power of curiosity lead to enabling leadership
Power of Curiosity Leads to Enabling Leadership
Despite our best intentions to engage and empower our teams to bring their best solutions to fruition, leaders can easily become ensnared in the day-to-day operational delivery challenges and lose sight of what is creating successful work. The frenzied pace not only drains leadership it misdirects leadership attention away from what might reduce and redress the challenges. It takes courage to embrace curiosity in the midst of busyness, as it involves committing time when we are time-poor, as well as a willingness to accept we don’t have all the answers.
If less ‘direct and tell’ leadership is the starting point, what follows next? Being a curious leader is first and foremost about adopting a belief that the person closest to the work front is likely to have the greatest expertise. In order to be truly curious, the leader needs to immerse themselves in the lived experience of those who do the work, and this will require the leader to temporarily suspend their expertise and opinions.
Once we have orientated ourselves to being the ‘humble inquirer’ the obvious question arises: what to be curious about? Leaders naturally gravitate to what is broken or not working; while a worthy pursuit, our curiosity is framed primarily through a deficit lens.
Another starting point for being curious is exploring successful work and what gives rise to success. Starting here can be uncomfortable for both leaders and team members, as it's a place we infrequently visit. By discovering from the frontline experts what gives rise to success a leader can determine where they need to give their time and effort to further the conditions of success. Interestingly, leaders will rarely hear that it's the organisation’s management systems that are giving rise to successful work.
Being curious is not only about crafting great questions it is also about becoming more observant about what is helping and hindering work and listening deeply to what team members have to say, both the words and the emotions.
Here are five curious success questions you might like to ask as we approach the end of 2020 and start 2021:
Thinking about the last couple of months, tell me about a day that things went really well and what made it go well.
What helps work go well here?
What are you most reliant on to be successful in your job?
What ideas do you have to make work more successful?
How can leaders help you and your team be more successful?
COVID-19 has given rise to many challenges, as well as incredible successes. Now might be an ideal time to become more curious about success and what has given rise to success in your organisation.
If leaders can work with their teams to make more things go right, then work is less likely to go wrong at the same time.