Is Your Team Crosstrained?

Is Your Team Crosstrained?

One of the advantages of military training is you learn quickly that any member of your team can be out of commission at any moment.  During shipboard training exercises the Master Chief conducting the drill would point at someone and say "You're OUT!" and someone else would step in.  We had specialists, but there was never a situation with only ONE person capable of completing the mission.

We learned how to crosstrain, to provide an alternate, and an alternate to the alternate. Now the alternates might not be quite as good as the first string, but the team could still function at high capacity.

I applied that same lessons of flexibility and training to my post-Navy assembly production days, making sure my medical device assembly team had the ability to function no matter who was on vacation or sick for the shift.

And we applied those same lessons to our real estate team!  Liz and I have personal specialties that work to our strengths,  the artist/negotiator/marketer/photographer/people person she is complements the engineer who enjoys the tech work, "grunt work" and who might have a suppressed creative side (get BACK in that box where you belong!!), and between us we can offer a pretty complete set of skills to anyone we represent.  Our Warren County home sellers and buyers know we each bring a different perspective and tool bag to their service, but love the overall team performance we can bring to the table.

But just like in the military, we're crosstrained too!  We CAN fill the others roles.  Will I ever be as proficient at taking great photos and writing marketing copy as Liz?  Nope...but I'm adequate enough to still get the job done at a level that meets our team standards.  Am I comfortable doing a full listing presentation solo?  Let's just say it's NOT my natural element, but no one has thrown me out yet! :)  And I have those skills because I watched and learned from Liz! :)  And if she needs to run comps or make some updates to our website?  Sghe can certainly cover that or any other number of functions I typically do!

And if need be, we can split and go in different directions for appointments.  It's not our preferred modus operandi, but sometimes you have to make those calls on the fly, and having two of us gives our team the needed flexibility to serve more than one client at a time.

How's your team?  Are they crosstrained enough that on one individual is indispensable? Can you step away?  Can you take a vacation without a phone, laptop and Internet and not be shaking in your boots the entire time?

1 + 1 is much more than 2 when both the "1"s know what they're doing!!
I know the mathematicians might argue with that :)

Serving Warren County's residential real estate needs,
Bill the Engineer/REALTOR®