'To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly'. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
One of the words that has not yet come into common organizational usage is 'astonishment' and I'm just wondering why. As Lucy Kellaway points out we have a vast language of words that have become debased into corporate guff but 'astonishment' fortunately has not yet reached this point. So, while it is still untainted by being included in a competence framework or list of essential applicant capabilities let me suggest why it is a valuable characteristic to nurture.
'Astonishment' has appeared a couple of times this week in my in-box, once in the quote above and once in a Brain Pickings email in which poet, Wislawa Szymborska, argues that not-knowing, 'is the seedbed of our capacity for astonishment, which in turn gives meaning to our existence'.