How To Master The Hardest Job In Recruitment: The Billing Manager Role with Andrew Sillitoe

We weren't a professional hockey team, so we didn't have the money to go and travel and play exhibition games. We literally turned up to the World Championships and played our first game, and it was just like, we don't even know how we're going to perform against Australia or Austria or Hungary or whatever. So let's test it. Let's test everything. Let's try it.

Welcome back to the show. My name is Hishem Azzouz, and on this week's episode, I was joined by Andrew Szilagyi.

I started playing street hockey when I was a kid, like 8, 9 years old, and just got lucky. I always think of myself as getting lucky. We didn't have any ice rinks where I lived, so I just fell into street hockey. We did have the best roller disco though. In the country.

Now, I've known Andrew for some time. We actually sat down quite a while back to record a face-to-face podcast, and this time around we got together to discuss his recent published book called Player Coach. Andrew wanted to give the recruitment industry a gift by distilling all of his wisdom, his principles, his insights from supporting and working with over 3,000 billing managers, which he likes to call player coaches. So he distills how to be a successful player coach into 10 laws, and in this conversation we break down each law and why it is a law in Andrew's eyes. So Andrew's now the founder of Team Head Coach, and we have a great partnership with Andrew at Hector. So hopefully this conversation, these laws, these principles, these insights from Andrew will massively help you. What have you found to be the most effective way to hold people accountable in terms of like consistency.

Best way to describe it is a—

Let's get into this week's episode. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Hishem, my man, it's good to see you.

Likewise. Sat down a real long time ago, a few times, when we was— yeah, when he was in, uh, obviously when he was on the podcast a while back, it was in the studio when I was working for Sean at Hoxo. Yeah, yeah, uh in East London, the depths of East London. Came in.

Yeah, I remember walking through that area thinking, what's going on here? Where, where are you taking me?

Literally. Um, so obviously we, we've got to know each other over a long period of time, obviously doing some really cool things together now. So I'm, I'm excited to sort of have this conversation with you. I think just to frame it up for everyone, what we're looking to do this conversation before before I get you to introduce yourself for those that may not know sort of who you are, your story. But you recently, which you like to call the gift to the recruitment industry, written a book called Play a Coach, which is all about how to stay, remain top biller whilst building a winning team, um, and scale faster. So I know you've done hours and hours and hours of work with people in our industry that are often described, uh, to be in the most difficult seat in the industry, which is the billing manager role. And, you know, with what we do at Hector, a lot of people that deliver training for us are people in that player coach role. And I think that those types of people, I've, I've found, are often some of the most underserved people in the industry in terms of support, development, which is why I think this this book, like, the amount of people that you've helped, worked with is, um, yeah, amazing. So what we're going to do is we're going to find out why Andrew even, you know, put this book together, um, how this came about. But also we're going to go through, uh, this book in this conversation. And you've broken down this player-coach, uh, role into 10 laws, and we're going to break down what those 10 laws are to all of you listening who may be aspiring to become a manager or in a player coach role right now can hopefully, you know, maximize that position that you're in. Uh, so yeah, so let's— Andrew, give us, you know, for people that don't know who you are, give us the, the background, because I think you, you know, your story is pretty unique, and I really like the, you know, the, the mix of, um, you know, the, the sports, uh, part of your life and also then, you know, the coaching, uh, part of your life. So tell us a bit about you know, who you are, and for those that may not know who you are.

Yeah, well, I'm a— best way to describe it is a former international athlete turned head coach, international head coach turned business psychologist. That's probably the, the roadmap. I started playing street hockey when I was a kid, like 8, 9 years old, and just got lucky. I always think of myself as getting lucky. We didn't have any ice rinks where I lived, so I just fell into street hockey. We did have the best roller disco though. In the country. So spent my Saturday nights in a roller disco and then ended up just playing hockey and traveling around Europe and then ended up pursuing it professionally. I moved to Canada, played down in California, had an amazing experience. I mean, this is back in the late '90s, so I'm showing my age a little bit now. And then I stopped playing in 2010, started coaching at the same time I was working at S3. So I'd taken on this job at S3 as, and my role was to help create a coaching and feedback culture there. So very much immersed, I had an awesome team, and we just started designing content to help S3 develop the leaders. I was doing executive coaching. And what was great about it is I was coaching the British team at the same time, so I was sharing these kind of anecdotal, these challenges. I was kind of building, you know, this concept of building in public. It was kind of the first time I'd started actually saying, this is my biggest challenge right now, I don't know how to be Austrian, sharing this journey. So I think that added a bit of credibility with the leaders there, that I was on this kind of mission, if you like. We had a lot of success with the British team. We had kind of a historic moment. And also at the same time, I was observing this challenge around growth at S3, you know, and S3 was very much, very bought into the billing manager role. You know, the whole concept of scaling, it's kind of the legacy, there, and I think a lot of this conversation around billing manager is probably Esprit legacy. I'm sure it exists in some of the other businesses as well. But when I left Esprit in 2012, I went straight into consulting work. So I was traveling around the Middle East, Europe, US, working with Fortune 500 companies. I'd done a master's in organizational psychology, and I was really going into this deep into management consulting. But it was, it's kind of causing a bit of a strain on me and my family, my health. And at the same time, I was getting these inquiries from recruitment business owners saying, look, you know, that work you did at S3, can you come and help us with, um, some of our leaders? And it just grew from there. And then it just shifted from management consulting with Fortune 500s being 99% of my work to 99% of my work being with recruitment companies. And we're forming some strategic partnerships and I was having so much more fun, you know. It's like, you know, you know, the recruitment industry, it's just, it's just good people focused, you know. I think as far as sports and business are concerned, those two, that like the recruitment industry is about as close to high-performance sports for an industry you're going to get, right? So, so it served me really well. I've had 10 years now, or just over 10 years, serving recruitment companies, helping them develop their leaders. I would say that now 90% of my work is working with CEOs, so I'm doing more executive coaching with the CEO. And then typically what happens is we start having a conversation about growth and scaling and, and developing their leaders. So they either put one or two of their billing managers on our course, or they've got enough to run it in-house. And that's what I'm doing, is we run the player coach course. And that's how it's come about. And, and I was just thinking, you know, that I I can't scale this as much as I'd like to. The best way to scale it is write a book, you know. Why don't I just put it all into a book, share my story, share my experiences of being a player coach myself, billing manager, not in recruitment, but I worked at Yellow Pages. I've always worked in sales. I was a player coach for Team Great Britain back in 2006. And so I'm bringing together these principles to help billing managers, and it, you know, the feedback is it's just practical, it works. You know, if I do the— if I follow these steps, you know, the system, then, then it works. As soon as I stop following the system, you know, things start to unravel a little bit.

