Practical Leadership Applications of Faith and Curiosity

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Hi there. Today’s podcast is about Faith, Trust and Curiosity and how these elements are essential to great leadership. Faith and Trust are essential to being centered and making bold moves. Curiosity is an incredible leverage point to making great stuff happen.

Regarding Faith, I’m going to talk about the logic and practicality of it, whether you believe in a higher power or not.

The combination of Faith and Trust and Curiosity feeds growth: yours, the people around you, and your business results.

As I’ve said before, being centered and confident is essential when you’re leading because you’re out in front, literally making the way forward and gaining people’s trust to go with you.

Faith and Trust: Why they’re essential to being a centered, confident leader
Faith. Most people hear that word and think of religion so let me address that first.
I don’t consider myself a religious person, maybe not even spiritual, but definitely faithful.

I’ve been faithful for a long time, since my early teens. The downside of Faith is the times I’ve had blind faith to the point of being naïve, which has sometimes bitten me in the ass… I’ve paid attention to his in recent years and tried to bring an eyes-wide-open balance. The upside is the ability to move forward when motivation is low and direction is unclear… this is when faith has helped me to make some pretty bold moves when most people wouldn’t.

I’m not going to talk a lot about God here but when you say faith, God comes to mind (or whatever name you have for God, The Universe, a Higher Power… I’m not picky about names). For a time in my 20s, I questioned everything, including if God existed. I leaned into the science and evidence that there is no God. I understood the validity of this, that I could not believe in God and still have a great life, and that believing in God is one viewpoint, not believing in God is another viewpoint. I just found that I like life better when I think there is a God… God as a benevolent & abundant invisible force… consistent with high vibration and the law of attraction and all that.

For me, this is where intuition comes from. When I have a gut feeling about something that goes against my rationale, reason, logic – but still feels right – this is ultimately why I trust my intuition because I feel like I’m not alone in whatever it is. In the times when my rationale, reason and logic tell me one thing and my intuition says another, I’ve learned over and over that when I trust my intuition, I will always end up in a great place.

This is a practical application of having faith in a positive-something-greater-than-yourself. It helps you to actually consider making a seriously bold move. Leadership requires being bold.

Alight, that’s all I’m going to say about the God aspect of faith.

Faith can also be trusting in more than what you see, like trusting in potential. This is key for growth.

Having a Faith and Trust that people can do more than they seem is key for self-growth and also for developing others.

The moment we believe in limits, there is no growth. The moment you believe you can’t do something, or even that you don’t like something or would never be interested in something, you limit yourself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be a neutral thing. Like I have no interest in becoming an elite athlete. Could I train to become one? Yes. I could. It’s physically possible. I just have no interest in it, so I don’t. It’s a self-imposed limit that I’m fine with.

But - the problem with these thoughts of “can’t do” “don’t like” “not interested in” – or thoughts like “that’s just the way I am” or “that’s just the way it is” - is when they interfere with the vision you have for yourself, your business and your leadership impact.

For example, a few years ago I was thinking about starting my own consulting practice. I had this vision of how I could work with people and what my life could be like - and I was really jazzed about it. Then when I thought about the reality of it - the practicality of my husband and I both being entrepreneurs – paying for our own healthcare for a family of 5, etc., I realized that actually having my own consulting practice was definitely not the reasonable thing to do. It’s still not. Except somehow it works well. But if I listened to those limiting thoughts, I would have compromised my vision.

Curiosity
On the heels of Faith that there’s more than what we see or know is Curiosity, questioning “What else could be?” and seeking, or even creating, answers to that question.

An example from work – years ago, I was consulting an executive team in a large corporation. We had some initial conversations about questioning beliefs, expanding our knowledge base, and trusting that something else is possible.  And the team set an outlandish cost-savings goal… more than 4x their forecasted goal.  We worked together in a leadership and change management process to execute this outlandish goal.
Anytime you set an outlandish goal, you have to believe that it’s possible and that you can do it. You might not see how you’re going to do it, but you have to believe it can be done and that you’ll figure it out. Anytime you’re thinking about doing something bold or outlandish, you have to have a lot of Faith and Trust in the potential of human beings.

The moment you start thinking you can’t do it or it can’t happen, forgettaboutit.
When we met as a team, we got very curious about (1) what limiting thoughts the team was unintentionally having – so we could keep moving those thoughts out of the way, and (2) what else they could do – what leverage points they had - that weren’t so obvious.

They came up with a ton of ideas, selected a few to implement, kept believing and having faith, and stayed curious. They achieved their outlandish goal of 4x their forecast. It was seriously a mind-blower.
But without their Faith and Trust that there’s more than what we see and currently know, and their Curiosity about what else could be, it never would have happened.

This blend of Faith, Trust and Curiosity is also applicable to developing the people around you because in order to develop someone, you have to believe there’s more than what you can see now, and you have to have faith & trust that the person will grow. Sometimes the person you want to develop doesn’t think they can grow, which is when it’s absolutely necessary that You believe they can, and you need to be curious about what will help them to grow, what self-imposed limits they may have.

Of course, at some point they need to have faith and trust in themselves, and they need to get curious about how to grow. But for you – as a leader – your faith and trust in someone’s potential goes way farther than we assume it can.

All Growth Relies on Faith, Trust and Curiosity
To sum it up, all intentional growth (whether it’s your own growth or your business or developing someone else) relies on faith and trust. It can be a faith and trust in a higher power, or a faith and trust in human potential, but for sure a faith/trust that something more is possible. This can give you peace of mind when you need it, and it can motivate you to make some pretty bold moves. And getting curious about how to grow and do things differently, especially in the ways that aren’t at all obvious, will take you a long way to fulfilling your vision for the future.

“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.”

-Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher-