Excelling as a Recruiting Leader with Richard Milligan 1

What is some lesson, saying, or experience that continues to influence your leadership to this day?

I can, in this moment, transport myself back to literally being 27 years old. And in that moment, that was my first management opportunity. It's like I had worked from the time I've been in corporate America since I was 19, at the time I was 27, and I've been like waiting for this. But one of the things I was very self-aware of in that moment is that I hadn't had a mentor to really model after. So I'd been someone who had self-educated, pursued knowledge through books and seminars. But I cherished a moment that I had with a really wise leader by the name of Barry Thomas. Barry was the head of sales for T-Mobile on the business-to-business side, and Barry was the guy that actually made the decision to give me a chance to lead. And I had a 30-minute conversation with him when he said, hey, here's the We're presenting it to you. And I had literally prepared this question for Barry in advance, and I wanted to ask him, like, what's the one thing, like, as a young leader, what's the one thing, like, as a leader of, like, 40 years in business, that you would say my success is going to be tied to in my career? And he said, it will always be tied to me setting the correct expectations with my people and the correct belief system with my people. And for whatever reason, that just has stuck with me for the last, whatever, I guess now we're going on 2 and a And I come back to that in moments where I'm like, what should I do? And I always want to make sure that with my people that I'm setting clear expectations with them and that those expectations are tied directly to a belief system that they can accomplish whatever the expectation is. And if that belief system is not there, I want to make sure that I establish that belief system, because what I found in my career is that Barry was right, that that's a very true thing.