Contribution to TED Circle on curious leadership: 26th September 2020

Last Saturday evening I was part of a TED Circle discussion on curious leadership thanks to an invitation from my friend Anurag Sharma. Here is what I shared there:

- Leaders need to develop the mindful knack of knowing when to step on and step off the pedals of divergent and convergent thinking so that they get into a beautiful, continuously flowing dance of equilibrium.

 

- We are all born curious but as we age and as the numerous tasks and decisions put pressure on our brain, it goes into a pattern identification mode to save on time and energy. This often makes it close the loop faster with incomplete information and thus jump to conclusions. This happens also because as Richard Bandler says, the strongest human instinct is to keep things familiar.

 

- Hence the more we can delay the closure of the circuit and the more mindful we are of our judgmental tendency, better it is for curiosity.

 

- I still remember the wise advice my senior lawyer Mr. Devraj Singh gave me when I went to learn with him in February 1999 – “Even if you have done a thousand murder trials, the thousand and first one would be very different”.

 

- So wipe your slate each time. This is not the same as reinventing the wheel each time. It's about being mindful of the difference of the road where we need ride the wheel.

 

- 40 years ago, the 'instant' noodle and coffee phenomena hit urban India and now we are compounded by what I will call as the Amazon/ FedEx syndrome jeopardising the slow movement philosophy whereas real connoisseurs know that the best tea and Dal Makhani are made over a low flame cooked slowly.

 

- Hence let us rediscover and live the slow movement philosophy to be curious again.

 

- Two questions that have helped me delay the circuit closure and remain curious are - 'What is this inviting me to be, do, become and have?' and 'What is right about this that I am not getting?'

 

- Both linear and non-linear thinking and personalities have their relative-place in the world. The key word here is relative.

 

- In the end I also referred to the non-linear interests of the character played by Vidya Balan in the movie Tumhari Sulu before she discovered her Ikigai as well as an interesting story from Paul Arden's book: Whatever You Think, knihT ehT etisoppO!