Curiosity is such a power skill across your teams.

Curiosity is one of the most powerful skills in any revenue organisation. Yet in almost every sales audit, deal review and leadership session we run, the same pattern appears.

Teams believe they are being curious. But client centred curiosity often switches off much earlier than leaders desire.

And when curiosity shuts down, so does value creation. Deals stall. Assumptions creep in. Client validation becomes shallow. Stakeholder mapping narrows. Pipeline fiction starts to appear.

This is not only a capability problem. It is an inhibitor problem. Dr Diane Hamilton’s work on curiosity blockers provides a useful lens for understanding this. Her research highlights how common inhibitors reduce curiosity long before skill or intent become an issue. Our experience inside revenue teams aligns closely with these findings.

Across organisations we see four consistent blockers. Fear. Technology. Assumptions. Environment. They show up in different ways, but they always suppress exploration and weaken client understanding. Which means they weaken revenue outcomes.

Below is how each blocker typically shows up, and how to recognise it in your own team.

Fear: The Silent Deal Killer

Fear rarely looks dramatic. It looks polished. It is the fear of appearing naïve. The fear of asking a simple question. The fear of looking less experienced than the client. The fear of slowing down the meeting or disrupting the flow. When fear takes over, sellers turn inward. They focus on how they sound rather than what the client means. Curiosity gets replaced by the need to look credible.

A simple example. A client mentions a cost pressure. The seller nods and moves on because they think they already understand it. They fear asking for clarity in case it sounds basic. Yet that missed question is often the difference between surface alignment and commercial insight.

Your role as a leader is to reduce the fear. Build psychological safety around exploration. Reinforce that the obvious question often unlocks the real issue. Celebrate when someone pauses the conversation and says, "Help me understand that a little more."

Fear shrinks curiosity. Leaders stretch it back out.

Technology: The Illusion of Understanding

Clients have never been more researchable. LinkedIn, Owler, analyst reports and AI tools all make it easy to gather information before a meeting. And that is exactly where curiosity gets blunted.

Teams confuse information with insight. They walk into conversations believing they already know enough. Revenue has dipped. A new region is opening. Efficiency is a theme in the annual letter. These facts create false certainty.

But context is not understanding. Online insight is never the client’s truth.

Research should fuel curiosity, not replace it. The best teams use research to build hypotheses that they intend to test. They arrive with informed questions, not preloaded conclusions.

Assumptions: The Expertise Trap

Experienced sellers recognise patterns. They know industries, personas and problem types. Pattern recognition is a strength until it becomes a shortcut.

A typical example. A seller hears a familiar challenge and immediately connects it to the last deal they closed. They race ahead mentally. They assume the drivers are the same. They stop exploring. They stop listening.

Experience is valuable only when it is tested. Your ICP models, personas and value stories are essential tools. They are not substitutes for understanding what matters to this specific client in this specific environment. And we teach buyer familiarity in our onboarding. But we need to balance it.

Top performing teams stay humble. They use expertise as a guide, not a guarantee. They slow down enough to check what they think they know.

Assumption is the enemy of insight.

Environment: The Culture You Build Determines the Curiosity You Get

The final blocker is not inside the seller. It is inside the organisation.

Walk around any sales floor and you can feel the culture within ten minutes. Do people talk about client value or do they talk about our opportunity. Do managers coach client problems and outcomes or do they coach activity. Do deal reviews focus on client truth or on internal optimism.

Most environments unintentionally reward speed, certainty and positive narratives. Curiosity thrives on the opposite. It needs time. It needs challenge. It needs space for questions that test assumptions and unpack value.

Curiosity is a muscle. If your environment does not encourage its use, it will weaken. Your language matters. Your questions matter. Your standards matter. They shape how your teams think and behave.

If you want client centred behaviour externally, you must create curiosity centred dialogue internally.

Curiosity is a muscle, help your teams use it. Or loose it!

What High-Performing Leaders Do Differently

The best leaders recognise that curiosity fails not because people lack intelligence but because these four inhibitors quietly limit it. So, they design their leadership approach to remove the blockers rather than reinforce them.

They make it safe to be curious. When leaders show through their own behaviour that clarity matters more than polish, fear reduces. They normalise pausing. They normalise asking the simple question. They normalise digging when something feels unclear. Meetings shift from proving to understanding.

They reset how technology is used. Research becomes the spark, not the script. Teams are encouraged to arrive with hypotheses to test rather than assumptions to defend. Leaders ask the who, what, where, when and why to ensure technology informs curiosity instead of replacing it.

They keep assumptions honest. They coach against shortcuts. They bring conversations back to the client’s specific drivers instead of the last deal that looked similar. They help teams use experience without letting it become automatic.

And they build an environment that rewards client truth. Internal dialogue focuses on outcomes, value and impact rather than activity or optimistic narratives. Deal reviews slow down long enough to interrogate validity. Coaching becomes about what matters to the client, not what feels comfortable to us.

When leaders operate this way, curiosity becomes habitual. Once curiosity becomes habitual, everything improves. Discovery deepens. Qualification becomes honest. Alignment strengthens. Forecasts become cleaner. Clients feel understood. Deal velocity increases because teams are working with validated truth, not convenient assumptions.

If you want to run a more curious environment. Give us a shout.