Nutshell: How to be curious

We live in uncertain times. Faced with the challenges of the average 21st-century workplace, we need to work on Always Being Curious – and learn our ABCs.

Like us, the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci lived in times of change. In the 15th century, the world was opening up to new ideas, bringing with them a whole host of challenges and opportunities.

Da Vinci's response? To become “the most curious man who ever lived”.

In his notebooks, we see how he questioned, explored and experimented, respecting no disciplinary boundaries, unafraid to think the unthinkable to inform his work.

Being a leader in the 21st century demands a similar approach. At a time when we can’t predict what our work will look like in even 12 months’ time or have to embark on projects with impossible-to-define outcomes, we all need a healthy dose of curiosity to keep us on track.

Boosting our curiosity

In simple terms, curiosity can be defined as “a desire to know or learn something”. It’s about wanting to find out, expanding our perspective, having the right mindset to question assumptions and learn and change.

Alongside resilience and agility, it’s one of the three traits Future Talent Learning has identified as essential if we are to thrive in an uncertain world.

While we’re all born with curiosity, our child-like sense of wonder about the world is often stifled as we grow up. We become wary of asking too many questions or not knowing the answer and threatened by challenge from others. It might feel a whole lot easier just to put our heads down and stick to the same old path.

Unfortunately, that’s not an option when the world around us is moving so quickly. Lifting our heads, broadening our frame of reference and interrogating what we see challenges our biases and helps us to make connections and come up with creative solutions.

The good news, though, is that none of us is born with a fixed amount of curiosity. We all have the potential to be more curious, given the right conditions.

As leaders, it’s our job to model what this looks like and to create those conditions where curiosity is simply part of our lives, whether at work or beyond.

We just need to learn our ABCs:

A: Always be asking

B: Broaden your horizons

C: Be courageous

A: Always be asking

If we want to build our curiosity, and encourage it in others, we need to adopt a beginner’s mindset and be curious ourselves.

That means continually examining and re-examining our assumptions and practices, and asking deep, penetrating questions – and encouraging others to do the same.

We need to always be asking.

As soon-to-be director general of the BBC Greg Dyke spent five months visiting the BBC’s major locations before he started in the job, asking two simple questions: “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?” and “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for our viewers and listeners?”.

By doing so, Dyke both built trust with his colleagues and used what he heard to inform his thinking about the organisation’s next steps.

He also shone a light on the importance of listening to fill gaps in our knowledge and to help identify other questions to explore.

The power of not knowing

As leaders, we should also be open about acknowledging we don’t have all the answers.

Like Greg Dyke, when we take over a new team or organisation, for example, we might not have the same technical depth of knowledge as our new colleagues.

By being open about that and asking those colleagues to teach us what we need to know, we show that we accept we can’t know everything, value curiosity and make others feel they can do the same. Some intellectual humility can go a long way.

If we are unsure how to approach an issue with curiosity, we can try some simple conversation openers:

I’m curious about…
Tell me more about…
Tell me why this works for you / why this doesn’t work for you.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Can you help me understand…?

Cultures of curiosity

There are also things we can do to create cultures of curiosity in our teams.

Reward curiosity and learning

When we think about setting goals and monitoring performance, it’s very easy for us to focus on results, especially in the face of tough challenges. But focusing on learning can be more beneficial to both individuals and organisations.

Framing work around learning goals (like developing competence, acquiring skills, mastering new situations) rather than performance goals (hitting targets, proving our competence, impressing others) also boosts motivation.

As leaders, we need to beware the performance vs learning goals trap. We can help ourselves and others to adopt a growth mindset by communicating the importance of curiosity and by rewarding people not only for their performance but for the curiosity and learning needed to get there.

Encourage questioning

We also need to make asking questions the norm. When young children constantly ask “why?”, we understand that it’s their way of making sense of the world.

But, as adults, self-consciousness, not wanting to appear not to know or be vulnerable, can get in the way.

That’s why we may need to draw out our own – and others - innate curiosity. Encouraging people to ask “what if…?” and “how might we…?” questions, for example about organisational goals and plans, will not just make people feel that their voices are being heard. It’s also likely to lead to some great ideas.

Techniques like “Why?” days, when employees as encouraged to ask questions, foster curiosity and also help people to hone their own questioning capabilities.

Car manufacturer Toyota has long been an advocate of approaches such as the 5 Whys that encourage people to interrogate problems by drilling down into their root causes.

The 5 Whys technique asks us to keep asking “why?” until we understand the problem better and the solution becomes more obvious. It encourages us to focus on causes rather than symptoms and helps to build cultures that embrace questioning and change.

We need to give people permission and time to ask the right questions – the foundation for curiosity.

A little plussing goes a long way

We can also encourage curiosity and learning by reacting positively to ideas that may be not quite work in themselves, but could lead to better ones.

Nothing squashes curiosity more than standard “We’ve already tried that” type responses, or even a simple “no” with no attempt made to explore the potential of different options.

And there are alternatives.

At animation studio, Pixar, people are trained in a technique called “plussing”, akin to the stage improv technique of “Yes, and…”. It’s a way of building on ideas without using judgmental language.

Instead of rejecting something out of hand, the response might be “That’s an interesting idea, and what if we…?” Someone else might jump in with another “plus.” It’s a way of keeping curiosity and ideas alive while building on initial thoughts.

Plussing is a technique that supports curiosity, and show others that we’re asking questions and listening actively, respecting ideas and welcoming contributions.

When we signal that we are open to others’ ideas and actively want people to contribute, we’re well on the way to creating the curious cultures we need.

