WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP TRAIT?

So, what do you think it is? More importantly, perhaps, what do you think is your most important leadership trait?

CEO at research firm, UserTesting, Andy McMillan, has a strong opinion about what should be No. 1 on such a list, so he took a look at a blog post from Indeed.com titled, Top 12 Qualities Every CEO Shares. Indeed.com listed these leadership qualities in order of importance: optimistic, accepting, loyal, understanding, trustworthy, inspirational, confident, critical thinker, compassionate, reliable, and passionate.

Unsurprising, perhaps – even though you might rank them slightly differently. But McMillan was disappointed. His most important trait, which he regards as essential to drive innovation and wild success, whatever that is, is curiosity. Curiosity. McMillan thought Indeed.com had underrated it – it only came in twelfth. McMillan again: There, in 12th?place — after optimistic, accepting, loyal, understanding, trustworthy, inspirational, confident, critical thinker, compassionate, reliable, and passionate — the word I was waiting for finally appeared: Curious (in The most important trait in a leader is not what you think, in Fastcompany, 22 Nov 23).

When you were choosing your student leaders for 2024 in the past month or so, what were you looking for? What did you seek in your young people amongst their leadership qualities and traits? Were you looking for young leaders other kids have come to trust? ?Or was it their unfailing enthusiasm and optimism, with a passion for the school and what it stood for? Were you seeking dependability and reliability? Or was it their self-confidence as they go about their daily life at school that impressed you?

How important to you is that your student leaders show empathy, compassion and acceptance of other kids – accept respect and value them as they are? Or was it more important that they had a capacity to inspire and encourage their peers and younger kids to give of their best? Was it their loyalty to the school and its values that you were seeking? Did you choose bright kids with a mature capability as critical thinkers?

How important to you was it that your student leaders for 2024 be curious?

McMillan says that he has discovered over and over in his eight years as a CEO that intense curiosity may not be the most obvious attribute for someone heading a company, but according to him, it’s ultimately the most indispensable one.

And why is curiosity so important? Curiosity lays the groundwork for so many traits one would ascribe to a corporate leader, McMillan avers, including most of those on the Indeed.com list, and others like decisiveness, big-picture thinking, and transparency.

Regardless of their individual career aspirations as 16- and 17-year-olds, it is probable that many of your student leaders may become leaders in their various fields of endeavour in the future, so if McMillan is right, maybe you need to consider ways your school can foster and nurture curiosity in not only your prospective leaders, but in your students generally.

Human infants are born innately curious. Part of their socialisation requires that they be able to make sense of the world in which they grow up. Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that one of the early key words a little girl or little boy masters in their own language is the word, Why?

Sometimes, as an educator, you feel that schooling somehow knocks the why out of children and young people, (unless it is in the adolescent voice asking, Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to learn this?) ?With our statutory requirements to comply with prescribed curriculum content and mandated approaches to assessment, there is not much room left to allow children and young people the freedom to be curious about other things during their formal schooling. Good schools find time for it – but fostering and nurturing curiosity needs to be the result of a conscious and intentional decision to make it a priority, both at primary and at secondary level. You know only to well that some of our most cherished moments as teachers come when one of our students brings us an answer to why, or struggles and eventually succeeds to research an independent answer to why. You don’t have to take my word for it, McMillan affirms — some of the smartest and most successful folks in history agree. For why is the question that prompts and stimulates investigation. It gives wondering a voice and legs – it inspires and encourages a natural human process of discovering, or finding out.

McMillan says he is not alone in believing curiosity is a most important leadership trait. For example, when asked to name the one quality that CEOs need most to succeed in turbulent times, billionaire entrepreneur Michael Dell said, I would place my bet on curiosity. Then too, McMillan notes that Sam Walton’s innate curiosity famously led him to make frequent, unannounced visits to his Walmart stores to ask questions and check on virtually every detail, from cleanliness to the product-return process. “Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat,” Walton said, “it kills the competition.”

Even Albert Einstein valued curiosity so much that his quotes on the topic fill an entire an entire web page! McMillan enthuses. ?Einstein attributed his enquiring mind to his mother. When he got home each day after school, his mother would ask him not the standard question parents ask – How did you go in school today?, or What did you do at school today? – inviting the answer “OK” to the first and probably “Not a lot” to the second. No, Einstein’s mother asked him, Albert, did you ask any good questions in school today?? Einstein himself said in later life, “I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.”

McMillan goes on to list three reasons why curiosity is so vital in a leader – of any age; at any level of responsibility:

LEADERS DON’T KNOW IT ALL; CURIOSITY FILLS THE GAP

Let’s unpack this on two levels, both of which speak to management realities for leaders, he offers, continuing, It has been said that artificial intelligence is 100% confident but not 100% accurate. That is, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools use available data to respond to queries, and sound very self-assured in doing so, but those answers nevertheless can contain inaccuracies and errors.

