In this edition of Half-Hour, my friend Nicholas Lambros Smith discusses the importance of empathy and curiosity and how using these communication tools can open up conversations, allow for growth, and to see different perspectives. In the world of live entertainment, every performance is the culmination of a delicate dance of creativity and precision. As the communication hub at the center of that dance, we Stage Managers are often confronted with new challenges at every turn. For many who are just starting their careers, the focus is learning how to handle the technical challenges – in other words, the kind that can be solved by following specific steps, like restarting a buggy computer or changing the temperature in a rehearsal room. However, just as often as those technical challenges, we also encounter adaptive challenges, or those that require more innovative and nuanced solutions – dealing with chronic tardiness, underprepared collaborators, and general communication hurdles. “The most common cause of failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems… Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.” - The Practice of Adaptive Leadership; Heifetz, Grashow, Linksy Working through adaptive challenges may seem simple on the surface, but many times they are like an iceberg, where the adaptive challenge is just the exposed tip while there are much larger issues under the water line. In their works on Adaptive Leadership, Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky discuss this using the metaphor, “getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony,” where the dance floor represents being in the middle of the action and looking at the fine details, while the balcony represents stepping back to look at the big picture. When we are in the midst of chaotic processes, it is necessary for us to pay close attention to the fine details, but that focus can cause us to lose perspective of the larger project if we aren’t careful. Especially in the context of working through adaptive challenges, it is important to be able to move back and forth between the balcony and the dance floor, taking the time to understand “what is going on beneath the surface” when challenges arise. In my practice, I have found it very helpful to use curiosity and empathy as my guides to moving between the dance floor and balcony, changing my perspective to better understand the big picture. Cultivating a Curious Mindset In many leadership circles, there is often discussion about “fixed” vs. “growth” mindsets. To define these in the most technical way, a person embracing a growth mindset sees intelligence, abilities, and talents as something that can be learned and enhanced with effort. In contrast, someone with a fixed mindset perceives these traits as naturally constant and resistant to change over time. However, in my own simplified way of talking about these concepts, I like to think of a growth mindset as one that is fluid, while a fixed mindset is rigid. When presented with an adaptive challenge, it can be easy to let our biases and ideas of “how things should be” influence the way that we approach problem solving – especially for those of us who have worked within different organizational structures, where one place may have a completely different set of values from another (An example: The leadership at Organization A values prompt email replies, even if the reply is an “I don’t know”, vs. the leadership at Organization B that values email replies only when the answers are available). One director you work with might not allow any kind of deviation from the set schedule, while another might prefer a more organic space where they can be more in response to the energy of the room. If we choose to lead with a fixed mindset, these kind of differences can become huge frustrations. In our roles as facilitators, embracing a growth mindset allows us to be more nimble and adaptable to the unknown. Curiosity is a great way to do just that. Curiosity creates space for other opinions and allows us to question our own beliefs. It opens us up to see things from different perspectives and helps to remove assumptions which can often influence the tone of our conversations. By stopping for a moment to question our own values and beliefs and how they may be different from those of our collaborators, we can avoid defensive knee-jerk reactions and instead craft responses that address issues in a more thought-out way. Some examples of phrases that encourage curiosity are, “Can you say more about ___?”, “What does ___ mean to you?”, “I want to learn more about ___.” These can help to facilitate more open and authentic communication, which will usually help to…