But you can work on it

Social curiosity is a specific category of curiosity that’s about our desire to understand what other people are thinking, feeling and doing – and it’s a fundamental requirement for building human relationships and social networks.

Curiosity is so familiar that we don’t often give it much thought, but sometimes we’re less curious than we could be. Not necessarily because we aren’t interested, but because we think we already understand. We recognise the situation (we’ve seen this movie before), know what’s happening and what needs to be done. Experience is obviously useful but it can also get in the way. We can think we’re listening carefully while missing something important because we’re already interpreting what we hear in our own terms.

Ed Schein explored this issue, particularly in relationships involving authority and expertise (Schein, 2013). He thought we were generally better at telling people things than asking questions – we like to explain, advise and solve problems, especially when we have some experience of the situation. And when we’re in a position of authority, we’re usually expected to have the answers.

Schein’s response was to develop the idea of humble inquiry, which focuses on asking questions to which we don’t already know the answer, and building relationships through curiosity and genuine interest in the other person. This approach isn’t so much about learning better questioning techniques, although that can help, but about how we see the other person. When we tell someone what we think, we’re putting our knowledge forward. When we genuinely ask, we’re acknowledging that they know something we don’t. We’re putting ourselves in the position of needing to learn from them. Thus the humility.

This can be challenging, particularly if we’re used to having the answers. But people are more likely to tell us what they think, including things we might not want to hear, if they believe we’re genuinely interested.

Take a simple example – a manager asks an employee why they’re unhappy. The employee says decisions are being made without involving the people affected. The manager listens, then explains why the decisions were necessary. The explanation may be perfectly reasonable, but the employee wasn’t so much questioning the decisions as describing what it felt like to be left out.

The manager asked a question, but missed the point of the answer.

Humble inquiry isn’t just about asking instead of telling. It’s about being willing to learn something from the other person, sometimes by resisting the temptation to jump in with our own explanation.

And this matters well beyond management. To use an example from aged care – consider a routine home care support visit. It appears in one person’s diary as a service. In the other person’s life, it’s “Tuesday morning”. The worker has a schedule, the person opening the door has their own routines and perhaps mixed feelings about needing help … 

Take the case of a woman receiving shopping assistance. Her list includes particular shops and a bakery that isn’t on the most convenient route. The worker suggests buying everything in one place. The woman isn’t keen. Perhaps the bakery is somewhere she knows people. Perhaps she just prefers it, as people doing their own shopping are generally allowed to do.

We won’t know unless we ask. And asking won’t help if we’ve decided the answer doesn’t matter.

This brings us to receptivity: being willing to let what someone says change our understanding. This becomes central to Schein’s humble inquiry –

• Curiosity prompts us to ask
• Receptivity means we’re prepared to reconsider our explanation and, where appropriate, our response.

We can’t accommodate every preference. Time, funding, safety and other responsibilities place real limits on what’s possible. But we should understand what matters to the person before explaining what is or isn’t possible. Otherwise, we might be solving a problem they don’t have while missing the one they do.

Expertise isn’t the only thing that can close down curiosity. Familiarity can do it too – We know what our colleague is like; we know our father is stubborn about accepting help; we’ve supported this client for years.

Those understandings may contain plenty of truth, but familiarity can persuade us that there’s nothing more to discover. Someone we regard as difficult may be frightened. What we interpret as indifference may be embarrassment. Understanding someone better sometimes requires us to question the picture we already hold.

There’s another aspect to humble inquiry: the attention we give to another person.

The French philosopher Simone Weil described attention as a kind of patient waiting, making room for something beyond our own concerns rather than immediately interpreting it through them. Not switching off our minds, but resisting the urge to seize an answer before we’ve properly understood the question.

Her account was deeply philosophical and spiritual, but it has a lot to say about everyday interactions. I imagine most of us have experienced telling someone about a difficulty and finding that, before we’ve finished, they’ve explained it, offered a solution or told us about something similar that happened to them. They’re probably trying to help, but we may still feel they haven’t quite heard us.

Weil had a simple question: “What are you going through?” It’s a question that asks us to attend to this particular person and their experience, rather than seeing only a familiar problem to be dealt with.

