Why curiosity might be one of the most underrated leadership skills

Organizations invest in leadership development, communication skills, and wellbeing initiatives. But one simple habit sits quietly underneath all of them: being genuinely curious.

Curiosity isn’t something we can really fake. Being curious changes the way we listen. It changes the questions we ask. And ultimately, it changes the conversations we have.

At Friday Pulse, we've seen that the leaders and teams who often make the most progress aren't necessarily those with the highest scores. They're the ones who approach feedback with curiosity instead of judgement.

Curiosity creates psychological safety

Imagine an employee shares a frustration about communication.

There are two ways a manager could respond.

The first is defensiveness: "But we communicate all the time"

The second is curiosity: "Thanks for sharing that. Can you help me understand what feels missing?"

The first response sounds like a question. But it’s defensive and closes the conversation. The second opens it, and that difference matters.

Psychological safety - the feeling that it's safe to speak up, share ideas, admit mistakes, or raise concerns - has consistently been linked to stronger team performance, learning, and innovation. One of the biggest contributors to psychological safety is how leaders respond when people share difficult feedback.

Curiosity signals that feedback is welcome, even when it's uncomfortable.

Research by Amy Edmondson, whose work pioneered the concept of psychological safety, shows that teams learn and improve when people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, share ideas, and talk openly about mistakes.

Curiosity helps us understand, not assume

One of the biggest traps at work is believing we already know why something is happening.

A lower happiness score? "They're just busy."

A frustration shared by the team? "They've misunderstood."

A drop in participation? "People aren't interested."

Sometimes our assumptions are right, but often they aren't. Curiosity helps us pause before jumping to conclusions.

Instead of asking the team "Why is this score so low?" try asking "What might this score be telling us?" It's a subtle shift, but an important one.

Curiosity makes feedback more useful

Employee feedback is only valuable if it helps us understand something we didn't know before. That means treating feedback as information rather than criticism.

This is especially true when reading frustrations. It's easy to see frustrations as complaints. But often they're something much more useful. They're clues – about friction, about unnecessary effort, about systems that make good work harder than it needs to be.

When approached with curiosity, frustrations become opportunities for improvement. Without curiosity, they're easy to dismiss.

Curiosity strengthens relationships

People don't expect leaders to have every answer. They do expect them to listen.

Asking thoughtful questions communicates respect. It tells people their experience matters, that you’re interested in understanding more, that you want to work together to improve this. Those small moments accumulate over time, strengthening trust and making future conversations easier.

Curiosity fuels learning and innovation

Curiosity doesn't just improve relationships. It also helps organizations adapt.

A growing body of research suggests curiosity is linked with greater work engagement, creativity, learning, and adaptability. Curious employees are more likely to seek new information, explore different perspectives, and generate new ideas rather than relying on familiar ways of working.

A recent review of workplace research concluded that curiosity supports innovation, learning, resilience, and performance across organizations.

Curiosity is a habit

Although some people are more naturally curious than others, it’s also a skill we can develop. It's something we practise.

It might look like:

• Asking one more question before offering a solution.
• Replacing assumptions with exploration.
• Looking for patterns instead of blame.
• Wondering what a frustration might be trying to tell us.
• Broadening your understanding by asking another person about their experience.

Small habits like these can change the quality of conversations across an organization.

Curiosity is built into Friday Pulse

One of the reasons Friday Pulse asks the questions that it does is that they encourage curiosity. A score isn't the destination. It's the beginning of a conversation.

When teams regularly ask:

• What's helping us?
• What's getting in the way?
• What can we learn from this?
• What small improvement could we make?

they're building something much bigger than a feedback process. They're building a culture of curiosity. And that's often where meaningful improvement begins.

Getting started

The next time you review employee feedback, try resisting the temptation to explain it away or jump straight to solutions.

Instead, get curious. Ask one more question. Listen a little longer.

You may discover that the most valuable thing in your feedback isn't the score itself. It's what happens when you become curious enough to understand it.

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