Be Curious, Not Judgmental: A Leadership Lesson from Ted Lasso
How asking better questions transforms leadership and organizational culture.
Be Curious, Not Judgmental: A Leadership Lesson from Ted Lasso
What do we stop learning when we become more invested in being right than in understanding?
"Be curious, not judgmental."
The line popularized by Ted Lasso is easy to appreciate. Practicing it when someone challenges your judgment, questions your process, or sees something you missed takes more effort.
That is where it becomes a leadership lesson.
In the show's memorable darts scene, Ted's opponent underestimates him. He draws conclusions without asking the questions that might have changed them.
We do versions of that in the workplace.
We decide someone lacks initiative before asking what happened the last time they took it. We label an employee resistant before understanding what previous changes have cost them. We dismiss a new person's question because we assume their lack of experience makes the question less valuable.
Sometimes we reach the right conclusion.
Sometimes we simply stop gathering information too soon.
When Experience Starts Answering for Us
I value experience. I have spent decades earning mine.
Experience helps us recognize patterns, anticipate consequences, and make decisions when the information is incomplete. Those are meaningful advantages.
But familiarity can also make us impatient.
We recognize the beginning of an explanation and assume we know the ending. We hear a suggestion that resembles something we tried years ago and dismiss it before considering what has changed.
The people may be different. The resources may be different. The problem itself may only look familiar.
If we do not stay long enough to hear those differences, our experience can steer us toward an answer that belongs to another situation.
Your experience should help you ask better questions, not convince you that you're done asking.
That is a standard I want to keep holding myself to.
The Question Beneath the Behavior
Consider an employee who has stopped contributing during meetings.
It is easy to decide they have disengaged. It takes more curiosity to ask when their participation changed and what preceded it.
Perhaps their suggestions were repeatedly interrupted. Perhaps decisions were already settled before anyone asked for input. Perhaps something outside work is consuming their attention.
Or perhaps they are disengaged.
Curiosity does not require us to invent a sympathetic explanation. It requires us to find out enough to respond responsibly.
A useful opening might be: "I've noticed you've been quieter in our last few meetings. How are you seeing things?"
Then comes the part that tests us: listening without immediately correcting their interpretation.
If every answer becomes a debate, the question was never much of an invitation.
How We Respond Teaches People What to Bring Us
Leaders often say they want fresh perspectives.
The real test arrives when a fresh perspective is inconvenient.
Someone identifies a weakness in a process we designed. A newer employee questions a practice we have defended for years. A colleague points out a consequence we did not anticipate.
In that moment, we are deciding more than how to handle one suggestion. We are showing people what happens when they tell us something we may not want to hear.
A defensive response can make the next conversation less honest. People begin editing themselves. They bring the agreeable portion of an observation and leave out the part that might actually help.
A curious response gives the conversation somewhere useful to go.
"Walk me through what you're seeing."
"Where does it break down?"
"What have you already tried?"
Those questions do not commit us to agreeing. They help us understand what we are being asked to evaluate.
Curiosity Still Leaves Room for Accountability
Being curious does not mean abandoning standards, postponing every decision, or treating every explanation as an excuse.
A missed deadline still matters. A harmful interaction still needs to be addressed. A leader still has to make decisions that some people will dislike.
Understanding the circumstances helps us choose an appropriate response.
A training gap calls for a different conversation than a clear expectation someone repeatedly chooses to disregard. Conflicting priorities require a different solution than insufficient resources.
If we treat every problem as an attitude problem, we can spend a great deal of energy correcting people while leaving the actual obstacle in place.
We can ask questions, consider the answers, and still say, "This needs to change."
We can also recognize when the change needs to come from us.
Make Room to Revise Your Thinking
"I hadn't thought of it that way" belongs in a leader's vocabulary.
So does "I was working with incomplete information."
And "You're right. Let's change it."
Those statements make learning visible. They show that bringing useful information into the room can affect what happens next.
That matters because asking for input creates an expectation that we will consider it. We do not have to adopt every suggestion, but we should be able to explain our decisions in a way that reflects what we heard.
Before your next difficult conversation, consider three questions:
- What have I already decided about this person or situation?
- What information could change my interpretation?
- Am I giving the other person a real opportunity to provide it?
The answers may reveal how much room you have left for discovery.
You can bring decades of experience into a room and still learn something from someone in their first week.
You can be confident in your judgment and willing to revise it.
How you show up matters. People notice whether you are listening to understand or waiting to explain why you already know.
Leave room to be surprised.
About the Author
Lynn Cirillo is the founder of Grounded Leadership LLC and a former Executive Vice President of Corporate Operations. Drawing on more than three decades of corporate experience, she writes about leadership, accountability, identity, and reinvention. She is the author of The Breaking Point and Reinvention Outside the Realm of Expectation, the first two books in the Musings of a Recovering Executive series, both available on Amazon. Learn more at MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com.
