Part 3 of Face to Face Meetings

Hey, it's Richard again. We're about to cut another podcast here, and I'm blown away. We've made it to 50. Last podcast, I realized the very end of that that this was going to be our 50th, and I think I said it was the silver anniversary, and it's not. It's the golden anniversary. Like, that's crazy. I haven't been married quite for 25 years yet, so I haven't gotten to those important numbers. Leah and I have been married for 21 years, but big deal. I think it's a big deal. The consistency of things that we do in life matter, right? Whenever I say the consistency of things that we do in life matter, it isn't about a podcast, right? It's about everything in life. Doing things consistently in our lives, that's what matters. And so I've just I'm gonna pat myself on the back because this hasn't been easy, but I've been committed to this. And there's a lot of reasons why we're committed to this, because this doesn't happen just by me. This is like, there's, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, sometimes 5 people involved with this podcast. I think I've said it before, like, this podcast costs us somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500 per podcast to produce. And so with— by the time you take all the energy and effort around everything that we produce from this podcast, So, it is a labor of love. It is understanding why we're doing what we're doing, and that is our heart is to help the recruiting leader who has very little help in this area of recruiting. And so, yeah, we made it to 50. I'm excited about that. I'm just kind of pausing and reflecting on camera right now. So, how about that? We're gonna go live with this podcast. Well, we're in the middle of talking about face-to-face meetings, and so this is episode 3 of 4. We did 1, we did 2, but this will be episode 3 of 4. And what we're going to talk about today is the progression in this. We've gone from talking about the initial building relationship piece to getting to the largest component of recruiting, which is— or the most important thing in recruiting, which is understanding what motivates someone most, their why. And now we're getting into— it's my turn to talk. And what do you say? Because when we're inviting people to this meeting, we have invited people into a meeting saying we are not going to recruit you. And for most people, they're not equipped to be able to handle this 3rd stage because of that. So I'm excited to share the 3rd part. That means that a lot of you are probably going to have work to do beyond this because you're not doing this correctly. But that's a win because now you're gonna have clarity on what you should be doing. Right. So here we go. We're gonna go live with the podcast, podcast number 50, here in 3 and in 2 and in 1. Welcome back to another Recruiting Conversations. Your host, Richard Milligan, and it is our 50th podcast. Let me give myself— there's nobody else in this studio— giving myself a rousing applause. Okay, look, like, I gotta do this. Like, If someone would have said when you start with the first podcast you're going to make it to number 50, I would have said, yes, I believe that I'm going to be able to cross that line. But like, now we fast forward a little over a year. It's been, what, 15 months since we've been doing this? This is episode 50, and we already have beyond this other ones recorded that we haven't played yet. So we know that— Um, We know that we're gonna make it, we're gonna survive. This was crazy. I realized this, I started looking, when I started looking at launching this podcast, I think this is relevant to recruiting, so I'm gonna give it to you. When I was looking at launching this podcast, the numbers were staggering. They were absolutely staggering for how many people start a podcast and don't get beyond episode 10. How many people start a podcast and never do anything. And it was one of those things when I was looking and thinking about starting this podcast, I started searching, probably like a lot of you, in iTunes where I was just searching the word recruiting. And I came across 3 or 4 podcasts. I remember this. I came across 3 or 4 podcasts. I was like, that is awesome. I would listen to an episode or 2, and there wouldn't be anything more than 3 or 4. And I began to realize that, gosh, we all have these great intentions, but few of us actually see these intentions all the way through. And so in the beginning, One of the things we have to do is we have to count the cost. What's going to be the cost of this? Because there's a limited number of hours in a day. There's a limited amount of resource and energy that I can actually expend and produce. So, understanding that, where am I going to invest my time? I think too many people think of time as time management instead of time allocation. That's an entire podcast in itself and we'll probably come back and do something around that. But think about that. Time management. Versus time allocation. This is important to us as recruiters, right? Most try to manage their time instead of allocating their time. And if I'm going to allocate my time, I need to determine where do I want to spend that and who are the people in my organization that I'm going to report to and have meetings with and open my email up to and what specific behaviors inside recruiting am I going to actually