Do You Have Enough Passion As A Recruiting Leader

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan, and I'm back with another podcast. I am going to talk today about passion. Now, in a recent conversation that I had within the past few days, I was dealing with an individual who was looking for some help In growing their recruiting education. Really, I think they were primarily looking for motivation. And as I began to talk to the individual, one of the things that really jumped out at me is that this individual was really lacking passion, and that passion was really coming from a place of not being clear that they were aligned with leadership. Now, this happens a lot. In my coaching where people show up and they really identify where they are right now as needing motivation or needing education, training, tactics, tools, systems. And where I have to start with some people is really asking this question, are you fully committed to where you are? And sometimes that commitment can be based off of whether they're in the right position Whether they're with the right company. Most times though, it comes down to, am I aligned with my leadership? So this is a very normal recruiting conversation that I have in my coaching. So we're going to tackle this today and really talk about how you gain clarity on being at the right place underneath the right leadership, the aligned leadership, because I think it's something that needs to be addressed as a whole, because if you can't spill over your passion on people about where you are and what you're doing, it gets very difficult to recruit because passion, it may be the most important element of all. You get me in a room with someone that's extremely excited about what they have to offer, and whether that's their own leadership toolbox or whether that's the company toolbox, someone that's got a lot of energy around that will be successful recruiting. They just will. So passion is something that's critical, and we're going to talk about that today. So we will tackle this starting now. Thank you for joining me on the video, by the way. Here we go in 3, in 2, in 1. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan. Welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations, and I'm coming to you today and it's a special day. It happens to be Father's Day evening. That I am cutting this podcast. Man, I must really love my audience to be cutting this on a Father's Day evening. I am just coming back from— it's actually late in the evening, but just coming back from having spent the entire day with my awesome family. And I gotta say, I'm blessed to have 4 kids in my house right now. Ages, oldest is 17, the youngest is 6. It's a sweet season. It's a hard season in terms of juggling all of the balls that come with that, but it's a sweet season to be a father and to get to have the opportunity to see my kids grow up and develop and see them taking the things that I'm leading them and teaching them to and acting those things out and sometimes not acting those things out. So, you know, there's where the difficult part comes into being a dad, but— Loving every minute of it, wouldn't change it for the world. But I'm not here today to talk to you about Father's Day, although I do want to say to those of you that are fathers, man, I applaud you. To be a great dad means that you sacrifice a lot. And if someone would have told me how selfless I would have had to have lived to be a parent, I'm not sure I would have committed to it way back in the beginning. But the truth is that You really do have to sacrifice a lot of you to have a healthy relationship with them and to have healthy kids. And so I applaud all of you because in my own life I have a number of dads that are great examples for me, just really close friends. I get to see them model good fatherhood, and it's something really special to see from a distance. So for those of you that are doing it right, I applaud you. For those of you that are like, ah, I'm I'm not sure that I'm doing it right. You know what? There's a lot of space in relationship for, I'm sorry, and, will you forgive me? And to walk humbly. And what I have seen is that in those, in my own life where I've been willing to do that, that it is a way to restore that relationship so quickly. So I'm not here to give advice around fatherhood. I'm here to give advice around recruiting. So I'm back on track. Today I want to talk about this thing that is so critical to being a successful recruiting leader, and it's called passion. That maybe may seem obvious, right? That I've got to be passionate about what I do to be successful. The reason why this comes up is that it's a recent conversation for me, right? Recruiting conversations. In my coaching, I have these repeated conversations, and as they come up again and again, I use this podcast to really hit some of these things head on. What I will say is this: again and again inside my coaching, I have people that will seek me out to actually, you know, coach them for a season, and they're looking for things like training, education, Motivation, inspiration. They think they need those things. A lot of times, I really take the time at the very beginning to slow down and really evaluate where the individual is at. From time to time, I come across someone who's ultimately lacking buy-in. The lacking buy-in of— most times, the lack of buy-in comes from Not truly being aligned with their leadership. Now, some of this can just be confusion, right? Because, you know, you can have a difficult moment with your leader, and that can be confusing, where maybe it was something you need to take ownership on and your leader had to have a difficult conversation with you. And so it's important that where you find yourself questioning, am I aligned? Am I at the right place? That you gain clarity. And so I'm going to walk through some things that I think are beneficial to this conversation. In my own life, as I look back at seasons where I've shifted from one place or one group of leadership to another group of leadership, most times— not always, but most times— there have been these places where I wasn't aligned with leadership. Now, I say not always because Right? The toolbox