The Power of Aligning Job Descriptions with Behavioral Style

What if you could predict, in advance, how a person would react to certain job performance tasks? What would the value of that knowledge be worth to you as a Lead Agent? What if you could predict how they will deal with challenges, make connections with others, deal with change, and respond to rules and procedures? What if you could align those key issues that we all face in the business world on a daily basis with the right individual and the right job? You would dramatically influence, in a positive way, someone’s job performance and the results achieved.

When you evaluate the individual jobs of the members of the team, each position needs different skills, attributes, behaviors, and actions. A Transaction Coordinator needs to be more rules and regulations focused. They need to be able to keep the other Agents adhering to the deadlines and timelines of the contract. They have to follow or establish certain systems and procedures, and clearly know the consequences of not following them and how that affects the quality of client service, stress load during the transaction, and smoothness of the transaction.

A Listing Coordinator needs to have the ability to interact well with clients more so than the Transaction Coordinator. They need to be organized, while at the same time, being creative. In order for them to accomplish the many tasks in front of them, they need to be stable, predictable, and steady in their work habits.

When you can observe the desired behaviors, temperaments, and needs of each of the positions on your team, clearly defining the type of natural thinking, actions, and behavioral tendencies a person would need to posses to excel in the job, you will be able to attract prospective candidates more effectively by designing ads that people with certain behavioral styles will respond to more frequently. You can then secure applicants more quickly and effectively. At that time, you will have achieved a pool of applicants that is small but of high quality based on the positions you have available.

Matching people to tasks

The best approach to finding the right people for the right job is to analyze the positions and the tasks of those positions. As the Lead Agent, you have to go below the job description level and look at tasks. What are the tasks that need to be done? Who is best suited to perform the tasks? How does an employee’s behavioral style align with those tasks?

In Jim Collins’ landmark book, Good to Great, he shared two clear concepts to consider when dealing with team members and teams. The first is, you have to get the right people on the bus. The bus in this analogy is your business. You have to get the right people as team members or employees. To be a great company, it takes great people. Getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus is essential to success with your company.

The second concept Collins trumpets is getting in the right seats on the bus. The truth is, even if you have the right people, but they are in the wrong seats, you will not achieve the explosive growth and other objectives you have for building a team. Having the right people is only half of the equation. You must get them doing the right tasks.

That’s why I believe you have to determine the tasks that need to be done first. Design the positions based on the tasks that need to be done, while aligning the behavioral profiles that would most likely be doing those individual tasks. Then you go out in the open employment market to select your candidates.

If you are a Lead Agent who already has team members, the approach to maximize performance and production is a little different. Again, you will need to start with a list of tasks that need to be done. Then analyze the behavioral styles of your current team members. Then match the tasks to the behavioral styles of those members. The time you will need to invest to get this area right is more than most Agents really invest in building their team. It’s important to get the people you have in the right seats. Right people plus wrong seats or positions still equals failure.

Right people + Wrong positions = Failure
Right people + Right positions = Success

Adapting lends to burnout

The reason people become frustrated in their job is because of adaptation. When people have to change who they are naturally to accomplish certain functions of their job, they become frustrated at work. They perform at lower levels. They use up large volumes of energy just to cope with their job. This sends them home burned out, frustrated, and ready to kick the dog, the cat, or even the kids when they get home. Just as I shared in The Champion Real Estate Agent™, the revolutionary discoveries we have developed in building the Lead Agent’s business around their behavioral style have to be taken a step further with your team.

We lose effectiveness and productivity when we or our staff members are in a constant state of adaptation. We will see staff turnover and low performance, which leads to additional challenges and, in extreme cases, the poisoning of all members of the team. Adaptation can kill a team. The objective is not perfection, however. It would be impossible in such a multi-task oriented business as real estate sales to perfectly align staff where they never engage in tasks that are outside the realm of their behavioral style. The objective is to achieve a high level of alignment to minimize the time that is spent adapting by us and our staff. If you can achieve an 80% threshold of alignment, you will have produced a high performance team.