WorkPuzzle

The Value of Great Questions - Part 2

In my last blog entry, I discussed the value of not just asking questions…but rather, asking great questions. I qualified the “great questions” as ones that add value, present your knowledge in terms of knowing your candidate, and show your attentiveness. Today, with the help of a blog written by Colin Wilson, I want to give you some general rules of thumb.

Allow for Warm-Up Time

At the beginning of a meeting or interview, take time for chit-chat. Casual banter is not work-related and allows for a more relaxed environment. Chit-chat time is an opportunity to build rapport and will help you gauge a candidate’s communicative style and perspective.

Label the Question

Labeling a question before you ask it positions the question in the respondent's mind. By “labeling,” I mean that you first tell the respondent that you are going to ask them a question on a certain topic, and then you ask the question(s). By giving them notice of the topic, it will give them a split second or two to consider a deeper response. More importantly, by explaining why you are going to ask a certain question(s) you will put the candidate at ease. This strategy is much better than the alternative, which leaves them guessing and uneasy…a situation that could ultimately lead to avoidance.

Example: "To gain a better understanding about your background, I would like to ask you some questions about your prior work history."

General Questions before Specifics

It is important to get an understanding as to why the candidate is sitting in front of you. Why, specifically, are they there? This is important information before you get into specific detail in an interview. There are three steps to this process:

1. Ask broad open-ended questions about areas of possible interest. Example: "Tell me about life outside of work...what hobbies or other interests do you have?"
2. Determine the priority areas…where do you, as the interviewer, need to direct the interview?
3. Ask probing questions about the broad topics that interest the candidate. Example: "How were you introduced to (specific activity)?"

Avoid too many Closed Questions

Asking too many close-ended questions (yes/no questions) will come across as if you are interrogating the respondent. That is not a place most people want to find themselves. If you need to ask a series of yes/no questions, let the candidate know that you are going to do so.

Example: "Next, I'd like to get some basic information from you... Are you financial prepared to start your real estate business? Do you have the time that is necessary to dedicate to getting your license? Does your family support your decision?"

Use the Person’s Name

People enjoy hearing their names. Therefore, use their name throughout the discussion, while taking care not to over use it. Without the use of the person’s name, the interview could come across as being very impersonal, which consequentially does not build rapport.

Avoid Negative Questions

Negative questions may put the respondent on the defensive and become a barrier to building rapport. Such questions may very well make the candidate feel ignorant, incompetent, guilty, wrong, etc... These feelings will most certainly inhibit your efforts to build a relationship with the candidate.

Example: During an interview with an experienced agent, DON'T ask, “Why did you fail to close so few transactions in the last two years?”

Effective Questioning can provide you with the opportunity to help crystallize a candidate’s thinking and will help you build rapport and trust by demonstrating that you understand and value their opinions. Additionally, as you move through an interview, and ask your great questions, you may very well begin to use their language, which is another block in your “relationship building.”

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Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Predicting success with Early Ownership

One of our readers, Jim Dickinson of Stark Homes, Madison Wisconsin, recently sent us an article that got our attention.  We'd like to pass it on to our readers. 

But first a few words to set up the context...

Attracting and hiring the right people (the best people) has never been more important, both for you and for the candidate.  Nobody is in the mood, has the time, or is in the financial position to make the wrong decision when it comes to their future.  We've improved the odds of making good hiring decisions with the Top Performer profile, but in the current environment, many of our clients are having to talk to as many candidates that come through the funnel as they possibly can in order to hire the numbers needed to expand market share.  Under these conditions, all of us can benefit from improving our ability to spot what we are looking for in candidates, so that we can pursue them with a tenacity that leaves them believing that they can succeed.  You can accomplish this by being dedicated to understanding people, keeping up with the latest research, and being purposely reflective about what you are seeing.

You might remember the name Daniel Coyle of The Talent Code, as we have written in WorkPuzzle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about his somewhat counterintuitive findings in the past.  In a recent blog entry, he takes another shot at trying to decipher what might help differentiate those who will be successful, from those who won't be.

"A lot of smart people have been thinking about this, and what they’ve decided is this: the problem is not that the measures are wrong.  The problem is --measuring performance the wrong way to approach the question.

