December 16, 2024 • 28 mins
In this episode of Curiosity at Work, Dr. Julie Pham chats with Diem Ly, Division Director at the City of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development. Diem shares her journey from community journalism to public service leadership, emphasizing how curiosity drives inclusive economic growth. She discusses balancing diverse stakeholder needs, creating a feedback culture, and adapting to a post-pandemic landscape. Learn how Diem fosters collaboration and innovation to build stronger communities and a more equitable future.
Connect with Dr. Julie Pham:
- LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliepham2/
- Website:https://curiositybased.com/
- Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/juliephamphd/
Connect with Diem Ly:
- Website: https://seattle.gov/economic-development
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diemtly
#DiemLy #EconomicDevelopment #CuriosityAtWork #Leadership #InclusiveGrowth #CommunityDevelopment #PublicService
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of Curiosity Based.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Hello, I'm Julie Pham with Curiosity at Work, and today I get to chat with my dear friend Diem Ly, who is the division director at the City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development.
(00:37):
Welcome Diem.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me, Dr. Julie.
So Diem, I'm super excited to have you here, because aside from being the division director at Office of Economic Development, you also spent years at Comcast, and before that you were at the International Examiner, a local pan-Asian American newspaper, and that's where we met.
So you actually have quite a breadth of experience, both in community, non-profit work, in the private sector, and now you've just been, I think in this role for, has it been under a year?
(01:09):
Just under a year, and that's right.
All right.
So could you tell us a little bit about the Office of Economic Development?
Oh gosh, I knew you were going to ask me this, Julie.
Let me, it's, it's wide ranging, when I, when I think about what we do, I do think about those we are serving, and so if people are wondering what OED does, or Office of Economic Development, imagine individuals, neighborhoods, whole commercial corridors and business districts, and then the whole city.
(01:40):
We serve every layer of that in an inclusive way, and with an eye on growth and opportunities for everyone.
So whether that is supporting small business, or business districts, to whole industries,
we have our eye and radar on all of those, and always trying to figure out every single
day in that office is how do we open doors for folks, how do we ensure that we are attracting
(02:06):
new businesses, how are we retaining the current businesses in place, and how are we able to
grow businesses over time, and for years to come.
I know that the Office of Economic Development, it's one of the, it's constantly changing
because the economy is how our ecosystem is constantly changing, and my actually first
(02:29):
experience with OED was as a small business owner myself, with my family, I had the, our
Vietnamese newspaper, and we started working with OED, I think about 12, 13 years ago,
so I really appreciate the work that you do, and how you work directly with businesses
and with industries too, it's quite a broad span.
(02:52):
How many people, I mean for so much impact, how many people do you actually have in your office, and what are the kind of roles you have?
We have quite a few people in the office, we've grown quite a bit over the last three
years since the pandemic, we're just under 60, so we're closer to about 55 or so, for
myself as a division director, I oversee the program team, so there's four program
(03:13):
teams, in that, it's more or less 25 folks, but the office as a whole is about 55 to 60,
and we're still growing, and we're actively recruiting now.
And you are also, it's hybrid too, right, people are able to work remotely, but I also believe that the mayor also mandated more time in the office as well?
(03:33):
Yeah, for some time now, we've been at two days minimum in person in the office, and starting January, it'll go to three days a week in person minimum.
So, Diem, we often talk about practicing curiosity, the virtues of practicing curiosity, and yet sometimes it can be really, really hard.
(03:54):
Can you share with us an example of when you have found it difficult to practice curiosity at work?
It's tough, you know, as what you mentioned a little bit earlier about my professional history, you know, working at a nonprofit, in the APA community, to the private sector at a telecom company, to now being at the city, it is distinctly different, I would say, in each of those phases of my professional life.
(04:21):
At the city, it can be difficult because there's so many stakeholders.
When I was at a, in the private sector at the telecom company, you knew what you were trying to achieve.
It was very, very clear who your stakeholders were and what your mission was.
So you go out, you have a plan, and you execute to it.
At the city, you are a public servant, and public is the key word, so you serve everyone.
(04:45):
So how do you, if you have a smaller department, limited capacity, you have a specific budget to work to, everyone is knocking on your door, and everyone needs you to see them and to address their issues.
How do you make choices?
And so in practicing curiosity, it feels like a luxury, sometimes, because everyone needs you and every single person is valid and important.
(05:09):
But if you are looking at your budget, the time and the talent you have on the team, you have to make choices.
You have to prioritize, and that means not everyone is going to get exactly the answers that they want or have been asking for.
So in practicing curiosity, a lot of it is in making decisions.
Are we asking the right questions of ourselves?
(05:30):
Are we addressing this the right way?
Who are we not?
Whether it's a population, a business district, a whole neighborhood, a series of neighborhoods, in terms of the information and relationships that we should have there, what information are we missing?
Let alone having the curiosity to go out there and ask the right questions.
(05:54):
So curiosity to us is, it's a tool that can be kind of rusty sometimes.
It's something you have to kind of continue to sharpen and constantly ask what you don't know.
And I think during the pandemic, the team was on emergency mode.
I really can't blame them.
It was such a tough time that they had to prioritize to very, very few things and execute to that.
(06:19):
And now we're emerging from it, and we're kind of, it's almost like kind of emerging from above ground.
And you're thinking, okay, so I think the dust has settled, so now what do we do?
