Let me ask you a question.
Do you know what people think of you and how highly they regard you?
This week I was talking with one of my legends; we’ll call her Vanessa, about an Introduction to Management workshop that I’ll be presenting on Tuesday 2nd February in Gosford, NSW.
I was explaining why I was invited to run the workshop at Realtair Academy by Lee Woodward, Creative Director for Realtair.
Lee has trained thousands of real estate agents over the past 20 years and has been instrumental in the growth and development of some of the most successful real estate businesses. He mentioned to me that he sees great potential in many of the employees he works with throughout the real estate industry and the sad fact is that many of those he sees potential in, especially women, sadly do not see how talented they are nor what’s possible for them.
As I was telling Vanessa, she shared her story which is exactly what we’re talking about.
“I think back to as a journalist, and I had one particular editor who clearly saw me as a leader and pushed me because he saw the previous editor hadn’t or didn’t develop people particularly well. But this guy really pinpointed particular people and we all had to go through this big leadership program through Fairfax.”
“I was petrified to start with, absolutely petrified. I went through it and kept thinking, I don’t know this stuff. Who am I to be doing this sort of stuff? And in the end, as an example, the guy who is currently very high up and working for one of the country’s leaders, is a guy that I trained as a journalist in our newsroom and who was petrified as a journalist and now look where he is.”
She continued, “You never know where somebody is going to end up. I ended up thriving on that whole nurturing the next generation of journalists that come through, I loved it. My boss made me the chief copy editor so that I could sit down with a cadet journalist and work through the copy and share because he was a highly Directive personality. He couldn’t teach the young journalists who were petrified of him because he was so scary.”
“He saw that I was very nurturing and that I would guide people through and be patient with their learning and so I ended up becoming the only copy editor and no one else could touch copy except for me or him. In fact, he would often say, Vanessa is not editor material, she will become a general manager, that’s where she’s destined to go.”
If you’re a team leader or manager, are you resonating with this? Is there someone on your team that doesn’t see their potential? As their leader or manager, like Vanessa, you don’t know what impact you could have on someone or where they could end up.
So if you have a team member that can’t see the potential you see for them, consider sending them to the workshop. It’ll be a unique experience designed to increase confidence and help your team members see what you see in them. It’s not only an investment in them, it’s an investment in the future success of your business.
The same goes for you, if you ARE THAT TEAM MEMBER who doesn’t see in yourself what others see in you. If you are petrified and don’t see that you could be the manager or leader making a difference to the people you’ll be managing or maybe you’re just curious to discover the difference between leadership and management. I invite you to attend the workshop. We’ll be discussing the Top 10 Skills you need as a leader and you might be surprised to see that you already have some, if not, most of them.
If you’re reading this and you are a manager/leader, I invite you to do a quick self-assessment and ask yourself, what are you currently doing to ensure that the people in your team grow and develop. In other words, what is your succession plan? Do you have one? If not, maybe now would be a good time to do something about that.
Click here to hear my interview with Lee Woodward about what it takes to be a successful manager and to find out more about the workshop. It’s not just for people in the real estate industry, anyone is welcome.
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