Curiosity and Leadership
Did you know that being curious can make you a better leader or, for that matter, a better person? Well, it can according to a recent Harvard Business Review article. Curiosity is something kids have in abundance but apparently most of us lose our curiosity around age 5.
Spend time with a child and I’ll bet you will be bombarded with questions. Many of us lose patience with kids when the why question is asked over and over, yet that’s how kids learn. They see or hear something that’s interesting—something they don’t know much about or don’t understand. So, they ask questions—often lots of questions—until the subject begins to make sense to them.
Adults don’t tend to ask a lot of questions thinking that asking questions makes us look like we aren’t smart. Actually, the more I think and read about the value of curiosity, I’m convinced being curious makes us look smart.
What gets in the way of curiosity is our failure to stop for a minute to think about things we want to know more about. What do most of us do when we have a minute of down time? We grab our phone or tablet and scroll for messages.
Consider the following by New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, and author of the wonderful book, Thank You for Being Late. He writes about meeting a colleague for breakfast in downtown Washington DC. Tom got to the restaurant on time and was seated and waited for his colleague. When his colleague arrived twenty minutes or so later and filled with apologies, Tom responded, “Thank you for being late. In the few minutes before you arrived, I had uninterrupted time to think about something I wouldn’t have been able to do if you’d been on time. My mind was open in a way it wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
I think about that book title often and especially when I have an unexpected minute to be quiet and think or when I allow myself the luxury of focusing on a person and asking them questions so that I can learn and grow as a leader.
The HBR article asks us to stop and consider what might happen if we took time to think or took time to be curious. What might change? What could improve? It suggests simple things we can do to increase our curiosity and shake things up.
Take a new route to work. What new experience might you have or what might you see that you would have never seen or experienced on your old route?
Try a new restaurant for lunch.
Read a biography instead of your usual historical fiction.
Try a new hobby.
Take a class in a new subject.
Ask more questions.
Even a small change in your routine can up your curiosity level so give it a try and see how being more curious makes you a better person and yes, a better leader.