6 ways to crack your team’s culture code

How is the overall ‘vibe’ of your real estate team? Do you have a pumped-up bunch of high achievers nailing their targets? Or is there something missing?

If you’ve spent time developing strategies you’re happy with, yet your team is plateauing or your customer experience is inconsistent, it might be time to look at team culture.

Culture provides the driving force behind strategy, or the idea of “how we do things around here.” But with the rise of the team model, it’s getting harder to keep culture on track. Today, we’re sharing real  strategies from successful leaders to help you strengthen your culture.

6 strategies for building a strong team culture

The word ‘culture’ means different things to different leaders. Here’s how Emily Smith, COO of Wemert Group Realty, explains it: 

“Culture is the piece everything else pours out of. Knowing who you are, or who you are aiming to be, allows your organization to shape every piece of what you do with intentionality. It’s up to you to define what those pieces are and how those will practically show up in your business.”

Let’s dive deeper into what some of those pieces could look like, starting with your own definition of culture.

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1. Define what culture means to you

“Culture in today’s society is an overused word,” says Matt Smith, President and CEO of Matt Smith Real Estate Group. “But the teams that grow continuously have a depth of understanding around the word culture and make it a priority in their organization.”

Culture isn’t about everyone being the same age or coming from the same background. It’s about common values and a shared vision. 

How you choose to define your vision and values is up to you. Here are some tips:

• Draft your mission statement and values: According to Debra Beagle, Co-owner and Managing Broker at The Ashton Real Estate Group, “When you’re looking at operational excellence, the very first things you have to know are, what is your mission, what is your vision, what are your core values? What do you stand by?” For Debra, it’s the idea of taking on an innovator’s mindset, actively testing different technologies to benefit customers.
• Offer practical examples: What does it actually look like to live those values? “What [culture] meant to me was everyone seeing the world the same way, everyone using the same vocabulary, driving toward the same goal. The challenge was taking something so special and scaling it to the degree we wanted,” explains Dave Ness, Founder of Thrive Real Estate Group. By sharing examples of how your values play out in real scenarios, you can make it easier for agents to act confidently and autonomously.
• Use shared language: Linguistic shortcuts like acronyms and nicknames can help build team cohesiveness. For example, Dave and his agents call themselves ‘real estate advisors’. For them, that means consistently showing up as the best in the industry.

Want a mission statement agents actually pay attention to? Here’s a quick bonus tip: keep it simple. “I remember when I onboarded with Ryan,” recalls John McCarthy, Director of Sales at Spyglass Realty. “He handed me this pretty little framed document that had our core values and mission statement on there and had all these catchy little phrases, and all the agents got it. Then we discovered it didn’t mean anything.” 

It wasn’t until Ryan and the team stripped back the fluff and simplified the vision that agents were really able to ‘get’ it.

2. Recruit for culture fit

Recruiting for culture fit means finding the right person for the right job, who fits in with the mission, values and overall culture of the company. Recruiting for cultural fit makes sense when it’s about work ethic and values, but starts to blur when things like “who can I see myself having a drink with?” come into it.

“Culture fit is the most important thing,” says Becky Garcia, Founder and CEO of The Garcia Group. “What I always tell agents when they’re talking to me about hiring is that I would rather take a lower-producing agent that is a perfect culture fit versus a very high-producing agent that is just not a culture fit for the team.”

To keep your culture healthy and productive, focus your hiring on experience and shared values first and foremost. Here are some strategies to consider:

• Ask relevant questions: The right agent interview questions can help you identify top-performers who are also a good cultural match. Consider questions like: What excites you about our mission? How would you describe your work style? How do you stay motivated in the face of a challenge?
• Know who you're looking for: According to Becky, the interviewer should also be prepared to ask themselves some questions. “When you’re interviewing, ask: Is this person going to be a team player? Is this person going to be driven? Is this person willing to be held accountable? Whatever the core values are for that team, ask questions around those core values.”
• Invite them to sit in on a team meeting: One of Becky’s other pro tips for identifying culture fit during the agent recruiting process is to invite them to join a team meeting. “We have them come to one of our team meetings and get an idea of what the vibe is with everyone else that’s there, and see how they react to other people as well,” she explains.

She’s also a big believer in agent support. If you’ve identified an individual with awesome potential but not much experience, she recommends simplifying the decision with this question: “With the proper training, is this somebody I am going to trust with my top-tier level clients?”

3. Provide support and training

The way experts like Micah Harper see it, if you’re hiring the right agents, you’re automatically building a strong team environment. The CEO of Exquisite Properties had a realization about the strength of the team model back in 2016 while at a Zillow Summit. 

“When I saw the team model, I realized agents shouldn’t be doing all the things agents are doing. Agents are people-people. They need to be in front of people.”

With strong onboarding and agent support systems, you can free up more time for agents to do what they do best. Here are some tips:

• Update your onboarding: A strong onboarding system can get agents up-to-speed in a matter of weeks. But are your training systems still aligned with your best workflows? Leaders like Justin Havre, Owner at The Justin Havre Real Estate Team are always looking for ways to improve agent training and onboarding: “We have two agents here coming up on one year. Both of them have sold over 40 homes with glowing five-star reviews coming left right and center from the clients, so you gotta sit there and think ok, how is that repeated over and over again?” 
• Help team members manage their time: According Mercy Lugo-Struthers, CEO and Principal Broker at Casals, Realtors, “One of the reasons agents enter the real estate industry is because of the freedom that it provides, but I believe that freedom is what really gets them into trouble. Being part of a culture or a cadence that is going to help them better manage their time, and really run the little businesses within a business the right way, is a huge opportunity.” With the right targets and a healthy cadence of team meetings and coaching sessions to back them up, you can help every agent succeed.
• Seek feedback: Jeff Brown, Director of People and Operations with The Heaps Estrin Team believes that, “If you’re going to let go of certain parts of your business and trust them to someone else, you have to take the time to really impart your values and expectations of how you want it done, and also listen to the feedback that they’re giving you.” 

