Last week, we discussed the importance of self-disclosure for moving relationships past the acquaintance stage.

In practice, this means asking slightly different questions during those times you’d normally rely on small talk.

Did you attempt a few of these questions during your Memorial Day activities?

If not, try to work them into your conversations this week. Rehearsing with your friends and family will make it easier and more natural to do this with people you don’t know as well.

The next step is to start using these techniques during your conversations with candidates. Initially, recruiting is about making friends and building trust.

It’s much easier to hire and retain those who have become your friends.

Start with Proximity…

The research sited in the previous WorkPuzzle was not conducted in a workplace environment. However, follow-up studies focused more on business relationships.

One of these studies was conducted at Washington State University by Dr. Patricia Sias and Daniel Cahill in 1998. In this study, the researchers found:

“[Workplace] friendships experienced three primary transitions: from (1) coworker/acquaintance‐to‐friend, (2) friend‐to‐close friend, and (3) close friend‐to‐almost best friend.”

For recruiting purposes, a hiring manager needs to progress through Stage 1 and start to approach Stage 2.

How do you get there? Here are the findings:

The acquaintance-to-friend transition was perceived to be caused primarily by working together in close proximity, sharing common ground, and extra‐organizational socializing.

There is nothing too surprising here. Most real estate hiring managers are trying to accomplish these tasks, and some do it quite successfully.

The problem? They stop at this stage and never reap the reward of going just a little bit further.

…Then Solve Problems Together

The researchers noticed a stall in progress as well.

Communication at [Stage 1] became broader, yet remained relatively superficial.

What caused the next level of connection to become a reality?

Solving problems together.

The friend-to-close friend transition was associated primarily with problems in one’s personal and work experiences. Communication at this transition became broader, more intimate, and less cautious.

This subtle change could be easily over-looked, but it demonstrates the connection between problem-solving and increasing the depth of a workplace relationship.

Recruiting Application

In the arena of recruiting, there is no shortage of problems.

Most new-to-real estate candidates are going to face challenges in transitioning from their prior career to their new one.

Talk to these candidates about the problems they need solved to move forward in their transition. If possible, pick a specific problem that you and a candidate can work on together.

For experienced agent candidates, look for specific problems that competitive agents are struggling to solve. Everyone has problems, and everyone wants them solved.

If you treat competitive agents like you’re already their manager and coach, you may find you’re transitioning to Stage 2 without even noticing it’s happening.

The goal is to build trust-filled business relationships. From this vantage point, hiring becomes much easier and leaving your team (at a future date) becomes much more difficult.

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