Curiosity
The Co-Active for Sport Leaders series
The choice that changes everything.
I have to be honest. Curiosity has been one of the trickiest articles in this series to write.
Not because it is not important. Quite the opposite. Curiosity feels foundational to everything in Co-Active. But it is also so obvious that it almost disappears. We all know we should be curious. And yet, in the moment, curiosity is often the last place we go.
So let me start by talking about the opposite.
Judgment arrives first.
Before you have all the information. Before you know the full story. Before the other person has had a chance to say a word. Judgment shows up. Fast. Automatic. Uninvited. We did not choose it. It simply arrived.
You are walking with your kids and someone runs through a stop sign. Reckless. Dangerous. You watch a player not follow through on something they committed to. Lazy. Uncommitted. You move to a new country and see people living differently than you always have. Wrong.
It happens to all of us. Every day. In traffic. At home. On the training field. In the boardroom. Judgment is not a flaw. It is human. It is wired in. It is fast because it has to be. Our survival has always depended on quick assessment.
But here is what judgment costs us.
When judgment closes the door, it closes everything behind it. The question we did not ask. The perspective we did not consider. The change that was possible but never happened. The player who needed to be seen, not assessed. The colleague who had a different approach that might have actually worked.
And expertise makes it worse. The doctor who has been practicing for thirty years. The record label executives in Nashville who had seen it all. At eleven years old, Taylor Swift submitted demo tapes to every major label in Nashville. She was rejected by all of them. They knew what country music was for. A teenage girl singing about teenage experiences did not fit their formula. Their expertise closed the door. A few years later, she became one of the most successful artists in history.
Judgment is not wrong. But if it is all we have, we stop growing. And so does everyone around us.
That is where curiosity comes in.
What curiosity actually is
So if judgment is the automatic response, what is curiosity?
Curiosity is a choice. A deliberate shift. A decision to pause the certainty and open to possibility.
In Co-Active Coaching, we start with a belief: everyone is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. They have the answers. That means the work is to be curious and ask questions. Questions that are open-ended, inviting, provocative. Questions that invite someone to look in a certain direction but with no preconceived conclusion. These are not leading questions. And there is no attachment to the answers.
Curiosity is a playful state, full of wonder. It is the feeling of not knowing what comes next. Of being genuinely open to what might emerge. Of asking without already having the answer locked in.
The spaciousness of curiosity is wide open. You enter this space together with another person to explore. And here is what is remarkable: curiosity is somehow less dangerous. It lowers the risk. It eliminates the stifling quality of judgment. When we are curious, it feels like no big deal. We are just being curious. And yet, curiosity is enormously powerful because it opens us to being surprised. To finding the unexpected truth. It is childlike: look what I found!
And here is what I learned about myself: I always told myself I was curious. But I was only curious about some things. About learning in general. About how kids learn, especially in sport. But not about people in certain contexts. Not about approaches that differed from mine. Not about the neighbor next door who saw the world differently.
The more expert we become, the less curious we often become. And that is exactly when curiosity matters most.
But here is what changed for me: the moment I became even slightly more curious about my own blind spots, about where I was not curious, something shifted. Not just in me. In how I showed up with everyone around me.
And here is what matters: you do not need to be curious about everything. You do not need to live in curiosity constantly. But when you let curiosity in, even just a little more, something shifts disproportionately. Ten percent more curiosity creates exponentially more joy. Twenty percent more curiosity creates exponentially more growth. For you. For the people around you.
That choice, to let curiosity in, might be one of the greatest things you can do to move the needle on your happiness from a six to an eight.
Let me show you what this actually looks like.
I spent a day with my daughters at their grandmother's house. At the end of the night, their nanny gave them Starburst candies. We were about to jump in the car for an hour and a half drive home. The girls would fall asleep in the car. My daughter, who was already fighting a cold, got two Starburst, some milk, and got in the car. Ten minutes in, she started puking.
My first reaction was judgment. Annoyance. I made a snarky comment about the Starburst. And I could have stayed there. I could have gone down a rabbit hole about why we would give all these candies before bed, about choices and consequences, about the way things should be done. I could have spiraled. I have my own struggle with candy. I could go on and on.
But I paused. And I made a choice. I let curiosity in.
She gave those candies to make my daughters happy. She is not just a grandmother. She is one of the most selfless, caring, deeply generous humans I know. She shows up for everybody around her. In that pause, in that choice to be curious instead of annoyed, something shifted.
We went back to the nanny's place. While my daughter got a bath and the girls got extra time with their cousins, I cleaned the car. But the shift had already happened. Once I let curiosity in, once I saw how awesome this grandmother is, that became the truth for the rest of the night. I did not have to keep fighting back to annoyance. I did not have to keep convincing myself. One pause. One choice to be curious. And everything that followed flowed from that.
