I was driving to a meeting this week when I turned on ESPN radio just as the Colin Cowherd radio show was about to start. I am not sure if I like him or not, but I am pretty sure that is part of his marketing/branding of himself. He says just enough to get your attention and get you to agree with him and then just enough to get the other half not to like his thoughts or opinions for that day.
On this particular morning Colin started off his show talking about coaches and the difference that they can make. I think his point was not that one coach really knew a secret play or had a great trick play, but that certain coaches have higher expectations than others. Colin used an example when he was watching Nick Saban from Alabama yell at one of his wide receivers for dropping a catch in PRACTICE. Colin had remembered that the previous year he was watching another college coach during a practice and how that coach did nothing and did not react to a dropped ball in practice. One year later, one coach is playing for the National Championship and the other Coach is out of work.
That got me thinking about my expectations here at Search Solution Group and how I can make an impact. I am not a Nick Saban fan, but I do appreciate and respect winning. I am not sure that yelling at one of my employees for not making a call or getting a sale would be the right motivation for my team or an example I want to set on a regular basis. I like to think that the last few years the approach that I have taken is that most situations are teachable and that we can learn from them. Sometimes it is easier to just yell or get made or make people run around a tree (inside joke), but in the office it is so much more challenging. It is so important to me that we are all learning and getting better. For most of us that means making a few mistakes and learning from them.
Sales is so tricky in the recruiting world. No two candidates are the same and no two clients are the same, what works for one might scare the other away. How do you teach that??? How do get a sales person to understand that just because the last ten people said “NO” that you should not take it personally? All of them are weekly scenarios that we encounter and need to get over to be successful in the sales world. But what I learned from Colin’s radio show is that I need to get better and I need to make sure that I am paying attention to my team. I need to listen, mentor and coach them to success. I am not trying to be Nick Saban and make people cry (Manuel Wright) but I certainly would not mind being lumped into a conversation about Nick Saban and all the success he has had in coaching.
Gnozzo Knows 