Curiosity-Driven Change Leadership in the Construction Industry

Summary

Mini Series Part 5: In this episode, Ryan Ware explores the critical role of curiosity in leading change management within construction projects and advancing construction leadership development. Building on the first four foundational C's of change—choice, control, clarity, and commitment—he delves into how activating curiosity empowers construction leaders to navigate industry challenges with psychological safety and a growth mindset. Listeners will discover how embracing curiosity fosters innovative learning and enhances problem-solving in construction leadership and change management.

The conversation underscores change management in the construction industry as a continuous journey, inspiring construction managers and leaders to cultivate curiosity in their teams and organizations. With practical guidance applicable to construction leadership training and coaching, this episode equips you to lead change boldly, fostering psychological safety and ongoing growth in the dynamic AEC industry.

Key takeaways include strategies to overcome change resistance, the importance of psychological safety to fuel curiosity, and how curiosity-driven leadership can transform construction business leadership and unlock organizational potential. Tune in to activate your curiosity and master leading change effectively in your construction projects and teams.

Chapters

01:09 Recap of the first Four C's of Change
04:58 The Importance of Curiosity
05:55 Psychological Safety and Curiosity
11:33 Defining Curiosity and Its Challenges
17:40 The Power of Ignorance and Learning
21:55 Shifting Perspectives: From Judgment to Curiosity
27:02 Curiosity as a Continuous Journey
31:16 Change as a Constant Journey
32:43 Conclusion and Reflection on the Five C's

Connective Consulting Group
Helping construction leaders simplify change, strengthen trust, and move forward with clarity.

