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.