Flashcard: Get curious

Don't be like Daddy Howard

The number one suggestion I make to my clients is to ask more questions. Which is another way to say get curious.

“I don’t understand why she didn’t do the thing I asked her to do.”

“I don’t know how to manage him.”

I’ll then say, “Have you asked him?”

My long-term clients usually get that wry expression they get when I tell them something I’ve told them before. And invariably the answer is no, they didn’t ask why.

There are many barriers to asking questions or getting curious. Curiosity can be hazardous in corporate cultures that lack psychological safety, or for people who don’t have lots of privilege.

But I generally find that the barriers to getting curious for most people in most places are that they have lost the habit of curiosity and that they are too wedded to their own narratives and don’t want anything to challenge their interpretation of reality. In the most egregious and destructive instances, they are blinded by ego and a desire to control and can seriously damage the organizations they lead.

I do many 360’s – intensive, confidential interviews with individual team members. I then write a report, scrubbed of any identifying phrases or details, and go back to the leader or leaders and tell them what I heard.

Every time there is that moment when a cherished story is crushed. I always start with the good stuff, appreciative inquiry, but when I get into the challenges or “opportunities for growth” in coach-speak, there is often that story crushing moment, and the emotional reaction to it.

I try to remind them that where there is a gap between their perception and intention and the perception of the people that work for them, it is an opportunity for curiosity.

Why is there a gap? Why do my employees not see that I am making these difficult changes in order to keep the business alive? Why aren’t they satisfied or motivated by the things that satisfied or motivated me when I was their age?

That moment of resistance is natural, and an executive coaching session is the place to vent. But my clients, and other good leaders, metabolize their disappointment and get on with the business of understanding why those gaps exist so they can address them.  

Not so Howard Schultz.

When I drive into Seattle from where I live in the south end, the cityscape is bookended by the Space Needle to the north and Starbucks corporate headquarters to the south, a red brick building with the iconic Starbucks siren peeping up from a tower. I’ve been inside multiple times, have friends who have worked there, and since Starbucks is one of the cornerstones of Seattle industry, I pay attention to them.

In this recent New York Times article by Noam Scheiber and Julie Creswell, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is navigating the gap between his perception and reality. Schultz thinks Starbucks is a great place to work and the employees should be grateful for all the wonderful benefits they have. The reality is that many of those same employees are considering unionization. Two percent of them have already unionized.

Schultz is pissed.

“But friends and longtime colleagues say Mr. Schultz’s opposition to the union isn’t primarily about the bottom line. It’s emotional. A union clashes with his image of Starbucks as a model employer.”

So instead of getting curious, or reconsidering his narrative, he’s reacted badly, replacing Kevin Johnson as CEO and upending the leadership team. That kind of upheaval – reactionary, sudden -  usually shouts wounded ego.

“At Starbucks, Mr. Schultz’s resistance to a union appears to be a matter of self-image, according to those who know him: He prefers to see himself as a generous boss, not a boss who is forced to treat employees generously.”

The phrase ‘he prefers to see himself’ is another way of saying he cherished a notion of himself that is no longer congruent with the way his employees see him. He wants to believe he is a champion of workers and a generous boss. In May, according to the article, Schultz offered some improvements to benefits. But not for union members.

The world, and the fancy caffeinated beverages that fuel a swath of it, has changed pretty significantly in the last few years.

Because he’s not curious about why there is a gap, he’s going to miss things like how hard it is for parents to get childcare with a work schedule that’s constantly changing. Because I doubt that Schultz ever had to manage childcare on a budget.

The paternalistic notion that Daddy Howard is going to take care of his workers in the way he sees fit is based on his ego. What the workers actually want and need isn’t germane to him; in fact, he has to suppress it because it challenges his story about himself. Shultz has decided he’s a good boss and he will suppress any voice that hints otherwise.

How can we not be a Daddy Howard?

First, reengage with your capacity for curiosity.

Spend any time around young children and you understand our innate human quest for knowledge. My granddaughter is constantly asking questions. Some are easy – who is taller, Nana or Daddy? Some are hard – how do you explain death to a three-year-old? But she asks questions constantly. Because children are greedy for information, they want to orient themselves to the world and the people in it.

Second, don’t assume you know the answer. Get curious about your narratives. Humans are meaning making machines, and we are generating stories below the level of conscious thought all the time. And rarely do we stop and examine the stories.

“Of course, he was the one to point out what was wrong with the plan, he never supports my work because he wants my job.”

That’s a somewhat egregious example, but that sentence is bristling with narratives. I would then ask, is there a way to reframe that narrative? Can we get curious about what’s actually going on? If, indeed, there is a pattern of provable sabotage, then the story can become fact and strategy can be built from there.

If, however, the reality is actually that the “he” in question thinks his role is to play “devil’s advocate” in meetings to demonstrate his business acumen, it will be more effective to address the actual problem – this man’s mistaken belief that he is adding value by poking holes in people’s plan. The strategy there would be to give him feedback and manage him to channel his desire to help the team into more useful areas.

Lastly, check your privilege. Have the humility to know what you don’t know. Without that, you can’t get to the real cause of problems. Which means you can’t solve them. The farther you get up the corporate ladder, the further away you move from the concerns of the people on the lower rungs. I haven’t been in my twenties for a long time. Yes, I was a single mom in my 20s, and it was hard. I have some cherished narratives about how I persevered. Which could make me feel like I know what single parenthood would be like now, but do I really? There was no pandemic when my kids were young. They could go to school any day they weren’t sick. Which means I have no idea what it’s been like for the parents of young kids in the last three years.

But I can get curious. And I can ask them.