Leading with Curiosity: A Key to Thriving at Work
- Tamar Balkin
- Sep 1
- 8 min read
"And as my mind begins to spread its wings. There's no stopping curiosity I wanna turn the whole thing upside down I'll find the things they say just can't be found"
Upside Down by Jack Johnson (Click here for the song)
“I’ve been struggling with my homework from the last session. I can’t articulate my unique competitive advantage.”
Coaching client
What is curiosity?
Curiosity can be defined as a psychological state with three core components: recognising an information gap, anticipating that it can be closed, and feeling an intrinsically motivated desire to close it. Based on the research to date, curiosity has the characteristics of both a trait (a natural tendency) and a state (something that occurs under particular conditions). Researchers have found that those with high trait curiosity are particularly interested in developing new knowledge and skills and which will manifest in a wide range of situations.
“Humans seek information not only to improve future instrumental decisions, but also to learn what to be curious about.”
Yaniv Abir, Jane Mok, Christopher A. Baldassano, Caroline B. Marvin, Daphna Shohamy
What evokes curiosity?
Curiosity can be sparked by uncertainty or novelty, when we pursue knowledge simply for its own sake. But it is also shaped by instrumental factors, such as the perceived usefulness of information. Researchers suggest that curiosity grows when people see an opportunity to increase the value of what they know—either by improving their understanding of a topic or by recognising its practical relevance. This means that even scientific topics, which might seem unimportant at first, can inspire curiosity if people come to see their usefulness.
Usefulness has both personal and social dimensions. People are curious not only about information that may help them directly, but also about information that is valuable to others. Socially useful knowledge can be motivating in its own right, or indirectly by offering future personal benefits or by enhancing one’s social capital.
Interestingly, curiosity can be self-perpetuating such that satisfying curiosity about one topic tends to amplify curiosity about related information, while reducing curiosity for unrelated material. Curiosity not only helps people learn but also teaches them what to be curious about in the future.
Curiosity is multifaceted. It can feel positive or frustrating depending on the stage of information-seeking. Researchers have found that for some, the value of curiosity lies not just in the outcome, but in the act of exploration itself.
Researchers have found that the experience of curiosity was mainly positive and is related to pleasure, suggesting that both the desire for knowledge and the state of obtaining information elicits enjoyment.
To grasp the complex nature of curiosity, researchers suggest that curiosity is a way of prioritising how information can fit together. Curious states encourage information seeking beyond just solving problems; they create opportunities for creating hypotheses, testing, exploring, and feeling wonder. When someone acts on their curiosity to understand and explain things, they develop new knowledge networks.
What are the benefits of curiosity?
Researchers consistently find the following benefits of curiosity:
Psychological well-being: Curious individuals report greater meaning in life and overall life satisfaction, along with fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, and burnout. Researchers have found that curiosity is critical to the maintenance of psychological vitality as people age.
Problem-solving and confidence: Curiosity is linked to faster learning, stronger memory retention, heightened neural activity in regions governing working memory and a greater tendency to engage in intellectually stimulating activities. Researchers have found that consistently acting on curious feelings serves to expand knowledge, build intellectual and creative capacities.
Open-mindedness: Curious people are naturally drawn to novelty but also more willing to challenge their own assumptions, consider conflicting perspectives and tend to be viewed as less judgmental.
Empathy: Curiosity enhances social connections. Curious individuals are more attentive in conversations and more accurate in judging others’ personalities. They also approach conflict with empathy, seeking understanding rather than retaliation.
A curious person is responsive to organisational changes; they are more intrigued than frustrated when trying to understand, appreciate, and extract the unique value of new colleagues and technologies. They are flexible enough to adapt strategies and plans to unfamiliar cultures in sophisticated global markets.
How does curiosity manifest at work?
Researchers have identified four aspects of curiosity at work:
Joyous Exploration: Researchers have found that curious employees reported feeling energetic, enthusiastic, and deeply engaged in their work. They experienced flow states, generated and implemented creative ideas and reshaped tasks. They tend to acquire resources to increase positive experiences, meaning, and learning. There are strong links between curiosity and innovation, enthusiasm, vigour, and dedication. In essence, joyfully pursuing information and experiences beyond what is required appears to fuel divergent thinking, creativity, and the persistence needed to turn ideas into action.
Deprivation Sensitivity: This is curiosity based on the drive to resolve knowledge gaps. These employees are motivated by the discomfort of not knowing and a desire to reduce uncertainty and strengthen competence. This form of curiosity can even resemble perfectionism or neuroticism; it has a very low connection to innovation and is strongly associated with self-initiated job crafting. These employees proactively take on demanding tasks to build knowledge and skills, solve complex problems and reach ambitious goals.
