How Curiosity Can Transform Nonprofit Communications with Leo Chan

Summary

Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell: Episode Summary

Title: How Curiosity Can Transform Nonprofit Communications with Leo Chan
Host: Julia Campbell
Guest: Leo Chan, Founder and Chief Innovation Igniter of Abound Innovation Incorporated
Release Date: April 30, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Nonprofit Nation, host Julia Campbell engages in a transformative conversation with Leo Chan, an expert in innovation and communication strategies for nonprofits. The episode delves into the pivotal role of curiosity in enhancing nonprofit communications, storytelling, and overall organizational effectiveness. Leo Chan shares his extensive experience, including his role as a LEGO Serious Play facilitator, and provides actionable techniques to cultivate curiosity within nonprofit teams.

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Understanding Curiosity as a Skill

Julia Campbell (00:37): Julia opens the discussion by posing a fundamental question: "How do you actually develop curiosity as a skill? And how can curiosity be used as a powerful tool in nonprofit and philanthropy communications?"

Leo Chan (04:37): Leo emphasizes that curiosity is often perceived as an innate trait rather than a cultivable skill. He mentions, "I have scrutinized curiosity, and I think curiosity has always led my life. I'm a curious cat." He articulates the challenges posed by traditional educational systems that may stifle curiosity by promoting linear thinking and fixed answers.

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The C Process to Curiosity

Leo introduces his proprietary "C Process" for fostering curiosity:

1. Seeing (S - 06:03): Curiosity begins with observation. Leo distinguishes between reactive and proactive seeing, encouraging individuals to create their own stimuli for curiosity rather than passively waiting for prompts.

2. Engaging (E - 07:01): After noticing something intriguing, the next step is to actively engage with it. Leo notes, "What kills curiosity often for us is busyness... We don't choose to engage for whatever reason. It's a choice that we make."

3. Exploring: This involves immersing oneself in the curious pursuit, achieving a state of flow where time seems to disappear.

4. Enjoying (E - 07:18): Satisfying curiosity triggers dopamine release, enhancing happiness and reinforcing the behavior.

Leo Chan (07:24): "The final E is enjoy. Research shows us that when you satisfy your curiosity, your brain floods with dopamine."

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Overcoming Barriers to Curiosity in the Workplace

Biggest Barriers:

1. Lack of Time (10:12): Leo compares being too busy to drive on a freeway—blurred and fast-moving—versus walking in a neighborhood where you can observe and interact.

2. Curse of Knowledge (12:14): Expertise can lead to complacency, reducing the desire to ask questions or seek new information. Leo states, "Our expertise can sometimes lead us to stop asking and stop learning."

Cultural Challenges:

• Nonprofits often grapple with imposter syndrome and cultural norms that discourage questioning, labeling it as a sign of weakness or disruption.

Strategies to Combat Barriers:

• Creating Margin (10:46): Allocating time specifically for curiosity-driven activities, such as a 30-minute weekly exploration session.

• Reframing Questions (16:03): Using "I wonder" statements to foster a culture of exploration without challenging authority. For example, instead of "Why do we do this?" ask "I wonder why we approach it this way."

Leo Chan (14:00): "We can all start to ask. We can one simple thing is, hey, start increasing the number of questions you ask a day..."

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Leveraging Curiosity for Better Fundraising and Communications

Fundraising Insights:

• Curiosity enhances empathy, which is crucial in understanding donors' motivations and building meaningful relationships.

• Leo Chan (18:09): "Curiosity leads us to understand others more... if you're curious about their motivations, it automatically builds empathy within us."

Cutting Through the Noise:

• Utilizing data to identify what resonates with the audience. Leo shares his experience on LinkedIn where personal posts outperformed more "valuable" content, highlighting the importance of authentic storytelling.

• Leo Chan (20:18): "If we take the time to be curious about these things, it gives us insight into how people are reacting."

Practical Application:

• Tracking engagement spikes and investigating underlying causes to refine communication strategies.

• Encouraging authenticity in storytelling to foster deeper connections with supporters.

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The Role of AI and Data in Fostering Curiosity

AI as an Augmentation Tool:

• Leo views AI as a facilitator that can handle monotonous tasks, freeing up time for creative pursuits.

• Leo Chan (30:04): "AI generally is an augmentation to what we do... you can use it to get yourself unstuck."

Biomimicry and Innovation:

• Drawing inspiration from nature and using AI to explore innovative solutions.

• Leo Chan (30:20): "Biomimicry is looking at nature and using nature to solve our problems."

Practical Usage:

• Utilizing AI to generate ideas based on natural phenomena or existing solutions across different industries.

• Leo Chan (31:03): "With AI now, it can do a lot of research for you. You can type in your problem andAI can look stuff up very quickly."

