It’s January 2010. I’m sitting in the middle row of a large lecture hall, attentively listening to the Psychology professor talk about an old experiment, where researchers gave infant monkeys a full bottle of milk and a metallic surrogate mother, and others no bottle of milk and a fluffy, warm surrogate mother. Warmth and comfort won over the basic need for food. I was captivated. My palms got sweaty like they always do when my gut is telling me “do it”.
That “do it” meant "“go all the way”, specialize as far as specialization can take you. Which meant a PhD for me. Why? Because I was really, really, really curious about Psychology.
It turns out though that I’m really, really, really curious about a lot of things, and it would probably take me twenty lifetimes to specialize in all of them.
I also like to lead. I easily take on the role of gathering others around a shared goal, and getting us to achieve that goal together. Even as a young child, I would organize recess games and group projects.
For a long time, I felt like my curiosity and ability to lead were at odds. When I had my curiosity hat on, I felt like the farthest thing from a leader. I was a learner. I was a beginner. I had no business leading anyone into anything.
When I had my leader hat on, I was an expert. I had answers that others didn’t. I had a responsibility of showing up as the expert, not the beginner. If I did, that would undermine the trust that others had in my abilities.
Or so I thought.
You can’t lead well if you’re stuck on being the expert
“Here are two software developers.” I was told before my first 90 days in tech were up. “Start a slack channel and we’ll get a product designer to weigh in as well. Ops will get meetings on the books.”
I had just gotten approval on a new performance evaluation framework for a hyper-growth company. I was asked to turn my idea into a custom-built survey platform for all 7000+ employees. Oh, and we had six weeks to get it done.
I had never worked with such a diverse and technical team before. Which hat did I put on? If you guessed the expert, you’re right. I wanted to show up as the expert even though I had no clue about software development, and had very little experience in actual product building, let alone systems or first principles thinking.
We shipped the survey tool in time, but the process was messy. I was so focused on being the expert that the core of what I was trying to do got lost in translation, every time it changed hands. And that led to a lot of “why are we doing this again? Who decided that?”.
Almost five years, four (five… six?) custom tools, and nine performance cycles later, I’ve learned that the greatest leaders are the ones who are able to translate an idea across every discipline, including senior leadership. An idea doesn’t travel from zero to shipped by being right. It travels by being re-expressed, faithfully, across each discipline, while getting to the best possible result.
And that translation work is curiosity at play.
Curiosity is the engine of leadership
Every discipline reasons in its own language. Engineering thinks in constraints and dependencies. Design thinks in user journeys and patterns. Finance thinks in models and risk. Senior leadership thinks in bets, narratives, and what they’ll have to defend. They all have their own unique way of framing and seeing the same problem.
What I realized is that my curiosity, my willingness to show up as the beginner and learn something new, gave me a key into my colleagues’ minds. I could approach them with ideas that felt, to them, increasingly more inviting because I wasn’t imposing my way of thinking on them. I cared enough to dive into their world, and ask questions that showed I wasn’t scared to go into details, even if I looked a bit silly or naive in the process.
There isn’t a one-size fits all approach to this, but here’s what I find works best for working with multi-disciplinary teams specifically.
Make why and how work together
You are responsible for shaping the core idea. That’s why you’re leading this work, no matter how big or small. You need to decide which parts are absolutely non-negotiable. You should know which problem you’re solving, and why the idea is the right path forward.
Everything else is negotiable, and should be allowed to bend and flex as your collaborators interact with it. Show them that you’re curious about their perspective, and acknowledge that you don’t have every answer, especially not when it comes to their domain.
That’s how you walk out of every room with your core goal intact and improved versus watered down or worst off. When you can make both clarity in the why and curiosity about the how work together, your team trusts you more, feels included, and can stand behind your decisions, even if they disagree with some aspects.
Learn new disciplines up to two layers deep, no more
Every time you start a project, see it as an opportunity to learn something new. That doesn’t mean you’ll be building the final implementation yourself, but taking the time to map out what you’re not an expert in keeps your mind nimble and your ego in check.
It’s now easier than ever to tinker and play around in new domains. AI tools are fantastic for that, and allow you to absorb knowledge, concepts, and frameworks fast. If you like to learn by building like me, these tools also open up many opportunities to prototype.
The caveat here is to keep your learning contained and to yourself. Going too deep into rabbit holes not only wastes time, but it can distract you from the details that are actually important. Same goes with building, sharing all your prototypes with your collaborators can be really noisy for them. Only share if it adds real value to the work.
In a domain where 100+ layers exist, go two layers deep. Learn enough about the domain to spot the details worth pulling on, and to ask questions that are helpful in implementing the idea. Let your collaborators take on the rest.
Use your curiosity to translate across disciplines
This step works best if you did the one before (where you went a couple layers deep into a new domain). Once you know what shape your idea takes when you apply it to other domains, take the time to translate it before you discuss it with collaborators from that discipline.
You want to avoid scrambling live in a meeting, because that’s when the idea tends to get distorted. Before you know it, your team is solving and optimizing for the wrong thing.
Before your first meeting, write one sentence that answers: “what is this idea in their language”? If you can’t answer that question, you’re not ready to talk about it yet. Open by naming their stake. People can only hear your idea once they believe you understand their reality. Showing that you understand the risks, the downstream impact, and the edge cases tells them you did the work of standing where they stand.
Stop talking
Yes, communicate the idea and your understanding of how it will impact your collaborators’ space is important. Explain, ask clarifying questions, but then stop.
I’ve seen this happen so many times. A leader walks into the room and goes on a long monologue. They think that by talking, they’re going to win collaborators over and get everyone on board. This backfires most if not all of the time. Giving room for other people to talk lets them shape the idea, not just receive it.
By pausing, you open up space for real input and push pack. You are showing your collaborators that you respect their opinion, and that their perspective is not only valued, but important to the work.
Always close the loop
An idea going from zero to shipped passes through the hands of people that might never meet each other. You are the memory and the context. You are responsible for translating both ways: when you ideate with your collaborators, and when decisions get made when they’re not in the room.
It’s important that you stay curious at this step too. Ask clarifying questions, be open to push back and reframes, and learn to bring all opinions and decisions into a coherent whole. I know, this sounds a lot easier said than done. But believe me, with curiosity, care, and patience, this skill will make all the different for you and your collaborators.
You are the bridge, the translator, the shapeshifter. You are the one that is able to open up discussion about the right things, and close loops so that your teams can understand decisions, and feel good about committing to next steps.
Better together
I used to think that the curious version of me and the leader version of me where two different people that had to take turns. But they work much, much better together.
The expert hat feels like authority, but it’s actually a ceiling. The moment you decide you’re the one with all the answers, you stop being able to see the right path to take. Curiosity is how you’ll learn to lead well. It’s what lets you learn to speak the right language in every room.
Be curious because you’re a leader. That’s your responsibility.
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