Be More Curious
Learning is Fun! (photo by Pexels)
The best investment for a Leader to make when looking to improve their Leadership Effectiveness Quotient (LEQ) is to deliberately cultivate a more active Learner Mode way of being in the world. To further clarify, this focus on activity is what sets Learner Mode apart from the more common, yet passive idea of “having a Growth Mindset” composed of beliefs, attitudes, or general approaches to things.
For example, operating in active Learner Mode doesn’t mean that you simply believe that abilities can be developed, it means you spend time actively developing your own abilities. And the same distinction applies for all the other familiar attributes of a Growth Mindset, such as being receptive to feedback, believing that failures open up opportunities for growth, and looking at talent as improvable vs given. The key pivot being taking these beliefs and/or attitudes you claim to have and consistently turning them into behaviors and actions you actually do.
But how to make that jump up from beliefs casually held into real world behaviors reliably done? What turns a positive sentiment regarding the value of learning into actual behaviors in pursuit of learning? What takes easy agreement with the idea that challenge and conflict can have constructive value, and turns those difficult experiences of friction into effective traction for developmental progress and adaptive growth? How do you from proper stance of attitudes and values, to flowing dance in alignment with them? The common connector here, or Catalyst, if you will, is the intrinsic motivation and effective actuator that comes from the generative power of Curiosity.
What follows below are 3 specific daily areas where being more curious will give you opportunities to put your Growth Mindset to the test with real world Learner Mode challenges, and support your aspirations of always upping your Leadership Effectiveness Quotient (LEQ).
1) Be More Curious... about your judgements. While Ted Lasso might have won his famous game of darts on the back of “Be more curious, less judgmental,” I believe that there is exponentially more value to be gained by accepting our judgments as they come, but then applying our curiosity directly to them. “Why do I think this? What else might be true? What am I missing? What assumptions of mine, and theirs, might really be driving this situation?” The list is endless, as are the benefits of leaning into to your judgements, beginning with awareness and acceptance, and then shifting over to curiosity about them. Many of your judgements will likely prove to be fairly sound. Many more, probably less so.
(Sidebar and irony alert– while spellcheck and Google both say “judgment” and “judgmental” are correct spellings in American English and legal docs, I still have a very strong feeling/judgement on the superior value that comes with that middle “e” added in, as in “judgement” and “judgemental.”)
2) Be More Curious... about emergent possibilities. By “emergent possibilities” I mean new and/or unexpected outcomes, specifically the kind that ONLY come about via the interaction of complex systems (like people) and that simply CAN’T be predicted, planned for, or otherwise derived from linear, cause-and-effect type thinking.
Obviously, your ongoing meetings, budget talks, and strategy session type conversations are an immediate place to push your Curiosity a little further past the edges. However, this active engagement of more open-minded attention and effort goes beyond just live conversations with real people. You can expand it out to include deep introspection, day dreams, thought experiments, and yes, even Ai-assisted brainstorming. The value isn’t so much in the person or place, as it is in the practice and process of active inquiry to get a new perspective beyond the edges of the known and expected.
3) Be More Curious... about asking higher quality questions. In addition to the standard “What am I missing here? How do you see things? What options come to mind for you here?” type questions, this mode of active inquiry can be truly transformative.
But first, let’s clarify how Curiosity shows up in intent. Start with the idea of asking to better understand more about what’s being said, but then continue on and explore what lies above, below, and beyond it. Genuine curiosity here in intent, and wisdom in application, can transform almost any conversation into a powerful developmental catalyst, for both you and the other person too.
Second, be sure to follow the energy of the conversation. The best way to do this is track the direction of your conversations partner’s attention and interest, and yours too, and then look to see what might lie just beyond that overlap. Asking a few well timed follow up questions on a specific tangent point can often lead to deeper connection than where you may have ended up if you stayed in the realm of your more common open-ended questions above.
Third, and finally, be sure to add your insights into the mix, but be mindful and deliberate about which ones, and when. Something that starts with “And,” that adds energy to the flow at the moment, and deepens the nuance or raises the complexity is a good place to start. After all, higher quality questions lead to higher quality conversations, which then lead to higher quality relationships and higher quality results.
Ultimately, the surest way to more effective Leadership application is to take daily action in the practice of “Learnership Activation.” Cultivating an active Learner Mode of being more curious, about almost everything, is the best way to elevate your Leadership more quickly, but also more sustainably too. In sum, iterate your new mantra of “Be More Curious” to elevate the quality of your Leadership effectiveness. Iterate to elevate. And then iterate some more.
Are you perhaps Curious as to how Catalyst Coaching can help support you turning your aspirations into actions, especially those aimed at elevating your Leadership game?
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