Most of the breakthrough discoveries and remarkable inventions throughout history, from flints for starting a fire to self-driving cars, have something in common: They are the result of curiosity. The impulse to seek new information and experiences and explore novel possibilities is a basic human attribute. New research points to three important insights about curiosity as it relates to business. First, curiosity is much more important to an enterprise’s performance than was previously thought. That’s because cultivating it at all levels helps leaders and their employees adapt to uncertain market conditions and external pressures: When our curiosity is triggered, we think more deeply and rationally about decisions and come up with more-creative solutions. In addition, curiosity allows leaders to gain more respect from their followers and inspires employees to develop more-trusting and more-collaborative relationships with colleagues.

Second, by making small changes to the design of their organizations and the ways they manage their employees, leaders can encourage curiosity—and improve their companies. This is true in every industry and for creative and routine work alike.

Third, although leaders might say they treasure inquisitive minds, in fact most stifle curiosity, fearing it will increase risk and inefficiency. In a survey I conducted of more than 3,000 employees from a wide range of firms and industries, only about 24% reported feeling curious in their jobs on a regular basis, and about 70% said they face barriers to asking more questions at work.

In this article I’ll elaborate on the benefits of and common barriers to curiosity in the workplace and then offer five strategies that can help leaders get high returns on investments in employees’ curiosity and in their own.

The Benefits of Curiosity

New research reveals a wide range of benefits for organizations, leaders, and employees.

Fewer decision-making errors.

In my research I found that when our curiosity is triggered, we are less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports our beliefs rather than for evidence suggesting we are wrong) and to stereotyping people (making broad judgments, such as that women or minorities don’t make good leaders). Curiosity has these positive effects because it leads us to generate alternatives.

More innovation and positive changes in both creative and noncreative jobs.

Consider this example: In a field study INSEAD’s Spencer Harrison and colleagues asked artisans selling their goods through an e-commerce website several questions aimed at assessing the curiosity they experience at work. After that, the participants’ creativity was measured by the number of items they created and listed over a two-week period. A one-unit increase in curiosity (for instance, a score of 6 rather than 5 on a 7-point scale) was associated with 34% greater creativity.

In a separate study, Harrison and his colleagues focused on call centers, where jobs tend to be highly structured and turnover is generally high. They asked incoming hires at 10 organizations to complete a survey that, among other things, measured their curiosity before they began their new jobs. Four weeks in, the employees were surveyed about various aspects of their work. The results showed that the most curious employees sought the most information from coworkers, and the information helped them in their jobs—for instance, it boosted their creativity in addressing customers’ concerns.

My own research confirms that encouraging people to be curious generates workplace improvements. For one study I recruited about 200 employees working in various companies and industries. Twice a week for four weeks, half of them received a text message at the start of their workday that read, “What is one topic or activity you are curious about today? What is one thing you usually take for granted that you want to ask about? Please make sure you ask a few ‘Why questions’ as you engage in your work throughout the day. Please set aside a few minutes to identify how you’ll approach your work today with these questions in mind.”

The other half (the control group) received a message designed to trigger reflection but not raise their curiosity: “What is one topic or activity you’ll engage in today? What is one thing you usually work on or do that you’ll also complete today? Please make sure you think about this as you engage in your work throughout the day. Please set aside a few minutes to identify how you’ll approach your work today with these questions in mind.”

After four weeks, the participants in the first group scored higher than the others on questions assessing their innovative behaviors at work, such as whether they had made constructive suggestions for implementing solutions to pressing organizational problems.

When we are curious, we view tough situations more creatively. Studies have found that curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation. We also perform better when we’re curious. In a study of 120 employees I found that natural curiosity was associated with better job performance, as evaluated by their direct bosses.

Reduced group conflict.

My research found that curiosity encourages members of a group to put themselves in one another’s shoes and take an interest in one another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own perspective. That causes them to work together more effectively and smoothly: Conflicts are less heated, and groups achieve better results.

More-open communication and better team performance.

Working with executives in a leadership program at Harvard Kennedy School, my colleagues and I divided participants into groups of five or six, had some groups participate in a task that heightened their curiosity, and then asked all the groups to engage in a simulation that tracked performance. The groups whose curiosity had been heightened performed better than the control groups because they shared information more openly and listened more carefully.

Two Barriers to Curiosity

Despite the well-established benefits of curiosity, organizations often discourage it. This is not because leaders don’t see its value. On the contrary, both leaders and employees understand that curiosity creates positive outcomes for their companies. In the survey of more than 3,000 employees mentioned earlier, 92% credited curious people with bringing new ideas into teams and organizations and viewed curiosity as a catalyst for job satisfaction, motivation, innovation, and high performance.

Yet executives’ actions often tell a different story. True, some organizations, including 3M and Facebook, give employees free time to pursue their interests, but they are rare. And even in such organizations, employees often have challenging short-term performance goals (such as meeting a quarterly sales target or launching a new product by a certain date) that consume the “free time” they could have spent exploring alternative approaches to their work or coming up with innovative ideas.

Two tendencies restrain leaders from encouraging curiosity:

They have the wrong mindset about exploration.

Leaders often think that letting employees follow their curiosity will lead to a costly mess. In a recent survey I conducted of 520 chief learning officers and chief talent development officers, I found that they often shy away from encouraging curiosity because they believe the company would be harder to manage if people were allowed to explore their own interests. They also believe that disagreements would arise and making and executing decisions would slow down, raising the cost of doing business. Research finds that although people list creativity as a goal, they frequently reject creative ideas when actually presented with them. That’s understandable: Exploration often involves questioning the status quo and doesn’t always produce useful information. But it also means not settling for the first possible solution—and so it often yields better remedies.

They seek efficiency to the detriment of exploration.

In the early 1900s Henry Ford focused all his efforts on one goal: reducing production costs to create a car for the masses. By 1908 he had realized that vision with the introduction of the Model T. Demand grew so high that by 1921 the company was producing 56% of all passenger cars in the United States—a remarkable success made possible primarily by the firm’s efficiency-centered model of work. But in the late 1920s, as the U.S. economy rose to new heights, consumers started wanting greater variety in their cars. While Ford remained fixated on improving the Model T, competitors such as General Motors started producing an array of models and soon captured the main share of the market. Owing to its single-minded focus on efficiency, Ford stopped experimenting and innovating and fell behind.

