Section 2 of 6
Pathway 3: Maintaining curiosity
Pathway 3: Maintaining curiosity
Maintaining curiosity
Maintaining curiosity as a head of service
What do you see when you consider a head of service who has fully developed their ability to maintain curiosity and see its effect on their work?
Enhanced problem-solving
Curiosity drives managers to question practices, explore solutions, and find better ways to address challenges, improving outcomes for children and families.
Continuous professional growth
Staying curious encourages lifelong learning and keeps managers up to date. This enables them to lead with fresh perspectives, innovative approaches, and a commitment to personal growth.
Stronger relationships
Curiosity about team dynamics and strengths improves communication, strengthens relationships, and creates a motivated, cohesive team that feels understood and valued.
A culture of innovation
A curious head of service demonstrates a commitment to self-awareness, team understanding, and system-wide leadership, focusing on service improvement and collaborative inter-agency work.
The following are examples of what that might look like when you demonstrate curiosity.
Values and moral purpose
Reflecting on your values, aligning strategic decisions with children’s and families’ best interests, modelling integrity and purpose-driven leadership across your service and team.
Biases and prejudices
Actively managing your biases, promoting an inclusive culture, encouraging your leadership team to address unconscious biases and embed anti-discriminatory practices throughout the organisation.
Leadership engagement
Engaging with senior leaders and frontline managers to understand strengths and motivations, modelling openness, encouraging feedback, and driving accountability and growth across the service.
Partnerships
Building strong partnerships with external agencies by sharing best practices, engaging in audits, and influencing collaboration to improve service delivery and outcomes for children and families.
You can encourage a reflective, inclusive, and strategically focused environment by demonstrating these behaviours as a head of service. This ensures continuous improvement and high standards across the service.
Over to you
Spend 10 minutes reflecting on this question:
How well do I understand the strengths and challenges of my leadership team, and what more can I do to create a culture of openness and accountability?
You can use the ‘Maintaining curiosity as a head of service’ section in your 4C leadership capability framework action plan for this activity.
The resources have been developed by
Frontline
in collaboration with
DfE.
Published: 30 January 2025
Last updated: 30 January 2025
Published: 30 January 2025
Last updated: 30 January 2025