Leadership Live - Creating Impact Through Resilient Leadership, Not Title

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Welcome to another episode of Leadership Live. My name is Steve Loewes and I'm the founder of the Lowest Leadership Institute. And today we're gonna have a little bit of a different conversation. We're going to talk about leadership from a, a point where you may not actually expect it. We often take leadership and focus on leaders with actual titles, whether it's a CEO or something else. But today we've got a little different spin on this, where we have leadership without an actual title of leadership, but where you still have to influence people, build trust, do all the same things that a leader with a title actually does. And because of that, we brought on a new guest, David Malcolm. David, thanks for, for help, for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So.

So you're a wonderful realtor from what I've heard tell. Give, give the audience a little bit of your background, where you're at, where you do, what you do.

David I'm currently an independent agent with Charles Reinhart Realtors Reinhardt Realtors. Now I began my real estate career back in 2005 with Keller Williams, moved on to Re America Hometown 1 at one point, and I've been with Reinhardt since 2015. And I just love serving my community and serving my friends and my sphere of influence, my clients. That's, that's what I like to do.

So let's, let's talk about that a little bit because you do so much more than just being a realtor. You're influential in your community. You're connected all over the place. Tell us a little bit more about that first.

Well, I was raised by a group of givers, so I spend a lot of time, my free time, volunteering for different charities for, you know, I play Santa Claus. I have been doing that for like five years for the kids, do fundraisers for Humane Society, fundraisers for people with food insecurities, housing insecurities, stuff like that. Those things are important to me and I can never seem to say no to volunteering for those.

Which is how we met. Yes, actually, yes, through, through Leah here. But because of, of supporting a non profit, that's how we met.

Yep.

So. So a lot of people think about leadership only from the perspective of having a title, like I said in the opening of this. But you're, you're kind of a unique role because you're a realtor, but you're still a leader in the community. You're still connected and you're still guiding your clients, which is a, is a big focus of what we do here at the Lowest leadership. It's Leadership Institute. It's all about guiding team members. So talk about how you do that with your clients. You've one of the most important transactions of their life. Buying a house, selling a house. How do you guide them through that?

First, I like to establish trust. I just want to be honest and open and work within my client's best interest in every single transaction that I, that I have. And you know, I don't think about money, I don't think about anything. It's my clients, it's, at the end of the day, are they going to be happy with the, with the results of our entire transaction and be able to move into a home that they love and enjoy for the rest of their lives or however long they choose to be there and just establish some trust with honesty and work with integrity and hopefully establish a relationship, a long term relationship, long after the transaction is over. I, I love that a lot of my clients have become friends, personal friends. Yeah, I've traveled with some of my clients, you know, as friends. Afterwards, you know, we get together, I get invited to family events and whatnot. I, I just want to establish those relationships and then hopefully leverage those relationships in the future, you know, and have my clients continue to help me in my business because of the work that I've done for them.

Well, so let's, let's relate that to leadership as most people think about it. In terms of leadership, you said the first thing is you got to build trust. You meet somebody for the first time in your profession as a realtor. How do you go about building that initial piece of trust? Because this is something that leaders struggle with. How do they build trust with their team member? It's the same thing that you do with your clients.

How do you do that again? I just, I don't come with a lot of gimmicks. I don't come with a lot of, you know, tricks, tricks of the trade. I mean, I just, I'm, I'm me, I'm myself. What you see is what you get. And you know my social media pages, I, I, I do videos and stuff for people. People see me, you know, on social media and I'll get a phone call and I'm just being me no matter what at all times.

So you're not changing who you are. You have to be honest to yourself before you can be honest with somebody else. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes. I just lead with respect for the client's needs, their family and my knowledge of my profession. And if they want it, I'll go after it, you know.

Well, there's, there's similarities again to, to what we do on the leadership side of things. Building that, that trust first with each of our team members, like you do with each of your potential clients, future clients, past clients, whatever the case is, and, and not being somebody that we're not, because ultimately our teams can see through that crap, just like your customers can potentially see through that stuff. But you're, you're also guiding them to make some of their biggest decisions of their life. How do you view that responsibility? Because buying a house, going to college, getting married, having kids, those are the big four. And you're messing with one of the big ones.

Yeah, I love working with first time home buyers because that they're some of the, the, I won't say hardest, but there's some of the, sometimes the more complicated people because they don't really know how to, to get the financing or they don't know who to use as an inspector. They don't know, you know, who to use as a, as a plumber and electrician. And I've built a great team of contractors and people in the industry to help them with that. And I normally make sure that I do not refer anyone that I haven't used myself or that I haven't worked with and that I know is going to do a really good job for my clients. And you know, after, after our transaction is over, more times than not, they're, they're very happy with the people that, that they've worked with and the people that I've led them to, to take care of, you know, business for them in, in their real estate transaction.

