WorkPuzzle

Why the best Recruiting Coordinators and Managers Sell the Invisible

While driving in my car, I have been listening again to Selling the Invisible, a book by Harry Beckwith.

You might think that I picked this title as a means of improving our sales within Tidemark, but you’d be mistaken.   I did read this book a few years ago for that purpose, but this time I wanted to think through how proven marketing ideas could help you improve the recruiting process. 

It’s been my observation that most well-run real estate companies understand that they are not only in the real estate transaction business, but also in the agent recruiting business. Gaining market share means performing both functions well.

I’ve also noticed that top recruiting companies share a common defining characteristic—their management teams tend to seek out any and all information that might lead them to increased results. There is a solid correlation between openness to assessment/feedback and steady improvement.

Those who are not willing to track, examine, metric, compare, and seek improvement (including challenging long-held beliefs) will invariably underperform their competitors and peers.  

As I was listening to Selling the Invisible from this perspective, I wrote down several principles that differentiate the best recruiting companies behavior from those who struggle.  Here are some of the standout differentiators and my comments beside each one:

Assume your service is bad. It can't hurt, and it will force you to improve. It is so uncanny how the best leaders I have ever met in my entire life have always made this assumption. Conversely the worst have an arrogant stance of "we've figured it out." I have learned a great deal through the humility of these fine leaders. 

Ignore your industry's benchmarks, and copy Disney's.  The point here is to surprise the candidate. Remember the blog we did on the offices that display a welcome sign with each candidate’s name before every interview? 

Big mistakes are big opportunities. If you aren't' performing well, see it as a time to examine, learn and improve.  If you make a mistake with a candidate, follow it with an apology, a gift card, and a promise to improve.  This will typically work wonders to reversing the course of the hiring process for most people. 

Don't just think better. Think different. Be open to out of the box ways of understanding a dilemma. Don't get so locked into old belief systems that you aren't willing to entertain other ways of seeing realty. You just might discover something revolutionary. 

Don't just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love. For recruiting, the market is the candidates you’re interviewing. The thing that all candidates love is to be understood thoroughly before making any bold statements about how you can solve their pain.

Every act is a marketing act. Make every employee a marketing employee. From the first contact with a candidate until he hands you his license, every touch with him is a marketing message.

What does each step in your recruiting process suggest to a candidate?  The candidates who will turn into top producing agents will be intuitively sensitive to how they are being treated (this is part of what will make them great agents).

If anyone on your team is not treating them with the upmost amount of respect, they WILL go elsewhere. If you’re waiting for agents to prove themselves before treating them with this respect, you ARE losing the best candidates. 

In most professional services, you are not really selling expertise - because your expertise is assumed, and because your prospect cannot intelligently evaluate your expertise anyway. Instead you are selling a relationship. Hopefully this speaks for itself. 

Which of the above principles can you improve upon? Which are strengths? Which are weaknesses?  Know that it is easier to see the weaknesses in others rather than yourself, so you might want to re-read the list a couple of times and make it a point of discussion with some of your peers.

Make sure you don’t miss the first point as you process this information-- we all must entertain a need for improvement if we want to grow. 

 

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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. 

Best of...Advice for the 2014 Grads

There is a plethora of professional advice floating around the internet this time of year. As the celebrities and politicians are called upon to do commencement speeches, each tries to boil down the essence of their success into short 20-minute speeches.

This is a very difficult thing to do.

How can a high-performing person really summarize a complex career into a few choice nuggets that could be taken and applied by the graduates he or she is addressing?

Most can’t do it (and I believe I would probably be in that group).  Instead of offering something meaningful or profound, they fall back on platitudes or focus on issues that most normal people can’t really apply.

Each year, I try to find a couple of these commencement speeches that rise above the norm and, at least, border on being profound.  I’ll share two of my favorites from this year in the WorkPuzzles ahead.

Why should you care about graduation advice?

I would argue that much of the advice that is being offered to graduates could be applied to the new agent interviews and to new agent coaching.   Many of the new to real estate candidates and agents are dealing with the same issues as the new grads: 

How do they use their talents and training to make an impact in the professional world?

My second “favorite speech” this year was not a speech at all, but instead a Twitter rant done by Marc Andreessen.  He was responding to the widespread notion that grads should follow their passions in the pursuit of their careers (see an example here).