map out in the day-to-day that I'm going to allocate my time to? Most people show up. I found this to be true. Most people show up in the day-to-day And it's like, ta-da! And I pause because it's like, what's next? It's like whoever can get my attention the most. And that's why email has become the enemy of the recruiting leader, because that recruiting leader wears multiple hats. And because you wear multiple hats, you are exposed to lots of people inside the organization. The people above you that are in upper management, the people that are really under your leadership, Underneath your umbrella, and those are the people that are feeding communication up to you, and you're funneling all that back and forth and back and forth. And most recruiting leaders get stuck in the middle of email and phone calls and voicemail and text messages. And ultimately, those things can literally absorb your entire day. You know this. They can absorb your entire day and you can get absolutely nothing done. So we're going to transition from that. I'm off my high horse. Yes, episode 50, but we are in episode 50 talking about one of the most important things in all of these 3, these 4 sessions where we're talking about meetings. If you go back to podcasts 2 episodes ago, we were talking about the building relationship part, which I think is the first phase of the meeting. And then in the past episode, which was episode 2 of 4, we were talking about what I think is one of the most critical things in recruiting, which is getting to what is the largest motivator for my recruit. And so I'm asking questions around that. What is your why? What is it that motivates you most? And that brings us to stage 3 of 4. And so at the end of getting someone's why, we transition from getting that information with some simple statements. A simple statement can literally be, I've enjoyed hearing a little bit about you, and I would love to tell you a little bit about myself. And so I'll start with kind of what I think are my core values, and then I want to share what my vision is. So we're going to now talk about our core values and our vision. You ready? Because a lot of people aren't ready. That becomes the larger problem with this, is that remember on the phone, if I said to you— What you should be saying is that if you're willing to meet with me, I promise not to recruit you. This will be a relationship-building-only meeting. Someone shows up, and when people— people get Stage 1, let them talk about themselves and you build relationship with them by asking good questions. And they get to some degree Stage 2, which is, I need to figure out what motivates them most. And then we get to Stage 3 and we're like, now's your time to share your vision and your values and what motivates you most. What is your why? And it's like, now I'm not equipped to move through the 3rd stage of this. Because most people would insert company value proposition in this moment. That's what they would do. They would insert their company value proposition. Let me tell you about how awesome our company is, right? It's like our support's phenomenal, our leadership is great, our technology is amazing. You know, all of these things, our culture, which is the most overused word on the planet for a recruiter. You wouldn't believe what our culture is like. There's another podcast in itself. How do we break down that word culture? What does that even mean? I mean, I like to use different framework For words like that because then people automatically assume that they know what it is. And everyone's culture is a little bit different and everyone's culture is a little unique. But we come back to this thing right here where it's like we can't talk about those things. Now, it exposes us in this area of not being clear and able to communicate our core values. It exposes us in the fact that we don't have a vision for where we're going. We've never really articulated Our larger why, why we do what we do, right? And that's not for money. If it is, you're going to be a very shallow recruiter. It's not for success. It's not for a better title. If those are the things that you're promoting, I put quotations around better opportunity. If that's how you're recruiting in this moment, then you get here to this third session of these 4 that we're recruiting. And it says you got work to do. You have a lot of work to do. Let me tell you why vision, core values, and why matter. Picture 3 circles, right? And the 3 circles are those things. What's my vision? What's my largest motivators? What's my why? And then what is the top 3 or 4 core values? Picture those 3 circles. There's an overlap. Take those 3 circles and overlap them. Slightly. There's an overlap with those 3 things where there's a bullseye. The person who's clear on those 3 things is operating in what I call the Passion Zone. That person has that it factor that we can't quite articulate what it is. It's like they're extremely compassionate, they love what they do, they're really excited about what they're doing. Right? But there's something unique and there's something different about that. And one of the key things in recruiting is that we're able to transfer our passion. That's what recruiting is. I'm trying— it's a transference of energy. I'm transferring my passion about my opportunity to you. You don't have to be discontent. If I'm