Key Note: 3 Tools for Architecting Better Relationships

In real estate, your business moves at the speed of your relationships. Using proven frameworks for communication will help you understand how people naturally work and will build momentum in scaling efficiently and with intentionality.

Join Keller Williams Realty Maine’s Team Leader Brad Knowles as he highlights three essential tools—the KPA, DISC, and StrengthsFinder. The better you know what makes people tick, the more effective your business becomes, turning everyday conversations into strategic organization.

What We’ll Tackle:

• The Power of the KPA, DISC, and StrengthsFinder: A high-level look at how these three tools help you understand different perspectives, leading to clearer communication and fewer misunderstandings.
• Efficiency Through Self-Awareness: Why identifying your own natural strengths is the first step to staying "Purposeful" and avoiding the burnout of trying to do it all yourself.
• The Strength of Partnership: The importance of getting into relationships with people who have different strengths to support your vision and move you past "Entrepreneurial" tendencies to "Purposeful" ones.

When you lead with the right tools, you stop reacting to people and start building a business that works for everyone involved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to KW Mean's Beyond the Sale podcast.

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One of the things that was a surprise for me when I was first getting into real estate was how much of running a business really comes down to you, the individual. And I'm sure this applies to other businesses, other founders, you know, as you think about anybody who's a business owner or somebody who's launching a business. But specifically in real estate, your individual strengths, your personality has such an amazing thumbprint on the type of business you do, the people that you work with, often how you go about launching the business. I mean, you name it, it really, it really plays a major impact. So I wanted to share with you three tools that I would really encourage you to take advantage of if you never have, and why each tool is really a complementary to the other and can really help you better know who you are, better understand your clients, and ultimately be more successful as you grow your real estate business. And the first one is one that you probably are familiar with, and it's called the disc profile, D-I-S-C, Disc Profile. And for some of you, I don't want you to tune out. If you think you understand the disc profile, give me another 90 seconds because I think it's a really important tool. The disc really is the first tool that kind of begins to speak to some of your natural acclimate. Are you a driver? Are you a social connector? Are you a detail person? But far deeper than that for me is when you really understand what the disc profile says about people in general, less about you, but people in general, you really begin to understand how to read people better for this singular benefit. Take note. So that you can better communicate with them. It's not about you with the disc, I find, more than it is about other people. The better I can understand kind of their wiring, the better I'm gonna be able to communicate in a format that they are gonna hear and take in and understand and be able to process. And by doing so, we're gonna have a better connection, we're gonna build trust quicker, and we're going to be able to have probably a better foundation for our relationship. So the Disc Profile, a very simple tool, really helps you understand yourself, but better yet helps you understand somebody on the other side of the table. And it could be vendor partners, could be who you're co-broking with, could be your clients, you name it. So another tool I want you to think about is a tool that we use here at Keller Williams called the KPA. It's the Keller Personality Assessment. And the Keller Personality Assessment basically measures the similar things that the disk does, but it also measures seven other traits. So you've got the original four of the disk plus seven other traits. And the reason it's so impactful is you can run that profile against the strengths needed for a particular role. So if I'm hiring somebody in a sales role or I'm hiring somebody in an administrative or operational role, I can already start to get a sense, even before I've met them, if they take the KPA, whether they might have a natural acclement for that role. Now, how does that apply to you? Well, you can take it for yourself as well. You can take the KPA, compare that to your role, and see where is their alignment on strength, where is there maybe some disconnect, and know that those areas of disconnect might be key stressors for you as you work in that role. And so then you can start looking at well, what are some things that I can do to avoid those stress moments, not by not doing the things that the role requires, but who else could I bring in? Could I hire complementary to that? Are there parts of that job that I could sub out to a vendor partner that could help execute on those things? Because maybe I'm not the most detailed person. So if I really take the time to do something like a KPA, I can really understand not just my strengths, but my strengths as they apply to the particular role I'm in or a particular role I'm interested in, as well as obviously anybody I hire into my business. So it's a really powerful tool. Let me give you one more. Strengthfinders. Strengthfinders, it's a great book. You can download it on Olible, you can go buy it. Do not, pro tip here, do not buy a used copy because one of the great things that you find with Strength Finder is there is its own assessment. I have actually got mine right here. Strengthfinder has its own assessment tool, and so the code that you get in the book you can only use once. So if you buy a used copy, you're missing the tool. So whether you buy that new or you buy it on Audible and get the link for it, either way, the Strength Finder assessment is a really powerful assessment because it doesn't talk about what role you're currently in. It's not really about understanding, at least initially, the person on the other side of the table. It really speaks just to your strengths. What are the top five strength areas for you? And how is it that they show up for you? And ultimately, how is that going to help you by focusing on your strengths? Let's go back to where we started our conversation. Real estate throws a lot at you when you get into real estate. You're launching a business, right? You're beginning this whole new thing, and it's so much about you and your personality. Well, it's really also about your strengths. You know, you want to play to your strengths to the best you can, and to the best you can, avoid spending a lot of time, especially really important time, in areas of weakness for you. So, what are those key strengths? Just think of a scenario like this. You need to lead generate for your business. You're really systems and kind of structure focused, and you really know how to leverage tech tools to drive business inquiries. Well, that's not the kind of person who probably wants to do lots of client events, door knock a neighborhood, or spend a lot of time at open houses because they're not, they don't have that strength of that interpersonal connector. Now, the inverse is also true. If I'm a great intrapersonal connector and if I could just get in front of people, you know, they quickly trust me and we quickly decide to do business together, then me spending eight hours a day behind a computer screen is not playing to my strengths. So the strength finder assessment really helps you understand what your strengths are and how it shows up in different parts of your life. Now, the other cool thing is it also speaks directly to how each five of those top strengths for you pair with the other strengths. So you get to understand the complementary nature of how your strengths work together to key you up for success. So let's take a look at this. You've got the disc assessment. The disc can really help you, yes, understand kind of your personality, but also better read the people on the other side of the table so you can better communicate with them. Let's talk about the KPA. Make sure that you're working in your strength zone for that particular role and the demands of that role and anyone you hire into your organization as your organization grows. And then Strength Finder ultimately brings real clarity to what are the best strengths that you bring to your real estate business? Now, here's a couple of questions I want you to consider, and then we'll let you go. How often are you working in your strengths? How much time in a week? If you're working 40 or 50 hours in a week, how many of those hours are you really working in your strength zone? How many of them, especially after taking an assessment like that, could you easily say you're working in things that aren't your strength zone? Just get some awareness around that. And then the things that take the most time that have you working outside your strengths, I want you to be thinking about what are the solutions that I can begin to implement in my business so that I'm not the person doing that. We very quickly move from how do I get that thing done that isn't my strength, to who? Who can get that thing done? And again, great opportunity to hire a vendor partner, partner with another agent, bring people into your world. And how do we do that? We do that by understanding our personality, their personality, the disk profile, and the KPA to better assess if that's the right role for them. All of these tools really work in concert together. I encourage you, if some of these were new and you never really knew about them, I want to challenge you to go out and take them. Go take a disc assessment, take a strength finder assessment. If you've never taken a KPA, reach out to Keller Williams, reach out to me. We'll include the information in the podcast. Reach out to me directly. We'd love to send you a KPA so you can better understand the strengths that you have in the role that you're currently in.

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