Curiosity: The Hidden Gem of Leadership

Amidst modern business landscapes' turbulence and disruption, the pursuit of sustainable company growth seems paramount. Yet, pinning down the elusive "how" of outperforming the competition becomes an ongoing challenge. To truly thrive in an era of continuous change and disruption, organizations must embrace a mindset that prioritises long-term resilience, innovation, and commitment to growth as a foundational pillar of their operations.

Leaders must embrace continuous improvement by applying a curious mindset to stay ahead of the competition. Only by venturing beyond the present known facts and past learnings, one can discover the unknown future opportunities.

Whether navigating personal challenges or guiding teams through turbulent times, curiosity empowers us to embrace new perspectives and seek solutions beyond the confines of the ordinary.

Let’s have a look at the various areas where curiosity becomes a paramount leadership quality.

Know Yourself

Socrates once stated, ‘To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.’

Curiosity encourages us to discover our inner truths - why and how we tick. It helps us to understand our values and beliefs applied to our interactions with the outside world and heightens our awareness of how we play in it. At its heart lies mindfulness, critical thinking, and a thirst for knowledge.

Understanding how we shape our perspective and opening to other diverse perspectives helps us to be receptive to different ways of doing things and learn how others perceive their reality.

Empathic Leadership & Continues Improvement

A true mark of empathetic leadership is a genuine desire to listen and learn from employees, clients, and stakeholders. By cultivating active listening and wanting to hear and learn about their experiences, challenges, and perspectives, one expands their social awareness, which leads to alternative solutions, risk mitigation strategies and improvement ideas. Conflict is best resolved if one can expand their viewpoint to see the larger versions of reality and see the issue from other people’s perspectives. Context creates meaning and people often get stuck by not shifting from their fixed viewpoint and context.

Everything exists inside a system as part of a larger system. This means nothing is separate and everything we do impacts everyone in some way.

With this desire to see more, one practices a growth mindset, seeking out new viewpoints and opportunities.

Growth Mindset & Creativity

One way to look at the concept of the growth mindset is to view it as a learning mindset, being open to learning with curiosity through challenges and experiences. If the value of learning exceeds the value of the cost of failure, there is no failure only opportunities for new insights and growth.

By slowing down and listening, new perspectives not previously considered emerge. As our curiosity grows, our growth expands.

The creative process starts with the first step of accumulating information and data that act as inspiration. This accumulation driven by a curious mind helps the brain to shift and sort through inspiration and associate it with a new context, which happens in the background when you are not thinking. That is why the best ideas come in the shower!

Resilience

Curiosity is also useful in situations where one must apply resilience. According to Diane L. Coutu (How resilience works, HBR ON Emotional Intelligence), resilient people possess three defining characteristics: They accept the harsh reality being faced with, are able to find meaning in challenging times and find strength in improvising with the cards given at hand.

Curiosity partners with innovative thinking and helps us face challenges with fresh perspectives and creative solutions, making us more adaptable and open-minded. Therefore, curiosity can become our ally in tough times.

Decision Making

Leaders feel pressure to seek perfect knowledge based on using their analytic skillsets and leadership experience. Sometimes a conventional approach may not be the best option for a dynamic and real-time challenge and leaders need to go with the flow instead of waiting for certainty.? An inquisitive approach can be invaluable. Instead of seeking absolute certainty, one can embrace uncertainty and foster a culture of curiosity, welcoming fresh ideas. This mindset allows for adapting conventional approaches to meet unforeseen challenges effectively.

Team Performance

By encouraging teamwork and rewarding innovative thinking, leaders create an environment where the discomfort of the unknown is met with excitement and the pursuit of alternative solutions. This requires a team to feel safe and valued for diverse opinions as well as being able to openly talk about mistakes and failure. Incorporating reflective practice helps team members let go of their individual positions and expand their listening skills, which leads to new inspiration for the team to share ideas. Embracing diversity can become a core strength for teams and it is important not to be afraid to discuss agreements, how else can better solutions emerge? ?Teams start to understand the importance of stepping away from individuality into a team perspective, working together to improve tasks and processes to better team effectiveness.

?Embracing Technology & Innovation

Lastly, it goes without saying that in a world rapidly transformed by technological advancements, embracing new technology with a beginner’s mindset and curios outlook, allows us to harness the power of innovation and drive our organizations towards uncharted horizons of success.

Curiosity serves as a catalyst for personal and organizational growth. At its core, curiosity is about being mindful, asking questions, and embracing a lifelong love of learning by being humble about what we know and curious about what we don’t know.

Practice curiosity in your everyday work life.

DO

• Cultivate a curious mindset that explores possibilities and inspires your team to do the same. Reward innovation and fresh ideas.
• How can you lead by example to show that a learning mindset is highly valued and make it part of your culture?
• What opportunities for knowledge sharing, reflection and new idea creation can you facilitate?
• Practice active listening with various members of stakeholder groups, clients, peers and internal departments. Ask good meaningful open questions and be curious for more detail.

REFLECT

• What am I curious to learn about this week?
• What have I learned from the conversations that I have actively sought out?
• What is the perspective of our stakeholders?
• What is happening in our team that is not about the individual?
• What bigger patterns can I identify?
• What is the story that I keep telling myself? And in what ways is it true?
• And in what ways is the opposite point of view also true?
• How can this insight help me to become a better leader and drive improvement strategies?

Written by Martina Rios, Masteryourmind Coaching.