more passionate about what I'm doing and I'm able to articulate to you why I'm doing it and the value system I'm doing it in and the vision of where I'm going, if I can articulate that to you, In this, in this little narrow zone where it all overlaps, there's a little bit of transference of that it, whatever it is. And someone says there's something different about Richard, there's something different about his opportunity, there's something unique about what's going on over there. And what we primarily lack as recruiting leaders is our ability to communicate this. This is really when we get to this 3rd stage of where Great recruiters differentiate themselves from average recruiters. There's someone in my coaching this last year that hired over 100 people inside their area. And a lot of people would say that's a successful career and they've done this in a year. How'd they do that? How they did that was this person is living in their passion zone. This person has it. If you spent some time with them, you would know they had it. And so we come back to this moment and we say, I have to have clarity around my vision. I've got to know where I'm going. I've got to be able to articulate this to people. I've got to have clarity around my core value system. And it can't be 20 different values. It needs to be clearly articulated in 3 or 4 things that are memorable and transportable because those are things people will take with them. And then it comes back to me. as an individual recruiting leader and being able to answer this question, why do I do what do I do? Why do I do this? What's important to me? What am I trying to accomplish in the larger scheme of things? And I think most people operate in like 5 different arenas with this. It's like we want to do what we love with the people we love while making a greater difference while being fairly compensated. And then able to spend time with the people that we love and adore most outside the walls of business. Now, I'm to my family and to my friends and to get to do these things that matter to me outside the walls of business. And I think most people operate in a similar framework. I think you're probably nodding your head right now, right? You've got to be able to articulate these things to people or you will simply fall in The opportunity improvement offering. We're a little bit better. And it might be that you think you're a lot better, but you're still in the opportunity improvement offer. The leader who shows up that can communicate vision and values and why they're doing what they're doing, they're operating in their own category. That's a new opportunity. That opportunity doesn't exist anyplace else. So we're not selling this. As much as we're storytelling this, I'm not showing up and saying, this is why you come join my winning team. You like my secondary voice I use right there? It's like, this is why you come join my winning team is something that a lot of framework, a lot of people use. That's not the framework that's best used if you want to motivate people that are ultimately aligned with you. I can take someone That's perfectly happy where they are, and I can move them to my team. Because perfectly happy in context for most people means that they put a little check mark in the box on the survey that says, I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied where I'm at. What does that mean? It means I've got the tools I need. It means I'm pretty content in terms of my paycheck. It means things are going smoothly for the most part. Things are going smoothly. But there is a defining word in the Latin that's used around status quo, and I would dare say most people fall into that category, that status quo. I'm content, I'm satisfied, that status quo. How in Latin it defines the term status quo is mess we're in. And I would dare say that people that are operating without being in this, these 3 circles that we're talking about here with vision, value clarity and why they're doing what they're doing clarity, those people are settling for something that's less than what's available. When a leader shows up that's operating in this area, we all want to spend time around that leader. Now, for me, that leader was a guy by the name of Greg Gunn. Greg Gunn is the founder of an organization called Family ID. I remember hearing Greg speak for the first time And when he spoke, that passion zone he was operating in, it just splashed all over me. So here I am running a busy life. I've got 4 kids running— at the time, I think I was running 5 teams. Greg shows up at an event. He speaks. There was something about Greg that was different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but Greg was operating with this it factor all over him, and he was clear. On why he was doing what he was doing. He was clear on his vision for where he was going. He was clear on the value system he was operating in. And I wanted to be a part of that. I just wanted to be around that. So I look up 3 years later and not only have I been serving alongside him at events, these nonprofit events, but I'm on the board for his nonprofit organization, Family ID. And I'm buying cases of his books and I'm handing them out because Greg was operating in his passion zone. This is what every leader needs to work towards. If you ultimately want to operate in the 5 areas that I mentioned, doing what