Leading with Grit: The Recruiter's Guide to Persistence

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, your host of Recruiting Conversations.

I'm back with another podcast, and today I'm going to let you listen in.

To a recent consulting session where the question that had been posed to me is a question that I think a lot of us can relate to. And the question was, how do you deal with the days or how do you deal with the moments where your energy is off, where you're not motivated, where you just dealt with a tough situation and now you got to pick yourself back up and go do the things that a recruiter does? Get on the phone with someone, make a cold call, right?

Like I think most of the people listening to this podcast are recruiting leaders. And now you just come out of a tough conversation solving a problem and you've got to engage with someone at a high level with great energy because we know that recruiting is as simple as a transference of passion, a transference of energy, but you've got to get yourself to that place where your energy is good. And so I'm going to, bring in this little clip.

You'll get to listen to about seven minutes of a session and then I'll come back to you. So we're going to go to the clip live now.

So let's, let's just talk about your personality profiles and come back to the, like the awareness, the self awareness conversation. As extroverts that are high feelers, that's both of you. That space of, Oh, I feel is going to, it's going to come up pretty consistently because that's, But that's how you've been designed. It means you're incredibly charismatic. You're very passionate. You're good communicators.

It's why you are great recruiters on the flip side of that, that feeling component can be, can in moments where it's like, you can get frustrated with something, whatever that thing is, it can really take you off the track of rhythm and routine. And so being aware of that, So I always, I'm a high feeler. I always am aware when I say I feel and I pause because it's not that I want to disarm the feeling as much as I want to be neutral in it to go. Is it because feelings always lie to us? Emotions.

They lead us to bad places and they don't typically lead us to great places. So we have to lead our emotions, not follow our emotions. So when I say I feel. I always, I try to catch myself and pause and be thoughtful in that moment. So that's a space for both of you that can actually be a struggle or win if you understand your playbook around your feelings, because feelings are simply a state of mind.

That's why we say people responding kind is because if you feel something and I'm a feeler, I will typically respond like you did. You say something mean to me. I'll say something mean back. You want to treat me poor. I'll treat you poor. You want to be condescending. I can be condescending. It's like people responding kind. Why? It's because that's the state someone else is in. Now our state is in that same place.

So in moments where it's, I'm really struggling or I feel low or I feel a synergy, it's always how the question you've got, that's a low level question is why do I always feel this way? That's a low level question. That's like saying, why do my kids always act out? That's a bad question. The better question is like, what can I do to, to change the situation? What can I do to change my energy around this? Because that's simply a state.

Now we change our state and how we arrive in a moment on the phone matters how we arrive in a moment when we're creating scripting matters or trying to push through to get the whatever the number is for the day all that matters. And you have to change your state, a lot of times in order to get to those places. So be aware that's simply a play in the playbook, you can always and forever change your state. I feel like my energy is low today.

You can either receive that, accept that, which is what average people do, or you can change that in a moment. And what's the play in the playbook that would change that. So I worked, I came back into my office last night. I did not want to come back to my office, but I've got some big projects on my plate. And I'm not a project guy. I hate projects. I got to go to a special spot in my brain to do a large project.

I came back into my office at nine 30 and worked almost three o'clock in the morning, got up at six. Hey, I'm really focusing on my state today because I'm in Consulting sessions . I started at eight. I come out at five. I'm really focusing on my state because I need to be here and be my best for both of you and for everybody else. So that's the place that you're going to win or lose. And that's a larger picture of a life, not just recruiting.

So as feelers be very aware of that, because when we show up and we go, I feel, wait a second, that's the bad place to be in. I can change that state. I will leave my emotions. I will not follow my emotions. And if you gave me 10 minutes, I can change all of that state, go to a playlist on music, go for a walk around your block, go drink two glasses of water, go do whatever green tea in the afternoon. All those are things that helped me change my state. Clapping my hands.

It's actually scientific. It didn't, it actually releases dopamine in the body. It seems silly, but that if I was to stand here and, and Tony Robbins, before he goes on stage, you know what he does, he gets on a little bitty trampoline, one of those little micro trampolines jumps up and down and jumps up and down and claps his hand and uses the vocal cords to get them going. Why? Because he's improving his state so that he can show up on stage and be at his maximum capacity.

We just don't think about it and we just take the environment or the situation for what it is. So there you go to that place. And now it's an awareness, right? Where's, Oh yeah, I know. I'm going to, I'm going to feel like this consistently. What's the play in my playbook. I pull it out and now I can change that. And now I go back to a better rhythm. And what happens is that it's like the pendulum. The longer you allow the pendulum to swing out, the farther it swings.

