If you lead a team, you have an idea of the types of people you want on your team. You know the kind of experience level, skill and work ethic that will help your team be the most successful. And you know the kind of daily performance indicators that distinguish “A” players from the rest of the pack.
So, what if you came up as a hiring prospect for your team?
I like to ask this hypothetical question because it invites introspection on the type of example we as leaders are setting. We all know the best leading is done by example. Employees can tell quickly when a leader walks the walk and when they only talk the talk. When a leader can’t set an appropriate example through action, their confidence in their judgment, knowledge and ability may falter. Consequently, morale can suffer, leading to productivity issues in the business.
So if your resume came across your desk, would you make the cut? Would you seek out someone like yourself based on your current performance?
Let’s walk through some key indicators together to see whether you are in a position to lead by example or you need to think about recalibrating.
Key Performance Metrics:
- SOI and Referrals
Are you actively maintaining relationships with the members of your SOI? Are you identifying those who are most likely to provide referrals and encouraging them to communicate those referrals? Or are you too busy taking care of administrative tasks?
- Open Houses
Do you regularly host open houses? Or do you not have time?
- Listings
Are you generating listings with the same energy with which you expect your team members to locate buyers? Is your pipeline consistently full? Or do you find yourself stuck in dry spells because after securing a few listings you start focusing on other things?
- Closings
How many of your listings closed in the last month? How many do you project will close in the next month? Have any of your listings stalled because you haven’t been able to give them the attention they need?
Based on how you answered these questions, it may be time to rethink and re-engineer your role as a team leader. If you don’t have time to focus on critical lead-generating activities and building out your pipeline, it might be time to expand your support staff. As the team leader, your priority should be generating business for your team, not getting bogged down in administrative activities. You aren’t doing right by your team if your time is mostly spent on activities that should be delegated to others.
If you are still working primarily with buyers, it’s time to add a buyer’s specialist to your team so you can focus on generating listings. You might be hesitant to turn over that work to others, but ask yourself: is it more important that you be the only person your clients deal with, or that they work with a specialist at every stage of the transaction? By doing everything yourself, you are hobbling your business’s capacity for growth and potentially neglecting clients.
Obviously, your role as a team leader is different than that of those on your team. You may be in a position where you are more or less out of production, and instead, focus on training and development—and if so, great! I’m more concerned about team leaders who are still trying to do it all themselves, and as a result, are unable to really do anything.
Remember why you started your team in the first place: was it to better serve clients and provide a more balanced life for yourself, or was it to produce at a lower level and experience more stress and uncertainty for yourself? If you aren’t getting the results you set out to achieve—if you are turning into the kind of team member you’d be inclined to fire—it’s time to wake up and make the changes you need to get back on track!
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, a real estate consulting company that specializes in performance coaching and building highly effective teams. Contact wssm@workmansuccess.com for more information and free downloadable resources.
