How Curiosity and Ignorance can make your leadership more effective

Copyright Justus H Lewis, PhD October 2005 This article may be reproduced provided that this acknowledgement is included together with a link back to www.transformasia.com.au.

The distinguished Australian psycho-therapist, David Johnston, was responsible for first formally introducing me to Curiosity and Ignorance in his paper of that title. Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they intrigued me at the time, although they did not seem that remarkable: Mr Curiosity and Ms Ignorance, the yang and the yin, a pretty ordinary combination. Nothing stellar as set against Sir Truth, Mrs Self-Responsibility, Dr Compassion and a host of other more widely praised values. Certainly useful values for a practicing therapist: but so what? And yet ?

Then I encountered them again, travelling incognito as essential leadership behaviours. Nick Morgan, opens his article on Leadership in the Harvard Management Communication Letter with the example of former US treasury secretary Robert Rubin who, when he joined the Clinton administration, admitted he did not have the foggiest notion of the inner workings of the White House. Ignorance supreme. However, he immediately began to practice Curiosity, making the rounds, interviewing Washington insiders - to gather information and advice.

Morgan then goes on to describe four categories of broad-ranging conversations that leaders can have with their advisory teams. It is easy to see how Curiosity and Ignorance are involved in each of these.

- The visionary conversation whose purpose is to imagine the different possible futures that you might create, and use that insight in the present;

- The sounding board conversation which is the place to explore actions and decisions of all sizes and importance;

- The big picture conversation whose purpose is to make sure that nothing has been left out;.

The expertise in enquiry conversation in which, You are looking not only to develop your knowledge but also fundamental models and new ways of thinking about the terrain.

Each of these categories of conversations encourages dialogue and collaborative exploration of possible futures and how these futures might play out..

In my own coaching practice, I find that my clients often seem to create the most transformation in their lives when I invoke Curiosity and Ignorance into the conversational space.

Starting with a visionary conversation about the possible futures they want to create for themselves, they then have a context in which to start the sounding board conversation that explores the actions that would be involved in implementing their vision.

This then naturally leads back to a big picture conversation that encourages them to look at all aspects of their lives and allow their transforming vision of themselves to be played out in a range of supportive ways. The final stage often involves clients finding new ways of engaging with and thinking about what is going on in their lives.

References

David Johnston, Curiosity and ignorance, Paper presented at ASOCHA conference, October 2002.Nick Morgan, The Third Opinion: How Leaders Can Get The Advice They Really Need. Harvard Management Communication Letter, Volume 1, Number 3, Summer 2004 pp 6-8.

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