To make the most of your agent support system, the information has to flow both ways. “They might have insights or perspectives from other industries, other teams, or their own lived experience that could make a huge impact and make a better product,” Jeff explains.

4. Encourage collaboration and accountability

Each agent will have their own trajectory on your team. It’s important to identify the baseline set of expectations they all must meet in order to maintain a strong culture.

“We're a small boutique team that operates like a small company. If we want to effectively serve our clients, there's no other way to do it. Not only are you operating a business the way that it should be operating — you have accountability, you have your numbers, you have very clear roles and responsibilities — you also have collaboration among the team members,” Mercy explains. “Everyone's an expert in an area, but when you put all of those great minds and ideas together, wow. You get something so much better to be able to serve the client.”

The following strategies can help you create stronger systems of collaboration and accountability:

• Establish a clear goal-setting process: You need to be hands-on with goal-setting, especially in a teamerage model. Define the key agent milestones within the first 90 days, or other predefined time period. “We are actually pretty prescriptive up front,” explains Dave Ness of Thrive Real Estate Group. “For the first three years, the agents that we are bringing onto our team and into our company don’t have to worry about goal setting because we’re going to hand it to them.”
• Create accountability groups: According to Ryan Rodenbeck, Owner/Broker at Spyglass Realty, “The accountability groups are really big, especially if they get into it and they start doing the things they say they’re going to be doing. As real estate agents, we fly by the seat of our pants, but if you have three things you know you’re going to do every single day, that’s going to empower you to do even more.”
• Focus on coaching: Instilling confidence is about getting people to do what they need to do by means of self-realization. “A lot of that has to do with asking the right questions,” explains Ryan. Use your one-on-one coaching opportunities to help guide agents to their own best answers.

In the early days with a new agent, it’s good to be prescriptive with your goal-setting. Once agents are consistently hitting their targets every year, you can relax the standard, but make sure you keep your baseline in focus.

5. Offer best-in-class tools and resources

Giving agents and staff the tools they need to succeed isn’t just great for morale — it’s critical to a collaborative, productive team culture.

“The future of our industry depends on an operation that has the flexibility to offer a great human experience to the agent, to offer a direct impact to our customers. That comes from happy agents, from agents that are successful,”

Says Abel Gilbert, Broker/Owner of ONEPATH Realty. If you’re using real estate tools and tech that can adapt to support your team as you grow, you can help your agents to remain profitable now in the future.

Here are some tips to help you choose the right team resources:

• Give agents scalable systems: “If I can help an agent that joins my team build a similar business to what I built, then I know as a team that we’re going to be really successful,” says Winston Murray, Founder at Works Real Estate. Give your agents tools that can grow along with their book of business.
• Lead by example: Anytime you introduce a new system or technology, make sure agents know what’s in it for them. “We really need our team leader to be vocal about how great this is making their lives. If you don’t do that as well, no one is showing up for the training,” says Justin Benson, Founder and CEO of Bara Agency.
• Replace outdated systems: Don’t scale frustration. Make sure your real estate tech stack is up-to-date and that it actually makes it easier for agents to do their jobs. 

According to Taylor Hack, Owner of Hack&Co, emerging tools like AI can help agents uplevel. “Consumers want ‘awesome' and ‘now.’ Computers are really good at ‘now’, but so far they have failed to be ‘awesome.’ The question now is, where can you make the mix of the ‘now’ that the computers are good at, and the real human connection you need to make it ‘awesome’?”

When testing new technologies, aim to strike a balance between innovative and practical.

6. Lead from the front

For a healthy team culture, make sure agents know how committed you are. 

That starts by being transparent about your commission splits and extends all the way to your coaching programs, training systems, technology, and beyond.

Here are some timeless leadership tips from our experts:

• Get to know your team: The ability to coach individually is key to great leadership. “Leaders need to be able to tune into the unique needs of their team members and understand how they need to communicate in order to get the most out of their team members,” says Jeff Brown of The Heaps Estrin Team. His advice? “Think about the whole person when coaching them.”
• Be clear in unclear times: The world of real estate is always changing. “What I pride myself on as a leader is I want to lead with clarity — here are my expectations, because I don’t want to set you up for failure,” says Matt Smith of Matt Smith Real Estate Group. “Remember the phrase, ‘clarity is kindness.’ To be unclear is to be unkind.”‍
• Celebrate shared wins: You don’t have to throw a party every time an agent closes a deal. Even a quick shout out in your monthly team newsletter or social media platforms can work wonders for morale.

Remember, a strong culture isn’t about getting everyone to do everything the same way. It’s about unlocking the unique potential of each and every individual on your team.

“For a high performing team, you cannot have people with too much overlap. You’ve gotta curate a team where each person brings this unique thing and then each person brings this unique thing, and then you create this magic and this synergy,” explains Howard Tager, CEO of Ylopo. “I don’t like groupthink where someone says something and everyone just agrees. I like a little bit of a clash, in a healthy way.”

By staying close to individual team leaders and agents, you can create the kind of environment where everyone is bringing new ideas and strategies for how to better serve your clients.

Help your agents thrive

Last but in no way least, building a strong team culture is about creating a strong sense of belonging.

“If you give something, there is a universal law that has a tendency to give back tenfold, and by pouring into people and by giving them what they need gives them a sense of belonging,” says Justin Havre.

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