The Power of Curiosity: How to Have Real Conversations that create Collaboration, Innovation and Understanding - Tapa blanda

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Kathy Taberner and Kirsten Taberner Siggins are a mother/daughter executive coaching team and co-founders of the Institute of Curiosity. A longtime occupational therapist, Kathy has been a leadership development facilitator, trainer, and coach for the past ten years, while Kirsten has coached leaders in business world and in the entertainment industry (including AOL and Universal Studios). In 2014, they created the Institute of Curiosity to help individuals learn and practice a lifestyle of curiosity to build better personal and professional relationships. Kathy lives in the Okanagan Valley and Vancouver with her husband, and Kirsten lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

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As kids, we are all curious. Kids are constantly asking questions, wanting to solve problems, looking for new possibilities. All because they are curious, wanting to learn more. Curiosity is a childhood survival skill; it’s how they learn, test their assumptions, become open to new perspectives, push the boundaries of what they are capable of, make mistakes, and do things they (and often we) never thought were possible. As kids, time is a limitless commodity, and the present is the only place to be.

But somewhere along the way, as we grow into adulthood, we lose our sense of curiosity. Is it when our parents become frustrated with our millions of questions--as they’re thinking about other things in their lives and are not present in the moment--and tell us to stop asking them or make us feel bad for asking them? Is it when our teachers, who don’t have the time or means to answer the myriad of questions thrown at them, dismiss these questions or make us feel we aren’t smart enough because we don’t already know the answer?

Sadly, however it happens, curiosity in adulthood is hard to find. We live in a time-pressured world, always anticipating what is coming next with little time to be curious about what is happening now.

A recent Globe and Mail (BC) interview with Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play: When No One Has the Time, pointed out that North Americans feel they are time constrained, which impacts their ability to be curious. Our offices are now our homes; our homes are now our offices. Technology tracks our every move, “connecting” us with friends on social media. Expectations of people are high, and people are trying to do everything at once. As a consequence, our communication is brief and our instructions shallow, leaving little room for listening, inquiry, and understanding.

But curiosity shouldn’t be something we grow out of. In fact, curiosity has been recognized as one of the most important skills needed by a leader today. In 2011, Forbes recognized curiosity as “the one trait all innovative leaders share,” using the success of Steve Jobs as an example: “Jobs wasn’t curious because he wanted to be successful. He became successful because he was so curious.”