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Cultivating Curiosity: Habits and Practices

Adopting "I Wonder" Conversations (31:52):

• Leo encourages incorporating "I wonder" statements into daily interactions to promote a culture of curiosity without confrontation.

• Leo Chan (32:17): "Fold in 'I wonder' into conversations that we have with people... it doesn't feel like a challenge anymore."

Encouraging Exploration Meetings:

• Holding dedicated sessions focused on curiosity and exploration topics to stimulate innovative thinking.

Balancing Curiosity with Professional Goals:

• Finding a middle ground between indulging curiosity and maintaining productivity by allowing oneself to follow curiosity when it aligns with professional objectives.

Leo Chan (32:45): "One small habit or practice that people can start today is to use the 'I wonder' phrase in their conversations."

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Leo Chan’s LEGO Serious Play Methodology

LEGO Serious Play:

• A business methodology that employs LEGO for facilitating creative thinking and problem-solving in a diverse and engaging manner.

• Leo Chan (03:25): "There are four in the world that are LEGO Serious Play Master facilitators... it's a business tool used globally for over 20 years."

Benefits:

• Unlocking creativity and ensuring all voices are heard through tactile and playful interaction.

• Leo Chan (04:09): "It's kinesthetic, it's visual, it's auditory, it's great for all styles of learners."

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Practical Examples and Personal Anecdotes

Ratatouille TikTok Musical (23:19):

• Leo shares his experience delving into the creation of the Ratatouille TikTok musical, highlighting the joy and unexpected insights gained from following his curiosity.

Art Installation Exploration (25:05):

• An anecdote about stopping to engage with a typographical art installation in Toronto illustrates the lasting positive impact of giving in to curiosity.

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Resources and Further Learning

Connecting with Leo Chan:

• Website: aboundinnovation.ca
• Social Media: LinkedIn and Instagram (@everyonecaninnovate)
• Courses: Leo offers four courses on LinkedIn Learning, including "How to Make Innovation Thinking a Habit." Interested listeners can message him on LinkedIn for access.
• Newsletter: Sign up at beindisruptible.com for insights on innovation, creativity, curiosity, and more.

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Conclusion

Julia Campbell and Leo Chan wrap up the episode by emphasizing the transformative power of curiosity in nonprofit communications and operations. They encourage listeners to adopt small, manageable practices to foster curiosity, ultimately leading to more innovative and impactful nonprofit work.

Julia Campbell (35:02): "Take advantage of all these resources and get more curious. I think this is fabulous. Thanks so much Leo for being on the podcast."

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Notable Quotes

• Leo Chan (07:24): "The final E is enjoy. Research shows us that when you satisfy your curiosity, your brain floods with dopamine."

• Leo Chan (12:14): "Our expertise can sometimes lead us to stop asking and stop learning."

• Leo Chan (16:03): "I wonder meetings... it really prevents that whole... challenge."

• Julia Campbell (19:41): "I love that framing of 'I wonder.' It's so important..."

• Leo Chan (31:52): "One small habit or practice that people can start today is to use the 'I wonder' phrase in their conversations."

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This episode provides invaluable strategies for nonprofit professionals seeking to invigorate their organizations through curiosity-driven communication and innovation. By implementing the techniques discussed, nonprofits can foster a culture of continuous learning and empathetic engagement with their communities.

Transcript

[Bloomerang]

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[Julia Campbell]

Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience and effect build your movement. If you're a non profit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place.

Let's get started. All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. This is Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. We're often told to be more curious, but how do you actually develop curiosity as a skill? And how can curiosity be used as a powerful tool in nonprofit and philanthropy communications? In this episode, I talk with Leo Chan, founder and chief innovation igniter of Abound Innovation Incorporated, to explore how curiosity fuels creativity, improves storytelling, and leads to fresh, innovative solutions in nonprofit communications. Now, Leo is a former innovation catalyst at Chick Fil A. He's a LEGO Serious play facilitator and a LinkedIn learning instructor. And Leo is going to share some of his hands on techniques to cultivate curiosity and to apply it to our work. Leo, welcome to the podcast.

[Leo Chan]

Thanks, Julia.

Super happy to be here. And hey everyone. Hey Nonprofit Nation. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today.

[Julia Campbell]

So I guess I first have to ask, what is a LEGO Serious play facilitator? And we were talking before we hit record about how my son is incredibly into Legos. And I'm sure a lot of other people have kids or maybe they're into Legos, but how do you become a LEGO Serious play coordinator or facilitator?

[Leo Chan]

Yes. Your curiosity is kicking in?

[Julia Campbell]

Yes, I'm curious. Good.

[Leo Chan]

Yes. Lego Serious Play is a real thing. It's a, it's a job, it's a career of mine. I, I was trained by two of.

There's four in the world that are.

LEGO Serious Play Master facilitators who were officially trained by LEGO hq. And I got trained by two of them. So this is actually a business methodology.

Business tool that is used globally. It's existed for over 20 years.

