R.E.S.P.E.C.T. at Work with Dr. Julie Pham

Most of us would like to feel respected at work, but sometimes we don’t. And sometimes, our co-workers feel disrespected by us.

Dr. Julie Pham has built a career on understanding where all the confusion comes from. She’s a TEDx speaker, consultant, and the best-selling author of the book “The 7 Forms of Respect.”

Dr. Pham doesn’t believe in the old saying, “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” because others may have a completely different concept of respect than you do. Instead, she has what she calls the “rubber band rule.”

In this episode, Dr. Pham talks more about that rule and why, as someone who teaches curiosity as a practice, she believes every workplace should cultivate an atmosphere of curiosity and learning.

“My biggest takeaway from this conversation is Dr. Pham’s strategy for talking with co-workers about our differences,” says BEATS WORKING host Mark Wright. “It safely opens the door for honest conversations that can lead to true understanding of the people we work with.”

Resources from the episode:

Connect with Dr. Pham on ⁠LinkedIn⁠ and follow her on ⁠Instagram⁠.
Learn more about CuriosityBased and the work they do ⁠here⁠ and follow them on ⁠Facebook⁠.
Read more about “The 7 Forms of Respect®,” sign up for the course, and buy the book ⁠here⁠.
Watch Dr. Pham’s TEDx talk, “Curiosity as a Practice,” ⁠here⁠.
Subscribe to the ⁠CuriosityBased YouTube channel⁠ for videos that will spark your curiosity and help you build trusting relationships with others.
Read this ⁠Puget Sound Business Journal article⁠ from Dr. Pham on how to make your workplace a learning organization.

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Transcript

The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.

Speakers: Dr. Julie Pham and Mark Wright

DR. JULIE PHAM 00:00

I think that learning can only happen so much by ourselves. At some point we actually have to share what we’re learning about ourselves with other people and then their reactions will help us learn even more. This is where it’s just like, you can’t get this just from a book or from journaling. You have to actually share it and I’ve been so surprised by what I learned and also the connection I feel with people through that process of sharing.

MARK WRIGHT 00:29

This is The BEATS WORKING show. We’re on a mission to redeem work – the word, the place, and the way. I’m your host Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to BEATS WORKING on the show this week, the power of curiosity and understanding respect at work. Most of us would like to feel respected at work. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes our coworkers feel disrespected by us. Dr. Julie Pham has built a career on understanding where all the confusion comes from. She’s a TEDx speaker, a consultant, and the bestselling author of the book The Seven Forms of Respect. Dr. Pham doesn’t believe in that old saying, treat others the way you want to be treated, because it’s possible they may have a completely different concept of respect than you do. She has instead what she calls the rubber band rule. We’ll explain. In this episode, we also cover why Dr. Pham believes every workplace should cultivate an atmosphere of curiosity and learning. She also teaches curiosity as a practice. I think my biggest takeaway is Dr. Pham’s strategy for talking with coworkers about our differences. It safely opens the door for honest conversations that can lead to true understanding of the people with whom we work. Dr. Julie Pham, welcome to BEATS WORKING, Winning the Game of Work. It’s so great to have you here. Welcome.

DR. JULIE PHAM 01:59

Thank you so much for inviting me on, Mark.

MARK WRIGHT 02:02

Well, this is going to be a great conversation, uh, Julie, because I feel like a lot of people’s workplaces can benefit from the work that you do, and that is to help people become learners at work and become curious about the world around them. Um, let’s start by talking a little bit about your company. You’re the founder and CEO of Curiosity Based. which is an organizational development firm based in Seattle, Washington. Tell me about the company and why you decided to start it.

DR. JULIE PHAM 02:31

So, we help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours. So how we feel at work is going to ripple into all those different parts of our life. We work with teams, with organizations to help, help them realize, hey, we can’t take curiosity for granted and we have to keep practicing it and exercising it. And when we do that, it leads to better collaboration, trust, connection.

MARK WRIGHT 03:03

I’d love to know when this idea of the power of curiosity started to form with you. Looking back at your resume, I’m just blown away at, uh, at your obvious intellect. Um, you went to Cambridge, got a PhD in history. Um, you’re a Gates Scholar. I don’t know, is that a scholarship funded by the Gates Foundation? How does that work?

DR. JULIE PHAM 03:25

They set it up to rival the Rhodes. So, Rhodes is at Oxford, Gates, new money is at Cambridge.

MARK WRIGHT 03:33

So, when did that idea of the power of curiosity really start to take root with you, Julie?

DR. JULIE PHAM 03:39

So, I remember my aha moment was it was in 2017. I started to create this cross-sector collaboration fellowship, bringing together people from tech government and community-based organizations. And they were together for six months. And the idea was they had to create something, uh, build a community project together. And I had five cohorts over three years. And Mark, it took me the third cohort. I was like, why is it some people are really thriving, and some people are really struggling? And we identified, oh, it’s curiosity. Oh, it’s curiosity. And so, because what we saw was the people who were really struggling were so focused on getting a particular outcome and having things go to plan and having a certain kind of impact. And when things inevitably did not go as planned, they were disappointed and they were grumpy and they could actually, and their bad attitude could actually affect the rest of the team. And then there are the people, the ones who are thriving. They were just, oh my gosh, look at what we’re learning. I had no idea. We created something out of nothing. And they were just so focused on what they were learning and there could actually be people who were very outcome focused and people who are very learning focused on the same team. And what we saw was, if you had, there were six people on each team, if there was a critical mass of people who were curious on the team, it could actually uplift the morale. And the inverse is true. If you had more people who were just, uh, were disappointed, we’re not getting what we thought, it could actually take down the morale. Because there are also people who are just bystanders. They’re just waiting to see what others do. And so that’s when we have this big aha moment of, oh, it’s, it’s curiosity.

