Office management

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.

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Posted by Wendy Forsythe 

Question: Do you want to recruit agents to your office, or do you want to attract the best possible talent to your organization?

I’d debate the view point that you want to attract the best possible talent to your organization. We’ve been telling each other for years that this is a relationship business and you don’t recruit relationships–you attract and build them.

In preparation for our launch, we’ve been developing our talent attraction and selection programs (what is normally called “recruiting”). One component of this is videos for the “Careers” section of our consumer Web site. We’ve created three different personas representing different people at different life stages, who either are currently in real estate or considering a career in real estate. Check out McKinsey & Company to see a great careers site.

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