Mid-tier coasting consultants are often those that have the skills but are happy to sit in their comfort zones. Even though they have the potential to be top tier performers, they often lack motivation, and so they just coast along, doing just enough to get by.
Your job as a recruitment business owner is to find the buttons to push that will get them motivated again. I have a tool that I use to elicit values. In other words I find out what is really important to them. Once you know what your team values it will make your job much easier. You simply have to offer them the opportunity to have more of what they value and they will be motivated. How useful would it be for you to know what ‘hot button’s” to press to get them to take action?
Follow these 3 easy steps and get to REALLY know what motivates your consultants. Then you can help them discover what’s important to them and get them motivated again.
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
Step 1 – What’s Important to them about – Work, Job and their Career
Ask them: “What is important to you about your being a recruitment consultant or your job or work or career?” Write down all their exact words they use in their answers as they respond. When they have gotten to the end of the list ask the same question again. Often this will elicit more responses. Wait for them to answer, don’t make suggestions. The idea is that the values are a reflection of what is truly important to them.
Step 2 – Motivation
The next question digs a little deeper. Ask them: “Can you think of a specific time when you were really motivated in your work / job / career/ recruitment consultant? What was it about the situation that really motivated you? You may find that some of the answers from the previous question are repeated. Write them down anyway and keep building the list of answers. If an answer is framed in a negative way, for example: “I don’t want to be bored.” Ask them if they can rephrase their answer as a positive. For example: “I like to feel challenged or I like to be creative at work.” You want to try avoid “away from” type motivating factors and instead have the values framed as “towards” motivations.
Step 3 – Ranking What’s Most Important
Once you have a list of things that the consultant values, you can ask them to rank them in order of importance. You can do this by asking the following questions:
- Of all the criteria, what’s the most important?
- Assuming you have (list what they gave as being most important), what is the next most important thing on the list?
- Repeat this way of questioning until you have a list of top 5 values.
10X YOUR TEAM’S OUTPUT
“Your team does a lot of work – but they could do better. “
Step 4 – What Do The Words Mean?
Once you know their values, and have the top 5 most important values, clarify what those values mean to them in real terms. In other words if they have mentioned that recognition is important to them as them what that type of recognition looks like. Is it a quiet word saying “well done”? Is it recognition in front of peers and colleagues? Is it getting some type of award or financial reward?
There are some useful questions that can help you find out what values mean. Using recognised for example:
- What has to happen for you to know that you are recognised_______?
- How do you know when you’re recognised?
- What does recognised________ mean to you?
- How do you know when someone recognises_______you?
- What is your evidence procedure for recognition _________?
- What causes you to feel recognised __________?
- What would have to happen for you to feel not recognised ________
Knowing their definitions of what is important will help you as a manager keep them motivated. You will know what buttons to push and how to manage them in a way that will help them perform.
I hope you found this article useful.
If you want to learn how to set up your business, so that it stops under-performance once and for all, then join my free webinar: The 5 Secrets Our Clients Use to Build 7 & 8 Figure Recruitment Businesses
‘Til next time,