The Twitter dialog was captured by Rob Wile a couple of weeks ago and documented in a posting on Business Insider.  Here is Marc Andreessen’s advice for graduates this year:

Tweet #1:  Thesis: "Do what you love" / "Follow your passion" is dangerous and destructive career advice.

Tweet #2: We tend to hear it from (a) Highly successful people who (b) Have become successful doing what they love.

Tweet #3: The problem is that we do NOT hear from people who have failed to become successful by doing what they love.

Tweet  #4:  Particularly pernicious problem in tournament-style fields with a few big winners & lots of losers: media, athletics, startups.

Tweet #5:  Better career advice may be "Do what contributes" -- focus on the beneficial value created for other people vs. just one's own ego.

Tweet #6: People who contribute the most are often the most satisfied with what they do -- and in fields with high remuneration, make the most $.

Tweet#7: Perhaps difficult advice since requires focus on others vs. oneself -- perhaps bad fit with endemic narcissism in modern culture?

Tweet #8: Requires delayed gratification -- may toil for many years to get the payoff of contributing value to the world, vs short-term happiness.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I think Twitter might be a good thing.  If it causes people to articulate their thoughts in such a concise and meaningful way—it would be a great thing.

This is simple and profound advice that every candidate and new agent needs to hear.  If your new agents all bought into this mentality, you’d hire many more top performers!

Later this week, I’ll share my favorite commencement speech from this year’s graduation season.  After reading the transcript, I immediately sent it to my four oldest kids with a note that said, “You've got to read/watch this…”

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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. 

A Simple Guide on When to Email, Instant Message, Text, and Call

I’m not sure how I ran across this blog (it is much more technical than I usually read), but I found Cyrus Stoller’s guidance on modern day communication helpful.  Cyrus is an entrepreneur and technology consultant, and it would be a great way to start a discussion on how your team communicates with each other.

With more options available for electronic communication, it only makes sense to choose the correct medium for your messages if you’re going to successfully connect with those in your audience.  

However, there do not seem to be any well-understood social rules for these interactions.  It’s like going to a wedding in the Northwest (which I did last weekend)—some people are wearing expensive suits and others show up in jeans (I’m not kidding).    

Is there any generally accepted convention on what’s appropriate in the world of electronic communication?  I don’t believe so.  But, Stoller’s open message to those he communicates with would be a great way to have this discussion with your team.

We're in an unfortunate equilibrium where it's not uncommon for people to expect under one-hour response times to emails. In my view, emails should not be used to communicate information that requires immediate action.

Most people I interact with have smartphones; we should agree to use different channels of communication to convey purpose. We're no longer restricted to just phone calls and email.

If I had my way this is how I would have people communicate their requests.

Disclaimer: Realistically this will only work with people you communicate with often e.g. employees/co-workers, family, and close friends.

If you need something to be done in:

30 minutes: call

two hours: text

today: IM

a day or later: email

Priority 0 - Voice Call

If you need something to have been done five minutes ago, call my cell phone. This gives you an opportunity to make sure I understand exactly what you need done and you know exactly when I received your request….

Litmus test: If we were in the same room and I was talking to someone else would you feel comfortable breaking up my conversation and taking me aside? If not, then a voice call is not the appropriate choice.

Priority 1 – Text Message

If you need something done in the next couple hours, send me a text that says something like call me asap or call me when you hit a break point.

This gives me time to gracefully wind down what I'm doing and call you back. I think most things that people find urgent fall in this category. It needs to be done soon, but it can wait up to 30 minutes to an hour….

Litmus test: If we were in the same room and I was talking to someone else would you feel comfortable signaling to me to wind down my conversation? If not, then an SMS is not the appropriate choice.

Priority 1a - Instant Messaging

Instant message works well for slightly more asynchronous communication. You're interested in getting a short response promptly, but it doesn't need to be right away. This is less disruptive than calling or texting. This works well when you need to find out a concrete piece of information before you can proceed.

Litmus test: If we were in the same room and I was in the middle of reading something would you feel comfortable leaving me a hand written note? If not, then an instant message is not the appropriate choice.

Priority 2 - Email

Email should be reserved for requests that you want addressed within the next day or so. Ideally it would be acceptable for people to only check their email a few times per day….

Most people I know feel like they have too many emails to deal with. Think twice about whether email is the right way to communicate your information. You should expect email threads to be truly asynchronous. I want people to move away from expecting near real time responses.

