Many leaders believe Purpose comes first. State the vision. Set the standard. Say the thing plainly and the team will follow.

Yet I’ve always put “People First”, which strikes some as a contrary approach.  Here’s why: you need the right people to understand and embrace what the team is focused on accomplishing.

Recently I ran across a negotiation book that had nothing to do with leadership on its cover and everything to do with it underneath — Chris Voss’s Never Split the Difference. Voss spent years talking hostage-takers down from ledges for the FBI, and his central claim stopped me cold: negotiation isn’t a battle of arguments, it’s a process of discovery. You don’t win by asserting your position faster or louder. You win by understanding the other side’s position more completely than they do.

Back in my agricultural days, we were facing foreign competition that was pressuring market pricing and growth potential.  I saw an opportunity to develop a farm in South America through a joint venture, in a place with ideal climate and labor.  I moved quickly to seize the opportunity, too quickly in fact.  I hadn’t asked all of the political and economic questions I needed to ahead of time; it turned out that those realities more than outweighed any production benefits. Deeper questioning would have saved a great deal of pain, but provided practical lessons in the power of Curiosity. At least I was fortunate to never personally need Voss’s actual specialty.

Here’s what I learned: Curiosity isn’t Clarity’s junior partner. It sharpens Clarity.

Voss calls it Tactical Empathy: listening as an active, disciplined skill rather than a passive one. He teaches something he calls “labeling”: naming what you observe in someone else’s situation — It seems like this deadline is the real pressure — instead of assuming you already know. He notes that the sweetest two words in any conversation aren’t “you’re right,” which people say just to end a discussion, but “that’s right,” which people say only once they feel genuinely understood. One shuts a door. The other opens one.

That distinction matters immensely for leaders. A team that hears your Clarity without ever experiencing your Curiosity will comply. A team that experiences your Curiosity first, one that feels asked and not just told, will be prepared to commit. Compliance ends at the instruction. Commitment survives it.

So before you state your vision for the latest mission, try asking a question first, one that’s not rhetorical. Here’s a real one, the kind Voss builds his calibrated questions around: What am I not seeing here? What’s the real challenge underneath this situation?

Clarity is still where you’re headed. But Curiosity is how you’ll discover if the compass is pointed in the right direction before you march…

Tempus Maximize!