Curiosity is an essential leadership behaviour, with Michael Bungay Stanier

Better World Leaders Episode 12.

A conversation about power & control, failure and learning – and the role of curiosity in all of these.

Michael Bungay Stanier is a world-renowned expert, author and speaker on developing coaching skills for leaders, the role of advice giving and developing meaningful learning experiences.
His book Coaching Habits is a Wall Street Journal best seller having sold close to 1 million copies.
Michael is the Founder of Box of Crayons, a Toronto based leadership development company, and most recently MBS.works – his vehicle to bring a life of meaning to as many people of possible.

In this dynamic conversation, Michael and I discuss several key elements of his leadership philosophy and approach to developing leaders.
The discuss the vital role of curiosity in building empathy, connecting to yourself and to others, enabling performance in teams and across whole organisations and essentially as a critical and under-appreciated leadership ability that must be practiced and refined.

We review the right approach to advice giving, and most importantly not to fall for the trap of responding reactively to the first question asked – most often this does not allow you to contribute to solving the real problem.
We move on to a fascinating review of Michael’s perspective on power and control, the role curiosity and advice-giving play in these dynamics and most importantly Michael’s view on the role of leadership in sharing and distributing power.

We also touch on failure as a crucial element of the journey to success, learning both for the individual leader as well as how to design learning experiences for your team.

Key messages from this episode;

On Curiousity…

• Curiosity is simply a must have for leaders to succeed in the world right now.
• Curiosity creates empathy.
• Curiosity connects you to yourself, to other people, and to the world around you.
• Curiosity impacts on how effective, resilient and innovative you and your team are.
• We can change our culture for the better by staying curious, holding back on judgement and not jumping straight to giving advice

On Power & Control…

• The power of curiosity is that it disrupts hierarchy
• Questions transfer power, advice retains or extends it
• In giving advice, you claim authority.
• Asking a question hands over control.
• Power and control exist as invisible webs in organisations.
• Think about how this plays out for you, in your world and your work, and what role you play.- Consider doing a ‘power audit’.- An interesting exercise would be to design an organisation chart based not on hierarchy, but on implicit power and control.- Part of your role as a leader is to share power, and provide space for others to step into power.- You control the process, not the outcome. The opportunity is to do your best work in the process element.- Whilst you control very little, you can influence more than you know.

Get involved with Michael’s work via his website mbs.works, especially his incredible free course – A Year of Living Brilliantly – click here for link

Additional resources;

• Google Coaching Habit or Advice Trap to get a copy of Michael’s books.
• To watch Michael’s TEDx talk, click here
• To check out Michael’s podcast – We Will Get Through This, head here – https://www.mbs.works/wwgtt

Finally as always, great thanks and appreciation to the team who contributed to bringing Better World Leaders to you;

• To Brendan Ward for production of all audio recordings and composition and performance of original music throughout each episode.
• To Cooper and the team at RadioHub studios for technical support and creative guidance during the episodes that are recorded face-to-face. You can find out about Radio Hub’s services here
• To NokNok Studios for website design, hosting and advice. Find out about NokNok’s awesome services here
• To Cirasa Design for logo and site graphics – Find our about Cirasa’s inspiring work here

A special note of thanks this week to Cooper, if it were not for his provocation to me to reach out to Michael to ask if he’d be willing to converse with me during his period in isolation, this episode may not have happened. Good on you Coop!

You’ll find audio and video recordings for this episode, as well as links to any specific recommendations or related resources mentioned today in the podcast area of 4ileadership.com/insights

This is the Better World Leaders, brought to you by 4iLeadership