These leadership tendencies help explain why our curiosity usually declines the longer we’re in a job. In one survey, I asked about 250 people who had recently started working for various companies a series of questions designed to measure curiosity; six months later I administered a follow-up survey. Although initial levels of curiosity varied, after six months everyone’s curiosity had dropped, with the average decline exceeding 20%. Because people were under pressure to complete their work quickly, they had little time to ask questions about broad processes or overall goals.

Five Ways to Bolster Curiosity

It takes thought and discipline to stop stifling curiosity and start fostering it. Here are five strategies leaders can employ.

1. Hire for curiosity.

In 2004 an anonymous billboard appeared on Highway 101, in the heart of Silicon Valley, posing this puzzle: “{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com.” The answer, 7427466391.com, led the curious online, where they found another equation to solve. The handful of people who did so were invited to submit a résumé to Google. The company took this unusual approach to finding job candidates because it places a premium on curiosity. (People didn’t even need to be engineers!) As Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, has said, “We run this company on questions, not answers.”

Google also identifies naturally curious people through interview questions such as these: “Have you ever found yourself unable to stop learning something you’ve never encountered before? Why? What kept you persistent?” The answers usually highlight either a specific purpose driving the candidate’s inquiry (“It was my job to find the answer”) or genuine curiosity (“I just had to figure out the answer”).

IDEO, the design and consulting company, seeks to hire “T-shaped” employees: people with deep skills that allow them to contribute to the creative process (the vertical stroke of the T) and a predisposition for collaboration across disciplines, a quality requiring empathy and curiosity (the horizontal stroke of the T). The firm understands that empathy and curiosity are related: Empathy allows employees to listen thoughtfully and see problems or decisions from another person’s perspective, while curiosity extends to interest in other people’s disciplines, so much so that one may start to practice them. And it recognizes that most people perform at their best not because they’re specialists but because their deep skill is accompanied by an intellectual curiosity that leads them to ask questions, explore, and collaborate.

To identify potential employees who are T-shaped, IDEO pays attention to how candidates talk about past projects. Someone who focuses only on his or her own contributions may lack the breadth to appreciate collaboration. T-shaped candidates are more likely to talk about how they succeeded with the help of others and to express interest in working collaboratively on future projects.

To assess curiosity, employers can also ask candidates about their interests outside of work. Reading books unrelated to one’s own field and exploring questions just for the sake of knowing the answers are indications of curiosity. And companies can administer curiosity assessments, which have been validated in a myriad of studies. These generally measure whether people explore things they don’t know, analyze data to uncover new ideas, read widely beyond their field, have diverse interests outside work, and are excited by learning opportunities.

It’s also important to remember that the questions candidates ask—not just the answers they provide—can signal curiosity. For instance, people who want to know about aspects of the organization that aren’t directly related to the job at hand probably have more natural curiosity than people who ask only about the role they would perform.

2. Model inquisitiveness.

Leaders can encourage curiosity throughout their organizations by being inquisitive themselves. In 2000, when Greg Dyke had been named director general of the BBC but hadn’t yet assumed the position, he spent five months visiting the BBC’s major locations, assembling the staff at each stop. Employees expected a long presentation but instead got a simple question: “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?” Dyke would listen carefully and then ask, “What is the one thing I should do to make things better for our viewers and listeners?”

The BBC’s employees respected their new boss for taking the time to ask questions and listen. Dyke used their responses to inform his thinking about the changes needed to solve problems facing the BBC and to identify what to work on first. After officially taking the reins, he gave a speech to the staff that reflected what he had learned and showed employees that he had been truly interested in what they said.

By asking questions and genuinely listening to the responses, Dyke modeled the importance of those behaviors. He also highlighted the fact that when we are exploring new terrain, listening is as important as talking: It helps us fill gaps in our knowledge and identify other questions to investigate.

That may seem intuitive, but my research shows that we often prefer to talk rather than to listen with curiosity. For instance, when I asked some 230 high-level leaders in executive education classes what they would do if confronted with an organizational crisis stemming from both financial and cultural issues, most said they would take action: move to stop the financial bleeding and introduce initiatives to refresh the culture. Only a few said they would ask questions rather than simply impose their ideas on others. Management books commonly encourage leaders assuming new positions to communicate their vision from the start rather than ask employees how they can be most helpful. It’s bad advice.

Why do we refrain from asking questions? Because we fear we’ll be judged incompetent, indecisive, or unintelligent. Plus, time is precious, and we don’t want to bother people. Experience and expertise exacerbate the problem: As people climb the organizational ladder, they think they have less to learn. Leaders also tend to believe they’re expected to talk and provide answers, not ask questions.

Such fears and beliefs are misplaced, my recent research shows. When we demonstrate curiosity about others by asking questions, people like us more and view us as more competent, and the heightened trust makes our relationships more interesting and intimate. By asking questions, we promote more-meaningful connections and more-creative outcomes.

Another way leaders can model curiosity is by acknowledging when they don’t know the answer; that makes it clear that it’s OK to be guided by curiosity. Patricia Fili-Krushel told me that when she joined WebMD Health as chief executive, she met with a group of male engineers in Silicon Valley. They were doubtful that she could add value to their work and, right off the bat, asked what she knew about engineering. Without hesitation, Fili-Krushel made a zero with her fingers. “This is how much I know about engineering,” she told them. “However, I do know how to run businesses, and I’m hoping you can teach me what I need to know about your world.” When leaders concede that they don’t have the answer to a question, they show that they value the process of looking for answers and motivate others to explore as well.

New hires at Pixar Animation Studios are often hesitant to question the status quo, given the company’s track record of hit movies and the brilliant work of those who have been there for years. To combat that tendency, Ed Catmull, the cofounder and president, makes a point of talking about times when Pixar made bad choices. Like all other organizations, he says, Pixar is not perfect, and it needs fresh eyes to spot opportunities for improvement (see “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity,” HBR, September 2008). In this way Catmull gives new recruits license to question existing practices. Recognizing the limits of our own knowledge and skills sends a powerful signal to others.