According to much of this new work, what matters is not current performance, but rather growth potential – what you might call the G-Factor — the complex, multi-faceted qualities that help someone learn and keep on learning, to work past inevitable plateaus; to adapt and be resourceful and keep improving.

Thing is, G-Factor can’t be measured with a stopwatch or a tape measure.  It’s more subtle and complex.  Which means that instead of looking at performance, you look for signs, subtle indicators — what a poker player might call tells.  In other words, to locate the G-Factor you have to close your eyes, ignore the dazzle of current performance and instead try to detect the presence of a few key characteristics... Sort of like Moneyball, with character traits."

Coyle describes two "tells" of the G-Factor: one is Grit, something I have written about before (WorkPuzzle 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...).  The other is "early ownership:"

"Early Ownership:  As Marjie Elferink-Gemser’s work shows, one pattern of successful athletes happens when they’re 13 or so, when they develop a sense of ownership of their training.  For the ones who succeed, this age is when they decide that it’s not enough to simply be an obedient cog in the development machine — they begin to go farther, reaching beyond the program, deciding for themselves what their workouts will be, augmenting and customizing and addressing their weaknesses on their own."

How can you use this information in your interviews?  Perhaps your interviews need to include questions to reveal past examples of early ownership.  How can this knowledge help with training, observing, and mentoring agents in the first months of performance?  

If you're going to hire better, it's imperative to take some time away from the busyness of executing tasks and dedicate ample time to reflect on this kind of innovative information that demands experimentation.  Tailor your process to assimilate what science has discovered about people... 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

How to deal with Boredom or Anxiety at Work

Like it or not, we all occasionally get into ruts. We can’t seem to find a way to bring maximum enjoyment to our work, so eventually we get bored. One of the differences between very successful people and the rest of us, is that successful people tend to intuitively follow the rules I’m about to show you, to prevent them from experiencing too much boredom, or too much anxiety.

For decades, despite hundreds of studies on boredom, not a lot was known about this elusive experience. Then, in the 1960’s and 70’s, a Russian born University of Chicago psychologist stumbled on the answers while studying the internal experiences of successful workers, artists, and climbers.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that for optimal engagement to be experienced, people must find a balance between their level of competence or skill and their level of challenge. If your level of skill is great and your level of challenge is low, you will most certainly experience boredom (see diagram).

Conversely, if your levels of skill and competence are low relative to the height of the challenge, then anxiety will kick in, and you could buckle under the pressure.

Where “optimum engagement” takes place is in the sweet spot between your level of challenge and your skill level. What this means is that we all need to pay close attention to balance between the two, looking for ways that we can increase our challenges as we increase our competence.

So how can we do this? This is much easier to answer when it comes to anxiety than when it comes to boredom. With anxiety, you can adjust in either direction....you can focus your energy on decreasing the level of challenge, or find mentors or training to increase your level of competence...or both.

With boredom, you can only adjust in one direction. Since it's impossible to decrease the skill level, you are left with having to find ways to increase the level of challenge.

Please send in your ideas about how this important balance can be accomplished in a practical manner for realtors or with those who manage them. If I get some concrete tips, I’ll pass them on...

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Challenges that Real Estate Managers Face: WorkPuzzle Manager Survey Results—Part 1

As some of you might recall, we asked each of you to participate in a real estate manager survey back in September. The purpose of the survey was to help us (and, in turn, you) better understand the challenges of the real estate manager role.

This was an unusual survey in that a group of our readers actually helped design many of the questions. In designing the survey in this manner, we hoped to focus on the issues that were of the highest interest and concern to the group.

The anxieties that seemed to rise to the top in this process centered on the appropriateness of the many “hats” a first-level manager is required to wear in today’s real estate company.

More specifically...What are the hats that managers typically wear? How does a manager balance these different roles? and, How is success measured and accountability maintained?

In the end, there were ten questions selected for the survey. These questions are listed on the left side of the chart below. On the right side of the chart, we’ve summarized the data that was collected in the responses.

This is not intended to be a vision test. To view a more readable version of the chart, click on it and a new window will open and display a much larger version (if you’re an email reader, clicking on the chart will take you to WorkPuzzle where you can click the chart again and get the larger version).



