 Welcome back to the Creative Life from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter, brought to you by Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Blyse. Joining me today is guest Christina Piukka to talk about how to live and lead fascinated. Christina is an executive leadership coach, an adjunct professor, and an author who is passionate about the ancient call to action, know thyself. She also serves as the honorary vice consul of Finland for the state of Washington. Welcome, Christina. Mahalo, Phyllis. Oh, good. How would you say that in Finnish? Kitos. Okay. I'm not going to try to say that, but while we're in Finnish, I was looking into you a bit more today and your vice consulship for Finland, and I see that you were benighted a couple years ago. You'll be our first night on this show, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit of what that was all about. Thank you, Phyllis. It was such an honor. This is an honor to be here, but the honor that was bestowed on me by the president of Finland is called the Nighthood of the Order of the White Rose, and it's awarded to people who have served their country in some distinguished way. In my case, I've been an honorary consul, honorary vice consul for Finland for over a decade, and do you want to see how it looks? Yes, please. So here it is. This is the medal I got from the president of Finland. That is a lot. Our first woman consul, our first consul, and there's just a lot there I'd like all of us to know and dip into. It's pretty, and a night, our first night. So all that said, let's jump into your show, which is very exciting to me. We're calling it Live and Lead Fascinated. What is that all about? Where does that idea come from? Phyllis, I've been a leadership coach for two decades now, and from the very first training that I got as a coach, as a life coach, we were instructed to get really curious about our clients, almost like you when you are interviewing your guests or a journalist who gets to interview their guests or clients in one way or another. I understood pretty early on that I have to really involve myself to a very high degree of curiosity, and I started to call it curiosity on steroids in order to really embrace that curiosity that brings people's true essence into the conversation that I was having with them as a coach, and then that developed into understanding that the shortcut for getting curious is actually expanded version of it, and I call it Be Fascinated, and then that led me into understanding that if you really want a fulfilled life, you need to live fascinated. It works for everyone, not just for coaches. OK, so now those are generic terms, live fascinated, but I have a feeling that there's a whole lot behind that, and I'm wondering either give us an example of how you use this idea or just give us some of the principles or parameters for being curious on steroids, which you call being fascinated. Let's talk about that first. Let's talk about that. So I had an aha moment a while ago when I was working in the International Women's Management Institute, and in the leadership team, we all had different backgrounds, different degrees from the university, and we had this conversation on our strategy and what we are going to be in the global field of leadership development. One of the members of our team was our executive assistant who had not gone to university, but was a brilliant young woman. And she was listening to our conversation for a while, and then she said, hey, hold on. What are you all talking about? Can someone explain to me and define the concepts that you are using in this conversation? We all stopped and with that question, that direct question, we realized that we had used, you know, jargon from our disciplines and the concepts that were not the same in each of the disciplines. We were actually making things more complex than needed to be and more vague for everyone else in the room. So we have a slide of that that I think you said her name is Heidi. So, Michael, let's take a look at Heidi Heidi. She's the woman who inspired the aha for you for executive accomplished women. She's sitting in the room and she says, what? She asked us like, what are you talking about? She asked good questions. And you know what, Heidi, when she went to get her PhD in business strategy and management, I told her this, Heidi, never, ever stop asking your so-called stupid questions. Because in those questions that are coming from total curiosity and wanting to understand, you open up the world and you help everybody else in the room to understand what's going on even better. So that becomes the rule number one for living fascinated and especially when you're leading, fascinated. OK, so that's interesting. I mean, this is not, this is not high, you know, high level scientific discussion. You're talking about asking a lot of questions, reminds me of the book, everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten or, you know, that kind of thing. What you said, it's especially important for leadership. My experience as leaders usually tell they don't ask. So give us the secret sauce there to how you're coaching leaders with this view of being, and is it, is that you're telling them to ask questions rather than have answers? How does that look? Yeah, you nailed it. However, you know, asking questions. Well, let me first say this, the best leaders that I've worked with, the greatest leaders who I've worked with ask a lot of questions and they are not ashamed to ask those stupid questions that Heidi taught me to ask. And they they are excellent inquirers. They have an inquiring mind. However, there's a danger in one particular question. Do you want to know what it is? I do. Absolutely. It is the the one and only why question. Why questions are fine when you are nailing into a strategy document and asking why, why, why? And there are methodologies to ask why when you when you are defining a an approach, but asking a why question of a person who is