The Importance of Curiosity for Successful Leaders

It's been a wold couple of weeks/months at Made For More... We've moved house, delivered in different states around the country every week. if you like data, to date that equates to 57,659 kms of (carbon offset) travel so far.

I've been working mostly with teams around their leadership and working better together.

In my first best selling book - Rise of The Courageous Leader I talk about three key pillars of Leadership; Self-Aware, Team-Aware and Business-Aware. Specifically we've been focusing on the Team-Aware leader which includes these key foundational soft skills - communication, compassion, and curiosity.

Communication

In a previous article, I shared the importance of communication. We can get wrapped up putting out the people-fires that we forget how to effectively communicate. It’s one of the most important skills for modern leadership. If you can improve your ability to communicate, and communicate well, you can avoid people fires.

Communication is the foundational piece. It should be built and strengthened every single day in order to build your leadership skills.

The importance of curiosity as a leader

The next level-up to communication is curiosity. The most effective leaders are those who are always curious. Really great leaders aren’t satisfied with what they know. They love continuously learning and know that curiosity is the gateway to the future.

I’m a big believer in following your curiosity. Among many other things, curiosity helps us frame our vision, fuels our passion and drives innovation. It inspires the courage to discuss the undiscussable.

The wider our perspective is helps us when we have tough conversations. Curiosity also challenges our thinking and challenges the status quo. When we start challenging the status quo, that’s where growth and innovation happens. We also want to deviate from characteristics, behaviours or situations that are accepted as normal.

The standard that you walk past is the standard that you accept. If there is something going on in the business or in your team that is undesirable, every time you ignore it, you are silently saying yes to that particular behaviour.

Sometimes when leaders wear their leadership hat, they think they have to know the answer to everything. Whereas in actual fact, if we use the skills and people around us we get so much more depth in our understanding and we see different perspectives. All great ideas begin from asking the right questions. When you ask better questions, you get better answers.

I like to call this, putting your 'curiosity cap' on.

Asking the right questions

As a team-aware leader, it’s important to ask the right questions.

You need to get curious about what makes your people tick.

• What motivates your team?

• What stresses them out?

• What are they good at?

• What are they passionate about?

You can use curiosity in terms of developing a deeper understanding, gaining insight into different perspective and getting your team on board towards the greater vision of the business.

Compassion

Compassion is the third pillar of a team-aware leader. It is one trait that every successful leader must have. Compassion isn’t something you are born with, but it can be strengthened.

Here are some ways to strengthen your compassion muscle and grow as a leader:

• Have a generous assumption

• A generous assumption is that you believe people want to do their best effort. Having a generous assumption is one great way to strengthen your compassion as a leader.

• Not acting out of pity but acting out of sincere concern

• Leading with compassion means leading with  good intentions while expecting nothing in return.

• Show yourself compassion

• Make sure that you are there for your team but also putting on your own oxygen mask first. Give yourself grace when you make mistakes or fall short, because no one is perfect, and that’s perfectly okay. Having vulnerability and knowing you are not perfect is so important to show up as a compassionate leader.

Organisations with compassionate leaders have more harmonious people which leads to a prosperous and effective working environment.

What do you think you could be a little more curious about?

Until next time, Eat the Frog, Get the Worm, Be the Bird and put your curiosity cap on!

Ally x

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Ally Nitschke is a best-selling Author, an award-winning Thought Leader and Speaker. She has been working with leaders and as a Leader for over 20 years.

She is on a mission to change the way we communicate at work, to lean into those uncomfortable conversations and lead with courage.

Ally is a Keynote Speaker at conferences, delivers Transformational Programs & highly engaging workshops as well as provides Executive Coaching.

In her spare time, she's mostly at the beach with her beautiful husband and 4 tiny people.