Archive for Real Estate
What If Your Coaching Isn’t Working?
Posted by: | CommentsYou’ve been coaching an agent for three months. You haven’t seen any improvements. What do you do if your coaching isn’t working?
The biggest mistakes managers make in coaching agents is to continue the coaching relationship when the agent isn’t doing the work. Usually, we continue because we didn’t set coaching standards at the beginning of the relationship. When our coaching doesn’t get results, we think that we must re-motivate the agent—that this is our job.
Who or What Motivates?
Motivation happens when we do an activity and it works for us. Then, we want to do it all over again. That’s right. WE do the activity! In this case, it’s the agent doing the sales activities and having some success. You just encourage that success. You can’t encourage not doing things, which is what you’re doing when you let that agent meet with you and you ‘pump them up’ even though they haven’t done what they were supposed to do! Don’t get caught in that trap.
Reasons to Terminate the coaching Relationship
Here are the reasons to terminate the coaching relationship:
- Not doing the activity work
- Not meeting at the scheduled time
- The results are working negatively on your own self-esteem
You’ve done your agent and internal review, and you’ve established the coaching rules. Now, it’s easy to terminate the coaching relationship. You already set up those perimeters prior to starting your coaching relationship. Remember, you have only time to coach those who respond. You also need this response to provide your own self-assurance that what you’re doing is working.
Free Yourself for Better Experiences
By terminating the coaching relationships that have no pay-offs, you’re freeing yourself to coach those who do want your time and talent—and you’ve pre-determined that these people will be successful. You’ve created the best recruiting tool there is—concrete success from your agents with your personal and professional help.
Choosing and Coaching ‘Responders’ Has Many Benefits
I find time and time again that when I try to work with people who do not want to achieve higher goals, they fail—and I feel as if I’ve failed. So, my caveat to you now is this: Choose the people you will coach carefully, to retain your self-esteem, self-confidence, and contribute your talents to those who will respond. That’s a win-win!
A coachability evaluator: Click here to get an evaluator you can use with agents.
What are your reasons for terminating a coaching relationship? What mistakes have you made in continuing a non-working relationship?
P. S. I’m working on an online program right now for the new or challenged agent, to get them into great business habits fast. One of the features of this program will be broker coaching. I’ll coach brokers on choosing those who are coachable, and how to coach when you have no time to coach! What do you want to see included?
Three Steps to a Successful Coaching Relationship
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’ve done any coaching at all, you have found that people don’t respond just because you told them they needed to be more productive—or they told you they wanted to be more productive. You may have blamed yourself for their failure to produce. Although it is true that we all need to hone coaching skill sets, failure to move an agent off ‘dead center’ is usually not a function of poor coaching skills. It’s usually a function of the coach choosing a poor candidate.
The Steps to Choose the Right Coaching Candidates
Step One: Determine who is coachable
You and I know that a successful real estate office is built one agent at a time. Although there were 30 licensees in that office (some of whom I never met), there were many fewer workers. If we didn’t have sales volume, we couldn’t attract the kind of people who would want to be on the team to attain that vision. My first job, then, was to find out who wanted to be productive. Here are the steps I followed, and that you can follow, too, to create a coaching relationship with those who will respond positively to your guidance.
First, set up a meeting with each agent that you think is coachable. Have prepared a list of questions, arranged with a place to write his/her answers for each question. Schedule at least 45 minutes with each agent. Here are 3 of the questions you should ask:
- Describe how you created a successful real estate business in the past.
- Describe how you are creating the business that you are doing now.
- What would be different in your life if you had higher income?
Coachability evaluator: Click here to get an evaluator to use with your agent so he/she can determine if he/she is coachable.
Step Two: Evaluate Your Chances of Success through Coaching this Agent
After asking these past-based questions, take the time to evaluate whether or not you think this agent has the skills and motivation to move his/her career to a higher level. Here are three of the questions you should ask yourself?
- Has this agent demonstrated the ability to overcome failure in the past?
- Is this agent realistic about the activities required and the time frames involved, to succeed?
- Does this agent accept personal responsibility for production?
