Learn, Share, Grow – Curiosity Is As Important As Intelligence

Below is a lesson from Harvard Business Review on the importance of curiosity, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

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Curiosity Is as Important as Intelligence

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

AUGUST 27, 2014

There seems to be wide support for the idea that we are living in an “age of complexity”, which implies that the world has never been more intricate. This idea is based on the rapid pace of technological changes, and the vast amount of information that we are generating (the two are related). Yet consider that philosophers like Leibniz (17th century) and Diderot (18th century) were already complaining about information overload. The “horrible mass of books” they referred to may have represented only a tiny portion of what we know today, but much of what we know today will be equally insignificant to future generations.

In any event, the relative complexity of different eras is of little matter to the person who is simply struggling to cope with it in everyday life. So perhaps the right question is not “Is this era more complex?” but “Why are some people more able to manage complexity?” Although complexity is context-dependent, it is also determined by a person’s disposition. In particular, there are three key psychological qualities that enhance our ability to manage complexity:

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https://hbr.org/2014/08/curiosity-is-as-important-as-intelligence

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Key Learnings:

Three key psychological qualities that enhance our ability to manage complexity:

1. IQ – Mental ability.

• IQ does affect a wide range of real-world outcomes, such as job performance and objective career success.
• Higher levels of IQ enable people to learn and solve novel problems faster.
• Complex environments are richer in information, which creates more cognitive load and demands more brainpower or deliberate thinking from us; we cannot navigate them in autopilot.

2. EQ – emotional quotient and concerns our ability to perceive, control, and express emotions.

• EQ relates to complexity management in three main ways.
• Individuals with higher EQ are less susceptible to stress and anxiety.
• EQ is a key ingredient of interpersonal skills, which means that people with higher EQ are better equipped to navigate complex organizational politics and advance in their careers.
• Higher EQ tend to be more entrepreneurial, so they are more proactive at exploiting opportunities, taking risks, and turning creative ideas into actual innovations.

3. CQ – curiosity quotient and concerns having a hungry mind.

• Higher CQ are more inquisitive and open to new experiences.
• They tend to generate many original ideas and are counter-conformist.
• Important when it comes to managing complexity in two major ways.
• Higher CQ are generally more tolerant of ambiguity.
• CQ leads to higher levels of intellectual investment and knowledge acquisition over time, especially in formal domains of education, such as science and art.
• Knowledge and expertise, much like experience, translate complex situations into familiar ones, so CQ is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems.