Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee - Dr. Diane Hamilton

(interview blurb)

Diane: There’s four factors that inhibit curiosity. For those who are curious about what those are, they’re Fear; Assumptions, which is the voice in your head; Technology, which is basically over and underutilization of it; and Environment, which is everybody with whom you’ve had contact basically. So, it’s FATE, to help you remember it.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of coaching.com and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is the founder and CEO of Tonerra, also a nationally syndicated radio host, and keynote speaker. She has authored multiple books, including Cracking the Curiosity Code: The Key to Unlocking Human Potential, and is also the creator of the Curiosity Code Index. She was also chosen as one of the top minds in management and leadership by Thinkers50 Radar. Please welcome Dr. Diane Hamilton.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Diane. 

Diane: Hi. I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Alex: I’m excited to have you here. Let’s start where we always started on Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. What are we drinking today?

Diane: Well, it’s a little boring and interesting at the same time, okay? I am drinking Hint, which is water, which could be boring, but it’s made more interesting because it’s peach-flavored water and this is the one I liked the most and I got into this because one of the guests on my radio show was the CEO and created this company and I thought, well, I want to research what she did, and it’s great. I’m totally addicted. 

Alex: That’s awesome. 

Diane: What are you drinking?

Alex: I’m drinking — so we’re both doing fun, water-based kind of drinks today. So I’m drinking this kefir cultured tonic drink. It’s kind of like a kombucha but based on kefir instead of kind of the typical kind of kombucha base by GT Kombucha like my favorite kind of kombucha brand and I saw this and I thought it was interesting so I picked it up and it’s pretty good. 

Diane: Those give you a little kick, don’t they?

Alex: No, 0 percent alcohol. Sometimes we do alcohol on this podcast but only a few episodes and it’s a little too early, 9 a.m. here in LA.

Diane: Oh, I was thinking caffeine but, hey.

Alex: Well, kombucha can have alcohol too.

Diane: Where your mind went with that but that’s okay.

Alex: You know, years ago, so I’ve been drinking kombucha for a long time and it has a trace amount of alcohol —

Diane: Oh, it does.

Alex: — but 10 years ago, they took them off the shelves because the trace amount of alcohol was I think more than I think the government agencies was concerned about so they took them off the shelves for a few months and kombucha and that was a whole thing, so, yeah.

Diane: You could tell I’ve never tried it. I have to see what it’s like. I know my daughter drinks that but that’s fun. I’m more of a water drinker though, which is kind of boring but kind of good for you.

Alex: I have my water here as well so —

Diane: We’re good. We’re set. 

Alex: Yeah, we are set. Cool. So it’s great to have you here today. 

Diane: Thanks. 

Alex: I like our fun creative drinks today. Doesn’t always have to be coffee but you’re right, the kick could be caffeine, could be alcohol, but today we’re keeping it simple. No caffeine, no alcohol, love it. It’s great to have you on our podcast today. Let’s start by getting us through your journey. I know you have such an impressive array of different experiences in your career and you did really interesting work. I’m really curious to learn more about your journey.

Diane: Well, it’s really interesting when people ask me what I do, it’s kind of hard to narrow it down because I do several things but I can look at it that I’ve learned things and then shared those things and that’s kind of the easiest way to explain what I do in terms of the coaching and training and everything that I do. But I started in sales. I wish a lot of people could have the sales background because, boy, does it teach you a lot of things, and I spent years selling everything from pharmaceuticals to loans and real estate and everything else. And I became very interested in education. I just always wanted to learn something new. I was always the curious kind of kid that drove you crazy, who drove you crazy, I should say, and would always ask, “Why? Why? Why?” And as I started doing different jobs, I started getting more and more education. I ended up with a PhD in business and mostly because I was curious to see how hard it would be. I didn’t have this lifelong desire to have a PhD but it really opened up a lot of doors and interests for me. I loved online education and I’ve taught so many thousands of classes now I can’t even count anymore, but I’ve taught mostly business leadership, that type of thing. And when I left, I was the MBA program chair at the Forbes School of Business, I really loved working around education but I felt like I wanted to try something new and I went out and created my own radio show, so it’s a nationally syndicated radio show that I thought was really fun. I interviewed, again, thousands of people, everybody from Steve Forbes to billionaires like Ken Fisher, and you name it people, I’ve interviewed, it’s been great. And I’ve learned so much from everybody. And when I started to talk to all these people, Marshall Goldsmiths of the world and everybody who was super successful, all were very curious. And so I had written some books early on and I wanted to write another book and I thought I’ll write a book about curiosity. And it was really interesting to me that there wasn’t more out there about the value of curiosity and I didn’t want to just write a book about curiosity, I wanted to fix it for people who maybe had issues with their curiosity. And since I’d written my doctoral dissertation on emotional intelligence and its impact on performance, I had all this background in assessing people. I did become certified in emotional intelligence and all that and Myers-Briggs and some of these others. So, it made me interested to create an assessment to go along with my book that would determine these factors so that I could help people improve curiosity. So that was kind of the path.

