Real Estate Team 2.0: Coach/Leader/Owner/Bottle Washer

Is having a coach/leader important? Yes, but then so is having a great assistant, a great marketing person, and great agents. Everybody's important, but the coach/leader will have more responsibility and will have to have more diversified talent. As you can probably tell by now, I don't like limiting labels and job descriptions when talking about a team.

The number of things to learn about a real estate operation can easily be learned by everyone, but there are some qualities that not everyone possesses. At the risk of sounding egotisical, I will say I have spent many hours, days, months and years developing these qualities, so I feel qualified to talk about them. Not only have I developed these qualities through experience, I have studied the subject for over ten years learning from others. I watched and learned from good leaders and coaches. And when I type leader I mean coach as well, and vice versa.

"Owner" is a financial and legal matter, that's why in an earlier post I stated there really wouldn't be an "owner" as least as it applies to the team functions -- "owner" has no relevance at this level.

The leader, as I also wrote, could be someone other than the owner. In a sense everyone needs to be a leader -- taking the lead on their responsibilities, their learning, their accomplishments, their success.

But the leader of the team must be there to cheerlead, to be a sounding board, to be an inspiration, to be a source of objective wisdom, etc, during the times when any one individual gets stuck or needs a little something special. The perfect team would be one where the coach is a perpetual cheerleader, but with any group of people there is always a little friction, or times when someone needs counsel.

The coach would also play the role of planning strategies with the input of everyone -- and implementation. So many times I've sat in management meetings where people had great ideas only to see the ideas fade away because of lack of followup and implementation. The coach has to see the ideas are put into action, implemented correctly and followed up.

This doesn't mean the leader is a straw boss making unwilling players perform --- the players should be executing their part of the of plan through internal motivation, but there are times when a plan takes co-ordinated effort and someone has to be making the connections and making sure the plan is executed as planned -- someone managing the plan.

Whatever the coach and team decide as far as the coach selling homes is fine -- there will probably be situations where the coach has a personal referral that needs to be handled personally, so the coach should be free to take listings or work with buyers. But in my idea of the team, when it comes to business, I think the coach should be looking at investment opportunities. It's hard to trust real estate professionals who don't invest in real estate. Investments will be a good way to add another stream of income. How that is arranged is open to agreement and willingness to particpate, but the team approach to investments could work just as well.

The leadership part of it all should develop naturally and the leader should never misuse power, The team concept will implode if the leader becomes a tyrant or an egotistical ass. The leader must constantly earn respect or it won't work. The other team members should never do anything out of fear of what the leader will say or do -- fear is a poor and short-term motivation-- team members should respect the coach because the respect is earned and the relationships should be open enough where the team members can question the coach -- the coach should be open and secure enough to be questioned.

If final decisions are forced with no clear team agreement, then the coach should have the final say and everyone should understand and accept this decision-making process upfront. The buck has to stop somewhere. This puts a lot of pressure on the coach to make wise, informed decisions and be prepared to communicate the reasons why the decision is made -- "Because I said so" is not enough. Big boys and girls don't have to work under an autocrat, and most won't for long.