you love with people you love while making a difference, while being fairly compensated, while having time to spend time with those people that are most important to you, if that's a framework that you're nodding your head and saying yes, then this is a place you got to put your head down and do work. And this is work. Look, when I originally got clear on my core values, when I originally got clear on why I was doing what I was doing and my vision, I had to go get to a place where my brain was quiet, where I wasn't looking at emails, where my phone was off, where I wasn't in the middle of running the kids to basketball practice and my daughter to horse riding lessons or whatever it is for you. I had to get to a place of white space and I had to start asking myself some really hard questions. So here's what I would like to do for the audience here now. I've got a document that will help you. A lot of you can't even answer what the term why actually means, and that's okay. I couldn't do it up until 2014. A lot of you aren't even clear what's the framework for core values. And how would you even define core values? And that's okay. I couldn't do that until 2014. And most of you aren't clear on the vision, like my market, my team, where are we going? What's the finish line that we want to cross? Outside of it maybe being a number, which is ultimately not vision, it's a goal. Outside of it being a number, you can't communicate that. And again, that's okay because that's where I was up until the beginning of 2014. If you get clarity around this and you work towards this, it's going to take work, then you're going to be able to get to this 3rd stage of this face-to-face meeting. And not only are you going to be able to share your vision and share your core values and share why you're doing what you're doing, you're going to be able to actually storytell them. So, I'm introducing storytelling now as part of this. Right. Because the context is this. If I share with you my why, how I convince you that that's authentically me, if I share with you my values and how I convince that, that Is authentically me is I share the story of my life. I share the story of why those things are important to me. You weren't born with clarity around your why. You weren't born with a core value system. You've been taught those things. You've experienced in life that's actually led you to a place where you've gotten clarity around these things, where you've been able to identify them. Some of those experiences are good experiences. Honestly, some of those experiences in my life are bad experiences. I could share with you some very detailed stories about the poor leadership that I've been under over the course of my career, as much as I could share with you the amazing leaders that I've had, like a Greg Gunn in my life. And we all have those stories. It would be very rare for someone to actually just have one amazing leader and they go through their entire career underneath that amazing leader. That would be rare. That's just not the story of life in general. The story of life comes through the lens of conflict and struggle and perseverance and fighting for things that are of value. That's why they're of value to us. If somebody just gave them to us and we didn't have to fight through the difficult seasons to get clarity on these, they would have no value to us. Why I am passionate about this topic, which you can probably hear in my voice, because I had to fight to a place to get clarity around these things in my own life. And when I did, I was able to actually Give those things to other people that were of meaning to me and have people adopt those things and make them of meaning to them as well. So, it's a long journey to get to this place. Most of the people listening to this podcast are mature leaders. If you sat down and spent some time getting clarity around your values, around your vision, around why you're doing what you're doing, and you had that and you could storytell it like I can. One of the stories I share with people It's a story of being— of 2007, being in the mortgage industry and failing miserably. Waking up in my bed mid-2007, knowing I've got lots of pain coming up, maybe because I got to recreate myself, lots of hard conversations to have because I'm failing in this moment, having already exhausted all my financial resources. And the only thing I'm looking at is obligations financially, not resources anymore. And realizing in that moment, like, What am I really living for? It's not for money. It's not for success. It's not for a larger, beautiful office with beautiful furniture in it. It's not for an awesome car. It's not for these things. And in those moments, I'm waking up in my bed and I'm realizing I got a newborn and I've got a 5-year-old. I've got a wife of 7 years or 8 years. And in those moments, my clarity was I'm doing this for them. I can't even do this for myself because I'm so discouraged. And I'm so afraid of failing further in these moments. The only things that got me out of bed was clarity that I don't want to go back to being 19 years of age and leaving home where I spent 19 years in a broken, poverty-stricken place. I said I wouldn't create this in my own family, and here I am staring it dead straight in the face. And in those moments, that story— I could share that story with someone and say, I'm