B: Broaden your horizons

It can be hard to find time at work to take a step back and reflect rather than rushing around the whole time.

But curiosity demands that we give ourselves and others the time (and resources) to explore and broaden our interests.

Whether we think Google’s famous 20% time is a gimmick to encourage their people to give 120% of their time or a revolutionary idea-generating concept, it shows us that we can create environments where people are encouraged to think and step outside the box.

We don’t have to go as far as giving people 20% of their working time to devote to pet projects.

There are a whole range of horizon-broadening things we can do on a day-to-day basis, like giving people (and ourselves) the opportunity to:

work in a different location or division
take on a new task
learn a new skill
try out other roles.

Developing outsight

We can also work on building our own networks and connect people with others to help them to build theirs too.

Organisational psychologist Herminia Ibarra suggests that we need to develop “outsight”: “the fresh, external perspective you can get when you do new and different things—plunge ourselves into new projects and activities, interact with different kinds of people, and experiment with new ways of getting things done.”

Rather than limiting organisational training to skills related to people’s day jobs, we can help them to pursue what they’re interested in, to build competence in other areas.

We can think about opportunities for people to interact – informally as well as formally – to build serendipitous connections and opportunities.

And we can boost curiosity when we bring together diverse teams who feel safe to contribute and challenge one another in the service of curiosity and learning.

Acquire some sticky wisdom

The authors of the book Sticky Wisdom agree.

For them, the “first law of creativity” is freshness, making sure that we seek out new experiences and ways of thinking about what we do. These new perspectives will help us to make creative connections that others won’t have made.

The more we can go beyond set routines, to go out of the way to experience new things and meet new people, the more we’ll see the world from different perspectives and the better placed we’ll be to boost our curiosity.

They suggest a number of “pattern-breaking” ideas we can try, including the following:

Planning a monthly lunch with someone in our organisations we don’t usually work with.
Getting out of our normal working environment for at least half a day a week.
Allocating twice as much time as usual to solve a problem – and making sure we have at least three options before we choose one.
Blocking out regular “freshness time” with our teams to go somewhere we wouldn’t normally go and do something we wouldn’t normally do.
Even taking a different form of transport to work can help us find “freshness”.

The more we can seek out fresh and new sources of stimulus, the better.

C: Be courageous

Always asking questions and broadening our horizons asks us to step outside our comfort zones. We will need to be comfortable with uncertainty.

That’s not easy. We might feel self-conscious about being openly curious; we might feel threatened or vulnerable when others question or challenge us. That’s why curiosity requires courage.

In her book Dare to Lead, researcher and storyteller Brené Brown suggests that when we step and lead, we shouldn’t pretend to have the right answers all the time. Instead, we need to stay curious, asking questions and involving others.

She believes that “power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work”.

Leadership, then, is about having:

the courage not to know and
the curiosity to find out.

The four pillars of courageous leadership

Brown’s courage is not a static trait. It’s a collection of skills that can be taught, observed and measured.

She has identified four pillars of courageous leadership to which we can all aspire:

Rumbling with vulnerability.
Living into our values.
Braving trust.
Learning to rise.

1. Rumbling with vulnerability

A rumble is a discussion, conversation or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability.

Rumbling with vulnerability is about:

having the courage to show up fully in the face of uncertainty, and
being less guarded in our relationships and interactions.

Although we may go to great lengths to hide our own vulnerability, it is often the leaders who are prepared to share their weaknesses and struggles that we find the most authentic, inspiring and easy to connect with.

Vulnerability, though, is not just about disclosure; no one needs to know everything about us. But it is about being open about not having all the answers all the time.

2. Living into our values

We need to be clear about what we believe and check that our intentions, words and behaviours align with our beliefs.

Courageous leaders are never silent about hard things, and do not turn a blind eye if they know something is wrong. Instead, they are curious and find out.

3. Braving trust

BRAVING is Brown’s acronym for enabling trust, which she developed for remembering its constituent elements:

B oundaries: being clear about our own – and others’ – limits.

R eliability: doing what we say we’ll do.

A ccountability: acknowledging our own – and others’ – mistakes and taking responsibility for them.

(In the) V ault: keeping personal information safe – you respect my story and I’ll respect yours.

I ntegrity: choosing courage over comfort, what’s right over what’s fun, fast or easy and living in accordance with our values.

N on-judgement: being vulnerable with someone without being judged by them, while they can be vulnerable and not be judged by us.

G enerosity: assuming the best intentions.

Braving trust is the key to connection, courage and compassion in our relationship with ourselves - and others.

4. Learning to rise

The fourth pillar is about resilience and how we get back up after we fall:

“If we don’t have the skills to get back up, we might not risk falling”.

Learning to rise involves reckoning with our emotions and being curious about what we’re feeling. We can then use this information to plot a way forward.

If we are to make the most of our curiosity, we need to have the courage to step up, ask sometimes difficult questions and go beyond our comfort zones.

It may not always feel comfortable and we may not get it right all of the time, but retreating into the status quo or sticking with received wisdom is not the answer for the world we live in.

A healthy dose of curiosity can help us get the measure of unpredictability and uncertainty. It is also the gateway to learning, and a sure-fire way to help us develop our learnability.

Learning our ABCs gives us some practical tools to boost our own curiosity – and others’ too.

Test your understanding

Identify the three factors that make up Future Talent Learning’s ABC of curiosity.
Outline the characteristic described by the authors of the book, Sticky Wisdom as “first law of creativity”.
List Brené Brown’s four pillars of courageous leadership.

What does it mean for you?

Reflect on how curious you are, and how that might affect curiosity throughout your team. What more might you do to encourage a more curious culture?