Premise: Let your goal be for your agents to become independent of you and, ironically, they will rarely leave you
In short, Isaac Newton was right… “Every action” does have “an equal and opposite reaction.” The thing that Newton did not fully explain to us in his writings though, is that this principle also applies to many aspects of human behavior. I call this “The Law of Opposites.”
One of your main objectives as a leader should be to develop the skills of your team members to the point where they become highly knowledgeable and potentially ‘independent’ of you. In other words, help them to think like business people and to become self-sufficient, highly competent professionals. This may sound wrong or backwards to some real estate leaders because they believe that this degree of knowledge will cause agents to leave them. However, please stop for a moment and just think about it.
Teaching your people to ‘think business’ implies many things about how you feel about them.
First – It reflects an underlying belief that they are intelligent, capable professionals
Second – It suggests that you trust them to use complex information wisely during the course of doing business
Third – The strong implication is that you care about them and want them to be well-prepared
Fourth – This type of learning cannot take place without consultative managerial coaching, which in itself creates strong bonding between agent and manager, over time
Acting in this manner creates a type of self-fulfilling prophecy (More on this point in future blogs). Since you are the one who is coaching them, agents keep coming back to you for answers when complex questions arise. Once this becomes a pattern, your role as their principle source of information has been established. More importantly, when the leader is the source of information, and that information helps agents become more successful, agents connect their success to their leader and the behavioral cycle is complete.
Rule of Thumb
If you help them become ‘independent’ of you, they will think twice before
entrusting their business lives to some unknown entity ‘down the street..
