#EveryLittleActionCounts Week 13: Fostering Curiosity!
This week is a call to foster curiosity. Fostering curiosity supports building cultures of innovation, creativity and continuous learning. Such cultures encourage the seeking of new knowledge, exploration of new perspectives and the questioning of existing practices and behaviour, leading to improved resilience, problem-solving, creative thinking, adaptability to changes, and inclusive relationships.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
– Albert Einstein
How to foster curiosity?
Building cultures of curiosity requires not only the provision of resources that nourish individuals’ curiosity but also individuals (especially leaders) who act as role models by proactively enacting, rewarding and recognizing curiosity. We can realise this through the integration of the following practices:
- Creating inquisitive environments: Encourage cultures within which individuals dare to try out and present new perspectives and ideas that contribute to organizational problem-solving, and enhancement of practices and processes.
- Learning-based goal attainment: Integrate learning-based goals that encourage curiosity instead of short-term metrified objectives.
- Encourage mindful questioning: Build cultures that enable individual and collective ‘thinking in action’ enabling questioning of practices and processes. Provide opportunities and spaces for proactive, creative communication, interaction and problem-solving across all career levels.
We recommend the following three sources that can support you in fostering curiosity.
- The Power of Curiosity in The Workplace
- The business case for curiosity
- Cultivating Curiosity & Imagination
We would be very happy to learn about your suggestions on how to foster curiosity in academia.
Anne-Wil Harzing & Christa Sathish.