat or progressive, they’re usually put on the defensive because that person they’re talking to usually attacks them and says, “How could you ever vote for this person? What is wrong with you?” They told me stories about their family and even their friends sort of turning on them because of who they were voting for, and it not only hardened their belief and their vigor for the person that they were voting for, but it also made it hard for them to connect with those folks, or they had to even end those relationships with brothers, with sisters, with their partner’s friends, whoever it was.

What was so interesting for me is that what I later found out in the research is that curiosity, this desire to know, when we ask questions, when we really want to understand who this person is, that is actually contagious. Curiosity is contagious. So when I started to ask them questions about, “Your beliefs, the stories that made you who you are. Has there ever been an experience where you’ve been judged for who you are or how you exist in the world? How did that make you feel?” I asked them those kinds of questions, and they would ask me those questions back, and they’d say, “What about you? Is that something that’s happening to you?”

30:05

And we’d have these really interesting conversations, and some of them tell me they had never had such an open conversation with someone who’s queer, they had never had a conversation in this way with someone who identifies as a democrat, you know? So what I saw was this possibility for two very different people to learn from each other’s experiences.

What I always have to remind people of with curiosity is that it doesn’t mean consensus. It does not mean that I’m going to agree with what you are saying. It also doesn’t mean that you’re going to agree with what I’m saying. It also cannot come with an agenda. I was not going to this rally to try to convert everyone into voting for a different candidate. I was truly just there in an open-hearted way to understand people who are very different from me who were not often in the bubbles that I occupied.

When we have those desires to want to change someone, even if it’s with open-ended questions, that is what I call predatory curiosity. It is this idea that we are asking questions with an ulterior motive. There’s a reason behind, a motive behind why we were asking those questions. It’s like what a detective or a prosecutor does. It’s not real curiosity.

And so, I not only saw curiosity in this true way be contagious where we’re asking questions back and forth, learning a lot about each other, individuating one another, and really starting to break down the stereotypes and biases that we held about each other, but something really beautiful happened, which is we started to connect with one another and we started to unwind our own fears and anxieties, like I said. Our anger started to reduce down. I would later find out that curiosity is used in mediation. It’s used in conflict resolution. It’s used in negotiations as a way to reduce feelings of hostility, anger, and to increase intimacy and connection, especially in these heightened moments where there is a lot of intensity, a lot of fire.

32:04

And so, I saw all of this happening, and I was like, wow, this is possible even in our country! We can approach each other with more curiosity rather than judgment. We can approach each other with these open-ended questions rather than attacking one another. We can call each other in for connection rather than canceling them out because of who they are or what they believe. And I think there’s so much that becomes possible when we do that.

Rebecca Ching: Okay, so much there. I want to dig in in a moment about predatory curiosity, because I think that’s a really, really important distinction. But I’m curious because that agenda piece was something when I talk to my clients I’m like, “You know, we need to have a non-agenda curiosity.” It’s something that I’ve used. I can’t help but wonder if there were times where it was hard to stay curious during your road trip? I know I rumble with parts of me that are like, “F this curiosity. We’ve got to shut this down,” especially when I feel like there’s so much at stake for people’s lives. I mean, we’ve seen the — I have no doubt that you’re familiar with the uptick in violence against a variety of different groups of people in our country that have been demonized and dehumanized. And so, there feels like there are parts of me that get so, “Do you understand that if you’re supporting this, lives are at stake!” [Laughs]

And so, I’m just curious, for you, were there times where it was particularly hard to stay in that non-agenda curiosity and how did you manage that?

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, I think that it’s important to remember that curiosity is not just outward. It’s not just towards other people. “How do I get curious about you and your beliefs, and why do you do the things that you do,” but it’s also you can direct that curiosity inward.

Rebecca Ching: A hundred percent.

Scott Shigeoka: You know, “Why do I believe this? Why do I feel this way? Is my safety in jeopardy right now? Is that real or imagined? How do I support myself? What are the kinds of questions I need to be asking myself for my own healing?”

34:07

I think that’s really, really core to this practice because that helps you to understand when are the moments when I want to dial up the curiosity towards others and when I want to dial it down, right?

