How to keep your team curious through change

The pressure to stay in your lane

When your charity faces redundancies and restructures, curiosity often feels like a luxury we cannot afford. When your role feels under threat, the safest move seems to be focusing entirely on your own list of tasks.

The pressure to prove your value can make you feel that you must be the expert at all times. In this climate, admitting you do not know something or spending time exploring a new area can feel risky.

However, staying in your lane reinforces the silos that make charity work less effective. To solve the big challenges our sector faces, we need to be more curious about how our colleagues work, not less.

Curiosity is a confidence game

Confidence is not a fixed trait that you either have or do not. It is contextual and can disappear quickly when your environment changes and especially when your job security is questioned.

It is difficult to ask questions or explore new ideas when you do not feel secure. We often judge others as being naturally confident, but usually, we are just seeing them in a context where they feel safe.

In a restructure, that safety is stripped away. Breaking down barriers in a struggling organisation requires a deliberate effort to rebuild the psychological safety that allows people to be curious again.

Starting small with low-stakes exploration

You do not need to sign up for an expensive course or take on a huge project to start being curious. When time and energy are tight, jumping into formal training can feel overwhelming and counter-productive.

It is better to start with activities that have a low barrier to entry. These allow you to build your knowledge and comfort level at your own pace without any public pressure or performance involved.

Ways to explore quietly

• Follow a new topic or expert on social media.
• Listen to a podcast about a different specialism.
• Read articles from outside your immediate field

Ways to explore with others

• Grab a coffee with a colleague to understand how their role is changing.
• Ask a peer from another team what their biggest challenge is right now.
• Spend ten minutes at the end of a meeting asking ‘what if’ questions.

Practising curiosity through shared experience

One of the best ways to build curiosity is to practise it in a setting that has nothing to do with your day job. Doing this as a team helps to level the playing field. It removes the professional hierarchy and lets everyone be a beginner together.

Activities like street photography are a great example. They require you to look at the world differently and notice details you would usually ignore. You have to be comfortable with trial and error, and with the fact that not every shot will work.

When a team engages in these creative experiences, they build up muscle memory of being curious. This makes it much easier to apply that same mindset back in the office when you are trying to solve a difficult strategy or brand problem.

Moving towards active collaboration

Once you have built a foundation of knowledge, you can move towards more interactive ways of learning. This transition requires more confidence because it involves social interaction and the potential for disagreement.

During a restructure, there is a risk that teams stop talking to each other just when they need to align the most. Leaders can help by making it clear that reaching out to other departments is not a distraction from ‘real’ work. It is the only way to ensure your digital or brand projects still serve the wider mission.

When practitioners feel backed by their managers, they are more likely to step out of their comfort zone. They can stop guessing what other teams need and start asking them directly.

Activities that require more confidence

• Attend a meetup or networking event to see how other charities are handling change.
• Enrol in a structured professional course to sharpen your skills for a new role.
• Reach out to an expert for a one-to-one chat to understand their specialism.
• Invite someone from a different team to shadow a piece of your work.

Building a curious culture during change

The most effective charity teams are those where different perspectives meet. To get the best out of your people during a restructure, you must design your culture to support curiosity rather than punishing it.

Curiosity should not be a solo pursuit or something people only do when they have ‘spare’ time. When teams learn together, they build a shared language that makes navigating a restructure much easier.

If you want to help your team move from survival mode to genuine collaboration, we can help you design the right conditions. We work with leaders to create sessions where everyone feels safe enough to be curious.