And you've— and you've helped— what I was looking on, I think you put on your website that you've helped over like 3,000 billing managers, something like that.

Yeah, I mean, if you include the 300 or 400 at S3 and then the 200 or 300 a year that we've worked with over the last 10 years, and then those that have just taken on the online program, then possibly it could be— I don't know, it could be more, but yeah, you know, if you include the on— like, people just doing it by themselves.

And like you said, the, the system that you often talk about is what you've distilled in this book, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Um, so yeah, I think it'll be fun to just go through this together. So people listening who might be in that seat right now or aspiring to can hopefully, yeah, like, uh, hopefully perform better in that role because it is really difficult.

It's a stressful role, you know, and, you know, I talk about that and well-being, and I don't talk about it in a fluffy way, but if you, if you're organized, you can, you can make it work. But it, like any sales job or sales management job, it's the best job in the world, the worst job in the world, you know, if we don't stay on top of it. So yeah, hopefully it can help.

So let's break this down. So you, you've broken it down into two, into 10 laws, but like two sections. You've got the foundations, yeah, and then you've got the playbook. So let's start with the foundations, which I'm assuming is like, you have to have this right before we talk about the other stuff.

Yeah, I think the foundations I think of as a mindset, but it's definitely a skill element to it as well, you know. So like the first one is ask, don't tell, right? So, and this has come from my experience of being a sales manager myself and that making that, that error of being a high-performing salesperson, going into a sales management role, and just telling people to do exactly what I did, and you'll be really successful. And in some ways, following, you know, some of the, of a blueprint, of course there are some basics, certainly recruitment, that you have to follow to be successful. But it, it's, there's a process to that, you know, you've got to train them first. But if you keep telling them what to do because they're not performing well or whatever, and I was doing that As a sales manager, I did it, I somehow, even with everything I knew back in 2010 when I took on the head coach job for Great Britain, I went in with this kind of didactic approach, and, you know, telling players how we're gonna play, what we're gonna do, what we're gonna achieve, and I just got lots of resistance. So it was a real light bulb moment, and when I'm working with leaders and they start to realize the power of asking good questions, not manipulative questions, sometimes people get it wrong and they think, if I just ask the question and I get the answer I want, I'm coaching. No, you're not. If you know the answer to the question you're asking, just tell them. It's not that we're not trying to steer them to the answer, but being curious, believing that people are creative, that they've got intuition. Even someone on day one, you know, of a recruitment job, of course they're not gonna have the in-depth knowledge, but you can ask them a question, they've got some gut feel. If you help create an environment where people feel confident to share ideas, to bring some innovation, But it all comes from the leader's questions. It's the ability to ask really good questions. We do it in sales, we do it when we are working with clients, and then sometimes do the exact opposite with our people. So that to me is the number one skill that every leader should double down on, is the ability to ask questions, to help people think. And it should feel challenging for people. It shouldn't be easy.

Yeah. So what I write down is you put seek first to understand and then to be understood.

Yeah, Stephen Covey quote, Stephen Covey, you know, that, that, you know, going into these conversations without an agenda sometimes is, is important, particularly with mentoring.

So let's just bring this to life a bit. Give us maybe an example of if I'm a player coach right now and I'm— I don't have this, like what you seem to be like, the, the, um, seems like the number one skill that I really need to get better at and work on. What does like telling people sound like in a recruitment context? Like, what does that sound— what might that sound like?

Be taller.

Be taller.

Be taller. I mean, it's what it sounds like, you know. It's like, that's what it sounds like to a person. It's like saying to a 5-foot-4 basketball player who wants to make the NBA, be taller, you know. So we're just constantly kind of— it's an analogy, you know. It's— that's what it feels like for the consultant. So be faster, do more, make more calls. You know, it's all that sort of just talking about the output, you know, and, you know, ask these questions, say this, say this, you know, get it over the line. You want to get the deal over the line. You know, I don't think it happens as much now, but I used to see managers literally in the ear of the consultants telling them what to say next, you know, rather than use it as an opportunity to spend some time after that call to reflect. And ask some questions, you know.

And do you think that also— what springs to mind for me when you're giving those examples is I feel like that really damages the feeling of agency. Like, if my manager is just telling me, like, do this, like, do this, do more of this. Yeah, I'm not— I don't feel like I'm gonna feel any sort of, like, ownership or, yeah, agency of, like, what I'm doing. And I'm just trying to keep my manager happy, which I don't think is Exactly. Sustainable way to be happy in my role or perform well in my role consistently.

Absolutely. We know what motivates people. If you look at Daniel Pink's work in Surprising Truths About What Motivates Us and Drive, you know, purpose. Give me clarity about what I'm supposed to do. When people say they've got a motivation problem, I would say 99% of the time they don't have a motivation problem, they have a clarity problem. The person isn't exactly sure what they're supposed to be working on that day, or they've got too many things to focus on. So purpose is, is key. Autonomy. You know, let me do it my way then. Let me figure this out. I know what the beginning is. I know what the end is because you've asked me the questions and you framed it that way. And then mastery. Let me, let me master this. Let me, let me develop the skill. Give me the space. Give me the tools. Give me the resources to develop mastery. So we've got purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Those three things together will drive motivation. They'll drive getting in the zone, you know, using the athlete's kind of language, or dropping into flow. Then you get into that high productive, high peak performance mindset when you give people that space.

What does it, what does ask sound like then, Andrew, in a player coach role? What does ask sound like in a billing manager role?

Hishem, what's your biggest challenge right now?

That's totally different, and that makes me feel totally different.

