Micro-Behaviors and Big Achievements

As a manager, your success is measured by your big accomplishments. These are both important business metrics (e.g., adding $10M in production to your office via recruiting) and relational objectives (e.g., my office is a place where agents can share openly and be vulnerable). These big accomplishments don’t just materialize out of thin air. They are the result of dozens of small actions each contributing to the objective. Organizational consultants often call these micro-behaviors and advise managers to put their focus on these behaviors instead of the end result. Why? Because behavioral change is incredibly difficult—both for you and for those you manage. Setting and keeping a recruiting time block in your schedule is a good example of business metric micro-behavior. A relational example could be starting each of your one-on-ones with a short personal time asking what’s going on in the lives of your agents. Perhaps the person who told us to “not sweat the small stuff” was wrong. When attempting to grow your office or team, it’s the small stuff that makes the big accomplishments possible.