By contrast, he goes on, a leader who is genuinely curious, who asks the right questions and truly leans in and listens, improves their chances of making correct decisions. A leader who lacks curiosity and then is unwilling to admit mistakes, to go back to people and say, “Yeah, I sure got that one wrong,” travels on a fraught path.

Truth is, leaders – of any age and at any level of responsibility - are often are responsible for entire functions they have little or no prior experience in, McMillan attests. As an example from commerce – and Heads of schools will know this, some from bitter experience! - ?they may lack a background in financial operations, yet are the final arbiter (working with the CFO or Business Manager of their school) on corporate finance matters.

This dynamic should force Heads – and by extension, other senior staff in schools - to be genuinely interested in all the work going on across the school, and ask thoughtful questions of the real experts – the Business Manager; the Head of Science, or the Head Groundsman. It’s the only way to develop thorough knowledge about all those unfamiliar topics that touch corporate strategy, McMillan maintains.

Training your student leaders to be curious about what they don’t know helps them to grow – making them better adult citizens and better leaders as they move out from your school into the community.

McMillan also argues that curiosity is a key contemporary leadership trait, at a time when new solutions and innovative thinking has never been more crucial. Your student leaders in 2024 are going to be working in a very different world by the time they graduate from university and take up their first professional role – in whatever field. As McMillan says,

CURIOSITY ESPECIALLY FITS THESE TIMES

It’s cliché to say we live in uncertain times—every period throughout history has been tumultuous in some way—but can we agree that the 2020s feel uniquely uncertain? From digital disruption to the pandemic’s impact to political anxiety, acute unpredictability has become the norm. This incipient uncertainty is affecting our school communities and our students significantly. How can we better equip them to deal?

In this environment, leaders – of all ages and at all levels of responsibility - must somehow get comfortable with enormous ambiguity, McMillan explains, in a different world in which change can occur in an instant and often does. Until someone invents a crystal ball, McMillan adds, relentlessly curious adult leaders ?- and by extension, your student leaders too at their level and in their sphere of influence, can at least devour enough information from multiple sources to try to make smart decisions.

According to McMillan, the same holds true for leaders who have a role as stewards of a positive and empathetic organisational culture, and this is a role student leaders undoubtedly have. Who better than they to foster and nurture a positive and empathetic school culture, where everyone now expects (rightfully so, obviously) to be highly valued as teachers and as students. At Head of School level, it has never been more critical for you to understand your staff on a deeper level, McMillan suggests. What are their jobs like? What are their lives like? Again by extension, student leaders can tap into what it is like to be a student at your school day by day, and act in ways to secure a positive student experience for all, with your support, of course. So, McMillan summarises, curiosity is an indispensable quality both externally (organisational success) and internally (staff and student engagement and well-being).

As a Duke University CEO study concluded, The challenges facing leaders today are less predictable, solutions need to be more systemic, and the power to effect change requires moving collectives through influence as opposed to formal authority. . . ?When asked how leaders need to adapt to these circumstances and challenges, several participants brought up the need for more curiosity. Are there better ways of doing what we do? Better ways to support our people? Better ways to deploy our resources? Better ways of being?

McMillan’s third reason should appeal to your student leaders:

CURIOSITY MAKES THE JOB MORE FUN!

McMillan says, I can’t imagine enjoying this job without a relish for asking questions and a “learn-or-die” attitude. In a way, curiosity is a leadership survival skill, he explains. On a typical day, a chief executive’s meeting schedule veers every half hour to cover one disparate subject or another. Finding fun in that — enjoying that variety and flow of information—tends to be a prerequisite for the position. Your busy student leaders to inhabit a world like that; juggling Maths with the New Student Welcome; Chemistry with planning the Grade 11 Community Service Drive; English with running the Summer Sports Assembly. Not to mention being a member of a family, playing their own sports and living their normal 17-year-old life!

McMillan suggests you – and maybe your student leaders too - may want to think of themselves as the unmanned Mars rover—appropriately named Curiosity, that has been exploring the Red Planet’s landscape for 11 years, logging a growing list of discoveries. On September 18, NASA announced that the craft managed to reach the Gediz Vallis Ridge, a precarious mountain range expected to hold clues of Mars’ watery past.

McMillan’s last word: as my list of three reasons for curiosity being so important shows, curiosity is vital in helping leaders – of any age and at any level of responsibility - ?to guide their own teams successfully up tall mountains.

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