Litmus test: Is this request something that you would feel comfortable dropping in an inbox on my desk when I wasn't there? If not, then an email is not the appropriate choice.

What are your thoughts on this topic?   Do you have a convention for communicating with those on your team?

If not, it might be worth discussing as a way of not only streamlining your communication with others, but also managing expectations.  Let me know how you’re handling this issue in your organization and I’ll publish a few of the responses (reply via email and don’t expect a response for a couple of days :).

 

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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. 

The Science of Sleep Part 3: Sleeping Tips

If you've been following my recent blogs, you will know that this is the final edition of my series on the Science of Sleep. In the first and second articles I covered general information on the neurology and physical impacts of sleep, as well as the types of sleep.

This final article will address "sleeping tips” and a special section from Rod Eller a good friend and client. Also, remember to check out the "Two Myths of Sleep" at the end of each article.

 Sleeping Tips

This sleeping tips have been adapted from When You Can't Sleep: The ABCs of ZZZs, by the National Sleep Foundation.

Set a schedule.  Go to bed at a set time each night and get up at the same time each morning. Disrupting this schedule may lead to insomnia. "Sleeping in" on weekends also makes it harder to wake up early on Monday morning because it re-sets your sleep cycles for a later awakening.

Exercise:  Try to exercise 20 to 30 minutes a day. Daily exercise often helps people sleep, although a workout soon before bedtime may interfere with sleep. For maximum benefit, try to get your exercise about 5 to 6 hours before going to bed.

Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol: Avoid drinks that contain caffeine, which acts as a stimulant and keeps people awake. Sources of caffeine include coffee, chocolate, soft drinks, non-herbal teas, diet drugs, and some pain relievers. Smokers tend to sleep very lightly and often wake up in the early morning due to nicotine withdrawal. Alcohol robs people of deep sleep and REM sleep and keeps them in the lighter stages of sleep.

Relax before bed: A warm bath, reading, or another relaxing routine can make it easier to fall sleep. You can train yourself to associate certain restful activities with sleep and make them part of your bedtime ritual.

Sleep until sunlight:  If possible, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning. Sunlight helps the body's internal biological clock reset itself each day. Sleep experts recommend exposure to an hour of morning sunlight for people having problems falling asleep.

Don't lie in bed awake: If you can't get to sleep, don't just lie in bed. Do something else, like reading, watching television, or listening to music, until you feel tired. The anxiety of being unable to fall asleep can actually contribute to insomnia.

Control your room temperature:  Maintain a comfortable temperature in the bedroom. Extreme temperatures may disrupt sleep or prevent you from falling asleep.

See a doctor if your sleeping problem continues: If you have trouble falling asleep night after night, or if you always feel tired the next day, then you may have a sleep disorder and should see a physician. Your primary care physician may be able to help you; if not, you can probably find a sleep specialist at a major hospital near you. Most sleep disorders can be treated effectively, so you can finally get that good night's sleep you need.

Some of you may know Rod Eller, Senior Vice President of Sales at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Carolinas Realty.   Rod has become a good friend over the years and chimed in via email during this blog series on sleep.  Here are some thoughts from Rod: 

"I’ve been doing a lot of reading about sleep over the last year.  I have never slept much...six hours tops most of my life.  

I have developed new beliefs and I’ve convinced myself that it is a trained habit so I have been in the process of retraining my sleep habits.  When I concentrate on it, I sleep more.   When I allow normal behavior to take over again, I fall back into the 6 hour or less habit.  

Take a look at Tom Rath’s book Eat, Move, Sleep – Tom is a Gallop researcher that did tons of research for his own health reasons.   One of the eye openers for me was the chemical issues on the brain related to sleep and more importantly Ericsson’s 1993 study on sleep and performance.  

While I knew about Ericsson’s research on the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice as it related to greatness, I was not aware that the study also revealed that the best performers slept an average of 8 hours 36 minutes.  What is great about Rath is that he cites scientific data on everything he describes in the book."  

When I asked Rod, how does he “practice better sleep”, he answered:

"The bottom-line is you set goals and measure.   When I was having the most success was when I had rituals,  prepared,  and eliminated stimulus that reportedly makes deep sleep troublesome.   

