Capitalizing on Curiosity with Ed Molitor

Ed Molitor

Episode 161:

In the last 26 years, Ed Molitor has developed his leadership skills in athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed has taught countless athletes, coaches, and business leaders how to THINK, ACT, and EXECUTE at an elite level.

As a result, Ed has a unique set of skills to deliver leaders across the country a purposeful, positive, energetic, and refreshing experience to unlock their true potential.

In 2016, Ed launched his company, The Molitor Group, to reach and add value to a larger sphere of ambitious individuals and help them achieve their goals every day.

Through The Molitor Group, Ed has guided all leaders to achieve success. From entrepreneurs and executives to teams and companies, The Molitor Group empowers individuals and groups to achieve at the next level.

Through Leadership Performance training, coaching, and speaking, Ed’s goal is to supply people and organizations with the necessary tools to move forward from where they are now to where they want to be.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

How Ed learned to utilize curiosity to connect people from Mrs. B
Why curiosity is so important for the creative process, helping us reframe business challenges
Why a company culture focused on curiosity drives business growth
How curiosity can drive engagement and a higher level of performance individually and collectively
How curiosity helps companies adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures which will boost success

What are three ways our coaching programs have helped leaders of the biotech/pharma industry bolster curiosity to improve their organizations, that you can also apply regardless of the industry
How to identify curiosity in candidates during the hiring process
Why emphasizing learning goals can be more powerful than focusing on performance goals

How Pixar’s Plussing can be applied to your organization and drive a psychologically safe space culture for learning development

How curiosity can be a driver of trust and other powerful intangibles for a culture that evolves and does not conform

Additional resources:

Podcast transcript

[00:03] Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

[00:19] Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed Molitor. And today I'm going to open up this solo cast with a personal story as we lead into our main topic, which is curiosity. About five weeks ago, misses B. Now, misses B, let me give you a little context here. She is the wife of my late, of the late, my former late college coach Brony. I played for him at Creighton, coach for him at Texas A and Misses B was absolutely the glue that kept us all together. And as we go on in this conversation, you understand exactly what I mean. She was diagnosed with advanced stage colon and lung cancer. And they made the decision.

[01:01] Now she had just, her and her brothers and sisters had just laid to rest their brother Patty, who is an incredible human being. So it was a very tough time in the family. And here's misses b now getting this news. She had advanced stage colon lung cancer. And like anything in life she has ever done, she attacked it. Okay? She was going to run to the fight and she was going to start chemo as soon as they would allow her to start chemo. So she started chemo on a Wednesday, and on Thursday, she started experiencing significant stomach pains. And then on Friday, stomach pains were worse. On Saturday, they were worse. They attributed to everybody around her, attributed to her chemo treatment, as well as doctors. And her. On Sunday, Miss B doubled over in pain.

[01:39] And if you know misses B, it took a lot to get her to double over in pain. And they rushed her to northwestern here in Chicago, and they found the root cause of that pain. And it was very significant. It was leaking poison into her body. So she was rushed into surgery, where they discovered some more complications. They would bounce her back from her room to ICU to room to ICU. And several days after that whole process started to unfold, I received a phone call from her son, Brian, who is the head men's basketball coach at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. And I had the great honor of coaching Brian. I text saying him and he's family. Along with his brother Tony junior and his wonderful sister Amy. They are absolutely family. Brian said, hey, she's an ICU, and here's what happened.

[02:22] And they explained her options to her and to keep the story tight. Misses B decided to just let's take care of the pain. Surgery probably wasn't really, wasn't an option. They didn't know how her heart would hold up when there's some couple other things that ran by her. But at this point it like looked like the best thing was to make her comfortable. So I immediately got my truck and went downtown to see misses Bean. When I arrived at the hospital it was close to 08:00 at night. So you know, they're getting ready to shut down visitors to ICU. But I snuck up. There we go, back to see misses bean. Now. Let me back up a little bit before I get to that point. So that day, Brian had reached out to me. He said, hey, can you do me a favor?