Take a few minutes to digest this information. Is there anything that surprises you? Do you see any inconsistencies in the responses that you feel are significant? Do you notice similarities between what you’re experiencing in your company and what your peers in other companies are reporting? Do you see problems that seem to characterize the manager position? If so, what are they, and why are they systemic?

Next week, I’ll provide some thoughts on the survey and make some suggestions regarding how you can use this data to make changes and improve your performance. In the meantime, record (click the comment link in web version) or email your comments (reply to your WorkPuzzle email) to me. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and it will also help me focus on the issues that you find most interesting.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Four Words That Will Get Your Email Opened

“You are not alone.”

Did that get your attention? Sean Platt, author and entrepreneur in the field of content marketing thinks it did. In fact, it has been proven to be the leading statement in an email subject line that gets opened and responded to.

This specific subject line has had an average open rate of 90% in email marketing, and has even surpassed the 100% mark (opened more than once by some people) several times, according to Aweber, the email marketing program that tracks Platt’s campaigns.

Why? Because Platt figured out that his statement taps into something every human being wants—to be understood and cared about. And because this is such a core need for individuals, it even trumps some of the normal inhibitions that make us suspect of marketing messages. Platt puts it this way:

“No matter what message you’re sending or service you’re selling, if you remind your reader that someone understands what they are going through and cares about helping them, you will become their temporary hero.

Do it repeatedly, and you will permanently solidify that position.

Use this subject line to get your email opened, but treat the open as just the first step. Once you capture your reader’s attention, prove that you deserved it by providing a useful solution to their most pressing problem.

Even the most effective subject line in the world merely gets you in the door. Your job is to address the issues.

Not only does the ‘You Are Not Alone’ subject line get opened like crazy, it has an extremely high reply rate. This isn’t too surprising since it responds directly to the need for community and connection.

Make sure you reply back. It’s amazing how directly responding to the needs of your reader makes it easy to nurture rewarding relationships.

Help people solve their problems and relieve them of their feelings of isolation, and they will reward you.”

In my years working with Tidemark, I have had countless discussions with real estate managers on the topic of recruiting. I have listened to many managers share their frustration with this particular aspect of their job. It became clear to me pretty quickly that the word “recruiting” can have a negative connotation for some. To counter that, it occurred to me that I could assist those struggling with the execution of their recruiting efforts, by helping them re-define “recruiting.” In fact, I wanted to take that word out of their vernacular and replace it with the concept of “relationship building.”

Having been exposed throughout your life to real estate professionals…and now working with hundreds of them, I can say one thing for certain; you are great at building relationships, and that is all recruiting really is. I believe most, if not all of you intuitively “get this,” but sometimes we need to be reminded of the basics.

While Sean Platt speaks specifically of email etiquette in his blog, I couldn’t help but feel that the true nature of successful and effective email communication involves building authentic relationships over time. The fundamental topic of Platt’s blog is the successful open rate of emails with the subject line “You are not Alone.” The value behind this statement lays the foundation for you to start building relationships with candidates and clients. This is precisely why it has such a high open rate…people need to feel a connection with others.

Platt’s last statement resonated with me: “Help people solve their problems and relieve them of their feelings of isolation, and they will reward you.” This holds true of anyone contemplating a career in real estate, or choosing to continue their career in real estate. I know many of you are emailing as part of your “relationship building” strategy. The concepts that Sean is sharing can go a long way in all aspects of on-boarding new and experienced agents. This goes beyond just email…every interaction you have with prospective employees should add value and offer understanding of your candidate’s needs, concerns, and potential fears.

If you have the opportunity to learn about and help solve a problem, you will endear yourself and your value proposition to all with whom you interact...

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Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Be a Genius: One Step at a Time

In a meeting this morning, a couple of individuals whom I respect a great deal were referring to a mutual friend of ours as "a genius," citing examples of the notable expertise that he has developed. While I nodded my head in agreement, I was also considering the mistake that was being made in that assessment. Because, in my view, labeling this man a “genius” might actually diminish the work he undertook to accomplish what he has. I know for a fact, and so did they, that he had spent countless hours (easily 15,000) over the last 15 years perfecting one single area of expertise. He was not simply "a genius." He worked extremely hard to get where he is.

