How Strong Leaders Can Make All the Difference

The most successful real estate agents are always looking for ways to evolve, improve their craft, help their fellow team members, and advance their own careers. Those qualities make some top-performing agents ideal candidates for leadership roles, and placing the right agents in the right positions is crucial for overall agent retention.

Leaders will feel more valued and fulfilled when working in roles that allow them to grow their careers, while promising new agents are more likely to stick around when they have trusted mentors on the team. Prioritizing agent leadership and retention are two of the biggest components in any real estate team's long-term success.

Growing Agent Leadership and Retention

• Why Agent Retention Should Always Be a Top Priority - According to the National Association of REALTORS®, the average tenure for agents at their current firm is four years. Naturally, you want your best agents to work with you for much longer than that, not only because their skills benefit your team but because the cost of replacing an agent is incredibly steep. The financial cost of training, onboarding, and equipping a new agent is significant, with no guarantee that the fresh hire will be a perfect fit for your brand or culture. Team morale can be negatively impacted by the departure of experienced agents as well, and new leaders will have to fill the void. Retaining your best agents has so many benefits, starting with avoiding the challenges that come with trying to replace them.

• How to Identify Agents with Leadership Potential - The best leaders are always looking for the next challenge. They want to learn, grow, adapt, improve, advance, and use their own experiences to help other agents who are following in their footsteps. These agents are often team players who will unofficially take on leadership roles before receiving any type of official recognition. They will help new agents learn the business and deal with the unique emotional challenges that can come with launching a real estate career. Their door will always be open when someone needs to talk, and other team members will often turn to them for advice. An agent who is a patient, knowledgeable, and personable team player will usually have the tools necessary to take on a leadership role.

• Not Every Top Performer Will Be a Leadership Fit - Let's be honest—being a top performer, on its own, doesn't necessarily qualify an agent to be a leader. Someone who's great at selling homes won't always be similarly skilled at leading other team members, and not every top performer will be interested in taking on the added responsibilities that come with being a leader. And that's okay! Those agents can still be valuable team members as long as they get along with the rest of the team while setting a positive example through their performance. Even if they don't take active leadership positions, there are plenty of ways for them to positively affect the day-to-day business. The most important thing is finding the right role for everyone and allowing them to thrive in it.

• Leadership Roles and Retaining Your Best Agents - The best leaders are often the agents looking to get more out of their careers than just a healthy paycheck. These individuals succeed in real estate because their skills as an agent are topnotch, and they're confident that those skills will help them excel no matter what market they're working in. They seek a level of professional fulfillment that goes beyond dollars and cents, which is why a leadership role can be a perfect way to retain them for the long haul. Leading other agents helps to provide that fulfillment while opening up unique paths for career advancement.

• How the Right Leaders Can Help Retain and Grow New Agents - Starting fresh and becoming a successful real estate agent is not easy, but it's also a path that many individuals have already walked. Use that experience to your benefit and to help everyone on your team. Whether it's a new agent trying to learn the ropes or a more experienced agent who has hit a rough patch, having a trusted, team-focused mentor is crucial to finding success. A leader does more than help other agents sell homes. They also help with all of the complexities that come with pursuing a real estate career. Their knowledge allows them to put challenges in perspective while providing real, proven solutions to help team members succeed. Add it all up, and it's no surprise that the most successful, cohesive real estate teams rely on great leaders.

Why Leadership, Team Building and Agent Retention Go Hand-in-Hand

Think about a time in your own career when you may have felt a little lost, were unsure of what to do next, or simply needed some encouragement from a trusted source. It's often in those small, personal moments that the best leaders genuinely shine. Leadership can be as simple as providing some encouraging words to someone who's going through a challenging time or an open ear to help someone vent their frustrations. It can also be as complicated as assisting a team member in identifying an underlying issue that's impacting their performance and helping them create a detailed plan for how to overcome it.

At some point in their career, every agent will face challenges that are difficult to deal with alone. In some cases, those challenges will be make-or-break moments where the agent is thinking about possibly moving on to a new firm or even pursuing a new career altogether. A skilled leader has the wherewithal to deal with those obstacles and knows how to approach other agents in a way that gets through to each unique personality. They are the glue that holds any successful team together, and playing that role gives them the fulfillment they need to be satisfied with their own career.

In other words, leadership is ultimately a symbiotic relationship, which helps with agent retention in multiple ways. Of course, new or less experienced agents benefit by having a leader they can rely upon, but the leader also benefits by having team members who count on them for help. As newer agents grow their skills and accumulate experience, they can look forward to taking on their own leadership roles. When the whole team is working toward the same goals, the workplace environment is positive, leading to a strong team and making it that much easier to retain every member of the team.

How Will Your Leaders Shape Your Real Estate Team?

Finding leaders isn't always easy, but it's more than worth the effort. Every agent is unique, just like every team is unique. Leaders help to set the standard for the culture of your team and can elevate those around them. Some leaders are naturally skilled at the role, while others grow into it over the course of their careers. By identifying the right people and encouraging them to take on more active leadership roles, you're ultimately shaping the future of your real estate team. And with the right people in place, that future will be looking bright for years to come.

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