Sitting in a work meeting today, a co-worker was describing a presentation he had given and the immediate dismissive response he had gotten from another teammate. While my coworker was clearly a little disappointed in this rejection and disagreed with that teammate’s opinion, I was struck by how he described that negative opinion. He didn’t say it was bad, or foolish, or stupid, or uninformed, or anything else critical or judgmental that way. Instead, he said this:

“A more curious response might have been…”

I love this, because I think it gets to the heart of the issue, which isn’t about the right-ness or wrong-ness of someone’s judgment of an issue. It gets to the person’s willingness to set aside their instinct and judgment for just a moment and consider that the other person just might have a point worth considering.

I want to remember that critique - both for times when it’s an appropriate way to describe others, and when it might be an appropriate way to describe myself.

Ted Lasso’s “Be curious, not judgmental” dictum from the best scene in the whole series has, at least in my circles, been overplayed to the point of becoming trite. Still… it’s wisdom worth remembering.