The "Player Coach" The Toughest Job In Our Industry!
Posted by on 25/10/2016
Career
Growth is the name of the game in recruitment...in all forms, whether it's your client base, your contractor book, the company's profit or your division's headcount, we are all after those green arrows! In most cases, all of these factors require strong management in order for growth to continue on that upward curve, but in all cases, for this curve to continue to flourish I believe its the spotting and identification of new and potential leaders and the success of these individuals that really keeps your business driving forward in 5th gear!
However, once you have identified those lucky few...that's when the real work starts. These consultants are about to embark on what I believe is the most important yet toughest job in our industry, one that is so vital to the success of the organisation but is often not given enough attention or value placed on the difficulty of the role.
Michael Woodwards article really got me thinking about how we develop our player-coaches as so often in recruitment the assumption is made that the best salesman or woman will naturally make the best leader and so is duly promoted, not on assessment of their competencies to be a fantastic leader, but on the amount of revenue that they have personally contributed. The result in most of these cases is that both the personal billings of that consultant and the growth and development of his of her team decline.
At Lawrence Harvey the transition from successful recruiter to player-manager to out and out Manager is essential for our business to grow and keep growing, getting this right allows our sales teams to expand but more importantly offers real progression for those who are keen to develop, learn and test their skills whilst starting to create careers for others in our industry. This opportunity, or perhaps lack of, is something that is often cited as a reason why people leave their company, or even the industry, after 3-4 years.
In recent years LH have invested hugely in this level of talent in our business and have put in place training and engaged an executive leadership coach to run modulised programmes throughout the year that focus on equipping these individuals with the techniques, skills and most importantly the right mindset and understanding to embark on successfully tackling the player-coach role.
In my opinion, the real game-changer in helping successful leaders emerge from successful recruiters has been the ability of those individuals to develop their emotional intelligence and awareness... not just their sales and coaching skills, as this is what separates the good leader from the great!
To be able to unlock what makes each and every one of their team members really turn up for work and therefore allowing them to treat each consultant as an individual and motivating them as such we are now able to rapidly create top-performing teams (whilst maintaining the level of the leaders own performance). These new skills coupled with the player-coaches ability to lead from the front in terms of sales has lead to Lawrence Harvey currently having more successful player-coaches than ever before on our sales floor and has now created a fantastic blueprint for budding leaders to follow and all importantly allowed Lawrence Harvey to keep tracking on that upward trajectory of growth!
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