And so, that’s why in the book, in Seek, I talk about start with inward first. Get curious about yourself. Practice exercising that muscle with yourself before you go out towards another person, and even before you to go to a rally where there are people that hold very different views from you. Maybe start a little closer to home. Get curious towards people like your partner, your children, your friends, your parents, your neighbors, your colleagues, you know, people who you already have this established trust with.

You know, I think the moments for me that were really difficult or challenging were the moments where I felt like my safety was in jeopardy in a real way.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Scott Shigeoka: And so, one of those examples was being in Minnesota, no disrespect to Minnesota. I met many great people there.

Rebecca Ching: That’s where I’m from!

Scott Shigeoka: Oh, okay, well —

Rebecca Ching: That’s my hometown — home state. It’s all good.

Scott Shigeoka: Well, I’m about to share a hard story that happened for me in that state.

Rebecca Ching: Ugh.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, I was there at a show with my partner, and obviously we are two very queer, very proud of our queer identities, and during a love song we were being affectionate. We were holding each other’s hands and just singing along. So were many of the other couples, by the way, around us, they just all happened to not appear to be queer.

And so, for us, we were very visible, and I love that, and I came from, again, The Bay where that is very normal. And a group of guys that were standing next to us, they did not like that. They were very uncomfortable with it. Dare I say they were even fearful and judgmental of it, and they could have used it as curiosity. But they told us — they demanded at us that we stop that, that we stop holding hands, that we knock that shit out or that something was gonna happen to us. And then it eventually escalated to physical threats where we just did not feel A, like we were present with the show anymore, which was the point of why we were there, and B, we did not feel safe.

36:15

And so, in that moment, I had to get inwardly curious and check in with myself, and then I also had to get curious wish my partner, and I was like this is not a moment where we need to be like, “Tell me more about the story of your name,” or “Tell me more about why do you feel this way towards me and my partner,” or you know, “What is hurting inside of you?” You know, especially, I definitely want to ask them but not in that moment. That was not the right place or the right time, and we had to protect ourselves in that moment. So we set a boundary, said we’re not okay with this and we’re gonna be moving, and we moved to a different part of the venue where we were very much accepted by the Minnesotans or whoever were there at that part of the venue and were very celebrated.

So I think what’s important and why I wrote a huge section in the book called “The Limits and Boundaries of Curiosity,” this is not Kumbaya shit, you know, that I’m talking about here. This is not let’s all grab tea and hold hands and just be curious about one another and then we shall transcend and all will be well in the world. There are real issues that are happening in the country, in the world, and these issues cause real suffering, real suffering for people, real inequity for people, real hurt and harm for people. That is why I’m so passionate about curiosity because I want those harms and those inequities to be revealed to people and I also want them to be understood, and I want us to wonder with our deeper understanding of each other’s individuals, with our shared common humanity what is a way that we can chart forward together? How do we overcome these inequities? How do we overcome this hurt? How do we build a possibility for our country and for our world that serves all of us, you know? What does that look like for us? And that’s the quality of the curiosity that I’m really talking about in the book, but in order to get there, you have to start with the curiosity that leads to connection.

38:14

Rebecca Ching: What I’m hearing from you and what I know to be true is I can’t hold fear and curiosity at the same time, and just like that story in my beloved home state, which it shows up — Twin Cities. I don’t know if you were in the Twin Cities or outside of the Twin Cities but —

Scott Shigeoka: I was outside.

Rebecca Ching: Okay, that makes sense. [Laughs] And even then, still not okay. But if there’s that real fear, I think because a lot of people feel like they need to override their safety, or they put themselves in harm’s way. So that kind of YOU-turn return dance is essential. But there’s this other component that really landed with me. You talked about realizing on this road trip that you were streaming through communities and not living in them.

Scott Shigeoka: Mm.

Rebecca Ching: And that’s something that I really have made a commitment over this last year just to go deep into my communities, my neighbors, different — instead of just I know a lot of people in a lot of different spaces I can touch, you know, in and out. I didn’t have the language for it but I was like I want to start really living and building reps with people so I can earn the right to ask questions or to say, “Hey, are you open to hearing a different perspective?” Because knowing, like you said, change doesn’t happen with just coming in with an agenda to prove someone wrong.