[03:01] Can you reach out to the Creighton guys and some a and m guys and whoever else you think and ask them to write my mom a note, send it to me, text it to me or email it to me and I'll read it to my mom. And this is right after the decision was made, okay. Which was, as you can imagine, extremely difficult one. And he says we spend so much time telling people we love them, we need to get more specific and tell them why we love them so they know. And that really hit them. Hit me. Excuse me. That really hit me when he said that, I said absolutely. So I sat down in my office in a chair and I started to type and the words obviously came out quite easy because our feelings for misses B is quite strong.

[03:40] And it's funny because I was explaining this to someone last evening, my sons basketball practice and they said, is that normal to be that close to your coach's wife? Is that normal to be that close to your boss wife? I said, I don't know what it is for anybody else. I said, but it was quite normal for us. I said, not only was it quite normal, it's quite powerful in such a way that I've instilled certain things with my family that I learned from Misses B, how she treated the Creighton family, how she treated the Texanem family.

[04:05] So I started down in, you know, and I wanted to share this with you because I think its a powerful way to see the impact you can have and the difference maker you can be without even a title and how curiosity absolutely drives the impact that you can have on others. And a couple of weeks ago I shared this with thousands of folks that are on my newsletter mailing list and the challenge I had, theres times I wrestle with whether or not I should share something personal with you when it involves other people, especially people that I care deeply about and when they're going through a battle. So when I do this, I have two set of criteria, and this is important for me to explain this to you because the significance of this, I don't want this to be lost on you. Okay.

[04:44] I have two boxes I have to check. I have to be able to say yes to these two things. All right. First, will my story respect and honor who it is about? If I can answer yes to this, then and only then, let me move on to number two. And the second one is this. Does sharing this story serve you in such a way that you will become a better leader in the most important roles in your life, both professionally and personally. So being able to convincingly answer yes to both of those questions, I'm going to share this story with you. So here is the letter that I wrote to Miss B explaining to her why I loved her. Misses B, I love you because you have the absolute, kindest soul. Always with a smile on your face and quick to praise.

[05:28] You always had the scoop and if you didn't, you would ask questions until you got it. And the more you tried, the more we laughed. You were always curious about everyone. You cared about our families as much as you cared about us. And that was not lost on any of us. You were loyal. I'm talking old school loyalty. I knew you always had my back, especially when coach tried to fire me in the locker room at halftime against Oklahoma State for getting a technical foul. And there's a good explanation for that, by the way. But that's a story for another time. We got ourselves in some trouble, misses B. But there was no one that I'd rather get in trouble with.

[06:04] You were a mom to all of us at CU and your home was a safe place with amazing food, great games and a ton of laughs. You brought an energy to everything and that was completely absent if you weren't there. You made everything fun, your hugs were meaningful and you loved us all unconditionally. You put everyone before you and you did it with a smile on your face. Your family is your legacy and I'm blessed to be a part of that family because that is what you did for all of us, welcomed us into your family like were your own. Misses B. You were the glue to our teams at Creighton and the rock during our final years at A and M. Thank you for taking a sincere and genuine interest in our lives and for always caring Maddie and EJ.

[06:46] It's my son and daughter love laughing with you. And Nancy strives to be as cool as you. I mean, she loves you too. Misses B. Thanks for being you. The best. We love you. And then later that night is when I went to see misses B. And in true, typical misses B fashion, as I walked in her room in the ICU, she looked at me and said, oh, no, what are you doing here? And she was kind of in and out of being coherent. And I sat down and took her hand and we talked and I talked with her, you know, the other folks in the room. And she turns her head and looks at me and she proceeds to ask me about the kids sports. Now here's a woman who just made a decision to stop treatment.

[07:27] Allowed a doctor to just keep her comfortable. And then she says, how was your mom doing? My mom's been battling something. And she says, how is your mom doing? In typical true fashion, my last conversation with Misses B, she was thinking about others and trying to find out how everyone was doing. She had this incredible knack for making things right. And several days ago, we laid misses B to rest. And the stories, the celebration and the stories and the laughs, the things. Like any irish wake, you know, it is a celebration in the stories that came out that you didn't know. But they all had this resounding theme. They all have these certain things that words describe are selfless, connector, caring, compassionate, incredibly funny, kind, thoughtful. And the one word that kept coming up was curious.

