How Accountability Matters To Your Recruiting

So the big question is this: how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan, and welcome to Recruiting Conversations. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan. Welcome to another Recruiting Conversations. And we are going to talk about a topic today. Okay. Now I'm just gonna pause for a moment. I don't want you to tune out when I tell you the topic. I want you to tune in. What we're going to talk about today is accountability and how accountability matters to your recruiting efforts. Now, if you're like me, now maybe there's a rebel inside of me somewhere that when someone, if someone came to me and said, Richard, I'm going to hold you accountable. Immediately, I would have a negative response to that word. And I don't know what it is. Maybe it's I lack some maturity. Maybe I've got a long ways to grow in my life. But there is something about that word that tends to conjure up some negative emotions. Now maybe it's because it can be associated with micromanagement, and I'm a bit of a free spirit. But at the end of the day, it does matter. In fact, how this comes to even being on this podcast is yesterday I was in a conversation with an extremely bright and young recruiting leader. And in that conversation, this area of accountability came up because it is really important to whether you're going to cross that finish line that you have established as your vision and your goals. And so I wanted to bring this to you because there are some areas that if you will focus on creating accountability, that you can actually guarantee success. There's just a way that the world works. There's just a way that the universe has been created to operate. And that is when we do the right things right, right now we need to know what the right things are. And thus this podcast, right? We know what the right things are in recruiting, but when we know what the right behaviors and the right activities are around life in general, and then we go do those things, then you actually become successful. You actually have things that go well in your life, right? Like, there's a lot of things that you get from just doing the right things right, and accountability is an element that says that it will ensure that those things get done. Inevitably, if you try to operate in this area of recruiting on your own without any form of accountability around the day-to-day activities that you need to do, you will come to a place where those things just don't get done. Now, there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not a lack of you, you know, having some intangibles like being tenacious or being willing or willing to work hard. What, you know, there's— it's not because of that. It's because the recruiting leader operates in controlled chaos. And I would dare say in seasons in my life as a recruiting leader that I operated in uncontrolled chaos. So if you're in controlled or uncontrolled chaos, then the easiest thing to do is to let this particular day-to-day activity go. And the reason why is that The ship will not sink if you don't recruit today. And this is specific to the recruiting leader role. If you're a true recruiter and that's all you do, your ship will sink if you don't do that, the activity today. But the recruiting leader, let me remind you, is someone that's leading a team, but then is also responsible for recruiting. And so this person is, is doing 12 to 15 things every single day. In a lot of different areas. And so when you're managing people and you're managing a team and you're operating in the day-to-day, this thing can actually get punted from today to tomorrow. And it's very easy to just say, today was a busy day and I'll do this tomorrow. So let's just start in a place that just says, like, if I don't do this, would you agree with me? Okay. And I'm nodding my head up and down. Agree with me. Would you agree with me that if you don't do the day-to-day in terms of the activities, that you will not win? If you're not consistent in the day-to-days, that you will not win the way you want to win in terms of growing your team? And if you're shaking your head yes with me right now, like I'm shaking mine, then the second component of this is this. Would you agree that creating accountability would ensure That those day-to-day activities got done? And I'm shaking my head right now. And so I'm hopeful that you would shake your head with me. And so if that is true, and that's a fact, then it's a problem that we have to solve if we don't have accountability. Now, even if you have accountability, there's some things I'm going to share with you here today that I think are of value in terms of how you actually frame the behaviors for the person that's going to hold you accountable or for the systems you're going to create that's going to hold you accountable. OK? But let's just start at the very beginning. Let's define accountability. Excuse me. So definition of accountability is this— being the one who must meet an obligation or suffer the consequences for failing to do so. There's just something about going and getting a real definition of a word that puts some things in perspective. And so from time to time, I actually just go out and I want to see what the— definition of a word is so that I can have that put in perspective. So let's just talk about