at a lower hierarchy than you puts them into defensive and they will not be able to answer your question. Why did you do this in a way that makes them empowered and wanting to share why they did things? So I always alert leaders to be aware of the dangers of making someone feel like you are you are into interrogating them. You tell you say that word. It's hard for me interrogating them rather than rather than being honestly, authentically, genuinely curious about them. So OK, but let me let me just see if I'm keeping up here on the the first principle is asking a lot of questions. It sounds like you're shifting the role of a leader from being that the proverbial know it all to the maybe the learn it all. I've probably heard that from you. So that's that would take a lot of pressure off of the leader. If they walk into a room with just that curiosity and asking questions, they're they're in there pulling the gifts out of the people in the room. And then you're saying, however, because they have that hierarchical often position unless they're following a lot of several other forms of management styles will not go in today. But the traditional hierarchical, at least if they're just paying someone's check, their wages, they they're sitting in a position of power. Once they they interrupt the flow of the Q&A and say, why did you do that? It then puts a person on the spot and it sort of diffuses the generative nature, the popcorn brainstorming. Oh, I did this in this in the. How can you, though, ask the why without it freezing them into wondering if they're now being judged and they need to shut up? Yes, it's a way around it. There's a good way around it, and it goes back to the how question. So if you in your mind, when you want to ask a why question of someone, this also applies to your kids, you know, for parents. This is good advice as well. So if you can change your why question into a how, like, how did you how did you arrive to this decision? Or can you help me understand your thought process for, you know, doing it this way or deciding to, you know, finish the or complete the the job this way. So just in that way, you sit like next to them. You like a pair. You you you are trying to understand their process rather than pointing out that there's probably something that you did wrong because you approached it that way. And now I'm going to let you tell me. A little bit what you were trying to do. And then I point to what you did wrong. Right. So you're getting into the process questions as so if I were to say to you so like I did. So, Christina, how how did you come to this idea of living fascinated and and and then you took me to the story of Heidi. And then so so two things come out of that for all of us. If we're thinking about how we extract some lessons learned here through your model of coaching leaders, how we can coach ourselves, how we can tap into our own creativity. It almost sounds like you're you're activating that tried and true method of getting into story, talking story. As I understand it in creativity, our brains are really wired for story. And so you're inviting them to tell a story, not defend themselves. And yeah. And then the story feels fun, familiar. And then you said that puts you on the same side of the table, partnering with each other rather than interrogating each other. All about connecting, OK, standing rather than being threatening. OK, so that's a collegial atmosphere in the room. And the and you know, I think leaders can sometimes be even uncomfortable asking questions. It can make them maybe they think they're feeling stupid or uncreative. And if they're asking questions, should they have already known it? And you're saying absolutely not. I think you said something like great leaders or great listeners, great leaders are great question, you know, have a lot of curiosity. To me, in our interviews, you've redefined the metrics for a great leader. It sounds more like a byproduct of what you're doing rather than the goal. I love how you point that out. Absolutely. And because in the process of really authentically, genuinely being curious about someone's point of view, experience or thought process. You kind of forget yourself. You can't hold the worry about your own status or how you come across or what other people think about you. When you are asking genuine questions about the other person and you throw yourself into really wanting to know and understand them in that moment and in that way, you empower the other person, you make them feel seen and heard and even in a way appreciated for their contribution. They become a part of your tribe and you are in this together. So that, you know, that makes it sound like fun, actually. Sitting in together and then sharing story and perhaps something else is going on, not only in the mind of your colleague who you are questioning. What does that do for the shy leader or the not self-confident leader? Are there some takeaways and some some help that comes out of asking questions or a traditional leader has to come in, command control? And then, you know, they even say that great actors get stage fright. Right. And that you hear that story a lot. These people who who seem they were like they were born to speak. And then they're very afraid to speak. What what is going on in this leader that might be helping the leader as well personally? It goes back to what Carol Tweck talks about in her book, Mindset. Going back to the idea of moving from fixed mindset to a learning growth mindset. And you mentioned the learn it all, you know, moving from know it needing to be the know it all to the learn it all. And it sort of relaxes everybody around the leader, leader and leaders when there is an opening for creativity. And with that bond that comes out of allowing more exploration all around that can actually turn into innovation, innovative minds, innovative results out of the more open and relaxed minds that people have. Because asking questions in a sort of an open minded way