'Where do you want to get to by the end of the month?' You know, or, 'Tell me what the highlights were of your last podcast.' You know, 'What went well?' You know, 'What would you have done differently on that podcast?' 'What questions would you have asked differently in that podcast?' You know, 'Talk me through that.' So what— when I see you on the next podcast, what will I see different? Well, I'll ask this question. So whether it's a podcast, whether it's a sales call, whether it's a pitch a meeting that someone's just had. You know, it's— I always say to people, particularly when you're mentoring, you know, and we'll talk about bench coaching versus mentoring. Bench coaching is in the game, right? You are observing good stuff. I know we're probably getting ahead of the game a little bit here with the laws, but sometimes people confuse bench coaching with mentoring. They're two different things. Bench coaching is a retrospective conversation. Something just happened, we watched the game, Let's analyze it. Let's talk about it. Or we— I listen to the call with you, or I just watched you deliver that pitch, or let's talk about the highlights of the week. Um, the mentoring— the mentoring conversation is more about getting people away from the game and asking different questions. And I always say to people, if you're gonna have a mentoring conversation, it's gonna— it's either gonna be you downloading on them for 90% of the time and they're just gonna zone out, You know, you're gonna go through a checklist of KPIs and just, are they green or red or amber? And it's a really dull conversation. Or you're gonna say to them, hey, we've got half an hour, what do you wanna focus on? What's the goal of this conversation? And for some people, they'll be a rabbit in the headlights with that, particularly if it's different to what they're used to. You say to someone, we've got 45 minutes, 1 hour, what are we focusing on today? What's your biggest challenge? Chances are, if they're not used to that, they will struggle with that conversation. But people forget that developing mentoring skills and coaching skills is one thing, but the people that are being coached and being mentored have to learn how to be coached and mentored because they have to do the work. Because for the most part, people are inherently lazy. You know, they just tell me what to do, Hishem. Like, I'm got tired, you know, I just want to get out there and, you know, I'm struggling with this, the market's bad, just tell me what to do in a bad market, tell me what to do "with a difficult client, tell me what to do, a candidate doesn't want this role," whatever it is, you know, versus, "Well, let's have a conversation about that, and you tell me, if you're in the shoes of that candidate, what does that candidate need from you right now? And how will you go about showing up in that way?" You know, and asking questions that just move it from you speaking 80% of the time to the person you're coaching speaking 80% of the time, and you're asking questions. You know, the rule of thumb is 70/30 to 80/20. If you can get to that point, then you're doing really well. And so every mentoring conversation's got to have a beginning and an end, right? So if we're starting a conversation with, "What's your biggest challenge right now? Okay, what does good look like in the next 30 days for you? Where do you want to get to? Where are you right now? What's going on for you right now?" Now we've got a beginning of the journey and we've got an end. But often what happens is the conversation just goes, ends up in this swirl. We end up trying to fix the problem and brainstorming around it. We leave the meeting and we go, And then we get annoyed because the consultant hasn't done what they said they were— kind of said what they're going to do. And for the most part, it's because we haven't helped that person understand what the end goal is. We haven't helped them understand what the beginning is. We haven't helped them brainstorm and choose the best option. And then we haven't said to them, okay, when do you want to get this done by? Okay, let's check in on Friday afternoon and see where you got to. And if you don't check in on Friday afternoon to see where they got to, guess what's gonna happen? They're gonna think, "Easy life." And, "My boss doesn't hold me accountable." So, you know, and I try to encourage people to think about the best managers they've had. For the most part, it's the ones that were tough, you know, that held them accountable, were challenging, and helped them grow as people. You know, people look back and go, "I used to have these amazing conversations with my boss. They were hard, they were tough." They were quite challenging, but I always come out of a goal and I always came out feeling 10 feet tall. That's, that's what you want. You're not just battered, you know.

I love that.

KPI battering.

Just to, um, just to bring this home then, you mentioned a fishbowl exercise. Yeah, you'd like to do. Yeah, yeah, there's a bit about— tell us a bit about that because that could be something that people could experiment with.

Yeah, well, you can do it in your team. So we— and we did this We ran a program last year with Frank Group with their senior directors, and it was great. And we used the fishbowl activity there, and you could basically get two people in the middle. And so let's say it's me and you in the middle, and you've got people sat around the outside watching our conversation, and you're coaching me, and your job is to help me formulate my objective for the next 90 days, right? And work through what some of the problems might be and where I am now, and so on. And during that conversation, you might get stuck, right? So you might get stuck with, I'm stuck here, I don't know what question to ask Andrew next. And if someone noticed that on the outside, they can tap you on the shoulder, jump in your chair, you jump in their chair, and you now watch, and that person carries the conversation on.

Oh nice.

And it's a really good way for teams to, one, do a bit of innovation. We have a framework as well, the COPE model. Anyone that's been on our course will know the COPE model. It's a 5-step plan, so it's basically getting people to think about what was the objective, what's the outcome, where are you now, what resources do you need, do a bit of brainstorming, choose the best option, right, let's execute, let's put it into a SMART objective and go for it. Test it, refine it, et cetera. Stay agile. But that exercise itself is just a really good way for people, one, to understand what some of the challenges everybody in the team's facing and experiencing, so it gives them insight. You know, into that. It gives them empathy, makes them feel like, okay, I'm not the only person in this route, in this team, that's got the same challenge or problem, and we can all solve it together. So it's just a great exercise that a business owner can take away and start running with their teams.

Love that. Yes, that's a great exercise. So ask, don't tell. Then we have law 2: fail fast, learn quick. I feel like that's quite— so I write down here, safety to fail. How do you actually— yeah, how do you actually create this? But yeah, fail fast, learn quick. Tell us a bit about this.

Well, I think this came back again from my work with Team GB is that we weren't a professional hockey team, so we didn't have the money to go and travel and play exhibition games. We literally turned up to the World Championships and played our first game, and it was just like, we don't even know how we're gonna perform against Australia or Austria or Hungary or whatever, so let's test it. Let's test everything. Let's try it and see everything as a test, see everything as an opportunity to learn rather than going into it thinking we cannot fail, we cannot lose this game. If we lose this game, we don't make the next stage. It was just I guess it's a little bit like Simon Sinek talks about, the finite game versus the infinite game. You know, the— it's a constant learning process. And I think what happens in recruitment with managers is they interfere with the opportunity for the consultant to learn because they want it to be perfect. So they want that whole recruitment process to be perfect in a kind of linear way and making sure people don't drop the ball on that. So let's say there are 10 things they have to do, they drop the ball on 2 of them, the deal falls through. You know, they want to kind of jump in and say, make sure that those two things don't ever happen again. And they get too involved rather than, again, having that retrospective conversation to say, okay, look, the deal fell through. Let's talk about the highlights. Let's talk about what you did well. Well, I found the client, pulled two jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah. It all worked. You know, I did all of that. So what were some of the things you could have worked on and done differently? Well, these two areas here, I think I dropped the ball. Or if they don't know it, That's your opportunity to say, "Well, look, I think what happened here is that you missed these two bits here and that's why it fell out. Would you agree?" And then use it as an opportunity for them to develop that. So they failed, but they've got to learn quick. And you would hope that they don't do that again. If they do it again, then we probably have a little bit of a challenge there with that individual, right? If they're making the same mistake over and over again, there's a lack of conscientiousness or whatever. Um, so the failing fast, learning quick is just getting out of the way, essentially. Let's, let's do it. But you've also got to create an environment or a system that makes fail fast, learn quick work. Because if you're just failing, then it's just gonna— it's just you're doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. But if you're failing fast, learning quick, then you've got to put a system in place to learn quick, which is— for some people it might be daily retrospective conversations. Talk me through the highlights of your day, what went well, what's been challenging. Or it could be weekly. For your more senior consultants, more independent achievers, they probably need a catch-up every 2 weeks or a month to have those retrospective conversations. Because even high performers, they will get complacent. We see it in sports, you know, get complacent, they take the foot off the gas and they end up in a rut. They can't make the plays they want to play or score goals. And then they start getting the inner voice, self-chat, You know, so there's a few things that we have to do with fail fast, learn quick. One is create psychological safety, create a safe place for people to go out and try stuff, and also to be able to come back and not feel like they're going to get battered for it, but actually come back and have someone listen to them, help them understand what they did well, also help them understand what could have been better, and then make sure that they execute on those gaps.

