Manila, 21 October 2020 — Are you curious or fearful?

Considering where we are in the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impacts we see on people’s lives, the economy, politics, and the decline of our biosphere, there are many reasons for being fearful. 

Surplus of Fear

Speaking at the ADB’s Southeast Asia Development Symposium (SEADS) today, Nadim Anwar Makarim, Indonesia’s education minister with a track record for leading innovation, explained how people today feel panic as they are loaded by disinformation. A “surplus of fear” he called it. 

Yesterday, during the book launch of The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking — Governance in a Climate Emergency by Ray Ison and Ed Straw, the authors referred to the widespread impacts of the failure of outdated governance systems. They called for the reinvention of governance systems that suit the conditions and challenges we face today.

We’re actually in an almost existential struggle to evolve how we learn, both individually and collectively in businesses, organizations, and society. Learning across these silos is especially important, as pointed out by Veena Srinivasan, a leading policy researcher in India and the Netherlands who works on bridging the divide between science, policy, and practitioners.

What these thought leaders urge you to do is to expand your bandwidth and see what’s happening around you through a wider lens. To engage with wider worldviews that help you make more sense of the complexity we live in. 

Adapt or Die

The sheer difficulty of doing that, mindful of the current turmoil and the heaps of data showing how frustratingly hard it has been for people and systems to change, gives you more reasons to be fearful of what the future brings.

Seven years ago, my team and I were making a summit video for Asia’s leaders entitled Leadership for Water Security. One of the messages was that “in nature, one adapts or dies — we are no exception.” Today, I was reminded of that wicked leadership challenge of water security in asking the question if we’re curious or fearful. 

Sometimes, our fears do point us to the challenge to adapt, like in nature. It’s part of a process of the regeneration of life, to find new ways. It’s only natural at these times to fear uncertainty and death. And then you realize that it’s also the way to renewal. Old patterns have to die for new ones to emerge.

Zoom Out

As a leader, you want to be able to take a step back, to zoom out. While there are plenty of reasons to be fearful, can you also discover a spark or flame of curiosity in yourself at this time? And if so, for what? Curiosity is always about discovering new perspectives, new ways, and new life.

Earlier this month, we saw how the Three Connect Gaps can hold you back from making good connections with other people. And in Courage to Connect we saw that these gaps are a particular risk to leaders at times when they are full of their message and passion.

Your fears can also land you in the no man’s land of the Three Connect Gaps. As often for leaders, the remedy is to ask yourself a question. Like: are you curious or fearful?

If you find your bandwidth narrowed by fears and stress over the current circumstances, ask yourself where your curiosity has gone? Chances are that it’s still there, close by and within your reach.

Three Practices

Here are three practices that can help you switch on your curiosity again today, so that you can be less full of yourself and your concerns, and create valuable space for (un)learning and regeneration that helps others as well as yourself:

• Reach out to have a 1:1 conversation today with someone you care about and set out to discover something new about that person that you didn’t know before.

• Reach out to your teammates today for a conversation to discover what you can do next to influence a positive change in your workplace together. 

• Reach out to yourself and create quiet time today to reflect on what to leave behind and what’s new and waiting to be explored ahead on your path.

Using these three practices, it’s your reactivated curiosity that will create space in yourself to help you expand your bandwidth in this time of fears so that you can make better connections with others, and generate change for new solutions in your workplace.

Perhaps, you also see others around you battle with fear at this time. If so, the three practices above might offer a way for you to help them in reactivating their curiosity.

It can take courage to engage with curiosity, and this need for courage was underlined today in SEADS by Sherie Ng, a manager for Asia-Pacific at Microsoft.  Only with courage and action can you bring your better connections to scale, and that starts with curiosity. 

Scaling Up 

While we are concerned about the surplus of fear and uncertainty in our world today, it’s entirely possible to invest in positive change especially during this time. 

And that is happening as a whole new generation of impact investors is accelerating projects through collaboration among the public, private, and people-to-people sectors, as explained at SEADS by Khailee Ng, a managing partner at 500 Startups. The time to start more projects driven by an ESG purpose (Environmental, Social, Governance) is now, he advocated, so that we can change more lives and livelihoods during the pandemic.

When asked for the secret to making this possible, Khailee said that the central issue is that of “discovering each other.” In a symposium focused on tech, that really stood out.

So it all comes down to you making better connections and to upscale from thereon. (Re)activating your curiosity then becomes the first step to make that possible.

If you want to practice together with other leaders to trigger your curiosity for discovery and workplace changes for ESG impact, check us out at #Grow3Leaders and bring three workplace colleagues along with you so it’s more effective and fun.