It's practiced in, I think, all continents of the world. And there's lots of people like me, but nobody has the name Leo. It just goes so well with lego.

[Julia Campbell]

It does, it does. That's fantastic. So you go and facilitate workshops using lego?

[Leo Chan]

That's right, yeah. So I work with, I would say generally a corporate client, even with nonprofits, and it's really used to unlock more creativity. It enables diversity of thinking, it enables.

All voices to be heard.

It's kinesthetic, it's visual, it's auditory, it's great for all styles of learners.

It's great for introverts, it's great for extroverts.

And it's done in such a playful way. So it's almost like you, It's a different form of communication, actually.

Instead of just talking with your mouth, you are communicating through these three dimensional.

Models that you build.

[Julia Campbell]

Well, we know that curiosity is often encouraged, but it's rarely taught. What are the foundations of curiosity?

[Leo Chan]

I have scrutinized curiosity, and I think curiosity has always led my life. I'm a, I am a curious cat. And I think the problem is, is that curiosity became taught out of us.

I think.

I'm not going to criticize the educational system, but I think that we are over our educational life. Some of us are taught that there's.

Only one way to do something. There's one answer.

You know, if you think about sort of like linear solutions and A equals A plus B equals C, you know, that kind of thing, one plus one equals two. And so sometimes we're taught that there's.

Perhaps one way to look at the world.

And I think I'm fortunate. I have a graphic design degree and I was educated that there's millions of possibilities. And I think that's what curiosity allows us to do, is to kind of.

Want to seek those things.

So as I was exploring, creating, teaching or workshops on this, I realized that.

I have a process to curiosity.

So I, I created my own.

I call it the C process.

Oh, so it's C with an extra.

E. So, so the first S stands.

For that you actually, actually have to see something. So I talk about that. There's two ways of seeing curiosity. There is reactive curiosity. And reactive curiosity is kind of like.

There needs to be some sort of stimulus that piques your curiosity.

I call it a curiosity whiff. So if you've ever been, I'm sure this has happened to you, Julia, where.

Somebody with very strong perfume or cologne.

Walks by you and you get that whiff, right? For good or for bad. But you smell it and then you're like, oh, what is that?

Right.

That's the same with our curiosity.

So let's just say a UFO flies.

By us right now, right? That may be a curiosity for you. You might be like, was that a ufo? I'm gonna go follow and see what that is. Right, right. So there's like a prompt.

We react to something that's given to.

Us that's reactive seeing. But then there's proactive seeing where we can sort of. I like to say we can kind.

Of take agency over that narrative. Instead of just waiting for things to.

Happen, we can kind of solicit. Solicit experiences. And I have tools that I teach around how, how we can do that to make kind of curiosity whis come to us so we can kind of.

Take a proactive stance on that.

So that's.

The first letter is S is seeing.

And then the second is we have to engage, right? So if you see something that makes you feel curious, you actually have to make a choice.

What kills curiosity often for us is busyness. When we have. We lack time, right?

When, when too busy at work or, you know, we're going somewhere and you just literally don't have time to stop. And so we don't have that.

We don't choose to engage for whatever reason.

It's a choice that we make. So you have to see something, that you have to choose to engage it.

And then you have to explore it.

When I say when you explore this curiosity, like, give yourself that permission if you're going to engage with this thing.

Immerse yourself in the world, take the time.

And you lose all track of time when you're exploring curiosity because you get.

Into flow state, flow of states. When we're in our most creative self.

And our creative best. If you remember when you were a kid and you're playing and your mom or dad says, hey, Julia, come home at 6 o'clock, you're not home at 6 o'clock, YOU'RE IN the sandbox playing, you're Having a great time, you lose all track of time. That's what it's like when we immerse ourselves in our curiosity. Because the final E is enjoy. Research shows us that when you satisfy your curiosity, your brain floods your brain with dopamine.

And dopamine is the pleasure reward chemical in your brain.

So you literally feel happier. Because you satisfy your curiosity, your brain rewards you.

So that, in short, is the c process to curiosity.

[Julia Campbell]

So this process, this is how curiosity can be developed as a skill. Because I think many people think that it's either something you have or you don't, or like you said, it's maybe kind of drilled out of you or drained out of you as an adult. So how can it be developed as a skill? How can we, like intentionally develop it?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, so knowing the process, I think helps. And so, you know, I, in the workshops and things that I teach, I.

Talk about how you develop this.

So one of the very counterintuitive things I talk about to see better. We're in the land of social media and newsletters, and there's so much content.

Out there on the Internet, but how.

Often are we enabling that to come to us?

You know, do you sign up for newsletters?

Do you follow things on social media.

That may or may not interest you?

And I always encourage people when you're signing up for things to actually do both. You know, when's the last time you signed up for something you were completely uninterested in? Sign up for that.

Why?

