Employee engagement has been extensively studied by businesses seeking ways to ensure employees enjoy their work and are motivated. The document discusses Ian Leslie's book "Curious" and suggests that tapping into employees' innate sense of curiosity is one of the simplest and most effective ways to do so. Curiosity thrives in a "knowledge gap" where someone has enough information to learn more but not total mastery. Providing both short-term puzzles and long-term mysteries in daily tasks can fully engage employees for a long time by fueling their curiosity. Engaged employees innovate, invest in the company, and contribute to its success.

1. I M P O R T A N C E
O F C U R I O S I T Y
N O B L E N E W M A N
The

2. Employee Engagement has been
meticulously studied and chased with great
fervor by HR departments and businesses
throughout the world.
From Myers-Briggs tests to team-building
activities, every regime is looking for ways
to ensure that their employees enjoy their
work, enjoy coming to work, and are actively
investing in doing their job well to propel
the business forward.
A failure to engage employees can result in a
sluggish business of workers doing the bare
minimum with no incentive for innovation —
only for a paycheck.
A Q U I C K L O O K

3. I N I A N L E S L I E ' S B O O K , C U R I O U S : T H E
D E S I R E T O K N O W A N D W H Y Y O U R
F U T U R E D E P E N D S O N I T , L E S L I E
S U G G E S T S T H A T O N E O F T H E S I M P L E S T
Y E T M O S T E F F E C T I V E W A Y S T O E N S U R E
P E O P L E E N J O Y T H E I R W O R K I S T O T A P
I N T O T H E I R I N H E R E N T S E N S E O F
C U R I O S I T Y .

4. LESLIE
THINK:
believes curiosity nestles in
a sweet spot between two
different contexts — no
knowledge of subject, and
mastery of subject.
Curiosity dwells between these
two contexts when a learner has
enough information for a starting
point but not enough to speak
with authority on a subject.
It is this filling of a
knowledge gap
fueling what we all
know as curiosity.

5. Curiosity also takes on different formats depending on the type of cognitive
exercise. Leslie categorizes curiosity stimulators into “puzzles” and “mysteries.”
Puzzles have all the information you need and a correct answer — and once the
curious individual reaches the answer, the curiosity fades. Mysteries, on the other
hand, are much larger scale and have lots of both necessary and extraneous
information as well as no conclusion. Whereas “who was the bad guy?” is a puzzle,
“how do we preemptively prevent crime” is a mystery.

6. To engage your employees at
work, you need to make sure
their daily tasks fall into their
“knowledge gap” — they need to
have enough information to be
excited about learning more, but
not so much that they’re bored.
Additionally, ensuring there are
both short-term puzzles and long-
term mysteries to occupy the
employee’s penchant for curiosity
will ensure that they’re fully
engaged for long stretches of
time.

7. E N G A G E D E M P L O Y E E S I N N O V A T E , I N V E S T , A N D
C O N T R I B U T E T O T H E U L T I M A T E S U C C E S S O F
T H E C O M P A N Y . F I N D O U T H O W Y O U ' L L W O R K
T H I S P R A C T I C E I N T O Y O U R W O R K S P A C E
T O D A Y .
N O B L E N E W M A N
Think about it: