Welcome back to Spirit of EQ! In this episode, Eric here. I

In this episode, I look into the powerful connection between emotional intelligence and curiosity. I’ve been thinking a lot about how curiosity isn’t just a personality trait—it’s a vital tool that can open the doors to learning, enrich our relationships, and help us truly understand ourselves and others.

Drawing from my own experiences and practical examples, I unpack how curiosity ties into key emotional intelligence competencies like recognizing patterns, intrinsic motivation, and empathy.

I’ll share some personal insights on how easy it is to slip into judgment, and why being intentional in my conversations, especially by asking open-ended questions, has made such a difference, even with people I might not always see eye to eye with or those I may have taken for granted.

If you’re looking for ways to strengthen your connections or become a lifelong learner, you’ll find something valuable in this episode. Slow down, shift gears, and discover the transformative power of curiosity in our everyday lives.

Here are my top 3 takeaways:

Curiosity Strengthens Relationships: By taking a genuine interest in others—especially those closest to us—we reinforce our connections and communicate how much we value them.

Intentional Practice Drives Growth: Being curious, especially in tough situations or with people we disagree with, takes intentional, sometimes uncomfortable work. Leaning into open-ended questions helps us gather better data, not just quick judgments.

Curiosity Fuels Self-Awareness & Empathy: It’s closely linked to recognizing our own patterns, intrinsic motivation, and building empathy. Pausing and seeking to understand rather than rushing to react makes us better listeners, colleagues, and leaders.

Memorable Moments

00:00 Intrinsic Motivation and Empathy Explored

05:18 Curiosity in Meaningful Interactions

10:29 Nurturing Close Relationships Intentionally

13:04 "Curiosity Enhances Business Connections"

16:51 "Intentional Work in Relationships"

19:02 "Building Takes Time and Effort"

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at info@spiritofeq.com, or go to their website, Spirit of EQ.

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Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/roo-walker/deeper

License code: PEYKDJHQNGSZXDUE

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Spirit of EQ

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Hi, everyone. It's Eric. I've been thinking a lot lately about curiosity. And if you've listened to our show before, you know that that typically gets injected at some point or another. And for good reason. It's almost in some ways like a superpower and I know that term is kind of worn out these days but it really is. It's a valuable, valuable tool to use in so many different situations and it does connect to our emotional intelligence. And the idea there is, is that our curiosity opens up doors to learning, to gaining more understanding about what we're experiencing, what we're hearing.

Now that does imply that you gotta be able to slow down and take it in. I don't know of many people who are running at a breakneck pace who can still be curious. Maybe there are, but I think typically those who are most curious are the ones that are able to kind of set aside this speed and shift the gear to a place where they can just take it in. This does connect to listening as well, and that's another area that we've talked a lot about on the podcast. But today, I want to focus in just purely on curiosity and its connection to emotional intelligence. So ultimately, at the end of the day, in our model that we use, there are these competencies and I connect curiosity to three of them. The first being recognizing patterns, the second one being intrinsic motivation, and then empathy. The definitions around those maybe are pretty clear.

Right? And I'm probably gonna butcher the official here, but let stick with me. So recognizing patterns, think of it as your game film, being able to to know how you typically react, respond when you're in situations, interactions with other people, news you get from fill in the blank. The idea of intrinsic motivation, meaning that you are finding something inside of you that drives you to to move, to to do something, to go after something versus an external motivation or extrinsic motivation, which is really derived by the pressure or the forces of those things or people outside of you. Then, of course, empathy. And empathy is connected to curiosity in as much as that it's a it's a sincere desire to to hear, to listen, to to take in, to absorb And again, I'm not playing with the exact definitions as we use in our model, but I think you know where I'm going. I think slowing down in many respects does imply an invitation from empathy. You know, this idea that I'm going to appropriately, I'm going to appropriately respond to emotions in that moment, whether they're the emotions in myself or in others, and quite frankly, if I may be so bold, I think emotions that might be flowing just from other forces that are not necessarily in human beings, I believe that from the perspective of like music, I think music, is wrapped in the emotional zone and there's certain things that music can sort of be a catalyst for that creates or brings on emotions. But that's another podcast episode as well.

