I have spent decades in boardrooms, on stages, in workshops, and in one-to-one coaching conversations with some of the most remarkable people I have ever met. Leaders navigating crises. Entrepreneurs building something from nothing and professionals at crossroads they didn’t expect to reach.

And if I had to name the single quality that separated those who truly thrived from those who merely survived, it wouldn’t be ambition, nor intelligence, it wouldn’t even be resilience, though that does matter enormously.

It would be curiosity.

Not as a personality quirk or as a nice-to-have characteristic you put on a leadership competency framework and promptly forget about. But as a living, daily practice. A choice to stay genuinely interested in people, in ideas, and in what might still be possible.

The business world has been slowly waking up to this. Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, whose research on curiosity in the workplace is among the most cited in the field, found that when curiosity is triggered in leaders and their teams, people think more deeply and rationally about decisions and arrive at more creative solutions. Her research also found that curious leaders gain more respect from their people and inspire more trusting, collaborative relationships.

In a survey of more than 3,000 employees across industries and company sizes, Gino found that 92% credited curious people with bringing new ideas into their teams and organisations, and viewed curiosity as a direct catalyst for job satisfaction and motivation. Those are not small numbers.

And yet, separate research published in the Harvard Business Review revealed a striking gap: 83% of executives believe they encourage curiosity in their organisations. Only 52% of their employees agree. Meanwhile, just 16% of workers report feeling genuinely curious in their work on a regular basis.

So we have a situation where curiosity is widely recognised as valuable, broadly claimed as a cultural value, and largely absent from the day-to-day experience of most people at work.

That is a significant missed opportunity. And I think most leaders know it, somewhere.

I have observed this pattern throughout my career. It is rarely intentional. Leaders do not set out to suppress curiosity. I believe that what happens is more subtle.

Pressure to perform creates a gravitational pull towards certainty and efficiency. Questions start to feel like delays. Exploring a new idea begins to feel like a luxury. And gradually, without anyone quite deciding it, the culture narrows.

The irony, as Gino’s research points out, is that when people feel free to be inquisitive and to question the status quo, efficiency actually improves. Less conflict, better decisions, more innovation and fewer costly mistakes.

Curiosity is not the enemy of performance, it is one of its most reliable engines.

I can speak to this personally, because curiosity has been the thread running through my entire life.

As the daughter of a military officer, my childhood was a series of new places, new schools, new people. I had no choice but to be curious. It was the only way to find my footing, again and again.

That instinct never left me. It showed up in my coaching work, in my consulting, in my travels across the world. It showed up when I picked up a paintbrush again at 81, having set aside my passion for art decades earlier. It shows up now, as I prepare to celebrate my 86th birthday in the Galapagos Islands.

I am not sharing this to suggest that everyone needs to be booking adventurous holidays or reinventing themselves in later life. I am sharing it because I genuinely believe that the leaders who stay most alive, most effective, and most relevant are the ones who never stop asking questions. Not just in the business sense, but in the broadest possible sense of the word.

Curious about their people. About what their industry might look like in five years. About what they don’t yet know. About what delights them.

It builds genuine connection. When a leader is truly curious about the people they work with, those people feel it. They feel seen, not managed. That difference matters more than most leaders realise.

It keeps judgement flexible. Curious leaders are less likely to double down on ideas that are no longer working, because they remain genuinely open to new information. They hold their assumptions lightly.

It models permission. When a leader asks ‘I wonder if there’s a better way to approach this,’ they give their whole team permission to ask the same question. That is how a culture of curiosity takes root.

It sustains energy. This is the one I find most personally true. Curiosity is one of the great antidotes to stagnation. It is very difficult to feel flat or purposeless when you are genuinely interested in what happens next.

In my experience, curiosity does not fade with age or with seniority. It fades when we stop giving it room. When the diary fills up and the same people sit in the same rooms having the same conversations. When the pace of life leaves no space for ‘I wonder.’

The good news is that it can be rekindled. 

And when it is, something happens. In individuals, teams and in organisations.

“The secret of genius,” Aldous Huxley wrote, “is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”

I would add this: 

Never stop asking questions. Not because you don’t know the answers, but because the right questions have a way of opening doors you didn’t even know were there.