But can you talk a little bit about what you meant by streaming through communities to start living in communities, and what did you do as a result on your trip when you realized that you were streaming?

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, well, and before I jump into that, I just want to note something that I heard from you, which is — and tell me if I’m misunderstanding this, but that it makes more sense for something like that to happen outside of the Twin Cities.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Scott Shigeoka: I just want to pull that apart a little bit.

Rebecca Ching: I know. Thank you!

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, no, because —

Rebecca Ching: Thank you.

40:00

Scott Shigeoka: You know, just because I think this is where the curiosity really helps us to detach from some of what I call the ABCs in the book, our assumptions, our biases, and our certainty. There’s an amazing organization that is called Out In The Open, and it’s really about the flourishing LGBTQ+ communities that are in rural or small towns, or I think about the work of The Center for Rural Strategies and the incredible organizing and the incredible sense of belonging that is being modeled in smaller towns outside of city centers, in fact, that a lot of cities could learn from, you know? And I think that this is all a part of sort of the mission of the book and the spirit of my road trip was when I actually went to these places that I would notice, in my own language, that I would say, “Oh, my gosh. Well, that’s outside of The Bay. Of course, it’s like that,” or “What’s happening in that small town?” And I started to come in with that curiosity of actually meeting some of the folks that were in those communities. I knew that one bad experience that I had does not necessarily represent that entire town that I was in in Minnesota. Two people can share the same city that they’re in or the same town they’re in or share the same identity and be very, very different.

And so, I think an inward curiosity thing that I had towards myself after that experience was, you know, who is here in this town that I didn’t get to meet at that show that would have loved me, that would have accepted me. And then curiosity also shines a light on the good, right? That’s why I love curiosity. It allows us to see and be open to the good in life, to the love that’s in our lives, to the things that we should appreciate more, be more grateful of, right? If we are closed off from those things, we’re not in a place of recognizing what we appreciate and what we should be grateful for. But when we are curious, we look for those things.

And then I was like, wow, thank god for that amazing group of people, when we moved to a different part of the venue, that celebrated us and loved us, you know? It’s like, wow, that is a memory also that I want to hold with me as I move from this town to the next place on my journey. I don’t want to just paint my perspective of that town on that one experience with those guys.

42:14

Rebecca Ching: I want to just reflect back on the call-in because it’s a good one. It’s a good one because what was coming up for me, as I slow it down, I’m very proud to be from Minnesota. Anyone who knows me, I mean, I love me my Prince. I grew up in the eighties.

Scott Shigeoka: Yes. Yes.

Rebecca Ching: I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, a lot of high school pride, and so, I immediately went, “Okay, who is misrepresenting my state?” in my head, and then, “Okay, it was those people. It was outside of the cities,” like the cities are perfect.

Scott Shigeoka: Mm.

Rebecca Ching: And so, that was a beautiful, beautiful call-in, and such a good important piece about the YOU-turn of curiosity and our own biases, and you talk extensively about that. It is so slippery how it comes in. My curiosity was not a curiosity, it was an agenda curiosity. “Was it in the Twin Cities, or was it out of the Twin Cities?”

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: You know, so that was such a badass call-in, and I appreciate that. That’s that pace. It slows us down. So yeah, thank you for that.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah. Well, what you’re demonstrating to me is unburdened leadership. It is you’re coming in with intellectual humility, so knowing the limits of your own knowledge and being willing to —

Rebecca Ching: So many limits.

Scott Shigeoka: Sure, yeah, and being willing to admit that we can sometimes get things wrong or there are things that we’re — I mean, we’re constantly growing as humans. We all are. I also get things wrong all the time.

Rebecca Ching: All the time.

Scott Shigeoka: And I messed up a lot on the journey and also in my life constantly, and to have that awareness and to have that self-compassion and then to also extend that grace and say, “Yeah, I did that, and here is something for me to be mindful of as I move forward in the future.” I think that is that is such a demonstration of unburdened leadership because I think that so many leaders today, so many people who want to move in the world as a leader think that to do that they need to know everything, they need to —

Rebecca Ching: Exactly.

