No More Safe Seats
A different type of leadership will define the next generation of real estate brokers
Brokers, the world has changed—and it’s not just your agents who must adapt.
The old model praised you for wearing every hat: recruiter, compliance officer, coach, culture-builder. But the reality? You’re overloaded. You can’t be everything to everyone, any more than your agents can.
It’s time to acknowledge what most won’t say out loud: doing things the way they’ve always been done isn’t just unsustainable—it’s a recipe for becoming obsolete. Your agents have been required to evolve, to become storytellers, marketers, and attractors of business. We’ve been told (by you) to “articulate our value.”
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: brokers have to do the same, and they can’t in the current model.
The brokers and leaders who will thrive aren’t just managing—they’re voicing their vision and value with clarity and conviction. What’s that sound like? It starts with having the ability to answer one very important question: Why work at this office with you? What’s your vision for our collective future?
Feel uncomfortable?
Ya - I get it.
I’m not trying to put broker/owners on the spot. I think brokers are the unsung heroes keeping most of us from having a stroke, which is why I’m concerned.
Most (not all) have a leadership structure and culture that says success is measured by the brokerage body count. Brokers (like agents) may have been taught that “more is always better.” If I understand correctly (and I’m happy to be wrong, given I’ve never been a broker), the pressure to recruit is high. The recruitment mandate for brokers seems to be the equivalent of the “lead generate” mandate for agents.
There are two ways to do either: pull or push.
Pull is to be so good and meaningfully important - agents can’t ignore you.
Push is to be so persistent and annoyingly relentless - agents always ignore you.
Here’s my hypothesis: brokers (in current organizational models) don’t have time for either.
Learning how to pull others towards you means slowing down long enough to learn new skills (like how to cast a compelling vision to your current agents).
But what if you did?
What might happen?
A fantastic recruitment flywheel. The same beautiful referral flywheel agents are coached to build.
It’s the art of going a mile deep with those you have vs. a mile wide with strangers who may not be the right fit. Both require hard work, massive effort, and a willingness to stake a claim that’s more than the corporate tagline. For emphasis, I’ll repeat myself, “Why this office, with you?”
If you can answer that question privately (and then publicly), you will be a hero to your agents.
Here’s why: it’s what your agents are grappling with today. It’s the private problem they’re trying to solve - and don’t know how.
If you can be the kind of leader who shows them how to do it versus telling them to do it, you will have a retention rate like none other and a recruitment mechanism that outpaces anything you and Chat GPT can create.
Agents have to answer, “Why me?” before “Why us?”
Same goes for you.
And your agents who HAVE solved this problem?
They’ll expect this deeper, more meaningful type of leadership.
Brokers who can answer the question without sounding insincere, typical, and tired will have a line of agents waiting to work with them.
When you do the hard work alongside us, we trust you and become advocates for you, just as our clients become advocates for us.
When you’ve taken the time to think about and articulate how you solve agent-related problems, we love and respect you. But only if your answers are yours, not your marketing department’s.
To do so requires brokers to answer questions like;
What do you stand for?
Why should agents care?
Would they say you actually deliver?
How would your agents describe it?
What are you trying to build besides volume?
What do words like “culture,” “support,” or “leadership” mean to you?
How does proof of that claim show up in your agent’s calendar or your meetings?
These tough, calibrating questions are the kinds of questions your agents are answering from the client's perspective. As they say, these can be “come to Jesus” moments, where we feel a sense of gravity. But gravity is good today. Useful. It grounds us all in truth, not tactics.
Reflect on the past seven days.
Did you connect at this level?
Or did you host another social hour scheduled by your admin to see the same people who always attend? That’s analogous to an agent’s half-hearted happy hour, or a tattered pop-by thrown on a doorstep.
The stakes are higher today. The bar has been raised - for all of us.
A mantra like “my door is always open” doesn’t measure up anymore (and you probably don’t like the fact that your door is always open anyway). That passive approach is dead, and it leaves your agents free to hide at home in the fetal position.
Is leadership at this level even possible? Probably not. At least not in the current leadership models. Most brokers are balancing the impossible task of being all things to all agents with a ratio of 100:1.
It’s why you may have to make some hard structural decisions, just as agents do.
Will you recruit a mile wide? Or retain a mile deep?
My humble opinion: a leadership team that divides the work in a new way, one that leaves brokers room to retain, will be the most successful. They’ll have dedicated, die-hard agents who recruit passionately because they know they have something special to protect and nurture.
Dare to be different
Agents don’t need another generic broker—they need someone who models new behaviors. A broker who knows exactly what they stand for, where they’re going, and why we agents should align with them.
Agents are changing fast (we have to), and we need you to change with us.
I implore you, as an agent, to evolve. Your competition is. They’re putting this kind of work in because they know - no safe seats exist anymore.
