When Alice fell down the rabbit hole, she set off on an adventure that would lead her to make the statement, “Curiouser and Curiouser!” With each new discovery and the more curious that she became, the more curious and stranger Wonderland seemed to her.
She did more than step out of her comfort zone and did more than ask standard questions to get basic information, and the dialogue of Lewis Carroll’s classic is anything but straightforward. How often as leaders do we miss opportunities to explore and grow with our team and with our organization because our questions are looking for ‘just the facts’ rather than exploring the potential thought-provoking richness of the answers? We invite you to consider how increasing your curiosity within your leadership role can be a place of untapped personal and organizational growth.
Within New World Leadership™ we begin by learning about ourselves so we may better learn about and work with others. We ask ourselves hard and heartfelt questions. Our first layer of curiosity is to explore why we do what we do. What are our driving forces? How do they manifest in our beliefs, behaviours, actions, and interactions? Conversations that occur between leaders in our sessions reveal that often people with similar motivations act on them differently or those who are behaving similarly are doing so for very different reasons, and likely getting different results. We come to realize that things we recognize in others may instead be our own projections: places where we think we don’t need to ask a question can instead become our greatest locations for unintended misunderstanding.
By starting with ourselves and sharing this exploration in curiosity, the transformation begins. We examine how we currently lead ourselves and then move to discover how this informs our engagement of curiosity in relationship to others. We investigate and challenge the very questions and contexts we use in these relationships to see if we really are getting the answers and engagement needed for success and a culture of personal accountability.
Our New World Leadership™ Series is beginning again in June. For more information, please visit https://changeinnovators.com/our-programs/new-world-leadership/
