Last week I wrote about the importance of curiosity, so I thought it might help to give you some actionable ways to go increasing your own.
Humans are curious by nature, there is just too much evidence to deny that. When young kids ask questions, they are curious about how things work. They have an insatiable and constant need to learn and discover new things. It’s really built into us, but sometimes we lose track of it as adults. The question becomes how much you’ve worked to train yourself to foster that skill to the highest levels of excellence. This is an area we train our clients in through a series of sessions.
Here are the top three ways to send curiosity through the roof:
1. Create awareness when you notice something of interest.
It happens on a daily basis. It’s this very small spark in your mind that comes about when you find something interesting, or begin to wonder how something happened. If you do not feed this spark, it will not turn into a fire.
Any time you have these thoughts, you should label them as curiosity. This label will become your trigger. As soon as you recognize your curiosity, develop the habit of always asking yourself one or two more questions that drill deeper. You can ask yourself things like: “What do you mean by that?” or “What makes you say that?” or “What experience led you to believe this?” These secondary questions are exceptionally powerful. We call it “the second dart.” The second dart is a habit we instill in our clients: Any time you ask a question, make sure to ask a secondary question as well. The first one is likely to condition the person’s mind to think about the topic, and the second inquiry gets you closer to the juicy parts of the matter.
When you have an inkling of curiosity, amplify it by going deeper. Tweet this
2. Celebrate the fact that you’re curious.
If you make a discovery through your own natural curiosity and you realize it was intriguing, entertaining, or you got value from it, celebrate it! Relish in the fact that curiosity opened the door to a new learning experience. Celebrate even the smallest things. If you are curious, it is likely that at one point or another, you will have an experience where your curiosity drives you to identify a life-changing or career-changing course of action. If you are a naturally curious person, it’s probably just a matter of time. Celebrate these opportunities, but look for value in the chances you uncover that are the smaller step functions of your professional success; for example, learning about a best practice, a small tool you’ve never used or learning how to save an hour a week. You may never learn from these experiences until you leverage your natural curiosity to the fullest extent.
Celebrate curiosity as the reason you find value. It will reinforce being curious and most likely grow it. Tweet this
3. Become an expert in proactive curiosity.
There is conclusive evidence that people who are proactive harvest more success than people who are relatively reactive. The tip we have is to proactively pursue one topic as a way of satisfying your curiosity.
For example, let’s say you’re curious about how the recruiting process works for the types of clients you serve most. You probably aren’t a recruiter, but you’re already helping your clients in many ways. If you understand how they are going about recruiting, it can deliver a tremendous amount of value for you and your organization. What I anticipate you’d find is that you are capable of helping them with talent a lot more skillfully than you may have thought.
The beauty in this is that you don’t have the friction of a transaction. On top of that, you may learn about your own recruiting process and how elements of it can be improved. Another possible outcome is the cross-pollination of the things you learned to other clients, thereby increasing your relevance to clients beyond the reasons why you are working with them. Many professional service providers are in a commoditized industry, and that increase in relevancy can make the difference between clients sticking with you or thinking it’s time to switch. As a result, curiosity becomes a very powerful way of keeping business you’ve already earned as well as obtaining new business.
Pursue one proactive topic to satisfy your natural curiosity and uncover new ways to help others. Tweet this