That is the power of curiosity.
What curiosity is NOT
Before we go further, let me be clear about what curiosity is not.
Curiosity is not looking for exceptions. It is not rationalizing away reality. It is not thinking, "Well, maybe they were rushing to the hospital, so running that stop sign was okay." It is not, "Maybe there is a one percent chance this person had a good reason, so I should ignore what I saw."
That is not curiosity. That is wishful thinking. That is avoidance.
Curiosity is also not about denying facts. You saw what you saw. The choice was made. The consequence happened. Those are facts.
But curiosity asks a different question. Not, "Is there an exception that makes this okay?" But, "Who is this person? What was their intention? What am I not understanding about their world?"
Curiosity is about seeing the whole picture. Not excusing behavior. Not making exceptions. Just genuinely wanting to understand.
The piano
Here is what I want you to understand about expertise and curiosity.
Imagine a piano. You have spent years mastering a certain section of the keys. The ones in the middle. The ones that feel natural to your hands. You know them so well that you can play them without thinking. Your fingers find the right keys. The music flows. You are exceptional at this part of the piano.
That mastery is your superpower. It is not the problem. It is why you are good at what you do.
But the piano has a full range. There are keys to the left that you have never played. Keys to the right that exist but feel foreign. And here is the truth: you do not need to abandon your superpower. You do not need to stop playing the keys you have mastered.
But sometimes, when change matters, when growth matters, when curiosity matters, you need to learn to play some of those other keys. Not because your original keys are wrong. Not because you should play both ends equally well. But because the magic happens at the edges. It is your ability to occasionally step outside your mastery, to play a key you do not usually play, at exactly the right moment, that makes your mastery so much more powerful. The song becomes richer. More dynamic. More alive.
That is what curiosity does. It does not ask you to stop being who you are. It asks you to know that more exists. And that more, used strategically, makes everything you are already good at even better.
The Self
If you want to move the needle on your happiness and well-being, curiosity is one of the most powerful tools you have.
Most of us work in an environment where something feels stuck. Behind. Frustrating. Maybe it is the organization you are part of. Maybe it is a relationship with someone you work alongside. Maybe it is the way things have always been done, and you can see so clearly how they could be better.
Your expertise tells you exactly what needs to change. And so every day you show up, and you see the gaps. You see what is not working. You see what they are not doing. And that becomes your daily experience. Judgment. Frustration. A quiet resentment that lives in your chest.
Here is the reality: the situation is real. The gaps are real. Your frustration is real.
But here is what is also real. How you feel every single day is also real. And you have more power over that than you think.
What if, before your next dreaded interaction, you walked in with one simple question: What is one thing I do not know about this person?
That curiosity does not mean you ignore what needs to change. But it changes everything about how you experience that interaction. It shifts you from closed to open. From certain to curious. And from that different place, something different becomes possible.
Co-Active coaching teaches us something fundamental about human well-being: you can make choices that will have a drastic impact on how you feel.
And if you do want to be an agent of change in your organization, your curiosity and your connectedness are what will actually move the needle. You cannot change someone when you are in confrontation.
Youth
Youth coaches are good people. They care deeply about kids. Development matters to them. And we are all human.
We operate on System One thinking most of the time. Fast. Automatic. Efficient. Our brains evolved to work this way. Quick assessment. Quick judgment. Quick decision. For millions of years, this kept us safe. This kept us alive.
But in youth development, this autopilot can close doors we do not even realize we are closing. It shapes how we see players. It shapes what we believe is possible for them. And young players feel it. They experience the world through our judgments, whether we know we are making them or not.
Small shifts in awareness have outsized impact. One of those shifts is curiosity.
We have all watched a documentary on a topic we knew nothing about. An hour later, you feel informed. You feel certain. You have strong opinions on something you had never encountered before. Then you dig deeper into that same topic. You realize how much nuance you missed. How much complexity exists beneath the surface. How much you did not know.
We all fall into this trap. Beginner or expert. We consume information and think we understand. We stop exploring and start confirming.
But here is what matters: young players need coaches who are still exploring. Who are still willing to not know.
There is a difference between curiosity to learn and curiosity to know. Curiosity to learn keeps you open. It is exploratory. It says: I do not have all the answers. There is more to discover.
Curiosity to know is different. It wants to arrive at certainty. It wants to confirm what you already believe. It closes the door.
Most of us start with curiosity to learn. We are humble. We are open. But as we accumulate knowledge and experience, something shifts. We stop exploring. We start confirming. We become curious to know instead of curious to learn.
And that is exactly when curiosity matters most at the youth level.