Step Three: Get Agreement on Mutual Expectations from the Agent
You’ve now determined who wants to work to higher goals. You’ve done your due diligence to determine whether you think they’re coachable. Now, you have to get agreement on the game plan—the plan of action. This is the point at which the agent may say, “I just want to do better on my own. I don’t need any coaching. I just want to be able to ask you questions whenever I want to, and I want you available.” If this is an agent that is not meeting your minimum production standards, I suggest you give them a choice:
Either
- attain specific monetary results (a listing sold or a sale) within a certain time period, or you will terminate that person (and you must be explicitly clear when you say this)
or
- implement a mutually-agreed upon game plan and meet with you on a pre-determined schedule with pre-determined activity standards to be attained and goals to work toward
The game plan: Coaching often fails because it’s not anchored by a specific, pre-determined, agreed-upon game plan. Most agents weren’t taught how to organize a start-up business plan, or weren’t given one and coached to one as a new agent, so they don’t have a proven game plan. You need to have one ready.
“George, I’m so pleased to be working with you to help you take your career to the next level. What we’ll do now is to agree on the activity standards to maintain our coaching agreement (minimum numbers of lead generating and sales activities), your goals, a time frame (should be at least 3 months), and the scheduling for our coaching appointments. We’ll agree on what would stop our coaching relationship, too (not doing the activities, not keeping the coaching appointments).”
P. S. I’m working on an online program right now for the new or challenged agent, to get them into great business habits fast. One of the features of this program will be broker coaching. I’ll coach brokers on choosing those who are coachable, and how to coach when you have no time to coach! What do you want to see included?
My Big ‘Red Flags’ in the Interview Process
Posted by: | Comments
For the last few blogs, I’ve been blogging about that all-important interview process. We’ve talked about the dangers of ignoring the red flags. We’ve investigated how to discover those red flags. I’ll bet you have certain ‘red flags’ that pop up during the selection process that drive you nuts. I do, too. These include the following comments from the candidate:
“I just want to hang my license” (usually stated over the phone; my response is that I want to hang them…)
What are your commissions?” – stated in the first five minutes of the interview (I’ve never interviewed an agent I hired who started the interview that way)
“I want a special deal.” –also usually stated in the first five minutes of the interview, or even over the phone (what makes them so ‘special’?)
Personally, I have never interviewed a candidate who was a ‘fit’ with one of my offices when they led with commission questions.
Other Red Flags
The candidate won’t fill out any paperwork (pre-appointment questionnaire or application)
They ‘drop in’ and expect me to drop everything to meet with them (they must think we managers just sit around waiting for Their Excellencies to show up)
They’re late to the interview—or just don’t show up
They obviously didn’t make an effort to dress in business attire for the interview (I realize this varies greatly by area, but you can tell if the person made an effort).
Specific Red Flags To Notice in the Interview Itself
They won’t answer my questions, or, when they answer, they answer as though it was a question for me to acknowledge
They won’t let me set the structure and tone of the interview (they immediately want to know what I will do for them)
They say they don’t know their production for the past year—with any metrics
They defend their low production and/or are accepting of a few transactions a year
They don’t have an idea of how they will change their production for the better
They seem enamored with the companies that have already hired them in a 15-minute “interview” (low self-esteem, anyone?)
They have been ‘sold’ on the companies that tell them they will provide them leads
They want to be hired ‘on the spot’. They’re not willing to do a 2-interview process, even when I explain the benefits to them
As you can tell from my red flags, my values and vision drive my judgement about these candidates.
What are your ‘Red Flags’?
One broker’s red flags may be another broker’s acceptable standards. What are yours? List five red flags or knock-out factors. What process or system do you have to discover them? Decide whether you would absolutely not hire an agent who demonstrated that behavior, or whether it was a minor flag. Finally, how many of those minor red flags do you need to identify before you rule that candidate not suitable for your team?
Are You Ignoring the Red Flags in your Interview Process?
Posted by: | CommentsIs your interview process gaining the kind of agents you want? Or, are you unpleasantly surprised ‘after the fact’?
The scene: You have been waiting all week with baited breath for that desired candidate to keep his appointment with you. Now you’re in the interview. Everything seems to be going fine, until…
You get an uneasy feeling. It’s just a ‘gut’ response. You can’t put your finger on it. Yet, this candidate has been recommended to you. He’s a top producer. You need him. Other companies have been wooing him. So, you ignore your gut and keep going.
Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. We are enamored with that candidate. We really, really need his production. Our competitive nature comes to the fore when we learn other companies are vying for this very agent. So, we don’t pay attention to the ‘red flags’ that are being waved in front of our face. In the next few blogs, we’ll investigate those ‘red flags’–and I’ll ask you to share with me YOUR red flags, too.
What are ‘red flags’?
The term ‘red flags’ has been around our industry for years. Literally, ‘red flags’ are indicators you observe which may be ‘knock-out’ factors for that candidate. Or, taken one at a time, they are warning flags. They indicate a candidate doesn’t fit the profile of the kind of agent you’re looking for.
