When joining an office or team, a new hire hopes to experience a sense of community.

I want to be part of something special. 

This is a sentiment we all internally express when making a career change.

So, how do you foster a sense of community among those in your office?

According to Rich Millington, it happens through two types of validation.

Internal validation is validation by other members of the community.

When members publish a book, achieve a promotion, get married, or achieve any major goal, it’s powerful to see that success validated by other members of the community.

External validation is the validation of the community by third parties.

When members are featured on the news, or the community is featured in some external source, it’s powerful to share this within the community. It validates everything the community is doing.

As a leader, you’re in charge of facilitating the validation of your community.

Encourage your agents to share their successes with each other, and celebrate individual accomplishments among the group when they happen.

But more importantly, seek out third party validation on behalf of your agents.

You’ll not only establish yourself as a beloved leader, but you’ll also build a community that is known far and wide.

It’s just the kind of thing that attracts more talented agents.

Like previous years, the Recruiting Insight writing and editing staff will be taking a two-week break from publishing as we enter the holiday season.

We’ll restart publishing on Monday, January 3rd.

Thank you to all those who read, ask questions, and engage in the discussion. We learn much from this daily dialog, and we hope you do too.

If you feel like you need some Insight while we’re away, we’ve put together a few resources to tide you over until we return:

Try reading the Top 25 Insights. This page contains our most read posts from the year.

Try the Random Insight Button. After you click into any post on Recruiting Insight, you’ll see the “Random” button at the bottom of the post. Click this button and you’ll be served up some new Insight.

I wish each of you a safe and joyous holiday season, and hope you’ll get the opportunity to recharge, as well.

I was recently reminded of a conversation I had with my wife a few months ago.

She mentioned she had not read an email I’d forwarded to her a couple of days earlier.

It wasn’t an urgent issue, so it wasn’t a big deal. But, it did prompt the question:

Why don’t you check your email more often?

Her answer was insightful:

When someone emails me, they usually want something. It’s typically a request for money, an opportunity to volunteer, or some other demand for my time and attention. I get tired of it, so I’m not very motivated to interact with my email.

I pushed this line of questioning a little further.

I understand why you don’t like email, but you seem to text a lot. Is texting any better?

Her response surprised me:

Texting is much better because it’s a conversation, and I enjoy connecting with people.

I think this sentiment is very common.

If you want to have conversations with your recruiting prospects, text them.

If you want to be perceived as selling something, email them.

A wide body of experimentation and research suggests that what the mind believes to be true is a very powerful thing.
 
And according to best-selling author Bruce Kasanoff, the same forces at work in a drug validation study have a profound effect on a person’s career.
 
You don’t need more training to be qualified for a promotion. You don’t need caffeine to wake up. You don’t need a good night’s sleep to feel rested. 
 
It just takes a credible researcher in a professional setting to tell you that you have what you need.
 
In essence, the placebo effect works because a patient believes something to be true based on the authority of the person in the white lab coat.
 
If you manage a real estate office or lead a team, this is a very important principle to understand.
 
Why? You’re the credible researcher in the professional setting.
 
This is not about tricking people–it’s about demonstrating the power of belief and using your authority to assist those under your care.
 
It’s your job to understand what your agents believe about themselves and their propensity for success.
 
If you neglect this responsibility, your agents will be left to listen to the random voices that speak into their lives.
 
While some of these voices might be positive and helpful, most of them will be negative and counterproductive.

Yesterday, I encouraged you to think of your role in terms of contribution.
 
Stop asking: What tasks do I need to get done today to fulfill my obligations?
 
Start asking: What can I contribute to help my organization accomplish its goals?
 
Once you’ve adopted a contribution mindset, gaining focus gets easier.
 
Peter Drucker advises that a leader’s contribution should spring from a common set of priorities.
 
Every organization needs performance in three major areas:
 
1. Producing Direct Results.
 
2. Building of Values and Their Reaffirmation.
 
3. Building and Developing People for Tomorrow.
 
This resilient framework directly applies to the work of every real estate manager.
 
Use it as a quick test when you build your schedule, decide who to spend time with, and choose when to let some things go undone.
 
Your highest and best contributions will only emerge when your efforts are focused on the most important needs.

There is too much to do and not enough time in the day to get it all done.
 
This is the plight of every real estate executive and manager.
 
We know that prioritization is necessary, but how do you effectively set priorities?
 
Peter Drucker suggests you start by asking this simple question:
 
What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance of my organization?
 
This question gets at three important issues:
 
Organizational Goals. The organization’s measurable results should be your first consideration. Unless everyone is focused on a common set of outcomes, the team’s effort will be fragmented.
 
Performance Measurement. Performance is rightly measured by what happens outside your team or office. This is the only place where true results exist.
 
Contribution. Processing priorities in terms of contribution forces you to think beyond the short-term interests of the loudest person (or need) demanding your attention.
 