Where did all the neighborhoods, the business districts, business owners, industries, workers, where are they all at now?
And how do we allocate our time and resources?
(06:39):
Well, where would we be really successful?
What do they need from us?
So asking ourselves those questions again, and practicing curiosity in a fresh new way, but with the same people who have had a tough experience in the pandemic and emerging from it has been a unique challenge.
And I think we're getting closer and closer every single day, but curiosity has been tough.
(07:01):
It's been tough to think about that, have the time for it, and have discipline around it.
There's so many more stakeholders and so many more folks in the public that we're responsible for.
So we're always wondering and challenging ourselves is, are we missing a point of view here?
Are we missing a stakeholder here?
Are we missing a major issue here or information and intel that we need to be soliciting and synthesizing so that we're making really good decisions?
(07:28):
If we're only looking at one stakeholder, that one relationship that you've had and you've really embraced each other, especially in times of crisis and emergency like the pandemic, it's hard to release yourself from that hug and that embrace to look around because you still need each other.
So that's where we're at right now is trying to release the embrace and look around to see who else is impacted by this and who else we need to be including, I suppose, at the table, for lack of a better way to describe it, to make solid decisions moving forward.
(08:01):
Because I can imagine the relationships you have when you're in emergency mode and then that changes when you're not in emergency mode.
And how do you change?
It's less dependent now and more interdependent, but it's that interdependent, like who else do we need to be relying to, who else are we missing to make really strategic decisions about the future of Seattle now that we're in a different phase.
(08:32):
And I also know that because you are also new to government work, there's just so many more stakeholders than you've ever actually experienced, right?
Yes.
In your previous roles.
That's very true.
I've learned that and I'm still learning that every day.
It's as if you had an open invitation to a house party and you invited the entire city.
(08:57):
It's what it kind of feels like.
There's so many people that are knocking on your door and asking for assistance and that's why it's really incumbent on the team at OED to know exactly what we're trying to achieve at any point in time.
And I think we're getting closer and closer to having kind of like a fresh strategy for our own team moving forward too.
(09:22):
Because with OED, you've got, there are probably individual businesses who are contacting you and then there are the association of businesses who still actually hold businesses as members.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why it feels like rings.
Yeah.
It's almost like if you were to think of like a ripple or something or like rings as you have exactly as you have the individual, then you have maybe a group of small businesses.
(09:44):
You could have associations, like you mentioned, like an association, a neighborhood group or a BIA or business improvement area that represents them.
Then you might have someone that is representing the whole neighborhood, not just a district, but a whole neighborhood.
Then you have folks that are representing the whole city, you have other departments, you have mayor's office, council members, their staff, it's just, there's so many folks that kind of depend on each other and depend on each other kind of doing their job, frankly.
(10:17):
And I imagine that you also have people who, organizations who are trying to fight to be the convener of conveners too.
We all want to be the simple hub and be the connector.
That's right.
Yeah.
We all, yes, we, you know, yes, people do like to be the convener, but as, and there's nothing wrong with being convener, as long as you know specifically what you're trying to be convener of and to what end.
(10:41):
We don't want to, no one should, and no one I would imagine wants to just convene folks for the sake of it.
I think that's been the tricky reputation people have had with the city is particularly of like neighborhood groups and nonprofits and individuals and community leaders is like, oh no.
It's another city task force or neighborhood, you know, round table that wants to bring us together, hear from us again, then it's going to get lost and then they're going to, you know, a couple of years from now, they're going to convene us again.
(11:08):
And so it's, you know, it's really imperative amongst city employees and departments that we're, we're always sharing information and trying to build on this like knowledge base that we have so many tremendous people that have tenure and so many fresh folks coming into the city that are very passionate.
We have to collect that information so we can kind of build on it, not, not pull along so many of our community partners and groups along the way and not see results.
(11:39):
Yeah.
So definitely as speaking as the end user, as that the small business, just who do I talk to?
Wait a minute.
Do I talk to this person or this person?
And so it's kind of good to know that it's, it's equally messy on your end too, so it's not just me.
Yeah.
I think it's, yeah, it's, it's, people have good intentions, people are trying to, to, to do the best that they can with what they have.
(12:00):
And sometimes, you know, even at the city, people might have incomplete information.
So they're just doing the max that they can do with the information they have.
And so I think it's just imperative on leadership at city departments for which I'm, you know, appreciate being a part of is just always trying to connect dots.
Right.
I think that's, that's what my, my fellow colleagues are always talking about is connecting dots.
(12:22):
And did we consult with this other department?
Did we check in on this?
And so I really appreciate being surrounded by really savvy folks like that.
So Diem, I know that in your role, you actually have more of an internal facing role and you help a lot with the, the team culture.
So could you talk about how do you support, how do you support your team members to practice curiosity?
(12:43):
And if you can give an specific example, tip, tactic.
There's a couple of different efforts that we're, we're working on right now.
But one of the things is instituting, creating a learning culture, which then feeds into a feedback culture.
Those are two things that I think historically for our department hasn't really gotten the gears going in the last couple of years, again, just similar to probably other departments too, is they've just been on emergency mode.
(13:10):
Right.
So now that we've kind of emerged from that, it's like, how do we invest back into the department, back into the team?
And I'm really gratified to see that people are kind of like clenching onto it.
They're very interested in it.
They want to know what that looks like.
How can we get involved from all levels of staff?
