A Curious Leader Can Give Employees Meaning, and Companies Success

August 10, 2017

Executives wanting to make their companies more successful can deploy something simple: curiosity.

A recent Harvard Business Review posting argues that curious leaders can help make the workplace more meaningful and rewarding for their employees. Happy employees do their best work, and then the company succeeds in the process says article authors Lewis Garrad, the growth markets lead for Mercer company Sirota (an employee research and organizational psychology company), and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems and professor of Business Psychology at University College London.

Why do curious leaders help make work more meaningful for their team? It turns out they help people find greater meaning “by exploring, asking questions and engaging people in ideas about the future,” the article notes.

Curious leaders can do this by giving employees a number of options for how to complete a job, rather than being specific and micromanaging. They are also easily bored, so these types of leaders look for people who can find ways to make the workplace more interesting.

There are other ways to help employees find greater meaning. As the article notes, leaders can help employees by being challenging, relentless and ambitious, encouraging them to have a desire to strive for something better and greater. Leaders seeking to accomplish this can also trust employees to get the job done, experiment and develop their skills. Of course, hiring people who share the same values also helps, according to the piece.

For the whole Harvard Business Review piece on how to make work more meaningful for your team, click here.