The point is, he not only worked hard, he disciplined himself to become great at what he did. I don’t doubt that he began with very strong predispositions and inherent talents toward his proficiency, but what really made the difference is that he woke up every morning with determination to do his best, again, and again, and again...

The reason for my passing this on to you is simple: The best way to coach people toward success is first to firmly establish where they want to go, then help them determine how they are going to get there...not in giant leaps, rather with small steps, every day.

In our times of instant gratification and low frustration tolerance, your primary role will be to stay watchful for the inevitable signs of fatigue and frustration. Then when you see them, re-frame the person's pain, and remind them that very few things worth having come easily.

Here are some quotes to emphasize my point:

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones." —Winston Churchill

"We do no great things, only small things with great love." —Mother Teresa

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble." —Helen Keller

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Coaching High Potential Agents: When Encouragement Backfires

On occasion, I come across some research or insight that is so counter-intuitive, it makes me question the progress I've made in my quest to understand people. Earlier this week, I had one of those moments.

It came when I read an article written by Dr. John Sullivan, a well-known thought leader in the world of Human Resource consulting and a professor at San Francisco State University. This article deals with the topic of succession planning in large organizations.

While this is not normally a topic that would interest the typical real estate manager who manages a single office, the insight came in how Dr. Sullivan suggests that business leaders communicate with the "high-potential" members (he affectionately calls these individuals "HiPos") of their organizations.

The conventional wisdom is that these HiPos should be identified early and given a bunch of encouragement when their above-average performance starts to emerge. I've often heard comments like this when I've spoken with real estate managers:

"Let me introduce you to Roger...he's closed more transactions in his first six months on our team than any agent we've ever had!"

or

"If I just had more new agents like Jill our office wouldn't be in a slump. She runs circles around most of the people who have been here for years."

or

"Why can't more of our agents be like Jason? He comes in here and operates like a true professional. And look at the results! We need more people like him."

Of course, all these comments come from a hiring/selection perspective because my conversations with managers typically focus on this topic. But, they reveal an attitude that is very prevalent among real estate companies: When someone comes along that quickly performs at a high level, the tendency is to first marvel at such a thing and then hold that person up as an example.

At this point, Dr. Sullivan suggests that we may be shooting ourselves (and our organizations) in the foot. When a person starts to figure out they are a HiPo, all types of strange behavior tends to ensue. Here is an abbreviated list of the potential impacts on the individual and the team:

1. The probability of losing this person to a competitor increases. If you tell employees that they are high-potentials, it is highly likely the news will spread both inside and outside the organization.
2. Increased frustration and turnover if early success and perceived opportunites don't materialize. Acknowledgement leads to expectations, and unfortunately opportunities do not always materialize as planned.
3. Employees may not take development efforts seriously. If the HiPo is aware of their status, they may not see the value in actively self-improving. In addition, they may not take full advantage of any improvement and development opportunities offered.
4. Reduced effort after “making it.” Following acknowledgement, the HiPo may expect things to happen automatically, going into coast mode as they assume their future is set.
5. Ego issues. Notifying HiPos lets them know they are valuable, but may also create an ego boost that results in a change in behavior (i.e. arrogance, sense of entitlement, etc.)
6. Frustration among those not designated. As managers identify HiPos (directly or through subtle comments like the examples above) other agents may react unfavorably. If the informal designation process is viewed by other agents as biased or not fair, these factors could lead to reduced productivity and increased turnover.
7. There may be sabotage. A HiPo could face subtle or direct attacks from individuals who feel that they don’t deserve the designation. Once identified, others within a competitive organization may work to slow them down or even sabotage them out of bitterness.

[Dr. Sullivan identifies another nine risks if you care to read more on this topic]

As this list of concerns and issues illustrates, successfully dealing with those under your care and nurturing is rarely straight-forward and easy to understand...and, the HiPos are an especially challenging lot.

The lesson here is to treat everyone on your team with respect and provide as much thoughtful insight and encouragement as possible. Try to discern what every person needs and customize your assistance to each indivual. And finally, understand the risks of elevating one person (especially if the individual is a new HiPo) over the others on the team. Encouragement and praise is necessary and good, but make sure it is not administered in a way that creates divisions.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Why you should Ignore the Generation X, Y and Z Rhetoric

During a recent presentation focused on the psychology of recruiting, I was asked to elaborate more fully on the difference in the psychology of generations X, Y and Z.  Specifically, the manager wanted to know what they could do to more effectively reach these elusive generations.  What was originally meant to be a brief response to this question turned into a prolonged sermon that resulted in more nodding heads than I’ve seen in a long time.  It resonated so much with these managers that I felt pretty strongly it was worth the time to pass these thoughts on to you.