So how do you actually do that? Is it by Is it by proving that that's, that's what you're doing for them? Because like the way that you just said that makes complete sense. And I'm thinking, how, how does one actually make another person feel safe to fail? And you know, where I end up is if you do what you're saying, it's just about doing it and proving to that person that they're not going to get battered, they're not going to be embarrassed in front of everyone. But actually they're going to be, uh, hopefully given an amazing opportunity to learn on how they can get a different outcome, which is what they're aiming for next time.

Yeah.

Is it just by doing what you just said?

It always comes back to the conversation, always, you know. So let's say, you know, you're a consultant and a deal fell through. You know why? You dropped the ball on something. You didn't follow the process. You got a little bit complacent and you're thinking, oh, I've got to go and tell my boss. I've got to tell my boss. I can't believe this. It's gonna I promised this, this was in my pipeline, I was depending on it, the team's depending on it, and how am I going to explain this to my boss? Now, there's two extremes. One is, you're an idiot, what have you done? Why did you do this? But there's nothing better for someone to come back and hear the boss go, okay, let's talk about it. Let's just talk about it, because you clearly did some things here to get to this point, in the sales process? Yeah. So I'd like to understand that a bit as well. So what that does is it makes them think, oh yeah, there was, there were some things that I did that worked well. It wasn't a complete failure. And now I know that those things I should keep doing because they work. And then you must say, so let's have a bit of a chat about why this happened. You know, what, what's your, what's your opinion of it? Why do you think it fell through? Now they might make excuses. They might say, well, the candidate wasn't honest with me, or whatever. My question to that consultant would be, well, what is it you did or not do that caused the candidate not to be honest with you? Because I don't want to complain about the candidate. I want to take ownership of the situation. And they go, well, I suppose I could have done— okay, well, let's talk about that then. And it's done in a calm way, but in a firm way. It's not a fluffy conversation, we're not letting them off the hook. So, for the next month then, or when we're working on this next project, whatever it is, can I be confident that I'm going to see that change in you going forward? That this won't happen again, that we'll make sure that we follow the process. Is that cool? Yeah, you've got it. Okay. What support do you need for me to help you do that?

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And I guess that brings it into law 3, right? Hold each other accountable, which I think, uh, is, is often— I, I've— I'm always thinking about how I can do that effectively with my team, and just a team of 4. So like, tell us a bit about this, hold each other accountable. I think most managers will know they need to do it, but can often find it difficult to do it because it's, it's hard. Yeah, I find—

well, it's, it's hard for some people, particularly if you are more on the agreeable spectrum, you know, looking at, again, sort of psychology here. But if you look at the 5 personality traits psychology, one of them being agreeableness, and it's on a spectrum. So some leaders struggle with accountability because it feels like conflict, or it feels like I've got to follow up, or what if I follow up this person, they've let me down, and da da da da. You know, and if they have let me down, then what do I say? Do I put a consequence in place? Do I have to put them on a performance improvement plan? You know, what is the extreme here? You know, because so we end up kind of just avoiding that whole thing until something happens and it becomes an even bigger problem. So, and then there are other people who are really quite comfortable holding people accountable. They just do it all the time, you know. And, and unfortunately for those managers, their emotional bank account is in massive— is in negative equity, right? Because all they're doing is, where are you with this? What are you doing? Where are you going? You know, what's happening with this? What's happening with this? Right, uh, well, I've got a problem with it. Okay, well, let's fix that. What you need to do is this, this, this, and this, right? So when are you going to get done by? And it sounds like that, and it's just like being someone just being getting jabbed. It's like going in a ring, you know, and just taking jabs in the face for, you know, 12 rounds, whatever. So, so there's a balance between ask, don't tell. Some people are really comfortable with ask, don't tell. They like the conversation, but they take it to such an extreme it's fluffy. It's like just this woolly conversation of just going around and asking questions, and it's all nice, and someone's sitting there thinking, this is— what is this, therapy? What's going on? You know, like, can we just get to the point? So there's one extreme of that, and there's the other extreme of being too directive and didactic with people. So we have to— accountability and ask, don't tell, it's like— accountability is about driving performance, and ask, don't tell is about engagement. Right, so if we look at those two things, performance and engagement, we're trying to create a culture of engagement where people feel engaged, motivated, and excited, and it's a nice place to work. It's supportive. Performance is about challenge. Make me better, you know, drive me, push me. You know, we want both. And what we often see in companies is that they drive, drive the numbers, so performance, pushing it, pushing it, pushing it, and then we start to see a little bit of burnout. They do an engagement score and everyone's upset and not happy and wants to leave and blah, blah, blah. So they go, oh, we better do some engagement stuff now. Like get everyone happy. Let's fill the office up with beanbags and table tennis tables and give everybody a, you know, a smoothie when they turn up or whatever it is they're doing. And it's like the flip-flop. And I liken that to— I mean, I use ice hockey as an example, football is a good example, to maybe tennis. The difference between amateurs and pros, the biggest difference is a professional ice hockey player shoots the puck hard, shoots it accurately. It's the difference. The amateur can shoot it hard or they can shoot accurately. They can't do both at the same time. It's really what separates the pros from the amateurs. So organizations that can do performance and engagement simultaneously is what makes them different. So the ones that flip-flop. And the companies I see that just have a great— would create a high-performance culture are that they have the ability to do both really well.

I really like that, the, yeah, the performance engagement. So when it, so when it comes to holding each other accountable, yeah, I think you've given some, I think you've given some good examples of like what that sounds like. But like, when is, when is the line of Andrew, you know, I felt like, I feel like, you know, would you agree that we sort of both understood that you was going to do this differently so we didn't end up in this outcome again. But then they, you know, do it again and again. Like, when, you know, when— I don't know, just trying to think about when, when is the line of being like, right, I've held this person accountable, they're not sort of changing what we've agreed they said they'd change, and we're still arriving at the same outcome, which isn't the outcome that we're looking for.