Rituals:  Shut everything off 1 hour before going to bed – no books, no TV and no electronics (although I do use a bluetooth speaker for playing sleeping noise).    I use that time to stretch and breath for relaxation.   In bed, it must be dark – no light at all – clocks and such with no display.  

Measure:  I measured effective sleep.  I wore a device that measured my sleep and I used that to try to beat my numbers from the previous night.  When I was diligent I added an hour on average to my sleep.  I went from an average of 5.75 hours to 6.75 .  I even recorded some 7.5 hour nights.  The problem is that I had to stay focused on the ritual.  I recently lost the habits on an out of town stay and have fallen back into watching ESPN or reading before bed.   What Rath wrote in his book is that the hour before you go to sleep frames the rest of the night.  He calls it "protecting the final hour."

Thanks to Rod for your insight and personal experience. 

 Here are your final two sleep myths: 

You need prescription drugs if you have insomnia every night.
Sleep meds are designed for short-term sleep problems, caused by stressful events like the loss of a job or taking a transatlantic flight.

People with longer-term problems benefit more from cognitive behavioral therapy — essentially, retraining your perceptions of sleep and learning better sleep habits, such as going to bed at the same time every night, avoiding TVs and computers before bed, staying away from caffeine at least six hours before sleep, and other lifestyle changes.

In fact, in 2005, the National Institutes of Health concluded that this type of therapy is as effective as prescription drugs for short-term treatment of chronic insomnia. In many cases, a sleeping pill may not even solve your sleep problem. "About half the people who think they have insomnia may have anxiety or depression," says Daniel Kripke, M.D., a University of California at San Diego sleep expert.

You can make up for lost sleep on weekends.
 Bingeing on Zs over the weekend and not sleeping during the week — what Harvard sleep expert Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., calls "sleep bulimia" — upsets your circadian rhythms and makes it even harder to get refreshing sleep.

Sleeping until noon on Sunday generally prevents you from hitting the sheets by 10 that night. So instead of correcting your deficit from the week before, you set up a no-sleep cycle for the week to come. "The body loves consistency," says Donna Arand, Ph.D., spokeswoman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Best to rise around the same time every day, even on weekends.

 Sleep myths source: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/7-myths-about-sleep

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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. 

Key to Organizational Success: The Right Manager

Are you a great manager? If so, you’re amongst a small minority of individuals who work for companies in the United States.  If you are not a great manager (yet), keep reading.  There is a recipe of talents that great managers possess and it is not as complicated or illusive as you might imagine.

The research on this topic (done by the Gallup Organization) was recently reported in the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  It outlines both the importance of good managers and the scarcity of their existence in business world.

Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time. 

Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement.

Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

So, high-performing managers cause employees to increase their engagement in their day-to-day work. That begs the question: Why is employee engagement so important?   HBR goes on to explain:

Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators [such as] customer metrics, higher profitability, productivity, quality (fewer defects), and lower turnover…. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

A negative chain reaction seems to be at play in most companies.  Employees (agents) who are disengaged cause companies to perform poorly, and employee (agent) disengagement is primarily caused by low-performing managers.

The purpose of this WorkPuzzle is not to beat up on managers.  Even if they wanted to do so, most real estate companies would have a hard time replacing their existing managers with higher-performing alternatives.

In most cases, it would be a better strategy to help the managers who are already on the job make improvements.  More specifically, these developments should be focused on the task of improving employee engagement.

Gallup outlines five critical talents that good managers possess as it relates to increasing employee engagement:

They motivate every single employee (agent) to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

If you’re a manager, review this list and take inventory of your day-to-day actions.  Are these the behaviors you find yourself doing?  If not, how can you start to focus your attention on these important tasks.  Remember, these are the tasks and traits of managers who manage highly engaged agents.

If you’re managing managers (owner, general manager, regional VP, etc.), set the example by making these traits part of your management culture.  Then coach your managers to take on these traits as they manage their own teams.

As a result, you’ll hopefully have more engaged agents who will produce the business metrics that make your company more successful.  That’s a purpose everyone can get behind.

 

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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. 

Execution Failure and Rescue: Lessons from Healthcare.gov - Part 2

In last weeks edition I described some of the challenges, chronicled in a recent Time Magazine article, on the healthcare.gov website's initial issues. It’s a compelling story, that when dissected, leaves us all with reminders of the differences between how projects can go wrong and what can be done to right them.

