Building a Team
What to Learn Before You Lead a Real Estate Team, and Where to Learn It
Updated
Bottom line: Leading a team takes four skills: knowing when your production can carry one, guiding people through the stages a new group goes through, onboarding them well, and coaching each person differently.
When is your practice ready to carry a team?
Three RE/MAX team leaders, interviewed by RE/MAX News, tied the timing to production. Start when others can help you manage a growing number of transactions.
The second half matters as much. People who join should be able to build on your experience, your client base and your reputation.
Their first handoff was administrative work. Moving it off your desk keeps your hours on customers, which is where your production comes from.
Danielle Dowell leads The DoWell Group at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in Chicago. She told HousingWire a leader must decide how the team will run before starting one.
What does a new team go through in its first stages?
RISMedia, in an article by ShowingTime+, applies Tuckman's stages of group development to real estate teams. The original theory listed four phases: forming, storming, norming and performing.
In the early phase, RISMedia reports, members learn one another's backgrounds, set roles and draft a plan. Roles and a plan are yours to lead.
When differences surface, RISMedia describes the team lead's work as keeping a growth mindset. You help the team settle its differences and coach members toward a shared solution.
What should be in place before you add people?
Stephen Meadows, chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Premier, wrote in HousingWire that agent management and training came first as he planned growth.
He wanted to know that if large numbers of agents joined, the company could give them what they needed. The clear gap he found was onboarding.
For a team, that means building your onboarding before your first hire.
How do team leaders manage people day to day?
Steven Trice of BoomTown set out rules for running a team in RISMedia. Once goals are set, he wrote, hold the team to the sales process that reaches them.
Agents in the field make key decisions for their clients. Trice's advice is to give them the autonomy to make those calls.
He also asks leaders to adapt their style to each person and help that person succeed as an agent.
Danielle Dowell said much the same about her own team. Every member gets resources fitted to what they need, and anyone she brings on deserves to be mentored and given opportunities.
Where can you learn to lead a team?
RISMedia published NAR's description of its L.E.A.D. program: three self-paced online courses plus one interactive course led by an instructor. The instructor-led course uses story arcs drawn from real REALTOR® leadership.
The program is aimed mainly at leadership roles inside REALTOR® associations. Its topics include how an association works, communication and public speaking, conflict resolution, and leading a committee.
The other route is learning inside an office that coaches you while you build. At Keller Williams Southwest in Sugar Land, we offer weekly one-on-one coaching, classroom training and a yearly business plan reviewed every month.
Fourteen people at 1650 Highway 6 work behind you, including a productivity coach, marketing, technology and compliance. A 12-agent Associate Leadership Council sets office strategy.
If you want to talk through your plan for a team, ask Jana Hayes, Team Leader and Operating Partner, for a first conversation.
Filed in The team.
Questions & answers
What do Sugar Land agents ask about this?
Is there a stage after performing, when a team's work together ends?
Yes. RISMedia's article on Tuckman's stages of group development notes that Tuckman later added a fifth phase, adjourning, to his original four. The name points to the close of a group's work together. If you lead a team for years, people will come and go. Treat the end of a working group as a stage you plan for, the same way you plan for the start.
When someone leaves, sit down with the people who stay and settle who takes which part of the work. Defining roles and drafting a plan is the same task the early stage asked of you, so you start from something you have done before.
Should I promote someone already on my team or hire from outside?
Stephen Meadows, writing in HousingWire, argues that promoting from within is much cheaper and easier than training an outsider in your culture and process. Someone already on your team knows how you work and what your standards are. Before you look outside for a new role, look at who has been learning your system the longest.
Promotion is easier when your process is written down. Before you move someone into a new role, record what their current seat involves, so it can be filled too. The RE/MAX team leaders RE/MAX News interviewed hired for energy, enthusiasm and a willingness to work hard, then taught the rest themselves. That habit gives you people worth promoting later, because they learned your system from the start.
Do I need my own leads before I recruit agents to my team?
The RE/MAX team leaders RE/MAX News interviewed said yes. Build a big client base first, since a team has to be able to hand the agents who join it leads. If your pipeline is thin, start with administrative help. Add agents once you have more clients than you can serve yourself.
Danielle Dowell told HousingWire that with the right people handling support work, her agents can focus only on selling. That arrangement works when there is business to sell. Support staff and a steady client base together are what free a team's agents to do the selling.
How often should my team meet?
Steven Trice of BoomTown, writing in RISMedia, ties meetings to purpose, not to a calendar: don't hold one unless it has a clearly defined purpose. A standing meeting with nothing to decide takes agents away from clients. Before you book one, name what the team should leave with, such as a decision or a check against goals.
Weekly one-on-one coaching at Keller Williams Southwest is a different format from a team meeting. It is time with one person on that person's own business plan. Trice also asks leaders to fit their style to each agent, and a one-on-one suits that better than a full room.