Why curiosity is the most underrated leadership skill

There is a quality I notice in the most effective leaders I work with. It is not confidence, though they have it. It is not expertise, though they have that too. It is curiosity.

Not the performative kind. Not the question asked in a meeting to demonstrate engagement. The real kind. The kind that makes a leader pause before they speak. The kind that makes them genuinely interested in why something is happening, not just what is happening.

And yet it is almost never on a leadership competency framework.

We reward certainty. We undervalue questions.

Most leadership cultures are built around decisiveness. The ability to act, to direct, to have the answer. These are important. But they can crowd out something equally important — the willingness to not know yet. To sit with complexity. To ask a question that has no obvious answer.

The leaders who struggle most when I work with them are rarely the ones who lack confidence. They are the ones who have been so rewarded for having answers that asking questions feels like weakness. It is not. It is often the most courageous thing a leader can do.

What curiosity actually looks like in practice

It looks like a team meeting where the leader speaks last, not first. A conversation where instead of solving, you ask: what have we already tried? What do you think is really going on here? It looks like a leader who reads widely, thinks broadly, and brings unexpected ideas into the room because they have been genuinely curious about the world beyond their own organisation. None of this is soft. All of it is strategic.

Curiosity builds the conditions for better work

When leaders model curiosity, something shifts in the teams around them. People start to feel safe to say I don't know. They start to share half-formed ideas rather than waiting until they are polished. They start to challenge not destructively, but thoughtfully.

That is psychological safety in practice. And psychological safety is not a nice-to-have. It is consistently linked to higher-performing teams, lower turnover and better decision-making. Curiosity is not a personality trait you either have or you don't. It is a practice. And like all practices, it can be developed.

A place to start

The next time you are about to give someone the answer, pause. Ask yourself: what question could I ask instead that would help them find it themselves?

That is not a small shift. Over time, it changes everything.

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Susie Edwards is the founder of WonderIf, working with leaders, teams and organisations across private sector and corporate organisations alongside the NHS, universities and beyond. If this resonated, get in touch we'd love to hear from you.

Leading through complexity — what healthcare teams need now

If you work in the NHS or healthcare more broadly, you do not need me to tell you that things are hard right now. You are living it. Workforce pressures. Restructuring. Increased demand. Less time to think. A sense that the system keeps changing before anyone has had the chance to find their footing in the last change.

Leadership development in this context cannot just be about frameworks or models. The usual tools feel inadequate when people are exhausted and the ground keeps shifting. What leaders in healthcare need right now is something different.

They need space. And they rarely get it.

The single thing I hear most often from NHS leaders from ward managers to executive directors is that they do not have time to think. They are reactive by default, not by choice. When I work with healthcare teams, one of the most powerful things we can do together is simply create a pause. A space that is protected, purposeful and genuinely different from the operational noise. Not to escape reality, but to see it more clearly.

In that space, leaders start to notice things. Patterns in how they respond under pressure. Assumptions they have been carrying without examining. Relationships that are quietly draining them, or quietly sustaining them. That kind of noticing is the beginning of real change.

Complexity needs collective thinking

One of the characteristics of genuinely complex problems the kind healthcare leaders face every day, is that no single person has the answer. They cannot. The problem is too multidimensional. What complex environments actually need is distributed leadership. People at every level who feel confident to act, to speak up, to bring their judgement to bear. That does not happen by accident. It happens when leaders at the top model it, create the conditions for it, and actively develop it in others.

What good leadership development looks like in healthcare

It is contextual. It starts with the real challenges the team is navigating, not a generic leadership syllabus. It creates connection. Healthcare professionals are often siloed. Bringing people across teams and specialisms together to think, to share, to problem-solve has an impact that extends far beyond the session itself.

It is honest and it does not pretend leadership is easy or that there are clean answers. It makes space for the difficulty, and then helps people find a way through it.

And it respects the people in the room. NHS professionals are highly capable, deeply committed, and frequently underestimated by the systems they work within. The best leadership development I deliver starts from that premise.

The leaders who make the difference

They are not always the most senior nor the most visible. They are the ones who, in the middle of enormous pressure, still take a moment to check in with a colleague. Who ask a question rather than issue a directive. Who hold the bigger picture in mind even when the immediate crisis is demanding everything.

That quality can be found, named, nurtured and grown. That is what we do at WonderIf.

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WonderIf works with NHS Trusts, healthcare leadership teams and individual professionals across the UK. If you are exploring leadership development for your team, get in touch we would love to talk.