September 8, 2025 • 29 mins
TrulySignificant.com is led by a bunch of curious people that are always asking why.
Lo and behold, Dr. Debra Clary, author of The Curiosity Curve, debuts her book today. It's the culimination of 40 years of experience and accumulated wisdom.
Learn about the skill of curiosity and how it can be taught.
Hear how curiosity is tied to company performance and retention of great leaders.
Build a plan of curiosity for your culture to make this trait a part of your core values that are strategic.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Lo and behold, Dr. Debra Clary, author of The Curiosity Curve, debuts her book today. It's the culimination of 40 years of experience and accumulated wisdom.
Learn about the skill of curiosity and how it can be taught.
Hear how curiosity is tied to company performance and retention of great leaders.
Build a plan of curiosity for your culture to make this trait a part of your core values that are strategic.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And welcome back to truly significant dot com presense. I'm
Rick TOLKEINNY. Our very special guest is Deborah Clary. She
is a leadership strategist, researcher, executive coach with over four
decades of leadership experience, including having worked for my old company,
Free Delay, and in the pre show, we were just
(00:30):
sharing stories of common stories of how we were grilled
and drilled at the route level to learn DSD Directstore Delivery.
Some of those lessons will never go away. I think
my back still hurts. I wish I were one hundred
and sixty pounder again. But Deborah has written this great
book called The Curiosity Curve, and you can tell by
(00:53):
her narrative that it is a culmination of four decades
of experience, including her work with Pepsi COO and Freedom Lay. Deborah,
welcome to our show.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Rick, It's wonderful to have you. And let's start with
your backstory beyond that very brief description I just provided.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes, So I started my career fresh out of business
school with tons of aspiration and lots of hope about
where my career trajectory was going to take me. And
I went to my first interview with a suit and
a briefcase. I was being interviewed for a manager role
(01:34):
at Freedom Lay in Detroit. And I returned from the
interview with the job, but not the job I thought.
I actually was offered a Freedom a route driver job.
And I returned with a uniform and a clipboard. And
my mother was like, wait, what you went six years
(01:55):
and now you're going to do this? And I said,
I did. They start you at the bottom, and I'm
to do it. I just felt so compelled that I
would do a good job on the route, they would
see my worth and then I would get promoted.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
What a start, and they they do put you through
the system and to learn the basics, and it is
boot camp like no other boot camp. And now you've
written this beautiful book, the Curiosity Curve. What are some
of the other layers that have gone into the book
that people will enjoy reading about.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So the book is a combination of my four decades
of experience in corporate America and from a woman's lens,
you know, starting as a teamster in the eighties and nineties.
And there are some stories and some funny stories. But
then it also combines the research I did on curiosity.
(02:51):
And how this came to be was I was sitting
in a meeting with my CEO. I was working for
a fortune. It was one hundred billion dollar company for
forty company, very large, and he turned to me in
a meeting when somebody was presenting, and he said, quietly,
do you think curiosity can be learned? Or is it innate?
(03:12):
And I said, I don't know, but when the CEO
asked you a question, you go try to find the answer.
And so for the next week I couldn't get enough.
You know, I was just so intrigued about this question,
and I looked at the lead literature, I looked at
the research, and I came back that following a week
and I say, oh, by the way curiosity can be learned?
(03:33):
And he said, oh, all right, that's that's really interesting.
And to me, though it wasn't just interesting, it was
a question that really changed my life because I began
to notice the absence of curiosity in corporations and how
people have become incurious. And so I just knew by
(03:55):
doing that research that there wasn't enough research, at least
enough for me as it related to what was happening
in corporate America. So I commissioned a group of researchers
and this was all on my own, nothing to do
with the company, but because I was so fascinated by this,
and I wanted them to research one question, and that
question was what is the relatedness between leadership, performance and curiosity?
(04:22):
And after we got the data back and there was
a direct correlation between performance, leadership and curiosity, I said,
this is my calling. There's nothing more I could want
to do but to share with organizations how they can
change what's happening inside with their employees.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That is so powerful. That's what I want to talk
to you about at length this morning. And that's why
I told you in the pre show that we think
that you've moved from success to significance with this topic.
I'm wondering when you you go through school, people get
their master's degree, they've never had any corporate experience whatsoever,
(05:07):
and they interview and they come across as a curious person,
and then two weeks later they are basically going through
a boot camp and they want the corporation wants them
to come in with a blank slate. They don't. They
want to eke out any curiosity that they may have.
Isn't there an issue with American companies that don't even
(05:32):
honor the na curiosity that one person has, and they
tend to kind of push it aside so they can
get in their own philosophy.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, and I mean there's a lot that's into that question.
