Curiosity Needs a Cat

In today's world, it's time to get curious.

Most people treat curiosity as a soft skill. Something we encourage in children and dust off in brainstorming sessions. In my work with founders and executives, curiosity behaves differently. It is not gentle. It is a precision tool. Sometimes it is the only thing that cuts through the noise. And the excuses.

When I coach, curiosity begins with a pressure test. Why now? Why this audience? Why should anyone care beyond the features? Data can’t answer that. Templates can’t answer that. Curiosity can because it refuses the first version of the story. It keeps digging until intention and truth sit in the same place, like a stubborn detective. Many leaders never reach that place because they stop digging the moment it gets uncomfortable.

A consultant friend spent months polishing his offer. Beautiful site. Careful branding. All the trimmings. Yet he still couldn’t articulate the problem he was trying to solve. Not because he lacked intelligence but because clarity forces confrontation. So he avoided it and met consequences. Months lost. Momentum gone. Curiosity would have saved him all of that. It finally did. But only when he allowed himself to be challenged instead of hiding behind his own polish.

So, how can we get curious when brainstorming for a pitch, presentation or any kind of context that requires messages to get passed on in a way that meets their target?

Here is a tool I use. I call it CAT. Simple. Brutal. Effective. CAT stands for: Context. Audience. Tension. Most people skip these steps and then wonder why their message collapses the moment someone asks a hard question. What's important is the way we ask questions in these 3 areas.

Context is the environment you are speaking into. The market forces. The timing. The stakes. Dig around with the notion of playing opposite a devil's advocate. What have I missed, underestimated or gotten wrong? What would a skeptical insider in this space say that I'm blind to?

Audience is the human reality. Who are they? What are their hierarchies? Their cultures. Their thresholds for risk. What's the web that influences them? What are they asking themselves before they give you their time? What was their day like before entering the space before you?

Tension is the core. It's the conflict, the block, the unmet need, the fears, both practically and professionally and often even personally, for your audience. These layers rarely line up. Curiosity forces you to see the gap instead of decorating it.

CAT works. But only if you’re willing to look at the parts of your work that don’t flatter you. Many don't, and they lose time because of it.

My coaching is not about adding techniques. It is about unsettling the assumptions that keep a message safe and therefore forgettable. In a noisy market, the curious communicator isn’t louder. They are sharper. They notice what others don’t. They say what others won’t.

Four ways curiosity shapes my work with leaders.

• Curiosity as a filter. It isolates the one truth buried under a mountain of information. That takes digging to get there.

• Curiosity as design. It builds the architecture behind a message long before the slides exist. That takes discipline to get there.

• Curiosity as courage. It forces people to say the thing they’ve been avoiding and makes the whole story stronger. That takes resolve to get there.

• Curiosity as an advantage. Original questions create original voices. Everything else sounds like recycled LinkedIn coaching. That takes patience and determination to get there.

Curiosity is not decoration. It is the shortest path from complexity to clarity. And clarity is what separates leaders from performers.

Let me finish with this. Curiosity is disruptive because it turns inward, too. Why am I really on a platform like LinkedIn? What do I think engagement proves? What am I chasing? What am I avoiding? And why do certain posts trigger comparisons I pretend not to feel?

Curiosity is the discipline of knowing your own motives. For any entrepreneur, that is the real frontier. The one most people never cross.