2023-11-17 19:59:31
Being curious goes well beyond a simple interest in learning new things according to Scott Shigeoka. (Photo: 123RF)
RHéveil-matin is a daily column where we present managers and their employees with inspiring solutions to start their day off right. While sipping your favorite beverage, discover new tips to make your 9@5 productive and stimulating.
WAKE-UP-MORNING. It goes without saying that the curiosity of your employees is a quality that has great virtues for your organization. However, this goes far beyond their simple interest in learning new things, believes author and consultant Scott Shigeoka: it is also a powerful tool for creating connections.
Managers who fail to see this difference, or who only cultivate their team members’ ability to dig into different topics – which, by the way, makes the company more innovative – are missing a golden opportunity to increase their retention rate.
By using curiosity for this purpose, by focusing on exchanges that go “deeper than the surface”, it can solidify working relationships, promote a better understanding of yourself as a leader and help you manage conflicts or anxiety in the office,” he writes in a Harvard Business Review paper.
When he studied what he calls “deep curiosity” at the Greater Good Science Center, a research institute at the University of California at Berkeley, he found that managers might implement it in their organizational culture by adopting four principles: accepting not to know everything, paying attention to teammates, recognizing that they are multidimensional beings, and being interested in what everyone has to say.
“Intellectual humility”
When speaking to Fortune 500 companies, Scott Shigeoka notes that “many leaders are afraid to say ‘I don’t know,’ afraid of losing credibility, of appearing ill-equipped to carry out their jobs.” On the contrary, he believes.
Not only do leaders who recognize that they do not have complete knowledge appear more competent in the eyes of their colleagues, according to American and German researchers, but they also rise in their esteem. Your employees will feel like they can trust you and that you are open to other people’s ideas.
After having demonstrated “intellectual humility”, the manager must follow up with his interlocutor, try to learn more in order to encourage “participation, collaboration and problem solving”, advises the author of the book “Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World.
Grasp the stretched poles
Scott Shigeoka also recommends implementing a habit in business that works small miracles in a relationship: grabbing the poles set by your partner, or your employee in this case.
So, when an employee says that what he is learning on a specific subject fascinates him, or that his work schedule is busy, a manager should ask him to tell him more. Otherwise, these are missed opportunities to solidify the relationship or the bond of trust, and this can harm the organization, warns the expert.
“It can reduce employee burnout and stress, and […] enhance creativity and innovation,” he writes.
More than a worker
Showing curiosity also allows you to recognize when an employee’s workload is weighing on their personal life. Such “conflicts” affect the performance and productivity of your staff, and reduce the feeling of psychological safety which ultimately increases turnover.
Hence the importance of recognizing that what happens outside of 9@5 will inevitably have repercussions in professional life.
Open your blinders
“Not only is the contemporary workplace more interested in answers rather than questions, but it also has preconceived ideas regarding who has those said answers,” denounces Scott Shigeoka.
Just like Pixar, the American animation studio to which we owe many technological advances in cinema, companies should voluntarily ask themselves who within the organization might have a point of view, a different reading of the situation. which might lead the reflection further.
By adopting these four principles themselves, managers will demonstrate the benefits of “deep curiosity,” and inspire their team members to follow suit. “And that’s how you build a culture,” recalls Scott Shigeoka.
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