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Transcript

Ryan 0:00

That is where you are starting to build a stronger relationship with change because you see through the lens of curiosity. You don't see through the lens of victimhood, this change is happening to me. You don't see it through judgment. You don't see things through embarrassment. You fear more not opening that door to curiosity than you do the fear of losing something. And curiosity is it's what we've had as kids. We have that thirst of knowledge, and we actually are in our highest level of agency when we're curious, when we're in that moment, when we give ourselves the time and the space. We have spent the previous bonus episodes really building the foundation of how we start to analyze for ourselves and others how to build a stronger relationship with change. And in those episodes, we talked about our idea around and our feelings around choice and whether we've made that initial choice to see something change, or we are, you know, in our own life or within our professional life, where someone else has made that initial choice, and we find ourselves in an area that's called willing participants in the change and the choice, or a forced compliance into the change. And then we've explored how we think about control as it relates to things within our lives and within change and within our business that things that we've we've always known or we've always been able to do. So when that change is happening, we we revert back to that area of known. We revert back to those things that we tend to as humans overvalue in that moment. That we it got us here, so we need to hold on to we can't let go. There can be no other answer for us. So we have choice and we have commitment. And the third foundational piece as we think about building stronger relationships with change is clarity. And we we discussed really with clarity that anything new, anything that we've never seen or done before, like we won't be good at it the first time. And when it comes to anything with change, we we tend to back up and say, I need 100% clarity. And we combine clarity as if it's certainty. And they're not the same thing. Certainty, we actually think about with clarity. Clarity is really that we just need to be able to see what our long goal is, and then breaking it down into smaller action steps or smaller steps forward that we can light with a flashlight. We can we can see it more clearly than the things that are going to happen throughout that journey, throughout that experience of the change. And then the fourth C we talked about, which was commitment. So once you have the foundation of choice, control, and clarity and understand those better, once you're in the middle of change, commitment really isn't motivation. We are all motivated for a lot of reasons to want to see a change happen. But that doesn't, that motivation doesn't necessarily keep us committed because when we think about neuroscience and how our brains sort of function, like we'll sit in several different areas before we'll make that move. We'll be in pre-contemplation, we'll be in contemplation mode where, yeah, we're motivated. We we want to get healthier, we want to get our finances under control, we want to do all those things. But as we find ourselves in the middle of trying to actually achieve those, that area of commitment is where we falter because we haven't built a strong enough relationship with those foundational pieces to keep us there. And really, once we're in that committed area, like this is where we get to the fifth C and what opportunity there is when we actually uh begin to build a stronger relationship with curiosity. And that's what we're going to talk about today. The podcast is titled Activating Curiosity. Curiosity is foundational to what I do with my business and when I'm working with clients. It's what I've spent my career focused on how can I always be curious? How can I be a spark for others? And how can I continue to be a spark for myself to ignite that that level of curiosity that's required to be able to navigate small changes all the way through very large life changes that I might have or professional changes that I might have. So today we'll talk a little more about curiosity. And curiosity can only really be available within our own mindsets as well as within our teams and businesses. It must have what's called psychological safety. And what do I mean by that? We've talked about it a little bit on some episodes. Psychological safety for ourselves is that we provide ourselves enough empathy, realizing that in our current state, yeah, we've probably made mistakes when we tried something new. We probably have made mistakes even in things that we are used to every single day. And we will throw in self-doubt, we'll begin to put in limiting beliefs into our own mindset. We will talk ourselves down. And it's just what we do as humans. So when we do that, we ignite emotions, we ignite sadness, we ignite anger, we ignite fear, um, and and many other possible emotions may be coming up as we think about change and and taking something new on. And limiting beliefs are sitting and utilizing mental real estate and it's living rent-free in our head. And we cause ourselves and inflict more pain during that period because we're not providing the psychological safety to say it's okay that we've made mistakes in the past. And and I know I remember things that I've made my entire life. I can remember all kinds of things that I'm probably embarrassed by or I'm still frustrated by of why didn't I know this and why didn't I do that? And we beat ourselves up. And we need to be able to step back and say, that moment, what did I learn from that moment? What did I take forward? How did I grow? How did I help others grow by having that lived experience and being able to grow through it and maybe explore something further? And the same thing for psychological safety is in businesses. If we don't provide this area for curiosity, and we are constantly bringing things up and reflecting back onto the challenges, whether it was a project and we potentially could have been a project where we felt someone else caused most of the issues and it wasn't us, we will not provide that psychological safety to actually learn from that moment to say, well, what was it in that situation that made that project feel or be more painful? And if we're not providing that for ourselves to even extend it to those project teams that you felt were part of the problem or part of the challenge, we we don't open the door up for exploration. We don't open up our minds to let us start to question the situation that we find ourselves in today that maybe differed from back then, whenever that issue was being kind of felt and really some something that was impacting you both, maybe mentally, physically, emotionally, in any way that you have sort of let it live in your brain rent-free. So when you're a leader and you're trying to provide that psychological safety, you have to understand how your empathy needs to be extended to all