Judgment arrives first. Before you have all the information. Before you know the full story. It is not a flaw. It is human. But if it is all we have, we stop growing. And so does everyone around us.

In this episode, I explore curiosity as a deliberate choice. Not a personality trait. Not something you either have or you do not. A shift you can make in any moment that changes everything about what happens next.

We get into:

Why expertise makes judgment worse, not better
The Taylor Swift story and what Nashville's best label executives missed
Curiosity to learn versus curiosity to know, and why the shift matters
The piano analogy: why your mastery is not the problem, but playing new keys makes the music richer
A personal story about Starburst, a grandmother, and one pause that changed an entire night
The Dutch Football Federation research on relative age and what it reveals about what coaches are actually selecting for
Anson Dorrance and what curiosity looks like with twenty-one national championships
What Arteta's second-place finish teaches about groundedness and joy in the process

Ten percent more curiosity creates exponentially more joy. That is not a slogan. That is what I have experienced. And this episode is about showing you what that looks like across youth, college, and professional sport.

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mamaillet/

If this resonates, I work 1:1 with sport leaders who want to lead themselves first, so they can show up differently for the people they coach.

Learn more at acumencollective.co