What it really takes to be a leader 🥇

Many people in recruitment (and elsewhere) seek a ‘leadership‘ role as their career progresses.

This is natural as we have always been taught that ‘career’ means climbing a hierarchy.

But tread with care.

Being a great recruiter does not mean you will be an effective leader. You can be, but it is a different job requiring different skills, competencies and temperament.

Still, people aspire to leadership roles for status, money, and prestige – or sometimes for less selfish reasons, like ‘helping others succeed‘, ‘sharing my knowledge‘, and ‘taking more responsibility‘.

Here is the cold, hard truth;

It takes many things to be a great leader, but high on that list is ‘courage.‘

Courage and the ability to face down your fears.

Leading people can be terrifying. Difficult decisions, Negativity. Blame. Targets. High expectations. Manipulative people. Huge responsibility.

The fun part of leadership is coaching and developing people, celebrating success, seeing excellent results, and building a great team.

All fabulous.

But there is much grunt work to face on the way.

The rubber hits the road as a leader when you must make unpopular decisions that you believe are right, and you make them for the greater good.

Letting people go. Cutting marketing costs. Changing the commission scheme. Advising a good recruiter, she is not ready for a promotion yet. Telling your high performing prima-donna that we love your results, and we used to like you, but with success, you have evolved into a bit of a dick. Let’s talk about a plan to fix that. (Hard conversation. Must be had. No need to use my exact words.)

Of course, decisions and actions are not made in isolation. Great leaders get the communications, support, coaching, and follow-up right. However, in leadership, you will make decisions and take actions that leave you sleepless.

If they are done with the sincere interests of the people and the business in mind, with authenticity and empathy, they will ultimately succeed and be acknowledged.

I like to say, “Leadership is action” because so many leaders are great talkers but seldom follow through.

Or their actions belie their words.

If you are a leader and ignore behavior or values inconsistent with what we say we are and do, you are condoning that action or behavior. You have then set a new standard—a lower one. And it’s hard to challenge these behaviors. It needs courage.

Truthfully, I have realised that the core of outstanding leadership is ‘Accountability with Empathy’.

There are plenty of things your team will ‘want,‘ and in many cases, they need and deserve them. But in some cases, you must deliver what is needed, which may not be what the people want at that time. Again, the way it is explained, the respect shown and much more will be part of this.

However, leadership is not a popularity contest. Ask my thousands of staff over the years. (Yet so many are good friends now).

People will remember you, value you, and respect you for giving them what they needed at a time of low results, hubris, arrogance or low effort.

Because you will help them improve

And that is a leader’s real job.

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Commission, bonus and compensation are critical issues in Agency recruitment.

And so many get it wrong, killing motivation or rewarding the wrong behaviours.

Or making the recruiters rich while the company breaks even, or worse

Seen it many times.

Join our free podcast with Recruiterflow and learn what great comp models look like, pitfalls to avoid, and how to get it right for everyone.

Sign up here

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