What prized leadership skill do all children possess?

Why curiousity holds the key to effective leadership (and how to keep it intact as an adult)

“I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will in a minute."

Now, I can’t claim any credit for this wonderful story. That belongs to Sir Ken Robinson (RIP), famously the author of the world’s most popular TED talk.

The topic?

“Do schools kill creativity?”

What a devastating hypothesis.

That schools quash the inherent curiousity that we are born with. They “educate” it out of us. In deference to one preferred style of learning, where in reality, we all learn, lead and thrive in different ways.

My 9 year old daughter for example, has to “move in order to think” (I’m borrowing another famous phrase from the same talk here). She finds it easier to puzzle out a challenging problem if she can also occupy her body in some way whilst she’s doing it.

She worked with her amazing teacher this year to develop some really effective techniques to support this way of learning. But she only got there because she asked herself why she needed a fidget toy every time she had to do times tables. Or why she needed to walk around to solve a difficult problem. She worked out that her brain worked better when her physical body was occupied in some way.

I was inspired to write this newsletter by a great post on LinkedIn by Simon Alexander Ong, a leadership expert and coach. He wrote about the power of curiousity and it immediately made me think of Sir Ken and the 6 year old drawing their version of God.

Simon shared, “According to academic Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, curiousity is as important as intelligence in leadership.”

And guess what? All children have a high Curiousity Quotient (CQ). We’re born with it. But we can easily let it slip away.

And that’s what I want to talk about today.

The power of curiousity and what it offers our leadership practice.

Curiousity is the single most effective trait we have as great leaders. Scratch the surface of any leader you admire and you’ll find a deeply curious spirit within.

It’s why great leaders always list life-long learning as one of their secrets of success. Why their job is never done. Why they’ll never profess to “know it all”. And why the day they stop learning is the day they know they’ve failed as a leader.

It’s also the reason that “WHY” is the most powerful three letter word in the English language. And the word that effective leaders use all the time.

As a former Director of Communications, I always felt that curiousity was one of my super powers. When you can ask why, you can start to identify and unpick intractable-seeming problems, challenge people if they don’t have a good answer to “why are we doing this?”, and most importantly, understand the purpose and intention of decisions that are being made.

It’s a sad fact, going back to my favourite TED talk, that we lose this inherent wonder about how things work, and why they work the way they do, as we get older. Whether it’s by educational systems, challenging life experiences or difficult corporate structures, our curiousity is beaten out of us and we forget what it’s like to be interested in the new, the unexplored, the unexamined.

For me, continual learning is one way to keep my curiousity intact. I’m never happier than when learning a new skill. And my one job as a parent, apart from keeping my daughter safe and well, is to do my utmost to help her retain her wonderful sense of curiousity.

As Picasso memorably put it (with a slight adaptation from me!)

“Every child is curious an artist. The problem is how to remain curious an artist once we grow up.”

So how can we cultivate curiousity in our leadership practice?

Here are five tips that underpin my own approach (and that I use when coaching others too):

1. Listen to understand - instead of impatiently waiting for the other person to finish so that you can have your say, listen, really listen, to what they are saying. It may change your pre-conceived response, or even your mind

2. Encourage a culture of asking questions - foster an environment where questions are seen as the way to learn and improve. Crucially, this means acting on the insights you receive and also, allowing for healthy dissent.

3. Broaden your cultural diet - this is a big one for me. I get the best communications ideas from the strangest places. I once turned a 5 second clip of the TV Show “Sherlock” into an all hands presentation for an NHS trust. Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t allow outside influences (and a broad spectrum of them) into their learning development. You can gain insight and ideas from anywhere if your eyes and heart are open.

4. Start from a place of empathy - if you’re leading a diverse group of people and populations, empathy should always be your baseline. Seek to understand before you act, be curious about how people got to where they are and what their needs are.

5. View failure as a badge of discovery - how many times have you heard that failure will not be tolerated? And how many times has that sentence led to people doing their best work? Think about those numbers. Failure means that you were empowered to try something new, to take a risk and to be curious about what would happen if… And to apply what you’ve learnt to help you next time.

I’d love to hear the ways in which you keep your sense of curiousity at work and as a leader. What works for you?

I’m currently booking in new coaching clients from mid-September onwards, so do get in touch if you’d like to explore what coaching could do to support your leadership journey. We cover lots of the topics I touch on in this newsletter, including the power of empathy and asking good questions! You can email me here, or book a quick call through my website: www.louisethompsoncoaching.com