Well, this, this is something we spend a lot of time on the course because it's it's— it requires some feedback, right? So what we would teach on the course is something like, well, first of all, you've got to have evidence, right? It's like, oh, this has happened several times, you know, and I'm starting to get a bit pissed off about it now. It's like, well, it hasn't happened several— it's the first time. No, no, it's, you know, because there's no evidence, it's just a sweeping generalization, right? Yeah. But what you're describing is, look, I've noticed that 'This is the third time we've had this conversation about this situation. It's the third time it's happened, and last time we talked about it, we discussed that if this continued, we were going to have a different type of conversation. So you've really given me no other option,' you know. And it might get to that stage where it's, okay, this is now verbal warning. Now, anybody getting into that situation, whatever you do, speak to HR. 'Cause if it is getting to that stage, then you do need to get advice on what the process is for your business and make sure that you follow the process. Because otherwise, if it gets too general and sweeping statements and you're always like this, you're always late, you're always, you know, dropping the ball here or whatever, then it will end in a messy place. Obviously, what I'm trying to do is help managers avoid that, getting to that point, you know, by doing the bench coach daily, train weekly, mentor monthly, give them all the resources, coach them. But if it gets to a point where this person just isn't fit for purpose, for the job and they could actually do much better in a different company or a different, uh, industry, then we should really give them the opportunity to, to do that.

And then just quickly then, before we move on, what have you found to be the most effective— it might— I might be jumping ahead, and if so, then we'll— we don't need to cover it now, we can go through it shortly. But what have you found to be the most effective way to hold the— hold people accountable in terms of like consistency? Is it on like a weekly basis? Is it on a daily basis? Do you know what I mean?

It's whatever you agree with the person, right? So Hishem, you, you're going to edit this podcast today, right? You know, as an example, you're going to edit it. Um, when would you like to have it edited by?

Yeah, so I'd like to have this edited by, uh, end of play today before the weekend.

Okay. And what are you hoping is the ideal outcome for that?

Is that it's ready to go, ready to be published um, so I can then share it on Monday.

Okay, so you, you want to share on Monday. So you mentioned either get it edited by today or by the weekend. What would be better for you, today or by the weekend? Today, definitely. Okay, what time would work for you? 5 o'clock. 5 o'clock. So if we catch up about 5:30 today, would that be all right, just to see where we're at and if it's ready for— yeah, posting on Monday? Yeah, that sounds fun. Cool. So that's today, you know, it's going to change depending on the project, depending on the objective, depending on what's happening, um, right? Yeah, but it shouldn't feel too like, you know, it should feel like, okay, yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, nice. All right, so then we have Law 4: Create future leaders.

Yes, well, if you want to scale You've got to create future leaders, there's no doubt about it. Invest in your people, identify the ones that have got the presence and the gravitas and the skills, the natural skills that you think are worth investing in. And, you know, I talk about the Mavericks and I talk about the quarterbacks. You know, do you want a Ronaldo running your team because he's the best on your team and, you know, smashing it out the park and so on? Or do you want a Tom Brady, you know, who's got that presence, that gravitas, you can quarterback everything? And that was always my goal with the British team, was to identify 3 to 4 players that could be my core leadership, and I know that would hold the team accountable as well when I wasn't around. So when you leave the office, you know, and you want to go home, you want to go and watch your kids play football, or, you know, take a holiday, or just go home and have some dinner, you need to know that there are some people around that can help me do that. So it's, it's one, identifying the right profile of person who can step into that leadership role, and then what sort of investment you're going to make in them to help grow them. And if you, if you look around your business and you go, well, I just don't have anybody like that, I've got, I've got a few Ronaldos, I've got a few people that are, you know, just making target, but I don't, I don't feel like I've got anyone in my team that's got that presence yet, you're probably gonna have to make an acquisition of some sort. Ideally, I always think it works better when you've got someone homegrown you can come through. I think most people that listen to this would agree with that. They might have had some examples where they've hired someone in and it's made a difference, but it's usually more senior level, I think. But if you can hire that person, even that consultant, you know, that a rookie, for, you know, grad, you know, you can still see in there, in them, whether they have the potential to, one, be a really good recruiter, and two, start to step into, have that maturity. You can just tell with certain people. You can tell by their presence, by the way they speak, how they articulate, whether they can show some leadership prowess. What have you found to be—

if I'm— what have you found to be like useful experiments in terms of What I mean by that is if I've got a team of 8 people and there might be, you know, 3 or 4 people that I'm thinking they're showing some of the things that you're talking about, but you know, what can be some good experiments on like extra responsibilities that could give them opportunities to see how they might handle certain scenarios like some of the things that we've spoken about? Is there anything useful there that you found?

I would always start with bench coaching. You know, if they're good, just give them an opportunity, give them a framework for bench coaching, observe a few calls. Can you just go and, um, you know, Hishem, it's your— you know, you've been in the business a year, year and a half or something like that, and I've just turned up, rookie in the business, and your boss says to you, hey, can you just sit with Andrew for an hour today and just listen to some of his calls, give him some coaching, you know, like how we do it, you know, just give them some of that. I would start with that. Nice, that's good. Then the next thing I would do is probably a daily setup, you know, the huddle in the morning. Hey, can you run a huddle for me? I can't make it tomorrow morning, I'm taking my kids to school. Can you run the huddle for me? Yeah, here's a bit of a framework, you know, for you to ask questions, to ask, give them that. And I would just keep layering in different things, you know, and give them a bit of coaching. Hey, I observed your huddle today, I've got some feedback for you, you know, or— and I think that's—

sorry, go on.

No, or you just ask them the questions, you know, tell me, you did the huddle today, how was it? What was good about it? Everyone left motivated and, you know, whatever.

I was just going to say, like, that's also from the individual standpoint, I think, important because it gives them opportunities to find out if they enjoy doing those things as well, right? Rather than, yeah, feeling like they're being pushed into it or forced into it, which is often the case for a lot of people.

Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, have a conversation about it. You know, that's the thing, is to prime them for that, that role, not just drop them in and expect them to swim, but just give them, give them a little bit of rope to, uh, to do it, you know, and a few skills and techniques. If, if you're, if you're, if you're role modeling it, this is the thing I always talk about with Yellow Pages. It was, it was such a brilliant organization to work for. Like the training was incredible. And by the time I moved into, I moved straight into a regional sales manager role. So it was big, a big role. And, but I knew how to have the conversations with people because my boss had been having the conversations with me. So you start to create a culture of coaching and feedback and accountability. And it just becomes the way we do things around here. It just takes, It takes a little bit longer for some companies to transform into that.

So final law of foundation then, always be hiring.

