How can a Leader Cultivate a Culture of Curiosity in the Workplace?

How Develop Curiosity How can a Leader Cultivate a Culture of Curiosity in the Workplace?

Curiosity is what makes leaders, managers and employees stay relevant in their respective roles. Look at any business that is underperforming, they are likely to have a mindset that doesn’t foster curiosity which in turn prevents innovation and new ideas to flourish.

As written about on CIO.com’s article “Why curious people make better employees”,, hire people who are curious as they are very likely to want to learn and improve things. These people too probably have better relationships as the Greater Good Science Center wrote about here.

San Francisco State University also found in this study that individuals who engaged in creative pursuits outside of work had improved job performance and creative problem solving ability than those who had less hobbies and creative pursuits outside of work.

We have found through our work that people who are curious usually have a strong Growth Mindset which we have written about previously, “Leading with a Growth Mindset for Business Impact.”

Here are 5 tips from the team at CFCD to help cultivate a culture of curiosity in the workplace:

  1. Encourage employees to foster curiosity with others.
  2. Provide consistent and interesting learning opportunities.
  3. Expose employees to different ideas by encouraging cross team communication.
  4. Encourage employees to cultivate hobbies and interests outside of work.
  5. Encourage open dialogue within your teams. At meetings take time for interesting ‘what if’ questions and stay curious with what evolves in these discussions.

Written by Gabrielle Droulers, Director at CFCD

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