Curiosity / Business acumen

If you have identified that there is a lack of ‘business acumen’ within particular employees within your business this has potentially serious commercial implications.

For example, if individuals fail to notice, question, challenge, think creatively or suggest new approaches and ideas in their professional roles. In other words, ‘curiosity’ is a core aspect of ‘business acumen’. It’s linked to communication and innovation, and the good news is that they’re skills that we can all learn and improve. For all employees to progress they’re essential. A lack of curiosity or business acumen creates a credibility and creativity gap, and costs businesses vast amounts of money.

Pursuing curious questions - Interactive Masterclass with Actors

Dare to dig deeper will be the provocation for the session, encouraging you to fearlessly explore what lies beneath the surface. You’ll investigate how to overcome the barriers that prevent us from actively pursuing our curiosity. By first noticing how our own behaviours can get in our way, you can then focus your behaviours on others. Observing and directing actors, you’ll investigate, interrogate and identify the route of their behaviours and work with them towards a more positive outcome.

Learning outcomes — through this event you’ll:

Develop a greater level of self-awareness as the root of behaviours.
Explore different levels of listening to hear what’s being said, and what’s not.
Apply elements of curiosity towards solving a workplace issue.

Listening and Questioning – Interactive Masterclass with Actors

This session will take a forensic approach to our interactions with others. Participants will explore and practice different questioning techniques to open up conversations, dig into what is being said, and get to the heart of the matter. Participants will practice being present as well as active receivers of that information. Working in small groups, participants will receive instant feedback on the quality and accuracy of their listening, to ‘hear’ what is being said, both verbally and non-verbally. Participants will also observe actors.

By the end of the session participants will have:

Rehearsed the use of different questioning techniques to get to the heart of the matter in practical ways that they can put to use immediately at work
Explored different levels of listening to really hear what is being said, and what is not
Developed their confidence to follow their curiosity with ease and dexterity

Accepting and Building - Interactive Masterclass with Actors

Most of us are already highly curious about specific things that matter to us personally, whether that’s a particular football team, medieval history or Japanese food. But the most curious people are able to find a sense of interest and wonder in almost anything. Why is that? Often it’s because they are more open to accepting and building on the ideas of others. In this interactive masterclass, we explore how we can become more open, agile, curious and collaborative as leaders and practice employing a very specific skill from the world of improvisation, that of saying ‘Yes, and…’.

By the end of this session participants will have:

A better understanding of how to build (and kill) curiosity
A better understanding of how to specifically use language to accept and build on new ideas
Rehearsed the use of specific improv techniques that they can put to use immediately at work