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Section 2 of 6
Pathway 4: Maintaining curiosity

How practice leaders can maintain curiosity in practice

By now you will have a clearer sense of how you want to develop your professional curiosity. The following is a set of actionable strategies designed specifically for practice leaders to encourage a curiosity-driven leadership approach. These activities will help you maintain a reflective and adaptive leadership style by focusing on:

  • making your decisions and actions consistent with the organisation’s core values and the best outcomes for children and families
  • developing deeper insights into the strengths and needs of your team while creating a culture of feedback and continuous learning
  • talking to external partners, services, and the broader social care landscape to stay informed and drive innovative practice

These are separated into suggestions that will benefit you, your teams, and your work with wider stakeholders. Which of the following activities do you think you, your supervisees and teams across your service would most benefit from doing?

Choose at least one activity from each section to experiment with in your leadership practice.

Thinking about yourself

Shadowing and direct engagement 

Spend time shadowing frontline staff to immerse yourself in the day-to-day work of your team. This first-hand experience will:

  • keep you curious about the service context 
  • strengthen your relationships with staff 
  • provide valuable insight into the systemic challenges children and families face

Multi-agency immersion

Get involved in multi-agency work by participating in cross-sector visits or joint audits. This will enhance your understanding of how other sectors operate and help you stay curious about how children’s services align with broader governance and community priorities.

Thinking about your team 

Strength-based and identity mapping

Develop team strength maps that also explore diverse aspects of identity and how these strengthen everyone's practice. Host workshops where the team reflects both on their professional strengths and on how their diverse backgrounds shape their perspectives. This will deepen curiosity about how identity influences practice and relationships within the team and with the families they serve.

Curiosity journals with an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) focus

Encourage team members to keep journals that focus on their reflections regarding EDI. Ask them to document questions or reflections about biases, cultural considerations, and how they can improve equity in their work. Sharing these reflections with the team will create a space for collective curiosity and growth in EDI awareness.

Thinking about the wider system

Stakeholder partner visits

Organise visits where you and other stakeholders visit each other’s environments—such as schools, community centres, or healthcare settings.

This hands-on approach encourages curiosity about how different sectors operate and provides a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in each setting. This promotes a more collaborative approach to social care.

Stakeholder workshops on emerging trends

Host workshops where you explore emerging trends or research in social care with wider stakeholders. Encourage attendees to question how these trends affect their work and the children and families they serve. This will create curiosity about new approaches and create a culture of shared learning across sectors.

Over to you 

Now that you’ve reviewed these activities, choose one that you would like to experiment with. You can use the 4C leadership capability framework action plan to detail when and where you’ll try these out and reflect on their effect over time.

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The resources have been developed by Frontline in collaboration with DfE.
Published: 30 January 2025
Last updated: 30 January 2025