Curiosity leads to better outcomes

Your Weekly Inspiration with Lily Woi

A weekly newsletter inspires you to take action and unlock greater performance in your organisation, your team, your career and most of all in yourself. All in 10 minutes or less.

?? Focus of the Week: Curiosity leads to better outcomes

When we embrace curiosity, it's like opening a treasure chest of insights and ideas. It guides us to look beyond the obvious, sort of like becoming detectives of our own challenges. Let’s explore what this means for you at work.

Insight 1 - Be a better problem definer ???

We’re often too close to our challenges to be objective.

?? What you think is the root cause might actually be a symptom.?

Get to the heart of the issue and solve that rather than just the symptom. If not, it’ll keep coming back.

Here’s an example:

You’re suffering from a fever. What people tend to do is to treat the fever. But that is actually a symptom.

The cause might be a bacteria or viral infection. If you only take medication that treats the fever (symptom), you might feel fine for a while, but you’ll get sick again.?

That’s because you have not actually treated the infection, which is the root cause.?

?? You need to dig deeper and probe further to find the ultimate reason behind the symptoms.

Start getting comfortable in asking why. Rather than taking it at face value, ask about the context, the goals, the people involved etc. Take the time to figure out what’s causing the challenge before you start solutionising.?

It’ll save you time, energy and money in the long run. ??

Insight 2 - Getting to the root cause with curiosity?

Get into the WHY mindset by flexing your curiosity muscle!?

As we advance in our careers and fields of expertise, it is easy to lose curiosity. We believe we know all the answers and feel a need or pressure to be seen as the expert.?

When you’re expected to constantly have the answers, you stop learning and start telling. This mindset will get you stagnant in your career very quickly.?

You start to box yourself into doing things the same way over and over again and remain stuck in your comfort zone. ?? The quality of your decisions starts to suffer, and your self-confidence goes down.

On the other hand, fostering curiosity helps reduce anxiety, cognitive bias and group conflict. It improves engagement, productivity, innovation, sense of belonging and makes the workplace fun.?

Start introducing a curious mindset at work and focus on figuring out the root cause of your challenges.

The upside is endless.

But How?

Here’s how…

For individuals, build your curiosity muscle by

?? Asking genuine questions - learn new things and seek out new knowledge?

?? Adopting a beginner’s mind - find new ways to approach old situations?

?? Be intentional - reserve time to find ways to be curious. It’s easy to get swept away by your to-do lists

For corporates, foster a curiosity environment by

?? Creating safe spaces - where people are encouraged to ask Why questions, try new things and have permission to fail?

?? Adopting a coaching mindset - where leaders identify opportunities to turn ‘telling’ into ‘asking’?

?? Reward curiosity - introduce learning-based goals and show appreciation?

Struggle to Take Action?

It’s helpful to have an external perspective on this. Reply to this newsletter, and let’s figure it out together. Your keys to transformative success are just a conversation away! ??

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Warm regards,

Lily

Lily Woi - People & Culture Catalyst?

Website | LinkedIn?