As a real estate broker, you are no longer directly responsible for leading buyers and sellers through the complexities of real estate transactions. Instead, you are now charged with the responsibility of successfully leading your team of real estate agents to reach their potential. While there are many traits and skills that make up what most would consider a successful leader, there are a few that serve as the cornerstones for every broker. As you strive to become the best leader you can be for your team and your business, focus on the development of these must-have traits.
Authenticity
The greatest leadership wisdom taught in lofty places like Harvard has to do with being authentic. Authentic leaders are said to value input and feedback, are positive, truthful, and open. They build trust and generate enthusiastic support that improves both individual and team performance.
A career in real estate can feel like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs. For some real estate agents, the downs can lead to doubts in their abilities and fears about their future. As their broker-leader, you can help shoulder those burdens by being an authentic leader who has both empathy for their situation, but whose enthusiasm and positivity helps them stay focused and motivated. Being an authentic leader, also helps create the authentic culture in your brokerage that will minimize turnover and help improve production.
Recognition
There is nothing more demoralizing than having those you look up to ignore your strengths and accomplishments. As a leader, it is your job to give recognition to those agents that perform well and showcase exceptional talents. If you hold team meetings, you may want to consider regularly giving out awards or tokens of recognition to worthy individuals. Certainly top performers should be recognized, but there are many things you can recognize people for. In the spirit of being authentic, just make sure they are recognized for real achievements. If you look hard enough, everyone has something meaningful they have achieved that you can hold up for your team.
Humility
Everyone makes mistakes. The difference between an “average Joe” and a successful leader is that a leader is humble and willing to admit their mistakes. This is another attribute of the authentic leader, the willingness to admit mistakes. In fact, as a real estate broker, you have a special opportunity to use your hard earned knowledge to save your agents from wasting their own time, money, and resources in the same ways you may have as an agent. By exercising humility and openly leveraging your mistakes into lessons, your entire team can work smarter and will have deeper respect for you as a leader.
Empowerment
One of the first things you had to learn to do as a broker was to stop selling homes yourself. Now the next part is actually empowering your agents to do the selling and make them as good at it as you were. Don’t be a broker who swoops in and personally fixes everything, whenever a deal hits a rough spot. Instead give your team the training they want, the advice and support they need, and the encouragement to be successful. Agents who feel empowered and supported, and who are not micromanaged, will take more initiative and will develop into more productive and motivated sales associates.
Accountability
If you strive to lead an all-star team, you must lead by example by being accountable for what you say and do. This really means getting back to some basics like saying what you will do, and doing what you say you will. Since the buck stops with you, some things will naturally float up to your level, and when agents see that you will jump in and handle the big challenges, their confidence in your leadership will grow.
Accountability is actually one of the important skills Weichert teaches its brokers through the Weichert Management Academy. The academy, open to Weichert owners, brokers and managers across the country, teaches attendees all the important elements of building a successful team and managing a successful business. In this training, the behaviors that constitute accountable leadership at every level are discussed. Being accountable means employees will feel your organization is solid, and that they are both well supported, and empowered to move their business forward.
There’s Always Room To Be A Better Leader
As a real estate agent, you successfully developed your abilities as a salesperson. As a broker, your focus shifted to being an effective leader. If you think you could benefit from leadership coaching and training programs, as well as a collection of production boosting tools and systems for your agents go to weichertfranchise.com or call 877-746-2067.
