Why Surrogate Leadership Matters - Podcast #12 with extra bonus tips

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan. You know who I am if you're watching the video by now, surely, right? Or it says it below so you can read. I guess I don't have to do an introduction anymore. I'm about to cut another podcast. This will be episode 12. I want to take a moment before I jump into this because I think Teing up what I'm going to talk about today is going to be really important to you. So I find myself saying maybe a dozen times inside the things that I teach something along the lines of, this is really important, you need to get this. So there's probably about, if I identify them, maybe 12, maybe max 15 principles that you have to get if you're going to be next level recruiter. So again, this is for recruiting leaders, means you manage a team, but you're also responsible for Recruiting to that team. It's a very unique role inside any industry. But this principle today is a really key principle to your success, period, end of story. Okay, so I really want to tee this up and say this is an area to lean in. This is an area you should really be asking yourself, how do I actually actionably insert this into The things that I'm doing. Okay. And it's a principle, it's called surrogate leadership. We're gonna talk about surrogate leadership today. Why does that make a difference in you winning or losing in the area of recruiting? And so with that said, stay to the end. I'm gonna give you an extra nugget once we get to the end of this. These nuggets aren't available on the podcast, they're only available on the videos. So you can see this video on Vimeo, my Vimeo channel. You can also see it on my YouTube channel. You're probably seeing it in one of those 2 locations right now. And so with that said, let's get this party started. We're going live on our podcast. Podcast in 3, 2, 1. Everybody, welcome back to Recruiting Conversations. This is your host, Richard Milligan, and today I'm going to talk about one of the top 10 to 15 principles inside recruiting leaders and their success. So, one of the things that I recognize is that from time to time I say, this is really important. You have to get this. And so, while that isn't always true about everything that I talk about, this principle here is true. What we're going to talk about today is surrogate leadership. Now, if you've never heard of the term surrogate leader, it's because I made it up. It didn't exist until I identified it and I made it up. Now, it's not actually made up. It actually is real. It is something that exists whether you recognize it or not. So if you want to call this a surrogate leader law, a surrogate leader principle, this matters. Now, it matters more today than maybe ever at any point in your life and my life. Now, I'm 46 years old, and while that's Neither old nor young. That's me saying that. I am older than my kids, and maybe you're older than me, and that makes me young, right? So it's all relative. But in this time, in this space, inside business and inside leading, this principle matters. It absolutely matters. Now, let's just break this down. What does the word surrogate mean? The word surrogate means in place of. So when you think about— when we typically think about surrogate, we think about a surrogate mother. As an example, if a, you know, a litter of puppies had a mother leave, you could find another surrogate mother, another surrogate dog that would take on that litter of puppies and feed them and take care of them, right? In the animal kingdom, we think of that as in place of. A lot of times we use this even as humans talking about That's my surrogate mother, right? When my mom's not around, that's my surrogate mother, in place of. So, while we use this typically in the parenting role, this is absolutely true in the leadership role as it pertains specifically to recruiting. So, let's just back up a moment. Like, as a surrogate leader in place of someone's current leader, what does that mean? Well, right now in every industry, but specifically in certain industries based on how they recruit, how they promote, There is an epidemic in this area where there's a shortage of great leaders. Now let's just walk this through. In a lot of industries, what we do is we take good producers. These are people that are great salespeople. And because either other companies are recruiting them to become a leader, right? We might give them a better title and we might put people underneath them. So maybe another company's recruiting them and offering them that position, and we feel pressured to offer them that position. We actually go ahead and we take good producers, good salespeople, and we automatically make them leaders. This doesn't mean that we've measured their ability to lead. This doesn't mean that we've done anything other than look at their ability to sell. And we assume you're a great salesperson, so you've got some intangibles in place. And that's always going to be true of great salespeople. And so because of that, you can teach that, you can lead that. And so, oh, by the way, welcome to your new promotion. But being a great salesperson doesn't automatically make you a great leader. I can actually take my own real-life example of being back at the age of 25, 26, 27, being promoted into a leadership role, and