And so creating that learning culture really is starting with partially the characteristic is curiosity, but it's, it's just assuming positive intent is asking more questions and it's trying to be really self-aware as a, as a colleague and as a team member within the department is this other person I'm talking to is they're trying to do the best that they can.
(13:49):
I'm unclear about something, or I'm feeling a certain way about something.
Let me take a beat.
Let me be aware of kind of like how I'm feeling and how I'm interpreting this.
Know that that person is not able to read my mind.
How do I show up really well?
Because ultimately this result, whatever outcome that we're trying to achieve together, whether it's in this conversation or this project is more meaningful and is more important.
(14:14):
And so how do I kind of use this opportunity to, to grow and learn and model that to that end?
So trying to normalize a learning culture, make it psychologically safe for people to feel like they're, you know, drop the ball a little bit and it's going to be okay.
And we'll pick that ball back up and you're not going to be alone in having to pick that up.
(14:37):
Right?
Someone's going to support you and like, let's, let's do it even better next time, right?
Feedback has been the other one where I think that is practicing curiosity in real time in the everyday.
We're trying to really encourage people, managers to be super attentive and responsive.
When you see something happening, whether you're seeing a team member kind of falter a little bit, when you get stressed out, something didn't show up as well, is lean in with them, provide them that support and that feedback as soon as possible.
(15:08):
But it does require a special kind of skillset to provide feedback in a way that's not, you know, wagging your finger.
It's kind of, it's, it's kind of an art, but if people come from a place of learning, like this is, we're learning together.
I'm learning as the people manager, you're learning in this moment as well.
If people come from that, you kind of come up, it comes across a little bit more humble and a little bit more present and people seem to be much more responsive to that.
(15:33):
You make it safe for someone that this is kind of in the container.
What we're talking about right now is confidential.
It's just between us.
We're just going to keep growing together.
Whenever I've done that and I've seen it being done in the office, I find people kind of flourish.
Like I can see it happening in real time.
People flourish and they feel, you can almost see like a weight lifted from them.
But I find in real time, it's, it's asking the questions in the moment that you're providing feedback or coaching for someone privately has been pretty tremendous.
(16:07):
For me, I'm still practicing the curiosity, especially in the city department.
I assume there's so much for me to learn.
I'm already on, I'm already assuming it's going to take me probably several more months to who knows even, even another year to really hone in on how I act on and build a new set of skills around curiosity in this seat.
(16:35):
It's a very different seat than in my previous seat.
I'm responsible for a lot more people.
I have to check my biases and my assumptions a lot.
I have to be really conscientious of when I ask questions out of curiosity, how that can show up and be received by someone else who has never had a person who is one layer to two layers above them, kind of in quotes, right?
(17:01):
And so I have to be super mindful of when and how I practice curiosity now.
I have to be really aware of the power dynamics of that, the tone, whether it's in person or virtual and some, you know, there's, there's so much to do.
There's so much to work out across four teams, a lot of people, a lot of coaches that it's probably truthfully, it's probably every 30 minutes to an hour, there's like a moment of like, how do I practice curiosity in this moment?
(17:36):
And it's different every single time.
I appreciate how you're saying that practicing curiosity requires that feedback.
Yeah, it's difficult to operationalize.
And so, especially when you're talking about layers of hierarchy, even if, even if you've just got 55, 60 people and yet there's still layers of hierarchy.
And I also imagine with things changing so much, sometimes people hesitate to give feedback because you're just, should I be giving feedback on something I don't know as much as maybe it's, I'm not, if people sometimes hesitate, oh, well, it's not my place.
(18:08):
It's not my expertise.
Yeah, feedback sounds so different coming from different people and depending on what their relationship is like, especially if you're starting to give feedback where you haven't before, and that person has not really received feedback in their professional life.
So I think the key is in terms of how to operationalize it is consistency.
(18:30):
So it's, I think it's really important that fellow managers, we call them M-team.
So it's the management team at OED, that we're all consistent on how we want to approach it, how we define feedback, how we define performance, right?
How we identify gaps in the performance, right?
(18:55):
Who is performing to their job really great, who is not performing as well and why, right?
So that way we're not making it too subjective, but instead it's based on maybe the classifications for that role.
Maybe this person is not performing, not because it's about them per se, but it's because for their position, they're responsible for certain things and maybe they haven't had a chance to flex those skills yet.
(19:23):
So maybe that's like a coaching opportunity and that's maybe a performance thing.
So having that consistency in terms of how we define gaps in performance, how we define good performance, and even the cadence in which we provide feedback, because if some folks never provide any feedback and all of a sudden we wait until we have the performance reviews at the end of the year, we would never want anyone to be caught off guard.
(19:50):
There should be no surprises, right?
So having that cadence of how you provide feedback is really important.
Otherwise, different groups of team members that have one manager, they're going to have different experiences.
What we're trying to reduce is too much of variance across feedback and learning and expectations and assessing performance.
(20:10):
That could blow up in a bad way if you're not consistent across the board, because teams, they could talk with each other and say, hey, I got really strong feedback the other day and someone else is like, I haven't gotten feedback all year.
I'm not saying that that's the case really with OED.
I think we're pretty good about providing that, but I think that's very important.
(20:31):
So what I'm hearing you say is just having consistency across your M team, across that leadership team about how to give feedback.
And then in terms of the expertise, that's still given by the manager.
And so it's still in those verticals.
