Leveraging curiosity as a Leader
Posted on October 24, 2014 by Sylvana Rochet, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Leadership is within your reach if you know how to leverage a tool as simple as curiosity in your work. Read on to find out how to do this!
One of the most valuable assets a leader can possess is curiosity.
Curiosity is one of the secret “power tools” I’ve used both in mentoring teammates scattered across the world when working for organizations, as well as in coaching conscious leaders. Not only does it help uncover some key insights, it also injects a subtle playfulness into your work relationships -which increases the comfort level among colleagues, across all levels.
Here are three ways of leveraging curiosity in order to create favorable team dynamics, and to navigate challenging circumstances:
1) Be curious to discover your team members’ strengths and natural talents, so that you can be sure to capitalize on those. There is significant research showing that when people can use their gifts in their career, they are substantially more engaged in their work (read: they deliver like crazy), having been able to “shine” with their best contributions. You can ask them which has been their favorite project or job up until now, and you will be able to identify their best skill(s) easily in that story. Imagine for a second if every person in your team worked on what they are brilliant at!2) Be curious in getting to know their personal goals, what they value in life as well as in their careers. Make a point to spend time with them 1:1 with a “walk and talk” for example. Take the team to the coffee shop for your weekly meetings. Observe what happens when you move your discussions out of the conference room with the fluorescent light fixtures (CIA interview, anyone?) to the Hungarian tea parlor or the park: people start opening up and their creativity and excitement spill over to the “work stuff”. You will discover what drives each of them, as human beings, and then take that into account in how you lead and mentor the team.
3) When performance appraisal time comes around, use curiosity in your approach in carrying out individual evaluations. This means being interested in finding out what led to your employees’ successes, so that you can understand and replicate what works brilliantly. It also means being genuinely curious about why certain things did not go as planned. As you explore from a place of “no assumptions” and a desire to understand, you will find out much more useful info than if you came from a place of simply reading from a checklist of what was not accomplished. When you ask empowering questions and hold the space for someone to come to their own conclusions on what they could have done better (and how), you leave them with a sense of accountability and dignity. Which means they will be bought-in to the process of improving those challenging areas or finding a solution that serves everyone.
You’ll notice that you are using curiosity in a powerful way when you hear people say things like “Wow, no one has asked me that before” or “You ask good questions! Let me think about that for a minute”. And I don’t need to tell you what happens when someone feels like you are authentically interested in them. It can transform everything in that relationship.