44:09

Scott Shigeoka: They need to say that they’re never wrong and that they know everything that they need to know about whether that’s the field they’re in or the school they’re in or the community they’re leading or whatever it is. And, you know, when you actually look at the research, that’s not what we want in a leader. In fact, that is an arrogant person. I ‘m defining an arrogant person, someone that thinks that they’re always right and knows everything. What we want are curious leaders. We want people who are open to the ideas of others, who are willing to work with other people, who are willing to admit when they’re wrong, and not only are we more well liked as a leader when we have those qualities of curiosity and intellectual humility, but we’re often found to be more competent, and people want to be around us and work with us. So we become a magnet, as a leader, for attracting people into our orbit, and I think that this research is helpful not just for leaders but also for anyone who is guiding —

Rebecca Ching: For humans.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah, for humans, you know, whether you’re a parent, you’re a coach of a sports team, I think that coming with that spirit of intellectual humility and curiosity is really gonna help with the experience that everyone is having and make you more well-liked as that person that is leading a group.

Rebecca Ching: If we really want to grow, if we really want to be better humans, it’s beyond our intellectual curiosity. We have to feel through it. We have to connect through it. And there has to be some level of trust within but also with the people that are saying, “Hey, can I come back to this?” And even how you did, it wasn’t like, “Well, do you see what you did there? You were not being curious.”

Scott Shigeoka: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: It was even your approach, but your approach was, “Hey, I just want to notice something,” and I knew right away. I was like, “Aww, fudge,” you know?

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah. [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: But I think that’s the part of the relationship. You talk about curiosity and connection like that’s been — we picked up on that right away, you know, in this conversation, and it’s hard to have generative conversations without that, and I do think at least in a lot of circles I run in, we can armor up with intellectual kind of armor and very afraid to let that go just like maybe others that we would look down on like, “How dare you think that this would be the way to move our country forward or the best way to lead,” you know, judging, and yeah, we lose that.

46:25

So that intellectual piece sometimes is why I’m a nerd. I love to learn. It can be such an armor, but the other piece is our biases are frickin’ lightning speed, and slowing down, you talked about that a lot in your book too. I really appreciated that. So thank you. Thank you for being in relationship and in community so we can model that because my worth isn’t on the line with that. My desire is to be a better human, and I just love that exchange.

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard, so hard, and it’s often controversial. I mean, what isn’t controversial these days, right? It’s so hard to navigate staying aligned to our values, our mission, our boundaries, staying open and curious when it feels like there are so many different opinions and needs that are in conflict with each other. Navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm, and our curiosity often is one of the first things to fall there. But I know you don’t mind making hard decisions, and sometimes the stakes seem higher and can bring up echoes of old doubts and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and action.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our ever-complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small. Leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It is brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up.

48:05

Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies, along with a really powerful true curiosity, path, and practice are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay, along with predatory curiosity, and foster a hope that is both actionable and aligned.

When the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than you were taught.

To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

Scott Shigeoka: So in the beginning of the trip, I was what I call streaming through communities, I was staying in a town or a city for a couple of days trying to meet as many people as possible, calling folks on Facebook on my wall being like, “Does anyone know anyone in this small town in Colorado or this small town in Georgia,” or wherever I was, and I was just like this is not working. I’m not meeting people fast enough. I’m not gaining that trust or that relationship to actually bring things a lot deeper. And so, I had to make this game-day decision about a month and a half into the road trip, and I asked myself, “Why is this not working?”

I got curious, and my hypothesis was that I was spending too little of time in community and that I needed to change my strategy and spend, you know, three months, at least, in one community to really get to know the people there, to start to see the different social dynamics, to start to understand the different places that they would go to, like that corner market or that bar or that restaurant or whatever it was, right, just to get a lay of the land. And I would still be a guest.

50:08

I would still be a stranger from the outside coming in, but I at least had more time to establish these relationships, right? And I knew that that is where the real transformation comes from. It’s often the time that we spend with one another, really being curious about each other and choosing that over many, many, many months or sometimes years. And I knew that as a person that had come out, you know, that not everyone’s like, “Yes, we celebrate you! I see you, Scott. Yes! You go out and live your queer life.” Some people, even those that are closest to me, didn’t understand it, were like, “No, it’s just a phase,” or were against it in some way.

