Who Stole My Curiosity?
(And how I can get it back again)
Mar 2 - Written by WAYNE REUBEN
Humans are born curious. I mean extremely curious. We are genetically programmed to be the most curious beings on this planet! Our curiosity is more than an explicit desire for information, it is an innate need to make sense of our moment-by-moment experience of the world1. This is important to understand, you see our curiosity even as a child is not without purpose. We are curious for a reason!
Any reader with children knows full well you don’t have to teach kids to be curious. They’re bursting with curiosity! We’ve all endured endless sequences of “but why” questions, probably with a mix of joy and frustration. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who periodically has sought to terminate one of these “why chains” with “just because!”
Hopefully as parents most of us tolerate and even enjoy a certain amount of “succession of why” questions from our beloved youngsters. I don’t think most problems start here. But even with that said, its important to know that whilst curiosity is innate, its also inherently fragile, and can be easily discouraged.
I believe there are 3 distinct phases of curiosity discouragement that happen as we grow up. The first happens at school. Einstein famously said “it’s a miracle curiosity survives the education system”, and I think that’s even more so today than in Albert’s time. At school we quickly realise we earn approval from parents and teachers by getting good marks. That’s fine for maths and science based subjects where right and wrong are binary and not up for discussion. 2+3 =5, and we’re not ready for young philosophers to start challenging that notion.
But once we get into the social sciences, all that changes. The teacher may well have his or her views on why Othello did whatever, but the simple fact is there is no right answer to that. Kids quickly learn that for most teachers, you get the best marks by telling the teacher what they told you. You risk dismal reward for left-field thinking, no matter how deeply you’ve thought through your radical proposition.
The first series of nails is now in the coffin of curiosity.
As we enter teen years our socialisation changes radically. Parents become less influential on how we act and present ourselves to the world. Whilst we are furiously pulling away from our parents, most of us are desperately trying to gain acceptance and favour from our social circles. We dress like our peers. We talk like them, like the same music and movies…..most of us work incredibly hard to be just like the pack we want to be accepted into….in every possible way.
There’s literally no place for curiosity as you travel this treacherous path! “Why” infers challenge and potential disagreement. These are the last signals we want to be sending while all we crave is acceptance! Moreover, because we are hard at disengaging from our parents, we don’t want to be asking them ”why all the other kids want piercings”…..we’ve locked that door to curiosity conversations and thrown away the key.
The 2nd series of nails is now in the coffin.
A few years on, we’ve left the world of being a student and we start our first proper job. We walk into the workplace with eyes wide open feeling like we have to figure out how to survive in this new jungle very quickly! Imagine 20-something you standing in the crowd at your first town hall meeting. The “big boss” gives a speech that’s supposed to be motivating. You and plenty of others clearly look totally underwhelmed. You whisper to the colleague alongside you “so much of what he just said makes no sense. I’m gonna put up my hand and challenge his thinking”. Your colleague looks at you in aghast horror. “Never do that!! Do you want to get fired before you’ve even passed probation?”
When you talk later, your new friend tells you trainwreck stories of people who challenged or even questioned the boss in public meetings. “Legend has it you do that, you don’t pass probation. They find some form you once filled in wrong and that’s the end of you!”.
The 3rd Series of nails is now in the coffin.
Think about what we know about the mental state of today’s workforce. In Gallup’s 2023 study of workforces, they found only 33% of employees in the US workforce were actively engaged3. Around 1 in 6 were actively disengaged (now called “quiet quitting) while the balance, a staggering 51%, sit in some no-man’s land being neither actively engaged not totally disengaged. These bleak statistics have simple underlying causes.
One of the strongest causative factors is lack of role clarity. Obviously if you’re unclear what your boss expects of you, you’re never going to be engaged in your work (you don’t even know if its useful or useless!). Between 41%-47% of US employees in the survey said they were unclear on what their boss expects from them. Imagine how simple all this would be if bosses had enough curiosity to ask each of their team “are you clear on what I expect from you?”. Equally, we solve the problem if each employee simply asked their boss “what exactly do you expect from me?”. With the curiosity sucked out of both the bosses and the employees, we have this staggering number of people co-existing in disengaged darkness.
As a leadership consultants that works with the topic of “Curiosity”, I’m often asked “how do I teach my team to be curious?” (I’m also occasionally asked by senior leaders “How do I get my own curiosity back?”). The good news is that as much as curiosity can be laid dormant, the force is always there deep within each of us. We don’t have to teach people to be curious, we just have to help them re-ignite their curiosity. More importantly, we have to create safe environments that allow people to cautiously explore displays of curiosity driven thinking, without fear of adverse consequence.
Where to start? Its always a good idea to tell people what you want from them….so tell them you want to inject a healthy dose of curiosity into the workplace culture. Build brainstorm time into meetings. Role model appreciation for new thinking. Show even more appreciation for brave souls who question sacred cows and the status quo! Talk about a new mindset of “even better” and show your own desire to see every “best practice” challenged in pursuit of even better. And finally, have fun re-discovering your inner child and ask “why” and “why not” questions with a smile. You’ll be amazed how fast a culture can change!
Want help? We specialise in helping leaders and their teams re-discover curiosity, instil curiosity into their culture, and channelling curiosity to drive way better business results. Drop me a note at wayne@curiousleaderscircle.com, or click here to book a chat https://calendly.com/waynereuben/clc-discovery-call
Michael Greenberg “How our public education system discourages curiosity and encourages depression and anxiety” Bard College 2020
Bonawitz, Shafto, Gweon, Goodman, Spelke, & Schulz, 2010
Jim Harter “In New Workplace, US Employee Engagement Stagnates” Workplace, January 2024