Harvey Mackay Academy's Blog

Cliff Jones: Hello everybody. Cliff Jones, cofounder, managing partner of Harvey Mackay Academy and with us today is Dr. Diane Hamilton. Very dynamic author, speaker, and we’re going to be talking to you about is cracking the curiosity code. Diane’s new book in the Curiosity Code Index, and if you don’t know who I am, ladies and gentleman, I’m Cliff Jones and I am very curious and I can’t wait to take you through the work of Diane Hamilton today. If you’re new to street smarts podcast, it was a little love on iTunes that you don’t have a free basic membership. Harvey Mackay Academy. Go there and get one. You’ll get all sorts of cool free stuff. So I want to, Diana, I want to, I want to properly introduce you because you have a contagious passion for improving interpersonal communication which I love. Nationally syndicated radio, host award winning speaker, author, brand new book educator, Dr. Hamilton, thought leader in the fields of leadership, sales, marketing, management, engagement, personality, curiosity, motivation. Basically improving relationships in the workplace, in performance as a result. So if you’re going to hang with us to the next 20 minutes, what we’re going to do is walk through Diane’s body of work. We’re going to leave you with some takeaway value. We’re going to run about 20 minutes or so today as we normally do. We go over, that’s a-okay, because that means you’ll be getting some cool stuff. Diane, welcome to Street Smarts with Harvey Mackay.

Diane Hamilton: Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. It’s going to be fun.

Cliff Jones: So we met through Greg Williams, who we just love one of the hungry fighters of the free world. It just can’t say enough about Greg, I’m very grateful. Harvey and I are grateful to have you today on the street smarts podcast. Let’s talk a little bit about how you got into your field and what really gets you excited when you wake up and go to work every day.

Diane Hamilton: Well, you know, my field is hard to even explain what I’m in because I’m in several things. Uh, I’m an educator as a, you said, you know, I’ve, I teach business, but my field is kind of behavioral, uh, areas of business. So, uh, I kinda got into that and when I wrote my doctoral dissertation on emotional intelligence, I mean I’d already had my master’s and my PhD in business management with a focus on organizational management leadership. But the behaviors really came into play when I started to study emotional intelligence too much more depth. I think that, uh, my, I just fell into emotional intelligence at the time and it got me interested in personality assessments. I became certified to give the EQI and NBTI and a whole bunch of other letters of assessments. And I thought it was just really fascinating to see what makes people tick.

Diane Hamilton: And as I started to teach, uh, I’ve taught, I say over it more than a thousand, but it’s closer to 2000 probably courses in business. I started to see how some of my students think and I compared that to all these leaders, these billionaires and top executives who I have on my show and how they would be just so curious and they wanted to learn everything about everything. And then my students kind of just wanted to meet it, sometimes give them a fish instead of teaching them to fish. And I don’t think they were lazy. They just had been always given things, you know, not really asked to push themselves sometimes. And I wanted them to, to be more curious. And so as I start with the show, I was writing a book on curiosity and I thought, no, I don’t just want to write a book on curiosity. I want to fix this problem. Somehow. I want to develop an assessment that tells you what’s holding people back from being curious. And uh, so that’s what led to me writing the Curiosity Code Index, which goes along with the book.

Cliff Jones: Well, you have quite the education to pedigree. Uh, you know, the who’s who in the free world, you’re spanning around the globe speaking and teaching. Let’s talk a little bit about the connection, if you would, between emotional intelligence and curiosity. There must be some correlation there that you could describe.

Diane Hamilton: Well, you’d think there’d be a lot of research about that. And there’s a lot of research on emotional intelligence and there’s a lot of research on curiosity. There’s some overlaps I’m finding is, you know, with, with curiosity, you have to want to try and put yourself in different situations. You would have to be interested in what other people are interested in. You have to kind of open your mind to some things. And with emotional intelligence, there’s a big aspect, uh, you know, interpersonal skills. It includes a lot of that, but so does empathy. To have empathy, you really have to be able to, to understand somebody from their own perspective. And I think to build that empathy, you have to ask questions. You have to, to recognize what other people are, are dealing with in their own reality is not the same as what you’re dealing with. And so curiosity, is a huge, a spark to all lot of things, not just emotional intelligence because once you have curiosity, it sparks motivation and drive to go to the next level, which is, that next level is where you get help with engagement, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, leadership team, cooperation. Everything you could possibly think of. If you ask a leader what’s wrong in the business that they’re working with right now, it comes into that level, which all of that is impacted by drive and motivation, which is impacted by curiosity.

