On Do The Words there are tips on writing at work: engaging busy readers, and overcoming writer’s block. There are ways to brief bosses, teams, and stakeholders, and ways that writing can help you think clearly. But above all it’s about listening. Open, curious, adaptive listening, and how it’s a manager’s secret power. I first learned this by example.
A curious boss was the one who made me think the most. Among her teams, the user education group helped millions of customers use their new phones. We’d finished a project to change in-box manuals to online tips & tutorials in structured content. That same year, we’d also built an app with personalized hints and video guides.
So we’d finished all that in about a year. And we felt pretty happy with what we’d done. We were saving lots of money on translation, producing more and better content, and delivering to three digital channels. Time to enjoy a bit of business as usual?
Not for our boss. She got us together and asked “What’s next?” We thought we were shaping the content to users’ goals but were we really? Where was the data? Could the Marketing Insights team help us understand our users more? Could we do more with user-generated content, or on social media? What were consumers saying about us, and could we use that to improve not only our content, but the communications of the company overall?
Our boss had a strong drive to succeed and be recognised. But ambition wasn’t all of it. She was constantly curious, going to conferences, talking to leaders from many organizations, always following what was new. And also what was old and good. As well as tech, she knew her art and history. (She later brought virtual reality to a famous museum collection.)
She’d bring ideas to us and encourage us to explore more. She’d ask a question, and ask it again two weeks later, to see what we’d discovered. After that “what’s next” moment, we did many further fun things, driving agency research projects to improve the content, helping other groups in the company get their knowledge organized, and helping many customers use their phones more.
(I have mixed feelings about that, but it was a couple of years before phone addiction became widespread. I was one of the first phone addicts I guess — some achievement on Windows Mobile with a stylus.)
Things were always changing, and our manager kept pushing us to learn and adapt. I liked it that way. It kept us thinking.
In later jobs, I learned more about communicating and leading. I learned to grab attention in writing and presenting (people need to listen before you can direct them effectively!) I saw how the process of writing helped me and my teams work through tricky decisions — not just filling a page but writing to think (like listening to an inner voice). And I realised that curiosity did so much good at work. (The drive to listen to bosses, colleagues, customers, competitors, and experiences, staying adaptable and open.)
Curious leaders inspire their colleagues’ attention. If you got this far, you probably are one.
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