The Curious Advantage Podcast 87: Stefaan van Hooydonk: How Curiosity Fuels Growth, Leadership, AI & Resilience (Founder, Global Curiosity Institute)
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Oct 1, 2025 Stefaan van Hooydonk, founder of the Global Curiosity Institute and former Chief Learning Officer at Cognizant, dives into the impact of curiosity on growth and leadership. He discusses a framework for fostering curiosity across organizations, as well as surprising insights from research revealing how environments and language influence inquisitiveness. Stefaan also contrasts curiosity with conformity, examines the pitfalls of AI, and shares his unexpected journey into farming that fuels his resilience and curiosity.
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Grant Permission And Provide Tools
- Give people explicit permission to explore and fail so curiosity can grow in organizations.
- Pair permission with practical tools and practices to convert permission into measurable learning behavior.
Training Doubles Annual Learning Time
- People who received curiosity training averaged 43 hours of learning in a year versus 25 hours for others.
- Small interventions can create large, sustained differences in learning behavior across large organizations.
Apply The P-A-I Model
- Use the Permission → Awareness → Intentionality model to practice curiosity at individual, team, and organizational levels.
- Slow down to observe where curiosity thrives and intentionally open doors to new actions.