It's not certainly all organizations. When you think about it, it
actually are incurious starts when we are young. I mean
we are naturally curious as children. As a matter of fact,
toddlers ask two hundred and fifty eight questions a day.
I mean you may say, well, me even talk, but
(06:03):
if they're pointing, that means they're asking a question. So
researchers out of London came up with this number after
observing them two hundred and ninety eight or fifty eight
questions a day by the time where adults were asking
about five questions a day, you know, a significant reduction.
And most of the time those questions are where are
we going to dinner? Did you make dinner reservations? You know,
(06:25):
we have long lost this this curiosity that we once had.
So you think about when we were naturally curious and
we're we go to school and we're taught children are
to be seen and not heard. Children, you know, we
need them to sit in their seats, we need them
to raise their hands, and there are a lot of
reasons that we do that when you don't want mayhem
(06:46):
in the classroom. But it's almost like we've gone too
far on that continuum in terms of having children be
directed at versus creating an environment where we can ask questions.
So we learn to be in curious and then guess what,
We go to university and then we go to grad school,
become a medical doctor, you become a lawyer, and when
we get into the workplace, we are rewarded for that expertise.
(07:11):
We're being paid for that expertise. And oh, by the way,
we have such demands on us and constraints that we
just end up telling people what to do versus stepping
back and listening to their thoughts and their ideas.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Is based on what you just said, do you think
that across Fortune one thousand companies and even startups that
curiosity is a soft skill?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I think they think it's a luxury, but in my
data suggests that it's actually well, it improved performance, So
I do think and that's My work in the world
is teaching executives that curiosity is a strategic advantage and
it can be learned.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
How does that skill then, of curiosity that can be taught,
How does it work with in political companies?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, I mean every organization is political, right, there's there,
there's it's just a two degree of which, right, And
so it's understanding power in organizations and it's about how
you position your ideas and how you position change. So
every CEO, every executive team, they have a desire for performance.
(08:38):
That's why they are they're in that position. And even
if it's in a nonprofit, it is about performance of
the organization. The missions might be different, the purposes might
be different. So when I'm working with CEOs, at first
they scratch their head like wait, come on, what is this?
And then I show the data in terms of what
(08:59):
what curiosity can do for their organization. And because they
like data and because they want performance, they're interested.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
M hm. That's what would change it. Can you share
a story this morning about a person, let's say, who
had lost their curiosity and then rediscovered it and it
led to breakthrough results.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So I was working with a executive team, So that's
the CEO, and they he had ten direct reports and
so they came to me because they were losing market share,
they had employee turnover rate, and they were significantly behind
their competitors and launching launching new products. So I think
(09:46):
you would agree that's a pretty bad position to be in.
So they asked me to lead a strategic session, you know,
a two day strategy session, and I said, I can
do that, and could we also include the curiosity assessment
because I have a validated assessment where we can measure
individual teams and organizations current level of curiosity. And the
(10:09):
reason we want to do that is because we know
curiosity can be learned and you can continue to grow
in that space. So he agreed to do the assessment.
So as I'm leading the two day strategy session, there
is a two hour session on curiosity, and I had
all of their scores. Now, when organizations take my assessment,
(10:30):
they get their individual scores, but I never attributed scores
directly to that it's confidential and I always have a
safe environment. So I put up on the screen a
scattered plot of each individual's level of openness to new ideas.
There are four factors, but this was the one that
I was showing, and they looked at that and everybody
(10:52):
had a high score in openness to new ideas but
one person. Now I knew who that one person was,
but I wasn't going to call that individual out. And
we went through like, well, help me understand. If everyone
is high on openness to new ideas, why are we
not launching new products? And it was crickets in the
room and I just let the silence hang there, and
(11:15):
the CEO said that low score is me. And I
said to the rest of the group, how do you
all feel about that? And we'd built up enough safety
where they started saying, absolutely, you shut our ideas down.
We come with new market research, we show what our
competitors are doing, but you shut us down. And he said,
(11:38):
you know, I founded this company. I feel like I
have the best ideas. I know what's right for us.
And then he said I'm realizing I don't. And in
the next year they had a significant turnaround in terms
of revenue, employee retention, and in performance. And it was
(11:59):
this awareness that a CEO is only one person, but
they have significant power over how people are behaving.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
That is one of the truly significant stories I've ever heard,
because it came down to the zero moment of truth
and someone had to fess up that they were the issue.
