Good business leader
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Stephen Hawking
While we may debate the most important skill of a good business leader, certainly a critical skill is curiosity. That is, demonstrating curiosity and inspiring and cultivating the natural curiosity in your staff. Ineffective business leaders are the ones who have lost their passion and curiosity for their subject or even for their job.
You can’t fake curiosity and passion. The best leaders are the ones who show their passion to continuously learn more about their subject. They are not afraid to show mistakes or admit that they don’t know it all. They continuously seek to experiment with new ideas.
The best leaders guide, coach, inspire, and feed that natural flame of curiosity and exploration that lives within every employee. The courage to lead, then, is the courage to expose yourself as you demonstrate your curiosity and passion for business subjects. This kind of passion is both infectious and memorable.
The openness to show your natural curiosity in front of others requires one to be vulnerable. Passionate curiosity demonstrates many things to others, including that we don’t know all the answers or even that we are uncertain about various things. Be curious and never fear your vulnerability.
Become the leader and coach who lights the sparks and inspire those around you to pursue curiosity, exploration and discovery.
Please share a story or two about your leadership experiences.
More reading:
Are You Aware of These Surprising Facts on Innovation?
Do You Practice These Habits of the Highly Creative
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That’s a a very interesting posting and I’m glad I’ve found it since I share the same opinion.
Passion and engagement are definitely crucial for the success of a leader and usually they don’t really follow this “recipy”.
To support more your idea there are some well known examples of successful businesses (Apple) led by great people mentioned by Simon Sinek in a TED Talk. He clearly states the importance of Emotional Intelligence of business leaders and shows how they’re applying it:
http://www.tedxvienna.at/blog/emotional-intelligence-in-leadership-%E2%80%93-friend-or-foe/