does ultimately matter. And there have been seasons where I have left one organization, gone to another organization, because some really important things that mattered a lot were broken. And so that can be a driving force, but most times people leave companies because of either a lack of leadership or a lack of alignment with leadership. Okay, so I always want to stop there when I'm coaching someone and make sure that they are fully convinced that they're aligned and that they can truly buy into the direction that the leader's going. So let's just walk through some steps here of how you gain clarity or even really how you get your passion back. Because what I found is this, if you're excited about something, and let's just maybe define passion here. Because the word passion, if you're not clear on what it means, it means that you're barely able to control your emotions. Like, these emotions are so strong that you're barely able to control them. So that's a great measuring stick for, can I be, or am I currently passionate about where I'm at? And if I'm not, then I need to work through some methodology of getting clear on this. Let's just walk through maybe 3 steps that will help you gain clarity or potentially help you get your passion back. One of the things that I know is that— and I mentioned that word clarity again and again and again— you've got to be clear on where you are right now. But in addition to that, a lot of times it's helpful to get clear On how you actually got there. So, where have I been? Where am I right now? And then where are we going? If I'm clear on those things, like how did I get here in this exact moment? And then where are we going right now? If I've got clarity around that, that's very beneficial in making a decision. Can I reengage and get re-passionate about where I am if I'm not passionate right now? Now, a lot of times where you look at where you've been, take the time to look at that and look at where you are now and where you're going, that is a way for you to get re-engaged, to get re-bought in. Because in my own life, as I see in a lot of other people's lives, where we are lacking passion, it ultimately is because we're weary. We haven't taken the time for self-care, and because we haven't taken the time for self-care, What has happened is that we've gotten to a place where we haven't been able to rejuvenate and become restored. And so really this passion is lacking, not because I'm not bought in, but because I actually need some rest. I need some reprieve. And so, you know, if that's the case, what's very helpful is understanding that you're completely bought in from a heart place. Okay. So why where you've been is important is because that really tells part of the story. It tells part of the story in that you know how you got here. You bought into a leader's vision or you bought into some core values or core convictions or beliefs that they had. And so, when I look at where I've been to get to this very moment of where I am now, the lens of that came through that value system, that belief system, that passion system that existed from the beginning. Okay, so that takes me to this very moment. Now, in this moment, if I'm not passionate, sometimes it can be because I'm not clear about where we're going. And sometimes that can be from a lack of clarity around current leadership casting clear direction, or around a change in leadership, or around even a change in how a leader is responding or reacting or leading. It's not— if it's not a cohesive leadership message, A lot of times, confusion can begin to revolve around that where are we going part. I don't have clarity where we're going. And where I don't have clarity where we're going, that is a diminishment of my passion. So, if you're a leader right now listening to this, what I would say to you is this: one of the primary things that you have to deliver to your current team if you're going to retain them is clarity. And when you go through those 3 things— where have we been, where are we now, where are we going? The perfect way to contextualize this, if you want to give clarity to people, is to storytell it. Think about that. You could very easily storytell this to someone. Where have we been? Where are we now? Where are we going? And that clarity is important because we can get lost in the chaos of a moment, in the chaos of busyness, in the chaos of a lack of busyness, in the things that surround business in the day-to-day. Clarity can be difficult to come to because business can be at times overwhelming or underwhelming, either one. And so you need to give clarity. One of the most important things as a leader that you have in your toolbox is your ability to storytell. Now, why is storytelling so important? Because there, there's really what I've identified 4 or 5 tools in the leader's toolbox that matters most. And the reason why storytelling is one of those most critical is that storytelling gives clarity, but storytelling also allows people to understand where you're headed. Think about it. Great stories always have a beginning. Great stories always have conflict and struggle. And great stories always have this happy ending highlight reel part to them. So when we look at great stories, that's kind of the context of a great story. And when you begin to talk about where have we been, where are we now, where are we going, you're really meeting the 3 elements of that— of in the beginning, the conflict and struggle, and that happy ending, that highlight reel where we're headed. But all of that engages clarity. So the first part of this is If you're not clear, you gotta ask some hard questions because the second part of this is you need to understand, are you aligned? Is your value system aligned with your current leadership? Now, you might be thinking, well, shouldn't I be figuring out if I'm aligned with my company? But here's the truth. Company is ultimately a toolbox primarily. Right? The company culture, the way the company responds to that toolbox, the way the company responds to the people that are employed there, all of that comes through the lens of who is your immediate leader. And sometimes, depending on where you are in the hierarchy of the, you know, company