Trust Motivator

A young man at a client company wanted to become a future leader. He was aggressive in learning and achieving his goals, but passive in communication. The speaker shared a strategy called state and ask, and told the young man that being a manager requires exhibiting trust at all times. The young man admitted that it would be hard for him, but the speaker praised him for acknowledging the challenge and rewarded his trustworthiness. The speaker emphasized the importance of leading with a statement, tying it to the person's motivator, and listening during the discussion. You know, I want to share with you a story to represent how you can tie the motivator to this thing called trust. Recently, we were in a conversation at one of our client company sites that a young man wanted to become a future leader. And I would say he was passive-aggressive, and I know passive-aggressive can have a negative connotation. I don't mean it in that way. He was aggressive in terms of learning. He was aggressive in terms of the way he wanted to achieve things. He was very aggressive in terms of what he wanted to do with his life. Yet, he was passive in his communication. He was a people-pleaser. And I'll never forget when he said, I really want to become a future leader. And we said, why? And he really had some great answers. And I said, you know, I want to share with you something. And I want you to think about, again, this is a strategy called state and ask. And you lead with a statement. And he said, sure. And I said, I want to share with you a statement. And I want you to just not react right away. I want you to just think about what I said. And then I want you to think about what you need to do to represent that. He said, okay. I said, being a manager requires you 100% of the time to always facilitate and exhibit trust without exception, no matter the circumstances. And as I said it, you could just see his face get flushed. And I didn't do it to expose him, but he felt exposed. And I let it go about a minute. And I said, so what's going through your mind? He said, that is really going to be hard for me. I said, awesome. He said, what? I said, that is awesome that you are already demonstrating trust. You're not dismissing it saying, yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a pretty trustworthy guy. That would get you in trouble. I'm proud of you. So, what I did in that few seconds is I reframed from his admission of, uh-oh, this is a challenge to I was rewarding his trustworthiness, his honesty, his transparency. So, lead with a statement and then tie it to the person's motivator and then open it up for discussion and really listen.