[08:16] And then she used her curiosity to connect people to each other. And I followed up the morning of her funeral, I was in the city and I woke up early and sent another letter out to her vip list. And I encouraged those folks to do for their friends and family and their peers and their coworkers and their team members to do for them what misses b did for us. And that's this. Tell your family and friends that you love them. You never know when it will be the last time. Plus, they need to know. Hug your family and friends tight. Be the difference maker and be curious about everyone's life and how you can help. And here's the thing about curiosity that I love.

[08:58] As we lead into and segue into what it does for your team, for your organization, I just described to you a woman who made just an incredible impact on thousands of people. Whether it was when they were coaching at Bradley, coaching at Creighton, coaching for the Memphis Grizzlies, all the other places they have been together over the years, all the people they had met, the people that they had introduced to each other, the time they had spent with everybody. Mississippi was no different than the emerging leaders that we work with here at the mallitor group, right. And formally influencing others. The impact curiosity can have, and you think about it, this curiosity is an elite communication skill. It is absolutely an elite communication skill. It creates these connections that drives employee engagement at a high level.

[09:45] And there is no doubt that employee engagement, that curiosity empowers everybody inside of the organization to perform at a higher level. You think about this, the greatest inventions, products and services are the result of what curiosity. You might have said an idea. Yes, but that idea arose from curiosity, the impulse to seek new information, experiences, explore novel possibilities. Those are basic human attributes. And I want to share a couple of important insights about curiosity as it relates to business. Now this comes from the Harvard Business Review and the article is a great article. Case for curiosity. And again, I love driving curiosity. I love encouraging it. I love seeing that spark in people on our team and the people that I work with. First, curiosity is much more important to an enterprises performance than was previously thought.

[10:36] That's because cultivating at all levels helps leaders and their employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures. Think about what we're going through right now. Think about what we're growing, trying to grow through right now. Right? Let me say this again. Cultivating curiosity at all levels helps leaders and their employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures. When our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more creative solutions. Curiosity also allows leaders to gain more respect from their followers and inspire employees to develop more trusting and more collaborative relationships with colleagues.

[11:14] And let's not forget how this absolutely fosters a psychologically safe, not self, but a psychologically safe environment where people aren't focused on what others are going to think about their best, but they're focused on giving their best and the role curiosity plays in that. Second, by making small changes to the design of the organization and the ways they manage their employees, leaders can encourage curiosity and improve their companies. Now, obviously, we really worked a ton in the biotech biopharma bioscience space, but this is true in every industry. Okay, now let me share with you three ways to bolster curiosity. Before I do that, I firmly believe that people who are curious, they have a penchant for seeking new experience, knowledge and feedback. And there can be different motivations and different reasons that inspire them. We'll talk about that on another podcast.

[12:03] Matter of fact, we'll talk that with that about a couple of podcast guests that we have coming up. But I want to share three ways to bolster the curiosity. First of all, hire for it, right? Hire for curiosity. Now how do you do that? Ask candidates about their interest outside of work. What books are they reading unrelated to what they do for work? Explore questions just for the sake of knowing the answers are indications of curiosity. Obviously, there are curiosity assessments which have been validated by studies and those generally measure other people explore things they don't know, analyze data to uncover new ideas and read widely beyond their field, have diverse interest outside of work. And here's the key. Are they excited about new learning opportunities? Now how else do you hire for curiosity?

[12:51] You and I both know that you don't just figure out the person's desire and willingness to learn new things by the answers they give you, but it's also by the questions they ask. Now, I have a client in the biotech space that's doing a large number of hirings. They're expanding, they're growing. It's a, it's a great run that they're on. And I currently am doing a 90 day emerging leader coaching program with them. We have six members in it and we're ramping that up to do an emerging leader as well as an enroll coaching program with them. And we're going to get that up to about ten to 15 people.