Cliff Jones: My direct experience, looking back 30 some odd years, many managers, people I’ve worked for is as, as a caring, curious person myself. I noticed that probably on a handful of occasions, the people I worked for cared enough to be curious enough about me as a human being, my motivators, what I was, where my core skills were, where they weren’t, and they were emotionally aware and engaged with me to empower me to perform in the workplace. So isn’t that what your body of work is really suggesting? Basically what, what, what, what I’ve experienced, in the real world?

Diane Hamilton: Well, you’ve been really lucky and fortunate to had people who have been that way with you because a lot of people don’t have that experience. And I, that’s what I’d like to change. I would like to have people feel like people are interested, their leaders and the people around them are very interested in what they do. And I think a lot of people are interested, but they don’t really know how to ask questions. They don’t really know if it’s appropriate to ask questions. They’d been cut down in the past for doing that. They, you know, they’re worried about insubordination. If they suggest things, if they show too much interest, sometimes there’s leaders who want you to just follow in this path because it’s easy. But that’s status quo thinking is going out. I mean, we were talking before the show, I interviewed the father of artificial intelligence and we are going to see changes that we have never seen in the past in terms of innovation. Then you the status, both thinking of just letting things just go as smoothly as they always went and without questioning things with just, you know, that’s not gonna happen anymore. And, uh, so that’s what I’m trying to, to, to get, I think if you’ve had that great experience of a boss or a leader that you know, who’s really let you, uh, explore and they supported you, that’s great. And I think we need that more now than ever with the fact that we need to become more innovative than ever.

Cliff Jones: Well, from my perspective, is it fair to say that if one is emotionally intelligent, caring and curious, if someone like me isn’t going to find and relate well to that immediate supervisor, am I not going to be curious enough and motivated enough to go find someone who who I can work for or basically just, you know, get out of the way of a non-caring non-curious low EQ leader, which to me is exhausting.

Diane Hamilton: It has it, you know, some people just don’t have the luxury of being able to make those moves and choices. They have to stay where they are for one reason or another at least temporarily. And my goal is to open your eyes to other options because you don’t really have the golden handcuffs where you have to stay. Sometimes I think some people all think they have to stay when they don’t have to. But I think, you know, culture comes from the top. And if the to head of the company has embraced the culture that you find toxic, that doesn’t embrace curiosity, that doesn’t support you, it’s going to be almost impossible to fix it, you know, going up. So it is time to think of moving. I believe if you’re in that kind of a culture, if you can’t,

Cliff Jones: To your point, I was listening to an NPR interview last night and it was the reporter, basically scientific reporter reporting that she was at a conference where many scientific men dominated the conference. And in the context of the treatment that she experienced as, as a woman, uh, you know, one of the few women in the audience among these highly esteemed, super smart, IQ people who, to me in her storytelling had low EQ, low curiosity. And basically, isn’t that kind of the dynamic you’re talking about changing? Where awareness, curiosity, the caring leader, uh, is, is held in higher esteem these days to impact productivity.

Diane Hamilton: I think, you know, there was a time I agree with that. We saw a lot more of this negative, uh, treatment of women, the negative closing down of ideas and all that in past generations than we do now. I still see a lot of it with women, you know, and I think a lot of us don’t even recognize it that we’re not being taken as seriously as we could because they’re not necessarily being rude or doing anything that is insulting that you are aware of. In fact, they’re very pleasant sometimes, but your ideas just aren’t really ever utilized or you’re given tasks that are beneath what you’re capable of doing. And there’s just a lot of things that we could change if we have that sense that, uh, what, what women or men or I don’t like to really just look at men or just look at women.