clear today. On family being more important than work. And I encourage my employees. In fact, I'm coming out of a meeting yesterday with one of my employees where I'm saying, take time away. Go spend time with your family because something's going on there. Those are my larger motivators. When I share that story with someone, what I'm ultimately doing is convincing them that that value is true about me. This isn't a sales pitch. This is the authentic me. And I think the number one characteristic of a good story is the vulnerability of the storyteller. So this means that you're going to have to be vulnerable in these stories. I think great stories come through some unique framework, and most people have never connected the dots on that unique framework. That unique framework is there's always a beginning. I just kind of at a high level articulated that to you in my story, right? The beginning is 19 years of age and leaving home, kind of planting my flag in the sand and saying, in the future, this is who I will be. And I already am clear on who I won't be. I've given you the other component of a good story, which is conflict and struggle. That's necessary. We make a huge mistake when we recruit and we only tell highlight reel stories. It's a massive mistake because those stories are not trustworthy. It's not— we would never go watch a movie That's nothing more than a highlight reel story. It's why we watch SportsCenter, but we would never go watch a movie. I could tell you today the context of a movie I've watched. I don't know how old the movie Hope Floats is, but for those of you that have seen it, I mean, that's an old movie. I mean, it's like, what is it, 20 years old? Right? Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr. It's like, I mean, for those of you that haven't seen it, you probably should go see it because there's a good framework for story. There's a beginning, there's conflict, there's struggle. Yes, the happy ending exists, but that's not the story. That's part of the framework of the story. So when I share my story around my failure, which was conflict and struggle, and I shared the story going back to the beginning, and then I shared where I am today and how I lead today, what I'm doing is I'm convincing you that that is the authentic, real me. And if you are aligned with that, If that's something that you're looking for, then if you're looking for it now and don't have it, then there's an immediate next step. If you don't have that now, but you're not looking for that because you're happy where you're at, I'm planting a seed in good soil. I'm planting a seed of who I am as a leader that you will not forget. Last year, I got a LinkedIn message from someone that I'd tried recruiting 9 years prior. No doubt. 2019, I actually had to go back and look and see, and what season was I in and where were they and where did we engage to figure out that 9 years prior, I had met with them and I'd shared a story with them and they're showing up in my LinkedIn inbox saying, something you posted today triggered a thought and I remembered back then. Stories are memorable. Stories make impact, leave impact. Stories are transportable. They can take them with them. So yes, vision. Yes, values. Yes, why. And then we want to connect those to stories. This is one of the things I'm most passionate about. You want to convince people to join your team as a leader? You have no shot against me if you can't articulate these things. If there's someone in your market that can more clearly frame these over you, You don't stand a chance because this is how we've been wired as humans. This is how intrinsically we're wired. Think about this for a moment. Just pause here. Pull out a sticky note, pull out a piece of paper, pull out your pen. I just clicked my pen. And write down the places and the timelines of your career. Go through this process. And then what I want you to do is, Transport yourself back to those moments, that space, that little bitty space of where you were and where you were headed. Like, I'm at one company, but I'm leaving and I'm going to another company. What I know is true is that if you sat there and you evaluated that long enough, it would be your core value system that would be moving you from one place to another place. I go back in my own career, Why was I leaving one place and going to another place? It was because of misalignment in some way with my value system and realigning it with something that I thought was aligned with my value system. It was leaving one vision and it was moving to a larger vision. It was being motivated by a leader who was not clear on what they were doing or why they were doing it or had actually articulated to me and it wasn't in alignment with that. And I was then moving towards another leader who I thought was clear, that was in alignment with that. And when we look at our careers and we start stacking these opportunities of where we've left and where we've gone, most times, not always, but most times what's motivating us to move from one place to the next place is this intrinsic design that we have to be more motivated by values, to be more motivated by aligning with leaders who are clear on what they're doing and why they're doing it, which part of the vision, part of the why. We're motivated through that lens. So, a lot of times when we go back and when I