I previously listed three ingredients (principles) that when missing in any worthy endeavor will lead to failure; but conversely, when done well can lead to a successful execution. I also promised to draw parallels to HiringCenter successes.

Last weeks edition described the first and most important principle:

Metric Driven Leadership to Oversee and Drive the Effort 

The second ingredient is:

A Central Dashboard to Monitor, Measure and Improve each Important Metric.

Quoting again from the Time magazine article:

“One of the things that shocked Burt and Park's team most (the healthcare.com rescue team)--'among many jaw-dropping aspects of what we found,' as one put it--'was that the people running healthcare.gov had no "dashboard," no quick way for engineers to measure what was going on at the website, such as how many people were using it, what the response times were for various click-throughs and where traffic was getting tied up.' So late into the night of Oct. 18, Burt and the others spent about five hours coding and putting up a dashboard.”

Can you imagine this? You have developed one of the largest scaled projects known to developed countries, a system that will draw incredible scrutiny, and you have no way to monitor, measure or improve anything.  No idea what is wrong or how to fix it.

One of the first things we did, at Tidemark, as we were developing HiringCenter, was to create a dashboard. This allowed our clients (and us) to constantly monitor progress among the many tasks that must be performed with each candidate within the massive pipeline.

Those of our clients who practice ingredient one (metric driven leadership to oversee and drive the effort), seem to naturally utilize principle two exemplified by the HiringCenter Dashboard. Conversely those who don’t have ingredient one typically abandon the Dashboard. You can probably guess what results appear when these essential pieces are lacking. Sooner or later someone says... “this isn’t working."  

Which brings us to the third ingredient:

 A Sense of Urgency

 According to TIME, one of the technology consultants (Abbott) who had worked on the rescue site said:

“To this day he cannot figure out who was supposed to have been in charge of the healthcare.gov launch. Instead he saw multiple contractors bickering with one another and no one taking ownership for anything. Someone would have to be put in charge, he told Zients. Beyond that, Abbott recalls, "there was a total lack of urgency" despite the fact that the website was becoming a national joke and crippling the Obama presidency."

TIME then goes on to describe the rescue teams mentality:

"We need to stay focused on the most urgent issues, The stand-up culture--identify problem, solve problem, try again--was typical of the rescue squad's ethic."

What was the eventual result of the rescue squads overhaul of the website?

“On Sunday, Dec. 1, Zients issued a public report card showing the website's turnaround. A series of hardware upgrades had dramatically increased capacity; the system was now able to handle at least 50,000 simultaneous users and probably more. There had been more than 400 bug fixes. Uptimes had gone from an abysmal 43% at the beginning of November to 95%. And Kim and her team had knocked the error rate from 6% down to 0.5%. Average response time--once a ridiculous eight seconds per page--was down to 0.343 seconds.”

Impressive isn’t it?

Assessing the issues, solutions and steps involved in this example, we at Tidemark have considered requiring new to HiringCenter clients to agree to use only the  "best practices" established by us over the last 9 years and screen out those who don’t agree. So far we haven’t done this. What do you think? Would this be helpful?

For those of you who practice the principals listed above throughout every facet of HiringCenter we thank you. You make us look good, and it is our hope that we improve the efficiency, predictability and reliability of your new agent recruiting.

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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. 

Execution Failure and Rescue: Lessons from HealthCare.gov

The key ingredients to HiringCenter success are no different than those responsible for rescuing the HealthCare.gov website; ingredients the recent administration had sorely lacked and had to discover the hard way.

Time magazine sets up the scene:

“Last Oct. 17—more than two weeks after the launch of HealthCare.gov—White House press secretary Jay Carney was going through what one senior Obama aide calls 'probably the most painful press briefing we’ve ever seen.' Pressed repeatedly on when the site would be fixed, the best he could say was that 'they are making improvements every day.'

“They” were, in fact, not making improvements, except by chance, much as you or I might reboot or otherwise play with our computer; a shot in the dark fix. Yet barely six weeks later, HealthCare.gov was working well and on its way to performing even better.

This is the story of a team of unknown—except in elite technology circles—coders and troubleshooters who dropped what they were doing in various enterprises across the country and came together in mid-October to save the website. In about a tenth of the time that a crew of usual-suspects (Washington contractors had spent over $300 million building a site that didn’t work) this ad hoc team rescued it and, arguably, Obama's chance at a health-reform legacy.”