You don't have to worry so much about giving feedback to people who are about something that's outside their expertise, as long as there's consistency across the different departments.
(20:52):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So I know that you are doing a lot of hiring.
And can you, so moving on to the next question, curiosity is important.
How do you recruit and identify and hire for curiosity then?
Oh, I love the recruitment process, Julie, because you get fresh folks joining the team.
(21:16):
So your question is, how do we practice curiosity in the recruitment process?
Yeah, how do you identify?
How do you, when you're talking to a potential candidate, how do you identify that this person is actually, you think that they're going to be curious?
I was actually just having this conversation with our human resources team is that I always want to save time at the end of every interview for Q&A from the applicant.
(21:41):
At least 30% of the time should be the applicant talking about what's meaningful to them, what they're curious about in the workplace.
It tells you a lot about their approach, what matters to them, what they're prioritizing in the workplace.
I've heard the gamut, even in the last two weeks, been in a lot of different interviews for different positions on all four teams.
(22:03):
And I've heard folks ask a lot about workplace culture.
What's it like?
What's the team like?
What's their personalities like?
That tells you what that person, what is the most meaningful thing to that person.
If they ask quite a bit about the budget, which I just got that recently, I was caught off guard.
(22:23):
I was surprised by that.
They asked a lot about budget and the decisions that OED had to make in this recent budget cycle that just passed last week.
And how did you all make decisions?
Curious, how did you make decisions about what to cut, what not to cut, what to preserve, what to prioritize?
How did you make those decisions?
And then other people ask about programs and how we approach partnerships to implement those programs.
(22:52):
What's our definition of partnership?
What looks like a good partnership?
What doesn't?
So that tells you quite a bit about how a person will probably approach the job.
I'm very curious about sincere curiosity, because sometimes people will ask questions where they may generally already know the answer.
(23:16):
It's kind of like a leading question.
I ask leading questions all the time.
And so I can identify that when other people do it in an interview.
I'm really looking for people who sincerely have a level of self-awareness that they express I really don't know.
I am truly curious about A, B, and C.
(23:39):
How do you all make decisions?
How do you select the right people and projects?
How do you orchestrate all of that?
And how do you know when you're successful?
How do you know as a city department you did what the public is asking of you?
I'm so thrilled when people ask those kinds of questions when they sincerely don't know, and they're very curious about the engine behind the scenes.
(24:03):
Always looking for that.
Hopefully, that answers your question.
Yeah, and I think it also signals this kind of, I can imagine a certain boldness, too, of, oh, they really want to get in there.
Because sometimes in interviews, it's just, I want you to like me.
I want you to like me.
So I'm not going to ask the hard questions.
And yeah, if you have some candidates who are asking some pretty hard questions, that also indicates their boldness and being curious, too.
(24:26):
Yeah.
Put it back on us.
Yeah.
So Diem, last question for you is, what inspires curiosity in your own life?
What's a resource you turn to?
What's something that just sparks curiosity in you?
I don't necessarily turn to it, but it's prevalent in my life.
And I really, I so deeply appreciate it.
(24:51):
My family has so many different political affiliations and reasons for their affiliations that, you know, and this is like my loved ones in my life as well, that because you already love these people, because they're family or significant others, because you already love them, that's already the baseline.
(25:12):
And so that makes it a little bit easier.
But when they have such different perspectives on how they view the world,
why the world should be a certain way, and their unique experiences that led to that,
I so deeply appreciate those, because it's, especially for this role,
when you're supporting so many other people of so many different backgrounds and motivations,
(25:36):
that it always reminds me of that our perspective and biases don't always have to be a bad thing.
It's what kind of propels us and drives us.
But it's also something that we have to be so mindful of and check.
And that's something I really value in being able to do for myself, which sometimes I'm successful at, a lot of times I'm not.
(25:57):
So I always have to check my biases and assumptions all the time, sometimes just not successful on some days.
But I value that so much to have that surrounding me in my real life, that it constantly reminds me that there's so many other points of view, so many other perspectives.
(26:17):
There's people who, it's grounded in their life experience.
And so there ought not to be one point of view.
And that's, if we look to do that in our day-to-day work in the workplace, it'll be extremely problematic.
And we will not get anywhere near the outcomes that we're trying to achieve collectively in our communities.
(26:40):
If we only look at one stakeholdership, one point of view, in one approach, we are going to get ourselves in a lot of trouble.
And so how do we keep ourselves open-minded and remember why we're trying to do so much of this work?
So it's really, it's my family.
And that's why I'm looking forward to the holidays when we get together more regularly to remind me of that.
(27:05):
Yeah, I love that answer because it just grounds us in, we don't have to go far to practice curiosity.
We can actually turn to our loved ones.
And I actually like to think about the difference between perspectives and approaches because you, your family, I mean, we're both Vietnamese refugees and here's this one perspective.
And yet there's so many different ways to approach the world from that shared perspective too.
(27:27):
And so that I can imagine how that really helps you in your work as well.
If you can do it at home, then you can do it at work.
That's right.
That's right.
I would put you in that group as well, Julie.
You've helped me check many of my biases and assumptions.
All sorts of matters as well.
So it's always great to have a friend that you trust and can, like, you know, cares about you and cares about you being successful in your personal life and professional life and just ask you hard questions to think about, you know.
(27:57):
Yes, because I hate the idea of us reducing one another to, I mean, you talked about politics, who we voted for, which is there were so many more things than that.
