Being curious about curiosity is not unlike having an episode of semantic satiation-that experience when you use or repeat a familiar word or phrase and it sounds “wrong” or has momentarily lost its meaning. But start asking questions about what it is and how to cultivate it, especially in the workplace, and it’s not as cut-and-dried
Work in your curiosity zone
Celeste Kidd, assistant professor of psychology at the UC Berkeley, defines curiosity as variation within individuals, moment to moment
- Variation may depend on your interest in and knowledge of the subject
- One known important predictor of curiosity is uncertainty
- You are most curious about subjects that fall into the middle ground
- Those about which you have some knowledge, but not a high degree of certainty
Embrace a collaborative approach
In his studies of dancers, Harrison found that curiosity can be contagious
- They would watch each other dance and when someone made a mistake, they didn’t criticize each other, they coached each other
- This experimentation gave them a broader set of possibilities to draw
Avoid the “advice trap”
Don’t give advice instead of listening
- Instead, “ask a question, ‘Hey, what’s the real challenge here for you? Well, what’s on your mind?’”
Manage Uncertainty
We can control far less than we think and influence far more than we realize.
- Realizing the difference may be the difference between throwing up your hands in frustration and giving up because you don’t have control and being able to release what you can’t change anyway.
Stick with it
You can become more curious over time if you try
- Forcing yourself to learn about something and stick with it “means that you will naturally become interested in other things that are related to the things that you already know, understanding that there’s a relationship between what you currently know and what you could know”
Surround yourself with curious people
People are more likely to be curious when they have a close or supportive relationship with people curious about the same thing
- It’s more often the case in organizations that people are curious together than they are curious alone
- Maybe they’ve run into some sort of a puzzle that opens up space for new ways of thinking, and they want to explore that opportunity together
