WorkPuzzle

Measurement or Holes in the Head

My reading list turned up an interesting article about "trephination," an ancient practice of deliberately cutting holes in the skulls of humans.  Stone age people were especially fond of exercising this technique, for no apparent reason.  The practice appears to be a historical mystery.  "It was a delicate procedure, with stone tools used to carefully scrape away and remove the bone without damaging the tissue underneath."  The good news is that the survival rate for this operation was over 90%.  The bad news is that it was absolutely unnecessary. 

Usually these kinds of practices make their advance in medical history after someone experimented with a medically or mentally ill person, and the person miraculously recovered, at which point the procedure is seen as the cause of the healing.  The next thing you know, everyone is getting holes cut out of their heads.  In learning theory, psychologists call this "superstitious behavior," meaning that we tend to repeat behaviors that we believe have caused a specific outcome, regardless of their power to actually do so. 

Baseball players are famous for this.  They might go 4 for 4 in hitting one night and attribute their improved hitting to the fact that they tried a new bat size that evening.  That same player will tend to continue hitting that new bat size the remainder of the season, despite the fact that their batting average actually dropped subsequent to the change.  

So, what behaviors could be considered your organizations "trephination?" 

The only way you could possibly discover these is to examine behaviors and tasks, measure, and report them.  You've heard the old saying... "What you don't measure, you can't manage."  It could also be true that "What you don't measure, may be a hole in the head!"

We have the advantage of peering into many organizations.  Some measure tasks and outcomes, and some do not.  Most of our clients like measuring tasks, and being able to predict outcomes on past measurements.  Others sort of wing it.  The ones that resist us asking measurement related questions are typically the ones who have become attached to certain ways of doing business, defensively holding on to them, despite little evidence to do so.  Then there are companies who do indeed measure, but blame their result differences on factors beyond their control.  Whether it's getting stuck, "only hiring experienced agents" or "interviewing the same way I always have," behaviors might exist that once worked with some people at some point in time, that no longer are effective with most people at this point in time. 

Psychologically, organizations that measure and are open to others' interpretation of the results, tend to invite questions, and sometimes even scrutiny, about how they do things and the results they produce.  In contrast, organizations that don't measure tend to become uncomfortable around questions pertaining to tasks and outcomes.  I imagine that managers of single offices vary in a similar way, even within the same organization. 

Clearly, if you want to extinguish practices that don't get results, and increase tasks that do, everyone has to get on the measurement bandwagon, and be open to acknowledging the holes you might be pointlessly boring into heads. 

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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.

The 20-Million Candidates You’re Missing—Revisited.

Last spring, I wrote a WorkPuzzle blog on the dismal job prospects for new college grads.  In that discussion, I demonstrated how “underemployment” has become a reality for many college seniors looking to start their careers. 

If you do not remember reading this article (or you’re new to WorkPuzzle within the last year), it might be helpful to review it before you try to digest what we are going to discuss today. 

Last year, BusinessWeek and several other media venues were spouting optimism concerning a problem that seemed to be hanging on for much too long—adult children moving back home after college. 

Why the optimism?  Because there was a small increase in the number of adult children who were leaving their parents' homes and setting up their own households.   

Buried in the research was a shocking metric--over 20 million young Americans find themselves in this state.  Even under very optimistic conditions, researchers admitted that this huge backlog of stagnant labor could only diminish to about 11 million within the next five years. 

Well, so much for optimistic conditions.   

The Associated Press reported last week that for the graduating class of 2012, over 50% of the new college grads will either be jobless or underemployed.     

Here are some highlights from the article: 

“Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans… 

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of new bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years.  Out of this 1.5 million, there is an even split of those who are unemployed versus underemployed… 

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants.  

Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers. 

College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely…” 

So, what does this mean for the real estate industry?  As I mentioned last year in the second part of the WorkPuzzle discussion, some of these new college grads may be well-suited to start a career as a real estate agent.    

Rather than rehash the points I made in the previous discussion (all of which are still relevant today), I thought I’d share a quick story from a client I spent time with last week. 