You know, we have this, this philosophy that we talk about a lot on online and, and for the Lowe's Leadership Institute. It's our focus is on getting the best for people, not just from people. And you just described exactly that. You said you don't do it just for the dollars. You don't look at everybody just because of the dollar signs that you're going to make off of it, because you have to make money too.

Right?

But everything you just described is about doing for others to get the best for them, not just the best from them. And that's, that's an important leadership principle that we talk about all the time. But there's not everything goes perfectly in your business. Sometimes the deal falls through, sometimes something happens. How do you have that difficult conversation with your customers and get them through it?

You know, sometimes I try and prep clients before we even get started in the transaction. Anything can happen in a real estate transaction. I mean, you can, you can have somebody that's happy and ready to purchase a property one day, and they go home and get buyer's remorse the same night, and they want me to call and, and rescind their offer. You know what I mean? I hate to be the bearer of bad news for people, but I try not to take it personal. And I hope that my colleagues and buyers or sellers on the other side don't take it personal and understand that things may not work out here, but they will work out at some point. And, you know, let's, let's move forward and do what we need to do to get where we need to go.

Have you ever had, and I'm assuming the answer is yes. Have you ever had a, a client or potential client that was just being unrealistic? Yes. How do you have that conversation?

I've fired a few clients in my lifetime. If, if I don't feel that we're a good fit, you know, it's, it's not hard for me to say, hey, look, this is not working. Maybe you should use someone else, or maybe I'm not the person for you.

So the correlation to that could be. And again, I look at everything from a leadership perspective as well. Not everybody is ideal for every leader. Same kind of thing. Now, I'm not suggesting you go fire them, but, but you may need to encourage them to go work for another leader in an organization, just like you're encouraging your customers to potentially work with another realtor.

Yeah, well, we, we don't all, you know, we don't all mesh sometimes, so. And it's okay, it's okay to not, you know, see things the same way. It's okay to disagree on, on things, but when you figure that out, you have to act on it and make sure that, you know, you, you do what's right for you, your business, your clients, the people around you, your family, and, and move on.

But, but let, let's assume that you've got somebody who's just showing for the first time, a client of yours for the first time, that there might be. They might be a little bit unreasonable, but, but they haven't done anything out of. Too crazy, and you've got to have that conversation with them and let them know they're being unreasonable. How do you approach that?

I have the, hey, look, this is not going to work. You know, I've, I've had some of my, my best friends working with Me on homes and whatnot. And they wanted people to reduce their sale price astronomically low. And like, you know, this is not working. And, you know, and. And they felt that maybe I wasn't working as hard for them. And I'm like, no, you're just not being realistic here. And then when the house closed afterwards, we had a whole nother conversation. See, I told you that this is why you were. You were being unrealistic in your. Your dreams or whatever it was that you were thinking about. I'm speaking from experience, and I kind of know how things work. And if you allow me to do my job in helping you, I'll get you where you need to be.

How often do you. Do you start to poke around and figure out what's the source of why they're being so unrealistic? There's usually a reason why somebody's being the way they are.

Immediately. I guess as soon as I. Soon as I get a red flag, I have to address it and start asking.

What do you ask them? How do you dig into them? And this is important because whether you're a realtor dealing with a client, whether you're a leader dealing with one of your team members or just two people in general, this. This viewing things from different perspectives is a common problem. Would you agree with that?

Yes.

The problem is, is that I think often we don't try to understand the other person's perspective at times. What are your thoughts on that?

I mean, how do. How do we get here? Where do we want to go? What. What's the return on the investment you're trying to make here?

Yeah.

Whether it be time, money, you know, expenses on the house or whatever. And how do we. How do we develop a plan to. To reach your goals? Sometimes people are. Are more unrealistic than others, and. And they have to lose a couple times to see.

Sure.

That. Okay, I see. I see what he's saying. You know, they have to lose out on a couple of deals or. Or lose out on the house that they truly liked because they're not understanding that I'm telling them to do what they need to do to get it.

Well, that's. Again, I take everything back to this whole idea of leadership. It's the same thing of letting your team members make the mistake sometimes, because sometimes they just. They don't get it. And that's okay. Letting them go out there and lose the deal. Letting them go out there, make the mistake internally. There's a ton of correlation between what you do every day and how we view and how we should be viewing leadership in the first place. People think it's so different, but it's. It's not. What we're doing is so similar.

Yeah. I learned from one of my. One of my managers, one of my favorite managers of all time. His name is Martin Thomas, and he empowered all of. I worked at Washtenaw Community College. He empowered all of his employees to make decisions. Sometimes we made the wrong decision, but we could talk about it and we could work, make sure that we never made those decisions again. And, you know, if. If he felt that if he had to make every decision for us, he didn't need us there like, we. We. He empowered all of his employees to just do the right thing and everything would work itself out.

