Nancy Kline
AUTHOR

Interest

Not Curiosity
 ​

Of course curiosity is good. It brought us to almost all of the splendid places we are today.

Pragmatically, it was curiosity that led to the device you are using to read this. And to the light on your desk, the bike on your porch, the shoes on your feet, the paint on your walls, the aid in your ear, and the food in your belly. In fact, almost nothing in our everyday lives came about naturally; it all emerged from human inventions mothered by curiosity.

Ethereally, curiosity led to the music you love, the voice of a child who survived after all, the canvas and paints that gave us Monet and Pollock, the satin around the ankles of Misty Copeland. All of it from curiosity.

“What if we tried this?” we asked. “How about we add one more and see what happens?” “What else could we do with that?” “What really happened there?” “Do you see that? What do you think it is?” “What could they have meant by that?” “Why did that work?” “Who else might have been involved?” “Can we be sure of this?” “Then what?”

Curiosity. Focused, self-driven, determined. Most likely a uniquely human attribute, its progeny essential to every dimension of our lives.

Except one. Exceptional independent thinking. The fruit of generative listening. That requires interest. Not curiosity. When it comes to generating the highest quality of thinking, there is a fine-as-gossamer distinction between interest and curiosity.

Interest in where the thinker will go next in their thinking is different from curiosity about that. Interest has no agenda; it is content to focus on the thinker. Interest, therefore, is full of ease. It is open, welcoming, invitational, uninvested in the final destination. It does not long to steer; it longs only to be, and through its being catalyse daring, crisp, consequential, well-reasoned, deeply-felt, sky-high and quark-deep consideration. That’s it. In that way interest is selfless.

Curiosity, on the other hand, is self-driven. The second I become curious about where you will go next, I have begun to want you to go somewhere specific. I have latched on to something. I have sharpened my teeth and begun to smile a bit strangely and to nod more often, at all the things you say that align with my curiosity. I have begun to intrude.

You can sense that I have done this. But it is just a bit too subtle, too nuanced, for you to call it out. So you continue, noticing a qualitative change in the whole experience, but gaining something good from it nonetheless. And so it continues. Interest inevitably turns into curiosity every time we meet to think.

The creeping take over of curiosity is slithery in our listening relationships. Even the idioms contain the differences: “interested in” vs. “curious about.” One is “inside” with the thinker, the other is “outside” with the self. When interest starts to morph into curiosity, the quality of the listening diminishes, gradually but inevitably.

Skip Steward,  leader in the improvement movement of American healthcare said it well, “Curiosity is a disguised form of telling." 1 I agree. In all arenas of listening, particularly professional ones such as executive and personal coaching, “telling” is regarded as blunder. Discovery by the client is seen as success. And yet, as Skip has noticed, listening from curiosity, rather than from interest, is the blunder in insidious force.

So we have much to gain from internalising this exquisite distinction between interest and curiosity. If we can shake ourselves free of the societally-championed habit of becoming curious, so imbedded it feels like marrow, and settle back supplely into interest, the human being thinking in front of us will have a chance to embark and stay on a remarkable journey of their own never-before-generated thoughts, leading often to better-than-they-could-imagine changes in their lives.

1 Skip Steward, Vice President and Chief Improvement Officer, Baptist Memorial Health Care, Memphis, Tennessee. Podcast host “Connecting the Dots”: https://www.baptistonline.org/physician-resources/connecting-the-dots-podcast/episodes