Diane Hamilton: I think cause it’s really hard to stereotype all situations as being, it’s almost like millennials are all this or boomers are all that and it’s, it’s very, you know, there’s been a lot of boomers that have had issues. There’s been a lot of men who have issues or, you know, it just depends on the group. So I, I’d like to deal with behaviors on a case by case company by company basis. But definitely there’s been a lot of issues where, uh, in, in any organization, I mean, people grow. I mean, even Steve Jobs when he was first at Apple had demonstrated very low EQ, but then when he learned his lesson all of somewhat and when he had to come back and realize he needed to deal with people in a more productive way and he grew, and that’s a good thing about emotional intelligence is, is it can be improved. And, uh, I think, you know, by asking questions, by, by doing the things that I’m talking about in my CCI certification training is, it’s all leading to improving in all those areas, that are behaviorally based.

Cliff Jones: Well, I want everybody to understand how you are approaching the measures of this through, through your, uh, your approach. Thank you for making the distinction. I didn’t really mean to single out men as being, you know, in that context, my personal has been that I do see, uh, many women, uh, having that empathy, that caring, nurturing nature that I’d like to see more in the men, uh, that, that, that I do business with. I will say Harvey Mackay, uh, as a dear friend and mentor of mine, just a hero to many of us in this community. One of the most caring leaders I’ve ever met, incredibly curious, will remember your names. I mean, the stories are countless. So, so to me when I talk about, uh, being, uh, that kind of leader, it would seem pretty logical that people would understand the cost of not being that leader when we know that, that the number one reason people would leave their job is because of the lack of a relationship or rapport with their immediate supervisor. Isn’t that a fair…

Diane Hamilton: People leave their bosses, not their companies. I mean, they really leave because their bosses are giving them a tough time or they don’t feel rewarded or appreciated. And yes, I think there’s so many great leaders like Harvey and others who really, you know, embody what I’m trying to do by looking at what we can do to develop people, to be more like Harveys of the world, to be more curious, to be more compassionate to be all these things, whether they’re male or female. Um, I think that what I looked at, you started to allude to is how I came about this. And what I did was I looked at the factors that hold people back from being curious. And I found that there were four factors and those are fear, assumptions, technology and an environment. And the environmental impact is very strong. And that’s what we’ve touched on some of this.

Diane Hamilton: I mean, how your boss treats you, how your teachers, uh, you know, impacted you, how your family impacts you. I mean, there’s just, it’s everybody around you throughout your life has had an impact on whether you feel comfortable and confident to ask questions or any, if you think it’s appropriate or not. And, uh, you know, I thought it would be very heavily weighted towards fear because we all fear looking stupid saying the wrong thing, you know, and they are, and it is very big area for people. But so our assumptions, there’s assumptions are uh, the, the voice that you have in your head that says, oh, I’m just not going to be interested in this. Uh, I ha that’s going to take too much time. I’m, you know, you’ve got this dialogue that you’re fighting in your mind. And I think that the assumptions were very low and you know, very high too.

Diane Hamilton: It’s, it’s pretty evenly dispersed across the board in my initial research is, you know, fear, assumptions, technology holds people back because it either does it for you or you’re intimidated by it. You think it’s too much trouble or you, you don’t see the need for it because it’s doing, you know, all these things. So there’s the technology aspect. So you know, and we already discussed the environment. So FATE is the acronym I use to help remember it and have all these, you know, four factors. That is what we measure with the CCI. The curiosity could index. And uh, we’re working with consultants and HR professionals to get them certified, to go to the organizations to make sure that everybody can take this assessment. You can take it online now. I mean it’s available, but it’s great to go through the training programs, uh, that the CCI certified coaches can provide.

Cliff Jones: Tell everybody, uh, how your Curiosity Code Index came to be. What was your motivating factor in the, how did you pull off that, that feat? Cause you probably took a very academic approach to doing so.