leadership chain, that can be multiple leaders. You can have Incredible groups of people in another division and then have another division that's completely out of alignment with the entire organization. All of that can be boiled down to leadership, leadership, leadership. The second part of this is once you're clear on certain parts of this, one of the things that you have to ask as a hard question is, am I aligned with my current leadership? Now, if you're a leader listening to this right now, one of the important things that you need to bring to your team is this: you need to help them understand that they are aligned with you. So, 2 parts to that. The first part of it is understanding of their values. If you don't understand their values, how are you going to create alignment with your own values? And if you're not clear on your values, then you start there. How am I going to understand if someone's aligned with my values if I'm not even clear with what my value is? So in my coaching, where we typically start with a leader is we start with this attractive leader framework. And you've heard me use that terminology before, right? The attractive leader has a clear vision, has these clear core values. They can articulate around those, they're so clear, and they're living and acting in alignment with those. So as a leader, if I'm not really truly understanding what my values are and what the value of the person that works for me, with me, partners with me in this business, if I don't understand their values, how in the world are they going to be aligned? How in the world are they going to ever see alignment? And so where we see High attrition, high churn rates within an organization, what we typically are able to point a straight arrow, straight line to is a lack of clarity in what a leader represents. So when I'm coaching a divisional, a regional, a head of sales, someone that's in a larger leadership role, when I'm coaching them and they're moving into a new position or don't have or haven't asked the current team to create vision or to create clarity around their core values, I ask them to start there with the team. And the reason why is that understanding what the team has as a value system, as individuals inside the team, and being able to point a straight line to what your values are as a leader is imperative to make sure That you have, one, the right people on the bus, and then two, are able to actually pull them into your vision because you would create alignment with people to do that. So, clarity, yes. And part of that clarity is, am I aligned with the value of leadership around me? Look, when I see people change, leave one company, go to another company, Leave one company and go start their own company. A lot of times, I can go back to those moments and they have clarity that they weren't aligned with the current leadership that they were with. So, not being aligned with someone's leadership ultimately can actually force somebody to make a large change, take on lots of risk, and it all comes back to This meter of sorts, this temperature gauge of sorts of how passionate am I? Because if I can barely go to sleep at night because I'm so excited about where we're going versus barely go to sleep at night because I'm so worried because I don't know where we're going, the differences between those is the difference in someone staying in an organization For a long time, or someone that's willing to take some risk and to move. The second part of that's gaining clarity. Now, here's the third part of this. You get to a place where you are clear. I'm not in alignment with leadership. If you're going to reengage your passion, most times, it means that you're going to have to take some risk. When in doubt, Work towards clarity. And if your leadership doesn't have clear core values, you can come to those on your own. You can figure those out on your own. Our values are typically lived out. A lack of integrity gets lived out. Someone can say integrity is one of my core values, but their actions will actually indicate to you whether they are or not. So you can identify the value system and whether there's alignment in that value system with you, even if your leader is not articulating that to you and is not elevating the noise around this. So if, if you don't have a leader who's giving you clarity around their values, you can determine those, and then you need to determine yours. The most passionate people are people who are clear on their values. I'll give you a perfect example of this. Someone recently asked me, when I get into coaching sessions, and I do a number of group coaching sessions throughout the week, when I get into those group coaching sessions, my energy begins to go up and up and up. And a lot of times I have to pause and just bring my energy down because I'm so excited about the things that I'm teaching. And someone's asked me before, why do you get so excited about this recruiting thing? And my response to them, because I'm so clear on why I get excited, is that because I empathize with the recruiting leader's struggle. The recruiting leader, in my opinion, has the most difficult job in any organization. If you have to lead and you also have to recruit and build the team, man, you're wearing 12 to 15 hats, and then you got to put another mega hat on. That recruiting hat's a big hat, and it's an important hat. And it will determine the level of success in your career if you're a recruiting leader that has to do that. So part of the reason why my energy goes up and why I can be so passionate about this, where I can barely control my emotion, right? Because that definition, passion is this strong, barely controllable emotion, is because I empathize with the recruiting leader struggle because I was a recruiting leader for a long time. In one industry for almost 15 years. And so I remember what it was like trying to figure it all out and trying to juggle the other 12 to 15 balls every single day. So the clarity of my value system ultimately leads me to a place where I can bring an enormous amount of enthusiasm into what I do. So here's what I would tell you to close this out. It is worth Finding a leader you're aligned with. It's worth finding a