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Transitioning from Leader to Owner with Shirley Dalton


With Shirley Dalton, Dalton Business Systems

We may have the dream of running a successful business but being successful is actually incredibly stressful and challenging. Shirley Dalton, business mentor and the CEO of Dalton Business Systems believes that the quickest way to create a fully functioning business is to make sure your business has the correct structure, communication processes and systems – and she can show you how to do exactly that so you can have a successful business and play a game of golf or get down to the beach.

Shirley has worked with many people in the real estate industry and says, “What I've found is that the people who are really successful are the people that invest in training, in development in themselves and in their people. They recognise that people are their best asset. They recognise that through training their team, they can actually lift the team and step away from themselves."

Becoming a boss brings a new set of responsibilities and Shirley helps great practitioners become fantastic bosses and business owners. First you make the transition to working on the business rather than in it, to be a great leader. She says, “Then, as a great leader, you need to be the great business owner, where you're looking at the vision, the strategy, how to make your business better."

Shirley works with clients to implement workflow and procedures across a business. She says, “The workflow says who does what and when and why. Then coming off that are the procedures, the how. If you think about, you've got all of your marketing work that needs to be done to get an enquiry, and then who takes that enquiry? Is it the receptionist? Is it the salesperson? Then what happens? We're going down in or across in the process, and then we're asking ourselves why. Once we've got that, then we can establish the roles, which then form our organisational chart. From there, we look at each role and we say what needs to be done in that, which is what we're getting from our workflow, because here are all the tasks that are assigned to that. Then coming off that is the how. If I'm looking at that, then for the assistant, I'm looking at the role based on all of those tasks."

With regards to communication, Shirley recommends, “One of the things you want to do is to ask people what's the best way for me to communicate with you? If you think about Stephen Covey's time management matrix, he's got important, not important, urgent, not urgent. I actually came up with one, and it was for property management teams. How much communication, how little communication, or how much information do you want? How do you like to get your information? Is it by face-to-face? Is it by phone? Is it by email? Is it by text? People will often tell you, and particularly real estate agents, sometimes to get their attention you are better off texting."

Shirley Dalton will be featuring on Real Estate Academy’s Mobile Audio Book, How to Build Procedures & Processes. She will also be presenting a session called ‘How to Build Processes and Get the Best out of your people’ in the Real Estate Academy Amphitheatre. This session will be held on the 27th March 2018. Please contact Real Estate Academy on 1300 367 412 for more information.

 


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