October 2025 Member Spotlight –
Justin Jones-Fosu, Founder/CEO, Work. Meaningful.
-This is part 2 of 2 conversations with Shannon Minifie, Box of Crayons
Curiosity, Respectful Disagreement, and the Echo of Ideas: Justin Jones-Fosu, Part Two
I’m back with the second part of my long conversation with Justin Jones-Fosu, Founder and CEO of Work Meaningful. In the last spotlight, our discussion ranged from the cultural context(s) influencing what Jones-Fosu sees as basically a crisis of disrespectful disagreement, to the need to get ahead of disagreements by building our muscle for other perspectives—a practice he lays out in his Circles of Grace Challenge.
What we didn’t get to last time is the role that curiosity plays in building that muscle, and since that’s a topic that’s close to heart for me, it’s the focus of the second part of our conversation.
SM: Okay, Justin: let’s talk about curiosity, since we’ve already been talking around it. How do you define curiosity in your book, I Respectfully Disagree: How to Have Difficult Conversations in a Divided World, and what role does it play in your approach to building bridges between people?
JJF: For us, Pillars 1–3 cultivate curiosity. Pillar 2 is Be the Student—move to the middle of the Dunning-Kruger “U” where learning happens. And we operationalize curiosity with a simple behavior: 1MC/W—one meaningful connection per week (or per month). Don’t just “be curious”; act curious.
SM: You also teach a listening move you call the Power of 3. What is it?
JJF: One of the most powerful ways we practice curiosity is through something I call the Power of 3. Most of us are used to what I call “double-Dutch conversations” where we’re not really listening—we’re just waiting for our turn to jump in with a “me too” story, advice, or a quick fix. The Power of 3 interrupts that pattern by giving people the gift of staying with them longer than feels natural.
Here’s how it works: instead of asking one question and moving on, you commit to asking at least three consecutive questions.
- Start with something open and invitational like: “Tell me more.”
- Then deepen it with a clarifier: “What did that mean for you?”
- Finally, add a perspective question: “How did you get there?”or “What shaped that view?”
These three rounds signal genuine interest. They expand context, create psychological safety, and—most importantly—they keep you out of “fix-it” mode.
And here’s the best part: if you don’t know what else to ask, fall back on “Tell me more.” Those three words are simple but profound. They keep the focus on the other person without pressure on you to come up with the “perfect” follow-up.
Clients tell us that once they start using the Power of 3, they realize how often they used to cut people short. It has changed how they show up in team meetings, in one-on-one check-ins, and even at home with their kids or partner.
At its core, the Power of 3 is not about technique—it’s about a posture of humility. It’s about saying: “Your story matters enough for me to linger here. I’m not rushing past your humanity.”
SM: I love this focus on having a learner’s mindset, which seems appropriate to a strategy that’s really about creating more humility going into a disagreement—how to hold something a little more lightly. A series of studies covered in Scientific American found that wonder and awe are commonly “the emotional signatures” of curiosity—and wonder and awe are typically humbling experiences.
JJF: It’s interesting you bring up humility because something we talk about when we teach our Power of 3 tool is: sometimes we think we’re being curious, but we’re actually taking control.
SM: Right! So you could be asking questions—you can seem outwardly curious—but maybe you’re not genuinely curious, or at least not in the way you want people to be. At Box of Crayons, we talk about WHO the curiosity is for.
So I tend to think of curiosity broadly as the possession of an enthusiastic interest. But where that interest is pointing—what it’s in service of, or WHO it’s in the service of—is everything.
JJF: That’s a perfect lead-in to something I’ve been working on recently: the idea of what I call an IdeaEcho™. Every idea has an echo—it reverberates differently depending on who hears it. The same words can be received in very different ways:
- Hateful– some may hear the comment as an attack on who they are or what they value.
- Harmful– some may receive it as diminishing or invalidating their lived experience.
- Harmless– some may interpret it as neutral background noise that doesn’t affect them.
- Helpful– some may take it as supportive or clarifying in their own context.
- Hopeful– some may feel inspired, encouraged, or even deeply affirmed by it.
Take, for example, the phrase: “I stand with Israel.”
- To some, it may echo as hopeful—a strong stand for solidarity and shared values.
- To others, it may come across as helpful—a sign of reassurance or moral clarity.
- But for others, it may feel harmful—ignoring their pain or struggle.
- Some may even interpret it as hateful—a direct negation of their story or identity.
- And still others may find it harmless—just another statement in a crowded news cycle.
The key is not that there’s one “right” echo, but that as leaders, teammates, and neighbors, we must understand that our words don’t echo in a vacuum. They resonate through people’s personal histories, cultural contexts, and lived realities.
When we recognize the power of the IdeaEcho, we stop assuming everyone hears what we meant and start asking more curious questions about how our words are actually landing.
SM: That’s profound—because it puts the responsibility back on us not just to speak, but to listen for the echoes.
JJF: Exactly. Respectful disagreement isn’t about winning word games; it’s about building habits that keep people human—before, during, and after conflict. If we can do that—listening for the IdeaEcho as much as we listen for the words—teams perform better, families relate better, and we all leave fewer scorched bridges behind us.