Alex: Love that. Being curious about being curious is very meta.

Diane: Isn’t it? It’s such an interesting term to me because I don’t know if I use it the same way as everybody else. I look at it as getting out of the status quo thinking, not just asking questions. I mean, you can ask questions and not listen, you can ask the wrong questions, you can — the problem is so many people are held back and I’m sure we’ll get into the four factors that inhibit curiosity, but we’re held back and then we’re — with companies, it’s such a hot topic because everybody’s trying to be innovative and engaged and that’s why I work with so many coaches because everybody wants to be relevant right now and it’s hard keeping up with everybody is lacking all these innovative ideas and how do you get there, and I really believe getting out of status quo is getting your curiosity built.

Alex: Yeah, curiosity is such an important driver for learning and it is one of those things that when you look at children is children tend to be super curious and a lot of what you’re doing every day as a child is learning about the world, about the different interconnections that are out there. One of my favorite thinkers absolutely of all time is Albert Einstein and he’s known for just being an incredibly creative person and a tremendously curious person and when I read his biography by Walter Isaacson, which is really a fantastic book, the one thing that struck me as the most interesting was just how curious he was and then everything he did was really around fulfilling the need to understand because of that drive for curiosity, but I don’t really hear too much about curiosity when you’re browsing through LinkedIn or looking at the latest books and it’s interesting because it is really a driving force of humanity and invention and innovation and as you’re saying, there’s this drive in organizations to be relevant, to innovate, to discover, and curiosity is really at the core of how we go about solving those big problems that organizations and people really want to solve these days. So, why isn’t curiosity more at the forefront of the way we think about leadership and learning? 

Diane: I think it’s getting to be more so. When I started to write the book and assessment years ago, in the beginning of my research, I put out a — I did first of all a Google search so it would alert me, a Google Alert of every time curiosity came up and then once I got rid of “minus Mars” off of it so I didn’t have to listen to the Mars rover stuff, I was surprised by how little was coming across in terms of what was coming out on the news or whatever. And since then, the same alert, I get unbelievably more articles about it and I’d like to think that maybe my research has something to do with that but it’s interesting because I was fortunate to have won the Thinkers50 Radar award or whatever, I was part of that group, which is the top ideas of our time, which is a real honor for me because that’s considered like the Academy Awards of business thinkers, right? So I think that this was so important that that’s why I think my work got noticed because there hadn’t been a lot of research into this area. There were assessments out there that told you if you had high or low levels of curiosity, but, say, you had a low level, then what do you do? It doesn’t tell you what’s stopping you or how to fix it. But I think those are good assessments, like you start, you measure your level, then you do curiosity training, and then you take another level to see the impact. I think it’s interesting because you were talking about how you don’t hear a lot of it but you do in a sort of way, you just hear it in different words, you hear asking questions, creativity sometimes they get confused with curiosity. It’s tied to everything from empathy to engagement and innovation, you name it. I’ve had people on my show, so many Harvard professors have been on my show from Francesca Gino to I’ve had Amy Edmondson, everybody who writes in fringe areas, I mean, Francesca Gino wrote an actual piece in HBR about the case study for curiosity, but even Amy Edmondson’s work is about collaboration and things that require curiosity. And if you look at her famous TED Talk, that got a really big audience interested because she talked about how they got the Chilean miners out from that disaster because they were curious enough to work together, to build collaboration. And so whenever I ask anybody who’s on the show what comes first, curiosity or creativity, curiosity or innovation, whatever it is, they all say curiosity comes first. So, to me, I look at it like baking a cake. So, Alex, you want to bake a cake, right? You have all these ingredients. You have your flour and your oil and your eggs or whatever it is and you mix it together, you put it in a pan, you put it in the oven, you want cake. But if you don’t turn on the oven, you get something completely different, right? And so in the workplace, the end, what we want, our cake, is productivity and money. To do that, we know what the ingredients of engagement and motivation and all this engagement and things that we need to work on, but if we’re putting it in the oven, we’re not necessarily turning on the oven because that oven, that spark is curiosity. So that was the beginning of everything. And if you start looking, go to ChatGPT and type in, “Does curiosity improve innovation? Does it improve whatever?” you ask anything about it and I’ve tested it because I was curious, it tells you exactly what I’m saying. It’ll say that obviously there’s not a lot of research out there but it’s obvious that it does this and that and the research is that you tie it back to engagement, you tie it back to these different things. And you can get those figures. I have few companies I’ve worked with like Novartis that actually did do some research to test their engagement and then doing curiosity training and then test engagement again and it did make a difference. I’d love to see more companies do that. I’d love to see more coaches go out there and get these organizations to do this because it would be groundbreaking work.

