The advantages of being a curious leader

Companies are constantly driven to improve and innovate in their search for unique angles of engagement and brand reputation. This, in turn, has the potential to increase their customer bases and, consequently, profits.

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This, however, is not easy for most companies. The difficulty here lies in their focus: Most companies rely on the logical side of an idea in order to attempt at innovation. This approach has the unfortunate tendency of reducing their team to a bunch of emotionless, entirely logic-driven robots which blindly follow stimuli based on predefined conditions. The truth is that human beings are not like this; they are emotionally-driven beings who make decisions according to their whims.

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This emotional aspect is the key to innovation. This is also why a lot of newer companies are more likely to come up with innovative ideas. Young people generally have a more curious and excited view toward life. This curiosity is the perfect mix of logic and emotion, one that can naturally drive people to come up with new, progressive ideas and activations.

However, most corporate environments are not conducive to the curiosity that drives innovation. Older entrepreneurs, in particular, tend to exhibit less curiosity due to the numbing effects that years of workplace experience can give.

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The key to fighting these numbing effects is to keep one’s emotional intelligence constantly developing. As a company grows, leaders in particular have to find ways to keep abreast of their employees’ and colleagues’ experiences in order to keep the innovative spirit alive, which can benefit the company in the long run.

Emile Haddad is a Seattle-based business coach who is the head of Catalyst Business Consulting, which specializes in keeping leaders on their innovative toes. Visit this LinkedIn page for more about his work.