And when it comes to curiosity, he had lost his
(12:31):
way somewhere through the journey of that company. If that's
what that's the power of the curiosity curve right, their folks,
that's the reason to buy the book. And by the way,
where can they buy the book?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
You can buy the book on Amazon dot com. It's
in pre order and it will be released on October
seventh by Fast Company Press.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And are you doing a speaking tour or if you
want to give out your information, so can contact you
and they can get you to be the keynote speaker
at their come.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, fantastic. So if you go to my website, which
is just Wwwdeborah Clary dot com, you will learn about
all the things that I do and then the opportunity
to connect with me if you're interested in having me
speak at your organization.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
That is excellent. And Deborah, we're going to be brought
back after this commercial that is from the one and
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(13:58):
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Speaker 1 (15:15):
And we are back with Deborah Cleary. She just shared
a brilliant story about the curiosity curve and the power
of it. We've talked with so many people on skill sets,
from collaboration to brainstorming curiosity. Simon Sinex asking why I
(15:37):
wanted to throw in a granddad observation here. I've got
two grandchildren. My youngest is two and a half. She
asks forty seven thousand questions a day about why, and
we marvel in her curiosity. And what we're striving to
(16:02):
do as grandparents is to give them information and then
get them to think about it and process it and
enable curiosity and wandering from your perspective. Once people discover
the power of curiosity, how are they making it stick
within their cultures?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Curiosity is contagious. It is, It is contagious. So if
you are around curious people, you too will increase your
level of curiosity. And in our research, we looked at
leaders that had high levels of curiosity and then we
measured their team's curiosity. And there's a correlation between a
(16:45):
leader's level of curiosity and guess what, being a DeBie downer.
Here the reverse is true. So if your leader is
not open to exploring new things, they're not open to
ideas the whole team will decrease their level of caureuriosity.
So by you being around your grandchildren, I can imagine
your curiosity is also elevated.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
It is, it is, indeed, and it's a wonderful culture
to have because it's about imagination and storytelling and answering,
and with today's technology being able to get to some
answers and actually be able to explain them and explore
them ourselves. It's like, this is this is the day
(17:30):
and age for curiosity. Why would anybody try to tamp
that down?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Do I know? Why?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Sure, that's the reason why you're on today.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So we touched on it briefly earlier in the sense
that there is so much pressure on leaders to perform,
to get the return on their investments, to get you know,
to hit the KPIs for the for the order is
that we have lost our way of thinking about leadership
(18:04):
as a as the long game, not the short game.
So the short game is when an individual comes in,
you know, an employee of yours, your teammate comes in,
and they say, we have this problem when the leader
is constraint and has pressure and by all the way
they're you know, they've been promoted because they are probably
pretty confident in that area of expertise. What do they do?
(18:27):
They give the answer, and when you give the answer,
you've solved one problem. Now. A leader that is is
thinking about the long game and thinking about the development
of their team. They want to have help that individual
solve the problem themselves. Doesn't mean that they're not saying,
(18:49):
you know, I have confidence in you, I am here
for you, but I want to hear what you're thinking about.
How have you thought about solving this problem? And it's
the same thing with our children and our grandchildren, is
helping them solve problems for the long term.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's so true. We study here what we would consider
to be the dream state and epiphanies. And I think
that in talking to other former employees of certain companies,
(19:25):
we suffer from our own PTSD because our ideas were
shut down. And running my own company for the last
sixteen seventeen years has been so much fun because there's
only two or three people on the board that will
say bad idea. But I'm going to take you back.
I want to give you an example of my PTSD
(19:48):
and I want you to comment on it. Relative to curiosity,
So I was running the or helping to lead the
Southeastern zone for Freedo l A, which is basically tax
as far north as Tennessee as far south as Miami
into the Keys, and I've always had a personal interest
(20:09):
in the Latin market and the emerging flavors that were
coming from the Latin market, and so I brought to
the committee an idea to launch a planting ship, which
is almost like it's a vegetable banana. And there one
question was is it going to do two hundred million
dollars a year? And I went no, but we could
(20:31):
scale it to that based on the growth of the
Latin market. Shut down. Idea never pursued, and twenty five
years later I finally see the product on the marketplace,
and it's like, at that moment, those KPIs and those
objectives that were coming down from Purchase New York were
(20:52):
so powerful that they shut down an opportunity to have
really gone deeply into the Latin market with a flavor
that they love, not a performance brand like Ruffles or
Laser Fritos or Doritos. Please comment on that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's the sense of that they have this concept that
there has to be a return on an investment that
meets these hurdles. And for them, what did they say
was it they wanted it to be a two hundred
million dollar brand? Is that what it was? And that's
not how no brand goes from zero to that overnight?
