I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity,  
Eleanor Roosevelt

The Not So Secret Benefits
of a Curious Mindstate

I think viscerally we all know that curiosity is powerful.

Do you remember Curious George, the monkey who is the main character in a series of children’s books by Margret and H.A. Rey that focus on developing curiosity?

Did you know that more than 75 million copies of Curious George books have been sold worldwide in many languages, including Yiddish, Afrikaans, Braille, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Swedish, German, Chinese, Danish, and Norwegian?

Have you ever wondered what that level of attraction is really about? Well, a little research shows that curiosity is a key to everything from promoting happiness and protecting your brain to enhancing achievement and creating higher levels of work performance.

And did you know….

…a study in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California – Davis found that curiosity helps the brain learn new material. Quoted in an article in Psychology Today, Dr. Matthais Gruber, the lead author of the study says, “Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it.” This was found to be true even when the surrounding material was neither interesting nor important. The study goes on to cite curiosity as a form of intrinsic motivation that increases activity in the reward center of the brain and other areas related to learning.

I think it is a powerful insight that it’s not making learning material interesting but the curiosity you bring to the material that is most important. That makes total sense and reinforces what I’ve always known to be true for me and my clients, that curiosity makes a difference – a huge difference – in business, relationships, and certainly in my field specialty of sales.

It’s simple, really. Curiosity deepens relationships. People are more attracted to us when we have a natural curiosity about them.

 

Let’s take, for instance, my view on the importance of coming to each sales interaction with a hunger to discover what is driving our prospects and clients to buy our services, to find out what’s really going on behind the questions they are asking and what is getting in the way of them moving forward. Since all sales have an emotional component, a deep curiosity about the emotional landscape of the human beings who are sitting across the table is profoundly powerful and allows us to connect in an open and honest way, which singularly increases our likelihood of making a sale.

The other big curiosity that is perhaps most important to me is our self-curiosity. What drives us? Why do we behave, feel, and experience the world in the ways that we do? What is my reaction to a certain person or situation really about? It’s never quite as it seems – at least that’s the way I see it.

The most powerful tool I’ve ever seen for helping with this journey of self-curiosity is the Enneagram? If you’re at all curious about the Enneagram and how it might support your personal and professional success, call us to schedule time for a conversation.

Curious, George?

By Mary Anne Wampler,
PRINCIPAL, TRANSFORM, INC.