position that you're excited about. Because when you get to a place where you can hardly contain your energy and your excitement about— around who you're aligned with, who you're working for, who you're working with, who you're partnered with, what you're doing in your career, then you are going to be able to influence and impact A lot more people. So, if you're right now asking yourself, I'm not sure I'm in the right place, or my passion level is extremely low, then take yourself through this process. Ask yourself the hard questions. Get clarity. It's worth getting clarity. Get to a place where you are convinced, yes or no, I'm completely aligned with my leadership, or I'm not completely aligned with my leadership. And if that means that you've got to go figure out what your values are and create a narrative for what the values are of the leaders around you, Then do that. Well, let me end with this. I am not saying that if your energy's low, that you're in the wrong place. Because what I know is that there is no industry, there's no business, there's no role in any organization where the line for growth is straight up. Okay. Business cycles are ups and downs. Incremental improvements and higher, you know, higher highs, and then incremental improvements where you've got lower lows. It's if you understand trading stocks where you're always looking for higher highs and lower lows, okay, to make decisions around. A lot of times those pieces can indicate, should I stay and should I fight, or should I actually fight to go? Because difficult seasons are going to come and go in any industry. Okay? But if you're aligned with your leadership, then it's worth fighting through and it's worth fighting for. Ultimately, there's a couple of stages in business that I talk about a lot. And those stages really come in this first stage of where we get really excited and energized about something because we're dreaming. And that's the first stage of us dreaming. The second part of that is where we take a leap. Like, okay, we're all in, we're doing it. And most people end up at a new organization because they had a leader that dreamed with them. And they took the leap. But a lot of times what follows that leap is this big dip. And the big dip is really the fight zone. It's where you have to bring more energy, more positivity, more motivation, more inspiration to this, whatever this is, in order to get to a place that I call the climb. And if you get on the climb, you'll feel the energy of that. It's still hard, but you're headed in the right direction. And if you stay on the climb long enough, you'll get to a place where you achieve and you accomplish whatever it is you set out to accomplish. So I don't want to ever not remember the fight zone because the fight zone's an important place. One of the things that I've realized in my own life is this: anything worth having, you are going to have to fight for it. That's a line that, that has resonated with me for a number of years from someone that I would consider a mentor of mine, although I've never actually met him. I've read every one of his books, listened to most of his podcasts. Someone that's actually influenced my life pretty dramatically, a guy by the name of John Eldredge. Some of you may know him, wrote the book Wild at Heart. If you haven't read that book, I would challenge any man out there to pick up that book and to read that book. But one thing that John Eldredge said one time that just resonated directly to me, as though he was speaking to me, is this: anything worth having, you will have to fight for it. And so When you look at where you are and what you want to get out of your current situation, sometimes it just means digging a little bit deeper and fighting a little bit harder. But the one thing you cannot fight against is where there's clear unalignment in your values and the leader values around you, where you're able to clearly point a line to, I'm not in alignment. There, I will challenge you. Go take some risk and find someplace else to fight. So, I hope this brought some value to you. Hopefully, there's some nuggets in here. Look, if you are a leader, one of the things that I would challenge you right now, if you're listening to this and going, gosh, I don't have a clear value system, I don't have a clear vision, you really do have to get to a place where you have that. I have a 2019 vision, but I have a vision that was a 10-year vision when I started this company in 2017. I have a 2027 vision. What were we going to accomplish in those 10 years? I know exactly what we were going to accomplish. I know the exact lens that we're going to go through. In fact, one of the things that I did before I even wrote my vision and before I determined my core values was I wrote kind of an essay. Why would I do this? And today I call that why we do— why we here at Four C Recruiting do what we do. And it's basically an essay of sorts, right? And it's got some bullet points. We do this because we love people and people matter to us. We do this because we empathize with the recruiting leader struggle. We do this because great leaders influence things outside the walls of their business leadership. There's even a lot more why we do this, okay? But the truth is that you've got to get to a place as a leader where you are crazy passionate about how you're leading and the direction that you're going, and you've got to give people clarity around this. Vision's important. You can write out a why we do this. If you want to get to a place where you're crazy excited about it, then you need to determine the core values that you're going to do this through. Those core values can be as simple as one word. Those core values for us are ultimately statements. To give you an example, one of our core values is that we practice open, real communication. I could sum that up probably in one word if I wanted to. One of the things that we say is no jerks allowed. We will literally not allow a jerk inside this organization. That's one of our values. It's just difficult people that aren't willing to play a role inside a team. They're just not a fit here. And so, we've developed about 8, I think it is, core value statements that represent who we