of the individuals within the project team or within this project team that's going to drive or lead this change. Psychological safety is a foundation that allows for curiosity to exist. And without it, then we will tend to go back to those emotions and we will let the fear drive us to thaw out a commitment. It will make us hold on longer to control. It will make us feel like we need more clarity to finish this change, to actually complete it. So it doesn't really matter what you are working on in life. Again, going back to the financial side, to trying to eat healthier, trying to work out more, or trying to actually add technology into your business or a merger and acquisition, like without that psychological safety piece, then curiosity cannot exist. It can't coexist in a space where we're in a constant down talking of ourself or constant down talking of others and constantly looking at the mistakes and thinking about the emotions and the fears that are being driven by those areas without the psychological safety. So when we think about curiosity, then if we just take it by its pure definition, it is a strong desire to know or to learn something. And this should be, as a human, foundational for really what we are doing in our daily lives, is that we should, we should all be hungering for continued knowledge and continuation of trying to build upon those things that we've known and that we've learned in our life. And one of the areas that really kind of are a challenge within the AEC industry is that we we might feel that we are curious, but again, we don't have the psychological safety. But in other areas that we just we don't have the time. We don't have the time to be curious, we don't have the time to to explore certain things. And the reality is that by not exploring, you aren't releasing the opportunity to learn anything. Beyond the definition of curiosity, it's it really is this willingness to accept and reflect on that knowledge that we've gained, but also that the opportunity lies in the fact that we don't know something, that we can be ignorant of something, and that provides us this huge opportunity to explore, this opportunity that we can gain insights by slowing down during that change, or in that moment, to understand that we don't have to feel embarrassed that I don't know it. And I think as humans, a lot of times when we're asked something that we don't know, and the easiest answer is to sort of say you know, but you forget, or or that you've never really been able to explore it, you've heard of it, you've never tried it, whatever it is. And the reality is we're like, I don't, I know nothing about this. But we tend to want to try to answer in a way that appeases those asking and makes us feel maybe better about ourselves when in reality it's like, well, why am I embarrassed if I don't know something? What is it in the situation that I'm afraid is more embarrassing than it is an opportunity to learn? Like, why why is it that I feel this way? What what in my past has actually gotten me to believe that just being embarrassed is more painful than than the idea that not knowing something uh actually is? I think that one of the things that we miss as humans, this this is me, is that we that embarrassment piece and this this area of not fully understanding what you've known your entire life, and not being able to take a step back to reflect on the current situation and those situations that existed for you to know it um as you do today. And starting to ask questions like what is it that is different about today's situation that might make what I know today to to be false? What what else has happened? Or how can I explore this more to know if it is still valid? And because we know something, we don't feel like we're ignorant of it, but we're again going back to that control of, well, I've known this, it's always been true, it's always worked, so therefore I don't need to explore anything else. And when we stop exploring, when we stop asking those questions, when we get out of the what questions and the how questions, we we don't provide ourselves that space to live in that area of curiosity, to live in that area of exploration, to live in that laboratory, to test and to try and and to know that, hey, this is this is that messy middle. This is that area where I don't know everything. And how do I provide myself with the freedom of being ignorant on a subject? And how do I provide myself the time in an industry that is always feeling time poor? How do I provide myself that space, as well as anyone else on my project team, that space to explore and to let curiosity sort of drive the moment? And that freedom of like, I'm not going to judge myself any more than I'm going to judge anyone else in this situation. Because the freedom, the freedom that comes from being ignorant of something, is a power and an opportunity that we constantly devalue. We constantly push it aside as, well, knowing it is far more value than not knowing it. And that might seem true in certain situations because of the moment that you're in, but it's also just as valuable to be able to explore, to be able to open the books, to be able to have conversations with others to gather insights, to hear from experts, to become your own expert in the subject that helps you accelerate your own personal life and your own business. Again, providing ourselves the space to question. We're going to provide the psychological safety that is required that will allow for that curiosity for ourselves and for others. We're going to provide the empathy. We're going to provide the no-judgment zone, if you will, that that not knowing something is okay. It is not detrimental. It is, it is seen as more positive of this is opening that door to learn more about myself and learn more about our business and to learn more about our industry. One of the things that makes curiosity so difficult beyond the psychological safety is that we don't, if we go back and we think, oh, well, I'm going to lose control, and I don't have clarity in those moments, and I can't stay committed because it just feels too risky. That's driving those fears, it's the angers, is the anxieties are all starting to come out uh through that moment. And as humans, our brains are wired to act in that way. It's it's they're wired to be embarrassed, they're wired to want you to move back to that thing that you've known without questioning it. When we provide ourselves the opportunity to slow down and to be more curious, we get to ask deeper questions of what is actually happening here? What is it that I am trying to protect by the emotion that I'm feeling in this moment? And what other information might I need to gather to better understand this? And when we're starting to ask more questions, we're not asking like, why don't I know this? Why don't they know this? Then that's a judgment question. You see, why questions are more judgmental? It can be judgmental of ourselves of why didn't I know this from the start? Like, why didn't I remember this? Why, why didn't I remember where my keys were? Why