In a recent episode of The Table, I sat down with Dr. Keba Rogers, psychologist, educator, and founder of Keba Speaks, LLC and Rooted, Resilient, Rising LLC, for the third conversation in our four-part series on her Grace, Growth, and Greatness framework. After exploring grace and extending compassion to ourselves and others in previous episodes, we turned our attention to something that often gets overlooked in the daily rush of school leadership: curiosity.
Dr. Rogers described curiosity as “one of the most underrated leadership tools,” and as we talked, I found myself thinking about how often school leaders default to judgment or assumption rather than genuine inquiry. In an environment where we’re expected to have answers, make quick decisions, and project confidence, asking questions can feel like admitting weakness. But what if curiosity is actually the bridge between defensiveness and connection, between reacting and responding?
This conversation offered practical insights for school leaders who want to lead with both firmness and kindness, who want to build trust without sacrificing standards, and who recognize that sustainable leadership requires more than just having the right answers.
The Busyness That Makes Us Forget Our Tools
Dr. Rogers opened with a metaphor that resonated deeply: “The busyness of life makes us forget that we have certain tools. It’s almost like we just keep trying to survive. We forget, you remember Linus with his cloud of dust? We just have a cloud of tools followed just behind, like we forget and we have to pause and go back sometimes and say, wait a minute, I do know how to do this.”
In the constant motion of school leadership (managing crises, attending meetings, responding to parent emails, supporting faculty, overseeing curriculum), we often operate in survival mode. We reach for what’s familiar and fast rather than what’s most effective. Curiosity requires slowing down just enough to ask genuine questions, and when you’re juggling seventeen priorities simultaneously, that pause can feel like a luxury you can’t afford.
But here’s what Dr. Rogers helped me understand: curiosity isn’t about learning for learning’s sake. It’s about improving our execution and impact. When we take time to genuinely understand the populations we serve, we enhance our interactions and service to them. When we learn about the history of processes and procedures, we avoid repeating mistakes. When we learn about the people we work with, we collaborate more effectively.
Why We Default to Judgment
When I asked Dr. Rogers why school leaders so often default to judgment instead of curiosity, she didn’t pull punches. “We think we already have the answers. If we already have the answers, asking questions exposes that we actually don’t have the answers and we don’t know. And we spend so much time trying to present this facade of perfection.”
This hit home for me. Leadership positions come with an expectation of expertise. When you’re promoted to dean, division head, or head of school, there’s an implicit assumption that you have the knowledge and experience to guide others. Asking questions, especially in front of faculty or parents, can feel like revealing that you don’t belong in the role.
Dr. Rogers continued: “If I start asking questions, then not only will you know that I don’t know, but whoever else is in the room will also have clarity on the fact that I don’t know. And that’s what I’m trying to avoid because I want to save my ego.”
We protect who people think we are. In that moment of protection, we discount other people’s stories, perspectives, and expertise. And while we might think we’re maintaining authority, we’re actually undermining trust and missing opportunities to make better decisions with more complete information.
The traditional model of leadership tells us we should look like we’re in charge, act like we’re in charge, project confidence at all times. But you can be in charge and not know something. In fact, acknowledging what you don’t know and asking questions demonstrates a different kind of strength: the strength to prioritize truth over ego, outcomes over appearance.
The Cost of Pretending to Know
Dr. Rogers shared a powerful story from her own experience facilitating a workshop for about 175 faculty members. Someone asked her a question about a change in law, and she couldn’t remember the specific detail in that moment. Rather than pretending or deflecting, she said, “You know what, I can’t remember if… let me look that up and I’ll get back to you.”
She described the collective gasp in the room. People were shocked that she admitted not knowing something. But here’s what happened next: it gave everyone else permission to do the same. It normalized the reality that no one has every answer at their fingertips, and that taking time to verify information is far more professional than confidently sharing something inaccurate.
This kind of modeling matters enormously in school cultures. When leaders demonstrate that it’s safe to say “I don’t know, let me find out,” they create environments where teachers feel comfortable admitting when they need support, where mistakes become learning opportunities rather than failures, and where collaborative problem-solving can flourish.
