Darryl Davis salutes your resilience as a real estate professional, being able to make it through the lean years and come out on the other side. He also recognizes that when one problem in real estate is solved–such as a foreclosure crisis–it’s usually followed by other difficulties, such as the inventory shortages that real estate professionals are having to deal with across the country.
Credit: Steven Depolo
“You thought you had to smile when the market was bad?” Davis says. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
But Davis isn’t all about doom and gloom. The speaker, trainer, standup comic, and real estate professional is on a mission to get real estate professionals smiling more.
Davis expects his new book—How to Design a Life Worth Smiling About—to be available by the time NAR’s annual conference rolls around in November. Until then, he’s determined to get the word out about why people should start smiling more. I saw him in action at NAR’s Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo in Washington last week, and I have to admit that I’ve been smiling more ever since.
He cites studies (like this one as published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) that show that smiling actually makes you feel better. Even when you’re having a tough time, a smile can fool your brain into mitigating your negative attitude with natural chemical stimulants such as serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine, Davis says.
“The smile is a trigger, like a light switch, to tell the brain to produce these chemicals,” Davis says. “It tells the brain, ‘Hey, hello! I’m happy down here; give me some of those chemicals.’” Continue reading »
When change comes to town, it seems to divide people into two camps: victims and villains. Those who precipitated the change are often the bad guys of the situation. And everyone else seems to be warily looking for their name on the chopping block. Change has the same effect on businesses, which is why mergers and other structural shake-ups can be so damaging to morale and productivity.
Credit: busy.pochi, via Flickr
But they don’t have to be. While reading Sharon Melnick’s new book, Success Under Stress: Powerful Tools for Staying Calm, Confident, and Productive When the Pressure’s On, I came across her seemingly stellar exercise for people who are going through this kind of flux. It’s called “WIN at Change.” While it is intended for the individual, I think that brokers, managers and leaders of all kinds could benefit from it.
The exercise is predicated on Melnick’s theory that if you take responsibility for your 50 percent of any given situation, your stress level will decrease, as you’re holding up your end of the bargain with the understanding that you can’t do it all. I think that’s a key component to this exercise, and I think managers would do well to mention that ideal as an introduction to the exercise. As Melnick says, “It’s tempting to comment negatively on other peoples’ decision or to be fearful of the uncertainty, but the way to stay productive is by managing yourself” (emphasis hers). If nothing else, it should quiet detractors long enough to get through the exercise!
So, here’s what you do. Gather all the stakeholders and hand them two pieces of paper. The first one should be split into thirds, and the second one blank. Here’s your script: Continue reading »
Credit: Christop Brooks-Booth
Yeah, yeah; I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But we all do it to some extent; if we didn’t, publishers would save some money and all book covers would look the same.
And I’m going to confess something to you all: Whenever I see diminutive descriptors used in the title of a book, I tend to adopt a dismissive attitude. The “Little Books of __” and pocket guides to this or that seem to promise easy results without the “work” of actually committing to a full book. And authors: Don’t even come to me with 101 anythings.
So, when The Leader’s Pocket Guide: 101 Indispensable Tools, Tips, and Techniques for Any Situation crossed my desk, I was skeptical. Honestly, the phrase that crossed my mind was “junk food.”
However, while this collection is certainly not analogous to a five-course meal, it’s not a single-serving bag of Cheetos either. I’d venture to say author John Baldoni has taken the many ingredients from his long coaching career and assembled them in sandwich form.
And I swear I’ve just had lunch. Bear with me here. Continue reading »
We all know a sales manager or two like Brad Hutchinson, the main character in Brian Souza’s new book. Seems like they always have three things:
Image credit: Evolve Publishing
- amazing numbers,
- endless confidence,
- and no clue how to manage people.
But how do you break it to them that they should be more concerned about leadership than their own leads?
In The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable About Taking Your Game and Your Team to the Next Level, Souza has created an short, breezy tale in order to teach such managers how to become true leaders. The story begins with Brad heading out to a local bar to toast his “Sales Leader of the Year” award, as well as his general awesomeness. He invites his whole team out to celebrate, but when he gets stood up by the lot of them, he’s forced to question all that he set out to celebrate. Luckily, “Coach” Mick Donnelly is at the bar and easily explains why Brad’s all alone.