then being promoted pretty quickly into a regional leadership role. And I was a relatively young salesperson that had very little experience leading people. Now, I was a studier of success and business principles and leadership principles because I was taking on a lot of information because personal development has always been, from the time I was 19, it's always been one of my core values, one of my beliefs that I should be becoming something better than I am. And so, while I had probably more skill set in the area of leadership simply because of that single principle in itself, It didn't make me a great leader. I can tell you, I can look at a lot of decisions that I made as a young leader and say, wow, big mistakes. And look, I'm today in my mid-40s still making mistakes as a leader, but I am accelerated way beyond what I was as a good salesperson new to leadership. So, this leads to one of the many reasons why there's an epidemic going on in business today where there's a lack of great leadership. Well, and here, let me just give you this. Here's another item I think that plays into this. There's an enormous amount of information out there available, but it doesn't make it great knowledge. It doesn't make it wisdom. There's a quote by a guy by the name of John Nesbitt, and John said this. He said, we are drowning in information, but we are starving for knowledge. We are drowning in information, but we are starving for knowledge. Think about that. Like, there's so much noise. Thank you, social media. Everybody has a voice today. Everybody thinks they're right. Everybody's got an opinion. So we're drowning in that, but doesn't make it good information that we should be applying to our leadership. It doesn't make it good knowledge. Doesn't turn it into something that automatically should be used in how we lead. And so because we have all this access to information, a lot of times it's easy for someone to follow a path that's not the right path to becoming a great leader. And so I think that plays an element in this as well. Now, let me give you the backdrop to where I said surrogate leadership is an actual principle. Mid-2014. So if you know my story, I spent 10, almost 11 years really struggling to recruit. And then I spent 3 and a half years, 4 years actually having a lot of success recruiting. There were 2 distinct seasons that I actually went through. In that first season, the first 10, 11 years, I didn't understand this. And at the beginning of that last 3 and a half to 4-year window, I was only beginning to understand this in the first 6 to 12 months, but here's how it became relative to me knowing that this existed. Mid-2014. Now, at the end of 2013, I had revamped all of my recruiting efforts. I took a week and a half, 2 weeks off the grid, took a good friend of mine, Scott Sealy. We actually planned, premeditated, Dissected every part of the recruiting process and then put it back together in a full-blown system. Okay? So, we do this into 2013. Mid-2014 rolls around and I begin to receive phone calls from internal and external recruiters. And this is where I became aware that, look, what you're doing right now, Milligan, is different, it's unique, and it matters. And the word surrogate began to surface itself. And here's why. I got Maybe half a dozen phone calls from like June of 2014 to end of 2014, and the calls went a little like this. I'm not calling because I was specifically looking to recruit you to our company, but I just had to meet you. I was calling in one of the markets that you lead in, and I was talking to someone who's not on your team right now, and they said this: if I leave my company, the only person I'll ever go to work for is— and they would say my name, Richard Milligan. Now, while that began to, to some degree annoy me, because imagine this, I'm putting in a lot of hard effort to recruit people, to build relationships with people, and some of the benefits of that are people saying, well, I'm not going to move right now, but I will one day. One day I'll go to work for Richard. To some degree, there was this bit of annoyance that came with that, but there was definitely this aha moment that came with it as well. And the aha moment was what you're doing in terms of recruiting efforts is leading people to a place where they would say that one day Richard will be in a position of leadership in my life. Okay, so what was I doing? Now let's back into this. How does this apply to your recruiting efforts today? If there's an epidemic and a shortage of great leadership and you're a great leader, okay, now that's got to be the first premise. You're a great leader. So if you don't feel like you are, you don't believe you've brought yourself to a position of leadership, hit my email up. Maybe in another podcast we'll discuss maybe 12 key influences or a number of key influences in my life that have gotten me to a place where my leadership has grown and developed. Some of those are podcasts. Look, the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, great podcast. Andy Stanley, another great podcast. Carey Nieuwhof, another great podcast. Look, lots of books that I could give to you that I've read. I mean, my goal for 2019 is is to actually read a book a week. And how will I do that? Well, I'll do that in reading 40 to 60 minutes every single day. I'll