The Importance of Being Surprised

One of the attributes that I think is woefully undervalued in leadership is the capacity to be surprised. That may, I know, sound like an odd capacity to lift up and perhaps seems like a rather mundane thing on which to focus. After all, aren’t all of us regularly surprised by all kinds of things all of the time? Yes…and no. Do things regularly happen that we didn’t expect? Sure. And do we venture into experiences that we’d not had before and are therefore surprised. Absolutely. But that’s not quite the kind of surprise I’m talking about. What I really mean is the willingness to have our expectations defied, even overturned. To...