Yeah, that's right.
So Diem, how do people get in touch with you?
So people can find me on LinkedIn and ask for a connection or drop me a line and happy to respond.
(28:20):
Diem, thank you so much for sharing your insights about how you practice curiosity in the Office of Economic Development and also just sharing, reflecting on those other career paths you had as well.
And listeners, thank you.
And remember to practice curiosity at work.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of Curiosity Based.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Hello, I'm Julie Pham with Curiosity at Work, and today I get to chat with my dear friend Diem Ly, who is the division director at the City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development.
(00:37):
Welcome Diem.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me, Dr. Julie.
So Diem, I'm super excited to have you here, because aside from being the division director at Office of Economic Development, you also spent years at Comcast, and before that you were at the International Examiner, a local pan-Asian American newspaper, and that's where we met.
So you actually have quite a breadth of experience, both in community, non-profit work, in the private sector, and now you've just been, I think in this role for, has it been under a year?
(01:09):
Just under a year, and that's right.
All right.
So could you tell us a little bit about the Office of Economic Development?
Oh gosh, I knew you were going to ask me this, Julie.
Let me, it's, it's wide ranging, when I, when I think about what we do, I do think about those we are serving, and so if people are wondering what OED does, or Office of Economic Development, imagine individuals, neighborhoods, whole commercial corridors and business districts, and then the whole city.
(01:40):
We serve every layer of that in an inclusive way, and with an eye on growth and opportunities for everyone.
So whether that is supporting small business, or business districts, to whole industries,
we have our eye and radar on all of those, and always trying to figure out every single
day in that office is how do we open doors for folks, how do we ensure that we are attracting
(02:06):
new businesses, how are we retaining the current businesses in place, and how are we able to
grow businesses over time, and for years to come.
I know that the Office of Economic Development, it's one of the, it's constantly changing
because the economy is how our ecosystem is constantly changing, and my actually first
(02:29):
experience with OED was as a small business owner myself, with my family, I had the, our
Vietnamese newspaper, and we started working with OED, I think about 12, 13 years ago,
so I really appreciate the work that you do, and how you work directly with businesses
and with industries too, it's quite a broad span.
(02:52):
How many people, I mean for so much impact, how many people do you actually have in your office, and what are the kind of roles you have?
We have quite a few people in the office, we've grown quite a bit over the last three
years since the pandemic, we're just under 60, so we're closer to about 55 or so, for
myself as a division director, I oversee the program team, so there's four program
(03:13):
teams, in that, it's more or less 25 folks, but the office as a whole is about 55 to 60,
and we're still growing, and we're actively recruiting now.
And you are also, it's hybrid too, right, people are able to work remotely, but I also believe that the mayor also mandated more time in the office as well?
(03:33):
Yeah, for some time now, we've been at two days minimum in person in the office, and starting January, it'll go to three days a week in person minimum.
So, Diem, we often talk about practicing curiosity, the virtues of practicing curiosity, and yet sometimes it can be really, really hard.
(03:54):
Can you share with us an example of when you have found it difficult to practice curiosity at work?
It's tough, you know, as what you mentioned a little bit earlier about my professional history, you know, working at a nonprofit, in the APA community, to the private sector at a telecom company, to now being at the city, it is distinctly different, I would say, in each of those phases of my professional life.
(04:21):
At the city, it can be difficult because there's so many stakeholders.
When I was at a, in the private sector at the telecom company, you knew what you were trying to achieve.
It was very, very clear who your stakeholders were and what your mission was.
So you go out, you have a plan, and you execute to it.
At the city, you are a public servant, and public is the key word, so you serve everyone.
(04:45):
So how do you, if you have a smaller department, limited capacity, you have a specific budget to work to, everyone is knocking on your door, and everyone needs you to see them and to address their issues.
How do you make choices?
And so in practicing curiosity, it feels like a luxury, sometimes, because everyone needs you and every single person is valid and important.
(05:09):
But if you are looking at your budget, the time and the talent you have on the team, you have to make choices.
You have to prioritize, and that means not everyone is going to get exactly the answers that they want or have been asking for.
So in practicing curiosity, a lot of it is in making decisions.
Are we asking the right questions of ourselves?
(05:30):
Are we addressing this the right way?
Who are we not?
Whether it's a population, a business district, a whole neighborhood, a series of neighborhoods, in terms of the information and relationships that we should have there, what information are we missing?
Let alone having the curiosity to go out there and ask the right questions.
(05:54):
So curiosity to us is, it's a tool that can be kind of rusty sometimes.
It's something you have to kind of continue to sharpen and constantly ask what you don't know.
And I think during the pandemic, the team was on emergency mode.
I really can't blame them.
It was such a tough time that they had to prioritize to very, very few things and execute to that.
(06:19):
And now we're emerging from it, and we're kind of, it's almost like kind of emerging from above ground.
And you're thinking, okay, so I think the dust has settled, so now what do we do?
Where did all the neighborhoods, the business districts, business owners, industries, workers, where are they all at now?
And how do we allocate our time and resources?
(06:39):
Well, where would we be really successful?
What do they need from us?
So asking ourselves those questions again, and practicing curiosity in a fresh new way, but with the same people who have had a tough experience in the pandemic and emerging from it has been a unique challenge.
And I think we're getting closer and closer every single day, but curiosity has been tough.