knock a book out every single week doing that. If you don't believe me, go to audible.com and just look at the length of books. Most books are somewhere between 5 and 7 hours long. I can read a book a week. So part of that would be making sure you are positioning yourself well in how you lead. But the other part is how do we reveal this to people? Where they have these aha moments themselves where they say, that's the person I'll go to work for because they're bringing me more value than my current leadership is bringing me. Let me give you an example of how you could do this. Look, I ask this question a lot to people, which is, what's your next step? So when people say, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to send someone a direct message on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter, my question is not necessarily, What's the crafting of that message? I want to know what's also going to be the next step. Because if you have a single standalone tactic, then you're a tactical recruiter. You have to be a systems recruiter to be a successful recruiter. That's the bottom line. And the reason why is, look, in any sales, the secret number is 7. There's power in the number of 7 touches. So if I work to build a relationship with you and I engage you 7 times, I've now only hit the average That number that it takes to actually convert someone. Okay? So in the minimum, I'm going to work out what are my 7 next steps. But let me give you an example of how you could do this in terms of leadership as you're recruiting. If I'm going to call you over the phone, several things. One, I will not leave you a voice message. Okay? That's a breadcrumb that leads back to me being a recruiting leader. You don't know who I am. But if I leave you a message and say, this is Richard Milligan, Regional manager with ABC Company. Like, you know that I'm a recruiting leader, right? And if you're dissatisfied and unhappy, then you return my phone call. But look, we've tested that strategy out, the voicemail strategy out with a large company. 0.04% is the response rate that we got in return messages. So if we left 1,000, we got 4 return calls. Now, there's some of you out there right now that are saying, look, that's worth it to me. I'll leave 1,000. I'll figure out how to scale 1,000 voice messages. In order to get the 4 return phone calls. But the catch to that was the people that returned the voicemail were people that were job hoppers. These were not people that were tenured. These were not top producers. These were not the people that you're trying to recruit as a recruiting leader. Okay? So voice message, it just doesn't work. And it leaves a breadcrumb that says that you are a recruiting leader. And so the next time you call, I've identified your number as being your number, and I just won't answer it. Forever. So now you put yourself in a position of like the phone doesn't work at all. And we already know the phone has diminishing results right now. People have moved away from the phone. Marketers have ruined the phone. Thank you so much, telemarketers. You've ruined the phone. And now we've got to figure out a different way to communicate to people in scale. But the truth is that if you dial someone, 1 out of 20 will answer the phone on the first ring. We found that if you dial 3 times in 1 hour, You repeatedly call them in 1 hour. So you space that out every 15 to 20 minutes. They'll answer the phone in about 1 out of 11 is the number. So calling repeatedly without leaving a voice message in the course of an hour, that works. That'll get you more responses. Okay? Now, when someone answers that phone, you do need to have a good phone script. And there's a lot of what I would call tricky phone scripts out there. We're not going to talk about phone scripting today. Make sure you're using a high-integrity phone script. Look, if you're a recruiting leader, you fish in a pond that you're going to fish in forever. Unless you move markets, you're going to be fishing there for a long time. You have to have a strong reputation. You need people to believe that you are a high-integrity leader, to be able to identify you as someone they would work for one day, that they could— would come along and partner with one day, right? So if I call you and I use that kind of a phone script, a high-integrity phone script, and you say, You know what, I'm happy where I'm at. I'm not interested in meeting with you. And that's the end result. I'm going to ask you, what's your next step? Because the next step is where I get to start delivering my surrogate leadership role. So if you say, I'm happy, I'm not interested in meeting with you, I'm going to put you in the category of being a cold recruit. And there's really 3 categories forever: cold, warm, and hot. But you're a cold recruit if you won't meet with me and you're not interested. And so if you were to do that, what I would say was this. Look, out of respect for you and honoring the fact that you're happy where you're at, what I would love to say is thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day for having a phone call with me. And as a way of saying thanks, I would love to send you one of my favorite books. And one of my favorite books is this. Now, I've got a number of books that I use. I use Tim Collins' book, Good to Great. I used