Written by Peter Tran

The Importance of Clarity

One of the most common missteps of agency leaders is beginning the process of building a winning team without having a clear picture of what they want that team to look like.

The leader who repeats this mistake again and again may conclude that building a winning team is just not possible in their area.

Great leaders don’t enter this cycle. They make clear decisions from the outset about where they hope to end up. Then they course correct throughout the process.

A key difference they possess? Clarity.

One of my favourite authors, Jim Rohn, says before building anything, you need to have it clear in your mind’s eye.

It is essential to have clarity around your ideal culture. It’s not as simple as how many people you want on your team, and how many sales you hope to make. A great team is built on a foundation of culture.

The more time you spend visualising your ideal culture, the more depth you add to it. You begin to picture the values your team hold, how they speak to and about clients, and their day-to-day behaviours.

Defining Culture

Culture within any organisation cannot be underestimated. The smaller the team, the more important it can be – especially when your goal is expansion. 

Consider the type of culture you want for your business. Do you envisage a team where everyone gets along regardless of performance? They likely will still have a job next month. This is known as Clan Culture.

Perhaps you see a team where everyone does only what they’re told, stays in their lane and gets on with the job. This is Hierarchical Culture.

How about a purely Market Culture where results reign supreme, regardless of their attainment?

None of these alone will create the ideal real estate team. The best teams focus on each of these elements, yet you must decide as the leader what the blend will look like in your agency.

Culture in Action 

Working with new members of The Leaders Circle recently gave me an opportunity to help them articulate, with clarity, what they wanted in a winning salesperson. We discussed what this looked like in values and, just as importantly, how these would translate into daily behaviours.

The defined values included: Coachable, Work Ethic, Ego Drive, Honesty/Trustworthiness. 

Being coachable means being open to being trained by you and listening to your advice with a genuine appreciation for your time and effort in developing them.

Work ethic means being able to think like a business owner and put in the necessary hours to get the job done. Whatever it takes.

Ego drive is the internal competitive trait for a salesperson to hunt down a result and get a real kick out of the outcome.

Honesty and trustworthiness mean the salesperson can be relied upon to execute their daily tasks to achieve results, all with a client-first mindset.

Clarity in your culture as a leader will empower you to make decisions on recruiting through to managing salespeople on acceptable and unacceptable behaviours.

This will set the foundations for you to build the Winning team you deserve.

Smartre Training and You

Smartre Training can work with you to help define the right culture for your agency. Our management system focuses on recruitment of the right people, complimented by a leadership system which focuses on the development of those people.

Although Culture is a stand-alone element within our Management System, it is necessary to have the leadership skills required to ensure its existence within your agency.

Earlier this year Smartre Training ran its annual two-day leadership seminar focused solely on leading and developing real estate teams. Our seminars are always presented through the lens of real estate – specifically, high-performing real estate teams.

If you would like to discuss developing your agency’s culture, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you. Please feel welcome to reach out to the team at Smartre Training today.