Being Curious
What’s This Resource About?
To meet the demands of today’s dynamic and challenging environment, the public sector needs leaders who are open-minded, flexible, and willing to trial and adopt new approaches that shift away from traditional thinking: leaders who are curious. As well as fostering their own inquisitiveness, curious leaders are more likely to encourage their staff to try different ways of thinking, to ask questions and to apply a critical lens when assessing information.
This resource provides some practical ideas and tools to incorporate into your leadership approach to increase your curiosity and openness to experience.
Definition
The Leadership Success Profile (i.e. Leadership Koru) component ‘Curious’ falls under the leadership character dimension: Show curiosity, flexibility, and openness in analysing and integrating ideas, information, and differing perspectives; to make fit-for-purpose decisions.
Consider this: What does being curious as a leader look like?
You ask questions to draw out others’ thinking and perspectives
You listen to others, are patient and hear people out.
You experiment with new ideas and seek out optimum solutions.
Being Curious and Leadership
The public sector is in the midst of a technology and information revolution. The spread of knowledge, opinion and relationships has increased exponentially. Not only has access to information increased, but there are also entire new ways of working. To maintain relevance in this ever-changing environment, public sector leaders must keep pace with this fluidity and be prepared to consider different delivery models, services and business fundamentals. You need to navigate this new landscape by constantly learning, adapting to and being willing to try new approaches. Being more curious about the environment in which you work can also help mobilise your team to work more effectively and contribute to achieving better public service results.
Theories and frameworks
Open up to diverse perspectives
Frans Johansson (2006) said that so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience in the field needing attention. He coined the term ‘the intersection’ − a place where ideas and concepts from diverse industries, cultures, departments and disciplines come together, which ultimately leads to extraordinary innovations. You can leverage this idea by building a diverse group and engaging widely with different people from varied disciplines and backgrounds. In his book, What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us about Innovation (2006), Johansson offers these tips:
Swim at the intersection − hang out with those in other disciplines and get out of your comfort zone.
You need quantity to get quality − keep generating ideas and follow up as many as you can.
Prepare many ideas at once and execute them in parallel.
Be okay with failure − act on ideas. Inaction is far worse than failure.
Break out of your network − build a network with diverse cultures, backgrounds and expertise.
The ‘Six Thinking Hats’
The Six Thinking Hats method was designed by Edward De Bono (1985) to make better use of group members’ intelligence, experience and information. It works to remove any ego from the discussion process and to consider multiple angles of a subject before a group decision is made. The method generates multiple streams of problem solving – so members are all thinking about the same factor of a problem at once, but from different perspectives. As a leader you can use this model to help foster collaboration and to generate a range of different pathways to harness the collective thinking of a team.
The ‘Six Thinking Hats’ method
Each person in the team wears one coloured hat at a time (this can be real or imaginary). The premise is that when everyone wears the same hat they will consider an issue from only one perspective. By allocating different coloured hats to different team members, a broader set of perspectives can be gained. Use the process below to help guide a group problem solving session:
White hat – Present the facts of the problem.
Green hat – Generate ideas on how the problem could be solved.
Yellow hat – List the benefits of the ideas generated.
Black hat – List the drawbacks.
Red hat – Have everyone share their gut feelings about the ideas.
Blue hat – Summarise what has been decided and finish the session.
Building a Growth Mindset
With the current work environment facing challenging transitions, public sector leaders need to be able to navigate and lead others through change. Leaders need to adopt, and encourage others to adopt, what Carol Dweck (2006) terms a ‘growth mindset’. Dweck suggests that to negotiate added change, novelty and challenge, a leader needs first to understand their current mindset, and identify any constraints influenced by their own experience and inferences that might be causing a more fixed mindset.
Dweck’s two mindsets are:
Growth mindset – you can cultivate your basic qualities through your efforts
Fixed mindset – your basic qualities are carved in stone and do not change.
Another framework for shifting your mindset to cope with novelty and change was proposed by Kevin Cashman (2008) in his book, Leadership from the Inside Out. Cashman suggests that you will be far more successful at leading through change or novelty if you can make the following shifts.
Move from problem focus......to opportunity focus.
Move from short-term focus......to long-term focus.
Move fromcircumstance focus......to purpose focus.
Move from control focus......to agility focus.
Move from self-focus......to service focus.
Move from expertise focus......to listening focus.
Move from doubt focus......to trust focus.
Improve your abilityto be curious
What you can do:
Remain open minded – Let go of the need for control, let yourself explore different ideas,and challenge yourself to do something new or different every day.
Seek out different networks – Mix with people from different backgrounds, disciplines and work areas. Explore the ways in which others do business and solve problems.
Build diverse workgroups – Bring together teams thatincludepeople from different backgrounds, disciplines and work areas.
Ask questions and listen carefully – Don’t accept information at face value −dig deeper, ask questions, and probe for more detail until you build up a clearer picture. Ask questions about the roles of staff, clients and stakeholders. See where you can assist them and show genuine curiosity and interest.
Be vulnerable – Having an open mind is like stating ‘I don’t know it all’. Be comfortable with this as you continue to learn.
Make mistakes – Implement ideas, test out different ways of working, step away from tried and tested approaches, fail fast and learn.
Get excited about what you don’t know – Create a lifestyle of learning and take comfort in knowing that you will never know everything.
Create a growth mindset and encourage the same in others – Know you can grow and develop your qualities and character.Give your staff permission to take chances and try out new approaches.
Self-reflective questions:
How naturally curious am I or is this an area I need to stretch myself in?
Who do I know that applies open-minded, agile and adaptable leadership styles? Can I spend some time learning from this person by shadowing them or asking formentoring?
How can I connect with the right people, news feeds, audio or other sources so I’mup to date withcurrent thinking?
What frameworks or models are available thatwill help me think differently and generate new ways of doing things?
What can I change in my current role to make it more experimental in terms of trying new or different ways of doing things?
Which of your insights from reading this toolkit will you turn into actions, and how?
About The Author:
This resource has been borrowed from the LDC: Leadership Success Profile page on ‘Being Curious’ and can be found here: https://www.ldc.govt.nz/resources-2/leadership-success-profile-development-options/curious/
Source:
Cashman,K. (2006). Leadership from the Inside Out. United States: Read How You Want.
De Bono,E. (2000). Six Thinking Hats(3rdedition). Great Britain: Penguin Books.
Dweck,C. (2006). Mindset – the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House
Johansson,F. (2006). The Medici Effect: What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. Boston: Harvard Business School.