Diane Hamilton: Yeah. You know, it was, it was very challenging. You know, cause I’ve been certified in so many different assessments, but I’d never tried to create it from scratch, which is a whole different ball game. And of course I went through all the scientific, you know, you want to try to pilot studies, you want to do factor analysis. You want to do all this stuff though? So, you know, no one wants to hear about because it’s kind of, you know, techie nonsense stuff. But it’s, um, it’s important stuff. Even, I don’t want to say it’s nonsense because it’s really important to do all that, but that’s very challenging because you want to find that the questions you ask, uh, are giving you the kind of content that you’re trying to, to improve. So it was very, very challenging. I got interested in writing the assessment about halfway through writing the book because I started to write the book about curiosity.

Diane Hamilton: And I thought, well, okay, this is nice. It’s important to develop curiosity, but is writing a book enough to actually change anything? And I didn’t think that that was enough. I wanted that to be a piece of the puzzle. And that led me to go, okay, so now we know I wanted to see what’s holding people back. I did some research, found out that, you know, factors that people assumed were the things that were holding them back. Did it surveyed thousands of people to, you know, with a question, different questions until I got just the right questions. And, uh, found those four factors are really the ones that were holding people back.

Cliff Jones: Okay. So let’s talk about FATE again, quick recap of fear, assumption, technology environment. You said earlier, uh, you, you can teach people to improve EQ, but is it, is it true that one can’t really help or teach people improve IQ and would the same not be true for EQ?

Diane Hamilton: No, EQ is actually developed. I actually, I had um, Daniel Goleman on my show who’s the main guy in the area of research that everybody probably knows if they studied emotional intelligence. Uh, he’s done a lot of research in the area of developing EQ. You can improve it. They have found that it is something that you can develop. I, you know, a lot of it is a skill. I mean your interpersonal skills, your intrapersonal skills, it’s stress, tolerance, empathy, a lot of things that people just need to have somebody help them recognize that they don’t have a high levels of it. It’s, it’s not an all or you don’t have, it’s not like saying you have no EQ you have levels and everybody can improve the ones that, things that you can’t really, that don’t change very often. And when I was studying, um, Meyers-Briggs for example, it’s kind of your preferences for life on Myers-Briggs. You’re an introvert or an extrovert. It feels comfortable to write with your left hand versus your right hand or the right hand versus your left hand. That’s how your personality is with a Myers-Briggs. If you’re, you’re comfortable as an extrovert, you’re comfortable as an introvert, whatever your personality is. That’s not to say you can’t be more extroverted if you put effort into it, it just doesn’t feel comfortable. But with emotional intelligence, it becomes comfortable because you’re growing and expanding and you’re, you’re really developing as an individual. And as a leader.

Cliff Jones: Let’s say someone has fewer issues, however they’re churning through 300% of the people they hire, that’s not sustainable. You show up, they take the Curiosity Code Index, you get a snapshot, an x-ray of that person. How do you help? Are Hungry fighters? Anybody listening to the street smarts podcast deal with the fear issues that are holding them back from being a more caring, curious high EQ leader?

Diane Hamilton: Well, everybody takes this assessment, not just the leader, not so all the employees that so and it and actually the results that they get are or should be, uh, not shared. This is something we want that to keep as a very private thing. What is shared is in the training, we have two different activities that they go through. They have individual activity where they create an action plan for how they’re going to improve their FATE areas because there’s nine sub areas within each of those four main traits. But, um, within the other report that they create, this is something that’s shared with leadership and leaders will get feedback directly from their employees. That’s gives them, uh, how to, uh, scenarios of what they can do to help employees develop in different areas. Now this feedback will not only help them help their employees, but it will give them insight as to things that they’re not doing, that they could be doing as a leader to develop their own issues as far as fear, assumptions, technology and environment. And they can do that report for all the way going up. I mean all the way to the top. It, it could be, you know, different levels of management and leadership could take this.

Cliff Jones: How about sharing a story that comes to mind where you had an impact. You, you know, everybody went to the assessments, people are motivated in the workplace to get better results because in the end that’s what your work produces. A recent scenario that you’d like to talk about?

