How do we unlock the power of curiosity in the workplace?.

Join Klaudia and her guest Stefaan van Hooydonk, the founder of the Global Curiosity Institute and the author of the bestselling book The Workplace Curiosity Manifesto, to explore the role of curiosity in fostering innovation, happiness, and collaboration.

Discover practical tips and strategies to cultivate curiosity in your work environment, driving positive change and unlocking new possibilities.

Klaudia Mitura: Hello, happiness seekers. Welcome to the happiness challenge podcast. I'm Klaudia Mitura, and I'm on a mission to explore the best happiness habits that science has to offer. Like so many others, the pandemic cut me off from my family and work. So I decided to use my training as a psychologist to discover what science can tell us about the art of happiness.

What I found set me on a path to joy. And now I'm ready to share my journey with you. Each month, I'm publishing three linked episodes where I'm speaking to a leading expert, putting their tips to the test and sharing my findings and feelings. From mindfulness to exercise and random acts of kindness, I'll be shining a light on the simple happiness habits that can bring more joy to our lives. So join me as I embark on my challenge and together, we can become more successful, resilient and happy.

Hello, happiness seekers. Welcome to this month's happiness challenge where I'm exploring how to stay curious and happy at work. Helping me with this topic is the founder of the Global Curiosity Institute and the author of the bestselling book, The Workplace Curiosity Manifesto, Stefaan van Hooydonk.

Stefaan is going to outline why curiosity is important to our success and happiness, as well as how we can build a stronger curiosity muscle. So I'm very intrigued about that. So join us to ignite your curiosity to stay happier, healthier, and more successful. Welcome Stefaan.

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Thank you, Claudia. This is no pressure.

Looking forward to the discussion. Actually, I told you I'm working on some research around looking or exploring the connections between happiness and curiosity, so the podcast comes very timely.

Klaudia Mitura: Yes. I'm very excited. I think those two topics go really nice hand in hand and we need both of them to really reach that great potential of positive wellbeing.

But let's start with maybe the kind of the basics and foundations. What is your definition of curiosity?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Well, I've selected a definition of curiosity, which fits both individuals, but also systems. Because for me, organizations can be curious. Teams can be curious. Even societies can be curious.

So I'm talking often about the mindset, to challenge, the status quo to discover, to explore and to learn. So there's many things unpacked in those dimensions. So it's about intentionality. It's about taking action. For me, curiosity is a verb. So it requires activating that curiosity.

And now it's a little bit like happiness. When often we have a very simple definition of the word in the backs of our minds when pressed and we can all come up with some definition of happiness, I guess, but we're reflecting a little bit of it about both dimensions and we're kind of uncovering or kind of going deeper into the layers of these, the peels of the onion of actually both happiness and curiosity.

We find many other things. So for me, curiosity is not only linking to what we, in popular language, is using what I call intellectual curiosity. I'm also heavily focusing on empathic curiosity or interested in the other as it links to diversity in the workplace, to inclusion, as it links to better relationships.

And that often already takes people a little bit by surprise. And then the third dimension of curiosity for me is everything about curiosity about me and myself. What are my beliefs? What is my purpose? And actually there's also a link to happiness there. I call it self-reflective curiosity.

And the better people are at this, the better it leads to self-awareness. And the outcome of that type of curiosity is happiness, is resilience, is feeling grounded and feeling empowered. Now also maybe to round off and I'm trying to paint a picture of curiosity is, it's not this single thing. It's a multifaceted dimension. It's that curiosity can be positive but can also be a little bit negative. Like curiosity can be positive, and nowadays everybody thinks of curiosity as this positive thing, and it's a kind of curiosity for curiosity's sake, and Einstein discovering the universe, children being interested in the world around them, so it all has a lot of beautiful stuff yet there's also one dimension which links to anxiety, which is the frustration of not knowing.

And scientists call this deprivation type curiosity. For instance, if you're watching a really bad movie. But you want to keep on watching the movie because you're hungry to know the end and you know, or at work when you find a problem and you can't sleep until you found the solution to that problem.