(21:29):
Is this this notion of the longer game?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
If we're going to introduce something new, what is going
to be acceptable in the first year? What's then the
second year, what's the third year? I mean Freedomly didn't
start out, you know, the Freedo brand didn't start off
like that either. But it's this thing where they have
put themselves into parameters and spreadsheets and saying this is
(21:52):
what if we're going to invest in it, this is
the return it has to be. They're playing the short game.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
They were playing the short game, and now hopefully they're
playing the long game. As you look ahead, what skills
or mindsets do you think will define the next generation
of leaders?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Well, if I'm being really optimistic and hopeful and that
we can actually turn around what we're currently experiencing, it
definitely is an individual that is has a growth mindset,
you know, so that someone that wants to continuous to learn,
to continuously evolve and at The root of having a
(22:35):
growth mindset is curiosity, and at the root of curiosity
is asking questions. Asking questions of ourselves and asking questions
of others.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Is part of that debora, having more gumption, courage, bravery
to ask questions to the people that maybe are the
most influential.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yes, this it's one around having confidence in who I
am as a person. You know, I mean that I
have this confidence that I can ask questions in a
way that has a positive intent and that I'm really
trying to either get to know this person better or
I'm trying to have a breakthrough for the organization. In
(23:27):
our research, Rick, we found something really surprising. I was
going in with the mindset that we're probably going to
find that people early in their career have higher levels
of curiosity, and it was not the case. The people
with the highest level of curiosity were those that in
the later years of their careers, so people in their
(23:51):
fifties and sixties. Now, we didn't do the research on
this any further, but what my hypothesis is is that
when by the time you're fifty or sixty, you have
a lot of confidence in yourself and you're not You're
not worried about being let go, so to speak, if
you if you're speaking up, but the sense of I
have confidence to ask questions because my purpose is to
(24:13):
make the company a better place where I believe that
people that are young in their careers may not have
built that confidence. So I think you're on to something, Rick.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That leads to a fun question I had for you today,
Not that these haven't all been fun, but who's the oldest,
most curious person you've ever met? And why?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Oh? Wow? So I had a mentor he has has passed.
His name was Bill McGrain, and Bill started his career
as a priest and then decided he wanted to do
(25:04):
something else, and so he went into the work of
It was really around helping individuals have higher self esteem.
So he was in the development of individuals long before
it was popular. And his ability to ask questions that
got to the root of problems or the root of issues,
(25:26):
or the root of limiting beliefs of an individual was
just extraordinary. So I would say Bill McGrain was my
mentor in that, and he was probably in his early
eighties when I met him.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
That's a beautiful story. And you know, people, sometimes you
don't have to personally have known somebody like One of
my example is doctor Lynn Yu Tang, who passed away
long before I was born, but in his older years.
Is his elder years, he had been a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist,
(26:07):
and he started to observe the sounds of nature. The
older he got, his hearing actually got better. And so
I just love what he wrote in the Importance of
Living in the Sounds of Water and the observations he
makes on Americans in nineteen thirty nine that still apply
(26:27):
today in twenty twenty five, and how obnoxious we are.
It's like to add yourself to an older, curious person today.
It's what I would say.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's so great. Okay, final question for you. If
you could leave our emerging leaders with one piece of
advice from your book, what would that be.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
It would be to develop the skill of asking genuine questions.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And how do they do that other than reading your book.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
It starts with the mindset of I want to build
relationships with others, and in order to build relationships with others,
it requires me to come with an open heart and
asking questions that allows me to get closer to them.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well stated Debrah Clary, you have the it factor and
you're onto something quite significant and you know it. We
hope that your book is a great success. And for
those that want to get a sign autograph copy of
The Curiosity Curve, how in the world are you going
to pull that off?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Well, I will be doing book signings and so they'll
be listed on my website once we have them all
planned out.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That's excellent. Will you come back in six months and
let us know how it's going.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
It would be my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
That would be so fun. You're such a fun guest.
Her book is The Curiosity Curve. It's going to be available.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
What day, October seventh?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Excellent? And will you And you've got an audio book out.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I'm pretty an audio book as well.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And did you do the recording?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I did not do the recording.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh well you should have four and a half hours
of getting to listen to your own voice.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, that's what they told me, and I thought, oh,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well it was. It was great to have you on
and we look forward to having you back. That was
Deborah Clary. Her book is The Curiosity Curve. Make sure
and buy it, read it, and not only read it,
but make it I must read for everyone in your culture,
and I would say for the seven hundred and fifty
thousand new businesses that are going to open next year.
Wouldn't it be great if that was kind of one
(29:04):
of the primary books that your startup has for everybody
to read and for everybody to know from your client
perspective that you're a curious customer. You're a curious person.