So, you know, but thankfully, after many months or many years, those same people are now totally understanding of it, will march alongside of me at Pride. I think my mom even called me and she’s like, “I’m not voting for this candidate anymore because I heard that they’re anti-LGBTQ,” and, you know, that’s not exactly where our relationship started around my queer identity.

Rebecca Ching: Wow.

Scott Shigeoka: So really believing that people can change but sometimes that change takes time, and if I had said, “Oh, you don’t understand me in this moment? Well, then we’re done. We’re through. I’m canceling you. I’m blocking you from social. I’m no longer gonna speak to you,” wow, how much hurt that would not only give to that person but also to myself, what that would deprive me of, all of the experiences that followed from it. All of the love and all of the understanding and all of the joys that I experience from those relationships would have been lost if I had cut those too short. And I think we’re in a culture where we’re cutting these relationships too short, you know? And we’re saying, “I don’t like what you’re saying. I don’t like who you’re voting for. I don’t like the identity that you hold,” whatever it is. “You’re queer, you’re from a small town,” whatever it is. “So we’re not — I’m gonna block you. I’m gonna cancel you out of my life.” But how do we sort of reduce that impulse and resist that impulse and instead stick with it for a period of time for that long game, like you said, and actually lean into the curiosity, which sometimes can be so uncomfortable but so, so important.

52:24

Rebecca Ching: It’s where we feel alive. It’s where I feel the most alive in me.

Scott Shigeoka: Yes! Yes.

Rebecca Ching: I don’t want to hold onto a belief or a value. I don’t want to be right at the sake of the relationship all the time. I want everything that I believe to be tested and challenged and then refine and update. I learned that in DC, believe it or not. That’s the thing that I really learned from my mentors when I worked on Capitol Hill. I know that’s very different than what we’re seeing today, but it was a different time back in the nineties, and that really — my boss really was someone who was always curious and didn’t hold on — he held onto some things like a dog and a bone but was always open.

Scott Shigeoka: There are also a lot of great bright spots in DC too. I also lived in DC, and there’s amazing organizations like Future Caucus that’s bringing people together across the political gridlock that we’re seeing —

Rebecca Ching: Really!

Scott Shigeoka: — using mindsets like curiosity or skills like curiosity to actually have these congressional members be in conversation with one another and to repair some of these relationships that have been fractured. You know, in a lot of ways, at the congressional level to the legislative directors and legislative assistants and their whole staff, the staffers and the teams that they work with, they are families in many ways, intra families but also the Congress as a collection is also a family, a big extended family —

Rebecca Ching: Totally.

Scott Shigeoka: — at a big family reunion almost is one way to think about it, and there’s just a lot of personalities, there’s a lot of dynamics, and there are a lot of patterns that have been established that are really, really hard to break.

54:00

So having these kinds of organizations like Future Caucus that are basically like, “Hey, we’re gonna help heal.” That’s just like a marriage and family therapist might heal this in a relationship or in a marriage or in a partnership, we’re gonna do this in Congress.

And so, that’s been so exciting for me with my curiosity is to find the bright spots, to find where are the places that feel really dark to me where I feel a lot of fear and a lot of anger (which Congress is one of those places), and how can I get curious towards that place?

Rebecca Ching: Like, where is the place for just rage? How do you hold space for sometimes you’ve got to just go, “What the?” and not bypass.

Scott Shigeoka: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: I think that’s my concern. I don’t want listeners to — because I hear you, but there’s probably a lot of emotion that you have to work through to get to that place of focusing on the bright spots, but I don’t necessarily want to bypass the pain that happens too when we experience so much harm that’s happening.

Scott Shigeoka: What I found that was really important is who is being curious really matters, and I think related to that question: whose anger and whose rage should we really be focusing on.

So an example is Ry Moran, [Indiscernible] is in Canada, was part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, gathered the stories of survivors of these residential school systems, these horrible institutions that affected Indigenous people, I mean, led to mass graves, the ripping of culture and families apart. They were just extremely, extremely traumatic, and in very recent history, the last residential school system closed in the 1990s, so this is very, very new history. And it harmed many, many First Nations, Métis, Inuit people all across Canada, and it also enraged a lot of non-Indigenous Canadians too.