Key Leadership Lesson: Listen more than you speak

Listen More Than You Speak

When I was first offered a leadership position in my mid-20s, I initially thought that leadership meant speaking up and making my voice heard in every situation. I quickly learned that wasn’t true. A pivotal shift happened when I read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman, a book that fundamentally changed my perspective. It taught me that a leader’s role is to extract the best ideas from the team, listen deeply, and only speak about 10-15% of the time in meetings. That was a game-changer for me.

I naturally tend to ask a lot of questions – curiosity is second nature. So, the idea of remaining in curiosity came easily. Instead of leading by speaking, I realized my job was to create an environment where the team could solve problems, and I could guide decisions by understanding their inputs and filtering for the best outcomes.

Creating a Safe Space for Open Dialogue

To ensure team members feel confident sharing their ideas, it’s critical to establish a safe, judgment-free environment. We use what I call “green light meetings,” where no idea is criticized, and everyone is encouraged to share freely. Even off-the-wall ideas can lead to breakthroughs. Once all ideas are on the table, we move to a “red light” phase, where we edit, combine, and evaluate the best ones.

The key is fostering a culture where there are no bad ideas, just ideas that need refining. The goal is for the best idea to win, no matter whose it is, and as a leader, there’s nothing better than when the team brings forward a better solution than the one I had in mind.

Staying Disciplined in Speaking Less

At first, it can be hard to keep quiet in meetings. Instinctively, as leaders, we think we should dominate conversations, but that handicaps the team. When leaders do all the talking, the team becomes dependent on them, unable to make decisions without their input. That’s why we train our team to come with solutions, not just problems. Over time, they learn to think critically and solve issues on their own.

Encouraging Problem Solving and Ownership

If someone brings a problem without potential solutions, I ask them to take a step back and think of a few before coming to me. It’s a gentle reminder that we expect everyone to contribute to solving challenges. Our culture encourages critical thinking, and if someone doesn’t align with that approach, it might mean they aren’t the right fit for our team.

Our goal is to hire people who enjoy autonomy and are entrepreneurial in their thinking. We align incentives so that when the company wins, they win too. By empowering them and giving them the freedom to act, we’re able to create a high-performance team that continuously improves.

Ultimately, it’s about focusing on our “North Star” – our investors and residents. Every decision must add value to both, and if it doesn’t, we know it’s not worth pursuing.

Key Leadership Lessons: Slow to hire, fast to fire

Early on in my career, I found that I was sometimes too easy and forgiving with people who clearly weren’t a good fit for the role. They might have had the right attitude or fit well with the culture, but they just didn’t have the necessary skills to get the job done. Over time, I realized that a lot of this was on me. I didn’t have a good hiring process in place and wasn’t looking at the whole person – their behavioral style, personality, and what type of work or environment they would thrive in. Once I learned that it was about finding the right person and aligning them with the right role, it became easier to shift talented people within the organization or help them find a better fit elsewhere.

This realization wasn’t from one specific experience, but I had an early one with a salesperson. She had the ability to do really well and would often hit her numbers. But then she would completely fall off for a couple of months, failing to get the job done. Because I liked her, I kept her around longer than I should have. The opportunity cost of the leads we provided her, along with her lack of care for some of her clients, ended up costing the company much more than keeping her did. That was a wake-up call – I had to make faster decisions when I had the “right person” in the wrong role.

As for hiring, I began educating myself by looking at companies known for great hiring practices. One company that stood out was Keller Williams Realty, which was using a third-party consultant, Corporate Consulting, for their hiring process. I engaged them for coaching, and they taught me the process I still use today. It’s a minimum of four steps: a screening interview, a comprehensive interview, an AVA behavioral assessment validation, and a commitment interview. The screening interview is a chance to get to know the candidate and share our company culture. In a way, we try to scare the person away by being upfront about our high-performance expectations. We also highlight our love for people and our core values.

If that goes well, we move on to the comprehensive interview, where we ask detailed questions about the person and their role-specific knowledge. Afterward, we do a behavioral assessment and validate it on a third zoom call, ensuring that their behavior matches what we’ve seen in previous interviews. From there, we check references and conduct a commitment interview where we discuss how we’d work together and give feedback. In some cases, we also include a panel interview for leadership roles. This multi-step process ensures we make good hiring decisions and bring the right person into the right role.

Despite all this, hiring mistakes still happen. Sometimes it’s due to changes in the candidate’s life or the company’s needs. The hardest situations are when I genuinely like the person outside of the workplace. It’s challenging to part ways with someone you have compassion for, but the mission of the company has to come first. When someone is not contributing to the mission, we provide feedback quickly and, if necessary, remove them from the team. We do this with dignity and, where possible, help them transition to another role outside the company.

The key to deciding when to act is looking for movement. Is the person embracing feedback and seeking growth? Are they making an effort to change? Growth is uncomfortable, and if someone is unwilling to do the work to improve, it’s a clear sign they’re not a good fit.