What a great trait to have. Thank dev, We.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Appreciate you, Thank you reck my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Hey, folks, we hope that you enjoyed today's show, and
as always we wish you success, but on your own
unique way to significance. Have a great week.
And welcome back to truly significant dot com presense. I'm
Rick TOLKEINNY. Our very special guest is Deborah Clary. She
is a leadership strategist, researcher, executive coach with over four
decades of leadership experience, including having worked for my old company,
Free Delay, and in the pre show, we were just
(00:30):
sharing stories of common stories of how we were grilled
and drilled at the route level to learn DSD Directstore Delivery.
Some of those lessons will never go away. I think
my back still hurts. I wish I were one hundred
and sixty pounder again. But Deborah has written this great
book called The Curiosity Curve, and you can tell by
(00:53):
her narrative that it is a culmination of four decades
of experience, including her work with Pepsi COO and Freedom Lay. Deborah,
welcome to our show.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Rick, It's wonderful to have you. And let's start with
your backstory beyond that very brief description I just provided.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes, So I started my career fresh out of business
school with tons of aspiration and lots of hope about
where my career trajectory was going to take me. And
I went to my first interview with a suit and
a briefcase. I was being interviewed for a manager role
(01:34):
at Freedom Lay in Detroit. And I returned from the
interview with the job, but not the job I thought.
I actually was offered a Freedom a route driver job.
And I returned with a uniform and a clipboard. And
my mother was like, wait, what you went six years
(01:55):
and now you're going to do this? And I said,
I did. They start you at the bottom, and I'm
to do it. I just felt so compelled that I
would do a good job on the route, they would
see my worth and then I would get promoted.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
What a start, and they they do put you through
the system and to learn the basics, and it is
boot camp like no other boot camp. And now you've
written this beautiful book, the Curiosity Curve. What are some
of the other layers that have gone into the book
that people will enjoy reading about.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So the book is a combination of my four decades
of experience in corporate America and from a woman's lens,
you know, starting as a teamster in the eighties and nineties.
And there are some stories and some funny stories. But
then it also combines the research I did on curiosity.
(02:51):
And how this came to be was I was sitting
in a meeting with my CEO. I was working for
a fortune. It was one hundred billion dollar company for
forty company, very large, and he turned to me in
a meeting when somebody was presenting, and he said, quietly,
do you think curiosity can be learned? Or is it innate?
(03:12):
And I said, I don't know, but when the CEO
asked you a question, you go try to find the answer.
And so for the next week I couldn't get enough.
You know, I was just so intrigued about this question,
and I looked at the lead literature, I looked at
the research, and I came back that following a week
and I say, oh, by the way curiosity can be learned?
(03:33):
And he said, oh, all right, that's that's really interesting.
And to me, though it wasn't just interesting, it was
a question that really changed my life because I began
to notice the absence of curiosity in corporations and how
people have become incurious. And so I just knew by
(03:55):
doing that research that there wasn't enough research, at least
enough for me as it related to what was happening
in corporate America. So I commissioned a group of researchers
and this was all on my own, nothing to do
with the company, but because I was so fascinated by this,
and I wanted them to research one question, and that
question was what is the relatedness between leadership, performance and curiosity?
(04:22):
And after we got the data back and there was
a direct correlation between performance, leadership and curiosity, I said,
this is my calling. There's nothing more I could want
to do but to share with organizations how they can
change what's happening inside with their employees.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
That is so powerful. That's what I want to talk
to you about at length this morning. And that's why
I told you in the pre show that we think
that you've moved from success to significance with this topic.
I'm wondering when you you go through school, people get
their master's degree, they've never had any corporate experience whatsoever,
(05:07):
and they interview and they come across as a curious person,
and then two weeks later they are basically going through
a boot camp and they want the corporation wants them
to come in with a blank slate. They don't. They
want to eke out any curiosity that they may have.
Isn't there an issue with American companies that don't even
(05:32):
honor the na curiosity that one person has, and they
tend to kind of push it aside so they can
get in their own philosophy.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, and I mean there's a lot that's into that question.
It's not certainly all organizations. When you think about it, it
actually are incurious starts when we are young. I mean
we are naturally curious as children. As a matter of fact,
toddlers ask two hundred and fifty eight questions a day.
I mean you may say, well, me even talk, but
(06:03):
if they're pointing, that means they're asking a question. So
researchers out of London came up with this number after
observing them two hundred and ninety eight or fifty eight
questions a day by the time where adults were asking
about five questions a day, you know, a significant reduction.
And most of the time those questions are where are
we going to dinner? Did you make dinner reservations? You know,
(06:25):
we have long lost this this curiosity that we once had.
