In the real estate space, “leaders” are not confined to the C-suite of a big-box franchise or a publicly traded real estate tech giant. Jay Thompson and 10 Agent Edgers give their insights into what makes a good leader.
Jay Thompson is a former brokerage owner who spent over six years working for Zillow Group. He’s also the co-founder of AgentLoop. He “selectively retired” in August 2018 but can’t seem to leave the real estate industry behind. His weekly Inman column is published every Wednesday.
It’s “Leadership Month” at Inman! There are leadership tips, profiles of industry leaders, Pulse questions and answers from the Inman community and more to come throughout March.
Why talk about leadership?
Simply put, because it’s important. In the real estate space, “leaders” are not confined to the C-suite of a big-box franchise or a publicly traded real estate tech giant. Brokers are leaders. You have team leaders, whether it’s a team of two or 200. I’d argue that even solo agents are leaders, or should be. You have to coordinate the efforts of many people to reach the ultimate goal of a closed transaction. To do that well, you lead.
What is leadership?
There are practically endless definitions of “leadership” out there. If you boil it down to the most simple form, leadership is the practice of positive influence. This begs the question, what is influence?
Combining definitions from the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, influence is “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something,” but without using “apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.”
In other words, getting action from someone by clubbing them over the head or saying “because I said so” isn’t leadership or influence.
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower may have summed up the relation of leadership and influence best with: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to…