As a leader in the mortgage industry, people are going to look to you for guidance and direction. How you deal with them on a daily basis can make or break your business.
By David Lykken
Special to MPA
As a leader in the mortgage industry, people are going to look to you for guidance and direction. Your vendors, customers, investors, and especially your employees are all counting on you. How you deal with them on a daily basis--particularly when things aren't going your way--can make or break your business. Losing your temper can destroy the confidence people have in you and erode any success you might have otherwise had. As a leader, anger can be your worst enemy.
Now, when I encourage leaders in our industry to exercise patience and understanding rather than rage and hostility, some people tend to disagree. Leadership, they say, is about getting things done. And sometimes people need to be yelled at in order to motivate them to do their jobs. After all, Steve Jobs is considered one of the greatest leaders of our time, and he was quiet well-known about his employees for his angry outbursts.
But most of us aren't Steve Jobs and, in the mortgage industry, none of us our Apple. Most employees in most organizations are looking for a leader who will work with them slowly and kindly to develop them into productive members of the organization. For most talented workers, anger just scares them away. Your people want to know that you care about them. They want to know that you understand them. The quickest way to be sure that doesn't happen is to show them you're angry with them. So, do your people, your organization, and yourself a favor. Don't lose your cool: keep your anger in check.
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.
