Overcoming Leadership Obstacles To Produce And Grow

There are big questions floating around our industry about a lack of productivity, a lack of profitability,  and a lack of growth. Here is the truth: We learn from Patrick Lencioni and Jim Collins, just how important leadership is in overcoming obstacles to have productive and growth gains.

People need to be reminded more than instructed. We have done a lot of research of this at REAL Trends and have the privilege of hosting several CEO groups and given the lack of this, I asked one of the groups, “Did they agree that organic growth was just not there?”  They agreed – organic growth had not occurred for many of their companies (large residential real estate firms)

So then I asked, “What should a brokerage CEO focus on?” Well, we have covered it before, and most recently on our podcast The Five Magic Questions but I’ll cover it again.

1- Recruit Talent

2- Develop Talent

3- Spend Less Money Than You Have Coming In.

Every firm in the room was good at #3 – they are all very profitable. But when I asked about the first two, the room went silent. They admitted, that their own personal time was not well spent on recruiting or developing talent. It turns out between financial and technological reviews and out of town meetings, that perhaps, only 10-15% of their time was spent recruiting and developing talent.

But building a cohesive leadership team that is focused on a few basic goals and objectives is critically important to any residential real estate services company. You’ve got to focus on the core of the realty and build the strength from there to create the great results in other core services.

Pat Lencioni’s book The  Ideal Team Player states,  to build an ideal team player for your organziation you are looking for certain attibutes for leadership teams. You need a humble team, those who are not caught up in their own ego satisfaction. You want people who are hungry and looking for success. Lastly and most importantly an ideal team player will hire people who are humble, hungry and people smart. They know how to communicate and get along and problem solve with others.

Real estate is still a story of people, not yet a story of technology. And according to Jim Collins, you simply need the right people in the right seats going in the right direction.