Discussion Overview
This week we discuss curiosity in its many different forms to improve this important cultural agility competency. We have covered different types of curiosity, examined why they may benefit your leadership capabilities, and discussed tactics to improve your curiosity skills (Ch 3 in the textbook). We also discussed the changing role of the office (Fayard, Weeks, & Khan, 2021) as well as some hot-off-the-press findings on how interruptions and unexpected situations can improve employee creativity (Harrell, 2023). Each reading and related video material provided insights into specific strategies, tactics, and actions to become a more curious leader in a global setting.
Questions & Instructions
- Can you think of a situation where your curiosity (or the curiosity of another person) improved your decision-making or the performance of your team?
- Reflecting on the readings and videos, which specific actions, tactics, or strategies do you find effective in cultivating curiosity as a leadership competency?
Examples:
Example 1.
1. Can you think of a situation where your curiosity (or the curiosity of another person) improved your decision-making or the performance of your team?
During a university marketing class, my group worked on a campaign for a new product. Our initial idea followed a safe and familiar approach, similar to existing campaigns we had seen before. One group member, however, kept asking simple but disruptive What if? questions, such as What if we targeted a different demographic than the one suggested? and What if the products strongest appeal wasnt its main feature, but its environmental impact?.
Those questions pushed us to step outside our assumptions. We ended up researching nontraditional data sources and talking to students outside our major to better understand how sustainability influenced purchasing decisions. This shift led us to reposition the product around its environmental value rather than its technical features. That curiosity changed the direction of our project, made the campaign more original, and ultimately improved our teams decision-making and overall performance, which was reflected in a stronger final presentation and a higher grade.
2. Reflecting on the readings and videos, which specific actions, tactics, or strategies do you find effective in cultivating curiosity as a leadership competency?
Ask More and Better Questions: As emphasized in the lecture, maybe moving from closed questions to open-ended, exploratory onessuch as How might we? or What are we assuming here? – will encourage deeper inquiry and challenges existing mental models.
Reframe Interruptions as Opportunities: Drawing from Harrells research, leaders can view unexpected interruptions not as disruptions, but as potential sources of creative insight. By pausing to explore the context of the interruption, they may uncover information or perspectives that would otherwise be overlooked.
Practice Deliberate Curiosity Daily: Inspired by Einsteins quote in the textbook, one simple tactic is to dedicate a small portion of each day to actively question or explore a mystery within your work or team dynamics. This habit fosters continuous learning and inquiry.
Seek Diverse Perspectives Intentionally: In global leadership, proactively engaging team members from different backgrounds or functions expands the range of ideas and challenges groupthink. Deliberate inclusion of diverse viewpoints strengthens decision-making and encourages innovation.
Examples 2.
Question 1: Can you think of a situation where your curiosity (or the curiosity of another person) improved your decision-making or the performance of your team?
Answer:
In my role as an audit and compliance manager, I once led an Access Review where repeated control gaps were being flagged in the IT Dept. At first, the pattern appeared to be straightforward, and my approach was to tighten up the controls and escalate the findings. Instead of approaching it directly, I chose to approach the situation with curiosity and asked the local Systems Department of the IT Team to walk me through how the controls actually operated, rather than how they were getting documented.
After having these conversations with the systems team lead, I learnt that the department operated in a high-interruption environment with ad hoc requests from multiple stakeholders, which made the entire situation of adhering to standard procedures very difficult. I also saw that team members at the junior level were hesitant to push back and ask clarifying questions when certain processes were unclear. With curiosity, I gained a deeper understanding of cultural and operational factors and how the compliance process worked, rather than directly taking actions with assumptions.
This curiosity led me to be more effective in my decision-making ability. Rather than imposing strict controls that are likely to fail again, I redesigned the process that fits better with the systems team environment and clarified escalation paths and provided guidance that would help employees push back on those requests when needed. As a result of this, the compliance improved and the audit findings and gaps decreased and the relationship between audit functions and systems team became more collaborative. As mentioned by the author Caliguri in Chapter 3, that curiosity helps leaders expand their understanding of cultural differences and also in turn help them to make informed decisions in global and diversified organizations.
Question 2: Reflecting on the readings and videos, which specific actions, tactics, or strategies are effective in cultivating curiosity as a leadership competency?
Answer:
Based on the readings and textbook, curiosity usually emerge as an intentional leadership practice that helps leaders to expand their understanding on cultural differences. As mentioned by the author Caliguri in chapter 3, if you want to expand your understanding of cultural differences, you need to slow down your interpretation and inquire about the situation; mainly by asking open ended questions, not being biased on judgements, and seeking alternative explanations. This will help leaders recognize how cultures shapes the behavior and expectations.
Also mentioned in the article by Fayard, Weeks, and Khan (2021) that leaders can often cultivate curiosity by valuing informal interactions in physical or virtual unorganized spaces. Informal conversations have exchanges that often reveal how people think, work or how they interpret the situations differently. Leaders who are curious can gain great valuable insights from these conversations than having formal meetings.
In the article by Harrell (2023), the author highlights that during interactions, an interruption or an unexpected situation can enhance creativity amongst leaders. It is more of a form of creativity rather than inefficiency. He suggests that disruptions should be treated as opportunities for leaders to openness and adaptability. By following these norms, the leaders will gain deeper understanding on how different employees experience the work environment in culturally diverse or global teams.
Example 3:
One situation where my curiosity improved the performance of my team was when I began training in my current role. To set the scene, the department I was hired into had not hired anyone new if a very long time. They were not prepared with proper training materials, nor was I assigned to sit with anyone in particular to learn my role. Only a couple of weeks in, I found myself doing very minimal tasks on my own because the workload was overwhelming, requiring the attention of everyone in the department. The minimal tasks I was working got boring very quickly and I became curious to know more about the documents I was reviewing and how it related to what I’d eventually be doing on a daily basis. I would open up document packets and just go through them, looking over the way they looked, what information was on them, relating them back to the information in the system, and taking notes in the process. I’d ask my leadership questions on things I did not understand, and would even reach out to people in other areas of the department that I knew had a hand in the process to get more clarity on the bigger picture of our work. I eventually was directed to some internal websites and material that provided more information to research and use as a guide. Throughout the following weeks, I continued my process until I was finally doing the work I was hired to do. By this point, I had a general understanding of what my purpose in the department was, how to execute tasks successfully, and reliable contacts I could communicate with when I got stuck. This led to me being able to work independently very quickly, and I was able to assist my peers in clearing the overwhelming workload in just a couple months. My curiosity and action helped our team become more efficient and catch up on the workload much quicker than leadership originally anticipated.
2. In chapter three of Build Your Cultural Agility, Caligiuri discusses ways to build your confidence, which I believe is a critical part of cultivating curiosity as a leadership competency. I find this approach to be effective because everything we do and seek comes from an internal place that we must understand first before our actions can follow. While external behaviors can be adjusted a bit more quickly, internal mindsets take much more time and practice to change because the way we think is typically a result of conditioning and life experiences. To build confidence, Caligiuri emphasizes limiting negative self-talk and adopting a growth mindset. The saying “the only thing holding me back is me” applies here as self-doubt can prevent one from asking questions, seeking new perspectives, or embracing unfamiliar situations. These two strategies are the most important, yet most difficult, to master when fostering curiosity but, when practiced intentionally, it can strengthen your overall cultural agility.
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