Episode #243 – Curiosity: What Killed the Cat Will Save You

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's about to resurrect your trial game.

Curiosity isn't just about asking questions; it's about forging connections that transcend courtroom formalities. 

Curiosity isn't about having an end goal in mind. It's about embracing the unknown.

I know you’re DYING to revolutionize your approach to voir dire, so go ahead and tune in.

Xo,
Sari

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"What trial lawyers do is stand up for human values versus corporate values. And what curiosity does is say that this trial, this case, this voir dire, is a human endeavor. This is getting to know each other. This is connecting you with the themes, with me, with each other. The very work that y'all do is human work. It's about connection. And I honestly believe we cannot have connection when we don't have curiosity."

sari de la motte

EPISODE 243 TRANSCRIPTION

Well, welcome everyone to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Sari de la Motte here with you, and we are talking about Curiosity: What Killed the Cat Will Save You.

Now, curiosity is what we're covering this month in our Deep Dive in the Crew, back in the Playground, and let me just tell you what it is to make you super jealous so that you will consider joining the Crew because we have so much fun back there. But what we've done is have a new program in addition to all the monthly sessions that we have, every month, you can join what we call a Deep Dive.

It starts with my monthly training, which I've always done and will continue to do, and then, if you want to, you can then come back for three more times in the month at the same time every month, and that first time you come back, you're going to be working on something content related. You're put in small groups, and you work together. That third time you come back, you're going to be working on your mindset with Coach K. And that fourth time you come back, you'll be back in your small group of cohorts practicing whatever skill.

So it's a great way to go deeper into one of our concepts that we're playing with. So, this month is Cultivating Curiosity. I should say last month by the time this podcast comes out. But it got me thinking about even if you're not in the Crew, how it's important that you understand curiosity.

I wish you could smell my dog's fart right now. No, I don't because it is nuclear. Why is it with the bulldogs on the farting? You might hear her snoring as well, just FYI.

Okay, so, curiosity. I went and looked up the definition, and it is a strong desire to know or learn something. And I was reading this book by Ian Leslie. The name of the book is Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It. It was so good. I highly recommend it. It talks about our need for curiosity, why we have lost curiosity, what you can do to be more curious and all of the things.

But I loved when he was talking about how curiosity is something that we have lost that we all had as children. And if you look up curiosity and why it's so important just in the world, just Google it, you'll find things like it creates happier people, it helps combat cognitive decline, it drives innovation. That's for sure. It strengthens relationships.

I mean curiosity is such a good human thing. But for lawyers, I think even more so, trial lawyers, it is, I'm going to say it, the make or break trial skill for a few reasons.

ONE, curiosity creates connection.

It doesn't just create connection, for example, between you and the juror that you're talking to, but it creates a connection between what your case is and the juror's beliefs. Aren't those the two things that we want to connect? Curiosity is what gets us there because so often you are asking questions in voir dire, for example, that are close-ended or information gathering or what I call cognitive questions.

So, questions that are easy to answer like where do you work? Do you have to follow rules at work? How long have you worked there? People can answer those questions very easy. They're very cognitive. They're information gathering. They don't involve curiosity on any level. And notice that when we get answers to those questions, we don't know anything more about what they believe, what they love, or what brightens their day. Nothing that we can connect to our case. So we're just kind of swirling around in voir dire.

I get why y'all hated it before I came along because it's a horrible process when all you're doing is asking these information gathering questions, and then going back to your desk with your highly paid, overpaid, I should say overpriced, jury consultant, and then making, I'm going to go on a stretch and say educated guesses about what the fuck those things mean. We're not using any curiosity, but...

When we do use curiosity, what it does is it connects your case with the jurors' beliefs and hopes and values and all of the things.

Curiosity also is contagious. We want jurors to listen. We want them to be invested. We want them to be engaged. If we are not invested or engaged with who they are and we're doing this pedantic, boring exercise.

In voir dire, we ask questions we think we're supposed to ask. They don't mean anything. They don't get us any real information. How are we teaching jurors to be curious in the case? That's a huge reason of why we want to be more curious as trial attorneys.

And what I think is a really big point is Rick Freeman often talks about that what trial lawyers do is stand up for human values versus corporate values. And what curiosity does is say that this trial, this case, this voir dire, is a human endeavor. This is a getting to know each other. This is a connecting you with the themes, with me, with each other. The very work that y'all do is human work. It's about connection. And I honestly believe we cannot have connection when we don't have curiosity.

But when we use it as some sort of exercise, when we are not going all in on storytelling, like I talked about last episode, we make it more of a cold, calculated, corporate feeling thing when it's not. The reason we're there is the most human thing of all. And so, in voir dire, we must have a curiosity about the jurors and about ourselves and about the whole process.

So the question then becomes, well, why aren't we curious? What is the problem? Well, I think there are a variety of problems when it comes to curiosity. The first one is we don't want to admit that we don't know something, right? So there's a control thing. If I get curious, that on its face says I don't know something and we like to have the appearance at least of knowing all the things.

This is why voir dire, and when I first started getting into this work, I was like, "Why are people so scared of voir dire?" Well, it was because you were so afraid of what jurors would say and you didn't know what to do with that. Which really brings us to...

TWO, I don't think we're curious is that it's risky.

We think it's risky because we're scared of what we don't know. If I don't know and I'm scared of what could be behind that door, then I'm not going to open it. And then if I do open it and I don't know what to do with what's behind the door, that's scary as fuck too. So I might as well just not open the door at all. Could be something scary. And even if it's not scary, I won't know what to do with it. So I'm just not going to open the door at all. So there's risk involved with curiosity.

THREE, the reason why we aren't curious is it feels like it's inefficient.