this. The definition of accountability is that I'm being the one who must meet the obligation or I have to suffer the consequences for failing to do so. Okay, so the truth is this. As I see, and I coach primarily in 3 to 4 different industries, and as I see changes take place within organizations or within industries What I noticed is that the recruiting leader ultimately is middle management. You are a branch manager, you're a team manager, you're an area manager, a regional manager, divisional manager. This is typically what I would put into this thing that I would call middle management. Now, when things get difficult, the easiest place for an organization to go and to trim in terms of expenses is middle management and to get flatter across their leadership. So the— why, why I look at the end part of that definition, suffer the consequences for failing to do so. What I know is that middle management that can actually build and grow things is extremely more valuable to an organization than the recruiting leader, the middle manager That's simply managing teams. So if I'm going to look in the mirror and say, I don't like suffering consequences and I like job security and I like to be successful and win and be seen as successful in my career, then you have to create accountability. So it's not about micromanagement. This is about winning. Let me share a couple of stories with you because I think this will help put this in context. And the reason why this is relative to this podcast I'm cutting right now is that Look, I had completely forgotten about a scenario that I created to create accountability. So let me, let me give you 2 stories. Number one, this podcast only takes place because I've created accountability. Yes, the, the reason that you're listening to this podcast is because I have created accountability. Now let me describe that accountability for you. One of the things I identified from the very beginning Was that this was going to be difficult to do. And the reason why is that this is not what I would consider direct response marketing. This is ultimately larger branding for me. Direct response marketing to me is something that I'm going to do that's going to initiate an immediate point of— an immediate sale for me. And I don't typically get sales from this, but I do get a lot of emails. I get a lot of people dropping me lines. In social media saying thanks for doing it. And that's nice. But at the end of the day, I knew that this was going to be a conflict in terms of my energy and my effort and my time. And then at some level, there would be a time and a place where I would look in the mirror and go, I don't have the hour to cut the podcast. So I created accountability around just doing this. And let me tell you what I did. I found someone that, that could actually cut the podcast beyond me just actually recording it. I found someone that could actually do all the deliverables around this. Let me just describe what that looks like. I'm recording this on video. This is good. This will go on my YouTube channel, it'll go on my Vimeo channel. The video will get cut up into 2 or 3 different shorter videos, um, outside of that long video that will get loaded to YouTube or Vimeo. And then I'll use that in social media. I'll put it in some closed Facebook groups. I'll put it on LinkedIn. I'll put it in Facebook, Instagram, these other places. And so I'll use this as part of my larger branding. And so there's extra pieces that have to be done beyond this. So I found someone who could do everything, someone that can take the actual podcast recording, that could actually drop that into the platform that I'm actually using as a host for this. That could actually transcribe it, that could put it on my website. I mean, there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes of this. And because of that, I found one individual and I said this, I said, if you will manage my podcast and you'll actually hold me accountable to recording it, in the weeks that I don't record it, I will pay you our agreed-upon fee if I don't cut the podcast. Now, the reason why I did that was I knew that if I had to write a check, I don't pay her by check, but if I had to exchange some money with someone, that I would actually record this podcast every single week. And so that individual leans in. We get to the end of the week and I haven't produced that podcast, that person says, are you gonna deliver a podcast this week? And I know that I've made the commitment with her that if I don't, I will actually still pay her. So this podcast comes from simply creating accountability. Let me go back to the story that I shared yesterday with someone that really brought this to surface and brings this podcast to light. And it's this. I go back to 2012. Now it's 2019 right now when I'm recording this podcast, but in 2012, 7 years ago, I went into that year and in this particular area of recruiting, I knew that I had to move the needle significantly on my recruiting efforts. Now, one of the things that was really near and dear to me at that time— here's a moment of vulnerability and transparency— one of the things that was really near and dear to me at that time was the Oklahoma City Thunder. Now, if you're into basketball and you're into the NBA, then immediately you know who I'm talking about. If you're not, That's actually the