The Culture in Your Office

Your role as a great leader is to pull people up, but too often we actually pull them down. In this month’s Growth, Leadership and Management tip I want to talk with you about the culture in your office and how you can ensure that it’s about improvement and progress.

You want to build an organisation of collaboration based on a culture of learning. The key is to teach systems and train on skillsets. Those can be broken down into forms for operations such as booking a market appraisal, qualifying a buyer, or taking hold of bids at an auction. The goal is to put together essential information in the right order so nothing gets missed.

Using checklists supports your system by teaching basic processes such as running an open home. A checklist for that would step an agent or assistant through putting out the board and flag, opening the home, playing the music, having the contract and brochures available, and taking visitors’ details at the front door. The best way to write those checklists is to develop them as you make mistakes to make sure those mistakes won’t happen more than once.

Understand that your systems and checklists only work if you’re using them yourself. If you don’t follow them or take them seriously, neither will your team. It’s your role to set the culture in your office you want others to follow and deliver on your own expectations, because your people will do as you do, not as you say.

This includes learning new skillsets. Just having a new hire follow an established agent isn’t enough. There has to be specific training around those skills and a desire on the part of the trainee to learn them. That desire often comes from a failure that prompts a decision to get better. Your part is to encourage that decision and offer appropriate feedback in a supportive manner.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Growth, Leadership and Management tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next month.