Curiosity is a Growth Fertilizer

We’ve all been told countless times that curiosity is the key to maintaining a growth mindset. But how do leaders embody that in practice?

I started working at a Wells Fargo call center in late 2014. My first supervisor had left the company within weeks of me exiting training, and I soon found myself moved to another side of the building and being placed on another team.

Par for the course at call centers. Turnover is high and teams shake up all the time.

For a blind person though, it meant certain logistical challenges. The ZoomText software I used was licensed to one specific machine, so instead of just telling me to pick another chair (like most others), IT had to physically move my workstation and set it up for me.

Then there was the personal challenge of having to learn how to navigate to another part of the building after I had already grown comfortable with my previous location. Not an insurmountable challenge by any means, but a logistical concern nevertheless.

None of that really bothered me too much. What was frustrating was that my new supervisor had a very different work schedule than mine.

I worked Saturdays. He didn’t.

He worked Sundays. I didn’t.

There were at least two other days of the week where our schedules didn’t overlap. For the other days, our hours were different.

I calculated it out at one point. If memory serves, our schedules overlapped for only about 18 out of 40 hours per week.

Our schedules didn’t overlap much, but he also just never seemed to care either. He hadn’t even come and introduced himself to me for the first three weeks I was on his team. He wasn’t the slightest bit curious about me.

I’m just going to refer to him here as What’sHisName, because I actually don’t even remember what his name was.

Since What’sHisName wasn’t around much, I found myself having to constantly get assistance from other nearby supervisors. Specifically, there was Linda.

Linda, who very much has a name in this scenario, went out of her way for me even though I wasn’t technically on her team.

When my earbuds died on me on a Saturday, and I wasn’t able to hear my computer (a key part of doing my job with a reasonable accommodation), she personally drove over to Best Buy and picked up a new pair for me with her corporate card. Then when we found out the earbuds she picked up weren’t compatible with my computer, she went back and exchanged them for a pair that was.

She didn’t have to do that. Linda could have just told me to log off and wait until Monday when What’sHisName could have done something about it. She would have been within her rights as Not My Supervisor to do so.

Linda was awesome. What’sHisName wasn’t.

That’s why I was so furious when I found out one day that there had been talks about rearranging teams again, and What’sHisName had fought hard to keep me under him.

Without ever so much as asking for my opinion, he argued with his managers that I needed to remain on his team for stability’s stake. He didn’t think it would be good for me to move to another team just a few months after the last move. He didn’t think I should be on Linda’s team, because everyone knew she was due to retire within the next six to nine months. He didn’t think I could handle all the upheaval.

He didn’t think. He wasn’t curious enough to ask me.

I don’t know what he was getting out of the deal. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the impact.

I continued to work under What’sHisName…

For about a month. Because it wasn’t long before he accepted an offer to take over as supervisor of a higher-tier sales team, and he was off.

Then I ended up with a new supervisor anyway, and it wasn’t Linda.

What’sHisName kept me from moving to a team where I would have had opportunities for growth. With a supervisor like Linda, I could have spent her remaining six months (which actually ended up turning into a full year) being treated like an actual team member, with actual feelings and actual career aspirations. Instead, I just got a lot of upheaval.

After about a year of total career stagnation, I landed a new role on a team under a supervisor named Mark.

I had never met him before, but everyone had great things to say about Mark. He was kind, knowledgeable, proactive, and tenured.

You know the adage that “reputation is what people say about you when you’re not in the room?”

Mark had a great reputation.

He lived up to it.

Mark was a genuine leader, not a supervisor or manager just in name and title. He didn’t just show up to work everyday to manage his team’s call metrics and hand out reprimands when someone wasn’t meeting them.

Every time we had a 1:1, we did our usual company-mandated check-in about call metrics and quality assurance scores. Then he put aside his mouse and keyboard, turned his chair directly to the person he was talking with, and asked about their life.

Over time, he had genuine career conversations with everyone on the team. Some people just wanted to show up to work for a paycheck. Others, like me, wanted more out of life and just needed help unlocking opportunities for learning, mentoring, coaching, and growth.

Mark learned that I was earning my Management and Organizational Leadership degree, so he started looking around for opportunities that could help me practice my skills. He set me up to do peer coaching with struggling teammates, hooked me up with some Coach the Coach sessions with my team lead, and notified me when he found out the call center was starting a facilitator certification program.

Then he listened to me as I pitched an idea for a training session I wanted to run about the skill of empathy, because I noticed a lack of it amongst some of the teammates I was coaching. After I showed him the slides I created for it, he encouraged me to develop an entire program around the core skills our center was trying to teach at the time: empathy, acknowledgement, and ownership.

After I ran that complete workshop for my team, he asked if I’d be comfortable running it for other parts of the business. Since I was, he pitched my workshop up the chain of command to our General Manager, who loved the idea so much that she put together a list of struggling agents all across the call center and asked me to run the workshop several more times.

Every one of those opportunities helped me build a load of confidence in myself. They also set me up for success, because when Mark told me the company was starting a high potentials program, they were exactly the type of experiences I needed on my resume to prove that I could be part of it.

(Side note: Read my thoughts on why I think the term “high potentials” is a misnomer.)

With my new experiences, my new degree, and Mark’s letter of recommendation, I did get accepted into the Rising Stars program shortly before he moved on to lead another team.

That brief period in my career was full of opportunities, some big and some small, that Mark helped me unlock and which totally changed who I was as a person and where I felt like I could go with my life.

Mark is a true leader. He’s the type of person that people would follow even if he didn’t have a title to go with it. He treated people like individual human beings and was genuinely invested in their futures.

We should all strive to be more like Mark than like What’sHisName. When we go out of our way to serve those around us, we earn a positive reputation. More importantly, we help other people grow in ways that they may not have been able to on their own.

That’s all well and good. You probably didn’t need to read this entire story to get that bit of wisdom.

There’s something else about Mark’s leadership style that’s worth noting, though.

Mark used to tell me how much he learned from me all the time. Not in a patronizing, “blind people are so fascinating and I’m always learning new things about them” kind of way, either.

No, he genuinely gave me the sense that he meant it, and that I’m not the only person he regularly learned from. You see, Mark was constantly learning about people’s lives, interests, faiths, beliefs, fears, courageous moments, and wisdom. Because he was always curious about people on a genuine level.

By doing the things that made him a strong leader—serving others, actively listening, and staying curious—he didn’t just unlock growth potential in other people. He kept growing in new and miraculous ways everyday, himself.

Personal growth is a team effort. What Mark’s example has taught me is that you get out of that effort as much as you put in.

While What’sHisName wasn’t curious enough to ever ask what I thought, Mark was curious enough about me and my team to ensure that everyone around him thrived. It undoubtedly helped him, too.

Have you had leaders like Mark in your life? What lessons—intentional or otherwise—have you learned from observing how they lead? I’d love to hear your stories or shout-outs in the comments. If you can, why not share this article with them as well?

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