only professional team that we have in Oklahoma. Now, if you go back to 2012 and you know anything about basketball, you know that we had a really, really, really good team. Okay, Kevin Durant played for us, Russell Westbrook played for us. And by the way, I'm recording this podcast the week that Russell Westbrook gets traded. So, you know, let me lean on your shoulder for a moment, for a moment. And maybe that's why this is surfacing right now. There's an emotional place. That's actually connected to him and he's leaving our market. And so I digress. But in 2012, here's what I was doing. I was— I actually had season tickets. I had a terrace suite, which is a small suite that is 4 seats. That's a box. That's your own suite. Pretty cool setup. You got food, you've got a waiter, you've got TVs on both ends. And I was literally going to every game. Now, if you know anything about the NBA, they don't— you don't get like 10, just 10 games at home. This isn't like, you know, in football where, you know, college football team plays 12 games. In the NBA, these teams play an enormous amount of games. Okay. And so we're talking about 30, 40, you know, events that you're going to. I was going to every one of them. And so I looked in the mirror one day and I said, I want to actually grow and I'm spending all this time going to these games. What if I gave that up? And so I sat down and said, what would that look like? How much time would I recover if I said to myself that I won't watch a single Thunder game for an entire year? I go from having, you know, going to every game and loving this team and watching most of the road games on TV, DVRing them and watching them. And to getting to a place, right, where I was actually challenging how much time I was investing in it and would I be willing to give it up to accomplish something bigger in my business. So the process I went through was I determined how much time does it take me to get to the game, how much time am I at the game, how much time does it take me to get home from the game, right? What, what does all of that look like? And then how much time am I investing in watching the games that aren't home? And then what does it look like whenever they make the playoffs? Because then you're attending more games, and if they Get to the next round, you're attending more games, right? And when I got done with this, it blew my mind how much time I was investing in that. So it made it easy for me on the surface to say, like, I'm not going to do that for the next year because I need to grow my business. I want to invest in my business. But here's what I knew. Saying that I was going to do it and doing it was 2 completely separate things. And so I knew I was going to have to create accountability around this. So I went to a person that I had a lot of respect for that was in my business at the time. And I said, Scott, would you be willing to hold me accountable for this? And I laid it out for him. And Scott said that he would. On the flip side of that, Scott also said, I'm going to join you in actually not participating or watching Thunder games for an entire year, because that's a brilliant idea. And it will help me move the needle on my business as well. Okay, this is someone in the market that I'm, that I'm, that I'm in that was also a huge Thunder fan. What transpired for that entire year is this: I did not, I did not watch a single game because I created accountability. Now, I also tied a check and some money to that, that if I did, that I had to write it to him. So I made it— I basically created a contract that if I broke the contract, I had to pay him some money. So that added element actually created a system around carving out an enormous amount of time that I could invest in my business. So when I start talking about accountability, this isn't just about going and finding someone that will check up on you every single week and say you did this. I mean, going to lengths to ensure that in the day-to-day you will actually do this. So you've got to use some, some creative juices around this to create accountability at the highest level. And that's where I'm encouraging you. Okay. So with that said, I want to actually go through a methodology of how you— why really, why you should create the accountability and then give you an idea of how you can actually create what I call a scorecard so that you can start tracking the things that you're doing in the day to day. Okay. So I always want to talk about the why before I talk about the how. The why is this: why is this an important topic to recruiting leaders? First and foremost is that you typically operate in the day-to-day without any supervision. Okay, you operate in terms of managing your team without someone leaning over your shoulder. Now, this is true— not always true, but this is primarily true about this particular role. And so if no one's there managing you and saying, did you do it? It's easy for this to not get done, right? Leadership trusts that you're going to do whatever's necessary to hit the goals that you set or the expectations that they have set for you, right? They realize that you're, as a recruiting leader, someone who has all the intangibles and has gotten to this place because they've acted on those intangibles. Okay. The other part of this is something that I've already brought up. Controlled chaos