Stress Tolerance: Regular readers know the importance of handling the strain of uncertain, complex, or ambiguous tasks at work. The higher an individual's Stress Tolerance, the higher their innovation, job satisfaction, and work engagement, and the lower their chances of burnout and exhaustion. Given that the ability to manage doubt, confusion, and anxiety is essential in all workplaces, curiosity cannot be fully understood without accounting for Stress Tolerance. Curious exploration depends on whether novelty feels manageable.
Openness to People’s Ideas: Researchers have found that social curiosity in the workplace can manifest as a willingness to seek, value, and apply ideas from others, regardless of their source. This drive to seek cognitive diversity varies greatly and provides a competitive advantage, as diverse perspectives enhance knowledge creation. This dimension was one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes, including job satisfaction, engagement, job crafting, social support, and innovation.
Researchers have found that this openness extends to feedback. Curious workers are more likely to proactively seek feedback, ask open-ended questions during the acquisition of feedback, and effectively cope with ambivalent feedback from coworkers and supervisors.
What gets in the way of curiosity?
Emotional Hijacking: Emotional experiences can significantly enhance or dampen curiosity. Regular readers know that curiosity is difficult when your nervous system is on high alert. In the context of stress, our brains switch from learning to defending. Thus, emotional overwhelm impairs our ability to remain open and engaged, causing curiosity to evaporate.
Pressure for Speed and Efficiency. Fast-paced environments reward quick answers and confident decisions, not slow, open-ended wondering, and focused attention. Regular readers know that when speed is the priority, curiosity feels like a luxury. Yet research shows that rushing narrows our focus and blinds us to surprising or disconfirming information. Curiosity requires focused attention, which is governed by the prefrontal cortex. This brain region helps direct our cognitive resources toward curious pursuits, filtering out irrelevant stimuli and honing in on what captivates our interest. Thus, when we rush, decisions are made with only half the facts and insights that could change everything may be missed.
Groupthink. Researchers have found that the desire for harmony can suppress dissent and dampen curiosity, especially when divergent views aren’t welcomed. When everyone appears aligned, curiosity fades. We default to consensus not because every angle has been explored, but because agreement feels safer.
The Illusion of Knowing. Researchers have studied the illusion of adequate information, which is the false belief that we know enough, even when key facts are missing. As a consequence, people make assumptions, become overconfident and stop being curious.
Distraction and Mental Overload. Readers know that a bombardment of information and mental overload characterise most people's work days. Researchers have found that the consequences of cognitive overload are surface-level thinking, a reduction in the ability to process new information, and less openness to other views.
Internalised Norms That Say “Don’t Ask”. Researchers have found that people often have discomfort around questions. It may be disrespectful, nosy, or open us up to scrutiny or create conflict, thus inhibiting curiosity.
“I had never really understood the phrase, 'curiosity killed the cat' and that before really appreciating what curiosity was, that I’d been a bit scared of it … especially if it was able to kill a cat! I didn’t know whose cat specifically, and although I’ve always been a dog person, I still felt sorry for the cat in question.”
Paul Slezak
Is curiosity always useful?
Researchers have found that curiosity can lead to :
High distractibility, the tendency to constantly shift between topics and activities due to a sudden fascination with something new and unrelated to the task at hand.
Indecisiveness, specifically, the desire to explore decision alternatives more meticulously and over longer periods of time before concluding.
Violation of social norms, such as privacy or even legal regulations, such as state secrecy laws by being curious about the “wrong” things.
Risky behaviour: Curiosity fosters sensation-seeking and the pursuit of novel, stimulating experiences, leading individuals to explore potentially hazardous experiences, and increasing their exposure to genuine risks.
“Curious people do not always perform consequentialist cost-benefit analyses and may be tempted to seek the missing information even when the outcome is expectedly harmful.”
Hsee, C. K., & Ruan, B.
What about my client?
As the session ended, my client reflected:
“It’s curiosity. Your questions have sparked my curiosity and challenged my assumptions and fears. I’m seeing things from a broader customer perspective. To me, it just feels like the way I naturally think, so it doesn’t seem remarkable. But it probably explains why, in these economic times, my department is finally getting a seat at the strategy table.”
Curiosity Challenge: Do Try This at Work.
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References:
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Kashdan, T.B., Goodman, F.R., Disabato, D.J., McKnight, P.E., Kelso, K. and Naughton, C. (2019). Curiosity has comprehensive benefits in the workplace: Developing and validating a multidimensional workplace curiosity scale in United States and German employees. Personality and Individual Differences, 155, p.109717. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109717.
Hsee, C. K., & Ruan, B. (2016). The Pandora Effect: The Power and Peril of Curiosity. Psychological Science, 27(5), 659-666.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616631733 (Original work published 2016)
Abir, Y., Mok, J., Baldassano, C., Marvin, C. and Shohamy, D., 2025. Learning Reinforces Curiosity.
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