The physicist Richard Feynman once described his father's gift to him as teaching him to see the world through questions rather than labels — a robin wasn't just 'a robin' but a creature with hollow bones, a particular hunger, a migration wired into its nervous system. This habit of radical curiosity, what Feynman called 'the pleasure of finding things out,' is also a profound leadership practice. Leaders who stay genuinely curious about the people and systems around them — rather than reaching for fast categories — consistently make better decisions and build deeper trust. The universe rewards the person who keeps asking the next question.

Where in your work or relationships have you stopped asking questions because you already know the name for the thing — and what might you discover if you looked again?

Drawing from Scientific humanism / Epistemic curiosity — Richard Feynman