This company is a large, independent, multi-generational real estate company on the West Coast.  They are leaders in their marketplace and have a long track record and heritage of success.   

Here’s the problem:  This company has an agent base where a large majority of their agents are above 55 years old.  This data didn’t impact me until I saw the demographic ranges they shared during our discussion.    

I don’t have the data in front of me, but I believe they had cataloged demographic age ranges as high as 55 to 65 years old, 65 to 75 years old, and over 75 years old....AND, a high percentage of their agents were in these categories.  The lowest age range category was “below 40.”  And for this company, less than 20% of the agents were demographically in this category. 

This company is not an anomaly in the real estate industry.  It is representative of the norm.  Most companies that we work with find themselves in this situation. 

So, here’s my challenge to you:  Step back and look at this problem from a 30,000 foot view.  Real estate companies are stuck with an aging workforce that will limit their growth and ability to change in the upcoming years.  Society is stuck with a large group of educated and aspiring young people who do not have adequate career opportunities.  There has to be a way to connect these dots.     

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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.

12 Mistakes You’re Making in Social Media

I’ve been spending a lot of time studying and experimenting with social media since the beginning of the year.  I know that some of you will certainly think I’m showing up really late to a party that started some time ago.  And, that may be true!  

But, the more I study the topic, the more I’m becoming convinced that being an early adopter with such a powerful emerging technology, like social media, is bound to lead to a number of mistakes and missteps.  For recruiting applications, some of these mistakes have been both profound (ie. disqualifying) and expensive.  

However, I’ve started to observe, in the last six to twelve months, social networking recruiting ideas that will likely be viable for the long term.  Makers of the new applications have gained insight from earlier mistakes, and the use of social media for recruiting purposes is really gaining momentum.

One thing that helps this process of improvement is that social media mistakes that companies make seem to be increasingly documented.  I’ve read many articles on this topic and thought I'd share one I recently found helpful.  

This article is based on a light study recently conducted on LinkedIn, where a group of participants were asked to document the mistakes they most commonly observe.  The original write-up included the top 16 mistakes, but I’ve cut it down to the top twelve I thought were most relevant.  

The list is arranged so that the mistakes are numbered and listed in bold.  Under each mistake is a relevant comment from a user in the study.  It may seem a little disjointed at first, but these eclectic comments do paint an interesting picture.  If you want more detail, take a look at the original article.

1.  Thinking it's a sprint instead of a marathon.

"I find most expect social media to be a sprint not a marathon.  They get really into it and then let it fall by the wayside by not posting regularly and not engaging with others.  As my partner says, ‘It's a marathon, not a sprint.’  You must give it time, you are building relationships."

2.  Not having a plan or strategy.

"I think the biggest mistake is not having a clear strategy around why they are using it that aligns with a strategy of what they want out of it.  This is closely followed by not measuring if they are on track.”

3.  Talking too much and not listening enough.

"They need to talk less and listen more.  Social media is all about making connections and, just like in the real (rather than virtual) world, people will be more drawn to you if you actually listen to what they're saying, than if you try to force your message upon them."

4  Airing bad feelings.

"I think the biggest mistake is airing bad feelings / arguments over sites like Twitter.  I watched a CEO debate rather childishly with a PR guy - going so far as to use derogatory and inappropriate language."

5.  Too much time spent on self-promotion.

"One big mistake small business leaders make in social media is to spend a lot of time trying to promote themselves.  They also forget to keep an eye on how their brand is being perceived.”

6. Not making it relevant to me.

"I don't want to get ten tweets a day hearing about YOU.  I want to hear things that are valuable for me and my life... and they need to be fast.  And not too frequent:  I don't want to incessantly hear about your business.  It won't make me think of you more, it'll just make me annoyed with you.  So:  short, sweet, pertinent, and valuable to me."

7.  Blurring the lines between personal and professional.

"They blur the line between personal and professional.  If you are using Facebook, use it only for personal or business, not both.  Same applies to Twitter.  I think LinkedIn is ideal in that it is all business/professional."

