When I transitioned my real estate team, the McConnell Group, from a traditional brokerage to The Real Brokerage, it required a lot more than just changing our website address and letterhead. One of the most significant challenges we faced was having to build a new company culture from the ground up.
Under a traditional brokerage, company culture is almost a de facto derivative of the brokerage’s culture. Because much of that culture involves assets provided by the brokerage, when we changed, we lost access to many aspects of our previous culture. That sounds painful, but we quickly discovered it was one of the best consequences of the change!
One of the hardest things I dealt with previously was when the brokerage was not in alignment with my team’s inherent culture. That’s not to say the brokerage was wrong; it wasn’t. At times, it just wasn’t a good fit for our ethos.
Building from the ground up
When business leaders talk about culture, they often focus on the fun activities and events they hold to boost employee morale. That can be great, but it can also lead down the wrong path. Seattle is famous for companies establishing “culture” by putting games and toys in the break room that employees never use because they’re expected to work 80 hours per week.
A great aspect of any leader gaining their own culture is that we get to define what “culture” means to them: What is important to your team? For us, true company culture means a genuine effort to establish team cohesion and a healthy balance between work and play.
We decided early on that being in person was very important. Working in a physical office allows much greater collaboration among the team members than is possible when everyone’s working from home or their cars. One of the first things we did after we decided to make the brokerage change was to secure office space.
It was important not to simply take the first office space that came along and was affordable. Our team has its own vibe, and the office needed to reflect that. We found a beautiful Art Deco building in downtown Seattle that everyone on the team fell in love with. After moving in, we were able to take full advantage of the culture opportunities that working in person offers:
- A daily, 10-minute morning meeting where I address the whole team. Sometimes the message is motivational, sometimes about the industry and, occasionally, it’s even about the intense weather swings Seattle is experiencing this year.
- Each week, we have a full team meeting to share ideas and opportunities. It lets us keep abreast of industry trends, market changes and combat the isolation that can happen in the real estate profession.
- Greater accountability. Being in person motivates people to do their best work so their achievements can be celebrated by the team, in person, and they have people to lean on to reduce misses.
We quickly re-discovered that the core of our company culture is that we focus on kindness and support for each other. Too often in real estate, or sales work in general, a culture of every-person-for-themselves develops where people are reluctant to help each other out because they fear it will diminish their own results.
That’s completely opposite to how we want to approach our work. If I help someone achieve a great result this week, that’s something to be celebrated, just as it will be if they then turn around and help me next week.
Even if someone’s been in the business for a decade and is working with a brand new agent, a good culture believes that’s OK. Experienced veterans don’t talk down to new agents and do all they can to help everyone succeed.
Lessons learned
One of the biggest challenges to creating a culture is that it’s easy to get overly wrapped up in it and create an echo chamber. This closes you off to new ideas and runs the risk of your entire team missing important market trends that could dull its competitive edge.
We combat this by arranging happy hours with other Seattle-area teams. It’s not just to enjoy some of the world-class craft brews available here, but also to share ideas with each other. It helps ensure we don’t miss out on what others may be discovering. Just like helping each other internally, helping other teams comes back around as well.
Any time you work to develop a new culture in an established team, it exposes cracks in the business. This is painful in the short term, but it’s necessary for sustained, long-term growth. Finding and addressing those weaknesses leads to a stronger business, which in turn leads to an even better culture.
I was recently asked: If I could go back in time to before I made the switch, would I still do it? The answer was a resounding “yes!” In fact, I’d tell myself to do it sooner. And the team agrees: Having a culture that not only resonates with them, but that they helped to create, is exhilarating.
Sean McConnell leads Seattle-based McConnell Group (formerly NK Team), one of the top-performing real estate groups in Washington State. Get connected on LinkedIn.