So you think about when we were naturally curious and
we're we go to school and we're taught children are
to be seen and not heard. Children, you know, we
need them to sit in their seats, we need them
to raise their hands, and there are a lot of
reasons that we do that when you don't want mayhem
(06:46):
in the classroom. But it's almost like we've gone too
far on that continuum in terms of having children be
directed at versus creating an environment where we can ask questions.
So we learn to be in curious and then guess what,
We go to university and then we go to grad school,
become a medical doctor, you become a lawyer, and when
we get into the workplace, we are rewarded for that expertise.
(07:11):
We're being paid for that expertise. And oh, by the way,
we have such demands on us and constraints that we
just end up telling people what to do versus stepping
back and listening to their thoughts and their ideas.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Is based on what you just said, do you think
that across Fortune one thousand companies and even startups that
curiosity is a soft skill?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I think they think it's a luxury, but in my
data suggests that it's actually well, it improved performance, So
I do think and that's My work in the world
is teaching executives that curiosity is a strategic advantage and
it can be learned.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
How does that skill then, of curiosity that can be taught,
How does it work with in political companies?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, I mean every organization is political, right, there's there,
there's it's just a two degree of which, right, And
so it's understanding power in organizations and it's about how
you position your ideas and how you position change. So
every CEO, every executive team, they have a desire for performance.
(08:38):
That's why they are they're in that position. And even
if it's in a nonprofit, it is about performance of
the organization. The missions might be different, the purposes might
be different. So when I'm working with CEOs, at first
they scratch their head like wait, come on, what is this?
And then I show the data in terms of what
(08:59):
what curiosity can do for their organization. And because they
like data and because they want performance, they're interested.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
M hm. That's what would change it. Can you share
a story this morning about a person, let's say, who
had lost their curiosity and then rediscovered it and it
led to breakthrough results.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
So I was working with a executive team, So that's
the CEO, and they he had ten direct reports and
so they came to me because they were losing market share,
they had employee turnover rate, and they were significantly behind
their competitors and launching launching new products. So I think
(09:46):
you would agree that's a pretty bad position to be in.
So they asked me to lead a strategic session, you know,
a two day strategy session, and I said, I can
do that, and could we also include the curiosity assessment
because I have a validated assessment where we can measure
individual teams and organizations current level of curiosity. And the
(10:09):
reason we want to do that is because we know
curiosity can be learned and you can continue to grow
in that space. So he agreed to do the assessment.
So as I'm leading the two day strategy session, there
is a two hour session on curiosity, and I had
all of their scores. Now, when organizations take my assessment,
(10:30):
they get their individual scores, but I never attributed scores
directly to that it's confidential and I always have a
safe environment. So I put up on the screen a
scattered plot of each individual's level of openness to new ideas.
There are four factors, but this was the one that
I was showing, and they looked at that and everybody
(10:52):
had a high score in openness to new ideas but
one person. Now I knew who that one person was,
but I wasn't going to call that individual out. And
we went through like, well, help me understand. If everyone
is high on openness to new ideas, why are we
not launching new products? And it was crickets in the
room and I just let the silence hang there, and
(11:15):
the CEO said that low score is me. And I
said to the rest of the group, how do you
all feel about that? And we'd built up enough safety
where they started saying, absolutely, you shut our ideas down.
We come with new market research, we show what our
competitors are doing, but you shut us down. And he said,
(11:38):
you know, I founded this company. I feel like I
have the best ideas. I know what's right for us.
And then he said I'm realizing I don't. And in
the next year they had a significant turnaround in terms
of revenue, employee retention, and in performance. And it was
(11:59):
this awareness that a CEO is only one person, but
they have significant power over how people are behaving.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
That is one of the truly significant stories I've ever heard,
because it came down to the zero moment of truth
and someone had to fess up that they were the issue.
And when it comes to curiosity, he had lost his
(12:31):
way somewhere through the journey of that company. If that's
what that's the power of the curiosity curve right, their folks,
that's the reason to buy the book. And by the way,
where can they buy the book?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
You can buy the book on Amazon dot com. It's
in pre order and it will be released on October
seventh by Fast Company Press.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And are you doing a speaking tour or if you
want to give out your information, so can contact you
and they can get you to be the keynote speaker
at their come.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, fantastic. So if you go to my website, which
is just Wwwdeborah Clary dot com, you will learn about
all the things that I do and then the opportunity
to connect with me if you're interested in having me
speak at your organization.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
That is excellent. And Deborah, we're going to be brought
back after this commercial that is from the one and
only Marcus Aurelius stand by.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
This is Marcus Aurelius reappearing to proclaim that Truly Significant
Conversations with Big hearted People is a rare piece of literature.