8.  Creating a business profile first and a personable profile later.

"They make their profiles appear as their company portals, trimmed with lots of company/brand information.  It results in viewers bouncing out of the profile quickly—ie. professional visits the profile, but flips to another profile without scrolling down the entire profile.  You should create an interesting profile first, engage people, and then propagate your message."

9.  A serious underestimation of the amount of resources it takes to administer a social media effort.

"The number one mistake I've seen is a serious underestimation of the amount of resources required to engage and maintain a social program."

10.  Expecting social media to do all the work.

"You can't just blast the world with your ideas, products, and services, then sit back and expect everyone to think you're so wonderful.  That is unrealistic."

11.  Getting on social media just because everyone else is doing it.

"I see many businesses getting on social media because 'everyone else is' or 'we just have to' but without clear purpose or a plan.  One wouldn't open a new store, address a new market, or open a new sales region without extensive planning, goals, organization and thought.  And yet, many small businesses (especially sole proprietors) just up and register for Twitter, etc. one night and wade right in."

12.  Not understanding that it's all about relationship building.

"What I see so often is that a business decides to jump into social media because they're afraid they might be left behind, but then they fail to put a well thought out strategy in place.  They end up throwing a bunch of profiles on the internet, trying to market and sell to everyone, and basically failing."

Do an inventory or your organization’s social media efforts.  Are you making any of these mistakes?  If so, put a plan in place to make corrections.  I do believe your effort will pay off.  Social media is here to stay, but you’ll need to apply effort and focus to make it work for you.

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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.

When You Can't Predict Talent; Foster It

While we make our living by assisting our clients through the murky waters of predicting a candidate's future performance, we've learned an important lesson:  there are always exceptions to every sourcing profile, pre-screening process, and well-intentioned interview.  And these exceptions come in every shape and size--good, bad or indifferent.  

So, if you can't always predict who is going to be successful, what can you, as a manager, do to foster talent?  Margaret Heffernan, an entrepreneur and author, explains how she was able to create an environment where those whom she selected to work for her were able to thrive.  

Margaret explains that it wasn’t so much her innate ability to see and select talent, but rather her ability to create the conditions in which her staff could grow.  So what were those conditions?  

An open atmosphere.  Every team Margaret ever ran had been profoundly democratic—which is to say that any good idea got attention.  She never cared about status, except in disliking those who did.  She took in good ideas from anywhere for anything...from making the lunch room more pleasant to improving the core technology.  Ideas didn't have to fight their way through a structure.  They could be blurted out.

Extravagant diversity.  It wasn't just that they employed Russians, Taiwanese, Indians, Americans, Brits, and Italians.  Their youngest employee was eighteen and the oldest was 68.  They'd worked in different countries, states and industries.  Some demonstrated enormous emotional intelligence; some had virtually none.  

Time didn't matter.  She never cared when the work got done—as long as it did get done and in a way that didn’t cause co-workers undue inconvenience.  Hours are not what count; productivity is.  The same applied to maternity, paternity, and family leave.  Individuals figured out what worked for them, and for their families—and that worked for the business.  Too many companies seem to feel they have to fight for priority over family life and in that jealous feud, vast amounts of energy and goodwill are dissipated.

Stretch goals were just the start.  Almost everything her team tackled was hard.  And if they cracked it, work got harder.  They liked big challenges and cheered anyone who met them.  People coming in for interviews witnessed that the company was fun, but not an easy option.  

Sure, you can see great potential and talent as you have candidates sit before you during interviews, but even the most talented people need an environment where they can grow.  This is not only true for hiring, but most certainly for retention.  One of our tenets is that people look less at compensation in career choices and more at where they feel they will fit and flourish.  Creating and showcasing that environment will draw talent to you, and keep it there.

Inevitably, you will hire a few exceptionally creative individuals who may then attract others like themselves.  “But none of that will matter if the work itself isn’t joyful and hard.  It may sound like a contradiction, but doing great work is hard—that's why great people love it.”

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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.

Are you a Trusted Leader?

