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There are three major components of leadership, but leaders must be careful they don’t get bogged down with day-to-day tasks, according to this business coach.
In a conversation with REB, business coach and performance expert Michael Sheargold outlined that a leadership role can be broken down into three components: leading, managing and coaching.
While sometimes these roles do all get lumped together, Mr Sheargold said leaders must be wary they don’t get bogged down with menial tasks.
“I quite often ask great leaders in real estate: Where do you think you spend too much time and where do you not spend enough time?” he offered.
“And they all say I spend too much time managing and not enough time leading and coaching.”
Breaking down his own definition of leadership, Mr Sheargold said a good leader will “lead people in the direction of our vision”.
“My favourite definition of leadership, by the way, is creating positive energy in the direction of our vision and clearing negative energy getting in the way of our vision,” he shared.
In essence: “It’s either clearing negative energy getting in the way of our vision, or creating that positive energy towards our vision.”
But not only that, he acknowledged that a leader is usually responsible for managing things: “We manage projects, we manage numbers, we manage processes and we coach for performance.”
“Sometimes we’ve just been busy and we’ve let those things go,” he conceded.
When that happens, it might be that a business needs to clean up its database, or get its act together from a tech point of view, or it needs to get its settlement processes up-to-date or its lease signing working digitally.
All of these actions (or pain points) could be classified as negative energy, or at the very least, creating more noise and causing a lack of focus on what Mr Sheargold refers to as “the main aim of the game”.
Instead of turning to management, Mr Sheargold argues that it’s not necessarily the responsibility of the leader to get these items actioned, but “ultimately it is the responsibility of the leader to empower people to be able to embrace that”.
To further illustrate his point, Mr Sheargold offered up his own example of “the three bricklayers”.
“I go to the first bricklayer and say, what are you actually doing? And the first bricklayer simply says, ‘I’m putting a brick in the wall’.
“Second bricklayer, what are you doing? ‘I’m building a wall’.
“And the third bricklayer, what are you doing? ‘I’m creating a cathedral.’
“The challenge is, the three of them are putting a brick in the wall.
“One is purposeless. One has got some purpose. And the cathedral has got huge amount of purpose,” he opined.
On one end of the spectrum, “one person’s turning up and just going through the motions”.
At the other end of the spectrum, the bricklayer “is truly turned on in what the overall vision of the business is and where we’re going”.
“It’s the leader’s responsibility to activate in [their] team that kind of cathedral,” he professed.
“What is the cathedral that our leaders are building to be able to lean into?”
Mr Sheargold’s comments come ahead of The Business of Real Estate ’23 Conference to be held on the Gold Coast on 12 and 13 September 2023.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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