didn't I remember where I was going? Why didn't I remember uh this detail and this project? Why didn't I remember to do that specification section? Why didn't I remember this manufacturer? Whatever the question is that you're asking yourself when you're in the why, you're now judging yourself. And you're starting to answer that why question, opposed to what would I need to do different to ensure that I remember that manufacturer? What can I do now to make sure that I don't forget that specification? What can I change when I bring my keys in? What do I need to do different to always know where they're located? And I know those those may seem very simple, but we all forget things. But you can tell the difference in the questions and the tones of providing your space to actually ask the question to find a solution, not look back into an area of judgment. Of, well, I I've got too much going on. I don't know where my keys are. I don't know where I'm putting them because I'm always looking at this chaotically when I come into the house. I don't have time to go through every manufacturer. I don't have time to go through the specs. So the why questions throw you into that area, and the what questions provide you the laboratory, the space to begin to think about these things in a different point of view, from a different perspective. And I think that is one of the biggest things that um that we have to be able to understand for ourselves is that space. A curiosity isn't it isn't rushed, it isn't Uh, set a clock necessarily to always remember to be curious. It has to be this thing that becomes ingrained in us to feel free in any moment at any time to ask those questions. And that's where psychological safety comes in for yourself. But it's also so that you understand that there isn't a clock running on you. There isn't an always guaranteed space where curiosity will exist. It just needs to be part of your strengthening your relationship with change and that once you have those foundations, it's it's providing you this 24 hours a day. It's providing you the understanding that I don't need to know everything in this moment, but I have this strong desire and passion to learn something new, to question what I've always known, to look at things differently than the way I did yesterday. Because the current state that I find myself in or the current state that I find my business in, like that's not, that's not where I want it to be. I want it to be somewhere different. And that can really only happen when you're willing to ask different questions. If you're, if you're always in a victim mode, if you're always looking at it through the Y lens, then you feel like things are happening to you. And this is where curiosity allows you to look at change as something that is happening with you. When you change the perspective of the questions, and when you change the perspective of how you're you're thinking and how you're asking those questions, it's opening up that space for you to understand that this is your journey. This is your life experience, that your level of curiosity is yours to own. It is your choice. It is yours to really control. And it is yours to understand that clarity will come by having the curiosity and by staying committed to always being open to ask those questions, by always being committed to wanting to learn new things while questioning some things that you've known in those situations. That is where you are starting to build a stronger relationship with change because you see through the lens of curiosity. You don't see through the lens of victimhood of this change is happening to me. You don't see it through judgment, you don't see things through embarrassment, you fear more not opening that door to curiosity than you do the fear of losing something that you thought was more valuable than it really is. And curiosity is it's what we've had as kids. We have that thirst of knowledge, and we actually are in our highest level of agency when we're curious, when we're in that moment, when we give ourselves the time and the space, but we remain present in it. And that's why I named the podcast Activating Curiosity, because you can't you can't just say you have it, it has to be activated. You've got to have it be a part of who you are every single day to provide yourself the empathy to be able to lead the change that you want, to lead the change that all of you want as a team in your business. So we've reached that fifth C. You've built a better understanding of the foundational pieces between choice, control, and clarity. By having that, that helps you get into a messy middle to remain committed because you're providing yourselves the space and the empathy for curiosity and the psychological safety that's needed for yourself. You've abandoned the squatters who were living in your mind rent-free, creating those limiting beliefs and how you've potentially made mistakes or had failures in the past. You see those two things as opportunities to learn, to move forward, not to create the fear, not to be an anchor that's holding you back, providing yourselves that space to ask better questions, to be more curious. And I know that many want a quick answer and how they can they can instantly go from this point to that point. And change is a journey. And that is what I want everyone to continue to remember that change is not an event, it is a journey. And that change will not be something that you go through at once. You will look at change as an opportunity to to go through it at the same time, that it's not happening to you, that it's happening with you. And that is where our mindsets start to shift into this opportunity with change. We get to look at our emotions and our relationship with it from a different perspective. And that change is more constant than we had thought before. And even though we've seen everything change around us, one perspective will be everything's changing to nothing's changing. Well, building this stronger relationship with change and understanding it better for yourself and for your team, it is just a beginning because it's it's going to continue to be prevalent throughout your life. But when you strengthen this relationship and you don't see it as one-sided anymore, and you see it as strengthening it to be a strong two-way direction, then you're on, you're on the path of something that is going to be very powerful for yourself and for your business. So I hope that these bonus episodes have been helpful. The fifth C today was curiosity. And the next bonus episode will do another reflection or reframe back onto the five C's of change so that you can continue to build a stronger relationship with change. So until next time, I hope that you are able to start applying some of these frameworks to how you're looking at change and the things that you feel are really important to you in your personal life and in your business, that you're able to start to look at those and help yourselves move forward. I hope that you're also able to continue to activate your curiosity as well as curiosity within others.