Curioser and curioser

Doing some book research on Palmyra the other day, I came across this line from the late French historian Paul Veyne.

“Yes, without a doubt, knowing, wanting to know, only one culture – one’s own – is to be condemned to a life of suffocating sameness.”

Suffocating sameness. Those words took me like Alice down a rabbit hole of deeper exploration and reflection. In essence, Veyne posits curiosity as the great barrier breaker, the path cutting across insularity and any belief that one’s own culture or worldview is better than others. In short, let’s not pull the drawbridge up and isolate ourselves in the self-generated knowledge that we’re right and everyone else is wrong. Instead, let’s be strong enough to challenge and open ourselves to the wider world and the riches of different, maybe even contradictory perspectives. Phew, heady stuff…

We see this by extension in work around anxiety, phobias and even in conflict mediation. Being curious about someone or something cuts away the pillars of fear and hatred and bigotry and many of our less beloved -isms.

And yet we have the common sayings that seek to keep those walls up, such as 'Mind your own business' or 'Curiosity killed the cat' - any favourites? Misfit? Name and Number? Down to Earth? Sorry, misplaced 80s reference.

Just wrong.

Curiosity is typically defined as a strong desire to know or learn something. I’d add genuine to strong, as in the Outward Mindset philosophy of seeing others as unique individuals and not as tools to manipulate. This element of interest and motivation to explore the other places it in many models of intelligence (e.g. social, emotional, cultural, spiritual) and even in my REALM structure under Loose.

Curiosity drives development, the acquisition of new skills and knowledge, ultimately even survival and evolution.

In the workplace, with its importance recognised yet hard to quantify, curiosity shows up increasingly in corporate values statements with offshoots of creativity and innovation in competency frameworks.

Francesca Gino has a useful HBR article on the subject from back in 2018 (in fact, HBR are about to release a collection of pieces on curiosity as part of their Emotional Intelligence series). Gino cites three main learnings from her research, all of which are, if anything, only truer today:

·????? Curiosity is critically important to business performance

·????? It can be fostered in organisations through small changes to structural design and to leadership practices

·????? Most organisations and leaders actually stifle curiosity rather than encourage it

Let’s break these down further to focus initially on the primary benefits she identifies.

Curiosity leads to better decision making as it works against our confirmation bias – our seeking of data to confirm what we already believe. It allows for deeper reflection and more varied and diverse inputs than our typical, stereotyped thinking patterns would access. We actively seek and generate alternatives, supporting learning and innovation, while also strengthening our flexibility and adaptability in our VUCA / BANI world.

Through our interest and drive to understand and learn from others, team dynamics are improved, reducing conflict, enhancing communication and collaboration, and building both respect and trust. All of these contribute to stronger, more sustainable performance.

However, the main barrier to fostering curiosity in the workplace lies with the leader’s mindset. Gino notes that by blindly focussing on efficiency, we can lose our ability to explore and experiment. With time and deliverable pressures, it can be easy to fear that exploration will increase risk and inefficiency, akin to the management dilemma over delegation. How many organisations do we know that advocate agile innovation and yet their practices are anything but? Hmmm.

Let’s be positive. What are her tips for encouraging curiosity?

1.??????? Hire for curiosity – include the topic in recruitment processes towards hiring T-shaped employees and similar

2.??????? Model inquisitiveness, and reward it too

3.??????? Emphasise learning goals in the day to day stuff, not just in performance management processes

4.??????? Let employees explore and broaden their interests – go beyond JDs and career tracks

5.??????? Dedicate time to what Gino calls ‘question days’ - days full of Why? What if? and How might we…?

There’s more, of course. Asking open questions, adopting an Outward Mindset approach (as above), showing up authentically, sharing personal values, coaching practices, and all the rest.

If the above focusses on the workplace, what can we take from these points into our personal realm? How can we be authentically curious, just as we were when everything was new to us as kids?

Let’s keep that childish sense of wonder at the other, at the different, at what we don’t know, at what we can learn.

?

Julian

I help people lead their way forward with greater clarity

https://orangecairns.com