Tenelle Porter, a postdoctoral scholar in psychology at the University of California, Davis, describes intellectual humility as the ability to acknowledge that what we know is sharply limited. As her research demonstrates, higher levels of intellectual humility are associated with a greater willingness to consider views other than our own. People with more intellectual humility also do better in school and at work. Why? When we accept that our own knowledge is finite, we are more apt to see that the world is always changing and that the future will diverge from the present. By embracing this insight, leaders and employees can begin to recognize the power of exploration.

Finally, leaders can model inquisitiveness by approaching the unknown with curiosity rather than judgment. Bob Langer, who heads one of MIT’s most productive laboratories, told me recently that this principle guides how he manages his staff. As human beings, we all feel an urge to evaluate others—often not positively. We’re quick to judge their ideas, behaviors, and perspectives, even when those relate to things that haven’t been tried before. Langer avoids this trap by raising questions about others’ ideas, which leads people to think more deeply about their perspective and to remain curious about the tough problems they are trying to tackle. In doing so, he is modeling behavior that he expects of others in the lab.

3. Emphasize learning goals.

When I asked Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger how he was able to land a commercial aircraft safely in the Hudson River, he described his passion for continuous learning. Although commercial flights are almost always routine, every time his plane pushed back from the gate he would remind himself that he needed to be prepared for the unexpected. “What can I learn?” he would think. When the unexpected came to pass, on a cold January day in 2009, Sully was able to ask himself what he could do, given the available options, and come up with a creative solution. He successfully fought the tendency to grasp for the most obvious option (landing at the nearest airport). Especially when under pressure, we narrow in on what immediately seems the best course of action. But those who are passionate about continuous learning contemplate a wide range of options and perspectives. As the accident report shows, Sully carefully considered several alternatives in the 208 seconds between his discovery that the aircraft’s engines lacked thrust and his landing of the plane in the Hudson.

It’s natural to concentrate on results, especially in the face of tough challenges. But focusing on learning is generally more beneficial to us and our organizations, as some landmark studies show. For example, when U.S. Air Force personnel were given a demanding goal for the number of planes to be landed in a set time frame, their performance decreased. Similarly, in a study led by Southern Methodist University’s Don VandeWalle, sales professionals who were naturally focused on performance goals, such as meeting their targets and being seen by colleagues as good at their jobs, did worse during a promotion of a product (a piece of medical equipment priced at about $5,400) than reps who were naturally focused on learning goals, such as exploring how to be a better salesperson. That cost them, because the company awarded a bonus of $300 for each unit sold.

A body of research demonstrates that framing work around learning goals (developing competence, acquiring skills, mastering new situations, and so on) rather than performance goals (hitting targets, proving our competence, impressing others) boosts motivation. And when motivated by learning goals, we acquire more-diverse skills, do better at work, get higher grades in college, do better on problem-solving tasks, and receive higher ratings after training. Unfortunately, organizations often prioritize performance goals.

Leaders can help employees adopt a learning mindset by communicating the importance of learning and by rewarding people not only for their performance but for the learning needed to get there. Deloitte took this path: In 2013 it replaced its performance management system with one that tracks both learning and performance. Employees meet regularly with a coach to discuss their development and learning along with the support they need to continually grow.

Leaders can also stress the value of learning by reacting positively to ideas that may be mediocre in themselves but could be springboards to better ones. Writers and directors at Pixar are trained in a technique called “plussing,” which involves building on ideas without using judgmental language. Instead of rejecting a sketch, for example, a director might find a starting point by saying, “I like Woody’s eyes, and what if we…?” Someone else might jump in with another “plus.” This technique allows people to remain curious, listen actively, respect the ideas of others, and contribute their own. By promoting a process that allows all sorts of ideas to be explored, leaders send a clear message that learning is a key goal even if it doesn’t always lead to success.

4. Let employees explore and broaden their interests.

Organizations can foster curiosity by giving employees time and resources to explore their interests. One of my favorite examples comes from my native country. It involves Italy’s first typewriter factory, Olivetti, founded in 1908 in the foothills of the Italian Alps. In the 1930s some employees caught a coworker leaving the factory with a bag full of iron pieces and machinery. They accused him of stealing and asked the company to fire him. The worker told the CEO, Adriano Olivetti, that he was taking the parts home to work on a new machine over the weekend because he didn’t have time while performing his regular job. Instead of firing him, Olivetti gave him time to create the machine and charged him with overseeing its production. The result was Divisumma, the first electronic calculator. Divisumma sold well worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s, and Olivetti promoted the worker to technical director. Unlike leaders who would have shown him the door, Olivetti gave him the space to explore his curiosity, with remarkable results.

Some organizations provide resources to support employees’ outside interests. Since 1996 the manufacturing conglomerate United Technologies (UTC) has given as much as $12,000 in tuition annually to any employee seeking a degree part-time—no strings attached. Leaders often don’t want to invest in training employees for fear that they will jump to a competitor and take their expensively acquired skills with them. Even though UTC hasn’t tried to quantify the benefits of its tuition reimbursement program, Gail Jackson, the vice president of human resources when we spoke, believes in the importance of curious employees. “It’s better to train and have them leave than not to train and have them stay,” she told me. But according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2017 employee benefits report, only 44% of organizations provide or support cross-training to develop skills not directly related to workers’ jobs.

Leaders might provide opportunities for employees to travel to unfamiliar locales. When we have chances to expand our interests, research has found, we not only remain curious but also become more confident about what we can accomplish and more successful at work. Employees can “travel” to other roles and areas of the organization to gain a broader perspective. At Pixar, employees across the organization can provide “notes”—questions and advice—that help directors consider all sorts of possibilities for the movies they are working on.

Employees can also broaden their interests by broadening their networks. Curious people often end up being star performers thanks to their diverse networks, my research with the University of Toronto’s Tiziana Casciaro, Bill McEvily, and Evelyn Zhang finds. Because they’re more comfortable than others asking questions, such people more easily create and nurture ties at work—and those ties are critical to their career development and success. The organization benefits when employees are connected to people who can help them with challenges and motivate them to go the extra mile. MIT’s Bob Langer works to raise curiosity in his students by introducing them to experts in his network. Similarly, by connecting people across organizational departments and units, leaders can encourage employees to be curious about their colleagues’ work and ways of doing business.

