Want to catch up to Curious Now? On this page, you can find every Curious Now “Workout of the Week” since Episode 1. Listen above, or follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube!
Curious Now Episode 1: Foundations of Good Judgment
Workout of the Week: Begin a practice of mentally noting when you are judging. Don’t judge your own judging, but just observe neutrally when it happens.
Curious Now Episode 2: Hidden Standards Behind Your Judgment
Workout of the Week: When you notice that you have a judgment or a complaint, ask yourself, what’s the standard I have that isn’t being met here?
Curious Now Episode 3: Freight Train of Emotions
Workout of the Week: When you have a complaint about someone’s performance or how they are acting compared to your standards, name the emotions that you are feeling when the standard is violated.
Curious Now Episode 4: “Are you an Idiot?!”
Workout of the Week: Think back to your judgments from week 1. What was another person doing that made no sense by your standards? Get curious and think about… what might their standard have been in that moment? Why did their actions make sense to them?
Curious Now Episode 5: WTF to WTF
Workout of the Week: React, reset, and get curious. When someone does something you don’t understand, name your reaction, reset yourself, then get curious about what’s going on for them.
Curious Now Episode 6: Surviving Psychological Contract Breaches
Workout of the Week: Look out for thoughts like “I thought you were going to…” or “It’s not fair that…”. Did you actually agree to a standard with this person, or did you just think it to yourself? Much like your mental noting, counting your judging, how often is this happening? Are there repeats or patterns? Tell us what you found.
Curious Now Episode 7: “I wouldn’t run them over in the parking lot…”
Workout of the Week: This is almost the opposite of our first exercise of noticing when you judge… instead notice when you make a generous inference, and take a look at what permitted it (was it something about your state, your relationship with the person, something about them, or the situation that allowed you to do it)?
Curious Now Episode 8: The Feedback Dilemma
Workout of the Week: Before you have a feedback conversation, use the Feedback pre-think chart to ask yourself, what am I feeling about this conversation, and what is my goal for it?
Curious Now Episode 9: What are We Listening For?
Workout of the Week: Notice yourself listening – are you listening to understand or listening to respond? How does your body feel different in these two modes? Experiment with switching modes – most will find the switch from listening to respond to listening to understand most informative.
Curious Now Episode 10: Little Acts of Genius
Workout of the Week: This week’s leadership rep is all about decoding the mystery. Here’s your mental gym circuit. Think of something someone did recently that caught your attention. It could be amazing, puzzling, or a “Why on earth would they do that?” moment. Name the action. Then name the result. What was the behavior? And what happened next? Now generate 2–3 possible frames they might have held that would make that action make perfect sense.
Curious Now Episode 11: You May Be Right, You May Be Crazy
Workout of the Week: When you have a thought like: this is the answer, this is the way the world works, train yourself to say, ‘What could I be missing?’ and sit with that thought.
Curious Now Episode 12: The Greatest Obstacle to Effective Learning Conversations
Workout of the Week: Pick one upcoming conversation where you might usually guard your true intentions. Before entering, come up with a transparent statement that reflects your real feelings or concerns. Ask yourself: Which small, honest disclosure might change the dynamic of our interaction? Do a scene assessment: what is happening around me that makes me feel like I can’t share that honestly?
Curious Now Episode 13: How We Talk Shapes the Way We Work
Workout of the Week: Choose one inclusive prompt to use regularly– two weeks ago we asked ourselves, this week, ask the group: “Who sees this differently?” or “What am I not noticing?”
Curious Now Episode 14: Transforming Toxic Culture One Conversation at a Time
Workout of the Week: In a conversation, share your point of view and follow up with a genuine, open inquiry about the other person’s perspective.
Curious Now Episode 15: Scaling Good Judgment to Your Team
Workout of the Week: Notice when you are triggered (something happens and you notice that there is some way in which you are over-reacting—ashamed, spiraling, etc.) and note it down. Data collection mode: what/where/when, not why.
Later we can categorize (see trends, what meaning do I make from it, how do I interpret it, not mistaking my meaning making for absolute truth…) What meaning are you making of them?