The alternative, pretending to know, creates cultures where people are afraid to ask questions, where errors go unreported until they become crises, and where innovation stalls because no one wants to reveal they’re trying something new.
Practical Strategies: From Judgment to Curiosity
Dr. Rogers offered a concrete framework for shifting from judgment to curiosity: “Notice judgment, pause, empathize, and then reframe.”
Notice Judgment
The first step is recognizing when you’re in judgment mode. What does that feel like? Often it’s a sense of certainty, a quick conclusion about someone’s motivations or competence, an internal narrative that sounds like “they should have…” or “why can’t they just…” or “this is obviously because…”
These moments of certainty are your cue to pause. Not every judgment is wrong, but hasty judgments often are.
Pause
Dr. Rogers acknowledged the resistance here: “People say, ‘But Dr. Keba, I don’t have time to pause.’ And I say, either we’re going to make time in the beginning and try to respond instead of react, or we’re going to really react at the end. And now we’re going to have to pick up the pieces of the fallout from this situation.”
The pause doesn’t have to be long. It can be three seconds before you respond to an email. It can be saying, “Let me think about that and get back to you this afternoon” instead of answering immediately. It can be taking a breath before you respond to a challenging parent or address a faculty concern.
That small pause creates space for curiosity to emerge. It interrupts the automatic pathway from stimulus to judgment to reaction.
Empathize
This is where curiosity becomes active. Dr. Rogers suggested several questions to guide this process:
- What’s going on that I don’t understand?
- What are the pressures that might be there that I’m not seeing?
- What are some of the perspectives, systemic barriers, or circumstances occurring that I may not be thinking about?
- How would I interpret the situation if I assumed positive intent?
- If I assumed this person was trying to do better, or trying to do well, or really doing their best, how would my interpretation of the situation change?
Understanding doesn’t mean agreeing. You can understand why a teacher is struggling with classroom management without accepting that students are being poorly served. You can understand why a parent is frustrated without changing your decision. But that understanding creates the foundation for productive conversation rather than defensive conflict.
Reframe
The final step is taking that new understanding and reframing the situation. Instead of “This teacher isn’t following the curriculum,” you might reframe to “This teacher is struggling to implement a new curriculum while managing some classroom challenges. What support do they need?” Instead of “This parent is being unreasonable,” you might reframe to “This parent is deeply worried about their child and doesn’t feel heard. How can I address their core concern?”
Reframing doesn’t change the facts, but it changes your approach. It opens up solutions that weren’t visible when you were operating from judgment.
The Questions That Create Space for Growth
Throughout our conversation, Dr. Rogers emphasized the power of simple, genuine questions:
- “Tell me more about that.”
- “How did you come to that conclusion?”
- “Explain your thinking about this situation.”
These phrases sound deceptively simple, but they’re remarkably powerful. They communicate respect for the other person’s perspective. They acknowledge that you don’t have complete information. They create space for understanding before action.
Dr. Rogers contrasted this with what we often do instead: “We say things like, ‘Well, I know you’re thinking blah, blah, blah.’ You might be right, but they might also have a whole other thing they’re thinking.”
When we assume we know what someone else is thinking or feeling, we shut down dialogue. When we ask, we open it up. The difference seems small, but the impact on relationships, trust, and collaborative problem-solving is enormous.
Behavior Is Communication
One of the most practical insights from our conversation was Dr. Rogers’ reminder that “behavior is communication.” She gave a striking example: “When someone has a difficult interaction at work and they don’t show up the next day, they are out sick. Please understand that is directly correlated to that difficult interaction.”
Most leaders struggle to acknowledge this correlation. It feels uncomfortable to connect someone’s absence with a conversation or decision from the previous day. But behavior tells us something, and curiosity means asking what that something is.
When a reliable teacher suddenly starts missing deadlines, when a usually engaged student becomes withdrawn, when a collaborative colleague becomes defensive, these behavioral shifts are communicating something. Curiosity prompts us to investigate rather than judge, to ask what’s changed rather than assume what’s wrong.
The question Dr. Rogers posed is crucial: “What is this person’s behavior telling me? What is the behavior communicating?”