Some Indicators that We’ve Been Ignoring Red Flags
From consumer feedback and sales statistics, seems to me we have been ignoring the red flag concept in our hiring practices lately. Why do I draw that conclusion? One reason is that 65% of agents today are part-timers. Now, you may decide to hire a part-timer on purpose. But, I’ll bet you’ve hired several agents in the past year who didn’t reveal to you they had a full-time job (and it wasn’t selling real estate…). You thought you had hired someone who would start ‘up and running’, but, instead, you hired someone who is slow and crawling—if moving at all!
Consumer Feedback Indicates our Red Flag ‘Ignorance’
Another clue that we’re not paying attention to those red flags is the consumer feedback. In a recent survey of buyers, the California Association of Realtors’ survey found that buyers rated their buyers’ agents at an all-time low: an overall satisfaction rate of a lousy 4%! Yes. That’s right. Not 40%–but 4%. You and I know that’s too low to get return business. It’s too low to maintain any type of attractive commissions. So, it’s time to bring that ‘red flag’ concept back and practice it to protect our businesses.
What ‘red flags’ do you note? How have you been ‘snookered’?
SAVE in March: $70+ off Recruiting Resources
(regularly $129.95, now $99.95)
For in-depth how tos in these four sins to saint status, see Your Blueprint for Selecting Winners. 
A $40 value, the Blueprint is FREE to those recruiters who purchase The Complete Recruiter. Plus, get The Complete Recuiter at $30 off (regularly $129.95, now $99.95) AND my new eBook on recruiting, From Romance to Reality. Order now and save $70+. This offer expires Mar. 31, 2012.
Trends: Are You Anticipating Them or Chasing Them?
Posted by: | Comments
It’s What Happened When We Weren’t Looking that Defeats Us….
I just finished the 4th edition of Up and Running in 30 Days, the new agent’s business start-up plan. To do this, I updated the trends, and told new agents what those trends should mean to them as they start their businesses. But, let’s talk about trends from a management perspective. Are you anticipating them or chasing them? The last few blogs were concerned with trends and management long-term habits. It’s hard to change those habits. One way to convinnce yourself, though, that it really is time to make some changes is to look at current trends and see if you are
recognizing them
watching them
or
anticipating them and implementing new strategies
Being able to identify a trend or micro-trend is an art and a science. It’s difficult for us brokers to step back and look at a bigger picture, because we are so busy running our businesses. And, many of our models of success –and successful businesses–are based on old business practices (like hiring everyone who walks in the door). “If it works, don’t break it” is our favorite mantra. Yet, that very philosophy has lowered our commission structures, threatened our consumer base, and made our good agents unhappy with our offices (if we’re keeping non-producers and have no standards).
Getting a ‘whack up the side of the head’ from this very challenging market now may be enough for us to take another look at our business practices and ask, “Is that the best we can do?”
How to Proceed. Choose one area of concern that you have with your business. (Hint: the foundation of all change in a real estate office is the implementation of standards). Write a plan for implementing that change. Take action in one area, and you will see how it positively affects other areas. Mentally get out of real estate for awhile. Look at other successful businesses to see how they handle their customers, their employees, their standards. Get a coach or consultant to help you as you make these changes, so you do these things with purpose, congruent to your core values. There are some of you reading this that will actually change the industry for the better!
Another Leadership ‘Whack: Quit Calling your Agents your ‘Customers’
Posted by: | CommentsWhack: Toss the mantra ‘our agents are our customers’. The real customer is demanding we pay attention to them—or else.
Many brokers call their agents their ‘customers’. We thought that, by calling our agents our customers, we would please them, create loyalty and forge recruiting tools. This trend of calling agents ‘customers’ was a reaction to the old-style ‘father knows best’ management. Not a bad thought, but, unfortunately, too limiting. We assumed that, if we provided the services agents wanted, everything would be wonderful.
That thought process has sure gotten us into trouble. Why? Because we forgot that the person who actually pays commissions is called a ‘buyer’ or a ‘seller’—the end user. If the end user is unhappy, they vote with their feet. The result of our lack of focusing on the end user is plummeting commissions and alternative ‘agent-lite’ companies, relying much more on technology than personal service.
The bigger business world got it long ago. When is the last time you were asked about the level of service in a business you were using? I’ll bet you are asked at least once a week. The bigger world of business discovered long ago that they had to satisfy the needs of the consumer-and that those needs were escalating by the minute.