Leaders who can be trusted have a tremendous impact on those they influence.  Trust is certainly a part of the "level 5 leader" that Jim Collins refers to in "Good to Great."  

In a recent article, Dan McCarthy lists...The 20 signs that you can't be trusted as a Leader:

"Are you a trustworthy leader?  Take the assessment below.  Sure, everybody may do a few of these now and then.  However, if there’s a consistent pattern of multiple behaviors, then I’d say there’s a serious issue of trustworthiness.

1. You don’t do what you said you were going to do.
2. You over-promise and under-deliver.
3. You’re unpredictable and inconsistent.
4. You always seem to have a hidden agenda.
5. You’ll agree just to avoid conflict.
6. You never share anything personal about yourself.
7. You never seem to finish anything you start.
8. You have a reputation that says you can’t be trusted.
9. You’re never willing to take a stand.
10. You won’t listen.
11. You don’t seem interested in what’s important to others.
12. You gossip about other people and disclose confidential information.
13. You make decisions but don’t explain how and why you made the decision.
14. You often change your plans or mind and don’t tell others about it or explain why.
15. You come across as uncompassionate and insensitive.
16. You won’t admit your mistakes or acknowledge your weaknesses.
17. You misrepresent other’s views.
18. You’ll say anything to achieve your objectives and results.
19. You sugarcoat the truth.
20. You see others as a threat when they are successful or come up with good ideas."

And here are some quotes that you might enjoy: 

“Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.” - Leadership Guru, Warren Bennis

“In leadership, there are no words more important than trust.  In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved.” - Duke Basketball Head Coach, Mike Krzyzewski 

“The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.” - Woody Allen

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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.

Assessing the Real Problem

In my practice as a clinical psychologist, it has become clear to me that the initial problem reported at the first meeting rarely turns out to be the REAL problem.  In well over 35,000 hours of psychotherapy and individual evaluations I've found that, more often than not, the "presenting problem" turns out to be an external symptom of a deeper underlying problem.  I learned early on that deciphering the underlying problem is the key to alleviating the symptoms, disorder, or pain.

Within our own business, and certainly within the realm of recruiting, we witness the same scenario.  Humans are incredibly stubborn, short-sighted, committed to their biases and unable to assess their own blind spots.  Because of this blindness we need the input of others.  We need fresh eyes.  We need experts who know how to see through the symptoms and locate the core roadblocks. 

In order for an organization or office to flourish, the leader must be humble enough to actively be on the watch for what they might be missing.  They need to seek out their blind spots.  They should welcome critique.  Even Jim Collins found the best leaders to be "humble" in his well-known book, "Good to Great."  

Humility can be seen in several characteristics.  One that Ben and I have noticed is that humble leaders ask questions...lots of them.  They always want to know..."What's going on out there?  What could I be missing?" 

When leaders are humble, they demonstrate a greater tendency to actively search for the "real problem," rather than trying to fix the superficial symptoms...or worse yet, ignoring the symptoms all together.  Humble leaders don't experience a mistake or a failure in the company as an insult to their ego.  Because of this, they are free to self-examine and improve.  Companies and offices with this kind of leadership are the ones that thrive. 

In the next edition, I'll share some characteristics of poor leaders. 

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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 be Fully Engaged

We, at Tidemark (and I, personally), are in the process of trying to simplify our daily workflow.  The purpose of this exercise is to free ourselves from extraneous, unproductive tasks, and replace them with more critical, strategically driven tasks, as well as free up time to think, imagine, and innovate.  This exercise has already taken an enormous amount of thought, and is likely to take even more.  But I'm optimistic that the end product will be worth it. 

I can already begin to imagine a more productive workday, where each task is laid out the night before; where I keep track of the time that I spend on each task (using the Toggl App); where I delegate tasks that should be done by someone else; and where I am freed up to research and develop new ideas.  

Our quest to achieve efficiency while maintaining the excellence in productivity that our clients have come to expect, has caused me to research and listen to experts, on ways that this can be done.  While I have written extensively on a number of research supported ways to improve engagement on a personal level, the following is a valuable exercise that we’ve found helpful for our staff. 

