7 Ways to Develop Your Curiosity
Our ‘how to’ guide for leaders who want to make a difference
The concept of curiosity can often mean different things to different people. We all understand what it means in our day to day lives, but when it comes to its use in organisations, how much do we really understand? How effective are we at integrating it into our working days, into our systems and processes? How important is it that we do so?
One thing is for sure, curiosity is an integral part of successful high performance businesses and leadership teams. But how can you harness the power of curiosity to take your leadership skills and capabilities to the next level? Here’s a practical guide to get you started and to help you take some simple steps towards greater success.
1. Start with those around you and invite them to tell you about themselves
How much do we really know about our colleagues, our stakeholders, our team members, leaders? Getting curious about them gives each individual the opportunity to open a little window into their life and show a different side to their personality, skills and knowledge – and it can be as big or as little as they choose. Start with a simple question – tell me/us one thing we don’t know about you?
I recently asked this question to a team I was working with. It was interesting to see that after the first person started with an anecdote about their time in higher education and set the tone, every other person followed in a similar vein. Before we knew it, we were hearing such wonderful and funny stories. Someone then added that they had almost had an alternative career in astronomy and had the opportunity to apply for the Mars Mission! What a gem of a story and what a fantastic opportunity for those around them to relate to them very differently after hearing it.
Regardless of the nature of any individual business , most working environments include the need to work alongside others, even if those others are your customers or partners and not a direct team. Building and deepening our working relationships is very supportive to our wellbeing and it allows for greater collaboration and innovation. When we do this, we build a spirit of inclusion and safety – think Maslow’s hierarchy of need. On the other hand, exclusion triggers the same part of the brain as physical pain and we are more hard-wired to remember it! This is all the more reason why it is important to focus your attention on building effective relationships with all those around you.
2. Employ child-like creativity
If you watch a young child who isn’t yet caught up in the conventions of their parents, teachers, grandparents etc. and who doesn’t yet know the laws of physics, you’ll soon see that there are no boundaries. Just watch what they do with different items. The child will try anything. They’ll lift it, throw it, taste it and so on. As soon as we can see our boundaries or pre-conceived views we have some choice whether we work with them. This is not easy to do in today’s world full of rules, regulations risk averse governance. However, maybe once in a while, try to learn from these tactics of a small child, employ them for yourself and attempt to look with fresh eyes or a beginner’s mind at some of your own tasks or challenges.
Maybe you could also employ this tactic to be curious about others and their roles and responsibilities. What do you suspect are their challenges? What would it be like to imagine yourself in their shoes, doing their work? What might you uncover or notice for the first time?
3. Take time out – away from your typical ‘doing’ mode
I’d encourage you to try and drop into your human being self by getting off the treadmill or your automatic pilot for a period and taking the time to:
Reflect
Just notice and observe what is around you – make it your only job for 30 minutes
Put away your phone
Put away your opinion and maybe even your voice!
Notice your internal commentator and see if you can invite it to become more quiet, maybe even laugh at how busy it is and how determined it is that you should look at your phone or speak!
I should include a few words of caution here. If you are really stressed or under considerable pressure to deliver – be honest about this – you probably won’t take up the invite or if you do, you are likely to spend the time ruminating about the situation. Instead, note where you are and make a mental note to do this on another occasion.
4. Ask big questions – ones you can’t possibly answer
What do I mean by this exactly? It’s all about thinking ‘big’. By doing so, you can have fun exploring some of the possibilities and allow your brain to indulge in different options or notice if it wants to shrink the question to bite size components. If it does, explore them too. However, notice if you are seeking the right answer or going to what you already know would work.
I notice often in organisations people want to make radical and transformational change. They come up with big possibilities but often they get shrunk back because of very real and tangible concerns. We can often handle these by asking a big question. If we are committed to double digit growth, what are all the things we need to put in place to truly support this? How do we be operate with flexibility and agility and have the mechanisms to ensure we are taking risk into account without being limited by it?
The use of a facilitator or moderator in workshops is a great idea. They can keep asking the big question or to throw out a future date that is so far out no-one can know for sure what will be happening by then. Find techniques to keep you asking the questions vs just come with answers. With my work in the field of organisational change and transformation, I have probably done my best work when I have created more questions than answers. You would be amazed at what happens when you leave people with big questions!
5. Be playful with things not going “right”
It happens and you can learn from it as recognising failure and mistakes helps to reveal things. Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the electric lightbulb amongst other things, was not successful first time round. By persevering and learning from his mistakes, he increased humans’ capacity for productive working time. He famously said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Explore how you can create the environment for people to trial and take risks.
Do you know much about Spotify – the online music streaming service? Spotify’s Founder, Daniel Ek, says “we make mistakes faster than anyone else.” The business promotes a fail-friendly environment even displaying failures on a failures wall. You wouldn’t do this if you aren’t interested in uncovering the learnings or being curious about what they teach so you can try again. Spotify are interested in uncovering the answers to questions such as: What happened? What did we find? What would we change?
6. Actively work to challenge or reduce overload and overwhelm
Are there people in your team complaining about being too busy and not having enough time? Do you regularly hear “we have more work that we have time for? If so, help your colleagues to look with fresh eyes at some of the choices they have around their workload. Can they opt out of some meetings? Can they encourage shorter ‘standing’ meetings? Is it possible that someone else can attend on their behalf and report back to them? Have they permission to say no? Do they believe they can say no? (This is another blog entirely!)
If we feel out of control, the human brain produces more cortisol. This makes it even harder for us to switch off and relax. However, if we get curious and solve our own problems, we get that feel good feeling from dopamine which produces a positive natural high.
7. Take a mental snap shot of enjoyment at work
Positive psychology offers all sorts of things that can help us to improve our levels of happiness. Apparently, looking at a picture of a loved one gives us a hit of dopamine. If we have a favourite piece of music we can get two hits from this. The first one comes from the anticipation of hearing it, the second one from actually hearing it.
We can also get these additional dopamine hits from laughter and therefore adding in some fun to our days should be obligatory. People who are enjoying themselves are much more likely to dabble in curiosity around a work issue. Those who are not will be more likely to grasp at a quick fix. This could still be helpful but might possibly miss the causal factors and leave them untouched to emerge at another time.
Deborah Smith, in her book entitled ‘Grow your own happiness – how to harness the science of wellbeing for life’, points to the many benefits of positivity. These include having greater resilience, more optimism, a stronger ability to make new social connections, more open-mindedness and flexibility and greater creativity amongst others.
Encourage all of this and you path the way to people being able to use their inherent curiosity to tackle your most pressing and major organisational challenges. What’s not to like about that?
And finally... time for action
You’ve read these tips so now it’s time for action. I strongly urge you to take the time to try and integrate as many of these ideas into your own business thinking – and practice - as you can. Let me know how you get on – I’m curious after all!