MARK WRIGHT 05:26

Well, this is something that I want to get into in much more depth a little bit later in our conversation. I’d love to talk a little bit more about your personal background. Your family, your family fled Vietnam in the fall of Saigon, is that right?

DR. JULIE PHAM 05:40

We fled in 1979. So, I came with my parents as boat people. So, uh, so fall of Saigon was 1975.

MARK WRIGHT 05:49

Ah, yeah. So, um, how did, tell me, tell me about what that experience was like and how it shaped who you are.

DR. JULIE PHAM 05:56

Yes, being a Vietnamese refugee is a really strong part of my identity. My Vietnamese name is Hoai Huong, which means to remember one’s homeland. My father was in, was a South Vietnamese military officer and after the war ended, he was sent to reeducation camp. And so, he spent three years there. And when he was able, when he was released, he said, we, we have to leave. And so, we’re actually the first in our family to leave Vietnam. And I was a two-month-old baby at the time. So, whenever I think about something that’s scary, I just think about what my parents did. And, and it’s just, well, if they can do that, then I can have the courage to do things as well. And then, so we landed in Seattle, which was the first port. And then we were really sponsored in, uh, by a family in Florida. So, we were there for one weekend and my dad said he could not live there and borrowed money. Came back to Seattle. My parents founded the first privately owned Vietnamese language newspaper in the Pacific Northwest. And, uh, and so I really think of my parents as being hustlers among hustlers. Because it was all these pho shops, nail salons, all the real estate shops, all of, all of the small Vietnamese business owners, that’s who they served. And so, growing up, entrepreneurship was very natural.

MARK WRIGHT 07:15

And you ended up actually Not only working for the paper, but running the paper at one point, right? Tell me what it was like working in a family-owned newspaper. And I just love the idea that your parents were so entrepreneurial that they started a publication like that. That, that probably was not an easy thing to get off the ground.

DR. JULIE PHAM 07:33

Mm hmm. I mean, they really saw a need because the Vietnamese community was growing. It was founded in 1986. So, I, even though my parents, we had this newspaper. Like with many refugees, they wanted stability for their kids. And so, it’s just be a doctor, be a lawyer, have a career, be a professional. And so I thought I was going to become a professor, and that’s what I spent most of my twenties doing, getting this training in academia. And as when I finished my PhD, that’s when I realized, oh, I don’t wanna stay in academia and I wanna try something new and I wanna try my hand up business. And at the time it was 2008. Yeah. And so, I had, I was living in Vietnam. I came back to Seattle and the world changed because before then the newspaper was thriving and supported three kids through college. And then it was a great recession and also the global decline of the newspaper industry. I mean, Mark, you remember there was the PI and there was the Seattle Times in 2009 and then there was only one and all of these newspapers across the country were going from two newspaper cities to one newspaper cities. And here we were a niche. Niche. Uh, and so I decided to get my real life MBA by running the newspaper. And so, I ran the newspaper from 2008 until 2011. And I actually, the first year was long, long hours. Um, And, and my brother and I kept talking about, oh, we want to run it this way. What if we could do this? What if our parents let us do this? And so, what we actually ended up doing was, at the time my parents, we had, there were two editions of the newspaper, Tuesday and Friday edition. We decided to buy out our parents the Tuesday edition. So, we took a loan out. My brother’s car was the collateral. It was a community development, uh, fund. And we bought half the newspaper and then we ran a much more aggressive model and we partnered with a hispanic distributor So we can go to eastern Washington. So we we were able to do all of these things and I learned a lot business firsthand. Truly. That was my real life NBA.

MARK WRIGHT 09:41

What an interesting, uh thing to be able to do. What was it that really made it solidified in your mind that you didn’t want to become a history professor in a college somewhere, that you wanted to do something else?

DR. JULIE PHAM 09:54

That’s a great question. It was, I looked inside, and it was just, oh, that this was not going to be dynamic enough that I didn’t want to do this. And I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the country, hoping for some job that would open up because some professor died or retired because that’s the way it is in academia. And I wanted to be with people, and I didn’t want to just be with students and with other academics. And I also saw that quite honestly, in academia, it can be really petty. We’re fighting over footnotes and, and I wanted to have more impact. So that’s why I decided to pursue business instead.

MARK WRIGHT 10:33

Yeah. As someone who studied history, I’m always sort of envious of people with your level of knowledge. Um, as you look at the world today. I’d love your assessment of what the world is, is like today, and I think we can get into politics and, and, and business because I think your curiosity paradigm really has a lot of application there. But as you look at the world today as someone who’s studied history, Julie, what do you see today that maybe is a cycle in history repeating itself, or I just, I’d love your, this might be a rabbit hole in a tangent, but what’s your what’s your assessment?

DR. JULIE PHAM 11:07

Well, so I will just say that there are lots of different approaches on history. There are some people who, when they study history, it’s very much to get to this absolute truth. And my end of history, I actually, the reason why I fell in love with history is because I see it at the intersection of social science and humanities. And what I mean by that is, as social scientists, we are searching for truth because we believe there is such a thing and in humanities, we know there is no such thing as truth. Everything is a story. And so, I think history more than any other discipline is right at that intersection. It needs both. I’m looking and yet I kind of know that it’s just a story. I’m looking and yet I kind of know, and yet we don’t stop striving. And so, when I look at the, the world today, and even, even in the workplace, I think, I always think there are multiple perspectives and multiple truths and we get so caught up in believing whatever we think is true right now is the truth and yet no just wait five years or 10 years and so that’s why in a way I’m not attached to anything and I there are definitely some historians who, who are much more empirical than me and uh and yet for me it’s just things are going to swing. And I think what’s much more interesting than trying to get to the truth is understanding what is it about the storytellers. What is it? How do we come up with that version? And so even when I was, just as a side note, my, my undergraduate thesis, my, my MPhil, my PhD, they were all on. Not just trying to get at stories, but why do we even tell those stories in the first place? So, Mark, you mentioned the fall of Saigon. In Vietnam today, they call that Liberation Day. And you know what they, the South Vietnamese community calls that day? The day we lost our country. So here we go, just with April 30th, three different ways, and they’re all true. And so that’s where, in my work around curiosity, it’s just, it’s trying to get people to, to understand we are just trying to understand one another and understand and also understand ourselves because a lot of times we don’t even know why we think what we think.