The best managers hold themselves accountable to the performance of the whole.
 
And they gain clarity by contributing their best efforts and talents to something bigger than themselves.

In a post from the archive, psychologist Shawn Achor demonstrates why working in a positive culture is so valuable.
 
Our brains are designed to work much better when they are in a positive state as opposed to a negative or neutral one.
 
We find that when people are positive, it raises their productivity rate by 31 percent compared to when they’re in a negative state of mind. Salespeople sell 37 percent more than their negative counterparts. Even doctors perform diagnoses 19 percent more accurately when they’re positive.
 
So why does a positive environment matter so much?
 
The research suggests it’s related to how dopamine is released in the brain when an individual is in a positive state of mind. 
 
The brain can access all kinds of creativity, activate learning centers, and provide motivational energy when dopamine is naturally released in a positive state.  And positive brains see more possibilities, and productivity rises.
 
Does your office culture help create a positive state of mind for your agents? 
 
Are you mindful of working to keep your team positive, regardless of current stressors?
 
If you want to attract and retain the best and the brightest, it’s a worthy goal.

Peter Drucker once wrote,

The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up.

And the demands on a real estate manager’s time are always high.

Time is, therefore, always in short supply. And the manager’s time scarcity is bound to become worse, not better.

Time scarcity is a ubiquitous problem—every manager has struggled with it, and all successful managers have faced it down.

How?

Drucker offers this plan of action:

1. Document where your time is going. Record/categorize the activities to which you dedicate your time.

2. Eliminate the things that don’t need to be done. Ask yourself: What would happen if this were not done at all?

3. Redirect the tasks that would be better performed by others. Ask yourself: Who could do this task better than me?

4. Consolidate your discretionary time into time blocks. Time blocks should be long enough to gain the benefit of serious thought and focus, but not longer than 90 minutes.

Being effective does not come from finding efficient ways to cram more into your schedule.

It’s the result of focusing on getting the right things done.

A decade-long research project known at the Whitehall Studies followed 10,000 British employees comparing health outcomes to different pay grades.
 
Sheena Iyengar cited this study in her best-selling book, The Art of Choosing.
 
Contradicting the stereo-type of the hard-charging boss who drops dead of a heart attack at 45, the studies found that although the higher-paying jobs came with greater pressure, employees in the lowest paying grades, such as a doorman, were three times more likely to die of coronary heart disease. 
 
The researchers traced the cause for this differential to an unlikely source – the degree of control employees had over their work.
 
Lack of control spawned frequent low-grade stressors that wrecked the health of the blue-collar workers.
 
The researchers concluded that most people have an innate drive for autonomy and feel stress when it’s not met.
 
During interviews, start asking questions like:
 
New agent prospects: In your current job, do you feel like you have control over your destiny? (Why not?)
 
Experienced agent prospects:  Do you feel like your efforts to grow are being frustrated by the people and systems in your office?
 
By doing so, you’ll be dangling the autonomy carrot.
 
To high-performers who are stuck in dead-end jobs or stressful situations, autonomy appears irresistible.

To solve your recruiting challenges, it’s sometimes helpful to seek advice from those who are at the cutting edge of hiring.
 
Amazon employs 1.3 million individuals and hired about 170,000 in the last quarter.
 
How do they do it?
 
In an insightful interview, Shabaz Alibaig, Amazon’s Global Talent Acquisition Transformation Leader, said they’re constantly planting the seeds for future hires.
 
In this highly competitive job market, growing companies must invest and focus on all things sourcing and pipelining.
 
[Pipelining] allows your organization to create campaigns, talent pools, employee referrals and alumni networks, plus provide individualized candidate experiences.
 
Amazon has learned it’s impossible to hire great talent by waiting until a hiring need arises and engaging what is readily available.
 
New agent recruiting operates under the same principles.
 
If you’re waiting to connect with prospects until the end of the process (after they have a license), you’ll be talking to lower-quality candidates who have been most likely picked over by your competitors.
 
As the ancient proverbs advises—it’s better to dig your well before you’re thirsty.

Effective communication is powered by a high level of emotional intelligence.
 
According to researchers, those individuals with high emotional intelligence tend to have the following characteristics:
 
They are not impulsive or hasty, but consider circumstances, reason, and emotion carefully before acting or speaking.
 
They are consistently conscious of their own emotional state.
 
They can regulate their own emotions to avoid undesired actions or commentary.
   
They can easily identify what someone else is feeling and adjust their thinking and behavior accordingly.
 
Based on these underlying characteristics, author Jeff Steen formulated these short phrases to help communication be more emotionally intelligent.
 
Considering Circumstances: Let me think about that and get back to you.
 
Conscious of Your Emotional State: I’m a little worked up right now. I may need a minute to calm down.
 
Regulating Emotions: I’m going to take a breather. It will help me clear my head.
 