Diane Hamilton: Well, I’m thinking, you know, I’ve had a few that were very fear, uh, related. I could go with one of those I think would probably be the most easy for people to relate to. I think one of the assignments that are assessment results that, uh, one of the women in one of my courses got. She found that she was fearful of, uh, being in front of a group at work because in the past everything she’d done had been, you know, shut down by leadership or she was always cut off. Her ideas were never accepted. And so w w what this coming into this whole training program, you know, that leaders have bought into the fact that there’s a problem, there’s a cultural issue in the organization. So right off the bat they’re going to be more open to letting people speak because they’ve realized that they, there are fear issues, there are, you know, they’ve gone through this training, so it’s part of her, her initial report that she created for herself.

Diane Hamilton: She created a way to improve her, her fear level, and develop her critical thinking by creating an exercise that she gave to leadership in that second to assignment that I was talking about where she suggested they have her look up a certain topic to present at their Friday meetings that they had. And it caused her to develop her critical thinking skills and by you know, analyzing all the different materials. But it was a topic that she was interested in. They let her pick the topic is something that she knew that no one else knew. And in that meeting that would help everybody else, but she was able to pick what made her comfortable in and be in a safe atmosphere where she was able to, to teach this skill to other people that they didn’t know. So what that does is it makes her comfortable because she’s in control. She’s got, she doesn’t have an assignment just thrown on her that she doesn’t really embrace right off the bat. She becomes more interested in that topic. She has to learn more about it because she goes around and researches all the different journals or wherever she went to go get that. And there’s no better way to learn something than to teach it. Right. So she’s learned this topic, she’s taught everybody else and she’s overcome the fear of presenting in front of the group because now it’s a safer environment.

Cliff Jones: I love that correlation between learning to teach. And how did you say that again?

Diane Hamilton: Well, there is no better way to learn something than to teach it. Yeah.

Cliff Jones: Then to teach it. So do you find that, uh, teachers, uh, are kind of curious and hungry for knowledge to make them better teachers? Is there any evidence for that in your work or no?

Diane Hamilton: Well, you know, I didn’t study teachers specifically my work, but, uh, you know, then one thing, I’ve wore a, since I’ve taught so many courses in around the professors when I ran the MBA program at Forbes and you know, I’ve done so many different teaching position, um, type of, uh, research based things. I have found that when you assign somebody a topic to cover and they, they’re going to handle it for any reason, uh, whether they pick it or not, they’re going to learn so much more about it because they want to look good and they want to come across well when they teach it. So I think that that was one of the reasons I really enjoyed so many different courses. I didn’t always teach the same course. I mean, so I have probably taught the same course many, many times. But I’ve taught multiple different types of courses and, and that makes you much more, um, every time you teach something different, no matter how close it is to the time you’ve taught it before.

Diane Hamilton: If I’ve taught introduction to management in one school, it’s completely different from introduction to management at another school because the curriculum, a developer saw a different view of it. Right. So I think that anytime, even if you know a topic that you think, you know, like I know emotional intelligence, because I wrote my dissertation on it. I could always learn something new about it. Should I want to find a new level. Like today if you assign me go write a course about emotional intelligence, correlation with curiosity, it would be something I didn’t study in my dissertation. So I think though in the business world, in the sales world, and you get a lot of salespeople, I ain’t, you know, and, and I think this is so important because critical thinking is specifically in it because you’re going into offices, you’re talking, I was in sales for decades and it was so different cause they couldn’t look up your product on the Internet and they couldn’t find out what you didn’t know before you came in. And so now it’s super intimidating cause you have to go in there and they’ve already know as much as you do. So you have to find what they wouldn’t be able to figure out. You have to go one step ahead. And that’s going to take a very curious mind. And I have a lot of people who teach a curiosity in sales or they’re interested in writing, uh, different, uh, papers or whatever about curiosity and sales and it goes together. And it’s really important that you’re able to develop that, that particular skill.