Alex: Yeah, it would be, and when you mentioned coaches and curiosity, it’s really baked in into the reason why people want to do coaching. I remember when I used to do a lot of assessment debrief coaching with CCL, it was just so interesting when you get like someone’s package. You get all this information so we would do like the FIRO-B and the 360 and the Myers-Briggs or the WorkPlace Big Five, so you get all this battery of assessments and biographical information, then you start painting this picture of who this person is and you have information from different psychometric tools.

Diane: It is helpful. 

Alex: Yeah.

Diane: Daniel Goleman was on my show and I talked to him about emotional intelligence and even he said that curiosity is the key term of the future, what we need to be working on. And I think with these assessments, I mean, a lot of people make fun of Myers-Briggs or different tests, like does this help? I think a lot of them are helpful too, especially for people who take them and do self-assessments in terms of knowing — they know what they are. If you’re surprised by your results, that’s kind of a strange thing because you’re answering what you are in the question, right? But what I think a lot of those can do is tell you what other people are, the opposite of what you are. But what I’ve created is different. It’s more like an emotional intelligence test or an engagement survey because it’s not boxing you into a DISC, whatever type of thing, it’s telling you this is your level, this is how strong you are in this area versus this area versus this area, and these are steps that you can do to overcome that. And I think that that’s what I saw as kind of a problem with some of these assessments is they don’t give you a lot of feedback other than, “Now you know what you are and this is what somebody else is,” and that’s great for communication but in terms of what this does for you, I mean, we mentioned a lot of things but think about the empathy that you’re building as a coach that you’re able to put yourself in somebody else’s position and think in their emotional state because you’re asking them the questions that allow you to see their perspective or their perception, as you know from my other book, but it’s something that is so critical that you don’t often think about how important questioning is to empathy and that questioning is another word for curiosity.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so much to unpack there. You know, when I was doing all of that work with assessments, it was just so interesting, you become so curious about, we have all these data points and when you meet that person, then it all comes together and some of your theories about how they may come across suddenly, because the way we did coaching in CCL was part of programs, so I don’t know the client until I meet them. I have all this information but I don’t know them until I meet them and I did hundreds of those. And when I’m thinking about what was the driver for me that would keep me super interested in the work, it was just being curious about like who is this person, having all these data points and then really getting to know them. And to really listen with intention, the way you’re supposed to when you’re doing coaching, really is tied to the curiosity for learning about someone and who they are and where they want to go, where do you think perhaps they should go. I mean, there’s all these different things that come together as a coach but the driving force for being engaged in the work is pretty aligned with being curious, I think. Don’t you think?