MARK WRIGHT 13:27

That is so cool. Well, let’s talk about your book. It’s a number one amazon new release and bestseller. It’s called Seven Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work, and I think this is such an important topic because you know we’ve all seen the studies that have been done on how many times emails are misinterpreted and just how ineffective as a medium email is. That it can be misconstrued wildly and, uh, we all think everybody knows what we mean. Um, so give me an outline of what the book covers and what you hope to teach people in the workplace through the book.

DR. JULIE PHAM 14:08

So, the idea is that respect is dynamic, it’s relative, it’s subjective, and it’s also contradictory. And it’s contradictory because we as humans are contradictory. We say things that we don’t do, right? And so, and, uh, and maybe we treat someone a certain way and someone else a different way. And maybe what we give is different from what we want to get. And we are contradictory, and it kind of, it explores that, and it makes it possible that, oh, we can change. The way that we talk about respect right now is as if it’s absolute and universal. Mark, I want you to respect me. Well, Julie, I am respecting you. You know, when we go back and forth and what we’re using this word respect as if we think we mean the same thing. And so, with ideas, seven forms of respect is no, actually let’s explore. This is how I want to get respect. This is how I like to give respect, which can change actually on hierarchy, on power dynamics, in the workplace there are people who have more power than us, equal power, and less power, and I’m talking about formal and informal power. And so, it’s, it’s actually, ultimately Seven Forms of Respect is about practicing curiosity. It’s not about, hey, these are the ways to be respectful. I, I like to tell people, it’s not like seven habits of highly effective people. It’s more like five love languages. It’s relative. And. It’s, what I’ve discovered in introducing this framework to people is it’s actually quite radical. Wait, we might see things differently? Because when I’m not getting respect in the way that I want, what is natural to assume is I’m being disrespected. And they’re doing that intentionally because we see respect the same way and so if they are not giving me respect in the way that I want, they must be doing it intentionally. And yet, I actually differentiate between disrespect and lack of respect. Disrespect is intentional. Mark, I know you don’t like it and I did it anyway. Lack of respect is, I didn’t know that mattered to you. And Mark, maybe you told me it didn’t matter to you. And yet inside you’re seething, right? How often does that happen?

MARK WRIGHT 16:22

That’s really interesting, Julie, because when you describe it as a love language, it’s completely different than a list of, here’s what you do. So, I’m curious, when you come into a company or an organization and you start to roll out this concept, where in the world do you start?

DR. JULIE PHAM 16:38

So, the first is giving an overview I actually like to show this video where I have the boss is saying something and then you’ve got two different people who are interpreting it really differently.

MARK WRIGHT 16:49

And then different coats on I think I saw that video. It’s, it’s brilliant.

DR. JULIE PHAM 16:53

Right. Because and then in that they’re like, oh I’ve actually felt disrespected and respected by the same behavior, depending on who it’s coming from. And so even, you know, I’ve compared this to the five love languages, although I will say it’s even more complex because in the five love languages, it doesn’t take into account hierarchy, that power dynamics, and also what we like to give might be different from what we like to get. And this, there’s a different with respect. There’s this what I should get and what, what actually matters to me, what should matter to me and what actually matters to me. And that requires a lot of self-awareness. So, Mark, your question was, when I go into an organization, what do I start with this? The first is, hey, this is relative. And then I try to give some analogies to, to help people understand this. For example, I can, if I say music, then people are automatically going to think about some genres of music, and you might think of jazz, I might think of, uh, uh, of rock, and jazz and rock are both good, they’re equally good, they’re just different, right, and just like with the seven forms of respect, all these forms are equally good, they’re just different, and it’s about understanding which are the ones that I prioritize. And then, I, my, my favorite question to ask to start with is who in your life and what experiences have influenced how you think about respect? Because what that gets at is oh, these ideas came from somewhere. They were modeled for me. And it also changes because there could also be positive role models and negative role models. I’ve heard people say, oh, I learned this from my parent. I learned what not to do. I learned what to do and I learned what not to do. As people progress in their careers. Hey, maybe their first manager taught them this and their second manager taught them what not to do, right? It changes. And so that’s why respected also evolves into help people understand that the first thing is to shake it from being an absolute truth. I actually like to open it up with, I’ll ask people, raise your hand if you think you know how to be respectful. And everyone raises their hands. And then I say, I don’t think you know how to be respectful. I know you know how to be respectful. And this isn’t about teaching you how to be respectful. It’s about understanding that we see it differently, and for us to be able to talk about it.

MARK WRIGHT 19:24

Yeah. Yeah. Um, in your writings, you say that communication at work is, is, uh, something that can be very messy. Um, and you say what’s missing in the workplace is a vocabulary describing respect. Um, take, take me further down that road when you teach people how to understand our different perspectives on this, um, how do we, how do we create that shared vocabulary at work?

