Curiosity at Work: Using Curiosity to Unlock New Power in Your Team
What if the secret to leading in today's hyperconnected world wasn't about holding onto control, but letting your curiosity spark a surge of shared energy?
What if the biggest shift in how power works today isn’t happening in the halls of Congress or corporate boardrooms, but in your team’s Slack channel?
What if your team’s real power doesn’t come from the boss sitting at the head of the table, but from the dynamic energy flowing through every conversation? That’s New Power.
I’m stoked to share a Curiosity-Based Thinking approach to introducing the concept of new power to yourself and your team immediately.
What Is “New Power” (and Why It Matters)
New power is a concept coined by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms to describe a shifting dynamic in how influence, energy, and authority operate in our digital, interconnected world. Unlike “old power” which works like a currency (held by few, jealously guarded, and leader-driven) new power works like a current. It is open, participatory, peer-driven, and fluid.
In organizational settings, this means influence is increasingly earned through transparency, shared ownership, and engagement, not just title or decision-making authority. For a manager, project leader, or team lead, understanding how to channel new power can mean shifting from mandating to inviting, from controlling to enabling.
The Power Behind the Shift
Think about how a hashtag can mobilize millions, how Wikipedia gets built, or how your team’s best ideas often come from unexpected conversations rather than formal meetings.
For managers, team leaders, and anyone trying to get things done at work, understanding new power isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. The teams that learn to harness participatory, collaborative energy consistently outperform those stuck in old power hierarchies. But here’s the challenge: most of us learned leadership in an old power world.
How do you bridge that gap without throwing away everything that works?
What if curiosity could help you discover new power principles by connecting them to familiar workplace experiences you’re already having?
New Power Curiosity-Based Thinking Discovery Activity
Time: 10 minutes
Materials: Just your curious mind
Step 1: Curiosity Think about the last time something spread quickly through your workplace—maybe a new idea, a piece of news, a meme, or even a complaint. Got it? Now get curious:
What made it spread so fast?
Who was involved in spreading it?
How did people participate in passing it along?
What would have happened if only your manager had tried to spread the same thing?
Step 2: Discovery Here’s where it gets interesting. What you just identified is new power in action. That thing that spread quickly succeeded because it was:
Participatory: People didn’t just receive it, they actively passed it on
Peer-driven: It moved horizontally between colleagues, not just down from above
Open: Anyone could participate in spreading it
Collaborative: It got stronger as more people engaged with it
Step 3: Reframing Now look at a current challenge your team faces. Instead of asking “How do I get people to do this?” ask “How do I create something people want to participate in?” The shift from pushing information to creating participation is the heart of new power.
Step 4: Creation Design one small experiment for this week: Take something you need to communicate or implement and add one participatory element. Maybe ask people to add their own examples, contribute ideas, or help solve part of the puzzle. Make them co-creators, not just recipients.
Introducing New Power to Your Team with Curiosity-Based Thinking
Let’s use Curiosity Q&A to introduce the idea of new power to your team. You can run this in 10–15 minutes with a group, or even adapt it in a one-on-one.
Step 1: Pose the Question
“What if influence in our team worked like water instead of a paycheck?”
This frames New Power indirectly, letting curiosity guide the discovery.
Step 2: Take an Immediate Action
Ask each person to write down or sketch, in 60 seconds:
A real moment when someone in the team influenced change without authority.
One obstacle they felt when trying to influence that way.
Step 3: Keep in Mind
Remind them: “Influence doesn’t always flow from title; often it flows from trust, insight, or momentum.”
Step 4: Deeper Learning
Invite them to share patterns:
What types of influence showed up (permission, modeling, asking)?
Where did people resist? Why?
Step 5: Challenge
Pick one idea from the sharing and ask:
“What is one small experiment we could try this week to test influence-as-current in this team?”
By the end, the team begins to experience what new power feels like, which is a lot less command, and a whole lot more pull; less hierarchy, more flow. Not unlike the nature of curiosity!
Example in Practice
Imagine a product team debating feature priorities. Instead of the Product Lead dictating roadmap, you run this Curiosity Q&A. A developer recalls when a junior teammate casually prototyped an idea that got adopted. And it did not get adopted through rank, but because others rallied behind it in support. The group isolates that influence happened because the prototype was visible, simple, and invites iteration.
So the team experiments:
They set up a public “idea canvas” anyone can post to.
Anyone can vote or comment, and those ideas shift roadmap priorities.
Over weeks, influence shifts. More voices get heard. Energy increases. You are channeling New Power.
Application: Bringing New Power Into Your Work
Invite contribution early. In kickoffs, don’t merely assign. Ask: “What ideas would you bring?”
Visualize influence flows. Use tools (like public boards or Slack threads) to show what’s gaining traction.
Rotate roles of ownership. Let someone unexpected own a subproject to test distributed ownership.
Celebrate initiatives, not just compliance. Recognize ideas that emerged bottom-up.
Your Daily Win
Pick one tiny interaction today. Pose a What if question instead of issuing a directive. For example:
“What if the person who spots the gap can propose a fix, even if it’s outside their role?”
Watch how people respond differently when you invite rather than command.
8 What If…? Prompts to Seed New Power in Your Team
What if any team member could start a micro-project and pitch for support?
What if influence was visible in a public dashboard instead of hidden in hierarchy?
What if we rewarded the person who connected ideas more than the person who made the decision?
What if “authority” came from contribution, not title?
What if every meeting began with: “Who has a voice that hasn’t been heard?”
What if we asked customers directly to co-create priorities and influence our roadmap?
What if sharing control actually gave you more influence?
What if your role shifted from having all the answers to asking the best questions?
Why Curiosity + New Power Work Together
Curiosity is the tool that opens up space. New power is the energy that flows through that space. Curiosity nudges people to explore, question, invite. And when you do, you unleash influence dynamics that defy hierarchy.
Research consistently shows that curiosity enhances collaborative problem-solving and workplace performance. A study by Todd Kashdan and colleagues found that workplace curiosity predicted job satisfaction, engagement, and innovation better than traditional performance metrics. When we’re curious about problems rather than just pushing solutions, we activate what neuroscientists call “exploratory networks” in the brain. The exact, same networks that drive participatory engagement.
This connects directly to new power dynamics. Curiosity is inherently participatory. When you pique someone’s curiosity, you invite them into the discovery process. They stop being passive recipients and become active participants. This is why new power models consistently outperform old power approaches for complex, creative work.
Curiosity-Based Thinking Meets New Power
Curiosity-Based Thinking provides a perfect methodology for implementing new power principles because both approaches:
Start with questions rather than answers
Invite participation rather than demand compliance
Build energy through engagement rather than authority
Create ownership through contribution rather than assignment
Value discovery over dictation
When you combine curiosity’s natural participatory energy with new power’s collaborative frameworks, you create work environments where people are simultaneously more engaged and more productive.
This happens because instead of being stuck figuring out how to choose between autonomy and alignment, they’re free to find both through meaningful participation.
The organizations that learn to harness this combination will consistently outperform those stuck in old power thinking, not because they’re abandoning structure, but because they’re building better, more responsive structures that work with human nature rather than against it.
Your Next Move
Ready to put new power principles to work in your team? Start with curiosity!
The Curiosity at Work eBook provides step-by-step guides for transforming everyday workplace challenges into opportunities for collaborative discovery and innovation.
Get your copy here and discover how leading with questions instead of answers can revolutionize how your team works together.
What if the best way to gain power at work is to give it away? There’s only one way to find out…
Stay curious!
Matt