“Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to never stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein
What makes a good leader? Is knowing everything a good indicator or is having the drive to learn and understand the best quality of a good leader?
I think the latter. It doesn’t matter your path in life, but if you aspire to lead your organization or company, you must have an innate desire to be curious and innovative. You must be willing to try different things to do things better, faster, stronger.
My business partner, Dean Saunders, does this.
He is always challenging our team to look at new ways to be better at our job. That job is marketing and selling real estate. Our company had drones before drones were everywhere. They enable us to take real-time, high-quality videos of the properties we market and capture more eyes and ears with our digital marketing efforts. Some in our business have followed suit, but few do it better than us. We also produce very high-quality print material for our listings, often being industry leaders in that endeavor as well.
This creative thinking comes from being curious.
Having that desire to do better for our clients and learn new skills and methods of doing things. And not being afraid to be wrong or fail, but to have the passion to succeed.
Harvard Business Review reports that people with a higher “curiosity quotient” (CQ) are more inquisitive and generate more original ideas, and this “thinking style” leads to higher levels of knowledge acquisition over time. CQ, the author states, “is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems.”
Leadership coach, speaker, and author Art Petty says, “In the right environment, curiosity leads to experimentation. Experimentation is the foundation of innovation.” He adds a uniquely personal angle, “I once worked for a leader who lived and led by his curious nature. His questions about our customers, competitors, and processes reflected his pure sense of wonder. Instead of stressing us out, they fed our curiosity and subsequent explorations. A few of those explorations yielded great treasure. All of them taught us to think critically and avoid becoming prisoners inside our own four walls (or industry, or business model).”
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” - Albert Einstein
Isn’t this a wonderful approach to leading your company? To have the desire to be curious and the confidence that if you fail, you will learn and be better the next day?
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