1. We re-worked and re-affirmed our key strategies for the next year.
2. We named three critical tasks that support these strategies.
3. We had everyone in the organization memorize these tasks so that they can improve anything that supports these objectives, and exclude the things that do not support the objectives.

Another exercise that I am personally integrating into the mix was found in the article “The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time.” 

The author recommends being fully engaged at each moment rather than attempting to juggle several duties throughout the day.  I am fully committed to giving this a try.  The following are suggestions that I am most likely going to experiment with.  

“It's also up to individuals to set their own boundaries.  Consider these three behaviors for yourself:

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time.  If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones.  Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point.  The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you'll be.  When you're done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically.  If you don't, you'll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent.  Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that's relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. Take real and regular vacations.  Real means that when you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work.  Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend.  The research strongly suggests that you'll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions.  When you're engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time.  When you're renewing, truly renew.” 

Just like our garages need a spring cleaning, by ridding ourselves of items that have become cluttering, so too our work lives require occassional cleaning to optimize talent, efficiencies, and focus.

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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.

New Research: Transitioning to a Real Estate Career Could Save Your Life?

As you may know, our company closely follows the recruiting trends in the real estate industry.  Even though we are starting to see signs of recovery among many of our clients, it is still a challenge to get high quality “new to real estate” candidates to seriously consider becoming an agent in today’s market. 

One of the metrics we use to track this trend is the amount of advertising dollars it takes to source an individual candidate.  We track this metric across more that 30 metropolitan areas in the United States and eventually arrive at a “cost per candidate” average (aggregate) for the whole country.  

In 2011, this cost per candidate average rose steadily over the entire year.  After evaluating a number of marketing process variables (ex. # of ads, frequency of postings, ad content, etc.), it became clear that the elephant in the room was the constant negative dialog that the public is fed concerning the state of the real estate market by media sources. 

As a result, the default mode of thinking for most people in our society is that the real estate industry is not the place to find exciting and lucrative career opportunities. We're flying into a head wind.

So, here’s an important question:  How do you counter this type of thinking?  This is something we ponder every day as we fight the advertising and sourcing battles.  But, it is also a question you should be considering if you are going to successfully interview and guide a high-quality candidate through the hiring process. 

To win your battles, I would suggest that your best weapon is creativity.  To break people out of their status quo thinking, you’ll need to challenge their assumptions and help them see their careers from a new perspective.    

I ran across one example of this type of thinking earlier this week that I thought was worth sharing. 

This idea comes from Issie Lapowsky, a free-lance writer who discovered some research recently conducted by professors at Louisiana State University and Baylor University.  The research centers on the health benefits individuals experience by starting and managing a microbusiness (a business with less than five employees). 

By examining data from more than 3,000 counties in the United States, the researchers documented the number of microbusinesses per 10,000 residents in each county.  Then, they compared Center for Disease Control and Prevention health data to the same study groups.  

Their findings revealed a strong correlation between the health and well-being of citizens in those counties that had high percentages of microbusinesses.  More specifically, compared to national averages, mortality rates were up to 55% lower, obesity rates were up to 63% lower, and diabetes rates were up to 55% lower in those counties that had high numbers of microbusinesses. 

Check out the embedded info graphic to learn more (click on the graphic to see a larger version of the graphic):

Becoming a real estate agent is, in essence, starting and managing a microbusiness.  During an interview, the argument could be made that choosing an non-traditional career field like real estate leads to a lifestyle that is not only more financially advantageous, but also beneficial to a person’s health and physical well-being. 

This line of reasoning may sound a little crazy on the surface, but people spend billions of dollars each year trying to better their health.  And, many people are stuck in jobs that carry serious health risks (extensive travel, high stress, long commutes, sedentary work conditions, etc.).    

Could starting a microbusiness in the real estate industry be part of a healthy lifestyle that a candidate is striving to obtain?  Of course it could.  And, by successfully making this argument, you’ve moved the focus of the employment dialog away from the script the media so relentlessly repeats. 