Cliff Jones: We ended up attracting a lot of sales leaders, sales professionals to Harvey Mackay Academy’s Hungry Fighter Club. I find the best salespeople are, uh, I wouldn’t have used the word curious before I met you, but they have an innate ability to ask intelligent questions, right? Help their prospective customers understand their value proposition, which shifts away from price. Is, is, is there, uh, do you focus and help a lot of sales organizations in your work, which is a big part of our community.

Diane Hamilton: Oh yeah. And, and you know, you’d have to find their pain points. And as a salesperson, if you’re just selling at somebody and you don’t even know what their need is, here you’re not, it’s just different. Wasting everybody’s time. So asking questions is a huge part of sales. And it’s interesting to see that the dynamic of sales and how it’s changed since I’ve been in it because it was always just me, you know, and now their teams and you’ve got, you know, there, there’s a focus on introvert. Uh, selling is actually something that we wouldn’t have even considered back in the day when you wanted the extrovert of all extroverts. But now on the team, it’s a good idea to have somebody who’s really good at listening and, and, and a lot of the things that introverts, uh, and I think Susan Kane’s book Quiet put a lot of focus on, on that. And I think it’s a good thing because, uh, sales isn’t what it used to be. It’s not the same high pressure. One sign here, I’ll never see you again. Thing. It’s more relationship building in this time. I think

Cliff Jones: I’m glad you brought up Quiet Susan Canes, but we talked about it when we first met one of the best books I’ve ever read because it helped me understand that, that there’s really not something wrong with me because I didn’t learn until I was much older than I am an introvert. Meaning I lose energy around people. I gain energy in my quiet zone, reading, studying, writing, being out in the mountains. So do you find in your work, uh, any correlation between introverts extroverts as one or the other being more curious or, or am I going way out?

Diane Hamilton: Well, the big difference you’re going to see is an introvert will wait to ask questions because they might be pondering their thinking if they, if you talk to an introvert, they’re listening to what you’re saying and their computing in their head what they want to say before they say what they want to say. When you talk to an extrovert, what they’re thinking, it’s coming out their mouth at the same time as they’re thinking it. So the introvert won’t ask questions as quickly as an extrovert would. And if you cut them off, they may not get a chance to answer the questions. So if I’m talking to you and you’ve got this great question, you’re pondering of how you’re formulating it in your head, but I’m talking all over you because I’m an extrovert, those questions aren’t going to come out because I’m not going to let you speak.

Cliff Jones: And there are varying degrees of introverts, extroverts, a widely misunderstood dynamic of a personality, much like I am. As in curiosity as it relates to EQ.

Diane Hamilton: Right. You know, I think there’s, it’s just so hard because you can be more introverted in certain situations than other situations. And I, uh, I think we talked about it last time. I interviewed Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments and he found Susan Quiets book very helpful to him because it explained why when he went to parties or whatever, he just, it made him just, it drained him. And there’s some, you have to understand all lot of different behaviors when you’re dealing with workers in any situation. And I think whether people buy into that, there’s, you know, great research behind Myers-Briggs or not or not. There is a lot of information out there about introvert introverts and extroverts and, uh, when you feel comfortable and when you don’t feel comfortable. And I think that this whole research that I’m doing is about opening a dialogue so people feel comfortable and are able to ask questions, pose solutions, and uh, just be their authentic self.

Diane Hamilton: Right now. Mindfulness is such a huge topic. I, when I had Daniel Goleman on my show, as I said, he was the big name behind emotional intelligence. He’s now writing about mindfulness. I had the mother of mindfulness on my show. Uh, and, uh, she’s, you know, we’re dealing with a lot of different things with mindfulness. Ellen Langer is her name and she’s at Harvard. Um, so, you know, we have all these experts on the shows and the, and what’s so wonderful about that is that I get different perspectives of um, what it is to take in to, to become more successful so that we have a culture that embraces, uh, all the things that make us be more engaged. And another one on my show was Doug Conant who turned around Campbell Soup. He has his case studies are in almost every one of my courses and what he did at Campbell soup. Just writing simple notes to people to make them know that they’re appreciated. Feedback is a huge apart of it. Developing the ability for people to ask questions and feel comfortable. And that’s what’s going to help with engagement.

