Introduction

Welcome to The High-Performing Real Estate Team - a practical and experiential guide to the fundamental components of team growth for real estate teams. This book has been designed to help your team realize greater success and profitability and to serve more people, while bonding and growing as a team at the same time. We're really glad you're here.

We're assuming you picked up this book because, like so many others, your real estate team is stuck in the status quo, has reached a point of stasis, or is at a significant turning point.

Perhaps you are the member of a real estate team. You see the sales targets, but you don't understand what you should be doing to reach those targets. You feel stuck, and not very motivated to work hard because you don't see how being on the team is really helping your business improve. In fact, you may even be considering jumping ship and going solo. You are frustrated and you are looking for answers.

You may be the leader of your real estate team. You know that sales targets need to be established and written down and you've done just that, but you're still not growing. You're tracking results and outcomes, but you're still not growing. You're driving your team members to work harder, faster, and longer, but still you're not growing. Try as you might, you just can't seem to move the needle and hit your target revenue.

Maybe your agents are simply not producing. Or, maybe you are experiencing a high amount of personnel turnover. Perhaps you are stuck at your current production level. You might not know how to grow your team to take yourself, as well as your team, to the next level. Or, it could be that you just feel it's time to up your leadership game.

FIGURE I.1 Common Questions

Congratulations - whether you are the team leader or the team member, you're in the right place. Whatever your criteria of growth, this book has been designed to help you achieve your real estate team's definition and vision of growth.

This book helps you understand and implement the fundamental, non-negotiable components necessary for real estate team growth and success. We are here to help you every step of the way.

The Status Quo

Before we look at where you are headed and how you hope to grow, let's take a look at where you are now and examine the status quo.

Maybe you were drawn to this book because, like so many others, your team is stuck in an unsatisfactory status quo. This isn't to say that your team is failing. In fact, to other people you may seem to be ticking along quite nicely, and there are days when you may even feel this way yourself. Yet, deep down, you're not content with the current state of affairs and you know that your real estate team is nowhere near where it could and should be.

Let's take a look at the existing state or condition of the majority of real estate teams today. An abundance of academic research and anecdotal accounts confirms what we have seen in our decades of coaching and consulting with team and brokerage leaders across North America: apathy, fear, a resistance to change, and a futile focus on day-to-day operations is the unfortunate status quo for a great many people.

Apathy

In the coming pages, you will hear us talking about creating a goal that energizes your team members and spreads like wildfire around your real estate team. We call it having a "viral goal," and it is the first and most important component for initiating growth and creating buy-in with those around you.

Nowadays, when people hear the word "viral" they probably think of an adorable, hilarious, or poignant video that's been shared many millions of times by email and social media. As you'll soon see, this is the positive, beneficial, and exponentially sharable vision that we have in mind when we urge you to create a viral goal for your team.

However, the word viral also brings to mind the flu or some other undesirable illness. Recently, this analogy hits even harder with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the analogy of a virus seems to serve us well when we consider the mechanics of a virus. Without boring you with all the microscopic details about how a virus works, at Icenhower Coaching and Consulting (ICC) when we think about the apathy that occurs within real estate teams, we see many similarities between biological viruses and the lack of interest, enthusiasm, and concern that affects so many groups, institutions, and workplaces across the country and beyond.

For example, oftentimes a virus works its way through someone's system before they notice any symptoms or obvious signs of illness. One minute you feel fine, perhaps a little more tired than usual, and the next minute you're barely able to function. Likewise, apathy can slowly and silently work its way through a real estate team and remain largely undetected until the most pronounced and damaging symptoms are impossible to ignore, and the culture and environment has become dangerously dysfunctional.

Apathy is contagious. It enters a team unnoticed and spreads from person to person. It seems to come out of nowhere and yet, when you look back, you can see that the signs have been there all along. Like the person who just feels "a little more tired than usual," a real estate team that's been infected with apathy is filled with team members who are listless and lacking in energy each and every day. They're certainly not happy but neither are they disgruntled or particularly resentful or discontented. Rather, they're just there - going through the motions, watching the clock, or engrossed in social media, completing only the tasks absolutely required of them in any given day, disconnected from their peers and leaders, channeling their energy into petty dramas with coworkers or group members, and counting down the seconds till the weekend.

No real estate team is immune to apathy. While the leaders and team members of a given real estate team might be dissatisfied and discontented with the existing state of affairs, when apathy seeps in it dulls people's desire and motivation, and heightens a human fear of and resistance to the change that may end up curing apathy, which then presents further challenges for achieving team growth and success.

Fear and Resistance to Change

Research from McKinsey & Company shows that 70% of all organizational transformations fail, largely due to employee resistance and a lack of support from those in positions of leadership. Whether the statistic is quite as high as that is subject to some debate, but in our experience a resistance to change goes hand in hand with apathy and is a key reason why so many real estate teams get stuck in a stagnant and precarious status quo.

Change is difficult for everyone. While there are some people who are less risk-averse and open to change than others, there are few people who don't feel somewhat anxious at the prospect of a major upheaval in their lives and routines, particularly if that upheaval means a heavier workload or increased responsibilities.

Salaried or hourly employees are not motivated by growth because growth means change and change means more work for them with, typically, no commensurate change in pay (at least until the team achieves its growth goals). Their existing routine represents stability, order, and calmness. Apathy coupled with resistance to change provides little incentive to push people out of their comfort zone.

And while you might think that commission-based employees, like most real estate team members, would be more than inclined to embrace the changes required to achieve success and growth, the fact is that they, too, are resistant to change. To be more precise, they are resistant to the activities that drive growth. While team members want more listings and more sales, it can be enormously difficult for them to perform the activities they need to, day in day out.

Knocking on a stranger's door, calling people who aren't expecting you, or contacting people who do not want to be contacted is extremely uncomfortable, no matter how talented and persuasive you are. Even with good training and a good script, it's not a "fun" activity. On top of that, the level and frequency of rejection that comes with a sales-oriented job is very difficult to deal with, especially for ambitious people who don't want to risk failure, or for team leaders who don't want to take risks.

We fear change because we can't anticipate or guarantee the outcome.

A Futile Focus on the Day-to-Day

Generally speaking, it should be abundantly clear to anyone that, when your people are disconnected, demotivated, or despairing, it shows in their productivity, performance, and participation.

Because of this, real estate team leaders become entangled and lost in a futile focus on the day-to-day. As we explain further later, 80% of what we do on a daily and yearly basis represents a very small minority of the results we achieve. The 80% is the daily issues and other duties that take up most people's time and gives rise to the biggest excuse for not performing impactful, growth-building activities. People tend to practice "crisis management" all day long by always handling every problem or task as it arises. This is practicing "business by default" by handling each task as it comes along, as opposed to...