This is just one example of how creativity is going to be necessary in order to increase our recruiting batting average.  I believe you should have four or five of these types of “alternative arguments” at your disposal when you’re talking with a candidate.  As you listen to a candidate’s story during the interview, be ready to creatively match non-traditional benefits to the candidate’s pain.  

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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.

5 Reasons You Need to Connect Face-to-Face with Your Clients

As I mentioned in our last discussion, Dave and I spent some time at a couple of national real estate conferences in March.  Each year, our company puts together a marketing and account management plan and there is usually some dialog among the partners concerning the benefit of such events. 

Attending a national conference means taking time away from our normal business activities, which produce the revenue for our company.  In addition, since no one in their right mind would schedule a spring time conference anywhere close to Seattle, there is the travel expense and inconvenience of uprooting for a few days to get to the conference location. 

So, why do we participate in these events?  Because we’ve come to the conclusion that there is an intrinsic value in connecting with our clients, face-to-face, as often as possible.  We’ve learned (in our business) that there is nothing that can replace this valuable interaction, and it’s worth the investment. 

Until recently, I thought this was something unique to our type of business.  But, as I’ve read more on this topic, I’ve found it is a common thread in the success of most companies.  And, I would suspect it is a necessity for a real estate manager as well. 

René Shimada Siegel, Founder of High Tech Connect, articulated some the benefits of face-to-face meetings in a recent article in Inc. Magazine.  Here is how she boiled down the topic: 

“No matter what industry we’re in, we’re all in the people business.  We’ll only be successful if we really get to know our customers and colleagues.  Many of my clients are so busy that they now prefer texting to even emails or calls.  

Skype, WebEx and audio calls are convenient and create the illusion we’re actually having a meeting -- but nothing beats the power of a truly personal, face-to-face connection.  What can you learn from an in-person meeting that you can’t from a virtual one?  

1. You're off the record.  Many of my clients work in cubes and can’t have private telephone conversations with me or anyone else.  This means that when I talk to them on the phone, I might not get to hear the most important information they can share:  the unique team dynamics, the executive’s personality quirks, etc.  Over sushi or a latte or a walk around the block, my clients can let me know more -- with more color -- than they can over the telephone or in an email.   
2. Make use of not-so-small talk.  Most business conversations are focused on solving a problem quickly and efficiently, while business relationships are built when people take the time to share and learn more about each other.  That happens more naturally in person than over the phone or in an email.  What cements a bond between people?  Small talk about a favorite team, passion for pecan pie, parenting challenges, and the other bits and pieces that make us unique and interesting.  
3. Make an impression.  I bought a new handbag.  It’s faux ostrich and it’s pink.  Really pink.  I’ve received compliments on it from every woman (and one man) I’ve met with in the past two weeks.  I had worried it was perhaps not professional enough for business.  But the style and color were bold, “spring-y” and made me smile.  Who knew my $60 knock-off handbag would be such a great conversation starter and deliver such a strong personal statement?  How do you do that over Skype?  
4. Read the body language.  Facial expressions often communicate so much more than words.  We host consultant coffees and invite a handful of independent consultants to our office in order to better understand the nuances of each professional in a relaxed setting.  We need to know what isn’t on the resume that makes each person unique.  In their eyes and in their body language, we can see confidence, empathy, fear, friendliness or sincerity.  That ability to “read” a candidate beyond their keywords is a huge competitive advantage for us.  
5. Learn where the action is.  I find out so much when I visit one of my clients in their office.  Is the lobby bright and inviting with recent accolades proudly displayed?  Do employees seem happy?  Is there free juice and healthy snacks in the cafeteria?  Brand new Herman Miller chairs in the conference room?  Is everyone moving in slow motion or is there a palpable buzz?  The environment speaks volumes and may factor into your business proposal or plan.  By understanding company dynamics, we can communicate more effectively to meet their needs.” 

As the use of technology continues to evolve in the real estate industry, don’t completely give in to the siren’s call.  Meeting with your agents face-to-face and encouraging them to meet with their clients face-to-face, is something that cannot be replaced.

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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.