And so it's like in Oklahoma, the wind almost always blows out of the South. It very rarely blows out of the North. So all the trees here, if you look at them closely, they're bending to the North because the wind always blows out of South, that's a bend, right? And so we use this with human beings. A lot of times we say, well, that person has a bend or is a tendency to do certain things, right?

In recruiting, if you don't create a bend, Whereas every single time that this comes up, I oppose it and I come against it. If you don't do that, you'll eventually have this bend. And what will happen is you'll be like, yeah, recruiting is just not for me. This sucks. Like it's too hard. I want to find something that's easier.

And in a great man taught me one time, he said this, and it just has always resonated with me, especially now that I'm much wiser than I was in my twenties and thirties is that he said, anything worth having in this life, I'll say it again, anything worth having in this life, you will have to fight for it. You'll have to resist this, right? So it's, this is the, what I'm feeling right now. I, if that becomes a recognition of, Oh, I'm always recognize that all my energy is low.

Oh, that emotions here. Oh, I'm feeling this way that can actually become a positive bend, which is the moment you recognize that you have a play in your playbook, you pull it out, you execute on it. And now you're resisting against that. And that's the better version of you. That's the version of you that releases some of this stuff that a lot of people will carry with them. I'm like, I had three calls in a row where people hung up the phone on me.

And so they want to know why we jump out of our chairs and act like Tommy boy, whenever we set an appointment, because no one deals with the rejection or the challenges that we deal with. So that's you, you got to have a bend here. Every single time it comes up, pull out your play sheet and your playbook and say, this is what I always do. And now that will shorten those cycles. The pendulum won't swing so far out. It'll start to swing out. You'll recognize it. You'll swing it back in.

It'll start to swing out. You recognize it. It'll start to swing back in. That is so good.

I'm back again here live on the mic. In the podcast. And that is so good to grab some of that because every single day, whether it's in our work, whether it's in our personal life, whether it's something physically challenging, emotionally, challenging us, spiritually, challenging, challenging us, we all deal with this moment in time where energy is low, where energy is off or emotions. aren't where they need to be. And when we understand that we're in control of that, it's a game changer.

We are in control of that. One of the things that I say as a daily affirmation is that I am not a victim of circumstance. I am gifted to change, create, and lead things from what they are to what they could be. And one of those things is my own emotions, my own energy, my state.

One of the things that I learned as a 20 something, I was a huge fan and still am today in my, but in my twenties and thirties, really, I took in all of Tony Robbins content. And if you're a fan of Tony Robbins, then you probably are familiar with Tony Robbins, what he calls the triad or the triad, which is this idea that there are three things that actually matter in changing our state. And one of those is like physically the physical, physiologically, what am I doing with my body language?

Am I sitting here with my chin up and my smile on my face and my, my shoulders forward leaning into this thing or, or physiologically, am I slumping? Am I like, is my body language sad? Don't want to be here. That was one component of I learned early on is that was important. The other part was, is what are we saying? Like audibly, what are we saying? Like the person who says negative things has negative emotions that follow that. And so what are we actually audibly saying matters, right?

Which is why I just gave you one of my personal affirmations. I do personal affirmations all the time. And I teach people that affirmations around recruiting is actually incredibly beneficial. It's incredibly helpful. Why? Because now audibly we're leading, which then means our mind or our focus can then follow because what we focus on expands and body language. Physiologically, this is important. Audibly, this is important. What we focus on is important.

And Tony Robbins calls that the triad, which is these three things that will literally determine whether we're going to accomplish what it is that we set out to accomplish. And so in that session, you can hear some of those things that I am talking about that are a part of those three things that matter. So then in those moments, what we do is we lead ourselves. It's leading ourselves. No one else is going to lead you through this.

In that moment, you can self lead and change something that might be a bad moment. or bad hour or bad day or bad week. You can change those things and change your response to things, change your energy to things, and those things will actually make you more successful.

So thanks for listening to the podcast today. I'll be back soon with something else of value because I love this group. I love this audience. I hope you're doing well. Thanks for the downloading this podcast. If it brought you value today, share with someone else. The recruiter and the recruiting leader role is the most difficult job in any organization. I just believe that it is. And so if you're listening to this podcast, man, I'm high fiving you, fist bumping you.

Like you are the one person on the seat on this bus called the company that can actually have the biggest impact because you can bring people to the organization through it is in who you are and what you do. And so I'm applauding on from a distance and we'll talk to you again another podcast soon because I will come back with another one until that happens. Have a great week everybody. Want more recruiting conversations? You can register for my weekly email at 4crecruiting. com.

If you need help creating your own unique recruiting system, you can book a time with me at bookrichardnow. com.