Curious Now Episode 16: Amy Edmondson, Creating Psych Safety Special
No Workout
Curious Now Episode 17: Behind the Scenes Debrief
Workout of the Week: Send us your feedback on the podcast so far to curiousnow@harvardmedsim.org!
Curious Now Episode 18: A Deep Dive into Psychologically Safe Conversations
Workout of the Week: Observe for conversations where you feel unclear—what was the point of this meeting, why are we having this conversation, what are our goals of care for this patient?
Curious Now Episode 19: What They Aren’t Saying
Workout of the Week: Use the subject line of your emails to practice more clearly telling what the purpose of the conversation is.
Curious Now Episode 20: Making Leadership More Fair
Workout of the Week: Note when you have gone up the ladder of inference to a conclusion about a person and perhaps lost track of the data that led you there. Then, go back down and incorporate the data into an observation. Example: “She was defensive” is an inference or conclusion. Go back down the ladder to the data and turn it into an observation: “I observed that she crossed her arms and said, ‘I don’t know,’ twice.”
Curious Now Episode 21: Impact, Not Feelings
Workout of the Week: Workout of the Week: Practice saying to people, “When you did x, it led to y.” One great feature about this workout is that you can use it for positive things! “When you stayed late to help me with that report, it lowered my stress level.”
Curious Now Episode 22: Why Real Questions Feel Risky in Debriefing
Workout of the Week: Every day, ask one truly open-ended, curious question—one you don’t already know the answer to.
Curious Now Episode 23: Universal Clinical Struggles with Bridget Van Gotten
Workout of the Week: Use the Universal Clinical Struggles resource as a cognitive aid in your debriefings.
Curious Now Episode 24: Making the Standard Explicit
Workout of the Week: When you detect an implicit standard, say it out loud and make it explicit (but be sure to own that this is your perspective!). For example, “I believe that our standard in this unit is that if we need blood drawn from a patient, we start a new draw rather than using an existing IV.”
Curious Now Episode 25: Pushback and Interruption as Learning Cues (with Walter Eppich)
Workout of the Week: Notice learning cues in your own conversations and determine how to make them explicit.
Curious Now Episode 26: Why Are You Hiding Your Judgment?
Workout of the Week: When you are tempted to hide your judgment, identify what is motivating you to do that.
Curious Now Episode 27: Jenny’s Current Challenge
Workout of the Week: Identify and name a part of yourself that keeps popping up regularly.
Curious Now Episode 28: Debriefing Teacher Judgments at Canberra Meta Debrief Club
Workout of the Week: When you find yourself judging, or even experiencing heightened emotions, ask yourself, what is the standard I’m holding here?
Curious Now Episode 29: How Shared Standards Can Bring Down the Heat (with Gabe Reedy)
Workout of the Week: Notice when the heat level is rising in a conversation when it isn’t clear what’s raising the temperature, and use curious questioning to figure out why!
Curious Now Episode 30: Managing Fight/Flight/Freeze in ER Conversations (with Hayden Richards)
Workout of the Week: Use a “good judgment statement” that begins with the words “I’m worried….” Hayden points out that this type of statement of concern lets the listener know that you don’t know all the answers, but this is what you’re thinking about as you find your way together.
Curious Now Episode 31: Just Tell Your Learners What to Do! (with Mary Fey)
Workout of the Week: Try out “I saw… I think (the consequences of what I saw and my concerns are)… Here’s what you should try.”
Curious Now Episode 32: That’s Not What I Meant
Workout of the Week: Notice when there has been an intent/impact mismatch, and ask for a redo, ie “Sorry, I don’t think that landed how I meant. Can I rewind and try again?”
Curious Now Episode 33: Psych Safety: HVAC for Learning
Workout of the Week: Note the moments in your day to day when you do feel psychologically safe: to take risks, to ask a question you don’t know the answer to, to work at the edge of your expertise in order to get better. What is contributing to those moments?
Curious Now Episode 34: Are You Psychologically Safe?
Workout of the Week: Upcoming!
Curious Now Episode 35: The First Step of Self-Rescue
Workout of the Week: Upcoming!