Deliberate thinking about workspaces can broaden networks and encourage the cross-pollination of ideas. In the 1990s, when Pixar was designing a new home for itself in Emeryville, across the bay from San Francisco, the initial plans called for a separate building for each department. But then-owner Steve Jobs had concerns about isolating the various departments and decided to build a single structure with a large atrium in the center, containing employee mailboxes, a café, a gift shop, and screening rooms. Forcing employees to interact, he reasoned, would expose them to one another’s work and ideas.

Leaders can also boost employees’ curiosity by carefully designing their teams. Consider Massimo Bottura, the owner of Osteria Francescana, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Modena, Italy, that was rated the Best Restaurant in the World in 2016 and 2018. His sous chefs are Davide di Fabio, from Italy, and Kondo Takahiko, from Japan. The two differ not only in their origins but also in their strengths: Di Fabio is more comfortable with improvisation, while Takahiko is obsessed with precision. Such “collisions” make the kitchen more innovative, Bottura believes, and inspire curiosity in other workers.

5. Have “Why?” “What if…?” and “How might we…?” days.

The inspiration for the Polaroid instant camera was a three-year-old’s question. Inventor Edwin Land’s daughter was impatient to see a photo her father had just snapped. When he explained that the film had to be processed, she wondered aloud, “Why do we have to wait for the picture?”

As every parent knows, Why? is ubiquitous in the vocabulary of young children, who have an insatiable need to understand the world around them. They aren’t afraid to ask questions, and they don’t worry about whether others believe they should already know the answers. But as children grow older, self-consciousness creeps in, along with the desire to appear confident and demonstrate expertise. By the time we’re adults, we often suppress our curiosity.

Leaders can help draw out our innate curiosity. One company I visited asked all employees for “What if…?” and “How might we…?” questions about the firm’s goals and plans. They came up with all sorts of things, which were discussed and evaluated. As a concrete sign that questioning was supported and rewarded, the best questions were displayed on banners hung on the walls. Some of the questions led employees to suggest ideas for how to work more effectively. (For more on the importance of asking good questions before seeking solutions, see “Better Brainstorming,” HBR, March–April 2018.)

In one study, my colleagues and I asked adults working in a wide range of jobs and industries to read one of two sets of materials on three organizational elements: goals, roles, and how organizations as a whole work together. For half the workers, the information was presented as the “grow method”—our version of a control condition. We encouraged that group to view those elements as immutable, and we stressed the importance of following existing processes that managers had already defined. For the other half, the information was presented as the “go back method.” We encouraged those employees to see the elements as fluid and to “go back” and rethink them. A week later we found that the workers who’d read about the “go back method” showed more creativity in tasks than the workers in the “grow method” group. They were more open to others’ ideas and worked more effectively with one another.

To encourage curiosity, leaders should also teach employees how to ask good questions. Bob Langer has said he wants to “help people make the transition from giving good answers to asking good questions” (see “The Edison of Medicine,” HBR, March–April 2017). He also tells his students that they could change the world, thus boosting the curiosity they need to tackle challenging problems.

Organizing “Why?” days, when employees are encouraged to ask that question if facing a challenge, can go a long way toward fostering curiosity. Intellectual Ventures, a company that generates inventions and buys and licenses patents, organizes “invention sessions” in which people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and levels of expertise come together to discuss potential solutions to tough problems, which helps them consider issues from various angles (see “Funding Eureka!” HBR, March 2010). Similarly, under Toyota’s 5 Whys approach, employees are asked to investigate problems by asking Why? After coming up with an answer, they are to ask why that’s the case, and so on until they have asked the question five times. This mindset can help employees innovate by challenging existing perspectives.

CONCLUSION

In most organizations, leaders and employees alike receive the implicit message that asking questions is an unwanted challenge to authority. They are trained to focus on their work without looking closely at the process or their overall goals. But maintaining a sense of wonder is crucial to creativity and innovation. The most effective leaders look for ways to nurture their employees’ curiosity to fuel learning and discovery.

Throughout its multi-decade history, service excellence has been – and continues to be – the bedrock of SAIPA’s offering to ensure that every stakeholder receives exceptional, professional service. To this end and with a vested interest in supporting members throughout their professional careers, SAIPA is proud to announce the launch of the new Member Service Charter and Member Handbook!

The Member Service Charter demonstrates SAIPA’s commitment to provide excellent service that is second to none, while the Member Handbook provides a valuable resource to 15,000+ #SAIPAProud members. 

Accounting iNdaba early-bird tickets close 30 September!

Keep your finger on the pulse of the trends redefining accountancy at the annual Accounting iNdaba, set to take place on 1 and 2 November 2023. This year’s theme, “MASTERING THE DEMANDING ENVIRONMENT: The Power of Agility and Ethical Practices in Accountancy”, will explore how you can stay ahead of the curve in today’s challenging landscape. Open to both SAIPA members and all other accountancy and tax professionals, attendees of this two-day virtual event can expect engaging and insightful presentations, panel discussions, and interactive workshops on the keys to ensuring success in the profession. Some of the topics you can look forward to gaining deeper knowledge about include:

•                     Navigating Economic Recovery in South Africa

•                     Unveiling the Potential: Digital Transformation and Agility in AI Accountancy

•                     The Paradigm Shift towards Sustainability and ESG

•                     Capturing the Essence of Gen Z Professionals: Attraction and Retention Strategies, among many others.

In line with the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) requirements, attendance will earn you structured CPD hours. By attending the Accounting iNdaba, you’ll be nurturing your professional competence and growth, setting yourself apart in the competitive world of business. 

SAIPA Members register here.

Not a SAIPA member? No problem, simply create your MySAIPA profile to register.

Conference Fees

Take advantage of early bird fees and REGISTER TODAY – only available until 30 September 2023. This is the last week to take advantage of this compelling offer!

Visit www.saipa.co.za/accounting-indaba-2023/ to find out more and register to attend.

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Ever had a candidate who spun every negative into a positive? Every question about a mistake or weakness turns into another story of how amazing this person is?

Ever had a candidate who struggled to get to the point? You ask a simple first question, and the candidate runs off on a 10-minute tangent or digression?

