By Jerry Kauffman, EOS Partner
Much has been written and spoken about traits of leadership and leaders, but the importance of curiosity is not commonly associated. Over the course of four years and nearly 200 EOS Sessions, the importance of curiosity has emerged as central to the best leadership teams’ success in becoming more healthy, powerful, and achieving the results they seek.
Question Curiosity
Intentional curiosity, or “radical open-mindedness” (Ray Dalio – Principles), is absolutely essential to keeping one’s mind open, thereby opening the door to learning that would not otherwise occur.
When you focus on first sharing our own views and ideas, you close yourself off from many potential learning opportunities. This concept is well summarized by a set of four questions from The Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Berger:
- Do you think like a soldier or a scout? The soldier is intent upon defending his/her territory. The scout is intent on understanding the absolute truth (no bias or assumptions) about what lies ahead, whether that truth be welcome or unwelcome.
- Do you actively seek out opposing views and ideas? Poor leaders ignore, or even worse, shun, those who disagree with them, thereby losing great opportunities for curiosity-driven learning. Great leaders actively seek out opposing viewpoints of other thoughtful leaders. They recognize tremendous value can be gained by being challenged and forced to think deeply, teach, explain, and evolve his/her thinking. Great leaders know that even the best ideas benefit from testing and scrutiny.
- Is it more important to be right or to be understood? A myopic focus on being right closes the door to learning. A broader focus on being understood invites dialog and asking questions about the other’s position, which opens the door to learning.
- Do you enjoy the pleasant surprise of learning you are mistaken? It may seem counterintuitive, but recognizing the realization of being mistaken as an opportunity for learning something that would otherwise have passed by rather than as an embarrassment or shame is brilliant. That’s a complex sentence, read it again.
The Leadership Trait That Leads the Way
During Focus Day, the first day of an EOS Implementation, I always ask a company’s leadership team if they are “ready and willing to become their best as a leadership team.” We learn together along the EOS Journey what that actually means, but I’ve seen time and again the benefits that flow when folks are open-minded, refuse to be offended, expect to say/hear things that generate disagreement, and insist on staying curious.
It takes a lot of courage to really lean into the uncomfortable spaces of conflict with determination to keep the conflict “healthy and productive,” but the payoff is so worth it.
Here are a couple simple yet powerful “stay curious” phrases that you might put in your toolbox:
- Tell me more.
- Can you help me understand…
- What I’m hearing is… How am I doing?
- What do you need from me?
By the way, if curiosity is not the most important leadership trait, it’s probably a close second to humility. Story for a different time.
Resources if you want to learn more:
Book of Beautiful Questions – Warren Berger
Principles – Ray Dalio
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey (especially Habit 6)
For more about the EOS Journey, check out EOS™ to see what many entrepreneurial organizations are doing to help their Leadership Teams become healthy and powerful.