Diane: Oh, I definitely think, and I think that a lot of coaches naturally come by this, as you said, with this curiosity and until you build the empathy for the other person, you might not know why they don’t necessarily have that same outlook. I found that with my students. A lot of them wanted me to give them the fish instead of teach them to fish. And I think we see that in the business setting a lot and my thought process was I want to uncover what’s holding that back. Why are they not going to the next level? And so what I started out doing is I went to LinkedIn and I posted a thread just asking people why they don’t ask questions in meetings and that kind of thing, just to see what I thought was holding people back. And, overwhelmingly, at first, everything was fear based and, as you know, there’s four factors that inhibit curiosity. For those who are curious about what those are, they’re Fear; Assumptions, which is the voice in your head; Technology, which is basically over and underutilization of it; and Environment, which is everybody with whom you’ve had contact basically. So, it’s FATE to help you remember it. So fear wasn’t surprising when it came out initially as one of the main factors but then I studied for years thousands of people to get all the factors, I wanted to know what all the factors were. Fear seemed logical but what else maybe? Is there anything else? And that’s when I found those four factors were the key and it surprised me how equally it was spread across. It wasn’t all fear as a huge aspect of it. I mean, fear will hold people back because, I mean, nobody wants to look dumb or unprepared. And a lot of times, it’s just you don’t want to put somebody on the spot and make them think you’re questioning their knowledge or their abilities so a lot of questions go unasked because of that. And people always —it seems like, I speak to LinkedIn and Verizon and all the big companies, and when I do, I often get the question, “How can I ask without them thinking I’m questioning them?” and that type of thing and a lot of it is how you phrase it and buffer things when you ask questions. For example, “I’m trying to build my curiosity, Alex. I hope you don’t mind if I asked you a question,” comes across a lot differently than, “Alex, why did you say that?” It’s got that buffer. It helps people realize it’s not that they said something wrong, that you’re just genuinely interested. And learning to ask questions properly helps a lot in the fear category and so that’s the kind of thing when I train coaches or HR professionals because I certify people to give my Curiosity Code Index, when I work with them, we often whiteboard a lot of different ideas of how they can ask the right questions or what are the common issues that everybody has in the room and it’s really fun to see everybody kind of just jump in and share ideas of what holds them back and how to get past that. It’s a very interactive experience and I think a lot of people like that. It’s so different than anything out there. In fact, I kind of based my training on some of the curiosity-based research I did from Disney. Disney had a problem with their turnover in their laundry division and all they did was go to their employees and ask them, “How can we make your job better?” and just a simple question like that made a huge impact. They’re expecting they’re going to get answers that they couldn’t do anything about, they actually got really helpful things like, “Put an air vent over my desk so I’m not hot,” or, “Have my table go up and down so my back doesn’t hurt,” and so when you go to the horse’s mouth like that and just ask the question, you get the answers. And so when I train people, especially like coaches and HR people, the first half of the training, we talk about their individual, how they can get better themselves, but then the second half, we talk about what can we do for the organization and you’re basically going to these employees and asking them, “How can we improve engagement? How can we improve innovation?” all these things based on building curiosity, so like the Disney case, you get the answers that does it all for the coaches, it does it all for the HR professionals, whoever’s doing the training, and it gives it a whole report back to leadership for them to pick and choose from. So it’s like a very interesting way of getting the path to solving these because we started with fear, that’s a huge thing that’s holding people back, but assumptions are kind of tied into fear because these assumptions can shut you down and make you fearful. If you start telling yourself, “If I asked Alex this, he’s gonna think I’m really stupid,” or whatever that voice is in your head, you hold on to it, you hold on to it, it paralyzes you. Eventually, you don’t do anything. You don’t ask any questions and you don’t explore. And then just to touch on technology, that comes up quite a bit because we over and underutilize it. You mentioned Einstein before. I often refer to Einstein because there’s so many curiosity quotes from him but if you say you are going to be the greatest calculator worker in the world, it’s okay if I hand you a calculator, but say you’re Einstein behind that and I don’t tell you the math behind it, you’re really only going to be the greatest calculator worker in the world. And so that’s like what I hear a lot is that people get behind in technology. They get behind in getting the basics of what they should know and they’re fearful, again, these things can overlap, to ask the questions and get caught up. And so technology really plays a big factor because once you know it all, then you have to explore how to use it all after you understand the technology. So technology is big. And environment to me was the biggest one for me because you’re raised around people maybe you have different interests, you have teachers who have to teach the tests, they don’t have time for all these questions and so a lot of people get kind of aligned to things that they don’t really even want to do and I think when you can get employees to take these kinds of assessments, you can find out more about what did they really like, what did they stop looking into because somebody told them don’t do that. You find out a lot.