Cliff Jones: And to your point on mindfulness, it’s really nothing more than a than, uh, an increased, a heightened level of awareness about as you, you referenced Authentic Self, how we’re showing up, how we’re, uh, relating to people. And, and I am sure in your work at your level of the game you’re finding a lot of caring leaders who want to get better at this. They want to empower their team to break through their fears, the assumptions, the technology issues that are holding them back or anything in the environment. Let’s shift gears. You have a phenomenal new book just on the market. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Cracking the Curiosity Code. Uh, is there one or two, are there one or two takeaways, things that you might want to touch on that our, our listeners and viewers could put put to work today?

Diane Hamilton: Well, I, I really would like for people to think outside their, their normal ways of thinking. I think a lot of people are tied into silos. They don’t think outside their, their situation of how they’ve always done things. Status Quo thinking is very common. I write about a lot of different stories in the book. One of the stories is about a hospital in England where a, that they actually were having very difficult time turning their beds around, doing things efficiently. One of the leaders went to uh, a car racing and saw the pit crew taking the cars and just turning them around so quickly thought, well, why can’t they help us? Maybe they’ll come look and see what we’re doing. Maybe we could learn something from them and improved 50% on their efficiency rate. And it’s just not just thinking outside the silo, it was thinking outside the industry, thinking outside completely the way things have been done in the past.

Diane Hamilton: And I write about things like that. Naveen Jane has been on my show, he’s the billionaire behind Viacom and a Moon Express. And when I went to dinner with him, he was telling me that he gets into industries that he knows nothing about. He doesn’t want to even know anything. He just wants to learn from scratch. So right now he’s in the medical industry helping with your normal flora of your gut and he’s also landing on the moon to mine things. And then the next might be education and the next might be, he goes just all over the board. And I asked him, I said, well, how do you learn this if, do you have a medical degree to do this, this or do you have this degree to do that? And he has a very good education engineering and all that, but he likes to start and just read everything he can from scratch about what he’s in. Almost like not having to unlearn your bad golf swing.

Diane Hamilton: You know, he goes in for it instead of if you’ve already just, if you shoot like Charles Barkley and you try to start all over again, it’s a little hard, right? So you have to start from nothing. Sometimes it’s, it’s nice, but a lot of us don’t have that luxury to start from scratch. But I, I did find it really interesting that he just doesn’t let anything limit him. And I think there’s a lot of leaders like that that just say, you know, the only, the best way is just to read, read, read, read all you can about everything.

Cliff Jones: Readers are leaders, leaders are readers. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just hearing this where he’d been chatting with Dr. Diane Hamilton, award winning speaker nationally syndicated radio host curiosity and emotional intelligence expert brand new book on the market, Cracking the Curiosity Code. Diane, how do people get Ahold of your book since it’s new in the market? Right?

Diane Hamilton: Well, you can get it everywhere. It’s on Amazon of course, but it’s also on my website. I have curiositycode.com is the main site where you can get the book. You can also access the assessment. There were going to have training for, uh, human resources and leadership professionals, but you could also take the assessment now, uh, you could find me on social media sites at Dr. Diane Hamilton and that’s Dr for doctors. So I’m on a all over Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, you name it. You can find me that way.

Cliff Jones: Wonderful. Well, I thank you very much for being with us today on the streets where it’s podcasts. Would you come back and visit with us in the future?

Diane Hamilton: I will. Thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun.

Cliff Jones: All right, Diane. Thanks very much ladies and gentlemen, Street streetsmart podcast with Harvey Mackay and Cliff Jones. If you’re just tuning in and new to the street smarts podcast, give us a little love on iTunes and get your free basic membership at harveymckayacademy.com. I’m Cliff Jones. Thanks, Dr. Diane Hamilton for being with us. Thanks again.

Diane Hamilton: You’re welcome.

About the Author

Seven-time, New York Times best-selling author of "Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive," with two books among the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times. He is one of America’s most popular and entertaining business speakers, and currently serves as Chairman at the MackayMitchell Envelope Company, one of the nation’s major envelope manufacturers, producing 25 million envelopes a day.

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