Yeah, I think, you know, I always use the analogy of, well, you never know who you're going to be working for and who's going to be working for you, for starters. Just be nice to people. So always be hiring, and also always be networking. So always think about your personal brand. Always think about how you're showing up in different situations, networking, meeting people. You know, CEOs that I work with, they might want to step away from the role. You know, if you've been a dick to someone in the past and now you want that person to be your MD, or I find that sales managers might have treated someone badly in another organization. Now that person's been brought in and they've got to report into that person. I've seen that happen before. That was— that's awkward. So it's just the idea of always be hiring, is always be networking, always be thinking about how you're showing up because you never know. And, you know, Ronaldo, we talked about Ronaldo, but when Ronaldo joined Manchester United, it was like, this is the club I'm joining because Sir Alex Ferguson had been having conversations with Ronaldo for, for years. You know, he was networking. That was one of his greatest, greatest things he did was his ability to network and mentor people from quite a young age and nurture them and develop them and So by the time they joined the club, he was like a father figure to them, you know. So you never know who— how people are going to develop and grow. And you'll see people out there and you think, right, that person there, that could be my future MD, or that could be my future leader, or that could be someone that could join us one day, you know. Um, so just always be hiring, always have that mindset, always be on the lookout, head on a swivel. Yeah, love that.

So to recap then, the foundations, the 5 laws that sit under here are Law 1: Ask, don't tell. Law 2: Fail fast, learn quick. Law 3: Hold each other accountable. Law 4: Create future leaders. And the final law we're just talking about is always be hiring. So now we come into the playbook. So yeah, we talked about— so Law 6, yeah, have a, have a game plan. And I write down here the 5 steps because I think that's sort of part of what you broke it down. Yeah. So talk to us a bit about have a game plan.

It sounds obvious, doesn't it, to have a game plan, but it's important to have a game plan. And I think for consultants or team leaders working with consultants, you know, think about your game plan over 90 days. And again, step 1 is where do we want to get to in 90 days, or where do you want to get to in 90 days? What does good look like for you? Where are you now? Right, so we've got a bit of contrast, but we've got a beginning of the journey and a destination. It's really important to frame that, you know, what is our biggest problem right now? You know, so if you're doing it at a business level, look, what was our biggest challenge right now? What are we struggling with? Downturn in the market, this, that. Okay, so where do we want to get to in the next 90 days? So that's step 1. It's the beginning, it's the beginning of the journey, end of journey. Get that right. And then the second step is resources. What resources do we need? What do we have? You know, don't recreate things. Sometimes I go into organizations, I'm working with them, I'm facilitating these meetings and they're like, we're going to design a new training program. And then someone comes along and says, yeah, but we, we did that 2 years ago. We've got something in the archive somewhere, you know, let's just use the resources we've got rather than reinventing the wheel. So what resources do we have? What's missing? And resources can also be, do we have the right talent? You know, so we might need to hire people over the next 90 days. All right, want to hire one more person, or we want to bring in a team leader, whatever it is. Brainstorming. Get your team to come up with ideas, innovation, and the rules of brainstorming: anything goes. Get it on a Post-it note, flip chart, let's get ideas there, or let's bounce some ideas off each other, just verbally. Step 4: Choose the best idea. Make sure you choose the best option. Debate it. This is your opportunity to ask some challenging questions. What if? If we go with this idea, what if? If we go with this idea, what if? What are the upsides, downsides? And often if people come up with some crazy ideas, through your coaching, they'll kind of work out that's probably not the best way forward. Rather than saying, nah, that's not a good idea. You know, we don't, we don't want to crush ideas. We want to just get them to, to think it through. And then step 5 is execute. You know, what are we going to do specifically? What are the measures? What are the timeframes? And then, then you're into fail fast, learn quick. You're into coaching, ask, don't tell, you know, and what we're getting into, bench coach daily, train weekly, mentor monthly. Which are the next 3.

Yeah, I love that. You— I think you would be like— it's so easy to get bogged down in the weeds. Yeah. And like, how many, you know, how many player coaches right now that are listening, how many of their team are aware of what the game plan is?

I don't know. I think— yeah, so I say, you know, you don't have a— you don't have a motivation problem, you have a clarity problem. No one knows what they're doing, right? That's the problem. You know, let's get clear on that. And there's a couple of things. Ask, don't tell is about being a facilitator as well. The best leaders I've observed and worked with are just brilliant facilitators. They can facilitate a conversation like you're doing and ask questions and get people thinking and hold them accountable. They can facilitate group conversations and get people to come up with ideas and use this 5-step plan that I talk about. They're really good at facilitating, and that's, that's the I think the biggest, the biggest shift I see in leaders, because it's vulnerable, right? It's vulnerable not to have all the answers, but it equally incredibly empowering.

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You've already mentioned it, but I do think this is when we're really getting, um, there's a bunch of practical things already, but we, we, these are really practical things which I absolutely love. And I do really love this methodology of bench, coach, daily. So just because I know you've already mentioned it, but Could you just quickly just define, yeah, bench coach, Danny, just so then we all understand what you mean by that?

It's, it's on the sales floor observing sales calls, observing people. You're looking for every opportunity to provide positive feedback. If you're on the bench with your team, you have coaches that break their players and they go back on the, on the ice just, or the court, feeling like crap. You know, it's like they might feel a bit of injection motivation, probably the stress hormone cortisol that's put them into action. They're not in flow or in the zone. If you don't have the opportunity, people say, oh, but we're working remotely, we've got a remote team, then, you know, recording calls, listening to them, but even blind coaching, just having a conversation, which is, tell me about the 3 best calls you had today. That's it. Let's talk about it. What was good about them? What did you do? Well, I prepped for it, I did this. What were the 3 worst calls you did today? Well, this one, this one, and this one, because The client was like this, and what could you have done differently? You know, but you can coach blind. There's no excuse with whether you're coaching remotely or this or that. Um, so I, I'm a, I'm a big fan of coaching remotely because I think one of the biggest challenges for a billing manager is how do I fit in the time to coach people? Take an hour of my day when I could make 30, 40 calls. Now I'm demonstrating 2 or 3 calls to someone, or I'm listening to 3 or 4 calls. You know, both our productivity have dropped. So, you know, we often see billing managers' performance drop off a little bit when they go through to kind of implementing the techniques. But if they can actually coach by listening to calls and working through them, or just asking the person, tell me about the 3 best calls you did today. Why? Why were they good? What was it you did that made them good? You know, well, I felt really prepped for it. I put a lot of effort into it. Whatever it is. I was just in a good mood, you know, I stood out, a good energy today, you know, compared to yesterday my energy was low and I just wasn't getting anywhere with, with anybody, you know. So, you know, that advice you gave me about standing up and making my calls and just bringing energy to every call was massive, you know. So that was a big highlight for me today, stuff like that.

Okay, yeah, so this is all about, yeah, like you said, on the sales floor or in a remote fashion, you know, on the day, in the moment. So you, you structured, um So you recommend structuring this sort of feedback with 3 steps? Yeah. So you've got, uh, step 1, what action did you notice them doing? Step 2, what was the impact or effect of that action? Yeah. And step 3, what is the desired outcome going forward, performing that action more or less or more consistently?

