If
you’re a leader, a business owner, an investor, a manager, a
salesperson, or a problem-solver, one of the greatest assets you can
have for thriving during rapid change is your thirst for answers—your
curiosity.
The Curious Thing About Curiosity
All
of us have untold potential. Yet it’s easy to fall into behaviors that
prevent us from reaching what we are capable of. These behaviors are
almost always the result of self-limiting beliefs. There are millions of
them:
I can’t lose control because the world will spin apart.
I can’t love because I’ll be hurt.
I can’t speak up because I’ll be put down.
I can’t challenge the status quo because I’ll be punished.
I can’t try because I’ll fail.
Although none of these things may be true, many people act as though they are. And limit themselves as a result.
Each
of these beliefs is personal. It’s easy to see how they might affect a
person's behavior, happiness, or chances for success. But underlying
them all is another limiting belief—one that is more insidious and in
many ways harder to deal with than any of the others. It is the belief
that the way things ‘are’ is permanent.
“It is what it is” may be true.
“It will always be what it is” couldn’t be further from the truth.
Nothing
is permanent. Your body and your mind change from moment to moment.
Eventually, those changes (we call them aging) become so profound that
you wear out: you cease to exist.
Even though we see the
impermanence of life almost daily, we often cling to the belief that
certain other things are permanent. Knowledge, for example, is
permanent, isn't it?
Not at all. The history of science is the
story of human beings converting what we know into what we thought we
knew. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy thought the earth was the center of
the universe with the sun and stars revolving around it. Today we know
that our earth is a small planet on the outer edge of a remote galaxy
billions of lightyears from the center of the universe.
And some
time in the future even this sophisticated concept of the way things are
will prove to be faulty. It will become as obsolete as Ptolemy’s.
Many
people find the idea of impermanence unsettling. But there’s another
way to look at it. Impermanence can actually be empowering.
If we
can accept that everything is changing, and that even what we ‘know’ is
not stable, we can actually exercise enormous influence over our lives.
Far from making us helpless, this belief actually gives us leverage.
If Nothing Is Permanent, Curiosity Becomes A Source Of Power
Think
of it this way: If what you ‘know’ to be true has become no longer
true, and you act as though it still is true, you are probably limiting
your options.
Here’s a story that illustrates this point: In
traditional South Asian societies, elephants were trained as beasts of
burden. If you owned an elephant, you were wealthy. But you had to
invest in your asset. Not only did you have to feed and care for it, you
also had to make sure it didn’t wander off, get into your neighbor’s
garden, or accidentally knock over the outhouse.
How do you keep
an elephant in place? If you don’t have easy access to metals and forges
with which to make chains, it’s not easy. Elephants are strong.
But
Indian mahouts discovered a simple and reliable method. Soon after a
calf was born, it was tethered by a heavy rope to a tree or stake
pounded into the ground. The rope was tied around the animal’s leg with a
slip knot. If the calf pulled, the rope tightened painfully. Over time,
even the slightest pressure from the rope would warn the baby elephant
to back off.
Adult elephants are kept in place with a much
lighter rope. They can easily break it. But they don’t. Because they
assume things haven’t changed and the rope will still cause them pain.
As smart as they are, the elephants aren’t curious enough to question
whether what they once knew to be true still is.
Most of us have
elephant’s tethers of our own. We repeat the same behaviors over and
over, simply because “that’s the way things are”.
One simple way
out of this mess is to be curious. Pull at the rope. See what happens.
You never know, you might find there’s a whole world out there waiting
for you to explore.
Curiosity To The Rescue
Curiosity—combined
with courage—is the root of every major advance human beings have ever
made. So how can leaders, managers, salespeople, and problem-solvers use
curiosity to their advantage?
By harnessing the power of
questions. From simple, informational questions to complex, probing
ones, questions are the key. There’s nothing new in this. Socrates
discovered the power of questions 2,500 years ago, and the world’s most
successful leaders, thinkers, humanitarians, inventors, investors, and
artists have been using it ever since.
The most basic questions
are informational: who, what, where, when, how long, how much, and so
on. When you meet a new person, you can use these basic questions to
open up areas for mutual discovery. You can find commonalities and
connections, you can give yourself the chance learn another person's
perspectives.
The next level is the complex, often difficult
question that relentlessly probes for causes, reasons, and speculations.
This is where you begin to discover what’s working for other people—and
what isn’t. What they hope for and what they fear. These questions open
worlds of problems and opportunities and challenges and solutions.
Finally,
there are the questions that have no answer. These are the ones that
create the new—that move us both individually and as a species to the
next level.
Questions—the basic tool of curiosity—activate a very
different part of the brain than mere statements. Questions literally
energize the brain.
A Simple Experiment
See
for yourself. Here’s a quick thought experiment. Look at the following
sentence and notice what happens in your mind when you read it:
New technologies will change the way we live.
Now look at the next sentence. Notice what goes on in your mind as you read it:
How might new technologies change the way we live?
If you’re like most people, you didn’t react much to the first sentence—the statement. It probably just sat there.
But
the second sentence—the question—activated your mind. You may have
imagined possible futures, or thought about how technology has already
changed the way you live or do business. In other words, something
happened when your curiosity was triggered. It’s almost as though you
can’t help yourself. Once you encounter a question, your mind jumps to
try to answer it.
Curiosity Generates Energy!
Curiosity
is the way we build both knowledge about the world and connection with
the people around us. It’s also how we discover the new.
Mutual
curiosity is a kind of two-way street that carries the traffic of human
thought, feeling, commerce, connection, and possibility.
Be humble, stay hungry.
Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT
Take the Next Step...
Interested
in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability,
culture, and employee engagement? We begin with a collaborative
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contact: Email: petercmclees@gmail.com or Mobile: 323-854-1713
Smart
Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers,
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culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork
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Having worked with several companies
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that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company
achieve sustained growth and prosperity.
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