Alex: What was the process like for you to discover that you wanted to create an index? So you have this interesting curiosity. How did you go from that into creating the index?

Diane: You know, it started really when I was writing the book and it was frustrating to me that nobody had a way to fix this and I assumed that it would be an assessment that would help you already created out there, but there really wasn’t and so I decided that, well, I loved assessing, from my dissertation process, I thought, well, how hard can it be to create an assessment? I’ll just hire somebody who’s great at statistics, which isn’t my favorite. 

Alex: A lot of people say that.

Diane: Yeah, right. 

Alex: Well, even Einstein didn’t like math.

Diane: Well, I like math up until a certain point. When I got into statistics, I didn’t like it so much.

Alex: I know. 

Diane: I actually like it better now since this process because I found out how useful it was and I hired people who had graduated from Harvard and Pepperdine, all these great names and nobody would create what I wanted. They were creating the same thing that Kashdan had already created, which is a great assessment but it just tells you if you’re curious or not. And I’m like, no, he’s already done that. That’s a good thing, we want to use that, but I want this. So I had to go back and become curious about statistics again and teach myself factor analysis and I ended up having to do it myself.

Alex: I like factor analysis. Reminds me of my dissertation. 

Diane: Oh, you had to do it? Yeah, I like it now. I never had to do it. What was your dissertation topic?

Alex: It was validating a measure of managerial coaching effectiveness so looking at the use of coaching behaviors in managers and how that impacts employee engagement but the first part of the dissertation was looking at the factor structure of the measure which hadn’t been validated before. It was based on a CCL model. We had a lot of people responding to it. So analyzed the factors really present in the tool and then, from there, kind of the outcome measures. So it was fun.

Diane: Well, it’s something that — you get kind of spooked by statistics sometimes thinking it’s going to be something so awful but once you get into it, you go, okay, now I see, and you get to see where all the dots combine. 

Alex: The one thing I’ll say I don’t wish on anyone to have to learn multilevel structural equation modeling because that wasn’t fun but, hey, now you know, now you people get to call us doctors, so it’s well worth the pain.

Diane: It’s tough. I was a doctoral chair for a while so they had to get through me to get their PhD and so I had to see all their statistical models and a couple things would come up, I’m like I have no idea how that works. You learn from seeing some of this but I did have to do the factor analysis for this, but what happened really interested me. I didn’t expect technology, for example. I didn’t expect some of these things to come up but I wanted a valid instrument, I didn’t want to just create something you put on your website, I wanted it in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal and all the things that I ended up doing with it because I thought this is something so important that we really need this out there. And since I was an individual solopreneur, I mostly was speaking and doing all these other things, right? I had my radio show, I do all this other stuff, so that’s why I started training coaches so that they can get out there to do it because I want it spread but it was just me. So I started to work with coaches and I got a lot of curiosity experts who already were interested but I started to find that a lot of people were looking to become relevant right now and they just didn’t — they had given this, they’d given them all and they just really wanted something new that was innovative. And so those are the people who I hear from most often are people who love giving assessments, love the whole thing, but they want something relevant to make themselves different from everybody else.

Alex: How do coaches use you work? The curiosity index? Is that something that they use with clients? Do they use it for themselves as well? How does that typically is used? Given that most of our audience are coaches, I’m curious to see kind of like the coaching perspective on your work and the measure. 