Because it gives your brain more play. You get to learn about a new topic that maybe you never thought about, you know, or if you follow someone.

That'S not in your wheelhouse that normally.

Who you'd follow, they're going to expose.

You to new information, new techniques, a.

New point of view that you would never have thought about.

And that leads you to those curiosity whiffs that happen.

Because, you know, recently I, I actually have a graphic design degree. I've also have like a photography and video background and I do more video content these days. And so I was like, you know, I should start following like videographers, photographers, like to get myself back into that world. Because it's been a minute for me, you know, that was a long time ago. And to see, like, what are people.

Doing in terms of capturing things differently.

And so I followed, you know, on social media, I followed all sorts of like, filming techniques and way to shoot angles and all sorts of stuff.

And it's not necessarily not in my.

Interest, but I don't normally would have that exposure to it. And it's gotten me to just think about like social media content, using my phone in all sorts of different ways.

It's just really interesting.

So I've been trying to diversify, even for myself, the things I see, because then I get curious. I'm like, oh, that's really cool. How do they do that? Then you go down the rabbit trail and all that. So that's one technique to do that.

Yeah.

[Julia Campbell]

So what do you see as some of the biggest barriers to curiosity in the workplace?

[Leo Chan]

There are, of course, challenges and like I mentioned, time is a big factor.

When we're too busy, we. We actually see less. Right.

And I like to compare it to driving on the freeway versus going for.

A walk in your neighborhood.

Right. When you're driving on the freeway, things are flying by. You can't really see, it's blurry. But when you're walking, you can smell the roses, you can pet a dog, you can interact with your neighbor. And so that's the difference when we don't have time is that we actually.

Miss out on all these possible curiosities.

That we could explore if we didn't have that.

So the first thing is to put margin.

You know, I used to work in corporate, work in corporate for over a decade and I know corporate calendars. I've been there myself.

[Julia Campbell]

Oh yeah.

[Leo Chan]

And creating margin for yourself is probably.

One of the greatest gifts that you can afford yourself to start enabling curiosity.

Because then you have time, you know, whether that looks like a 30 minute break during a lunch or once a week or something like that, just to.

Give yourself opportunity to see more.

Because when you see more, then you have the opportunities then to go down the see process of, okay, I'm going.

To engage with that thing now.

I can actually explore it and enjoy it. So making time is what I would.

Say is one of the first things.

The second problem I think that we have is that we have actually become.

Experts in our fields.

And while that is very good, it's good for us to know things about what we do. But our expertise can often lead us.

To be less curious about it because.

You know, we might think we know or perhaps we. There's a perception of us thinking, oh, well, if I start asking questions and explore curiosity, does that lower my expertise? Does that lower the perceived expertise that I have in the room? It's like, why is Leo asking all these, you know, basic questions?

You know what, we already know that and why is he asking that? So that expertise can also lead us to Stop asking.

And I like to say, you know, I'm an innovation and Lego Series play expert, right. But I have to resist the temptation to say, you know what? I know everything.

You know, I'm an expert, so therefore.

I cannot learn more. It's possible for me to shut that.

Off in my brain.

You know, say like I've reached, you know, a certain level and that's it.

Right.

And then when we do that, then.

Curiosity shuts down, we stop learning.

So our expertise can, can kind of get in the way sometimes.

And statistically for adults, we literally have stopped asking questions.

So, Julie, do you know the number.

The average number of questions adults ask in a day?

[Julia Campbell]

Oh my gosh.

[Leo Chan]

When a hazardous guess.

[Julia Campbell]

10.

[Leo Chan]

That's actually more than.

It's 6.

[Julia Campbell]

6, 6. What about people with children?

[Leo Chan]

Children?

[Julia Campbell]

I asked 10 questions just to my son this morning as he was getting ready for school. But are you talking more work related questions?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, yeah. Just on average, it's. I think with kids, I mean, they.

The thing is, we were all born curious.

There's so much research that shows us. So between the ages of 2 and 5, children ask an average of 40,000 questions. Maybe actually feel a bit low actually.

[Julia Campbell]

And so does they ask them all at bedtime as well?

[Leo Chan]

Yes. Yeah.

And there's some research that shows that some kids ask up to 300 questions. I think it's up to 300 questions a day, which is a lot of questions every day, or up to 107 questions an hour. And it's crazy, but we were all kids once. But the thing is, you know, it makes sense.

Kids are making sense of the world.

They don't like, know a lot of things.

So they're asking questions to learn and.

You know, all of that. But it kind of gets squished out.

Of us at some point because we.

Have kind of reached a level of knowledge and all that stuff. And we, you know, the thing is, in our culture we have these bad idioms about curiosity too. Heard curiosity kill the cat. Do you want to be the cat that gets killed?

No.

So we have these sayings that curiosity is bad. Or stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Or even in the workplace or even when you're in school, maybe you had a colleague or teacher that said, stop asking so many questions.

