With excessive regulation, economic forces behind our control and interest rates always in flux, it can be quite easy for us to get discouraged. Here's how to keep your team motivated.
By David Lykken
Special to MPA
Our business is a tough business to be in. Every industry suffers from external forces that are beyond its control, but it can feel like we are exceptionally helpless in the mortgage industry. Economic forces keep people from purchasing new homes and refinancing. Excessive regulation makes it harder for people who want to buy homes to actually get approved for loans. Generational values on home ownership can cause the demand to fluctuate as well. And interest rates are always in flux. It can be quite easy for us to get discouraged.
The reality is, of course, that all we really need is perseverance. If history tells us anything about our industry, it's that improvement inevitably follows decline. There are ups and downs--highs and lows. When times are tough, it can be easy to throw in the towel or begin complaining about this, that, and the other. But what we really need during those times is a sense of hope. We need to believe that things will get better soon--if not for ourselves, then for our people.
As leaders, are employees are looking to us to set an example on how to view any given situation. If we become cynical and start a habit of complaining about the industry's predicament or the company's standing, our people are going to adopt the same attitude. Discouragement is contagious and your employees will catch it if you let it fester within you. But hope is also contagious. And expressing to your employees that you believe things will be improving--well, that might just help those improvements.
A regular contributor on CNBC and Fox Business News, David also hosts a successful weekly radio program called “Lykken On Lending” that is heard each Monday at noon (Central Standard Time) by thousands of mortgage professionals . Recently, he started producing a one-minute video called “Today’s Mortgage Minute” that appears on hundreds of television, radio and newspaper websites daily across the United States.