Diane: Well, most of them become certified and then give it to organizations. Of course, they take it themselves initially to find out what it’s like and they go, “Oh, this is really cool. I think that this would work really well.” The ones who are already curiosity based include it in their programs of other things sometimes. I’m working with a company right now where they just got me and I think on their LinkedIn profile, they call themselves curiosity coach or curiosity something, and they tend to take what it is and say, “Okay, we’re doing several assessments. This is gonna be one of them and we’re gonna have,” sometimes they have me come in to give a kickoff launch of curiosity and that works really well because you get the expert behind it, I give the whole background and speech and all that, and then they go in and then they do the coaching and that aspect as well. So I’ve seen it used in different ways. I’ve had one guy recently who white labeled it for his own site and wanted it just to look like it was coming from him, which he likes that, but it goes to my stuff so he doesn’t have to deal with it. I have another group that wants to create their own labeled version and license it differently so I work with everybody kind of differently, depending on their needs and sometimes we partner on things. I’m very open to different arrangements with coaches so it’s kind of fun to see what everybody suggests because I’m kind of open to it all.

Alex: So you have all these things going on, how do you prioritize?

Diane: You know, I have a certain way I run my day. I get up at four in the morning, like a crazy person and then —

Alex: Well, that helps.

Diane: I do all my — I still teach for multiple universities so I do all my grading first thing in the morning so that’s my first thing, because I teach a lot of graduate students and different courses still. And so, usually, by the time a regular work hour comes around, it’s time to do my other stuff. And in addition to my radio show, I do a couple other shows that they hire me to do so that is here and there so that’s all scheduled into my calendar. But I also work on a lot of boards that require a lot of time and so I scheduled — I’m a Google Calendar addict. You saw my calendar, it’s just every square is a different color, and I like to keep busy. I’m one of those people — I can multitask. I know they tell you not to do that but I’m a multitasker. I mean, I wouldn’t be doing anything while I’m talking to you. I can’t multitask now, but there’s a lot of things you can multitask and I think that it’s all about how efficient you can be. A lot of people just waste a lot of time and I schedule like bam, bam, bam together and don’t waste a lot of time.

Alex: So let’s talk about your board work. So you’ve been in some very interesting boards, including the advisory board for DocuSign. So, when you’re doing that work, is the expectation from the boards that you’ll bring that expertise around curiosity or what is really the value that you see yourself providing when you’re working from that board perspective?

Diane: It’s different for each board. I’ve done a couple, DocuSign and Global Mentor Network and the Krach Institute out of Purdue are all connected to Keith Krach, who was the former chairman and CEO of DocuSign and undersecretary from the last administration. So Keith is wonderful and his boards are just unbelievable. DocuSign, when I went to that first meeting, and I was expecting this was a board of advisors, not of directors, and there was — I think you usually get maybe 10 to 20 people at the most at a board of advisors and this one had like 250 people. I mean, it was like the CEO of McDonald’s and the CEO of Sony and those kinds of people, I mean, everybody, and when you walk into that group, you go, wow. It was a who’s who of everybody you can imagine. And they were just so interesting. Maybe they weren’t the current, past CEOs and different things. And I learned a lot from Keith because he surrounds himself with just a variety of people like that that can bring different things. And you might wonder, what could I bring to that? But you bring your network, for one thing, of course. If you have a radio show, they want you to, of course, help with that. But a lot of it is connecting with people. I know a lot of people. I mean, I’ve had so many billionaires on my show, I’ve had so many people I know from this. I mean, there is a Craig from Craigslist. There is all these people, they’re out there, and you learn all that that you are kind of a connector sometimes for that. On Global Mentor Network, I do a lot of their shows. I interview CHROs, which is great for business for them to connect. On the Krach Institute, it’s all about getting awareness for technology in the United States and get to connect with people, head of NASA, different things, all these — there’s presidents of countries in this group, you know what I mean? It’s intense. And it’s wonderful because I think everybody should try and serve on as many boards that interest them as they can if they can because you get such a great exposure to different aspects. I’m starting a new one, LeaderNXT, which is going to be a CHRO base, kind of like chief is for CEOs. It’s the same kind of thing for CHROs, and that’s backed by a guy named Mike Dulworth who does amazing things. He has executive networks and some of these other things and he and I were in another board that was connected with Reid Hoffman, his work in the Flerish app, which was something completely different. So one thing kind of leads to another to another when you get in these boards and when you start talking to people, you think, “Oh, now I see what I can add. I know this guy and that might help this person and she might—” it all kind of has this domino effect. But to get in to these boards, you have to have a good amount of experience and that’s one thing good about getting older is all the experience you have in all the different industries and you’ve seen and done it a lot so I think that helps a lot. 