The remainder of this article describes the drama associated with this technology crisis and boiled down the ultimate rescue to principles essential to execution success; principles that coincidentally guide every one of our clients in their HiringCenter results.

Principle I:  Metric driven leadership to oversee and drive the effort   

"In the meetings prior to the launch, President Obama always would end each session by saying, 'I want to remind the team that this only works if the technology works.' The problem, of course, was that no one in the meetings had any idea whether the technology worked, nor did the President and his chief of staff have the inclination to dig in and find out. The President may have had the right instinct when he repeatedly reminded his team about the technology. But in the end he was as aloof from the people and facts he needed to avoid this catastrophe as he was from the people who ended up fixing it.”

The Blaze website summarizes the Time article this way:

 “When it became clear that the website had major flaws and needed working, the Obama administration rushed to assemble a team to fix it. This involved bringing in some of the brightest tech minds from the private sector.

However, as the team slowly came together, they found that the website’s problems were bigger than they initially imagined.

Mike Abbott , for example, is known in the tech industry for being the man who developed Twitter’s technology into what it is today. He was shocked by what he found when he was brought on to rescue healthcare.gov.

'Abbott could not find … leadership. He says that to this day he cannot figure out who was supposed to have been in charge of the Healthare.gov launch,' Time reported. 'Instead he saw multiple contractors bickering with one another and no one taking ownership for anything. Someone would have to be put in charge, he told Zients.'"

According to additional comments from "Time": “Jeff Zients isn't a techie himself. He's a business executive, one of those people for whom control--achieved by lists, schedules, deadlines and incessant focus on his targeted data points--seems to be everything.

This story thus far resonates with everything we at Tidemark have come to understand about HiringCenter results: Our best performing clients ensure that those responsible for the oversite of each piece of the HiringCenter process is someone with a proven history of measurement and execution. Everyone involved knows who is in charge, and who oversees each metric in the process. Do you?

In the next edition I will share more of this interesting story and the final two principles that drive success. 

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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. 

Sales Meeting Prep: 9 Lessons from Shark Tank

Since the focus audience of WorkPuzzle is real estate industry leaders, owners, and managers, readers often tell me that they’ve used our blog content as discussion topics for their sales meetings.  Many of the topics we cover can be adapted to help agents perform at a higher level. 

If you haven’t thought of doing this yet, try searching a topic on WorkPuzzle.com (right side of the
website, next to the search button).  There are more than 600 articles we’ve written over the last few years.

To get some ideas flowing, I’ve found an article that could be very helpful in teaching your agents to think like entrepreneurs.  It was originally written by Brett and Kate McKay and published on their popular blog.

The article highlights some lessons the authors gleaned from the popular television series Shark Tank.   If you’re not familiar with Shark Tank, it is a show where aspiring entrepreneurs get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pitch their business ideas to a panel of “sharks” — five self-made millionaires and billionaires and ask for funding in exchange for equity in their businesses.

Here are some excerpts from the top three lessons that I believe apply to real estate agents:

Learn how to pitch. If there’s one lesson you take from Shark Tank and this post, let it be this: master the art of the pitch.

Even if you don’t think you’ll ever find yourself standing in front of a bunch of venture capitalists, every entrepreneur needs to know how to effectively sell himself and his idea to his potential partners, employees, and clients/customers.

You’d think on a show like Shark Tank — in which people know they’ll be asking for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on national television – the entrepreneurs would prepare for their pitch like crazy.

But you’d be wrong.

I’d venture that 50% of the pitches on Shark Tank are absolutely horrible, 40% are so-so, and 10% are stellar. Some of the folks on Shark Tank just seem like they’re winging it, which makes for some awkward, yet entertaining moments.

If only 10% of Shark Tank participants are able to make good pitches, do you think some of your agents may be doing sub-par pitches to their clients?   I think you could bet on that. 

I’ve heard from several sources that the best pitch ever done on Shark Tank was by an 18-year-old girl who owns a skincare company called Simple Sugars.  It might be worth buying this episode and using it as a case study. (Season 4, Episode 19)

Know your business.   Mark Cuban once said, “Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world.”

You need to know your numbers — sales, cash flow, debt, margin, and so on. The sharks often hesitate to make a deal with entrepreneurs who don’t know important data points like their customer acquisition cost.