This doesn’t mean accepting all behavior or abandoning standards. It means recognizing that behavior has meaning, and understanding that meaning helps you respond effectively rather than simply enforce consequences.
The Questions That Build Empathy
Dr. Rogers offered five questions that help bridge the gap from judgment to curiosity, from reaction to empathy:
- What questions can you ask to learn the perspective of the other person before entering your own into the conversation? This embodies the principle of “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It requires discipline to genuinely listen before formulating your response or sharing your perspective.
- How do we prioritize active listening? Active listening isn’t just waiting for your turn to talk. It’s focusing on understanding what the other person is actually saying, not just preparing your rebuttal or solution.
- How do we strengthen our connection with the person? Dr. Rogers brought back “the other C word” from a previous conversation: collaboration. Strengthening connection enables collaboration. When people feel genuinely heard and understood, they’re more willing to work together toward solutions.
- What can this moment teach me about my own assumptions and triggers? This is the question we most often skip. When someone’s behavior agitates us, what does that tell us about ourselves? What does it reveal about the way we’re engaging with others? This kind of self-reflection is uncomfortable but essential for growth.
- What does this tell me about the way that I’m engaging with other people and what other people bring that really bothers me? And then what can I do about that? This moves from awareness to action. It’s not enough to recognize your triggers; you need to develop strategies for managing them so they don’t compromise your leadership.
Leading with Both Firmness and Kindness
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Dr. Rogers how curiosity helps us lead with both firmness and kindness. This felt particularly important because we’re losing kindness in educational spaces. The pressures on schools, the polarization in communities, the intensity of social media discourse all of these have eroded our collective capacity for kindness without sacrificing our commitment to standards and excellence.
Dr. Rogers pointed out that we haven’t just been losing kindness, we’ve lost it. “We’ve forgotten what it means to actually not only be kind to others, but what it means to receive kindness from others.”
Curiosity helps us reclaim kindness because it interrupts the automatic judgments that shut down compassionate responses. When you take time to understand why a teacher is struggling, you can be firm about expectations while being kind in how you support them. When you understand why a parent is frustrated, you can maintain your boundaries while treating them with dignity and respect.
Firmness without kindness creates compliance at best, resentment at worst. Kindness without firmness creates chaos and enables dysfunction. Curiosity helps us hold both: understanding the person while maintaining the standard, respecting the struggle while expecting growth, acknowledging the challenge while holding the line.
Reclaiming Your Cloud of Tools
As we wrapped up our conversation, I kept returning to Dr. Rogers’ opening metaphor about Linus and his cloud of dust, the tools trailing behind us that we forget to pick up in our rush forward.
Curiosity is one of those tools. We all have it. We all know how to ask genuine questions, how to listen with the intent to understand, how to approach situations with openness rather than assumptions. But in the daily press of responsibilities and the performance pressure of leadership roles, we forget.
This conversation reminded me that reclaiming curiosity isn’t about learning something new. It’s about remembering what we already know, slowing down just enough to ask before we assume, to inquire before we judge, to understand before we decide.
The most powerful aspect of curiosity as a leadership tool is that it’s immediately available. You don’t need budget approval or board support or professional development training to start asking better questions. You can begin in your next conversation, your next meeting, your next difficult decision.
Notice judgment. Pause. Empathize. Reframe.
And remember that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign that you’re prioritizing truth over ego, relationships over expedience, and sustainable solutions over quick fixes.
Dr. Rogers reminded us that curiosity is a way of leading with empathy. In a profession where we’re responsible for the learning and development of others, this seems foundational. We can’t create environments where students are encouraged to be curious, to ask questions, to admit what they don’t know if we’re not modeling that same curiosity ourselves.
The schools that thrive are the schools where leaders create space for inquiry, where questions are valued alongside answers, where understanding is pursued before judgment is rendered. These aren’t soft skills or nice-to-haves. They’re the foundation of cultures where everyone can learn and grow, where mistakes become opportunities rather than threats, and where both students and adults can show up fully and authentically.
That’s the kind of leadership our schools need. And it starts with curiosity.
