Have you ever had a conversation where you were not given the opportunity to say a word? Where your opponent would simply talk non-stop, not once pausing, blinking, or showing any interest in allowing you to make a peep. I recently had such an incident at the gym. It made me feel awful and small, but it got me thinking.
We have lost the art of good communication. Effective communication requires mindfulness when talking with others, listening with respect, and conveying ideas efficiently. This leads to a deepening of our connection with other people. While most of us are familiar with the 7 C’s of communication: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete and courteous, I would love to propose an additional C: Curiosity. Not the type that killed the cat, but the impulse towards better cognition.
Lyndon Johnson once said that you aren’t learning when you’re talking. A very similar statement to the one King Solomon made: “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion”.
Nowadays we label this concept intellectual arrogance. Ilana Redstone, a professor at the University of Illinois, calls intellectual arrogance the “certainty trap”. The certainty trap prevents us from getting along with others and seeing things clearly. It tells us there are two possibilities for an opinion we disagree with: ignorance and hateful motives. However, there may be a third possibility we should consider: our opponent might have a principled motive for their position. They may be examining the situation from a different perspective. They may be aware of something that we are not aware of. When we refuse to hear or recognize reasons, we shut down communication and ignore opportunities for discovery.
The opposite of being overly certain is intellectual humility. Intellectual humility simply means the degree to which one accepts that they could be wrong and that someone who is challenging their position could be right. This is a mindset that guides our intellectual behavior and is often referred to as an intellectual virtue.
Curious people tend to be intellectually humble. Curiosity is all about exploration. It is an instinct beyond being right or wrong. Curiosity is motivated by the desire to understand what makes people tick. The more diverse viewpoints we engage in, the smaller our blind spots and the more informed our decision-making will be. Curiosity breeds understanding. Understanding breeds empathy, and empathy softens our defenses against hostile pushbacks. When you're genuinely curious, it's difficult to be judgmental and when you're judgmental, it's difficult to be genuinely curious.
The golden question we should ask ourselves in each situation is: what is the likelihood that I might not know all there is to know? Albert Einstein said: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”. If he believed he could learn from others, it may not be a bad place for us to begin.