What does recruiting look like under the “new normal?”
As leaders and coaches of recruiters prepare their teams to face a post-pandemic era, the task of teaching and encouraging such adaptability may seem slightly overwhelming. But keeping up the energy during times of uncertainty is possible.
During the TechServe Connect 2020 virtual event, Sales Management Solutions President Lance Cooper and Sales Management Solutions Vice President Rodney Hightower shared the ways one can successfully lead their sales and recruiting teams through these new challenges.
Their takeaways include:
Build trust and communication as a mentor: Understanding different communication styles is important for emotional intelligence, Cooper says. Listening to people and asking questions also bears great importance.
For Hightower, these traits in a mentorship can be impactful.
“So few people have actually experienced a real connection where it’s built on trust so they can be authentic and open,” Hightower said. “As we’re meeting people through our recruiting efforts and wanting to bring them in, we ask: Do we have the support behind us to mentor and teach them on a personal level?”
Cooper added that mentoring can also provide much-need optimism in difficult times.
Understand your purpose: Discovering purpose as a leader and as an organization requires reflection over certain questions: What do you do for your community? How does it help people? How does it make a difference?
This purpose goes beyond generating profit, meeting yearly targets and examining numbers as they relate to incomes for the company. It instead translates into values and beliefs in order to maintain motivation.
“Who would have ever thought that purpose was going to be necessary in leading a sales team or a company? But today, we are moving forward where mentors and coaches are helping people transform what’s broken,” Cooper said.
Have a growth mindset: Seeing the journey as an opportunity for transformation and knowing not to quit in recruiting is key to achieving growth.
“A fixed mindset that basically says, ‘We’re already perfect’ and you’ll get it because you show up… Of course that’s not true,” Cooper said. “Those who have a growth mindset understand it takes sacrifice, hard work and falling down.”
He’s seen many sales leaders with no clear goals, which led to a drop in motivation and no ideas about what they wanted their future to look like. “In other words, the very finest coaches out there are always on a transformative journey,” Cooper said. “They grow to understand people and treat them differently.”
