Curiosity, communication, and what happens when we learn to listen.

By Michelle Formanczyk

I watched the replay of my podcast interview with Kelly Anderson this morning, and I found myself smiling.

Kelly is an excellent host.

I told her that during our conversation, and I meant every word of it.

She has a natural ability to facilitate meaningful dialogue. She listens, follows the conversation where it needs to go, and recognizes when something deserves a little more attention.

That is a skill.

And it’s one I happen to know quite a bit about.

I’ve spent decades helping people and organizations learn, communicate, solve problems, and navigate change. I’ve designed learning systems, helped build academies, and studied the neuroscience of human learning and development.

One of the applied disciplines I practice is called VoicePrint.

And there’s a fascinating little demonstration of it in our conversation.

“But I’m so sweet!”

During the interview, Kelly used a word I’ve heard throughout my professional life.

Intimidating.

Oh, that one.

I’ve been called intimidating more times than I care to count.

And you know what?

It hurts my feelings.

Because I don’t aspire to intimidate anybody. I love people. I love learning, teaching, exchanging ideas, and watching somebody discover something wonderful about themselves.

I’m also knowledgeable. I’m ambitious. And I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of my life accumulating tools I can use to make things better.

Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

When Kelly used the word again, I interrupted.

“But I’m so sweet!”

And I am!

At least I think so.

Years ago, I might have reacted differently. I might have felt compelled to explain myself, defend my character, or prove I wasn’t the intimidating person I believed someone was accusing me of being.

I could have spent ten minutes advocating for myself.

Which, ironically, might have made me appear even more intimidating.

Imagine that.

But here’s what I’ve learned about the way I communicate.

VoicePrint identifies nine distinct voices we use to accomplish different things through conversation.

My most prominent voice is Advocate.

She’s powerful.

She’s also capable of wearing out her welcome.

Advocate helps me stand behind an idea or position. But overuse can make me sound more interested in defending what I know than discovering what someone else means.

Sometimes what the conversation needs isn’t more Advocate.

It’s Challenge.

Not confrontation. Not criticism.

An intentional interruption that creates an opportunity to change the direction of a conversation.

And then, perhaps, Inquire.

A question.

An invitation to understand.

That’s what happened with Kelly.

She clarified that what she found intimidating was my knowledge.

Ahhh.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

There’s a meaningful difference between describing someone’s character and describing your experience of encountering them.

I didn’t need to defend myself.

I needed to understand what Kelly meant.

Which reminded me of a remarkable woman named Jacqueline.

A little curiosity in the kitchen

Jacqueline was one of the first women I connected with through Women in Lean, a community of more than 1,400 problem solvers around the world.

Different industries. Different backgrounds. Different toolkits.

One thing in common: a commitment to learning and continuous improvement.

When everything went wonky in my life, Jacqueline was one of a handful of people who showed up.

Literally.

She drove to my house.

We had never met in person.

She drove out of her own chaos to come sit with me in mine.

And what I needed more than anything at that moment wasn’t another expert, another solution, or another well-intentioned list of things I should be doing.

I needed somebody to witness.

To simply exist with me for a little while.

She did exactly that.

And somewhere during her visit, standing in my kitchen, we had a conversation I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life.

I made a comment.

I don’t remember exactly what I said anymore, but I remember that I intended it to be positive.

And then I saw her expression change.

Just a tiny movement. Something subtle enough that I could easily have missed it.

Something about my words appeared to have landed differently than I’d intended.

I could have ignored it.

I could have explained myself.

Instead, I stopped.

“Jacqueline, what just happened there?”

I asked her what she’d heard.

And she told me.

What she received was connected to criticism she’d experienced before. My words had touched something I hadn’t known was there.

That wasn’t what I meant.

But it was what she’d heard.

And suddenly, we had something useful to work with.

Not because one of us was right and the other was wrong.

Because we’d created enough room for both experiences to exist in the same conversation.

Two women. Different industries. Different backgrounds. Meeting face-to-face for the first time in the middle of a crisis.

And what did we do?

We practiced continuous improvement.

In my kitchen.

Without a PowerPoint presentation or a single laminated process map.

Imagine that.

When knowledge becomes something you can actually use

Here’s what makes those two conversations so meaningful to me.

I didn’t simply recognize that something felt uncomfortable.

I recognized an opportunity to change what happened next.

Instead of defending, I interrupted.

Instead of assuming, I asked.

Instead of reacting to what I thought someone meant, I became curious about what they actually experienced.

That’s VoicePrint in action.

Not a theoretical discussion about communication.

Not a training exercise.

Just people using language intentionally to understand one another.

And this morning, watching myself have that conversation with Kelly, I recognized something else.

I’ve grown.

Quite a bit, actually.

Probably more than I’ve been willing to give myself credit for.

There was a time when hearing the word intimidating would have sent me straight into defending myself against a judgment the other person might never have intended to make.

Today, I’m better able to recognize my reaction as information about my own experience.

Not necessarily information about the person speaking.

That distinction didn’t arrive overnight.

It came from years of learning, practicing, getting things wrong, trying again, and discovering that the tools I built my professional life around could help me navigate my personal life, too.

My circumstances have changed. My capacity looks different today.

But that hasn’t erased the skills I’ve spent a lifetime refining.

And I’m getting better at recognizing the difference.

The next right thing

There’s a question I’ve learned to ask myself when life starts feeling impossibly big.

What’s the next right thing?

Not the next ten things.

Not how to solve everything between now and the end of time.

Just this:

What can I do right now that moves me into better alignment with my own life?

Sometimes it’s an action.

Sometimes it’s a decision.

Sometimes it’s allowing somebody to sit beside me without asking them to fix anything.

And sometimes it’s asking one simple question.

What did you hear?

Because what I meant and what you received aren’t necessarily the same thing.

And somewhere between those two experiences, there’s something worth learning.

That’s a win worth recognizing.

And as for that conversation with Kelly?

There’s much more to share.

Our interview for The Feelin Good Academy Podcast, “When Survival Mode Has Become a Way of Life: How Do We Learn to Let Go?”, gave me an opportunity to revisit some of the most important lessons I’ve learned about communication, curiosity, and finding our way forward.

I’ll be sharing more about that experience here soon.

For now, I’m enjoying the rather wonderful realization that sometimes the person we most need to recognize has been looking back at us in the mirror all along.

Michelle Formanczyk