Curious Consulting
So, we’ve had connected coaching, we continue with the alliteration with curious consulting. We have been thinking about how our curiosity is useful and valuable to our clients. Defined as a “strong desire to know more about something” or “ the state of being curious: inquisitive, wondering, working to figure something out”.
We started with the potential negative connotation to curiosity and what it can prompt in behaviours. We wanted to challenge ourselves to push our thinking on what curiosity means and doesn’t mean for us at Laing Russell. And most importantly how does our curiosity deliver value for our clients in our consulting.
We concluded, unsurprisingly, that it comes down to what you do. And how your curiosity is experienced, how your curiosity enables and drives the right outcome. Key questions seem to be: what’s the focus of your curiosity and what is your intent in being curious. There may be a two or even three dimensional model that might prove useful, For now, this is our insight from our many years of consulting with CIOs, their organisations and teams and from this recent reflection.
Starting with the end in mind, the intention of your curiosity. Might be obvious, but let’s start there. We think and feel that the curiosity has to be in service of the client and the strategic aims of the organisation. As in coaching, your work is in service of the client and their organisation. Their desired outcomes not yours. We do recognise that the real world does not reduce to simple binary states, and our work is mutually beneficial. We do benefit from our work, we learn and develop and we do get paid fees. And yet our intent should be and our behaviours should be experienced as a curiosity that is for the client, even when it might be felt as challenging. A curiosity that is relevant to the situation and the objectives. For example, curiosity about levels of commitment, curiosity about what are the different perspectives on the situation, curiosity about what’s been tried already, what’s worked well and less well, curiosity about the resources that are or could be available to the client. All in service of the client identifying, committing to and then taking the best next step.
Taking the thinking a bit further how do you do curiosity in service of the client and the organisation? In our experience it’s about the words and the music. The specific questions used and the way that they are delivered. And linking to a previous insight piece on powerful questions, we find some of the most useful interrogative words are the exploring questions, the questions that prompt divergent thinking, opening the mind eg what and how. Moving on to using the convergent questioning words such as who, when, where. And then the interrogative word that we think is best used sparingly is why. We find why, shifts the focus out of the situation, it invites client to conclude, perhaps conclude on reasons, perhaps prematurely. And yet of course it is a key question at certain stages. And analysis prompted by why is a key step in the consulting process with the client. The process steps that develop shared theories of what is happening and planning and committing to the best next step. So, we concluded that our productive, valuable curiosity does use all the interrogative words…but at different stages and uses why when you really need and probably not early in the process.
What do you think? We are curious about your experience or activity as consultants. Are you curious? How is curiosity valuable? What do you do when your most valuable? When do you do it?
