Richard Milligan argues that motivation without education breeds discouragement. Leaders often push teams to recruit without teaching them how, wasting effort. The fix: education first, then motivation and application, which leads to transformation.
Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with 4C Recruiting. I wanted to share with you an idea that I just covered in a recent coaching session. It's this idea that motivation, a lot of times how we see it, we believe that it precedes us being able to do something, right? So a lot of times we try to find inspiration or motivation so that we can move towards the actual doing. I love it. John Maxwell, in one of his books, said that motivation comes from doing, right? So it's the doing that precedes the motivation, not the other way around. Why is this important? Well, the reason why this is important is this, is that if you're a leader that is leading other leaders that are responsible for building and recruiting and growing, one of the things you have to be aware of is that A lot of times we can be great motivators, we can be inspirational, and motivating someone to do something is actually harmful. And here's why it's harmful: if they don't understand the right way to do it. Okay, so for example, most people aren't great recruiters. If you're a leader that is responsible for leading a team, you probably haven't had any type of recruiting training. And so because of that, you don't really necessarily know what you should be doing. You probably have had some Experience in sales, had success in that area. You've taken some of those principles, you've applied it to recruiting, but ultimately no one's told you how to recruit, how to build a system around recruiting, and what things are important in that. What should your scripting be like? What should the process and flow look like? No one's ever shared that with you, right? So think about this. If I motivate myself and I do, and I'm doing the wrong thing, what do I do? I actually discourage myself. Right? Doing more of the wrong thing gets no results. And so I can be highly motivated doing the wrong thing, get no results, and be discouraged. So let me put it to you simply like this: motivation without education equals discouragement. So you have to create an equation here. If you're a leader that leads other people, or even if you're just thinking about yourself, How are you going to lead yourself? Where do you start? Start with education. Okay? It's education plus motivation. If you teach me to do something correctly, you're going to build my confidence. You educate me to do it correctly, you'll build my confidence. You're going to build my willingness to move towards it. I'm going to now have a larger understanding of why I'm doing what I'm doing, not just that I'm doing it. So you educate first because the education leads to the motivation. Right? The education is part of the doing that leads to the motivation. So it's education plus motivation plus application. If I take what I've learned in terms of the knowledge and I apply it, that equals transformation. Got it? So motivation without education is discouraging, but education plus motivation plus application equals transformation. And that's what we're after, right? There's this intersection Where recruiting well and leading well overlap. Okay. So great leaders are typically great recruiters and great recruiters are typically great leaders. Why is that? Because there's this— the process around recruiting is relationship building and inviting people into who you are, the leader. The leader is the product, right? So when you think about all of this together, you educate yourself around recruiting. Yes. Another component of this needs to be You educating yourself around leadership, becoming the best leader you can become, because you, the leader, are the product. Hope this is helpful to you. Uh, my calendar's live at bookrichardnow.com. If I can do anything to support or help you, you're welcome to hit up any available time slots that I have there. And until my next video, everyone's having a great week, and we'll see you soon. Bye.