It happens ALL. THE. TIME. Even strong candidates will “spin” or ramble from time to time — due to nerves or because prior interviewers enabled these behaviors.

We have lots of techniques for handling these issues, but there’s one tactic that is especially effective with high-performing candidates, the ones where a simple case of nerves (or a lack of guidance in prior interviews) is the primary root cause of the spinning or rambling.

We call them “kickoff modules.”

They are little scripts that you tuck into the kickoff of your interview. They essentially communicate your expectations before the candidate has exhibited the bad behavior.

Here’s the overall flow of your kickoff, to show you where you can tuck it in:

1. Small talk (warm it up, of course!).

2. Set the agenda (take charge of the conversation, let them know that you have a set of questions to ask and that you’ll leave time for their questions at the end).

3. Give a quick intro of yourself and your role (but don’t burn too much time).

4. Then, tuck in your favorite spin-buster or ramble-stopper module from the list below.

4 Useful Kickoff Modules

Spin-buster No. 1: “Culture of Growth” 

“You’ll notice a fair number of questions about mistakes, missed opportunities, and development areas in your past. We have a strong culture of learning and growth here, and a big part of that involves being open about the bad as well as the good.”

Spin-buster No. 2: “Reference Reminder” 

“As we explore some of your prior career experiences, we will be talking about some of the people you’ve worked with along the way. I may ask for names and spellings for future follow-ups, just so you’re aware. We won’t be reaching out to these folks without your permission. At this point, we would just love to know who is who.”

Ramble-stopper No. 1: “Headliner”

“I have so many things I want to cover with you in this short time together. If it works for you, let’s hit the ‘big headlines’ on a given story first, and then we can dive into the details where it makes sense to do so. Does that work for you?”

Ramble-stopper No. 2: “Permission to Nudge” 

“I’m excited to learn more about you — I’m hoping we can cover a lot of ground. Would it be OK with you if I jump in or nudge the conversation along from time to time to make sure we hear your full story?”

Not only do these modules make for more efficient and honest discussions, they also give candidates comfort. Candidates want to know what you expect from them — your transparency will be refreshing.
...

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.

A talent professional’s work can feel like it’s never done. You’re tasked with managing the people needs at your organization, often collaborating with stakeholders who feel their own needs should be prioritized.

So, what do you do when you’re overwhelmed with tasks? Working more hours isn’t the answer. Not only can working too many hours make you less productive but it can take a toll on your personal life and well-being. A better solution is being more efficient with the time you're spending at work.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all time management strategy, there are some best practices that can help.

1. Learn to prioritize

Prioritization is the foundation of effective time management. 

That means determining which tasks to plunge right into, which to set aside for later, and which to delegate or eliminate. “Understanding the process of prioritizing tasks can help you get through your never-ending to-do list,” says Beate Chelette, a leadership strategist in Los Angeles. 

While the following prioritization strategies take somewhat different approaches, one or two may resonate with you.

Most Important Tasks methodology

If there are 20 items on your to-do list, you already know you can’t get to all of them in one day. Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, recommends using the Most Important Tasks (MIT) methodology to whittle down your list. 

Pick no more than three tasks from your to-do list that you will focus on that day. Choose the activities that will have the greatest impact on your most important goals. To identify those tasks, Josh suggests asking yourself, “What are the things that would make a huge difference if I got them done today?” 

For example, if spearheading the CEO’s succession plan will be transformative for your career or for the company, focus on tasks associated with that project.

Eisenhower Matrix

When you have demands coming in from every direction, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking every request must be handled at once. The Eisenhower Matrix, coined by and named after former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, helps you correct that line of thinking. 

Using this strategy, you would categorize tasks like this: 

• If a task is urgent and important, do it first.
• If a task is important but not urgent, schedule it for later.
• If a task is urgent but not that important, delegate it or outsource it.
• If the task is not urgent and not important, don’t do it at all. 

Talent professionals often feel the pull of urgent but not important tasks from well-intentioned colleagues and must learn to address them so more important tasks can be prioritized.

ABC Method

With the ABC Method, author Alan Lakein suggests measuring a task’s importance and giving it a corresponding grade.

• Tasks with pressing deadlines or deemed very important to the organization score an A. 
• Tasks that are important in the long run but not immediately would score a B. 
• Tasks that would be helpful to do but would make little difference in achieving your biggest goals would score a C. 

The biggest part of your day should be spent working on — and finishing — A tasks. Once they’re complete you move on to B tasks. C tasks should be scheduled for when you have extra time.

Pareto Principle

Another strategy for prioritizing your to-do list is the 80/20 rule, or Pareto Principle, which says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Identify which of your activities have the greatest impact on your key performance indicators and organizational goals. Then do those tasks first.

For example, if helping employees learn new skills is helping your company address the skilled talent shortage and retain team members, then upskilling may be at the top of your list.

2. Conduct a time audit

A popular piece of budgeting advice is to write down where your money is currently going. The same advice can apply to time. 

Create a pie chart that shows in detail how you’re spending your days, suggests Arianna Huffington in her LinkedIn Learning course Arianna Huffington’s Thrive 03: Setting Priorities and Letting Go. Note the average time common activities take so you have realistic expectations of what you can accomplish in a day.

You may find that you’re wasting two hours a week sorting through unimportant emails when an app can sort your email for you. By freeing yourself of those tasks, you create room for more important ones. 

3. Set time limits

Getting caught up in a project for three hours can make you feel productive — unless it keeps you from working on an equally important assignment. Timeboxing is a strategy in which you create time allotments for all of the tasks you’ve prioritized for that day.

Timeboxing can be structured in different ways, including:

• Time blocking. When determining the length of a timebox, ask yourself questions like: “How long can I work before needing a break?” and “How much deep work is involved in this task?” Set aside a realistic amount of time to complete your task and block it off on your calendar.
• Pomodoro Technique. Work on a priority task for 25 minutes, followed by a five-minute break. After four cycles, take a longer 15-to-30-minute break — then repeat.
• 52/17 rule. Similar to the Pomodoro Technique, the 52/17 rule suggests 52 minutes of focused working followed by 17 minutes of complete rest and recharging.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the key to making this time management strategy work: When the allotted time has passed, you must stop working on that task. 

