Curiosity is Caring

Kind Curiosity Shows Willingness to Consider, Connect, & Learn

Image by Gary Butterfield from Unsplash

At work and in life, curiosity is terribly underrated. Kindhearted curiosity about people, their stories, how something works, and new ways of doing shows CARING, and caring shows willingness to connect and learn.

Curiosity is a key component of a can-do growth mindset. It is key to drawing people together, to personal development, to craft, and key to humanizing and deepening our interactions with our work and each other. In our fast-paced, often-transactional world, what can we employ to build trust? What can we employ to connect to issues and others, and to grow personally and professionally? In a word, we can employ benevolent curiosity about people, things, places, traditions, habits and methods with which we are unfamiliar.

Benevolently curious people are caring people, and caring people are learners. Research shows that people feel attracted to and more at ease with people who show genuine curiosity about the world and others. From the standpoint of being effective leaders, curiosity helps us more fully see people, more fully take things in, more fully meet challenges, and more fully understand and adapt to nuance. Curiosity is critical to acquiring knowledge, critical to openness and flexibility, to being current and remaining relevant, and to staying young. In a word, curiosity is caring, and what really matters at work and in life is standing up, connecting, doing good work, and making positives happen. What really matters is caring.

Curiosity is key to developing a can-do growth mindset, key to leadership and craft, key to relationships and collaboration, and key to deepening interactions. The power and positives of caring and benevolent curiosity are many and clear. If you are kindly curious, you care.