Boom. Triggered. (and I’m not referring to July 4th fireworks😉)

Why? You name the reason. We’ve all been there.

One of my coaching mottos for leaders is: “Be curious, not furious,” and it came in handy for one leader when he was *ALMOST* triggered.

In this leader’s regular one-on-ones with his employees, he had one employee in particular who was showing up as disinterested, disengaged, and lacking motivation to do his job.

The employee wasn’t very responsive to questions and seemed to be avoiding any real conversation with him.

This leader began to get frustrated, because he thought his employee just didn’t care about his job.

BUT, the leader stopped before going any further with that frustration. In his head, he asked himself a few CURIOUS questions…

–       Why might he be showing up as disengaged and unresponsive?

–       What could I be missing or assuming?

–       How has he shown up in the past, and how is this different?

He then decided to shift the conversation with his employee—not to accuse, just to state what he was observing and ask about it.

[This is what I call practicing JUDGMENT-FREE AWARENESS!]

He shifted the conversation like this:

“I’m noticing today that you don’t seem like your normal self. You aren’t responding to questions like you typically do and something seems off. I’m curious if you’re noticing that too?

The employee reluctantly acknowledged it. So the leader stayed curious by asking, “Where do you think that might be coming from?” The employee began to open up and share what was really going on.

As you can tell, you can fill in the blank with whatever the situation might be. This leader only described to the employee the FACTUAL observations that he’d made—not his ASSUMPTIONS or the STORY he’d begun to tell himself about the facts.

And come to find out, the employee’s ACTUAL story was completely different than the leader’s ASSUMED story.

Rather than the employee being disinterested and noncommittal, he was actually dealing with a fear of failure. He had been discouraged about his performance and didn’t know how to ask for help from his boss without it affecting his standing in the organization.

When the leader realized this through the conversation, he was able to provide the support the employee needed.

This corrected not just the SYMPTOMS of the problem (appearing disinterested and disengaged in conversation) but the ROOT of the problem (fear of failure).

When we allow our TRIGGERS to make us CURIOUS rather than FURIOUS, it can strengthen our leadership and we can inspire and help the people we lead!