This book reminds me of one of my more stirring quotes,
waste no more time arguing what a good man should
be be one. If you're stepping into your next life
(13:58):
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this book is for you. Dive into forty soul stirring
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(14:21):
and build a legacy that outlasts you. Authored by Rick
Tolkiny Truly Significant will challenge your view of success and
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(14:44):
epitaph will read she gave outrageously extended grace unceasingly and
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Speaker 1 (14:54):
So that death found her empt.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
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Speaker 1 (15:15):
And we are back with Deborah Cleary. She just shared
a brilliant story about the curiosity curve and the power
of it. We've talked with so many people on skill sets,
from collaboration to brainstorming curiosity. Simon Sinex asking why I
(15:37):
wanted to throw in a granddad observation here. I've got
two grandchildren. My youngest is two and a half. She
asks forty seven thousand questions a day about why, and
we marvel in her curiosity. And what we're striving to
(16:02):
do as grandparents is to give them information and then
get them to think about it and process it and
enable curiosity and wandering from your perspective. Once people discover
the power of curiosity, how are they making it stick
within their cultures?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Curiosity is contagious. It is, It is contagious. So if
you are around curious people, you too will increase your
level of curiosity. And in our research, we looked at
leaders that had high levels of curiosity and then we
measured their team's curiosity. And there's a correlation between a
(16:45):
leader's level of curiosity and guess what, being a DeBie downer.
Here the reverse is true. So if your leader is
not open to exploring new things, they're not open to
ideas the whole team will decrease their level of caureuriosity.
So by you being around your grandchildren, I can imagine
your curiosity is also elevated.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
It is, it is, indeed, and it's a wonderful culture
to have because it's about imagination and storytelling and answering,
and with today's technology being able to get to some
answers and actually be able to explain them and explore
them ourselves. It's like, this is this is the day
(17:30):
and age for curiosity. Why would anybody try to tamp
that down?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Do I know? Why?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Sure, that's the reason why you're on today.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So we touched on it briefly earlier in the sense
that there is so much pressure on leaders to perform,
to get the return on their investments, to get you know,
to hit the KPIs for the for the order is
that we have lost our way of thinking about leadership
(18:04):
as a as the long game, not the short game.
So the short game is when an individual comes in,
you know, an employee of yours, your teammate comes in,
and they say, we have this problem when the leader
is constraint and has pressure and by all the way
they're you know, they've been promoted because they are probably
pretty confident in that area of expertise. What do they do?
(18:27):
They give the answer, and when you give the answer,
you've solved one problem. Now. A leader that is is
thinking about the long game and thinking about the development
of their team. They want to have help that individual
solve the problem themselves. Doesn't mean that they're not saying,
(18:49):
you know, I have confidence in you, I am here
for you, but I want to hear what you're thinking about.
How have you thought about solving this problem? And it's
the same thing with our children and our grandchildren, is
helping them solve problems for the long term.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's so true. We study here what we would consider
to be the dream state and epiphanies. And I think
that in talking to other former employees of certain companies,
(19:25):
we suffer from our own PTSD because our ideas were
shut down. And running my own company for the last
sixteen seventeen years has been so much fun because there's
only two or three people on the board that will
say bad idea. But I'm going to take you back.
I want to give you an example of my PTSD
(19:48):
and I want you to comment on it. Relative to curiosity,
So I was running the or helping to lead the
Southeastern zone for Freedo l A, which is basically tax
as far north as Tennessee as far south as Miami
into the Keys, and I've always had a personal interest
(20:09):
in the Latin market and the emerging flavors that were
coming from the Latin market, and so I brought to
the committee an idea to launch a planting ship, which
is almost like it's a vegetable banana. And there one
question was is it going to do two hundred million
dollars a year? And I went no, but we could
(20:31):
scale it to that based on the growth of the
Latin market. Shut down. Idea never pursued, and twenty five
years later I finally see the product on the marketplace,
and it's like, at that moment, those KPIs and those
objectives that were coming down from Purchase New York were
(20:52):
so powerful that they shut down an opportunity to have
really gone deeply into the Latin market with a flavor
that they love, not a performance brand like Ruffles or
Laser Fritos or Doritos. Please comment on that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It's the sense of that they have this concept that
there has to be a return on an investment that
meets these hurdles. And for them, what did they say
was it they wanted it to be a two hundred
million dollar brand? Is that what it was? And that's
not how no brand goes from zero to that overnight?