Darren Hardy's book, The Compound Effect. I use John Gordon's book, One Word. There's a lot of books. You may have a book or two that you're like, that's been something that's been dynamic and has changed my life. Use that book. You can buy those books in bulk used on Amazon. If you've ever done that, those books show up practically brand new simply because most people buy books and then don't actually read them. But imagine the concept of buying a book and reading it. But I would buy these books in bulk and very rarely would one show up that didn't look new. So you'd get those books for $2 to $5 apiece. And so I would end my phone call with this, out of respect and a way for me to say thank you for taking my call today and being professional, I'd love to send you one of my favorite books. What's a good address for that? They would then respond, about 8 or 9 out of 10 would respond with an address. And now most people will respond with their home address because they recognize you're a recruiting leader. And they don't want you sending that to their office because it just gets awkward a lot of times if you send it to the office. If their boss were to open up the envelope, so you get the home address, which that's actually— there's some secret sauce in that because now I can engage in a conversation at home. That's a completely separate podcast. Why is that important? But it is important. And now I get to actually go on a journey of next steps with you because if I send the book to your home and you get it, I follow up 7 to 10 days. In a text message and say, just following up to see if you got my book, John Gordon's book, One Word. And they say yes, and I'm gonna say, did you get a chance to read it? Such an easy read. It takes an hour to read that book, by the way. And if they say yes or if they say no, either way, I'm engaging in a conversation. My next piece, and if you listen to my previous podcast, I every year develop one word. I can share my one word with them. And if they didn't develop their one word, I'll follow up a couple weeks from now to see if they've developed one word. And if they have developed one word, then I'll get to find out what it is. And I get to go on a journey as a surrogate leader with them. Let me give you an example. One time in this exact situation with that exact book, I sent that to a young lady. The young lady got the book. The young lady actually responded back to me and said, here's my one word. Her one word was audacious. Now, that's— I mean, that's not an— I wouldn't say that that's actually a normal word that somebody would actually develop, right? It's like kind of in this peripheral realm of like something that I could even come up with, like the word audacious. And so I responded with, what does that mean to you? And she said, I need to be more bold in the area of picking up the phone and reaching out as a salesperson. I find that I have issues with actually cold calling. And so there's cold call reluctancy. I'm not sure why, but I've got to be more bold if I'm going to grow my book of business. And that opened the door for me to step into ideas, touching base weekly, finding out where she was. Some incredible stories come from that. At one point, I find out that she's actually making her phone calls from the women's bathroom because she was embarrassed to actually make the phone calls in the bullpen area where there were other salespeople. An incredible journey. She does come to work for me. That's surrogate leader. A surrogate leader takes someone on a journey of bringing value to them in a place where this person is lacking value. If this person's lacking leadership and you show up and you lead well, right? Now, you got to figure out creatively how you do this and you got to incorporate it into your system. But if you figure out creatively how you do this and you do it right, This person at some point asks themselves this question. The question is, Richard's bringing more value to me than my current leader is. What am I doing over here working for this leader? I should work for Richard. This is one of the ways that you actually change the conversation from this company value proposition mindset to who you are as a leader and your leadership value proposition. Look, I'm a firm believer in this. I don't care how good your company value proposition is. If you don't lead with your leadership value proposition first, your vision, your core values, what do you have that you can lend, that you can give as a leader, as a great leader, as a good leader, then you are missing on an opportunity to tap into the 95% of people that are happy where they're at. Only 5% today say they're unhappy. So, if you're going to lead with company value proposition, you just pigeonholed yourself to the 5% that are unhappy. And I would rather be in the 100%. I'd rather be being able to pursue everybody, and the surrogate leader can. You know you're doing this right when someone says, you're bringing me more value than my current leadership. Can we talk? There's lots of creative ideas on how to do this. I've given you one. If you need more ideas, you can always set up my calendar at bookrichardnow.com. This is really important, gang. It's really important. Okay? A takeaway from this should be this. If you're not in a position where you're even like, I know what I would