Letting Go
REALTORS like to be in control. Letting go and trusting people to perform and treat your clients the way you do is not easy.However, it is possible. You can not be everywhere and do everything if your business is going to continue to grow. Something will suffer, your marriage, your family, your health, or your clients.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and what you love to do is important when you begin to realize you need help. I am not a detailed person but more of a “big picture” person. So I hire to my weakness which is a person who enjoys all the little details.
When I hear agents complain they are over-whelmed, I encourage them to hire someone to help them even if it is part time.
What I often hear is, “I can do it faster myself.”
Yes, you probably can do it faster but all those little ‘faster myself’ tasks add up.
Trust & Training
When you first hire your new assistant you have high expectations the person will do a good job. However they can only fulfill your expectations if you invest in training.
Training a new person takes a tremendous amount of work. You cannot expect a new team member to automatically know how to do what you do according to your standards and objectives without training them.
Some agents in my offices over the years, played Russian Roulette with all the assistants they keep going through. What I saw after observing this for years was the problem was not the new person but the REALTOR not spending the time in the beginning to train them.
The Right Fit
I got lucky when I hired my first assistant, as Gary Keller had yet to write The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and I went with a “gut” feeling. We worked together for the next 16 years. The next assistant I hired was very competent, and had previously been a assistant on a local real estate team, so I “assumed” very little training would be necessary.
Boy was I wrong.
Over the years, I have learned to use the online DISC test before hiring any team members, but because of this persons prior experience I neglected this. The DISC is a diagnostic test that reveals insights into a person’s personality.
If and when there is something wrong on a team, everyone knows on the team knows it. If you as the team leader put off dealing with it, you will risk loosing the respect of the whole team.
Letting someone go, is not easy for me. It is not in my nature to hurt people but I had to step up and do it for the benefit of the whole team.
Immediately, the joy and synergy of the team came back.
Empowering Them
Every person on a team needs to feel valued. If you are micro-managing (note the operative word here is micro and not managing) a team member and not allowing them to excel in their strengths they feel insecure, unsure and unfulfilled.
If you hire the right person, and train them properly, let them go and empower them they will take pride in their work and know they are a valuable asset to the team. You will be free to do the activities in real estate you love and will have more time for your family and personal life.
Building a team takes a tremendous amount of work. The key things to remember out of this post:
1) Hire the right person
2) Train them properly
3) Let them do their jobs, manage but don’t micr0-manage
