There are moments in time as a leader that stand out.
One of them for me is 2014.
I was celebrating a massive win with my team.
We had just lived out our values in a big way.
A friend of mine shared with me how he was connected to a Girl Scout Troop who was in the middle of a horrible situation.
About 3 months prior, the Girl Scout troop leader had died after a short unexpected illness.
She was also the mother to one of the girls in the troop.
What followed was generous donations to the troop to show support for them.
In the transition of leadership, another troop mother took over the leadership role.
This included access to the money the troop had from donations and selling cookies that year.
Fast forward a few months and there was a revelation that the new leader had embezzled all of the troop’s money.
To make matters worse, these troops use the profit they make from selling cookies to take an annual trip to somewhere cool.
Needless to say, there were a number of disappointed and confused ten and eleven-year-old girls.
When I heard the story, I couldn’t stand by so I approached my team with a creative idea to help them out, and they jumped at the opportunity.
Fast-forward several weeks, and we held an event at our local office on a Saturday to help these girls sell cookies and obtain donations.
We went to every radio station, news station, newspaper, social site, referral partner, past client and so many more to spread the word about our event.
And then…..WE CRUSHED IT!
We sold more cookies than anyone expected as hundreds of people turned out to donate, buy cookies, and show these girls some love.
People drove more than 100 miles to buy a case of thin mints.
At the end of the event, we presented the troop with a golf check for a trip to Great Wolf Lodge.
My team had donated above and beyond everything else to contribute to it.
The girls were elated, and we were excited to have played a small part in their journey.
At the end of that day, about 15 team members gathered around the girls to take a photo.
It was a testament to an amazing culture and team chemistry.
I still have that photo to this day.
Then, about a year later, people began leaving.
Within a short window of time, nine of the 15 had left for other companies.
I remember asking myself what had gone wrong.
Was it me?
Was it something I should have seen coming?
As I pondered this for the next few months, I realized I had been incredibly transactional in my leadership.
I had a great sales culture but little real connection to my team.
I was so focused on producing, operations, and recruiting that I didn’t have a personal connection with many of them.
The big aha took place in one of the oddest places.
I was conversing with someone I would consider a mentor, and we were discussing marriage.
He brought up the fact that he had recently seen a survey of divorcees where they asked them the question, what were the top reasons you got divorced?
One of the top answers was that couples said they had stopped dreaming together.
It made complete sense to me as in looking at the future they were focused on bigger and better things to come.
Then it hit me that this wasn’t just a marriage principle.
This was a leadership and life principle.
Leaders who dream with their teams, retain their teams.
I began honing my skill at figuring out people’s dreams.
What I found was that it really wasn’t that simple.
It took effort and skill.
Over the years, I developed a simple framework for remembering it.
Here is a recent example of a whiteboard where I created a visual for it.
Let me break this down for you into 5 simple steps.
Ask the dream question: Where do you want to go professionally over the next ten years? I will also follow up and ask about their personal dream, outside of work. Ten years is a big enough window of time that it forces us to start with a simple premise: Anything is possible. We have long forgotten the days of being a kid when we dreamed without limitations.
Context: You are going to find that a lot of people struggle to dream. They will answer “I am not sure, as I haven’t thought about that.” Here is the challenge, if you let them off the hook, you will not have what you need to retain and recruit them. So give them context. Context around where they currently are followed by this, “is that where you want to be in ten years?”
An example, “so you are currently doing 18 million in production a year?
Do you want to be doing 18 million in production in 2034?” You can also do this on the personal side. As an example, I have 5 children, ages 22, 17, 14, 11, and 2 (we are in the process of adopting baby Hayes). Context in a question would be, “in ten years, your children will be 32, 27, 24, 21, and 12. Is that a different season of life for you?” Use context to get people started on their dreams.
Ask Why: Now that you have the dream, you want to know why the dream is important to them. I have found asking why multiple times leads to better places. In a real-world example, I have had someone tell me they wanted to make 300k so that their spouse could quit their job and be a stay-at-home parent for their one child. When I asked why that was important to them, they stated that they were going to grow their family. They wanted to have more children. Be willing to ask why several times and you will get more meaningful answers.
Reframe what you heard: Here is a great statement to memorize: “If I heard you correctly, what I heard you say was.” You want to reiterate what you heard them say, as they will add additional information to your statement. I can distinctly remember someone saying, “Well, that is part of it,” when I reframed what I heard. When we are working to retain and recruit, we want to throw darts at the bullseye (The dream), not around it.
Gain agreement on the dream. This is where they simply say yes, that is the dream. You need this as you are now going to bring the professional dream and personal dream up again and again.
As a recruiter and leader, this is a big opportunity for you to be the unicorn of all leaders.
The leader who constantly resurfaces the dream and pursues people keeping the dream in front of them retains and wins talent.
If do this you have a unicorn offering that no one else has because you the leader are the product NOT the company.
The leader who knows their people’s dreams and simply focuses on helping them accomplish those dreams retains their people.
So here is your challenge: Go use this on your team, knowing that practice will prepare you to ask these questions when recruiting.
