Blog

“Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar.” – Orrin Woodward 

To lead in our often challenging, ever-changing real estate industry, we have to raise the bar, over and over again. Orrin Woodward’s words highlight the idea of transformational leadership, and how we have to help create the pathways for agents to transcend the ordinary and reach for the extraordinary. 

Woodward’s profound statement not only illuminates the tiers of leadership but also challenges you to reflect on your own style and impact. It begs the question: What kind of leader do you aspire to be? The journey from average to great is not just a path of personal achievement, but one of collective empowerment and inspiration. 

Related reading: How to Achieve Your Real Estate Goals 

Related reading: Agile Socks – Servant Leadership 101: 4 Ways to Raise the Bar 

The Journey of Self-Enhancement 

The first tier of leadership focuses on self-improvement. In real estate, this means an ongoing process of garnering new knowledge, mastering how to recruit new team members, retention of those agents, growing the business, fine-tuning sales skills with training, and staying up-to-date with what is happening in our industry. By doing this, you can confidently and accurately lead your team to step up to that change and embrace their own sense of self. The real measure of a leader’s effectiveness lies not in their personal accolades but in their ability to uplift others and bring them to where they need to be for their own personal growth. 

Elevating Others 

Good leaders recognize that their success is intrinsically linked to their team’s growth and achievement. As the leader, you set high expectations while providing guidance and creating opportunities for your team members to excel. In this industry, leading to elevate others involves mentoring new or struggling agents, fostering a collaborative and innovative environment, instituting policies that encourage professional development and transparency, or arranging for coaching or training for your office for skills development. 

Related reading: Pioneering: How Leaders Will Help Navigate the Ever-Changing Real Estate Frontier 

Inspiring Self-Driven Excellence 

Great leaders don’t just raise the bar; they inspire their team members to see the potential within themselves and to set their own benchmarks of excellence. This form of leadership is transformative, giving agency to your team members and creating a culture where individuals are motivated not by external directives, but by their own aspirations and sense of purpose. 

It’s too easy to fall prey to the pressures of sales targets and client expectations that loom large, so fostering a healthy, balanced environment that encourages agents to pursue their own standards of success can lead to extraordinary outcomes. It cultivates a team of self-motivated, innovative, and resilient professionals who are not just working to meet a quota but are driven by the desire to excel and redefine the industry’s standards. 

It’s true that some agents may struggle to set their own aspirations, having worked in companies where all activity and goals were directed by leadership. Essentially, they are out of practice., and these agents may need extra encouragement to reignite the freedom to create the life they will smile about.  

Related reading: Harvard Business Review – How to Be an Inspiring Leader 

The Ripple Effect of Inspirational Leadership 

The impact of a great leader isn’t confined to your immediate team but ripples through the entire organization, the industry, and beyond. By inspiring others to raise their own bar, great leaders foster a legacy of excellence, innovation, and empowerment. This legacy not only upholds the standards within the real estate sector but also contributes to the broader perspective of what it means to lead with vision, integrity, and inspiration. 

Conclusion 

Orrin Woodward’s quote serves as a powerful reminder of the life-changing power of leadership. Aspiring to be a great leader means embracing the challenge to inspire others to discover and achieve their own potential. It’s about shifting the focus from individual achievement to collective empowerment, from meeting standards to setting new ones, and from imposing to inspiring. 

The choice of how you lead can shape the future of our teams, our organizations, and the industry at large. Let us choose to be great, to inspire excellence, and to leave a legacy that transcends our own achievements. 

For Your Agent… 

As a company, our goals are to grow while meeting our goals, but it’s not just about the brokerage as a whole. As you strive for excellence in your own business, consider the ripple effect it can have on your fellow agents, and the profession as a whole. By consistently raising the bar for yourself, you inspire others to do the same. Sharing your knowledge and experiences with other agents fosters a collaborative environment where everyone is motivated to excel. With that motivation, ask for constructive feedback and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth. Not only does this elevate your own performance and confidence, but also contributes to a culture of continuous improvement within the whole company. 

Know that agents do NOT have to go it alone in this market. 

Our goal is to bring the tools, training, and coaching to not only survive the shifts – but also build solid, dependable foundations they can count on and help them build clients for life. If that sounds like a goal that can help you reach YOUR goals – then join us for our Free Weekly Real Estate Webinar Training Series! Click below to register for the next one! 

Darryl Davis is an award-winning international speaker, real estate and business coach, and best-selling author of three books, all published by McGraw Hill Publishers.       

For more than 35 years, Darryl has spoken to and trained more than 100,000 sales professionals around the globe to more than double their production year after year. His book,  How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, tops Amazon’s charts for one of the most sold books to real estate agents.       

He was awarded the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation by the National Speaker’s Association, which is given to less than 2% of all speakers worldwide.       

Whether from a stage or Zooming into a virtual room, Darryl’s extraordinary humor, relatability, and natural gift for teaching real-world, results-producing skills and mindsets to audiences have made him a client favorite throughout his career.       

Audiences will laugh, learn, and ultimately walk away better prepared for a changing world, with the tools, skills, and training they need to build their businesses with more ease and less stress and to design lives and careers worth smiling about.       

Bring One of Darryl’s W.O.R.K. Topics to Your Organization!      

By providing your agents with the knowledge and insights they need to stay ahead of the game, you can ensure that they are equipped to handle any situation that comes their way! Contact us here to learn more!