“Why should I care?” How Empathy and Curiosity can help us see “The Big Picture”

In this edition of Half-Hour, my friend Nicholas Lambros Smith discusses the importance of empathy and curiosity and how using these communication tools can open up conversations, allow for growth, and to see different perspectives.

In the world of live entertainment, every performance is the culmination of a delicate dance of creativity and precision. As the communication hub at the center of that dance, we Stage Managers are often confronted with new challenges at every turn. For many who are just starting their careers, the focus is learning how to handle the technical challenges – in other words, the kind that can be solved by following specific steps, like restarting a buggy computer or changing the temperature in a rehearsal room. However, just as often as those technical challenges, we also encounter adaptive challenges or those that require more innovative and nuanced solutions – dealing with chronic tardiness, underprepared collaborators, and general communication hurdles.

“The most common cause of failure in leadership is produced by treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems… Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.” – The Practice of Adaptive Leadership; Heifetz, Grashow, Linksy

Working through adaptive challenges may seem simple on the surface, but many times, they are like an iceberg, where the adaptive challenge is just the exposed tip while there are much larger issues under the water line. In their works on Adaptive Leadership, Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky discuss this using the metaphor, “getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony,” where the dance floor represents being in the middle of the action and looking at the fine details, while the balcony represents stepping back to look at the big picture. When we are in the midst of chaotic processes, it is necessary for us to pay close attention to the fine details, but that focus can cause us to lose perspective of the larger project if we aren’t careful. Especially in the context of working through adaptive challenges, it is important to be able to move back and forth between the balcony and the dance floor, taking the time to understand “what is going on beneath the surface” when challenges arise. In my practice, I have found it very helpful to use curiosity and empathy as my guides to moving between the dance floor and balcony, changing my perspective to better understand the big picture.

Cultivating a Curious Mindset

In many leadership circles, there is often discussion about “fixed” vs. “growth” mindsets. To define these in the most technical way, a person embracing a growth mindset sees intelligence, abilities, and talents as something that can be learned and enhanced with effort. In contrast, someone with a fixed mindset perceives these traits as naturally constant and resistant to change over time. However, in my own simplified way of talking about these concepts, I like to think of a growth mindset as one that is fluid, while a fixed mindset is rigid. When presented with an adaptive challenge, it can be easy to let our biases and ideas of “how things should be” influence the way that we approach problem solving – especially for those of us who have worked within different organizational structures, where one place may have a completely different set of values from another (An example: The leadership at Organization A values prompt email replies, even if the reply is an “I don’t know”, vs. the leadership at Organization B that values email replies only when the answers are available). One director you work with might not allow any kind of deviation from the set schedule, while another might prefer a more organic space where they can be more in response to the energy of the room. If we choose to lead with a fixed mindset, these kind of differences can become huge frustrations. In our roles as facilitators, embracing a growth mindset allows us to be more nimble and adaptable to the unknown. Curiosity is a great way to do just that.

Curiosity creates space for other opinions and allows us to question our own beliefs. It opens us up to see things from different perspectives and helps to remove assumptions which can often influence the tone of our conversations. By stopping for a moment to question our own values and beliefs and how they may be different from those of our collaborators, we can avoid defensive knee-jerk reactions and instead craft responses that address issues in a more thought-out way. Some examples of phrases that encourage curiosity are, “Can you say more about ___?”, “What does ___ mean to you?”,  “I want to learn more about ___.” These can help to facilitate more open and authentic communication, which will usually help to clear the air when the atmosphere is tense.

“Rather than assuming we already know everything we need to, we should assume that there is important information we don’t have access to.” 

– Difficult Conversations; Stone, Patton, Heen.

The whole idea for this article came from a discussion I was having with a friend who also works in the industry – they were expressing their frustration with an artist at a long-running show who was always late to calls on Thursdays. I could hear in their voice how annoyed they were by this person’s tardiness, especially because my friend was the person in charge of making the daily training schedules at their show, and this artist’s lateness affected the schedule for the rest of the day. I asked them if they had talked to that artist to see if there was some specific reason that Thursdays were hard for them, and my friend replied, “Why should I care?”. I saw the opportunity to talk about the difference between Technical and Adaptive Challenges, and see if that might help them approach their situation in a different light.

I told them about a similar situation at one of my shows where an actor had missed a fitting that we had scheduled before our rehearsal call time, for the third time, and the other stage managers on my team were getting fed up with it. During rehearsal that day, I found a moment with that actor. As soon as they saw me walking up to them, the actor immediately started apologizing for missing their fitting that morning. Instead of digging in, I tried a curious approach. I asked them if there was anything going on outside of rehearsal that was affecting them, and it turned out, there certainly was. The actor was going through a divorce, which meant that they were suddenly solely responsible for taking their kids to school in the mornings before rehearsals. This meant that they were cutting it close to get to the rehearsal on time, and anything before that would be nearly impossible for them. By stepping back, or going up to the balcony, and asking for more information, it helped make the big picture for that actor much clearer.