DR. JULIE PHAM 19:52

Hmm. So, you could use the framework and we could also just talk about behaviors too, or Mark, you mentioned the email. The email communication, how that can really get, uh, misconstrued. And so rather than saying, hey, I need some respect, which then insinuates you’re not giving me respect to shift it and say, oh, respect to me looks like this. This is how I like to get it. How do you like to get it? And then assuming, hey, it might be different. And I want to show you respect in the forms that matter to you. And I would like you to show respect to the forms that matter to me. And that kind of, that shifts it from being this binary of respect, no respect, right? To look kind. And that actually really does open it up to more discussion. And then, and then I think what’s also really important is it’s not just about what, it’s then also about sharing the why, the stories behind it. Because people, I might say, hey, punctuality is really important. And this comes up a lot actually. I hear a lot of people say, well, I get, I get how the other ones are relative, but punctuality is not relative. And I’m just, but it is. Cause there are people come from different backgrounds, different experiences that will affect how they prioritize it, or they don’t prioritize it. Uh, and then to be able to share stories around that. So, I’ll just share one really quick. My mom growing up, my mom was always late picking me up from school. And I was, I felt a lot of shame and anxiety because the school staff had to wait with me until she came. And so, I still carry that to this day. And so, time for me actually creates anxiety. I literally feel it inside. And so, when I tell you that, you can imagine five-year-old Julie looking out the window, is that mom’s car? Is that mom’s car? Versus Julie’s just being really rigid. And so, when we share the stories around it, we actually build understanding versus just do this.

MARK WRIGHT 21:54

That’s a really interesting story that you say that because so much of this is just stuff that’s accumulated over our lifetime, and it’s so wise that you say that sometimes the way that we react has nothing to do with, with the current situation. Let’s talk more about the power dynamic because, uh, I had a boss, a news director one time when I was in television news for many years, and uh, probably in the first week of of working for him, he sat me down in his office and he handed a sheet of paper across the desk and he said, hey, I just want to give you a heads up. This is who I am. This is the stuff that you need to know about me so that we’re on the same page. And it was really amazing because I’d never had a boss say, I hate it when people do this, I love it when people do this. Like one of the things was I hate surprises. He said I don’t care if you make a mistake, but if this is something that I should know about and I don’t learn about it and I find out in a department head meeting that this has happened, there’s gonna be trouble. He said I do not want surprises. You can make mistakes, but I don’t want surprises. And I thought it was really wise of him to be able to just lay that out at the beginning of our relationship, because I knew those bridges I could not cross, and I knew where it, you know, where I had some flexibility with him. When there’s a power dynamic, how do you get managers and employees to get on the same page? Because I think some managers think, if you question my decision, that’s disrespecting me. Some managers just want you to march when they give the order. But other managers want feedback. So, it’s, it’s, I’m curious how you, how you deal with that.

DR. JULIE PHAM 23:36

So, your, that manager you describe, had incredible self-awareness, right? To be able to write that out. And a lot of times, so I said earlier that seven gorms of respect is a tool in practicing curiosity and we think of the practice of curiosity as having these three elements. The first being self-awareness, the second being relationship building, and the third being clear communication. And a lot of times people really lack that self-awareness part. So, what they think is, if people can’t articulate why it’s important. What’s important to me and why? How do you expect someone else to know, right? And so, it is actually, self-awareness is, is incredibly important. And so going to the power dynamics. So, I have, I actually think that hierarchy can create a lot of order and clarity. When it is used that way, right? Because hierarchy actually helps people prioritize, especially in the work setting. Should I be late to my meeting with my boss? Or am I going to be late to my meeting with my report? Well, chances are I’m going to be late to my meeting with my report. if I have to choose between the two, right? That’s just, and the report understands the person on your team understands that. So regardless of your position though, to be able to do what your manager did and then to invite whoever’s on their team. Hey, what bothers you? What, how do you like me to work with you? And a lot of times they’ve never been asked that. And so, this, I think this is just about clarity. And then also the other thing in terms of power dynamics is for people in the workplace to understand. And just because I like to be treated this way, just because I like to get respect this way, I might not get it because we’re a team and we’re not going to be able to make everyone happy at the same time. So then, then the ultimate hierarchy I think is what is the mission? And that even goes for the big boss, right? So, for me on my team, I actually don’t prioritize in my personal life information. Yet my small team, we’ve decided, okay, this is a priority for curiosity base. We need to do this as a team. So even for me, it’s not about, Ooh, what I like, what I want. It’s okay. Considering the nature of our work, considering our mission, how small our team is, this is what we need to do right now. And everyone then supports that. I think that actually, when I’m working with teams, cause what ends up happening is when there’s not clarity, what ends up happening is whatever the boss does, the big boss does, that’s what everyone else does, right? Because it’s you, what I do, not what I say I do. That’s the reality of it. And usually there’s not clarity around that. There’s a lot of, say, I saying, and leaders don’t realize people are watching me. So, I actually need to have some self-awareness around what I’m modeling. So, you asked, how do we use the sound forms of respect in the workplace? We actually help people understand that respect lives in layers. So, the analogy I like to use is that of language. So, if you think about a big organization and the CEO. Whatever they prefer, and they also think, uh, this is going to support the mission. That’s what the forms of respect they prioritize are what I call the national language. And then there are the different departments. You’ve got engineering, marketing, finance. They have their own leaders. They have their own functions. The forms of respect they prioritize, that’s like the regional dialects. And then there’s just me, the individual contributor, right? And you know, people who do best in an organization are those who are multilingual. Who can understand the forms of respect that are, that are prioritized in finance versus in engineering versus in marketing. And then one more at all, all organization meeting and understanding we need to flex. That’s what it comes down to. We need to flex and also understanding, oh, I don’t want to flex anymore. This is too much. This is, I’m, I, I call it the rubber band rule. I have what I call the rubber band rule, which is we can. Yeah, actually, let me grab a rubber band here.