Alex: So what’s next for you? What are you excited about when you think about the next five years?

Diane: Well, there’s so many things. I’m excited to do this venture, I’m a co-founder with LeaderNXT. The most interesting thing to me is always going to be curiosity. I mean, it’s my passion. I’m very interested in expanding the Curiosity Code Index. I mean, I’ve already have it with SHRM and all the different things where people get credit for doing it and I think that there’s a lot of expansion that can be done with the CCI and I wrote the book, The Power of Perception, Perception Power Index, again, is another index that I work with coaches about and I just didn’t want to water down what we’re talking about today by going to all the different things I’ve done but all of that is on my website. And with perception, it ties into curiosity because we looked at perception, I co-authored that with Dr. Maja Zelihic who’s now the dean at the Forbes School of Business. We looked at it as IQ, EQ for emotional quotient, CQ for curiosity quotient, and CQ for cultural quotient and how people process their perceptions. So, there’s always more books. Actually, a book’s coming out this week that I’m featured in from Thinkers50 that Des Dearlove wrote called Certain Uncertainty and so I am featured in some of these kinds of things, other people’s books and stuff. I love speaking, I love doing kickoffs with coaches when they want somebody to come in to talk so I do — speaking takes up a lot of my time but curiosity is definitely my passion.

Alex: I love that you’re so passionate about curiosity because it is, definitely, I think, a core driving force for a lot of what we do, especially in coaching. I can’t imagine a coach that’s not curious —

Diane: I can’t either.

Alex: — and coaches tend to be curious about people, systems, processes, organizations, so it is good to bring light into the foundational aspects of what curiosity is and understanding how we can tap into the power of curiosity to help others and to also learn more about ourselves. I really think it’s a fascinating topic so I appreciate all the work that you do to bring it to the forefront and have people really understand the components of curiosity a little bit better. And for coaches, specifically, I think it could really be a very powerful tool to become better coaches.

Diane: I totally agree. There’s so much you can learn for free out there too. I mean, they can go to my site, to curiositycode.com, just go right to the curiosity stuff, or to drdianehamilton.com to find out more, but I also have a free course at the bottom of that Curiosity site and my site, if anybody wants to take it. There’s also a free course on — it’s out of London, UK, the name escapes me at the moment but there’s a lot of courses out there. If you look at my name and curiosity, you can find all kinds of free information if you’re trying to find out. I don’t know why I can’t think of it.

Alex: That’s the worst when you can’t find the word, and as soon as we’re done with the episode today, you’ll be like, “Oh.”

Diane: No, I’m going to look because I want people to — FutureLearn. In FutureLearn, they have a great course that they created and it’s free. So I think there’s a lot of free stuff you can learn. I post a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and if you want to talk to me through LinkedIn, just say you saw me here and I’ll gladly LinkedIn with you. Again, I have a lot of free information if you’re interested. But this has been so wonderful.

Alex: We’ll add all those sites, your site to the resource section of this episode. So thank you so much, Diane, for joining me today. Really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit more and also learn more about your work. So keep doing such a good job with this area that I think is so up and coming and exciting so we’re looking forward to staying connected and congratulations on the Radar award from Thinkers50. We work a lot with Thinkers50, it’s a great organization.

Diane: Oh, I’m going to be there in November. Are you going?

Alex: I will see you there. I mean, any excuse to go to London. I just came back from London two days ago. Any excuse to go to London, I will take it.

Diane: Oh, good. Well, I’ll be there with my co-author, Dr. Maja Zelihic and we’ll see you there. That’ll be fun.

Alex: Absolutely. We’ll have some water in person together.

Diane: We’ll have some more water.