But knowing your business extends far beyond having a handle on your numbers; it requires a deep understanding and grasp of the industry you’re competing in. Lots of entrepreneurs come on the show pitching a product or service they think is truly unique, only to be informed by one of the sharks that a very similar product or service already exists. If they had done just a bit of due diligence, they could have avoided that embarrassing “surprise.”

A perfect example of entrepreneurs who came on "Shark Tank" without really understanding their industry (or even business) was a pair of doctors pitching a social network for their fellow MDs called Rolodoc. The docs had no clue how social media worked, or even what it was, despite the fact that their business idea would supposedly revolve round it. Consequently, they stumbled over even very basic questions about how their idea would be executed and how it would actually make money. Mark Cuban called it the worst pitch in "Shark Tank" history.

Do your agents really know their businesses?    This is a great way to breach this topic without coming across as overly critical.  You can buy this episode also (Season 5, Episode 1).

Concentrate on your core competency. Sometimes an already successful business will enter the tank seeking more capital to expand and grow.  Nothing wrong with that. The problem arises when one of these companies wants to use that money to expand into a somewhat related product line or service that detracts from their original core competency.

Most of the sharks are leery of these businesses and will often tell the entrepreneur that they’ll only invest if they drop their plans for the expanded product line. Why would they want their money funneled into an untested product or service instead of being used to boost a proven winner?

It’s good to experiment and try different things in business, but never lose sight of your core competency. Getting sidetracked has been the downfall of many a business. This is especially true with the volume and ease with which you can get feedback on social media these days; you might hear from a bunch of folks who say, “I wish you guys would make this too!” leading you to believe there’s a popular demand for a new expansion in your business. Then it turns out that those commenters actually represented a very small but disproportionately vocal minority.

Know what you’re good at and stick close to it.

These are good lessons for any businessperson. They are especially helpful for real estate professionals because the best agents are entrepreneurs at heart.

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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. 

The Case Against Positive Thinking to Achieve Success - Part 2

Last week, I started a discussion about the prospects of positive thinking alone being a pathway to success.  When researched in an objective manner, this philosophy has been shown to produce less-than-positive results.

Don’t get me wrong—there is nothing harmful about being optimistic and having positive thoughts.  However, there seems to be a line that is crossed by some people where positive thoughts become a strategy.   Under the scrutiny of objective research, this philosophy appears to be flawed and unreliable.

As much as researchers have been critical of positive thinking success strategies, they have become excited about the concept of “grit.”  Grit is a success strategy that does withstand the rigors of research.

If you’re a long-time WorkPuzzle reader, you’ll probably remember this topic.   Dave and I have both written about it several times over the last five years.

For those of you who may be new readers, I’m going republish parts of two blogs (1, 2) Dave wrote in 2009.   Even if you’ve read these blogs already, it is a good reminder on how success is truly achieved.

Angela Lee Duckworth, PhD, has conducted a series of studies on a concept called "grit." 

Grit is another word for backbone, chutzpah, fortitude, guts, stick-to-it-iveness, etc. 

It all started when Dr. Duckworth observed that it wasn't necessarily the smartest people who succeeded and made a lasting impact on science. She had a hunch that it was a person's personal "grit" recipe that made the difference in their level of success. 

Across six studies, Duckworth found that grit significantly contributed to successful outcomes:  Undergrads with the most grit earned higher grade point averages than their peers.  West Point Cadets with the highest levels of grit were more likely to return after the first summer.  Even "grittier" spelling bee competitors (a situation where IQ would seem the best predictor) out-spelled their less tenacious competitors.  Among older individuals, people with substantial grit had higher levels of education and made fewer career changes than less gritty peers of the same age.

Many successful people don't attribute their success to their IQ or level of talent [or positive thoughts], but rather to their tenacity.  Thomas Edison was one of those people.  Edison once said:

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Here is another prime example of grit:  Poet David Baker is Director of Creative Writing at Denison University, and author of seven books of poetry, including "Midwest Eclogue."  Mr. Baker laments:

"Unfortunately, no one comes in my window and whispers poems to me... Poets [have to] work hard.  I may work on a single poem for weeks or months and write 60 or 70 drafts—only to decide that draft 22 was the good one.”

Along these same lines, people often refer to Mozart's diaries, where he divulges that an entire symphony appeared, supposedly intact, in his head. However, Jonathan Plucker an educational psychologist at Indiana University points out:

"But no one ever quotes the next paragraph, where he talks about how he refined the work for months.”