How do we put the real consumer first, providing the services that make them so happy they would never leave us?
Recommendations:
- Quit hiring non-committed agents. They simply will not do the work, create a business, and serve consumer needs to warrant a ‘generous’ commission
- Establish standards of production for your agents. What do you expect of them—and when?
- Accept that a low-producing agent cannot and does not provide excellent service—and the consumer knows that
- Pretend you are a consumer. Which of your agents would you want to work with? Which of your agents wouldn’t you want to buy a home from?
If your agents aren’t your customers, what are they? Perhaps partners, as one very successful franchise has termed them. You decide.
Get Real Leadership Strategies
Do you want to step into a better leadership style? Be more effective? Recruit more and better? I’ve created a very special, unique program for managers and owners: Once a month I share a specific leadershp strategy to recruit, choose, train, coach, and retain winners. These are proven strategies to get you out of a rut, take you past crisis management, and energize and inspire your team. See more at 365 Leadership. This new series closes for enrollment March 15. Find out more here.
Another ‘Whack’: The Market Won’t Motivate–You Must
Posted by: | CommentsIn this series, I’m sharing some ‘whacks up the side of the head’ for managers.
Whack: The market won’t as motivator anymore. You must provide an atmosphere to motivate.
Fear and greed are terrific short-term motivators, and the on-fire market furnished those generously. Fear of loss pushed buyers to make that buying decision or they would be left out. The market generously provided appreciation to sellers, so they could see the advantage of more money to sell now. (greed). The market provided the fear and greed motivators to agents, too. Now, the market isn’t pushing buying decisions. The market isn’t providing easy deals to agents. Guess what? The motivation finger has just been pointed to you! You must provide an atmosphere that motivates your agents to go to work. You are appreciating your agents. You are already encouraging them. If you’re not seeing changes in their production, you are leaving out the motivator the market used so effectively: fear.
A different way to use ‘fear’ as a short-term motivator. Don’t stop reading now. You don’t have to use that stern parent/dictator style of management. You don’t have to threaten. Instead, you must get skilled at creating, explaining, and implementing standards of production. Why? It’s a business. The market won’t motivate now. Consumers expect much better performance from agents than they are getting.
Standards as Motivators
Standards of production (minimum expectations) let your agents know what is expected of them to have the privilege of staying with you. They also create accountability for management. You must have programs that leap agents over your standards. If you don’t do this one, you are forever dependent on the whims of the market or the whims of your quasi-committed agents. Can you afford to let your business rely on those whims?
Recommendations:
a. Decide whether you’re a business or a baby-sitter. (harsh words, but, remember, these are ‘whacks’.)
b. Decide what is reasonable for you to expect—production-wise—from each of your agents (minimums).
c. Decide whether you deserve a certain level of excellence for all the hard work you do each day.
d. Implement production standards.
e. Look at your ‘agent development system’ and see where the holes are. For example: When do you expect them to start lead generating? If you expect that the first week in the business, when are you engaging them in a start-up plan? When do you start your coaching with them? One of the biggest mistakes managers make is letting agents sit around waiting for something good to happen to them—and it’s not going to happen as an accident in a transitioning or normal market.
Get a Leadership Strategy Every Month
Do you want to step into a better leadership style? Be more effective? Recruit more and better? I’ve created a very special, unique program for managers and owners: Once a month I share a specific leadershp strategy to recruit, choose, train, coach, and retain winners. These are proven strategies to get you out of a rut, take you past crisis management, and energize and inspire your team. See more at 365 Leadership. This new series closes for enrollment March 15. Find out more here.
A Third ‘Whack’: Father Knows Best Management Style is Out
Posted by: | CommentsIn this series, I’m sharing some ‘whack up the side of the head’ for managers. Here’s today’s whack: ‘Father knows best’ is so fifties old-style management.
In the fifties, ‘father knows best’ was the preferred management style. The CEO made the decisions. The agents, the workers, sold real estate. Unfortunately, too, many managers took that top-down management style clear to the doting parent extreme. When you act like the parent, guess what the agents are supposed to act like? The kids. That management style caused a rebellion from agents in the seventies, when they decided they ‘didn’t need a manager’ (a parent) and left the traditional ‘parental style’ management real estate offices for offices promising more independence.
The Extreme ‘Father’
Many managers have taken that parental management style to the extreme in a challenging market. I call this the ‘loving parent’ manager. The ‘loving manager’ dialogue sounds like this: “If I just love them enough they will come back and go to work. I feel sorry for them. I just need to be there for them because times are so tough.”