(07:01):
It's been tough to think about that, have the time for it, and have discipline around it.
There's so many more stakeholders and so many more folks in the public that we're responsible for.
So we're always wondering and challenging ourselves is, are we missing a point of view here?
Are we missing a stakeholder here?
Are we missing a major issue here or information and intel that we need to be soliciting and synthesizing so that we're making really good decisions?
(07:28):
If we're only looking at one stakeholder, that one relationship that you've had and you've really embraced each other, especially in times of crisis and emergency like the pandemic, it's hard to release yourself from that hug and that embrace to look around because you still need each other.
So that's where we're at right now is trying to release the embrace and look around to see who else is impacted by this and who else we need to be including, I suppose, at the table, for lack of a better way to describe it, to make solid decisions moving forward.
(08:01):
Because I can imagine the relationships you have when you're in emergency mode and then that changes when you're not in emergency mode.
And how do you change?
It's less dependent now and more interdependent, but it's that interdependent, like who else do we need to be relying to, who else are we missing to make really strategic decisions about the future of Seattle now that we're in a different phase.
(08:32):
And I also know that because you are also new to government work, there's just so many more stakeholders than you've ever actually experienced, right?
Yes.
In your previous roles.
That's very true.
I've learned that and I'm still learning that every day.
It's as if you had an open invitation to a house party and you invited the entire city.
(08:57):
It's what it kind of feels like.
There's so many people that are knocking on your door and asking for assistance and that's why it's really incumbent on the team at OED to know exactly what we're trying to achieve at any point in time.
And I think we're getting closer and closer to having kind of like a fresh strategy for our own team moving forward too.
(09:22):
Because with OED, you've got, there are probably individual businesses who are contacting you and then there are the association of businesses who still actually hold businesses as members.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why it feels like rings.
Yeah.
It's almost like if you were to think of like a ripple or something or like rings as you have exactly as you have the individual, then you have maybe a group of small businesses.
(09:44):
You could have associations, like you mentioned, like an association, a neighborhood group or a BIA or business improvement area that represents them.
Then you might have someone that is representing the whole neighborhood, not just a district, but a whole neighborhood.
Then you have folks that are representing the whole city, you have other departments, you have mayor's office, council members, their staff, it's just, there's so many folks that kind of depend on each other and depend on each other kind of doing their job, frankly.
(10:17):
And I imagine that you also have people who, organizations who are trying to fight to be the convener of conveners too.
We all want to be the simple hub and be the connector.
That's right.
Yeah.
We all, yes, we, you know, yes, people do like to be the convener, but as, and there's nothing wrong with being convener, as long as you know specifically what you're trying to be convener of and to what end.
(10:41):
We don't want to, no one should, and no one I would imagine wants to just convene folks for the sake of it.
I think that's been the tricky reputation people have had with the city is particularly of like neighborhood groups and nonprofits and individuals and community leaders is like, oh no.
It's another city task force or neighborhood, you know, round table that wants to bring us together, hear from us again, then it's going to get lost and then they're going to, you know, a couple of years from now, they're going to convene us again.
(11:08):
And so it's, you know, it's really imperative amongst city employees and departments that we're, we're always sharing information and trying to build on this like knowledge base that we have so many tremendous people that have tenure and so many fresh folks coming into the city that are very passionate.
We have to collect that information so we can kind of build on it, not, not pull along so many of our community partners and groups along the way and not see results.
(11:39):
Yeah.
So definitely as speaking as the end user, as that the small business, just who do I talk to?
Wait a minute.
Do I talk to this person or this person?
And so it's kind of good to know that it's, it's equally messy on your end too, so it's not just me.
Yeah.
I think it's, yeah, it's, it's, people have good intentions, people are trying to, to, to do the best that they can with what they have.
(12:00):
And sometimes, you know, even at the city, people might have incomplete information.
So they're just doing the max that they can do with the information they have.
And so I think it's just imperative on leadership at city departments for which I'm, you know, appreciate being a part of is just always trying to connect dots.
Right.
I think that's, that's what my, my fellow colleagues are always talking about is connecting dots.
(12:22):
And did we consult with this other department?
Did we check in on this?
And so I really appreciate being surrounded by really savvy folks like that.
So Diem, I know that in your role, you actually have more of an internal facing role and you help a lot with the, the team culture.
So could you talk about how do you support, how do you support your team members to practice curiosity?
(12:43):
And if you can give an specific example, tip, tactic.
There's a couple of different efforts that we're, we're working on right now.
But one of the things is instituting, creating a learning culture, which then feeds into a feedback culture.
Those are two things that I think historically for our department hasn't really gotten the gears going in the last couple of years, again, just similar to probably other departments too, is they've just been on emergency mode.
(13:10):
Right.
So now that we've kind of emerged from that, it's like, how do we invest back into the department, back into the team?
And I'm really gratified to see that people are kind of like clenching onto it.
They're very interested in it.
They want to know what that looks like.
How can we get involved from all levels of staff?
And so creating that learning culture really is starting with partially the characteristic is curiosity, but it's, it's just assuming positive intent is asking more questions and it's trying to be really self-aware as a, as a colleague and as a team member within the department is this other person I'm talking to is they're trying to do the best that they can.
(13:49):
I'm unclear about something, or I'm feeling a certain way about something.
Let me take a beat.
Let me be aware of kind of like how I'm feeling and how I'm interpreting this.
