Last week, my company held “Leverage,” our annual conference for real estate teams. Perhaps you were there.
As always, I had a fantastic time! We got to hear from some of the best speakers in the business, and it’s always so inspiring for me to meet and mingle with team leaders from around the country as they share their experience and knowledge.
If you’ve ever put on a major event, you know how much work goes on behind the scenes to make it possible. Over a year of work went into planning and executing Leverage 2022—more than I could ever hope to accomplish alone. Fortunately, I had a team in place to help perform all the hundreds of tasks needed to get the event off the ground.
A team can’t function effectively—can’t achieve large tasks or accomplish their dream goals—without effective delegation. Team leaders tell me one of the hardest (and therefore most valuable) lessons they’ve learned in their careers is how to delegate. Many of them tell me it’s a lesson they have to learn time and again, each time their business reaches a new stage.
I sometimes wonder why we are so hesitant to delegate to our team members when, very often, that was why we hired them in the first place! If you bring on a new buyer’s specialist to your team, but insist on continuing to work with buyers, why did you hire that person? This might sound foolish, but time and time again I meet leaders who are convinced they are the only person on their team who can do what needs to be done. They insist on doing the work of three or five or 10 people themselves, which inevitably keeps them from growing their business.
Here’s what the power of delegation looks like:
- Prioritize your priorities.
When a new need arises in your business, ask yourself: is it more important that I attend to it, or that someone does? With Leverage, there were many things that, even if I wanted to be involved, I couldn’t fully handle by myself. I had to distinguish between activities that only I could do and that someone else could do. For example, only I could prepare the presentations I was going to share with our guests, but several people on my team could work out agreement terms with our selected venue. Both of those activities were essential to the success of the event, but if I tried to do both, I might not have had the time needed to accomplish both successfully.
If the essential value of a thing lies in you doing it, then do it. If not, delegate it so you can focus on what only you can do.
- Let others grow.
Many team leaders hesitate to share tasks because they don’t feel they have someone experienced enough to give those tasks to. While this can be an issue depending on the nature of the task, it is usually not the dealbreaker we make it out to be. In fact, it represents a wonderful growth opportunity. After all, how will those novice team members grow if they aren’t allowed to do difficult things? How did we as leaders get the knowledge and expertise we now have if not by doing challenging things for the first time? At some point, someone trusted us to “figure it out”—even if that person was us. So why would we want to withhold that same opportunity from the people we’ve hired and presumably want to develop? If you want to create a culture of productivity, you should be open to mentoring when necessary.
Don’t let your worries create an ego that gets in the way of providing opportunities for growth to your team members.
- Surround yourself with specialists.
When you delegate parts of your business to other team members, those team members become specialists in those areas, which in turn elevates the entire team. Would you rather have a team of generalists who are good enough at most aspects of real estate, or a team of specialists who together can provide the highest possible level of expertise to your clients? Many of us want to be the one person our clients work with through the whole process of buying or selling a home, but that is not the experience they expect.
By creating a group of specialists you are guaranteeing a better client experience, regardless of your clients’ needs.
What more can I say? Delegation is one of the most important tools you have for growing your business, and it’s one of the very few things in your business you can actually control. When you share your workload you can achieve bigger and better things, develop your team members, and level up the client experience!
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, a real estate consulting company that specializes in performance coaching and building highly effective teams. Contact wssm@workmansuccess.com for more information and free downloadable resources.