send, or I know how I could contribute, or I don't believe I'm a great leader, look, you really need to stop and go to this place of how do I become a great leader? One of the ways you do that is you take on information. You don't know what you don't know until you know it. Am I right or am I right? So, the truth is that you've got to become this information aggregator. Look, the average CEO today takes on 50 to 60 books per year. I didn't stutter when I said that. That's a book per week or more that they're taking on. Did you know average person, the other range of that spectrum, is that the average person today reads 2 to 3 books per year? And most of those books are not self-help, are not motivational, are not leadership books. So, look, I know a lot of people that are leaders that aren't even reading a book per year. So, if you're questioning, man, I don't believe that I'm in a position to be a great leader or to be able to contribute at a level where I can really position myself as a surrogate leader, you start there. You start there, you become the information aggregator, and in a very short window of time, you will have the knowledge and the information that you can actually go and apply To become a great leader. Giving you some good podcasts that you can listen to here. I would take on each one of those if you don't have podcasts that you're listening to. Incredible information there that will advance you on your journey. Lots of others too that you can listen to. So look, I hope this brought value to you today. Surrogate leadership— attach yourself to this idea. Ask yourself the question, how do I position myself as a surrogate leader? It will make you a better recruiting leader. No doubt. Until next time, this is Recruiting Conversations with Richard Milligan. Look, if this brought value to you, share it with somebody. The biggest compliment you can pay me is sharing this to somebody else. Look, we are now the number one recruiting leader podcast in iTunes. Share this with somebody. I know this would bring value to the old Richard Milligan who started out his journey without any knowledge around recruiting, had a false belief system around recruiting. Share this with somebody that's in your industry that you are friends with. That's the biggest compliment you can pay me. I say thanks in advance for doing that. And until next time, have a great week. I look forward to talking to you again on Recruiting Conversations. Thanks so much. Okay, done there. That idea is a great idea. The idea I shared of books and sending books is a great idea. Let me give you another nugget on this. One of the— if you're like, man, that's too expensive, and oh, by the way, I want to scale this, I want to send that to 200, 500, 1,000 people that are maybe in a pipeline you've created, here's a good idea. If you are a Prime member, so an Amazon Prime member, then every single month you get 2 book credits from Prime. Those book credits go to Audible. If you've got a smartphone, Audible is is a book listening app. You can take those 2 book credits and it's really easy to do. On Amazon Prime, you actually go find the book that you want, you make sure that there's an Audible version of it. If there's an Audible version of it, you simply over on the right-hand side of the screen click get this with an Audible credit. It's free. It's not really free, you're paying for it as part of your Prime membership. But then it automatically asks you where you want that to go. You tell it where you want it to go, which is a the phone that you have, the phone number that you're associated with, and it automatically shows up in your Audible account on your phone, on your iPhone or whatever smartphone you have. At the very top right-hand corner of that is a little box. It's a box that has an arrow pointing up on it. If you click that box, it actually will pull a drop-down menu and the top line says, send this book for free. This is really cool. If I click that, it asks me how I want to send it. I can send it by email, I can send it by text message. There are certain apps that work with it that you can send it through. If you just simply go to the text message part, it will then drop it into a text message and it gives you some message along the lines of, I'm giving you this book. If you haven't ever received a book from a friend on Audible, this book is free, and it gives them a URL. Now you can take that URL and you can cut and paste it into anything. LinkedIn, Facebook, email, that URL will work anywhere. It's a shortcode that they can use to get that book for free. So it doesn't have to be that you buy the book. It can actually be that you actually just do that process right there and then share the book. Because you could say as part of that phone scripting that I just gave to you, at the end of that you could actually say something along the lines of, you know, I'm looking at my clock, I've got— I'm late for a meeting, so I've got to jet. But you can just say something along the lines of, hey, I wanted to share this book with you, right? And per our conversation on the phone. And so a great way for you to create next steps inside your recruiting process. Hope I brought some value to you today. I love the fact that we're doing these videos with some added nuggets. And until we do it again, I'll see you. Awesome.