opens creativity and then everybody can kind of participate and build on each other's ideas. And it's just creates more collaboration and from that collaboration, we can actually find some new gems of innovative thinking. Got it. And it also seems like you have an outward looking focus as the leader rather than worrying about what you're going to say or how you're going to say it or how you're looking. I mean, that's that's just not even important. You can walk into the room, not worried about that at all. You walk into the room with this curiosity like you could as a kid and you start asking questions and all of a sudden it's outward looking and then tensions off yourself and you can relax, whether you're at a dinner party, you know, speak, you know, in a conference in a board board meeting. And even a review, you know, performance reviews, many of the clients of mine, executives who give performance reviews to their employees and their team members, you know, they are telling their colleagues what they are seeing. How about if you create an atmosphere where you are exploring together with questions like, you know, let's see why this might have been showing up in the in the in the review. And, you know, let's explore it rather than rather than tell what the what the employee is doing right or wrong. It's an opportunity to ask a lot of questions rather than draw conclusions and make somehow life more boxed in in a, you know, sort of a certain way. Let's keep it open and explorative exploratory. I see. And so, you know, you've been doing this for over 20 years. You have a model and a process. Do you ever go in and observe leaders in their usual roles? And then you unfab with them later on in one on ones. How long do you and how long would maybe a coaching gig be with? I know I don't even have I don't know the names of your clients. I don't know if you're even allowed to say. But I know you've been working with top CEOs around the world. And and so what is that like to introduce this live, fascinate, live in leading, fascinated? What are some of your actions? So let me go back to how you introduced me in the very beginning, like going back to being curious about yourself, know thyself. That's the first level of work that I do with executives. And what that means is that the more self-awareness a leader or any one of us has the more clarity there is in the way of being in the world, as well as communicating and because leadership kind of manifests in the way how we communicate in the organization and with other people in relationship, more clarity, the better. The next step is then to really focus on that being fascinated about the other and the more fascinated you are about the other, more inclusive you become. Because then you find empathy for the other when you come to the conversation with other people with that extended explosive fascination. But the third level of that is to be fascinated about the relationship. And when you create the conditions for the relationship opening up to being also in this space open for exploration, asking questions like how do we make this relationship safe for us even when it's tough? If you have some of those agreements to create a partnership and alliance with each other it's going to be so much more relaxing to be in that relationship when you approach it with the same kind of open-minded non-judgmental curiosity that I call being fascinated. So know thyself, you know you remind me there is a there is a guru Jesuit priest and counselor for the religious his name is Father Anthony DeMello and he has there's a there's a book of the recording of his trainings at Fordham University in 1987 and one of the things that he tells the group is he said you know when I was training to be a psychotherapist my teacher told me to tape our interviews and he said you know what I learned I learned that it was more important to listen to me in reviewing the tapes and what I was saying then listening to the person I was counseling and that is just that is so I you know I had to like stop the recording when I was watching that and I thought how can that be I mean I as a lawyer myself I would let I let go over and over the notes I took so I really heard what the client said and you know I put I put a huge amount of focus on the client and did I miss anything and I wasn't taught in law school or elsewhere put just as much focus on you in being curious about you listen to you and you'll have more to learn and it's it's still still a tough concept for me and yet you're after all of this time and the people you've talked to you're you're going back to basics here on Socrates know thyself and is there a book in progress about all of this is there some we can do besides watching this this interview and we can go to your website which I'll flash in a few minutes but is there also going to be a book coming out tell us the best things in life are very simple it's easier to live life well lived when you can follow principles that are simple and straightforward and easy to remember that's why I have kind of boiled down all all I know in life and in my profession to live and lead fascinated because it encapsulates everything so of course I'm also trying to finish my book that I've been writing for a while and hopefully I can write more about it I would love to see it I know you have quite a few YouTube's out there and trainings and people can look at your website and sign up for that so I we want more Christina and I really appreciate today and what I'm going to do is I'm going to call the call it the show for right now we'll have to leave it here and I want to let our viewers know that you have been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii today I have been discussing how to live and lead fascinated with our guest Christina Hiyuka and mahalo to you for joining us Christina for you joining us and on Phyllis Bleece and we'll be back in two weeks for another edition of The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii Aloha