Don’t be half-arsed with curiosity. There’s no joy in half the team getting curious while the rest don’t bother. Or just a handful feeling curiosity is allowed. Or the entire team learning that one curious leader = no-curiosity-for-anyone-else-ever.
Everyone can be curious, and everyone’s curiosity is needed. So embrace the lot. All of it. For and from everyone.
Easier said than done? Yep. Getting yourself curious is child’s play. (Sometimes literally.) Embedding a culture of curiosity that’s bigger than you, or your current team, is… tricky. There are no hard and fast rules. And much depends on the specifics of what you’re doing, with whom, why and when.
But is getting curious the place to start? Again, yes. First, run a critical eye over your team:
Who regularly gets curious?
Whose curiosity is welcomed and rewarded?[1]
What are all the ways in which you both embrace and then channel your team’s curiosity?
Where are you resisting or inhibiting your team’s curiosity, wittingly or otherwise?
Once you know roughly where you are now, you can get curious about how to get to where you want to be:
Whose curiosity will you encourage, embrace or amplify more or more openly?
Which experiment will you all run together as a whole team?
Where will you celebrate the act of getting curious purely for its own sake?
How will you curb your own resistance to the team’s curiosity?
Where does your team need to pause the curiosity and apply the learning?
It’s easier, faster and less annoying to do A Thing instead of Attempting Everything. So think about the first step rather than the entire journey. And get curious about what happens along the way. What works, what doesn’t, why, with and for whom, what will you keep, ditch or switch?
Curious leaders don’t exist in isolation. They build communities of the curious. How will you build yours?
Keen to get curious and fancy a spot of help?
Get intensely curious about who you are, who you’re not, and what actually matters with Impertinent Questions. My nosiness meets your context each weekday for a month.
Get curious with The Curious Leader newsletter. Longform, practical, personal opining on curiosity in leadership. Like this on owning your success, or this on busting that pesky FOBFO.