MARK WRIGHT 27:55

This is our first, uh, visual prop that we’ve had on the BEATS WORKING podcast. I love it.

DR. JULIE PHAM 28:01

So, you know, uh, when I was doing this research, a lot of people talked about the golden rule, treat people the way you want to be treated. And that’s what respect is. And the issue with that is what if they don’t want to be treated the way you want to be treated? And then there’s the platinum rule, which is treat people the way they want to be treated. Now, maybe they don’t know, maybe it changes. Maybe they’re too embarrassed to admit it. Maybe they want you to do something that you don’t like. So, then there’s the rubber band rule. The rubber band rule, it shows, I’m stretching this rubber band here. We as humans are flexible. We can stretch. Mark, I know you care about this, so I’ll do this. And then Mark and Tamar, oh, when I’m with them, they will really stretch for them. Okay. What happens though is if I find myself doing something that I don’t like over and over again, I continue to stretch myself. You know what happens when we continue to stretch. As we can snap, like a rubber band. And so, with the rubber band rule, the idea is, I need to know what my breaking points are. What is going to make me snap? And that is different for everyone. And I want to be really clear. It’s not about being a big stretchy rubber band. It’s about understanding, am I a tight little rubber band? I’m big and stretchy. And that can change depending on context. I think about, just think about how, how you are at home with your family versus at work.

MARK WRIGHT 29:22

Yeah. We, I’ve often been, uh, called out. I bet you don’t treat people at work like this.

DR. JULIE PHAM 29:27

Right. And yeah, of course. I mean, I think about when people say bring your authentic self to work, it’s just like, but I have multiple selves. I have multiple selves, right? There are different aspects of me.

MARK WRIGHT 29:41

I love it. Um, so. If I’m at work and I want to start going down this road of, of, of understanding, respect on the team in the workplace, does it start out just as simply as saying, hey, I’d love to know more about your language when it comes to respect? How do you feel respected? Because I’ll tell you this, this is what, this is when I feel respected. Like, what does that conversation sound like? Will people look at you like you have three eyes or is this a natural thing to do?

DR. JULIE PHAM 30:09

I mean, I think the, it could start with, hey, who influenced how you think about respect? Because that warms people up for, oh, this came from somewhere. Oh, I guess I saw this and this and this. And then from there you can go, okay, well, so how does that impact you today? And, and then they can, so I think instead of going straight to what do you want or it’s to, a warmup is to first understand it’s all of our ideas of respect have been socialized. They come from somewhere. I have seen people who, and when I, when they’re answering this question, so many who have, I’ve never thought of this. I’ve never thought of where my ideas of respect come from. And then the thing I like to point out to them is, you know, if people are influencing you, you know what’s also happening? You’re influencing people. You’re modeling respect for other people, and you don’t even realize it. And then from there, you can have conversations about, hey, this is what I like to get, how I like to receive respect, and this is why it matters to me. I think it’s really important to share the story, because that’s what builds trust. I talked about how curiosity, as a practice, has those three elements, and the second one is relationship building. And what I mean by that is, it’s not just about, hey Mark, I want to be curious about you. I also have to let you be curious about me. I have to share myself with you. And that creates reciprocity because there are some people who think, oh, curiosity is just about learning about other people. What happens is if I share myself with you, you will give me a reaction. And then that reaction is going to help me learn more about me, right? And we kind of have this, it goes, it goes, um, back and forth. Uh, so in any case, I think it’s important to share the stories.

MARK WRIGHT 32:13

I’d love to dig deeper into the idea of how we practice curiosity and, and, uh, if those of you listening want to check out a really great TEDx talk, um, what’s the name of the talk?

DR. JULIE PHAM 32:24

Curiosity as a Practice.

MARK WRIGHT 32:25

Curiosity as a Practice. So, in your TEDx talk, you, you lay out the three steps to practice curiosity. But before we get into that, that was really interesting. You relayed the story of presenting to a conference and a woman on a zoom call called you out and said you were way off topic and basically slammed you in front of the whole group and basically said your presentation was a complete waste of time. And through that experience, you came to realize that our expectations of other people can kind of turn our brains off. Help us understand how to cultivate the proper mindset to learn through curiosity, because there’s a gap there, right? And we’re trying to bridge that gap. And it starts with looking in the mirror, right?

DR. JULIE PHAM 33:09

Mmm. Absolutely. And so, I think it’s also really important to, we’re not striding not to have gaps. The gaps will come. We will have expectations. It’s impossible not to have expectations. And oftentimes we didn’t even realize we had an expectation until we are disappointed or surprised and that’s when we’re like, oh, I had an expectation there. So,

MARK WRIGHT 33:32

So that woman had an expectation of your presentation. It didn’t measure up to her expectations. So, she turned it on you and said, hey, what, what’s up?

DR. JULIE PHAM 33:41

Yeah. And I had an expectation of how she should have reacted my presentation too. So, we both had, we had both had expectations. I wasn’t just this, this victim in that. I also had expectations too, and it’s when we’re just, oh, well, what were my expectations? Where did they come from? And in this practicing curiosity is to first is to admit. Hey, curious people are not curious all the time. We often say, be curious, stay curious. There are times where we lapse and you know what often happens is, oh, be curious, which insinuates you’re not curious. I’m curious, right? Be curious like me. And so, and so I think the first step is to, is to assess, am I willing to learn from them? Cause oftentimes, yes, I want them to learn from me, but am I willing to learn from that? And that, Mark, I realized, I mean, I, I realized in that moment, in that, through that experience that I was taking curiosity for granted and that we’re not always curious. And then through my workshops, actually with my clients, I realized I was also jumping too much. And what I mean by that is I would take them through, hey, these are the steps of how you ask questions to other people. And you know what I’d get sometimes? Well, why do I have to ask a question when I know the answer? That’s passive. I know why they said what they said. Why do I have to do that? And, uh, 70 percent of people feel that they face barriers asking questions at work. And, um, and so, when I saw that coming up, I realized I had to create a step before I just taught them the structure of how to ask questions. And that step was the self-assessment. Am I even ready? To truly listen and learn from this person. Because if I am not, then I can’t just ask questions, because all my questions have a motive behind them then. I’m really trying to listen with my agenda in mind. I’m not trying to understand them. And so, what I found was I needed to create this little bumper, this little pause.