Yes.

Right. And so that, that kind of, kind.

Of squishes it out of us.

And so we have to kind of reclaim the journey. And all of us can do this.

We can all start to ask. We can.

One simple thing is, hey, start Increasing the number of questions you ask at.

A day, track what you're asking and.

Try to increase it to, let's say, 10 or 20 questions a day to start, kind of reinvigorating that curiosity in us.

[Bloomerang]

I agree.

[Julia Campbell]

I want to pull out something you said, really, about the curse of knowledge. I do think that nonprofits tend to want to put their heads down and do the work, and they really feel like they have a grasp on the issue and the cause and the programs that they're running. But that curse of knowledge, I mean, we need to understand that other people are curious about what we do. So we need to almost have empathy for people and think in that way and think about what might they be curious about and what else can we explore? So I love that question, and I want to talk more about that. Do you feel like I did want to ask a question about our culture and how we kind of get stuck in these feedback loops, but also how certain cultures, I would say, don't encourage curiosity or it's rude to ask a lot of questions, or it's, you know, I think nonprofits often have imposter syndrome where they don't want to bother people, they don't want to speak too loudly, they don't want to cause too much commotion, they don't want to cause too much noise. And I also think that sometimes asking questions, I don't believe this, but I do think maybe some people think this, unfortunately, is a sign of weakness. Like, how can we combat that?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, it's a great question.

I think questioning in it of itself as a practice, it could be seen as negative. Right.

Like, say, Julie were talking about something, I'd be like, why it could be.

Seen or interpreted as a challenge.

[Julia Campbell]

Yes.

[Leo Chan]

Right. But if we reframe that.

When one technique I teach is about asking I wonder questions.

[Julia Campbell]

Oh, I love it. Tell me about that.

[Leo Chan]

So I normally do an exercise, but listeners, we could pretend like we're doing this if. Have you ever had I call these I know. Conversations with people? And you're basically. You're just saying, yeah, I know that. Yeah, I know, I know.

Right.

And so the conversation never really goes anywhere. Right. Because we all know a bunch of things. But what if you start reframing those.

Conversations to I wonders? Let's say you're talking about a nonprofit challenge that you have at your workplace. What are the things that you wonder?

Right. So it doesn't invite that you're positioned as a beginner.

It's a frame of curiosity. What we wonder about the problem that we have at hand versus the things.

That we know about it.

And to just invite conversation around that.

The silly example I like to use when I teach this is talking the.

Difference between what we know about turtles versus what we wonder about turtles. Okay, Right.

And when you talk about things that you know about turtles, we might say, okay, they're amphibious. They can swim. You know, they have a shell. They go into their shell, whatever.

Right. What do you wonder about turtles?

[Julia Campbell]

It's like, oh, I wonder what they think about. Yeah. What do they do in the shell?

[Leo Chan]

What are they. What are they doing in the shell? How long can they stay there?

[Julia Campbell]

Right, right. I wonder why some are amphibious and some are on land. I wonder why. I wonder a lot of. I actually really love turtles.

[Leo Chan]

Me, too.

[Julia Campbell]

So that's interesting. I love the framing of I wonder. Yeah. So I think that's fantastic. I think it's so important what you just said that a lot of people could see asking questions as a challenge. So, say you're in a fundraising meeting with your executive director, and you. The executive director brings up a donor, but you want to ask questions like, well, why would this donor give? Or what kinds of things should I ask this donor? Where do they work? Or what is their volunteer history? What's their history with us? And you worry that you should either know it or that it is going to come off as almost a challenge to the executive director. I think that's really interesting. So what do you think are some ways that curiosity can lead to better fundraising results for nonprofits?

[Leo Chan]

I think curiosity leads us to understand others more. Like, there's research.

There's a woman named Francesca Gino. She's a Harvard professor, and she's done research on curiosity and question asking all this. And one of the things that she.

Discovered was it leads to more empathy for others. And.

And that's. That makes a lot of sense, because when we're curious about other people and.

Their perspective and where they're coming from, that automatically builds empathy within us.

And I think, you know, if you're talking about fundraising with donors, it's like.

Let'S get curious about their motivations. Let's get curious about what matters to them.

What, you know, why have they supported.

You in the past? You know, what might hold them back?

Like, get curious about their position, who they are, what they love, what they don't love. Like, and all of that. And wouldn't fundraising be more meaningful and.

Effective if we knew more and more about those folks?

And I think it's curiosity that would.

Allow us to lean into that.

[Julia Campbell]

And I think it's generous. I think for donors, they genuinely want to be heard and they want their experience. They want to share their experiences, and they want the nonprofit to know more about them. And I think for us to be curious about our donors is just a generous act. I actually really believe that. So in terms of communications, I know that you've spoken at comnet, you spoke at the Comnet conference. You've done webinars for communications. I know that nonprofits, social justice organizations, advocates, we're all constantly competing for attention. What are some ways that maybe curiosity can help us cut through the noise and create messaging that resonates?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, it's a great question. I think data is a really powerful thing as a tool that we have these days. And so, I mean, when I was at Covnet, I remember these incredible booths and all these really cool experiments and work that people were sharing. And I think because we have data.