“You said that you crushed your number, right? Well… how many people on your team crushed theirs?” Coach asks. Continue reading »
Here are the current best-selling management and leadership books from Amazon.com:
1. StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
2. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton
3. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
4. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Pmbok Guide) by Project Management Institute
5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series) by Patrick Lencioni
6. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
7. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
8. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
9. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
10. Rework by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Michael Gurian
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our book review on Leadership and the Sexes. The Weekly Book Scan talked with the book’s author and gender expert Michael Gurian to gain more insights into how the sexes communicate differently.
Do your findings on gender differences among leaders in the workplace apply to other relationships too—such as real estate professionals’ relationships with their customers?
GURIAN: This book is for any male and female interaction at any level. When we looked at the companies that provided quantitative data to us for the book, they were using it at all different levels. It’s not just training CEOs, but they are training everybody to understand the gender differences. There is an immersion in the culture that transfers to a real estate office or even just a single practitioner to get training in it. These are hard-wired gender differences, and understanding men and women better and getting the tools to improve your communication will make you more effective.
Is there a risk that these findings on gender differences can be used as stereotypes in the workplace?
GURIAN: There really needs to be some immersion in it. If the company or individual, does not immerse themselves in understanding it then they will be prone to stereotype. There’s so much popular information out there and you can scan an article and in two minutes and believe you understand men and women. That leads to stereotypes. Continue reading »
By Melissa Dittmann Tracey
QUICK SKIM
Do you have a female client who’s exceptionally chatty? Or a male client who zones out sometimes? It might be their gender that’s to blame. Men and women have different communication styles that often clash in the business world, according to Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis, authors of Leadership and the Sexes (Jossey-Bass, 2008). The authors set out to move beyond gender stereotypes and point to brain imaging studies that can offer you insight into how you can better communicate, lead, and negotiate with people of the opposite sex, so that gender communication blunders never cost you a deal. BUY THE BOOK
FROM THE BOOK: 5 WAYS MEN AND WOMEN COMMUNICATE DIFFERENTLY
At times, men and women may seem like they really are communicating from two different planets. Why is that? Blood flows differently to varying parts of the brain in males and females, making each gender better at processing certain types of information. The book outlines several of these differences and offers tips to account for these differences and deter misunderstandings.
Here are five differences presented in the book.
1. Women’s brains are always “on.” Females might appreciate this: “There is more neural activity in the female brain at any given time than in the male brain, as evidenced by 15 to 20 percent more blood flow, with more brain centers ‘lit up’ in a scan of a female brain than in one of a male brain,” according to the book. The female brain tends to be more constantly active, while the male brain is prone to “zoning out” or “blanking out” during conversations. To avoid a zone out, men might unconsciously start an activity, such as tapping their pencils, gazing out the window, or swiveling in a chair. Continue reading »
DNA Leadership By James R. Ball, 420 pages. Reston, Va.:, The Goals Institute Inc.,
1997. $29.95.
By John D. Mayfield Jr., broker with Mayfield Real Estate-Better Homes and Gardens, Park Hills, Mo.
Although DNA Leadership through Goal-Driven Management is slow going in parts and somewhat repetitive, it’s still packed with good ideas.
As a goal setter myself, I enjoyed and learned the most from the “Goal-Driven Management” section–worth the cost of the book alone. Author James Ball does a good job of emphasizing the need to set business goals to survive, and he shows that it’s important for employees (read salespeople) as well. That is, it’s important to impart your corporate goals to salespeople. Then they can adapt them to their practice, and you’ll both be working in the same direction.
Ball compares goal-driven management to Newton’s law of motion to send home the point that for every action of force, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So if you do nothing, your result will be no return. Most managers would probably agree: Practitioners fail when they don’t put time and effort into building a business. You can’t just type a to-do list. If you set a goal of selling $10 million in real estate, you have to call on x number of prospects or send out x number of letters.I used his Newton analogy at a recent sales meeting, and the point really hit home with my salespeople.
Although Ball does an excellent job of explaining the leadership process, readers’ minds may wander from time to time as a result of his complex topics and comparisons. And the average broker may not have the time or resources to evaluate company performance and set goals according to Ball’s guideline, which involves six levels of evaluation. But at least DNA Leadership gets your goal-setting juices flowing and reminds you that goals are the best way to plan and shape your company’s future.
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