MARK WRIGHT 36:04

Yeah, this is really a gut check at the beginning, that am I, am I ready to learn from other people? And if the answer is no, maybe dig a little deeper as to why that is, and, uh, yeah, you’re right. Wow, that’s a great, uh, place to start because if you’re not in that, in that mind frame, what’s the point? What’s the point of talking to that other person?

DR. JULIE PHAM 36:22

And it’s okay if you’re not, right? That’s natural. Our emotions, I think it’s actually better to admit it than to try to force it because I think, as reasonable people, I should be okay. I should. I know. Oftentimes, we actually reason ourselves out of even having the conversation, right? And so, um, in this, so I think that even just having some self-awareness, going back to the first element of practicing curiosity, self-awareness, how am I feeling right now? Am I ready to have this conversation? If not, they’re, they can read through that. We’ve all been on the other end of that. They’re not really wanting to listen to me.

MARK WRIGHT 37:01

Step two is, uh, kind of digging deeper, right? Ask yourself the tough questions about that first gut check, you know, dig deeper about why you feel the way you do. Name the emotions surrounding our expectations and, and what, what’s the reason that step two is, is really to examine the why behind that?

DR. JULIE PHAM 37:19

Because this, this is the, this is practicing inward curiosity. So, this is why am I having these feelings? Why is this bothering me? In the case of the woman, why did I feel entitled to getting a positive reception? That was a hard question to ask myself. And then that can disrupt and dislodge these expectations. It’s like, oh, well, maybe my expectation is just an expectation. It’s not the right thing. It’s just, it’s just my expectation. And so, when we ask ourselves these questions, we actually open ourselves up to multiple truths, as we were saying earlier. Oh well, huh, if I can believe this, then what else is possible?

MARK WRIGHT 38:03

Yeah, you told the story of how your mother still tells you to wash your hands as a full-grown adult. And when you started introspecting on that, you realized that you perceived that she was treating you as a child, but she perceives that you are still her child, which is a reality and a depth of love that no one else on the planet shares with you. And I think that story was really cool because I think we all tell our kids stuff that they look at us like, what, what, why are you telling me this? But, uh, but that, that introspection is just great. And then step three is to share what we discover, share with people and, and the value of that sharing. What, what have you seen? Uh, how have you seen that unfold?

DR. JULIE PHAM 38:46

This was the most surprising part. Because when I shared, people shared, they reciprocated. They told me about when they were embarrassed, they told me about their frustrations with their parents, and it actually acted as a way to not just, oh, I’m sorry for you that that happened. It’s just, I’ve been there too. And sometimes it’s like, oh, I didn’t have that experience. This is the experience I had, or this is my perspective. So, I think that learning can only, it happens so much by ourselves, at some point we actually have to share what we’re learning about ourselves with other people and then their reactions will help us learn even more. This is where it’s just like, you can’t get this just from a book or from journaling. You have to actually share it. And I’ve been so surprised by what I learned and also the connection I feel with people through that process of sharing.

MARK WRIGHT 39:43

Sometimes people will share stories that are so shocking and unexpected of maybe tragedies in their life, struggles that they’ve had in their lives, addictions, whatever. And when, when people share those kinds of things, oh my gosh, my experience has been that I have just a completely different level of empathy and feeling and understanding for that person. Worse, before I might judge how they behaved in a certain situation. But with that new understanding, I think sometimes there’s, there’s real freedom and grace that happens in that moment. Um, I would love to talk about curiosity as a practice in our everyday lives. Because I feel like as a country, when it comes to politics, I feel like we are so polarized now, and I feel like people on both sides of the spectrum don’t think they have anything to learn from anyone on the other side, and we’re siloed in social media, and we’re not talking with those other people who think that way. Given your expertise on, on this, talk about, if you would, Julie. Uh, the political climate in our country and, and just the complete lack of curiosity we show and the respect we show to the other people on the other side.

DR. JULIE PHAM 41:01

I think that it is a symptom of believing that there is a single truth, right? Not allowing for this nuance, not allowing for the multiple perspectives. And also that a person’s political opinion or religion or some kind of one aspect of who they are defines them entirely. And so, even when I talk about respect, I often, I often like to say we belong to multiple cultures, communities, and identities at the same time. There are going to be days where my Gen X aspect of me comes out really strong. There are going to be days where, you know, I’m a firstborn, right? I’m an oldest child. Other days where, hey, my refugee identity, there are so many different parts of me. And I think that part of this polarization is thinking that there’s only, we only get one chance or one, one identity, and it’s the identity that might be most visible to other people. And while we want people to see us as complicated, nuanced human beings, we’re not willing to do that for other people. Because we have this double standard, right? So, uh, so I think that a lot of it is around, they want a single truth. Because there is a desire for things to be easy. It’s hard to, to imagine that good and evil can be present in one person and yet all we have to do is look at ourselves, right? We’re contradictory and we’re contradictory and that means other people are contradictory too. It’s the slowing down. I also think that technology has a huge, huge role to play because people just expect things right away. They expect, oh, I’m just going to look this answer up and whatever I look up is the answer. And then with the personalization of technology that also puts us into these echo chambers as well.