Unexpected results. There are, unfortunately, negative outcomes from this management style:
1. This style appeals to the non-producer. Loving your agents bleeds clear into sympathy, and sympathy encourages victimization. And victimization encourages non-action.
2. This style treats adults like little kids. When a three year old skins her knee, we kiss the knee to make it better, and put a cute little band-aid on it to comfort that three-year old. Why are we treating our agents like three-year olds?
3. This style drives producers crazy, lowers their production, and they ultimately leave. A recent study from The Ripple Effect, a Washington , D. C. management training and research firm, asked over 70,000 executives, managers and employees in 116 organizations what kind of impact underperformers were having on their workplaces? Eighty-seven percent said working with a slacker actually made them want to change jobs (retention issues, anyone?). Ninety-three percent said it had hampered their development or decreased their productivity.
Poor producers cause producers to produce less.
Poor producers cause good producers to leave.
Recommendations:
- Respect each agent as a responsible adult. Have an adult conversation with each agent. Ask that agent if he/she intends to work in real estate? Ask for a commitment to a work plan. After all, this is a business, not a love-fest!
- Move your ‘love them into business’ actions toward ‘business love’. Ask yourself: Is it fair that they work in the business to enjoy those commissions they want to earn? Is it fair to expect that they work even half as had as you work? Is it fair to expect that they keep honing their skills, keep getting better? Is it fair for you to expect them to invest in their businesses?
The irony of the ‘adult-style’ manager, foundationed in standards, is that it actually is the kinder of the management styles—by far. Why would we want to keep agents in careers where they were failing? Why would we want to provide sympathy instead of helping them create and implement a plan of action?
Leadership by the Month
Do you want to step into a better leadership style? Be more effective? Recruit more and better? I’ve created a very special, unique program for managers and owners: Once a month I share a specific leadershp strategy to recruit, choose, train, coach, and retain winners. These are proven strategies to get you out of a rut, take you past crisis management, and energize and inspire your team. See more at 365 Leadership. This new series closes for enrollment March 15. Find out more here.
Do You Have a Group or a Team?
Posted by: | CommentsThis January and February, I’m featuring the topic ‘leadership’. Why? Because it’s one of the biggest real estate industry trends (and probably world trends) of 2012 and beyond. Look for leadership strategies and trends (not just in the real estate industry), plus ready-to-use documents to go from ‘maintenance management’ to leadership. And, check out my complimentary recorded webinar for leadership. See more below, too.
A Group is Not a Team
So, you’ve got a group of people together in an office. They’re a team, right? Wrong. Until the leader orchestrates teaming, the group is just a group. Can’t associates start teams without the support of the manager? Sure, but the leader (who, I assume thinks he/she is the leader) can’t be assured that the team is going in the direction that’s best for everyone. (Prima donnas, anyone?) Reminds me of the saying, “Where are they going? How many of them were there? I must find them. I’m their leader….”
When a group of musicians gathers to play together, we first have to decide where we’re going–the tune we’ll play. We must decide what key it will be in, and what rhythm we’ll use. To make these decisions, we find ourselves starting to cooperate and compromise, to share the talents of each player. I’ve played in musical groups that obviously weren’t teaming–just getting through the tune. That’s no fun, and actually takes more energy than it’s worth. I’ve played in other groups that were so attuned to each other, that it the joy in creating became so infectious that we all played better than we knew we could. That’s when a team starts happening.
Creating Team Synergy
Without the synergy of the team feeling in an office, agents (and manager) spend too much energy just fighting to stay in business. Managers spend too much time with crisis management, constantly handling internal and external conflict. Working together toward common, inspiring goals, crisis management shrinks, while inspiring leadership blossoms. With teaming, agents and manager perform to higher standards than they thought they could. With consumer expectations so high today, it’s much safer, and a better way to reduce risk, to orchestrate methods where agents are working together for the best interests of the consumer. That takes teaming.
Taking another look at ‘teams’ in the real estate office. There are three reasons why the industry should redefine teams–and use them:
1. The public is pressuring real estate companies to be accountable to them. When they call a manager, they want to know “who is supervising that agent?” Risks could be reduced greatly by agents working more closely together for the good of the consumer–and much more return business, at low cost, could be generated.
2. The industry is changing too quickly for managers or agents to keep up ‘on their own’. Too much information too fast– on our own, we simply can’t process and prioritize this information sufficiently well to compete in the future. Agents who have been extremely independent are finding out that the isolation they thought they treasured is leaving them behind the learning curve.