It doesn't feel like a good use of time and everything has to be good use of time. Right? It has to directly correlate. Even when I'm teaching things like our Price vs. Value, the way that we talk about damages in voir dire, y'all are always looking for an angle, right? "Okay, so this is the part where we then find out who doesn't want to be here or this is the part where we then use it to do this." And yes, all of the things that I talk about, they all connect eventually for sure. I'm not saying we're just doing things just to do them.

But sometimes, I would say at the beginning, you have to be curious without an end goal in mind.

In fact, if you have an end goal in mind, that kind of destroys the whole point of curiosity. When you have something that you are looking for, you are no longer curious. You are on a mission to get whatever you want done. And how do I get that out of the jurors quickly and fast? That is the opposite of curiosity. But when you actually allow yourself to become curious, some of the most beautiful things have happened in the voir dires that I've seen with attorneys that have actually gone there.

One of the things that Ian whats-his-face says in the book Curious. I thought this was so important. He talks about the difference between puzzles and mysteries. And so, with puzzles, I've just gotten into puzzles in the last eight years of my life because my daughter's into puzzles. Before, I thought puzzles were the most horrendous. Who could ever sit there and just spend time putting these little things together? I was like, "Oh my gosh." Then she started getting into puzzles and then I would do them with her. And I was like, "This is actually kind of fun." And then she'd do more and they get harder and now we're up to a thousand piece puzzles and they are a lot of fun.

He talks about puzzles and how they are fun only until they're done, and then they're no longer fun. Then we lose all interest, right, because it's done. Where mysteries asks the questions like, who am I? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? They are things that are never answered, and that's what makes us continually be interested in them because there is no answer. We can talk about them forever. When I read that, I realized that y'all want jurors, jury selection, and trial to be like a puzzle. You want there to be an end point. You want to have the pieces that fit so that when you get to trial, that everything goes where it's supposed to go. There's no pieces missing.

And so that's why you go from CLE to CLE, you buy book after book trying to get all the pieces together so that one day, you can finally complete the puzzle, right? You're on the search for the right pieces. And I'm here to tell you, which may sound like bad news to you, but I think it's incredibly good news, is that trials, jury selection, and jurors are mysteries.

They will always be mysteries. And isn't that a beautiful thing? I mean that is the human experience. You will go in to this mysterious group that you have never talked to before and you will have a conversation that under any other circumstance, would never happen with a group of people that would never under any other circumstances be together. And if you have curiosity, will find out some amazing things about these people.

You won't find out everything because they are a mystery and they will always be a mystery. And even if you do find out a lot of things that will help you in trial, you're going to have to do it all over again in the next one.

There's where curiosity is going to serve you because it's something you can use every single time, unlike formulas or techniques or gimmicks that people tell you, "This works every time." By the way, if someone tells you something works every time, they're full of bullshit. That's just not how this works.

But when you have curiosity, you're okay in any situation because you know that curiosity is going to take you where you need to go. It may not seem like it in the moment. You can be like, "Where is this conversation going?" But it will serve you much better than trying to force a formula or a structure on something that is not or cannot be structured.

Now, a caveat to that. One of the things that y'all say to me is, "Voir dire is so scary because we just don't know what the jurors are going to say." And I always say, "We know exactly what the jurors are going to say. I mean, exactly. We get to the point where I'm working with people in Trial Lab, we're mocking it up, we're trying it with each other, then we go in front of a mock jury and they say nearly word to word the exact same things that I said they would say." And that doesn't mean they do that because I'm brilliant. I mean, I am. But it's because, as you've heard me say, you stand on the side of the right.

When you stand on the side of the right and you identify your principles, of course they're going to say what I think they're going to say because principles, 99% of people believe them.

So the caveat is, is that most of voir dire, you know what they're going to say. But when we get curious in that Price vs.Value conversation, we're talking about what the jurors value, what they love, and we go into a really curious conversation there. That's where we don't know what they're going to say, but we do know that it's going to be a beautiful conversation if you have curiosity in your back pocket.

So, how do we become more curious? I have three things for you today, as of course I would. So the first one is that you stop trying to make it work for you. Curiosity is not a gimmick. We're not doing it so we get somewhere. You have to just be okay with just being curious and just finding out about people and asking them questions that you're literally curious about. When somebody says, "One of the things I value in my life is family." You don't say thank you and move on. You say, "What is it about your family that you love?" And then they say something and you get interested in that.

"Well, this is silly, but every Friday night, we have a family game night and I look forward to those nights every week."

"What is it about those nights that are so special?" Right? You just get curious. I don't know how this connects with my case. I don't care. I'm making a connection. I'm making connection. So, first, stop trying to make it work for you, make it efficient. It doesn't have to be efficient. That kills curiosity.

Two is to use the three follow-up questions. Those are, on their face, curiosity questions. So, remember, those questions are "What was that like?" Or "What is that like?" "How important is that?" Or "What's important about that?" Notice how all three of those questions start with what or how? Most curiosity gathering questions do. Or just simply tell me more. Tell me more.

But the third thing that you need, which is probably the most important thing for curiosity, is you need to be there. You need to be present , be with the person, and be genuinely curious. Not in your head, not, "How am I going to use this?" Not, "What does this have to do with anything?" You're literally in that moment really curious about the human being that is in front of you. You don't need to be scared of curiosity.

It will absolutely change your experience as a trial lawyer if you let it. It killed the cat, but it's going to save you.

Hope that's helpful. Talk soon.

Have you ever wished that you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I'm about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind. It's going to help you to understand what the jury is thinking, so you'll feel confident to trust them and yourself in the courtroom.

Ready for the address? Go to sariswears.com/jury. Enjoy.