Curiosity is a key leadership capability and organisational value

 
When working with companies and organisations we are often asked to help develop or comment on their values and leadership capabilities. Of course, words such as integrity, collaboration and customer-focus feature and why wouldn’t they? However, I am consistently surprised how often curiosity is not included. This blog argues why curiosity needs to be considered.
 

What is curiosity?

 
First, let’s look at some definitions:
 
Curiosity (noun): a strong desire to know or learn something.
 
Curious (adjective): eager to learn or know; inquisitive. Synonyms: interested, inquiring
 
Clearly, being curious is about wanting to learn. Surely this has a role to play in any organisational culture that describes itself as innovative, customer-focused, learning etc.
 

The benefits of being curious

 
Wouldn’t it be great if all of your managers and their team members sought to understand why things happen rather than just acknowledge that they do happen. This is why I feel that curiosity should become part of an employee’s DNA wherever they work and whatever they do.
 
For example, how many times do you experience the same mistakes or errors being repeated? Poor quality, communication not happening how and when it should, interruptions to processes. I could go on.
 
Yet how many times do people, for whatever reason, focus on the question what and ignore the question why? Surely at some point someone needs to put their foot on the metaphorical ball, look up and ask ‘why?’ Unless this happens, we fall into the trap of ‘if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got’ syndrome.
 
Imagine if your organisation had curiosity as a value. Imagine how this would encourage people to look deeper into issues and take accountability to raise, or even solve them. Imagine how you could recruit people into your organisation who share then exhibit this value. Imagine how solutions-focused your performance review and 1:1 meetings would be if being curious was a topic of discussion to be recognised and rewarded. Of course, calling people out for not showing curiosity is the other side of this coin.
 
In our blog article Problem Solving – getting to the root cause we discuss and illustrate the benefits of using the 5 Whys. This simple yet effective method is very much promoting both the art and science of being curious. Asking why is easy – ask any parent of young, curious children.
 

My curious question to you is...

What’s stopping you from refreshing your values and/or leadership capabilities to include ‘why?’
 
Paul Beesley
Director & Senior Consultant, Beyond Theory