Humble inquiry requires being attentive enough to notice what we might otherwise miss, and receptive enough to let it influence our understanding.

And when it comes to the provision of human services, it isn’t just about understanding someone better; how we listen and respond becomes part of our core responsibility to them.

The psychiatrist R. D. Laing put it pretty clearly:

“The ‘treatment’ that we give someone, is the way we treat that person.”         

(Did You Used to Be R.D. Laing? 1989)

Laing wasn’t suggesting that respect replaces competent treatment, but was pointing to things we may separate in our thinking but which arrive together in someone’s experience. A person receiving assistance at home doesn’t tend to separate the prescribed service and the human interaction. They receive the visit. Were things explained? Were they asked? Could they disagree? Did anyone notice they were uncomfortable?

Those things are part of the care, not extras. They’re also part of a larger question within aged care: how do commitments to dignity and choice become everyday practice?  The Royal Commission called for major reforms. The rights-based Aged Care Act and strengthened Quality Standards bring those commitments into ordinary encounters, requiring attention to individuals, preferences and communication.

In Support at Home and CHSP services, this happens in people’s kitchens, during shopping visits and on trips to appointments.

Standards matter – being heard shouldn’t depend on finding a sympathetic worker. But a completed form doesn’t establish that someone was understood, or that their answer mattered.  And whilst we can require respectful behaviour, appropriate communication and consent, we can’t produce authentic curiosity by adding “be curious” to a procedure. Nor should someone need an interesting life story or an agreeable manner to receive good care.

We can work on our habits

Sometimes making an effort to understand is how interest begins. Notice what we say about people: “She won’t engage.” “He refuses help.” What did we actually observe, and what explanation have we added?

“He declined the visit” describes an event. “He doesn’t want support” supplies an explanation. Perhaps the problem was the timing or how assistance was offered.

We can also make correction easier: “Have I got this right?” — and be prepared for “No.”

Sometimes a quieter room, an interpreter or a less hurried exchange helps more than a better question. Sometimes we need to remember what we’ve already been told. And sometimes we need to stop asking – “I’d rather not discuss it” is an answer too.

This needn’t turn every visit into an interview. It’s about keeping our understanding open enough to notice when it needs changing.

At the organisational level

It’s one thing to encourage people to listen carefully and question their assumptions. But an organisation’s everyday practices can either support those efforts or make them difficult. We can say that listening and individual choice matter while organising the work in ways that send a different message.

Chris Argyris and Donald Schön provide a useful model for reflecting on these potential contradictions. (Argyris, C., & Schon, D., 1978).

They assert that people have two different sets of “theories of action” – the mechanisms by which we link our thoughts to our actions. One set is our espoused theories — those that we know about, the values and beliefs we say guide our behaviour — and the other is our theories-in-use — the values and assumptions implied by what we actually do.

So, for example, an organisation might espouse that it genuinely values listening and respect. But if its usual response to someone questioning a decision is to explain why the decision was right, what does that tell us about its theory-in-use?

This is something to reflect on both individually and organisationally – what does our everyday behaviour tell us about the values we’re actually putting into practice? A worker may understand someone’s wishes perfectly well but have no authority to respond – another reminder to listen won’t fix that. Can a worker get a timely decision? Can a recurring request change a routine? When staff explain what isn’t working, are managers prepared to reconsider their own understanding?

Genuine inquiry needs to extend beyond individual conversations to how organisations examine their own practices, and how well these practises support a way of working in which listening and understanding can influence decisions.

We can’t mandate genuine interest. But we can practise questioning an assumption, make correction easier and take seriously what people tell us.

Our experience and judgement matters, but so does the experience of the person in front of us – we can ask, we can listen, and we can leave open the possibility that the answer will change what we do.

References

Argyris, C., & Schon, D.  (1978) Organisational learning: A theory of action perspective.  Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley.

Did You Used to Be R.D. Laing? (1989) Documentary film, directed by Kirk Broom.

Schein, E.H. (2013) Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Weil, S. (1951) ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’, in Waiting for God. New York: Putnam