CHAPTER 5 Curiosity s a context for coaching, curiosity may be the quality that starts the process and the energy that keeps it going. The most effective coaches seem to be naturally curious and to have developed their curiosity in a way that opens doors and windows for clients. Being genuinely curious and eager to play with whatever shows up is at the heart of a Co-Active coaching relationship. A A Different Way of Asking Curiosity starts with a question. The interesting thing about a question is that it automatically causes us to start looking. For example, when you read the question, "Is it cold or hot outside today?" chances are that you instantly started thinking about the weather in your town. We have this Pavlovian response to a question. It nearly always throws us in the direc- tion of the question, looking for an answer. Simply posing the question shifts the focus of the conversation. Being curious has the same effect. Coaches naturally draw their clients' attention to those things they both become curious about--like what clients are most enthusiastic about or what gets in the way of having that every day. And yet, being curious about these aspects of a client's life is not the same as gathering informa- tion. Curiosity is a different way of discovering. Our experience in school trained us to gather information by asking specific questions that enable us to deduce answers. In that environment, 63