Using Re-Recruitment to Battle Burnout and Restore Resiliency

Every business in the world is facing the massive problem of “The Great Resignation,” a “Second Pandemic,” plaguing every leader. Surveys of CEOs show that workforce staffing and retainment are the key issues they face now and in the future. Couple that with the growing epidemic of burnout from increased job stressors and declining resiliency/adaptive capacity and we have “The Imperfect Storm.” The solution is “re-recruitment.”

When I proposed to my beautiful and brilliant newborn ICU flight nurse wife Maureen, she agreed to marry me but added, “As long as you agree to ‘re-recruit’ me through the course of our marriage.” I didn’t quite know what that meant, but I have certainly learned that skill, which every leader must master.

Leadership is worthless, because it is a noun, something you say, while leading is priceless because it is a verb in the active voice- the things you do, who you are through your actions.

Re-recruitment is being as proactive at retaining your A Team Members as you were at recruiting them in the first place. The better your A Team Members are, the more certain it is the competition is pursuing them during the Great Resignation. “Re-Recruitment Leading” requires changing the culture, as well as the systems and processes in which we work. One tool is to “Stop Doing Stupid Stuff and Start Doing Smart Stuff” to change the systems and processes burning us out. Who will do that? The team itself, with A Team Members leading the way since, “If they aren’t with you on the takeoff, they won’t be with you on the landing.”

Another tool for re-recruitment is “The Love, Hate, Tolerate Tool,” using the team’s reflections on what they love about their work and accentuate it, what they hate and eliminate it (to the extent possible), and minimize what they tolerate.

These and other tools of “Re-Recruitment Leading” moves from The Great Resignation to The Great RE-SIGNation, where A Team Members not only stay but recruit other A Team Members.