[13:22] But anyways, one of the things I'm working on with these folks as they move into their new leadership roles is the hiring process and how they ask questions, how they break down the answers, how they ask follow up questions. And one of the gentlemen who's an amazing leader, we're talking about his interviews a couple of weeks ago and the tells and what the debt giveaways were. And he actually had a candidate applying for a very significant role. An incredible product, I mean, just an unbelievable treatment. And theres so much untapped business out there where you have to kind of reframe how you go about finding it and reframing that and being creative about it. And he said, you know, Ed, when I asked him if he had any questions, he had nothing. He said, no, im good. No, im good. Pretty good.

[14:09] Tell that hes not good and hes not curious. Right. So what are the questions they ask? People who want to know about aspects of the organization that arent directly related to the job at hand probably have more natural curiosity than people who ask only about the role they would perform. So in other words, culture. In other words, diversity. In other words, what does it look like when were successful? How do we define success? What type of support can I expect? What are my potential growth opportunities? I'm really interested in learning about this. What can I do to make that happen if I come to work for you? Okay. The second way that you can bolster curiosity is to emphasize learning goals. Now, what are learning goals? Learning goals are when you develop competence, acquire skills, master new situations, as opposed to just performance goals.

[14:58] Now, performance goals are very important, hitting targets, proving our competence. Competence, excuse me, impressing others, but when you emphasize the learning goals, you're going to increase motivation. Now, here's the thing. Talk about learning goals versus performance goals. Let's talk about lead measures versus lag measures. When you are inside of the process, when you're locked into the behaviors to attack those learning goals, you're absolutely looking at lead measures, things that you can adjust in real time. The lag measures your performance goals once. Let's just say you get to the end of the quarter and let's see, did you make your numbers? No. Well, what can you do about it? At that point, nothing. All right. You can't make any adjustments to make your numbers for that quarter.

[15:39] But with the learning goals, you can constantly make adjustments, start, stop, do more of, do less of, et cetera. And here's the thing. We keep talking about employee engagement. We keep talking about fostering curiosity. All of this is going hand in hand as you are getting your people emotionally attached to the process through emphasizing learning goals. Now, leaders can stress the value of learning by reacting positively. Think about this. I love this. Reacting positively to ideas that may be mediocre in themselves, but could be springboards to better ones. You think about the concept inside of improv. Yes, and right. It's never, but no, anything like that. You build on the idea that the person presented before you. Now, writers and directors at Pixar are trained in a technique called plussing, very similar to yes, and this involves building on ideas without. Think about this.

[16:35] Think about the power of this. When you do this with your people, without using judgmental language, instead of rejecting the sketch, for example, a director might find a starting point by saying, I like Woody's eyes, and what if we someone else might jump in with another plus? And what this does is this allows people to remain curious, listen actively, while respecting the ideas of others, and contribute their own. Now, when you promote a process that allows all sorts of ideas to be explored, you are sending as a leader, you are sending a clear message that learning is a key goal, even if it doesn't always lead to success. Now, the third and the final one, I'm going to share with you the third way to bolster curiosity, and I really want you to lock into this, okay?

[17:18] Because it has everything to do with you. Model the behavior, model curiosity. Model inquisitiveness. Ask direct questions. Not only that, ask direct questions to the right people at the right time, in the right way. And I would encourage you to really be conscious of the setting where you're asking the questions. Ask questions that are smart, strategic, thoughtful and targeted. Now, someone asked me the other day, why do leaders struggle with this? Why do they struggle with this piece of the coaching, of being a coaching leader, of coaching their people. Now don't forget your people want three things. They want a lot of things, but they do want these three things. Number one, they want to know that they are valued. Number two, they want to know that the work they are doing is meaningful and important.

[18:04] And the third thing is they want to be coached. And a huge part of coaching is the ability to ask these questions. And why do leaders refrain from asking questions? Because they fear they'll be judged. Judged incompetent, indecisive, possibly unintelligent. Now here's the other thing. Time. Isn't that the great excuse that we all have as leaders? Time? I don't have the time. I don't have the bandwidth. I don't have the capacity. My people, I don't want to bother them. I need them out there. I need them doing their job. Now, experience and expertise exasperate the problem as people climb the ladder. Okay, think about this. As people climb the organizational ladder, they think they have less to learn. Leaders also tend to believe that they're expected to talk and provide answers and not ask questions. Those days are over. That is absolutely not.