So let me just stay with the curiosity thing, Ben. So loosely, the definition, curiosity, being in a position of where you have a desire to learn, to want to see different angles, objectivity. You're just searching for more. You want to understand more. It's sort of this appetite thing, right, Where you might have taken two bites, but that's not enough. You know you need more, you need to digest more. And a great example of curiosity is when we are in conversation with someone. And if we were really honest, I think we'd say there's some conversations in our given day that we just try to get finished, right? We wanna check the box.

You may have a meeting with a with a superior or, a coworker, whatever it may be. And you may be, on the face of it, don't think that there's anything really that important that's gonna come out of it. So you're just kind of in that mode of, alright, I just, okay, you know, we're gonna meet from nine to 09:30. Okay. What time is it? It's 09:20. Okay. We're almost done here. Because you wanna move on.

Maybe you legitimately wanna move on to something that you have more interest in, in fairness. But I've been finding a lot lately that every interaction that I have, every relationship brings value to me, but only if I'm exercising curiosity, which really is kind of daunting in a way, maybe a little embarrassing for me when I think about the number of times that I've been quick to dismiss an interaction or a conversation because I thought that there was something better ahead of me versus what is in front of me. So if we can say that that's the what curiosity is, right, then how does that go? How do we do that? Right. And I'm going to kind of use some examples here that I think you could probably just implement pretty, pretty straightforward, pretty easily. Right. So this is going to start I'm going to give you a hard one. You're interacting with someone who you disagree with. Maybe you disagree with their politics.

Maybe you disagree with their their view on religion, or you disagree in the way that they they use strategy and business and the kind of business approaches they have. Judgment is really easy, and I think that's one of the reasons why America has so many problems because we continue to take that easy route. I wanna get to this place, right, where I can maybe not be so avoidant of the hard, the hard things. But when we jump to judgment, we typically cut off learning. And think about it. It's kind of straightforward. Right? If if I know that you support a certain candidate or if you think of a certain way of doing business as being incorrect or off mark or whatever, I can easily say I don't agree with them, and then I shut the door. Because in many respects, you're probably your brain is gonna support that because it's easy and it's efficient.

One, two, three, done. But remember what I said earlier about how many conversations and that there's value even in the unseen and the not so obvious. Right? So in that situation, if you find yourself, why not be intentional and just turn it around a bit to, I typically disagree with this person. I don't typically like their approach to things. Fill in the blank, whatever it may be. But you decide intentionally, I'm going to I'm going to be curious. And I think one of the best ways to exercise the curiosity muscle, if you will, is open ended questions. So for example, it's John, and John is the person and you typically don't like to be around John.

You'd like to just hurry up if I can just get out of this guy or whatever. Why not be intentional and go, well, John, tell me a little bit more about why you like, why you feel, or maybe it's, John, tell me, what is it about that, fill in the blank, that makes you feel empowered, inspired, and then let them talk. And here's a key thing. I'm gonna kind of hit back onto the listening thing just for just for a little bit. After asking those open ended questions, after that curiosity is fueling those questions, there might be a temptation for you to prepare for a counter argument. You might start in your brain going, I know what he's gonna say, oh, here he goes, Judgment. This is really hard work. I get it.

But I'm with practice, it can be very powerful for you because I'm not saying you're you're being curious because you want you and that other person to spend the holidays together or go golfing or have dinner, whatever. It's it's the gathering of data. It's getting more understanding Because what you might find out is that that person believes what they believe from a whole set of circumstances and experiences that you had no idea about. And the only way you would know about it is by being curious. So there's one example. The other is, related to those closest to you. I don't think anyone would say, that those closest to us have the deepest connection. Right? And what I'm finding more and more every day, we have to protect those relationships, and we have to continually be working to strengthen the connection because you're gonna need them In good times and bad times and whatever it may be, you're gonna need them.

You want them to be healthy, robust, strong. Right? But isn't it interesting how quickly those closest to us can be the ones that we tend to ignore, that we tend to not have time for, or we take them for granted, right? Oh, they've been with me for since Yeah, I'm going to, I will, because you believe that time really isn't your, enemy. And don't get me wrong, time isn't always an enemy, but time does take. And sometimes it takes in surprising ways when we don't we don't really grasp the power of the moment with that other person which is where I'm going. This requires again, intentional work. So the intention is, okay, who are the people that I'm closest to? Where are my closest relationships? Whenever they give you the opportunity to be curious, you should take it up. You should really take advantage of that because one, it's going to strengthen the connection because think about it, you showing curiosity and you listening and asking those powerful open ended questions is a statement of you better way to say it, how you value them. And once that's communicated, it builds that strength.