Fostering Compassionate Collaboration

Another important element that can help us embrace a growth mindset is empathy. In her book Daring Greatly, Brené Brown defines empathy as, “…simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘you’re not alone.’” In the case of the actor who kept missing their fittings, empathy allowed me and my team to understand that the outside factors were overwhelming this actor. We chose to adjust the way we scheduled their fittings, and they never missed another one during that process. The actor later expressed that they were so grateful that I had asked them that simple question instead of berating them for missing the fitting. As a Stage Manager, empathy can serve as a powerful tool in leading with a people-first approach. This can help us to cultivate community and establish a sense of belonging – not only within our teams, but also within ourselves. Empathy allows us to understand and connect with our collaborators on a deeper level, building trust and fostering a sense of mutual concern. By putting ourselves in their shoes and genuinely listening to their point-of-view, we can contribute to a more supportive and inclusive work environment.

One of the unique ways that live entertainment differs from the traditional workplace is that we are often existing in a much more exposed emotional realm. Actors and performers need to tap into emotion on stage in a way that can leave them very vulnerable. Designers and directors must understand emotion in a completely different way – the lighting designer has to know how to support the emotion of anger visually, while the sound designer needs to tell the story aurally, and the director needs to be able to go between each of these elements to communicate their vision of anger to the audience. Because of this, as well as the pressures of quick timelines and audience expectations and organizational missions, the spaces we inhabit as stage managers can be tense and overwhelming. Empathy can help us to lower the temperature when things get heated. The first step, though, is taking the time to really listen to our colleagues and understand what they have to say.

Examples like the story above about the actor missing their fittings show where empathy and curiosity can collide in our leadership choices. When someone approaches the SM table with a heightened emotion, it can be so easy to match their tone. However, if we instead commit to actively listening to what they are saying, we can learn so much. When I first learned about active listening in my graduate program at UC San Diego, it helped me to repeat a mantra to myself every day, “Don’t think about what you’re going to say next, listen to what they are actually saying.” I learned to listen for words and phrases that were being repeated, to feel the tone and monitor the body language of my conversational partners, and really try to put myself in their shoes for a moment to know where they were coming from. As we practiced active listening in classes, we looked at different frameworks, trying first to be able to repeat word-for-word what our conversational partners were saying to us, and then working to be able to rephrase it in our own words – because understanding is just as important as listening.

“Active, engaged listening followed by a distillation of the words and ideas of a conversation into a summarized response are examples of simple and powerful tools to promote dynamic and functional communication.”

– Stage Management Theory as a Guide to Practice; Porter, Alcorn. 

This also serves as a tool to clarify any confusion, because the person you are speaking to might say, “Actually, no that’s not what I meant.” By staying curious and practicing empathy, we can demonstrate to our collaborators that we are committed to communication that serves us all.

“Coming to understand the other person, and yourself, more deeply doesn’t mean that differences will disappear or that you won’t have to solve real problems and make real choices. It doesn’t mean that all views are equally valid or that it’s wrong to have strongly held beliefs. It will, however, help you evaluate whether your strong views make sense in the light of new information and different interpretations, and it will help you help others to appreciate the power of those views.” 

– Difficult Conversations; Stone, Patton, Heen.

Conclusion

Conflict is inevitable, because we all exist in our own story, with our own beliefs and values. However, being curious and empathetic as leaders demonstrates our commitment to collaboration in the most essential meaning of the word: We are committed to the diversity of opinion, background, talent, and personality that collaboration entails. When combined, empathy and curiosity enable us to lead with compassion and authenticity, allowing our teams to explore new ideas and approaches, inspiring creativity and positive change. As stage managers, the “manager” in our title is often misunderstood; it certainly doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in the corporate world. In most cases, we are not in the position to hire and fire anyone, and we are typically not considered part of the “management” of the theatres and companies that we work with – basically, we are middle management, balancing the priorities of what producers want while also supporting the creative process.  However, we are certainly in a position where using good leadership techniques can help us foster more positive working environments. By using empathy and curiosity as our guides, we can show our collaborators that we care about them, and value their presence. And when things get tough, remember the biggest picture of them all: at the end of the day, we aren’t defusing bombs. We’re putting on a show, and the show must go on… might as well make it fun, right?

Nicholas (Niko) Lambros Smith (he/they) is a freelance AEA Stage Manager & Actor based in San Diego, CA. They have worked on several new plays and productions with regional theatres and Cirque du Soleil, most recently the aquatic spectacular “O” at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, NV.

Also by Bryan Runion:

The Power of Culture

How Show Calling Changes Based on the Production

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