How Will You Measure Your Life? (The Bugle)

If Malcolm Gladwell, acclaimed author of New York Times bestselling titles such as The Tipping Point: How Little Things can Make a Big Difference;  Outliers: The Story of Success and more recently David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, is right it takes 10,000 hours on average to become an expert at something. This is my 200^th issue of writing this column and if on average it takes four hours to research and write each issue, then I have wracked up a reasonable 800 hours towards the 10,000 hour threshold at which time “expert” status can be considered. The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know, and it is this realisation that drives me forward to gain more understanding. Author’s such as Malcolm Gladwell or Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner who wrote Freakonomics, Super-Freakonomics and Think Like a Freak should be compulsory reading for any serious student of economics. 

The great thing about a career in real estate is that it encompasses a range of skills and disciplines that takes a lifetime to master. The professionalisation of the estate agency business in South Africa has taken a giant leap forward in recent years with the education requirements imposed and the requirement to write an exam within a time frame in order to qualify as a practicing estate agent. I wrote this exam last year and found it an excellent exercise to go through and a tool that will add value to our industry over time. The number of young graduates that have been attracted to our Ballito office and who have committed themselves to a career in real estate is encouraging and indicative of the changing face of estate agencies. Young, hungry, smart and with a desire to make a difference in the lives of the people they interact with, while at the same time earning a respectable living is how I would describe them. When an industry goes from over 90,000 registered estate agents to fewer than 30,000 today you begin to understand how impactful the 2008/2009 economic downturn was. With fewer players in the industry but with turnover rapidly recovering, those that have remained and continue to have an impact in their areas of influence are now doing better than ever. 

For several years I have considered what makes for an excellent estate agent. Although women have a more natural empathetic attitude and can be great listeners, both important traits, men tend to be more analytical and legally minded. Top performing estate agents are therefore divided between men and women on the whole. I was pleased to discover that research has also indicated no clear personality pattern is evident across top performing estate agents – they range from very analytical leaders on the one side who drive a business forward to a socialising and highly supportive personality on the other. What does however seem to be an essential requirement for a top estate agent is a high level of emotional intelligence and the ability to comfortably interact across many different types of people. This chameleon-type quality is not a bad thing. It allows people to feel immediately at ease with the agent and connect at a mutually understood level. To consistently go the extra mile and way beyond the call of duty is something I have noticed that the top performing agents do. When all else is said and done, and in the words of Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School Professor the world’s current leading management thinker, How Will You Measure Your Life? It all comes down to the difference you made to those people you interacted with on a daily basis.

Published in The Bugle, 16 April 2014, Author: Andreas Wassenaar