is what you're operating in, right? And so we can go by, 2 weeks can go by, 3 weeks can go by, and you can get caught up in the busy— busyness of that and let this particular activity slide because nothing falls apart if you don't recruit. Not in 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, right? It will eventually because attrition is something that's just natural. Look, the industry that I came out of, 30% year over year was normal. That's normal. Now, if you're in a different industry, it may not be that high, but I would say, as I've studied other industries, 10 to 20%, it's very normal attrition. You go 3 years and don't recruit, you've lost close to 50% of your team in most businesses. Okay. Specifically for the recruiting leader, because you're managing and leading typically salespeople. The other reason why this is important is that this is job security. Growing your team is job security. Not only is it just this particular job security, it's career security, right? If you're good at this, you can go recreate yourself anytime, anyplace. Like, that's a— that's the truth. Like, this is you being secure, right? If you're great at recruiting and you got a system around how you recruit, then you can go anyplace and grow your career, right? The other thing is this. Don't miss this. Getting better at recruiting and holding yourself accountable to these behaviors is a direct investment into your career. A lot of people think that, you know, growing is helping the end— is, you know, is helping the business that they're in. But at the end of the day, your, your resume, your ability to build and grow actually creates more opportunity for you inside your own career. This is a true fact. Inside my coaching over the last 18 months, people that I would consider middle management that are in these roles of like, you know, team managers, branch manager, area manager, regional manager— 5 people that I have individually coached have gone into director, head of sales, head of organization type roles. And the reason why is that as they've gone through my coaching, they've improved this skill set. And they've been able to grow very quickly. And immediately that person becomes more, a more valuable asset to the organization. If you can grow something, right, you can also teach other people to grow it. And so you become more valuable as a leader inside your organization if you can coach, if you can teach other people to grow, other people to build. That's the why. OK, let's talk about the how. Now first, let's just establish something. When I talk about the how, I'm going to talk about how you actually measure and report this. Okay, so Pearson's Law— and if you've never heard of Pearson's Law, in the 1800s Pearson came up with a principle and he determined that it was actually a law, that this holds true to everything as it applies to Us as humans. And what he said was this: what we measure, we improve. Okay, so number one, I've got to measure this if I'm going to maximize what I'm trying to do. Okay, so I've got to measure it. Now the second part of Pearson's Law was this: what we measure and report improves exponentially. So not only do I need to measure it, okay, I got to report it. That's the accountability piece. Okay, so I'm going, I'm going to measure this. Yes. So now I got to figure out how am I going to measure it. So I needed what I call a scorecard. I'm going to track my wins and my losses in the day-to-day, the week-to-week. But then I have to report it. And why would I report that to someone? Why would I create accountability? Because when we do that, it not only improves, it improves exponentially. And I want the exponential. Right. I want The other side of that. I don't want to just improve somewhat. I want to actually be on the largest scale. I want to be on the largest stage of success. This is why you would create accountability. And this is why each one of us should actually look in every element of our lives and say, how can I incorporate that, that reporting piece so that I can improve exponentially? Like, this comes into play in all areas. Look, if I asked my wife to hold me accountable to eating certain things or not eating certain things, I improve my health exponentially, right? If I ask someone to meet me at the gym, right, that's accountability. I now improve the opportunity that I'm going to show up at the gym and work out, and I improve my health, I improve my life exponentially. There's lots of areas of our life where we can capture this piece, but it takes a willingness to step into it. So let me, let me give you 3 questions that need answered. Start with this: am I willing to create accountability? Am I willing to commit to this? And if you're not, you're 20-some minutes into a podcast, you can click off and you can go on to the next one. Okay, but if you're going to answer that first question, am I willing To create accountability? Am I willing to commit to this? And you say yes, then let's move to number 2. And only those who answer yes to that will fall into the 1/10 of the 1% of the successful people. Right. We all know that the 1 percenters exist, and the 1 percenters typically are extremely driven. They're, they're, they're hardworking, they're tenacious. But when you create accountability Around all aspects of your life, you become a 1/10 of the 1 percenter. And