What does a pear taste like to you? Curiosity in coaching

There is a beautiful scene in the 1998 romantic fantasy film City of Angels. Nicolas Cage’s

character (Seth, an angel who cannot feel, touch or taste) asks Meg Ryan (Maggie, a mortal)

to describe the taste of the pear she is eating. Responding to her surprise that he does not

know what a pear tastes like he says: “I don’t know what a pear tastes like to you.”

This tender scene played and replayed in my mind recently as I reflected on the multifaceted

role of curiosity in coaching. The co-creation of a coaching relationship and the

establishment of agreements can feel a little like route planning before a journey. It is

tempting to treat this as a straightforward preliminary step, something to complete before the

real work begins. In practice, it is anything but. It is too easy to accidentally rush through

what is actually the foundation of the coaching partnership. Without curiosity, coach and

client may believe they are heading towards the same destination when they are actually

imagining quite different journeys. We might find ourselves carefully plotting a route before

we have fully understood where the client wants to go, or what that destination means to

them.

The beginning of a coaching conversation is a discovery phase. It is where clarity emerges,

but only if we are willing to slow down and remain curious. When a client uses a particular

word or phrase, it often carries personal meaning, assumptions and emotions that are not

immediately visible. It is easy to assume we understand. It is more valuable to pause and

ask: "What does that mean for you?" Curiosity helps us resist the urge to navigate by our

own map. Instead, it allows coach and client to develop a shared understanding of the

terrain before setting off together.

Secondly, enquiring in this way (What is that like for you? or What is your experience like?)

is an act of trust-building. Models of trust emphasise rapport, which is built through curiosity,

attention, and care. This aids the growth of psychological safety: creating a space where the

client knows their perspective matters, that it is safe to contribute, and that they will be met

with interest rather than assumption or judgment.

This feels closely connected to the humanistic roots of coaching. Carl Rogers’ empathic

understanding asks us to suspend certainty long enough to really understand someone

else’s inner world. It asks us to step into someone else’s perspective without assuming we

already understand it. It requires us to stay with their experience rather than quickly

translating it into our own understanding.

There is something profoundly respectful in that line: “I don’t know what a pear tastes like to

you.” It recognises that even seemingly common or shared experiences are not, in fact,

experienced in the same way. We are asking “what is it like to be you?”

Finally, curiosity encourages deeper thought and more meaningful responses. By placing the

focus on Maggie’s experience, Seth receives a much richer answer. Maggie responds to his

curiosity by saying the pear was “sweet, juicy, soft on your tongue, grainy like sugary sand

that dissolves in your mouth.” Seth’s curiosity resonates with Nancy Kline’s Time to Think,

where attention and the suspension of assumptions allow people to think for themselves with

greater clarity. Maggie offers a richer, more honest and thoughtful response, one that Seth

could never have arrived at on his own.

Curiosity in coaching begins with the humility to recognise that we do not know what the

pear tastes like to someone else. By slowing down and asking, we create the conditions for

understanding, trust and deeper thinking to emerge.