732: How to Find What’s Missing, with Jeff Wetzler
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jeff Wetzler is co-Founder Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization, and an expert in learning and human potential. His experience spans 25+ years in business and education, as a management consultant to top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders, and as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America. He's the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life*.
We place our organizations at risk when we miss stuff. Often, the things we miss aren’t what we don’t know. Instead, they are the assumptions we don’t even question. In this conversation, Jeff and I explore the practices that work to find what’s missing.
Key Points
Hidden feedback cues:
Repeated questions or suggestions about seemingly small details.
Increased involvement in tactical decisions.
Unexpected decreases in engagement.
Benefits of curiosity:
When We’re Curious About People, They Like Us More
Curiosity begets curiosity.
Curiosity creates empathy.
Curiosity makes us more resilient.
Curiosity sparks:
What might I be missing?
How else might someone interpret the situation?
How might I be impacting them?
What can I learn from this person?
Resources Mentioned
Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life* by Jeff Wetzler
Ask Approach
How to Recognize “Hidden Feedback” (Harvard Business Review) by Jeff Wetzler
The Curiosity Coach In Your Pocket (Psychology Today) by Jeff Wetzler
Related Episodes
How to Inspire More Curiosity, with Shannon Minifie (episode 520)
How to Help Others Be Seen and Heard, with Scott Shigeoka (episode 654)
Make it Easier to Discuss Hard Things, with Jeff Wetzler (episode 679)
Discover More
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We place our organizations at risk when we miss stuff. Often the things we miss aren't what we don't know. Instead, they're the assumptions we don't even question. In this episode, the practices that work to find what's missing. This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 732. |
| 0:26.0 | Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. |
| 0:32.8 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. |
| 0:40.3 | This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahobiac. Leaders aren't born. They're made. |
| 0:45.8 | And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. |
| 0:53.2 | Mark Twain said, what gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. Today's guest mentioned that |
| 0:56.9 | quote in his TED talk, and it is the reality of leadership for so many of us that it's not |
| 1:03.3 | even the things we don't know. It's the things we don't see coming because we're so sure of it, |
| 1:08.2 | and we haven't found the things that we're missing. |
| 1:11.4 | Today's guest is going to help us to actually do a bit more to be intentional about finding |
| 1:16.5 | what we're missing so we can lead better for our organizations. |
| 1:20.2 | I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show, Jeff Wetzler. |
| 1:23.5 | He is co-founder of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization, and an expert in learning and human potential. |
| 1:31.1 | His experience spans 25 plus years in business and education, as a management consultant to top corporations, a learning facilitator for leaders, and as chief learning officer at Teach for America. |
| 1:43.7 | He's the author of Ask, |
| 1:45.9 | tap into the hidden wisdom of people around you for unexpected breakthroughs in leadership and |
| 1:51.7 | life. Jeff, welcome back. Thank you, Dave. It's really great to be back with you. |
| 1:57.2 | I loved getting back into your work from a year ago. As you know, I'm a big believer in asking questions. |
| 2:04.0 | Yes, I know that. Your book appealed to me right away when we first came across a year ago in our first conversation. And when we last talked, I asked you what you changed your mind on, as I often do for folks. And you told a story about |
| 2:19.3 | taking an Uber ride a while back. And I've learned more about that story since that first |
| 2:26.0 | conversation. And I actually would love to start our conversation where we left off last |
| 2:31.8 | time on that Uber ride. And for those who didn't hear the past episode, |
... |
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