Your Curiosity Is Your Superpower

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Curiosity is a free skill that doesn’t necessarily require extra schooling and is available to anyone. Yet we might take it for granted and not appreciate its power, inside and outside the workplace.

Recognition of the value of curiosity is growing. It is increasingly cited as a crucial trait for CEOs and other leaders. Some people have built their careers on leveraging curiosity, such as Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, who co-founded Imagine Entertainment and who writes about his curiosity journey in A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.

In her Leader to Leader article “365 Days of Learning: Embracing Learning as a Superpower,” Ekpedeme “Pamay” M. Bassey, Chief Learning Officer and Chief Diversity Officer of The Kraft Heinz Company, writes: “First, I drive the company’s global training and learning strategy, programs and initiatives, and, second, I drive a culture of continuous learning, bold creativity, and intellectual curiosity.”

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, lived a life full of curiosity, which I believe was a major factor in his remarkable success. It helped keep his mind active and alive so that he remained relevant and productive until the end of his 95-year life. He sharpened this sense of curiosity by remaining open to new ideas and information.

We can learn from Drucker’s example by getting curious about our own sense of curiosity and to not be swayed by preconceived notions of what the future may hold. Let’s look at six areas where curiosity manifested itself in Drucker’s life:

Questioning. Drucker consulted for both businesses and nonprofit organizations. His consulting style was built on asking questions, sometimes ones that were seemingly naïve. This style is reminiscent of the Zen notion of “beginner’s mind.” Shunryu Suzuki, who helped bring this concept to the United States, begins his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind with this definition: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Drucker’s deft questioning ability may have had its roots in his years as a young journalist in Germany. Sometimes his clients said that in their meetings with him, they initially felt they did all the talking in response to these questions and wondered what benefit they derived. Yet when they received his written report, it would invariably be penetrating and full of insights. How can we approach our future encounters by asking questions powered by a beginner’s mind?

Lifelong Learning. If he was sufficiently curious about a subject to study it in depth, Drucker would embark on a three-year (in later life, three-month) self-study project. Sometimes the projects, which he conducted throughout his long career, involved reaching out to practitioners and other knowledgeable people to meet with him in person. But often it involved reading a variety of books, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and government reports. We have many more opportunities for lifelong learning than Drucker did, given the widespread availability of online resources.

Random Inquiry. For his ongoing learning opportunities, Drucker tapped into seemingly unlikely sources. For instance, when in a new city, he would sometimes strike up conversations with cab drivers about the nature of their work and the local economy. Our daily encounters (even those online) can provide similar opportunities, providing that our curiosity is genuine.

Libraries and Librarians. In 2002, Drucker gave the keynote address to the business-oriented Special Libraries Association at its annual conference. He noted his respect for the organizational librarians and how much he had learned from them when he embarked on consulting assignments.

Librarians employ inherently curiosity-based techniques such as the question-oriented reference interview to provide the most benefit to people seeking information. They are also taught to maintain a nonjudgmental “there are no dumb questions” attitude. Libraries, whether visited in person or online, remain an under-used resource yet can be crucial for personal or professional information-seeking.

Beyond Your Four Walls. Drucker advocated that people in organizations should not be confined to getting their information internally. This can mean getting out and meeting other people in the community: stakeholders, neighbors, customers, noncustomers, suppliers, and more. He also believed that, in order to get unfiltered information, high-level executives should interact with customers and clients by, for example, accompanying people on their sales calls.

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We can enhance the effectiveness of such a curiosity-driven approach by seeking out seminars, workshops, conferences, author talks, brown-bag events, and related opportunities, especially ones on topics that are outside of our own comfort zones.

Eclectic Reading. We can develop and refine our curiosity by following Drucker’s example and reading widely in a variety of genres. Two of his favorites were Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and Middlemarch by George Eliot. In his 70s, he wrote two novels: The Last of All Possible Worlds (1982) and The Temptation to Do Good (1984). With the proliferation of online books (especially those we can borrow via library apps such as Libby and Hoopla), we have ample opportunity to read as widely as possible.

The Future of Curiosity

If we cultivate curiosity the way Drucker did, life can be endlessly interesting and full of wonder. We can engage in self-development through the humble attitude of learning from our own mistakes. We can remain curious about our alternatives in life, no matter where we are on our educational, career, or retirement journeys. The world presents us with many possibilities for our future if we are open-minded, receptive, and willing to engage in exploration.

Curiosity has no barriers to entry, just an exhilarating shift in mindset.