Leading and Influencing Performance

I hope this article provides inspiration or insights to help your realise your own potential so you too can operate a broking practice that provides you ongoing professional and personal reward.?

……………………………………

People leadership and managing staff performance to support the practice to meet its KPI’s is central to the sustainable progress and performance.??

Leaders need to be able to articulate the goals of the business in measurable terms and to implement behaviours and processes to achieve what it says it’s going to.

The same is true for you as a leader of your broking practice.?

It is up to you to set and adhere to the standards you seek. These standards begin with you. When your team see you doing as you say, they begin to trust in your leadership and influence.?

As a rough guide, it takes approximately 3 months for people to believe others are going to be constant and do as they say.??

Achieving KPI’s and maximising staff performance is crucial and at the same time problematic. Doing this relies on understanding our leadership styles, how we recruit, what we want to reward and how we want to do it.

There also needs to be alignment between these things that in turn builds an operating framework. This will be different for every broking practice but begins with a framework and incremental change.

As leader in your practice, it is up to you to set and adhere to the standards you seek.?

These can be based around measurables such as the amount of loans written, and they can also be values-driven. It’s about having a consistent identity which reflects the standards you’re asking of your staff.

One of the challenges in our industry and sector is that we tend to be on the tools. So, we tend to work, talk to clients, be both the decision maker and the rainmaker.?

The culture of your practice tends to come from you, and this can happen on the run. However, small changes can cause long term impact, so taking the time to think about your leadership style, how it works in your practice and what you may like to change is a valuable exercise.

There are four main leadership styles:

• Autocratic - the boss tells people what to do and has the final say. No one else has an opinion or voice.?
• Democratic – everyone has an opinion and has the chance to voice it. This may lead to some having louder voices than others.?
• Laissez-faire – people show up and do their job and their leader tries to give them the environment in which they blossom or bloom.
• Transformational – leaders change process, change people, help them grow and become better and continuous improvement is a given. One of the features of transformational leadership is having your team be able to do and lead in your absence. This style can be hard to recruit and retain people as they may wish to continue to grow and leave for other areas.

Your natural leadership style will tend to occur when you’re stressed – what style do you revert to when making decisions?

For some of us, there is the leadership style we think we are or would like to be, versus that which we actually are.

Remembering there’s no ‘right or wrong’, but there are more or less effective ways of leading in any given situation.

Part of leadership is recognising your style and asking whether it’s matching the strategy of your organisation. Does it inspire and reward your team to do better because you are??

Many brokers (and therefore, leaders) revert to the autocratic style because they have the experience and know how to get a task done. They also often have KPI’s which are based solely on outcomes.?

As a leader, there is what you say and then there is what you do.?

The challenge of leadership is inspiring and managing the performance of your staff, as there will also be what your staff say and what they do. And there is also that important space between the two which gives people the opportunity to speak up.?

For example, a broker was becoming frustrated with a staff member.?

He was continuously being asked questions by her and encouraged her to write down processes so the information was available to her (transformational leadership). She was reluctant to do this and his level of frustration was building and he was reverting to an autocratic management style to deal with this.?

To break this pattern, I advised him to set some time aside to talk to his staff member and find where her resistance was coming from. Did she not completely understand the information? Did she not understand what the end process was supposed to look like??

By becoming autocratic and telling her what to do he was missing the opportunity to learn how to work with her and productively grow her knowledge and value to the business. In this case, the collaborative approach was far more effective and contributed to her growth and confidence instead of needing rehire and retrain.??

By understanding your leadership style, you then have the opportunity to engage and communicate more effectively with your team, build trust and to empower your team so they in turn can enhance their contribution toward the goals.

How well do you know your team and what motivates them?

Many brokerage firms I’ve known have had the unfortunate experience of losing a valuable team member because they didn’t feel fulfilled in their role. ? Despite offers to pay them more, people move on, primarily, because their core needs or values are not being met.?

So, while we can assume what motivates them, it helps to be curious.? People will appreciate it, and you’ll create a feedback loop of trust and safety to know how to best support the efforts and focus of your team.

I wonder, what changes can you make to your leadership style to maximise staff performance?

……………………………………

Want to grow your broking practice?

I’m James McCracken, Broker Growth Strategist, where for the past 10 years, I've coached brokers to grow their practices with structure and consistency.

Here are further ways I can help:

Speaking & Presenting:?Would you like a tailored presentation for your conference or PD Day so your brokers can grow their volumes??Send me a LinkedIn message to request my speaker kit.

Deal Flow Plan:?Download a personalised plan that pinpoints growth inhibitors and options for operating with more structure, efficiency and consistency.?thesuccessfuladviser.com/dfp/

Ultimate Broker:?For established mortgage brokers only, this service provides guided support to accelerate settlement volumes, improve operational efficiency and reduce worth hours.?

Book an initial call ?to see if there is potentially a fit.

To your continued success!

James