those are the people that are— that's when I mentioned the 5 people that have actually moved into some sort of head of sales director type role. Those are the people that have created accountability in this particular area, in the area of recruiting. Okay, here's the second part. Who's going to hold you accountable? You have to answer that question. Who's going to hold you accountable in this particular area? Now, here's what I know. Finding someone that also needs to grow in this area, someone that maybe is in a similar role or someone that's in a leadership role over you, this, that would be the perfect person to actually hold you accountable. Similar to the story I told you about the not watching the Oklahoma City Thunder games, the moment I brought that idea up to Scott, Scott said, I'm in, me too. Most likely you go find someone that's in a similar position as you, whether that's inside your organization or outside your organization, whether that's a friend that you have, or that's someone you're going to go initiate a relationship with. When you do that, it's highly likely that that individual is going to say, I'll do it too. Okay, and so who's going to hold you accountable? You have to look in your circle, your close circle around you. As to who that will be. Look, at times my wife, my spouse, has been that for me. Now, she's not always the— in this area of business, the best person to be able to look at something and say, you know, I can hold you accountable. So I need to go find someone that it makes sense, that will actually be able to identify, am I truly doing the right thing right? Okay. So the second part is the who. Once you've identified that, now you need to answer the third question, which is, how am I going to track? How am I going to measure? How am I going to report these activities? So let's talk about this. There's multiple ways to do this. I'm going to give you a, what I call recruiting scorecard. Okay. And if you go to Recruiting Conversations, that's the name of the podcast. If you go to Recruiting Conversations, .com/scorecard. Okay, there will be a PDF of a scorecard there that you can download. Okay, now here's what I recommend. If you don't want to use that scorecard, create your own scorecard, but print that and put that on paper. There's just something about having that with you on paper and bringing it into the day-to-day to where it's in the line of sight that actually creates a form of accountability. Here's what I found. You can use spreadsheets, you can use software, right? There's lots of software that you can create accountability and probably create some alerts and incorporate that into what you're going to do, right? You can actually go create cool spreadsheets. And I know some of you are probably spreadsheet people. I find myself becoming a spreadsheet person the older I get. I have too many things to measure. And so I need these things in places that I can go and see the information immediately. But what I found is that actually putting something on paper and actually having to write it down, that transference to paper of being able to visibly see it, having to carry it into the day-to-day, and it can't get hid behind something on your, on your laptop, is going to bring value to you. So I would recommend going and checking out my scorecard, printing that scorecard, and begin using it. Now here's what the scorecard is going to do and what it's going to track, what it's going to measure. The day-to-day. What are you doing in the day-to-day? Now here's what a lot of people do is that they confuse lead metrics, measuring what should be leading the day-to-day, versus lag metrics. Okay, so a lot of people, when I say go create a scorecard, here's what they do. They write down the end results, right? How many hires are you going to have? How's that going to influence the production on your team? What are your goals? I want to hire 4 people by the end of the year. Okay, that's a lag metric, but a lot of people will see that as a lead metric and just go pursue recruiting efforts. Okay, that's the wrong way to do this. You have to back into what are you going to do today? Okay, what are you going to do in the next hour? And what that is, is the actual activities and the behaviors that are going to actually end up Producing the results. So those are your lead metrics. The results are your lag metrics. Do not confuse the two. I'm asking you to create accountability around your lead metrics. This is how many calls are you going to make? This is, are you going to be active on social media? And you should be. You should be walking through our 4 C's. You should be connecting. You should be delivering content. You should be communicating to the audience of one, and then you should be creatively brainstorming around after doing those 3, how are you going to get conversions? Okay, and so that— are you going to be active on social media? What does that look like? And what, what things are you going to do in the day-to-day? And there's some things that are old-fashioned that just work, like when you have a phone conversation or you engage someone in a conversation on any of those social platforms. Handwriting a card's a brilliant thing to do, right? How many follow-ups are you going to make every single day, right? So there are things that— these are the lead metrics. You need to