The Most Curious Person In The Room
“My curiosity was almost a fourth presence in the room.”
The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods
Happy August, Friends!
Each year Leadership+Design selects a theme for our newsletter for the year ahead. This year we are excited to be writing on the topic of curiosity. As an organization, we put the words “be more curious than certain” on our team sweatshirts and include this phrase as a central norm for all of our meetings, programs, facilitations and client projects. (Shout out to our dear friend and colleague Christian Long, who first shared that phrase with me long ago!)
Being more curious than certain has become a team motto and creed. It echoes my favorite Rumi quotation, which also accompanies my email signature: “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” It reminds me to forget about being the person in the room with the most answers, and instead strive to be the person in the room who has the best questions.
But what exactly is so important about curiosity? And what, if anything, is so wrong with a little bit of certainty? Does everyone get to be curious? Is curiosity ever dangerous? As a leader, will I look weak if I am not certain? What does it look like to be curious? Can curiosity be taught? Do I have to be curious about everything and everyone? How can I stay curious when I feel scared, threatened, ashamed or angry? When I am at my most curious and my least?
These are the kinds of questions we hope to explore over the course of this year with all of you in this curiosity adventure.
I have a theory about curiosity. Curiosity is not something that can be imposed on a person. It comes deep from within our core and it is the fiery magma that allows us to connect with new ideas, circumstances, and people and meet them with wonder, awe and open-ness. As educators we can nurture that curiosity or we can extinguish it. We all start out as curious creatures - visit any kindergarten classroom - but curiosity has a way of diminishing over time with age, experience, and, ironically, education. Albert Einstein once said “It’s a miracle curiosity survives formal education.” I would agree that curiosity can die in the classroom, snuffed out like a candle deprived of oxygen. When teaching is transactional, the deposit of knowledge - Paolo Freire literally called it “banking”- or when teaching is really about obedience and control, then curiosity, and thus deep learning, is rarely present. Rewarding students for simply being “right” and getting the “right answer” might provide a swift hit of dopamine, but it doesn’t sustain the drive to pursue further learning. But that “being right” dopamine hit persists like a Pavolvian response, even into adulthood. School has turned us into adults who want to be right.
Alternatively, what if we committed to developing the most curious students rather than the “rightest” students. Schools absolutely have the ability to not just reignite curiosity but make it a core element of the educational program and help students build the internal mechanisms that allow for infinite curiosity both in things and in others. And of course, that kind of mindset shift and posture has to start at the top, with the adults in the community - the faculty, the leadership team and the board of trustees - modeling what it’s like to be not the smartest person in the room but the most curious.
This is a perfect year to practice curiosity as school communities. As we wade into another polarizing election season, it’s more important than ever to build our curiosity muscles - both about the many issues on the table but also all of the humans with diverse viewpoints on those issues. We can get curious about the people in our communities and practice being - as David Brooks writes in his book How to Know A Person - “illuminators” rather than “diminishers” actively get interested in how other people think and the experiences that have shaped their values and their beliefs. Curiosity is most challenging but also most rewarding when stakes are high and circumstances are stressful and hard.
The opposite of curiosity comes out as defensiveness when we come up against something that feels uncomfortable, ambiguous, or confusing. We all know how it feels to get defensive. It doesn’t feel good. It is a tightening and a rigidity in our body. Sometimes it shows up as boredom or general resistance. Sometimes it shows up as “We’ve tried that already.” or “That’s now how I/we do it here.” But how do you diminish defensiveness? Ask questions and listen to understand. “Why” “Can you say more about that?” “What am I missing?” Can we, as school communities, invite curiosity into our classrooms, our meetings, and our daily conversations as if it were an indefatigable presence in the room?
We are so excited to kick off this new school year with all of you. There are lots of ways you can foster your own curiosity this year with L+D. We will be announcing new registrations for all of our programs after Labor Day!
Get your whole school curious about navigating the election, building pluralistic communities, and encouraging viewpoint diversity with Design for Election Season.
Get curious about the inner work of leadership and how you can sustain and nourish your capacity to lead at the Santa Fe Seminar, November 2024.
Get curious about the future of schools and learning at What’s the Future? Boston, April 2025
Get curious about facilitating the messiest and most challenging meetings and conversations at Badass Facilitators Training, Denver, April 2025.
Get curious about jumping into leadership with a new set of skills for the contemporary leader at the Leadership Lab, May 2025.
Get curious with the L+D community of learners every single day about almost any topic with our L+Doers Unite Membership. Being a member of L+Doers Unite gives you 10% off program registration for all open-enrollment programs.
Just L+Do it!
