Blog / Leadership
Chris Mercer, Putting a premium on Leadership
Chris Mercer believes that leadership is critical in running a successful business - and he should know. He is the Managing Director of Live Bookkeeping and has over 20 years experience preparing, reviewing and planning financial accounts and budgets. Specialising in the real estate industry since 2001, Chris knows a successful business from ten paces.
For Chris, a successful business starts with the leader. He says, “Leadership is a very important part of real estate, because it’s a people game. As soon as you’ve got staff, they’ve got other challenges they need answered. You’re the leader. You own the business and you have to be there for your staff. You need to help provide the resources they need. You need to have systems in place, have rules around disputes, have areas, and also have a logical way in which you attack the overall market.”
Leaders have to constantly ask more of themselves. Chris believes, “It’s relentless and ruthless. Constant improvement needs to be at the heart of everyone’s day. Everyone has to ask, ‘What am I doing today that I could do differently tomorrow which is just a bit better, without blowing everything up?’. Big changes, radical shifts - people don’t trust that. No one likes that, that’s unpredictable. What people like is calm, clear direction. And it can’t be much better than achieving an objective market share goal.”
Leadership is a very important part of real estate because it’s a people game.
Now we all know that the truth can hurt but Chris believes that if you are prepared to ask your staff to find out if they would stay if they were offered another position in another company for more money, then you can find out your leadership premium. He says, “When someone’s prepared to work for less and stay in an environment where there’s very engaged leadership, that’s when you know that leadership matters and how you can measure it. Leadership premium is like any measurable material.”
Chris believes that a strong leader can handle the truth. If you’ve got great staff, it is inevitable other people are going to want to poach them. So when rivals come sniffing at your door, Chris advises not to see it as an act of disloyalty and say ‘Why would you even entertain that idea of shifting?’. Rather he says it is imperative that you see it as a result of the hard work that you have put it to create an ideal workplace.
A strong leader can handle the truth.
He says, “Sit down and chat with the staff member who has been made an offer by a rival company, and say, ‘I don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable, but I can’t stop it from happening. I want to know where you’re at. This is going to happen. You’re going to get these carrots dangled in front of you. Come and talk to me. Don’t be afraid of being attracted to the opportunity. And I’m not afraid to find out that you’re doing it. I just don’t want you to unnecessarily only take that distorted view, which is intentionally promising all the good aspects of it, without highlighting the challenges that come with it. But we’re ready to talk. We’re open’.”
So if you manage to keep your gun agent, your work is not done - you still have to work hard to keep your top players. The problem with leadership is that it is relentless. You can never be off your A game and you need to be highly evolved, able to act like a fully functioning adult rather than a cranky child. For example, Chris says, after your gun agent has stayed and 12 months has gone by, it would be a mistake for you to conclude that, ‘I did it once. He or she wants to stay and is prepared to stay’ or ‘I’m not going to engage in that conversation. I don’t need to be at the mercy of people’s whims’.
He says, that if you think like that, “Your leadership premium just dropped. And it drops every minute that you’re absent from your team. You cannot just abandon your team and say, ‘I’ve got a big leadership premium’. That’s a mistake. You always need to work your leadership premium, and refine it and constantly help people grow. Get this, there are plenty of professional coaches who can help people get from, let’s say, golf from 36 to 10. Lots of golfers can get to that. There’s only a handful that can get a 10 handicap into a 5, and even less that can get someone from 5 to a positive handicap.”
If you’re a type of leader who thinks, ‘I’m just a bread-and-butter person’, you’re not the aspirational one; you’re not the person who can take me to the next level. Chris believes that you’re at risk of being partitioned as a suburban real estate agent who doesn’t offer people the ability to go to the next level. Your business will suffer as a result.
Constant improvement needs to be at the heart of everyone’s day.
Chris believes true leaders are always looking at ways that they can help to encourage people to grow. He says, “You want to always encourage people to be able to grow. And you don’t want to make them feel like it’s a burden. It’s a simple fact: the better they operate, the more they do, the better off everyone is. And that should be the way it works.”
From little things, big things grow!
For more information please see: www.live-bookkeeping.com.au/
← Go back
