Do you know who’s on your bench?

This week during the monthly webinar for Startup Women NC (one of my businesses that provides support to women entrepreneurs), we talked about partnership as the path to business growth. 

One member said “I’m here because I need to know who’s on my bench.” Another member jumped in and said “we all need a roster of support.” 

This really got me thinking about what a strong analogy that was to me as an individual, and us as leaders. 

We do not get anywhere by ourselves, even if we are the smartest and the most talented. It either takes the help of someone else, the approval from someone else, or the permission from someones else that allow us to gain glory, power, status, or money. 

It just doesn’t happen alone. 

This is probably a great place to be as we dive into March, where a new month for novelty is upon us and it is, drumroll please, all about curiosity. 

Curiosity is such an important part of finding novelty. Asking questions and being in a frame of mind to wonder, these are essential parts of creativity, interest, discovery, problem-solving, empathy, and leadership. 

As a leader, curiosity is a skill you can develop. As Kimberly, a friend and Novelty experiment participant, recently posted on her LinkedIn, “curiosity can thrive even in the middle of extraordinarily ordinary moments.”

In fact, curiosity can be a great place for leaders to start building psychological safety, which is the #1 indicator of team success. 

Research on high-performing teams consistently shows that the most effective leaders aren't the most self-sufficient, they're the most connected. They've built what organizational psychologist Adam Grant calls a "give-and-take" network: people who challenge them, people who cheer them, and people who tell them the hard truth. All three are necessary. Most of us only cultivate one or two.

Curiosity is the engine that makes those bench relationships work. It's what keeps you asking, "What do you see that I'm missing?" instead of seeking validation. And that shift, from validation-seeking to genuine curiosity, is exactly where psychological safety starts to grow. When leaders model "I don't have all the answers," they give their teams permission to say the same.

As a person, we can develop curiosity. We can train ourselves to be stronger, just like our muscles, for many surprising things such as memory, storytelling, and reflexes. 

The decision to practice comes with some simply not-so-simple decisions:

Knowing who’s on your bench can help you with the stick-with-it-ness, because it will eventually be hard. Harder than it may seem worth it. Especially for leaders in large organizations, it often feels like an uphill battle against culture, policy, lack of support, or a multitude of other obstacles. Having your go-to people to keep you going is critical to success.

This is what’s on my mind this month, because February was not my idea of success. I had my first novelty “failure” (an activity that did not go well... I couldn’t even start before I stopped!), and had no where near my 8 events to get to 100.

But my bench is wide. You’re all here. So I’m going to start again and keep going.

That’s all a leader really can do- acknowledge their short comings, get curious about why and what to do, consult their bench for support, and then try again.

Whether you want to ponder who’s on your bench like I am, or how novelty might be able to sneak it’s way further into your weekly habits, we’re going to explore it together. Let’s keep going.

Talk soon,

Rachel
Leadership trainer, novelty junkie, and human being

Thanks for joining me on my search for novelty and one human-centric leaders's journey towards a more balanced life.