Blog / Leadership
Even Great Leaders Make Mistakes
By Chris Hanley Byron Bay First National
1. They decide to PARK themselves and their business and they relax and then they take their foot off the pedal.
In business you are either going up or down but you can never stand still. Also a business is never finished or completed. All businesses are works in progress.
2. They leave school. The moment you stop learning you stop growing and the people around it sense it and they stop learning and growing.
Being a Learner Leader is infectious. Personally I read and study more now than at any time in my career.
3. They stop shining a light in all the dark corners of their organisation. Ignoring stuff is not only dangerous, it is cowardly and it corrodes a good culture and sends signals to all your team that you are neither strong nor smart.
4. They build a footy-club culture rather than an equal opportunity culture and they fail to understand that women are the greatest untapped resource in the real estate industry.
5. They stop believing - as I continue to believe - that anything is possible and they abandon the growth mindset we have when we first start a business and instead adopt a fixed and cautious mindset that is afraid of failing and making mistakes.
Mistakes are an essential part of business growth. All great leaders make mistakes often. Remember we all learn to walk by falling over.
6. They forget that habit becomes character, good or bad.
7. They sit around waiting for CLARITY before they act. It doesn’t happen. Act first then clarity follows.
8. They start taking short cuts in the hiring process and hire for appearances rather than patiently focusing on finding good people with resilience and grit. They also fail to fire quickly.
9. They fill up their days doing the easy stuff and the fun stuff and they become addicted to technology rather than having good CONVERSATIONS. Having raw, open and safe conversations with all your team every day is the single most important activity for a leader.
10. They delegate some of the mandatory jobs on a boss’ job description like managing the money and paying the bills and building and protecting company culture. A leader is the architect and the maintenance man of the company culture.
11. They spend their time speaking to all the wrong people and going to training courses run by people who have never done the thing they are being paid large sums of money to be a specialist in.
12. They decide that life is now about accumulation rather than connection.
13. They focus too much on the destination rather than a direction.
14. They keep trying to use the same map they started with.
15. They get serious and angry and forget that a happy shop is nearly always a profitable shop.
16. They stop believing the numbers.
In our industry the numbers never lie. The number of listings this month will tell you how many sales you will make next month. The amount of VPA this month will also give you a good indication of next month’s activity. There are only 5/6 numbers in our business that we need to focus on. Real estate is a simple business with simple metrics.
17. They start to worry about money. I never worry about money but I do worry about PEOPLE.
Not everything in business is important but everyone in business is important.
18. Even great leaders sometimes go MIA. You can’t. No matter what anyone tells you, a business cannot be run on autopilot. All of you need to be there all of the time.
19. Good leaders also make the mistake of rewarding people with good results and bad behaviour. This is fatal for culture and for team morale. We all know the soft stuff is the hard stuff but it is also the stuff that has the most impact overall within your organisation. You cannot build a sustainable, profitable business without a strong powerful culture.
20. They stop giving praise and recognition.
21. They stop investing time and money in their people.
22. They start to forget the single most important fact about working with people - that most people most of the time are trying their best.
23. They start getting caught on small hooks and wasting time on things that are energysapping and futile.
"Mistakes are an essential part of business growth. All great leaders make mistakes often. Remember we all learn to walk by falling over."
24. They fill up their heads with noise and run around all day with a pin ball mind.
25. They stop saving.
26. They stop listening.
27. They decide to work hard or long or smart but not all 3.
28. They start blaming the market or other people or the weather. All great leaders know that if it is going to be, it is 100% up to me.
29. Great leaders also sometimes assume they know what their staff are thinking or feeling. This can be a serious mistake. Never stop surveying or talking with your team
30. Real estate is always a marathon and never a sprint. There are no short cuts and to build a profitable organisation you need to put down deep roots right in the centre of your community and focus on building deep layers of trust across the whole community.
I would like to leave you all with one of the many great recruitment questions that I will be sharing at my Building an All Weather Business sessions.
The Question is...What did you learn from your mother?
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