The curious leader

The Rev Dr Martin Johnstone says leaders should always be willing to listen and learn.

I HAVE a friend. At least, I like to think of her as a friend. Over the years, she has undertaken a series of demanding leadership roles. She has done so with aplomb.

She appears to remain naturally calm under pressure. She is a clear thinker. She listens well, clearly articulates the nub of the problem, and seeks consensus on how to bring about change. At the same time, she does doesn’t shy away from making difficult decisions and choices.

However, in my opinion her greatest leadership quality is that she remains inherently curious. She was probably the first leader I met who would deliberately spend time every month visiting people and places where she would learn something new.

On those occasions, she does her very best not to turn up as the leader but as a learner, keen to find out what is happening; and to have that experience inform and challenge her own practice.

One of the most delightful things about my friend’s curiosity is that she encourages those who work alongside her to develop their own inquisitiveness, not just to feed off hers. Just as she might spend a day a month deliberately listening and learning, she encourages others in her team to do the same. It means, I am told, that her colleagues are always popping with fresh ideas and creativity.

Graham Leicester is the founder and director of the International Futures Forum, based in Aberdour. In Beyond Survival, a wonderful little book about finding practical hope in turbulent times, he writes: “We cannot plan but we will learn our way out of crisis.”

It is important not to take this piece of wisdom out of context. Effective planning matters. Too much of what goes wrong happens because of a lack of effective planning, whether that is about forgetting to pack my toothbrush when going away for the night or not being adequately prepared for a global pandemic.

Some of the malaise that we currently find ourselves in is happening because we have failed in the past to plan adequately. Or perhaps more accurately, we have not only failed to plan but we have also failed to implement what we did propose. Surely, I am not the only one who has bookcases of reports full of recommendations that have simply remained on the shelf.

One of my regrets was that I was involved for several years in a piece of work that sought to take a long-term generational approach to change which we then failed to adequately put into practice. I take at least some of the responsibility for that. We got caught up in short termism. We failed to recognise that, on occasions, things are so urgent that we cannot afford to do them quickly.

“ However, in my opinion her greatest leadership quality is that she remains inherently curious.

The interaction between effective planning and constant learning feels critical for leadership at this juncture. We need to avoid pretending that there are easy fixes to inherently complex and multi-layered challenges. Let’s stop blaming leaders when they fail to find easy answers. There aren’t any. To quote another deep thinker: “For every complex human problem there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong” (H L Mencken).

Part of the solution is to try to remain constantly open to a different way of seeing things. To have plans but to be always learning. It’s why we need curious leaders. And why curiosity is such a vital trait in good leaders. ¤