Or when you go to a doctor, and it takes two weeks before the results come back. That type of anxiety, in science we call it kind of an information gap theory. You have this gap in information in your head and you, you're trying to play with it. So anyway, the definition for me is the mindset that challenges status quo to discover, to learn, and explore.

Klaudia Mitura: Fantastic. And I think it's so important that we understand that curiosity, as you're saying, is not multidimensional. Very interesting to know that curiosity can lead to that anxiety. I was actually thinking when you said that curiosity might have some negative components, I guess. I was thinking about maybe the idea of being a bit too nosy or gossiping about other people in a kind of social relationship.

So that's what came to my mind that, you know, it's a great thing to be curious about other people and find out about their experiences and backgrounds. But I think it's a different way than if it's used maybe for kind of any malicious ways. So I think that's what came to my mind.

But I think the exploration, the curiosity about ourselves, it's so interesting because I must say, when I think about curiosity, I do associate it more kind of outward facing, you're curious about something that is out there rather than maybe what is happening for you. So you already mentioned a little bit that link between curiosity and happiness.

But let's recap some of the outcomes or some of the findings that you are aware of. Why is it that actually happier people are more curious or vice versa? When we are more curious, we are experiencing more happiness.

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Yeah, it's a beautiful question. Maybe backtracking what you're saying and what you thought was about the negative connotation of curiosity.

Or in Romanian, I was told, you have a thing where you're saying that curious people die young. Or in Polish, apparently there's a saying, you're from Poland?

Klaudia Mitura: Yes, yes, I am. I was about to say, maybe that's, I was just reflecting, maybe that's my background coming here into play. Perfect.

Stefaan van Hooydonk: And in Polish apparently you have a saying that curiosity is the first step to hell.

Klaudia Mitura: Yes, it is.

Stefaan van Hooydonk: And I think that stems from a very deep religious background, because when you're looking at religion, in all parts of the world, too much religion actually doesn't want people to be curious. Let's think about Eve. She was eating the apple of knowledge, and she was not supposed to.

Anyway back to your question about the link to happiness and curiosity. I think it's quite magical. And I said, I was doing some research on it, that apparently happy people are 12 percent more productive in organizations versus not so healthy people.

What I also found is a huge variance in definitions. Like on the one hand, happiness deals with this hedonic. Like it's all about pleasure, and it's all about positivity, but also eudaimonic dimensions, kind of happiness linking to purpose and so very distinct and sometimes positive, sometimes subjective, sometimes objective.

Now, in any case, I think when we're looking at happiness, I think happiness positively links to cognitive flexibility. The more we're happy, the more we're going to be open to the environment, the more we're going to be able to brainstorm, the more we're going to be more positive to this colleague, the more we're going to be creative or coming up with new solutions to dimensions.

And already I'm starting to make the link with curiosity, I think, and curiosity clearly fuels growth. Fuels learning, fuels connections. Fuels also the search for meaning, the search for purpose, the search for the self-reflection, the search for these best relationships. And also interesting, what researchers have found that there's a negative correlation between curiosity and anxiety and depression.

So the more you're curious, and probably there's also a link to happiness there, the less you're prone to be depressed and the less you're prone to be anxious because you create this power around you to deal with this. So there is this interlinkages kind of happiness feeds curiosity and curiosity feeds happiness, and it's a nice loop, I think that we're often in companies are not really focusing on, or not really considering as an option.

Klaudia Mitura: Yeah, I would say that curiosity is always in the shadows of other very well-known and researched concepts when it comes to happiness, such as gratitude, exercise, but curiosity is, yeah, I would say it's a little bit shadowed behind that. And it's so important, as you say, and specifically for organizations, because you wrote a book about curiosity in the workplace and really encouraging organizations to create environments for curiosity to thrive specifically at work.

What benefits do we have to actually be curious?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Well, at an organization level, I think it's very intuitive. In the old days, like in the last century, not much was happening. Therefore, in many organizations, innovation and looking to the future and changing the way we're working wasn't really key. Nowadays, with things changing so dramatically around us in all industries, if companies and leaders and individuals for that matter, at an individual level, are not open to the notion of exploration are not interested in challenging the status quo, updating their products, updating their knowledge, updating their skills, it's going to be a very short ride. Now, at the same time it is difficult.

