The Value of Great Questions – Part 2

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

In my last blog entry, I discussed the value of not just asking questions…but rather, asking great questions. I qualified the “great questions” as ones that add value, present your knowledge in terms of knowing your candidate, and show your attentiveness. Today, with the help of a blog written by Colin Wilson, I want to give you some general rules of thumb.

Allow for Warm-Up Time

At the beginning of a meeting or interview, take time for chit-chat. Casual banter is not work-related and allows for a more relaxed environment. Chit-chat time is an opportunity to build rapport and will help you gauge a candidate’s communicative style and perspective.

Label the Question

Labeling a question before you ask it positions the question in the respondent's mind. By “labeling,” I mean that you first tell the respondent that you are going to ask them a question on a certain topic, and then you ask the question(s). By giving them notice of the topic, it will give them a split second or two to consider a deeper response. More importantly, by explaining why you are going to ask a certain question(s) you will put the candidate at ease. This strategy is much better than the alternative, which leaves them guessing and uneasy…a situation that could ultimately lead to avoidance.

Example: "To gain a better understanding about your background, I would like to ask you some questions about your prior work history."

General Questions before Specifics

It is important to get an understanding as to why the candidate is sitting in front of you. Why, specifically, are they there? This is important information before you get into specific detail in an interview. There are three steps to this process:

Ask broad open-ended questions about areas of possible interest. Example: "Tell me about life outside of work…what hobbies or other interests do you have?"
Determine the priority areas…where do you, as the interviewer, need to direct the interview?
Ask probing questions about the broad topics that interest the candidate. Example: "How were you introduced to (specific activity)?"

Avoid too many Closed Questions

Asking too many close-ended questions (yes/no questions) will come across as if you are interrogating the respondent. That is not a place most people want to find themselves. If you need to ask a series of yes/no questions, let the candidate know that you are going to do so.

Example: "Next, I'd like to get some basic information from you… Are you financial prepared to start your real estate business? Do you have the time that is necessary to dedicate to getting your license? Does your family support your decision?"

Use the Person’s Name

People enjoy hearing their names. Therefore, use their name throughout the discussion, while taking care not to over use it. Without the use of the person’s name, the interview could come across as being very impersonal, which consequentially does not build rapport.

Avoid Negative Questions

Negative questions may put the respondent on the defensive and become a barrier to building rapport. Such questions may very well make the candidate feel ignorant, incompetent, guilty, wrong, etc… These feelings will most certainly inhibit your efforts to build a relationship with the candidate.

Example: During an interview with an experienced agent, DON'T ask, “Why did you fail to close so few transactions in the last two years?”

Effective Questioning can provide you with the opportunity to help crystallize a candidate’s thinking and will help you build rapport and trust by demonstrating that you understand and value their opinions. Additionally, as you move through an interview, and ask your great questions, you may very well begin to use their language, which is another block in your “relationship building.”

Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Value of Great Questions – Part 1

Monday, December 19, 2011

I have often said that recruiting is essentially selling. When you have the good fortune of having a qualified candidate sit before you, you are in a position to inspire. Don't waste that opportunity; “Sell” yourself, your office, and your brand. Part of any good sale involves understanding the customer as a person, including their wants and needs. The same holds true when interviewing candidates.

Colin Wilson, a strategic business and leadership consultant in the UK, published a blog that addresses the value of asking great questions…however, his perspective is in the sales world. I couldn’t help but read the entire blog with recruiting (or in my world “relationship building”) in the forefront of my mind. Certainly, everything that I say here is applicable to your agents in their sales process and feel free to share, but I was surprised at how applicable the article was to the hiring process as well.

There are three tenets that I realized from this article:

Value. Your value to your candidate is not measured by what you know, but by the questions you ask. You add value by making your candidates think. Add value to your candidates’ experience during the interview process, and endear yourself as their potential manager.
Knowledge. Knowledge is power, and the more you know about your candidates' wants, needs and obstacles, the more likely you are to get the hire…or in the case of an unlicensed candidate, the more likely you are to inspire them to take the next step. How are you able to help them navigate obstacles if you don’t know what the obstacles are?
Attentiveness. Asking questions of the candidate puts them at the center of your attention and demonstrates that you care enough about them to inquire. You are looking to learn more about their problems, more about their opportunities and most importantly, you are getting them to think.

Here's a general rule of thumb — You should look to speak no more than 30% of the time during the interview. In my next blog, I will cover some basic rules to apply during an interview.

Predicting success with Early Ownership

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

One of our readers, Jim Dickinson of Stark Homes, Madison Wisconsin, recently sent us an article that got our attention. We'd like to pass it on to our readers.

But first a few words to set up the context…

Attracting and hiring the right people (the best people) has never been more important, both for you and for the candidate. Nobody is in the mood, has the time, or is in the financial position to make the wrong decision when it comes to their future. We've improved the odds of making good hiring decisions with the Top Performer profile, but in the current environment, many of our clients are having to talk to as many candidates that come through the funnel as they possibly can in order to hire the numbers needed to expand market share. Under these conditions, all of us can benefit from improving our ability to spot what we are looking for in candidates, so that we can pursue them with a tenacity that leaves them believing that they can succeed. You can accomplish this by being dedicated to understanding people, keeping up with the latest research, and being purposely reflective about what you are seeing.

