If You Recruit Start Here!

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with 4C Recruiting, and I'm coming to you today to talk about a topic very near and dear to my heart inside the lane of recruiting, and it's called attractive leadership. Now, years ago, I began to figure out why I was winning at a much higher rate than others were winning inside this lane of recruiting as a recruiting leader. Now let me pause and say, when I say recruiting leader, I'm talking about those of you that manage a team but are also responsible for building and recruiting to that team. Okay, so if that's you, this message is for you. Now let me tell you what I mean when I say attractive leadership. An attractive leader represents 3 things, and these 3 things play out inside your recruiting efforts in a major way. In fact, I can tell you the epiphany moment I had was around 2013 when maybe half a dozen times I would get a phone call From an external recruiter or an internal recruiter, and the call would go a little like this. Richard, I'm reaching out to you today because I came across your name in the market that you're in, and someone said this. Okay, and what they would always say was this, is that I spoke to this person, and this person said that if they ever left their company, the only person they would go to work for was Richard Milligan. And the epiphany moment for me was this. I began to realize they weren't saying the name of my company. They were saying my name. And in that moment I realized my leadership brand is ultimately what mattered most. And so I began to focus on understanding what my leadership brand was and how do I formulate that into something that people can actually grab onto, understand, and then attach themselves to. It was, in essence, I was creating polarization or alignment with people by simply being clear in who I was. So here are the 3 big pieces that you need to understand about attractive leadership, okay? Number 1, an attractive leader always has a vision. Okay, so in this moment, just ask yourself this, do I have a vision? Now what I found is that most leaders don't have a vision, so you'll start there. But the ones that do, and if in this moment you said, I do have a vision, here's kind of a gut check. When I ask a lot of leaders, do you have a vision, I'll get a yes. And then when I say, what is that vision, they can't articulate it to me. They look for that piece of paper That they wrote on 7 years ago when they were at some understanding your why boot camp. So the first thing is you've got to understand your vision, but not just on a piece of paper. It's got to be in your heart. So the second part of that is not just having it, but being able to articulate it. Okay, this means that when someone says, like, what motivates you? Like, what's your why? What's your vision? What are your core values? You can articulate those immediately. Okay, so first part is having it in your heart. Have a vision, understand your core values. Second part is being able to articulate those extremely well, and what that means is that you're going to storytell them. How we understand each other best is through the lens of storytelling. Okay, so what I've found is that great recruiters are also great storytellers. So when you're thinking of what is my vision, what are my top 4 or 5 core values, also think how could I storytell those? Now typically, I would say I would identify with the fact that our core values come through the lens of our life experiences, and because of that, you should be able to go back to a moment where this thing jumped out at you, or you saw someone represent something in that moment that you wanted to become, or somebody represented something that you didn't want to be, and so you went the other direction and represented something else. Okay, so that's how we go back and we storytell those things. Storytelling gives me the lens of who you are best. Okay, so have a vision, articulate the vision, and the last part of this is this: live and act in alignment with your vision. Okay, a lot of people ultimately fail in this space because they'll have a vision, they'll be able to articulate the vision, but then guess what? Their leadership brand fails because who they say they are and who they actually are are not one and the same. And guess what? In an era where personal persona and business persona are no longer separate but they're actually woven together as one and the same, you cannot avoid your brand as a leader by having something that you say and then having something that you do as being something not in line with each other. So hopefully the attractive leader framework helps you understand what you have to become in order to become a successful recruiter, because then what we're going to do as a next step is we are not going to lead with our company value proposition. Most people, when they recruit, they lead with company value proposition first and then their leadership brand last. And what you have to do is reverse this. If there was ever a time inside the mortgage industry that this needed to be realized, it is now. Where Stratmore Group survey says 95% of people are basically content where they are, only 5% of people are discontent today. Okay, where you lead with your company value proposition, you're hoping that what you offer is just a little bit better than what they have, That's not how you're going to move people from where they are to where you want them to be. How you're going to do that best is through what the lens of your core value, what the lens of your vision is, and that will get people in alignment with you, and that begins the relationship building piece, which is so critical. We're not recruiting, we're relationship building. So I hope this insight helps you today. You can check out more videos like this on my website at 4crecruiting.com, and until we meet again via video next time, God bless. God bless. All the best to you, and remember, recruiting and attractive leadership go hand in hand. Have a great day. Thank you.