4. Batch similar tasks

Frequently changing tasks can lead to a loss of momentum and reduce your productivity. Group similar activities together to stay focused on one area of your job at a time.

For example:

• Proactively source candidates for various open roles back-to-back
• Onboard new hires in cohorts
• Outline several L&D lessons in a single work block

Focus on the task at hand until it’s completed or until your timebox is over, then move on to your next activity.

5. Begin your day with the most daunting task

Is there a task you’ve been dreading so much that you keep putting it off? Do that one first.

Author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy shares: “The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning.” In doing so, you can get your most challenging task out of the way to feel accomplished and build momentum to complete easier tasks.

Your most daunting task may vary based on your strengths and interests. Some may feel overwhelmed getting started with a new talent initiative, while others may find analytics and reporting to be tedious busy work. Identify the project you’re least looking forward to doing — and get it out of the way.

6. Get control over workplace communications 

A constant inundation of emails, Teams or Slack messages, phone calls, and other communications can suck up unexpected time in the most organized person’s day. Author and leadership coach Dave Crenshaw recommends scheduling certain times in your day when you focus on it and deleting or archiving every message once you read it unless you have to send a response. Of course, that means you’re not focusing on email at other hours of the day.

But what if you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your in-box that you’ll never find time to sort through? In his LinkedIn Learning course Time Management Tips, Dave provides this solution: Find a day in the past and declare “email bankruptcy” as of that date. Then archive all emails that are older than the day you picked. That frees up your inbox and you’ll still have all of those emails stored away in the unlikely case there is something you need.

7. Optimize meetings 

If you feel like you have more meetings in recent years, you’re probably not alone. A study found that large U.S. organizations had 60% more remote meetings per employee in 2022 as compared with 2020.

Following some best practices can help your team build a better meeting culture and be more productive:

• Stick to the agenda. An agenda is a great tool to help attendees prepare for a meeting and stay on topic. Table any conversations that aren’t pertinent to the topic being discussed so you don’t run over your meeting time.
• Decline unnecessary meetings. One-third of meetings are unnecessary, wasting time and costing organizations $25,000 per employee every year. Review your existing meetings to reevaluate whether your presence is needed or if the meeting could be replaced with an email or a task in your project management software.
• Take advantage of meeting notes. Most employees (71%) say they’d feel empowered to skip unnecessary meetings if high-quality notes were shared in a timely manner. With so many meeting transcription tools on the market, this is an easy way to save time across your team.
• Implement a no-meeting day each week. Meetings can interfere with deep focus work and make it feel impossible to schedule time blocks. See if your team can set aside a day each week where nobody schedules meetings.

8. Do what’s quick and easy now

If a candidate or team member has a question that will take you one minute to respond to in a quick phone call or email, do it immediately. That’s the premise behind the One-Minute Rule, which is credited to happiness expert and author Gretchen Rubin. 

Procrastinating on tasks that will take a minute to do will simply add to your to-do list and keep you buried beneath a pile of work. But quickly checking off those one-minute tasks means you won’t have to spend time scheduling them or energy thinking about them.

9. Know when to say “no”

Talent professionals often find themselves pulled in multiple directions, with requests coming from multiple people at once. Understanding your priorities and limitations will help you learn to say “no” when you can’t realistically take on a new task or commitment.

You may also choose to delegate or outsource the work if you’re able. For example, training your managers to write better job descriptions or build employee development plans can be more efficient than taking on those projects yourself. Hiring an outside firm can be particularly useful if internal resources lack expertise or if your team needs additional support on an urgent project.

10. Streamline and automate tasks

Invest the time upfront to streamline and automate key parts of your job that can help you improve efficiency in the long term.

For example, if you’re using AI to complete work tasks, note the prompts that have yielded the best output and begin building a set of best practices for prompt engineering. Set up automated reporting so you can save time on that task each month. Take the time to build cold email outreach templates that you can quickly customize when you’re recruiting passive talent. Or try using the LinkedIn AI-Assisted Message feature to create fully customized outreach messages to talent with just one click. 

Getting organized and leaning on your HR tech stack to build efficiencies are forward-thinking ways to improve time management. 

Final thoughts: Effective time management skills can be learned

As with all skills, time management can be learned and fine-tuned to meet your unique needs. You might find that one methodology or best practice doesn’t work for you — and that’s OK — there are plenty more to try. LinkedIn Learning offers a large selection of time management courses to help you examine your habits, find areas of improvement, and make targeted changes to your daily routines.
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Original post > LinkedIn

Professional services company PwC has published its report on South African executive directors for 2023, revealing the top-paying industries for executives in the country right now.

The report analysed executive pay during the period from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2023, focusing primarily on executive remuneration among companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

The group noted that, in instances where executive directors have resigned from their roles on or before the cut-off date, they were excluded from the data set. Executive directors appointed after the company’s financial year-end have also been excluded from the analysis.

It added that, where directors were paid in foreign currency, their remunerations were concerted into rands using a one-year average exchange rate as of 28 February 2023.

The firm also focused on the ‘total guaranteed package’ (TGP), which represents the portion of total remuneration regardless of employee performance. It is a fixed cost made up of basic pay plus a cash value attributable to benefits.

As directors’ fees rarely follow a standard distribution curve, the financial services firm provided a snapshot of the average TGP across three quartiles: lower – median – and upper – on the top 200 JSE-listed companies.

An examination of TGP fees paid across the JSE shows that the average salary for chief executive officers (CEOs) was R9.36 million over the period.

By comparison, the average pay for chief financial officers (CFOs) was R5.93 million, and the average pay for executive directors was R4.84 million.

Top paying Industries

As part of its analysis of executive director remuneration trends, PwC revealed the top 10 highest-paying industries on the JSE – averaging the pay across top management, including CEOs, CFOs, and Executive Directors (EDs).

According to the data, the telecommunications industry pays the highest executive salaries, on average, across the JSE. The average telecoms executive gets paid an estimated total guaranteed package of R10.56 million – with the upper limit sitting around R13.57 million while the lower limit is R8 million.

Consumer staples – including companies in beverages, food products, tobacco, household products and personal products – are the second highest-paying industry. Execs in these fields earn, on average, R9.82 million annually, with salaries ranging from R5.36 million to R13.23 million.