You might remember the name Daniel Coyle of The Talent Code, as we have written in WorkPuzzle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about his somewhat counterintuitive findings in the past. In a recent blog entry, he takes another shot at trying to decipher what might help differentiate those who will be successful, from those who won't be.

"A lot of smart people have been thinking about this, and what they’ve decided is this: the problem is not that the measures are wrong. The problem is —measuring performance the wrong way to approach the question.

According to much of this new work, what matters is not current performance, but rather growth potential – what you might call the G-Factor — the complex, multi-faceted qualities that help someone learn and keep on learning, to work past inevitable plateaus; to adapt and be resourceful and keep improving.

Thing is, G-Factor can’t be measured with a stopwatch or a tape measure. It’s more subtle and complex. Which means that instead of looking at performance, you look for signs, subtle indicators — what a poker player might call tells. In other words, to locate the G-Factor you have to close your eyes, ignore the dazzle of current performance and instead try to detect the presence of a few key characteristics… Sort of like Moneyball, with character traits."

Coyle describes two "tells" of the G-Factor: one is Grit, something I have written about before (WorkPuzzle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…). The other is "early ownership:"

"Early Ownership: As Marjie Elferink-Gemser’s work shows, one pattern of successful athletes happens when they’re 13 or so, when they develop a sense of ownership of their training. For the ones who succeed, this age is when they decide that it’s not enough to simply be an obedient cog in the development machine — they begin to go farther, reaching beyond the program, deciding for themselves what their workouts will be, augmenting and customizing and addressing their weaknesses on their own."

How can you use this information in your interviews? Perhaps your interviews need to include questions to reveal past examples of early ownership. How can this knowledge help with training, observing, and mentoring agents in the first months of performance?

If you're going to hire better, it's imperative to take some time away from the busyness of executing tasks and dedicate ample time to reflect on this kind of innovative information that demands experimentation. Tailor your process to assimilate what science has discovered about people…

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

How to deal with Boredom or Anxiety at Work

Monday, December 12, 2011

Like it or not, we all occasionally get into ruts. We can’t seem to find a way to bring maximum enjoyment to our work, so eventually we get bored. One of the differences between very successful people and the rest of us, is that successful people tend to intuitively follow the rules I’m about to show you, to prevent them from experiencing too much boredom, or too much anxiety.

For decades, despite hundreds of studies on boredom, not a lot was known about this elusive experience. Then, in the 1960’s and 70’s, a Russian born University of Chicago psychologist stumbled on the answers while studying the internal experiences of successful workers, artists, and climbers.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that for optimal engagement to be experienced, people must find a balance between their level of competence or skill and their level of challenge. If your level of skill is great and your level of challenge is low, you will most certainly experience boredom (see diagram).

Conversely, if your levels of skill and competence are low relative to the height of the challenge, then anxiety will kick in, and you could buckle under the pressure.

Where “optimum engagement” takes place is in the sweet spot between your level of challenge and your skill level. What this means is that we all need to pay close attention to balance between the two, looking for ways that we can increase our challenges as we increase our competence.

So how can we do this? This is much easier to answer when it comes to anxiety than when it comes to boredom. With anxiety, you can adjust in either direction….you can focus your energy on decreasing the level of challenge, or find mentors or training to increase your level of competence…or both.

With boredom, you can only adjust in one direction. Since it's impossible to decrease the skill level, you are left with having to find ways to increase the level of challenge.

Please send in your ideas about how this important balance can be accomplished in a practical manner for realtors or with those who manage them. If I get some concrete tips, I’ll pass them on…

Challenges that Real Estate Managers Face: WorkPuzzle Manager Survey Results—Part 3

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Recruiting and retaining talented agents is the most challenging part of the real estate manager’s job. How do I know that? The data in the WorkPuzzle survey was most clear on this topic.

There was large consensus that the top priority, as communicated by owners and managing executives, for the first-level manager in real estate companies across the county, is recruiting. The second priority is retention.

However, when managers were asked what job function they perform best, only 9% said recruiting. In addition, when managers were asked what part of the job they hear the most complaints about…75% said recruiting.

Let that sink in a little bit…

In essence, what managing executives want the most, first-level managers are the worst at delivering.

This prompts two important questions: Why is this happening? …and… How can this gap be reconciled? I’ll address both issues.

1. Why do real estate managers hate recruiting? Quite simply—it is difficult work and the results come very slow. As discussed in previous WorkPuzzle blogs, both the demographics and the economics of real estate recruiting make it increasingly difficult.

For experienced agent recruiting, the bottom 60% of the typical real estate company is either nonproductive or marginally productive. The top 20% are very difficult to dislodge because they are well-respected and making money. This leaves 20% of experienced agents who are eligible to be recruited. Due to short supply, the competition for these agents is very intense. If you are lucky enough to recruit some of these folks, they are typically acquired at low margins (ie. unfavorable splits).

