At the end of last month’s blog post, I posed this thought-provoking question to any Brokers responsible for leading real estate agents; “Why do your agents not achieve what they say they will achieve?”
The answer to the question may or may not surprise you, but the answer is nevertheless simple and brief; “Because you let them.” Real estate agents are great at making ambitious statements as to what they intend to achieve in terms of production, but when the time comes to account for their actions, most fall short because no one has held them accountable.
Accountability is a word that gets a bad rap. Accountability, simply defined is noticing that the agent didn’t achieve what they said they would, and doing so without judgment. And in the right environment, when one is held accountable as they should be, we give them permission to take on the unaccomplished goal yet again, or back away from it altogether.
But when we don’t hold our agents accountable for what they say they intend to do, we are actually acknowledging their failure to achieve, and as I often say, “What we acknowledge, we get more of. And further, we are actually giving them permission to fail, then fail again; and that’s when we as leaders have to be held accountable for that action. The great Moliere said, “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”
As leaders engaged in our agent’s careers, as someone who can be highly influential in that agent becoming all they can be, we owe it to them, and we owe it to ourselves to hold them accountable for their actions. If we acknowledge poor performance, we’ll see more of it, until it becomes the norm, but when we hold our agents accountable for achieving their goals, we actually provide them the avenue to achieve on a higher plane. Success becomes their habit.
Where accountability and personal responsibility are nonexistent, permission to fail, and the excuses for failure run rampant.
As brokers, we owe it to our agents and ourselves to help them put together a plan; a plan focused on success, and made up of specific, actionable, measureable, and ambitious goals for which they are expected to achieve, and for which we are willing to hold them accountable.
Accountability is the difference between aiding and abetting failure, versus providing an environment that fosters achievement. Accountability is a good word that can and does produce positive results!