Know that that person is not able to read my mind.
How do I show up really well?
Because ultimately this result, whatever outcome that we're trying to achieve together, whether it's in this conversation or this project is more meaningful and is more important.
(14:14):
And so how do I kind of use this opportunity to, to grow and learn and model that to that end?
So trying to normalize a learning culture, make it psychologically safe for people to feel like they're, you know, drop the ball a little bit and it's going to be okay.
And we'll pick that ball back up and you're not going to be alone in having to pick that up.
(14:37):
Right?
Someone's going to support you and like, let's, let's do it even better next time, right?
Feedback has been the other one where I think that is practicing curiosity in real time in the everyday.
We're trying to really encourage people, managers to be super attentive and responsive.
When you see something happening, whether you're seeing a team member kind of falter a little bit, when you get stressed out, something didn't show up as well, is lean in with them, provide them that support and that feedback as soon as possible.
(15:08):
But it does require a special kind of skillset to provide feedback in a way that's not, you know, wagging your finger.
It's kind of, it's, it's kind of an art, but if people come from a place of learning, like this is, we're learning together.
I'm learning as the people manager, you're learning in this moment as well.
If people come from that, you kind of come up, it comes across a little bit more humble and a little bit more present and people seem to be much more responsive to that.
(15:33):
You make it safe for someone that this is kind of in the container.
What we're talking about right now is confidential.
It's just between us.
We're just going to keep growing together.
Whenever I've done that and I've seen it being done in the office, I find people kind of flourish.
Like I can see it happening in real time.
People flourish and they feel, you can almost see like a weight lifted from them.
But I find in real time, it's, it's asking the questions in the moment that you're providing feedback or coaching for someone privately has been pretty tremendous.
(16:07):
For me, I'm still practicing the curiosity, especially in the city department.
I assume there's so much for me to learn.
I'm already on, I'm already assuming it's going to take me probably several more months to who knows even, even another year to really hone in on how I act on and build a new set of skills around curiosity in this seat.
(16:35):
It's a very different seat than in my previous seat.
I'm responsible for a lot more people.
I have to check my biases and my assumptions a lot.
I have to be really conscientious of when I ask questions out of curiosity, how that can show up and be received by someone else who has never had a person who is one layer to two layers above them, kind of in quotes, right?
(17:01):
And so I have to be super mindful of when and how I practice curiosity now.
I have to be really aware of the power dynamics of that, the tone, whether it's in person or virtual and some, you know, there's, there's so much to do.
There's so much to work out across four teams, a lot of people, a lot of coaches that it's probably truthfully, it's probably every 30 minutes to an hour, there's like a moment of like, how do I practice curiosity in this moment?
(17:36):
And it's different every single time.
I appreciate how you're saying that practicing curiosity requires that feedback.
Yeah, it's difficult to operationalize.
And so, especially when you're talking about layers of hierarchy, even if, even if you've just got 55, 60 people and yet there's still layers of hierarchy.
And I also imagine with things changing so much, sometimes people hesitate to give feedback because you're just, should I be giving feedback on something I don't know as much as maybe it's, I'm not, if people sometimes hesitate, oh, well, it's not my place.
(18:08):
It's not my expertise.
Yeah, feedback sounds so different coming from different people and depending on what their relationship is like, especially if you're starting to give feedback where you haven't before, and that person has not really received feedback in their professional life.
So I think the key is in terms of how to operationalize it is consistency.
(18:30):
So it's, I think it's really important that fellow managers, we call them M-team.
So it's the management team at OED, that we're all consistent on how we want to approach it, how we define feedback, how we define performance, right?
How we identify gaps in the performance, right?
(18:55):
Who is performing to their job really great, who is not performing as well and why, right?
So that way we're not making it too subjective, but instead it's based on maybe the classifications for that role.
Maybe this person is not performing, not because it's about them per se, but it's because for their position, they're responsible for certain things and maybe they haven't had a chance to flex those skills yet.
(19:23):
So maybe that's like a coaching opportunity and that's maybe a performance thing.
So having that consistency in terms of how we define gaps in performance, how we define good performance, and even the cadence in which we provide feedback, because if some folks never provide any feedback and all of a sudden we wait until we have the performance reviews at the end of the year, we would never want anyone to be caught off guard.
(19:50):
There should be no surprises, right?
So having that cadence of how you provide feedback is really important.
Otherwise, different groups of team members that have one manager, they're going to have different experiences.
What we're trying to reduce is too much of variance across feedback and learning and expectations and assessing performance.
(20:10):
That could blow up in a bad way if you're not consistent across the board, because teams, they could talk with each other and say, hey, I got really strong feedback the other day and someone else is like, I haven't gotten feedback all year.
I'm not saying that that's the case really with OED.
I think we're pretty good about providing that, but I think that's very important.
(20:31):
So what I'm hearing you say is just having consistency across your M team, across that leadership team about how to give feedback.
And then in terms of the expertise, that's still given by the manager.
And so it's still in those verticals.
You don't have to worry so much about giving feedback to people who are about something that's outside their expertise, as long as there's consistency across the different departments.
(20:52):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So I know that you are doing a lot of hiring.
And can you, so moving on to the next question, curiosity is important.
How do you recruit and identify and hire for curiosity then?
Oh, I love the recruitment process, Julie, because you get fresh folks joining the team.
(21:16):
So your question is, how do we practice curiosity in the recruitment process?