[18:48] Your job is to connect with your people in such a way that you get them to accomplish things that maybe even they didn't think were possible. Your job is to put them in the best position possible to maximize their success, put them in position to win. And to do that, you have to raise your level of engagement. And curiosity absolutely plays a significant role in that. Now, when we demonstrate curiosity about others by asking questions, people like us more and view us more competent. And here's the key. We know this, the foundation of any relationship, specifically the coaching relationship, right as we're talking about right now. The foundation of that relationship is what it is. Trust. It makes our relationships more interesting, more meaningful, and more productive. With that being said, by asking these questions, we're going to promote more meaningful connections.

[19:37] And the whole point of curiosity, more creative outcomes. And it's no secret that we're kind of we're in a crazy time right now. We're in a crazy time globally. We're in a crazy time in our industries. There's a lot of moving parts. And here's the thing. The pace and rate of change is unlike anything we have ever seen, but it is not slowing down. It is not slowing down. Do we have the ability to reframe novel solutions? Do we have the ability to collaborate with people? And when you think about this, go back to all the conversations we've had on this podcast about authenticity and how do we break authenticity down three ways? Right? First piece is honesty. Honest with yourself and others. Second is integrity. All right. Your words and your actions are aligned. Your people know what to expect with you consistently.

[20:24] The third piece is this vulnerability. Think about the role vulnerability plays in fostering and bolstering and the ability to bolster curiosity in your people. You ask for help, you seek input from your people. And at the end of the day, curiosity, individually and collectively is a whole lot of fun. But in circling back to what we started this conversation with, the ability to impact others just by asking questions, just by being curious and being curious for the right reasons and doing the right things with the information that you get. Now, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation I have to do here, as we wrap this up, a quick plug for our 90 day emerging leader coaching program, which is absolutely taken off and we're having so much fun doing it. Here's what we do with this program.

[21:13] 90 day emerging Leader coaching program clearly identifies the traits and behaviors you can use to identify emerging leaders. So what are those traits? Behaviors? Now think about the conversation we just had, and here's what I'm going to talk about informally. Influencing others, supervising others, being open to failing learning and growing, having strong people, building skills, being centered on their core values, having the vision to see the possibilities, to see a future state, being a change agent, uniting others and helping them see new possibilities and actively seeking ways to become a more impactful leader. And as I said, this program's realized tremendous amount of success, especially in the biopharma biotech space right now. If you are interested in learning more about the program, how to enroll multiple members from your organization, go ahead and shoot me an email.

[22:03] Ed at the Molitor group ed at themolitor group.com and I will have a member of my team get back to you. And we are enrolling multiple members from organizations, and we have a great follow up program to this 90 day emerging leader coaching program. And again, it's a whole lot of fun. We've had people move on from this program into their first ever leadership roles. We've had managers go to director roles. We've had all sorts of great stuff happening. Thanks for the conversation today. Don't let what misses B did get lost on you. You know, I remember, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, one of my favorite books and most impactful books in my life, and we just had Cynthia Covey on the podcast, but her father, Stephen R.

[22:45] Covey seven habits of highly effective people and begin with the end of mind, right? So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about your time as a coaching leader has come to an end, right? People you have led throughout your career decide to drop you a note, text you, or leave you a voicemail with a message about why they loved working with you and having you as a leader. All right, that's the context of the exercise. Here's what I want you to do. Write that note to yourself. Picture someone who has worked with you, worked for you. They write a note, send a text, an email, a voicemail, whatever it is, whatever form of communication, saying why they loved working with you, for you, alongside you.

[23:26] And then write that note yourself and keep it somewhere you can access in times of success to keep you humbled and grounded, as well as during times of struggle to remind you of your purpose and why. Do what you do.

[23:40] Thank you for listening to the athletics of business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.com. Now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.