The Tracking Wonder Framework and How It Influences Work: Openness
When we’re focused at work, our cognition naturally closes in and shuts out distractions. That’s a healthy state of deliberate closed cognition. But a default closed cognition is when we’re unintentionally shutting off from possible insights, fresh perspectives, or opportunities.
That kind of default closed cognition at work can correlate with dysfunctional team connections, stale workflow, and missed opportunities.
This default closed cognition is natural on one hand. As we age, our brains naturally categorize things, which helps us adapt to our environment but also leads to a narrowed perception.
But here’s my premise: We have the capacity to trip this wiring on behalf of our most impactful work and best lives.
Yet, as our weary eyes become Wonder Eyes again, so to speak, our perception literally widens. It’s the equivalent of your mind’s camera shifting from the standard default lens to the wide-angle lens.
When our perception widens, we can see new possibilities. That’s a facet of the Tracking Wonder Framework called Openness.
More than Intellectual Quotient, openness to experiences correlates more with heightened creativity and creative problem-solving as well as with long-term fulfillment. It is possible to foster this quality and learn skills of openness.
What does it mean to be truly open at work? What would it look like for you as a leader or entrepreneur to see things differently and experience wonder at work and in life outside of work?
The Illusion of Being Open
Team members can be tempted to think that because they’re educated, work remotely, or scale businesses globally, surely, they are open people. But that is not always the case. Most of our daily awareness is set unconsciously on a default mode of getting things done. We often see each other and our work through biased filters. That’s the exact opposite of what it means to be open
Openness is a wide-eyed wonder among us grown-ups. It is the capacity to perceive a subject or situation anew while pursuing new knowledge or launching and even executing a complex endeavor. When we develop skills of openness, we can detect and instantly suspend our biases, dare to not know everything, or even dare to “un-know,” (i.e., challenge what we think we know), and be receptive to possibilities instead of immediately judging others’ ideas
Why Openness Matters at Work
For a few seconds or minutes, an experience of wonder can dissolve those biased filters we’ve gotten used to. We can see ourselves, others, our work, and the world around us in refreshing ways that are nonetheless real, true, and beautiful. Those few seconds or minutes experienced more often can gradually shift our general outlook and capacity to make things happen with delight and excellence.
Practicing Openness
Here are some meaningful ways your teams can explore openness:
1. The Advantage of an Intelligent Naiveté
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote in Walden. “There is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”
Far from indicating amateurism, an intelligent naiveté gives you an advantage with your complex endeavors and business initiatives. As recent studies have corroborated, your openness to experience, more than your intellect or other factors, could better indicate your ability to find creative solutions to problems, big and small.
Imagine your mind like a house with many windowed rooms. If you keep stuffing that house with more boxes of knowledge to prop yourself up like an expert in disguise, soon those windows will get blocked. You won’t be able to look out toward a horizon of possibility.
Here’s a practical exercise:
Ask yourself or your team members to take stock of their dream of what could be, even if it does, as Thoreau suggested, seem like a castle in the air.
Next, they’ll imagine every open action possible to take toward that dream as laying down a brick imbued with your intelligent idealism.
2. Openness Naiveté at Work
Openness can boost on-the-job creativity and fuel you to pursue your dream in a way that only you can do. It primes us to tolerate uncertain outcomes.
To take risks creatively doesn’t mean you gamble your life savings on a marketing scheme. It means you’re willing to invest time, resources, and cognitive energy into a dream that has an uncertain outcome. Maybe you’ve figured out a way to make new yummy flavors of ice cream with organic ingredients, but you have no idea how to make a business of your idea. Tracking this facet of wonder suspends the requirement for immediate answers in favor of the process of figuring things out. Instead, wonder asks, “What might happen next?”
Here’s a practical exercise:
Throw out an interesting question and ask the team to think about it openly. It could be something such as, “How would you approach this [task, project] if anything was possible?”
You’re inviting them to use their imagination and seek answers from a place of wonder, rather than on autopilot, constrained by deadlines and the need to give feedback immediately.
Notice any positive changes in their reactions, responses, or attitudes? That’s wonder at work.
Fostering a Culture of Openness
Cultural attitudes can influence just how comfortable we are with being open in the world. Have you ever curbed your enthusiasm or hidden your naiveté for fear you might appear foolish? Your team has too.
Maybe you have absorbed a belief that most people are self-interested and that you shouldn’t trust their motives. Do you think that to be taken seriously and “make it” in the world, you must become competitive, shrewd, and guarded?
Rest assured, I have seen many clients—some of them executives and successful professionals—who have had to question their cynical beliefs. Teams and leaders I’ve worked with often want to bypass any hint of exhibiting qualities of a dreamer.
The good news is we can break the spell of cynical, conditioned reactivity with practice. With a bit of mental window opening, an irritation or a doubt could be an opportunity to solve a common problem in an uncommon way. Openness to new experiences is something we can cultivate, as individuals and corporations. Assuming an open and creative mindset means you can approach each day and situation in a fresh way. You’re able to question your own assumptions and interrupt your own preconceptions. Even when you’re tired or discouraged, a creative mindset keeps opening you up to what’s possible.
That’s what makes innovative teams different from teams stuck in the same vicious cycle: the courage to stay open and explore fresh perspectives.
Here’s a thought:
When next you ask for unconventional ideas, let your team know that it’s okay to feel embarrassed while sharing. You can even share that you’re not sure how this is going to go, but you know that this is exactly what they need right now. It eases the tension and encourages a culture of openness.
Every single one of us has this extraordinary capacity for openness, curiosity, and wonder.
If you find something useful in today’s Wonder Blog article, do me a favor: share this article with someone who could use a dose of wonder.
Here are some other articles you might find useful:
Unlocking Impactful Creative Ideas Through Radical Openness
Tapping into Creative Collaboration
The Role Core Values Play in Strategy Execution