We can look at what tracks well with our audiences. Are there certain types of posts or.

Videos or audio or podcast topics or things like that that track well with audience?

We can track those things these days.

Right. And if we notice spikes when it's.

More engagement, more likes, more feedback, maybe.

There'S a peak in donations, why is that happening? I think if we take the time.

To be curious about these things, it.

Gives us insight into how people are reacting. For example, I can talk about. I'm on LinkedIn a lot. I post a lot on LinkedIn. And something that was very interesting for me is as I look at performance on posts, a lot of times the.

Highest engaged posts are personal things that I share.

Like, there was one time I talked about my wife that, you know, we were married 20 years. Not 20 years, but like at that time was like 17 years or something like that. And so I posted and it was.

Like one of my highest engaged posts.

And I was like, that's interesting. It's not. It's not anything of quote, unquote value, but people loved it, you know, and there was one time a couple years ago, I updated my photo on LinkedIn.

And it's me looking at this light.

Bulb, which I thought was just.

Just very silly.

But I. I uploaded it as kind of not a joke, but I just uploaded not say. And that had so many comments. I was like, I just wrote like, new new Year, new me do this new photo. And that, at that time, that was the highest engaged post I had. I'm like, isn't that interesting? So I. I have data points and I was, I was curious about this. I was like, why are people tracking with this? And as I've done more of these posts, people are like, I love getting.

To know your story.

I love your backstory.

Now I know who you are.

Like all, you know all these things because I, I've, I've, since those days, I've posted more about myself and things that I. That matter to me, those things as well. And so it's getting curious about what does.

Well, right, Absolutely.

And looking at that, because we, we all have these metrics, you know, you can look at on LinkedIn or Instant. We always, you're always given tons of data. Are you using that for.

To better reach your target audience?

[Julia Campbell]

Getting curious about the data, getting curious about the results. I mean, I teach nonprofits how to use social media and digital tools to build their communities and, you know, connect with their stakeholders and do better fundraising. And you always have to be curious, curious about the content that works, curious about the trends that are happening, curious about the types of content, curious about what your audience is resonating with and what really works. I mean, you really have to constantly, if you're a communicator, you constantly have to be curious about new things. And that doesn't mean you have to overwhelm yourself with shiny object syndrome. So I guess that would be my next question because for someone like me, I feel like I can be overly curious because I curate my day. You know, I'm self employed. I have a lot of freedom over my day and what I can do and how I can use my hours. And I could literally just go down 90 rabbit holes all day on a variety of topics. So how do you kind of rein it in? How do you make it work for your professional goals?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, I like how you called it shiny object syndrome. So I'm like you, Julia. I have. My time is my own. I can kind of choose what I do. Sometimes I do allow my curiosity to lead me. There's a, there's one example I like to share. So are you familiar with Ratatouille? The movie?

[Julia Campbell]

I love that movie.

[Leo Chan]

Do you know about the Ratatouille TikTok musical?

[Julia Campbell]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Leo Chan]

Okay.

[Julia Campbell]

So the rat tattoo, how cool is that?

[Leo Chan]

It's actually one of the coolest collaboration.

Stories I've ever heard of.

Like from, from a business lens. I discovered it about a year later, so I missed.

[Julia Campbell]

I discover everything way too late.

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, I miss it about a year later.

[Julia Campbell]

I'm like, way behind on the trends.

[Leo Chan]

So I found this. I love Ratatouille as a film.

Anyway, somehow I found this whole thing.

I literally spent. It was a Friday. I totally remember it was a Friday. And I spent about five hours going down the Ratatouille TikTok Broadway musical thing. I watched all the videos and learned about how it all came to be. I watched everything, including the actual broadcast that they have on YouTube. And that seems. It could potentially seem like a waste of time, but I was the happiest person that day. And I still remember doing it. And I actually talk about it now in the innovation workshops that I teach.

Including this Curiosity one, and in a.

Collaboration mindset workshop that I have because it's such a powerful story of what happens when minds come together and work on something. Like, you can never predict what could happen. And so I always will say that I don't ever think that pursuing curiosity is ever a wasted time, because at the very least, which is already good in and of itself, is that you will learn something new about something. And when I talk about innovation, I'm.

Like, those little data points in your mind, you never know when you might.

Use it again in the future. You can't predict it.

And you never know when that little.

Nugget that you just ingested might come up a year later and be like.

Oh, yeah, remember that thing?

You have it in your brain, and then. So then you can totally utilize it. So I never see it as a waste of time, but I totally agree with you. Like, we could spend all sorts of.