And for me the opposite of curiosity is conformity. And conformity has two dimensions. It's conformity to the team, but also the conformity that we do to ourselves. Conformity to the team is all we want to be perceived as loyal members of our tribes. That's why we want to conform to the rules, to the guidelines, to the leaders ideas, to everything around us, rather than rocking the boat.

And rather than saying, oh, what if we do it completely differently, or this project is really not the right thing to do at this moment, people often, even at really senior levels, do not share those thoughts, because doing so makes you a less loyal member of the tribe. So often we keep it to ourselves.

And then this other dimension of conformity, where we're trying to conform to our way of looking at the world and our way of creating a simplified world. The world is too complex. That's why we're taking the same roads to our office every day. And we don't think about it. That's why we often have lunch in the same restaurant every day and often we're taking the same type of lunch because it feels easy.

We don't have to think about it and that's why we often have lunch with the same type of colleagues. So that's also a type of conformity. And that's also why we're pushing away new ideas. If they don't correspond to our way of looking at things because often, we have this simplistic realism in our minds that how I see the world is how the world is.

Why some people should be likable or not likable. Of course, my, this person is objectively not likable. But that's maybe not entirely the case because other people like that person. So maybe there's something wrong with you type of thing, you know? So, this conformity is a big force and it's just hard for people to be curious.

Often people are curious in the beginning of things. In the beginning of a relationship, you cannot wait to be with the other person, you're all the time with each other, you know and by your smile, I could see that you're thinking of a situation where this was the case. And then, and if you fast track 20 years down the road, often people are not so curious anymore in their relationship because somehow this conformity settled in, we take people for granted, we become less curious and we invest less into that person because we assume we know. The same is happening with colleagues, the same is happening with products. Once we have a winning product, we want to keep that, milking that product as long as possible at the expense of exploring something new.

So, I hope that makes sense.

Klaudia Mitura: Yeah, absolutely. And yes, I was definitely smiling. I've been in a relationship with my husband for the last 12 years, so I can definitely relate to the level of curiosity in the beginning of the relationship than 12 years later. So yes, I absolutely hear you. But I guess there is an aspect that some individuals are more curious than others, isn't it? Why is that and how can we check how curious we are?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: It's a very good question and it has a number of dimensions. And the first dimension is counterintuitive. Often, we think that curiosity is something that we're born with.

And to a certain extent, that's true. I'm going to talk about it later. But even more important is that curious people need curious environments. If you grew up in a curious family, if your workplace is curious, if your colleagues are curious, if your manager is allowing curious and he's a curious person, him or herself, you're going to show up more curiously.

So if somebody blames somebody for not being curious, maybe that person has also something to do with it. So curiosity needs a conducive environment. And then another dimension, indeed, curiosity is about 50 percent what you're born with, but only about 50%. So 50 percent is fixed in terms of your intellectual powers, in terms of your mental structures and mental setup.

But about 50 percent is indeed influenced by how you feel, by how the environment is influencing you. And that specific 50 percent is something that can get better when you practice it. It's like a muscle. Or it can get worse if you don't practice it. So that's why I'm often calling a lot for measurements.

What do you measure? And you just asked the question, how do you measure your curiosity? But also becoming aware, just noticing, am I curious in this moment? Am I curious when I'm filling up my car with gasoline? And am I kind of curious in those banal, mundane dimensions because often people think of curiosity as kind of being this mega event that you need to have, so awareness really important.

And then intentionality. How intention, how proactive, how empowered are you looking at curiosity or do you see it something that is just happening to you. How you can measure it. That was one question. You can do a diagnostic on my website, go to www.globalcuriosityinstitute.com. And you can kind of find your own diagnostic.

We can check this at home, we can also check it at work. Why don't we check with colleagues? Was I curious in this last meeting? Or was I curious in this project? Or was I more conformist? Or, I think, a beautiful question that we can ask ourselves or gift ourselves is when asking others, how can I be a better dot, dot, dot. How can I be a better partner to my husband of 12 years?