MARK WRIGHT 42:55

Yeah. And it doesn’t help that social media algorithms, um, are geared toward feeding us what we already believe.

DR. JULIE PHAM 43:03

Hmmm. And so that’s why I actually just try to create spaces for people to learn from one another. I do very little lecturing. It’s literally here are some prompts, let’s take you bit by bit, little more vulnerability with each conversation until it’s just, oh, we can learn from one another. The answers are actually right here. We just have to be willing to ask questions and then to truly listen.

MARK WRIGHT 43:35

Boy, that’s such wisdom, Julie, when you just said that we expect that there’s only one identity in that other person and, and, and once we sort of figure that out, we kind of judge them based on that singular, um, you know, identity that we believe them to hold to.

DR. JULIE PHAM 43:54

And sometimes people also think, oh, you only see me as this. So, I have a learning experience we call getting curious about your assumptions and we have different variations of this. We have the general one, we also have getting curious about race related assumptions getting curious about class-based assumptions And so when doing the race related assumptions, sometimes I go to spaces where white people especially white managers oh, you’re gonna think this about me and I’m here to be the, the perpetrator. I’m the bad guy. No. That is not the case and we talked about how we all make assumptions and how people have all made assumptions about us, and it’s just really interesting to learn what those assumptions are, because they are actually a lens through which we see the world. Even, even sharing the assumptions made about me, that, that tells, that can tell other people a bit more about me. And, and I, I spent a lot of time in that particular session. Calming people down because they go in thinking like, this is what you think I am. And this is the role that I’m going to play in this conversation. It’s just, you decide the role. So, one of the things in doing this, I tell people, hey, there’s no using jargon, no intellectual bullying. There’s no right or wrong words to speak plainly though. That’s key, and tell stories, and tell your own personal stories, and listen to one another. Because if you want other people to listen to you, you have to be willing to listen to them.

MARK WRIGHT 45:28

You wrote a great op-ed in the Puget Sound Business Journal that encourages business leaders to make work a place where people can learn the value of learning in the workplace. I want to read just a couple of lines from that op-ed. You said, the very impulse to problem solve is what gets in the way of learning. The logic goes, we’ve identified the problem. Let’s figure out how to solve the problem. Once we fix the problem, we can congratulate ourselves and then go find the next problem we need to fix. So, you say that this cycle of finding and fixing the problems and then finding another problem really doesn’t allow for people to pause and ask, what is this problem teaching us? Um, how did you come to, that’s a brilliant, uh, perspective. How did you come to that, to that realization? Because I think that’s how, if we, if we’re honest, I think that’s how most workplaces operate. Identify problem, fix problem, find new problem.

DR. JULIE PHAM 46:26

Yes. And it can get addictive too, right? Because we, people like to describe themselves as problem solvers. It was actually in the, this book, The Poor Pivots. I can’t remember the author right now, but he tells this story of actually his child having colic and he and his wife are up at all hours. They’re resentful. They’re, they, they don’t have any sleep. And then he goes to his mentor and he’s, he’s saying, I’m just exhausted all the time right now. And the mentor says, you’re actually the problem, the baby’s not the problem. You have to slow down and think about what this problem is teaching you. And I really thought about that. That was such a brilliant takeaway from that. And, and I see it all the time at work where people are just find it, fix it, find it, fix it. And we take pride in that. There’s also something else that happens at work, which is if we don’t realize that it is a place of learning, then people, their whole value is around the problems they fix. And that’s actually very transactional, right? The only value you bring is the problems that you can fix. And I don’t need to invest in you. And the reality is, after people graduate from school, Sean Genwright, Dr. Sean Genwright, that’s the, the writer of The Four Pivots, um, after people graduate from school, that learning doesn’t stop. And where do we spend most of our waking hours? At work. So then how can employers, leaders make the workplace a place of continual learning, which then feels like continual investment. Oh, you are invested in my development. You are invested in me, not just what you can extract from me, the problems I can solve for you. You actually want to see me grow and that makes me want to give more to you as well. So, on my small team, I hire learn it alls, not know it alls, learn it alls, and I remember actually one member on the team, they all, by the way, came as, started as social work students and because they didn’t want, and they came to me because they didn’t want to do traditional social work. And one of them said, well, I really want to do marketing. Alright, let’s do that. Let’s, let’s get you into digital courses. Get you, I’ll get you some mentors. Give you a platform to experiment. You can take over this and try it. And we’ll, we’ll learn together. And I have benefited from that. People have invested in me and said, Julie, I remember, I remember the second tech job I had, the CEO said, I know you don’t know anything about digital marketing, but I’ll teach you everything I know. I think you’re smart and you’d be fun to work with. And I learned everything from him that he knew within six months. He invested in me. And that created a sense of loyalty and wanting to really give back.

MARK WRIGHT 49:20

Wow. So, you believe that the most valuable managers and business owners are those who work to create a learning friendly environment. One where people can say, I don’t know. Let’s talk about this. Wow. Um, what’s interesting, our employer at WORKP2P, the company that produces this podcast, Dan Rogers from day one told us he has a saying make mistakes at full speed. And he said I’m not gonna fire you if you make a mistake. He said you need to make mistakes at full speed because if you don’t you’re not gonna be doing enough. And to have that reassurance from the very top, from the very beginning, freed all of us up to not only make mistakes, but learn quickly from those mistakes. And the learning curve went straight up. Because if everybody’s afraid to make a mistake in a workplace, how fast are they really going to move? They’re going to be looking over their shoulders saying, oh my goodness, I hope I don’t make a mistake. I just love that. Um, so Julie, what, what would be your advice to say a business leader listening right now who wants to institute this culture, um, of, of learning first and that, and that safe place?