Yeah, how do you identify?
How do you, when you're talking to a potential candidate, how do you identify that this person is actually, you think that they're going to be curious?
I was actually just having this conversation with our human resources team is that I always want to save time at the end of every interview for Q&A from the applicant.
(21:41):
At least 30% of the time should be the applicant talking about what's meaningful to them, what they're curious about in the workplace.
It tells you a lot about their approach, what matters to them, what they're prioritizing in the workplace.
I've heard the gamut, even in the last two weeks, been in a lot of different interviews for different positions on all four teams.
(22:03):
And I've heard folks ask a lot about workplace culture.
What's it like?
What's the team like?
What's their personalities like?
That tells you what that person, what is the most meaningful thing to that person.
If they ask quite a bit about the budget, which I just got that recently, I was caught off guard.
(22:23):
I was surprised by that.
They asked a lot about budget and the decisions that OED had to make in this recent budget cycle that just passed last week.
And how did you all make decisions?
Curious, how did you make decisions about what to cut, what not to cut, what to preserve, what to prioritize?
How did you make those decisions?
And then other people ask about programs and how we approach partnerships to implement those programs.
(22:52):
What's our definition of partnership?
What looks like a good partnership?
What doesn't?
So that tells you quite a bit about how a person will probably approach the job.
I'm very curious about sincere curiosity, because sometimes people will ask questions where they may generally already know the answer.
(23:16):
It's kind of like a leading question.
I ask leading questions all the time.
And so I can identify that when other people do it in an interview.
I'm really looking for people who sincerely have a level of self-awareness that they express I really don't know.
I am truly curious about A, B, and C.
(23:39):
How do you all make decisions?
How do you select the right people and projects?
How do you orchestrate all of that?
And how do you know when you're successful?
How do you know as a city department you did what the public is asking of you?
I'm so thrilled when people ask those kinds of questions when they sincerely don't know, and they're very curious about the engine behind the scenes.
(24:03):
Always looking for that.
Hopefully, that answers your question.
Yeah, and I think it also signals this kind of, I can imagine a certain boldness, too, of, oh, they really want to get in there.
Because sometimes in interviews, it's just, I want you to like me.
I want you to like me.
So I'm not going to ask the hard questions.
And yeah, if you have some candidates who are asking some pretty hard questions, that also indicates their boldness and being curious, too.
(24:26):
Yeah.
Put it back on us.
Yeah.
So Diem, last question for you is, what inspires curiosity in your own life?
What's a resource you turn to?
What's something that just sparks curiosity in you?
I don't necessarily turn to it, but it's prevalent in my life.
And I really, I so deeply appreciate it.
(24:51):
My family has so many different political affiliations and reasons for their affiliations that, you know, and this is like my loved ones in my life as well, that because you already love these people, because they're family or significant others, because you already love them, that's already the baseline.
(25:12):
And so that makes it a little bit easier.
But when they have such different perspectives on how they view the world,
why the world should be a certain way, and their unique experiences that led to that,
I so deeply appreciate those, because it's, especially for this role,
when you're supporting so many other people of so many different backgrounds and motivations,
(25:36):
that it always reminds me of that our perspective and biases don't always have to be a bad thing.
It's what kind of propels us and drives us.
But it's also something that we have to be so mindful of and check.
And that's something I really value in being able to do for myself, which sometimes I'm successful at, a lot of times I'm not.
(25:57):
So I always have to check my biases and assumptions all the time, sometimes just not successful on some days.
But I value that so much to have that surrounding me in my real life, that it constantly reminds me that there's so many other points of view, so many other perspectives.
(26:17):
There's people who, it's grounded in their life experience.
And so there ought not to be one point of view.
And that's, if we look to do that in our day-to-day work in the workplace, it'll be extremely problematic.
And we will not get anywhere near the outcomes that we're trying to achieve collectively in our communities.
(26:40):
If we only look at one stakeholdership, one point of view, in one approach, we are going to get ourselves in a lot of trouble.
And so how do we keep ourselves open-minded and remember why we're trying to do so much of this work?
So it's really, it's my family.
And that's why I'm looking forward to the holidays when we get together more regularly to remind me of that.
(27:05):
Yeah, I love that answer because it just grounds us in, we don't have to go far to practice curiosity.
We can actually turn to our loved ones.
And I actually like to think about the difference between perspectives and approaches because you, your family, I mean, we're both Vietnamese refugees and here's this one perspective.
And yet there's so many different ways to approach the world from that shared perspective too.
(27:27):
And so that I can imagine how that really helps you in your work as well.
If you can do it at home, then you can do it at work.
That's right.
That's right.
I would put you in that group as well, Julie.
You've helped me check many of my biases and assumptions.
All sorts of matters as well.
So it's always great to have a friend that you trust and can, like, you know, cares about you and cares about you being successful in your personal life and professional life and just ask you hard questions to think about, you know.
(27:57):
Yes, because I hate the idea of us reducing one another to, I mean, you talked about politics, who we voted for, which is there were so many more things than that.
Yeah, that's right.
So Diem, how do people get in touch with you?
So people can find me on LinkedIn and ask for a connection or drop me a line and happy to respond.
(28:20):
Diem, thank you so much for sharing your insights about how you practice curiosity in the Office of Economic Development and also just sharing, reflecting on those other career paths you had as well.
And listeners, thank you.
And remember to practice curiosity at work.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
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