You know, how can I be a better father to my 16-year-old daughter? How can I be a better colleague to you? How can I be a better guest in your podcast? You know, and thinking about it and asking that questions and how can I be a better boss and reverse feedback, something that's happening in only 23 percent of the cases, according to my own research.

So I think that's a great way to also from a quality level, ask how curious am I, and what can I do to become a better version of myself? It's a scary question but I guarantee you, you'll learn something, your relationship will become better because of it. And I've not heard any single case where people have misused or abused the opportunity of giving that positive feedback.

Klaudia Mitura: Great. So we have specific metric that you design, which is scientific, and that can give us some insights and inspirations. And then that very powerful, the gift of feedback, as you said, scary, but so powerful and candid, and we can learn so much about ourselves and our level of curiosity. We're going now into those specific, practical actions.

So I'm having that feedback. I have my score. I do want to build my curiosity muscle. And I really like that you're using that phrase specifically because we know that the muscle is something that we can practice, something that we can improve on. So what are specific tips you could give to myself, to my listeners, to improve and make that curiosity muscle stronger?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Well, a beautiful question. At the first level, I would say, give yourself permission. Just make it okay to ask more questions, to ask this stupid question in your team meeting, you know, or to give yourself permission to go up to other people and tell them I respect you. And I really want to learn something from you.

Another, another tip could be when you're brushing your teeth in the morning, prime yourself, or promise yourself, or invite yourself to be a little bit more curious about the world, about others, and about yourself. And in the evening, brushing your teeth again, you can kind of check, how did I do today?

And then tomorrow you do it yourself. So it's about micro actions that you can be taking towards every day. And I guarantee you, by the sheer fact that you're moving your gaze, or your focus towards curiosity, it will show up in more abundance which is quite interesting how we work as individuals.

I think another dimension could be: I'm working together with a with a beautiful colleague and she's using the concept of Curious Thursdays, and actually that means that for six days a week, she is really focused on the conformity side of work. Things need to be done and, everything needs to be produced and companies want their projects done.

But for one day, she says, I'm going to do things slightly differently. I'm going to explore new tools. I'm going to have meetings with people in different places. And she has meetings in parks , in musea. You know, and she's actually also close to London. And she's allowing herself for one day a week to explore new things.

New courses, anything really to allow herself to be more divergent and to explore new territories, so that's a great strategy. Another strategy related to people is make every conversation count. Every single conversation, even that conversation when you're paying after you have fuelled up your car with a cashier or in the supermarket.

Try to learn something new with every single person that you're interacting with. And with a cashier, it could be a simple question like, well, how many customers do you see on an hourly basis? You know, simple things that kind of, where you are genuinely with a lot of care and kindness asking questions.

I want to learn a little bit about your world and make it a promise to yourself, not to leave a single conversation without learning something new at work and the colleagues, if you're in the elevator with colleagues. Go beyond the superficialities. There are many other suggestions. Do you want me to continue?

Klaudia Mitura: I think that's absolutely great. I think we have a suggestion of that self-reflection and micro moments. And then I love the very practical have one day or one afternoon or one morning, whatever it is when you're allowing yourself that curiosity. And I love the fact that then we're going into those relationships and being curious about everyone. I love to have curiosity conversations with colleagues when I'm saying, you know what, it's not necessary about this project. I want to go beyond. I want to learn more about you as an individual, about your career, your, what are you learning? What are you excited about?

But I think yet it's to, with every person to be curious, I think you're taking it definitely to the next level. At some point, you did mention that curiosity thrives in the right environment. So my question is, if I'm a manager and I want to have a curious team and I want to contribute to building a curious culture in my organization, how can I create that right environment so that my colleagues, my team, give themselves permission to be curious?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: A beautiful question. I would say that it's really important for the leader to give permission to say guys and girls, it's okay to come up with new ideas. It's okay to stick out your neck. It's okay to challenge the status quo. I'm also vulnerable as a leader. I don't know everything. Actually for many leaders, they promote themselves as knowing everything as kind of being these know it alls and it's much more powerful and they get much more engagement from their people and much more motivation if they're promoting themselves as being a learn it all saying, I don't know everything.