It builds the strength. It creates the strengthening of connection. So let's not take those people for granted. Let's remember how important they are. So here's another example. Let's just say it's from an employee employer situation business, right? Your company is saying this is the strategy and these are the tactics. This is where we're going. This is why on and on and on.

Maybe you should be intentional there too. Be curious. Raise your hand and ask the questions. Be polite. Be respectful. Ask them. Help me understand. When we do this, what's our objective? Like, what's the endpoint of this? How can I know that my role will have impact? Fill in the blank.

Showing that curiosity, again, even in a business relationship, it strengthens connection. It gives you a greater sense of vision about what it is and why it is you're there, right? Your participation and it's gonna help you to learn more. And in general, though, we've touched on, you know, relational type things. I think this is really the key to being a lifelong learner and not being how would I say, not taking for granted all of these various opportunities that we're presented with every day of our life. So why is it important? Maybe that's obvious to you now in the examples I gave, but what happens when we're not curious? I think that speaks to why it's so important because typically, not always, but typically, if you're not curious, you're probably judgmental more often than not. And I get it. It's not a one or the other thing. It's probably shades of percentages.

Right? You may have certain parts of your life where absolutely you're curious and you want to know more. You want to learn more. You're interested. You're engaged. And then you might find that maybe that's 10% of your life, but then there's 90% you're not very curious. You're just kind of, hey, I need to get to where I wanna go. I don't like this person. I don't like that particular person.

I I I don't like that. I don't like this. I don't want this. I want that. It becomes very, very judgmental. Not a lot of data. Right? The other part of it is is that if you come to a conclusion about a matter and especially another human being, you better be very careful here. And here's what I mean because I've done it too.

Okay? I'm I'm I'm in the tribe, is that I made big statements about certain people, and I had maybe 30% of all the information I needed to come to that judgment, that conclusion. It's a weak set of data. It's a weak data point. Right? If I were to ask you, hey. I want you to go into business with me, and I've got a business plan. And I tell you right up front, my business plan is missing 70% of the information that you're gonna need to make a good solid decision about whether or not you're gonna invest and participate. What would you say to me? I I think I have a pretty good idea. Find somebody else, Eric.

Right? So what would I want to do if I want you to invest and to work with me? I'm gonna make sure that business plan, as best I can, is gonna get as close to a % because I don't want you to to operate without good solid data, reliable data. But once again, the irony, with other human beings, we don't apply that same approach. Interesting, isn't it? Human beings who are far more valuable than a business idea or an entity do not get the same scrutiny, the same desire to to figure out that we we just don't. And I get it. I don't wanna make it sound like it's the easiest thing in the world to do because it's not. At the end of the day, human beings, we rub up against each other. We we push each other. We we irritate each other.

We we, you know, we're judgmental. I mean, all of those different things that happen in relationships, it's messy. And some of you might say, that's why I'm not so curious because I don't really want to bother with it, I don't want the headache, I don't I really don't care. I'm just saying that by intentional work you might discover some things especially, again, if you're operating with only 30% of the data that you need to really come to a full good solid conclusion about the other person. Last thing I want to give you before I close out for the episode today is this idea of the work, the intentional work. In the beginning, if you try any of these ideas that I gave you, some of them are gonna be very clunky. It's gonna feel very unnatural. And you might even have the person who is experiencing your curiosity to look at you as if what's wrong with you? Why are you asking me all these questions? Keep in mind it more than likely because their brain has normalized your judgmental approach to things, right? And if it's the right kind of relationship that is strong enough, close enough, you can say to them, be vulnerable.

Hey, I'm thinking I haven't been curious enough. I think I've been too judgmental. So if I'm asking you all these questions, it's because I'm trying to become this person who's more curious, who wants to learn more, who wants to learn more so that when I make the decision, the judgment, I can be confident that I'm making the right decision. More than likely, if it's a solid relationship, they'll appreciate that. They might even be inspired that you'd be willing to take a look at your life and see where there needs to be improvement. And that's very, very, very powerful. But it's intentional work and you have to stay at it. One of the constant refrains in our work that we tell our clients, we're building a practice.

And every building process starts with mud and dirt and foundation and we don't get there overnight. It takes time. It takes intentional work. Thanks for tuning in. We look forward to the next time that we're together.