Tell us a bit about that because I think again, yeah, that's more direct in-the-game feedback. So it's less questions and it's more opportunities to provide positive feedback. So Hishem, I've noticed for the last year you've shown up consistently on, on LinkedIn, and as a result, that's built your personal brand. You're one of the go-to people in the recruitment industry, and going forward, you know, I think you're gonna, you're gonna smash it going forward if you keep doing that. That's, that's kind of in the moment, you know, 3 or 4 seconds. I could put that on a text to you at the end of the day, I could say to you, Hishem, the questions you asked me today in the podcast really got me thinking. You really got my conversation going. I'm really appreciative of that. It really helped me think through, and I can't wait to listen to the podcast or more of your podcasts going forward. If I text you that, you know, it's like, I noticed that you put— you pulled 3 jobs today, you know, on the system. That's awesome. That's going to help you get to the target. It's going to help you save up your money if you, you know, you close these deals and save up money for your, for your wedding or whatever it is that the person's focusing on, a car. And let's keep going for it, you know, just keep that positive energy. You've got to look for opportunities to give positive feedback. Stop trying to fix people. You know, that's what we see a lot of. You know, most people feel bad enough about certain things if they messed up or whatever, and at some point you're gonna have to give someone a kidney blow, you know, some, some developmental feedback, you know, which is the same structure. I noticed that, and the impact of it was, and I'd like to have a conversation about how we avoid that happening again. That's a tough, challenging conversation, but if it's in the mix of 5, 6 positive You know, you're always in your emotional bank accounts in credit. You should always be trying to keep your emotional bank account in credit because at some point you're gonna have to make some withdrawals.

And this is what you're talking about, which is part of this, which are— which I, again, I really like and is really practical for people, which is all those examples that you gave are in line with your advice, which is keep feedback evidence-based, not subjective.

Exactly. Yeah. Otherwise you end up in this sort of ping-pong match of, you did this, you know, several times you've done that. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. You know, it's like Just cut to the chase. Let's get, let's get it really clear and, and choose your battles, you know.

No, I love that. And again, like, just those examples that you gave, they may seem like small to you but could be huge for the person receiving them, right? Yeah, absolutely massive.

And your team completely underestimate that. Yeah.

So law 8, train weekly. Yep. Um, and I think you've even got, which I've got a picture here of, like, an example of um, what that might look like as well, which I'll be able to share. But talk to us a bit about this train weekly and why, why this is one of the laws.

I, I would say that this, if you want ROI on your time, this is the one to double down on, and it's the one that gets most neglected because of time. And I share a structure. I won't go into the structure now of designing training because we try and do it like really quick on the course, like do follow these 6 steps, show a video, make it funny, share a war story.

Well, you have 6 steps, which are set a clear objective and prepare, set the scene, use a video to open discussion, challenge trainees with an experiential activity, share war stories, set actions, and ask for feedback.

They're your 6 steps. Yeah, and that's something we teach, like sharing a war story. Teach you how to tell a story, funny stories, usually an experience that was awful for you, like the word, something you'd like to forget about, but actually when you tell it, it's actually funny, you know, and we can bring it to life. So we teach people how to tell story in that way and Find videos on YouTube to illustrate your point and so on. So make your training, which could be a 30-minute training session once a week. But the point is, if you take professional sports, you're on a training ground 90% of the time, you're playing the game 10% of the time. In recruitment, you're in the game 99% of the time. Yeah, so there's no wonder people start getting fatigued and burned out and so on. So getting them together for half an hour to do a structured training like we, like we teach, but also just doing a mastermind session You know, where the— or a fishbowl exercise, or just 5 of us sat around and we go, what's our biggest challenge? And let's say I'm in that group and there are 5 other people, and I say, look, this is the biggest challenge I'm facing right now, and we just talk about it and we try and come up with a solution together. That's training in itself for rookies. It can be really good training. Some of the best training I've had is when we just throw a challenge out on the table and we try and solve it together, or someone shares some gems, some nuggets. You know, that, you know, question I could ask or a way to get past the gatekeeper or whatever it is, you know, oh wow, that's awesome. I'm going to try that today. You know, that can be energizing. So doing that once everyone knows on a Wednesday morning, 8:30 training happens, that's kind of what I try and encourage people to do. That's really overlooked.

Like when we're speaking, it's part of our implementation system with, with Hector, which is people are given a safe space to learn each week by their manager. And then on a biweekly basis or weekly, they're then getting together, sharing what they've learned, ideas. Um, and like a lot of companies, yeah, overlook like really using the subject matter expertise that they have within their four walls. Just because you say to someone like, I'm here to support you, anything you need, let me know, it doesn't mean that they're going to ask for the help or have the courage to ask for it. So they think they should have more space. Yeah, for most people, creating that— I was just gonna say, sorry, like, just create— what you're talking about is what we found is like creating that intentional space to do that knowledge sharing is often what, what people need. And it's, it's, yeah, a missed opportunity, particularly if— because there's just so many people where in recruitment there'll be top performers in your business right now and they're doing certain things in a really great way and there'll be other people on the team that are struggling with that exact thing, but they don't know how the top performer are doing it, right? Yeah, so creating those moments to share how people are doing what they're doing and sharing the challenges is, is really valuable.

Yeah, and I think that's what you're doing brilliantly with your mentors, you know, and so on, bringing that together, that, that environment.

That's so— this, this is in the book, but I think just worth, worth sharing. So just to bring this to life a bit, but again, you can see this in practice in the book as well, but So just to bring this to life as we close this out, which was, so if the problem was not enough pitches are resulting in closed deals and we want the outcome to be team more confident pitching persuasively and closing deals, and then the benefit of that will be team will be earning more commission thanks to increased closed deals. What this training session might look like with your framework is, you know, first 5 minutes, a couple of minutes of discussion on what we think is a, you know, single biggest challenge causing not converting the leads, what skill is holding us back. Then we might watch a video that you would have sourced online. Could be anything, could be a podcast, could be something you found on YouTube. Then after that, we're going to do a bit of a role play in pairs of interviewer and interviewee. Interviewers ask questions to make interviewee talk as much as possible, you know, do a bit of a role play, have people do this in a safe environment. Then we have an anecdote, personal war story for sort of 5 or so minutes. Context, find presenting, high pressure pitch. Obstacle: client name misspelled on opening slide. Solution: adapt to mistake, present as a benefit for the client. And then, yeah, activity: group discussion, group war stories. What's worked for you? And Andrew, like, share with us some of your biggest challenges. What did you do differently? Um, and then getting feedback from the team. How do you like this training? What could have done better? So just to bring that to life a bit and what Andrew recommends. Nice. Yeah, and I think—

thank you. You know, the one of the things that I find with training is particularly for in recruitment, is what's in it for them. Like, you've got to tell them, you know, that it's going to make you more money, it's going to make more efficient, it's going to make you look cooler, it's going to make you build stronger relationships. You know, you've got to really share the training because people are coming with crossed arms, it's on Zoom, it's like, why are we doing this? You know, tell me what's in it for me. All of a sudden, oh, now you've got my attention. I can make more money with this, or whatever it is, you know. I love that.

