Real Estate Team Leader Mindset – Key strategies for being a better leader in real estate with Brian Icenhower.
Today, I’m going to talk to you about the mindset of a successful real estate team leader. Along with that, we’ll talk about the attitude and mental perspective of a real estate team leader and why it is so important. This is what separates the big successful teams from the smaller struggling team.
I’m not saying having a small team is bad, but one fact remains true: the larger the team, the more income. Therefore, the more life balance the team leader is going to have. The smaller the organization, the more the team leader is going to need to work. For the sake of simplicity, today I’ll be referring to a “team leader,” but understand that it also applies to broker-owners, too.
At Icenhower Coaching and Consulting, we coach the top real estate teams in the country. We help our clients grow successful teams and provide them with guidance along that path. One of the biggest breakthrough moments that team leaders have is when they change their mindset around the agents on their team. They adopt a growth mentality. This involves coming from a place of abundance and being positive. These real estate team leaders adopt a growth mindset.
VIDEO: Real Estate Team Leader Mindset
Let go of perfectionism
Oftentimes, team leaders are perfectionists. I’ve been there! I think just about everyone has. You must learn to break through and adopt a growth mindset even when it’s not comfortable.
Too often we are wondering what is wrong with our team. Why are they not doing what they should be doing? They are not selling enough. Why are they not showing up to the office? They are not making their contacts. They are not building their database. You are wondering why they can’t be more like you.
That’s not a healthy leadership mindset. You are the team leader. A very small percentage of real estate agents get to your level of success. Few agents have overflow business and need to build a team in order to continue to grow. You must understand that you are an outlier and can’t hold your agents to this standard.
Criticizing your agents for not having the same qualities that you posses naturally is actually against your own best interest. In some ways, you want your agents to need you. You want them to need your accountability and be dependent on the team for support. To criticize them for not doing everything on their own is a little counter-intuitive to why we have a team leader in the first place. For the most part, we need to be positive and support our team members. We need to adopt a growth mindset.
Manage your expectations
You may have a certain idea in mind of how much your team should be producing each year. If your goal is 200 homes this year, and you have a four-person team, this is going to be a lot of pressure on your agents to perform at a very high level. And you’re going to need to stay after them and spend a lot of time keeping them on track and pushing them. On top of that, you’ll want to be selling homes to meet your own goals as well. You’re asking so much of your people, and they have lives. It can get really frustrating. It will build up resentment and negativity. This happens all the time.
The growth mindset for real estate team leaders
There is a high failure rate in the real estate business — we know this. The numbers are daunting. For this reason, we need to be positive sources of energy for our people. You need to grow yourself in order to provide this kind of support to your people and to help them grow, too. Growing your team is going to help ease this tension and provide a growth mindset.
Adding a team member (or several) in this situation provides more balance and positivity to your team. You must release your perfectionist mindset and realize that, yes, it is true that several of your team members may not make it. That’s just reality, and that is okay. Accept it, and decide that in order to grow your team, there will be fluctuations. That is normal.
Leaders of top real estate teams know that some members of their team will probably not be around by the end of the year. They accept that fact. You must continue recruiting to bring new agents in.
Don’t ever stop recruiting
As a team leader, you are probably constantly urging your agents to lead generate. It’s a continuous activity that your team members must do to be successful real estate agents. In the same way, you must be continuously recruiting to your team as the team leader. Same exact principle. Because you know that some of your team members will not work out, you need to continuously recruit to keep replacing those members and growing your team. It’s a numbers game.
It’s very hard to tell which agents will work out and which ones won’t. I’ve been in the business for decades and I have recruited agents for many teams throughout the years. I still have a really hard time judging if an agent is going to make it long term or not. It’s hard to tell until you see them in action.
If you are doing all of the things you are supposed to be doing as a team leader, it’s now on the agents to respond to it and meet you halfway. Realize that you will not be able to create this perfect utopia where none of your agents will ever leave you. You need to be tough. When agents leave you, don’t let it create drama within your team. Wish them well. If you’re always recruiting and growing, it won’t bother you so much because you’ll know there is more to come. Don’t get into that negative, scarcity mindset where you are overly worried about retention.
Don’t worry about the back door
Worry about the front door. Focus on who you are bringing in to your team, not who is leaving it. Look at where you are going as a team. This is a growth mindset. If you find yourself in a scarcity minset, and you’re worried about how to recruit, push yourself and go forward sloppy. Focus on growth and push yourself. Adopt the mindset of a successful leader and do what those before you have done. Re-direct your energy to recruiting. Your income will go up, your life balance will improve, and you won’t worry so much about your team members.
Make sure that growth is your constant mindset focus as a real estate team leader. Have people in your life who will help refocus you. Get a coach to push you in the right direction and hold you accountable. It’s easy to come out of this mindset. Be aware that you must be purposeful about this mindset shift. Keep after it!
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