Following consumer staples is the basic materials industry – such as mining – in third, with the average executive guaranteed pay estimated at R8.98 million annually, ranging from R4.88 million to R10.54 million.

The table below lists the top 10 highest-paying industries in South Africa in 2023, as outlined by PwC.

South African employees can be fired for the misconduct of their colleagues, however, the decision must be legally fair and just.

According to Jacques van Wyk and Michiel Heyns from Werksmans Attorneys, the retail sector often suffers from stock losses or shrinkage, with employers constantly struggling to identify perpetrators. The employer may then want to charge a group of employees with collective misconduct.

This issue was seen at the Labour Appeal Court (LAC) in South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union and Others v Makgopela and Others (“SACCAWU v Makgopela“).

In this case, 12 employees (represented by a trade union) worked in various roles at a retailer. Following stock takes from January to March, the employer noticed alarming stock losses.

In response, the employer held two “shrinkage workshops” for employees in March and June 2016, where the employees were interviewed and given questionnaires about the stock losses, which revealed several deficiencies in the store’s systems.

The employees were charged with collective misconduct, and following a disciplinary hearing, all employees were found guilty of misconduct and fired.

They took their complaints to the Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). Still, the commissioner said they had implicated each other during the shrinkage workshop questionnaire by referring to others who were not doing their duties.

“Had they disclosed the cause of the stock losses, they could have been prevented. Their dismissals were found to be both procedurally and substantively fair,” the experts said.

The Labour Court dismissed a review application after finding the arbitration award reasonable.

LAC Decision

On appeal, the LAC said there were four types of collective misconduct in South Africa.

Firstly, the doctrine of common purpose occurs as a consequence of the deemed participation of an employee as part of a group that committed the primary misconduct.

There is also team misconduct, where several employees are collectively dismissed as the individual responsibility of individual employees in a team cannot be determined, with each team member seen as failing to ensure that the employer’s standards are met.

There is also derivative misconduct, where an employee elects not to disclose information regarding their colleague’s misconduct despite being expressly required to do so.

Finally, there is collective misconduct, which mainly occurs when the individual capability of employees cannot be determined, and there is an operational justification for their dismissal.

Following analysis, the LAC said that the employees’ dismissals were unfair for the following reasons:

• The employer relied on team misconduct, the essence of which related to the failure of the employees as members of a team to adhere to its rule to prevent and halt shrinkage at its store;

• The issue was whether it was shown that the employees, as members of a team, had culpably failed to ensure that the team complied with the rule or attained the performance standard set by the employer to prevent shrinkage;

• To prove this required the employer to rely on direct evidence of the failure on the part of the employees as members of the team to adhere to the rule or performance standard sufficient to warrant a finding of team liability; and

• The employer failed to do so.

The LAC distinguished the current matter from other instances which have been found to justify the dismissal of all employees in a team for, among others, the following reasons:

• No evidence was presented by the employer as to the details of the systems and controls in place at its store to prevent stock losses;

• There was no evidence of any attempt to ascertain through an investigation how stock was being lost or from which part of the large store this was occurring, including relying on CCTV footage or available documentary evidence;

• There was also no evidence which indicated that, given the size of the store, employees in one section of the store would have been aware of stock being lost in another section; and

• The evidence indicated that employees performed diverse functions across the large area of the store and that when they raised a number of concerns and made proposals for system improvements to prevent such losses, these were not acted upon by the employer. The employees therefore did not remain silent.

The case is important as it shows that caution must be taken when reliance on collective misconduct is used for firing employees.

“Our law does not allow a determination of guilt simply by association. Where team misconduct is relied upon, there must exist either a factual basis or sufficient grounds for inferring that all employees were indivisibly culpable as members of the team for failing to ensure compliance with the employer’s rule,” the court said.

“A reliance on generalised facts, arising from a scant investigation into the alleged misconduct, does not provide a sufficient basis on which to infer that collective responsibility exists.”

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Original post > BusinessTech

The latest inflation expectations survey from the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) shows that analysts, businesses and trade unions expect better salaries to be paid in 2024 – all while anticipating a steady decline in inflation.

The latest survey’s findings are a double boon for hard-hit consumers, as the lower inflation expectations should further solidify a more positive rates decision from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) later in September and also indicate an easing of price pressure on households.

According to the BER, the average headline CPI inflation expectations of analysts, business people and trade unions seemingly peaked in the second quarter of 2023, as expectations declined significantly in the third quarter.

It was also the first drop in average 2023 expectations in two years, it noted.

“Lower expectations were also evident over the entire forecast horizon (2023 to 2025) and mostly due to downward revisions by business people and trade unionists. Analysts were the exception; they virtually retained their forecast for the second quarter,” the BER said.

The downward revisions in inflation expectations come against the background where headline inflation dropped from 6.3% in May to 4.7% in July.

Average five-year inflation expectations continued to tick down, reaching 5.1% in the third quarter, from a peak of 5.6% in the second quarter of 2022.

The one-year-ahead inflation expectations of households subsided from a recent peak of 8.1% in the second quarter, to 7.0% in the third quarter. Their 5-year expectations declined from 10.7% to 9.8%.

Not only are inflation expectations improving, but respondents are also more optimistic about the state of the economy. During the third quarter of 2023, the survey respondents, on average, forecasted economic growth to be 0.8% in 2023, before rising to 1.4% in 2024.

“This forecast is slightly more optimistic for this year, though similar for next year, compared to the second quarter,” the BER said.

Salaries and wages

On average, the three social groups expect salaries and wages to increase by 5% in 2023, and to then gain momentum to 5.4% in 2024.

Previously, they expected 5% for both years.

Of the three social groups, business people are the most bullish on 2023 salary increases, pushing up expectations from 5.2% in Q2 to 5.4% in Q3. Unions are also more optimistic, anticipating 4.8% in Q3 versus 4.6% in Q2.

Analysts again are the exception, with 2023 salary expectations dropping from 5.2% in Q2 to 4.8% in Q3.

For 2024, however, all three groups revised their expectations higher, from 5.2%, 4.6% and 5.2% in Q2 to 5.5%, 5.2% and 5.4%, respectively.

While the prospects for 2024 are a significant improvement, the 5.0% salary growth expectations for 2023 are still muted compared to the Q1 forecast of 5.4%.

