Time, Attention, Curiosity: The New Leadership Trinity

Dr. Sara Reed
Jul 13
4 min read

I always love a day, an hour, or even a few minutes that get me thinking. Recently, I had the chance to participate in DisruptHR Salt Lake City 8.0 - an endeavor to help people rethink human resources. I came away with my brain putting pieces together from how my fellow speakers challenged conventional norms and suggested that there might be other ways.

Big Idea Up Front: Unless we change how we equip leaders, we won't change our organizations to be better for the future. We need to help them have time, pay attention, and practice curiosity.

As much as I haven't wanted leaders to be the center of an organization, I would be remiss if I pretended that they don't play a central role in employees' everyday lives—and they often play an outsized role when employees and team members are in need. These might be moments of grief, depression, needing a different or what might be considered "unconventional" work arrangement to excel.

Recently, reading Ashley Goodall and Malissa Clark, both brought to the conversation the “ideal worker.” As much as there is a belief that the "ideal worker" never has life happen - that's a fallacy. I haven't met a human who doesn't have something happen in their life where support from their leader and organization could (or could have) helped. It's more those who feel comfortable sharing - and asking for what they need, and those who choose to manage it another way or hide it (often with negative impacts to performance or even choosing to leave the organization).

What might organizations look like if more leaders were equipped not only to manage metrics and KPIs and to lead the "ideal worker" but also to embrace the human piece that IS leadership? The truth is that numbers are easier to manage and put neatly into boxes than humans, though organizations have been trying since Frederick Taylor's days to put individuals into boxes.

Instead, we need to be teaching leaders not just what people erroneously refer to as "soft skills" (these are essential life skills -- they make us all better humans), but we need to be helping people to craft leadership with their presence. I'm not referring to executive or leadership presence (important, but not the topic of this writing). Instead, I am referring to being with people - in all their moments. I wrote earlier this year about leadership being about living life with people, and DisruptHR Salt Lake City's event has me building on that thinking.

Time

Time is the most precious (and often mismanaged) resource in leadership. Instead of measuring leaders by activity, which causes time scarcity and inattention, what if we built the expectation of time into leadership?

Leaders need to proactively make space and use their time to connect more deeply. - Zach Mercurio

Attention & Noticing

With time comes the ability to pay better attention to the person in front of you—and with that, to notice when someone might not be at their best. We are all really good at being distracted and not paying attention to each other. I recently learned that attention comes from the Latin "to move towards" and in 1741, the word was defined as "consideration, observant care."

The time demands on leaders are even greater. However, in this inattention, we miss the chance to notice when a well-timed question or check-in could be just what someone needs. In noticing, as leaders, we are able to offer support - to see where someone might need something but hasn't asked for it.

Curiosity

The last two elements are connected. The first is curiosity. Curiosity truly is a superpower - it can open up so many avenues.

Curiosity is "a strong desire to know or learn something." Note that desire is part of the definition. In other words, we have to want to know or to learn something. We need to be open to hearing something that could challenge our thinking.

As I was thinking about the three keys to leadership, I realized that one key was missing: the leadership result: empathy.

Empathy is impossible to develop without time, attention, and curiosity, and relationships are challenging to build without empathy. Leadership, in many ways, is the relationships that ultimately create organizations' results.

Empathy is a learned skill. In other words, if you aren't empathetic or don't demonstrate empathy, that's your choice. Empathy builds connection and trust with people, so when they are in their moments of need, there is a sense that if they share, there will be a supportive and helpful response.

I was thinking about the DisruptHR speakers who encouraged us to think differently about how we handle grief, not avoiding it, but instead going towards the people who need us. Or the speaker who shared their personal experience with needing to work differently to be effective because of an extraordinary neurodivergent brain -- and discovering that he couldn't find one that could help create conditions for success. Or the speaker who navigated the challenge of burnout, and the need for leaders and employees to work together. In so many ways, it pointed my thinking back to empathy. Back to creating conditions for leaders to spend time with people, to pay attention and notice, and to care enough to be curious.

I'm afraid our organizations want an easy button when we need an entirely different mental model about developing leaders - one that teaches them to be human and to see the humans they lead as the best investment in their time and attention.

Question to consider: