Radical Curiosity with Seth Goldenberg

The Evolving Leader

Today co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Seth Goldenberg. Seth is a designer, activist, author, curator, and entrepreneur who harnesses the power of questioning to catalyse innovation and cultural change. He is the founder and CEO of Curiosity & Co., exploring, designing, and building flourishing futures through a design-venture studio, an experience laboratory, Ideas Salons as thought-leader retreats that tackle the essential questions of our time. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Wired, The Chronicle for Higher Education, Providence Journal and the Boston Globe.
Seth’s book ‘Radical Curiosity, Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures’ was published in 2022.
Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)
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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Capitole

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Why do you think there is a decline in curiosity and why should we be talking about this right now? (00:05:22)

3. How do you get past that initial resistance to what you’re saying? (00:09:02)

4. In your book you provide the reader with a comprehensive way of thinking about how to increase their curiosity. Could you set out the underlying framework for your methodology? (00:13:39)

5. As we experience legacy narratives being challenged by challenger narratives or new emerging narratives, how do you see this playing out in your work? (00:18:20)

6. We’re also seeing (what feels like) ‘more people doubling down on their certainty’ which seems to be pushing left and right further apart and curiosity is collapsing in the middle. What are your thoughts? (00:20:32)

7. Education in the West prioritises knowing over curiosity. How far upstream do we need to go culturally to shift that? (00:25:47)

8. How do we open ourselves up to greater exposure to diverse experiences and how do you deal with the feelings of vulnerability when you’re with people who are not like you? (00:32:50)

9. Can you give us an example of when you have extended your social boundaries? (00:39:22)

10. In your book you say that ‘metacognition is the most important skill of the 21st century’. Can you unpack that for us? (00:41:20)

11. Could you share a couple of things that you are helping organisations do to find these future values that they need to embrace? (00:49:04)

12. You talk about the death of dialogue being one of the enemies of curiosity. Could you give us an insight into how you get that dialogue going particularly when there are competing interests? (00:55:51)