Finding and Fostering Talent

Finding instructors today is not like shooting fish in a bucket.

Today’s professional landscape is not like it was 10 years ago.

Sure, an impactful size of the millennial employee market is very soft, but the rest are ambitious beyond what we’ve seen, and they have the goods to back it up.

With that said, you need to step it up as follows:

  • Recognize talent.
  • Deliver on what they want/ need by fostering their talent.
  • Be humble enough to let them go when you can’t deliver, and find a replacement immediately.

With that said, here’s my big question: If you don’t have talent in-house, meaning your home-grown students that have the potential to be instructors, have you ‘really’ put forth the effort to find and foster talent?

An ad on craigslist and other jobs platforms, and a post on Facebook will not cut it for the average business.

I, or should I say Andrew now is that he’s the owner of SKILLZ HQ school, has a long list of up-and-coming-talent on the backend, but that’s because I’ve built culture in the DNA of our instructors that’s easily duplicated.

Now, it’s easily duplicated because I’ve had three generations of talent to help keep the torch lit, and that’s where most business fail:

  1. They give up too quickly before letting the DNA ‘mature’ in the business.

Or,

  1. They don’t foster talent good enough.

It’s that simple.

If you want to be in this industry, then you need to learn how to foster talent really, really quick.

Don’t settle for average and then lose your eye on this. You can settle for and average instructor for now – but all while you are still looking for that talented person who can help mold the next generation.

So my proclamation for today is: go find and foster talent.

Where do you find talent?

Everywhere there are people: on top of the normal job posting and social media platforms, get out and look at your local gyms, restaurants, coffee shops, tea shops, shoe stores, malls, movie theaters, networking events, trade shows, half-marathons, fitness franchises (like Orange Theory), and I could go on and on, but you get my point: you keep looking until you find someone.

What is talent as far as a great instructor goes? Someone that is empathetic, teachable, hard-working, ambitious, positive, visionary, resilient, and humble. More to come on these 8 skills in upcoming posts, videos, and courses!

Now, once you find one, how do you foster talent?

You train that person on your systems often! Don’t just put them on the spot and expect them to learn on-the-go, retain everything, and execute perfectly. If they are THAT good, then they should be working for themselves, and not you.

We train through the same three intensive certifications per year. We have our 6 and under Curriculum Certification in the Winter (Early and Basic SKILLZ), our Instructor Certification over the Summer, and our 10 and up Certification in the Fall (Core and Extreme SKILLZ). (Our Spring event is our annual MEGACON Escape beachside training). As they take these seminars over-and-over, they slowly transition from being a student to actually participating in the teaching part.

You see where I’m going with this?

Find and foster talent, and watch what happens.

-Melody