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Key points
- Some corporate leaders discourage curiosity in the workplace because of a relevance bias or a fear in giving up control.
- But research shows that once curiosity has been triggered, we tend to make fewer decision-making errors.
- Furthermore, there are reductions in group conflict when participating members are curious.
- Making everything relevant and practical can be helpful, but it can also impede basic curiosity.
If there is one major tendency currently shared by both the political left and the right, it may be the devaluation of curiosity as virtuous. More and more folks are choosing to celebrate their confirmation bias instead of overcoming it.
To be curious means to take a risk that you may encounter a distressing idea. But this type of behaviour can be a prelude to innovation, as failure and error are no longer dirty words. Curiosity and creativity go hand in hand, as the curious hold a deep-rooted belief that things can be better.
Why Some Corporate Leaders View Curiosity as Too Expensive to Support
Researchers have found a few tendencies that prevent corporate leaders from encouraging curiosity in their professional spaces. The first is a bias toward relevance. The second is a fear in giving up control.
To welcome curiosity means inviting play, unstructured explorations, and a bit of chaos into the workplace. Unfortunately, many business leaders worry that the above is a recipe for a costly mess, and not a profitable innovative outcome.
A wise mentor once taught me about the difference between childlike, which we need to nurture, and childish, which we need to outgrow. Curiosity is a childlike trait that allows us to tap deep into the realm of imagination. Some leaders take the association of curiosity as a child-like trait in an ugly direction, imagining that a curiosity-positive workspace would be close to an unruly playground. They believe that their company would be much more difficult to manage if workers were empowered to go off and explore the paths they find most interesting. They also believe there would be a rise in disagreements and a slowing in executing decisions, thus raising the cost of doing business.
Are they right?
When We Are Curious, We Make Fewer Mistakes
Recent research has found that there are numerous meaningful and substantive benefits to encouraging workplace curiosity.
First, once curiosity has been triggered, we make fewer decision-making errors. This result is explained by the fact that if we are curious, we are subsequently less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias.
When curious teams are facing a challenge, they engage by hearing each other out and welcoming intense criticism. This is in opposition to the more natural tendency to seek out information that supports our beliefs. Inviting partners to bring evidence suggesting we are wrong substantively lowers the likelihood that when we finally take action it will be motivated by errors in our decision-making.
Curiosity Lowers Defensiveness and Aggression
Second, curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation. We also perform better when we are curious. Curiosity has these positive effects because it leads us to come together and generate a wide range of alternatives. Engaging our curiosity at work leads to a more innovative culture, because when we are curious we view tough situations more creatively.
There are reductions in group conflict when participating members are curious. Why is this the case? It relates to the feeling of connection and smallness associated with the fleeting experience of wonder. When we are curious, we are more likely to set aside our own egos and really try to imagine ourselves in the other’s shoes. When we listen as intently as we talk, we can absorb our partner’s ideas more robustly. When we feel deeply connected, we are less inclined to put an exaggerated amount of weight on our own perspectives.
So perhaps counterintuitively, sustained challenging, criticism, and assertiveness actually leads teams to work together more effectively and smoothly than those who embrace a more passive model.
Conflicts are less heated because they are welcomed and encouraged, with more open and honest communication, and, consequently, these groups achieve better results.
The Incurious Spend Most of Their Time on the Sidelines
Finally, great innovations come from curious folks who have time on their hands and objects with which to play. They play in order to satisfy their inquisitiveness, and eventually discover something interesting. Making everything relevant and practical can be helpful, but it can also kill the basic notion of curiosity.
Obviously, there is value in seeking to find concrete solutions to real-world problems. But the lack of continuous curiosity slows our ability to navigate disruptive environments as we end up sitting on the sidelines as passive observers stuck and unable to progress.
Curiosity draws us to the novel and inexplicable. Too many institutions, and not just corporate settings but universities, NGOs and government offices as well, seek to privilege “relevance” above all else. Relevance destroys the curiosity that matters most in social, political, and economic advancement.
References
Francesca, G. (2018). The Business Case for Curiosity. Harvard Business Review, 96: 48–57.
Weitzner, D. (2021). Connected Capitalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