So, if you review the research I referenced in the last blog… you’ll see that grit appears to the vital component to success.

Success comes to those who work harder and demonstrate perseverance in the face of obstacles. 

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."  (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Where does that leave the positive thinker? 

Not as far from the truth as you might imagine.  Having positive thoughts is a great start, but it must be combined with hard work, tenacity, and focus on doing whatever it takes to accomplish the goal. 

This is grit.  It’s far beyond positive thinking, and it’s what effective people do to be successful.

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By joining TMOC, you'll get to see who else is in the group and your comments will only be seen by those whom you trust.   Joining TMOC is quick, easy, and free (no kidding…this takes less than 2 minutes).   To get started, click here.

Already of a member of TMOC?  If so, join the WorkPuzzle Dialog Group by clicking on the WorkPuzzle Group icon on the left side of your TMOC homepage.  Questions?   Email the WorkPuzzle editor (workpuzzle@hiringcenter.net) and we'll walk through the process.

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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. 

The Case Against Positive Thinking to Achieve Success

The idea that positive thinking alone can change a person’s circumstances is a seductive thought.  It’s something that we all, at some level, want to believe is true. 

It’s easy to head down this path.  For sure, positive thinking is better than negative thinking, but what happens when this becomes your sole strategy for success?  

According to new research highlighted in the New Yorker Magazine, you’ll probably end up with a good dose of disappointment and failure—exactly opposite of the success you’re thinking about experiencing.

Adam Alter an assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, tracks the renewed growth of the positive thinking movement back to 2006:

Since publishing “The Secret,” in 2006, the Australian author Rhonda Byrne has been writing self-help manifestos based on the idea that people who think positive thoughts are rewarded with happiness, wealth, influence, wisdom, and success….

Byrne’s idea isn’t new—it’s been a mainstay among greeting-card companies, motivational speakers, and schoolteachers for decades—but she’s become one of its most visible prophets.

‘The way to change a lack of belief is very simple,’ Byrne writes. ‘Begin thinking the opposite thoughts to what you’ve been thinking about yourself: that you can do it, and that you have everything within you to do it.’

How does Byrne’s philosophy work out in real life?  Not very well.  

While you can always find a few (what Byrne calls) “heros,” the vast majority of people end up even more frustrated than when they started.  Alter highlights some of the research that debunks this philosophy:

According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding.

In one experiment, the social psychologists Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked eighty-three German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on the subject of transition into work life, graduating from university, looking for and finding a job.”

Two years later, they approached the same students and asked about their post-college job experiences. Those who harbored positive fantasies put in fewer job applications, received fewer job offers, and ultimately earned lower salaries.

The same was true in other contexts, too. Students who fantasized were less likely to ask their romantic crushes on a date and more likely to struggle academically. Hip-surgery patients also recovered more slowly when they dwelled on positive fantasies of walking without pain.

The research documents the dismal results of this philosophy, but it doesn’t offer any information on why this philosophy doesn’t work.   Alter offers two hypotheses on this topic:

1.  Less Preparation.  Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can’t persuade himself to believe are good.

2.  False Feeling of Working Towards Goals.  [Positive] fantasies hamper progress and dull the will to succeed.  Imagining a positive outcome [just] conveys the sense that you’re approaching your goals, which takes the edge off the need to achieve.

So, now that everyone is depressed, what does work?  We’ll cover that in the next WorkPuzzle.  There is a success philosophy that is counterintuitive to positive thinking that researchers have shown to produce much more reliable results. 

For those of you who are high performers already, you’ll instantly connect with these ideas.  

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Join the WorkPuzzle Discussion at the Tidemark Online Community (TMOC)

Engage in the WorkPuzzle discussion by joining the TMOC private social network.  Commenting on a public blog like WorkPuzzle can be a little intimidating, so why not join the discussion inside the privacy of the TMOC discussion group?  

By joining TMOC, you'll get to see who else is in the group and your comments will only be seen by those whom you trust.   Joining TMOC is quick, easy, and free (no kidding…this takes less than 2 minutes).   To get started, click here.

Already of a member of TMOC?  If so, join the WorkPuzzle Dialog Group by clicking on the WorkPuzzle Group icon on the left side of your TMOC homepage.  Questions?   Email the WorkPuzzle editor (workpuzzle@hiringcenter.net) and we'll walk through the process.

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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.