So then you've mentioned it, but then we have Law 9 Mentor Monthly.

Yeah, get your people away from the game, you know, take them for a walk, coffee, lunch, boardroom, but get them away from the game. And if you, if you have to do this again, it's S3 legacy MBR style, you know, the monthly business review, which usually is a check sheet of— can be a check sheet of KPIs. That the art, the art of a mentoring conversation is to make it feel like a conversation, not, not a linear kind of checklist or a structured kind of step-by-step conversation. That's the art, is making it conversational. And the science is the framework, you know, that you're taking people on a journey and they're always coming up with a goal, an objective, something they're going to execute that you can hold them accountable against. That's the key with mentoring. And mentoring is, you know, in the game, the bench coaching can be tough. It can be— you can be driving people, you can Again, I've used Sir Alex Ferguson as an example, I have to find a different one, but this kind of angry Scotsman on the sideline barking at his players, pulling them out of nightclubs and stuff like that, is considered a father figure, and it's because he gave his players time. Sit down, let's talk. And it's, we've got 30 minutes, 45 minutes, we've got an hour, what do you want to focus on today? What role can I play in helping you achieve that? Where are you now? Well, let's brainstorm some ideas together. "Which of these ideas do you think is the best one to go with?" "I'd like to try this." "Okay, what's the upside of that?" "Well, I think it helped me do this." "What's the downside?" "Well, I might do this." "Okay, I think I'll go with this idea." "Okay, when do you want to implement it by?" "Next week." "All right, so if we catch up next week on Wednesday at 5 o'clock, is that cool?" "Okay." Or next month, or why don't we put this in place for the next month, and we'll follow up on this in our next mentoring conversation or next meeting. You don't have to call it a mentoring conversation, you call it a meeting. The fact is you're being a mentor. And, you know, team, the best billing managers, once they become selfless, they start to see themselves as Yoda and not like Luke Skywalker. You know, you're creating heroes in your business. So you're not being the hero. Look at me, I'm a billing manager, I've done, look how amazing I am. You know, it's, no, your consultants are the Luke Skywalkers, you're the Yoda or the Obi-Wan or the whatever. Whatever kind of analogy you want to use. But you, you've got to feel like that's your role, to help people transform. And I remember distinctly, I distinctly remember thinking with Team GB that regardless of results we get, that these people are going on a journey for the next 3 to 4 years with me, and they're going to come out of this transformed. Like, and we've got people working for Google in California, we've got who run their own companies, pts that have become celebrities, you know, we've got Um, you know, Jack Larson's working at Boston Consulting now as a partner. I mean, we've got, you know, developed these people. And so I think see the— see your organization and their experience of your leadership as a conduit to something greater than they could ever imagine, and they'll remember you for life. That's your legacy.

Yeah, I love that. I just— I just— what I really think is important, which I think again is often missed, is just like you said taking time away from the game, because oftentimes we're talking about bench coach daily and stuff. Yeah, like I feel like sometimes, particularly in recruitment, you might find that oftentimes your, your conversations with your managers are like really just in the weeds of stuff. And exactly, I think having this space, like you said, to mentor monthly and have more of these open conversations, yeah, just for the individual on, you know, having those meetings, it's I don't know, it's just also really, um, game-changing. Yeah, to not always be talking about the weed. So law 10 then, to close this out: stay in the zone. Yeah, because you've got things like managing the mist. You have the white mist, the red mist. Talk to us about staying in the zone.

So obviously using a sports analogy here, and I experienced the white mist as an athlete where things just seem to close in, you're paralyzed by the fear of failure, you know. And for a consultant, that might be I just don't wanna make the call, I don't want anyone to hear me, I don't want, you know, what's the client gonna say, you know, whatever. You get this kind of white mist, this fog, you can't find your words. You know that you can speak and articulate yourself, but for whatever reason, it's just, whoa, I can't get it out, everyone's, the whole world's listening to me. Red mist is more understood because it's more about anger and exerting energy outwards. So white mist is like, this is why I talk about managing the mists in my book, you know, where white mist is like inward energy, you go into yourself. You've got the inner voice, the red mist is like outward energy, you become aggressive, you get angry. So dropping into the zone, dropping into flow where we get this heightened level of focus, self-awareness actually drops down, ego drops off, prefrontal cortex starts to become less engaged and we get in the zone. And for a consultant, that's, they're just in their flow, they're making calls, the words are coming out, they're just building rapport with everybody they speak to, the energy's just awesome. And so for a, For a team leader, you've got to create that environment where people feel— again, it comes back to psychological safety. But as a leader, you know, telling a story, presenting to a group of people, the most successful leaders typically are really good at presenting, giving feedback. And so if we go into ourselves, we get the white mist, it won't land, it won't resonate, people won't take you seriously. And equally, if you get angry and shout and bark at people all the time— there's a time and a place, by the way, to shout and bark consciously not unconsciously, consciously firm with presence. But yeah, having that presence, that gravitas, you know, being in the zone is also about presence. It's about walking the room, owning the room, non-verbal presence, you know, command. Love it.

There are 10 laws.

There are 10 laws. I gotta go take my kids to a hockey game now, so I'm gonna shoot off. Unfortunately, I could talk to you all day, Hishem.

No, no, I love it. I think, um, so, you know, everything that we just covered is in this book. It's, it's $9.99. I think, you know, you've— what you've done a really good job with is it's super practical. There's real-life examples with real billing managers in here that you brought to life. There's actual practical, like, frameworks that you can maybe use in your next mentoring conversation or your bench coach daily conversation. So, um, yeah, like, we'll make sure that you can grab this book with a link in the show notes. But Andrew, I think, you know, kudos to you on— like, I do truly believe that these types of people in our industry are some of the most underserved, undersupported people. Agreed. So, you know, equipping these types of people with frameworks and systems and tools that they can use to help them get more out of their people will hopefully mean we have more people, you know, enjoying and finding the fun in this role. Thriving. Yeah, because yeah, I think, um, I think that's a big part of the, the problem, rather than people saying, oh, my manager was shit. Well, how much support did your manager get on how to be a better manager and a better coach, right? So exactly, exactly. Yeah, thank you, really enjoyed it, and, and thanks for coming.

Thanks, been a pleasure. Keep up, just love your work, Hishem. Keep doing what you're doing.