are. And it gives us more clarity. So as a leader, if you don't have a vision, not just a vision today, but a vision that takes you through the next decade, and you don't understand why you do what you do, and you don't have a value system in place that you've established, you need to start there. Okay? If I can help in any way, you know how to find me. You can find lots of resources on my website at forestirecruiting.com. You can always hit my calendar up live at bookrichardnow.com. I give free hours away every single week to people just to pour into people. If there's a free hour on my calendar, you are welcome to it. No strings attached. Truly nothing to be sold in that hour. And that's something that I'm extremely passionate about, is helping recruiting leaders become the best recruiting leader they can possibly be. So until you hear from me again next time, or if you're watching the video, until I see you again next time, Have a great week, everybody. And if this has brought value to you, please pass it on. Let's continue educating, inspiring, motivating, giving clarity to these people that are in this role of the recruiting leader role. Thanks so much, everybody. We'll talk to you soon. There you have it. Another Recruiting Conversations in the books. Yeah, passion. It's a really, really, really big deal. Passion, if you don't have it, it spills into every aspect of your life. It will spill into your interpersonal relationships. You'll take it home with you. You will find it very difficult to get through the day-to-day of what you do in your career and your job. And so this is something that when I identify someone that's lacking passion, I slow down here and just say, you want to figure this out? Why aren't you more excited? Where is there a disconnect here? And almost every time I would tell you, it goes back directly to leadership. So it's a, it's a big set of shoulders that we as leaders have in terms of bringing this passion to the people through this lens of clarity and alignment. Okay? This is how you become a great recruiter. Having and bringing lots of clarity and being clear on your value system and then being able to figure out what the value system is of the person that you're trying to recruit and then creating alignment around that. It's a critical element to whether you're going to win or lose in recruiting. Recruiters are not salespeople. Okay? You see yourself as a salesperson, but ultimately you are not. You are a relationship builder. Okay? You are some degree a brand ambassador. Okay? You can also be to some degree a marketer. Okay? All of those things are critical to whether you're going to win or lose. Old school recruiting with salesmanship, that is not the name of the game today. And ultimately what we believe is that there's 4 things that matter inside social media, and all of those things are critical around these pieces of clarity and alignment. Clarity and alignment. So we talk about the 4 pieces, which is, you know, the connection and being able to connect at scale. We talk about delivering content, and that content should be centered around what your values and your vision are. Okay, communicating— I want to communicate directly to someone. And then the 4th part of that is, yes, there's got to be a conversion, otherwise I shouldn't even be doing this. If there's no conversion at some point, right? And so if you think about it, salespeople only see the two ends of that. The two ends of that being the connection and the conversion. But where you're trying to build relationship, you've got to have all four of those. You got to have the connection plus the content plus the direct communication in order to get the conversion. So you got to stop thinking like a salesperson and start thinking more like a marketer or relationship builder. In order to have success. And to do that best, you gotta have clarity yourself. You gotta have clarity of your vision and clarity of your values. Okay, so it is something that I'm really passionate about because it's something that changed my life. And when I say it changed my life, it didn't just change my life in terms of my ability to recruit, it changed my life inside my own family structure. When I say that, I came across a gentleman Who I consider a dear friend today, a guy by the name of Greg Gunn, who wrote a book called Family ID, and ID stands for intentional direction. Greg helped me inside my own family structure create these— create a mission statement and to understand what my core value system was, and then to develop what I would call purpose statements. And so today we say some pretty hilarious things that are very true about who we are as Milligans. Okay. Okay, one of the things that we say as examples is Milligans make things better. And so if we go to the lake and the lake's dirty when, when we were there and, and we're walking out, we'll stop and each one of us will pick up an extra 10 pieces of trash. It's little simple things like that that give us clarity as to who we are. We say things like Milligans treat each other better than their best friends. And so that gives us clarity around how we're going to treat each other inside our household. And so those 19 value statements that I have inside my house today Ultimately, give us direction. Give us this ability to say, are we aligned in our actions and with who we want to be? And that's a critical element to becoming a great leader, is having clarity around your vision and your values and being able to answer that question, am I aligned? Is my action aligned with who I want to be? And today, a lot of people will leave an organization because a leader is not clear. Or they are clear that there's no alignment in terms of how that leader's acting and the value that the individual has. So it's critical. It's critical to retaining. It's critical to recruiting. And I could sit here all day and talk to you about it, but I'm gonna let you go. 33 minutes is long enough to do a video. So until I see you again on a video, appreciate you watching. Pass this on to somebody if there's value in this. You simply drop a link into somebody else's inbox. You never know what encouragement you could be. To someone else. Have a great week. Bye.