Why Curiosity Is the Real Qualification for Leadership
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Dr. Kat Mahadeva is a board-certified physician and creator of Biological Leadership™, a science-based framework for sustainable leadership. She helps high-achieving women align their biology with their ambition—so they can lead with clarity, resilience, and vision in every area of life.
The moment I outgrew my coach wasn’t loud. It didn’t come with a dramatic exit or a fiery confrontation. It happened in a sentence so small most people would miss it. I was still working as a physician, still running a pre-diabetes coaching practice, and still enrolled in a high-ticket, six-month coaching container designed primarily for nurses and dietitians.
At the same time, I had just discovered a completely different world of leadership and content creation. I had begun following @theleannelopezmoseley’s work and was struck by how clearly she articulated frameworks around authority, embodiment, engagement, and conversion. It wasn’t just “post more” advice. It was architecture. Systems. Design.
So I brought it into my own coaching container.
I asked my coach what she thought about these frameworks and whether she could offer guidance on how I might apply them. She paused and said, casually, “Oh, I don’t really do it that way.” And that was the end of the conversation. No curiosity. No inquiry. No exploration. Just a quiet dismissal.
What surprised me most wasn’t her answer. It was my body’s response. Something in me tightened. Something went still. Something knew. The room I was in could no longer hold the woman I was becoming.
When dismissal contracts and triggers expand
At the time, I didn’t yet have language for what I now call Biological Leadership™. But I did understand one thing clearly, frameworks exist for a reason.
We use them in medicine. We use them in engineering. We use them in design and systems thinking. Frameworks don’t limit creativity. They amplify it. So when curiosity was met with dismissal, my nervous system registered a ceiling.
Around the same time, I was listening to Leanne speak bluntly, sometimes provocatively. At times, she triggered me. But instead of contraction, something entirely different occurred. She said, “If I trigger you, it’s for a reason, and it’s worth looking at.” That landed in my body like truth.
One response shut inquiry down. The other opened a doorway inward. That contrast changed everything. Because what I realized, slowly and unmistakably, is this:
Leadership is not revealed by confidence. It is revealed by how someone relates to discomfort.
The invisible moment you outgrow a container
Outgrowing a mentor is one of the most disorienting experiences in personal and professional development. It often comes wrapped in guilt. In loyalty. In “they helped me once, so I must stay.” But evolution doesn’t ask for permission.
I didn’t leave that coaching container because it was “bad.” I left because my identity had quietly shifted. I was no longer interested in surface-level tactics, one-size-fits-all strategies, or being told what to do without being invited into why.
I was becoming someone who wanted to examine patterns, track nervous system responses, decode identity, and design expansion from the inside out. The mismatch wasn’t strategic. It was biological.
The fracture line between wellness and Biological Leadership™
Over time, this experience revealed a fault line that now sits at the center of my work, the subtle but critical difference between people seeking to improve their habits and those seeking to redesign their identity. Both groups may speak the language of “better health,” but they are not playing the same game.
Some people approach wellness as a set of tasks. They want to eat better, feel healthier, follow a plan. But beneath the surface, they are often looking for external fixes to internal dynamics. They prefer habit tweaks over identity contact. When asked to look at their deeper patterns, they flinch. Not because they don’t care, but because change feels like an accusation. If they have to do something different, they assume they must have been wrong. Their nervous system begins to shut down in quiet ways, deflecting, rationalizing, defaulting to overwhelm. What looks like resistance is actually a bid for safety. Comfort wins out over clarity, because inquiry feels threatening.
Others arrive with the same surface goals, more energy, better boundaries, fewer stress responses, but carry a different orientation. These are the people who instinctively understand that this work is not about fixing the body, but about learning to lead from it. Their nervous systems are sending signals, not symptoms. And they are ready to listen. They are already high-functioning but misaligned with how they are being fueled. Instead of bracing against discomfort, they get curious. Instead of resisting change, they reinterpret it. For them, growth is not about discipline. It's about design.
This is the invisible fracture between the wellness industry and what I call Biological Leadership™. One seeks improvement. The other seeks evolution.
When triggers become portals
The deeper I moved into somatic and identity-based work, the more I understood what truly separates people who plateau from people who quantum leap: Their relationship to feeling wrong. Some people experience being challenged as danger. Their system contracts. They defend. They justify. They shut down.
Others experience being challenged as data. Their system opens. They inquire. They metabolize. They expand. Triggers, in this sense, are not problems to eliminate. They are portals into the next identity layer. The moment a trigger can be met with curiosity instead of self-judgment, leadership capacity begins to multiply.
Curiosity is the new credential check
I used to ask all the conventional questions, Is this person successful? Is this program high-ticket? Is this strategy proven? But over time, those markers became irrelevant. I no longer vet people or investments by their external credentials. I only ask one thing, are they curious when they’re uncomfortable?
That single question tells me everything I need to know about their capacity to grow, about the safety they can create for others, and about whether their leadership is built on truth or protection. The day I outgrew my former coach didn’t make me bitter. It made me precise.
How to know which side of the fracture line you’re on
For readers looking to ground this in something tangible, here are the clearest indicators I’ve seen that reveal where someone sits on the spectrum between surface-level wellness and identity-level leadership work.
Your relationship to change: If change feels like an accusation or evidence that something was wrong with you, you’ll find yourself resisting it. But if you recognize change as a natural part of evolution, you’ll start to invite it in because it signals expansion, not failure.
Your relationship to triggers: If triggers are experienced as personal attacks, growth becomes dangerous. But when triggers are seen as information, portals into deeper layers of the self, they become the very mechanisms that accelerate transformation.
Your relationship to authority: If authority must remain unchallenged, your growth will eventually stall. But if authority becomes a space for mutual inquiry, it catalyzes expansion for everyone involved. Leadership is not about hierarchy. It’s about how safely truth can circulate.
Your relationship to discomfort: If discomfort is labeled as danger, your system will shut down to protect you. But if discomfort is interpreted as a signal, an invitation to look deeper, then leadership capacity begins to grow from within.
Your orientation to health: If health is treated as a checklist to fix, you stay trapped in symptom management. But if health is viewed as a language your body speaks, something to interpret, not suppress, then your entire identity structure becomes available for redesign.
Final reflection
Outgrowing a teacher, a mentor, or even a version of yourself is not betrayal. It’s biology. It’s the intelligence of your nervous system recognizing that what once supported you can no longer hold the signal of who you’re becoming. When curiosity replaces self-protection, leadership stops being a performance and becomes a living, embodied truth.
If something in you recognized yourself in the second half of this article, if you’re already living at a high level but know there’s another frequency available, you’re likely standing on the Biological Leadership™ side of the fracture. That means your nervous system is already signaling it’s time for something deeper, more honest, more aligned.
If you’re ready to stop fixing and start leading from your biology, if you’re ready to enter a space where curiosity becomes your design tool, my work is for you.
Read more from Dr. Katharina C Mahadeva Cadwell
Dr. Katharina C Mahadeva Cadwell, Board-Certified Internal Medicine & Palliative Care Physician | Executive Health & Resilience Coach
Dr. Katharina Mahadeva is a board-certified physician, executive health resilience coach, and the founder of Vivo, Ltd. She created Biological Leadership™—a science-backed framework helping high-achieving women regulate stress, reclaim energy, and lead with clarity. A graduate of Stanford’s LEAD Executive Program and Harvard Business School Online, she studied Data Science and Digital Health to integrate systems thinking with high-performance biology. With over two decades in Internal Medicine and Palliative Care, Dr. Kat is redefining sustainable leadership by aligning strategy with the body that drives it.