Our time doing that.

So sometimes I have to balance it with, like, what. What do I actually need to get done? But if there's something curious that crosses.

My path, I give myself permission to go follow the whiff and see where it goes.

Because a lot of times you're presented.

These curiosity whiffs, but if you miss.

It, you might forget about it. And then it's gone. And then you lose.

You lose it, right?

And you just, like, you don't remember. Things happen, you get busy again, and it's just out of your brain. And I find sometimes I have to intentionally slow myself down to look at.

Things or to pursue my curiosity.

And I can give you an example. I was. I remember I was. I was with a bunch of friends. We were downtown here in Toronto, and we were going.

We were in a mall, and they.

All had somewhere to go, and we all walked by this.

I have a graphic design degree, as.

I mentioned, and so I love typography.

And I saw this art installation with.

These beautiful panels that were very typographically Set and it caught my interest. But we were going to. I think it was chapters or something. So we go there and. And they all hang out there and I was like, oh, I think they're.

Going to be here a while.

And I told my wife and I'm like, I'm going to go back to the thing we just passed because we didn't have time for it. But now I see that I have time for it. And I literally stood there and read. It was a four dimension, like three dimensional thing. It was four sided.

And I literally read everything that was there.

I took photos and I noticed Julia, I was the only person doing it. It was just. Everyone else was just walking by and I was just literally standing there, like.

For a while, reading things, taking pictures.

And I was just, I was just so happy, like going back to my design days. And it was just a really nice moment. But that's what happens if we miss it, then we forget and then it's gone.

Right?

And there's.

Our world is filled with curiosity whiffs that are waiting to be explored.

It's just that we gotta take the discipline and diligence to do it.

[Julia Campbell]

I tend to take notes, so I'll take notes on my phone or I'll take notes on paper about things to. Things to explore like that. Because I think they're really interesting. Okay, so on the other side of the spectrum, what if you're stuck, what if you feel you're stuck in your work? I don't know if you watch Severance, the show Severance.

[Leo Chan]

I've heard about it, but it's my favorite show.

[Julia Campbell]

Talk about rabbit hole that I go down every day. I listen to podcasts, obsessed with the show. It started in Covid and then we had to wait three years for this second season. But it's amazing. So it's about. Well, it's about severing your work self from your outside work self. But in the job, curiosity is very discouraged. Obviously this is a very extreme sci fi example.

[Leo Chan]

Okay.

[Julia Campbell]

But curiosity is completely discouraged. They are worker bees. They're in the office. They are drones. They're doing the work. They don't even know what they're doing. They're just filtering numbers in a. Into buckets. Okay, what if you have a job like that? Like, what if you feel like you're very stuck in your job and there's just not very many outlets, like, what kind of exercises could you do? What could you do to. To really kind of reinvigorate your love for your work?

[Leo Chan]

I don't know if this will answer it, but in my career I always found that there's always administrative tasks to do things that we don't love, the, the necessary things that have to happen. And I think I leaned into curiosity to solve those pains that I had because I'm like, there's got to be a better way to do X whatever, you know, there's got to be. Because I know for myself, you know, I, I love to be creative.

I like to think differently about things.

And when we're too busy, like, like.

We talked about earlier, it kills curiosity, it kills creativity.

And so it's, it's actually curiosity and creativity that will get us out of that situation by looking at, is there.

A different way to do this?

And I don't call myself like a technologist.

I do love technology, but I'm not like super into tech.

But there's always probably a way to solve something that already exists, either as a tech solution or someone else in.

The world has solved it.

And I find that that's what's going to help us kind of overcome these must do things.

I believe there's unlimited possibilities to solve.

Anything that we're doing. And I grew up with the Internet and I think that one of the greatest things about the Internet is people like to talk about what they're doing. And so you can probably find a solution if you can't think of one.

On the Internet, somewhere that someone has.

Posted or something, or if you look at a different culture or different country, you know, how have they solved it? Or different industry that you're in, how.

Have they solved it? You know, has nature solved it for you? If you lean into curiosity and look.

You might be able to find something.

That can save you that time.

So you have the ability to perhaps.

Work on the more creative things, the more kind of quote unquote fun things.

And with AI now, it can do a lot of research for you. You can type in your problem, be like, hey, right, find me this over somewhere else. Is there a solution?

It can look stuff up for you very quickly.

So I think we have tools now that really enable us to help solve some of these challenges.

[Julia Campbell]

Yeah, that was going to be my question. Do you think AI is a tool stifling curiosity or encouraging it? And that's a very broad question because there's all kinds of AI out there.

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, I think AI generally is an augmentation to what we do. I think it can handle some of.

Those sort of monotonous tasks.

But I think you can also use it to get yourself unstuck. I'm a big fan of biomimicry. So biomimicry is looking at nature and.

Using nature to solve our problems.

