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You may be looking to help your team members advance their careers with leadership training, but according to one industry veteran, your money is better spent elsewhere.
“I believe in spending money for courses but if it was up to me, learning to live rather than learning to lead is what I would be spending my money on,” said Chris Hanley, principal of First National Byron Bay.
Speaking at RiSE Leadership Awakening back in March, Chris told the crowd of over 100 real estate professionals that the qualities he sees in good leaders are ones that require internal reflection rather than the outward absorption of instructions and facts.
That’s why, in his view, courses on personal development and counselling would be more valuable to most principals in real estate because the nature of their work and the relationships they need to build with teams and clients have more to do with personal development.
Yet still, many principles continue to contribute to the $60 billion worldwide annual spend on leadership development courses, where, in his view, “they give you a list of what to do without telling you the why and how”.
With more than 40 years of experience under his belt, Mr Hanley has seen agencies come and go and a lot of different leadership styles. He, himself, admits that his way of guiding a team now is a lot different from when he first started out running a business.
Mr Hanley recalled being once asked how much power should be wielded as a boss, which led him to reflect on how power is obtained in the first place.
“I was asked, ‘When should I use the power that I’ve got and when should I not?’ and I thought that was a great question. Now, when I was a young boss, I probably would have said, ‘Use it all the time!’
“But if you’re running around getting people to do things and they’re only doing them in your organisation because you’ve got ‘Boss’ written on your card, then you’ve got a challenge here because you’re trying to lead based on fear,” Mr Hanley said.
Fear, he said, is ultimately an ineffective long-term motivator. And just because your staff fears you does not mean they will respect you, which is how good, altruistic power is gained. Mr Hanley refers to this as influence rather than power.
“Influence is based on respect. And it’s completely different to fear.”
In Mr Hanley’s view, true leadership comes from modelling behaviours that encourage not only honest work but an ethical approach to all aspects of life.
“You work out if you’re working for the right boss by one single yardstick and asking, ‘Do I want to be a better human being, a better person, because I’m working for this person?’” he said.
“If the people who work for you say that, you know you’re a good leader.”
Ultimately, he feels leadership is about “very simple things” — the skills you learn in daily life from relating to others.
“It’s about giving and helping people get what they want; it is about trust; and it is also about spending a lot of time listening to people rather than a lot of time talking to people,” Mr Hanley said.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of people in real estate who he sees “[spending] their waking hours when they walk into the office talking and giving people instructions and telling people what to do”.
Absent one important aspect, he says that’s as good as shouting into a void.
“If there’s no trust, your team won’t hear you.”
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