How Leaders Can Leverage Curiosity For Inclusion

Why wouldn’t every leader lead with curiosity?

Curiosity is having a moment. And if it’s not on your organization’s leadership competency list, perhaps it should be. Why? Because there’s a surprising connection between curiosity and inclusion. And given that a recent survey of over 100 top HR leaders indicated that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has surfaced as a top priority for their organizations, a leader’s spirit of inquiry will become more important than ever to help all members of the workforce believe their contributions matter.

Organizations have long known that curiosity has many benefits. Research highlighted in the Harvard Business Review shows that curiosity opens the door to different points of view, facilitates insights and understanding, invites involvement, and reduces conflict. Further, teams achieve better outcomes when they demonstrate curiosity towards others’ ideas.

Our own research bears out similar findings on the power of curiosity to invite others into conversation and action that leads to business success. In a pulse survey, we asked leaders across the country how important curiosity is to a variety of business factors and outcomes. Among the top-ranked factors, these leaders cited curiosity as “vital” to both inclusion efforts and ‘building a culture that values diversity.’

Curiosity, which was once seen as the purview of professionals such as scientists, and inventors, has now entered the mainstream as a critical leadership competency and a key to organizational effectiveness. We now have a better understanding of the sweeping and broad-reaching capacity of curiosity. In fact, our text analysis of the responses of more than 250 leaders who participated in a recent study paints a vivid picture of curiosity’s role in the workplace.

Curiosity benefits individuals. When people experience curiosity (whether on the giving or receiving end of it), they become more engaged, motivated, and inspired to seek answers. They make the leap from hearing to listening. They find themselves leaving the ‘knowing zone’ and entering the ‘learning zone’ as they shift focus from themselves to others and the answers they may possess.

Curiosity improves a range of situations. ‘Authentic’ and ‘genuine’ are the words that most frequently describe curious exchanges. These qualities contribute to an environment that invites exchange, honors the interests of others, and anticipates possibilities. This can dramatically transform the dynamics of even the most challenging interactions.

Curiosity leads to results: The understanding and knowledge gained from genuinely curious exchanges directly support better business outcomes - innovations, workable solutions, etc. - while also contributing to learning, development, and stronger relationships and connections among individuals.

Curiosity is a lot less amorphous than most people believe. In fact, it manifests itself through three interrelated channels:

Mindset: Mental disciplines that cause individuals to wonder, ruminate, ponder, consider, explore, and research. Although some people are naturally blessed with curiosity, it’s possible for all individuals to consciously develop this trait to expand their effectiveness. This involves cultivating greater tolerance of (and possibly even relishing) ambiguity and uncertainty.

Conversation: Verbal practices and processes that are generally associated with curiosity, including: asking questions; seeking out different and even contrary points of view; working to understand how others think, feel and behave; focusing on why; engaging in an exploration of issues, factors, and possibilities; continuously peeling back the layers of the onion through conversation.

Actions: Deliberate acts and interactions with the broader environment (beyond conversations) that bring curiosity to life through such things as: experimentation and learning through mistakes and failure; breaking or disassembling things to figure out how to put them back together better; intentionally seeking out new and different people, experiences; volunteering for novel projects and challenges.

Given the interrelated nature of these channels, the good news is that focusing on and cultivating one usually has a ‘spill-over’ effect on the others.

Effective leaders – the ones who are using curiosity as a tool for facilitating greater inclusion – are exploring ways to practice, spotlight, teach and support it at all levels of the organization. And you can too. Consider the following strategies.

Turn curiosity inward. Cultivating an environment that’s more inclusive begins with you. Understanding your biases – both conscious and unconscious – is the foundation of interactions and behaviors that ensure fairness and equity for all.

So, be curious about yourself, your feelings, and your natural, knee-jerk reactions. Pause and reflect upon where your responses may be coming from. Consider your go-to resources, key allies, and top talent. Do you notice any threads of similarity among those individuals? Might you need to take action to expand and diversify that group? When engaging in challenging interactions, ask yourself, ‘what else could be influencing this relationship or my interactions with this person?’ Listen carefully to your inner voice’s answers and then take action.

Apply curiosity across the board. Most organizations and leaders remain passionately curious about the technical dimension of their work while curiosity about the people dimension wanes. Consider the number of times that managers become engrossed in reports, analyses, prototypes from their employees.  What if the level of curiosity that data earns was applied to other dimensions of the work... and most importantly to people? Leaders must challenge themselves to consider how curiosity plays out most naturally for them. Then they can support greater inclusion by identifying even one or two ways to transfer and leverage those approaches toward people.

Don’t let experience extinguish curiosity. Chris Reagan, president of Glory Global asks his organization, ‘when does experience become baggage?’ He explains that the knowledge and understanding gained from past experiences can increase technical effectiveness and efficiency.  But applying this dynamic (even in well-meaning ways) to people leads to generalizations that are dangerous, inaccurate and undermine the ability to understand and bring out the best in each individual. As a result, it’s critical to approach people and situations with a clean slate, forgetting how others might have thought/responded/acted, and being ready to start fresh and learn from each encounter.

Elevate your cue curiosity. There are signals and cues all over the workplace – pointing to individuals, situations and opportunities that deserve – and demand – greater inclusivity. But they are only visible to those who bring curiosity to the environment around them.

When you notice that someone has shut down or shut-up during a meeting, that’s a cue to become curious. When performance falters or performance slips, that’s a cue to explore the situation, inquire about what’s happening, and learn more about how people are feeling and, in necessary, the actions you can take to promote greater inclusion.

According to Price Cobbs, diversity expert and author of Black Rage, 'In organizations, curiosity manifests itself in developing new products and services and in refining and reinventing old ones. In today's increasingly diverse workforce, curiosity manifests itself in people discovering differences and learning about them to enrich their own lives.’

Curiosity is at the core of the discovery process, supporting diversity, inclusion and the countless business and human benefits that follow. Which leaves just one question: Why wouldn’t every leader lead with curiosity?

Many leaders have suppressed their curiosity, thinking it’s more politically correct to simply avoid shining the light on differences. That’s an understandable concern, says cultural consultant Laura Kriska. In her book, The Business of We, Kriska writes that well-meaning people truly want to connect with others about their differences. However, ‘their worry overdoing or saying something wrong outweighs their impulse to act or speak.’ But ignoring the differences - while somehow ‘safer’ - also leaves a lot on the table: authenticity, human connections, untapped talents and energy, and engagement. One way to discuss differences in a non-threatening manner is to invite conversations about ‘identity.’

In addition to immutable identities such as age, race and sexual orientation, leaders can invite conversation about life experience, family structure and hobbies. Expanding the notion of the ways in which employees self-identify allows for leaders to ‘promote connections around factors that are flexible and attainable for anyone.’ When leaders do this, Kriska writes, ‘the circle of belonging grows wider and there is more inclusion.’