Because when a coach stops exploring, they stop seeing the player in front of them. They see their judgment of the player. They see the category they have already placed them in. The young player feels it. They feel decided on. They feel boxed in.
But research from the Dutch Football Federation reveals something striking. When they analyzed their youth academies across the country, they discovered a pattern. The vast majority of players selected to elite youth programs shared one thing in common: they were born early in the calendar year. January. February. March.
At first, this seemed like coincidence. But when they changed the age cutoff dates, the entire player pool shifted. The kids selected to elite programs changed. Which means the best coaches in the world were not identifying talent. They were identifying who happened to be oldest in their age group. An initial advantage got mistaken for superiority. Better coaching and more resources followed. Over years, the advantage compounded. What started as a birth month gap looked like talent.
Even knowing this is true. Even with all the research. Even with the best coaches acknowledging it. The bias persists.
So the question becomes: what are you not seeing?
When a coach stays in exploration mode, genuinely curious to learn about who this young player is, what they are capable of, what they might become, everything shifts. The young player feels seen. They feel possibility. They feel safe to grow, to experiment, to fail, to discover who they are becoming.
That is the power of curiosity at the youth level. Not curiosity to develop better players. But curiosity that creates safety and joy. Curiosity that keeps the door open instead of closing it with premature certainty.
Elite/College
There is a coach who has won twenty-one national championships. Everything in his program is organized. Intentional. Prepared. Every training session is designed with precision. Every detail matters. He knows what works because he has won more than anyone else in the sport.
And yet, Anson Dorrance stays curious.
When someone with no credentials, no track record, no name behind them shares an idea about collective decision-making and video analytics, he listens. He does not dismiss it. He does not think he already knows. He says: this might be the missing piece.
That is curiosity at the elite level. Not curiosity because you are uncertain. But curiosity even when you have every reason to be certain. Even when you have twenty-one national titles. Even when your system works.
And here is what is remarkable: Anson does not just think about curiosity. He models it.
Everything in his training is prepared. Intentional. But there is always room to try new things. New ideas. New approaches. And when those new things do not unfold exactly as planned, his players watch. They see how he responds. Does he get frustrated? Does he shut down? Or does he stay curious? Does he say, interesting, let us learn from that?
That response is the most powerful teaching you can offer. Because your players are learning how to be in uncertainty by watching you navigate it. If you are rigid and certain, they learn to be rigid and certain. If you are prepared but flexible, curious but intentional, they learn that.
That is the modeling at the elite level. That is what creates a culture where players feel safe to experiment, to fail, to learn. Where they see that curiosity and excellence are not opposites. They go together.
Professional
At the professional level, it is about winning. But growth matters too. A team that goes from tenth to fifth is celebrated. A team that stays second for three years starts to feel the weight.
Arteta said something that stuck with me. When you win the league, your phone explodes. Texts pour in from everywhere. When you finish second, although you played well, nobody texts you.
Everyone at the pro level is expert. Every coach is prepared. Every player is fighting with everything they have. But someone finishes first. Most finish somewhere in the middle. That is just the reality.
And this is the world we operate in. Media. Television. Money. Sponsorships. Expectations. We are not reinventing that system. That is what it is.
So the question becomes: can you compete at the highest level, give everything, come up short, and still choose to be grounded and happy in the process?
The loss will sting. The saboteur will show up. It will tell you something is wrong. That you are not enough. That you should have done more. That voice is real and it has something to say. Let it speak. Feel what is there.
And then make a choice.
You can stay locked in that doubt and fear. Or you can choose curiosity. About yourself. About what you are feeling. About what this season is teaching you. About the ecosystem around you, the staff, the players, the people who showed up every single day alongside you.
When you bring curiosity into that moment, something opens. Not because you are happy you lost. But because you are staying alive inside it. You are not letting the silence and the doubt close you down completely.
And when you mix that curiosity with the expertise you already have, something shifts. You see more clearly. You lead more freely. You take better action. Not from desperation. From groundedness.
You cannot guarantee your team finishes first. But you can choose to bring curiosity and joy into the process. And from that choice, happiness becomes possible. Even in the middle. Even in the loss. You may still feel the disappointment. But instead of a one or a two out of ten, you might feel like a six or a seven. That is massive. That is the difference between being destroyed by the result and being grounded through it.
Coming Next
Everything we have explored in this series, listening, the saboteur, being and doing, powerful questions, curiosity, has been building toward something.
Before we go deeper, I want to pause and name the foundation underneath all of it.
Next, we explore the Four Cornerstones of Co-Active coaching. The beliefs that make everything else possible. You have already been living them without knowing their names. It is time to meet them properly.
Because once you see the architecture, everything we have built together lands differently.
