Curiosity is your Superpower: Are you using yours to cultivate curiosity in your organisation?

There are a number of leadership characteristics that define the modern marketing leader of tomorrow. One of them is curiosity.

As marketers, the right questions help us to better understand the problem at hand, to critically analyse the options, improve our messaging, deepen relationships, engage our audiences, explore new products and markets, and make our work more meaningful and relevant.

What gets people curious each day

If you’ve raised children you’ll know from first hand experience that toddlers are completely unafraid to ask questions – beginning with every child’s favourite; ‘why?’. In a TEDx presentation Spencer Harrison and Jon Cohen’s research claims that four years olds ask up to 300 questions each and every day. Their curiosity is insatiable. By primary school however, the number of questions children ask drops to almost zero.

While children often look to adults as teachers, we rarely stop to consider what they could be teaching us. There is a lot to learn from a child’s open mind – rather than stereotyping, and falling into a habit loop, we need to embrace uncertainty, question assumptions and challenge the status quo.

Harrison and Cohen claim that the systems that socialise us beat the curiosity out of us – so why then is it our job, as leaders, to inspire wonderment and exploration in the next generation of leaders? Why is it a highly sought-after skill in business?

We ran a search on Seek to see how many job ads are currently seeking a curious individual for their organisation. We found 3,236 jobs that wanted someone who defines themself as being curious.

Curiosity is a core building block for professional growth. It helps us to ask direct questions of ourselves and to learn from our experiences. To generate alternatives. To seek new ideas and experiences. To be open to feedback. And to invite exploration of new ways that we can achieve business goals.

Harrison and Cohen conducted a survey on  23,000 people in five countries – including 16,000 employees and 1,500 C-suite leaders across a breadth of industries. The goal was to understand how the participants view the role of curiosity in their organisations. Given the importance of curiosity, the research sheds light on a conundrum that most organisations face: leaders assume—mistakenly for the most part—that their employees feel empowered to be curious. But employees describe a very different reality. Here are a few takeaways from the findings

1. In terms of professional values, employees valued ”communication” and ”commitment” more than “curiosity”. Interestingly, these characteristics reinforce the perception that an organisation is “stable”.
2. Curiosity is nurtured and seen as acceptable within organisational hierarchies, but is often stifled and allowed to languish at all other levels.
3. While about half (49%) of the C-suite leaders believe curiosity is rewarded by salary growth, only 16% of individual contributors agree. A staggering 81% of individual contributors are convinced curiosity makes no material difference in their compensation.
4. There is a fear of looking stupid – especially in millenials – that leaders can help the next generation overcome.

Their data strongly suggests that curiosity helps employees engage more deeply in their work, generate new ideas, and share those ideas with others. When feeling curious at work, 73% of individual contributors report “sharing ideas more” and “generating new ideas for their organisations.”

CQ, not IQ or EQ

To stay competitive in an ever-evolving environment, it is the soft skills such as curiosity that are proving key to a company’s performance.

Business curiosity (curiosity quotient, or CQ) is not as widely studied as IQ and EQ, but as an article in the Harvard Business Review highlighted, curiosity is just as important a tool as intelligence for leaders who want to develop solutions for complex problems.

The good news is that curiosity can be learned and nurtured.

Adult life can strip away curiosity in favour of conformity according to Todd Kashan, Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, in Virginia. We need to “build and strengthen our curiosity muscle,” encourages Kashan. “Once you get going, it causes a ripple effect.”

Harrison and Cohen’s data indicates that there are gaps where curiosity is and where it could be. But we see these as opportunities for individuals and businesses. As leaders, we have a job to do in encouraging conversations where curiosity can thrive.

Purposeful Curiosity is a cornerstone module in our Dynamic Marketing Program – our university accredited course for mid-senior level marketers.
To learn more about Purposeful Curiosity and its applications within the current brand and business context of driving growth, enrol in the Dynamic Marketing Program. Take a look at our calendar of programs for the next available time to join. Find out more here.

Spencer Harrison is an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. He grew up drawing cartoons and these days he invents stories for his kids, likes using the word “puzzle” as a verb, and researches creativity and how people connect to their work. You can follow him on Linkedin @curiosityatwork.

Jon Cohen is Chief Research Officer at SurveyMonkey. You can follow him on Twitter (@jcpolls)