“Once you do a deep dive into curiosity, you realize that all the TED Talks and all the management consultants and all the business folks on the topic are really detailing a very non-nuanced , non-practical idea that you’re curious or you’re incurious…and that doesn’t capture what real life is like.” ~ Todd Kashdan, PhD

Todd Kashdan’s work was the first place I encountered a full-throated case for choosing to be curious, in any of its many-splendored forms. How can one not love a conversation about the multidimensionality — the width and breadth and depth — of curiosity?

Listen to Choose to be Curious #65: Capturing the Bandwidth of Curiosity, with Todd Kashdan

I confess I get a bit of a thrill when a guest actually uses “choose to be curious” in our conversation. Todd did just that when we got into the importance of curiosity in the workplace and the key role it plays in our ability to hear perspectives and ideologies that are different from our own.

“When we are faced with ideas or experiences that are outside what we commonly [encounter], the typical crossroad is: do I choose to be curious and open and receptive, or do I decide to be defensive and stick with what’s known?”

My conversation with Todd echoed many themes that came up in a discussion with Vivek Patil, a former candidate for the Arlington County Board and one of the founders of a group called Building Bridges, which has set out to listen — really listen— to their neighbors and people outside their “bubbles” —  in hopes of building a stronger community and Commonwealth. So this week’s Curiosity to Go segment draws the two together…

Listen to Curiosity to Go #38: Bursting Bubbles

Learn more about what Todd Kashdan is up to. 

Check out Building Bridges.

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