Real estate understands that performance is rarely linear.
Listings are won and lost. Deals fall over. Markets move. Motivation rises and falls. Some months seem to reward every effort, while others ask people to keep working without without any immediate sign that the work will pay off.
The leadership challenge is not removing those fluctuations. It is helping people navigate them without allowing every result to dictate their confidence, energy or sense of worth.
That was the strong connection between my recent conversations with executive coach Holly Cole-Havens and Olympic gold medallist and Marshall White Bayside General Manager Drew Ginn.
Holly explained the psychology behind the peaks and troughs. Drew shared how leaders can create greater steadiness through feedback, recovery, reframing and trust.
Do not let the result control the room
Drew described agents walking into his office saying they had “lost” several opportunities in a row.
His role is not to join them in the disappointment or tell them to simply move on. It is to help them reframe what has happened.
Did you lose something you never had? What can you learn? What remains within your control? Where should your energy go next?
That shift does not deny the disappointment. It prevents the disappointment from becoming the person’s identity.
Drew takes the same approach when the team is performing well. He celebrates success but does not ride the wave so high that the next setback feels like a crash.
Holly approached this from a psychological perspective. When organisations turn every win into an enormous emotional event, people can begin chasing the next high. When the results slow, the emotional drop can feel even greater.
The goal is not to make work a flat line. It is to help people build enough perspective that they are not emotionally controlled by every result.
Understand what sits beneath behaviour
Performance pressure does not look the same in everyone.
One person becomes frustrated and disruptive. Another withdraws. Someone else works longer hours, narrows their focus and shuts everyone out.
Holly’s advice is to look beneath the visible behaviour.
What pattern are you observing? What triggers it? What pressure might the person be carrying? Do they need clarity, support, accountability or a healthier way to manage frustration?
This does not mean tolerating poor behaviour. It means responding to the cause as well as the symptom.
That requires leadership capacity. Holly made the point that leaders cannot deal with complex people issues well when every hour of their calendar is filled.
As leaders become more senior, they need more white space, not less. People issues rarely arrive at a convenient time.
Practise honesty before pressure arrives
Drew shared how the Oarsome Foursome held regular “honesty meetings.”
The crew discussed what was working, what was not, what strengthened trust and what was beginning to erode it.
After finishing third in an Olympic semifinal they believed they should have won, tensions erupted. People pointed fingers, and frustrations surfaced that had little to do with the race.
The next morning, their coach called an honesty meeting.
It worked because honesty was not something they attempted for the first time during a crisis. They had practised it.
Teams cannot wait until trust has broken down to begin speaking openly. By then, honesty often arrives as accusation.
Performance requires recovery
Elite athletes do not operate at maximum intensity every day. They prepare for the moments when they must perform, then recover and reset.
Yet many businesses expect people to be at 100 per cent every day, all year.
Drew spoke about the habits he discusses with his team: sleep, sunlight, movement, hydration, nutrition and what happens to alcohol or social media use when pressure increases.
The people who manage difficult periods well often practise these habits consistently. They do not wait until they are struggling to begin looking after themselves.
But wellbeing cannot be pushed entirely onto the individual. Leaders shape workloads, expectations and culture. Telling someone to sleep better while sending midnight emails is mixed messaging.
Sustainable performance is a shared responsibility.
Create steadiness without losing ambition
Holly’s advice during difficult market conditions is to name the pressure honestly and remind people that economic cycles are seasons, not permanent trajectories.
Return to the fundamentals. Strengthen client relationships. Develop skills. Use available capacity to prepare for the next upswing.
Drew describes this as moving beyond resilience towards reinvention. Do not simply wait for conditions to improve and hope people bounce back. Anticipate what is changing and prepare for it.
A leader’s role is not to remove every high and low.
It is to provide enough consistency, honesty and perspective that people can move through both without losing themselves in the result.
Holly Cole-Havens and Drew Ginn will both appear at the Business of Real Estate Conference on the Gold Coast. Drew will also speak at the RISE Leadership Breakfast, where the theme is Lead Today, Shape Tomorrow.
Listen to podcast Behind The Numbers: Leadership Series