Staying Curious

I have always been curious and this stemmed from my upbringing. I went to a Montessori nursery school before starting primary school and those principles have stayed with me throughout my life.

My mum loved the Montessori approach so much that she trained as a Montessori teacher herself and eventually set up her own school. She didn't set out to become a business owner. She simply believed passionately that children could learn differently.

One of the things I particularly loved about Montessori was its emphasis on discovery and learning through doing. Children weren't simply told how things worked. They were given the opportunity to try things for themselves. And often, the things they were learning were wonderfully ordinary.

At three or four years old, children might clean their own desks, polish something, wash their drinking cup or help with other everyday tasks around the classroom. To an adult, these might seem like very simple things, but for a young child, they are full of learning.

They are developing coordination, concentration, independence and responsibility. They are learning to follow a process. They discover that if they practise something, they get better at it. And perhaps most importantly, they experience the satisfaction of doing something for themselves.

There is something very powerful about that. We often think learning has to look like sitting down with a book or being taught by someone else, but some of the best learning happens when we are allowed to get our hands dirty and figure things out.

The Connection with Growth Mindset

That is what I love about the idea of a growth mindset. It isn't simply about telling people to "think positively". It is about believing that our abilities can develop through effort, practice, curiosity, feedback and experience.

Montessori creates an environment where children can discover this for themselves. They try, they make mistakes, they try again and gradually, they master something that they couldn't do before. Nobody needs to tell a three-year-old that learning can be rewarding. You can see it on their face when they manage to do something independently for the first time.

And then we grow up...Somewhere along the way, I think we can lose some of that natural curiosity. As adults, particularly as business owners and leaders, we can become much more concerned about getting things right.

☑️We don't want to look like we don't know.

☑️We don't want to admit that we need to learn something.

☑️We don't want to make mistakes.

But building a business inevitably means doing things you haven't done before. There will be strategies that fail; recruitment decisions that don't quite work out; difficult conversations and ideas that seem brilliant but don't deliver the results you expected.

The question isn't whether those things happen, It's what we do with them. A growth mindset allows us to ask: What can I learn from this? rather than: What does this say about me? The same principle applies to our teams

I think this is particularly important when we become leaders. If we always step in and do things for our team because it is quicker, easier or because we think we can do them better, we might solve the immediate problem but we also take away an opportunity for someone else to learn. There is a parallel with those Montessori classrooms.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is give someone the opportunity to try. Let them work it out, give them the support they need and let them make a mistake. Then help them reflect on what they have learned. That's how capability grows and it's also how confidence grows.

My Mum's Accidental Business

There is another reason this story has stayed with me. My mum's school became a successful business, but that wasn't her original motivation. She was driven by a genuine belief in the Montessori method and what it could do for children. The business came afterwards.

This weekend, I was helping her sort through some cupboards. She's nearly 90 now, and amongst all the things she had kept, I found a box of thank-you cards. They were from parents of children who had attended her school. I sat and read them.

They talked about how much the school had meant to their children. How it had helped them grow in confidence, how different their experience had been and how grateful they were for what she had given their children. It was incredibly moving and it reminded me that sometimes the most meaningful measure of success isn't turnover, profit or growth. It's the difference you make.

My mum started with a belief. She created an environment where children could learn through doing and she kept learning herself. Despite leaving school at 16 and being undiagnosed as dyslexic she built a successful business as a consequence of creating something that genuinely mattered to people.

Learning Like a Three-Year-Old

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about the way young children learn.

☑️They are curious.

☑️They aren't embarrassed about not knowing.

☑️They ask questions.

☑️They try things.

☑️They make mistakes.

☑️They celebrate when they finally get it right.

☑️And then they move on to the next thing they want to discover.

Perhaps there is something for us to remember in that. As founders and leaders, we don't need to have all the answers. We need to remain curious enough to keep looking for them; we need to create environments where our teams can learn, experiment and develop and we need to recognise that mistakes aren't always failures. Sometimes they are simply part of the process.

I think my lifelong love of learning started at Montessori and I'm very grateful that it did because whether we're three or ninety, there is always something new to discover.

About the Author

Sarah is a business founder, MBA graduate and coach who has built and scaled businesses to over £8 million in revenue with teams of up to 25.. She now helps ambitious founders gain clarity, build motivated teams and create businesses that support the life they want to lead.

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