#EveryLittleActionCounts Week 26: Foster Curiosity!
This week is a call to foster curiosity! For academics curiosity plays a crucial role because it drives intellectual growth through exploration and innovation. It encourages continuous learning and problem-solving that both support academics’ identification of strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. Curiosity thus enhances the sustainability of our careers.
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
– Albert Einstein
We can foster curiosity by considering the following key aspects:
- 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.
