Good Team or Bad Team: It Follows the Leader

I know your type: confident, high-performing, and in control. You do well in your real estate business as a solo act. You don’t see a need to join a team because you feel they’d just slow you down. You don’t want to share your piece of the pie – after all, sharing just means there’s less for everyone, right? 

Kudos to you for your success, but I wonder if you understand the value of leadership and the opportunities it provides. You may be in a place in your career where you’re doing very well, but what if there were two of you? Or three? Or ten? What if you could teach 50 agents to do real estate the way you do?

Are you feeling threatened by that idea? You shouldn’t be. Dozens of agents working the way you work would be an incredible boon. Scarcity isn’t an issue for real estate agents who know how to generate leads, follow through with clients, and work a sphere of influence. So, what would you do with a team of yous?

Belonging to a Good Real Estate Team

If you could guarantee that your real estate team would dominate the industry, you’d build it in a heartbeat, no questions asked. The reality is that most agents who fear joining or building a real estate team, really fear bad real estate teams. You don’t want to waste your team or lower your profits when what you have going is working.

Again, I urge you to imagine a team of yous. Now, add into that a group of people who prop up the areas where you’re weakest or who enjoy the pieces of business that you find tedious. A real estate team of hand-picked, specially trained agents who all bring their own specialization to your business, but who all also understand your vision, your systems, and your pathways to success? That’s an unstoppable juggernaut.

The Hard Part of Building a Real Estate Team

It’s not how you sell or train but how you lead that sets the pace for your success in real estate with a team.

The ability to leverage leadership to increase your success in real estate is nothing short of a superpower. Multiplying yourself, your systems, and your efforts manifold is the way to building something beyond what your own individual efforts can accomplish. And it should be easy, right? You know how you run your business. You should know how to transfer that knowledge to others.

Here comes the hard part of building a real estate team that acts the way you do: Leadership and the ability to pass your knowledge to others comes naturally to very few. This doesn’t mean you’re not a skilled agent! It’s simply a fact that the ability to do a thing and the ability to teach other people how to do a thing are different skills. You might be the best agent you know, but how do you go beyond that and become the best leader in real estate?

Follow the Leader to Success or Ruin

A recent national study on teams shows that how good or bad a team is depends largely on who is leading it, how they’re leading, and whether they inspire loyalty, communication, and community among their team members. This means that leadership training is an indispensable part of building a team. It’s not how you sell or train but how you lead that sets the pace for your success in real estate with a team.

A paper published by the University of Portland says it well: “Leadership is not a person or a position, it is a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” You become a leader not by starting a team, but by building a culture of trust, communication, commitment, shared vision, and success in real estate among a group of specially chosen people.

I bet you’re an excellent agent. I bet you’re good at your business. But are you an effective leader yet? If you haven’t yet built an effective team, I propose that the answer to that question is “no.” We learn by doing. We become leaders by leading by example. Crucially, we become leaders through concentrated effort at learning how to lead.At Workman Success Systems, we want to help build leaders who change the communities they live in. We want to empower you to pass the amazing skills you’ve gained in real estate to a team so you can leverage the abilities of many to create abundance and grow to new heights in real estate. We want to help you develop your abilities as a leader in real estate. Click here to schedule a free consultation with one of our business analysts and see if you’re ready to start building your team with Workman.

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