4 Practical Ways to Cultivate Curiosity in Your Leadership
By Kaila Pilecki
Whether in work or life, how we show up affects everyone with whom we’re connected. Cultivating a mindset and practice of curiosity will strengthen relationships and help others learn how to think for themselves.
Here are 4 ways to add curiosity into your daily way of being.
1. Get curious about your opportunities for being calm and co-creative
Whether you acknowledge it or not, as a leader, the way you conduct yourself sets the tone for how others interact. With a curious sense of self-awareness, consider how often your reactions are measured or disruptive? Do you take opportunities to seek input from others and listen to their ideas? We all live in choice to bring calm, co-creative energy into our work and home. Where can you be more intentional about how you show up?
2. Help people think for themselves
Helping people think for themselves means giving them the space to come up with ideas, implement solutions and learn from mistakes. One way to support learning is by asking questions more often than giving answers. One of the best leaders that I’ve ever worked with set a clear expectation for our team: we could always come to her with problems, as long as we also presented a variety of solutions. Over 3 years of working in this high performance team, I can only think of a handful of incidents where she actually gave answers. Most of all, she held us capable of doing great work, exploring solutions and learning from these experiences.
3. Shift your mindset from knowing to wondering
The degree to which you embrace a curious mindset will determine how effective you are as a leader. Trusting that you don’t have all of the answers and being open to ideas goes hand-in-hand with helping people think for themselves. How often do you assume you know the right answer, have the correct belief or insist on your authority? When you hear yourself thinking “what’s wrong?”, “who’s to blame?” or “how can I be in control” you are almost certainly in a knowing or judging mindset.
Where can you try being curious rather than knowing? Do you see opportunities to consider “what works?” “what’s my part in this?” or “I wonder how that person is feeling?”. Rather than jumping to conclusions and attaching to what you think is true, take a moment to sit with curiosity and wonder. Form your questions from that place.
4. Ask open ended questions
Asking great questions is at the heart of being curious. This includes learning more about people’s thoughts, ideas and motivations before making decisions. It’s so easy to ask leading or closed ended questions -- those that imply your opinion or can be answered with a yes or no. For example:
“Do you want to talk about your top 3 accounts in our meeting today?”
“Should I hand over your case to Moira?”
“Do you think David is up to delivering this speech?”
Open ended questions, on the other hand, are much more informative. They give people a chance to answer from their perspective, without being led. Most open ended questions start with what, how or who. For example:
“What might you like to bring to the table for our meeting today?”
“How do you think we should handle this case?”
“Who do you have in mind to deliver that speech?”
Both at home and work, curiosity is a tool that supports us in showing up as calm, co-creative leaders. Asking powerful, open-ended questions is a catalyst for learning, growth and independent thinking. The shift from being right to being curious is a constant work in progress, strengthened by self-awareness and a commitment to having great relationships.
At IRG, we are committed to holding ourselves and our clients capable by supporting our network with the Courageous Leadership framework.
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Please share examples of how you (or others) are courageous in your leadership by commenting on this post or sending us a quick email, coach@inspiredresultsgroup.com.