work individually with a leader, we map some of these things out where people get stuck and say, why did that take place? Why did you move? Why did you get into an industry to begin with? Sometimes, it can be a value system that's pushing us in a direction. You have to be able to articulate these things. And if you can, then you are a next-level recruiter. So behind the scenes here, we call them Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 leaders. We just— it's an easy, simple framework for us. When we meet a leader and we're working with a leader, we do a lot of leadership branding here. So in our leadership branding, which is part of a channel, we've got 13 people here that help leaders to develop their brands and be able to articulate those, create content around those. As we're doing that, When we say Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, a Tier 1 leader, clear on their vision, their values, and why they're doing what they're doing. Clear 2 leader understands those, has identified those, but has not created ultimate clarity around those. Tier 3 leader has no clue. The hardest leader to represent in this area on social media is the Tier 3 leader because they don't know what their content's going to be. Right? We've kind of— we call it the FAV or the FAVE stage. There's 3 letters there, F-A-V. One is they're fearful in what they're posting, and they're not real sure in whether this is right and whether someone's going to receive it, or if I'm going to get rejection in this, and if I'm going to have to defend it. I'm not really— there's a fear starts to come from that, right? The A stands for ambiguous. They're just real vague. In what they're going to post. And you read things and you're like, well, that's kind of an abstract thought. So, they're ambiguous in how they're representing themselves. And then the V stands for they vacillate. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And that becomes the Tier 3 leader that's very difficult just to follow or to understand what they're talking about or where they're going with their social brand. Right? So this plays a part in every aspect of your leadership. And the reason why is because we as human beings are drawn to people that are confident and clear in these areas. So here's the big challenge for you. Go spend some time getting clear in this. I've got other podcasts on vision, values, and why. I've got a YouTube channel that's got some resources there. Go pick up Simon Sinek's book on why. Go just to your Audible and search it. Go to YouTube and search it. John Maxwell's got great content on this. I already brought up Simon Sinek who's got a lot of great content on this. Go find people that are talking about this. Andy Andrews— I'm sorry, Andy Stanley has some incredible framework for this. I'll include a link below this podcast where you can go look at his course on vision and why it's important. There's some Amazing gems there that you could go grab, and I'll make a point to include that below the framework of where this is on iTunes and Google Play and Spotify and Stitcher where we're posting these. So, that's your homework from this. If you're going to do this face-to-face meeting right, you're going to be able to present this, you're going to be able to storytell this, and if you can do that, you as a leader will become a Tier 1 leader. And I think the Tier 1 leader is what I would define as a visionary. This is someone that everybody wants to work for. There's something special about them, like a great gun, that wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you want to be around them because you realize they will make you better. So that's part 3. You can probably tell I'm pretty fired up and pretty passionate about this, but I think this is one of the most critical things to you becoming that next level recruiting leader. And I'm all about helping you on the journey along this way. So thank you for being a part of this, for being a part of this tribe. Thank you so much for tuning into this. If there's something of value here and you're thinking of someone else inside your organization or on your team that would also find value in this, I would be honored if you would share it. Thanks again for listening. Until episode 4 of Face-to-Face Meetings, have a great week, everybody, and we'll talk to you again next time. Bye. Can you tell I'm fired up? I'm passionate about this. Holy smokes. I think that we've been wired as human beings to want more. And I think we get confused when that framework comes up of want more. We think want more equates to a better home or a better car or a longer vacation, or those are the things. And ultimately, I think that we desire to have more than that. Because it's not about those things. Talk to anybody that's in the last season of life and you'll get a lot of these epiphanies as to what's important. I don't know many people that get to the end and they're thinking about acquiring more things. I talked to a leader earlier today who is a Tier 1 leader and he made the statement, legacy Over currency. And I'm nodding my head. I agree. Right. And so I know there's value in this. Now let's go do the work. Have a great week, everybody. We'll see you again next time here on another video on my YouTube channel and on another episode on Recruiting Conversations. Thanks so much for tuning in.