Interest rates

While salary growth expectations are tempered, the expectation that headline inflation will track downward is good news for interest rates.

The BER Inflation Expectations Survey is one of the market surveys commissioned by the SARB to measure key variables related to inflation.

Rising inflation over the last two years has been the main driving force behind interest rate hikes since November 2021, and the Reserve Bank has maintained that the only thing that would stop the cycle is a sustained path of disinflation towards its target range of 3% to 6%.

The SARB’s Monetary Policy Committee would be worried if the survey results showed key stakeholders expecting higher inflation, and this would factor into any decision to hike rates further.

However, with the survey showing the opposite trend, the latest results should further cement the bank’s most recent position to hold rates.

According to economists at Nedbank, the cumulative 475-basis-points rise in interest rates is taking its toll on the local economy and is keeping both business and consumer confidence subdued.

Even with a weaker rand, more load shedding and inflation risks ahead (thanks to rising fuel prices and the knock-on effects), the Reserve Bank should keep the impact of the current cycle in mind when it meets next at the end of September.

Anyone in the thick of the hiring process will tell you that waiting, in the words of Tom Petty, is the hardest part. The pathways between candidate screening and signed offer letter are often long and windy, strewn with hurdles that can stretch days into weeks into months. 

This slow roll to filling roles can be a thorn in the side of hiring managers too. 

“I think a lot of us needed to lose a candidate because we were slow to make a decision,” says John Vlastelica, founder of Recruiting Toolbox and a frequent Talent Blog contributor. In a recent LinkedIn post, he conjured the image of a grimacing Ron Burgundy, the fictional anchorman played by Will Ferrell. The caption reads: “When that great candidate informs you they have already accepted another offer.” 

For anyone working in talent acquisition, having a top prospect slip through your fingers can feel, as one commenter put it, “like a punch in the gut.”

But gut punches can be incredibly effective teachers. John says that losing a candidate to glacial hiring practices taught his team to “engage and respond and communicate and set up a basic process for getting feedback from our interviewers to make a decision faster.”

It’s just one of the lessons that hiring managers have to learn on the job. In his post, John solicits others from the LinkedIn community. Here are four important lessons every hiring manager should learn. (Visit the comments on John’s LinkedIn post for a host of other ideas.)

1. Stop chasing pedigree 

“Avoid fixating on candidates from shiny brands and fancy colleges,” says hiring veteran Chetta Crowley. Often they fall short of expectations, she warns. Instead, Chetta suggests embracing undiscovered talent — what she calls “happy accidents.” 

Rather than falling in love with a candidate’s bio, she recommends clearly defining your hiring standards and measuring job seekers against that. 

“Remember, you’re dealing with living, breathing candidates,” she says. Chetta believes hiring managers should take into consideration everything from qualifications to background to whether or not the person is genuinely excited about the job. “Don’t waste time,” she says, “chasing imaginary ideal candidates.”

Indeed, the concept of the “ideal candidate” has been reexamined recently, leading to a rise in skills-based hiring. “A degree is no guarantor of success,” says talent strategist Sarah Fell. She thinks managers should be attracted to candidates who continue their education while on the job. “Success depends on the slope,” Chetta says, “not the candidate’s starting point.”

2. Never hire on the cheap

You get what you pay for — it’s an age-old adage and one that many business leaders ignore, especially during a downturn in the job market.

Daren Mongello, a talent advisor in New York City, shared a cautionary tale in which a manager hired a team of engineers at a cut rate, only to struggle later when the market rebounded. “He realized significant raises to catch up to market rates would be nearly impossible,” Daren says. 

The results were catastrophic. Glaring pay disparities between new hires and current employees breeded discontent, roles remained unfilled, and eventually the manager was dismissed.

Lowballing candidates during a rocky labor market may be a tempting way to cut costs, but in the long run it almost never pays off, often leading to employee dissatisfaction, poor performance, and high turnover rates.

A similar lesson hiring managers should learn: Be practical about the talent they can afford. Senior recruitment consultant Cheryle Elder perhaps sums this up best: “You can’t afford a Porsche on a VW budget.”

3. Let the competition inspire you

Talent acquisition isn’t always a level playing field. No matter how solid your pipeline is or how many college fairs you’ve posted up at over the years, there’s always someone with deeper pockets and bigger promises waiting to snatch up your dream candidate. 

No one knows this better than Ron S. Williams, a global TA consultant and lecturer who speaks on such topics as career transitions and military hiring. His advice for getting a leg up on the competition: See what they do and let it inspire you. 

He shared a story about a time when he took a group of business leaders to a career fair for engineers. When the team arrived, they were astonished by how fierce the competition for talent was. Upon their return, the recruitment budget was immediately increased and a strategy was put in place. 

The takeaway: It’s a lot easier to get buy-in from leadership once they see up close how the game is played. 

“You have to pay to play!” Ron says. “It was a great lesson for the whole organization.”

4. Maximize your time — all of it

“I would love for hiring managers to understand that recruiting is a team sport,” says Jennifer Anker Kaufman, head of global talent acquisition for Wiz, a cloud security firm. Even during hiring lulls, she says, there’s plenty that a recruiter could, and should, be doing to add value to the team. 

For Jennifer, the winning lesson is that you don’t have to wait for there to be a job opening before you start networking. “Build your personal brand, take those coffee chats, stay in touch with people you meet who’ve impressed you,” she advises. “This way, when a job does open, you already have a network of candidates to pull from instead of starting from scratch,” dramatically decreasing your time to fill. 

In fact, time management was a recurring lesson on John’s thread: how to speed it up, how to slow it down, and how not to squander it.

Adrian Holtham, a senior recruiter at Atlassian, says that one of the biggest and most common time guzzlers is when hiring managers chase unicorn candidates. Doing this, he says, often takes longer than hiring and onboarding someone with comparable skills who’s more likely to be motivated by the job.

How does he communicate this lesson to managers? By getting others in the organization to share their success stories. “Peer persuasion can be useful here,” Adrian says. Highlighting the tension between job requirements and speed to hire lets managers know that “they have something to lose from wanting too much.”

Jennifer’s words bear repeating: Recruiting is a team sport.
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Originally posted on LinkedIn