There are three things you need to know: 

1. Yes, X, Y, and Z generations are very different.
2. Self-indulging and child indulging baby-boomer parents made them this way. 
3. At their core, most people are the same and will respond favorably if you meet their most basic needs. 

 Let's unpack each one of these individually: 

1. These younger generations do appear to be disloyal, are out for the best deal, expect to be paid immediately, aren't willing to do menial tasks first, and are willing to change jobs or firms in a moments notice.  These are real and true observations, and because of these observations, companies and vendors go to great lengths to try to find ways to respond to these characteristics that only wind up exacerbating the condition.  Why do I call it a condition?  Because it is a disease.  It cannot sustain your company, our culture, the nation, or the world.  Find a company or country that attempts to cater to these needs, and I’ll show you one that is on the precipice of collapse.
2. It's time to take responsibility and fess up to the values many parents within the baby boomer generation have created.  This is a generation that believed that immediate personal pleasure was more important than service to others.  Self-esteem without contribution was more important than earning the respect of others.  Frustration, struggles and hard work were to be soothed as quickly as possible and replaced with rescue and pampering.  Unfortunately, while all the above was going on, their most basic needs were being ignored.  Many of them were left alone, with a Nintendo, or X-box as a babysitter, activities were valued over relationship building, and family dinners were held on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
3. The good news is that to redeem the mistakes of the past, we can easily return to the core needs of all human beings.  There is an old saying..."There is nothing new under the sun."  When it comes to people, we are all basically the same and will never, at our very core, change.  When you purposefully seek to meet those needs, you can reclaim the dormant needs of these individuals and bring out the best in them, and your company.  As we have presented repeatedly in WorkPuzzle, science has proven without question, that happiness is never experienced through increasing the frequency and duration of personal pleasure.  Being confident in this allows you to offer these young people something more compelling that meets a need they didn’t even know that they had, and deeply resonates with every human being. 

People need to belong, they need to have high expectations, and they need a goal that is bigger than themselves...with a company painting a picture of doing something special.  Are you doing that?  What you have to offer is better than what many of these young people are being offered elsewhere: A chance to learn some skills that would be transferable to many occupations.

My 26-year-old son recently quit his last job to tour the world for five months.  Upon his return he had three organizations giving him fairly generous offers to work for them.  What separated the one he chose to work for from the other two?  The one he chose went out of their way to make him feel welcome.  Everyone greeted him as he walked in for the interview, several people emailed him with positive comments, and each of his questions was followed up with immediate answers.  He even received a very nice note from the boss of bosses in this firm.  In other words, he was treated like he was already hired and part of the big, efficient, family.  He was also introduced to top performers who treated him like he was a peer, and yet clearly introduced to what was expected in a way that raised high expectations without undo pressure.  The support he would receive upon being hired was clearly seen in every interaction. 

So, the question for your company is:  Can you move past what you’ve heard about these younger generations and speak to their deeper needs?  If you can, you’ll attract the best of the best. 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

How great expectations lead to better results

Have you ever wondered how important positive expectations are in the workplace? Take a moment to think about when, and under what conditions, you best perform...

The Rosenthal Effect refers to a phenomenon that many of us might understand intuitively, but can't fathom the sheer amount of power and achievement it can harness. It emphatically shows that the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. The Rosenthal Effect is in essence, a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby people with poor expectations internalize their negative label, and perform poorly...while those with positive self-imposed labels, exceed their own apparent abilities.

In the late 1960's, Robert Rosenthal showed that if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from a select group of children, these children were able to rise above previously predicted achievement levels. What he (and others who came after him) has proven, is that reality can be influenced by the expectations of others...And it goes both ways: Detrimental effects come from negative expectations just as strongly as achievement results from positive expectations.