DR. JULIE PHAM 50:34

So, I think modeling is really important. Um, admitting when I don’t know, I don’t, asking if some, when people come to me, it’s just, how do we do this? And if I don’t know, I’m like, what do you think? Well, this is kind of what I think, but what do you think, what do you think we should do? We’ll look into this more and to, to turn it back onto the team so that they can figure it out and also make sure that they understand. You have their back. And that whenever we start something, we ask, okay, what are we going to learn from this? Not just, well, what are we going to achieve? What’s the goal? Because if this fails, what are we going to learn from it? Because no matter what, we’re going to get, we’re going to get some kind of lesson. So, model to ask what we’re going to learn, to show when you don’t know. Another one that I really like is in meetings to have people take turns to facilitate the meetings. Oftentimes the leader is the de facto facilitator. I think it’s really powerful to have someone who, who is not the leader to be the facilitator and, and also to rotate that role.

MARK WRIGHT 51:44

Wow. That’s great. You really give people the ability to sort of flex and to stretch into those, those different roles. Um, you consult businesses. Your company is curiosity based. Um, what, what’s your sweet spot, Julian, in terms of clients? Uh, that you serve.

DR. JULIE PHAM 52:00

I would say we, we actually really like working with government and nonprofits and companies that care, private companies that care about relationship building. So even though I spent a lot of years in tech, I don’t work with that many tech companies to be honest. Uh, we, we work with leaders who believe that relationship building, and culture takes time, and we have to continually nurture it. You don’t just get to a place, and you leave it. Um, and then with companies that are anywhere between hmmm 50 to 500 people, and we can work with their entire organization or with specific teams.

MARK WRIGHT 52:40

I’m curious about tech companies. Well, how come you don’t work with more tech companies? Is that is that it’s sort of a different beast in terms of how they operate?

DR. JULIE PHAM 52:47

I think that a lot of tech companies are very transactional in nature. And then going back to the extractive, because they can pay really high salaries, right? It’s just like, I need you to do this thing. So, and this is, and I’m going to pay you very well to do this thing quickly. I need you to solve problems quickly so that we can make, so that we can scale and make all of this. And, and I think I’ve just found that there’s, um, it’s transactional and it’s also the culture tends to be, oh, here’s the roadmap and this is how we solve it. So even though I think one of the great things about tech is there’s a lot of space for ambiguity, there’s not much patience for relationship building.

MARK WRIGHT 53:31

And let’s face it. If you’re a startup or you are. You know, trying to please the shareholders and you’re developing new products. It really is all about fixing the problem to get the product to market, right? So, it’s, and super intense, pressure. Um, Julie, I, I, this has been so much fun spending time with you. Do you have just sort of a summary statement of, of, uh, of your, your body of work and, and what you’re most proud of in this space?

DR. JULIE PHAM 53:57

Curiosity as a practice. If we want to have other people learn from us, we have to be willing to learn from them. And we also have to take the time to slow down and learn about ourselves as well.

MARK WRIGHT 54:14

Julie, when I was younger in my life, I came to a point where I realized I was wasting a ton of mental energy by trying to figure out what the motive was of other people and it was literally exhausting and I just came to the point in my life because you know I did it with family members, I did it with coworkers, people I didn’t even know. Uh, and what I realized is I got to a point where I just basically said, Mark, give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Assume that they have good intentions. And when they prove you wrong, cross that bridge when you cross it. But if, you know, but I realized that by creating that as sort of a credo in my life, it was so freeing and it took so much mental baggage and energy off my plate. Um, does that, does that play into, to your process of, of curiosity?

DR. JULIE PHAM 55:08

So, I’ll make a slight reframe there. Because I think that sometimes when we can say, oh, assume good intentions. And what that means is, I’m not going to think about this anymore, and I’m not going to learn what the intention was. I think that the difference between good intentions and bad intentions often is, I like this person, I don’t like this person, right? Because two people can do the same thing, but I like one person, I don’t like the other person, so the first person who I like has good intentions, and the person who I don’t like has bad intentions. And both t so we’ll excuse the person with good intentions. Didn’t mean it. And with a person with bad intentions, we might get really upset and we don’t say anything, or we may, might say something. What we don’t do is try to understand what the intention was. Oh, so you did this thing. Could you tell me what was that? You know, what were you thinking at the time, or what did that mean, or I didn’t understand. Can you explain some more? And so, I think it’s actually about understanding the intention versus just characterizing it as good or bad.

MARK WRIGHT 56:14

So don’t just keep it at the surface. Try to dig a little deeper to understand what the actual intention was and to deal with that leads to greater understanding.

DR. JULIE PHAM 56:23

Because that’s where, oh my gosh. When I’ve had those conversations, I’ve been amazed by people’s logic. Oh, that’s what you meant. I never would have known that. And I wouldn’t have known if I just said, oh, they didn’t mean it.

MARK WRIGHT 56:38

Well, that’s awesome. I love learning new things. Uh, Dr. Julie Pham, this has been so much fun. Um, if people want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way to, to connect?

DR. JULIE PHAM 56:48

Please, I’m most active on LinkedIn, so you can find me there. You can also go to curiositybase.com. And we also have lots of videos on the Curiosity Base YouTube channel as well.

MARK WRIGHT 57:02

Okay. Well, thanks for taking the time to be on the show, and thank you for the lessons and the wisdom. So nice to spend time with you. Thank you.

DR. JULIE PHAM 57:10

Thank you so much, Mark.

MARK WRIGHT 57:11

I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORKP2P family. New episodes drop every Monday. And if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING. Where we are winning the game of work.