
WELD (Women for Economic and Leadership Development) recently hosted a mentor circle program where attendees engaged with three featured mentors, including me, to discuss career growth and strategy. This is a topic I live and breathe daily as a women's career growth and leadership facilitator for more than 2 decades, and for which I have a passion.
Midway through the event, I had a big "Aha" moment surface that I wasn't expecting, and it was one of regret that caught me off-guard.
As I was offering advice and strategy to the women at my table about taking advantage of unexpected opportunities, I had a flashback to two golden opportunities offered to me years ago that were nowhere on my radar at that time, and that I flatly turned down. Now, surprisingly in a micro-second of recalling this, I found myself having some unexpected present-day regret about those long-forgotten career misses.
Sharing these regrets isn’t about dwelling on the past. It is about helping others avoid similar missteps to lessen their future regret, by learning to pause with curiosity before saying no. It's also a golden opportunity to remind myself to keep asking these questions even now.
In these two past instances, I naively only considered the surface description and job title frankly out of self-limiting thoughts and a tunnel vision on what I "knew" I was good at doing.
Me: You want me to go from being a learning and development trainer to IT analyst- hahaha! Me... working as a technologist? Now, that's a good one, hahaha!
Why take the time to ask deeper questions before saying "no"?
Imagine instead of "no," having been open-minded in exploring what either job would actually have entailed and how my transferrable skills would have been used and expanded, which could have radically altered my career trajectory, and my skill set, to be more versatile today.
The Power of Curiosity...

In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article about "The Power of Curiosity," researchers uncovered many upsides of developing deeper curiosity and the benefits of it, such as experiencing greater:
Innovation
Adaptability
Advancement within an organization
Happiness
Resilience
In those two situations, my responses of “No, thank you—that’s not my skill set” wasn’t met with a challenge by the folks offering the positions. Thankfully in other situations I had persistent talent scouts who refused to take no for an answer from me and for which I attribute much of my growth today.
Nonetheless, for those two missteps, I can’t help but wonder—what opportunities and achievements might I have discovered if I had simply replied, “Tell me more.”
The fact is, I hadn’t yet learned to ask career-changing questions like...
What skills from my current role do you see as valuable in this new role?
What qualities or skills do I possess that could benefit your team or clients?
Why is this role important now, and how does it support you to be more successful?
Can I shadow someone before deciding?
What support can you offer while I get up to speed if I say "yes" to this?

The moral of the story is, don’t close the door to random opportunities being offered before asking deeper questions- it's looking a gift horse in the mouth, as the old adage goes.

My advice to the attendees as we closed out the event was, "If someone sees potential in you, be curious about what they see and how that could show up in a new opportunity for you- no matter how unexpected and perhaps totally out of left field that opportunity seems."
Bottom line, by turning self-limiting and fixed mindset “no’s” first into curiosity, combined with meaningful conversations, you may unexpectedly find yourself seizing opportunities, supporting others in their needs, and ultimately, boosting your career while soaring further together.
You can find a free online curiosity assessment by clicking here: Assessment: What’s Your Curiosity Profile? Click here for the research abstract on the Five Dimensions of Curiosity.
Contact Tonya if you desire more information on her "Next Level Leadership" keynote or workshop offerings where she interlaces how the Five Dimensions of Curiosity foster growth-minded behaviors of a next level leader at any level of an organization.