Sometimes the most meaningful piece of feedback never registers, whether it’s because a person is fearful of speaking up, or because they did and were ignored or drowned out.

At SurveyMonkey, we believe the power of curiosity can change feedback’s bad rap. As children, we exercise curiosity by the minute. As adults, we need to relearn how to use it. And as leaders, we need to foster it across our organizations. We believe in curiosity so much that we made it our mission.

Working with creativity and curiosity researcher Spencer Harrison, associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, we learned that achieving greater inclusion starts with a mindset of inquiry.

Broadening the Definition of Team: When we surveyed our employees about company benefits, they gave us surprising and inspiring feedback.  This feedback grew our definition of teammate, and started a dialogue about how we could support our extended team, who enhance the quality of our work environment.

Moving Beyond Diversity to Belonging: To gather feedback on inclusion, we created a survey called the Belonging & Inclusion template, which measures the lived experiences of employees. We uncovered areas where we could improve, particularly when it came to helping employees understand their path to career growth.

Using Curiosity For Good: Most recently, we have committed to crafting tools to build curiosity in the social sector. For the past three years we have piloted with the Fund for Shared Insight a feedback system called Listen for Good, which more than 200 nonprofits now are using.

Read the full article on the power of curiosity for building equity by Zander Lurie at Stanford Social Innovation Review.