Did you ever make one of those decisions? That was a mistake.

I did.

What'd he do? How'd you respond? How do you respond?

He sat down, he talked to me, and I immediately took responsibility for my mistake and said that I wouldn't let it happen again. And it didn't hurt or maim anybody, but we both had an understanding that that wasn't the right decision to make.

Did he ask you questions, I assume, about why you made that particular decision?

Yeah. Martin was a pretty. Pretty good guy. Asking questions or staring you down and bringing the answers out of you just by looking at you. You know what I mean? He made you want to give up the answers. But he taught me a lot about managing, being a leader and making people want to work for you and work with you.

What were some of the unique. Since you're talking about him, what were some of the unique differences you saw in him as a leader versus all the other leaders, you know, which is a ton because you're so well connected. What did you see in him, beyond what you just described, that made him a real good leader?

He understood that. That the people that worked for him actually did the work and that they. Us. Excuse me, I'm speaking in third person. But he understood that we were the ones that were actually doing the work that, you know, he was charging us to do. And at the end of the day, if we did what we were supposed to do and did things the right way, it made the whole group look. Look awesome, including him. So.

So you made. He made you to want to do it right for him. Almost.

I've never wanted to work more for an individual in my life. Like, I worked for that man. He was a great, great mentor, a great, great leader.

So kind of go along the same lines of that Now. Now moving to your realtor. Your. Your current. What you've been doing for. For a long, long time. Have you had. Give me a time where if you don't mind sharing this, you don't have to. But if you don't mind sharing where you made a mistake with one of your clients. It was. It was something that was on you. The oversight, a misstep or so on. How did you regain their trust if you did? And would you learn from that if you've got one?

Actually, I just. I just had one. I had a client that really wanted to purchase a property, and they wanted it for. For, you know, recreational purposes. In hindsight, I shouldn't have allowed. I can't say allowed. I should have instructed them not to. To purchase this property minus some contingencies in the contract.

Okay.

Because they wanted to back out after they found out the seller was not being truthful in his disclosures.

Okay.

And I kind of left him open to, you know, some liability there. We ended up getting out of it, but he just wanted the property. He wanted to, you know, buy it. And I should have been a little more. I wanted him to have it, and I knew that there were multiple offers on there and he was willing to do just about anything to get it.

Yeah.

And, you know, sometimes you might have to. To put some things in there that. That makes your offer not look so clean, but protects. Protects your client a little better.

So. So taking that learning and taking out of the context of being a realtor for a second, how do you apply that learning to life in general, to relationships, to communication? Is there a way that you apply that lesson?

Pay attention. Make sure that. That my. My eyes are dotted and my T's are crossed. Make sure that at all cost. I get it. I want my client to have the property that they want, but at the same time, making sure that they are completely protected in that situation is. Is most important.

So. So you. You were introduced to me by an individual here, Leah, who. Who knows you very well, and she keeps describing you as even all the time. She even said it a little earlier, before she left it, before we started recording this thing. Right. But you're in a business that's pretty emotionally charged because they're dealing with personal finances, losing homes, buying homes, whatever the case is. How do you manage to keep your emotions at bay all the time?

Customers always right, even when they're wrong.

But how do you, like, control that from, like, an emotion? Because you. You're a pretty emotionally intelligent guy. Because we've spent Some time together too. Like, how do you manage yourself? Because you're always cool. You're always, like, calm.

I, I just try not to worry about much, you know what I mean? Everything can be fixed.

Sure.

Real estate, that's my thing. Everything can be fixed. I try not to worry, Worry about much. And if, if we're truly connected, you know, we can resolve anything just with a simple conversation. A pickup of a phone or a handwritten note or whatever. I mean, you can, you can resolve just about anything.

Now look, before you go on, listen to what David just said. You can resolve almost anything. You have that relationship, you pick up the phone. That is leadership guiding right there. There's no difference in what you just said and how we describe this whole idea of leadership, but keep going with that.

Yeah. And, you know, Leah describes me as that way Again, like I said, I am a Gemini. I do have a switch. I don't like for that switch to be, you know, tripped. But I just, you know, I like to see people happy. I want to be happy. I don't want to make anybody unhappy. At the end of the day, I have a, I have a job and, and I work in a profession where, you know, it can be pretty stressful, but at the, at the end of those transactions, for the most part, people are happy. I love helping older people make their transition to, you know, downsizing or whatever. You know, I, I have a widow right now that I'm working with, and she has five kids, you know, a couple big boys. You know, I want to make that whole family happy and that woman happy because, you know, my, I know how I was about my mother, you know what I mean? And I have this, this fragile 80 something, year old woman here.