Many team leaders and single office brokerages must make a transition from sales to leadership.While many of a high-performer’s sales skills do transition to leadership positions, there are some predictable blind spots.In a post from the archive, tech columnist Geoffrey James relates this transition to a start-up scaling their operation.Here is some of Geoff’s advice that applies to aspiring real estate leaders who are attempting to scale their teams.Fighting fires rather than scaling up. New leaders have a tendency to focus on crises: service issues, customer issues, agent drama, and, of course, running out of money. They forget a team can’t possibly grow and succeed unless they make a commitment to recruit.What to do: Put aside at least five hours a week for recruiting and interviewing candidates, even if you’re not currently hiring. Ideally, you want a pipeline of potential hires whenever you need to add staff or agents.For a team to grow, everyone on the team must level-up every 12 months. That’s only possible if the owner helps them understand the new skills and behaviors they’ll need to grow themselves as the company grows.What to do: Think of coaching as an investment in time management. Yes, it takes longer to coach somebody to do a task than to do it yourself. Once you’ve trained somebody, though, that task leaves your to-do list, creating time to do those things that only you can do.Failing to plan for setbacks. Even the best-run teams encounter problems. If you’re not prepared to deal with them, even a small hiccup can derail your ambitious plans.What to do: Work with your coach or mentor to create contingency plans, in case there are recruiting delays, slower-than-expected sales cycles, departures of key personnel, and other operational disruptions.I’ve heard hundreds of times: Great salespeople don’t make great leaders. It’s not true if you can see and address the most common blind spots.