Some teams grow fast. Others plateau. The difference isn’t always talent or tools—it’s curiosity.
Curiosity doesn’t just belong in R&D labs or creative teams. It’s a core driver of learning, resilience, and adaptation in every part of the organization. And yet, it’s often overlooked in performance reviews or team diagnostics.
At Libra, we’re especially interested in one form of curiosity: epistemic curiosity—the desire to resolve uncertainty, understand why things happen, and explore problems more deeply.
What Is Epistemic Curiosity?
Psychologists distinguish between two types:
- Interest-type curiosity (I-type): the joy of discovering new things
- Deprivation-type curiosity (D-type): the itch to fill knowledge gaps and reduce uncertainty
Both types fuel learning. But in the workplace, deprivation-type curiosity plays a key role—especially when things go wrong, when tasks are ambiguous, or when feedback is vague.
It’s what drives someone to ask:
“What made that project stall?”
“Why do we keep getting blocked at this handover point?”
“What would happen if we tried a different way?”
Curiosity Is a Team Asset—But Often Invisible
The most curious teams don’t just react to events. They reflect on them. They examine friction points and ask better questions. They see failure as fuel.
But here’s the problem: curiosity is rarely rewarded in traditional performance systems. It’s slow. It’s messy. It doesn’t always look productive in the short term.
That’s why it often gets buried—especially under pressure to “move fast” or “just get it done.”
Why This Matters for Performance
In fast-changing environments, learning agility beats fixed knowledge.
Curious teams are:
- More resilient to change
- Faster at problem-solving
- Better at adapting cross-functionally
- Less likely to fall into blame cycles or stagnation
And curiosity isn’t just feel‑good—it drives creative problem‑solving and real-world innovation. A study in 2024 by Al Bloushi, Mehmood, Jabeen & Alharmoodi found that both interest- and deprivation-type epistemic curiosity predict innovative work behavior, with work engagement mediating the relationship—and better when leader-member exchange is strong. Moreover, a study in 2023 by Pelit & Katircioğlu that assessed hotel workers also confirmed that both curiosity types (I-type and D-type) significantly promote creativity and innovation.
Reflection Prompt for Managers:
“What’s one question your team keeps bumping into—but hasn’t yet explored out loud?”
It might be time to trade answers for inquiry.
What Libra Is Doing About It
Libra creates space for curiosity—not in theory, but in practice. Through voice-based reflections, teams are encouraged to:
- Pause after emotionally or cognitively demanding days
- Articulate not just what happened—but what they’re trying to make sense of
- Surface open questions, patterns, and blockers that don’t show up in Jira tickets or Slack threads
When aggregated, these reflections help managers see:
- Where ambiguity clusters across teams
- Which employees demonstrate deep inquiry or pattern recognition
- How learning is distributed—not just tasks
And when managers recognize curiosity, they reinforce it.
And when it’s reinforced, it grows.
This post is the second in a series of posts looking at interesting research directions in the field of performance management. Check out our other posts here:
- On Relational Energy: High-Energy Teams Aren’t Just Motivated—They’re Mutually Energizing
- On Identity Recognition: You Can’t Be What You Can’t Be Seen As: Why Identity Recognition Matters at Work
- On Goal Self-Concordance: Why Some Goals Stick: The Science of Meaningful Motivation