[Julia Campbell]

Oh, wow.

[Leo Chan]

You can literally type into chatgpt prompts that you have, and you can, you can guide what you want to do. So, for example, let's say we have a communication problem. You could say, my communication problem is.

This has this business solved in nature.

And you can, you can even guide.

It to say, look at plants, look.

At animals, look at birds. Like, you can ask it, and it will serve you some ideas in terms of what they're doing. And some of our biggest challenges have.

Been solved by nature.

You know, like, the flight was inspired by birds, right? The Wright brothers looked, they.

Nobody could figure out flight. And they looked at birds, and birds have these things called wings, and that's.

What inspired them to build a plane.

The way they did.

And if you don't know this, speedo was inspired by shark skin. So when they were developing speedo, they were looking at, you know, aerodynamics and water. It's probably not the right term. I don't know what it is, but it's like, how do we move faster in water?

Well, sharks have very smooth skin, right?

And so they looked at that and. And speedo was inspired by that. So, like, there's so many ways in which now we can use AI to help us do these things, because maybe you're not a shark expert, but you could, you could use AI to be like, tell me everything about sharks, you know, and it can give you all.

This information very quickly.

So I think it's a. I think it's a support for us in this day and age.

[Julia Campbell]

I never even thought of any of that. That's so cool. Well, that's really cool.

[Leo Chan]

Yeah.

[Julia Campbell]

So what is one small habit or practice that people can start today to become more curious and innovative?

[Leo Chan]

I would go back to encourage folks to leverage the I wonder phrase as.

A point in their conversations.

You know, I teach. I teach these tools in my workshops.

And this particular one, I have found.

I'm always curious about data. I have found that people have resonated.

A lot with this one. And it's a very simple technique, but it's so easy to execute on. Right. We can start folding in, I wonder.

Into conversations that we have with people.

You can hold, I wonder, meetings with people.

So it's like, let's say we want to get.

Be curious.

We're like, let's hold an I wonder meeting today and put in the topic that you want to be focused on.

And when you come to that, the goal is curiosity. The goal is exploration. And so it, from a mindset perspective, it helps us sort of lean into that.

I wonder about our donors today. We're going to wonder about fundraising today. We're going to wonder about communication today.

See where it goes and go from there.

And then when you start talking to.

People individually, have I wonder conversations.

Right. Fold it into your conversation and it really prevents that whole, like we talked about earlier, of challenge. It doesn't.

It doesn't feel like challenge anymore. When you say, hey, I wonder about this, what do you think? Right.

I wonder about.

It doesn't.

It's not a challenge.

It's curiosity that's leading it.

And so that kind of lowers our defenses. It lowers how we might respond.

And we lean in with curiosity.

That's the one tool I'd say we should lean into.

[Julia Campbell]

So, Leo, if people want to hire you to do a Lego Serious Play workshop to speak or just learn more about you and what you do, where can they connect with you?

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, I'd say come find me on social.

I'm on LinkedIn or Instagram at. Everyone can innovate.

So you can find me there. Yeah, my webpage is aboundinnovation ca.

So that's my business website.

We can talk innovation training. We can talk Lego Serious Play, and you can find me there. So I love talking to people.

Find me, message me.

I'm happy to have conversations with any of you.

[Julia Campbell]

LinkedIn as well. I just, I follow you on LinkedIn and I love all of the amazing resources and insights that you share. So thank you so much. I think this is going to be really helpful for a lot of nonprofits, you know, feeling stuck, feeling like they can't flesh out new ideas. They have to just constantly be doing their to do list and not getting out of their comfort zone and exploring new ideas. So this is really helpful. Thank you so much.

[Leo Chan]

Yeah, I'll plug one course.

I have four courses on LinkedIn learning. I have one called how to Make Innovation Thinking a Habit. And I like to call it. It's like my greatest hits album of.

All my innovation curriculum smashed into one.

Course, so I have the ability to.

Gift it to people for free.

If you don't have LinkedIn Premium, if.

You DM me, I can send it to you.

So find me on LinkedIn and message me. I'm happy to send that to you because there's. I actually even talk about curiosity in that one about the seed process. If you forget, there's a little bit of a reminder there about what that looks like. But if you find me, I can send it to you. And then the last resource I'll share with you is I have a newsletter that I call Indisruptible, so if you go to beindisruptible.com you can sign up and I I post all the things about innovation, creativity, curiosity, Lego, you name it. I'm doing videos and vlogs and things like that there too, so I love that.

[Julia Campbell]

I'll post all this in the show notes. Tell Leo you heard about him from Nonprofit Nation. And yeah, definitely take advantage of all these resources and get more curious. I think this is fabulous. Thanks so much Leo for being on the podcast.

[Leo Chan]

Thanks for having me. Julie.

[Julia Campbell]

Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create email more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on instagram @julia campbell77 Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unic.