The quietest person on the flight deck is usually the one in charge, writes former pilot Ben Stern. Here are five ways to demonstrate quiet leadership in your business.
There are myths that movies love about leadership in high-stakes jobs, but reality continues to disprove them. In other words, the person in charge is the loudest person in the room. A decisive voice, an instant command, a commanding energy that lets you know someone is leading the show.
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After 35 years of flying for major airlines, I can tell you that the best captains I’ve ever shared a flight deck with were almost unnervingly quiet. Don’t be passive. Not indecisive. Be quiet in a certain way. They listened more than they spoke, they asked questions before they spoke, and when they did speak, their words carried weight because they didn’t waste time making noise.
In the real estate industry, this is more important than most agents realize. Because our business operates on the implicit assumption that agents should always be selling. Chat. pitching. fill the silence. steering. We mistake the force of words for ability.
I learned aviation the hard way.
In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of accidents were traced back to the same root cause. Either the co-pilot sensed the danger and knew something was wrong but didn’t say it out loud, or the captain was too wrapped up in his own plans to hear it.
The industry’s response is a discipline called crew resource management, and at its core is a deceptively simple idea. Those in charge have a responsibility to create an environment where everyone else feels safe telling the truth.
Convert it into a listing appointment. The agent who visits and performs for 45 minutes knows nothing about the seller.
An agent who asks genuine questions and actually stays silent until he hears the answers can hear what the seller is afraid of, what the last agent did wrong, what a good outcome actually looks like for this particular person, and walk away with the information to win the listing and save the deal three weeks later.
The same principle applies within your own brokerage firm. If you’re leading a team and a new agent discovers a contract issue but doesn’t feel comfortable reporting it to you, it’s not their fault. It’s yours. You have created a flight deck for your juniors to spend their time quietly. In aviation, we know exactly where it’s going.
Quiet leadership is not softness. The captains I admired the most were able to stand still when the situation called for it. But they used their authority sparingly, which is why they had meaning when they used it.
They understood that the goal was not to make it seem like you were in charge. It means operating in such a way that the right information reaches the right people when they need it. It’s rarely just the people who speak the loudest.
Next time you’re tempted to fill the silence at a listing appointment or team meeting, don’t. See what appears in the spaces you leave open. On the flight deck or at the closing table, that’s usually what you want to hear most.
Delivering Quiet Leadership: A Field Guide for Agents
The above concepts are not abstract. Here’s how to take them from the page into your daily practice.
1. Create a pre-booking brief
Before you give your listing presentation, take five minutes and ask yourself one question. What do you actually know about this seller’s situation and what are your assumptions?
Please note the differences. What you don’t know is the agenda for the first 15 minutes of the appointment, not the pitch.
2. Set and maintain talk rate
Crew resource management training involves studying voice recorder recordings to find out who was speaking when a problem occurred. The pattern is consistent. The person in charge did most of the work.
A good benchmark to start with is 30/70. So you speak 30 percent of the time and your client speaks 70 percent of the time. It feels uncomfortable at first. That sense of discomfort is what makes this work.
3. Ask the question behind the question.
When a seller wants to list at a number they know is too high, the superficial question is about price. The real question is usually about fear. Fear of leaving money on the table, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of transitioning for which you are not ready. Quiet leaders don’t engage in superficial discussions. They are with the seller long enough to find the real thing.
4. Non-blaming debriefing
After every trade, smooth or rough, spend 15 minutes going over what happened. Instead of assigning fault, we need to understand the order. What did we know and when? What would be different?
In the aviation industry, this is called a post-flight debriefing, and it’s a way for flight crew members to recover without waiting for something to go wrong again. Most real estate teams skip this completely. It’s a competitive advantage.
5. Leave the negotiation to silence.
Stop the conversation after making an offer or making a counter-offer. Silence belongs to the other person. Filling it for them is a habit that costs customers money. Train yourself to wait. Usually the first person to speak after the number lands is the next person to make concessions.
Quiet leadership is a skill, but like any skill, it feels awkward before it feels natural. But agents and team leaders who master it tend to do something that many noisy agents never do: develop a reputation for being someone who actually knows what’s going on in the room.
That reputation is worth more than any sales pitch you’ve ever made.
Ben Stern is a real estate agent with RE/MAX Prime Properties in Orlando, Florida. Connect with us on Instagram and LinkedIn.