Detecting Other’s Feelings: It seems like you’re happy/upset/angry/etc. about something. Can you tell me what you’re thinking/feeling before we move forward?
 
The holiday season is packed with stress, emotions, and challenging circumstances and thoughtful communication is the foundation for connecting with those you lead.
 
But great connections don’t just happen—they’re infused with the emotional intelligence of great communicators.

Working hard to hire talented agents while watching others walk out the back door will suck the motivation out of anyone who plays the recruiting game.

In the long run, recruiting and retention cannot be separated–every successful recruiter is also good at retaining the agents they want on their team.

If you’re struggling with retention, here is a simple framework Dave Mashburn shared in a podcast from the archive:

Happy and Engaged Agents. Researchers have demonstrated that happy and engaged workers are more profitable, more creative, and enjoy what they do. And, they tend to stay in the place where they’re experiencing these things.

Meaning/Purpose/Relationships. Researchers have discovered that workers who have a meaningful vision of the future, a sense of purpose (why their work is contributing to the vision), and great relationships are the happiest and most engaged.

Convert these concepts into a simple checklist to use during business planning or coaching sessions with the agents on your team.

☑️ Engaged: Does this agent seem engaged and happy in the work they’re doing?

☑️ Meaning: Does this agent possess a meaningful vision of the future for themselves and the team?

☑️ Purpose: Does this agent see how their work contributes to the meaningful vision they’ve identified?

☑️ Relationships: Does this agent have great relationships with others on the team?

When an agent defects to a competitor, they’ll typically be struggling in one or more of these areas.

If you met a random person on the street and asked them to name a real estate company in your market, what answer do you think you’d get?

Would it be your company?

For most of you, it would be one of your competitors.

This is what marketers call unaided awareness. By definition it’s the ability to name a member of the category without having to choose it from a list.

While it seems like this would be a great advantage in recruiting, Seth Godin explained why it doesn’t help much with decision making.

It’s tempting to want to be the Nike of your category.

It really pays off in group situations, where someone wants to be sure to choose an option that ‘everyone has heard of.’

But unaided awareness isn’t a useful goal. Because most decisions that matter aren’t unaided.

Most choices are made with some consideration.

What people say about you is even more important than being on everyone’s notorious list.

Being heard of may get you a place at the table, but most people don’t make career decisions on reputation alone.

They need to connect with a real person who is willing to listen and engage.

That is why the best recruiters and hiring managers usually win the best talent.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal documented how workers are quitting their jobs in droves to become their own bosses.
 
Here’s some of what they reported:
 
There are now 9.44 million unincorporated self-employed workers—up over 500,000 since the start of the pandemic.
 
There were 4.54 million new federal tax-identification numbers registered between January and October this year—up 56% from the same period in 2019. Almost 70% of these applications report having no plans to hire employees (they plan on being solo entrepreneurs).
 
The number of people who work for large companies (>1000 employees) has fallen for the first time since 2004 while the number of self-employed has risen to an 11-year high.
 
In September, US workers resigned from a record 4.4 million traditional jobs.
 
Why is are some many workers quitting and stepping out on their own?

People are looking for more flexibility, anxious about covid exposure, upset about vaccine mandates, and disenchanted with pre-pandemic office life.

This self-employment trend is advantageous to the real estate industry for two reasons.

There are more talented individuals willing to consider working under the real estate independent contractor model than any time in the previous decade.

These entrepreneurs bring knowledge from other industries to real estate. This knowledge is an important source of innovation that will equip you to better compete with the outside entities who have entered the real estate industry in recent years.

It’s a great time to be hiring if you can recognize the trends and operate like a professional talent manager.

I was doing some planning over the holiday weekend and came across a recruiting framework a client shared with me several years ago.
 
The framework was developed by LeadingRE and adapted by Carpenter Realtors in central Indiana.
 
And it’s helpful because it reminds us that hiring is cyclical in nature, and it takes proactive energy and focus to staff an office for both productivity and growth.
 
Here’s the Carpenter hiring framework:
 
Prospect: Create opportunities to talk to individuals about a career in real estate or changing brokerages.
 
Select: Choose only those who meet your criteria and your company’s mutual expectations.
 
Hire: Convince the best prospects to commit to a long-term career with your company.
 
Develop: Train, mentor, and challenge your agents continuously throughout their careers.
 
Weed: Terminate agents who are not meeting your company’s mutual expectations.
 
Retain: Communicate regularly and work to build a meaningful relationship with your agents.
 
As you move into the 2021 home stretch, it’s a great time to take inventory of your hiring and retention strategies.
 
Do you have good systems for attracting and hiring talented agents?
 
What needs to be tweaked or retooled to make you more effective?
 
Are there some agents on your team you need to let go?
 
What needs to change so you can develop and retain more effectively in the year ahead?
 
This framework will help you set the big picture and apportion your effort to all the parts of the process.