So I think a leader is giving permission is pretty important as a leader. Also allowing people to spend part of their time in less conformity-based activities, but also curiosity, encourage people to think outside the box, encourage people to spend their time on innovation and creativity.

And that's true for all the roles. In every role there's a certain level of conformity we need to get things we need to fill out forms we need to do excels and whatever you're in your work, but if you're also building in excitement and creativity and innovation in every role and it's a beautiful thing to happen.

I've noticed leaders who are in team meetings, for instance, who are creating a rotating chairmanship, or I've seen some companies and I'm talking now a team level where the team activities or the agenda points are formulated as questions, and it's amazing how much that's changing the dynamic in those team meetings.

And also. I often ask the question to leaders then, how do you have your meetings? What are you talking about in your meetings? Do you talk about things that you already... No, and just are there to conform what you know already, or are you're also inviting questions that challenge the status quo?

So have this routine, create this space and time, I would say, as a leader, for the team to get together at a relational level, but also time and space to question things. Are we still on track? The world is changing so radically around us, and it feels very comfortable to continue the same thing that we're doing.

And that's true, I'm working with marketing groups now, and they're doing brilliant stuff, but they've been continuing doing the same things they've been doing the last three, four years, very successful at it, but their CEO is seeing that this has an ending shelf life.

So why don't we check and challenge the status quo and are we doing the right thing? So give that time and space as a leader. And what I started off with earlier is show up as a person full of what I call confident humility. Because not knowing some managers are hiding behind not knowing and they don't articulate it or , you know, they're a bit shy because I'm paid more money than my employees are supposed to know all the answers.

But what research shows that the more a manager says, I said it earlier, the more a manager says that I don't know, the more engagement and the more productivity and the more committed a team he or she is creating. And then maybe the last thing is what language is the manager using in his own writing, their own speaking.

There's some research done. It's beautiful research, actually, in those test centres of where we're testing for people going to Mars later on. And you have a couple of those centres around the world kind of we're just looking at anthropology and how does it work and equipment testing, etc, etc. Now when an analysis is made of the logbooks of leaders and the logbooks of the employees of those leaders one day later, then there's a correlation.

The more a leader is using question marks as an indication for questions and exclamation marks as a correlation of surprise, the next day you see those curious actions appearing in the logbooks of employees. And there's a direct correlation. The more explanation marks and the more question marks, the more words like novel or wonder or curious is happening in the logbooks of employees.

So I'm often asking the question to managers: How does your language look like when you're writing emails? You know how and by the fact how the language you're using directly reflects on how people are reflecting and are behaving and are mimicking your language. If it's aggressive, they're going to be aggressive.

If it's curious, they're going to be curious. Just notice. Often people are not aware of the language they're using. That make sense?

Klaudia Mitura: Yep. Brilliant. Thank you so much. And so many practical tips there for managers from changing our language to asking more questions to changing the agenda into questions.

I mean, here came the agenda to the meeting, everyone like, oh, my goodness, but actually let's make it fun and exciting. And as you say curious. Stefaan, thank you so much. You've shared with us so many interesting pieces of research and most importantly, lots of practical actions that we can take on board to stay curious at work, in life, and most importantly, be happy as a result. My final question to you, because this is a podcast about happiness is what makes you happy?

Stefaan van Hooydonk: What comes to mind is what makes me happy is I, I became a part time farmer during COVID, and I have a piece of land of two hectares and buying another piece of land.

So I'll have five hectares at 50, 000 square meters. That's a lot of land. I'm building a permaculture-based food forest on top of it. So it's completely bio, sharing with animals, sharing with the community and just growing. And that makes me happy to grow things. And I'm also noticing while doing this, I'm learning so much because I'm just a beginner and I'm encouraging everybody start with something new, a new hobby.

It doesn't have to be such a big piece, big hobby that I'm having now, but start something new and it will just create so much energy and for me, creation means happiness and like I'm building something for the future. So that's what I'm, that comes to mind as more things, but let's stay with this one.

Klaudia Mitura: Brilliant. Thank you so much again for coming to the happiness challenge podcast. It was an absolute pleasure to be speaking with you.

Stefaan van Hooydonk: Thank you so much, Klaudia. Thanks for having me.