(21:29):
Is this this notion of the longer game?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
If we're going to introduce something new, what is going
to be acceptable in the first year? What's then the
second year, what's the third year? I mean Freedomly didn't
start out, you know, the Freedo brand didn't start off
like that either. But it's this thing where they have
put themselves into parameters and spreadsheets and saying this is
(21:52):
what if we're going to invest in it, this is
the return it has to be. They're playing the short game.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
They were playing the short game, and now hopefully they're
playing the long game. As you look ahead, what skills
or mindsets do you think will define the next generation
of leaders?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Well, if I'm being really optimistic and hopeful and that
we can actually turn around what we're currently experiencing, it
definitely is an individual that is has a growth mindset,
you know, so that someone that wants to continuous to learn,
to continuously evolve and at The root of having a
(22:35):
growth mindset is curiosity, and at the root of curiosity
is asking questions. Asking questions of ourselves and asking questions
of others.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Is part of that debora, having more gumption, courage, bravery
to ask questions to the people that maybe are the
most influential.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yes, this it's one around having confidence in who I
am as a person. You know, I mean that I
have this confidence that I can ask questions in a
way that has a positive intent and that I'm really
trying to either get to know this person better or
I'm trying to have a breakthrough for the organization. In
(23:27):
our research, Rick, we found something really surprising. I was
going in with the mindset that we're probably going to
find that people early in their career have higher levels
of curiosity, and it was not the case. The people
with the highest level of curiosity were those that in
the later years of their careers, so people in their
(23:51):
fifties and sixties. Now, we didn't do the research on
this any further, but what my hypothesis is is that
when by the time you're fifty or sixty, you have
a lot of confidence in yourself and you're not You're
not worried about being let go, so to speak, if
you if you're speaking up, but the sense of I
have confidence to ask questions because my purpose is to
(24:13):
make the company a better place where I believe that
people that are young in their careers may not have
built that confidence. So I think you're on to something, Rick.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That leads to a fun question I had for you today,
Not that these haven't all been fun, but who's the oldest,
most curious person you've ever met? And why?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Oh? Wow? So I had a mentor he has has passed.
His name was Bill McGrain, and Bill started his career
as a priest and then decided he wanted to do
(25:04):
something else, and so he went into the work of
It was really around helping individuals have higher self esteem.
So he was in the development of individuals long before
it was popular. And his ability to ask questions that
got to the root of problems or the root of issues,
(25:26):
or the root of limiting beliefs of an individual was
just extraordinary. So I would say Bill McGrain was my
mentor in that, and he was probably in his early
eighties when I met him.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
That's a beautiful story. And you know, people, sometimes you
don't have to personally have known somebody like One of
my example is doctor Lynn Yu Tang, who passed away
long before I was born, but in his older years.
Is his elder years, he had been a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist,
(26:07):
and he started to observe the sounds of nature. The
older he got, his hearing actually got better. And so
I just love what he wrote in the Importance of
Living in the Sounds of Water and the observations he
makes on Americans in nineteen thirty nine that still apply
(26:27):
today in twenty twenty five, and how obnoxious we are.
It's like to add yourself to an older, curious person today.
It's what I would say.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's so great. Okay, final question for you. If
you could leave our emerging leaders with one piece of
advice from your book, what would that be.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
It would be to develop the skill of asking genuine questions.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And how do they do that other than reading your book.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
It starts with the mindset of I want to build
relationships with others, and in order to build relationships with others,
it requires me to come with an open heart and
asking questions that allows me to get closer to them.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well stated Debrah Clary, you have the it factor and
you're onto something quite significant and you know it. We
hope that your book is a great success. And for
those that want to get a sign autograph copy of
The Curiosity Curve, how in the world are you going
to pull that off?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Well, I will be doing book signings and so they'll
be listed on my website once we have them all
planned out.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
That's excellent. Will you come back in six months and
let us know how it's going.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
It would be my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
That would be so fun. You're such a fun guest.
Her book is The Curiosity Curve. It's going to be available.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
What day, October seventh?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Excellent? And will you And you've got an audio book out.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I'm pretty an audio book as well.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And did you do the recording?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I did not do the recording.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh well you should have four and a half hours
of getting to listen to your own voice.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, that's what they told me, and I thought, oh,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well it was. It was great to have you on
and we look forward to having you back. That was
Deborah Clary. Her book is The Curiosity Curve. Make sure
and buy it, read it, and not only read it,
but make it I must read for everyone in your culture,
and I would say for the seven hundred and fifty
thousand new businesses that are going to open next year.
Wouldn't it be great if that was kind of one
(29:04):
of the primary books that your startup has for everybody
to read and for everybody to know from your client
perspective that you're a curious customer. You're a curious person.
What a great trait to have. Thank dev, We.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Appreciate you, Thank you reck my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Hey, folks, we hope that you enjoyed today's show, and
as always we wish you success, but on your own
unique way to significance. Have a great week.
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