C is for Courage, Commitment, Creativity, Connection, Collaboration, and Contribution. Successful real estate agents have what the leadership gurus are now calling the new and true C’s of leadership.
The old C’s were control, command, coerce, conform, comply, and correct. This stuff never worked very well in real estate and research now shows that it’s not working well in the corporate world either.
Success in real estate comes to those who are willing to see things in new ways, constantly learn new things, explore human nature, expand their emotional intelligence, and remain optimistic and positive through challenges and failures.
Interestingly, it’s the same stuff that the corporate world invests millions of dollars towards coaching and training their leaders and top talent to succeed.
Recently I attended a very high level leadership coaching workshop. This is where top corporate coaches go to learn, share, and evolve. I was curious about where the learning would intercept with my coaching of real estate agents; I was pleasantly surprised. We realtors rock!
Here is what I learned:
- Realtors who have learned the art of excellent sales conversations are well ahead of their counterparts in the corporate world. Many corporate executives have significant challenges communicating effectively in a team, with direct reporting staff, and colleagues.
- Realtors who are successful are comfortable with and competent at…change. Change is certain, but many corporate executives are stubbornly closed minded about it. Closed mindedness about change creates serious performance deficiencies, and the corporate world spends millions trying to teach, train, and coach their top executives to embrace change.
- Realtors who are successful, or on their way to being successful, are willing to explore and examine their inner world. The inner world consists of emotions, mindsets, attitudes, beliefs, awareness, reflection, psychology, human nature, and soul. Many top corporate executives are stuck in the old C world and still prefer to plow the field than grow the crops.
- Realtors and other small business entrepreneurs have a 30,000 foot perspective, we see the big picture and don’t drown in the details. Meanwhile, executives are often plagued with tunnel vision.
If realtors don’t “do”, we don’t eat. Corporate executives get paid whether they produce revenue for the company or not. They may not get promoted, and they may even lose their job at some point, but today and this week and this month – they get paid and can feed their family, even if they didn’t perform at work.
Here’s a quick story:
When I first became a certified coach in 2006, I did a fair bit of corporate work. We would take top teams into wilderness environments to shift their perspective and create meaningful, sustainable change. I had this really wonderful group of senior executives who worked together and I assigned them a series of simple tasks to complete in the forest wearing snowshoes. The exercise lasted a couple of hours and we had a lot of fun and laughter. The purpose was to create an analogy for them to see how well they worked together as a team. By having them act naturally in an unfamiliar environment, we could examine their team dynamics without evoking their natural defensiveness.
It was a great exercise and a lot of very valuable learning came from it.
Except, they didn’t achieve any of the simple tasks. When I asked them to rate their success on a scale of 1-10, they all rated themselves and their team between 7 and 9. I was shocked. I rated them at 0 or maybe 1. As we gently debriefed this, and I pointed out that the tasks had not been completed, they were very confident that process mattered much more than outcome. I was really glad that I wasn’t signing their pay cheques.
It was after this experience that I decided to commit full time to supporting successful real estate agents. I love realtors – I understand you!