For “new to real estate" recruiting, the risk-to-reward ratio that used to consistently attract new talent into the industry is no longer a compelling draw. As house values have plummeted and transaction volumes have waned, an increasing number of candidates can do the math. Starting a real estate career has significant risks and the payoff is not what is used to be.

2. How can real estate managers be successful at recruiting in spite of the obstacles? Quite honestly—there is no simple answer! This is what we spend much of our time in WorkPuzzle discussing because it’s a complex problem. So, here’s a plug to read past discussions and become an email subscriber if you haven’t already done so. With that said, here are some patterns that I’ve noticed among companies and individual managers who recruit more successfully than others.

Compartmentalization. This piece of advice is for managing executives who have the latitude to adjust workflows. If a manager’s job description requires many different roles (ex. recruiting, training, coaching, building office culture, etc.), the role that has the least amount of short-term feedback will naturally get pushed to the bottom of a person’s priorities. It takes an extremely disciplined person to overcome the inertia of human nature.

If the recruiting function (or parts of the recruiting function) is broken out as a separate role and a limited number of individuals are solely responsible for the execution of this role, the job gets done more reliably. Why? Because there are no easy, “sugary” tasks for the manager to fall back on. The new reality is the difficult job at hand—making the recruiting process work. Also, there are some managers who have more natural talent for recruiting. Letting them focus that talent without distraction is a win-win.

Focus at the task level. If your organization is not willing or able to compartmentalize the recruiting function, you may have to continue to work inside an environment with competing priorities.

If this is your reality, I would encourage you to stop looking at the recruiting part of your job from a transactional perspective. Because many managers used to be agents, there is a tendency to look at the recruiting process like a home sale. Did the transaction close or not? Do I have the listing or not? Is financing approved or not? Is this candidate going to work in my office or not?

While there is certainly a time to “ask for the order” in a recruiting discussion, the normal, day-to-day pace of the recruiting process (as a whole) moves slowly and meanders.

Managers who recruit successfully have a large number of candidates in their pipelines (so that no one candidate makes or breaks them), and they focus on completing the tasks of recruiting rather than focusing on the end result. The transaction focus shifts from, is the person hired (end result) to, is the next task in the recruiting process for this candidate complete?

I hope you’ve enjoyed gaining some perspective on how your peers view the challenges of being a real estate manager. It’s a tough job and many of you could use the encouragement.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Challenges that Real Estate Managers Face: WorkPuzzle Manager Survey Results—Part 2

Monday, December 05, 2011

Hopefully you've had an opportunity to read and digest the summary of the data from the WorkPuzzle survey that was conducted in September.

While you’ve probably drawn some conclusions on your own, I thought it might be helpful to share some additional insight. This insight comes from the internal discussions we’ve had on the Tidemark team, as well as individual discussions with many managers, executives, and owners since the survey was commissioned.

Let me start the discussion by acknowledging that in most real estate companies, the first-level manager position (often called a branch manager or sales manager) is a very difficult assignment. Because there are so many “hats” to wear in this position, we rarely see individuals who perform at a high level in every role.

In many non-real estate organizations, a person in such a diverse role would typically be supported by others on a team who shore up the manager’s weaknesses. But, the profit margins in most real estate companies are too thin to support this arrangement. The branch manager is left holding the bag…or for that matter, several bags.

So, what’s to be done? I would suggest making the most of the realities that exist in both your company and your professional life. Here are some thoughts based on the data that we collected:

Setting clear and realistic performance objectives. A significant portion of real estate managers do not have clear performance objectives, and even a larger portion do not believe those objectives are realistic. This is a problem that needs to be solved. If you find yourself in this situation, here’s some advice: Don’t wait for your boss to solve it—solve it yourself. Develop your own set of performance objectives and present it to your managing executive. This is commonly called “managing your manager,” and it is lacking in the real estate industry. As you develop the objectives, make sure you focus on roles and outcomes that not only address legitimate business needs, but also play to your strengths. I know this may feel a little scary at first. But, to your surprise, you’ll find that most executives appreciate this type of exchange. You may not get everything you envision, but you will most likely exit the process with some clear performance objectives—exactly what you need as a foundation for success.
Re-Thinking accountability. Everyone seems to hate accountability. Most managers dislike being under it, and most bosses really hate to administer it. Why? Because it usually requires a lot of attention to detail (by both parties) and causes us to notice and address failures frequently. As the survey results suggest, it’s much easier to just assume that everything is OK and focus on the more non-confrontational and mundane tasks of our roles. But, accountability produces results—results that both you and your company need to be successful. If your managing executive is not willing or able to keep you accountable, keep yourself accountable. Set measurable short-term goals and keep track of how successfully you’re able to check off items you complete. Also, share these goals with your peers (other managers in your company), and ask them to keep you accountable to the things you’ve set out to accomplish. As the fitness industry figured out long ago, peer accountability is one the best ways to lose weight and stay in shape. While it is not practiced as much in the business world, it may be something you find effective—especially if your manager is not willing or able to perform this function.

In the next WorkPuzzle, we’ll discuss what the survey revealed about the state of recruiting in most real estate companies. Why is it that what owners and executives want most, managers have the most difficult time accomplishing?