identify those, you quantify how many you're going to actually do in the day-to-day and the week-to-week, and then you're going to hold yourself responsible for doing those. Now, at the end of the week, the accountability— here's where I think the accountability should come into play. Send that scorecard to the person that has said, I will hold you accountable. Will you review this and give me feedback? Okay, now this only works if you're willing to be transparent, because I can take the scorecard that I just gave you and I can write some fake numbers in there and I can make it look good. But at the end of the day, what you're gonna have to walk in transparency with this, or it won't work with the person that's going to hold you accountable. That person needs permission. Okay, this is part of the conversation when you're asking them to hold you accountable. They need permission to ask the hard questions. Okay, and they need permission as a voice to speak to areas where you're not doing what you said you were going to do and to remind you of why you're doing what you said you were going to do. That's where accountability will come in best. Right, Richard, you said you were going to do X, and I noticed that Tuesday and Wednesday, those days are blank. What happened? Okay, how can you solve the problem of that, and how can you hold yourself accountable to ensuring that doesn't happen again? I might have had the flu on Tuesday and Wednesday, and there's no way that I could have made those calls or made the connections or done the things I said I was going to do, right? So this accountability piece needs to be able to speak into your life, and that will only happen if you actually give them permission to do so. Okay. Look, when I sat down, I looked at my career. Over my entire career— this is true— over my entire career where I spent 15 years in one business— now I spent another 10 in another business— but in those 15 years in one business, I never had A leader who was in the role above me that could have been CEO, could have been president, could have been some sort of director regional role. I never had anyone in that role create accountability around this and hold me accountable for the day-to-day. Okay. They were always asking questions about the lag metrics and they were talking about them as though they were the lead metrics. Okay, how many hires I'm going to have and my projections around how many units or how much volume or how many contracts that you're going to do. I mean, all of that is lag. What ultimately matters is what are you going to do tomorrow that's going to produce that? And you've got to measure tomorrow and the activities that's going to actually produce that. Okay. So with that said, grab my scorecard, right? recruitingconversations.com/scorecard. Grab that scorecard and begin using it. And if you want to improve on it, improve on it. If it doesn't work for you, find something that will work for you. Go find someone that will hold you accountable. Give them the permission that they need to speak into your life where you may not actually do the things that you said you were going to do. And this single piece will ensure that not only are you establishing goals, But you've built a system around actually accomplishing them. James Clear made a statement in Atomic Habits— great book, you should pick it up. You're welcome for the plug, James. In the book, he made this statement: we never rise to the level of our goals, we only fall to the level of our systems. So tracking your day-to-day behaviors, which are your lead metrics, tracking those behaviors. Is part of your system. Finding someone that you're going to send that to, report that to every single week, is part of your system. That person reviewing it and speaking truth to you, speaking life to you around that scorecard, applauding you when you're doing it the way you said you would do it, and speaking truth to you and asking hard questions when you're not doing it— this is all part of your system. Remember, what is measured is improved, and what is measured and reported is improved exponentially. We all want the exponential. Thanks for listening, everybody. If this brought value to you, look, if you're, if you are in an upper management role, this is, this is a problem for you to solve as well as it is for the people that are in the recruiting leader role. If you're listening to this, you have got to creatively figure out how to create accountability. That's necessary. And then on the flip side, if you're in that recruiting leader role, it's typically middle management. You have to be receptive To having accountability from your leadership in this particular place, accountability is not micromanagement. Accountability, when it's done right, is so beneficial that you win at a much on a much larger scale than you will if you don't have it. So yes, it needs to be done right, but let's not be resistant to this because if we have accountability, if we don't have accountability, we got to create. If we already have it, it's there for a reason because we will win exponentially because we simply have that one piece. Thanks for listening, everybody. I look forward to sharing some more recent conversations with you soon, right here on the podcast Recruiting Conversations. Have a great week, and until next time, we will talk to you then. Bye.