In my experience, leaders who transcend “Good to Great” to having an elite mindset are those who constantly seek to learn and grow.
One key attribute I see is an innate and insatiable curiosity. In fact, if you search this site for the term “curiosity”, you will find (click here) pages of posts around the subject. I was reminded of this at the beginning of the most recent weekly #WhatComesNextLive podcast, this time with the lovely Oli Barrett.
The whole idea of these podcasts is for people to be able to “see inside a conversation” of the types of conversations I have with various leaders all the time. Of course, what is slightly different with the podcast conversation is that the focus is entirely on whatever the guest wants to talk about, so how Oli started out the conversation was a reminder of the power of curiosity.
Oli has so much to share with others, yet the first thing he did was to show his deep curiosity and ask me some questions. Of course, I happily answered them, though I first noted that when he and I met in person just before the pandemic he did the same. I had asked to meet him to learn all about him and what he does, yet it took quite some time before his initial burst of curiosity was satisfied through asking me quite a number of questions and I could then start asking questions of my own.
Be Curious.