3. The business world internationally is using new combinations of teams to manage their new work force–the values of Generation X and Y. With more workers staying home to work, or working in a ‘mobile office, the most successful businesses in the world are finding that innovative teams solve the problems of ‘culturizing’ and sharing vision. As real estate offices hire more of these people, they must change their management strategies to fit the style of the Generation X and Yers, who value education, information, and teamwork.
Translating teams to the real estate office. One of the biggest concerns of real estate companies today is raising the productivity of their agents. Those of us in performance fields know that raising performance comes from associating–working with–the best. Creatively orchestrating people working together is the best way to enhance performance.
What’s your take on teamwork and the real estate industry? Have you had success creating a team?
Turning your Leadership Style Upside Down for more Effectiveness
Posted by: | CommentsThis January and February, I’m featuring the topic ‘leadership’. Why? Because it’s one of the biggest real estate industry trends (and probably world trends) of 2012 and beyond. Look for leadership strategies and trends (not just in the real estate industry), plus ready-to-use documents to go from ‘maintenance management’ to leadership. And, check out my complimentary recorded webinar for leadership. See more below, too.
Is your leadership style ‘tell them what to do and expect them to do it’? It seems so easy. You’re the chairperson or manager. Just take charge, tell people what to do, and they’ll do it. NOT. It’s just not that simple. At least, it’s not that simple unless systems are already in place and people on the committee know what their tasks are.
Seven Truisms about Effective Participative Leadership
It’s not enough today to be good at a traditional leadershp style. In fact, you have to really ‘turn your leadership style’ upside down to become effective. You must become a ‘participative’ leader. Here are seven truisms to help you flex your natural style toward more participation from your team members.
Truism #1: New chairpeople don’t know what’s expected of them
Just because people accept the title it doesn’t mean they know how to proceed with the job. Most people have never chaired a committee, so they don’t have the skills. It’s especially challenging when it’s a new task. They need to have clear direction, a job description, job responsibilities, and exactly who to go to when the job doesn’t get done.
Truism #2: People don’t know HOW to get it done
Even when people know what to do, they don’t usually have checklists, systems, deadlines, and assignments to get it done; it doesn’t work to leave it to a person (95% of the time, the other 5% will figure it out on their own) to decide how to get the job done.
Truism #3: Myth: “Leaders are the “idea people” and aren’t supposed to get into implementation (someone else will figure out how to get the work done)
When leaders say that, they immediately put others into the “secretary” mode. Their mentality is, someone else beneath them should be able to figure out how to get that done. That’s a secretarial or assistant’s job, isn’t it? But, your committee members don’t work for you. They work with you. You can’t expect someone to raise his hand and offer to be your assistant because you came up with the idea.
Truism #4: Verbal-type people resist processes and systems
There is a natural resistance in us (maybe especially in we verbal-type people) to organizing processes and systems. We love to talk about the idea. We don’t like to clarify exactly how that idea gets into process.
Truism #5: We ‘big idea’ people think we can delegate systemization to an assistant
Having worked with assistants for over 15 years, I have found that not true. Assistants need help in systemizing any process that YOU want done. They are good at systemizing their own processes–but not good at all at systemizing ours!
Truism #6: Leaders know committees take most of their time REPORTING to the larger group, not deciding on issues or processes
A mistake that committees make is to try to design processes within the large committee meeting. Instead, create task forces to report back quickly to you.
Truism #7: When accountability factors aren’t built in, things don’t get done.
This is a dicey issue, because you’re working with volunteers. Or, in the case of a real estate company, with independent contractors. At the same time, your association or business also expects the services and programs you promised. There’s a great difference between “do it the way you want” and expecting results and “do it the way you want” and let’s check how it’s going regularly.
Sharpening Your Participative Leadership Skills
What truisms do you want to add from your experiences in leadership? What do you see of yourself in these truisms? How can these help you lead? What needs to be done in your leadership position to gain greater skills? These skills are learned over time, and the pay-off is an association or business that is ‘owned’ by all those involved, with empowerment assured.
Leadership Strategies By the Month
Do you want to step into a better leadership style? Be more effecctive? Recruit more and better? I’ve created a very special, unique program for managers and owners: Once a month I share a specific leadershp strategy to recruit, choose, train, coach, and retain winners. These are proven strategies to get you out of a rut, take you past crisis management, and energize and inspire your team. See more at 365 Leadership. This new series closes for enrollment March 15. Find out more here.