What biases do you bring to the table with new agent candidates? Are you one of those who believe that everyone has a certain ceiling of performance that they will never exceed? Do you refrain from holding people to high expectations because it feels mean or unfair? "After all, this person couldn't pull it off, so it would be cruel to expect that they will?" This kind of thinking, Rosenthal and others have termed the "observer-expectancy effect," where a person forms unconscious, biased expectations, based on extremely limited, and usually irrelevant information...and creates a downward spiraling, self-fulfilling prophecy as a result.

The Rosenthal Effect is confirmed by Jane Elliot's blue-eyed versus brown-eyed discrimination exercise. In this experiment, a group of third graders were told that they were going to take turns looking down upon one half of the classroom, as if they were inferior people. They used something completely random to determine who would be inferior/superior - eye color. The first day of the experiment, one group was given preference and regarded as "superior" because of their eye color, while the other group was made to feel inferior in intelligence and learning ability. On the second day of the experiment, the groups were completely reversed; those who had been treated as lower-than, were regarded as superior, and those who were treated as superior were treated as dummies.

The teacher continued to hold classroom structure and assignments as if the "experiment" wasn't occurring. In keeping with the classroom routine, spelling tests were administered on both days. The results strongly confirm the Rosenthal effect: The students scored very low on the day they were "inferior," and very high on the day they were considered "superior."

It's time to recalibrate the way you approach everyone you are responsible for. Check your internal biases, reset your expectations, and watch people flourish.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Career Security: The Recruiting Card You Should Learn to Play

On occasion, I highlight an article written by Peter Weddle.  Peter is a nationally known author and consultant who specializes in dispensing career advice and explaining recruiting trends.  He has published a number of helpful books over the years and currently writes in his blog as well as other venues.

Recently, Peter published an article in his bi-weekly newsletter that opened my eyes to a trend that I believe could significantly aid those who have the responsibility of recruiting real estate agents.  The trend is a desire that many talented individuals have for some much needed “career security.”

Notice that I didn’t say job security.  Most people have come to the realization that job security is not something that a company can truly offer.  Why?  Because in an era of global competition, employer needs and circumstances change much more frequently and unpredictably than ever before.  Individual employers are not in a position to offer anyone security.

So, what’s “career security?”  According to Peter, career security is the ability of a person always to be employed, and always by an employer of their choice.  In essence, it is reinforcing a person’s ability and propensity to be gainfully employed in the future by helping him/her acquire the knowledge and skills needed to continuously succeed.

How can a real estate company do this? ...By teaching each and every employee how to practice effective career self-management.  This is not far removed from the mentality needed to start and manage a real estate career.  I know this may sound crazy, but the rest of the employment world may be coming around to using the language that the real estate industry has been using for years!

It used to be that people went to school and then found jobs.  Now, there is a need to start a career that must be notoriously self-directed.  Peter points out that traditional companies are not very good at providing this insight and assistance to talented individuals:

"[Higher education and university] faculties work in ivory towers that were erected long before the advent of global competition and talent.  They simply don't realize that employers can no longer afford to provide career-long guidance and development for their employees.  Those workers must now do it for themselves.

The tragedy, of course, is that almost none of them know how.  Talented people are defined by their quest to excel - to be the best they can be in their profession, craft or trade - so they are acutely aware of this shortcoming.  Indeed, they more than any others in the workforce recognize the importance of this knowledge.  They want to know what they must do and how they must do it in order to build up the strength, reach and endurance of their career.

Any employer which fills that vacuum will send a powerful and differentiating message to top talent.  They are saying:  We care about you and want you to succeed, in our organization and successively wherever else you might be.  Yes, of course, we want you to work for us, but we also want you to work where you can grow and excel.  That may cause you to leave us at some point, but if you succeed successively, there's a good probability that you'll also come back.

Admittedly, it takes a brave organization to embark on such a strategy.  Because it teaches employees to take care of their own careers, it is, in some respects, their emancipation proclamation.  However, it is also a unique show of respect for the ultimate goal of those individuals.  And for the best talent, there's simply no more powerful and compelling reason to hire on.”

Is your organization willing to develop programs to meet this need?  For many in the real estate industry, it would not be a significant jump from what is already offered in terms of training, mentoring, and coaching programs.

The tricky part is crafting a recruiting marketing message that “connects the dots” for those who are seeking career security, but would not naturally see a real estate career as a destination for meeting that need.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.